I received a text message from the hall’s web team vice-head today demanding for an updated status of the web site.

Tech-savvy folks understand that the crux of web design lies not on the aesthetics alone. A good user experience comprises more of than the usual eye-candy; information architecture, for instance, plays a paramount role in web design  — which in the hall’s context, was the reason for its failure. The hall’s web site sucks visually, but the main reason for drawing strong criticisms is beyond that.

So, when I got assigned the task of a complete face-lift, I asked for the most fundamentals  — what do we want to show? I went around asking seniors or residents who had spent time significantly there about the hall’s culture. Not surprisingly, I received the most flippant answers. Web team head offered me assistance by offering his right-hand woman to my aid; she will assist me in giving me all the information required to be published on the site.

Alright, I did expect a great deal from her. So when I sought advice from her through email some weeks ago, all she did is to give me a call the next evening at 11.30pm and told me to include “whatever is already on the web site“. Perfect. As if I needed some wise advice from the oracle to nudge me in the direction to include in the new design with “whatever is already on the web site“.

Again, this situation felt like having a three year old planning your career or an amnesia-suffering folk signing your paycheck. In any of such cases, we should give thanks that they don’t send you working with the dementors in Askaban or in the latter case, having a zero lesser on your next payout.

While on our way back from the web meeting, I was bewailing on the strong political movements that exist within the walls of Temasek Hall. While I’m not new to politics — work in the SAF camps and my short stint in KPMG had given me quite an insight — the intensity of such a hunger for power falls outside my expectations.

I didn’t know how the hall decides who should head the committees, but I will expect the ability to perform the said job to come under one of the criteria. Apart from hands-off delegation, blatant bossing, and incessant whining, the vice-head knows no shit about web design. And her inability to code a single line of web standard markup insults my intelligence. Seriously, it’s akin to getting a pre-school to handle your company’s accounts and expect no signs of irregularity.

Every part of me wants to contribute. I wasn’t the perfect designer in town, but I know what it takes. So, as a member of this focused group, I’m tasked to share, to design, to code, to coach and to maintain. Whoa! I’m all so flattered.

It’s high time I start doing something good for myself.

A reason why I’m not a fan of project meetings is because precious time is so often spent wasting on group brainstorming sessions instead of idea pitching or sharing.

Yesterday’s meeting was a classical example of such a sin committed; three hours spent watching members staring at each other while I battle on with myself coming to reconcile with the incredulous gay-themed drama they came up with.

So after three hours of non-productive eye starring meeting, I went on to another meeting that was held in hall. The phone has never been so busy, three missed calls and several short messages; the phone wasn’t with me. Wow, I must be really important, so much so that my input was critical for the survival of tonight’s submission. But wait a minute, wasn’t my proposals tragically rejected?

So earlier on today, they called me to remind me that the submission was today, and that I should go and discuss on how we would want to proceed to shoot the remaining of the drama. Upon reaching, I was greeted by a computer with an open word document, and all I had to do was to correct the drama treatment littered with grammatical errors and boring sentence structures.

Mind you, if you read Tributum and find yourself dozing off after three paragraphs, I guarantee you basking on the seaside in Wonder Dreamland in one sentence of the treatment. See, my job for the day was the group’s copy editor, my ideas or creative directions were sans-required.

The premise remains the same — Human with gay tendencies and the power of invisibility playing tricks on his ill-mannered Singlish-speaking university mates. I feel so uber-ashamed being an NUS student.

On a lighter note, my media writing assignment came back with much improvments. Happy, not gay.