Watsons You Awards

One of the things that I did recently was to take part in a Watsons contest. It was quite an enlightening experience and I wrote about my journey over the last month below on Facebook to thank my supporters and friends.

Culminating in a 'victory' hiphop dance of sorts at their D&D last night, the Watsons You Awards has been an interesting journey. It started out with me naively thinking that it was a simple contest where you go for a casting, get chosen as a finalist, turn up for a photoshoot and then ask people to 'like' my picture. It was in actuality, a lot more than I bargained for. Over a period of two weeks, I had to pit myself against a friend in the same category for daily votes, making a meteorical rise from the third placed contestant with 70+ votes to win with 3000+ votes. This was followed by a ZA makeup workshop, 5 sessions of rehearsals and the performance mentioned above. Being born with two left feet didn't help much and I had to pump in hours of self-torture in front of the mirror. Incidentally, my mom mentioned that she was the one who passed down the bad coordination genes. Thanks mom! :P

In my quest to get votes, I shamelessly 'harassed' my friends almost daily over a two week period, involuntarily stuck to Facebook Chat. I magically developed an inch-thick hide overnight. Online, I met people who were really friendly and supportive, and who helped me vote tirelessly. Some even roped their entire office/friend list in the voting. THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH! Over this period of time, I made some friends, got reacquainted with others, and got to network with people from various walks of life, and I think, if i had lost, this itself would have been a reward. All the votes of love and support in itself meant a lot to me, and I was really overwhelmed. Meeting the other contestants and having their friendship was also a boon!

(On a personal note, and it is very personal here if you wish to read on. If not, please skip to the last part...I feel that I need to vindicate myself although it would appear very wicked to wash dirty linen in pubic.)

I do have one main regret though - in the process of the competition, I lost a friendship. This person was someone I used to be close with. It hurts because this was a friend that I was really true to. We went to KL together, I shared with her the goodies l had e.g NDP tickets, Star Awards VIP tickets. I even helped her to procure a crown from China on my trip, went to her mom's funeral for support etc. So to be stabbed in the back like this was a real letdown.

She was in the same category and thus became a strong competitor. Due to some conflicts earlier in the friendship, where I felt she was insulting me in quite a few of the photoshoots that I did, I had blocked her from my wall. For example, I quote her in one case here: 

"Sorry to say the makeup dont look like you almost thought was someone else lookalike. Wonder why they chose her as excutive while you look like asst. I mean she dont look convincing as a excutive.Think you do better. mayb that why they have to make you less attractive or else you take her attention away. ....For once she look better than you hahaha.They manage to make you less attractive. What the makeup artiste did for u really is bad.But she is good at making you look older !!! hahaha gd skill in that ! ....hahaaha no la just think the making does make u look bad. But we all know who looks better."

She took the blocking very badly and 'flamed' me on a mutual friend's wall. I wouldn't have guessed she would do that except someone alerted me to the unpleasant remarks she made. The story goes like this: someone had posted on his status that some people would do anything to win. And her comment follows:

"aha i have similar experience too.I didnt want to make things ugly and it wasnt in my mind to begin with but some people just want to make it ugly and think everything can still be the same after what they did but the truth is its nt possible.All cuz of $2000,is it worth it ?A friend gone for me but lucky me made a new one at the same time.

....

You cheer up too.No point geeting upset over ppl like these.They wanna turn things ugly let them be.Our conscience is clear then who cares.They dont deserve us.lol

...

all i can say is when comes to competiton,not all close frens can still treat one another as frens.I want to but sometimes the other cant do the same

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at least william you deserve the award.Unlike some who didnt even want to be in certain category at first and even think watsons chose the contestnats without real consideration who should be in which category.But then that person went tru all ways to win in the category she dont like. should I say she wants ti win cuz mayb its just about beatin me at another contest? Was told fame isnt what she want and the $ isnt the main reason either"

This was my reply:

"Who said that i didn't want to win? I GAVE UP my air ticket so that I can attend this casting. That cost me $400. I just want to recoup my loss. And not about beating you. If I am in a competition, I ALWAYS give my best shot. This is a fair and open competition, I try my best and you try your best. And I won this time again due to my own hard work. And I did say hello to you after it was over. In fact, I defended you when some of my voters said you didn't look good. I told them you were pretty in person. I am very sad that you actually post this on William's wall. Looks like the one who doesn't appreciate friendship is you."

At one point in the competition, she casually asked me to give it up for her. Is this what a friend would do? I would never think of even insinuating that to her. It is her right to fight for the win and it is just unfair to make a request like that, however casually.

For me, to have someone behave so immaturely and offload all the junk in public doesn't show the right spirit of sportsmanship. And to compound the offence, she did it against someone she called "friend". It would have been bad enough over a private message, but to discuss all these openly shows that she was a sore loser who chose to frivolously throw a friendship away over a contest of votes. I could go on and on about all the other things she said and did, but that would go beyond the scope of this note.

 

In any case, I choose to move on after this issue. I have learned many lessons in this journey, and I want to focus on the good and forget the bad. Most importantly, in this note, I want to express my heartfelt thanks to people who were so generous with their time and friendship, for the many who encouraged me when I felt tired, for the many laughs and fun moments with my newfound friends. And also beg for forgiveness for the moments when bothersome ME gets too much for poor longsuffering YOU. Hey after all, it's the YOU AWARDS right!

Cam-whoring with Tiger in my performance costume.

In addition to what I wrote on Facebook, I really think I learnt quite a few things about friendship. I guess, in some ways, I should have been a better judge of people and stayed further away when I got the nagging feeling that this lady could be a "time bomb". I quote our mutual friend here who distanced herself after a two-night trip with her. I should have seen the warning signs when she blocked a friend on Facebook over some trivial American Idol spoiler statuses. Or when she bitched to me about another friend she really couldn't stand. 


I would write a lot more, but let me recover from this episode and move on with my life and not mourn the loss of a friendship that is of such poor value to the other party.

There are some who think it doesn't reflect very well on myself to post up such personal stuff on Facebook. i don't often do this as I am a private person by nature, and I will not even post on my statuses things that insinuate or malign others, but this time I really feel very victimized.

All I did was to block a friend from my wall, and that was reason enough for her to launch a full-blown attack on me. Should I do the same to my siblings if they want to keep their private lives from me? People do things for reasons known to themselves and they are entitled to that if it is not a vicious act. I would say, flaming someone is a vicious act. She claims that me writing my note is disrespectful to her since we have a lot of mutual friends, but it is ok for her to badmouth me on someone's wall because we had ONLY a few mutual friends. I am very sorry, but to me it is really the same. To use an analogy, it's like if someone committed a crime, and just because only a few people saw, it doesn't make it any less of a crime
 
In retrospect, I removed most of my comments about her and just left the basic stuff she said intact. I think people can see for themselves that the comments she made were certainly unfair and I leave it at that instead of implicating myself further in the mess.

So, if you think the worse of me because of this, I can't help it. I just know that people can see the truth of the matter and make judgments for themselves.