Sunday morning, my ex-JC mate and CLDDS friend Kangming gave me rare call - rare cos we seldom kept in contact since last year's Cha Dian (CLDDS alumni's bi-annual performance). Yup, for those who came to see our play, he was the male lead in my segment... Anyway, said he had a 'lobang' for me. Apparently his army friend needed someone to translate a documentary script from English to Chinese. KM thought I was up to it as he had this impression that I was highly proficient in both languages. According to KM, it's on a freelance basis and I would be paid $500 for it.

Not too sure about my actual abilities to translate actually. I have been doing some translations for fun during my free time, especially for the good people at SPCNET and in particular for Funn's Shaunsation (what's that, u ask? Well, it's a fansite dedicated to this handsome and talented 'local' actor Shaun Chen Hongyu, one guy I grew to like after watching Ch U's Changing Lanes ^^) So that's abt the only type of translations I do - mainly entertainment news and interviews from Chinese to English. I find it fun, but I confess that I'm not a very good translator cos although I'm sure I've gotten the meaning right, it seriously lacks style and a certain 'magic' to it that makes an article a good read (ok ok, Pearl is never one to write interesting and engaging narratives in the first place). Purely fact for fact, word for word.

But I'm very interested and wanted see if I could really pull off such a stint. So I told KM I was interested and KM gave my contacts to his friend, Nick, who was i/c of this project. Anyway, I'm sure Nick will have to find a way to ascertain my translation ability instead on relying on KM's recommendation only.

Now, Nick called me that Sun evening and told me that we would meet today to discuss the details further. I wanted to find out more abt Nick's work over the phone - which company is he working for? What kind of production issit? According to KM, what he roughly knew that it was a documentary which was produced probably for Mediacorp and that they've gotten the English version but now wanted a Chinese version blah blah blah... But that was about it. When I asked Nick over the phone, it was so noisy over at his side that I wouldn't make out what he was saying.. something about being an 'anonymous production'... Huh???

Anyway, Nick told me over the phone that he'd confirm with me in the morning where to meet and at what time to discuss the details. End of story.

Yup. Tired of waiting for the confirmation, I sms'ed him in the afternoon and asked if the meeting was still on, and got this reply, "I'll get in touch with you later".

Pearl suffers from a condition that makes her extremely distrustful of the people and the world around her. I trust KM actually, he's a really good guy and loyal friend. But I dunno what to make out of Nick and his production so far. Hmmm well, will see.

Seriously, if this is true, then I'll really be on cloud nine. Doing translations for a job has been one of my dreams, and so is working in the media line (sometimes I wonder if I should have gone for Mass Communications instead...). How nice if it all came true!

What's more, it's $500!