Lets Speak Chinese (LSC) – Hurdles to cross

The mail saying that our LSC proposal for 23^rd and 24^th quarters was successful, created little bit worry as the proposed producer of this program fell sick with cancer diagnosis.  Thought of replying CIBS that we may not be able to proceed in this endeavour.  But Ms. Mok was keen in proceeding with this production and found another person Ms. Celia Chu to help in the production.

When we were invited for CIBS interview, I requested Ms. Celia Chu to go with me to attend the interview.  For the first time in three years of 9 seasons production, the interview got cancelled due to typhoon.  I think it happened for a reason.

To our dismay, just based on our application proposal, our 23^rd quarter application was rejected but 24^th quarter application got accepted.  One advantage was that we had ample time for production.  But disadvantage is that the random topics chosen were somewhat difficult compared to the ones submitted in 23^rd quarter.

We wanted to do the 23^rd quarter topics.  I did not want to leave any stones unturned. Sent a message to CIBS requesting that we would like to do the topics submitted in 23^rd quarter (like my school, parent, friend etc) instead of proposed topics of 24^th quarter.

Again to our dismay, they told that we need to produce the show only with 24^th quarter topics as the judges found that those are more interesting than 23^rd ones.

Meanwhile, my December visit to India with my husband fetched fruitful result of my son’s wedding proposal.  Many things worked out fast and I had to travel to India again in February.  Ms. Mok told that she will request the script writer to work after Chinese New Year.  CIBS stipulated us to submit first two episodes on March 11.  Since I planned to return on February 13^th, I felt that we still have ample time to prepare and record the drama with the receipt of the script immediately after Chinese New Year.

However, another hurdle had to be crossed.  My stay in India got extended up to 26^th February.  Ms. Mok was not able to proceed without me.  I worked on this project while in India by requesting the CCG members to make 2 minutes speeches on all the submitted topics to CIBS.  To our surprise, there were many takers and we got participants for all the topics. It was so encouraging.

As soon as I reached Hong Kong, I spoke to Ms. Mok and fixed an appointment to meet on March 1^st.  I know it was really too late to prepare the Ep1 and Ep2 recording. But we need to proceed.  During the meeting with Ms. Mok and Celia, I informed that we can bring in 4 participants (two of them good in reading and writing Chinese and one good in speaking and one learning Chinese for an year) from different countries to do the drama.  She told that she will get the script done in a week. 

It took 5 days to meet the script writer after that.  March 6^th… the time was running.  I know that it would be difficult to submit our first two episodes.  Hurdle need to be crossed.

When the script was ready and given to the participants, one who was good in speaking Chinese dropped out.  I got it filled by my classmate Priya who puts lot of effort in learning Cantonese in all these years but does not know how to read and write Chinese.  Now two participants know only to speak Chinese. Another participant helped amazingly.  She converted the whole Chinese document into English transcript (following jyutping). 

Meanwhile, we booked the studio for recording on March 11 to record the first episode so that at least one episode can be submitted on the stipulated deadline. We did that successfully. Hurdle was successfully crossed partially. I bought some time from CIBS informing that second episode will be submitted on 20^th March. This is the first time that we could not meet our first 2 episodes deadline.

While this hurdle was partially crossed, another major hurdle cropped up on 17^th March.  The friend who helped us in getting English transcript was not able to join us for some reason.  My hunt for participant at this juncture seemed to be impossible.  But this hurdle has to be surpassed.

God only know how many more hurdles we had to surpass in this production.