It’s the Spud‘s last day at Lianain Films. James calls it The End Of An Era. Sounds a little melodramatic, but he’s right. It’s hard to imagine work without the Spud.
She’s baby-sat bawling Bangladeshi infants, played Pied Piper to hoards (HOARDS!) of rowdy kids. She’s fallen into muddy rivers and downed too many bottles of Teh Botol, data-wrangled on dodgy side streets, work through two typhoons, sound-mixed, assembly-edited, subtitled, DHL-ed, organised our accounts, encouraged James’ addiction to the World Cup Waka Waka song, rescued a dog on our behalf, OD-ed on Sour Bears, survived dodgy fruit, dodgy desserts, dodgy hotels… all the while going, “My favourite thing!”
The day we met the Spud, James and I were on the verge of giving up our search for a Production Assistant. We’d interviewed all sorts of people, but no one felt right. And then the Spud showed up. And five minutes after talking to her, we knew. She told us she was volunteering for The Online Citizen and had been out on the streets, collecting vox pops about Singapore’s Mandatory Death Penalty. We were in the midst of shooting “Yong’s Story“. Back then, the Death Penalty wasn’t so widely discussed. It was a little too sensitive, a tad too controversial. People didn’t want to think about something so morbid. And yet, this 21-year old kid was doing just that, and getting fired up in the process. We liked her. A lot. We’re glad she didn’t run when our job offer was accompanied with dire warnings of, “You’ll have to do some really tedious stuff” and “It won’t be a whole lot of fun”.
It’s been a blast. We’re going to miss having the Spud around. We know we’ll keep in touch though. If not for work, simply because no one understands why it’s so much fun singing “So Ronery” out of the blue, in the middle of nowhere, at the top of our voices, the way the Spud does.
Thank you, Kirsten. Safe travels. Enjoy Cardiff. Don’t forget to come back.
