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Saturday, April 16, 2016

I was nominated the emcee for our company's annual kickoff held last evening. When I received this arrow last month, I was pretty sian about it, because it's one huge saikang. The thought of hosting an event on a scale of 800-people was pretty daunting too.

It wasn't my first time being an emcee, having done a similar role twice last year for a department of 200 people. Those two times didn't turn out bad, but they probably weren't awesome. But it did seem like a natural progression from a 200-strong audience event to a 800-strong one.

My co-emcee and I began preparing 2 weeks ago. I had my own ideas and attempted to inject my own style into the script, which was hopefully different from the usual very 'corporate' and 'formal' tone in previous company kickoff events. After coming back from China less than 2 weeks ago, we began to rehearse regularly.

I was pretty surprised that HR and the Strategy office, didn't request to look at my script. Not even at the final moments when we were doing rehearsals half an hour before the event at Kallang Theatre. So without censorships from the company, we kickstarted the event as planned.

I was a little nervous during the first few moments, especially during the first few exchanges on stage with my co-emcee. I could tell that she was extremely nervous at that time, so I knew I had to hold my ground. The limelight that shone on us were so bright that I couldn't make out faces in the crowd, but when I heard some sparse laughter at some of the things we said, my initial anxiety were almost entirely gone. Then my partner forgot one of her lines, to which I quickly continued for her and turned it around. Alot of things went through my mind during this short first segment, but by the end of that first 3 minutes, as we were walking back towards backstage, I was already very pleased with myself.

The remaining segments of the entire programme went pretty smoothly. My co-emcee and I became so comfortable on stage eventually, that we decided to let everything take their natural course on stage, and we even fired impromptu off-the-script salvos, and succeeded in making the audience laugh. Very quickly, it turned out to be the best emcee-ing experience I've ever had so far.

Not to say I'm doing a good job, really, but I'm just glad with the way I'm handling anxiety now. Probably the TV experience last year had helped, or perhaps the previous few emcee-ing times contributed. I can't say I enjoy doing it yet, but I can say I'm definitely improving.

Hosting an event at Kallang Theatre - Checked.

人生是黑白的.
4:13 PM <3

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