Buttons! Buttons! Buttons!
Carol booked me for a portrait session six months in advance.
A pre-wedding to test me, before committing to the full wedding. I get it. In fact, very smart. Start with the basic plan, then upgrade to premium later.
When we finally met, I thought she looked familiar.
Uh, yes, I bought your book.
I was there during the book launch, the first hundred?
I also paid for your newsletter?
Oh shit.
It wasn’t an acquisition; but a bullseye within my brand's target market. From cooking and writing to now photography, I'm dominating the presence of ‘me’ across the horizontal market.
So after our portrait session, I took my VIPs to a food tour - Mr. John pizza at Kaprica, then Leonie Upstairs since they’re really into sake (but mostly Japan).
She was the one who told me you could order toothfish off the menu at Benyue Kitchen.
The one who convinced me to take the newsletter off the free market.
If you value your work, then you won’t give it out for free.
“You tricked me! How dare you!”
I don’t usually use the word ‘shriek’, but I have witnesses to prove that comedian Jennifer Wong shrieked at me after her show at the door. There are still echoes lingering in the stairwells of the Chinese Museum in Chinatown.
Hana’s godparents, my wife, and I caught her show at the Melbourne Comedy Festival last week. We were late, and that’s how we managed to avoid her radar, since she greeted everyone at the door during opening and closing.
“I thought we were friends!” She was furious that I paid to watch her show.
I wanted to repeat what Carol said to me, but artists steal and improvise right?
“Friends, support each other, like bras,” I replied. (It’s an inside joke from her show.)
Anyway, when we caught up the next day. I was secretly hoping she would take photos of our food tour like how she did with her other cool friends on Instagram.
Instead, I had a full four-hour private consultation/inquiry/evaluation of my professional life.
Let me backtrack, it started with me confessing ‘I think I need to start looking for something stable, like a full-time job.’ It’s all doom and gloom recently about inflation, the interest rate, and how businesses are getting slammed. It’s uncertainty, not love, that is in the air.
Jennifer nodded.
And then from Antara 128, to HK Cafe, to the corner of Little Collins and Russell, to Brother Baba Budan, she pushed me.
Why don’t you pitch this and that to the Guardian? How about photography for comedians? Do you want me to put your name for The Cook Up with Adam? What about your book? I have not heard you talk about your book in the newsletter. Just because it’s old doesn’t mean it’s irrelevant. Do you have an editorial calendar? What are you doing for Mother’s Day? Are you constantly reminding everyone you self-published a cookbook? A fantastic one?
Here’s how you do this. How about doing that?
By the way, are you alright with people giving you unsolicited advice?
“You need to sell your prints,”
Hana’s godmother told me.
“You know the solution, and you can’t be shy about it. Tell people this is your life - you need to feed and care for your beautiful daughter. Grow some skin.”
“You can find a full-time job, but is that what you want?”
Cheryl asked.
God damn it Cheryl, you are my bloody accountant and you just sighed at my annual income! You of all people should be the one encouraging me to think about my daughter.
“Yes, but will that make you happy though?” She said.
Jennifer’s thing is puns, right? You should see her during her show. There’s a lightning round, and the audience yells out a noun, and she has to come up with something punny on the spot. Good or not, it was the unscripted improv part that made it funny, and real.
I can’t imagine Jennifer doing anything else.
I guess it’s the same for everyone around me.
They can’t imagine me doing something else.
So here I am at the bottom of this post, telling you, Jennifer made a good point.
What are you doing for Mother’s Day?
I have a cookbook.
But please, do not buy your mother a cookbook. It’s like buying her a new vacuum cleaner / ab blaster and feeling puzzled over her hysterical fit.
Instead, buy the book for her husband/boyfriend/children and cook a dish for her.
I also have prints for sale from my exhibition last year. They are mostly A2 in size, in museum-grade paper. I can even organise framing.
Buy her a fleeting moment to hang on the wall.
Better yet, buy her a portrait session.
I will show up with a Hasselblad, or a Leica, perhaps even a Pentax 67ii and capture her youth, her vitality, with her loved ones.
And if she’s up for it, it may turn into a food tour.
It took me probably twenty minutes to write this.
And the cursor prompt has been blinking for two weeks.
Skin growth takes time.
And then on Monday, I received a text from Carol.
Her brother and partner are coming to town end of the year, can she engage me for a portrait session, then a food tour as a gift for them?
Telepathy is definitely in the air.
Recently I met a person who rocked the foundation of my core belief in the food industry.
Another woman, another advice.
Rather than thinking of switching, why not focus on something that you know will bring you joy.
I will write about her soon.
Let me consolidate everyone’s advice to formulate a breakthrough to my midlife crisis.
My biggest fear is that by promoting myself, I’m scamming you.
But you know what, I’m good at what I do.
And if you’re going to let some major corporation con you into buying some plastic, gift vouchers, sloppy workshop, Thai massage for your mother.
Buy my plastic, my gift voucher, my sloppy workshop, my massage photography for her.