"Bye Sitiiiii!"

Hello! Was this morning one of the lousiest or wot!

OK, I was supposed to attend this PeeCee right, so I should expect to see other journalists right? Well, yeah, sure but I wasn't expecting this fella, he's a contributor for some foreign financial times.

Ugh, I still get shivers everytime I recall this incident which took place at this morning! But I gotta tell you guys a bit of history first.

I first bumped into this fella, let's call him Oz, at a PeeCee last year. He introduced himself - picture a gawky, geeky guy (not that I have anything against gawky geeky people), thick-rimmed specs and sport-shirted, complete with a schoolboy knapsack on his shoulder and an earnest grin on his face - and asked for my name.

He wanted to get to know all of us IT journalists, but as he approached our group of four, I seemed to be the only one left - the rest, I didn't think they were directly avoiding the guy, they were timely interested in food - so I had to give out my name.

As my friends returned they caught his ice-breaking remark to me, which goes like this, "You are soooo sweet! You have such a sweeeeet face!"

I knew at that point, there would be no ending to this. My counterpart from Chip mag, let's call him GG, said, "Whoa, even I ain't that brave!"

After that I bumped into him several more times at other PeeCee, but managed to slip in and out of the Q & A sessions unnoticed... till today.

I absolutely wanna blame it on our host company - the producers of Memory Sticks - for having such a weird PeeCee. It is weird cause they made us have tea break at 11AM, then proceed to lunch at 11.30AM till 12.45PM, just so the rest of the two-part PeeCee fits the bigwigs who came all the way from Nippon - actually I really should thank them for a lovely food festival, no?

Anyway, during the long gastronomical fiesta, I was having a good time with the other IT journalists - GG, Lin, Ime etc - talking about Euro 2004 and stuff, till one of them, the Chip writer actually, said "I think I saw your admirer.. hehe.."

I was thinking, oh, there's a big turnout of journalists today, surely ol Oz'll miss me again. But no, he happened to sit on the same table as a BH writer, my pal as well, and as I was saying hi to her on my way to the buffet table, Oz began to wave frantically (though there is really no need to do that!), and I had to smile back!

As I load the wonderful dishes onto my plate, I began to search for an alternative route - bloody hell, there's none! All I could do was wait till the guy was facing down to his food to manage a safe route back to my table.

Back at my table I cursed GG for not telling me the exact coordinate of Oz's location, what he was doing and an alternative plan on how I would get my food, enjoy it and have him not notice me!

By that time the incident about how Oz was picking me up at last year's PeeCee had reemerged. Shit, oh shit - if only he wasn't so weird and seemingly desperate, I would have been flattered.

But Oz is weird! He went to a veteran journalist's table and started talking to the old guy, at the same time pointing and waving at me... and repeated the same process at some other journalist's table as well!!!

I really should not outcast him simply cause he's a bit weird right? I can imagine an old friend of mine, Fathul repeating what he said to me about three years ago, "Korang ni bodoh la. Apa la dengan orang gila pun nak takut. Muka aje lawa tapi bodoh."

For the record Fathul's word sliced my vena kava at the right places - eversince that day, I began to see people with Otak Tak Center in a different light. Well, till Oz showed up again this morning lah!

Anyway, promptly at 12:30PM (the time we were told to get back at the PeeCee room), all the journalists began to wipe their hands on the hotel's nice napkins, collect the press kits and made a move to the PeeCee room (it's actually the hotel's night club). I begged my IT journalists pals to help me out - I just got a bit panic there, right after his fourth Mexican-wave to me.

GG agreed to be my walking wall and we ended up going round the mulberry bush trying to escape the lunch area safely. And safely we arrived in front of the club - only to be told that the hosts needed 5 bloody more minutes before they can let us in.

So we hung around the area, and when I didn't see Oz anywhere, I thought "Hey, safe!". Not.

He arrived, walked straight to me, stood as near as he could, and asked me again my name, just to be have that Man...-your-face-is-so-familiar-and-we've-met-so-many-times-but-for-the-love-of-?-I-just-can't-remember-your-name kind of chat, you know!

GG is already clearing his throat, but Lin's such an angel! She stood right next to me, and we huddled close, she to be my gateway against the malicious blended threat, me the harassed party.

Lin even grabb GG to her side, just to have a better "barrier" effect, and I already huddled towards old B and began a conversation about his health and (please forvige me B!) sort of made him my other "wall". By that time we were huddled so close together even All Black's scrum setting would have been put to shame!

But Oz was more creative than we all thought - hey I give credit where credit's due ok - and he began to shove his neck giraffely (this is not an insult, tis a verb, thank you very much!) in between Lin's and GG's shoulders, peering right into moi. That made even the angel in Lin shivered!

Lin swished-swashed her hair to shake him off, but that did not do much for GG. Oz, having his face swasched by Lin's hair, continued to huddled nearer to GG, pressed himself to GG's back, till GG had to ask with gritted teeth, "Is there anyone behind me?" to drop a hint.

Lin quickly suggested we go to the ladies - bloody hell, why didn't I think of that? Stupid! Stupid! Let's go!

Ime followed us, so we stayed in the ladies loo (I know this is redundant) for about 5 minutes and discussed a strategy for our upcoming entrance in to the PeeCee area. But I guess it could not get any worse, so with a soggy plan we braved it - thankfully the rest of the journalists were already seated by the time we got there, and we were just in time to hear three Nipponese speak about AVIT products...

Did I said I though things could not get worse? I really shouldn't have - cause it did!

Right at the end of the PeeCee, when the emcee had said thanks for coming and hope to see everyone in future events, Oz saw me again, and loudly(!) said "Bye Sitiiiiii!", right in front of everyone and waited dead on his tracks, his face all expectant.

I mustered a lousy half-smile and did a small, short wave-once-back - could not trust my mouth to say anything though, cause trying to recover from the shock of having almost everyone in the room turning to look at Oz and I...