Real work...

It's the Monday blues. After my weekend getaway, it's hard to start up my engine, get out of bed and back to work. Judging from the past few days, I thought I would spend the day blogging about my trip. But I was wrong. Today the "real" supervisor returned from her medical leave. We were each assigned to follow a reporter and we were to hand in our scripts by 1230am!

Today's morning news: Taiwan Dell's website pricing screwup - NT 18000 for a laptop??

Bargain hunters had a big windfall when Dell's website experienced a pricing hiccup yesterday, it's second within ten days. Netizens realized the loophole and found that certain makes costs only NT18,000, a third of the original price of NT60,000.

Standing up for consumer rights, the "credit card guru" Miss Yang Hui Ru called together a press conference at the Yong Chun MTR station exit. The fiesty woman blasted Dell for its dishonesty, calling the whole pricing mixup a hoax to get customers' personal information.

In the afternoon, Dell had a press conference to announce its decision to rectify the situation - it will give each customer a NT20,000 discount coupon to buy the laptop in question, the Latitude E4300.

The power the media holds can be seen from how the reporters and cameramen just rushed into the conference room ignoring the PR personnel who was asking in all earnesty for their namecards. The China-Taiwan straits issue seems to be a constant point of contention as seen from the questions posed by the fiesty reporters. "Why is it when a similar online pricing problem happened in Mainland China, the mainlanders got better treatment?" , "Why under the customer care link is Taiwan placed under China?" Certainly the Dell GM would not answer the question, instead he gave a politically correct generic answer or should I say he skirted the whole issue. (PR move)

It was an action packed day, watching the fiery exchange between the reporters and Dell, it's no wonder that news in Taiwan is pretty much like watching a drama played out on TV.

TV journalists have to pack about three news in a day. In between the Dell interviews, the reporter squeezed in an interview with the Taipei county's "environmental doctor". The "clinic" provides free electrical analysis for residents of the Taipei county, giving them the diagnosis of their high electrical bills.

Now I have to write up the news scripts (which I have no idea how) to hand in to my supervisor. Not knowing how I just "anyhow hantam". You should have seen the look on my sup's face when I handed in my first script. At the end of the day, the sup asked the interns to stay back to point out our (many) mistakes. Our sup's pretty blunt and strict, she treats everyone as an equal and demands the same of every intern (even if you're a foreigner). While it may be a lil more pressurizing meeting her demands, I guess it'll be a good learning experience.