And thats exactly how I started off. Got up at 6.15, got dressed decently, ofcourse I had to look presentable (there were pictures being taken :P ) and I went off to the invitations office to collect the invites for the celebrities. Our hospitality team (Manali, Amulya and Malvika) were already present at the reception, working out a major issue. Somehow all the work they did about booking rooms for people arriving in the morning got erased and had to be re-done in the morning. I kind of felt guilty that I would not be able to help them out in any way, and they had work effortlessly burning the mid night oil to get this done. I even felt sorry for the hotel staff who had worked so hard, but had to redo the work. Such complications in such a simple situation....well not really a simple situation, these celebrities want their own stuff, pre-arranged, so its not so easy either.
Regardless, things got resolved because Manali was sitting there and getting stuff done and boy was she pushing the hotel staff to work hard. Apart from that the morning was uneventful, I returned to my room after delivering the invites, although I felt bad that the hospitality team could not do the same. They had to stay back and start preparing for the next batch of people arriving at 12 noon. Even after coming back, I barely got any sleep. I got back to my room by 8 am and I had my alarm for 8.30 in order for me to grab breakfast at 9.30 and finally start work at 10 am. Again like yesterday, the aim of the day was to prepare invitations and send those out to the people we missed out on the last night. While the distribution was going on in the background, I wintessed how the seating is done. And trust me when I say, it is a very complicated process and I must congratulate Mehez on doing a great job. Some of the management people want their people sitting in the best location, and then the celebrities want extra tickets, its a real pain. Trust me, I have seen it. There came a time when we had to strictly say no to everyone. We were at a stage when Mehez and Natasha said that even if Shah Rukh Khan or Amitabh Bachchan walked in, we do not have seats available for them.
Even for the rooms there is a big hassle. We had to accomodate the celebrities in the best possible rooms and we had to oblige if they need a change of the rooms. And that makes the invitation delivery difficult for us as well. We though of placing the invites in the rooms before the celebrities arrived, but decided to go against that idea just in case someone decides to change the room they are assigned, and then we could land up in a huge trouble with the wrong invites getting to people.
Given yesterday's frantic running around and delivering invitations, I decided to work better with the hospitality team and both Malvika and Amulya were nice enough to let me know whenever someone was coming in. I had to rush out with the invites and I got those delivered right when the celebrities were walking in. I was also assisted wonderfully by my volunteer Dileepa. He had talked to one of the receptionist and got a person escorting him with a master key to go and deliver the invites to the rooms. While this was working out smoothly, I also had to do my job which I was really there for, corporate hospitality. I had clients calling me and emailing me regarding the sale of tickets. Some had to either pick them up from me, some wanted to bargain a good deal out of me and some had to pick up the tickets and make the payments as well. It was very stressful under all the pressure of delivering the invites to the celebrities and the clients calling as well. Its a very hard job to be handled by one person. On one end the celebrities want their stuff taken care of and on the other the people who had paid big bucks for the tickets wanted to pick up the tickets. I was in such a position that sometimes I had to let go of a few phone calls. I would only attend to the clients I knew and the other, I am sorry, but I had to let go. I guess as they say in marketing, you cannot keep everyone happy, one should always keep their target market happy and that is much better than short term gains. And that is exactly what I chose to do, I took care of all the clients who had either paid or were coming in to make payments and/or pick up the tickets. It was a difficult discussion for me personally, because I like to keep everyone happy, but I think I took it pretty well ;)
By the middle of the second day, I had hoped to go for the charity cricket match that was happening. But like every other day, I was taken up with work and had to skip that as well. But I was glad I did, I was told that the crowd at the stadium was going absolutely wild. But I personally found the people of Sri Lanka to be very helpful. They were ready to help you out in the blink of an eye. Whenever I started to walk somewhere or lift something up, I always saw Dileepa coming over and asking if I needed help. At one stage I had to tell him to get some rest because he was getting all the work done. But I sincerely would like to thank him for all the help he provided during the weekend!
Just going through all of this, my day was over. I finally got done with everything at about 10 pm (we called it an early night) and finally thought that I will attend one after party. There were 3 after parties happening. One was a private party with all the celebrities and the others were open to public (not including the private private parties that the celebrities were hosting in their hotel rooms). I first went to grab some dinner and then hit the public after party, which was pretty much dead with a handful of people hanging around, but some good music. Then Ankit (another intern) and myself decided to hit the private party. We went in saw all the celebrities in there. I wanted to stay and enjoy, but personally, it was the first early night and no matter how much I wanted to party, I decided to take a break and catch up on my sleep, and so I left. But then I ran into my other friend, Nitin, who insisted I join him for a drink. So I stayed with him for another 30-40 minutes and then headed to my room and on my way ran into another colleague (Astrin) who was looking dead tired after all the workload. So I decided why not help her out a little, and I helped her make the media packages (which contained brochoures and info material of all the sponsors), which went on for another hour and a half. After that I decided it was too late for me stay up, as I had to wake up early the next morning and distribute more invites.
And THAT was finally the end of my day, the second day of the IIFA weekend. And before I leave today, I will give you a glimpse of what the invites look like. I have been talking about them so much that you must have got a little curious about them. So here is how it looked like!
:)... yeh dil maange more!!! :D
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