A fantastic way to end off the year of 2012 — I was invited last Thursday, by Ms. Suzanne Jung (television presenter and co-anchor) to be on Channel News Asia’s flagship morning show, AM Live!
The topic? Our very popular bucket lists, a topic which all of you should be familiar by now. ;) (By the way, grab my free e-book: 101 Things To Do Before You Die by signing up for the free newsletter.)
Given that CNA is one of the most popular and most prestigious television networks in Singapore, I very gratefully accepted the offer. This is the second time I’m on CNA, with the first time being two years ago on BlogTV (which was coincidentally on bucket lists too!). Suzanne quickly set up the interview with me over email, and it was agreed that they would bring the crew to my home, where they can film me in my natural environment, working and doing my thing!
This is the third time the media has come to my home. The first two times were in 2009 when I was interviewed by My Paper and Lianhe Zaobao (separately) on my story of how I quit my job to pursue my passion. It has been a while since then!
Pre-interview discussion with Suzanne on the bucket list topic, while we waited for the crew to set up the equipment. And by the way, those were some pretty bad*ss equipment I saw today!!
Showing Suzanne my vision board, an important after-step of bucket lists
All ready to start the interview!
Being interviewed by Suzanne Jung herself. She’s really an awesome person and presenter!
Taking the questions, one after another. The main interview itself was about 30 minutes long. (There was a separate short segment later and additional filming of about 10 minutes.) It was really fun sharing my personal knowledge on bucket lists with Suzanne.
Showing Suzanne my vision board pictures for year 2013 😉
The crew taking shots of me working
Sharing my life philosophy and how bucket lists relate to that
Me crossing out items on the bucket list for the camera 🙂
Myself and the very lovely Suzanne Jung 🙂
The whole recording took about one hour and went *very* well actually — probably one of the smoothest interviews I’ve ever done, save for a couple of fumbles in the beginning. But then again, you never know how things get captured on film, so I’ll wait for the final cut before I give the verdict!
Catch the Interview this Friday, Dec 21
Suzanne told me that they will be selecting key sound bites of the interview (about two minutes long) and airing that during one of the AM Live! chatterbox segments on Friday. The interview will be aired during the chatterbox segment, at 7:30am. It will be slightly over two minutes long.
The interview has been broadcasted on Channel News Asia’s AM Live!, on Dec 21! Watch the full clip here!
As the actual interview itself lasted 30-40 minutes and there are good bites which won’t make it for the TV segment (since it is just two minutes long), AM Live! has included a clip of me sharing on vision board on their AM Live! Facebook Page. Check it out here: Celestine Chua’s Tip on Achieving Your Bucket List – Having a Vision Board (Update: The link is now defunct)
Special thanks to Stephan Park for recording the segment for me on DVD! I really appreciate it!
Update: I’ve subsequently been invited back on AM Live! to talk about new year’s resolutions. Catch my interview here: My Channel News Asia interview on Dec 31, 2012
If you like my articles, join 64,000 readers and get my latest articles delivered to your inbox. Your email is safe and I never send spam.
Dear Celes, I have only recently bookmarked your blog and so glad that I did. Your passion really shines through and you are to be congratulated for taking the giant leap of faith and certainty to follow your calling. I am from Queensland, Australia and visit Singapore every April…we love the city, so I was delighted to know that it is where you are based. My story is a little on the flip side to yours, I have been in one organisation for 20 years in organisational development and perhaps stayed 2 years too long. It was causing me grief to the point of where I became physically and mentally sick…I was not being true to my destiny & core values. I was so caught up in the day-to-day busy that I ignored the important. I have a large poster in my office, I would see it and say it every day..”It is the choices you make not the chances you take that determine your destiny” The resonation of those words to my soul and not acting upon them, were causing me grief….but it does have a happy beginning…I am taking the time out to restore my vision, set my goals to help others tap into their potential for greatness and make a difference. thank you again for your inspiration. Warm regards Lisa
Dear Celes,
You have such amazing insights and extremely helpful suggestions and points of view. I’ve only recently signed up to receiving your newsletters and I’ve already managed to glean numerous practical tips on a vast spectrum of my life.
The only thing I would suggest, if I may, is that you consolidate everything you have to share into one daily newsletter. I seem to be receiving numerous emails per day which can become quite redundant for some and may unnecessarily close them off to being open to the worthwhile message you’re sending out. A constant bombardment of information throughout the day can be perceived as bit aggressive, psychologically speaking, seeing as the modern world is also slapping us with a blur of informational input 24/7. Less is more, more often than not these days.
Wishing you a day of full color! And thank you so much, once again, for all you do.
Hey Sandra, thanks for your feedback! I think you are receiving several emails a day because of the auto responders and the newsletter which is based on latest posts at PE.
The auto responders are sent only to the new subscribers – you receive the anti-procrastination series in the first week, with one post a day. After that, you will receive a couple more posts (past classics at PE), spaced one week a part.
The newsletter is based on the posts at PE. Whenever there are new posts, the newsletter will be sent out, at one email per post. Since there has been a daily new post in the past couple of weeks with the Ask Celes section, media announcements and what not, it has resulted a new newsletter sent out every day. I personally do try to space out the posts to only once every day.
With the auto responders combined with the newsletter, it would have resulted in you receiving dual emails every day. This situation will change after you finish receiving the first round of auto responders in the first couple of weeks; you should receive a max of 1 email each day after that, which would be from the newsletter itself.
At the moment my approach for the newsletter to have 1 email sent out for every post, rather than combine several posts into 1 email. When several posts are combined into 1 email, people often miss out the other content that is inside the post and hence miss out on the announcement. Some readers do prefer one email per post so they can delete the emails/posts that are irrelevant and keep the ones that are relevant (vs. having multiple posts per email which makes it harder to sort/classify). There are definite pros/cons with each approach so it’s something I have to evaluate on my end. I appreciate the feedback you are sharing as it helps me better understand some of the reader needs.
Thanks for reading the site and for subscribing to the newsletter! Hope you will join the 2013 Countdown if you haven’t!
By the way Sandra, I just paused the auto responders since there is the 2013 countdown challenge for this month (which would mean there would be a daily mailing sent out as part of the challenge). That should help to address the frequent mailing situation. Hope that helps!
Great Job and congrats!!! You have been in the media plenty of times because of all of the hard work you do… You deserve it and so much more… wish I could record it for you… :-(
Thanks Karen! That’s sweet that you even had the intention, so thank you! :D
Well done Celes,
Beautiful photo with Suzanne Jung. You deserve this, don’t spoil your chances of further growth by using inappropriate words like “bad*ss” Celes, express your excitement about the quantity & quality of the technicians equipment in a subtler way. I’m sure the finished product will look even better than the photos promise!
Hey Bob, I understand that some people might have certain issues with usage of certain words, but I personally see it just as an expression of personal identity and feelings, just like words like “cr*p”, damn, and so on. I actually do not see them as “inappropriate” (it’s a subjective assessment), including the f-words and the four letter words. (I *personally* wouldn’t use said four letter words myself because they aren’t very tasteful in my personal opinion, but I wouldn’t go as far as tell people not to use them just because I personally don’t like them, because I respect that it’s a subjectivity thing at the end of the way.) I hope you can respect that space! It can get disturbing when I get consistent feedback on words I should use or shouldn’t use on my blog and words I should say or shouldn’t say in my interviews because I’m starting to feel like I’m being molded to fit a particular person’s vision rather than what I want for myself, and I also do feel like you might be eating into my personal space a bit.
But I know you have such a genuine and good heart Bob and you’re just looking out for me with your comment(s); just want to let you know that I got this one covered! I’d say what I feel is most appropriate and I would never go the direction of saying things just to polarize, slander, incite hate/fuel anger, and so on, and these will always be the most important guiding principles for me in running PE and doing everything. I think that’s the most important thing that strings me and all my readers/followers together.
On a separate note, thanks for your kind words regarding the photos! :)
What struck me Celes, is that I think you are distinguished, so I looked this up to clarify in the dictionary:
distinguished adj. very successful, authoritative and commanding great respect: A distinguished American educationist
– dignified and noble in appearance or manner: that hairstyle makes you look quite distinguished
My reason is, I thought using the word “bad*ss” is not consistent with being distinguished, that’s why.
Hey Bob! I hear you. My point is that whether “bad*ss” is considered distinguish or not is merely something that’s subjective. It’s the same reason as how I wouldn’t feel whether someone who says “crap” or “damn” in particular scenarios should be considered any less distinguished or deserving of any less respect than if they didn’t use those words (unless they were to say it every single sentence; that would be different altogether). You are absolutely entitled to your opinion though; I respect your views and appreciate you for sharing them!
Congrats! Keep up the good work. Helping others is always fulfilling and pays off in the long run, even if you’re not looking for a payoff.
Dan
Thanks Dan, much appreciated! :D
Commenting for this post is closed.