Anything that Can Go Wrong, Will Go Wrong

Last Saturday I had to work. It was a congress dinner at one of the hotels in KUL. I had to go since the Minister is a Guest of Honor at the function, and will be delivering a speech. Had to make sure everything runs smoothly, eventhough this is not our function. The Minister being a Minister, will turn to her officers and asks what's wrong, if anything happened to go wrong. So, we as the officers of the government must strive for perfection just for the sake of Minister's happiness.

Anyway, my job was to make sure that the promotional DVD runs smoothly before her speech. Its a perfect window of opportunity to show your video as you have a captive audience. Thus, it is very, very important not to have any technical glitch during the actual screening of the video. I'd handed my DVD to the technical person there, who happened to be a mass comm student from UiTM, as managing this event was to be included in their final project. He was supposed to play the congress video first after the first speech, and then play my video before my Minister gave her speech. We tested the video while everyone was milling about the ballroom and foyer. It worked beautifully.

Then, we'd to change my DVD back again to his DVD since there were no additional DVD player or laptop available. I was standing by at the technical area, waiting for the time to play my video. Together, we waited for the emcee extraordinaire aka stage manager, Dato' Dale to give the cue. He gave the cue. Then the guy played the video, but...silence. The video didn't work, it was stuck. He panciked and started to curse, "shit, shit". Dato' Dale came over and said, "tell me can the video work? tell me now, can you do it or not?". The guy panicked, the other commitees also panicked, a few seconds have relapsed. Then Dato' Dale said you guys should've tested the video and went back to the mike and said something to the effect, "if anything that can go wrong, will go wrong, that is Murphy's law" and smoothly covered the glitch. And on to the next speech, my minister's video and speech. Everything turns out smoothly.

In retrospect, I felt sorry for the student, I really do. Maybe it was my fault, coming to add the additional video an hour before programme starts. I'd re-examined this in my head, maybe justifying this to myself. I'd to have the vidoe played, if not the bosses will slay me alive. Maybe the student was inexperieneced enough to deal with ad hoc programme. But then again, I recalled during the panic time, one of the committee asked which video was supposed to be played, since they had two videos to play, additional to my video. Why are they still debating about which video to play at the eleventh hour? According to Dato' Dale they'd attended meetings to discuss about the videos. Well anyone can play the blame game, but on my part I am clear that I was supposed to ensure that the video played without any glitch. Whatever happens behind the scene, everyone was suppose to play their part. No matter what happens, be it a an ad hoc request or a technical glitch.

Let a lesson be learned, no matter how good or bad you are in your job. Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. That's Murphy's Law.