All You Have To Do Is Ask

Tomorrow, my term as Head of Public Relations, PKPMI will end (PKPMI: Persatuan Kebangsaan Pelajar-pelajar Malaysia di Indonesia. Such a long name, huh?). Serving under the organization for the last one year has been quite tiring, but there’s absolutely no regret. Valuable lessons were learned; lessons that I won’t get in classes or tutorials. I guess after the term ends, I can say that I have equipped myself better for my future life! One of the most valuable lessons I learned is:

“All you have to do is ask”

No man is an island, and whatever obstacles lie ahead, there is always someone out there willing to help. All you have to do is ask! I used to get the wires in my head tangled up after being assigned to a task I’m unfamiliar with. Early last year I was assigned to design, produce, promote and sell PKPMI’s merchandise products…from scratch! The organization never had merchandise products before, and it is up to my bureau to do the designs, create a prototype, produce them, promote, and sell them. Let me remind you that I never ever had experience doing business before, and I had no idea on how to design products! So I started asking around.

It’s like playing the Final Fantasy. You wanna make weapons, you go to the Blacksmith. You got poisoned, you go to the White Mage. You wanna practice magic; you go to the Wizard’s Lair. Well of course there’s not much wizards lying around these days, and no such magic that can create merchandise products exist. So I went to a friend who knows one of the modern day’s magic instead: Adobe Photoshop. So I learned a bit of designing using the software, and after a few days, I was able to make a few designs!

It gets downhill afterwards, asked around for shops that produce merchandises, got them to help with the prototype, and extended the line of products. Not long after, the first ever PKPMI-CB merchandise product were launched! We got great responses, and we made good profit out of it. Well I admit that it wasn’t all smooth-sailing, we had some trouble distributing the products, but all in all, it was a very good experience.

We are all getting used to hear that people nowadays have this 'Mind your own business' mentality. That the modern life creates problem for everyone that they couldn't afford to care about other people's problem. However, you'd be surprised at how many people actually care and are willing to help you. All you have to do is ask!

This is one of the T-shirts that I designed. Interested, anyone?