profile: Sook-Yin Lee - Definitely more than a VJ
Hayley MacPhee, The Fulcrum(University of Ottawa)

OTTAWA (CUP) - After ending a six-year run at MuchMusic in 2001, former VJ Sook-Yin Lee needed time to regroup.

"Sloths are creatures that move so slowly, apparently they only come down from the trees once a week to take a crap. I felt like what they do was like a metaphor for what I had to do for a year," Lee says of her hiatus spent in Costa Rica.

While on vacation, she decided to take the job as host of the CBC radio show "Definitely Not the Opera."

Lee is speaking to a packed room of student journalists in Montreal. She's wearing a white-collared shirt with a short, plum jumper over jeans. Her clothes suit her age entirely, down to the careless bun in her hair. For a young woman who has accomplished so much in her life, she is surprisingly down-to-earth.

She begins by speaking of her childhood.

"It was a strange convergence that led me to work on Much. My parents were first generation Chinese. I lived in a white suburban valley near Vancouver. My family had this inability to communicate with each other. This is why I work in communications. When I was a kid, I was a TV addict."

As articulate as she is, Lee hasn't had much formal education and learned by trial and error while working for MuchMusic.

"I didn't know I was going to end up here. I never graduated from high school. I learned from very unconventional sources. MuchMusic is like a school [where] you can grab a camera, film something, and if it's good, they're like, 'OK.'"

But not everything about MuchMusic suited Lee's lifestyle. The hours were often gruelling and sometimes the thought of being "on" at any time was overwhelming.

"The most difficult thing was having to be on air. I'd have to go and get ready, put my makeup on, when sometimes I really wasn't in the mood. I left MuchMusic after six years. It was over-stimulation. I felt as though I had morphed into another being. I felt like I had totally explored what MuchMusic was like. I decided to take some time off and go to Costa Rica."

The getaway opened a new door.

"Definitely Not the Opera" is a welcoming place where Lee swaps story ideas with the other hosts. For Lee, the whole atmosphere is incredibly relaxed. "'DNTO' is basically a cool group of people. We jam together; we debate. It feels just like a clubhouse. This place is just as free as MuchMusic; you can find a story and go with it. I can really create [there]."

She says working on the radio show has improved her writing skills. Her favourite perk about radio is that she doesn't have to do numerous takes.

"In radio, there is more emphasis on writing. Some things translate better to one medium, some to another. You don't have to tell a story in visuals, you don't have to redo shots like for television," Lee says.

Lee likes to conduct interviews that often turn out to be rather unconventional.

"I like to create the anti-interview," she says. "What people freak out about is dead air. I love dead air for both radio and television. It's exciting to see people sink or swim. It makes for interesting television."

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