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Who Says Money Can’t Buy Love

Posted on January 16, 2010 admin

Oh yes it can! Oh yes it can!

I LOVE my boyfriend t-shirt… all for RM29.90.

Value for money!

FML 1 & FML 2

Posted on January 12, 2010 admin

FML #1

Finally got myself the time to go buy Lady Gaga’s album. Got it in 1-Utama just before the shops closed late at night. Was holding my CD happily in my hand when I got to my car and loaded the CDs into the CD Changer in the back.

There were two CDs. One of them was working fine but I couldn’t figure out why the second one couldn’t play. When I got home and took the CDs out I found out why: One of the CDs had a crack right down the middle.

I was like “WTF???…. come on if you bought a pirated CD and if this shit happens then fine. But that was an original album!”.

So the next morning I had to go back all the way to 1-Utama to change it. Princess went down to help me get it changed and she told me the woman at the counter gave her a black face and reluctantly exchanged the disc. I think she thought we broke it in less 24 hours and tried to get it changed.

C’mon! How would I buy a CD at night and break it by the next morning? I’ve never even broken a CD before.

FML #2

Also at 1-Utama that night, Princess stopped by this shop and saw some face masks. She said “OOH OOH.. LETS BOTH WEAR A MASK TONIGHT”. I didn’t seem to keen on it. Ignorant me… I always thought masks were only for women but Princess showed me one that was made just for men.

She called it the “MAN MASK”… or something like that.

She said it would help me clean my pores and do something something… I wasn’t really listening. Find it hard to listen when girls talk about beauty. I just like looking at beauty… not listening to how it comes about. It’s like you just want to look at your beautiful crispy fried chicken in the bucket waiting for you to eat it. You don’t wanna know how the chicken died before it got to the bucket right?

So fine… later that night we both tried out the mask.

Right after I took off the mask I began to see some redness on my cheeks. Thought it was nothing so I went to bed. Then in the middle of the night I felt some itch on my cheeks so I touched it only to feel like my face had just turned hard like a rock. An itchy rock.. if that makes any sense.

My face felt swollen. Started cursing and swearing mentally at the mask and telling myself that I shouldn’t have done it. It was still dark and I was tired so I kept telling myself to stop thinking and go back to bed.

I couldn’t…. my mind kept thinking about how my face looked and I had this image of me with the cheeks of Dumbo. So I got out of bed, went to the toilet and looked at myself in the mirror. I had two big round patches on my face. Rashes. I must’ve been allergic to something in the mask.

I let out a “Fuuuuucccckkk”… then I went to wake Princess to show it to her. The first few seconds that she began to wake she mumbled a “Huh??? Wha????” which actually meant “THE HOUSE HAD BETTER BE ON FIRE… OR IMMA KEEL YOU FOR WAKING ME UP FAT MAN!!!”.

Then when she saw my face she went all “Ohhhh….. noooo…. I’m so sorry baby”.

I looked at her with the most pitiful face I could make and said “It’s itchy…”

She then cuddled me to sleep.

The next morning it got a lot better but I still look like I had rosey cheeks.

And it was still itchy.

Fortunately by the end of the day it had began to really clear out.

So no more masks for me… ever!

FML 1 & FML 2

Posted on January 12, 2010 admin

FML #1

I was like “WTF???…. come on if you bought a pirated CD and if this shit happens then fine. But that was an original album!”.

C’mon! How would I buy a CD at night and break it by the next morning? I’ve never even broken a CD before.

FML #2

She called it the “MAN MASK”… or something like that.

So fine… later that night we both tried out the mask.

Then when she saw my face she went all “Ohhhh….. noooo…. I’m so sorry baby”.

I looked at her with the most pitiful face I could make and said “It’s itchy…”

She then cuddled me to sleep.

The next morning it got a lot better but I still look like I had rosey cheeks.

And it was still itchy.

Fortunately by the end of the day it had began to really clear out.

So no more masks for me… ever!

Nuffnangers at the DiGi Internet Pimp My Day

Posted on January 10, 2010 admin

Princess and I decided to drop by the DiGi Internet Pimp My Day Challenge at 1-Utama last Saturday. It was a whole treasure hunt that DiGi organized for some 100 Nuffnangers there that day. They had to go around 1-Utama doing all sorts of different challenges like hit a baseball, run 800m on a treadmill, make a TVC and etc etc.

Because there were so many Nuffnangers who wanted to take part and not enough spots, Princess and I had to sit this out but we did make it for the after party at Mardigras. It was heaps fun!

When I got there, all the Nuffnangers were busy updating their blogs from their laptops (hooked to DiGi Broadband).

If there was a Malaysian Book of Records for the Most Number of Bloggers Updating Their Blogs at One Place (at the same time), I think that day in Mardigras might have just made the record.

I was creeping up behind people up trying to take pictures of them blogging. I clearly wasn’t much of a ninja in my past life because almost everybody I tried to take a picture of noticed me in a corner of their eye and turned to stare at me.

Anyway there were a couple of highlights for the night. The first were the pole dancers who were pulling off stunts that made me feel fat, weak and heavy (again probably wasn’t a ninja in my past life).

The other was the KL Stompers!

You guys know about Stomp right? I first heard about Stomp when I was in London. They had a show there where a group of people took really random stuff that you can pick up from the streets and make music from the random sounds they make by hitting them with sticks.

I never knew there was one in KL and I gotta say that they were all really good. It’s these kind of talents that make me proud to be Malaysian. I just wish we all gave them a bigger opportunity to develop their talents.

I’m making it a point though to go see as much local stand-up comedy shows as I can this year.

Ah anyway here are some other pictures from the night.

Here’s a picture of me and Joyce from DiGi.

Picture with Redmummy!

Tziaa and Adele who called their team (The DiGi Girls)

People on the stage getting some prizes. DiGi gave out loads of prizes that night.

Everything from Levi’s and Swatch Vouchers to external HDs and laptops.

I particularly liked the uniforms some of the teams came up with. There were all in all about 25 teams of 4 that took part in the challenge. The dress code was just to wear anything yellow but some teams went about printing their own shirts.

Like this team here, that called themselves “DiGi Yellow Army”

Or this team, that all had sprayed on a little Nuffnang logo on their sleeves.

Or even this team that made a little DiGi Yellow Man teddy bear and wore it around their neck.

Ahhh thanks for the great night DiGi Internet.

Video of the Gurney Drive Christmas Celebration in Penang

Posted on January 9, 2010 admin

Just a few days ago my sister sent me some videos of the notorious Christmas celebrations at Gurney Drive. Some of the videos were a bit sad because they had people fighting but there was one video that I embarrassingly found funny.

This is it.

Before you watch this video, remember to pay attention to these things

1) Throughout the whole lecture they were getting from the man, the youths with the aerosol cans kept shaking it. As if getting ready to spray more.

2) Man gets back in car (the crowd starts cheering) and car starts moving again. That’s when the scene that cracked me up came.

3) As the car advances, the cameraman points to the back of his car where you can see like an entire platoon of “sprayers” cooking up what looked like an friggin snow storm on the guy’s car. Then when the car stopped again everyone totally stopped. That scene cracked me up so hard!

I thought it was interesting how the crowd reacted. While they were being scolded everyone was quiet like students being given a scolding by a school teacher. Notice though that while he was giving the scolding, none of the youths answered back or anything probably out of respect for the uncle. I mean had it been another youth in the car instead of the uncle a fight would probably have broken out but I guess we Malaysians still have it instilled in us to respect the elders and not answer back when being scolded (especially when we know we’re the ones causing the trouble haha).

As soon as the “teacher leaves”, they get back to doing what they were doing before.

3 Answers (Well more like 11)

Posted on January 7, 2010 admin

Hey Everyone,

Whew that was a lot of questions. It was so hard for me to pick among them so instead of answering just three I decided to extend it to eleven.

Still it wasn’t enough to answer everyone’s question so I’m sorry if I didn’t manage to answer them. Thank you anyway for the questions. I had fun reading them all!

Here goes.

1) By Kei: do u guys ever argue? cuz u two are just incredibly sweet. i am jealous. if you say you do have arguments sometimes, it will make you two more human. if you answer you don’t, then i am gonna be all jealous lol. me n my bf are sweet too but we argue all the time! 🙁

Tim: Fight? Nah… never had one of those before. How’re they like?

HAHA JUST JOKING!

Of course we fight sometimes Kei. We fight over all sorts of things because while we both love each other and get along very well, we both still do have our differences.

For example I’m the kind of person who likes to plan everything. I like having everything planned. How I’m going to spend my week, how I’m going to spend my next day etc etc. Everything is very carefully planned.

Princess on the other hand is one of those happy-go-lucky girls that just live in the moment. She never thinks any further than one step ahead of her. So sometimes we fight because I complain that she doesn’t plan her time properly and she complains that I take all the fun out of life from having everything planned.

The ideal situation of course is a good balance. A bit of her and a bit of me. Like it’s good to plan certain things, but it’s also nice to wing it sometimes. Something I learned from Princess and Ming is that sometimes I think about the future too much, I forget to enjoy the present.

2) By Khailing

tell us why do you hate long distance relationship that much.

Tim: Haha! Back in college I used to be one of those unlucky people who was always stricken with long distance relationship. When I was studying in KL, I had a girlfriend in Penang. Then a few years later when I ironically ended up with a girlfriend in KL, I was already studying in the UK.

Thing about long distance relationships is that it’s very often beyond our control especially in the student days where we have to be at different places for the sake of education. Just like many things in life though, I believe there is a time and place for everything.

This year I’ll be turning 26 which means I’ll probably want to be get married some time in the coming years. So I don’t want to spend these last few years in a long distance relationship.

I want to spend it with someone who’s always around so we can see if we can really tolerate each other enough for marriage some day.

3) By Cynthia

When was your first time? And last time if you don’t mind…heee

Tim:

First time was back in Form 5. When I was 17.

Last time was just… right after work and before dinner earlier…. you’re talking about driving right?

HAHA!

4) By Mark

What motivated you to start Nuffnang?

Did you always have that entrepreneurial spirit or did you learn how to become an entrepreneur

Tim: Hey Mark because I have too many questions to answer I’m just going to answer the first ok?

I was a blogger back in those days. On a blog that some of you will probably remember but a blog that I’m too shy to talk about now. Haha!

The experience of being a blogger in those days is far different from the experience of being a blogger today. Back then, blog advertising hardly existed. Many brands back then didn’t want to or didn’t know how to advertise on blogs. I remember how some of my blogger friends were even telling me how they were so willing to write for a brand in exchange for a brand’s product but it didn’t go through because the brand didn’t see any value in being involved with blogs.

We had blogger gatherings too but they were all mostly smaller scale ones where a few hardworking people like Jolene and Yee Hou

will organize everything and try to get everyone together at the gathering which is as always a lot of work. Worse still, I remember an occasion where some bloggers left a gathering accidentally forgetting to pay for their food and drinks.

So Jolene and Yee Hou had a hard time trying to figure out how to pay the bill in the end. I’m not sure but I think might have had to fork it out of their own pockets. I thought of how great it would be if we had a company that could represent bloggers and help bear the costs of these things.

So it was seeing the blogosphere in that state that motivated me to start Nuffnang. Ming and I had a dream back then to create a network where bloggers stood together and made up big numbers which made advertising on blogs worthwhile. Further to that we now have plenty of events and activities where bloggers can go, have fun and not worry about the money because everything is paid for.

(Thank you Jolene and Yee Hou, for having the earlier gatherings :))

5) By Sarah

Hi Tim,
First time leaving a comment here since there is such a great opportunity to ask u questions since u have become such a big shot since the day i met u and skyler in uptown.

My questions are :
1. When u started, u didn’t know anyone in the industry. Did it worry you and how did u go about to grow your relevant contacts?
2. How do u motivate your staff?
3. Do you think some bloggers are now overexposed and overpaid? Has blogging become too commercialised that consumers are not paying attention to advertorials anymore?
4. Your first ever client – do u still keep in contact with her? Has her business progressed from there?

Hope u answer at least 1!!
Happy 2010 and continue to inspire us.

Tim: Hey Sarah. Please don’t call me or refer to me as a ‘big shot’. That’s a term saved for the real big shots in town. I’m just a 25 year old kid.

Hope you don’t mind if I just answer your first question ok? Otherwise I won’t be able to find the time to answer the rest. Okay here goes.

Ming and I actually started Nuffnang without knowing a soul in the advertising industry. We didn’t know anyone… not even our parents or any of our relatives knew anyone there because none of my family friends were even in the advertising industry. So the irony is today whenever I go for any Chinese New Year family reunions, I’m actually the only one of all the Tiahs who work in advertising.

Back then a lot of people were telling us how important contacts were in doing business and I remember someone we knew even saying this to me

“You don’t know anyone in the advertising industry? What are you going to do? Cold call ar?”

And that’s exactly what we did. Because we didn’t have any other choice. Out of every 10 cold calls we made, maybe we would get 1-2 meetings and out of every 10 meetings maybe 1-2 deals might come through.

Fortunately we were really really lucky that it paid off. Many of our clients who are now my mentors and great friends today, we got to know through a cold call. I’m blessed to have good people around me.

6) By Star Sky

Why are you ‘Boss Stewie’ when you should be ‘Boss Timothy’?

Tim:

Hehe actually the nick “Boss Stewie” was something I used even back at university. The “Stewie” came from my huge obsession with the Family Guy character named Stewie back then.

As for the word “Boss”, back then I had this blog I shared with my friend Wilson. He’s one of my best friends and we used to call each other “Boss”. You know like how you call some of your best friends “Bro” or something.

So on the blog he gave himself the nick “Boss Lepton”. Hence, for uniformity I added a “Boss” to my nick “Stewie”. It was a blog that wasn’t meant to be read by anyone else apart from our own friends but somehow it grew and well….. it stuck with me all the way till today.

7) By Sam

Okay I’m an avid environmentalist. With the world climate drastically changing for few years running already, ever think of utilizing nuffnang as a platform to enhance environmental awareness among bloggers/net surfers?

For the only mother earth we have. =)

Tim: We actually worked with WWF on their Earth Hour initiative last year and we’re likely to do something with them this year as well (if they invite us in again of course heh).

Even in the office we’re quite conscious about some things we do. Like we use very little paper in the office. We only really really print when absolutely necessary. Our office has really big windows and orange walls so during the day the sunlight comes in through the big windows and bounces off the orange walls to light up the place. So we hardly turn on any lights in the office during the day.

I do think we could always do more.. and we’re constantly finding ways to improve on that.

8) By Hayley

Being the sweetest couple ever, i’m sure marriage came across your mind. so, when’s the planning for getting married? 😉

Tim: Hehe yes it was crossed my mind but Princess and I have decided we’re not going to rush it. *nervous*

Don’t have all these high expectations ok? We can’t take the pressure… who knows we might not even end up together. I’m just saying!

Must lower expectations among everyone… pressure 🙂

9) By value investing in Malaysia

hi tim,

whats your favorite real life success stories/business books that entail d A-Z of how an entrepreneur made it to d top? One of my favorite books is Sam Walton – Made in America or the story of WALMART. Have u read d book? I am interested to buy books like that.

Thanks for sharing. 🙂

Tim: For me… the book that really made me want to be an entrepreneur was Topman. It was a book about the retail tycoon in the UK, Philip Green.

I also really liked Richard Branson’s Losing Your Virginity. Also read iCon, a book about Steve Jobs… and some other books about other entrepreneurs.

What I really appreciate from the stories of these successful entrepreneurs is how they really made it to where they were today because they never gave up. Many of them had at one point made a lot of money, then lost it all again, then mustered the courage to make it all again.

10) By Brenda Ang

Hey Tim,

I heard/read how you started Nuffnang, etc. My question is, how HARD is it to get started? Alot of people have the vision, but to actually get started is really hard. And when you do start something, the first few times, you tend to fail, etc. Share 🙂 Thank you.

Tim: I think a lot of people expected Nuffnang to fail when it first started and the truth is that it wasn’t easy. I don’t think there’s a secret to it or anything but I honestly just had a lot of luck and was blessed with a lot of good people around me who chose to support me (our dear bloggers included of course).

11) By Donna Bong

Alright.. here’s something unrelated to your success and your awesomeous gf.

Growing up what show did you watch most? In sesame street, do you like elmo more or cookie monster more?

You did your university in UK did you get a chance to go snowboarding? Or skiing? Or any snow sports? Would you want to do any of that?
oh oh yeah, since you guys(you and aud) go to lots of places every year, what’s one place that you would really really want to go to with her and WHY? (okay fine something related to you and your awesomeous gf)

LOL. Thanks!!!!

Keep your daily posts up! I get soo bored here in Edmonton 🙁

Tim: Hi Donna! I gotta say you made Princess really happy by referring to her as my “awesomeeous gf”. Hehehe. Ok you have so many questions but the answers to each question are pretty short so I’ll answer them all ok?

Here’s all the answers to your questions in one go.

Garfield, COOKIE MONSTER ROX!, Nope, Nope, Been skiing once, Naples because I hear it’s beautiful.

Thank you for the questions everyone. I wish I could answer them all but I promise I’ll do this again some time in the future ok?

Have a great weekend ahead everyone!

3 Questions

Posted on January 5, 2010 admin

Okay here’s what I’ve decided for this entry and the next. Rather than choosing what to write and share with you guys on my blog I’m going to let you guys decide. Here’s how:

Leave a comment at the end of this entry of a question that you’d like to ask me. It can be anything. It can be about me, or about what I think about something or anything that doesn’t even have to be about me.

Then I’ll go through some of the questions and pick 3 of them that I will answer in my next blog entry (unless I find less than 3 questions that I think I can or want to answer). How’s that?

Ok so ask away guys 🙂

2009

Posted on January 3, 2010 admin

I looked at the date on my phone today and it has finally dawned on me (after a few days), that 2010 is here and here to stay. 2009 seem to fly by so quickly for me so I took the time to go through my blog archives to kind of see what it is that I had done in 2009.

That’s the great thing about blogging if you ask me. There are two things I love about blogging. The first thing is reading the comments that I get after each entry (although in recent months for some reason you guys have started leaving less and less comments eventhough there are more of you reading my blog now than before. Why??? Do you guys find me less approachable or something now?)

Anyway the second thing I love about blogging is that your blog kinda acts like a personal diary of your life so every once in a while you can go back into your blog archives and read your old entries. You can then have a peak into what you did in the past.

So here are a few cool things we did in 2009.

January

1) Met Lolo

February

1) Princess and I attend Andrew and Jayen’s wedding.

2) Nuffnang Turns Two!

3) Held Princess’ Surprise Birthday Party which was quite a success!

March

Princess and I go to Manila.

We went for a bit of sight-seeing.

And I had quite a bit of work at the Nuffnang Philippines office.

Was the peak of our spitting exercise then.

April

1) Found my horrid Secondary School Report Card

Saint Xaviers Boleh!

2) Went for the Nuffnang Music Bash

May

1) Kena Dengue.

Haih… FTS.

June

1) Went to Phuket with Princess.

2) Attended the Media Specialist Awards where one of Nuffnang’s campaign won a Gold thanks to the people at GroupM.

July

1) Attended Pierre and Lay See’s Wedding.

2) Visited my Aunty Nancy who brought me up.

August

1) Won the JCI Young Creative Entrepreneur Award

2) Put up our first Nuffnang Philippines signage in Manila.

3) Revamped the look of our Nuffnang site.

September

1) Went to Melbourne to visit Nuffnang Australia’s office.

2) Project Alpha’s First Episode Released.

October

1) Attended the Nuffnang Asia-Pacific Blog Awards

2) Princess and I celebrated our One Year Anniversary.

November

1) Released the Nuffnang Milestones videos (Video about the Nuffnang Story).

2) Appeared in some media. On Astro Awani, on Personal Money magazine etc etc.

3) Went to Hong Kong Disneyland again ! Woohoo!

December

1) Went to Tokyo ! Yay!

2) Attended the Mister Potato Fiesta

3) Had our Annual Christmas Dinner with the Nuffies

Whew… it was one heck of a year.

Hope this year will be just as great!

Happy 2010!!!

Posted on December 31, 2009 admin

Happy New Year Everyone!

How did you spend your New Year’s Eve?

The first half of mine was spent at an airport waiting for a flight back to Penang. Then just a couple of hours before I was in Penang at a friend’s house for his annual New Year’s Eve party.

It’s funny how Annual New Year’s Eve party at a friend’s house starts to be a tradition. My friend Gin just started having it for the first time many years ago. He invited a few close friends to come over, have drinks and play cards or do some other stuff. It wasn’t meant to be one of those wild parties with strangers all over. Just his close friends.

Then because everyone had fun each time, over the years it became a tradition. This year though, Gin was almost not going to have a party but I managed to convince him to.

Here are the few pictures I manage to take that night.

Some of the guys there.

I was trying to eat the slice of cake in my hand when suddenly the guys started crowding around me saying “Come come picture picture!”

So while everyone was being cool and had drinks in their hand in each picture, I on the other hand had a slice of cake. Haih… I guess it goes with my “fat image”. Princess will be pleased since she now makes it a point every day to remind me how fat I am.

This is Yong Lin. Can you guess what she works as?

Come on come on try.

Lawyer, accountant, architect… anything…

Guess…..

Well…

She’s actually… a doctor!

Doesn’t give off the “doctor look” right? Can’t imagine her in a white coat treating a patient.

Some of the girls that night. Including Princess.

And a last picture that night with Princess and me.

The rest of the night after that was a blur.

Thanks for the great party Gin!

Haha.. Happy New Year everyone!

How did you spend yours?

Wombeh & Domokun’s Photo Album

Posted on December 29, 2009 admin

Princess and I have this thing about presents. We’ve always agreed that we don’t need an occasion to buy presents for each other. Be it Christmas, Anniversary or anything like that. We just decided that whenever we see something that we think the other person would like, we buy it there and then. It can be any time of the year. So we don’t expect Christmas or Anniversary presents from each other. Except for Birthdays though. We still expect birthday presents haha!

So I’m not sure if I should call this a Christmas present because it isn’t exactly one. What I can call it though is my “Best Present of 2009”. All it was… a photo album with the pictures of Wombeh & Domokun.

Oh Princess and I refer to each other now as Wombeh & Domokun. Me being Wombeh (which comes from the word wombat because when she saw a wombat in Australia she thought it was cute). I on the other hand refer to her as Domokun because she sometimes goes “RARARA!!!”. I’m sure the names we call each other will change in the next 3 months so don’t get too used to it.

Okay back to the album Princess gave me.

In case you’re wondering, the 10th of October 2008 is the estimated date that we got together as a couple. The exact date is still a mystery for us because I didn’t exactly ask “Will you be my girlfriend?”. We just… somehow started treating each other like bf/gf and I guess one day we both understood that we were in a relationship.

The great thing about photo albums with pictures in them is that they never grow old. I will never get bored of receiving photo albums with pictures in them because I think it takes a lot of effort to hand pick each picture. Besides, when someone gives you a photo album with pictures.. you’re not just getting a “photo album with pictures”. You’re getting a whole condensed book of memories you’ve had with that someone.

That makes photo albums such great gifts! I’m sure some of you guys out there have done it at least once before for your other half. If you haven’t then do it! I think it makes a great gift.

Princess’ photo album was a page by page story of us. The story of “Wombeh & Domokun”. She put in each picture and some captions on which period of our relationship was that picture taken.

With Princess’ permission, I’m going to share a few of them with you guys. Notice the captions she wrote on each page.

This is the first picture.

This is us at the Nuffnang V-Post party in Singapore a year ago.

Yep… this picture was taken at the start of my Paul Frank craze. I now have like an entire wardrobe of Paul Frank t-shirts.

I LOVE GROCERY SHOPPING!

If you’re wondering why “Sebastian babeh”. It’s because I turn red when I drink and that picture was taken after I’ve had a little too much to drink.

Ah yes it’s true. We used to be so much more happening as a couple. Going out and all. Now all we (yes we.. not just me but Princess too) wanna do is stay at home and watch DVDs.

Princess with her “Stitch ears” in Disneyland HK noming me.

Yah Princess said she looked tall in this picture. With long model-like legs. So she loves this pic.

This is how she used her photo editor to sissify one of our pictures.

And the surprise or not so surprise birthday party she planned for me this year. It was a total failure of a surprise but I’m happy she tried.

Yes it’s true. We became a boring couple that only hang out with each other on weekends.

This is us at the Nuffnang Asia-Pacific Blog Awards (NAPBAS) dressed our best.

And the rest of the photo album I shall keep for myself 🙂

You gotta share some of the love… but you also gotta keep some for yourself right?

Heh.

Thank you for the great present baby!

Timothy Tiah – Co-Founder of Colony, Kuala Lumpur Co-Working Space