Wei Leen from NUS just sent me this picture of me giving the talk at NUS the other day.

I tell you, any picture that is taken from below the chin level just makes you look fat.

Fat fat fat fat fat fat fat!

This month’s Personal Money magazine had a one page article about Nuffnang. Thanks very much to Siew May who wrote a very nice piece about us.

I’ve been traveling a bit this week. I just got back from Singapore yesterday after a couple of days there and tomorrow I’ll be going away on business again. This time to Manila to visit the Nuffnang office there.

*sigh*

I will miss certain things when I’m away… certain simple things that are often part of my daily routine.

I will miss going to the gym here.

I will miss going to work at our KL office like a typical work day.

I will miss my XBOX.

I will even miss the Nuffnang Screening of Dragon Ball. 

So many Nuffnangers have been writing about it I feel so overwhelmed by the hype I wish I could go but aihh.. I’ll be in Manila then.

But there is one thing I certainly won’t miss.

I won’t miss my Princess.

I won’t miss her at all. 

Not one bit…

Not a tiny little bit at all!

Because I’ll be taking her with me.

The last time I was away for a relatively longer trip was when I went for a business trip to Shanghai. I was away for 5 days… 5 days where both Princess and I suffered dearly. After that we both made a pact never to be away from each other for longer than 3 days in a row.

So since my trip to Manila was going to be longer than 3 days, I decided to bring Princess along.

The good news is that for the first time there I’m actually going to go sight-seeing in Manila for her sake. I’ve been to Manila a few times before but always strictly on business so I never really saw any of the touristy stuff. It always was hotel —> office —-> hotel —–> office.

Now I’m going on a weekend so I’ll be able to take Princess around a little bit before Monday starts.

Princess is going to be clinging on me like a little dinosaur. 

Will update more when I’m there. Have a great weekend everyone.

Ming and I were at NUS yesterday to give a speech to some students there. We went there early to set up some slides and stuff. Managed to catch this picture way before the talk started, just when we were all setting up.

Their lecture halls there are really really nice but that wasn’t all that impressed us.

We told the Nuffnang Story to all the students there and when we opened up for questions, we had some really really good questions. Anyone watching could tell that everyone in the audience was really bright.

Meet Pierre (and his fiance) 

Pierre is one of the capable but humble sons behind the Mamee family. You know Mamee? Like the instant noodles, Double Decker, Mister Potato and most importantly… MAMEE MONSTER!

I met Pierre some time last year on a professional basis. Mister Potato was going to run a campaign on Nuffnang then so I met him to work some details out. Then we kept in touch but always again on a professional basis. You know how you are on a professional basis right? You be yourself but try not to be TOO much of yourself. For example, you cut down on your profanities when talking.

Then one day Ming came down to KL and I set up a dinner between us and Pierre. It was sort of an off-work dinner so for the first time ever we all talked about a lot of other non-work stuff. Now I don’t know if it was the good steak we had that night or the booze (don’t remember if we had any), or about Ming going on and on about how much he loved Manchester United but we quickly became …. ourselves.

And you know when a group of 20 something year old males are comfortable with each other when they start saying bad words casually. So instead of saying “Dammit!”, you could say “Fuck this shit!” and we would all laugh about it. Or you could take it another level higher and say “Fuck this fucking shit” and we would all laugh even harder.

It was at that dinner that Pierre asked us all to make a trip down to his hometown: Malacca.

I’ve been to Malacca once in my life but that was like 10 years ago and I’ve always been meaning to go so I said okay. We arranged for one day where I would drive down from KL with Princess and Ming would drive up from Singapore with Estee. We’ll all meet in Malacca to spend a night.

That day was last weekend.

We made it down and we had a full day of meals. Seriously. Like we reached Malacca at 12PM and starting from then we had 6 more meals in the day.

Everything from Chicken Rice Balls.

To Satay with peanut and pineapple sauce,

To Mille CREPE (I LOVE MILLE CREPE HOLY SHIT GIMME GIMME GIMME!!!!)

 

To Peranakan food

Cendol at Jonker Street

and ending with Satay Celup supper.

I was sure I had put on like 30 kg thanks to Pierre and I really literally mean thanks to Pierre because that guy always snuck behind us to pay for all our meals when we were there. And because we refuse to let him pay for everything, we often display a very China Man scene: Fighting to pay the bill.

They often give it to Pierre though. Maybe they’re afraid of Ming because he sometimes looks like a Rempit Boss.

So fine, I said when he comes down to KL I’ll buy him a good expensive meal to make up for it. We had Brazilian food in Cangkat Bukit Bintang the night after Malacca and guess what he did? He snuck his credit card to pay the bill again. I had to get up from my comfortable seat, walk to the waiter carrying his credit card to the cashier, replace it with mine and throw his card back at him (Sigh.. the work you make me do Pierre).

Anyway the good news is that in between our food destinations, we also went to do some touristy things like the Riverboat Cruise, 

though Princess still wasn’t satisfied. Being the “MUST SEE EVERYTHING TOURISTY” kind of girl she wanted to go see museums, Kota A. Famosa and everything. Nothing was going to stand in her way… not even the hot sun that she hates so much. 

She has a tiny red umbrella packed in her bag for that.

After the trip I got scolding from her.

I did what many boyfriends would do. Shut up and drive.

Now the last thing I noticed about Malacca is this.

It is the home of Mamee! When you’re driving into Malacca from the highway you’ll even notice the Mamee factory there.

And they take pride in Mamee-ing everything in Malacca.

Heck there are Mamee ads everywhere!

From the coffee shops

To the streets

To even the big Karaoke stage on Jonker street. All MAMEE!

Towards the end of the trip I finally told Pierre

So I went back to KL and bought like 10 packs.

I ate two at one go and the happy nostalgic memories of my school boy days came back to mind. When I was in Form 1, I used to skip meals at recess just to play football and to keep myself from getting hungry I would down two packs of Mamee Monster.

Oh well… I was young.. what can I say…

I came down to Singapore yesterday. Ming and I are supposed to go to NUS to give a talk about the Nuffnang story this evening.

This is me in the Nuffnang Singapore office. Cherie was sitting in front of me so I took out my camera and pointed it her direction. Then I asked her to turn around and she gave this puzzled face.

Ishh girls ar…

Attended the “Obama Magic” conference at PJ Hilton where Nuffnang was one of the media sponsors.

Ham and crew brought in Roger Frisk, the Director of Special Events of the now President Obama.

Thanks for the pic KY 🙂

Last Friday I gave Princess another surprise. 

One thing I learned about planning surprises is that it’s so hard to keep things from your girlfriend. I told Princess near the beginning of the week that I had a surprise planned for her on Friday after work but I refused to tell her what. All week she tried guessing and guessing and I had to go through a lot of resistance to making sure I didn’t tell her what it was. 

Friday finally came and I picked her up from work full of excitement. I could barely contain my smile in the car. Whenever I anticipated how happy she would be when she found out what the surprise was, a smile broke.

Finally we reached the destination: Bangsar.

I parked my car in Bangsar Village then pulled Princess along with me down the streets of Bangsar. We walked street by street until I found the right street, Telawi 3. Then I spotted the place we were supposed to be at. 

The two ladies who had helped me plan the surprise were waiting for us. I went up to them and greeted them “Hello! Sorry we’re a bit late. Princess got off work a little late”.

Princess gave me a very very confused look and I could tell what she was thinking at the back of her mind after I introduced the two nice ladies’ to her. She was thinking

It was then that we revealed the surprise.

The two nice ladies’ were Sherin and Nik from RedRibbon Days, a really fun company that sells “experiences” instead of “gifts”. So if you want to give someone something nice, rather than just giving her a bag or something you give her an experience that she will love and a memory she will always keep for the rest of her life. That is what both Sherin and Nik call a RedRibbon Day Experience. 

That works for me because I would really rather spend money on giving Princess an experience she will never forget as opposed to buying her an handbag that she would love but will sooner or later replace some day.

There were many experiences to pick from on their site, so much that I had been browsing the site for the past few months and yet found it hard to pick the right one. I mean there were all sorts of things from Model for a Day to even a helicopter ride above Kuala Lumpur city.

Then one day, Nik talked to me and after giving me a few suggestions I finally heard one that I knew Princess would absolutely love: The VIP Shoe Shopping Experience.

Every girl loves either bags or shoes or both. Princess… loved shoes.

So what we did for Princess was Nik and Sherin suggested a boutique in Bangsar that sold really nice shoes. They arranged for the boutique to close for 1-2 hours just for me to bring Princess in to shop so she would have the whole empty boutique for herself and all the attention on her.

Then there were the tiny details.

When Princess walked in, the first thing she saw was this basket with a bottle of champagne and flowers.

And on it was a card that said 

Because Princess loved Hello Kitty, inside each champagne glass was a cute little Hello Kitty figurine. 

As Princess walked in and absorbed everything I waited to see her reaction but it never came. Yes… she had just about NO reaction. She just went … “Oh… I… don’t know what to say…“

I then turned to Sherin and Nik to ask

They replied

I nodded and sighed in defeat

Then she quickly ran to me to give me a hug to make me feel better. Hmph! How “forced“… but it worked 🙂

Princess later told me that her reaction (or lack of it) was actually due to the fact that she was totally shocked in disbelief. And I guess it was true, when everything began to sink in and the shopping started, I could see the happiness in her eyes.

She tried on countless shoes and she was allowed to take home whichever three pairs she liked. I thought the shoes at the boutique (called Shoes Shoes Shoes) were really really nice. I mean for a guy, if there’s one thing I appreciate in a woman, it’s not her bag so much but it’s her shoes. 

But my taste and Princess’ taste can differ though. So I asked her if she liked the shoes here and if she had been to this boutique before. She said she had been there before and thought the shoes were beautiful but the minute she saw the price tag of the shoes she knew it wasn’t something she could regularly afford so she made a dash for the door. 

How cute! At least I knew she loved the shoes there.

It also helped that the actual designer of those shoes was there to personally help pick the right shoes that suit Princess.

She told us that she designed all the shoes there and that only two of every size for each shoe were ever made.

While waiting for Princess to try on her shoes, I popped the champagne and served her a glass.

I said 

After about an hour of trying many many pairs of shoes, 

Princess had finally picked the 3 pairs of shoes that she wanted. Everything was packed into a bag for her and she left the boutique a happy Princess.

We held hands and walked down Telawi at least for a while until I decided to whip out my camera again and take this Sex and the City like shot of her.

Next… Nik and Sherin had made reservations for us for dinner at a very nice Italian restaurant called Vincenzo.

It was there that Princess’ made me spill the beans. How long I had planned this for, how I did it and what it took.

The truth was that I wouldn’t have been able to do it without the help of Sherin and Nik so to the both of you… thank you so much for giving Princess this wonderful experience.

During dinner Princess said

I told her that I thought it was a great idea and she said something that even I agree with.

She’s probably right.

What did I get out of the night?

At the end of the night in Vincenzo she reached out both her hands to hold mine and she said 

Then she proceeded to ask me a very silly question

I looked at her and gave away a smile

Just parked our car near the chicken rice ball shop and Pierre tried to negotiate with the car park attendant for a cheaper parking rate since we had been there like 3-4 times in the past 24 hours alone.

It didn’t work. 🙂

Went to Malacca this weekend. Will blog more about it in time to come. When I was there I dropped by this boutique hotel there called The Majestic. They took an old bungalow and renovated it + built a building behind it to make it a hotel.

I like the nice little swimming pool that you could see from the spa and there’s something about glass-walled gyms that appeal to me 🙂