Just a few days ago I was at the gym. Right after my work out I decided to go answer nature’s call so I walked towards the urinals in the changing room. There were 3 urinals there and this guy was standing right in the middle one peeing away, something already rather uncommon. I mean usual toilet etiquette is if you see three available urinals you use the one on either corner, not the middle one right? (So when someone else comes and wants to use the urinal, he’ll avoid the middle one and use the one at the other corner giving everyone enough privacy to go around.)
To make matters worse, as this guy saw me coming from behind towards the urinal on the left, he started staring at the urinal on the left.
So I moved to the one on the right and started doing my business. Suddenly he turned his head from the left to the right and started casually looking at my dick. I shot a look back at him to remind him that I can see him peeping over but he just casually kept looking as if nothing had happened.
Then I tried to clear my throat to get his attention. I went *AHEM*
The guy looked up at me then looked away a little embarrassed. I breathed a sigh of relief only to find that just a couple of seconds later he started looking again!
I was FUMING mad…
I was so close to shouting at him
“KEEP YOUR EYES ON YOUR OWN COCK LA MAHAI!!!”
but I decided to just finish up and go.
And the joke is, this is not the one and only time that this happened. This happens so often to me and I really can’t see why. Why? Why? I have never once even thought of wanting to look the other side… why would you even seriously want to? What are you going to see that is so different from what you already have?
You gotta give it to Nike. They just really know how to make viral videos that people want to watch. Last year they released this video which I thought was probably one of the coolest videos I had ever seen.
It put the viewer in the eyes of a footballer who got discovered by Arsenal.
Then just recently, they released this really cute video.
I didn’t get any sleep last night. Like literally! I mean I’ve had ‘sleepless nights’ where you only manage to get a few hours of sleep throughout the night but last night was the first time in my life that I actually lay in bed from night till morning without any sleep. I think I managed to scrape about 10 minutes of sleep towards the end but just when I was dozing off the sunlight from my windows started creeping into my room to wake me up.
The source of the sleepless night: Anger. Anger over something that happened almost 2 years ago but only now seemed to have come back to affect me emotionally. How this thing affected me up to now still comes to a surprise to me.
Few things in life really hurt or upset me. My motto in life has always been “It’s not what happens to you but how you react to it that matters”, so that really gave me a new perspective in whatever I face in life. Every time something bad happens to me, I think of it very much as a challenge and that somehow gets me excited about going through it because at the end of my life, I want to have lived not necessarily a long life, but a meaningful one.
Even business-wise. While a lot of business owners I talk to are worried about the recession and how they will survive 2 years of it, I am actually excited about it because it’s the first recession I ever had to go through as an entrepreneur and when we do make it through, it’s going to be affirmation that Nuffnang is a company that has really grown up. Besides, I am not afraid of failure for I think that the lessons I will learn from then will be invaluable. You lose a little bit of money in the process, but my father always calls it “tuition fees”.
Unfortunately what kept me up last night had nothing to do with work, business, money or any of the usual stress. That is stress I perhaps have become fairly immune to and have developed a habit of always looking at the positive side of things. It had to do with someone doing something very very wrong and getting away with it scot free after all these years.
And that’s what angers me! I believe that if you do wrong, it will one day come back to around to bite you in the ass and that is the principle of how I live my life (Do good and good will come back, do harm and harm will come back). It angers and frustrates me when justice is not served especially when there’s absolutely nothing that I can do about it.
Fortunately after a whole night of thinking about it I’ve decided to accept what has happened and perhaps learn to forgive. I’m just writing this entry and putting all this into a bottle now… then closing it so I will never think about it and let it bother me again.
So the question I ask myself again is, having experienced far worse things how can something like that affect me so adversely. But just like Brad Pitt who played Achilles in the movie Troy, I think somehow every man even in the modern world has a weakness, an Achilles’ Heel.
Something that really gets to him and at an extreme, is something that could possibly bring him down to his knees.
Ming came down to KL just a few days ago for some work stuff. For those of you who don’t already know, Ming is the strictest, fiercest and more dominant one of the two Nuffnang Bosses.
Look at his face when he was working on his mini-laptop.
Such anger all bottled up!
Anyway, we found ourselves at KLCC on Saturday to meet a friend for dinner. We were there a little early so we followed his girlfriend shopping for a bit until he spotted the Rolex shop there. Since we were just talking about watches earlier on, he said “Come lets go see!”.
I just gave a short laugh at first thinking that he was joking but a few seconds passed and it dawned on me that he was serious as hell. So there we were, two young dudes dressed in t-shirt, jeans and sneakers looking some sort like this,
walking into the Rolex shop at KLCC.
As we walked in I was thinking to myself
“Shit shit they’re so going to ignore us both… they’re so going to ignore us both!!!”
But the lady behind the counter smiled at us and showed us a few of the lower end Rolex watches. The cheapest there was like RM14,000.
Then Ming suddenly asked to see another different range of the Rolex watches. I can’t remember what it was called since I don’t know anything about watches that I can’t afford but the lady happened to say that range cost a minimum of over RM30,000. She added that they were all kept in a safe at the back of the shop.
Instead of taking her hint that she doesn’t want to show it to us when we’re obviously not going to buy it, Ming said
“Can I see it?”
And at that point already I was thinking to myself
“WAHLAU EH BRAHDER!!! How much you want to push the limit? I’m surprised they even let us in here!!!”.
I think the lady rolled her eyes a little bit but she hid her boiling anger really well and kept being professional. Though I bet after we left the store she probably suggested to her Boss that they impose a cover charge for entering the store to keep the kids out.
A Person More Gadgety Than Me
Yesterday I met up with the CEO of MOL Access, Ganesh Kumar at his office. He showed me around his office and showed me his entire list of gadgets.
He had a MacBook Air, an Apple TV, iPhone, Big LCD TVs and heck everything any guy could wish for on his list of gadgets. And the joke is… all this is in his office. How he gets any work done remains a mystery to me!
I said to him
“You know they say every guy has one thing in their lives they spend a lot of money on. I guess I know what yours is.
Not An Eligible Bachelor
I got a call from CLEO magazine this week asking if I’d like to be in this year’s batch of their CLEO’s 50 Most Eligible Bachelors. The only condition for joining I guess is that:
1) You’re a guy
2) You don’t look too ugly
I guess I pass on both counts but I told the nice lady who called that it’s not really my kind of thing and that no amount of air brushing is going to make me look good even in photos.
I asked the Nuffies however and they all thought that I should’ve done it. Saying that it was a once in a lifetime experience and at least they could tell their friends that their Boss was in the list once.
Oh well… it’s just really really not my thing.
So there you have it everyone. 3 things that happened to me in the past 1 week.
When I was in Hong Kong with Princess last month we managed to catch up with some friends. One of which was Andrew who just recently moved to Hong Kong to get married to the love of his life: a Hong Kong girl named Jayen.
Andrew insisted that we had to go to this place where all the local Hong Kong people go. Where they serve typical Hong Kong breakfast kind of stuff like egg sandwich and french toast.
It was supposedly so good that we had to queue up for 20 minutes just to get a seat and this was in the middle of the afternoon like 3.30PM where you’d think most people would’ve been done with eating by then.
Now I really couldn’t understand it!
I mean it was just fried egg and bread, how different could it possibly be unless they secretly slipped weed into it or something. Why was everyone going back to this place where the waiters wore white uniforms and had pen ink stains just on top of their pockets as a result of accidentally scraping their pens on their shirts while putting it back into their pockets.
This is the egg sandwich.
and this the French Toast.
It looked pretty normal and I thought it was great but.. well… not exactly to die for. Perhaps my expectations were raised wayyyyy too high before I got there.
Princess herself didn’t eat much.
My reply to Andrew when he asked me how it was…
“Ok lah but not exactly like… WOW right dude?”
Though I did enjoy the coffee mixed tea (yin yong) there.
So he asked me what I wanted to eat then and it was almost like a reflex, I said
“EGG TART!!!”
About 30 minutes later I found myself staring down at this ORGASMIC egg tart that we had bought from a shop in Central Hong Kong.
Yes my dear readers, it really IS as good as it looks. Allow me to illustrate by showing you this picture of Andrew’s face when he had one in his hand.
It was the moment of truth, the best egg tart in Hong Kong or not… I took a big bite…
and in all the excitement I neglected to remember that egg yokes that had just come out of the oven have really really hot fillings so I ended up burning my tongue to Kingdom come (sigh all sorts of different shit seems to hit me lately).
But by the time I was done screaming in pain at the burning sensation on my tongue and the taste had sunk in, I realized that I had just had the best egg tart I have ever had in my life.
The crust was just sooo crispy and the egg tart was soft and so damn bloody tasty they must’ve made it with the eggs of some Aristocrat Chicken.
After the orgasmic egg tart we paid a visit to the new most famous tourist attraction of Hong Kong. One that involves something probably more famous than Ocean Park and Lan Kwai Fong ….
Elite Multi-Media electronics store. The store where Edison Chen had apparently sent his laptop for repair.
I was taking so many pictures in front of the store I think the staff inside were beginning to notice. If I had stayed there just one minute later, I’m pretty sure they would’ve come out chasing me with parangs. I have long legs so I would’ve gotten away in time.
Princess on the other hand would’ve probably been caught and made into char siew pau.
After we quickly got away from the store we ended up doing a little bit of shopping at the flagship H&M store in Hong Kong.
Then we met up with some of my old Malaysian friends who are now working in Hong Kong for dinner and then drinks.
We had dinner at this place where they gave you this jar of pork fat that you were supposed to put into your rice and mix it around while you eat the dishes. My friends loved it but as much as I love Bak Kut Teh and a lot of other pork related stuff, I drew the line at liquid pork fat.
After dinner we all went for drinks at this place full of bars in Kowloon just near my hotel in Kimberly Street. We ended up talking a lot of cock for a few hours.
Among the many are two really good friends.
Ah Bon who’s in the middle and Hong Wee on the right.
Ah Bon works for Morgan Stanley in Hong Kong and he was telling me how he used to have a lot of co-workers to say good morning to every morning but since the recession hit, that number halved.
He still earns a very very fat pay cheque though….. and is SINGLE!
Yesterday I dropped my iPhone and I just noticed this morning that it stopped vibrating. That’s a big problem for me because the ringer on the iPhone is already as soft as it can get and I never really hear it. Most of the time I know I’m getting a call because it vibrates.
Now I’m going to have to go buy a new one and I googled for the price of a new one and it costs RM3,000. That’s crazy! That’s like the price of a brand new laptop!
ARGHH!!!!!
I thought about changing phones to something simpler but I’ve just gotten to used to being able to check and reply e-mails while I am out for meetings.
Maybe I should get a Blackberry like the Blackberry Bold.
Argh! Spending way too much money lately.
Update: Guess what… I dropped it again and the vibrate is working again now.. HAAHAH no need to spend!
I took almost a full minute just to put on my t-shirt this morning. Can barely lift my arms above my head now it’s not even funny. So to distract myself, I am going to think HAPPY THOUGHTS, HAPPY MEMORIES AND HAPPY PLACES!!!!
Let it be said that Disneyland is the Happiest Place on Earth!
It really is!
It’s been hardly a month since I was in Disneyland Hong Kong with Princess Audrey here
and I’m longing to go back again.. soo soo bad.
I don’t know what it is about Disneyland. It’s not just the rides.
Or the Christmas tree when I was there.
Or the very thoughtful D0nald tickets for the guys and Minnie tickets for the girls.
Or even the fake snow they had on Disneyland’s Main Street USA.
But heck it’s just that really happy happy atmosphere. If Disneyland was a country it would be the country with the lowest suicide rates (probably at 0), with no stress whatsoever and their asylums will be filled with people who don’t suffer from mental illness or depression but suffer from excessive happiness (Yes I hear that even too much of a good thing can be bad).
The sad thing is that the park closes relatively early. Just right after dinner and after the fireworks display, everybody rushes to the exit ending the happy happy day.
By the time I passed the exit, the realization that I had just left Disneyland for the day had began to sink in and I started getting grumpy. And when I start getting grumpy I start cursing and swearing at everything(e.g. DAMN YOU GRASSHOPPER!!!)… something that if I did in Disneyland, I would get kicked out.
Yes it’s true, part of the Rules & Regulations of Disneyland is that you’re not allowed to curse or swear or say any bad words. Not even shit.
But my mood gets better by the time I get back to the lovely Disneyland Hotel and see the lovely beds.
Or the very cute-sy Disney-themed amenities.
After a quick shower, Princess and I went down to the hotel restaurant to have something to eat but also to later meet a couple of my good Hong Kong friends that I haven’t seen in a while.
I ordered myself a typical Cheeseburger.
And they served it with tomato sauce that they made look like Mickey’s ears.
And while waiting for my friends to come, Princess and I decided to do a little camwhoring on the dinner table, something that my parents definitely wouldn’t have allowed me to do growing up.
In fact I could almost see all the families around us looking over at us with their parents shaking their heads at our lack of table manners.
But ahh whatever… they probably weren’t bloggers so they wouldn’t have understood.
Finally my two Hong Kong friends and ex-coursemates came: Eddie and Timothy (Yes… I have a Hong Kong friend named Timothy too). After graduation, the both of them naturally took their economics degrees to go work in banks.
Timothy Siu (on the left) worked in London for 2 years after graduation but he’s now at Cambridge University doing his Masters.
Eddie (on the right) on the other hand is working in Standard Chartered right in Hong Kong and seems to be loving his job.
I ended my night at Disneyland Hong Kong with many happy memories to keep from the day and the warmth you feel when you catch up with old friends you spent years with in another foreign country.
If you’re asking me for a memorable and happy moment I’ve had since 12 months ago, it was in Disneyland Hong Kong.
Oh well… back to work now everybody… Tuesday blues!!!!
Just last week I went and bought myself a new toy.
BEHOLD MY NEW TOY!!!
Before I go on about what it is, let me tell you a bit about my history with toys.
Growing up there were plenty of toys I wish I had. The fortunate thing was that yes… I did have a lot of toys to play with. The unfortunate thing though was because I am the 3rd son in the family, most of my toys were inherited from my two older brothers.
So whenever I asked my parents for new toys, they would always say
“You already have so many toys!”
So I had a hard time trying to convince my parents to buy me new toys (although they sometimes did buy me some new toys anyway).
While my friends had the latest Optimus Prime toys, I begged and I begged but I never got it.
I remember a time many many years ago when I was out shopping with my parents in Sunshine Square. Back then the Nintendo Gameboy (the very very first one) had just came out and I think it cost something like RM99 or something back then.
I wanted it so badly but always as usual feared asking my parents for it. Eventually I did muster the courage to ask my Dad and the answer came and went as quick as whatever little hope I had to have one.
“No Son, you already have your computer to play at home (which was btw inherited from my elder brother)”.
So I grew up… dreaming of having so many toys but knowing that I would almost never get it. While my friends got into the phase of playing Nintendo and Sega consoles, I didn’t even bother asking my parents for one.
Today though, life for me has changed a little bit… just as how it would change for everyone when you start working. Sure, you hear a lot of people tell you stuff about working, that it’s boring and that you should enjoy your student life etc etc.
Well the good thing about working though, is that you earn money! And you can choose how you want to spend your money!
So once I started working, I started spending a bit on these little things I wish I could’ve afforded back then. A couple of years back I bought myself a Nintendo Wii that I ended up only playing a lot for the first couple of weeks and then neglecting it ever since.
And just recently, I bought myself…. AN XBOX 360, something I’ve wanted since my university days but couldn’t afford as a student.
Yes as much as my dad gave me a very comfortable allowance I knew he would frown if I spent any of it on a game console so I resisted.
I know I know, I’m a little slow on the XBOX 360 bandwagon.
Heck here’s the thing. I still love playing computer/video games. So I was thinking of either buying a supercomputer for gaming or an XBOX 360. So I did a little bit of research and called up my friend Jun King. Jun King told me that an XBOX 360 is just the bomb for playing games. That if I wanted to get a computer which could match its performance, I had to get one that cost four times more.
I thought about it for a few days and eventually ended up buying an XBOX 360 for RM1,280 though after you add in an extra controller, and a couple of games the damage was a total of RM1,700). I bought two games. Gears of War 2 and Halo 3 though I have to admit I’m still pretty hopeless at using the controller to aim (Can barely hit a truck with a machine gun to save my life).
The funny thing is that I bought it knowing that I wouldn’t really have much of a chance to play it given how little time I have these days but…. I don’t know, I guess the little boy in me just had to have it.
I guess I’m lucky I only crave toys that don’t cost more than a month’s pay. Imagine if I were a girl who craved LV, Chanel or Hermes bags… man I would totally have no savings then.
I spent my New Year’s Eve with some close friends at my apartment in KL with some drinks, card games and music. When midnight came we all stood outside the balcony to watch the fireworks display that happened right before our eyes.
We were a bit disappointed at first because the first fireworks that started was blocked by a building from my apartment but another one started soon after and we were in a perfect position to watch it entirely. We all stood there silent for 5 minutes watching the fireworks display and I could tell what was on everyone’s minds.
They were all thinking “FUCK I’M OLD!!!”
Happy New Year my dear readers!
Thank you all so much for always keeping up with my little adventures on my blog. I shall try to keep up with my blogging habits despite the overworked schedule I know I will have in 2009.
New Year’s Eve is a time for wishes and messages, not just like the e-Card Nuffnang sent out to all our business partners and bloggers
It’s probably the only time of the year where you get so many SMS wishes, you know some of them which start like
“Before the lines get jammed, before I get drunk ….. “
My favourite New Year’s SMS this year came from a friend of mine, Mark Lankester.
It read
“For you who survives Bear Stearns, Lehman Bros, George Bush, Madoff, Tainted milk, Britney Spears, sky-high oil prices of ’08. Best wishes of success happiness and lots of wealth.”
In a few days, the year 2008 will be over. I have mixed feelings about 2008, I mean it’s the one year of my life that I felt so much has happened. This entry is to remember what I did in 2008.
It was the first time I had spoken to such a big crowd but the crowd was if anything really really accommodating. I didn’t think I did a good job but after the speech a number of people came up to me to tell me that they enjoyed my speech and they found the story of Nuffnang some sort inspiring.
I’m glad I was able to inspire a few people here and there to do bigger things than I have managed to do myself.
I had never spent so much money on a bottle of water before. The funny thing though is that once I got the bottle I immediately opened it to take a drink. In fact I was so thirsty I gulped half the bottle down.
The people around me gave me the biggest GASP like I had just killed a chicken or something and that I should be drinking it like you drink a RM1,000 bottle of wine. Here’s the real joke, after drinking half the bottle away, I accidentally left it somewhere and went home so I totally lost this RM1,000 bottle of water.
If you’re asking for the most pain I’ve experienced in 2008, it’s got to be from my scratched cornea. Talk about sharp and sudden pain, then couple it with the fact that you can’t open both your eyes for a 4-5 days until your cornea heals again.
I considered putting on a helmet when I sleep to prevent me from rubbing my eyes in the middle of the night.
But I later realized that I was actually suffering from a Recurrent Corneal Erosion where because my healed cornea was weak and because morning dryness would cause my eyelid to stick to my cornea, when morning comes and I open my eyes it rips off my cornea with it.
Went for an operation the same year where the doctor lasered my eyes and I had to be awake to see the whole thing. The operation seems to have cured it so far *Fingers crossed*.
4. Celebrated the Nuffnang 1st Anniversary along with 300 Nuffnangers at the Nuffnang Chipster Pajama Party.
Probably one of the best parties I had ever been to in my life!
I remember standing in the crowd by the side of the stage looking at the big crowd and smiling at the Nuffnang community of bloggers having fun and going wild.
I gave many speeches during the year but this was probably the most stressful of all for me because the audience were all industry leaders, CEOs of listed companies and very very important people in the media industry.
Always conscious about costs, we took the longest time ever to actually move out of our old tiny office in the same building until we were totally sure that we can support the rent that costs multiples more.
10. Appeared in a number of magazines and newspapers.
11. Expanded Nuffnang to the Philippines.
One of my favourite moments of 2008 is having the opportunity to expand Nuffnang beyond Malaysia and Singapore to the Philippines.
I feel so blessed having met our partners for Nuffnang PH: Eric and Jay and even more blessed to have such a capable team of Nuffies there to run the show.
12. Put up the first Nuffnang Outdoor Ad in Manila.
I never got to see our ad on the giant LED board but one of the Nuffies there were nice enough to send me a video of it.
As of December 2008, the Nuffnang Community in just these four countries consist over 70,000 bloggers.
14. Embarrassed myself on TV 3 times.
Once for the National Entrepreneurs Convention on “Hello On Two”, once on NTV 7 Prime Time News and once on the NTV 7 Breakfast Show for Maxis Wild Live Blogging.
15. Then went on to embarrass myself on Radio at BFM (I never learn).
16. Grew the Nuffnang Team that I see every day and have begun to see as my extended family.
Looking back, 2008 was quite a year for me having gone through so much both in my personal life and in Nuffnang. When people look forward to 2009, they list down a list of things that they want to achieve in the year and sometimes even a thing or two about themselves that they want to change (ie New Year Resolutions).
The one thing I hope for in 2009 is that I will learn more as an entrepreneur. Something my father has taught me is that when doing business at such a young age, the main priority should be to learn and to experience, not necessarily to make big money.
In fact my father believes that I shouldn’t make too much money while I’m too young, he fears that will make me too comfortable to achieve my full potential when I reach the later years of my life.
When I read the biographies of many billionaires today I see that I have merely learned 1% of whatever there is to learn in order to be a successful entrepreneur.
2008 was a year of rapid growth and expansion for Nuffnang and with that I have learned how to keep up with growth and what a growing company demands ie certain procedures, check & balances and the likes.
I have for example not yet learned how to manage a company through a bad economic recession.
As my father always tells me
“It is only through severe adversity will you be able to differentiate the boys from the men”.
This is something I think 2009 will teach me for it is the year that will see Nuffnang go through the worst economic recession the world has seen in decades. We’ve made preparations and we’ve built large cash reserves, now it’s time to sail through the storm.
I can’t wait to see what I will learn and how the experiences and challenges I face next year will mould me to being a better entrepreneur.
Popcorn and drink in hand….
Here I come 2009!!!
Timothy Tiah – Co-Founder of Colony, Kuala Lumpur Co-Working Space
Timothy Tiah – Co-Founder of Colony, Kuala Lumpur Co-Working Space
