Christmas is around the corner and it’s present buying time (YES YES!!! STIMULATE THE ECONOMY PEOPLE!!!)

Now when it comes to buying presents it’s the easiest thing ever when it comes to guys. Buy a guy anything, like buy him a DVD or a computer game and he’s happy.

So I went around and did a quick survey to ask some of the ladies in the Nuffnang office. I started with Pinky first who’s been sick these few days but was so hardworking she came to work to clear up some of her work this morning.

I mean say you were buying a present for your girlfriend, not just any girl friend but a girl you’re dating. You buy her an LV bag for Christmas this year. Then when Valentine’s Day comes you’re going to have to buy her something better than an LV bag like an Omega watch or something.

It’s like this. You wake up late one morning and start rushing to work or class. Normally it takes like 15 minutes to get to where you need to go and you’re already late.

Then as you drive out on to the roads, loads of things that slow you down take place. I feel as if I’ve seen them all.

Sometimes you just happen to follow behind a car that is driving so slow you’d think his car was being pulled from the front by a mule.

Sometimes you get into a traffic jam at a part of the road that normally isn’t jammed whenever you drive on it on every other day.

Sometimes all the traffic lights you seem to hit ALL turn red just when you’re getting to it and when you see the light turn yellow and try to step on it, the car in front of you takes its own sweet time to cross the traffic light only just enough for it to pass while you have to stay behind.

Or sometimes the construction site you pass on the way to the place you need to go suddenly has a giant cement mixer or crane that needs to reverse out of it hence blocking all traffic from moving.

Or a bus happens to stop right in front of you to drop off some people and holding off traffic again for half a minute.

It’s just bad luck!

I mean who’s to think that these kind of things happen ONLY on the days you’re late for something.

Here’s the classic though.

Just a few days ago I was driving down the highway and there were so few cars on the road you’d think they raised petrol prices to RM10.00/Litre. I was enjoying the smooth traffic and making good time.

Then just as I approached the toll booth I kept to the Smart Tag lane as always. A car cut right in front of me and I let it go.

Then it stopped right in the middle of the Smart Tag lane. The driver then put his window down and took out his Touch n Go card and touched it on the green intercom that you normally use to call for help when something goes wrong.It didn’t work (naturally), so he tried it again… and again… and again….

I was about to get out of the car and say
“DUDE!!! STOP TOUCHING YOUR TOUCH N GO THERE!! You might as well touch it on my head because either ways it’s not gonna get the barrier up!!”

when a PLUS Highway official finally came to save the day.

The poor lady had to take the dude’s Touch N Go card and walk over to the Touch N Go lane, then wait till all the other cars had passed before she touched his card on the reader to deduct the credit. Then only did she open the barrier for the guy in front of me.

I tried to reverse out and change lane but there were so many cones blocking the way I just gave up and sat still.

Total time it took… 4 actual whole minutes. I heard the start till the end of a song in my car in that time.

And you know what’s the best part… these things ONLY happen when you’re rushing somewhere.

Will someone buy me a helicopter for Christmas? Just a small one will do.Like one of these.

Tonight for the first time in 7 years, I met up with one of my old school friends: Sam. Sam and I go way back. He used to be the top boy in my year, that means he almost always ended up in first place.

I remember the days he would compare his marks with mine just to see if I might eventually catch up. I never did catch up with him though except for once when I got lucky. The rest of the time I always settled around 4th or 5th place.

After we parted ways when we were done with our SPM, Sam went on to pursue his ambition of being a lawyer and today he’s a lawyer at one of the top law firms in the country probably earning more than a lot of the other guys my year are making now.

He came by the Nuffnang office tonight to meet me for dinner and as he walked in, he took a quick look around and he said
“Wow! Look at you and your office”.

He then went on to say how it must be great to have a business of my own and how he was hoping to do something else but practice law some day, something different… like perhaps start a business or something.

Sometimes I wonder if people fully understand the other side of the story, how it really is to run a business and the price you pay for it.

A lot of people seem to come up to me these days and tell me the same thing, that they want to own their own businesses one day and how they feel it’s only that way they would make real money.

First of all, there’s the obvious notion that the businesses you see and pay attention to are the ones that have succeeded and made it at least somewhat far and what you see on the outside are the rosy things. Sure you see the money they spend, the cars they buy, the nice cosy office they sit in and you see a whole lot of other material things but let me tell you what you don’t see from an entrepreneur’s point of view.

First, there is the coming up. All businesses start small and when you’re small, sometimes you just meet nasty people who will look down on you and spit on you while you’re trying to climb up. All you can do is swallow your pride and take it.

The only satisfaction you may get in return is that one day if and when you do get big, you’ll notice how these people who once looked down on you and spat on you turn around and suddenly are somewhat your best friends. Hopefully by then you’d already know who truly are your friends and who aren’t.

The most taxing part about running a business though is the stress. I thought I’ve had stress during my student life and with whatever short work experiences I had before starting Nuffnang. I really did have stress… but all that stress was nothing compared to the immense stress I’ve faced since Nuffnang came about.

I’ve had nights where the stress from work was so immense that I lay awake in bed the whole night sweating… yes actually sweating in a cold air-conditioned room.

Where does the stress come from? Everywhere and in all sorts of angles, from bringing sales in to managing cashflow to managing a team and the stress gets bigger the bigger the company gets.

Let me give you an example.

When Nuffnang was a small company with just 4 people in it including Ming and myself our costs were low so there was a lot less pressure on sales. Today it costs millions of dollars a year in salaries, server costs, rent and all other costs just to keep Nuffnang running.

Imagine the pressure we face to make sure our revenues at least keep up with our costs. Fortunately for us, we’ve been lucky so far and our revenues have always outpaced our costs.

Every day I walk into the office I look at the many faces of the people that work there. They all smile at me in the mornings and I love them all but there is the burden that I carry that their lives are directly affected by whatever happens to Nuffnang. That any mistake I make with not managing the company right could hurt their jobs and their lives at this company. So every decision I make carries that burden because sometimes the smallest wrong decision can have the biggest impact.

Sometimes it’s true when they say that the grass is greener on the other side. Because at times when I’ve been overwhelmed by all this stress I sometimes do wonder how it would be like to be just working at a great job in a great company. I mean when you’re working and you screw up, what’s the worst that can happen? You lose your job then all you’ve got to do is find another one.

When you’re running a business and you screw up, what happens then? You not only lose your job, you lose a lot of money and you drag a whole lot of other people down with you. That is the burden of running a business of your own and that is the price you pay.

And you pay that price without knowing whether at the end of the day whether your business will work or not. I feel very lucky because Nuffnang worked… and I’m sure many other people have tried many other different businesses and gone through worse but still haven’t gotten anything out of it yet.

So is this what you still really want? The sleepless nights and the immense stress you face every
day?

Why do I do it then?

I guess for me, I do it for a lot of reasons like passion, interest and love for what I do but also because of the thrill. Somehow there is something in me that loves challenges and loves being faced with problems that I’ve never faced before, then finding the solutions to them.

I can only seem to get that satisfaction from running a business in a new industry like Nuffnang. Every day I face some sort of problem at work in Nuffnang but I get an adrenaline rush whenever I’m faced with a difficult situation like that and occasionally manage to pull of a smile on my face while doing it.To be honest, I think as we all grow older our priorities will change and I can see mine changing too. Right now while we’re all young we chase our careers, we chase material wealth because there isn’t a lot more to chase.

But I think one day when we are married and look into the eyes of our children, our lives will no longer be about chasing wealth, it will be about other things, like growing old with our soulmates or watching our children grow.

By then I think whilst money will be important, its importance will come in a different form. The stability and constant flow of money to support your children will matter far more than the amount you have. I can see that happening to myself one day… I wonder if everyone else does.

Shanghai’s Nanjing Road is the main shopping street of Shanghai. I mean it’s one freaking long street full of shops on both sides, a wonderful place to shop.

It is also a place where it kinda sucks to be a tourist.

Why? Because it’s full of touts who’re looking to scam you the minute they know you’re a tourist and heck it doesn’t matter if you look Chinese like I do, they somehow know how to spot you even if you don’t open your mouth to speak Mandarin in your Malaysian accent.

Maybe it’s just the way we dress.

I was walking with Ming down that road just a few days ago and so many touts came up to us trying to sell us stuff or invite us to restaurants to eat.

I know what you’re thinking
“What’s wrong with being invited to a restaurant to eat? You’re looking for food anyway right?”
Well … WRONG.

Let me tell you one of a few stories that happened to some friends of mine who visited Shanghai not too long ago. To protect his identity, I’m going to call this friend Frank.

Frank gets stopped by touts a million times while walking down this street (probably because he’s Caucasian and you don’t look anymore touristy than that) but he knew about their scamming ways so he ignored them. Then suddenly a really pretty Chinese girl came up to him and randomly starting speaking to him in English.

Surprised that a girl there starting speaking fluent English to him, he paid attention for once. I mean heck, wherever in the world you are, if a pretty girl who looked something like this
came up to talk to you, you don’t ignore her… instead you say
“Oh hai!!!”

So after a while she suggested that they got get lunch so Frank who was hungry himself said okay. She brought him to this Chinese restaurant on the same road. Frank upon sitting down took a look at the prices on the menu for fear that he might be getting conned into an expensive lunch. The prices were pretty normal.

They sat there to eat but throughout the lunch the Chinese girl started ordering a few glasses of wine for herself. One glass after another. By the time the bill came, it came up to be the equivalent of RM3,000.
Frank was shocked. He was like “WTF?!?”

And most of the bill apparently came from the ‘expensive’ wine she was having. Frank looked into his wallet and found only RM1,500 worth of Chinese currency so he said he can’t afford it. The waiters and the restaurant manager gathered round his table and demanded that he use his credit card but Frank said that his card is not working outside his country.

After making some more noise, Frank finally told them that the only currency he had left was another USD 200 back in the hotel (actually a lie, Frank had much more but knowing he was being scammed he acted broke).

The restaurant owner sent two of his people to follow Frank back to his 5-star hotel just to get the USD200. So there you have it everyone. After hearing all these horror stories, Ming and I were even afraid to go eat anywhere around that area without our local friends showing us around. One morning we woke up for lunch and Ming suggested to have lunch at the Italian restaurant in our hotel.

I said
“WHAT? What for so expensive?”

And his reply
“Well if you go out and eat and get scammed, it’s going to cost you a lot more for crap food so what would you rather do?

We had Italian food for lunch that day.

Okay if anyone is wondering what the hell happened to me for the past few days let me tell you.

I arrived on Monday night, really happy and all. Went for dinner with some of my friends and clients who happen to be there and we went take some pictures around Shanghai.
Then I spent the whole of Tuesday working and on Tuesday night one of my friends who works in Shanghai brought us for oily Sichuan food.

I went to bed thinking that I was going to be fine on Wednesday morning for work again but in the middle of Tuesday night I woke up with a painful stomach ache. I didn’t know what was causing it but my body told me that I had to be near a toilet so I rushed into the toilet.

That night I woke up almost every hour to rush to the toilet.

By the end of the night it had finally dawned on me that I was suffering from food poisoning probably from the oily Sichuan dinner.

When Wednesday morning came I was struggling to stay alive. By the time I was up it was near 10.30AM and I knew I had to go to a pharmacy. So I made my way to find a pharmacy and while I was expecting to see a well-stocked pharmacy like this.
Only that the pharmacy I saw was more like some shop with well.. not as much medicine and apparently according to my friends working there, that’s how the pharmacies here are like.

So okay I asked for some of the Western medicine that I knew off but they had no clue what it was so I told them that I was suffering from food poisoning and I needed something.

They prescribed these pills for me and I started taking it as they suggested. 3 of these pills 3 times a day.
And guess what, it doesn’t seem to work.

It’s Friday now and I’ll be leaving in a few hours for the airport to head back home and I’m still feeling like shit so that kinda messed up my trip a little.

The good news is that my cruel friends made sure I went out to see Shanghai no matter how sick I was so I did manage to go some places and take some pictures. Will blog about that in time to come but right now.. I just need to recover and hope I get well before I get on to the plane.Otherwise…. it will be a very unpleasant flight home.

See you guys soon.

Okay so I’m in Shanghai today. After a 5 hour flight, I finally got in this afternoon and found my way into the city using the Maglev, apparently the fastest train in the world that travels all the way up to 422km/h.That’s insane!

And to be honest I really wonder whether it’s really necessary or not. The whole train ride took like 5 minutes to get us into the city but if it were a normal train then heck, maybe it would just have taken double the time.. like 10 minutes instead of 5. Is that such a bad thing?

But I guess there’s the bragging rights of having the fastest train in the world.

A quick taxi ride later Ming and I finally got to our hotel, the Westin Shanghai and checked in.

This is Ming checking in.

And while waiting for him to get us checked in I walked around the lobby of the hotel and took these pictures.

Pretty nice huh.

Such a busy busy hotel full of business people.
Very quickly after we got our key cards, we made our way up to our room. The thing I love about traveling is the hotel rooms. I mean I can save on everything else on a trip, eat cheaper food, fly budget airlines but the one thing I really do appreciate is a good hotel.

There’s nothing better than a great place to go back to sleep after a long day of work.

The Westin has one of the softest coziest beds.

and a huge bathroom

with a bathtub next to a window and a city view.

Too bad I probably won’t get to use it since I’m going to be out most of the time.

This is what I’ll probably be using most if not all the time.

A typical shower.

This is also the first time I’ve actually seen a hotel room have a special cubicle for its toilet so that when anyone ever has to take a shit, the entire toilet doesn’t stink up and you can still go in and brush your teeth or something without smelling all the love.

Anyway apart from the usual cool stationery drawers that the hotel room provided, there is something that I really fell in love with and was the one thing that made me confirm that I will from now on stay in the Westin every time I come to Shanghai.

The bed…. had more than just pillows.

IT CAME WITH A BOLSTER!
I LOVE BOLSTERS!!!! AND WHAT A GOOD WAY TO HELP FILL THE EMPTINESS I FEEL NOW FROM THE BOLSTER I HAD TO LEAVE BEHIND BACK IN KL!!!

I feel almost just as home here now.

Okay everyone, gotta go to bed now. Got a long day of work tomorrow.

Have a wonderful week ahead!

Her name is Emily, 1 year old female Siberian Husky. Lost around TTDI. erm she has blue eyes and her marking on her right is longer than the marking on the left!
If you find it, e-mail Michelle at michelle.thl@gmail.com

Early tomorrow morning I’m hopping on a flight to Shanghai. I’m going to be in Shanghai this week for a conference and for some work stuff there.

Funny thing is my friend Hasan is there in Shanghai right now too and will be there for just about as long as I will be there for this week. He’s on holiday though.

He sent me a text this morning
“Dude.. no one here speaks Engrish!”

Then like a few hours later he sent me another text
“Dude I just met this random chinese chick and I’m having lunch with her now. She speaks damn good english , but if I get kidnapped you know why”.

I replied him a little late, like 1 hour later because I was a little busy saying something like
“WOOHOO!”

Then he sent me a very short reply
“Dude I just got conned”.

I guess there goes another story of being cheated in China, this one involving a friendly random english speaking Chinese girl.

So my little bag is packed.
My passport all set.

And enough Chinese currency to last me for a while.

Only thing I’m missing is my heart.

Feels so heavy leaving home again…. But I guess when you gotta go work, you gotta go work.

During my second year of uni in London, I shared a flat with two very wonderful ladies. One, a Malaysian girl named Gene who was studying law at Queen Mary University and another, a british born Chinese girl named Julia who was in the same course as I was at UCL: Economics.

Julia is a pretty interesting person. Her family is from Hong Kong but she was born and raised in the UK. So she speaks English with the strongest English accent possible but when she speaks Cantonese, she sounds as if she grew up in Hong Kong.

Well this week, she made a short trip to KL just to pay me a visit.The last time I saw her was two years ago at graduation and I didn’t think I’d see her again so soon. We spent a lot of time catching up on what we’ve both been up to (she’s now in reinsurance) and also on what our other uni friends have been up to.

You know things like… is bla bla still together with bla bla… or what is Sheila from UCL doing now… etc etc. Most of my old uni friends seem to be doing quite well career wise, although some of them who were working in the financial sector in London got laid off recently due to the economic crisis.

While she was down I took some time off to take her shopping at Pasar Malams, Sungai Wang, Sunway Pyramid and also to try some local food. We even made a trip all the way to Klang to have the famous Klang Bak Kut Teh.

I was expecting a response like
“WHY THE HELL DO YOU GUYS PUT PORK IN YOUR TEA?!?!”

But it turned out that she actually liked it!

Ended up taking pictures of it too… and she’s not even a blogger.

Here’s something interesting.

While I was in London, I spent a lot of my time with my friends from the UK, Hong Kong or other countries. All of them always felt that my Malaysian accent sounded weird to them and Julia used to poke a little harmless fun at me here and there.

But these few days while she was here she realized that everyone here spoke English like me… and I never thought I’d get to say this in my lifetime but.. . Julia… now you’re the one that speaks funny 🙂

We took some time off our busying around KL to pay a visit to our 3rd flatmate, a nice girl named Gene who has now become a lawyer at one of the top law firms in the country pulling in big bucks.
The three of us caught a picture, a picture that we all agreed will be the last in a long time to come until one of us gets married.

I sent Julia off yesterday after her short trip… we said our goodbyes, hugged and at the end of it all, I think she’s glad she came over.

Bye Julia!

You will be missed!

In the past few months while I have been working on putting together Nuffnang Philippines, Ming has been keeping himself really busy too with another installment of our Nuffnang expansion plans.

We’ve always dreamed of making Nuffnang a regional blog advertising network and regional to us doesn’t mean we start announcing that we accept bloggers from all over the world and call ourselves an international player, anyone can do that. It means we actually set up physical offices in the respective offices with staff there to better service the market in that country.

So since a few months ago Ming has been working together with two very experienced digital marketing Australians (Martyn and David) to set up the team and operations in Nuffnang Australia. After months of preparation, setting up a team and looking for people to add to our office in Melbourne, at 12.00AM today we finally launched Nuffnang Australia.

Among some of the first few bloggers to join us in Nuffnang Australia is someone pretty familiar to some of us here closer to home… Karen Cheng.

Here are some pictures of the Nuffnang office in Australia that I managed to steal off Ming’s blog.

It’s housed in this nice 3 storey building along with the offices of Frank Media.

and here are some pictures of how it looks on the inside.

Dammit I wanna go work there some day too.

There’s even a nice chillout area or their version of the “Nuffie’s Corner”.

I’m really excited by all this.

Less than 2 years since Nuffnang started off in a small Penang office, today we have grown to have offices in Penang, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Manila and now Melbourne. It’s exciting being at the front seat of a company that is growing so fast.

Now that Nuffnang Philippines seems to be picking up and growing really quick too, I can’t wait to face all the challenges we’ll have in our operations in a 4th country: Australia.

Thank you for having us Australia!