Okay I’m getting some questions about some rumours going around that I’m going into politics thanks to my buddy Desmond here who made this entry.

And the truth is, Desmond was just joking lar… I’m not going into politics. I leave the running of the country to the more capable people.

Few of you may not know but for the second half of last week, I once again injured my cornea and was once again without my eyesight for a few days.

Fortunately for me I had already drafted out my previous entry on Mudah and all I had to do was ask someone to publish it for me so many of you probably didn’t know I was gone.

Well…. so it happened .. AGAIN.

This is the 3rd time I scratched my cornea in 8 months and each time I do it, I go through a lot of pain and lose my eyesight for a few days which is really great for catching up on loss sleep but really frustrating if you have plenty of work to do.

Clearly.. the helmet I wear to sleep really ain’t helping.So I went back to my eye specialist.

The minute I took my first step into his room he said
“AHH….. Mr Tiah… nice to see you again.”

I replied
“Yes Doc… this is becoming a habit. Do you happen to have one of those Coffee Bean kind of loyalty cards where I come for 12 treatments and get the 13th one for FREE?”The Doc laughed it away and got down to looking at my injury.

After 5 minutes of examining my eye, he said
“I think you suffer from this thing called a Recurring Corneal Erosion”.

Naturally my reply was
“Doc… English… please!”

and he went on to explain that my injury was really nothing to do with me scratching my eyes but more like a disorder where the outer layer of my cornea fails to attach properly to the underlying layer hence causing some kind of friction.

Anyway I wikipedia’ed “Recurrent Corneal Erosion” later on and found out.
Recurrent corneal erosion is a disorder of the eyes characterized by the failure of the cornea‘s outermost layer of epithelial cells to attach to the underlying basement membrane (Bowman’s layer). The condition is frequently painful because the loss of these cells results in the exposure of sensitive corneal nerves.

Painful eh??? YOU DON’T SAY!!!

Anyway as always I’m always a guy about solutions. Not about what happened before but what we can do to stop it from happening again so I asked the Doc
“Doc… so how ah? How to make sure I dun kena like this again?”

And you know what the Doc said?

He replied
“Oh you can’t.. it’s going to happen like that pretty often for the rest of your life.”

I let out a courtesy laugh after that… you know.. the Doctor just told a joke and when the doctor tells a joke.. YOU LAUGH. Simple as that right?

You know there was once a case where someone went for a Kidney transplant and the Doctor operating on him mistakenly removed the wrong kidney?

He removed the kidney that was working instead of the kidney that wasn’t.
Do you know why? It’s not because the Doctor is an idiot. Doctors are all smart.

It’s because the patient didn’t laugh at the Doctor’s jokes when he was telling it.

So when in surgery the Doctor decided to take matters in his own hands and when the shit hits the fan, all he has to say is
“Whooops… wrong kidney… sorry ah! They both look the same to me.”

Anyway back to my Doctor. My Doc replied
“Hey I’m not joking you know. I’m serious”.

What was I supposed to say to that?

If this happens say even 3-4 times a year, that means I’ll be out of action for say 16 days each year with certainty. Hell if I were working somewhere, I wouldn’t even have enough sick leave for me to take because of this!

And think of what my clients like Desmond here would think if I were MIA for so many days in a year.

Probably something along the lines of
“Mahaii… this Timothy always pretend that his cornea kena scratch to escape work. I bet now he’s not at the hospital but instead at some Strip Club enjoying himself.”

So I sat up from my seat and asked the Doc again
“WHAT?! So there is NOTHING I can do about this?!”

The Doc said
“Nope. Well we could do a surgery where we use a needle to poke your cornea or even scrape off your entire cornea and wait for it to grow a new one back… but even then it still might not solve the problem”.
I edged closer to the Doctor, looked him in eye and said
“So you’re saying… I can go through a surgery where I have you or someone poke my eye with a needle many many times to remove the entire outer layer, which sounds painful as hell to me… but even then it may not solve the problem?”

Tomorrow morning I am flying to Singapore… to see another Doctor there… for a second opinion.
—————————————————-
Updated

Hey after seeing the first few comments of this entry I think it’s drawing a bit of a somber mood. I am touched that you guys are concerned about me but at the same time this is not too big a deal okay everyone so don’t worry about me.

There are no long term effects of this, what this means is just that every now and then my eye will hurt and I won’t be able to open both my eyes for a few days while undergoing treatment. After that… like now it’ll just heal back again.
Like now.. see? I just took this picture a few minutes ago.

All healthy and all.. so don’t so somber okay.. cheer up a little bit…

This is an advertorial. But I actually really like this entry okay.. SO READ IT ANYWAY… trust me it’s fun. I wouldn’t have done it if it wasn’t and you guys know how very selective I am with advertorials.

Okay so I’ve heard a lot about Mudah.com.my since they became our client at Nuffnang.

There it was, an online Marketplace where you can sell or buy things to other fellow Malaysians (Sort of like eBay but without the bidding process).

Not long before, I just heard from Nicholas that Pinkpau managed to sell a bulk of her old teddy bears on Mudah so hey… I decided to give it a shot myself.

Only thing was… I wasn’t sure what to sell.

What could I possibly sell that nobody else could get on any other day.

I mean if I were Brad Pitt I could probably sell my SPIT and I’m sure someone would’ve bought it for a few thousand bucks.

But.. I’m not Brad Pitt. I’m Timothy Tiah and nobody is gonna buy my spit let alone a properly signed autograph.

So I while looking through my junk I spotted something that brought back childhood memories of myself.

Yes… the Rotan.

Not just ANY Rotan.

The Rotan that my father used frequently to whoop my ass when I was a kid. That’s the funny thing about beating a kid right?

In the West, nobody beats their kids and if they do, the kid calls Child Services and gets the parents taken away.

In the East, like Malaysia… everyone beats their kids (fine.. not everyone, those of you who didn’t get beaten, you have no idea what you guys missed out on).

I was a beaten kid.

Seriously… my father used to whack me like there was no tomorrow (although I did deserve it most of the time). I know it’s hard to imagine this but I was actually a very rebellious kid that always talked back to my parents when I got a scolding or even a beating.

Heck I got so much beating that The Rotan even was cracked at the tip.

I used to be so terrified of the thing. So terrified that I used to hide The Rotan when I knew my Dad was gonna whoop my ass.

He used to keep The Rotan on top of the fridge thinking that I won’t be able to reach which worked fine and dandy for a while but the problem with kids is… we grow. So as I grew older (and taller), I learned to climb on to chairs to quickly grab The Rotan and hide it somewhere safe like under a rug or something.

I remember a day my Dad came home from work looking to beat the shit out of me for something I did wrong. He stared at me with fire in his eyes as he walked through the door but he didn’t want me to know that I was going to get a beating yet till he got his Rotan so he would first run off to the kitchen to grab it.

Sooner or later he realized that I hid it and he walked out of the kitchen and gave me the courtesy of asking me to return it to him.

And I stupidly replied
“YOU CHEATING WAN ALWAYS USE ROTAN… I ALSO CAN BEAT WITH ROTAN.. USE YOUR HANDS AND FIGHT ME LIKE A MAN!!!” (and I put my tiny fists up).

I don’t remember what happened after that though I did remember hearing a “POW!!!” just like in the old Batman movies.

So there you have it everyone… right now I am going to try to sell on Mudah.com.my the very same Rotan that my Father used to beat me into the man I have become today.

All for only RM200.

If I manage to somehow sell this Rotan on Mudah.com.my. It can only mean 3 things.

1) Mudah.com.my is damn bloody good!
2) Someone out there is damn SM.

Click here to go find my Rotan. HAHAAHAH!!!

Will update you guys on the results later on.

To My Dear Father: Thank you for beating me when I was young.

Many of you ladies must already know that CLEO magazine always has this page in every issue where readers can write in and ask questions about sex (heck I remember blogging about this once before).

One of my female friends reads a lot of CLEO so whenever I see one I rush through to read the Question & Answer sections.I’ve always thought the answers to those questions were always politically correct and sometimes not brutally honest. One day if I’m free and all, it might be fun for a while to be one of those “Dear Thelma” people. Maybe a “Dear Boss…”

I’ll do a really good job at answering the questions. Really! Here’s my trial run.

Question 1

Question: “Every time when my husband and I have sex, he likes to squeeze by breasts hard. It hurts after that. I just want to know if there would be any infection to my breasts if he were to do this to me regularly”.

Answer: Every time he squeezes your breasts, squeeze his nuts equally as hard… you know just for fun. I bet he’ll be the one worrying about swelling or an infection.

Question 2

Question: I’ve always felt sorry for women whose boyfriends ogle other women in public. Especially when these girls are thinner or younger than the women they are with. i love the fact that if my boyfriend does check out other women when I’m around, he does it in such a discreet way that I have never noticed.
Until now. The other day, I caught him red handed. To my shock however, the woman he was “appreciating” was in her mid fifties at least. Yes she was immaculately dressed and rather striking, but still. I almost would have felt better if it had been some bimbo. What’s the attraction here?

Answer: WHAT?!?! A NON-SUPERFICIAL MAN?!?! BLASPHEMY!!!

Question 3

Question: The other day, my boyfriend of six months made a strange request in bed. He wanted to lick honey off my body. I told him I’d think about it but to be honest am a bit put off by the stickiness factor and having to wash it all off afterwards. How do i break the news to him without sounding as if I’m not open to trying new things in bed.
Answer: Easy. Do the honey thing ONCE. Then after that tell him you have a fetish for shit and you want him to smear shit all over you, then lick it all off.

If he refuses to do so say “What the hell?!?!? I thought you wanted to be adventurous in bed?!?! YOU PUSSY!!! I’m not doing that honey thing for you ever again!!!!”

Problem solved.

Question 4

Question: I’m 18 years old. Last week my boyfriend hugged me and we kissed for a really long time which left me feeling very aroused. Can I become pregnant this way? I’m scared.

Answer: OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG!!! YOU HUGGED AND KISSED?!?!? Did you know that HUGGING AND KISSING alone has a 95% higher chance for you to get pregnant compared to having actual sexual intercourse?

Not only that, if you were to conceive via HUGGING and KISSING, your baby will come out evil with a really big head, a red jumper and big plans to take over the world!!!
Question 5

Question: My recently ex-boyfriend cheated on me and I want revenge. I want the world to know what a two-timing sleaze he is and how he hurt me. I’m thinking of putting his name and photo on one of those Websites which warn women not to go out with certain men. Should I go ahead?

Answer: You know this is why it’s dangerous to date bloggers. Imagine if I dated Skyler.
If I screwed up, she will blog about what an asshole I am and the whole world will know. Then anyone who Googles you name will know what a bastard I am!!! Oh but back to answering your question… ermm.. yeah go ahead. I’m sure he’ll “care”.

See? I’m good eh.. you guys would write to my column eh?

I mean I’ve very practical about. No nonsense mushy mushy politically correct answers from me.

Many of you ladies must already know that CLEO magazine always has this page in every issue where readers can write in and ask questions about sex (heck I remember blogging about this once before).

One of my female friends reads a lot of CLEO so whenever I see one I rush through to read the Question & Answer sections.I’ve always thought the answers to those questions were always politically correct and sometimes not brutally honest. One day if I’m free and all, it might be fun for a while to be one of those “Dear Thelma” people. Maybe a “Dear Boss…”

I’ll do a really good job at answering the questions. Really! Here’s my trial run.

Question 1

Question: “Every time when my husband and I have sex, he likes to squeeze by breasts hard. It hurts after that. I just want to know if there would be any infection to my breasts if he were to do this to me regularly”.

Answer: Every time he squeezes your breasts, squeeze his nuts equally as hard… you know just for fun. I bet he’ll be the one worrying about swelling or an infection.

Question 2

Question: I’ve always felt sorry for women whose boyfriends ogle other women in public. Especially when these girls are thinner or younger than the women they are with. i love the fact that if my boyfriend does check out other women when I’m around, he does it in such a discreet way that I have never noticed.
Until now. The other day, I caught him red handed. To my shock however, the woman he was “appreciating” was in her mid fifties at least. Yes she was immaculately dressed and rather striking, but still. I almost would have felt better if it had been some bimbo. What’s the attraction here?

Answer: WHAT?!?! A NON-SUPERFICIAL MAN?!?! BLASPHEMY!!!

Question 3

Question: The other day, my boyfriend of six months made a strange request in bed. He wanted to lick honey off my body. I told him I’d think about it but to be honest am a bit put off by the stickiness factor and having to wash it all off afterwards. How do i break the news to him without sounding as if I’m not open to trying new things in bed.
Answer: Easy. Do the honey thing ONCE. Then after that tell him you have a fetish for shit and you want him to smear shit all over you, then lick it all off.

If he refuses to do so say “What the hell?!?!? I thought you wanted to be adventurous in bed?!?! YOU PUSSY!!! I’m not doing that honey thing for you ever again!!!!”

Problem solved.

Question 4

Question: I’m 18 years old. Last week my boyfriend hugged me and we kissed for a really long time which left me feeling very aroused. Can I become pregnant this way? I’m scared.

Answer: OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG!!! YOU HUGGED AND KISSED?!?!? Did you know that HUGGING AND KISSING alone has a 95% higher chance for you to get pregnant compared to having actual sexual intercourse?

Not only that, if you were to conceive via HUGGING and KISSING, your baby will come out evil with a really big head, a red jumper and big plans to take over the world!!!
Question 5

Question: My recently ex-boyfriend cheated on me and I want revenge. I want the world to know what a two-timing sleaze he is and how he hurt me. I’m thinking of putting his name and photo on one of those Websites which warn women not to go out with certain men. Should I go ahead?

Answer: You know this is why it’s dangerous to date bloggers. Imagine if I dated Skyler.
If I screwed up, she will blog about what an asshole I am and the whole world will know. Then anyone who Googles you name will know what a bastard I am!!! Oh but back to answering your question… ermm.. yeah go ahead. I’m sure he’ll “care”.

See? I’m good eh.. you guys would write to my column eh?

I mean I’ve very practical about. No nonsense mushy mushy politically correct answers from me.

Just a few days ago I watched this movie called “The Bucket List” by Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman.

It’s a very touching and inspiring story about two terminally ill men (one a car mechanic and one a billionaire), both with less than a year to live and rather than fighting the cancer, they decide instead to create a list of everything they always wanted to do in their lives and do it before they die.

I loved that movie. I absolutely loved it.

It was a reminder to us all how life is shorter than we all think, and the sad part is… how we all only realize how short life is for us when it is too late.
That movie reminded me of something.

Many years ago when I had just graduated from UCL, I was on the plane back to Malaysia trying to decide what it is that I wanted to do with my life.

On one hand, I had a job offer at a good investment bank waiting and on the other hand… there were plans to start with Ming what would end up being called Nuffnang.

I was confused. I didn’t know where or how to start.

So I made the list of things that I wanted to do with my life before I died and came up with a list.

I didn’t know how to call it a “Bucket List” back then, so I just called it a list of “Things I Will Do Before I Die”.

Here’s a short snippet of the list I can share with you guys.

I had to censor some… BWAHAHAH

Start a Charity Foundation to help the poor
Tell a bed time story to my baby boy/girl
Save a life
Buy a Ferrari
Shag a model
Find my soul mate
Be in the news on TV
Be on one of those talk shows on National TV
Be in either Fortune, Forbes or BusinessWeek magazine
Own a Hotel
Visit New York
Meet Richard Branson
Start and Own a Sustainable Business
Buy Dad A Porsche
Go Skydiving
Take Dad and Mum for a luxurious holiday
Shoot a gun
Live in San Francisco

There you have it.

My bucket list.

Somehow I’ve already managed to do some of them in the first few years since I wrote that list.. but well.. plenty more to go.

Anything else you guys think I should add to my list?

Thursday morning, I found myself at the KLCC Convention Center for the Opening of the JobsDB Career Fair. I’ve heard loads about this fair since JobsDB approached Nuffnang for a campaign last year to promote this fair.It wasn’t gonna be like any other fair. It was going to be the first PAPERLESS one in Malaysia.

When I got there they made me fill in a really short form.
Just some basic details you know… name, e-mail contact number, list of ex-girlfriends, bad words that I use over a daily basis and etc etc.

Everyone lies or exaggerate in their CVs right?

Well these details isn’t gonna be a huge part of your CV so you may or may not need to lie about them but I decided to lie anyway and bring over the filled in form to the registration counter.

But I’m a terrible liar, I always get caught…
Then after that they showed me to a lot of laptops they had ready for me to do some serious lying. Time to fill up my CV 😛

I took hold of the keyboard and typed away.Now when you want to lie about a CV. There are a few sections you need to take note of.

Academic Results: So people think you’re Einstein reincarnated.

SPM results: 45 A1s
A-Level results: 8As
Graduated from Harvard University
Masters at Stanford
PHD at Oxford University

Extra-Curricular Activities: So people think you’re well-rounded

Now nobody gives a shit about you being in the scouts or girl guides… why? because every other person is. So to stand out.. you have to make your employer feel that.. well.. you’re outstanding like this:

-Member of the Red Cross. Have traveled on peace missions to Africa 13 times in the past 3 years.

-Captain of the Malaysian Debate Team. Second-runner up for the World’s Debate Championship (Don’t lie until too ho liao say second-runner up can di… after people suspicious).

-Captain of the National Football Team

Languages Spoken and Written (Because everyone likes a multi-lingual fella):

-English
-BM
-Chinese
-Japanese
-Thai
-Korean
-French
-German
-Russian
-Spanish

And finally… previous work experiences which would depends in what industry you’re applying for but say you’re applying for a job in Finance at Maybank, this is what you should write:

-Junior Analyst at Goldman Sachs London
-Senior Analyst at Morgan Stanley New York
-Associate Director at Lehman Brothers New York
The people at Maybank will be so blown away.. the first thing they’ll probably ask you at the interview is
“So with all this work experience… why do you want to come back to Malaysia to take a pay cut and work here?”

In which your model answer should be
“Because I love my country”.

FUIYOH… they’ll be smiling at you like this man.
So I finishing lying telling the truth about myself in my CV and headed to another registration counter where they gave me a tag with a bar code on it and told me that’s all I was going to need to apply for jobs at this Job Fair.

All I had to do was go to any job booth I see there and let them scan my code… effectively digitally passing on my kickass CV to them.

I walked around the fair looking for a friend of mine.

Do yall remember Christine here from 88DB?She was playing boss.. managing the biggest booth at the event… all taken up by 88DB.

Her booth had everything from free muffins to free massages to… heck even a huge balloon floating on top of it.

Booths don’t get any bigger than this!After spending some time checking out the place, Nicholas (our Marketing Manager at Nuffnang) who was with me reminded me that it was time for us to run off to another meeting and that I should stop using this wonderful Career fair as a reason for me to slack off!

So we left.

*sniff*

Bye bye JobsDB Career Fair!If you guys are free this weekend, go check it out at the KLCC Convention Center. Pretty nice to see the first paperless career fair.

I’m can’t say for sure if you’ll definitely get a job there because I myself wasn’t really applying (Unless Nuffnang one day decides that my “services are no longer required“) but there are quite a lot of booths there.

Details at JobsDB

Okay.

Today I went to the opening of the JobsDB Career Fair at KLCC Convention Center. Pretty cool stuff. But I’ll blog about it later.
Anyway so I went to the Career Fair right.. and I took some pictures and wanted to blog about it because it’s the first Paperless Career Fair in Malaysia ever held. Like really pretty high-tech lar.

So I came home in the evening, uploaded all the pictures from my camera to my computer and you know what I found?

THIS

AND THIS

AND THIS

AND THIS

AND THIS!!!

MY CAMERA WAS FULL OF CAMWHORE PICTURES AGAIN!!!

Samantha… I think we need to lay some ground rules here.

Warning: This entry is rather long and text-heavy. So much that I don’t know how many of you would really want to read this but it’s just something that I want personally recorded in my blog for me to look back on one day.

It’s about… our first year at Nuffnang.

In the Beginning

It’s hard to imagine the life I am living now to the life that I lived one year ago. Time flies.Exactly one year ago, at this very same minute, I was tossing and turning on my bed trying to get some sleep.

Nuffnang.com was due to be launched at between 2.00AM-4.00AM on the 27th of February 2007. We had to launch at that very odd time because Ming went to some Feng Shui Master who told us that it was the best time to launch our website.

I eventually managed to get a short hour’s sleep and woke up in the middle of the night hoping that the clock would show 2.00AM and we could all start getting to work in bringing the website to life. But alas, it was only 1.30AM and I lay in bed staring at the ceiling, listening to the fingers on my alarm clock tick.

In what felt like an eternity later, the clock finally hit 2.00AM.

I jumped out of bed and straight to my laptop. I saw Ming and another colleague of mine already online on MSN waiting to get to work. We opened up a chatroom and started to bring the website to life. I was nervous. I really was.

The first launch was meant to be a small Beta launch which involved just a few of my blogger friends to test the site with me.

By 4.00AM the website was online and I had made this blog entry on my blog to share with my readers about what the “leetle dotcom” I always referred to really was.

The First Baby Steps

The next day, before I knew it… a number of my friends had started joining Nuffnang to test it out. NONE of them expected to make any amount of money… they were all just being good friends of mine, supporting me in every way that they could. I still remember them today: Cely, WilliamLeong, Jasonmumbles and Rojaks to name a few.

Soon the number of sign ups we had picked up and by the end of the first day we had over 50 blogs signed up with us. This was a huge achievement for us back then.

In our business plan, we were only hoping to hit 300 blogs in a span of the first 3 months so 50 in the first day was… unbelievable. We eventually hit our target of 300 bloggers in a span of 3 weeks but not without problems.

The number of bloggers signing up with us was so immense that we kept having to upgrade from server to server and optimize our code to ensure we can cope with the load better.Nuffnang Opens Up To Malaysia

I remember the first time we publicly went to promote Nuffnang among the blogging community. Wingz, always a true friend and always will be… was nice enough to allow us a spot at the Together Gather blogger gathering that he and his group were putting together.

We set up a booth there to dispense information to our bloggers, but always staying within our bounds to respect the sanctity of a blogger gathering.A blogger gathering is for bloggers to get together and have fun. If any companies like ourselves were to participate as a sponsor or otherwise, we had better learn to behave and not try to hard sell our product way too much to the bloggers.

We had some mixed reactions from bloggers. Some welcomed the existence of Nuffnang, some were skeptical.

The Bloggers Who Believed In Us

Let’s face it.

When Nuffnang first started out, we didn’t have that beautiful and high-tech a website that we have now. We didn’t have a stable of advertisers waiting tied around our belt and we didn’t even have the big team that we have today to support the network. Nuffnang was… like it or not… Ming, me and another 2 dudes.Even under these circumstances, a good number of the top bloggers in Malaysia believed in us from the start and have stuck with us through thick and thin since then.

I can’t possibly name them all but to name a few… Shaolintiger, Chanlilian, Kimberlycun, Jolene Lai, Suanie, Kyspeaks, Nicole, Xes, Jeff Ooi and last but not least Kenny Sia… all of which who had put their faith in us from the very beginning.

Thank you so very much to all of you. I hope we never ever disappointed any of you.

Finding Our First Ads

Once the first bloggers had joined us, we had pressure. Pressure to find ads to satisfy the growing community of bloggers under Nuffnang. Now Ming and I knew nobody in the advertising industry. Not soul. But we knew we had to find our way in.

We started off by reading magazines just to find the ads on them and writing them all down on a piece of paper to later compile their contact numbers and make cold calls. Cold calls are hard to make. Especially when you’re from a very unknown company, worse still a dotcom.
Many skeptics told us that cold calling will get us no where and they had good reason to believe so. But Ming and I didn’t have anywhere else to turn to. It’s either we cold call… or we sit around hoping that advertisers might find us. We chose the former.

Out of every 10 cold calls, 9 will have us rejected for various reasons ranging from “I not free” to “We no budget” (When they really do have). Only 1 will result in a meeting, giving us a chance to pitch.

Our first clients were Exabytes and a boutique hotel in Singapore called Perak Hotel but they were a good start. In the beginning, we couldn’t afford to be choosers. We took anything that came by. I remember servicing the client for one of our first ads.

The client owned a small website that sold parenting items and her budget was only to spend RM100, and on top of that we had to design her banners for her as well. We took the business anyway because there wasn’t anything else for us at the time. Those were hard times.

3 months after we launched… in June… we ran a campaign for our very first BIG client: Nike. It was for their very localized “Jangan Togel” campaign and it was our first chance to prove ourselves. I was so excited by it and it meant so much to us just to have that one campaign eventhough the people who gave us that deal at the very beginning probably didn’t realize it.

Subsequently, we kept working hard to build our clients and eventually closed more deals. From Nike, to Honda,to Nestle and the likes.

The Growth Stage

From the 6th month onwards, things started to grow really really fast for Nuffnang. We were securing more and more ad deals with more and more clients and our team was growing fast. We not only had hired more but also expanded from Penang to open up 2 more offices, a humble office in KL and one in Singapore.An important component of our growth is in finding the right people in our team. Believe me when I say this… the right people are very hard to find…. and when you find the right people to work with, it’s like finding the love of your life.

You go to work every day very happy to be able to know that you’re working with the very best, and when you know you’re working with the best you know the company you’re in is going somewhere.

To name a few of the Nuffnang team that had been essential to us:
Tim 2, Lee Meng, Nicholas, Firdauz, Raff, Samantha, Hui Wen, Skyler, Michelle, Su Ann and not forgetting Suet Li.Ming and I did not bring Nuffnang to where it is today. You guys did… all we did was help.

The Critics Speak

From the birth of Nuffnang to around the 9th month, Nuffnang has always had its skeptics. People, some of them bloggers who always did whatever they could to put us down for whatever motives they had. They bashed us online and offline, downplaying all the things we had done right and magnifying the things we had done wrong.

Fortunately for me, I personally never lost any sleep over whatever any of these people talked about. Most of the time in fact, I never really read any of them eventhough I knew they were there hoping to get my attention.

I ignored it all not because I felt cocky or arrogant enough to ignore them, but because I always believed that an opinion is only as good as the person that gives it. More often than not, that person is either an anonymous blogger or someone who always had ulterior motives that he did not make clear of, making him a person of no credibility.

Furthermore, I decided that if I were to read each and every one of these things that the skeptics wrote, it would leave very little time for me to do what matters… to work.

Kimberlycun once told me
“The worst thing that you can ever do to anyone who’s out to smear you is ignore him like he never existed.”

Honestly, I never believed it to be true at the time. But guess what.. it really turned out to be true.

Sooner or later, the critics got so worked up they started to cook up rumours. The most recent one that happened last year cracked me up the most.

I was in Singapore sitting with Ming at his home after my cruise when a journalist called Ming up to ask
“Ming… I heard that you and your partner Timothy had a big fight and are no longer in talking terms. So bad that you sent him away on a cruise”.
Ming looked at me sitting on his couch, trying very very hard to hold back his laughter when he finally replied to the journalist
“Hey.. actually Tim is here with me right now and we’re going through some work together. You wanna talk to him?”

When I took over the phone from Ming, the journalist sounded really really surprised to hear my voice. We cleared things up and we all had a good laugh at the end of it.

Nuffnang Today

Nuffnang today is a company that is growing so fast in both the Malaysian and Singaporean markets it’s very very exciting to be at the front seat. Our company has grown so much so quickly that for the first time ever, I actually see myself sitting on a different role.I used to have to handle everything on my own. The accounts, invoicing, HR, admin, marketing, hell I even used to reply the Helpdesk e-mails by myself etc. Today there are people in place doing all that and doing a better job than I could ever do myself.

I find that my role at Nuffnang has changed, not because I have become less important but because Nuffnang has grown up and Ming and I need not babysit it anymore. It can run on its own. My job is no longer to feed it every day but to keep it growing.When I look back that it has only been one year since Nuffnang has started, I can’t believe it myself… it certainly felt very much longer than that. I look back and I see not only what Nuffnang has grown into… but what I have learned and what good friends I have made along the way.As such, I shall end this entry of mine with a dedication.

I dedicate this blog entry to all the people that are responsible for bringing Nuffnang to where it is today.

To:

Tim2
Firdauz
Michelle
Skyler
Raff
Samantha
Lee Meng
Hui Wen
Su Ann
Suet Li
Yat
Esther
Joanne
Mehlin
Ai Ping
Andrew
Desmond
Jerry
Nik
Natasha
Bonnie
Jaclyn
See Yin
Ron
Kau Sern
Michelle
Ker Loon
Nisha
Edhir
Alice
Danny
Yuki
Linden
Tracy
Hooi Leng
Isabella
Debbie
Sarah
Chan
Kim
Sinsee
Kien
Vincent
Jia Wei
Ming See
Emily
Haznizah
Pamela
Najib
Adeline
Anwar
Ashraf

Thank you all for all you have done for all of us at Nuffnang.

I am forever grateful.

If I had missed your name, it doesn’t mean that you’re any less important… it just means I’m up too late typing this while I should be in bed sleeping by now.

Nuffnang has had one helluva First Year… I can’t wait to see what the second year holds for us.

Happy Birthday Nuffnang!

I did something really really really… unbelievable today.

While in the office, one of my friends forwarded me a link to an item on sale on eBay.

It was for a bottle that costs RM1,000.

RM1,000 FOR A BOTTLE OF WATER!!! EVEN BRAD PITT DON’T DRINK WATER THAT COSTS THAT MUCH!

My first reaction to that was obviously
“F#@*&#(*&##CKKKK”.

But I read on a little bit about the item.
THIS CHILD DOESN’T HAVE ACCESS TO FRESH WATER

Neither do 1 billion people in the world.
2 million die each year from drinking contaminated water.
Women & children walk for hours to collect water, weighing around 25 kilos each time.

You can change all of this right here, right now!

Buy this bottle of One water within the next 2 hours and you will be contributing towards the purchase of pumps that will provide fresh water into African villages.

One water has been profiled by The World Bank and the UN for their innovative approach and was recently awarded best presentation at the Global Greening in Industry Conference.

Hurry, you only have 2 hours to bid! MAKE A DIFFERENCE. THIS COULD BE YOUR CHILD.

Please check out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_9jeRTOUnM
and also spread the word

Grab as many as you can from http://search.ebay.com.my/_W0QQsassZleeseeyin

Thanks!

So I took 10 minutes of my day to do a little research on the One Water Foundation and in the process watched a video on The One Foundation.

I gave Ming a phone call after that and said
“Hey… I found this charity foundation selling RM1,000 for a bottle of water. You wanna buy one just for charity?”

Ming has always been up for doing some charity or community work no matter how big or small or company is. He believes that every company can contribute in their own ways.

Hence with his approval, I clicked the button which took me to the point of no return.And there you have it. For the first time in my life, I bought a bottle of water that costs RM1,000.

If you guys wanna donate (in any small amount), you can call my friend.

Her name is Mehlin and her number is 012 3312 989.