I am having a really really bad day at work today and really not in the condition to blog.

But this joke someone happened to e-mail me cheered me up a little.

I was just reading the news today when I read THIS!

(@(*&$&*(#$(#$&#&(*$&*(#$^&*

DOES ANYONE ELSE NOT FEEL THE SAME AS I DO?!?

YOU DO NOT… JAIL JACK BAUER!!!
I mean.. Jack can rob a bank, get caught red handed with a gun in his right hand and a money bag in his left, then plead guilty in court but you STILL DO NOT JAIL JACK BAUER!!!

NOOOOOOoooooooooooooooooooo…..

WHO IS GOING TO SAVE THE WORLD WHEN TERRORISTS ATTACK NOW?!?!?!

I live alone in my apartment in KL.

As a result of that, I always have to find my own dinners and most of the time it’s fine because I’m out meeting clients for dinner most of the time.

But sometimes, whenever I find the time, I like to sit down to a dinner I made myself.

Any real man knows how to cook. He may not need to be a good cook but at least knowing how to cook is a sign that the man can survive on his own!

So one day, I left the office early. Went home.

Rolled up my sleeves.
And decided to cook!

I can’t say I’m a good cook.. but I can say that I LOVE my cooking.

I never always knew how to cook and it was only in my student days in London that I learned how to cook bachelor like food. Simple meals like Pasta.

So that day I decided to make pasta.

Now I don’t like tomato-based pasta and don’t quite fancy carbonara as well. What I do like however… is Pesto-based pasta or Aglio Olio type of pasta.

Here’s how I did it.
First, you need the ingredients.

Simple stuff.

Sausages, ham, fresh mushroom, garlic, mixed herbs, olive oil and pasta (Duh!).

If you want you can include some vegetables but I’m not a big fan of vegetables.

So after you get your ingredients together, chop them up into however you want it to be.

I don’t believe in chopping anything down until it’s small small pieces simply because, it takes too much time (that I don’t have) and… whatever you do, it’s all going into that one frying pan anyway.
So I don’t even bother cutting my ham into small small pieces.

In fact I like it a little bigger so I can feel it when I bite it.

Then of course there are the sausages which are easy to cut.

Except for one thing that most noobs forget about.

For some reason, sausages seem to come in condoms.

I shit you not… they really do come in condoms.

So always remember to REMOVE the condom before you throw them into the frying pan.
And when you do… don’t hold it up and laugh at it!

Don’t!

Just don’t do that… especially if you’re cooking for your date.

Because she’s going to think you’re a little kiddo that has never seen a condom before (let alone put one on later in the night).

Now the next thing and the MOST important thing you gotta do is… boil the pasta.

Just chuck it all into a pot, fill it up with water and boil away.

Now why I say this is the most important part is because… I am VERY particular about my pasta. IT HAS to be AL DANTE which means not too soft and not too hard, but a little chewy.

I like my pasta like that… and you can even give me Al Dante pasta with nothing but olive oil and I will eat it.

I get very very pissed off when I go to a good restaurant and pay RM30 for pasta and the damn chef can’t even make the pasta Al Dante.

I mean.. how hard can it be!

If a noob like me can make it Al Dante, I don’t see why a restaurant chef can’t do it.

Here’s what I do to make it Al Dante.

When you’re boiling the pasta, just remember to stir it and every once in a while try a piece to see if it’s the texture you want it to be.

Just right after you feel it is JUST BEFORE how you like it to be, lift it off the stove and pour all the water out.

Now when you’re done, chuck it all into the frying pan along with the other ingredients that you should’ve started cooking 5 minute ago.
Note that this is not the way ALL pasta is made.

Some pasta especially those with sauce just needs you to pour some olive oil around it then pour the pasta sauce on top of it.
But for this particular one, I like to pour the pasta into the pan and mix it.

And before you know it… VOILA.. it’s done!

This meal should take you 15 minutes to prepare if you’ve done it many times before, 30 minutes to prepare if you haven’t, 1 hour to prepare if you’re a noob and 3 hours to prepare if you’re completely hopeless with a frying pan.

Now if you’re making this for a date then you can go ahead and beautify it to make it more presentable.
But if you’re cooking for yourself then don’t bother.

And Voila… Boss Stewie cooks.

Rambo has had so much influence in my life.

I mean just not too long ago in my Counterstrike days, whenever I felt ball-sy and decided to go alone against an entire team of bad guys (and of course died), my friends will always say
“YOU THINK YOU RAMBO AR?”

And I bet that prior to reading the title of this blog entry, you have never ever heard the words
“Rambo” and “Fag” in the same line before.

Even after I put that line as my blog title you can’t believe that I really mean that…. and it’s true.. I don’t… Rambo is no fag!

RAMBO is DA MAN!!!

And it doesn’t matter that his first film debut was in a hardcore porn film called Party at Kitty and Stud’s.

I mean, put 1,000 of the most dangerous and violent people in the world on a jungle island.

Give them all the machine guns and bombs in the world and tell them to work as a team and kill anyone else that comes on to that island.

Then, throw Rambo on to that same island and give him nothing but a giant Disneyland lollipop and Rambo will still have them all beaten to death with that piece of candy.
Now Sylvester Stallone is old…. last I checked, he already passed 60.

That’s grandpa territory over there.

But I recently came across the trailer of his new upcoming Rambo movie: John Rambo.

Behold!

Watch the most violent movie trailer of all time!

Note to self: Don’t phuck with Rambo!
(And don’t call him no fag… he has balls so big it makes a bull’s nuts look like marbles)

Yes some of you may remember that I lost my bluetooth headset to the washing machine just a few days ago.

To make matters worse, I was feeling very broke after spending so much money on booze that night at Velvet but I knew that I just can’t do without a headset.

So the very same day, I went straight to The Curve to buy myself a new one.

I walked around The Curve and ended up on the Ground Floor of Cineileisure Damansara.

There were quite a few mobile phone vendors there so I walked up to one and said
“I just killed my bluetooth today… and I need a new one”.

The man behind the counter took a quick look at me and thought to himself
“Niama… little boy in a “Mr Happy” T-shirt… don’t even know whether he can really afford a bluetooth headset or just playing punk with me!”.
But he decided to humour me anyway
“Sure Sir… we have this very special bluetooth. Locally made but it is very reliable. It costs more than the Motorola, Samsung or Sony Ericsson ones but it is very stable. Trust me, so far no complaint!”.

I have never used a non-Motorola Bluetooth before.

So I thought about it and said
“Hmm… this one some more is like a clip wan… can clip on my baju wan right? Damn cool”.
And there the salesman was thinking to himself
“Stooopid small kid… clip also cool, like never hang baju before”.

So I took a good long look at it and asked some questions about the specs.

The nice salesman smiled and answered my questions promptly… but by the look in his eyes I knew he was thinking
“Niama… this smart Alec asking so many questions… he better buy if not I will do something really bad to him”.

Then the question that he was waiting for came
“Do you have anything cheaper ar?”

The salesman then struck a look in his eyes that I knew what he was thinking
“AH HAH! I KNEW IT! NO MAHNEY TO BUY SOME MORE WAN TO PRETEND CAN AFFORD!!!”But again on the outside he said
“Unfortunately not sir… this is the only Bluetooth headset we have”.

Then I asked
“How about a normal hands-free set? You know the traditional one with wire one?”

The salesman opened a drawer and took this out.

I asked him how much and he said

“RM10”.

My parents always taught me that my reaction to a price quote should always be
“WAH SO EXPENSIVE AR?!?!”

Of course, I forget that the rule doesn’t apply sometimes, especially when you’re buying cheap products like a kilo of sugar or ….. a fake hands free set.

But I forgot about that so I “accidentally” went on to say
“WAH!!! WHY SO EXPENSIVE?!?!? MADE IN GERMANY AR?!”

The salesman said
“No sir, locally made one… and it’s not expensive lar”.

Seeing that the salesman was still playing it cool on the outside, I went on to say
“Can give cheaper or not?”

I saw that same “pissed-off” look in the salesman’s eyes that I saw earlier… but this time he was thinking
“BLOODY HELL THIS MR HAPPY…. RM10 ALSO WANT TO ASK FOR DISCOUNT… SOMEONE SHOULD BUY HIM A MR. CHEAP SHIRT!!!”

But again on the outside, the nice salesman maintained his cool
“Cannot lar sir… I only make very little from this one sale”.

In the end I thought about it and decided.

I’ve been buying so many bluetooth headsets in the past but they always fail on me one way or another. So why not just go back to the basics and buy something that is cheap and works.

Not to mention, Bluetooth headsets have stopped being cool since uncles with flowery shirts started wearing them on the ear everywhere they go even when they’re not on the phone.

So in the end I told the salesman with affirmation
“Forget about the bluetooth… I’ll go for the RM10 wan”.

The salesman took my RM10 and watched me walk away with my new hands free.

I didn’t look back but I knew he was saying to himself
“*(@&(@&($*#(&*$&*(#$(&*#&*($#*($ BLOODY MR CHEAP!!! YOU BETTER NOT CUM BAK AGAIN OR I WILL BEAT YOU SO BAD YOUR OWN MOTHER WON’T BE ABLE TO RECOGNIZE YOU”

But after all his frustration I knew he was trying to calm himself down thinking
“Ok lah… sell it for RM10, my cost is RM8 so made RM2 lah… not bad”

I took a few steps away from the counter… then I turned back and said
“Hey… can I have a plastic bag to put this in?”

The salesman grunted and took one out for me, mentally recalculating in his mind
“Cost RM8 + Cost of plastic bag = RM8.10 so made RM1.90, ten sen less… niama this Mr Happy”.

Two days later… I kinda figured out why it doesn’t pay to be cheap sometimes.
Haih… broken already.
‘

Just about any famous blogger in the Malaysian and/or Singaporean blogosphere knows Nadnut.

And you know why they know her?

Because she just loves to make fun of people.

I mean take for example, my partner Ming.

Ming was nice enough to invite her to our Nuffnang office in Singapore to check out our Nuffnang Backend (Nuffnang BE).

The Nuffnang Backend is something that we all have kept Top Secret till today.

It’s what the Nuffnang team uses to monitor the entire network, everything from monitoring ad campaigns to selecting blogs into advertiser campaigns and even the minor minor things like checking ad placements on blogs or detecting click fraud.

Yes, Nadnut was one if not the only lucky blogger ever to be invited to the office to view the Nuffnang BE.

And how did she show her appreciation to Ming?

She SPANKED MING IN THE BUTT and checked out his REAL BACKEND!

KETERLALUAN THAT WOMAN!!!

So cruel!!!

So ruthless!!!

Which reminds me of the time when she SPOOFED my “5 Step La La Pose“!!!

Remember that?

Huh?

Well see what she did here… HMPH.

How can a blogger like that NOT get on your nerves ??

Yesterday I was summoned by one of Nuffnang’s clients to pay a visit to their office.

Now let me explain the concept of the word CLIENT.

A client is a customer.

A customer is someone who pays money so that a company like Nuffnang can survive.

Ever heard of the phrase
“Customer is King?”

Well, it can be almost directly translated to
“Client is KING”.

What does that phrase mean?

It means, when the client says to you
“JUMP!”

You DON’T say
“What?”

You DON’T say
“Huh?”

And you SURE AS HELL BETTER NOT SAY
“Why?”

No… you say…

“How High?”

Similarly, when a client says
“Come to our office”.
You DON’T say
“Why?”

But you say
“WHEN?”

and if your client says
“RIGHT NOW”

You DON’T say
“But but… I can’t right now… my grandma is not well and I’m taking her to the clinic”.

You say
“YES SIR WILL BE THERE IN TEN MINUTES! PO PO CAN WAIT!”

and if your client says
“Make it FIVE!”

You DON‘T say
“But but… that’s impossible! I’m in Subang right now and your office is in KL”.

You say
“SIR YES SIR!”

Anyway, this client is 88db.com which coincidentally is owned by and shares the same office with JobsDB.com, a dotcom in Malaysia that requires no introduction.
You will see some of their ads running around the Nuffnang Community this week.

88db.com is one website that you just can’t ignore unless you’re a fool.

I feel stupid enough for not knowing it exists until they approached Nuffnang for a campaign.

I mean here is a wonderful website that has everything you can ever look for, a huge directory of user posted content that can find you everything from weddings to pets to even home-made cookies for Hari Raya!

There is even this little eBay-like trading area where you can sell your junk and buy other people’s junk (Eh! One man’s meat is another man’s poison).

So anyway, back to my story.

I paid a visit to 88DB (JobsDB)’s office today at Menara UOA and was greeted by a very nice and polite receptionist.

Then my client came out of the back and greeted me with a smile.

Everyone!

Say Hello to Christine!

Christine is the Marketing Manager at 88db and one of the people responsible for giving you your ads!

Christine is among the nicest of our clients at Nuffnang.

Upon greeting me today she asked
“Are you still having a hangover from the other night? Do you want some water?”

In which I replied
“No… I’m okay now thanks” (with my face turning redder than a red tomato).

We sat in a meeting room and chatted while waiting for her Boss, the General Manager of JobsDB Malaysia to step into the room.

And before you know it, Steven opened the door, stepped into the room gave me a handshake so firm I couldn’t feel my fingers.

With a smile on his face he said
“Why don’t we do this in my office?”

So he brought me through the workstations of the other people at 88DB (and JobsDB) and straight to his office at the back.

Then he sat down on the chair and we started talking away.Steven shared with me his inspirations on 88db.com
“Where do you find a website today that provides a service of helping people find what they need and yet does not charge both users and advertisers for using it?”

And he was right.

In a website like eBay, typically if you were to sell something, eBay will take a transaction fee off your sale but on 88DB.com, it’s completely free.

If you’re a freelance designer and want to post your services there, you can do so for FREE…

WITHOUT paying a single cent… on a website that is viewed by so many people each day it’s almost like putting an ad up in the field of the World Cup Finals. (Okay I kinda exaggerated there, but you get my point).

Why do they do it?

My guess is just like the Founders of Google, they believed in building something that added value FIRST, before trying to earn money off it, and that is the mindset of a rare breed of new generation dotcoms.

After our long chat, I asked Steven and Christine if they would humour me and let me take a picture of them and putting it on my blog since I don’t often get to blog about visiting our clients’ offices.

They agreed.

Then I asked Steven if he would let me take a picture with him.

And …. he….. AGREED!!!

Now that’s not all there is to this blog entry.

I mean sure, I just kinda explained how a typical day for me at work goes… and where I go… but let me tell you something else I happened to see today.

You remember the chair that Steven was sitting on?

Does it look familiar to you?

No?

Ok let me remind you.

Remember this picture?

THAT IS THE VERY SAME CHAIR I SO WANTED TO BUY WHEN I WENT SHOPPING FOR OFFICE FURNITURE A MONTH AGO BUT HAD TO HAVE A PARTICULAR SOMEONE TALK ME OUT OF!!!

AUGGHHH!!!!!

AUGHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

&(*#$&*(#&(*$#&(*$#&(*$&*(#$&*(

And here’s the joke.

When I first noticed the chair and started drooling over it… Steven said
“Oh yeah.. this chair… I don’t like it… made a mistake buying it.. piece of junk!”

My heart broke into so many pieces, it would take miles of scotch tape to mend it back together.

*sigh*

One man’s meat, is another man’s poison.

PS: Check out 88db when you guys have the time. There’s seriously a lot of stuff going on there.

Ok so last night I was at Velvet (Zouk) with some friends…. the first time clubbing in a long long time!

I had a lot to drink… because a particular pretty girl kept ‘challenging‘ me to drink with her and I came home not drunk but pretty high and happy.I was in that ‘high and happy’ state where everything I saw was amusing and made me laugh.

Even the cockroach I saw in my bathroom was funny… that is until I beat it to death with my FHM magazine which I threw away after it was tainted with cockroach juice.I know I know what you guys are thinking…
“BOSS STEWIE!!! WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?!?! WHY THE HELL DID YOU USE FHM TO WHACK COCKROACHES?!?!?! USE AN OLD NEWSPAPER LIKE NORMAL PEOPLE DO!!!”

And to those of you who say that.. I have only 3 words to say
“I… WAS…. HIGH….”

I would’ve even used an LV bag to whack the cockroach if I had one around me.
So anyway back to my story.

I came home, chatted on MSN for a while, brushed my teeth, beat a cockroach, took a shower to wash away the stench of cigarette smoke on myself and then headed to sleep.
The next morning which is this morning, I chucked all my smelly clothes from last night into the washing machine and went out for lunch while I left it for a wash.

While leaving the house I checked my pockets for everything…

Mobile phone… check
Car keys… check
Wallet… check
Bluetooth headset….

Uhmm…

Bluetooth headset…..

I couldn’t find it. So I thought maybe I might have left it in the car.

But I went down to the car to look for it and it wasn’t there!

I looked high and low and everywhere for my Bluetooth Headset that is the size of a 50 sen coin.

Soon enough, I gave up for a while. Thought that it’s just one of those things that will show up sooner or later.

And true enough it did.

I was taking out all my clothes from the washer and hanging them to dry when I suddenly begin to feel something small and hard in the pocket of my jeans.
UH OHHHHhhhh…..
I DROWNED BY BLUETOOTH HEADSET!!!

Sure fair enough it was a stupid headset that kept giving me problems and was highly unstable so much that I was already planning to replace it… but it didn’t deserve to be DROWNED IN A WASHING MACHINE!!!

AUGHHH!!!

AUGGGHH!!!

Ok ok… I smell a shit storm coming.

My father reads my blog.

And eventhough my father is one who changes his bluetooth headset once every 2 months because it just fails on him, when he reads this, he is going to pick up the phone…

and he’s going to say
“GET HIGH SOME MORE LAR!!! YOU DESERVE IT!!!”

Ideas, ideas ideas….

We’re all full of it.

Maybe it’s just me, but it suddenly dawned on me that Malaysia has recently started off with a whole new breed of young entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs that share that huge dotcom dream just like the dotcom entrepreneurs of the famed Silicon Valley.

I myself have had the privilege in meeting many of these young ambitious personalities. Like it or not, the one thing I find in common with each and every one of them is how their success is benchmarked against the success of internet titans like Google, Yahoo or the most recent… YouTube.
That’s right, benchmarked against success that happens abroad, not within our borders.

With all this entrepreneurial drive in our homeland of Malaysia, why is it we don’t draw inspiration from the success stories closer to home instead? Success stories in which would be far more realistic benchmarks in our local environment.

I sat down and started thinking.

Thinking of a good Malaysian success story from a young entrepreneur that I could draw inspiration from. Sure there were companies like Jobstreet or even MOL that sold out to Tan Sri Dato’ Vincent Tan for RM 12 million but that was millenniums ago.
It’s true. In recent years I couldn’t recall many real dotcom success stories.

So the question is… if there were so few success stories of Malaysian dotcom entrepreneurs making millions or selling out… why is it that yet so many people are itching to start a dotcom of their own.

Almost as if it’s the “IN” thing to do right now when many of us on the other side already know that there’s nothing “IN” or “COOL” about it and unlike the Silicon Valley in California, this Silicon Valley is not crowded with office car parks full of Ferraris. And as if things weren’t bad enough, where the success stories are scarce, the failure stories are filling up a warehouse so huge it could fit Subang Jaya in it.

As I write this, I had just gotten news that a fellow Dotcom entrepreneur and friend of mine is on the brink of shutting down a dotcom he started just a few months before Nuffnang launched.

I recall the first time I met him.

He was extremely passionate about entrepreneurship and his new business. His passion ran so deep that when anyone tried to play Devil’s Advocate on his business model, it would never put him down.

I always imagined that people with this level of commitment and passion will succeed but I was wrong.

So why… why do people long to join the growing trend of dotcom entrepreneurs?

Why? Where is the light at the end of the tunnel?
What or how much do people think they’re going to achieve when they forgo proper jobs with security? Do they think that they will make 1 million? 2 million? 10 million or 20 million in their lifetimes?

Even then it wouldn’t be worth it since I happen to know of some professionals in Malaysia that have made RM40-50 million in their lifetimes, and that’s without taking any risk.

So where are all the Malaysian success stories for us to draw our inspirations from?

Someone please enlighten me!

Yesterday was another typical day at the office with the pressure mounting along with the increasing work load.

Things have been getting insanely busy for us at Nuffnang.
As much as we’ve expanded our team in Penang, KL and Singapore, the workload of a growing Nuffnang is daunting and the stress level has been mounting.

Even our intern Su Ann was beginning to lose her mind.

I decided that it was time we all had a breather so right around lunch time, every one of us left the office with our laptops and walked towards the nearest Monorail station.
We waited for a train and hopped on the first one to Sungai Wang. Where we all ran to KFC for lunch.

I bought everyone a huge bucket of FRIED CHICKEN and we all feasted away.
All of us of course, except our two Muslim team mates there who were on Puasa.

Now you must be wondering why we all had to bring all our laptops for lunch and risk being mugged and having everything stolen.

Well that’s because…. after lunch, the whole Nuffnang KL team (All 7 of us) went to Starbucks to spend the afternoon there working.

It was a change of environment for once.

Rather than working in the typical office environment we have, it was a nice change of environment to work inside Starbucks with Italian music playing in the background and with a view of the busy street along Low Yat Plaza right next to our laptop screens.
Some of us sat in pairs but some of us, preferred the privacy of their own tables.

Like Su Ann here.
Yet, it was pretty fun.

There we were with the small Starbucks outlet all to ourselves, with our own little tables within talking distance of one another.

Of course even when working in the relaxing environment of Starbucks, some of us decide to have breaks with packets of Chipster.

We love the Sour Cream & Onion flavour for Chipster and since Twisties is a client of Nuffnang, it has very quickly become a favourite of everyone in the team including the two Nuffies in this picture Su Ann and Samantha.

Speaking of Su Ann…

You would think the interns at Nuffnang mimic the interns of other jobs where the intern is responsible for making coffee for the seniors or photocopying 1,000 pages a day.

Not at Nuffnang… eventhough we have a pretty cool photocopier.
Our interns here work independently on hands on stuff and actually play a very important role at Nuffnang.

The best part is that our interns from now and the past have all been bloggers themselves so if anything, they understood blogs better than anyone else.

Su Ann, just like Suet Li before her,
Lance in our Penang office

and Hui Wen in Singapore played essential roles in making Nuffnang what it is today…

But just when I’m getting used to the comfort that Su Ann gives me.. what does she do?

SHE DECIDES TO GO FOR A 2 WEEK STUDY-LEAVE!!!

So now I am INTERNLESS!!!

SOMEBODY PLEASE TELL SU ANN HOW CRUEL SHE IS!!!