Does everyone here know who Mark Chang is?

Just in case your memory’s a little blurry.

Mark Chang is actually the Penangite who founded Jobstreet.com which is today without a doubt, still Malaysia’s most successful dotcom.
Now let me tell you a story.

Just a while before the renovation of our KL office was completed, I was hunting for office furniture. I went to everywhere from Ikea, to A-M.. I was looking for a big conference room style table.

Then a little piece of news came to my attention.

Just a floor above my office was another office that had an old conference room table the owner wanted to give away.

Apparently (or so the legend goes), that table once belonged to Mark Chang himself but after Jobstreet moved on to a bigger office, he passed it over to its current owner.

In the years that it had been with the current owner, his business had flourished and now he wanted to give it away.

So when I heard that this table was now up for grabs, I seized the opportunity.

I went straight to the current owner’s office to see the table. It was huge but old.
I wanted it anyway.

I didn’t know how I was going to bring the table down a floor to our new Nuffnang office but if there’s a will, there’s a way.

So when our office was ready enough for us to shift in our first pieces of furniture, I got the help of two guys to bring the table down.

It wasn’t an easy task.

Parts of the table could be dismantled, but the top was one HUGE piece of heavy wood.
The two heroes that handled most of the job were fantastic.

First they lifted the table up to dismantle all the screws on the inside.

Then they had to bring it down the long corridor of our office.

But that was the easy part.
The hard part came when we had to bring the huge table top down the fire exit stairwell.

Believe me when I say this, if that table was just 1 inch thicker, it wouldn’t have fit through it.

It took them 30 minutes (with some of our help) but they managed to bring the huge table top down eventually.

The next day, I came back to the office to see the table fully assembled again.

It wasn’t perfect. The table had lots of scratches and some of the wood was coming out on the edges. But that just made it even more desirable for me… just like the scars of a soldier.

Our contractor, Hanifah was nice enough to help me touch up the table as best as he could.

When the job was done, I stood at a window in our newly renovated Nuffnang office.

The smell of fresh paint still in the air as I looked out the window.

There in the distance, the KL Tower stood majestically before my eyes.

When you see a structure so magnificently tall, you can’t help but feel small and humble.

Just like how I was feeling… there I was standing at a window in the new office of a dotcom startup that has grown tremendously fast in just a few months.

I pondered about where I would be standing from in the next one year.

Dreams lingered in my mind when suddenly… my mobile phone rang.

It was time for me to get back to reality.

There was much work to do.

HAHAHAHA GUYS!!!

YOU GUYS….

WILL NOT…

BELIEVE…

WHAT I JUST STUMBLED UPON ON YOUTUBE!!!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

AHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA

Okay okay…..

I share with you guys…

Watch this video.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHHAHAHAHA

All I can say is… if I were a slug, I would be sooooo depressed.

Picture this.

One day, tycoon Vincent Tan comes up to you and says.

“My Good man…. I want to start a Malaysian soft drink brand. I am hereby now giving you this cheque of RM100,000,000 and I want you to take this money, and start a brand. But first… I want you to tell me what you’re going to call your soft drink.”

What would you say?

Well I would say
“SEI LOR!!!!!!”

Because the best name for a soft drink in this part of the world is already taken by this Singaporean drink called Anything or Whatever.

The idea behind this is simple.

When you guys go to Mamak or a coffee shop, you often get a man come up to you and say
“Boss… minum?”

In which you would sometimes say yourself
“Anything…” or “Whatever lar”.

So in cases like this now… in Singapore.. they will literally bring you a drink called Anything or Whatever.

How cool is that?

Now I’ve never had the drink before but I did some research and found that the Anything drink is Carbonated whereas the Whatever drink is Non-carbonated.

However, the carbonated drinks can range anything from a typical Cola to Root bear and the non-carbonated ranges from ice-lemon tea to peach tea and quite a few more.

So every can you open… it’s a new surprise! (Unless you want to spoil the fun by looking at the ingredients of the can before you buy it).

Now if you think that’s cool.. check out their TV ads….

HILARIOUS!!!

This is the Anything one.

And this is Whatever.

“Can you give me…. ANYTHING”.

AHHAHAHAHAH HILARIOUS!!!

We’ll be moving into our KL office soon.

Today all the furniture is coming and tomorrow will be our first day at the office (assuming Streamyx manages to activate our internet line there in time).

Yet, even before moving into our office, our KL team has been busy working on an upcoming new Nuffnang that is yet to be announced on our website.

Something our team has labelled “Nuffnang 2.0″… and guys, if you’ve seen the blueprints of Nuffnang 2.0… believe me.. it will blow your panties off.

Anyway, allow me to introduce you to Arsyan and Firdauz. Arsyan and Firdauz are the latest additions to the team at Nuffnang.

For those of you who might notice… yes, they used to work for our competitor and the both of them were actually the ones responsible for building their website.

Now they’re with us… for many reasons but it wouldn’t be nice for me to say why. Anyway, it was Firdauz’s birthday a few days back so I said to him

“Dude… since it’s your birthday… come we go for lunch together! The whole team! I belanja of course!!!”

Firdauz put on an innocent boy look on his face and said, “Can I pick the place?” I didn’t even need to think for an answer.

“OF COURSE!!! It’s your birthday! Where do you wanna go.. Chillies? San Francisco Steakhouse? You name it!”

Excited as a kid he said “I WANNA GO TO A&W!!!”

A little shocked I said

“Dude… it’s your birthday.. why don’t we go somewhere special like Chillies?”

But he relented
“I WANNA GO TO A&W!!! A&W IS SPECIAL TO ME!!!!”

All of us gave in and said
“Okay…. okayy… we go A&W”.

So we had A&W for lunch that day. Curly fries, Mozza burger, coney dog… mmm… and most importantly… the root beer!!!

The good thing about the A&W in KLCC is… directly opposite it is… LECKA LECKA!!! So to complete our day, we all adjourned there for some 94.99% FAT FREE ice-cream!!! Everyone… meet the new Nuffnang team in KL.
From left: Arsyan, Firdauz, Timmy, Samantha and Suet Li.

The only one missing is Cynthia who’s coming in the week after next.

Will be sure to blog about her then.

To the Nuffnang teams in Penang and Singapore… Don’t be jealous ar!!! Timmy loves you all too!!!

I FOUND HER!!! I FOUND HERR!!!!

AFTER SO MANY YEARS OF SEARCHING AND SEARCHING AND SEARCHING…

I FOUND HER!!!

If you’re all wondering what I’m talking about,

LOOK CLOSELY AT THIS PICTURE!!!

What do I and this wonderful lady here have in common?

HAHAHAHAA CHUN RIGHT?!?!?!

SAME PLACE, SAME SIZE… ALL IN THE SAME COUNTRY!!!

Our Nuffnang office in KL is completing renovation this week so it’s time for me to start shopping for furniture.

Today, I found myself at A M-Office System for that. Now if you’re looking for office furniture, A M-Office System is every little boy’s wet dream.

Walk inside and you’ll see different office set ups of all kinds… almost like a dream office yourself.. only with price tags on all their furniture.

This time round, I was looking for office chairs and a small meeting table. The meeting table wasn’t hard to find.

I walked in, set my eyes on it and knew that was the one. A small round glass table just for four with stainless steel legs.

But the hard part was the chairs.

Simply because… they were ALL SOOOO GOOOD!!!

I mean you could sit in them… and… and… FEEL LIKE THIS!!! SEE THAT LOOK ON MY FACE?

THAT IS THE LOOK OF ABSOLUTE BLISS!!!

There were even chairs that made me feel like I COULD THINK BETTER!!!

BEHOLD!!! BOSS STEWIE THE PHILOSOPHER!!! But my little chair scouting screeched to a stop when I saw this!!! Now I don’t know about you guys, but that looks like one of those chairs that you see in The Matrix.

Only that the ones in The Matrix looked rather uncomfortable but this one felt so good it would make your balls float in the air for a few seconds.

I glanced at the price tag and it cost just about the same to a previous chair I saw.

RM1,788. NO MATTER!!! YOU CAN NEVER PUT A PRICE TAG ON A GOOD CHAIR!!!

Excited I called my dad to tell him about it but he didn’t answer his phone so I called my mum instead.

“MUM!!! I FOUND MYSELF THE PERFECT CHAIR!!! I AM SO GONNA GET IT.. It costs almost RM1,800 BUT IT IS SOOOO DAMN GOOD MUM!!!”

My mum was calm.

“Good for you son! Go get yourself that chair! But before you do… just let me ask you a few questions”

I laid back on to my soon-to-be-mine chair and said “Shoot!” Mum: Tell me son… you must be a multi-millionaire now huh…

Me: Uhmmm no.. but what has that got to do with this?

Mum: Just bear with me… well.. so you’re not a millionaire. Okay.. is Nuffnang making millions now?

Me: Uhmm… not really.

Mum: Oh?? But will you be making millions by next month?

Me: Uhmmm… that’s a little too quick…

Mum: Ohh… So will this chair help you make millions?

Me: Uhmm…. not directly.

Mum: And how many ads must you sell to afford this chair?

Me: Well ermm… just some…

Mum: Just some?

Me: Well fine.. quite a lot.

Mum: Now will the people who invested in Nuffnang be happy about you buying this overpriced chair?

Me: Probably not.

Mum: Will Ming be happy?

Me: Probably not…

Mum: I see… is your backside allergic to normal chairs?

Me: Uhmm no… but one day it COULD BE!!!

Mum: Okay son.. very well. Go and buy yourself that chair!

She hung up the phone and I walked across the showroom back to the saleswoman. As she turned to me I asked “What is the cheapest chair you have here?”

She pointed out this chair… RM45. I tried on the chair. Then my cheeks turned pink as I asked
“Can give cheaper a bit ar?”

I was driving around Subang the other day when I saw a sign board that said
“This way to the Longest Pencil in the world”.

I thought to myself “The Longest Pencil in the world?!?!”

Holy crap I had to see it.

So I followed the directions and TADAA!!!!

Behold everyone!
You are now looking at the longest pencil in the world by FABER CASTELL!!!

I must say it’s pretty impressive.

I mean that is quite a length!
Almost as long as my…

My Dear Readers!

Happy Saturday!

And now to uplift your Saturday.

Listen to this song!

I mean it.. you have to listen to it!!!

This has got to be one of my favourite songs of all time.

Listen to it and tell me that you didn’t end up humming to it the rest of your Saturday.

I am a really proud Malaysian.

Honestly, I never always used to be like that. I had a turbulent young adulthood with a very tiny sense of patriotism.

I had no idea how it felt like to be a patriot and the hours of Pendidikan Moral and Sejarah back at school never really helped much even though I aced both subjects in SPM.

It was only when I left for the UK that I began to understand what being a Malaysian really meant.

There I was heading to UCL, the 3rd oldest university in the UK (after Oxford and Cambridge) off to study Economics at a faculty full of students from all over the world. I made friends with British, Americans, Russians, Israelis, Japanese… they came from all over the world to represent their respective countries in that faculty. I on the other hand, came along with 4 Malaysians to represent Malaysia.

It is only when you sit in a room full of people from all over the world that your national identity suddenly comes closer to heart.

People would ask me where I was from and whenever I said “Malaysia”, nobody ever said “Where’s that?”

They all nodded their heads and often said something like
“Oh I love your twin towers!!! That has got to be the most beautiful building on the planet!”.

It is at moments like this that I began to feel proud of where I came from.

Then there were the friends I hung out with.

There were the two nice Singaporean girls there that I met in my first year. The first Hong Kong girl I met in my lecture that I almost fell for. And even the first Japanese I met when I was there, his name is Koichi. Yes, my reaction in the picture came right after I said.

“HOLY SHIT YOU’RE A JAPANESE!!! I’VE HEARD SO MUCH ABOUT YOU!!!”

Then there was the group of Asians that I hung out with. Some of us were from China, some from Singapore, some from Hong Kong, and one of my very best friends Hasan, from the middle-east.

But being 10,000 KM away from home, sometimes it feels good to be around a group of Malaysians… to talk or even curse like a Malaysian.

People that will understand you when you say “Oi!!! Pundek!!!”

And for that I had a friend or two like Michelle who went to London with me all the way from Penang. Or Alina Rashid, one of my best friends back at UCL. And a group of friends that followed me to London right after we finished our A-levels here at Help Institute.

I remember this very moment when the group of us Malaysians stood in this picture in Leicester Square. It was only a few months since we all touched down in London and we were walking around Leicester Square.

One of us hustled and said
“THIS IS THE FAMOUS LEICESTER SQUARE!!! LETS TAKE A PIC HERE TO MARK OUR ARRIVAL!!!”

And take a picture we did.

I spent 3 years in London with these friends of mine. 3 years sounds like a long time but it sure felt very short. Before I knew it, the time came for us to start making plans about what to do after graduation.

Many of my friends were adamant about finding a job and staying in the UK.

But my mind was clear from the start. I wanted to go home.

Even my friends back home were shocked when I told them that. “Why? Why do you want to come back here? Life there is so much better, better standard of living, cold weather, equal rights.. you name it!”.

I admitted that the dear country that brought us up was not perfect.

But that just made me want to go back even more to somehow, make a change. It didn’t matter if I would be earning in Ringgit instead of pounds. It didn’t matter.

What mattered was that I went overseas to find myself… and now that I had found myself it was time to go home.

I did come home and along with Ming, we started Nuffnang which is something Malaysian that has caught the eyes of even those on other side of the world.

I really am proud to be Malaysian… I am. So when one of my business associates-cum-friend Chan, the CEO of Exabytes told me about his company’s Merdeka initiatives I offered myself to help, which is why you see a little Merdeka logo at the bottom right of my blog. Sure, the nice Chan gave another incentive for people to support the cause by giving away prizes like a Sony Ericsson Phone or a Logitech Wireless Mouse & Keyboard.

But as for me… being Malaysian is enough to support any initiative like that.

Dear Malaysia… it feels good to be home.

Last Sunday, I was invited to give a speech at an event organized by Putera MIC: Bloggers’ Buff.

One of the organizers Mahendran gave me a call weeks earlier and invited me to give a speech. I was supposed talk about “Blogging as an Income Generator”.

Something I feel that someone like Chanlilian is far more qualified to talk about, but then again, I guess I was expected to go up and share Nuffnang with the 60 odd people expected to attend the event.

It had been such a busy and turbulent week for me. My eye injury put me out of commission for a few days and when I finally got well again on Friday, I had a backlog of work so I didn’t manage to prepare for the speech until Saturday night, just a night before.

I knew I was in trouble.

That night, I sat in front of my Mac with Word open. Trying to figure out at least what I was about to say.

I was a little nervous.

Now I’m used to talking to a room full of people with all the marketing pitches I do at Nuffnang.

In fact, I love doing these pitches, I love the adrenaline that flows through my veins when I’m up there talking about Nuffnang… but this was a SPEECH… somehow it made it a little different for me.

I struggled with my Mac and drafted out something quickly. Shortly after I went to bed and said a little prayer.

“Dear God… whatever it is, please don’t let me make a fool of myself tomorrow.. I promise I’ll spend more time preparing my next speech”.

The next morning I woke up with my nerves somehow a little numb. I got into the car and just drove straight to the event.

I saw a few familiar faces there and shook the hands of many people there who seemed to somehow have heard of me before.
First there was an introduction by the MC.

And then a speech by a VIP who I didn’t meet earlier since he was waiting in the VIP Room.

The organizers actually told me that I was supposed to be in the VIP Room when I arrived, but I told them I felt much more comfortable out here mixing with everyone else.

Then the time came for me to give my speech.

When my name was called, I sat still for a split second with many thoughts racing through my head.

I thought that the easy way out would be to read from the script I had prepared. But I hate speeches like that. I really do. And I was determined not to give one like that.

I walked up to the front with a folded piece of paper in my hand. Inside, my speech all written out just in case I f*ck up.

Then I closed that piece of paper and decided to let it come naturally.

My heart whispered to me
“You are here to talk about something you believe in, something you have put your time, money and heart into for the past year… just talk naturally. If people don’t like your speech, they might at least appreciate your sincerity”.

I stood in front of the room and the words came out of my mouth on its own.

I don’t remember how I started.

But I did remember asking the audience to indulge in some interactiveness and to feel free to interrupt me at any time if they have any questions or anything at all to add in. They did and that made a difference.

The speech was if anything… fun.

Everyone was laughing not at jokes made by me, but even by the audience themselves.

Then came the Q&A session where we opened up questions to the floor.

For a minute there I thought
“Okay this is the part where everyone sits still and doesn’t say anything because we’re all shy here”.

But I was wrong.

I remember Danny Foo asking the first question and after that it opened up a floodgate of questions from everyone all around the room.

It’s funny how people sometimes can perceive you as if you’re someone bigger than you really are.

Halfway during my speech, a man in his fifties put up his hand to ask
“So have you joined the league of young millionaires yet Timothy?”

My answer to him was frank.

“Obviously NOT”.

I told the room that my first year at Nuffnang is not going to be about making money, but making sure that we get our product right.

Making sure, that each campaign we run, is an utter success, building a perfect portfolio that will easily convince more advertisers in future to tap into blog advertising.

If I fail in doing this, blog advertising in Malaysia will never take off and I will have failed our blogging community.

If we succeed, then blog advertising will truly take off and we will all have built a sustainable medium of advertising.

I was supposed to speak for 15 minutes, including my Q&A session, but the whole session if I remembered it correctly lasted for over 45 minutes until Mahendran had to signal to me saying
“Tim… time’s up!”.

Everyone in the room seemed happy at the end of the speech and I didn’t catch anyone sleeping throughout the speech.

The event turned out to be quite a success.

Even with Kenny Sia giving everyone a surprise visit just before I left.

To the organizers… thank you very much for planning this wonderful event.

Oh oh… and after my speech, I got myself a little souvenir.
Which turned out to be this cool little pen holder.

WOOHOO!!