Okay I’m going to show all of you something.

Take a look at this piece of transparent square plastic I am holding up.This piece of plastic probably costs 50 sen at most. Probably even less.

Now the question is this.

If I gave you this piece of plastic, what would you try to sell it as to make the most money as you can out of it?

The reason I’m asking all of you this question is because I have a brilliant answer to that which I will reveal within the next two days.. HAHAHA.

Okay… so tell me what you’ll sell it as, and realistic suggestions only please.

Don’t say “I will sell it as a time machine!“…

It has to be something that an average person would at least consider buying.

WE RAN OUT OF CHEEZELS!!!

Just so you all know, Cheezels is to Nuffnang what Petrol is to Cars.

Without Cheezels… Nuffnang just doesn’t have the strength to move on.

This week has been a rather stressful week for all of us at Nuffnang having had to work in the office till the wee hours of the morning and wake up the next day to make it in time for some meetings.

But we all kept our motivation…. because of our Cheezels!!!

So you can imagine my horrid after I got a call from one of my colleagues the other day saying that we ran out of Cheezels.

Ming and I had to rush to Tescos in the midst of our hectic day to stock up on our supply of CHEEZELS.

We chucked in packets of Cheezels like there was going to be no tomorrow.

And Nuffnang is saved again.
WOOHOO!!!

Now we can all go back to work.

I just walked into the office a while ago, turned on my computer and received over 30 e-mails that were sent in the last 12 hours.

E-mail from clients, potential clients and bloggers.

Yet, the knee-jerk reaction for me is to always look at what bloggers e-mail me about.

Then an e-mail from James Yeang of Friedbeef.com caught my attention.

The e-mail titled
“Wow you guys are on the top searches list on technorati now”

And on it was this link
http://technorati.com/pop/
With my eyes still blurry after the late night I had, I checked out the link only to find that it’s true!

Nuffnang is among the Top Searches on Technorati.

The pressure on us to perform rises since I’d imagine people’s expectations of Nuffnang are bound to rise.

Thank you guys again for all your support including those of you who’re searching Nuffnang on Technorati every day to see what good (or bad) things people write about us.

Now it’s time for me to get back to work. So much to do… so many bloggers to satisfy…

If you’re wondering why I haven’t updated in two days… it’s because I’ve been in shock.

Just two days ago I was a happy Stewie.

I jumped out of the bed in the morning, sang Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” in the shower, and had corn beef with bread for breakfast.

I was a Happy Stewie!

Happy Stewie then jumped into his car in the morning with Ming and Jazz (another Nuffnang team member), and we drove off to work.

I was driving down the road of a nice quite suburb. Ming and I were debating issues as usual when suddenly I saw a flock of birds from the side of the road take off and fly across my car.

I nearly hit all of them with my car… but I did hit ONE.

“POOF“, I heard the sound of a bird reflect off the bonnet of my car.

As it impacted the front of my car in mid-air, it suddenly dropped dead towards the side of the road.

Ming shouted in response “F*CK DUDE… DID YOU JUST KILL A BIRD?“

Boss Stewie is a murderer 🙁

Please forgive me oh leetle birdy… Please don’t come back to haunt me…

Aunty Lilian recently sent me an e-mail saying that she was doing this “Hottest Male Blogger” contest on her blog.

She asked me to answer some questions and to pick a photo of myself.

I decided that I could of course pick one of those gaya looking photos where I’m posing with sunglasses, looking into the sky wtih wind blowing against my hair.

But nooo… I instead gave her THIS picture.
What in the world was I high on when I did that…?

Anyway let me tell you who’s going to win.

Sapiensbryan is going to win!

Let me tell you why.

Beauty is relative.

For example, you put an ugly guy next to an even uglier guy, the ugly guys looks like Brad Pitt.

But you put an ugly guy next to Brad Pitt, and Brad Pitt looks like he was made in Heaven.

Allow me to illustrate.

This is a picture of Ming and I.

I don’t look too bad right? (Ming: HAHAHAHAHAHAA).

Now this is a picture of SapiensBryan and I.

Now be honest with me… at first glance.. did ANY of you girls out there EVEN notice the guy in the white shirt?

NO RIGHT??? And even if you did… you were thinking

“WHAT THE HELL WAS BRYAN STANDING NEXT TO?!?!”

PS: Check out Lilian’s post on the Hottest Blogger awards.

Keep up to date with her blog to see my prophecy come true!!! Bwahahah Sapiensbryan will win….

Ahhh cybercafes….

Where I wasted soo much of my life.

I used to spend almost 10 hours each day in a cybercafe playing Counterstrike back when it was still very very new (Beta 3).

It was ridiculous! If I had spent 1/10th of that time doing something productive like read a book, I would be a much better man today.

I was talking to a friend of mine and we started talking about funny things we’re heard happen in Cybercafes.

Story 1

This actually happened in my college library many years ago. You know how college libraries these days come fully equipped with the best computers you can find for students to do research on.

Once I was studying in the library and I saw a rather peculiar guy consistently refreshing his Hotmail mailbox. Wondering what the heck he was doing, I peered closer only to find that he actually had a little browser window opened.

And in that little browser window on the right corner of his screen, was a picture of a naked girl.. or at least a quarter of a picture of a naked girl like this.

The dude was surfing porn, but he was too shy to open the entire browser window, so he decided to instead open a small window to view part of a picture.

Then scroll up down (and left right) to slowly see the rest.

The poor poor dudeeeee….

Story 2

Some guys were playing Counterstrike in a cybercafe. You know how cybercafes are, noisy, smokey and full of guys cursing
“NIAMA!!! WHAT A FAKE SHOT!!!”.

Then somewhere in the midst of a high pressured Counterstrike game, a 15-year old boy managed to sneak up behind his opponent (in the game) and knife the opponent to death.

The gangster-looking person playing the opponent on the other side of the cybercafe shouted
“BASTARD YOU!!! BELAKANG MARI!!! NO SKILL AR?!?!?”

The 15-year old boy laughed
“AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA YOU LAH DIN SEE ME COMING… YOU NOOOB!!!!!”.

The gangster dude then got up from his seat and walked towards the boy who was busy playing away on the next round.

The gangster took out a REAL KNIFE… and stabbed the kid in the back.
Then he laughed
“HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!! YOU DIN SEE ME COMING!!! YOU NOOOB!!! KENA BELAKANG MARI!!!”

I think he got arrested after that but I’m not sure.

Story 3

This is my favourite story of all the ones I’ve heard, which actually happened to a friend of a friend.

Again because of a very high-pressured game of Counterstrike late one night, a few guys got up from their seats and started shouting at each other, calling each other cheaters.
Then one of them said
“OKAY!!! COME WE SETTLE OUTSIDE”.

And they all went outside the cybercafe to fight it out.

It didn’t take long before the police arrived and broke up the fight.

But the funny thing is this.

When the police arrived, they walked into the cybercafe and saw everyone playing away at their computers not knowing anything.

One of the policemen walked around the dark noisy room full of computers and turned on his torch light to shine at all the guys there.

He then shouted
“SEMUA BALIK RUMAH SEKARANG!!!”.

One of the guys turned at the policeman and said
“Boss… last game last game!!!”.

Yes.. it is true.. I am guilty of the above crime.

I haven’t been updating often enough.

I’m terribly sorry my dear readers but these days I’ve just been sooo busy I can barely find time for anything.

I will update very soon before you all know it ok?

Wen-Qi was overwhelmed by the response we got from you guys, with so many people wishing her well.

For that I must say thank you.

Wen-Qi has since been discharged from Pantai Hospital and is resting at home with a bandage on her forehead (occasionally making microwave popcorn to kill time).Only thing about her now is that her movements are all very very slow and it hurts whenever she has to laugh.

Please note however that if you were to ever meet Wen-Qi, please DO NOT say
“Hey I heard you banged a wall”.

What you SHOULD say is
“Hey I heard a wall banged you”.

So please get that right, she did not bang a wall, a wall banged her.

Just yesterday Wen-Qi said to me
“You lied to me in the car! You said it wasn’t a serious cut! How could you?”

I guess what I should have said was
“HOLY SHIT THAT IS A SERIOUS WOUND!!! MAKE YOUR PEACE WITH GOD WEN-QI, YOU’RE NOT GONNA MAKE IT!!!”.

Saturday 31st March 2007.

I woke up at 6am in the morning to drive back from KL to Penang.

I was rushing back to make it for an afternoon meeting with the CEO of a listed company who happens to be in Penang.

In spite of being able to get his phone number through a contact, it took me three weeks of following up to finally get a meeting with this very busy man, so when he offered me an opportunity to meet him on a Saturday, I grabbed it.

I had my chance and I wasn’t about to blow it.

By the time the hot afternoon sun hit Penang, I was already at home in the comforts of my room rehearsing whatever I had to say to the CEO.

Wen-Qi even came all over to my place that afternoon to give me some support before my meeting.

Before I knew it, evening came and it was time for me to leave home for the meeting.

Wen-Qi who came in her own car was the first to drive out in her Kelisa, followed by my father who also happened to be going out at the time.

I got into my car as I saw my father’s car disappear in the distance and left home.

Just a little down the road from my place, I suddenly saw my father’s car stopped by the side of the road.

As I whizzed by not suspecting anything, I caught my father jumping out of his car in a hurry and rushing to the opposite direction.

Wondering what was going on, I looked in my rear view mirror only to see Wen-Qi’s Kelisa crashed into a retaining wall; a sight that I had completely missed as I drove past the first time.Pic: The actual wall that Wen-Qi ran into after they cleared the wreckage.

I screeched my car to a stop and rushed out towards the crashed Kelisa.

As the car drew nearer I found myself getting increasingly anxious.

The wreckage was much worse than it looked in the distance.

I reached the driver’s door and looked in.

The door was smashed in just like the front of the car and there was shattered glass everywhere.

Wen-Qi was there sitting in the driver’s seat dazed and covered with blood.

My heart dropped at the horrifying sight.

She was in pain with her bloody hands covering her eyes crying
“My head… it hurts… it hurts!!!”

I stood shocked for a few seconds, not knowing what to do but I came back to earth when I heard my father shout “GET HER OUT OF THE CAR!!!”.

I unlocked the driver’s door from the outside and tried to yank it open but the door wouldn’t budge.

As I tugged on the driver’s door, Wen-Qi was moaning in pain so I tried to comfort her.

“Don’t worry don’t worry… we’re going to get you out of here”.

Failing miserably to open the driver’s door, I ran over to the front passenger’s door and threw it open.

My dad crouched in, released her safety belt that had a layer of blood over it and pulled her out of the wreckage.

I carried Wen-Qi to my car and put her in the back seat wiping the blood off her with as much tissue as I could find in my car.

She had cuts and bruises all over her body but most of the blood was coming from a big cut in her forehead.

My dad gave her a huge stack of tissues and said “PUT PRESSURE ON YOUR WOUND!!!“.

I jumped into the driver’s seat and drove her off to the nearest hospital (which wasn’t exactly a stone’s throw away).

My dad led the way in his own car.

I was driving fast praying that there would be no traffic but I was too hopeful.

Traffic was heavy.
Every few seconds, my eyes darted back at Wen-Qi who was in my back seat to see how she was doing.

She was still dazed and kept saying
“What happened? Am I dreaming?… my head hurts so bad… I wanna wake up!!! Please wake me up”.

She was bleeding everywhere, her top and skirt were soaked in blood.

It didn’t help when she looked at the stack of tissues that she had earlier been using to cover the gash on her forehead.

It too was soaked in blood and the sight of it was a good enough reason for panic.

She cried
“OH MY GOD OH MY GOD…. I’M BLEEDING SO MUCH.. OH MY GOD OH MY GOD!!!”.

I looked back and shouted
“DON’T WORRY!!! IT’S JUST A SMALL CUT… DON’T WORRY… YOU’RE FINE!!!”.

I felt the guilt right after those words left my mouth.

I didn’t know if it was a small cut or not, and it probably wasn’t considering the amount of blood there was, but I knew that I had to calm her down though I doubt saying that helped much.

Her thoughts suddenly swinged a full 360 degrees and she said
“OMG!!! Your MEETING… you’re going to be late for your meeting!!!”.

I replied hastily
“That is the LAST THING I’m worried about right now… I HAVE to get you to a hospital first”.

She managed to thank me somewhere in the midst of her pain, only to tell me a few minutes later
“I think I need to puke”.

I looked back at her and saw the dreadful expression on her face as she tried to keep herself from puking.

I shouted yet again.
“LOOK… if you have to puke then PUKE here in the car!!! I am NOT stopping till we get to a hospital!”.

Puke in the car she did.

She skillfully decorated my car with puke but it wasn’t the typical puke you would see from a drunk man.

She was vomiting blood.

That was enough motivation for me.

I stepped on the gas and starting aggressively honking the slow cars ahead of me.

Finally we got to Gleneagles Hospital in Penang but our sense of relief was short-lived.

We got stuck at the entrance.

At Gleneagles whenever a car wants to get into the hospital grounds, it has to first take a parking ticket.

So as any pessimist would guess, when shit happens… it happens not just once or twice at a time, but all in one go.

The ticket machine wasn’t working and the barrier wouldn’t go up so both the cars my dad and I were driving were stuck outside the hospital.

We decided to leave our cars by the side of the road as my dad carried Wen-Qi into the emergency room.

I followed to help only to hear my dad say
“Go for your meeting!!!”

I resisted and replied
“How can I go when she’s like this?”

But my dad was adamant
“What are you going to do? You’ve already taken her to the hospital, she’s going into the Emergency Room, all you’re going to do is WAIT… so JUST GO… I’m taking care of her… and call her parents!”.

I stood there for a few seconds thinking about what my father said and decided to listen to him.

So I got into the car and rushed to the meeting place.

When I got there, I first rushed to the restroom to wash up.

The white shirt I was wearing was spattered with blood and as I rinsed my hands in the sink, the water turned red with Wen-Qi’s blood.

I washed it all off and tried to calm myself down.

Then I walked confidently into the lounge where I was supposed to meet the CEO and waited.

He came not long after and we talked for more than an hour about Nuffnang (of course with me initially explaining the blood all over me and ensuring him that I didn’t just kill someone who didn’t like idea of Nuffnang blogs).

My mind was racing back and forth.

On one hand I was wondering what the hell I was doing here at the meeting when I should be with a friend who needs me now more than anything else.

But my Father’s words came back to my head and I focused on the meeting.

Right after the meeting ended I rushed into the car and called my father to get an update on the situation.

They had moved from Gleneagles to Loh Guan Lye Hospital because Gleneagles didn’t have a brain surgeon present at the time.

But alas some good news.

Wen-Qi had a scan at Loh Guan Lye and they didn’t find any damage to the brain, just a hairline crack.

But the cut was very deep, so deep that you could even see her skull. The neurosurgeon at Loh Guan Lye advised us that since the patient is a 19-year old girl, we should instead take her to a plastic surgeon to stitch up her wound. At least the stitches might look better.

We found a plastic surgeon at Pantai Hospital all the way on the other side of the island and we made our way there.
This time with Wen-Qi’s father driving the car and I sitting in the back seat with Wen-Qi, trying to make her smile in this difficult time. I succeeded in most instances.

When we reached Pantai Hospital, there were already people waiting to get Wen-Qi on to a wheelchair to wheel her straight into the Emergency Room.

I followed her in.

She was still suffering in pain, at one point even saying that her head was hurting so much she felt like ripping it off.

I took it as a joke.. but I wasn’t so sure if she was really joking.

She went into surgery at 9.30PM and her parents told me to go home, saying that she probably wouldn’t be awake until the next morning.

I went to see her the morning after. She was lying in bed with a huge bandage on her head.

She gave me a cheeky smile as I walked into her ward which indicated that she was feeling better.

Her pain had subsided and she was feeling a lot better, remembering a bit more of what really happened.

I took of a picture of her in bed and asked
“Your Dad last night asked me if I’m gonna blog about this. Should I?”

She said
“Okayy… but I look so awful nowww”…

I pictured how she looked yesterday right after the accident.

Then I said
“You’ve never looked better”.

It wasn’t a lie.

PS: All the pictures in this blog entry (except the first pic) was taken after the incident. I obviously didn’t quite have the peace of mind to stop and take a picture during the crisis.

What kind of bastard would I be if I did that?

Ming and I are in KL doing our marketing rounds to tons and tons of advertisers and just yesterday we got a little lucky.

We managed to secure a meeting with the CEO and Founder of a very large multinational company which commands a brand that every Malaysian has heard of.

That afternoon, we walked straight into the grand office with a secretary smiling at us and asking
“May I help you?”

Right that instant a well-dressed older man walked out of a room and straight past the secretary’s table.
He saw Ming and I standing there with our briefcases and asked “What are you both doing here?“

I calmly replied
“We are looking for PPP (Not his real name obviously 😛). We have an appointment with him for right now”.
He let out a short laugh and said
“I am PPP.”

I mentally gave myself a pat in the back for looking like an idiot but before I could say anything else, he said
“Come come into my office”.

We walked into his posh office, it was beautiful.

Not extravagantly huge but beautifully furnished with expensive furniture.

We all took our seats on the soft sofa couches around a striking wooden coffee table.

He sat down comfortably on his end of the sofa and said
“Okay… now tell me, how can we do business together?”

Ming and I started first by introducing ourselves and how we came about to start Nuffnang.

Then we went on to describe Nuffnang and the ins and outs of how we work and then bring the story round to whether his huge company would be willing to take a small percentage of his advertising budget to advertise with us.

That small percentage would already be HUGE for us.
At the end of our introduction, PPP said
“Your kind of internet business has very low barriers to entry. You have to be careful. You will experience fierce competition, and in my experience, competition can turn nasty.”

He paused for a while then asked
“How much money did you put in this business?”

I gave him the 6 digit figure and was quick to tell him that both my partner and I are lucky to have little financial constraint on this end.

He then asked
“Do you need another investor?”, smiling at the both of us as the words left his lips.

Thoughts ran through my mind in that split second.

On one hand, there we were in the office of this tycoon hoping to convince him to advertise on Nuffnang blogs but instead we were now having him ask us if we would like him to invest in Nuffnang.

I looked at PPP and realised that rather than trying to pitch to him, I should instead be pitching to his Marketing Department.

I shouldn’t be using this meeting to pitch, I should be using this meeting to learn from PPP.

Ming and I are both young and we have a lot to learn but we learn fast. If there is any chance to ever get business advice that money can’t ever buy, it was now.

So I asked him for more advice, trying to draw from his business experience and that’s how we spent the rest of our meeting.

Before we knew it, 15 minutes was up and the Tycoon had to be some place else.

He showed Ming and I out of the office and said
“If there is any way that you can think of that I could help, please let me know. You have my contact details on the card. Let me know when you’re free to meet again and we can talk more”.

I thanked him graciously and walked away from his private office.

As Ming and I were walking away I said
“Do you know that we just had a meeting with one of the Richest Men in Malaysia?”