Hello from the San Francisco Bay Area once again!

Ok let me tell you what I’ve been up to lately apart from meeting loads of investors for NuffnangX.

1) Shorty and I went to play mini-golf over our long weekend.I’ve always wanted to try mini-golf because it looked so fun and fun it was. This is how a mini-golf course looks like. Nice right??

We played 18 holes and I got two hole-in-ones but ended up STILL losing to Shorty. Why? Because there was one spot where the hole was on top of a volcano and I ended up taking 16 strokes in order to get the damn ball in. I knew the game was over by the 10th stroke. Shorty finished it in 6.

Shorty does have a talent for putting in my opinion.

My golf coach has yet to teach me how to putt but now after I learn that I’m coming back here again.

Then again maybe not. Somehow the frustration of missing a hole brings out the curse words in me. And mini-golf courses here tend to be filled with kids. So if I do decide to come back I better get some anger management lessons of my own first. Haha.

2) I love ice-cream. That’s no secret. And my favourite ice-cream place here in San Francisco is Bi-Rite Creamery. Our friend Jesrina happened to be here in SF too so we brought her out for what I told her was the best ice-cream ever.

At first she was doubtful that it was the best… but after she tried it… HAH. She was impressed.

The salted caramel here in Bi-Rite is the best I’ve ever had!

I told Jesrina about how I wanna start an ice-cream store in KL and she said it probably won’t make much money. So I guess I’ll have to keep my day job 🙂

3) Ok this is a weird experience for me but when I’m back at our apartment, Shorty spends most of her time watching the home improvement channel. She loves watching renovations or new homes or stuff like that. Kinda reminds me of my mum. Ah how we have aged.

Anyway we were watching this program about a house in Koh Samui, Thailand where the owner had this HUGE water slide in his house.

Now I know what I want in my house if I’m loaded some day!

Ok guys! Gotta run. Talk soon.

Alright time for another quick update. Just because Shorty’s updating her blog too right now. Here’s a really quick update.

1) Been spending quite a bit of time with the NuffnangX team here in Sunnyvale.

Notice how we have Malaysian and Singaporean flags in our little office space.

Just to remind everyone of our roots 🙂

2) Shorty has been following me to work too and sporting very different hats every day.

Our receptionist saw Shorty on Friday and said out loud “I LOVE ALL YOUR HATS”.

3) The 3rd thing we did today was that we finally decided to buy a Microsoft Surface.

We did lots of research and read all the reviews on it. The reviews were pretty mixed but we decided to get one because it’s the one tablet that allows you to use Microsoft Office just like you would on a laptop and has a USB drive. Would be pretty handy to travel with.

So far we’ve been setting it up and it seems pretty cool. It looks almost like a laptop with its keyboard on. The only thing about the keyboard though was that I thought it’s really expensive for $130.

In any case, we’ll blog about it later on once we’ve used it for a while. Ok 1.30AM here so time to go to bed. Good night guys!

Hi Guys!

Lack of updates because I’ve been really busy here in Silicon Valley. Even on the nights when Shorty gets to sit down and blog, I find myself making phone calls, replying emails or doing other sorts of work. But here’s one update for you guys of some pictures I took during my busy week.

Here’s Shorty following me to work with her funny blue hat.

Yes I know, California is amazingly sunny. The weather here is the best I’ve ever seen anywhere else.

I was at this place called Rocket Space which is like a place a lot of startups work out of and I happened to come across this sign.

And the one play thing that Shorty and I managed to do in this busy week is go cycling in the park one day after work. We had finished a long day of work and meetings and we thought it would be fun given the beautiful weather. It was my first time riding a tandem (two-seater) bike.

It was certainly more fun for Shorty than for me. I felt like I was cycling for the both of us but she denied it all the way. Said she was cycling too though I doubt it… all she was doing was riding!

Heh okay I gotta go back to work now. See ya guys!

So today Shorty and I woke up at 4.30AM. Compliments of jet lag. We struggled to go back to sleep and by 5.30AM Shorty fell asleep again but I had given up. I went out for a jog instead in my quiet Sunnyvale, California neighbourhood. It’s only when I ran outside with my shorts did I realize it was 11 degrees celcius out there. Freeezing my ass off.

Fast forward a couple of hours later and Shorty and I had just finished breakfast. We didn’t know how to spend our Saturday. We could go outlet shopping but we already went shopping the last trip and we’re all spent out of shopping money. We thought of driving into San Francisco but considering that I would probably be spending most of my next few work days there I hesitated.

Finally I remembered the one thing I wanted to do last trip but didn’t get to. I wanted to go to Fenton’s.

It’s this ice-cream store in Oakland that was known for great ice-cream and it inspired the ending ice-cream scene in UP.

I had two scoops.

Yes… that is how two scoops look like. It was huge.

So I knew I was going to be down in Oakland and I started looking for things to do in that direction. I googled Top 10 Things to do in Oakland and I found it. My favourite attraction that I’ve been to in all of the Bay Area so far and to think I found it by accident. A chance to visit the now decommissioned USS Hornet Aircraft Carrier.

The USS Hornet is an aircraft carrier that was built by the US in 1943 and served till 1970s. It played key roles in World War 2, the Vietnam War and even the Apollo Program where it retrieved astronauts that had returned from the moon.

Now let me explain to you why I loved this attraction by telling you two things that I love:

1) I LOVE military-stuff.

2) I LOVE modern history.

This is both.

Plus I had never ever been on an aircraft carrier before so this was just… amazing.

This is a picture I took of it just before entering.

Once immediately in the aircraft carrier there was this HUGE open space called the hangar deck. It was this huge indoor space where they used to keep their planes to repair, refuel or arm them.

There were some exhibits of some planes that the USS Hornet used to launch. This particular plane caught my attention because the sign told a story of how one pilot of this plane once shot himself down.

How? He was shooting his guns in a dive but he was going so fast that he managed to hit himself with the very same bullets he shot out. The plane suffered heavy damage and he had to crash land his plane. I’m sure he never heard the end of it from his fellow air force pilots… you know being the guy who managed to shoot himself down.

The aircraft carrier had 8 levels. So much of the lower levels were rooms and riddled with corridors that looked like this.

Connected by ladders that looked like this.

It’s definitely not for the claustrophobic. When I was walking through these corridors I couldn’t help but imagine scenes that we’ve seen in the movies where the ship takes a torpedo and water starts filling up and you gotta get out of there or be dragged down into the ocean with this huge steel ship.

What was also cool was the engine room. We followed a tour led by a veteran who used to serve on board this ship. He told us how everything worked and how life on the ship was.

What’s cool was that there was another veteran on our tour who served on another ship and they shared the things they had in common.

One thing this veteran said was that this ship will never be able to go into action again because nobody else but them knows how to run it. And they’re all old and retired now unless we have something like what happened in the movie Battleship.

The coolest part of the aircraft carrier of course was the flight deck. The top of the aircraft carrier where they launched jets and planes. It’s huge! Like one massive football field.

On the flight deck were some of the other planes this aircraft carrier used to launch. In its early days it used to launch the propeller planes we watch in the World War 2 movies. Then in its later days when jets came into action it launched jets using its catapult system. A technology that I understand only the US has. All the other countries that have aircraft carriers launch their jets in other ways.

Throughout the ship there were little stories about what role the USS Hornet played in history and all but there are too many for me to talk about each and every one of them here. Perhaps its best to read up a bit on Wikipedia or something if you’re keen.
This was probably the most fun I’ve had in the San Francisco. Shorty though looked terribly bored the whole time and said she didn’t understand anything. Well if I had known that it was possible for tourists to visit a US aircraft carrier I would’ve so put that on my bucket list.

Fortunately I didn’t need to put that in and it came really as a surprise to me.

If you love these kind of things like me, be sure to visit the USS Hornet in Alameda.

PS: When I was Googling USS Hornet a “USS Hornet Ghost” came up. I was like whaaat? Apparently the USS Hornet is haunted.

No wonder Shorty kept saying she didn’t like the place and that it felt creepy.

Ok you may or may not know… but I love everything Domokun.

Let me show you how.

I have a Domokun T-Shirt that urges the general public to vote for Domo for President.

I have a pair of Domokun slippers that Shorty bought me some years ago. Today I still use these same pair of slippers in the office.

They’re so comfy and they keep my feet warm.

And my latest addition to my Domokun collection is this little cup that Shorty gave me too.

I use it to drink my green tea in the office everyday.

I love Domokun, like how Shorty loves Hello Kitty (and I’m not afraid to show it).

OKAY! Gotta go pack now… going off to the US tomorrow for NuffnangX!

So let me tell you what Shorty and I have been up to lately. We’ve been busy making ice-cream.

See the story goes that two of my friends Adrian and Eddie gave us an ice-cream maker as a wedding gift a few months ago. We’ve never had the chance to use it until well… in the midst of some soul-searching I suddenly developed the interest to try it out. You see in Thailand there’s a type of ice-cream I really like. It’s called Umm Milk and it’s a milk flavoured ice-cream that tastes like you’re eating Dutch lady milk powder (in a good way).

But I’ve never seen this milk flavored ice-cream anywhere else in KL. In fact I don’t see many options for ice-cream in KL apart from Haagen and Baskin. Baskin of course being the one with the most variety of flavours and my favourite of the two. There’s a lot of Frozen Yoghurt stores in KL now but I don’t really like Froyo. I heard too that it’s not as healthy as people make it out to be and I believe that if you wanna have ice-cream, go all the way or don’t do it at all.

So one day I decided that we should do it. The machine came with a recipe booklet and we also Googled for some other recipes and tried our hand at making ice-cream. The first one we ever made was Nutella ice-cream.

It was horrible. I don’t want to show the picture here because I’m pretty ashamed of it. Haha. But today I made my milk flavoured ice-cream and it’s YUMMY! Not as good as Umm Milk yet but I think we’re on the right track. Just have to do a bit of trial and error.

The thing I love about ice-cream is that it’s such a happy thing. Can you ever imagine anyone holding an ice-cream cone looking angry? When we make ice-cream, I feel as if we’re making happiness in a bowl. To then pass it on. Maybe one day Shorty and I will start a small ice-cream store that sells this happiness. It’s probably really hard to make money as a business but hey as long as it doesn’t lose us money… why not sell a bit of happiness?

Now we’re looking for more flavours to try out. What’s your favourite ice-cream flavour that you can’t seem to get in KL?

Girls have loads of accessories to play with. Close to half the time my wife spends in Forever 21 is in the accessories department. There she browses everything from ear ring to bangles to well little iPhone accessories even like this.

This isn’t the case for us guys though. We don’t wear ear rings or little bangles. If we do wear something on our wrist it’s normally a little string or a wrist band. And I am yet to see a single guy that put a pink bow tie accessory on his iPhone’s antenna dock. It’s just not cool.

Sure I look around my body and I wear a 16 year old choker that looks like this.

A choker I have been wearing for the past ten years. So long that the string around it seems to be giving way but I wear it not because its cool. But because its my lucky choker.

When I recently told Shorty about it she kinda laughed. She said you don’t know for sure if its lucky right ? Well… Let me tell you the story.

I was 12 when my brother gave me this gemini choker. But I never wore it. I kept it in a drawer and forgot all about it. The next time I saw the choker again was when I was 19 years old. It was a tough time for me. I was in college and I had just broken up with my first girlfriend. I was the biggest loser for a while after that. You know one of those mopey guys you see on TV that can’t get over their ex.

One day though my friends decided they had enough. They came over to my house and dragged me out clubbing. This friend of mine Chi Ying did what any girl friends did for the guy friends. She picked the right shirt and pants for me to wear (those were the days I used to wear khakis, oh the horror). When she was done with me she then said something was missing. I needed to accessorize.

So she trawled through my drawers and found this neglected choker of mine. She took it out and with the help of another friend Muffy she tied it up for me. Once I had it on she stood back to look and me from top to toe and nodded in satisfaction. I was ready.

When I went out that night I didn’t get laid or anything but I remember having a lot of fun (you may also interchange the word “fun” with “alcohol” in this sentence and both statements will still prove true). I however had so much trouble taking the choker off at the end of the night that I just left it on. Days became weeks and weeks became months to years. Years passed as I continued to wear my lucky choker and I started to get a lot of good luck.

Think about it. 10 years since I put on this choker I found myself with this wonderful company we started called Nuffnang and ChurpChurp. I enjoy what I do, I travel the world for work and I got married to Shorty.

So that is why this is my lucky choker and why I have always had it on.

Coming back to accessories for guys, there is one other thing that guys wear. That’s watches.

Girls have their designer handbags, guys have watches. We’ve always loved our watched since growing up. I remember when I got my first Casio when I was 12. It was a watch with a tiny calculator keypad. Those days just the thought of you having a calculator on your watch made you go “FUUYOOHH I AM THE MAN”.

Then secondary school came and G-shock and Baby-Gs became the status symbol or the in thing.

I begged my Dad for a G-Shock every day and he eventually ended up buying me two during the entire span of my teenage years.

At university though I noticed things changed. Electronic watches started becoming a little childish and my friends started wearing Tag Heuer and the likes. Watches that I couldn’t afford.

Now in my late twenties, as I end up hanging out with people older than me their watches too get more expensive. I start seeing Rolex, Panerais, Hublot… Watches that cost a lot of money.

As for me, I have only to date bought myself one luxury watch. That was three years after Ming and I started Nuffnang and I had a little bit of savings. I remember taking a long time to think about it because it costs RM6k which is a lot of money. Ming said that I should. As a reward for working so hard. So I got myself this Tag Heuer.

Since then I’ve been lucky to have been gifted some really nice watches. Ming gave me this for my birthday years ago.

And Shorty’s parents gave me this Bell & Ross as a wedding gift when we got married.

My parents too gave me a really nice watch but it’s one of my fathers old watches that I can never sell and must keep safe for the rest of my life.

It’s nice wearing nice watches and I realize that guys do notice the other watches other guys wear. But I always fear losing them. So now I’m wearing a watch Ming just bought me.

It’s a G-Shock and brings me back to my childhood memories. I love G-Shocks.

They were awesome to me then, and they’re awesome to me now.

Oh there is one other accessory I wear now apart from watches.

And Shorty’s latest accessory is a pink neck pillow.

She says “Whaddup bitchas??”

Ming is in London now and he sent me this page of a newspaper that had a small mention of NuffnangX in a column.

This means loads to us because the US and UK markets are really important markets for NuffnangX. Still a lot more work to do. Going to be flying off to the US again soon. Dreading the 18 hour long flight but looking forward to everything else.