So I looked in my phone and found a number of pics that I haven’t yet uploaded on my blog here. They were pics that I randomly took of my day while in San Francisco. Like this picture I asked Shorty to help me take while driving back to San Francisco.
It was a cloudy day and look at the clouds! They emerged on the horizon almost as if I was driving in Heaven.
One of the things that Shorty really wanted to visit while in San Jose was the Winchester House. The mansion was built by the late Sarah Winchester. Wife of the ex-owner of the Winchester Repeating Arms company that made the famous Winchester rifles.
It’s a really odd house with doors or staircases that lead to nowhere. There’s even a room inside the house that was meant for Sarah Winchester to speak to spirits.
After her husband and daughter died, Sarah Winchester believed that the spirits of the people killed by the rifles her husband’s company made was haunting her. So that’s why she made the house with all these funny features. To confuse the spirits so that they would get lost in it and not be able to find her.
We weren’t allowed to take pictures inside the house so I can’t show you what it’s like inside but I had the house had this really eerie feeling. It was huge… and confusing so I can imagine anyone easily getting lost in this house. You can read more about Winchester House here.
This is Shorty and Lilian outside a part of the house after our tour.
Shorty later said to me that she was actually a little scared inside and asked if I noticed she was clinging on to me the whole time. Hah! This coming from a girl who loves watching horror or ghost movies.
That night Shorty and I went to Cheesecake Factory.
Where we had my 2nd cheesecake of the day.
The Yummy Oreo Cheesecake!
Man was it good! Shorty found herself rubbing my stomach a few times after the dinner and sighing to herself. Knowing how fat I was going to be. Yes… no point fighting the fat. I’m destined to be. If I were fat at least I would be able to stand the cold in San Francisco. This is Shorty wearing my jacket over her head to brave the cold.
I can’t believe how cold San Francisco is over summer.
It can get as cold as 10 degrees Celsius. Still Shorty insisted to go out that day because she wanted to go buy herself a Kindle.
After a week working in Silicon Valley, Shorty and I hopped on to our first Virgin America flight to Vegas. This is how the plane looked on the inside. Totally different from any other plane I’ve been on. All its windows were shut and it looked more like a club.
I must say I’m pretty impressed with Virgin America. I ended up leaving my iPad on the plane only to realize it some time later while at the baggage claim. Shorty quickly filed a report and they managed to get it out for me before the plane left for New York an hour later.
So that’s it for me guys! I’m in Vegas now and I’m spending more time talking on the phone and doing emails than enjoying it with Shorty so I’m going to keep my blog entries short.
So let me tell you how my past few days in San Francisco were like. To be honest it was really very eventful for me. I was having fun going around setting things up for our new startup. I can’t say the same for Shorty though.
She was following me around the whole time and kinda doing nothing but reading her book whenever I was working. It doesn’t help that the Bay Area is HUGE! And we made the mistake of staying in San Francisco which means we have to travel to Silicon Valley every day on the freeway.
So a big part of our days were spent in the car like this.
And Shorty looked like this in most of the car journeys.
On one of the days we got stuck in a massive jam that took us an hour. We had no idea why traffic wasn’t moving until we heard it over the radio that up ahead from us there was a high-speed police chase (just like in the movies) and the suspect’s car overturned causing a huge jam further up from us.
The good thing though is that I have now gotten used to driving on the right side of the road.
Everything’s all good now although I did get my first parking ticket today. Silly thing. One of Shorty’s readers Katherine brought us to this ice-cream place with a long queue of people waiting to buy ice-cream.
When I first got there, I didn’t know where to park but I saw a lot of cars parked right on the road side so we thought it was legal and parked there. There weren’t any signs or lines on the road to tell otherwise.
After a quick 45 minute ice-cream session though.. we came back to a parking ticket waiting for us. $70. Ouch.
When we were not stuck in a jam, I was in meetings and all. So Shorty would just read her book or… well during one of my meetings she did this to the white board.
Or she would kaypo a little and talk to Lilian about some stuff.
So when I wasn’t working I made sure to take Shorty out.
I brought her shopping where she punished the supplementary credit card I gave her.
(notice the handbag she’s been carrying now is this huge cloth bag that costs $9 that looks like a shopping bag. While all girls are going for thousand dollar handbags I find it amusing that my wife is comfortable using bags like this and still looks cute).
And did it once again at Forever 21.
And again at an Abercrombie & Fitch sale.
It was a great sale though… I bought a pair of jeans from A&F for only like RM99.
Today I brought her to Japan Town.
And to the Walt Disney Museum where we followed the life of Walt Disney. Seriously I have a newfound admiration for Walt Disney. He’s an entrepreneur that took so many risks and went through so many setbacks but still managed to pick himself up. When he passed away in the 60s, the whole world mourned. Still.. his legacy lives. To think I was only born almost 20 years after he left our world and I still knew his name since I was a little boy.
Being motivated to be a true fatty now of course, I ended each day with dessert. When it’s not ice-cream…
it’s cake or something else. Saturday night for me was spent at Cheesecake Factory where I had this Godiva Chocolate Cheesecake that was just… amazing!
So that’s it for me guys. Tomorrow morning is an early start for me again. See you guys and have a great Raya holidays!
Okay okay 5 days no update! I’m not proud of that. But I can explain !!! (Haha I always can).
If you’ve been following me on Twitter (@timothytiah) or Instagram (also @timothytiah), you’d know that I’m in San Francisco now with Shorty.
SAY HELLO SAN FRANCISCO!!!
SAY HELLO FATTY & SHORTY!!!
I know it looks like Shorty and I are in SF for a honeymoon but no that’s not really true. We’ve been here a few days already and we’ve hardly done any sight-seeing apart from visiting Fisherman’s Wharf at the end of yesterday. The rest of my days so far have been spent working and Shorty just tagging along and accompanying me for the long drives.
Yes I’ve been driving here in SF and man did that take some getting used to. On my first day of driving I probably broke the record for the fastest rental car accident in the history of Hertz. I rented the car at the airport, then while driving it out of the car park some 30 seconds later, I hit my passenger side mirror against a pillar and it broke. Fortunately I bought insurance so they just replaced my car.
After a few days though I started getting used to it and now driving on the other side of the road comes a bit more natural to me. So yeah… no more accidents and no more driving against traffic (happened to me once briefly but managed to correct myself without getting anyone hurt).
Today has been a long day of work and tomorrow is too so I guess I gotta keep this blog entry short. Now I’m actually here in San Francisco to set up an office. It’s not for Nuffnang or any of our current companies. It’s for a new startup that Ming and I are working on and it’s located in this building in Silicon Valley.
When I look back at the past 5 years of my business life I feel grateful. Grateful to God and the people around me for helping bring us to where we are today. If you asked me 5 years ago if Nuffnang would grow to where it is today, I really wouldn’t have believed it.
Yes in our past 5 years, we’ve succeeded in some businesses and we have failed in others too. Fortunately our successes outweigh our failures but Ming and I though are constantly restless. We’re always looking for new experiences and that’s what life is about right… acquiring new experiences.
Just a few months ago Ming came up with an idea. I dare say it’s one of the best ideas that has ever come from either one of us. So we decided to put our time and money into it. It is one of the biggest investments I have personally ever made in a startup. If it fails, then we lose a lot of time and money.. but I guess we take back lessons and experiences. If it succeeds… we hope it would change the world.
I can’t talk about what that startup does specifically… but you guys will know soon ok? In the mean time. I have work to do. We’ve got a long road ahead of us and this is just the start of it.
Oh Shorty and I are making a trip to Vegas next week. So that’ll be for a holiday 🙂
When Shorty first got together with me years ago this was how I looked/dressed like.
She accepted it for a couple of weeks but not long after she decided to take matters into her own hands. She went into my closet and after 45 minutes of rummaging through my clothes she set aside a small pile of my t-shirts and jeans. She went on to say “Okay… this small pile here is what you’re allowed to wear from now on… get rid of everything else”.
Then she took me shopping and all I almost felt like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. Except that I was the “Pretty Woman” and Shorty was “Richard Gere”. Come to think of it now man was that emasculating. Once she was done with my sense of fashion she decided to work on my hair. I used to get my hair cut for not more than RM30 at some barber. She then brought me to A Cut Above where for the first time in my life I spent 3 hours cutting, dying and having hair treatment on my hair. It was the most boring 3 hours of my life but hey who am I to complain… I just got together with a cute pretty little girl and she’s worth it anyway.
After the full 3 hours, I ended up looking like this.
And I vomitted blood when I saw the bill.
But people started commenting that I look much better so okay! I guess it’s worth it and I owe Shorty a favour.
Over the years my hair changed a little here and there but every single hair cut I had was with Shorty.
Which suited me fine because I don’t really care how my hair looked. I just like to sit there, read my book or check my emails while Shorty tells the hair stylist what to do. This year she started bringing me to this salon she goes to called 76 Style. It’s a Japanese salon so everybody there speaks Japanese including the stylist Hiki who is from Japan. Again that suits me fine because all I hear is some Japanese words from Shorty’s mouth and the stylist go “Hai hai hai” and at the end of it my hair comes out nice.
Last week though I decided to go to the same salon and have my hair cut on my own. Without Shorty. I had trouble communicating with Hiki but we settled for pointing at magazine pictures. She pointed at a number but I said “No I want it shorter”. Now here’s the thing…. having my hair cut is a chore for me just like how say… jogging in a park is a chore to Shorty. I don’t like going there and sitting there for a long time. So whenever I go I try to get them to cut my hair as short as possible so I never have to come back again for a couple of months.
Shorty on the other hand doesn’t like that. She thinks that I look fat in short hair… but hey a fatty should rightfully look fat right? So I told Hiki to have my hair cut short… but not too short… because I knew Shorty wouldn’t like it.
Somehow I think there was a bit of a misunderstanding. My hair came out really short which was fine by me! But on my way back I realized that… Shorty wouldn’t be pleased. After all in Shorty’s books:
And in this case… “ONE” refers to a particular Fatty.
So at the end of the day I was on the way to meet Shorty for dinner when I decided to manage her expectations in advance. That’s something the advertising industry teaches you… always manage expectations. So I did.
She wasn’t pleased. In fact I thought she was going to divorce my newly married fat ass.
The next day Shorty so happened to visit Hiki and Hiki asked her in Japanese “Is his hair ok?”… apparently with a little bit of fear in her eyes because she probably guessed Shorty didn’t like my short hair. Shorty just smiled and said sure. Because she put all the blame on me… that I asked her to cut my hair short. For the past few days she was going on and on about my hair until I finally came up with the best response evah! I said
“Hey! I’m married now! I don’t have to look good anymore!”.
And she didn’t say anything about my hair anymore after that. Except for this morning when she said that my hair makes my head look like an egg plant in which again I came up with a genius response (seriously I’m on a roll this week): “Well if I’m Mr Egg Plant then that makes you Mrs Egg Plant. How does it feel to be married to an Egg Plant?”
So anyway everyone… without further ado… here is my haircut.
How bad is it?
———-
Disclaimer from Shorty: it looks better styled ok!!! Past few days he went around with flat short hair and really resembled a vegetable.
So a few days ago I realized that Shorty jumped me and blogged first about our tea ceremony. In any case she did me a favour because since the official photographs are all not out yet we had to crawl through all our pictures on Facebook and pick the ones we could use for our blogs. So the pictures that I use are going to be the same ones that Shorty put on her blog too. What’s different I guess would be my point of view on what happened that day.
Now I never understood what the purpose of the tea ceremony was until I actually did it myself. Basically even though Shorty and I was legally married the day before at our ROM, in Chinese tradition we weren’t considered husband and wife yet until the tea ceremony. Everything had to be planned in detail. Even the specific time in which I had to leave the house by to go pick up Shorty or even that my Dad had to be the one who helped me wear my suit jacket.
There was lots to do that day so I was up early by 6.30AM. My best men arrived by 7.30AM so we started first with a nice char kuay teow breakfast that we had tarpaued from the market that morning.
We were scheduled to leave the house by 8.15AM but we kinda predicted that the girls won’t be ready in time and they would call us and tell us to leave later. True enough that really happened. So we took our time to eat a hearty breakfast before we left.
We were out of the house by 8.45AM along with an entourage of some 6-7 cars. Halfway though I remembered that I was supposed to bring an ang pow to give Shorty’s brother when he opened the car door for me. So I turned the entire entourage back.
In the WhatsApp group we had, the Best Men who were seated in all the different cars were like
“Why are we turning back? What’s happening?”
“Maybe he changed his mind about getting married…”
But I went back, got the Ang Pow and headed to pick up a bride named Shorty. Soon after we arrived at the apartment Shorty was waiting for me at.
Shorty’s brother opened the door for me but he went up first while I waited for the next lift. It was only after a while that we realized “Eh what floor is it ar?”.
So we looked at what floor the lift that took Shorty’s brother stopped at and we said “OK 12TH FLOOR!”.
We turned out to be wrong though. Fortunately Shorty’s bro’s gf was downstairs with us and when we asked her she pointed us to the right floor.
So we all rushed upstairs only to meet the eight bridesmaids who had built a wall of chairs to stop us from getting in. Now this is the part of a tradition that I don’t actually like. From what I understand, traditionally it was just meant for the bridesmaids to play some games with the best men to make it difficult to get the bride. The games were meant to be fun… maybe it involved questions about the brides or maybe to do a little dance or even sing a song.
Over the years though I think that act has been bastardized so much that it’s more cruel than funny or fun. A common occurrence is that the bridesmaids will get the best men to wax off their legs or eat some disgusting stuff which is to me already at the border of too much but ok fairly acceptable. But some have gone overboard. I have been to some where they got all the guys to strip down, wear lingerie and hump each other. Now while that may be funny to some… it’s sadistic to me.. just like how I don’t find Tom & Jerry funny at all. What’s worse is that Tom & Jerry is fictional… the best men who are with me are not animated characters with no feelings. They are my best friends in life and I will not let my best friends be abused or humiliated like that.
So before the whole thing happened I told Shorty to make sure that the bridesmaids kept it fun and civil. That if anything really bad or low class happened even though it may not be planned by her, it will reflect on her. I asked that she keep it classy and truly fun for all.
That is exactly what her bridesmaids did and I am proud to say that Angela, Xiaxue, Cheesie, Suet, Bobo, Hui Wen, Jia Meei and Tze put together the the best games I had ever seen. Here’s what they did:
When we walked in there were 5 boxes all tied up in ribbons each and named after a challenge each. When I walked in Xiaxue said “Okay Tim in order to get Audrey you have to prove your worth in 5 ways: Bravery, Intellect, Romance, Wealth and I can’t remember what that last thing was.
In romance, we had to sing a song. Intellect we had to do a soduku puzzle and the only bordering cruel thing was Bravery where we had to drink some fruit vegetable juice with cili padi in it but even then it wasn’t so bad. My friend told me he once told he a friend of his had to drink something with raw egg and some other stuff in it and the best men all got food poisoning by the end of the day that they all missed the wedding dinner. Man if that happened to me I would be really upset. All my best friends missing my wedding because of some silly drink. But no… what the girls made for us was awful… but actually good for health I think (kinda like what my mum used to make me drink)… apart from the cili padi.
Of course one of the challenges was that I had to answer questions about Shorty which I can proudly say I got ALL correct except for the name of her favourite professor.
Every time I completed a challenge, I got a badge. And with 5 badges I was able to go in.
Finally after the games were done the best men pushed their way in and I rushed into the bedroom to fetch me bride… only to be stopped by Shorty’s mum. She stopped all of us and said “NO CANNOT GO IN STOP STOP STOP!!!”.
So all of us halted to a stop. Ming looked at Shorty’s mum and then looked at me and said “Who’s this person?”.
I whispered “That’s Audrey’s mum”.
Shorty’s mum got me to first drink some tong shui served by Shorty’s brother… I don’t know the reason for that but Shorty’s mum is really into all the traditional stuff so I just do as I’m told.
Then finally after what felt like 45 minutes… (though a fun 45 minutes), I walked into the room and this is what I saw.
At first it hadn’t occurred to me that Shorty was wearing her wedding dress that I had never seen before until now. So I just commented about her friends holding us back for a while. Then when it finally hit me… I couldn’t help but say “WOW” or something like that.
Her dress was the most beautiful wedding dress I had ever seen. I know the designs of wedding dresses are supposed to be a big thing. Just like how everyone’s talking about Kate Middleton’s dress… I never understood it. But when I saw Shorty’s dress I was like.. WOW. I especially love the back of her dress.
It’s so so her. For this I have to thank Gilbert. Because of him, my wife wore the most beautiful dress I had ever seen in my life on her wedding day.
I picked Shorty up, gave her a short kiss on her lips (no tongue action or anything don’t worry… Shorty and I are not romantic like that… or French)… and I brought her out to a crowd of clapping best men and bridesmaids.
Then I brought my Shorty home.
Where all my relatives were all waiting for me. As we walked in everybody stood up and clap. Now I know how prime ministers feel when they enter formal events. Heh.
Shorty and I spent the next few hours serving tea to our family members and receiving ang pows and gifts. This is one part of getting married that I totally never knew. When you get married… people give you gifts like it’s your birthday. Except that they’re really nice gifts because they know you get married only once.
All in all I had so much fun at our tea ceremony. What you may or may not know is that in my family, every Chinese New Year we all have a little tea ceremony of our own. We take turns to serve my parents tea. Hehe I know it sounds like my family is really traditional but I kinda like having that bit of tradition in my family especially since we don’t really follow many other traditions.
This Chinese New Year though will be the first Chinese New Year where Shorty and I will be giving instead of receiving ang pows 🙂
3 years ago we came up with the Nuffnang site that we used all the way from then till today.
The thing about websites is that designs change rather quickly. So while we were really happy with this old layout, we knew it had run its life.
So this year we put a lot of effort into thinking what the new one should be like. It’s tough. Because there isn’t much to get inspiration from or copy from overseas. Sure there are blog ad networks in the US as well but we haven’t seen yet a company in the USA or UK that is a community-based blog ad network. So our site had to be a bit of a community based site and portray that bloggers can earn money from it.
So what a group of us Nuffies did was we all brainstormed about what Nuffnang really meant to us or bloggers. And here’s what we eventually realized it meant. Nuffnang has grown to a company that doesn’t just help bloggers earn money. It’s a lot more than that. It helps you meet other bloggers, uncover new opportunities that you can get as a blogger (movie screenings etc etc) or even help with the content of your blog by giving a blogger new experiences: whether in a community event or a new mobile phone review or even a trip overseas.
Nuffnang is like an add on to all bloggers in these countries we’re in. Bloggers have their cameras, their laptops, their mobile phones… and Nuffnang is what completes their blogging experience on top of that.
That’s what our new site is based on.
We also made it as simple as we could. It’s ironic how it can be so complicated to try to make something simple but I’m glad we finally got there.
Alright so I finally have the chance to sit down and blog about our wedding weekend. I’m going to start with our registration of marriage ceremony that we had on the 27th of July in Penang. Now my only regret with our wedding weekend is that because we were so busy taking pictures with everyone else and doing everything, we didn’t really have a chance to take pictures of our own or more pictures of what really happened. The pictures I have here are the best pictures I have from the ones my friends posted on Facebook.
It’s not traditional to have a registration of marriage ceremony in Malaysia I think… but Shorty always wanted a “walk down the aisle” moment so we decided that we would have a ceremony for that.
It was meant to be simple. Just a few of our closest family and friends would come. Shorty’s intention was that while the tea ceremony and the wedding dinner was going to be for everyone else, the ROM was going to be for us. That didn’t quite work out though. Once we included all our relatives, some Nuffies and friends we ended up with something like 150 people.
We still loved it though. In the video that Crazy Monkey Studios did, everything looked perfect but the truth is, just like any other wedding I guess lots of things went wrong.
Like on that day itself I suddenly had an outbreak of pimples on my face or an example of a more serious problem: Some 20 minutes before the ROM was about to start for example, we realized that the music we had in mind to play when Shorty walked down the aisle (Canon in D) wasn’t working. Shorty was freaking out but I just pat her and said “Don’t worry Shorty, everything will be fixed and it will be great. It’s our day… the only thing that can go wrong is if either one of us doesn’t show up.. and I’m right here”.
I just brushed all the troubles off because I kinda expected an imperfect wedding. An imperfect wedding for an imperfect couple… but no matter what happened, I knew it would be a perfect wedding just for us.
True enough the music problem was fixed just minutes before the ROM started thanks to my sister who took charge of the situation and found a solution. Shorty got to walk down the aisle with Canon in D. If you forgot what Canon in D sounds like, it sounds just like this.
The version we played was a piano version too.
Right after Shorty walked down the aisle to me, Angela the maid of honour and our emcee for the day started the ceremony with a poem. Then came the vows.
Now just a few weeks before Shorty asked me if we were going to do vows at our ROM. I said it was up to her so she decided that yes we should have vows. So I went back to the office one day and in 30 minutes or so managed to come up with mine. When I told Shorty I had done by vows she started to worry… not knowing how to write hers but I told her since I did it already she wasn’t getting out of it.
Doing vows was a little bit awkward for me. I asked some of the Nuffies how they normally sound like and they told me about this beautiful scene in the movie called “The Vow” where they made this really romantic vow. This is the scene.
I watched it and immediately I thought “Wow… I’m never going to be able to pull that off”.
Shorty and I after all aren’t the most romantic couple. I knew my vows just had to be simple. Not flowery or anything.. but simple.. and perhaps a little silly. Like us.
So I wrote my vows. It was called 8 Promises. This is it.
8 Promises
(Yatsu Yakusoku)
I promise…. that I will only be moderately angry, when you put a Hello Kitty sticker on my car.
(Anata wa watashi no kuruma ni Hello Kitty suti-ka wo hattara, chotto dake okoru youni yakusoku shimasu)
I promise…. that I will never let you stand under the sun… without an umbrella.
(Anata wa zettai kasa nashi de taiyou no shita ni tatasenai youni yakusoku shimasu)
I promise… that I will take you to Japan as often as I can.
(Anata wo yoku nihon ni tsureteiku youni yakusoku shimasu)
I promise… that I will remember how watching you wake up every morning is my favourite moment of each day.
(Anata wa asa okiru toki wo miru no wa ichinichi de ichiban tanoshii koto wo oboeru youni yakusoku shimasu)
I promise… that I will forever remember how you’re the only one who made me feel marriage is not something I should be afraid of, but something I am lucky to have.
(kekkon wa, kowai mono jyanakute, shiawase mono dayo tte, anata wa watashi ni oshieta koto wo zettai wasurenai youni yakusoku shimasu)
I promise…. that I will laugh with you in the good times, and cry with you in the bad.
(Anata to ureshii toki wa isshoni waratte, setsunai toki wa isshoni naku youni yakusoku shimasu)
I promise…. that while I’m not perfect…. I will always strive to be perfect for you as you are perfect for me.
(Watashi ha pa-fecto dewa nai kedo, pa-fecto naru youni yakusoku shimasu. Watashi ni totte anata wa pa-fecto dakara)
I promise…. that I will always be there for you and I will always love you.
(Watashi wa, itsudemo anatano soba ni itte, itsudemo anata wo ai suru youni yakusoku shimasu)
To make it even more silly I got the idea to do it in Japanese. Since Shorty loves everything Japanese. I knew Shorty might understand it since she speaks Japanese… but nobody else would. So for that I got Michelle and Linda to help me come up with some place cards that my best men will hold up whenever I said the vows. After I said each vow my best men would all say a “HAI” and bow. Haha that was their idea! Not mine!
After our vows were done, we did our registration.
While I was about to sign my marriage with Shorty my best men teased “Tim are you sure? There’s no turning back after this”. I just smiled and put pen to paper. Didn’t even hesitate. And then we exchanged our rings.
That is one thing till today I haven’t gotten used to wearing. I find the ring really uncomfortable to wear so I take it off every night before I sleep. Then what happens is when I rush for work the next morning I sometimes forget to put it on. Today Shorty saw it on my nightstand when she woke up so she hid it from me as to teach me a lesson.
Finally we were pronounced husband and wife… and we sealed it with a little kiss.
Just a short kiss… no french tongue thingy or anything like that. We like it simple 🙂
Right after that Shorty did her bouquet toss. I’m proud to say I took this picture myself with my phone. She looked so adorable.
The ROM ended with an early dinner and an opportunity to take loads of pictures with the guests there. Here are some of the pictures that I found on FB.
Here’s Shorty and me with Yuta and Shintaro, our Japanese friends.
Through Shorty I somehow got to know a number of Japanese friends and quite a number of them flew in from Japan just to attend our wedding. Here’s another of Shorty’s friends from Japan. Ayumi.
I apologized to them for my really bad Japanese when doing the vows but Japanese being polite as always said that my Japanese was good (even though it was obviously really bad).
Here’s Shorty and Angela, her maid of honour.
And here’s a picture with Shorty and me with the bridesmaids and best men. The bridesmaids wore matching outfits with different colours but I just told my best men to wear whatever made them feel comfortable for our ROM.
When the bridesmaids first heard about it… they were like “WHAT?!?!”… but they let us off easy. Here’s another picture of the bridesmaids and their dresses from Mary Julian of Jipaban.com.
Shorty and I both had awesome bridesmaids and best men. I kinda learned that day how important it is for a bride to have good bridesmaids.
Good bridesmaids understand how a bride’s wedding is the most important day of her life and how nothing else should matter to the bride that day but her. I learned that Ringo was sick the whole weekend but she never once troubled Shorty with it…. and the things Wendy did for Shorty was amazing. Wendy, Ringo, Suet, Bobo, Hui Wen and Angela… you girls have no idea how you all made Shorty so happy that weekend! Now she wants nothing else but to return the favour.
My best men were all awesome too of course! RAWR!!!
When I stood under the sun they stood with me. When I was really hot during the tea ceremony they went as far as to fan me with paper plates. I felt really taken care of that day and I had so much fun with them around. So I guess when you pick your best men or bridesmaids… don’t just pick people you like. Pick your true friends… the ones that you know will understand how important that day is to you and your other half and will know how to make it all about you… for that one day in your life. Because it is those friends that will make your wedding a wonderful one.
And voila everyone… that was our wonderful ROM and the start to our wedding weekend. When our wedding photographer comes out with more pictures I’ll make it a point to share the official pictures with you guys. Will also find the time to share a post on our wedding dinner and tea ceremony that happened the next day too. Until then… have a good weekend!
If you didn’t catch the video of our ROM yet. You can see it here.
Thanks to my cousin Michelle Tiah for some of the beautiful pictures she took.
PS: Just before I ended this entry I told Shorty who’s sitting right behind me blogging herself. I said “Our wedding was just beautiful”. She agreed. I wish I could go back to it now.
I was going to blog about the wedding weekend we had. Everything from the Registration of Marriage to the tea ceremony and to the wedding dinner. But this was one occasion where I found it so hard to take pictures. So neither me or Shorty had many good pictures of the event. Fortunately we had our wedding photographer do it all but we haven’t got any pictures back from him yet. So we decided to wait till the pictures are out so we can do justice and tell the story of what really happened that weekend.
In the mean time I can share this video that shows a few parts of our registration of marriage and tea ceremony.
It’s done by Crazy Monkey Studios, the people who did the Meme Proposal and one of the most talented video production people I know. I’m blessed to have them film our wedding.
And I thought that perhaps… it was worth sharing my wedding speech with you guys.
Now the speech that you will see below is basically whatever I could recollect that I said. Because while I wrote out a speech beforehand, I didn’t necessarily follow the script precisely. The first half of it at least was kinda taken off the cuff so I’m going to try reconstruct it as best as I can. Perhaps you guys can compare it then to what I really said when a video of the speech comes out.
So here it is:
Before I start on my speech, I have a confession. There is… a significant amount of alcohol in my blood right now. I made a mistake. At first I thought that for the earlier part of the night I should avoid my friends whom I knew would make me drink a lot. So I opted to visit the tables of my father’s friends. What I didn’t realize was that my father’s friends drink even more than my friends. So ladies & gentlemen, forgive me as I give you this speech in a semi-sober state.
I want to start with a conversation I had with my father many many years ago. When I was young, I used to tell my father that I would grow up to do many things. I had many dreams. I dreamt of being a soldier, a postman or even a pilot. One of the dreams I had though was to marry a beautiful girl. My father had a different point of view. He said “Son.. you don’t marry a girl just because she’s beautiful. You marry a girl who can be a good partner for you in the many ups and downs of life”.
After having spent the past 28 years watching my parents and how they lived their marriage, I began to understand. I saw them live their lives through the ups and downs. I saw how my Dad and Mum were there for each other whenever one needed the other, I watched them build their careers together, watched them make money and lose money together… and more importantly I watched them raise a family. In the many times that I would say hurtful things to my father or my mother, I would watch them take turns to console one another. My parents don’t know this… but it is from them that I learned the meaning of marriage. Marriage is not about romance or not just about love. It’s about having someone who will always be there for you through the ups and downs of life… and it’s about finding happiness.
I have imagined this moment all my life. I would be standing here up during my wedding in front of my closest family and friends and giving this very speech. The only part that was missing in my imagination was who the person standing next to me would be. Tonight I see her. And she is beautiful.
Growing up, Audrey and I were taught that we should be perfectionists in everything we do. From our studies, our work and yes… eventually find the perfect somebody and have the perfect wedding to start a perfect marriage.
That didn’t work out. Audrey and I are very far from a perfect couple. She’s short, I’m fat. She’s forgetful, I have a bad temper. She falls sick once every two weeks, and I have recurrent medical problems with my eyes. We annoy each other almost every day… but somehow in the weirdest way that I nor the universe can understand… we make each other happy.
Audrey and I have been together for almost 4 years now and till now each and every day together is like an adventure. Not a day goes by where we don’t make each other laugh or smile. In these 4 years we learn about the good and the bad we have in each other. We learn to treasure the good and embrace the bad…. And that’s why we call each other Fatty and Shorty.
We are one of the most imperfect couples out here… but we think we’re perfect for each other. So that’s why we’re all here today. To celebrate the wedding of an imperfect couple that is perfect for one another.
When I look back in life, so many things had come together to bring us to where we are today. I owe a great deal to my father and mother who have been to me the best parents any boy on this Earth could ever want. My Dad taught me how its okay to make mistakes in life, but to never let the mistakes keep you down. My Mom taught me to be kind and forgiving to others. Together they taught me to be humble in whatever I do.
In raising me, my parents never asked that I score straight As or have a successful career or make a lot of money. Their only wish was that I grow up, to be a good person. Mom and Dad, I hope that after 28 years of my life, I am as good a person as you want me to be. I promise to care and love you both for the rest of my life.
From today on I no longer have just 2 parents. I am blessed enough to have 4. Aunty Joyce and Uncle Ooi, it is for the first time now that I will call you Dad and Mom. You have both done an amazing job raising Audrey and I can only wish that I will be able to raise my future daughter as well as you have raised Audrey. I know how precious Audrey is to you both so thank you for trusting Audrey with me. I promise that for as long as my heart beats, I will take care of her.
My last thanks tonight goes to our siblings. To my brothers Kong and Liang, my sister Li, thank you for always being around and for putting up with me. There are no better siblings to grow up with than the 3 of you.
To my brother-in-law Barry… I know we started off like oil and water, but thank you for opening up yourself to me.
To my dear wife Audrey: Today is the end of our courtship but the beginning of a new adventure. Yes just like any adventure, it will have ups and downs. But from now on we will always have each other to laugh together in the good times and cry together in the bad. What matters is that I love you and I know that we will make each other happy.
As of a few hours ago, I am officially a married man. Shorty and I had our registration of marriage ceremony where we exchanged vows said our “I Dos”.
I’m so tired now after a long day and I have to go to bed now because tomorrow I have an early start and a full day. Starting with the tea ceremony in the morning and all the way to the wedding dinner at night.
So I don’t have the time to write much now but I just wanted to let you guys know as soon as possible that yes… Shorty and I are now legally man and wife.
Will blog more about the wedding when I have more time once this is over.
Let me end this post with a photo taken by one of the Nuffies of Shorty and I sharing a kiss over a sunset.
Have a good weekend everyone. I know mine will be an eventful one 🙂
Yes… lack of updates but I can explain! Hasan just came down to KL a few days ago so I’ve been spending most of my time taking him around over the weekend. Then yesterday I had to clear up loads of work in the office because today onwards I’m going back to Penang to help prepare for our wedding this weekend.
So here’s a picture of Shorty and me just before we start on our trip back to Penang. See you guys on the other side!
Timothy Tiah – Co-Founder of Colony, Kuala Lumpur Co-Working Space
She accepted it for a couple of weeks but not long after she decided to take matters into her own hands. She went into my closet and after 45 minutes of rummaging through my clothes she set aside a small pile of my t-shirts and jeans. She went on to say “Okay… this small pile here is what you’re allowed to wear from now on… get rid of everything else”.
Timothy Tiah – Co-Founder of Colony, Kuala Lumpur Co-Working Space