This week has been a really busy week for me. Apart from the usual work stuff, Shorty and I had to drive back to Penang somewhere in the middle of the week for a short couple of days. The agenda: For us to do our registration of marriage application.

That’s right… I never knew this but apparently before you get married, you have to apply, put your picture on a wall at the registrar for 3 weeks, in case either one of us has been married before. The process for us was extra complicated because we wanted to do our registration of marriage at home rather than at a town hall or at the registrar itself.

It took us almost the entire day to do our application for marriage… but it’s finally done! And now Shorty and I are ready to get officially married in a month’s time.

We spent the rest of our trip meeting our wedding planner at the wedding venue to work out the details of our wedding dinner. This is where our wedding dinner is going to be next month.

Then we drove back early yesterday morning to make it in time for a talk I was giving at the Malaysian Achievement Summit. Right after, Shorty lobbied to go to see the pet fair in Midvalley. You see, for the past few months… Shorty (whom I sometimes call my pet Shorty) has been thinking about getting a dog. She came up to me one day and said “The pet wants a pet”.

We don’t know a lot about having a dog. Like we don’t know if our apartment allows pets or even what type we want… but all we know is that given the size of our apartment, we can’t have one of those big dogs. Only one of those small ones. So Shorty heard about this pet fair going on in Midvalley and asked that I brought her there. We went there, paid RM5 each and was a bit disappointed because there seemed to be more things there for current pet owners rather than for potential pet owners. There were some… but not a lot of dogs for sale.

She did get to play with a few puppies though. Shorty doesn’t like cute dogs though. She likes BIG dogs… like a labrador or bigger. Ones that she says she can simply put a saddle on and ride into the sunset.

I’m not huge on dogs though. I’ve already got my new pet. My pet Beast.

Yesterday I completed my gaming PC with a Razr headset.

My beast… is now all complete.

Now the one other thing we did this week while we were in Penang was to go for a durian party. Every year we go for this same durian party and have this awesome durian. It is every year also that I see this uncle open durian like it hardly takes any effort. You see… when I grew up my family used to have loads of durian. My Dad would bring a few into the kitchen, bring out a cleaver and whack the durian repeatedly with it in order to get it open.
This uncle though opened the durian in the most gentle manner possible. I decided to take a video of it this year.

Ladies & Gentlemen… this… is how you open a durian… like a boss.

This post is sponsored by LG but the stories and my opinions are real.

I have two TVs at home. One in my living room and one in my bedroom. The one in my living room is a 47 inch LCD Full HD one that is way underutilized… because it was only much later that I realized that I would hardly have the time to sit and watch TV in my living room.

The one in my bedroom however is the one I use almost every day.

It’s a smaller LED one. And I love it!

Both my TVs though.. are LG.

The thing about TVs though is that I think it’s the kind of thing that you buy once and you use for 20 years. At Shorty’s parents house, her mum still uses the same TV she uses every day for the past 20 years. Yes it’s one of the boxy ones, it doesn’t have Full HD or even Half HD for that matter but it works.

So I thought that these two TVs were going to last me at least until my firstborn child goes to university.

I was wrong.

Last week LG invited me and some Nuffnang bloggers for a preview of its latest 3D TVs. Here’s me with some of the Nuffies there.

With my white 3D glasses on.

Yeah to be honest when 3D TVs first came out, I was less than excited because of three reasons:

1) You need to wear these battery powered glasses.
2) How many DVDs are 3D anyway?
3) How good can the 3D effects be anyway? I’ve watched many 3D movies in the cinema and I was less than impressed.

But seeing the new LG 3D TVs in real life changed my perception:

1) I learned that the new LG ones don’t need battery powered glasses. Just the usual plastic ones you wear in the cinema. Except that I found these ones more comfortable than the ones in the cinema.
2) It comes with a converter where you can convert ANY DVDs you want to 3D. Of course if the movie isn’t shot in 3D you won’t necessarily see an apple flying out of the screen at you.
3) The effects… were amazing. I was VERY surprised. I was watching this Korean music video with what I thought was Hyuna in it (only to realize I was wrong and that she was another Korean pop star), and I could literally feel her coming out of the screen at me.

That is a feeling that I hardly get even from watching 3D in the cinemas. Now when I think about 3D there, the best experience I’ve had was in Disneyland. Where they had some magical Mickey show that was in 3D (or actually that one is 4D since they had smell and sprayed water at you).

Then there is our regular 3D in the cinemas that we go to sometimes. The 3D experience with the new LG 3D TV is kinda somewhere in between these two for me. And that’s a surprise to me because I would think that it would be less greater than even in the cinema.

Convinced that it made a good 3D experience, I went on to see if the other things that would matter to me if I had a TV.

The colours were great. The borders around the TV were minimal, really maximizing the screen. Then being a geek I went to check out how thin the TV is. And this is how thin it is.

Yes the truth is that I’ve seen perhaps one or two other TVs that were thinner but I felt that this was all I needed.

So yes I was convinced. This TV would be worth the upgrade or worth the buy even from my current LG LED TV in my bedroom. But of course the rationale side of me took over. On how I already had 2 good TVs and how I’m already spending loads of money on the wedding and so this year I should save on such luxuries.

Thinking about the sad reality of how I had to budget and not simply buy whatever I want while standing amongst all these cutting edge TVs waiting to be brought home made me sad. So I spent the rest of my night distracting myself.

Taking loads of pictures with the other bloggers and Nuffies that were there.

Here’s Jamie and Rachel.

Cindy and Vivy. Vivy who is getting married soon!

Jane, Ashley and a guy who I could tell was her bf by the same hair colour she had.

Me and Edhir!

Have I ever blogged about Edhir?

I first met him some few years ago when he was with an agency Nuffnang and ChurpChurp works really closely with. We started off talking on very business terms then after a while I started seeing him at all the parties, concerts and ANY other cool events that happen all around town.

Edhir is one of the most happening people I know in KL. Go to any concert and look out for him. If you see him say “HAI EDHIR!!!”. Note that he normally doesn’t wear those white 3D glasses around.

There were loads of things going on that night. Apart from watching Korean pop stars in 3D and watching them reach out to you from inside the TV, you could play Kinect games.

Or get involved in the blogger activities that were organized by the Andrew who was emcee for the night.

All in all, it was an awesome night. The Nuffnangers are as always… a fun bunch.

Thanks LG for the wonderful night… (and for reminding me how I probably won’t last 20 years before buying a new TV).

Christina Perri was in KL for a concert last Thursday. At first, Shorty and I weren’t sure if we were going to go because I’ve been traveling a lot and I wasn’t even sure if I’m going to be around that date. Then just a week before, Celcom came and afford us both a pair of tickets for the concert and the meet and greet. Fortunately it turned out I was going to be in KL too on that date so we decided to go.

On the day, Shorty and I joined a long queue of fans at the meet and greet. Then group by group we got our chance to meet her. When she first saw Shorty and I, she gave us a hug and then got us to take a picture with another group. She didn’t recognize us from the meme proposal, something Shorty and I kinda guessed would happen.

Then as Shorty and I were walking away, Mimi went up to Christina Perri and said “Hey do you know the meme proposal?”

Christina Perri replied “Of course!” which was then followed by Mimi pointing at me and Shorty walking away shouting “THAT’S MY BOSS!!!”.

Christina Perri waved for us to come back and said something to us. I mean something because… to be honest, I was still star struck at that moment that I kinda felt as if my soul lifted up from my body and I was just watching everything from the air. I can’t remember what Christina Perri said to me or even what I said back… all that was running through my head was “I’M TALKING TO CHRISTINA PERRI?!!?”.

Fortunately Mimi took a video of the encounter so you can see what she really said to us then.

Christina Perri then asked us if we would mind going up on stage when she sang “A Thousand Years” at the concert. She said she wanted to sing it for us and asked us if it would be ok. We said sure and acted calm and all (but inside we were like jumping for joy already).

Then the concert came. Shorty and I stood amongst the crowd for most of the concert, enjoying her performance. In real life, Chrisitna Perri is really pretty, pictures don’t do justice. She has a beautiful voice… and she’s really nice too. No diva air about her or anything like that. When  our cue came to go up on stage, her assistant ushered us through the back stage and this is what happened next.

I whipped out my phone camera and took this picture while I was sitting on stage with Shorty.

It was a blur photo.. but that was one of the most incredible moments in my life.

Christina Perri has given us two things now.

First, she gave us the wonderful song that we used for our meme proposal.

And now… she has given us an out of this world experience that night… when she called us up on stage to sing “A Thousand Years”. It was awesome!

Special thanks to Celcom/XPAX for the tickets or this moment would never have happened. Another special thanks to Mimi… for doing what Shorty and I would never dare to do.

I turned 28 yesterday. In previous years, whenever I turn a year older I would do a blog entry to recap everything I did in the past year. This year though when I look back at what I’ve done… I realize that I’ve done a lot from a business point of view. But on a personal point of view… I haven’t actually done much.

I think that’s something a lot of us forget sometimes. We’re too busy working in our lives trying to achieve our career dreams that we forget about what we really want in life.

This is the one thing I learned from Richard Garriott, the very successful entrepreneur who invented games like Ultima back in the 90s. That life is about acquiring new experiences and money… is an enabler of that. For example, lots of us want to travel. Traveling is an experience and money enables that. For me though I guess I travel so much for work the experiences I look for are a little different. Sometimes a little bit dangerous… like what Shorty gave me for my birthday yesterday.

As we were walking down to my car at 10AM, I asked her “Where we going?”. She refused to tell me. Instead she said “I drive”.

So for the whole 30 minute car ride I kept trying to guess where she was taking me to but she refused to tell me anything except for “It’s something that you would never buy yourself”. When we reached this road though… I kinda realized what I was going for.

If you don’t recognize that road, it’s the road to Subang airport. One of the things I always said I wanted to do was a “Pilot for a day” program where they would train you a little bit about how to fly a plane and let you actually fly one (with a qualified pilot sitting next to you doing the take-off, landing and all the hard stuff). I just never did it because I wanted to save money this year. You know… since we’re getting married and all.

When I first realized what we were going for I got really excited. Then the reality sunk in a little as I imagined myself flying a small propeller plane. Then fear began to sink in… both for my safety and both for the lecture I was going to get from my parents for doing “dangerous” things like this. This was something I would never do years ago… but I don’t know. As I get older and do more and more things in life, I find myself wanting to do more things that I had never done before. So my curiousity got the better of me… and I went for it… (and decided not to tell my parents about it until after I landed).

After meeting the pilot and going through a briefing about how a plane works and all, we went to our plane which was a small 2-seater propeller plane.

The pilot then taught me how to do some routine checks to make sure that everything was okay… before we flew. Then we all got into the cockpit (with Shorty sitting behind). In front of me was all these dials.

The pilot ran through everything with me. How to read each dial, how to control the plane and everything. The dashboard for the dials and control was so big that all I could really see from the cockpit was this.

Then he turned on the plane engine and asked me to taxi the plane on the runway. When the plane is on the ground, the steering doesn’t work. The way to taxi it to the runway is by using the rudder which is controlled by two foot pedals below. I brought the plane to the runway (with his help to make sure I didn’t veer off into the grass or something) and he did the take-off.

Oh yeah forgot to mention that. The pilot before told me that he would do everything for the take-off and landing… because those are the hard parts that you need a trained pilot to do. So I asked him what almost anybody would have asked him

“What if we’re up in the air and you get a heart attack or you pass out or something. How do we land?”.

He laughed and said “Okok fair question!”. Then he went on to explain that I can just radio to the control tower and ask them for help on how to land the plane. He also said not to worry… that if anything happened to the plane in mid-air, we can land either on the highways OR on any of the many golf courses we have in Klang Valley.

So off we went. Our plane took off and once we were 1000ft in the air, the pilot let me take control of the plane. I could bank, turn here and there, pull up or down… but for most of it I was awed by the view of KL I had never in my life seen before.

In one view we could see KLCC all the way to the Curve. We could see all the places that we were so familiar with, places that we hung out at during weekends, the offices we worked in. Everything looked so small from up there. It gave me an odd feeling that KL isn’t really as big as I thought it was… and like I was living the past few years of my life in this little “Polly Pocket”.

Here are the few things I learned about flying:

1) There is a lot of air traffic above us in the city that we don’t realize. When we were up in the air we had to constantly keep in touch with the control tower that will coordinate the air traffic. So if a helicopter was flying in our area they would tell us to fly higher and the helicopter to fly lower or vice versa.

2) The pilot’s job is as much out of the plane as it is in the plane. What I mean is that before a flight, they have to prepare lots of things. They can’t just get into a plane now and fly anywhere they want. They have to submit a flight plan to the control tower to tell the control tower where they will be flying to and around what time and they have to stick to it. They can’t turn back. We flew around the Petronas Twin Towers twice and then I asked the pilot if we could make one more round and he said we can’t… because it wasn’t in his flight plan.

3) The small plane I was flying would fly around 1,500 feet. The passenger jets that we fly like Air Asia or MAS on the other hand fly at 30,000 feet. They fly higher because up there there is less density so the plane needs to burn less fuel ie it’s more economical. They fly higher also so that the pilots have more time to react if anything happens.

We flew around for an hour. With Shorty in the back seat with this camera on her cap… so that she could record the experience.

But by the end of the hour, Shorty was starting to feel a bit air sick so we flew back to Subang and the pilot to us in for a really nice landing. Right after I landed I gave my mum a call and told her what I did. As expected, both Mum and Dad were not pleased. Told me how I shouldn’t do dangerous things like that and that as I grow older I will learn how to value life more etc etc. I thought that well… if there was any point in my life that I would do something like that. It would be now.

Nevertheless, it was an awesome experience, being able to fly a plane. I tweeted about it and some of my followers on Twitter actually said they saw my plane flying around Bandar Utama at around lunch time… which was when I was in the air. Small world indeed!

After the experience we were all so excited we just went back home and took a nap. Then Shorty had planned a surprise dinner for me with some Nuffies and close friends. Birthdays are all about spending it with people who matter to you.

 

Thanks for the wonderful birthday Shorty and friends! It feels old to be 28… but it’s nice to know I have another experience to start my 28th year on Earth with.

Next experience for the year … getting married.

Shorty and I have been having these conversations lately. You see, Shorty is really into English medieval history. She loves reading novels and history about how England was in the 1000s-1500s. All the kings, queens, castles, civil wars… the french. Etc etc.

When we were in London last year, when we were not going around making bad imitations of posters on the street,

we visited some historical sites like the The Tower of London which turned out to be her favourite attraction.

Because in all the history and novels, the Tower of London was often mentioned as the place for the King to stay, and a prison for noble prisoners. It seems like those were difficult times to be an average commoner then.

I mean in modern times, the average “commoner” or citizen like you and me, gets to:

1) Buy clothes, cars, gadgets

2) Go for holidays

3) Go to work but as much as some of us might not like our jobs, it’s not like planting paddy in the field all day.

4) Watch movies, go on holidays…

5) Get married… have kids…

and you know… have a good life.

The commoner in those medieval times has to:

1) Plant and grow their own food. Or starve.

2) Get drafted to fight wars not necessarily for your country but just to help your warlord/king overthrow another warlord/king. (Shorty: but they get rewarded quite handsomely! or even knighted)

3) Risk getting wrongly accused of treason and get beheaded without trial or even necessary evidence.

4) You can get married at any time but if the King likes your wife he can take her away from you any time and make her one of his many mistresses.

5) There weren’t restaurants to eat out at the time. Just taverns maybe to go drink but not everyone even gets to go for that.

Sounds like a really crap time to be a citizen of the Earth if you ask me. Of course perhaps for the people then it was a way of life. It’s not like they experienced how lucky our modern lives here are and then go back in time to live in those times. They don’t really have anything to compare it to.

So at the Tower of London I was telling Shorty that if I ever lived in those times, I hoped to be King or something.

 She looked at me though and said “Are you sure?”

She explained that the English Kings of those times live a good life… yes but they often lived a life of paranoia. Paranoia that someone is trying to overthrow them and wrest their power from them, be it their cousin or even their own brother or sister. And when another King overthrows you, they don’t normally just overthrow you and say “Yo ex-King, here’s some money, go live your life elsewhere”. Like in the movies, they throw you in a dungeon somewhere to live the rest of your life… or more often than not, they just go “OFF WITH HIS HEAD!!!”.

So living the life as a King is like living a life where every day you have to worry about someone trying to poison your food, or wage war on you to overthrow you. It’s like living a life knowing that people are trying to kill you, but you don’t know who and you don’t know when. Suddenly being a King doesn’t sound so cool after all.

So… in Medieval England would you guys rather be King? Or a Peasant?

———————-

PS: If you’d like to know more about life as a peasant in those times, read this article.

Pay special attention to this part.

“Peasants lived in cruck houses. These had a wooden frame onto which was plastered wattle and daub. This was a mixture of mud, straw and manure. The straw added insulation to the wall while the manure was considered good for binding the whole mixture together and giving it strength. The mixture was left to dry in the sun and formed what was a strong building material.”

Basically if you were a peasant, you would be living in a house that is made of shit. Animal shit to be specific. Peasants can’t seem to catch a break here!

Ladies and Gentlemen….  Meet… The Beast.

The beast is the result of one angry Saturday morning of constantly getting disconnecting from Diablo 3.

You see I’ve always wanted to have one super powerful gaming PC even as a student. But my parents made sure not to spoil me with one. So most of the computers I had growing up were hand-me-downs from my elder brothers. Then when I joined the work force and started earning money I had the means to buy my own gaming PC. I decided to fulfill my dream when Starcraft 2 first came out a couple of years ago.

I excitedly went over to a computer store in Low Yat and stood in front of the counter. When the sales person came over to attend to me I loudly pronounced

“Okay! I want the best most powerful gaming PC you can think of. Money is no object!”

He then pulled out a spec sheet and started showing me all the parts he would put in the computer. The total quote came up to something like RM8K or so. A bit intimidated by the price I said

“Haha.. uhh.. uhh… actually money is object ah.”.

So I settled on buying a much cheaper version that cost about RM3.8K in total. Good enough to play Starcraft 2… but with medium settings.

Over the next two years though I started seeing a lot of the gaming PCs my friends had. They would spend RM7-8K on a gaming PC. An amount I thought was obscene. So one day I asked one of them how they could justify buying such an expensive PC. They said that buying a gaming PC was actually a much cheaper investment than going out. They worked out the math. Say you spend RM8K on a gaming PC which would typically last at least 3 years. If you play it every day (which many people do), then it would cost you about RM222 a month. Or RM7.4 a day. You would spend a lot more if you went out instead of play games at home (of course they didn’t account for the cost of games but that typically isn’t too outrageous). Doesn’t this argument sound familiar? Breaking down the cost to a day? That’s how your insurance agent sold you your insurance right?
“Can’t you afford RM3 a day just to make sure your medical bills are taken care of if anything happens to you?” 

Haha nevertheless, I was sold on the idea of buying a good expensive gaming PC then but not many people could understand that. One of my friends who has been working for many years bought his for about RM7K but he told his mum he only got it for RM3K (eventhough he spent his own hard earned money on that). He told me that even at RM3K his mum gave him a bit of a lecture for spending money on that.

So yeah I decided that the next time I bought a new computer I would make sure I got a good one. But I had no excuse to. My 2 year old PC I bought before was still working just fine and this year is a year of saving money for me. Already I’ve had to spend so much on our wedding stuff so far this year.

Then last Saturday morning came and I got so frustrated with how my game kept crashing (Googled the reason and found out that it was because of my graphics card), that I just decided to go to Low Yat in the afternoon to buy a new gaming PC. Hence… the beast.

The inside of the beast is a monster. Whenever it’s running I hear its roars like I have a nuclear reactor in my computer room.

I got almost the best specs in everything. I say “almost”… because maxing out the specs from what I already have would probably cost way too much more. When people ask me how much I spent on The Beast… I try to forget. Because yes it was a heavy investment on my end but I’m enjoying every bit of it.

I even went all the way and bought a special Razor mouse and keyboard.

Now… as Razor very well puts in… I am imba

For the past few months, Ming has been thinking hard about what kind of wedding gift to buy me and Shorty. I told him to get me a blender or something but he took that as an insult. He said as my business partner he wanted to give me something more meaningful. So one day he had the idea to buy Shorty and me a piece of art. Our first piece of art at least.

He knew that Shorty and I are into an artist called Coplu. So he got the gallery to send us a catalog and got us to pick one. In the end we both fell in love with one of the pieces and chose it. Yesterday it got delivered to our apartment.

This is Shorty admiring it.

.

This piece is called “Almost there”. It’s portrays the husband and wife working together (the husband rowing and the wife reaching for the ladder) to get to a goal. How I interpreted it on a personal level was that Shorty and I are about to start our married lives. We are about to face lots of struggles or married life or the rest of our lives together and this painting is a reminder to us that as hard as we try… push a little bit more. Because we’re “Almost there”.

I have never really learned to appreciate art. But this is one piece… that I can relate to. And thanks to Ming…. we have it.

So a few weeks ago I posted that this was a picture of me and Shorty’s wedding invitation card.

It was going to be an UP-Themed wedding hence the balloons and all. We were happy and we were all settled with the design. Then somebody actually pointed out something. That is actually looked more like a birthday invitation card than a wedding invitation card.

So Shorty went back to the drawing board with our designer Chee Ching. Shorty… being as creative as she always is came up with the idea that maybe our invitation card should be in the form of a plane ticket or a boarding pass. Since UP is about adventure and you know, getting married to each other is like embarking on a whole new adventure for us.

The idea was that the boarding pass would be placed inside a typical old-school “Air Mail” envelope that looked like this.

 

And inside… the boarding passes (invites) to our wedding.

Below is how our wedding invitation card looks like now:

This is the front.

 

and this is the back.

I gotta say that I’m really proud of Shorty so far when it comes to the wedding preparations. When she asked me what our budget was for the wedding, I gave her a figure that I thought was generous. While one might expect her to spare no expense considering that we only get married once, she actually has been really prudent. Shorty never looked at that figure as a target but actually tried to save in whatever areas that she could but still putting together a beautiful wedding.

This card is a perfect example of that. When we looked at wedding card vendors outside they typically cost something like RM5 per card. She made our wedding invitation card for less than one third of the price at RM1.50 each. And it’s perfect for us.

I think it means a lot to have a beautiful wedding and to be willing to spend on that beautiful occasion. What I have learned to appreciate even more is the opportunity to watch how my future wife spends my money at our wedding. For it gives me an indication on how she will likely spend wisely in the rest of our lives.

Did any of you guys manage to catch this article on Rage that came out on Friday?

They interviewed some entrepreneurs in Malaysia including the guy who brought in the Cha Time franchise into Malaysia. In which Shorty just realized was actually her college mate or something.

Anyway here’s the short interview they did with me 🙂

The photo of me here actually came from our wedding photo shoot. I was too lazy to actually take a proper studio profile picture of myself so I got them to do one at the wedding shoot .

Have a good Sunday everyone!

Two weeks ago I told my Dad that I was going to subscribe to the Facebook IPO that’s happening tomorrow. My Dad was very against it. He had his reasons. My Dad is a very seasoned investor that looked at the fundamentals of any company he invests in to determine if they are worth the money at that price. Facebook’s valuation by his measure was CRAZY.

I thought I understood more than him though. That it’s not what Facebook is today but what it will be in the next 2 years that is what people are betting on. Still my Dad didn’t relent. He sent me reports from various investment banks that mark Facebook as a very risky stock to invest in. Of Analyst reports that in all honest truth you don’t really need because every other website/blog out there is talking about Facebook and doing the homework for you on whether it’s worth it.

In the end, I decided to listen to my Dad and sit this one out for now. I won’t be surprised if Facebook’s share price soared in the first day of its IPO, even if institutional investors are saying that it’s not a good buy. Yes there is lots of skepticism out there about it. Whether they will be able to make money from its mobile users, that their growth is slowing, that advertisers find their ads ineffective. All these kind of things about how their growth is slowing and even things about how the Class A shares being sold to public only account for less than 4% of the company’s voting rights.

What I do think though that I think some analysts are missing is that Facebook will potentially be even bigger in future not purely as an advertising business. When I was at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco and watched Mark Zuckerberg talk, he talked about how his vision is to build an economy within Facebook where people could develop apps and run businesses ON Facebook. Just like how Zynga makes loads of money from its Facebook games. Once this economy is there, all they have to do is tax it just like how they “tax” Zynga. If they’re successful in doing that, Facebook will do something even Google hasn’t been able to do yet: To get their core revenue from another source apart from advertising.

Then… Facebook could potentially be worth many times more than its IPO valuation. So while I’m sitting the IPO out, I might look into buying into it in future 🙂