Last Friday we had one of the biggest Nuffnang events ever. The kind of event that we have only once every 2 years. It was the Nuffnang Asia-Pacific Blog Awards 2011. The Awards is meant to be the Oscars for Bloggers in Asia-Pacific, to honour the best of the blogosphere. We had 550 bloggers from 10 countries flying in to attend it: Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, Australia, Thailand, Hong Kong, China, Brunei and even as far as Japan.

 

This is the hall before all the bloggers arrived. All prepared.

To tell the story about Napbas, let me share with you a snippet from the booklet we gave out that night. A message from Ming and Me to all the bloggers there.

Months before Nuffnang started back in 2007, we attended one of the early blogger gatherings in KL. Some 50 or so bloggers met up at a restaurant called Wizard World, a huge number in those early days of the blogosphere. The organizers were two passionate bloggers: Jolene and Yee Hou.

The event was a huge success but at the end of it, some bloggers had mistakenly left without paying for their own food. Jolene and Yee Hou who put in the effort to organize the gathering now found themselves a huge bill to settle. We offered to help cover the cost but they refused and managed to settle it on their own.

That incident changed the course of Nuffnang altogether. Initially planned to be just a Blog Advertising Network, we decided that we wanted Nuffnang to do more than just help bloggers earn from their blogs. Following that, Nuffnang started down the path of establishing a community instead. Our mission was to build and support the ecosystem in which the blogosphere exists in through various initiatives. In helping bloggers meet other bloggers, in finding talented bloggers and promoting them to the world and in creating opportunities for bloggers that never before existed.
Four years on, Nuffnang has changed the blogosphere in a way that surprises even us even today. No longer are brands and advertisers doubtful of the power of bloggers. They now embrace it. Almost every consumer brand out there today now has blogger engagement as part of its media or PR plan. Credibility of bloggers has also grown. Bloggers today are seen as independent journalists and are regularly invited whenever companies today launch a new product or initiative.

Top bloggers who used to earn a little bit of pocket money in the pre-Nuffnang days now earn enough to make blogging their full-time jobs. Some even going as far as to start new companies to house all their blogging income.

Then there is the social part of the blogosphere. Nuffnang has brought bloggers together not just locally but internationally. It all started with the Nuffnang-Chipster Pajama Party back in 2007 – Our first cross-border event that brought Malaysian and Singaporean bloggers together. Since then Nuffnang has expanded its wings to many other countries in Asia-Pacific. As Nuffnang’s reach grew geographically, so did opportunities for Singaporean Nuffnangers to meet Filipino Nuffnangers or Malaysian Nuffnangers to meet their Australian counterparts.

Today Nuffnang is home to over 1,000,000 bloggers throughout Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Philippines, Australia, Hong Kong and China. Each of these countries have a local Nuffnang team that actively seeks to support the local blogosphere. From providing advertising income to bringing bloggers new experiences through sponsored trips or even to allow bloggers to meet other bloggers.

The size and power of the Nuffnang community in Asia-Pacific today gives us one important asset: A blogging community of powerful content creators who actively create thousands of new articles that are read by millions each day.

The Nuffnang-Asia Pacific Blog Awards was created two years ago to honour the Best of Asia-Pacific’s bloggers. The inaugural event was held in Singapore and involved 400 bloggers from four countries: Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines and Australia.

This year’s Nuffnang Asia-Pacific Blog Awards though is a far larger event. Look around the room and you will see 550 bloggers not just from Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, Australia but also bloggers who have flown in from Thailand, Hong Kong, China and Indonesia. Tonight… great bloggers will be recognized, new cross-border friendships will be made but most importantly, we will all celebrate the phenomenon of blogging.

Let me bring you through the rest of the night in pictures.

The VW cars that were parked outside after bringing in a group of Malaysian bloggers in for the Awards.

Me with Jinn from Hitz.fm. His blog was a finalist in the category of the “Best Entertainment Blog”.

He just started blogging not too long ago so he didn’t expect to even make it to the finals but check out his blog and you’ll know why he got in. It’s amazing!

Me with Hui Wen, Ginny , Vivien Sam.

 

Me, Shorty and Fayth at the event.

Me, Shorty and Hanis who was a finalist in the “Most Influential Blog” category. She is one of the Top 10 people searched by Google in Malaysia for 2010 and 2011 so it’s no surprise she’s in there.

Bobo and me.

 

Harith Iskandar who gave a show that night. He was HILARIOUS!

Shorty and I are huge fans of our local stand-up comedy scene but up till that day we’ve never had chance to meet Harith. So when we saw him that night, we rushed for an opportunity to get a picture with him.

 

Me with Pang Kirari who is one of the top female bloggers in Thailand.

 

Me with the finalists from the Philippines.  The Philippines contingent took home 4 of the 14 awards that night. Huge!

 

Philippines is tied with Malaysia for the most number of awards won that night. Both countries won 4 each.

Eric, our partner in Nuffnang Philippines with me and fellow Nuffie Tim2.

Our partners for Hong Kong and Australia. Kingston and David Lee.

 

Picture with the Nuffie girls before they started work that night. They looked gorgeous!

Rina and Anne who were really busy the whole weekend too.

And here’s Angeline and Rina. I sit next to the both of them in the office.

Our Nuffies manning the registration table. Registration was separated by the countries the bloggers came from.

Outside the ballroom in the cocktail area where bloggers gathered before the dinner, we had a gallery of all the finalists that night.

We had two bloggers from Indonesia too. They came not knowing anyone but by the end of the weekend they were like best friends with some of the bloggers there from Singapore and Japan.

 

Ming and I started with a speech that night on Nuffnang and how far we’ve come.

Me presenting the Award for the Region’s Best Blog to Xiaxue.

She cried. She didn’t win Best Lifestyle Blog earlier in the night and she thought she wasn’t going to win anything. She ended up winning two awards that night. Region’s Best Blog and The Most Influential Blog.

David Lee after presenting the award for the Best Geek Blog to Geekout from the Philippines.

One of the finalists from Australia that night came with this cute outfit with a dinosaur like tail. She got a lot of attention!

Me with Joyce and Linora from Red.FM.

A picture of all of us and the finalists that night.

Ringo and Kenny. Ringo won Best Fashion Blog and Kenny won Best Micro Blog.

Kingston and Jenni Epperson who won the Best Lifestyle Blog.

Reshmonu performed that night on stage too.

The Nuffnang Asia-Pacific Blog Awards booklet that we gave out that night.

Hui Wen and Bobo just walking into the hall.

It was a totally awesome night and I have to thank the sponsors who made it possible. VW, XPAX, Olympus, Air Asia and Putrajaya Marriott who made it all possible. And 76style for the hair 🙂

If you’d like to see more pictures of the awards click here.

If you’d like to see who won what click here.

And here’s a picture of Shorty and I at the Awards.

It was a wonderful night. Stressful at first with some glitches along the way but overall we enjoyed the night. We hoped you did too 🙂

When Shorty and I first decided to blog about our little proposal, we knew we were going fairly public about it. We didn’t expect what happened next.

One night we realized that somebody had posted it on 9GAG and it was trending. The next morning, it made it to the front page of 9GAG where all the “HOT” posts are.

 

The title: “Meme usage in Malaysia“. There was no mention of my name but Shorty’s name in the signs wasn’t properly blurred out. So the whole world saw it.

After that we saw these pictures posted on Facebook walls or Twitter streams all over the world from as far as Russia. The honest truth was that our very first feeling… was a bit of fear. Being bloggers for years we’ve come to terms with something… that if you’re going to post something online, you’re going to get good comments and you’re going to get bad ones from trolls. So we didn’t dare to read any of the comments on the 9GAG post. Later on in the day though I decided to just do it. So I went through all the comments on our entry and I was surprised. Sure there were bad ones… but the good ones overwhelmed the bad ones. So I told Shorty that it was safe to go have a read and she had a good time reading it all.

Today the post on 9GAG has been tweeted 354 times, Facebook Shared 2,982 times and Liked 1,000 times.

It has 586 comments on it.

There were some mean ones like these.

And quite a number of comments saying commenting on my “lady hands” holding the sign up… HAHA

And there were also comments about how I had used some of the memes wrongly.

That it should’ve been “FLY, YOU FOOLS” not “RUN, YOU FOOLS”.

But among that were also some really wonderful comments. And here they are.

So thank you for all the nice comments everyone. They lit up my day.

 

On the 30th of November I asked Shorty to marry me. It was a surprise I had been planning for months. A surprise that only a couple of her close friends knew about: Angela and Ringo. And the only reason why I had to let them in on the secret was so that they could help me secretly find out Shorty’s ring size. Leading up to the actual proposal I was thinking really hard for ideas. My Dad never understood it though. He always thought proposals should be simple… just ask a question over dinner or something and that’s enough. When I told him how I wanted to do a surprise and do something a little special, he shook his head and said “Young people these days…”.

I thought really hard about how to propose. Even watched like a hundred YouTube videos to see how other people did it. There were the really simple ones like this… (that ended up failing).

And really elaborate ones like this.

First I had to think of a place. Some of my friends did it while on holiday, at a beach resort or even at the Eiffel Tower in Paris. But I decided against it. I thought that since Shorty and I met in KL and have spent most of our relationship in KL…. I should propose to her in KL. Plus I think we’re simple. We’re not very romantic to each other and we both like simple things. One thing we both love doing though… is making each other laugh. So whatever proposal I did had to at least try… to make her laugh.

One day I was discussing proposal ideas with Angela and she gave me an idea. She said since Audrey loves all these meme or 9Gag/Reddit kind of stuff, maybe I should give her a picture of the Y U NO GUY that said something like this.

That gave me an idea. It’s true. Shorty and I both love all these memes. So I thought that instead of just having one picture, maybe I’ll tell a story with her favourite memes. I quickly put a plan together for the 30th of November.

The Day Came

On the 30th of November I got Tze, Jam and Ringo to ask Shorty out for dinner at Neroteca; a restaurant we frequent a lot. I wasn’t supposed to go for the dinner. I told her that I had plans with my other friends, Thean and Wilson. So while she was on the way to the restaurant, I was waiting at home with my friends.

I had never been so nervous before. I had done all sorts of things. I’ve given speeches to hundreds of people and been on many TV interviews and all those things never got me nervous anymore. The thought of proposing to Shorty though… made my heart beat so fast I thought it was going to burst out of my chest. It wasn’t because I was afraid she would say “NO”. I mean I was fairly confident she would say “YES”. But perhaps I knew this was something I was only going to be able to do once in my life… so I had to do it well.

Once Shorty sat down at the restaurant table, Ringo WhatsApped me to tell me that she was there. My friends and I left for the restaurant quickly. When we got there, the camera crew I had engaged to record this memory was waiting for me. They told me that they already had some of their crew hidden among the patrons in the restaurant filming what was about to happen (The video is still being edited today. It was actually just meant to be kept by Shorty and I for memory’s sake so I’m not sure yet if we’ll post it online when it’s done but will check with my fiancee :)).

The crew set me up with a mic and along with Thean and Wilson, I walked towards the restaurant. I reached the glass door of the restaurant and waited there till she noticed me through the glass. When she did, she first gave me a surprised look (because she thought I was out with my friends), followed by a big smile and a wave. I took a deep breath and then took out some signs I had made the week before.

Neither Shorty or I or her friends had actual photos of me showing the signs because we were all too caught up with the whole thing so the best I can do is show you what those signs looked like.

The following were the exact order of the signs I showed her that day (it’s a bit geeky and you may not understand some of the slides unless you’re really into internet memes but if you want to know more of the meaning of each one… check out knowyourmeme.com)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After this sign I waited for Shorty to nod (or shake her head for that matter). Fortunately, she nodded and with a sigh or relief I then showed her this sign.

What she didn’t know then was that being a boy scout before and living by the  motto of “Always Be Prepared”, I had printed another sign just in case she said NO. It was the “forever alone” face.

Anyway after I showed her the successkid.jpg sign (the one where she said YES), I opened the glass door and walked into the restaurant. She stood up from her table then and in tears she asked me “Are you serious? Real wan or not? Real wan or not?”.

I gave her the bouquet of flowers I had bought just a few hours ago then I got down on my knee.Then I presented the ring to her. I was so nervous my hand was shaking.

I had prepared a speech in my mind on what to say to her when I was down on my knee but I failed to execute it. I was so nervous I ended up mumbling something which I can’t remember what exactly till today… except that it ended with a “I love you and I want to take care of you for the rest of my life”. Or something like that.

I then took the ring and put it on her ring finger… only to realize that the size both Ringo and Angela gave me was wrong. It was too big for her. So she wore it on her middle finger instead which fit better.

We kissed and hugged. When we were done we looked around us and all her friends were in tears. I looked at my friends too and they too looked like they wanted to cry but they forced themselves to cry MACHO tears. We stood there with everyone staring at us for a while then we said “Ok… what happens now?” and everyone laughed.

The answer to my question was… we all then sat down for dinner together with my close friends and hers.

Till that moment, both of us hadn’t tweeted a single word about our proposal yet but our friends did. So our phones were beeping with people on Twitter asking us if it was really true. We spent the next few minutes reading the tweets and finally tweeted to confirm… that yes… I asked Shorty to marry me (and she said yes).

So that everyone was how I asked Audrey to marry me.

It was one of the happiest moments of my life…. and it was the beginning of the life of a Fatty and a Shorty.

Two very imperfect people… who’re perfect for each other.

You can read Shorty’s version here. Our versions differ a bit in sequence of events because we remember some things differently. 🙂

PS: Thanks to Mimi, Thean, Angie, Rina, Wilson, Angela, Ringo, Jam and Tze for helping me put this together.

About a couple of months ago I was sitting down and thinking about one of the companies we have under Netccentric: ChurpChurp.

ChurpChurp’s a sister company of Nuffnang and has been around for the past 2 years. Just like what Nuffnang does for bloggers, ChurpChurp allows any social media user to share brand messages with their friends on Twitter and Facebook and get paid for it.

It’s run by a group of my colleagues who call themselves Churpies.

Which ironically is exactly what the ChurpChurp stuffed toy is called too.

ChurpChurp as a company on its own has been a commercial success. Something always bugged me about it though That maybe it does what its meant to do (help Facebookers and Twitterers earn money) well… and that’s just it.  Nuffnang for example always focused on doing much more than just helping bloggers earn money from their blogs. We helped bring bloggers together through our events, we gave bloggers opportunities to review products, go on trips and collectively we helped promote the ecosystem of blogging.

Sure ChurpChurp has a vibrant community of users that always come out whenever we have an event.

But what else can we do?

I didn’t have the answer. Until the 5th of October 2011 came. That was the day Steve Jobs passed away. I spent the morning reading tributes to Steve Jobs, watching his interviews and reading about his life. I read about him creating the iPod and how Microsoft tried to compete with the iPod with the Zune. I can’t remember his exact quote but it was something along the lines of “Microsoft failed to come up with a product as good as the iPod because at Apple, we all really love music. We’re not building it for the sake of making money… but because we’re building a product we love”.

That’s when it hit me. That we need to make ChurpChurp a product that we all loved. So I sat in our brainstorm meeting room with the Churpies that day and asked them what they like. The objective was not to build a product that will sell a lot of advertising. No. The objective… was to build a product that we would all LOVE to use every day.

Finally we came up with this idea of discovery. The first wave of the internet was helping people find what they wanted to find on the internet. That’s how search became so powerful. Then came social networking which helped people stay in touch with each other. The third wave though, will be about discovery. Sites that help us find things we don’t know that we’re interested in but we don’t know we’re interested in it yet. There are sites like that out there like Stumbleupon, Pinterest, Reddit, Digg and the list goes on.

So we decided to make ChurpChurp a site not just for earning cash but for discovery. If you want to go see a funny viral video or a cute picture that other Malaysians are looking at, you go to ChurpChurp. You can then share that with your friends or even share something of your own there if you find it interesting.

We also made it such that you can follow what your friends on ChurpChurp are reading or watching online too. Like I would be interested to know what Shorty and Ming reads. So we started work on the new ChurpChurp and because it was inspired on the day Steve Jobs passed away, internally we called the project… Steve.

A couple of days ago we launched the new ChurpChurp (or Steve). This is the result.

Our dream is to create a site that you can visit every time you want to read something interesting or even something that would make you laugh or cry. The Churpies even came up with an idea to encourage people to share the good stuff they see online. They’re giving away NINE Christmas presents to 9 lucky Churpers who share really good stuff on ChurpChurp. One of them by the way… is an iPhone 4S.

So check out the new ChurpChurp, take the tour… and read the cool stuff the Churpers are sharing there online now.

In the mean time, I know many of you are waiting for me to blog about my proposal to Shorty. Give us time to put everything together ok? Heh still waiting for some pictures from others.

While waiting for more pictures to come in from our proposal and before blogging about it we decided to blog about how we got together in our own respective point of views. This entry covers some really personal things about me and Shorty. We always made it a point not to put everything out online because we wanted to keep some of our relationship for ourselves… but this is a rare entry that I will share more. 

——————–

I first met Shorty back in 2008. Su Ann, Kenny and Wen-Qi wanted to bring me out for a small birthday tea time think at The Banquet in Bangsar Village so I went along.

Over there we bumped into Shorty having tea with a couple of her friends. My first thought when I first saw Shorty
“That’s gotta be a new record of short-ness in a dress”.

She was wearing this yellow dress that was so short it barely covered anything. I later learned that the dress wasn’t really a dress but more like a top that Shorty was wearing as a dress…. and she had really short shorts under it.

Shorty and I didn’t know each other then… but we knew OF each other. She knew that I had started a small internet company called Nuffnang and I knew that she was a pretty well known blogger who used her height as her blog URL. We talked a little and I learned that just being freshly back from the US, she was looking for a job in the advertising industry. So I promised to help and we exchanged e-mail and MSN contact. We didn’t even exchange phone numbers.

After that first time we met, we never saw each other again for a while though we did keep in touch over MSN.  Shorty had a boyfriend at that time and I was with a wonderful girl then named Wen-Qi. In the next few months though our relationships ended. Shorty broke up with her boyfriend and Wen-Qi and I broke up when she left for Singapore to study music.

As time passed, our MSN conversations turned out to be quite something. Shorty and I would make each other laugh over MSN every day. She was really smart, witty and had this confidence about her that she wasn’t afraid to make fun of herself whether it’s her height or her absent-mindedness. Eventually we got together one day. It wasn’t like a “Will you be my girlfriend?” or anything like that. It was somehow like a mutual understanding that we were both together. I was 24 and she was 23 though, so we weren’t looking for anything really serious (definitely not marriage)… just having a little bit of fun from our companionship.

3 years later we find ourselves still together which is an achievement for us both because I tend to have a relatively short attention-span when it comes to relationships and Shorty says she always gets dumped. We were lucky. I think for us, our honeymoon period lasted for a year (eventhough it didn’t feel like it). It was only after a year had passed that we knew we were going into the ‘comfort-zone’ of a relationship phase but somehow….. we still made each other really happy. We would still make each other laugh every day… and on days where either one of us had problems, we would sit down together to talk about it. Talking to her about my problems always made me feel better.

As attached to we are to each other, ironically we’re also quite independent. Whenever I go home to Penang for a few days or go overseas for a business trip we don’t always find the need to call each other before we sleep. Once in a while we would make a call to each other but when I do come home we would sit down and do nothing but talk about what happened in those past few days.

It’s not like we never had problems though. We had many… and many of them were common problems other relationships had. Like we would argue because I would feel I do a lot for her but she didn’t do enough back for me. Over time though we naturally learned to bridge these differences. I would learn to bring down my expectations and she would learn to try to do more. Today, we still have some of these problems but we have somehow learned to accept them.

Shorty and I had a kind of relationship that I had never experienced before. We somehow really understood each other.

Marriage on the other hand was something I had always been terrified of. My married friends always told me to stay away from marriage and enjoy single-hood.
They told me two things:

1) As a guy, the older you get… the more options you have.

2) Marriage is tough.

I found the first point a little true. In university, I wasn’t very popular among the ladies. But as I grew older and somehow a little more matured (eventhough there’s still a little boy in me), things got easier. Girls who were my age were all looking to find “the one” and get married so they would make a little more effort to get to know a guy… and then of course you have girls a few years your junior who were always looking for someone a little bit older.

For the second point though I realized I could never know what to expect. I’ve seen a number of my friends already end in divorce and those we weren’t in divorce yet were complaining about their wives/marriages etc etc. I knew I should get married sooner or later though… I just didn’t want to yet.

One day I realized something. A fortune teller once told me that I would always have to take care of my wife. I’m not sure what that really meant but it apparently could be interpreted as that my wife would always fall sick and all that. I thought about it and yes I can imagine it. Shorty’s the kind who’s really weak and always falls sick. When I thought about her being sick I realized that if she were one day sick, I would want to be the one to take care of her.

Not have anyone else but me.  That’s when I knew…. she was the one.

So last week on the 30th of November… I proposed.

————————————

PS: Here’s something I just learned last night. While Audrey grew up in Subang and I grew up in Penang, we were both actually born in the same hospital in Penang and delivered by the very same doctor.

I will save the proposal for the next entry 🙂

You can read Shorty’s point of view here.

Hi Everyone,

A quick announcement. Tonight I asked Shorty to marry me. It’s been a long day trying to put everything together so I’m going to take a rest now. Will blog about it when I get the pictures and find the time ok?

Some little facts about tonight

– It happened in a restaurant that we all frequent a lot: Nero Tecca

–  Her close friends and my close friends were there to witness it

– Yes I did get down on one knee in front of everyone in the restaurant.

– It was a surprise so she didn’t know anything about it.

– It happened around 8.30PM

– The way I proposed was something that was very… US.

and finally… she said “Yes”.

Good night everyone!

So Shorty and I were at Pavilion today shopping for one of those float boards. Shorty suddenly had the urge to go swimming and she didn’t want to swim like a normal person would. Being the doll she is, she didn’t want to get her hair wet so she insisted on getting one of those float boards. At first I thought when she said float she was looking for one of these Dinosaur floats.

But she was actually looking for this.

Anyway as with any other day with Shorty… drama ensued.

She quickly decided to buy one blue one from Speedo because it was the only colour (blue is the colour she hates the most btw). Only to realize later on that right across from Speedo was a shop that was selling many many more in different colours. One of them being her favourite… pink. For the next 20 minutes or so she considered all possibilities on how she could get a refund of the Speedo and buy this other pink one instead. So much that I began to feel bad for the little Speedo itself and I started telling her a story. You know how when we were kids we used to have to write karangans titled “Saya Sepasang Kasut” and stuff like that.

So on the way home, I made up and narrated a story about the Speedo (in broken Bahasa Malaysia) and made her feel bad about not giving the Speedo one any love. Eventually she decided to take my silly story and blog about it. So we decided to share the entry. She would blog about it and she would let me paste it on my blog so that you guys could read it here… since the whole story involved the both of us.

Here it is: Inspired by a fatty and written by a Shorty. (Note that the events that happened in the story really happened btw. True story.)

————————–

Aku sebuah papan apung berwarna biru. Aku dilahirkan di sebuah kilang di Negeri Cina. Nama saya Speedo wtf.

Saya duduk di kapal terbang dan dibawa ke negara yang dipanggil Malaysia. Saya dipamerkan di kedai Speedo di Pavilion. Saya sangat gembira sebab kedai saya cantik wtf.

Pada suatu hari, ada satu si pendek masuk kedai ingin beli papan apung sebab dia sudah gemuk dan tidak sihat dan tidak ingin mati cepat. Dia mahu berenang tapi takut rambut dia tukar warna so dia nak beli papan apung supaya kepalanya tak akan masuk air. Si Pendek mengambil aku sebab harga saya sudah yang paling murah wtf. Saya terus jatuh cinta dengan Si Pendek itu. Nasib baik tak ada persaingan dari papan apung yang lain sebab kita semua warna biru yang sama.

Si Pendek terus membeli saya ^______^

Tak sampai 30 saat pun, Si Pendek keluar dari kedai Speedo dan ternampak kedai Sun Paradise di depan. Omaigat ini mungkin bad news untuk saya wtf.

Dia terus masuk kedai itu dan ternampak papan apung yang berwarna merah jambu dan terus jatuh hati terhadapnya. T_______T Lebih-lebih lagi papan apung berwarna merah jambu yang bastardo itu lebih murah RM15 FTS T___________T

Nasib baik teman lelaki Si Pendek yang bernama Si Gemuk kata “jangan lah…” Saya sokong Si Gemuk.

Tapi Si Pendek tak peduli dan masuk balik kedai Speedo FTS. Dia cuba cari benda untuk tukar dengan saya. Contohnya sepasang selipar haih standard saya memang jatuh. Sedih.

Nasib baik sekali lagi Si Gemuk kata “tak payah tukar la” dan Si Pendek pun tak dapat cari apa-apa yang dia mahu beli. #successkid.jpg

Tapi aduhai Si Pendek terus balik rumah dan kata kepada Si Gemuk bahawa hanya ada satu jalan. Iaitu saya rosak dengan cepat baru dia boleh beli yang baru WTF. Dia cuba baca tengok samada saya ada tarikh kelupusan ke tidak WTF. Nasib baik saya memang tahan lasak dan tak ada tarikh luput.

Tiba-tiba Si Pendek terbaca arahan tertulis di badan saya yang kata saya tak boleh diletakkan di bawah cahaya matahari untuk terlalu lama. Dan dia tersenyum wtf.

Tamatlah cerita aku di sini.

—————————-

English translation – this story was based on the “I am a…. ” essays primary school teachers used to force kids here to write.

I am a blue floating board. I was born in a factory in China. My name is Speedo wtf.

I sat on a plane and was brought to a place called Malaysia. I was displayed in a Speedo store in Pavilion. I was very happy cos my shop is very nice wtf.

One day, this short person came into the store wanting to buy a float because she’s fat and unhealthy and doesn’t want to die early. The shorty wanted to swim but scared her hair change color which is why she wanted to buy a float so her head won’t go underwater. Shorty took me because my price was the cheapest wtf. I straightaway fell in love with Shorty. Luckily there was no competition from other floats because we were all the same blue color.

Shorty bought me ^_____^

Not even 30 seconds later, Shorty exited Speedo and saw the shop Sun Paradise in front. Omaigat this could be bad news for me.

She straightaway went into the shop and saw a pink flotation device and fell in love with it T_________T Some more the pink bastard float was cheaper by RM15 T___________T

Luckily the shorty’s boyfriend, Fatty, said “it’s ok….” I support Fatty!!!

But Shorty didn’t care and went back to the Speedo store FTS. She tried to find something to exchange me for. For example …. a pair of slippers haih my standard really dropped. Sad.

Luckily again Fatty said “don’t need to exchange la” and Shorty also couldn’t find anything to exchange with.#successkid.jpg

But sucks to be me Shorty went home and said to Fatty that there’s only one way. Which is that I spoil fast so she can buy the pink one WTF. She tried to check if I had an expiry date WTF. Luckily I am very good quality and have no expiry date.

Suddenly Shorty read the instructions on me which says I cannot be put under direct sunlight. And she smiled.

Thus here ends my story.

————-
And everyone… this is the star of the show.

Meet Speedo. Or the star of “Saya Sebuah Papan Apung”.

Haha just as I was editing this I said to Shorty “I’m sure ‘sebuah’ is not the right word to use to describe this board”.

And she said “Then what? Sekeping?”

Haha!

 

PS: You can read Shorty’s version here.

I’ve been making quite a number of trips to Thailand in the past few months working on opening an office there. The story goes that earlier this year I was at the WPP Stream Asia conference in Phuket. It was a conference that involved a lot of the top advertising people in the region. There I met a group of nice people from the advertising industry in Thailand. Many of them already knew what Nuffnang was but for the rest, when I told them about Nuffnang they asked me one question: “Why aren’t you guys in Thailand yet?”.

So throughout the rest of 2011, Ming and I worked hard through many business trips to setup Nuffnang Thailand in Bangkok. Thailand is an awesome market but it’s also a little different than the rest of the blogosphere in the region. While most bloggers everywhere else in the region mainly use Blogspot or WordPress, a big portion of the Thai blogosphere was on local blog platforms. The biggest 3 there: Exteen, OKNation and Bloggang.

We spent the past few months meeting the top platforms there and persuading them to work with us. Convincing them that we will grow the market for blog advertising the way we have in Malaysia, Singapore, Australia and Philippines. Fortunately, they all agreed.

After lots of hard work, last week we officially launched Nuffnang Thailand from our new office in Bangkok.

I spent the whole week in Bangkok meeting advertisers and pitching blog advertising to them. The rest of my time was spent hanging out with some of the Thai Nuffies there.

Or getting to know some of them while we were walking to meetings.

I know I know, most of you are probably thinking “Hang on… isn’t Bangkok flooded?”

And well yeah, I admit… when I took a flight to Bangkok early this week, I had never seen such an empty flight before. Some of the Nuffies back home were even concerned about me. Like Linda here who was Whatsapped me.

 

But the truth is, much of Bangkok felt really normal. Traffic was terrible… like normal, people were going out like normal and business was going on like normal. I hear that the flood is mostly affecting parts outside of Central  Bangkok but in much of Central Bangkok (which is huge), it’s all ok.  Some tourist spots are still closed though. My Thai friend told me that Chatuchak market is closed.

This thought crossed my mind the other day and so I tweeted it. Boy did I spark a huge debate on Twitt. The more I think about it though the more I think it’s true. Think about it, how many girls do you know let their boyfriends control them. Quite a number right?

Now think of how many guys you know who let their girlfriends make most decisions for them. Is this number higher than the previous? For me the answer is yes.

And here’s the thing… These two examples are extreme examples. In most cases it’s not extreme but somewhere in between. Like a guy can still choose to do what he wants but if something is important enough to a girl, she will have it her way.

The best part is that more often than not, we guys do things that we think is our choice but is actually something our girlfriend or wife wanted. And the influence of women on men are not limited to girlfriends or wives. If you’re macho about it ask yourself then how much influence your mother or your sister has on you.

I looked at myself for the influence of women in my life. Not just my girlfriend but the influence my mother and my sister has over me and it’s significant! More than my chauvinistic self would dare to admit.

I talked to Shorty about this the other day and she went through a whole history lesson with me. On how even in the middle ages when kings ruled the world, they acted very often based on the influence of their queen or girlfriends. She quoted Anne Boleyn as an example.

Maybe it’s in our DNA. So I can’t help but think… Women do rule the world (or at least control the world in more ways than we think)…they just do it by proxy.

What do you guys think ? Please convince me I’m wrong.

In the mean time, I am going to stand up to Shorty next. The next time she asks me to go for dinner I’m gonna say “NOOO!! I am going to finish my game first”.

If you don’t already, Shorty and I are huge fans of stand-up comedy. Last night we went to watch Kings and Queen of Comedy Asia 2. I’ve watched Harith and Vivek before and they’re both awesome but I was introduced to two really great comedians: Paul Ogatta

and Sugar Sammy.

They were absolutely awesome. Now I have the highest respect for all stand-up comedians regardless of how funny they are. Because I think to get up on stage in front of a crowd and to try make them laugh with nothing but your words and actions takes courage that would make General Patton proud. For that and because Shorty and I love to laugh we’ve been following the local stand-up comedy scene in KL a lot. Our favourites of course are Douglas Lim, Kuah Jenhan and Phoon Chi Ho.

Anyway, you can catch some of Paul Ogatta and Sugar Sammy’s shows here on YouTube.

After the show there was an opportunity for us to take pictures with the comedians so Shorty and I tried… for a while… and this is how far we got.

2,000 over people at the show scrambled for a photo opp with them so I guess that didn’t quite work out for us. I sometimes wonder why stand-up comedians aren’t given as much fame as artists or actors. I mean I know a lot of my friends who can sing well, dance well and even act. But I don’t know any of my friends who can go up on stage with a mic and make a crowd laugh. So if it’s that hard… why aren’t they in Hollywood or something living in huge mansions like the one Akon lives in…

equipped with private chefs, helicopters and all that.

Sure don’t get me wrong, stand-up comedians make a LOT of money. I hear that Harith Iskandar charges RM15,000-RM20,000 just for a 30 minute set if you want to get him to do one for your company annual dinner or something. But I just think they deserve more for their talent.

For Kings and Queen of Comedy Asia 2, I kinda wish I paid more for a better ticket too. Heh… Shorty and I went for one of the cheapest tickets which had us end up far far behind. So far behind we could hardly even see Harith Iskandar. Fortunately they had a big screen so the far back ones like me could still see what’s going on. I tweeted about being so far back and one of my friends replied.

Ok so the joke is that Penang people are kiam siap. I always wonder… how did Penang people get to be known for being kiam siap? Which Penangite did what? (apart from me buying the cheapest ticket to the comedy haha)

PS: My friend Tammy who tweeted me is from Penang too.