Happy Independence Day my fellow Malaysians!

I don’t know if it’s just me but somehow I’ve grown more and more patriotic in recent years. My friend Jia from Shanghai is down in KL this week and I was just telling him about Malaysia over dinner. Everything about our history, our people… and all the great things about Malaysia. Speaking of people… do you guys notice that we’re getting a little more civil Malaysian drivers on the road lately?

When I first started driving some 9 years ago, Malaysian drivers on the road were the most aggressive. They will never give way to you if you try to cut into their line. Even fight you till the end like it was some game. These days though I notice that at least 30-50% of the time, whenever I want to switch lanes even in a jam, I find the car before me actually opening up and giving way. Because of that I tend to do that more often too… Do you guys start giving way more?

Well that is.. us normal drivers that is. Except taxi drivers. In my experience taxi drivers in Malaysia still continue the “fight you till the end” policy when it comes to giving way.

Maybe if we keep being nicer on the road and “paying it forward”… in a few years time all Malaysian drivers will start giving way to each other and we’ll be known for the most polite drivers in the region.

In any case Happy Merdeka everyone!

PS: In conjunction with Merdeka, MSN Malaysia came up with a list of the Top 10 Young Malaysians and I just found out today they included me in that list too. Among those in the list are Co Founder of MyEG TS Wong, Zee Avi and Nicol David. Thank you MSN for the feature! I’m proud to be Malaysian!

In the car on the way back from dinner earlier, I was talking to Shorty about the TV ads I still remember from long ago. It’s funny.. when you sit down and think about all the ads you remembering watching on TV growing up, you’ll remember quite a lot of them. Ahh those were the days where TV ads was the best way to reach kids like us. When I look at the kids today grow up, they do so many other things and consume so many other media it’s so complicated for marketers to reach them.

20 years ago, if you wanted to hit 6 year old Timothy Tiah with you ad… easy. Just buy a spot between 5.30PM-6.00PM on weekdays where 6-year old Timmy will be watching cartoons on RTM2. The ads those days were really good too. Here are some of the ads that I always will remember:

1) 7-5-5-2-5-2-5 Pizza Hut Delivery

This is one phone number I will never forget. Do you guys remember the Pizza Hut jingle/song back then? The TVC will come on with singing that goes 7-5-5-2-5-2-5 … 7-5-5-2-5-2-5… 7-5-5-2-5-2-5 … Pizza Hut Delivery.

2) Fern Leaf

There are two types of Fern Leaf ads I will always remember. The first one is in Chinese. It’s a song that goes like this : “Zhi shang zhi you ma ma hao…”

The other one… is this one.

Who remembers this song?

Ibu… ibu… engkaulah ratu hatiku 🙂

3) Tora & Ding Dang

Man… these were exactly the kind of ads that hit 6-year old Timmy when he was watching cartoons between 5.30PM-6.00PM on weekdays. These cool ads for Tora and Ding Dang will come on and showcase kids playing with the fun toys they got from the chocolates they bought.

I don’t know what happened to Tora and Ding Dang and if they still have them…. but I always remember two things. The actual chocolate sucks ass. I don’t think anybody ever bought it for the chocolate. Everybody though bought it for the cool little toy they have inside. The other thing I also remember is feeling disappointed when I eventually see the toy. When the kids play with their toys on the TVCs it looks so cool, like it could fly and do all sorts of things that even toys today can’t. But when you actually buy the product and open up the toy packaging… you see just some crap piece of plastic.

I keep falling for it though. Over and over again I will see a new Tora and Ding Dang TVC and buy the product over and over again.

4) Milo & Ovaltine

I always remember these ads. There were so many of them… and they always had the say sort of theme. Energy or sports. Milo had this really jingle at the end of each TVC that went “IT’S MARVELOUS WHAT MILO… CAN DO FOR YOU!!!”.

HAha!

Ovaltine on the other hand had this ad.

5) Nano Nano
This is probably my most favourite ad of all time growing up. Yes… Nano Nano… the sweet with a taste so confusing it still baffles me why I used to like it so much. Why I love the ad?

Well.. listen to the song and you’ll be hooked too 🙂

Haha I stumbled upon this really funny video recently. Basically the story goes that this guy went on a trip to Europe and he told his gf about it but apparently she wasn’t listening. So while he was in Europe for two weeks, his gf had been trying to call him and sent him countless emails.

This video documents the escalation in the tone of her e-mails.

Remember that all that happened in two weeks!

I’m glad I don’t have a crazy girlfriend!

PS: On another note, check out this Dating tips for guys 🙂

After a few days in Beijing, I made a trip to Shanghai with a few of our Nuffies to see some Nuffnangers there. We woke up at 4AM or so that morning and was at the airport by 6AM in order to catch an 8AM flight.

I’m not in this picture because I’m behind the camera with a grumpy face cursing and swearing and asking David why the hell we picked such an early flight. He said that it was the cheapest flight of the day and he wanted to save us some money… so fine.

For the first time in my life I was going to fly an internal flight in China. You know I’ve always heard bad things about the flights within China but I can say that after flying it once, they were all unfounded. It was a really good flight. I think I flew China Eastern. The planes were new, the stewardesses were polite, the seat had a good reclining angle and there was enough leg room.

The instant we got to Shanghai though, the Nuffies put their game on. Julia put on a nice dress.

They said Shanghai girls are very pretty so them Beijing girls wanna keep up! Actually Julia and Rachel aren’t really from Beijing. That’s the thing about Beijing and Shanghai that really remind me of New York. When you go to New York, lots of the locals there aren’t actually from New York itself but from some other city in the USA. Same for China… the locals there are from everywhere else in China. China is HUGE!

I met up with one of my friends there Jia.

Funny how you meet people. I met Jia through my Thai friend when I was visiting Bangkok some months back. Jia actually went to UCL too. He was a year below me! When Shorty saw this picture she said “Wah who is that guy? So handsome!”. I chose to ignore it!

In Shanghai we met with some bloggers and also had some meetings. We had one meeting in an office in the tallest building in Shanghai called the World Financial Center.

The view from the top was amazing!

Shanghai is actually my favourite city in China. It’s not as cultural as Beijing but it’s really a first world city. On par with cities like Tokyo or New York or London. No wonder so many of my friends choose to work there. I met up with one old friend who’s working there too. Meet Ker Loon!

Ker Loon told me that at first he didn’t quite like it in Shanghai but eventually grew to like it.

On the last night I was there, we all went for dinner at this really nice Yakiniku restaurant. When Ming and I first went there some 3 years ago, it was completely empty. But we loved the food there!

This time though it was packed! Like some food bloggers went to review the place or something and suddenly everyone in Shanghai was eating there.

Met up with Darren Chin too… first time seeing him again after some 3 years. Last time I saw him was in Shanghai too. Here’s David with some of the Nuffies.

After dinner though we headed to what is supposed to be the most happening club in Shanghai called Muse 2 opposite this building.

It was packed going in and the Nuffies were pretty excited.

I wasn’t allowed to take any pictures in the club but I can say this about it:

1) There were definitely A LOT more guys than girls in the club.

2) The girls there were unbelievably hot. Shanghai girls… aww man… !

Julia met a group of Singaporean guys when she was there. After a while one of them came over to Ming to say hi. His opening line was something like “Do you know who my father is?”.

Haha is that the way we should introduce ourselves these days? What if my father isn’t anyone big? Then what would that mean?

I arrived in Beijing Tuesday this week and was greeted with something you hardly see in Beijing.

BLUE SKIES.

If you stay in China long enough, especially Beijing and Shanghai… you’d know what I mean. Beijing constantly has this thick smog around the city… like a perpetual haze that comes from all the pollution the factories on the outskirts of the city spew into the air. Once in a while after it rains though, you get to see a bit of blue sky… which was how I managed to see it when I arrived.

I arrived like 6AM in the morning. Ming and I headed straight to the hotel to check-in first.

Then off to the Nuffnang China office in Beijing which is in this building.

Meet some of our Nuffnang China Nuffies.

They represent our small but very passionate team in China led by our dear ex-Malaysian Nuffie David Wong. It was a bit of a culture shock for me though. All our discussions, meetings with the Nuffies took place in Chinese, with the occasional help with Dai Xia or Julia translating it for us. Man I thought my Chinese was okay… but after spending some time in China talking with people there about work and all.. I realize it’s terrible!

I walked around taking pictures of some of the things in the office. They have a photo-bombing Churpie.

A local version of our Nuffnang Bunting.

And a local version of our I Love Nuffnang badges.

Spent most of my trip meeting bloggers and business partners here but had loads of fun with the Nuffies. Captured this one hilarious moment we had before lunch. We were getting out of a cab and David somehow stepped on some shit.

He first went “UGGHHH”…

Then he did one thing that made me realize he has perhaps been in China for too long.

He went to the bushes nearby and started wiping his foot off them.

Haha David cracks me up!

I’m in Shanghai now with the Nuffies and going back to KL tomorrow. Homesick! Blog soon!

Well then you ain’t seen Public Bank’s 45th Anniversary dinner.

The “Tan Sri Teh” that everyone is singing about in the video is the Founder and owner of Public Bank. One of the richest and most successful men in Malaysia.

I’ve never seen anything like it. The Public Bank staff must REALLY love their BOSS!!! Tan Sri has managed to take employee loyalty and love for the company to a WHOLE NEW LEVEL!

*grabs mic from Taylor Swift*

“Imma let you finish… imma let you finish… but Tan Sri Teh has the best music video of all time… OF ALL TIME”.

Hey Guys,

Here are some updates.

1) Went to the market today for the first time in a very very long time. Somehow I think the wet market is slowly dying among our generation. I mean when was the last time you went to the market to buy fruits or vegetables? It’s second nature to my mum but everyone I know of our generation just goes to Tesco these days.

Right after I took this picture I noticed a little argument break out right next to me. A man was shouting at a vendor for being overcharged. Somehow the vendor made a calculation error and asked him for another RM10. The man was so angry he kept going and going. After a while though he calmed down and just ran off and business went back as usual.

Nobody in the market paid any real attention to that. Almost as if it happened every day.

2) While I was just looking at Starcraft 2 videos online, I found this old documentary about Starcraft 1 in Korea.

Man it’s crazy over there.

I grew up spending way too much time on computer games. First there was Red Alert, then Half-Life, then Counter-strike and the first Starcraft. I’ve never really played competitively for any of those games except for Counter-strike. That was a game where I used to have a team of 4 and we would play competitions in Penang that would win us money.

We always got within the Top 4 but never ever won the top spot…. though we often got 2nd place. Even today I still play computer games. I spend a lot of time on Starcraft 2 so much that it used to annoy Shorty. I think it still does but she doesn’t say as much right now. I’ve read before that in Silicon Valley, Starcraft 2 is to the nerds what chess is to normal people.

In Korea though Starcraft 2 players are like pro-athletes. They have huge tournaments that draw crowds in the tens of thousands and is watched on TV by millions! They have huge fans, sponsors, managers, coaches and they all earn a lot of money just from playing Starcraft 2. Check out this video for example.

Ahh I can imagine. If I were in Korea, Shorty would be proud of me that I spend so much time on Starcraft 2. Maybe I could be a pro-gamer some day. Heh… when she has coffee with her friends, she’ll proudly say that I am in the Diamond league… and her friends will “aww in envy”….. and tell her how lucky she is.

Haha of course… that is all… but a dream.

Still I think it’s amazing how gaming in Korea is a whole other level. Heck besides… if I were a Korean pro-gamer… maybe I might have a shot with Hyuna 🙂

3) Speaking of pro-athletes though. I watched the finals between Lee Chong Wei and Lin Dan tonight. Gotta say that I thought Lee Chong Wei did really really well but it wasn’t good enough. Once again, I watched Lin Dan beat Lee Chong Wei, take off his shirt and celebrate.

So here’s what I think we should do. If you support Lee Chong Wei and our Malaysian badminton team, wear yellow (that is after all their colour) tomorrow. If you support Lin Dan then go topless tomorrow. Since Lin Dan seems to do that quite a bit.

Whatever  it is though, I’m proud of Datuk Lee Chong Wei for making is so far in his career. He truly deserves his Datukship.

Tomorrow my traveling begins again. I go to work tomorrow as usual but after work I head off to the airport. While you guys are sleeping in your comfy beds I will be getting my sleep on a plane to Beijing. I reach Beijing at 6AM and straight off to work I go from there. Traveling gets too tiring. But oh well that’s the life I chose.

Till my next update guys 🙂

We’ve been working on a new ChurpChurp for the past few months. Somehow Ming felt that while the older version was just updated less than a year ago, it still wasn’t good enough. So we went back to the drawing board and built it all up from scratch again.

This is the old ChurpChurp.

And this is the new.

The new has a lot of new features on the front and back end. Most of the back end features though the every day user doesn’t see. What the every day user sees is perhaps more user friendly stuff, features to automate certain things and well a better display of the Churpers on our network.

I was talking to a DJ from a radio station lately and he told me “Did you know that most of the DJs from my station are on ChurpChurp?”. I was like “REALLY? I didn’t know that”. I went in to take a look at true enough we had celebrities of all kinds all part of our network.

So on the new front page we featured some of these celebrities on ChurpChurp. TV hosts, Radio DJs, Artists, Models etc etc.
Of course ChurpChurp is open for everyone to join. We want to build a huge community of Facebookers and Twitterers all around the region just like Nuffnang has done so for bloggers.

Already there are lots of benefits of being a ChurpChurp member just like being a Nuffnang one. From movie screenings, to give-aways, to winning cash prizes and meeting new friends.

So if you’re on Facebook and Twitter a lot, sign up at ChurpChurp.com!

This is a really odd topic. I know. Probably not something you’ve seen before but I got inspired to write this just by looking at my feet one day. You see, one day I was just sitting down looking at my feet and I was reminded of a birth mark I had there. As I thought more about it, memories of everything about it flipped through my mind. What people said it means, when I first noticed it and all that.

Then I realize that it’s something that has been with me my whole life. Most of us have at least some birthmark some part of our bodies and there’s always a story behind (I have a LOT of them, too many to probably cover in this one entry). Whether it’s because someone always told you it meant something… or whether because you were ashamed to show it to people when you were younger.

So this is a story of my birthmarks and scars… starting with this scar I have on my arm.

1) The Burn

Notice that I have that sliver of darkened skin there?

Well I actually got this really recently. Almost as long as my relationship with Shorty. It was just shortly after Shorty and I just got together some 3 years ago. It’s actually caused by this.

For the guys who don’t know what this is, this is…. the ENEMY. This gets hot when it’s turn on and if it touches your skin it burns!!! This… gentlemen is a “curling iron”. The ladies use it to make curls on their hair.

Shorty and I were at my place in Penang getting ready to go for dinner. Shorty was getting all dressed up and curling her hair when we got into a fight. She was annoyed that I never put the toilet seat back down every time I’m done with it while I told her she should just make it a habit to put it back up every time she uses it. So we got into a bit of a fight and she eventually got so angry, she picked up the curling iron she was using to curl her hair and struck me with it.

My reflexes kicked in and I raised my right arm to block the iron… only to have it burn. It hurt like a mofo!!! It got worse over the next few days. It grew to this big boil and I had to wait for it to pop and all the water to come out. When it happened, Shorty was so worried my parents in Penang would notice it and scold her for it but they were quite understanding :).

And no that wasn’t exactly what happened although whenever people ask me that, I tell them that fake story just to see the look of shock on their faces before I tell them the truth. What happened was…. well.. Shorty’s very careless when it comes to placing her heated curling iron. It’s like an accident waiting to happen. This one time she put it among some things on my dressing table and I reached for something not noticing it was hiding behind some stuff I couldn’t see. So I ended up burning my hand.

On other days she even puts the curling iron on the floor right below the dressing table. I worry that one day she might burn a toe of mine or something. But yeah that’s what happened. She didn’t go all apeshit and strike me with a curling iron. So don’t worry… Shorty’s not crazy 🙂

The next scar I have is this one on my leg.

2) The Centipede

Do you see a light scar that looks like a centipede? Well I’ve had this since I was 3 years old. It used to be a lot more distinct but over the years it has faded… and this is how it looks like some 24 years on. For those of you who don’t know, I was born with a lazy eye. That means one of my eyes could barely open. It was at such bad a stage that the doctor then was worried that if I wasn’t operated on, I would lose all vision from one eye.

So when I turned 3 my parents decided they had to do something no parents would ever want to do to their 3 year old kid. Put him through surgery. What I was told when I was a kid was that the doctor would cut open my thigh, take some of my muscle from there and put it into my eyelid so I can open it. That’s how my parents explained this little scar to me as I grew up.

Somehow locked in one part of my brain is this memory that I would never forget. A memory of me being awake in the operating room, watching the doctor cut open my thigh into little cubes just like the scar represented. I remember I could see it, but not feel anything. My parents said that it wasn’t possible though because I was under general anesthetic and fully asleep. So I’m not sure if I just dreamed that memory up one day.

3) The Globetrotter.

This is one of those birth marks I never knew I had until some time in primary school. It’s this black spot on my foot.

I remember the day I noticed it when I was a kid. I thought I had some kind of ink on my foot so I started washing my foot with soap. It wouldn’t come off so I rubbed harder and harder until I was like “WTF???”.

Eventually my parents calmed me down and told me that it was something I was born with. You know how moles and birthmarks sometimes have “meaning” right? Well growing up lots of people told me that having this mole or birthmark on my foot means that one day I will travel a lot. Well I guess that turned out to be sort of true. I do travel a lot for work these days to all the countries that Nuffnang and ChurpChurp are in and more.

4) The Burden

I don’t have a picture of this one because I’m finding it really hard to take a picture of it… since it’s on my back! I have this big mole on my back. The meaning of this one though isn’t good. Many people say having a mole on your back means that you will have a lot of burden to carry next time. I’m not sure if that came through because yes I have a lot of stress but so does everyone else.

I guess one burden I feel is taking care of all the Nuffies and giving them job security. If that counts.

5) The Famous One

You know how sometimes you want to describe somebody to someone you always go “the bald one”, “the fat one”, “the dark one”…. well for me it’s “the one with the mole”.

Yes yes don’t lie! If any of you have ever described me, you say the word “mole” on my face right?

The mole on my face is something that I was ashamed to have for the longest time. I don’t know… I mean it’s not like anybody ever goes “WOW THAT MOLE LOOKS GOOD! YOU SO HEMSEM!”. Sure when I was growing up some kids in my school used to call me “Sexy mole” but they meant the word “sexy” sarcastically. I had always want to have it removed.

I think these little things affected my confidence when I was growing up as a kid. This and a few other things that I will probably have to save for another blog entry. By the time I hit age 17 though I began to grow more confident of myself.  That’s when I met my first proper girlfriend. Her name was Melissa. Today she’s happily married with this great guy named John and she has a beautiful baby!

I remembered asking her if she thought I looked better if I removed my mole on my face. She said “No… because it just wouldn’t be you anymore”.

After that I stopped feeling ashamed of my mole on my face.

What does my mole mean? Well many people say that if you have it so close to your mouth, it means that you will never have shortage of food in your life. That’s true for me so far I guess. One day I met one of my Dad’s friends in China. She’s 50 or probably 60 by now and she had a mole exactly the same place where I have mine. She told me that she used to be ashamed of it too… using her hand to hide it every time she took a picture.

I asked her if she ever had any shortage of food in her life. She said “No”. So I guess maybe that’s true.

The funniest thing happened to me when I was studying in London. I was buying groceries at my neighbourhood supermarket and lining up to pay. Right in front of me was this really old lady who looked like she was 80 or 90 years old. She had a cute little shopping basket with her and she was in the queue to pay for her things. She suddenly turned around to face me and said in the thickest English accent.

“That is a really really really lucky mole do you know that? A really lucky mole!”

A bit taken aback I just said “Uhh thanks hehehe”.

I never got to ask her why she thought it was a lucky mole. But looking at my life so far. I guess I’ve had some good luck. Not sure if it’s the mole on my face… but that could just be it 🙂

Edit: Forgot to add a video that this blogger made on the event. Have added it below.

When we first started Nuffnang Australia two years ago, lots of people thought we were going to fail. Sure, Australia has a billion dollar digital ad industry and sure marketers there are very forward thinking. But…. are there even enough bloggers there?

Blogging in Australia is nowhere as strong as in Asia. Still we did some research and felt that there are enough bloggers in Australia. They won’t be easy to find and there was nothing like a Nuffnang there to put them altogether yet… but we knew if we tried hard enough we’ll be able to find bloggers that are as passionate as the ones back here in Asia.

Two years later, Nuffnang Australia organized it’s largest event ever (and I gather it’s the largest blogger event in Australia to date). It was called Nuffnang Blogopolis. We had 300 bloggers there from all over Australia fly in just for this.

It was held at Fed Square at this place called ZINC.

Nuffnang Blogopolis was among the first of our more serious kind of events. Rather than the parties and dinners we normally have, this one was a conference about blogging. Bloggers went there to learn a bit of everything about blogging. Things from tools of the trade, to how to monetize your blogs, debates on Editorials vs Advertorials and even skills like how to improve content on your blog, photography tips or overcome writer’s block.

At first I thought that I would go there and listen to things that I probably already know about… having blogged for about 4 years now. But I was wrong. I learned so much about everything that one day. I hardly got enough sleep the night before so I was afraid I might fall asleep at some point in the day but I was wide awake the whole time, intrigued by whatever was shared there by the speakers.

There were lots of really famous speakers there. From Arnold of MrGadget, Lady Melbourne and I even met for the first time, Darren Rowse of Problogger.

I remember Problogger when I first started blogging some 5-6 years ago. He was among the first high profile full-time bloggers… who decided to not only make blogging his passion or hobby but his job. I gather he does really well for himself too. He became an inspiration for a lot of Malaysian bloggers I knew back then to go on full time blogging as well.

Our Country Manager for Nuffnang Australia is David Krupp.

He’s known all around for being really suave and charming… but when he gave his opening speech… he tried to be as serious as he could.. with a few jokes along the way. David used to work for MySpace before he joined us two years ago. Ever since he’s been an asset in growing the company to what it is today.

Of course I also met some old friends there. One of them Violet… the pretty lady in red here.

She was one of the bloggers who flew in for our Nuffnang Asia-Pacific Blog Awards in Singapore back in 2009. She dresses very differently from most Australians and is a big fan of Japanese-sy things… fashion included.

So much that she often feels like she was born in the wrong country. Heh… her bf told me that she even teaches herself and practices Japanese before she sleeps every night.

Picture here with Violet, her bf and Grace… who did lots of cheering that day!

Here’s a picture I took of some of the goodie bags that were given out that day.

The day before I saw the Nuffies there packing everything into a 4WD just to bring it over. Also got a picture of some of light food we had during the coffee breaks.

The thing that really kept me occupied almost the whole day was watching our Twitter hashtag for the event #nnb2011. All around the venue we had big screens or LCD TVs that showed everyone a live update about what people were saying about the event on Twitter. There was so much chatter on Twitter I think it must’ve been like 1 tweet for every 1 second or so.

So much that eventually not only did #nnb2011 go trending in Twitter Australia but so did the word “Blogger” and basically the Twitter handle of almost every speaker who went up on stage each time.

Nuffnang Blogopolis was definitely one of the best Nuffnang Events I had ever been to (among my favourites are the Nuffnang Asia-Pacific Blog Awards 2009 and Nuffnang Chipster Pajama Party). It was also the first event where we actually sold tickets for. Each blogger had to buy a ticket that cost A$100 which is about RM330. Reading the feedback though, everyone seemed to think it was the best 100 bucks they ever spent.

I’m so proud of the Nuffies in Australia and just at how much progress Nuffnang Australia has made since it started.  Well done guys! Proud of you all!

If you want to see more pictures of Nuffnang Blogopolis 2011, click here for the official photos. Much better than my photos that were just taken with my phone camera hehehe.

You can also get a feel of Nuffnang Blogopolis 2011 from this video that a blogger there made 🙂

Unfortunately there weren’t any official pictures taken at the Post-event drinks because… well I heard everyone got drunk and “what happens at the Nuffnang Blogopolis 2011 Post-Event Drinks Stays at the Nuffnang Blogopolis 2011 Post-Event-Drinks”.

And yes everyone… we’re planning to do a Nuffnang Blogopolis in all the other countries we’re in too in future 🙂