Meet Yuen Yee.

She’s a fellow Nuffie that I see every day in the office.

This is how she looks grown-up and matured when she’s posing for the camera.

This is how she normally looks in every day life.

Yuen Yee loves to eat. Crab, lobster, steak, ham… everything short of Unicorn or Smurf steak.
Sometimes they call Yuen Yee “Unicorn”. Because she sees the world in a magical fantasy point of view.

Sometimes they call her Panda.

After this Never Say No to Panda commercial.

Apparently because she once flipped a table when someone took her food from her.

This is what Yuen Yee looks like when you force her to give back food she takes.

The Nuffies love to mess with her.

We once filmed her watching a scary video, filmed it and uploaded it on YouTube.

We also once filmed her going down an escalator in Pavilion.

Yes… as you can see from the video. Yuen Yee is scared of heights AND escalators. In ANY mall she goes to, she ALWAYS take the elevator.

Once she went up an escalator with Pinky not realizing that she was actually on one. When she did realize, she held Pinky’s hand and squeezed it so hard she broke two fingers (Haha no la no la I keed I keed… no fingers were broken).

She sometimes curses in the office but whenever she does she say sit in a cute high pitched voice.

We all love Yuen Yee!

We voted her the cutest person in the office.

Scenario 1:

Many months ago. One of my best friends from childhood BBM’ed me along with another old friend:

Melvin: Gentlemen… I’d just like you to be among the first to know… that I’ve just proposed to May and we’re getting married within a year.

A normal response should’ve been
“DUDE!!! CONGRATULATIONS!!! DAMN HAPPY FOR YOU MAN!!!”

Instead my response was

“WHAT?!??! DUDE ARE YOU SURE YOU THOUGHT THIS THROUGH?! WE GOTTA MEET UP… WE GOTTA TALK”.

Scenario 2:

Today, another friend… this one a nice girl messaged me:
“Tim, can you come for my wedding reception on XX date?”

Again I should’ve said
“AWW CONGRATULATIONS! I’D LOVE TO!!!”.

Instead my immediate response was
“YOU’RE GETTING MARRIED?!?!?! TO WHO?!!? “

“To John. You met him at my house a few months ago”

Me: WHAT?!?!  I thought you both just got together ?”

*realizes this time that my response should’ve been different. So in an attempt to damage control….*

Me: CONGRATULATIONS!!!

She hasn’t replied me.

*sigh*

I gotta work on that “CONGRATULATIONS I’M SO HAPPY FOR YOU” face when people tell me that they’re getting married.

Hey Guys,

Guess where I am this week?

For the past 4 weeks I’ve been traveling every single week. 3 weeks ago I was in Hong Kong, then Singapore, then Bangkok and this week I’m in Melbourne.

Man… I broke a new record this month. I think out of 30 days in a month, I spent 20 or so sleeping in a hotel room in a foreign country. My trip to Nuffnang Australia this week couldn’t be avoided though. Already I think I haven’t visited the Australian team enough in the past 12 months but this Saturday they’re having a huge blogging event.

It’s called Nuffnang Blogopolis where they’re expected to have 300 or so bloggers from all over Australia. Among the speakers are Darren Rowse of Problogger, Arnold Aranez of Mr Gadget who won the Nuffnang Blog Award for Best Geek Blog in 2009 and Phoebe Montague of Lady Melbourne. Each ticket was sold at AUD 100 (RM320) each and it’s all sold out. In fact we’ve been getting requests for more and more tickets but I think we’ve reached our limit. Think we’ll try to have a bigger one next year instead.

So anyway Ming and I came a few days to visit the Nuffies here in Nuffnang Australia. As always they look like they’re having loads of fun.

I also notice that it’s the only Nuffnang office in the region that has more Macs than PCs. Something I’m sure Ming wouldn’t approve of heh.

When we arrived some of the Nuffies took us for lunch at this really nice steak house.

After lunch they took us to see the new office for Nuffnang Australia which they’ll be moving into next week. I loved it!

This is the front of the office building. The entrance to it is this big green door.

Here’s how it looks like on the inside once you walk in.

It’s a loft like kind of office with a big open area downstairs and a loft upstairs.

This is the view from upstairs. This time next week or so, all these desks will be filled up and full of Nuffies busying about their day.

This is one of the meeting rooms we have.

The blurry dude in that picture is David Krupp, our Country Manager for Nuffnang Australia. Someone we all more affectionally call “Kruppy”. We have a little pantry area where people can cook their meals and eat on the side.

Also a server room that hasn’t really been loaded up with stuff yet.

And an upstairs area where we can put some workstations.

So what do you guys think?

Heh we try to make all our offices in the region nice and homely but I think this one could potentially rank up to the Top 2 nicest of our offices.

I’m really proud of Nuffnang Australia. When we first started off 2 years ago, lots of people didn’t think we’ll be able to make it. Today Nuffnang Australia’s growing so quick I can’t wait to see where we’ll be in the next few years. If you asked me 4 years ago when we first started Nuffnang if one day we’ll be able to have an office like that in Melbourne, I would never have believed it.

Today… we have and it’s all thanks to these wonderful people.

Our partners Martyn, David and our Country Manager Kruppy who came to us from MySpace years ago.

Nuffnang Australia’s looking good and I’m so glad to have been able to be a part of the story.

UPDATE: I WAS MESSING AROUND WITH MY NEW FB COMMENTS PLUGIN AND ACCIDENTALLY HID ALL THE COMMENTS. NOW I CAN’T GET THEM BACK!!! PLS COMMENT AGAIN.. I KNOW IT’S SO MUCH TO ASK BUT I’M SOOO SORRY

You guys know ChurpChurp right? One of our companies that allow people to earn with their Facebook or Twitter accounts just like how Nuffnang allows bloggers to earn.

Well the “mascot” for ChurpChurp is a little blue bird designed by a Nuffie. Lots of people think that I designed it after Shorty but no… that’s not true. Anyway a few months back we decided that since the birdie was so cute, we had to just make a plush toy of it. So we had people go to China to source the best person to make the ChurpChurp plush toy and a few months later, boxes of it had reached our shores.

The girls in the office gave it a name. They call it Churpies. I gave the first one I got to Shorty who loves it.

It didn’t take long before everyone in the office wanted one. So I finally decided to give one to each Nuffie. Since then they’ve all kept it around their workstations.

Some of the girls had Churpie sit right next to them while they work.

Some took the extra step and hugged it while working like Linda, Wendy and Xinxian here.

But some of the guys just left it by the side to watch while they work. Like Latif here.

Or Firdauz.

One particular guy Nuffie even just left it at a corner of the office where he kept his bag. Unloved… and unopened.

One of the cutest I saw that day was Sara’s Churpie though. When she left the office, she decided to put the Churpie in her place.

But the cutest has got to be what some of the other girls did. They decided to dress up the Churpies.

I wonder what people will think of next. Heh.

Here’s when I think I could use some suggestions. We’ve had loads of requests for the Churpies but we don’t have too many to give out and the ChurpChurp Community is HUGE. How do you think we should give it out to ChurpChurp users and how do we decide who gets it?

We’re thinking of maybe giving some out on the ChurpChurp Facebook fan page but you guys got any ideas?

In return for your suggestions I’ll give out 5 Churpies to the Best 5 Ideas 🙂

If you’re looking for another way to get a hold of these limited Churpies, check out the ChurpChurp blog.

Check this out guys. My colleague Latif put this in for me.

You can now comment on this blog with your Facebook account 🙂

See below.

Happy Sunday Guys,

Got a busy Sunday ahead but first let me share with you guys two things that made me laugh like shit in the past few days.

The first one is the video of this Shampoo prank.

The second one is this. It’s called the Top 15 Damnyouautocorrect of all time.

You know what Damnyouautocorrect is right? It’s a site that compiles all the funny messages that get accidentally sent out when iPhone tries to predict (wrongly) what you’re trying to type.

Hope these bring you the laughs that it brought me 🙂

And let me end with this old Chinese song that I recently listened to. Brought me back memories.

Last week I was in Singapore for a few days for our Annual Country Manager Summit. It’s an annual event we have Singapore where all the heads of our offices in the regions will come together, share updates and formulate a strategy to grow the whole company in the next year.

Last year we had representatives from our offices in Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, Australia and China. This year though we added Hong Kong and Thailand to the list.

This is David Lee and Kingston representing our Australia and Hong Kong side.

And here’s Carlos and David representing Philippines and China.

Carlos is one helluva sweet talker. I took a bus with him from KL to Singapore that morning. At the Singapore immigration check point there was this really pretty immigration officer. I went first, gave her my best smile and tried to convince her that I wasn’t going to run away to Singapore and work as a waiter there. I got my stamp and moved out.

Carlos then went after me. And in that 30-45 seconds that he was there. He not only got a stamp but managed to get her PHONE NUMBER. He eventually called her out that weekend and she came out to meet him. What the hell… I’ve seen guys pick up girls from all sorts of places in all sorts of scenarios but never have I seen anyone pick up a girl over the immigration counter.

So anyway back to the Summit. It opened as usual with an opening speech by Ming.

Telling us how bad he thinks the world economy is going to be next year and how we have to prepare for it and stuff like that.

Then it went on with each Country Manager sharing what their country has managed to achieve in the past year and together everyone taps on each others minds for the plans of the future.

The Summit lasts for 5 days. That’s right.. there is that much to discuss. On one of the nights though we went for a really nice Japanese restaurant for dinner. Ming has a media embargo on the name of this place because he says it’s his little secret and doesn’t want anyone else to know about it. Haha although I’m sure many already do.

Lucky for him I can’t even remember how to get to this place or even what it’s called. But I remember the food being really good. I was sitting next to Jamie.

Jamie works in our Regional Office in Singapore. She’s basically like the hub or the glue that glues all the countries together to make sure that good practices of one country is shared with the rest.

Before I end this post, let me share something with you guys. I saw this version of our Nuffnang logo in the Singapore office when I went down this trip. Guess what it’s made of.

Look closely. No the picture is not pixelated or messed up or anything. That’s how it looks in real life. That my friends…. is the Nuffnang logo made out of lego. Don’t ask me how they did it… but they did. Cool huh?

Last week when I was in Singapore I went with some of the Nuffies to Marina Bay Sands. We went to walk around the place and eventually ended up in the casino playing some baccarat and roulette. At the end of the night, all of us had lost money. Not even one of us won.

So the superstitious ones of us starting thinking. You know how they say that when people build casinos they have certain designs in place to create a better “Feng Shui”  for the casino which equates to worse luck for the gambler? Like they say RWS has pyramid shape things at the entrance to take away luck from you and stuff like that.

Well Marina Bay Sands only needs one thing. When you’re in the casino, look in the middle ceiling of the casino and you’ll see this.

What does it look like to you?

Heh well our Singaporean Nuffies told us that the locals there refer to it as “THE GIANT CIBAI”. That it’s meant to “Cibai” all your luck away. So that night we tried to avoid playing directly under it but clearly that wasn’t good enough to get past the giant cibai. Nothing escapes the giant cibai. It sees all and it cibais all!

PS: As a disclaimer, I’m sure many people have won at MBS before. Haha just sharing whatever I’ve heard.

I know. The title sounds like it belongs to a fashion blogger or at least a female blogger. When guy bloggers buy new shoes, it doesn’t normally make headlines. But I love shoes. Not all shoes actually… but more specifically sneakers… and even more specifically, Adidas Superstar sneakers.

So Ming came down to KL for the weekend and we went to Pavilion to shop a little. Ming wanted to buy a pair of shoes. I was browsing in Adidas but didn’t quite like what I saw. Then the salesperson then pointed out a particular shoe to me. It was this limited edition Adidas Star Wars shoe.

I decided to try it on and I couldn’t resist.

Love it love it love it.

It’s such a geeky sneaker. Like when you open the box, the sneakers are wrapped in Star Wars themed paper. WIth the words “Rebel Alliance”.

And inside the shoe, Star Wars all over.

There’s even a little Rebel Alliance logo at the back of the shoe.

The best part about it though is that eventhough it’s sooo geeky… it’s not particularly obvious when you wear it. So when I wear it, all you see is this.

See? Nobody can see the geeky X-Wing logo on my shoe or the words Star Wars. Girls won’t go running away the minute they see my sneakers.

I love Adidas sneakers. I don’t wanna wear any other kind of shoe but sneakers!

Simple luxuries like that in life make me happy 🙂

Hey Guys,

Sorry for the lack of updates but I’ve been so busy lately. So busy that I can hardly even find time to reply your comments. So if I’ve missed replying your comments in my recent previous posts, please don’t mind me. Know that I have took the time to read every one of them. When I do get the chance I’ll reply it all one day 🙂

Last week I was in Hong Kong to attend some meetings and also to attend a Nuffnang HK event there. It was a Stand-up Comedy event at a club and we had 60 Nuffnang HK bloggers attend. It was only the 3rd Nuffnang event we had there, and the biggest. Our previous events were simply lunches and all.

Here are some picture I took. The guy with the red checkered shirt in the middle is Kenshin. One of the top bloggers in Hong Kong.

Here’s a picture of two of our Nuffies in Nuffnang Hong Kong. Jason on the left and Kevin on the right.

The girl on the right told me that she had just graduated from New Zealand. She was thinking of looking for a job there when she heard that Nuffnang was opening up in Hong Kong so she came back just to apply for a job there.

The guy in between Kevin and Jason is a well-known stand-up comedian in Hong Kong. He’s of Indian descent but because he grew up in Hong Kong he speaks fluent Cantonese.

One of our bloggers there who won our iPad 2 giveaway.

My mistake was not taking a picture that captured the crowd there but I guess there’ll be another time.

After work on one of the days, my friend who works in an investment bank brought us out on his bank’s private boat. We sat on the top deck and it took us around Hong Kong Island.

We eventually ended up at Lama Island for a seafood dinner.

This is Jestina and Jason talking on the top deck. It was so romantic I was afraid they might fall in love and we’d have another inter-office-Nuffie relationship.

After a while the sun even began to set and it got even MORE romantic.

So I went in there for a while and pai lamp post.

Heh no la I didn’t purposely do that. Just took a picture with them.

And another picture with Kingston.

Once I had snapped enough pictures of people on the boat, I took this picture of one of the tallest buildings in Hong Kong.

Ahh it was so relaxing and so much fun. I could so get used to this life.

Too bad I’m not an investment banker. I hear they get at least 12 months bonus every year. If they get anything below that it’s considered a bad year.