I have been MIA for a few days. Yes I know… I’m sorry. I have an excuse though! A very good one! For the past couple of days, I was in Phuket for WPP Stream.

Quick fact on WPP from Wikipedia:
WPP plc (LSE: WPP, NASDAQ: WPPGY) is a global communications services company with its main management office in London, United Kingdom and its executive office in Dublin, Republic of Ireland. It is the world’s largest advertising company measured by revenues, and has over 2,400 offices in 107 countries. It owns a number of advertising, public relations and market research networks, including Grey, Burson-Marsteller, Hill & Knowlton, JWT, Ogilvy Group, TNS and Young & Rubicam.

The company today is worth almost $16 billion on the stock market.

Every year, WPP has a few of these invite-only conferences around the world. The description on the Stream website:

Stream events bring together the brightest and most innovative leaders and future leaders from the creative, media and technology industries

This year, I was one of the lucky ones among 4 other Malaysians to be invited for Stream Asia held in Club Med, Phuket. I know I know what you guys are thinking. When I told people that I was going to Phuket for a conference, the response I normally got was:
“Hahha! Yeah yeah sure….”

But it’s true! Totally true… and it turned out to be the best conference I had ever attended. For Stream, I think WPP booked up the entire Club Med for 3 Days and 2 Nights. They gave each attendee a room each which was very generous of them considering that EVERYTHING was paid for by WPP. So all we had to do was just buy our own flight ticket there and show up.

This was my room.

I’ve always heard about Club Med but this was the first time I was staying there.

Gotta say it has a really nice resort feel to it. To get an idea of what I’m talking about, this is the view of the room window.

Now unlike typical conferences you have where people would just sit and watch powerpoint presentations all day, WPP Stream is very unlike that. Sure there are some sessions where they have the help of powerpoint slides but most of what goes on the days are group discussions that are led by the attendees themselves. There was hardly any fixed agenda set prior to the event itself.

In the main area of the resort they put up this big board that started off blank. Then anyone who was attending the event can take a marker pen and write a discussion topic on any of the time slots. They’ll then be given a place and everyone who was interested could go. At any one time there were some 8 discussion groups going on at the same time covering various topics on technology or advertising.

Topics like “The death of the pageview as a measurement” or “Big data and how to handle them” or “Digital success in China” or stuff like that. The one that got the most attention though was a discussion group started by Jeff Marx. It was titled “THE INTERNET IS FOR PORN”.

Ahh let me tell you about Jeff Marx. I first met Jeff during the orientation of the conference where everyone was holding a drink of their choice and mingling. We all had name tags to see where we were. So I looked at his, saw that below his name, he had “Avenue Q”. Avenue Q is a musical in New York that Shorty and I watched last year when we were there. It’s this really cute musical done by puppets, so it’s a bit like a Sesame Street but it covered young adult themes. Like sex, porn, living on your own etc etc.

One of their popular songs is “The Internet is for Porn’. You can watch a video someone took off their phone camera or something here. It’s blur but it’s good enough to get you a feel of the show.

If you can’t hear the words clearly from that video, you can hear the audio here.

Shorty and I loved it!

So after glancing at Jeff’s name tag I asked him what he does and he said that he was one of the co-creators of Avenue Q. I think he wasn’t confident if I would have heard of it but not only have I heard of it and seen it, I am a big fan of it. Unfortunately I didn’t hide my excitement very well. I went on and on like a Penang Chinese Girl High School student meeting Jay Chou for the first time. I asked sooo many questions and said the words “SO COOL” no less than 5 times in 3 minutes. At one point he asked what was it that I do and I just gave him like a one liner answer and basically went like “enough about me… what about you?”.

Looking back I think I freaked him out a little because the next day we were talking about going jet skiing in the evening. He said he wanted to come but wasn’t sure yet so I told him that he could decide later. That I would just send him a text when some of us were going and he can decide then. I asked him for his number but he told me to e-mail him instead (code for saying: “Uhh… noo.. it’s okay… don’t think giving you my number is a good idea”.

He did show up for jet skiing in the end but he was a little too late. I was already in the water then so he waited for Desmond and I to finish and we just took a walk along the beach and watched the sunset. We talked, got to know each other better and on the last night when I said our last goodbye we exchanged name cards.

So he did finally eventually give me his number… and I gave him mine telling him not to be a stranger if he ever comes by Malaysia… whenever that would be. But I noted to self not to behave like a fan girl anymore whenever I met people who did musicals I love!

So anyway back to the conference itself. I attended quite a lot of discussions and what I found really cool about it was the format. Everyone was expected to contribute something or share an insight.

There were people there from all the top companies in the region. People from Google, Facebook, Tencent, Sina, Nestle… you name it. They were there.

This guy who led a discussion on China is from one of the top ad networks there called Ad China and he graduated from MIT.

So if you have all the brains there then it’s silly not to tap on everyone’s insights right?

On one of the afternoons though we had the CEO of WPP Group, Sir Martin Sorrell come and do a Q&A. Everyone in the advertising industry knows who Martin Sorrell is. He is after all responsible to bringing WPP to what it is today. According to Wikipedia, he’s worth at least $175 million. Listening to him was inspiring. He had such deep knowledge about everything that was going on in the world and such thought-provoking insights in everything from advertising to technology to… everything!

Sure, he did graduate from Cambridge and did an MBA at Harvard but the knowledge he had really meant that he read a lot about everything!

One of the questions he was asked was something a lot of people in the advertising industry are trying to figure out now. With the emergence of social media, creative and media agencies are both competing with one another for their role in social media. So much that you have companies that are within the WPP Group competing with one another. What was his opinion on that?

His response made sense. He felt that the internal competition was necessary for agencies to keep having to reinvent themselves and grow organically rather than be directed on the group level what it could do or couldn’t do. Which makes sense. In a new area like that, you just have to allow your individual subsidiaries to compete and do what’s best for themselves so they can react in time to the market.

He left us that afternoon with one prediction. That with the growth of Asia and the emerging markets, 5 years from now… one major multinational corporation will move its corporate HQ from New York or London to somewhere in Asia…. and he mentioned “probably Singapore”.

There were lots of other stuff going on at WPP Stream. Not just discussions. Like there were a group of people who were making this rabbit out of… well.. stuff from trees.

On the first night they had this thing called a “Gadgethon” where the conference participants could bring a gadget of their own to share it with everyone else. One guy from Google brought a Motorola Xoom whereas others brought all sorts of stuff like a waterproof and shockproof mini camera that you could hook on to your surf board to record yourself surfing. You know stuff like that.

On the second night though they had this “Extravaganza” night where they had performances. One really cool part was when they decided to play music in line with “user-generated content” from the crowd. So the band played the music for the song “Hey Jude” and the crowd sang the words. Then they got one of the participants to go up on stage and conduct the volume and the tempo of the band. With her hand signals the band would either play the song fast or slow. Really cool stuff.

WPP Stream Asia is really the best conference I have ever attended and it wasn’t just because of all the free flow food and drinks. I promise. It was the quality of friendships that I built there with some of the other people there and the insights I got from the sharing and discussions. Thanks WPP for this wonderful event!

I remember my mum’s voice that night when she called. She was crying over the phone, barely able to utter the words clearly but I heard all I needed to hear: “Aunty Audrey… lung cancer… final stage… Doctor gave her 6 months to live”.

I don’t know what to say at times like that but I knew I had to be the strength for my mum. So as I took in the shocking news I told my mum a white lie: that I knew Aunty Audrey will be ok… and they’ll find a way. The Doctor gave Aunty Audrey 6 months to live and we knew the next 6 months were going to be difficult for my cousins.

That was two years ago.

For two years, Aunty Audrey fought cancer. She suffered not just physically but mentally. I can never imagine how it must feel like, knowing that you were going to die in the near future and knowing that it would come slowly and painfully. I was never very close to Aunty Audrey through my childhood but it was in her final years that I saw her the most. I saw how cancer slowly took her. I remember how she fought on hard. The Doctor had given her an instrument to measure her lung capacity in order to decide if she was fit for surgery. She blew into that instrument each day, hoping to get a good enough reading. At times she felt defeated but my mum encouraged her, told her never to give up.

Months passed and slowly life got more difficult for Aunty Audrey. She got weaker, lost her hair and had to walk with a stick. That stick soon became a wheelchair, on to her last days where she had to stay in bed.

This morning I attended Aunty Audrey’s funeral and paid my last respects. It was the most peaceful funeral I had ever attended. We sang her favourite song “Yue liang dai biao wo de xin” and said our last words to her. Everyone was sad but it was peaceful because I think as much as everyone will miss Aunty Audrey, we’re glad that she was a part of our lives.

My other Aunty told us all how one day in her final days, as she lay in bed she suddenly grew a big smile. She beckoned for my other Aunty to come over and told her
“Jesus is here…. I can see him”.

And she continued to have the biggest smile for the longest time. Whether you believe in God or not, I’m glad my Aunty Audrey felt there was someone waiting for her on the other side.

I will always remember Aunty Audrey for the kind woman she was and the big smile she always had.

Goodbye Aunty Audrey… see you in Heaven some day.

Last weekend, Shorty went for her company’s charity drive that involved a few orphanages in PJ. She came home telling me all about the day and about this cute and very pleasant boy that she met. She told me a bit about the home the boy was from and how they were in need of some help. We’ve been to a number of orphanages around Klang Valley but never this one so this weekend we decided to pay the boy’s home a visit.

The Siddharthan Care Centre is home to some 35 or so children.

It’s been around for 3 years and it’s led by a man named Manimaran. I asked him how he got involved in the home and he told me how he has always been active in orphanages for many many years taking after his late brother. One day the company he was working for gave him the support to start his own home and it all just happened for him.

When I first got to the home, I was on the phone. So I stood outside the home for a while trying to quickly finish my phone call. Suddenly a little girl dressed in white came up to me. She looked up at me and extended her small hand out to greet me. I gently shook her hand and a few more children came up to me to greet me. It was a very warm moment. Many children that age that I see in our every day lives are afraid to even talk to you if they don’t know you, let alone come up and shake your hand. These children though were so warm.

All the children at the home were very very well brought up. They come from different backgrounds. Some of them have never met their parents before and have been abandoned since birth. Some of them have parents who are still around but unable to take care of them because they suffer from drug addiction or they’re really poor. The one thing they all had in common though was they would always give you a big smile whenever you look at them.

It really reminds us what we have in our lives. We have so much more than many of these children but still they manage to find happiness in their daily life. Each day , their lives follow a strict schedule.

And no matter their age, they all played a part in doing house chores. I saw a bunch of them sorting and folding clothes that just had been washed.

I did notice though that some of them did take quite a long time to get it done because they were playing around with the clothes. Like one of them would load everything in the basket, and then pour it all out again just to load it back.

The boys would play around a little but the girls would seriously fold everything themselves. On our way to the home, Shorty and I decided to stop by and buy them some cookies. At the shop I happened to see a good stock of Vitagen in the fridge so I ended up buying 35 small bottles of them.

I remember how growing up, I used to love to drink Vitagen and would beg my parents for it. I thought it would be nice to bring some for the kids. I imagined that just like a children’s birthday party, once I took out the Vitagen everybody would be all over us grabbing the bottles but I was very wrong.

When we announced we had Vitagen to give out, all the children quietly lined up and took a bottle each in an orderly fashion. As each one walked by and took a bottle, they all said “Thank You Uncle” without the need to be reminded.

After giving out everything, Manimaran gave us a tour of the home. This is one of the 4 rooms that the children sleep in.

He told us about how some of them just aren’t able to sleep on double decker beds without falling off because they move around so much in sleep. So what he has to do is organize some of them to sleep on mattresses on the floor. Even then, he would come in the morning and see some of the kids having mysteriously moved in their sleep to go under the bed itself.

We walked across this room that had these 3 little girls sleeping there together on the floor. I thought it was really cute how the little one on the end was sleeping against the one in the middle.

After a while some of them woke up and the older children quickly carried them and cared for them.

This cute little girl was put in her walker.

Every child in that home has a story. This little girl was given up at birth because her mother was only 16 years old at the time.

The mother recently got married this year but has only been able to come back to the home to see her only a few times. I went downstairs to see some of the girls who were helping do the laundry and they willingly took a picture with me and Shorty.

This girl was really cute. When I asked her what her name was, she replied something like “Manogan”. Then I asked her how to spell it and she  just looked at my blank. Not sure if she understood what I was saying but I think she was only 3 or 4 years old.

In my few hours at the home, I learned that the home was in dire need of financial help. They were 2-3 months behind in rent. It hadn’t been easy for them to find cash sponsors because after 3 years they’re still waiting for some kind of license from the government. This license would allow anyone who donates money to the home to claim some tax benefits from the donations. Without that, they can’t.

Nevertheless, I left the home promising to send them a cheque next week that will hopefully help them a little.

On my way home I was trying to think of what I could do to help the kids, maybe even involving Nuffnang and ChurpChurp. To raise funds, or even to bring out the kids for some fun. Manimaran told me how they sometimes go on some sponsored trips to Genting or anywhere nearby and they all have fun.

You guys have any ideas?

In the mean time, if you’d like to help them this is their address

No 32, Jalan SS3/46, Taman Universit, 47300 Petaling Jaya, Selangor.
Phone number: +603 7874 7893

You can also call Manimaran at +6019 314 8533.

I just came back from the Nuffnang Screening of Beastly. Whew I’ve actually been for two screenings in a row in the past couple of days. On Tuesday I went for the ChurpChurp screening of “I am Number Four”. I had pretty  low expectations for that movie because I thought it had a silly name but it turned out to be not too bad. It wasn’t exactly the kind of movie that I like but on the other hand, quite a number of the Churpers I met there loved it.

Tonight though I went to watch Beastly.

It’s like a modern day Beauty and the Beast story. I was really excited for it because I love Beauty and the Beast. I grew up watching the Disney version and till today it’s still one of my the best Disney movies to me. It’s the only Disney movie where I actually own an original DVD for.

I came back right after the movie and I looked on YouTube for the ending of Beauty and the Beast. One of the best Disney endings ever if you ask me! And mind you… Disney movies have a darn lot of good endings!

This ending actually made me cry when I was a kid. Even when I watch it again it made me *sniffle* a little.

The most memorable part of the movie though has got to be this scene. When they sang the song “Be…. our…. guest be our guest…” haha!

I feel like watching Beauty and the Beast again! Think maybe I’ll do that this weekend!

What’s your favourite Disney movie of all time?

I think mine has got to be Beauty and the Beast on top and Aladdin following close behind or… or.. Up… AHH DAMMIT there are just too many. Disney is amazing just by the memories it created for us from its many characters. Picking a favourite Disney movie is really a lot harder than you think.

Ok think to yourself now about your favourite Disney movie.

Got it?

Ok now lets move on….

Are you sure it’s that and not…

Lion King

Up

Toy Story

Pocahontas

Lilo & Stitch

Little Mermaid

Hercules

Finding Nemo

Enchanted

Tangled

Mulan

Wall-E

Monsters Inc

Jungle Book

The Incredibles

Hunchback of Notre Dame

So have you changed your mind about which is your favourite Disney movie yet? Just so many to love right? And there are many many more…

Here’s a really quick short story.

So it goes like this. One of my friends just went to Japan for a skiing trip with some friends. He was really excited about it. You could sense the excitement from his Facebook status. On his skiing trip though, he got injured. He fractured his foot. No no… not by skiing… but because he slipped on a tray on the floor when at a restaurant. All that before he even had a chance to hit the slopes.

Talk about bad luck!

Get well soon JJ!!!

PS: Saw this deal of a Manicure and Pedicure for RM 34 (60% off) on Milkadeal. Shorty goes crazy when she sees things like that. So ladies…. if you’re interested click here.

4 years ago on this date, Nuffnang was born!

I like to think that time really flies but sometimes it does feel like so much has happened since Nuffnang started and I can’t believe it’s only been 4 years. I remember more than 4 years ago when I was telling a friend of mine about starting a blog ad network. He kept saying “I don’t think you’re going to have enough blogs in Malaysia.. and even if you do, who wants to advertise on blogs?”

I guess it was a good thing that I was stubborn. Still.. soo much has happened since then. Twitter and Facebook were born… which then led to the founding of ChurpChurp for people who don’t necessarily have blogs but are big on Facebook and Twitter. Remembering the 4 years of Nuffnang, I decided to take a short walk of history into all the old videos of Nuffnang on YouTube.

See if you guys remember any of this.

1) Nuffnang 2.0

This was a teaser video we created for Nuffnang 2.0. In the first year that Nuffnang started we made many many changes to the website. A lot of the changes were with the infrastructure of the site, to make things run smoother and more efficiently. A lot of changes also were cosmetic.

Nuffnang 2.0 was the first time we decided to seriously look at the entire Nuffnang website and improve on it.

Today we’re running on Nuffnang 3.0 and we’re already looking at revamping the whole backend of the site. Take everything apart and build it all over again to make it all better. Eventhough Nuffnang 2.0 looks primitive to us by today’s standards…  Nuffnang 2.0 was still a big step for us.

2) Present from a Nuffnanger

Every now and then we get some presents from really nice Nuffnangers. This was one of the bigger earlier presents we got back in 2007 in our old office. Someone sent us this huge box of snacks…. more importantly Cheezels because we all love Cheezels!

Up till today I still don’t know who sent this package. It was anonymously sent. So to the person who sent it, let me know who you are so I can do something nice for you ok? In return for making us so happy that day.

3) Nuffday Video

On our first birthday, some bloggers made this video for us. The project was titled “Nuffday” , short for Nuffnang Birthday and it was a collaboration between some Malaysian and Singaporean Nuffnangers.

This is Part 1 of it.

And this is Part 2.

Make sure you watch Part 2 till the end. Sheylara sang a really beautiful song about Nuffnang 🙂

Hehehe… Can’t believe all these videos were back from 2007.

Thanks for always supporting us Nuffnangers.

I have only worked in two other offices prior to starting Netccentric but from whatever little experience I have, my observation is that people curse a lot in the office. Blame it on stress, blame it on influence from American TV or blame it on anything but in all 3 offices I’ve worked in (the first two being investment banks in K) there was some good amount of cursing that goes on each day. Of course to be fair the cursing that goes on is always in a very casual way, not in a scolding kind of way. Like I have to admit that I curse every now and then in conversation but when I’m having an argument or scolding anyone I never curse.

Yesterday though we decided to have some fun in the office. We decided to put together this thing we called a “Fuck Jar”. So every time anyone says the word “Fuck”, he/she will have to pay a RM0.50 fine into the jar. To throw a little more fun into it, we decided that there will be no change given. So if you say the F word once but your smallest note in your wallet is RM5, then you will have to pay the RM5 instead of just the RM0.50. Unless of course you manage to beg for smaller change from someone else in the office.

When I walked in that morning the jar looked like this.

Clearly some people who weren’t fond of mornings had already started some of the cursing. The rest of the day went on with everyone waiting to catch everyone else cursing. At first the F words came naturally on its own. We also noticed that F words came in pairs. Say for example someone drops something she curses “FUCK!!!”. Then after realizing that she just got fined she would shout again “FUCKKK!!!” only to then close her mouth with her hands to prevent from talking further.

As more and more people got fined, everyone started being more and more careful. So to make sure that the F Jar’s contributions continued, people started tricking or provoking people to say the F word.

Like Rachel, I saw her sitting down at her work station leaning back a bit on her chair. So I suddenly jerked her chair downward to make her think like she was falling Inception style. Her immediate reaction was a loud scream. Then a few seconds of silence passed and I thought I had failed to provoke the F word out of her. But after those few seconds it came. She screamed a loud
“FUUUUUUUuuuuuCCCKK!!!”.

We all laughed and got her to contribute to the jar. By mid day the jar was this full.

On the other side of the office, there was just as much action going on. Shun Yau is one of those macho men and very sensitive about being called gay. So Tim2 asked him “Hey Shun Yau, you’re gay right?” and he responded with a “NO LAH FUCK!”…

Then later in the day another guy Nuffie started playing a little footsie with Shun Yau under the table just to provoke him again. Shun Yau again shouted “WOI FUCCCKK!! DON’T FOOTSIE ME”.

Of course in every office there’s bound to be people that are really hard to get to curse. One of them was Raessa. I tried to scare her by pulling her chair down as well but she didn’t let out any scream. She just turned around and went “Woiii! Tsk!”.

Later on though someone managed to get her to say it. One of the Nuffies asked her “Hey what does Fubu mean ar?”

And she replied “Fuck Buddy”… to a loud cheer of people bringing the “F Jar” to her.

So by the end of the entire day, this was how full our F Jar became.

We collected a total of RM30 in that day that will be used for our lunch fund (to buy us all lunch some day). RM30… that means the F word was said some 60 times in a span of some 8 hours that day. That’s like 7.5 “Fucks” an hour and more than one every ten minutes.

I think we should have this more often to reduce the profanity that goes on in our daily lives. Reminds me of that old Sylvester Stallone movie Demolition Man set in the future where every time you say a bad word the government fines you?

When I tweeted about it, someone replied saying that for their office they would need a “bucket” instead of a jar. Lol… I thought we were bad.

I’m finally back in KL after a week of being in Hong Kong. I was already feeling homesick in my final days there so it’s good to be home. I feel that I can always travel everywhere and go lots of places but there’s nothing like coming home!

Sunday was another lazy Sunday for us!

Shorty and I woke up late and then went for lunch at one of our usual places. This corner shop Imbi pork noodle.

There usually aren’t a lot of people but for some reason it was so packed we couldn’t even get a seat. We barely managed to grab one empty table… but it happened to be the one furthest from the coffee shop, right on the pavement and right in the middle of the sun. I tried to be positive about it. Telling Shorty that it’s for us to get our daily dosage of Vitamin D and all. If there’s one thing you have to know about Shorty though is that if there’s anything she would avoid like a plague, it’s the sun.

She fears it will make her darker and she hates it when her make-up melts. So she went all the way back to my car to get an umbrella and we sat eating our lunch like this.

I was sitting right next to her where those plates were and we would both take turns to hold the umbrella.

We got a lot of attention though. People who walked past us laughed at us. This Aunty walked past and teased “Wahh sooo lo-mantic” (romantic). Shorty heard that and she went “FTS!!!”, loud enough for the aunty to hear and giggle away.

We had fun though. Shorty was saying “I bet they wish they thought of this idea too”.

After our lunch by the road side we decided to go somewhere nice. So we popped by BSC to look for this little place called Tea Republic. We had bought the Milkadeal voucher for it some time back.

I have to admit, I bought it solely on how yummy the cookie in the picture looked. It was quite a find though! It’s a really nice and quiet place to chill and relax. Plus the cookies were great!

Shorty loved the place too much she started feeling a bit kiasu. She was like “I better not tell anyone about this place otherwise next time we come we got no place to sit”.

But after a while she decided to share the love so she tweeted about it. I guess that gives me the license to blog about it too.

After spending some couple time Shorty and I went our own ways in the afternoon. She went out with her friends and I went to play badminton with mine.

I don’t know what to blog about when I’m in Hong Kong because most of my trip has been work and meetings. I don’t really know how to blog about work or meetings because… well.. most of the time it wouldn’t interest any of you what I do unless of course you’re my competitor or something. Heh heh.. won’t they love to know what I talk about in meetings. I certainly would love to know what they talk about.

I like to think that I’ve been living the life of a Hong Konger in the past few days. Every day I wake up in the morning and walk to the nearest MTR which is like their underground train. Of course you can take cabs which are fairly affordable in Hong Kong but I quite enjoy the MTR commute. Maybe because in Malaysia we sit in cars to go everywhere… so once in a while when the weather is nice and cool, it’s nice to take the train and walk.

The MTR though is wonderful. When I was a student in London I used to think that the London Underground was awesome. I loved it! My Hong Kong friends there though complained about it all the time. They compared it to the MTR in Hong Kong and thought it sucked. So I figured that the MTR in Hong Kong must be really awesome.

It is….

The trains are so frequent. Like every 2 minutes. They’re very fast and very smooth too. Buying a ticket is so easy. Just press where you want to go on a map and it tells you how much to pay for at the machine.

For a while I had fun playing a typical Hong Konger heading the work on a busy day. During peak hours though the MTR can be really packed with people but it’s nothing unbearable. Maybe because it’s winter now… it’s cool even underground.

The trains can get really packed too but I’ve seen much more packed trains in Tokyo or even in London.

Still it was nice to have a taste of working life in Hong Kong. I had dinner with someone who lives that HK working life every day. His name is Ah Bon.

He grew up in KL but now works in this investment bank here in Hong Kong and makes big money. He works really hard though. Today I called him and he told me he had to work till 2AM. Plus he starts work every morning at 7AM. So if you want to earn a lot of money, go to Hong Kong, wear a suit to work like Ah Bon and sleep 4 hours a day.

Today was a little more interesting though. Hui Wen and I had a meeting with Hong Kong Disneyland. One of our clients. I love it when Hong Kong Disneyland suggests a meeting at their office. It’s an excuse to visit the magical world of Disney.

It was Hui Wen’s first time at a Disneyland and she was a bit of a grinch. All along I was asking her if she felt the magical world of Disney yet and she just went “It’s ok”.

I now refer to Hui Wen as the Disney Grinch.

Pinky happened to be on holiday there with Kah Kit too so they dropped by Disneyland and we met up for a while.

Took this picture, walked around a little and then we had to head off back to work and for our meetings and all.

So that’s the end of my Hong Kong working trip guys.

While everyone was sleeping on the public holiday yesterday, I was up early. By 7AM I had already left home and headed for the airport. My destination… Hong Kong. My business traveling sprees have started again. After trying to stay in Malaysia as much as I can for the past couple of months, I find myself having to travel again.

I was supposed to follow Ming to Melbourne to visit Nuffnang Australia’s office but in the end because of some things I needed to do in Hong Kong I decided to split up and head to Hong Kong instead. Why we’re in Hong Kong? Well, something that we haven’t officially announced yet is that Nuffnang recently set up an office here in Hong Kong. The purpose is really not to immediately duplicate the Nuffnang model from the other countries. Right now our office there is to support our other regional offices and also for research purposes.

So that’s why I’ve been having to make so many trips here. This trip was with Hui Wen who currently heads the Singapore office as well.

It was a rather uneventful day in the start. Just the same go to airport, check-in, have breakfast and then wait for my plane to take off. On the plane though I kinda did something bad. See all flight long I was seated next to this man who looked very much like he was going to Hong Kong for a business meeting. He was dressed up smartly in a suit and tie. Halfway through the flight, they served our meals. So I slowly went through the fruits, the main course and eventually settled on the yoghurt. When I opened the pack of yoghurt, some yoghurt flickered out of the little box and happened to land right on the man’s suit.

Aww man… when that happened, I feel everything went slow motion…. from the moment the drips of yoghurt left the little box and headed for the man’s suit. I could then almost see the future. I imagined he would get really angry, get up and then shout all sorts of profanities at me in Cantonese. I would then have to bend my head low and take it like a man… since it was my fault.

Surprisingly as I was scrambling to get tissue to wipe it off his suit, he just used his hands. I apologized repeatedly and he forgave me really quick. He just said “It’s ok… it’s ok”.

I felt bad all flight long though. So much that I made it a point to trouble him as little as possible for the rest of the flight. That meant at one point, holding my bladder so that I won’t have to cross him to get to the toilet.

When I got to Hong Kong though I went straight to the hotel, checked-in and right after some of the Nuffies there met me at the hotel for a meeting.The meeting lasted two full hours until it was time for dinner.

Meet Kevin and Jason of Nuffnang Hong Kong.

We had a good dinner where we talked all about work but by the time dinner was done we all decided to let the work conversation end for the day. We went for drinks later at Lan Kwai Fong just to chill.

On the way though I saw a few of them stop and start taking pictures of a shop front. I was wondering what the hell they were looking at.

Then I saw it… it was an ad for armpit waxing. I mean look at that picture… and all that hair of that cartoon woman.

That sure caught our attention.

Ok tomorrow’s another long day of work and I gotta head to bed now guys. Blog again soon 🙂

PS: If you have a car, this 35% discount that Milkadeal has for an AAM Membership is something you might wanna consider. Bought one myself too. AAM memberships are so that if your car ever breaks down you can call this number and they’ll send people to help fix it on the spot or tow it away if it’s a serious problem. Milkadeal’s been growing really quick too with Shaun and Wilson running it. Netccentric recently made an investment into it because Ming and I believe in Shaun and Wilson.