Hey Everyone!

I cannot begin to tell you how busy I am these few days it’s crazy! Because I was in Singapore most of last week for the Nuffnang Country Manager Summit, I came back with backlogged workload that spans as far as KL to New Mexico. Not only that, we had done some good planning during the Summit in Singapore and now that we’re back, it’s time to execute everything. At night is the only time I really get some time for myself and my nights are being spent doing one of two things:

1) Watching Desperate Housewives in bed with Kitteh and Dug.

You guys know Dug right?

There’s nothing like spending the night after a long hard day’s work in bed just watching the lives of the people in Wisteria Lane. Kitteh pointed out the other day that our lives have become so predictable… so routine “boring couple”. After we’re done with Desperate Housewives though I plan to lobby with Kitteh that she watches 24 with me. I’m yet to watch the latest season of 24 but I’m beginning to feel that everything is slowly becoming a little repetitive. Like.. there’s a terrorist act, then there’s a traitor in CTU or FBI or whatever… and then Jack wants to go out there and kick all the bad guy’s asses but some idiot leader is holding him back. Still… I would watch Jack kick ass for another Season.

I’ve also been trying to get Kitteh to watch Lost starting from Season 1. That’s probably one of the best TV shows ever made in my opinion. Will someone please tell her that?

Speaking of TV though, I switched on my TV this morning over breakfast and saw Notting Hill on HBO.

Anyone remember that movie? Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts. Mann… movies that are set in London like that make me miss London. It’s funny how we change. When I was studying in London I used to hate being there. Didn’t like the gloomy wet weather and always missed home. Now whenever I’m really stressed and wish I could find a place to escape to I think of London. London is the only place in the world to me that is so foreign and yet so familiar.

It just still feels like home to me…

2) Well the second thing I spend my nights doing is… playing… Starcraft II.

Whenever Kitteh says that she has some work to do or goes to wash up after work or something a little joy in me is lit up. I get to play some Starcraft! Yay! I used to be really into Starcraft, I was really good in it too. Now though I think that I’ve kinda grown out of it a little bit. Like I don’t get as much joy playing it as I do for some of my other XBOX or PS3 games or even watching TV series. I do however still love playing it because of the nostalgia it brings back to me. Plus a lot of my friends are playing it now so it becomes a bit of a social thing when you play online together.

Okay guys. Now I have to go for dinner. Catch you guys soon ok 🙂

I met up with an old friend of mine lately. Her name is Michelle. I was 14 when I first heard about her existence. She was staying in a house just a few doors down from my cousin’s house back when I was still a secondary school student in Penang. We were outside my cousin’s house just playing around when we saw Michelle’s car open the gate and go into her house. My cousin then said “The girl who stays in this house.. is damn hot!”.

I then began to hear about her from friends in school. How this girl from Methodist Girl School was perfect. Like she was pretty, top in her class and also a school or maybe even state tennis player. I don’t remember how I officially met her but I think it was through some other friends many many years later when I was in college. It was just before we were about to start university in London together (she, going to LSE) and so we kept in touch and hung out quite a bit in London. We used to do a lot of stuff together… but after graduation she got a job in London whereas I came back to start Nuffnang with Ming. I hadn’t seen her since until recently… and I think some 3-4 years might have passed since I last saw her.

Now she’s off to another high paying job somewhere else in the world but she managed to stop by Singapore for a day and paid me a visit at our office. Ming who also knew her, set up the lunch we had that day. It was really nice seeing her again and it’s funny how things panned out huh. From the time when I first heard about her some 12 years ago… and now.

On another note, yesterday I was at Sunway Lagoon for the Sony Cybershot TX-5 event with some Nuffnangers.

We had about 100 Nuffnangers with guests there for some games so some of the Nuffies and I went along.

The TX-5 is the camera Kitteh is using now and she seems to love it not because it’s a great camera but because it’s “clumsy-proof”. Like it’s water-proof, dust-proof and shock-proof so you can be clumsy like Kitteh and still have a working camera at the end of the day.

The games they played that day tried to highlight that. Like they had this game where mockups of the camera were put inside this box full of … some kind of liquid and stuff and you had to dig them all out to find them.

Or this game where you tried to throw cameras into these round boxes.

Or this one where you’re supposed to find these cameras in an ice-box. That pink one there is Kitteh’s real camera.

Or another one where you had to take an underwater photo with the camera.

I spent the rest of the afternoon after the event sleeping… I don’t know what got into me, just got really tired and sleepy. When I woke up though I played Starcraft 2… until I got nagged by Kitteh.

Halfway through the weekend already… man weekends just fly by too quickly.

I’m going to end this Baywatch like picture I took of Huai Bin at the Sony Cybershot Event. He came fully prepared with his trunks!

Have a good weekend guys.

I have a new present!

Yay! Here’s the story. For the past few weeks or even since a month or two back, I’ve been going back to this store over and over again to look at this new watch that I’ve really grown to like. It’s called ToyWatch. Now it’s not a Rolex or Omega or anything. If anything it’s something like a expensive Swatch.

Wow… how often do you hear Swatch these days at my age? Back when I was in school I remember Swatch used to be the “In” thing man. It’s like you’ll hear stories about how this guy who bought his girlfriend a Swatch and you’ll go “WOAH!!!!”. Just like how “G-Shock” and “Baby-G” was such a hit back then.

I wonder if it’s still as popular among the high school kids these days. It’s gotta be right? I’m sure they still sell like hot cakes.

As you grow older though, things change. Just like how “Guess bags” used to be high class. These days, all the girls around me are talking about Miu Miu, LV, Balenciaga and the likes. Watches though have evolved… from Swatch to guys I know wearing Tags, Rolex, Omegas, Panerais… man you name it. I think those watches are nice and all but it’s just so much stress having to worry about wearing something so valuable on your wrist. Imagine wearing a RM30,000 Rolex and getting mugged or even getting your hand chopped off because someone wanted to steal your Rolex. It would be soooo not worth it.

Anyway my desires are a lot lower. Instead… I started craving… this ToyWatch.

ToyWatch is this really young brand that I grew to like after I did more and more reading up on it. It’s supposed to be an “anti-luxury” brand where they would take the designs of high class premium watches like Rolex or Patek or so and then make cheaper “toy” versions of it using ceramic or plastic.

I fell in love with this black and white one that cost RM1,300 but I didn’t dare buy it on the spot though. It’s still a lot of money to splurge on myself so it took me so many repeated visits back to the shop until even Kitteh began embarrassed of going back into the shop. She began to feel that the sales staff there already started recognizing us as the couple that would go in, look at the watches, get our fingerprints all over the display but walk out 5 minutes later without buying anything.

Well last weekend… I DID IT!!!
And now I proudly wear it.

It’s this fun, bright and trendy watch that actually looks really cheap. In fact if I ever get mugged one of these days (touch wood), I think there’s a good chance that the robber might even just look at my watch and let me keep it. He’ll probably think I got it as a free gift after buying a lot of Koko Krunch or something.

Of course unlike a Rolex or something, this watch probably doesn’t retain any value but hey it’s just a fun watch to have. I was feeling stressed but now I feel a lot better though. Retail therapy helps.

What do you guys think of my new watch? Hehehe. Makes me feel young again.

Whew I have been really busy this week so I’m going to make a really quick update on what I’ve been up to. Last Sunday morning was the earliest I had been up on a Sunday for a long time. I was invited to the Malaysian Student Leaders Summit to be on a panel talking to students about taking “unconventional career paths”. With me was musician and CEO of Tune Talk, Jason Lo. Funny guy I tell you…. makes a lot of money too!

Also with me was Juana Jaafar from Unicef.

I thought I could’ve done a lot better but I had fun in the event nevertheless. Jason Lo saved the day with his funny antics.

The next morning I was up early again! This time to catch a flight to Singapore. I’m in Singapore this week for the Nuffnang Country Manager’s Summit. It’s the first time we’ve having this but it’s basically where all the Heads of Nuffnang Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines and Australia meet once a year to exchange what’s been going on in their respective markets and to plan for the future.

I’ve been having quite a lot of fun lately. I mean it’s great to get an update on how Nuffnang is doing in each of the countries. Each country reported really good growth in the past 12 months and I’m so glad that 2 years ago we decided to quickly expand to Australia and Philippines. Today Nuffnang is a lot more stable as a company because of these other markets which makes us not totally dependent on one market now.

So I’ve really been seeing the inside of an office for most of my time here. The only time we get out is for meals. So that’s the only pictures I have… of us at meals!

At the end of Day 1, Ming brought the team to this really kickass Nasi Lemak in Singapore. Some really really good food!

Then on Day 2 (Tuesday), we went for this Chinese restaurant that had the best sweet sour pork ever!

Some of the Singapore Nuffies tagged along too.

Interestingly enough, most Nuffies are on Blackberries.

Right in the middle of our afternoon meetings though, Esther and Elisa surprised us by making us this really nice cup of ice-cream. Yummy!

Here’s Kruppy enjoying it.

Kruppy is the Country Manager for Nuffnang Australia, based out of our Melbourne office. Yes… he’s as charming as he looks.

Whoops now I have to jump into a conference call. Sorry guys, catch you guys soon!

Not too long ago, I had dinner at Neroteca, one of my favourite restaurants. It’s just off Cangkat Bukit Bintang. Unlike it’s fine dining restaurant Nerovivo, Neroteca is a little more casual… in a bistro kind of way and I like the quaint feel of it. If there’s one thing I really like that I don’t find in KL too often is small quaint restaurants with great food. You can find so many of those in London or even in Melbourne sometimes… you know, off some alley or something you find this little restaurant with just a few tables with with gorgeous food.

The reason I was at Neroteca that night though was because of Leon. Let me give you some history on my friend Leon. Leon is an old friend of mine from Penang… but he now lives in KL half the time. He graduated from Purdue University with an engineering degree. After that he came back to Penang and easily found a job at an engineering firm. He worked there for a few years until he finally realized that his passion was in the stock market.

So he quit his job one day, taking with him whatever savings he earned from his engineering job and just focused on investing it. So while all of us are working, Leon wakes up any time he wants in the morning, goes to the gym or live his life however he wants. Then whenever he finds the time to, he sits down and studies the stock market to see which stock he should invest in. Once he makes the decision to invest he leaves it for a while and just watch the stock price over months or years. In the mean time, he’s the biggest party animal I know… in Penang he would be out partying like 2-3 times a week and man did he live the life.

Now he’s come down to KL too and he’s been partying just as often. So anyway just recently Leon asked me and another friend of mine Gin for dinner. Gin is the other guy in this picture.

The reason was because a company he had invested in about a year ago just got bought out. So as a result he made money and he wanted to buy his friends dinner! How nice of him!

I imagine that to be the kind of life Leon has. Like he invests in all this, some make decent returns, some may even lose but sometimes he makes one killing and that’s all the money he needs to enjoy his life for another year or so.

Still when your friend asks to buy you dinner, you don’t exactly want to take that for granted so we ordered decent stuff. We didn’t pop a few bottles of French wine open. All I had was just a Pesto Penne Pasta… simple.. but fantastic!

Neroteca just has the best pasta I know of in KL… and it’s not particularly expensive or anything. I think it’s about RM28 or something.. which is more or less the same as a lot of other places. Only that this pasta has very very high quality ingredients. You can feel it.

And for dessert, the waitress recommended their famous Tiramisu.

Tried it out, it was okay… but I still kinda prefer the Alexis one.

The dinner and the company that night was just lovely! Thanks Leon for the dinner. Hope you make more money in the stock market in the future.

You guys remember Pierre and Lay See right? They’re both good friends of mine. Last year I attended their wedding in Malacca,you guys remember which one right?

The wedding where I got tortured along with a lot of other guys. And the wedding where I learned I will never again be a “heng tai” again. You  know, being forced to getting my legs waxed…. having lipstick put on me… kissing a guy… and all that other shit does that to you.

Earlier this year I went to Melbourne with them.

And last weekend I paid them a visit in Gleneagles. Visits to hospitals are normally sad. Because it’s a place where sick people go… there is however one occasion where going to a hospital is actually a happy thing and that is when you get the “gift of life”.

Lay See who has been pregnant for the past 9 months, just gave birth to a baby girl.

I could see it in Pierre’s eyes. Suddenly everything else in the world mattered a bit less… to make room for this one little blessing that came. It’s beautiful! I always believed that when we’re young all we do is work hard and chase careers or money. Once we have kids though, our lives change a little and all we really look forward to is seeing our kids grow old. Money and career all take a secondary desire. It’s true! Pierre himself was thinking of buying a sports car 9 months ago. Then he found out Lay See was pregnant and he didn’t.

The gift of life!

Sometimes I try to think of a word that would describe my girlfriend. Some of my friends describe their girlfriend as HOT (lucky them), some “cute”, some “girl-next-door”, some… “smart”.

But if I were to describe Kitteh I would say… FUNNY. The funny comes from her doing entertaining little things or sometimes just being as silly as she sometimes can be.

1) Like a couple of weeks ago, she was trying to do this video  adv for the Munchys Muzic Moments contest where you can win an iPad and stuff and she managed to somehow convince her friends Angela and Suet to be in it. I wasn’t so keen on acting in it… heck I’m not comfortable doing any sort of video myself. Then she started wobbling side to side and getting all whiney like a 9 year old girl… the kind of thing that would normally annoy you but it made me laugh instead. Allow me to illustrate.

Imagine this girl…

now imagine her swaying from side to side whining incoherently about you not helping her do her video. Yes.. you see it now?

So fine… I decided to do it.

And the outcome was this video.

I can’t bear to watch myself in it.. watching myself makes me cringe. The things I do for my girlfriend.

2) Then last night we all watched Salt. Which was a really great entertaining movie by the way. Some sort like a spy story. We kept guessing throughout the movie what was going to happen in the end but we kept getting it wrong. When we all got home I went to take a quick shower and then on to my laptop to do some work. Halfway I decided to walk back into my room and that’s when I noticed Kitteh there right outside the bathroom, wrapped in a towel with her hair still wet just standing still. I asked her “What’s wrong?”

And she said… “Nothing.. I was just thinking what if I was SALT.”

That was so random I burst out laughing and then she went on to explain as serious as she can
“No it’s true! If I were salt I think I will just die. I cannot read maps, I cannot shoot guns, I cannot jump from place to place…”.

So that my friends, is the little entertainment Kitteh gives me every day.

Saturday night we had another Nuffnang Community Event for about 100 Nuffnangers. It was the LG Cookie Monster Party that was in-line with the launch of their new LG Cookie phone range.

The event was held in Neutral Club. I thought the concept of the venue was really interesting. I mean it’s a club that had white walls, white furniture white everything. The wall had no decor but each of these big walls had a projector which could project all sorts of things on the walls. Be it a movie, trailer or even just a logo.

It was pretty cool. It’s like a club that can change its interior every few minutes. The theme of the LG Cookie Monster party was… needless to say… Monster! So we had Nuffnangers dress up as all sorts of monsters… one of the most elaborate was this guy who came as a Predator. No joke! Full costume all the way man!

Kenny Sia was the emcee for the event and we had all sorts of games. Like a game where we had an eating contest on stage to see who could eat a packet of Chipsmore and finish a glass of milk the quickest.

The highlight of the night for some of us though, was the performance by the “WonderNuffies”. How that came together was a couple of months back, Robb asked one of the girls in the office if they would like to do a performance that night. All the girls in the KL office agreed to it and born were the “Wonder Nuffies”. They would all perform “Nobody Nobody” after the Korean band Wondergirls.

They all practiced so hard. Every day in the office after lunch or after work they would all get together and learn the steps. Most of the time I saw them practising though I heard lots of laughing here and there so I can only assume that they had fun. Finally the night came and well… let me share a video that I took in the middle of their performance. Here it is.

The crowd cheered really loudly after their performance and demanded an encore. At that point I thought it was funny how they all looked at each other not knowing what to do since… well.. they didn’t expect that the crowd would ask them for an encore. Some of  the people at the event didn’t know that the “Wonder Nuffies” were all staff from the KL office.. but for those who did know, they joked about us getting a surge of “male applicants” to join the company after that night. It didn’t happen though. Nope no surge 🙂

Here are some more pictures from the night.

1) Eric Soong, Kitteh, Lainey, Kenny and me. Kenny went as shrek. I on the other hand pulled out my Domokun t-shirt from the closet and wore that to the party.

2) Here’s me with Nuffies Elaine and Pinky (oh and Domokun too).

3) Me and Lionel, from Ripplewerkz.

4) Me and Hui Wen.

5) Me and Tim 2…  who has been with Nuffnang since the early days.

6) Here’s Jolyn and me.

Jolyn is a Nuffnanger from Penang and I always admire how she so often makes a trip down just to attend Nuffnang events. Not only that, she always comes very well dressed too.

7) Some of the Nuffies.

8) One Nuffnanger came in a full Stitch outfit. This is her when she was eating some cookies on the cookie & milk eating contest on stage.

Haha damn cute. If i had a Stitch outfit like that I would’ve so worn it to the party.

9) This is probably the scariest outfit of the night. Mummy girl!

Seriously! I mean her outfit on its own was creepy enough but what was worse was that she had this little “baby” she carried around with her. Like a mummy baby. Man that was freaky!

A bit of a shock though when you talk to her though. I mean when you look at her you get a bit scared, then she comes up to you and this bubbly girl starts talking to you and you get confused on whether you’re supposed to be happy or scared. Heh…

10) This is a picture with Maylene, Elaine and Pinky.

Notice the Cookie Monster eyes on Pinky’s head? She made it herself. All she did was take two white Ping Pong balls, paint black dots on it and then put it on a hair band. So easy yet so nice huh!

11) Finally a group picture of all the Nuffies there that night.

———————

After the LG Cookie Monster party some of us Nuffies decided to go to Velvet for an after-party. When I showed up with My Hello Kitty, the Nuffies had the biggest “surprised look” on their faces! It’s like they didn’t expect us to come. They expected us to be an old boring couple that just goes home after an event and not go out for an after party. Hah! We proved them wrong!

Them bastards tried to get me drunk though. One by one of them took turns filling up my drink with as much whiskey as possible and getting me to bottoms up with them. To make matters worse, I met a lot of other old friends in Velvet there that night and they all made me bottoms up with them too. The intention of the Nuffies was so obvious though. You could see them all whispering amongst themselves… plotting to get me drunk. One thing they didn’t know was… while I’m generally quite an alcohol lightweight, I for some reason have a pretty good tolerance for whiskey. It’s like.. I can drink a lot and a lot of it and it doesn’t seem to have as much of an effect as me as say wine or even beer!

I don’t understand why….. but nevertheless after all the whiskey I did get a little high… or more like “happy”, That was like… the happiest few hours I had all week. Booze really does some things to you. And you know what, I bought a bottle of whiskey for everyone that night and the bottle cost RM438. I paid RM450 in cash and he never returned with my change! Then again, maybe he couldn’t find me given how packed it was there that night. Heck I wonder what would’ve happened if I had given him my credit card instead. I would’ve had to spend the whole night hunting for the waiter to get my credit card back.

The Nuffies I learn are really different while clubbing as opposed to how they are in the office. I’m not allowed to talk about what happened there that night but lets just say I saw a whole other side to some of them. *Wink* Xinxian. Either ways I was all just happy and having fun anyway. At one point of the night, Maylene nudged me and pointed out to me that some guys were chatting my girlfriend up. I looked over at her and decided two things:

1) The guy didn’t look like a creep.

2) My Hello Kitty looked like she was having fun from the attention she was getting.

So I just said “Bah! Let her have her fun”. Not like I didn’t care or anything but I like to give my girlfriend some space whenever I can. Besides, I trust her 🙂

The next day though she told me that one of the guys was Japanese and after talking to her for a bit finally asked her
“Would you like to share a hotel room with me?”

At which point she then pointed at me and said
“Haha no thanks. That’s my boyfriend there!”.

I only wonder how I looked like at the moment she was pointing at me. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t looking all macho ala Old Spice Man …. but I just wonder if the guy looked over at me and saw me bouncing around (or trying to dance) and thought “Man that guy looks like an idiot!”.

Oh well… I had a really fun night though…. the music in Velvet was great (as always) and we had good company there. Ahh what a night.

My Hello Kitty and I were just saying how our lives have changed. When we first started dating or even before we started dating we used to go out a lot at night. Lately though we find all we want to do is stay at home and watch TV after a long week of work… we’ve even admitted to being the “boring couple”.

So last weekend when we heard about the Xplay party at Gosh, we decided that we had to go. That’s something about XPAX lately though. So often now they would have parties after parties… almost every other week. Like one week they would have it in KL, then the next week in JB, then in Penang then in Malacca… it’s like they go everywhere and bring the parties with them. Just about 4 weeks ago we went for the one in Opera Sunway… and now we’re at Gosh.

We went with some of the Nuffies and Nuffnangers that night and we had loads of fun. Of course things that night started really nice and formal. Like we were all well behaved and all. But there was free flow of beer so it didn’t take long before everyone was high and happy…

and most of us red.. especially me.

This is me with Ah Quah and Leon.

Ah Quah (or Boss Lepton if some of you may remember him) is the guy on the left. He’s one of my best friends from the UK and he has recently got together with another one of my friends from the UK to start a wine business. They call it www.wineactually.com. They just started and they have a long difficult road ahead of them but they’re both among the smartest people I know so I’m sure one day they’ll be huge.

In this picture from the left is me, Chris, Nic Gan, Rachel and Jestina.

Chris’s real name isn’t really Chris. His real name is Nicholas Liew and he’s actually the vocalist of a band.  We have 3 Nicholas’s in the office before Chris joined us and one day I accidentally called him Chris out of the blue. Eventually that kinda stuck on to him with the rest of the Nuffies so Chris it was. We asked him if he mind but he didn’t.

This really reminded me of one of my friends from college named Ah Bon. Ah Bon used to be friends with some of my other college friends when they were back in Catholic High. Since their high school days they’ve always called him Ah Bon so when we met in college he introduced himself as Ah Bon so I called him that from now on. It was only years later that I realized that his real name wasn’t anything close to Ah Bon. It didn’t have an Ah or Bon anywhere in it. In fact his real name is Kelvin Pang… and nobody remembers how they came up with the name Ah Bon. It just happened.

I hear out in the working world now he’s stopped introducing himself as Ah Bon and more as Kelvin Pang now. When the old friends see him though… it’s still Ah Bon.

Some of the other there that night.

Michelle, Jessicat, Eric and Stephanie.

Can you believe that Stephanie is s a teacher? An actual tuition teacher that teaches classes! She’s like one of those young cool teachers all my friends would use to drool at in class.

This is Angeline.

She just recently joined our team as one of our accountants. She used to work in KPMG and I hear that in KPMG they had an “unofficial” list of the “hottest girls in KPMG KL”. Apparently Angeline was ranked number 3… I never knew that before I hired her… really!

Some more pics that night. Just realized that I didn’t manage to take a picture with Joshuaong and Bryan.

And here’s Rachel carrying My Hello Kitty.

My Hello Kitty later told me that Rachel is a strong girl. Yes she is.. yes she is.

Well we all had a lot of fun that night. Nice to remember what it  feels like to be young again!!! (or at least to start going out again at night). Thanks for the great party XPAX. Happy to be carrying my XPAX Blackberry! Which reminds me… kinda need to top up tomorrow.

Lately I’ve been really into a viral campaign done by this men’s body wash in the USA. It’s called Old Spice. If you haven’t heard of Old Spice before, I don’t blame you because it’s a really really old brand that our generation totally missed. Our parents would know that though. When I mentioned Old Spice to My Hello Kitty’s parents, they both went “OHHH I REMEMBER THE ADS!”.

Now I’m not sure which Old Spice ads we had back in the 70s or 80s but I YouTubed around and found these.
Ahhh how simple advertising was back then. All they had to do was just tell us how good the product was. These days if advertisers tell you that a product is really good you call them “hard sell”. They have to find new ways to engage you, like this new Old Spice campaign.

It started off with these TVC that made fun of men that used “female-scented body wash”.

I found this one especially funny. I like the way he goes “Look at your man, now back at me… now back at your man.. now back at me”.

Haha!

So anyway what they then did is they created an Old Spice Man twitter account and they started uploading video responses to what people had to say to Old Spice Man. These are some of my favourite responses.

I love the Old Spice Man campaign. It’s certainly the best social media campaign I’ve ever seen. And to think it’s for a BODY WASH! Haha

I’m on a horse!