When I was talking to Ming a few weeks ago, something dawned on me. When we first started Nuffnang (Netccentric), the team in Malaysia and Singapore used to be really close. Since then the company has grown. The Netccentric Group we founded which now owns Nuffnang, Ripplewerkz, JPB, ChurpChurp and Nom Nom Media now employ some 60 staff in offices at KL, Singapore, Manila and Melbourne. So what we find now is that some of the Nuffies in the Malaysian offices don’t know the Nuffies in the Singapore office and vice versa.

I went into the office in the next few days and had a talk with all the 25 staff based in the KL office. I told them about how it used to be between us and how it is now. Then… after some discussions among the Nuffies, the LDR Initiative was born! The idea was that we invite the Singaporean team over for a “homestay” with us here in Malaysia next weekend. So we will have a plan to do all sorts of different things, whether it’s paintballing or a day at Sunway Lagoon and in return we will each host a Nuffie at our own homes. So we can get to know each of them better.

So here’s how we executed it. First, Sara sent an email to all the Nuffies in the KL Office.

Ming happened to be in the KL office the day that this email was sent. So Sara was going around collecting the money from us when Ming suddenly came up and asked us “What’s going on?”

Fortunately either Sara or me (can’t remember who) were quick enough to say
“Oh no lar.. just paying each other back for lunch”.

Ming just nodded and went away uninterested… fortunately… or the surprise would’ve been spoilt. And a surprise it was!

On Monday everyone in the Singapore office received a rose each with a card on them with their names.

Inside the card was all sorts of freaking cheesy quotes which go in-line with the LDR theme. Seriously, some of them are so cheesy we all went “eeeyyeeer” whenever we heard it… some of us went ahead and puked blood.

To give you an idea on what the quotes were like:

“We only part to meet again”

or

“What’s the opposite of two? Lonely me and lonely you”

We knew that the Singaporean Nuffies were going to tweet all about it when they got it so Linda sent an email out to everyone to make sure nobody would tell them that it was us… at least until the sunflower came the second day that revealed it all. Naturally when the Singaporean Nuffies got it they started to freak out.

They were wondering who the hell from the outside would know ALL their names. I mean it’s one thing to know the names of a few people here and there since sometimes we blog about them, but even the names of the people that the outside world don’t normally see.. like the Finance or Admin side.

Here’s one of the tweets.

Then they started guessing who the sender could be… and Ming actually guessed me!

I denied it all the way… after being warned by the rest of the Malaysian Nuffies that they would keel me if I leaked out the plan. When Ming asked me about it I was like “NO LAH!! I where got do these kind of things wan!”. So then he started guessing other possibilities. Like how it could be…

And they talked a bit about that with Elise replying Ming.

And Ming replying Elise

The Singapore Nuffies were so freaked out they called the florist to demand that the florist tell them who sent it. They stressed how it was “NOT FUNNY”…. all that while the rest of us on the Malaysian side were laughing away!

The next day, the Sunflower came.

Though miles may lie between us, we’re never far apart, for friendship doesn’t count the miles, its measured by the heart. Though that stands true in every detail, the wax of the candle has shadowed our glow. It has reached the peak to rekindle our romance, so hop on the bus and we’ll meet you on the weekend. Head towards the twin towers on the 2nd of June, we will write a new chapter that will make you swoon.

With all our love,
Your Malaysian Counterparts

And shortly after that we sent them an e-mail to clear it up.

They accepted our invitation and now it’s time for the planning on our side. Next weekend is going to be fun 🙂

What made me really happy was to see how the Nuffies really pulled this together and even contributed time and money to keep the closeness of the Nuffies alive! That’s the kind of people that I think we need to keep the company the way it is… and it’s the kind of people that I’m very glad that we have 🙂

See you next weekend guys!

Preface: Girls, please forgive me for the following geek entry. C’mon! You girls gotta gimme a break! I’m a guy and I grew up always wishing I had a game console to play but my parents never wanted to buy me one. So now that I have one (or two), I feel like I’m living my delayed teenage years! Yay!!! I love playing my XBOX/PS3 games, that is… whenever I get the time to. Even My Hello Kitty sometimes shakes her head and wonders how she ended up with a geek boyfriend loves games and doesn’t appreciate art.

Anyway today I shall give you a picture of my very confused looking Hello Kitty.

For the guys: So I just sat down at my computer trying to think about what to blog about. I was going to blog about something… general but there’s nothing in my mind right now except for… sad to say… a PS3 game. A DAMN GOOD ONE THOUGH! I just finished it! It’s called Heavy Rain. That has got to be one of my favourite games this year and I’ve played some damn good games at that too!

What makes this game really great though is one big change in the concept of games. We’re all used to playing games where you’re supposed to do something in order to advance in a game’s plot. So say you’re supposed to kill the bad guy but you fail to do it, then the game makes you start over again right? That’s how computer/video games have conventionally been made.

Heavy Rain though was made to be played where…. whatever you do, whatever choices you make (wrong or right), life (or in this case the game) still goes on. If you fail to do something that you were supposed to do then it’s okay, you just might have to pay for consequence of that later in the game. That’s just like life! I mean in life there very often isn’t a right or wrong choice. We make choices based on what our mind or our hearts tell us and then we move on. Only in hindsight do we sometimes think back and say “I’m glad that I didn’t do that” but the truth of course is we’ll sometimes never even know in hindsight whether what we did was right or wrong.

Heavy Rain anyway has a lot of underlying themes: Choices, Love, Regrets…. but the story is about a man who has had his son kidnapped. The kidnapper then tells the man that in order to get his son back, he has to do certain tasks to prove that he loves his son. If he doesn’t, then the son will die. There’s a lot more to the story and it’s so captivating that if it was a movie it would’ve made a DAMN GOOD movie!

It’s also the kind of game that is as fun for the audience as it is for the player. My sister was watching me play much of the game and she was really addicted to the plot. If you have a PS3, make sure you try Heavy Rain! It’s one hell of an experience. In fact, I kinda envy those people who haven’t played it yet. Such a fun experience ahead.

Here’s a trailer of the game, check it out.

Oh and just to illustrate how different actions in the game leads to different endings, there are 24 different endings. I found out about them after watching so many of them on YouTube.

I have a new toy!  It was some weeks back when Ming first told me that he had a great idea for what to buy me for my birthday. He described it as a wireless sound system that could be controlled by an iPhone or iPod touch and play the music of any computers in a Wi-Fi area.

It can also apparently play hundreds of radio stations all over the world which stream via the internet.

I didn’t think much of it. When he asked me if I would like it I just went “err…”. He looked disappointed and asked “What? You don’t like music ar?”

I thought a little deeper about it. I mean yeah I just moved into this new place and I don’t really have a sound system in the bedroom yet so I guess that would be nice… but do I need such a fancy one? I mean heck, I would’ve just settled for a speaker dock for my iPhone on my nightstand. Then I went home and started doing some research about this wireless sound system he told me was called “Sonos”. I watched some videos about it and read about what it could do and I was IMPRESSED.

Let me tell you what it can do.

I now have two of these speakers that apparently have like a woofer and all built in. One in my bedroom (along with my 1,000 year old boxy TV).

and one in my living room downstairs.

They are both connected by this hub called the “Zone Bridge”. I only have two but if you have more you can simply hook them all up to the same wireless network.

So from the Sonos iPhone App I can install on my phone, I see this in the menu.

I can browse all sorts of different radio stations from all over the world. Like here I’m looking at the radio stations in San Francisco.

I can choose the radio stations based on genre. Say if I like classical music, there are many many radio stations out there that have nothing but classical music. Say I like RnB then I can pick the RnB stations or if I like the Oldies I can pick a station that specializes in Oldies.

There are even news stations, comedy stations etc etc. Heck there even is a station dedicated to Beatles songs and play nothing but that. That’s one of Hello Kitty’s favourite. Then I can control them such that both the speakers in my Living Room and Bedroom play the same music or different music.

In this case, the speaker in the Living Room is playing “Song to Whoever” by Beautiful South and the speaker in my bedroom is playing “21 Guns” by Green Day. It also pulls off any songs from any computers that are hooked on to my Wi-Fi network and can play from that computer instantly.

The sound from the speaker too is great. A little speaker like that can go really really loud. I don’t know if the sound quality is better than a Bose or something but…. I like the flexibility it gives me to listen to whatever music I want, wherever I am at home. Best part is that I don’t need another controller just to control this. I can just do it from my phone.

All the internet radio stations too are great. It’s like you keep discovering new great songs when you listen to them.

Thank you for the great Birthday Present Ming!

While My Hello Kitty and I were in New York, one of the places we had to visit was Central Park. You hear so much about it from TV or Movies. Like in so many movies where they have aerial shots of New York, you’re very likely to see a shot of Central Park in there somewhere! It’s like this big patch of green in the middle of the concrete jungle that’s rectangular in shape.

The cool thing about New York is that It’s planned out in a way where street names can be used as coordinates. So if someone wants to tell you where he lives, he just has to say “on the corner of Madison and 31st Street” or something and you can look on the map and find that exact spot. So similarly, distance is measured by the term “blocks” which is how many grids of buildings you will have to pass in order to get to the place. One block takes maybe… 5-10 minutes or so to walk. Central Park runs for like… 51 blocks!

Central Park is really nice. You see a lot of people doing all sorts of outdoor stuff. I saw girls in bikinis sun bathing while lying on the grass. I saw people playing baseball.

I saw couples row boats.

I saw lots of people jogging or cycling.

Lots of mothers with strollers walking around the park and lots of water coolers for people like me who can’t last 5 minutes without water.

There were lots of people walking their dogs too. My Hello Kitty loves big dogs so when she saw one she couldn’t resist patting it in the head. The owner of the dog was Filipino and fortunately she didn’t have the dog ordered to ATTACK MY HELLO KITTY!

That’s one thing about New York. Everywhere you go, people like to ask where you’re from because lots of people there are from all around the world and they just happen settle down in New York. I initially thought New York had a reputation for “rude people” but I actually met some really really helpful people there. We would be walking the streets looking at a map and a passerby would just stop us and ask if we need help.

This other time we were trying to get into the subway but failing terribly because My Hello Kitty’s subway travel card didn’t seem to work. We were trying it for a long long time until a guy who was dressed like Snoop Dogg and looked like Akon came over and offered to swipe his card for us. In other words, to help us he was willing to pay the subway fare for My Hello Kitty. To make matters worse, once he swiped the card I saw the credit he had left, something like $8 left or something. So that guy probably had $10 to begin with on the card and he spent 20% of the total money he had on the card just to help a stranger. Such a nice guy. I hope good karma comes back to him.

Anyway back to Central Park. One of the things we wanted to see at Central Park was Strawberry Fields. The story behind Strawberry Fields is that decades ago, John Lennon was shot right outside his apartment which is the building behind me in this picture. That’s right, John Lennon used to stay there.

His apartment is right opposite Central Park so in 1985 on what would’ve been his 45th birthday, his Japanese wife did was create a memorial for him in Central Park named after one of his songs: Strawberry Fields (Forever).

It’s a mosaic mural where lots of John Lennon fans will come and leave their belongings here amongst the strawberries and flowers that were laid out into a peace sign.

Right in the middle of the mural was the word “Imagine”, probably after his song.

I don’t know how to explain but just being there at Strawberry Fields gave you a very… peaceful feeling. Heck if I ever have a memorial, that’s the exact kind of place I would like it to be. Not that I want to die anything soon or anything… don’t get me wrong… *touch wood touch wood* (please please let me live a long happy life!)

Here’s My Hello Kitty and I with the full shot of the memorial. A friendly New Yorker was nice enough to take this picture for us.

O

One thing about me is that I’m very very easily influenced by things around me. Like I can see an ad for Snickers and within the next 24 hours I will crave one and go buy one. My Hello Kitty calls me the dream consumer. Just advertise anywhere and you get instant ROI from people like me going out to buy your product.

In this case, the next day after Strawberry Fields we were walking on the streets of New York when we came by this fruit stall.

I saw some strawberries and I immediately bought some.

Gotta admit that those are some really good strawberries though. Sweet and juicy! I don’t know why we can’t find such good strawberries back here in Malaysia. If I could I would have so many of them! Oh well… strawberries for you John Lennon!  I shall end this entry with a tribute to John Lennon.

Here’s “Imagine” by John Lennon. Such a beautiful song! Rest in peace John Lennon! Your legend lives on!

I was in Singapore on my birthday weekend. I happened to be there on a Thursday and Friday for some meetings and so I just decided to stay the weekend since I had to fly off to Beijing from Singapore right after the weekend ended on Monday. My Hello Kitty was nice enough to fly down right after work on a Friday night to hang out with me in Singapore.

On Saturday a bunch of us went to Universal Studios.

That’s my second time there and I’ve blogged about it before so I won’t go into too much detail here but after this second time I can safely say that I have been on ALL the open rides on Universal Studios SIngapore.

Except for  some merry-go-rounds or kiddy ones. Oh and except for this Battlestar Gallactica that is still closed since the park opened.

I soo soo soo wanna try that! You know it’s one of those rides where I’m damn freaking scared to go on but I still wanna go on. I will eventually get on the ride and then realize that it was a mistake right after I have been strapped into my seat.  I like how they controlled the number of tickets they sold each day. I mean there was plenty of room to move around but the lines for the rides were already pretty long. Can’t imagine if they didn’t have a limit on that.

Here’s Yanti and Eileen lining up to collect our food vouchers. The girl on the right who’s covering her camera-shy face is Karen.

The only picture I managed to get of Karen is this accidental picture I have of her.

I happened to also take this awkward picture of My Hello Kitty. In what looks like her adjusting her holding on to her hat in fear of someone about to steal it from her. Well we had some other good pictures too.

Like this picture with Marilyn Monroe.

We felt a bit sorry for Marilyn Monroe. There were so many people lining up to take pictures with her and throughout the whole time that could go on for an hour or so, she had to keep a smile on her face. How do you do that? I smile consistently for 15 minutes and already my smile muscles hurt.

We ended our day at Universal Studios later in the evening and went for dinner at my favourite Sunset Grill where I was surprised to see Pierre and Lay See who had come down just for my Birthday :). Anyway, this place is known to have spicy chicken wings and rate them from Level 1-30. Level 2’s spicyness level is like Nandos hot peri-peri, and Level 30 is… well… pretty fucked up for your stomach and tongue. If you eat above Level 20, they’ll actually take your name and put it up on the wall.

Amos was the first one who had the balls to try Level 30. Everyone took pictures and videos and cheered him on.

This is how Amos looked after he had ONE piece of Level 30.

Yes… it wasn’t a pretty sight. Notice all the empty cans of drinks around him. That’s how much liquid he had to take to cool down that Level 30 fire.

The next guy who had the balls to do it was Stanley. He quickly shoved it into his mouth and surprisingly managed to recover rather quickly.

Stanley’s experience had a whole other story altogether. Right after dinner he went to Marina Bay Sands’ Casino to gamble with Ming and Pierre. He decided that since he just had a Level 30 chicken wing, he was going to the first roulette table he saw when he walked in, and placed S$500 on number 30!

On that very table, number 30 had just came out when they arrived but that didn’t stop him. Guess what… the wheel spun and the ball ended up landing on number 30! 5 minutes from entering the casino and just from making one bet, Stanley had turned his S$500 to S$18,000 (which is like over RM40,000). I ended up gambling at MBS too right after the clock struck midnight into my birthday. I kept telling My Hello Kitty that I was FEELING LUCKY… but she said “there’s no such thing as feeling lucky”.

True enough, I ended the night losing S$200 which was as much as I could afford to lose.

Anyway the next day which was the day of my actual birthday, I woke up and had lunch with my brother. Then it was time to send My Hello Kitty off. We dropped her off after lunch and said our Goodbyes. I wasn’t going to be able to see her for a week or so since I would be traveling to Beijing and Hong Kong before I return to KL.

Ming, James and Estee picked me up right after lunch and we went for coffee. Spent an hour at this old army barracks that they had converted into a chic place for people to have coffee and hang out. Then Ming decided it was time for him to take me go buy my birthday present. They ended up driving me to this quiet place with two run-down houses that nobody lived in anymore. Waiting right outside one of the houses was some of the MY and SG Nuffies, some friends and My Hello Kitty!

Turned out that they had organized a surprise Laser Tag session and My Hello Kitty ended up missing her flight just to attend it. Man laser tag was sooo fun. It’s sort of like paintball only that it felt a lot more realistic in the sense where there are different kinds of guns, some heavier but with longer range (good for sniping) and some light but good for spraying.

I used the gun this guy was holding. The P90.

We broke into two teams and we played different missions like protecting the VIP or just pure team deathmatch. If anything it really felt like real-life counter-strike to me..  how sometimes I would stand at the window and shoot people and hear the people on the other side shout
“SNIPER AT THE WINDOW SNIPER AT THE WINDOW!!!”

I also learned that it was almost impossible to shoot accurately and run at the same time. And that it was also difficult even just to keep aim at something and walk since you had to keep looking down to see what uneven ground you’re stepping on.

It was so much fun though! So much fun that I wanna play it again in KL if we have something like that here. Do we?

After laser-tag, I said my goodbye to My Hello Kitty and went to Ming’s place for a surprise Sukiyaki birthday dinner he had planned for me. Ming’s mum and dad were nice enough to prepare everything… I felt terrible. I thanked them as much as I could.

I didn’t have any pictures from that night on because it was then that I realized I had left my camera with My Hello Kitty and she was unknowingly bringing it back to KL. So I’m just going to have to tell you that… it was a great night. It was the first birthday I’ve celebrated in Singapore… but it felt like I was celebrating it at home.

This afternoon, My Hello Kitty and I just sat at the computer and watched videos on YouTube. We went through so many and there were two that really cracked me up.

Okay the first one is this one.

This guy basically took a video of an aunty driving a Lexus trying to reverse park her car but doing so very very slowly. I thought he was really patient about it but the things he said….. just made me laugh.

This second one is a Thai TV commercial for an optical company.

I really didn’t expect what was coming so when I saw it in the end, I laughed out loud like shit for like 10 seconds. Gotta love Thai commercials!

Whew I finally have time to blog again. I’m leaving back to KL tomorrow afternoon. I’ve been staying in hotel rooms for the past one week and I’m really looking forward to going home to my own bed. What a busy trip it has been for me. Worked hard but had some good food though. Speaking of good food, let me tell you about the best burger that My Hello Kitty and I has ever had!

While we were in New York, I was told that our hotel was near the best burger stall in town. So one day we took a walk down Madison Avenue and came to Shake Shack!

We thought we were early, arriving some time at 11am or so but by the time I got there the queue was already building up. So being Asian and Kiasu and all, I asked My Hello Kitty to go jom a place while I stood in the queue playing Doodle Jump.

Man I waited for like 30 minutes and when I finally placed my order I had to wait some more with this buzzer thing.

Once it vibrates I would know my burgers were ready and I could go collect it.

That 2nd part of the wait took like 10-15 minutes until my little gadget started vibrating like a… well..  a vibrator. I went to collect it and brought it back to my patient Hello Kitty who was just sitting down watching some performance in front of her.

When she looked at the burger, saliva dropped from her lips.

The burger was a lot smaller than we thought but when we took the bite, we both floated up 5 feet in the air and then came back down again. It was AWESOME! I don’t know how to explain it. The bun was soft, the beef … just really high quality and the vegetables that came with it was all really fresh. Kinda made me realize that sometimes less is more.

My Hello Kitty loved it too and that’s an achievement! She doesn’t normally like to eat anything other than Sushi, especially burgers! But she loved this one.

We loved it so much that we made a trip back the next day, lined up for another 45 minutes and got ourselves more burgers.

It was sooo good.

Someone should bring the franchise of Shake Shack over to KL. It is one of the smallest, but definitely the best burger I have ever had!

Hello everyone!

Sorry for the lack of updates. I’m in Beijing now but leaving for Hong Kong in like an hour. Been having really tiring days from morning till night. By the time I get back to the hotel I’m exhausted and I haven’t been sleeping well in the past two nights because Ming has been snoring really loudly. He normally doesn’t snore, think it’s some sinus problems.

Will update soon guys. Hong Kong here I come!

It is now over… my birthday. The one day in the year that I feel really really special….

This year’s one was the first one I’ve ever celebrated in Singapore before (since I happen to be here for some work) and I gotta say that it was great. Thanks to Ming, the Nuffies, My Hello Kitty and some friends here in Singapore it was a day full of fun and surprises! From the sweet present that My Hello Kitty gave me shortly after midnight, to the video the Nuffies made for me, to the surprise laser-tagging session and to the nice Sukiyaki dinner Ming’s mum helped make at his house.

Thanks so much for the great time everyone! I wish I could blog more or had more pictures but I think I’m going to collect the pictures and save it for a future entry ok? Really tired now. I have to wake up at 6AM tomorrow for a flight to Beijing!

In the mean time I’m going to leave you guys with a video that the Nuffies from the KL office made for me.

Thanks guys! I’ll miss you when I’m away this week.

Okay so this morning Esther and me  had a meeting here in Singapore. The meeting was one of the highlights of the week. I learned so many things from the people there. After the meeting we hopped onto a cab and headed back to the office. In the cab I was talking to Esther about what the meeting was about, explaining some things to her and all. At one point I even took out my chewing gum, popped one in my mouth and offered one to Esther.

She GASPED…. which was only then that I remembered that chewing gum was illegal in Singapore. Well not really illegal… illegal to sell and illegal to spit around but not illegal to consume. I quickly hid the gum from the taxi driver and didn’t dare chew once on the gum that I had popped into my mouth. A few minutes later we reached the Nuffnang office in Singapore. I rushed out of the cab after paying the driver so I could start chewing on my gum.

We walked into the office building of the Nuffnang office and it was only when I was in the lift that I realized I had left my iPhone in the cab. I darted back out of the lift but the cab was already gone. Fortunately we had taken a receipt so we had the registration number of the cab. I did the following:

1) I tried calling my own phone. It rang for a long time then somebody canceled the call and I couldn’t call it again.

2) I called up my telco to tell them to suspend my line

3) Elisa from the Nuffnang Office helped me call the cab company (Premier Silvercab or so) to file a lost and found report.

We were put on hold in our call to the cab company for a long time but we decided not to give up. Finally we managed to get through and file a report. An hour or so later they e-mailed Elisa to tell her that they haven’t found a phone that matches my description. So well… I had just about given up. I had arranged for My Hello Kitty to bring down a new sim card with her when she was coming down that night and I also considered buying a new phone.

I talked to Lionel of Ripplewerks who used to be a Singapore Police Officer and asked him what were the odds of me getting my phone back. He said that if it was some lousy phone then higher but if it was an iPhone, probably like 3% chance or so. The rest of the Nuffies in the Singapore office agreed that it was a lost cause.

I then made a pledge. I said that if the driver or someone somehow returned by phone I would write a blog entry and tweet that “I love Singaporeans!”

So you can see by the title of my blog post that well… I found my phone!

While I was having my meeting with the JPB team later, Elisa slipped me a note to say that the cab company called back, that they had found my iPhone. I was to go collect it at their office. I quickly hopped on to a cab there and voila! My phone was there! I was really impressed. I mean there were so many people that the iPhone must’ve passed hands from. From the passenger who probably saw the phone after me, who then passed it to the taxi driver, who then sent it to the office. I mean all these people could’ve taken the iPhone and nobody would know! But they didn’t…. they decided to return it to me.

Thank you for the kind act of honesty Mr Taxi Driver. Singapore is a great place because of you!

Thanks again to Esther, Elisa, Yuen Yee and My Hello Kitty for helping me out in getting my iPhone back or my new Sim card. And to the rest of the SG Nuffies who were there to support me. Thank you!

And of course, thank you for all your kind comments in the previous entry guys! So comforting to read!