Today is Ming’s birthday. Ming has been a great friend and business partner to me so this year I wanted to give him something special for his birthday. I initially had something else in mind until Pierre called me one day and mooted an idea.

You see… Ming’s the kind of guy who puts a lot of value in experiences. More value in experiences than in physical items. Like when we went to Singapore F1 last year, he bought the official caps for all of us not because the cap looked nice or anything but so that we all had something to take away and remember the night.

The other thing about Ming is that he’s a HUGE Manchester United fan. The biggest I have ever seen. He knows everything about every player and he makes it a point to catch almost every match. Every year he will also make it a point to fly halfway across the world just to watch a Man Utd match and support his team.

When his team takes home a big win, Ming sometimes gets so happy he cries. When Man Utd loses though, even his girlfriend Estee says that she knows how to stay out of his way the next morning for he’ll be in a very very foul mood.

So combining the two together Pierre and I put together a birthday surprise for him. Last Friday we forced him to come down to KL for it not telling him what the surprise was. He kept guessing what it was and seeing that it was dinner he kinda guessed that we were bringing someone over to meet him.

This is Ming at the dinner before he knew who he was meeting. All anxious and all still trying to guess who we were bringing.

He’s also known as “Captain Marvel”.

When he walked in, Ming acted all perfectly normal only for us to learn later that he was actually screaming in excitement inside. He initially started off by asking Bryan what he was doing in KL. Bryan answered that he was in KL just to have this dinner with Ming. Ming somehow didn’t believe it so he asked Bryan another couple more times throughout the night until we had to really drum it into him that Bryan Robson had REALLY flown in all the way to KL just to have that one dinner with him.

For all those who have missed the first few episodes.

Here’s the trailer.

Have a great weekend guys!

To catch the rest of the episodes as they come out, click here.

We all use printers these days. I remember the first time I ever saw a printer. My father bought it along with the home computer we had. That was a looong time back. Even before computers themselves had hard drives… the first computer we had was the one with those big floppy disks which we put in to play games like Alley Cats (or… I think Bubble Bobble? Man those were good days)

It looked something like this.

The printer we had though looked like it was made out of the same metal from this old computer. Something like this.

When printing it made as much noise as bunch of workmen drilling a hole into the ground to find oil. It wasn’t just loud noise. It was the screeching high pitched kind of noise. You know… something just a step below from a school teacher scratching her long nails on a blackboard.

I’ve been through many many generations of printers since then and learned lots of things. I’ve also ended up buying lots of different printers in my lifetime. Some for my home use (that sometimes seem to fail when I need it the most… like when I need to print my e-ticket hours before a flight) and some for the office.

For the home, I always end up buying a colour inkjet because they actually cost a lot less. Their cartridges cost a lot more than the cartridges of laser printers though so if you print a lot then a Laser printer might save you a lot of money. I don’t print that much at home so I opted for that.

I remember interning at this investment bank many years ago and printing a company’s Annual Report in colour. My Boss hauled me up and gave me a big scolding. I was naïve then…. You know thinking that the money investment banks make is limitless so why not pay more so I can read my Annual Report in COLOUR!!! I deserved the scolding I got… I know.

Today in the Nuffnang office though it’s a whole other thing.

I try to keep the Nuffnang office as environmental friendly as possible. Like during the day when the sunlight pours in from our big windows we don’t turn on many of the lights in the office.

Or that we have a policy where we only really print when needed. As much as we try hard to be paperless though some of my colleagues especially those in the Finance and the Admin part of the company use the printer a lot to print stuff. For that we end up using a laser printer since we don’t exactly print our Profit & Loss statements in colour. If My Hello Kitty ran the company though she might. She’ll probably make sure each Balance Sheet had a Hello Kitty Star on the top right corner of it.

The only other time we would use a colour printer in the office is maybe to print photos of our events and put them up on our Nuffnang Footprints Wall.

Recently though HP’s been running this campaign on Nuffnang about some promotions they have on their HP Photosmart and HP Officejet printers. The Photosmart I’m thinking can replace my dead printer at home and the Officejet works for offices.

If you’re getting a HP Photosmart printer you’ll get an additional Photo Value Pack that includes ink, HP Advanced Photo Paper and HP Photosmart Essential software. The printer even has a Color Graphic Display which makes viewing photos easier with its touchsmart frame. Plus to help with connectivity, the Photosmart 4780 is wireless!

If you get the HP Officejet Pro, you’ll get an additional High Capacity XL Black Cartridge with it. The 8500 is feature packed with built-in double sided printing, Ethernet networking and water resistant print outs. Good if you have an office that prints a lot. Cuts your cost-per-page into half and acts as a printer, fax, scanner and photocopy as well. We have one of these all-in-one things in the Nuffnang office too. Except that the one we have doesn’t print as fast 🙁 . Maybe time to upgrade that one then we can have two printers in the office.

Like all good things, this promo doesn’t last forever. It ends on the 30th April 2010 (while stocks last).

To find out more about it click here or call 1-800-88-9886

On another note, anyone else here loves Bubble Bobble?

Makes me want to play it again.

I’ve been thinking about it for soooo long!

So long I tell you! I used to play XBOX and watch all my movies on my old boxy TV at home

until of course I had some friends start telling me that playing XBOX on a proper LCD HD TV is a whole new experience altogether.

Still.. I didn’t buy it right there and then. It’s a heavy commitment. So I thought about it for a full month until Mike (Xiaxue’s bf) one day finally pushed me over and convinced me to buy one. What he said was that he was having the same dilemma as I was before he bought his LCD TV…. and now that he has, the only regret he has was not buying it earlier than he did.

Of course Boss Ming’s tweet reply to me the other day as well helped egg me on.

So well… I went shopping with my Dad (who was visiting from Penang) yesterday. We went to lots and lots of different places to look at TVs. We even went to this shop in Low Yat that claimed they had the lowest prices. The sales guy went to the extent of showing us a piece of paper with prices on it and saying that the price he was quoting us was already at cost. I didn’t believe it of course. Why would you sell a new product at cost?

We eventually ended up at Harvey Norman in Pavilion. There this salesman starting telling us all about what TVs to get and he was pushing this particular LG model really really hard. The 47-inch LCD TV came free with a home theater system and a DVD player all for RM7,299.

I compared it with the other brands in Harvey Norman and they all cost about the same or more (without the DVD player and home theater system). So my Dad immediately said “Son… buy this… it’s value for money”.

And like a good son I did… along with what could’ve been my life savings. (Then again LG ran a Nuffnang campaign to push its Scarlet campaigns some time back so okay I’m just returning the favour).

One day later, my new TV arrived!!!

Along with my home theater system.

My living room looks a bit more equipped now.

And my XBOX games… look a lot more fun to play.

We were at Karen’s house warming last Saturday and I played Raving Rabbids for the first time. Man that has got to the be most fun Wii Party game ever!

Check out My Hello Kitty and Jestina playing. Both shaking the remotes.

Ok here’s what’s been up with me lately:

Last night my Blackberry died. For some reason it suddenly started resetting itself and before it could finish booting up it would reset itself again. It’s like my Blackberry didn’t want to wake up. Just kept turning itself off whenever it was being turned on.

Panic struck me almost instantly! Life without my Berry. It’s only been months since I’ve started using my Blackberry but I gotta say it has helped a lot with productivity. Like whenever I’m out I’m still always in touch with my e-mails. Now I still have my iPhone of course but it just doesn’t do e-mails as well as my BB.

Oh well… I’ve sent it in for warranty and it’s gonna take 2 weeks. 2 weeks!

My addiction to my BB was so bad that I even considered buying another BB just for these two weeks. Then fortunately I realized how stupid I would have been for doing something like that.

Went shopping with her and she saw a shop full of Hello Kitty things. Ended up buying another Hello Kitty thermos.

What I think she needs though is new shoes. Today she was wearing this pair of shoes and every step she took she let out a little yelp of pain.

Curiosity finally made me ask

“Do you have ANY high-heels that don’t cause you pain?”

She looked down at her feet and replied
“Actually these are one of the most painful ones I have….. “

Then her face lit up when she went on
“…. BUT THEY’RE SO PRETTY!!!”.

Like my mother would say. Girls these days all willing to suffer to look pretty.

Speaking of shoes, apparently one of our Nuffies has just as much trouble waking up as My Hello Kitty does. In her blurness before coming to work one day she actually accidentally wore 2 shoes each from a different pair.

So they looked like this.

I was supposed to share with them how to go about getting a job after they graduate. At first I wasn’t sure if I was the best person to talk about it since I’ve never really got interviewed for a full-time job before. I started Nuffnang straight out of university.

The nice organizing committee there convinced me to still come and told me to talk about what I look for in people I hire. It’s the first time I’ve talked at a college for something like this. I’m usually brought in to share the Nuffnang story or my journey as an entrepreneur.

Either ways, I think it went alright… right guys?

*fingers crossed*

Check out this picture I took of her in her pajamas.

The alarm clock rang. I had been awake for the past 20 minutes just lying in bed thinking about things so it didn’t come to me as a shock. It did however come to My Hello Kitty as one.

She grumbled at the sound of her Blackberry alarm ringing away… crawled to her phone and put it on snooze. If there was a huge mallet next to her night-stand where her BB lay, I’m very sure her BB would’ve been in a hundred different parts.

My Hello Kitty never was a morning person. She hates mornings. She wakes up every morning grumbling like she was a mummy waking up from a 1,000 year nap. Most mornings I actually wake up earlier than her and go wash up to get ready for work. On one of those mornings, after my shower and all I nudged her to wake her up. She didn’t move.

Then I started pretending I was Dug, sniffed all over her face and said

The first words out of her mouth that morning was

I laughed and tried to defend myself
“No I didn’t…. I…”

In the end I just resigned to my fate of morning scoldings. You learn many things from being in a relationship after a while. One of those things I learned is…don’t mess with My Hello Kitty in the mornings. Once she’s had breakfast and by the time she’s out of the door to work she’s back to her happy self though. The grumpyness would’ve faded away by then and she would be all giggly again.

Just a few days ago after she left for work she messaged me on BBM

My Hello Kitty: Wombeh… I haz a confessionz

My Hello Kitty: HAHA!

So that everyone, is how I start my mornings with My Hello Kitty.

Thursday last week was probably the most exciting day I’ve had in the past few months. It was the day of our Press Conference & Blogger Launch for Project Alpha Season 2. The Press Conference was held in the morning and the Blogger Launch at night.

Both launches were meant to unveil the trailer of Project Alpha Season 2. That’s right everyone, after months of filming, editing and hard work… Project Alpha Season 2 is coming out in a couple of weeks (19th April 2010 to be exact).

Here are some pictures from the day.

From left: Wai Fong from MAS, Jojo Struys, Sam from Adidas Action 3 (Starasia), Idham from P1 and me *shy*.

I was told by journalist Niki Cheong that in many Press Conferences when it comes to Q&A time, the journalists don’t normally ask a lot of questions. This time though they asked some really really good questions!

We’ve had the best sponsors to work with. Seriously. You know how it’s like right, putting together a production like that is sooo much work but the whole gargantuan task is made easier when you have really smart and really good people to work with. Our sponsors were all great partners to have. I feel so blessed to have them on board.

After every Press Conference I always worry about whether we answer questions good enough but lots of people told me later that we all answered them really well together as a team.

They had really good Nasi Lemak there. Ninie was secretly whacking some 30 plates of Nasi Lemak there. Haha don’t think we didn’t notice Ninie!

Like this floor vinyl thingy done by Adidas Action 3.

It went on to very very far. I think you have to really be there to see its real-life effect of it but it was just… simple yet caught your attention instantly.

After the Press Conference I went off to run some errands, head back to the office and then back again that night for the blogger’s launch.

At first everyone started shy but as the night went on, more and more Nuffnangers went to take pictures with all the bloggers there. There was actually a freaking queue to take pictures with Xiaxue.

Took loads of pictures with all the Nuffnangers there!

Love the photos they took at the photoshoot. Really nice. If you want to see the rest of the pictures from the photoshoot, click here.

Probably tired from all the photo-taking she did. If you haven’t caught on yet, Xiaxue is actually a guest blogger featured in Project Alpha Season 2.

Azwan Ali is some Star man! So many bloggers were all taking turns to take pictures with him. So when we all saw the opening to, we just jumped in to grab a picture for ourselves.

14) Apart from a simple dinner that night for people to mingle with other bloggers and the Project Alpha Stars, Rimmel London also set up a little make-up booth for anyone who wanted to have some make-up done and look all glamourous and all.

Meeting Cynthia was a funny story. When I first met her in a meeting room at P1, she came in wearing this really big towering jacket that made her look very intimidating. I was thinking to myself that this lady looks very very fierce and is gonna keel us. I commented on the jacket and she just laughed and said she was just cold.

Many months on, she turned out to be a really really fun person in real life. Very into social media and very active in 4sq! Always got higher points than me no matter how many check-ins I do. So far… almost a year in and we still haven’t kena any big scolding from Cynthia yet…. she has however laughed a lot with us in that time. We all love Cynthia (we love you too Kenny! Don’t worry).

Shaolintiger was trying to prove quite successfully that even on his knees he was the height of My Hello Kitty.

I’m going to end this post now with the trailer of Project Alpha Season 2 that we aired that day.

Everyone, here it is.

I’m so excited to watch it when it comes out on the 19th of April. If you want to follow the developments of Project Alpha Season 2 until then, follow us on our Facebook fan page here.

To the sponsors: Adidas Action 3, P1 and MAS, thank you for supporting this program.

To the people who worked with us for this project: Julia, Sam, Margaret, Idham, Kenny, Cynthia, Wai Fong, Salina, Michael, Jojo, Tony, David, Xinxian and anyone I missed out… you know who you are.. Thank you for making this dream come true for us.

Thursday last week was probably the most exciting day I’ve had in the past few months. It was the day of our Press Conference & Blogger Launch for Project Alpha Season 2. The Press Conference was held in the morning and the Blogger Launch at night.

Both launches were meant to unveil the trailer of Project Alpha Season 2. That’s right everyone, after months of filming, editing and hard work… Project Alpha Season 2 is coming out in a couple of weeks (19th April 2010 to be exact).

Here are some pictures from the day.

From left: Wai Fong from MAS, Jojo Struys, Sam from Adidas Action 3 (Starasia), Idham from P1 and me *shy*.

I was told by journalist Niki Cheong that in many Press Conferences when it comes to Q&A time, the journalists don’t normally ask a lot of questions. This time though they asked some really really good questions!

We’ve had the best sponsors to work with. Seriously. You know how it’s like right, putting together a production like that is sooo much work but the whole gargantuan task is made easier when you have really smart and really good people to work with. Our sponsors were all great partners to have. I feel so blessed to have them on board.

After every Press Conference I always worry about whether we answer questions good enough but lots of people told me later that we all answered them really well together as a team.

They had really good Nasi Lemak there. Ninie was secretly whacking some 30 plates of Nasi Lemak there. Haha don’t think we didn’t notice Ninie!

Like this floor vinyl thingy done by Adidas Action 3.

It went on to very very far. I think you have to really be there to see its real-life effect of it but it was just… simple yet caught your attention instantly.

After the Press Conference I went off to run some errands, head back to the office and then back again that night for the blogger’s launch.

At first everyone started shy but as the night went on, more and more Nuffnangers went to take pictures with all the bloggers there. There was actually a freaking queue to take pictures with Xiaxue.

Took loads of pictures with all the Nuffnangers there!

Love the photos they took at the photoshoot. Really nice. If you want to see the rest of the pictures from the photoshoot, click here.

Probably tired from all the photo-taking she did. If you haven’t caught on yet, Xiaxue is actually a guest blogger featured in Project Alpha Season 2.

Azwan Ali is some Star man! So many bloggers were all taking turns to take pictures with him. So when we all saw the opening to, we just jumped in to grab a picture for ourselves.

14) Apart from a simple dinner that night for people to mingle with other bloggers and the Project Alpha Stars, Rimmel London also set up a little make-up booth for anyone who wanted to have some make-up done and look all glamourous and all.

Meeting Cynthia was a funny story. When I first met her in a meeting room at P1, she came in wearing this really big towering jacket that made her look very intimidating. I was thinking to myself that this lady looks very very fierce and is gonna keel us. I commented on the jacket and she just laughed and said she was just cold.

Many months on, she turned out to be a really really fun person in real life. Very into social media and very active in 4sq! Always got higher points than me no matter how many check-ins I do. So far… almost a year in and we still haven’t kena any big scolding from Cynthia yet…. she has however laughed a lot with us in that time. We all love Cynthia (we love you too Kenny! Don’t worry).

Shaolintiger was trying to prove quite successfully that even on his knees he was the height of My Hello Kitty.

I’m going to end this post now with the trailer of Project Alpha Season 2 that we aired that day.

Everyone, here it is.

I’m so excited to watch it when it comes out on the 19th of April. If you want to follow the developments of Project Alpha Season 2 until then, follow us on our Facebook fan page here.

To the sponsors: Adidas Action 3, P1 and MAS, thank you for supporting this program.

To the people who worked with us for this project: Julia, Sam, Margaret, Idham, Kenny, Cynthia, Wai Fong, Salina, Michael, Jojo, Tony, David, Xinxian and anyone I missed out… you know who you are.. Thank you for making this dream come true for us.

Okay I was thinking of blogging about Project Alpha’s launch yesterday but there are so many pictures and all that I’ve decided to save it for the next entry where I have more time to sit down and draft one nice one out.

One of the things I’ve been busy with is moving to a new place. I moved to a new apartment recently and was running around getting the room furnished. Was staying in a temporary room (that My Hello Kitty didn’t like) while we got the main master-bedroom furnished.