The plan that Saturday night was to go to a cybercafe somewhere just after USM and play some games. I was 20 years old then and back in Penang for my summer holidays. With me were my childhood friends.

We gamed away through the night until it was close to 2AM which was when I knew it was time to head back. At age 20 my parents still imposed some sort of a loose curfew with me. It was a curfew not in the sense that I had to be back by 2AM, but more in the sense that if I wasn’t back by then they would call me every 10 minutes.

We headed back home in 3 cars, my car leading the pack and Gin sitting shotgun in my car. We were cruising down the wide empty roads when my friend shot past me in his Honda Civic traveling at least 50 KM/H faster than I was. Right behind him was another friend of ours in his sports car tailgating him. Some sort of race was going on between the both of them.

In the heat of the moment Gin shouted “GO TIM GO!”. Almost as if it was a reflex my foot kicked down the accelerator as my car engine roared and pushed my car forward. Within seconds I was close behind then. It was like a scene in Fast and Furious and I was Vin Diesel.

Keeping up on the wide open road was easy but up ahead I saw a corner closing in. My two friends in the cars ahead of me didn’t seem to slow down so I matched their speed thinking hey, if they can make the turn at that speed so can I.

The turn came and I eased my steering wheel clockwise only to realize that it wasn’t enough. I was heading into the corner too fast. So I jerked my steering wheel to compensate. I heard my tires screech and for a split second felt my rear wheels lose grip of the ground. I panicked. I didn’t know how to respond to a loss of control like that.

As I was about to make a move that may or may not have gotten us into bigger trouble I felt traction again on my rear wheels. My wheels had gotten a grip on the road again and stabilized my car. I immediately slowed down.

Gin was oblivious to the whole thing and was wondering why I was letting the two front cars get away.

I however knew what could’ve just happened. I could have swerved off the road at a very high speed and hit something. Gin and I could have both been killed or very seriously injured. We were lucky to be unhurt.

That was the moment I realized that I would never do something stupid like that again and race. The friends in the two cars ahead of me carried on doing that for the next few years. One of them managed to crash his car once but emerged unscathed.

Tonight at dinner though I bumped into a friend of my parent’s who wasn’t that lucky. He had hit a tree while speeding late at night and today lived a cripple. The passenger with him didn’t survive.

Speed is dangerous. Racing is stupid.

I only hope that my kids in future never have to learn the hard way. I hope everyone does. So if you’ve just got your driver’s license and are egged on by friends to speed or race. Don’t do it. It may cost you your life (and that’s if you’re lucky). It may cost others theirs too.

Some of you may have read Shorty’s latest entry. If you haven’t, then read it here first before you continue reading the rest of this.

Over the weekend Shorty was telling my sister about what happened on the plane. As the story went on and on I could see my sister’s face get redder and redder. It’s like she was getting really angry for me.

Then it came to the part where I apologized to the man and I think my sister totally lost it. She was like “WHY?!! HE WAS SO RUDE!!!”.

Here’s what I was thinking. I just had an argument with a man. Yes he was rude first and yes he started it but nevertheless we had a heated argument. I was sitting on my seat with Fighter on my lap (who was completely oblivious of the argument though) and thinking about what just happened. I couldn’t shake the fact that what I said to him was rude. Yes it was in the midst of a heated argument and he was saying just as rude or hurtful things but two wrongs don’t make a right. Or an eye for an eye makes the world go blind.

It’s really easy to pick a fight with somebody but it’s really hard to apologize especially when you’re wrong. Part of the reason why it’s hard to apologize is because you’ll never know how the other end would respond. But I decided to try anyway.

After 5 minutes of silence I said to him “Can we start again?”.

I think the first time round he couldn’t believe I was talking to him so I repeated myself “Can we start again?”.

I was prepared that he might just respond with a “FUCK OFF!” and that would suck but at least I tried. But he didn’t. He just turned and looked at me. So I continued

“Look… I’m sorry about what I said. It was uncalled for. Now let me explain my issue to you. My issue is that I need to be on the front row because I need the basinet and I need to stay around my wife in case she needs help with my other baby. If I were traveling on my own I would gladly oblige and move to the back but I’m not. So that’s my issue. Could you tell me yours?”.

He went on to explain that he had paid for this front row seat and he wanted it and how he was surprised I fought back because he wasn’t talking to me directly (even though he was talking about me in front of me to the cabin manager).

We talked things out and we ended up having lots of conversation on the flight. He later explained to me that whenever he makes a big enough of a fuss, the cabin manager would compensate him and that was all part of his plan. Not the kind of thing I would do since it comes at the expense of spoiling someone elses’ day but okay that’s his choice.

Shorty was shocked though. When we were chatting away like best friends I happen to notice her staring at me from the corner of my eye with a “wtf?!” look.

So there. I talk about #kempensopansantun all the time and the need to call out rude people when they’re rude. That includes myself when I’m rude. Besides I think because I apologized and we ended the argument amicably he was a bit more tolerant of Fighter’s crying throughout the flight.

He never apologized but well some people aren’t really good with saying sorry.

On 27th February 2007, we launched Nuffnang, our first company under Netccentric; a holding company between Ming and I for all our internet ventures. Over the coming years we expanded Netccentric from just Nuffnang to a series of other media related web and mobile companies (Dayre, ChurpChurp, Ripplewerkz and Reelity).

We shied away from raising any money beyond our startup capital of RM150,000 that both Ming and I put together equally at the start. Not raising money meant that we had to build a business that was fundamentally profitable.  A business that allowed us the profits and cashflow to continuously reinvest our funds. We did and by 2015 we have grown to a company with 200 employees and offices in 7 different countries around the region.

This week though we reached another milestone. After 9 months of preparing for an IPO, we officially listed on the Australian Stock Exchange. This article is to tell you my account of how it feels like.

The night before

If I’m excited about something the next day I normally have trouble sleeping but that night I slept like a baby. I sense that was a sign my body was trying to tell me that what I didn’t feel was excitement. People asked me if I was excited about my IPO and I said not really. What I did sense was relief that after 9 months of preparation we’re finally here.

What worried me though was that we managed to pick what possibly was the worst date of the year for an IPO. The day after the Greek vote on whether or not to accept austerity measures. Just like many others, I expected that the Greeks would vote no but I only feared what would happen to the global stock markets then. I decided not to think about it too much and fell asleep soon after.

When I woke up…

The first thing I did was to turn on the news. My guess turned out to be right. Greece voted NO. I had breakfast and prepared myself for the first stock markets to open: Australia, Japan and South Korea. The markets opened all down. My lawyer later told me that by market closing, only 12 companies of the ASX 200  recorded positive gains that day,the remaining recorded negative gains from the poor market sentiment.

At the ASX…

We reached the ASX at 10.40AM. Just 5 minutes before the listing ceremony was going to start. The ASX officer gave an introduction to the ASX as a whole and congratulated us.

Insecure about the effect of Greece and China’s meltdown happening that very day I looked at my father and my uncle for reassurance (my uncle is one of our cornerstone investors). My uncle said

“What’s the point if your share price goes through the roof right now? It’s not like you’re going to sell any shares right? You’ve already raised the money and the investors you want are those in for the long term. They don’t care about what happens on the first day. So just enjoy today regardless of how the stock does”.

I learned also that in the first week of an IPO what happens is that generally the short term investors sell at the first pop and the long term investors who believe in the company get a chance to buy in.

I relaxed then and soaked in the moment.

We got presented a listing certificate and finally just before our stock was going to be listed, we rang the bell at 11AM Sydney time.

Our stock immediately began trading. The IPO price was at A$0.20 but it opened 15% higher at A$0.23. In the next hour we watch a screen where bids and offers came in as the share climbed 35% to a peak of A$0.27.

I guess that was good enough for some investors who got in on the IPO to take profit so we saw some profit taking and the share settle around A$0.25-0.26. Our lead manager told us that we couldn’t ask for anything more in this market condition so I was thankful.

We settled down and took some pictures. Here’s a picture of Martyn (our chairman), Ming, me and our corporate advisors for the IPO Benjamin and James.

And here’s a picture of my family. I think Penny is potentially the youngest person to attend a listing ceremony at the ASX.

Or Fighter maybe the youngest to ring the bell.

After we finished with the pictures we left the ASX building and headed back to the hotel. I had a celebratory lunch hosted by my uncle nearby and then a full afternoon of meetings.

When I had the chance I picked up the news articles that came out that day about our IPO.

Our stock settled and closed 15% up with a market capitalization of A$60 million. The Company we started with RM150,000 years ago was now worth over RM170,000,000.

We had a post IPO celebratory dinner with our partners who worked with us on the transaction. Sharing war stories about the struggles we had along the way and the hard work everyone had to put in. It was good closure to the night.

I was thankful that we did well amid the declining global stock markets but I know the hard work had just started. We now have to execute on our plans and our promises to investors to make sure we build shareholder value.

So how does it feel to IPO? It feels good but once that good feeling passes, the pressure sinks in. Pressure that we now have to make sure we perform and do things right for the sake of our shareholders. We now have shareholders to answer to.

My friends have been asking me if they should invest in Netccentric. I told them that I can’t advise them because it’s a conflict of interest. However I can tell them only one thing. That if they read the prospectus they’ll see that no founder of the business is cashing out from this IPO. On top of that our own family is buying in on the IPO (my uncle, my Dad, Ming’s wife). So we’re very motivated to make sure we build shareholder value and drive the stock price up in the long term.

I’ve been thinking about wedding dinners lately because Ming got married and another friend of mine is getting married soon. So there’s a lot of busy wedding dinner preparations going on during this time.

Planning wedding dinners can be one of the most stressful experiences for a couple about to get hitched for mainly two reasons:

1) Dealing with expectations you have for your own wedding dinner.

2) Dealing with expectations your parents and in-laws have for your wedding dinner.

You however deal with problem 1) really easily when you realize from the start that your wedding isn’t going to be perfect. There’s ought to be something that wouldn’t go the way you want during the wedding dinner itself.

So you then just have to focus on problem 2) and that’s a tough one. There really isn’t any guide in this because the chemistry between each of our parents and in-laws are unique. So are there expectations. We just have to figure out how to deal with it in our own ways.

I loved my own wedding. I thoroughly enjoyed it and so did my friends. There were however a few things that I did regret not doing. And I’ve listed them here so hopefully you guys won’t have to make the same mistakes I did.

1) Sound wasn’t loud enough

We all do it. Before our wedding dinner we go to our friends’ weddings with a mental notebook so we could take note on the good ideas they had and the things we think they could have done better. One thing i noticed about many of the weddings I attended was that the sound system was often too weak.

Often if you’re sitting near the back you can’t hear the speeches that are going on. To prepare for this we did sound tests on the day before the wedding and even then I felt it wasn’t loud enough. So I paid RM2,000 to insert more speakers so that it could be heard all round. I thought I had it covered but I was wrong.

A sound system can sound strong in an empty ballroom but it’s very very easy to underestimate how 500-800 people at your wedding dinner talking at the same time can really drown out whatever speakers you have.

In my case I underestimated it even though I thought I had prepared for it. The situation was made worse with my next regret.

2) Inviting too many people

The thing about wedding dinners is that it’s often not for you. It’s for your parents and in-laws. Our parents often feel the pressure to invite many of their friends and relatives. It doesn’t even matter if they’re relatives that you hardly see or have never even seen in your life. Because they’re your relatives and because it’s your wedding dinner, culture and tradition has it that you invite them.

Our wedding ended up with over 70 plus tables and the sheer number of people there took a toll on the beautiful atmosphere we imagined. It’s not possible for you and your parents to really know 700 people well. Lets face it. Of the 700 or so people, the people who really really want to be there because they want to see you get married are probably just a handful. The rest go for many other reasons: obligation, free food, opportunities to meet people, opportunities to socialize with other people there and all.

The problem with this is that I personally knew less than half of the people at my wedding. Half of the people there didn’t really care about me or that I was getting married. I know because when my best man or Shorty’s maid of honor was giving their speeches about our union, everybody behind was busy talking. Some tables were even calling yam sengs… during a speech!

The best weddings I’ve seen are the small ones. The ones with 10 tables.. maximum 30 tables. The shortage of seats in small weddings force you to filter out the people who don’t matter and include only the people who do matter. Those weddings have the best atmosphere of all.

Looking back I should have limited the number of tables our wedding was going to have at the very beginning.

3) Food was terrible

The other problem with having big weddings is that the food is more often than not going to be crap. I did what most people do before their wedding dinners. I had a food tasting of the hotel with a group of 10 before we decided on the menu and the food then was great.

It’s easy to cook good food for 10 people. It’s another to do it for 700. The food at my wedding was terrible. So bad I only ate half a dinner and ended up going for supper after.

I do notice though that Chinese restaurants tend to cope better with food quality than hotel ballrooms do.

4) Not taking a family photo 

My biggest regret of the night was not setting down a time to take a wedding photo. Throughout the whole dinner I was busy saying hi to all the people at the wedding. Half of them whom I didn’t know. Shorty was busy changing outfits as the bride normally does and my parents were busy entertaining their friends.

By the end of the wedding I realized one thing. That I never took a family photo. We got so overwhelmed with the whole dinner that we just forgot the whole thing. Sure I think our wedding photographer should have reminded us at one point in the night but I think what we should have done at the very beginning was to set a time to take a photo beforehand.

5) Being Strict on Dress Code

Most wedding dinners now have a dress code. You’re expected to wear a suit or at least a blazer. True that some people don’t have the luxury of wearing a blazer or a suit but at my wedding I had people wearing all sorts of things.

One of my guests wore jeans, sneakers and a hoodie. When you look at your wedding photographs at the end of it, you see photos of really well dressed people and then suddenly you see someone there who dresses like he’s going to the mall.

I know that at some wedding dinners, the bride and groom predict who will dress down instead of dress up and plot the seating arrangements accordingly so minimize the impact on the wedding photos. Thats something we didn’t do though.

In spite of these regrets though, I loved our wedding. The one thing about weddings is that no matter what happens or how you do it, it’s going to be the best wedding you’ve ever attended. Because it’s your wedding. Besides the people who matter don’t care about what goes right or wrong in the wedding, they only care about being there and seeing you get married. So relax. Whatever happens, your wedding will be the best ever. The only thing that can go really wrong is that if you don’t attend your own wedding and that’s not going to happen right?

Writing about this brought back memories of my own wedding so I dug up our wedding videos.

Here’s our ROM video.

And this is the full length video, including our wedding dinner.

Credit to my wife who really did most of the work in planning our beautiful wedding.

Hi Guys

I’m sorry I haven’t had a chance t update these few days. Between juggling a regional meeting in Singapore and making the final preparations before our IPO, it’s been crazy for me.

After work a few days ago I sat down to think about what I could blog about but my mind was mentally too tired to write or express anything I had on my mind.

In the mean time I’ve been regularly updating my Dayre and Snapchat. You can find me on @timothytiah for both.

Speaking of Snapchat here’s my latest compilation of Fighter videos when he came down to Singapore to see me.

Even though I have to travel quite a bit these days I try to maximize time with Fighter by having Shorty bring him down with me if they’re free. Fighter loves traveling too. Always loves seeing new things. The only thing is that his routine gets messed up and in the new environment he seems to test his boundaries and throw some tantrums around. You can read about that in my latest Dayre update.

I’ll update again when I get the chance to. In the mean time take care everyone and have a wonderful weekend ahead!

So I was in Bangkok over the weekend for Ming’s wedding weekend. My business partner Ming got married to a beautiful Thai girl named Patty who’s a fashion designer and one of the two girls behind the label Innit.

It was a really small and intimate wedding. Just 12 tables. I really like small weddings like that because it feels really intimate so everyone is really friendly to each other.

Let me show you some of the pictures we took and tell you the story behind them.

Here’s me with some of us from Netccentric who made it.

Our company has close to 200 staff so with 12 tables Ming couldn’t invite everyone so he invited people he worked directly with and are really close to.

Here’s a picture of Ming and I in the morning.

I was one of the groomsmen so Ming told us to all come in a black suit. Then Patty made us a special Innit bow tie.

The wedding was held at this really posh boutique hotel called The Siam. It was done in a very classical colonial period type of feel. This is the entrance to our room.

Here’s the bathroom.

The bed area is pretty normal but one of the favorite parts is the tub.

It’s definitely one of the posher hotels I’ve ever stayed in.
After the wedding ceremony on Sunday morning we went out for a while for a massage. I happened to stand next to Xiaxue and my wife and noticed this.

Haha. Speaking of Xiaxue she convinced me to get on Snapchat lately. So if you’re not already doing so you can follow me on Snapchat @timothytiah.

This is Ming giving his wedding speech at the wedding dinner.

Ming always said the most important thing about wedding speeches is giving thanks to the parents of the bride and the groom. Advice I took for my very own wedding.

All dressed up for the dinner with Shorty, Pierre, Lay See, Fred and Velda.

For the wedding dinner Ming brought in two performances. One is a singer from the UK named Cole Paige. Ming met him many years ago when we were at Old Trafford and he was the singer and entertainer for that event. Cole is more than a good singer. He’s great at interacting with the crowd so Ming told him then that he would bring him over for his wedding one day. True enough he did.

The other performer they brought on was a Thai artist called New and Jiew. We’ve never heard of them before but they’re huge in Thailand. All the Thai guests at the wedding went crazy and mobbed them to take pictures of them later.

Shorty and I managed to catch them at the after party and took a picture with them. They’re so humble and simple. I often see celebrities in Malaysia with an entourage or their managers always with them but New & Jiew were alone on their own.

Each guest at the party got an autographed copy of their album.

All and all Ming and Patty’s wedding was one of the most well planned and personalized weddings I’ve ever been to. I mean so many things could go wrong at the wedding dinner. At mine for example the sound wasn’t loud enough so people weren’t paying attention to the speeches. But at Ming and Patty’s wedding everything was prepared. I could even hear New & Jiew in the afternoon doing a full rehearsal of their performance before the wedding dinner itself.

It was an awesome wedding and one that I was glad to be a part of. Congratulations Ming and Patty!

I was in Sydney this week for what must’ve been the shortest trip to Australia I’ve ever been on. Well okay wait there was a shorter one. My work trip to Melbourne a couple years back was just as short. Just 2 nights.

This Sydney trip on the other hand was also 2 nights but it was a lot busier for me. Here’s how it went.

I left KL for Sydney on a Tuesday night. I slept on the plane and arrived at 6AM on Wednesday. My first meeting was at 9AM. My meetings went on all the way till 1AM on the first day. By the time I was in bed it was 2AM. Then the second work day started.

Thursday. This one lasted till 2AM. Friday came and I spent most of it in the office too until night when I flew home. I arrived KL Saturday morning at 4AM.

I did manage to take some pictures of my Sydney trip though and I think they tell a good story of my trip.

This was taken on the second day right before we headed to work. I was feeling a lot fresher because at least I had a proper sleep in a bed before my meetings started. The day before I had only slept on the plane.

Here’s a snapshot of the meetings I had during the day. Well these meetings really lasted all the way till night and this is how the nights looked like.

On the first night we only managed to duck out for dinner about 9PM. Being Sydney though most of the restaurants had already closed by then so we ended up eating in a pub.

And ordered some beer along with it. When we got to the pub the kitchen was closing too and we just made the last order.

Learning from our mistake of eating dinner too late on the first day, on the second day we went out for a nice dinner. Italian food at the Westin in Sydney.

I enjoyed it and the great conversations we had.

On the last day of the trip I managed to duck out for a quick lunch with my cousin Michelle here. Michelle Tiah! She’s now working in Sydney.

She told me her lunch ritual is first to have lunch in a food court and then buy a coffee back to the office. She said the coffee in Australia was awesome so I asked her to bring me to her favorite place. She brought me here.

A place called Gumption. Perhaps I’m not a coffee person so I couldn’t really tell how this was better than the coffee we had back home in some of the hipster coffee places. I thought it was just okay.

This last picture was taken on one of the nights that we worked late. The office we worked at was at a really busy place called Martin Place. Whenever we left the office though it was totally quiet like this. And cold too.

That’s Angeline walking in front of me. She was freezing and practically did an Olympic standard sprint back to the hotel.

So that was my quick trip to Sydney. Really busy but you know what… I actually had a lot of fun!

You guys know I’m part of Entrepreneurs Organization. One of the initiatives that EO is doing this year is called EO Impact. An initiative for entrepreneurs to give back to society.

When we talk about give back though we’re not looking at just a one-time donation or even really a donation at all. We look at initiatives that are long-term. That instead of giving someone a fish we teach that person to fish. Sustainability.

That’s what a lot of my fellow members have been working on. Instead of orphanages to homes for example, we have kids at home bake cookies (my wife’s latest hobby) and find the people to sell those cookies too so they can have a constant stream of recurrent income.

This Saturday 16th of May EO will be organizing an event (bazaar and stuff) in Publika to promote this and all profits from the event will go to support the homes involved.

So if you’re free go check it out. Details in the flyer.