I’m in Jakarta right now for a training program for entrepreneurs called Taipan Masterclass organized for members of this organization I’m in called EO. It’s where successful entrepreneurs from all over the region come to learn how to improve their businesses in areas like HR, Finance, Execution and the likes. Taipan is a program that is brought over from MIT (speakers and all) and it’s a yearly thing.

Last year’s was in Manila and this year in Jakarta. So let me share a couple of pictures I took in Taipan so far this week.

1) Here’s me with Bryan of Chatime and Pierre of Mamee in one of our coffee breaks.

2) On one of the nights, the team took us in a police escorted bus all the way to this restaurant. After dinner we listened to a talk by Muki Hamami, one of the richest men in Indonesia. With his family net worth estimated to be over $2 billion.

3) I’m here with Nuffies Angeline and Hui Wen. Here’s us in our Batik shirts.

Okay now got to go back to the program guys. See ya!

Oh just one more thing, I’m supporting the Milo Breakfast movement and going to be organizing an event for my cause to feed the homeless. Check it out here if you haven’t already.

This is an advertorial.

Almost every guy I know loves football. Watching a football game is never dull, especially when you’re watching it live. I’ve watched a football game live before and it was so much fun! It’s a great experience because the crowd really cheers, the game itself is exciting, and best of all, Shorty who doesn’t even like sports, also said she had a good time.

Shorty visiting the Old Trafford stadium with me before the Chelsea vs. Man United match in 2011

Since I’ve already watched a live match, I was thinking the other day, “What else could give someone more adrenaline than watching a live football match?” Heineken must have read my mind because as the proud sponsor of the UEFA Champions League, they are giving away all-inclusive VIP screening of the UEFA Champions League final in Ibiza! All you football fans, party and music lovers, rejoice!!!

Whenever I think of Ibiza, I think of hardcore partying to the best trance, electro and house tunes. But this isn’t just some random party in Ibiza. This is the party to be at when you’re in Ibiza. You can bet that after the screening of the finale in Ibiza, no matter who wins or loses, there will be definitely an all-night long celebration.

Picture taken from www.thesun.co.uk

To stand a chance to win these invites, join the Heineken FB app contest where your first task is to find out where these exclusive tickets are hidden. From now till 20^th April, the more tweets and check-ins you create, the sooner the location will be revealed. Easy right?

Once the location has been disclosed to you, you’ll stand a chance to be invited to the final on-ground challenge where you’ll have to compete for the all-inclusive VIP experience in Ibiza.

Now not only can you party like a rockstar, you can watch the UEFA finale like one too!

Too bad Shorty is pregnant with Fighter right now so looks like we’ll be skipping this one out. Good luck guys!!

So yesterday was April Fool’s Day. When I got to the office door this is what I saw.

And when I walked into the office this is what I saw.

We had been pranked. The pranksters even dressed up some balloons to make it look like me.

Somehow these days anything with a face and a mole right above the upper lip is supposed to be me.

The pranksters wrapped up the workstations of some of the tech team with plastic with an error 504 since that’s the error people get when the site is down.

They wrapped up all the stuffed toys in the office together. Including my minion.

They filled up our water dispenser with some weird disgusting tasting drink that is supposedly a combination of salt, sprite and some other stuff.

They filled up the sink with a condom balloon and put some little fish in there.

They filled our toilet tanks up with coffee so when we flushed it would look at brown!

They rearranged the keys of our keyboards.

And when our mouse didn’t work we realized it was because they taped this right below it, blocking the sensor.

Speaking of sensors, they even taped the finger print sensor that we use to enter the office so that it wouldn’t work when the first people tried to get in.

It was the most elaborate April Fool’s Day prank I had ever seen. As for the culprits… after checking our office CCTV we realized the ChurpChurp team had come in the Sunday before when the office was empty to do all this.

The funny thing is that I had actually supported another prank that the some of the Nuffies were involved in but that didn’t quite work out because we didn’t know the ChurpChurp team already had something planned.

Well played ChurpChurp. Thank you for making the office a fun place to work.

So just a few days ago during lunch time I was waiting for someone by the road side in Uptown and doing some stuff with my iPhone. Suddenly I felt my phone get pulled away from my hand and when I looked up I saw a guy on a motorbike who came from the opposite direction had snatched my phone from my hand and rode away. He had his back number plate covered and he casually just rode away. Didn’t even look like he was in a rush. Right opposite from where I was standing were a few guys buying food at a food truck. The food truck owner kept telling me repeatedly that he had saw the bike coming but when I asked him why didn’t he warn me then he had nothing to say.

Oh well I just shrugged the whole incident off. Just a cost of living in Malaysia, getting stuff stolen every now and then. At least I wasn’t hurt. So I just suspended my line then went to buy a new phone. I didn’t even bother making a police report because I’ve made a police report before many years ago when a reckless driver nearly ran me down in Sunway. I had the car model and number plate but I wasn’t aware of any action taken after that. Plus I figured our cops probably had other more serious crime to solve.

In the afternoon I was at Maxis getting a new sim card and I asked the girl at the counter how many people see her every day to report stolen or snatched phones.

She said about 20 a day. I said “No la it can’t be!!! PM say our street crime has dropped!!!”. She giggled. So think about it, if one Maxis center had 20 a day, how many phones do you think are snatched in Klang Valley every day? It’s like a whole syndicate going on.

I think KL needs Batman or Spider Man or some superhero vigilante to help with our crime. Do we have any young good looking super hero type who inherited billions from their Dad and spends that money buying crime fighting tools and a suit?

So this Harlem Shake thing has been going around and the Nuffies decided to do their own version this morning.

 

 

So… in case you didn’t hear… Shorty’s birthday this year fell on the first day of Chinese New Year. That pretty much ruled out any form of a birthday party because well.. nobody would come. So to make up for it I organized a small surprise birthday dinner among Shorty and her close friends a few days before.

On the first day of New Year though I still wanted to do as much as I could to make sure she remembered that it was her birthday… and not just CNY. So she woke up with breakfast in bed (her favourite Roti Canai) though she eventually got out of bed to eat it because she found it difficult to eat while in bed.

Then we went out… got another birthday cake for her (the first one was at our surprise party a few days ago) and came home to sing a song for her so she can cut a cake. We also went out much of the day to celebrate Shorty’s birthday as much as we can.

In spite of all our efforts though, all in all Shorty’s birthday still got drowned out by Chinese New Year. The spirit of CNY was just too strong and there was only so much we can do on CNY because everything was closed.

To make matters worse, this Valentine’s day this year is the first Valentine’s Day Shorty and I will spend apart ever since we got together. Why? Because while she headed back to KL, I have to spend Valentine’s Day in Singapore for some meetings and work.

The good thing though is that these little things like Valentine’s Day never bugged us. I mean we never needed to wait for a particular day to shower each other with love…. we think we do it all the time. Almost as much as we annoy or insult each other … which reminds me… I know I ended Things Shorty & Fatty Say at #100 but I’m still considering bringing it back ok? Just need a breather for a bit before I try to get into the habit of remembering the things we say that make each other laugh every day.

Just out of curiosity, how many of you guys really want to see Things Shorty & Fatty Say continue for another 100? Will there even be a hundred of you guys?

Gong Xi Fa Cai everyone!

Shorty and me have been busy with CNY stuff. We’re back in my hometown Penang spending time with my side of the family. It’s our first CNY as a married couple so the first day of CNY we spend with my family, and the second day with her side of the family. Just like how tradition has it.

This year is also the first year we have to give out Ang Pows. So Shorty and I found ourselves wrapping Ang Pows today for the first time.

Giving out Ang Pows is a lot harder than we thought. First you have to estimate how much money you need for all the Ang Pows you’re going to give out. Then you have to go to the bank and try to get it all in the different denominations. And what I learned this year was that new notes are hard to come by when you wait till the last minute. So we had to exchange our old notes with some new notes my mum had.

Check out all the different Ang Pow packets we’re using this year. Including the Hello Kitty ones Shorty bought.

We gave out our first Ang Pow of our lives to my nephew today. It was … well… nice actually. Giving is always as nice or even nicer as receiving. Tomorrow’s a busy day. It’s the first day of CNY and also Shorty’s birthday so we’re going to have to go to bed now.

Good night everyone… Gong Xi Fa Cai from a Fatty and a Shorty.

PS: I’m currently addicted to this really old but famous Japanese song (they made a Chinese version too)

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Somehow I’m like that. Whenever I travel and I come home I always end up spending the next few days or weeks listening to music from that country. 

Remember Shorty and I’s Meme Proposal?

Well a few of our readers brought to our attention a very similar meme proposal video from China in a proposal done last month.

I have some confused feelings about it. I mean on one hand… I wish the new couple happiness and everlasting marriage but on the other hand… it’s like… almost the same thing. Down to the words that he used for the individual cards or the music of the video.

Would you like it if your boyfriend proposed to you just like that?

UPDATE: So my friend Hui Wen tweeted that she left a comment on the video that this whole proposal is copied from Malaysia, and they deleted her comment.

HELLO from Hokkaido!

I’m here for a conference with a group of entrepreneurs at a ski resort here. I never thought I would have a reason to go to Hokkaido… since I don’t really ski or anything. So this conference is a great excuse. Here are some pictures I took in the past few days.

One thing you should know about Shorty is that she hates the cold and she hates snow. Given the choice, she would rather be in a dessert than in a ski resort. So when she does come out into winter she prepares bundles up herself like this,

I took skiing lessons while here. I learned to ski some 10 years ago but I think I totally forgot everything so I just did a refresher lesson. I was supposed to go to the slope right after my lesson but my friends didn’t want to go. Then I wanted to go today but there was some sort of a snow storm so booo… didn’t get to go either. Anyway here’s a picture of my ski instructor.

Shorty said I better not pick up skiing as a hobby because she doesn’t want to ever come back to a ski resort again. She hates snow and the cold.

Here’s Shorty a random picture of Shorty and me.

Today we went out for some activities by the organizers even though it looked like  a blizzard out there.

This is Shorty and me caught in a snow storm. After 10 minutes she was like “FUCK THIS I’M GOING INSIDE”. So I sent her inside and came back out.

Took this picture when I was out alone in the snow.

Didn’t realize that my beanie and scarf was all covered in snow from the wind.

At the event there was this really flamboyant photographer that goes around taking picture and after he’s done he gives an “OKAAAAYYY”. Shorty thought he was funny so she took a picture with him.

Yes for some reason Shorty found herself some animal suit. Some Japanese guy was wearing it at this party we went to. When she said it was cute he quickly took it off and gave it to her… eager to be rid of it. Apparently he was told to wear it for the party so when the opportunity came to gave it to Shorty he grabbed it. He said that it looks better on a girl.

And yes we’ve talked to many Japanese here. They no longer have any radiation fears. The only thing they avoid is any seafood that comes from the Fukushima area. Really sad man. They told us the Fukushima farmers and fishermen and all are having a hard time now because nobody wants to buy their produce or fish. So they can’t sell any of it and they just end up eating it themselves.

So that’s Hokkaido for us so far. Gotta go to bed now. See ya guys.

Today is a big day for Shorty. Shorty spent most of her Sunday preparing for the launch of Foruchizu. She even skipped dinner with me so I had to tarpau some beef noodles for her just before I went out with some friends. When I came back I saw Shorty looking all worried. I asked her what’s wrong? She said the Foruchizu online store is finally ready to accept its first few customers but she’s really nervous about it.

One of Shorty and Ringo’s concern was being able to secure all the demand once it launches.

They want to be able to test out the site, the logistics and make sure service standards are high rather than have so many orders they can’t fulfill them all so quickly. So what they decided to do was to take in a few customers at a time. That means people can register and they would gradually approve your individual accounts before you can buy anything on Foruchizu. It’s not meant to make the site “exclusive” and all that… I mean the truth is which retailer wants to restrict the number of customers they get. They just want to make sure they get things right before they open it to public.

So if you want to be among the first few customers of Foruchizu, you can start by registering with them now at www.foruchizu.com