It’s just a few weeks now before our launch of our Silicon Valley startup based in this building in Sunnyvale, California.

This building is a huge center where loads of other Silicon Valley startups are based. Paypal was supposed to have started off here when they were first founded too.

The startup Ming and I are doing in Silicon Valley is called NuffnangX.

Even though it borrows on the name of Nuffnang that we came up with some 5 years ago, NuffnangX is a completely separate unrelated company from Nuffnang. Unlike Nuffnang which is a mid-sized company with a strong management team that practically runs the company now, NuffnangX is a startup with few staff and limited resources that will need loads of personal attention. So Ming and I have invested lots of our personal money and time into it because we believe in it.

But still we know that it’s one of those things that will either be really big some years from now… or completely fail. There is no middle ground because there is no revenue model yet and for it to really make money in future it needs scale. Lots of scale. So much scale that we know even if we’re successful in Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, Australia or any of our other Asian countries we’re in… it wouldn’t be big enough to survive. So that’s why we decided to invest in setting up offices in Silicon Valley and in London, to try to cater to our US and UK users.

My colleagues in our US office here Ezen and Gabriel along with some others will be helping us with that.

NuffnangX isn’t meant to be a company or a product targeted just to the Malaysian or Singaporean market. It’s meant to be for the world and our dream is to change the blogosphere of the world.

So far the excitement and the experiences we’ve been having doing this new Silicon Valley startup has been really rewarding. The stress is tough… but still it brings me back to our exciting startup days from before. If we fail, I know at this point that we’ll have no regrets. Ming and I would have lost a lot of time and money… but we would have made in experiences and lessons.

If we succeed though, I hope we would be the first Asian company to be able to break into Silicon Valley.

Wish me luck guys.

If you want to be kept up to date with NuffnangX’s developments, you can go to www.nuffnangx.com.

Or follow NuffnangX on Twitter @NuffnangX.

So here’s the deal. I’ve always wanted new experiences… and one of the things on my bucket list is to go sky diving. I’ve always wanted to do that but was held back by the thought of the feeling of the ‘drop’. Like I love rollercoasters but the one thing I can’t stand to bear is when you feel like you’ve left your stomach behind (still because I love the thrill I end up doing all sorts of roller coasters). Recently though I happened to find out that sky diving doesn’t have that drop feeling at all.

It basically just feels like floating all the way down from the air.

That removed my last and actually only fear of sky diving and I was all up for going. So in Vegas last week I had researched a place to dive and decided to go. The day before I planned to go I was talking to Shorty about it and she wasn’t excited about the idea. She said “NO NO NO… What if you die?”. Then I asked her if she’s putting her foot down and she said “Yes”, followed by a stamping of her right foot on the ground.

I didn’t give up though. I kept bugging her about it all the way till the night before and she finally said
“Okay! Google skydiving accident stats and let me see them”.

So I googled it hoping to find something encouraging. That you know… it’s really safe now with technology. The stats I pulled showed that in 2012 alone, about one reported person a month has died from Skydiving. If that didn’t scare Shorty enough, it went on to describe how the accidents happen. In one case both parachutes didn’t open on the way down and the instructor and student that was strapped to him just went splat on the ground. The student died on the spot but the instructor lived. Though he was critically injured.

In the end I yielded. So I started looking for another experience to do in Vegas and I found one where you can drive supercars on a race track.

I signed up for it immediately and the next morning we found ourselves on the way to a race track.

When we first got there, they got us to go for a briefing on some basics of driving on a track. Then they brought us in a car around the track so we got familiar with it and then they got us all to put helmets on.

Shorty said the helmet made everyone wearing it look silly. Never bugged me though heh. After suiting up, we picked whatever cars we wanted from the whole selection of Ferraris, Lambos, SLS, R8s, Astons and the likes. Then we sat in the car with an instructor who then taught us how to drive. He taught me how to take turns quickly… you know… slow down before a turn, drop a gear and then release a gear just while you’re making the turn.

I ended up trying out two cars. The first one was a Ferrari 458 Italia which apparently costs upwards of RM2 million in Malaysia. This is the instructor briefing me before I got on to the track.

The 458 is the latest Ferrari and I must say it was amazing to drive. I thought it was the most forgiving car to drive. I could take sharp turns too quickly and no matter how I punished the car or yanked the steering wheel, the car would stick to the ground.

I got a video done of me driving the car with the instructor. You can watch it here.

After the Ferrari F458 Italia I tried the Lamborghini Gallardo.

Unlike the Ferrari 458, the Gallardo is the lower end of a super car (unlike some of the other Lambos). So it didn’t handle as well as the Ferrari but somehow I loved it. I loved how it”s smaller and more compact looking… and looks really sharp. I thought I’ve always wanted a Ferrari before… but now I think my dream car is a Lamborghini Gallardo.

Because it didn’t handle as well as the Ferrari (and because I’m not a good race track driver) I ended up taking turns too quickly and had my car skid. Was still loads of fun though.

At the end of the experience we had one last option (notice how they only allow you to go for this next option only at the END). We could go on a “ride along” on a Corvette. The driver was a professional race car driver that would drift the whole track. I asked my instructor if I should go for it and he said “Well do you like rollercoasters?”
I said “YES!” and he replied “Then go for it!“. So I did.

This is a video of what happened next.

I had two new experiences that I had never had before that day. One… to drive super cars on a race track.

And another… to ride with a professional driver as he drifted through the track. Both were equally awesome.

Hi Everyone!

It’s our last night here in the USA. We’re back in Silicon Valley now so tomorrow I go to work at our new office here and at night we’re taking a flight back to Malaysia. It’s hard to believe we’ve been away for 3 weeks. This is the longest I have ever been away from home (apart from my 3 years studying in London).

So since I’m not going to be able to blog much in the next few days, Shorty and I decided that we’re going to leave you with our long overdue blog post of our wedding dinner. Lots of the pictures here are courtesy of our photographer Wayne, my cousin Michelle who is ALSO a talented photographer and Carol. So rather than go through a whole long story of the night, let me show you picture by picture. This is how our photo corner looked like.

I remember the first time we went to our wedding planner, Audrey Chow from Focal Concepts. She asked us “So what theme do you have in mind?”. We immediately said “UP!”. At first it drew some blank stares but when we explained that it was supposed to be the Disney Pixar cartoon UP,  she immediately got it. She was excited about doing it because it wasn’t like the usual wedding she had done before. Most weddings she has done have colour themes or flower themes but this was the first … well.. odd one.. she had.

Audrey (as in Audrey Chow, not to be mistaken with Shorty) and Shorty worked together and came up with some of the best ideas. That photo corner was one of Audrey’s ideas I think and it was meant to be the “Living room” of the UP House. She even sourced for furniture that looked as close as possible to that and added in some personal touches in it. For example, look at the backdrop of it.. notice the little blue ChurpChurp bird? Shorty and Audrey filled the photo frames of the photo corner with pictures of Shorty and I either from our photoshoot or our childhood pictures.

Then comes the decor of the registration table.

We had more pictures of us.

And we had a mailbox with our handprint on it… just like in UP.

Then this I think is another of Audrey’s ideas where she took this picture of us and got all the guests to leave coloured thumb prints on them so they all end up looking like balloons.

Our guest book, was the exact same Adventure Book that Mr Fredrickson had in UP. Then of course we had loads of signs that led guests to thewedding party.

Now we knew UP themed meant we had to have a lot of balloons right. The problem was that… if you had a lot of balloons tied around chairs all over the ballroom you’d end up with a wedding that looked more like a birthday party than a wedding. So Audrey suggested that instead of balloons, we use lanterns… and this is how beautiful it looked by the time it was all set up (but just before the guests arrived).

This is the walkway from the door all the way to the stage.

Shorty picked the door gifts and ended up with these little jars of honey. I don’t really know why to be honest and I’m yet to ask her but it looked cute so okaaay.

On the stage came our backdrop. The theme or the objective of the wedding wasn’t to make it look grand. We’ve been to lots of grand weddings before and wow are they hard to beat. So Shorty and I just wanted a fun wedding. Our backdrop on the stage ended up like this.

Notice the “duct tape” on the side of it holding the map down. It’s kinda how the world map in the adventure book looked like in UP. And if you look closely at the map you’ll see markings on the places that Shorty and I have been together. Or places that she has been without me. And yes my favourite part of the backdrop was how they used real balloons to hold “US” up 🙂 Oh Oh and I nearly forgot to mention. WE HAD AN ACTUAL FLOATING HOUSE !!!

While Shorty and I were hiding in the bridal suite getting ready. Our guests were gathering at the cocktail area already. Some of my friends came from all over. Here’s Hasan from Bahrain talking to Eddie and Adrian from Hong Kong.

I met all three of them while studying at University College London. I used to hang out with them every day! I came down before Shorty to mingle with the guests. Here’s me with Sara and Linda.

And here’s Rina and Wendy taking a picture with Angeline in the background looking really fierce (but hot ok.. hot .. ).

You know the best part about a wedding is that it’s the one time in your life where all the friends you made throughout life will come together in one place.

I had friends from school in Penang, my college friends in KL, my London friends and now my current friends.

They were all together in this one place. Some of them knew each other, some of them didn’t but all of them were happy. And this will probably almost never happen again.

So after all our guests went into the ballroom, it was time for our entrance. First went the bridesmaids with the groomsmen.

And then came Shorty and me.

Words cannot describe the feeling of doing the first walk-in. You walk hand in hand with the woman you love, down a red carpet with all your best friends and fathers friends on the side standing and clapping with smiles on their faces. If there was one moment in my life I could save and revisit over and over again… it would be this.

I gotta say AGAIN that I LOVE Shorty’s dress. It is the most beautiful wedding dress I had ever seen in my life. Thank you again for designing it Gilbert.

Now traditionally once the bride and groom walk into the room, they take their seats at the main table and then everyone else sits down. My mum though wanted something different. She said forget tradition. She said that it was only polite for me to go up on stage first and thank all our guests for coming tonight. So because mummy knows best… I went on stage, still holding my Shorty’s hand and thanked our guests who had come from all over the world for that one night.

Then we went back to sit down on the main table.

The rest of the night went by really quickly.  I remember being disappointed with the first few servings of my food. We had gone for a food tasting before and it was really good but that night I didn’t really enjoy my food. I guess it’s one thing to make food for one table… and another thing to make food for seventy. What I did enjoy though was the company of all my other friends there.

After we all sat down my father gave a speech. I can’t include a picture of that yet because my Dad is blog-shy.   And then after some food and some performances Angela went up to give her speech as maid of honor.

Then Shorty went away to make her change.

While she was putting on her second change, I was….

Well going around and drinking with my Dad’s friends. And then came my turn to go up and give my speech.

I already posted the content of my speech before but if you want to read it again, here it is. Here’s Shorty talking to her bridesmaids.

And then came Ming’s turn to give his speech as my best man.

After Ming’s speech, the Nuffies had a little surprise for me. They all went up on stage and they all department by department said some words or poems. It was a nice little surprise… enough to get me up clapping by the end of it.

We ended with a group picture.

This is a picture of me talking to my grandmother.

I can’t remember what about but possibly something about great grandchildren…

The night flew by much quicker than I expected it to be. Before I knew it I was at the exit saying goodbye to all the guests that came. I had never in my hands shaken the hands of 700 people before. It was tiring. Took us quite a while… so much that by the end of it even Shorty decided to do without her high heels. People had to bend down to hug her. Hehe.

We were supposed to go for an after party after that but Shorty said she was too tired to. I don’t blame her. It was a long and tiring day… but it was an awesome wedding.

An awesome wedding… of a Fatty and a Shorty.

Read Shorty’s version here.

————-

PS:

One of the reasons why Shorty and I loved our wedding so much is because it came out not just like how we envisioned it to be… but even better. We couldn’t have done it if we didn’t have the right people working with us for all these things and I think we were blessed to have the right planner, photographer etc etc.

So I want to share our contacts with you. If you’re a bride to be… let me see if I can help you out in making your wedding awesome.

Here are some resources if you’re looking to plan a wedding of yours soon. I’ll list our wedding planner, photographer and wedding dress designer.

Wedding Planner – Focal Concept. They’re a Penang company. Who we worked with though was a lady named Audrey Chow. She’s awesome. Her email is dreychow@gmail.com. It’s so important to have a wedding planner who not only understands how important your wedding is to you but totally understands what you want and know how to build on to it. Audrey was one such planner.

Wedding Dress Designer – Shorty’s wedding dress which I think is the most beautiful of all is done by Gilbert. You can check out his site here.

Wedding Photographer  – Wayne from Mocco.my. Wayne and his crew were awesome and I think he managed to capture the emotions of our wedding so well. There are so many other pictures but I can’t post them all. He’s great.

Videographer – And of course, our video grapher was Crazy Monkey Studios. Ask for SK. They did the meme proposal video and the meme proposal sequel. They also did the video for our wedding dinner but they’re still working on that so it’s not out yet. You can also reach them on Facebook here.

Hair Stylist and Make-Up – Shorty seems to think that I look good that night only because Hicky from 76Style did a great job in styling my hair. Hicky was awesome, she was with us all weekend and took good care of Audrey’s make-up throughout. She wasn’t just like a stylist… but like a friend. She helped Shorty with everything she needed. You can check out 76 Style here.

Pre-Wedding Photo Shoot – One Way Ticket was the company we used. They’re new and I heard we’re one of the first couples they did. We didn’t want to go for the tried and true and famous photographers. We wanted to go for the rebels… the new kid on the block that would be passionate about doing a quirky shoot. And do a great quirky shoot they did. You can reach them here.

So I was at a stand-up comedy gig last night and the comedian said

“Vegas is the only place in the world where once you land you’ll call one of your friends and say ‘I’M IN VEGAS BABY!!!’. It really is… you don’t hear anyone landing in Ohio and calling his friend and saying ‘I’M IN CLEVELAND BABY!'”.

And yes ladies & gentlemen. That’s where I am!

I’m going to be here for a week. Actually it was supposed to be for a few days to kill time before I have to get back to San Francisco on the 31st August to orientate our new team just before I head home to KL. Then yesterday as I was looking at the hotel rates for San Francisco I was like wtf? The hotels in Vegas are like 60% cheaper than the hotels in SF. So I decided to spend more time in Vegas killing time and only head back to SF when I really have to.

It’s been fun though. Let me run through with you what we did from the pictures we took in the past few days.

Shorty and I went to watch The Beatles Love Cirque Du Soleil. It’s basically like a circus with all sorts of stunts and dancing to the Beatles old songs.

Shorty first heard about this when she saw an ad about it on TV in San Francisco and she immediately decided she had to go. So we got the tickets and went. She loved it but I didn’t know many of the songs they played so I didn’t really enjoy it. Now don’t get me wrong… I love the Beatles too but maybe I don’t know ALL the songs… and the other songs they chose to play… well I didn’t quite like them. So I thought it was just really bad song selection.

We walked down the Strip many times in the past few days. Another thing that same comedian I was referring to in the beginning of this entry talked about during his gig was “depth perception”. He said “Just because you can see the Stratosphere… it don’t mean its a block away”.

And that’s so true of us. Somehow everything in Vegas looks close but when you actually start walking it’s pretty friggin far eventhough you can see it right in front of you. It’s easy to underestimate how big each hotel is and how long it takes to walk past each one.

This is one of the nicest hotels on the Strip. The Bellagio.

Famous for its beautiful fountain show that they have every 30 minutes or so.

You can watch a video that I found of it on YouTube here.

I remember reading about it in a book about Vegas once. It was actually built by Steve Wynn for $1.6 billion plus another $400 million he spent just on art to decorate the place. The whole theme of the hotel was that it was supposed to be a really luxurious place… and well he spared no expense even in the expensive art he got for the place. That was what got him personally interested in art.

Eventually though because he was spending so much money building the Bellagio the share price of his company then came down so much that a competitor of his bought it over and now owns the Bellagio. Kinda sucks right.

So what he did later on was to build an even more luxurious hotel called the Wynn… and the Encore.

And yes…. that thing in the bottom left of the picture here… is my finger.

The hotels here on the Las Vegas Strip are huge. Each of them have thousands of rooms each and they have very different themes. There’s a hotel called New York New York.

And a hotel called Paris with an Eiffel Tower of its own.

Or even this huge complex called City Center.

There are just so many things to do in Vegas. Sure there are the hangover Strip Club kind of things but apart from that and the gambling there are tons of shows to watch.

Shorty and I have been watching a new show almost every day until well.. we’re kinda running out of money so today we’re not going to do that today.
Part of the fun part of Vegas was meeting one of Shorty’s readers: Rachel and her boyfriend Anthony.

This is them making some personalized M&Ms at this machine.

And this is me with Anthony.

With my eyes closed for whatever reason.

One of the first places we had a meal together was at this Diner kind of place. I ordered some corn beef with bread but it looked huge on the menu so I decided to order like a half portion. And this is how it looked like.

Seriously. There is so much meat it’s almost like they just killed a cow and slapped two slices of bread around it.

We had a fun few days hanging out with Anthony and Rachel but unfortunately they had to go back today. So let me end this entry with the last dinner we had together at Wolfgang Puck last night.

Ok guys… time to go sight-seeing. More updates in the next few days!

So I looked in my phone and found a number of pics that I haven’t yet uploaded on my blog here. They were pics that I randomly took of my day while in San Francisco. Like this picture I asked Shorty to help me take while driving back to San Francisco.

It was a cloudy day and look at the clouds! They emerged on the horizon almost as if I was driving in Heaven.

One of the things that Shorty really wanted to visit while in San Jose was the Winchester House. The mansion was built by the late Sarah Winchester. Wife of the ex-owner of the Winchester Repeating Arms company that made the famous Winchester rifles.

It’s a really odd house with doors or staircases that lead to nowhere. There’s even a room inside the house that was meant for Sarah Winchester to speak to spirits.

After her husband and daughter died, Sarah Winchester believed that the spirits of the people killed by the rifles her husband’s company made was haunting her. So that’s why she made the house with all these funny features. To confuse the spirits so that they would get lost in it and not be able to find her.

We weren’t allowed to take pictures inside the house so I can’t show you what it’s like inside but I had the house had this really eerie feeling. It was huge… and confusing so I can imagine anyone easily getting lost in this house. You can read more about Winchester House here.

This is Shorty and Lilian outside a part of the house after our tour.

Shorty later said to me that she was actually a little scared inside and asked if I noticed she was clinging on to me the whole time. Hah! This coming from a girl who loves watching horror or ghost movies.

That night Shorty and I went to Cheesecake Factory.

Where we had my 2nd cheesecake of the day.

The Yummy Oreo Cheesecake!

Man was it good! Shorty found herself rubbing my stomach a few times after the dinner and sighing to herself. Knowing how fat I was going to be. Yes… no point fighting the fat. I’m destined to be. If I were fat at least I would be able to stand the cold in San Francisco. This is Shorty wearing my jacket over her head to brave the cold.

I can’t believe how cold San Francisco is over summer.

It can get as cold as 10 degrees Celsius. Still Shorty insisted to go out that day because she wanted to go buy herself a Kindle.

After a week working in Silicon Valley, Shorty and I hopped on to our first Virgin America flight to Vegas. This is how the plane looked on the inside. Totally different from any other plane I’ve been on. All its windows were shut and it looked more like a club.

 

I must say I’m pretty impressed with Virgin America. I ended up leaving my iPad on the plane only to realize it some time later while at the baggage claim. Shorty quickly filed a report and they managed to get it out for me before the plane left for New York an hour later.

So that’s it for me guys! I’m in Vegas now and I’m spending more time talking on the phone and doing emails than enjoying it with Shorty so I’m going to keep my blog entries short.

Have a good weekend!

So let me tell you how my past few days in San Francisco were like. To be honest it was really very eventful for me. I was having fun going around setting things up for our new startup. I can’t say the same for Shorty though.

She was following me around the whole time and kinda doing nothing but reading her book whenever I was working. It doesn’t help that the Bay Area is HUGE! And we made the mistake of staying in San Francisco which means we have to travel to Silicon Valley every day on the freeway.

So a big part of our days were spent in the car like this.

And Shorty looked like this in most of the car journeys.

On one of the days we got stuck in a massive jam that took us an hour. We had no idea why traffic wasn’t moving until we heard it over the radio that up ahead from us there was a high-speed police chase (just like in the movies) and the suspect’s car overturned causing a huge jam further up from us.

The good thing though is that I have now gotten used to driving on the right side of the road.

Everything’s all good now although I did get my first parking ticket today. Silly thing. One of Shorty’s readers Katherine brought us to this ice-cream place  with a long queue of people waiting to buy ice-cream.

When I first got there, I didn’t know where to park but I saw a lot of cars parked right on the road side so we thought it was legal and parked there. There weren’t any signs or lines on the road to tell otherwise.

After a quick 45 minute ice-cream session though.. we came back to a parking ticket waiting for us. $70. Ouch.

When we were not stuck in a jam, I was in meetings and all. So Shorty would just read her book or… well during one of my meetings she did this to the white board.

Or she would kaypo a little and talk to Lilian about some stuff.

So when I wasn’t working I made sure to take Shorty out.

I brought her shopping where she punished the supplementary credit card I gave her.

(notice the handbag she’s been carrying now is this huge cloth bag that costs $9 that looks like a shopping bag. While all girls are going for thousand dollar handbags I find it amusing that my wife is comfortable using bags like this and still looks cute).

And did it once again at Forever 21.

And again at an Abercrombie & Fitch sale.

It was a great sale though… I bought a pair of jeans from A&F for only like RM99.

Today I brought her to Japan Town.

And to the Walt Disney Museum where we followed the life of Walt Disney. Seriously I have a newfound admiration for Walt Disney. He’s an entrepreneur that took so many risks and went through so many setbacks but still managed to pick himself up. When he passed away in the 60s, the whole world mourned. Still.. his legacy lives. To think I was only born almost 20 years after he left our world and I still knew his name since I was a little boy.

Being motivated to be a true fatty now of course, I ended each day with dessert. When it’s not ice-cream…

it’s cake or something else. Saturday night for me was spent at Cheesecake Factory where I had this Godiva Chocolate Cheesecake that was just… amazing!

So that’s it for me guys. Tomorrow morning is an early start for me again. See you guys and have a great Raya holidays!

Okay okay 5 days no update! I’m not proud of that. But I can explain !!! (Haha I always can).

If you’ve been following me on Twitter (@timothytiah) or Instagram (also @timothytiah), you’d know that I’m in San Francisco now with Shorty.

SAY HELLO SAN FRANCISCO!!!

SAY HELLO FATTY & SHORTY!!!

I know it looks like Shorty and I are in SF for a honeymoon but no that’s not really true. We’ve been here a few days already and we’ve hardly done any sight-seeing apart from visiting Fisherman’s Wharf at the end of yesterday. The rest of my days so far have been spent working and Shorty just tagging along and accompanying me for the long drives.

Yes I’ve been driving here in SF and man did that take some getting used to. On my first day of driving I probably broke the record for the fastest rental car accident in the history of Hertz. I rented the car at the airport, then while driving it out of the car park some 30 seconds later, I hit my passenger side mirror against a pillar and it broke. Fortunately I bought insurance so they just replaced my car.

After a few days though I started getting used to it and now driving on the other side of the road comes a bit more natural to me. So yeah… no more accidents and no more driving against traffic (happened to me once briefly but managed to correct myself without getting anyone hurt).

Today has been a long day of work and tomorrow is too so I guess I gotta keep this blog entry short. Now I’m actually here in San Francisco to set up an office. It’s not for Nuffnang or any of our current companies. It’s for a new startup that Ming and I are working on and it’s located in this building in Silicon Valley.

When I look back at the past 5 years of my business life I feel grateful. Grateful to God and the people around me for helping bring us to where we are today. If you asked me 5 years ago if Nuffnang would grow to where it is today, I really wouldn’t have believed it.

Yes in our past 5 years, we’ve succeeded in some businesses and we have failed in others too. Fortunately our successes outweigh our failures but Ming and I though are constantly restless. We’re always looking for new experiences and that’s what life is about right… acquiring new experiences.

Just a few months ago Ming came up with an idea. I dare say it’s one of the best ideas that has ever come from either one of us. So we decided to put our time and money into it. It is one of the biggest investments I have personally ever made in a startup. If it fails, then we lose a lot of time and money.. but I guess we take back lessons and experiences. If it succeeds… we hope it would change the world.

I can’t talk about what that startup does specifically… but you guys will know soon ok? In the mean time. I have work to do. We’ve got a long road ahead of us and this is just the start of it.

Oh Shorty and I are making a trip to Vegas next week. So that’ll be for a holiday 🙂

Now let me give you some history on my hair.

When Shorty first got together with me years ago this was how I looked/dressed like.

She accepted it for a couple of weeks but not long after she decided to take matters into her own hands. She went into my closet and after 45 minutes of rummaging through my clothes she set aside a small pile of my t-shirts and jeans. She went on to say “Okay… this small pile here is what you’re allowed to wear from now on… get rid of everything else”.

Then she took me shopping and all I almost felt like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. Except that I was the “Pretty Woman” and Shorty was “Richard Gere”. Come to think of it now man was that emasculating. Once she was done with my sense of fashion she decided to work on my hair. I used to get my hair cut for not more than RM30 at some barber. She then brought me to A Cut Above where for the first time in my life I spent 3 hours cutting, dying and having hair treatment on my hair. It was the most boring 3 hours of my life but hey who am I to complain… I just got together with a cute pretty little girl and she’s worth it anyway.

After the full 3 hours, I ended up looking like this.

And I vomitted blood when I saw the bill.

But people started commenting that I look much better so okay! I guess it’s worth it and I owe Shorty a favour.

Over the years my hair changed a little here and there but every single hair cut I had was with Shorty.

Which suited me fine because I don’t really care how my hair looked. I just like to sit there, read my book or check my emails while Shorty tells the hair stylist what to do. This year she started bringing me to this salon she goes to called 76 Style. It’s a Japanese salon so everybody there speaks Japanese including the stylist Hiki who is from Japan. Again that suits me fine because all I hear is some Japanese words from Shorty’s mouth and the stylist go “Hai hai hai” and at the end of it my hair comes out nice.

Last week though I decided to go to the same salon and have my hair cut on my own. Without Shorty. I had trouble communicating with Hiki but we settled for pointing at magazine pictures. She pointed at a number but I said “No I want it shorter”. Now here’s the thing…. having my hair cut is a chore for me just like how say… jogging in a park is a chore to Shorty. I don’t like going there and sitting there for a long time. So whenever I go I try to get them to cut my hair as short as possible so I never have to come back again for a couple of months.

Shorty on the other hand doesn’t like that. She thinks that I look fat in short hair… but hey a fatty should rightfully look fat right? So I told Hiki to have my hair cut short… but not too short… because I knew Shorty wouldn’t like it.

Somehow I think there was a bit of a misunderstanding. My hair came out really short which was fine by me! But on my way back I realized that… Shorty wouldn’t be pleased. After all in Shorty’s books:

And in this case… “ONE” refers to a particular Fatty.

So at the end of the day I was on the way to meet Shorty for dinner when I decided to manage her expectations in advance. That’s something the advertising industry teaches you… always manage expectations. So I did.

She wasn’t pleased. In fact I thought she was going to divorce my newly married fat ass.

The next day Shorty so happened to visit Hiki and Hiki asked her in Japanese “Is his hair ok?”… apparently with a little bit of fear in her eyes because she probably guessed Shorty didn’t like my short hair. Shorty just smiled and said sure. Because she put all the blame on me… that I asked her to cut my hair short. For the past few days she was going on and on about my hair until I finally came up with the best response evah! I said

“Hey! I’m married now! I don’t have to look good anymore!”.

And she didn’t say anything about my hair anymore after that. Except for this morning when she said that my hair makes my head look like an egg plant in which again I came up with a genius response (seriously I’m on a roll this week): “Well if I’m Mr Egg Plant then that makes you Mrs Egg Plant. How does it feel to be married to an Egg Plant?”

So anyway everyone… without further ado… here is my haircut.

How bad is it?

———-

Disclaimer from Shorty: it looks better styled ok!!! Past few days he went around with flat short hair and really resembled a vegetable.

So a few days ago I realized that Shorty jumped me and blogged first about our tea ceremony. In any case she did me a favour because since the official photographs are all not out yet we had to crawl through all our pictures on Facebook and pick the ones we could use for our blogs. So the pictures that I use are going to be the same ones that Shorty put on her blog too. What’s different I guess would be my point of view on what happened that day.

Now I never understood what the purpose of the tea ceremony was until I actually did it myself. Basically even though Shorty and I was legally married the day before at our ROM, in Chinese tradition we weren’t considered husband and wife yet until the tea ceremony. Everything had to be planned in detail. Even the specific time in which I had to leave the house by to go pick up Shorty or even that my Dad had to be the one who helped me wear my suit jacket.

There was lots to do that day so I was up early by 6.30AM. My best men arrived by 7.30AM so we started first with a nice char kuay teow breakfast that we had tarpaued from the market that morning.

We were scheduled to leave the house by 8.15AM but we kinda predicted that the girls won’t be ready in time and they would call us and tell us to leave later. True enough that really happened. So we took our time to eat a hearty breakfast before we left.

We were out of the house by 8.45AM along with an entourage of some 6-7 cars. Halfway though I remembered that I was supposed to bring an ang pow to give Shorty’s brother when he opened the car door for me. So I turned the entire entourage back.

In the WhatsApp group we had, the Best Men who were seated in all the different cars were like

“Why are we turning back? What’s happening?”

“Maybe he changed his mind about getting married…”

But I went back, got the Ang Pow and headed to pick up a bride named Shorty. Soon after we arrived at the apartment Shorty was waiting for me at.

Shorty’s brother opened the door for me but he went up first while I waited for the next lift. It was only after a while that we realized “Eh what floor is it ar?”.

So we looked at what floor the lift that took Shorty’s brother stopped at and we said “OK 12TH FLOOR!”.

We turned out to be wrong though. Fortunately Shorty’s bro’s gf was downstairs with us and when we asked her she pointed us to the right floor.

So we all rushed upstairs only to meet the eight bridesmaids who had built a wall of chairs to stop us from getting in. Now this is the part of a tradition that I don’t actually like. From what I understand, traditionally it was just meant for the bridesmaids to play some games with the best men to make it difficult to get the bride. The games were meant to be fun… maybe it involved questions about the brides or maybe to do a little dance or even sing a song.

Over the years though I think that act has been bastardized so much that it’s more cruel than funny or fun. A common occurrence is that the bridesmaids will get the best men to wax off their legs or eat some disgusting stuff which is to me already at the border of too much but ok fairly acceptable. But some have gone overboard. I have been to some where they got all the guys to strip down, wear lingerie and hump each other. Now while that may be funny to some… it’s sadistic to me.. just like how I don’t find Tom & Jerry funny at all. What’s worse is that Tom & Jerry is fictional… the best men who are with me are not animated characters with no feelings. They are my best friends in life and I will not let my best friends be abused or humiliated like that.

So before the whole thing happened I told Shorty to make sure that the bridesmaids kept it fun and civil. That if anything really bad or low class happened even though it may not be planned by her, it will reflect on her. I asked that she keep it classy and truly fun for all.

That is exactly what her bridesmaids did and I am proud to say that Angela, Xiaxue, Cheesie, Suet, Bobo, Hui Wen, Jia Meei and Tze put together the the best games I had ever seen. Here’s what they did:

When we walked in there were 5 boxes all tied up in ribbons each and named after a challenge each. When I walked in Xiaxue said “Okay Tim in order to get Audrey you have to prove your worth in 5 ways: Bravery, Intellect, Romance, Wealth and I can’t remember what that last thing was.

In romance, we had to sing a song. Intellect we had to do a soduku puzzle and the only bordering cruel thing was Bravery where we had to drink some fruit vegetable juice with cili padi in it but even then it wasn’t so bad. My friend told me he once told he a friend of his had to drink something with raw egg and some other stuff in it and the best men all got food poisoning by the end of the day that they all missed the wedding dinner. Man if that happened to me I would be really upset. All my best friends missing my wedding because of some silly drink. But no… what the girls made for us was awful… but actually good for health I think (kinda like what my mum used to make me drink)… apart from the cili padi.

Of course one of the challenges was that I had to answer questions about Shorty which I can proudly say I got ALL correct except for the name of her favourite professor.

Every time I completed a challenge, I got a badge. And with 5 badges I was able to go in.

Finally after the games were done the best men pushed their way in and I rushed into the bedroom to fetch me bride… only to be stopped by Shorty’s mum. She stopped all of us and said “NO CANNOT GO IN STOP STOP STOP!!!”.

So all of us halted to a stop. Ming looked at Shorty’s mum and then looked at me and said “Who’s this person?”.

I whispered “That’s Audrey’s mum”.

Shorty’s mum got me to first drink some tong shui served by Shorty’s brother… I don’t know the reason for that but Shorty’s mum is really into all the traditional stuff so I just do as I’m told.

Then finally after what felt like 45 minutes… (though a fun 45 minutes), I walked into the room and this is what I saw.

At first it hadn’t occurred to me that Shorty was wearing her wedding dress that I had never seen before until now. So I just commented about her friends holding us back for a while. Then when it finally hit me… I couldn’t help but say “WOW” or something like that.

Her dress was the most beautiful wedding dress I had ever seen. I know the designs of wedding dresses are supposed to be a big thing. Just like how everyone’s talking about Kate Middleton’s dress… I never understood it. But when I saw Shorty’s dress I was like.. WOW. I especially love the back of her dress.

It’s so so her. For this I have to thank Gilbert. Because of him, my wife wore the most beautiful dress I had ever seen in my life on her wedding day.

I picked Shorty up, gave her a short kiss on her lips (no tongue action or anything don’t worry… Shorty and I are not romantic like that… or French)… and I brought her out to a crowd of clapping best men and bridesmaids.

Then I brought my Shorty home.

Where all my relatives were all waiting for me. As we walked in everybody stood up and clap. Now I know how prime ministers feel when they enter formal events. Heh.

Shorty and I spent the next few hours serving tea to our family members and receiving ang pows and gifts. This is one part of getting married that I totally never knew. When you get married… people give you gifts like it’s your birthday. Except that they’re really nice gifts because they know you get married only once.

All in all I had so much fun at our tea ceremony. What you may or may not know is that in my family, every Chinese New Year we all have a little tea ceremony of our own. We take turns to serve my parents tea. Hehe I know it sounds like my family is really traditional but I kinda like having that bit of tradition in my family especially since we don’t really follow many other traditions.

This Chinese New Year though will be the first Chinese New Year where Shorty and I will be giving instead of receiving ang pows 🙂

3 years ago we came up with the Nuffnang site that we used all the way from then till today.

The thing about websites is that designs change rather quickly. So while we were really happy with this old layout, we knew it had run its life.

So this year we put a lot of effort into thinking what the new one should be like. It’s tough. Because there isn’t much to get inspiration from or copy from overseas. Sure there are blog ad networks in the US as well but we haven’t seen yet a company in the USA or UK that is a community-based blog ad network. So our site had to be a bit of a community based site and portray that bloggers can earn money from it.

So what a group of us Nuffies did was we all brainstormed about what Nuffnang really meant to us or bloggers. And here’s what we eventually realized it meant. Nuffnang has grown to a company that doesn’t just help bloggers earn money. It’s a lot more than that. It helps you meet other bloggers, uncover new opportunities that you can get as a blogger (movie screenings etc etc) or even help with the content of your blog by giving a blogger new experiences: whether in a community event or a new mobile phone review or even a trip overseas.

Nuffnang is like an add on to all bloggers in these countries we’re in. Bloggers have their cameras, their laptops, their mobile phones… and Nuffnang is what completes their blogging experience on top of that.

That’s what our new site is based on.

We also made it as simple as we could. It’s ironic how it can be so complicated to try to make something simple but I’m glad we finally got there.

I particularly like our About Us page.

So well done to the team of Nuffies that managed to pull this through!

What do you guys think of the new Nuffnang?