Alright so I finally have the chance to sit down and blog about our wedding weekend. I’m going to start with our registration of marriage ceremony that we had on the 27th of July in Penang. Now my only regret with our wedding weekend is that because we were so busy taking pictures with everyone else and doing everything, we didn’t really have a chance to take pictures of our own or more pictures of what really happened. The pictures I have here are the best pictures I have from the ones my friends posted on Facebook.

It’s not traditional to have a registration of marriage ceremony in Malaysia I think… but Shorty always wanted a “walk down the aisle” moment so we decided that we would have a ceremony for that.

It was meant to be simple. Just a few of our closest family and friends would come. Shorty’s intention was that while the tea ceremony and the wedding dinner was going to be for everyone else, the ROM was going to be for us. That didn’t quite work out though. Once we included all our relatives, some Nuffies and friends we ended up with something like 150 people.

We still loved it though. In the video that Crazy Monkey Studios did, everything looked perfect but the truth is, just like any other wedding I guess lots of things went wrong.

Like on that day itself I suddenly had an outbreak of pimples on my face or an example of a more serious problem: Some 20 minutes before the ROM was about to start for example, we realized that the music we had in mind to play when Shorty walked down the aisle (Canon in D) wasn’t working. Shorty was freaking out but I just pat her and said “Don’t worry Shorty, everything will be fixed and it will be great. It’s our day… the only thing that can go wrong is if either one of us doesn’t show up.. and I’m right here”.

I just brushed all the troubles off because I kinda expected an imperfect wedding. An imperfect wedding for an imperfect couple… but no matter what happened, I knew it would be a perfect wedding just for us.

True enough the music problem was fixed just minutes before the ROM started thanks to my sister who took charge of the situation and found a solution. Shorty got to walk down the aisle with Canon in D. If you forgot what Canon in D sounds like, it sounds just like this.

The version we played was a piano version too.

Right after Shorty walked down the aisle to me, Angela the maid of honour and our emcee for the day started the ceremony with a poem. Then came the vows.

Now just a few weeks before Shorty asked me if we were going to do vows at our ROM. I said it was up to her so she decided that yes we should have vows. So I went back to the office one day and in 30 minutes or so managed to come up with mine. When I told Shorty I had done by vows she started to worry… not knowing how to write hers but I told her since I did it already she wasn’t getting out of it.

Doing vows was a little bit awkward for me. I asked some of the Nuffies how they normally sound like and they told me about this beautiful scene in the movie called “The Vow” where they made this really romantic vow. This is the scene.

I watched it and immediately I thought “Wow… I’m never going to be able to pull that off”.

Shorty and I after all aren’t the most romantic couple. I knew my vows just had to be simple. Not flowery or anything.. but simple.. and perhaps a little silly. Like us.

So I wrote my vows. It was called 8 Promises. This is it.

8 Promises

(Yatsu Yakusoku)

I promise…. that I will only be moderately angry, when you put a Hello Kitty sticker on my car.

(Anata wa watashi no kuruma ni Hello Kitty suti-ka wo hattara, chotto dake okoru youni yakusoku shimasu)

I promise…. that I will never let you stand under the sun… without an umbrella.

(Anata wa zettai kasa nashi de taiyou no shita ni tatasenai youni yakusoku shimasu)

I promise… that I will take you to Japan as often as I can.

(Anata wo yoku nihon ni tsureteiku youni yakusoku shimasu)

I promise… that I will remember how watching you wake up every morning is my favourite moment of each day.

(Anata wa asa okiru toki wo miru no wa ichinichi de ichiban tanoshii koto wo oboeru youni yakusoku shimasu)

I promise… that I will forever remember how you’re the only one who made me feel marriage is not something I should be afraid of, but something I am lucky to have.

(kekkon wa, kowai mono jyanakute, shiawase mono dayo tte, anata wa watashi ni oshieta koto wo zettai wasurenai youni yakusoku shimasu)

I promise…. that I will laugh with you in the good times, and cry with you in the bad.

(Anata to ureshii toki wa isshoni waratte, setsunai toki wa isshoni naku youni yakusoku shimasu)

I promise…. that while I’m not perfect…. I will always strive to be perfect for you as you are perfect for me.

(Watashi ha pa-fecto dewa nai kedo, pa-fecto naru youni yakusoku shimasu. Watashi ni totte anata wa pa-fecto dakara)

I promise…. that I will always be there for you and I will always love you.

(Watashi wa, itsudemo anatano soba ni itte, itsudemo anata wo ai suru youni yakusoku shimasu)

To make it even more silly I got the idea to do it in Japanese. Since Shorty loves everything Japanese. I knew Shorty might understand it since she speaks Japanese… but nobody else would. So for that I got Michelle and Linda to help me come up with some place cards that my best men will hold up whenever I said the vows. After I said each vow my best men would all say a “HAI” and bow. Haha that was their idea! Not mine!

After our vows were done, we did our registration.

While I was about to sign my marriage with Shorty my best men teased “Tim are you sure? There’s no turning back after this”. I just smiled and put pen to paper. Didn’t even hesitate. And then we exchanged our rings.

That is one thing till today I haven’t gotten used to wearing. I find the ring really uncomfortable to wear so I take it off every night before I sleep. Then what happens is when I rush for work the next morning I sometimes forget to put it on. Today Shorty saw it on my nightstand when she woke up so she hid it from me as to teach me a lesson.

Finally we were pronounced husband and wife… and we sealed it with a little kiss.

Just a short kiss… no french tongue thingy or anything like that. We like it simple 🙂

Right after that Shorty did her bouquet toss. I’m proud to say I took this picture myself with my phone. She looked so adorable.

The ROM ended with an early dinner and an opportunity to take loads of pictures with the guests there. Here are some of the pictures that I found on FB.

Here’s Shorty and me with Yuta and Shintaro, our Japanese friends.

Through Shorty I somehow got to know a number of Japanese friends and quite a number of them flew in from Japan just to attend our wedding. Here’s another of Shorty’s friends from Japan. Ayumi.

I apologized to them for my really bad Japanese when doing the vows but Japanese being polite as always said that my Japanese was good (even though it was obviously really bad).

Here’s Shorty and Angela, her maid of honour.

And here’s a picture with Shorty and me with the bridesmaids and best men. The bridesmaids wore matching outfits with different colours but I just told my best men to wear whatever made them feel comfortable for our ROM.

When the bridesmaids first heard about it… they were like “WHAT?!?!”… but they let us off easy. Here’s another picture of the bridesmaids and their dresses from Mary Julian of  Jipaban.com.

Shorty and I both had awesome bridesmaids and best men. I kinda learned that day how important it is for a bride to have good bridesmaids.

Good bridesmaids understand how a bride’s wedding is the most important day of her life and how nothing else should matter to the bride that day but her. I learned that Ringo was sick the whole weekend but she never once troubled Shorty with it…. and the things Wendy did for Shorty was amazing. Wendy, Ringo, Suet, Bobo, Hui Wen and Angela… you girls have no idea how you all made Shorty so happy that weekend! Now she wants nothing else but to return the favour.

My best men were all awesome too of course! RAWR!!!

When I stood under the sun they stood with me. When I was really hot during the tea ceremony they went as far as to fan me with paper plates. I felt really taken care of that day and I had so much fun with them around. So I guess when you pick your best men or bridesmaids… don’t just pick people you like. Pick your true friends… the ones that you know will understand how important that day is to you and your other half and will know how to make it all about you… for that one day in your life. Because it is those friends that will make your wedding a wonderful one.

And voila everyone…  that was our wonderful ROM and the start to our wedding weekend. When our wedding photographer comes out with more pictures I’ll make it a point to share the official pictures with you guys. Will also find the time to share a post on our wedding dinner and tea ceremony that happened the next day too. Until then… have a good weekend!

If you didn’t catch the video of our ROM yet. You can see it here.

Thanks to my cousin Michelle Tiah for some of the beautiful pictures she took.

PS: Just before I ended this entry I told Shorty who’s sitting right behind me blogging herself. I said “Our wedding was just beautiful”. She agreed. I wish I could go back to it now.

You can read Shorty’s version here.

Hi Everyone,

I was going to blog about the wedding weekend we had. Everything from the Registration of Marriage to the tea ceremony and to the wedding dinner. But this was one occasion where I found it so hard to take pictures. So neither me or Shorty had many good pictures of the event. Fortunately we had our wedding photographer do it all but we haven’t got any pictures back from him yet. So we decided to wait till the pictures are out so we can do justice and tell the story of what really happened that weekend.

In the mean time I can share this video that shows a few parts of our registration of marriage and tea ceremony.

It’s done by Crazy Monkey Studios, the people who did the Meme Proposal and one of the most talented video production people I know. I’m blessed to have them film our wedding.

And I thought that perhaps… it was worth sharing my wedding speech with you guys.
Now the speech that you will see below is basically whatever I could recollect that I said. Because while I wrote out a speech beforehand, I didn’t necessarily follow the script precisely. The first half of it at least was kinda taken off the cuff so I’m going to try reconstruct it as best as I can. Perhaps you guys can compare it then to what I really said when a video of the speech comes out.

So here it is:

Before I start on my speech, I have a confession. There is… a significant amount of alcohol in my blood right now. I made a mistake. At first I thought that for the earlier part of the night I should avoid my friends whom I knew would make me drink a lot. So I opted to visit the tables of my father’s friends. What I didn’t realize was that my father’s friends drink even more than my friends. So ladies & gentlemen, forgive me as I give you this speech in a semi-sober state.

I want to start with a conversation I had with my father many many years ago. When I was young, I used to tell my father that I would grow up to do many things. I had many dreams. I dreamt of being a soldier, a postman or even a pilot. One of the dreams I had though was to marry a beautiful girl. My father had a different point of view. He said “Son.. you don’t marry a girl just because she’s beautiful. You marry a girl who can be a good partner for you in the many ups and downs of life”.

After having spent the past 28 years watching my parents and how they lived their marriage, I began to understand. I saw them live their lives through the ups and downs. I saw how my Dad and Mum were there for each other whenever one needed the other, I watched them build their careers together, watched them make money and lose money together… and more importantly I watched them raise a family. In the many times that I would say hurtful things to my father or my mother, I would watch them take turns to console one another. My parents don’t know this… but it is from them that I learned the meaning of marriage. Marriage is not about romance or not just about love. It’s about having someone who will always be there for you through the ups and downs of life… and it’s about finding happiness. 

I have imagined this moment all my life. I would be standing here up during my wedding in front of my closest family and friends and giving this very speech. The only part that was missing in my imagination was who the person standing next to me would be. Tonight I see her. And she is beautiful.

Growing up, Audrey and I were taught that we should be perfectionists in everything we do. From our studies, our work and yes… eventually find the perfect somebody and have the perfect wedding to start a perfect marriage.

That didn’t work out. Audrey and I are very far from a perfect couple. She’s short, I’m fat. She’s forgetful, I have a bad temper. She falls sick once every two weeks, and I have recurrent medical problems with my eyes. We annoy each other almost every day… but somehow in the weirdest way that I nor the universe can understand… we make each other happy.

Audrey and I have been together for almost 4 years now and till now each and every day together is like an adventure. Not a day goes by where we don’t make each other laugh or smile. In these 4 years we learn about the good and the bad we have in each other. We learn to treasure the good and embrace the bad…. And that’s why we call each other Fatty and Shorty.

We are one of the most imperfect couples out here… but we think we’re perfect for each other. So that’s why we’re all here today. To celebrate the wedding of an imperfect couple that is perfect for one another.

When I look back in life, so many things had come together to bring us to where we are today. I owe a great deal to my father and mother who have been to me the best parents any boy on this Earth could ever want. My Dad taught me how its okay to make mistakes in life, but to never let the mistakes keep you down. My Mom taught me to be kind and forgiving to others. Together they taught me to be humble in whatever I do.

In raising me, my parents never asked that I score straight As or have a successful career or make a lot of money. Their only wish was that I grow up, to be a good person.
Mom and Dad, I hope that after 28 years of my life, I am as good a person as you want me to be. I promise to care and love you both for the rest of my life.

From today on I no longer have just 2 parents. I am blessed enough to have 4. Aunty Joyce and Uncle Ooi, it is for the first time now that I will call you Dad and Mom. You have both done an amazing job raising Audrey and I can only wish that I will be able to raise my future daughter as well as you have raised Audrey. I know how precious Audrey is to you both so thank you for trusting Audrey with me. I promise that for as long as my heart beats, I will take care of her.

My last thanks tonight goes to our siblings. To my brothers Kong and Liang, my sister Li, thank you for always being around and for putting up with me. There are no better siblings to grow up with than the 3 of you.

To my brother-in-law Barry… I know we started off like oil and water, but thank you for opening up yourself to me.

To my dear wife Audrey: Today is the end of our courtship but the beginning of a new adventure. Yes just like any adventure, it will have ups and downs. But from now on we will always have each other to laugh together in the good times and cry together in the bad. What matters is that I love you and I know that we will make each other happy.

So my dear wife…. our Adventure is out there.

 

Dear Readers,

As of a few hours ago, I am officially a married man. Shorty and I had our registration of marriage ceremony where we exchanged vows said our “I Dos”.

I’m so tired now after a long day and I have to go to bed now because tomorrow I have an early start and a full day. Starting with the tea ceremony in the morning and all the way to the wedding dinner at night.

So I don’t have the time to write much now but I just wanted to let you guys know as soon as possible that yes… Shorty and I are now legally man and wife.

Will blog more about the wedding when I have more time once this is over.

Let me end this post with a photo taken by one of the Nuffies of Shorty and I sharing a kiss over a sunset.

Have a good weekend everyone. I know mine will be an eventful one 🙂

Hey Everyone,

Yes… lack of updates but I can explain! Hasan just came down to KL a few days ago so I’ve been spending most of my time taking him around over the weekend. Then yesterday I had to clear up loads of work in the office because today onwards I’m going back to Penang to help prepare for our wedding this weekend.

So here’s a picture of Shorty and me just before we start on our trip back to Penang. See you guys on the other side!

I woke up this morning and realized that my Shorty jumped me and published our wedding photos on her blog first. So to make it fair to my own readers, here are some of the best pictures I picked.

Our wedding shoot took a whole day. After the shoot though I realized that I will never be able to live the life of a model. I find taking photos such a painful thing to do and I think the photographer found me really stiff and hard to work with. Credit to them for managing to make the best of my unphotogenic self.

So here are the pictures.

Because we’re having an UP Themed wedding, we got a little Grape Soda badge too.

And we had an Up-Themed shoot in the afternoon.

And our last and final shoot took place at night in Petaling Street.

I gotta thank One Way Ticket for the great job they did with the photos. For more of our wedding photos you can check out Shorty’s blog.

On another note, today I arranged for JJ & Ean from Hitz.fm to do a Gotcha call on Audrey. Haha listen out for it in the next few days.

Hello everyone!

I just got back from Beijing.

It was a really short business trip that I had to make just two weeks before the wedding. This time though I managed to drag Shorty along for a quick break.

We flew on Sunday night and arrived Beijing on Monday morning at 6am. Right after that I went straight to work. As for Shorty, she took a short nap in the hotel then went on with an itinerary I had planned out for her. For the two days that I was there for work I arranged for a tour guide to take Shorty around Beijing to see all the historical sites or do whatever she wanted to do. I spent my entire day time in the office in meetings with the Nuffies there

but Shorty on the other hand managed to go visit the Forbidden City, The Summer Palace and even time to do her nails. For that side of the story you can probably read that on her blog when she updates it next.

On my end though the only time I managed to go out and enjoy Beijing was during lunch or dinner or at night after work. We did a few things then.

David introduced me to a fellow Malaysian who was working in the advertising industry there in Bejing. Her name is Nicole. She’s smart, witty and really funny. She brought us to loads of good food and on the first night brought us for a short walk around a shopping area there.

I can’t remember what it’s called but there’s a huge shopping district of designer brands in Beijing that often look empty. The reason isn’t because the Chinese don’t like their designer goods. Quite the opposite actually.. they love branded stuff… but in China all designer goods cost some 30% or so more because of the import tax.

According to Nicole though, some local Chinese still go to those stores sometimes and buy stuff just to be seen.

We’ve had some funny meals when we were there too. For lunch on one of those days, the team brought us to a restaurant that actually serves insects.

I totally opted out of it. Can’t bear the thought of eating maggots or worms or stuff like that.

One of the highlights for me this trip though was the last night. We had finished all our work so we decided to go celebrate and for that we went for ice-cream.

At one of the largest Haagen Dazs I have ever seen. It was like a whole building.
Here’s Ming, me, Shorty, Nicole, David and Aveline.

And here’s Aveline and Rebecca, visiting from our Singapore office.

It was an extremely tiring trip for me. Fly in, do work and fly out. It was though a very very productive trip and eventhough I spent so little time exploring Beijing this time round, I kinda grew to like it a little more this trip.

My reward for the tough trip is this.

Yes…  I love ice-cream!

So in the past couple of weeks we’ve outgrown our old office and took over another unit which now acts as our new office. There are now 50 Nuffies in the KL office so we thought that it was about time some of us actually moved out for our own space. We still have the old orange office… but it’s now more like a back office to us.

For the first time ever… we now have our own little lobby with our logos on it to greet guests.

Now when we first took over this new office unit, everything about it was really corporate. It was nice.. but just corporate. We knew it wouldn’t do. We also knew that our Nuffies were a talented bunch. So instead of getting an interior decorator to do it, we set aside some budgets and we trusted the Nuffies who would be using the new office a free hand in decorating their own offices. Or as we call it… to “Nuffie-fy” our new office.

This is the result.

Welcome to the Blogger Relations Department in Nuffnang Malaysia.

This is where the team that manages our 300,000 bloggers in Malaysia sit every day and help Nuffnang bloggers with whatever they need.

They thought that since we’re all crazy about blogging and social media in general, they would decorate their walls with this.

And they would have little photo frames all over with a little notice board for them to put up post-it notes for each other.

And of course there’s a notice board for them to put up stuff they got to keep from past Nuffnang events.

Whether it’s just a ticket stub or a flyer or even a cap from the event.

Next to the Blogger Relations department is a more formal meeting room where we have some of our bigger meetings.

It comes full equipped with a wine cooler, fridge, microwave etc etc for the people having a meeting to snack. We’re also thinking of adding a foosball table in the room for Nuffies to chill out when the room is not being used for serious stuff.

On the whole other side of the office sits the ChurpChurp team. They keep their door closed all the time so nobody really knows what the girls are doing. They call their HQ, the Birdie’s Nest.

Right outside their room though you’ll see their shoe racks with all their shoes in them.

Welcome to the ChurpChurp office.

They opted for a bright yellow wall and little decos that are of birds… since well… ChurpChurp’s mascot is a bird.

The entire ChurpChurp team operates very independently from Nuffnang and even from me. I don’t really get involved with their team at all. I just put a bunch of really talented people together and they do their own hiring and run their own operations. One thing about them though.. is that for some reason… all the staff at ChurpChurp are girls.

Which kinda explains why @Churp2 is so feminine.

I asked them why is it they don’t have any guys in their team and they played this song which they say is their theme song.

So okay… fine fine. I moved on but told them it’s about time they hired some guys. Perhaps they foresee themselves hiring some guys already because for some reason they have a football in there.

The rest of their office is pretty cool

I really like how they turned boring old cupboards to really nice ones like this.

Or boring plain walls with little stickers of birds like this.

And of course they too have their own notice board where they can post memorabilia from their previous events.

My favourite part of their office though was their insta-wall. Where they printed up and put up pictures that all of them had collected about Nuffnang or ChurpChurp from Instagram.

I spent some 10 minutes there looking at one by one of the photos. I love how they’re really creative in the stuff they put up and the best part was that they’re not even done. When I went over they were still putting stuff together for their new office.

I think the Nuffies at both Nuffnang & ChurpChurp did an awesome job with their new office. I always think though that it’s not just about how the office looks that makes a company fun. It’s the culture and the people and for that I’m thankful that I’m working with the most wonderful team evah!

I go to work every day looking forward to see all of them.

But I realized that the pictures I took for it was all blurry!

Well so let me give you a bit of a spoiler. The new entry is about our new Nuffnang & ChurpChurp office in KL. It’s really really cool so to give justice to what the Nuffies there did to the office I’m going to go back to the office tomorrow and retake some of those pictures. Then I’ll update this blog again ok. Until then… see ya everyone.

I got a surprise wedding present sent to my office today. The sender was anonymous but looking at the return address, it looks like it came from a company called Determined Chicken. They sent us a t-shirt of Derp and Derpina. If you read 9GAG often enough then you’ll know who they are 🙂

And some meme badges too… I guess because of our meme proposal.

I googled them and found their site that sold lots of meme related merchandise. So if you’re into memes… you can get them here.

Thank you for the nice gift Determined Chicken!

On another note… our wedding is in two weeks so Shorty and I have been doing what all to-be-wed couples do at some time before their wedding. Rummage through all their childhood pictures for their wedding video. My mum sent some of mine up from Penang so let me show you how I look like.

This…. is how I look like today.

Except thinner. Camera added 10 pounds here *denial

And this… is how I looked like as a little boy.

It was my birthday party and my mum got me a cake that looked like a cottage. The baby on my left with very little hair… is actually my little sister. She was damn cute (and still is cute to me actually)!

So does the kid look like me? I know what you’re thinking… “But… where is the mole?”.

I think I only grew my mole in my later years.

My mum was talking to me and Audrey about wedding stuff last weekend. I gotta admit that I’m not very involved in the wedding preparations. Shorty has got it all covered on that end. So far no bridezilla moment from her yet… well then again she did kinda have one last week but the next day she regained her morale and was just like this.

So one thing I learned is that apparently one of our wedding band members play the trumpet. My mum asked me to think about what kind of songs we want the wedding band to play that involved the trumpet.

Well… when it comes to music I’m really ignorant. So when I thought about what our trumpet could play, I thought about this.

Well this is not really a trumpet. More like a bugle but for some reason every time I think of a trumpet I think of this tune. I get flashbacks from all the cartoons I watched growing up… you know when one cartoon wants to wake up another cartoon, he pulls out this bugle and starts blowing away the most annoying tune ever.

I decided to explore how annoying this tune would be as a wake up call. So I downloaded it to my phone and made it not just my alarm clock sound but also my ring tone. It has two kinds of effect on you… but the effect it has depends on what state of mind you are.

1) When my phone rings around people who are wide awake, they tend to laugh at my silly ringtone.

2) When you’re sleeping though there is a different effect. I tested it on trying to wake up Shorty one day. Some background on the case, Shorty is extremely hard to wake up in the mornings. A volcano can explode 500 metres away and if we don’t turn to ash instantly, Shorty would still be asleep. So I played this tune to wake her up one morning. The first 10 seconds of it passed and Shorty didn’t move an inch. Then as the tune dragged on relentlessly for the next 20 seconds she finally woke up… looking annoyed and looking like she just got out of the wrong side of bed and is going to make me pay for it.

So guys… what do you think of my new ringtone? Hehehe

When I told the Nuffies I had a new ringtone they were guessing “Is it call me maybe?”. Ah come on… this is much better.