You know the saying that goes “When it rains it pours?”. I think that’s totally true. When bad things happen, they happen all at one go. The past few months were very stressful for me. I had so many things going on and so many challenges hitting me at the same time that it got me mentally exhausted really quick. By the end of March I had already begin to feel like I needed a holiday… and the year had just started.

The good thing though is that while bad things all come at one go, once you’re done with all the bad things… the good also come at one go. The good things for me don’t necessarily come from money or career or things like that. It can come from the simplest things. Like coming home from an overseas trip one day and seeing this new stuffed popcorn in my room.

With a real-life Shorty attached.

After spending the past months solving all the problems I had and overcoming all the challenges, this week things have gotten a little less stressful. I even managed to get some exercise done.

Today the Nuffies all left the office a little early for this thing we have called “Fitness Friday”. We would pick a sport and go do some exercise together. Today’s was badminton. The Nuffies though are a devoted bunch. In between their games I saw them on their laptops sending off emails to clients or bloggers or Churpers and getting lots of work done.

I asked Sara (the girl on the laptop in the picture above) if she found Fitness Friday a distraction and if she would rather stay in the office in peace to finish her work. She said “No it’s fun”.

It’s for that reason that I love all the Nuffies. How do you not love coming to work and seeing people like that.

So if you’re going through a bad time right now, remember… that once you overcome it… the good things come all at one go too.

So Shorty and I have a bunch of friends who’re really into buying art now. We spent one weekend following them around looking at art galleries… at art pieces that cost in the tens of thousands. What Ming explains is that art… helps transform the feeling of a room in the house. It’s also one of a kind. If you see one that you like, there’s only one in the world.

I do kinda agree with that sentiment… but of course I don’t think Shorty and I can afford expensive art yet.

Shorty did see one artist that she liked though. It’s called Coplu. It’s really cute like in the picture above but it costs like RM25,000. I told Shorty that we’re not even in the phase of our lives where we can afford to spend money on Chanels or things like that… I think art is still a bit of a way off for us.

Heh on another note, I went to my friend’s house the other day and his mum was showing us her bags.

Guess how much the bags on this table are worth?

Wednesday this week was an extremely busy day for me. Well not just me but Shorty too. The night before she stayed back at work and came home for dinner only about 10.30PM, only to head back to the office first thing next morning. One thing she knew she didn’t want to miss though was the screening of Hunger Games that we had on Wednesday night.

If you haven’t seen my previous entry on The Hunger Games, you can check out the trailer here.

I had checked Rottentomatoes.com the night before and Hunger Games rated 91% with critics and98% of audiences loving it. That’s friggin high.

Shorty ended up having to work pretty late though, so dinner for her was some food I took away in this little plastic container. I took this picture of her eating takeaway like a boss on the way up to the cinema.

The movie though… was worth every bit of anticipation. In fact now that I’ve seen the full movie, I think they not only made the perfect movie but the perfect trailer too. The trailer showed exactly what the movie was about but didn’t give away any details on how the games actually were.

So what is The Hunger Games about?

It’s set in the future in a country called Panem which has a rich Capitol and 12 other poorer surrounding districts. In the years before, the surrounding districts had waged a rebellion against the Capitol which the Capitol won. So as a reminder of the pain that war causes the Capitol hosts this huge yearly event called the Hunger Games where each District would randomly pick and send one male and one female between the age of 12-18 into a huge jungle arena where they would fight to the death. The last man (or woman) standing will be promised freedom and riches.

What I thought about the movie?

I think we live in a time where movies with good special effects don’t necessarily come with a good plot or story. Like I love Avatar for how beautifully made and entertaining the movie was but the story is predictable from the start. You also never really fall in love or form a personal bond with any of the main characters. The same goes for Transformers. We know what the story is about. Decepticons want to destroy Earth and we know at the end, the good guys (Autobots) will prevail. Transformers and Avatar are still great movies and among my favourites. But what would a movie with good special effects and a good story be like?

The answer to that in my opinion is in The Hunger Games. The whole story evokes lots of emotion in me. Laughter, relief, sadness, suspense and it made me think about how it is that humans have a natural or unnatural love for violence even if it comes at the expense of others. Why do horror movies for example do so well sometimes? Today we’re disgusted when we’re told about how Gladiators fought to their deaths in the Colloseum in Ancient Rome as a crowd cheered on but who knows that could come back to modern society one day.

Throughout the whole movie though Shorty and I felt terrible for the people who were selected for The Hunger Games. The story and the themes behind The Hunger Games isn’t all that make it a great movie. It’s the characters.

When the main characters came on screen, the honest truth is that I had an initial dislike for all of them. As the movie went on though, that dislike faded away. By the end of it you’ll find yourself emotionally attached to the main characters.

The movie does remind me of that Japanese movie that came out many years back. Even saw this article that compared both the movies (without giving away spoilers) and I think it sums it up really well.

Unlike Battle Royale though, one thing I like about The Hunger Games is that it didn’t find the need to take advantage of the violence in this movie to make it gory or gross to watch. I know there’s an audience that loves that but gore makes even me feel uncomfortable sometimes and I found Hunger Games to be fairly tolerable on the gore.

I loved this movie… and I gotta thank Stephanie from NEF for engaging me and giving me the opportunity to watch and write about it. After watching this, Shorty told me that she was going to read the book too.

This is one movie you guys have to watch. If you don’t believe me… then believe both the critics and the audience at Rottentomatoes.com.

I really hope they make the sequels Catching Fire and Mockingjay.

PS: Oh btw…. Lenny Kravitz has a part in the movie too. HAHA!

ChurpChurp to me is a little bit of an experiment. What Ming and I did was slowly put a bunch of really talented young people together from different backgrounds and different skill sets, and give them a mission to build an awesome company. We had to trust them to build a great one… because Ming and I was constantly traveling and working on expanding Nuffnang in the region.

Build a great company they did.

After some two years and lots of struggles even in finding the right passionate people, the awesome team behind ChurpChurp have put together a company that isn’t just doing well financially but they’ve made it a fun place to work. Under this group of young leaders they put together a community of social media users in Malaysia and Singapore that meet up at #churpout’s.

They’ve managed to get some of the most influential people in the country to be a part of the community. Everyone from artists like Ning Baizura or Sazzy Falak to radio announcers like Adam C or Jinn… to… well.. even Alex Yoong our first F1 driver.

ChurpChurp now is one of the fastest growing companies under the Netccentric Group having offices in Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines and Australia.

Every now and then though I lean in to guide them and give them direction in whatever way I can help. Just recently during whatever time I had in Malaysia, I worked with them on the new ChurpChurp site they were coming up with. We felt that the old ChurpChurp site had become way too messy so we decided to scrap everything and build a very minimalist and zen one. We spent 6 weeks on the site going through the smallest details even on where the smallest buttons should be placed.

The final result was launched yesterday.

Internally we called this ChurpChurp 6.0 because it’s the 6th version of our website since we started. Having to evolve over and over with time… we finally settled on this one that we think will bring us far into the future. (Kinda reminds me of how Nuffnang itself changed its website multiple times in the first couple of years before settling on the one we still use today).

ChurpChurp started out a couple of years to go as a company that was meant to help its users make money by sharing messages on their Facebook or Twitter. Since then it has evolved to more than that.

Because the Churpies (what we call the people who work at ChurpChurp and incidentally what we call the ChurpChurp plush toy) really got into 9GAG and all sorts of viral articles, they came up with the “Discover” part of ChurpChurp where users can share any interesting articles they read online over at ChurpChurp.

So if you’re ever bored and looking for something interesting to read you can always go to ChurpChurp. And if you see a brand message that you think your friends might be interested in, you can share it and get paid for doing it.

I’m so proud of how far ChurpChurp has come and it reminds me how young people can get together themselves and build something great. Here’s to the Churpies at ChurpChurp (to the ones in this photo and the shy ones who hide in the background).

Check out the new ChurpChurp to see what a bunch of 20-something year olds can do.

Last week I was in Phuket for my 2nd time attending WPP Stream Asia.

Remember my first time?

Well if you missed the first time round let me explain. Stream Asia is a big meet of all the top people in the digital and media industry in the region. It’s organized by WPP, the world’s largest advertising agency group. You can’t buy a ticket to Stream. On the contrary, everything from the conference to the food or even the accommodation is totally free for anyone who is invited to go but it’s an invite-only event.

Being in the advertising & media industry, I attend lots of conferences every year. Stream though is one of my favourites. It’s not just because it’s held at Club Med in Phuket at a resort right next to a beach like that.

It’s because of how this conference is run. In actual fact, they call Stream an unconference. Basically when you reach there, anyone can go sign up to either lead or participate in a discussion. The discussions can be about anything!

There are the serious discussions like “Doing business in Thailand” or “The China Story”, and there are rather casual ones (Jeff Marx last year led a discussion titled “The internet is for porn”).

The discussions are held in little tents like that all around Club Med

but the best part is who the participants are. There you had the top executives for internet heavyweights like Facebook or Google, or top entrepreneurs from around the region or even as far as Israel.  It’s not just about the opportunity to get to meet all these people but when you put the top brains in the region together for discussions, you learn loads from their stories or their experiences.

The stories you hear at this conference is amazing. I hear about entrepreneurs in China who sold their company for hundreds of millions of USD. I even met one entrepreneur at the conference who sold his company just recently for tens of millions. He immediately bought a Ferrari after that and is on to find the next big thing.

I met an Israeli entrepreneur that made money selling the simplest of all inventions. He designed this plastic thing which is shaped exactly like an ice-cream cone. The purpose of it… is so that you can plug it in the sand on the beach and use it as an ashtray. He made a few shipments of those and sold them all entirely and now he’s making more.

Got me thinking that innovation doesn’t have to come from technology. It can still come from the simplest of things.

So I recently joined Formspring after Shorty got addicted to it herself. It’s basically a platform that lets people on your FB or Twitter ask you questions that you can answer. I had some really interesting questions but one particular one was “Are you afraid of dying?”.

I never thought much about that question… but I just answered away and before I knew it I had composed one heck of a long reply and I thought I’d share it here.

So I guess for me what I feel is…. if you live your life to the fullest at any one point, you’re a little less afraid of dying. Because when you die, you don’t fear the regrets you have in life.. but just fear what comes after life.

What do you guys think?

If you’d like to ask me any questions on Formspring you can go here. I haven’t answered lots of the questions yet but will slowly digest them and answer one by one of them when I get the chance to.

Everybody… I am about to surprise you with something today. Now I’ve been going to Thailand quite a bit lately because of Nuffnang just opening up an office there. So I’ve had the chance to eat all sorts of great Thai food… and boy do our partners there really bring us for good Thai food.

After all these meals I have finally decided on what my favourite restaurant in Thailand is. It’s a Steamboat place called MK.

I know I know… you’re thinking “WTF?!?!?”. All the tom yam, all the fish cake, all the pandan chicken and all that and I choose to go to Thailand to eat steamboat?

I’m a big fan of steamboat, and MK is my second favourite steamboat restaurant in the world. My first is one in Penang that I’ve been going to since I was a kid called Golden Gate Steamboat. In KL… well I’ve tried many but I’m yet to find one that I like as much as MK or Golden Gate.

My Thai friend Pruet told me that the story behind MK is that it was started by a lady who used to work in a steamboat restaurant. After a while her boss decided to shut down the restaurant because he didn’t want to do the business anymore so she came out and started her own. Her son who’s an engineer by training runs the business now and MK has grown to an entire chain of restaurants in Thailand. You can see them EVERYWHERE!

MK has some specialties that no other steamboat restaurant I’ve seen have. Like these seaweed pork balls.

Who would think to do something so simple and yet so delicious.

MK is also the most efficiently run steamboat restaurant I’ve ever seen in my life. Everything there is so well thought-through for efficiency. For example.. you know how in steamboat restaurants the waiter has to bring everything over in one trolley. Then they would lay plate by plate of stuff on the table, taking up all the space right?

All the food in MK is brought in little stacked up trays like this.

So one waiter can carry everything over without a trolley and you can stack it all up on your table without taking much space. So the table can be a lot smaller and the restaurant can fit more tables than it normally could.

Cool right?

There’s more. When you walk into the restaurant the waiter doesn’t even have to give you a menu. Right behind each seat is a small shelf where everyone knows to reach for the menu. The waiter then takes the order with a PDA and all these orders are sent back to the kitchen. In less than 5 minutes they’ll bring out the pot and all the food you ordered.

Instead of using a gas stove, MK uses an electric one which saves them so much trouble if you take into account how many restaurants they have all over Thailand.

I’ve seen a lot of electric stoves before and they’re mostly not very good… but the one in MK though, will have the pot boiling by the time you finish tweeting about eating in MK. Among the other stuff I love at MK.
These green noodles.

And their roast duck.

I brought Shorty there for the first time last trip.

Shorty hates all kinds of steamboat. This one however… she sorta liked. And that’s good enough for me.

I love MK for the great food and service… but I admire it… for its efficiency and how they thought the steamboat restaurant business inside out to make it so efficient. It’s an inspiration to me on how the most traditional businesses can still be so innovative.

So Shorty borrowed my gym bag not long ago and filled it up with her stuff that she never took out. Today at the gym I opened up my gym bag and out came pouring all her stuff. Everything from pink Hello Kitty earphones, some biscuits and lots of some other pink stuff.

All the built topless men around me gave me a look as I sheepishly stuffed the pink explosion back into the bag. I cleared my throat and shook my head trying to make it look like it was my little daughter’s stuff or something. I don’t think they would even believe anyway if I told them it belonged to my girlfriend.

I’ve decided that the next time I go to the gym I’m going to load my gym bag up with dumbbells or something and accidentally let them fall out in the changing room. Then I’ll let out some grunt… and spit on the floor or something.

This morning I opened up my Instagram and noticed that Christina Perri (whom I follow… for obvious reasons) put up a couple of pictures on Hunger Games. I have never seen her do that for any other movie before. So I thought ok… this movie could be interesting. So happens we have a Nuffnang/ChurpChurp screening for that too.

So I Googled Hunger Games. The first thing I did of course was to watch the trailer.

I watched the trailer first with zero expectations. At first I was worried about whether it would be one of those movies with an extremely predictable plot and storyline but from the trailer it definitely doesn’t seem like that. So I did a bit more research and here are a few things I learned about it (thanks to IMDB).

1) Hunger Games is the first part of a trilogy series of a young adult books by Suzanne Collins. There are 3 books “The Hunger Games, Catching Fire and Mockingjay”. According to IMDB, the studio Lionsgate has said that they may or may not make the other 2 books into a movie. It all depends on how well Hunger Games does… so if it does well, we’re looking at another trilogy.. LOTR style.

2) The other thing I learned about Hunger Games is that Stanley Tucci is in it. This is a big plus for me.

Stanley Tucci is one of my favourite and in my opinion he doesn’t get nearly enough of the credit that he deserves. He has been in lots of great movies. Margin Call, Easy-A, Burlesque … but the one movie I watched that made me decide he is in a class of his own is when he played a murderer in Lovely Bones.
I love Stanley Tucci… and he alone makes this movie worth watching for me.

3) The last interesting fact about Hunger Games is this:

On February 22nd, four weeks before The Hunger Games’ release, Lionsgate began selling advanced tickets. Not only did the ticket sales break the one-day record originally held by The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, but also accounted for 83% of the ticket sales of the day.

Okok Twilight fans, don’t flame… but to date, Twilight remains the only film that I have ever walked out of the cinema of halfway.

Check out Hunger Games’s FB page here.

When Nuffnang and ChurpChurp subscribed for Cloud Hosting, the supplier gave us an iPad as part of their promotion. I decided to give that iPad to Pinky. You’d think that Pinky would happily go home and quickly install everything right?

Wrong… she left it in the office. So the other Nuffies in the office decided to take the iPad out of the box and hide it. In its place, they put in this little drawing.

The “slide to unlocks” is an inside joke on Pinky.

In the past week I myself got a gift too. This is what Ming gave me for the Nuffnang 5th Anniversary.

A pair of cuff links that I’ve decided that I’m gonna wear on my wedding night.