So the 27th of February this year was Nuffnang’s 5th Anniversary.

I can’t believe that it’s been 5 years since Ming and I stayed up one night to launch Nuffnang.com on the 27th of February between 2AM-4AM. Why did we go through all that effort to stay up? Because Ming went to see some Feng Shui master and the Feng Shui master said that for a successful business, we should launch it on that date and time.

Can’t say we really believed it then but I guess it’s a good thing that I can look back now and be thankful that I listened to that Feng Shui master. We never really celebrated too many of Nuffnang’s birthdays in a big way. There was the 1st Anniversary one, the Nuffnang Chipster Pajama Party where we had some of our bloggers then put together this video for us that we showed at the event.

But that was about it.

This year though we decided that we had to do something. Because it was our 5th year! Our team was just recovering from planning the biggest event we ever had, the Nuffnang Asia-Pacific Blog Awards 2011 in December but they managed to pull a celebration together. Nuffnangs of all the 7 countries we were in would together hold their own parties and celebrations to celebrate Nuffnang Turning 5 years old!

I went for the one in Neverland, KL that was attended by 250 Nuffnangers. We also had a short video done by some of our Nuffnangers too.

The Nuffies asked me to go up and give an opening speech but in all honest truth I had no idea what to say until I got on stage.

I didn’t know how to prepare or anything. All I knew was that…. if I went up there and spoke from the heart, I’ll be ok. So I did… I told them about how Nuffnang came about right after I graduated from university, how my father supported me, the dream were painting for bloggers then and what we have achieved now. I also talked about how exciting the future looks for us… and of course… big thanks to all our clients and Nuffnangers who had always supported us.
This is us… some of the KL Nuffies on stage doing our Nuffnang Stickman pose.

I don’t know how that pose came along but someone in our early years did it and since then it has always stuck internally with all the Nuffies.

Nuffnang has indeed grown. From a community of 300 bloggers in our first 3 weeks, we now have over 1,000,000 bloggers in 7 countries in the region with over 100 Nuffies (staff).

Thank you for the support everyone!

Hey Guys,

Check out this video of all the highlights of the Nuffnang-Asia Pacific Blog Awards 2011 we had in December last year.

You guys spot any bloggers you know?

Hey Everyone,

I just got back last night from Thailand working on Nuffnang Thailand. The week before I was in Philippines and next week I’m boarding another plane again. This week’s been a tough one for me with so many things going on so much that even when I’m supposed to relax now on this weekend I’m feeling stressed.

So I went to the gym this morning to try work out and release some of that stress. Well ok the truth is I do it more for the work out than for releasing stress. I don’t know why people say that exercise helps you release stress because jogging on a treadmill doesn’t do that for me. Playing computer games or watching movies does. Then something stupid happened to me. After I was done with my exercise I went to my car and realized that I hadn’t switched the Thai Baht I had in my wallet with my Ringgit. So I had no RM to pay parking with. I went hunting around for an ATM and eventually managed to find one but the minimum amount I could draw was RM50. Whereas parking was probably like RM5.

I was so sure that when I presented the RM50 note to pay the parking attendant he would flip me the finger but surprise surprise! He had change! Parking attendants today must be raking it in.

Lots of people ask me what else I’ve been doing and the truth is. Not much but work. I haven’t even been preparing for our wedding much. Shorty’s been doing the work and one lucky thing for us is that we’re getting lots of stuff sponsored even without asking for anything. A wedding dress designer named Gilbert Ng sponsored her wedding dress and designed a dress just for her. Her shoes, hair and now I hear even the wedding cake might be sponsored.

I never expected anything like that. When Shorty and I first talked about marriage plans our rule was that we would never ask anyone for sponsorship.. but if they came and we think they fit the theme without commercializing the wedding (like having buntings of corporate logos around the reception area or something) then sure. We’re lucky to have all these sponsors. Thanks to them we get to save a little bit of money.

Ok I’m going to take a break now guys. Need to release stress!

I was at the Prudential R U Ready workshop to give a talk last Saturday.

Shared with everyone a bit about my story with Nuffnang and ChurpChurp. No matter how many times I practice going up in front of a crowd to speak, I still get a little nervous and shy. What helps though is when people in the audience are responsive and the crowd that day was wonderful. That alone makes you feel a lot more at ease.

The past few days got me thinking about the life I have. I feel blessed and not a day goes by when I don’t thank God for how fortunate I am. I sometimes can’t help but wonder how different my life would have been if I had graduated and taken one of those investment banking jobs instead of starting Nuffnang. For starters I would probably be dressed like this every day.

Instead of like this.

Probably wouldn’t have met Shorty too.

Now don’t get me wrong.I enjoy being part of an internet company. I love the people I work with and I enjoy the work. While internet companies are cool and fun and all that, a part of me always wishes I was doing something more brick & mortar. One thing I always thought I’d love doing is property development. No no not necessarily in a huge way. Even in a small way, like buying a piece of land and building a house on it to sell. When I was a kid I loved building things with Lego and a part of my heart always feels like building a building is something I would love.

When I meet owners of the brick & mortar business though they tell me how lucky I am to be in an internet business. Where startup costs are low and where you don’t have to hold physical stock or invest in expensive fixed assets. Well there might be some truth in the latter but not in the former. One of my angel investor friends told me the other day how one of the biggest misconception is that “internet businesses are cheap”. He goes on to say, internet businesses tend to have a lower sunk cost or startup cost but they cost the same to run as a real business. Take for example if you were to start a physical shop at the Curve that sold shoes versus an online store. With a physical store you have to rent the store and put money into renovating it etc etc.  In an online store you don’t need to do that. But the costs after that are similar. In both cases you still need to hire staff, do marketing and etc etc.

I spent the past 5 years selling an “intangible” or virtual product. Banner ad impressions (Nuffnang), Tweet updates (ChurpChurp) or things that you can see on a screen but can’t feel or touch. I always wondered what it’s like to sell not a service, but a product. Like shoes, a keyboard or anything like that (which maybe is why we’ve worked so hard on Jipaban).The people I know who sell tangible stuff like that though always go on to tell me how they wish they were selling what I was selling, so they didn’t have to keep stock or things like that.

Maybe it’s like what they say in Hollywood: “Singers always want to be actors and actors always want to be singers”.

So as you may already know from my previous entry, I was in the Philippines for some business in the past couple of days. It was a short trip packed with meetings in and out but I made the most of the time I had there at the office.

Every time I go I’m reminded about how I love the area in which our office there is. Fort Bonifacio is to me the most beautiful part of Manila. There are parts of Manila that have more character or are more adventurous of course but I love Fort Bonifacio for how clean it is, how organized and how well developed it is.

Look at it. I took this random pictures while outside the Nuffnang Philippines office. It looks like we’re in California or something.

I had time to catch up with some of the Nuffies in the Philippines there.

And after a dinner together we ended up with a big group photo.

It’s amazing but whenever I visit Nuffnang or ChurpChurp’s offices anywhere in the world I feel the same culture there among different people from different countries. Everyone is young, fun and love what they do. I like how some of our Nuffies have really unique hobbies too. Like Carlos here who has this Mercedes which is almost 30 years old (a car that is older than him).

I asked him why he bought it and he said he just always loved classic Mercedes. So he bought it and then rebuilt the engine so that everything works like new again and the car hasn’t broken down ever since. When I asked him how he knew what to do… he said YouTube videos… everything’s on YouTube these days.

My Little Singapore Airlines Misadventure

I got back from Manila just last night with a bit of an inconvenient trip though. I was flying Singapore Airlines which meant I had to transit from Manila in Singapore before I could head back to KL. My flight arrival at Singapore was delayed some half an hour because we were stuck in a holding pattern above Singapore Airport due to heavy air traffic. So when I finally landed I had just 15 minutes to get to my next flight.

When I got out of the gate, there wasn’t anybody to guide us which gate the flight to KL was so I rushed to a screen to look for a flight and scrambled to my next gate. Fortunately the gate I needed to get to was just next door. When we were at the gate though we were told that they won’t be able to get or checked-in bags on to the flight in time. That I could choose to still get on the flight and they’ll send the bags to KL with the next flight which was an hour plus later.

Caught up in the moment I was furious and lost my cool but after a while realized there was nothing they could do anyway. So I opted to hop on to the next flight and wait for my bags to arrive an hour plus later.  Turned out the flight from KL to Singapore was delayed too for like 30-40 minutes. I asked the flight attendant that since the flight was being delayed, if they had time then to load our bags from our Manila flight but after checking with her supervisor, she said they’ll try but there’s a 50:50 chance. I asked her then to just advise us by the time the flight takes off if the bags got loaded in time or not so that we know if we have to wait for it at the luggage belt upon arrival. She never got back to us on that… so I assumed that they didn’t manage to load the bags.

When I got to KLIA, there wasn’t any Singapore Airlines staff around to help apart from one guy that waited at the arrival gate to tell us to go to the KLIA Lost & Found Baggage department. It wasn’t a Singapore Airlines counter or they had no Singapore Airlines staff there so when we got there initially they had no idea what was going on too. The KLIA staff were helpful though and found out on their own what was going on. I was in a rush to go back so I headed back first and passed my baggage tags to Min (who was travelling with me) to collect for me.

Later on in that night I learned from Min that the bags never came as promised. They said they would deliver it the next morning. I’m lucky that KL is home to me. I can’t imagine flying to another country only to NOT have my luggage with me even for a night. That means no phone chargers, no toothbrush, no spare change of clothes, no nothing.

So that was my slightly unpleasant trip with Singapore Airlines. They’re supposed to be known for being efficient and for the best service but I didn’t see any of that yesterday. I hope my bags come as promised later this morning.

So I’m traveling again. This time to the Philippines to visit the Nuffnang operations there. I initially wanted to fly Malaysian Airlines to Manila but it was fully booked so I ended up flying Singapore Airlines that means I had to transit in Singapore. Can’t believe the plane was half empty too… eventhough it was so much cheaper than the Malaysian Airlines flight to Manila. I guess maybe more Malaysians wanna go to Philippines than Singaporeans. Heh.

Took this picture of the airplane wing. I thought it looked like a road to heaven. More updates when I get back! So much to do!

 

Shorty has been bugging me for the longest time to get  a dog. I’ve always thought the idea of a dog is cute. I wanted a dog when I was a kid but my parents never wanted to give me one because they thought I wouldn’t take care of it well. Now I find myself in the same situation as my parents… telling Shorty that she won’t be able to take care of it because she already struggles just to take care of herself (though she denies that and attests to having lived 27 years taking care of herself).

In order to convince me she somehow got herself a tamagotchi from Jipaban.com and is taking care of her virtual pet. The first pet she had looked like a piece of poo with a hat and died in the first week of hunger (well ok not died, apparently newer tamagotchis are more kid-friendly so the pets don’t die, they just run away).

Now she’s onto her second one.

So my condition to her was that ok fine she CAN have a dog but it must not trouble me in any way to take care of it. I travel and work so much I don’t know how to find the time to take care of a dog and I’m sure it’s a lot of work! She excitedly agreed and gave me her word. Now we’re looking at what kind of dog to have. The one on top of our list is a pomeranian… especially after seeing the famous pomeranian named Boo.
Here’s a video of it.

We’re already talking about what to name our dog. I suggested something silly like “Banana” and so far Shorty seems to like that idea.

What do you guys think?

Are pomeranians really hard to take care of?

It was Shorty’s birthday yesterday. I had a small surprise organized for her but a few days before the surprise, Shorty kept begging me to tell her what it was. So I did. She then proceeded to scold me for telling me what the surprise was and in my confused state I reminded myself how I will never understand women.

So we just did a simple dinner with some of her friends at Watami in Pavilion. One of Shorty’s favourite restaurants.

Every year, getting a cake for Shorty is no easy feat. Why? Because Shorty doesn’t eat cake. She used to be allergic to eggs and when she was a little girl she had cake and had some allergic reaction. So ever since then she never ate cake. So I would normally buy her an ice-cream cake but even then she would eat only the ice-cream part of the cake and nothing else.

So this year I decided to try something different. I bought her a jelly cake.

Can’t say I liked it though. Thought it was kinda weird.

As for Shorty’s birthday present, I actually gave it to her a few days before. See Shorty has been using this same laptop that she’s always been using even before we got together. That’s like more than 3 years ago. So seeing how it’s slowly dying I decided that she needed a new laptop. She doesn’t like Macs so it had to be a windows laptop and knowing her.. it had to be pink.

So I went out and bought the best pink laptop I could find. But I didn’t just give it to her like that. I gave her a decoy present that was a laptop bag wrapped up in Chinese New Year wrapper.

I thought that first she would complain about why I gave her such ugly CNY wrapping and second she would say… what’s with the laptop bag?

To my surprise though when I gave her the present she was like “OH WOW CNY WRAPPER HAHA!”.

And when she saw the laptop bag (that was a free gift along with the laptop I bought) she was like “Wow cool! Thanks Fatty! I need a laptop bag! (she actually already has one). Then she said “Speaking of which I probably need to buy a new laptop soon”.
That’s when I gave her the real present wrapped in some slightly nicer looking wrapping.

It was a pink Sony Vaio.

She loved it. But the best part about Shorty… is that she loves everything I give her. Doesn’t matter what it is 🙂

 

Today I:

-Had dim sum in a Chinese restaurant in Pavilion. I ordered food in Cantonese.

-Ordered a jelly birthday cake for Shorty (cuz she doesn’t eat normal cake) at a bakery. Spoke Malay to the really nice salesgirl who took a long time helping me decide which was the right cake.

-Went to Low Yat in the afternoon, bought a new laptop. Spoke English to the sales person there about Windows vs Mac.

– Ended up in the gym before dinner. Chit chat a little bit with one of the staff there in Malay about the parking in the building.

All the people I spoke to today were Malaysians. Sometimes we take these little things for granted. How all of us speak at least 2 languages and how we switch between languages like its our second nature when speaking to other fellow Malaysians. Think about how you know what language to speak to another Malaysian when you see him/her. If you’re a Japanese in Japan and you want to speak to another Japanese, you speak Japanese. If you’re American, you speak English. What about if you’re Malaysian? English doesn’t always work, neither does Chinese or Tamil (and for some of us Malay isn’t our first language).

Sometimes you find immediately that other person speaks English just as well as you do. Sometimes though that person doesn’t… then you try to switch to another language you think that person is better in (even if you’re weaker in that other language) whether it’s Chinese or Malay until you both find a common language you’re both comfortable with.

I’ve never seen this linguistic culture among people of the same nationality anywhere else in the world. It’s amazing how we embrace our differences and unconsciously make so much effort to blend in with each other without realizing how much we do. We talk about 1Malaysia, we talk about tolerance. Look hard enough at the little things we do each day and I think you’ll see plenty of that. Sometimes we just forget to stop and look at what we have.

Today was the first day of our long weekend! Whee!

It’s the kind of weekend where Shorty and I would normally take advantage of to go on a long holiday but we had so much going on this weekend we couldn’t get away. Plus we got really tired of traveling so for once we decided to stay put.

Saturday afternoon for me was spent following Shorty around to try wedding dresses. There was a wedding dress designer named Gilbert who suggested sponsoring the dress for Shorty’s wedding so we went to try out some of the dresses he designed. Here’s one.

And here’s another…. that he designed for a competition in Hong Kong.

He won runner up for that.

Which do you guys think fits Shorty better?

After an afternoon of trying out dresses (well Shorty did all the trying of dresses, I basically just sat on a couch and read a book), we went home for a quick pre-dinner nap. We had to get all rested for the night because that night we were going to the Kechara Soup Kitchen to give food to the homeless in KL.
When we went there this round we met a number of my blog readers. Some of them who read my first entry about the first time I went and started going since then. I met a Nicole there and a Katy and Vicky that have since gone much more often than me and are pros now.

My route this time was the same as the last time. We went to Chow Kit and gave out food to the homeless.

The difference this week though was that we all had apples (that were hugely popular) and t-shirts that were even more popular.

Apparently one of the volunteers managed to get some t-shirts from a production overrun for us to give out. Here’s a picture of the volunteers that decided to take time off on a Saturday night and help feed 650 homeless people that night.

Including fellow Nuffie Yee Hou and his girlfriend.

 I had also been doing a small part on my own. I heard that the homeless people really love the little shampoo or bath foam bottles that we get from hotels when we stay there. So since I travel a lot and stay in hotels a lot, I’ve been making it a point to collect them and give them all to the soup kitchen to give to the homeless. To us it’s just something we take for the sake of taking it (since we paid for it already) but to the homeless, taking that small bottle of shampoo and washing their hair once a week is a luxury.

So we went out to the usual spots and gave out food while the homeless lined up orderly.

David took this picture of me getting ready to give out the apples we had. I have no idea what Shorty was doing tugging at my leg. But I think she was trying to tell me to look at the camera. Heh.

Every time we go we meet some new people. Here’s a few that I met:

1) The KTV Hostess

We met this woman who looked like she was in her fifties now. Homeless and staying on the streets but seeking refuge every night near a Chinese temple. She used to work as a KTV hostess in her day where she would earn RM1-2K a month. She said she could’ve earned more if she had gone further and slept with her “customers” but she didn’t want to sell her body.

Her job did cost her health anyway. She had developed liver cancer from all the heavy drinking she had to do in her earlier days.

2) The HIV Victim

We met this really nice and grateful Malay lady in tudung. She was in her twenties or thirties. She used to be from a Kampung but her husband came to KL to work so she followed. They eventually ended up on the streets because the husband started getting into drugs. His drug habit one day gave him HIV from sharing needles. Eventually I’m not sure if through needles or unprotected sex with her husband but she got HIV too.

So now there there were living on the streets, not able to afford a lot of HIV treatment (apparently HIV can be treated and controlled if you have the right treatment). One thing I admired about her though was how she was still so bubbly. I can never imagine the strength she must have… to know that you have a deadly disease and still be able to smile so much. I wish she could be cured and given another chance at her life.

3) The Wanker

We were at one of our stops giving out food to the homeless when we saw this Indian man standing in a dark corner in the distance. We shouted out to him many times and asked if he wanted some food but he kept saying “later” and just stood there instead. We eventually found out what he was doing. While he was standing there in the dark corner under the shadows, he was giving himself a wank… probably looking at the girls in our group (or the guys).

These were people I met today on this trip. Regardless of whatever their stories, we all fed them all (except for the wanker who decided not to take any food and instead spend some alone time for himself). I still find feeding the homeless a fulfilling experience.

Now I shall go to bed guys. I’m sooo tired.

PS: If you’d like to volunteer, call Kwok Wai at +603 2141 6046.