So Shorty and I were at Pavilion today shopping for one of those float boards. Shorty suddenly had the urge to go swimming and she didn’t want to swim like a normal person would. Being the doll she is, she didn’t want to get her hair wet so she insisted on getting one of those float boards. At first I thought when she said float she was looking for one of these Dinosaur floats.

But she was actually looking for this.

Anyway as with any other day with Shorty… drama ensued.

She quickly decided to buy one blue one from Speedo because it was the only colour (blue is the colour she hates the most btw). Only to realize later on that right across from Speedo was a shop that was selling many many more in different colours. One of them being her favourite… pink. For the next 20 minutes or so she considered all possibilities on how she could get a refund of the Speedo and buy this other pink one instead. So much that I began to feel bad for the little Speedo itself and I started telling her a story. You know how when we were kids we used to have to write karangans titled “Saya Sepasang Kasut” and stuff like that.

So on the way home, I made up and narrated a story about the Speedo (in broken Bahasa Malaysia) and made her feel bad about not giving the Speedo one any love. Eventually she decided to take my silly story and blog about it. So we decided to share the entry. She would blog about it and she would let me paste it on my blog so that you guys could read it here… since the whole story involved the both of us.

Here it is: Inspired by a fatty and written by a Shorty. (Note that the events that happened in the story really happened btw. True story.)

————————–

Aku sebuah papan apung berwarna biru. Aku dilahirkan di sebuah kilang di Negeri Cina. Nama saya Speedo wtf.

Saya duduk di kapal terbang dan dibawa ke negara yang dipanggil Malaysia. Saya dipamerkan di kedai Speedo di Pavilion. Saya sangat gembira sebab kedai saya cantik wtf.

Pada suatu hari, ada satu si pendek masuk kedai ingin beli papan apung sebab dia sudah gemuk dan tidak sihat dan tidak ingin mati cepat. Dia mahu berenang tapi takut rambut dia tukar warna so dia nak beli papan apung supaya kepalanya tak akan masuk air. Si Pendek mengambil aku sebab harga saya sudah yang paling murah wtf. Saya terus jatuh cinta dengan Si Pendek itu. Nasib baik tak ada persaingan dari papan apung yang lain sebab kita semua warna biru yang sama.

Si Pendek terus membeli saya ^______^

Tak sampai 30 saat pun, Si Pendek keluar dari kedai Speedo dan ternampak kedai Sun Paradise di depan. Omaigat ini mungkin bad news untuk saya wtf.

Dia terus masuk kedai itu dan ternampak papan apung yang berwarna merah jambu dan terus jatuh hati terhadapnya. T_______T Lebih-lebih lagi papan apung berwarna merah jambu yang bastardo itu lebih murah RM15 FTS T___________T

Nasib baik teman lelaki Si Pendek yang bernama Si Gemuk kata “jangan lah…” Saya sokong Si Gemuk.

Tapi Si Pendek tak peduli dan masuk balik kedai Speedo FTS. Dia cuba cari benda untuk tukar dengan saya. Contohnya sepasang selipar haih standard saya memang jatuh. Sedih.

Nasib baik sekali lagi Si Gemuk kata “tak payah tukar la” dan Si Pendek pun tak dapat cari apa-apa yang dia mahu beli. #successkid.jpg

Tapi aduhai Si Pendek terus balik rumah dan kata kepada Si Gemuk bahawa hanya ada satu jalan. Iaitu saya rosak dengan cepat baru dia boleh beli yang baru WTF. Dia cuba baca tengok samada saya ada tarikh kelupusan ke tidak WTF. Nasib baik saya memang tahan lasak dan tak ada tarikh luput.

Tiba-tiba Si Pendek terbaca arahan tertulis di badan saya yang kata saya tak boleh diletakkan di bawah cahaya matahari untuk terlalu lama. Dan dia tersenyum wtf.

Tamatlah cerita aku di sini.

—————————-

English translation – this story was based on the “I am a…. ” essays primary school teachers used to force kids here to write.

I am a blue floating board. I was born in a factory in China. My name is Speedo wtf.

I sat on a plane and was brought to a place called Malaysia. I was displayed in a Speedo store in Pavilion. I was very happy cos my shop is very nice wtf.

One day, this short person came into the store wanting to buy a float because she’s fat and unhealthy and doesn’t want to die early. The shorty wanted to swim but scared her hair change color which is why she wanted to buy a float so her head won’t go underwater. Shorty took me because my price was the cheapest wtf. I straightaway fell in love with Shorty. Luckily there was no competition from other floats because we were all the same blue color.

Shorty bought me ^_____^

Not even 30 seconds later, Shorty exited Speedo and saw the shop Sun Paradise in front. Omaigat this could be bad news for me.

She straightaway went into the shop and saw a pink flotation device and fell in love with it T_________T Some more the pink bastard float was cheaper by RM15 T___________T

Luckily the shorty’s boyfriend, Fatty, said “it’s ok….” I support Fatty!!!

But Shorty didn’t care and went back to the Speedo store FTS. She tried to find something to exchange me for. For example …. a pair of slippers haih my standard really dropped. Sad.

Luckily again Fatty said “don’t need to exchange la” and Shorty also couldn’t find anything to exchange with.#successkid.jpg

But sucks to be me Shorty went home and said to Fatty that there’s only one way. Which is that I spoil fast so she can buy the pink one WTF. She tried to check if I had an expiry date WTF. Luckily I am very good quality and have no expiry date.

Suddenly Shorty read the instructions on me which says I cannot be put under direct sunlight. And she smiled.

Thus here ends my story.

————-
And everyone… this is the star of the show.

Meet Speedo. Or the star of “Saya Sebuah Papan Apung”.

Haha just as I was editing this I said to Shorty “I’m sure ‘sebuah’ is not the right word to use to describe this board”.

And she said “Then what? Sekeping?”

Haha!

 

PS: You can read Shorty’s version here.

I’ve been making quite a number of trips to Thailand in the past few months working on opening an office there. The story goes that earlier this year I was at the WPP Stream Asia conference in Phuket. It was a conference that involved a lot of the top advertising people in the region. There I met a group of nice people from the advertising industry in Thailand. Many of them already knew what Nuffnang was but for the rest, when I told them about Nuffnang they asked me one question: “Why aren’t you guys in Thailand yet?”.

So throughout the rest of 2011, Ming and I worked hard through many business trips to setup Nuffnang Thailand in Bangkok. Thailand is an awesome market but it’s also a little different than the rest of the blogosphere in the region. While most bloggers everywhere else in the region mainly use Blogspot or WordPress, a big portion of the Thai blogosphere was on local blog platforms. The biggest 3 there: Exteen, OKNation and Bloggang.

We spent the past few months meeting the top platforms there and persuading them to work with us. Convincing them that we will grow the market for blog advertising the way we have in Malaysia, Singapore, Australia and Philippines. Fortunately, they all agreed.

After lots of hard work, last week we officially launched Nuffnang Thailand from our new office in Bangkok.

I spent the whole week in Bangkok meeting advertisers and pitching blog advertising to them. The rest of my time was spent hanging out with some of the Thai Nuffies there.

Or getting to know some of them while we were walking to meetings.

I know I know, most of you are probably thinking “Hang on… isn’t Bangkok flooded?”

And well yeah, I admit… when I took a flight to Bangkok early this week, I had never seen such an empty flight before. Some of the Nuffies back home were even concerned about me. Like Linda here who was Whatsapped me.

 

But the truth is, much of Bangkok felt really normal. Traffic was terrible… like normal, people were going out like normal and business was going on like normal. I hear that the flood is mostly affecting parts outside of Central  Bangkok but in much of Central Bangkok (which is huge), it’s all ok.  Some tourist spots are still closed though. My Thai friend told me that Chatuchak market is closed.

This thought crossed my mind the other day and so I tweeted it. Boy did I spark a huge debate on Twitt. The more I think about it though the more I think it’s true. Think about it, how many girls do you know let their boyfriends control them. Quite a number right?

Now think of how many guys you know who let their girlfriends make most decisions for them. Is this number higher than the previous? For me the answer is yes.

And here’s the thing… These two examples are extreme examples. In most cases it’s not extreme but somewhere in between. Like a guy can still choose to do what he wants but if something is important enough to a girl, she will have it her way.

The best part is that more often than not, we guys do things that we think is our choice but is actually something our girlfriend or wife wanted. And the influence of women on men are not limited to girlfriends or wives. If you’re macho about it ask yourself then how much influence your mother or your sister has on you.

I looked at myself for the influence of women in my life. Not just my girlfriend but the influence my mother and my sister has over me and it’s significant! More than my chauvinistic self would dare to admit.

I talked to Shorty about this the other day and she went through a whole history lesson with me. On how even in the middle ages when kings ruled the world, they acted very often based on the influence of their queen or girlfriends. She quoted Anne Boleyn as an example.

Maybe it’s in our DNA. So I can’t help but think… Women do rule the world (or at least control the world in more ways than we think)…they just do it by proxy.

What do you guys think ? Please convince me I’m wrong.

In the mean time, I am going to stand up to Shorty next. The next time she asks me to go for dinner I’m gonna say “NOOO!! I am going to finish my game first”.

If you don’t already, Shorty and I are huge fans of stand-up comedy. Last night we went to watch Kings and Queen of Comedy Asia 2. I’ve watched Harith and Vivek before and they’re both awesome but I was introduced to two really great comedians: Paul Ogatta

and Sugar Sammy.

They were absolutely awesome. Now I have the highest respect for all stand-up comedians regardless of how funny they are. Because I think to get up on stage in front of a crowd and to try make them laugh with nothing but your words and actions takes courage that would make General Patton proud. For that and because Shorty and I love to laugh we’ve been following the local stand-up comedy scene in KL a lot. Our favourites of course are Douglas Lim, Kuah Jenhan and Phoon Chi Ho.

Anyway, you can catch some of Paul Ogatta and Sugar Sammy’s shows here on YouTube.

After the show there was an opportunity for us to take pictures with the comedians so Shorty and I tried… for a while… and this is how far we got.

2,000 over people at the show scrambled for a photo opp with them so I guess that didn’t quite work out for us. I sometimes wonder why stand-up comedians aren’t given as much fame as artists or actors. I mean I know a lot of my friends who can sing well, dance well and even act. But I don’t know any of my friends who can go up on stage with a mic and make a crowd laugh. So if it’s that hard… why aren’t they in Hollywood or something living in huge mansions like the one Akon lives in…

equipped with private chefs, helicopters and all that.

Sure don’t get me wrong, stand-up comedians make a LOT of money. I hear that Harith Iskandar charges RM15,000-RM20,000 just for a 30 minute set if you want to get him to do one for your company annual dinner or something. But I just think they deserve more for their talent.

For Kings and Queen of Comedy Asia 2, I kinda wish I paid more for a better ticket too. Heh… Shorty and I went for one of the cheapest tickets which had us end up far far behind. So far behind we could hardly even see Harith Iskandar. Fortunately they had a big screen so the far back ones like me could still see what’s going on. I tweeted about being so far back and one of my friends replied.

Ok so the joke is that Penang people are kiam siap. I always wonder… how did Penang people get to be known for being kiam siap? Which Penangite did what? (apart from me buying the cheapest ticket to the comedy haha)

PS: My friend Tammy who tweeted me is from Penang too. 

Hi Guys,

I recently did an interview with an awesome program on Astro Awani called Entrepreneur. For this program they go around interviewing entrepreneurs in Malaysia about their business and tips for aspiring entrepreneurs.

The host is Ben Ibrahim who’s this really cool guy that made me so comfortable I didn’t feel I needed to see the questions before the interview. So the answers I gave on the program weren’t rehearsed or anything which was why I guess I could’ve answered some questions a little better.

In any case it’s an awesome program and I think it’s the only one that regularly focuses on interviewing Malaysian entrepreneurs from all sorts of industries. Catch it on Astro Awani if you can 🙂

Last Saturday night, instead of going to the movies or to Zouk, Shorty and I decided to do something different. We went to the Kechara Soup Kitchen in Imbi to help out. Kechara is this huge buddhist organization that does lots and lots of different things and one of it is the Kechara Soup Kitchen. While it was started by Kechara, the Kechara Soup Kitchen or KSK is not for exclusively meant for buddhists or any particular religion. The whole idea of KSK is to feed the hungry regardless of race or religion and the volunteers you find there are of all races and religion. I for one am Christian… but I found myself very much at home there because it’s main focus was not to spread buddhism or anything like that but just to feed the homeless.

The night started off with all of us meeting at the Kechara Soup Kitchen in Imbi for a safety briefing. We were all told the things we should and shouldn’t do while going out on the streets to give food to the homeless. Things like how to approach the homeless safely. Most of the homeless were ok but some who might be mentally unstable had to be handled with care.

After we were all confident that we knew enough not to get ourselves in any trouble while on our trips, we were all introduced to our team leaders and fellow team mates that would go out on 10 different routes around KL that night to feed the homeless. It was amazing. The target every weekend is for volunteers like us to go out and feed 650-700 homeless people ranging from Petaling Street

to Bangkok Bank and more.

Shorty, Huai Bin, David and I were put into a team that was in charge of Chow Kit and a place they called “Honda”.

All of the food that we gave out came from sponsors. Everyone from Giant, High 5, Tupperware, Pensonic, Khind to even hotels like Le Meridien who would take turns to cook food to donate. Even many restaurants around KL like the Boathouse in TTDI would donate food to be distributed.

The logistics was quite something. First volunteers had to pick up the food from all the sponsors. Then people had to pack it or distribute it among the 10 different teams that will go out.

And finally we would all load it up in our vans or cars like this.

Carrying all that food and loading it up into our van made me feel like an aid worker for the UN. Each food pack we gave out had

– A meal pack consisting of either rice with something or pasta.

– A mineral water bottle

– A loaf of High-5 bread (that was high in demand among the homeless so it ran out really quickly).

– Bread rolls from High-5 (which was also high in demand but fortunately we had plenty of that).

We also brought along some other stuff like some clothes in case we found any of the homeless needed any.

Shorty and I had reached KSK about 8PM but it was only about 11PM that we were ready to leave. Why so late? Well the truth is… there are lots of homeless people in KL but we don’t see them during the day. Why? Because they too have a sense of dignity and want to blend in with society. So when the sun is up and everyone is busying around with their days, they’re hiding in the back alleys where we never look. When night comes and the shops close at 10PM, they start coming out and laying their mats right in front of all the store fronts to spend their nights there. It is only at around 11PM when you see lots of them sleeping on bus stops or in front of store fronts in all these areas like Chow Kit.

Our first stop was “Honda” which turned out to be the Honda showroom I always drove past whenever I went for Super Kitchen/Kin Kin Chilli Pan Mee.

There were already about 40 homeless people already waiting there for us by the time we got there. I was told that every Saturday night, a crowd of homeless people would gather there to wait for us to give them the food and water they needed.

We stopped our van right next to the showroom and we all went to work to unload the van.

 

We then formed a line of volunteers where we would each give them one specific item. I was in charge of giving everyone bottles of water while Shorty and Huai Bin were in charge of giving them bread and a pack of pasta. We learned that a lot of them didn’t like pasta. Unfortunately for us our team didn’t have the rice packs so for those who didn’t want the pasta we could only make up for it by giving them more bread.

Most of the homeless were very happy to see us. They would smile and thank us in all their respective languages whenever we gave them anything. Those smiles alone made the entire night worth it for us. For the rest of the homeless, they were less smiley. Not because they felt it was like their right or anything… but because you could see in their eyes they were ashamed to even take this from us, but they had to… to continue living.

After we were done distributing the food, some of them would stay back to talk to us. KSK’s view of feeding the homeless was that while it starts with addressing their primary physiological need, it doesn’t end there. KSK spends much of their time starting conversations with the homeless and helping find them jobs and a way out of poverty.  Then again some of you might ask, how did they get into being homeless people in the first place?

Contrary to the belief some might have, the homeless people of today aren’t all homeless because they’re lazy or refuse to find a job. They come from all races and religion. A good number of them are educated and speak fluent English! I even met an Indian homeless guy that spoke fluent Tamil, English and Hokkien. All of them probably had lives like you and I at one point years ago. What they did have that we didn’t though… was very very bad luck.

Let me illustrate this from two real life stories of two homeless people.

1) On one of our stops, I met a 50 year old man that we all called Mr Chee. Mr Chee used to be a very skilled elevator technician. He knew everything about elevators and had a pretty good job, even spent some years of his working in Singapore. One day he got into a fight with someone which resulted in him being hit really hard on the head. He took off his cap to show us his injury. I had never seen anything like that before in my life. The right side of his skull had collapsed so instead of a typical roundish looking head, the right side of his skull was flat downwards like a cottage roof.

I never knew somebody with that kind of injury could still live! But there he was, almost a miracle! That injury though ended up costing his entire life. Because of it, he would get very very bad headaches during the day. So bad that he couldn’t continue working. Then as it got worse, he found relief in taking drugs and eventually began an addict. Eventually he lost his job, his home and whatever family and friends he had… and now he was out on the street with a few of other homeless people who have become his friends. Mr Chee had a life… a home.. a job. But this is how he’s likely to live the rest of his life. Sleeping on a opened up cardboard box by the street.

2) The other story I’m going to tell you was told to me by my team leader whom I will refer to here as KW. KW was distributing food near an LRT station one night and saw this homeless Indian man. He asked the Indian man in Malay if he wanted food only to have the Indian man reply in fluent English and with a British accent. KW was shocked. He later learned of this Indian man’s story.

Many decades ago that old homeless Indian man was working with JKR. He was a civil servant working under the British back in those days and subsequently for our very own Malaysian government. He had family: Two daughters that he sent to the University of Sheffield in the UK to study law. One of them married a Brit and never came back. The other came back and became a lawyer in Malaysia.

He finally retired at the age of 65. Having nothing to do he picked up drinking at home. Every day he would kick up his feed in his living room sofa and have a couple of beers. His wife though didn’t like that at all. Eventually the wife kicked him out of the house and there was nothing he could do about it since the house was under her name. The remaining daughter in Malaysia took the mother’s side and so he left home… all alone. After spending his entire lifetime working to raise his children and giving them a good education… this man was all alone on the streets, without a home and not knowing where his next meal will come from.

So as you can see from both these stories, many of these homeless had lives like you and I at one point. There were many other stories. From senior citizens who worked all their lives only to have their pension cheated out of by some con man, or grandfathers or grandmothers who have been abandoned.

Our second stop of the night was in another area of Chow Kit where another long queue of 30 or so homeless people were waiting for us.

My team leader said that these first two groups we’re visiting have already been trained from our previous team. They knew how to line up and let the ladies go first. After we were done with this second group was when the “hunting” started. We drove all around Chow Kit looking for homeless people to give the rest of our food to. Our team leader knew of these little pockets. We would go to those pockets, see someone we think needs food and drop off some food and water.

When you look at some of these people, the harsh reality of living on the streets is obvious on them. Some are dressed ok but most are dressed with really old clothes and smell like they haven’t showered in a while. They have black feet and some of them have had injuries. You can also tell whether they’re newly homeless or have been homeless for a long time.

We saw this homeless person sleeping on the bus stop and from the way he hugged his bag to his chest while he slept indicated that he was just newly on the streets. According to our team leader, the ones who have been on the streets for the longest time don’t care. They sleep like a starfish on the streets if they had to because they know they have nothing to lose.

We didn’t want to wake him so we put some food next to him. He will wake up to some pasta, some bread and a fresh bottle of clean drinking water.

Another place where our team leader knew some homeless people stayed at was at the top of this pedestrian bridge.

You probably drive past many many bridges like this at night not knowing that some homeless people actually live on top of these bridges. We sent a few of us down to look for them and found them hiding in a corner of it, all dug in ready to sleep.

We made many more stops that night, in places that I never thought would have homeless people inhabit.

By the time we were done it was 2AM. We had drove around for 3 hours on a Saturday night, looking for homeless people to give food to. At the end of it, Huai Bin joked it was not too late to go to Zouk… but we all knew we were too tired. We just wanted to go home and sleep.

That night, before I went to bed I asked Shorty
“Aren’t we so lucky that we get to sleep on our nice beds in a safe air-conditioned room?”

She replied
“You know what scares me? At one point of their lives…. they probably had this luxury too”.

———-
If you’d like to volunteer at KSK. There are many many many things you can do. Helping distribute food to the homeless is just one of them. They feed the homeless not just on weekends but every day. So if you’d like to volunteer, call Kwok Wai at +603 2141 6046.

The Nuffies all over are the wackiest bunch I know. Every now and then they would do something that would prove that point.

For example, this is what the Nuffies in the Singapore office do in their free time.

I was out with a client last night and she was talking to me about blogging. Asking me how I found the time to update a blog for so many years. The truth is, I found it so much easier when I was a student… you know in the Leng Mou days. Now when I’m out working it’s just so hard. After a long day at work, I get home and I sometimes sit in front of a blank screen waiting for inspiration for my next blog entry. But it doesn’t come… because my mind is so mentally exhausted and just want to do anything but write.

I guess to some extent you can see it in the quality of my blog entries lately. Shorty recently said to me that my blog sucked! And I guess it does. I don’t know why you guys keep coming back to read it but whatever the reason is… thank you for being so tolerant!

At the end of the day I think about all the eventful stuff I’ve done and the truth is… not that much. I mean a lot of it is work and computer games in my free time and there’s nothing really interesting to blog about them both. Then again I spend some 5-10 minutes a day reading funny stuff online and watching funny videos so I’m thinking maybe I’ll share some of that up here. So here’s one that I really like.

I watched this video over and over and over again with Shorty. Haha damn adorable!

I love how the older kid is so matured and the little boy is soo… hahaa cute!

I spent my afternoon today at Chatime Publika. To support my friend Richie there and because I know lots of our Nuffnangers/Churpers love Chatime, we decided to have a small gathering there. Was loads of fun! Thought the Nuffies did a great job putting the little gathering together which in line with Chatime tradition, started with a queue.

Richie also took a picture of some of us and put us up on the “Wall of Fame” in the stall. So if you go there for your Chatime anytime soon, check out the wall 🙂

My following pictures are going to be of something that I don’t think many of you would know what it is. In fact if you do, you’re probably as geek as I am 🙂

Ok so Ming bought me this and got Jamie to bring it down for me all the way from Singapore.

It’s called the Gears of War 3 “Epic Edition”.

For the non-geeks, Gears of War is one of my favourite XBOX games. In fact it’s the game that finally influenced me to buy an XBOX in the first place.

The cool thing about the Epic Edition is that the game doesn’t just come in a typical XBOX games case. It comes in THIS.

And the whole set comes with this handmade piece of the Marcus Fenix. The main character of the game.

Pretty cool if you’re a geek to me.. but I know I know.. if you aren’t … then all you’re thinking is… “so it’s a model of a very muscular man eh?”.\

Hey Guys,

I have a confession. My social life these few days is pretty much gone thanks to a new game called Battlefield 3. If you’re into first-person shooter games… you gotta try it out. Don’t take my word for it though, watch this trailer.

Computer graphics these days have gotten so good it’s insane! I felt like I was in a real battlefield and it reaffirmed my belief that I probably wouldn’t last more than 30 seconds on a real battlefield. Probably get shot before then. Still it let me live the life of a US marine for a while… heh… did you know when I was a little boy I once told my mum that I wanted to be a soldier when I grew up?

Speaking of great computer graphics, I watched Tin Tin last night too and the graphics is beautiful! Definitely worth a watch especially if you’re a TinTin fan.

A quick update on the Nuffnang Asia-Pacific Blog Awards happening in KL this year. Due to many requests we’ve decided to bring back a couple of new categories: Region’s Best Blog and Most Influential Blogger.

Also, the ChurpChurp team decided to sponsor a new category there called “Best Micro Blog”. Nomination ends on the 7th of November which leaves us with just a few days left. So if you haven’t nominated someone you think is worthy of the award, click here.