Hey Guys,

Here are some updates.

1) Went to the market today for the first time in a very very long time. Somehow I think the wet market is slowly dying among our generation. I mean when was the last time you went to the market to buy fruits or vegetables? It’s second nature to my mum but everyone I know of our generation just goes to Tesco these days.

Right after I took this picture I noticed a little argument break out right next to me. A man was shouting at a vendor for being overcharged. Somehow the vendor made a calculation error and asked him for another RM10. The man was so angry he kept going and going. After a while though he calmed down and just ran off and business went back as usual.

Nobody in the market paid any real attention to that. Almost as if it happened every day.

2) While I was just looking at Starcraft 2 videos online, I found this old documentary about Starcraft 1 in Korea.

Man it’s crazy over there.

I grew up spending way too much time on computer games. First there was Red Alert, then Half-Life, then Counter-strike and the first Starcraft. I’ve never really played competitively for any of those games except for Counter-strike. That was a game where I used to have a team of 4 and we would play competitions in Penang that would win us money.

We always got within the Top 4 but never ever won the top spot…. though we often got 2nd place. Even today I still play computer games. I spend a lot of time on Starcraft 2 so much that it used to annoy Shorty. I think it still does but she doesn’t say as much right now. I’ve read before that in Silicon Valley, Starcraft 2 is to the nerds what chess is to normal people.

In Korea though Starcraft 2 players are like pro-athletes. They have huge tournaments that draw crowds in the tens of thousands and is watched on TV by millions! They have huge fans, sponsors, managers, coaches and they all earn a lot of money just from playing Starcraft 2. Check out this video for example.

Ahh I can imagine. If I were in Korea, Shorty would be proud of me that I spend so much time on Starcraft 2. Maybe I could be a pro-gamer some day. Heh… when she has coffee with her friends, she’ll proudly say that I am in the Diamond league… and her friends will “aww in envy”….. and tell her how lucky she is.

Haha of course… that is all… but a dream.

Still I think it’s amazing how gaming in Korea is a whole other level. Heck besides… if I were a Korean pro-gamer… maybe I might have a shot with Hyuna 🙂

3) Speaking of pro-athletes though. I watched the finals between Lee Chong Wei and Lin Dan tonight. Gotta say that I thought Lee Chong Wei did really really well but it wasn’t good enough. Once again, I watched Lin Dan beat Lee Chong Wei, take off his shirt and celebrate.

So here’s what I think we should do. If you support Lee Chong Wei and our Malaysian badminton team, wear yellow (that is after all their colour) tomorrow. If you support Lin Dan then go topless tomorrow. Since Lin Dan seems to do that quite a bit.

Whatever  it is though, I’m proud of Datuk Lee Chong Wei for making is so far in his career. He truly deserves his Datukship.

Tomorrow my traveling begins again. I go to work tomorrow as usual but after work I head off to the airport. While you guys are sleeping in your comfy beds I will be getting my sleep on a plane to Beijing. I reach Beijing at 6AM and straight off to work I go from there. Traveling gets too tiring. But oh well that’s the life I chose.

Till my next update guys 🙂

We’ve been working on a new ChurpChurp for the past few months. Somehow Ming felt that while the older version was just updated less than a year ago, it still wasn’t good enough. So we went back to the drawing board and built it all up from scratch again.

This is the old ChurpChurp.

And this is the new.

The new has a lot of new features on the front and back end. Most of the back end features though the every day user doesn’t see. What the every day user sees is perhaps more user friendly stuff, features to automate certain things and well a better display of the Churpers on our network.

I was talking to a DJ from a radio station lately and he told me “Did you know that most of the DJs from my station are on ChurpChurp?”. I was like “REALLY? I didn’t know that”. I went in to take a look at true enough we had celebrities of all kinds all part of our network.

So on the new front page we featured some of these celebrities on ChurpChurp. TV hosts, Radio DJs, Artists, Models etc etc.
Of course ChurpChurp is open for everyone to join. We want to build a huge community of Facebookers and Twitterers all around the region just like Nuffnang has done so for bloggers.

Already there are lots of benefits of being a ChurpChurp member just like being a Nuffnang one. From movie screenings, to give-aways, to winning cash prizes and meeting new friends.

So if you’re on Facebook and Twitter a lot, sign up at ChurpChurp.com!

This is a really odd topic. I know. Probably not something you’ve seen before but I got inspired to write this just by looking at my feet one day. You see, one day I was just sitting down looking at my feet and I was reminded of a birth mark I had there. As I thought more about it, memories of everything about it flipped through my mind. What people said it means, when I first noticed it and all that.

Then I realize that it’s something that has been with me my whole life. Most of us have at least some birthmark some part of our bodies and there’s always a story behind (I have a LOT of them, too many to probably cover in this one entry). Whether it’s because someone always told you it meant something… or whether because you were ashamed to show it to people when you were younger.

So this is a story of my birthmarks and scars… starting with this scar I have on my arm.

1) The Burn

Notice that I have that sliver of darkened skin there?

Well I actually got this really recently. Almost as long as my relationship with Shorty. It was just shortly after Shorty and I just got together some 3 years ago. It’s actually caused by this.

For the guys who don’t know what this is, this is…. the ENEMY. This gets hot when it’s turn on and if it touches your skin it burns!!! This… gentlemen is a “curling iron”. The ladies use it to make curls on their hair.

Shorty and I were at my place in Penang getting ready to go for dinner. Shorty was getting all dressed up and curling her hair when we got into a fight. She was annoyed that I never put the toilet seat back down every time I’m done with it while I told her she should just make it a habit to put it back up every time she uses it. So we got into a bit of a fight and she eventually got so angry, she picked up the curling iron she was using to curl her hair and struck me with it.

My reflexes kicked in and I raised my right arm to block the iron… only to have it burn. It hurt like a mofo!!! It got worse over the next few days. It grew to this big boil and I had to wait for it to pop and all the water to come out. When it happened, Shorty was so worried my parents in Penang would notice it and scold her for it but they were quite understanding :).

And no that wasn’t exactly what happened although whenever people ask me that, I tell them that fake story just to see the look of shock on their faces before I tell them the truth. What happened was…. well.. Shorty’s very careless when it comes to placing her heated curling iron. It’s like an accident waiting to happen. This one time she put it among some things on my dressing table and I reached for something not noticing it was hiding behind some stuff I couldn’t see. So I ended up burning my hand.

On other days she even puts the curling iron on the floor right below the dressing table. I worry that one day she might burn a toe of mine or something. But yeah that’s what happened. She didn’t go all apeshit and strike me with a curling iron. So don’t worry… Shorty’s not crazy 🙂

The next scar I have is this one on my leg.

2) The Centipede

Do you see a light scar that looks like a centipede? Well I’ve had this since I was 3 years old. It used to be a lot more distinct but over the years it has faded… and this is how it looks like some 24 years on. For those of you who don’t know, I was born with a lazy eye. That means one of my eyes could barely open. It was at such bad a stage that the doctor then was worried that if I wasn’t operated on, I would lose all vision from one eye.

So when I turned 3 my parents decided they had to do something no parents would ever want to do to their 3 year old kid. Put him through surgery. What I was told when I was a kid was that the doctor would cut open my thigh, take some of my muscle from there and put it into my eyelid so I can open it. That’s how my parents explained this little scar to me as I grew up.

Somehow locked in one part of my brain is this memory that I would never forget. A memory of me being awake in the operating room, watching the doctor cut open my thigh into little cubes just like the scar represented. I remember I could see it, but not feel anything. My parents said that it wasn’t possible though because I was under general anesthetic and fully asleep. So I’m not sure if I just dreamed that memory up one day.

3) The Globetrotter.

This is one of those birth marks I never knew I had until some time in primary school. It’s this black spot on my foot.

I remember the day I noticed it when I was a kid. I thought I had some kind of ink on my foot so I started washing my foot with soap. It wouldn’t come off so I rubbed harder and harder until I was like “WTF???”.

Eventually my parents calmed me down and told me that it was something I was born with. You know how moles and birthmarks sometimes have “meaning” right? Well growing up lots of people told me that having this mole or birthmark on my foot means that one day I will travel a lot. Well I guess that turned out to be sort of true. I do travel a lot for work these days to all the countries that Nuffnang and ChurpChurp are in and more.

4) The Burden

I don’t have a picture of this one because I’m finding it really hard to take a picture of it… since it’s on my back! I have this big mole on my back. The meaning of this one though isn’t good. Many people say having a mole on your back means that you will have a lot of burden to carry next time. I’m not sure if that came through because yes I have a lot of stress but so does everyone else.

I guess one burden I feel is taking care of all the Nuffies and giving them job security. If that counts.

5) The Famous One

You know how sometimes you want to describe somebody to someone you always go “the bald one”, “the fat one”, “the dark one”…. well for me it’s “the one with the mole”.

Yes yes don’t lie! If any of you have ever described me, you say the word “mole” on my face right?

The mole on my face is something that I was ashamed to have for the longest time. I don’t know… I mean it’s not like anybody ever goes “WOW THAT MOLE LOOKS GOOD! YOU SO HEMSEM!”. Sure when I was growing up some kids in my school used to call me “Sexy mole” but they meant the word “sexy” sarcastically. I had always want to have it removed.

I think these little things affected my confidence when I was growing up as a kid. This and a few other things that I will probably have to save for another blog entry. By the time I hit age 17 though I began to grow more confident of myself.  That’s when I met my first proper girlfriend. Her name was Melissa. Today she’s happily married with this great guy named John and she has a beautiful baby!

I remembered asking her if she thought I looked better if I removed my mole on my face. She said “No… because it just wouldn’t be you anymore”.

After that I stopped feeling ashamed of my mole on my face.

What does my mole mean? Well many people say that if you have it so close to your mouth, it means that you will never have shortage of food in your life. That’s true for me so far I guess. One day I met one of my Dad’s friends in China. She’s 50 or probably 60 by now and she had a mole exactly the same place where I have mine. She told me that she used to be ashamed of it too… using her hand to hide it every time she took a picture.

I asked her if she ever had any shortage of food in her life. She said “No”. So I guess maybe that’s true.

The funniest thing happened to me when I was studying in London. I was buying groceries at my neighbourhood supermarket and lining up to pay. Right in front of me was this really old lady who looked like she was 80 or 90 years old. She had a cute little shopping basket with her and she was in the queue to pay for her things. She suddenly turned around to face me and said in the thickest English accent.

“That is a really really really lucky mole do you know that? A really lucky mole!”

A bit taken aback I just said “Uhh thanks hehehe”.

I never got to ask her why she thought it was a lucky mole. But looking at my life so far. I guess I’ve had some good luck. Not sure if it’s the mole on my face… but that could just be it 🙂

Edit: Forgot to add a video that this blogger made on the event. Have added it below.

When we first started Nuffnang Australia two years ago, lots of people thought we were going to fail. Sure, Australia has a billion dollar digital ad industry and sure marketers there are very forward thinking. But…. are there even enough bloggers there?

Blogging in Australia is nowhere as strong as in Asia. Still we did some research and felt that there are enough bloggers in Australia. They won’t be easy to find and there was nothing like a Nuffnang there to put them altogether yet… but we knew if we tried hard enough we’ll be able to find bloggers that are as passionate as the ones back here in Asia.

Two years later, Nuffnang Australia organized it’s largest event ever (and I gather it’s the largest blogger event in Australia to date). It was called Nuffnang Blogopolis. We had 300 bloggers there from all over Australia fly in just for this.

It was held at Fed Square at this place called ZINC.

Nuffnang Blogopolis was among the first of our more serious kind of events. Rather than the parties and dinners we normally have, this one was a conference about blogging. Bloggers went there to learn a bit of everything about blogging. Things from tools of the trade, to how to monetize your blogs, debates on Editorials vs Advertorials and even skills like how to improve content on your blog, photography tips or overcome writer’s block.

At first I thought that I would go there and listen to things that I probably already know about… having blogged for about 4 years now. But I was wrong. I learned so much about everything that one day. I hardly got enough sleep the night before so I was afraid I might fall asleep at some point in the day but I was wide awake the whole time, intrigued by whatever was shared there by the speakers.

There were lots of really famous speakers there. From Arnold of MrGadget, Lady Melbourne and I even met for the first time, Darren Rowse of Problogger.

I remember Problogger when I first started blogging some 5-6 years ago. He was among the first high profile full-time bloggers… who decided to not only make blogging his passion or hobby but his job. I gather he does really well for himself too. He became an inspiration for a lot of Malaysian bloggers I knew back then to go on full time blogging as well.

Our Country Manager for Nuffnang Australia is David Krupp.

He’s known all around for being really suave and charming… but when he gave his opening speech… he tried to be as serious as he could.. with a few jokes along the way. David used to work for MySpace before he joined us two years ago. Ever since he’s been an asset in growing the company to what it is today.

Of course I also met some old friends there. One of them Violet… the pretty lady in red here.

She was one of the bloggers who flew in for our Nuffnang Asia-Pacific Blog Awards in Singapore back in 2009. She dresses very differently from most Australians and is a big fan of Japanese-sy things… fashion included.

So much that she often feels like she was born in the wrong country. Heh… her bf told me that she even teaches herself and practices Japanese before she sleeps every night.

Picture here with Violet, her bf and Grace… who did lots of cheering that day!

Here’s a picture I took of some of the goodie bags that were given out that day.

The day before I saw the Nuffies there packing everything into a 4WD just to bring it over. Also got a picture of some of light food we had during the coffee breaks.

The thing that really kept me occupied almost the whole day was watching our Twitter hashtag for the event #nnb2011. All around the venue we had big screens or LCD TVs that showed everyone a live update about what people were saying about the event on Twitter. There was so much chatter on Twitter I think it must’ve been like 1 tweet for every 1 second or so.

So much that eventually not only did #nnb2011 go trending in Twitter Australia but so did the word “Blogger” and basically the Twitter handle of almost every speaker who went up on stage each time.

Nuffnang Blogopolis was definitely one of the best Nuffnang Events I had ever been to (among my favourites are the Nuffnang Asia-Pacific Blog Awards 2009 and Nuffnang Chipster Pajama Party). It was also the first event where we actually sold tickets for. Each blogger had to buy a ticket that cost A$100 which is about RM330. Reading the feedback though, everyone seemed to think it was the best 100 bucks they ever spent.

I’m so proud of the Nuffies in Australia and just at how much progress Nuffnang Australia has made since it started.  Well done guys! Proud of you all!

If you want to see more pictures of Nuffnang Blogopolis 2011, click here for the official photos. Much better than my photos that were just taken with my phone camera hehehe.

You can also get a feel of Nuffnang Blogopolis 2011 from this video that a blogger there made 🙂

Unfortunately there weren’t any official pictures taken at the Post-event drinks because… well I heard everyone got drunk and “what happens at the Nuffnang Blogopolis 2011 Post-Event Drinks Stays at the Nuffnang Blogopolis 2011 Post-Event-Drinks”.

And yes everyone… we’re planning to do a Nuffnang Blogopolis in all the other countries we’re in too in future 🙂

Meet Yuen Yee.

She’s a fellow Nuffie that I see every day in the office.

This is how she looks grown-up and matured when she’s posing for the camera.

This is how she normally looks in every day life.

Yuen Yee loves to eat. Crab, lobster, steak, ham… everything short of Unicorn or Smurf steak.
Sometimes they call Yuen Yee “Unicorn”. Because she sees the world in a magical fantasy point of view.

Sometimes they call her Panda.

After this Never Say No to Panda commercial.

Apparently because she once flipped a table when someone took her food from her.

This is what Yuen Yee looks like when you force her to give back food she takes.

The Nuffies love to mess with her.

We once filmed her watching a scary video, filmed it and uploaded it on YouTube.

We also once filmed her going down an escalator in Pavilion.

Yes… as you can see from the video. Yuen Yee is scared of heights AND escalators. In ANY mall she goes to, she ALWAYS take the elevator.

Once she went up an escalator with Pinky not realizing that she was actually on one. When she did realize, she held Pinky’s hand and squeezed it so hard she broke two fingers (Haha no la no la I keed I keed… no fingers were broken).

She sometimes curses in the office but whenever she does she say sit in a cute high pitched voice.

We all love Yuen Yee!

We voted her the cutest person in the office.

Scenario 1:

Many months ago. One of my best friends from childhood BBM’ed me along with another old friend:

Melvin: Gentlemen… I’d just like you to be among the first to know… that I’ve just proposed to May and we’re getting married within a year.

A normal response should’ve been
“DUDE!!! CONGRATULATIONS!!! DAMN HAPPY FOR YOU MAN!!!”

Instead my response was

“WHAT?!??! DUDE ARE YOU SURE YOU THOUGHT THIS THROUGH?! WE GOTTA MEET UP… WE GOTTA TALK”.

Scenario 2:

Today, another friend… this one a nice girl messaged me:
“Tim, can you come for my wedding reception on XX date?”

Again I should’ve said
“AWW CONGRATULATIONS! I’D LOVE TO!!!”.

Instead my immediate response was
“YOU’RE GETTING MARRIED?!?!?! TO WHO?!!? “

“To John. You met him at my house a few months ago”

Me: WHAT?!?!  I thought you both just got together ?”

*realizes this time that my response should’ve been different. So in an attempt to damage control….*

Me: CONGRATULATIONS!!!

She hasn’t replied me.

*sigh*

I gotta work on that “CONGRATULATIONS I’M SO HAPPY FOR YOU” face when people tell me that they’re getting married.

Hey Guys,

Guess where I am this week?

For the past 4 weeks I’ve been traveling every single week. 3 weeks ago I was in Hong Kong, then Singapore, then Bangkok and this week I’m in Melbourne.

Man… I broke a new record this month. I think out of 30 days in a month, I spent 20 or so sleeping in a hotel room in a foreign country. My trip to Nuffnang Australia this week couldn’t be avoided though. Already I think I haven’t visited the Australian team enough in the past 12 months but this Saturday they’re having a huge blogging event.

It’s called Nuffnang Blogopolis where they’re expected to have 300 or so bloggers from all over Australia. Among the speakers are Darren Rowse of Problogger, Arnold Aranez of Mr Gadget who won the Nuffnang Blog Award for Best Geek Blog in 2009 and Phoebe Montague of Lady Melbourne. Each ticket was sold at AUD 100 (RM320) each and it’s all sold out. In fact we’ve been getting requests for more and more tickets but I think we’ve reached our limit. Think we’ll try to have a bigger one next year instead.

So anyway Ming and I came a few days to visit the Nuffies here in Nuffnang Australia. As always they look like they’re having loads of fun.

I also notice that it’s the only Nuffnang office in the region that has more Macs than PCs. Something I’m sure Ming wouldn’t approve of heh.

When we arrived some of the Nuffies took us for lunch at this really nice steak house.

After lunch they took us to see the new office for Nuffnang Australia which they’ll be moving into next week. I loved it!

This is the front of the office building. The entrance to it is this big green door.

Here’s how it looks like on the inside once you walk in.

It’s a loft like kind of office with a big open area downstairs and a loft upstairs.

This is the view from upstairs. This time next week or so, all these desks will be filled up and full of Nuffies busying about their day.

This is one of the meeting rooms we have.

The blurry dude in that picture is David Krupp, our Country Manager for Nuffnang Australia. Someone we all more affectionally call “Kruppy”. We have a little pantry area where people can cook their meals and eat on the side.

Also a server room that hasn’t really been loaded up with stuff yet.

And an upstairs area where we can put some workstations.

So what do you guys think?

Heh we try to make all our offices in the region nice and homely but I think this one could potentially rank up to the Top 2 nicest of our offices.

I’m really proud of Nuffnang Australia. When we first started off 2 years ago, lots of people didn’t think we’ll be able to make it. Today Nuffnang Australia’s growing so quick I can’t wait to see where we’ll be in the next few years. If you asked me 4 years ago when we first started Nuffnang if one day we’ll be able to have an office like that in Melbourne, I would never have believed it.

Today… we have and it’s all thanks to these wonderful people.

Our partners Martyn, David and our Country Manager Kruppy who came to us from MySpace years ago.

Nuffnang Australia’s looking good and I’m so glad to have been able to be a part of the story.

UPDATE: I WAS MESSING AROUND WITH MY NEW FB COMMENTS PLUGIN AND ACCIDENTALLY HID ALL THE COMMENTS. NOW I CAN’T GET THEM BACK!!! PLS COMMENT AGAIN.. I KNOW IT’S SO MUCH TO ASK BUT I’M SOOO SORRY

You guys know ChurpChurp right? One of our companies that allow people to earn with their Facebook or Twitter accounts just like how Nuffnang allows bloggers to earn.

Well the “mascot” for ChurpChurp is a little blue bird designed by a Nuffie. Lots of people think that I designed it after Shorty but no… that’s not true. Anyway a few months back we decided that since the birdie was so cute, we had to just make a plush toy of it. So we had people go to China to source the best person to make the ChurpChurp plush toy and a few months later, boxes of it had reached our shores.

The girls in the office gave it a name. They call it Churpies. I gave the first one I got to Shorty who loves it.

It didn’t take long before everyone in the office wanted one. So I finally decided to give one to each Nuffie. Since then they’ve all kept it around their workstations.

Some of the girls had Churpie sit right next to them while they work.

Some took the extra step and hugged it while working like Linda, Wendy and Xinxian here.

But some of the guys just left it by the side to watch while they work. Like Latif here.

Or Firdauz.

One particular guy Nuffie even just left it at a corner of the office where he kept his bag. Unloved… and unopened.

One of the cutest I saw that day was Sara’s Churpie though. When she left the office, she decided to put the Churpie in her place.

But the cutest has got to be what some of the other girls did. They decided to dress up the Churpies.

I wonder what people will think of next. Heh.

Here’s when I think I could use some suggestions. We’ve had loads of requests for the Churpies but we don’t have too many to give out and the ChurpChurp Community is HUGE. How do you think we should give it out to ChurpChurp users and how do we decide who gets it?

We’re thinking of maybe giving some out on the ChurpChurp Facebook fan page but you guys got any ideas?

In return for your suggestions I’ll give out 5 Churpies to the Best 5 Ideas 🙂

If you’re looking for another way to get a hold of these limited Churpies, check out the ChurpChurp blog.

Check this out guys. My colleague Latif put this in for me.

You can now comment on this blog with your Facebook account 🙂

See below.

Happy Sunday Guys,

Got a busy Sunday ahead but first let me share with you guys two things that made me laugh like shit in the past few days.

The first one is the video of this Shampoo prank.

The second one is this. It’s called the Top 15 Damnyouautocorrect of all time.

You know what Damnyouautocorrect is right? It’s a site that compiles all the funny messages that get accidentally sent out when iPhone tries to predict (wrongly) what you’re trying to type.

Hope these bring you the laughs that it brought me 🙂

And let me end with this old Chinese song that I recently listened to. Brought me back memories.