I have only worked in two other offices prior to starting Netccentric but from whatever little experience I have, my observation is that people curse a lot in the office. Blame it on stress, blame it on influence from American TV or blame it on anything but in all 3 offices I’ve worked in (the first two being investment banks in K) there was some good amount of cursing that goes on each day. Of course to be fair the cursing that goes on is always in a very casual way, not in a scolding kind of way. Like I have to admit that I curse every now and then in conversation but when I’m having an argument or scolding anyone I never curse.

Yesterday though we decided to have some fun in the office. We decided to put together this thing we called a “Fuck Jar”. So every time anyone says the word “Fuck”, he/she will have to pay a RM0.50 fine into the jar. To throw a little more fun into it, we decided that there will be no change given. So if you say the F word once but your smallest note in your wallet is RM5, then you will have to pay the RM5 instead of just the RM0.50. Unless of course you manage to beg for smaller change from someone else in the office.

When I walked in that morning the jar looked like this.

Clearly some people who weren’t fond of mornings had already started some of the cursing. The rest of the day went on with everyone waiting to catch everyone else cursing. At first the F words came naturally on its own. We also noticed that F words came in pairs. Say for example someone drops something she curses “FUCK!!!”. Then after realizing that she just got fined she would shout again “FUCKKK!!!” only to then close her mouth with her hands to prevent from talking further.

As more and more people got fined, everyone started being more and more careful. So to make sure that the F Jar’s contributions continued, people started tricking or provoking people to say the F word.

Like Rachel, I saw her sitting down at her work station leaning back a bit on her chair. So I suddenly jerked her chair downward to make her think like she was falling Inception style. Her immediate reaction was a loud scream. Then a few seconds of silence passed and I thought I had failed to provoke the F word out of her. But after those few seconds it came. She screamed a loud
“FUUUUUUUuuuuuCCCKK!!!”.

We all laughed and got her to contribute to the jar. By mid day the jar was this full.

On the other side of the office, there was just as much action going on. Shun Yau is one of those macho men and very sensitive about being called gay. So Tim2 asked him “Hey Shun Yau, you’re gay right?” and he responded with a “NO LAH FUCK!”…

Then later in the day another guy Nuffie started playing a little footsie with Shun Yau under the table just to provoke him again. Shun Yau again shouted “WOI FUCCCKK!! DON’T FOOTSIE ME”.

Of course in every office there’s bound to be people that are really hard to get to curse. One of them was Raessa. I tried to scare her by pulling her chair down as well but she didn’t let out any scream. She just turned around and went “Woiii! Tsk!”.

Later on though someone managed to get her to say it. One of the Nuffies asked her “Hey what does Fubu mean ar?”

And she replied “Fuck Buddy”… to a loud cheer of people bringing the “F Jar” to her.

So by the end of the entire day, this was how full our F Jar became.

We collected a total of RM30 in that day that will be used for our lunch fund (to buy us all lunch some day). RM30… that means the F word was said some 60 times in a span of some 8 hours that day. That’s like 7.5 “Fucks” an hour and more than one every ten minutes.

I think we should have this more often to reduce the profanity that goes on in our daily lives. Reminds me of that old Sylvester Stallone movie Demolition Man set in the future where every time you say a bad word the government fines you?

When I tweeted about it, someone replied saying that for their office they would need a “bucket” instead of a jar. Lol… I thought we were bad.

I’m finally back in KL after a week of being in Hong Kong. I was already feeling homesick in my final days there so it’s good to be home. I feel that I can always travel everywhere and go lots of places but there’s nothing like coming home!

Sunday was another lazy Sunday for us!

Shorty and I woke up late and then went for lunch at one of our usual places. This corner shop Imbi pork noodle.

There usually aren’t a lot of people but for some reason it was so packed we couldn’t even get a seat. We barely managed to grab one empty table… but it happened to be the one furthest from the coffee shop, right on the pavement and right in the middle of the sun. I tried to be positive about it. Telling Shorty that it’s for us to get our daily dosage of Vitamin D and all. If there’s one thing you have to know about Shorty though is that if there’s anything she would avoid like a plague, it’s the sun.

She fears it will make her darker and she hates it when her make-up melts. So she went all the way back to my car to get an umbrella and we sat eating our lunch like this.

I was sitting right next to her where those plates were and we would both take turns to hold the umbrella.

We got a lot of attention though. People who walked past us laughed at us. This Aunty walked past and teased “Wahh sooo lo-mantic” (romantic). Shorty heard that and she went “FTS!!!”, loud enough for the aunty to hear and giggle away.

We had fun though. Shorty was saying “I bet they wish they thought of this idea too”.

After our lunch by the road side we decided to go somewhere nice. So we popped by BSC to look for this little place called Tea Republic. We had bought the Milkadeal voucher for it some time back.

I have to admit, I bought it solely on how yummy the cookie in the picture looked. It was quite a find though! It’s a really nice and quiet place to chill and relax. Plus the cookies were great!

Shorty loved the place too much she started feeling a bit kiasu. She was like “I better not tell anyone about this place otherwise next time we come we got no place to sit”.

But after a while she decided to share the love so she tweeted about it. I guess that gives me the license to blog about it too.

After spending some couple time Shorty and I went our own ways in the afternoon. She went out with her friends and I went to play badminton with mine.

I don’t know what to blog about when I’m in Hong Kong because most of my trip has been work and meetings. I don’t really know how to blog about work or meetings because… well.. most of the time it wouldn’t interest any of you what I do unless of course you’re my competitor or something. Heh heh.. won’t they love to know what I talk about in meetings. I certainly would love to know what they talk about.

I like to think that I’ve been living the life of a Hong Konger in the past few days. Every day I wake up in the morning and walk to the nearest MTR which is like their underground train. Of course you can take cabs which are fairly affordable in Hong Kong but I quite enjoy the MTR commute. Maybe because in Malaysia we sit in cars to go everywhere… so once in a while when the weather is nice and cool, it’s nice to take the train and walk.

The MTR though is wonderful. When I was a student in London I used to think that the London Underground was awesome. I loved it! My Hong Kong friends there though complained about it all the time. They compared it to the MTR in Hong Kong and thought it sucked. So I figured that the MTR in Hong Kong must be really awesome.

It is….

The trains are so frequent. Like every 2 minutes. They’re very fast and very smooth too. Buying a ticket is so easy. Just press where you want to go on a map and it tells you how much to pay for at the machine.

For a while I had fun playing a typical Hong Konger heading the work on a busy day. During peak hours though the MTR can be really packed with people but it’s nothing unbearable. Maybe because it’s winter now… it’s cool even underground.

The trains can get really packed too but I’ve seen much more packed trains in Tokyo or even in London.

Still it was nice to have a taste of working life in Hong Kong. I had dinner with someone who lives that HK working life every day. His name is Ah Bon.

He grew up in KL but now works in this investment bank here in Hong Kong and makes big money. He works really hard though. Today I called him and he told me he had to work till 2AM. Plus he starts work every morning at 7AM. So if you want to earn a lot of money, go to Hong Kong, wear a suit to work like Ah Bon and sleep 4 hours a day.

Today was a little more interesting though. Hui Wen and I had a meeting with Hong Kong Disneyland. One of our clients. I love it when Hong Kong Disneyland suggests a meeting at their office. It’s an excuse to visit the magical world of Disney.

It was Hui Wen’s first time at a Disneyland and she was a bit of a grinch. All along I was asking her if she felt the magical world of Disney yet and she just went “It’s ok”.

I now refer to Hui Wen as the Disney Grinch.

Pinky happened to be on holiday there with Kah Kit too so they dropped by Disneyland and we met up for a while.

Took this picture, walked around a little and then we had to head off back to work and for our meetings and all.

So that’s the end of my Hong Kong working trip guys.

While everyone was sleeping on the public holiday yesterday, I was up early. By 7AM I had already left home and headed for the airport. My destination… Hong Kong. My business traveling sprees have started again. After trying to stay in Malaysia as much as I can for the past couple of months, I find myself having to travel again.

I was supposed to follow Ming to Melbourne to visit Nuffnang Australia’s office but in the end because of some things I needed to do in Hong Kong I decided to split up and head to Hong Kong instead. Why we’re in Hong Kong? Well, something that we haven’t officially announced yet is that Nuffnang recently set up an office here in Hong Kong. The purpose is really not to immediately duplicate the Nuffnang model from the other countries. Right now our office there is to support our other regional offices and also for research purposes.

So that’s why I’ve been having to make so many trips here. This trip was with Hui Wen who currently heads the Singapore office as well.

It was a rather uneventful day in the start. Just the same go to airport, check-in, have breakfast and then wait for my plane to take off. On the plane though I kinda did something bad. See all flight long I was seated next to this man who looked very much like he was going to Hong Kong for a business meeting. He was dressed up smartly in a suit and tie. Halfway through the flight, they served our meals. So I slowly went through the fruits, the main course and eventually settled on the yoghurt. When I opened the pack of yoghurt, some yoghurt flickered out of the little box and happened to land right on the man’s suit.

Aww man… when that happened, I feel everything went slow motion…. from the moment the drips of yoghurt left the little box and headed for the man’s suit. I could then almost see the future. I imagined he would get really angry, get up and then shout all sorts of profanities at me in Cantonese. I would then have to bend my head low and take it like a man… since it was my fault.

Surprisingly as I was scrambling to get tissue to wipe it off his suit, he just used his hands. I apologized repeatedly and he forgave me really quick. He just said “It’s ok… it’s ok”.

I felt bad all flight long though. So much that I made it a point to trouble him as little as possible for the rest of the flight. That meant at one point, holding my bladder so that I won’t have to cross him to get to the toilet.

When I got to Hong Kong though I went straight to the hotel, checked-in and right after some of the Nuffies there met me at the hotel for a meeting.The meeting lasted two full hours until it was time for dinner.

Meet Kevin and Jason of Nuffnang Hong Kong.

We had a good dinner where we talked all about work but by the time dinner was done we all decided to let the work conversation end for the day. We went for drinks later at Lan Kwai Fong just to chill.

On the way though I saw a few of them stop and start taking pictures of a shop front. I was wondering what the hell they were looking at.

Then I saw it… it was an ad for armpit waxing. I mean look at that picture… and all that hair of that cartoon woman.

That sure caught our attention.

Ok tomorrow’s another long day of work and I gotta head to bed now guys. Blog again soon 🙂

PS: If you have a car, this 35% discount that Milkadeal has for an AAM Membership is something you might wanna consider. Bought one myself too. AAM memberships are so that if your car ever breaks down you can call this number and they’ll send people to help fix it on the spot or tow it away if it’s a serious problem. Milkadeal’s been growing really quick too with Shaun and Wilson running it. Netccentric recently made an investment into it because Ming and I believe in Shaun and Wilson.

Yep… it’s finally here. I’m sick.. right after Chinese New Year too. Whenever I get sick I look back at the things I did in the past few weeks and almost all the time I can find the reason why I got sick. Either because I’ve been really stressed, working really hard, sleeping not enough, eating unhealthy or not exercising.

This time though I looked back and I saw what I did all Chinese New Year.

When I first got back to Penang for Chinese New Year I thought it was going to be a very quiet 1 week for me. Not doing much, just hanging around the house spending time with family. I was wrong though. I met up with some old friends when I was in Penang. And from those old friends I met up with more and more old friends and before I knew it I spent almost every night partying. I realized then how much there was to do in Penang these days.

Like this other day I went to this new club in Penang Times Square called Soju. The whole time I was in Penang, lots of people were telling me how I had to go there because they had this really good Live Band there called Crush.
The band consisted of people from all over. There were a couple of Thais, a Filipino, a Canadian and I think one or two from The States. They were great! Really got the party going! Heck I went on a Tuesday night and even then it was pretty full of people! I ended that night, just like many others with a lot of drinking … and of course sleeping late. No doubt that contributed to the state I was at today.

What else contributed… well let me tell you what. Meet “chee gu”.

This potato chip-looking snack is evil I tell you.

Once you start eating it, it takes a very very strong conscious effort to STOP eating it. It’s almost impossible I tell you. Impossible!

This Chinese New Year I won’t be surprised if I ate an entire KG of this stuff.

It doesn’t help that every Open House I go to they have it right on the table there with the host egging you on to have some.

Saturday night I attended Nicholas’s Open House. Look at the amount of food they prepared for us there.

Here’s a picture I took of some of the Nuffies there that night.

I saw how they made a waste bag holder out of this plastic stool and I was really impressed.

I went “Wow! What a smart idea!” only to have everyone look at me strangely saying “Haven’t you seen this before?”.

After Nicholas’s Open House, I rushed over to the Global Battle of the Bands to watch Nic Davis perform. His band, Rosevelt was competing that night. I’ve always failed to make it to all of his performances in the past but I knew this one was important so I made sure to go.

I was already falling sick then and the thick smoke in the club didn’t help my sore throat. It was worth it though, Nic was great and Rosevelt came in 3rd. I went to bed that night feeling really tired and when I woke up this morning…. I felt sick already.

But I couldn’t stay home. I had to go for a family lunch and then later on in the afternoon go visit Shorty’s parents. Shorty pointed out that I haven’t yet visited her parents for CNY since I’ve been away in Penang all along. So okay… then after that visit, we had another dinner and now…

I need to go to bed.

Sooo tired…

Not going to work tomorrow is not an option… it’s going to be a really busy week ahead. So good night everyone.

Yesterday was Shorty’s Birthday. The first few birthdays Shorty I put together a really nice surprise for her. You can read about one of the first ones here if you’ve missed it before.

As we moved on in our relationship though we grew simpler in a lot of ways and that includes birthdays. For birthdays now we just have a really nice dinner together and cake.

So this year that’s what we decided to do. As far as Shorty knew, we were just going for dinner date together at Fukuya or something we called “Shorty & Fatty’s Night Out”. I decided though to have a small get together with some of her close friends. I booked a room at Fukuya and according to them the room could only fit 10 people so I could only call a few friends.

Shorty always tells me every other day that she doesn’t have anymore friends in KL. That all her friends have left for overseas but when I’m limited to 10 invites, I realized that she actually has a lot of friends. So I had a tough time deciding who to call but decided to make sure the people I called were sort of in the same group of her friends so she could just kickback and relax the whole night rather than having to go around making sure that everyone’s comfortable and not left out.

Plus my sister Fayth’s birthday happens to be a week after Shorty’s and I won’t be around to celebrate it with her so I decided to make it a joint celebration between Fayth and Shorty. Fayth on the other hand is a very private person. When asked on which friends she would like to invite she only wanted to invite one.

Here are some pictures we took of the 10 of us there that night.

And here’s Fayth and Shorty both cutting their birthday cake.

Birthday cakes are a tricky one for Shorty. Remember in the first birthday party I did for her I got her a custom made Hello Kitty birthday cake?

Well she didn’t eat a bite of it because one thing you should know about Shorty. She doesn’t like cake.

So this time I made sure the cake was an ice-cream cake, something she wouldn’t have an excuse not to eat. Fayth and Shorty, 2 of the 3 most important women in my life (My mother would be the other one in the Top 3).

And a group photo of all of us together.

Happy Birthday Shorty and Fayth!

Don’t ask Shorty how old she is this year…. don’t… I made that mistake once.

I went house visiting quite a bit this Chinese New Year. In one of the houses I visited, I bumped into a visiting uncle who hails from Canada. After some small talk over pineapple tarts and chee gu, I learned something that would be the talk of the next few hours. He used to work in an airline. Air Canada specifically.

I love talking to people who had at one point work in airlines because I always have a lot of questions. Don’t you? I mean when we fly we’re asked to follow rules that we sometimes don’t even know why they’re there but just do it anyway. So I’ve always wanted to learn why these rules were there…. like why do you need to open all the windows when we’re landing and taking off? Etc etc.

This uncle is not the first though. I have a few friends who’re now air stewardesses with Malaysian Airlines, Air Asia or even Singapore Airlines and whenever I see them the conversation always goes the same way. So here are some things I’ve learned about flying. Please note however that whatever I’m sharing here is in its rawest form. I didn’t cross check any of these facts online to see if they’re 100% true. They’re just based on what my friends who work in airlines tell me.

1) Why do we need to open all the windows during takeoff and landing?

I’ve heard a lot of reasons for this in the past. Some people say it’s so that if the plane crashes *touch wood*, the emergency crew on the outside will be able to look in and see what’s going on inside. What I learned though is that it works both ways. Having the window open allows a passenger to see what’s going on outside in a split second and it’s not only because the window is opened. Say imagine if the plane crashes and the windows then just automatically open on its own leading way to a ray of bright sunlight coming into the passenger cabin. For a few seconds, all the passengers inside won’t be able to see anything outside until their eyes adjust to the bright sunlight outside. That few seconds in the case of an emergency is crucial.

2) Why do we have to dim the cabin lights every time we do night landings?

The reason for this is exactly the same as the first reason. During night landings the outside of the aircraft is dark. So they want to make the inside dark too so that it doesn’t take any time for your eyes to adjust when you’re looking outside.

3) Why do we have to turn off mobile phones and all electronic devices during a flight?

This is a funny one which I’m not sure how true it is. Well basically everyone I talk to tells me that this is bullshit. There is no real evidence that your mobile phone or your iPod interferes with the aircraft systems. In fact a pilot friend mentioned that the pilots always have their mobile phones turned on in the cockpit throughout the flight anyway.

Then why is this rule there? Well because the only electronic devices that can really interfere with the airplane systems are like satellite phones or long range walkie-talkies or something. They don’t want to be able to specify each of these equipment every time the plane takes off and land so they just do a blanket “Turn off all electronic devices”.

Of course there are probably some other reasons. Like if an emergency happens during take-off or landing, they want you to be able to listen to any instructions the cabin crew have to give rather than having it blocked out by your iPod.

4) Smoking on the airplane

A lot of smokers I know always have this way of smoking on the airplane. Many claim that they were taught this method from the cabin crew themselves. What they do is they go into the airplane toilet and take one of those small paper cups and use it to cover the smoke detector in the toilet. Then smoke and blow the smoke into the sink because there is a suction there.

What I’ve learned is that in most airplanes, they don’t have smoke detectors in the toilet. They’re heat detectors instead because smoke detectors can be too sensitive and cause some false alarms here and there. The real deterrent though isn’t setting off any detectors. It’s because it’s DANGEROUS to all the other passengers on the plane. Also it’s illegal and if you do get caught you can get in big trouble. So don’t smoke on the plane!

5) Do airplanes run out of food?

Yes. Some airlines intentionally stock food for less passengers that its carrying to reduce weight of the aircraft and in turn save costs. This is especially so in night flights. So say there are 300 people on a night flight to London, the airlines take a bet that maybe… 10% of the passengers will choose not to have a meal and instead sleep through.

So the aircraft only carries food enough for 270 people instead of 300. If however everyone chooses to eat on one particular flight then they have to go find biscuits or all sorts of different things.

6) Do people shag on flights?

YES…. and you know how I know? All my friends who are cabin crew tell me so. So when you’re thinking of joining the mile-high club by shagging on flights, know that all the cabin crew will know haha. One of my friends told me that she even saw a girl going down on her boyfriend at their seat while trying to hide underneath a blanket. It was the talk of the entire cabin crew the whole flight.

There’s so much more that I’ve learned but I think putting it all in here would make this post much more lengthy than it already is so I’ll stop here. Just happy to share whatever I’ve learned. If there’s anything you guys know that I don’t, please feel free to share in the comments 🙂

My brother showed this to me over CNY. Thought it was really cool.

Now everyone can have a platinum album!!!

I don’t have many pictures for Chinese New Year period because my family always made me promise not to put any pictures of them on my blog. They’re all very shy. Here’s how my Chinese New Year has been going though.

1) My two cousins are the latest Tiahs to be addicted to Starcraft 2.

Meet Stephanie Tiah

And Rachelle Tiah

Both of them saw me playing Starcraft 2 with my brothers over the course of the week. One day when we left our computers unattended they decided to start up Starcraft 2 and try the game themselves. Before we knew it they were addicted to it. Much more addicted to it than I am. Ahh if only my gf “accidentally” started playing Starcraft 2 on her own and got addicted to it too. Then we would have so much quality time together heh.

2) Wedding Pressure

Speaking of my gf. This CNY I got my first official pressure to get married from my mother. We were just talking about marriage and relationships and it came to this:

Mum: Aiyahh still so young la you don’t need to think about marriage yet. How old are you again ?

Me: Ummm this year I’ll turn 27.

Mum: What?! I thought you’re 25 only! Eh son if you are sure already then what are you waiting for? Faster get married. Old already.

That’s not the only pressure I’m getting though. My relatives apparently have an ongoing bet that I will get married either this year or next. Apparently they say 30% chance I’ll get married this year and 70% next year. In other words they’re saying there is NO chance that I will get married if I don’t get married by next year. I told both my Mum and my relatives the same thing. I’m not ready for marriage yet and neither is Shorty.

3) Rude Shorty

Speaking of Shorty. She was over at my place yesterday and was so sticky from all the CNY heat (and for playing indoor football with my cousins) that she took a shower and wore some of my clothes. One of my t-shirts she put on was my “Mr Rude” t-shirt. When I pointed out that she was wearing a Mr Rude, she went into one of her usual laughing fits.

Only to stop for 2 seconds only to do something rude (to live up to her t-shirt), like flip me the finger or something.

Funny Shorty.

I will end with this picture of Shorty wearing my Mr Rude t-shirt and giving the ugliest rudest face possible.

Hehe my cute shorty. How she can mess up her hair, dress up like that, give that kind of face and end up looking like that from this little angel here.

Heh.

Just had the Chinese New Year Eve Steamboat dinner that I have with my family every year. One of my favourite meals ever is the steamboat that we do at home.

See that thing on top of the pot? That’s Fu Chuk… or deep fried bean curd… LOVE IT LOVE IT LOVE IT!

All of you guys must be having your CNY Reunion dinners now.

Happy New Year everyone!