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Sometimes I like to look back at how times have changed in the past 26 years of my life. I remember life as a little boy in primary school growing up in Penang. Things were simple then and it always felt like I had so much time to do anything I want. Days passed really slowly.

I go to school in the morning. Talk in classes, sleep through some and when recess comes I would buy some junk food and play monkey bar with friends. Then I would come home, go for tuition or piano class. The one thing I always remembered doing though. No matter what day it was and no matter what was going on that day, I was in front of the TV every weekday at 5.30PM.

Why? Because 5.30PM was cartoon time! We had cartoons like Captain Planet, Mighty Mouse and Transformers. The half hour after 5.30PM was total bliss, I even made myself sit through all the commercials because I loved how fun the Ding Dang and Tora commercials looked. The kids in there always played with the featured toy in a way that made it look so real.

All the fun didn’t end at 6PM though. From 6PM-7PM starts my very early taste of “Hong Kong TVB Drama”. The first show I followed was called “Breaking Point” and it starred Leon Lai, someone whom I thought was the most handsome actor that ever lived at the time.

Today I look at my life and so much has changed. The existence of Astro has multiplied the number of channels from the old three to some few hundred of them today but I hardly get to watch enough. I go to work in the morning and very often come back only after dinner.

So I miss all the good shows they have in the evening. By the time I come back at night I’m distracted with so many other things like going online. Everything online these days is on demand. You want to see a video, you go to YouTube and you watch it whenever you like. You don’t have to wait for 5.30PM-6.00PM to see a video of this narcoleptic dog.

So just like many people these days I’m spoilt by technology. I’m used to getting my entertainment now whenever I want it rather than work it in my schedule to watch TV at a given time. Which is also why some of us these days don’t wait to catch How I Met Your Mother on TV. We buy the DVD box sets when they come out.

Plus I find I have different things that I want to watch at different times of the day. The channel I turn on every morning before I go to work though is either BBC or CNN and when I come back at night I turn on Star Movies or HBO

I always wondered that. The computer has changed so much with technology with the internet to give us the entertainment we need but the TV, something that has been around for decades more than the computer hasn’t. Then recently I learned about Astro PVR.

Astro B.yond’s PVR allows you to automatically record any program you want while you’re away from the TV or even out for drinks with friends. Then you can come back and turn it on and watch it whenever you want. You can even record up to two different channels at the same time when you’re watching something else.

Nuffnang’s running a contest for Astro’s B.yond’s PVR where all you have to do is leave a creative comment on the Nuffnang blog here. The most creative comment as decided by the people at Astro will get to win a one year subscription of Astro B.yond PVR. Do note however that you NEED an Astro subscription first before you can get PVR. So if you want an Astro B.Yond PVR then join up. 10 Bloggers get to win 🙂

Find out more about Astro B.yond’s PVR here

Like them on Facebook at www.facebook.com/astro or on Twitter at @astroonline

Taylor’s invited me over for their open day last Sunday to do a sponsored post. I was to be there at 10AM on a Sunday. I dragged Kitteh along… a risk because Kitteh is never happy to be up before 12PM on a Sunday. We spent almost 5 hours there on the campus and by the end of it, we learned so much and had a lot of fun.

Let me tell you about our day there. The first thing we saw when we got there was this big hot air balloon. Kitteh was dying to sit on one ever since she saw the movie “Up” so she was really excited when Wai Quan who was showing us around took us there.

We queued up for a while and watched as it went up and down taking different people. It finally came to our turn. We hopped on and took a picture.

When the balloon began to rise though my paranoia kicked in. I started worrying about what happened if I fell off or the balloon “popped” or something ridiculous like that. Then I don’t know what happened but before we gained much altitude, we landed again. The operators told us that the winds have become really strong and they decided that they need to let it rest for a while.

Kitteh was disappointed but I was… secretly relieved.

So after pulling Kitteh away from the hot air balloon, Wai Quan gave us a tour of the campus. The first thing we saw was this showcase of what looked like a race car right at the front. We had no idea what it was so we went to check it out.

There were a few students from their School of Engineering there at the showcase and they explained it all to me. Here’s something that I NEVER knew existed.

Apparently in recent years, engineering students from universities all around Malaysia take part in this tournament called the Formula Varsity Race. They are all tasked to design AND build their own cars. They have to do everything of having a race car team. Everything from the engineering part of it, to finding a driver to even finding sponsors to help them fund their project.

This car that students of Taylor’s University made cost RM50,000 to build and can go as fast as 100km/h. It also happened to be the varsity champion in the race against other universities by a big lead.

How cool is that! While I was at university, all I spent my time doing was coursework or studying theories. These students here were building actual cars and racing them!

I asked them what they wanted to do once they graduated and they all talked about a career engineering and designing cars. They even mooted the possibility of working in a race team like the Tony Fernandes’s Lotus F1 Team.

After we were done checking out the race car we went on to tour the rest of the Lakeside Campus. The whole campus cost some RM450 million to build.

We checked out their Student Life Centre that was normally packed during weekdays we’re told. It’s a place for the students to organize non-academic activities. They have ping pong tables, foosball table, a keyboard, and a corner to watch tv!

Kitteh noticed the foosball table, grabbed a feel of one of the bars and then said “Woo this is a good table”. I wondered how she could tell and she told me a bit about how she used to play foosball too.

We then moved on to check out the other facilities. Apart from the class rooms and lecture theaters we checked out their computer labs. Like this one here that was filled with Macs to teach students how to edit videos.

Then we came across something that got the playful side of us out. Under the Taylor’s Law School, they had this thing called the Moot Court. Sort of a mock courtroom where law students can go there for a real life courtroom experience and practise debating at hearings.

Kitteh decided to do something acting on her own. This is Lawyer Kitteh presenting her case and defending her client.

And this is Judge Kitteh and Judge Tim listening to an argument by the prosecution but being skeptical about it.

My favourite though was this picture of Kitteh. We were supposed to pose pretending to be in a discussion but she put on her exaggerated argument face.

Seeing that we were getting too carried away with the moot court act, Wai Quan pulled us away. Only to bring us here…

Taylor’s University Lakeside Campus has its very own studio where people could record and edit audio and music.

Kitteh jumped in and pretended to be a recording artist… like in 200 Pound Beauty.

Again before we got too carried away, Wai Quan pulled us away. We were brought to this Gallery where art and design students could display their work.

And this automation and robotics lab where we saw this robotic T-Rex being made.

I insisted though that we checked out their library.

The library has always been my favourite place at university. It’s where I spend a lot of time studying near exams. It’s just fun studying together with friends because that way you feel pressured to study rather than be distracted by your computer or by your bed when you do it at home. This library was pretty neat. It had all sorts of seating arrangements. Some for quiet study, some for heated discussions and some just for lounging around. It even had a mini theatre to view videos, a computer lab with PCs and MACs and a 24/7 study room in case any students were inspired to cram at 4am!

The coolest part of the whole visit though was learning about their Hospitality, Tourism and Culinary Art Courses. Before visiting the campus that day, I didn’t think much about Hospitality Courses. I thought that you would just learn how to manage a hotel and that’s about it… but I used to wonder why you needed to do a course for it when you could just …. Learn on the job.

Then I sat through a talk by the Deputy Dean – Yeoh Tay Boon who was also in charge of the School of Hospitality, Tourism and Culinary Arts.

He talked about how yes in the past, there weren’t any courses specific to hospitality or hotels. But today there are… and they teach you not just the very basics of running a hotel or customer service but things like accounting or yield management. Yield management is pretty interesting. It’s like where the hotel decides out of its 100 rooms, they can afford to sell 20 rooms at a discount but the 21st room then goes up at its usual race.

The yield manager’s job is to manage this. At Taylor’s though they took it to a whole new level. Throughout the campus there are restaurants and bars that are run by students from their School of Hospitality, Tourism and Culinary Arts.

Tangerine Deck – overlooking the campus’ lake

Some facts: Taylor’s School of Hospitality, Tourism & Culinary Arts is Southeast Asia’s largest and most established hospitality and tourism school. They have been around for 25 years now, and last semester alone, they had 3,200 students! To fit all these students the school built a range of specialized facilities to better equip them to what goes on in the working world. In fact, we were told that even in terms of area, the school is probably the largest hospitality school in South East Asia, beating schools in Singapore, Indonesia and Thailand! These facilities include:

• 14 culinary suites including a Chocolate Room, Garde Manger, Pastry Kitchens, Artist Kitchen and a Culinary Bar & Theatre;

• 6 full-service restaurants (ranging from fine dining serving, Asian, lifestyle and multiservice);

• 3 training restaurants;

• 3 hotel suites;

• 3 front office receptions of varied concepts;

• 2 tourism practical rooms;

• Travel agency

• Wine laboratory

Bet you’re thinking then what the heck it a “Wine laboratory” right? Well a wine laboratory is a special lab for wine demonstration and tasting. It’s equipped with artificial sunlight and lighting panels so that it’s easy to pay attention to the colour of the wine.

There’a also this theater that really looks like the set of Chef Wan’s cooking show. It’s called the “Manifestation Theatre”. That’s where they do their beverage and culinary demonstrations for students to see.

If you’re wondering how students are going to be able to see anything that goes on in a frying pan if they’re sitting at the back of the theatre. It literally has one of those cameras in cooking shows where it zooms in on what you’re preparing or cooking and projects it on a big screen.

Then of course just like in any cooking world, there are the “kitchens”.

Taylor’s has five hot culinary suites for preparation of appetizers and main course meals and three pastry culinary suites for preparation of desserts. There are also Artist Kitchen and Cocoa Room for food, chocolate, sugar and ice carving. Now out of the “Culinary Arts” side and into the “Tourism” side. I thought this was something interesting.

In the school they have two rooms equipped with Internet and Customer Relations Service System (Galileo), fax and phones. Students can plan, design, create packages, do airline bookings and negotiate with industry suppliers here. All of these contribute to learning how to design different inbound and outbound packages. Then on to the “hospitality” side of the school is where I think they took it the furthest. Taylor’s University has a real hotel open to public that will be run only by students of Taylor’s! It’s called Ruemz,. It‘s catered to business travelers to Subang who want to stay at this hotel laboratory which is Malaysia’s first. It’s located on campus in the building here on the right, and is scheduled to open early this year.

We went to check out the hotel. This is how the lobby is like.

And these are how their rooms are like.

Ruemz also has their own blog where they will conduct product reviews to the industry. Find out more at http://www.ruemz.com/blog

I thought that was really so interesting…. How Taylor’s University has really taken education to a whole new level. From the Racecar project by the School of Engineering to the hotels and restaurants by the Hospitality students… students there don’t just learn theories but they actually get hands-on experience. I kinda wish my student days had more hands on experience but I guess it’s great that we have it now in places like Taylor’s.

There was so much more that I had learned from my visit to Taylor’s Lakeside Campus Open Day even though I’m passed being a student. If you’d like to visit their campus too, they’re having their Campus Day on the 8th and 9th January 2011. You’ll get to see the campus then and even see what kind of courses you want to pursue from the huge Open Day Booths at their Multi Purpose Hall.

Or you can just check out their website www.taylors.edu.my

Note: Some people have noticed how I’ve stopped referring to Kitteh as Kitteh but now as Shorty. Just like how I stopped referring to her as Princess but as Kitteh some months back. The thing about Shorty and I is that we somehow come up with different names to call each other every and then. Some are cute and romantic, some are not. These nick names come up as a result of certain things that happen in our daily lives. Like lately Shorty did something that made her look like the cute red monster character in the iPhone game Mega Jump, so I called her Mega Jump for a while.

The latest though is…. she calls me Fatty and I call her Shorty. Haha I know it’s hardly romantic and more platonic than anything but that’s just the way we are. We’re like best friends that just happen to fall in love.

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Every year I normally spend New Year’s Eve at a private house party with some friends somewhere. This year though Shorty and I decided to do something different. We decided to actually go out and witness some of that New Year’s Eve action on the streets. So the 11 of us started off with dinner at Cafe Vivo in Pavilion. Some of us was too shy to have their pictures on my blog so I’m just going to focus on the ones who weren’t.

That’s Leon and Gin.

And of course Shorty and Ringo.

The food was pretty good. Service though wasn’t as good as the food. After dinner I insisted we go for ice-cream so we went down a couple of floors and had Italian ice-cream at this Gelato parlour just before it closed.

The plan was that after dinner & dessert we would take a walk from Pavilion to Cangkat Bukit Bintang. That was where we wanted to spend our New Year’s Eve. So we got out Pavilion only to see people EVERYWHERE on the streets of Bukit Bintang.

I had never seen Bukit Bintang this packed before in my life. The roads were flooded with people so much that 3 lanes for cars became 2 or even 1 lanes. Cars had to move very slowly past the crowd. A number of people in the crowd were walking around armed with those sprays that spray out snow like stuff. People were running around spraying at one another though they left the innocent passerbys like us alone. Except for one guy who saw Ringo and thought to himself “Hey that’s a nicely dressed up girl, let me mess up her hair with this” and gave Ringo a good spraying.

Lucky for Ringo he only managed to get a bit on to her hair but that was enough to piss her off. I took a picture of Ringo and she looked sad on the outside but I can tell on the inside she was burning with rage.

You don’t mess with a girl’s hair… you just don’t.

We took some 20 minutes trying to squeeze through Bukit Bintang to get to Cangkat. My friends were worried. They thought the crowd was really rowdy and they wanted to break out of there as soon as they could. I on the other hand…. perhaps naive as a child, thought that it was amazing. I loved the atmosphere there. I mean there’s only that once in a year where everyone would come out and hang out in the open like that… all waiting for a countdown. Everyone was smiling and happy!

Besides there were a lot of cops around to make sure nobody did anything violent or over the top. The cops even sent their K-9 unit equipped with a dog so big that everyone couldn’t help but stare.

Shorty described it more as a wolf. Shorty likes big dogs anyway. When talking about dogs, I always said I would like a small cute dog that ran around the house but Shorty always wanted a dog big enough for her to put on a saddle on it and ride it.

As dangerous as everyone thought the crowd was, it obviously wasn’t dangerous enough for us to stop and take pictures there.

After a long struggle we finally reached Cangkat. The street on Cangkat was busy but relatively more quiet and felt safer than it was at the adjacent Bukit Bintang.

All the outlets there seemed to be having this huge Heineken party people have been tweeting about.

So we chose Little Havana owned by someone we happened to know. We sat down and we ordered some Heineken while we hung out and waited for the fireworks.

They gave us this neat little Heineken bottle opener. Gin loved it and wanted to take it home so badly so we conceited it to him.

At the end of the night though I think he FORGOT to bring it back because I didn’t see him carrying it. All that fuss Gin… all that effort and you forgot to bring it back!

Then came the 2 minutes before midnight. Someone in the bar announced that there was about a minute left to the countdown so everyone got ready to count the last 10 seconds down. Just before it happened though we heard a loud bang and the sky lit up. Further down Cangkat, they had already released some Fireworks to usher in the New  Year. So we skipped the countdown and everyone in Cangkat ran out of the bars and stood on the street to watch the Fireworks. It was simple, probably not as elaborate as the one in Dataran Merdeka or something but it was good enough.

All we need for New Year’s Eve is good company… and fireworks. So that was how we spent the New Year’s Eve of 2010.

Happy New Year everyone. From Shorty and me.

Whenever I reach the end of the year I always look back and think to myself how the year has passed so quickly. I wonder then what I did the whole year. So I do a couple of things. I go through my blog archives and I go through all the pictures I’ve taken for the year. Those two things tell the story of what I’ve done in the past year.

That’s the thing about blogging or being a blogger. It’s not just what you publish online but it’s also the discipline you have to take pictures wherever you go. Pictures always tell a story.. of what you’ve done or what you were doing back at a certain time. Here’s just a quick summary of the things I did in 2010.

Early January was the first time I’ve started using the Kindle.

Ming bought it for me for a Christmas present the year before. It remains today an awesome gift. When it comes to reading books, nothing beats the Amazon Kindle.

I went to East Malaysia for the first time in my life. It was for the filming of Project Alpha Season 2. We shot a few episodes in Kuching and one even in Kenny Sia’s gym.

Like a week after Kuching I had to leave again for London for the shooting of another episode of Project Alpha there. It was my first time going back to London since graduation so I took some time to meet up with some of my old uni friends who were still there.

Julia, my British Born Chinese friend that always amazed me how she sounded totally English when she spoke English with her accent and totally Hong Kee when she spoke Cantonese.

and Adrian who is working at the Bank of England now.

Took a walk down memory lane too. Visited my old University College London where I spent 3 years of my life.

and even visited the old council flat I used to stay in as a student.

Spent a bit of time on a food adventure too.

Had my typical English Breakfast.

Went back to Alounak, my favourite Persian restaurant in Bayswater.

and actually went for lunch at Maze, a Gordon Ramsay restaurant.

Dropped by Miu Miu at the later part of the trip to buy Shorty a gift. Met a salesgirl there who happened to know all about Nuffnang 🙂

Got back to Malaysia just in time for Chinese New Year. Played sparklers for the first time since I was a little kid.

That’s me playing it with Shorty.

Back in KL the Nuffies had a Chinese New Year lunch because Robb insisted on having his Yee Sang.

Felt really bored one weekend with nothing to do so Shorty and I decided to make Oreo Truffles. Turned out to be quite a hit.

Had a little Nuffie BBQ at my place.

Saw the biggest pint of Guinness I’ve ever seen in my life (made out of balloons).

Went to AMP Radio and met up with some of the Era DJs 🙂

Headed off to visit our office in the Philippines. Here’s the first dinner we had with the team there.

After that dinner we went to this really nice bar where people could go up and sing a song they wanted to sing with the backing of a live band. I went up and sang “How to Save a life” (badly).

I wouldn’t have done it without the help of the Filipino Nuffies… and the booze.

The next day we had dinner at Jay’s house. The cook for the dinner that night was this TV celebrity chef in the Philippines they referred to as the Martha Stewart of the Philippines.

Met Hannah there too.

Came back from the Philippines and then made a trip to Singapore with Shorty to visit Universal Studios there.

Ming booked us a luxurious night at Capella. A once in a lifetime kind of experience because it’s too expensive to stay more than a night.

Since we were having a luxurious night, Shorty and I dressed up and went for a good dinner with some friends too.

Came back from Singapore in time for the Project Alpha Season 2 launch. Filming was done and it was time for the blogger launch at Cineleisure Damansara.

Moved into my new place.

Nuffnang and Gatsby held Malaysia’s Largest Blogger Gathering with over 500 bloggers at Berjaya Times Square one afternoon.

Everyone had a sticker with the number they were. We hold that record still till today.

Went to Malacca one day for my favourite Chicken Rice Balls.

I can never get enough of that and it doesn’t matter if I have to queue. I spent all the time queueing just taking pictures with Shorty here.

Went to Japan with the Jipaban team in September for a trade show.

Had Xiaxue, Ringo and some other tag along too.

Popped by Tokyo Disneyland for a day too right after the tradeshow.

Right after Japan I headed back to the Philippines for work.

Came back in time for the Nuffnang-Vaseline party at Lunar Bar. One of the few cocktail-classy kind of parties we’ve ever had.

After that I headed to Hong Kong for some meetings. Took this picture while waiting for the people I was meeting to come into the meeting room.

Shorty and I celebrated our 2nd anniversary. Got Firdy to make us these little clay figurines.

Went for the Horeca Temptations party at Seven Ate Nine with Gin and Coring.

Took a flight one day and remember seeing this Firefly attendant wearing an Air Asia cap.

Attended the Glitterati Plus Open Meeting at Taylor’s for the launch of our new program for bloggers who want to be really active.

Went to San Francisco after that for the Web 2.0 Summit.

Ming and I visited the Google office and many other offices of Silicon Valley companies then.

Over the weekend I made a quick trip to Vegas too. Just to check out how it’s like.

Came back in time for the Merry Guinness Christmas party.

December came and we went for our first Nuffie company trip ever with the staff from Nuffnang, Nom Nom Media, Netccentric and ChurpChurp.

We went on a cruise.

And that everyone was my year.

I did miss out one part of it though. My business trips to the Nuffnang Australia office but I’ve lost all those pictures because my Macbook’s hard disk crashed some time in the middle of the year. Sucks but that’s life.

Hope you guys had a great 2010 too. I wonder what 2011 has in store for us!

I went back to my hometown Penang for Christmas. I haven’t been back for a few months but this time is the first time in many many months that I actually took the time to go around Penang. The previous trips back I hardly went out. Spent all my time at home.

This time I noticed quite a number of things that are different in Penang. Before, the streets in the town area around Komtar and all that have always been infamously known for being dirty. Now they are clean. So clean that I hardly find any waste around the whole area. I drove around to the other parts of Penang and notice the same thing. It’s so clean that it reminded me of Singapore.

For a long time I’ve been hearing about the great work the Penang state government has been doing with the state but I’ve never really seen it for myself until now. There are a lot of other things. Every Penangite I talk to knows what the state government has done and is really really happy with it. So to that I just have to say. Kudos to the Penang state government for doing a great job!

The other thing I noticed about Penang this time round is the huge development. There are countless new apartment buildings in places that I never knew existed and even malls in the oldest places of town. One of the new developments that is pretty cool though is called Straits Quay.

It’s sort of like a mall-restaurant-bar-area in the new housing area Tanjung Pinang. The best way to describe Tanjung Pinang for me is that it’s kind of like a Desa Parkcity but by the seaside. When I went there, most of the shops of Straits Quay weren’t open yet but I could see from the shops that were already open that it was going to be really cool.

For one, the shops that you had there weren’t your common shops that you find in ever other shopping mall ie Giordano etc etc. There were a number of boutiques or even art galleries there. Then comes the restaurants. They were restaurants that before were never found anywhere else in Penang and were the kind of places that I would really love to eat at.
I took a walk out of Straits Quay and walked around the seaside.

Around me were people walking around or taking their afternoon jog. The houses nearer to Straits Quay are newer so they still haven’t got anyone living in them yet but I hear they’re all sold out.

In fact I hear that a Terrace house in Straits Quay now costs over a million ringgit. Notice how the houses in Tanjung Pinang though have a very colonial kind of theme. The houses here don’t look anything like the typical home and they’re all white. I feel that theme though gives it some identity…. especially in a place like Penang that’s one of the World Heritage Sites.

I just realized now while blogging that I didn’t take any pictures of the inside of Straits Quay. What I did take a picture of though was the entrance where they had this huge Christmas tree there.

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and an Audi on display in front of a luxury car showroom they had there.

In the next few months though I’m sure I’ll be back. Once the rest of the shops open up and Straits Quay really comes to life, I’m sure it will be a big thing in Penang. Something Penang has always needed.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Today I realized that I am the worst uncle ever. Woke up this morning realizing that I didn’t buy any Christmas presents for my little niece and nephew. So I rushed to ToysRUs in the morning to do some last minute Christmas shopping.

Bought my little niece this little pink computer because she always likes to sit on our laptops when she sees us working on our computers. So I thought it would be nice for her to have a computer of her own. She was excited, played for it for a short while then got bored. Turns out iPhone or iPad games are a lot more fun to her than these little education games.

I wonder why these toys haven’t upped their games yet. It’s still having the same old black and white tiny LCD screen they did some 10 years ago. Come on… times have changed, at least have a big colour screen or something.

My nephew who is just a couple of years old though loved his new gift. He’s a big Toy Story fan so I bought him…. this Buzz Lightyear Buzz Space Mobil!

He loved it!

The fun in Christmas.. is giving presents. More than receiving them somehow 🙂

Merry Christmas everyone!

When I was in Las Vegas last month, the one thing I wanted to see was the Bellagio. It’s known to be one of the most luxurious hotels in Vegas right next to Caeser’s Palace.

I’ve been lucky to have been to Vegas before but that was when I was a little boy. Back then I was staying in the pyramid-like hotel called Luxor and I remember seeing a whole lot of hotels being constructed. One of them was called New York New York and another one called Paris. I remember people saying then that there was going to be a big rollercoaster on New York New York and Paris was going to have an Eiffel tower to it.

Last month, I actually got to see the hotels all completed and open for business for years.

Since then more hotels opened up. One of them was something I always heard about on TV: The Bellagio. See I hear all about Las Vegas because I love the TV Show not ironically called Las Vegas as well. It’s a TV show about a team of people running a fictional casino hotel in Las Vegas.

I also know a bit about the history of Las Vegas because I read a book about Vegas some time back (can’t remember what it was called). About how it came about and how Steve Wynn played a really important part in it. Here’s what I remember from it.

Steve Wynn was a pioneer when it comes to Las Vegas hotels. Before, hotels in Las Vegas used to be simple. They had basic amenities and avoided being too comfortable because they wanted people to spend more time in the casinos than in their rooms. Wynn changed that when he built the Mirage.

It was the first Las Vegas hotel with a theme. It had a forest in the inside and a volcano on the outside.

After that he went on to build a family-oriented kind of hotel called Treasure Island which was Pirate themed. It was again another first in Las Vegas. It was only after he brought these kind of hotels to Vegas did other hotels focus on themes like Paris Las Vegas, New York New York or even the Venetian today.

Then one day he had the idea to build a hotel where the theme would be LUXURY. He found it odd that in a city like Las Vegas there wasn’t yet a hotel whose main focus and theme was LUXURY. So he started work on an almost 4,000 room hotel known today as the Bellagio.

The Bellagio when it was built was the most expensive casino hotel ever built costing a total of $1.6 billion. According to the book, that didn’t even include another $400 million in which Wynn spent on Art which be bought from auction houses all over the world. It was with building The Bellagio did he find his passion in art since any luxury hotel had to have some level of fine art.

The Bellagio, as beautiful as it was also happened to be his downfall. Mirage Resorts was Wynn’s listed company which built and owned all his hotels from Mirage all the way to the Bellagio. Because he was so passionate about making sure the Bellagio was perfect, he spent a lot of time and money on the project. So much that his shareholders began to worry and eventually the share price came low enough for a competitor of his to buy him out (MGM).

The book went on to tell how that was a down in his life. Some sort like how Steve Jobs was feeling when he got kicked out of Apple decades ago.

So it’s because of this story of Wynn that the Bellagio was something I always wanted to see. I wanted to see how something a perfectionist spared no expense to create looked like. The Bellagio was indeed beautiful in real life. I didn’t get a chance to stay there because the rooms were just too expensive though I made it a point to come back one day and try it out.

The Bellagio is known for the beautiful fountain show here.

I took a video of the fountain and wanted to share it here but I watching the video, I realized that it really doesn’t compare to seeing it in real life. So for that reason, I’d say… don’t spoil the experience by watching a video of the fountain. Make it a dream to one day be able to go to Vegas and see the fountain with your own eyes 🙂

So there’s a really simple version of The Story of The Bellagio 🙂

Ending Note: Since Steve Wynn sold Mirage Resorts (which included to Bellagio) to MGM, he started another a very successful hotel of his own called Wynn. He was apparently really against naming the hotel after himself but was convinced by research that showed his name brought a premium perception to the hotel and allowed it to charge higher rates. Steve Wynn today is today worth $1.5 billion and is one of Las Vegas’ Legends.

On the 3rd day of the Nuffie cruise, the ship stopped at Phuket in Thailand. It’s amazing. You’re doing so much on the ship sometimes you forget that you’re actually going somewhere. Then one morning you wake up and instead of seeing ocean as far as the eye can see, you see Phuket.

Standing on the balcony I saw some jet skis circling our ship. We all got together and took a boat from the ship to the island. As our boat left the ship, for the first time in two days we saw close up how our ship really looked like from the front.

When we got to shore we got on 2 vans that took us all for lunch. Believe it or not, each van could fit some 15 of us. I tried taking a picture of all of us packed into the van like sardines but failed.

All you can see of me is my forehead and my hair.

Some 15-20 minutes later we reached our destination. We were going to have lunch in this beautiful resort there.

I think it was called Andara Resort or something and it costs some…. well a lot of money to stay there. We were just there for lunch at a Thai restaurant there that had some really good reviews.

We ended up taking two big tables to fit everyone in.

Here are some pictures with some of the Nuffies there.

After our lunch though we all decided to split and go free and easy. Some of us wanted to go for a massage, some wanted to play water sports and some wanted to go to a shooting range. I decided to follow the small group to a shooting range. The van took us there for free because they get a commission from the shooting range for bringing tourists there.

We all got a mixture of guns. Everything from a 9mm handgun, to a shotgun and an M4A1 Carbine. My favourite was the Carbine. It has hardly any recoil and it’s deadly accurate!

I think we got cheated by the shooting range though. We all bought like 10 bullets of each gun to share but we ended up shooting much less than we bought. We didn’t fight it though… by the end of some 20 minutes, we decided that we had shot enough guns that afternoon.

Took a video of David here shooting a shotgun. We all laughed in the office when we watched it because of how he jumped back and shouted “Woaahh”.
The shotgun does that to you. Gives you a kickback that you would remember.

After time at the shooting range we went to the beach to meet up with some of the Nuffies.

I went with David to the water and just sat in the water while the waves hit me. I somehow forgot that I was still wearing my glasses so when the wave hit me once I dropped my glasses into the sea. I shouted out to David and told him what happened.

He was like “Ohh man.. you’ll never find it”.

I was hopeful though. So I just put my hands into the water and groped around for it. Believe it or not… I actually managed to find it.

After lazing around in the water, we decided to go jet skiing. I don’t have any pictures of that because… well we’re not allowed to bring our cameras there but jet skiing is one of the most fun things ever. It’s soo liberating. It’s like you’re moving so fast on a wide blue open ocean with nothing in your way. Makes you feel…. so free… right there and then… not one bit of stress of the world comes to your mind.

We had so much fun that we went again right before the sunset. The second time, David and I decided to share a jet ski. It was getting dark when suddenly our jet ski’s engine died and failed to start. We were just sitting there floating in the ocean as the sun slowly set.

I asked David
“Dude… do you think we’re floating away from shore or towards shore. Because if we’re floating away… we’re fucked”.

David panicked for a while then used his feet to try paddle our jet ski towards the shore but we gave up after some 30 seconds when we realized we were going nowhere. Lucky for us we were jet skiing with a few other Nuffies and they came to help us out. They couldn’t do anything but sooner or later one of the marshals from the shore saw us and came over. They refueled the jet ski and helped us get it started again.

We went back to the ship after the sunset. This time we were having a pool party there.

We’re like the party animals on the ship. Whenever and wherever there was a party we would all be there.

This time they had a live band there. When Wondergirl’s “Nobody Nobody” came up, the girl Nuffies all decided to go up and do the dance.

Here’s a video I took of them doing that.

After the pool party we adjourned to the club on board the ship and bad things happened. I drank way too much Guinness and some other stuff that I ended up getting myself pretty drunk that night. It was badd… badd… but that night gave us a lot of stories to tell the next morning.

What a fun day.

My Blackberry had been giving me some problems lately. For some reason whenever I pressed the “a” button once, instead of just one “a” coming out, multiple “aaaaaa” comes out.

Imagine how frustrating that is when you’re sending messages on a daily basis. “Baaaaaaby I’m coming home right now. Whaaaaaaaaat do you want to do aaaaaafter dinner?”

The problem was getting so severe that I was tempted to buy another Blackberry but I love my current Bold 2. It’s a great phone and I have no urge to change to anything else. So what I did was I visited my friend Eric of Blackberry Housing. He’s the go-to guy in KL when you want to get your Blackberry pimped. I visited him in his new office in Bangsar and in just an hour he got it all sorted out for me. Turns out the problem with the “a” key was just a really small problem. Beneath the keypad there was some residue that made it conduct the signal sooner than the key is supposed to. Once he wiped off that dirt, everything was back to normal.

In the process he stripped apart my Bold 2 and this is how your Bold 2 looks naked.

Such a small device…. yet so powerful!

And this is how the back of it looks.

I remember how the old mobile phones used to look soooo much bigger and yet the phones today does so much more than they did back then. Ahh technology.

After Eric fixed my “a” key I also decided to pimp my BB. I was spoilt for choice but I ended up with this one which was a little bit of a mix and match.

Notice the blue along the front borders is a bit of the glossy shiny kind. The back for this particular case was also of the same kind of blue but I decided that if the back was all shiny blue my phone would look totally “Jeng”.

So I opted for this one.

I love my new BB now. It makes you feel as if you changed to a completely new phone and all for less than RM200 bucks.

If you wanna pimp your BB you can check out Eric’s site here

Or if you want iPhone or iPad accessories you can check out his Jipaban store here.

On the second day we were all up early for breakfast.

I think it was the ONLY day that we were all up before 9AM. The reason? Because it was time for the “work” part of the trip. We dedicated half a day (or slightly more than that) for everyone to get an update on how the overall Netccentric Group (Nuffnang,ChurpChurp,NomNom etc etc) was doing around the region. We went through the history. How we went from like 2 to 70 full-time staff in 3 years… and the challenges we face from this growth.

We acknowledged the things we had done right and are still doing right but we also acknowledged the problems that we’re facing with the growing company. We wanted to get everyone’s input. How we could do things better than what we are already doing.

One process of it though was ideas! We wanted to come up with new things so one of the exercises we had was where we broke up everyone into many groups. Each group had a couple of hours to collectively come up with an idea of a new product that we should offer. After that, each took turn to present their idea to everyone. There would be a jury to decide which was the best idea in terms of creavity and also whether it made business sense. A prize was offered to the team with the winning idea.

The winning team came up with a really good idea and it’s something we are really launching as a product in 2011. After we were all done with the work part of the day,  it was time for everyone to go free and easy. Everyone went to do whatever they wanted to do on the ship.

Some of the girls went to the pool to relax.

Ming and I though went to play Bingo!

We didn’t win.

By the time we were done with Bingo, it was almost time for dinner. That night was FORMAL night. That means everyone was expected to dress up. So the girls went back and put on their dresses and looked their best. The guys did the same. When we all met again we all looked like different people. Everyone looking grown up.

Here are some pictures we took that night before and during the dinner. Some of the ladies.

More of the ladies 🙂

Me with gents!

And this was when some of us were trying to get together for a group photo.

After dinner though we went ahead to do a Nuffie Tradition. Every year right before Christmas we would all do a Secret Santa. Meaning everybody drew lots and had to buy a present for someone. Then at a Christmas dinner, you would have to explain to everyone why you bought that present for someone. It doesn’t have to be expensive… just thoughtful.

This year we did our Secret Santa on the cruise since it was the one time in December that both the Malaysian and Singaporean teams would get together. We all squeezed in Ming and my room.

And we ordered Champagne.

There was a whole lot of presents that went round that night and it was exciting finding out everyone’s Secret Santa.

Like Clara here was Angeline’s Secret Santa.

But Robb was Angeline’s Secret Santa.

My Secret Santa Was Nick Davis.

He explained how he had talked to my gf about what to buy me. He at first wanted to buy me XBOX games but realized I had almost everything. So then he thought since I was so into games, instead he would buy me an offline game (trying to “ungeek” me). So he bought me a Poker Set.

I don’t really play Poker but I promised him I will learn 🙂

The set weighed like a ROCK. It was DAMN heavy.. and he was stopped at Singapore’s Security check-point because they thought he was carrying a bomb or something in the case. Every year the Nuffies also do something nice for Ming and me. This year they made this… apparently they took turns to stitch it.

If you look closely you’d notice that it was the mascots for all the companies under Netccentric.

From left is Nom Nom’s monster, Nuffnang’s stickman, ChurpChurp’s bird and Jipaban’s shopping bags.

The whole Secret Santa thing took hours because there were just so many of us. I wonder how we’ll do this again next year especially if we were to include the Nuffies from the other offices. It was though… a great way to end the day.