Hey Everyone,

I’m in San Francisco this week for the Web 2.0 Summit. The Web 2.0 Summit is this big conference in San Francisco held each year. When I say big I don’t really mean big in the number of people that attend it because to be honest I’ve seen bigger audiences but that’s also probably because it’s an invite-only event (I was lucky to get an invite).

But when I say big, I mean big in the sense that they bring in the most powerful people in the tech scene to speak. In these two days alone, I have seen 4 technology billionaires speak and a lot of other very successful hundred millionaires. People that range from the Founders/CEOs of Google, Facebook, Zynga, Twitter, Linked-In, Adobe and every other huge significant player in the tech world was speaking at this conference. I will go into the details of each person maybe in the next entry.

I’ve always wanted to go to Silicon Valley to see what it’s like. It is after all the technological innovation hub of the world! All the huge tech companies have a base here. Everyone from Apple, Google, Facebook and etc etc. I never got a chance to go though or more like never really had an excuse to go. San Francisco is a little far to go for a holiday and besides apart from my New York trip this year, I haven’t really had much of a chance to go on a full-fledged holiday-only trip.

So when the invite for this conference came up, I decided to take a leap at it. So far I can tell you this whole trip was amazing. Not only from the conference but from the offices of the Silicon Valley companies I’ve visited and the people I’ve met.

It was a real eye-opener for me.

Let me  give you a bit of an insight. As part of the conference today, they got young aspiring internet entrepreneurs to go up on stage and each were given some 2 minutes each to pitch their ideas to the crowd.

These people were all smart. They spoke well, carried themselves well and sold their ideas very well. You heard all sorts of ideas for all sorts of different web innovations that you have never even heard of. One of the guys went up on stage to pitch the idea of his new dotcom called Path.

It was an iPhone app that helped you share photos with up to 50 of your really close friends. Why 50 friends? Because he had some research done to find that we only really have a maximum of 50 really really close friends that we want to keep in touch with online.

Or there was a guy who had lost a close friend of his in a car accident and got inspired then to start a site to store our memories of someone’s life. He called it 1000 memories.

Or even this site called Tokbox that allowed you to communicate with each other via video much easier. There were a lot of other stuff. Other iPhone and Android apps (Android seems to be one of the most talked about subjects now with its growth) created by people to try to make our lives easier. I even saw one of the Founders of Meebo share a new feature of theirs that allowed you to share bookmarks or links by checking into websites FourSquare style. Point of that was to help you find people with similar interest of you.

And here’s the thing. This is going on EVERYWHERE in Silicon Valley. I was having dinner tonight with some people and overheard was some guy pitching his mobile app idea to someone else. . Walk around the conference area during break time and you see young entrepreneurs with laptops pitching their ideas to potential VCs, hoping to raise money to pursue their dream.

It’s everywhere! Everyone has a different idea and there are so many Venture Capitalists looking to invest in the next Facebook or Zynga. Silicon Valley has that energy of innovation. Everywhere you go there are people with ideas, people executing ideas and people looking to facilitate the execution of these ideas. Many of these ideas fail but some of them become multi-million or even billion dollar businesses in just a span of a few years. It’s crazy!

Here’s the funny thing though. Contrast to the internet companies in many other countries (even China), the companies that start here focus on PRODUCT first before making money. That in theory sounds really good because yes you want to perfect a product before you sell it or just like what Google did, perfected search before it found the way to monetize it.

That works fine in Silicon Valley because there are many VCs who are able to give you a lot of money to put all the resources you need together and give you the time to build a good product. All that without feeling too much of a pressure to make money first. So the result of that is that yes… in some cases they make some really good products. I’m not sure if this kind of thing works back in SouthEast Asia since the VCs back home aren’t able to give you that much money to be able to buy you this time.

Being here also really makes me realize how small we are in the grand scale of things. Take for example Baidu.

Robin Li the Founder of Baidu was at this conference too. Baidu has a market capitalization of $36.5 BILLION (RM114.39bn). None of the companies in Malaysia OR Singapore are even close to having that kind of stock market value. MayBank which is one of the biggest companies on the KL Stock Exchange only has a market cap of RM64.41.bn in comparison.

From this trip alone I feel like I have learned and experienced so much. What’s more important perhaps was the macro perspective that this trip to Silicon Valley has given me. I now look at life and business very differently.

In the next few days I will find the time to blog about the speakers who spoke at the conference and my visits to some of the offices of Silicon Valley companies that I was lucky to be able to visit while I was here. This afternoon I visited the Googleplex in Mountain View and took lots of pictures to share with you guys.

This trip has been a really busy but productive business trip. We’ve been so busy I just realized that I’ve never even had a chance to properly do touristy stuff or sight-see in San Francisco.  Haven’t even seen the Golden Gate bridge. Oh well okay I gotta go to bed now guys. Tomorrow morning I’m going to visit Zynga, the creators of Farmville and one of the fastest growing games companies in the world.

It’s 7.12AM here in San Francisco. Everyone is still asleep but I woke up at 5.30AM and struggled to sleep more. Jetlag does things to you and it gets so much harder with age. I remember how when I was stil in university, I would hardly feel jetlag at all. Ming has a place here in San Francisco with a view of the city.

So I woke up this morning and watched the sun rise for a little. It was beautiful.

In a few hours I’m going to get dressed and go for the conference I came for. Got a really busy week ahead.

On another note, thought I’d share something I haven’t actually blogged or tweeted about. Every year Prestige magazine comes up with a list of Top 20 people under the age of 40. My cousin was in it last year and I think he won.

I’m in the Top 10 for this year and I think there’s a voting process for the Most Promising Male and Female but I think voting has ended already. Don’t think I actually was the Most Promising Male for this year but well one thing they did do was come up with this article.

Thought it was a really flattering article but well here’s to share it with you guys.

Going to try to get some sleep now before I go for my conference. So see you guys.

Updated: Sorry just realized the pics didn’t come out before. Have updated it now 🙂

Hey Guys,

Forgive me for the short updates but I’ve been really busy traveling around lately. Spent a few days ago in Hong Kong waking up to this view in my hotel room.

This is Hong Kong. The real definition of a “concrete jungle”. Everywhere you go there are buildings taller and as close to each other as you can ever imagine. I ended up staying in this hotel with a really really small room.

The room doesn’t look that small in this picture but really, outside this picture there really isn’t anything else except a really small study table on the side. The room seemed to have a lack of lighting too, was really dark at night in spite of me turning on whatever lights I could find.

Tonight though I’m leaving Hong Kong to head on a really long flight across the Pacific Ocean to San Francisco. Going to be really busy at a conference during the week and will be visiting the offices of some Silicon Valley companies there. Over the weekend though I told my Dad that I’m considering going to Vegas for a night or two if I have the time, just to check it out.
Today he forwarded this e-mail to me saying
“I know you are going to Vegas, don’t you ever try this! Whatever you say I still think it’s dangerous!”

The email had these pictures.

Heh Heh. My Dad knows me sooo well.

I’ll blog more from there ok guys? See you then!

Last last weekend I met up with some friends for drinks and my friend Wilson here got us to play some drinking games. There were a number of drinking games but one of the funnier ones was this one we called “Bunny ears”. So it starts with someone having “Bunny ears” and the people right next to him will have to do this “Surfer” pose. Then he can look around the table and then point at someone else. That someone else will then have to put up the “bunny ears” and the people next to him have to do the surfer pose. If any of them are slow, they will have to drink. You can also “bluff” the passing of the bunny ears by just pointing the fingers but not letting it leave the top of your head.

Anyway here’s a video we got from that night.

What are the drinking games you guys have played?

Hey Guys,

I’ve been really busy lately. Lots of things to sort out with so many things happening. Like yesterday I realized that my credit card got compromised. I was being charged by some unknown merchant and have ended up losing over RM350 or so. I’ve called to cancel the card already but *sigh*. I’ve just been having a bit of bad luck lately.

This morning though I’m taking a flight to Hong Kong on another business trip. Then after a few days there I’ll be flying to San Francisco for a Silicon Valley conference there that I’ll be attending. All in all I’m going to be away for almost 2 weeks so I’ve had so much work to clearup before I go. I tried traveling as light as possible this trip so I’ve packed it all up into a medium sized bag. My coat and all.

Will update again soon when I have the chance. And yes I’ll blog about San Francisco when I get there.

I’ve only been there as a child and I always remembered it to be the most beautiful place on Earth! I always dreamed of living there one day… not sure if that dreams going to come true eventually but at least I get to stay there for the week of the conference. See you guys then!

Ok here’s what I’ve been up to lately. On Thursday lunch, some of the Nuffies decided to drop by Pizza Hut Pavilion to try their new 6-cheese pizza. It’s loads yummy!

The people at Pizza Hut were telling me how they took quite a long time to perfect this formula and to have it suit our local taste buds and I think they’ve managed to really get this right. I hope they keep this on the menu for a loong time.

There were quite a number of us so we ended up splitting into 3 different tables. Here’s Nic Davis with the girls.

Me with some of the other girls on the other table.

And Nic Chay, Robb with the rest 🙂

Over the weekend long Deepavali weekend, I heard a lot of Malaysians were heading down to Singapore and a lot of Singaporeans coming down to Malaysia. I was one of the former. I had to go down for some meetings I had to attend. So yes, it was unfortunately a little bit of a working long weekend for me. I did manage to catch up with some people though.

Caught up with Kenny, Xiaxue and some other friends for lunch at this peking duck restaurant in Paragon.

Ming was really proud of it and he was telling me how it was much better than the peking duck we had in Beijing itself.

It was good. I’m not sure if it’s just us but we never seem to be able to find good food in Beijing. Everything there is always really oily or served cold.  This duck though was good!

It was crispy and the meat was really tender.

Had some other dishes there too like the usual sweet sour pork and all and that was great. Kitteh went shopping with Xiaxue for the rest of the weekend while I worked and did other stuff. Before I knew it though, we’re all set to go back to KL, the weekend was over. We packed our bags, including Kitteh’s proudest addition to her luggage. Her pink polkadot Hello Kitty bag.

A very nice reader of hers apparently helped her buy it from Taiwan. I wanted to share a bag with her for this trip to Singapore but she insisted she carry an additional bag so she could use this pink bag. It became a little bit of a burden though. When she found out she had to check it in, she panicked and she asked the staff to mark it as fragile.

That’s right, a LUGGAGE bag with nothing but clothes in it marked as FRAGILE not to protect what’s inside the bag but to protect the pink bag it was.

Then when we were walking around the airport I accidentally kicked her bag. At first she just let out a soft “Heeeyyy!”, then it registered to her that she was using her new pink bag and she repeated her “HEEYY!!!!”, only louder and in a lower more angry voice. Okay now that I’m done talking about a girly thing, let me share something for us geeks!

When I was over at Ming’s place he showed me his Limited Edition version of Starcraft 2. It came in this really nice box that opened up like that.

Inside there was the game, a DVD on the making of the game, the soundtrack and a comic of it.

Plus it came with Jim Raynor’s dog tag which was actually a USB flash drive. Loaded inside the drive was a full version of Starcraft 1.

And Ming also managed to get this poster of Starcraft 2, signed by the lead designer of the game.

People were apparently bidding for this Limited Edition of Starcraft 2 up to the tune of S$500 per copy. Ming though managed to get it for much cheaper.

Ming described Starcraft 2 as a game that took geniuses to conceive and make. My Kitteh though would beg to differ I’m sure. She’ll call it a game that destroys relationships. Hee heee.

This Post is Sponsored by Strongbow!

Anyone know what Strongbow is?
I was curious one day so I sent out a tweet and asked people if anyone out there loves Strongbow

and I got quite a lot of responses to it.

Strongbow is the most popular cider in the UK, accounting for more than half of the cider sold in Britain (according to Wikipedia). In a mug it kinda looks like beer but it’s not exactly beer. Beer uses malted barley as a sugar source for the fermentation process whereas cider uses apple juice (Both beer and cider require yeast for the fermentation process though).

Unlike beer too, it’s not bitter. It’s actually sweet so some people I know who don’t like the bitterness of beer go for Strongbowinstead. Last weekend I decided to go for a drink with some of the guys and girls at The Social in Bangsar.

Instead of our usual beer though, this time we decided to order Strongbow!

Strongbow is a really nice change to the beer we usually drink. Kitteh took a sip from me and really liked it too which kinda made her regret ordering her usual cranberry juice.

Coring on the other hand went all out for Strongbow along with the other guys.

There’s more to Strongbow though than just being a drink on its own. After the first round of Strongbow, the guys started talking about how the many ways they can drink Strongbow and the topic of “Snakebite” came up. “Snake-bite is a cocktail that involved mixing beer and cider, topping it off with a dash of Ribena.
Huai Bin was eager to try it out so we asked the waiter if they could make us one but they didn’t serve it then.

So we decided to take matters into our own hands. We ordered more Strongbow, a jug of Tiger beer and a shot of Ribena.

Then we started to mix it all… and I don’t know if it was the booze talking but somewhere along the lines someone suggested we make a video of this and post it on YouTube. So make a video we did.

We made one mistake though, apparently we’re supposed to add the Ribena last according to Eric but no matter! This was the result.

I slowly took a sip and guess what I thought…. IT TASTED DAMN BLOODY GOOD! It tastes some sort in between beer and cider. Like it’s not as bitter as beer and it’s not as sour as cider normally is. Because Ribena is sweet though, snake bite tastes less sourish but much sweeter than the pure Strongbow. I passed the drink around and everyone loved it so we ordered more Strongbow and made more.

I can really see myself drinking lots more Strongbow either in its original form of made into “Snakebite”. I really recommend you guys try it out… try both and you’re ought to find a kind of combination that you’ll like.

Both Huai Bin and Eric here can testify to that. ☺

It was 4 years ago in August 2006. I had just come back from London after graduating and I had just made the decision to not join an investment bank but instead to get together with Ming to start what would eventually become Nuffnang. We had assembled a small team in Penang to start building the first version of www.nuffnang.com.

It was a huge step for me. A leap of faith. Turning down an opportunity to work at a good job that pays well and jumping really into the unknown. Into something that may eventually fail. I needed inspiration so one day I decided to go into a bookstore to find it. As I was walking by the magazine section, this cover of BusinessWeek magazine caught my eye.

Kevin Rose his name was. The guy who invented Digg. The article I read talked about how he made $60 million in just 18 months after starting Digg.com, which was at the time one of the most popular websites in the world. I read his whole story… and that inspired me to go on. At one point Google even offered $200 mil to buy it but the deal didn’t work out.

Fast forward to 2010 though and things seems to have changed. Digg is no longer one of the top websites in the world that it used to be. It also announced that it was laying off about 1/’3 of its staff and now people online are wondering whether it’s going to die in the next few years. It’s not all gloomy though. Digg.com still has some 15,000,000 unique users a month visiting it’s site and that’s a lot of traffic. Now the thing about the world is that the media magnifies your success or failure. Online now you can find lots of good articles about Facebook and Twitter now that it’s breaking new boundaries but you’ll also find articles about the failures. Digg isn’t the only one. There’s MySpace who was once the biggest social networking site of all time, Bebo who was sold by AOL for some less than $10 million when it was bought two years ago for $850 million and who can forget Friendster.

Bebo’s Founders who cashed out big time from AOL buying them

These ups and downs of life don’t only happen to internet companies. They happen to businesses from all industries (Richard Branson is one of the entrepreneurs today that I admire the most simply because he has gone down and managed to pick himself up so many times). We just happen to hear about the internet companies the most. Knowing these things about business remind me every day how not to take anything for granted and how to keep working hard and be thankful for whatever we have today. Today Nuffnang, ChurpChurp and all the companies we have under our wing are still growing at a really fast rate but who’s to say where we’ll be in the next 5 years. We’re nowhere in the comparison of huge sites like Digg or MySpace that have made a huge impact all over the world. If they can go down, anyone can.

The Founders of MySpace who sold to NewsCorp for $650 million

The silver lining about these stories is that it’s not like all of them have gone down to zero. MySpace is still one of the Top 50 sites in America at least and the founders have somehow along the way made money. MySpace was sold to NewsCorp for $650 million back then (which are numbers we never hear on internet companies in our part of the world). Kevin Rose from Digg is said to have made some money and was one of the early investors in Zynga and Twitter.

I guess no matter where their companies are or how they end up, they are no doubt still successful people to me at least. They have at least the experience, the memories and the stories to tell from whatever they have achieved from their lives. Like they say, it’s better to have tried and failed, than to never have tried at all.

I wonder where Facebook and Twitter will be in the next 5 years.

PS: You can read the article I read on BusinessWeek 4 years ago here.

Last night I went for dinner at Bermuda and Onion at Changkat. I was going to have dinner with Gin, Leon, Coring, Jestina and Kitteh. The last time we all met up last week we had a really budget dinner. Duck rice. So we decided that we were going to spoil ourselves last night and wanted to have a nice dinner at a fancy restaurant. Kitteh who loves Japanese food suggested this restaurant in Imbi called Fukuya. I checked the website out and it looked really nice.

Then over lunch at work, Angeline told me that she went there once and it was like RM250-RM300 per head (although she said it was DAMN good). I got a shock. I thought then maybe Angeline just ordered expensive dishes like raw fish and all sorts of different kind of Japanese seafood. She then told me it was a set. So I went on to the website to check it out. I managed to find the menu there and realized it was the kind of traditional Japanese restaurant where you could only order sets. So you wouldn’t be able to go there for dinner and get away with just ordering appetizers or a soup.

We decided that we were feeling “rich” but not that rich. So we decided to go to one of the restaurants in Cangkat Bukit Bintang for dinner. I Googled “Cangkat Bukit Bintang” and found lots of food blogs talking about Bermuda and Onion so we decided to try it out.

We had the hardest time finding the place only to realize that they didn’t have a signboard. It was being fixed or something. Food there was ok… but the mushroom appetizer was awesome. They fried it with butter and garlic or something and Kitteh made sure she ordered another

After dinner we went for Horeca’s Temptations event at Seven Ate Nine.

It was a night of booze and ice-cream! Who knew they could make such a good combination. The bartenders that night spoiled us with all sorts of different cocktails that were different combinations of booze and ice-cream.

And the waitresses there spoilt us with all sorts of drinks and Haagen Dazs ice-cream. All that with great company and you have one wonderful night. We ended up staying till midnight when it ended.

Here are some pictures from the night. Me with Ringo.

Gin here looking all comfy with Coring.

Gin and Coring are both my primary school friends whom I’ve known for almost 20 years.

Heck Gin actually goes back 21 years with me.

Me with Kitteh!!!

Me uhm… about to gobble up the jelly desserts with booze that was made by the bartenders. It was yummy. Had quite a kick too, which explains why my face later on turned red.

Ringo, Kitteh, Me and Ah Quah.

Huai Bin here looking all happy!

Some Nuffies were there that night too but I forgot to take pictures with them. Also met some of my readers there too but again I’m not sure what was with me then but it didn’t occur then for me to take pictures with them! I think it’s because by the time I met everyone else later in the night I was already a little happy and high!

To those of you who managed to come. Was great meeting you guys. Always nice to meet people the faces who read this blog 🙂

Did you know that the average person farts 12-18 times a day? Everyone has a fart story somehow, either stories where they fell victim to the stench or when they got away with it. I know a particular someone who is known to fart in the car, turn off the air-con, lock the windows and laugh “HAHAHA!!!” while the other person suffered.

I though that was funny and I decided to try it on Kitteh one day.  Our car was at the Taman Tun traffic light waiting when I farted, shut off the air-con and locked the windows. She didn’t suffer quietly. She unlocked the windows (since the switch was in the middle), stuck her head out and used her hands to frantically fan the gas from inside the car out. All this drama while the family in the adjacent car looked on at us. I think I remember a grandmother in the back seat shaking her head.

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So last night I was sitting up in bed with my legs crossed one and my laptop right in front of me, thinking of what to blog. It was the end of a really long day and there I was in my shorts and a t-shirt that I bought in Penang some 10 years ago for RM5. The trusty t-shirt had been washed some 5,000 times in the past year and it’s only gotten more comfortable.

Suddenly I felt an urge to fart. I looked around the room. I was alone. Nothing like having your own private fart with nobody around so you don’t have to say “excuse me” or pretend that it wasn’t you. I leaned to one side and let the gas go. Right after that Kitteh appeared being all cute and manja. She saw me on the bed sitting down and she ran straight for me shouting “ARRRrrrrrr!!!!” (not sure what the Arr means but it’s just one of her many expressions) attempting to hug me only to fall short and bury her head in my lap instead. Thinking that she was feeling dazed from her slight “miscue”, she lay still on my lap and said “Wanna puke wanna puke”.

Some 2 seconds later, her brain identified the smell the nose was sending to it and she realized what was going on. “FUUUuuuuuuccckkkkk YOU FARTED!!!!”. She rolled off the bed and fell on the floor. Then she stood up again and looked at me with eyes that said “I KEEL YEW!”. We looked at each other for a few seconds, then we both burst out laughing for the next 30 seconds.

That’s a recent fart story we had. What’s yours?