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How To Follow Your GF Shopping

Posted on October 20, 2009 admin

In the past few weeks, Princess and I have been looking to buy our outfits for the Nuffnang Asia-Pacific Blog Awards in Singapore this Friday. I initially wanted to just go in my suit but Ming insisted I go in a tuxedo so I ended up having to go buy a tux and almost emptying my bank account.

Then I had to go through a process that most bfs find painful: Following the gf shopping for her dress. Over the years though I’ve learned ways to ease this pain. Here’s how you can make the whole process a lot simpler.

1) Don’t fight it

Fine we hate shopping and doing things we hate makes us grumpy. So when you walk around with your girlfriend, you give a bored looking face. When she asks you if a dress is nice you just say “It’s ok” and then go back to playing with your phone.

The truth is, shopping with your girlfriend is a bit like getting your tetanus jab. The more you struggle, the more painful it is. So what you gotta do is this.

Look like you FUCKING LOVE SHOPPING! That you’d rather follow her shopping than play beach volleyball with Jessica Alba and Kate Beckinsale.

Follow her around and when she tries on a dress and asks for your opinion give her one. And I don’t mean just “It’s nice..”.

I mean a real opinion like

“I think the cutting and all is nice but the colour isn’t really nice. I think the yellow is a bit too pale, makes the dress look a bit old.”

So she really takes it all in.

What’s the point of doing all this? It helps her decide quicker and when she does decide quicker, it cuts down your painful shopping time from 6 hours of walking around to maybe just 2.

Don’t lie for the sake of getting it over with quickly though. She’ll know you are and she’ll never ever listen to you again.

2) Be Patient! Wait for it…. wait for it….

Ok here’s how we guys shop. Correct me if I’m wrong.

I went to Pavilion to look for a tuxedo. Went to Zegna, asked for a tux.

They brought out two different types. One that cost RM12,000 and the other RM9,000. I kept my cool and pretended that it was a reasonable price eventhough inside my head I was going (HOLY SHIT!!!). Acted cool, ran out of the shop and never looked back.

Then went to Hugo Boss. Asked for a tux. Was quoted a much much cheaper price and said ok. Tried it on.

Like it. Buy.

End of discussion. It didn’t matter to me if there was another suit somewhere else in Pavilion that was potentially a bit nicer and a little bit cheaper. It didn’t matter. Just like all guys, here’s how we shop: We come, we see, we like, we buy.

Women though don’t usually shop like that and that’s something we will all gradually learn. She may find the best dress in the world in the shop but she won’t buy it. No not yet. She’ll want to go looking around some more. Don’t grumble.

In fact, since you know it’s going to happen already why not just suggest it.

If you find a dress that you like then say “I think it’s really nice darling but lets go see if we can find something better. If not then we’ll come back and buy it”.

Yes accept it…. with or without you, she is going to go look around and chances are come back and buy the same dress! You might as well accept it and be the one to suggest it. Besides it makes her decide quicker too. Otherwise you might end up spending another 20 minutes in the shop while she looks at herself in the mirror.

3) Smile

If you’re lucky and with your cooperation, sometimes this ends really quickly. Like within a couple of hours. So give yourself a smile then. Because your girlfriend will probably wanna give you a big kiss for being such a good patient shopping buddy.

But most importantly, she will have a nice dress that you liked and you suggested she buy.

Princess’ dress for the Nuffnang APAC Blog Awards is really cute. This picture doesn’t do justice but you’ll all see from the Nuffnang Blog Awards pictures.

The thing about buying dresses for formal events though is that it’s a bit of a marathon. Not a sprint. It doesn’t end at the dress. After the dress you’ll have to move on to finding the right shoe for the dress (unless you’re lucky enough that she bought a black dress, because chances are she has black shoes) and accessories.

Glad shopping is done. I even find it a bit of a pain for myself. Don’t like shopping… unless it’s buying gadgets or something. *sigh* I’m such a geek.

Can’t wait for Friday.

One Year

Posted on October 17, 2009 admin

On the 10th of October, Princess and I celebrated our first year being together.

We did the usual couple things 🙂 The night before we just stayed at my place and watched a DVD.

Unveiled the presents we gave one another.

I hid this present of hers in my cupboard and got her to look for it.

The week before she bought me a bowtie and cummerbund that I’m going to be wearing for my Nuffnang Awards tux.

The highlight though was this really nice card she wrote for me. Can’t show the content because it’s …. private 🙂

But I’ll show you a little drawing of us she made.

All on the eve of the 10th of October. Princess blogged about what we did on the day itself so if you want to read it, check it out here.

To be honest, we don’t know for sure if that was the exact date because our relationship didn’t exactly start with a “Will you be my girlfriend?”

“Aww… I’d love to be your girlfriend”.

It kinda started off with a kiss and we can’t even remember now when exactly that first kissed happened.

The story is we really started off as really good friends. We started off getting to know one another by talking quite a bit on MSN and eventually we started to go out here and there. I was really happy where we were. For the first time in my life, I had a “best friend” who was a girl and that was really fun to have.

It all changed one day though. I was telling one of my good friends about this “best friend” I had who I could just really click with. He said something rather unexpected to me.

“You know, I think it’s great and all that you have this girl as a best friend. I used to be really close to a girl like that too. We kept it platonic all the way but you know what? Even up till today, I can’t help but wonder how it would’ve been like if we were a couple and if we would’ve been a great couple”.

Those words of wisdom from this friend of mine (he knows who he is but I shan’t say it out), is what changed my mind about what I wanted with Princess.

Many nights later I found Princess and myself alone in the car on the way to supper. We had just finished clubbing with some friends at MOS. We had a moment alone so I talked to her. I told her what my friend told me and how I didn’t want to live life wondering what this could’ve been.

I told her that I thought we could be really good together but at the same time I’m in no hurry at all. I didn’t want her to be my girlfriend that night or in the next few nights even. All I wanted to tell her was that I don’t want to be just friends anymore. I promised not to make a move on her until she was ready.

Weeks later while sitting in my room chatting after I had cooked her dinner, she leaned forward and kissed me.

That was how it all started… (I think… I mean if a girl kisses you means on already right?)

Since then we’ve both done so much together.

We went to Macau.

Hong Kong.

Disneyland

and Phuket where we met these two friendly Indian tourists.

She’s followed me over to the Philippines too for a business trip.

Then over to Melbourne to visit the Nuffnang office there where we also caught up with some friends.

We’ve done our fair share of stupid things together.

We’ve at least once or more taken bad pictures of one another.

Me taking this picture of her in Macau when she was trying to remove a strand of hair on her tongue.

Or us here doing some… ogre thingy.

We’ve both had multiple MSN nicks since getting together our nicks have always been something related to one another.

It started with her MSN nick being “Koala” and mine being “Tree”.

and now she’s “Pebbles”, I’m “Bam Bam”

I think Ming at one point found it annoying.

We’ve attended two weddings of our friends.

Andrew and Jayen’s.

and Pierre and Lay See’s.

The couple whom we always referred to as the “perfect couple”.

To think that all this and more happened in a time capsule of a year. It’s so exciting to know that there’s so much more to look forward to. More moments of happiness, more moments of sadness, more moments of adventure but most importantly, having all those ups and downs of life with someone you’re happy to walk it with.

*My favourite picture of all time.

Quick Notes

Posted on October 14, 2009 admin

Man I’m so tired now I feel like just kicking back and reading to sleep. Then again I think about all of you logging on to my blog waiting for an update so I’ve decided to do a quick one.

1) Last weekend I was at the Playboy Roadshow in MidValley.

It was so much fun. Some Nuffnangers went as Bunnies to win a Prada and Burberry bag. They got so much attention it almost looked like the whole mall was crowding around them.

I even looked upstairs and there were so many people on all 3 floors above crowding around the railing looking down.

I guess the Lamborghini and hot models helped attract that attention too.

2) Was in Singapore since Monday. Flew there for work, had an important meeting on Tuesday with some people from Europe. Learned that some people really know how to live life. One of the French guys we met has a restaurant in Singapore. So what he did was for the fun of it, he named items on the menu after some of his friends in his group. Like… “Timothy Tiramisu”. Only that it sounded cooler with European names.

3) After my meeting, the rest of Tuesday was spent mostly in the office of Nuffnang Singapore. Realized how hard the team in Singapore were working for the Nuffnang Asia-Pacific Blog Awards happening next week.

Some of my colleagues there have been sleeping over at the office for nights and nights in a row. I guess it’s a good thing that our office there feels nice and homely.

4) Woke up this morning to the sound of my baby niece playing around outside. Played with her for a while then had to go to work then off to the airport after that. She saw me bring my suitcase out with me so she knew that I was leaving and not coming back for a while.

She tried to hold me back, blocking the front door and then she started crying. The maid had to carry her away while I sneaked away. We both said Byebye. *sigh* Made me almost not want to leave for good.

If I have a daughter like that one day, I would so spoil her. Buy her like the biggest Pooh bears in the world.

5) Went to the Nuffnang office and worked on some plans with Clara on the blog awards then shortly after headed to the airport to catch a flight back to KL.

6) Waited in the airport while the flight got delayed for like 45 minutes. Ended up waiting for a long time but fortunately I had a book with me 🙂

Just started on it not long ago. So far so good. Did you guys like this book? (No spoilers please!)

7) Reached back to KL only to catch a massive traffic jam on the way home in the taxi. The taxi driver was getting so annoyed with the jam I was afraid he was going to drop me there and then and say “JALAN KAKI BALIK!!!”. Fortunately he did not and he graciously sent me to my door step.

8) Came home then went straight for this HP event. They took a picture of me behind this backdrop when I got there. One of the promoters jumped in for the picture.

Then when I left the gave me this picture as a souvenir.

I’m still trying to think of how to explain this picture to Princess if she sees it at my place.

It’s a picture? Not a video?

Posted on October 12, 2009 admin

Princess and I spend a good amount of time playing around with my webcam on my Mac. Seriously, the amount of time we waste just taking pictures/videos and laughing at each other is just… crazy.

We first started with the usual normal webcam poses.

Then we started doing more.

Then we started playing with the settings.

And we started fiddling around more with the settings until we ended up with things like this.

So just a week plus ago, we decided to do a birthday video for Su Ann using our same silly features on my webcam.

Here’s the video we came up with.

We laughed so hard even after watching it again and again and again

I have the funniest girlfriend. She makes me laugh all the time!

Top 3 Places in Singapore Princess Would Visit

Posted on October 11, 2009 admin

Princess and I have a little plan. We’ve both decided to write our Uniquely Singapore post for our Nuffnang Asia-Pacific Blog Awards in a bit of a different way. Instead of writing about things that I wanna see in Singapore, I’m going to write about 3 places that Princess will want to go to in Singapore and why.

In return she’s going to do the same for me and we’ll see who gets how many right.

So here are the Top 3 Places that I think Princess would visit in Singapore.

3) Asian Civilizations Museum.

What it is?

Housed in the grand Empress Place Building, the ACM features more than 1,500 artefacts displayed over 14,000 square metres of gallery space. The museum’s growing collection traces the cultural roots of Singaporeans through its focus on Southeast Asia, South Asia, China and the Islamic world of West Asia – (Source – Visit Singapore website)

Why she would go for it?

Princess studied Asian Studies at Mount Holyoke. That’s right, while most of us studied things like law, accounting, economics, she studied Asian Studies. So somehow she has a rather curious interest in Asian history.

2) Ma Maison in Central

What it is?

This really quaint Japanese restaurant in Central where they serve really different kind of Japanese food. Food that Princess used to eat quite a bit while she was studying in Japan.

Why?

Princess spent a year studying in Japan. She speaks fluent Japanese and also has a thing for Japanese food. It’s not just the usual Japanese sushi and stuff that she’s crazy about. She tells me that people in Japan don’t really eat sushi on a daily basis. They eat other stuff too, like the food you find in Ma Maison sometimes. She loves it there.
Ming brought us once there and she loved it. Think she’ll probably wanna go there again.

1) Far East Plaza

What it is?

Shopping mall which is a bit of a Singaporean version of Sungai Wang. You can find really cheap hair extensions there (according to her) and the kind of clothes shops where you will only find one type of one top. She likes stuff like that. Not clothes from a typical brand but one of a kind or two of a kind type of clothes which are also cheap. This is a recent dress she bought from Far-East.

Why?

Princess spent the afternoon today shopping at Sungai Wang. Need I really explain further?

Check out Princess’ version of this post here where she guesses the places that I would go for.

Locking myself out, 1st Anniversary weekend and Playboy!

Posted on October 8, 2009 admin

This week started off with a fun grocery shopping trip with Princess on Sunday.

I love grocery shopping. I don’t know what I love about it but I think it’s because of the memories I had growing up. I remember following my parents grocery shopping and very often I would wish they would buy me some of the chocolates on the aisles we past by but they often said no.

Now that I’m all grown up and all though I feel so powerful. I cart down the aisle and load up my trolley with as much goodies as possible… well that and household essentials.

I also decided for the first time to try Nutrigen (instead of buying loads of Yakult like I normally do). Will tell you guys how that goes.

I drag Princess along with me. She hates grocery shopping… but she often agrees to follow me anyway 🙂 *sayang*

Monday was a typical work day for me with usual work decisions to make. This week’s decision is whether to hire more people into the Nuffnang team in Malaysia. This year has been crazy. Nuffnang as a group has hired a lot of people in all our offices around the region.

Yet I always worry about hiring too many people. It’s just a fine balance to strike. On one hand it’s having just enough people to work efficiently so that people aren’t overloaded with work and end up making mistakes. On the other hand it’s making sure the company is not too bloated.

Anyway, after work on Monday around 7PM I got down to my office car park to go pick Princess up. I was going to pick her up from work then head to her home for dinner with her family. I opened the trunk of my car, chucked my bag in there but just a thought crossed my mind on whether I remembered to bring something back from the office. So I put down the car keys I held in my hand and started rummaging through my bag.

After finding what I needed to find I zipped up my bag and shut the trunk. That was when I noticed my car auto-lock itself. Yes, my car has this really silly (or smart) mechanism where if you unlock the car then open and close the trunk, it automatically locks the car out.

Right after I shut the trunk and my car locked itself I stood still for a few seconds to digest what had just happened. I left my keys in the trunk of my car, and now my car was locked. I HAD LOCKED MYSELF OUT OF MY OWN CAR. That was when I let out a loud yell in my office car park “FUUUUUuuuuCCKKK!!!!!!”.

Nobody was around to hear me but if there were witnesses, I tell you they would’ve handed me the Award for Idiot of the Year.

Haih… anyway the rest of the week is going to be really fun. For one, this Saturday is Princess’ and mine first anniversary of being together. We’ve got some things planned out and I’ll blog about it next week when it’s all done and over with.

We’re also taking a couple of hours out of our day to hang out with some friends at the Playboy road show happening in Midvalley this Saturday to launch their new fragrances.

They’re going to have this huge stage thing there.

And I think a number of Nuffnangers are going there as Playboy Bunnies

so that they can win a Burberry or a Prada bag.

Ringo happily these bags for us 🙂

If Princess decides to go in her own bunny ears herself I think it’ll just be soo adorable.

Anyway if you happen to be there, come by and say hi to us ok? Don’t shy shy!

Click here for more details.

Until then everybody…

When students bunk together…

Posted on October 5, 2009 admin

When I was in Melbourne with Ming and Princess like a month ago, Pinky brought us to her place.

She was sharing a flat with a few of her flatmates and she brought us in for a little tour.

The place really brought back memories of what my student life was like and what I had as a student.

1) Messy living room with leftover empty booze bottles from house parties lined up on the bar.

CHECK!

2) Big loaf of bread for breakfast and for mid-night supper.

CHECK!

3) Year long supply of instant noodles from Malaysia for other hungry moments when you don’t feel like eating bread.

CHECK!

4) Microwave to cook instant noodles in

CHECK!

5) Fridge with some basic cooking essentials. With eggs, pasta sauce, etc etc.

CHECK!

6) Broadband modem and wireless router for everybody (everyone’s main source of entertainment)

CHECK!

7) Unwashed pots and plates left in the kitchen sink.

CHECK!

8) Take-out menus and fast food delivery numbers on fridge for times when you’re too lazy to cook.

CHECK!

9) Simple bed room with just a bed and study table at the end.

CHECK!

10) Rubbish bin that badly needs to be emptied.

CHECK!

11) Pinky furry handcuffs…

Uhhh…

Sunday TV

Posted on October 4, 2009 admin

I just realized that I didn’t post up episode 4, 5, 6 and 7 of Princess’ Project Alpha.

So here’s something for you guys to watch on a lazy Sunday.

And that was the end of Fourfeetnine aka Princess 🙂

After Princess was Nicolekiss. Now Nicole was a blogger that Michael (the producer of the show), really wanted to feature because she was a travel blogger who had documented a lot of her travel experiences in videos.

When Ming first watched it in the studio, he said

“Sorry partner, I hate to say this but I think Nicole’s episodes are better than Fourfeetnine’s”.

I defended my gf of course! But I thought Nicole’s episodes were really interesting. Particularly like the episode about Cambodia.

I also liked the way the first episode started off. Nicole wasn’t in there.. but I liked the way it started off. Very different from the typical starting episode.

Anyway, here they are.

This should keep your Sunday busy 🙂

Okay to avoid putting too many videos on my blog. If you’d like to see the rest, and also Redmummy’s that is coming out throughout this week click here.

Have a great Sunday everyone!

I’m off to Klang for BKT now 🙂

Almost a year

Posted on October 2, 2009 admin

It’s a week before Princess and me’s first anniversary together!

Oh no… what do I do what do I do…

Done taking her for a short trip.

Done surprising her with a shopping experience

Done giving her a new phone she really needed when her old phone started to fail.

Done doing a video for her

Done having romantic dinners

Done cooking dinner with her (and later on getting food poisoning)

Done giving her balloons

Done surprising her with flowers

Done giving her a big stuffed toys.

Done writing her love letters.

Done it all..

Maybe we’ll just have a “romantic” steamboat dinner. Haven’t done that yet.

Ok baby?

At the Singapore F1

Posted on September 30, 2009 admin

Last Sunday, I went with Pierre and Ming for the Singapore F1. I’ve never been for an F1 race before. Can’t say it was something I was interested in at first but with all the hype over it and after watching it on TV last year I decided to go to Singapore to watch the night race this year.

The three of us got the walk-a-bout pass which only cost like SGD100 each. I think it’s like the cheapest ticket there. The other tickets can cost like SGD 300 onwards.

The bad thing about the walk-a-bout passes is that there’s no fixed place to sit with a good view. The good thing though is that you get to walk around along the entire track and get to stand right next to where the cars are driving past.

We spent the whole night walking around and stopped by the river at some point to have some drinks and Mister Potato, enjoying the view of the city.

Took a picture of Pierre too.

If you’re wondering why my pictures are so dark. It’s because all these pictures were taken with my iPhone camera. Princess took my real camera with her that weekend.

Later in the night we found ourselves in some part of the tracks where you had emergency teams waiting in place in case an accident were to happen. There was like a fire truck all waiting full of fire extinguishers at the back along with an ambulance all with people already inside them waiting to drive out the minute something went wrong.

It’s like they weren’t going to waste a minute by even standing outside the cars.

Funny thing though was that the next day we watched parts of the race again on TV and realized that there were a lot of things that happened on the race that we missed because we were at the wrong side of the tracks to see it. You know, car banging one another and all.

Overall, the experience of watching the Singapore F1 was AMAZING.

I mean it’s one thing watching the cars from an aerial view on TV. It’s another thing altogether standing right next to the track when they drive past. It’s really loud when they go past, so loud that we all had to buy these little ear plugs to put in our ears whenever we were near the track.

In the midst of buying the ear plugs, Ming also bought a Singapore F1 cap for all three of us.

It cost SGD55 each… something I thought was waaaay overpriced but Ming decided that it was worth it for the memory. Ming is like that sometimes. He has a slightly different view of life than a lot of people have (including myself).

Like if I were going to spend RM100, I would evaluate to see if this material thing I was getting was worth it or not. In this case for example, I would ask myself if the cap is really worth that much.

Ming on the other hand would value something not merely for its material worth but for the memories it brings. So in the case of the cap, the cap probably wasn’t worth SGD 55 but the memory of the 3 of us being there was… at least to him.

So in the hope of capturing the memory of it all in the photos we took, we all made sure we wore the caps the whole night.

I really really enjoyed the night. It was good fun walking around the track and watching the cars go by even if we could only see a car for like a few seconds before it zoomed right past us. I tried taking some pictures of the cars driving past but couldn’t manage to get any good shots with my iPhone camera.

So I ended up taking a video.

Here it is guys.

Cool huh?

I think I’ll go again next year 🙂

Timothy Tiah – Co-Founder of Colony, Kuala Lumpur Co-Working Space