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Hello Paul!

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I’ve been out doing a lot of t-shirt shopping lately. Suddenly was struck with a t-shirt binge. There’s this really nice shop in Sungai Wang that I like going to. They sell these really cool t-shirts with really unique designs. One of them I bought recently is the one I’m wearing in this picture.
Notice the grey shirt I’m wearing with the teddy bear on the front. I thought it was cute.. though both Princess and I agreed that it bordered ‘gay’. 

I walked into the office the other day wearing this shirt. Robb saw me wearing a new shirt (leave it to the gay guy to notice these things) and yelled 
“STOP!!! New shirt ar? Let me see!”
I turned around to have my shirt face him and he suddenly let out a 
“FREAKIN GAY LAR!!!”
and everyone else in the office started checking out my shirt and laughing. Doria even came up to me just to take a picture of the shirt while mumbling to herself
“I can’t believe my Boss is wearing a shirt like this”.
I don’t care! I like my teddy bear shirt.
Just last weekend Princess and I went shopping again. This time to Pavilion. We ended up in Paul Frank.

I never really got the appeal of Paul Frank until just recently.
So I decided to go buy myself a few t-shirts.
Here’s one of the t-shirts I ended up buying…

(Never thought I’d ever find myself doing a “fashion blog dressing room photo pose” like that… isn’t life full of surprises)
In the process of my t-shirt shopping I spotted a really cute pink bag that I thought was made just for Princess. I reached for it then brought it down from the shelf to let Princess have a hold of it.
It looked perfect for her. The minute I saw this…

I knew I had to get it for her so I put it in my shopping cart too. I ended up buying 3 t-shirts and one bag in just 15-20 minutes. 

Princess’ Dad was just telling me the day before how men just shop really fast compared to women.
Guys walk into a shop, they see what they like then make a decision to buy it straight away. Girls on the other hand will try it on… then ask their friends about what they think then decide to walk around the mall to see if there’s anything better… only to eventually come back again to buy it.

This is how Princess is like when she shops
“I like this dress… it’s sooo nice…. but I don’t know if I should buy it. I think I’ll go look around first to see if there are any other dresses. Maybe I can find it cheaper somewhere else too. Nevermind I’ll go and if I can’t find anything else I’ll come back”
Guys don’t think about whether we can find a nicer t-shirt at another shop or anything like that. 
Here’s how guys shop: 
“ME SEE T-SHIRT. 
ME LIKE. 
ME BUY!!!”
We’ve got to be the easiest retail fashion consumers ever. No wonder the fashion brands don’t seem to spend as much effort marketing to guys than they do to girls. 
Anyway… Princess and I both went home that day with some new presents for ourselves.

I actually felt so much at ease and relaxed after all that shopping. Retail therapy really really works. At the end of the day Princess said 
“You like shopping!! I know you do!! Admit it admit it admit it!!!”
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Masked

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The haze was really bad today. When we were going to head out for lunch I brought a mask for myself. I asked everyone else in the office if they wanted any of my spare masks and everyone said “No“… except for a few. I guess everyone thought I was being a fag.
Then once we got out of our office building the stench of the haze got into the maskless people and suddenly all those ballsy Nuffies who wanted to brave the haze insisted they went back up again to get my masks. 
So we all ended up like this. That’s me in the red shirt.

Yes… so many months in with H1N1 and one of the first times I start wearing a mask is not because of the flu but because of the haze. Speaking of Swine Flu, Jojo nearly got a bit of a scare lately… thought she was infected with Swine Flu but fortunately turned out to be negative.

Seriously…  something has to be done about this haze. 
Fortunately the air improved by the time the afternoon came.
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The Way She Cries

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Princess is an extremely sensitive girl. She cries on almost every episode of Desperate Housewives whenever there’s an emotional scene and she cries at any movie that just slightly attempts to be sad.
I remember when we were watching “A Walk To Remember”, a movie she had watched many many times before. 

There was the scene where the guy brought the girl (Mandy Moore) to a park or something with a telescope and showed her some stars. It was a touching scene ok… nobody died in that scene yet. 
I heard sniffing next to me and when I looked over at Princess I saw her sniffing away with tears in her eyes, covering her face with a pillow from my couch. I asked why she was crying and while choking in her own tears she weakly replied
“He’s just sooo sweet”.
Every time she cries like that I think it’s really cute so I go
“Awwwww…” and hug her tight.
When I do that she normally lets out a small little manja sound. I always wished I could’ve taken a picture of how she looks when she cries while watching a movie.
And… today I managed to take one such picture.

Voila!
Notice her watery eyes.
My Princess is just so cute.
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Nuffie Family!

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Firdauz today out of the blue decided to come to work in a Baju Melayu. When we got the chance to we asked “Oi brahder! What’s the occassion? Getting married ah?”
He gave a boyish smile then said 
“Yes… getting married to Rina.”
True enough when we put them next to each other they looked like they were getting married so we rushed to take pictures of them… you know being bloggers and all.

Then we saw the opportunity to just take one group photo of all of us in the KL office. 
Well almost all of us… some of us were out busy meeting clients.. right David?
This is us looking normal.
And this is us doing a picture where the guys are supposed to be looking macho and the girls looking Kawaii.
I love the people I work with. They’re all so much fun!
That includes the Nuffies in our Penang, Singapore, Manila and Melbourne offices ok!!!
PS: To clear the air, Firdy and Rina are not married or even dating ok?. They’re just co-workers and Firdy was just joking.
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Stop Parking at the Handicap Spot!!!

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Nuffnang’s really active. There’s always some activity or some contest going on.
Recently there’s this DiGi MMS contest that encouraged us to snap a picture of anything that would make Malaysia a better place and hope for that change. I’m probably not eligible to win the contest anyway since I work permanently at Nuffnang but last night I saw something that INSPIRED ME to take a picture and send it over.

I was at Midvalley looking for a parking spot when I saw this group of middle aged people park their car on a “handicap spot”.  

You can’t see the spot so clearly in this picture but it was CLEARLY MARKED HANDICAP… so big that you could probably even see it from space.

I was driving past when I saw them get out of the car and I shot a stare at the driver. She was a woman somewhere in her 40s or so. Once she saw me staring at her with burning annoyance she pretended to limp while walking away from the car.  
Even if I gave her the benefit of the doubt and assumed that she really was limping genuinely from an injury or a cramp, you’re only supposed to park on that spot if you have that STICKER on your car. That sticker is proof that people deem you disabled enough to park there. If you’re limping, that’s a lot better off than the person whose spot you’re taking. Plus there were so many more parking spaces out there! Sure none of them were as close to the exit but still…
I don’t think it’s as small a thing as some of us may think it is. If you’ve been doing that in the past, please stop.
Make Malaysia a better place. Let us start by being considerate especially to the people who have been less lucky than us.
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I don’t spoil market… this guy does

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Our Nuffnang office on one side overlooks the KL tower and a nice city view.
On the other side which is where I sit, it overlooks the walls of some buildings right behind my office building and also the pool area of Sheraton Imperial.
Just a few evenings ago I was standing on my window looking down when I happened to see something peculiar. 
Right next to the pool and the deck chairs was something that looked like a small dining table for two. I squinted to get a closer look and true enough, it was a dining table all set up with table cloth, silverware and all.
I started paying a little bit more attention and when I looked down at the pool area again closer to the dinner time I noticed that they cleared out all the deck chairs.
Only the table was left on the pool area. On top of that they lit candles that came from inside the hotel all the way to the table.
And we could see all the hotel staff that would be serving that night gathering outside for a meeting.
They even brought out the chef.
I wanted to stay to see what happened but I couldn’t.. had to run off before the guy and girl came. So I’ll never know what really happened that night but if I had to guess… here’s what I think might have happened.
The guy brings the girl up the hotel elevator to the pool area. Right after she takes the first step out of the elevator, she sees candles lit all the way from her feet to a table for two that sat right next to the pool.
The guy would then say.
“Follow the candles”
And like a curious girl scout she walked from the elevator alongside the candles all the way to the table where the staff who would serve them that night stood waiting. There would be 3-4 of them. The chef, the restaurant manager, the hotel manager and their waiter for the night.
When it all finally sinks in, she shrieks in excitement but eventually gathers herself after 2 minutes of hysteria to sit down on the table. There would be no menus served that night.The guy already ordered her the special baked cod fish he noticed she always had every time they went to a fancy restaurant. She was a bit less simple when it came to the appetizer though. She always bounced around either the Caesar Salad or the Hungarian Goulash. He couldn’t decide so he ordered them both to be safe.
For music, he had a Quartet dressed in Tuxedos greet them both one by one when they arrived then played her favourite classical music, 8 feet away from their table throughout the rest of the night.

Towards the end of the night, just after the main course but before desert, he would take her hand and walk her around the pool. It is then that he would get on his knees, pop out the ring that he spent the last weekend picking out and say “Darling… I love you for everything you are and everything you’re not. Will you marry me?”
Then the girl would…..
Well I’ll leave it to you guys to come up with your own version of the ending to this story and post it in the comments ok?
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Catching up with Wilson the fruit king

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When I was back in Penang this week I got a chance to pay a visit to an old friend from primary school. His name is Wilson.
Wilson was a friend I grew up with from Standard 1 all the way until I changed school after Form 1. He stayed on till Form 3 then went to California to do his high school and later on college. He just came back to Penang from California about 9 months ago to help his family’s fruit business.

The business is called Chai Hup Seng Sdn Bhd. Back in the years when I was in school, Chai Hup Seng was the main distributor of fruits to all the major supermarkets in Penang at the time ie Gama, Komtar, Penang Plaza etc etc. I guess that kinda explained why back in school Wilson always had better toys and a better pencil box than I did. 

I had one of those old magnet open and closing ones. His magnet open/closing ones was the one that had 5 buttons on it which either open up hidden compartments or pencil sharpeners.

Now that Wilson has come back to do his family business things are a little different though. Hypermarkets like Tesco have come into play in Penang and these hypermarkets have the economies of scale to supply themselves without having to go through people like Wilson. Now his customers are decreasingly less supermarkets and more coffee shops or other retailers. 

I spent 1-2 hours in his shop talking to him though and business still seemed to be pretty good. I saw so many boxes of fruits get shipped out of the shop just in those couple of hours. The atmosphere in the shop is really something. I mean my friend Wilson can be talking nicely with me for a minute then suddenly he’ll receive a phone call from a retailer or a supplier and start shouting in Hokkien.
At one point I heard him shout over the phone in Hokkien
“OI!! U SAY 5 O CLOCK COME NOW STILL NOT YET COME… U WANT TO GET BEATEN UP AH!?!”
Later we talked about a common friend we had from school and I passed him that friend’s contact. Wilson called him up on the spot and shouted
“OI AH CHEAN AH!!! LU KIAM WA LUI AR?!?! (You owe me money ar?)
Now if someone called me up and said that to me I would most probably have said
“Yeah right… bullshit lar”
But Ah Chean replied
“Si meh? (Really meh?) “
Wilson was just joking though. If Ah Chean ever owed Wilson money anyway it would’ve been back in Standard 6 or something… and an amount like RM3.50 or something.
In between the interruptions and shouting here and there, Wilson and I did a little bit of catching up. He asked me what I was doing for a living in KL and I told him that I was working for this company that did blog advertising. He then shared with me the pressure he was now facing to grow this company that his grandfather had founded and how he was working on some ideas.
Then he introduced me to his wife.
Yes his WIFE.
When I shook her hand to introduce myself I shot a confused look at Wilson
“You’re married??? When?? But you’re only my age!”
“Ah I wanted to get married when there is still youth in me….”
Wilson’s wife is this Taiwanese girl whom he met in California.
She has a Masters and all but she’s now helping him with the family business that I’m sure he’ll one day be taking over. Wilson later told me that she was about to get married to someone else when they met but he managed to successfully convince her that he was the better guy so she married him instead.
*thinks about what he just said…
Speaking of which…. nobody had better come near Princess!!! *protective
Anyway, I ended the left his shop that day with an up to date picture on what a childhood friend of mine was doing and also a big box of apples for juicing.

Yes… I drink green apple juice every day.
It’s good for health… 🙂 
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Aunty Nancy

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I’m going to share something really personal to me today. Not something actually… but someone. Her name is Aunty Nancy.
To understand how Aunty Nancy came into my life, you’ll first have to learn a bit about my growing up. For most of my time growing up, both my parents were working parents. They spent a lot of time away from home working really hard to afford me the best education and the best lifestyle I could ever ask for as a kid. Knowing that they needed someone to watch over me and take care of me, they found help in Aunty Nancy who acted as our stay-in Baby Sitter for many many years.
Aunty Nancy was a mother herself at the time. She had 4 kids but she spent almost every day of the week with my brothers and sister, only taking some time off in the weekends to go out with her family. She watched us grow… from helping me with my Bahasa Malaysia homework in Standard 1 to even breaking up fights between my brothers and I as I grew into a teenager. She had many war injuries, from the childish but mean things we said to her to the punches from my brother that she deflected off me. Nevertheless she stayed with us throughout.
She wasn’t just any baby sitter. She taught us manners. She taught us how to greet people, how to behave around people and even small small things like how to bring our dinner plates back into the kitchen sink right after dinner. Every time we got back from school, she was there. 
Aunty Nancy eventually left our home when we all grew old enough to take care of ourselves. I went off to KL and then on to London to study but we kept in touch. Every time I came back to Penang I would look for her. She would find out what’s going on with my life and sometimes give me advice that she thought I needed at that point in life. When she first met a girlfriend I had in Form 5, she told me “Don’t break girls’ hearts ar!”
Up till today, every time I get a chance to when I come back to Penang I would go pay her a visit and if I have the opportunity to, give her an “ang pow” out of my salary. Just out of gratitude for helping shape me from the rebellious boy I was to the working man I have become today. As I slowly grew older I began to learn that Aunty Nancy had gone through a lot in her life. Ups that she often shared with us… and downs that she hid from us to protect us or to keep us from the sad realities of life some of us sometimes face.
Perhaps I hope that with these little things I do…. she may look back and realize that she had made some mistakes in life but she had also done some very good things. One of those good things… I hope… would be raising me.
A day after I visited her and gave her the “ang pow”, she called me up and said she wanted to pass me something. She had baked me this chocolate cake that she used to bake all of us while we were young.
I loved that chocolate cake and having another bite of it many many years later brought back memories. I don’t know if it was just because of the nostalgia the cake brought …. but either ways… it was a damn good cake. The icing is amazing and the cake is not too dry… but moist. I sometimes think that she would be able to sell this cake and make some good money.
Attached to the cake was a “Thank You” card.
And a personal letter.
In the card it read
Dear Aunty Nancy. 
While you may not read my blog or spend much time online at all. I just have to tell the world and have it documented somewhere in history… that it is me who owes you a “Thank You”.
Thank you for helping both my parents raise me to the person I have become today.

No matter where I am. You will not be forgotten.

I wish I could do more for you in the years to come.

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My Last Weekend of June 09

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Here’s how I spent my weekend 🙂
1) Princess and I tried to go to Urbanscapes but when we got there we couldn’t find parking. So Princess decided to get adventurous and go on to the muddy grass where a lot of other cars were parking. So I took my Honda Civic on a ‘jungle track’ drive and eventually ended up getting stuck in the mud.
Yes actually really stuck in the mud where we couldn’t get out. I was about to get out of the car to push it out of the mud when we eventually manage to gain some traction and get out of it. Here’s how the car ended up looking after that little adventure.
We both gave up on Urbanscapes after that.
And went straight to an automated car wash machine.

We spent the rest of Saturday shopping at Pavilion.

2) On the way back we passed a branch where people were putting up the CIMB sign.
I was amused… so I took this picture.
Princess didn’t think it was anything worth taking though… to her it was just people putting up a sign. She shook her head.
3) Sunday came and we woke up late again. This Sunday was a little different though. Like many other Sundays where I normally wake up earlier than Princess, this time she actually dragged herself out of bed and straight to do some work at her computer. 
I do this every morning but I’ve never seen Princess like that before. Ahh… what working life has done to my poor Princess.
4) Went to Midvalley later on. Princess’ old hair stylist was opening his own shop so she wanted to go give some support. We both went to get our hair done there.
By the end of the afternoon my hair was all over the floor and they weren’t allowed to sweep it away. For Feng Shui reasons or something you’re not allowed to sweep the floor on the first day of business.
4) We walked around Midvalley for a bit after that and we came across this.
NEW ZEALAND NATURAL.

I love New Zealand Natural!

To be honest, I never really discovered New Zealand Natural until just recently but since then I’ve been having it almost every time I get the chance to. I’m even a fan of theirs on Facebook. They sometimes give their Facebook fans some promotions.

My favourite flavour is Hokey Pokey… 
You guys have to try that… especially if you love Caramel. Today is actually a good time to try it out because it’s the 30th of the month and every 30th they have 30% off their take home packs. 
They have some other stuff too apart from just ice-cream like Flos and Juices that I hear are pretty nice though I haven’t had the chance to try them yet. They even have this Durian Flo that’s made just for Malaysians. 
Princess and I hung out in the NZN cafe for a while.
5) Then we went to Princess’ place later on to steal some books from her.
And to take her mum to Pasar Malam. We brought this little trolley thing and Princess somehow decided she had to pose with it.

6) Just when we’re leaving this little boy came up to us and asked us if we’d like to donate for his school. I remember doing things like that when I was back in school so we donated a little bit of money.

7) Then we headed off to the Pasar Malam and we came across yum yum

and also a perfect example of polite Malaysians.
8) We had dinner with her family later that night then spent some time watching TV clinging on one another.
I was going off to Penang the next day and coming back only at the end of the week.
We were going to miss each other….
Now that I’m only halfway through my Penang trip… and I’m missing terribly much already. Can’t wait to be able to hold her hand again.
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Timothy Tiah Timothy Tiah – Co-Founder of Colony, Kuala Lumpur Co-Working Space

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