Last week I attended the vPost-Nuffnang Christmas Party in Singapore, along with some of the Malaysian Nuffies. It was the first large scale cross-border Nuffnang party (think Nuffnang-Chipster Pajama Party) held in Singapore for both Malaysian and Singaporean Nuffnangers in collaboration with vPost (SingPost).

Just like all other Nuffnang parties, this was a costume party. The theme was that you were supposed to dress as anything that starts with any of the letters in vPost.

So you could dress as Vendetta or a Porn Star or even Timothy Tiah (For the letter T 🙂 ). So we ended up with some pretty interesting costumes. Let me show you guys a few pictures I took from the night.

I went as a Popstar (well actually a Korean popstar), so I dressed myself up a little bit and stole one of those giant stuffed mics I found in the Nuffnang Singapore office.

The girl next to me is Cindy from MDG, she went as Venus the Goddess of Love.

Our dear friend Kenny Sia went as an Old Man. Nobody recognized him there behind that mask. We were all queuing up to get into the event and when I told one of the bloggers in front of us that the Old Man standing next to me was Kenny Sia, he didn’t believe it.

All the Nuffies went dressed as something too.

Raine went as an SIA Air Stewardess but I can’t remember what Clara was supposed to be that night though. Clara please refresh my memory.

Ginny went as a Playboy Bunny and Vivian who is further to the right went as a Student. Sooo cute!

I also bumped into the famous Chipster Girl from Dweam who went as a Soccer Fan (or a Soccer Player).

Audrey went as a virgin bride and KY went as a Pirate. Not one of those Pirates of the Caribbean kind of Pirate but I think one of those Somalian pirates kind of pirate. A modern pirate.

The simplest yet one of the coolest costumes of the night though has got to be from FA who went as a…. guess what she is.

Yes… shopaholic. And all she had to do was grab loads and loads of shopping bags and carry them to the party!

The guy behind her is Jasonmumbles. He was dressed pretty normal armed with his usual camera but when I asked him what he was supposed to be he said “Photographer” (ISHHHhhhhhhh……).

The night was full of games with loads of prizes to give away with some really cool stuff that vPost managed to bring in. For example, when we all got to the party we had professional photographers take pictures of us behind the vPost-Nuffnang Christmas Party backdrop.

Then by the end of the party, everyone left with those photos printed on to official SingPost stamps. That means you actually had stamps with your photo on them and not just any stamps but stamps that you could actually use in the post office to send letters to your friends. I thought that was a pretty neat souvenir.
All and all, I gotta say the Nuffnang Singapore team did a wonderful job in putting the party to go. I myself wasn’t involved so it was actually my first time going to a Nuffnang Event actually pretty much as a guest more than anything else and I actually had a lot of fun that night.

The next major Nuffnang event in Singapore is planned for March, for our 2nd Nuffnang Anniversary. The first was held in Malaysia (the Pajama Party) where we brought down 100 Nuffnangers from Singapore down to meet 200 Nuffnangers in Malaysia. I guess we’re having this year’s in Singapore and bringing down the Malaysian Nuffnangers.

It’s still pretty much in the works so don’t get your hopes up ok people?

If things go well for Nuffnang, maybe next year we’ll do our 3rd Anniversary in Manila and the year after in Melbourne, Australia.

Guess what just happened not too long ago.

I got burnt by a curling iron that looks like this.
Don’t ask how, don’t ask why, don’t even ask who it belonged to…

THESE THINGS ARE EVIL!

I’ve got a burn blister now for Christmas.
Yes… it hurt. I shouted so loud it sounded as if I was yelling into a huge microphone.

At first I rushed to put toothpaste on it, then once I told my dear mother that I just burnt myself she jumped and said “BUTTER BUTTER… PUT BUTTER INSTEAD TO STOP A BLISTER FROM COMING UP!!!“…. so I washed off the toothpaste and put Butter.

Did it help?

Well… you tell me.

Update: I woke up this morning and realized that somewhere in my sleep last night while I was rolling around in bed or something, I burst the blister so this is how it looks like now.
I guess it’s going to scar now.

I should learn how to sleep without moving around like a groundhog.

It seems like we’ve made it a ritual where at the end of every year, we would have a Nuffnang Christmas Dinner/Lunch among the Nuffies from the KL, Singapore and Penang offices (all meaning as many of them who could make it).

The Christmas meal is also when all of us give each other our Secret Santa presents. That means weeks before the meal we are all assigned a person we’re supposed to buy a Christmas Present for and on the day itself we get to give that person the present.

Always adds a lot of fun to it. Of course, so that we make sure that it’s not about who buys the most expensive present, we make it a rule that the maximum cost of a present should be no more than RM100 (although Ming has broken that rule two years in a row).

This year we had our Christmas meal in this nice quaint restaurant in Singapore.

And rather than give us many long tables as would be the case in most fine dining restaurants, this restaurant gave us a nice private room with a big square table so everyone on the table can talk to everyone else.

The restaurant was a beautiful one, and the food was great but not as great as the company we had. Let me show you guys some pictures of the great Nuffies that always make me chuckle and laugh.

Here’s one with Robb and Nicholas.

With Cherie, Pinky and Clara.

Firdy, Lee Meng and Hui Wen

Tim 2, Raine, Vernice and Robb again.

And Yee Hou!
And if I missed you out, like Ming then it’s because I don’t have your picture ok? 🙁 But it doesn’t mean you’re any less important.

Ming and I both gave a good speech to the team about Nuffnang to look back at how far we have come this year but also to look forward at the mounting challenges we have ahead for next year (next year will be a difficult year).

Then Ming had a surprise for everyone, something he asked me about before but he has to take credit for actually getting it done.

He made special Parker pens for each and every Nuffie in the team with their names/nicknames engraved on it.

Mine had “Boss Stewie’ engraved on it. I promised to use this pen to sign our million dollar deals from now on. Heck the pens that I’ve been using to date are like… free premium pens that I got from clients or some events I went for. I’m such a cheapskate when it comes to pens.

After we were done admiring our shiny new pens, we had our wonderful lunch with lots of jokes and laughter, ending with dessert.

And by the time coffee was served…. it was the time everyone was waiting for.

OPENING THE SECRET SANTA PRESENTS!!!

We took turns and went round. Basically if it was my turn to give my present to whoever I was Secret Santa to, I had to give clues on who that person is.

So say if it was Firdauz then his Secret Santa would say
“This person laughs like this: ‘Hur hur hur'”.

Or like when it was me my Secret Santa just pointed to the part of his face where a mole would’ve been if he were me.

And the presents were all given out.

Firdy got Clara for his Secret Santa and she got him a very nice customized Nike shirt with the words “Firdy” on it and with an “Afro” cartoon on it.
Pinky got this bag thingy from Vernice.

Hui Wen got a book.

Nicholas got a mug with candy in it from Firdy.

Ming got a scarf from Lee Meng.

And Yee Hou got a kinky G-String from Cherie that came equipped with an attached cock-ring.

Reminded me of the Christmas song we used to sing in school. It went like this.

“On the third day of Christmas my true love gave to me, one Nintendo, two coffee mugs, three leather wallets and a G-String to keep my balls warm!”

Haha no no that was his “prank present”. Cherie actually gave him one of those Nike sports bags.

Nicholas gave Vernice a pretty cool present. Two tickets to watch a Gold Class Movie for her bf and her. That means all the space you want in a cinema Vernice. Just no cuddling or hugging bf during movie times because he’ll be so far away you’ll be lucky if you could reach him with your toes.

But heck who wouldn’t want Gold Class Tickets. Check out Raine’s face when she saw Vernice take out the tickets. It looked like she was saying
“OHHH MY G…… IS THAT GOLD CLASS?!?! YOU BITCH!!! GIVE IT TO ME”

I didn’t give Raine Gold Class Tickets 🙁

My present to her was a Lava Lamp!

Because when I think of “rain” I think of sun, so when I think of sun I think of light. So I got her a lamp! But not just any lamp! A lava lamp!

The kind of thing that is nice to have but you never really would buy with your own money because you know it’s just going to be a little bit of a waste of money.

Finally after it went through everyone, it came to my turn and my Secret Santa was Robb.

Man look how excited I was about my present.

I practically ripped the wrapping paper to shreds… a disgrace to the typical Chinese family that likes to carefully remove wrapping paper and recycle it.

My present was two ready-to-play decks of Magic The Gathering cards.

Robb got that idea because he recently found out that I used to play the silly card game 10 years ago when I had barely turned a teenager.

Don’t know if I’ll start it again though, costs too much money and I seem to have grown out of it a little unless I play it for fun.

We ended the lovely lunch 2-3 hours later, one of the longest lunches we’ve ever had but even then it was cut short… why? Because a client was chasing us to have some work sent in before a deadline so we all had to rush back to the office in Singapore.
I’m looking forward to next year’s Christmas Lunch and wondering how many new faces we’ll be seeing there. Hopefully some of those who missed it this year will be able to make it next.

It’s Christmas Eve tonight, Merry Christmas everyone!

I love this time of the year!

Mobile phones started off as a very utility kind of thing, something that we all just use like a computer mouse. They were all mostly made in generic colours like Black or Grey and they’re meant to be unisex. That was probably like 10 years ago.

Today as mobile phones evolved from a communication tool to take on the additional purpose of an accessory (why else do some people wear their phones around their neck these days or lay their phones on the tables at Coffee Bean), we’ve started to see phones that are for guys and phones that are for girls and they differ more than you think.

Now I’m going to compare two phones from the same brand for this and basically two models.

Behold the LG KP500

And the LG Ice-Cream KF350

Clearly the LG KP500 is for the men.

Now lets do a very simple newbie comparison between the features of both phones.

Apart from the usual features of a phone, the LG KP500 has:
1) A 3” Full touch screen. Touch screens seem to be the trend these days.

2) A stylus because that just makes the phone a lot cooler when you’re standing in a line playing with your phone. Plus things like handwriting recognition just makes the geek in you smile. I remember when I had my first phone with handwriting recognition, I was playing with it non-stop till I finally got used to it and took it for granted after a few months.

3) And motion sensor games where you can play games that require you to tilt, flip or twist the phone.

And well, also important with our current economic climate that it doesn’t cost an arm and a leg. This costs only RM899.

Now compare it to the LG Ice-Cream KF350
1) NO TOUCH SCREEN.

Why? Because most girls I know hate touch screens. You should see one of my girl friends try to dial a number on my touch screen phone with her fingernails. It’s like trying to pick up a needle with boxing gloves on.

STICK TO BUTTONS BUTTONS BUTTONS!!!

2) NO stylus because lets face it, not very cool on a girl.

3) Most girls I know don’t care about motion censor games or games in general.

So what do the really girly girls care about then?

They care about the fact that the phone is PINK and PRETTY. The Ice-cream for example has pretty 3D lighting effects and it comes it sweet pastel colours like thisThis
Or thisSecondly, the girls I know seem to prefer flip-phones more to other phones.

Now of course there’s no hard and fast rule to any of this. I mean some girls would like the touch screen LG KP500 and some guys might like the LG Ice-Cream (seriously dudes?) but heck, this is just something I happen to notice among the mobile phones that come out for each target market.As for me, give me a touch screen phone packed with features any day of the week and I’ll even give up the fact that I can’t SMS while driving no more. I tell you that’s why there are so many touch phones these days.
The governments of the world decided that there were too many people typing SMSs while driving and they wanted to find a way to stop it so they invented… THE TOUCH SCREEN PHONE.

Ahhhh… oh well… for road safety it is.

Yesterday morning we were all up early.

Nicholas went over to the rooms of all the other Nuffies to wake them up for breakfast.

He started patiently knocking on some of their doors at first.

Then when the patient polite knocks didn’t seem to wake them up, he started banging.

And that instantly got everyone up! (In fact I think we woke up the whole floor)

We were up so early yesterday morning because the plan was that the Nuffies were going to go to the Singapore Zoo that Ming proudly announces is WORLD CLASS. He even brought his brand new Nikon camera that he called “The Beast“I’ve never really been to zoos before but I still wasn’t very excited about the zoo at first. I mean when I previously thought about zoos, I kept picturing wild animals locked up in cages and that sounded very depressing to me.

But I was wrong.

The zoo is if anything, beautiful. I hardly saw any cages, all the animals were put in very beautiful environments!

The polar bears for example were put in this big area that had those fans that spray water all around to keep them cool and they had a huge deep pool for them to dip in if they were ever too hot and wanted to cool down.

They even had a special air-conditioned room to go into if they were feeling hot. I mean heck… while the downside of being in a zoo is that you get locked up the whole time and have no freedom, the upside as according to Clara is
“You don’t have to worry about money, food or rent… all you have to do it sleep and chill all day”.

So I guess some people won’t mind that right?

Being at the zoo I somehow couldn’t help but constantly make reference to Madagascar 2.

Like I saw some hippos there and I had to say out loud
“Motto Motto… the name so nice you gotta say it twice”.

I thought it was funny, but nobody around me thought it was, so I laughed on my own.

Then I saw a lemur and I thought of King Julian so I said
“Whatever happened to the separation of the classes.”

and again nobody found it funny =(

So I stopped making Madagascar 2 quotes after that.

And we went on taking pictures of more animals.

I saw some rhinos there.

I watched them for like 15 minutes and I kinda wondered how any of them got anything done. I mean if I had such a heavy body I would find it sooo damn hard to wake up in the morning (It’s hard enough for me already as it is).

And I guess you can kinda see it in them too. I mean they had so many flies going round and round bothering them while they slept but none of them seemed to be bothered to get rid of any of them. They all just opened their eyes a little to look and then closed it.

Then later on in the day, we saw the famous white tigers in the Singapore Zoo. These are the same white tigers that just a month ago or two had mauled a cleaner to death. Apparently the story was that the cleaner wanted to commit suicide or something so he jumped into the den and swam across the river to get to the tigers.

But while the tigers were mauling him to death, he was screaming away for help so I guess he kinda regretted it. What a painful death.

There’s a YouTube video of it but I decided not to post it up here because I found it quite disturbing.

The funny thing is right after the incident, the people thought that the tigers were traumatized by the incident because they had never killed anything before and they never meant to kill the guy. They thought they were just playing with him.

After the tigers we all went to watch two animal shows. This is a picture our official Nuffnang photographer KZ took of us there.Yes the truth is some of us didn’t even know we were having our pictures taken.
While the rest of us that did made sure we posed.

Here’s a picture I managed to take with Cherie and Clara who were sitting next to me during one of the shows.

I thought Cherie looked damn cute in her cap. Later that day she got me to do this pose with her.

Probably another one of those La-La poses that look good only when girls do it. Not guys.

We ended our day at the Zoo with a wonderful treat.

Yes… we all love our Ben & Jerry’s!

There goes all my effort waking up every morning to jog =(

This morning at 7.30AM I was at Bandar Utama with my luggage bags next to me waiting in the early morning for a bus that was about to take me somewhere. I wasn’t going alone, some of our Nuffies in the KL office were coming with me and I waited patiently as they arrived one by one.

Verneece was the first to arrive after me.Then Pinky, with her glam sunglasses.

And just when I thought she was looking glam and all that, Robb strolled in looking like a Hong Kong Movie Star. It almost looked as if he was walking in slow motion as he walked towards us.

Robb makes us other guys look bad.

It’s the end of the year and at the end of each year we try to pull the Nuffnang team from all our offices in the region to hang out. Throughout the year, the Nuffies in Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Penang, Melbourne and Manila offices correspond with each other a lot via phone or e-mails but because of the distance we don’t often get to meet.

Hence this year end, we got all the Nuffies from the Penang and KL office to make a trip down together to meet up with the Nuffies in Singapore (all except some of our other Nuffies who had to stay in KL and Penang to man the fort while the rest of us are away). We thought of getting the Nuffies in Manila and Melbourne to meet up with us too but I guess the timing was a bit tough this time.

The Singaporean Nuffies planned an entire packed day for us. Shortly after we arrived, the Nuffies from the Penang office flew in and we all met up at the new Nuffnang office in Singapore. It was my first time in the new office of Nuffnang Singapore and it turned out to be a really cosy place.The Singapore office has something that none of our other offices have. They have a patio area where they have nice seats for people to chill and talk and even eat their lunch or something. I still prefer our KL office though but maybe it’s because I’m just used to it.

When I asked some of our KL Nuffies if they prefered the Singapore office to the KL office they all said that they prefered the KL office. But when I asked the Singaporean Nuffies though they all said they thought the KL office was nice but they all still prefered the Singapore office.

So I guess everyone prefers the office they work out of.

Still… I could imagine myself working in the Singapore office though busying away on my own.

Heck, the Nuffies in Singapore look like they have as much fun as we do in Malaysia. Look at Clara for example, always smiling away at work!

Anyway after the quick visit to the Nuffnang Singapore office all of us went bowling at the Singapore Island Country Club. We booked four lanes for two hours which was just about enough time for me to realize how much I hate bowling.

Dammit I just totally suck at it.. like really really bad. Only on rare occassions do I even pass 100 points!
I wasn’t alone though.

Little Miss Naughty here sucked as bad as I did…. haha!

So rather than focusing on my poor bowling skills I spent time taking pictures with some people in the team. The first one of course had to be with Ming.

Then while everyone was in a picture-taking mood, Firdauz managed to get a picture with some of the ladies in our team.
But alas, after two hours of camwhoring and throwing bowling balls into the longkang, we finally got out and took a walk around the club.

Then prepped ourselves to take an outdoor group photo. A group photo that I don’t have yet but one of the Singapore Nuffies PROMISED he will send to us all. You know who you are! Don’t forget ah!

Tomorrow the Singaporean Nuffies have another long day planned out for us. From visiting the Singapore Zoo in the morning, to paintballing in the afternoon and then off to watch a musical at night.

I guess I better get some sleep now. I’m gonna need it. I shall end with a photo we took this afternoon with some of the gents!
While the Nuffnang team has grown so much lately to include many many great and wonderful colleagues, these few men you see in this picture were among the earliest in the team. Each of them like brothers to me and Nuffnang would not have been the same without them.

PS: To the Nuffies in our KL office and Penang office that couldn’t make it this trip: Raff, Wenny, Mellissa, Yat, Kelvin, Chee Ching and Wendy, we’re missing you guys already! And to the Nuffies in Melbourne and Manila, next year we shall do a meet up ok?

Audrey and I spent most of Sunday in Disneyland Hong Kong. We were out till late with some of our Hong Kong friends on Saturday night so we ended up waking up really late on Sunday and reaching Hong Kong Disneyland only in the afternoon.

Once we got there though, time wasn’t to be wasted!

We quicky bought ourselves two tickets which were quite cute. My ticket had a Donald Duck on it and Audrey’s had a Minnie Mouse.
Everyone has told us that Hong Kong Disneyland is the smallest Disneyland in the world so we only allocated half a day but I think we kinda underestimated its size. We opened the map to the entire park and realized that there was quite a bit to see and not enough time for us to see it all.

Now here’s the problem with Disneyland and I guess the problem with theme parks in general. Especially if you go on a weekend, there’s almost certainly a queue to whatever rides you want to go on and you spend a lot of your time there just waiting in queue.

So when time is short, and there is a lot to see or do what you get is people always trying to cut queue. I can’t stand it when people cut queue! I mean I don’t understand and I never do that! No matter how late I am, even if I am queuing up for a seat on an Air Asia flight and if I risk getting a bad seat for being late, I don’t cut queue!

That’s just rude!

I can’t say the same for everyone else though.

Let me give you an example of a situation that just happened to both Audrey and I at one of the Disneyland rides on Sunday. We were in the queue to sit on this ride which I can’t remember what its called but it basically goes up then round and round. Basic stuff for any theme park right?

The queue for this ride alone was like 45 minutes long.

So when we started we queued up right behind this group of Hong Kong people. We noticed them because we were checking out the LV bag that one of the aunties was carrying.

Then right behind us was a fairly big group of Indian tourists…. I think about 8 of them or so. So Audrey and I waited in the queue joking about all things in general… you know because time flies faster when you’re joking around rather than when you’re just standing idle.

Suddenly we looked in front of us and we saw 3 of the 8 Indian tourists who were behind us… actually in FRONT of us. Audrey and I looked at each other with a very big WTF look but fine we let it go, just 3 of them anyway right.Little did we know about their plan. After 5 minutes of being in front of us, the 3 of them signalled for the remaining 5 to cut through us and join them in the front. You know, making it look as if all they were trying to do was regroup rather than cut our queue.

What a clever trick!

And it worked!

I mean… if someone just tried to cut your queue you would make a big fuss but if you saw some people just trying to regroup you’d close an eye right?

Before we knew it, all 8 of them were in front of us and Audrey went from smiling away like this to looking so grumpy and annoyed you could almost see a storm cloud hanging over her head.

But we were on holiday so we just accepted defeat and decided to go back to joking around. About 5-10 minutes later we noticed that the aunty with the LV bag was in front of us again. Audrey excitedly jumped around and said
“Hey! Hey! Hey! The people who cut our queue are gone!! HAHA!”

I took a quick look around us and I replied her
“No Audrey… they’re not gone, they just made progress.” (Points further to front).

She looked in front and almost jumped in anger when she saw all 8 of them even further in front of us, like a few more feet ahead from where we were standing. They must’ve like cut another 10-15 people along the way in just those few minutes!

It came to the point when it was their turn to board the ride while we were still waiting in the queue to get our turn. Fortunately we pushed our way in and Audrey and I were one of the last people to get on the ride without having to wait for the next cycle. My gosh the time it took just to get on one of these things. Made me feel as if we were in Communist Russia queuing up to get food from the central government.
After our ride that only lasted like 60 seconds or so, we got to the exit and I happened to take a shot of some of the people who cut our queue!

I guess they were off to another ride.

Them queue-cutting bastards!!!

I hope some other people in the other queues end up cutting their queue.

Can you imagine how much time they must save from cutting queue at each ride.

People! Be civil!

Don’t cut queue ok! It leaves a scar on people.

Since that incident, whenever Audrey is in a queue she extends both her arms on the railings and forces me to do the same to prevent anyone from cutting through us. Look at what it has done to the poor paranoid girl.

In my experience though, Malaysians are generally a lot more courteous although it’s true that I have met a few bad hats even back home trying to cut queues (Mostly at LCCT when people are rushing to board the planes though).

So keep it up guys! Queue up and wait your turn. Everyone else wants to get to the front of the queue as urgently as you do!