Taiwanese Girls

On my recent trip to Taiwan, I befriended a number of very nice Taiwanese girls.

Allow me to introduce them.

From the left
Boss Stewie, Hui Fern, Joe (My DJ Bro), Koyuki (a nice Taiwanese/Japanese girl), Jane and my sister Fayth.

Now last weekend, the girls were all nice enough to bring us clueless Malaysian tourists all over Taipei to experience the sights & sounds and of course the lovely food in the city.

I'm not a big fan of Taiwanese food but I lurrvee their deserts and junk food.

For example, last Saturday, the group of us were walking the streets of Taipei when Jane suddenly disappeared.

Only to appear again a few minutes later with a cute little Hello Kitty biscuit (cake) thingy which you can see me holding in this picture.
and see me eating in the picture (BWAHAHAH).

But before I start telling all of you about where the girls took us or about the Hamsap pigs they have in the Taipei Subway that seem to enjoy getting in sex positions and saying "Pukii",

Let me first tell you about the girls.

Taiwanese girls seem to looooveee taking pictures.

Now... when a Malaysian takes a picture, he/she would try to look normal and smile... just like me in this picture with Jane.

But Taiwanese girls like Jane on the other hand, tend to like posing in pictures (notice Jane's pose in the picture).

I couldn't help but ask her what on earth that was supposed to mean.

She giggled and replied that it was meant to make her look a lot more cute than she already is.

Plus, she said it's boring to take pictures without some sort of pose.

So I thought:

When in Rome... do as the Romans do...

When in Taiwan... do as the Taiwanese do...

So I decided to pose as well.

First, I did her pose

Then I did another pose that was supposed to look 'cool' but ended up making me look like a patient who escaped from Tanjung Rambutan's Hospital Bahagia for the mentally retarded.

Then there was the 3rd picture that made me look like I not only escaped Hospital Bahagia but was so retarded that I deserved to be drug out to the street and shot.

Boss Stewie is beginning to like Taiwanese girls.

Meet Jay Chou!

This is an Advertorial.

One of the joys I experience about working with Nuffnang is being able to give bloggers the right things somehow.

A few months ago, May Zhee sent me an SMS saying
“Tim… I HAVE SOMETHING IMPORTANT TO BEG OF YOU!!! IT’S ABOUT THE LOVE OF MY LIFE”.I replied her wondering what the hell could be so important.
“What what?”

And she said
“JAY CHOU IS COMING TO MALAYSIA IN FEBRUARY!!! PLEASE GET ME TICKETS TO SEE HIM!!! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!!!!”.A little dumbfounded I said
“Jay Chou is not exactly my brother or childhood friend… what makes you think I can get you what you want?”

And she cheekishly replied
“You know a lot of people… I’m sure you can find a way!!!”

I put down the phone thinking that May Zhee is going to be soooo disappointed when she finds out that I can’t possibly help her with her love of her life… until the people at Mamee approached Nuffnang for an ad campaign to promote their “Be Funky with Funkees” contest.

To take part in the contest the participants are required to pose in the funkiest way with a basketball and a packet of one of these Mamee Funkees.Which actually tastes pretty nice.

So I first went to check out the “competition”: “Funky” poses that some of the other people did like this dude here.
Or these people

or even these two nice ladies.
Yet I had no clue as of what to do.

So I sat down in our office for a while and asked my colleagues what I could do.

Some of them suggested that I do a serious pose like this which was honestly a really really hard thing for me to do… you know... appearing serious.If you know me in person, I normally can’t naturally stop smiling for long.

Then they suggested that I do this.
Do you think I’ll win?

I don’t either.

SNIFF

If you think you can do better than me… go here and join.

Or if you’re too shy to take pictures of yourself and pose but still wanna try yourself at a chance to meet Jay Chou or prizes like an LG Flat TV, iPod, and T-shirts of Jay Chou’s upcoming movie Kung-Fu Dunk that will be out on the 7th Feb 2008, then just go buy a packet of Mamee Funkees and if you’re lucky you might see one of these winning cards.

The winner gets exclusive passes to the Kung Fu Dunk Uth FEST event at 1-Utama which starts at 10am this 2nd February 2008.

The event is set to have a fashion show by Converse, an auto show, a games booth by the Uth crew, a Kung Fu performance by Hapkune Do, a Street Dance performance by Street Fusion and most important of all, the winner will be seated as close as anyone in the public can get to Jay Chou.

Now May Zhee is lucky because Nuffnang is getting a few of those exclusive tickets to give to their Glitterati and she's one of them so she doesn't have to do the contest.

But unfortunately… I wanna go too but there weren’t enough Glitterati tickets to go around so… I’m gonna be eating Funkees for breakfast, lunch and dinner over the next 3 days and if I still don't win then ish.. I'll just go back to Penang and sulk or something.

Web Wednesday!

Today is Robb's birthday. Happy Birthday Robb!

Yesterday I decided to bring my camera out with me everywhere I went that day to document my day.

Here's what I did.

1) Went to the office but hopped out for a while to have a quick breakfast with Cheng Leong who is this famous anonymous blogger out there.

During the night he blogs but during the day... he's a high flying lawyer!

Very busy lawyer. Always on his Blackberry. 

The funny thing though is that while you might think he's always checking e-mails and doing work stuff, the truth is most of the time he's just on his Blackberry chatting with someone else on MSN or Gtalk. Right dude?

2) After breakfast I headed back to the office to start my work day. 

This is the view from where I'm sitting.

That's Carol, sitting right in front of me. She was working in the office till 1.30AM the previous night and was back again in the office by 9AM that morning.

I worry for her.

I bet she goes home and her mum complains to her 

"Why your company work you so hard wan? Do they pay you enough or not?"

I met her mum that night though at a Nuffnang Screening. She introduced me to her mum and I greeted her with a

"Hi Aunty, I'm Tim. Sorry we've been overworking your daughter."

And she was nice about it. She said "It's okay... when young must work more to learn more".

3) Soon it was lunch time. Seriously trying to decide where to go for lunch with the Nuffies is just so difficult!

We normally just bicker about a place to go until someone in the Nuffie team says

"WOI FASTER DECIDE!!! F-CKING hungry lar!"

Then we all rush out of the office

That day we had lunch at this restaurant near our office.

I was trying to take a random picture of Vernice. Some people look good and some people look bad in candid pictures but somehow Vernice looked damn lansi in this picture don't you think?

With her chin up and all. She defended herself saying that she was looking at something on the ceiling.

Sure Vernice... sure...

I got Vernice to take a better picture with Jestina and Carol.

And I got Penton then to take a picture of all of us at the lunch.

4) After work that day, I went for this thing called Web Wednesday at Souled Out, organized by the Malaysian Digital Association. It's this after-work gathering with all sorts of people from the online media industry in Malaysia gathering around to have some beers.

You know whenever you see any ads online, whether it's on Facebook or the news portals or even blogs, chances are it would have passed through the hands of some of the people in that event.

To name a few people there.

From left: Me, Tze Khay and fehmes blogger Desmondkiu

From left: Me, Mehlin, Michelle and Shelly

From left: Daniel and Danny.

From left: Me, Jordan, (uhmm shit can't remember his name), Ham and Desmondkiu

Had an embarrassing moment with the guy in the pic whose name I don't remember. I had met him some time back and I recalled that he was from some agency. Couldn't remember which agency though.

So when he greeted me I said 

"You're from Arachnid right?"

He said "No... I'm from Arc" (a completely different agency).

Everyone around the table laughed. Desmondkiu and Ham poked fun.

"Well you got the "A" right... and the "R" as well.... "

5) I left Web Wednesday early to rush to KLCC for our Nuffnang Monsters Vs Aliens screening. 

Picked Princess up on the way too to have dinner at the food court in KLCC.

She had her favourite Yoshinoya.

6) I had Fish & Chips 

but right after that I felt like having a McDs Apple Pie so I went over to queue up for one. The girl at the counter told me that I had to wait 3 minutes so I said okay and both Princess and I just stood aside to wait.

To our very big surprise, they poured us both a cup of Coke each just to give us a drink while waiting.

I was SO pleasantly surprised. I mean it wasn't the drink. I wasn't feeling thirsty or anything but it was the very nice gesture that made my day. 

And all I was buying was an Apple Pie! Kudos to the people at McDs for that!

7) Then we went for our movie.

This is us posing as the little cartoon characters in Monsters Vs Aliens.

Princess and I were fighting to do the pose of Bob the blob. 

And nobody wanted to pose as Dr Cockroach.

So in the end we decided to take turns.

This is me posing as Bob the blob and Princess posing as Dr Cockroach.

And this is Princess posing as Bob the blob and me as Dr Cockroach.

Everybody was looking on wondering why the two of us were fighting just to pose.

After the movie we went home and headed straight to bed.

Such a tiring day.

Life on the Island

After my business meeting in Singapore on Thursday, I hopped on a flight straight back to Penang for the weekend.

Every now and then I try to make it a habit to come back to Penang most importantly to see my family and remind my parents that they still have a third son, but also to soak in a bit of island life.

How different is life in Penang from KL? Take yesterday for example, it was dinner time and I went along with some friends to this hawker centre that was at the backyard of this old bungalow house right by the sea.
There were all kinds of hawker food by the sea, everything from your usual Penang Char Kuey Teow to even French Food with a chef really from France,
and Wunderbar German Sausages... all at a fraction of what you would pay in KL for the same thing.
We took a place on one of the tables by the sea and sat down to enjoy the sea breeze and start doing what we like to call "Talking Cock".

In no time the food will come.

I had the typical Char Hor Fun

but one of my other friends on the table even had this macaroni and cheese bake thing.


You can't help but take a look around at the other patrons of this hawker centre and notice that you have everyone from the typical tourists

to more tourists

and to the true blue Penangites!

And you know what's the best part of all this?

In Penang, we can wear whatever we want when going anywhere, even if we go to the nicest shopping malls here and I take advantage of that.

No accidentally running into clients in public... so I take every opportunity I have to wear silly shirts, like this one that Nicole gave me.

Shirts like those make me happy. So funny how whenever I walk around, everyone stares at my chest to read what my shirt says.

Words just attract attention. Especially big ones.

I remember when I was in London, I used to share a flat with this really hot British Born Hong Kong girl.

She loves to wear pants like this.

And I find myself always staring down at her ass reading the words even if I already know what they say from before. I can't help it.. big words just BEG you to read them.

Let me prove a point.

DON'T READ THE NEXT LINE!!!

DIDN'T I TELL YOU NOT TO READ THIS LINE?!?!?!

See? You read it anyway didn't you.

Fortunately that friend of mine is a nice girl, and she enjoyed the attention... right Julia? :P

Anyway, whatever shirt I was wearing could NOT even come close to the shirt another shirt another one of us was wearing.I mean.. how do you compete with a tag line like that?

You just can't... You can't!!!

Anyway after we're done with our dinner and have had enough time talking cock and enjoying the full moon that was coming up,
we would all adjourn and head home.

As I leave the old bungalow house, I would come heads on to a number of office buildings, one of which (the one in the center) is where our Nuffnang Penang office is located.

That is the fascinating thing about Penang.

You have a bit of a tropical island kind of feel, and at the same time you have a bit of a city feel with all the skyscrapers we have around.

After dinner, we'll all take a slow drive home and since it's Saturday night, it's time to go out.

So we go home, take off our silly shirts and dress up a little.
Now in every city in the world, there HAS to be a place where people can go to POSE and act cool.

In Penang, that place is a seaside bar called QE2.

That's right, I said seaside bar. Yes we eat by the sea, and party by the sea too :P

Now if I were an economist (which I actually am by training), I would consider measuring the performance of the economy in terms of people's drinking habits.

Why?

Because here's what I notice.

When the economy is booming (and all my friends feel rich), all my friends who go out will always buy bottles of good whiskey or vodka to drink.

When the economy is not exactly booming, all my friends... well... we drink beer, the cheapest option.So cheap that even the girls in our group are shy to show their faces on my blog thinking

"I can't be seen just drinking a few bottles of beer in QE2... no!!! no!!! I can only be seen if we're drinking Premier or Blue Label."

Too bad for you guys because this particular girl who covered her face is actually a really hot Penang girl. But fret no more, she'll be coming to KL to finish up her studies soon... so KL guys, please ensure you're single by then.

We spend the rest of the night there drinking in the rather open air seaside environment and people-watching.
Always interesting to see how some guys and girls pose in bars and clubs.

The poser guys who are often a little red from the alcohol would see each other then shout out loud
"BRO!!! HOW ARE YOU!?!?!? LONG TIME NO SEE MAN!!! I DIDN'T KNOW YOU COME HERE TOO!!!"

Of which the translation of that is often
"Bro... I know we don't really know each other but act like you know me damn well okay? I got some chicks behind me that I need to impress".The poser girls on the other hand would scream like this when they see a fellow poser girl friend.
"AIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

And then hop like little birdies to hug each other like they've never seen each other for 10 years when the truth is they just saw each other at the same time same place last week.

Of course the next question is.. do any of my friends act like this?No... we're more like the more passive crowd like this couple you see here.

We sit down... talk, joke... laugh... and sometimes when we run out of jokes to tell... we just sit there looking bored.

We really should start learning to pose one day though....

Posing is an art!

All pictures in this entry are taken by my trusty Panasonic DMX FX-33