Sunday, September 30, 2007

AUGGGHH!!!!!!!!

Ok so last night I was at Velvet (Zouk) with some friends.... the first time clubbing in a long long time!

I had a lot to drink... because a particular pretty girl kept 'challenging' me to drink with her and I came home not drunk but pretty high and happy.I was in that 'high and happy' state where everything I saw was amusing and made me laugh.

Even the cockroach I saw in my bathroom was funny... that is until I beat it to death with my FHM magazine which I threw away after it was tainted with cockroach juice.I know I know what you guys are thinking...
"BOSS STEWIE!!! WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?!?! WHY THE HELL DID YOU USE FHM TO WHACK COCKROACHES?!?!?! USE AN OLD NEWSPAPER LIKE NORMAL PEOPLE DO!!!"

And to those of you who say that.. I have only 3 words to say
"I... WAS.... HIGH...."

I would've even used an LV bag to whack the cockroach if I had one around me.
So anyway back to my story.

I came home, chatted on MSN for a while, brushed my teeth, beat a cockroach, took a shower to wash away the stench of cigarette smoke on myself and then headed to sleep.
The next morning which is this morning, I chucked all my smelly clothes from last night into the washing machine and went out for lunch while I left it for a wash.

While leaving the house I checked my pockets for everything...

Mobile phone... check
Car keys... check
Wallet... check
Bluetooth headset....

Uhmm...

Bluetooth headset.....

I couldn't find it. So I thought maybe I might have left it in the car.

But I went down to the car to look for it and it wasn't there!

I looked high and low and everywhere for my Bluetooth Headset that is the size of a 50 sen coin.

Soon enough, I gave up for a while. Thought that it's just one of those things that will show up sooner or later.

And true enough it did.

I was taking out all my clothes from the washer and hanging them to dry when I suddenly begin to feel something small and hard in the pocket of my jeans.
UH OHHHHhhhh.....
I DROWNED BY BLUETOOTH HEADSET!!!

Sure fair enough it was a stupid headset that kept giving me problems and was highly unstable so much that I was already planning to replace it... but it didn't deserve to be DROWNED IN A WASHING MACHINE!!!

AUGHHH!!!

AUGGGHH!!!

Ok ok... I smell a shit storm coming.

My father reads my blog.

And eventhough my father is one who changes his bluetooth headset once every 2 months because it just fails on him, when he reads this, he is going to pick up the phone...

and he's going to say
"GET HIGH SOME MORE LAR!!! YOU DESERVE IT!!!"


Saturday, September 29, 2007

Where Did All The Malaysian Dotcom Success Stories Go?

Ideas, ideas ideas....

We're all full of it.

Maybe it's just me, but it suddenly dawned on me that Malaysia has recently started off with a whole new breed of young entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs that share that huge dotcom dream just like the dotcom entrepreneurs of the famed Silicon Valley.

I myself have had the privilege in meeting many of these young ambitious personalities. Like it or not, the one thing I find in common with each and every one of them is how their success is benchmarked against the success of internet titans like Google, Yahoo or the most recent... YouTube.
That's right, benchmarked against success that happens abroad, not within our borders.

With all this entrepreneurial drive in our homeland of Malaysia, why is it we don't draw inspiration from the success stories closer to home instead? Success stories in which would be far more realistic benchmarks in our local environment.

I sat down and started thinking.

Thinking of a good Malaysian success story from a young entrepreneur that I could draw inspiration from. Sure there were companies like Jobstreet or even MOL that sold out to Tan Sri Dato' Vincent Tan for RM 12 million but that was millenniums ago.
It's true. In recent years I couldn't recall many real dotcom success stories.

So the question is... if there were so few success stories of Malaysian dotcom entrepreneurs making millions or selling out... why is it that yet so many people are itching to start a dotcom of their own.

Almost as if it's the "IN" thing to do right now when many of us on the other side already know that there's nothing "IN" or "COOL" about it and unlike the Silicon Valley in California, this Silicon Valley is not crowded with office car parks full of Ferraris. And as if things weren't bad enough, where the success stories are scarce, the failure stories are filling up a warehouse so huge it could fit Subang Jaya in it.

As I write this, I had just gotten news that a fellow Dotcom entrepreneur and friend of mine is on the brink of shutting down a dotcom he started just a few months before Nuffnang launched.

I recall the first time I met him.

He was extremely passionate about entrepreneurship and his new business. His passion ran so deep that when anyone tried to play Devil's Advocate on his business model, it would never put him down.

I always imagined that people with this level of commitment and passion will succeed but I was wrong.

So why... why do people long to join the growing trend of dotcom entrepreneurs?

Why? Where is the light at the end of the tunnel?
What or how much do people think they're going to achieve when they forgo proper jobs with security? Do they think that they will make 1 million? 2 million? 10 million or 20 million in their lifetimes?

Even then it wouldn't be worth it since I happen to know of some professionals in Malaysia that have made RM40-50 million in their lifetimes, and that's without taking any risk.

So where are all the Malaysian success stories for us to draw our inspirations from?

Someone please enlighten me!

Thursday, September 27, 2007

A Change of Environment for the Team

Yesterday was another typical day at the office with the pressure mounting along with the increasing work load.

Things have been getting insanely busy for us at Nuffnang.
As much as we've expanded our team in Penang, KL and Singapore, the workload of a growing Nuffnang is daunting and the stress level has been mounting.

Even our intern Su Ann was beginning to lose her mind.

I decided that it was time we all had a breather so right around lunch time, every one of us left the office with our laptops and walked towards the nearest Monorail station.
We waited for a train and hopped on the first one to Sungai Wang. Where we all ran to KFC for lunch.


I bought everyone a huge bucket of FRIED CHICKEN and we all feasted away.
All of us of course, except our two Muslim team mates there who were on Puasa.

Now you must be wondering why we all had to bring all our laptops for lunch and risk being mugged and having everything stolen.

Well that's because.... after lunch, the whole Nuffnang KL team (All 7 of us) went to Starbucks to spend the afternoon there working.

It was a change of environment for once.

Rather than working in the typical office environment we have, it was a nice change of environment to work inside Starbucks with Italian music playing in the background and with a view of the busy street along Low Yat Plaza right next to our laptop screens.
Some of us sat in pairs but some of us, preferred the privacy of their own tables.

Like Su Ann here.
Yet, it was pretty fun.

There we were with the small Starbucks outlet all to ourselves, with our own little tables within talking distance of one another.

Of course even when working in the relaxing environment of Starbucks, some of us decide to have breaks with packets of Chipster.

We love the Sour Cream & Onion flavour for Chipster and since Twisties is a client of Nuffnang, it has very quickly become a favourite of everyone in the team including the two Nuffies in this picture Su Ann and Samantha.

Speaking of Su Ann...

You would think the interns at Nuffnang mimic the interns of other jobs where the intern is responsible for making coffee for the seniors or photocopying 1,000 pages a day.

Not at Nuffnang... eventhough we have a pretty cool photocopier.
Our interns here work independently on hands on stuff and actually play a very important role at Nuffnang.

The best part is that our interns from now and the past have all been bloggers themselves so if anything, they understood blogs better than anyone else.

Su Ann, just like Suet Li before her,
Lance in our Penang office

and Hui Wen in Singapore played essential roles in making Nuffnang what it is today...

But just when I'm getting used to the comfort that Su Ann gives me.. what does she do?

SHE DECIDES TO GO FOR A 2 WEEK STUDY-LEAVE!!!

So now I am INTERNLESS!!!

SOMEBODY PLEASE TELL SU ANN HOW CRUEL SHE IS!!!


Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Wynn in Macau

On my last night at Macau, I moved out of the Venetian and stayed at the Wynn.

The Wynn is slightly more expensive than the Venetian only because the Venetian is running on a promotion but on the outside the Wynn didn't look as impressive as the Venetian so I didn't keep my hopes up.
The good news though, is that the Wynn had more rooms available, so the staff there managed to give us an upgrade to a bit of a suite.

When you walk into the suite, this is exactly how it looks like.
There's a living room with a plasma screen TV by the windows.

Once you walk in and look behind you, you'll see the front door right in front of you.

To your left is a small toilet.
And to the right.. believe it or not... is a freaking massage room.

LOL.
I jumped on the massage bed as soon as I saw it and took a picture.
Not a nice looking picture, but still a picture :P

And yes I know my glasses aren't supposed to be on but hey, I wasn't really having a massage.

Can't afford to have someone over just to give me a nice massage.

Anyway, back to the living room.

The cool thing about the living room apart from the view of the hotel swimming pool down below,
is the presence of a small bar on one corner


and a small dining table at another corner.

The bar comes fully equipped with booze, a coffee machine, even a teapot and tea!


Now get this.

When you stand in the middle of the living room, you'll see mirrors on the ceiling.



Bwahahahah how cool is that!
Perfect for the ideal living room shag.

The bedroom itself hasn't got anything particularly fancy
but the bathroom... ho ho ho!

Now it's quite common for a lot of hotel toilets to have phones right?

But how many bathrooms have... TVs in them for you to watch news while taking a bath?

Not like we ever use it ... but still!!!

It's not whether you use it or not... but it's the luxury of having the OPTION of using it!

Bwahahah hahaha hahaha

The other smaller things I learned to like about the room are simple things like how the hotel phone is cordless.

How there is a little gadget alarm clock thing.


And how there's this little stereo set.


But there is one thing though that I don't like about Wynn.

They charge for internet access!

HK$ 160 for 24 hours!


Apart from that I quite like our room at Wynn.

And I will miss those red couches in the living room.

Hehehe..

I love red couches... I had a few in one of my flats when I was living in London.

They make me feel... all yuppie and all.


Disclaimer:
Now before any of you thinks that my father owns Genting or something... let me tell you that we kinda got that room for free ok? We didn't pay for it. I'm not loaded.. I wish I were... but oh well...

Sunday, September 23, 2007

The Venetian Macau

So I've been in the Macau Venetian for the past couple of days.

Now, thanks to a particular celebrity blogger who recently blogged about the Venetian Macau, everything I say about the Venetian now is going to be OLD news... OLD NEWS!!!

Reminds me of that "tai jor lar!!!" Astro commercial.

Only this time it would be
"Kenny kong jor lar!!!"

So I'm not going to bother showing you much of my room.

Or much of the work station where my Mac and I spend most of our time working while I was there.
I'm going to show you the rest of the hotel (apart from the casino because they throw people in jail for taking pictures of Casinos).

Now most of you are probably expecting me to go on and on and on and on about how great the Venetian is and how you should all give your left nuts to go so I'm going to do the complete opposite and tell you that Venetian "did not" impress me.

HMPH!!!

Notty Venetian!
You think having massive spaces for function rooms impress me?

HMPH!

You think having countless beautiful chandeliers made out of Murano glass impresses me?

HMPH!

You think having an indoor 'town' with an artificial sky impresses me?
HMPH!


You think having found a human being that can paint himself white and act like a statue impresses me?
HMPH!

You think having an indoor canal with gondolas in it impresses me?

HMPH!

Well... I have got news for you my dear Venetian!

...
...
...
...
...

YOU'RE DAMN RIGHT IT IMPRESSES ME!!!

BWAHAHAHAHA

And it's not just your GONDOLAS!
Or your indoor town with an artificial sky.
Or your countless chandeliers in every part of the hotel


IT'S YOUR FREAKING LONG ESCALATORS IN YOUR HALLWAY!

BOSS STEWIE LIKEY LONG ESCALATORS!

(But he no likey long stairs)

Will cerita more about my trip in the coming posts.

Tonight is the last night in the Venetian and I must say it has been nothing but a pleasant experience!

Well done Venetian, you guys have built a hotel that I will really miss... and it's not just because it houses the Largest Casino in the World.

I'm spending one last night in Macau after tonight but we're moving over to another Las Vegas origin hotel in Macau called Wynn.

Hotel hopping is good fun.