Saturday, January 30, 2010

Hello Kuching!

I'm in Kuching everyone!

It's so weird. It's like. This morning I woke up in KL, then went for my usual work day. Right after work I headed straight to KLIA and hopped on the next MAS flight to Kuching and here I am.

I've never been to East Malaysia before in my life (I know, I'm ashamed!). Kuching gives me a bit of an odd feeling. On one hand it looks like some of the cities in Peninsular Malaysia but on the other hand it's really peaceful and really clean. Plus it's a lot more developed than I thought it was.

Something about the place. It feels like a whole new country to me to some extent. Heck you don't need a passport to come here (if you're a Malaysian) but when I passed immigration they gave me a 90 day visa, meaning I could only stay there for 90 days under the visitor pass. Really feels like a whole other country to me.

Then again I haven't really seen much of Kuching yet. Spent much of my evening in KLIA doing some shooting for Project Alpha Season 2 with some of the Season 1 bloggers. Didn't occur to me to take any pictures of the day except till when I was in the plane not doing anything.

Food was served so I ended up doing the blogger thing and taking pictures of my plane food. Food on a full service airline is quite a bit of a switch from flying budget because you get to order as many drinks as you like and you don't have to worry about being charged for each and every one of it.

This is what I had.

I thought it was great. Liked the fruit cake and especially like the Ferrero Rocher they added to the meal.

Flight time was 2 hours and soon enough we reached Kuching but we took a long time to get off the plane because the pilot was nice enough to let us take a look at the cockpit so bloggers being bloggers we were all crowding around the cockpit trying to take pictures.

In the mean time, Jojo kept the nice pilot entertained.

He told the story about how he had always wanted to be a pilot ever since he was a kid and look at him now, living the dream. Pilot at Malaysia Airlines.

Got to the hotel shortly after. We're staying at 360 Hotel in Kuching.

They were nice enough to send a couple of vans to pick us up from the airport.

The minute we got there, Huai Bin dashed to the nearest internet connection and succumbed to his internet addiction.

If you're wondering where he got the pink hat from, the answer is he stole it from Princess.

We got it all on film!

The room at the 360 Hotel is really nice. It's like a one bedroom apartment with a small living room, kitchen and bedroom.

This is how a part of the bed room looks like.

Nais!

Tomorrow we have a full day of filming Project Alpha Season 2. Whew.... gotta go to bed now guys.

Long day tomorrow.

Thanks for flying us here MAS... and thanks for putting us up Hotel 360. Oh and of course, thanks Adidas Fragrance and P1 Wimax for giving us a chance to make Season 2 of Project Alpha. It's going to be great!

Nite all!

PS: Did you know the hotel addressed Princess and me as "Mr and Mrs Tiah". Pressure pressure!!!

Thursday, January 28, 2010

Nuffies at the MACC (Jaya One)

Seeing that the Nuffnang team has been working so hard in the past few weeks, last night I organized a stand-up comedy night out for the Nuffies so they can let go and release some of the stress they get at work.

Pic: Nuffies with Douglas Lim, Kuah Jen Han and Chi Ho.

So we went for the MACC (Malaysian Association of Chinese Comedians) at Jaya one to watch Douglas Lim, Kuah Jenhan and Chee Hoe perform. We were all laughing so hard! Saw Firdy rolling around in his seat.

Highly recommend you guys catch it if you have the chance. They're only on till Sunday. Click here for details.

On another note, can't believe I'm going to miss the Tiger Run cuz I'll be overseas.

Monday, January 25, 2010

My Kindle!

Update: I just realized I didn't add any pictures of how it looked like from the side and the back so I've added it in the entry now. Sorry.. me blur.

For the past few weeks, Ming has been telling me that he bought me the best Christmas present ever. He didn't want to tell me what it was until I saw it from myself but even Pierre who knew what it was said that it was freaking awesome!

So last week I finally made my way down to Singapore for some work and the very second I got into the car he threw a box at me and said "Merry Christmas! Open it!".

The box looked something like this.

It said Amazon.com on it so I thought that maybe he bought something off Amazon for me. A book ? DVD ? XBOX game? Something like that.

When I opened it though, I saw this.

At first I went
"What is this?"
And then it dawned on me... that it was an Amazon Kindle! HOLY SHIT!

The Amazon Kindle is an e-book reader from Amazon. It's basically a device where you can download all sorts of e-books from Amazon and store it inside. Then you can virtually carry hundreds of books in it wherever you want and take your time to read it.

It's unbelievably awesome!

Let me tell you why.

1) "Electronic-ink".

I read a lot of content now from the computer. Everything from news, blogs and all that. The thing about reading stuff off the computer though is that once you've been doing it for a long time it my eyes kinda get a little tired from the glare.

The Kindle though isn't one of those computer screens. The words on it appear really almost like it's on paper so there's no backlight and no glare.

So it's as easy to read as a book. Not sure about most of you but I can read articles on the computer but I can never read novels off it. I just can't seem to 'get lost' in the stories whenever I read them off a computer.

When reading off a Kindle though, my imagination takes me away just like reading off an actual book.

2) The largest book store in the world!

While I still love going to book stores just to browse, it's lots of fun browsing books on Amazon.com as well. Not to mention there are times when you want to go to a book store just to find one particular book and have to ask around or browse around in order to find it. On Amazon all you have to do is type it in the search bar and it'll find you the book.

I can't think of any book that Amazon doesn't already have! Only limitation is that while the Kindle books database is huge and growing, there are many titles not available on Kindle (but I'm sure they're working on that). Also you can't really buy Kindle books from Malaysia because the Kindle is not available here yet but there's a work around for that. All you have to do is buy a gift voucher from Amazon then redeem it for credit and use that credit to buy the e-book.
If you're in the USA it's even better. You can just buy the e-book from Amazon and it wirelessly gets sent to your Kindle.

3) No more carrying books around!

I read a lot especially when I travel. With the Kindle though you don't have to bring heavy books along with you. The Kindle is all you need. Plus it automatically book marks any page you stopped at so you don't have to be worried about losing your book mark or things like that. Plus there are some other bonus features the Kindle has. Like it has its own Oxford Dictionary so you can find the meaning of any word you're not sure of just by hovering a cursor over it on the Kindle and you can even make notes on each page.

Imagine if all our school students had this. No more lugging heavy school bags to school. Just this one device with all the text books you need.

I think the Kindle is truly revolutionary because if you think about it, that's how we may all be reading stuff off in the future. We will all each have a device like this next to our bedside tables. When we wake up in the morning, the daily newspaper and magazines are all wirelessly sent and updated to your Kindle so you can read it from there.

Think of all the paper we'll save (not to mention printing costs that newspaper and magazines can save).

I think the Kindle is great.

It's not yet available here in Malaysia or even Singapore yet though. So the only way to get it is to order it to a US address and then have it shipped over here. Ming went through all that trouble for me. Thanks Ming :)

Saturday, January 23, 2010

Malaysia Boleh!

Today was the day I finally decided to renew my passport. My passport was due to expire end of this year and since I know I'm going to be traveling quite a lot for work this year, I thought I'd get it done. Man I really have a really busy travel schedule ahead of me.

For starters, next weekend I'm going to Kuching for a Project Alpha shoot. Then right after Kuching I'm heading to London for another leg of the shoot. That's right, Project Alpha Season 2 has started production and is due out in April.

Adidas remains as the main sponsor with P1 and Malaysia Airlines as the other sponsors. If you'd like to keep track of the coming developments, join our Facebook fan page here.

The Nuffnang and Kyanite crew have all been busy updating the page with photos of the filming sets and stuff like that aside from the other stuff they have to do.

Anyway, after I'm back from London I head back to Penang for Chinese New Year. Then a few weeks later I'm off to Manila to visit our Nuffnang Philippines office. After Philippines, I'm off to Melbourne to visit the Nuffnang Australia office. Then after all that is over, I'm supposed to follow Princess to the USA for her bro's graduation and then to Bahrain for Hasan's wedding.

That's right... my buddy Hasan is getting married!

You guys remember Hasan right?
Heck I'm going to be traveling so much the next few months it's going to be so tiring. So I've been trying to cut the traveling down a little bit. Was invited to give a talk in Jakarta end of February but decided not to stretch it.

So back to my passport. I went to get it renewed today and man was it done efficiently.

First off, you don't really have to take a number and queue anymore. All you have to do is go to the kiosks they have right outside the immigration office and follow the very simple instructions. You have to do stuff like insert your IC, give your thumb print, pay for your passport and then drop your new passport photos, a photocopy of your IC and your old passport into it.

You can pick it up two hours later. When I went to pick it up later in the afternoon, all I had to do was pick a number and wait for 5 minutes before I could collect my brand new passport.

That was it! I think all it took was something like 10-15 minutes just to get the whole thing done! (not counting the 2 hours it takes to get your passport ready because you can actually go have lunch or do something else and come back later to get it).

Man I was impressed. I told the immigration officer at the collection point that I thought they were very very efficient and he gave me a big smile. I've heard so much about the immigration office being efficient. Nice to experience it first hand.

I'm going to end this entry with a picture that shows how some Nuffies work in the Nuffnang Office. This is a picture of David talking on the phone with a client... walrus-style.

And you know what, I've seen weirder positions from some of the other Nuffies. So if you're on the phone with anyone in the Nuffnang offices, there's a chance that person might be talking to you in some Kung-Fu position instead of just sitting at a table.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Nuffnang Samsung Corby Carnival Day

Last weekend we had a Nuffnang event that was a little different from the ones we've had in the past. Most Nuffnang events were parties, movie-screenings or meet up sessions. All indoor.

The Nuffnang Samsung Corby Carnival Day we had last Saturday though... was OUTDOOR!

In conjunction with their new phone (the Samsung Corby that lets you change the backing of your phone to all sorts of different colours) we decided to have an outdoor challenge between 4 teams of Nuffnangers, each to represent a different colour.

About 100 Nuffnangers or so were split into 4 teams represented by 4 colours (orange, yellow, pink and white). Then they were put together to compete in things like tug-of-war, rock climbin and even paintballing. I didn't get to join myself but it was soo fun just to watch.

I took plenty of pictures and videos that day so I'll let the pictures do most of the talking.

1) Everyone sitting down at the briefing for the day. Right before they all changed into their team t-shirts.

2) Princess just before she changed into her yellow team shirt.


3) Princess right after she changed. The shirt looked so big on her it looked like a dress.


4) Tug-of-war match between yellow and orange. It was done on water so the losing team would be dragged into the water.

I love watching Tug-of-war. If you look closely at the yellow team you'll see a very small figure somewhere in the middle. That's Princess. Don't know how much she helped when it came to pulling the weight but ... well... maybe she helped with the moral support.

Took a video of the tug-of-war match but had so much trouble uploading it on YouTube. Was so funny watching one team pull the other team into the water.

5) After the tug-of-war, everyone regrouped to go for..


6) Rock-climbing!

The teams had to take turns to go up the wall and grab a balloon each.

7) It was right next to the reverse bungee.

Man that is a ride I wouldn't want to be on.

I mean I love rollercoasters and all but being tossed into the air is a whole other thing altogether.

If you want to see what it's like, watch this video I took of it.

8) The last activity for the day was a paintball match between the teams.


9) Caught a picture of some of the Nuffies talking. One thing I notice is that some of the Nuffies use a lot of hand gestures when they talk.

Just like Christy here....


and Pinky here....

and Christy here again.

I have no idea what they were saying but everyone else seemed to be pretty intrigued.

10) A picture with some of the Nuffies there that day.

They were all showing off their blackened hands that they got from climbing up the back of the rock wall to place the balloons for the rock climbers to retrieve.

From left: Tim2, Christy, Xinxian, Pinky, Me, Michelle, Jestina, Yuen Yee.

11) Here's Ker Loon. One of the people who we worked with to bring this event around.


12) Happened to see this group of people at the wave pool standing right in front of the water jet coming out of the lion's mouth.

Some were massaging their backs

and some like this woman here looked like she was water massaging her butt.

Looks damn comfy. Man I gotta try that some day.

13) The Samsung Corby prizes.

The winning team (which turned out to be orange) won each a new Samsung Corby. There are supposed to be 25 in each team so that's like 25 phones that Samsung gave away that day to Nuffnangers!

Naturally team orange couldn't contain their excitement.

In second place was Yellow team who won RM2,500 in cash for the whole team which worked out to be about RM100 each.

14) And here's a picture of the Nuffies who were there to put the event together that night.


Thanks for putting everything together Nuffies. And of course, thanks for the fun day Samsung.

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Steamboat Dinner with Nuffnang Singapore

I'm down in Singapore these few days for some work stuff.

Just had dinner with some of the team from Nuffnang Singapore and I now smell like steamboat.

Always a fun bunch to hang out with.

Thanks for the great company guys!

Sunday, January 17, 2010

One of those days....

Have you guys ever had one of those days where you were rushing somewhere and all sorts of things that don't normally come into your life suddenly appear to slow you down. You know like a big truck on the road or something.

Well today I was supposed to meet Pierre and Lay See for lunch at Papa Rich in Bangsar. It was supposed to be at 12.30PM so I ended up leaving my place about 12.00PM or so. 20 minutes is all you really needed to get to Bangsar from my place.

Man it was one of those car journeys where everything was going wrong.

1) It first started with me taking a wrong turn. Instead of making a U-Turn at the Pudu traffic light then head to Bangsar through Jalan Parlimen, I went straight towards Petaling Street. I don't know why I did that. I was headed to a longer and more jammed way to Bangsar.

2) So I was forced to go through Brickfields where there were somehow busses stopping everywhere taking up half the road and creating bottlenecks.

3) I was forced to stop at every traffic light. I nearly made it across for one of the traffic lights but this really slow car in front of me took its time and true enough was fast enough just to make the light but slow enough to be the last car to make the light (leaving me behind... asshole).

4) When I finally got to Bangsar there was a long line of cars turning into Telawi. Seeing that I wasn't going to get any roadside parking I made my journey to the Bangsar Village 2 car park.

5) Again... there was a long line of cars inside the car park. All waiting for each other to park one by one. Plus you had one particular car that took an amazingly long time just to reverse park into a lot. I started tapping on my steering wheel impatiently.

6) Finally I found a spot and I tried to reverse it, only to realize later on that by the time I reversed in I couldn't open my driver's door in spite of me being so close to the pillar on the other side of my car. The reason: The asshole who was parked next to me was parked on one and a quarter lot. The extra quarter of a lot coming from the lot I was in.

7) So I had to give up on that lot and find another lot somewhere else.

8) After I parked my car I raced upstairs only to be stopped by a group of people at an escalator happily standing there and talking leisurely. Now I could've gone passed them and climbed up the escalator but there were a few of them there so I didn't want to be a pain.

9) So I waited... and waited... and when I reached the top of the escalator I dashed passed the group of people who were blocking me.

10) Got to Papa Rich and saw Princess there waiting for me. She told me that Pierre and Lay See were waiting upstairs so we climbed up the stairs to see Pierre and Lay See at the other end of the room waving at us.

11) It was 1.00PM. We were unfashionably half an hour late! But our long journey of constant red lights and things in the way was finally over.... at least that's what I thought.

12) While we were walking towards Pierre through the narrow spaces between the other tables, a grandma came in front of us and was walking in the same direction. So we respectfully waited for the grandma to take her time and get where she needed to go before we quickly walked over to Pierre's.

One hour, to get from the city to Bangsar on a Sunday when most roads are empty (except Brickfields).

Man it was one of those days...

Fortunately Pierre and Lay See were nice and didn't give us a lecture. I bought lunch in return.

Ok bed time for me guys. Gotta catch a flight to Singapore for work tomorrow.

Saturday, January 16, 2010

Who Says Money Can't Buy Love

Oh yes it can! Oh yes it can!

I LOVE my boyfriend t-shirt... all for RM29.90.

Value for money!

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

FML 1 & FML 2

FML #1

Finally got myself the time to go buy Lady Gaga's album. Got it in 1-Utama just before the shops closed late at night. Was holding my CD happily in my hand when I got to my car and loaded the CDs into the CD Changer in the back.

There were two CDs. One of them was working fine but I couldn't figure out why the second one couldn't play. When I got home and took the CDs out I found out why: One of the CDs had a crack right down the middle.


I was like "WTF???.... come on if you bought a pirated CD and if this shit happens then fine. But that was an original album!".

So the next morning I had to go back all the way to 1-Utama to change it. Princess went down to help me get it changed and she told me the woman at the counter gave her a black face and reluctantly exchanged the disc. I think she thought we broke it in less 24 hours and tried to get it changed.

C'mon! How would I buy a CD at night and break it by the next morning? I've never even broken a CD before.

FML #2

Also at 1-Utama that night, Princess stopped by this shop and saw some face masks. She said "OOH OOH.. LETS BOTH WEAR A MASK TONIGHT". I didn't seem to keen on it. Ignorant me... I always thought masks were only for women but Princess showed me one that was made just for men.

She called it the "MAN MASK"... or something like that.
She said it would help me clean my pores and do something something... I wasn't really listening. Find it hard to listen when girls talk about beauty. I just like looking at beauty... not listening to how it comes about. It's like you just want to look at your beautiful crispy fried chicken in the bucket waiting for you to eat it. You don't wanna know how the chicken died before it got to the bucket right?

So fine... later that night we both tried out the mask.
Right after I took off the mask I began to see some redness on my cheeks. Thought it was nothing so I went to bed. Then in the middle of the night I felt some itch on my cheeks so I touched it only to feel like my face had just turned hard like a rock. An itchy rock.. if that makes any sense.

My face felt swollen. Started cursing and swearing mentally at the mask and telling myself that I shouldn't have done it. It was still dark and I was tired so I kept telling myself to stop thinking and go back to bed.

I couldn't.... my mind kept thinking about how my face looked and I had this image of me with the cheeks of Dumbo. So I got out of bed, went to the toilet and looked at myself in the mirror. I had two big round patches on my face. Rashes. I must've been allergic to something in the mask.

I let out a "Fuuuuucccckkk"... then I went to wake Princess to show it to her. The first few seconds that she began to wake she mumbled a "Huh??? Wha????" which actually meant "THE HOUSE HAD BETTER BE ON FIRE... OR IMMA KEEL YOU FOR WAKING ME UP FAT MAN!!!".

Then when she saw my face she went all "Ohhhh..... noooo.... I'm so sorry baby".

I looked at her with the most pitiful face I could make and said "It's itchy..."

She then cuddled me to sleep.

The next morning it got a lot better but I still look like I had rosey cheeks.

And it was still itchy.

Fortunately by the end of the day it had began to really clear out.

So no more masks for me... ever!

Monday, January 11, 2010

Nuffnangers at the DiGi Internet Pimp My Day

Princess and I decided to drop by the DiGi Internet Pimp My Day Challenge at 1-Utama last Saturday. It was a whole treasure hunt that DiGi organized for some 100 Nuffnangers there that day. They had to go around 1-Utama doing all sorts of different challenges like hit a baseball, run 800m on a treadmill, make a TVC and etc etc.

Because there were so many Nuffnangers who wanted to take part and not enough spots, Princess and I had to sit this out but we did make it for the after party at Mardigras. It was heaps fun!

When I got there, all the Nuffnangers were busy updating their blogs from their laptops (hooked to DiGi Broadband).

If there was a Malaysian Book of Records for the Most Number of Bloggers Updating Their Blogs at One Place (at the same time), I think that day in Mardigras might have just made the record.


I was creeping up behind people up trying to take pictures of them blogging. I clearly wasn't much of a ninja in my past life because almost everybody I tried to take a picture of noticed me in a corner of their eye and turned to stare at me.

Anyway there were a couple of highlights for the night. The first were the pole dancers who were pulling off stunts that made me feel fat, weak and heavy (again probably wasn't a ninja in my past life).

The other was the KL Stompers!

You guys know about Stomp right? I first heard about Stomp when I was in London. They had a show there where a group of people took really random stuff that you can pick up from the streets and make music from the random sounds they make by hitting them with sticks.

I never knew there was one in KL and I gotta say that they were all really good. It's these kind of talents that make me proud to be Malaysian. I just wish we all gave them a bigger opportunity to develop their talents.

I'm making it a point though to go see as much local stand-up comedy shows as I can this year.

Ah anyway here are some other pictures from the night.

Here's a picture of me and Joyce from DiGi.

Picture with Redmummy!

Tziaa and Adele who called their team (The DiGi Girls)

People on the stage getting some prizes. DiGi gave out loads of prizes that night.

Everything from Levi's and Swatch Vouchers to external HDs and laptops.

I particularly liked the uniforms some of the teams came up with. There were all in all about 25 teams of 4 that took part in the challenge. The dress code was just to wear anything yellow but some teams went about printing their own shirts.

Like this team here, that called themselves "DiGi Yellow Army"

Or this team, that all had sprayed on a little Nuffnang logo on their sleeves.

Or even this team that made a little DiGi Yellow Man teddy bear and wore it around their neck.

Ahhh thanks for the great night DiGi Internet.