TimothyTiah.com

Universal Studios Singapore

Posted on March 30, 2010 admin

Last weekend, Ming dragged us all over to Resort’s World Sentosa. We were going all going to visit the newly opened Universal Studios Singapore. Ming was really generous, he put us all up at Capella which was such a great resort but I’ll save that for another entry.

Let me show you my day at Universal Studios in pictures.

1) This is Ming and I at Festive Hotel. One of the hotels at the integrated resort.

Ming was damn kiasu. He wanted to go for Universal Studios the minute it opened so he got us all to meet there at 9AM. Pierre though was late. His GPS seemed like it was taking the day off as well and he ended up being guided to somewhere in Woodlands rather than Sentosa.

About an hour later though, Mr and Mrs Pierre Pang and Mr and Mrs Kah Seong arrived safely at Sentosa.

2) Princess and I at the entrance of Universal Studios.

The big globe kinda reminds me of Disney Sea.

It’s actually not my first time at Universal Studios. It’s my 3rd. I’ve been to the one in the USA and the one in Japan once before on family trips. Still… I was excited.

3) Princess and Mrs Bossming at what I keep calling the “Main Street USA” of Universal Studios.

4) Pierre, Ming and me starting our day at Universal Studios.

5) Oh and did I mention Lyndi and Kah Seong who came along too.

We saw this big pop corn truck and thought it was a prop. Didn’t realize that you could actually really buy popcorn off it until we got much nearer to it. And just because of that… someone insisted that they take a picture in front of it.

6) We ate breakfast at this really 60s looking cafe.

It ain’t a 60s looking cafe without a jukebox!

So while the rest of the group who often acted grown up and all sat down and had breakfast. Princess and I went about camwhoring.

With the jukebox, among other things.

7) After dinner we saw this group of dancers in colourful shirts dancing outside to all kinds of music.

8) Watched it for a while then we went to watch a musical performance called “Monster Rock”.

It was a really fun performance! You could tell that all the actors and actresses were all from overseas but they did whatever they could to localize their performance. At one point they broke out singing “Gei wo yi ge wen” and “Nobody nobody but you *clap* *clap*”. That is of course, amongst the other rock songs they sang like It’s My Life and all.

9) Walked along the streets and saw yet another performance.

This one a breakdancing one. My sister would’ve loved it. Have I ever mentioned that my sister is a great street dancer. Maybe I’ll share her videos up here one day (with her permission).

10) I love rollercoasters…. and I was really looking forward to this one but just a few days before my trip I was disappointed to hear that the police shut down the ride temporarily for safety reasons.

So when I was there at Universal Studios, the ride was closed.

11) Ming however was happy.

Ming is a really tough soldier kind of guy but not a rollercoaster kind of person. He doesn’t enjoy it and I understand it. I used to be like that. I used to think… why go through all that shit just to scare yourself?

That was of course until I learned to scream and shout when I’m on a rollercoaster. Once you do that, it’s like you let everything lose and it suddenly becomes… actually fun.

So now I love rollercoasters. The faster the better. I’ve been on all sorts now.

Back to Ming, his favourite ride at Disneyland is the ‘tea cup ride’. You know the one where you sit in a tea cup and you can turn a big dial in the middle of the tea cup to spin it round and round?

Well at Universal Studios, their version of the tea-cup ride is this…

something they call the Accelerator.

Princess and I hopped into one ‘cup’ ourselves while Ming, Kah Seong and the rest went into their own cups.

This is Princess posing and pretending to look as if she’s scared of the ride.

And this is Princess genuinely scared of the ride.

She was getting dizzy and was afraid that she might throw up… on me.

12) The next ride we went for was the Mummy ride.

Pierre and the rest had invested a lot of their earlier time telling Ming that it was a fun ride. Not scary at all. Not much of a rollercoaster. So we managed to trick Ming to go for it with us.

It wasn’t easy to be honest. While queuing up for the ride there were many warnings signs that said “Warning, Mummy ride (or whatever it was called) is a ride that involves sharp turns, drops and etc etc…”.

Each time we passed one of those signs, one of us took our queue to distract Ming from looking at it.

When Ming finally realized, he was already strapped into his seat.

The next 5 minutes was really funny for us… but not funny for Ming.

I ended up buying the picture that they took of all of us on the rollercoaster because it was so funny. Ming’s reaction (along with everyone else’s) was hilarious.

But Ming banned me from posting that picture online. So I shan’t… for fear of losing my business partner.

13) We went to watch Waterworld after that.

This is again my 3rd time watching Waterworld. I don’t understand why the real movie was a box office flop though. I read all these bad reviews about it online but I remember growing up watching the movie and actually really liking it.

It was also, one of the most expensive movies ever made.

Me, Ming and Mrs Bossming waiting for the show to start.

14) Here’s Princess and I at Far Far Away Land.

Princess said she likes this picture very much.

15) Me and the Friar !

16) The ladies shopping for Universal Studios merchandise.

We ended up buying a lot of these little stuffed Gingerbread Men. You know the one in Shrek with the high-pitched voice.

I didn’t buy the little stuffed Gingerbread Men but what I did end up buying was this pillow.

For the office. Hehehe.. nais leh!

17) Saw the penguins from Madagascar as well. We wanted to take a picture with them but there were too many people queuing up for that same opportunity.

So we only managed to get a picture of their backs.

18) This is us at the Jurassic Park part of Universal Studios.

Princess and I decided to each do some pose with the big dinosaur we saw.

I went for the stupid look.

And Princess went for the cute one that just makes everyone wanna go.. Awwww….

19) And a last picture to end with.

This was taken at the Hershey store outside Universal Studios.

Me looking stupid again.

I had fun at Universal Studios.

Thanks for dragging us there Ming. And for the tickets.

Princess and I thank you!

I shall end this blog entry with……
“NOBODY NOBODY BUT YOU …. *CLAP* *CLAP*”

HAHA! NOW THAT SONG IS ALWAYS GOING TO BE STUCK IN YOUR HEAD!

Do you believe in ghosts?

Posted on March 28, 2010 admin

My sister is moving down to KL to work. As a result of that, I find myself having to move out of the room or actually the apartment I used to stay in and move into another one right across the hall from it.

This new apartment I’m living in how has been empty for years. I used to live in one of the rooms in this new apartment more than 3 years ago but ever since I moved out it has had only one other tenant who moved out a couple of years ago. As a result the apartment has been empty for two years.

The minute Princess walked into the new room with me she started feeling very depressed and sad and grumpy. I asked her what’s wrong and she shared that there was something not right about the room. She didn’t know how to explain it but she said something about it made her feel uneasy and depressed. She said she thought there might be a spirit living in here.

I calmed her down. I’m a God fearing person. I believe in God and while I believe that there are spirits among us sometimes, call me optimistic but I somehow believe that spirits don’t want to harm us… short of us doing anything evil or something.

Princess then went on to tell me a story her parents had told her before. Her parents used to share a home with 2 other couples. The couple who lived in the master bedroom of the house used to fight a lot. One day they finally moved out of the room and the other couple moved in. The second couple then started having a lot of fights. So her parents always believed that there was something wrong with that room.

Well I hope it isn’t the same for this room. It is after all a room I’ve once lived in for a while.

Princess and I decided to try it out for one night. Hope it all goes well.

Do you guys believe in ghosts or things like that?

Philippines in Pictures

Posted on March 27, 2010 admin

Hi everyone,

I’m in Singapore now. Staying at Capella in Sentosa. It’s a really really nice place. Have taken lots of pictures and will blog about it soon but in the mean time here is the rest of the things I did in the Philippines… in pictures.

1) This is the lobby of the hotel I was staying in. I stayed in Peninsula at Makati. Great hotel.

I actually witnessed my first earthquake in this hotel. On the last day of my stay in Manila, we were in the room when Ming suddenly said “Do you feel the hotel shaking?”

I didn’t know how to confirm it at first. I did a Google News Search and didn’t manage to find anything about an earthquake in Manila so I did a Twitter search and voila, everyone was talking about how a 6.0 magnitude quake just hit Manila.

Ahh the power of Twitter.

2) Picture of taken during the Board meeting of Nuffnang Philippines Inc.

Haha for some reason some people seem to think that I was in Manila on a holiday or something because all they see are my dinners and all.

Well here’s what I do during the day. Go to the office 🙂

A picture of all the people at the Board meeting.

The Board meeting is where the heads of the company meet together and get updates on how the company is doing and make any major decisions moving forward.

3) Had a chance to meet the Country Manager of Yahoo Philippines as well.

We met up with him for lunch. Eric brought us to this place called Mamou.

It had really great steak.

4) Here’s a picture of one of the hosts at Mag.Net’s Rockoke night. He was a great host. Really funny as well.

On one of my other days at Manila, Ming and I bumped into him in the lobby of our hotel all dressed up in work clothes.

He laughed and said “This is my day job”.

I hear he runs some private equity fund. Big job!

5) Speaking of Rockoke night at Mag.net, here’s a picture of the some of the Nuffnangers there singing Wannabe on stage.

Spice girl fans.

6) Picture of Jay, Eric, Ming and I at a dinner on the first night we were there.

Having Mexican food!

7) Here’s a random picture of Ming taken right outside Greenbelt.

Being his first trip to the Philippines, I wasn’t sure if Ming would like it but at the end of the trip he decided he liked Manila too. Just like me. I love coming to Manila 🙂

8) And I’m going to end off with a picture of the team in Nuffnang Philippines.

Can’t imagine how it has grown. It used to only have like a couple of people in the team, now there are so many more.

I enjoyed Manila very much but it was really all thanks to the great company I had there. Thanks for hosting us guys (that means Nuffies, Nuffnangers and Eric/Jay) 🙂

Looking forward to another trip soon 🙂

Dinner Party with Nuffnang Philippines

Posted on March 25, 2010 admin

Last night which was my last night in Manila, the Nuffies from Nuffnang Philippines put together a great night out. We had a really nice dinner party at the beautiful home of one of our partners there: Jay.

The PH Nuffies did a really great job in setting everything up. Everything from the finger food, drinks, food and settings. About 30-40 of us were there and we all had name tags with fixed seating arrangements so everyone knew where to go.

And as a surprise, they even arranged for Heny Sison and some of her apprentices to cook for us that night.

Now Heny Sison is probably a new name to us but according to all the Filipinos I talked to there, she’s a really really famous chef that does cook shows on TV.

Jay described her as the “Filipino Martha Stewart”. Cooking for private functions like this is not something that she does at all. She just agreed to it because she was a family friend of Carlos our PH Nuffie.

She cooked some of the food but she even gave a bit of a cooking class to teach us how to make Pizza. So we all put on our Chef hats and aprons and tried to follow.

Man I never knew it was so much work just to make the dough.

This is how you do it.

First you put a mixture of some things yeast just like Jay here.

Then you put some flour in with the yeast in a mixer. Just like how I was doing here. See ? I helpful! 🙂

Then you’re supposed to knead the dough.

And once the dough settles after 40 minutes or so it looks like this.

Then you’re supposed to take bits of it and roll it until it becomes a flat pizza thing and you can put all your toppings on it to put it in the oven.

And voila… pizza is made.

Everyone was just having fun watching the others work.

Look at Ming laughing so loud! *evil laugh.

Thank you Chef Heny for the nice cooking lesson.

For the rest of the night we had our dinner, some dessert and a lot of great conversations.

Here are some pictures from the night.

Everyone crowding around listening to Eric (our other partner in Nuffnang Philippines) give an opening speech to the night.

The chefs then explaining what each food they made was all about.

Some of the Nuffies and Nuffnangers chat over dinner. All look like they’re having some deep conversation.

Me and PH Nuffie Patty here.

Ming having a conversation with Nuffnanger Jane.

Pam and Joy. The bubbly wives of our partners 🙂

One of the desserts we had that night.

Picture with some of the Nuffies and Nuffnangers that night.

Judd camwhoring with my camera.

Hannah and me.

Hannah is a Filipino blogger who reads lots of Malaysian blogs. She said she’s a big fan of Nuffnang even before Nuffnang came to the Philippines.

And I first knew of her when I blogged about coming to Manila once before and she left a comment welcoming me or something. I checked out her blog then because I didn’t think then that I would have many people from the Philippines reading my blog. That was a long time ago.

Now we’re all friends.

Jay and Ming having a good man to man talk.

The Buffet table with all the food.

Nuffie Maki here having dinner with Jehz!

Jehz if you remember was one of the finalists for Most Influential Blogger in the Nuffnang Asia-Pacific Blog Awards. (Notice Ming in the background taking some pictures of the food with his “beast”).

By the end of the night, this is how I looked. Red as a lobster all because of the man in the picture.

His name is Gerard. He was getting everyone to drink plenty all night long.

Thanks for coming everyone. And thanks to the Nuffies for putting the whole party together! I thought they did a great job.

Oh and thanks to Jay for letting us host it at his place.

I had so much fun. Just halfway throughout the night I told Ming “You know, these are one of the nights where I’m going to have a memory of forever”. I will always remember that night.

What a way to end our trip to Manila.

Rockeoke Night in Manila

Posted on March 23, 2010 admin

I just had a very very fun first night in Manila.

It started off with dinner with the PH Nuffies.

This is Eric and Jay. Our partners in Nuffnang Philippines!

And here’s the Nuffnang Philippines Team.

Can’t believe how it has grown. Used to have like.. just one person in Nuffnang Philippines when we started about one and a half years ago.

Dinner was great. Good company, good conversations and great laughs.

After dinner though we headed to this bar called Mag.Net for its famous Monday Rockeoke Nights. Now Rockeoke is where there’s a live band and anyone who wants to request a song can go up and sing.

It doesn’t matter if you’re good or bad, the crowd’s just really supportive either ways. The last time I was at Rockeoke I chickened out of singing in front of the crowd and I really regretted it.

This trip back in the Philippines I decided that I just HAD to do it. You only live once!

So I mustered the courage to go up to sing. At first I requested to sing Yellow by Cold Play but the band decided to sing it as one of their opening songs and they sang it so damn bloody well I changed my mind about singing that song. So I picked “How to Save a Life” by Fray.

The whole night was so much fun!

We were all singing along with the other people who went up on stage to sing. Cheered for them. Danced along with the music and had lots to drink. That was pretty obvious from the colour of my face. Red as Sebastian.

Here’s a picture of Ming and I with the host that night.

He was really funny. Made all sorts of jokes to get the party going.

Okay I really thought long and hard before sharing this video of me singing with you guys but okay… I’ve decided to be sporting and share it (Yes don’t worry, I will keep my day job).

Something tells me I’m going to regret this. Singing ain’t exactly a talent I have but it was so much fun being up there on stage. Almost made me feel like I was in an actual band. Like real-life Band Hero. WOOHOO!!!

Thanks for the great night out Nuffies!

On to a full day of meetings today!

Manila Mari

Posted on March 22, 2010 admin

I woke up at 4.45AM this morning. Waking up that early in the morning has got to be illegal in some countries but well awake I was.

I sent out a tweet thinking that nobody else would see it but apparently I wasn’t the only one awake so early.

I quickly showered, got dressed then hopped on to a flight from Penang to KL and then KL to Manila.

I reached Manila to have Patty, one of the Nuffies from Nuffnang PH pick me up from the airport with a big sign!

She said she didn’t realize how big her sign was until she was standing next to everyone else who appeared to have signs the size of a piece of paper.

I’m now at the hotel. Ming is arriving soon.

I’m so tired. I need to sleep first.

Long work trip begins.

Good night world!

St Patrick’s !!!

Posted on March 20, 2010 admin

I’m in Penang now. Just drove down this morning. Came back to see my family for a day then Monday morning I have to wake up at like 4AM and catch a flight to Manila. Aihh… my life.

Last night though I went for the Guinness St Patrick’s Day celebration at 1-Utama and I had soooo much fun. I had fun at last year’s event too but this year’s was a class of its own. I went really early. Like it starts at 6PM and I was there even before that, having come straight from a meeting.

Walked around 1-Utama for a bit and waited for the rest of the Nuffies to arrive. Linda was the second earliest Nuffie to arrive and we decided to walk around and take some pictures.

Here’s me with the huge St Pat’s Day clover made out of balloons.

And check out the huge Guinness pint made of balloons behind me. Gotta be the most creative use of balloons I’ve ever really seen.

While I was having my picture taken, a friendly stranger popped in to take a picture with me too.

The whole event had a very carnival-like feel. There was a huge stage where they had bands playing all night long.

They had a comedy tent where they got Douglas Lim, Kavin and Jenhan to perform stand-up comedy.

and they had food stalls that served great food.

Even one from J&R.

I actually just had J&R for lunch that same day but I decided anyway to pick up some Guinness.

And what they call a “Guinness Pie”. I’m assuming a beef pie with some Guinness in it.

They even put the Guinness logo on the pastry.

Linda didn’t feel like pie so she had a hot dog that was apparently really spicy. I call it a hot hot dog. It was also around then when she told me that she had never once in her life tried Guinness before so I made sure she got one.

Guinness to me is a bit of an acquired taste (if you don’t like it, go acquire some taste… haha just kidding just kidding. I learned that line from one of our PH Nuffies). The first time I tried it I didn’t quite like it but after drinking more and more of it I began to grow to like it.

My staple drink is still Heineken but there are times when I’m in the mood for a Guinness. Like you know, there are so many of these Irish Pubs popping up around KL. The kind where you go in and everyone else is drinking Guinness. Makes you want to have one yourself.

Anyway back to St Patrick’s Day. We were all in time to watch the first stand-up comedy session with Kavin and Jenhan. Linda and I went in early so we sat at one of the front rows. Halfway through Jenhan’s performance Tziaa called me to tell me she was here. She wanted to know where I was.

I picked up the phone and spoke very very softly for a few seconds but Tzia couldn’t hear me. Then realizing that I was being very very rude to Jenhan performing I quickly hung up and text her to tell her that I’ll call her back. Sorry Jenhan… won’t be so rude ever again.

Just as well though, for some reason Tzia managed to guess that we were in the comedy tent and met up with us after the performance.

Say hello to Tzia and Adele.

There were a lot of other bloggers there. Including Vvens, Ginny and Superwilson here.

And Ringo too.

I heard Kimcun and Shaolin were there too (from their tweets) but I didn’t manage to spot them. I did manage to find Sixthseal though.

At the rate he was going with the booze, I found myself wondering if St Pats had enough Guinness for him…. but they did. I think they must’ve brought truck loads of Guinness.

And of course the Nuffies all made it too.

Here’s Jestina, Michelle and Karen looking pretty that night. They brought all their clothes to office and changed just before they came straight after office.

Michelle is that a Chanel you’re carrying?

I wish I had taken a picture of the rest of the Nuffies there but I was too distracted by all sorts of different things. Like the great band music.

Or the fireworks they had at around 10PM. Man that was FREAKING AWESOME!

I’ve seen so many fireworks but this one really made me go wow because it was all happening so close to me.

The night ended with me finally reuniting with Princess.

Yes that’s her in the big St Pats hat and the weird glasses. Can’t you tell by her height? She insisted on putting on her disguise because she had been working and she thought she looked “ugly”.

But of course she didn’t. She always looks great.

Thanks for the great St Pats Day Guinness. Looking forward to next year’s.

Ok everyone. Time to go spend time with family now in Penang. Dreading my early morning flight on Monday… uggghhhhhhhh

The Value of Life

Posted on March 16, 2010 admin

Today was a normal work day for me. In fact it was more than normal. It was a very eventful one. I started off going to work in the morning and catching up with the Nuffies. Then in the afternoon we went for lunch and then off to AMP Radio and met some of the DJ’s at Era Fm.

Then I came back, had dinner with some of the Nuffies and played Band Hero with some of them in the office until almost 12AM. Then when we decided that we’ve been playing for way too long, we all went home.

When I got home my brother told me some news. He told me how someone we all knew had gone missing for the past 7 days. No sign of him, no call for ransom or anything. Nothing. Just recently they found him…. murdered.

I don’t want to go into the identity of this person nor do I want to go into what happened but I don’t know how to describe how I feel about this now. We read about these things in the papers almost every other day. Someone gets raped, someone gets murdered or something else equally as bad happens to someone. To us we all read it as a piece of news because we don’t know that someone.

When it happens to someone you know it finally hits you. Suddenly a person that you felt would always be around just suddenly disappears from your life. You think of your last memory of him and maybe the last conversation you’ve had with him and then poof it’s all gone. I can’t even say I was really close to this someone and already I feel very sad. I can’t imagine how his family must feel.

Why are there such cruel people in this world?

God please help us…

Decepticon Bumble Bee

Posted on March 15, 2010 admin

Was at Princess’ house the other day and I saw this car parked outside.

It wasn’t just ANY beetle.

It was a Decepticon beetle!

What do you call a Decepticon Bumble Bee?

On another note, I met a reader at the Mobile Youth Unconference the other day. Her name is Vickie!

Pic: Stolen from Vickie’s blog

Say Hello to Vickie!

I visited her blog and she seems to have quite a misconception of herself referring to herself as an “aunty“. Please go over to her blog and tell her how wrong she is. Call her… “young hot chick” or uhh… Princess suggested “Sweet Young Thing”.

What Tiger Woods Really Meant to Say At His Press Conference

Posted on March 13, 2010 admin

I’m sure all of you know what’s been going on with Tiger Woods right? How he’s been having a little bit of a bad time for being caught cheating on his wife and all that. He’s even had a press conference not too long ago to issue an apology. The public has been putting him through so much shit that I actually feel really sorry for him.

It’s politically correct these days to say Tiger Woods deserved whatever he’s getting and all that for what he did but I’m just going to say it. I think it’s too much. While he has done wrong by cheating, why should everyone continue to crucify him for his suffering marriage? Who are we to say that we will never make any mistakes like this at any point in our lives? When we judge him, what is it that makes us feel we’re more perfect than him?

Anyway a few days ago Princess sent me one of these forwarded e-mails that she gets from her Dad. Yes her Dad haha and I thought it gave a different perspective from how we’re all used to seeing this situation which I thought was a little over the top but worth sharing anyway.

—————–

What Tiger Woods Really Meant to Say At His Press Conference

Let me just say to all my fans that I feel sorry for everyone who criticized me for my extra-marital affairs. You must live a miserable existence if you have nothing better to do than read about my personal life in the tabloids. But I suppose I should provide an explanation about my behavior so that you will continue to buy the products I endorse.

So here goes. I am an average looking man of mixed racial descent. Like most men, I had trouble getting pussy before I became a famous multimillionaire. I did okay at Stanford because I was on the golf team, but the women there graded out with a “B” because they were leftovers that players on the football team didn’t want. Before that, I got nothing because I have a bland personality and big lips.

Then, I win a few golf tournaments and women are lining up at my door. Of course, I took advantage of my opportunities. These were women who wouldn’t give me the time of day if I sold insurance or worked on a used car lot. They wanted me so they could brag to their friends about having sex with a celebrity, while holding the belief that one day they would live a life of luxury as the wife of Tiger Woods. When that didn’t happen, they seized on an opportunity to sell their story to the tabloids, all the while looking the part of a woman scorned.

Now I want to discuss my wife.

When I met Elin, she was just like the others, except she played the “hard-to-get” strategy that women often use to corral men. It worked. She had all the qualities I wanted in a woman: pretty face, nice tits, nice ass, and an inviting personality. We dated for a while, had wild sex, and we genuinely enjoyed each other’s company. When I asked her to marry me, she accepted. Why wouldn’t she? Only an idiot would say no to a lavish lifestyle that most people only dream about.

Our marriage was okay. We have two wonderful children and Elin is a good mother. But since she had those kids, she’s become a bitch, and doesn’t want to have sex very often. And, she won’t accompany me on road trips, except to the major championships. Unfortunately, my job requires that I travel to a different city every week where women nod approvingly at me where ever I go. Do you see the problem here?

To all the men out there: What would you have done in my shoes? Would you have said no to all the woman who lined up to meet you, especially after listening to your wife bitch at you over the telephone for not spending enough time at home with her and the kids?

And to all the women: How many of you would have turned down an opportunity to spend a night with me, knowing that you could sell your story to a tabloid for 500K?I feel bad about the potential damage my actions might cause my kids. As for Elin, I can think of at least 300 million reasons why she will be okay if we divorce and she is forced to survive on her own. And don’t forget that vast support network she will have after appearing on Oprah and The View.

As for me, I have paid dearly for my transgressions. I have lost millions and might lose custody of my children. Almost everyone who sees me takes great pleasure seeing me in pain.
The letters “Saint” or ” St. ” do not precede my name. Your telling me it’s O.K. to screw everything in sight and be a politician, but you can’t be a pro-golfer???
Did I become famous for being a model married man, or was it because I’m the best damn golfer in the world???

Now here I stand, while you sit there anxiously waiting to hear my heartfelt apology, when all I really want to say is “Fuck Off!”

——–

Timothy Tiah – Co-Founder of Colony, Kuala Lumpur Co-Working Space