Whenever I reach the end of the year I always look back and think to myself how the year has passed so quickly. I wonder then what I did the whole year. So I do a couple of things. I go through my blog archives and I go through all the pictures I’ve taken for the year. Those two things tell the story of what I’ve done in the past year.

That’s the thing about blogging or being a blogger. It’s not just what you publish online but it’s also the discipline you have to take pictures wherever you go. Pictures always tell a story.. of what you’ve done or what you were doing back at a certain time. Here’s just a quick summary of the things I did in 2010.

Early January was the first time I’ve started using the Kindle.

Ming bought it for me for a Christmas present the year before. It remains today an awesome gift. When it comes to reading books, nothing beats the Amazon Kindle.

I went to East Malaysia for the first time in my life. It was for the filming of Project Alpha Season 2. We shot a few episodes in Kuching and one even in Kenny Sia’s gym.

Like a week after Kuching I had to leave again for London for the shooting of another episode of Project Alpha there. It was my first time going back to London since graduation so I took some time to meet up with some of my old uni friends who were still there.

Julia, my British Born Chinese friend that always amazed me how she sounded totally English when she spoke English with her accent and totally Hong Kee when she spoke Cantonese.

and Adrian who is working at the Bank of England now.

Took a walk down memory lane too. Visited my old University College London where I spent 3 years of my life.

and even visited the old council flat I used to stay in as a student.

Spent a bit of time on a food adventure too.

Had my typical English Breakfast.

Went back to Alounak, my favourite Persian restaurant in Bayswater.

and actually went for lunch at Maze, a Gordon Ramsay restaurant.

Dropped by Miu Miu at the later part of the trip to buy Shorty a gift. Met a salesgirl there who happened to know all about Nuffnang 🙂

Got back to Malaysia just in time for Chinese New Year. Played sparklers for the first time since I was a little kid.

That’s me playing it with Shorty.

Back in KL the Nuffies had a Chinese New Year lunch because Robb insisted on having his Yee Sang.

Felt really bored one weekend with nothing to do so Shorty and I decided to make Oreo Truffles. Turned out to be quite a hit.

Had a little Nuffie BBQ at my place.

Saw the biggest pint of Guinness I’ve ever seen in my life (made out of balloons).

Went to AMP Radio and met up with some of the Era DJs 🙂

Headed off to visit our office in the Philippines. Here’s the first dinner we had with the team there.

After that dinner we went to this really nice bar where people could go up and sing a song they wanted to sing with the backing of a live band. I went up and sang “How to Save a life” (badly).

I wouldn’t have done it without the help of the Filipino Nuffies… and the booze.

The next day we had dinner at Jay’s house. The cook for the dinner that night was this TV celebrity chef in the Philippines they referred to as the Martha Stewart of the Philippines.

Met Hannah there too.

Came back from the Philippines and then made a trip to Singapore with Shorty to visit Universal Studios there.

Ming booked us a luxurious night at Capella. A once in a lifetime kind of experience because it’s too expensive to stay more than a night.

Since we were having a luxurious night, Shorty and I dressed up and went for a good dinner with some friends too.

Came back from Singapore in time for the Project Alpha Season 2 launch. Filming was done and it was time for the blogger launch at Cineleisure Damansara.

Moved into my new place.

Nuffnang and Gatsby held Malaysia’s Largest Blogger Gathering with over 500 bloggers at Berjaya Times Square one afternoon.

Everyone had a sticker with the number they were. We hold that record still till today.

Went to Malacca one day for my favourite Chicken Rice Balls.

I can never get enough of that and it doesn’t matter if I have to queue. I spent all the time queueing just taking pictures with Shorty here.

Went to Japan with the Jipaban team in September for a trade show.

Had Xiaxue, Ringo and some other tag along too.

Popped by Tokyo Disneyland for a day too right after the tradeshow.

Right after Japan I headed back to the Philippines for work.

Came back in time for the Nuffnang-Vaseline party at Lunar Bar. One of the few cocktail-classy kind of parties we’ve ever had.

After that I headed to Hong Kong for some meetings. Took this picture while waiting for the people I was meeting to come into the meeting room.

Shorty and I celebrated our 2nd anniversary. Got Firdy to make us these little clay figurines.

Went for the Horeca Temptations party at Seven Ate Nine with Gin and Coring.

Took a flight one day and remember seeing this Firefly attendant wearing an Air Asia cap.

Attended the Glitterati Plus Open Meeting at Taylor’s for the launch of our new program for bloggers who want to be really active.

Went to San Francisco after that for the Web 2.0 Summit.

Ming and I visited the Google office and many other offices of Silicon Valley companies then.

Over the weekend I made a quick trip to Vegas too. Just to check out how it’s like.

Came back in time for the Merry Guinness Christmas party.

December came and we went for our first Nuffie company trip ever with the staff from Nuffnang, Nom Nom Media, Netccentric and ChurpChurp.

We went on a cruise.

And that everyone was my year.

I did miss out one part of it though. My business trips to the Nuffnang Australia office but I’ve lost all those pictures because my Macbook’s hard disk crashed some time in the middle of the year. Sucks but that’s life.

Hope you guys had a great 2010 too. I wonder what 2011 has in store for us!

I went back to my hometown Penang for Christmas. I haven’t been back for a few months but this time is the first time in many many months that I actually took the time to go around Penang. The previous trips back I hardly went out. Spent all my time at home.

This time I noticed quite a number of things that are different in Penang. Before, the streets in the town area around Komtar and all that have always been infamously known for being dirty. Now they are clean. So clean that I hardly find any waste around the whole area. I drove around to the other parts of Penang and notice the same thing. It’s so clean that it reminded me of Singapore.

For a long time I’ve been hearing about the great work the Penang state government has been doing with the state but I’ve never really seen it for myself until now. There are a lot of other things. Every Penangite I talk to knows what the state government has done and is really really happy with it. So to that I just have to say. Kudos to the Penang state government for doing a great job!

The other thing I noticed about Penang this time round is the huge development. There are countless new apartment buildings in places that I never knew existed and even malls in the oldest places of town. One of the new developments that is pretty cool though is called Straits Quay.

It’s sort of like a mall-restaurant-bar-area in the new housing area Tanjung Pinang. The best way to describe Tanjung Pinang for me is that it’s kind of like a Desa Parkcity but by the seaside. When I went there, most of the shops of Straits Quay weren’t open yet but I could see from the shops that were already open that it was going to be really cool.

For one, the shops that you had there weren’t your common shops that you find in ever other shopping mall ie Giordano etc etc. There were a number of boutiques or even art galleries there. Then comes the restaurants. They were restaurants that before were never found anywhere else in Penang and were the kind of places that I would really love to eat at.
I took a walk out of Straits Quay and walked around the seaside.

Around me were people walking around or taking their afternoon jog. The houses nearer to Straits Quay are newer so they still haven’t got anyone living in them yet but I hear they’re all sold out.

In fact I hear that a Terrace house in Straits Quay now costs over a million ringgit. Notice how the houses in Tanjung Pinang though have a very colonial kind of theme. The houses here don’t look anything like the typical home and they’re all white. I feel that theme though gives it some identity…. especially in a place like Penang that’s one of the World Heritage Sites.

I just realized now while blogging that I didn’t take any pictures of the inside of Straits Quay. What I did take a picture of though was the entrance where they had this huge Christmas tree there.

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and an Audi on display in front of a luxury car showroom they had there.

In the next few months though I’m sure I’ll be back. Once the rest of the shops open up and Straits Quay really comes to life, I’m sure it will be a big thing in Penang. Something Penang has always needed.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Today I realized that I am the worst uncle ever. Woke up this morning realizing that I didn’t buy any Christmas presents for my little niece and nephew. So I rushed to ToysRUs in the morning to do some last minute Christmas shopping.

Bought my little niece this little pink computer because she always likes to sit on our laptops when she sees us working on our computers. So I thought it would be nice for her to have a computer of her own. She was excited, played for it for a short while then got bored. Turns out iPhone or iPad games are a lot more fun to her than these little education games.

I wonder why these toys haven’t upped their games yet. It’s still having the same old black and white tiny LCD screen they did some 10 years ago. Come on… times have changed, at least have a big colour screen or something.

My nephew who is just a couple of years old though loved his new gift. He’s a big Toy Story fan so I bought him…. this Buzz Lightyear Buzz Space Mobil!

He loved it!

The fun in Christmas.. is giving presents. More than receiving them somehow 🙂

Merry Christmas everyone!

When I was in Las Vegas last month, the one thing I wanted to see was the Bellagio. It’s known to be one of the most luxurious hotels in Vegas right next to Caeser’s Palace.

I’ve been lucky to have been to Vegas before but that was when I was a little boy. Back then I was staying in the pyramid-like hotel called Luxor and I remember seeing a whole lot of hotels being constructed. One of them was called New York New York and another one called Paris. I remember people saying then that there was going to be a big rollercoaster on New York New York and Paris was going to have an Eiffel tower to it.

Last month, I actually got to see the hotels all completed and open for business for years.

Since then more hotels opened up. One of them was something I always heard about on TV: The Bellagio. See I hear all about Las Vegas because I love the TV Show not ironically called Las Vegas as well. It’s a TV show about a team of people running a fictional casino hotel in Las Vegas.

I also know a bit about the history of Las Vegas because I read a book about Vegas some time back (can’t remember what it was called). About how it came about and how Steve Wynn played a really important part in it. Here’s what I remember from it.

Steve Wynn was a pioneer when it comes to Las Vegas hotels. Before, hotels in Las Vegas used to be simple. They had basic amenities and avoided being too comfortable because they wanted people to spend more time in the casinos than in their rooms. Wynn changed that when he built the Mirage.

It was the first Las Vegas hotel with a theme. It had a forest in the inside and a volcano on the outside.

After that he went on to build a family-oriented kind of hotel called Treasure Island which was Pirate themed. It was again another first in Las Vegas. It was only after he brought these kind of hotels to Vegas did other hotels focus on themes like Paris Las Vegas, New York New York or even the Venetian today.

Then one day he had the idea to build a hotel where the theme would be LUXURY. He found it odd that in a city like Las Vegas there wasn’t yet a hotel whose main focus and theme was LUXURY. So he started work on an almost 4,000 room hotel known today as the Bellagio.

The Bellagio when it was built was the most expensive casino hotel ever built costing a total of $1.6 billion. According to the book, that didn’t even include another $400 million in which Wynn spent on Art which be bought from auction houses all over the world. It was with building The Bellagio did he find his passion in art since any luxury hotel had to have some level of fine art.

The Bellagio, as beautiful as it was also happened to be his downfall. Mirage Resorts was Wynn’s listed company which built and owned all his hotels from Mirage all the way to the Bellagio. Because he was so passionate about making sure the Bellagio was perfect, he spent a lot of time and money on the project. So much that his shareholders began to worry and eventually the share price came low enough for a competitor of his to buy him out (MGM).

The book went on to tell how that was a down in his life. Some sort like how Steve Jobs was feeling when he got kicked out of Apple decades ago.

So it’s because of this story of Wynn that the Bellagio was something I always wanted to see. I wanted to see how something a perfectionist spared no expense to create looked like. The Bellagio was indeed beautiful in real life. I didn’t get a chance to stay there because the rooms were just too expensive though I made it a point to come back one day and try it out.

The Bellagio is known for the beautiful fountain show here.

I took a video of the fountain and wanted to share it here but I watching the video, I realized that it really doesn’t compare to seeing it in real life. So for that reason, I’d say… don’t spoil the experience by watching a video of the fountain. Make it a dream to one day be able to go to Vegas and see the fountain with your own eyes 🙂

So there’s a really simple version of The Story of The Bellagio 🙂

Ending Note: Since Steve Wynn sold Mirage Resorts (which included to Bellagio) to MGM, he started another a very successful hotel of his own called Wynn. He was apparently really against naming the hotel after himself but was convinced by research that showed his name brought a premium perception to the hotel and allowed it to charge higher rates. Steve Wynn today is today worth $1.5 billion and is one of Las Vegas’ Legends.

On the 3rd day of the Nuffie cruise, the ship stopped at Phuket in Thailand. It’s amazing. You’re doing so much on the ship sometimes you forget that you’re actually going somewhere. Then one morning you wake up and instead of seeing ocean as far as the eye can see, you see Phuket.

Standing on the balcony I saw some jet skis circling our ship. We all got together and took a boat from the ship to the island. As our boat left the ship, for the first time in two days we saw close up how our ship really looked like from the front.

When we got to shore we got on 2 vans that took us all for lunch. Believe it or not, each van could fit some 15 of us. I tried taking a picture of all of us packed into the van like sardines but failed.

All you can see of me is my forehead and my hair.

Some 15-20 minutes later we reached our destination. We were going to have lunch in this beautiful resort there.

I think it was called Andara Resort or something and it costs some…. well a lot of money to stay there. We were just there for lunch at a Thai restaurant there that had some really good reviews.

We ended up taking two big tables to fit everyone in.

Here are some pictures with some of the Nuffies there.

After our lunch though we all decided to split and go free and easy. Some of us wanted to go for a massage, some wanted to play water sports and some wanted to go to a shooting range. I decided to follow the small group to a shooting range. The van took us there for free because they get a commission from the shooting range for bringing tourists there.

We all got a mixture of guns. Everything from a 9mm handgun, to a shotgun and an M4A1 Carbine. My favourite was the Carbine. It has hardly any recoil and it’s deadly accurate!

I think we got cheated by the shooting range though. We all bought like 10 bullets of each gun to share but we ended up shooting much less than we bought. We didn’t fight it though… by the end of some 20 minutes, we decided that we had shot enough guns that afternoon.

Took a video of David here shooting a shotgun. We all laughed in the office when we watched it because of how he jumped back and shouted “Woaahh”.
The shotgun does that to you. Gives you a kickback that you would remember.

After time at the shooting range we went to the beach to meet up with some of the Nuffies.

I went with David to the water and just sat in the water while the waves hit me. I somehow forgot that I was still wearing my glasses so when the wave hit me once I dropped my glasses into the sea. I shouted out to David and told him what happened.

He was like “Ohh man.. you’ll never find it”.

I was hopeful though. So I just put my hands into the water and groped around for it. Believe it or not… I actually managed to find it.

After lazing around in the water, we decided to go jet skiing. I don’t have any pictures of that because… well we’re not allowed to bring our cameras there but jet skiing is one of the most fun things ever. It’s soo liberating. It’s like you’re moving so fast on a wide blue open ocean with nothing in your way. Makes you feel…. so free… right there and then… not one bit of stress of the world comes to your mind.

We had so much fun that we went again right before the sunset. The second time, David and I decided to share a jet ski. It was getting dark when suddenly our jet ski’s engine died and failed to start. We were just sitting there floating in the ocean as the sun slowly set.

I asked David
“Dude… do you think we’re floating away from shore or towards shore. Because if we’re floating away… we’re fucked”.

David panicked for a while then used his feet to try paddle our jet ski towards the shore but we gave up after some 30 seconds when we realized we were going nowhere. Lucky for us we were jet skiing with a few other Nuffies and they came to help us out. They couldn’t do anything but sooner or later one of the marshals from the shore saw us and came over. They refueled the jet ski and helped us get it started again.

We went back to the ship after the sunset. This time we were having a pool party there.

We’re like the party animals on the ship. Whenever and wherever there was a party we would all be there.

This time they had a live band there. When Wondergirl’s “Nobody Nobody” came up, the girl Nuffies all decided to go up and do the dance.

Here’s a video I took of them doing that.

After the pool party we adjourned to the club on board the ship and bad things happened. I drank way too much Guinness and some other stuff that I ended up getting myself pretty drunk that night. It was badd… badd… but that night gave us a lot of stories to tell the next morning.

What a fun day.

My Blackberry had been giving me some problems lately. For some reason whenever I pressed the “a” button once, instead of just one “a” coming out, multiple “aaaaaa” comes out.

Imagine how frustrating that is when you’re sending messages on a daily basis. “Baaaaaaby I’m coming home right now. Whaaaaaaaaat do you want to do aaaaaafter dinner?”

The problem was getting so severe that I was tempted to buy another Blackberry but I love my current Bold 2. It’s a great phone and I have no urge to change to anything else. So what I did was I visited my friend Eric of Blackberry Housing. He’s the go-to guy in KL when you want to get your Blackberry pimped. I visited him in his new office in Bangsar and in just an hour he got it all sorted out for me. Turns out the problem with the “a” key was just a really small problem. Beneath the keypad there was some residue that made it conduct the signal sooner than the key is supposed to. Once he wiped off that dirt, everything was back to normal.

In the process he stripped apart my Bold 2 and this is how your Bold 2 looks naked.

Such a small device…. yet so powerful!

And this is how the back of it looks.

I remember how the old mobile phones used to look soooo much bigger and yet the phones today does so much more than they did back then. Ahh technology.

After Eric fixed my “a” key I also decided to pimp my BB. I was spoilt for choice but I ended up with this one which was a little bit of a mix and match.

Notice the blue along the front borders is a bit of the glossy shiny kind. The back for this particular case was also of the same kind of blue but I decided that if the back was all shiny blue my phone would look totally “Jeng”.

So I opted for this one.

I love my new BB now. It makes you feel as if you changed to a completely new phone and all for less than RM200 bucks.

If you wanna pimp your BB you can check out Eric’s site here

Or if you want iPhone or iPad accessories you can check out his Jipaban store here.

On the second day we were all up early for breakfast.

I think it was the ONLY day that we were all up before 9AM. The reason? Because it was time for the “work” part of the trip. We dedicated half a day (or slightly more than that) for everyone to get an update on how the overall Netccentric Group (Nuffnang,ChurpChurp,NomNom etc etc) was doing around the region. We went through the history. How we went from like 2 to 70 full-time staff in 3 years… and the challenges we face from this growth.

We acknowledged the things we had done right and are still doing right but we also acknowledged the problems that we’re facing with the growing company. We wanted to get everyone’s input. How we could do things better than what we are already doing.

One process of it though was ideas! We wanted to come up with new things so one of the exercises we had was where we broke up everyone into many groups. Each group had a couple of hours to collectively come up with an idea of a new product that we should offer. After that, each took turn to present their idea to everyone. There would be a jury to decide which was the best idea in terms of creavity and also whether it made business sense. A prize was offered to the team with the winning idea.

The winning team came up with a really good idea and it’s something we are really launching as a product in 2011. After we were all done with the work part of the day,  it was time for everyone to go free and easy. Everyone went to do whatever they wanted to do on the ship.

Some of the girls went to the pool to relax.

Ming and I though went to play Bingo!

We didn’t win.

By the time we were done with Bingo, it was almost time for dinner. That night was FORMAL night. That means everyone was expected to dress up. So the girls went back and put on their dresses and looked their best. The guys did the same. When we all met again we all looked like different people. Everyone looking grown up.

Here are some pictures we took that night before and during the dinner. Some of the ladies.

More of the ladies 🙂

Me with gents!

And this was when some of us were trying to get together for a group photo.

After dinner though we went ahead to do a Nuffie Tradition. Every year right before Christmas we would all do a Secret Santa. Meaning everybody drew lots and had to buy a present for someone. Then at a Christmas dinner, you would have to explain to everyone why you bought that present for someone. It doesn’t have to be expensive… just thoughtful.

This year we did our Secret Santa on the cruise since it was the one time in December that both the Malaysian and Singaporean teams would get together. We all squeezed in Ming and my room.

And we ordered Champagne.

There was a whole lot of presents that went round that night and it was exciting finding out everyone’s Secret Santa.

Like Clara here was Angeline’s Secret Santa.

But Robb was Angeline’s Secret Santa.

My Secret Santa Was Nick Davis.

He explained how he had talked to my gf about what to buy me. He at first wanted to buy me XBOX games but realized I had almost everything. So then he thought since I was so into games, instead he would buy me an offline game (trying to “ungeek” me). So he bought me a Poker Set.

I don’t really play Poker but I promised him I will learn 🙂

The set weighed like a ROCK. It was DAMN heavy.. and he was stopped at Singapore’s Security check-point because they thought he was carrying a bomb or something in the case. Every year the Nuffies also do something nice for Ming and me. This year they made this… apparently they took turns to stitch it.

If you look closely you’d notice that it was the mascots for all the companies under Netccentric.

From left is Nom Nom’s monster, Nuffnang’s stickman, ChurpChurp’s bird and Jipaban’s shopping bags.

The whole Secret Santa thing took hours because there were just so many of us. I wonder how we’ll do this again next year especially if we were to include the Nuffies from the other offices. It was though… a great way to end the day.

Last week the Nuffies from Malaysia and Singapore went for our first company trip ever (Nuffnang Philippines and Australia had their own because of the distance). We’ve always talked about a company trip over the years but we never got around to do it. This year though we decided we had to.

Two options were put the vote. The first was a trip to Hong Kong Disneyland and the second was a cruise on Royal Caribbean’s cruise lines. The Nuffies chose the cruise. So last week for the first time ever, the KL and Singapore offices closed and operations from Nuffnang, ChurpChurp, Nom Nom Media and Netccentric were put on auto-pilot.

The cruise was a 5 day trip. Most of it was some team-bonding activities but we also had a day for discussing the future of the company together and how we can do better. In this entry I’ll just cover the first day.

The Malaysians were up early on Monday morning to catch a bus to Singapore where the cruise was leaving from.

On the bus there, everyone was still half asleep. Rachel was wide awake and she tried to get us to play some games but the attempt failed. We were all just too tired. Some 5 or more hours later we found ourselves in Singapore and had our first little crisis on the trip. The bus driver had no clue where the Singapore Cruise Terminal was and we were already late for the boarding. At one point the bus driver stopped the bus at the side of the road and waved down a cab to ask for directions.

When we finally got to the cruise terminal and met up with the Singapore Nuffies we were really really late. Still Ming suggested we take a group picture before we go in (living life of the edge) so we did. Then we ran over to the check-in counter only to find out that the check-in counter closed some 15 minutes ago. A Caucasian man dressed in uniform who looked like part of the crew looked really pissed off. We begged…. and he let us through. We filled in whatever forms we could and hopped on to the ship.

Once we got on we all split up to get settled in our rooms. Ming and I chose to share a slightly bigger room so that there was a place we could all hang out together in private on the ship.

Once we chucked our bags in our rooms, we all met up at the swimming pool of the ship which was at one of the top decks. There we all sat around some deck chairs, had a briefing and played a game called “2 truths 1 lie”.

It’s where each of us will go up one by one and then tell 3 things about yourself. Everyone then had to guess which one was the lie. Eventhough I shared an office with many of the Nuffies and some I had known for years…. I found myself learning some new things about them. Later on we all decided to split up and take a tour of the ship.

This is Robb, Yuen, Elise, Clara and me at the ship’s indoor pool area they called the Solarium. It was made to look a bit like some sort of Roman bath. The main atrium area of the ship too was beautiful. This is how it looks like inside the ship.

Really looks like a hotel huh.

During the tour, Angeline really wanted to go to what she referred to as the “Titanic” part of the ship. After some querying, we figured out that it meant the front of the ship where Jack and Rose did their romantic Titanic scene.

So we brought her there.

And we took some pictures there. Here’s me with Angeline.

Angeline is an accountant who used to work in KPMG but now leads the Finance part of our company. So anything from sending blogger cheques, approving payments etc etc… all goes through her.

Angeline, Linda and I got there in time to catch the sunset. So we decided to take some pictures there.

After sunset we all went back to our rooms and got ready for dinner. We met for dinner at the dinner hall on the ship they called the “Romeo & Juliet” dining hall. It was beautiful!

Our group took up a few tables. Here’s one of them.

The food on the ship was free and it was great fine dining food. The menu had everything from Steak, Fish, Chicken or even Lamb. Whatever you chose.

You can choose to order however many Appetizers, Desserts or even Main Courses that you want. Our in-house “Eating Monster” Yuen Yee on average there ate 2 Appetizers, Desserts and Main Courses per meal on the ship. The dessert was always something I looked forward to though. Always some really good stuff.

I went around the rest of the night taking some pictures with the rest of the Nuffies around and here are the pictures I ended up with. Here’s me with Melissa and Hui Wen from Singapore.

Me with Michelle, Jestina, Rachel and Clara.

From the left, Michelle, Jestina, Rachel, Clara, Melissa, Hui Wen, Me, Nicholas , Tim2 and Linda.

Also took this random candid picture of Jestina, Rachel and Clara. Don’t know what they were looking at.

And finally me here with Nicholas, Tim2 and Linda.

After dinner we all adjourned to the highest point that we could go to in the ship. You see this round glass thing that overlooks the pool on top of the ship?

That whole area… is actually a club. So we spent the first night in that club dancing and drinking away. We had a lot of drinks and over 50 shots there the whole night playing lots of drinking games.

By the end of the night, some of us were really really drunk. I survived this night though… (not one of the later nights though but I will get to that later).

It was a great first night and a great beginning to our first company trip with the Nuffies.

Last weekend Eyeris invited me to his wedding. It was up at his parent’s house in Genting. That’s right… his parents actually really stay in Genting full-time. They have this beautiful swiss-cottage kind of house there.

At first Kitteh and I got lost looking for it. We were told the address and we punched it into our GPS only to find ourselves in some kampung around Genting. Then we were told that it was nearer to the top of Genting so we went all the way to the top only to find that it was somewhere in the middle of the hill. So we went down again. Time it took to get to the wedding: 2 full hours.

Going back though it was much quicker. It was only some 30-40 minutes drive. Suddenly living in Genting does seem like a plausible idea and I can understand why Eyeris’ parents do it. It’s quiet and there air is cool. It’s like living in a foreign country somewhere in Malaysia.

His wedding was packed with people from everywhere. Kim, Shaolin, KY, Suanie and gang were all there. Couple of things I loved at the wedding though.

These brownies.

This Wall-E cake.

(Eyeris is really into this kind of stuff. I hear he has this huge Transformers collection too.)

And of course …. this picture with the Groom and Bride.

Man do I look fat.

As you can see, my few days in San Francisco was fully booked. When I wasn’t at the Web 2.0 Summit learning and listening to the things going on there, I was visiting the offices of Zynga and Google and have some other meetings there. I did however manage to squeeze in two things. On one of the nights I managed to meet up with Kitteh’s best friend Angela.

Angela studies in Stanford which is not far from the Google office so she basically lives in San Francisco (almost). She came by to see me for a short while but the real reason why she came over was because Kitteh and her wanted to exchange stuff. When they knew I was going to San Francisco, they quickly bought each other stuff and got me to do the exchange for them.

On the last afternoon I was at San Francisco, I did manage to go to Fisherman’s Wharf.

I remember my parents taking me there when I was a little kid and I remember we bought this huge tin of hot chocolate powder that literally took us years to finish. Being there again many years later I can’t say that anything looked familiar to me though. I can’t tell if there was much of a change or that I just have really short memory.

Here’s Ming and I at Fisherman’s Wharf.

The cool thing about Fisherman’s Wharf is that standing there, you can see the most famous prison in the world: Alcatraz. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s this old prison they had on an island right off San Francisco and was once known as impossible to break out of. To date, nobody has ever officially succeeded in breaking out of Alcatraz Prison. (And I say officially because unofficially… JOHN MASON DID!!!)

The funny thing is that standing at Fisherman’s Wharf you’d think that it’s pretty near and that you’d make the swim over from the island to the mainland. The currents in the water though looked fierce and I would imagine even good swimmers would be swept out into the Pacific Ocean from the undercurrents.

Alcatraz is also known as The Rock and many of you might have known it for the movie The Rock that starred Sean Connery and Nicholas Cage. Kingston, Ming and I ended up having lunch together at a restaurant at Fisherman’s Wharf talking all about action movies.

We all agreed that The Rock was one of the best action movies ever made and they just don’t make action movies like that anymore.

My favourite quote from The Rock:

John Mason (Sean Connery): Are you sure you’re ready for this?

Stanley Goodspeed (Nicholas Cage): I’ll do my best

John Mason: Your “best”? Losers always whine about their best. Winners go home and fuck the prom queen.

Stanley Goodspeed: Carla was the prom queen.

John Mason: Really?

Stanley Goodspeed: [cocks his gun] Yeah.

Or well here’s the scene. It’s a spoiler if you haven’t seen the movie yet.

If you haven’t already seen The Rock. Go watch it! The movie came out some 14 years ago in 1996 but it’s still just as good. Here’s the trailer.

The trailer’s really 90s (because it was released in the 90s) but the movie was great.

Anyway, Fisherman’s Wharf is a really nice touristy place. Lots of nice touristy stuff that you can buy there. We even saw this store that sold autographs of famous artists, politicians or people from history. Imagine having Heath Ledger’s autograph from Batman’s The Dark Knight. We saw it framed up there.

Before we left Fisherman’s Wharf I got my hands on these little donuts.

They’re like little drops of Heaven. SOooo yummy!

The next day I flew to Vegas to spend the weekend there before coming home. Will blog about that soon 🙂