Earlier last week I paid a visit to the team in the Nuffnang Philippines office. I get this really nice feeling whenever I go to the Nuffnang Philippines office because it’s in this really nice area in Manila called Fort Bonifacio. The placed used to be an old Fort and one of the richest Filipino families (The Ayala family) developed it into this really nice place with apartments, office buildings and a great high street for shopping. I always remember how in the car I would turn a corner into this beautiful development and see the Nuffnang signboard on one of the buildings
It’s actually the only one of our 4 offices that actually has an outdoor signboard… or in this case, actually two of them.
I spent most of my day meeting the team getting updates on how Nuffnang Philippines is doing and also sharing with them things we’ve done in Malaysia. Here’s a picture of me sharing a video that Cindy and Huai Bin did for the Guinness Arthur’s Day contest.
Everyone went.. “WOAH!” when they saw the hard kissing. The Nuffnang Philippines team has really really grown. I remember how we had only about 2 staff when we first started off. Now it’s growing so fast that every time I drop by the Philippines I meet new Nuffies that I hadn’t met before in my previous trip.
The team culture there really reminds me of back home. Everyone works really hard and is really really fun. Whenever anyone has a problem with his/her area of work, everyone else will come in to help out or talk things out regardless of whether it’s in their job scope or not. Tweetjacking is also a problem in the Nuffnang Philippines office. So I even saw this warning note on one of the desks.
Other things they put at their work stations apart from this little teddy bear
is this that I found on Trixie’s desk.
Trixie is this young hip girl who does Blogger Relations and apparently refuses to give up her single life for a boyfriend.
When she came into work that day, Judd poked fun saying
“Trixie forgot to wear pants”.
She’s a fun girl!
For dinner that day everyone decided to take me to this new art-sy place called The Collectives.
When I first stood outside it looked like this really dodgy place that I would never step into without an army of bodyguards. I wasn’t sure what to expect but the team thought that I would like it so I trusted them. True enough I did! It turned out to be this awesome place I had never ever experienced before in Manila or anywhere in South-East Asia for that matter.
Inside it was this whole area with all sorts of cool shops ranging from art galleries, bars, ramen houses and even tattoo parlours. It’s like the kind of place where they threw out convention and any form of restriction to a group of young people and they made the most out of it. The walls in there were decorated with graffiti art.
We stopped by one of the art galleries that caught out attention and found that it wasn’t just an art gallery. It had a toy collection too. Not just any toys but limited edition ones.
Like this one.
Every toy that was made by an artist had a story behind it. This one is supposed to be Manny Pacquiao vs Mickey Mouse, the two heavyweight of their old world. Mickey Mouse of course representing the heavyweight from the Disney family. There were only a small number of these ever made and I thought it was the kind of thing that Ming would love. I almost bought it for Ming but I wasn’t 100% sure if this would be his kind of thing. Plus it was going to be so hard to bring back because it came in these huge boxes.
The prize tag also was… woah…. both of them, which came in a pair cost a little less than RM2,000. There we met this nice lady named Gabby Dela Merced who the Nuffies immediately recognized. They told me she was a famous Filipino race car driver.
I googled around and it’s true. Check out her Wikipedia page.
It wasn’t just me who huddled around to take pictures with her. Eric and Jay followed suit too 🙂
Anyway Gaby’s really passionate about collectable toys and she told us so much about them. Her favourite toy designer is Michael Lau and this is one of the works that she had.
She painted a picture for us of this other toy world out there where artists made these “Vinyl” Â toys that ended up being worth even tens of thousands of USD. The artists are like celebrities to their fans. Gaby was just telling us how that very weekend she was flying to Hong Kong just to attend a preview of one famous artist there displaying his toys.
Apart from the toys, stored inside these used arcade machines were records.
Like actual vinyl records. You know the big black discs they use in the old days. And they had it for some of the latest Eminem albums and all. I never knew they still produced these things for the latest music.
After exploring the gallery we went for dinner and decided on this little vegetarian ramen shop. I like small little quaint restaurants like that. This one only had a few tables and a blackboard for a menu.
We had to split into a few different tables but here’s my table.
So that everyone was my trip to Nuffnang Philippines. I had such a great time there! Thank you for the company and for taking good care of me in Manila Nuffies!
Tomorrow I fly again for work. Until then … 🙂
Timothy Tiah – Co-Founder of Colony, Kuala Lumpur Co-Working Space