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Capitalism without bankruptcy, is like Christianity without hell .... #19 mins ago
Sometime in April, I received an email from our MP, Mrs Josephine Teo.
It was as all her emails are, crisp and to the point.
She asked me if I would like to attend the “Opening of the Second Session of the 11th Parliament”, as her guest.
To be perfectly honest, I had no idea what this event was about, and that piqued my curiosity, so I agreed, and penned it down on my Iphone schedule, locking down a date, almost a month away!
About 2 weeks before the event, I received my invitation, hand delivered by a courier. As usual, it was tastefully appointed, and with all government events, it had a hint of grandness and tradition about it.
Ok this update is long overdue, and as it is 1AM in the morning, its going to be very heavily photo reliant!
After last year’s Glorious Champions League Victory, I thought to myself, my team is great, but no way Man Utd are getting into the final again this year.
I was wrong, and this time, the finals presented an unprecedented opportunity to watch two of the best attacking football teams in the world playing for the top prize in World Football, next to the world cup of course!
So it was to be at 5AM on a Wednesday Morning I believe, that I sent out a text message to all my contacts to ask them to source for tickets. I wasn’t as desperate as last year, and took a “Que Sera Sera” kind of approach to things.
All the way until, I got a phone call from my friend/client, Patricia, from Nike, who said simple, “We are going to Rommmeeee!!!!”
All I heard was a “click” sound in that brain of mine, and I was off to work booking our flights and accomodation. With the flights directly to Rome, being as expensive, as us flying to London first, and then laying off to Rome, that was the option I chose. After all, I would get to visit my favourite city in the world (next to Singapore), good friends, and pat was well excited too, having not been before.
So on Friday morning, the 22nd of May, we were off on SQ319! So anyway, this is where the photos start.
I was the impromptu tour guide for Pat, and took all these photos along the “guided sight seeing tour” using my trusty “BEAST”, the Nikon D700, ohhhh I love u.
Here is the world famous big ben, and the houses of parliament, honestly a sight to behold, at 7Am in the morning! We were jetlagged and got up at 5!
A BMX-er in a skate park, near the Royal Festival Hall.
Pat’s living room set, was a tad oversized.
The guy down the road resorted to building his own set, out of sand, and got some dosh out of me for his efforts! You see all kinds of things in london.
I love love love absoloutely love love love Borough Market, and we had such an amazing, sausage and bacon bap at 930 in the morning. Glorious.
The fish mongers in London are exactly the same as in Singapore. See what see? Take photo? Buy lah!
Nuttttsssss, and this cheeky english flirter, who was having a good time with his female customers.
Moving on to my second favourite market, Portobello in notting hill!
Popularized by Hugh Grand and his house with the blue door.
Paella for lunch!
Pat! I know you had a good time! But dun shag the poor lion already!
Every wednesday, the Singaporean office is packed full of people.
That’s because it is an “admin” day as set aside by myself!
A good part of the team is actively engaged in Sales and as such are running about everyday meeting potentail clients.
So much so that I found, for 2 weeks or so, I hardly got the time to catch up with them. Hence the mandatory admin day!
For me, its important that some time like this is set aside, so they can follow up with their meetings, catch up and bond with their fellow colleagues, and equally as importantly! CLEAN THE OFFICE!!!!!
So here they are. Oh i love you all!
This is the duty board as set up by our company administrator Raine.
And this is she, mopping away at the parquet floors.
Meiyan scrubbing our sink. With all their make up paste! :-p
Eugene rolling up his sleeves, and doing a man’s work!
Elise, taking out the trash, and relining our bins! Our very own ms chor lor … lup lup lah.
Anyway, I just celebrated my 26th Birthday on Saturday, and this is the card my parents got me. I thought it was very meaningful, so I’m sharing it with you all.
It reads:
“Your life is important,
Like an evolving work of art …
All your decisions, big, little
Or in between will be a permanant part
of your life’s art.
Your thoughtful, confident,
intelligent approach is sure to produce
A masterpiece
These lines really reached out to me, and I hope they will do the same for you too.
I’m still kinda hungover by the immense coldplay concert.
More than anything I always love success stories. Why? Because they’re about ordinary people doing extraordinary things.
There is a coldplay special showing on Channel 5 right now, and its a documentary with a young chris martin. Its hard to tell how old he is, but he looks no older than 25. The same age I am now.
One of the interesting nuggets of information I’ve found out about coldplay is that they met at UCL (A fact I’m sure my partner Tim is very proud of). At a very ordinary looking hall, called Ramsay Hall.
I found an article on the UCL webpage, where Chris Martin (lead singer coldplay), talks about his times in University.
“I went to London like Dick Whittington looking for gold. I didn’t have a cat but about 12 bags and my dad had to drive me there. I arrived at this big place called Ramsay Hall, Tottenham Ct Rd – brilliant – and I met Jonny and everything changed.”
His friend and lead guitarist Jonny continues, “I can remember meeting Will for the first time and I can remember meeting Chris for the first time. Chris was running up and down the corridor with this really long curly mop and I thought he was a bit mad, a bit wacky and Will was very nice. I can’t remember meeting Guy, I think he always used to be drunk.”
“We met each other because we were living in the halls of residence, it was like this block of rooms, everyone has their own room and downstairs was the bar and the pool table so everyone met in and around that area and people would introduce themselves to each other. I can remember meeting them all over a pint.”
I don’t know about you, but I feel that is such an easily identifiable story. The type that is replayed year in year out, as people meet other people, and partnerships are forged.
In fact, it makes me wonder, what if Timothy and I had been as musically inclined as Chris Martin and Jonny Buckland and we had hooked up with 2 other dudes?
Timothy would have looked something like this presumably.
Chope! Actually I would probably be lead singer, and the one with the babes. So minus Raine, and Clara, plus the mike, add a guitar, and thats how he would look.
As I’m sure you all know by now. The story goes, I was at a pussy cat dolls concert for a girl (not for tim), and I met him there. Our passion was not music but business. And instead of jamming, and smoking loads of weed, we met up at starbucks and could only talk about business, and the internet.
We firmed up our intentions to go into blog advertising, in a cramped japanese restaurant in london that is no more (On my recent trip to london, I made this discovery to my dismay). It has now been converted to a taiwanese restaurant called “Leong’s Legend Continues …” *sob sob*
Anyway, on with the coldplay story. In that same TV documentary, Chris Martin seems like such an innocent and in a way careless “kid”. Already he was so successful, having had massive hits in Yellow. But he openly said this (something like it), “We’re not famous, you ask a band like U2, if coldplay is famous, and they’ll be having a laugh, there’s a long way yet to go. I love the music, and I want our music to be everlasting. When the grandkids of some 60 year olds pick up our records, we hope they’ll say, yeah that was a great band.”
There are 2 morals of the story for me. The first is that however far Nuffnang has come today (And it has indeed), we are still only ketupats (or small fries). Although, that’s not going to stop us from becoming huge one day.
The second is when, in what strikes me as an awfully sincere assertion (You have to see the documentary to really understand), he says, that he loves the music, and thats all the band’s ever been about.
From that statement, my belief that it is passion, that ultimately drives success is reaffirmed.
But I often wonder, will we “grow” in the same way coldplay has “grown” as individuals and as performers? (compare chris martin with photo on top).
I also wonder, who will my Gwyneth Paltrow be? (Chris Martin’s wife, whom he met backstage, and now has 2 kids with).
Perhaps equally as crucial, will our success, have the same beautiful effects, that Coldplay’s music has on thousands upon thousands of people, singing along in what is probably blistring cold, but feeling euphoria and hope nonetheless.
Watch this coldplay perfomance, and put yourself in Chris Martin’s shoes, as you play the piano, and the crowd sing along. Then ask yourself a question, “Where will you be in 10 years?”
A crazy number of top rated of bands/singers have been booked for concerts in Singapore recently.
We’re only 3 months into the new year, and Singapore has already seen the likes of Jason Mraz, Duffy, Coldplay, Rihanna, Brian Mcknight and Rod Stewart grace our shores, with Craig David, and Oasis coming up!
Simply crazyyyy!!!
I’ve had the fortune of catching Jason Mraz and Coldplay live so far, and whilst I spent a small fortune on the tickets, I would recommend everybody caught one of these 2 performers live at some point in their lives.
Jason Mraz for his Vocal Powress, which honestly is out of this world. The recording studio does him no justice honestly. He can outsing any instrument, and goes up to Opera range, I swear.
Last night I caught Coldplay though, and it was the best concert I’ve ever been to in my life. For the atmosphere, with crazy fans, and honestly one of the most energized crowds ever. 10,000 voices singing together gives you a feeling of empowerment, a feeling that we can solve all problems and they are not insurmountable. Maybe thats why people sing at church.
Check out this video from the concert last night.
The second thing that was so goood, was the concert coreography in general. When they played the song yellow, huge yellow balloons were thrown into the crowd, and the sight of these balloons floating up and down was spectacular.
Honestly, amateur videos dun do it justice. Just watch the concert.
To end off, a sea and endless streaming of confetti fell on the crowd, the colours looking like fireworks.
I have just gotten back from the UK, after a host of important and life changing meetings with key clients.
It was not all work and no play however ;-p, and whilst in London, I decided to drop by my Alma Mater, the London School of Economics or LSE to see what had changed, and to experience what hadn’t.
As I was walking in, I noticed a bunch of flowers laid on the floor. I imagined the worst, thinking some student had been knifed or robbed in the city campus.
This is what I found.
I grimaced at the thought, and inspected postings on the wall more closely, and the items neatly placed.
Blashphemous! This is much much worse than a kid being knifed. I mean after all, the poor penguin was defenceless, idly standing by! It had no defence against the legions of strand poly delinquents!
Bless those kind souls who felt compelled to leave penguin’s favourite food of canned sardines, he would have appreciated it, especially with the pull and peel lids.
Ever since I got my own domain, bossming.com, I’ve been using one of those standard and rather dreary templates.
Super uncool for the co-founder of a Blog Advertising Community servicing over 85,000 blogs!
Back from Australia after my roadshow, and fresh with inspiration (Blogs there are soo beautiful, like eatshowandtell.com, by my friends teresa, howard and linda), I thought to myself, I need one of thoseeee!!!
Whilst I could have bothered the nuffies to get it done, I decided not to, as they are all so cooped up with more important work, so I hired a freelance designer to get it done.
That freelance designer is Lionel from Nitrodesigns. Definitely a good dude, and as you can see from this blog, very proficient in what he does!
When Lionel gets a task like this, he really gets stuck in it. Asking me questions about myself, digging deeper for information and so on.
The results, as you can see, reflects his dedication to the task.
For example, check out the thoughtful logo he had designed. On top of the I, instead of putting a dot, he put in the chinese character of my name, and at the end of it, there are three “shout lines”, just like the nuffnang logo! Cool eh.
Moving around to the header, he used a caricature which Wealth Magazine comissioned (And I subsequently bought over), which I love, and incorporated sketches of a living room. This is very apt I feel, as through my blog, I’m inviting you in to have a chat and dialogue with me.
Plus, I specifically instructed him to put the twitter widget on the side bar. He took it a step further and put it as a speech bubble, integrating it seamlessly into the setting.
Lastly, if you scroll down to the footer, you’ll see a landscape. In it, you’ll see a plane, a squash player, and photographer, representing my hobbies, and the things I do.
Cooler yet, you see that blue tinge?
Its there because its 1630 in the afternoon, at dusk, it will turn to an orangey colour!
You see all kinds of things in london.
