k r i s a n d r o

Yet another, “I have neglected my blog” post!

I have tons of experiences and photos to share with you guys and I promise I’ll catch up real soon.

Here are some pictures to whet your appetite!

So stay tuned as I try to update this space of mine!

F1 Rocks is here in Singapore! The 3 day music event full of iconic music superstars will be held at Fort Canning Park from the 24th Sep till 26th Sep 2009. Tickets are selling out fast but here is your chance to win one of two pairs of tickets (each pair is worth S$390) to the F1 Rocks performances on Fri, 25th Sep. Who is playing that day?

No Doubt!

And don’t forget the rest of the music stars performing that day like ZZ Top, Simple Minds and N*E*R*D.

 

Here is what you have to do!

1. Post an entry on your blog to tell us why you deserve to win the F1 Rocks tickets. The post with the most originality and desire will be chosen!
2. In your post, insert a link to http://www.visitsingapore.com/sgpseason so that your readers can find out more about the F1 season.
3. Have a return link to Singapore Blog Press post on the contest at http://pea.to/f1R
4. Submit your blog post and your details to the post at Blog Press so that we may contact you via mobile phone if you win.
5. Each blog post will earn one chance in the lucky draw, and if you tweet this phrase in your twitter, you’ll get an additional chance of winning in the lucky draw – “Win F1 Rocks tickets at http://pea.to/f1R. Contest ends 20th Sep 09. #f1 #f1rocks”

Each blogger will only be eligible to win 1 pair of the tickets. Both winners must attend a blogger F1 Rocks stage tour on 22nd Sept 2009 at 6pm where you’ll get to see the preparations for such a huge scale music event.

The contest runs from 16th Sep to 21st Sep 2359H and is open to all Singapore Citizens, PRs and Residents.

This giveaway wouldn’t have been made possible without 24seven and Singapore Tourism Board. Join on Facebook for more news like this!

It was a blast at the “Your Blog” event yesterday at the Open Room. The event is organized by the good folks at Ogilvy and the topic was on “How to market your blog Like a brand”.

Yongfook

 

The speakers came from very different backgrounds; we have Yongfook, the handsome-enough-to-make-me-question-my-sexuality CEO of Egg Co., who produced cult favorite projects like Open Source Food (now known as Nibbledish) & Sweetcron;  Arti Mulchand, who has spent much of her career life in SPH and probably regards words as any guy would regard porn; Design Sojourn,  a serious award winning industrial design leader who still has enough humor to ; and not forgetting Andy from ToysREvil who made me laugh so hard from his Singlish and subtle hand-wanking gestures that I teared up.

All of the speakers (apart from Arti who owns a small personal blog) have very successful blogs in their own right and the amazing thing is that none of them made money directly from blogging. The success I am referring to is of course the niche traffic that they have built up over the years and it was the personal branding in their blogs that led them to other opportunities. All these happened because of their blogs; Yongfook dated a hot girl (he also got a job in a big media company in Japan but I like to emphasize the ‘hot girl’ part), Design Sojourn is working for a huge electronics giant; and Andy has… toys. (You guys will never understand how important that is to him)

The great thing about the speakers is that they shared their own experiences on how they evolved as a blogger through the years and it’s exactly what I am or what most of you bloggers are going through. I started off writing in 2004, just wanting to have a voice and not caring about what I say because who is to judge me on my own space? Soon the readers rose from one (myself) to a couple (colleagues, friends) and I found blogging tools like wordpress that relieves me of my lousy html skills. Soon, strangers started popping out of nowhere because of search engines and referrals and I found my voice becoming restricted. I could actually hurt somebody and thus hurt myself from the things I say! I came soon to accept that true opinions (the ones with FUCK YOU! ALL YOU FUCKING BASTARDS!!!) are not meant to be on the web especially when I am not very anonymous.

I soon turned to the ‘dark side’ and got into the hype of putting ads on my blog so that I can eventually strut around in my berms in Orchard during daytime, scoffing at all the stressed out peeps in suits and ties while checking out my adsense account.

It didn’t work. So now I am back to where I started, and realize that not everyone can make money through blogging directly (certainly not me).

Their blogs were a brand. People who knew of Yongfook, Design Sojourn & Andy knew what they were about and their success were built upon shaping their blogs to their strengths for a niche audience. Getting success in terms of traffic hits are not much of a secret these days considering how much information is out there. Barring bloggers who cannot write coherently or has no opinion whatsoever, we all can succeed in our own right.

So what’s my niche to work on. Humor methinks.

It’s a little on the ‘Lame’ side of humor but I’ll get whatever laughs I can get.

Don’t make me come over and tickle you.

(Check out the key take aways summarized by Brian Koh of Ogilvy)

(Oh and Arti, if you are reading this. You were shaking so bad throughout most of your speech but the points that you put across were definitely a lot of food for thought.)

This is as close to a modern day fairytale romance as it gets. Four years ago, Italian guy meets Singaporean girl in a virtual 3D world and was besotted with her avatar. Guy relentlessly pursued her but she was resistant to his charms. Girl finally found a side of him that makes her fall unwittingly in love. After months and months of knowing each other, girl takes the plunge and accepts a ticket from guy to visit him in Italy. Cartcart, the Italian guy and Rinaz the Singaporean girl are married on 18th of December 2008, exactly 4 years after they got married in the virtual world, Second Life. A marriage that transcends continents, distance, race & culture; the rest of the story of Rinaz and CartCart would be best read at her blog or at ST.

I had the pleasure of being invited to this lovely Muslim wedding and it was my first Muslim wedding of a friend that I have ever attended. Rinaz is very active and well loved in the local social media scene and throngs of bloggers were seen at the wedding, furiously snapping away at the couple. I don’t know if it’s a normal thing but I had to actually queue up to give them my blessings and once again to take a picture with them.

Rinaz will soon move over to Italy and she will be sorely missed in Singapore but I’m happy, knowing that they will live very blissfully over there! And besides, we will always see them online.