k r i s a n d r o

First of all, no worries that I will spoil anything about the movie in this post because I hate movie reviews that give away too much about the plot and make me feel like printing the blog post down and marching down to the blogger and shoving the paper down his/her throat.

I got to thank my iPhone and my data plan on instances like this when I was travelling underground in the MRT and received the invitation from Alvin of Omy.sg, telling me that United International Pictures (UIP) are giving away 10 pairs of tickets to the SG Blog Awards finalists watch the VIP Gala Premiere of Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen.

KuKuNehNeh (KKNN) was extremely excited when I got news that I was one of the lucky 10 bloggers who got the tickets as she was a big fan of the first installment of the movie even though she can hardly tell an Autobot from a Decepticon much less recognizing who Optimus Prime was when a group of mascots appeared at the Cathay were the premiere was held.

A retro and movie version of Optimus Prime were there amongst the insanely popular Bumble Bee and one Decepticon in the form of Starscream or Megatron. I couldn’t really tell as it looked as though they carefully crafted all the nice Autobot costumes and didn’t know what to do with the remaining material and thus decided to put them together and paint it all grey to make it look like one of the bad guys. I don’t have a picture of that poor dude in that Starscream/Megatron costume but trust me, it was baaaaaad.

KKNN was even more excited after spotting quite a few bloggers from the SG Blog Awards and especially at the local celebrities and came in dribs and drabs like Elvin Ng from Mediacorp.

The picture above summarizes very well what happened: Me before spotting Elvin Ng, KKNN after seeing Elvin, Me after seeing KKNN see Elvin.

So I mopped the remains of the starstruck KKNN from the floor and went up to the cinema theatre where she hoped for Elvin to sit in our theatre while I hoped for Megan Fox to do the same.

The movie was AWESOME! There were more robots and favorities from the original cartoon, longer and cooler fight sequences and the animation was top notch. It was a little draggy in parts because of the over dramatization of certain scences which sometimes involves Megan Fox running in slow motion in a top that left little to the imagination but that didn’t stop us from enjoying the movie thoroughly. I am definitely going to watch it a 2nd time just to check out all the action again.

I do realize that even if I say the movie sucked, people are still going to watch Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen just because of the love for action, the Transformers & Megan Fox.

Thanks to Omy.sg and UIP for the tickets and all the sponsors for the goodie bag!

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.

Apart from the fact that the National Geographic is on channel 11, Starhub Cable TV; my knowledge on National Geographic was poor to say the least. It was with great excitement that I was invited by Pat Law of Ogilvy PR to the exclusive preview of Asia’s first National Geographic Store in Singapore!

 

Never have I ever thought that the National Geographic would have a physical store and much less open one in Singapore.

The bloggers were told to meet at Newton Food Centre and were chauffeured by a grand convoy of 17 SUVs from the great volunteers at www.suvec.org. A personal SUV for every blogger! How cool is that? The royal treatment was only marred by the traffic jam at the town area, but we arrived safely at Vivocity, where the store is located.

 

Stepping through the boarded doors of the National Geographic Store was like stepping into another dimension in Vivocity. The mood of the store mirrors that of an art exhibition but with the promise that one can actually afford the cool ‘exhibits’ that the store showcases.

 

The National Geographic Store provides a ‘one stop’ experience for shoppers that sells stuffs ranging from books to the likes of apparel and photography equipment. Even if you don’t fancy the stuffs that are sold there, one can always be reminded of what to buy for your trip by walking through the store. One of the interesting facts about the store is that almost anything can be bought, even the furniture! The sold furniture and items like the photographs are replaced and it gives the store a different look and feel from time to time. Just note that I said, ‘almost anything can be bought’ and not ‘everything can be bought’. The cute store attendants cannot be bought (amongst other things), so do ask nicely if you fancy anything from the store.

 

Asia’s 1st National Geographic Store is located at Vivocity 1st level. Visit it if you haven’t already!