k r i s a n d r o

I was queuing for a sinful cup of milk tea at Sweet Talk @ AMK Hub when a lady behind me called for my attention.

“Excuse me.” She pointed at a $5 note on the floor. “Did you drop that on the floor?”

I was fumbling around with the pockets on my bag at that time and I thought I might have dropped the note and said my thanks; picked the note up and stuffed it in my bag.

As I continued fumbling for loose change like any Singaporean looking to pay someone in denominations of 5 cents, I noticed a young woman doing the same fumbling with her bag right in front of me. Unlike me, who was looking for something that I may not have, she seemed to be looking for something that she had just a few moments ago.

The moment I saw her scanning the floor, I knew that $5 tucked in the warm pocket of my bag wasn’t mine.

I truthfully contemplated for a few seconds to keep the $5 so that I don’t look silly to the lady behind who saw me confidently pick up the money and claimed it as my own. But waves of guilt and chokeful of images of the young woman with no money but the $5 filled my head up.

“Hi…” I directed my voice at her. “Is this five dollars yours?”

She smiled and took the money and said, “Thanks!”

I quickly paid for my milk tea in the exact price and left quickly, blushing to what the lady and the young woman might have thought of me.

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.)

I got this interesting email in my spam folder a couple of nights ago and usually I will do quick scans of the titles and sender names before I empty the whole spam folder. Usually, the spam titles will ATTEMPT to address victims with names and for me it will be usually ‘KRIS’, ‘KRISANDRO’ or ‘KRISANDRO MCBECKS’. And I opened this particular email because,

Seldom will I have emails addressing me as ‘KRIS TAN’ and so I got curious and opened it. These are the contents.

BARR ZHAO CHANG

BENTARIO PANG RD,

75 JALA GELENG,

DOUPASARA CLOSE, 56000

KUALA LUMPUR,

MALAYSIA,

Email:

Phone:

Good day I am Barr Zhao Chang, an attorney at law.A deceased client of mine, who here in after shall be referred to as my client, died as the result of a heart-related condition on the 11 November 2001. His heart condition was due to the death of all the members of his family in the Gulf Air Flight Crashes in Persian Gulf Near Bahrain Aired August 23, 2000 – 2:50 p.m. ET as reported on:http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0008/23/bn.08.html

I have contacted you to assist in distributing the money left behind by my client before it is confiscated or declared unserviceable by the bank where this deposit valued at Nineteen million dollars( US$19 million dollars) is lodged. This bank has issued me a notice to contact the next of kin, or the account will be confiscated.

My proposition to you is to seek your consent to present you as the next-of-kin and beneficiary of my named client, since you have the same last name, so that the proceeds of this account can be paid to you. Then we can share the amount on a mutually agreed-upon percentage. All legal documents to back up your claim as my client’s next-of-kin will be provided.All I require is your honest cooperation to enable us see this transaction through.

This will be executed under a legitimate arrangement that will protect you from many breach of the law. If this business proposition offends your moral values,do accept my apology. I must use this opportunity to implore you to exercise the utmost indulgence to keep this matter extraordinary confidential, whatever your decision, while I await your prompt response.Please contact me at once to indicate your interest. I will like you to acknowledge the receipt of this e-mail as soon as possible via my private email address which is ( ) and treat with absolute confidentiality and sincerity.I look forward to your quick reply.

Best regards,

Barr Zhao Chang

Attorney at Law

.

First of all, his email is ‘barr.zchang’ which totally sounds like this Chinese delicacy.

[Photo of Ba Zhang from here]

Apparently, this Ba Zhang has a client who died on 11 November 2001 because his whole family died in an air crash and the client left behind U.S NINETEEN MILLION DOLLARS ($19,000,000) behind. The bank asked him to look for his next of kin and since there isn’t any, BaZhang looked for me because me and the dead rich dude has the same last name.

Well… If my name is Kris QwertyWTFLOLBBQ then it isn’t a problem I guess. I don’t think anybody has that for a surname, but my surname is…

TAN

According to wikipedia, the MOST common ethnic Chinese surname is none other than ‘TAN’! 9.5% of the Chinese in Singapore have the same surname as me which means that you 237,800 Tans have a chance to share the 19 million dollars with our dear BaZhang friend

.

I have no need of so much monopoly money. So, don’t hesitate! CONTACT BAZHANG NOW!