k r i s a n d r o

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.

The nice and ‘not-afraid-to-make-balding-jokes-at-himself’ Daniel Goh of youngupstarts invited me for a Samsung event for the new INNOV8 phone. It is a really cool phone and I would really consider it if not for the fact that I own a great phone already. Do read all about the INNOV8 here.

Daniel who looks like he was pointing his middle finger at the TV (but was not. Really.)

 

 

After a tour of the Samsung flagship store at Vivocity and some introduction to the INNOV8 specifications and functions, the bloggers were introduced to a contest where 3 of us could walk away with a spanking new INNOV8 phone! All of us were given 30 mins to take 3 pictures on what inspires us about the INNOV8.

Of course I didn’t win. If I had, I would be boasting about it by the 2nd paragraph in this post.

Anyway, I realized at the end of the 30mins that I was the most used ‘model’ in the contest. No less than 3 pictures were of me!

Molemole‘s entry

Nadnut‘s entry

Sylvia‘s entry

 

I know you all will think that those who used my pics all didn’t win but ONE OF THEM WON HOKAY! Congrats to Rinaz, Esther and Nadnut who won!

Thanks to the Su Min of Text 100, I got invited to attend a Blogger event at HBO Asia office for a tour and preview of one of their latest additions to the HBO lineup, Flight of the Conchords. I am a big fan of many, many, MANY TV series and I haven’t heard of Flight of the Conchords ever. It wasn’t until Claudia posted an entry about the show that got me interested. And boy! It was hilarious and entertaining!

 

“Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie – a.k.a. Flight of the Conchords – may be “New Zealand’s 4th Most Popular Folk Parody Duo,” but in the USA, finding someone who knows their act is about as easy as finding a kiwi nest in Central Park! To rectify this oversight, Jemaine and Bret have moved to New York’s East Village to conquer America, one fan (literally) at a time.

In this irreverent half-hour musical comedy series new HBO series, Jemaine and Bret (playing naïve, fictionalized versions of themselves) move to downtown Manhattan, where they try to land gigs and pursue relationships with elusive women, both with marginal success. As we see, the duo’s innocent, misguided efforts rarely yield dividends, but they do spawn an abundance of plaintive Conchord tunes about life, love, and the pursuit of an elusive music video.”

-Extracted from HBO

 

I arrived with Claudia at our destination and bumped into Nadnut on the way to the HBO Asia office. We were greeted warmly by the Text 100 & HBO crew and plenty other bloggers joined us like Jerrick, Nicholas, Hillary, Rinaz, Sheylara, Musxzart & many other bloggers accompanied by their +1s.

The HBO crew took us for a short but informative tour around their superb office and we got to see the various departments and crew that are responsible for bringing life to the movies, series and trailers that you see on HBO. In the sound editing room, a volunteer was asked to do a short recording and guess what? I was ‘volunteered’.

Into the recording room I go and I was asked to grunt, “ARRRRRRGHHHHH!!!” 3 times.

Not being sure how I sound as my ears were muted from my voice, I went out to see that the sound guru was ready to incorporate my grunt into the trailer. Roars of laughter filled the room as my voice was in heard in that HBO trailer. Seeing that he could squeeze more laughter from the crowd, he played that portion of the trailer a few more times to the delight of the ‘I-can’t-believe-this-funny-shit’ crowd.

The genre of the trailer was ‘Horror’ by the way.

We ended the tour of the office at the lounge that many employees will kill for to have and stuffed our faces with the delicious food catered by Absolutely New Zealand. After having one too many of their fabulous desserts, we plonked ourselves on the comfy couches and watched 2 episodes of Flight of the Conchords. What a great way to end the event!

[Image from Claudia]

 

Some pictures of the stuffs in the goodie bag!

Flight of the Conchords OST! WOOO HOOO!!

Flight of the Conchords premieres on HBO today at 10.30pm! There is also a video contest in which you can take part to win a Mac Book Air!!

After months of preparation and anticipation, Ping.sg finally had their 2nd Anniversary and Awards at Fig & Olive on Saturday!

The committee were at the venue early but we were running around like headless chickens sometimes. Everyone helped one another and we managed to complete our tasks in time. My slaves, Hendri and Miccheng, helped me finish up on the table tennis bats which were given out as award trophies.

Sylvia hooked the committee up with a lady named Caressa who made us such great looking and tasting cupcakes! If I wasn’t battling the fact that my love handles are starting to look like the edges of the cupcakes, I would have had seconds.

People started trickling in and everyone had their chances to meet up with the bloggers that they come across every now and then in the Ping community. Everyone had name tags that helped identify each one of us and due to the evil blogger by the name of Wendy, I had this tag.

Everyone loves to hate a Chao Ah Beng and hence I got quite a lot of poofs from the pingsters. But I wasn’t the most hated! The winner is actually…

Diana’s lovely daughter, Shervon got the most POOFed award! WAHAHAHHAHAHAHA! Not that she is hated though. Everyone wanted the little girl to win something. =P

The awards were hosted by the laugh inducing duo, NTT & Mintea. Despite a few cock-ups here and there, the awards were given out at a very nice pace. I was nominated for quite a few and I expected to return home empty handed after awhile as other bloggers walked away with their prizes. But I manage to win the “Most Entertaining Blog Award!”

And with the votes of the great crowd there, I won the “HP Blog of the Year”!!!

I TOTALLY DIDN’T EXPECT IT! I only remembered being in a daze as I walked up to receive my prizes which consists of….

…..and the biggest prize of the night….

This has to be the most awesome thing I won so far in my life! And no better time than now when I am actually looking to get an UMPC to blog and surf on the go. Thank you to the great people at HP and Waggener Edstrom Worldwide for sponsoring such a prize!

Melvin! If you are reading this, get me a new set soon! I can’t wait to caress it!

Sorry if this post felt very truncated and bullet like. I am so bloody sleepy and I cannot write this post as well as I should. But before I end this post. I will like to thank the following people. Uzyn, Daphne & the committee for organizing such a memorable event. Claudia and Miccheng for preserving the memories in pictures and video.

But most of all,

I want to thank all the readers who nominated and voted for me. Without you guys and girls, I would be just a regular guy with a blog.

Now, I am a regular guy with a blog, armed with two ping pong bats, a glass and a HP MINI!

WOOOOOOOOO HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh! And please watch this great lipdub video created by Rinaz for the Anniversary!

Ping Lipdub Project from rinaz on Vimeo.