k r i s a n d r o

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!

First of all, many thanks to Sabrina & Gavin for inviting me to the “Exclusive Yahoo! & LG Electronics Blogger’s Event” at Expo which happened on Wednesday. It is a first invite to an ‘exclusive blogger’ thingy for me and I really didn’t know what to expect.

I reach there right on time to only find myself waiting for almost half an hour without a familiar face in sight at 7-11. It turned out that Sabrina, Sheylara & Priss were waiting at the OTHER 7-11. We were soon joined by Yanjun and we were ushered down to the entrance of the exhibition to get our lanyards.

VIP HOKAYS! DUNCH PWAY PWAY!

It looks all nice but Sheylara quickly pointed out to me that…..

WAH LAU! SPELL WRONGLY DEY!

*Facepalm*

.

We were led to the LG booth and up to a platform when I saw familiar faces like Leonard and Nadnut and DK later. Nadnut was kind enough to introduce me to the rest of the other bloggers but I don’t really recognize most of them and they probably didn’t recognize me as well, so it’s okay.

WAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAAAA!!!

Oh, before I continue, this post is gonna be picture free as I only had my Nokia N95 with me and despite my love for the phone, it’s not going to have good pictures in such light conditions and so I didn’t take any pictures at all.

We were brought around the LG booth by this pretty LG PR manager. I think it could be her first time dealing with local bloggers and when she picked up the new LG phone to talk about it, a SWARM of bloggers whipped out their cameras and surrounded her while flashing the sight out of her. She quickly recovered her composure and talked about the phone. Problem was, her soft voice was drowned out and my interest in the product drowned away as well.

All I can say is that it was a visually appealing phone. I will only talk about it in depth if I can get my hands on one.

…..

(Awkward silence)

…

Okay. Next, we were led to an area where a humorous MC took the stage and said that a group of Korean dancers were going to perform for the crowd. At one point, he said,

“Hello everyone! Today we have Singapore’s Top Bloggers joining us today!”

I was completely shocked at this point. The MC then looked over our side and raised his voice a little.

“Singapore’s TOP BLOGGERS! Raise your hands!”

I think I subconsciously shuffled my feet AWAY from the group of bloggers as the rest of the crowd looked over at our group. The MC realized the lack of enthusiasm from the bloggers and the crowd and still managed to get the crowd to clap.

Not to put any of the bloggers there down, especially those who have much higher traffic than mine but…. “TOP BLOGGERS?”

WAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

If the word ‘relatively’ is put in front. Then I think it’s true mostly. Maybe do a ‘mumble’ to make it nicer lar.

“Hello everyone! Today we have Singapore’s relatively Top Bloggers joining us today!”

The dance item was quite nice actually, so credits to LG for putting the show up.

.

The next booth that we went to was more exciting for me. The Yahoo! booth. Adam Taggart who is Yahoo’s Senior Director for Product Marketing greeted us warmly and he totally captivated my attention with the way he presented himself and I can feel his excitement for the Yahoo Mobile Apps that he showed us. It’s quite a couple of products to talk about and you can visit Yahoo! Mobile’s site here to find out more. I’ve already downloaded one of the applications to my phone to test it out.

Will blog about it soon once I get familiar with the product!

OH! And Sabrina said that MrBrown and Dawn Yang came down as well. ARGH! WANTED TO MEET DAWN YANG MRBROWN SO MUCH! I AM TOTALLY INTO HER HIM. I HAD TO LEAVE EARLY! WHAT A BLOODY WASTE!!!

Meanwhile, you guys can surf to the following blogs for the coverage of the event and products and hopefully find pictures you like.

Leonard’s coverage.

Sheylara’s coverage.

I’ve been wanting to design and print a blogger namecard ever since I saw a whole SLEW of bloggers start to print their namecards like Claudia, Nadnut, Jayden and Rinaz who got their lovely cards printed at Tommy Print.

So, after so long, I decided to run through some ideas through my head and this is my namecard!

.

*drumroll*

.

…………………………

.

…………………

.

…………

.

………

.

……

.

…

TADA!!!

.

Front

.

Back

.

The only problem is that it is not PRINTED yet and I have a few blogger events to go to! And I think this design is only done over a couple of hours and I need more time to refine it. So no choice lar. Have to settle with this…

.

.

“Hieee~! My lame is kiss-send-do! Here ish my lame card! Muz cum my bRog hokayz?”

Most people who got to know me after my poly days do not know that my parents are actually divorced. It’s not something that I hide but I think people don’t really ask about parents at my age. I am guessing that one possible reason is that at my age, there is a high possibility that one’s parents are old and therefore, could have passed on. And asking about it might lead to awkwardness if the subject’s parents aren’t around any longer.

My father, or I would prefer to call, my ex-father, came from a relatively wealthy family who as a family business. He was sporty and enjoyed bowling and photography. I remember looking at his pictures in his younger years and he was… like me I guess. Tall and lanky. He managed to win my mothers heart over and his food addiction eventually took over through the years and he turned into a fat slob. I always had this joke for my close friends where I will depict this scene of my mum marrying this tall, slim and handsome man and to only turn over on the bed in the morning to find a human lard on her bed.

WAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAA!!!!!!!!!!

After I was born into the world, I had the habit of sleeping during the day and only waking up in the wee hours in the morning to wail. My poor mother was so stressed and depressed and did contemplate to throw me down the HDB and commit suicide. You know what the human lard did? Wear ear plugs and continue sleeping.

In my baby years, he did contribute to my pampers and milk fund. A grand total of ONE can of milk and TWO packs of pampers. *clap clap*

I remember he once approached me during primary school years saying,

“Kris! I struck 4D! I give your some extra pocket money okay?”

“Oh really!”

.

You know how much he gave me? $1+. ONE DOLLAR PLUS! At that age, I was already getting $8 per day for my pocket money.

As I grew older, he realized that I am quite the rebel and not the nicer son that he sees in my brother. So he hated my guts. When my friends call up my house and goes,

Friend: “Hello! Is Kris around?”

Human Lard: “HE DIE ALREADY!”

*SLAM*

.

He does it so often that my friends and I laugh about it so much (after the initial shock).

WAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA!

I remember another incident that just shows his laziness. Back then, our remote control for the TV in our living room is spoiled and one has to use the controls on the TV to switch channels. So the Human Lard usually sits on his couch in the living room with his legs propped up on the stool and has some food resting on his belly that doubles perfectly as a table. He only needs to get up and take ONE step to turn on the TV, but no he doesn’t. Instead he…

Human Lard: “BENNE! (My brother’s name) Turn on the TV!”

And where would my brother be? He is in the room. He has to walk out his room to the living room to turn the TV on for that lousy excuse of a human. Whats worse?

(10 minutes later)

“BENNE! Change to channel 5!”

.

The Human Lard has affairs, smokes, gambles, is lazy, is a slob, is irresponsible, is not caring, is a miser. He even once quit his job so that he can watch the world cup. In some ways, I think his existence is worthy because, I want to NOT BE LIKE HIM.

Some people at this point may be feeling very uncomfortable and thinking of the favorite line that I hear so many times in my life.

“But Kris, after all, He IS your father.”

.

“Father my perky ass!”

.

To me, a man doesn’t become a father just by having a child. He must perform his duties as a father and as a husband. A father like mine was just somebody who contributed that ONE SPERM that brought me into existence. That is all really, not even love. I don’t hate him after so many years but I am very sure that I will not feel sad if I hear of his death.

.

My Mother on the other hand has been the one who has been playing both roles in mine and my brother’s lives. She is the caring mother who will tend to her children’s whims and emotional needs. She is the strong ‘father’ who works so hard to bring the bread home and fixes everything in the house.

So, on this father’s day, I will like to wish my Mum,

“HAPPY FATHER’S DAY, MUM!”