Hear Ye! Hear Ye!

As part of my new year resolution (I know it’s not 2009 yet but I’m trying to keep the momentum), I’m going to make a second post in a single day.

Some of you might know that Brands, most famous for their chicken essence, organised a Singapore-Malaysia blogger challenge today, the first of its kind (or at least, it’s the first I know of). Basically, it’s a competition between a team of 5 Singaporean bloggers and 5 Malaysian bloggers. Representing Singapore were Eastcoastlife, Mr Endoh, Wilfrid Wong, Sheylara and myself. Malaysia was represented by Red Mummy, Sultan Mufazzar, KY, Suanie and Capt’n Hook, who was standing in for Babe in the City - KL.

I got the invitation from Brands because Eastcoastlife recommended me. Prior to this, I’ve not been in contact with her and I was kinda wondering why she recommended me, especially when this blog has been in graveyard status for a while. I kinda put the thing on the back burner due to more pressing deadlines as a student and teacher but eventually, I said yes because I was assured it wasn’t anything too onerous (thankfully, they didn’t bluff me on this count).

So, I had been drinking a bottle of chicken essence every day for the past two weeks as part of the preparation for the challenge, along with trying out the set of puzzles Brands gave to the bloggers who were to take part in the challenge. I realised I suck at certain types of mental challenges, which thankfully my team mates today more than made up for. I was a little disappointed that logic type of questions weren’t featured, though. I guess those questions typically take much more time to solve so the organisers probably decided to go for questions involving memory, concentration and simple arithmetic.

In the end, Team Singapore won the challenge, but not by much. The final score was 47-54. I remarked to Endoh and Eastcoastlife’s husband (who was there with us) that it looked like a great 4D number. Let’s see if the number will be today’s 4D draw’s top prize. It certainly felt good to win the challenge but what was even better was to meet fellow bloggers and get to know more of the actual person behind the blog. I had a really great time chatting with Eastcoastlife, Endoh, Wilfrid and Sheylara. They are extremely easy-going, friendly, and more importantly, funny and humourous folks. I’m certainly glad to have the chance to meet them in person today.

It was also really cool to chat with the Malaysian bloggers too. Socio-political stuff is one of the things I dabble in on this blog so it was an eye-opener to hear from some of the Malaysian bloggers the situation for Malaysian bloggers who choose to dabble in socio-political topics in Malaysia. Of course, these bloggers are not exactly a good representation of Malaysian bloggers by academic standards but after talking to some of them, I get the sense that Singaporean socio-political bloggers have it really good compared to them.

I don’t have pictures because I didn’t bring a camera (it’s half-way round the globe in Massachusetts with my wife). Wilfrid, however, had this ultra professional digital SLR which he was constantly snapping pictures with, so I guess he’ll probably put up more pictures on his site once he gets the chance to sit down and download them from his SLR so check his site for pictures.

It’s now time for me to get back to work and I’ll try and post an entry on my thoughts about the Bangkok crisis in a couple of days. I consider myself to be a liberal in terms of my political views but what’s happening in Bangkok has made me revise my position a little, which I’ll talk about in my next entry.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS