k r i s a n d r o

It’s only two days away from Christmas, which also happens to be my birthday! Yes, I am a Christmas baby and Christmas was great until people around me realize that they should give me one birthday-cum-Christmas present instead of two separate gifts. One good thing that is still prevalent through these years is that it is so easy to remember my birthday; Kris is born on Christmas day! How hard is that? If you don’t remember my birthday, SHAME ON YOU!!! Go repent and get me a big gift! (Or make it two… )

SUBTLE HINT: iwantanipodtouch16GBthankyouverymuch

As much as I would like to believe that I am 18 years of age, I am actually turning 27 on Christmas and that thought is quite scary! I am actually inching towards the big 30 soon! And I can actually feel the age catching up on me; friends of the same age/batch getting married, more wrinkles, deteriorating stamina and most of all, the increasing hunger for a superpower to turn back time. That and X-ray vision. Heheheheheheheeee.

Despite the fallbacks that come of age, I think I am still happy with the past year. I made a lot of friends through the revival of blogging in February and through channels and platforms like wholivesnearyou.com, ping.sg, twitter, yebber, facebook & plurk. Being so active in the social media scene also gave me opportunities to attend various events that added colors to an otherwise mundane life. Most of all, thanks to Ruifang aka KuKuNehNeh aka KKNN aka the gf, for contributing the most joy for the past year.

Merry KRISmas and a Happy New Year everyone!

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.

It reads "Krisandro & KKNN". WAHAHAHAAHA!!

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.

KKNN cam whoring in the car

Absolutely cute wedding cupcakes

The suave looking CartCart and the SEXEH Rinaz in a beautiful gown

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.

Thanks to Ahjay of Porter Novelli for the pic above!

KuKuNehNeh (KKNN) and myself were invited by Estee Teo for a Bloggers Event by Gillette. First up was a nice brunch spread from Serenity@Vivocity and were given a goodie bag each that consisted of a Gillette Power Fusion Atom, Gillette Fusion Hydra Gel and a media kit. To top it all off, we were given a pair of tickets to watch the latest James Bond flick with Gold Class tickets from Golden Village @ Vivocity.

KKNN and I are not fans of Bond but who would pass up on tickets to watch a blockbuster in $30 seats?

Many bloggers have already covered their experience on the event of the brunch and the movie but I will like to touch on something else. After attending quite a bit of blogger events so far, I am most impressed and most intrigued by this particular one. Not because Xiaxue was there, not because of the good food and not because of the freebies. Er… okay. I do admit that I love the Gillette Power Fusion Phantom to death and it is THAT GOOD even though I cannot grow any form of respectable facial hair.

I remember reading about Uniquefrequency’s post titled “Don’t Be The Insurance Salesman At The Party - Doing It Right“, which was on a Samsung event in which I had the privilege to attend. The article that Uniquefrequency wrote is about Daniel Goh who ‘did it right’ by working on relations with the bloggers for some time before organizing an event which in itself, was very nicely organized with no ‘in-your-face’ branding that one might expect.

Now, if the Samsung event was being mild on the branding, the Gillette event’s branding was almost non-existant!

There was no presentation. No contest and nothing to be won. Besides the media kit that is sitting in the goodie bag and the Gillette commercials that were running on TVs during the brunch, there was no mention of Gillette at all by the people from P&G and Porter Novelli! In fact, the ONLY time when Gillette was brought up during the event was when I was conversing with Edwin from P&G and it was me who brought up the topic of the differences between the battery powered Gillette Fusion and the non battery ones.

I really appreciate the team from P&G and Porter Novelli for organizing such a non-pushy event. If there are looking to work long term with the bloggers, this is definitely a great start to a good blogger-brand relationship.

Gillette is also holding an exciting contest! Details below!

Oh! As for the picture of me and Xiaxue..

Here it is….

Fidelis, Me & Xiaxue

=P

For the uninitiated, Plurk is a social medial tool and used for micro-blogging whereby one sends updates in 140 characters or less to the service. Plurk is very active in the local scene and most of the social media lovers are using Plurk very frequently to take part in various discussions, ranging from how great the Obama win was, to how lovely it is to take a dump in the toilet. Whatever the topics might be, Plurk is a great way to share and communicate.

We now have a Plurk: Singapore Facebook Group and had two ‘official’ gatherings so far with the last one at SMU’s Ice Cold Beer. A total of 17,352,451,726 30+ people turned up! We had loads of fun playing bar games with each other and laughing at a couple of people that totally sucked in certain games. It may sound evil that we laugh at them so openly but they are all alive so far and are looking forward to the next gathering that I was volunteered to organize. =P

Group shot at Plurk Gathering v2 - Thanks to Willy and David of Live! Studios for most of the photos that night!

I enjoyed myself thoroughly at the outing and it’s always great to put faces to the names/nicknames that I talk to so frequently online.

Join me on Plurk!

Blog posts about the gathering so far:

Wenderella

Clauds

Claudia

Cloudi3

Limetouch

iammyy