Finally a fridge that can be used. I should have taken a before picture of this fridge.

When we moved into the new place at Nuffnang China office, we loved it a lot because we had a big couch, TV, and almost everything you needed to start living there.

Then we went to the kitchen and while the kitchen was pretty clean, we got a shock when we opened the fridge. It had stuff inside that was in there for a long time. I always said we wanted to clean it up so that we could use it. But I guess we didn’t have to since it’s so freaking cold here.

But as I was cleaning the apartment yesterday I was like….hmmmm..maybe it’s a good time to clean it now.

So walahhh… I can have cold drinks in winter now.

Huiwen braved the cold and the transits and came all the way to Beijing to spend NYE with me. It was an insane travel itinerary for her and I appreciate that she came by for NYE. Would have been meaningless to spend it away from the person you care about.

She spent almost 24 hours each way to get to Beijing and back. Left for Changi airport at 9pm on the 30th, took the 12am 31st flight to KUL LCCT, spent a whole night there before taking a 8.30am to Tianjin arriving at 2.30pm. Met her at Tianjin airport, had lunch, and took a airport transfer bus to Tianjin train station to take the 5pm train to Beijing. Arrived Beijing at 5.30pm and took the Beijing subway and got into Guomao at about 6.30pm.

Almost 24 hours from when she started.

We chilled a bit at home, then headed out for dinner, and then poker with the usual bunch at Gulou. Lost some money there and went pass 12am without realising it. Then headed to Dao near the Beijing Zoo where we hung out with the rest of the Malaysians

Julie and Suzen.

And Eldwin below:

Was a fun night. This is actually the first time I went out dancing with Huiwen. hehehe.

The next day we gathered around for dinner again at this awesome place at Nanluoguxiang for their Shuizhuyu = fish cooked in oil. Yep. Drowned in oil. Unhealthy but awesome. Added in here were Julia, Vig, Kareen, and Nick and Ashley who were visiting from KL.

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Continuation of Vig’s last night at Sensations, new name for Solutions.

No i did not drink that much, I just acted like I did.

Adam came by to visit Suzen from Hunan, don’t know where Suzen went in this picture.

Andrew stopped by to say hi at the club.

Kareen sure knows how to keep her eyes open:

Must be a guy thing about the eyes not being able to open.

We finished up the rest of the cigar at the club. (coz we only did half at the restaurant, hehe. …value!)

I’ve been having cigars again. hehehe. It was the last day that Vig was in Beijing so we went out to dinner at Wudaokou, had some pretty good japanese dinner (sushi was all half off, that’s why it was good). and then chilled at the restaurant for a bit and of course, he brought the cigar that we should have had during NYE.

It gives you the same kinda high as cigarettes but i guess without the chemicals ? since it’s all organic? or i might be seriously misinformed. But I know that this shit is way more expensive than watever cigarrette. Probably hell know I ain’t paying for any myself but hey it’s good for celebrations. Like, champagne and cigar, hehehehhe.

We headed to a Wudaokou club called Sensations after and left about 1.30am.

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Found this new nice restaurant just outside the Nuffnang office here. We saw it being built up, renovated and all, and now it’s ready. Julia and I went to try it out. They had a few different things – hot pot, some sushi, cantonese stuff, etc. We had some canto and dimsum and it came up to about RMB80 for both of us. OK i guess for that kind of ambience, but not something to eat everyday!

Just so happen that some of the first few bloggers of Nuffnang China were bloggers from Blogbus that were into independent comics. When I say independent comics I don’t mean that they only just like reading comics, they’re the creators of these comics – the artists themselves. Blogbus is known for quite a bit of artsy fatsy people so a lot of the bloggers there were within this genre – music, art, culture, indie stuff.

This group of comic creators recently launched their 4th indie comic book called SC4. It’s basically a compilation of 30 artists putting their individual work together and publishing a big fat comic book for sale for RMB88 each. There were 1500 copies of this printed and will only be 1500 copies. It’s the kind of thing that will rise in price when demands grow and there are only so many books around, apparently.

Rachel, Wangting her roommate, and I went for the launch of the book last saturday at The Place. Wasn’t far away from the office.

After like 1.5 hours of a panel talking about the newly launched book, the process of making it, and the comic industry in general, the opened it up to the floor for questions and some dude out of no where starting making a fuss by talking about the money part of the book and how it didn’t add up. I guess for something like this where the comic creators don’t make much initially and the printing house takes a bunch for printing, but the dude was complaining as a artist, blabla i don’t even know what was going on coz it was all in Chinese. All I know that it was about the money. That dude stormed off and left.

To cool things down, Ray, our favorite Nuffnanger, did another freestyle rap there about the incident and lightened things up!

Of course, everyone applaused like crazy hahaa. I mean how many people do you know that can really just stand up and freestyle about what’s happening at the moment?!

Nuffnang did a small contribution to their comic and the artists drew a small ad for us in the book. Just to support since a lot of the artists are actually are bloggers here in China.

This is Yancong, one of the main man behind the newly launched SC4. He’s the one that also drew our small ad.

Yes. he’s the bald one on the right. haha. Not the white dude.

After the event we went out and The Place, where the event was held was famous for it’s super large monitor. Yes Whatever you see above me, is a monitor screen. insane. It’s probably like 100 meters long? and they had an aquarium showing.

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Totally unrelated, 2 nights ago, Montse came back to Beijing and after my kickboxing workout we went to eat this monster burger at Blue Frog

They have buy one free one on Mondays after 4pm.

Free ad for them. Damnit.

I don’t celebrate Christmas. This year I’m at Beijing for Christmas and the friends that I have here all celebrate Christmas. On Xmas eve Nuffnang had this Xmas event for bloggers, you can find out more about it here.

On xmas day itself, Julie invited me to come hang at the Ascott Beijing which was just up the street of where I am. They (her, Henry, Vig, Suzen, and Kareen) had booked the penthouse and decided to stay a night there to chill, cook dinner, exchange presents and celebrate xmas. We got a pretty damn good deal for one night at the penthouse from Suzen’s connections.

The penthouse was HUGE. 2 storeys, 3 bedrooms, 3 baths, 2 living rooms, 1 dining room, 1 kitchen, 1 study, insanely big. They checked in at 4pm but I got there at about 6pm when they were already cooking.

The cooking went on for about 4 hours before we finally ate at 10pm. I must say, a big thanks to all the chefs, that’s pretty much everyone except me coz i didn’t wanna get my hands dirty hahaha…sorry i’m lazy.

There were 6 of us (L-R: Julie, me, Kareen, Vig, Suzen, and Henry).. Just a quick background, Julie is the one in the previous blog post who was totally attracting hot chicks at Vics, one of beijing’s hottest clubs. Kareen went to LSE along with Julie and Henry who came to visit all of them for xmas from Malaysia. He just turned Singaporean and going to NS soon. Vig was introduced to me by Steph Ng one day before he left to Beijing to study Chinese with the rest of them. He was the link to all of them for me. Suzen is Julie’s childhood friend.

Dinner was prepared for more than 10 people probably. Food was really good, we had pork, beef, chicken with stuffing, lotsa vegetables, mash potatoes, and 2 bottles of wine.

And then it came to the present opening time. I don’t celebrate xmas so I had no idea we were exchanging presents but when I got there and saw a bunch of presents on the table, some with my name on it, i was like…oh-oh….this is bad. I didn’t bring anything. I felt so bad but I had no time to get anything so Huiwen adviced me to get something from the hotel, to remind everything about this night we had there. I went down to the lobby and got some Loccitanne lotions and body care packs for everyone. Had the concierge deliver it up for me. For some quick thinking, you know there’s always Huiwen to count on! Everyone loved it.

Gift exchange was a blast. Everyone got everyone something meaningful. I got stuff that was REALLY useful too. Gloves, a scarf, a tie, home slippers, and this shuttlecock looking thing that all the chinese like to kick around during lunch time outdoors. I doin’t know how you explain it but you play it like a sepak takraw, only thing it looks like a big shuttlecock.

Yes,. we all had a blast opening presents. Vig, got the dudes Cuban cigars, and since it was xmas, we decided to light up right there since we ain’t gonna be smoking any other time anyway.

Vig in style, he got that hat and sweater as presents and look totally Irish.

Yep, that is some RMB80 Cuban cigar I’m having there. Every puff is money…… oh, and I’m also wearing everything I got as presents, my monkey shoes, scarf, tie, except the gloves.

Of course, Suzen had to try the cigar as well and try to look niggerish…hahaha.

We ended the night by watching a xmas movie. Heck I doin’t even remmeber what movie coz everyone fell asleep within the first 20 min of the movie so we didn’t even finish it. I walked back to my place to crash right after.

The next day I got back there to have left overs for lunch.

That bread and butter just taste so good when you have nothing else to eat.

All in all, a pretty damn good xmas party. Dinner and wine, cigar and port, presents and all at the Ascott Beijing.