It seems that I’m clocking my car’s odometer a little bit sooner than I should. With the amount of traveling that I’m doing everyday, I would have to service my car at least once every 2 months instead of 3 months. There is one way to avoid this, move nearer to my office which is located about 40km from my house in KL.

Anyway, last weekend I went to Kepong where I used to go and service my car. I had noticed one of Fasfik’s service workshop in Sri Serdang had been closed for quite some time. I would have never thought Fasfik Kepong would have gone to the same process.

Fasfik Kepong Closed (August 2008)

It’s a pity that such a nice location and a nice facility needed to be closed down. I suspect Fasfik is having a scaling issues whereby they tried to go big very quickly but find out that they are incapable of supplying enough resources. In businesses, there is always risk to be taken therefore I guess Fasfik would really have to make a decision whether to move forward and overcome their obstacles or just sell off their business like what Projet (Now being bought over by Shell) did.

I am quite sad to see them closed down however, my car needs to be serviced one way or the other. A few meters away from where Fasfik is located, is another service workshop. They’re currently having a promotion but it is only for old cars. Their normal package for my car starts at RM98 but I ended up paying RM178 because of other parts of my car that is slowly deteriorating. I should have brought my laptop because there’s free Wi-Fi while waiting in the customer’s waiting lounge.

AutoCare & Tyre (ACT) with Free Wi-Fi Available

This ACT Workshop is Very Clean

The service was quite fast. In less than an hour, my car was serviced and running smoothly again. Now isn’t that money well spent? So much of me being so thrifty.

About almost a month ago, I blogged about BarCamp Malaysia and how I got to know about it. Last Saturday was the day that BarCamp Malaysia actually commenced. It was quite impressive the amount of sponsors that BarCamp Malaysia had acquired.

There were so many sessions which got me torn apart to choose upon which one I should go to. I then finally decided to go to any sessions that I managed to squeeze myself in. I brought along my laptop but hardly even use it after I found out that the Wi-Fi is unusable. My big fat Maxis Wireless Broadband modem which I happened to bring along is just too big to setup. Maybe it is time for me to get myself a Pocket PC or a BlackBerry. Then again, that would mean I need to put aside some money just for that purpose alone.

BarcampMalaysia KL Morning Registration at Xtrain

The Widgeo.us Session

Widgeo.us Introduction

I would have gone to the Google Android session but the room was packed full. I then went to Widgeo.us session instead. Honestly, I have no idea what Widgeo.us can or able to do. I do know that it has something to do with widgets based on their name. I’ll give it a try when I have some spare time.

RIA Development via Flex + JROR

RIA Development via Flex + JRoR

This session was really meant for programmers. In my day to day job, I don’t look at anymore of those web programming languages unless if it is really necessary for me to do so. Nowadays, there are plenty of technical programming tools available and these tools save time and resources instead of looking at programming codes line by line. Nevertheless, learning those codes will eventually help especially if you stumble upon problems and needed to find solutions. Anyway, I walked out from this session because there was no need for me to learn this topic, at least for now.

Monetizing Youtube

Monetizing Youtube Session

Now this was a really interesting session. The topic alone drew a full house of people into the small room. At first I thought this session might be some way or techniques to make money off from Youtube. I was wrong instead it was a new concept of pattern recognizing technology that instantly indentifies a pattern and turns it into an advertising medium in a form of 3D object or logo. It’s a brilliant idea Presented by the enthusiastic Roni Mustafa from Urekalabs but I think if this were to be introduced here in Malaysia, a lot of promotion, a lot of dedication and presentation is needed to attract advertisers.

A few people from the crowd at the time were bashing the idea by making comparison of similar technology used in the US but in the end, a lot of supports were shown by the audience to help this brilliant minded group to go further with their work.

Lunch Time

BarCamp Malaysia Lunch Time

The food was awesome.

BarCamp Malaysia 2008 Launching Ceremony

Khai Lee gave an enthusiastic opening speech at the opening of BarCamp right after lunchtime. I certainly was entertained by his Emcee skills. Check it out at the video taken by my cameraphone below:

The video is also available on Youtube using the link below:

• BarCampMalaysia KL 2008 Official Opening (Part 1)
• BarCampMalaysia KL 2008 Official Opening (Part 2)

Bridging People with Ideas Session

Bridging People with Ideas Session

Presented by Kelvin, during the first 15 minutes make sense where he talked about bringing in non-tech and non-IT people into the scene and organizing events and talk. After that, the idea got contradicted by mashing up other ideas and bringing in other people to diversify the entire theme and events.

Personally, I don’t think it make sense when something too in-depth is then being generalized in order to keep it balance. It should be either specialized or generalized. I know that once in a while, variety can make it more fun for participant or what people nowadays call it ‘fusion’. Then again, I just got confused and if I were a buyer, I would totally reject what is being sold.

A Whole New Perspective by Ameer

Then came along Ameer from Sudan who happened to crash into BarCamp and talked about his upcoming book which I’ve forgotten the title. I do know that is has something to do with Islam and some kind of revolution or was it evolution. It was an interesting topic but to me, I don’t take this seriously because I’m not that radical enough to be talking about all the subjects and topics that Ameer has brought up.

Jumping The Shark

Jumping the Shark Session

I nearly fell asleep in this session. I’m not actually a brainstormer so to pick out ideas out of my brain after a good lunch is rather useless. Nevertheless, the good point from this session is that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel and be careful of the big guns because they have all the resources to make or break you.

Entrepreneurs Going Global

Entrepreneur Going Global Session

This session was moderated by my buddy Cerventus. Three panel experts were invited namely, Vishen Lakhiani from Mindvalley, Ganesh Kumar from MOL.com, Roslan from MDEC and Siva an entrepreneur mentor. Now this session was a really good one since it was full of experience sharing, business information and the best is free advice for wannabe entrepreneurs. I love the idea of becoming an online entrepreneur and I am planning to become one myself. I think the best advice is to always build your own client database because that where the money will always be.

Blogging in Malaysia

Blogging in Malaysia Session

I sat behind HongKiat in this session. Other celebrity bloggers were also in the session as well such as Gobala Krishnan, LiewCF and Syokkahwin author Fayz. I remain silent the entire session because I don’t find the session to be useful to me. To me, blogging is just a tool for the use of delivering and sharing information. Maybe I should have shared “how I use blogs to make 2 of my company’s website to get listed on the search engine for specified keywords” or “how I landed a job using blogs”. Oh well, at least I learned a thing or two in this session.

Summary

If I were to describe this first BarCamp Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur in one word, I would have to say “Fusion”. It was a pity I couldn’t come to the second day of BarCamp Malaysia because of a scheduled commitment. Visit BarCamp Malaysia Official website to read more of this awesome event.

On the 13th of July which was two weeks ago, I went to Bangsar to attend a public talk. A few days before that, I saw an advertorial that says “Here’s how you can get a job in advertising paying you a salary of RM2,300. Guaranteed.” The headline alone drew me to read the half a page content. The advertisement was from 95%: The Advertising Academy so it did a good job at making me notice and take action to come to their talk.

Since LV is a masscom student majoring in advertising, I brought her along as well just to give her some insight of what her future career will look like. I’ve already have a career but somewhere deep inside of me, I have a lot of interest in advertising. Eventhough I blew up some of my own advertising money during a few weeks of online advertising campaign I practiced a couple of years ago, I still think advertising has an endless bright future.

95% The Advertising Academy Office

A Scene Before The 95% The Advertising Academy Talk

The talk starts at 2.30pm so even though I was kind of late, I still managed to arrive there.

Janet Lee Giving A Speech

That’s Janet Lee, she’s one of the founder of 95% The Advertising Academy. They have their own blog here if you are interested to read what they are planning to do or what they have done so far.

The Welcome to Advertising Slide Show

The welcoming slide is rather simple but quite creative. If you cannot read what the fineprint is saying, it says “Say goodbye to dull and boring days”. Basically it was assuming that people who came there are looking for a career change and advertising are one of the industry that isn’t dull and boring.

One of the trainer at 95% The Advertising Academy

That’s Shaikh Shahnaz Karim. He was the one presenting the entire presentation to the audience. He was actually from the IT industry before he came into the advertising world which he finds it ‘colourful’. Now read this, the advertising industry is a RM5 BILLION industry in Malaysia alone. That’s a HUGE amount of money! Now look at this figure:

Number of advertising agencies in Malaysia

I think there are plenty of shares to have more advertising agencies in Malaysia for that RM5 billion advertising pie. That might be one of the reason 95 percent ad academy has come out with a program called Hydrogen. The program cost RM15,000 for 6 months but there is a screening before you are actually admitted into the program. They have 3 positions to be filled; 1)Copywriter 2)Strategic Planner 3)Account Executive. If I were to choose, I think I’ll go for copywriting since I like to play around with words.

95 percent Advertising Agency Hydrogen program

The best thing about the program is it is sort of like a crash course training twice during your weekdays evening and you are actually guaranteed a job. If I were looking for a job or a career change, I think this program is really worth it. Just think of the time you can save by leveraging through your mentor’s network and experience and you get paid on top of that. It’s a healthy investment. The advertising industry is the only industry that can connect and communicate with every industry available because of their excellent medium which is now become really targeted using Information Technology. Throughout the talk, they’ve shown us sample videos of advertisement from many different countries and which videos won the Kancil Awards and the Cannes Lions festival.

Then again, I’ve already found my career field which is currently in the IT solution and application. 95 % The Advertising Academy works closely with the Association of Accredited Advertising Agents Malaysia. You can check out their blog at http://enter95percent.blogspot.com/ or visit http://www.rise67.com to learn more about their program.

The past several years have seen a lot of my friends finally settle down and started their own family. Deep down inside of me, it hurts not to admit that I myself also wanting to get married. To make matters worse, my younger brother’s wedding is just next month and I will be busy helping him out along with my other family members. Aren’t it supposed to be the big brother getting married first? Oh well, I have plenty of excuses for that.

On Friday the 4th of July, I went to MidValley for the 2008 Malay Wedding Fair Exhibition. The event was organized by Urban Vibe and I was quite impressed by the number of exhibitors who had participated. I’ve actually started to take down notes and gathered a bunch of brochures to come out with a budgetary for my own wedding. The last time I went for a wedding event was last year at Plaza Alam Sentral Shah Alam but it was just a small one. I haven’t been doing thumbnails on my blog yet, so I’ll put one this time:

It seems like the financial numbers can really kill my financial well being. I’ll probably look like this once I get the total sum of what my budgetary projection will be like:

Me Thinking of my depleting wallet

A couple of months ago, I went to Nilai 3 and it is known as the “Malay Wedding Haven”. There’s every kind of wedding shops available over there and it’s jam packed every weekend of public holidays. Here is another thumbnail of photos:

Honestly, I find that the price over at Nilai 3 is slightly higher. It is much more reasonable to buy it at the heart of Kuala Lumpur’s especially in Jalan TAR or Jalan Masjid India. Anyway, I think I’m going to leave the shopping part to my future wife as my pocket will definitely be wounded. Ouch!