Everyone loves party pictures don’t they?
Here are my FrontalLabs homies. Being into breakbeats and such, we started a DJ / production group to help push the local dance music scene since 1998. We wanted to make a zine at first, then decided to go web-based. Now you’ll see a forum in it’s place where the entire dance music community hangs out. I’ll be helping the guys from FrontalLabs and BreakinAsia move into podcasting and Second Life… yes, hoping to build a virtual club of our own!
I think this was the most packed I’ve ever seen Geek Terminal get! See any familiar faces? This was the upper deck… most of the crowd was on the lower deck lining up for free flowing food and champagne. There was also a bag full of schwag for everyone, which I’ll examine in a while.
This is Nic Fillingham and Leon Brown from Microsoft. When people ask who they were, Leon simply said that he was Nic’s “Biatch”. We were talking tech when Leon proclaimed that he wanted the Apple iPhone so bad. I joked that being from Microsoft, didn’t they sorta frown on iPod use? Nic was quick to jump in to say that was a rumor. Leon on the other hand said that he owned FIVE iPods. Daaaaamn!
Along our conversation, Shawn Chung (not pictured), T3 magazine editor and gadget guru, popped in to talk about the unreleased games he’s gotten his hands on. He transitioned from trivia about how Aigo was the number one selling MP3 player brand in China, to Shadowrun, which was the name of the game both him and Nic said was awesome. I had seen bits of it on The 1UP Show (my fav videocast) and it did look like a pretty juiced up shooter. Since they were into FPS (Halo fan here!), I suggested we get our game-on and have a three way console challange between us bloggers, T3 folks and the Microsoft dudes. Nic was in on it and we might crash the Playworks studio along Stamford Rd one day for a royal beat-down. I’ll need one decent partner to join me in representing the bloggers, so drop me a comment if you think you’re hawt enough! Yes, I’ll be videocasting this!
Speak of the devil, Nic won an “iPhone”… get it? I don’t think Leon’s down one bit :P
Out of the blue, Prabir Baurua came by and gave out his business card. As seen above, I think you get what he does. “Lobang” is a Singaporean slang for favor or hitch. If you don’t get it, USlobang helps you bring in anything from the US or Japan, anything except for adult movies and illegal paraphernalia. He said his service beats the local vPOST service flat since his is more personal, i.e. they find stuff for you. Funny guy.
Since I wasn’t engaged to talk or anything, I had more time to mingle. Finally got photos with some of the ladies I’ve collaborated with online and offline. Here’s Wenn Li from Film Formations, where we worked together on that “Hi! Tech” TV series about Kids and New Media. Congrats to her for finally getting her Producer status!
Everyone here knows Estee by now. She and the TDM team organized the recent BlogOut event. It’s amazing how she can remain so cheerful despite having pains from her wisdom tooth. Must be the drugs…
Then of course there’s EastCoastLife… the “hottest mum blogger”. Her son Jaymes got featured on “Hi! Tech” so that’s how we got connected. I didn’t know them that well, but last night was a riot. Her optician optometrist husband was explaining a non-invasive way of correcting myopic vision called neurovision programming. The idea was that instead of tampering with your eyes, you’d go through around 30 sessions of computer imagery to train your brain to compensate for the lack of visual contrast. After that he and his wife started cracking jokes and behaving like kids. Quite an insane bunch… :P
Speaking of insane, after running in circles and chasing one another, the Ping.sg group finally settled down to celebrate U-Zyn’s and Ridzuan’s birthday under the OUB towers by Boat Quay. The cake was exceptional, consisting of cheese and banana, with a carrot cake texture to it. The best part was that it was baked by Ping.sg member, Adrian Zhou! ArZhou apparently experiments with cake flavors and has once made a Vodka-saturated chocolate cake much to his clubbing friends’ delight.
Last but not least, the schwag! It’s geek tradition that whenever we go to any convention of this sort, there has to be freebies. It’s great marketing for startups and a useful freebie goes a long way. Some of the interesting ones include:
1. Chimei’s LCD cleaning cloth
Useful, and very relevant gift especially since they sponsored all the big LCD screens for Geek Terminal. This Taiwan company is in tough territory, but they seem to have good price point vs. quality for the screens.
2. Linksys’ Retractable Ruler Pen
Pens are popular as schwag, and toying with it revealed the retractable ad inside the pen. On the edge of the ad was a ruler scale, but it’s usefulness is “meh”.
3. Nokia’s “WTF” freebie
While it has a fancy coiled rope and hook, I don’t get what this plastic slipcase is for. Your passport? I’m probably taking this out of context… perhaps there’s something else that goes with this.
4. Geek Terminal’s “Free Barista-Made Coffee” Coupon
Because regular coffee won’t do, you’ll want Barista-made coffee. After pimping Geek Terminal so many times, they said coffee would be on the house for me. I never got one, so just to let you know, I don’t get paid by them. Bah! :P
If you can’t get enough, you can see the rest of the photos here…
