My first ping.sg gathering

After the extensive coverage on the ping.sg anniversary party by various members, I feel kinda lazy to blog about it too. Afterall, what do I know? I’m just a noob at ping.sg!

But then, I decided that instead of posting up the photos (which my BB has already done here) and putting the usual lame captions, I should blog about how I felt during the whole event!

The day started off badly with me battling a massive jam en route to Pasir Ris from JB, and without sufficient sleep too!

I rushed down to BB’s place in Pasir Ris, and we had lunch before rushing out to Geek Terminal by taxi (we were not that late, yay!) for the pre-event meeting. When we arrived, a lot of people were there already! I suddenly felt very shy. I recognized some familiar faces – Uzyn & Sekling (of course haha), Ridz & tstar, Rinaz… Uh, that’s about it. Didn’t recognize the rest of them! Hur hur hur.

BB was with me, thankfully, but after a while, I went and did my stuff, and he starting taking photos, so we sort of just separated for a bit. But it was funny how everyone knew him as BB, cos that is what I call him, and how I write about him on my blog. Hehe! Sekling made a name tag for him later, with this huge ass “BB” on it. Hur hur hur.

Anyway. We sat down when we arrived and started talking about nothing in particular. I felt a bit weird, cos I was surrounded by people I didn’t know except for the last few weeks of interaction on the shoutbox at ping.sg. But slowly, I started talking to them, and of course, when Nicole came (with Hendri in tow), I felt so much better! Haha! I dunno what it is about her, but she makes me feel very comfortable. She’s easy to talk to and get along with. Then we started packing goodie bags! Haha! That was quite fun!

Got to talk to some of them, and then Nicole brought me to meet Danny, the coffee god of Geek Terminal! Hehe! He made a cup of latte for me. And I tell you, that is the most heavenly coffee I’ve ever had! (Of course, I’m probably biased cos he did this for me) But seriously, I can tell you that that cuppa totally perked me up! It was just the way I liked it! 🙂

Anyway, soon after, people started streaming in, and Sek Ling and I sat at the reception table to help people register and get their name tags. I must say that this was a great way to meet people, cos you’d be able to ask them their names (and nicknames on ping.sg) and match faces to those names! 🙂

Unfortunately, I am really really really really bad at faces (just like Sheylara) and I’ve forgotten most of the faces by now. Hee hee! I am so happy to meet so many people, though! Heehee!

While at the registration table, I was thinking, “Wah, it must be damn difficult to be Sekling (aka Mrs Uzyn) because she has to play the nice hostess and remember all of the members’ names and faces!” Haha. Dunno how she does it.

Suddenly there is a lot of commotion coming from the inside, and I hear Rinaz and Brennan’s voices booming, loud and clear (they are the emcees), so I head on inside and abandon Sek Ling at the reception table. Haha!

I helped out in controlling the slides cos I made the slides, though I think Ridz would have done a better job clicking the slides (cos I was so distracted, haha). Well, I am very easily distracted. I had to be prompted several times, “Daph, slide!” before I remembered to click, to show the next slide. Haha!

The award presentation went on pretty well enough, other than my little hiccups. Not many surprises there. Hee hee. I presented an award together with Sheylara – unlike the other presenters, we just went straight to the nominees. Haha! Shy lah 😉

(at this point in time, I need to interrupt this broadcast and announce that I just burped a really huge burp, and it smelled of mango cos I ate this huge ass mango just now, hee hee!)

I felt a little awkward standing in front, cos my overactive imagination led me to thinking that people were staring at me (I hope not). Haha. So I tried to hide behind the laptop and the table.

My tummy started growling somewhere around the first quarter of the awards presentation. Haha! It didn’t help that I was standing within a 3 metre radius of that delicious-smelling 3-tiered chocolate cake made by Arzhou and his partners from sweethut.biz. All the while, I was complaining to Ridz that I was hungry. And to Rinaz, too. Haha! I wanted to get my hands on that cake! Lol.

*skip all the other parts*

Finally, we got to the food! Haha! I have gripes about the food! I don’t like the pasta – it tasted weird! Haha. But I wolfed it all down anyway. Hee hee!

And can I say that I really love Arzhou and his partners for baking that cake?! I really love it leh! I regret that I didn’t manage to eat more of it. Haha.

While eating, managed to catch up with Sweska, and meet many many many many people! Sorry, I’m not going to name everyone, because I’m just going to leave out someone and they are going to feel very sad! Haha.

Oh, I want to mention a couple of people though. Chillycraps! He said he knows my sister Elaine and I back from our ODAC days in AJC. Haha that was aeons ago! I’m shocked he remembers. And NTT! I liked talking to him but then I changed my opinion of him after he made me walk all over Singapore in my high heels after the party, looking for Brewerkz.

And I want to mention my secondary school teacher! Her name is Miss Ong Huileng, and she’s the wife of James of tomorrow.sg! Wow 🙂 Anyway, I was quite shocked to see her there, and when she told me that her husband is James, I nearly toppled over. Haha. She recognized me! 🙂 Okay, she wasn’t really my teacher (she taught Chinese, and I never took Chinese) but I think she was in charge of library (which was one of my ECAs), or something? I can’t really remember! I’m bad at this. Haha! She’s not teaching anymore, though.

Lalala. Okay!

After the makan session, we had a short thank you speech by Uzyn, and he gave out some tokens of appreciation (I got one too, but I think I didn’t really do anything) and a group of us adjourned to Brewerkz at Clarke Quay. Had beer (which I don’t really fancy) and I got to talk to a few people – michaelon9, mantas_lt (who is a visitor from Lithuania, I think), bjorn of e27, herryanto, etc. but I felt that I didn’t really get to talk to any one much, cos after that I changed table to sit with some others whom I talked to more often on the shoutbox.

Oh well!

I think the whole event went really well (sans a few hiccups along the way and some bad stuff after the event), and I think organizing this event really brought many of the members closer. I also got to know more people because of the organizing of these event (thanks to Uzyn for including me in the mailing list for the organizers).

Congrats to all my friends who won awards – keep blogging! 🙂

Now, my wish for ping.sg is to become bigger, better, and for its members to form an even closer-knit community. I wish for all bad things to be left behind, and I wish for three special people to be happy. So I will share a photo of my favourite grumpy cat! Her name is Fat Fat Miaomi (or at least, that’s what I call her).

ETA: I just wanted to mention a few more people cos I felt bad after remembering that they mentioned me in their blogs? Haha. Veron (my fave blogger, hehe), Farinelli and UglyFatChick (who is damn chio lah!) and her bf, Defector. Heehee! I’m so looking forward to meeting everyone again 🙂