Well planned holidays are restful and not stressful (breakfast at Lake Tekapo, New Zealand)
We love going on overseas vacations. There is a certain buzz in the air when one is planning and arranging for a trip abroad, regardless of the duration, distance or destination.
In the age of omnipresent online options, choreographing your own holidays is entirely possible. However, one may still want to weigh the pros and cons of DIY versus having a travel agent or travel planner do it for you.
Courtesy of Life’s a comic strip!
In the world of User Generated Content (UGC) on social media platforms, a common question always arises for those whose job involves blogging, facebooking or twittering.
How do we separate our personal and professional selves? More importantly, are we able to do that in the first place?
It was an afternoon to remember at Movida of St James Powerhouse when virtual virtuosos became real rock-stars. More than 100 bloggers, models, singers, friends, fans and followers of social media stardom congregated for Omy.sg’s Singapore Blog Awards 2010. As one of the judges for the awards, I had the privilege of evaluating the shortlisted finalists for two of the categories, and was blown over by the quality of the entries.
Looking around the hall, I had the following quick thoughts (being an insightful blogger – remember?) on what Singapore’s blogging scene has become:
Before I talk about the great opportunity for bloggers, I must first declare that I’ve been selected to be a judge of the 2010 Omy.sg blog awards. Spearheaded by bilingual news portal Omy.sg, the awards have always been well received by the blogosphere year after year.
It is a great honour for me to be appointed alongside other more well-known luminaries from the arts, entertainment, and digital communities like Mr Kelvin Tong, movie director, Ms Kuo Jian Hong, Co-Artistic Director of The Theatre Practice, Ms Anna Lim, Radio 100.3 deejay, Mr Josh Lim, Managing Director of Advertlets, Mr Chua U-Zyn, CEO of Ping.sg, Mr Samuel Ng, CEO of Marine Parade Family Service Centre, Ms Xiao Han, Director and Lyricist of Funkie Monkies Productions, and Mr Danny Yeo, who is a theatre practitioner.
Jack Neo and his wife Irene Kng (courtesy of Syokkahwin.com)
By now, everybody would have read, listened, spoken about or viewed news about Jack Neo, his wife, and his dalliances with Wendy Chong.
The local and international media has gone wild with the latest celebrity news in every channel, and tremendous buzz has been generated in social media and mobile platforms – SMSes, MMSes, blogs, Facebook, forums, Twitter, Plurk, Youtube, blog aggregators (like Ping.sg), wikis and so on. Many have leapt into the fray with all kinds of judgements and interpretations, with some harsher than others. Jack himself has blogged about it here and apologised for his actions.
At the kind invitation of HP/Microsoft through Waggener Edstrom, I attended a panel discussion and ideation exercise titled “Future Is: The Online Community Talks About the Future of Things”. Held at the Giraffe Restaurant at the Istana Park across the road from Plaza Singapura, it was attended largely by bloggers, tech entrepreneurs, and students with a new media interest.
Featuring purveyors of tech like Daniel Tsou of Tech65, Willis Wee of Penn Olson, Nicholas Aaron Khoo of C-Net Asia’s Geekonomics, fashion blogger/editor Mina Sunico and Brian Ling of Design Sojourn, the session was a good refresher for me on what’s new and what’s hot in the world of technology.
Today’s post is rather light-hearted, and we take several digs at Digg, poke fun at poking, and titter away at Twitter.
First, a meeting of social media addicts anonymous:
Followed by a short and chirpy little love song fit for these social media enabled times.
What was the greatest company or brand story you’ve ever heard? Why were you enchanted by it?
Since time immemorial, mankind has always relied on stories to transmit information, values and ideas from generation to generation.
2) Mainstream media players still wield incredible influence on social media debates and discussions.
It was a starry starry night, with blogging stars and celebrity bloggers alike thronging the Asian Civilisations Museum (ACM) last night. ACM was all abuzz when the Omy Blog Awards was held at its River Room. Bloggers and social media users from all walks of life – students, young adults, mothers and fathers – gathered to participate in the event. It was a pretty interesting experience for me to combine work and play.
During the course of the evening, I had the privilege to meet both old and new friends from the blogging communities. They include Chun See, Marina, Claudia, DK, Chillycraps, Eastcoastlife, ieatishootipost, Sparklette, Samantha Chan, Angela Jean, Alice Cheong, Sabrina, and Miss loi amongst others. Special thanks to the team at Mypaper/Wo bao and Omy, Editor Chim Kang and Alvin, for having this event at our museum. Many thanks too to my hardworking team at NHB – Wei Chong, David, Kimberly and Kenny – for making this possible.