I got sick of eating Chinese New Year goodies the old fashioned way, so I decided to do what the folks at Oreo do best… Dunk. The oriental way.

Egg rolls dunked in soya milk.

Oh it’s GOOD stuff! It’s hard to describe the taste of both combo, so I guess you’ll have to try it to believe it.

I wonder what I’ll be dunking next. Pineapple tarts with eight treasures tea?

My first YouTube video. Enjoy and Happy 2009!

Worst of 2008:

1. A year of playing the stakes high, grabbing the damn bull by its horns, losing the ultimate battle.
2. A year where I truly understood a valuable lesson in life “For everything you have missed, you have gained something else; and for everything you gain, you lose something.”
3. For what I’ve lost, I’ve gained back much more …

Best of 2008:

1. Embracing social media. It’s now an integral part of my life and career.
2. Learning guitar. Always wanted to but could not find the time previously.
3. Discovering Tokyo’s awesomeness. I’ll be back soon.

Special thanks to Jonathan, Wee King & Larry as my biggest social media influence, Daniel Purnomo my favourite guitar teacher, and family, friends and colleagues who stood by me during difficult times. Rock on people!!!

I was suppose to continue on the topic of Subject Titles for Email Marketing and my thoughts on Michael Netzley’s Digital Comms workshop, but I was missing McDonald’s garlic chilli so much, I needed to talk about it.

It’s been a few months now, and I’m still wondering why McDonald’s took away their garlic chilli sauce. What were they thinking????

Maybe it’s another one of those “rational” cost cutting measures during bad economic times, or perhaps some peculiar survey findings reflected a change in consumer taste. Whatever the reasons, did McDonald’s really do their homework diligently? Did they conduct focus groups, get feedback online prior to this, monitor reactions on forums and blogs? Or maybe McDonald’s simply felt that the cost savings from discontinuing their garlic chillies far outweighs the lost of business from patrons like myself.

How tragic. Many of us grew up with their garlic chilli. I personally eat it with everything- Burgers, fries, nuggets, even with KFC’s crispy chicken. I go to McDonald’s not because they’ve got the best burgers or fries in town. I go to McDonald’s because their garlic chilli taste great with everything. And no other fast food chain serves garlic chilli. So why take away a key differentiator?

I’m not reacting alone. Just Google search for “McDonald’s Singapore no garlic chilli” and see the reactions of like-minded Singaporean on forums. The community has spoken.

NO GARLIC CHILLI = NO MCDONALD’S.

To McDonald’s: If you’re listening, may I propose a possible solution for you?

If producing garlic chilli is severely eroding your bottom line (which I doubt it), consider charging a minimal amount, like $0.05 or $0.10 per packet. No doubt you will inevitably have to deal with some degree of public backlash when you charge for ancillaries, but at least you will be giving your consumers a CHOICE. It’s entirely up to them if they wish to pay for it. I speak for myself, and I will pay $0.05 or $0.10 per packet to fix that craving. I believe many of your hardcore garlic chilli loving fans will too.

So until you bring back garlic chilli, I’m NOT lovin’ it.

Like all Sales people have sales funnels, should B2B Marketers have marketing funnels too?

YES according to Brian Carroll, one of the most well respected thought leaders in the field of lead generation. Read his blog entry on Building a Marketing Funnel and More Lead Management Tips.

Plus my favourite folks from Marketing Experiments held yet another insightful webinar. With Brian Carroll! A Proven Playbook For Growing Your Leads. View the Complete Version (slides and audio).

A great piece of work once again by Marketing Experiments. Their webinars are just *speechless* awesome.

Yes, that’s right, we can’t leave you alone even in public toilets.

Check out these creative ads in public toilets. It’s advertisements in every possible place, even on your toilet paper. Hilarious! And my favourite ad happens to be a freaky one…

Schizophrenia Awareness
Source: Ads of The World

Can you imagine being alone, in a quiet, dimly lit public toilet, caught unaware by this ad? SCARY!

Next up, a bizarre toilet theme restaurant in Taiwan makes you eat out of a toilet bowl. They serve your food in mini shaped toilet seats, all while you enjoy the meal sitting on actual toilet bowls and looking at urinals turned into lamps.

Hmmm… I wonder how their employees will react when asked “Where’s your bathroom?”

Source: Fun Fever

The sick rat is a marketer, and that marketer is me. Being unwell recently had resulted in my lack of blog entries for almost 2 weeks. Definitely a cardinal sin for a new blogger.

Even a wordless picture-only post proved to be a challenge, as the trusty home NAS crashed!

Anyway, I am looking forward to a virus free serious blogging Sunday!

After I gave Jelena bunny ears as shown in my previous post, she took her “revenge”, and grew some kind of weird fungus on me. What a “great” assistant!

More of her “masterpieces”…

By the way, a BIG THANK YOU to all my friends and family for your well wishes and gifts on my birthday today!

Yup, that’s me.

Found this on TechCrunch this morning- Yearbook Yourself. Try it and have a good laugh!

(Warning: If you are at the office, control that laughter. )

I think I took this a step too far. Created one for my favourite rodent…… and here it is……

Kind of freakish!!!