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It’s 9pm and I’m at my sister’s place enjoying quite family holiday.

It’s no secret that New Year is not celebrated here like back at home. With all the shining super-mega shopping complexes, all the luxury and high technology New Year eve isn’t as exciting. I guess it’s not because of those things, I guess it’s the new year mood that gets you high and makes it more exciting.

Yeah, few hours left of 2008, 2009 is just ahead. So what was so special in 2008 to me?

• My daughter, my sweet angel. She turned 1 and walking and talking(in her own way). My shining star. I love her so much!
• My son, super-duper cool guy He started talking English only. His first year at pre-school is over. He’s not rooky anymore
• My wife started working as freelance guide. She couldn’t wait to start. Now she’s in Sabah, a part of Malaysia where the locals used to hang skulls of their ancestors. She’s there for a 2 weeks job. Doing pretty good.
• I got to know great and interesting people. Learned a lot.
• Went to couple of barcamps.
• Started driving, bought my first ever car. An old Honda civic which is older then me
• Started off (2-3 months ago)  couple of websites ( http://hotweddingguide.com and http://thebrandology.com ) with my kid sister. Today I got to know they are Google PR2!
• Said good bye to my futsal career (as if!) because of my knee injury. I really have to find some time and get it “fixed” as my better half says.
• Have malaysian server, moving out from US.
• Hands on Macs, iPod touch

I could go on with the list but I think it’s enough. Now, next post will be expectations for the year 2009.

Stay around.

What I have really missed is getting up early, I guess that’s what you get when you live right in front of your office, literally. So to get myself register(registration at 8am) and attend early tracks(9am) I had to wake up at 6.30am. Travelled in LRT until Bangsar and took a cab to Midvalley Megamall.

Getting through registration and writing my name on a sticker and sticking it on my T-Shirt, I went into the lift where I meet Daniel CerVentus. Upstairs at level 7 early comers were getting their startup camp T-Shirts and already getting social.

I attended Social Entrepreneurship & its Challenges: Aceh – The Case Study – Ellynita Hazlina Lamin, CEO, ACSB, Profiling: Picking The Right Partners – Michael Reyes (Co-founder, Money Tree), The Entrepreneur Myth – Khailee Ng, Shaking Today, Shaping Tomorrow - Michael Tan, Founder of www.yourparttime.com

Ellyn was quite emotional, her startup involved a lot more then just making big bucks. I believe she is contributing to the society and she is really dedicated to it. It was quite different and informative for me.

The next track was Michael’s from Money Tree. He was very experienced in giving speeches and did quite a interesting one. He made a lot of related jokes and interacted with the audience. His track was about how to read people and choose the right partner for your startup. It was fun.

Khailee started off quite in unusual way, he didn’t have any slides to show(I’m sure it is not because he didn’t have time to prepare it was his style) unlike others. He talked, very fast and very interestingly. All the audience was listening carefully to him. He mentioned his life experiences, mistakes and pitfalls of getting to where he is. And he is at TheYouthIntelligence. It was surprise for me to hear him mentioning about Phang, my boss over at Innity.

In between these sessions I met a lot new faces: Carmen and Jules from Creative Paramedics, Boon from Gotka Technologies and Steven from Brilliant Resources.

We had really nice chat with Carmen and Jules, they are sweet ladies that started 4Play magazine for kids and teens.

With Boon we couldn’t chat much since the track was already begining. But I guess will have time tomorrow.

Steven and I did exchange some thoughts of SEO and local web hosting companies and also business in general. His office turns out is not too far away from mine. This is yet another sucessful example of a startup.

Then we had lunch, it was quite long queue for the lunch. I waited a bit then I headed off to Midvalley shopping, I couldn’t miss a chance to eat outside once I’m out of PJ.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t attend the tracks after lunch.

Right now I’m at my sisters place, will be going off to my place in a while. I’ll be posting Startup Camp, Day 2 post tomorrow.

Life is good –> ayuuma.com

Recently, like a 2-3 weeks ago I joined my colleagues to play futsal after work. We’ve been playing futsal for the last few weeks. And guess what, I got to hurt my knee very badly, I couldn’t walk for at least 3 days. Every touch, every step hurt so badly.

I am very thankful to my lovely wife for her care and patience. I am very thankful for my brothers Nurbek and Kamchybek, my sister Aijan to help me in every possible ways. My good friend Ades also stood up to give me a hand.

My boss at my work was also very kind to say “No worries, just get better”.

I came to understand that just walking itself is a very big thing, I fully understood those disabled people who can’t walk.

All of these made a good lesson, I have to be always thankful for my family and friends, for all that I have  and say Alhamdulillah.

I’ve been long enough in Malaysia to start thinking of getting a car for my family.  Having two kids, younger daughter is 1 year plus and elder 3 year plus, makes traveling quite unpleasant experience. You have to  make sure everybody sits in the taxi, the bags, baby things and toys all of it must fit in the booth.

So, I’ve been thinking of a car. Since I don’t have much experience, as a start I am thinking a low cost local car. I end up having to make choice between Proton Persona and Proton Saga(BLM).

So far I like Persona, but it’s slightly more expensive then Saga. Anyways, I still have time to make my mind up(and to get ready some cash) before I can really afford.

Searching in the internet for Proton Persona clubs, I came across this one – http://www.personaclub.net

This club is quite active, although if you aren’t local you might be a little bit lost coz some threads are in Malay language, or Minglish If you happened to be a Persona owner, you will be most welcome to join this club.

Art Lebedev is a leading design studio based in Russia with many other office worldwide. Artemy Lebedev, he is the founder and the head of the studio write a lot good articles on various topics.

One of the latest article he wrote is about pointless presentations. Note that the article is in Russian, however they will publish in English later. So to cut short, here’s the list of what I understood:

• Be prepared, know your topic – don’t just memorize
• If you are presenting some text on your slide show, make it shorter. Write a few words then talk the rest in your words. Don’t let your audience read your long text.
• If you let your audience read the text, don’t repeat and read it again yourself.
• Don’t mumble/ramble and be confident.
• 99% percent of all presentations are boring, decisions are not made after the presentations.

What’s your opinion about the article and in presenting in general? Please leave in the comments.