MOL Buzz

Bollywood

During a chat this evening with our partner Deepak, CEO of Ace2Three India, he shared with us some cultural insights of Indian film productions. Deepak comes from a family that are involved in film production and distribution, so clearly his answers cannot be more valid that anyone else. In India, Bollywood is one of the largest film producers in the world and the largest in terms of films produced. Any 2 hour films in Bollywood can be produced from scratch in less than 4 months, and released with gross revenue at least 5 times its production cost.

Why is it in every Indian film, even till today, they still involve a lot of singing and dancing?
That’s the recipe for a successful Indian movie.
5 songs
2 fights
1 sentimental ending
… it can never go wrong

Were there any successful Indian films that doesn’t have musicals fitted into?
Yes.
We call that documentaries!

Nibble! Nibble!

If all of you are wondering what the 3 items above have to do with each other, well, I guess it’s me and where I am today (10^th June 2008). Yup, that’s right, I just flew in to the Beijing Airport today on the way to meet the Mayor of a City called SuiFenHe which is located in North East China at the Chinese-Russian Border. I was looking forward to the trip as I just read in a magazine that Beijing recently opened its Terminal 3 Airport at a cost of a massive USD1.2Billion. And, as my connecting flight was only at 5.00 pm and my flight arrived at 6.30am this morning, I thought I would enjoy the new airport, finish up my work on, yes my shiny new MacBook Air and perhaps even get a massage to kill the time.

Well, as I landed this morning, I found two things to my dismay, one was that I landed at the old air terminal and two was that there was a massive haze shrouding Beijing…. Something that was quite common here due to pollution. As I landed at the airport terminal that I was quite familiar with I decided to take a stroll to my favourite massage center and have a massage before getting on my MacBook Air to finish up my work. The massage was great and as I started looking for a lounge, I was advised that most of the new facilities was in the new Terminal 3.

Looking around for somebody who could speak English so that I could find a train to the new terminal, I found out another two things, one was that although the Olympics was only 2 months away, there was still not many people here who could speak English and two was that there was no train to the new Terminal and I had to either take a free shuttle or a cab to the new Terminal. Deciding on the cab, I arrived in the new Terminal in 15 minutes although being almost suffocated in the pollution that was shrouding Beijing; I wondered how anybody could do a 100m sprint in this kind of air.

Reaching the new Terminal that architecturally was amazing, I went to the nearest Starbucks to try to access the WIFI connection to check my mail and to also prepare this piece for Malaysia Today. To my utter dismay, Starbucks did not have WIFI here. Asking the nearest Enquiry counter, I was shocked to be informed that there was no WIFI access in the parts of the airport prior to checking in. However, the girl at the reception counter, after a lot of harassing did advice me that the lounge at the end of the Airport ‘could’ have WIFI and that I should check. Reaching the lounge, appropriately called the ‘Hourly Lounge’, I was advised that I would have to book a room and that there again ‘could’ be an internet connection there. Entering the room, the girl showed a network cable…… and then it hit me……. My MacBook Air did not have a cable connection as it only supported wireless connectivity!!!!

Well, moral of the story, to China; I hope that there will be WIFI access at the new Air Terminal by the Olympics, with more English Speaking people and less pollution, for the sake of the athletes at least. To Steve Jobs, please, please, please add Wired connectivity to the next Macbook Air and to all Malaysians, we really should appreciate what a wonderful country we have in Malaysia.

Our CEO Mr. Ganesh Kumar Bangah is well known for a number of things – a great visionary, a shrewd businessman, an entertaining public speaker and Malaysia’s youngest CEO of a (once) listed but now private company…

At the recent WCIT Gala Dinner, Ganesh demonstrated that he has also a lesser known trait – generosity.

In the spirit of WCIT, PIKOM organized a charity auction in aid of PIKOM’s M.A.IN. PC - a literacy programme aimed at the younger generation. Ganesh generously participated in the auction and ended up winning a framed pewter plate signed by the Prime Minister and a RM5,000 dinner date with the luscious Hannah Tan.

The next day the office was buzzing, everyone wanted to know where and when the date was going to happen. “Where will they be going? When? What time? Will she bring her body guards? What will he wear?”

In true entrepreneur fashion Ganesh decided to “share” his dinner with Hannah with MOL, our partners and the press by inviting everyone for dinner.

Hannah Tan is truly a professional and we do hope to see more of her in the near future.

5 reasons why Hannah Tan rocks!

Hannah Tan wasn’t a diva and was very punctual for the event.

She mingles very well with all the other guest.

She took the time and effort to introduce herself to each and everyone at the dinner. Like WOW!

She is very obliging and is happy to let anyone take a picture with her, and obviously tones of people wanted a picture with her.

Hannah speaks really well and knows exactly what to say to please the audience, plus she’s a real babe. Need I say more?

MOL was one of the platinum sponsors for the recent World Congress of Information Technology (WCIT) held once every two years. Often dubbed as the Olympics of IT, the event was graced by more than 100 speakers, attended by more than 3000 delegates from more than 90 participating countries, and was described as the best ever World Congress of IT.

I believe WCIT helped establish better business relationships for many local MSC companies as MDeC arranged more than 2000 structured business-to-business meetings for such companies with matching international delegates.

For me, WCIT marked several important milestones for the company:

1) “It’s money online” not Malaysia Online

For as long as I can remember, whenever someone heard of MOL, the phrase “Malaysia Online” would immediately spring to mind - no thanks to AOL I’m sure.

Starting but not ending with WCIT, we are now going to change that perception with our new tagline “it’s money online”. We believe this tagline is more in line with our global expansion and aspirations, and better describes MOL’s essence as a company.

2) Our CEO rolls with the big boys

Our CEO, Mr. Ganesh Kumar Bangah was one of the technologist panel speakers for the session entitled, “Future of the Internet”. He spoke alongside Dan Neary, Vice President of eBay and Tyson Dowd, a senior director of Microsoft Malaysia.

The session was probably one of the most attended next to Bill Gate’s holographic (boo!) appearance. Afterwards, many visitors of our booth commented that they were extremely impressed by our CEO, who is only 28 and (I hear) single I might add

We were also really thrilled that Pak lah stopped by our booth!

3) We are now in 200,000 payment outlets across more than 50 countries

As part of our preparation for WCIT, our team has been working hard to expand our global payment channels. We are proud to be in so many new countries serving so many new customers. The revenues for our newly launched website, global.mol.com, aimed at serving our international client base, have increased by more than 150% between the months of April and May! Boss, if you are reading this, we are expecting the same increase in bonus, wink, wink!

4) We are one big family.

Part of preparing for such a big event involves a lot of screaming and shouting at each other. There were some really tense moments but everyone was on the same page and we all have the same aim, the same objective, the same purpose – taking MOL to the next level.

So now that the dust has settled and I have breathing space to look back on this great and momentous event, I can honestly say - I am proud and honored to be part of this great family.

Every once awhile, we have to take some time and reward ourselves for all the efforts, regardless on how big was the contribution to pamper our own selves. So i took the liberty and went to Delicious to enjoy one of the few favourite dishes available at the restaurant.

From the wide range of cakes, desserts and western style main cuisines, we ordered 2 styles of pasta which were the Aglio Olio based spaghetti with Smoked Salmon topping & the Smoke Salmon Angel Hair with caviar.

Within minutes, viola! They served our food fresh out from the kitchen. Check out the pictures below.

Aglio Olio Spaghetti

Smoked Salmon Angel Hair

*They actually serve caviar!*

You can count on us for the plates to be squeaky clean. This is what you call a food-haven.

way back when online games did not exist, a time known as my childhood, we used to play in arcades with coin operated machines. these days, such machines are an uncommon sight. and just to give you an idea of what it looks like if you’ve never seen it before

if you’ve never played with one of these before, i think you should try it at least once. but once is enough, as it is quite boring in comparison with the interactive PC, console and hand held games of today.

One of my favorite quotes was from a speech delivered by Steve Jobs in June 12, 2005 for the Stanford commencement, which he said:

“Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.”

If you’re either inspirationally self-sufficient or never been motivated by any kind of speakers like SteveJobs, here’s is one speech that I humbly recommend:

Now, if I were follow suit of what it means by “very, very clear looking backwards”, here’s how I would like to see it, many, many years from today =)

Comrades, my name is Tanco and I am newly recruited member to serve and protect minions globally from the Lost Generation

Hi there fellow gamers, my name is Clarence and i’ll be your guide today to introduce to you one of our recent addition to our suite of online contents.

Do you tire from gamers bailing on you at the critical moments or simply left the game for whatever reasons. Such behavior have been around, especially on fixed online games like DotA, and any other RTS games out there. Gamers always strive to reach the pinnacle in the world of competitive gaming, and some resort to non-sportsmanship methods, attaining “special powers” to allow them to achieve victory with the use of “one hand”.

Well, one of my friend (We’ll call him Alex) was firing away about such gamers he had encountered recently during one of our ritual mamak outings. Another friend of ours (Grant) introduced a client named Garena (formally known as GG Game) to Alex. Grant went off to say that Garena helped him filter most of “these” gamers and promote fair play amongst the community derived from it.

I continued by informing Alex that there’s a striving community from Malaysia that utilize Garena. By now Alex is ready to jump on the bandwagon. Both Grant and I told Alex we’ll see him there once he was ready for the competition that lies ahead.

People achieve higher capabilities by accepting the challenges ahead, and Garena allows me to compete on a global scale.

Enough of Garena now, it’s time for some killing-spree.

Disclaimer: We do not encourage the consumption of alcoholic beverages. The following post is merely an introduction for a cocktail drink and is shared for discussion purposes only.

So after green tea, I had the blue m after dinner. A mixture of blue Curaçao, Sprite, martini, and 6 drops of  Tobasco Green Pepper Sauce. It’s refreshing and on the way down your throat you’ll get a hint of tobasco. Doesn’t taste like an alcoholic beverage at all, tastes more like a soft drink.

the blue m

I know it looks a little light coloured and understated, but believe me it is a very refreshing drink. A concoction born out of a lot of failed mixtures.

the failed experiments

The drink will be featured at the WCIT 2008 dinner on the 19th of May 2008 where it will make its world premiere. Fret not, it will also make its appearance should MOL host any future events.

And I noticed that my mug is actually quite cool. Look at the first picture, can you guess what game it’s from? Not that hard.

can you guess what mug is it?

What’s so cool about it? Well first of all, you can’t buy it with all the money in the world. Secondly, it’s probably limited in terms of quantity. Thirdly, well, it’s cool cause I have it. Figured it out yet? Well, if you want to find out just see the picture below.

maple story mug

Guess what. I have not one, but TWO of these mugs. If you can post a good enough reason why you deserve one in the comments section of this post and leave your email. I might just give one to you.