Geekonomics

DreamHack is the world’s largest and most popular digital media festival. Situated in Sweden, DreamHack plays host to thousands of gamers twice a year, numbering up to 12,782 attendees last winter. DreamHack has netted itself three Guinness World Records in 2004, 2006 and 2007 for being the largest Read more…

Recently, the Straits Times called me up asking me about the NTU Stabbing incident in regards to gaming. This was the resulting story.

I was quoted in the story : 

Referring to the stabbing incident at Nanyang Technological University last week, Mr Nicolas Khoo, 31, co-founder of the Cybersports and Online Gaming Association, said: ‘Such incidents happen to a minority of gamers…In this incident, there could have been other reasons that led him to do it, so why was gaming blamed?’

Nothing seems to be wrong, except that : Read more…

A 15-YEAR-OLD jumped from the 11th-floor bedroom window of his home - in front of his mother - after a disagreement with his parents over his intention to switch his co-curricular activity (CCA) in school.

Tan Wen Yi had wanted to switch from track-and-field to drama but his parents were against it.

Up till then, no one would have thought Wen Yi as a troubled or even self-destructive sort. The Secondary 3 student of Anglo-Chinese School (Independent) was described as cheerful and was well-liked by his classmates and respectful towards his teachers, the Coroner’s Court heard yesterday.

http://news.asiaone.com/News/the%2BStraits%2BTimes/Story/A1Story20081127-103692.html

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Someone sent this to me with a strange comment : 

“If put into a normal context of bad press for gaming, now track and field officially is bad for kids just like gaming.”

It might be a strange comment, but isn’t that what it all comes down to? Whether it’s gaming or anything else, a lot it has to do with the parenting.

But parents don’t know what to do in this strange new digital world today. Hopefully SCOGA can help them understand their kids better in terms of gaming and bridge the digital divide there. But SCOGA can’t help them in track and field and drama. That’s just plain poor parenting. Poor kid.

Since end Sept, I think the time I’ve spent in Singapore are more like stop-overs, the shortest being 4 hours when I came back to Singapore from Kuala Lumpur and left for Chicago 4 hours later. Let me see, the cities I’ve been to include Moscow, Samara, Dubai, Seoul, Osaka, Tokyo, Chicago, Indiana, Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong, New York, North Carolina, Kentucky, and a couple of other American states. It was really great to experience the American Elections in the States itself!

I’m in Brunei now and had the chance to speak at a great event - the Inaugural Brunei THiNKBIG National Technology Forum. It was quite overwhelming to be interviewed by the local dailies almost right after touching down! To hear the Permanent Secretary from the Prime Minister’s Office share about their national technology roadmap, to talk about new media alongside great speakers like Dan Neary (VP of Ebay for Emerging Markets), Edward Orange who’s in charge of IBM’s Collaborative Technologies, David Abberton(Partner of Accenture Brunei), Chow Yen Lu(a former Chief Scientist for Apple), and many more distinguished presenters. In many ways, it was humbling to be sharing the same stage with the very best and to be sharing to a crowd which represents some of the very best in the nation. Very eye-opening and a great experience indeed. With the setup of the National Incubator, the iCentre, technology never looked so good in Brunei. I hope this inaugural event will be the tipping point of technology and new media proliferation and adoption in Brunei! The responses I saw today was certainly very encouraging!

Oh, did I mention that the Empire hotel where they put me up is overlooking the horizon of the South China Sea and is decked out in 21k gold? Well technically, this is the first time I’m blogging with gold everywhere around me. Blogging should ALWAYS be like this :p

Throughout my travels, I brought with me the latest Kohjinsha SX and SC series which has been great for travelling because of the small form factor, durability, light-weight, and wonderful battery lives. I’ve been able to work comfortably on long flights, hotels, airports and in the conferences.

I also brought with me the Canon 1000D on part of the journey for capturing some of the moments. I’ve just been too busy to process and upload the photos but promise you’ll be seeing some of them soon!

Next stop is Shenzhen and Seoul where I’ll be presenting at some Tech Bloggers Conference. Think I’ll get to meet the guys from Digg, Engadget, and Gizmodo. Looking forward to that!

I’ll then be back by the 20th to host the world’s first arcade eSports event outside of Japan at Anime Festival Asia ‘08 called the Singapore Arcade Showdown. Street Fighter IV will be launched in Singapore at the event so head on down to SUNTEC Convention during 22nd and 23rd Nov and experience the anime culture like you’ve never before!

And do you remember the fundraiser I was crazily working on with SCOGA 2 months back raising funds for some Singaporean cybersports champions to take part in the World Cyber Games the ‘cyber Olympics’ Grand Finals? One of the gamers SCOGA helped to raise funds for just won the silver medal! Congratulations Danny! Thanks for doing Singapore and SCOGA proud! And thanks to all of you for supporting in one way or another, you definitely deserve to share in this proud moment.

Busy busy. Welcome to the story of my life. I do miss out on quite a lot of stuff back home, especially a few social media events! Things will pretty much stay at this rate till end of January from what I’m expecting now. I didn’t even get a chance to unwrap and play with my Nintendo Wii - but I did manage to get the Apple iPod Touch 2nd Gen and it’s been lovely for my travelling so far!

Hope to update you again soon, stay tuned!

UPDATE : Here’s a lovely story by Rano, the top news blogger in Brunei whom I had the wonderful pleasure of meeting:

Geekonomics and RanoAdidas

and also with former CNET Blogger (Brunei) whom I finally got the chance to meet in person, Reeda! What a cool dude :p

Geekonomics with Reeda of AnakBrunei (Credits to Rano for the picture)

p.s. I have no idea why but I think my server was flooded during the elections where I posted some posts related to the elections. It can be quite frustrating to blog while being on the road when sometimes I have limited access to the internet

Anyways, Xmas is round the corner, what’s your Xmas wish? Check out my wish!