Astro B.yond Bloggers Night!

"Experience like never before,
See like never before,
Hear like never before,
Touch like never before,
Feel like never before."

Astro has recently launched its HD broadcast service (previously known as Astro HD) as Astro B.yond on 18 December 2009.Modesto Sri Hartamas

As it was still relatively unknown to most subscribers at that time, Astro has launched a Blogger's Night event at Modesto Sri Hartamas on 13th January with the help of Nuffnang to recruit the bloggers.The stage of the event.

Before that, thank you Nuffnang and Astro because I got invited. Woohoo!

The event starts at 7.30pm but arrived on scene about half an hour later with fellow blogger MichL. (Wanted to ask Wee Sheong to join but he was at Penang at the time...)

Me

As we arrived late, there was no place to park the car and we had to resort to valet service which costs RM10 compared to RM5 if we found the parking ourself.

Me

MichL

After registering (and writing our New Year's resolution), we were greeted with a scene of many people who seem all so familiar.( a high percentage of the attendees were bloggers)

Bloggers armed with DSLRs

We met up with Samuel to catch up on what we had missed in the first half an hour which thankfully (for Malaysian timing) we didn't.

MichL, me and Samuel

The event started slightly after 8pm with an opening speech by the emcee.
(sorry, Jojo Struys was not the emcee but she was present)

Later on was the speech by Astro COO officially declaring the event and showing the official TV commercial for Astro B.yond which was shot in HD(obviously).

Astro COO giving his welcoming speech and officiating the event.

There are currently 5 channels available in HD which are HBO HD, History HD, National Geographic HD, AstroSport HD and ESPN HD.

(which promises that the 2010 World Cup will be available in HD here. Something for the football fans to shout about)

The bloggers were also part of the event as celebrity bloggers such as sixthseal.com , beautifulnara , Shaolin Tiger , Red Mummy among the featured.



Blogger's intro to HD.

When that was over, everyone who attended had free food (buffet style) consisting of pasta, sphagetti, roasted lamb,chicken, fried mushrooms and eggplant.

The free food.

Did I mention about free flow of drinks which includes beer?

While we were eating, we were entertained by drummers who went on stage to give us a lively performance.



Drummer's performance

Right after the drummers went off stage Sixthseal and Rocky went on stage to give us a briefing on the on site game to win the 32" LCD TV by LG and a year's worth of Astro B.yond subscription.



The game is called Murder in the Details which has a Facebook game with the same rewards.

Basically, we have to find 5 clues which are printed on A4 paper that can only be viewed using the supplied magnifying glass to find the culprit to a mother case ala Sherlock Holmes style.

As the game required a team of 5 people, me and MichL made some friends with the other bloggers namely CWKen , Aaron and Gary.

Behind: Gary, Aaron, Ken
Front: MichL and me.

After running around in circle around Modesto with 19 other teams (there were 20 teams in total), we managed to find 4 of the clues with me being the clueless one as there were many people blocking the way.

We managed to find out from the clues that the culprit is a female Nuffie wearing a band aid in a red dress which sounds easy except that there are quite a number of girls wearing red on that day.

The worst part is the band aid part of the clue was fake and only served to mislead us as a team got kicked out of the game for getting the wrong culprit. (Ouch!)

Luck was not really on our side that day as we were talking to the culprit before the wining team managed to take her away. Haiz....

The wining team were then subjected to a question and answer session which was finally won by Eric Yong.

The winning team

After the winner was crowned, the scenario for the game was re enacted.

It seems that Sixthseal and Rocky had an affair under the whims of a business partnership which was found out by sixthseal's girlfriend which is Fres and sixthseal was stabbed.

Thankfully, I got it all on video for those who are still blur.




Rocky and Sisthseal's "relationship".

Found out by Fres.

Sixthseal's death scene.

After all that, there event was officially over but me and MichL stayed around to check out who were present and noticed that Benjicajes and Jojo Struys were also there.

MichL, Benjicajess and me.

We managed to take a photo with Benjicajess but not with Jojo Struys as she seemed pretty busy with two cameramen shooting video for Project Alpha 2 (presumably).

We both left the event at 10.30pm and had lots of fun there (although I didn't get to finish my plate as we rushed to join in the game).

Thank you Astro and Nuffnang for inviting the non-celebrity bloggers such as me to this event and I hope that there will be more in the future.

Peace!

:)

Digi Pimp My Day (the night event)

After arriving at the final pit stop of the race which was Mardi Gras, we were greeted with our final challenge at least one member of our team must submit a blog post before 7.30pm.

Our left arm was stamped with to make sure that minors can't drink beer.
(The stamp is only visible under UV light. Neat!)

(We did not finish on time but it was extended until 12am Monday due to technical difficulties)

As we arrived at around 6.20pm which is just in time before the given time was up, we had some refreshments (free drinks) before writing up the blog post for the team event.
(most credit goes to Michl as she did the writing on her blog)

Everyone who participated in the challenge had some rest, chit chat and ate the food there which was quite nice (free food and drinks for bloggers, beer for those who are 18 and above)


At around 8pm, the night event officially started with Jojo Struys as the emcee for the night.

Also as a treat for that day, the Mardi Gras organized pole dancers to be performing for use (Wee Sheong was very happy about this)







After the amazing performance, the event went on with the prize giving ceremony for the Pimp My Broadband Challenge which was previously held a few months back.





Oh yeah, before I forget, Wee Sheong who was the driver for the day lost his keys at Celebrity Fitness.(What?!)

Thankfully, the staff at Celebrity fitness were kind enough to hand the keys to Jojo so that she can find the owner which is Wee Sheong.



Wee Sheong got back his keys from her and "claims" that she asked him for a ride back.

As there was no video recorded, we can only assume that she said so.
from Wee Sheong.

Then, there was a speech by the Digi representative about the event giving us a new product to test for free (Wooh!) which is a Digi Prepaid Internet SIM Pack.





Later on, there were prize giving ceremonies.



Most notably was the war cry which was won by the Beacons and also the most Digi-fied team which was a draw between Digi Dolls and Ka ba boom!.

Digi Dolls and Ka Ba Boom on stage.

As a closing act, the KL Stompers were invited onstage for a performance which was great considering they only use recycled items as musical instruments.








All in all, the night event was great but it was a pity that team MiraGeZ didn't win anything that day.

Digi Pimp My Day (the Race)

The Digi Broadband Pimp My Day Challenge ended yesterday with our team MirageZ joining in on the fun.

The team MirageZ consists of me, Michl, Eileen and Wee Sheong who are fellow Nuffnangers and bloggers.

Team MirageZ

MichL

Eileen

Wee Sheong

Me

Our 'War Cry':





The day started where we arrived to Mardi Gras at One Utama for registration and briefing before the event which is a list of challenges we need to finish within two and a half hours.

The Briefing.

By the way, we were also given a USB dongle so that we can use the internet throughout the challenges.


There were suppose to be 20 teams joining in but in the end there were 25 teams which equals to 100 bloggers at Mardi Gras. Woot!

Group photo at Mardi Gras before the race

The "Sea of Yellow"

Our team, MirageZ was team 13 which sounds unlucky but we move on to complete the challenges.

Getting our first stamp.

We started at around 3.50pm and the first challenge we decided to do on our list of eight was the at the Digi Telecommunications booth where we had to upload two songs in a playlist on Digi's music site.

The songs in question are one from Lady Gaga and one from Akon.




The second one was a blow dart challenge with three tries per person with Bulls Eye which was unfortunately one of the challenges which we did really badly.

Our results.

We only manage to get one hit from Kang Wee Sheong while we did not manage to hit anything within the points section.

Wee Sheong in action.

The next booth was by Nokia and we had to figure out the given puzzle using the video and clue given.

This challenge was very easy as we finished it within 5 minutes but we could have done it faster as the video we needed to view was actually not needed to solve this.


The reason: you only need the T9 dictionary on your handphone to decode it which was
'Digi Broadband Done Right' in the form of numbers.

Try typing these numbers on your T9 input on your phone:

3444
276232263
3663
74448

The fourth Challenge was suppose to be Swatch but we skipped it as we needed to do a 30 second advertisement with Digi and Swatch as the main message.

Brainstorming in session.

So we're off to the fifth challenge at the fifth floor which we got lost for a while but manage to find the stairs to reach there.
(Note to Michl: next time search for the lifts first or ask properly before running.)

Wee Sheong trying to hit the balls.

Group photo.

In this challenge we have to each hit 15 balls shot at you using a bat in the softball challenge.

I wonder why they call it softball cause my hand got hit by one of the balls and it hurt.



There is a special prize for people who manage to hit a marker marking a home run which considering that our team is not good at sports was impossible to achieve.

Eileen trying her to hit the ball.

Michl posing.

In the lift after the challenge with another team

A strange note was our team leader Michl manage to hit the most times....(Height advantage?!)

The next task at hand was at Mardi Gras where we need to dance (?!) .



Needless to say, our dance is out of sync due to race mode and lack of planing.

Next up was a threadmill run at Celebrity Fitness where we had to run 800m each and get the highest average speed in the process. Yikes!

Running.

We managed to breeze through this task but I was feeling a bit uneasy after the run.
(Lack of exercise...)

After a sweaty routine, we went to our next challenge at Quicksilver where we needed to pose using the clothes given.

I'm thinking that the people of Quicksilver are not really happy hearing that we ran on a threadmill beforehand.

After finishing 7 challenges, we ran back to the Swatch challenge and did the advertisement.

Suffice to say, our ad did not really connect Digi and Swatch together but we tried our best as the time was almost up.



At about 6.20pm, we reached Mardi Gras for the last checkpoint and greeted with another challenge which is uploading all this to our blogs.

All in all, this was a great day even though there were ups and downs along with some technical problems (the videos and photos took too long to upload).

And finally, Thank You Digi and Nuffnang for this event and also the other sponsors for the challenges, we had fun and enjoyed it.

PS Look out for my next post on the events at Mardi Gras after the challenges are done.