1 Year Rendezvous With Ping.sg

1 year ago on 21st July 2007, I joined Ping.sg and hence, our love affair begin...

I can't really remember how I stumbled upon ping, but I was looking to get my blog listed on some site so I can reach out to other cancer survivors and/or patients. Like a blur sotong, I was trying to figure out how things work around here and even thought that I as long as I pinged, my post would be the one on top for that moment in the latest listing. 2 pings later, I realised that blogger aka blogspot post time is the time of creation, not time of posting and ping.sg lists post based on timing, thus, my pings would end up in the middle of the big sea. Finally, I got clever and did the right thing.

I saw the shoutbox and thought that it seemed like a mini mIRC chat room. I couragously typed something and was warmly welcomed and greeted by a few people. And for the next few days, I found myself addicted to the shoutbox, and more importantly, the community, as everyone was like a one big family! On the shoutbox I chatted with people like Xizor, Daphne, DK, Chillycraps, Arzhou, Rinaz, Malique, UFC (sorry if I forgot anyone) and got to know even more people, even the members who joined after me, as the time went by.

I was 2 weeks late for the 1st anniversary party, and some did asked why I wasn't there cos they thought I had joined before the party which was held on the 7th July. But I felt that I was part of ping community within a week of joining when I was involved in the ping.sg adverts started by (I think) Cris, and I did it again and again.

Days later, 3 gals began talking about cheesecakes on the shoutbox and it became a Secret Recipe outing. Initially set at IMM, it was shifted to a more central location at Forum Shopping Mall so it would be more convenient for the "easterners". At this virgin outing of mine, I saw first hand, the power of Twitter and I think we managed to psycho DK to cut his class and come down. Haha...

There was a day when I just got home and since I have a tab permantly fixed on ping on IE already, I took a peek at the shoutbox while cooling down and getting ready to shower. Then I saw ping Daddy, Uzyn jio everyone for supper damn last minute at Fong Seng (behind NUS) because Daphne was feeling down and needed some company. In about 15 minutes, some "westies" agreed to come out and it was already close to midnight. At this moment, I could feel that the community was tightly knitted and everyone regarded each other as friends when all of us rushed down to Fong Seng in our own ways to meet up. DK drove down and fetched some others and even offered to give me a lift, but when Arzhou called me, I was already in my Dad's car, hehe!!! And, I was the first to reach! Funny stuff happened and I remembered that DK was damn stunned (jaw-dropping-stunned) when he got to know how old I was. At the previous Secret Recipe outing, we were talking about male pingsters having a belly and I came up with a post based on the supper...

About a week or 2 later, I got flamed left, right, up, down, center over this post on my blog, my tagboard and some forum. First time I kena this kinda thing, and I really did not know what to do. So, what else can I do but to talk to fellow pingsters about it, since they are all bloggers as well? I went down to Cafe Cartel to meet up with them, and they comforted me and gave good advices. To me, this ping community was a big family of people who cared for one another.

Then I did up a post on a pasar malam happening in Clementi and another gathering took place. We bought food from the pasar malam stalls and went to a nearby kopitiam to order drinks and enjoy our food while having a TCSS session.

Soon, I kinda like disappeared from the radar because my modules were beginning to pile back to back and were even overlapping. Furthermore, a few of my classmates managed to push MDIS for a Student Council and I was on board as a committee member. Thus I didn't really have the time to lurk on the shoutbox or come out often for gatherings. I remembered having ice cream at Island Creamery and the TCSS session at Essential Brew, then there was the yu sheng session at Decoder's Cafe and the Good Friday Waraku and TCC TCSS session. I was so tied up with school that I missed Daphne's surprise birthday party (Sorry Daph)...

I further disappeared into thin air when I went over to the US for 6 weeks to complete the last 3 modules for my degree and my family joined me over there for a holiday after that. While I was studying, the hotel I was staying in had free wireless connection and I would be free after about 8pm Oklahoma time and on the weekends. So, I would try to blog something or to appear on the shoutbox. When touring started, there was hardly any free time as we would be out the whole day. It was also a clash of timings when I thought I could help contribute to the 2nd anniversary party after a year, but I can't as I was overseas and had to mug for 2 papers and essays when I came back. But thanks to the organizing committee who had let me played a small part by helping out to present one of the awards!

Recently, some unhappy stuff happened as well. I was horribly affected and cried numerous times because I did not know what to do. I did not really take sides as both were friends to me and I felt I did not do a good job in trying to help. I really miss the good old days (where there were still people chatting on the shoutbox at 4am in the morning) but that doesn't mean I don't want the good new days (where there are more pingsters and there is now a bigger community).

I remembered how we used to have discussions over grey areas such as pong cheating and all, or how to improve ping over the forums or the ideas page and everyone contributed their 2 cents worth. Everyone somehow played a part as a community member to help improve ping through their ideas and I could see some of the ideas coming to life as Uzyn is improving the site over time through version 1.8 and the upcoming version 2.0 which was given a sneak preview during the 2nd anniversary party. And yep, till now, I still miss the old ping pong balls... (Psst, Boss, can we have the ping pong balls back again, please please, pretty please...)

And oh ya! (Belated) Happppeeeeeeeeeeee 2nd Birthday ping.sg!!!