Greetings to you! My name is Norman Phua.
I took up my friend George's suggestion to start up this blog. If you're wondering what SG Gian Peng means. It is really very simple. SG being
Singapore, with
Gian Peng being a hokkien term, with a direct translation of being greedy for food.
The essence gian of means having a sense of greed, of something free. It also
captures the Singapore spirit of
kiasuism, which means being afraid to lose out. Some examples of the usage of
Gian Peng are,
- Gian Peng adjective - Gian peng, gian peng-er, gian peng-est~ The gian peng man impressed me. The gian peng-er man impressed me even more. The gian peng-est man impressed me the most.
- Gian Peng noun - His gian peng-ness astounded me.
- Gian Peng adverb - He gian peng-ly ate up all the food when no one was looking.
- Gian Peng verb - I managed to gian peng something good today.
I actually have never had interests in blogs. I always felt it was better left to the ginas and wannabes. But recently with more free time in my hands, I explored this myriad world of blogging and found some that i really liked. The more famous ones that you might have heard of are those belonging to kennysia and Mr Brown. One that isn't famous but really tickled me is bigbrohu. I have yet to meet bigbrohu aka tianci aka zha fit, but I'm sure I will one day.
Some blogs are outlets of emotions, others try to sell you something. Most try to entertain, helps friends keep in touch and updated. The main purpose of setting up my blog, SgGianPeng, is to help fellow liked minded gian peng people in Singapore to find good deals, win prizes, or in short, to participate in gian peng activites, where a minimal effort is used to achieve something bigger. A characteristic of a gian peng person is to not use money, not a single cent, to get something for free, or the least, at a reduced cost. Not only will i provide details of gian peng activities which i hope to scour and update regularly, but i hope this blog may serve as a platform, an avenue for gian peng readers to add to the opportunities for getting good gian peng deals. I also decided that the deed of having done something gian peng, shall be called gian penged, in the past tense. An example of its usage could be 'I gian penged something today man." Or in the present tense, "I'm so bored, lets go find something to gian peng." Hence like the F word, gian peng can be used loosely with many different meanings but also achieving its intended effect.
This blog like i suppose alike many others, will contain posts about my life, thoughts or experiences that i might want to share. Topics like religion, government and racial issues will be avoided or written in an objective manner should i feel the need to discuss it.
Many a times when people use the term gian peng, they pair it up with the term, gian sai. Example 'Wah! Mary is sibei gian peng gian sai," with gian sai meaning greedy for shit. It is hard to explain if you are a non dialect speaker. Loosely translated, gian peng gian sai means greedy for anything. What this website offers however, is only good deals, freebies, minimal resources to secure something. I shall only pick good offers to post up because bad ones wastes my time and also that the term gian sai will not apply here.
Okay next up, so what kind of Gian pengs, (gian pengs are erm good deals that u can go gian peng and hopefully tell others that you have gian penged) do i offer? First off there are practical ones that you come in contacts with that may allow you save money on a periodic basis. But mosts gians (gians are bargains or hot deals that you might want to consider gianning) are on an an-hoc basis, meaning contests and often one time or limited offers. Okay if you have read this far you are either really interested in knowing more about the art of gian peng-ging, you are really bored, or you are a good friend of mine and wants to see how much more rubbish i can conjure. You may also have noticed that I have done away with the italics for new terms as it is getting tiring for me to ctrl I every other second since I'm coming up with my own words as they appear in my mind. Hence i will provide a glossary of terms and their meanings so you wont get lost in the world of gian-ning soon.
What I have noticed is that the term GIAN, when you switch the alphabets A and I, is GAIN. This is also known as spoonerism. No its nothing sexual although when i first heard it i thought he was lying. A spoonerism is a play on words in which corresponding consonants, vowels, or morphemes are switched. Reilliterating, this site aims to promote means to how you may GAIN something, simply by gian-ning it. Lost? Okay here's an explaination. What I hope to achieve trough my gian-nings is to save money and SONG. I cannot think of any other reasons. A way of looking at this picture is, why should i pay for something, if I can get it for free? If not at a discounted rate? To me, getting these deals makes me feel happy, even elated. An apt term to summarise these emotions would be SONG! Of course through advertising these gians, I put myself at a position where my chances of a successful gian is compromised. But it is my desire that these so called 'wisdoms' may be shared, so others may feel as SONG as how i feel with each closed gian.
Now let me make this distinction. There is only a VERY thin line between a gian-penger or gianee, as compared to a bloody cheapskate person, a cheepo neh neh, or worse, a kiamsup kia. These people strive to benefit, many a times at the expense of others, or making their own impressions fall by being branded as a cheapo. I try not to fall into these traps, where many ugly Singaporeans do. But as I'm a Singaporean, the blood is in me and I sometimes do. Rantings aside, this site does not advocate being a cheepo neh neh, but as a repectful gianee. A very good friend of mine, Beh, once commented, "Norman is damn good at finding food deals." Which led me in deep thought. Hey! Everyone has different talents. Some great, some world changing. I guess mine is this. I was born with the intrinsic value of thriftiness, the inbuild anger when I'm shortchanged or cheated and the righteous justice of finding good deals.
If you have read through all the above jargon, I respect you for your faith in gian pengging, or once again you're one of my idiotic friends who wants to see what else i can crap. Gians have been far and few and I do not remember all of them. Some come all at once, or some once in a few months. Not to boast, but below are the top 5 gians i have gianned over the years as a gianee. Got the terms so far?
5. 881 Movie Tickets.
4. Movie premiere tickets to Harry Potter through 987FM
3. Music CDs worth $100 or $50 dollars i cannot remember. Once again courtesy of 987FM
2. Movie tickets to Evan almighty and Arctic tale in a week through United International Pictures (UIP). Note winning both together is damn SONG. Its called a combo.
1. All expense paid tickets to catch Supersonic 2006 in Tokyo Japan. Not kidding. This was the bomb and the turning point in my gian-peng life.
I know it does not seem like much. But after winning 881, Evan Almighty and Arctic Tale movie tickets all in the span of three weeks, the SONG level was just too much and I've realise how easy it is to close gians, with a touch of luck of course. I have decided to put in more effort and be more sensitive to the gians the world has to offer. Okay that sounded damn lame.
Right now, I am waiting for a reply from the STOMP staff, on word of the KT Turnstall competition, where you can catch her live in Scotland. They actually asked for my contact details for verification, not sure why, but I'm taking it as a bloody positive sign.
Most gians posted are lifestyle related, in the areas of performing arts, movies, music, gifts and so on. Gians i post are largely stuff I have interests in, so you may find that some gians may not seem appealing to you. Sometimes it is also the act of winning, the SONG you feel than actually collecting the prize, that compells me. There has been at least three occassion where i was too lazy to go all the way down to mediacorp to collect my music CDs. Not worth the effort. Yes Louis, if you are reading this, you are an idiot for not returning my Nelly Furtado CDs, whole day say sorry sorry i forgot until become i forgot about it. I hope you meet a "Promiscuous Girl" and get aids and may "All good things come to an end" for you. Hur.
The next term i would like to introduce, is gian-i-sity. It means the level of how worth the prize is, indicating that you should take part. The gianisity level is a rating of 1-10, which considers factors such as how good the prize is and ease of entry. Ease of entry means the opportunity cost of taking part in the contest, or perhaps going down to somewhere to do something. Entry levels may include a simple question and answer email segment, a short write up on a topic to harder ones like physically going down to answer questions, aired contests or doing dares or physical competitions.
Most gians can easily be found online, with a relatively lucrative gianisity and low entry cost levels. Such contests usually allow you to take part only once by tracking your IP or remembering your email address. But other dumb organisers allow you to take part as many times you want, often quoting more entries equate to more chances. When this occurs, it is time to WHACK. What WHACK means is simply to spam, to mass send, to take part as many times to increase your chances of a gian. Depending on the system, you can sometimes hold on to the button Enter of your keyboard, to resubmit your entries again and again and again. Others require you to refresh, or press back in order to resend.
Enough said, all of the above mentioned depends largely on the factor of luck. So if you are damn suay, then I suggest spending your time on other things such as exercising or sleeping which is good for health. Another factor of increasing your chances of a gian is to make yourself seen everywhere. Simply meaning if you take part in more contests you are more likely to win something. But if you take part in EVERY SINGLE mother contests, you confirm will win at least a keychain. With that good luck my fellow gianees.
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