Warning: long blog post ahead. But some pictures to entertain you too.

A couple of days ago, I blogged about the Blogfather mission.

For those who have no idea what the mission is about, read Part 1 and Part 2 before continuing with this final chapter.

For those who are in the know, read on.

So what happened to the Blogfather? The answer lies below

Taken from Kryxx on Reddit.com

The Blogfather is dead.

I had to put a picture of a gummy bear because the real one was too grisly. But you get the idea.

In his place, will be my blog and I will reign supreme. I shall be the Ah Long of all Ah Longs, the Bak Chor Mee man of all Bak Chor Mee men and women and the new emeritus junior Blogfather  (I’m not that old yet. Still in my early twenties).

I shall be the new l’infantile terrible of Singapore.

Now kneel down and kiss my hand.

But how? How did mrbrown, one of the apex Singaporean bloggers, fall into the hands of a young upstart? 

Well…

Actually, he never did.

I was the one who failed the mission. No shooting, stabbing, manslaughter or murder ever took place.

So what happened?

First, let’s backtrack to Monday:

Locating mrbrown’s place of accommodation.

On Monday afternoon/ evening, mrbrown uploaded a twitpic showing a clock tower. When I saw the picture, I went into overdrive mode. I knew I’ve seen that clock tower somewhere. I knew it was somewhere in the Sydney CBD but I just could not remember where it was.

Stumped, I asked my housemate for help. At first, she was bemused that after staying near the Sydney CBD for nearly 2 years, I still did not know the location of the damn clock. So she made me guess.

After half hour of guessing, I gave up. I still did not know the location of the clock.

My housemate finally relented and told me that mrbrown was probably staying at the Westin Sydney, since from the angle of the photo, that was the only place where he could have took a photo of the clock.

Fired up by that clue, I started Googling for all hotels, apartments and hostels around Martin Place (where the clock is located). I went to this website and they listed five hotels (the Westin included) around Martin Place. 

To make sure that the Westin was indeed the hotel mrbrown was staying at, I fired up Google Maps and started comparing the locations of all five hotels in respective to the location of the clock tower.

After about 45 minutes of scrutinizing the maps, I came to a conclusion that the Westin was the right place. 10 minutes later, my housemate told me that she show the twitpic to a friend that did hospitality and hotel management. When her friend saw the twitpic, the friend told my housemate that from the angle of the pic, there was only one possible place:

The Westin Sydney.

So I decided to head over to the Westin Sydney the next day.

The hunt is on.

Tuesday:

So after waking up at noon, instead of 6am like I intended, I headed over to the Westin, but not before having a fulfilling lunch at Hungry Jacks. I think it was sometime around 3pm when I got to the Westin.  However, I ran into an obstacle: there were two exits.

While I was loitering around the main entrance, which exited onto Pitt Street, I could not keep an eye on the second, smaller door which exited onto George Street, as my line of sight was blocked by a restaurant. But I decided to take my chance and wait at the main entrance.

So I loitered around the lobby for about 20 minutes, watching the lifts and the exits. After 20 minutes, I came to a conclusion that mrbrown was not in the Westin and probably went for the SPARC 2011 convention at Darling Island Wharf. I checked the SPARC official website last night and knew the location of the convention.

I left the Westin and started walking towards Darling Island. Walking there from Martin Place would take me half hour. But I didn’t want to take the bus as the CDB’s roads was always jammed.

I made it to Darling Island and saw the convention going on in full swing. There were crowds and crowds of people in casual business suits and smart casual attire. I spent half hour outside the convention, tolerating the winter wind, while trying to keep a lookout for mrbrown. I checked mrbrown’s tweets to make sure he was still in the convention. He was there, but hiding in the convention room.

Smart man.

I wasn’t chased away from the staff since the convention took place next to a wharf and a small park. So I was more or less on public grounds. Furthermore, in order to reduce suspicious, I behaved like a tourist and snapped a few photos:

Sydney’s skyline. Click on pic for a larger image.

Sydney Harbour Bridge in the distance. Click on pic for a larger image.

After waiting in the blustery winter evening, with no sight of mrbrown, I gave up and rushed to Starbucks to have some hot mocha to warm myself up. Another reason for not staying longer was that I was going to meet my friends at Circular Quay to experience Vivid Sydney 2011. Walking from Darling Island to Circular Quay will probably take me about 40 minutes.

To add insult to my wounded pride, mrbrown tweeted about having dinner at the Flying Fish Restaurant when I was approaching Circular Quay. If only I stayed longer, I could have caught him. But no… mrbrown chose to come out of the convention when I was a 40 minutes walk away.

So I didn’t get mrbrown on Tuesday. But I did have a pretty awesome time at Vivid Sydney. Here are some crappy, blurry photos I took:

Circular Quay Station all lit up, in red.

 

Some fire dancing to Katy Perry’s “Fireworks”. More info here.

 

An exhibit at Vivid about the moon.

 

 

This is a cool one. It’s powered by solar energy. So if you use your camera flash, the bells will light up with colourful light and music.

 

 

The Custom House decorated in light.

 

My friend and I on a lit bench.

It is the same bench that mrbrown planked on. I wanted to plank on the bench but there were too many people around. Sigh, I can’t even copycat mrbrown.

 

Some wire car next to Sydney Opera House.

So after Vivid Sydney, I went to Max Brenner’s cafe with two friends of mine who were visiting, before heading home. But before I went home, I loitered around the Westin, hoping that mrbrown would turn up. He never did. Dejected, my weary feet dragged my sorry ass back home.

I complained to my housemate who told me what my problem was: staying at one place for an extremely short amount of time. She said that true stalkers camp at one place for hours at time. She told me that to improve my chances of bumping into him, I should go to the hotel at 7am in the morning and camp there.

Like hell I am.

But she did make a good point, so I made a mental note to try and wake up as early as possible. Before I went to bed, mrbrown tweeted about being in Chinatown. I stay pretty close to Chinatown and it was only about 20 minutes walk. I stood next to my bed, debating whether I should go to Chinatown and hunt mrbrown down.

Fuck it, I thought, I’m cold, tired and spent half the day walking around the entire Sydney’s CBD. I’m not going to spend another hour chasing mrbrown around Chinatown. So I went to bed.

Wednesday:

I woke up at 11am. Late again. Feeling a bit dejected, I went to SPARC website to check out the itinerary for the day. Apparently lunch was from 1300hrs to 1350hrs. I had a hurried brunch, fed my rats, took a quick shower and changed into something proper.

As everyone at the convention was in casual business attire or smart casual, I decided to dress smart casual in order to blend in. So I dressed up, looking every inch like a yuppie.

It was about a half hour walk from my place to Darling Island. I reached there around 1345 hrs (1:45pm) and there were still people milling outside the convention. I took a slow, unhurried walk among them. Unfortunately, mrbrown was not among the lunch crowd.

A smart, cautious man.

Not deterred, I went to a cafe next to the convention and ordered a large mocha. I sat outside the cafe for two hours, trying to make the mocha last. In that two hours, I saw no signs of mrbrown.

Frustrated, I finished up my mocha and dallied in front of the convention entrance.

Then I saw him.

Or I think I saw him.

I’m not sure if it was him though, I was standing about 50 metres away and he was surrounded by business-looking people. The only thing I could see was his side profile. As I hesitated, he turned and walked down the side of the building.

I hesitated, unsure of what to do.

So I called my housemate.

“I think I saw mrbrown!”

“Oh. You saw mrbrown. So did you take a photo?”

“No, I didn’t. I said I think I saw him. It may be him. It may not be him.”

“So is mrbrown there?”

“Yes, he is. Wait, are you in the library? Never mind, I call you back.”

I decided to chase after mrbrown, so I brisk-walked to the side of the building. But mrbrown was no where to be seen. Somehow he vanished.

What the…

Goddamn it, I’ve lost him.

I knew mrbrown would be around the convention, but I didn’t want to hang around any longer. It was very cold that day, and suit jacket was not giving enough warmth. Frustrated, I went home, hid under my blanket and took a nap.

My housemate came back in the evening and asked if I managed to get mrbrown.

“No. I though I saw him and when I finally went after him, he disappeared.”

“Oh, you could have went straight up to him when you saw him.”

I shrugged my shoulder, “Well, I don’t think I’m going to chase him down anymore.”

My housemate laughed, “So you broke your Twitter virginity for nothing.”

Damn right.

Despite two days of walking around Sydney’s CBD and obsessive twittering, I failed in my mission.

So I admitted defeat and took the easiest way out: tweeting him directly.

Saturday, 12:37am:

Today, I tweeted mrbrown asking if I could get a photo and his autograph. If you can’t beat the Blogfather, join him. And save your Twitter virginity for someone better.

Therefore, I leave you with the final debriefing on the Blogfather mission:

Debriefing on identifying mrbrown’s locations in Sydney, NSW

Selected point man: Zareth Lim

Target: mrbrown

Target’s last known location: Don’t give a fuck anymore.

Mission goal: Get mrbrown’s photo and autograph.

Current status: Case pending closure.

Method: Tweeted mrbrown directly.

There, all done.

Jokes aside, I want to let everyone know that this was just done for fun. People may think “Yeah, right, you’re stalker, Zareth. Admit it.”

You know what, I did notice by the end of the first day that I was bordering on stalkerish, creepy behaviour. When I first told my housemate that I was going to chase after mrbrown, she told me I was a stalker. When I told my friend at Vivid that I was chasing mrbrown, she said: “wow, you really idolized him.”

Although mrbrown is one of my favourite bloggers, I don’t idolize him to the point where I have his pictures on my wall and underwear. Truth.

On Tuesday night, as I was debating whether I should camp outside the Westin early in the morning, what struck me was how this simple joke could become such an obsession for me. It was frightening, really. It didn’t felt like me but my Twitter updates only confirmed this obsession:

On Tuesday alone, I twitted 7 tweets about mrbrown.

What the fuck.

So I want to state again, that this whole thing was just for fun. And if mrbrown somehow read this blog, I just want to say that I never intended to intrude into your personal privacy.

So I’m calling this so-called ‘mission’ to a close. I know I just twitted mrbrown that I want his photo and autograph. But that was more to let him be aware and to seek for his permission. Even if he said yes, I probably would not meet up him because, really, as much as I admire him, I have better things to do. This whole mrbrown affair, in my opinion, just became a farce.

So yep, no more blogfather mission or “somebody else” mission for that matter. Nope, nada, zilch.

___________________________________________

I want to remind you that the voting for best WTH blog is still ongoing until 3rd July!

So vote for me! Voters will get to win prizes too!

You’ll need to sign in or register before you can vote. (Just a quick FYI: only Singaporeans and Singapore PR eligible to vote, part of the competition’s rules).

Some of my friends said they couldn’t find the voting button. I suggest using Mozilla Firefox browser if you have trouble finding the button.

The link to vote for me is here and you should see this:

So get your voting mojo on!

While you’re voting for me, vote for Estelle’s blog too! She blogged about me (I’m under “Mr Toilet Seat Welcomes You”) and is asking her readers and friends to vote for me (Thanks!). Vote for her blog in the Best Lifestyle category.

And vote for the Cambelles in the Best Social Media Integrated Blog.

That’s all folks. Now quit stalking me.