This blog started as an experiment. Then it became an addiction.
In early 2005, I found myself on the steering committee for a Writers Festival. We wanted to both engage bloggers to help publicize our festival and feature some of the more popular ones on various panels. Because many of us were unfamiliar with the world of blogs, one of our fellow committee-members suggested that we start our own blogs, in order to get a better sense of what they were all about.
It wasn’t until much later did I realize that I was the only one who took the suggestion seriously and actually started one.
I’ve always loved food. I believe it comes from growing up in a family of foodies, who not only placed importance in what we were eating but in the act of eating together. As I grew up and moved out, the friends I made were also food-lovers. As was the woman I eventually married. My darling wife Su-Lyn is, in many ways, a much bigger foodie than I am. Not only does she love food, she knows a helluva lot about it. She also happened to have made a career as a food writer and editor for over a decade.
It was only natural then that the subject of my first (and only) blog was food. Through this blog, I tried to share the joy of eating well and eating with people you love. I never imagined that Chubby Hubby would be as well-received or as well-read as it is. I am eternally grateful to readers for their comments and for returning day after day or week after week to read about what Su-Lyn and I had been up to in the kitchen, where we’ve dined, or other inanities that I or my darlin’ wife have felt like posting over the years.
Su-Lyn and I were also amazed at the amazing community of food bloggers. While that community has certainly changed and grown dramatically since we started this blog, what continues to unite the scene is a love for food, a love of eating well, and a love for sharing information freely. We’ve made some amazing friends because of and through this blog. And we hope that the blogging community will always be as welcoming and warm a place as it was when we first wandered into it back in 2005.
Some readers have asked to know a bit more about me. Well, first and foremost, I don’t live off of this blog. I wish!
In my professional life, I wear a few hats. Work-wise, I co-own an integrated communications group. “What in the world does that mean?” you might ask. Well, for that answer, please head over to our corporate site through this link here: Ate. The Ate Group is arguably the best at what it does in Singapore. But I can’t take credit for that. My wife is the CEO and I am these days just a Board Member. I also am proud to sit on the Boards of a few not-for-profit organisations.
I actually started my career as a journalist and photographer. I’ve had the immense pleasure of working in NYC, Paris, Hong Kong and Singapore. While I started out in news and have also worked in business reporting, I ended up running lifestyle magazines, which was fun work. I took a break a few years back to work in the arts–one of my first loves. And in 2006, started Ate with Su-Lyn and two close friends. I left to spend some time working in charity and, in 2014 entered the F&B space professionally. I spent a year restructuring a friend’s restaurant and bar group, relaunching her products and putting professional practices in place. Since then I have been working as a part-time media strategy consultant while developing a new business with some amazingly talented friends.
Chubby Hubby has been featured in countless media, from other websites to some of the world’s most widely read and respected newspapers and magazines. We’re grateful for every single mention. But what we are most grateful for are the readers. Nothing has meant more to us than the feedback and the correspondences we have received over the years. The stories that you have shared with us have been simply amazing. And some of them have even moved us to tears.
In my career as a journalist, I have had the opportunity to run a number of different lifestyle magazines, co-author several cookbooks and travel books, and even shoot photographs for some other books, but nothing I have ever worked on has ever generated the kind of response and recognition that has come from this blog. It is truly an honour to continue to create content that you, the readers, respond to, share and are able to use.
You can reach us at s@chubbyhubby.net and aun@chubbyhubby.net respectively.
Thank you again for your support.
Aun
