the lastsplash

Fresh from the " fire-fighting " in office yesterday for my colleague via phone support, it was my turn to go on site for user support today. Although it wasn't my first time I did user support, it was the first time alone. And boy was it tough... Perhaps it would had been easy for my experienced colleagues, but for me, it was my first taste of fending for myself, solving the problems on the spot, and responding to the users' needs. There was a bad omen early in the morning on what was waiting for me. An accident on KJE after Pioneer North exit had caused a massive jam all the way to BKE. A 30min cab journey to site from home, took almost an hour. Although I was not physically there yet, the problem managed to find me in the form of phone call from the users. When I reached, I bounced around the different sites to understand what was going wrong as I was not too sure where the different group of users were. Yes, thats the problem when you have 4 sets of servers, ie. 4...

I guess many people share my sentiment, why not calculate the bonus package according to average income of the household, instead of the annual value of home? It simply doesn't make sense. 3-room flat, pay house loan, 4-room flat, pay house loan, 5-room flat, pay house loan, EA flat, pay house loan. Why penalise the group of people who sacrifice other material goods, for better and more comfortable living for their family? A larger flat simply does not imply more well to do household. Neither does staying in a 3-room flat implies you are poor. Some may say, give you money still complain so much . But, you pay tax, I pay tax, now the government share with us a portion of their "profit", it should be done fairly. Of cuz, those its always those who feel marginalised who speak up, and thus appearing to be big whiners, sore losers. And the rest who are satisfied will prefer to keep quiet, tiam tiam and um-chio . Using average household income to calculate is similar in nature...

I don't wanna be the whinny sort. I want to stop being so critical. But everytime it seems so right to complain about the ugly Singaporean I see everyday. He refuses to give up the seat to pregnant ladies, he ignores and not offer help to the lost VH on the streets, he hogs the escalator, he refuses to move to the rear of the bus. Don't get me wrong, it is not that I am greatly irritated by his actions. However, when there are people who stick cigarettes into their mouth and light them immediately after they got off the bus or out of the MRT station down the escalator into the underpass, I feel compelled to tell others about it. Remember the Pine Tree Club incident? The female driver who got her car stucked on the carpark divider? And you wonder why that could happen to anyone? Just this morning, I saw a who guy drove his van up the divider at the bus-stop. His eyes were not on the road, but on something at the sidewalk. It was lucky nobody was hit by the flying pole he crashed...

I must admit, I know very lil' about the movie. I have not the slightest idea what it was about, and not read any reviews, for goodness sake, I don't even know the name of the movie!!! Is it "V for Victory"... or "V for Veranda"? Oh forget it. Oh oh, I think I remember reading something about the name on Mr Brown's. V for Vendetta. But anyway, I caught the show with my girlfriend tonight. And it was fantastic! It had been quite a while since we caught a movie, I don't even remember what was the last movie we watched. Finally we get to use our free movie passes! And I must say, we are always lucky to catch the good ones. My expectations for the show increased after my girlfriend fed me some info. It was adapted from a graphic novel and produced by the makers of The Matrix! Yes, movies adapted from graphic novels, such as Sin City, and Constantine, were great, in addition, throw in the CG magic from the Wachowski brothers. Certainly the right recipes f...

Last night I dream about having a Apple iBook. I am not sure whether its the craze of having some Apple gadget that gotten into me or the fact that I can't forget reading an article about someone's MacBook magsafe power connector burst into flame (you can still find the mosiac of the ruined connector here . Isn't it scary? I am gonna think twice about leaving my electrical appliances on when I am not in the house. I think it is a good practice to switch off everything, of cuz 'cept for the fridge. Last week, there was the Creative warehouse sale again. I wanted to get the 19 bucks web cam, but didn't have time to do so. I wonder how was the turnout, Was there a queue before they even open? With the Apple craze (the "i" prefix in almost everything new, iGallop, iSqueeze????) going on, products like the classic iPod, Shuffle, Nano, etc., Creative seems to be losing steam. I have not tried any Apple products, so I can't really comment, but I am using th...

Frank Lloyd Wright once said, " The truth is more important than the facts ." When thoughts are expressed verbally, they become opinions. And when opinions are reiterated, they slowly become factual. When I have negative thoughts about some things, the more I tell someone about it, the more I feel negative about it. Analysis gets loud, judgements are justified. Yes, that someone will slowly agree with me and develop those negative impressions as well. I live by my principles, I seek the ideals. They form the facts in my eyes. Why am I deceiving myself? I speak for myself and myself only. Don't let my facts blind me from the truth and my happiness.

Monday: " Stick to what you know and do best. You can get ahead professionally if you talk to whoever is in charge of the position you seek. You can make a move that will allow you to earn more money ." Tuesday: " You can make some very interesting observations and changes in your career direction. The opportunity to talk to people with knowledge about a position will turn out well. Don't stand still - you can make a difference to your future ." Wednesday: " There is a window of opportunity today if you jump at a career offer. Have faith in your ability and talent. Someone from your past may be on your mind. Wait a couple of days and then make contact ." Some Taurean is going somewhere, obviously I am staying put.

This is not a Tickle quiz topic. I am not sure why this question came to my mind on my way to work. I would choose an Ant to represent myself. Cuz "Ant" begins with "A" and it'll always be on the top of the list! Provided the list is sorted in ascending order. ha ha. Seriously, I choose an ant cuz despite its small size, its contribution is by no means small, very essential to its community indeed. It is both hardworking and is able to carry heavy responsibility. Literally heavy as well (50times its weight). An ant is both a team worker and an independent individual. Sometimes you can see it crawling around looking for food. It is a survivor. And that is my answer. Duh. =b

I always see long queues at UOB ATMs, while no one is using the OCBC ATMs (if you noticed, they are always quite nearby). Eg. The OCBC ATM at Yishun MRT is always free, same applies to that at AMK MRT. Either most people do not know, or they choose not to use, you can withdraw cash from OCBC ATMs using a UOB ATM Card. This is quite convenient, considering there are not many OCBC account holders out there, compared with the three other local banks, there's no need to queue. But please be warned that there'll be a 30 cents surcharge for using OCBC ATM with your UOB Card. I am not sure whether its monthly or for a certain number of transactions. If you consider time is money, or the UOB ATM is out of service, 30 cents is definitely worthed it! Updated: "For locally shared ATMs, the first two transactions of the month are free. Subsequent withdrawals are charged at S$0.30 each." - Thanks KingMeng ;)

Friday can be considered as one of the most dramatic day of this week. I won't say it was stressful, cuz I seem to be able to handle stress rather well. But it was just awful. Sometimes, the brain just wouldn't work properly even when I wanted to do so. Just before the morning presentation, got a call from the users. There was an error in a module I was responsible and a user had complained to his top superior, who was going down personally to investigate the situation. Apparently someone had patched the program with the latest jars without our knowledge. Most of the jars have dependencies, so you don't just copy a few latest one and expect it to work with new features. What more, I don't understand why there was a need to inform some big shot guy. What can he do? Besides, implementing new features often meant new bugs are introduced. So, please don't deploy anything on your own, without the knowledge of your engineers, and expect them to do miracles. For the rest o...

When I was young, my dad bought be a small box of Lego set, which I had hours of fun. It was no fancy set, just a normal set with some doors and windows, and a couple of Lego man. I remember fondly that I watched "The Journey to the West" serials on tv and started constructing these spaceships for Sun Wukong, Zhu Bajie, and Sa Wujing. The spaceships I made were customized according to their characters. But there was just so much I can do with the limited number of lego bricks I had. Forget about action figures, pokemon, digmon or what mon, yugi-oh or what oh, console games or pc games. Get your children lego sets and see them expand their imaginations! Of cuz, make sure you brief them not to put the little pieces in their mouths or into their noses (I think I did that! At least thats what my mum said!). I think the ability to make/construct something is a skill very essential to man. Besides, lego is not only for kids, guess what adults are doing with lego sets? Check it out ...

Wenta the Jurong Bird Park two weeks ago with my parents and girlfriend. Tickets were compliments from my company. =) I can't remember when was the last time I wenta JBP, but it was definitely in better condition than I had imagined. It was fun to be up close with the feathers friends. Took quite alot of photos of them, but the ones with the penguins did not turn out well, probably due to the poor lighting. Btw, Big Bird was no where to be found. Below are some of the pictures, more can be found here ! These are actually real birds!!! But the are so colourful and perfect, you will think that they are models. Some were in cage. Tho' they seemta enjoyed themselves climbing up and down the grilles. I was shocked when I saw the menu. Pay attention to the price of "Chicken Rice". Anyway it is kinda weird to eat chicken rice in a bird park. No photos of real penguins but at least we have this!

Public transport companies get fined or something when they operate with more than certain percentage of downtime per year right? Well, if that is so, I think the SMRT are going to get a nice big bill soon if they continue to operate this way. I'm going to either win some lucky draw or 4D soon to compensate for my suay-ness . The Southbound train from Yishun was delayed for two consecutive days, I was on both !!! One can easily thought that it was one of the Ex Northstar kinda thingy again, ha ha. Thankfully, despite the hiccups of our trusty mass transport , I got to work in two hours on Monday (FYI, I don't work in Changi, Tuas, or Sentosa hor , okay its quite near Sentosa, ha ha). During the first delay on Monday, the train rested for 15mins after leaving Khatib station, and started jogging along Lentor Ave for the next 15mins, then it stopped at YCK station but kept its doors shut for another 10mins, before the driver announced that the train was to terminate at YCK. Can...