the lastsplash

Its 5am here in Goteborg. But I am awaken by my growling stomach and the noisy sea gulls. My stomach is still in the SG time zone lah. It is lunch time for my stomach now. And the sea gulls must be the Swedish equivalent of noisy mynahs in Singapore. A quick look of the morning street from the lil' rooftop window before I continue to account the transit day tour at Amsterdam. It is a darn heavy window. Kept it open using a bottle. Hah . On the left you can see the old German church. Gonna visit it later of the day. And on the right you can see the stadium with the red words "SCANDIA" on top. Hmm... can't quite see it in the picture. The cool morning air is really refreshing. No pollution. No " funny chocolate smell " like you-know-where. And not that many people too! There is plenty of room in the trams, buses, streets for everyone. I am beginning to enjoy the slower pace of life here (perhaps that is because I am on holiday, no need to work!). Air-conditio...

The "See Holland" tours are a range of 8 different tours for passengers transferring at Schiphol airport - perfect for people like us who have to wait for eight hours for transit! We joined the two and half hour tour around Amsterdam. For 39 Euro per person, it was a very expensive tour. But it is better than lazing around in the airport and we are already in Holland, gotta step out there and breathe the air right? It is a guided bus ride with a few quick stops. The highlights of the short tour included the canals, the " Skinny Bridge ", the Anne Frank House , a private windmill, the Ratterman Wooden Shoe Factory and the Red Light District . I'll try to go thru' as much as possible based on what I can remember of what the guide said. :op The tour started off at Schiphol airport. So we begin with a lil' story of Schiphol , " ship hell " in Dutch. The airport is actually sitting on reclaimed land. It was originally a lake. One day, they decided ...

Other than the time differences and my infamous runny nose, the flight to Amsterdam was a pleasant one! The stewardess were really polite and warm. I had two delicious meal during the flight. The meal included a pencil. Why pencil? Cuz there was this tear-out Sudoku on the meal boxes, and answers printed as well. Idea hor ? We also had ice cream in the wee hours of the morning SGT while we were over the sky of Afghanistan. Currently we are in the mid of our 8-hr transition wait at Schiphol Amsterdam Airport right now - the airport with a fly scribbled in the urinal to help men aim. =p We will be going for a short 2 and 1/2 hr transit tour around Amsterdam. Unfortunately, no free wi-fi at Schiphol, so this is a delayed post when I reach Goteborg. Will update with photos later. Photo Updates: View of Schiphol airport from the outside. This plane is a KLM McDonnell Douglas MD-11, Marie Curie . This section of the fleet of planes are named after famous people. The plane we took from Singa...

It had been a tiring two weeks. That explains the lack of postings. In fact, I was forgetting things - at one point I forgot my mobile number. Not to mention I even dreamed about my work several nights - right till last night! Other than moments of emotional ups and downs (which I always had, as I was easily emotionally influenced by others and felt grump), there wasn't much room or time for thinking or blogging . It was a long time since I worked so hard. It wasn't easy. Thus I truly admire my hardworking friends like XTT-KC, Stitchy-SOP, PingPing, etc., who had week-in, week-out do OT, meet unbelievable deadlines. Luckily I did have time for a shopping-cum-complaining-session which I really enjoyed. The one big regret was missing the Sun Developers Day - missed the opportunity to take photo with Duke. =p In the past two weeks, I had mostly been brainstorming of new ideas (outta thin air), arranging and meeting users whom I had never known (otherwise they were friendly people)...

I woke up at 7.30am this morning, early for weekend, but for a good reason. Today was the launch of the cookbook " Patchwork of Flavours " and I had volunteered to help out at the sale. " Patchwork of Flavours " is a recipe book. The project was initiated by volunteers from Regular Service Project (RSP) Elders , NTU Welfare Services Club (WSC) , two years ago. It showcases traditional home made recipes of elderly living in the homes, heartland, and clans. There are 38 easy-to-follow recipes with nice colourful photos of the dishes (tho' abit ruin by the sponsors' products in the background). Volunteers tried cooking the dishes themselves! The proceeds from the book sales will be donated to four charitable organizations, "AWWA Community Home for Senior Citizens" (where we volunteered back then!), "Kheng Chiu Loke Tin Kee Home", "Geylang East Home for the Aged", "Retired and Senior Volunteer Programme Singapore - RSVP". ...

I like the feeling of the short moments just when you wake up. There is peace. You forget the worries and unhappiness. Then you start to remember who you are, where you are, what there is to do, and what time it is. Reality sets in, memories remain. It is mid-week working day. You climb out of bed. You do your routines, as your mind struggles to recall what happened the previous day. Are you going to continue from there? Some emotions and thoughts stirs you, but you are no longer affected by them anymore. You drop them one by one. You are more focus now. Slowly you stop idling and get task oriented. What and how things are to be done today? Along the way you observe and think. You accumulate the bad feelings against the world. There in the bus, in the train, walking along the way, they all adds up at the back of your mind. Then you reach your workplace. You see the familiar people, the familiar piece of work, you recall even more of the previous day. You let yourself sink into that unh...

Being left out is worse than being alone. Being left out and alone? hmmm.... - 苦笑 -

I suspect it was another politically-driven article, a perfect example of a misrepresentation of facts. " Getting a cab? Easy, say 3 in 4 tourists " on TODAY News seemed to be giving the public an impression that taxi services in Singapore are in tip-top condition. Anyone who tried to take a cab in the evening around 8 to midnight will know perfectly well that the report is misleading. The first paragraph gave it away, " Despite the brickbats from locals and the occasional foreign letter-writer for their alleged disappearing acts during peak hours, Singapore's taxi drivers didn't fare too badly in a TODAY poll of 100 tourists. " I question the significance of this poll. And why do they survey only tourist? Are they implying that tourism is very important to Singapore's economy, so as long as tourists are happy, we are fine? Thanks for all the hard work to do this survey and come up with this article, but no thanks. First of all, when did these tourists ...

"Saving the Earth", "Raising Awareness with Music" - the themes for this weekend. And the message? "Answer the Call". Will the impact be more than just entertainment from a series of concerts? What about tomorrow? What are we supposed to be doing? How long will our broadcaster's logos remain green? I have no answers for all these questions, but since its becoming "cool" to go green, hopefully more people will join in the "revolution", as Madonna calls it. Keep it going! Act now! At least it got my colleague (one of the golden flowers) going at it. Last Friday, she advised me to switch off my machines before we left the office. =P Thanks for the reminder. I admit I am guilty of wasting energy. If everyone switches off their machines when we are not using them, we can save some energy. What's even better is if we were to do so at home. Besides saving energy, we will be trimming down our utilities bill as well! We can do the simple...

Sometimes, bad things in life happen for good reasons. Ironic isn't it? Makes you feel life is fragile. Ponder about karma. Take things easy. When the episode is over, will we revert to what we used to be?

This is freaky. I had been trying to find the right opportunity to convey my dream to somebody for the past few days.

Are SMRT buses haunted? I was at the rear end of the bus this morning. There was about four-person standing gap between me and the next guy, the Yakult-man (nothing against the company, just for easy identification as he was wearing the Yakult shirt). A ten-minutes bus ride ended up almost twenty. Partially due to Mr Yakult-man. Not that he did any stun... he did nothing! Not even moving a single toe. The kind driver waited at every bus stop for people to squeeze up. Despite that, it was already filled to the steps of the front door. I must say those at the front end could not have done much as there were really quite a few stone-casted people between them and me. So easy to move them meh? Especially if it might had been haunted! Very difficult to convince people to move in lorh... Or was it because of me? -smells myself- Sometimes its the case of poor planning that result in insufficient number of buses. Sometimes its just the commuters. Well, maybe planning can take account of such ...

Do you remember Nevermind ? I think I can see smiles from most of you! My favourite Nirvana album is In Utero . Nevermind was their best-selling. I remember the days when I printed the latest Nirvana FAQ on my dot-matrix printer... I have four copies of it!!! Anyway, while we slowly recall about the amazing guitar riffs and our younger days, sixteen years later, here is the same baby boy on the album cover. He's seventeen now. Yes, 我们也老了 。。。

All that hype! I wanted to get my hands on one too, till I read this - a review from a user. Of cuz they only show you the cool stuffs on TV and omitted some real issues that greatly reduced the usability of the iPhone. This is the short list of comments extracted from Jonny Bruha's post on Howard Forum : 1. Bluetooth is ONLY good for connecting a headset. That's it. 2. There is no file browser on the device at all. Data must be organized (if at all) in the appropriate application. 3. The camera is a simple application that has ONE button: the shutter. Pictures come out okay on the device, but nothing too fancy on a monitor, especially if it was an attempt at a macro shot. 4. SIM card is damn near impossible to open, if at all. I didn't look into it extensively. 5. Web browser is slow, even over WLAN. Even the simple OneList web app that was created takes around 20 seconds to load over WLAN. You can not highlight, cut, copy, or paste and text from a website, and you c...