the lastsplash

Oh my gosh. I finally finished the book I picked up more than four months ago. Reading a book is something which I usually do only on my trip to and back from work. And this book isn't exactly the size which I would wanna put in my bag, so I left it at home to collect dust after a couple of days. I picked it up yesterday only becuz I wanted to buy a new book, and had to finish this first. Once I did that, like the experience of reading other Gaiman's books, I was unable to put it down and promptly finished the two hundred odd pages left today. Anansi Boys was the fifth Neil Gaiman novel I read (excluding the Sandman Series and other related graphic novels). I like reading Gaiman's stories because of the world he created in his stories. The world where the Gods and the Deads walk among the Livings. Gods from long ago who would eventually be forgotten. If you have read American Gods, you'll probably be familiar with the world he created in Anansi Boys . I don't know ...

Not me. The highest-earner of my cohort is working there tho'. I don't dream of working there, but hope I'll at least get a chance to work on something big someday. Something with many users. Of cuz, there'll be some who will love it, and some who will hate it. So what is it really like to be working in such a big company which many hate and love? A Microsoft programmer analyses and gives his structured perspective on working in Microsoft, a very programmer-thingy to do. =) Who dares to speak so openly about their company? There are certainly somethings I hope to see in my working environment as well. Read it from the insider here .

I was very honoured to be invited to write a line or two last week, to be featured during the Tea Reception for SCE applicants and on the Alumni Website. The main aim was to inspire and guide the freshmen on education at NTU SCE, and to recount my memorable experience in SCE. A difficult task at first, it turned out that a couple of lines were not enough for me. Below is a preview to my lil' contribution. Hopefully it'll be useful to potential NTU SCE freshmen who will not be able to make it for the Tea Reception. =) During my Convocation last July, the guest speaker, Mr Chan Yeng Kit, CEO of IDA Singapore, reminded us of our decision to place the bets of our future in the IT industry shortly after the bust of the dot-com bubble. He portrayed us as brave souls, passionate about IT. And he painted the future of us as future professionals in the dynamic and exciting industry, where we can make a difference across the society. He also presented past statistics that half of the IT-...

It was the first week of April when the flowers bloomed. The petals pink and white covered the long stretch of the road back home. For the moment, I was brought a scene from the Japanese animation, where they enjoyed scent and sight of beautiful cherry blossoms in the Spring. That moment was perfect, if only I had a camera to capture it down and share with everyone. Two weeks later the beautiful sight of bougainvillea was replace by tropical torrential rain. Spring was over. Next year I'll be ready when April comes.

I finally got to watch the " Why My Vote Matters - A Dialogue with the Minister Mentor " on the re-telecast tonight and understand the reasons for some of the comments on Today . Some after thoughts from watching the show... At times, I wondered why some of the young journalists did not have the basic courtesy of letting MM Lee finish what he wanted to say. There were numerous times when I heard MM Lee said, "Let me finish it." If you ask a question, listen to the answer, then ask another question. I am not sure why some of these young journalists do not know that it is rude to interupt someone speaking. I think it is more important to learn to listen, and speak at the right thing at the right moment. As professionals in the media, I think they should be more responsible in what they say. One of the participant said, "There are friends in university who don't know who the PM is, who don't know who you are..." Shame on her friends. Please don'...

I seem to be in the mood to write. This is my third entry for the day. =) It is a common sight to see students selling flags on Saturdays. Almost every Saturday of is a Flag Day. Although it feels like every Saturday. If you understand the rationale of Flag Days, you'll agree that it is a very good idea. I think that other than raising funds for the VWOs (Voluntary Welfare Organisation), it is also to spread the awareness of these organisations and their causes, and to involve students in some community work. I am sure almost everyone of this young generation has participated in at least one Flag Day during their secondary school days. Regardless of much is raised, Flag Days help VWOs in some way. Other than funds from the government, most VWOs have to raise their own funds to run their facilities and programmes. It is no easy task to canvas for funds. Contrary to what many think, there are actually many VWOs out there which need our help, besides NKF, Cancer Foundation, etc, which...

The change to the NTU Points Award Scheme (PAS) did not come as a surprise to me. The enrollment has increased steadily with the opening of the new schools (Humanities, Physical Science, Design and Media). The demand for hostels will definitely go up as well. Therefore a revamp of the system is needed, especially to cater for students who live far from the campus. However, I feel the abolishment of points system completely in the new Hall Allocation Scheme (HAS) is not very good move. Of cuz, the new scheme has its advantages (you can read about it here ). The best thing about the new scheme is that students who are staying far from school will worry less about getting up early and travelling so far to campus (unlike SMU or NUS, NTU is situated at this far corner of Singapore!). Students who never have got a chance at hostel life will do so now too. Student leaders will also be rewarded. Locals will also get more chance to stay with international students in the new scheme. Although th...

Dear friends, Please forgive me if I start seeing less of you for the next few months or years. Perhaps I'll be too busy at work, but I suspect the real reason is because I can't afford to eat at a fancy restaurant with you anymore. Or let me put it this way, we can still meet for hawker food, or dinner at coffee shop, but much less often from now on. Let me share with you my story, and you'll know why. I am a typical Singaporean living in the rat race, and I choose not to stay like this forever. In the rat race means, despite working my ass off, money is still never enough. Some might say, "Hey, you have a good job leh, earning so much, where got not enough?" To begin, I don't really earn much, and a very large portion of it is for paying off my liabilities. Every month, it comes down to the minimum last $500 in the bank account. And sometimes, I have to squeeze over the last few dollars before that minimum. No house, no car, you may ask, "What kinda lia...

I was not aware the National Library Board had joined the bandwagon of organisations with blogs till I saw a post on tomorrow.sg today. The NLB book blog, "High Browse Online" , has been around since October 2005. I think they are doing a great job to adopt a book blog format. Book blogs make reading book reviews easier and more fun. The blog-style makes navigation systematic and easier, as well as maintainence really simple too. I applaud organisations which are able to embrace technology the right way. An economical way to encourage the sharing of information. Below are some tech blogs of different organisations which I read: 1. O'Reilly Developers Weblogs - discussions and articles on wide range of topics. 2. Inside FireFox - A firefox developer's blog on the incredible web browser. 3. IE Blog - The project blog of the rival! Updated glimpse into the IE development and new features. 4. Borland Developer Network - blogs of Borland projects and developers. 5. J...

...And a dot dot here, dot dot there, here dot, there dot, where is dot NET? Good news for Java programmers! Once again, Java is the most popular language according to the statistics from www.tiobe.com . Check out their websites for their definition of popular language and ranking of the rest of the languages.

Recently there were some discussion about desire on Sunshine's blog. And since my birthday is not too far from now *hinthint*, I started thinking about what are my desires... I stopped before the list got too long. I guess desires in the form of material ones are mostly things we don't really need. Such as this really super duper cool Ro Tuck laptop bag and classy Knomo Frinton 17" below!!! *more hints* hah hah. Ok la, just kidding. *take back all the hints* Take a look at the rest of the Top 10 Coolest Laptop Cases here .

Last night, some guys from the resident committee and the town council informed us that depending on the outcome of the voting, a new lift will be built at the corridor just outside our flat. It is part of the lift upgrading for our area. As our flat is along the lift landing level, it was just for info and we will not be voting. We were informed about the lift upgrading earlier by letter, and I did not expect that they were actually planning to build a new lift! Our block is relatively small compared to the other blocks in the area, with a total number of households of 50. The new lift will stop at every level, which means that other than the serving even levels as the existing lift, it will also serve the two corner units at the odd levels, and 8 units at level two. The existing lift is at the other end of the block now, where there are no units at odd levels, therefore to serve the odd levels units, the new lift has to be built at our end of the block. I am not very supportive of th...

The headline read ,"Thaksin sobs, will step aside". This news came as a surprise to me as despite winning the snap polls, he is resigning to fate. His words brought about a tinge of sympathy for him, "I beg all Thais to reunite. I beg all Thais to sacrifice for the king. I apologise to my 15 million supporters that I cannot take the post of Prime Minister...". Regardless of whether it is like what the opposition suspects (merely appointing a seat-warmer and waiting for political storm to blow over before returning to power), I believe Mr Thaksin will stand by his words, unless it is a request from the King. Is democracy about staging protests and boycotting the election? I am sure the whole world can tell that the opposition merely used the sale of Shin Corp to Temasek Holdings to stir up the nationalism feelings in the Thai citizens, as a platform to launch attack on Mr Thaksin. A case of commercial move used as an excuse for a political cause. I think it will not ...

Do not watch!!!

I wonder if anyone noticed, Mediacorp had been using lotsa Franz Ferdinand songs for their shows' intro clips these days. For example they used "The Fallen" for the DH2 clip. I bet either all these clips were done by someone who is a Franz Ferdinand fan or they were paid alot to do so. I think the former is more likely. And that person sure have good taste. Btw, you can find some nice photos of them here from their " No Encore " concert back in Feb. Courtesy of Aloysius Lim. Thanks dude, your photos are really incredible. Today was a usual day, with two passengers on the bus who preferred to let their NTUC plastic bags "sit", then giving up those seats to two poor ladies with high heels, whose hands were really full. It is interesting to note that one of the passenger was sitting behind the other. One was a 40+ auntie, the other was a 30+ man. Totally normal, balanced demographic, and occurrence, of inconsiderate people on the public transport. At wor...

Found this interesting poem on a tag with the pair of ZO jeans I bought from Thailand. It also says "est. in 1047" duh!!! So big hole! There you'll find a place filled with poetry A place where everything and everyone has a new shape. Where the universe is upside down and inside out. Where colours have sex and you can suddenly do that dance move you always wanted to do. Naked. A place where friends fly, members breathe, donkeys explode, stars scream, peace lives, and disasters happen in reverse. A place where you're licking shaved cats one minute and wrestling tornados the next. What kinda place is that?!!! The poet must be really high or something when he/she wrote that... "friends fly" and "colours having sex?!"... and "Naked." Woah. Everything seems peaceful, till the donkeys start to explode... Give the man a tiger! He wrestles with tornados! So what is that "dance move"... funky chicken dance? Yeah, the poem sounds abit li...

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...

I am back in one piece! Resisted the urge of taking the cab, I tricked my mind into thinking that I was not dizzy. With that second wind, I got home and saved 6 buckeroos. Day Two. More hands-on. Attended one on Studio Creator and one on Netbeans Profiler . Silly me did not bring my power adapter cuz I wanted to travel light. So I did not get much outta the first as I was worrying about my power most of the time and did not get to complete the lab. For the latter session I got help from the Friends of the Fujitsu fanclub (a student and a kind gentleman from IHPC) ha ha. The profiler is a very useful tool to analyse all those memory leaks and lousy code practices. As Joey Shen put it, "There are rumours that Java is slow, but it is slow only when your codes are not good." Yeah, something I can take back and tell my boss, "Hey we can use this! And its free!"... "So maybe more conferences for me next time?" heh heh. Seriously I recommend this tool. Its sor...