the lastsplash

Tomorrow, one year into the society. No time to stop and reflect yet.

I hung on for my life and alighted the cab slightly shaken. It was the ride of my life . Learning from my previous experience, I told the cab driver to take Pioneer Road North, and then AYE, to my office from site at Jurong. Previously, another cab driver had taken me for a joy ride en route to office, via PIE (very longggggggggggg wayyyyyyyy right????). It was a pleasant ride until we reached the Alexandra Road exit. There was a massive jam due to an accident. Instead of joining the queue, the driver drove on. I thought to myself, "Its my lucky day! Quick thinking by the driver, no need to waste time in the jam." That was until he drove past the next exit at Lower Delta Road. I knew something was wrong. As we approached the next exit at Keppel Road, I told the driver we had past our exit. He was not sure of which way to go, and was driving into the road divider!!! I suggested to him that we should exit immediately and make a U-turn along Keppel Road. Along Keppel Road, he w...

Are good neighbours hard to come by? I am not too sure, cuz for the past few years, we hardly felt the existence of our neighbour, ie. the guys who moved into the unit opposite our flat two years ago. Why? Cuz they pretty much treat their flat as a chalet. And by that I mean the only time that I saw them was the one time I came back to see their house all brightened up. Why? Cuz they rented out their house as a set for some film production. And the other times I saw them were mostly weekends when they invited their friends over for mahjong. Probably overnight mahjong and made lotsa noise, cuz somebody complained to the police and they probably thought it was us. They decided to protest by putting a shoe rack over our potted plants *** (please note that these potted plants in front of our door were there since we moved in, yes, for more than sixteen years). Btw, it was a ugly looking shoe rack which they don't use at all. So I guess it was either to "mark their territory" ...

I look forward to the opening of the movie " Da Vinci Code " tomorrow. Perhaps I'll catch it this weekend or next week when it'll be less crowded. But as many, like me, who are looking forward to the movie, there are also many who criticise and shun away from the movie. In fact, in India, the release of the movie had been put on hold. Many feel that the movie offended their faith, we should respect that. But I think it is important to keep in mind that this is a movie adapted from a the book by Dan Brown, a work of fiction. We should probably watch the movie, or read the book, with the intention of getting entertained, rather than finding the truth. The controversies are its selling point. No doubt, the story itself is flawed. An article on HowStuffWorks analyses "How The Da Vinci Code Doesn't Work" . My favourite flaws are that "the restrooms of the Louvre have liquid soap, just like most other public restrooms" and "according to a "...

At twenty-six, I got to know more of what I want. When you are put in that position to think what you are willing to give away, you realise what you really want. I am sure most people know the hard facts of life (I'm talking about the $$$), but not many can really appreciate it. Until you are thrown in that situation, those are just words and numbers. I may not be experiencing the worse life, but I am experiencing enough for me to appreciate it. And when you do, you'd wanna do something about it right? The grand plan of things is simple, "Plan and work towards the goal". The planning we can leave it to the professionals, our financial consultants, to tell us how much we need to make to achieve what we want. The "working towards the goal" part, depends on ourselves. As we pursue this path to work towards the goal, opportunities come by. Opportunities such as doing a business, having a promotion, etc. But with these opportunities come some trade off. Such as t...

Tomorrow is my birthday, below are my seven ("lucky seven" mah... heh) wishes not in any particular order... I wish that... 1. My sister will be mature abit faster. Twenty-three years is already a long time, and yet there are quite a few things she need to pick up. Eg. Learn to not leave stacks of her belongings all over the house, and to return things to their respective places after use, especially if she had borrowed them. Keep up the good work, you are almost there! (Hope you'll read this and make the difference today!) 2. People will be more considerate in general, so that everyone will at least enjoy their journey to and back from work, no matter how sucky work may be. Your considerate act and friendly smile will dispel any Monday blues! =) 3. Parents will actively play their part to be good role models for their children, so that their kids will be better behaved, and teachers' lifespan will not be shortened with every breath they take down the children's n...

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