Life in Hell - A Photo Essay of Baghdad

These visions & commentaries remind me of what the Bible says - The Devil comes to steal, kill & destroy...

Below is a short paragraphy from the diary of a journalist for TIME:
"A knot begins to form in my stomach exactly at 8 a.m., when I step into the small Fokker F-28 jet that will take me and 50 other passengers from Amman, Jordan, to Baghdad. I know what lies ahead: an hour's uneventful flying over unchanging desert, followed by the world's scariest landing--a steep, corkscrewing plunge into what used to be Saddam Hussein International Airport. Then an eight-mile drive into the city along what's known as the Highway of Death. I've made this trip more than 20 times since Royal Jordanian's civilian flights started three years ago, and you'd expect it would get easier. But the knot takes hold in my stomach every time."

Read the full diary entry here.

Astronomy Paintings from 19th Century

While I have limited understanding of the pictures as I am hardly an astronomer, the paintings of stars like Mars & Jupiter are surreal and beautiful in a weird sort of way. I can say the only time I truly enjoy the stars are when I see them on a cloudless night and can make out the form of Orion. After these drawings, I have to confess that my imagination is inspired at the "invisible life" that shows evidence of the great power working behind them.

I dream of the day when one can take a vacation in Mars or chill out at Jupiter, maybe even go for a Women's breakthrough camp at Venus? ;)

See the paintings here.

PS. Check out the paintings on the right hand column!! They're so cool.

AOL Users Plotting Murder

No, this is not a figurative title, but a very real one.

Apparently, the list of available sites on the web that Google fought so hard, and won, against the government to not include in their search engine, is being found through AOL.

And what kind of searches are leading to these sites?

how to kill your wife
wife killer
how to kill a wife
pictures of dead people
killed people
murder photo
photo of death
death
dead people photos
www.murderdpeople.com
decapatated photos
car crashes3

And more. Want the whole list? Read the list.

I wonder if this finding should present any real surprises. Given the hellish customer service dished out by AOL, is it any wonder that so many of its users are so depressed? I wonder what results they will find if they pulled up the statistics of "how to kill AOL CEO..."

Snaky Shoulders

Today I wore the 2nd piece of shawl that I bought and I admit that i felt good, different, classy. Nothing much had changed - I wore an outfit that was a typical attire that I usually wear to the office. Except that I wore a dark brown top, to complement my champagne colored shawl.

The beauty of this shawl lies in the hand sewn crystal snake amdist swarovski crystal flowers. I was a little deflated that not one of my colleagues noticed nor complimented me on the shawl. But then again, the only colleagues I met today were men. Not too observant creatures. That didn't dampen my mood too much as I still felt good with my new shawl, and even considered sending a text message to my new found friend, founder of Singapore shawls, at how good one of her designs was making me feel.

Unexpectedly, after the last scheduled meeting, a colleague from Public Affairs whom I work quite closely with on some projects walked into the meeting room. Apparently, my NZ colleague had scheduled a meeting with her about a Caring & Sharing program. It is a community project, and he wanted me to help him coordinate the people from the regional office in this global campaign. What is it with all these people who are flying everywhere and leaving me to tie up administrative / coordination work that requires someone to be grounded?? Sigh.

Anyhow, during the meeting, I noticed that she kept looking over my shoulder, distracting me. I was a little taken aback, and very surprised as this lady is an extremely professional and efficient lady. This was the first time I had seen her so visibly distracted. I couldn't figure out this strange new behaviour until I suddenly remembered that the crystal snake was resting just over the arch of my shoulders. When I realised this, I must say it closed a tough day very nicely. A wonderful breakthrough in the morning, closed by a pleasant surprise near the end of the day.

Tomorrow's going to be a harder day - when all the deliverables for MY stuff are due, especially since I spent the whole of today fussing over other people's stuff. And my meeting with the sales director won't be a cushy one. And then follows a long week. One day lost flying to Thailand, 2 days spent familiarising myself with the Thailand market, and a weekend spent shopping for furniture for my new home. I can see my timelines slipping into the land of no return.

Of course I can't let that happen. So to the grinding stone it will be. Gosh, is it my imagination or is my nose growing bigger???

A Crabby Situation

I had dinner at the same coffee shop where the frogs were. I wanted to see if Charlie (aka the frog staring at me out of his left eye) was still around. It was only today that I realised there was another cage of live crabs with pincers tied to their bodies with ropes sitting on top of the frogs' cage. It was depressing. I looked over and lady boss was still perfecting her wax museum look. I was both jealous and overcome with fear at the same time. Jealousy that she had the luxury of sitting there with nothing to think about. And afraid for myself at how possible it was for someone to live their lives with nothing on their minds... *shivers*

Well, I have to get back to my work. A global newsletter needs a proposal for my meeting with the sales director whom I'm interviewing for his input. Do keep me updated on what I missed in your lives while I'm living mine out through work emails...

Early Thanksgiving

It was a good day. A Monday, but nevertheless a good day. A day of meetings where the project owners weren't around because the were either resting from or promoting their own causes to external parties. Only myself and my boss' next in command was left to chair the country meetings in the afternoon. My boss wasn't around as she had been "working like a demon" as my colleague aptly described, and was taking a well deserved break with her family. So today, the 2 of us were chairing other peoples' meetings and helping them make sure that their programs were being properly run in countries while our own work was sitting in our laptops. I could literally feel the tasks that were pending glaring at me, with crossed arms and deeply knitted brows, tapping their feet while waiting for me to start work on them. BUT - It was still a good day. Even if it is a Monday and one spent helping to keep other peoples' projects on track.

Why? Because a project I had been chasing after for ownership finally fell on my plate. It wasn't a political move, merely a practical one. If I could have followed the plans of global, and turned my eyes (and heart!) away from the faults of the project, my life would have been much cushier. But it was a project I couldn't live with if it had continued at status quo. So while my initial objective was getting our head office to fix it, it eventually turned into a tussle for ownership of the project when it was found that global's arms were tied due to resources and some political considerations.

My boss and I had worked as a team - with me pressing the project owner on deliverables required by AP within the required timeline, while my boss rallied support from "higher powers" i.e. our VP of marketing. Today, we were finally awarded ownership of the project for until global cleaned up its act...

Don't be mistaken though - all the deliverables I had used to press global to wrestle for ownership - have now become MY deliverables. If I were in my previous company with the level of control and dexterity that I had, I would have been full of confidence. I must admit that working in an MNC with its share of stakeholders and fragmented business units presented a challenge in terms of coordination & strategy. But I'm prepared. It's going to be a hectic 2006 - or what's left of it. This site project has landed on my plate at the same time that a few other major projects have, on top of my new role of program management "overseer", if you will.

I'm praying hard that my passion will give me the energy I need to pull my projects through. AND that as I revive the exercise program I need, that my health will cooperate and not keel over without permission.

The Face Transformer

So there's this site that takes a photo you upload to it, and converts it to your choice of Caucasian, African, Manga, etc. Drunk faces. It may not be an intelligent site, but is good for a few laughs.

After manipulating a few of my photos, I'm glad I was born an asian. I would certainly have been a weird child if I had been any other nationality...

Start Transforming now!

Till Death Do Us Part? Think Again...!

Remember my previous video post about a guy who was trying to unsubscribe from AOL and had to get on air to finally get his account cancelled?

What do you do when it's your relative who was subscribed to AOL and can't unsubscribe for himself because he's now dead? In this other AOL nightmare, the daughter of an ex-AOL user now has to bear the burden of her father's monthly charges on top of her grief. Despite her offer of faxing his death certificate to AOL just to prove to them that he is dead, she has just been told to "Pay Up" and then got hung up on.

Read the story here.

The Swedish Cinnamon Bun

Its a symbol that we see being used in shorthand, and in recent years on business cards and all over our email boxes - the "@" sign. Some other names it has, apart from "Cinnamon Bun" in Sweden, include "a-hose", "elephant's ear" etc.

In France it is called "arobas" (meaning unknown) or "a roulé", in Holland "apestaart" (monkey tail), in Italy "chiocciola" (snail) and in Israel "shtrudel".

Have you ever wondered where and how this little symbol came to be such a historic trademark in the history of the Internet? Find out here.

Notable (Company) Names

Have you ever wondered how companies like Apple, Yahoo & Motorola got their names? A stroke of genius? Think again...

Adobe - Came from name of the river Adobe Creek that ran behind the house of founder John Warnock.

Apache - It got its name because its founders got started by applying patches to code written for NCSA’s httpd daemon. The result was ‘A PAtCHy’ server -– thus, the name Apache.

Apple Computers - Steve Jobs was three months late in filing a name for the business because he didn’t get any better name for his new company. So one day he told to the staff: “If I’ll not get better name by 5 o’clock today, our company’s name will be anything he likes…” So at 5 o’clcok nobody come up with better name, and he was eating Apple that time… so he keep the name of the company ‘Apple Computers’.

CISCO - Its not an acronym but the short for San Francisco.

Google - The name started as a jokey boast about the amount of information the search-engine would be able to search. It was originally named ‘Googol’, a word for the number represented by 1 followed by 100 zeros. After founders – Stanford grad students Sergey Brin and Larry Page resented their project to an angel investor, they received a cheque made out to ‘Google’

Hotmail - Founder Jack Smith got the idea of accessing e-mail via the web from a computer anywhere in the world. When Sabeer Bhatia came up with the business plan for the mail service, he tried all kinds of names ending in ‘mail’ and finally settled for hotmail as it included the letters “html” - the programming language used to write web pages. It was initially referred to as HoTMaiL with selective upper casing.

Hewlett-Packard (HP) - Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard tossed a coin to decide whether the company they founded would be called Hewlett-Packard or Packard-Hewlett, and the winner was NOT Bill…the winner was Dave.

Intel - Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore wanted to name their new company ‘Moore Noyce’ but that was already trademarked by a hotel chain, so they had to settle for an acronym of INTegrated ELectronics = INTEL

Lotus (Notes) - Mitch Kapor got the name for his company from ‘The Lotus Position’ or ‘Padmasana’. Kapor used to be a teacher of Transcendental Meditation of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

Microsoft - Coined by Bill Gates to represent the company that was devoted to MICROcomputer SOFTware. Originally christened Micro-Soft, the ‘-‘ was removed later on.

Motorola - Founder Paul Galvin came up with this name when his company started manufacturing radios for cars. The popular radio company at the time was called Victrola.

ORACLE - Larry Ellison and Bob Oats were working on a consulting project for the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency). The code name for the project was called Oracle (the CIA saw this as the system to give answers to all questions or something such). Acronym for: One Real A****** Called Larry Ellison??

Red Hat - Company founder Marc Ewing was given the Cornell lacrosse team cap (with red and white stripes) while at college by his grandfather. He lost it and had to search for it desperately. The manual of the beta version of Red Hat Linux had an appeal to readers to return his Red Hat if found by anyone!

SAP - “Systems, Applications, Products in Data Processing”, formed by 4 ex-IBM employees who used to work in the ‘Systems/Applications/Projects’ group of IBM.

Sony - From the Latin word ’sonus’ meaning sound, and ’sonny’ a slang used by Americans to refer to a bright youngster.

SUN - Founded by 4 Stanford University buddies, SUN is the acronym for Stanford University Network.

Xerox - The inventor, Chestor Carlson, named his product trying to say dry’ (as it was dry copying, markedly different from the then prevailing wet copying). The Greek root `xer‘ means dry.

Yahoo! - The word was invented by Jonathan Swift and used in his book ‘Gulliver’s Travels’. It represents a person who is repulsive in appearance and action and is barely human. Yahoo! founders Jerry Yang and David Filo selected the name because they considered themselves yahoos.

Note: This information was provided by www.blogiseverything.com

Shals, Tallits and Kashmir

I was also inspired by Singapore Shawls. So inspired that I actually bought my 2nd piece. If I keep up this habit of buying 1 shawl every weekend, I would not be able to pay my contractor when the renovation for my flat is completed...

Beyond retail therapy, I did a little googling in Wikipedia and discovered some interesting facts about Shawls:
1. The first shawls, called "Shals" were actually made for men. They formed part of the traditional costume in Kashmir. If they were embroidered, they were called "ameli". I have no clue why a piece of clothing designed for men would have a woman's name.

2. Tallit, or prayer shawls, were also worn by men - Jewish men during prayers & ceremonies.

3. Kashmir, or Indian shawls - with which we are more familiar with.

Read the Wikipedia article on shawls.

Inspired? Want to get a special shawl gift for your sister, girlfriend or wife? Or would you just want it for yourself? Visit Singapore Shawl on the second level of Tangs Shopping Centre, Singapore. Designs are limited so grab your favourite piece now before they run out!

Divine Encounter

Re my previous blog, I stumbled onto a brand called The Singapore Shawl. Did I mention that I ended up passing my business card to the founder of The Singapore Shawl Pte Ltd? She is a dynamic lady, and was excited on learning that I was a marketer, and a web marketer at that. She needed someone to promote her brand internationally. While I was awed by her stunning and creative shawls, I didn't have the capital, nor immediate plans to quit my job to open an office for her in NY. My current boss has been an amazing leader and I am in a debt of duty to help her marketing plans find their legs in AP before moving on.

What i DID have though, is the contact of a friend whose daughter is studying in Julliard's school of music. Actually, she's the sister of a friend I've known since I was 10. Anyway, this friend of mine staying in NY was there because her daughter is extremely talented on the piano, and is the first Singaporean to win a scholarship to NY's Julliard School of music at the age of 5.Being the marketer I am, I thought it would be an ingenuous idea to have a Singaporean prodigy in NY promoting the Singapore Shawl by wearing them at her concerts. At the same time, my friend - the mother of the prodigy - could find something else to do that could not only fill her days with something more meaningful than ferrying her kids around - she could very well make a very decent income to offset her costs of living in NY as well as the studies of her younger child whom she had brought there as well.

Well, as my friend was in NY, I went to meet up with this dynamic entrepreneur with her sister who is my childhood friend. I have known this childhood friend since I was 12. She started working for a church almost immediately after graduation. Today she is a youth pastor looking after the girls' brigade ministry. After 10 years of dealing with church leaders, and given an unhappy incident in her current church, she has decided that it is time that she moved to working in the commercial world.

However, having no skills whatsoever apart from counselling, she was stumped trying to work out which industry she could go into, and which skills she had that would made her employable in the commercial world. Today, this meeting with the founder of Singapore Shawls presented an unbelievably opportunity as if God had personally delivered the apple to her on a silver platter. She could work with her sister in New York in promoting the shawls, an accessory she has always loved.

As if this opportunity was not perfect enough, it was discovered that the founder of Singapore Shawls was a Christian who loved the Lord with all her heart, and was very much into community work. A warm, open hearted lady before her time, whom God has blessed with a wonderful gift and passion for designing shawls, we wondered at the wonderful way the hand of God had brought about our meeting and ended in a sincere prayer for partnership, and that God would bless her business and plans for the future.

I am happy for my friend. Working in a church with leaders who were conservative and at times stiff necked, she was in need of inspiration and encouragement. And this lady had inspired and encouraged her tremendously. As she was speaking I could see my friend's eyes going red, and that her anxiety of being trapped in a situation of limited options suddenly open out into a wonderful world of new opportunity, doing something that she already loved.

After the meeting, she gave me a sincere note of thanks, and I was touched that God would use me to bless this friend that was so dear to me. The feeling was indescribable - being the instrument of bringing hope to someone who was in despair and feeling trapped. It is a wonderful feeling when you realise God has given you the keys with which you have used to free someone from their personal prison. And I am immeasurably grateful that He would use someone as self-centred, wayward, and unfocused as me. I can only hope that there would be more of such opportunities coming my way.

Tribute to Emilie du Châtelet

While doing some research on the web, I came across the story of Emilie du Chatelet. Who is she? A brilliant woman who's work rivaled Einstein, but sadly forgotten (buried) in history by men who couldn't accept (threatened?) that a woman could have come up with ingenuous work. Frustrated, she journaled her thoughts at being shackled by a male dominated society:

"I feel the full weight of the prejudice which so universally excludes us from the sciences; it is one of the contradictions in life that has always amazed me, seeing that the law allows us to determine the fate of great nations, but that there is no p lace where we are trained to think...Let the reader ponder why, at no time in the course of so many centuries, a good tragedy, a good poem, a respected tale, a fine painting, a good book on physics has ever been produced by women. Why these creatures who se understanding appears in every way similar to that of men, seem to be stopped by some irresistible force, this side of a barrier. Let the people give a reason, but until they do, women will have reason to protest against their education...If I were king...I would redress an abuse which cuts back, as it were, one half of human kind. I would have women participate in all human rights, especially those of the mind. It would seem as if they were born only to deceive -- this being the only intellectual exercise allowed them. The new education would greatly benefit the human race. Women would be worth more and men would gain something new to emulate...I am convinced that either many women are unaware of their talents by reason of the fault in their edu cation or that bury them on account of prejudice for want of intellectual courage. My own experience confirms this. Chance made me aquatinted with men of letters who extended the hand of friendship to me...I then began to believe that I was a being with a mind..."

Her characteristically UNboring life also distracted from her true worth as a scientist. Involved in quite a number of scandals and brash moves, people became too caught up with the gossips she was creating rather than powerful theories she wrote which led to the invention of photography and dynamics of light.

If you are as captivated by the life of this woman as I am, here are some links to unearth more about the life of this extraordinary woman who dared to live her life fully, without apology:

Chateau Cirey, where she stayed with Voltaire
Her Biography

Your Site DNA

There is a site that will analyze your website and convert its statistics into a "DNA" bar chart. It shows you how well organized your site is, or if you have a messy space. Heading tags are converted into various colored lines on a bar chart, and the intensity (or emptiness) of the lines on each bar indicates how much words (aka real content) you have on your site.

Try it out for yourself. It can be really revealing and your result might surprise you. I know mine did.

The Aim of the Pee

As if it weren't bad enough that some guys have problems aiming their pee (consolations to the women who have to stay with them), they have now invented urinals that's going to add on to the pee on the floor problem...

Walking On Water - The Band

I attended a concert by a band called Walking on Water this evening. One of the band players is a talented, charismatic friend from our small group. She is only 26, and has been working as a full time musician for a number of years. She plays for a local celebrity who found international fame, but at the same time holds her own concerts where she plays 3 types of instruments and sings to Jazz, R&B, Rap & Rock.

While Walking on Water consists of 4 members where the drummer is the leader, I'm decidedly biased and think that my friend is the most talented, and has the most potential, among all of them. All four members are amazingly talented. And all show true mettle & character. But for me, my friend has this quality of strength around her, the X factor that differentiates the true star from among performers. If she read what I were writing now, she would be greatly uncomfortable as she is such a humble, down to earth gal. But that is truly what I think, and look forward to where her talents will bring her.

Tonight is the "last" concert for them as one of their members is leaving for a 2 year study program in Perth. As such, without a bassist, they are still trying to figure out what their next steps will be. The 4 of them have great chemistry, and it will not be easy to replace her. Which precisely makes up their theme tonight - Walking on Water - into faith. Tonight, their repertoire consisted of original songs written and arranged by themselves - every single song. And all of them are R&B & rock gospel songs. First ever concert that I have attended on such a theme. After tonight, I am a true convert to their band and wish them all the best - no matter what the future holds!