The Feather Starfish

Blogsy On My iPad

2011-05-05T00:03:00.001+08:00

So I was looking for a journaling app to load onto my iPad. Then it struck me that my blog has pretty much been dead and that it might be a good idea to kill 2 birds with one stone by downloading a blogging app instead to journal on my blog.

And that is how I came across Blogsy and paid $2.99 for it at the US iTunes store. Here's Blogsy in action.

My New Domain Blog

2007-10-19T16:43:00.001+08:00

My posts on this blog has stopped for a while as I have been busy, and have designed a new site to put up my posts. It is a little more serious and professional than this site, but carry interesting articles as well.

If you would like to visit, the URL is: www.ivytan-online.com. The site is best viewed using the latest version of Safari and IE 7. Registering yourself is something even better than you can do as it allows you to add comments, view private posts, and corrects the layout if you're using an older version of browsers.

Recent articles include:
Willy Wonka under "Around Town"
Bohemian Manifesto under "Bookworm"
Secrets of Emperor Qin's Tomb (Part 1-5 videos) under "Goggles"
Japanese Puffer Fish (video) under "Goggles"
How Spiderman 3 Should Have Ended (video) under "Goggles"
Skin Care / Safety of Herbs (audio podcast) under "Looking Good"
Choosing Natural Solutions for Optimum Health (podcast) under "Looking Good"
How to Turn on the Multi Language Function on a Mac under "My Idiot's Guide"
How to Capture a Screenshot on a Mac Computer under "My Idiot's Guide"
天堂, Paradise by Michael Wong under "Sonic Hedgehog"
楓, 彩虹天堂 Maple Leaf and Rainbow Paradise under "Sonic Hedgehog"
童話 Fairy Tale under "Sonic Hedgehog"
My Social Network Profile under "Web News"
What Other People Accomplished at Your Age under "Web News"
Circumnavigation in 13 Years under "Web News"
The Mango Heist Affair under "Web News"
My Favourite Things under "Web News"

Enjoy.

Nude Woman Buys Cigarettes at German Gas Station

2007-07-25T16:55:00.001+08:00

Read all about it here.

All I can say is, smoking's definitely bad for your health. And, what? They allow you to buy cigarettes at petrol stations? Cigarettes => fire + gas fumes = EXPLOSION.

A 14 Million Dollar Picture

2007-07-25T16:45:00.000+08:00

Bad Fortune or Bad Cookie??

2007-07-20T13:35:00.000+08:00

Part 1:

So last night I had a group of friends over at my place. The new renovations are in place, I just do not have my sofa, dining table and bookshelves in yet. But it was a cozy affair, and someone brought salad and lasagne. I had orange cake, and someone else brought eclairs and cherries for dessert. It was a great party, the jazz music was playing on my ipod speakers, and we talked about life, God, the most memorable presents we ever had, played draw and guess, etc.

It was a great evening, with fun and some really wonderful people. This of course put me in a good mood for today (not to mention that it is Friday!) and after having a really nice lunch at a Korean restaurant I accidentally stumbled into, I decided to take a bit of time from lunch to do some web reading.

The most recent entry of one of the blogs I read regularly was about fortune cookies. Following the links from that post, it led me to this site called badcookie.com. For a laugh, I decided to click for a new fortune today, and got this message:

It was hilarious. I wonder what my mates from last night would have to say about this?

Part 2:

The "fortune" I got was so hilarious that my curiousity got the better of me, and I clicked on the cookie again for another "reading". This is what I got:

I have a tripped planned to Tibet come early to mid August and will be spending my time there with a bunch of nomads living in tents. This will be out there in the open plains, with no bathrooms or toilets (Tibetans apparently bathe only once in their entire lifetime - when they are born, I think). We will be living in tents and drinking Butter milk and consuming yak meat, with no modern amenities whatsoever. This is a national geographic trip, my adventure trip... is it an omen???

Ok, so I'm not superstitious. I believe that they probably took the most common activities that people do and made up "bad fortune" for them as a joke. I mean, how often do you have people come over to your place, or have the urge to do something adventurous?? All the time is my guess. But still, it was fun - to a point. Now I'll just move on to my next post.

The Power of Krispy Kremes

2007-07-13T21:45:00.001+08:00

Never underestimate the power of a brand. I had read various brand stories on Coke, SIA, etc. but not had any personal encounters - until last night. AND 3 encounters at that.

It all started when my colleague from Sydney asked if I wanted any Krispy Kremes. He often flew into Singapore for meetings and would ask some of us whom he knew had a sweet tooth if we would like him to get some Krispy Kremes for us.

Well this wasn't the first time that he has done so, but was the first time I didn't have a carier to bring it home in.

I had a dinner appointment before heading home and had to carry the box of Krispy Kremes by resting it on my lower arm and gripping it from the side. As such, the Krispy Kreme logo was in plain view.

While we were waiting to get a cab, I heard this delighted shriek behind me: "KRISPY KREMES!" I turned around and saw 3 caucasians walking toward me, one of whom was the shrieker. They walked toward me all smiles and asked me where I got it from. Turned out they were from Sydney, Australia and that it was the favourite of Ms delighted shrieks. After a short exchange they continued on their way with parting words like 'Lucky Girl!' and 'Enjoy'.

As we weren't as lucky with getting a cab, we decided to walk down to City Hall to take the train. When we were almost there, waiting at a traffic junction for the little green man to appear, I heard a voice shout out 'Can we have one?!' Surprised I turned and saw a small car packed full of muscular, sporty guys who looked like they were still in college. At that time the little green man appeared and I hurriedly made my way across the road while my friend shouted out 'No!'

I finally said goodbye to my friend and got into the train station. While waiting at the gates for the train to arrive, I decided to blog about my 2 encounters for the night on my Palm Treo 680. Barely 2 minutes into blogging, the guy beside me who had been staring at the Krispy Kreme box for a while suddenly sprang to life and walked up to me. "Excuse me, did you get the Krispy Kremes here?" Taken aback as I was deep into my blogging, I looked up and saw a guy probably in his late 20s or early 30s, looking like he had been hit by a truck, with hope written over his face, and said ' Sorry, a colleague brought them over from Sydney for me.' He was immediately crestfallen and said 'Oh well, I've had a lot of bad news today so this is just one more. One more doesn't make much diff.' Then he went on to tell me that he's a Taiwanese working here in Singapore, but had studied in the States and ate Krispy Kremes all the time. 'I really miss it a lot' he repeated twice forlornly.

'Well I would have given you one if we were not at train station" I said guiltily.

"Oh please don't get me wrong! I'm not begging for one, just that I miss it so much but it wasn't with the intention to get one from you."

I smiled and then the train arrived, thanfully. we parted ways after which I saw him making calls on his mobile with a tense, angry countenance of one under great pressure. When I got off the train at my stop, still holding my Krispy Kremes, I felt like a princess walking home with a prized trophy...

Normsoft Email

2007-07-07T12:56:00.000+08:00

My email to Normsoft, developer of hblogger:

Hi, does the current version of hblogger support "subject" so that I can add a title to my blogger post already?

Also, will the labels feature be included in the next upgrade?

Normsoft's reply to me:
Hi,

Currently the subject field is not supported but that is something we are looking at adding. Also we may add support for labels as well. We have a company policy not to publish the release dates for feature enhancements so I can't tell you if/when you might see them added, but they are definitely under consideration.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Take care,
NormSoft Support Team
NormSoft, Inc.
www.normsoft.com

Thanks. Not too happy about your non date disclosure as it could be a couple of years before the new feature kicks in...

Unwise Spending

2007-07-07T12:29:00.000+08:00

I realised that the only way I could keep up with my blogging was from my Palm Treo, when I'm traveling from one place to another. I was doing ok on hblogger though it had a few irritating bugs like not having subject header i.e. no title, and not being able to post images for posting to beta blogger. as I was on trial version of the software, I naively thought that these problems would disappear with the purchased version. as they say, desperation makes a fool of the best of us.

Well, I just made the purchase of hblogger at USD14.95, and sadly, the problems didn't go away. I also found out that I would need an FTP server if I wanted to post images to my blog! I checked their website at Normsoft, and the last update by the company was in 2004 which states the same bugs I was experiencing with the program. Given that its already 2007, I don't think I will be seeing version 3 anytime soon.

I was baffled why there was such a lack of good mobile blogging software. Annoyed actually. And the fact that I couldn't photoblog from my PDA was too irritating to leave it as it was. So I got to work and did some thinking and logical projections.

Which was the most popular online photo publishing site I had an account with? Flickr. As blogger allowed you to claim FTP sites so that your photos automatically got posted on your blog when you upload it to your FTP server, I wanted to investigate if it accepted the Flickr server (as opposed to paying for an FTP server juz to upload photos!).

Kudos to Flickr, they allow you to add blogger to your Flickr account which allows you to post a photo blog through Flickr using email! Best part is that you can opt to include email text in the post. I did a test and it worked beautifully - see the previous blog entitled test photo? That was sent via email from my PDA phone to a designated Flickr email which automatically got posted to my feather starfish account. Neat eh?

So what does it mean? That I could have saved myself USD14.95 if I had discovered this alternative solution earlier. Well, you learn something new everyday. If I saved you 14.95 through this post and you happen to be in town, you should really think about buying me coffee.

Test photo

2007-07-05T18:35:00.001+08:00

Test photo

Peter pretending to be a boozie during at East Coast food centre.

David Pogue of NY Times gives a (humorous) demo of iPhone

2007-06-28T12:22:00.000+08:00

Fantastic Wallpapers with High Resolutions

2007-06-21T13:34:00.000+08:00

Nevermind that these wallpapers are free, but that the images themselves are equally stunning. To download these free wallpapers, click here.

For your preview:

2007-06-19T19:46:00.001+08:00

Terminal 3 At Changi Airport Lures Tenants

2007-06-19T18:48:00.000+08:00

The new T3 terminal at Singapore Changi Airport has finally completed its renovations. The rumor was that it was originally built to house budget airline plyers.

However, budget airlines have very much been shouldered out of business by the big boys like SIA who reacted by offering promotions and deals during off peak season that were only slightly more expensive than their no frills competitors. These budget airlines did not have a chance to take off (pun not intended) before their business model caved in.

As a result, T3 at Changi Airport is now sorely in need of tenants after having cost CAAS $1.75 billion dollars to build. Standing at 7 storeys high, it is capable of catering to 22 million passengers a year. SIA is its only confirmed tenant, who are moving 50% of their operations to T3 consisting of long haul flights to United States, Europe, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.

With 67 airlines based at T1, and 12 airlines (including SIA) at T2, CAAS is now attempting to lure airlines over from these terminals over to T3, the carrot being a 6 month free rental caveat, premium lounge and unique check in systems. While these terms were attractive enough to set Cathay Pacific, Qatar Airways, Korean Air, Southern China Airlines, Thai Airways and United Airlines thinking, other airlines like Emirates have no plans to move as they had made considerable investments by opening multi-million dollar Emirates lounges in October last year. Plus that the rental rates for T3, when it kicks in, is 10 percent higher than rental rates at T1 and T2. In addition, relocation costs may outweigh the rental relief given.

So if you're a frequent flyer of any of the 6 airlines considering CAAS' T3 offer, do check if you will still be flying in at the old Terminals or to the spanking new T3. You might want to check out the "unique check in system" that CAAS has promised...

Soup Spoon Drama

2007-06-13T17:55:00.000+08:00

So there's this really yum soup chain of outlets that I sometimes go to which serves as a sort of comfort food for me (especially on rainy days!). I love the Tangy Tomato with Basil and the Boston Clam Chowder is also a favourite - when I'm not watching my weight. In any case, I've spent quite a number of yumelicious lunch hours at their outlets, particularly the one just at the basement of our office building.

Until a few weeks ago, a friend of mine informed me of the fact that a murder happened there, a few months ago. I must have missed the news on that, and he went on to elaborate that the chef, who had serious work conflict issues with the restaurant manager, knifed him in the heart in a fit of anger and he died at the hospital almost immediately after the ambulance rushed him there. The chef was found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to be hung. News was that they were supposed to have closed the branch at our office building after that.

This piece of information disappeared from my cognizant memories until when I saw my colleague in the next cubicle enjoying his lunch from The Soup Spoon. I recounted the story to him, and he - enjoying Beef Goulash - made a mock expression of horror and said "Gosh, this could possibly be human meat of the restaurant manager!!" Then he laughed at his own joke. Seeing him polish off the rest of the bloodish red beef goulash after that did not help the shiver that went down my spine... so call me chicken.

Google's Powerpoint Slideshow Viewer Goes Live

2007-06-13T16:01:00.000+08:00

If you are ever at a meeting and had to present something on powerpoint presentation but had your laptop die on you, there might still be hope for you if you have a PDA that can browse the net and is modern enough to connect to a projector.

Just give a call to your colleague to send it to your gmail account, and wallah! you can run the slideshow of your presentation using the newly launched Google Slideshow Viewer and impress your audience with your resourcefulness. Read all about the new Google slideshow viewer here.

Thought balloon: I wonder if the new slideshow viewer will have an impact on the number of Microsoft Powerpoint licenses bought each year?

Bizarre History

2007-06-05T23:11:00.000+08:00

In my online scour for floating morsels of information / news that made an impact on me, I came across this photography site (2nd one for today), and had to stare at it in puzzlement for a full minute before what I was seeing hit me right between the eyes.

If you're wondering what kind of drinking fountain this is (like me!), read the labels on the wall. While racism has not been totally eradicated in the 21st century (will it ever be?), at least we are no longer confronted with such blatant displays of class discrimination, which is illegal today.

I personally found this photo totally heartbreaking and disturbing.

China's Bizarre Solution to Global Warming

2007-06-05T22:37:00.000+08:00

What is your biggest challenge when you have a population of 1,321,851,888 and are facing the phenomenom of 13.45 births but 7 deaths per 1000 population? According to TODAY Online, it's generating enough power / energy to keep your citizens cool enough during summer and warm enough during winter while trying to not to contribute to the problem of global warming.

Sound impossible? You bet. The Chinese government have resorted to setting laws for how high and how low their citizens can crank up their air conditioning / heaters during the 2 seasons, together with the imposition of power cuts in some parts of cities like Shanghai. Even then, they still face energy supply failures due to an overburden of the demand for power supply.

Read all about it here. So next time you crank up (or down!) on your air conditioner, think about how lucky you are... unless you live in China.

Zoomable Pictures

2007-06-04T22:01:00.000+08:00

While browsing for something that captured my fancy enough to blog about, I stumbled onto the "Scott Howard Photography" website and thought it was such a brilliant site. So there are thousands of photography sites out there - what makes this one so special?

It only boasts of 3 pictures, so to speak, of Sydney & Chicago night skylines. However, the Sydney night picture is taken at 720 mega pixels, using 169 photos. The Chicago by night picture is taken at 1000 mega pixels, using 194 photos. The Mega Machu Picchu one however, is taken at a staggering 1500 mega pixels composed of 400 photos.

Using a software called zoomify, you can zoom from a night landscape to a room where you can actually count the number of people inside it:

Chicago By Night

Chicago By Night - Zoomed In

Fascinated? Try it for yourself:

Chicago By Night
Sydney By Night
Mega Machu Piccu (only day pic)

Some iPhone tidbit

2007-06-04T20:57:00.000+08:00

For those of you Apple fans who are still awaiting the much anticipated release of the iPhone, here are some extra tidbits for you to "chew over" in your purchase decision.

Google Maps

2007-05-30T11:39:00.000+08:00

What's as cool, or even cooler than Google Earth? That is not a trick question - don't break your head trying to figure it out if you don't know. If any of you are fans of Google Earth (yes, the old version was a little clunky, but check out the new version, its pretty cool), you will love Google Maps. So I'm a little late in professing my wonderment with this Google tool. The reason is simply because it only got my attention now with their new feature "Street view". Though it currently works only for "major cities" (read: major cities in US), it is a cool feature to look forward to.

What is cool about Google map is that it merges both Google Earth with Google map views (you can always alternate between the 2 views via tabs on top) while allowing you to search nearby locations for restaurants, buildings, etc.

So I did a test. I remember giving up on the older version of Google Earth when I did a search on "Darling Harbour" after my introduction trip to our Sydney office and came up with nothing. I was appalled. Someone later told me that the satellite images shown on Google Earth is actually a couple of years old. So you see, Google didn't actually go out and BUY a satellite just to give us Google Earth. They simply retrieved old (i.e. non security threatening) images from government satellites that are already out there.

So when I was alerted that Google Map now had street views, and with the newer (improved) version of Google Earth, I wondered if the images and information were more up to date.

I went to Google map and typed in "Darling Harbor". This is what I got:

I can save it as a bookmark under "My Map" and do a search for any businesses nearby. Since it was Darling Harbor, I did a search for "Seafood" with some surprising results. Nick's Seafood place came up (and I remember eating there too!) along with many other seafood places, with addresses and even phone numbers!

I then did a zoom in on the map for road directions then switched over to satellite view for a visual recognition. Pretty cool:

Only thing is - I don't remember Nick's being where it is on the location that is showed. But then, my memory is not very good geographically - I only passed that subject by the skin of my teeth. It was surprising that all the seafood restos that were on darling harbour itself did not get "found". Only goes to point to 1 truth: It pays to be listed on Google...

Google in the Near Future?

2007-05-29T21:49:00.000+08:00

Google is such a useful tool that we search everything on it for information nowadays. Well, ALMOST anything... Who knows, in the next 10 or 5 years it might actually be "omniscient"? See below:

How Big Is Planet Earth?

2007-05-10T14:45:00.000+08:00

Buy Her a Heineken - If You Can

2007-05-10T14:24:00.000+08:00

Heineken released a poster ad where its target audience were specifically males trying to pick up women at bars / pubs. See if you can navigate your way in this chart to finally be able to buy a womant that (Heineken) beer...

The oPhone

2007-05-10T14:07:00.000+08:00

As apple enthusiasts await the availability of the iPhone in their respective markets, MS geeks are out creating prank ads of their "new product" that will beat the iPhone hands down - hence the birth of the oPhone.

Watch the video here. Whilst the video is funny at how far fetched the oPhone prank goes - one gets the feeling that this could be Microsoft's way of giving tribute to the iPhone. It is so good that the only phone that can beat it is an imaginary one...

Not My Job

2007-03-28T14:59:00.000+08:00

This picture clearly illustrates how the the person painting the lines for the road refused to go beyond the call of his duty...

Good News for Tolkien Fans

2007-03-26T22:05:00.000+08:00

On Apr 17, Tolkien's unfinished book "The Children of Húrin" which has been completed by his son Tolkien's "voluminous notes", will be released. Tolkien experts expect a great box office hit if film rights for the book can be secured. I wonder if Borders takes pre-orders for the book...

Now Computers Can Even Tell You If You're Beautiful (Or Not)

2007-03-19T02:18:00.000+08:00

Two Australian inventors have invented a software that measures the distance of your features, and tells you if you're beautiful or not. Their reference? Over 200 pictures taken of beautiful women of the world, and the distrances of their features.

The industry to benefit most from this software would be the cosmetic surgery trade. Imagine people telling surgeons of how far apart they want their nose to be from their eyes from now on instead of taking pictures of eyes / noses that they like to show to surgeons.

Seems like another frightening step toward stereotyping / conforming all standards to one common standard set by "experts" of the world...

Read all about it here.

New Strides

2007-03-16T08:55:00.000+08:00

So I'm going for a small gathering today. The previous small group I was with had all signed up for a combined church training program with a schedule I was unable to commit to. As such, I was deployed to another small group where the average age group was 23. You can imagine I had a hard time fitting in, particularly since my life had been an eventful one.

So I haven't been there much. A friend from my old small group then recommended another small group that was just starting out to me - one that her best friend and pursuer was in. The said pusuer was the leader of the small group, and my friend was not interested. To allay her guilt for constant rejections to dinner, movies, flowers even, she introduced people to help out in his small group instead.

That was yesterday. Continuing this entry today, the gathering last night did me wonders. The host worked for a Dutch oil company, very hospitable, charming and talented. The new people I met there were more my age group, and you could tell that they all had eventful lives too as there is a certain toughness to them. My stress and panic attacks were considerably dispelled near the end of the night.

I rushed home at 10.30 pm to hook up with my financial planner where we connected via his server to start our quest together in Never Winter Nights. I started a new character profile as a Wizard with Transmutation spells. I am so powerful that all mind spells would not be able to affect me, and I have a "Disintegration" spell to blow people into smithereens at the flick of my hand. If you have seen Fantastic 4, you would know what I mean. How the Phoenix disintegrated everything into nothingness with no mess, no blood, no fuss...

How I wish I could export those abilities into real life. No mind spells of organization change and new boss highhandedness can affect me. And any time someone dares to mess with me, I will just disintegrate them into nothingness and there would be no evidence pointing toward me as the culprit for disappearing persons... *evil grin*

[Posted with hblogger 2.0 http://www.normsoft.com/hblogger/]

Breakdown Signs & Symptoms

2007-03-15T12:19:00.000+08:00

Cold sweat, blanked out mind, Confusion, blurred vision, trembling hands, pervasive feeling of anxiety... nothing that a good, hot cup of coffee can't fix!

[Posted with hblogger 2.0 http://www.normsoft.com/hblogger/]

I'm Sorry, Did you say Gaming or Gambling?

2007-03-14T11:10:00.000+08:00

A friend of mine had heard about my work woes and called me up yesterday. Apparently she had mentioned me to a friend in the gaming industry who needed a web and online marketer. He was interested, and wanted to talk to me.

"No obligations," she said. "Just meet up with him and you never know." I was intrigued. Having recently started Never Winter Nights gaming with my financial planner, I was soon enthralled with the technology in producing a game. Especially now when it was almost like producing a mini movie with cut scenes, voice talents, character profiling, etc.

And there are some very smart cookies out there in the gaming industry for online marketing. Capturing an already existent fan audience, they created comprehensive walkthroughs of the game, how to gain influence on characters so that they wouldn't betray you in the final battle, how to craft weapons and armor, etc. What they then created was a huge hit stats for their web page, which equalled huge advertising revenue. Using DHTML and layer style sheets, these ads splash over the contents of the page and you are forced to view it while it plays out. It could be hugely annoying, but site owners keep the ad to 5 seconds, and only once in 24 hours. So if you regularly return to the site within a day, you will see the advertisement once only. In addition, the ads are hugely graphic and visually engaging, so the pain is minimized. They also give you options like the "X" button, or "click to skip the ad". Small price to pay for the number of spoilers in the site. And given that the ads are of other games in the same category, you might just click on the ads out of interest or simply to support the thoughtful people who created the site so you can win the final battle against the Lord of Shadows...

Anyway, I was looking forward to the chat to dig up the expose behind the gaming industry, and agreed to talk to him. He was considerate enough to call after office hours, and he went directly to what I was doing and my qualifications as an online marketer. I mentioned to him my previous positions and scope of my experience, and then he went into what he was doing.

"We are a company that does games for gambling. We don't actually collect bookings, but help our clients to market gambling in online gaming."

"I'm sorry, did you say gambling or gaming?" (that's me seeing all my excitement and fantasies of getting into the gaming industry as an online marketer being smashed like godzilla crunching his foot on them and viciously pounding them into the ashes...)

"Both. Of course its all legal and approved by the government...."

I didn't hear much of the conversation after as I couldn't quite decide what I felt about working for a gambling industry. While it is legalised here, there is something in my moral upbringing that is glaring at me with disapproval and heaping tons of guilt on me even being part of this conversation. You can blame my parents for that - I would have been filthy rich by now if not for my morals.

I politely followed the rest of the conversation through with him asking me to take a look at their website, and meeting for coffee later. I don't think our appointment will survive the week, as I don't think I can last the moral glare for an entire week. Oh well, back to the classifieds...

A Feeling of Foreboding

2007-03-13T22:17:00.000+08:00

Its been another trying day, and work is starting to become a chore for non web related projects. Things are not boding well with Prima Donna who's already started taking over the functions of my current boss who is leaving end of this week.

As the last thing she could do for us, my boss had arranged for our performance agreement meetings (used to rate our performance at the end of the year by checking it against the list of our deliverables agreed on) this week, when she was still around, with Prima Donna sitting in. In this way, our agreements on the number of projects would be fair, our deliverables will remain fairly reasonable and consistent, and our budgets would be safe.

It was not to be so. In her quest for world dominion starting with AP, Prima Donna had pushed all the meetings to next week. My boss would not be around, and she would have full authority to mess with our deliverables and projects. Following that move, my boss also recalled all previously agreed on budgets for 2007, deferring it to Prima Donna's leadership.

In addition to that, we have just received an email that she wants to meet us on a fortnightly basis to get reports from us. This because our new VP expects the same of her. While I think this is a good discipline for a boss to have, I doubt it will be beneficial for us as her intention is to give our new VP a good report rather than to give us direction or mentoring. I'm definitely going to miss my boss...

2007-03-10T02:25:00.000+08:00

I am sending this post from my new toy, the Palm Treo 680. Why not the new 750? because it runs on the window OS. Duh...!

[Posted with hblogger 2.0 http://www.normsoft.com/hblogger/]

The Jiffy Lube Scam

2007-03-07T21:15:00.000+08:00

Do you own a car? Are you among one of the millions of majority vehicle owners who prefer mechanics to fix your vehicle for you? Do you visit your local Jiffy Lube to get your car fixed for you? If so, you might want to dig up your old car service receipts and go somewhere else to check that they actually fixed / replaced what they claimed to have done.

Read all about it here.

OR better yet - See the scam CAUGHT ON TAPE here:

PS. Its great to finally use the phrase "CAUGHT ON TAPE" in neat capital letters... Usually they're ads for cheesy exposes, but hey, I think the scam here warrants a "CAUGHT ON TAPE!!!!" announcement...

Google CEO and Co-Founders ask for $1 annual salary

2007-03-06T20:35:00.000+08:00

On CNN Money, it was reported that Google CEO & Co-Founders Eric Schmidt, Larry Page and Sergey Brin asked for annual salaries of $1 for 2007, without any bonuses while other executives got hefty pay raises from 250K per year to 450K per year.

Why can't my bosses be like that? Maybe its time to start searching the job page of google.com.sg for openings...

Read all about it here

Play Catchup

2007-03-06T20:05:00.000+08:00

Its been a long while since I blogged, so I guess this entry / series of entries(??) will be about playing catchup, a term I've long since become familiar with this past year.

Its certainly been a most eventful few months, and those that I do remember are enough to fill one entire week's worth of newspapers. Of course, I exaggerate, but I also kid you not.

We could start with the drama of politics at my work place, and the shocking announcement today that my boss is taking leave indefinitely, and will be replaced by Ms Company Prima Donna, indefinitely. The drama is amplified when our Sales Director also announced his sabbatical (he has 226 days of long service leave in his account) and will be back in AP only in July. This news following the announcement of our new VP and a couple of months earlier, our new President of Global Lubricants.

It was interesting that the time the news hit me (I happened to hear the "rumor" an hour or so before the announcement), there were tremors felt in my office building. I felt like I could have fallen off my chair, and my colleague's computer screen actually shook. It was worse on the 24th floor, where the tremors were quite apparent. For the rest of the day, our office was constantly hearing status updates about the quakes felt in the building and that we would be notified in the event should an evacuation be needed, etc. etc. etc.

And I finally went in to the doc's today to find out why I passed out cold at the end of a company dinner which we held for our new VP. Thankfully, the "boss" had left for his hotel, and I was actually in the middle of a conversation with my boss who was telling me that she wanted to send copies of the internal newsletter that I was in charge of to the RCF, not that I know who they were. It was after that exact sentence that I passed out. My colleague later jokingly told my boss to stop traumatizing me. When I awoke, I was totally unaware that I had passed out, and wondered why I was sitting on a chair with so many people around me. My boss, after making sure that I was ok, said, "Bad joke, but are you pregnant?" And I thought, "What a strong woman!"

While it may sound like a strange thought, to put things in perspective - my boss had recently lost a baby through miscarriage. She found out she was pregnant when she passed out at our company D&D last year and was thrilled to be a mother again. However, it was a risky pregnancy due to her age, and sadly, didn't manage to keep the baby. And at that instant, the fact that she could make a joke about it - I am impressed by her ability to bounce back.

Anyway, to the doc's I went today after the announcement of Ms Prima Donna planning to take over the AP world, thinking they might have some sort of pill to cure injustice and management woes. Sadly, they weren't even able to diagnose what was wrong with me - it had been a week since I fainted - and resorted to poking me with a needle a couple of times to draw blood from me.

The doc informed me that she suspected I passed out due to work exhaustion, but needed to do the due diligence to exclude all the other possibilities such as:
Thyroid disorder
Diabetes
Anaemia
Low Blood Count
Low Blood Glucose

In addition, she DID discover that I was having gastric problems as my stomach was bloated with gas. A sign of gastric, for which she gave me some pills for.

So that is the adventure for today. What I have not included in this entry is:

How I almost got arrested by my government
How I was locked out of my home
Why my wall is being redone
How water bubbles form on my wall
Why I hate private schools
Why I hate American Universities
New Career Options I am considering
The new, really cute Marketing Manager in New Zealand
My Chinese New year
How My Parents' Neighbour were Burgled and they nearly were too
My New Gaming Past Time,

etc. etc. etc.

How Things Get Done

2007-02-02T00:51:00.000+08:00

As mentioned, our Supply Chain Director jumped on me over an email sent by our headquarters on a global audit project. My boss had appointed me the project coordinator for AP, and my job was to help ensure that the audit was being carried out for all countries in the region, and to compile country updates and send them to global.

Well, I had a meeting with the key 3 markets in AP (as they were the only one listed in the template sent over by global) and obtained all their updates, including their requests from global for assistance in issues arising out of the audit, and for more guidelines. I communicated that over to our HQ, and received the guidelines some time later.

For some reason, the person in charge of the global audit decided to send a summary update on the status of completion of the audit in each country. However, they only included countries in Latin and North America. And the information had been compiled by the Public Affairs Business Unit for our Business Unit in those countries.

I have no idea why she did not include in her summary other regions like Europe, Pan Asia and Asia Pacific. She obviously has her updates from AP already. However, unbenownst to her, the email she sent got my Supply Chain director jumping on me - in a nutshell, he was asking me if I had done my job. It wouldn't have been so bad if he had personally checked with me first. What he did was to write directly to my boss, copying me in the email. In it, he asked my boss why regions like Europe, Pan Asia and Asia Pacific weren't included in the update sent. It wasn't my boss' job to know that, and she would not have access to that information. Then in the next line, he directed his question to me with "I assume you are coordinating this?". He obviously knew that I was. I had been receiving emails from him if I had been doing my job on this every week since he knew that the Vice President of our company was visiting the region for a launch related to the audit. I wonder if he was aware of the fact that my boss had a personal health issue for which she had taken medical and personal leave until the 2nd week of February. She had requested that no email messages be sent to her unless absolutely on a must-know basis. I didn't feel this warranted a must-know for her part.

Funny how no one cared about the audit at all until when the President decides to visit us for a related issue. Funny also how otherwise calm, sane and reasonable human beings suddenly turn into nasty ogres out to make sure that they have got their backs covered. Of course, it could be that I am taking this the wrong way.

Luck is Relative

2007-02-01T23:55:00.000+08:00

So it was one of the worst days I have ever had in the office. The primary trigger for the bad day was of course the discovery that Prima Donna would be mucking through my personal work performance profile, AND discussing it with a group of my bosses' peers which was utterly humiliating. My boss had done me the favour of handing my dirt to the enemy who has now been magically given the power to decide my fate in the company.

In addition, I had problems with a vendor with creative tantrums, and claimed that because I had been unable to meet the timeline which they had drawn for me, they were ending the project and pronounced it finished even though I had not approved on any of the copy at all. To make matters worse, procurement had mistakenly paid them the sum of the entire project so I was without negotiation power.

Throw in the email from our Supply Chain Director who literally jumped on me for a global audit project for which I was in charge of coordinating for AP. More of this in the next entry.

Then have disgruntled colleagues who start panicking that they have missed my deadline for them by over 2 months and start demanding updates from me on the status of the project, forgetting that I had already updated him 2 months ago and even given him the materials I needed him to work on. As he couldn't find them, it automatically became my fault that he didn't have it, and that he had missed the deadline for the project.

At this point in time, my job is like a hot potato that's roasting in my hand that I'm dying to drop off. I thought this was the worse run of bad luck that I have been having this week.

Then I meet up with a friend to resume our regular gym sessions. We went for dinner after our workout and she received a phone call on the way to the coffee shop. She was visibly upset after and told me that she had a friend who discovered that she had leukaemia immediately after she had given birth to her first born. This friend of hers had just lost her dad to cancer. For a while, the friend underwent chemotherapy and seemed to have become better and even got a bone marrow tranplant from her sister. However, the phone call was to inform her that her friend's body was rejecting the bone marrow, and that her white blood cells was down to an all time low count of 0.1. To make things worse, her friend's son had somehow contracted hand, foot and mouth disease. And now her husband was down with flu, and there was no one to take care of her boy.

Luck is so relative isn't it? I thought I was having the worst luck of all this week. But compared with what this woman is going through, I'm considered blessed. Of course, if I were to compare myself with Prima Donna, I might seem cursed. The conclusion of the day? Shit happens, and life is unfair. But everyone still has their course to run. Its not really how bad a life you have, but how you choose to live it that makes it worth your while, or not.

Weird Twist of Fate

2007-02-01T23:30:00.000+08:00

Our company employees have recently undergone our annual performance review. That includes me, of course. After the review with our bosses, they will then have a meeting where all employees on the same grade scale will be compared with their peers, and a performance score will be given to each employee based on bosses' recommendation of who should be deserving of a 1 (the top performing employee) to 3 (employees who have completely failed to complete all their designated tasks).

Well, today was that meeting for discussing group of employees of my employee grade level. Typically, my boss would be representing me, highlighting my achievements and tasks to compare with my peers, and recommend me for the grade score that I deserved. By a strange twist of fate, she is on medical leave from yesterday to 7 Feb, and has asked the person who has her delegation of authority to attend the meeting on her behalf, and to represent me. Usually, it would be our group operations manager. For some mind-boggling reason, she decided to delegate that task to none other than our company Prima Donna. It is too humiliating to think of her going through the list of my personal achievements and tasks, dragging out delayed timelimes and snickering over comments from my colleagues in areas of room for improvement. I can certainly imagine what satisfaction of sweet revenge she would have savoured this morning.

I never really understood the saying "the straw that broke the camel's back" as a straw seems too puny, and an exaggeration. I finally understood today the might of that straw.

To Tighten Belts, SIA to Shorten Skirts

2007-01-23T20:31:00.000+08:00

by Michael Bloombird
Singapore Airlines has said they will be taking immediate measures to deal with the losses arising from the economic crisis. According to SIA spokesperson Ms Choe Puay Kee, "We must cut costs and focus on our strengths. We can do both of these by shortening the length of the sarong worn by our Singapore Girls."

Ms Choe said that while other airlines could compete with SIA on services and amenities, "our real appeal is the Singapore Girl, so that's what we must exploit."

Accordingly, the traditional Pierre Balmain-designed batik sarong kebaya worn by female flight attendants will have its skirt length shortened to halfway up the thigh. The estimated savings in fabric costs is estimated to be around $3m annually.

"The savings will be a real leg up for us financially," said Ms. Choe.

The new change in outfit will be accompanied by an ad campaign bearing the slogan, "Fly the Friendly Skies, and See More Friendly Thighs".

Air stewardess Ms Por Ang Mor accepted the measures as necessary. "Boh pian, mah. If we don't let them cut, we all sure kena chop."

SIA had also intended to shorten the length of the stewardesses' blouses to expose their belly buttons in line with current fashion trends, but, as Ms. Choe put it, "We didn't have the stomach for such a drastic
move."

Posted on Our Refrigerator Door

2007-01-23T17:36:00.000+08:00

After the incident of the non-compliant booze, an A4 sized paper was found taped to the office refrigerator door on our floor:

Corporate Policy XXX

“The use, possession, distribution, purchase, or sale of alcohol by any person while on Company premises, or while operating Company equipment is prohibited unless prior permission has been obtained from appropriate Company management. Any person under the influence of alcohol is prohibited from entering Company premises, engaging in Company business, or operating Company equipment. Any use of alcohol that causes or contributes to unacceptable job performance or unusual job behavior is also prohibited.”

P.S. Please remove. I really do not want to see good wine go to waste.

Yipes.

Non-Compliant Booze

2007-01-22T17:42:00.000+08:00

Last week, following the international safety week day, someone had found booze in the fridge on our floor. Unfortunately, the Corporate Policy Compliance unit (not the actual name) sits on the same level(how stupid can some people get??) and they found the booze. It wasn't difficult.

They promptly got someone to shout out on our floor that having booze stocked in the fridge on office premises wasn't compliant with corporate policy and demanded that it be removed immediately.

It was done quickly, but so discreetly that no one knew who put it in the fridge. Next thing you know, our boss received an email from the Corporate Policy Compliance unit asking her if she had approved for the booze to be brought into office premises with an attached copy of the policy booklet. We promptly replied, "nope, not me" and "Me neither". The mystery remains unsolved, and I'm pretty sure the compliance unit will not let it go that easily. Who knows, they may work with our ex-FBI Security head to weasel out the person with the audacity to breach our corporate policies...

Conned!

2007-01-22T17:27:00.000+08:00

Our sweet department secretary, whom I've recently got to help me with a global project sent me an sms early this morning.

"Are you in the office" she asks.

We work from home sometimes when we don't have any meetings and need a place to work where people aren't constantly popping into our cubicles to ask us on-the-spur questions, pull us into impromptu meetings, chase us for something that's way down in our priority list, etc.

In a meeting, I replied "Yes, in a meeting. What's up"? She later replies me when I'm in my second meeting for the day that my boss would like to speak with her and myself on that same global project mentioned late in the afternoon. It would be right after my second meeting.

"Ok, I should be done by then" I replied, and she tells me that she will call me to let me know when my boss is ready for the meeting. I managed to squeeze 10 minutes between meetings to send her and my boss 3 files on the project plus an update file. I went down at the appointed time and found my boss still on a previous conference call. So we waited outside her room until she was done. I used that time to brief and update the secretary on the 3 files, the process following and what she needs to do.

When my boss was done for the meeting, to my surprise, she strode out of her room said "Let's go" and walked toward the central area. The meeting was to be in her office. I thought, "Must be that she needs to get some materials from the secretary's desk or from the printer."

I follow them into the central area and lo and behold suddenly heard a choir composed of my colleagues singing the birthday song, saw the carrot cake with the single candle, and realised that I'd been conned.

We spent the rest of the session (while gobbling down the cake) on the booze-in-fridge incident on my floor (see next post).

Ok, so I was touched. *sniff*

Someone Get On The Keyboard!

2007-01-22T17:25:00.000+08:00

Happy Birthday to me, Happy Birthday to me... :) I'm 25 again this year...

Bring out the Champagne and Send out That Resumé

2007-01-19T17:41:00.000+08:00

This post is another "Good News, Bad News" story. The good news is that God seems to have heard the angst of my previous post, and answered. I no longer have to work with the company Prima Donna - Hurray! (No, I wasn't fired).

The not so encouraging news? She has just been promoted in an unbelievable 3 grade jump to the General Manager position in Pan Asia. Shocking. I almost fell over my chair when I heard it. Impact of the news? My colleague was so upset and disappointed with the selection process that he wanted to send a letter of complaint to management on the selection process.

The company Prima Donna only had 2 launches in her sector, all done by the country managers and not herself, and her sector figures were way below target. But no one checked on that when recommending her for the job. And her application for the job was approved based on recmmendation by our Vice President who only heard and saw the presentation of her programs but never actually saw the implementation plan or figures.

That solicits questions on what kind of management I have in my company, and what exactly I'm working my behind off for. Sadly, I couldn't live with myself if I were to conduct my professional life like the Prima Donna, and I don't fancy not being rewarded for my hard work. Guess its time to start passing out my resumé.

New Fad in SF - Ghostriding

2007-01-12T11:32:00.000+08:00

What is ghost riding? It is getting on top of your car when it is moving and doing a dance from the hyphy culture. You have to see it to believe it...

Thanks again to Matt for this post!

Never Tick Off Sci-Fi / Fantasy Writers

2007-01-12T11:02:00.000+08:00

"Bruce walked around any more. Some people might ought to her practiced eye, at her. I am so silky and braid shoulders. At sixty-six, men with a few feet away from their languid gazes."

Will you publish a book that reads like this? Apparently, this script was submitted to PublishAmerica which promptly sent a letter that "This book deserves a chance" and sent the contract to the writers for publishing.

The title of the book, Atlanta Nights was the work of 30 sci-fi and fantasy writers who took action after PublishAmerica made derogatory remarks about them. It all started when sci-fi writers criticised PublishAmerica for being a vanity press, or a publishing house that will publish anything for a fee, leaving the author to do their own marketing. Their books were printed as and when the order came with no refund policy, which means very little of their books out of their 11,000 titles were sold.

PublishAmerica returned their criticism by calling them "literary parasites" who "looted, leeched or plagiarized their way to local stardom." Incited, the writers hatched a plot to intentionally come up with a really bad book, and submitted it to PublishAmerica through a friend unknown to the industry.

The style in the book swung from hard-boiled detective to women's sexy shopping novels. The style changes from chapter to chapter, and which characters were in which chapter was determined by rolling dice.

Chapter 21 was left blank because one writer missed deadline. Another chapter was included twice. MacDonald, the compiler for the book, took portions of two other chapters, ran them through a software program that randomly reordered the words, then accepted all the spell check and grammar fixes his software recommended.

The result is Chapter 34, nine pages of disconnected gibberish that begins: "Bruce walked around any more. Some people might ought to her practiced eye, at her. I am so silky and braid shoulders. At sixty-six, men with a few feet away from their languid gazes."

After the manuscript was submitted, PublishAmerica sent the contract over, which the writers promptly posted up on the internet, together with a copy of the book. PublishAmerica caught on to the hoax, and promptly resent them a letter that the book needed more work, but the word was already out.

So moral of the story? Never tick off sci-fi / fantasy writers. With their creativity and imagination, you never know what they can think up to get back at you.

READ AN EXCERPT

Chapter 9

Penelope Urbain let out the clutch as she sped around the curve. She felt a thrill — partly from the roaring engine, from the speed of the car (she was moving fast, too fast, on a suburban street, and she liked the speed too much). Partly, no, mostly — mostly it was the thrill of anticipation. She was going to meet Bruce Lucent, and she was eager to see him.

She could not have said why she wanted him so badly, but she did. Wanted to see him! That was all it was, she was curious, more than curious. Eager, but — not too eager.

There. That was his home. That was where she meant to be.

She hit the brakes hard, skidded to a stop in front of his house.

He was in the doorway, waiting for her.

ORDER THE BOOK!

Company Prima Donnas

2007-01-11T17:09:00.001+08:00

Working in an MNC has its fair share of challenges. Due to the size of the company, many challenges are understandable, and even expected. However, nothing prepares you for the company Prima Donna that you meet. I have met my fair share of Prima Donnas, but the one in my department is one mind boggling sample.

What's a company Prima Donna? They are the people who love being in the limelight, think they are better than everybody else, insist their own way, claim credit for what others have done and bully them into doing work for them, while refusing to contribute to any other projects that do not raise their profile in the company. They are self centred political creatures who are out to "dazzle" higher management with self promotion while unabashedly bullying others into doing work for them and insisting they agree that she's the best thing that happened to the company. Any of these sound familiar?

Well, part of my duties in my business unit is collating business review reports from the various countries, getting respective sector managers to look at the country reports, compile them into sector reports and send them over to me. I'll collate them for the Asia Pacific region and send them over the headquarters as the business review report for AP.

It was quite a challenge to get our country managers and sector managers to keep to their deadlines at first. They are already bogged down with too much work and administration, reports and presentations. However, they soon learned that I would hound them, call them, bug them and stalk them until they got it done and that it was easier for them to comply to the deadline than to try to run away from it. After a few months, people were actually all keeping to their deadlines and we have never been late in submitting our report to our headquarters after the first couple of months. My boss was pleased, and things were going well.

When I say all, I mean all but one, none other than our department prima donna. She simply ignored all my reminders of the deadline, and for the first 2 reports, I actually completed her sector report for her. The first time I rationalised that she was unfamiliar with the format (as were all of us) and was busy with a launch. The second time, she was on business travel so I gave her another chance. Third time around, I wised up to the fact that she did not even care about the report and simply expected me to complete it for her.

I put my foot down, reported it to my boss, and got her consensus that meeting the deadline was the priority, and that missing information would have to be provided after the initial submission. I communicated to the department Prima Donna that if she did not meet her deadline, I would have to submit AP's business review without her sector report, and copied my boss and our group operations manager on the same email. She promptly completed her report within the same evening and sent it over.

After that incident, she was on time for all her business reports until this month. Plans for her "top" programs were falling through (due to her lack of leadership to the country launching the program, and due to insufficient business development of the program). Initially scheduled to be launched in Aug 2006, It was postponed to Oct 2006, and now again to Feb/Mar of 2007. She had little to show for her sales volume. Somehow, she had managed to get herself involved in another high level project in AP, and management in the States were impressed at the number of high level projects she was taking on, without realising the sad state of those programs in AP. Heady with the power of having top management's approval, she reverted to her bullish tactics and once again to ignoring my requests for her to complete her report on time.

I gave her a deadline, reminding her in a text message that my priority was submitting AP's report on time, and if she should fail to submit it by noon today, I would have to submit the report without her sector report. She replied promptly with a single word, "cool". I couldn't believe this was the attitude of a high level executive in a company that placed importance on integrity and fostering respect for your colleagues and peers. I was stunned. We are talking about a woman in her mid thirties who is married with a son, has an international career, and worked in global FMCG companies...

Since that was her decision, it was not my place to do her job for her and I still had a job to do. I had to inform my boss that I would be submitting the region's report to our headquarters without the commercial sector report, and conveyed my communication with the sector manager to her. After I had cooled down a little, I decided that the text message warranted a response. I picked up my phone and sent her a text that I had made note of her decision, and informed her that I had informed my boss of her decision as the report was a representation of AP's performance to our head company. There was no reply until an hour later when I received a reply that she had sent her report to me.

I am immensely baffled by her actions, and trying to understand her is a mind boggling affair. She is mean to the people who try to assist her in the projects (taking all their ideas and then kicking them out of the project claiming they are trying to steal her credit, and then working their ideas into her proposal and claiming it as her work!) and is treating her new hire badly. He had wanted to report for work in January this year to have a short break between jobs, but she had insisted he report for work at our company immediately as she wanted him around. And then she went ahead and took leave for December so that when he reported for work, she was not around! So he practically spent his 2 weeks in an empty office (everyone was on holiday leave) and trying to do what he could to get himself orientated by speaking to whomever else was around.

A global colleague whom I'm close to told me that our head office is very impressed with her because of the presentations she has sent over to them, and how she has "marketed" them. Apparently, she is expected to get a grade "1" review which is for outstanding performance. Something which is even more difficult to understand. There is even speculation that her counterpart in our head office may be leaving, and she is pushing hard for his job. It would be a promotion for her. Personally, I would be glad for her promotion. Not that I'm rooting for injustice, but at least I'll have peace of mind or as the saying goes, to have "plucked the thorn from out of my flesh..."

Bizzare Cause for Traffic Jam

2007-01-11T16:51:00.000+08:00

One of the most frustrating / stressing times is when you're in a cab, caught in a bad traffic jam. Those are the times when I consider living in a busy city a big pain, especially when the meter jumps like a mad kangaroo all the way to Mars...

However, there are certain events that living in a city keeps us away from, like this bizzare cause of a traffic jam seen in South Africa:

iPhone - The Ultimate Digital Device

2007-01-10T17:30:00.000+08:00

Its finally here!! The much awaited iPhone, thought by many to be a mere rumor, is finally released by Apple in an announcement. Not to disappoint, the iPhone is a combination of a cell phone, iPod and Blackberry device all in one! It plays music, widescreen movies, surfs the net, checks yur email, yada yada yada.

Read all about it

Watch the Announcement on CNBC.

While consumers are waiting in anticipation, the ringtone industry have much to worry about. As the iPhone is an iPod, any song can be used as a ringtone and any photo uploaded to the iPhone can also be used as wallpapers. No more downloading of ringtones and wallpapers from sites of service providers as you can get them from your personal archives of iTunes and photos.

While the ringtone industry won't die overnight, it will definitely shrink as iPhone is the foreleader of future mobiles to come for the next 3-5 years. This will of course depend on the price of the phone that comes with or without contracts with mobile service providers...

International Safety Week & Global Security

2007-01-10T16:31:00.000+08:00

Sound like big words, and we went through them early this morning from 9.30 am to 12 pm. While other business units preferred to spread their training out over 1 hour periods daily to cover the week (hence the International Safety WEEK), our business unit decided to squeeze all topics into 1 morning.

While we had some interesting talks and videos on safety, the most interesting talk was on Global Security. They are the ones who send us Travel Advisories on when it is unsafe to travel to a particular country due to terrorist threats, natural disasters, or security breaches. What was impressive to learn was that their services are also available to us when we are traveling on vacation. There is a hotline to call should we ever find ourselves in a bind, at all times, 24 hours a day. This leads to a stray thought - Have you ever watched "The Terminal"? Maybe if Tom Hanks were working for our company he would not have found himself stuck at the NY International airport for 9 months...

As Global Security also include investigations into duplicates (counterband production of our products by unauthorized dealers / companies), theft, fraud, etc., what was an interesting piece of information for us was that one of the bigwigs in our Global Security team was a former top personnel of the FBI... Suddenly, I felt so much better and safer as an employee of our company...

Cat Massage for Lucky Dog

2007-01-09T00:57:00.000+08:00

If only the underdog were as lucky as this lazy dog...

The Art of Pencil Sculpture

2007-01-09T00:25:00.000+08:00

The Best Unkown Mac Applications

2007-01-08T23:51:00.000+08:00

If you own an Apple computer and would like to be able to do more cool stuff on it, these mac applications by Dustin Bachrach will put you on the road to enhancing fun and functionality on your mac.

Best Unknown Mac applications - Page 1
Best Unknown Mac applications - Page 2

Unbelievable POS System

2007-01-07T10:10:00.000+08:00

A man walked into a gaming shop to buy some Magic cards worth $10.80. He paid for it via his credit card, not aware that the store was a new branch and didn't have a POS system set up yet. He saw the cashier typing his information into a computer and when he had finished and turned the computer over for him to check his information, he was shocked to find that the clerk had been entering his personal credit information through AOL to another store branch to check if his credit card was good and for registration of sale. To top it off, he was given a handwritten receipt for his purchase.

Read all about it.

Grungy Manhattan Building

2007-01-07T09:53:00.000+08:00

Buildings on Manhattan's 188 Suffolk Street underwent power washing. The before and after picture shows how sooty the air is in New York.

Looks that Kill

2007-01-06T23:19:00.000+08:00

Was surfing the internet, and came across this article. Thought some of you might find it sad, yet funny. Its about a teenage boy who meets the girl he's been chatting to face to face for the first time, and was so disappointed with her looks that he actually killed himself. It puts an end to guy's denial that looks aren't everything for them.

Read all about it here.

Phallic Stress Reliever Ends College Girl in Jail

2007-01-06T02:34:00.000+08:00

A college student was arrested at an airport and put in jail for 3 weeks as she had condoms filled with flour, given to her as stress relievers as a college gag. The police claimed that field tests showed that it was not flour but cocaine. She was immediately arrested with a USD500,000 bail. After 3 weeks and when tests were carried out again, it was found that there were no traces of drugs at all and that it was indeed flour that was in the condoms. Read all about it here.

So if you're ever in need of a stress reliever and need something to squeeze, reach for a squash ball or two. It would certainly have saved this young lady from a 3 week traumatic stay in a prison cell.

Free Beethoven & Mozart Podcasts

2007-01-06T02:21:00.000+08:00

As the title suggests, you can download musical masterpieces from the great maestros themselves from a german site. It downloads to your iTunes program and is readily synced to your iPod for listening pleasure. Free classical music can also be downloaded from Wikipedia.

Download them here.

Map Addressed Christmas Card

2007-01-06T02:14:00.000+08:00

When a steel worker wanted to send a holiday card to a coworker but forgot his address, he tried his luck and drew the map of his coworker's home. He sketched the map onto the front of the envelope from the map his coworker had shown him, and where he had pointed where his home was.

Amazingly, the holiday card arrived at his coworker's place after 9 days. The postman who delivered the post card had remembered his coworker's name when sorting out mail at the post office. Read all about it here.

Other Animals in Trees

2007-01-06T01:36:00.000+08:00

It's Amazing What Goats Can Climb

2007-01-06T01:26:00.000+08:00

MatchStick Eiffel Tower

2007-01-06T00:44:00.000+08:00

Paris is the city for lovers, and its indelible landmark is unarguably the Eiffel Tower. So famous and loved is this symbol that a guy from Ukraine actually made an exact 3.3 feet replica of it in his living room using matchsticks. While it didn't say how long this feat took, the matchstick Eiffel Tower took 7464 matches to make, with 15,000 details. There are too many photos to attach, so I am uploading just a few to demonstrate the level of intricacy of the model.

To truly capture the romance of Paris, the matchstick Eiffel Tower even has LED lights installed which lights up to create that magical Paree feel.

PS. What I found funny was that next to the Eiffel images were ads with headlines reading "Beautiful Russian Girls" and "Looking for Polish Girls". Hmm... is this the new millenium standard of romance??

Plagiarism @ Work

2007-01-06T00:05:00.000+08:00

Sound familiar? While we hear about bosses and superiors taking credit for what their direct reports have done, I recently encountered a colleague who actually reversed the order. A powerpoint presentation created by her counterpart from our US head office was sent to her, and she promptly sent it out to managers in the region, with the audacity to claim that she had pulled the presentation together. Of course, her boss at our head office was not copied on that email.

And how did I find out? She did not spot that one of the persons on her recipient list to whom she sent the presentation to was also on the cc list of the email correspondence between her and her US counterpart. Another important lesson on email threads and being careful who you forward them to. Shocking isn't it? Tsk tsk.

HQ Sighting

2007-01-05T23:56:00.000+08:00

Just for fun and out of curiousity, I have Google Analytics installed on my blog. This way, it tells me who from blogger's have visited my site so I can pay them the same courtesy, and informs me which site I "publicise" my blogs on are giving me the most number of hits.

So far, my number of regular visitors make up 75% of my hits, with 50% as direct links. This week, as usual, I have 2 major hit sites - Singapore and Australia. In addition, I have 1 hit from SR where my company head office is. It could be a freak coincidence, or someone from my headquarters could actually be reading my blog...

There are Creeps Exploiting the Internet

2007-01-05T16:42:00.000+08:00

There's this blog I visit regularly - Fireflies In The Cloud - apart from his dry sense of humor, he puts his photoshop skills to good use by providing visual illustrations which can be quite hilarious.

Anyway, while reading his blog, I came across the story of Michael Crooks. I thought he was such a creep and sore loser that I decided to blog about it. His story serves as a good reminder of what can happen when you send personal information over the net to strangers you know nothing about.

As the exchange of information becomes more common over the internet, people are led to a false sense of security, and many times forget that personal information, pictures and videos posted on the web, and/or sent to people can be easily posted up on YouTube, on the forums, etc. without your consent to a very public community. And some of the channels to which you send your personal information can seem so innocent.

Michael Crook is a guy who put up a fake identity as a 19 year old female student on dating sites in 5 states. With the promise of casual sex with any man, single or married, he extracts information about these men who are looking for a casual sexual relationship, and posts them up his site with their real names, occupation, yada yada yada, and even the names of their wives. That was how he found his place to "stardom" on the Fox News Channel, after which his picture on Fox News was posted all over the internet. He proceeded to send Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) notices to all the sites who put up his picture, ordering them to remove it claiming that he had the copyright of the picture, which in fact belonged to Fox who had given free use of his picture. Read all about it here.

So next time, when someone asks you for personal information or a picture of yourself - think twice, think hard. The person at the other end might be a pervert who could broadcast all your personal details to anyone and everyone - your enemy at work, your ex-boyfriends/girlfriends, your parents, etc. Or they could photoshop your photos and send it out as a misrepresentation of where you were and what you were doing...

Wise Winery

2007-01-03T21:08:00.000+08:00

After weeks of being busy with class, a minor accident which caused massive muscle bruising to my ribs area (Ouch!!) and lazing over the holidays, I remembered that I'm not done in finishing my holiday posts.

I have to admit that at this moment, I'm more keen in digging up "dirt" about the Saddam Hussein hanging (Did he die? Did he REALLY die???). However, my trip was so great that it deserves a proper finishing, especially for the best part, so here it is. This post is on one of the highlights of the trip.

As I would be passing by the famous Margaret River on my way to Albany, where my friends stay, I thought it would be a waste for a wine connoiseur poser like me to miss out on. Truth is, while I like Red Wine, I can't hold my liquor at all - A maximum of 2 glasses and I'm ready to go home.

In any case (no pun intended), a colleague of mine got married in one of the vineyards in Margaret River a week before my trip. At her recommendation, I decided to drop by the same vineyard (for lack of recommendation) to have lunch on the restaurant deck which according to her had a gorgeous view. Browsing through the travel brochure, we could see the whole "sweeping view of the geographe bay" from there. I had no idea what "geographe bay" was, but I'm a sucker for copywriting (being one formerly) and succumbed to the beckoning description before me.

There was definitely no regrets. While I wouldn't say the "sweeping view of geographe bay" was the most stunning that I saw on my Australian trip, the food was certainly fantastic for a really good price, and the wine was just too good and cost less than a fraction of what we would pay for here in Singapore. All that good food and wine with a dropping view of azure sky and clear view of where the sea met the sky amidst a forest of trees, it was leisure at its best.

As my friend's husband was driving, he couldn't have his share but made up for it by buying a case of wine with vengeance. I purchased my modest portion of 3 bottles (and regretted that very night for not getting a whole case) and enjoyed the rest of the Margaret River Shiraz for the rest of my stay in Albany from my friend's purchase. At $12 per bottle for something we would buy for $26-30 per bottle, it wasn't hard to be generous.

After a gastronomic treat in the peaceful and beautiful Wise Vineyard, we were all sublimely contented and imbibed, and were too happy to be happy. Putting an end to a gorgeous afternoon of 22 degrees celsius in Summer at Albany, life couldn't get any better.

"Swarming" Web posts

2006-12-30T22:01:00.000+08:00

So if you've been following my "newsy" posts closely, you would have realised I "dug" a number of my stories from "digg". While following the story of Saddam Hussein's hanging, I discovered a feature that I never knew existed on the site. As the name suggests, it presents a dynamic, graphical view of when someone submits a post in the form of a bubble, when someone links to it via a connecting arch, and allows you to mouseover and click on any of the "bubbles" or stories that appear. It is almost like watching a live animation of viruses moving around in liquid culture under a microscope. Try it for yourself! It certainly makes for an interesting experience, and maybe a new way of surfing blogs and posts?? Hmmmm

The Pinnacles

2006-12-15T02:45:00.000+08:00

Part of the "tourist" visit planned for me was a visit to the famous Pinnacles, which was a few hours' drive away from Perth. According to the map, it was only about 3-4 hours' drive, and as we were making good time, my friend's husband decided to take the scenic route.

Sadly, we couldn't find the left turn that was supposed to bring us straight to the Pinnacles, and ended up making a loop. We ended up driving for up to 7 hours and we ended at the Pinnacles 5 minutes after sun down. Another lesson learned - the estimated distance on maps and road signs cannot be trusted...We scrambled around taking photos trying to make the most of the quickly diminishing light.

Amidst the scrambling around, my friend's hubby dropped his plunger for his camera. After the sun finally went down and we were making our way out, we saw an unusual rock formation that was just beautiful, and we improvised by using the headlights of the car to take photos.

After that, it was a search for some place to take dinner before making a mad drive back to our hotel in Perth. We found a student club of sorts nearby which sold horrible, but piping hot food. It was a long drive back to Perth where I fell asleep along the way.

Sorrento

2006-12-15T02:28:00.000+08:00

My friend's hubby did some reading in order to plan for my visit, and was the perfect host not only in providing me with a beautiful place to stay, fantastic food and view, but also the luxury of having a "tour guide" plan my visits for me.

He decided that Sorrento would be a nice, relaxing beach place to bring me, but was sorely disappointed to find it busy and "infested" with tourists and holiday makers.

There were some pretty sights though, and the yachts and tourists were a welcomed change from my cubicle. There was a "direction pole" of sorts telling us the exact number of km from Sorrento to Paris and London. As if that made them more accessible...

Fremantle Buys

2006-12-15T02:14:00.000+08:00

Like I said, I did some shopping at Fremantle. On my shopping list was to get knick knacks for my modernish Bohemian abode to make it feel more authentic, cosy and "lived in".

The moment I saw Freddie, I knew he was the perfect Bohemian knick knack addition. Don't you think? Doesn't he just look like a Freddie?!

I also saw something that I knew my niece would love. Problem is, my niece takes after me a lot - we both like the same colors and the same toys and gizmos fascinate us. So my niece's gift ended being my new toy... Isn't it amazing? What is it? It's a clay toy that allows you to mould it into whatever mood you want:

Smile

Smile (again)

Pout

Uhm...

Fremantle Market

2006-12-15T01:49:00.000+08:00

Upon colleague's recommendation, I insisted on a trip to Fremantle. Well, I initially wanted to make it to both Rottnest AND Fremantle. However, my friend did a search on Rottnest and was convinced it was a tourist trap. She and her hubby both had no plans to be trapped, so we made our way to Fremantle for a half day trip.

We passed by Fremantle prison on our way to the Fremantle market, which was just as well as there was quite a bit of shopping to be done before we made our way down to Cappucino strip for lunch and some coffee.

Purple Jacks

2006-12-15T01:37:00.000+08:00

Apart from Hungry Jack, we saw a lot of purple "jacks" in Perth. Beautiful trees covered with purple flowers decorated the streets of Perth and were a sight for sore eyes. As we drove along, I kept looking out for these trees gracing the bleak Perth landscape.

Nobody knew what they were called, so I googled them when I reached home and found them in Wikipedia. Apparently, their biological name is "Jacaranda". And what keywords did I use to find them? "Purple Trees, Australia". As easy as that, and took me the whole of 10s to find.

Bondi Beach

2006-12-15T01:28:00.002+08:00

These photos were taken at Bondi beach at high risk. Please view with appreciation and share (if you are) with care. *evil grin*

My Australian Trip Movie

2006-12-15T01:28:00.001+08:00

So I have been in Bangkok the past 3 days for another company meeting. Out of the 3 days, I felt I needed to be present at only 1 - where I was presenting on communications plan and platforms. After that, it was more of a working meeting for the countries where a few of us regional folks did not really need to be there. However, the agenda wasn't drafted by us, and we planned our feedback, and promised to work harder at influencing the agenda for the next meeting so as to cut traveling costs and maximise the use of our time.

Upon my return, while trying to unwind, I thought it would be a great idea to create a home movie for my trip using my mac (since creating a movie was almost automated) and got started to work on it. However, for some reason or other, it refused to let me use 2 songs for my movie. The movie played well on my mac running on the 2 songs I chose for my movie, but when I exported the file to a Quicktime movie, it only played one song and ran the rest of the movie in silence.

However, since I'm pressed for time and have a hell of a work tasklist to follow up, in addition to the unpacking I need to finish after my move in, in addition to contacting my aircon installer as my aircons keep tripping, in addition to my renovator who mixed up my hot and cold water pipes, in addition to the my neighbour's upstairs toilet leaking down and ruining my paint job, in addition to the fact that classes have started for one of the modules of the Masters' course I'm taking - I think I will settle for this imperfection for the meantime and just post it up.

If any of you have the know how to save me some time so that I can fix the movie to run the 2 songs I have selected for it to run during the whole movie, please write me and save me some time.

(8 hours later...): Well, the video was taking a long time to load, so I checked. I nearly fainted - my file was over 400 MB. No wonder. Looks like you guys will have to wait until I have time to create the Flash file for this. Sorry! Will just do photo blogging first. However, blogger's photo upload seems to be having some problems recently...

Rumors, Rumors, How They Turn to Tumors!

2006-12-08T17:31:00.000+08:00

Being neighbours with a high ranking employee in the company has its advantages. Having reached a certain trust level - we are both extremely discrete and know how to keep confidentiality on information passed between the 2 of us. As such, we have become each others' "sharing" partners when we have been upset by decisions in the organisation made for political reasons rather than profit or benefit. Of course, he being a global employee who has access to top level news, and having been with our company for almost a decade, he has the experience to weigh the rumors flying around and know what decisions will be made by management.

Well, one piece of information he shared with me has not sat well with me. Due to some internal movements in our head office, a global brand position has become open, and apparently my boss is a strong candidate for that position. I made some mental chess moves in my head, and with horror realized that if that were to happen, the person who could end up taking over her position was someone who was very much a political creature who worked with her mouth rather than with her hands. Of course, all these were just possible chess moves, but they were enough for me after a long year of being loaded with more and more projects, dealing with people with their own brand of attitudes, and frustration at red tape - to seriously consider if this was the right job for me.

I no longer enjoy my job - spending most of my time unraveling red tape, fighting battles that were not worth the time or energy, and working with a head office that did not care how their decisions affected other regions. I wouldn't say I am very unhappy as there is still growth opportunities, but the cons are starting to outweigh the pros.

I miss the days when I could roll up my sleeves and revamp a website in a week. There was even once we did it overnight on a high. I miss being in control of all the elements of web publishing - I set the design standards, took care of the framework, crafted the text for optimized searches on major search engines, plonked in enhancements to heighten customer experience, was involved in all the technicalities of managing a web server, linking it to other communications devices such as fax and SMS, having the opportunity to experiment with new software and technological advancements on the company site without having to go through procurement, legal, IT, head office, etc. I simply did a review of competing tools, took their various features and costs and presented my recommendation to my boss. Upon approval, I was given charge to run and set up the entire project by myself, and all colleagues from various departments were happy resources, and we would be able to get all our required tasks completed by the day.

As I was the person who set up the metrics, I had access to all the information I needed to analyze what customers were reading and subscribing to, tailored the next issue of the newsletter for even better response and hits, etc. And that was how I got our website from receiving 200 hits a day to over a million hits a day in 6 months. I miss the mental clarity with which I worked with, and knew exactly which direction I should be heading and what I wanted to happen based on clear objectives.

I'm tired of complexity for no good reason other than to create opportunities and jobs for people, with the intent to impress. I'm tired of the political games and tantrums exhibited by people who prefer not to do the work. I'm tired of the incessant meetings leading to a whole host of action items, many of which could have been avoided if there had been clearer directions and guidelines given from management and better planning by the project owner. I'm tired of battling with lagging deadlines as demands increase with diminishing resources.

I'm waiting to see if this is a phase I'll be able to plough through, or if I decided this mode of working conflicts with my philosophy of how work should be conducted and what working life should be all about. It could be that its the year end melancholia at looking back and noticing that I have achieved so little over this past year...

Hula-ing Away

2006-12-08T17:12:00.000+08:00

Tonight is our company's annual Dinner and Dance in Singapore, with the Tropical Paradise theme. Personally, I think they are talking about Hawaii, but I guess there are others with different ideas of what a tropical paradise is.

However, I won't be going though my boss is really excited about it. Horror stories of how boring it is have deterred me from signing up though the lucky draw prize is attractive - a pair of travel vouchers to the island of Hawaii. I made an arrangement with my global colleague sitting behind me. His boss from San Ramon is here in town and he has to bring him out tonight and over the weekend. So I suggested that the best way for his boss to get to know folks over here in AP is to attend the dinner. I handed him my D&D ticket with the deal that should it win the lucky draw prize, it would be mine. He sportingly agreed and promised to give me the tickets when he next saw me. We shook hands on that deal, and he left to pick up his boss, with my ticket.

I DO have a valid reason for not going. Our small group will be disbanded next year, and tonight will be our last meeting together. So while I had my heartaches with some members in my small group, I thought it would be good to attend the last "closing" meeting. Its akin to going to the funeral of someone who you really were not that close to, but feel obligated because you have known him for some time, and he led such a miserable life that you can't decide if it was a tragedy or blessing that he had to go earlier than expected. Yes, that's the way I feel about our small group, sadly.

Oh, I did have good times and there are a couple of friendships I made that have been rewarding. But over the 2 years that I have been with them, everyone was extremely considerate, polite, and christianly - to the point where you would never know what was REALLY going on in their lives, their true struggles, their real feelings and thoughts, and who they really were. But - they did provide the fellowship, support and occasional listening ear, transport home, etc. which is a lot in today's age of individualism and overwhelming rat race that has overtaken our lives. Its just that they would not be the people I would think of calling should I ever encounter a real life crisis.

So, that is how I will spend my Dinner and Dance. While others will be having relatively good fun at the Tropical Ballroom with hopes of winning the grand lucky draw prize, I will be attending a funeral of sorts and saying goodbye to a confusing part of my life. Sayonara, adieu and au revoir. On another note - what should I say "Hello" to for 2007? *ponders cynically*

Communication Breakdown

2006-12-06T22:45:00.000+08:00

Did I ever tell you that I have psychic moments? I try to block out this ability as much as possible as there have been a couple of times they foretold of events that were traumatically unpleasant, and which came true. I prefer to be blissfully ignorant as to know beforehand is to assume the responsibility before it happens(even though you can't do anything about it!!) and deal with the guilt after (like I said, even if it had absolutely nothing to do with you)...

However, there are times when I do get flashes about things that I worry or concern myself about, and that's ok. Well, I was having my dunch (dinner+lunch) when I suddenly knew that my laptop was being lost. My hotel wouldn't allow me a late checkout as they were fully booked, so I had to leave all my luggage with the concierge, including my work laptop. That wasn't an easy decision for me as my work laptop could be equated to my life (spending 8-10 hours on it everyday and it gives me access to all the work and emails that I've used those hours in creating and refining) so I walked off with a finger on my mental alarm bell.

As I left my room at about 10 am and since I was on the executive floor, I checked out via the executive reception and got them to carry my bags and laptop down to the storeroom instead. I made the lady call the concierge and inform them that I had 2 bags AND a laptop so that they wouldn't miss it. I emphasized that my laptop was a top priority and left the hotel.

Five hours later, I was biting into my sandwich in Bondi mall, and suddenly knew that my laptop was lost. I asked God, my subconscious, or intuition even, if this was serious (a stupid question as it obviously was!), and was told that it would be no problem. These 2 facts were conflicting, but surprisingly I was relatively comforted by the assurance that it would not be a big deal. No point to worry too before I was confronted with the actual loss.

I made my way back to the bus station, but decided that I may need extra time for unexpected situations and hailed a cab instead. The cabbie found out I was on my way to the airport and was passing through the hotel to pick up my bags and offered to take me all the way. I thought it was a good idea and happily told him to wait outside my hotel while I picked up my bags.

The concierge had all of my 2 bags for me almost immediately, and no laptop. They invited me into the storeroom where there were 2 laptops - both tagged with a different room number and not mine. I spent a good 20 minutes there searching for it with no result, while they sent someone up to the room I had been staying in (which was now occupied with new guests) but still no laptop. They communicated via walkie talkie, and I heard the feedback before the concierge came and told me. I was worried BIG TIME now. I should have lugged my laptop with me to Bondi beach and Borders and the shopping mall even if it would have killed me... I resigned to my fate, went out and told the cabbie I wouldn't be able to let him take me to the airport as I had to locate my laptop, or file a complaint or declaration of loss with the hotel. He was concerned, flabbergasted that Swissotel could have blundered so badly, and a little disappointed that he had lost a longer fare.

Well, I got back there in the store room and started scouring every nook and cranny just in case my laptop had shrunk and hidden itself in between some cracks in the wall. When my quest was unfruitful, I ended up standing in front of the store room entrance, lost and trying to rack my head for action steps to take in the event of a lost laptop (all the emails I deleted about what to do should you lose your laptop came back to haunt me) and drew a blank. I must have looked bad, and a tall, cute blond who had just taken his shift at the concierge desk came up to me looking concerned and asked if there was anything wrong. Before I could answer, the head concierge shouted across that they were helping me look for my lost laptop. Immediately after he said that, the walkie talkie came alive again and the person at the other end reported that they had finally found my laptop in Lost and Found, brought there by housekeeping.

Apparently, whomever it was that took the call that I had 2 bags and 1 laptop to be carried down to the concierge didn't pass on the message and they only took down my 2 bags. While preparing the room for the next guests, housekeeping had seen my laptop and put it in the Lost and Found department. So much for a 5 star service hotel. The tall blonde sympathised with what I had to go through while they brought the laptop down and got a cab for me. To top off the adventure, the cabbie that took me to the airport took AUD30 from me for a AUD27 cab ride and drove off. It was also then that I found out you had to pay AUD4 just to get a trolley to help you push your luggage into check in. Oh well. At least I still had my intuition and psychic moments to guide me through this life. *frowls and grins*

So Much For Tax Free Savings

2006-12-06T22:07:00.000+08:00

After getting away with nude shooting, I made my way down to Bondi mall. Big mistake. I ended up shopping close to AUD 100 in body shampoos and rose water for Christmas gifts. They had a decent Borders there and Jeffrey Archer's new book "A Cat with Nine Tales" had been beckoning me for a while. The deterent was of course as with all new releases - the hard cover and steep price. Having worked in publishing before, I was well aware of the fact that hard cover books don't take that much more to bind - in fact, they are cheaper because not many people like hard cover books.

Since I knew that I could easily get a copy of it back here in Singapore (and probably at a better price), I contented myself with browsing. It served me well as I would later realise that all books in the airports were at least AUD 10 more expensive. The said Jeffrey Archer book cost AUD 29.95 at Bondi mall borders, and AUD 40 at the airport. I made a mental note that for all the savings tax free goods gave you, the marked up price factored in by rental probably jacks it up more than what you save.

Risking Exposure at Bondi

2006-12-06T21:46:00.000+08:00

So I had a full day on Saturday to walk around Sydney as my flight was only at 8.40 pm at night. Blue mountains was on fire and I didn't fancy being barbecued so I decided to go where there would be no danger of fire - the sea. I took a cab down to Bondi beach and walked around for a bit, taking a few photogenic shots before ducking into MacDonald's for lunch. A lot of the cafe by the beach had tables outside and all those in the shade were already occupied. I didn't fancy being baked either, so MacDonald's did just fine with me.

It was only today when I was showing a colleague my photos that she gasped at my audacity in taking photos of a nude beach. "NUDE beach?" I had no idea. "But there weren't any nude bodies there."

"Doesn't matter!" She says. "You were SO lucky!"

Apparently, she had a friend who toured with 3 colleagus on a trip to another nude beach in the States - 2 gals and 2 guys. Apparently, one of the girls took a photo of the nudies on the beach completely ignorant that she wasn't supposed to do that, and they got caught. The nudies made them strip right there and then before they would let them go. As if it weren't embarrassing enough that her friend had to strip naked in front of her colleagus, she had to face them every day after in the office... Hmmm... I wonder how that works. Would you still be able to work with each other after you have seen the most intimate details of the other's body, how much cellulite he / she has, the mole here and there, birth defects, how long it was or how round they were, etc etc etc...

PS. Nope, no nude bodies out there on that chilly day... sorry gals!

Seoul.Ria Restaurant

2006-12-06T21:09:00.000+08:00

As promised, this is the signboard and entrance to the Seoul.Ria restaurant. If you like Korean food and am looking for a culinary adventure in Sydney, they have a number that you can dial to ask for directions.

Jack the King?

2006-12-06T20:50:00.000+08:00

I was in Sydney the week of Nov 20, and while looking for the Korean restaurant (see previous post), I saw "Hungry Jack", a burger joint. Thing is, we have an exact looking outlet here in Singapore except that it's called "Burger King". Then I remembered all Australian companies must have 51% of shares owned by the public. Obviously, "King" does not seem to mean a lot to Australians - especially since they're also debating if the queen means anything to them - so it seems Jack is the more likeable guy than king OR queen...

Seoul.Ria

2006-11-23T17:09:00.001+08:00

Monday night found me wondering where I could go for dinner. Having gone to restaurants at Darling Harbor, Tower restaurant which rotates to give you the Sydney city view, and even dinner at the Rocks, I was looking for something authentic, palatable, and poignant. And I was lucky enough to find it.

Clueless on dinner plans, I approached the concierge desk at Swissotel where I was staying which interestingly enough was attended to by an Australian, a Korean and a Thai. Recommendations to all the tourist restaurants failed with me - yes, I know some of you are going to shake your head at fussy Ivy again - and the Australian who was somewhat exasperated by this lady who knew exactly what she wanted without a clue of what it actually was, suggested a little tongue in cheek and a little practically that they had very tasty McDonald's and KFC's around the corner.

The Korean then suggested Chinese food in Chinatown and drew on the map how to get there. I asked if he knew of an authentic one there, and he was at a loss. Finally, the Thai (apparently head concierge) appeared and gave some suggestions of fusion Thai food. As I was due to fly to Bangkok week after next, I told him I preferred not to, and he finally had a brainwave and asked if I liked Korean food. It was an instant hit. Apparently this Korean restaurant was frequented by all the Koreans in Sydney, so it had to be good, according to him. Only 4 blocks down from my hotel, I decided to take a walk and make an evening out of it.

It was chilly, so I was sure to wear my jacket and took a leisurely stroll down the street. I had to pass by the Town Hall, St Andrew's Cathedral, and later the only college in Sydney. At least that was what the sign said. There was also this interesting shop that reminded me of those shops back in Chinatown Singapore where you could get stuff at 1 - 2 dollars, with the tape recorder on a continuous roll spitting out what you could get for a dollar, asking you to hurry before everything gets snapped up... When I saw the Movie Theatre, I looked out for the corner with the delifrance I was supposed to turn into. It was a little confusing as the Delifrance there looked like a bar or pub amongst many that could be found in that area. The Thai concierge had told me that the Korean restaurant was just above Delifrance, so I looked out for a stairway that would lead upstairs. When I finally saw it, I stopped short in my tracks. The sign above the stairway read "Adult Books and Litererature. Adults allowed only." I blinked. Maybe there was another stairway round the other side. I circled to the other end of Delifrance, but there was no stairway. only a Japanese restaurant a few doors down.

I suddenly wondered if the head concierge had pulled a joke on me to make fun of what a big fuss I was making over where to go for dinner. I went back to the stairway and stared at it. I wondered if maybe the Korean restaurant would be beside the Adult bookstore upstairs. I continued staring at it, and soon realised that some people were staring at me staring at the "Adult Books & Literature" sign and were stopping to stare at the stairs as well. I didn't want to give up walked toward the stairs and peered up at it. Yes, I am extremely stubborn and determined over things that seem trivial. But I had come all the way for a good hot Korean meal and I was intent on having it! However, the sight of the dinghy, desolate stairway with a large piece of torn cardboard the size of half the height of the wall covering the corner of the stairway wasn't encouraging. I decided that I would ask the delifrance staff and if they were unable to help, I would just have to find somewhere else to have dinner.

The senior staff that I asked didn't know if there was a Korean restaurant there. Refusing to accept it, I asked again. This time, the other junior staff at the counter heard me and blurted out loudly that it was just round the corner and a couple of doors away from where the Japanese restaurant was. After her outburst she suddenly clamped up as a look of regret and fear came over her and she stole a glance at the senior staff. She immediately tucked her head down and continued with her duties and avoided eye contact with me. When I walked down the street, I realised that the senior staff had apparently not wanted to be helpful as there were actually a few Korean restaurants there. Then I saw it, and knew that it was the one the head concierge had talked about. The entrance to Seoul.Ria was actually a door to a lift which you had to take to go up to the restaurant.

I was totally unprepared for the culture shock i was about to have. While we always talk of finding authentic asian food, we always tend to be a bit more sceptical of the word "authentic" when in western countries. This was my state of mind. While I was waiting for the lift, there were other Asian Australians there who just struck a conversation with each other and joked around, including me in on their conversations. Young and gregarious, they seemed to have met only at the lift entrance and ended up having dinner as a group. They looked at me, and I graciously declined. Even in a different country, I was a little uncomfortable at having dinner with strangers in a foreign country, especially when I was alone.

When the lift opened at the 3rd floor, everyone emptied out and I was immediately hit with the sound of Korean being spoken all over. The restaurant was big, and I felt as if I had stumbled at one of those pentecostal prayer meetings where everyone was speaking out loud in tongues at the top of their voices. The menu was even more exasperating. Written in Korean with English descriptions, they used terms that I was not familiar with. What in the world were Pork "shards' fermented in wine? And all the portions were huge - almost all tables had at least 3 persons with one of those large flat metal containers with food covered in spicy sauce or soup over a fire. There were also the standard side dishes of Kimchi, pickled cucumber and potatoes.

Overwhelmed, I kept knocking things over. First it was the plastic drinking cup, then the disposable chopsticks on the table. Each time that happened, even if there were visibly no waiter/waitress near your table, they miraculously appeared out of nowhere and as unobtrusively as possibly replaced what you had dropped on the table. When I was ready to order, I asked for recommendations, and again exasperated the waiter with knowledge of what i did not want without knowing what it was that i really wanted. He waved to another waiter who after a few glances at my facial expression in response to his recommendations, finally recommended his personal favourite which was spicy tofu soup. Not too sure if that was what I wanted, but it was something that did not sound as alien, and was not too challenging in portion for a single diner. So I asked to have that. And it turned out to be exactly what I needed. Authentic, tasty, not too sourish, full of brothy flavors from the mixture of tofu, mussels, spring onions, chives, all types of mushrooms, and beef stock in kimchi flavoring. Tasting of a hearty home cooked meal, it was hot, interesting to the palate with enough kick, and totally addictive.

While I was having my meal, the waiter who recommended me the dish popped by and asked, "Do you not like?" I swallowed what I could and told him that it was very good. The pleased look of surprise and pleasure at being praised that came over his face was priceless. How much did I pay for the meal? A grand total of AUD 11 dollars for the spicy tofu soup dish, inclusive of the 3 side dishes and free flow of water. I whipped out my corporate card and paid it off amongst the clucking of the owner at having to start his credit card machine for such a mere amount. But i was happy, contented, and didn't really care...I took some photos which I will upload once I'm home and have my memory stick connector with me. Am planning to try the fusion Thai restaurant for dinner today..

My Morning Kit

2006-11-23T17:05:00.000+08:00

So I flew to Sydney on Sunday night for a business trip. I usually take the Singapore Airlines - more comfortable and better menus. However, as Qantas offers free stopovers for those flying business class to some Australian states, I booked my ticket with them as I was planning to take leave in Perth and Albany with some friends who are staying there.

As all business class seats on Qantas flights were full, our company travel agency put me on British Airways. I didn't quite know what to expect but as a friend pointed out - it's business class after all, how bad can it get? The check in was more exclusive - no queue, private seating area, and your luggage was personally carried and checked in for you while you are seated at the counter, waiting to collect your boarding pass.

I asked for a window seat and was told that it would be facing the opposite direction. I was more prone to claustrophobia (and having a window always helps!) than backward travel sickness, so I opted for the window seat. It was interesting that the seats are positioned in opposite directions with a centre partition. But I soon realised that the seats can be adjusted to horizontal position, which was good and made sleep a lot easier and more comfortable. The one thing that hit me though, was that the entire plane was full of Australian and Brits. I certainly felt like a fish out of water, and that I stood out like an oversized sore thumb. People were striking up conversations with neighbours and aircraft crew, talking about the weather, good bargains, families at home, etc. Believe it or not, I saw a couple of boys who looked like they were still in college, and I guess they must be rich kids in some ivy league school flying home.

The entertainment on the plane was faulty which was ok, as I had not been able to sleep the night before due to accidentally drinking coffee after 12pm which doesn't work well with my system. I was planning to be dead to the world on the whole flight. Once I reached my seat and had the controls figured out (not that hard to), I settled myself into a comfortable position and was happily closing my eyes when the gayish steward passed me a grey cosmetic looking pouch. Curious, I took it from him, and lo and behold it was my morning kit. Not surprising considering that it was an overnight, sleeper 777 plane. What was a little astonishing to me was that the toothpaste, moisture lock, pulse balm, lip balm, etc were all Molton Brown products. I guess they must be way cheaper in UK than they cost in Singapore. Having not had the time to get sunblock or lip balm before flying off, I said a little prayer of thanksgiving to God for meeting all my needs.

After a dinner of roasted mediterranean vegetables, steak and potatoes and the pass up on dessert and expensive wine, I lowered my seat down out of sight from the elderly gentleman facing me in the next row who also kept curiously peering at me from above his book, threw the comforter/blanket over myself and blissfully switched the world off.

No Grinning Matter

2006-10-30T08:33:00.001+08:00

If you are a happy person and living in UK, you would probably need to change your passport picture. The new photo scanners in airports installed in a bid to fight terrorism, are thrown off by toothy grins and smiling faces. Apparently, faces with neutral expressions work best with these machines. Long fringe, head coverings, sun glasses and baby dummies are also not allowed. As if a baby could be a terrorise in disguise... Heads up for those travelling to UK at all.

Jesus at 9.5m on Google Map

2006-10-30T08:15:00.000+08:00

If you have Google Earth (you can download it for free), type in these coordinates: 43°38'43.00"N 115°59'33.50"W. What is there, you ask? The largest "Jesus Loves You" sign on earth. Each letter is 9.5 m high. Where is it in? Idaho, Boise. Given that there are quite a number of alien sightings in Idaho, I wonder if they are trying to testify to their outer space neighbours?

Seriously, I think it's really cool. Way cooler than the "Hollywood" sign, though it may not be as famous. I find it appropriate to end this post with this blessing, "Go in peace, brother/sister, GOD LOVES YOU."

The Amazing Whyteboard Machine

2006-10-27T09:01:00.000+08:00

The company I work for has hundreds of years of history. So you can imagine it retains tradition in quite a number of ways that they do things. I guess having worked in a software integration company and in Creative Technologies for a while, I am not used to moving from the forefront of technology to a place where technology supports other functions and is deemed as "optional", and avoided even.

However, there is this piece of technology that is simply amazing and fascinates me. It is found in some of the meeting rooms. Its a whyteboard. *Yawn* you say. Hold on - it is not just any ordinary whyteboard.

As I am revamping a site, I conducted a meeting with a colleague who is building the site for me. We were planning on the storyboard for the site, and I used The Whyteboard. We drew and discussed the layout of the home page, worked out the names of the links and and sections, the navigation pathways, and before you know it, a couple of hours had flown by and we were done.

All that was left to be done was to copy what was on the whyteboard onto paper. Where I would have picked up a pen and paper for an ordinary whyteboard, I pressed a button labeled "Print" on this whyteboard. There was a whirring sound, and the board slowly turned inside of the whyteboard, displaying a blank new writing space. Then this bar of light behind the whyteboard slowly scanned the back portion from left to right, as does a photocopier machine. Next you know, a piece of A4 sized paper appears from a slot at the bottom panel of the whyteboard the way paper does from a fax machine with the storyboard of our home page on it. All I had to do next was press the "Cut" button, and wallah! Our storyboard had been transferred to paper. Isn't it amazing? I now like to invite vendors to hold meetings in rooms with these Whyteboards. Watching their jaws drop has become a favourite past time of mine...

How Retired People Get Their Kicks

2006-10-25T01:38:00.001+08:00

The Match Against the Japanese

2006-10-25T01:23:00.001+08:00

Why the Japanese lost the World Soccer, according to Pepsi.

"Sticky" Problem

2006-10-25T01:13:00.000+08:00

The New Starbucks Coffee

2006-10-25T00:47:00.000+08:00

I'm not much a fan of Starbucks. I've gone cold turkey on coffee a couple of years back already, but once in a while, I'll have that occasional coffee. And if I ever do, it won't ever be for Starbucks. However, they have come up with an innovative idea of "flavoring" their blends. I have a feeling the new taste will be more popular with the mates than the chicks.

Foiled Suicide Attempt

2006-10-25T00:22:00.000+08:00

This is an ad which shows how a man's plan to jump to his death was foiled by a vacuum cleaner.

Kids Night Out

2006-10-24T23:53:00.000+08:00

Do you still remember Mr Attention Seeking, Mr Irritated, Mr Cool & Ms L? Well, it had been a long time since we met so we decided to have dinner together to catch up. The japanese dinner ended up as a sort of kids night out. Needless to say, Ms L and myself were both BORED and ENTERTAINED all at once by the 3 dudes. We still love you guys!!

PS. Make a guess on who is who

The 20th Century Slimming Ad

2006-10-24T23:44:00.000+08:00

Have you ever wished that losing weight were as easy as peeling it off? Well, here's an ad that capitalizes on that wish:

The New Ergonomic Toyota

2006-10-24T23:27:00.000+08:00

Toyota has recently released their latest model which is the truly ergonomic human car. Watch the ad below. I think I'll give it a miss...

My New TV Set

2006-10-24T23:12:00.000+08:00

So what do you think of my new TV set for my new home? How much did it cost me? I don't know... I sent Santa an email and am expecting his delivery on 25 Dec 2006. Cool eh? The TV I mean. Santa's getting a little too fat to be "in" or "vogue" anymore. JUST KIDDING. *ducks a reindeer's antler*

Steve Job's Vision

2006-10-24T22:50:00.000+08:00

Received this from a friend - Steve Job's speech to Stanford University in 2005. Inspiring and with heart. If you're a fan of the Apple brand and the Mac, it'll give you insight into the vision and resilience of leadership in this man. If not, move on to the next post.

Thank you. I'm honored to be with you today for your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. Truth be told, I never graduated from college and this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation.

Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories. The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first six months but then stayed around as a drop-in for another eighteen months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out? It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife, except that when I popped out, they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking, "We've got an unexpected baby boy. Do you want him?" They said, "Of course." My biological mother found out later that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would go to college.

This was the start in my life. And seventeen years later, I did go to college, but I naïvely chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, and no idea of how college was going to help me figure it out, and here I was, spending all the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back, it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out, I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me and begin dropping in on the ones that looked far more interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms. I returned Coke bottles for the five-cent deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the seven miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example.

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer was beautifully hand-calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and sans-serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me, and we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts, and since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them.

If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on that calligraphy class and personals computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do.

Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college, but it was very, very clear looking backwards 10 years later. Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards, so you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something--your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever--because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well-worn path, and that will make all the difference.

My second story is about love and loss. I was lucky. I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents' garage when I was twenty. We worked hard and in ten years, Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4,000 employees. We'd just released our finest creation, the Macintosh, a year earlier, and I'd just turned thirty, and then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew, we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so, things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge, and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our board of directors sided with him, and so at thirty, I was out, and very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating. I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down, that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure and I even thought about running away from the Valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me. I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I'd been rejected but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods in my life. During the next five years I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the world's first computer-animated feature film, "Toy Story," and is now the most successful animation studio in the world.

In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT and I returned to Apple and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance, and Lorene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful-tasting medicine but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life's going to hit you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love, and that is as true for work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work, and the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking, and don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it, and like any great relationship it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking. Don't settle.

My third story is about death. When I was 17 I read a quote that went something like "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself, "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "no" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important thing I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life, because almost everything--all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure--these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago, I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctors' code for "prepare to die." It means to try and tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next ten years to tell them, in just a few months. It means to make sure that everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope, the doctor started crying, because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and, thankfully, I am fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept. No one wants to die, even people who want to go to Heaven don't want to die to get there, and yet, death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It's life's change agent; it clears out the old to make way for the new. right now, the new is you. But someday, not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it's quite true. Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice, heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalogue, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stuart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late Sixties, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and Polaroid cameras. it was sort of like Google in paperback form thirty-five years before Google came along. I was idealistic, overflowing with neat tools and great notions. Stuart and his team put out several issues of the The Whole Earth Catalogue, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-Seventies and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath were the words, "Stay hungry, stay foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. "Stay hungry, stay foolish." And I have always wished that for myself, and now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you. Stay hungry, stay foolish.

Thank you all, very much.

Google Buys YouTube.com for 1.65 Billion

2006-10-24T22:36:00.000+08:00

Ok, so I know this piece of news is late. The press reported this on Oct 10. I saw it on Oct 10. But I only have time to blog about it now, and was reminded of it when catching up on my news. Yes, I'm supposed to be packing. I'm on my break. *grin*

Google seems to be buying over everything these days. Blogger.com and now YouTube. After the shock of Adobe buying over Macromedia, I guess nothing shocks me much anymore. Yes, it shocked me more than Lenovo buying over IBM. Seems like the big guys are choosing to conquer the competition by buying them over. Wonder if that will happen to MY company... *trying to wrap my head around that thought*

Well, as the saying goes, "If you can't beat them, BUY THEM OUT". And how does it relate to you, you ask? There is now a new Google Service called Google Video where you can browse and upload videos just as in YouTube. Convenient tool if you've got a gmail account - upload your video and email it to your gmail contact list.

I Want Your Lily Frond!

2006-10-24T18:13:00.000+08:00

Reading through a few of my favourite blogs, one of them gave a link to this mathematical puzzle which takes on a fun front. The key is to get the brown frogs over to the lilies where the green frogs are sitting on, and vice versa. Sound simple enough? Its mentally stimulating enough to keep you engaged, while easy enough for you to solve in 5-10 min. Throw on realistic frog croaks and rushing waters, and you've got a winning game. Got 15 min to kill? What better way to spend than switching frogs on lilies...

Try it now!

Beastiality Crime

2006-10-24T17:26:00.000+08:00

Your reaction to the title of this post might be a "Wha'??" or a shake of your head. So what is Beastiality? Its the name of the law pertaining to cruel treatment of animals. While this may sound innocent enough, it certainly isn't. If you've been charged with Beastiality, it means that you have been caught committing a sexual act forced on an animal.

Incredible? Unbelievable? Read it for yourself Apparently, beastiality was instituted as a crime in the state of Washington after a man died post having sex with a horse last year. Michael Patrick McPhail is now the first man to be charged with the crime of forcing sex onto his pet dog while intoxicated. His wife walked in to see his act as their dog was visibly squealing and crying. She took pictures with her handphone and reported him to the police.

One of my absolute favourite blogs, where I got this story from, writes about this piece of news from a funny angle. It was difficult to decide if I should laugh or cry. Thanks for the laff Matt! Read it here.

The Bed Where the Princess Will Never Feel the Pea

2006-10-24T15:34:00.000+08:00

So I'm shifting into my house this Friday. Scheduled to that is. I've got my mover, and my contractor has been alerted (aka all reno works should be finished by then), etc. etc. But I'm only 2% packed. So what happened to my long weekend? Well, given the long hours I've been putting in at the office, my body protested against more work and refused to let me get up from bed the entire weekend. Exhaustion and fatigue are formidable enemies...

I did manage to make my way to IMM on Monday afternoon though, after accompanying my dad to change the new pair of optician's glasses he got. He was concerned that he would have trouble with the shop staff, and got me to go along with him. I prayed very hard that God would intervene, give us favour, and allow my dad to get a replacement pair of glasses as the new pair they prescribed were making him giddy, and the frame he got were too wide and kept falling off.

Given the recent spate of work, contractor, HDB, and vendor woes that have been plaguing me every week, I have had to follow closely on every project from work to personal. From chasing colleagues for information so that my copywriters could meet their deadlines, following up with internal colleagues who are providing services to my department but were deployed away for 2 weeks' training (such that I had to take over their tasks myself), to supervising my renovation due to an overstretched and somewhat irresponsible contractor, negotiating with HDB officers, conservation fees, front door replacement, upgrading policies conflicting with my renovation, worries about my dad's biopsy and health, etc etc etc, I was beyond being burnt out.

So I prayed. When the universe seems to be hurling at you the full brunt of Einstein's law of chaos, that is the only truly valuable thing you can do for yourself.

I told God I really needed a break, and that I needed to conserve my energy for the upcoming move. So I really wanted things to go smoothly. Praise God, He chalked up another answered prayer. While I believe in social & career networking, the best connection you can ever have is God. When we reached the shop, the senior optician took over my dad's case and believe it or not, he happened to know my dad's long time friend and previous optician. In fact, they were socially networked to the same group of cohorts. He changed the frame for my dad and replaced it with a Hugo Boss model. He also arranged for new lenses to be made for my dad, to be collected this Friday. All at no extra charge. It was a blessing of peace that I needed!

Since things were going so well, I thought I might venture into IMM to hunt for my bed / mattress. Based on a friend's recommendation, I looked out for the Sealy brand. No, not the "Silly" brand, the "Sealy" brand. I tried a few mattress shops and actually thought that the Americana brand was pretty ok. That was before I tried the Sealy mattress. They had the whole range from hard, semi-soft, to soft mattresses, based on your personal preference. The mattress was designed by chiropracters and are built to support your back and whatever sleeping posture you have. On the side, flat on your back, with your legs over your head (no, just kidding!), and so on.

When I tried the version where they used latex instead of 8 layer down for the "Semi-soft" range, I felt I was lying on a cloud in heaven... It wraps around your body posture, drives out all the aches, and had an unbelievably plush feeling. Then I tried the "soft" range. A little too soft for me, but if you had hidden a pea in it, I wouldn't have felt the difference...

With the promotion for "buy one mattress, get one bed for $125 and 2 fibre pillows for free", the real decision I have to make is if I were going for the "On Cloud Nine" or "Princess" bed.