Hi folks, this blog has moved. Please visit my new blog at <a href="http://www.tzlee.com/blog">tzlee.com/blog</a>.

I'm sure you've said something along the line of "XYZ company should have added ABC feature to DEF product", so why not I share what felt should have been done, but never done (or done a wrong).

Keys on keyboards should be made disposable / replacable. Have you ever joined a new company and made to take over a PC used by the previous guy only to find yourself cleaning the oily keyboard and mouse for the rest of the day? Yes, our keyboard is one of the worst germ container in the office. We eat and drink at our work desks, and who knows if you've been digging your nose?

Portable storage devices should automatically sync with your PC, just like ActiveSync or iTunes. I am extremely puzzled why no proper backup software exists for USB sticks and portable disks to date. The best I've used so far is Toucan from PortableApps, but still lacks a lot of features I desire - especially an auto-sync!

The iPhone should have been unlocked. Apple knows the game of good vs evil, why did they still tie themselves in with Telcos and spend time trying to lock down the phone? Perhaps it might be telecommunication regulatory requirements but I believe if the iPhone was sold unlocked and didn't come with a crappy telco plan, it might have outsold McDonalds' hotcakes by now.

Tailgaters should be fined instead of speeders. They are the main cause of traffic conjestion on the road. Traffic conjestion leads to a lot of other unforseen problems, such as global warming, frustrated drivers returning home and poking their spouses in the eye, so on and so fourth.

Fully sheltered motorbikes or lightweight single-person vechicles automatically guided by electronic systems when on "highways" should already be on the roads! (Think of it as a cable car with detachable cabins on wheels.) With horrendous traffic conjestion in cities like Tokyo, New York and Singapore, a lane dedicated to these mini vehicles travelling no faster than 70km/h might just be the solution for the future.

Arts should be taught as a core subject in secondary (high) school. Isn't it pathetic that our lives revolve around math and science? Imagine if we had no parks to visit, and no movies to watch. The world lacks creative people already.

More coming up... when I get home later

Looks like we have a new member in the family.

It's a hamster! So cute right? Before I ramble on, let me clarify I am straight and I am not gay. So, here's how a big macho *aheem* guy ended up with a little rodent in the house - I found this thing running across my house carpark one night and decided to grab him.

So cute this little thing is!

Ferren was the first person who came to my mind when it comes to Hamsters. I vagely recalled she loves these freaking rodents, and so yes, I called her and she gave me a nice cage for the hamster the very next day... and the week after she gave me an even BIGGER cage. Now I have 2 cages in the house.

So today me and dear spent some time cleaning up the cage and I gave it a little renovation by placing wooden boards (actually balsa wood I bought for R/C stuff) on the uncomfortable wire platforms.

Little one peeking out of the sand bath.

And then I took Ferren's small cage, popped open the small hole, and bingo. This dude now has a huge ass condo.

Cages facing each other with open doors to allow little one to climb around.

So far so good. I'm enjoying the company of a little Rodent. Weird, ya?

Wahlau. I don't understand how I got selected and they put a Durex ad up on my blog lah... vibrator tester?? OMG. Who wants to sign up? 

Happy chinese new year! As David may put it, hope you huat (get rich) till your wallet explodes; or huat till you buay tahan (can't take it anymore).

So renovation's finally over. I spent an entire day packing my room. I threw a lot of old old old stuff away, mainly ancient computer parts, even piles of PATA cables (who uses PATA nowadays?) and FDD ribbon cables (FDD? What's that?). Lots of books also went to the trash, like Oracle 7 (woah, we're at 11 now I think). So all that's left in my room are some simple books, electronics, etc. It's good to get over old stuffs because there will come a time you'll realize space is more expensive than anything else... well, at least in Singapore. Space is also something that helps calm your mind... don't you think you always feel that urge to bite somebody in a crowd, or run over somebody in a traffic jam?

While packing, one thing came out of the boxes badly - and that's my 17" LG LCD panel. It has lots of ugly lumps on the screen now and I believe that's caused by me packing the LCD panel with the screen against a moist newspaper. I'm desperately trying to remove the lumps by using a hair dryer, but does not seem very effective...

Other than that, things are looking good at home. Living room looks so much better, so does the dining room.

I'm taking time to rebuild my R/C crafts, and also my DX7 should be arriving next week (just managed to get my Paypal account verified). So it seems after CNY is good for flying - especially slope soaring!

Once again, blessings for the year ahead, and last but not least... 

HUAT AH!!! 

Well, mum went to hire a Feng Shui guy and somehow I think I could do Feng Shui too. Mostly common sense, some economics, isn't it?

So he goes like 2008 (chinese calendar) will be a bad year (yea, check out US economics and how tightly Singapore's reliant on that) and some other BS like we must renovate before the 2008 chinese new year, and no renovation's allowed for another two years (so Feng Shui guy can get some $, and live past the next "bad" year?)

So there goes, since it's less than a month away from the chinese new year, mum called in one heck of a renovation to redo the entire house. We have the electricals rewired, the cornices remove, replastered the entire ceiling and installed some false ceiling along the way, repainted the entire house (now our doors look hell ugly), and also coming up is a new staircase and floor fittings.

For the past week I've been sleeping in the living room and some berable mess around the house, not until Friday when I returned, the entire house was a complete mess since everything was reswizzled to make way for painters. I left at midnight for the NPCO PP2008 concert celeberation chalet down at Elias Road (Pasir Ris).

So for the weekend I've been putting up at Pasir Ris, and made numerous trips from east to west, each averaging about 30-40km of drive. I made a total of four trips on Saturday and burned about $30 of fuel for almost 150km of travel. The Renault Kangoo 1.4A proved to be really a sucker at fuel economy (10km/l highway driving)!

So I am finally back in the living room, with power and decent Internet. I wished I had pictures of the house in a mess but no I packed my camera to a corner and don't have anything to show now. As of today the paint work's almost complete and my living room is beginning to take shape.

Hopefully for the next week or two things will get better, but I think I won't be able to get away with sleeping in the living room until my grandmother returns home.

That said, I've been missing my flying buddies and hope to drop by Bedok for sloping maybe next week!

I was woken up at 8.30am by CKS so we could go flying. With a little bit of excitement that I could finally meet the good folks @ Segar Field, I climbed out of bed, sat down in front of my computer and decided to visit my own blog, but... DAMN. It never came up.

I tried visiting several other sites hosted on the same server, and they were all down. I hit google.com, and it came right up. Obviously, my machine was having trouble.

Unlucky #1: Server Busted

I SSHed into my VMware instance and found that the ext3 file system crashed and went into read-only mode, which also caused every VM to crash. I would also blame myself for the bad partitioning layout (I didn't have a seperate /var partition) so I could get any logs of what happened. Deseprate, I hit reboot but the machine never came back online.

Sent an e-mail to the DC to request for a technician to see what's on the screen, but all I got in the reply was...

We are sorry that we are unable to fulfill your request.
For Co-Lo servers, we can only do server reboots upon request.

Oh well. I quickly washed up, packed up my heli and drove straight down to the DC which was (luckily) 15 minutes drive fron my house.

Connected a console screen and there it was, halfway through reboot with a linux prompt requesting for root password to scan a bad FS. And so, the sequence of events the way Rendy would have written it....

1. The 250gb disk took one heck of a time to scan
2. I was wearing berms, crocs and a t-shirt all ready to go flying under the hot sun later but was freezing my ass off in the DC
3. After the disk scan, I upgraded to VMware 1.0.4 but it refused to start
4. I nearly flipped out
5. A final reboot of the machine and everything came back online
6. Cheers

So it took almost an hour to recover the file system. And during this time, NOBODY called me. Wow. It's a good thing people don't work on Saturday. Heh.

Time to rush down to the flying field...

Unlucky #2: Heli Busted

I was so happy to see the crowd at Segar. I never knew the group grew. Even Art2 and jansonfinn was there. The usual suspects CJ, CKS, Yong Wee and Ken from Radio Control Sports were there too.

I did a warmup using my Esky HoneyBee King. Something was acting up weird and the copter was vibrating so badly. I thought it was the tail, but the tail looked fine. Well, I didn't care much and just flew it anyway. With all the vibration, the heli started to lose power and I decided to land it. Upon closer inspection, I found that the nuts on the feathering shaft were coming off and there was approx 0.5cm of freeplay around the blade grips.

Well, I had a backup - Belt-CP. I took it out, started flying and oddly this one was having a bad tail vibe as well. I landed that crap, took a look and didn't see any anything wrong so I didn't care much and just flew the crap out of it. The tail was pretty much uncontrollable thru the flight. An attempted inverted hover went bad and a final bail out saved the heli, but several other attempts at backward flight later a brain glitch dug the heli's tail right into the ground. The entire tail assembly's busted but surprisingly the boom was still intact.  Looking a little closer, my entire heli's busted. Frame's busted (area holding boom gone), main shaft busted, feathering shaft busted, tail servo (HS81) busted. Oh well...

After some crazy flying, we had a quick bite before I headed off to meet girlfriend.

Unlucky #3: Drink Spill in Car

Mei Sin and I went for some grocery shopping. Towards the end we walked pass Jolly Bean and thought we could have some japanese red bean pancake and a cuppa nice soya bean drink. Happily, with two pancakes and a cuppa jolly, we got into the car. Just as I drove out of my carpark lot, I heard a loud splash and the entire cup had spilled on the car mat. :(

Unlucky #4: Cashcard Stuck

We drove to the nearest multi-storey carpark to find a place where I could wash the mess out of my car. There was this machine where I had to insert a Cashcard and for 25c they would give me a pail of water. I didn't have a pail, but I didn't really care as well. I put the mat under the tap and inserted my Cashcard. Then, according to the instructions on the wall, it says "insert cashcard fully and press button". Well, I did exactly so. I inserted Cashcard but it didn't go in FULLY. So I press a little harder, and my cashcard was complely in the machine, but never came out! WTF!?! Nevermind the damned card, but there was no water as well!

I finally found a fire hosereel and used some water to clean up the mess. Drove poor girlfriend home and headed off to orchestral practise.

Unlucky #5: Cello Busted

Well, practise as usual, but I noticed my fingerboard's comming loose. Its time to send to the luthers'. More money down the drain. Sigh... not a big deal, so maybe next month.

Unlucky #6: Engine Oil Leaking

After practise, Tian Yao, Mei Sin and myself headed to Stamford Tyers to get my crappy tyres replaced. My car's been running on an unbalanced set of wheels since the day I bought it. Three wheels had 165/70/R13 and one other 155/70/R13. The one other was running on extremely old tyres I'm guessing to be the spare.

Halfway thru the tyre replacement, the guys opened up my hood so I was thinking why were they looking into my hood. I went out and they asked me if I had done any engine repair and I said yes. He told me in chinese...

"Boss, your engine oil's leaking. You'd better bring it back to where you got it done."

What? One problem after another. He pointed to me the oil stains on the ground and showed me an area of the engine covered in oil.

Well, I'm thinking of not going back to the original mechnic as he wasn't doing a good job anyway, so I asked them how much it would be to repair and they said probably another $100 or so. More money down the drain... 

Unlucky #7: Credit card limit reached 

Just as I was about to pay for my new tyres (about $200+) using my credit card, I couldn't. My miserable $500 limit had reached, and I was quite embarassed to have asked for a Citibank cardmember's discount but not being able to pay with the card. The nice lady gave me the discount anyway and I had to pay with NETS.

Unlucky #8: Poor Ferren...

Ouch. Poor Ferren was crying over the phone about her being unable to tune her instrument and wanting to send it for repair. I explained to her she that needs some patience to allow the new set of strings to settle and tuning is really an art - something you can't learn overnight. I dropped by her place in the evening and got her cello all tuned up and I hope they're all good to rock and roll now!

I'm sure many people heard of this video of three pathetic beings bullying an old trishaw rider.

Article from THE NEW PAPER...

S'pore Netizen fury over YouTube video

Tourists film trishaw uncle, taunt him, then post video on net

Wed, Oct 31, 2007
AsiaOne

It all started with a British tourist posting online a video he took while on holiday in Singapore about three months ago.

What the Englishman and two of his fellow tourists thought would make a funny video now have them labelled as bullies.

The original video posted up by tourist Mr Bo Davis, 26, was titled "The Slowest Taxi in Southeast Asia."

In the 3 minutes 51 seconds video, the three medium-built guys are seen squeezing onto a trishaw ridden by an elderly man.

Clearly struggling under their weight, the trishaw uncle pedals at a snail's pace, while his passengers taunt him for going so slowly.

According to The New Paper, the trishaw uncle is 67-year-old, Mr Lee Shee Lam, who has been riding for 15 years now.

Mr Lee told The New Paper that the three tourists had originally agreed to pay him $15 for the ride, but after the ride they got off and left in a taxi.

Leaving Mr Lee without paying a single cent.

The original video has been removed by Mr Bo, but someone else has since re-posted it on YouTube and retitled it: "B*****ds bullying Singapore senior citizen…"

At last check, the video has been viewed over 18,000 times and commented over 500 times.

Mr Lee, who does not understand English, says that he was not aware that the three Englishmen were making fun of him or that they were filming the trip.

He has since brushed the incident off as bad luck, saying this was the first time his passengers refused to pay, and that there was nothing he could have done about it.

The New Paper also managed to contact Mr Bo Davis, who said he did not feel they were being bullies at all.

On comments that the three of them had bullied Mr Lee, he said: "Looking back, I think we were insensitive. But bullies, no."

And the news made it to the UK itself...

Brits in Singapore mock aged rickshaw driver and spark anger over YouTube clip
Last updated at 18:55pm on 31st October 2007

Three British tourists who mocked a 76-year-old rickshaw driver because he couldn't pedal fast enough for them - then posted a video of the struggling and panting old man on YouTube - have caused uproar in Singapore.

The trio also ran off without paying the £5 fare he requested and escaped in a taxi yelling expletives which were heard on YouTube as they filmed themselves leaving the scene at Clarke Quay, popular nightspot.

“Ten dollars my f***ing arse,” yelled one as the video camera showed a close-up of his face.

The video titled “the Slowest Taxi In SE Asia” was posted on the popular site by one of the three, who called himself Bo Davis.

Angered by the way they treated the rickshaw driver dozens of Singaporean bombarded the website and local papers, expressing their feelings and what they would like to do to them.

“Don't come back to Singapore,” wrote one. “We will be waiting for you.”

Another attacked them for behaving like Singapore was still a British colony. And a local tabloid The New Paper splashed the story on the front page with two pages inside, showing the laughing faces of the mocking Brits goading the rickshaw rider.

The video also showed close-ups of the three Brits and the agonised look on the face of the driver, Mr Lee Shee Lam, as he pedalled as fast as he could under the weight of the three men, all in their mid to late twenties.

They were also heard laughing and mocking him. “God, he's in fifth gear,” said one.

They had squeezed into the rickshaw at Clarke Quay for the ten minute ride along the river.

But soon it was clear they were out to poke fun at Mr. Lam along the way.

Liew Hanqing, a reporter at Singapore tabloid, The New Paper, said she managed to communicate with Bo Davis via YouTube which gives his age as 26. She said: “He seemed surprised at the reaction he got from viewers after he posted the video.

“This was not bullying,” he told her. “I do not like bullies or bullying.”

Davis told her he posted the video to display his personal account which he had just opened - and didn't think anyone would look at it.

He told Hanqing: “I couldn't believe the comments - I was shocked by the threats. People's reactions were shocking but interesting.”

But later Davis said he was sorry that he had caused so much offence to Singaporeans and posted an apology online. Then he removed the video.

“I am sorry for the offence caused, and for being disrespectful to the elderly. But I think it's been blown out of proportion. Yes, I think we were insensitive but not being bullies.”

But the video was put back on YouTube by an another angry Singaporean under the heading UK *******S.

And the anger continued to grow.

Mr. Lam was working again last night in the Clarke Quay area where he is licensed.

He recalled the incident with a grimace and said: “I'd almost forgotten about it, but I was very angry when they ran off without paying." He had no idea they were making fun of him because he does not understand English too well and had no idea they were filming him. “They agreed to pay for the ride but then refused and ran away. I couldn't understand why because I did my best to give them a safe ride.

"I am a bit slow when so many people are in the rickshaw, but I am not a youngster any more, like they are. Perhaps when they get old they will know what it's like!”

“I'm not going to worry about them any more,” he said. “I am sure they are now sorry they did this to me.”

And more from the local papers...

Apology sparks more outcry
By Elysa Chan
November 02, 2007

Tourist says: I'm sorry, but we're not bullies


HE WAS so infuriated with their behaviour that he wanted to 'strangle them'.

The three British tourists' 'offence': Poking fun at an elderly trishaw rider here struggling with their weight and then refusing to pay him after the ride.

To add insult to injury, one of them posted the video of the incident on YouTube, titling it, 'The Slowest Taxi in Southeast Asia'.

'I'd like to see the three of them and embarrass them so bad with a good dressing-down,' said Mr David Miller, 60, a Canadian who has been living in Singapore for the last 14 years.

'I think it's bull**** that they were trying to make fun of an adult they should respect,' the management consultant added.

Mr Miller even called for them to pay $50 each to the elderly man 'for the privilege they had of insulting him' and suggested that they 'be placed on a list of non-desired persons in Singapore'.

'When you go to someone's house, you respect them. When you do, you are treated like a king, especially in this region, and there is no better place on the planet,' said Mr Miller, who has lived in Hong Kong, Beijing, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok and India.

'I am disgusted by people like that. The fact that they had the arrogance to post it on the Internet shows how low-class they are.'

But don't they deserve a second chance?

Mr Miller added: 'If their apology had been genuine, I would give them a second chance. But what killed me was that he gave a very easy apology. If the reporter had not called him, would he have done anything? He never even apologised directly to the old man.

'We don't need people like that, and we shouldn't let them off.'

Most aggravating, he said, was how they were laughing at the rider.

'If I had got his father or mother to do that, how would they have felt?' he asked.

FURORE

Other readers were also upset over how the three British tourists had treated the rider, Mr Lee Shee Lam, 67.

Said Mr Lucas Lee in an e-mail to The New Paper: 'Isn't it ironic how the country which he struggled to build has played host to a bunch of foreigners that took his livelihood as a joke and spat on it?'

There was also a huge uproar online. The video, which was re-posted on YouTube after the original poster, Mr Bo Davis, took it down, drew more than 600 angry responses, mostly from Singaporeans.

Some called for justice to be done, others hurled abuse at the tourists, and even threatened them with violence.

And many were not satisfied with Mr Davis' apology carried by The New Paper yesterday, in which he said: 'I am sorry for the offence caused, and for being disrespectful to the elderly. But I think it's been blown out of proportion.'

Reacting to criticism that they had bullied Mr Lee, he said: 'Looking back, I think we were insensitive. But bullies, no.'

Like Mr Miller, one YouTube user, yahling, dismissed Mr Davis' apology: 'Clearly, your denials are ignoramously inane and disgusting... You should be tried and charged in Singapore for being cheats.'

Several of the online postings also took on a racist tone as they railed against Caucasians.

While Mr Miller felt the three men gave foreigners like himself 'a bad name', he was quick to add that not all behaved that way.

'Some get arrogant when they visit (other countries). (But) they do not represent the majority of foreigners,' he said.


'They made my Dad look like a beggar'

Mr Sam Lee, 33, watched the video clip of his trishaw rider father being taunted by three United Kingdom (UK) tourists in Singapore, after a cousin told him about it.

What angered him most was that the men had made his father look like a beggar, asking for a fare that he had earned from ferrying all three of them on a 10-minute ride in downtown Singapore.

Interviewed by The New Paper, he said the part that hit him most was when he watched his father stretch out his hand to ask the men for his fare.

He said: "It really kicked in at that portion. I felt very irritated because it made him look like a beggar."

Now, he has three requests for the three men who had such fun at his father's expense.

He wants them to:

(1) Write a formal apology. And no, email or Internet posting will not do.
(2) Pay his father the amount - $15 - that they had not paid for that trishaw ride.
(3) Take a video of themselves carrying any three old people and post it on YouTube (where they had posted their video of the senior Mr Lee).

Any the elder Lee's reaction to all this?

The 67-year-old said to The New Paper in Cantonese: "It's a small matter - it is only a small amount of money."

My thoughts?

They'd rather not write back to "apologize". Not only did they commit a crime equivalent to that of theft or cheat, it was obviously a racist act by taunting an old man in a language he did not understand.

These people are pathetic. They lack self esteem and moral values.

And thinking a little deeper, an old man at his age is sill working to ferry three assholes for $10. We might end up the same...

I'm getting really worried about our rising cost of living here. I can barely survive a month without spending close to S$1k on food, transport, phone bills and maybe one movie a month, excluding other luxuries like a car. The recent increase in GST actually sparked off more price hikes.

With the strong SG currency our property market is at an all time high again. Looking forward when the IR is built the currency would probably go down, killing some property buyers along the way. In the end only the Government makes the money.

Our CPF rates went up from total 33% to 34.5%. While this looks like good news on the surface for those looking to buy a flat, it's actually bad news. This means no pay increment for maybe the next year, because your company's payroll went up by 1.5% this year.

USD is weak now, which is a bad news for exports.

If there's anything promising in the region, I'd look south-west towards Australia or New Zealand, where the currency has been in a steady increase recently. 

Welcome back. I haven't been blogging for a while now. It's been busy months working at my new company, and of course pretty interesting too. Am now confident to say I am now very familiar with ASP.NET and VB.NET languages after having worked with the excellent development team!

So what happened over the past months?

I finally returned the van, a blue Renault Kangoo 1.4A to my uncle. I bought myself a bright yellow Nissan March (known as Micra in UK/AU) K11 1.0A. It's a really cute ride. I bought some stickers over the weekend to apply them on the car, now it looks really whacky! (Photos soon...)

Heli flying has been stagnant, primarily being very broke (just paid road taxes for two vehicles and a hefty downpayment, damnit!) and also lacking the proper electronics. I do have an R/C IFO (Kite) though, thanks to Ace Hobby. I join them at Bukit Timah when I have time every Friday night. In case you're wondering what's an IFO, it's the radio controlled kites with colourful lights during the National Day Parade. (Yes, photos coming soon too...)

On R/C, I got myself a Castle Creations 45A ESC, hopefully that goes nicely with my Scorpion 2216-12 motor in my Mini Titan by the end of the year! (Yes, carbon frames are due out soon too, which is good.)

On cars, I'm getting bad fuel economy on the oldish car, which I might need to get it to Nissan for an ECU readout. Regular servicing with filter and spark change didn't help. :-(

Stay tuned... 

Got Tagged? Too bad.

Jessie tagged me.

The rules: Each player starts with 7 random facts/habits about themselves. People who are tagged need to write their own blog post with their 7 things as well as these rules. You need to tag 7 others and list their names on your blog. Remember to leave a comment for them letting them know they have been tagged and to read your blog.

Okay, who says rules can't be broken? I'm not going to tag another 7 more people just to save them the agony so I'll just fulfill the first rule to write 7 useless facts about myself. 

1. I'm fat. Fact.

2. I'm lazy. Fact.

3. I'm sleepy right now. Fact.

4. I'm fly RC helicopters and planes. Fact.

5. I drive a van most often. Fact.

6. I am quite a racist. Fact.

7. I am quite vulgar. Fact.

:P 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgWcI_s6PFw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jb2Q08k3V20 

Do u even kw this sentence is trying to tell u? Some s just to use it and it gets so ing anying to decipher messages like this, I want to at people who them via IM

FYI, it reads:

"DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHAT THIS SENTENCE IS TRYING TO TELL YOU? SOME BASTARDS JUST LOVE TO USE IT AND IT GETS SO FUCKING ANNOYING TO DECIPHER MESSAGES LIKE THIS, I WANT TO YELL AT PEOPLE WHO WRITE THEM VIA IM." 

I guess there's a widespread popularity for using dumb, meaningless, crappy emoticons in such a manner. So the next time a fucktard write messages like these over MSN, I will simply ignore them; because it's simply not an English sentence to me. I'm not going to waste my time figuring it out.

PLEASE CLEAN UP YOUR EMOTICONS. 

I thought it was getting rampant in Indonesia and started to pick up in Singapore (e2max?), this is the latest from Japan. Hot`cafe is a term I came up with (note: copyright) stands for hotel+cafe. Business venture, anyone?

Japanese find sleep, shelter in cyber cafes

TOKYO, Japan (Reuters) -- Takeshi Yamashita does not look like a homeless person.

From his carefully distressed jeans to his casual-cool navy striped T-shirt, he is every bit the trendy Tokyoite.

Yet the 26-year-old has been sleeping in a reclining seat in an Internet cafe every night for the past month since he lost his steady office job and his apartment.

It's cheaper than a hotel, offers access to the Internet and hundreds of Manga comic books, and even has a microwave and a shower where he can wash in the morning before heading off to one of his temporary jobs ranging from cleaning to basic office work.

Read more

Looks like a cute 'lil innocent duckie?

Well...

NOT ANYMORE!

Project Duck Drive is a SUCCESS!

Who ever thought of this idea could be a sicko in the mind, or maybe just a genius. Animals do have sexual needs, ya'know.

Panda porn sparks panda boom (CNN)

I found a very interesting read on Color, Mood and Meaning. After reading through it I found quite a bit of interesting theories (yes, the striking orange from QQ should go with a tinge of blue).

Then again, I realized I am not a very visual person. I can't really tell the three dimensional spaces the tutorial was trying to get us to see, or the change in shades of gray against other colors. I just see gray as it is. Maybe it would show better in print than on screen.

http://poynterextra.org/cp/colorproject/color.html

It's been a tiring the past two weeks. Full time job, income tax filings, own businesses, parent's stuff... its a never ending list.

Finally the tax has been settled after a series of mayhem. Lots of conversions took place in 2006 from sole proprietorships to LLP or Private Limited companies, so accounts were a bunch of mess. Here in Singapore, you don't want to fool with the tax man.

Meanwhile, I still have lots of stuff to catch up on before I can take a break and enjoy myself with RC helis again. I'll be pretty inactive for a while to allow for funds to catch up as well. Gotta get some savings!

- - - 

Hanz has been having pretty interesting experiences with his new company, with some racism karma slapping him right in the face. It's kinda funny when he bitches about it over lunch. Sometimes you just gotta believe it comes around.

- - - 

Dear just said something bizarre today. To re-enact, repeat after the following in a poetic manner:

"Once upon a time, there were three pigs..."
Look up into the sky, foster some scenes of pigs rolling about, then take a deep breath...
"Big pig..."
Turn slowly and point at me...
"Small pig..."
Turn slowly and point at self...
"... two pigs!"

I was like... ??? ... ??? ... ??? ... ??? ... ??? ... ??? ... ???

Three? or Two? or Three? or Two? or Three? or Two? 

That was exactly my response... "Glitching".

I was down with a fever two weeks ago while I was at a chalet. Even though I had my Army No. 4 with me to keep me warm, I shivered and rattled my teeth in the insanely cold air-conditioned room. Sidetrack - the No. 4 is really good to wear at chalets where blankets are scarce. Its an attire you could sleep in almost anywhere. Roll up another pair of slacks and you have a pillow.

A couple of days later I had flu, followed by persistent dry cough.It gets worse in cold weather, or when I have a fan beating air at my face. Worst even, the cough comes around at night and I start coughing really bad that I could just throw up.

Earlier today while I was at work, I had a throbbing pain in the area around my eye. It felt like the pain came between the eye sockets and the eyeballs. It hurt so bad I had to get away from the computer screens because I could hardly open my eye.

This all looks kinda bizarre, I know. Each illness just builds up on another. When will it end?

Meanwhile, for all your curiosity - the kite flew; pretty well, in fact! It was furious and could roll 3 times a second. Pretty exciting stuff!

Long, long ago, when I was just a little boy, Pasar Malam, or "Night Market" in malay, was a place where we always wanted to go whenever they appeared near our estate.

Pasar Malam in Singapore has actually evolved into part of our culture. These nomadic stalls travel around the country, setting up makeshift tents  either along the streets or under our flats. They usually operate daily from 5pm in the evening through 1am in the morning and can visit an estate as frequently as once a month or only once a quarter. They don't usually stay at one area for more than two weeks.

Due to the nature of such setups, Pasar Malam stalls cater to a residential crowd and sells cheap products - mostly imported from China. Older folks who find difficulty travelling too far would take the opportunity to grab some bargains during the lazy evenings after dinner.

You could find all sorts of products ranging from household items such as bamboo sticks (for hanging out clothes to dry), straw brooms, mattresses, pillows, blankets, nail clippers, screwdrivers, hammers, etc. to clothes, plants, toys, food and more. With such a wide variety of producs, you'd hardly find more than two stores selling the same thing.

When piracy was still rapmant in Asia, Pasar Malam was everybody's heaven for $10 games, software and videos. Ever since the .COM boom back in the late 1990s and early 2000s, piracy control and stricter laws have replaced these stalls with mobile phone gadget stalls selling protective plastic and silicone housing, straps, lights, etc.

The good old days have gone and more commercialized vendors now operate these night markets. You could easily find three stalls selling the same stuff; and almost 70% of these stalls sell food.

The fun of Pasar Malam with the stores selling household items, toys, clothes and pirated discs were gone with urbanization. Large air-conditioned shopping malls have taken over these privately operated stalls.

Now, I hardly visit Pasar Malam anymore. It's mostly food. The variety of products have shrunk. Prices have gone up. The smoke from the excessive number of food stalls makes my eyes tear and my nose itch, not forgeting the pollution it generates to our residences just above the market.

However, there's one thing I might still buy from the Pasar Malam though. It's the $1 Taiwan Sausage - one of my old time favorites.

It has been ages since I've met up with some of my poly friends and today was quite a heck of a gathering although it didn't last very long.

As usual, the defacto tradition was to gather and gamble, and so they did... spent about 80% of the time gambling anyway. Hah!

Here's the link to the entire photo gallery.

OK, maybe I should call this day, 14th of February of every crazy year, carrothead's day where people kill each other and empty their pockets to smiling businessmen.

Dad called me 2:30 am in the morning (!!!) and told me to buy mum some flowers as he was overseas. I was like "Huh? 2:30 am in the morning?!? Where do you want me to find flowers?"

"Tomorrow lah!"

Fair enough. I woke up, went to Long John's for lunch at BPP. And oh my gawd! Let me relate some stuff about Long John first.

I orded this fish thing. I forgot what it's called anyway, but it's a huge piece of fish which I had to wait for more than 5 minutes before they served it to me at my table.

The fish was horrible! It was so not fresh (fishy smell) and had a layer of coagulated fats just between the crispy outside and the fishy (literally) inside. Being a not-so-health-conscious guy, I actually took the effort to scrape the fats out. My gawd! I can't imagine those kids eating these stuff!

Then, I asked for some tartar sauce. The cashier came over with a huge bottle and just squeezed with all her might. "Ploop!" I had almost ten tablespoons of tartar sauce on my plate instantly. It just had to add on to the horrible experience. Yucks! I will not eat freakin Long John's again.

Back to the flowers.

So I walked around Bukit Panjang Plaza and found a florist. There were 4 assistants wrapping endless bouquets of flowers. I went inside the store and asked the cashier, who was also busy wrapping flowers.

"Urm, do you still have any flowers available?"

"Yah, I think two more in the fridge."

I was like... ??? the two left behind were obviously the reason why they were still there. They're ugly!

"Urm OK, what if I asked you to customize one for me?"

"Yah, can, you'll have to wait till 7 pm?"

"?!?!?!?!?@#!@&#*!^@#%*&!@%#&^$!@^%#$!@#!!!! SEVEN? Wah... today got dinner leh!" 

"Otherwise you can just take the roses alone without special wrapping..."

I thought to myself, yea maybe that's fine. I've bought a single stalk of rose before... it's not that bad. 

"Okay, give me 3 red roses in one wrapping, and one more rose in another wrapping."

"So total four roses lah?" 

"Yarrr..." 

The cashier went on to prepare the order I just made and to my astonishment, they just took the roses from the bunch they had at the back and wrapped them sloppily in some paper. The leaves weren't even trimmed and the stalks were at least 40 cm long.

"Urm.... er... ah... (speechless) how much is it?"

"$10..."

I thought, maybe, not so bad after all. It didn't cost me a bomb... so what the heck, I paid for it and left.

While I was walking back to my car, I was looking at the roses. The more I looked, the uglier the wrapping seemed. After some thought... I don't think I wanna give that to my mum. She'll kill my dad for such lousy wrapping (because it was supposed to be from my dad, remember?)

Luckily Eileen told me she knew an aunt back at her old house who's a florist and we drove down to her store. I bought three more white roses, got all the roses wrapped, paid $20, and left a happy man.

I quickly drove home, dropped the roses off, and went to meet dear at NUH where her grandma was hospitalized. After the visit, we drove off to Holland Village, which was the nearest I could think of because I had strong beliefs that if I drove to town, I would kill somebody along the way. (I'll relate my bad driving experiences .. urm... in another entry when the inspiration comes. )

The traffic was horrible. Freaking Singaporeans are all going out for a bang on Valentine's day. Every damn expressway is jammed because maybe people were giving blowjobs in the car... argh.. nevermind.

I even had to fight for a parking lot because some asshole in a Suzuki Swift zhng until like a Mini Cooper reversed into a lot I was waiting for. So I didn't care... I reversed as well until we're both in a stuck position with a queue of traffic waiting behind us, and I sounded my horn. The asshole gave up and drove off. Yea. I got my lot.

So we went off for dinner at Fosters' and the bill came up to be a whopping $104 for a simple meal with 1 soup, 2 main courses, 1 desert and a cup of tea. Ah well... it's a carrothead's day.

I'm now back at home, peacefully and happily pimping my HoneyBee. It's now on brushless mains and a direct drive tail. Am gonna test fly it after I sign off.

Till next time, suckers! 

Timecheck, 6am. Just got home and nicely showered all ready to... sleep?! No way! 6am! My bio clock is screwed, totally.

Weiwei told me I should blog more human stuffs other than RC helis... I'll try for today.

Woke up in the morning and met up with the usual suspects CKS, CJ, Junyang and Yongwee at Segar field to fly. Flew my Belt CP in the strong winds. It was very twitchy and I didn't dare to do much flights with it so I finally gave up after a few hovers and half-forward-flights. (Sorry! Couldn't avoid the heli topic!)

After that I picked dear up from home and met up with the flying gang at the coffee shop near Segar field for our usual lunch. Had kuay chap.

Then I dropped dear off at BPP for her weekly supermarket spree and drove down to Rotor Hobby (Lavender) together with CKS. Decided that some money should go into better quality parts and bought well over $200 of stuffs like servos, USB simulator cable and some other electronics. More on geeky stuffs later. (I am still trying my best to avoid the topic...)

Literally "flew" back to KHCO for the usual Saturday practice. Pretty nice music but not so exciting for Cello. It was also a little packed in the already-confined space due to the increasing Zhonghu headcount. Had dumpling noodles for tea break. Saturday's one of the only days I eat at least 3 meals a day. Very bad for health...

After practice, the whole bunch of us (Kenneth, Yang, Yanpo and myself) met up with dear, Eileen and Ferren for dinner at Fish & Co Wheelock Place.  Seafood platter for two shared with dear. Burp. Bloated.

Then it was a night of games and fun at E2max Cineleisure. That's where the three of us guys bashed out on Warcraft till almost 4am in the morning. Ferren fell asleep on the sofa. Yang and dear was watching some DVD. Eileen just couldn't resist chatting on the Internet. She was pretty sad Maplestory couldn't work tho.

Now back to the geeky topic. (I was suffering from mild withdrawal while typing the above already...)

While waiting for Kenneth to end his theory lessons in KHCO, I replaced the Esky servos on my Belt CP cyclics with Hitec HS-55s. There wasn't any inconsistent swash movement anymore. I was soooo glad. Shows that the Esky servos sucks! Their travel distances are all different!

I will take some time during the following week to setup my heli all over again with the HS-55s and report back on the flight tests. Stay tuned.

I also bought a HS-81 which I have yet to install on the tail. Plus some other stuffs like a 2s 1200mAH battery, GWS ISC-50 ESC for the tail motor of my fixed pitch, some LED lights for night flying on my HoneyBee, a USB cable for my Optic6, and some miscellaneous connectors, etc.

Looking back, I started on this hobby on 15th Nov 2006 when I bought my first proper 4ch heli, the Esky Honeybee. I managed my first hover on the 20th, approximately 5 days after I bought the heli. Then I got my second heli as soon as 20 Dec 2006. Barely a month later I went on to the Belt CP. That's pretty fast.

Hope I can make my fixed pitch fly like it was dancing instead of flying murderously. I was very impressed when I saw William fly his Fixed Pitch so well.

I've got lots of stuffs for sale. If you're interested, please contact me! SMS me at 90082997.

Acer n30 PDA w/built-in Bluetooth

This PDA runs Windows Mobile and has built in Bluetooth so you can hook it up to any bluetooth phone or device. It also supports the use of SDIO cards so you can actually buy a SDIO Wi-Fi card from Sim Lim and get on Wireless @ SG.

Package contents are PDA, 2 pouches, charger, USB cable, CDs, Manuals and Box. Original price S$399. Selling for S$180.

Canon PowerShot A70 3.2MP Digital Camera

Excellent camera that has followed me to China, Hong Kong, Sarawak and also used to take all my previous photos of stuffs I wanted to sell, company product shots, etc.

It is capable of manual shooting modes up to ISO400 and shutter delay for several seconds. Video recording supported as well. Runs on industry-standard CF card (much faster than SD).

Package contents are camera, 256mb CF card, 16mb CF card (came with the camera), USB CF card reader, USB cable for camera (not in photo), CDs, manuals, box. Original price S$699. Selling for S$200.

18GB Original Sun 10k RPM SCSI Hard Disk (Hot-plug). Explains it all. S$100

Yes. Welcome back. I've finally decided to blog after quite a long while. It's the start of a brand new year, but I don't really feel any "new". Everyday's new, izn't it? :)

Anyway, I was shopping with dear around Jurong Point after picking her up from a company event when I chanced upon a crazy digital camera deal. It was a 5.1 megapixel Fujifilm FinePix S5600 going for $499. Not believing my eyes and thinking something must be quite wrong with this camera, I asked to have a look.

To my surprise, it was very easy to operate and produced excellent photos. What's more it has 10x optical zoom and a very good feel when you hold it. It even has a digital viewfinder.

Me: Buy?
Dear: Buy.
Me: Buy.

I bought it. 

Photo of the new camera (taken using my old camera)

Photo of dear eating mos burger (taken with my new camera)

Sidetrack... While I happily spent $499, dear was happy (you could tell from the picture) as well as she spent well over $200 on clothes such that she even got a free membership at the store. So it was a happy spending day. (Yea, but I have no bonus...)

Lastly, it makes sense that I should rid my old camera so I'm selling it for $200. Anybody who wants it can leave a comment!

Entire package - Camera, 128mb + 16mb card, USB card reader, manuals and CD-ROM. (Taken using my new camera. He he.)

The camera closeup.

1GB of Sacred Storage 

Machine this the whole a new geenration's digital walkman equipment. Support form music, such as MP1, MP2, MP3, WMA, WMV, ASF, WAV, etc. This machine perfect tone quality, extremely high dependability and exquisite appearance bring out the best in each other, can be rated as master's works of grade, she can bring the enjoymenf free from worldly cares of digital era to you in hearty hope.

... etc ...

General MP3 user will plague by "the materials divulge a secret", unwilling to let one's own "personal data see, can only delete these personal secrets" first when the friend uses MP3 by others, cause very great trouble like this.

... etc ...

What saw formatted tools at first, choose "person who divide encrypt" secret, encrypt capacity of the magnetic disc choose a suitable capacity, and the hook selects to set up the user name or the password, input the user name in "new user name" place, place input password in "new password", in "new password confirm" office inputs the same password again, click the button "begin", begin the dividing area.

... etc ...

There's actually more mind boggling english. All spelling mistakes and grammar mistakes are directly copied from the user's manual.

Can anyone actually understand what the above is saying?!

You really pay a bit more for a Creative or Apple product for good reasons.  

Since there's so much commotion about the Visa advert, I've decided to create the MIDI. Enjoy!

http://www.tzlee.com/downloads/public/5birds.mid

P.S. Respect Intellectual Property. Do not redistribute my MIDIs without permission. 

Update:

Well, due to popular demand, here's an even better version with percussion!

http://www.tzlee.com/downloads/public/5birds-full.mid

Best enjoyed with good speakers having proper reproduction of bass. Heh. 

Is it true that you will be more successful in life if you studied more? Yes or no, the answer really varies from individual to individual, but let's see some financial figures.

Baseline: Polytechnic students A and B graduated in the same year. A went out to find a job, B went on to further education in a private University.

Assumption 1: Typical polytechnic graduates starting pay of S$1,400, 5% annual increment.
Assumption 2: Typical degree graduates starting pay of S$2,000, 10% annual increment.
Assumption 3: Typical private degree education fees S$14,000 per annum, 2 years degree course.

                 A annual      B annual
------------------------------------------------
Year 1        $16,800       -$14,000
Year 2        $17,640       -$14,000
Year 3        $18,522        $24,000
Year 4        $19,448        $26,400
Year 5        $20,420        $29,040
Year 6        $21,441        $31,944
Year 7        $22,531        $35,138
Year 8        $23,657        $38,652
------------------------------------------------
Totals        $160,459    $157,174

At the end of 8 years of work, A's monthly salary is $1,971 (underestimated based on experience)
At the end of 6 years of work, B's monthly salary is $3,220 (again, underestimated on experience)

Alternative calculation based on national data at SingStat :
Modal polytehnic graduate income $2000-$2999, we shall assume $2500
Modal university graduate income $3000-$3999, we shall assume $3500

                 A annual      B annual
------------------------------------------------
Year 1        $30,000       -$14,000
Year 2        $30,000       -$14,000
Year 3        $30,000        $42,000
Year 4        $30,000        $42,000
Year 5        $30,000        $42,000
Year 6        $30,000        $42,000
Year 7        $30,000        $42,000
Year 8        $30,000        $42,000
------------------------------------------------
Totals        $240,000    $224,000
 
These are just very conservative estimates, but you can see that to catch up with a simple polytechnic graduate, the degree graduate has to go on for many, many years.

I have not factored in also variable economic factors such as inflation & cost of living, CPF, financial interest rates, as well as the different lifestyles of people with different salary grades, i.e. people with more money tend to spend more.

Don't believe me? Gather your statistics, do your math, post it here. It must be generalized and best to base it on public sector's salary schemes.

So why is the government promoting education? Education is a "selling point" for Singapore's workforce; our only "natural resource".

In proper english, "Mee Siam Mai Hum" is the instruction to prepare the popular malay dish "Mee Siam"  without Cockles.

This phrase hit me when I heard a particular podcast. Well... I shall not link the Podcast here, but I guess most of you can find it off Mr. Brown's site. It one hell of a hilarious. :)

Then, it brings me to this point.

Mee siam... got hum meh? i.e. Since when was Mee Siam prepared with Cockles

I remembered when I performed in the Istana over the past few years with my chinese orchestra, the Mee Siam was awesome. It was called Seafood Mee Siam and had big prawns, but I didn't recall it to contain cockles either. Maybe it's a PM special dish. ;) 

I was at the Creative Showroom in Marina Square last month and saw two Vision M on display completely frozen with a distorted display, and unresponsive to input. I snapped a photo with my phone managed to upload it last night. Another reason why you should choose an iPod. ;)

Lastly, an awesome illustration of what depression (literally) means.

Just when you needed a charger to go around your office or home? We have a whole basket of Nokia chargers (original, mind you) to clear at $8 each. You can choose and test until you're satisfied. Self-collect at #03-126, Far East Plaza. For more mobile phone stuffs, visit our website . :)

When I decided to find out the magical ingredients of the pi pa gao sweet that has been soothing my cough for the past couple of hours, this is what I found...

Ingredients: Sugar, Glucose Syrup, Honey, Water, Natural Herb Extract, Permitted Flavouring, Caramel, Menthol

WTF?

Basically simplified as: Sugar, Sugar, Sugar, Water, Herbs, Flavouring, Sugar, Menthol

Further summarized: Lots of Sugar, Herbs, Menthol, Flavouring, Water 

So, was it the Menthol, Herbs or Sugar? 

Actually, it's Sugar. This site states both honey and sugar. So I guess sweet stuff does soothe coughs.

If he's not GHEY, somebody tell me what he is...

I present, PRIVATE CHEN YAN PO...

Last week I filled up an online form on Sun's website to enquire about the X2100/X4100 server. This is what i asked:

Q1. Does the X2100/X4100 rack rails fit into normal data center 19" racks with square holes?
Q2. Does the X2100/X4100 system come with empty hard disk racks when I order them without the hard drives options? What is in the packing list of these servers?
Q3. Does the X2100/X4100 run on non-ECC RAM?
Q4. What is the minimum speed specification for the RAM in X2100/X4100?
Q5. Does the X2100/X4100 support Native Command Queueing (NCQ) and SATA-II hard drive?

As you can see, it's a typical technical e-mail with simple yes/no answers that would satisfy me.

A day or two later, a Sales Rep responded, and with the typical sales talk you could expect:

Q1. Does the X2100/X4100 rack rails fit into normal data center 19" racks with square holes?

DIMENSIONS AND WEIGHT of  X2100 Height: 43mm (1.69 in.), Width: 425.5mm (16.75 in.), Depth: 550mm (21.68 in.), Weight: 13 kg (28.7 lb.) maximum.

DIMENSIONS AND WEIGHT of  X4100
Height: 43 mm (1.69 inches), Width: 425.5 mm (16.75 inches), Depth: 632 mm (24.88 inches), Weight: 17.9 kg (39.3 lb.) maximum

SUPPORTED RACKS for both X2100 and X4100 (http://www.sun.com/servers/rack/)

Q2. Does the X2100/X4100 system come with empty hard disk racks when I order them without the hard drives options? What is in the packing list of these servers?

Do take a look at the Sun Online Catalogue for config options. The first config option are without disk (please note that warranties will be void if non-Sun recommended disk is used).

X2100: http://catalog.sun.com/blahblah

X4100: http://catalog.sun.com/blahblah

Q3. Does the X2100/X4100 run on non-ECC RAM?

Please note that if non-Sun recommended memory is used, all warranties will be void. For further information on recommended RAM, please refer to links below:

X2100: http://catalog.sun.com/blahbla

X4100: http://catalog.sun.com/blahblah

Q4. What is the minimum speed specification for the RAM in X2100/X4100?

Minimum for X2100 & X4100: 1GB (2 X 512MB)


Q5. Does the X2100/X4100 support Native Command Queueing (NCQ) and SATA-II hard drives?

X2100 supports 7200 RPM SATA HDs.
X4100 supports 10K RPM SAS HDs.

At this point of time, most of you would have been going -- what the f***? Same goes for me.

I decided I could take it no more and blasted the sales representative, making my point clear that, firstly, she couldn't even understand simple english, and secondly, I don't need to know what's on your webslte and which Sun part works because I can see it for myself!

She forwarded my e-mail a day later to a distributor from Ingram Micro. I get slightly better replies but still nobody could answer my questions. Frustrated, I went searching the Internet for information on the X2100 and stumbled across Ben Rockwood's Blog. His blog was very informative but I need some specific answers so I dropped him an e-mail and got all the answers I need.

Meanwhile, Ingram Micro has forwarded my e-mail to like seven or eight enginners and pre-sales people who are still unable to obtain a simple answer. The last e-mail from an enginner who told me the brackets only came with the hard drive was almost a week ago (which is not true - it comes with the no-HDD X2100 as well) and I've not heard from them since.

This isn't the first time I've had such experience with Sales people. I've had people call me, asking to meet. Time and again, I  rejected them, and then they'll pull their "mind cornering" trick to mention a date like "are you free on 11th afternoon" and you'll be stuck in a situation where you reply "no" and he asks "why" and you reply "oh because.. erm.. urm... erm.. i have a meeting" and then he goes like "oh what about 12th then?" and yes, you can't possibly be having meetings every freakin' day right? so you give another excuse and he just adds another day and asks if you're free and finally you run out of excuses so you're stuck with an appointment with a sales d0rk and he comes knocking at your office for an hour or two when back on your desk you have Solaris installation running and you're eager to get your server up for development testing. Half the time while they're talking, I'm mentally switched off.

So next time if you're coming to me for a sale, I don't need to you ask me when I can meet you. If I need you, I will definately be more eager than not to meet you. Don't tell me what's on your website, don't show me how many people you've forwarded my e-mail to because all I'm concerned with is my answer.

I don't know why I am so sway these days. First it was Kenneth flying out of the van, now a smashed rear windscreen.

I was driving dear back home when we decided to grab a drink at the coffeeshop near dear's place. I drove up the multi-storey carpark and spotted a narrow lot which had the metal bars jutting out from the top (you know, the type of multi-storey carparks where floors are staggered). I didn't notice the damn bars and started reversing the van into the lot. As the lot was very narrow, I went in slowly. Suddenly, I heard a loud "poof", followed by sounds of shattered glass. I turned around and saw a big hole in the windscreen.

"Ahh fuck," I thought. "It's going to be a thousand dollars to repair that."

I drove up to the top storey of the carpark and started smashing out the remaining pieces of glass from the sides of the window and sweep out the shattered glass from the interior of the van. It was a tough job and it took us almost an hour to clean up the mess from the van.

After that I drove back to my new office to park the vehicle in a safe place. Along the way, I encountered a road block. Luckily the traffic police didn't notice my shatted windscreen, otherwise I would have been much more trouble.

I just returned from the dealer and the repair costs me $750... there goes my plans for starting another small business. :(

It was Tuesday again. I drove by my shop in the late evening to install OpenOffice and print some flyers only to find that the printer's having problems getting to print correctly. Dear was having courses nearby at Raffles City so she popped by as well.

After a couple of tests plus some wasted paper, I finally gave up on the printer. I drove dear to NP where we hung around the CO studio and spoke a little to Mr. Sim about musical arrangement and copyright, etc.

The usual dinner session after practice was still on. However, we decided to head to an unusual location since I was driving a van. About nine of us (including myself) managed to squeeze in and we drove off to Bukit Panjang Plaza. We wanted KFC but it was closed for the day, so we had our tyical dosage of Mac and the exciting parts starts afterwards.

Most of the people in the group left directly for home. I was to drive Yang, Kenneth, Eileen and dear home / to a convenient location. All of us were comfortably seated in the spacious Renault Kangoo with Yang, Kenneth and Elieen behind and of course, dear and myself in front.

As I made the turns around the carpark towards the exit, everything was fine and we were chatting happily.

I drove up towards the IU and paid for my parking. The barrier lifted and I accelerated.

Suddenly, I heard Kenneth say "wooow...", followed by a thump, an "ouch", and Yang yelling "STOP!". I jammed my brakes and turned behind.

Eileen hit her shoulder and was lying on the van floor... and Kenneth has flown OUT of the van and was sitting on the slope!!! OMG! Luckily there were no cars behind.

I put my gears in "P" and engaged the handbrake. In shock, I didn't know what to do and was rooted to my seat.

Kenneth stood up and walked towards the van, I told him to slam the back door shut and get back on the van quickly from the side doors.

I drove out of danger onto normal roads and proceeded slowly to Eileen's house. I turned into a carpark and parked the car so I could do some inspection. All of us were puzzled why the rear door was open as there aren't any handles to open the door from the inside.

It's indeed lucky that nobody flew out when I was driving a packed group of 7 passengers behind, and I still have no idea why the rear door came loose.

Anyway, now I know that before I move off, I should always check indicator lights for open doors and ask passengers to ensure that all doors are secure as well. So much for experiences with a van!

P.S. I've tried Unleaded 92, 98, and now VPower. If you own a petrol car, go for VPower. Indeed, the fuel gives you more power, your engine not only feels smoother, it sounds smoother as well, and the best of all -- a good fuel gives you better mileage. It's worth a couple of cents more. Trust me! 

Went over to uncle's place to borrow his van for the weekend so we can move expensive stuff over to our new office instead of leaving it all in the hands of the movers'. Dad drove the van from uncle's house (Upper Changi Road) back home (Bukit Batok) and for once it was a completely different experience for him!

Once we reached home, I took the van out for a ride as well and went to pick dear up. It was a completely hilarious experience.

First, dear wanted to take the pouty photo with my phone like what Jacqueline had done but it was too dark. As I accelerated from a traffic light down Bukit Panjang the engine sounded really fierce like the Volvo but the van couldn't go any faster so dear said, "same sound, different feeling." Argh! The, the beeper went off at 60km/h and dear was laughing away at me cos I couldn't go any faster.

The best part was, I saw a taxi with his ass sticking out. It was my tendancy to horn such retarded drivers and so I did. But guess what? The van gave out a muffled "peee" sound, like how you would pinch your noise and say "peep". It sounded worlds apart from the booming horn the Volvo had and the both of us just burst out laughing. Nevermind that. The main point is, the horn didn't work! Either the taxi couldn't hear it or ... nevermind.

Finally, we drove to Shell for some refuelling. When I got out, it took me and another puzzled petrol station attendant 5 minutes to figure out if the van runs on diesel or petrol. He finally stuck his nose into the gas tank and said: "I smell petrol." :|

$20 of Unleaded 92 gave me almost a quarter tank! Haha.

Well... so much for a van experience!

Unbelievable...

before breaking up 

after breaking up

Something which I found extremely cute!

I think I've used the most number of vulgarities in a day for this year yesterday. After I've upgraded my iBook Hard Drive, I drove over to dear's place to meet her. Dear suggested that we pop by Suntec so that I could do my shopping (IT Fair) and she could do hers (Boutiques @ Suntec for clothes and ladies' what-nots, etc.)

It turned out a brilliant idea indeed, all in spec with Murphy's law. Just as I was driving down PIE from BKE, Kelvin called and I missed my exit at Steven's Road as I was too distracted trying to communicate with him over crappy Skype VoIP quality.

So I took a turn at Kallang (shows how far I've went without realizing I've missed the exit) to Macpherson and down CTE before I exited near KK hospital where the Great Singapore Squeeze started.

I was fine for about 15 minutes in the jam until I realized I haven't even moved past a single traffic light. For the next hour or so, (Note: one HOUR from Rochor Canal Road to Suntec City) the traffic was completely crazy. Everybody's in a rush, but everybody's stuck -- the NB, the CB, the KNN, the middle finger, the horn and the headlights all finally get to work together.

As I was passing by the (messy) junction before Suntec where Circle Line construction was taking place, I saw the amazing crowd going past the link bridge from CityLink Mall to Suntec. Shit. Sardine's the dish of the day.

I avoided the left turn to Suntec and went straight to Marina Square. Shit. Carpark's full.

I took a turn to the back of Marina Square where there's another carpark entrance with some hope. Shit. Carpark's full.

I decided not to wait anymore. I turned out of the queue, accelerated hard to pass the dumbos waiting at the carpark queue outside Marina and went straight to Esplanade. I'd rather pay more for the freaking parking than waste time queueing up for a parking lot that'll never arrive.

Ah, the beauty of music. I went to the instrument store where I tested a S$10k German cello which sounded really good and my temper was gone.

Then, it all came back when we headed towards Suntec, into the crowd going up the escalator. I was there just to buy a S$10 hard drive enclousure for my old 2.5" disk which I've removed from my iBook. As soon as I grabbed the enclousure (which was the first store at the Level 6 hall entrance), I left the dreaded place.

I found nothing amazing from my brief visit on Friday. The prices aren't much of a discount, the bundles are simply worthless, the products aren't bleeding edge, everything's a mess that even OSIM and FIAT are there selling non-IT related hardware. I wonder what's the damn squeeze about.

We went back down in the crazy crowd and decided to head into Suntec where we met a huge human jam just before Giodarno and the Dell booth. (We stopped dead in our tracks behind a huge crowd!?!). Time to U-turn.

So the plan to go to Suntec failed and we detoured to Marina Square. Dear bought herself a nice pair of jeans and had her fair share of shopping before we sat down at Fin's. They serve good fish and I would recommend it if you're around the area.

On my way back, I went down Shenton Way and up AYE towards Jurong. Bless me, I didn't get caught in any jam.

If there's a thing in town, don't go near ECP Rochor Road exit at all costs, including ERP. 

I was down at Wheellock Place with my gf yesterday and headed towards the newly renovated Apple Center @ Orchard. I managed to get my hands on the new MacBook Pro and was very amused. Firstly, it runs hot (very!) below the left wrist area  (where the hard drive is?) and I believe it can keep a cuppa espresso warm for the day. ;) Secondly it loads Safari so fast I hardly had time to press "stop" on the stopwatch. I compared it against a PowerBook G4 right beside it and confirmed that it is indeed two times faster -- at least for the time it takes to load applications. I held down Command+R (refresh) and webpages just refresh in a blink.

Another funky device also came to my attention -- M-Audio KeyStation 49e. It's a 49-key keyboard MIDI input device which runs on USB, and is powered by USB. I read several reviews online at Apple's website and about 10% of reviews condamned the product's support. I am still contemplating if I should get the keyboard so I can punch music into my computer real fast. It isn't really expensive, especially for only S$180. If you have a better, cheaper product (except for Creative, for I condemn outright plagarizm), please drop me a note.

Lastly, since I've just reinstalled a clean copy of OS X on my ancient iBook G3, I've decided to go 100% original (or at least, 99% original). I ditched Microsoft Office 2004 (MSO'04) and installed OpenOffice 2.0 instead. I found out OpenOffice was WAY better than MSO'04, in terms of speed as well as usability. The key thing being it doesn't have the MSO'04 messy toolbars (MS makes a mess of everything it tries to copy -- in this case -- Adobe Photoshop). If you are a templates freak, maybe you should stick to MSO'04 at a premium of >S$500, OR get your ass arrested in no time.

The second M$ software in the drain was Virtual PC. There was no freaking way I'm going to use VPC ever again as it was practically unusable in my previous install. Sadly, VMWare Player doesn't run on Mac OS X as a host OS or else it would have been my choice of virtualization platform.

I stumbled upon Project Q , a port of QEMU to Mac OS X. I am still installing so I'll keep this blog updated for further results.

Anyway, back to the point on plagarism, another con-dom (short for "con-domain", like "con-man"), Open OSX is repackaging the unstable universal binaries of Project Q and selling it for $25. A complete rip-off. Now we have another site to boycott.

Basically, all plagarizers bah-bodoh (act stupid). 

So I have made my point. I hate copycats like the Creative, the Microsoft, the OpenOSX, the Hyundai (don't you realize the Tuscon looks so alike the Volvo XC90?) and the choochee.

Nevermind if you don't understand the last one. 

"So what's the hype about?", i thought.

Maybe it's another student teacher thing like years ago. (Google "Susan Chua NYP Sex Scandal" if you're curious.)

Apparently not. Tammy, a Nanyang Polytechnic cheerleader, recorded her sexual escapade with her bf using her mobile phone and was, IMHO, silly enough to keep it in her handphone. A (reportedly) jealous rival stole her mobile and found the videos. She then published it over the Internet.

I got my hands on one of the video and I must say it's really hardcore. :-O (I'm 23, if you're wondering.) Not suitable for kids!

Well, fancy a polytechnic girl (17 years old?) having sex and seemingly so experienced. I'm appalled! =D

Poor girl. I hope the evil thief gets the sentence. 

Local celebrity blogger xialanxue.blogspot.com managed to contact Tammy's friend who said Tammy seems fine. She also published her correspondance with the media people which really shows their ugly side.

I remember few years ago when my friend passed away in the RSS vessel accident, the reporters are the worst people around. Most of them showed no respect for the distressed family members and kept asking questions despite them refusing an interview.

But then again, who's the real big bad wolf? Read bexafraid.com for a little more info on how this news surfaced.

Moral of the story?

1. Never store your (sex) videos on your freaking mobile phone, or any portable storage device you carry around for that matter.

2. There's no stopping the Internet!

3. Don't mess with the freaking media people, the mass com people, or the attention-seeking bloggers. 

4. Buy a K750i from whymobile.com if you must have such a video. At least the quality is decent and the video length is unlimited. :-P 

The word is best illustrated by the typical 'ORD' mood.

Here goes the award winning link to Yado's site on the ultimate story of a typical Operationally Ready SAF unit.

http://iamyado.blogspot.com/2006/01/operationally-ready.html

I bought an Acer n30 handheld about over a year ago at $399 -- which was a very good deal at that time. Something similar with built-in Bluetooth from HP would have cost an extra $100+.

I bought the handheld because of its price, but I never considered being able to conveniently obtain spares. I broke my stylus near the end of last year and was stranded with a PDA without a stylus.

I searched Harvey Norman. Boh. Best Denki. Boh. Even Sim Lim Square, Boh?!?! Unbelievable. You couldn't get an Acer stylus anywhere in Singapore but from Acer themselves.

I dropped by Acer at International Business Park and parked the car by the roadside becuase I couldn't find the entrance to the building. After peeking under some trees, I spotted the Acer building and walked to the reception desk.

"Uh, I'd like to buy ... "

"Spare parts huh? That way...", pointing at a door on her left.

Woah, she could read my mind.

I went through a maze before I found the entrance to the service center which was packed with people. I saw a sign which read "Q ticket, please proceed to counter 1."

I promptly did, and asked the man if they sold Acer n30 stylus. He turned around and asked another lady at the neighbouring counter, "N30 stylus, wu boh?" (Proper english translation - is the N30 stylus still in stock?)

"N30... Err... Yah yah..."

I was given a Q ticket - Collection, no. 7025. Currently serving no. 7022.

I waited... and waited. 1430 hrs, I arrived. At 1445 hrs, I approached a lady at counter 2 attending to customer no. 7023 and told her that all I wanted was a stylus and that I was in a rush. She replied me in a very unplesant manner.

"But you still have to wait. I still got to draw the stocks for you."

At that point, I thought like... WTF? You don't even sell your accessories in retail outlets, yet you don't have a proper sales counter at your head office, now you ask me to wait a whole 30 minutes in queue with the other customers collecting laptops and PCs who will sit and inspect every inch of their computers before they make payment and leave?

I didn't ask for much. I was one number away. All I wanted was a stylus and then I'd leave.

The best part was, ONE freaking stylus costs $15. I could buy three of those for O2.

So I've decided that from today onwards, I shall not recommend anymore Acer hardware to people.

May rude Acer staffs work like dogs for the new year.