I’m not a regular blogger

I am not a regular blogger.

I just realized that I didn’t blog for a few months already. My life has been kept busy and interesting with work. Work in my current company is interesting. The people are interesting. I wonder when was the last time I felt this way. At the end of a day’s work, I don’t feel like logging on to the Internet again just to blog. I just want to walk around, fiddle around, clean up the house a bit, read a book, listen to music, shower and sleep, or just rot in front of the TV.

So if I do have the energy to blog, it’s because I have nothing more interesting to occupy my brain on an extended period of time, or I have something that I felt strongly passionate about.

December 2007

It has been a few months.  I almost forgot my login to my blog.  It has been busy and tiring, but work has been gratifying and satisfying.  I have a great team of people working together with me now.  Boss is supporting, patient and willing to get involved in the work.  It’s a wonderful end to the year.

Just got a slight breather to post a belated Merry Christmas, and best wishes to you in the coming New Year!

Just some updates

It has been weeks since I last wrote.  I tried to write 2 weeks back, but wife wanted to talk to me because there was so little time to talk.  That was about 7am in the morning that I tried writing!  Sad, isn’t it?  So we talked, and I lost my feeling for writing.   After which, I was back in working mode, and writing took another back seat.

So I’m writing now because I’m stuck at where I’m developing.  Stuck between business flows, application designing and schedules.  “How to fit that in?” is the question that I’ve been grappling for the past few days.  So what’s new?  Definitely nothing in the realm of software.

I’m back into application development using Java, with this company that deals with payment transactions.  Using AppFuse, Spring and Hibernate, it has been an interesting ride so far, for I’m learning new things.  Although these frameworks have been around for some time, but that’s the downside being in management.  You know that they exists, but you hardly get to touch, smell and taste them.

So how was your National Day?  I spent it over at my mum’s place in the afternoon, and back at my home with our own-cooked dinner, watching the NDP 2007 over dinner.  Dinner was good, but the NDP was boring.  The theme for the performances was some half-cuckoo idea associating Singapore with the 4 elements, Mother Earth and into the future.  Some age-old ritualistic believes interleaved with space-agey designs and dances.  It didn’t work for me.  What a pity that it was an opportunity to come up with good performances against Singapore’s city skyline, but it was wasted.

The fireworks were too much… so much smoke was generated that the later half of the fireworks were blocked.  The camera angles had to be switched over to the camera-in-the-sky to capture the brilliance of the firework from the side.

Same old songs… One People, One Nation… Together Singapore… to close the NDP.  Yawn!

So I’m just a Singaporean that’s getting jaded from the annual NDPs.

Moving on to a new job

Yeah, I have moved on to a new job. The previous one is put on hold, until things are more confirmed. It wasn’t moving in some ways, so we decided to get on with new jobs now. Hopefully we’ll be able to pursue our ideals at a later phase in our lives.

So it has been 2 days since I started at the new company. It has been so busy that I haven’t had time to set up my office computer, access emails and Internet, nor write anything. It has been meeting clients and attending internal meetings for whole days, gearing me up to speed. But being busy is good. I need to get used to it after months of working from home.

Now, I am handling the research and product development. We’re building up the infrastructure for mobile payment. I wouldn’t want to go into details, it’s not the right time for that. But I would say it’s a real interesting idea with good business model.

I hope I’ll have more success to show for. 🙂

Updates:

I’m looking for people who can do Java programming, involving product development.  Anyone interested in working with me again? 🙂

I dream in colour too, or do I?

During my last meeting with a group of friends involved in puppetry, we touched on a topic on whether we dream in colours.  Most of them said that they dream in colour, except for my wife, who dreams in grey scales.

Honestly, I couldn’t remember whether I dreamt in colour or not.  Usually the dreams that I remember are those with fear, being victimized, highly-charged with emotions.  Something like being chased down a dark corridor, and waking up with a high beating heart rate.  For dreams like that, everything seemed to be happening very fast and blurred, like a camera taking a fast-moving object.  For dreams occurring in very deep sleep, I could not remember those dreams.  I usually am conscious of dreaming, but I don’t remember what they were.

Just 2 nights back, I remembered a dream.  I accidentally dropped my black mobile phone.  After picking it up, and tried using it, I realized my phone had turned to this bulky old generation Nokia candy-bar phone.  The colour of the phone had turned to silvery-grey.

Hey, I dreamt in colours!  Or did I?  Mulling over it, I also realized that silvery-grey can be considered to be part of grey scales.  So did I dream in colours?

Citibank’s cute girls

Did anyone notice that Citibank’s Consumer Banking’s branch offices have cute counter staff?  I have been visiting their Dolby Ghuat branch office regularly to deposit cheques, and I realised that all of them are cute to a certain degree.  Much better looking than SIA stewardess, and they do make the queue time seem shorter.

Ah well, when they end their service with a smile and “Thank you, and have a nice day.”, I already did.  🙂

My mum the Qigong Master III

My mum went to China (Li Jiang) recently, and at an airport for transit, she bought a book to pass boredom.  The author of the book is a doctor whom took over his father’s thesis on how people with different blood types are affected by their diets.   In the book there was a mention that people with blood type A and AB have more difficulties in expelling toxins from their systems, hence most people with ailments are of those blood types.

Now my mum asks her patients what blood types they belong to when they come for their regular massage and qi-gong sessions.  She was very surprised to learn that most of them do belong to type A and AB.  Now she’s advising us what to exclude from our diets.  Fortunately, mine is contained to only chicken and tomatoes.  Unfortunately, one of the best Singapore food is Hainanese Chicken Rice.

How have you lived?

Today, I had a lunch with an old friend.  We had an interesting conversation, and we touched on how a colleague of hers turned health conscious and became a vegan.  She also paid to go on health camps and detoxifying exercises.  Her supervisor was a bit stumped on her willingness to pay good money for such activities.  His comment was “Everybody dies eventually.”

That got me thinking.  It is a fact that everybody dies eventually.  The difference is, how did you live?

Did you live just like everyone else, so that your dying was nothing, well, spectacular?  Just another person that passed on?  A shadow that slide across a dark alley?  The candle that never burned bright enough to light the room?

Will you live a boring life, or did you do something interesting?  Did you live just to earn today’s meal, or did you do something that you’re passionate about?  Did you live a life with integrity, honesty, honor, joy, happiness, care and love?  Or did you lived like the walking dead?

In the end, the difference is in the living.  You would have lived so that no one would want you to die.  Tall order?  How about, you would have lived, so that someone remembered that you died?

Chinese toothpaste found to contain a potentially deadly chemical

I read this news article about how a toothpaste made by a Chinese company contained diethylene glycol, which could be blamed for causing 51 deaths in Panama after mixing with cough syrup.

Quote:

Chen Yaozu, general manager of Danyang Chengshi Household Chemical Co., said his company had exported toothpaste to Panama containing diethylene glycol, a chemical blamed for the deaths of at least 51 people in the Central American country last year after it was mixed into cough syrup.

In the article, you can read “used as a low-cost substitute”, “permitted under Chinese rules and was safe in small amounts” and “export markets worth about US$30 billion (€22.2 billion) on alert”.

It is disturbing for a few points. Obviously a lot of manufacturers are using low-cost chemicals to manufacture low-cost products for the masses for the purpose of profits. The safety of chemicals that is acceptable is also questionable. In this instance, it was not safe for 51 people. The most disturbing point was that concerns are more focused on economic ramifications , and not humane concerns.

When are we going to wake up to the facts that the authorities’, the governments’ and the manufacturers’ primary concern is about the bottom line? When are we going to start taking responsibilities on deciding what goes into our mouths and on to our skin?

Read the full news article here.

Too much See’s chocolates

Arck…!  I was mildly hungry.  There was nothing to munch except some chocolates from See’s.  I took 3 pieces of them, and now I’m feeling like my stomach’s flipping over.  Too much sugar.  Arck, I’m sticking to dark chocolate from now on.