Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Utilities Bill

Today received the utility bill for the month of October.

Since end-Sept, my mother-in-law came back from the medi-care centre, and my maid was moved back to my home to help take care of her, and do the usual housechores.

So early Oct, a lot of cleaning was done by my maid.

For October, air-cons are switched on in 2 rooms (does it matter if only 1 or 2 or 3 rooms are switched on?).
More loads of washing on washing machine.
More electric used with more rice cooking and water boiling etc.

This month, the bill went up almost twice. Now at about $191. :P
In hokkien, I will say, 'Jing Yao Siu'!
In malay, I will say 'Tak Boleh Tahan'!
In cantonese, it's 'Yao Mou Gao Chor'!
In cheena, that should be '他妈的'!

I need to buy more Toto!

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Issues and Demo

Yesterday was slightly busy. Was at customer's site working on the BW project.
Somehow, I feel the solution is not very elegant, but have already stepped onto it, and probably not so easy to switch to another solution in a short time.

And to top it all, now I think I will have some issues regarding getting some form of classifications within the data. As usual, I won't go deeper into it, as it doesn't make sense to most people, including me. :D

Well, today went back office, as the customer didn't want me to stay too many days at their site. Chargeable. So to reduce cost, they wanted a bit of logical stop to it, and then to recall me back when they are ready as well.
Basically, they have to work on the system too, else they will have a hard time in future to support it.

Anyway, was back in office trying to figure out some of the other issues faced for the project. Not very good result after the search. So now I have to think of some other alternative to resolve the issues.
Sigh. 真的是。。。伤脑筋噢!

And tomorrow, will be heading to another site to test demo system, prior to actual demo presentation to another customer.

Work can be so fun. NOT.

Sunday, October 28, 2007

Eventful Day

Morning received a SMS from my NUS friend Yee Loon. He said he setup a car boot sale stall at Downtown East selling 2nd CDs, and asked me to go down if I am free.

So went down with Karinna around 11am. The place was a little crowded, quite hot too, as it's under the sun. Managed to find that bugger, and chitchat for a while before we leave for our next destination.
Anyway, selling old CDs away is pretty good idea to clear things from home. Things tend to get too cluttered at home, if no effort is done to do housekeeping. That's why I don't buy that many CDs nowadays. Listen from the radio is already good enough, else there's always internet.

Next, we moved on to Jalan Kayu to take a quick lunch. Ate chicken murtabak and beehoon goreng, plus drinks. Total damage: $11.80. Not cheap eh?

Then, we went to Cisco office. Karinna's laptop got problem, somehow cannot login from home. I know it's something related to some corrupt file in her laptop, but it's better to leave it to Cisco's IT support to resolve it rather than the home IT expert, which is me lah. hehehe
Anyway, so we went to her office, and she called up the IT support to help troubleshooting the problem.
About an hour plus later, still cannot fully resolve the issue. The IT support managed to provide a workaround though. That is, DO NOT shutdown the laptop when go home, just leave it as standby or hibernation mode, so that the computer can still allow her to logon onto the PC back at home.
Just as I expected. Maybe tomorrow they will tell her they need to format her harddisk, and re-build her laptop from backup. :P

After that, we went to her colleague's son 4th year old birthday party at Dempsey Road. The place is called 'Go Go Bambini'. This is the first time I go to Dempsey, and I don't think I can understand why people want to go there. So troublesome to go there you know?
This 'Go Go Bambini' place is basically a place for kids to play around with. To be more specific, it is just like an indoor playground. They have some rooms to allow birthday celebrations to be done. Kids' money are easy to earn, not just woman's money.

Took just a few pictures there. I think I didn't take any picture of the birthday boy though.
The baby Karinna was carrying in the picture belongs to another colleague of hers.




The boy quite cute lah. He kept looking at me so often that I felt a bit shy also. hehehe.
Actually, the pictures were taken off my phone, and it seems like it's pretty well taken. Maybe the lightings in that room makes the photo looks ok.

We left around 5pm+, and on the way back, stopover at Giant Hypermart at Tampines. Bought things again lah. Nowadays, things are used up pretty fast at home. Used to buy 1kg of rice, which will last us about a year. Now my mother-in-law and my maid are staying here since 3 weeks plus ago, I think we have already bought close to 15 or 20 kg of rice. Other daily home groceries are not counted in yet too ...

Sigh.
Na si wa wu jit ba banh ... ... jit ba banh ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!

Saturday, October 27, 2007

Alphaville - Forever Young

The power of internet.

Still in some mood for songs, so I decided to look for one of my favourite song of all time, Forever Young by Alphavilla.
I have a lot, a lot, a lot of different versions of the song.

And this the first time I saw the music video of the song!

I once had a seconday school friend Gregory Ong, who bluffed us about the video showing a baby born in 1970, then when it's 1980, still show the same baby face, come 1990, stil lthe same thing ....and goes on and on.
Ka na sai eh? :P

So here it is, the music video from the 80s.


And to top it all, there's a music video for the remix version of the song.
Forever Young (Special Dance Version).


Maybe I will look around for more others. A little bit of cheap thrill here. hehe.

=====================================================

Forever Young - Alphaville

Let's dance in style, lets dance for a while
Heaven can wait we're only watching the skies
Hoping for the best but expecting the worst
Are you going to drop the bomb or not?

Let us die young or let us live forever
We don't have the power but we never say never
Sitting in a sandpit, life is a short trip
The music's for the sad men

Can you imagine when this race is won
Turn our golden faces into the sun
Praising our leaders we're getting in tune
The music's played by the mad men

Forever young, I want to be forever young
Do you really want to live forever, forever and ever
Forever young, I want to be forever young
Do you really want to live forever? Forever young

Some are like water, some are like the heat
Some are a melody and some are the beat
Sooner or later they all will be gone
Why don't they stay young

It's so hard to get old without a cause
I don't want to perish like a fading horse
Youth's like diamonds in the sun
And diamonds are forever

So many adventures couldn't happen today
So many songs we forgot to play
So many dreams swinging out of the blue
We let them come true

Forever young, I want to be forever young
Do you really want to live forever, forever and ever
Forever young, I want to be forever young
Do you really want to live forever, forever and ever

Forever young, I want to be forever young
Do you really want to live forever?

冬天里的一把火

Well, was in the mood to look for some songs. I found this rendition of 冬天里的一把火 by the Project Superstar Contestants from Series 1. :P

Kinda cute for viewing. That's all.

明珠姐妹 - 最后一口气

Feel like putting a hokkien song today. So here it is, courtesy of movie 881.

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Rantings

Have not been posting anything for the past few days.
No excuse. Just lazy.

It is true that it's been busy few days, but I always believe no matter how busy, you should be able to find some time some where.
Else, how to pang sai? hahaha

Well, weekend was simply good for lazing around. Mondays are blues. Tuesdays are more blues, and Wednesdays can't be cool. Thursdays you won't feel blue, and Fridays are simply boons!

Pardon the crap.

Seriously, have been wrecking my brains hard with the project I am doing. Not too hard, but hard enough for my small brain. hehehe
At least, now things look a little brighter, hopefully it can stay that way till end of the project.

Work can never end ...

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

骊别

已经十月份了。
再多几个星期,学校就放假了。

这个时期,许多同学都会准备一本 autograph book, 让其他的同学留言,记下联络资料。

一九八二年,我毕业于尚义小学(已经不存在了!),这些留言簿是相当流行的。

当然,我已经忘了我所写下的一切一切,可是,唯有一则我至今都还记得一清二楚。

是一位女同学的留言簿。她向来有一点儿凶。
以下是我在她的册上所写的。

你是老虎
我是狗。
你吃人肉
我吃骨头!

有押韵吧!?

朋友! 你现在还好吗?

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Prose8 - 因果

因果

有因必有果
肯耕耘,必有收获
切莫计较时间之长短
毕竟
是努力而得的结果

27 Oct 1987

Sunday, October 14, 2007

Sunday

Today was a busy day.

8am. A call came. The system we are monitoring seems to give problem to my colleague. So have to wake up, and check it out. As per my colleague, the system indeed behave oddly. Upon checking, it is due to some additional huge load of data the client is running, which causes the system loading to behave that way.
So I taught my colleauge how to perform some 'cheat mode' to get the loadings done. But that's quite a painful way, and rather tedious.
Shall not go into detail, but if any one interested, feel free to email me and I shall elaborate. hehehe
Siow!

Meanwhile, I helped in checking the system, then it's almost lunch time. After lunch, freed myself from work, and went to visit my father. Also, to help my nephew restore his darn slow PC. Managed to restore his PC, but somehow something was amiss. System was still darn slow, and seems like it still has the previous data in the system despite doing restore!

No time to deal with it further. Have to become a chauffeur to drive my father, sister, nephew and my wife to visit my new born nephew Matthew.
So off we go. Zoooooooooooooooooooom.

Reached there, baby can only come out at around 4pm.
Zoooooooooom. Go drink kopi downstairs.
Zoooooooooom. Baby come out liow, go up see see.
Zoooooooooom. Go home around 5.

Then went back home pick up my old Altec Lansing sound system (with booster) to give to my nephew Benjamin.
Zoooooooooom. Back at his home to re-fix the darn slow computer.
This time, I angry (like the Hulk like that hor!) and restore the system again, but using advance option this time. Damn stupid restoration only allow formatting with advance option.
Who in the stupid world need to do a system restore without formatting the harddisk?

Anyway, this time, the restore looks much better. System gets cleared, was performing quite alright in the beginning.

Then started loading Avira antivirus, started making the system able to download updates from Microsoft site etc.
Reboot.
Slow.
*ptui*

My guess is that due to option to make system download updates, the system was exactly doing that, and since it's a restore from a pretty old system, there must be quite a lot of updates to be done.

So left the system there, still slow performance when I left. Almost 8pm liow ok.

Zoooooooom. Back home.
After makan, made some quick check on the monitoring work just to see things are back in order. Pretty ok except for a small issue.

Well. So much for a Sunday.
Thought I should be relaxing ...

And darn! Tomorrow is Monday.
I love Mondays ... ... ...

Saturday, October 13, 2007

Matthew


First, it was National Day baby, Casper.
Now, it's Hari Raya Puasa baby, Matthew.

Yes. The newest addition to the Tay Family is here. Matthew. At least that's what my brother has decided to call his baby boy.

Baby arrived at 2.41pm weighs 2.9kg
More pictures at my flickr site.

Next, can't do without a short video taken as well right?
Here it is.

Friday, October 12, 2007

Strike!

Alright!

Orr-mii-tor-hoot leh!
Tio Toto leh!
Ole Ole!
Ho seh liow leh!



I am $20 dollar richer!
I will blanjah my wife to eat char kway teow! :D

Monday, October 8, 2007

Noise?

Yesterday was quite an interesting day. Not exciting, but interesting.

Not much in the morning though, was trying to check out my SAP installation on my system. Boring stuff. Not worth mentioning.

Afternoon went with Karinna for some shopping. Needed to buy more cardboard/sideboard to store things. My house need more storage! Also needed to buy some stackable storage for my maid to store her things, so that my mother-in-law can have more space to store her things.
SOOOOOOOOOOO MANY THINGS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Where's the garang guni man!?!?!? oi!

When about to return home, my niece called me, and said they (she and her bro and her dad and her grandpa, my pa lah) coming over to my home to visit my mother-in-law.
Fine, so back home I came. On the way home anyway.

So I told them to stay over for dinner, and somehow, a call was made to my sister, and somehow, arrangement was done that my sisters are coming over to my place too!

So in the end, my home was quite crowded. Other than my mother, and my 2 brothers' families, the whole army was at Blk233. :D
My home hasn't been so crowded for a long time. Kinda fun! :)

Of course, my dogs played very good hosts. They were hoisted to the study room by me. They made some guest appearance to the joy of my fat nephew though. hahaha
That was fun!

Anyway, they left some time after dinner. Only thing is, the food for dinner was barely enough. Didn't prepare that much food, but nevermind lah, they hungry they can go eat some more, I am sure. Everyone has a certain size to upkeep! hehe

When's next? Hmmm ...
Too bad, I forgot to take pictures. :P

Saturday, October 6, 2007

Astons Specialties

Actually, yesterday after arriving back in Singapore, didn't go home directly.

Went for dinner date with my lovely wife. *blush*

We went to this place call Astons Specialties along East Coast Road.
Dun pray pray ok. Long queue!

Their specialty is supposed to be Wagyu beef, and you need to order 3 days in advance in order to eat that. So we didn't eat that lah.

I took some crispy friend fish, and Karinna took prime ribeye.
We ordered garlic bread too. (Wanna smell my breath?)
And each with a rootbeer drink.

The total destruction is pretty minor. $25 still got change.
10 cents. hehehe
Value for money, and it's pretty good too.

Below is a picture of the food that was dismembered by us.

Friday, October 5, 2007

Project

How exciting. Back from Jakarta today.

Weather at Jakarta is darn hot. As bad as Singapore hotness. :D

Well, as usual, poor mobile reception, and very limited internet access for me at Jakarta. And somehow, the 3G Mobile wireless access that we have there, just cannot work for me. Works fine for my other colleagues though. Bewildered me, but no time to troubleshoot for resolution. hehe

Anyway, I think the project there has some progress, but ultimately there's still a couple of problems to settle. Somehow, the data from customer is not so ready, definitely a huge showstopper for us.
If master data is not fully ready, how can things proceed? D'uh!

To make things worse, Hari Raya is coming, and there will be a plant shutdown next Wednesday or so, until almost 20 Oct! How to finish the project??!?!?!? :P

Nevermind lah, see how lah.

If things need to be done, it will be done. Somehow. :P

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Just Another Day

Today woke up at 4am.
Too excited that I'll be flying to Jakarta?
NO!

My wonderful dogs woof woof at 4am, cozie they got a little scared. Useless dogs.
Not even rained yet at that time, just a bit more windy, still, useless dogs are useless dogs. *woof* until I woke up to keep them company.

Nothing unusual, such things have been happening for a long time, and I am usually the unfortunate person to be awakened.
My wife is always fortunate.
The new occupants in my house (my mother-in-law and maid) seem to be pretty fortunate too.
Time to buy Toto! :P

Anyway, now at the airport, waiting to board the plane to Jakarta. Will be there until Friday. So exciting.
Afterall, it is the cockcroach-infested place that I am going to. Hopefully, it is cleaner now in the unit that I am staying.

And yes, will have pretty limited internet access, but now we have our own 3G mobile internet modem right now, the situation should be a little better.

I will know when I am there. Have not been back there for 1 month plus already.