Singapore Flyer

Earlier, we went to the famous Singapore Flyer. :D

You see, we had a pair of free tickets, which has an expiry date of 31 Mar 2009.
Therefore, we have to use it by Mar, which is already ending!

As such, we went in the evening after work, and we reached there around 6.35pm.

It's not crowded at all, and we have express pass!
Not useful for such crowdless crowd. :P

Of course, being up there, cannot don't take photos right? So here they are:

I think I look quite toot like that hor.

So we were up there in circle for about half-an-hour.
After a short while, actually can be quite boring. hehehe

But the scenery around it is good. And the evening time, where there's still a shade of bright lights, and getting ready for the last light, makes the whole place looks pretty cool!

Having said that, still don't think I will go again, unless I have some freebies again! hehehe

After the merry-go-round, getting giddy liow.
Went to Popeye to have dinner. The fried chicken was so hot until my fingers got a little burnt. Karinna's too!

Like hubby, like wifey!

Meet The Parents

Call me Dad!

I was asked to attend a "Meet-the-Parents" session by my niece. Kinda weird right? No kid yet attend the "Meet-the-Parents"? Uncle is also not considered parents in real sense mah.

Althought I did have a part in bringing her up, that is, giving her some canes, and more canes, and more canes. :D
Ahhh. I not so evil. *wink*

Being the punctual person, of course I am not late.

From the gate entrance to the assembly hall, there were prefects stationed along the way to be the guides to the gathering location.

Wow. They are all so courteous. You walked past every single one of them, they will bow their head slightly downwards, and greet you "Good Evening Sir!".
There's one particular one even called me "Hamsom".
Aiyah! Forgot to ask her name! She needs to be complimented! :D

I think she must be the best prefect in the school.
I like. *giggle*

Anyway, the principal started the session, and went on and on about their school results, comparing results according to subjects blahblahblah.
Wow. School life has become quite stressful huh.

It's ok. I understand. She has her own KPI to attend to.

Apparently, English Language and Social Studies / Humanities seem to be the toughest subjects for most of the students. What's worse, these 2 are quite critical in terms of gaining access into Junior College too.
Well, English has all along being the utmost important subject that will be accounted for in all kinds of entries into all higher tertiary educations.

Let's not neglect Mother Tongue too ok?!?!

The principal even called upon ex-students to come back to make a short speech, to inspire the current cohort to put more effort in their studies, in order to make better grades, and able to let them go into the targetted next level of higher education.
That's pretty interesting.

Just wondering, how many will be exactly motivated? :P

So I asked my niece, how motivated she is, to get more A1s. She said she is very motivated.
Hmmm. We'll see how her results fare in January next year, then we will know if she is indeed motivated.

Again, her current result (Common Test I) is not really that bad, not that it is fantastic though.
Singapore style: Can do lah.
But seriously, I think she can do better. Need to get the lazy genes out of the way, perhaps that will help. hehehehe

Comparing to 20-odd years ago, her results were only slightly (and more slightly, and slightly more slightly) worse than my results then.
But 今昔非彼昔. Cannot compare apple to apple.

It's ridiculously for me to hear that in order to go into TOP JC, you need L1R5 results that is lower than 6!
L1R5 means Language 1 (which is English) plus 5 Related subjects, which has criteria related to Maths/Science/Humanities etc.
You need to compute with 6 subjects, and your result has to be lower than 6 to enter top notch JC!

KA NA SAI!

Time has really changed.

To me, as long as good effort has been put in, and that each and every time you have made improvement, that would be already a good form of learning by itself.

All Ze Best-est-est-est!
Students of the world ...

Bonus

Recently, there was a little hooha over comment made regarding bonuses received by some of the CDC employees.

Of course, the comments were made from our elite MPs, which agitated a large group of unhappy Singaporeans.

There were many blogs that voiced their unhappiness over the issue.
Wayang Party has some. Mr Brown made his.

I mean, if you read Mr Brown's entry on this fiasco regarding missing threads in forum discussions, it will undoubtedly create a sense of disgust in most people as to what some people can do, and will do, to cover things up.

I'm not into politics, and have no intention to, and have no calibre to as well. I'm not part of the elite team. :P

As a little commoner of the nation, and definitely the thoughts for most people, giving a 8-months bonus in such poor showing of economy just doesn't make economical sense.

I guess most people will still agree to give bonus to good performers, regardless of good or poor economic situations, but 8-months bonus at such critical time fixture?!?!??!
It goes to show that the elite brains somewhere had some short-circuit.

Maybe there is really some good reasons, commoners like us just cannot envisage it.

Seems like no big hooha on this matter after all.

We are Singaporeans!
C@@L!

BlooiE's II

Today, we went to BlooiE's Roadhouse Restaurant again. This time, we were there earlier, just after 6pm or so.

I had an afternoon meeting which finished about 5.10pm, and Karinna went somewhere, and finished about 5.40pm

Actually wanted to go to Stewhaus at Siglap, but it's gone from there! So re-directed ourselves to BlooiE's. :D

See what we ordered!


Ha ha! Yes. A burger and a pizza!

And I ate 5 pieces of the HUGE pizza!
WAH!
饱到要死！
*BUURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRP*

Cake

Ha ha! The domestic goddess is at work again!
I am sure your bright eyes can see the piece of creamy stuff there.

Give you a close-up of the product:

After covering the cake with the cream fully, she radiantly smiled for the camera.

And then she started wondering what to do next, after filling up with strawberries ... ...

Ah yes! Of course! Some colourful sugar coatings will make it look nicer ...

Feeling happy with herself for her product, did some final touch up to the cake.

So now, who wants to be the guinea pig?
:D

Double Bay

Yesterday, we went to the show flat for Double Bay at Simei.

Following the successful sales from Alexis, Double Bay seems like the new kid on the block which is getting quite a lot of attention.

Is the property market at a very good price now? Quite a lot of people were there at the showroom despite some rains during the afternoon time.

It's about $800K for a 1250sqf 3-Bedroom unit.
How how how?

Maybe in the end, it's still no $ no talk.
kekeke

Maybe have to wait for Double Pay then consider. :P

Fashion

Today, we went to Marina Square.
It's hip to be square!

Anyway, we just walked around, then went for dinner at the food court.
Took a while to look for it, coz' don't know where it is. hehehe

After our dinner, as we came down the escalators, there was this fashion go going on.
So being the kaypoh Singaporeans, we peek here and there to look at the show.

I look at the girls, she look at the clothes. :P
The models are all too thin. So terok.

Not my type. :)

Play Balls

This morning, before going to office and while waiting for Karinna, I took out my 4 stress balls and wanted to throw away.

In the end, I throw at the 2 canines, and they started running and chasing for them.

Well, that's the two useless dogs chasing useless balls. :D

IT Show

I have not been to IT Show or any other PC Show for quite a few years.

Today, we went to the super duper crowded IT Show at Suntec City.

I wanted to buy some sort of Network Access Storage, in order to have a simpler process of backing up date to some external storage, other than PC or laptop.
NAS, so that Karinna can similarly do backup from her PC without interfering me.

Then I saw this Verudium, and I thought it is quite an interesting way of enabling sharing.

In the end, I bought this Verudium, plus a Internet Radio Donger (which comes as a bundle), and a 1TB external harddisk.

Well, the Internet Radio Donger and the external harddisk sure works well. No problem.

I've been trying to get the Verudium to work properly, but it keeps giving me problem here and there.

First, everything looks fine except I keep having problem connecting to the 1TB harddisk through the Verudium.
Then I keep getting blue screen of death.

To troubleshoot, I even change my weird Norman anti-virus program to F-Secure. At least F-Secure still allow me to synchronise my Outlook to my phone.

Right now, with anti-virus installed, somehow the BSOD has not occurred as much, but I still cannot connect to my external device through the Verudium.

I suspect it is Vista giving me such problem, but I have no more XP system to test it, and it cannot work on my other Windows2000 system.

So how?

Sent a mail to the Verudium Support to ask them. That's how!
Guess won't have a good solution in a short while. Hopefully, it is not money wasted.
Hmmmm ...

三字经

Who knows 三字经?
Of course, I am not referring to 他妈的, or whatever people want to refer it as. :P

I am referring to the traditional chinese 三字经.

Seriously, I don't know the full thing. I've never learnt to memorise all of it, and never will too.
The only ones that I remember well, would be the ones that most people are used to hearing:
人之初 性本善
性相近 习相远

Nowdays, the youngsters' language skills for Chinese has been quite deterioting, so I will not be surprised they don't even know what does that few lines mean.
Hmmmm. Maybe people at my age do not know too. *shrug*
My chinese language skill is not superb, but can do pretty ok. :D

Perhaps should take some time to read these stuff again, hopefully can help enlighten us in some ways in the way we deal with our life.
Some of the teachings which we should have followed, but never really did.

For a full list of 三字经, click on the link to take a look, and hopefully we can understand it.
It's all in chinese.

For some sort of English transaction, look here.

Then again, who in the right mind would read it? heh heh

Hospital

Just reached home, after settling the hospital admission for mom.

Actually, it was more or less settled by 3+pm, then my sister said she would go and see mom, so I stayed a little longer.

At least this sister of mine, Kelly, is a little bit more talkative, so can entertain mom a bit. hehehe
I not so entertaining. I only entertain kids better. :P

See this picture, Kelly with mom, and mom so stylo-milo right?

Other than some mis-comfort experience down her throat (due to the endoscope procedure), she's relatively fine.

"Fine" is a relativity, because her liver condition has not been good for many years. After this, still need to do many followups for her case.
Liver, eyes, nose, blah blah blah.

Her pulse rate is good, heartbeat is ok too. Blood pressure a little lower, but still acceptable.
Cholestrol too high. That's tough. :P

Anyway, should be discharged tomorrow.

So have to see how.
One step at a time.

Endoscopy

Last month, brought my mom to SGH to have some radiography done, and was supposed to followup with the doctor a few days later for the report.

In the end, she forgotten about it, and I tried in vain to contact her on the actual day as well as the previous day.

Somehow, an appointment was made yesterday, and the doctor advised to do an endoscopy to check part of her intestines for any blood clotting or stuff like that.
It was supposed to be related to her liver problems, too chim for me to understand anyway.

So we came back to CGH this morning, and she needed to take some blood test before the endoscopy, just to make sure she has enough blood in case anything happen.
Appointment was 0930hrs.

But just like how most of the hospital works, it was damn slow.

First, the in-house doctor came to take the blood test like about 1015hrs, took 4 small tubes of blood, and came back at around 1120hrs to say one of the tubes had not enough blood to do the test.
Crap! But sometimes such things happen, so cannot fully blame them also. I am so kind.

Then wait wait wait, just like army huh, and wait wait wait.
Wait until around 1240hrs, then they pushed her to the endoscopy room to do the procedure.
It's about 1/2 hour procedure.

I went off to take my lunch at that point of time.
They called me at 1315hrs to tell me that it is likely for my mom to be admitted in the hospital for a 1-night observation.

Just spoke to the doctor, and he said it is good that this endoscopy was done. He found some blockage, and managed to tied up 5 blockage-growths, and would like to observer her condition for 1 day.

In fact, just did the administrative work with them for the admission, and waiting for the nurse to come and bring her to the ward.
Not sure which ward yet also.

Oh well. Wait again ... ... ...

Ten Years

It was on the 9th day of March, year 1999.

Two innocent youths went to this place called Registry of Marriage, and put their names together on a piece of paper, signed/chopped/stamped their lifes to be devoted to each other.
With witnesses from both families and some friends, the two persons were then bonded to each other for life.

Ahhhh! You so smart.
Yes! It is Karinna and me!
我赔上了我的青春! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

So today is the 10th Anniversary.
Piang! Sounds so scary right?
And we've known each other like 17/18 years already.
红红青春敲啊敲！
烦恼忧愁不见了！
Ohhh really!??!?! :P

Being the special day, we went out for dinner instead of eating at home.

Anyway, not say very special place lah.
Parkway Parade not very exciting place right?

In the end, went to this place "Siam Kitchen", and had some Thai food.
So-so lah, can do. I not very particular with food, just like how I am not particular with choosing wife. kekekeke

We had some pad thai with tanghoon, beef noodle soup, tom yam soup, pomelo salad and thai fish cake.
Not really a lot a lot, but still pretty full.

姐姐妹妹站起来

每年的今天，也就是三月八日，是为了庆祝女性们的经济，政治和社会成就而成立的。
三八妇女节

It's a day to declare "女人万岁"!
Hmmmm. Very OLD Very OLD Very Very OLD! :P

Seriously, not many countries celebrate this day, and for our little Singapore, I guess most people won't be bothered with this day as well.
Not that I really care.

And I do respect the women of the world. And it is out of respect that I call so many of them "Aunties", and perhaps I do get rebutted for calling them that.
Maybe "Ah Sohs" would be better! heh heh heh

Nowadays, we talk about equality, but life is never really going to be equal.
Be it your own personal life, or workplace, women will still be treated differently, somehow.
And they are all out in full force, the lady bosses, the lady colleagues, and the lady subordinates, and vendors/customers, and blahblahblah.

Of course they have lots of achievements! Bravo!

So, to all the sisters of the world, please stand up!
I want to salute you all!

Ahhhh! I don't really care! :P

三八妇女节快乐！
你快乐，所以我快乐！

屁啊！

金門王與李炳輝

Can't remember which show I watched recently, and they have some people singing songs.
I guess must be 王牌大賤諜 which I watched.

Anyway, then I heard this song called 來去夏威夷, which I believed I had heard before. It's quite a catchy song.
Hokkien song is not always dull and boring, or in some cases, 俗气.

I think this song is quite cool.

Ultimately, the most famous song from the interesting pair (visually handicapped) should be this 流浪到淡水.


Lately, the visually handicapped singer which really sings well, is none other than fire engine 萧煌奇.

Of course, in the Singapore scene, we have our very own 陈伟联.

Who do you prefer? :D

Norman & HTC

Heh heh. Norman is not my friend.
Norman refers to Norman Security Suite, a relatively new anti-virus software company. At least new to me, I only know about this anti-virus software early last year when I bought my laptop that comes with a 1-year free subscription.

I just switched my mobile to HTC Touch Dual, since my Sony Ericsson K618i likes to shutdown on me occasionally without me knowing. This HTC phone is a pass-me-down from my lovely wife Karinna. :P She will always get the better phone.

So yesterday, I was trying to synchonise my contact list and calendar from my Microsoft Outlook into the HTC phone.

Tough luck. All installations looked perfectly fine, just cannot synchronise. The best part is, it tells me that synchronisation is completed. However, none of the data appear in the phone.
Not even when I disabled the Firewall feature in Norman!
!@#$#^&%^&(*^&(*$@#$#&^^*())(^%$#^%$%*(&)(*_)^%

So being an IT professional, I have to keep thinking what could be wrong.

In the end, I decided that it is my anti-virus software that is preventing the synchronisation.

So I uninstalled my Norman Security Suite earlier, and then do the synchronisation.
Voila!
True enough, the data synchronisation works like a charm. I am like a charm too.

But I cannot live without anti-virus, so I have to re-install back the Norman shit again. At least temporary till I can find some solution to make them both work together. Obviously Windows Mobile and Norman hated each other.

Anyway, I feel that the problem is more on Norman software side. I had previously used another software, which cannot work with Norman anti-virus installed too.
I tested that software when I removed Norman earlier, and it works like me (a charm) again!

Why do people make software that complicates life?
Oooooops! I doing SAP Application Consultation ... ...
Such complications!