Voting for the cutest baby

Hi, if you have some time. Please vote for the cutest baby/toddler.

If you happen to like my cute friend Prawnkid, please vote for his nephew - contest #12 Davy
http://www.kidscentral.sg/ssi/contest/K242850606.ssi

-2H1U

Winding down 2/2

[edited on 27-Aug-2006, 10:40am]

[Background]
I was stressed for the last two weeks, rushing for a deadline on Friday. I completed the coding and testing on Thursday and was told that the vendor pushed back the launch date.

[Saturday/Today]
Woke up to a sleepy day and played DOTA right in the morning. Then I played again with Gaga when he came online. We tried the two new heroes and just pretty happy exploring the differences.

I went to a Chinese doctor for further torture but the queue moved at a glacier pace. I gave up and went ahead with my appointment with Gaga. A cabby was dropping off a passenger so I took it instead of crossing over to the other side of the road. We travelled straight towards town area for a distance before he declared that he was going to take a U-turn. Now? Why not like 2 junctions back? I was still early so I was agreeable. He took a turn and entered the highway. He had deactivated the voice readout on his satellite linked device so it was beeping like a pager and he responded by pressing buttons for each message. I thought it unsafe but traffic conditions were good. Finally, we popped out into Orchard Road beside Meriden Hotel.
"You're going to the Oredian theatre?", he asked.
"No...", I repeated, "I'm going to the old Cathay. The newly re-opened one".
"Oh okay", he said, once again. "Can I drop you off inside?", he asked, meaning the taxi stand at Carrefour.
I agreed, since it can be good for his business. "Sorry ah, I picked up a call here so I have to drop you off here."
Suddenly, everything clicked. I still thanked him but I felt a little disgusted.

We watched "The devil wears Prada". We rather liked it. The audience laughed at every minor thing, even those that appeared in the trailers. I thought that was rather fake of them. However, I'm not complaining. Rather posers than having people who converse loudly. Or irritate others with the light from their mobile phones throughout the movie.

Dinner was sausages, well appreciated, and followed by shopping. Thanks to Gaga, I bought over a hundred dollars in clothes, my single largest fashion purchase ever. Think he felt outraged that the 70% discount I had prevented him from emptying my wallet. Ty...

-5H1U

Winding down 1/2

[Background]
I was stressed for the last two weeks, rushing for a deadline on Friday. I completed the coding and testing on Thursday and was told that the vendor pushed back the launch date.

[Friday]
After reaching my first milestone, I had no mood to work. Not that I was angry or tired. In fact, I was in a relatively good mood. I tutored our new hire; I helped another colleague with his debugging work; I simply did everything but my own work.
When the sunlight starts to come through the windows at a slanted angle, I started doing investigations seriously. I found more potential problems for project. This will be remedied on Monday.

Our room was to be renovated over the weekend and we gathered and 6pm and started moving things. Some selfish members left for home after they moved their own stuffs. Everyone else (who stayed) was game and co-operative. "It felt like a second ORD!", I declared. I even brought my little friend home for the weekend =)

Night came and I was looking forward to it. We met up with Faith and had dinner together. We talked about job opportunities and mutual friends(the industry is small). Kieran and Belle left us and we proceeded to Loof. The ambience looks nice but the drinks list does not suit me as it consisted mainly of cocktails and wines. The beer list had an impressive selection of 1 type of beer. They even have light and dark versions. Wohoo! As a side note, they mentioned they also have Tiger beer, Corona and something else. I guess they taste terrible since they did not even occupy a proper line in the menu.

When Joseph arrived, Faith made him re-enact his calling of Tommy "You stupid!" - Upon learning that the latter signed a bond with the company. "No, no! You must say it with passion!", cried Derek, which made me chuckle inside. The talk turned quickly about our frustration with work and I was surprised to learn that I was not the only one. Some in turn were shocked to learn of my points of disagreements with my work. To them, I was the most tolerant but those who knew me laughed their heads off. I was pretty surprised too. How did they know? I thought I hid things pretty well. It couldn't have been my attempt to drive my bosses crazy with my constant nagging for more IDs. Or me walking out of the room when boss tried to explain about the ID situation?

No, seriously, I'm surprised they read more that I cared to show. On one hand, I should watch myself. On the other, I don't think I really care.

-7H2U

Can't get any work done

[work]
There's so much interruptions to my work for the last two days. Other than being chased for existing work, I have to answer queries from colleagues on program logic. I'm not getting anything down.

[social]
Anyway, we got to meet Joseph this afternoon. Tony also contacted me out of the blue. Too bad I didn't have much time.
Btw, happy birthday Bee.

-4H2U

Public stand; Private stand

[social]
An informal survey by JW.
Subject: How un-touchable is someone in a relationship?
Lady friends generally open to choosing another guy if a "better" one comes along. Guy friends have little qualms about wooing someone who is attached.
Or so they say.

We claim we believe one thing, but would do another when the situation arrives. I thought I was open to gays, but I retreated when someone made an advance.

When the time comes, would you stand for what you said?

-2H1U

16 Aug 2006: 5 things

[work]
Without good analytical skills, it means every fault in the program is Joran's fault. Bzzt...

[grace]
People in green uniform disgust me again. They gather; drink; leave their rubbish behind and they break the plastic chairs. For what? Contest of strength?

[social]
Got to know some people better.

[grudge]
I didn't order lunch for boss's boss yesterday. Is she angry with me? I don't think I really care. Not informing me before 10.30am + Me in a bad mood == Me not caring If you had placed your orders.

[food]
We had Waruku in Katong. Nice!

-4H3U

Hey! How are you doing?

When I was finally nudged into blogging by friends, I was naturally eager to share it with others. Getting an audience wasn't easy.

My primary targets weren't interested; no excitement; no drama; some complained of lack of content; some say there's too much. One of the stronger attacks - not updated daily.
Everday? Fine. So I did (see my posts during Feb 2006 and Mar 2006). What was the criticism next? Too many complaints. Not exactly a fair one. Be your own judge. There is no pleasing everyone.

"Hey! How are you doing?"
"Oh fine", most would reply. Or, "Busy". I wonder if I buck the trend by saying, "Not good". Like, what else can we say? Our mood swings from day to day. It doesn't fall for eternity in the Wold; neither does it rise constantly like our bus fares. Take it as an update, sharing or cry for help. I'm not exactly sure either. But rather than get a lame answer from a lame question, why not just check the numbers at the bottom of my posts? It was meant to be an Easter egg but too many know the secret now. It'll change very soon.

-1H3U

OT on Sunday

I wanted to clear away the miscellaneous stuff I had so that I could concentrate on my main task. So I decided to return to office on a Sunday.
It rained on me when I went out. There was no bus service. The gate was locked. I should have checked...

-1H2U

Next target

Gaga is back from his own trip to Kota Kinabalu. We plan to revisit it one day but for now we are setting our sights on...

Source: our classmate's "photo blog"
More reading: 24 views of Mount Fuju

-3H1U

Interview: unhappiness

You don't believe what I tell you verbally. You don't like what you read. Then why bother calling me up for an interview??

-3H1U

Kota Kinabalu: Index page

Okay, it's finally written up.

Here are the links:
Climbing again??
Kota Kinabalu: D-2 Flight plans
Kota Kinabalu: D-1 Manukan island
Kota Kinabalu: D-Day
Kota Kinabalu: D+1 The struggle, part 1
Kota Kinabalu: D+1 The struggle, part 2
Kota Kinabalu: D+2 Rest and recreation


The full set of photos are available. Please visit my Friendster profile to retrieve the URL.

-1H1U

Dim sum and Majong

Ding Dang has returned for good. Yesterday, we met him with Chloe, Norman and Kat for dim sum at Hong Xing resturant. It wasn't bad but after re-evaluating it with the things I ate, it isn't in my top spot anymore.
Norman and Kat left us for their personal shopping and we left for the residence of Gina and Terry. It was a 10 hour session of Majong that seen some changes in fates. The final winner was Chloe. Oh well.

-4H2U

Comment Spam

This site is being targetted by comment spam. Bots search out blogs and add comments to them, advertising their own sites. Regrettfully, I'm adding spam protection to my comments feature.
Please don't let this stop you from comment though.

-4H4U

A "constructive" and "productive" day

[Job]
The morning started with a constructive meeting. We cried foul about the lack of resources while boss took the role of the bad guy by defending the bad guys. He went further by asking why we can't solve the production issues during working hours and work on our programming requirements after our users have gone home. Nobody gave an answer to this.
After the meeting, we broke into a race for the hotly contested IDs and PCs. I got there first despite my ankle, probably because no one bothered to run. I did some good work finally with full access to an ID, a workstation, a phone and an email account. Wohoo!
Nuts...
I was in a relatively good mood and return to my personal PC to catch up on my programming. A colleague asked me about syntax, another asked me about SAP and I was caught being a busybody when Mdm Foo came into the room. Mdm Foo was one of our key users and she understands the flow of this project like a blood cell knows the body. Somehow, our company struck an undeserving windfall of fortune by pulling her over as an IT consultant. As if disciplining a misbehaving puppy, she called me out of the room for having multiple outstanding issues. Meekly, I followed her back to the production room. In no time, the list was cleared. If left to me alone, I might not have finished it by week's end.

Things look set to get worse for this project but just for today, things look a shade brighter.

-4H3U

1 Aug 2006

-2H5U

Do not disturb the grouchy bear

I sort of woke up with a few things to be unhappy about. I got irritated a few times and went for a walk more than once to cool off. It's some part issues, some part irritation and a large helping of stress.
Do people who work as programmers really know how to write good codes? Logical errors, lack of comments and difficulty in maintenance seem to be the hallmark of programs here. Do people document for the fun of it? Why not put something useful in it?
I'm ok. Few know that my output goes inversely proportional to the amount of sunlight. I put in some good work and I even fixed an extra bug for the Buggiest program on Earth, introduced by the very first amendment. Wow. How about some professionalism?

-1H4U

Link to my blog

This is unexpected. I'm breaking the link between my friendster profile and this blog so to restrict the spread of its existance.
For those who prefer to use RSS, here's my feed.
http://feeds.feedburner.com/jwqh

What's a feed? Well, for starters, why not try to paste the URL into a window?
If you like, you can set up a program or a html page which mutliple RSS can give you a summary of "What's new" in friends' blogs or newsletters. For a long time, I had placed it inside my Friendster profile but I'm discontinuing it now.

-3H2U

Light will triumph over Darkness

[DotA: The beginning]
It was a simple practice session that snowballed into a massive match up. Our mutant, Hulk got the itchy fingers and decided to humble us mortals.

The match-up. Me, Joran, the sneaky player in training picked Kardel Sharpeye - the dwarven sniper that can kill people from afar. Woo, the retired pro, picked Aggron Stonebreaker - the Ogre Mage. Let's just say his character set things on fire. Via Spiel, our newbie in training picked Ryai - the Crystal Maiden, who specialise in freezing attacks.

Hulk chose my favourite hero killer - the dreaded Demon witch, whose stun and hex attacks are perfect setups for a team kill. On top of that, the Demon witch has a finger of death which does what its name suggests. An early game powerhouse. Fant chose Lucifer - the Doom bringer. His character is strong in melee attacks and comes with a good finishing move.

[1/6]
We led for the first 15 minutes, gaining levels more rapidly then they did. My longer ranged attacks forced Fant to return to base for healing many times.
Somehow, Hulk got a kill and things went downhill. Our characters were killed in turn and our shopping plans dashed.

[2/6]
Things got badder. I formed Snaga and Yasha - an attack enhancer and together we took down a tower on the left lane. And got killed by the evil Duo.

[3/6]
We probably all died like 7 times each. Strangely, they seemed to be killing our characters in sequence. Frustrated at what appeared to be a losing game, we banded together and charged along the middle lane. After several tries, we broke in, killing Hulk. We got killed afterwards. I started saving up.

[4/6]
Hulk and Fant went out in revenge, killing our characters whenever we tried to take the middle lane. We took the left path while they were busy defending the middle lane. We reached the final tower on the left path and were killed when they ambushed us front and back. I saved up enough for Monkey king bar - an item that can disrupt enemy spells.

[5/6]
We alternate between the left and right lanes. Occasionally we got killed but we made progress. Eventually, we tied down a pattern. Woo would supply the muscle; Via Spiel would freeze them when they charge; and I, who would be hiding in a corner would fire shots that stun them. We began to turn the tables.

[6/6]
We broke into their base in 2 places. Victory!

[Last words, uttered by Joran]
1. Morgaga is reaching home...
2. Via Spiel, these are runes...
3. Via Spiel, run!
4. Hulk is here...
5. They respawned... Woo, out!

-3H0U

You give so much to your parents?

Ok... I met her again. As my brother forgot my standing order to tell all female callers that I'm not home, she managed to contact me and I continued my lie that I didn't receive her sms all this time...

Long story short, she wanted to review my coverage, so another meeting to set up. She was surprised at the amount I gave my parents, but the true ratio was hidden from her as I did not tell her I have allowance. She suggested that I could reduce what I am currently giving to my parents. I gave the excuse that this could approximate my true expenses in the event I move out.

I give a total of 23% of my gross salary to my parents and grandmother. I wonder how much others give.

-1H1U

Sorting out photos

I'm the process of sorting out my digitial photos from Kota Kinabalu. While I'm still days away, photos for the white waters rafting are availiable. To protect my identity, I won't be posting the URL here. Please check out my Friendster profile for the link or ask it from me when I'm online.

-0H0U