I throw letter today

I just sent my resignation letter by email and SMS to my Project Manager today. After I have failed to get a pay raise in January, I have decided to look for another job. I sense a recession around the corner, with all the signs pointing south, hence the urgency to scout. Not that I didn't give Getronics a chance, but if they didn't value an employee who bring value and offer good performance, so be it. I am not the type who will work for peanuts. I helped them secure re-contracts after re-contracts, fixed a sinking ship abandoned by the ex-teamlead, and I am paid lower than some engineers. With my studies killing me, worrying about money is the last thing I need.

Boy, the job market is indeed good. I have sent 5 emails to the usual job agencies and got 6 replies. The job agencies were more excited than I am, with 1 particular agency came to my current working area during lunch for an interview.

I signed up for the sweetest deal of course, the one with the best pay, prospect, experience, package and environment. To those who didn't know, your employment contract is negotiable. You can push for a better package, so if you feel that you deserve better, give this a try.

After signing the offer letter and sending my resignation letter, I will start my 1 month count down today. Being a hard working bastard, I still have 4 days of off-days, 5 days of leave from last year, and 4 days from this year to spare. Judging from the looks of things, Getronics is likely to buy out all of my leaves which I certainly don't mind.

I hope people will miss me, for I have put in a great deal of effort to bring the smile to my users. I am quite sure that they will go back to the days where the helpdesk is more interested in looking good on paper than to deliver actual results.

"Refund" from Singapore Pools

After a year of buying Toto, Singapore Pools decided to give me a "refund" for the draw just before the hong bao draw. I got back almost as much I have put in for the year, which is not too bad, considering that I can't even get 3 numbers right most of the time on 3 rolls of system 7 quick pick. Although I missed my target by 3 zeros, I can't complain if I managed to get back something at all.

[INSERT WINNING TICKET PCITURE]
Woah !!! I have forgotten to scan my first winning ticket !!! I can't remember what numbers were involved either !!!

However, most of the cash was blew a few days later, because my sister wanted to ditch the Celeron 2.4D. It couldn't do 4 open tabs in firefox and winamp was throwing fits. I don't think I can keep throwing my old PC to my sister, so I bought her a Athlon 64 x2 6000 with 500GB harddisk, 2GB RAM and slap my GeForce 7600GS with a new Razer Krait for good measure. She can now 打包 her Logitech mouse and a Barracuda mousepad for office use.

Not expensive but surely speedy. So now I got a grand total of 3 PCs and 1 laptop at home. I just hope that they will stay in good working condition or I will be very busy spending time on maintenance for sure.

True Horror Stories By Taxi Uncle

This morning, while I was doing Google search on taxis, I ran into this interesting post in sgClub. A poster going by the name of Taxi Uncle wrote a series of short "true" ghost stories in a post. It's quite a fun read given that I had just completed a nightmarishly long database assignment and I have not read Russell Lee's True Singapore Ghost Story for ages.

Here is an tidbit from the first story.

"hi there, this is my first but 100% non-fiction story, hope u like it...:mellow3:

This incident was happened many years ago on a public holiday that fall on a
Sunday in 1998. I was then sleeping tastefully and was suddenly disturbed by
a phone called from the ki tong 乩童 ( medium ) of my temple. I was told to
rush down to our temple for an urgent session. I knew only later that it was
because of a spirit that has possessed on a young lady and a deity dee ya
pek 二爷伯 ( hell deity ) was appointed to take the job. By the time i reached
the temple at about 11am, i saw a young lady already sitting inside our
temple just beside our 'yim tua' altar ( altar setup with hell deities statues ). i
walked near to her and hurriedly setup the altar for preparation to invite the
deity dee ya pek. That was my virgin experienced coming so closely with a
human body that is now possess with a spirit inside her. And it was still inside
her. My feeling then was very tense. She keep staring at me becos i was just
standing beside her. she looked lost but calm and could be wondering what
are we trying to do to her. I presume 'she' was not a Taoist."

Come and scare yourself !

Uncle Foong is promoted to Daddy Foong

While taking a taxi home from Sakura Toa Payoh, the taxi uncle struck a conversation with me. And from the conversation, I could tell that he thought that my sisters are my daughters.

So at the age of 27, I have been promoted from Uncle Foong to Daddy Foong.

On the bright side, he gave me a 40 cents discount and I paid $7 for the trip.

Random nonsense

...Google is officially gayish pink ...

When I opened up my Google Documents, their pinkish Valentine template drove me nuts.

If you can take more pinkish assault on your eyes, you can challenge your sanity by going to this Pink VS Blue Project.


A sea of pink...eeek


And in case you are wondering, this is how I spent my 27th lonely Valentine day ...


And finally, my nonsense sprouting Mom just contradict herself again. I offered her to try my newly purchased fish floss rolls but she rejected it on the grounds that prawn rolls sucks. It's like saying Big Mac sucks because Fillet O Fish sucks. Then by the next evening, she happily consumed 1/2 of the fish floss rolls. Blahhhh ...

The rat race started early for me

This chinese new year is the worst so far for me. My homework is cursed with ...

Instead of relaxing during the CNY period, there is a large load of homework to complete within 4 days.

1. 2x information systems management critiques at 750 words each
2. 1x operating system workshop
3. 1x database tutorial
4. 1x database assessment
   - 1000 words essay
   - Relational algebra
   - SQL
   - Normalization
   
   

This same curse was placed on a application server at my customer's site once before. Guess what? It worked, and the server's hard disk ran out of space.

Right now, the excess things left over from the previous year are all problems and more work. It didn't help when there is no prospect for a pay raise. So I guess it's jump ship time again.

To whoever reading this blog, happy chinese new year 2008 !

恭喜发财，万事如意，心想事成 ！！

Unfairly wide

Last December, I went to the last computer show (i forgot the name) of the year on day one to get myself a new Acer 24" wide-screen LCD that was recommended by Jun Ming. It was advertised at a bargain price of $599 a couple of days before the show. Considering that other brands are going for $899 or more, this is a good steal.

I have been looking for a high resolution wide screen LCD for almost half a year to replace my 17" Philips LCD. It's always useful to have more pixel assets and frankly speaking, dual monitor display (2x 17" LCD) didn't cut it. I admit that it started off as purely indulgence but I wanted something more bad ass.

At the show, I saw a display unit of the 24" LCD and I was disappointed by it's ergonomics. It looked boxy and simply ugly. The silver rims made the 1 year old design LCD looked like a fashion dinosaur. Seldom do I condemn something over it's appearance but this one really sucks too much.


I grabbed the brochure and walked off the Acer booth in utter disappointment. As I was walking around, I spotted a new model in the brochure which looked way better. It cost $100 more but it has better specifications and design. It's still a lot cheaper than it's competition and it comes with a free Brother All-In-One printer as well. So I went back and placed a order for it as they didn't have available stock for it yet.

So 2 weeks later, the LCD landed at my place and 1 month went by. So you may wonder, why would you want to buy a 24" wide screen LCD ? That's 1920 x 1200 pixels of visual real estate.

Reason Excuse #1 : Work

Unfair advantage while doing homework. That's enough space to fit power point, photoshop and an open PDF document.


Talking about Photoshop, the ability to edit a hi-res image without scrolling so much really makes life easier.

Reason Excuse#2 : Internet

Another excuse to promote Firefox. Why settle for multiple IE windows when you can have multi-tab, split screen browsing ? Aren't you sick of a stack of unmanageable IE windows that just reads "Microsoft Internet Explorer" on your taskbar ? Get your split-screen plugin today!


This is the Piclens plugin for Firefox on a Google image search. This makes image searching really easy now. Piclens also works in Friendster and Facebook too.

Reason Excuse#3 : Games

This is a screenshot of Hellgate London in hi-res glory. Games will never be the same when you can see 350 pixels more to the left and 350 pixels more to the right compared to the 1280 x 1024 max offered by main stream 17" and 19" displays. It came with a price too. My GeForce 7600GS had a early retirement because it couldn't keep up with the stress from the extra pixels it had to render. That's all the excuse I need to upgrade to the GeForce 8800 GT 512mb.

Reason Excuse#4 : ^ ^Downloaded Movies

How does HD rips decompressed by the latest codec sounds ? The results can be better than DVD quality too.

Reason Lame Excuse#5 : Fish Tank

This is the only way to rear some fish without seeing any more dead fishes. All my previous fishy attempts to keep gold fishes as pets ended up with a 100% toll rate within weeks.

Ok, this is end of this obviously bragging post.

Expensive rubber band

Spotted this at Carrefour. It's just a rubber band which you can stretch in many ways to get a workout for $40 bucks! Come on, I can't imagine what this giant rubber band can do to your reputation.

"I got a large rubber in my pocket!"

"Want to get a workout with my rubber band ?"

"Want to try my rubber?"

Also, this large rubber band can also wind up as a component in a extra large slingshot ! Certainly not for kids with some imagination. Unless you want to break something around you that it.

Come on, jogging is free guys. Swimming is cheap too. For me and rubber bands, I will prefer to make stars with them than to exercise with them or shoot it at something or someone.

If you can't make this star with a rubber band, your childhood must be really miserable. You can redeem yourself by going through the tutorial here.

Turning deaf to your own advice is not convincing

Last year, Peter Lye, the IT-infrastructure manager of Power Seraya (my customer's company) gave me a bottle of 12 years Limited Edition Black Label Johnnie Walker Whiskey before he left for greener pasture. I never like Whiskey before and it turned out to be actually enjoyable. The scotch is smoother and has a deeper feel to it compared to the Chivas Regal I had tried before.

Too bad it was 1/2 gone by the time that it reached by claws. Every weekend, I will share a serving with my sister for a good night's sleep. In moderate amount, it promotes good sleep which is particular great after a week of hard work and studies.

My mother started lecturing me about the dangers of alcoholism and blah blah blah, after I have placed the nice bottle on my shelf. I totally ignore her nagging as I know I am a light drinker and certainly, I am not drinking at crazy rates. After 4 months, the remaining content was at the 1/4 mark, meaning I and my sis drank only 1/4 of a bottle in 4 months.

Then suddenly late this month, I found that my 1/4 bottle was reduced to almost none in 2 weeks. My mom had consumed a serving everyday for 2 weeks because it gave her a good sleep. It didn't help when she added that the 12 years scotch tasted good too. She went 2 nights without it and lost sleep immediately. So much for the person warning me about getting addicted to alcohol. My mom just got less and less convincing as I grow up. Now she can chew on her words and flush them down the drain.

And here is a picture of my whiskey that is almost gone, and a new bottle that Seng Chai had bought for me at duty free.



I wonder how long this will actually last me.

Considering that I buy some alcohol every now and then, I didn't get to drink as much as people will imagine.



My dad consumed my supply of Hoegaarden and Tiger beer ...


My sister consumed my collection of various flavours of Baileys Irish cream ...

and now my mom is consuming my Whiskey ...

Next to go will probably be my wine collection ...

It may be cheaper to drink out soon.