I only popped by this evening for a short while, but this was my first time at WOMAD and I didn't even have to sit on the grass, thanks to the hospitality of the Singapore Tourism Board which supplied us with food, drinks, cushions and mats. The African music was pleasant. The Indian dance workshop was splendid. I suddenly recalled the time I celebrated Diwali up in Bristol with my Indian Kenyan friends. That was a bizarre combination of cultures.
August 2002 Archives
Today could have been called 'Bad Driving Day'. It started when my mother was trying to exit a very crowded Ngee Ann City this afternoon. Just as she reached the exit to the main road, we found that a shiny red open-top Lotus (complete with lofty-looking yuppie chick with short hair and sunglasses) was sitting atop the sacred yellow box. So we couldn't turn left to get out, and neither could the car on our right, which was trying to turn right.
My mother waved a hapless hand in the direction of the car, but nothing could be done until the lights changed. When that happened, the Lotus zoomed off, turned left on a straight-only lane, cutting into the paths of a few more cars at the next junction then disappeared. The chick's fancy licence plate number? EX1L. Short for, aXis of EvIL?
Minutes later, we got back onto Orchard Road and were trying to turn into Centrepoint. As we turned left just after the taxi stand, another car sped up from behind us, got onto the opposite lane, horned at the pedestrians walking casually across both lanes, and nipped in front of our car! Once again, the driver pretended not to notice us as he and his wife continued on their slow trudge towards the car park entrance.
My mum didn't give a hoot because, several metres later, the security guard recognised our car, removed the barricades and let us park on the pavement, right next to the side entrance. It pays to shop with mother.
Two nice things happened to me this Friday. First, in the morning I finally met a nice client. A very polite German lady, who made reasonable requests and actually understood the nature of the internet as a medium.
Next, the Singapore NIC (registrar for .sg domain names) replied to my query, confirming that .sg sites don't necessarily have to be hosted in Singapore as well. That is good, because local web hosts generally charge more than overseas companies (especially in the US where competition is fierce). Of course if you know of a good local host which supports Coldfusion and SQL, please let me know by posting a comment below. Thank you.
And make that three nice things, since an old friend I haven't heard from since junior college days, has just posted on my website. Hey hey :)
It's past 2 am, I know I should be sleeping soon and I will. Goodnight.
Due to increasing commitments at work and outside of work, I now get by with 4-5 hours of sleep per day. Every night I practice for the GRE, work on my church's new website, research for my own further education, and maintain this website. By the time I'm done for the night, it is usually 2-3 am; I wake up at 7+ am and the whole cycle begins again.
I also have to pay for one year of my Master's should I choose to do it overseas, and according to my calculations, I have to completely empty out all my bank accounts to cover just my tuition fees and accommodation. To add insult to injury, my company is charging our clients $100 per hour for MY services, and I receive less than that amount per day.
So if I look like I can't be bothered with making small talk with random people, I am. Unless you're an old friend of mine, don't expect to see my face for the next couple of months, and don't expect me to smile. *Growl*
After a most excellent dinner with Ricky, Alex and Ricky's son Marcus, I learnt more about databases than I ever thought existed. I also learnt two disturbing things:
1) My church still uses a predominantly paper-based filing system - which means migration to electronic records (for integration with the new website) is going to be one living ... hell. I'm popping over to the church office next Saturday to see for myself how the administrators do their paperwork.
2) My church is being fleeced S$75 per month for 5 email adddresses and 5 measely megabytes of web space. What makes it worse is that this web host is supposed to be a non-profit organisation whose purpose is to build a community of Singapore churches on their server(s). It seems that the original intention no longer holds true.
Basically, we have our work cut out for us. God give me strength.
Tonight I'm having dinner with the rest of the church website team. My company may be able to give them a content management system with minimal charges. But it would've been fun to see how far we could've gotten, completely free with PHP/mySQL and Perl.
This morning's melodrama was a prime example of Murphy's Law.
I woke up this morning by myself, wondering when my alarm clock (actually, the alarm feature in my Nokia 6510) was going to ring. It didn't. Because the damn phone had hung again. I restarted the phone, and checked the time: 8.20 am. Not good.
I went straight upstairs for breakfast, read the article on Dr Baden (see my previous post) in the Straits Times, went to the bathroom, changed my clothes, heard one of my parents drive off ... then realised I didn't have my wallet.
Then I remembered I had left my wallet in my mother's car. Both parents' cars were no longer in the garage. I grabbed my farecard and office pass (which I fortunately don't keep with my wallet) and dashed off to the bus stop.
And the 174 took nearly thirty friggin' minutes to arrive. Alison and I were both waiting at different stops for the same bus, and were starting to worry what with our company's new policy on punctuality. It was already past 9 am. When it finally arrived, the bus was so crowded that I almost had to stand on the steps.
To top it all off, as we approached our destination, another 174 (obviously emptier than our bus) came up from behind and overtook us on the fast lane. Doh!
This evening my parents and I decided to try out Jade restaurant at Fullerton Hotel. We bumped into the son of famous forensics expert, the late Dr Chao Tze Cheng, who was waiting for his guests to arrive at the same restaurant.
The next thing we knew, he convinced us to join his table, and soon we were surrounded by emininent pathologists, contemporaries of his father.
In particular, I was honoured to meet Dr Michael Baden and his wife, Linda. Dr Baden was the forensics expert in the O.J. Simpson case as well as for the September 11 attacks. He is also the author of the book, Dead Reckoning, and host of a HBO show, Autopsy.
I was browsing around at Borders this evening, and found myself immediately drawn to a specific corner of the Computing section - the two rows of shelves dedicated to Web Culture.
*destiny*
What would I have put in my shopping cart, budget notwithstanding?
1. Crypto Anarchy, Cyberstates, and Pirate Utopias (on different aspects of net anarchy)
2. The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World
3. Boo-hoo (CEO's account of the rise and fall of Boo.com)
Then I went to Amazon to read comments on 'Crypto Anarchy', and one reviewer helpfully pointed out that most of the chapters could be found on the Internet, anyway. Sure enough, there were 24 chapters and one appendix, and the only one I couldn't find was chapter four. Crazy isn't it?
It's been over four hours since that horrible bus incident, and my hands are still shaking!
It's the same kind of feeling you get when you've done 500 push-ups and everything you try to hold on to after that, feels heavy. Your muscles are trembling with fatigue.
It's like, if I were American, my lawyers would be filing affidavits already. I can't believe I still have the strength to type this.
Aiee! This is what my horoscope said today. I now have the benefit of hindsight since I read it late - only after I came home from work:
[Horoscope for Aug 22] "If you overindulged last night, you are likely paying the price today. If your head is screaming and your blood feels as though it has turned to molasses, you know that too much of a good thing can make you feel rotten! Much as you feel driven to pull yourself up and out of bed in order to get on with your list of chores, there is simply no point... You would be better off spending the morning resting. By afternoon you will be your old self once again. Surely your work can wait until then."
So what did I overindulge in last evening? I was merely catching up with a friend I made in the ol' newsroom. Considering how I usually spend half my time at work pandering to fussy clients, and the other half kowtowing to my evil bosses, it was refreshing to indulge in intelligent conversation for once (at least on her side of the table, it was).
We talked for five straight hours. Satisfied, I went to bed with a dry throat and awoke ... with no voice.
I was on my way home from work this evening, on the usual 174. Shortly before I alighted, while standing near the exit doors, the bus jerked and braked so violently that a few people were flung forward.
I happened to be holding on lightly to a pole, but was hurled a few feet forward, yanking my joints nearly out of their sockets and bruising my finger.
My hands are still shaking.
And I've lost my voice so I'm quite antisocial today. I feel bad about it because Little Dan has come to Singapore to visit, and I don't feel like leaving the house and staying up late - even with old friends. How on earth am I supposed to talk?
If you've been wondering why you don't meet any good-looking people at the pub, this may be why.
A round for the house! >:-)
After reading Jakob Nielsen's latest article on Style Sheets, I thought, okay, I know designers are guilty of fixing font sizes so that everybody without perfect screen vision won't be able to adjust the size of the text they're trying to read.
So how do we alter our style? We use relative (percentage) size specifications. Instead of setting the fonts on this website to 11px, I changed its size to 70%, and voila, it looks the same, but now you can change the font sizes in your browser. Simple as that!
Sure, it may not look so pretty anymore, but get your priorities right. If people can't read the content on your site, then it defeats the purpose of having one.
I learnt a few things over the past couple of days:
1. I just don't like people.
2. However I can live with the fact that I'm not the only human being around.
3. I have a long way to go in the hierarchy of things, and I really can't be bothered climbing up this one.
4. People will always discourage me from pursuing my dream, but if I really want to make a difference then I should be strong enough to ignore them and focus on getting myself there.
5. Don't gibber.
Dear folks, thanks for checking out my freshly-launched website. OK it was actually in hiding for the past month while I feverishly did my testing. Anyway, the search engine is working, the photos are up, and my new content management system seems to be running well. But I still have to tidy up one section which isn't in a template yet. I'll leave you to figure out what that is so you can keep on clicking away on this site >;-) Tut tut to me.
Anyway I'm heading off to JB for a staff training retreat and we all have to wear this black T-shirt which says 'Waiting for the next Big Bang'. I hope people don't start calling me Vannabel again.
Until Saturday, adios!
The upholder of Web Standards is also a champion of web designer rights. And I thought I was the only one suffering from dealings with people who don't know how to work a browser properly.
Yesterday evening, I was at Times the Bookshop in Centrepoint looking for GRE prep books. I went to the Education section and found plenty of books on SATs, GMATs and even TOEFLs. But I couldn't find a single book on the GRE.
So I went to the counter where special offers are usually displayed, and saw that the Arco series of SATS, GMATS etc were on sale. GRE books too. But having done some research on the excellent Amazon website, I knew that the top-rated book was actually published by the Princeton Review (4.5 stars). So I went to the computer terminal near the cashier's to do a search - on their pretty little intranet.
I typed in, 'GRE', but all I got were books beginning with titles like "Great Ways to Cook ...". I thought, this is silly. If I were looking for a book beginning with the word 'Great', I'd type in 'Great' and not 'GRE'. It was behaving like a 1980's library catalogue!
I decided to give it another try. "GRE CAT" brought up four results. One of the books was published by the Princeton Review, although it wasn't the title I was looking for. I also saw it was dated 2001. Big help that would be. I asked the cashier where the other books were, and she said the Arco book was all they had in this store. Their records were obviously out of date.
That certainly defeated the purpose of having fancy search terminals in a spanking new bookshop - at least where my objectives were concerned. I decided to pick up the Arco book instead, since it was the 2003 edition, and included the latest syllabus changes (on Analytical Writing) in their questions.
The threats of war by the US against its favourite bogeyman Saddam Hussein are completely unnecessary. Nobody should be treated as guilty until proven so; and uncooperation does not always indicate there is evidence of guilt. Iraq looks less sure of itself this time, but I doubt it will truly be 'liberated' by the US.
I predict the US will take military action against Iraq, but I expect their mission to be a failure. World opinion will slowly turn against the Americans, support at home will wane, and George W Bush will not make it through the next US election.
Maybe this whole fiasco is a blessing in disguise.
I've been looking around for good graduate schools for Law and Mass Communication, and came across the USNews forum which was mentioned in the 2003 grad school guidebook. It was a little frustrating parting with eighteen bucks only to find that there were only a few pages in the guidebook covering the latter subject, so I decided to check out the site.
And then yours truly got a little distracted with some of the weird stuff people were posting on the forum. For instance, you'd think that mass comm students would at least get their basic spelling and grammar right, especially if they're intending to proceed to university level:
"i am doing a diploma in mass communication in singapore. i wish to knoe more about the better university in america for the course..."
And the next message I came across from another poster, is plain funny. Anal-yse this!
"i had some difficulties pushing up my anal. scores and i wonder whether there is any good reference materials for preparations, to push up the scores ?..."
Maybe he should stop taking such long toilet breaks >;-)
I just received a customer service call from my mobile phone company, SingTel. They usually call me every year to find out how things are ... well, this time I was told that my free SMS quota per month has been increased from 300 to 500 for being a customer for two years. That was the good news. The strange part was when I was asked about my occupation. I told the lady I was a 'web designer' (mumbling to myself, not for long, not for long). She said, oh okay, so then it's a sales job? I was surprised and said, in a less pleasant tone, "No, it isn't in sales at all". She sounded a little awkward and started asking other questions.
Featuring:
Peter Stead
After completing a degree in music at the University of Exeter and a PGCE at the University of Cambridge, Peter Stead worked as a musician and teacher in the UK... He has also worked extensively as a conductor and musical director. Credits include Musical Director of the International Festival Chorus, Musical Director for the Singapore Repertory Theatre's productions of Godspell, Into the Woods, and Sing to the Dawn and Chorus Master for the Lyric Opera Company.
Vanessa Tan
Resident web designer, alto and occasional church pianist.