November 2003 Archives

I call it a reverse-colonial trend. First, Indian curries became popular fare in the UK. Now it looks like some British parents are becoming more like Singaporeans - at least, in one aspect. In a bit to ensure their children get into the best primary schools, parents have resorted to moving house, using relatives' addresses, or telling on their neighbours for fibbing.

Estate agents are capitalising on this by promoting residential property within schools' catchment area. Deja vu? Remember all the condominium advertisements in the papers and on TV, emphasizing the proximity to some top-ranked schools? And the hoo-ha in the local papers about parents who were caught lying about their addresses - well, that happened years ago.

And now with Crony, I mean, Tony Blair's proposal to further increase university fees (with exceptions for low income households), it is argued that this may compel students who originally wanted to study, say, French medieval history, to switch to more a 'practical' subject such as Business to help them pay off their debts more easily. Well, we were already doing that, decades ago - if not to pay off debts (usually funded by parents or scholarships, anyway), then simply to make more money for ourselves. Sad isn't it.

I went for the Alpha talk at Fullerton Hotel to see Nicky Gumbel. He was good. Funny. Took photos with new phone. Don't have laptop, so can't beam it, and am too tired to take out the multimedia card in my phone and connect it to PC, so no photos for now. Realised that if not for Alpha, I'd have quit Christianity. Was planning to leave the Church a couple years ago. I never totally believed in it, anyway, and I felt what I stood for was not condoned, and I wasn't going to surrender my own notions of life to suit God's purpose.

So, Alpha was good because it turned me around. In Alpha they don't talk down to you or force you to accept God, and amazingly, it isn't boring. So you don't feel unworthy, or unwanted, or unloved. If the facilitators don't know the answer, they'll say they don't know. They won't make things up along the way, or point fingers and say, 'YOU are a sinner!' (we all are, anyway). You may also get to meet very nice friends.

So if you've heard of Alpha, why not give it a try. It's non-denominational (though started by an Anglican), and it won't cost you a cent. God bless and goodnight.

Test your digital IQ with this Flash-based quiz (nope, you can't jump back to the previous question). I scored 178. Warning: for some answers, you get points deducted.

A few things I did with my Nokia 6600 yesterday: Assign voice commands to activate my camera and call various people, including the police; shoot numerous videos of my golf swing; activate Bluetooth; create a wallpaper on my PC which I then transferred to my phone's multimedia card; update my currency convertor.

Today I realised I'm definitely not an MGS girl, as I just seared two of my fingers trying to iron my dad's shirt. Since I'm nowhere near marrying well (or marrying, period!), and since I don't think I'm too 'boring' a person, I'm starting to wonder if I really belong to my alma mater SCGS either. Where on earth did my white blouse go??

Anyway, kudos to the group of old Raffles girls who set the record straight and spoke up on other schools' behalf. This stereotyping is getting a little overplayed, I mean, who'd expect a follow-up article with caricatures (not included in the online version, so the last few lines won't make sense).

I'm starting to wonder if it all began like this:

Editor: Our Forum page is getting a little skimpy. Singaporeans have run out of things to complain about! EZ-Link, GST, slimming pills, rude taxi drivers... we're all getting blasé!

CMH: I know! I'll write a silly article with very little substance in it, bash my own alma mater and maybe a few other schools as well, making use of my limited (and rather negative) knowledge of friends' experiences, to illustrate each point.

Editor: Brilliant! Everyone will get so riled up, that the letters will just come pouring in!

And so the story goes...

[Note: Articles on the ST website may expire 7 days after publication. Money talks, y'know.]

After the useit.com redesign competition comes a proposal to redesign Slashdot. Also useful to read if you're thinking of reformatting your company website into something a little more compliant and semantic.

And here's the book we've been waiting for: Carrie Bickner's Web Design on a Shoestring. A positive Digital Web magazine review here. Considering the state of the local web design industry, I am sure a lot of frugal clients and managers will find this book useful, and know which areas are worth investing in.

You can read excerpts here. I'll be looking out for a copy when I next visit a computer bookstore.

Last night, after starting, my computer detected new hardware. Strange, because I hadn't inserted any. It was my ethernet controller. Hmph, I thought, maybe it was loose and got reconnected again. Anyway, my internet connection was up and I didn't give it another thought - until this morning, when the hardware in question decided to conk out. I unplugged and replugged the wires numerous times but to no avail. It was down the whole afternoon, despite numerous reconfigurations and rebootings.

I was vexed. I had research to do, and an interesting thought about a Psalm in the Bible that I wanted to make notes on, and additional church webpages to update, so I had one last resort: I got down on my knees, put my hands on the CPU, and prayed for the hardware to work so I could do God's work. I was filled with absolute certainty that my request would be granted. Naturally, after praying I leaped up, opened up my browser...and the connection was still down. Patience! I told myself. When did anything I asked for, happen a split second later? 'In His Time' ... I'll reboot, and wait.

I came back a while later, and found that the hardware was functional again, and I was once again connected to the Internet. After nearly a day of trying to fix things myself! So I'll be working on my promises to Him now. He's just amazing.

This morning I sent our maid off to the airport. She's been with us for six years so the least I could do was to get up at 5 something in the morning to drive her to the airport myself. She asked me to inspect her bags last night and this morning, but I refused, because I trust her. We are going to miss her.

One good thing about going to Changi airport is having the chance to drive down the East Coast Parkway (ECP), because it is the most beautiful expressway in Singapore. Lined by trees on either side, with flowering bushes, the Singapore cityscape on one side, and on the other, our booms. In one glance, I was reminded of our position as a financial centre and port.

"Look, this is where I work," I pointed at a building, while trying to continue driving in a straight line. "Very far [away from home]," was all she could say.

The ECP is also a road I remember fondly, for many years before I was born, a young man, barely seventeen (which was the legal age for driving then) would take this same expressway to visit his girlfriend who lived, for a period of time, in Katong. That young man was my father, and of course the young lady was my mother.

The ECP is also the route I take to visit my good friend Aimin, who throws great BBQ parties, and my bestest friend Van Heng, who is returning from the States soon. Of course there are bittersweet memories - how I used to cycle at East Coast Park with ex-colleagues who, after the closure of our newspaper, were no longer in the mood to meet up every weekend. Passing by my old music school gave me the shivers - because that was where I and other students, as children, were sometimes scolded and even beaten for not performing well.

But all in all, it was a good drive, and now I am too awake to go back to sleep again. I have a wedding to attend later in the morning, but for now, it's time I did some ... housework.

Today I tried to transfer funds electronically to a friend who ordered and paid for some tickets on my behalf, and realised that there is now a new ruling for those who use internet banking in Singapore, which requires users to provide their mobile phone numbers (for SMS security alerts) at an ATM before the new payee is activated. Obviously that is a move to stem a somewhat recent spate of fraudulent transfers which received some publicity in the press.

However I find it quite inconvenient. The whole point of me doing my banking at home, after work, is for privacy and convenience. I just want to make a simple transfer and I'll probably never use it again (unless she orders more things for me). From the look of things, it seems like I'll be paying her back in cash instead when I next see her. I guess things are safer now - but at a price.

Dear Sir/Madam

Congratulations! Our records show that you have successfully maintained a clean driving record. For 5 years from xx to xx you have not received any demerit points. Neither have you committed any serious traffic offences.

We hope you will maintain this clean record by continuing to observe traffic rules, and by being safe and courteous while on the road.

Our recognition of your efforts is part of the Road Safety Outreach Programme to promote road safety awareness among all road users - motorists, motorcyclists, cyclists and pedestrians.

As part of this programme, we will be on the look-out for courteous motorists, throughout the whole of November and December this year. Motorists spotted displaying exemplary behaviour like signaling early, giving way or waving to say thanks will be rewarded with attractive prizes.

Once again, congratulations for doing your part in keeping our roads safe for everyone.

Sincerely,
xxx
Commander
Traffic Police Department.

I haven't, honest-to-goodness for the life of me, had time to review my favourite newsfeeds since I started work again. I nearly had to skip one friend's wedding this weekend because of contractor problems (but I made it, hallelujah), and nearly forgot about an ex-colleague's forthcoming wedding, AND I forgot the birthday of one of my oldest friends, which is completely unforgiveable and I know she is reading this and yes I will take her out for a really nice dinner when she gets back. And yes I promise to enter all important dates into my new phone so I will never forget again.

But anyway. For those of you who read feeds like I do, Boing Boing has a collection of popular comic strips which have their own newsfeeds. You can view each daily strip in your 'reader. Yay.

That's all for now folks ... back to work.

So we're in the papers today. I hope this doesn't start another influx of questions like, "So, you did law, har. Which firm you at? Eh? How come you not lawyer? Isn't the pay very good?" because that pisses the heck out of me - and people really have been saying that since I graduated.

The other thing I want to comment on is another Life! article by a Raffles Girl (note to non-Singaporean readers: Raffles Girls' School is our country's top secondary school for girls, at least for academic performance, as she says). She also wrote something about my own school, SCGS (another school usually in the top 10) which I felt would give readers the impression that we are shallow social climbers who are only looking for wealthy husbands.

Singapore Chinese Girls' School girls are said to marry well - because they mix with the right crowd. But if you're not from the right kind of family to begin with, life can be tough. Or so some SCGS girls say.

I have no idea who her SCGS friends are, but in defence of my schoolmates may I say that most of us are actually quite down to earth. In my ten full years there, I do not recall any girl being ridiculed or ignored for not having enough pocket money, or having a father who is a lorry driver - not even while she was out of earshot. I would like to believe that our teachers and principal imbued us with a fair amount of values, and that we are turning out as the Kim Geks that they wanted us to be. And that is what the writer said she wanted in an education!

Personally I abhor the thought of rubbing shoulders with people from high society just because they are famous. I find that insidiously fickle and shallow. I value friendship, not bank accounts, looks and status. Not to say that my 'bestest' friends are poor, stupid and ugly ;-P but I am sure they know what I mean. If you thought about each of your oldest friends, you'd have a fond memory or an endearing personality trait in mind. If the first thing that comes to your mind is: my friend X is so-and-so's daughter/niece/sibling, then I'd say you don't really know the person, and you've got the wrong idea about friendship.

I've digressed a little. I do agree with the rest of the article that academic achievements aren't everything. Many other qualities in a person can go unnoticed or are undervalued, such as honesty. Why tell the teacher she gave you extra marks, when that means lowering your score? Should we also get 'integrity points' along with our extra-curricular activity points?

I also notice that many children don't have time nor energy to explore the world beyond their syllabus, because it already is too much to cope with. Their schoolbags are almost as heavy as they, and everyone looks like a little Ninja turtle, as a friend of mine calls it. We start wearing spectacles before our age hits the double digits, and many of us have had tuition, outside of school hours. Living on a tiny island, surrounded by giants, we know that human beings are our only resource. Something's got to give. And I think it has.

I bought a new mobile phone this evening. I am not a chronic handset changer, by Singaporean standards at least, so I was willing to wait for one and a half years before a model I liked came out.

I was considering the 02 models but decided it felt strange sticking a PDA to your face whenever you made a call. I quite liked the calendar feature in my old Nokia 6510 (at the time, it was cutting-edge), so I was looking for another model which had even more advanced organiser features. The camera with 2X zoom was a nice extra, but if MMS rates are still cut-throat then I won't be sending photos or video clips to anyone.

I haven't got a new laptop yet, so I won't be able to sync things up for now. I am pretty busy, working at home, so I should stop playing with it now and dreaming of the Java applications I can download from e-Ideas.

ps. Once I get my settings sorted out, I can also surf using the XHTML browser. Who says web standards aren't important?

We had a server problem for a couple of days. I guess our web host had 'itchy fingers' once again, and either upgraded some server software without re-installing some necessary modules, or simply uninstalled modules which they didn't think were necessary.

Because Movable Type required these modules to function, nobody on my server was able to log in, and readers were unable to post comments. The problem has just been fixed, so we are back in action!

I dislike the smell of rotting freezer water. Especially on my clothes. We cleared out the rest of the now-unfrozen stuff this evening after we all got back from work and I am pooped. I have absolutely nothing to write about anything new I've surfed across, because I haven't had time nor means to use the Internet today. Please pardon the silence... it may persist for a while.

In other news, I received news that there is an SCGS 1994 reunion (yes, that's how old I am) and some old girls have already responded. To protect their privacy (email addresses), I won't give the link - send me an email and I'll forward the page to you.

I nearly spent the last hour wading through pitch darkness - thank God I brought my grandma with me (I feel I was somehow 'persuaded' to ask her along, just this time, and boy am I glad I listened to Him) to inspect the house at night, because there was a blackout when the demolition began on the other side. Grandma unpicked the canvas sheets tied over each pillar, then I had to crawl underneath the house to check the fuse box. Later we emptied out melting items in the refridgerator. It was nearly midnight in pitch darkness. There seemed to be nobody in the lone guardhouse in our garden. I was half afraid we might be mistaken as burglars.

In fact, I didn't own a torch until this evening when I picked one up at the supermarket. Then when I asked Grandma along, she brought another torch too. If not, I'd have been groping about the house in pitch darkness!

Anyway...Why was I going to the house at that time of night? Because I was too darn busy this morning and afternoon and evening with administration and medical checkups. I'm starting my new job today. That's really all I have to say, and I will tell my friends about it in due time.

Yeah, I just watched it on a super big Imax screen. Are there spoilers ahoy? Oh yes there are, but they'll be so twisted you won't know what on earth I'm talking about unless you've already watched it. I think. If you want serious discussions, head over to Kottke. The Guardian also has a Matrix shrine and I am sure there are many others about.

Does this happen to you, too? Your relationship with God is like a cycle. There are periods of intense closeness (highs) - You feel a warmth in your heart, and there's a bounce in your step. He may even speak to you, as He did to me one and a half years ago with the Bus Incident. Then there are excruciating periods of lowness, where you feel you have slipped into a chasm and sometimes it seems like too much effort to claw your way back to the top.

Yes, I have restored the Menu section to its former glory, after numerous checks for bugs in my contact form. My 'About' section has been updated/rewritten. It's nice to get mails from you.

And another thing. After many years of ridiculing this practice, I decided to relent, and rebond my hair. Like, yesterday. It's really weird because my hair doesn't feel like ... my hair! They raked in lots of thick pasty chemicals, steamed my hair (twice, because my hair is that resistant) and then ironed it even flatter. At one stage they re-pasted my hair and spread them out on sheets of foil. I looked like a Samurai!

All in all, I had to sit at the salon for four hours. Thank God for recent copies of the Economist and Home Living. (While I was preoccupied with something else, the ladies attending to my hair quietly took away my copy of the Economist and eventually replaced it with a few trashy mags)

So anyway, my hair is amazingly tame now. Previously, all I'd need was a strong wind to mess things up again. Now, everything will fall into place ... just like those Vidal Sassoon / Pantene / Organics ads. Swoooosh!

Read on to view pictures...

Many people have been asking me about my future in the working world. I hesitate to give definite answers, because there aren't any yet. There are possibilities, but I do not wish to speak about them at this point in time.

As a Christian, I believe that God has a plan for each one of us. It may not be clear to us, but it is clear to Him, and what we want may not always come easy. Neither do we always know what is best for ourselves.

For myself, I do not pin my expectations to any sort of job, in any organisation. If I get the position I want, that's great; if I don't, well, failures make me a stronger person, and maybe I was meant to find something more suitable for myself - that may, in the big picture of things, also benefit other people.

That's all for now.

I read the latest Foxtrot comic strip, and couldn't help giving a few pointers:

1. 'Nuff said.
2. Macromedia has a short and sweet explanation for using <strong> and <em> instead of <b> and <i> respectively: While the latter tags are not yet deprecated, they only achieve a visual effect. The former tags make more sense to screen readers which will read the text out more loudly. A W3C workshop on accessibility says: the use of EM and STRONG elements is superior in the sense that they describe the content without committing it to a specific format.
3. Jason isn't always polite, but he should try to mind his </p>s and </q>s.

I have emerged victorious from Orchard Road, bringing home several retail spoils, namely in the skirts department. However my bank account sustained a few heavy losses, though I expect the troops to recuperate in time.

I received a shock when I typed in 'club21[dot]com'. Club 21 is one of our premier retail outlets which carries many outstanding brand names. Anyhow, I landed at a porno site! After evading the popup windows I did another search. Who would have thought the proper address was 'clubtwentyone.com'. Doh.

[Update: And as for the hair ... well, this comic strip makes me feel a little better!]

All right. So I finally decided to sign up for a Friendster account, after continued pestering by certain friends. Then I found out there are a hundred and one other Vanessa Tans, some of whom also call themselves 'vantan'. *shudder* I haven't put up a photo, so please don't mistake me for some hot vixen with long hair (think: opposite!).

Since then, I have accumulated over 200,000 friends in my personal network of 12 (and counting). I have been approached by old friends, mostly from university, who were also on Friendster. What made it more intriguing was the fact that I had lost touch, or maintained minimal contact, with them. Now I can find out their status (single/attached), what they were doing, and maybe a few more things I'd never have known about them. And of course, who THEIR friends are.

Wardrobe update: No additions so far. Found something quite delightful (and red) at British India today, decided against it as it wasn't suitable office wear, and left the shop empty-handed (as with 99% of shops I visit). Come on, me, I have to boost the retail sector!

After two straight years of work, it is ironic that I have no idea what to do with a week of freedom. I've made a sort of list, seeing how reality will soon set in again.

Important stuff:

1. Sort out wardrobe into formal, smart and casual wear (done)
2. Run through suggestions from fashion-savvy friends and relatives on where to get smart new work clothes (doing)
3. Run house errands (doing)
4. Get the car serviced (can't do #3 and #4 at the same time. hmm)
5. Visit church office to handle website matters (can't do #4 and #5 at the same time either. Hoo boy.)
6. Get messy, Medusa-like hair fixed. Considering something close to rebonding.

Slightly less important stuff:

1. Go for a massage.
2. Go back to the gym.
3. Start reading Lord of the Rings (doing)
4. Upgrade antivirus software.

There. I should get cracking!

Sacrilege! Last night I installed Object Dock, a nifty tool that adds a dock to my desktop which looks and works very much like the one in Mac OS X. All I have to do is drag the files and folders onto the dock, and shortcut icons will be created. My Start menu of course had to be relegated to the Northern hemisphere of my screen.

Speaking as a newbie, what I like best about the dock is that if, for instance, I have a few web pages in my browser(s) open, and then I minimise them, screen shots of each document will be thumbnailed in the dock. You can also customise your icons and how they appear when you hover over them.

But I couldn't stop there, could I? I had to go all the way and install Window Blinds to shed my stodgy Win 2000 image. I heard that someone created a Mac OS X skin but Apple wasn't happy with that, so it's no longer listed on the skins website.