"Visa-waiver visitors face US screening"

I was already "biometrically" scanned earlier this year, so I am not too concerned about this change. It does, however, affect all Singaporeans travelling to US under the Visa Waiver program - their finger prints and photos will now be taken at US customs.

政门三绝

死顶：

陈唐山为自己的粗俗语言引起台湾民众的不快致歉，但不会向新加坡政府道歉。

活赖：

而陈唐山本人也在沉默将近两天后于昨日下午亲自召开记者会解释说，当时，他是在和乡亲们亲切聊天时应用通俗语言。他自认并没有批评新加坡政府，新加坡一直是“我们在亚洲的好朋友”。
...
对于为何只向台湾民众道歉而不向新加坡道歉的原因，吕庆龙说，对于陈部长的言论，新加坡也没抗议，“何来道歉之说？”

反咬:

他指责媒体的报道走调了，在搞不清楚他的原意下大肆报道，“实在太没公道、没爱心”。

this.mobilizeBlog()

One thing I don't like about Blogger is that its pre-built templates are not friendly to mobile devices like my PDA. Today I finally found a site that converts any RSS source to a mobile-friendly HTML site. I of course signed up for the free service and added a link to my new mobile blog to the sidebar on the right. The link icon looks like this:

Another take on Taiwan's classy Foreign Minister

Here is another take on the remarks by Taiwan's classy public official Mark Chen. I like the author's unofficial response:

"N*bei, this kind of ch**bye l*ncheow thing also can say. Want to make we all t*lan issit?"

I like this "Mr. Brown". =)

One nasty-looking vehicle

Man, that's one mean-looking transportation device!

Politician's code of conduct

Am I the only one who feels that some politicians from a certain geographical location are just not up to par?! Exhibit 1.0:

Minister of Foreign Affairs Mark Chen (陳唐山) yesterday blasted Singapore Foreign Minister George Yeo (楊榮文) for telling the UN that actions by Taiwan's independence groups could lead to war with China.

"Singapore holds China's lam pa (爛疤) with its hands, if I may use these ugly words," a fuming Chen said.

In the Hoklo language (also known as Taiwanese), lam pa means "testicles"; saying that someone holds another's lam pa means that he is fawning over that person.

Exhibit 1.5 (same speech, so I count it as 0.5):

Chen lamented Taiwan's status in the international community, saying "even a tiny garden country like Singapore, which only has 3 million people, can criticize us."
"Singapore is a country only as big as a piece of snot," he added.

I don't know what Mark Chen (pictured below) is gesturing, but it looks suspiciously vulgar too, especially when one links it to Exhibit 1.0 above.

I don't think even a decent professional adult would use such language in public, not to mention a foreign minister speaking to the media against a different country. Another English version of this news used more toned down words, but I feel that the "original" will better carry across my point.

Earthquake!!

I was in my cube doing what I normally do early in the morning (checking personal emails) when I felt the floor sway below me, nah, make that the entire building. The fact that I am on fifth and highest floor probably made the shake more obvious. I will take it as a morning wake up call. =)

My Yahoo updated

My Yahoo's interface has been revamped. It looks a bit more contemporary. Unfortunately I haven't seen any functionality improvements yet.

还没有到

唉,我等的信今天还是没有到。真是急啊！

好久没有...

我发现我好久没有写中文的blog了。

就这样，没别的了。

Car hunting

Oh, I also need a second-hand car. Perhaps a 1997-98 Acura Integra GS-R? Anyone has it for sale cheap?! =)

House hunting

Today we semi-started our housing hunting journey by looking at offerings in our current city. Wow, everything started at US$630,000, even for a 3-bedroom town house. We even saw a single family house for a cool million. Nice houses, but just not for me - I either can't afford it or don't want to. I will look around some where else next week.

No game today

Boy was I prepared for a big badminton game after two weeks of absence! Boy was I not prepared for the big let down. The gym we normally go to was rented to a volleyball league competition. It didn't help that I called on Friday to confirm the badminton time - the gym was rented out on Sat itself. No matter, we drove to a backup gym a little further away and a little more expensive. Nope, that wouldn't work out either. The backup gym was also booked by some school for some tournaments.

In summary, a big let down. I just won't get my dose of exercise this week.

Can you say 'offshore' anymore? | CNET News.com

"Offshoring" == "co-sourcing" == "global sourcing"?

Whatever!

Free Programming and Computer Science Books

Free downloadable technical books... Not from well known publishers (if published at all), but hey, they are free.

IPaq 63XX case

I don't know... Is this nice? The only innovative feature is the removable front cover, but I would rather have a built-in cover with a see-through section for the screen.

Baffled

The entire afternoon I have been baffled by a bug. The weird thing is that it won't happen the first time the steps are carried out, but only subsequently when the scenario is repeated. Guess today is not the day to resolve this issue.

Transformers: A History

Oh yeah!!

"Master U-shaped Kryptonite style lock w/ two keys"

Poking some fun at the Kryptonite lock debacle.

So happy

I got in the office and did what I normally do first thing in the morning - check my personal emails. And there in my Gmail account awaits three good-news emails. For a few minutes I was literally jumping up and down in my tiny window-facing cube. =D

Camping at Stanislaus National Forest

This weekend we went camping at Stanislaus National Forest. Man, it was cold up there at Lake Alpine campground, 7300 feet. We reached there by Sat afternoon, walked around Lake Alpine, and started dinner preparation at 5pm. The Coleman gas canister failed to sustain the BBQ fire because it was half frozen, so I dumped the entire metal rack onto the campfire fueled by firewood. Come 10pm it was already time for bed since it was so cold outside. Luckily we were reasonably prepared for the cold weather, so we slept soundly throughout the night.

The next morning we started another fire to keep ourselves warm. We struggled through breakfast and left by 11am. Soon after it started snowing! Cool! Then on the way down snow was replaced by heavy rain as altitude decreased. Still, my wife was ecstatic about seeing snow, no matter how light it was. As for me, I have seen plenty of it before, so it was only a decent refresher course.

Of the three camping trips I have gone to this year, Stanislaus is my favorite. I think I would want to return again.

Singapore media rivals merge

That's it, the end of competing TV channels in Singapore. All TV stations are again owned by one company after the merger. Channel U will probably still be available. Channel I's future is uncertain. More uncertain are the jobs of those who years ago jumped from MediaCorp to SPH MediaWorks.

New Pocket PC phone announced : DP900 PDA Phone

A new Pocket PC phone.

Yahoo Mail address autocomplete

I just noticed that Yahoo has added JavaScript-based (presumably, since it works in FireFox) email autocomplete to their email service. This must be Yahoo's response to Gmail, which was the first free email service to provide this awesome tool. Before this Yahoo already had an autocomplete feature for Internet Explorer, but that version required an ActiveX download - overkill in my opinion.

Wine tour

Today our entire team went on a wine tour in Livermore. I managed to try every single type of wine they offered at the three vineyards, though I must say it's a waste on someone like me who can only tell the difference between white and red wine. Below are some pictures I took with the crappy camera on the the h6315.

Some gadgetry into which they dump the grapes and this thing will "push" it up to the "containers".

The grapes...

Where the bottles are capped.

Barrels of wine in the aging "room".

The tasting room at Wente Winery.

Wente Winery, the first of three we went to and in my opinion the best.

Lunch, finished.

Outside the third and last winery, waiting to go back.

Less than smooth day

Today is not one of my smoothest days:

1. Had to interact with some rude jerks at work.
2. Email arrived about "Mini"-reorg at work.
• Again.
• The Nth time in the last 2 months.
• Sure, The reorg is mini for the top management, but it is not so for us mini engineers.
• "Welcome, new manager!"
3. At home exchange-dog peed and pooped where he shouldn't have.

T-Mobile hotspot service still inactive

Yap, it's been 2 weeks since I signed up with them and my T-Mobile hotspot still has not be activated. I am getting these 1-day temporary passwords every time I call them. I don't blame anyone, certainly not the poor tech support guys who typically answer, put me on hold, and transfer my inquiry phone calls. As a matter of fact, I have come to expect such delinquency from major corporations, especially from wireless carriers.

Update: It's funny how timing works. Right after I first posted this entry I attempted to logon to my HotSpot account at T-Mobile's website. I was expecting an error message but was pleasantly surprised when I managed to login. This is not final deal though, I still need to test out the real thing. StarBucks, here I come, again!

Positive review of Landrover LR3

Looks like the LR3 is getting some positive reviews - this is the second I have come across.

T-Mobile GPRS mail attachment problem

There has been some discussion on people not being able to send emails with attachments over GPRS. I tried it and experienced the same thing. That would severely limit my moblog opportunities. I hope T-Mobile has a fix soon.

"Extra! Extra!" - too funny (but only for those with NS experience)

I just found this blog about National Service in Singapore. Being a NS man myself, it reminds me much, and this CPL Tan Ting Tong is such a character:

"Hallo One Niner this is One Two Bravo, we are lost, over": Sign three. (46th was an Armour Reconnaissance unit. You NEVER get lost. Even if you did, you NEVER say you are lost).

By the way, "extra" means "extra duty", typically guard duty. "Sign three" means three extra duties, or three sleep-deprived nights.

Oh, and a "poster" to sum up this blog entry of mine.

Uninstalled NetFront

I have uninstalled NetFront from my h6315. I suspect it caused a problem earlier where I can't attach any files to emails in Pocket Outlook. So it's going to be the primitive Pocket IE from now on.

Cramped Frosty

Frosty seems to like being cramped. He doesn't want to sleep on his big bed, instead he chose to snatch another dog's "crib".

My h6315 journey

I am already on my third h6315 in two weeks. Yes, number THREE! Here is the log:

I got number one on Aug 27, one day after its official release. The T-Mobile store was out of stock initially and had to get 2 (and only 2) from another location. I got one of them because I managed to convince the sales person to give me higher priority on the waiting list because I would be a new T-Mobile customer and I had already pre-registered with T-Mobile.com. Immediately after getting the unit I experienced frequent lock ups. The worst part is that the darn thing wouldn't connect to any WiFi. On Aug 28 I brought the thing back to the store and true enough, it was defective - it wouldn't even connect to T-Mobile's own hotspot. Unfortunately I couldn't exchange it then because there wasn't any stock in store.

On Sep 8 I called the store and was told that they just received twenty units. Yippy! I had the sales person take out one unit and test its WiFi for me. Right after work I went to the store and happily exchanged unit number one for this spanking new number two. The screen didn't feel as smooth compared to the first one when I used the stylus, but I thought I finally got a working $500 PDA-phone. The happiness last less than two days when on Friday Sep 10 I started to realize that the phone wouldn't wake up on incoming calls. Instead when I manually turn it on it would briefly flash a incoming-call message followed by a missed-a-call message. I conducted some tests and verified that basically the phone part of the $500 gadget doesn't work. Luckily this time the store still had some units remaining.

Getting very frustrated by then, I couldn't wait till after work to resolve the problem. Instead I went down to the shop in the middle of the afternoon - hey, it's a Friday. I got my number three, and that's the one I am still using.

So far I think this third unit is a keeper, but in the next few days I would still conduct whatever tests I can think of. The funny part of this "journey" is that according to the sales person, I am the only customer at that store who had experienced problems with h6315s. Oh lucky me.

GMail Icon Maker

Ever wanted your own GMail icon? Use this site to generate one!

From StarBucks

Testing my T-Mobile hotspot account at StarBucks. Didn't go too well, seems like my account is still half-active, or something like that.

Bloglines works perfectly from PDA

Bloglines has a lite version of its site that is tailored for PDA browsing. Now RSS feeds are available to me every where (with a signal).

Carpet stains

We are looking after someone's dog, and this dog left some yellowish stains on our carpet. The stains are because the dog is dirty, but the owner stubbornly refuses to believe anyone but herself. I am thinking of terminating this "exchanged program", unfortunately I have yet to get my end of the exchange.

Teen Titans theme song by PuffyAmiYumi

To listen to the theme song, click on the "Discography" link followed by the "Nice" album. The theme song is track number 12.

Unfortunately the site is built on Flash, so I can't provide a direct link.

Just testing

I am writing this email/post on my exchanged h6315 using the thumbboard. It is surprisingly useable. Though the PDA itself is not as stable as my old iPaq 2215, the screen is yellowish, and there is some hissing when the phone is on.

自私的人

我认识一个自私的人。她总是想占便宜，好像别人感觉不到似的，久了以后真的很讨厌。

Fancy in-flight entertainment system

I travel by air perhaps twice a year, and by that I mean those long 20+ hour flights each time. If I am stuck on a plane for so many hours, I certainly won't mind Song Airlines' fancy entertainment system (with Internet!). =)

Donald Trump's dog

Oh the similarities...

Time management

Time management skill is important. It affects not only yourself, but also the people around you.

Group interview

Tomorrow morning I will be an interviewer in a panel interview. Basically a few of us will interview one candidate over telephone and NetMeeting. I don't like such interviews. It's pressurizing for the interviewee, and it's uncomfortable for me as an interviewer. I feel that I will be judged by the other interviewers on how I deliver questions and guide the candidate. Unfortunately for me, such a group interview is one of the most cost-effective way to conduct off-shore interviews.

Update: It turns out the interview was conducted on a one on one basis, with one interviewer in the room at one time.

Mindsay v3

My first blog was at dkl.mindsay.com. Mindsay version 3 was just released. While the new themes do look nice and there might be some new features, overall I find it to be a step back. For example, I can no longer tweak the underlying HTML and CSS - whatever little that was there was taken away.

MPx delayed again

On Friday I was in a T-Mobile store exchanging my wife's Nokia 6600 for a Motorola V600. The sales person, while chatting with me on new cellphones, mentioned that the Motorola MPx might be delayed until second quarter of next year. This kind of news makes the MPx less and less appealing. A year is a long time for companies to release interesting gadgets that could overshadow the by-then stale MPx.

Oracle seen through h6315

This picture of an Oracle building was taken using h6315's built-in camera. It's uploaded via email (from my notebook, not h6315) to Flickr and this blog directly.

Posting from h6315

I am sitting near a pond surfing the web via GPRS on my defective h6315 and writing this post. Next thing to try is to post a picture via Flicker - too bad I can't remember the email address for that.

11 hours

I have now been at work for almost 11 hours - 9AM to 8PM.

Massive hiring

With the massive recent departures, our group is attempting to do "massive" hiring to fill up the vacuum. Just last week it seemed like we didn't have a systematic approach to interviews and decision making, but within a week I already see some processes put in place by the management. I am quite impressed, especially for this company where change needs to be quadruple approved.

Marketing requirement

This afternoon a marketing folk approached us engineering guys for a new requirement. Sure, from the marketing perspective it would be great to have, but too bad we are not exactly at the beginning of our development cycle. Besides, this requirement would most likely mean a total rewrite of our 3-year old engine. Easier said than done.

First interview

I conducted my first job interview this morning. It's an experience.