Value Of Our Human Thumbs

You see, our human thumbs can do wonders. Some people tuck it into their mouth, and suck it or taste it (yucks! I know). Most will find it convenient to use the thumbs for pressing buttons. It can even help you to turn keys to open doors or pinch someone on the face. So, do you know the value of your thumbs?

What I'm trying to say is, if a company knows the values of its people, it would have made every effort to retain them when they intend to leave for good. Sadly, this is not so in most company...

Rich dad, poor dad

Recently, I read a pretty interesting book 'Rich Dad, Poor Dad' by Robert Kiyosaki's and Sharon Lechter. It's not really just about investment, per se, but one that advocates financial independence through investing.

The book touches on the fact that most people lacks finance accounting knowledge and understanding. This has led to many people running into cash flow problems, because they don't understand the differences between Income, Expenses, Assets and liabilities. It's simple, buy more assets that bring up cash flows (e.g. real assets), cut down on liabilities (e.g. car loans), as long as your assets' cashflows can cover your expenses, your are considered wealthy!

Airshow 2008

On the 23 Feb, there was this Airshow coming right to city (Eastern part actually), once every 2 years.

I had to queue for 2hrs just to get to the free shuttle bus, took another hour for the bus to clear the traffic jam, and another 30 mins to clear the scanning and checking station at the Airshow site. By the time I reach the site, the aerobatics display was already over. That is not the end yet, the going back trip was worst, all messed up, people everywhere. In the end, I had to pay 5 dollars just to get on a paid bus.

The organiser said they didn't anticipate so many people coming, not true, people bought tickets from them in advance. They should know how many people have bought the tickets. Tickets costed $20 each, no freebies, no cap, no drinks, nothing.

what a waste of time going there.

SOE Awarded

Finally, after more than a year of anticipation and waiting, the SOE or the Government's Standard Operating Environment project has been award, it goes to the OneMeridian team. Check out the news release:

http://www.ida.gov.sg/News%20and%20Events/20080228151049.aspx?getPagetype=20

Smart kid

The other day, our familiy gathered to have a 'lao yu sheng' dinner. It's actually a CNY (chinese new year) celebration dish consist of raw fish (yu sheng), usually Salmon, shredded cucumber, carrots, and some other vegetables. Then, everyone, armed with chopsticks will lift the ingredients high up, that is 'lao', may means grab ($$) in chinese dialect (I think!), for good luck, eat it.

Surprisely, my little (pre-school) niece, was able to use the chopsticks, we have always thought she can't, so usually, we give her forks and spoons. She didn't want to tell us who taught her. Yes, what a naughty girl.

Leap year

So fast, it's 1st day of February, 2008 today.

This month we are going to see 29 days, it happens every 4 years, it is also the year of the Summer Olympics. This month there will be a 2-day holiday, which is the Chinese Lunar New Year, wow, can take a break from work.

Maybe, I will be spending some time visiting friends and relatives.....

Long, long queue

Seriously, I hate to queue! Irregardless of where I go, there are queues at food courts, bus stops, taxi stands, cashier lines, yes, everywhere.

This city is getting crowded here, small place, densely populated. With all the booming economy activities, people are buying, buying and buying, where did they get their money from, stock market? Price of housing is rocketing because of some invisible driving force pushing the prices up, at least 30% increase compared to one year ago. There are people, especially foreigners, complaining that they couldn't find a decent priced apartments. Cost of necessity products also went up by at least 10%.

Crazy!?! I just hope some day all this will cool down, I guess it should be happening pretty soon...

Happy New Year 2008!

Another fresh new year, wish everyone may all their wishes come true.

This year's New Year fireworks display duration was very short, only 8 minutes. The worst thing of all was, we, friends, were at a spot, can hear, but, can't see the fireworks, wrong place! Not just me, but a lot of people were also there, haha, big mistake. In the end, we had to chase and run around some blocks of buildings trying to get near. Yup, can hear, but, still partially blocked view.

I managed to take some pictures, the night scenes photos taken were not good, I think exposure too long. Sooo... disappointed.

The Heroes, Season 2

Hey, I think I have finished watching Heroes, Season 2, only 11 episodes this time, it was so short.

Now, I confused who is/are vallain(s) and who is/are the good ones, Peter has 'hooked up' with Tenshi, the immortal, aimed to save mankind by destroying the world with the deadly virus, Shanti, which could potentially kill 95% of the earth population. The virus was later destroyed by....Peter, when he realised what he had done.

Syler is slowly recovering his power, oops, the end.

Season 3 next....

Work and no play

There goes my leave plans for today, the tomorrow and probably the day after next. My work can't seem to finish, never ever!

Trying to find time to rest and have some fun outside work is tough, 2 more weeks and it's Christmas and new year. I just don't feel that holiday mood now, thinking about the work that I have to complete.

Let's see how, maybe I should try to squeeze some time and catch a movie on Wednesday, I got a free movie ticket.

Thought I could go on leave

Just when I thought I could clear my leaves from Thursday onwards, I was told we will be having a Disaster Recovery exercise to do.

The last 2 days at the DR site was terrible, had encountered a couple of issues, e.g. restoration failure due to incompatibility of tape drives/library. Problems that we did not see at our office surface. LTO2 tapes (HCART3) written using LTO3 tape drives (HCART3) cannot be restored from a LTO2 tape drive (HCART2), which is for Veritas Netbackup 6.0, tried to re-configure the LTO2 tape drive as HCART3, it didn't work!

Oh dear, guess don't think I can finish clearing my leaves by end of the year.

The Heroes

"Save the cheerleader, save the world!"

Hey, I have just finished watching the season 1 of The Hero's serial TV show. It took me almost five days and nights.

What's the fuss about this show? Well, it's about heroes who found out that they have special innate capabilities (in the show, they called it 'power') to fly, talk to machines, listen to other people's thoughts, mind control, self healing, turn invisible, etc.

Naturally, in such show, there will be the good and bad guys (or gals), but wait, the line between them is gray. There's this guy, Noah (played by Jack Coleman) who would pay any price (even killing) to protect his adopted cheerleader daughter, Claire (played by Hayden Panettiere) from harm. Good or bad? You guess.

Season 2 coming up....

Lost in translation

When I walk on the roads of this city, I no longer understands what people are talking about. It's seems to me when I pass-by someone or a group of people, the language used sounds so alien to me. No surprise that 1 out of 4 people here is a foreigner!

Everywhere you see Indians, Chinese, English, Japanese, French, Spanish, Chileans, Brazilians, Germans, koreans, Africans, Arabs, Russians, Indonesians, Thais, Malaysians, Australians, etc... the list goes on. Foreign people who are working, studying, holidaying, etc. here, each speaks a language most locals may not understand.

I hope I do not lose my way in this city, asking directions would probably be a difficult task. I think.

Memory, perishable and enduring

I would like to share something that I read...

"Memory, perishable and enduring, is the brain's archive. It is a marvel of neuronic circuitry..... It's loss can be cruel, but remember this: It is through memory that we hold on to those we love." - Chris Johns, Editor-in-Chief, National Geographic Society's Magazine (November 2007).

True enough, without memories, how could we still remember our love ones, or the things that we love, e.g. house, pets, food?

Side track, I have found out the reason why I have not been eating well. It is because of my tooth-ache. Still waiting for the dental clinic to call me to schedule an appointment with the dentist.

Don't feel good

Lately, I have been feeling very perturbed and uneased.

Just don't know why, too many thoughts are flowing through my mind, and waking up in the middle of the night is just not good. i don't think I am eating well for weeks, in fact, I don't feel like having my meals sometimes, have that tendency to eat more veggies and stays away from meat. Nope, I don't want to be a vegan, yet (not at least until I retire!). Also, I have started drinking Coffee, I don't used to do that, strange??

There is just something that is happening around me and is disturbing. Maybe something to do with my job, my life or it's something else....I really don't know.

Trying to configure Netbackup

For the past weeks, our team has been trying to setup the Netbackup for backing up DB2 database. It is really tough, and I simply couldn't find much information on the Internet in doing this.

We had to get the Veritas (or Symantec) technical support to help, frankly, it is not easy, but, we finally got it working, doing backup (restore not tested yet!).

Well, just to share, if you are using Netbackup version 6.0, and requires the 'Backup, Archive and Restore' (BAR) GUI to browse the DB2 instance and objects, you will need at least MP5. When logon to BAR GUI, you have to use the DB2 system ID, e.g. db2inst1. These are not stated in the official Documents. You can create templates with the GUI, you know what I am talking about, right? By the way, we are using scripts.

One note, however, the GUI does not allow you to browse previous backups, already stated in the documents, we are trying to find out more for Veritas support on this. The last thing we would want to do is to use commands, not many people like to do that, including us!

Roller-skating

A month plus into learning to roller-skate, it seems to have bear fruits. At the very least, I have learned how to stand up on the skates and able to skate!

Initially, wanted to take up a inline skating course at one of the community clubs, 70+ dollars for a couple of lessons, but, guess they couldn't get enough headcount to start a class. So, I was on my own.

Armed with the skates, protective gears, i.e. elbow and knee guards, helmet, I began skating around my neighbourhood.

Just yesterday, I lost focus and fell backwards, two little girls laughed. Well, lesson for new skaters, falling down is ok, don't worry and don't be embarrassed, it happens.

One more guy leaving...

We are going to lose another DBA soon. He got an offer to work in Europe, and a huge jump in his salary. The weird thing is that his wife and baby have recently just join him in this country, he's non-citizen here, by the way.

I guess many foreigners are just using their work experience here as a step board to venture out for a more lucrative career after working here for a while.

Well, if anybody out there is interested to work as a DBA, messing and playing with Oracle, MS SQL, Sybase, DB2, etc, send me your CV only if you are interested to work in this part of the world where I am in. Let me warn you, we don't pay as good as European or US companies, and working at unexpected hours is expected.

Yet another exercise

Went down to the DR site with the Unix admin who is supposed to take over my duty soon.

Day 1, not so bad, although encountered a problem with the setup, the system was unable to detect the tape (use 'mt stat') in the tape drive. Managed to get the site's DR specialist to help swap the drive connection to another SCSI port on the server. It worked! This issue took us almost 5hrs to resolve.

Day 2 ahead tomorrow, heard one of the customer's senior officers will be there....

Free, free, free from toxic wastes

The other time, I wrote about detox, cleansing the body of toxic wastes, and at the same time can lose some weight. The best program that I have found in the Internet so far is from chet Day's 21-day program. It can be downloaded from here --> http://chetday.com/21day.html

Actually, I don't want to lose weight, so, I have not start on this program, but, for the past few weeks, I have to trying out something different, a change in my eating habit.

In the morning, I will have a glass of Soya bean milk and two pieces of white bread, giving me about 600mg of Calcium ( daily recommended is 800mg). I ate a least 2 shares of fruits, apple, orange, pear, etc. and 2 shares of vegetables a day. I also try to have a light lunch, staying away from fried food.

I just want to take better care of myself......