Archive for the 'Off Topic' Category

Thursday, June 26th, 2008

A post on life rules and EQ

Everyone has their own sets of rules on how they should live, behave and interact with the society. In a way, you can call these “principles” but for the sake of this post, I define “life rules” as something that help guide my actions and steer them towards common sense, and these rules are inherently logical - they also closely relate to social aspects and EQ. On the other hand, “principles” to me is a set of beliefs that may be difficult to explain and defend, and does not necessitate actions, e.g. “I will not allow myself to get a lift from a lady”.

So here goes some of the 3 most important life rules from my personal rulebook that I would thus like to share with you; These are rules that aren’t straightforward like “Thou shall not steal” (so important and obvious I need not share), and are commonly violated by many in their everyday life. That’s not to say I have not violated them any bit, but for sure I have not for the past few years and indefinitely the future.

Rule No. 1: Never capitalize on what others cannot choose
“That’s quite below the belt”. A certain friend J remarked to me on a dining table when I accidentally joked about another friend’s volume. These words have stayed with me for 4 years now, and it is probably the first and only time I have ever degraded anyone because of their sheer size. Regrettably, this is one of the most commonly committed mistakes people always do. They assume their friends often would not mind such jokes, and live their joy at others’ expenses. Such insensitivity, imho, has no place in this world because many of them do not choose how they look like.

A little off topic: My secondary 3 English teacher’s words still ring in my head too. “If they say you are fat, tell them you can run and slim down. but tell them they are ugly, and they need total reconstruction”.

Rule No. 2: Always give others the benefit of a doubt (and imagine all possibilities)
It is much easier to live knowing others are not malicious, and to imagine the different positive excuses that comes with a negative behavior from someone else. For e.g., Alice told you Jack told a crowd in a bar you are a selfish worker who always turns down request to help him. Immediately, anger steamed through your mind. You can, however, speculate the possibility that Jack was drunk and sprouted something he did not meant, or Jack meant to say you are too busy to help him in your work. Alice may even have exaggerated his words! There is always a chance the latter reasons are genuine - in the case they are and you choose the easier path of believing in Jack’s maliciousness, you effectively destroyed a relationship unnecessarily.

I am not preaching you to become a saint or be overly naive, but my point here is people often misinterpret words and behaviors. Giving the other party a benefit of a doubt also meant giving the relationship 1 more chance. When in doubt, do not just speculate negativity - confront him/her to clear the air.

Rule No. 3: Prioritize events and work that others have an important stake
In SMU where I received my degree education, school team projects come in waves. These projects are normally the determinant for the final grade of that module. Some teammates that I have worked with unfortunately led extremely interesting lives - full of co-cirriculum activities and working part time to support their travel trip in the summer for e.g. Needless to say, most of them took advantage of the fact it is a group project and therefore the project is taken care of by the group who of course need to do well anyway for their grades. . They thus traded away their credibility and reputation in exchange for more involvements elsewhere. Such exploitations are much detested and despised.

Reputation and Credibility are for life. Trust me, they come back to haunt you.

That’s all folks. You may choose to agree or disagree with these rules - leave me a comment on your views!

Monday, June 9th, 2008

To my loving wife….

Saw this email from a friend and thought its funny enough to be shared!

A man checked into a hotel. There was a computer in his room. So he decided to send an E-MAIL to his wife. However he accidentally typed the wrong e-mail address and without realising his error, he sent the message.

Meanwhile, somewhere a widow had just returned home from her husband’s funeral. The widow decided to check her mail, expecting message from her relatives and friends.; After reading the first message she fainted.

The widow’s son rushed into the room, found his mother on the floor, and saw the computer screen which read:

To: My loving wife
Subject: I’ve just reached
Date: 13th oct 2006

I know you are surprised to hear from me. They have computers here now, and you are allowed to sent e-mails to your loved ones.

I’ve just reached and have been checked in. I see that everything has been prepared for your arrival tomorrow. Looking forward to seeing you.

Hope your journey is as uneventful as mine was;

Yours lovingly,
Lonely Hubby

Saturday, January 26th, 2008

Back for good from Cambodia and Thailand

A supersized big apology for neglecting this space for 2 months! There is some good explanation I can offer though: Firstly, I was away for a Business Study Mission in Cambodia and Thailand for a good 2 weeks in December. I would later provide a link to some takeaways from this trip in the form of a journal (later entry), but meanwhile, I have to say being in Asia and especially South East Asia, you got to visit Ang Kor Wat in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

 

Here’s why (:

 

Now, it is easy to see why I will come back to Ang Kor City really soon. For some reasons, we only spent 1 day in this place, and about 2 days in total in Siem Reap. And I learnt a new local lingo – “Boom Boom”.

If you plan to go here soon, please do let me know just in case I could join u!

It was also my first visit to Bangkok (I know la… sua ku), Honestly, clubbing doesnt feel the same anymore in Singapore now, after visiting Slim @ RCA. Other than that, nothing really eventful, nor do I have any useful information for you, except don’t eat too much squids on the roadside or you will kena rashes like me!

 

Now, the second reason to my hibernation mode is my evaluation of a new desktop tool. For some reason, I hated Wordpress’s web interface. I could have messed up some settings and thus posting in that WYSIWYG interface is a painful process. I tried W.Bloggar (which interestingly enough sounds like a virus name), which though was’nt too bad, it just was’nt good enough for me. So here I am, typing this using BlogJet, one of the premium tools in the market. So far it has been good. Again, I will use another blog entry for this trial post, so do keep coming back for more updates.

 

It feels good to be back here though, little red dot (:

Friday, October 5th, 2007

Creating Adobe PDF for Beginners

Its Friday and before I give a quick tip or two on creating PDF files, heres one of my fav strips from http://www.pbfcomics.com/ to end off a fine week. Its so BAD its funny

Anyway, back to topic. Many of us create PDF files for different reasons: For that extra niche touch to your resume, reports or quotations, or to prevent people from modifying, printing or copying contents from the file. Don’t ask me why people want to do the later, but generally, PDF files carry an aura of professionalism and is considered a real essential. I personally use CutePDF for this purpose. Read the rest of this entry »