Motivational Phrases

I have been receiving emails from Stephanie Goh of The Educated Mind since I attended John Kanary's seminar on 19th November 2005 at NACLI. The daily emails are called Insight of the Day that contained messages which were to inspire me every day. Here are some gems by famous people captured from the messages I got for the month of January.

“All results come from a certain level of thinking. To get a new result you must first move to a new level of thinking.”

“Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.”

“The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives.”

“Man’s mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.”

“The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore.”

“Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.”

农历新年快乐！

[争锋相对] 新加坡人笨吗？

我觉得新加坡人笨。你一定会说新加坡有许多世界第一，在不同的领域都有杰出的人才，怎么会笨呢？我同意新加坡人在政治，经济，管理及处理问题等方面非常聪明。可是新加坡人在社会，人文和待人处事方面却真的是很笨。

Pssst...我才刚刚被我的弟弟说我笨...sheesh...

[Online Game] Sleuth

I have been playing an online game called 'Sleuth' lately and I have to say it's good enough for me to be slightly addicted. Sleuth is an open-ended detective RPG where you solve mysteries by searching for clues, questioning suspects and interviewing witnesses. Every mystery is unique, with different victims, suspects and clues. All mysteries are solvable, in fact there are always two ways to solve any single mystery, but player skill and a small amount of luck are necessary to nab the guilty suspect. My detective has been doing okay, having 1960 experience points and 63 skill points in 105 days of game-play. You can play this game for free or pay to get more features and play more cases in different cities. Sleuth is found here -> http://sleuth.hypotheticalsoftware.com/.

心情日記015

一連幾天都在下雨。雖然這種天氣挺舒服的，但一直想睡覺，沒心情工作。

[Review] Codex

Author: Lev Grossman

Codex is a slow book to begin with (or it may be me that is losing patience lately). It tried to induce suspense but ended up making the story seemed longer than necessary in the first few chapters. However, where it lacked in narrating a good story, it more than made up for with a special story-line and abundance of information on medieval England. The use of an English aristocratic family and the mystery of a long-lost book belonging to this family is fabulous, keeping in line with other novels about ancient artefacts. This book really increases my interest in studying anthropology to learn more about ancient texts.

The story of Codex opened with Edward Wozny, a young hot-shot banker, taking up an assignment to help organise a personal library of rare books belonging to the Wents. The Wents in reality are the Duke and Duchess of Bowmry. However, the organising of the library is only just the beginning of Edward's eventful vacation. In fact, the Duchess was the one responsible for giving him the task in hope that he might find a hidden medieval codex. This codex was written by a Gervase of Langford and the Duchess suspected that it contained a dark secret that she could use to threaten or destroy her husband the Duke. The secret turned out to be scandalous indeed.

Both the discovery of Gervase's writings and the ending of Codex is unexpected. I recommend you this book just for finding these out, along with the secret and why the Duke desperately needs to destroy Gervase's codex. Maybe if I know more about England in the Middle Ages, I could have guess where Gervase's codex was hidden but that would have reduce the element of surprise.

Selamat Hari Raya Haji and a game for your pleasure

A happy holiday to all of you out there and of course, a happy festival to our muslims friends. I have an online flash game called Chasm. It is an interesting and absorbing puzzle game whereby you guide a little platypus to redirect water back into his town to save the day. Play it here. Enjoy!

[感想] 仁心慈爱照万千

刚在两个多小时前播出的《仁心慈爱照万千》慈善筹款节目已经帮仁慈医院筹得了680万余元的善款。由明义法师和海内外的艺人联手表演的节目，再一次为仁慈医院的穷苦病人筹到了多一年的费用。真得很佩服明义法师的胆量与毅力。明义法师他用不屈不挠的精神，以身作则，冒着受伤的可能去做高难度的表演。他的言语，表情，肢体语言和行动，都让世人们看到了他的爱心及慈悲心。希望大家继续帮助仁慈医院。

不过，在节目彩排时发生了新加坡艺人郑秀珍受伤的事，让人觉得痛惜，但她在受伤后所说的话却让我有不同的想法。她说电视台叫艺人做的表演犹如马戏团的杂耍，是说的有其道理。可是，退一步深想，她说的其实是有一点过分。慈善节目嘛，本来就是除了表演才艺或看家本领，就是表演平常生活中不会做到的东西。她说学斗唱舞，没有一样是行的，你说不安排她表演一些其他的行吗？

老实说，新加坡的很多艺人，在才艺和文化修养方面都很缺乏。因此我希望这些艺人（你知道你们是谁），能多花点时间进修，多看一点文学书籍或者学习几项才艺来充实自己，然后自己想一想还能做些什么演出。只要少一点制造那些无聊的新闻，浪费精力搏出位，就会有很多时间学习。真是非常看不起那些自以为现在靠几分姿色和人气而红的能继续有人支持的艺人。

[Seminar] Teaching as a Career

I attended the above-titled seminar earlier in the day as I wanted to find out whether teaching will be something I want to do. In fact, I have been contemplating a career switch for a long time and teaching seems to be a desirable choice. The seminar is informative but it neither increased my confidence nor determination to try. Given the requirements and training I needed to undergo, I know I can do it minimally with my knowledge base and skills. But I am still not confident in trying my hands in molding the nest generation as I don't know how good a job I can do; I can't foresee how students will turn out to be in my care. The bottomline is: do I have the aptitude and attitude, passion, communication skills, and awareness of the demands of a teaching career?

Web Office Suites

I don't know whether I have shared this before but there is this blog written which gave a review of the different web office suites. You can read the blog entry here: Ajax Office Review.

The list of web office suites reviewed is as follows:
- gOffice
- Thinkfree Writer
- Writely
- Zoho Writer
- WriteBoard
- EyeOS

These apps have been tried out on Firefox 1.0.7 on Windows XP Pro and Ubuntu Linux 5.10.

DeepBurner and DeepRipper

Ever want to use a CD-burning or CD-ripping software without having to pay or carry the guilt of using p-version of the software (yah right)? Now you don't have to feel the pinch for both. You have DeepBurner and DeepRipper, both free for download.

"Create data CDs and DVDs on your PC. The
program lets you burn audio CDs, burn and build ISO images, and create
bootable CDs and DVDs. The program's design is similar to Windows
Explorer: you drag and drop the files you want into a queue, and then
they can be burned. This free version burns all types of data CDs and
DVDs, but it does not burn video DVDs, photo CD/DVD albums, or copy
from disk-to-disk. For those, you have to upgrade to DeepBurner Pro,
which costs (US)$25." -- PCWorld.com

Enjoy;

Volunteerism

Yesterday I wrote about making new year's resolutions. Have you made yours yet? If you have not, can I suggest one for you? If it's not too much for you, I'll like to introduce to you a concept called 'volunteerism'. I know how busy we all are but just by spending a little bit of time a week, not more than 3 hours of an evening, we can bring a lot to the people we are helping.

I know of this volunteering initiative whereby a group of people come together to provide IT training to residents of social homes. Though I belong to this group, I am ashamed to say that I couldn't provide my skills due to some inconveniences (wheelchair + 2nd storey = inaccessible). Hence I wish to do a little promotion of this group called ComputerWorldVolunteers (CWV).

心情日記014

新的一年又來到,時間過得還真快.去年我可以算是做了一些笨事.希望今年會吸取教訓,不會再犯同樣的錯誤.今年也要好好的計劃一些我想要辦到的事,如把我的基本日文課給學好.

那麽大家在新的一年裏又有什麽理想與計劃呢?可以告訴我嗎?不論你有沒有新的計劃,我都要祝你新年快樂,心想事成.

Happy New Year!! My Resolutions!!

2006 is here! A new year means a new beginning. As usual, I will write down a few new year's resolutions to see if I can accomplish any of them, no matter how silly some of them can be. My resolutions for this year are as follow:

1. Complete my elementary Japanese learning. I have been delaying my progress for much too long. I must sit for the JLPT4 exam at the end of this year. 頑張って！

2. Finish reading the books I want to and/or suppose to. I want to make it a target to read a book outside of my study quarterly. Reading is my way to keep my mind as sharp as I can manage.

3. Do more physical exercises to keep myself fit. I am not getting any younger hence it is important that I watch my health. I also try to make subtle changes to my diet, taking a bit more vegetables and fruits than I usually would.

4. Besides physical health, I also have to take care of my mental health. No point losing my mind right? To prevent that, I will take care not to stress myself too much from the rigours of work and daily life. Just live life as it should be. A way to do it is to finish the list of Playstation 2 games I want to play: Shadow Hearts 2, Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, etc...

5. As usual, I will try to keep my emotions in check again this year, which I have to admit to have slipped last year. This is done to protect others from myself, to preserve any relationships I have with family, friends, colleagues, etc. Never let the devil in me be released...

So what are your resolutions for this year? No matter what you have planned for this year, I wish you all the best in achieving them. Here's a very nice new year pic, courtesy of an e-pal;