Thoughts and pieces

Private transport (private bus, van or car)

2012-02-22T18:38:00.000-08:00

I am starting a new job in Changi South about April 2012 and I am looking for a private transport in the morning and evening. I need to reach office about 8.30 AM and leaving at 6 PM. I have been trying hard to find over the internet but can't find anything. So I hope this blog post allow people who are facing same issue to post and maybe I can work out something.

I am staying in the West (Choa Chu Kang / CCK, Yew Tee) and hope to travel to Changi South Street 1 (can be Expo, Changi Business Park or any other Changi South areas).

Please comment if you are also looking for one such transport (i.e. maybe we can pull enough people to start one service) or if you are the relevant service provider. Thanks.

Fishy breast milk - the scientific summary

2012-01-31T08:28:00.000-08:00

I have wanted to write on the topic of fishy breast milk for some time but I have not had chance to do so since my boys takes quite a huge chunk of my time at night. Luckily today somehow I have half an hour to do so!
The topic of fishy breast milk is something that I only encounter recently. My first son was literally fed with fishy breast milk that my wife produced for more than 1 year without an issue. She went back to work after 2 months of maternity leave and after that, the boy drank thawed frozen breast milk that is at least 2-4 months old. I noticed the fishy smell but did not really think about it as he still drank them and did not show any health problem at all. Well, recently he developed asthma syndrome but then there is no indication so far that this is the result of the fishy breast milk.
I started to search on fishy breast milk topic as it was more apparent for my second boy. My wife had nearly four months maternity leave so by the time she went back to work, the frozen breast milk had already been 4 months in storage. I became aware of the issue of fishy smell and upon some searches in google realized that many mothers are facing the same issue. However, I have not managed to come across any article that talks about the issue using scientific references. So in this article, I would like to share what I can gather.
Apparently there has been quite a number of studies that indicates that mother's food intake can modify the content of breast milk and thus affect the odor. Harris, W. S. et. al. in their study (http://www.ajcn.org/content/40/4/780.short) reported that mothers taking fish oil supplement reported fishy odor in their breast milk 1 to 3 hours after taking fish oil supplements. However, a recent study by Sandgruber, S. et. al. (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308814611004390) seemed to dispute this idea as they reported no statistically significant modification of the odor of breast milk upon fish oil intervention. It would seem that the jury is still out there on whether the smell comes from fish oil intake or not. I reckon it will be really difficult to conduct a double blinded study on this issue as mother's metabolism may potentially be a major variable including other genetic factors. In addition, it will not be easy to control diet of a big group of mothers concerned about their child's well being.
However, Spitzer, J. and Buettner, A. (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308814609011935) in their study showed that odor active compounds are more active in stored breast milk. In addition, Sangruber, S. et. al. (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308814611009605) continued their study and reported that fishy smell was not apparent in breast milk stored at -80 C. They mentioned that apparent flavor change was apparent when the milk was stored at -19 C.
Therefore, would seem that to prevent fishy breast milk issue, a -80 C freezer may be required. I have not come across a small unit of -80 C freezer though so it may prove to be a potential untapped market or simply further study on how to prevent appearance of fishy odor in storage of -19 C may be required.
At this moment, I and my wife are trying to see whether the pasteurization mentioned in some sites actually works in preventing the milk to turn fishy. Will update this post when I have more information.

Update: I realised that at times my wife's breast milk will smell quite fishy before even I pasteurised it. Unfortunately the pasteurisation did not get rid of the smell. One possible factor that I would not be able to probe is the effect of direct freezing as my wife pumped milk at work so she has to keep it in a domestic fridge for about 8 hours. Amazingly my son seems to just gobble up whatever milk, pasteurised or not, that is presented to him. I guess it means good..

Singapore on fire

2010-10-22T21:49:00.000-07:00

If you think, based on the title, that I am going to write about haze, you are wrong. I am referring to the mess some of the industries are, especially those the Government hopes to foster. These are the current industries or perhaps employment in a drama and on fire:
- Financial consultancy
- Property agency
- Private education
- Wellness clinic

The industries are pretty much those that fits into the Government drive for more SMEs. However, typical of people falling into complacency, laziness or perhaps simply ignorance or even worse, gambling mood, there has been a kind of stand where these steps are repeated:
- Sudden emergence of a business
- Noone cares as it looks like providing a good amount of SME
- Noone cares so lack to no regulations are set up
- Booming time, plenty of jobs - some of it goes to the so called immigrants because locals do not want to do it (for example those in wellness clinic)
- Crashing time, plenty of problems

Let's break it down one by one.

Financial businesses are very lucrative. After all, Singapore drives itself hard to be the leading financial hub. What comes with it is the financial consultant, people who are supposedly working hard to help commoners to plan for their finance. However, as the business rules go, profit is the main driver. So the client's interest go to the back, money making comes to the front. So far, does not seem that there is any regulation to put bad financial consultant to task (or even the agency) if they cause a big loss to the client, misrepresent product or even for hard selling. Unless of course, the client is so rich that they can hire lawyer and push it to court! Plenty of insurance product sold under investment linked features add up to the woe because let's face it, we all want to get more for less. So what happen? Plenty of people become one of such consultants, plenty of people including ah pek and ah mah who got burned. Let's recall Lehman brothers. What happen after that? Nothing, practically nothing that would really change the life of the ah pek and ah mah. I bet those financial industries remain banking on people with sweet lips and nothing is in place to ensure their agents know the products upside down and have system to check or audit for things like honesty. Is it so costly to set up 'mystery shopping' kind of thing for a check and balance system? Nothing comes from the Government so far. After all, the drive is for financial hub, profit, profit, profit. They will at most tell you, if you don't want to get burned, don't go in. Again, my fault. Indeed, so every single one of us has to take care of ourselves better. Know what you are going into and oh yeah, make sure everyone in your family is super smart and don't get conned unless you are rich and can get a lawyer to get your money back. *sarcasm intended* ( I simply wish for a better regulations and to make sure those people are responsible for their jobs. I am sure if I am one such consultant, I will not make too much sales per people but I am sure those clients will love me as I will never cheat them. But then again, I prefer honesty. :-) )

Property agent is another issue. Lots of moonlighting meaning, potential lack of commitment. Plenty of cases to use for example where there is allegation that the agent won't help the client to save or earn few more thousands. Hey, wake up. What will make the agent help you with few thousands since it only translates to few more tens of dollars. Remember, you are paying 1%. Worse, if you are buyer, you are hoping to lower the price so you are hoping to cut the agent's fee? Dream on! What I would probably do next time I buy a house is to say to the agent that I will give him 20-30% of the savings should he succeed in reducing the cost. I hope no one kills me for disturbing the status quo in the industry. Then again, plenty of bad apples in the industry. Plenty of people who see their interest not represented. Even a case where the agent get a client, the client's tenant (for rental that is) not paying and got evicted within 2 months, the agent still pockets the money and small claim tribunal action has to be started. Gee..... where is the honesty? What's the rules anyway? Huh? Got rules meh? Again, where is the governing regulation or even framework for the industry?

Private education is one of the newest problem. Plenty of schools, into thousands. Yes, you read it right, thousands. Small ones of course. SME, remember? Small enterprises. Seems to be so easy to start one. Plenty of people from overseas coming in for education. Hey, the drive is to be another education hub. Heck care of the start. No strict regulations. Just register with Ministry of Education, get a CASE (Consumer Association of Singapore) and then run your business. My biggest question is why even with the involvement of Ministry level people and a consumer association, a so called accredited and approved institutes can still fold up so easily? What is in the so called requirement to get approval anyway? Simply has money to invest? Gosh... does anyone even start to sit down and think how many foreign students and poor hard working souls (especially those who really want education but got ignored by the other institutes) will be stranded? How many of the foreigners end up being exploited and becomes overstayer? There is even a news of a student who after schooling for a year, haven't obtained student visa. What's he staying with anyway? A work permit? Or simply an overstayer? Now, what does this seemingly mess produce? Some (or plenty perhaps) super rich and a dent in the image. Only after some folds up suddenly there is so called stricter requirements for registration. Gee.. why does it need to have some casualties before action?

Wellness clinic is also another SME growth in the latest years. Plenty of gullible people who thought they can save money by buying a year worth of service only to find out that their money flies away and no service can be obtained since the clinic folds up. Why would you buy the package anyway? Is the risk so low? Who will even guarantee your money should the clinic folds up? CASE will never care even after providing so called accreditation. What is the requirement anyway? Is it a good list of requirement if so many can fold up after the consumer's money run away? Who benefits? Well, again some (or plenty perhaps) super rich. Lots of unemployed immigrants (since their jobs are not interesting for Singaporeans) and clients with money in the black hole. Some of the immigrants surely will contribute to the social ill at the end of the day. Perhaps simply the case of the honest people being pushed to the corner. And yeah, no new regulations yet.

I question the roles of CASE and will they ever do better in protecting the consumer? Perhaps one of the possibility is to start a more powerful consumer association manned by people who can better predict and come up with better accreditation system and who can be hold responsible in a way if there a mess despite their so called accreditation system.

The bottomline is that there should be a simply risk assessment. The Government agency who is the stakeholders in any emerging business should sit together and carry out a risk assessment. They need to assess the positive and negative risk and think about what framework and regulations are required to safeguard the population. What I am looking at now is a Government who is so reactive that I wonder what they are doing in the office day by day. Is that so difficult to wish for proactive civil servants? They are not exactly paid low, supposedly at better than market to get the best. Too much to ask similar thing from the Government to make sure sufficient regulations are in place before victims show up? Is that so difficult to do a risk assessment? The workplace safety and health council just release a code of practice on risk management. I am confident that the code of practice can be easily used for non safety issues, provided they want some changes to better governance.

Risk assessment in Singapore

2010-10-09T06:53:00.000-07:00

Today's newspaper reported the incident of silts from building site leaking into two rivers feeding drinking water system in Singapore. While there does not seem to be a clear indication of preventive action, there is also no clear indication that the builder will even be punished.

What I come to realize in Singapore is how risk assessment has become an empty catch word. Workplace Safety and Health Act (WSHA) requires companies to do so, but there is no enforcement scheme. I never know of any requirement for environmental assessment before construction as well. All these, I suspect, are in the name of progress. After all, doing proper risk assessment require some initial investment (read: COST) which burdens the company. Worse, even saying that risk assessment will prevent further cost, the FUTURE COST is not something easily tangible and seen at present. Hence, things are easily ignored.

The case on silt which is reported is a highly probable sign that little to no environment assessment via risk assessment was carried out before construction. If they have carried out the assessment, most likely they would have realized that Singapore tends to rain all year long and the location of their site is near river feeding to drinking water system. Hence, there shall be a need to ensure no run off of building materials or waste into the rivers. Sadly, no such thoughts seem to exist. In addition, for PUB, nothing seems to have gone wrong.

It is also a sad practice that risk assessment becomes a task for a single person sitting down in the office. How would that person be able to cover issues from multi disciplinary field? Or is it simply for convenience sake when things go wrong? After all, it is easier to blame one than a group of people?

From what I can see, Singapore's risk management system is far than working. Unless remedial action in improving the safety culture and enforcement, I am afraid that we are waiting for big ugly event to occur. Hopefully it won't be as bad as the red sludge in Hungary.

Minimum wages for maid in Singapore

2010-10-08T17:45:00.000-07:00

Now, there has been some argument that there should be a minimum wage for maid in Singapore. This is mainly triggered by Philippines' Government who wants USD 400 (~SGD 525) as a minimum wage for their citizens who work as maid.

I want to examine the case objectively. Since maid or housekeeper is a profession, it needs to be compared with other profession of similar nature. In Singapore, I would argue that cleaner in the coffee shop should have a job similar in nature to maid, i.e. keeping things clean. After all, Ministry of Manpower in Singapore theoretically says a maid should be asked to do only one job scope, i.e. if the maid is to keep house clean, he/she cannot be asked to take care of your kids.

I understand the cleaner in coffee shop is normally paid SGD 600. Considering that they are paid for 8 hours work while maid normally work up to 16 hours, the equivalent wage would be SGD 1,200.

Currently a maid from Philippines in general is paid SGD 350 a month. However, that would have included accommodation, meal and other expenses. If I put in monetary value into those:
- Accommodation of one room without air conditioning and relatively poor condition (admit it, only very few employer give their maid an accommodation fit to be paid normal rental): SGD 300
- Meals, assuming SGD 3.00 a meal and 2 meals and 1 breakfast (SGD 1.00): SGD 7.00/day or SGD 210/month; say if you give fruits and others stuffs, maybe I will round it to SGD 230
- Toiletries and other expenses: assume SGD 30/month
- Travel expense: assume SGD 40/month

The total expense for a maid excluding wage is then SGD 600. If I would to include wage, in total it will become SGD 950. However, there is still levy to pay, that is around SGD 170 (with concession). That means, an employer's effective cost is SGD 1120. That is not that much different from what will be earned by a coffee shop cleaner. In fact some coffee shop cleaner may be even paid less. In fact, if the employer does not receive concession, there will be around SGD 80 extra for levy, making the cost the same.

If the minimum wage for maid is upped to SGD 525. It constitutes a SGD 175 increase. Using the same argument of cost, it would mean that a maid will earn more than a coffee shop cleaner. Hence, I would urge the Government of Singapore to also implement a minimum wage for coffee shop cleaner and other similar profession similar to a maid. There should be equality, right?

2010-09-19T01:18:00.000-07:00

I have visited Hanoi numerous times but I can't get used to the city yet. Many things remain confusing to me so I thought I may just write some of my experiences here in case someone happen to stumble upon this blog to learn more about dealing with Hanoi trip for first timer.

1) Hanoi airport
1.1) Arriving
In the international airport, there are two baggage belts, check where your baggages will be issued from the TV screen hanging on the ceiling. The cart to wheel your luggage is available for free. You may or may not have to give the officials your custom white card. It all depends on the guy who watches over the booth near the exit from the baggage areas. Just in case, fill them up.

1.2) Money changer
Go around various money changers to compare exchange rate. It may differ nearly 10% among those service providers. I was told that the rate is better in town but I have not had chance to compare so pick your choice.

1.3) Taxi
Taxi trips can be one of the most exasperating experiences in Vietnam in general. Do not try to get taxi from tout. Upon exiting the airport, look around and you will see simple marking indicating Noibai Taxi or Airport Taxi. Go to the stand (most likely there will be plenty of other people there as well) and ask for taxi. You can choose to pay fix rate or by meter. I am not sure what is better yet, even after numerous trips! For this current trip to the famous Hoan Kiem lake area from airport, I chalked up 300,000 VND by airport taxi. I had a feeling that I was had but I am not sure how to check. That is the problem. However, that is still better than the 30 USD rate quoted by some private taxi stands within the airport which translates to 570,000 VND. Taxi flag down rate ranges between 9,000 to 15,000 VND. In town, try your best to get Mailinh or Vinasun taxis. They are considered the most honest ones.

2) Amenities
2.1) Shopping
It is not that easy to find supermarket in Hanoi. Appears to me that many relies on traditional market or small mini market. There are some supermarkets in the big shopping malls but the prices are slightly expensive.

2.2) Hotel
There are quite a number of decent hotels with the rate of 50 USD a night and above. I am sure you know more than I do.

Hand, Foot and Mouth Disease (HFMD)

2010-08-17T07:42:00.000-07:00

I feel compelled to write something about Hand, Foot and Mouth Disease (HFMD) after listening to the woe of my friends whose children had or is having HFMD. The information I write here are a compilation from the internet with some analysis that I carried out.

1) Organism
Wikipedia entry mentioned that Hand, foot and mouth disease (HFMD) is a human syndrome caused by intestinal viruses of the Picornaviridae family. The most common organisms causing HFMD are Coxsackie A virus and Enterovirus 71 (EV-71). I understand that within that two species there are plenty of strains and new strain can also emerge. That should be why your child who has had HFMD did not develop immunity towards HFMD. Other strains may strike and when that happens, your child does not have immunity. If it is the same strain, most likely your child would be immune. Something in the line of why Flu vaccination has to be taken every year.

2) Victim
Basically it is infant and children who can fall ill to HFMD. However, although uncommon, healthy adult can also get HFMD. I had one colleague who actually contracted HFMD and although it was mild, she was absent from work.

3) Incubation period
The most commonly stated incubation period from infection to onset of symptoms are three to seven days although Singapore's MOH states in their website that the incubation period are between two to five days.

4) Symptoms
From US CDC website:
* The disease usually begins with a fever, poor appetite, malaise (feeling vaguely unwell), and often with a sore throat.
* One or 2 days after fever onset, painful sores usually develop in the mouth. They begin as small red spots that blister and then often become ulcers. The sores are usually located on the tongue, gums, and inside of the cheeks.
* A non-itchy skin rash develops over 1–2 days. The rash has flat or raised red spots, sometimes with blisters. The rash is usually located on the palms of the hands and soles of the feet; it may also appear on the buttocks and/or genitalia.
* A person with HFMD may have only the rash or only the mouth sores

Hence, it is important to check for those symptoms if you suspect your child to have contracted HFMD.

5) Transmission
The most common transmission route for HFMD is contact transmission. Meaning that the illness is passed through contact. So it is not something you get from breathing in the virus. It is something that has to get into your body. The virus causing HFMD can be found in nose and throat secretion, blister fluid, saliva and stool. Hence if a kid touch those infected fluid and get that fluid inside his/her body, he/she can be infected. Once the virus is inside the body, it does not necessarily cause a disease. However, children are with lower immunity compared to adult and hence, the chances of getting the disease after infection is more likely. It is also said that the first week of illness is the most infectious period. Disappearance of symptoms should also not be taken as a sign that the child is no longer infectious.

In fact, some people who are infected with HFMD may not have symptoms. Hence, it is very important to check your child's surroundings and friends to ensure that no one has had symptoms of HFMD and keep personal hygiene high. You should not let your guard down simply because there is no one with HFMD symptoms. This is specifically important if your child is in area where contact transmission is easier to happen, such as infant / toddler / child care, schools, etc.

5) Hygiene
It is important to inculcate good personal hygiene from young. Good personal hygiene will reduce the risk of infection but will never fully eliminate the risk.
Personal hygiene include (but not limited to):
- washing hand with soap and water before meal
- sneezing and coughing into tissue, handkerchief or the sleeves
- cleaning articles which may have come in contact with the body fluid of HFMD sufferers
- avoiding direct contact with HFMD sufferers

6) Vaccination
There is currently no vaccine available for HFMD. I am quite sure the inventor will earn quite a handsome amount of profit considering the economic loss from HFMD (e.g. parents taking leave to bring their child to doctor or even hospital).

Singapore breakdown in rain

2010-07-01T07:09:00.000-07:00

Seriously, I think problems are surfacing in Singapore. The recent flood in Orchard Road smells of something wrong. They do good actually since after some work, the flood does not occur again. However, it does show that if they have done something before that wicked rain, the flood may not have happened. Now, other areas are flooded, or perhaps they have always flooded but have not been reported in news until just now?

I would think that a period of complacency has set in and has taken too deep a root in the public services in Singapore. My interaction with the ministries in my work seems to obviously point out to lack of coordination. Although it is an "expected behaviour" of public servants (I face nearly the same thing when dealing with US's government agencies), I would have thought that Singapore's system would do more justice. But then again, the government may have lost control. After a period of "nothingness" as in nothing bad happen, people stops thinking about improvement and they become reactive. That is what I think the main issue.

It would appear simple that risk assessment can be carried out on the drainage system for example, to examine the weak point. Then there should be more coordination from building authorities (BCA), public utilities (PUB) and natinal environmental agency (NEA) on issues such as sewerage. I would suggest maintaining active surveillance and issue long. That would really help point people towards common issues and making sure appropriate communication programme in place.

I really hope the situation improve. Other issues such as inflation has lowered the attractiveness of Singapore and creates mumbling among the residences. Hopefully, it will improve, for the sake of the next generation.

Nurturing employees

2010-05-04T17:44:00.000-07:00

Many companies nowadays put forward programs to help their employees to develop. One interesting marketing campaign I have seen said "your development is your responsibility" implying that the employees have to take charge of their own development (I assume it means career and personal development). However, it does not seem to imply employer's role in it.

Granted that unless one is driving oneself, one would find it hard to succeed in anything. However, many times the employees' hands are bound by what the employers plan. How many employers would agree to fund and support their employees' development plan which is not aligned with the greater business objectives (aka making money)? I am not pessimistic to say none but I would say a great deal of them would say a clear "NO" although they may hide it under different disguise. In reality, a development plan means time and cost is required. A mentoring plan requires the mentor to spend the time and it is an opportunity cost where the time can be used to make money. A course will cost the department / company. These are the parts that are often forgotten. I would argue then that the employers have a bigger role in developing the employees. All comes to budget and thoughts within the organizations. All need management support. A company losing money will not be able to realistically fund for a course for the employees unless the course will make more money in a very short time!! However, I would also argue that the employers should look into a longer term and think about how the employees can be happier, more productive and when even leaving a company they may appreciate what have been done. These intangible values are somewhat lost, at least based on what I have experienced and through my reading of the newspaper. Sadly..

Cost of salary

2010-05-02T19:38:00.000-07:00

Everyone wants higher salary, doesn't it? Why? Because we think we deliver more value to justify that, right?

Now, plenty of us tends to forget several other costs of working. We always think about Profit = Revenue - Cost, aka Savings = Salary - Time spent.

However, what has always been forgotten are costs such as:
- Family life
- Social life
- Rest time
- Ethics
- Integrity
- Honesty
- Morality

Those costs are intangible yet important as it provides the invisible support to allow one to work optimally. However, plenty of times we and our employers do not value them. It is pretty much a driven world, world driven by money. We have seen recently how those many costs are blowing up. Consider the financial crisis fuelled by irresponsible acts. But wait, who says it is irresponsible? It is the unfortunate. In a way, it is the lack of integrity, ethics and morality which has seem degraded our working life to just work, for money, money and money. Plenty of times other rewards, benefits and contribution from working life are not considered. A meaningful work should be those that help the world turns around and better other people. Consider the cleaner, the operator, the rubbish collecter, etc. We need all those but we rarely reward them just simply because they don't create the money. Wait, someone will say "the value". I am not exactly sure when we human started to equate value = money and only money.

Similarly, moral degradation affects lots of facets of our lives. See how lavish some senior management is rewarded. It is time that more realistic and moralistic based salary calculation is implemented. Only then perhaps working life is considered sacred and really for the betterment of society.

Wait, even then this argument may turn against me because I am also talking about money here. :-) Then again, those other values ("costs") need to be considered as well. Why are we paying irresponsible and ethically incorrect people higher than the honest folk?

Singapore and music player

2010-04-28T06:28:00.000-07:00

Singapore residents seem to have quite a romance with MP3 players. This morning I took an opportunity to count how many people actually hearing songs while waiting for the train. Out of 33 people waiting for the train in a single door, I notice 22 people wearing either ear phones or head phones! That is 67% of them. No wonder mobile phones in Singapore seems to have audio player as a default feature. Too bad it does not seem that any company is taking a significant market share in it although iPhone seems to be very popular, held by students, teenagers and young adults.

Some people even use their music player to entertain others, kind of anyway. They enjoy blasting their music on their tiny ears. At times the music sounds even louder than if I were to use my own music player. When the music is what I enjoy, it is not that bad but most of the times, it's a pure ear splitting drums, heavy metals or alternative music that are blasting off. So it is quite annoying. This morning was not that bad though. There was only one (a Secondary School boy) out of the 22 people with music player who was blasting his music. It strikes me that with such a number of music player user and a small number of people who over estimate their ears, the business of hearing aid should be good in 20-30 years down the road. Surely they would have problem with their ears after subjecting their ears to daily loud music. Some scientific studies have outlined the danger of amplified music regularly:
http://informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.3109/03005369009077849
and
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WKR-4PYR4WN-5&_user=10&_coverDate=03%2F31%2F2008&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1314709155&_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=4a73119539abc420da390e0a9520aa7b

It would be interesting to understand whether the hearing aid companies actually know this case before venturing to Singapore. Quite a number of advertisements in the train actually.

Sometimes I have even thought of producing a T-Shirt with wordings "Listen less to music, Protect your ear" or "Keep your music to yourself" kind of T-shirt to wear in the train every morning. Haha... There are two big players in sarcasm T-shirt in Indonesia but none in Singapore. Anyone wants to join me?

Curriculum in NTU

2010-04-25T07:07:00.000-07:00

I studied in Nanyang Technological University for a total of 7 years ins the School of Mechanical and Aerospace engineering. So I have a good idea of what was taught. However, my several working years clearly indicate the insufficiency of what was taught suring the undergraduate study. I feel that they should have taught taguchi method and project management as core subjects. Plenty of engineer's work would need taguchi method and most of the time, engineer runs project so a good understanding of project management surely help. However, I do understand that there has been plenty of comments on how busy he study life is.I would think that simple weighting prioritization scorwe wilhelp determine which subject would need to bw compulsory. Subject such as human resource management is hard yo argue for its usefulness. When project management is in the curriculum, project team management would be inside anyway.

There are plenty of ways to reinvigorate the life of engineer in NTU and I believe the change is necessary for survival and to ensure survivabity and relevant to the world today. I don't think that would be other ways to do.

Singapore taxi driver

2010-04-23T05:06:00.000-07:00

I am continuously amazed by the taxi driver in Singapore every single time I take taxi. Most are generally quite talkative. They all offer unique perspectives of their lives and do not shy away from dishing some advices of how to lead one's life.

I can however put them into three baskets generally speaking:
1. Super rich taxi driver. They are some sort of high level executives in their previous jobs before deciding to retire and instead of spending time doing nothing, they drive taxi. Simply as filling up their time. These drivers are generally of full praise of the government.
2. Normal taxi driver. They are simply driving taxi to earn a living. Nothing like the type in no.1. Perhaps since generally they are in the middle income range or slightly below middle income that they are the complaining type. Most rant about how the Government doesn't care about the people, how Singapore is terrible place to live, how things has become quite expensive.
3. The silent one. They are simply ignoring you and aim to put you where to go with the slightest conversation as possible. They just want to make their ends' meet.

I think the drivers embodies typical Singaporeans. It is quite interesting to see how diverse the view that people have of the governance in Singapore. It is also a good description and wake up call that nothing is perfect in this world.

Clean room testing and containment laboratories

2010-02-22T23:04:00.000-08:00

I have been working in containment consultancy for few years and I still can't stop amazed by the confusion in the market between clean room and containment laboratories. Plenty times I have come across news and laboratories which are tested by clean room standards. Many times, the firms doing work in containment laboratories have been certified for clean room work, get the work in the laboratories for having such certification and well, deal with the laboratories as if they are clean room.

As a start, clean room is to keep things from going in, although generally there are some that also keep things going out. However, the first and foremost key issue is to keep things from going in. On the other hand, containment laboratories (BSL3/4) are intended to keep things from going out. Although there are some BSL3 that also provide means to keep their facilities clean either with the intention to improve work quality or simply to improve indoor air quality (arguably unnecessarily at times). Hence, the key principles between clean room and containment laboratories are rather different (or opposite, if you like). Therefore, one has to be careful in choosing contractors to ensure that safety and not quality is the focus of the work in containment laboratories.

Unfortunately, clean room is heavily regulated with plenty of standards while containment labroatories are something new without many technical standards guiding it. For a start, the website of NEBB, a popular accreditation body that provide certification to firms doing work in clean room, does not list Biosafety Cabinet (BSC) in their testing list. BSC is in fact, arguably the most important equipment in a containment laboratory, providing protection to the personnel, product and environment. I have seen places where only the HEPA in the BSC and the BSC is called as "certified" although popular BSC standards such as NSF 49, JIS K 3800 or EN 12469 call for other tests such as downflow and face velocity, smoke test, etc. for the cabinet, both in factory and on site! There is also a separate BSC certification scheme organized by NSF which an owner of BSC has to take note of. Therefore, BSC is not simply the HEPA filters installed. The airflow performance has to be tested as well. This is a second issue which many firms dealing with clean room are not familiar with.

The third issue is with the HEPA certification. Clean room has plenty requirements for HEPA and such facility puts a lot of scrutiny to the HEPA, which is good and similar to containment laboratories. However, sometimes, some clean room requirement would allow particle testing using atmospheric air. Owners of a containment laboratory should take note that such testing is not something acceptable for a containment laboratory! Acceptable HEPA leak testing in containment laboratories include DOP / PAO testing, scan tested or by overall penetration. Owner has to be clear as well that the testing is to establish a leak level and appropriate testing standards and methodologies acceptable to containment laboratories have to be specified by the testing firm. Unfortunately, technical standards for HEPA in containment laboratories do not exist. Many biosafety guidelines would refer to acceptable leak level but now how they are to be tested. Canadian guidelines goes one step further and require adherence to IEST standard which is essentially a clean room standard. However, the guideline is clear about the type of testing required and I can vouch that atmospheric testing is not something commonly accepted for containment laboratories.

Last difference is on the sampling of indoor air. Sampling of bacteria in the air is not something commonly practiced in containment laboratories. Gaseous decontamination of containment laboratories also uses biological indicator to validate. The biological indicators are mostly in the form of spore strip or other proprietary products. However, clean room at times uses bacterial sampler. Again, this is a different practice.

In conclusion, clean room testing standard is not directly applicable to containment laboratories and owners of a laboratory should question which standard they would want to comply with. Some testing commonly accepted in a clean room facility may not be acceptable in a containment laboratory setting.

Precious little family

2010-01-27T00:04:00.000-08:00

Family is something precious. We hear that very often and it is something that we rarely stop to think why it is stated as such. Never have I reflect that point until recently when my parents left for home (some 1.5 hrs flight away) after coming here for a few days to attend my sister's wedding. I have never felt the feeling of "missing someone" but when my mother texted me to inform me of them reaching my hometown, I feel the surge of a sad feeling. The feeling that I will not see them for some time. Despite my constant quarelling with them for many little petty things and despite knowing those things and actions I dislike was there because of their loving me, it is not easy to imagine that I will miss them somehow. Yet, here I am realizing that they have made an impact in my life with just a couple of days being with them in the same house, without even mentioning that I only see them few hours a day since I am working! This really show me how much a human can make an impression on others regardless of what they are doing. Just simply having a chat and even those quarelling can really give a deep impression. In case of parents, talking to them face to face after separating for few months can be very insightful. Realizing how much things have happened back at home, what has happened to them when they are away, etc. are a mind opening experience. Hey, they do help me clean my house, cook and tend to my boy. They are not exactly big stuff. I still don't like them straining themselves over those "dirty" (few specks of dust) window. But their just being there is simply enough to change and indicate that there is something different. After taking them for granted, their leaving for home just strikes me as something I would feel sad. How much we as human can take our lives and family for granted is beyond comprehension. I vouch to be more aware of people's presence in my lives especially my parents.

Healthy company

2009-11-20T19:27:00.000-08:00

The working world is very dynamic. It is very rare to see a company without any staff turnover. Depending on the type of business, the turnover rate may easily reach above 50%, e.g. hotel and service industry. Part of the issue is the long hours in those industry which does not tend to translate into adequate pay for the employees. Despite whatever turnover rate existing, I believe the spread of employee service duration can be used to describe the effectiveness of the company.

I would split the service duration in a company to short (0-5 years), medium (5 to 10 years) and long term (above 10 years). I believe that an effective company the spread of service duration should follow a kind of normal distribution where most of the employees should be in medium service durations.

Young employees of 20s to mid 30s are known to job hop and change job regularly to (1) find a job that suit themselves better; (2) negotiate better working condition. However, some of those 'lucky' youngsters will land in their dream job from day one or near day one. These are the people that would stay in medium to long term. People in medium term would be expected to have master their work and be in good productive part of their life while not being paid excessively. Thus, they are the ones which would be upholding the effectiveness and productivity of the company. Employees serving less than 5 years would be expected to still learn the rope and still climbing in productivity. Unless the company attempt to keep more of this people, the company will experience high turnover for the young employees.

Employees who have served the company for more than 10 years are known to be loyal and die hard fans of the company. They are the stalwart employees. However, their salary is often rather high compared to what they do. After all, you would have few people in the top management (normally people who has served for a long time). The rest would be low or medium level employees. Hence, their work would normally considered of lower value add but yet due to their long service, they are paid quite well.

Therefore, I believe an effective and productive company would be those with employee in medium service duration followed by a short service duration. A company that experiences a hollow medium service duration employee , i.e. lots more oldies and youngsters, may not function as effectively as they should be since the employees are either still (i) learning the rope or (ii) paid overly high compared to their value.

Technology marketplace - a potentially better set up?

2009-11-18T05:49:00.000-08:00

I just visited A*STAR's website on a whim and I found an interesting link: http://www.a-star.edu.sg/Industry/TechnologyMarketplace/tabid/97/Default.aspx

Looks like they are heading to a correct direction. They are offering technologies for licensing openly in the market. I wish there are more things listed there though. But then again, Singapore's R&D scene is still in the growing stage. The list there may even be considered impressive for the beginners.

However, I feel that more should be done for those patented technologies. They should be actively offered to targeted businesses or industries. A team of people whose job scope comprises of listing and finding potential companies who may find those technologies useful will serve any R&D institute well. Not many companies embrace the idea of searching technologies to buy online so to wait for one to stumble upon the webpage seems complacent. Active searching of buyers should still be the main activity.

The webpage set up could be improved as well by allowing companies to search based on their need, e.g. searching based on the type of the company, the type of technology and trying to categorize the technologies in wider manner. A technology would normally fall under several categories so they should be listed under those categories at the same time.

Another issue that can be taken up is to reduce patent applications. Patenting findings seem to be a pastime of Singapore's researchers. Unfortunately, not many of those patents really worth patenting. I think this is a credible explanation to the lack of commercialization. In fact, patent application may serve as the end point of the research without afterthought put into what will happen after that. Money spent for patenting nearly useless research findings could be well spent into bettering the technology or even channeling them to better use. Before a patent is applied, potential for commercialization should actually be assessed first. I would think that having 100% commercialization success of 100 patents are better than having 10,000 patent with 10 commercialization success.

Good idea for mall management

2009-11-18T05:37:00.000-08:00

I went to West Mall today and I must confess that I am impressed with whoever has the idea for the escalator arrangement. The Mall is roughly a rectangle and runs two stacks of escalator at the opposite long side. It used to be set such that one stack is for going up while the other stack is for going down. In this set up, the shoppers simply walk along a side to reach the escalator for continuing their trips up or down.

Today I saw the escalator being set in a crisscrossing manner. The escalator on the next level is running to the opposite direction of the previous level. In short, the shoppers has to circle one short side and one long side of the Mall to reach the escalator to the next level. Hence, the shoppers are required to pass through 50% of the shop in one level just to get to another level regardless of whether they are going up or going down! It is a simple but really good idea, for the retailers of course.

As for the shoppers, they have to travel far longer than they are used to. In fact, more than twice the previous distance, as previously one only need to go through one of the short side.

Who wins here? I guess both as the shoppers who need to reach the level would normally know where they want to go and they shouldn't really mind the extra trips while the shop owners are also happier (especially shop owners at the long side of the Mall) since more shoppers pass their way (although most will not go into their shops, at least higher chance of having shoppers). The definite winner is clear, the Mall management, for satisfying the shop owners while not terribly turning away the shoppers.

Customer satisfaction

2009-11-18T05:25:00.000-08:00

Recently, there has been quite a hot discussion the results of customer satisfaction survey in Singapore. The key issue is the finding that Singapore's customer satisfaction index has declined! It means that customer is less satisfied with the service this year compared to last year. In response to that, the so called Singapore Retailers Association (SRA) blames the customer! It is said that the frontline service personnel has been given training and they have improved. The customer is now to be blamed because they have increase their expectation.

How far can the retailers be from the current denial? Are really customers to be blamed for desiring more? Who are the customers? I thought customers are what the retailers want to gain. The world is dynamic and so are customers. It is inherent that people desire better situations, better products, better service and so on. The key point of winning customers is to fulfill their expectations or even winning them. So, customer satisfaction is a moving target. To say that the service improve while not managing to satisfy customers or clients are like saying that one is prepared to catch a 1 tonne fish with a makeshift wooden fishing rod (forgive my analogy, I can't find better example than this :-P). The inability of the retailers to understand what the customer wants or expects should not be turned around to the extent that customers are asked to lower their expectation. Who are to be served here at the first place? Service should not stagnate and should aim higher and higher to fulfill and exceed customer satisfactions. Efforts should be put forward to really understand customer's needs, e.g. maybe better ambient, better store set up, wider product line up or simply staff that speaks the language. Instead of complaining, the energy should be better spent on interviewing and seeking feedback to formulate real actions.

Ineffective advertisement

2009-11-14T05:31:00.000-08:00

Advertisements on "encounter of the nice kind" aka "closer" (if I remember the title correctly) that are normally put up in the MRT station have quite good stories. It talks about friendship of people from different background. However, I don't think it is effective. I would love to take a poll of how many people actually know which advertisement I am talking about. I bet there are not many people who are aware of that.

The only appealing thing (or repealing) on the advertisements are the huge number of words they use. I don't count but a simple glance can tell anyone it's far too many. Not surprising that people will not remember the advertisement or know what it talks about. MRT station is where people pass through and it's rare to see people stopping. It'll be difficult to expect people to stop, stand still and takes half a minute to read! In fact, people may actually remember "oh yeah, wordy advertisement with weird fonts and random highlights" but does this constitute effective advertisement? I don't think so. Effective advertisement is one where people know what the advertisement is about, remember clearly what it looks like or hears like and it's best if people involuntarily recall the advertisement. The advertisement on "encounter of the nice kind" (or maybe some other title... if you get what I mean here) does not seem to fulfill any of those requirements.

Fair company

2009-08-01T16:08:00.000-07:00

Nowadays we are flooded with news about pay and bonuses in the big bank where the bonus pool is larger than profit. Then there are the other side of the stories where employers run away with pay and leave the employees without pay.

I am wondering, have been wondering for long in fact, whether it is possible to set up a fair company. Seems logical and easy but haven't even found any that is built on such principle. What I mean by a fair company is where the profit is shared from the top to the bottom. Where say a profit of 1 million goes to the CEO for about 10%, the rest is to the say, 50 employees. There must be a way to work out a fair proportion where employees feel the CEO worth getting paid that much. Doing so, everyone in the company will be spurred to work and feel ownership. This is very ideal, I realize. How do you find a CEO nowadays that care less about his pay and bonuses? How do you find a married man with less worry on how to feed his family?

But I do strongly feel that unless we as human dare to stand up and share earnings in more equally manner, all of us stand to lose. The violence in Africa is a living testament of such issue and as the few corporation complexes (fortress like) in Indonesia where the surrounding is still forest like.

SMRT fine for eating or drinking - ungracious SMRT?

2009-07-18T20:40:00.000-07:00

The SMRT is embarking on a new campaign, fining all passengers caught eating or drinking.

As of now, it appears that the following falls under the definition of an offense:
1. Breastfeeding
2. Baby drinking from milk bottle
3. Sucking lozenges not from doctor - someone actually has been fined
4. Sipping a drink from your bottled water - someone actually has been fined

Now, the argument is that all kind of eating or drinking is an offense unless it is a medication. It is quite easy to define, isn't it? Unless you bring your MC or something labelled as prescriptive medicine, you'll be fined. What a convenient way.

I think with the new campaign, SMRT is being totally ungracious. Does it mean that they are suggesting someone with itchy throat or sore throat to tap out of the MRT, walk out to outside station to eat or drink before continuing the journey? That's absurd. I can understand the fine imposed to people eating bread, curry puff, nasi lemak, or drink from McDonald etc. However, fining a simple sweet eating and drinking from bottled water is bordering on over zealousy. The train is by itself not a bullet train. For me who takes 1.5 hours journey one way every morning and afternoon for work, I have experienced dry throat and sort. Demanding such a customer not to take a simple sip of water during that long journey is really too much. I wonder whether Health Promotion Board or Ministry of Health can even bother to put up comment on the health benefit of drinking water. Ha ha... No way.

For now, I suggest purchasing SMRT stocks. It is one of the company that won't fail and it's stock will always increase. What you earn from dividend and stock price is guaranteed. After all, everyone is bound to take MRT, the MRT price increases over time, more leasing of F&B outlet, and hey there are always ways to earn more money. Some time ago, after complaining of price not increased over some time, they are allowed to increase the price and hey, they posted a record profit after that. So much for "public" transportation.

The patient flight to Singapore

2009-07-17T18:37:00.000-07:00

JW Mariott and Ritz Carlton hotel was bombed yesterday morning. Soon, the news report in Indonesia reported the flight of foreign patients, bomb victims, to Singapore to seek hospitalization and cure. The news highlighted the advance of skin grafting and burn victim care in Singapore. Salute to Singapore.

On the other hand, it exposes once again the perception (and I would think, the reality) of poor health care in Indonesia. Coming from Indonesia, I know clearly doctors are among those that make tonnes of money. Lots of smart doctors but the infrastructure and the investment are just not supportive of getting some good surgeons. Unless you are very nationalistic or very dedicated to human lives in Indonesia, there seems to be nothing that prevent the doctor leaving for a better place. Yet, I would tend to think that not many countries would recognize medicine degree from Indonesia. Then, if that is such, there is a slim chance of medicine graduate in Indonesia to work somewhere else. Perhaps it is the insufficient medicine education in Indonesia to produce good skin doctors that pulls down the quality care.

Considering the chance of more attacks in time to come, more disasters, it is imperative that the government or private institution to look at bettering the healthcare of the country. I would believe that a hospital that manages to pull themselves out beyond the average hospital and claims the best doctor would at the end be able to sell the value and serve the crowd more. It is quite unimaginable why no hospital has clearly done so. What has transpired recently is more like a wanna be 'international' hospital suing a patient who complains. Then, plenty of report how those 'international' hospital is not really 'international'. I can't comprehend the wish to be 'international'. There is in no way any international hospital standard. The standard of care between Africa and western countries are definitely beyond imagination. The fundamental issue is more on the line of perception and obtaining the instrument capable of helping doctors providing the best of care. And of course the medicine education must be reviewed to get them up to date from time to time.

SSO advertisement in MRT can be better

2009-07-13T06:15:00.000-07:00

Saw Singapore Symphony Orchestra's new advertisement in MRT train. Impressive and educative. Lots of new musical terms to learn! Simple graphics and the message is that classical music is not that complicated. The advertisement is pasted in the exterior and interior's overhead advertisement board. In addition, it is also pasted on the panel at the end of the seating row. The ads on the panel could have been improved though. It seems that the ads pasted on that panel is with graphics on the top part and sentences on the lower part, which ends up at the side of the person sitting on the seat at the end of the row. Meaning.... noone can read the sentence at all. In other words, the poster on the panel is totally useless unless noone is sitting at the priority seat, which is always at the side of the poster. The graphics could have been at the lower part and the sentence at the top part? Or perhaps change the design?

Surgical mask and N95

2009-07-06T17:00:00.000-07:00

It seems that there are quite a number of article perpetrating wrong information on the use of surgical mask to prevent from getting flu.

Referring to http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/masks.htm

It says that surgical mask is for ill people. The mask captures whatever expelled out from the nose and mouth during coughing and sneezing. It does not seal tightly so it only blocks large droplets. However, it is still useful for the ill people to prevent them from infecting others. They are not supposed to wear N95 because they are already with nose problem and wearing N95 may as well kill them due to additional breathing difficulty.

If you want to prevent yourself from catching flu, wear N95. N95 is supposedly fitting tightly to your face. In occupational setting, there is respiratory fit testing you are supposed to take to test how fitting N95 can be on your face. They will get you to breath lots of smell to test. On the other hand, in community testing, at least you have to cup your hand around the seals and inhale or exhale deeply to ensure that no flow is felt around the edge connecting the mask to your face. N95 then will protect you from breathing aerosols containing the virus. The big problem with N95 is that it won't fit in small face (e.g. children) since it's only produced in one size and it won't fit in people with facial hair (no way to create seal around the big mustache and beard.

So if you are the sick one, surgical mask is your choice. Ensure the flexible adjustment around the nose is pressed around your nose and check properly.

If you really feel you need to wear N95 since you are within 2 m of the sick all the time, wear N95 then, don't just wear surgical mask. In your household with flu infected person, just isolate that person and get him to wear mask when he is to common area. Stay away from him 2 m apart. You won't really need N95 or mask then.

Best precaution is still personal hygiene and get away from people displaying flu-like symptom (sneezing, coughing). But remembers, still help them if they need to. Just don't breathe in their direction if possible. The suggested steps if you see people sneezing or coughing near you is to exhale and then move away before inhaling and continuing with normal breathing cycle.

Get more information

2009-07-06T06:52:00.001-07:00

If you can read Bahasa Indonesia, read http://www.antaranews.com/view/?i=1246879019&c=NAS&s=KES

A representative from Indonesian embassy claimed that an Indonesian citizen paid 10k SGD as a treatment of his dengue fever although he went to doctor as a suspected H1N1 case. The report is written such that I interpret the representative being confused why the so-called suspected case has to pay for treatment. He also says that the change from having free treatment to having to pay is because there are more cases.

Strange reporting, as always from Indonesian news. The Singapore MOH said in the news that H1N1 screening is free while there are definitely charges of consultancy fee, etc. Now, the clear fact from the Indonesian news is that the patient is hospitalized because of dengue, not H1N1. It's not weird for him to be charged to cure his dengue!

Not a first time I read strange news from Antara.

Flu clinic and observance of PPE

2009-07-06T04:28:00.001-07:00

I just came back from a Flu Clinic since I have fever and sore throat. So, I went to the flu clinic wearing a piece of surgical mask. I can testify that surgical mask is really posing breathing problem. My blocked nose went worse under the mask since I guess the nose detect higher breathing resistance which induces the production of more mucous!

Since I was without travel history, apparently was let go with just paracetamol and previous day's medication for sore throat.

What appalls me again is the observance of PPE by the front line staff in the clinic. I do realize that surgical mask is a problem, but the registration lady had her mask under her nose when she talked to the people who registered! Well, she did don it properly when talking to me. Perhaps she makes a judgement based on whether you wear a mask or not when you register. That should be problematic, isn't it? Not everyone has a mask at home! Well, the lady taking the temperature does wear gloves and N95. However, the same issue as the pervious clinic I went to, people are using the same pen. Hence, really, personal hygiene must be really implemented. Only if my eczema allows me to do so though.

So at the moment, extra days MC and hoping that the fever subsides tomorrow. Oh, quarantining yourself is a big problem. I am wondering about people who stays alone and never stocks up anything to cook. In that situation, is he going to wear mask to supermarket and buy things? I wonder...

Temperature screening, mask and H1N1 in Singapore

2009-07-02T06:25:00.001-07:00

Yesterday there is an article written by Dr. Lee Wei Ling, Director of National Neuroscience Institute in Singapore, daughter of Lee Kuan Yew. She called temperature screening as herd mentality. She argued that temperature screening is carried out since everyone else is doing it, not really because true belief that it will works. She is a knowledgeable person and quite right to quote research saying that asymptomatic person with H1N1 can be infectious. In fact, Singapore acknowledges that 1/3 of people infected with H1N1 can be infectious and this is a clear group of people which temperature screening will definitely miss.

Today I visited a clinic in CCK and notice first hand how I think temperature screening can really create more cases than prevent it. The clinic has employed a girl who is her teenage years. She wore a disposable blue gown, N95 mask and used ear thermometer. The N95 mask clearly looks too big for her, with the lower strap dangling loosely at the back of her neck. The N95 mask she wore is from 3M and it is actually for occupational use where respiratory fit testing is required and the mask must fit the face. The guidance document on mask clearly specify N95 mask is not designed for small faces.
Worse is the way she touched and adjusted the mask and then use the same finger to:
1. Touch her eyes
2. Play with her handphone which was on the table
3. Write using a pen which is also used by the multiple visitors + patients
4. She has no gloves. Not that it's wrong, but she has to perform personal hygiene to do it right.
And despite having a hand sanitizer on the desk, she never used it.

The girl is a clear example that putting PPE and temperature screening may create more havoc. The chance of cross infection from her action especially through the pen is enormous. The false sense of security by the patient and visitor that temperature screening will prevent H1N1 infection is something that should not be maintained. Inexperienced personnel handling supposedly first line defence like temperature screening is really an error that should be easily fixed.

Temperature screening is indeed helping to screen 2/3 of cases but the false sense of security and simple mistakes in screening activities may simply create more cases from the missed 1/3. The fact that a lady actually asked her daugther to wear surgical mask only because of fever is another example of wrong knowledge. Educating the population to be vigilant, appropirate use of PPE, keeping themselves away from people sneezing and coughing while being responsible to lock themselves up if they suspect themselves having flu will probably go a long way further than screening by inexperienced personnel.

Orange juice dangerous for your teeth

2009-07-01T04:48:00.000-07:00

Scientists compare effect of orange juice and whitening agent to teeth and they found that orange juice is more dangerous than whitening agent! Read more at http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090630132007.htm

This finding is distressing. So many people (including myself) are drinking orange juices and we all just see the bright side, that it is full of vitamin C. If orange juices are dangerous for teeth, it would also mean that orange by itself (not yet juiced) is also not so good for teeth. I wonder if this will provide the fuel needed by all the supplement manufacturer to promote the use of vitamin C tablet. To be very frank, they really should use this finding to boost their sales.

If indeed drinking orange juice is not good for our teeth, should there be any research on how to lessen the impact? Will there be such thing? Vitamin C is L-ascorbic acid anyway. Hence, it is indeed acidic by nature. But then again, if we as human has been eating orange all our lives, why should we care about the finding? I think the real perspective is that we drink and take too many substance that is not good for our teeth. Whitening agent is not uncommon in toothpaste. Sodas are also known to erode enamel. Therefore, the best and reasonable steps are to reduce those unnecessary sodas going down the teeth way and just enjoy our orange juices. Oh yeah, drink faster. Drinking longer = longer contact to teeth = bad for your teeth.

IES magazine vs. Eureka from UK

2009-06-30T06:36:00.001-07:00

In this writing, I would like to dissect engineering publication.

I got myself a copy of Eureka, an engineering publication from UK and IES magazine, publication of Institute of Engineer Singapore. My first and foremost assumption is that both publication attempts to interest people to the field engineering. My verdict: Eureka is a nice and cool publication that really triggers my thought and re-kindle my interest in engineering. On the opposite end, IES magazine is an old boring magazine that is full of advertisements.

Eureka contains articles of engineering advancement and extol the goodness and roles of engineering in life. The two magazines I have show solar powered car, new rapid prototyping method, bacterial cellulose from fruit waste, green power from compressed air, spin off examples from F1, plastic technology, etc. Those topics are the in-things. The articles and magazines are designed to look like a normal off-the-shelf magazine (not the gossip type). By showing reader that engineering is advancing and not long time dead and archeological finding, it tells them that engineers still takes part in the betterment of the world and the magazine proudly proclaim that engineers is to solve the problem of the world! That engineers have an important role to play and engineers deal with trendy stuff. That is exactly what students need to hear and to know that engineering is a field they can be proud of.

On the other hand, IES magazine is written like a journal! It has abstract, introduction, etc. etc. I am wondering why they don't call it IES journal instead. Then it has multiple times more advertisements (from NTU, from some course organizers, from some manufacturers, etc.). The articles talks about earthquake being from some other stuff, that risk management something and I can't even recall any title completely. I am wondering why Eureka can be designed more impressively without so many advertisements while IES magazine is full of advertisements.

One glance of Eureka and it gives me a good impression and I remember the title. One glance of IES magazine and I can't even remember anything but that it is terrible.

My point is that if the aim of the publications are to interest people to engineering, IES fails miserably. I feel that IES can do the following:
1. Take a look at other engineering magazine and use part of the advertisement money to pay someone to re-design the magazine.
2. Gather industrial people in engineering field and scour the engineering marvel that can be found in those organizations locally (not necessarily a local made technology, of course as Singapore gets more and more innovative, the local made stuff can take the prominence, until then anything will do).
3. Do number 2, but from the local universities.
4. Re-assess the role the magazine play, gather feedback!
5. If need more money, talk to the government of Singapore and plan a way to improve IES image and plays a part in government's attempt to make engineering cool.
6. Many more other things.

Of course ideally is for IES to bridge the engineering company and universities to once again produce engineers that are hands on and with critical thoughts and innovative!

Urinal without flushing

2009-06-29T06:18:00.000-07:00

Went to Vivocity on Sunday and realized one interesting thing from the toilet! The urinal is said to require no water flushing since it was treated with biotechnological system! It sounds really cool and very environmental friendly especially if it does prevent the smelly part as well. Alas, I still detect slight smell and one disturbing issue... there is no mention of the so called biotechnological system. A visit to the company's website (www.redlab.com.sg) on Sunday and today shows it to be under maintenance. I surely will visit the website again to get more details. The company actually seems like one that will succeed with such a radical idea. Weird that they don't publicize themselves more openly though... Let's see in a couple more days.

Monday, 30 June - Website still under "maintenance"

Exhausting all oil and gas on earth

2009-06-14T01:46:00.000-07:00

Green and renewable energy source is one hot topic nowadays. In US, the stimulus package has largely focus on getting more people involved in the green business area. However, the Democrats as the majority in congress also calls for energy tax to encourage more responsible energy use. On the other hand, the Republicans (now being the opposition) in US, banking on the potential hurt at the bottom line of the population having to pay extra, calls for greater oil and gas exploration and greater investment to renewable energy sources. Here, we see two opposite view of the situation. One says stop spending more non renewables, one says spend till the end.

We, being human, are quite creative and we think very well. So, normally it is the cost and benefit analysis that sways our decision. Nevertheless, cost and benefit will never manage to account for things that we cannot put exact value on, i.e. morals, ethics. In the energy debate, however, ethics and morals are quite complicated. Having less energy to spend freely means human having to survive with potentially less welfare (arguably, depending on where your "greed" level is). This could mean less morally responsible to ourselves while being morally responsible to the environment and our descendants. Which would be morally and ethically correct to side?

It is also known that human does extraordinary stuff when we are cornered. So, I would think that for energy debate, perhaps the best is to exhaust all oil and gas until suddenly we are totally out of oil and gas. Then perhaps we would be very creative. However, that would mean an extremely bad situation for those countries having winter season. Well, the solution would be to discover commercially viable renewable sources before all oil and gas are gone. Exploring and extracting more reserves would definitely mean faster exhausting, which in turn may force quicker innovation. That's a gamble and hey, I think it really suits the Republicans philiosophy so far, considering all the wars they have fought. But mind you, renewable sources are useful if the earth is not yet submerged and destroyed by global warming. If you think of the imminent rise of sea level or think a bit further than "now", perhaps you may want to consider the other end of argument.

Experts expect a certain minimum temperature rise that is no longer unavoidable, so it's not about mitigating and coping, no longer about preventing. At least in UK, the bag reuse scheme seems to be working well. But in Asia, owing to the mentality "Europe and US has enjoyed polluting to get better, it's our turn to experience the same thing", things are not so simple. After all, when you are still hungry all the time, floods are common and plantation failure is not unusual, global warming effect is not that great. In such situation, who would consider the Maldive residents having to search for another island to settle when the sea level rises a bit higher? Exhausting all oil and gases and not reigning their use will definitely fasten the bad effect but perhaps then it is a lot easier to make the argument. Again, when it is not too late to do so.

In the mean time, regardless of what other people is saying, time for me to reduce my plastic bag usage and be mindful with my electricity and water cost. It helps my bottom line at least.

Weatherman

2009-06-14T01:33:00.000-07:00

Weather report from BBC looks totally different from the Asia counterparts in the equator. In those countries, I think we don't really expect any difference from looking at the weather. After all, it's always wet and shine repeatedly. We are kind of always prepared for the wet and any change of weather does not affect the temperature by much any way. While in UK, rain and shine can swing the temperature from 10 C to 23 C, a huge range of change. Wind blowing in the shining sun may mean freezing feeling in a hot sun! Well, it's still better than raining and cloudy at the same time... Therefore, if there is huge incentive in following the weather report. Any sunny days in Summer means people rushing to enjoy the day, which at times is rare to come. People will travel out of town. It would also mean that Sunday evening would ten to have congestion in the motorway.

After having been in the weather swing for a week, I really appreciate the sunny days...

Summer in Sheffield

2009-06-07T14:22:00.000-07:00

Yay! Summer is here! That's what many Europeans and other residents of temperate climate is exclaiming happily. I had always thought that summer is hot and humid. Little did I realize that although summer is relatively better than winter, those two seasons are pretty much the same for tropical people! Although the sun is burning my skin today, any breeze will cause me to shivers. The temperature of air brought about by the wind feels like <10 C. A sweater made of 100% polyester is of not much a help in this case.

Weirder of all is the bright sky light at 9 pm! The ambient light at that time in Sheffield feels like 5 pm in Singapore. It only gets dark at round 10 pm. On the other hand, 4 am shows bright sky. What a short night!

Fixed my Acer laptop and I am convinced

2009-06-04T05:19:00.000-07:00

Finally my Acer laptop is fixed on 4 June 2009. They again repaired the motherboard. Last repair on 29 November 2008 actually also has the motherboard changed! This time, at first they offered to change the motherboard for 600+ then I protested and thought they will give me better offer, but at the end they still asked me to pay 480+ to get the motherboard repair! They said they offer customer to replace motherboard before asking them to repair. Stupid part about this is that the motherboard (regardless of being replaced or repaired) has only 3 months warranty following the visit! What a funny thing....

When I collected, my first start up end up with the Welcome screen and hang system... shut down, power up.... second start up end up at the loading screen and hang... then I asked the customer service, he plugged and restarted and it's okay! Now... I don't feel confident with this laptop anymore...

Few statements from the customer service officer in Acer Service Centre I learned while collecting my Acer Travelmate 3280:
1. Laptop is like a car. You won't know when it's broken and which part it is broken. There is no guarantee that all laptop produces the same quality although same model.
Translation: Acer laptop does not perform similarly although same model. If you are unlucky, you may come back and forth for multiple faults. In my case, I saw more people with faulty and running away from Acer than not. So, no Acer for me please.

2. You should not play games in your laptop. If you want to play games, use desktop. This statement came because I said my laptop went faulty when I played game. What the officer miss is that my laptop is not exactly thouse low weight item. I purchased 3280 because I thought it's desktop replacement and after all it came with ATI Radeon X1400 in 2006. Don't tell me the fancy video card is only for surfing net.
Translation: Acer laptop is not good for playing game, regardless of how good their video card is. Said the customer service officer. Hence, don't trust Acer! Even the employee won't use the laptop for games! So, no Acer for me please.

3. Nowadays people just want to have fast machine. They do not care whether it is reliable or not since they will just buy new one when it is broken. Only machines from long time ago perform reliably.
Translation: Acer laptop is not designed to last. It will definitely get broken after the warranty is off. After all, they think all customers has money and will just replace their broken Acer machine with another machine. What they miss is that customer change Acer machine with NON ACER machine. Hence, no Acer for me please. The officer clearly said that Acer is not reliable.

I am merely reporting on statements by the officer and what I as a customer interpret. You are free to try Acer on your own and I wish you good luck. Who knows you get the best of the batch and your Acer product lasts longer than warranty. For me, I am not fancy of gambling. My ATI Radeon and system (made in 2006) can't even run Star Trek Armada II, made in 2001 with the motherboard replaced 6 months before that. In fact, I have been using the laptop in that 6 months merely to surf internet and watch movie and yet the laptop still go hay wire. So, no thanks.

PCK

2009-06-01T06:46:00.000-07:00

Once Phua Chu Kang Pte. Ltd. was a very popular show. The main character of the show is a man called Phua Chu Kang (PCK) who speaks perfect Singlish or Singapore English (and PCK is actually Gurmit Singh, an Indian descent). Then he changed his accent and spoke better English. There was also a big hoo haa on his status as Singapore icon. Although he was generally regarded as the symbolism of Singapore folks (general folks), his one sided elevation to an icon is not agreed by some others.

Strangely though, the recent advertisement by MRT and supported by LTA put Phua Chu Kang aka PCK as the main cast with his on-screen's 'wife'. This to me, as a foreigner, indicates that PCK is indeed an icon and symbolizes the common Singaporean folks. It bedazzles me why it is so difficult to admit that PCK is indeed popular and people like him. His use to promote graciousness in public transport (train) is a clear sign of such.

I say let's admit and put PCK back to his rightful place. He may be the only clear Singapore-made 'culture' that should be preserved. At least, he is original.

Dirty Singapore

2009-06-01T06:32:00.000-07:00

Singapore is very clean. That is always the first and foremost impression of visitors to this city state. Admittedly, the city areas (like Orchard, City Hall) are indeed clean. However, decades of foreign and elderly sweepers who clean up the mess have generated complacent populations. The heartland is mostly dirty. On my walk from my house to MRT station, I encountered void deck with torn paper. Looks like some kids got fed up with his/her notes and tore them. I saw cigarette butts here and there, paper planes in a parking lot and tissue and paper cups on the raised platform with vegetations.

People think that someone will clean up their mess so it is okay to throw them away. Indeed they can be fined but who is watching them? There is no inspector normally in the heartland and the cost of patrolling may even be higher than just getting someone to sweep and clean those rubbishes. But at times, the sweepers need someone to supervise to ensure their work quality and at times, certain areas are sweeped not every day. Hence, some times some areas are very dirty.

Indeed the country is in overall still cleaner than other countries in the world. Yet, I shuddered with the thought that this is just the tip of icebergs and rubbishes will pile up even more simply because of irresponsibility of the crowd after being pampered for decades. It is really time for citizens and residence to be engaged and involved more in caring about their environment. Simply putting up recycle bin far away and who-know-what-place and paying sweepers do not educate at all. Schools should also start with educating young children on cleanliness and responsibility. I think Indonesia at least is scoring a point in teaching civic. I still remember what it taught me even after these years!

Acer service is just poor

2009-05-29T19:15:00.000-07:00

Bought my Acer Travelmater 3280 in 2006, warranty period of 3 years, ending in March 2009.

Starting 2007, I keep having problem whenever I tried to play games. The screen just freezes in the middle of the games and I have to shut down and restart. The windows would then report possible corruption in the HDD and I have to wait for it to finish scanning unless I skip it. It does not happen when I do browsing and other stuff, just with games. I went to fix and voila, they change the fans on the spot (this is a good time where such service is still there). Unfortunately, I never played games for soooo long that I thought it's fine.

In 2008, I played RTK IX and I realized that the same problem re occur. The screen will freeze and same old issues. Went back to them, luckily still warranty. Given them the laptop and waited for nearly a week for it to be fixed. Thought it's a display card problem and they replaced.... the motherboard. Stupidly, I never played the game anymore so I can't test the repair, can I?

Now... recently I started playing Star Trek Armada II and Star Trek Legacy. Guess what... same old issues. But now I realize the problem.. for Star Trek Legacy, when I set the setting to 800 x 600 screen resolution and 2 x aliasing, I have 1 in 10 chances of freezing. Any better setting = 100% chance of freezing. Amazing thing is that Armada is from 2001. So, there is in no way normal ATI Radeon X1400 can fail to perform. Not in my case though. Sadly, I thought I should just stop playing, after all it's beyond warranty. But then, the screen starts blanking off (fading) for few seconds and then returning to normal... and two nights ago, I can't start the laptop. Perfect.... the warranty is off in March. They really count and probably create the high probability of laptop dead after warranty. What irates me simply is that the main issues is the same old issues they NEVER manage to fix it for me. They told me I have to bring it back within a MONTH to get the claim. Guess what, the terms in the letter I sign actually says 90 days, so the service guy does not even say the same thing as the letter! And in my case, it's a random happening and only when I play games. How the heck such a 90 days term will work in my case? I forces myself to play games for 90 days? Yeah right....

The basic issue is still the same and no matter what I would think a reasonable manufacturer would consider that into their costing and warranty. But for ACER, at least in Singapore, it just doesn't work. Worse is the fact that the system does OVERHEAT all the times. It's well known with ACER laptop and it's really my fault not to read the reviews before buying it.

I decided that it is just not worth it. After this repair, provided it's not so expensive, I won't return for the next repair. And I am very sure I WILL NOT BUY ANY MORE ACER.

Acer just does not seem to be keen in cultivating good customer experience, provide crappy service and you just have to be without your computer for few days (or a week) for them to repair. Unless of course, you like being without it or abstaining from computer.

Acer Service in Singapore

2009-05-29T19:08:00.000-07:00

I have just returned from delivering my Acer Travelmate 3280 to Acer Service Centre in International Business Park, Singapore.

Let me give you a straight fact right, that many Acer purchaser never knows unless they visited the service centre for repair: NO ON THE SPOT SERVICE.

I repeat: There is NO ON THE SPOT SERVICE.

The service given is basically filling form and submitting the form along with your laptop / desktop / whatever to them and go back. So in fact, it shortens your wait and cut their cost on Saturday at least since they don't need to employ many staff to handle.

Just now I heard a Filipino couple who was confused by the inexistence of on the spot service. They claimed they were told (or perhaps reading their terms and conditions), that there is on the spot service. Do not be fooled. There has not been on the spot service since early 2008 as far as I know.

And as far as I can understand, normally your terms and conditions allow the supplier to change their terms any time without telling you. Well, not sure of other countries, but this is Singapore.

What the couple said while taking the form (something like this): "No Acer laptop again!".

H1N1 in Singapore

2009-05-28T07:20:00.001-07:00

H1N1 finally hits Singapore. The student from one of the university returned from New York with cough and missed by thermal scanner (not really missed, she is without fever after all) and then visited GP after developing fever. To be sent to CDC at TTSH and confirmed as first victim.

After that, came salvo of curses from some people shouting at her "foolishness" and "selfishness". They think that if she has not returned, there won't be H1N1 in Singapore. They seem to miss the point that today's global world is so interconnected that despite of what people do, pandemic will travel. Illness will reach everywhere, provided the transmissibility is good. Even mathematical modelling assuming 99.9% travel restriction into the country only produce delays of 2 months for pandemic to reach the country! If it's not her, it'll be definitely someone else.

She in fact has been quite responsible for going to doctor, revealing her travel history. I think people should realize that she acts correctly as the government never forbid the travel in any case. She has weighed her risk by travelling to NY. Government has weighed the risk by not banning travel. They all know non symptomatic person can infect starting 24 hours before symptom and not all symptomatic person has fever. Both sides know their risk, they accept it. Now that incident happens, it should be remedied and reacted upon. The importance is the reaction and quarantine not laying blame.

Election in Indonesia

2009-05-28T07:12:00.000-07:00

http://nasional.kompas.com/read/xml/2009/05/28/1710164/Mega..Negara.Ini.Seharusnya.Punya.Rencana.Jangka.Panjang
Presidential candidate, Megawati states that Indonesia should have a long term plan. I think I would probably applaud her for saying something obvious. However, I would then question her memory and fitness for president. She has completely forgotten that she was Indonesia's past president and she did not produce, suggest or have any. Good point taken is that she seems to have changed. Good for her. Nevertheless, I'm not convinced by any of the presidential candidate as none actually shows a vision or even outlines a long term plan.

Despite all his brokenness, Suharto set 25 years long term and 5 years short term plan. His ability to continue ruling maximizes the execution of his plan. Not sure whether fake or not, his plan once made Indonesia one of the top rice exporter before it became importer and now, the plan to export has been coined once again since it seems that there is enough rice to supply locally. Yet, most of this data does not seem to be backed by appropriate statistics. You see, statistics is not Indonesia's forte.

During Suharto's time, there is census every 10 years. After he went down at 1998, there has been zero census. That's, I think, the main reason for the chaos of this year's electoral list problem.

Unless the public administration is reformed, whatever progress planned will always lag behind. How does anyone know where to focus work if the data on what work is lacking, is inexisting or inaccurate?

Fu Ji duck rice in Cafe Lobby, Yew Tee

2009-05-26T06:15:00.001-07:00

Ate my dinner of a duck rice set meal, SGD 2.70 from Fu Ji duck rice stall in Cafe Lobby, Yew Tee MRT station.

The duck rice comes with half taukwa (soya bean curd), half egg, 3 slices of cucumber and 5 pieces of duck. And a bowl of soup.

Yeah, you read it rightly. It's FIVE pieces of duck meat. I don't even need to glance more than 2 seconds to finish counting. The duck is pretty much on the low side of taste, lots worse than Yu Kee duck rice you can find from Koufu in Yew Tee Point. The bowl of soup tastes like light soya sauce (salty) diluted with water then doused with lots of oil. The oil is pretty much on my lips and if there is any, the herb hint is almost inexistent. The taste of the glorious soup is not there at all. Such a sad serving of duck meat and sad soup, I don't think I would want to return there.

Fair trial does not exist

2009-05-26T05:48:00.000-07:00

The coroner court on the case between David Hartanto Widjaja (Indonesian) and A/Prof. Chan Kap Luk (Singaporean) is finally ongoing and the stories really get interesting. The latest news is http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/431665/1/.html

David allegedly stabbed his final year project's supervisor, A/P Chan before then jumping to his death. However, the family disputed the event and calls for fair trial, where they said the truth about a conspiracy behind the event will emerge. Unfortunately, woe to them, up to today, witnesses claiming direct involvement in the alledged stabbing, from bloody David and A/P Chan to David's jumping, support the allegation that David jumped to his death on his own accord. There is even a video recorded by a handphone allegedly showing David sitting on the parapet of the connecting bridge before jumping down. Now, the family did not accept that the person in the video is David and disputed the account. They wanted to get digital forensic expert to examine the video. Great effort and I applaud for that. They continued claiming that this is not a fair trial and there is a conspiracy behind the death of the beloved son.

Now, this case causes me to re-examine the term "fair trial". Frankly, while following this case, I realize that generally media tells story they want their audience to read. News in Indonesia tends to run contrary to news in Singapore. Interestingly, people also forms their own opinion based on what they perceived to be the truth. One side of the podium sits the people thinking of a good student gone haywire due to online gaming and stabbing his nice supervisor. On the other side of the podium sits the people claiming conspiracy theory where David's final year project is of great economy value and the supervisor planned to steal it by killing the student. These people could not have sat in the opposite of a wider and deeper chasm. After all, the thoughts they have are so much ingrained that it seems to be quite difficult to sway them to the other way. The conspiracy theory group for example, calls for a fair trial to be conducted to reveal the conspiracy theory.

Wait a minute, there is stark mistake in that call. How can it be a fair trial if the final result of the trial (that it is a conspiracy theory) has been decided? I really don't think these people will accept any results other than a conspiracy theory. That's why I don't think they won't agree that the trial is fair unless A/P Chan is proven to be the aggressor. They miss one obvious point though, trials are going to result in one version of a story, not two, not three. The trials are set by the witnesses, the judge and the lawyers. It is often a fight between two opposing theories. People can only say it is a fair trial if they see the trial with open eyes, not one eyes closed. In this case, unless there is a witness with contradictory witnessing and standing up in the witness stand, I am afraid that the "fair trial" sought by the conspiracy theory group may be hard to manifest.

A trial will always be directed. If by definition, a fair trial is where cases are examined by allowing truthful account of the situation to be brought forward, then there won't be a fair trial unless people accept that the witness gives a truthful account. If the crowd has decided a version of the story, it would be very difficult to see any "fair trial" at all. Hence, I don't think fair trial will exist for them. It is like searching for cat in a compound of dogs (forgive me of my crude analogy). This observation applies to all cases where people demands for a truth where the court provides the opposite, regardless of how truthful the court is. Cases where court is directed and fake group of witnesses are produced are also not uncommon in many places such as Indonesia. In such situation, it will be the victim, the sufferer who will be at the bad end. So will they get a fair trial? Bet you they won't. The witnesses pretty much also gives opinion of what they feel they have seen. It's not a completely objective view in any case. The court will always be steered by the witnesses. Strange thing I find is that the witnesses can attend the witnessing of others. I feel this approach helps steer the later witness to a common points. I may be wrong.. but one thing I am confident is that fair trial does not exist for people who has formulated their mindset to the opposite of the court results.

I pity the "victimised" and can only hope for their serenity in getting on with lives.

Edit:
Latest news from Indonesia news:
http://internasional.kompas.com/read/xml/2009/05/26/07265455%20/terekam.kamera.jelang.david.jatuh........
http://internasional.kompas.com/read/xml/2009/05/26/07332241/ayah.david.sebut.video.itu.rekayasa

The family lamented that non of the witnesses so far describes what happens in the emergency stairwell, which David used to run down to the bridge, his condition before falling and what exactly causes his wound. There are few things they have not considered before sounding their complaints:
1. Being in the building that is connected by the bridge for more than 2 years and in NTU for 7.5 years, I can confidently say, emergency stair well is not normally used. Students like lift, it's easier to get to places.
2. The area is deserted unless it is a lunch time. It is not improbable at all that no one passes that area. I remembered clearly that few days ago, a student from Iran claimed he tried to persuade David to come down from the parapet before then he left him to call for others to help. So, there is actually someone near David before he jumped.
3. The alleged stabbing event occur in a room where only two people were present and one of them is dead. How exactly can any other person describes what happen except the only living one? Too bad for them it's the supervisor who the family thinks as part of the big conspiracy theory.

The witnesses so far seems to have been from the other side of the fence. It would be good to hear what witnesses the family can call up since they claim that there is a witness claiming to hear David screaming "They want to kill me". I will wait for the witness, it will be interesting.

Praying for peace in everybody's mind.

Pharmaceutical manufacturing

2009-04-03T20:04:00.000-07:00

Just yesterday, some baby powder in US is found to have perchlorate above safe level of consumption. Read it here:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090403/ap_on_he_me/baby_formula_perchlorate

The find makes me reflect. Pharmaceutical manufacturing (including baby powder) is regarded as a very regulated industry where validation of each process and regular maintenance of the plant is required by regulation so as to ensure safe product is being produced. The baby powder and salmonella presence in the pistachio clearly show that the so called regulation does not exactlyu work well. After all, although the validation process where input and output is verified, I am not aware that the roles and responsibilities are regulated, i.e. noone care the independence and quality of the guy who does the work. You can probably get someone from the street and get him sign for you (correct me if I am wrong). I realize that at times company presents their validation strategy to the US FDA (Food and Drug Administration) and submit whole chunk of paperwork before they can start the validation process to confirm that what they will produce is safe or consumption (in short although there are lots more details to it). However, if these process is conducted correctly and regulated, why such clear disaster recipe such as the perchlorate and salmonella can happen?

Simply said, you can regulate process, you can not regulate people. People can choose to sign and not really able to vouch for it. People can choose not to reveal bad news (such as Salmonella in pistachio). Unless a good management system supported firmly by responsible top management is the only way to go. When people are aware of every consequence of their action, that is how we can prevent disaster. Simple validation and signature does not prevent bad things from happening especially when commitment from the top management may not exist. Furthermore, as my write up earlier point out, you can check for what you know you need to check. You can not possibly check everything. The most important issue is the responsibility. I view the Salmonella case as worse than the baby formula simply because their an indication of cover up. What we need in this world for the safety of all is responsible people who realizes the need to care for others, not just money.

Raw or cooked veggie?

2009-04-01T15:26:00.000-07:00

For many years I have been told by friends that raw vegetables is better because cooked vegetables destroy this and that. Some researchers have just published http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=raw-veggies-are-healthier

And they found that that actually raw vegetables may not always be healthier than cooked vegetables. Cooked tomatoes may have more lycopene but less Vitamin C, for example. Hence, it really depends on what you want. Choose well.

And I thought this kind of network only exist in Bond movie

2009-03-28T17:48:00.000-07:00

In 007 movies, we watched how skillful the spies obtain information from the internet and various places, including at times activating computers remotely. We think that this must be of movie-kind-of-thing only. Guess what, read this: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090328/ts_nm/us_security_spying_computers

Canadian researchers just found a huge spy network infecting computers worldwide and the implanted malware can activate the web camera and audio recording function of the computer to gain information! O my, imagine your action and your word being recorded unknowingly. It shudders me. Luckily at least I don't have a web camera in my laptop and neither I am that famous to get access. Now I know that turning off my in speaker volume does not really help.

Perhaps being aware of what website you visited and what files you open will prevent malwares into your computer. At least to a great extent.

Earth hour: the irony

2009-03-28T06:51:00.000-07:00

Discussed the Earth hour event with some friends, and here are some of our concerns:
1. Is the promotion and marketing of earth hour event carbon offseted? Well, the publicity of earth hour including website programming needs electricity, paper, water, ink, etc. Can anyone ensure that the resources spent to publicize the earth hour event is less than the minute savings of electricity by the participants of earth hour? Or is this the case of necessary evil?

2. How many participants of earth hour end up in shopping mall? Singaporeans are normally fond of air conditioned locations. So, when they switch off their lamps at home, will they flock to the shopping malls and cause the HVAC system in shopping mall to work harder?

Much more efforts should be coordinated beyond earth hour to battle global warming. Hopefully, whatever resources spent by the earth hour event can spur further awareness and get more people to participate in real time. If not, it may end up as another wasteful effort.

Eating medicine daily without knowing

2009-03-26T06:05:00.000-07:00

Do you realize that you are taking medicine everyday without knowing? If not, perhaps you can try to read http://www.sciam.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=pharmed-fish-09-03-26

The news is about the research that discovers the presence of medicine in fishes. In fact, there has been many researches establishing the presence of medicine in our food and drink chain. I remembered reading the findings about the presence of medicine in drinking water in US.

The fact I know are:
1. Whatever drugs you take, they are not totally absorbed by our body. Some will go down the drain via our urine or feces.
2. We can only detect what we know.

The sewerage system worldwide (good or bad) interacts with the environment and in many places, waste water (including urine) is treated to produce drinking water. The main issues are that unless there are specific compound to remove, chances are that noone knows how to remove them. Ozone, UV and whatever treatment given to waste water will not take away residual medicine in water. Medicinal residue in the soil going up to the plants (from even the so called organic plantation), will definitely end up in our kitchen. Even if you say that the soil is organic, there is no way to ensure the water is free from all unwanted residues. In short, our food and drink chain has become so entertwined that everything is linked. The amount of possible residues are also so many that it is virtually impossible to track.

Not trying to be pessimistic, I think we need to realistically accept the fact that we will be taking some of the unwanted medicinal residue. Chances are that the residue is in small amount after being diluted so many times, unless everyone use the same medicine at the same time! So, perhaps it is least likely that anything harm will come to us mainly because of taking those residues. The risk of dying from accident on the way to work or choking on fish bones may actually be higher. Nevertheless, there is no zero risk in this world and most of the time, it is really your perception that matters.

Edit: 28 March 2009
Guess what I have just read. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090326100714.htm

The article reported a finding that bottles of drinking water in Germany releases xenohormone, that is chemical that has hormone-like effect. Worse, the chemical behaves like estrogen, primary female sex hormone... the hormone promote some female characteristics, not so fun to have that in male, definitely...

This finding reflect exactly the fear on how much unwanted chemicals have entered human lives unknowingly. I wonder how safe glass bottle is as well.

SQ321 flight delay from London to Singapore

2009-03-25T06:35:00.000-07:00

On 15 March 2009 10.15 pm, I am supposed to return to Singapore from London on A380, flight number SQ321. Unfortunately, the flight is delayed for 12 hours. I'll chronicle that journey in this blog.

On that day, I reached Heathrow at 8.15 pm but alas, at 9.30 pm, the notice board put up "gate opened at 22.50". And at 9.45 pm, they called passengers to collect 10 pounds voucher for meal. I sensed something is wrong, but still, voucher is good for supper. Amazingly little did I realize that shops in the airport open only till 10.00 pm! By the time I got my voucher (which is VERY early compared to other passengers), "TGIF" is no longer taking orders and only sandwiches shops are open. Slightly fed up, I ended up buying some "innocent" smoothies (which I have been craving for) and lots of snacks to bring home. I still can hold my head high and thought perhaps the flight will take place at 11 pm. I was quite happy when they told us to go into the gate at 11.30 pm. I thought finally we'll fly. So, the long queue to the boarding gate by the anxious passengers start. By the time we reached the gate, the bomb fell. The customer service officers said we are to stay overnight in the hotel since there is a hydraulic leak on the landing wheel. They said update will be available on 6 am the day after and hopefully the plane can fly between 8 to 10 am. So, they gave us a box of snack and told us to wait for bus transport.

Amazing thing happen during the waiting for the bus transport outside the airport after exiting from the custom. Noone seem to do a simple calculation: passengers divide by bus capacity equal number of bus required. So, around 20 of us were standing in the cold night waiting for a bus that never come. Basically a fleet of bus waited for the passengers but one more was required. Another simple math calculation missed is the number of overnight kit required. There were lots of passengers without the kit, which was distributed during the queue. I find it amusing for SIA not to have simple consideration as such in the procedure.

Not only that, apparently business class people is put up in Radissons Edwardian, the economy class in Premier Inn. What a difference. And to act a bit more responsibly (which is appreciated), those of us (economy passengers) waiting in the cold, they ended up putting us in Radissons. I thought, at that time, what a luck that there was no old persons with some problems in the queue. None of the customer service officers actually told us to take comfort in the bus waiting room while waiting for 20 minutes in the cold!

Upon reaching the hotel, we checked in and that's 00.45 am. I finally got my overnight kit at around 2 am I think. The overnight kit has an amusing oversight. It contained XL t-shirt and no underwears. O dear, some one in SIA actually think t-shirt is more important than underwear for people forced to do an overnight due to flight delay. I really want to know who has the hand on deciding the overnight kit and whether a proper need assessment has been done to decide the content!

In the morning, I thought someone will be nice enough to call to inform the arranged flight. But well, guess what, despite all the SIA being "world class", noone calls and people were expected to queue to get more information. What I learned during the queue was disturbing. Apparently the busines class passengers was booked on the normal flight at 10.55 am and they booked the economy class passengers to 10.05 pm for the night. Amazingly, apparently the business class passengers know about their booking into the new flight at 10.55 am from the night! Hence, the customer service officers provided misleading information to the economy class passengers. Now, that does not seem to be any fair to me. Where is the customer service standard? The rich rules?

So, the economy class passengers were told to spend time in the hotel. That's quite a bleak way to spend your day, isn't it? Then I went up to the assistant station manager of SIA in London and commented that I would have spent 60 hours on the same clothes by the time I reached Singapore on the midnight flight and asked for a solution. He amusingly told me that I can try to purchase an under garment and TRY to reimburse. Now, that's only a TRY and we can't even reimburse our trip out of hotel, how on earth would I be able to buy the under garment? No offer to purchase one for me or sort of things... what another minus note in the service. So, I dejectedly went back to my room and continued working.

At 10.48 am suddenly I was rang to be told a bus is coming to fetch the economy class passengers at 11.00 am to get the flight on 1.00 pm since the plane was fixed. Wow, 12 minutes to get down and my socks were wet since I washed them thinking I may be able to dry them by 10.00 pm. While ironing, I forgot about the time and only called the receptionist at 11.07 am to check and to be told that the bus was leaving without me and I was told to go down fast. Now, I was really about to be left by the bus and they NEVER even check the name of the passengers in the bus against the hotel list. What a good service!

Cut things short, we ended up in the plane at 1.15 pm and waited till around 2.45 pm for the plane to finally fly since there were 14 passengers not accounted for. Somehow, someone forgot to ask all the contact number of all passengers and never call all of them before deciding to enter people into the plane. And amazingly, snacks were not served to the starving passengers (remember that we entered the waiting room before lunch) until later than 2.00 pm.

I am strongly unimpressed by the SIA's customer service in London and what disturbs me is that no offer of compensation for the inconvenience is even mentioned. I believe there should be some measure for such but they seem to be avoiding that. My e-mail to them has gone unanswered. This really shows that SIA has a long way to go for the customer service to be first class. I wonder whether the next quality certification will find this issue?

Death on the MRT

2009-03-25T04:16:00.000-07:00

Another death yesterday on the train track in Singapore. I wonder why there is quite a number of death in Singapore while there is nothing about death on the track in UK. There are lots more train track in UK than in Singapore. There is a plan to include platform screen door in Singapore to reduce accident in the track. This seems to be a fire fighting response and pretty much, a corrective action. There is no such screen in the upper ground platform in London and yet, everything seems fine. Perhaps Singapore is addressing the issue from the wrong angle?

Passengers should be aware of their surrounding more often to spot their fellow passengers who need help. Most of the time, people in Singapore is too mechanistic and have a race hourse view (blinded from side view). I myself at times feel so when I am waiting for train either due to drowsiness or plain stress from my commuting experience. Being aware at the surrounding surely help, but then again that will take some mindset change, not an entirely easy option. Perhaps the authorities know this and choose the easy way out.

Something that SBS and SMRT should consider

2009-03-24T17:28:00.000-07:00

Who never complains about SBS's and SMRT's waiting time in Singapore? Let me have a show of hand. I must confess I am not impressed at all by their standard. However, it's also true that their standard is better than the undeground in London. But hey, in London, the distance between station can be easily travelled on foot! In Singapore, unless you have the time (I mean it), strength of will and strong leg power, I do not suggest walking between the train stations outside the business district. So, the bottom line is that both cities are different. Where the options of route and type of transportation are not available, the train and bus service are the only thing that people can take. Hence, it is extremely important for the service to be efficient for the user of the public transport. Sadly, it is not the way it should be in Singapore.

Perhaps the SBS and SMRT can look at http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090317143157.htm for some inspiration on how to better their bus services. At least according to the article, heuristic programming allows the Spanish to create a better bus route. Anything that will allow the passengers to have a reasonable waiting time should be tried, provided they are there to serve the public (I know many people think the companies said here do not serve the public, but that is another issue).

Nanotechnology: the unknown

2009-03-24T17:17:00.000-07:00

People are crazy about nanotechnology. Even household cleaning products tout the presence of nano-sized particle in the mixture. The big issue here about nanotechnology is the pretty much the lack of knowledge on what the result of the interaction between nanotechnology and living organism is. As far as I understand, researchers have been trying to use nanotechnology to kill bacteria. Researchers have also understood by now that nano-sized material behave differently from the big size one (by big size, it can mean micro to few meters). You can easily search for these information in the net. Yet, because of its mass appeal, nanotechnology produces many nano-sized particles that have been rolled out into the market without fully testing whether the particles affect the world in the wrong way. Recently, I came across a report saying that the nano-sized particles in the sunscreen were found to kill the beneficial microbes in the environment. I shudder to think that this is really only on the iceberg.

Technology advancement is crucial important for human advancement. Nanotechnology is indeed one of the forefront in the effort to better human lives. However, researchers need to have the moral and ethical understanding that technology interacts with the environment. Technology should not be made in the expense of the environment. Nothing good will emerge if the environment start dying because of human foolishness and lack of effort to understand their own made technology.

New mammals?

2009-03-21T07:10:00.000-07:00

Two species of new mouse have been discovered! Read it at http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/03/090320-new-mouse-picture.html

Well, frankly, the expanse of earth makes it almost impossible for human to catalogue the entire world of animals and plants. I remembered recently about the discovery of a new tree in Europe as well. At times I wonder why the attempt to understand the earth's population is receiving far less attention than the space exploration. Perhaps the idea is that space exploration creates more spin off invention that has benefited human kind. There are tonnes of such ideas actually.

However, it has also been widely known of the attempt to replicate some of the nature properties to help human, for example the study of bird flight to create better flight engine, the study of gecko to create better adhesives, etc. Perhaps if more attention is put to study nature, there are lots of ideas to equal those presented by the space exploration as well?

Big vs. Small

2009-03-17T06:18:00.000-07:00

Books on Economic always tell about the agility of small corporation and the high inertia of big corporation. I've never really thought about that until recently. Simply said, I come to appreciate the difference between different sizes of a company. Small company equals to small number of employees. When there are few employees, they are all somehow forced to reach quite high efficiency and productivity. People would also be more resourceful. Hence, the cost of keeping them are pretty much similar.

However, in big company, there are lots of employees. Hence, there are far more people who work inefficiently and perhaps sit around doing nothing. These people who contribute not much still need cost to keep them and these huge cost when divided among the departments would definitely increase the cost to keep of all people across the board, including those competent, productive employee. This is also the main reason that the reason that big company can take in more people because the cost will be spread to many people. The bad news is that if one's hard work is also distributed to the same amount of people.

I believe, though, that the recent globalization and the pace at which the world moves will derail the big corporation who maintains their sluggishness. They either have reinvent themselves and seek for more efficient operation or face the risk of being perish within 5 to 10 years time. The world is no longer capable of waiting for anyone who sits tight. It's so dynamic and collaboration is everywhere. Innovation is pretty much alive with the concept of mass idea. The big corporation that works inefficiently will be soon taken over by other small agile companies that manage to harness the power of the crowd.

A car? no! a plane!

2009-03-13T11:27:00.000-07:00

See this: http://www.youtube.com/user/TerrafugiaInc

Amazing innovation, priced at <>

I would be wondering about the danger though. If I were to drive in such a car, I think I'd wear parachute at all time. Someone really need to do good risk assessment of the car and show the buyer!

Hoshi - Japanese Restaurant

2009-03-07T06:52:00.001-08:00

Just ate at Hoshi, a Japanese restaurant in IMM. The restaurant was quite crowded so I am a bit surprised. I went there with my wife because her Japanese friend said the restaurant serves good Japanese food. So, we tried. We bought onigiri, saba shiyoaki and karee katsu. The onigiri has salmon and taste quite good although it was quite cold. It could have been better if it's warmer. The karee is a bit too average and the miso soup that came with the set tastes like soup made with some miso bought from supermarket. Admittedly, the soup is still better than the one in Sakae Sushi. The chawanmushi, though simple with a tiny cut of chicken, tastes quite good actually. There is stock with the chawanmushi and the egg texture is smooth. The karee comes with salad, ebi prawn and chicken katsu. The ebi prawn has too thick a batter although the prawn is crunchy. On average, the price is quite reasonable, we paid around 35 SGD so the food worth the price in fact.

If you do go, try to sit near the side facing the garden, at least there are some better views. The service is good actually. They employ a lot of Singaporean elderly and they speak english well! This is really in contrast with other restaurants which tend to employ mainly Chinese from PRC who speaks no English (e.g. Mayim restaurant in Bukit Batok, just try it). The uncle serving us the green tea even provided a baby seat for my wife to put her bag! That's what I called good service. He even threw away the cold tea and poured for us the hot ones.

7/10 for the taste
8/10 for the service

More conspiracy theory

2009-03-06T05:06:00.000-08:00

And now the situation has somewhat worsened. News in Indonesia reported the parents of the student saying that they never saw wrist wound and Singapore police confirmed the absence of the wound. They said they saw slash wound in the neck of the student. They indicated that it may be the student who was assaulted. The student's friend claimed that the student carried a bag with towels, drinking bottles and other normal stuffs implying that he did not intend to kill (? or do any harm). There is even an opinion that there are 3 people in the room where the incident happens!

Now, this has gotten more out of hand for the fact that the police is somehow keeping very quiet. I hope the police works fair and faster.

I hope it ends fast

2009-03-05T06:01:00.000-08:00

I hope the police can reveal what happens in the stabbing fast. There is far too much speculation going on that would do more harm than good. Undeniably, there has been lots of pressure into the scholars to produce good results at all time. I understand clearly their pain because I was one myself. However, part of the problem lies on the scholars themselves. By subjecting themselves to the scholarship, they have taken part in adding the pressure into themselves, knowingly or unknowingly. Self-expectation, parents' expectation, peer pressure and the benefactor's expectation is a deadly mixture of pressure that can easily culminate in a sad incident.

Take this analogy:
Studying hard and enjoying the good result is like developing a cocoon that protects the scholars. Once a wrong turn is taken, the cocoon has a hole exposing the weak developing pupa to the harsh world. Unless the pupa manages to close the hole, heaven knows what will happen to the pupa. But the pupa should have known at the beginning that by doing the cocoon, he is subjecting himself to a vulnerability.

It's a two-two relationship, that of the benefactor and the scholars. Both have their own motives. None is at fault.

What should really be done is to encourage communication. Although the online world opens up possibility of many connecting virtual friends, visible friends are those that can save the day. One in the net can't reach his hand to pull his friend out of a mud, although after multiple connections, the virtual friend can reach a visible friend to help which hopefully by then won't be too late.

A buddy system and network should be implemented. Sadly, the tutor system in NTU never works. I can tell honestly that I've not seen my tutor more than the first time ever when he was supposed to see me. After all, if the lecturers are pressured into producing research, how can they spend time to teach and mentor? The university nowadays are putting themselves into the shoes of research institute and have neglected the holy duty of teaching. I've seen a number of my old lecturers, capable of teaching well, being asked to become "teaching fellow" and get their teaching duty decreased with a lot lower pay. The saving then spent for young and brilliant researchers who speak bad english and zero teaching skill but with extremely good journals. Who can blame the university if the world measures the rank of universities by research (just look at Times).

This incident should be a good wake up call for the university to re look their priority and the scholars to think about what they are really doing.

The truth will never be revealed

2009-03-05T05:46:00.000-08:00

The real story on what really happened during the stabbing in NTU will never go out. Sadly, that's how I feel. There is only one witness alive at this time and that witness will be the one ruling where the story will go. Apparently the student had been warned about his falling grade three times according to the news, contrary to what I felt previously. However, it would be nice if the parents can confirm this. You see, I am not a believer of one sided story. People are usually vindicated due to one sided story. Not that I am saying that the A/P is wrong. It just that two stories from different perspective will bring a more complete picture the situation.

Only if the student was alive to tell his story that solution can be found. His untimely death, decided by himself, brought him and the history more harm. Now, no way that we can get the real story. Even by reconstructing the event based on the one sided story, we'd only have again, one perspective.

After all, it's actually quite hard to fail your final year project. Experiments can always be wrong. There is no idea and experiments that can have its result predicted with 100% certainty. So, it won't be fair to penalize due to experiments not producing the expected results. After all, even the lecturers know so and hence, they will be lenient (I hope...). Hence, to be so afraid of failing is really... a myth propagated by self-fear. I hope no other student will fall into that trap.

I am still intrigued by the fact that the blood is splattered at the other end of the table containing the monitor. I hope more complete picture will emerge when the police is done with their fair investigation.

Analysis of the incident in NTU - flaws in logic

2009-03-03T05:22:00.001-08:00

I read that lots of people in the net is saying that the student (David) was told by A/P Chan that his scholarship was revoked and hence David became angry thinking that A/P Chan was the one initiating the idea. Then the killing. I think there are a couple of issues with such logic that need to be addressed:

1. I believe that unless there is a huge breach in confidentiality, A/P Chan should not even know whether or not any ASEAN scholarship is withdrawn. Scholarship matter belongs to the university and only the university staff administering the scholarship are supposed to know whether or not they are withdrawing any scholarship from anyone. If indeed A/P Chan somehow knows the scholarship issues, this matter should be investigated.

2. If any scholarship is withdrawn, the scholarship should have been withdrawn before the beginning of the new semester. Hence, it seems that the student has a long time to think about? I am not sure what exactly happen, but it may be too short (<2>

Student - lecturer relationship can easily get sour for many things. What the university should do are:
1. Employ lecturers who can teach and can read students' feelings better.
2. Teach lecturers to do that.
3. Provide avenue for students to complain. Many times, students feel disillusioned and greatly disappointed for not knowing where to lodge complain. When complaints are put up, nobody seems to care.
4. Hold sessions to seek feedback from students under pressure, i.e. students having scholarships, having to take loan, etc.
5. Find a better way to communicate any bad news. Ready counsellor at all times.

In the current hard time, there will definitely students who are affected by the recession. There must be measures in place to help such students.

In all honesty, being an ex-student of NTU, there are TONNES of things that the university should have done better in preventing such an unnecessary death and incident.

GM food

2009-01-11T05:29:00.000-08:00

There are so many contradicting publications and study on Genetically Modified (GM) food. How could one feel safe consuming such food if there is no agreement on the safety. I wonder what's the difficulty of getting organizations like greenpeace and the producer of GM food to sit together and form a neutral party to study the GM food that is intended for release? The study result from a group of scientists consisitng of both contending party surely will calm the population, doesn't it? The uncertainty posed by GM food is quite real since there is no one on earth that can safely say that modifying gene A will not cause any harm or any other mutation or change of function of other genes. However, the potential posed by GM food is equal if not greater since GM food potentially allow better products as in bigger quantity or quality. Hence, I would feel that rationally both contending parties should really sit together to figure out how to resolve their differences for the sake of humanity. Just get a group of capable scientists, neutral, if not get an equal group of scientists supporting different stands and carry out a study on the GM food!

Israel and Gaza

2009-01-04T05:18:00.000-08:00

I think the world has to learn that in all things there two sides of a coin.

When the world condemn Israel for the ground intrusion and calls it a terrorism, the rocket attack to Israel from Gaza should be equally condemned. It's strange that after millions of years, human never realize the chaos and bitterness that an eye for an eye causes.

MRT having more spaces for passengers

2009-01-04T05:13:00.001-08:00

Recently I realized that more SMRT trains are having cars without seats, i.e. you can only stand in that car. It greatly increases the number of passengers that train can take and smartly, the "standing car" is alternate between normal car. I find it as a very smart and effective measure since when the train is very crowded, one would be more or less forced to stand all the way through in the standing car unless one finds it rational to squeeze through the other standing passengers to another car to test his luck in finding empty seat. This new train set up surely will make the shareholders of SMRT very happy people as it lowers the maintenance cost (i.e. no more seat to repaint and replace) and hence, the profit. It surely will supplement the increase of transport fare due to the oil price increase, which amazingly when the oil price drops, the minister said that the transport fare is NOT linked to oil price. What an amazing counter argument.

Backpack posture

2009-01-04T04:58:00.000-08:00

I see a lot of teenagers in Singapore like to let their backpacks hang low to their buttocks. Perhaps to avoid feeling hot, damage to their long hair (for ladies), or simply due to peer pressure. A simple search on the net at http://www.livingposture.com/article.php?id=8 shows that it's not good to hang the backpack that low.

http://www.backpacksafe.com/N5_News_Detail.asp?pid=6&ID=7 even provides a good load of academic journal on backpack links to injury.

Nevertheless, I still use a backpack although I strongly advocate using the backpack snuggling fit to one's back and put it sufficiently tight to the body to evenly distribut ethre weight across the body.

Photography

2008-12-29T05:47:00.000-08:00

I've just discussed about the recession with a friend of mine, a photographer. He was afraid that being a premier photographer, his business opportunity would be hit and people would choose stock photo. I told him, in my opinion, the contrary would happen. When an organization has money (cash) to spend, they may in fact choose to buy from internet stock photo. The reason being the wide range of choice so they can splurge on getting a lot of photo. A discerning organization in tough time like now in fact should spend on a good photographer in order to make sure they really get what they want with a specific payment. Furthermore, I believe you can say... wait for 30 days before making payment. I don't think stock photo from internet allow you to do that right? So, it may just be likely that premier photographers are getting more work.

Besides that, with the market going down, advertisement business should be becoming more relevant since people are fighting for whatever purchasing power left from the market. In addition, the price gap between professional and amateur price may just be narrower and increase the value of paying for premium photographers!

Condemning one side

2008-12-29T05:41:00.000-08:00

The Arab world and others start condemning Israel for their attack to Palestina killing nearly 300 by now. The reaction is indeed swift and in no time spreading worldwide. But wait, where is the condemnation against Hamas's rocket attack to Israel? I know it kills only one but the world need to learn to be fair. For the world to avoid more terrorism or aggression, the condemnation for any kind of attack must be swift regardless of how many death. And it must be coming from any side of the story. None of such aggression should be tolerated.

Only then, the world would know peace. I am still waiting for such equal treatment of state to happen. I hope I will be able to see it in my generation.

An eye for an eye

2008-12-28T04:02:00.000-08:00

Israel is pounding on Hamas-ruled Gaza for the second day hoping that their attack will stop the rocket attacks from Hamas. I wonder who has the confidence that their attack will help to stop the attack. Practicing an eye for an eye principle is rather primitive at this kind of age. I would say that Israeli may do better by thinking about how to cut off rocket supply to Gaza and helps the current president of palestina in improving the Palestinian's welfare. Haven't they understood the term hungy people are angry people? The world has so many hungry people, including those in Somalia and we know what happen to Somalia... lawless and full of pirates... Why? They need food and come on.. if one ransom can let them feed the entire village for 100 years (heard they are paid in average US$15 M per tanker), which rational people won't do the hijacking? After all, if they don't hijack, they still die of hunger. The entire world need to learn to share if we really want to eradicate terrorists and crimes.

What now?

2008-10-29T04:57:00.000-07:00

It's quite scary to read the news nowadays since there will be a list of things people shouldn't eat due to melamine contamination. It used to be just milk but today Yahoo! News reported contamination on eggs as well! Perhaps the most direct step that people generally would take is to avoid China product. It won't be very easy. First of all, outsourcing and cheap labour and manufacturing cost has shifter HUGE number of product manufacturing to China. Second of all, what scares me even more is that melamine is NOT a common chemical tested in food safety surveillance. If China's farmers and egg producer can find way to add melamine into the milk and egg, what kind of assurance will there be to say that US product or Indonesia product or any other country products have NO melamine? After all, melamine IS NOT something that is tested for in food safety check. Hey, we can force the food safety surveillance to check every single chemicals anyway. Our food won't arrive on the table in a century since there is infinite amount of chemicals to test for! Since it's uncommon to test for the chemical, there is no way to say that US product is totally free from it. In fact, every government should actually really test their own products to check for such contamination.
The other possible worse thing that can happen is if undesirable and dangerous chemicals are to be found in clothes. It's getting more difficult to find clothes without writing "MADE IN CHINA" nowadays. You may think I am farfetched, but hey, melamine in egg is extremely remote few months ago.
Be careful of what you eat.

What not to say in your convocation speech

2008-07-24T07:41:00.000-07:00

Today the university I studied did something unique, the valedictorian giving the speech does not seem to be a winner of any good medal although the literal meaning of valedictorian is a student with the best grade. Rather strange. Yet it's good because it shows that appreciation should also be given to the general student.
One thing that really strike me rather odds from that student's speech is that the basically ridicule the university life unwillingly (perhaps). He was basically very honest in his speech. He talked about tough 4 years of bachelor life, talking as if all present are singaporean. Talking about students staying in the university hostel and only going back home on weekends while at tims not going home for weeks to study for exams or such, talking about students who stay at home who end up spending much of the time in study room trying to study very hard for a tough university life. Basically, he portrays that students in the university (NTU by the way) who have no life because of the need to study very very very hard. Although he is true (well, basically if you want a great grade, unless you are genius, you'll be studying like mad in NTU), I don't think such is an ideal valedictorian speech. It's kind of shameful to tell such a terrible university life to the foreign dignitaries or lecturers in the hall. Hahaha... I think he needs to tone down or reword his story a bit. :-)
Anyway now I know what not to say if I were ever chosen to do so. :-)

Misleading news

2008-07-23T16:50:00.000-07:00

Just read a news from Indonesia's ANTARA website reporting that Japanese government is giving 1 mil of bird flu vaccine to ASEAN. The news made me realize how important it is for a journalist to be schooled into what he/she is reporting or at least make effort to search further information. News are read by multitude of people, and when a news is wrongly reported without other newspaper to verify, you'll get quite a number of potential wrongdoings caused by the news.
The news mentions that the bird flu vaccine increases Tamiflu (antiviral commonly used to cure bird flu in human although not necessarily effective) stock twice the previous level. This is a mistaken identitiy. Tamiflu is NOT a vaccine more like a flu medication. Furthermore Tamiflu is for human while no bird flu vaccine for human is even created yet!
It's either the vaccine or the Tamiflu which is mentioned wrongly.
Indonesia's biopharma should be able to produce bird flu vaccine for birds although I am not sure whether they have done it or not.
One thing for sure, the reporter of the news may want to wiki or google Tamiflu before he reports the news

Money, woman, and the boys

2008-07-20T08:10:00.001-07:00

Singapore is famous for its kiasuism and kiasiism. Basically it translates literally to "afraid to lose" and "afraid to die". Those two behaviour is good to spurn the sense of competitiveness. The drawback is that I think they are the causes of Singaporean men having quite a bad reputation on ladies. Not being prejudice, but that's what I hear, perhaps I have heard from the wrong end.
What I realize is that most ladies that complain mentioned the unwillingness of the guys to treat. Not that I treat often as well. I intend to analyze the perception a bit further.
If one guy was to go out with a lady and the guy has "afraid to lose" mentality, the guy may think twice. After all, if he really spends that extra money treating the lady, he may perceive that he'll part with all those expenditure while there is no certainty to gain the lady's heart. Hence, he'll definitely think twice before treating the lady. Furthermore, it's perceived to be difficult to earn your keep nowadays.
Another reason is perhaps the sense of adventurous among the people. After all, courting a girl requires some sense of adventurous. Part and puzzle of trying to win a girl's heart is to try out something new and go beyond the comfort zone. Without adequate willingness to be adventurous, no effort will be spent appropriately.
Strangely though, being competitive should have helped the guy if he see that a girl he likes is being chased by some other guys. Not sure why it doesn't help...

Business Travel

2008-07-20T08:05:00.000-07:00

I like business travel for the sake of travelling and seeing other things, so more dynamics working life. However, I realize that business travel is normally tiring. The main reason is that when you travel, you don't have the time allocated to do other normal office work, while it "seems" that other people (your superior) and perhaps yourself, expect that work to continue even while you are travelling. So the tendency is for you to work at hotel even to late night, after you finish your work at the client side. All this additional working tires people eventually.
Furthermore, the travel time normally takes quite long as well, especially if you have a long flight.
It may be hard to find a boss that understands the toll of business travel and gives the worker a bit more break or compensation due to the travel. Unless perhaps the boss is also travelling like mad and is not that workaholic. Haha..
But well, the easiest is to strike balance and work smart. Easier said than done, isn't it?

Sungei Kadut

2008-07-20T07:50:00.000-07:00

Heard so many good news about Sungei Kadut, so we went there thinking that perhaps we'd be able to get good deal for furniture, what the area is famous for. What we realize was that the stores there have branches in the city area as well. Basically, they carry the same items! Hence, not sure what actually make Sungei Kadut famous for. We actually realize that we found some items we like in the city branches, but the items were not available in the Sungei Kadut.
Basically the stores in Sungei Kadut is the HQ for most of the furniture chains. It's partly their warehouses as well. Hence, it could have more display sets, more rejected products, or something in that line. It'd be definitely cheaper if you are willing to settle for those things. But if you don't, don't go there. Useless.

Condo priced HDB?

2008-07-20T07:26:00.000-07:00

Recently the Government of Singapore built quite a number of condo like HDB. Basically HDB is the apartment for average public in Singapore. Condominium is a private apartment with guard, swimming pool, gym, and bla bla.. so basically it's more expensive. However, the government now has started building HDB that is styled like condo minus the extra items... so basically HDB with more expensive content and better layout. The average price for HDB, 3 bedroom is around S$300k. The condo style HDB is priced at S$700k!
The amazing part is that, normally HDB is only allowed to be purchased by Singaporean with household income <>
The S$8k a month actually excludes the 20% CPF contribution. Hence it's actually S$6.4k real income a month. Subtracting S$2.5k from S$6.4k, the household has S$3.9k to spend including savings... Not so wise a choice for the buyer I frankly say. Considering that on average a couple will spend on average S$1.2k a month, I am not so sure that that couple with a long 30 year loan can live a decent life when they grow old. In addition, some household tend to buy a car which can amount to around S$800 more expense a month. Not much money left for savings, services bill, etc. huh?
But one thing for sure, the government takes away a small slice of private condo pie from the private.
I'd strongly advise friends to refrain from buying such a pricey apartment. Not worth a living style.

Public servant

2008-06-15T06:39:00.000-07:00

I heard a very truthful comments from my friend about public servant in Singapore. She said the public servant has forgotten that they are serving people not people serving them.

Well, if we are to examine the phrase "public servant", it's quite clear that the person is in the position to serve the public. However, often, nearly all the time that I face a public servant in a public office, it's I who is supposed to bow to them and follow their half-hearted explanation. Especially in Singapore, we'd often be asked to attend a preset meeting by the government office on working hour! and you are of course allowed to change them, but for another working hour at an appointed day! Outrageous. Not that I don't appreciate that the public servant is also a normal employee. It's just that any appointment should be agreed by both parties, not being dictated by one party feeling themselves as the King!

Well, that's what you'd most likely find in Singapore.

SMRT and its 'additional' train in the peak hour

2008-05-26T08:10:00.000-07:00

Hurray!! The newspaper exclaimed when the SMRT, train operator in Singapore announced additional trains for service at peak hours in the evening.

On the other hand, I (as one of the throngs trying to get train space), frowned and asked myself where the additional train is. The fact is that taking daily train to work at 6.50 AM and back at 6.05 PM, I don't feel any reduction on the crowd or even tiny additional space.

In fact this afternoon I experienced once again the poor logistical problem or woe that passengers of SMRT train experiences. The train from Changi Airport to Tanah Merah station (2 stations a way) is at 10 minutes period!! The moment the train come, every single soul in expo seems to board the train and of course automatically the train became packed the moment it left Expo station (between Changi Airport and Tanah Merah). Now, that's an extremely smart business decision huh? The train is calculated to arrive when the train is guaranteed full (Smart SMRT analyst, whoever that is). The fact is that the frequency has increased from 8 to 10 mins, in my experience. Now, the moment the train reach Tanah Merah, every single souls seem to migrate from that train to the train heading to Boon Lay. Hence, another packed train. Now I know where the additional train is taken from. I think it may actually be the train that normally serve Changi Airport - Tanah Merah route. Gee... how smart is SMRT.

And o yeah, despite the addition of train, I don't feel that I actually have higher chance to getting more space in the train. Gee......

Not that I have much choice since we only have one train operators serving that line. Taking bus is going to take forever to reach home and taking taxi is extremely expensive (~S$ 40+++). I guess the economist will say that's my price of convenience. Not that I have enough fund to pay for taxi trip everyday!

HSBC and language use

2008-05-25T08:35:00.000-07:00

HSBC or The Hongkong Shanghai Banking Corporation is a global bank. Hence, I again do not expect the bank to have any blunder in English.

Was trying to register for Internet Banking and sadly after typing a username containing all alphabets, I was prompted that the "username can only contain alpha numeric characters (i.e. A-Z, a-z, 0-9)". The key word there is "can". Hence I thought, hey my username containing merele alphabets should fit into the category. However, apparently who ever program the login page means that I MUST have ALL those variations (some capital letters, some small letter, some number). So, I can only create a username having some capital letter, some small letter, and some number. Such misconception that the warning sentence can provide the customer is very sad for a global brand like HSBC.

Perhaps the bank is really living to what the say "... local bank". Maybe HSBC of Singapore is using a twisted form of English.

Or I guess language spell check and grammar check for software are very much lacking nowadays.

I wonder what the point of cutting cost (by outsourcing to countries with cheaper labour) is the brand image is degraded by multiple small mistakes as simple as spelling error.

I don't think any company should dare to say its a global (or famous or premium) brand unless it's willing to spend money to be correct in the smallest detail.

Plastic bag degraded in three months!

2008-05-24T07:57:00.000-07:00

Wow, read this http://news.therecord.com/article/354044

A 16-year old teen may have solved environmental big problem.

A mixture of Sphingomonas and Pseudomonas is all it takes to reduce plastic bag made of PE in few months. The more amazing thing is that this teen's study is new! I wonder why noone has ever tried things as simple as what he has done....

Turmeric chicken soup

2008-05-24T07:45:00.000-07:00

I'll teach you how to cook a simple but yet nice and healthy soup.

Boil chicken together with a good dash of turmeric and 2-3 pieces of peeled onion. Sprinkle salt, pepper, and a bit of sugar to taste. Make sure it's sufficiently salty okay? Make sure it's yellow in colour as well. Increase the turmeric bit by bit while tasting it, making sure that it's not too much (too much = bitter).

MRSA and antibiotics

2008-05-24T07:26:00.000-07:00

MRSA stands for Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus aureus, a super strain of bacteria, a mutated form of Staphylococcus aureus. Physicians and scientists (and the pharmaceutical company partly I think) hate MRSA very much because it can resist many antibiotics and hence its infection is very hard to treat. Originally, MRSA was feared by hospital goers simply because MRSA tends to lurk in the hospital. Well, in hospital, patients are generally with low immune response so it's easier for the bacteria to survive. After all, if you have such a powerful weaponry in your gene, the weaponry makes it difficult for the bacteria to survive on people with normal immune response. You see, it's a give and take situation.
However, lately a new strain of MRSA emerges with better ability to infect the healthy. Hence, more danger for us.
One important thing that lay person needs to understand is that MRSA or other super bug emerges mainly due to abuse, misuse, and overuse of antibiotics. We simply have select for super strain due to our stupidity.
What I find more puzzling is the fact that some people are touting a new compound or are searching new compound (read: antibiotics) to fight MRSA as if MRSA will never develop resistance to the compound. What kind of naivity is that? MRSA itself develops after being selected by antibiotics for so long there will be a compound which it can't develop resistance for? Even after MRSA collect so many types of antibiotics from A to Z??
What the....

Andersen's Ice Cream

2008-05-24T07:21:00.000-07:00

Thought of sending the following comment for Andersen's Ice Cream but amazingly, the webiste has broken links all over, even for the Contact Us page!! So, I post the comment here.

============
Hi, I was at IMM, Singapore and happen to eat at a stall near Andersen's stall. Hence, I had a chance to watch the advertisement put up on the big LCD screen above Andersen's stall.A few comments that I would really like to share:1. Andersen's touted the brand as a premium ice cream, but the ads is poorly done and does not seem to befit the premium image.2. Please get someone to do a spell check before an advertisement is published. It's "irresistible", not "irresitable". It's "concoction", not "concotion". Such error further degrades the image of Andersen's.3. I humbly think that your Big LCD screen is a waste of time. How many peope will actually have time to understand what the advertisement is about? The advertisement is far too long as well. Someone walking past the store won't even have chance to see more than 5 seconds of the advertisement.
Sadly to say, this website does not seem to be updated as well :-)
You may want to really pay someone to put a better image or marketing to your business.
I commend your "home-packs" packaging though. It looks nice :-)

============

Strange that how many people try to call their product premium but are not willing to spend extra money to get advertisement done to support the image.

BMW is one of the global brand that strongly bear the premium image.

Handphone replacement

2008-03-16T08:05:00.000-07:00

I have N6120 Classic. It is less than 3.5 months old and already giving me a problem. At times after a period of being idle, the screen will turn blank and any key pressing will just lit the back light without giving much response. To get it back to normal, I have to take out and then put the battery back.

What really surprises me is the unwillingness of Nokia Care Centre to actually replace the handphone. I have given them chance to repair the phone once last week and it returned back to me, saying repaired, on Friday. This morning, Sunday, the same error happened again. The lady in Nokia Care Centre I went this morning merely said I should give them chance to repair the handphone and she promised to get her engineer to repair it this time round. Last repair was by a technician. Wow, that statement really implies that Nokia's technician is not properly train. I wonder what has happened to all other handphone repaired by the technician!!

I wonder whether Nokia management ever considered the transport cost, time cost, and grief cost of customers who have to return repeatedly for same kind of problem, yet no replacement can be done. Amazing... really...

And the lady emphasized further that to even a replacement takes a month to come. Wow, what a poor supply chain they have, I thought. How could obtaining a piece of N6120 Classic takes 1 month. Is my handphone so unique such that they have to reconfigure the entire manufacturing chain for my handphone? Not that it's only for mine.

I am really under the opinion that Nokia is under a big and heavy lullaby thinking that being big will just spare them for all the worst that can come. After all, their market share is so big and the tendency for such a company to really go lax on customer satisfaction is not unthinkable at all. I am really disappointed by Nokia. I am having far better service from Siemens' customer service, despite it being outsourced some years back. Too bad Siemens' mobile phone is not particularly of the proper standard.

Unless Nokia is doing something about its customer service and quality control, I feel that the downfall is coming soon. After all, Nokia 5300 is already having so many complaints due to error. It's not difficult to imagine that in not so distant future, some of its model will really go bust and its poor customer service will just accentuate the dissatisfaction further. I wonder what will they do to repair such situation by then.

Singtel and loan phone!

2008-03-06T18:15:00.000-08:00

Bah, just given my Nokia phone to Singtel for repair, after a mere 3 months use. Asked for a replacement phone and was given N8210! What an outrageous handphone replacement.

Furthermore, despite being a company that deals with communication and in a sense information, the company seems to disregard information security altogether. I found tonnes of other people's contact in the loan phone! I realized that the numbers could have simply be there from the previous person having the loan phone. But still, Singtel as an established and respected company should have simply and easily press several key to delete all the contacts from the phone before passing it to another person.

What a nightmare if the loan phone was at a bad guy's hand.

Easy tuna spaghetti

2008-03-02T01:37:00.000-08:00

Just cooked tuna spaghetti ala myself. Nice one :)

1 can of tuna chunks in water/ or tuna flakes; dry the water
few leaves of lettuce, chopped
2 tomatoes, chopped
3 pieces of garlic
1/4 pieces of onion
3 teaspoon of olive oil
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1 teaspoon of sugar
dash of pepper

Heat the oil.
Put in garlic and onion, stir till the smell is nice
Put in the tuna, cook for a while
Put in the tomatoes and lettuce
Stir till all are cooked nicely
Put in evaporated milk to your taste
Drizzle salt, pepper, sugar

Yummy!

Escapes of Selamat Kestari

2008-02-27T22:22:00.000-08:00

The JI detainee is reported to have run away by making a reason to go to toilet. Well, if the toilet is in MRT, that's kind of understandable. But then again, even MRT's toilet is covered up like isolation cell. The fact is that the toilet he went to is in Detention Centre! It's strange, really. Even while doing our exams in university in Singapore, going to toilet involves having an invigilator following you up to the toilet door and peeking back and forth inside the toilet to ensure that we are not doing anything strange. I wonder what's the reason that detainee like a the terrorist is not given the same 'nice' and 'careful' treatment. Maybe to them, terrorist can't run away from Singapore and students are hence, softly, perceived as more dangerous than terrorist? What a strange happening....

Or perhaps has the country grown so safe that the guards in the Detention Centre's gate are not trained to recognize those people inside the Detention Centre? After all, a Detention Centre should be gated and surveillance should be around (I think normal Detention Centre should at least have these things). For a LIMP man to manage to run away without officers checking why he took ages in toilet and not detecting his leaving the Detention Centre is rather appalling to reasonable man.

The fact that the high ups told the public not to consider the reasons for his escape is even stranger. I thought such a happening warrants a complete investigation to ensure at least risk assessment is performed on the Centre. Funny.

Museum

2008-02-27T05:44:00.000-08:00

The Netherlands is a good place for museum. I visited Rijkmuseum and Van Gogh in Amsterdam on Saturday. Well, both are nice. Sadly though the Rijkmuseum is largely under renovation when I went in so I didn't manage to see much. There is one or two Van Gogh's, 1 Monet, and 1 Rembrandt. That's it. The museum's brochure is rather misleading because the entire section with > 5 paintings where one of it is those painting are actually listed with the famous painter name! I was expecting to see the entire section lined up with Rembrandt, or Van Gogh, or Monet's paintings only to end up with 1. What a disappointment. Well, on average, the paintings in the museum are quite complete in depicting the painting style from 1600-1800s. The details of the drawing by Rembrandt and his peers never stop to amaze me. They managed to draw up even the intricate laces that people of that era wore!

The Rijkmuseum was rather quiet when I visited. It was 9.15 AM anyway while it opened at 9.00 AM. Hehehe.. The museum really depicts the proud of Netherlands' golden age aka the colonization era. There is this huge painting by Rembrandt, "The Night Watch" which took him 1 year to finish. Extreme details and what a hand! No more words, just visit there and you'll know what I mean ;-)

I must warn you though if you want to visit Van Gogh's museum. You better get there at the time the door opened! I was there from 10.30 AM and the place is rather packed. Despite holding 200 paintings of Van Gogh and his letters and drawings, there were at least 3-5 people seeing each painting! My gosh... it's really too much touristy for my liking. The collection shows the ingeniousity of Van Gogh though. The progression and his experimental work is visible through his bright strokes, experiments with pointillism, sharp drawings, and colour improvisation. Perhaps he might have died because of overworking himself. After all, he finished more than 1,800 works in 10 years. In average, around 1 drawings per 2.5 days! I find that his brother is extremely kind though because he supported him throughout the 10 years of painting effort while Van Gogh didn't seem to manage to sell a single piece of his drawings. Theo Van Gogh even died few months after Vincent killed himself. :-( They are buried side by side by the way.

A fabulous museum experience. :-)

Holland

2008-02-27T05:31:00.000-08:00

Finally back on the warm side of the earth.

A bit of review from my stay in Holland:
1. 6 nights in Bilderberg Park Hotel Rotterdam, stayed in Single Room.
It was small. Very small actually. Super single bed with one 14" tv. Weird toilet where the direction of the hole is the opposite of the normal one. Below average breakfast that cost €21.50! The breakfast only serves scrambled egg, veal sausage, stir fry champignon, and bread and bread and bread. The best part of the breakfast is the fresh orange juice and bottled Knorr juice. That's it :)

2. 1 night in Renaissance Hotel, Amsterdam,a hotel managed by J.W. Marriott. Stayed a night in King size bed room.
There is a huge LCD tv in the room. I guess around 32". Not very sure. But the distance between the table and the bed is only enough for one person to walk through! The toilet is slightly better than the Bilderberg Park Hotel. Well, the hotel is about €40 more expensive than Bilderberg. Both Bilderberg and Renaissance is quite close to shopping area though. Renaissance Hotel is less than 10 minutes walk from Amsterdam Centraal, the train station. The breakfast is quite a disappointment as well.

3. 1 night NH Airport Hotel, Amsterdam Schiphol. Stayed in a double bed room.
This is the best hotel I've stayed in Holland! Well, only 8 nights though :P Anyway, I was placed in a women style room. The room is even slightly bigger than Renaissance Hotel! And in the internet, it's listed only as 3-star. Perhaps it's because of the 19" or 21" LCD tv. *shrug* The toilet is as good as Renaissance Hotel and yet smells fresher! There is a specially packed toiletries aimed for women traveller on the bed when I came in. Shower gel, Shampoo, moisturizer and few more items are in 2 sets. There are 2 more sets in the toilet! There are also Vogue, Elle, and Style magazine in the room! Wow, that makes it the best hotel I've stayed. The value is great. I spent "only" €73.50! Lots less than the other 2. The discouraging part is that the hotel is only near too airport. Hehehe... far away from shopping area. And o yeah, I can tell you for sure that the dinner is rather sucks. I ordered tomato soup and seafood parella (not sure if I spell it correctly). The tomato soup is superb but the rice is fishy!

Well, that concludes my bed time in Holland.

Rotterdam - pt 1

2008-02-17T08:47:00.000-08:00

First day in The Netherlands. It's very cold by my standard. I am wearing a sweater on top of my street clothes. On top of the sweater, I wear a coat. I still feel the cold! Luckily I have a scarf. However, the gloves lent by my friend is still to big and hence, my fingers are feeling the cold since I don't wear gloves. My ears are also feeling like the meats stored in freezer.

Today, I brave myself to walk a bit from the hotel I stayed in. I realize that stuffs here are extremely expensive. A chinese take away food, beef teriyaki with nasi (rice) cost 6.50 Euro! Admittedly, the ingredients are extra of those that will be provided in Singapore. I had a cheaper version of Chinese food by buying a miso chicken from Wok to Go. It costed my 4.50 Euro, that's more than 9 Singapore dollars! Luckily, the fried rice acccompanying the chicken is extremely better than the Singapore version.

I am not sure what's wrong with the typical SIngapore fried rice, that is the fried rice with frozen vegetables. The version of fried rice in Singapore tends to absorb oil and it exudes certain unappetizing smell. Luckily, the version from Rotterdam is not pathetic, in fact it's fluffy and taste good.

Anyway, those are the food I dare to buy since I am totally against buying KFC, McDonald, or Burger King in such situation. Hahaha...

And I am already sleepy at 6 PM Rotterdam time. :S It's 1 AM in Singapore anyway. I am not sure what to do hahaha...

Income in Singapore

2008-02-13T16:16:00.000-08:00

Singapore newspaper likes to publish articles that talks about statistics released by government.

I myself am rather fed up with statistics reporting because I know personally how statistics can be easily "played" to produce figure to your liking.

Outliers for example is always easily cleaned out since they are said not to "represent" the populations. Simply said, the extremist are not to any statistician's liking. They don't care that the people called "outlier" may actually constitute the "hate group" which may bring down the statistics (e.g. people who proclaim that product A is sucks and may some times carry the truth) or the "love group" which may help to shore up the validity of the statistics (e.g. people who love the product so much that they spend bulk of their income to consume or promote it). There is of course chance for cleaning one side of the outlier to skew the result. Who will audit the result anyway?

Second of all, I realize what's always missing in the newspaper's statistics value is standard deviation or even the range. Saying that average is X makes no strong argument if the standard deviation is huge or constitute as big as the X. If average income is S$6,830 but the range of the sample is S$100 - S$100,000, do you really want to believe at the average value? Will average of S$6,830 when 70% of the population is at the range of S$100 - $ 6,000 destroy the trust of the statistics? Make your own judgement. That's simply why range or standard deviation is rarely stated. It simply reveals too much of the truth.

Thirdly, statistics value rarely tells you whether it's a normal distribution or a skewed distribution. After all, if the second point above happens, the statistics skew is actually skewing to the left. What does it tell you if the bulk population is actually far poorer than the average value?

Lastly, surveyors can always choose who they want to be in the statistics sample. Who will prevent them from choosing the high end income group for sampling? Will the reader know it? Nah, the surveyors and the statisticians are as safe as Singapore.

Economy is booming and yet

2008-02-03T06:19:00.000-08:00

The government of Singapore keeps saying that economy is looking good, unemployment rate is going down, and people's income is rising.

If it is true that the economy is looking good, I wonder why I see more old people "selling tissues", why there are more buskers around "performing art" for money, and why more old people is going around collecting tins and cartons?

Even if there are many aids around, but if there are no workers in the ground to approach those in needs, the aids are going nowhere and the poors do not have their needs fulfiled.

Yesterday night when I was in the MRT, I saw an old lady carrying a really big plastic bag containing lots of tins. I overheard her conversation with another curious old soul. Apparently, that super big plastic bag of probable size of 80 cm x 40 cm x 100 cm is carrying less than 2 kg of empty tins. The price of 1 tin is a mere S$1.80!!!! Imagine, she might have go around several MRTs to collect that amount of tins (could be at least 80-100 tins) and it earns her less than S$3.60. The time she spent and the cost she need to take the MRT do not seem to enable her to feed herself.

Now, where's the aid where it's needed?

I so wish one day that I'd be able to come out with an employment scheme for the poor and old so that they can earn to feed themselves well. The employment should not need to provide me with any profit.

Studying or working overseas

2008-01-27T05:23:00.000-08:00

If there is a chance, one should travel overseas to study overseas.

When one lives in a place for more than 15 years, one really needs overseas or out of town experience to widen the horizon. After all, living in the same place for 15 years will cause one to settle and find it hard to move to other places. Hence, disturbing that peacefulness will open one's eyes that there are many more things in the world than the town one lives in.

Only by living in overseas for sometime, one will understand the harshness of world. When one have to live and tend the house by oneself, when one have to learn how to cook to survive better, when one see that other places might not be the same as one thought, one will wake up to the reality that life is not so easy after all and there are much more than just the town one is born at.

Infrastructure and Indonesia

2008-01-26T07:24:00.000-08:00

Suharto's time was marked by high economic growth and stable food price. Infrastructure construction was quite on fire as well. Hence, it's not a big wonder that the poor in Indonesia is relishing the "good old time". After all, at the "good old time", they have higher chance to buying rice with their little money.

Yet, not many people realize that Suharto's growth is not realistic. The infrastructure is built with such a low quality that the entire country is feeling the brunt of it now. What else can cause the many planes to fail and cause many deaths besides poor maintenance? What is the cause of poor maintenance? It could be the corruption that prevents the money from being used properly, it could be the mentality of the engineer who was pushed to cut cost, etc. All those reasons are only built over time! It all started in the time of Suharto. When more infrastructure, the growth will grind to halt or even going negative. Years are needed to change the mentality and fix the infrastructure. In fact, Suharto might have destroyed Indonesia's chance of growth.

Road works and river's pollution issues as well. China is having the same problem now although it seems that their infrastructure seems like in a better state than in Indonesia.

Pushing for growth without building proper infrastructure is suicidal. Long term thoughts are needed.

Celebrate life ala aunties

2008-01-26T07:22:00.000-08:00

Dang, I keep wondering why I am quite a tense person while some aunties (read. Old ladies, 40s-50s) dare enough to bare their "cleavages", paint their fingers with multiple glittering nail paint, paint their hairs with multiple colours, use high boots, and revealing clothes.

Those ladies look too unique for me. I prefer to face the other way to prevent my eyes from staring with too much curiosity.

Ladies who rule the world (continued)

2008-01-26T07:19:00.000-08:00

This morning I met another of the "lady who rule the world".

I was in the train reading newspaper while standing. The moment the guy sitting in front of me stand up to move to my right, the "lady who rule the world" who stood at my left walk to the seat left by that guy. In less than 2 second that the guy's buttock left the seat, the seat is occupied by the lady. After she sat, she looked at her surrounding with the kind of face that said "I win!!!". :-)

I wonder why all of those type of people are ladies. Maybe some coincidence.

Flat price in Singapore

2008-01-23T07:10:00.000-08:00

The government apartment price in Singapore is going haywire. A 5-room flat can easily fetch cash-over-valuation (COV) from 40k to 150k. It's crazy! The COV really inflates the amount of cash you need to fork out to get a place to stay. No wonder some people force themselves to get condominium. With condominium, despites 20-50% higher price, there is no COV. Hence, you only need 10% of the unit's valuation.

Well, the higher price of condominium means higher installment though. Pick and choose then.

Ladies who rule the world

2008-01-23T07:02:00.000-08:00

Sometimes during my trip at the public place, I'd meet a special class of Singapore citizen. I call them "Ladies who rule the world".

When you are queuing for a bus in the interchange, you either wait nicely in the cordoned area or you wait outside the area. Normally, when you choose wait outside the area, you are expected to embark the bus after the people who are in the cordoned area finish embarking. It's a simple matter of courtesy. After all, we have chosen to wait outside the designated are for being lazy to enter into the maze (you should know what I mean if you have been to Singapore bus interchange). However, once in a while, you'd meed ladies (aunties actually) who queue outside the designated/ cordoned area and still cut the queue and embark at the midst of the more "rightful" people. While they are embarking, they tend to make a rather ugly face as if saying to the world that they have the right to do that for what-not reasons nobody but themselves know. Hence, I call them "Ladies who rule the world".

In another occasion, during a crowded MRT trip, you find some ladies who still insist on embarking the MRT/ train although the space could probably fill in only a 5 years ond kid. Yet, the ladies (aunties more likely but then again, which women bravely call themselves aunties) strongly push themselves in and after getting people into more squeezy moment, they simply utter a half hearted apology and start complaining about the MRT to other people they have just squeezed. Hence, I call them "Ladies who rule the world".

Maybe you know other cases? We should tell the story of this unique class of citizen. They colour the boring journey.

Google - made in singapore?

2008-01-18T19:34:00.001-08:00

Yesterday, newspaper reports A*STAR (the research agency in Singapore) announcing a competition for a new search engine said to be more powerful than Google. Basically the agency is trying to get people produce a search engine that can search the content of audio and images. The prize of the competition is............. a measly US$100,000.00.

That's one of the funniest joke that I have ever read this month!

Come on, A*STAR, if one can come out with the search engine, why should they submit to the competition? Even Google would be willing to pay hundred of times perhaps larger than the reward prize. Not that Google is not trying. It was reported in the same article that researchers are not making much progress in that area and Google themselves is spending millions of dollars for R&D a year. Who is the one in A*STAR thinking that US$100,000.00 and a visit to its new facility can entice people to come out with the breakthrough? Strange people....

If I were the one with the technology (as if I can), I'd perhaps start my own search engine, beat Google to pulp and I am sure I'd earn billions in a short time. US$100,000 and get A*STAR to own the product after the competition? Dream on...........

Pumpkin Scissors

2008-01-16T02:56:00.000-08:00

Hey, for those of you who is losing hope in the world, watch Pumpkin Scissors. :)

It's an amazing stories (sad, but funny yet a bloody one) on what will happen in the end of a war. It tells of a sotry about Alice L. Malvin, a young lady who never loses hope and always fight for the hope. She keeps fighting for the better future. It's heartening. It also teaches about a super soldier who has chosen to fight with the young lady, a fight to change the future. For it is said in the animation that you are able to choose who you want to be. What's you want to be is not determined by your past.

Bus and MRT in Singapore

2008-01-15T15:56:00.000-08:00

Morning and afternoon, the following buses are always as crowded as sardine (this list is just from my own very limited experience):
179
199
92
190
96
300

Besides that, the MRT (Mass Rapid Transit) are ever sardine like every single morning (people going to work) and afternoon (people leaving for home).

I'd like to applaud SBS and SMRT for making the company such a profitable one.

Amazingly, all the complains that customers fielded to the two companies produce zero change. The MRT still arrives at 2 min and 4 min frequency instead of 3 min. Sometimes, it even reaches 6 min waiting time. It simply amazes me that they can't make it more frequent considering that MRT plies the fix amount of stop. Well, it HAS to stop at all stops. It has to close and open at the fix time. Yet, they can't make it more frequent. And o yeah, I am not sure that the MRT is actually designed to take THAT many people. I don't find the label on passenger limit anyway.

The SBS bus 179 and 199 have always been amazingly packed by students every morning and afternoon. Complaints over the last 8 years at least, have fallen on deaf ears. Bus 92 as well. Amazing things about bus 92 is that the buses often comes 2 at a time and yet it's freakingly full. After that, the waiting time is agonizing. Why can't they just increase the frequency of the bus?

Well, I guess the classic comment for the reason of not increasing bus frequency will always be "not enough vehicles" and "cost is high". Wow, I don't believe that they haven't save enough money by making passengers packed by sardine, and keeping cockroaches infested buses. Where does all the money go? Maybe the money goes into revamping the station to make space for rental shops where they can earn more money. Sadly, I am not sure that the venture is successful. If Dobby Exchange is to be an example, the foray is a losing money method.

Another thing, if you are the passenger of a bus, I urge you to take a look at the plate on top of the old bus ticketing machine, usually at the side panel behind the bus driver. Take note of the number of passengers limit. Now, when you are in a sardine packed bus, go count the number of passengers. You'll understand what I mean. Seems like bus companies are immune to law, at least in Singapore. Well, after all, passenger limit is not imposed, and cockroaches infested buses are okay.

GM crops

2008-01-15T15:40:00.000-08:00

Some Genetically Modified (GM) crops apparently has shown up in the market shelves of many countries. Despite the many controversies of its use, for true reasons unknown to many, government approve the use of GM crops. Well, some governments do declare that GM crops have to be labeled as GM food when they reach the shelves. Yet, the full impact of GM crops to human body and environment are yet known.

First of all, GM crops introduced to plantation will interbreed with other wildtype version. Hence, after some time, plant researchers will definitely have their hard time in finding the real wildtype crops. Unwittingly, by allowing the GM crops, government has turned all variants of the particular approved crop to be GM. Why is it so? Because when the GM crop interbreed with other variant, it will definitely pass some of its gene to the descendants. Noone ever control what's being passed to the descendants. Hence, some time, ALL variants wil contain parts of the GM and hence, in a few years time, ALL of the crops' variants should actually be labelled GM, shouldn't they?

Secondly, noone should at this point claim they understand the function entire genome of the GM crops and I honestly think noone will do that. If you insert some DNA into a cell, DNA unknown to the cell, the cell might or might not take it. Well, in the case of GM crops, the plant take it and then incorporate it into its own gene. Have anyone ever declare they know what'll happen to other genes when a new gene is inserted? Well, as far as I know, noone yet declare they know. Hence, it's quite clear that noone actually know for sure what the GM crops have fully in store. Maybe by interbreeding the GM crops with wild types for years to ensure that the traits are being passed down to the descendants and stable, we can be at least 1% sure that the plant accept the new traits. Again, maybe that by doing such, we can be sure that the crops pass some selection. Alas, noone will know for sure.

Lastly, the long term effect of the GM crops is not yet known. There is even a notion that the government is unwittingly (or maybe wittingly) allowing the GM crops producers to use the entire population as the guinea pig of GM products. After all, no company will be crazy enough to do a 20-30 years trial on their product officially before they pass it to the market. Now, you be the judge whether you'd want to eat GM food or not. For me, if I ever read the label and know for sure that's GM food, I'd avoid it.