Do you key www before your blogger add?

I have come across quite a number of blog which repeat the same mistake. You don't have to key the www in front of your blogspot address.

For example,
xxx.blogspot.com - correct
www.xxx.blogspot.com - not necessary

Some people assume that for every internet address www is default. This is not true. During the first invention of world wide web, almost all the website carry the www address. Until today, there is not necessary anymore. In technical terms, with or without www is just a configuration only.

Tips to counter inflation 2008

Going into year 2008, inflation is very real for all the people. The forecast inflation number is quite stunning, our wallet would get squeezed. In fact, my wallet already started bleeding, follow by recent food price hike, fare hike, what ever.

So, some tips to counter the inflation next year.

1. Reduce the eating out ocassion/avoid going to restaurant
2. Reduce shopping trip (no see, no buy)
   
3. When going to hawker centre, always order mix vege rice or anything 2.5 & below
4. Bring your own plain water
   
5. Refrain from taking taxi
6. Don't buy useless gadget (good, but not essential to have)
   
7. Holiday at nearby countries - Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand

Keep your money in the bank, and let the inflation drop!

Completely my last wedding dinner of the year

Tonight, I have completed my last wedding dinner of the year. It is nice to share the joy of marriage with my friend and I truly enjoyed the food offered by the swissotel. It was a nice combination of style and food quality.

This year was quite heavy on my wallet, as there were many wedding banquet being held. Going into 2008, I haven't receive a single invitation yet. This is a good sign, haha. At least for the first 3 months, I would expect no invitation card.

Do let me know earlier if you plan to invite me for the dinner. I have to save the ang pao money before hand.

Second trip to Old Airport Road

Today, together with another colleague, we set off to Old Airport Road hawker centre the second time this month. He said he wanted to taste the Nam Sing fried hokkien mee (described as legendary). We thought the opening hour is till 8pm. So we happily took the train and bus there. Only realised when we arrived there, it is closed. I am not sure the opening hour, but definitely have to go there during weekend day time.

Since hokkien mee is out, we have some other dishes instead.


The dessert is sold by a soya bean stall - Selegie Soya. I only realised I forgot to take picture after I have finished. Therefore, only an empty bowl for you to see. The cincau taste nice, coupled with the syrup and atap seed. Makes a cooling and nice dessert.


The assorted kueh is sold by a stall claimed to be famous in Tiong Bahru. After tried it, the taste is fair enough, but not fantastic. The gula melaka inside the oneh oneh is quite stingy, it drag down the overall taste. The other kuehs were made by different ingredients that I have difficulties to differentiate.


The satay is from a stall called Old Man something. The waiting queue was fairly long. So originally I expect it to be good. However, after the long wait, the first taste verdict? Too sweet. I have tried different types of satay, but clearly this is not for me. The meat is marinated with too much sugar or sauce, and somehow it is surprisingly sweet. The satay sauce also very plain, the peanut is not crunchy and not spicy enough.

When we took the bus back to Kallang mrt, we passed pass a stretch of shop near the mrt. Unknowingly, the area has been transformed into China steamboat city. I think there are at least 6 to 7 steamboat shop over there, selling different type of steamboat coming from different area of China. If got time, I would try it next time and give comment.

Useful unix command

As a IT professional, very often, I have to use unix command. Here is list of useful command for easy reference.

#Recursive grep the word
find . -name "*.java" | xargs grep -l <search_word>

#Recursive grep the word ignore case
find . | xargs grep -li <search_word>

#Create tar
tar cvf <file name> <dir>

#List tar
tar tvf <file name>

#Extract tar
tar xvf <file name>

#Zip file - Original file changed
gzip <files>

#Zip file - Original file unchanged
gzip -c <files> > <tar file>

#Unzip the file
gunzip test.tar.gz

#Use awk to tokenise string
cat file.txt | awk -F ":" '{print $2}'

#Grep file name to copy to another directory
grep -l '\[273\]' *.txt | xargs -i cp {} <dir>

#Sort lines in file
sort <file>.txt >> <file>.txt.so

#Remove duplicate
sort <file>.txt | uniq > <file>.sort

#Remove spaces
cat <file>.txt | sed -e 's/ //g'

#Find files bigger than this size 1.5MB
find . -type f -size +1572864c -exec ls -l {} \;

#Show space occupied by directory and content
du -ks <directory>

#Sum and sort the space occupied by each sub directory
du -ks ./* | sort -n

#Remove old log files
find . -type f -mtime +45 -exec rm -f {} \;

#Find big old files
find . -type f -mtime +365 -size +700000c -exec ls -l {} \; >> big_old_files.txt 2>&1 &

选择

平时我们去小贩中心，总是要从众多的摊位中选择要吃的食物。如果你对那里不熟，通常都要想半天。结果点的食物没有达到要求。又好像我有朋友办结婚晚宴，酒店给了一大堆选择，结果花了一大堆时间选来选去。最后好像都差不多。

这就是选择的坏处。因为有的选，我们往往就迷失在当中。选工作，选伴侣，选房子。一些人在后悔的时候，就会把当初的选择拿出来讲。当初应该怎么样。。。怎么样。。。

如果没有的选的话，那人就会勇往直前，不用像太多。最后我觉得反而可能更好。

44th Golden Horse Award - Lee Hom & symphony

Just in case you did not watch the show, this piece of performance is one of the best of that night. One of my favourite too!

History of Hokkien mee

Last night I watched the channel u show on finding the history of Hokkien mee. This is only a part of the series to discover the food history in Singapore. More food history coming up.

Sometime it amazed me how creative the producer has became. After numerous foodie program they have broadcasted, they still manage to innovate the program. You have the viewer voting, expert recommendation, food competition, tertiary food hunt and now the food history.

Maybe basically people have little things to do over the weekend/holiday, so they resort to finding good food to eat. But, hey, sometime after the hawker was aired, the quality dropped. Famous cause stress.

Vietnam road accident dead rate world's highest

The shocking news is Vietnam actually has the highest road accident death rate in the whole world. The reason to this "number one" is because the motorcycle rider does not required to wear a helmet. As a result, most of the road accidents involve motor bikes. From today onwards, they would start to enforce the law and hoping to bring down the death rate.

The news is quite surprising in the sense that what seems to be a basic thing in one place, might be out of scope somewhere else. We should be mindful when traveling to other countries. Take your time to understand the culture and social norms. The world is so interesting.

Google building its own wikipedia

I noticed nowadays, whenever we search something, it is quite usual to see wikipedia link appears in the top search result. I guess that's why Google has decided to go into the business by launching its own wikipedia - knol. However, the mechanism of this new service is a bit different from existing wikipedia.

It would invite author to write article with their name on it. This would put some kind of ownership into the article, as individual reputation is at stake. This is getting a little bit interesting as the final structure is still unknown.

But, Google is a formidable opponent. It is yet to see how wikipedia can counter the new setup. Or after all, they can co-exist happily. What ever it is, I think it is generally good for all web user, as more knowledge can be captured and shared across the globe.

Jetstar disallow disabled person to board

The biggest news of today is Jetstar in Hong Kong disallow a disabled passenger to board the plane. The reason is whoever cannot walk, would not be allowed to board the plane. Given that, the passenger has enquired the company regarding any rule before, the incident left a sour taste.

Obviously, those customer service didn't bother to check the rule and regulation. When the customer reach the boarding gate, the service staff enforces the rule. Other airline in Hong Kong is more flexible, by allow early notification/surcharge.

I guess the airline is not sensitive enough to handle this kind of situation. If there is such rule, they should make the customer acknowledge the rule. Beside that, putting such restriction would do the company image no good.

Jolin 特务J - 特别推荐

当今华语乐坛,蔡依琳可说是一个人人皆知的名字.在过去的周末,最令我惊讶的是我妈妈也知道Jolin是谁.可见她已经是非常成功的了.

这个星期,我反复的听着特务J这张专辑.唯一的结论是非常好听.值得你花钱去购买.

专辑歌曲名称巧合的都是三个字.大多数的歌曲是快歌,在加上几首能打动人的慢歌.无论选曲或演唱都是水准之上. 个人特别喜欢Jolin抒情演绎.

个人推荐: 节拍器, 非卖品, 一个人, 日不落, 爱无赦.

Joy of seeing old friend

On my way to office this morning, met an old friend which going to work also. She is my old company's client and just came to Singapore to work. So conincident! If not I woke up late, if not I missed the bus, if not the traffic light delayed, I might not have meet her this morning.

So, life is so strange and full of surprises. Cherish the moment with old friend, colleagues and relative. Do organise gathering and keep regular contact. Human need friends.

Johor flood is back again this year

Christmas is near, monsoon is here and the flood is back. Just last year, we heard the serious flooding across malaysia. That includes Johor. Many places were under water. Imagine the single storey shops which were sub merge under the water.

One year passed, no preemptive measure has been taken. The flood is back again. As it would rain this whole week, the situation could only get worse. Let's pray for the sun. The authority should have taken last year's lesson and start with river widening/cleaning etc. But, little was done, or not enough was done. Another year of loss.

I wonder, is this truly Asia?

Morning 933 discussion - what many Christmas present you buy?

It is the topic of this morning, what many present you have to buy for christmas? Do you buy for friends/colleagues?

Mixed response from caller. Some who celebrate it, did buy quite a few present. Some who don't celebrate, don't buy or only buy for gift exchange/christmas party. Well, as Singapore is quite westernised, these people just celebrate it as a festival.

But, wait, as we are trying to save the world. We should start with this christmas. That is if you are buying gift, don't buy useless thing. That would only contribute to the rubbish bin. Buy some consumable gift. So, it would be easily disposed into the stomach. Do your part for our friend - earth.

Comfort dictate the taxi fare

After Comfort announced they are increasing the taxi fare, another two companies SMRT and Transcab would also increase. Oil price as a biggest factor in this round of price adjustment. Since comfort is the biggest taxi company in Singapore, they would dictate the fare. They say going up, then the rest just follow.

Yet, after paying for the extra bucks, do you get better service? Do you find cab easier? That's debatable. The taxi system in Singapore got serious problem. Everybody has encountered situation where you can't get taxi at peak hour/raining day. They should look at way to improve this, other than keep increase the surcharge.

Since Singapore always like to consult the public regarding some issues. They can just do the same to invite public for opinion to improve the system. Disable the ERP charge for taxi would make the system better and everyone benefits.

I like Ya Kun's cup

Recently, I frequent the Ya Kun store for take away coffee. Reason being that I like the take away cup they use. Sounds silly, but it is true. The way they design the cup make it simple and beautiful. First, the cup size is just nice, even for a small hand to hold. The cup body is embossed which enhance the grip. Then, the cover is also nice for a coffee slip. Overall, it is a well designed cup. Last but not least, the coffee must be good also!

See...



Don't believe? Try one yourself.

Cute dogs (pic)

Some really cute pics. Just received the link from friend.

Link.

Happy watching.

Put recycle bin at every HDB

I am a supporter for green movement. Whenever possible, I try to do my part for the environment. 3 key words - reduced, reuse and recycle.

However, let's say I got my rubbish separated into different categories. Where can I throw them? No where! I cannot find a place to put them. The authority has to think of a way to counter this. Set up a simple collection point in every HDB. Different bins for different materials - paper, class, plastic etc.

Once the collection point is ready, then we can really start the recycle campaign. And because it is convenient, I think people would buy the idea.

what is my talent?

Today, the thought just re-emerged again. What is my talent? Although I have long identified my strength on job, but seems that the jobs I am doing does not leverage much on it.

I am two months into this new job, but I am still not comfortable yet. In the last job, there are too many stupid things going on, which does not suit my intelligence. However, in the current job, I found myself start from zero again. Reason being that it does not require much of my strength or existing skill. I have to learn all over again, also learn from people junior than me.

I think that could be the common dilemma every working adult is facing. Everyone knows that he/she has certain passion or good at doing certain thing. But, the jobs on hand, just simply not up to the expectation. Let's face it, it is common trait in life. Because it is hard to match one's idealism against the reality. You need talent, opportunity and supporting boss to realise your potential.

I hope everyone can find that. I am hoping to be able to adjust myself faster. Let's pray together.