No good person or bad person

Just watched Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix today. I prefer Goblet of Fire though. Many parts they do not follow the book, especially the last part. However, you'll only notice if you remember the nitty gritty details. The movie on the whole is well-paced, and tells the gist of the story. I didn't even realize that 2 hours + has passed. Few movies could do that. :)

Anyway, for some reason, I remembered clearly one part of the movie. I will not tell which section but it was mentioned that there's no such thing as a good person or bad person. Everyone has good and bad within them. It's the choice that one makes that makes all the difference, and differentiate between the good and the bad.

Not the labels you put on yourself, not the words that you say, but through the actions that you do and choices that you make, that will determine what kind of person you are.

Good food for thought.

Gas OPEC?!?!?!

Great... We have OPEC. And now we're going to have a GECF (Gas Exporting Countries Forum), a cartel for gas.

Why no one is willing to invest in renewable energy like wave or solar energy?!?!? It's like education. You'll not send a kid to a university education without going through pre-school and primary school.

Everyone is look for short-cuts nowadays... :(

Success with Integrity

Read an article from Eugene Low's Slice of Life, Success with Integrity.

Just like to quote a little bit from the article:

the true mark of success - character and integrity.

No amount of wealth can compensate for a lack of character. Character equals integrity and integrity means you always do what is right - even when no one is watching you. It means that fear and guilt have no power over you because you have nothing to hide.

Wrong time to be sick!

Why does this always happen to me? Sick with some unknown nausea "disease" and I'm suppose to fly off to China for a conference end of the week. :(

How worse can it get? Yes... It could get worst. It always happen to me! I just hope that I'm fine by the time I fly off end of the week. Will be there 9 days.

Darn... And I don't have the time to watch Harry Potter! :(

Sick!!

Arrrgggh... I'm so stupid. I should not be drinking milk when I have nausea!! :(

Life's Lessons

Just read this excerpt from the Slice of Life. Quite meaningful:

"The family is the nucleus and the foundation of life. It provides you with love and care, support and confidence. Family members have to look after one another. You must enjoy a happy family life before you can concentrate and do well in your work. Everyone must play a part to have a happy family. Then you can help your friends, society and country.

You must be resilient. The real mark of character comes not from how you react to your successes, but how you deal with your failures. Acknowledge your mistake and learn from it. Every failure is a chance from which to draw valuable lessons. Pick yourself up and move on.

Build your life on integrity. Live by the simple dictum that honesty is the best policy. Be natural, be true to yourself and do not pretend to be what you are not.

A good attitude, whether socially or at work is important. In addition to your own work and responsibilities, you must also help others. Do not be calculative or watch the clock and do only the work assigned to you and no more. Help is mutual. You help others and others will help you when you need it. Similarly, if you are nice to people, people will be nice to you.

You must look beyond your immediate surroundings and take an interest in matters not directly related to your work. This is so you will gain a wider horizon, broader knowledge and outlook."

Promises

People close to me knows that I'm a stickler for punctuality. What they might not know is that the reason for that is because I don't give promises easily to other people. Once I commit to something, in this example will be meet so and so at this time or come to work at x am, I will do my best to meet the time, even though I might know everyone will be late. Call me stupid but that's the way I am.

Recently for this week, somehow people kept asking me this question. Just this morning before I went to see a doctor (yes, I'm sick again. grrrr), it cropped up again on the breakfast table. My mum lamenting the fact that everyone doesn't seem to have a sense of time. Work starts at 8.30am, come at 9am, work starts at 9am come at 9.30am, etc etc (That's because my sis is going to work later and later).

I told her (and to other people who asked me) that now, it doesn't really matter. What matters now truly is whether can you finish your work. Let's say for a particular task, you have 3 days to finish. I really don't care what time you come to work, but I expect at the end of the 3rd day, you would have given me a reasonably completed task (give and take a bit of refinement). I will have a very big issue if someone take more than 3 days, and yet come to work late everyday, and knock off on time. Even if you have under-estimate the time taken, you're duty bound to complete the task in 3 days. To me, that's the mark of a professional, and of course you'll gain the respect of everyone.

However, deep down inside me, I guess I'm still lamenting the fact that not many seems to take promises seriously, regardless of any religion. Why I mentioned religion? That's because after 10 years and 3 months in a methodist school, I still remember a sentence, which I try my best to follow. "Thou shall not lie". This is also mainly the reason why I don't give promises easily. Can I follow it truly? Of course not in this world of ours. But is that an excuse not to try to adhere to it? No way... At least not for me.

Ok, brain not working... Better go and sleep it off. Darn... Why am I sick again!! :(

Ways to optimize paging files

Just read an interesting article from Microsoft on how to optimize your paging file such that it will perform most optimally. The paging file is what the system will use once you run out of real physical memory. Nowadays, it's getting easier and easier to run out of memory. Even every internet browser that you open will eat up more memory.

This is what's recommended from Microsoft:

• Move your paging file to a different partition in a different harddisk. This is such that the read and write requests can be done in parallel and there won't be "competition" between reading of system files, and reading of the paging file.
• It is better to keep the paging file in a partition that is created solely for the paging file. This is again so that there will not be competition of resources, and there will not be any fragmentation.
• By algorithm, Microsoft Windows will use the paging file from the partition that is least frequently accessed. Therefore, it is possible that you can have 2 paging files, 1 on the same partition as the main operating system files, and another on a separate partition in a separate harddisk. It will by default use the paging file on the separate harddisk.

Personally for me, I used another additional method which is to "span" my paging file.
For example, I create a paging file 1GB. I have 3 partitions, Drive C, D, E. I will put the paging file as follows:

• Drive C: 1GB paging file
• Drive D: 1GB paging file
• Drive E: 1GB paging file

By doing this, my overall paging file will be 1GB, according to the article I read. Reason is that the paging file is spanned across 3 partitions, therefore increasing the speed of access of your paging file.

I've used the above, but I was not able to see if there's any differences in speed. I try not to use the swap file as much as possible. :)

Hope this is helpful...

Update: I've disabled my "spanning" swap and I did see a noticeable difference in performance. Do spanning if you can afford it.

Clarification on Looking into Perspective

One of the reasons why I started writing a blog was because I wanted to "track" my thoughts and emotions after encountering different situations. Sometimes after writing your thoughts down, you tend to be able to understand it more, and look at it from a different view point. However, first you have to look at it with an open mind.

I refer to the previous post I've made on Looking into perspective. I realized that I might have sounded like I'm an employer, or I manage people's pay or something along that line. Actually, I'll just like to clarify that I'm just a normal employee like everyone else. Would I want a raise and 6 months bonus? Of course I do. But at what cost? I also do not want to 把快乐建在别人的痛苦上。

Anyway, that post was triggered mainly because of my sister, and because around that time, the newspapers were also harping on the starting pay of graduates. She is doing internship now and during the whole internship, she basically leaves the house earlier than me, and comes back close to 10 or 11pm. That's almost every single day. I've also heard of someone who work from 9am to 1am every single day, 7 days a week, for almost a month now. No OT pay of course. All are IT jobs. Somehow, my brain related these things together.

My pay was lagging behind my peers at around 20% at that point of time. However, after discussing with the bosses, I do not lag behind that much now. It's acceptable to me. Why? Because other than the interests I've stated here, my other "hidden" interest is actually finance, and economics. I do some reading on it in my spare time. I understand how businesses work, and how cashflows and expenses go about. Based on my understanding of the workings of the company I am in, they are not severely underpaying us. There are much worst that I know of. The pluses of knowing many people. :p

Playing the devil's advocate, I ask myself if let's say my company intends to raise my salary by 50%, but requires me to work 7 days a week like the above example, will I do it? I really don't know.

Many times we only look at the aspect that we're interested in, and negating all other points. Me included of course. In jobs for example, people might look at salary, benefits, bonuses. But how about personal growth, working environment, working hours? Some might mix the above priorities but the bottom line is not to be fixated at one or two points only, unless it's really that important to you.

I guess this entry sounds rather serious, and I'm starting to ramble. I'm still thinking of somethings that someone asked me.

Maybe I should just play my guitar now to calm myself so that I can think clearly.

Misconceptions about Lithium Ion Batteries

I chanced upon a blog entry from techatplay, describing some of the popular mis-conceptions about the usage of Lithium Ion batteries. It would be good to understand how to conserve the battery life more efficiently, since laptops are the current trend now.

Basically, the popular misconceptions are as follows:

• Battery is limited by its lifespan and number of charging cycles, not how long you charge. Some people have a habit of keeping a spare battery, not wanting to use it. Please remember that the lithium ion battery starts to die the moment it leaves the factory. The best way to optimize your battery usage is to keep using your batteries, and swapping between 2 batteries.
  
• Taking your battery out of the laptop does not conserve your battery. That's because most laptops now come with circuitry that will ensure the battery does not get overcharged.
• Do not drain your battery completely. Draining it completely can damage your battery permanently.
• Temperatures higher than 40 degrees permanently reduce your charging cycles by a bit. Now I understand why some people put laptop coolers everywhere they go. A lower overall temperature helps in conserving the battery life.

Please read the full article here. Very enlightening.

Envy good or bad?

I was just reading the Slice Of Life by 938. Eugene was talking on envying other people. What he said is quite true. How many of us envy millionaires, our ministers, Zoe Tay, etc etc. Envy can be used to drive you to reach your goal.

However, have to first ask yourself a few serious questions:

• Is that what you really want?
• Are you willing to make the sacrifices they have made to achieve their current status?
• Are you willing to lose what they have lost to gain what they have now?
  

Does chasing other people's definition of success make you happy? Definition of success?

I always wonder why do I spend time to think about this kind of things... :p

Overblown Property Market

Finally the ministers have spoken up on the over-blown property market here. Super over-hyped. However, judging from the mad sentiments now, I wonder if it's too little done too late. Average selling price for property has shot through the roof, and many asking for insane prices. Even HDBs are affected. What happened to housing for the masses? I suspect that they are forced to react because of the recent sales of some of the HDB flats.

First of all, if you want insane prices, our average salaries for that property sector must be proportionally high in order to support this kind of prices. For example... If HDB 5-room flat is priced at $700k, that means the family with a combined gross housing income of less than $8000 must be forking out at least 35% of their combined gross income to pay for the mortgage.

Of course one might argue that its re-sale. I should not use the $8000 income rule. Why did I use it? Because the government did not build enough new flats to cater for the influx of people who are queuing up to buy flats. Just look at the recent queues at the HDB balloting. Fights even broke out. Therefore, resale flats have to be included in the calculation.

I wonder how many people know about the new ruling in investing multiple properties? This does not apply to those who are super rich of course. Excerpt from CPF:

Restriction on use of CPF Savings to Purchase Multiple Properties

Yes, you may use your CPF to purchase more than 1 property under the Residential Properties Scheme.

However, if you already own a property (HDB flat or private property) bought with your CPF savings and wishes to buy another property with CPF savings from 1 July 2006, you will be able to do so after setting aside in your Ordinary and Special Accounts the prevailing Minimum Sum cash component if you are below 55 years, or the Minimum Sum cash component shortfall if you are aged 55 and above.


How to resolve this property issue? I can only think of one... For every property sale, it's mandatory to do a valuation, and the buyer must know about it. Valuator should not be any Tom, Dick or Harry. Either that, or they should increase all our overall salaries to reflect the property market here.

Since the civil servants have given themselves a raise, they should jolly well resolve this problem. Salary hikes need justification, and its not a given right!

Looking into perspective

Had a talk with some people and I realized that sometimes, we do not recognize how fortunate we are. We have a tendency to compare all the good points, and just "forget" away the bad points. This results in the "grass is greener at the other side" syndrome.

Let me give an example (Hot topic nowadays):

*in a gathering*
Person A: I earn $4000 a month at XXX company. I think I should be able to buy a car soon. I work late everyday and I should pamper myself more right?
Person B: *thinking - I only earn $3000 a month. I must be underpaid*
Person C: I earn slightly more. About $4500. But ok lar... Got people earn more than me.
Person B: *feeling super depressed*

Ok, I admit that all of us, myself included, will feel depressed when we're in such a discussion. However, one should always try to look at the bigger picture.

Over here, you'll be making a whole lot of assumptions. Let me highlight the most obvious one, hours worked.

Person B.
$3000/month.
Start work at: 9am
Average hours worked daily: 9hours (Including meal times - Real life example)
Average hours worked monthly: 180 hours (9 x 20)
Hourly wage: $16.67 / hour

Person A.
$4000/month.
Start work at: 8.30am
Average hours worked daily: 13 hours (Including meal times - Real life example)
Average hours worked monthly: 260 hours (13 x 20 - Taking a very optimistic view of no weekends)
Hourly wage: $15.38 / hour

Person C.
$4500/month
Start work at: 8.30am
Average hours worked daily: 15 hours (Including meal times - Real life example)
Average hours worked monthly: 300 hours (15 x 20 - Taking a very optimistic view of no weekends)
Hourly wage: $15 / hour

Looking now, who has the better deal? I have not included the hours worked during weekends by Person A and Person C, because I left out the bonus calculation. The intangible benefits like starting work later? How do you measure that?

Many people asked me why I am still staying in my first job. Main reasons why:

1. I'm paid average, using the hourly wage formula, including the time I spend outside official hours. (No, the above examples are not my personal examples :) )
   
2. Good working environment
3. Consistently learning new things

Of course I'm only stating one of the many things that you can look at a situation. Assumptions can only be taken if you know the facts. Making assumptions without knowing the facts can distort the result widely, and in some cases, cause distrust, misunderstandings and unhappiness.

Always look at the whole picture...

NETS up 300%, GST up 2%

This is the day where our NETs administrative charges are up 300%, and GST up 2%. Just watched a movie today. I paid about 75cents more for 2 tickets.

NETs administrative charges have nothing to do with us consumers, but we in a way, can help keep the costs down. If all of us refuse to use NETs, then the businesses will have no reason to continue with NETs, and they will not need to raise the overall price further. I would rather use credit cards than NETs.

I have already boycotted NETs as far as possible since I've heard the news. If everyone does that,
we can finally show the banks that we consumers can be a force to be reckoned with.

Expose first free concert

What's expose? Actually, it's the un-official name of the guitar group I'm in, which consist mostly of alumni from the NUS Guitar Ensemble. Just this year, we had our very first free concert. It was also one of my most stressed concerts since I started playing in concerts in 2001. Why? Because I'm soloing most of the time in this 1 hour concert. Don't ask me why it happened. Stress...

Anyway, I asked my group if I can use a piece for "advertising". However, no reply came. I guess silence means consent. After all, the concert is free. It should not be an issue. :p The piece is called La Cumparsita, a popular dance piece. I wanted to showcase Carmen Suite I, but it was too long. I'm unable to find a place to host the file. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did playing it.

We're having another free concert next year Jan... Will post once I have the details. It's still quite far away.