Defined by your response to situations

I quote from David Stern:

You will ultimately be defined by the sum total of your responses to circumstances, situations and events that you probably couldn't anticipate and indeed probably couldn't even imagine. So just keep your eyes on the course and be ready to move in different directions depending upon the crises and opportunities with which you are faced. 

You are defined by your responses to situations. That's the fact. If you choose not to act upon it even though you can, you're responsible for your own actions.

inflation is up 0.1%

These are the Singapore inflation rates for 2014:
January: 1.4%
February: 0.4%
March: 1.2%
April: 2.5%
May: 2.7%
June: 1.8% 
July: 1.2%
August: 0.9%
September: 0.6%
October: 0.1%

Both Food and Education & Stationery inflation again rose by 2.8% and 2.7% respectively year on year. Transport inflation trend continued from last month, going down by 0.5% in comparison to last month. Housing inflation has also dropped 1.7%, more than expected.

Food inflation remained high, with all the food prices rising compared to last month. Due to the housing and transport inflation downtrend, the inflation has continued the downward trend. However, due to the high base last year, inflation looks mild.

As previously mentioned, I'm not surprised if the average inflation for 2014 drops below 1% year on year.

Reason for SGX low volumes

Personally, I think the reason for SGX low volumes is very simple. They seem to be cutting operational costs on things that matter!

Why I say this is very simple. Long long time ago, you're able to bookmark certain counters in SGX if you're interested in it. Then guess what? Instead of encouraging this, SGX banned this by changing their website technology to DHTML, so that you're not able to bookmark the counters.

At that time, I thought it was ridiculous that they did it. When they saw interest in certain behaviour, instead of encouraging the interest, they look at it from the money looking glass and choose to prohibit it, most probably due to the increase of operational cost to cater for the extra load.

So after changing it to DHTML so that we're unable to bookmark the counters, they made another ridiculous very recently. They are redirecting all non-ETF counters details to another page that shows a lot of information, but not the critical information I was looking for, the financial statements/announcements and the relevant links. Now it is very difficult to get financial announcements information and the related attachments. And guess what? ETFs still redirect to the previous link. Why the difference? I've no idea. I've also totally no interest in what they are showing because this doesn't show the full story. The news section also do not show all the announcements related to a counter. The financial results have the details I need. In fact, I rather they change the ETF counters because usually I don't read the ETF details. They went the other way around.

If you track the timing of the low volumes, it's tied to operational changes to their website. The less they invest in their website, the lower their volumes. The volumes are going to get lower because investors are going to be freaking irritated by the ridiculous changes made to SGX. They are removing the accessibility of information that we need.

Sometimes I wonder... Does SGX know exactly what visitors to their website need? They seem to be taking away information that most investors need. Very soon, no one will be investing in any counters in Singapore because it's so &*^@&*@ difficult to get information.

Ridiculous...

Disable man in the middle attacks on Yosemite

Recently there has been news on man-in-the-middle attacks being used against Linux and Macs because certain settings have been enabled by default. Basically, it uses a protocol called ICMP Redirects to redirect you to a malicious website. Currently, this also affects all Android and iOS devices.

However, you can protect yourself for Yosemite by just running a few simple commands. I have tested this on Yosemite and it works.

1. Run Terminal
2. Run the command sudo vi  /etc/sysctl.conf (You can use your favorite editor too)
3. Type in your current user account password (This is assumed that your account has sudo privileges)
4. Add in or replace the following lines and save the file:

net.inet.icmp.drop_redirect=1
net.inet.icmp.log_redirect=0

That's it. The above commands will tell Yosemite to drop all ICMP redirect packets and do not log any redirect packets since you are dropping it.

Embrace whatever you encounter

I quote from Rachel Naomi Remen:

Most people have come to prefer certain of life’s experiences and deny and reject others, unaware of the value of the hidden things that may come wrapped in plain and even ugly paper. In avoiding all pain and seeking comfort at all costs, we may be left without intimacy or compassion; in rejecting change and risk we often cheat ourselves of the quest; in denying our suffering we may never know our strength or our greatness. 

Embrace whatever you encountered because only then, you will know your strengths and weaknesses, and how you can use them to overcome the blockage.

Under Happy?

Usually I do not take much notice of the happiness survey because it doesn't really matter much to me. Only I myself know how happy I am and it doesn't really matter if someone else is happier than me. However, what caught my eye was this word "under happy". What the heck is under happy?

I tried searching high and low for a definition of under happy. I thought it was some new term that i was not aware of. However, that came to naught. I could only draw to one conclusion. It's not valid at all and it is "made up". A person can only be happy or not happy. How can you be in-between?

However, back to the crux of the question. Are we happy? Based on my past experience, unless you have a very understanding boss that knows you have a life outside of work, your work will always seem to be never-ending. Why? Because there is no labour law that governs official working hours for white collar workers. It is assumed we sold our life to the company, and we're paid even less than peanuts for that effort because there is no such thing as overtime pay for white collar workers here.

Recently I have also read an article where the US employees put in 34.6 hours a week on average, up from 34.5 hours in August and the most since May 2008. 34.6 hours??? I have never worked only 34.6 hours a week in my life. My typical work week is between 42-45 hours in my previous job!  There were a number of times I worked more than 50 hours a week straight.

With no law protecting us, we are given loads of work to do with no way of getting additional wages. This will also prevent us from spending time on doing the things we love, be it with family or with your hobby. Without any spare time for ourselves, it's also difficult to come out with any innovative ideas. You're too stressed most of the time!

All this is a chain reaction and seriously, you cannot explain it away just by inventing a new term called "under happy".

Creativity cannot be sustained by approval

I quote from Will Self:

When anyone starts out to do something creative - especially if it seems a little unusual - they seek approval, often from those least inclined to give it. But a creative life cannot be sustained by approval, any more than it can be destroyed by criticism - you learn this as you go on. 

Creativity usually require things to be done in a different way. It will not exist if every creative thing we do requires a stamp of approval.

Estimating wealth using GDP is useless

GDP, otherwise known as Gross Domestic Product, reflects the flow of goods and services a nation produces in a single year. It says nothing about wealth of the country and the wealth of the citizens.

How do you estimate wealth then using GDP? I could be buying goods from other countries but reselling it at a lesser profit due to the high rental cost for example. Where is the supposed wealth?

You might not be able to track wealth easily in other countries, but in Singapore, it's a different case altogether. Why? That's because we have something called the CPF.

It's compulsory for companies to contribute to CPF if your earnings are above a set threshold. Using the estimates from the CPF contributions tells more about the wealth of a nation then the supposed GDP that only tells other countries how good your business can flourish in Singapore.

There's a big difference between companies making money versus citizens getting a decent wage. Unless you have strong labour laws which unfortunately we do not have, profits from businesses do not necessary flow down to all. In fact, it may even flow out of Singapore to enrich others.

If GDP must be used, then the wealth of a nation should also be used in conjunction with the gini coefficient and the percentage of millionaires and HNWI in the population. This will also tell you how much of the supposed actual GDP flow down to the citizens.

It's like the US elections. All the economic indicators are very good. Low unemployment rate, high number of jobs created... But why did the incumbent lose the election? Personally, I think the reason is quite simple. The citizens did not see all this happening at ground zero. If everything is really as rosy as painted, I don't see why the citizens are not voting the incumbent party back to power.

Life is about family and friends

I quote from Vanilla Ice:

The most valuable lesson I've ever learned in my life is that life is about family and friends, not about material things or any of that. It's about enjoying your life. If you have no family, no friends to enjoy it with, it don't matter how much you have, how much success you have, how much fame you have, how much money you have, it doesn't matter. 

How can power fluctuations cause the entire system to go down?

Seriously, how can a power fluctuation cause the entire system to go down? Usually, there will be facility managers taking care of the data centre. They will do checks on the servers daily, and look at all the indicators, include monitoring all the lifespan of the equipment.

UPS batteries have a fixed life and you will need to replace it at a certain frequency. Was the monitoring being done for the equipment? Was there enough investment in purchasing of good UPS system with regular maintenance being done? UPS does not just fail. Either they bought the "cheapest" or they did not maintain it regularly.

Either case, this seems like again the issue where people at the top don't understand that investments need to be made in IT or such things will definitely happen again. I don't understand why they can spend so much money on marketing where sometimes you cannot even measure the ROI, but refuse to invest in the infrastructure to ensure operations can continue smoothly. Sometimes I think they forget that if the infrastructure is not working, no matter how much marketing you put in, it's of no use because you cannot deliver.

Sadly, this happens almost everywhere.

S.E.A. Aquarium

The Singapore S.E.A. Aquarium™ is home to more than 100,000 marine animals of over 800 species, across 49 different habitats. The habitats included within the aquarium include the Strait of Karimata & Java Sea, Strait of Malacca & Andaman Sea, Bay of Bengal & Laccadive Sea, Persian Gulf & Arabian Sea, Rea Sea, East Africa and South China Sea. Of course you cannot forget the dolphins and sharks.

Once you enter the aquarium, you will be mesmerized by the scene below.

Yes, you can spend some time here but do not spend too much time. There are more things to see within and you'll spend a lot of time turning left and right, going into all corners of the aquarium. Yes, don't let the size fool you but it is actually quite big.

Below are some of the pictures I took around the area. The aquarium is huge.

Leaving the aquarium will reveal another the big tank which contains many different kinds of sharks. That mark the end of the journey within.

Hope you enjoy the pictures. :)