Following up hot on the heels of 2004 is a brand new year of potential.
While disaster struck late in that year, current efforts at aiding the victims of the tsunami and earthquake are proceeding in full force.
Businesses in Singapore have chipped in to aid relief efforts. Donating a percentage of a day’s profit takings is a good gesture, though I would have preferred that they either donate all of the takings, or simply come up with an out-right donation. Advertising their products with a pledge to “give a percentage of takings to charity” certainly does benefit the needy, while at the same time en-riching the business when well-meaning donors flock to buy these items. Talk about taking advantage of a disaster!
Besides that, the high profile of the disaster in the local media has ignited a renewed sense of charity in the local populace. Never mind that they had already donated their fair share to charity - Singaporeans opened up their wallets once more to give - perhaps a small glimmer of hope of recovery for the victims in Indonesia, Phuket, Sri Lanka and India. Not only were people killed in the earthquake and its tsunami spawn, more were displaced from their beloved homes (treasured belongings destroyed, family members washed away to some other place). Epidemics threaten their very survival.
I am glad that the world has stepped up to the challenge of saving the people affected by this belated “Christmas Disaster”, even though the sum raised so far is nothing compared to the amount spent in the New Year celebrations. At least some people have bothered to acknowledge that others are not as fortunate as them, and extend a helping hand to these people.
We are the world.
Scribbled under:
General
A new year dawns upon the land.
A completely new slate fresh from the tree press and ready to be imprinted with stories. Words depicting tales of people, hardship, loyalty, leadership, tenacity.
As such, news from the old year spill over into the new year, episodes and un-paid debts make appearances to haunt the start of the new year.
At exactly 12:00 am 1 January 2005 (GMT +0800), Singapore mourns the passing of creative local TV with the merger of MediaWorks with MediaCorp. MediaWorks has always been a symbol of originality in the local broadcast scene, with plenty of new initiatives and shows that thoroughly entertained Singaporeans, young and old.
However, the vision of competition was mercilessly buried in the back seat as operating costs were held up as reasons for not sustaining MediaWorks, and inevitably, had to be forcibly merged. Artistes from MediaWorks would have to suffer the consequences of having betrayed their former (and future) employer (Since they were artistes who jumped ship from MediaCorp 4 years ago). Viewers would have to suffer the same old monotony of stale content again.
Thank you MediaWorks, for everything:
R.I.P
2000 - 2004
You can still view MediaWorks’ website at The WayBack Machine
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General
I have never been one to break traditions, nor do the people who have been in my life remember me as a person to rock the boat. But instead of posting the obligatory “New Year Resolution”, I am going to tell you what I will have done by December 2005:
- My class 2B civilian motorcycle licence, along with a basic bike to boot (I intend to upgrade my licence to the “free for all” class 2 category when I become eligible for it).
- I will have decided on my next stage of my life: Even though I failed to gain entry into a university, there are many other alternative routes that I can take to receive training in specialised fields - even though it isn’t the end of the world, these routes are definitely less trodden, and probably tougher.
- I will have finally finished my website (long overdue since 1998 *gasp*). Procrastination has been a killer for me this year, so to put myself on the line and finish it, I am going to go for a professional web host to serve my future website. Nothing like a little financial commitment to motivate myself.
- A business - no solid plans yet, but I am looking into the possibilities of network marketing. Tough concept to grasp (for me due to my lack of an economics background), but I will have read up totally on this business, and have created a proposal and presented it to like-minded friends.
- Built up a muscle bulk that allows me to sustain 15 chin-ups whenever and wherever I do them.
- Get the Gold standard for my camp’s physical test
I have been there, and tried it: vague resolutions are great for placating beloved ones, but don’t do anything to further your personal well being. Hopefully these solid goals are powerful enough to set my direction for 2005 (I get easily distracted by chocolates!)
So what would you have acheived by 31 December 2005?
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General
In a show of division unity, our company went on a trip to Sentosa (a very tourist paradise with pristine beaches, and $1.30 cokes).
Apparently, punctuality is lost (especially by superiors) when they are not in uniform. I was quite struck by the irony of the situation. I barely dragged my half-dead body to Sentosa, and was handsomely rewarded with sights of higher ranking people strolling off the different bus loads. The rest of us were so bored by their tardiness that we started our own breakaway “cohesion”.
Finally, when some semblence of an instruction was somehow passed down, the entire herd moved in the general direction of some hall (which turned out to be some over-decorated shed). Workers were setting up temporary struts and other small platforms for the new year countdown. There, we sat twiddling our thumbs, and talking - among our individual cliques.
(I am sure you would have known by now my reason for writing like this…)
A few of us were even bored enough to strip somebody and send him into the welcoming embrace of the equatorial water. Sorry there are no photographs to post here because I am too poor to get a digital camera, not even a low end model.
Essentially things got so dry (the so called cohesion program was actually only a monotanous beach volleyball “league”) that many of us broke away and started doing our own stuff. The lechers among us (I am quite sad to report that I am one of them) put on our best shades and took a stroll (swim and dunk) along the beach to (ahem…).
As of this writing, I am having serious reservations on continuing my narration (Yes, it is THAT boring, and I am not that bad a story teller, am I?), so I am going to stop by saying that we ended the whole program with absolutely nothing to take away (nope, my platoon didn’t win anything, and would be thankful if relationships were not damaged today, let alone maintained.)
Platoon level cohesion was supposed to be next on the agenda, but as the guys put it, “No mood. Go home. Sleep.” (I am quite annoyed that they have succeeded in making my blog entry sound like a teenager’s whine. Thanks very much.)
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Army Days
Advertisement posters with a twist:
(AWOL stands for “Absent Without Official Leave”)
More posters can be found here:
http://forum.aiomobile.com/showthread.php?t=183
Who said that people in the army were boring?
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Army Days
I was quite curious when StatCounter showed me some disappointing figures: (as a crazied supporter of open-source software) the uptake of FireFox .
Only 1 out of 100 visitors to this blog is using FireFox to browse the website.
Now that I have nothing related to my camp to write about (a break from camp and all), I am going to evangalise (quite unusual for a Buddhist).
FireFox is a revolutionary web browser that embodies the "open source" concept: That means many eyes are upon the coding of this application all the time, and any flaws or potential security problems are fixed with very short turn around times. Compare this to Internet Explorer, of which the development has been stagnant for 3 years now. The number of security problems are numerous. FireFox, on the other hand, is under constant development by volunteers, who add more functionality to improve your browsing experience!
So far, major features of the program include tabbed browsing, which saves tons of your window real estate, and an advanced privacy manager, which allows you to remove your tracks, all without much fuss. For those who want more functionality, it is achieved through Extensions.
Give it a try! It is only a small download, and you won’t lose a thing (you can uninstall it easily in the event you find FireFox unsuitable for you, but I think that it would be highly unlikely!).
[End of promotion speech]
On a personal note, I have used FireFox for a few months now, and I have not come across any security problems so far - in fact, FireFox load pages much faster than Internet Explorer, I have since relegated IE to the doldrums of the hard disk.
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General
It seems that the guys from Pioneer platoon blog too!
Kavan’s blog
Eugene’s blog
Patrick’s blog
Scribbled under:
Army Days
There are no apparent links between Promise and Play, except perhaps the fact that they exist under the same category of “Words Starting With ‘P’“. However, they happened to make my life miserable today (or rather yesterday, for that matter).
You should remember from my last blog post that I played the night over at Orchard (the photos show it all), but being the crazy NSF (that’s National Service FullTime) that I was, I decided to continue playing through the night. (Lest some readers mistake my intentions, I currently have no intention of delievering my maiden voyage to some well-powdered woman on the street.) I stayed at home to chat with some of my friends who also had trouble sleeping.
That was when my troubles began. I had promised one of my platoon mate that I would turn up for his church’s commemoration of Christmas in the Indoor Stadium the next morning (which was yesterday as of now). I ended up sleeping late and subsequently missed the event.
He did call to remind me just an hour before the event, but the comfort of my own bed proved too much to bear (I had answered the phone from my bed), and the next time I woke up, it was bright noon, and SMSes were piling up on my phone.
He called me a while later, and I had to suffer the guilt of having to tell him the truth (I couldn’t have lied anyway, I was too tired).
Three hours later, I found myself leaving the house again, to meet another group of friends.
Perhaps I would have felt better had I just slept this day away…
Scribbled under:
General
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