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Both my Chubby and Skinny nephews like fishing very much and they have been bugging me to bring them to go for fishing since a few weeks ago.

My family and I have finally brought them to the Bedok Jetty located at the East Coast Park recently. They brought along their own fishing rods and then bought some fishing accessories from a fishing-accessory seller who ran his business on a bicycle.

Bedok Jetty at the East Coast Park :

As you can see from the picture above, there were quite a lot of people either cycling or fishing along the Bedok Jetty probably because it was a pleasant Sunday afternoon.

My Chubby and Skinny Nephews Holding Their Fishing Rods :

Although Nephew Chubby and Nephew Skinny are little kids, they are much more skillful than me in terms of fishing. I also wouldn’t know how to swing the fishing rod or control the rope properly 🙂

Far View of East Coast Beach :

There was a company function on-going on that Sunday afternoon. The songs coming out from the loud-speaker made the whole afternoon very exciting and lively.

There was a school of fishes swimming in the sea occassionally. They swam near the surface and made a splashing sound that was pleasant to the ears.

Although there were many fishes there, my Chubby and Skinny nephews did not manage to catch a single fish on that Sunday afternoon 🙁 Anyway, we will try our luck again some other time. Stay Tuned.

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Friday has been my rest day since many months ago due to the global economic slowdown. But I had gone back to work today because I’m getting more and more things to do lately. 

Actually, I find that I really enjoy having a short work week and I’m used to it too. Reason being that I can have more time doing those things that I want to or like to do.  

I can spend quality time going out with friends and family. I can also spend time learning new skills on a week day. In fact, there are many things that I can do or plan to do during my rest day so it is never a boring day to stay at home on a Friday.

Frankly speaking, I have been slackened for having a shorter work week and the working pace is slower than what I used to in the past. But I feel that it is good to slow down your footsteps at times and take stock of what you might have missed out in life.

Although I really miss my rest day, I think it is time to gear up a bit so as to stay on track at work after slowing down for quite some time.

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I’m kind of busy with my work lately. Feeling like I have so much work to do but don’t have enough time to complete every single item assigned to me.

I don’t know whether this is a good sign or not. Perhaps, it is a sign of the economy is trying to pick up after slowing down for more than half a year. If that is the case, it is time for the bull to start running again especially in the second half of this year.

Whereas, it is not a good sign for me to burn myself out. I think I have to prioritise my tasks so that I could finish the assigned items before the deadline. This will help myself to be more effective and efficient in my work. Furthermore, this will also help to reduce stress and give myself a clear mind to think properly.

Actually, I’m feeling quite stressed out recently because there are some technical problems at work that have yet to be resolved. I’m really cracking my head and don’t have a glue as to how I can solve them. 

It is kind of bothering me. How I wish I could crack the hard nut by tomorrow. Maybe I can find an answer in my dream? So, I would better go to sleep now 🙂

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My new website is up and running since 15 May. I have been thinking of using different methods to drive traffic to this site after letting it go live.

There are a few things that I have done or I’m currently doing such as putting the link to my other Bogs and website. This is called backlinking so that search engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN and so on can find my new website quickly.

I have also submitted my website to Google by using its ADD URL free service but yet to do it on Yahoo and MSN. Anyway, Google is now the biggest search engine so it should suffice by adding my site to Google at this moment. 

Next, I have also signed up a Twitter account recently and the aim is to drive traffic to my website. I’m actively using it to have a feel of how Twitter work. I have around 400 followers within 1 week and I’m also following other Tweeps. By the way, Twitter users are fondly called Tweeps 🙂

Today, I checked the traffic rank of my new website via Alexa.com and I’m glad to know that my site rank around 14.43 millions. I think this result is not too bad for a new website that is only 2-week old. My other older site was initially ranked around 30 millions after a few months!

Well, I will explore some other methods, such as submitting articles to article directories, to drive traffic and see what the result will look like.

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I have finally finished designing my new website and I’m so excited about it. I bought a domain name from a domain registrar and then let it go live yesterday. It took me close to 6 weeks to complete the website design. I’m proud to tell people that I know how to design website from now onwards 🙂

I have had the concept of building my own website since last year but I only got serious about doing it near the end of March 2009. I first drafted out the plan on a piece of paper and then transformed the ideas into an Excel spreadsheet in April. 

I did my research by leveraging on other people’s websites. I wrote my own content on all of the webpages. I also designed my own web graphics such as logo, header, footer, gallery, divider, bullet points and so on. It gives me a lot of satisfaction and fulfilment for doing all of the designs by myself.

In fact, I had always wanted to design my own website since many years back but I didn’t know how to go about doing it. I also didn’t know what kind of website that I wanted to build back then. So, it was a matter of not knowing the how-to rather than being procrastinating.

Fortunately, there are many great information, such as eBook, video, newsletter and so on, on the internet guiding people on how to build website as well as uploading files to the server. Some of the informations are free and some are paid.  

I use both free and paid informations as I believe that you have to invest in it if you wanted to succeed in mastering certain skills. I’m glad that I have learnt a new skill set and I will explode in other areas to learn more skills so as to add more values to myself.

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I have published 201 Blog posts on this Laingan.com Blog so far and yesterday’s Blog post on Happy Mother’s Day was my 200th post. Wow, I almost cannot believe it that I have come this far!

Actually I could have reached the 200th Blog post earlier if I were diligent enough to update it daily 🙂 Well, the fact is that I’m not lazy as I have been busy working on my new website design since April. There are a lot of stuffs for me to think, plan, organise, write, design and so on before letting my new website go live.

I have been thinking about my website design these days and have not spent much time in organising my thoughts as to what topic that I plan to write about for my Blog post. The writing juice just doesn’t flow when your mind is just too tired and can’t think of anything to write about.

Anyway, I’m planning to finish up my new website design by this week so that I can move on to other new project that I have given myself. Hopefully, I can find time to update my Blog regularly after that.

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I have not been updating my Blog as regularly as I used to do. The reason is that I am too busy working on my new website design. 

I write my own content for my website as writing is not a problem for me. I also design the web graphics all by myself and I find that I realy like to design graphics. There is really no limit to our imagination and creativity. 

Probably, the only limitation is “YOU” yourself if you do not take the initiative to move the very first step. Now, I have taken the action to move my first step and I’m glad that I have done that. Reason being that I find that I can design decent web graphics although I have never actually learnt graphics design before.

I was from no idea about what to design to now creating presentable web graphics. Even my niece also says that my web graphics design look cool and her compliment really makes me feel happy. 

Well, I won’t be complacent after hearing her kind words. There are still a lot more that I need to learn and practise. I want my web graphics design to be as professional as possible.

Now, my new website is about 80% complete after working on it for close to 5 weeks. I want to complete most of the items that I wanted to cover before letting it go live. Thus, I won’t allow myself to do a rush job just to meet the deadline. So, stay tuned.

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I am busy searching for ready-made interactive forms using PHP scripts online these few days while working on my new website. 

I plan to set up a Contact Us page and a request form but I find that it is not so straight-forward to do if you do not know how to embed Javascripts and PHP scripts to the HTML pages to make them work properly.

Here is a snapshot of the Contact Us page :

Fortunately, there are many useful PHP tutorial online to help people in this area. I would say most of these programming sites hold people’s hands and show you step-by-step how to set up interactive forms.

They list down the content of the PHP script files and explain to you what the steps are doing in details besides showing you the look-and-feel of the interactive form. Some of the programming sites even go the extra mile to let you download the sample PHP script files.  

The best part is that most of the sites provide all these information for free. I believe there are many good people out there giving tutorial to people out of passion. 

So, you do not have to purposely go and take up some short courses to learn PHP offline. Internet is the best place to look for information if you wish to learn something.

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I’m in the process of designing the webpages of my new website and targeting to complete it by end of this month. So, I’m rather busy but I enjoy the process of working out my website very much.

I came out with an action plan in the beginning to list down the items that I need to carry out in order for me to stick to my schedule.

I put each action item in an Excel spreadsheet so that it is easier to manage this way. Like what most of the successful coaches often say : “You cannot hit a target that you cannot see”. I think they are absolutely right. 

Make a plan of what you want to do will help to get things going. Basically, what I have planned out is to draft out the website structure and layout on a piece of paper. Then, I transformed the ideas to the Excel spreadsheet in an orderly number listing.

I set priority for each item so that I will do the most important things first rather than trying to do everything all at one go. I also set the date, status and use different colours to alert myself of the progress. 

I would say I’m following my action plan closely although I have missed some of the dates. Anyway, I’m happy with my website design progress.

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I didn’t go anywhere else but working at home last Saturday and Sunday. I was really serious about the training that I would be conducting on Monday afternoon and was spending a lot of time sitting in front of my laptop to work on my PowerPoint slides.

I did a lot of touch-ups to the PowerPoint for myself to do a good presentation. I spent time working at home and I didn’t even go out for shopping at all. In fact, I was spending all my time gathering the information and inserting the relevant pictures to make the PowerPoint slides less boring.

This is the first time that I was doing a formal training to a group of 10 over persons in a meeting room so I wanted to make it a successful and impressive one. I worked on the PowerPoint and polished it till it was ready for me to present it to my audience on Monday.

I think the opening speech is very important as this is the first impression that you will give to other people. It will either make it or break it. So I had spent some times preparing my opening speech by jotting it down on a piece of paper and rehearsing it when nobody was around.

However, I fumbled a few times when I was rehearsing. Anyway, I was not discouraged by this and I was thinking that I could do better on the actual day which is today.

I even did the rehearsal in my car when I was driving to work this morning. I repeated my opening speech several times and I think other drivers might think that I was insane 🙂

Fortunately, the training went smoothly this afternoon and I have finally conducted the technical training for the skilled workers today. What a relief!

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