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You might have noticed that I have not been updating my Blog posts for the past 2 days. Reason being that I was too tired when I reached home after working late on Friday night. Then, on Saturday, I sent my nephew to his tuition at around 10am and then fetched him home in the afternoon.

He was supposed to have another tuition at around 2:30pm but the lesson was cancelled due to his teacher was sick. Frankly speaking, I was glad to know that the lesson was postponed to the week day of next week so that I can spend more time doing my own stuff in the afternoon.

I had an appointment in the evening as my Muslim colleague was having an open house for the Hari Raya celebration on Saturday. She was inviting me to her house from 7pm onwards so I took my dinner first because I was too hungry and didn’t take much food in the afternoon. Then, I drove to my colleague’s house and reached there at around 8pm but I was considered late because other guests were already there since 7pm. 

My friend has a very nice and cosy house. I like the decoration and unique furnitures in the house. Her house looks very clean and makes people feel very comfortable. We ate cookies, cakes and some other food that she had prepared for her guests. Her 13-month old daughter is very adorable and active. She had been running about the whole night and playing with her mom’s friends. My friend and I think that the cute little girl might be a “star of tomorrow”. Hmm….we shall see.

All of us just had so much to chat. We talked about our frustrations at work, talked about cars, talked about the weakening global economy, talked about our next gathering and so on. We didn’t bother about the time although it was quite late already. Then, we realised that it was past midnight by the time we left my colleague’s house. 

So, I was again feeling very tired when I reached home. Then, I went straight to my bed to take a nap. However, I was just too tired and was sound asleep even without taking my shower 🙂 Needless to say, I didn’t write my Blog post on Saturday after missing out the post on Friday.

My Favourites :

I like this song entitled “THE ONE” which is sung by Elton John. This is indeed a very nice and great love song that worth listening to over and over again. I admit that I wasn’t the fan of Elton John until I listenend to “The One” song 14 years ago. 

I was in California doing a product transfer in 1994. My former company sent me there with a few of my ex-colleagues. They arranged apartments for us to stay. Each apartment had a dining hall and 2 bedrooms. My roommate and I occupied each bedroom so we had our own privacies.

I remember my roommate liked to stay inside her bedroom most of the time. For me, I would rather stay in the dining hall and watch TV programmes since I had nothing to do after work. I watched TV news, talk shows, movies, documentary and whatever programmes were shown on the TV until midnight.

I would turn on the radio in the morning before going to work and in the evening after coming back from work. I had noticed that many different radio stations liked to play Elton John’s “The One” song. This just shows that how popular this song was during that time. It must be a hit song of Elton John in 1994. 

When I first heard of “The One”, I really love this song very much. I cannot stop listening to “The One”. It still remains as one of my most favourite songs after 14 years. The music, the piano and Elton John’s great voice have made “The One” song one of the most enchanting love songs ever.

Listen to this beautiful love song which is also the soundtrack of the touching movie entitled “What Dreams May Come” — a 1998 dramatic film, starring Robin Williams, Cuba Gooding Jr., and Annabella Sciorra  :

My Favourites :

My friend, the GFF, sent me an email saying that there was a news reporting about a newly-found business idea to fight off business crisis in Japan. It was talking about a Kayabukiya Tavern owner is bringing up a new generation of customer-pleasing waiters. This Sakae house is employing 2 popular and unusual waiters called Fuku-Chan and Yat-Chan in Tokyo.

What is so special about employing waiters to please customers then? Well, it is special because the employees are non-human beings. They are none others but a pair of monkey macaque. The duty of the monkey waiters is to deliver hot towel to their customers before they order their drinks. I think this is just amazing.

Actually, the 2 monkeys were once household pets but now certified restaurant employees. The monkey pair is working shifts up to a maximum of 2 hours a day due to animal rights regulation.

These 2 monkeys are well-appreciated by their customers who tipped them with boiled soya beans. Some of the Tavern customers feedback saying that the monkeys are providing a better service than those real bad human waiters.

Fuku-Chan and Yat-Chan, the monkey pair, are eager and natural to please their customers. No wonder why their customers find the monkeys adorable just like their kids or even better than their own children who don’t listen to them. Some of the Tavern customers are impressed with the monkeys because they understand the customer’s order. They also find the monkeys amazing for understanding human’s words.

So, if you are a business owner who cannot find good employees to serve your customers, I think you can turn to the animals for labour shortages. You never know monkeys can provide a better service than human beings.

Watch the video clip if you are ready for some serious monkey business :

My Favourites :

I think the Toyota iQ Concept is really a cute concept car. It measures 2.98 metres long which is about one foot longer than the Smart ForTwo car. As compared with the 3-door Toyota Yaris, iQ is almost 3 feet shorter.

Smart ForTwo is a two-seater car. Whereas, Toyota iQ is a 3+1 seater which can accomodate more people with its two seats that can be inhabited by adults in the front. iQ is a small and yet spacious car. It has high premium quality features. Toyota iQ can be said to be an ultra-compact vehicle that achieves exceptional space efficiency.

The 3+1 seater are meant for adults plus a child. It is optional to use the fourth seat for luggage space., The driver and the passenger can sit side by side in regular use. You can also slide the passenger seat further forwards makes room for an extra adult and child in the rear.

The Toyota iQ is the world’s smallest four-seat passenger concept car available. Besides iQ is cute by its appearance, it has intelligent space-saving design and miniaturised technology that helps to free up interior space. Toyota iQ may be a better choice than Smart ForTwo in terms of carrying more passengers because it is more spacious and practical.

Here is a video clip showing the Toyota IQ Concept :

My Favourites :

The IT guy of my company has finally come to work on my desktop PC today after it has been down for more than a week. I put up a PC helpdesk request last Thursday after I can no longer have the patience to wait for the IT guy to show his mercy. I just have too many things to do and cannot let the PC problem to bog me down.

Last week, before the IT guy came to my rescue, I was trying to fix the PC problem by copying some of the system files from other PC of the same brand and model as mine to replace the corrupted files of my desktop PC. I did this by following the instructions prompted on the screen. Then, the error messages of the missing files (ntoskrnl.exe and hal.dll) were gone upon rebooting the PC. 

I was delighted to see the problem had gone and was ready to use my PC to do my work. However, the PC did an auto-shutdown after about 15 minutes. The system went to the CHKDSK (checkdisk) mode automatically upon powering up. It showed some bad clusters and unreadable security descriptor error messages. I also heard some “act-act” noise quite frequently. After seeing the error messages and hearing the funny noise, my colleague advised me to get a new harddisk in case the old HDD has too many bad sectors which may be beyond repair. 

So, I went to Sim Lim Square to purchase a new 80GB SATA HDD and some SATA-related accessories after work. It costs about SGD $65. I think the price is quite reasonable as compared with the price of an IDE HDD a few years back. This just shows that the price of HDD has really eroded drastically over the years. 

I removed the old HDD and then installed it as a slave drive to my colleague’s PC to do a CHKDSK, virus scan and data backup on my own. After seeing what I had done, a colleague of mine told me that I seem to be more like an IT guy than the real IT guy in our IT department. Hmm….I cannot agree more with what he had said.

I installed the newly-purchased 80GB SATA HDD to my desktop PC and then passed it to the IT guy to do a system recovery and setup for me. After this incident, all I can say is that it can be very stressful and frustrating to have had encountered a PC problem.  Now, I’m glad that my PC is up. I can do my work, check my emails, surf Internet and so on as usual. 

My Favourites :

A fly-over bridge across rivers for cars, trucks, buses, motorcycles and so on to past by is very common nowadays. What about a water bridge across the rivers? I guess most of us have never seen or even heard of such water bridge existing in this world. 

I never knew there was a water bidge existing until I received an email from my friend, the GFF, who had forwarded the picture showing the magnificent engineering project of the water bridge in Germany. It is definitely an eye-opener for me to see and realise that it is possible to do wonders if one really has the heart to do something and to make it happen.

Here is a picture of the water bridge in Germany taken on the day of inauguration :

The water bridge is in fact a channel-bridge over the River Elbe and joins the former East and West Germany, as part of the unification project. It is located in the city of Magdeburg, near Berlin. 

The water bridge of Germany across the rivers costs around half a billion euros and it took six years to build. This massive project connects Berlin’s inland harbour with the ports along the Rhine river. At the centre of the project is Europe’s longest water bridge measuring at 918 metres. The huge tub to transport ships over the Elbe took 24,000 metric tons of steel and 68,000 cubic meters of concrete to build.

The water bridge of Germany is a gigantic engineering project of mankind. If you do appreciate engineering projects, here is a little puzzle for you as well as for the armchair engineers and physicists.

PUZZLE :
Did that bridge have to be designed to withstand the additional weight of ship and barge traffic, or just the weight of the water?  

ANSWER :
It only needs to be designed to withstand the weight of the water!  Why?  A ship always displaces an amount of water that weighs the same as the ship, regardless of how heavily a ship may be loaded.

My Favourites :

The long-awaited Lexus IS 250 Convertible has finally been unveiled at the Paris Auto Show 2008. The model of the saloon or sedan version is called IS 250 and the convertible version is called IS 250C. 

There have been many reports talking about the new Lexus IS 250 Convertible but none of them has actually got the chance to produce any pictures of the new Lexus IS 250C until it has appeared at the Mondial de l’Automobile in Paris on 02 Oct 2008.

At the Paris Auto Show 2008, the Lexus IS 250C draws the attention of the crowd by showcasing its three-piece folding aluminium top which does so in 20 seconds. As compared with the IS 250 saloon or sedan, the headlamps, bonnet, door handles and mirrors of the IS 250C convertible have been retained in order to accommodate the convertible configuration. 

The car body of IS 250C looks different from IS 250. You can see that the body panels have been re-designed to maintain design harmony with the three-part folding roof. Nevetheless, both Lexus Is 250 and IS 250C have elegant design and good-looking lines.

The IS 250C is not on sales right now. The press release says that IS 250C will be available in spring 2009 in the U.S. followed by UK in the summer. So, we won’t be seeing Lexus IS 250C Convertible running on the road until 2009.

My Favourites :

My colleague passed me a phone call yesterday while I was busy fixing the desktop PC problem in my office. The caller was my other colleague whom I used to work with on the same project 2-3 years ago. He is now posted to work on the site to support the customer. Thus, I hardly have the chance to see him in the company nowadays.

What’s up? I was wondering why he’s looking for me since we don’t work together in the recent year. He told me that he’s getting married and would like to invite me to his wedding dinner. I congratulated him for getting married and sincerely felt happy for him. Guess what? He told me that he had in fact left me out in his guest-inviting list. He felt as if I was the missing piece of a puzzle. So, he said he will get someone to pass me his invitation card the next day which is today (Friday).

To my astonishment, he told me that his wedding dinner will be held on this coming Saturday at the Double Happiness restaurant near City Plaza. Meaning to say, he informed me of his wedding just two days before his wedding dinner. Wow, what a rush and last-minute wedding dinner invitation?

Anyway, let us not be judgemental about my colleague’s sincerity. I know I might just be a spare tyre for filling up an empty seat at the dinner table since this is a very common practice for wedding. You see, I have been going for dinner after dinner recently. One thing for sure is that my pocket is going to be burnt with a big hole after attending all dinners. How to save more money if this goes on and on? Hmm…I wonder.

My Favourites :

The second day of October is my lovely niece’s 12-year old birthday. The family had already made an early birthday celebration for her by lunching out at a Chinese restaurant last Sunday. So, today’s celebration is just a simple one.

My niece will be having her PSLE examination soon. I wish her doing well in her exams. May all her wishes come her way. 

My Favourites :

Today is Children’s Day as well as Hari Raya Day so it is a public holiday and most of the people do not have to work on this day except for some people. My sister is working on shift work so she will be getting a triple pay for working on a public holiday.

Although today is Children’s Day, I didn’t buy any present for my niece and nephews this year. I feel that they don’t really treasure the gifts that adults have given to them. Sometimes, the kids are just taking things for granted so I have stopped buying toys for them unless they ask for it. Furthermore, the cost of living is getting higher and higher, it is better to save the money to prepare for a rainy day.

I don’t have many Muslim friends around so I usually don’t have to pay a visit to their house on the Hari Raya Day or the Celebration Day Of Fasting. I remember my mom used to buy some gfits such as chocolates, sweets, etc. for our Muslim neighbours who were staying next to our old house when she was alive. In return, they will buy some cookies for us during Chinese New Year. We respected each other’s cultures, customs, religions and so on. I think it is a good practice to give and it makes us feel good to be generous. 

I’m resting at home today but I had thought about going back to my office to fix my desktop PC which is giving me problem since last week. It shuts down automatically and then reboots by itself. I’m worrying that it might have something got to do with corrupted system files or virus attack or harddisk problem. I wanted to do a backup of data but the PC keeps shutting down by itself and I don’t seem to have the chance to copy anything out to the external HDD at all. 

The PC problem has really been bothering me for a few days and I can’t do my work conveniently. I approached my company’s IT department but the IT guy was just not friendly and not helpful to provide any kind of help. What’s the point of having an IT department if we need to resolve all kinds of PC problem all by ourselves then?

I was just too lazy to step out of my house so I didn’t go back to my office today to fix the PC problem. I’ll see what I can do tomorrow when I get back to my office. I’ll forget about the desktop PC problem for today. Besides surfing Internet, I took a nap in the afternoon and it made me feel very fresh when I woke up. I think I have been working too hard lately, I really deserve some kind of good rest.

My Favourites :