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There are a few job fairs held recently at downtown. Its aim is apparently to recruit suitable candidates to fill up the job vacancies. But I was told that most of those jobs are recruitment from the service and non-technical sectors. 

A few of my colleagues were interested to go to the JobDB job fair which is held at Suntec City from 20-22 March. Some of them said that they were planning to go to the job fair in the early morning so as to have a better chance of landing a job 🙂

Well, I think it is no harm going to the job fair and see how bad the global economic downturn is affecting the local people. So, I went there to find it out myself in the late afternoon on Friday.

Surprisingly, there wasn’t a big crowd when I reached there although I had expected it to be overwhelmed with job-seekers. The visitors or job-seekers were required to register themselves at the counter before they were allowed to enter the exhibition hall.

I did a quick registration and then showed the entry pass to the security guard before going in to the job fair hall. I was immediately attracted by the voice of a speaker who was giving his presentation on job-seeking techniques.

So, I went to listen to his job-seeking talk teaching job-seekers about the skills that they need to have when writing a resume as well as attending a job interview. Well, I think this talk was useful and informative enough to help job-seekers to do the preparation.

Then, I walked around and browsed through most of the booths after listening to the talk. To my surprise, 30-40% of the booths were not recruitment booths but institutional booths to get people to sign up for their courses.

 The promoters told the job-seekers that this is a good time to upgrade themselves so that they will become more employable when the economy becomes good again.

However, I think the immediate need of job-seekers, especially for those people who have been retrenched recently, is to get a job first rather than to spend money to further their studies. 

If the people don’t even have the salary to bring money back home or pay for the bills, how they will have the money to pay for the course fee then.

In my opinion, job fair might not be a good place to find a job for those people who have been retrenched or for those people who still have a job but wish to change job. 

Therefore, I don’t really recommend my friends to go to job fairs to try their luck.

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As mentioned in my previous Blog post, I have found some short poems that are written in very few words recently. The poem is so short that it only contains four words in it to make a great poem. It’s just amazing! 

Basically, this type of poem is called the four-line long poem. There is only one word in each line and each word has four letters. It’s short and sharp.  

The four-line poem resembles the Chinese’s four-character idioms or Chengyu which literally means that “to become (part of) the language”.

Interestingly, the four-line poems also adopt the use of rhyme if not rhythm in them just like the conventional poems.

I guess you should be able to get the inspiration of creating your own four-line long poems after watching the video clip. So, let’s be creative!

My Favourites :

I like to read classic and contemporary poems since I was a student. I had also written a few poems back then during my school days and also during my early working days. 

Most of these poems were humourous poems written to amuse myself. I had also written a few poems as a form of gift to be given to my ex-colleagues during special occasions because I didn’t know what to buy for them during their birthday, farewell day and so on.

I remember one of my ex-colleagues who had received my poem was so impressed and touched that she regarded my written poem was the best gift among the birthday presents that she had had received on that day.

Some of my ex-colleagues were jealous about my poem and they said it sarcastically that their efforts in buying the expensive presents for the birthday girl just cannot match a written poem that didn’t even cost a cent. 🙂 Well, I’m not a cheapo and I think maybe this is called : “A gift from the heart“.

In my opinion, it is not too difficult to write poems if you had the interest in poetry. You can read up more poems whenever you have the opportunity. Meaning to say, the more you read poems, the more you know the technique. The flow of writing just comes in naturally.

I especially like those poems that have an interesting use of rhyme or rhythm in them.

For example :

If I have faltered more or less
In my great task of happiness;
If I have moved among my race
And shown no shining morning face;
If beams from happy human eyes
Have moved me not; if morning skies,
Books, and my food, and summer rain
Knocked on my sullen heart in vain;
Lord, thy most pointed pleasure take
And stab my spirit broad awake.

~ Robert Louis Stevenson

I have also found some short poems that are written in very few words recently. I think I will share it here in my Blog in the next few Blog posts. Stay tuned.

My Favourites :

I have been organising for a birthday dinner for one of my friends since three weeks ago. Her actual birthday was on 11 March but she was just too busy lately to have the dinner with us last week. 

So, we had to postpone the birthday celebration till one week later that is today to have a be-lated birthday celebration for our young friend.

Sometimes, I think it is not so easy to be the organiser of certain occasion to gather friends together. Reason being that everyone of us is busy with our own work and family so we may not be able to find time to meet up.

Besides fixing the date, we also have to choose the type of food that we want to eat and the restaurant that we want to go to. The food choices could range from Sushi to Arabic food to Asian delights.

The mode of communication involves email, SMS and phone call. Sometimes, you just don’t get a reply back from a very busy friend. So, you have got no choice but to send several reminders so as to ensure the other parties really get your message.

It’s time to turn up for the appointment once your message manages to get through. Thus, the four of us have finally met up at the Grand Hyatt hotel’s Straits Kitchen restaurant this evening to enjoy the Peranakan buffet dinner.

I think it is always fun and enjoyable to get a few good friends together for dinner. It is a moment for everybody to catch up with each other and see how everyone is doing lately. How I wish we could meet up with each other more often!

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I read an article through a subscriber site and it says that the important factor of any success story is as follows :

How true it is! No victory happens by chance! I definitely agree with this motivational quote.

Of course, there are also some exceptional cases whereby the persons do not have to do anything and yet they can enjoy the victorious results. These people are just the lucky ones. But, how far can they depend on their luck? I just wouldn’t know.

Most if not all of the people have ever heard of success story. So, you can base on the success story to track down the key elements that lead to triumph. 

These key elements are :

• At the end of the journey
• At the finishing line

What you need to do is to look back and see all the different routes, the twists and turns, that lead you to success. From that point, it becomes very obvious that your success didn’t happen by chance when you have reached your dream.

You can use this method to your advantage by knowing that your success is not determined by those haphazard events surrounding you. You can actually start calibrating your strive towards your goal.

You can search for those events that will lead to success. Alternatively, you can also create those events yourself. While doing your best to use the key elements mentioned above, you are actually speeding up the process of achieving your goals in no time. 

So, remember this : “No victory happens by chance!“.

My Favourites :

My family and I are attracted by the various economical lunch packages promoting low-cost meals lately. The huge discounts as advertised in the newpapers and flyers are just irresistible.

So, we took the opportunity to go to one of the Chinese restaurants to have our lunch today. The boss of the restaurant was a famous chef who has set up his own Roland restaurant at the East Coast Park.

He is one of the four heavenly kings among the Chinese chefs who have made themselves famous by cooking delicious Chinese cuisine.

We ordered a mixture of Dim Sum, seafood and other Chinese cuisine at one go.

Shark Fin Soup :

Shark Fin Dumpling Soup :

Peking Duck Skins :

Pepper Crabs :

Soft Shell Crabs :

Siew Mai :

Fried Bean Curb with Shrimps :

Fried Shrimp Dumplings :

Fried Shrimp Dumplings with Salad :

Chicken Claws with Dilly Beans :

Fried Carrot Cakes :

Rice Noodle Roll (Chee Cheong Fun) :

After tasting the food, I would say the chef has earned his name for a reason. The Dim Sum, seafood and other Chinese cuisine were really delicious.

My family and I were very satisfied with the food there. It is always fun to enjoy good food with my family on family day.

My Favourites :

Yesterday was the second Friday the 13th (13 March) in year 2009 and the previous one was in February. The next Friday the 13th is in November as there are altogether three Friday the 13ths in year 2009.

Many superstitious people believe that Friday the 13th is a bad luck day. However, it turned out to be a very lucky day to the stock market investors especially in Asia. Reason being that the second Friday the 13th in 2009 had the biggest one-day gain in Asia this year.

Suddenly a ray of hope was shining down on the regional markets and enabling the stock market investors to enjoy the biggest one-day gain. Many traders were rushing back into the stock markets to buy the shares of the battered banks as well as blue chips.

Some people believe that the cause of the abrupt spark in the Asian stock markets is due to the Wall Street’s strong three-day rebound marks which is a key turning point for the global financial markets.

Therefore, you can see that Friday the 13th is not always a bad day and it could turn out to be a very lucky and profitable day instead 🙂

My Favourites :

Today is the second Friday the 13th of 2009, I went for walking exercise with my two friends at the national park. One of my friends was retrenched recently so she got the time to join us for a walk on my rest day.

I drove to the nearest MRT station to pick her up at around 7:30am and then headed to the national park to meet my usual walking friend. 

When we reached the national park, we were surprised to see a big crowd of people was gathering at the field. Then, we realised that it was a cross-country day of a secondary school. 

Each student was tagged with a 4-digit number on their T-shirt. The colour of the number tag was black fonts with orange background for the girls. Whereas, the colour of the number tag was black fonts with green background for the boys. 

We also saw many small kids below the age of 7 were playing at the playground in the afternoon. Coincidently, today is their outing day with the guidance of their nursery teachers. 

So, we saw many small children and big children everywhere today. Probably, my friends and I had chosen a wrong day to come to the national park for our walking exercise as it was too crowded to make a relaxing walk.

My Favourites :

There is an interesting and cute video clip that leads to the debate of web users on whether organic food really tastes better than conventional food. The superstar appearing in this video was none other but a cute hamster named Hammy.

The creator of the video is Kenneth who did a scientific experiment trying to find out the answer to the important question that leads people to compare the taste of organic food and conventional food. As human beings might get affected by marketing hype, the only way to get rid of this biasness is to do the experiment on an animal. 

In this case, a cute hamster was used as an unbiased test subject probably because hamster has superior taste buds. The person who conducted the experiment has designed it in such a way that it lets Hammy the hamster to repeatedly choose between an organic food item and a conventional food item of the same type. 

Interestingly, Hammy had chosen organic food in 60% of the trials. The simple experiment shows that Hammy the hamster prefers organic food to conventional food although Hammy had chosen the conventional walnuts over the organic. This is an exceptional case that shows the fascinating inconsistency. 

Some of the people may think that the result is not conclusive enough. But who cares? This is just a simple test by using the scientifical way to find out the taste preference of an animal. So, why take it so seriously? 

I would just take it as an educational piece of information as well as an entertaining video clip to de-stress myself. Inside the video clip, you’ll find that Hammy the hamster is so cute and lovely.

My Favourites :

As I had mentioned in my previous Blog post, I already know the techniques of creating a free-hosted Blogger Blog as well as a paid self-hosted WordPress Blog. This is because I had taken up a WordPress Jumpstart course in 2007 so I’m actually very familiar with the WordPress Blog setup process.

Thus, I don’t think I have learnt many new stuffs in the Wealth Academy business skill workshop on the topic of Advanced Blogging except for the type of software used for installing the WordPress Blog. I was taught to use Fantastico to install Blog since the WordPress Jumpstart course as it is one of the most popular installation softwares so far.

Fantastico De Luxe icon is a blue smiley which can be found in the web server under the “Software / Services” section once you log in to the cPanel administration panel. Fantastico is a commercial script library that automates the installation of web applications to a website. Its scripts are executed from the administration area of cPanel.

However, one of the drawbacks of using Fantastico is that the WordPress software version is not the latest. For example, it could give you an older WordPress version such as version 2.5.1 when a newer version, say 2.6.2, is already available. You need to upgrade the WordPress Blog version after you have installed the old one.

Actually, I didn’t know about this Fantastico drawback until I had attended the WA business skill workshop on Advanced Blogging. The trainer, Stuart Tan, told us that one of the methods to overcome this drawback is to use the Simple Scripts which is a one-click installer that automates script installation.

So, I think one of the benefits of attending the WA business skill workshop on Advanced Blogging on 02 March is to discover Simple Scripts and learn how to use it to install the latest WordPress Blog software. Well, it is still a gain after all.

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