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I happened to find a video clip featuring some special effect done on the screen of a laptop. It looks cool and I was wondering how the creator of the video clip had made it.

After searching the web for information, I came to know that this kind of cool stuff is called green screen effect.  It is a type of chroma key which is a technique used in video, film and still photography. The purpose is to replace a portion of an image with a new image such as a coloured background with a different setting.

I think the creator of the video clip has brilliantly utilised the green screen effect to bring out the attention-grabbing and cool laptop effect to his/her audiences. I’m sure you will be amazed by this person’s creativity.

My Favourites :

I just came across some very inspiring and motivating quotes created by Pravs J. Although I don’t know whom Pravs J. is or what this person does as a living, I’m touched by the 7 meaningful quotes written by him/her.

I find that the inspiring and motivating quotes were created with words of wisdom. The lines are full of philosophy. Here is an example :

When you keep saying you are busy,
then you are never free.

When you keep saying you have no time,
then you will never have the time.

When you keep saying that you will do it tomorrow,
then your tomorrow will never come.

~ Pravs J.

Does it sound familiar to you in our daily life? Do you have friends or family who often tell you that they are busy and have no time for you? Do you put things off till tomorrow when you can actually finish it by today?

If yes, you are in fact hearing all kinds of excuses from the people around you and this is the thing that the quote is trying to tell you. So, why do you want to be a procrastinator? Hmm…..Things to ponder.

My Favourites :

I have had conducted a technical training to my co-workers at the beginning of this year. That was the time that I started to use the PowerPoint template to prepare those training materials that I needed for the training session.

I did not use the corporate PowerPoint template again until recently when my colleague from the procurement department told me that the American vendor would be dropping by to pay us a visit. I was invited to sit in and was told to highlight the list of issues that I had compiled in the past few weeks to the visitors.

Everybody knew that I had a list of issues that were sent through email. We would also be using it for discussion but nobody told me how I should go about using the information to show it to the visitors, ie. the American vendor.

Then, I told myself that it would be more effective if I could export the information from my lengthy email to a PowerPoint template. What I could do is to summarise the long sentences into point forms; to insert relevant pictures to aid the audiences in visualising the issues better; to show some figures so that they could understand how the fallout rate is like, etc.

I remember I started to work on the PowerPoint slides in the afternoon of a Thursday. Then, I continued to work on it at night after I went for a walking exercise with my friend in the evening. Next morning, I spent about 45 minutes in writing the opening, contents and closing for my presentation.

At 10am, I went into the meeting room and started my presentation to a group of 6 people, including our management personnel, Quality staff and the American vendor comprises of a Vice President of Engineering and a Manager of Sales.

Guess what? At the end of the presentation, both the Sales Manager and Engineering VP thanked me sincerely and repeatedly for what I had presented to them. They had even requested me to send a copy of my presentation material to them so that they can show it to their people about the mistakes that they had made.

This is my first presentation and I’m glad that it is a well-received one. It gives me a lot of encouragement and boosts up my confidence to another level. I would also like to thank the American vendor for their generosity in giving thanks to me.

I think the technical training that I had conducted earlier in February this year has indeed helped me a lot in doing my presentation well. I gained the experience from there and I just needed to do the process again even without rehearsing.

This shows that you just need to start somewhere when learning new things and you will be alright when you take off.

My Favourites :

The last time that I was preparing the PowerPoint slides for myself to conduct a training to a group of more than 10 skilled and semi-skilled co-workers at my workplace was somewhere in February this year.

After that, I did not conduct anymore training because we were getting busy in the second half of the year. In other words, it seems like most companies would put the emphasis on getting people to conduct training or sending staff to attend training when there are not much activities going on 🙂

Perhaps, this is the only way to keep everybody busy as well as to upgrade the skill levels during the global economic downturn. I feel that this is beneficial to both the trainers and trainees.

Reason being that the trainees would be ready to apply what they have learnt to use it on their job when the world economy picks up. On the other hand, the trainers would be given an opportunity to conduct the training and pass on the knowledge to the fellow co-workers.

As a trainer, I feel that I have indeed learnt a lot of things through the process of preparing for the training session. Although I did feel pressurised and stressful at times, I find that the feeling was good after the training was conducted.

It gave me a lot of satisfaction and fulfilment for being able to deliver and teach a group of people. It was a good start and I hope to conduct more trainings whenever I’m given the opportunities in the future.

My Favourites :

Today is a public holiday in-lieu of Deepavali which took place on last Saturday (17 Oct). I feel fresh and great this morning because I don’t have to work today 🙂 It’s indeed a wonderful feeling for staying at home on a Monday morning!

I’m not sure how many people would share the same sentiment as me. I guess there might be a lot of people would feel the Monday Blues at the beginning of a brand-new week and they would call it a blessing if it is a holiday 😉

I took out the Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) book which I had left off at Chapter 6 before going to Thailand. I continued reading it after I came back and spent the whole morning reading it. The NLP book has 12 chapters altogether and I have finished 10 today. Hmm…I think my reading is progressing well and I should be able to finish reading the whole book by this week.

I stopped at chapter 10 and kept the NLP book before going out for lunch with my family. Initially, my nephew wanted to have lunch at the Swensen’s restaurant but changed to Seoul Gardens later because my niece said that she wanted to eat Korean-style Barbecue Buffet.

Korean-style BBQ Buffet at Seoul Gardens Restaurant :

I think it was quite fun by dumping the raw foods such as seasoned chicken meat, prawns, fish and so on onto the BBQ grilling plate and let them sizzled for a while. Alternatively, we dumped the vegetables, black fungus, mussels, cuttlefish, fishballs, prawns, etc. into the pot filled with Chinese herbal soup.

That was how I spent my public holiday in-lieu of Deepavali and I have had an enjoyable day today 🙂

My Favourites :

My colleagues and I left the hotel at around 5pm on the last day of our 5-day training trip in Thailand. The sky was dark and started to rain when we boarded a taxi to head towards Suvarnabhumi Airport.

It was raining so heavily shortly after our taxi was driving for less than 5 minutes. We saw long and white lightnings were drawing across the sky almost everywhere. Suddenly, we saw the lightning was striking those high cable posts located near the roadside.

We also saw white sparks were falling off from the cable post and landed on the road just 10-20m in front of our taxi. The taxi driver was stunned and we were shocked to see what was happening before our eyes!!

Fortunately, the taxi driver was driving slow enough in the rain. I wouldn’t know what would happen if our taxi was driving faster by 10 seconds. Phews……..it was a narrow escape! What a thrilling experience, huh?

Finally, we managed to reach Suvarnabhumi Airport safe and sound. We checked in our baggages immediately and entered the departure hall. I took some photos of the Thailand legacy displaying in the departure terminal while I was waiting for the flight.

Churning the Ocean of Milk – centerpiece in the departure terminal :

Shopping Alley in Departure Terminal of Suvarnabhumi Airport :

Later, we found out that all flights were delayed due to the heavy rain and ours was delayed for more than an hour. This means that we would touch down Singapore past midnight. Oh no! What a tiring and sleepy return trip that we have had 🙁

My Favourites :

Knowing that the internet speed would be extremely slow after 7:30pm (Thai time), I got to make some adjustment by pushing back my dinner time and check emails earlier to avoid the heavy traffic online.

After the daily reporting was done, I would go to the night street food stalls to have my dinner at around 9pm.  There was a whole stretch of street food stalls lining up side by side along the designated pavement. You can find fruits, raw food, cooked food, desserts, soya bean drinks and many strange foods selling over there at the Thailand night street market.

I went to the nearest noodle stall which was located just outside the hotel to take my dinner. I had patronised this noodle stall for 3 consecutive nights because I like the delicious Wanton noodle served there as compared with some other noodle stalls.

The main road over there was busy at night and I was sitting at the table facing the fast moving cars. Suddenly, something caught my eyes while I was enjoying my Wanton noodle. I saw an elephant was walking along the roadside and there was a man riding on top of it 🙂

I was stunned and could not believe my eyes. Why was there an elephant walking along the roadside of a busy road? Strange, huh? Then, suddenly a Thai man was approaching me and requesting me to buy a packet of sugar canes from him for 20 bahts to feed the elephant.

Thai Man Riding On An Elephant :

Back View of Elephant Walking Away Along Thailand Roadside :

Well, I just gave him the money and let him feed the poor elephant even though I didn’t know what was happening at that moment because of the language barrier.

The next day, I told my colleagues who went to Thailand with me for the oversea training about what I had encountered that night. Then, I came to know that it is quite a common scene in Thailand for seeing a man riding on the elephant along the roadside. Anyway, being a foreigner, I find it strange and amusing 😛

My Favourites :

I stayed in a hotel that provides free broadband internet service when I was having my oversea training in Thailand last week. I was delighted initially because not all hotels provide free internet service like this one 🙂

However, I later found out that the internet speed in the hotel room was very slow especially after 7:30pm (Thai time). The internet line got disconnected and then took a long time to get connected again.

Most of the time, it would take about an hour just to send one email during peak hours at night! If it were not because of work, I would not bother to send status report via emails and get myself frustrated with the extremely slow speed 🙁

I just cannot stand it so I didn’t update my Blog during that 5 days either even though I have had something to write about. I had been hitting the refresh icon over and over again hoping to get connected but was in vain. The waiting time to get online again was depriving my sleeping time too.

Whoever received my emails throughout the 5 days might not know that I had been trying very hard to get them through in the late nights. But I have no regrets because what needs to be done has to be done no matter what the circumstances may be.

My Favourites :

I was in Thailand from Monday to Friday this week for oversea training. I knocked off at around 5pm (Thai time) each day and went straight back to the nearby hotel without going to anywhere far from the accomodation.

There were two technicians came along with me and most of the time they were trying to go to somewhere else rather than staying inside the hotel room. However, we don’t understand Thai language and most of the Thai people also don’t speak English so it’s kind of difficult to communicate if you do not have a Thai friend with you after office hours 🙁

The two guys love Thai massage and they managed to find their way to the massage parlour despite the language barrier. But I think I should be the one who needed the massage service to relax my muscles since I have much more responsibilities and feel much more stressed out than them 🙂

Anyway, I would rather stay inside the hotel room to check emails and write my daily status report than going for shopping which will make myself feel even more tired.

Hmm…I begin to suspect that I might be a workaholic who enjoys working even during my own private time 🙂 I think I need to balance up between work and personal life. If not, I would soon become a live working machine that does not know how to enjoy life 🙁

My Favourites :

October is a very busy month as there are a few special occasions, celebrations and travelling for me in the first half of this month.

1st October :
– Children’s Day

2nd October :
– My Lovely Niece’s 13th Birthday

3rd October :
a) Mooncake Festival Day
b) Private Barbecue Day
c) My Colleague’s Birthday

4th October :
– Luggage Packing Day…..for me 🙂

5th-9th October :
– Oversea Assignment Days

Actually, there were two more special occasions being scheduled this week but they had been postponed to a later date due to I have to travel for 5 working days.

My former colleague has just left the company within a short notice so I think I can only buy him dinner when I have the time.

Another former colleague of mine has also invited me to her house for the Hari Raya celebration but it’s just too rush for me to attend so many activities that happened almost all at the same time. Otherwise, it is going to drain away my energy. Furthermore, oversea trip is often tiring 🙂

So, I think it will be better to re-schedule some activities to the second half of October so that I can concentrate more on the oversea work assignment and do a better job.

My Favourites :