Tuesday, June 26, 2007

My Happy and Unhappy Weekend

Apology to my loyal readers who check my blog regularly. Last week it had been a pretty busy week for Cuppa, that is right. It was Cuppa's birthday! :D

Why there was a heart on the cake? Don't ask me, I didn't order it....

My colleagues were nice enough to get me a cake (hey, it's a Coffee Bean Tiramisu) and it was pretty awesome to have 30 people sing Happy Birthday to me, though I was a little bit sad for not being to play cake-throwing in the office, neither was I allowed to sink my colleague's head in the cake for his using of such foul-smell hair cream all day long.

Later I had a meal at Brewerkz at Clark Quay with Mr. Snail, LY, and F. Stream. It was a great night for four of us. Four engineers(read: handsome (?), cute (maybe, if you think Smith Chart or Bandgap diagrams are cute), highly-geeky (should I say more? You wanna see what are free-body diagrams?), and available (involuntary for a little bit too long)). It seems I forgot to take picture of LY. :( Sorry man....

F. Stream talking about some very sexy subject (aka. D-to-A conversion) with Mr. Snail


This birthday was memorable because my ex-colleagues in Motorola also remembered my birthday and sent me an email. Needless to say old pals like Steph and Jenny sent their regards also. However I felt I was waiting for b-day wishes from someone...

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Cat, cat, and more cat


I came across this cat a few days ago, it is 90% similar to my old cat. However I don't see this boy/girl for sometime already...

Monday, June 18, 2007

Weekend Lock-Out

"Stuck, stuck, stuck"

The pad lock of my main door was jammed yesterday. After more than 10 minutes struggling with it, I gave up and called the owner. He said he would be there 'soon', which was usually hard to quantify.

Homeless for the mean while, I took a stroll around to visit my feline neighbors. The first one I saw was again the girlie cat just opposite my flat.

I approached and greeted her. Aptly called a girlie cat, that day she wasn't in a really good mode: she just opened a slit in her eyes, gave a lazy meow deep down her throat, and then had her eyes shut most of the time.

Ignorant about how girls feel.

"You wanna talk?"

She turned her face away.

Cared about her and wanted to know what had happened, I further probed her by asking what went wrong. Little did I realize she was growing more and more irritated.

"Fxxx you!!" I heard she shouted at me. Numbed and confused, I stepped back.

A talking cat?

"You shouldn't tell Ah Beng my phone number, you idiot!". Amazing, a phone-wielding cat who knows Ah Beng? Who is Ah Beng anyway?

No, it couldn't be, the sound wave traveled from my back.

I turned, there was a young school girl passing by, talking on her phone. Disappointed, it seemed that cats couldn't talk.

According to Darwin and Hollywood, animals do evolve. Chimpanzees evolve to homo sapiens, bats to batman, spiders to spiderman. But this cat woman is only half-done.

I looked at her, she was in total poise, didn't even raise her eye-brows.

Thursday, June 14, 2007

Yahoo! Instant Messaging

Yahoo! has launched an in-mail chatting facility similar to Google's: The web mail interface now shows your chat buddies and theoretically should allow online users to chat with each other in real-time.

Even though I already deprecated the use of my Yahoo account, I still log in at least once per day to check emails. Needless to say the number of spams is spectacular. However the account is still worth keeping because I have been using it for almost ten years. :)

For those who have yahoo! account and don't like Gmail, do remember to add me as your buddy =)

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Safari on Windoze

Very recently, Apple started its next foray into the lucrative PC market after migrating to the x86 platform last year. This time it ported its web browser, Safari on to the Windoze platform for everybody to try on. (Link is here)

Since I always like Apple products, I downloaded Safari for a test drive. The result is very disappointing though.

To clarify, I am reviewing this product from an ordinary user's perspective, using it just for normal day-to-day chores: online banking, web surfing, blogging, etc. No attempt was made to break it (more on that later). Even though this is still in the Public Beta phase, I am expecting all the normal things to work.

Upon clicking on it, the launch speed is indeed impressive. However the catch is it fetches the initial web site much slower than its peer (relative to firefox, but still faster than IE, obviously). I guess the Apple engineers just launch the skeleton _first_, such that it is fast as claimed, but doing all the initializations right after that.

I also tried to import some of my firefox bookmarks, but the import bookmark feature just didn't work, basically it just did nothing after I specified the file. On top of all these, online banking also didn't work and Safari just killed itself after I keyed in my username and password.
After all these trials, I decide to just leave it around until a more usable version comes out. For now, I still have my good faithful firefox. Using IE? You are kidding. :P

Not surprisingly, Safari already has a security vulnerability discovered (see here). So much for the 'world's best browser'.

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Neighbor Visit Day

To promote a more harmonious living environment, I set out for a visit to some of my neighbors on a fine Sunday evening.

As I strolled along the pedestrian path, I was lucky enough to see a pretty girl just lying lazily in front of the porch and enjoying the warm evening sunset.

When I approached her and said hi, she just opened her eyes slightly, did a stretch, and looked at me again. Slowly she walked and hid behind a flower pot, peeping at me through the leafy greens. She seemed very curious, however in order to care for her 'girl-liness', I guess she just hid somewhere and hoped I could take some extra effort to find her.



I always don't mind to take initiatives, but I need a reason to go on, for now I don't feel she cares enough, at least she can't see things from my perspective (I admit I also can't see from her perspective, but I already have tried my very best to communicate). Well, this is hard to decide. Cats can't talk.

Not intending to crowd her further, I just took a picture and moved on.

I met two more cats, but they were not as friendly: they just ran like hell while I was still 20 feet away. One of them was gone without a trace; another was more cautious and stood some distances away to observe me.


Mission half-accomplished.

Note to myself: Buy some cat biscuits to make myself more attractive.

Monday, June 11, 2007

Weekend Drift

I went to Funam the IT mall on Saturday. On the way home, the Transformers advertisement caught my eyes:


The storyline is about some vehicle-turned robots picked earth as battle ground for some unknown reason. Obviously the US cars, GMC and Pontiac, are the good guys, and as all children and American movies go, there must be some bad guys out there who resemble either Bin Laden, or persons from the evil [China/Japan/Russia/any country that is not agreeable with the almighty US]. In this case, they didn't pick Toyota or China's DongFeng, instead, there is only one bad guy transformed from Saleen car, while the rest are F-22, helicopter or boombox. Why not a vacuum cleaner? More concealable and useful, also it is far more 'evil' in any measure: when it loses a fight, it still has the option to spew junks at its enemies. Following this line, I start to imagine if a transformer of toilet bowl, or even septic tank... I will spare the details :P

My only thought is by spending a huge amount of money to get the movie to use its car names as good guys, GM hopes this will boost sales. However I suspect most people will shy away after looking at the fuel consumption stats and rather be bad guys. Well, maybe.

Friday, June 08, 2007

TGICCHN

It is Friday again and this marks the first Friday of my working in Singapore. In order to celebrate this special moment, I decide to give this special an acronym: TGICCHN (Thank God It's Carlsberg Code Hacking Nite). As convoluted as it seems, basically this means I am doing what I usually do in Penang, code hacking while drinking beer. The only difference here is I am doing this in office and the beer is from the office fridge (yeah, our office provides free beverages, including beer)



However, I am not really thrilled or happy to spend my Friday evening in such miserable way, well, I need to figure out someways...

Thursday, June 07, 2007

Hero No More

Today it was my first project meeting with the rest of the team.

The team lead discussed the strategies and schedules moving forward, and relented there will be some holes in skill sets because two candidates had rejected his offer.

"We need a good QA person who knows statistics..."

In my head I heard a voice: "I am Motorola certified Six Sigma Green Belt with a minor in mathematics"


"Another guy we want him to be able to come out with testing strategies and documentation standards..."

Well... I was the test system architect in Intel, overseeing the whole automated test architecture in entry level network processor drivers...

Three years ago I would have volunteered and taken up these responsibilities, but now, I rather take things slowly.

Mainly the 'long-term relationship' thingie starts to kick into place, although there is nothing much I can do anymore, consciously or not I still allocate some time for her, even though most of the time will end up I stay in the room reading.

Anyway, life as I live through it. :)

Wednesday, June 06, 2007

Cuppa's Foot Steps in SG: A Pictorial Tour

During the jobless last week, Cuppa Chai indeed felt quite adventurous and explored Singapore by bus. This will be an installment of posts, starting from my second day in SG, May 28

The secret lair of Cuppa

Tata, here is my bedroom and I took this shot from the door. The bed is just next to the chair, below the picture, so to speak.

If you have above-average eye sight, you can find the picture has a few circles with english alphabet beside each of the circle (Click on it for a bigger one). The order for the alphabets is starting from top left corner, move from left to right and from top to bottom.

Descriptions as follow:

A. Electronic shaver
B. Oxford learner's dictionary. I seem to keep forgetting words
C. Toilet roll. Its existence is obvious, btw this is the backup roll...
D. Books, books, all books!
E. Wallet, watch, and keys
F. Desk lamp that accompanies me from Penang for over 3 years
G. My good old HP 48G, old but still sexy
H. Stationery
I. My water mug since Purdue days. I used to use it for cooking instant noodle and water during my days in Purdue Village where I had no utensils. Now I spare it for such drudgery and it only serves the role of water mug
J. Inspiron 6400 that runs Windoze Vista. Unfortunately I have no Internet access and since my housemate (actually he is also the owner) has no use of Internet, I guess I will have sometime live without Internet access.
K. Water bottle for sports
L. My IBM micro mouse, small and reliable
M. Portable external harddrive. Storing all my data
N. Extension cord. I brought this myself all the way from Penang, which seems a bright idea.
O. I have yet to get my laundry basket, and I use the cabinet door as my temporary place for putting my clothes. How do I know which one is dirty? Actually there is no hard and fast rule, I usually will put them through an olfactory, or smell, test: as long as the shirt smells ok, I will wear it. For jeans I will wash once per week and no test needed. No I don't apply this rule to underpants or socks. :P

Tuesday, June 05, 2007

Second Day in Office

Sitting in front of a Dell Inspiron 6400 running Windoze Vista, the atmosphere is permeated with pleasant aroma of morning coffee and suffocating smells of eau de colognes from the three guys sitting near me. I doubt if they shower at all but just keep applying colognes.

Here I am: officially working for the second day as firmware engineer in a Singapore company.

Things seem to differ from Moto and Intel: no uniform to wear, no dog tag (badge), bigger cube space, more interesting job scope, beer in the fridge (yeah!), no car and have to use the public transport, am an alien in a 'foreign' country, and also, closer to her...

However there are similarities: same mix of people, familiar food, familiar speak (SingLish LAAH!), familiar weather, and familiar set of drill (go to work, go home, sleep, repeat)

This small island is vibrant and very materialistic. It seems to have a magical ability to lure people to just buy, spend, purchase, and suck the last cent from their pockets. There were a few occasions I had some urge to buy, be it a hand phone, a decent Omega watch, or just a crate of beers. I watched myself with amusement and thought about the whole process. The great Singapore Sales has created an atmosphere where most people think there are bargains everywhere. How Singapore can pull this off is what other countries should learn from.

Final thought: Windoze Vista sucks, it doesn't play well with third party products. For example quite a few Java-enabled websites can't be rendered properly even under its own Internet Explorer. I filed a complaint to my boss and am expecting a new XP machine instead, though down to my heart I still hope to get a Linux machine. However since I will work on some FPGAs, the development tools are only available on Windoze boxes. Duh....

Friday, June 01, 2007

First Post in SG

Dear reader, Cuppa Chai is again back to action after losing access to Internet+phone for over one week. Even now my access is limited, but I believe this will improve as time progresses. :D

Flowing Stream: Go for dinner when you are in SG? Let me know :P