Monday, August 31, 2009

People U Love The Most

Just now I was chatting with gf, she claimed she knows me well. She listed things like what I like to drink, where I like to go, etc. to prove her point.

One of the items was: "ppl u love the most - ur parents". I smiled but said nothing. Her answer is not wrong, and practically it is correct. "Whatever..." I heard myself said.

Good nite.

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Life as It Is

Just got back from a movie session with gf, and she hinted about marriage. Evidently she is looking forward to having a family in Singapore, as she starts to search for whole HDB unit for rent. I looked at her pretty face, and thought this is actually not a bad idea also. Life gotta move on. Heh. :)

Saturday, August 22, 2009

Friday Night, Cheers

The blogger interface today looks slightly better, though there are still some glitches here and there, it is much more usable now.

With a can of Guinness stout beside me, I am still sleepless. There are questions in my mind that I need answers:

- There are problems with audio at work, the platform can't play music files reliably, the source codes involve I2C, DMA and I2S. A precursory look seems the softirq setting in DMA is fucked. I gotta look into the components one by one on Monday.

- How to tell whether my OpenSolaris is running the 64-bit kernel on my new, shiny Athlon II X2 240 processor? There is nothing shown by 'uname -a', except the following:

SunOS opensolaris 5.11 snv_111b i86pc i386 i86pc Solaris

- I somehow miss mak, but I have no plan to contact her, mainly it serves no point. A relationship is bilateral. A dreamer I am, I am thinking maybe one day she will work in Singapore, and hey, maybe we can buy a flat in Singapore and have our own family. Hahaha. =)

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Blogspot is Weird

Blogspot is weird, the blogging interface is messed up and a lot of features are not available. I can only write some simple paragraphs for now.

Anyway, thanks for reading :)

Friday, August 14, 2009

Should I? Should I?

I just attended an interview with IBM. Nothing much, just an ordinary interview, with ordinary questions.

That position is on test automation, to be based in Singapore and is almost exactly like the job I had back in Intel: automation system, perl, multi-sites, multi components on the system, regular meetings with the north American counterparts, and all the politics you can get from a big company and multi-site projects.

Since I have a lot of relevant experiences for this position, it won't be much problem for me to secure this job.

Truth be told, I am quite happy with my current job, though I know too well this ibm job will give me a chance to go to Austin for a month-long training... At least, I will be in the same country as mak, even just for a short while. Throughout the interview, I was struggling within myself, should I take this job to go Austin? should I....? But what could I do if I was in Austin, what could WE do even if I could see her? Getting married? All in all, we are out of touch completely for close to 10 years... But I still miss her, for some unknown reasons, maybe it was the scent of her hair, maybe it was because I like her naivete to try to help Africa, or maybe I am a hopeless silly guy...

At the end of interview I told the interviewers I would think long and hard about this position, thanked them, and left.

On my way home, my mind was filled by questions: should I? should I...?

Sunday, August 09, 2009

My OpenSolaris is Up

Just a quick update I have my desktop running after getting it an Athlon II and a Gigabyte MA785GM-US2H motherboard. Yes, everything seems working for OpenSolaris 06.2009 and I will resume my technical blogging soon.

I got a blank email this morning, and it is my most familiar foreign object. Hmm....

Thursday, August 06, 2009

Random Thoughts

I just implemented a Linux system call feature to toggle a gpio pin. There are other ways to accomplish that, I just want to revise about system calls implementation.

All these days I do on and off think about mak. This is damn weird and silly.

Rumor has it that Apple is going to introduce tablet PC. Oooh, hope it is not the exploding one like some iPods do...

Singapore is damn crowded and today it is hazy. Bad air quality

I am very tired now.

Tuesday, August 04, 2009

The Advent of Chiwan

Chiwan (pronounced as Caiwan, rhythms with 'shine one') is a new term that caught a lot of attention world wide. This term, coined by a newspaper in South Korea, refers to the combination of China and Taiwan, and hence the name 'Chiwan'. Some people refer it as 'Chaiwan', however since there is a district in Hong Kong is called 'Chaiwan', I think Chiwan is a better term.

Taiwan and China were not cooperating much last time due to different political stances, but the Mah government represents a new set of faces towards the communist country. Ties are getting warmer and a few trade pacts were signed. For one Taiwan has accumulated a lot of technical know-hows after decades of experiences designing high-tech gadgets for big names like Apple and IBM. China has a vast eager market and almost unlimited supply of cheap labors. The effect of the brawn of China married with the brain of Taiwan has sent chill down to splines of all the major economies. South Korea is among the first to feel the impact from this strategic alliances as it sees its export dropped.

I am typing this blog as an engineer in Singapore, and I am looking at the new dynamics with interest. What I am pretty sure is Singapore will be hit by Chiwan eventually. As the pool of engineering talent dries up because of lower pay, companies will have to move to places where the talents are.

While I was typing this post, there is news about Seagate to shut down all the operations in Singapore and lay off as many as 8000 workers.

I will say this is just the start of the economy crisis...