Post No. 100 - New Year Resolutions

New Year Resolutions for 2007
1.) To Graduate by this May after 7 long years of tertiary studies
2.) Get my CCDA by June; I fulfilled the CCNA resolution last year
3.) Hit 5:30 for Full Marathon in this coming year.

Not much, but it's the quality that counts ;-)

Christmas gatherings~

Was quite a fun Christmas this year!

Attended @er Christmas gathering at Cecilia's place on 23rd Dec
Highlights of event -

• @ Dances - I need more practice on these

• FOOD
  

• I'll remember the strong choco smell flooding Cecilia's Kitchen
  
• a bit salty but tasteful Tomato-Egg Soup, 西红柿蛋汤
  
• exotic Parkistan's dish of Prata with Ladyfinger.

• interactions and games - played the "never ever game", revealed quite some of shock to me

AEC annual Christmas gathering at Sandy's place on 24th Dec
Highlights

• More FOOD! (boy, I think the following days workout is going to be tough)
• Mee Siam - prepared by Sandy, hey I think you should be a caterer with that excellent skills.
• Delicious Choco Logcake by FM
• Fried rice by JS's GF
  
• Nice and warm feeling seeing friends which I haven't seen for quite a while

• Jackie Chan's - Rob B Hood, which had the weird problem playing Canto so much that it became unbearable, imagining switching between Canto and Chinese on and off and cinema's laughter in the background.
  

• As well as Jackie Chan's - Legend, which I kindda regret bringing cause everyone's attention was stuck to it once it started, making us miss precious time to interact.
• Wine - freak~ My wine was kept too long; it had residue in it and we didn't realise it; think I should avoid keeping wine too long the next round.
  

• Movie - Which happened after the main event, Ben Stiller's "Night at the museum" was really quite funny.

• The Mahjong Session - I got so concuss that I bao 3 jia. :(
• The talk of the night - as usual, someone's problem, we really need to get the habit of talking about something else.
  

Got concuss after the AEC's gathering; hence missed the NTU Class party at Settlers on 25th Dec; sorry folks, really don't meant to miss it.

All in all, a fruitful Christmas, thank you dear friends for the cards, gifts, presents, SMSes

Many apologies that I didn't really give out any gifts; spent little time going out for Christmas shopping. I promise that I will pay more attention to that in future years. ;)

SwissCash *Beware, this might be a scam!!!*

Came across this highly suspicious "mutual fund" called SwissCash when my mom asked me to see this prospectus that someone happened to pass to my dad.

"Total Returns: 300% returns in 450 days."

I am a above average investor yet I rack in around 10% - 12% per annum. Warren Buffet, the world's top investor (also one of the richest around) rack in average 18% to 20%.

They are able to give 300% over 450 days.

Go figure.


P.S. It is not MAS approved, so if you invest and got into any deep shit, you can only eat your way out of the pile of shit.

Links of interest - http://northerncalm.blogspot.com/2006/07/swisscult.html

HK Ripples Conference

It's quite fun to be anticipating a trip to Hong Kong for an @er event. New things to learn, possible new friends that we could make as well as a tour around the beautiful city of Hong Kong.

But I never knew it would be such a headache to organize a tour out, everyone is like having thousands and one ideas about the HK trip that even the air tickets purchasing is a nightmare, this is especially so when no one is replying via the email channel; anyway, we'll be hoping to flying to Macau (maybe a short tour there?) via Tiger and returning via Jetstar.

All will go fine, I know it. Can't do much at the moment, so maybe relax a while and doing a bit of FYP here and there to relax the tension.

Meanwhile there's the Student Nominee (SN) application coming out, good time to force myself to get my testimonials from my dear friends in Vanco AP~ keke~ Be useful even if I don't go for the @ exchange. ;)

More about the Ripples Conference - 21 Jan to 24 Jan HKU-LC
Link to poster

New CDs as my own Christmas Presents

I just got Fish Leong's new CD 亲亲 and Eric Chiroku's "Spring of life" - an instrumental.
More reviews on this later...

Read, follow and manifast

A good post by Alvin about setting your surrounding to remind you about your life objectives. Sounds quite useful, so I'm gonna give it a go.

Many, many thanks to Wensan!

Just yesterday when I was talking with the Kevin, who took over me at Vanco AP about getting a testimonial done. Shortly after some discussion, we dragged in Wensan, our Level 1 team leader about helping us drafting a testimonial (reason: all the crap about guy engineers aren't really that good at drafting these sort of stuff and more importantly she's from a Biz related course) She mentioned that she recently got lots of new arrows behind her so I mentioned that it's okay and I'll draft it on my own.

Then today evening, an e-mail flew in around 10pm, she helped me with the drafting of the testimonial! I'm kindda surprised as I told her to get on to her more important stuff. Isn't it sweet of her to get it all done! And it's near perfect furthermore (the slight defect is that it doesn't contain lots technical stuff, but the fact that she had it done for me more than covered that)

Once again, I sincerely thank my dear Wensan for spending time to help me draft out a testimonial for me.

Just to share with all what beautiful work she had done ^_^

Testimonial for Nicholas Ong Yuh Shen

This is to certify that Nicholas was an intern at Vanco Asia Pacific for 6 months from _____ to ______. During this period, Nicholas was exposed to various aspects within the business ranging from customer service at the helpdesk to actual customer installations.

It was a pleasure having Nicholas as an intern and a co-worker due to his cheerful disposition. He was both an independent worker as well as a team player. He has also been very generous in sharing his knowledge with new interns. In fact, Nicholas is always obliging in offering assistance to his co-workers when requested to.

Additionally, Nicholas is highly responsible and can be counted on to complete tasks assigned. In fact, he has on several occasions gone beyond the call of duty either staying behind to pick up new skills or to ensure that outstanding issues during the day is resolved before the next business day. Nicholas is a highly motivated individual as evidenced by his proactively taking up courses which would enhance his effectiveness at work.

Despite his pleasant disposition, Nicholas is able to stand his ground when required especially in ensuring that vendors deliver on services promised. He has also displayed leadership qualities by spearheading a team to draft and compile a handbook for all future interns.

As a network engineer, he is able to not only configure and install Cisco routers and Netscreen firewalls but also troubleshoot and rectify any customer faults reported.

This is testimony to Nicholas’ good work ethics as well as his maturity in carrying out all tasks assigned.

HR Trends

Sounds to me that IT is still quite hot property.

Hopefully the trend will last a few more years~

NLDS 2006 Officially Over

Finally, after the past 1 week of hard work, NLDS 2006 is officially over.

It sure has been tough work given the short duration that we have been given to come organise the venue and stuff, but all those hard work sure didn't go unnoticed as we see the feelings that the participants are feeling as they departed from the conference.

Although the conference is far from perfect, some hiccups here and there. I'm sure that future OCs will strive to improve to make each conference better.

I've got so much so much to type, all those feelings; when I see some of my new found friends left, yet there's still so much to do, little time to spend~ this period will be deeply etched into my soul.

Okay, time to look towards to the future, cause that where all my dreams are!

-More photos at http://nlds.flarez.net

NLDS 2006

National Leadership Development Seminar be happening from 9 - 12 Dec. Hoping to learn new things as well as meeting new friends from overseas. Things will definitely get done by tomorrow afternoon so that we can have a wonderful seminar over the weekends.

Gambatte!

Marathon's Outcome

Well, this years marathon came to an end, thanks to the cool weather, top my personal best with 6:54 although I think I could have done better with more systematic training.

My Goal for 2007 is to complete the marathon with a timing of 5:00, quite a realistic goal if I go and run 3 times a week in school or with the SAFRA runners. Would even be easier if I shave a good 10kg off the scale.

Hmm, in fact, I'm gonna shave 1kg for the start for the month of Dec.

Running results for 2006

Official Photos of run

Life is like a game?

Sounds fun, don't you think?

End of the marathon week.

Finally the end of the Marathon Week - Exams and SCSM.

NLDS is coming around the corner, so preps are on-going.

Most importanting, another new phase with the FYP as well another sem of work up ahead.

Gambatte!