Saturday, November 21, 2009

Baby talk 101

I wonder if it comes with age, that one suddenly has the abilty to engage with other people's baby and small children. Or perhaps it so happened that lately I started working with teenagers and such that got me comfortable talking to them.

I remember I got so flustered when each time I tried interacting with my 2 year old niece. Well... That was about a year ago. I noticed recently we managed to get some sort of communication going. Probably, again, she's 3 years old now. But the thing I noticed about myself is that I am doing kid's talk with her now, something that I had never see myself doing naturally.

So back to the present, here I was having a late lunch at SLS foodcourt. A family with a baby girl seated next to me. The Dad was eating and The Mum was feeding the little one. A bottle of milk later, she burst out crying apparently from the lack of a sufficient meal. The Dad went off to seek hot water, and The Mum was trying to calm the baby girl down. And then there i was, trying to make faces and get her (the baby) to laugh. I guess I was just short of going "Ku chi ku~... Dunch cry..." etc to make her stop. Guess that might end up with The Mum giving me a wide eyed look.

But anyway, my point is that I noticed I became so spontaneous in such a situation. Not that I find the crying irritating but rather to interact (for lack of a better word) with kids.

Hmmm... I dunno. Perhaps it's always easier to handle other people's children than my own. Well... Until that day comes, I'll take this as training first.



Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Complacency

Perhaps one of the most dreaded attitudes at work. When the work cycle gets a little too routine, one tends to let our guard down, and then things happen due to that oversight.

This happened at work today.

There was a request from another research centre a few weeks back to use one of the lecture theatres under our charge. The email request came about a month before the date of the event. i figured there was still some time, and i did not follow up on it immediately. Blunder #1. Subsequently, I took a week's leave from work for a camp program for kids with learning disability. The guy in charge of the request text me for a confirmation, to which i replied I can only do so when i get back the following week. And when the following week came, i received an email which was mass addressed to all, indicating the talk which will be held at the requested lecture theatre. So here's blunder #2. Since the email was sent out from the Prof of that centre, there i was ASSuming that someone higher up had requested and confirmed with the higher ups from my side and gotten the approval. So i simply ASSumed that all had been settled already. Anyway, there has been a few occasions that i had been 'arrowed' to look after the theatre when there are events on.

So came today when they needed the space to setup for the event tomorrow, no one else in my centre knew that the theatre was booked. WTF?! No one confirmed their booking? Which means that Prof simply mass mailed and stated the venue? How come no one from my centre noticed it?

Now, the main person taking care of the place is my Boss Unit #2. And he is very strict about such procedures of the usage of the theatre. Now, the schedule for the theatre for the next 2 days is actually set aside for other purposes, ie, moving of ALL the equipment in there to another place/room/somewhere. And this schedule is arranged to fit my BU#2's ever busy calendar. So naturally he was damn pissed with all the 'sudden' arrangements.

In the end, we managed to get things resolved, which ended up with many other departments in the campus getting involved due to the change in the date for moving the equipment.

Feels that it's mainly due to my fault, for simply ASSuming that the reservation was confirmed. And that small blunder actually snowballed into such a large scale delay concerning a few other department and people.

Argh... a good lesson learnt this time round. Sometimes things are just too routine and I just took it for granted that things had been handled.

Darn... still feeling lousy about it.

Monday, October 12, 2009

Mobile

Things are getting convenient now that I can blog on the move. Let's see how well is this app on my phone


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Thursday, July 23, 2009

Random "Do You Know?!" of the Day

As adapted from Le Tavern

What is the difference between a cupcake and a muffin?



Simply, if you threw a cupcake against the wall, you would hear something of a "poof!" If you threw a muffin, you would hear a "thud!"

In other words, cupcakes are generally lighter as compared to muffins, which are much heavier (duh..) Cupcakes also have icings on the top and hence resemble mini cakes. Muffins, on the other hand, are plain on the top and have fillings of fruits, chocolate or oats stuff inside, or simply plain inside too.

Whichever the case, together now... "MMMmmmm"

Comparison results as taken from here.

Sunday, July 19, 2009

Late night snack


Planned to sleep, but gotten a little hungry.

Ended up fixing myself a black pepper ham with cheese and peanut butter sandwich. And finished off with a cold mug of... milk.

Heh, first meal on the bear's birthday morning.

Cheers!

Tuesday, July 07, 2009

Jigsaw Mania



This was the result of 3 nites of effort on putting it together. I kind of flipped my room upside down dug the jigsaw out a couple of weeks ago after suffering from a bout of Jigsaw fever at work.

Bought this "The Dog" series about 2 years back and completed about 25% in a few days. Subsequently, not wanting to finish it so soon, it was left under the bed nicely wrapped up and was there ever since. Until a couple of weeks ago when Dad finally decided to pack it all up because it had been there collecting dust. And a couple of weeks later, I decided to take it out again and finish it. I guess it's also thanks to him for packing it up that I recalled this piece of jigsaw which was left uncompleted.

Anyways, Dad also decided to join in the fun finishing this. So for the past few days we both kicked into high gear (OK, most of it was his effort to sort them out) and completed this much from the 25% that was done before it was kept.

FYI, this is a 1000 piece puzzle. What helped us to finish it so fast because it's numbered at the back. What didn't help us were that the pieces are all identically cut, which means there had been cases where the numbers fit (when fitted from behind) but the picture on the front is totally mismatched.

Anyway, progress is so far so good. Guess by the time I get home from work tomorrow it would be completed already.

Saturday, July 04, 2009

Ouch

Been having this backaches lately for the past months. Sometimes my lower back would be so stiff and sore that it hurts badly.

Couldn't stand, or sit without back support for too long. Sheesh..

Went to a chinese physician last Sat and got my back massaged. It felt so much better and relaxed. At least for much of this week, there wasn't this nagging sore and pain down the back literally.

So on Friday I decided to start the morning with a swim before I headed to work. For one thing, the exercise was good after a short break of a few weeks. Nice to feel the stretch of the muscles. The bad thing is... my back is hurting again. And it seemed that I have also strained my left knee.

And sitting all day today didn't really help. Until the paracetamol kicked in.

Ouch! >_<

Thursday, July 02, 2009

One intention to another

Earlier this evening i met a friend who wanted to introduce a weight management program to me. Having reluctantly fallen into his marketing technique a few months earlier, and the numerous appointments he tried to make since then, I finally relented and meet him to it over and done with.

The first thing which added to my already unwillingness to meet him was that he tried to reschedule the appointment to Tuesday... on the day itself. To which I replied that I already set an appointment for that day. And in the previous week when he called to arrange, he mentioned he would call on Wed again to confirm the appointment. Naturally that would be a proper thing to do when setting a 'business' appointment. But... he didn't. So today, I was tempted to sms to ask if our said arrangement is still valid, but I stopped myself. Well, HE was the one who set the appt, so it's HIS responsibilty. I was wishing that he didn't remember so I didn't have to go.

By lunch time, he did sms. And the second thing which got me annoyed was that in the message he said "Hi, see you at 6.30pm this evening?" And i went wtf.. we fixed at 7pm wasn't it?

I replied, "Hi, we arranged at 7pm wasn't it? That's the earliest I can reach town. If you have another appointment, we can always reschedule." And secretly hoping that I don't have to meet him this evening. He then replied. "7pm is fine." Damn...

Ended up I did go for the appointment. Reached there on time at 7pm and went up to the company office. Lo and behold! What i saw when I got out of the lift was the branding of a direct sales company. So why was I not surprise that such weight management programs are only offered by such companies? I'm not saying they are bad. But rather they are very effective during the course of the programme. The real challenge comes in when the program ends, and the willpower to maintain the proper eating and exercise habits come from the individual alone. Now, to me, that's the tough part.

Now comes the 3rd incident which totally put me off in meeting this friend. HE WAS LATE FOR THE APPT! I invited myself into the waiting area for a good 20mins before he came out from his other appointment. Nevermind, such things happens. But I'm already in my switched off mood already. Or in other words, I'm in a biatchy mood. So when he introduced the program details, I just said wat came to mind about the post-program scenarios.

He invited me to do a free body checkup on an OMRON weight scale and body fat analyser. And also a Biophotonic scanner which does a deeper scan into other stuff in the body. This cost $5. Well, I'd say this is the most valuable info I gotten out of the whole session of about 30mins there.

Now the biophotonic scanner is interesting. I place my palm on the scanner and it is able to measures through the fleshy part of my palm
1) Anti-Oxidant score - the index of anti-oxidants in my body. And I got 27k out of the ideal 50k values
2) Weight
3) Body Fat %
4) Skeletal muscles % - in layman's terms, the quality of muscle. Mine is a 32% out of the ideal 34% and above
5) Visceral fats - are fats surrounding the vital organs. Tougher fats to lose and a case of higher concerns than those fats beneath the skin. I got a score of 17 out of the ideal 8-9.
6) Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) - measures the rate of energy burned by the body at state of rest. Mine's about 1950 which is on the high side. Which also means i get tired and hungry easily. For a reference, those yoga masters' rate are at the region of about 600-700.

For me, those few that are a cause for concern would be the visceral fats and BMR.

So at the end of the day, I may be annoyed with this friend of mine, but I guess the checkup was worth the while afterall. Then again, they probably have tweaked the scanner to give an offset reading. Haha.. but well, tweaked or not, the results did get me looking into what I can improve on for my health.

So let's see... time to kick up my swimming regime a notch higher!

For those who wants more info, just click on the url for each of the highlighted factors.

of sushi rolls, raw fish and Guitar hero

For some unknown reasons, I decided to prepare sushi for the people at work today. Well, actually it was after the housewarming at Bibi's that I decided to practice more sushi making.

Sushi rolls were the easiest to make, compared to Nigiri Sushi (those which are knead by fingers and have the raw fish/ingredients on the top of it). And since there were a few exchange students from Germany in the company, I decided to go for cooked ingredients instead. Well, not exactly cooked in that sense, what I had were imitation crabsticks, sausages, ham, cucumber (Japanese) and raw salmon (for the colleagues and I who are suckers for salmon sashimi)

Guess the taste of the rice was just right. Getting the filling to sit right in the centre of the roll proves to be quite a challenge. Halfway through, one of my colleague came in to help as well. As I was done with the crabstick roll, sausage roll, black pepper ham + sausage roll, so my colleague helped with preparing the salmon. Made another salmon roll before we sliced up the rest for sashimi. One thing is for sure... we need a really sharp knife to cut the salmon into thin slices.

Kudos to my colleague, she managed to slice the fillet down to quite thin slices. And she did it with a smaller fruit knife!

And I do admit, the sushi tasted really good. :D

In other news, i borrowed my nephew's Guitar Hero World Tour for Wii, complete with the guitar and drum set. Looks like I'll be jamming the next few nights!

Friday, March 13, 2009

Ungrounded vs underground



Decided to buy breakfast from the school canteen this morning. Somehow this bun attracted me.

What I saw was "Red bean (Underground)" So I thought to myself, "Hmm... Trust the Japanese to come up with something new like this. Guess I'll try it."

Duh... there's nothing underground to UNGROUNDED Red beans lor...

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

The day I decided to stay home...

...well.. it's one of those days where I exercised my rights to choose and not go to work due to illness.

Yes, I have also fallen victim to the infallible cough, sore throat, runny nose/flu outbreak that had been on for quite a few weeks since after CNY. I completely lost my voice on Sunday, but that's due to another story.

Been to the doctor's on Monday morning to get some medication for the coughing I been having only at nights. And seemingly also in cold places the coughing act up quite badly. And also due to my loss of voice, I managed to convince the doc to give me a cough mixture with a higher potency. Muahahha!

Anyhow, my colleagues suggested I take a day off to rest at home, at least keep the virus away from work before everyone in the office gets it. So working along that line, I decided to do so today and catch up on some recuperating.

It wasn't exactly all that serious that I had to be confined to bed. So in the late morning, I went out and got my car serviced. Got the oil changed, some scanner lights installed (so that I can be reminded that I have locked the car. Something which I always forget if I had done so or not) And also a voltage stabilser fixed, which is a small device that supposedly smooths out the voltage from the battery and puts the power to use more efficiently. The result, better transmission and fuel saving. Anyway, I shall see how it helps in the fuel consumption in the next few days.

Went jogging in the evening with a friend. Have a bit of hesitations whether to run or not, since I was coughing. And there's also a broken left knee which hurts if I did anything more that 5km of running. Anyhow, I did it. Carefully be aware of my knees and managed to do 4km today. Timing was still quite within the target I set, and can be better if I keep up the training.

I remembered just yesterday, I texted a friend and she was mentioning abt wanting to take some time off and rest at home (aka nua at home) and I replied saying I wished I could do that as well and had been a while since I really done so.

I guess today I did it. And the feel was great! :)

Monday, February 23, 2009

I almost had a Dream

So on Sunday i went over to the Hello! shop at Comcentre to check out the latest smartphone. It's the HTC Dream which is the first mobile smartphone to be powered by Google's operating system.



It was pretty tempting to upgrade to a new phone with all the new techie stuff and all that are available. Somehow I was lured by the notion of the phone going for only $38. I was expecting a crowd at the shop during the promotion on saturday and sunday. But I suppose HTC Dream isn't as enticing as the iPhone when it was launched here back last year.

But I guess it's rather true. I had a chance to play with a display set in the shop. It's quite a novelty having the keyboard (at least for me) and the keys weren't small and narrow to use. The rest of the hardware is nothing new though. The basics nowadays for a typical smartphone contains the usual bluetooth, Wifi, GPS, camera (a 3.2 megapixel one), etc. Yeah the hardware is good enough for me. However, what got me thinking was actually the software that were provided. Considering it's a Google property, naturally the calendar won't work with Outlook. And this means I'll need to manage my calendar with another application. And there isn't any document software in the default programs. Well, considering there is a keyboard, I reckon I would fire up the Word equivalent applications rather frequently if I have the phone. But anyway, such apps would be avail in the e-shop for downloads in the future. The sounded quite like what Apple is doing for the iPhone, ie, putting up the apps in iTunes for the users to download.

I suppose Google is heading this direction too with this new OS of theirs, lovingly named as Android.

So my conclusion that evening? I figured I can still wait for the next Android phone to be avail in the market. Also wait for more apps to be avail before getting such a smartphone. Besides, $38 for the phone is only valid if I signed up with the highest phone plan which provides me 2GB of data usage per month. If I ever did choose that plan, I would be blogging from my Dream henceforth. And not to mention watching Youtube all day from my phone. :-)

Friday, February 20, 2009

The 5 Love languages

The Five Love Languages

My primary love language is probably
Quality Time
with a secondary love language being
Acts of Service.

Complete set of results

Quality Time: 10
Acts of Service: 8
Physical Touch: 7
Receiving Gifts: 2
Words of Affirmation: 2


Information

Unhappiness in relationships, according to Dr. Gary Chapman, is often due to the fact that we speak different love languages. Sometimes we don't understand our partner's requirements, or even our own. We all have a "love tank" that needs to be filled in order for us to express love to others, but there are different means by which our tank can be filled, and there are different ways that we can express love to others.

Take the quiz