Where Does the Time Fly?

Without realising, it’s already week 6 of the year and I am still wondering where the time went. Usually they say, “Time flies when you are having fun”. But in my case, the work load at my day job and school have been piling up and fun lately has not been in my dictionary as I try to aim for the deadlines that have smacked me hard in the stomach. I could hardly breathe last week but since everything has calmed down ever so slightly, things need to be picking up speed again by today.

I started to forget the things that I was doing in my personal life. I would read emails and make mental notes of answering specific emails yet I had forgotten to get back to the task when I deviated off course. My to do list started to get ultimately messy so I reorganised it based on office and school and then I totally had to ditch the thing when people were telling me they needed drafted letters tomorrow because they were off for a few days and so on.

I don’t seem to be having enough time lately. Whether this is because of poor time management or that I have swallowed more than I can chew, but attempting to multitask has left me with all half completed works which means that they are all incomplete.

I am glad to say after 2 years working here, I finally got the booking system running in the company portal. Having the system is not making life easier but a lot more checking and auditing is done and a breakdown of how many orders were made and how many were fulfilled can be easily extracted now. Still feel like perhaps there is still a long way to convince the team to integrate it to our daily operations since I still have to teach them step by step how to use the portal to do data entry… Currently no time since I am trying to close the billing that is a few months old. The thought of the financial year is coming soon just makes me wonder whether time will slow down for me to catch up.

While I was Sleeping – iPad is here

Depending if you were physically in an asian country, but since I am and while I was sleeping Steve Jobs was introducing the new product they had called the iPad.

Hardwarezone was on the ball by updating about their views on the product at the wee hours on their website here.

iPad – Apple’s answer to Tablet computers. What do you think about it?

I will update my views later.

Entrepreneurship Speaker Series

The government in Singapore is pushing for entrepreneurship and I have had the opportunity to listen to 2 seminars offered by the University Entrepreneurship Speaker Series (UESS) from Nanyang Technopreneurship Center at Nanyang Technological University. Both sessions I have placed my personal thoughts on my knowledge blog.

1) Open Innovation and Entrepreneurship

2) Deriving Values from a Venture Capital Investments 

It was definately a great experience to be able to go and listen to people speak about this topic. For those in Singapore interested in Entrepreneurship, go to this link here at Singapore Entrepreneurs.

Back To School

Back to classes for NTU Masters students for Information Studies / Systems and Knowledge Management tomorrow and I have to admit my knowledge blog has been dry and quiet for too long and looks like spiders have been making cobwebs on it.

December was time out from school for the holidays and I have to admit that during the whole month it was fully packed for me trying to catch up with back logged work, going for my driving practical test, getting a new citizenship, getting my grades for semester 1, and the list goes on.

But I am back to school on Monday and listening to a song W placed on his facebook page, I feel hyped up already!

Will post and share about the things that I learned over the weekend related to “Endnote” with the good librarians from NTU on Saturday.

[Update Jan 24 2010: Check out the Researcher's Skill Workshop here!]

The Last Book I Read…

When was the last time you picked up a book and you read it from start to end?

I have only been picking up books to read that was related to my studies… other than that my other books have been sitting on my shelf collecting dust under the section of “To Be Read Soon”.

I remember I use to have to do book reviews when I was in Grade 7 and 8 for my English class. I wouldn’t have time to read the book so I would buy Cliff Notes and read them and then flip through the book and try to pull quotes from the book to support the ideas being presented from the Cliff Notes. And it never really worked because I didn’t quite agree with the Cliff Notes in the first place. There was also a time when I watched the Hollywood versions of the books and then just wrote a book review on the movie which theoretically meant I did a movie review. And somehow I always picked the movies that never followed the book’s story and I got caught out.

Thinking back, I truly don’t think I read enough books. I can’t even remember what the title of the last book I finished reading was which isn’t a good thing. In Singapore, the National Library allows people to borrow books for a time frame, usually free for Singaporeans and Singapore PRs only? I wonder if the locals know to take advantage of this service.

New Kickers In My Town

It’s been almost 2 years with my striped converse shoes which I even blogged about getting it on February 10th 2008! As faithful companions of my walking adventures (which doesn’t seem like a lot even though they have a big hole at the bottom of my heel), I bought myself two pairs of shoes yesterday at a really good deal. Have I totally become Singaporean “Kiasu” when I followed a sign that had stated ”SALES 80%”?

Oh well whatever you call that, I got myself a pair of Neckermann, they have sandals just like Birkenstock but Neckermann is a fraction of the price (cheaper in another words). However I got myself their look alike Converse shoes design. I wasn’t sure if it would last me though but it felt good to wear them and it was about $40-50 cheaper than Converse for this normal black design. Perhaps I will update on the quality of Neckermann later after a good walk abouts with them.

 

Another pair of shoes I got were Puma. The model is ”Esito L 2 Wn’s White Hortensia”. They aren’t my favourite pair of sneakers from Onitsuka Tiger “Mexico 66″, but I still love this Puma pair even though my mom’s convinced it’s because of the purple since it’s one of my favourite colors. But my only argument to that was, “You don’t see me buying Converse in purple!”.

 

Driving Instructor in Singapore

Are you looking for a very patient and understanding driving instructor? Well let me introduce you to David Puan!

He’s a professional driving instructor that taught me at bukit batok driving center. He also taught at SSDC. He teaches for classes 3 to 5 auto and manual transmission. (UPDATE: The instructor got a new vehicle and thank you @Lvin for the update: it’s a blue auto Honda City.)

Give him a call at 97120290 if you are interested and ask for more information!

I only had to go for the TP test one time and I passed! His passing rates are impressive so if you are wanting to learn how to drive in Singapore, give him a call. He speaks English and Chinese.

Greatest Achievement 2009

My greatest achievement this year is finding that life’s greatest things are not things rather it’s the journey we embark ourselves upon. We find so many ways to measure ourselves to standards in society which often looks at how much we earn per annum, the material things that we have or even what position we are at our work place, which in a way is society’s way of categorizing us of our competencies. When was the last time one stood still to see others and really see them for who they are? When was the last time one stopped to take a deep breath? Has achievements been degraded to the number of deadlines that one meets in a week, month, year, etc? To finally realize that there is more to life than work and that comparing my progress to others is not important anymore but rather understanding that each day has it’s time limitations and you work with the time you have to make memories that will mean something to you taking in the good and the bad. To realize that living means staying alive one day at a time.

Undisclosed Desires – Muse

I heard this song on M’s facebook page and really liked it. Thank you Museyfied for posting it up on youtube.

Lyrics:

I know you’ve suffered,
But I don’t want you to hide,
It’s cold and loveless,
I won’t let you be denied

Soothing,
I’ll make you feel pure,
Trust me,
You can be sure

I want to reconcile the violence in your heart
I want to recognize your beauty’s not just a mask,
I want to exorcise the demons from your past,
I want to satisfy the undisclosed desires in your heart

You trick your lovers,
That you’re wicked and divine,
You may be a sinner,
But your innocence is mine

Please me,
Show me how it’s done,
Tease me,
You are the one

I want to reconcile the violence in your heart,
I want to recognize your beauty’s not just a mask,
I want to exorcise the demons from your past,
I want to satisfy the undisclosed desires in your heart

Please me,
Show me how it’s done,
Trust me,
You are the one

I want to reconcile the violence in your heart,
I want to recognize your beauty’s not just a mask,
I want to exorcise the demons from your past,
I want to satisfy the undisclosed desires in your heart

Secrets Revealed

I attended Dr Mel Gill’s NLP seminar yesterday and got an opportunity to meet a different spectrum of people. I have always found it hard to open up especially even when there’s a small group of people and coming to such a seminar, I learnt ways, techniques that can be so easily adopted in my life. 

He shared with us his new project, The Meta Secret which is a sequel to The Secret. The Secret is a book and a movie basically talking about the laws of attraction. Click on the link on “The Secret” to watch a 20 minute video clip oposted by aSecretAgent. Oprah herself talked about it on Larry King (posted by adriancel) here where I agree with her that,

“It’s not the answer to all questions. The law of attraction is only one law there are many laws working in the world. It is very true that the way you think creates reality for yourself. There are other factors going on so it’s not everything but you can change your own reality on the way you think.”

Dr Mel Gill mentioned how we all have 5 senses: to feel, smell, see, hear and taste. Not everyone uses all these senses the way we should and often people find themselves having certain preferences. They could be more visual, auditorial, kinesthetic and so on. He told us we needed to pay attention on the things around us. To communicate with someone effectively we had to understand the person and be like them to create a connection. Knowing how they are as a person, one can derive how to speak so that the person would understand. All patterns that one should adopt of the type of person they are trying to connect with so that there is common ground.

I definitely had a good time and it was a great experience. Funny how the mind can be so powerful and the brain so complex…