Last Episode of "Phua Chu Kang Pte Ltd"

Yesterday was the last episode of the TV series "Phua Chu Kang Pte Ltd". This show, with Gurmit Singh as the main star, has been running in Singapore since 1997, totalling 10 series. It started in 1995, as part of the TV show "Gurmit's World". Ever since, it has won various awards in Singapore, and it seems even gained a bit of fame in the region.

Gurmit plays a renovation contractor named Phua Chu Kang, concerned with making money and making the most out of his money (like, exploiting his employees...) It takes simple, everyday events and turn them into jokes. Phua Chu Kang speaks Singlish, a local dialect of English that mixes English with Chinese (and its dialects) and Malay. So much so, that this character was mentioned by our then-Prime Minister in an attempt to get people to speak proper English.

After so many years, it is time for all good things to come to an end, and the series wrapped up with a reunion of the cast. The end brought about lots of tears, but I am sure that somewhere down the line, they will come up with specials every once in a while to bring this great cast and this great series back to us, even if only for a while.

First in class

I came in top for the course I am attending. It is an achievement to be proud of. But then again, I am also aware that I came in top because of my fellow coursemates. Interacting with them actually helped me to learn a lot more than I ever would learning by myself. Through interactions and discussions with them, I managed to improve myself. Thus, I owe my success not just to my own effort, but also to the help I got from all those attending the course with me. Thank you guys!

Laziness is a spiral

A superior said to me today, that laziness is like a downwards spiral. Once you get into it, it is very hard to get out.

Thinking about it, it is quite true. Once we are used to a slower tempo of life, it is very hard to get back to a fast-paced life. Once we grow complacent, it is hard to motivate ourselves to do something again. It takes a lot of willpower to continue to do something, even when tired or stressed. To me, I am thankful that I have taiji practice. No matter how tired I am, I keep telling myself that I should not miss my practices, for once I miss one, I will grow complacent, and every time I am tired, I will start to convince myself not to go for practices. Before long, I will probably be practising once a week, or even less, as I grow more and more complacent.

And when I apply this to life, it means I don't grow lazy, I don't stop doing something just because I am tired. It means that even when I have time, I find something meaningful to do. Yes, resting is meaningful too. But I know when to rest and when to do something else. That is important because if I allow myself to drop into the laziness spiral, I will have an even harder time trying to climb out.

New Car! Part 4

I think I discovered something about the Honda Airwave today. Nothing important, really, but just thought I want to share this. With the Toyota Vios, I was doing 80km/h at about 2000rpm. But with the Honda Airwave, I was doing only about 70km/h at 2000rpm. For the Vios, at 2500rpm, I was going at 100km/h. With the Airwave, similarly, 2500rpm got me to 100km/h.

This led me to conclude that, the Vios is actually designed for fuel efficiency at 80km/h, while the Airwave is more efficient at either 70km/h, or when going above 100km/h. This is interesting because Singapore's speed limit is 80-90km/h for the expressways. For Japan, which is the market that the Airwave was designed for, the speed limit on normal roads is 60km/h and 120km/h (if I recall correctly). So maybe the Vios is more suited for Singapore conditions, while the Airwave will perform better (in terms of fuel consumption) in Japan.

Does anyone have similar experiences? Or differing views?

New Car! Part 3

Okay, the car review that I promised.

The Honda Airwave is a 1.5l car, with 5 doors (a hatchback). The rear seats can be put down to increase the boot space, or they can be lifted up to fit in tall objects (such as plants) in the rear passenger space. Compared to other 1.5l hatchbacks, the boot space is way bigger, and when the rear seats are lowered, there is even enough space to fit in a bicycle!

Driving it is okay, cars nowadays have automatic transmission and power steering and that more or less makes them all the same when driving, if you are not picky. Accelerating is a bit less powerful than the Vios, though. I guess this is because it has a heavier chassis but the same size engine. The initial pickup is okay, it is the mid range acceleration that is not as good. But the engine is not as noisy (maybe because it is new?) as the Vios. Even when going beyond the 3000 rpm mark.

One thing I like is that the doors are heavier. Not filmsy like the Vios. Makes it feel safer sitting inside the car. Of course, European cars are even more solid, but then, they cost more too.

The moonroof is a great feature, while it cannot open, it gives a great view above. Passengers will enjoy the great view (the driver should be looking ahead, not up!) though the sun in Singapore will mean that it may get hot inside the car. But it does make the car feel like confined.

Fuel consumption so far is about 15km/l. I probably can do better if I take out some stuff from my boot. With a bigger boot, there are now more things in there...

The need for defence

There was a letter in Saturday (27 Jan 2007) forum of The Straits Times, in which a reader wrote in about the use of our budget. It probably triggered from the ongoing GST talks, as Singapore is going to increase our GST (aka VAT) so as to provide a source of funding for more welfare (called Workfare in Singapore) benefits.

A large portion of Singapore's budget is spent on defence. The reader's comment was that, since "war is neither imminent nor anywhere near imminent", why are we spending so much on defence? Well... it does make perfect sense that you don't spend on something that you don't need now, or something that you are not going to need in the future. But then, defence, like insurance, is something that you don't know when you will need, and by the time you know, it is usually too late to try and get started.

Defence is like insurance. You acquire it with the hope that you never have to use it. Also, with the new security environment of transnational terrorism threats, militaries are called upon to do more than they traditionally had to do. With expanded roles, costs can only go up, or at the very least maintain as they were.

So cutting defence spending for welfare benefits is like reducing your insurance premiums so that you can finance the car loan. You can't expect the insurance company to still cover you for everything that you used to be covered for when you are paying them less.

DNS-312H Network Attached Storage

I went out shopping yesterday. Came back with a new network attached storage (NAS), which is basically a standalone file server. The DNS-312H from D-link, which comes with 120 GB of storage space.

Installing it was a headache. The 2wire hub that comes with Singtel's mio plan uses 192.168.1.x for addresses, but the default address of the DNS-312H was 192.168.0.101, which ended up with me having to do quite some configuring before I could convince the NAS to get its IP from DHCP.

In trying to get into the configuration for the NAS, I had to work on some of my network settings on my WinXP PC, and now, the workgroups is still quite messed up... I couldn't access the NAS from my WinXP PC... yet to be fixed.

So I gave myself some time, and went to try to link up on my Linux box instead. With Fedora Core 5 still installed, I didn't know that FC5 does not support smbfs anymore... I was trying to mount the NAS, which I could, but the file permissions were screwed. After wasting hours, I gave up.

Today, coming back from work, I tried again on my Linux box, and actually found a solution on the Internet. All I had to do, as root, was:
/sbin/modprobe cifs
echo 0 > /proc/fs/cifs/LinuxExtensionsEnabled
Then, when I tried to mount the share, it worked! I had to set the uid and gid, though. But at least it worked! I could read and write files at last.

Time to get back to solving the problem with accessing from my WinXP PC...

The Future of Singapore

I was talking to my wife the other day about the culture in Singapore, about the way people think, and how we have a culture of meritocracy with a smack of elitism. My thoughts? Well, in the past, when we were a small and young nation needing to quickly get up on our feet, we needed a group of strong leaders pulling us forward (setting the right direction) with a big base of obedient followers doing the common work. This was probably the birth of the scholarship scheme, and how we started down the track that brought us to where we are today. From a newly independent nation struggling to make an identity for herself, we have progressed to become a world-renown regional hub.

But what now? While the current system may have been adequate in bringing us up to speed, now that we have made a name for ourselves, how do we carry on? Our focus on education and developing our human resource has brought us here, yet in the next 10 years, the other countries in the region, as well as cities in China and India, would probably catch up. Given another 20 years, China and India would probably progress far ahead of where we will be if we carry on down this road.

What we need now is not a group of strong leaders and a large group of obedient followers. What we need now is to find a way to create a new niche for ourselves. As a small country without natural resources, we are disadvantaged and this will show in the next 10 to 20 years. What we need to do is to find a niche that only a small nation like us is able to do. We need to find for ourselves a purpose in our existence in this world, leveraging on our size, turning our disadvantage into our edge.

So what should this edge be? Let's see what our strong leaders can come up with.

About visions

Today, my group was having a discussion about visions. Having a vision helps to focus the efforts of everyone in the group towards a common goal. It helps to keep people committed to achieving something. Believing in a vision keeps people together.

But it also reminded me of the Dune series by Frank Herbert. In the story, Paul Atreides, and subsequently his son Leto II, had seen a vision. Because they symbolised that vision, they were treated as a prophet (Paul) and a god (Leto), and enjoyed great power given by virtue of their positions. Yet what happens when the idea of the vision (ie, the concept that a vision exists) becomes more important that achieving the vision? What happens when having a vision becomes a hindrance to achieving that vision? Or, even worse, what happens when having a vision is actually a danger to achieving the vision?

Internet Down

My wireless router at home went down on me last week. And my brother decided to take this chance to upgrade to a new plan that was being provided by our ISP. And guess what? It took them one week to come to our place to install the new setup. So for a whole week, I was without Internet access! So no updates to the blogs. No way to read emails, no way to check forums... argh!

Well, everything is back now, so expect updates to the blogs to come in as per usual.

Second Life

Recently, in my travels through the Net, I found this MMORPG known as Second Life. It seems quite interesting. You can find out more about it from the official site, or maybe read some of the pages below.

Second Life Herald
Second Life Insider
Gwyn's Home
ANSHECHUNG.com
Living Second Life Weblog
Miki's Sanctuary

Thank you Vios!

After running 69575 km, I have traded in my faithful Toyota Vios for a Honda Airwave. Thank you, my first car, for serving me well during the past 3 years.

Porridge Shop

There is a teochew porridge shop along Simon Road that I have been patronising for more than a decade. Before it moved to the shophouse along Simon Road, it used to be a stall in the old Simon Road market (which has since given way to Kovan MRT station). My father used to bring the family there for supper when I was still schooling. During my JC days, I used to eat supper there on my way home whenever I hang out late with my friends. After starting work, I have dinner there regularly. The food there is not exactly cheap, but it has the home-cooked flavour and the shop has a cozy feeling, with a friendly owner.

However, as of 30 Dec 2006, the shop has closed as they cannot afford the rent. Apparently, the landlord has decided to raise the rent by quite a margin, and the porridge shop owner has decided to move out instead. They still haven't found a place yet, though. It will be a waste that such a nice place has to stop business. Then again, even moving to a new place may not bring back the same cozy feeling. After all, it is both the location and the attitude of the shop owner that brings out the cozy feeling.

Goodbye Ikariya

Today, one of my goldfish died. We named it "Ikariya" because its lower jaw sticks out and looks like it is always angry. We had Ikariya since September 2005. It was fine until yesterday morning, when we came back from East Coast Park and found it weak and dying. There was no sign of disease or injury. There was nothing we could really do. This morning, it passed away. Ikariya will be missed.

Welcome 2007!

Happy New Year! Welcome 2007! Goodbye 2006!

I spent New Year's Eve at East Coast Park. We pitched a tent (see below) and watched the fireworks (over Esplanade) from outside our tent. It was a good thing that it didn't rain, even though this is the monsoon season. Besides the fireworks, the ships anchored off East Coast Park also did their own mini "fireworks", firing off red "shooting stars". We didn't hear them sound their ships' fog horns, though. Maybe we were too far? Maybe the crowd around at East Coast Park was too noisy and drowned the horns out?


Woke up this morning expecting to see the sunrise. What we saw were clouds obscuring the sunrise... by the time we caught a glimpse of the sun, it was already halfway up the sky. Oh well, at least it didn't rain.


I went to fish at the jetty near Amber Beacon (we had pitched the tent near the jetty) after that, the catch report is here.

Brunch was eaten at the new Burger King near Long Beach Seafood Restaurant. A competitor for MacDonald's! But the new BK is still quite "raw", it probably needs some time to run in and for the staff to be trained properly.

We got home to find one of our goldfish in dire straits. We quickly took measures to revive it, hopefully it survives the ordeal.