Category: the otnaicus daily

Hah.. Can’t think of a better title to put in for this entry so I’ll just leave the title as that…

Something I’d like to share from John Avanzini’s sermon from two weeks ago when he was at CHC. He preached about the covering that God has put over us. To bring you up to speed, the covering speaks of the leaders that God has put over us. As he was sharing the message, I was just reminded by God that the position of leadership is a very important one. In essence, we are responsible for the flock that’s under our care and it’s a job that one shouldn’t take lightly. A thought suddenly jumped out at me; that maybe I haven’t been as good of a leader as I can be, that perhaps I am able to contribute more into my flock’s lives and that perhaps there is still room for me to grow as a leader. I think at the end of the day, to become a better leader and person means to grow in our character and spiritually. Spiritually because we need God’s guidance in all that we do and in character because we just need to become better and stronger persons. Well, what can I say… Being a leader is not as easy as some make it out to be. Leaders are problem solvers and have the initiative to do things. Leaders should have immense patience. Leaders should have a lot of qualities that one doesn’t come born with but are cultured and nutured as a person grows. Do I see myself as a leader? Yes; but a leader with lots and lots and lots more to learn….

Hope that made some sense….. Moving on…..

I attended the ROM Ceremony of a friend on Saturday. To be more exact, we were attached way back in JC days. Yes, I can say confidently I’m over her since it’s like almost 5 years since the relationship ended. Yes, I can confidently say that I’m happy for her that she’s married to a very nice man (I hardly know the guy but I can be a surprising judge of character; sometimes). But that didn’t stop funny feelings from coming up. I mean, she was my first relationship and somehow, that holds a very strong emotional attachment to me. Whatever it was, it was. So we all move along in life. I’m glad that we’re good friends now, still keeping in touch and all. And I definitely wish her the best in her marriage…. 🙂

Okay… Enough of reminiscing… Time to come back to the real world… Until the next time, cheers…. :Þ

Pardon the topic and content of this post but I just couldn’t resist posting a re-hash of a conversation I heard in a crowded toilet.

Person A lets go of gas

Person A: Did you hear my fart?

Person B: That was your fart. Stinks man. You s*** already ah?

Person A: No haven’t….

It continues.. But I didn’t wanna hear anymore of it… Another person in the loo was sniggering away…

Oh well… Pardon me if I have grossed you out…. Cheers… :Þ

Well well well… Trying out WordPress after stumbling upon it although I don’t know why I have a second blog. I reckon that posts here will be few and far between, and maybe contain some of my more personal thoughts on things.

Come to think of it, how DO you keep a blog private? This site is probably gonna surface in a Google search in a few days time and password protecting a blog is kinda counterproductive to the purpose of a blog. If you really wanna keep thoughts private, then perhaps it should be done offline in a diary. But then again, there are just some thoughts that you wanna share with close friends and they are not able to get hold of your diary. Sigh… Dilemmas…

So. Yes. Tada. I’m christening this blog The Private Musings and it shall be a supplement to the otnaicus times. Do note the key word supplement. Like I mentioned, posts here should be few and far between. And the theme of the posts would be different. Trying to venture into the cheem (aka deep) thoughts and opinions.

Enjoy…

Heh… Yes… My 131st post in this blog of mine that I started ages ago during an exam period in my university days to keep my boredom in check.

Have been pretty busy at work. Even then, I had a revelation just yesterday about the sheer magnitude of the task I have in front of me. Guess I have to start shifting to higher gears at work. Time to buckle down and grit my teeth and get through with things. While I may still be not as proficient as I may want to be at programming, but I’m picking things up fast and with God’s strength and wisdom, I’ll be able to get through it. I’m gonna view this time as a testing and may I emerge stronger…. :Þ

Another first in my worklife. I got an MC today. The doctor gave me two days for a bad tummy and a severe nauseating headache. Checked my blood pressure and pronounced it normal. Said my headache due to tension and so gave me two days of rest. Think I will put it to good use to recover well and then get back to work with gusto…

Got my first phone bill for my mobile. Transferred it over to my name some time back and now daddy no longer pays for the bills. And now, to manage my money wisely… God, wisdom for that also please??

Haha.. Kk… I better go get some rest… Until Edition 132, cheers…. :Þ

Sigh… Walked in this morning to the sound of a high-pitched noise. Got irritated immediately so I proceeded to track down the source of the noise. Walked closer and closer to the Apple servers in my workplace and discovered that one of the hard drive modules in the Xserve RAID has FAILED!!! Thank God it’s the array that we use for backup. Beginning to question the reliability of Apple’s hardware and also the reliability of their partners. It’s meant to be a server component yet it fails so easily. So now awaiting my boss’ response to my email before I make my next move.

Just some rants….. Until the next time….

I have come to a realization that my iPod causes me to yearn for more music. The irony of the situation is that i have almost 10GB of music on my iPod but yet I’m beginning to feel sick of the music that I have on my iPod. Another irony is that I haven’t managed to listen to all the music in my iPod. Weird huh? And so to satisfy the craving for music, I began to dig for my old CD collection for “new” music to add to my iPod. But after listening to it once or twice, I’ll get sick of it again. Why? Cuz they’re not exactly new music and after a while, you’ll just feel “bleah”… Haha… Talk about humans not being able to get enough of anything.

Well, at least I can carry my music collection around now cuz the iPod is 20GB and my music collection is less than that. Used to use a MD player, which I still have around, but that only allowed me to carry around at most 3 hours of music on a MD and I wasn’t a fan of carrying multiple MDs and swapping them around. Primary reason why I splurged and got an iPod. The other reason being that I have wanted one for very very very long.

On a side note, totally not related to the topic of this post. I have been wanting to buy this set of in-ear earphones that cost quite a bit and is only available on the web. Think it is a word from God cuz I just felt that I had to shop around more for cheaper prices then just getting it direct from the manufacturer’s website. Lo and behold, I found another site that carries it. Cost of the earphones is still the same, but I would save a lot in terms of the shipping cost. Almost SGD50 will be saved!!! Haha… God willing, I’ll be able to find a cheaper place to order these.

Also, my original iPod earphones are giving up on me already. And it’s not event one-year old!!! ARGH!!!!!

Okay… Enough ranting for this morning… Time to head back to coding…. Cheers…. :Þ

Yes… I’m back in the blogging world. Haven’t had a lot of motivation to blog. Don’t know why, but I’m back anyways…

So, it has been a rather eventful month in October. A lot of things happened after my last post in the area of work. Can’t really elaborate much but suffice it to say that it’s gonna get busier and busier and more stressful around here. Finally, there’s something being done about finalising development plans so we have a concrete plan to follow during development. But at the same time, we begin to realise the immense complexity of this project given that it has to be done in the remaining 3 months. I feel that it is a rather short amount of time, but God’s grace is sufficient. I pray that I emerge a stronger and better person through this “trial”. Haha…

Went back to Penang to visit my parents last week. Had a nice week with them. Took two days worth of leave cuz of Deepavali and Hari Raya Aidilfitri. So I went back from 28 October till 3 November. Think I mentioned this in one of my previous posts. For the first time, my clothes shopping done in Penang was with my own money!! Spent quite a lot actually. Bought 2 Dockers slacks, a few shirts and a spanking new swimsuit. Some still paid for by my parents, but majority of it came from my own pocket.

It’s gonna get exciting very very soon in terms of my church ministry. The shift to Singapore Expo is beginning to excite a lot of people. It’s gonna be something major and I look forward to the first service there. I’m slated to be directing on alternate weeks and I can already feel the stress and pressure when that was announced. But if God put me there, I’m sure He’ll provide me a way to handle the job. And I’m determined to be the best director that I can be.

Back to work liaoz… Not much to do, I think. But got some other stuff to clear as well. So until the next time, cheers… :Þ

ARGH!!! Just got in to office not too long ago. Spent almost 4 hours at the Singapore Immigration; 4 hours that I’ll never see again in my entire life, gone down the drain.

BUT… It was for a good cause; I think. Went down to finalise my PR matters today. They make you wait for your queue number 5 times just to settle everything. First time to submit your approval letter so they can search for your file. Second time to submit the rest of the paperwork. Third time to pay for the entry and re-entry permit. Fourth time to register for IC. Fifth time to collect back your passport. And next week, have to wait one more time to collect the IC. I seriously think that this entire process can be streamlined, but hey, who am I to complain? Hahaha…

So yes, now I’m a Singapore Permanent Resident, complete with an IC number (IC only come next week). My advice to those who are still waiting to collect, either take the whole day off, or take the afternoon off. Cuz you won’t feel like doing work after they put you through 4 hours of waiting !!!

As as result of 4 hours of waiting this morning, I now have to come in on Saturday to cover up the 4 or so hours of work I missed this morning. Argh… That means waking up early on Saturday. Thought I could sleep in a bit cuz this week still no Children’s Church. Oh well, think God planned it in such a way.

Okay… Time to buckle down and try to get some work done, no matter how sleepy I am. Which, by the way, I am very sleepy actually… Cheers…. :Þ

It has been a rather eventful week, although there were only two major happenings in my life. I guess the things being major makes it look rather eventful.

First the good news. I’ve received the approval letter for my PR application. And so, I’m one step closer to getting my Singapore Blue Identity Card.

The second major thing came as a very rude shock and awakening to me and it arrived on the same day as the approval letter for my PR application. A dear friend of our “gang” back in NTU passed away. Yes, our dear “comrade-in-arms”, a gaming buddy of many and a very very dear friend to a lot of people, passed away. Somehow, this comes as a awakening for me as to how life is so precious but yet so fragile. Went to the wake yesterday and the feeling I got from attending this wake is so very different from all the other wakes. It all just so seems unreal until you arrive at the wake and pay your final respects. I was just standing there, facing his recently taken graduation photograph and it all just hits me; how young he still is and how he had the potential to do great things in his life. And from the amount of people I saw at the wake, you can see that he is one person that has touched a lot of people’s lives.

I guess, at some point, we have to pick up and move on. But the memories of the times spent together mugging and playing will be with all of us always….

My friend Jiwei, we are going to miss you dearly……..

To the families of victims of the quake in Pakistan, my condolences. My prayers are with all of you.

Now, to the gist of this post. I’ve secured the approval for the two days worth of leave that I intend to take. But the approval made me feel guilty as well because of the wording of the mail. Oh well, like a friend said, don’t feel guilty. It is my leave after all. Hahaha… I shall try not to lah… 🙂

Been a hectic day. Sat down from the time I came in this morning and worked through. Finished some outstanding administrative stuff in the morning and then in the afternoon worked through some outstanding issues with the server. One problem solved, one to go. Then I found out that the phone we bought for our project doesn’t support a particular feature of J2ME and so I have begun to “port” the code back to the older version of the code and that’s gonna take time. On top of that, still got changes to make to the handshaking segment of the system…. Oh well, you get the gist. If you understood what I had typed, you’re a few steps ahead of me and you can call me to explain all that… Hahaha…

Time to get ready to knock off. Update again when I have the time. The next few weeks is gonna be rushing for deadlines. God, grant me the grace and the wisdom to accomplish the tasks I have at hand.

Cheers…. :Þ