Just a couple of photos I wanted to share from a recent trip to Penang. Went there on a work trip, not a holiday. First time going back home, and not actually going back home. Interesting experience. Because it’s for work, I got to stay at a hotel at Batu Feringgi. This is where all the beaches are and I didn’t realise that it could be this beautiful.
Anyway, enough said… I’ll let the pictures do the talking.. Cheers… :Þ
Referring to the fact that I haven’t updated for close to a month. Aside from the fact that I’ve been quite busy at work, nothing much has transpired.
Grateful for the chance to go on a mission trip once again. Went to KL last weekend to complete the trip that was aborted the previous time round. All in all, a very good trip. And also a very busy one. I was on the ground running from the moment I touched down in KL. We stayed at the same hotel, Sunway Pyramid. And this time round, I only stepped into the shopping centre next door exactly once in the entire stay. A testament to the packed schedule that I had. Next one should be in July, and this time it’s to Jakarta. I’m not exactly alien to the place, but it’ll be my first time on a mission trip to Jakarta. And it has been ages since I last went back there.
This weekend is packed. We have Emerge (supposedly, a “mini†one), and then Global Day of Prayer and then teardown. To say that the weekend will be tiring is an understatement. But God’s strength and provision shall prevail.
I wonder why these days I find it hard to blog. Nothing seems to want to come out. Anyway, I shall leave it here for now. Until the next time, cheers… :Þ
I just realised that it has been a good half a month since I last blogged. Think I’m falling into the rut that my blog once fell into. The updates just get less and less and finally stops altogether. Trying hard not to let that happen.
Work has been busy. Suddenly, I seem to have multiple things that I need to work on and they all seem to come with high priority. As much as I want to prioritize, how do you do that with things that rank very much the same on the priority list? I guess I got to set up a schedule for me to finish up all the tasks. At the moment, it seems quite overwhelming. God, grant me the wisdom to manage my time…..
I’ve begun to treasure my days off very much. I don’t know why, but it suddenly seems as though I don’t have a lot of alone time anymore. Maybe it’s because of the nature of the job. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the work. It’s just that off days seems that much more precious in this line. It feels as though you’re on a well-deserved holiday and all you want to do is to just sleep in, and slack around at home. Ahhh…. Bliss…..
Weather has been murderous lately. Hot, humid, and no wind. Reminds me of summer in Taiwan. The sun beats down relentlessly and hurting your skin. It has been raining the past few days and the weather slightly cooler, but I long for the weather that we had at the beginning of the year. Pray that this hot and humid season will come to and end. Almost feels like a heat wave.
Suddenly just crossed my mind why I may be blogging less: Twitter!! You can check me out at http://www.twitter.com/otnaicus. But do note that my posts there are protected, so you would have to ask for my clearance.
Anyway, time for me to hit the sack. So until the next time, cheers…. :Þ
Random post coming up…. You’ve be warned….
The week has gone by very fast. It felt like the week started not too long ago and we’re now coming to the middle of the week in a few short minutes. At least, in my opinion, I had a productive week so far.
Work has been ramping up pretty quickly for me. The company is fetching and is trying for quite a few external projects and I’m being roped in to help in them. For a moment, I felt as if I’ve been thrown into the deep end of the pool yet again. But I surprise myself. I used to feel very lost and stressed when I’m faced with such situations. But today, I just tell myself, “Rise up to the challenge!!†Yes, I still feel stressed and lost but I guess I’m handling it all differently now. I take it in my stride and tell myself that it’s all about stepping out of my comfort zone and doing the best I know how. And I take comfort in knowing that I have colleagues and friends whom I can turn to when I need the help. I’m used to managing projects in the IT world, but this is a whole new ballgame and I intend to step up to the challenge, since I’ve decided to go down this route.
This week has seen me going under the weather as well. Perhaps it’s because of the fickle weather. Blocked nose, frequent sneezing and feeling hot. I think I have a fever that comes and goes. A teeny bit of sore throat as well. I pray and hope that it’s not one of those cases where I fall sick badly (*touch wood*).
My Mac has been serving me well. Exactly one week old today. And the mouse hung on me today. Keyboard was working fine and the applications and operating system were humming along. Just the mouse decided to hang. Over-complicated drivers for the multi-touch stuff? Perhaps. It was so bad that I couldn’t get the Mac out of sleep mode when I came back from a meeting. I had to resort to pulling the battery. Oh well, like a friend said, Mac or Windows, it’s call created by humans. And I’m typing this blog entry on a Windows 7 x64 virtual machine running on the Mac. Cool eh?
This has been my longest entry in a while. Guess I’m in the writing mood. Tomorrow, there’s a high-key meeting at work that I’m supposed to participate in. Hope if there are questions that come my way, I would be able to answer them. God, really need your guidance and favour on this one. Want to be at my best for the company and for You!
That’s it for now. By the way, typing on this keyboard is such a joy. But I think the experience is hampered somewhat by the keyboard protector that is over the keyboard. But all in the name of protecting the investment.
Until the next time, cheers… :Þ
I had a friend ask me this week what is MBP. I had mistakenly thought that this was a pretty synonymous acronym that people would know. You know, acronyms like MRT, SBS, TCS, SBC, etc. But apparently, I think MBP is only known to gearheads. In other words, computer nerds.
So WHAT is MBP? It stands for MacBook Pro. And why am I blogging about this?
Because I am now a proud owner of one. Thanks to my new company subsidizing the cost, I purchased a MBP for work. Have always wanted to own a Mac, and finally I have one in my hands. Didn’t take long for me to get used to a Mac having used one in the office prior to purchasing my own notebook. But I still feel that some stuff are better done on Windows. In short, I’m happy with it.
But one disappointing thing. A day after I received my MBP, I read on the Net that Apple has quietly bumped up the specs of the MBP. So now, the model I purchased actually came with a 2.66GHz (mine comes with 2.53GHz) processor. Sigh… Who wouldn’t be disappointed? But then again, it’s only a 0.13GHz difference.
So know the whole world knows what MBP stands for, or at least the readers of my blog. Until the next time, cheers…
PS: I gotta figure out how to get that accented “U” that looks a smiley on a Mac.
And so I attended all the morning prayer meetings last week. Okay, 4 morning and 1 evening. To say that it was tough is an understatement. Struggeled with waking up and staying awake. But it was definitely worth it. Even though I struggled a bit to stay awake, the amazing thing was that I was functioning at almost peak efficiency. Got my work done on time and never did once feel sluggish. Praise the Lord for that!!
Valentine’s Day this year was quite a boo-boo because I didn’t plan for it, and coupled with the fact that it landed on a weekend. I gotta start getting off my lazy laurels and make things happen. The rest of this year WILL be different.
Work-wise, it’s all good. I’m still not a very independent worker yet because there are still plenty of things to learn. But I do hope that I’m gradually moving towards there. I want to come to a stage where I’m assigned a job and then can get it done without asking too many questions. Not that asking questions is bad, but I feel that as an independent worker, one should be resourceful and with enough knowledge such that the task can be accomplished efficiently. Definitely wanna move in that direction….
The 2nd month of 2009 is approaching an end. Time really does fly, whether you’re having fun or not. Until the next time, cheers… :Þ
It has been one and a half weeks since I got to Taipei. It’s been a hectic time, with all the testing and bug fixing going on. But it has been much better than the last time we did the SIT and UAT here. Still, there are frustrations here and there, and that can be solved with some ranting. But all in all, work is proceeding quite smoothly and thank God for that.
Okay, enough about work……
Moving along, I noticed that this time round, I want to get out on weekends and go out of the hotel room. The last weekend, I went out to roam the streets a bit and did a bit of window shopping. And the best part, I did it all on public transport. Yeah, that means taking the subway. And this weekend, I intend to go up to the National Palace Museum to take in the sights. My parents went last year when they were around in Taipei and I’ve been wanting to go ever since. Now, this weekend, I’m getting my chance.
Oh yes! I discovered Cold Stone Creamery in Taipei!! And I’ve been there a few times. My favourite: Apple Pie A La Cold Stone. Not that I’ve tried all their creations, but that is what excites me most at the moment. Their ice-cream is fantastic to say the least. Hopefully, it comes to Singapore soon. But for sure I’ll be headed back there a few more times before heading back to Singapore.
I’m looking forward to getting back to Singapore. Miss the dear, miss church, miss ministry and miss my friends. Pray that the remaining time I have here in Taipei will be smooth going.
I’m going to stop here to retire. Until the next time, cheers… :Þ
I’m back in Taiwan. This time for 3 weeks. Going to conduct the Systems Integration Tests (SIT) and User Acceptance Tests (UAT) during this trip. Pray that everything will go smoothly.
My flight to Taipei yesterday was 8 hours long! That’s right, 8 hours. Why? Typhoon! We were about an hour out from Taipei when I noticed on the moving map display that we have made a U-turn. After a while, the captain came on the PA and said that we were diverting to Hong Kong as the Taipei airport was closed. My first diversion ever in my flying "career". In any case, we landed at Hong Kong International Airport, parked at a remote stand and wasn’t allowed to de-plane.
Thank God that I upgraded this sector of my flight to business class. The entertainment system was left on and I watched movies to kill time. But I noticed that economy class people didn’t have any headsets. Oops, must have been collected earlier prior to landing.
After two hours of waiting, captain said we were good to go and we departed Hong Kong at 2000hrs. Surprisingly smooth approach to Taipei and we landed at 2130hrs.
Then the next wait began. After clearing customs and immigration, I was met by a very very long queue of people waiting for taxis. Apparently, all the taxis have left as they didn’t expect any flights coming in yesterday. To make things worse, all the flights diverted were coming in at the same time and the queue just grew and grew. I ended up waiting for about 1.5 hours. And mind you, at this time, I haven’t even eaten dinner.
Finally got into the hotel at about midnight. After checking in, went to 7-11 to get cup noodles to eat first. And after talking to Debbie, crashed. Thank God today has been declared a typhoon holiday. Got chance to rest.
Eventful day indeed. Like I said, thank God I was in business class for that flight. If not, I think I would have been a very irate passenger. Some consolations. I was able to peek out of the door of the plane to take in the view of the tarmac. And the cockpit door was open so I peeked in and caught a glimpse of the cockpit. Quite a consolation for plane nut like me.
Signing off now. Want to get ready to go out and grab lunch and maybe shop around a bit for some stuff. Until the next time, cheers… :Þ
I can finally say that I’ve been to all the three Emerge conferences around Asia. And yes, I’m blogging from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Here for a quick getaway after KL Emerge.
KL Emerge was indeed an eye-opener for me. My main job for Emerge was to direct all the sessions. Camera will be crewed by the TV guys from CHC KL. The TV ministry in CHC KL is a 100% guys ministry. Not a single sister in sight. And they are a crew that does a 3-cam live production every weekend WITHOUT any form of communications between the director and camera crew. Yes, no comms. Impressive right?
Anyway, during the 3 days, I was very impressed with the TV crew. A bunch of people who have good attitude and are more than willing to learn and to excel in what they do. They really do have a passion for what they do. One example. On the last night, RDP took the handheld camera for praise and worship and did a lot of walking shots. The camera person who took over in the later stages emulated the shots without needing to be asked. Now that is what I call learning through observation. All-in-all, a fantastic bunch of people. I would love to work with them again soon. Heard that some of them coming down for Asia Conference. Now if only we can ask them to help out……. 😉
Other than Emerge, I’m thankful that I could extend my stay here in KL. Need a bit of break from work. Although a bit boring, the chance I get to spend time with my parents and for me to put some deposit into the sleep bank is more than worth it.
Guess that’s all for now. Will update again soon when I’m back in Singapore. Until then, cheers… :Þ