I don’t have balls like our Sunday Times columnist Sumiko Tan who once publicly declared that she will never use Facebook for social networking, on a Sunday paper. I am on the verge of saying the same to Twitter but ‘never’ is a strong commitment. In fact, Facebook and I have gone through the stages of ‘huh, what are these people doing poking each other playing stupid games’ to ‘oh my, these games are really fun’, and lately, I use Facebook primary to keep in touch with my real friends online. New friendships are developed, old friendships are rekindled, and through at times mundane status updates of routine life, at times sudden outbursts of random philosophic observations, there seems to be an invisible bonding between friends who are bought into a two-way communication. The word two-way is important because it is really scary to know that you have been reading everything about me and what I think while I know nothing of you and what you think.
Alice is one of my sister’s best friend and we met during my sister’s wedding in Hong Kong. We kept in touch through Facebook and I am finding it such a joy to have a glimpse of her life. Photos that she shares with her as a teacher and her students in Hong Kong in what appears as a fun environment, amongst other items that she writes. Her life is surely more colorful than my nine-to-five!
So how does this drawing come into the picture? One day I noticed that Alice has posted a drawing of her done by a friend of hers in Facebook. I commented that I also want a drawing of mine and she drew me one. In gratitude, I drew one for Alice too. Now those of you who know Alice will likely, most definitely comment that she looks much prettier than that in real life. Consider how I drew myself in oil back in 2007, you would agree that this drawing of Alice is not-that-bad as my talent is sort-of-limited.
Would you like me to draw a picture of you? Simply use your wildest imagination, draw a picture of me (it is the effort that counts!), and post it at my Facebook wall or tag it via this post. I will draw one for you in return. I enjoy drawing either sexes and if your cats and dogs can draw a picture of me, I am happy to draw a picture of your pets too!
In fact, as you can see in the photo above, she is very pregnant. So, why am I keeping mum about this significant news for so long? I don’t know, can’t really pinpoint. I mean, she is my little sister and the thought that she is carrying a baby seems so out of my wildest imagination. On the record, I am very happy for her and my good buddy who is responsible in this whole thing. And too on the record, I have been persistently telling this happy couple that the little one will call me “big brother”, instead of that forbidden U-word. They protest of course saying that this is so against the tradition. I highlight of course that whenever the little one calls me “big brother”, I will give the little one a gift. One U-word from the little one and there will be no gift.
My parents and my little sister would testify that on the surface, I am not the warmest person on earth. I am not brought up from a family that often hug each other, or to say I-love-you to one another. I am not even someone who would get himself involved in his family’s day to day life. Having confessed that, I do tend to drop everything I do if my family calls-for-action.
But all these have to change, somehow. I have been trying to get more involved with my sister’s pregnancy. One day out of the blue, she asked if Cynthia and I could join them for a weekend lunch and help them to take some photos. I am more than happy to play a part in recording this significant timeline of theirs, especially having gone through some of the old photos that my dad has taken for us.
It was a very warm day, under the noon sun in the Botanic Gardens. Benny was the golf umbrella carrier, to shield my little sister from the hot sun. It has been a long time since I last went for a photo trip. My back hurt a bit, my hands hurt a bit, but it was worth it. I love the results of some of the shots. Before the session, my sister hinted that I often take too long to process the photos. I hinted that if we are to look for quality over quantity – especially if we are only looking for that one photo for the wall – it should be fast. She then hinted that she would want to have all the photos in RAW format so that Benny can process then. Uh-oh. No way!
Below are some of the highlights. May God bless this happy couple and the little one with good health. And if it is not too much of a trouble, bless me with some extra energy to follow their journey like a paparazzi please.
Avid readers may recall my morning ritual of desk booking at work. 3 months have passed and the ritual stays more or less the same. Except more and more of our colleagues are moving into our building. Seats become a scarce resource. Good seats in especially. And scarce resource always drive bizarre human behaviors, much like what our history tells us. Bosses ask the subordinates to book the desks for the entire team (we can only book our desks online up to one week in advance). Some occupy the seats establishing the first-come-first-take rule. Some bring the company laptops home and book the seats in early morning, in wee hours. Wow! It’s just a seat you know!
Colleagues often ask me why I choose to sit in different seats almost every day. Well, given a choice, I would love to be stationary somewhere. But since it has never come across my mind that I have to work hard to book “my favorite seat”, I don’t bother.
Previously, there is a S$5 fine if we don’t show up at the desk that we book (note: no one cares if we show up at work but rather at the desk). That doesn’t seem to work. On paper, every day is a full house. In reality, it is hardly so. Hence recently, the fine is increased to S$50. That raises some eyebrows of course.
If there is one thing history tells us, we human beings are creative in finding ways to get around the system. Increasingly, we are seeing seats being released in the very morning. But for those who have already booked a crappy seat one week ago or have decided to work from home because there is no seat available, how does it matter?
Thank you for not hating my doodles. Drawing can be very therapeutic at times. Truth been told, though we often complain in the Spanish class that we dislike homework or deberes, I reckon we all secretly love it. This week’s homework was to write a recipe or receta. In fact, I looked forward to writing it as I love to cook. Inside Facebook, my buddy Alex’s wife Shirley suggested paella; my blogger friend Tigerfish suggested fried rice (by the way, you ought to check out her site if you love cooking). Both are great ideas and they got me thinking. Of course, being so behind time, it has never occurred to me that I could Google a recipe in Spanish and present it in the class. So I did it the hard way. Armed with my passion towards Chinese cooking and my electronic dictionary inside my wireless phone, below is the recipe for Pollo A La Crema De Maíz Con El Arroz Al Vapor, or in English, Chicken in Cream Corn Served with Steamed Rice (hence the doodle).
OK. I made quite a number of mistakes in the original version. Our teacher Natalia has patiently corrected them for me. ¡Gracia!
Cortar en cuadritos la pechuga de pollo, adobar con un poco de sal, un poco de azúcar, un poco de harina de maíz, y un poco de salsa de soja.
Sofreír removiendo el pollo.
A cocción, agregar la crema de maíz, el agua, el azúcar, la salsa de soja, un poco de sal, y sin parar de remover. Dejar hervir lentamente 5 minutos a fuego lento.
Agregar el huevo, cocer poco.
Servir con arroz al vapor.
* * * * *
Disclaimer: Please don’t take the measurements as they are. When I cook, I often cook with feeling. It is not at all incorrect to say that I have no clue on how much salt or sugar or etc. I use. Oh well … sorry! Just go with the feeling, would you?
I genuinely buy into the idea that there are people out there who are going all out to make our lives miserable for profit, and for pride. I run a website having to deal with hundreds of spam comments each day that come with thousands of dubious links. And I wonder: Why are there people out there doing something so unproductive affecting millions of people every second of the day? The reality is, these people not only want to disrupt your life by destroying your data, but also want to steal your identity in order to make money. I have had the opportunity to attend a workshop held by the Norton team July this year. The threat is real. It is not a question of “are you protected”. Rather, how well are you protected against the ever evolving threats. Instead of telling you what Norton Internet Security 2010 is, here are the reasons why I choose the Norton product and want no less.
1. The Power of Community Insight to Tackle the Unknown-Unknown
Years in the making, Norton has established a community network to tackle not only the black and white, but also the gray area. As seen below, the fingerprints of more than 66 millions files (note: NOT the actual file) have been submitted to Norton by the community. We know what are the good ones, the bad ones, and what are the ones that trust is yet to be earned.
Think about this. With the ever growing list of viruses, spyware, trojan horses, worms, bots, and rootkits, it seems counter productive to scan every file in your computer all the time. So, the concept of a community insight is to share the knowledge amongst the Norton users and skip those trusted files in your next scan. Reputation of unknown files are built that way too.
2. Working Silently in the Background
One thing I really like about the new generation of Norton products is that they work behind-in-scene without much interaction and disruption to your work. The moment I step away from my computer, Norton will scan my computer in the background. The moment I grab my mouse, the scan will be paused and resumed the next time I make my cup of coffee. Every so often, there is a pulse live update to make sure that my computer is protected with the very latest update. For the tech experts out there, the memory footprint of Norton is only less than 10MB. To give you an idea of what it means, Microsoft Live Messenger utilizes 30MB of my computer’s memory.
3. Feel Safe Surfing the Web
When you Google something going through the search results, how do you know which ones are safe to click onto? With this Norton product, now you can. Just take a look at the picture below, the little green ticks mean OK to click onto (thank God!). For malicious sites, you will be warned. Do note that there are sites out there that may hijack the real ones, look like the real ones. That too can be detected by this Norton product.
You can also turn on the parental control function if you have kids at home (not me!). And this Norton product also offers to store the user IDs and passwords for you. I prefer to use my [physical] personal diary to keep track of all my user IDs and passwords. Just so that I may still remember them when I am not using my home computer. These functions may be relevant to some.
Other Thoughts
I am a simple dude. I just want an industrial standard tool to protect my home computers from online threats. You may also wish to know that I have tried out their online support recently. It was kind of cool. The Norton service consultant actually took control of my computer thousands of miles away from my home. All I needed to do was to stare at the computer screen and ‘monitor’ how the consultant resolved my problem. I am impressed by his or her professionalism (though I nearly fell asleep halfway).
Also comes with Internet Security 2010 are a few tools to monitor the network security as well as the application ‘trust’ ratings. As of now, they are of less use to me. But I would suppose these tools would come handy when I become paranoid and want to see if there are some strange applications running in the background, or a stranger is logging onto my network.
Many friends whom I talk to often ask me how much it costs to run Norton products at home. Below is from the official source. And of course, I take no commission. How nice if otherwise! Do drop me a comment or write to me if you have questions. I may be able to get you an official response.
The suggested retail price for Norton Internet Security 2010 is SGD89.00 for a three PC license and SGD59.00 for a single PC license and for Norton AntiVirus 2010 is SGD65.00 for a three PC license and SGD39.00 for a single PC license. The price includes one-year service subscription to use the product and receive Symantec’s protection updates.
I remember vividly the first time I saw the words “Massive Jam” lit up on the highway signboard. I was driving on the northbound CTE (in Singapore), on a rainy evening, quite a number of years ago. One tree fell onto the highway that forced all the vehicles to exit at Ang Mo Kio. Imagine four or five lanes of traffic squeezed into one exit. Not pretty. And since then, no jam felt as massive as that mother of all massive jam. At times I try my luck, enter the highway despite seeing the “Massive Jam” warning sign and it turns out to be just another heavy traffic condition. Nothing massive. At times, it is like yesterday morning, when I have to spend more than an hour covering perhaps 10 km on the CTE highway.
2 incidents in 2 different segments of the highway. I suppose it must be pretty major judging at the amount of debris on the road (no pool of blood, thank God). One time, I was inside a lift and one foreigner said to another foreigner after showing him a – I suppose – gruesome image of an accident using his phone, “I wonder why such a small island can have so many road accidents.”
Out of the blue, I wanted to shop for a TV. We drove to Katong Mall, paid Mega Discount Store a visit. We have always wanted to try out the “Hong Kong Tea House” restaurant next to the mall. The food is indeed ‘pretty’ authentic, as what we’ve been told. But my plate of cheese baked spaghetti with meat was so much tinier than I thought, like one-third of what I would have expected. 2 main dishes, 2 cups of herbal tea, 3 portions of dessert, total cost was close to S$40. Sort of expensive for “tea house” food eh?
Sunday. After Mass. We drove from Ang Mo Kio to Pasir Ris Park. For dinner. We chose a bar. By the sea. Flashes of lightning from afar. Watch out, it’s going to rain, said I. God is taking picture of us, Cynthia smiled. Food arrived, so was the rain. Dashed to a partial shelter, we continued our dinner. Thunderstorm! Tree weaving. Shaken by the howling wind. Rain pouring from the sky. Splashed onto our table, onto our food, onto our hair, onto my spectacles. We dined in near dark, marvelled at the force of the nature. We laughed, longing for that cup of hot chocolate, and a warm bath. For home sweet home, seemed so far.
Yep. That little kid you see in the photo is me. I have got the confirmation this morning and I will get to that in just a moment. Like many entries I write, this one started with a concept, a consolidation of ideas for the past few days. I have got my thoughts linked and drawn out on a piece of paper last evening ready to be put down in words, in a snippet style. But like many entries you see, I prefer to start each piece of writing with a picture – an anchor to the words that follow. As I dug deeper into the digital archive my father has recently created for my sister and I finding that one picture that suits the theme, my emotion ran high. One event led to another and I have decided to chuck most of my initial train of thoughts onto a perhaps a later schedule. Besides, today is a Sunday. Sundays are for the family and the pondering of the good old days.
It all started with the 2004 film “13 Going On 30” played on TV one relaxing Saturday night, last night to be exact. My initial plan was to read a book borrowed from the national library while accompanying Cynthia to be the coach-potato-in-crime. That did not work out. I ended up laughing and crying with Cynthia, as we watched “13 Going On 30” together. For those of you who may not have heard of the storyline, a 13 years old girl wakes up one day as a 30 years old – exactly what she has wished for on her birthday. And all of a suddenly, there is a memory gap of close to 2 decades.
Yesterday was also the Mid-Autumn Festival. Traditionally – in Hong Kong as far as I can remember – families carried lanterns lit up using candles joining hands as they walked to a park nearby. It was a pretty scene to see in the evening. We would spread a mat onto the ground; my sister and I would place the candles and mark the perimeter of our base; and we would eat mooncakes and pomelo and other munchies as we admired the full moon. Replenishing the candles around us and inside the lanterns was enough to keep my sister and I occupied throughout the evening. Occasionally, lanterns would catch fire burned to the core. That was as close to playing with fire as we could get.
So, it was “13 Going on 30” in the evening of the Mid-Autumn Festival, with I in Singapore, my parents in Hong Kong, and my sister in her new family not too far away from where I live, I could not help but pondered: How years have vanished! And how I have changed!
In retrospect, I should have gone through the old photos with my parents when they were here in Singapore earlier on this year. But you know how we always think we have better things to do, I have missed that opportunity, an opportunity of a narration of my very own childhood story. This morning, as I looked at each photo of my sister and I and our parents – a visual memory of our childhood – there was a surreal feeling of being taken back in time, a time that I have zero recollection. I was unsure of the location; and I was not even sure if it was me in some of the photos. Panic struck and I called for Cynthia’s help. “That should be you, I think,” she replied casually as she continued with her breakfast. “I think” is not good enough. I need certainty!
So I called home. My mother picked up the phone while she was still asleep. I was so happy to hear her voice. Describing the photos in detail, one by one, I kept on asking if it was me or my sister or someone else. I wanted to know where we were and I wanted to know what we were doing. To be fair, I think my mother must have had a hard time trying to take in what I described and to give a definitive answer. “That should be you,” said my mother as I described what I wore. But she added, “Although you sister would be wearing the same too. You two shared some of the clothes as you were growing up”.
No!
The signboard says Macau, was I there? The background is a mountain and a lake and there are straws of grass as the foreground, was I the kid in the photo? That green lion statue, where was it? It was a picnic, a mat, a half eaten apple, a bottle of milk, a little toddler playing with a plate, was that me? My dad was half naked, making a face, and the little one with long hair must be my sister; how come I was not in the picture?
I talked non-stop, bombarding my mother who has freshly woken out from the bed with questions after questions. But like all good stories that ideally should come with a good ending, my dad returned home from fishing. I could hear our dog scratching the door in anticipation. “I will ask dad to call you later, OK?” asked my mother. “Sure,” I replied. “I will be waiting,” added I.
Ten minutes later, my phone rang. “That was you in that photo!” exclaimed my mother. “That was me!” exclaimed I. Apparently, my parents were watching the DVD – that I too should have a copy – as they commented on the locations and the circumstances of each photo. That DVD! I have almost forgotten. “You dad has sorted the photos nicely on that DVD,” said my mother, “One section for you and another one for your sister.”
I quickly slotted the DVD onto my computer and was surprised to see the following message from my father on the screen. The title is “回憶”, which means a recollection. I would have missed his message to me had I not planned to write this entry!
I will not translate the message in full here, unless someone really wants to know. My dad has a few life mantras that he often shares with me. One is about the end of bitterness comes the sweetness. Maybe because his life is full of hardship. Endurance appears to be one of his strengths and he always works towards that “sweetness”, that reward. And he often projects that ideal reward onto the success of my sister and I. Another one is to be happy is to be contented, without greed, without evil deeds, without jealousy, and without hatred. Maybe because these ideals are imbued onto me since young, they seem to be my personal mantras too.
It was my parents’ turn to describe the photos while watching the DVD thousands of miles away from me. As I closed my eyes trying to recall the photos that I have spent the entire morning admiring, I imagined I was with my parents in Hong Kong, in our living room, watching and laughing at these visual memories together, as they narrated through the photos. It has been a while since we laugh, in such openness. We touched onto the topic that I found it hard to tell between the pictures of my sisters and the pictures of mine. “When your sister was young, people said that she looked like a boy,” said my mother. She then paused, a long paused. And I continued, “And I looked like a girl?” “And you looked like a girl,” laughed my mother.
It was such a lovely morning, such a sweet morning.
Spend time to make a living if you may, spend time to get entertained if you wish, spend time to read if you want to acquire new knowledge, but don’t forget to put aside some time to document your life or lives of those whom you love (online social networking does not count, unfortunately). One day you may wish to answer the question on how years have vanish.
I wish I could save the best for the last. But my favorite photo album is still the journal of the previous day. Followed by the “Jelly Fish” post that some of my friends refer to.
The writing of this set of journal have been one helluva journey. A total of more then 22,000 words not counting the associated blog entries and close to 600 photographs. And this blog entry is dedicated to the regular readers of this series (and my website). Without your support, I reckon I would gave up halfway. So, thank you.
To read more about our last day of our trip in Mallorca …
A photo collection for day 12 of our trip to Spain (59 photos with captions)
