Positive thinking
Topic: Growth
Some explanation on how to rise above the daily struggles and take on a positive view. It is simplistic but helps in understanding how your own actions affect what happens to you. It does not guarantee that you can better cope with the struggles, but if everyone else around me think this way, it will be a better world for me. Similarly, if I can think in this way, it will be a better world for the people around me.
positive.ppt

Animation Nation


Realised today that there is a theatre hiding in one corner of Riverside Point, that ulu shopping centre between Clarke Quay and Merchant Court Hotel.
Singapore Film Society organised this anime fest and I watched the Japanese Animation Shortcuts screening there. This is a collection of short animations, some alternative and others just plain wierd. Fortunately, there are English subtitles.

My favourite is Great 5, about the common fantasy about being a superhero, except that the person is not a teenager but a salaryman, and the superhero looks suspiciously like the Power Rangers! He sings what sounds like the theme song of a Japanese action flick (deep male voice with gusto) but the lyrics threw the audience into fits of laughter. Imagine this: he brushes his teeth and sings that the stuff coming out of my nostrils is not nose hair, but electrodes, the thing on my head is not unbrushed hair but antenna. He runs with the morning sun on his back (not to train and fight monsters but to catch the garbage truck) and falls on his face. Climbing up, he sings that the things I am wearing around my waist is not an utility belt but a rocket booster. Oh dear, I think the Japanese salarymen are an oppressed lot in need of a superhero to lift them out of their dreary life.

The last story is Voices of a Distant Star which essentially is about the difficulties of sustaining a long-distance relationship. Throw the cell-phone messages (think SMS, but longer) into the near future where Mankind lauches into space to fight off aliens, and a message takes half a year to travel from Pluto to Earth, and another half a year for the reply to travel. When they warp to the next solar system 8 light years away, a message you receive is from 8 years ago. The 24 year old man received a message from the 15 year old girl (who does not age in space?!?) who sent it 8 years ago after fighting off a wave of alien attacks. Is she still alive when the message reached him 8 years later? Sometimes they just want to return to the simple life of 15 year old school life where they cycle home after school and eat ice-cream at a convenience store while waiting for the rain to stop. How do you keep a relationship alive when you cannot really communicate?

Testing tripod's file hosting feature

Mind over nature
Topic: Growth
Words by Michael Dee, the outgoing chief of Morgan Stanley (south-east asia), who spent 3.5 years in Singapore:

'Singapore is a 'State of Mind'. Everything that makes Singapore great, all the wealth accrued to the people, and the fact it works so well as a country are all due to the application of the mind. It's all due to human thought.

'All the things that happen in Singapore that matter, matter because people make them happen. That's why I have I have invested a great deal of personal time in the education system in Singapore.

'Education is the single most vital link to the ongoing prosperity of Singapore. It's mind over nature.'

http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/money/story/0,4386,257463,00.html?

A new beginning?
Mood:  not sure
Topic: IT
Made a trip to Sim Lim this afternoon and paid money for a new PC, one that will hopefully be more stable than my current Athlon machine. Have heard of some other people with stability issues, maybe I am not alone in this.

My mindset is more that of a user than of a curious and hands-on IT professional. It came to the point that I'm willing to pay money to avoid the headache I'm getting now and so that I can move on to do higher value stuff (such as surf for knowledge, play games and watch movies :p) and not be stuck on recovering my OS almost weekly. Hey, this is not my core competency, I don't need to spend so much time with the OS and hardware even though the knowledge is useful in my line. In short, I have had enough of that crap.

Will be collecting it tomorrow so that I will have my hands free this evening, so will be able to testdrive it only tomorrow. Time to sleep...