Time flies

I couldn't believe we are coming to the end of Jan'10, Today is last Friday ofJanuary and next week we are into February. Come to think about it, it sounds scary, how could time slip away without you knowing it. What a hectic month it is.

Time is the only thief we can't get justice against. ~Astrid Alauda

This week was busy week for me, lot of frustrations and stress in workplace. How I wish I don't have deal with all of them. Perhaps I should take a step back and look at thing from another perspective, maybe I will see the solution to all these problems. How I wish thing can be so simple. (Dear Lord, I could do a little help here. Got to pray more harder for God to answer my prayer. God is Awesome God! Mt19:26 With Man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible. I choose to believe this and longing for a miracle to happen on me soon....)

I'm counting down to Chinese New Year on 14-Feb. Looking forward to take a short break and go home to have my reunion dinner. I'm excited about it. I believe it's going to be wonderful reunion.

Facebook settings

I have overlooked important privacy announcement on facebook in Dec'09. Facebook has changed privacy policy and started to shift towards public information. (Read the detail here).

To summarize for you, basically, the privacy settings previously protected by you had be defaulted to public which is visible to everyone on the network if you didn't update your changes after Dec. When I mentioned default to public means the setting has been automatically default to either 'everyone' or 'friends of friedns'.

I suggest you take a minute to check your facebook now and change them back to something more private, do this:
1. From your Profile page, hover your mouse over the Settings menu at the top right and click "Privacy Settings" from the list that appears.
2. Click "Profile Information" from the list of choices on the next page.
3. Go through every setting, click on drop-down box on the right to select the level of privacy that you are comfortable with. I personally recommend the 'Only Friends' setting to ensure only those people you personally added as a friend can see things like your personal information.
4. Then scroll down to the setting 'Posts by Me'. This is a important setting. It control anything you post, which include status updates, links, notes, photos, and videos. I strongly suggest you change it to 'Only Friends' to protect yourself.

(Read this article, The 3 Facebook Settings Every User Should Check Now by The New York Times.)

Back on internet

Finally I'm online after 1 week of no connection. This morning SN tech support guy came again and as what I suspected he didn't see problem that I was facing previously. He did the line test, connection test and bla-bla testings all seems to work 'perfectly' fine. How unexplainable can this be as I'm seeing problem over 2 months. Anyway this is not his fault, he just a poor technician go round island listening to SN customer complains about how bad ISP service is. From now on, I definitely not going to sign up with this ISP when my contract end.

My home broadband internet connection is completely dead. I tried all sort of methods that I can think of to get it up but it won't work. It's a pain to call tech support hotline to ask for help. Now that I don't the connection, I realized how dependent I am on internet. Without internet, I can't chat to my family, can't watch on-line movie, can't do eTrading, can't surf net, can't check email, can't do anything. Can you imagine internet has been part of our daily life? It is something that we rely on without knowledge it. Ask yourself this question, can you do without internet for 1day, 1week or 1month?

I am getting fed up with my singnet connection. I keep having the connection down problem for no reason. I'm using speechtouch modem which is hooked up to a linksys router. Apparently this seems to cause much issue as linksys is not supported by singnet. Alas, every times when my connection is down, I have no choice to call technical support line after attempt to resolve it myself. Guess what every time it will end up as an unhappy incident. When I request for technician to come to my place, it takes minimum a week to wait for their response if you are lucky. The normal waiting time is at least 2 weeks. Since I just renew my 2 years broadband contract, I am in the position to switch operator none changing new modem. I have deal with this 'noise' for long time.....So, that is saying satisfied customer will tell 2-3 people but unsatisfied customer will tell 8-10 people. I'm telling you next time when you choose your operator do consider carefully.

I'm soooo addicted to my iPhone. Since I bought it 2 weeks ago, every night without fail I surely login into iTunes Store to browse for new apps. For the period of 10days, I already downloaded and played with more than 80 apps. Ha ha ha.

TranSGuide is one of my favorite apps on iPhone. It is an easy to use application which help you to commute in Singapore by bus. It comes with features like favorites, nearby, bus guide, search and query.


The default page is Favorites but first you can click on Nearby option to locate those bus stops near to your location. Then on the list, you can click on blue right-arrow next to each bus stop number to go one step deeper into a bus stop and view on next bus arrival time. I tested it and found the timing is rather accurate. One disadvantage is it doesn't support buses operated by SMRT.



When you found your bus, you can also add it into favorite list and next time when you launch this app again, you will be directed to your favorite buses list. There is also a bus guide feature which allows you to search for a bus by the number. First & last bus scheduled time and bus frequency is listed for each bus number. The best part is this app is FREE.

Addicted to iPhone...

Last weekend I finally bought an iPhone after all the three telco started offering iPhone. I was hoping they will slash the price but that they didn't except for increase data to 12GB. Anyway, I do get a good deal. I tried my luck to call up telco hotline to ask voucher and I was surprised the marketing rep was generous to immediately handing out $50 voucher.

Since I got the phone, I had slowly addicted to it. Spending many sleepless nights browsing through apps on iTunes store. Downloading and trying out free applications ranging from utilities, news to games. One advice to you is never buy any app without trying it first. You might regret it

Up to today, I have downloaded 72 free applications. Out of this 72 apps, I classified them into News, Finances, Games, Utilities. For each group here are my favourite:

News - CNNMoney, Bloomberg, CNBC Real-Time, MarketWatch
Finances - iSwim, OptionsXpress, Currency Converter
Utilities - Awesome Notes, eBuddy, Facebook, Dictionary.com

For local apps, I like Ch NewsAsia, laylio, tranSGuide. Oh, I'm trying SGMahjong and I got a few tips from my colleague. Haha...

Welcome 2010 and welcome to my new blog....

Time flies we are 10 days into 2010 and I'm still having little trouble writing 2010 on my notes. So, how should we address 2010? Is it 'twenty-ten' or 'two thousand ten'. There was a debate on this topic on news. What's your pick? I guess it is up to you to decide.

Dec'09 was hectic and exhausting for me but I enjoyed it. It started with my sis & her family came to visit me from Colorado. They had a pretty rough trip from missing a flight to baby troubles. But it is 'exciting' experience to them I guess. We spent great time together and we also had a awesome reunion as all the family members get together at my home town and I wish we could have this more often. That's my little wish.

Then comes Christmas, my friends & I decided to attend Christmas service but due to many reasons we couldn't get into service hall. Though we missed the service but I'm happy to see such overflowing crowd. Praise the Lord..Hallelujah!!! On Boxing day, I attended my friend Regina's wedding dinner. I knew her while attending CHC and I'm happy to both of them. Congratulation to them.

After that it's time to say goodbye to my sis&family as I send them off at airport together with Xing Yee who is traveling with them back to the State on the day before New Year Eve. (I started to miss them now....)

Aung Lang Syne!!! Finally on New Year Eve went to get catch a movie and sat down at Haagen Dazs with friends to count down to 2010. How awesome it is to end the 2009 with close friends around you.... Thanks Cynthia & Sarah.

I got myself a new 'gadget' for new year present.... Haha... Guess what it is? It's an iPhone 3GS.