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Name: coolcat
Location: Singapore

Just an ordinary person who dreams of doing something extraordinary...

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Saturday, January 28, 2006

新年快樂！

Just came back from our reunion dinner at my parents' place. As usual we had steamboat.

I was so busy with that problem at NUS that I didn't have time to do any proper spring cleaning. But since the Chinese New Year is a very special occasion for us, I couldn't leave our house in a mess. So last night I slept at about 10.00pm, woke up this morning at 3.30am and started cleaning the house.

It's amazing how much rubbish could accumulate in just one year. Anyway, since we are moving soon, I took this opportunity to throw away some of the useless, old stuffs. I packed the wardrobe (nope! no hidden world in there..), scrubbed the kitchen, toilets...Hubby and the kids helped too. So finally we managed to make our home presentable for receiving the New Year.

Too tired to bring the kids to Singapore River for the carnival. There's going to be a fireworks display at mid-night. Anyway I think the kids prefer to stay at home. Recently they were crazy over some on-line games, Maple Story, i think. And since tomorrow is a holiday, I allowed them to stay up a bit later. They're at the pc now. Not too sure when they intent to sleep. For me? I'm so dead tired. *YAWN* I can barely keep my eyes open.

So here's wishing Chinese all over the world a very happy Lunar New Year! Since this is the Chinese Zodiac Year of the Dog, 我祝大家 心想事成，狗年"旺旺"！

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posted at 1/28/2006 11:56:00 PM |

Sunday, January 15, 2006

Bang Bang

My year 2005 ended with a bang and I started 2006 with another.

It had been raining continuously from early December and so many of my projects encountered problems. Not only progress was badly affected but a number of my temporary retaining walls showed signs of movements. On 11 Jan at 7.10am, a terraced slope in NUS outside the Business School building came sliding down, destroying the landscape and a stretch of drain at the base of the slope. An underground sewer line was also damaged. It looked rather bad. I walked along a section of the slope and checked the exposed soils. Just as expected... the earth was totally soaked from the rain.

Since the Business School is sitting at the top of the slope just a couple of metres away from the edge of the failure, NUS's Office Estate Dept otherwise known as OED (I can't stand acronyms!) is worried that the building might be affected. A Crisis Management Centre was immediately set up at OED to monitor the situation and put in place some slope stabilising procedures.

How did I get involved? Too tired to explain now. (I've been going back and forth NUS everyday, including Sunday.) Perhaps tomorrow. I'll return with some pictures.

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posted at 1/15/2006 10:56:00 PM |

Monday, January 09, 2006

Horatio Caine


Was playing with Photoshop and decided to make a montage of my favorite CSI. My hubby can't stand him though.

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posted at 1/09/2006 11:05:00 PM |

Sunday, January 08, 2006

Curse of the Were-Rabbit

Watched this with my family today. Wallace is so goofy and lovable and Gromit is as smart as ever. His expression when the radio played Bright Eyes was priceless! I especially loved that part when the rabbit got sucked through his burrow towards the white light. There was plenty of puns and silliness for the kids and young-at-hearts (guilty!). Cracking! I must say! Brilliant!!

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posted at 1/08/2006 09:44:00 PM |

Wednesday, January 04, 2006

Into year 2006

Year 2005 ended with a bang for me. One of the temporary retaining walls I designed moved quite a bit during excavation. And it happened on 30 Dec, 2 days to the New Year! Needless to say I had to be at the site on New Year's Eve. I suspect the wall penetration wasn't deep enough. Anyway after the recent collapse cases (not mine! someone else's), any kind of wall movements, big or small, will send clients into hysterics. So my clients got very worried and emails were shooting all over, demanding for explanations & rectifications. Since it was my job, I have to deal with them. Oh well.

Let's talk about something more pleasant. Guess what? I bought the 5th gen ipod! The ipod that plays video!


Got mine just before Christmas and I love it! My U2 ipod was solely for music. But with this new ipod, I'm carrying around my family photos, videos I've yet to watch and lyrics to all my fav songs. (There's this nice little widget, Singtune, that will search for the lyrics to the songs I'm playing, stores them into itunes and then into the ipod when I plug it to my computer.)

Music is great, of course. And I was really impressed with the video quality. I've plugged it to the TV. Quality is good but I did notice some banding in the darker areas. Battery life is alright. I was able to get about 2.5~3 hours of video. I read somewhere I should get longer hours by using a lower bitrate for the videos.

My U2 ipod is still sitting in my drawer. Thought of selling it but doubt I'm able to get a good price for it. I might just give it to my kids. In fact my daughter is eyeing my old ipod.

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posted at 1/04/2006 10:21:00 AM |