163 = Eat Laksa
A very "beng-ish" advertisement. But it works! I actually remember the number to call. heehee
Labels: Humor
posted at 5/28/2008 11:39:00 AM
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Wednesday, May 28, 2008Friday, May 23, 2008How crude can you get?
The project at the major expressway is giving everyone a headache. I had to rush the design for the rescue shaft. Got it completed at about 5pm yesterday. Then I was supposed to send the document to the consultant but decided to get Mr. CoW to do it instead. As usual, conversation with him is the highlight of the day. Me : Mr. CoW, where are you now? Mr. CoW : I just left the site. I went Woodlands just now. Me : Ok. So where exactly are you now? Mr. CoW : I was at Laguna earlier on but not much work so I went Woodlands site instead. Me : I'm not asking where you were. I'm asking where are you NOW! I'm not trying to track your movement. I just need to know where you are so I can decide what to do. Mr. CoW : I'm going to wash my car. Me : But where.. ? arhh...nevermind. Just come back to the office immediately, alright? I need you to send the report to the consultant. It's urgent. Mr. CoW : Can. can. no problem. I go to the petrol kisok to urinate first. Just now no time to urinate... Me : ???? (wtf! why do i need to know that? ) Mr. CoW : .. then I will go Jalan Toa Payoh. Very fast one. Me : Our office is in Hougang. Why the hell are you going Jalan Toa Payoh? Mr. CoW : I go by that way very fast reach office one. Don't worry. Later then I wash the car. Me : Forget about the car! Just get back here asap. He appeared about 15minutes later, carrying a little red plastic pail. He smiled and waved the pail at me. For a moment, I thought he didn't have time to pee and had to standby a pail. But he volunteered the info. He needed the pail to wash his bladdy @$#% car. Labels: Work posted at 5/23/2008 03:18:00 PM
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Tuesday, May 20, 2008Supernatural S3 Finale
I've loaded it into my Zen Vision last Saturday. But I couldn't bring myself to watch it. Dean's fate is decided in this episode and I don't think I want to watch it unless I know for sure Dean & Sam will return in S4. Right now I'm staying clear of all SN review sites. I don't want to know just yet. Maybe when the season returns in September, I'll watch it just the day before the premiere of S4. That way I don't have to suffer any cliffhanger for 4 months. I've thought about it. There's no way Dean's going to get out of the demon's contract. He'll die. In fact every episode leading up to this finale points to that conclusion. The only way out is for the boys to kill Lilith. For some reason, Lilith has not come face to face with Sam. Since Sin City, we know there's another demon out there. But the surprising part in the previous episode was that Lilith sent Bela to kill Sam. Why? Was Lilith afraid of Sam? Anyway I have my CSI, CSI NY and CSI Miami, House, Las Vegas.. that should keep me busy for a while until I gather enough courage to watch this last episode of SN S3. Labels: TV/Movies posted at 5/20/2008 05:37:00 PM
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Monday, May 19, 2008Sunday, May 18, 2008Murphy's Law
 Well. Everything we worry might happen has happened... hence the Murphy Law reigns. Pipe-jacking resumed this morning but at 1pm. The site staff noticed undulation of the road surface in the slow lane and a slight depression in the middle lane. This time the operator saw clean water flowing through the shield face. It seems like they hit or damaged some underground water pipe. This is a totally new set of problem. Jacking stopped while the site people try to trace the source of the leakage. I was on site at about 3pm and stayed till 5pm. Nothing much I could do. This is pretty much a site construction issue not design issue. At 8pm, I was having a belated Mother Day's dinner with my mom and rest of the family members. Call came in. They found the source. It was a 1800mm diameter effluent pipeline for discharging treated water into the sea. That one takes priority over the jacking and has to be repaired asap. Good luck to the contractor. And good luck to me.. how on earth am I going to squeeze a rescue shaft in the middle of an expressway?! ps.. 19.05.08.. was on site this morning again. Received a sms from contractor at 1am, requesting for a meeting at 9am. I really didn't want to response to it. I could have ignored it and pretended that I didn't see it till quite late. But.. oh well. *sigh* i'm so Charlie Brown.. Labels: Work posted at 5/18/2008 09:59:00 PM
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@$#% System
I'm handling a project involving pipe-jacking underneath a major expressway. I'm engaged by the contractor to design the jacking & receiving shafts and also to come out with the construction impact assessmment. There are definite risks involved and these have been highlighted to the contractor. I've emphasized the importance of putting in place an action plan in case of sinkholes and also to station workers at all times on site to observe the expressway for signs of distress. But do they listen? No! They think I'm being paranoid. Work proceeded generally problem-free until Thursday night. A depression was seen by a EMAS vehicle on a lane. They alerted LTA but it took LTA a while to find out that it was our project. By then it was close to midnight. LTA mobilised to repair the depression and I wasn't informed until the next morning. Anyway after discussions with main consultant and contractor they decided to continue with jacking despite my reservations. My advice was for them to apply to close the lane during jacking works. But again, the rest felt it would take too long to get the permission and they had this deadline to meet. So they continue to jack however with proper supervision team this time. And today, another depression appeared on the road. The lane was temporarily closed. When the contractor dug out the bitumen, they found a The reply from LTA is almost silly. The officer we spoke to has the authority to order lane closure. But she's not gonna do it if there's nothing wrong with the road, not even as preventative measure. She suggested that we monitor the next stretch of jacking and should there be settlement than she'll allow closure of this lane citing danger to public as a reason. I pointed out that already a cavity has formed in the previous lane. Isn't that reason enough? But apparently not. wtf! It seems like LTA wants to see damage before they take any action. But this is stupid! Cavity forms but it may not be obvious because of the bitumen. And the sinkhole may appear suddenly if a heavy vehice goes over it, I mean, who knows? So why take such unnecessary risk? Just close the bladdy lane, jack the bladdy pipe and if no sinkhole.. good.. if sinkhole form.. no danger to anyone since the lane is close. Hell! what's so bladdy difficult to understand about that? The contractor is more than happy to continue jacking since LTA did not impose any work-stop order. And I have no power to stop the contractor since I'm engaged by the contractor. Guess I'll have to send an email to put on record my objections. At least if something goes wrong, they can't point the finger back at me. But I hate having to do this. These people just never learn. I was in a crappy mood today. Already I missed my drum lesson because I had to rush to the scene when the call came in. And it looks like I'll need to be at the site tomorrow too #$@% Labels: Work posted at 5/18/2008 12:08:00 AM
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Thursday, May 15, 2008Repairs
 My car broke down on Tuesday evening.. at peak hour... and it was just serviced last Friday!!! wtf! I was hopping mad.Luckily the car stalled at the traffic light just as I was about to turn onto Jalan Besar. If I were on Jalan Besar, I'll be honked, stared & cursed to death man. It was 6.30pm.. bladdy heavy traffic along Jalan Besar. A kind soul helped me move the car to the side of the road. Wasted an hour waiting for the tow-guy. Called Syafiq to cancel my gym appointment. The irony was on Sunday he cancelled mine for the same reason & I was laughing at him about it.. there is such a thing as retribution.. Repair costs -- $475 This morning also received a call from ACER about my laptop. Said motherboard gone case. To replace + labour -- $810. He told me it's not really worth it to repair since the laptop is already almost 4 yr old. I agree too. Anyway there is a PC fair coming in June. Will get a new laptop then. Labels: Ramblings posted at 5/15/2008 02:36:00 PM
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Staff Issues #2
I spoke to Mr Z yesterday. It didn't go too badly. In fact Mr Z was aware of the conflict he's having with our boss. The only reason he didn't resign was that we had been quite supportive and understanding when he had that problem with his thesis submission. So the session was quite amicable. Anyway the market is still very hot for geotechnical engineer and I'm sure he should be able to get another job soon. I wish Mr. Z all the best. Labels: Work posted at 5/15/2008 02:00:00 PM
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Wednesday, May 14, 2008Staff Issues
 A follow up on my weird supervisor Mr CoW.I sat down with him Monday evening to have a "heart-to-heart" (yeeeh... my flesh creeping already) talk with him. Basically I told him I wasn't comfortable with his terms of endearment. He tried to explain saying ever since he became a Christian, he treated everybody like a sister or a brother and that he was trying to be friendly. That may be true but I'm a Christian too, my boss is a Christian too, we don't go around calling our employees "girl-girl" or "boy-boy". And I didn't see him being "friendly" with the rest of the fellow colleagues too. wtf. I asked him to try calling our big boss "boy-boy" and see what would happen. Anyway I was quite blunt and firm with him. I told him his actions were making me very uneasy and if he wouldn't stop... I wouldn't be able to keep him any longer, it would be termination on the spot. Mr. CoW got my drift and said he knew what to do and where to draw the line. ok that settled one problem. Now the next problem. I have an engineer (Mr. Z) from China. He came to Singapore in 2002~2003 to do a PhD at a local uni (name withheld to protect the guilty). He joined us in 2005 as a part-time staff and became full-time in 2007. Mr. Z's actually quite a nice guy... very hardworking, easy to get along.. not a clock-watcher nor calculative type. But my boss & him had some communication problems.. well.. the short of it... I was asked to let him go. Why me? How on earth am I going to do that?!! With the silly Mr. CoW, it's easy. Just give me a reason & I'll fire him immediately. But not with this engineer! And I felt so bad for Mr Z. especially when he somehow had suffered a string of unfortunate events. He was doing his Engineering Masters in China and during his last year of the course he was offered a chance to come to Singapore to do a PhD. He took it up and left China without completing his Masters. After 3 yrs of research & labour-intensive lab testings, Mr Z was ready to start his thesis. That was when he joined us as a part-time engineer. But 1/2 way through his thesis, Mr Z's supervisor claimed Mr Z had made some errors in the setup and the results were not usable. So Mr Z had to re-do most of the tests and was ready to start on his thesis again when his supervisor suddenly resigned without arranging for another professor to take over. The poor guy was left dangling, not knowing what to do. The faculty department didn't try to help either. Finally a professor agreed to take Mr. Z on but the new supervisor found that Mr. Z's findings were in total disagreement with published literatures. By then 4.5 yrs have gone. The poor chap had no choice but to submit his thesis and hoped for the best. The last time I checked, Mr Z said his thesis was returned with a "major correction required" comment. He didn't seem very optimistic about getting his PhD. If that's the case then the last 5 years was a total waste of time. Poor guy. My boss wasn't as sympathetic. He thinks if a guy can spend 5 years on a subject and still not know what went wrong then he's hopeless. Mr Z was actually planning to get married soon too. His fiancée is in Singapore. She just flew in recently from China. *sigh* not sure how to approach the poor Mr Z..... Labels: Work posted at 5/14/2008 11:52:00 AM
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Monday, May 12, 2008Weird Attraction #2
I've been trying to avoid my supervisor since my last entry on him.
Last Friday, I was in office about 7.30. At 8am, I did a quick check and yup, Mr CoW's car was parked downstairs. He was probably having breakfast somewhere. At 8.15 I quickly rushed off for my 9.15 car-servicing appointment. I would be very early for my appt. but no choice since that guy would appear ard 8.25am and I really wasn't in the mood to talk to him. Today. I parked my car near my office block and had a nice, lesiurely breakfast. As I walked towards my office block I was deciding whether or not to send my laptop for servicing. The moment I saw Mr CoW in the distance walking past my car and it was decided. I made sure I stayed out of his line of sight, walked quickly to my car, jumped in and took off. I received an sms from him a couple of minutes later.. "Hi good morning, I didn't see u come down then suddenly u leave only 2 second miss. I will sms u for any info. See u have a good day."heehee... playing hide-&-seek... Mr CoW was supposed to pass me the site reports & photos. So I called my clerk instead and asked her to take those from him. She said he made some remark saying if only his ex-wife was 1/3 as capable and good as me. yuck! Anyway I still had to talk to him over the phone. Phone call ok.. as long as he's not in my face. But I got rather agitated when I found out he didn't have information on some crucial matters. You know what Mr. CoW said? He said "don't worry, don't worry, girl girl, I will make sure I get all the info from the contractor. I will keep an eye on the project."  He called me "girl girl" ?!! I'm the one signing his pay check and he called me "girl girl"? I've asked him to come in this evening and I'm going to show him what happens to an employee who dare calls his boss "cute & adorable" and "girl girl". Labels: Work posted at 5/12/2008 12:48:00 PM
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Saturday, May 10, 2008Unintended
 I tried Muse's Unintended on drums today. It's such a beautiful song, so sad.. so heart-wrenching.. Raf let me listened to it a couple of weeks back. But I was distracted by Rachel and wasn't paying attention then. A few days ago I was checking out Youtube and saw this music video. And I fell in love with the song... You could be my unintended Choice to live my live extended You could be the one I'll always love I'll be there as soon as I can But I'm busy mending broken Pieces of the life I had before Before you It evokes old memories of a boy I used to go out with... We met during the orientation months in JC. It was hate at first sight. I thought he was too aloof and he thought I had to be the noisiest girl in town. We were forced to work together on an orientation project and soon got to know each other better. The group of us classmates went out very often... and the 2 of us would end up just talking to each other, enjoying each other's company. I knew he liked me. But he couldn't get over his relationship with another girl. We moved on... Went our seperate ways... Labels: Music posted at 5/10/2008 04:54:00 PM
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Thursday, May 08, 2008Academy of Rock - Concert Nov 2007
 Thought I've accidentally erased this photomontage. Luckily I found a backup. Academy of Rock organized their first rock concert in DBS Auditorium last November. All performances by students and instructors of the school. Since it was Bryan's debut performance, I asked my mom, sis, brother & sis-in-law to come gave him our support. My brother came thinking it would be some kiddy performance and was amazed by the standard of the concert. It was totally awesome! Bryan did a great job! I enjoyed it tremendously and I'm looking forward to the next one. Labels: Music, Photography posted at 5/08/2008 09:52:00 PM
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Weird Attraction
 I don't seem to have any luck in hiring staff.I just hired a Clerk-of-Works (I'll address him as Mr. CoW) abt a month ago. I've previously engaged him for a ENV sewer contract. That was 10 years ago. Since completion of that project he has been calling me from time to time to ask if I had any opening for him. Told me he enjoyed working with me cos I was a good boss. Recently BCA has tightened the site controls. So I had to hire a supervisor to help with my site inspections. It so happened that Mr. CoW called and I thought ok.. I'll try him out. Anyway.. he started work. But recently he's really getting on my nerves. For one, he's very fawning. Imagine having someone praising you all day long and together with God in the same sentence. He's always complimenting me on my ability to juggle work with family, on my dress sense, on my driving skills and lots of other things. He reminds me so much of Collins in Pride & Prejudice, excessively flattering. Even a simple thank you from me will evoke long strings of you're-so-polite-it's-my-duty-no-need-to-thank-me responses. I'm usually in the office at 7.30am every morning. Mr. CoW comes around 8am and has been asking me to join him for breakfast. But I'm quite particular about my breakfast personal time cos that's when I'm getting myself mentally ready to face the day. So I rather not spend breakfasts making small talks. And after a few rejections, he offered to buy me breakfasts instead.. and lunches... and afternoon teas, which I politely declined many many times. When I go to sites, Mr.. CoW is worried that it's too hot for me and he actually opens up his brolly to shelter me. He thinks that a 20 minute walk through the muddy site is too tiring and dirty for me (I wouldn't be a soil engineer if I were afraid of sun & dirt). Apparently he also thinks I'm too weak and frail to carry my own bag or my own file or my own cup of coffee. It was so *arggh* to the extent that I actually make detours to avoid him when I see him in the distance. I told him off a few times already. His job is to carry out site inspections not to be my man-servant. Last week again I refused to join him for lunch. I have no intention of forcing myself to chit-chat with him. Mr. CoW said something like.. don't worry he'd buy me lunch. I said no I wanted to rush back to office to prepare for my meeting. And he called me cute & adorable. CUTE & ADORABLE?????!!!! I felt like firing his bladdy ass on the spot and see if he still thinks me cute & adorable. arrrghhhh! On Monday he told me he dreamt about me. That I was being bullied and he had to fight the bully off. Oh boy. Today he said he was worried about me cos I didn't come in at my usual time. WTF! He's quite old, divorced and his only daughter just gotten married & moved out. So my clerk thinks he's either infatuated with me or he's treating me like his daughter. Both thoughts are just as scary. Whatever it is, he's giving me the creeps. I've decided to terminate him... either when the project is completed or when he pisses me off again, whichever comes first. Labels: Work posted at 5/08/2008 02:46:00 PM
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Tuesday, May 06, 2008HP Un-service?
I saw this letter of complaint in ST Forum. My experience with HP was quite amusing (I was in fairly good mood that day). I bought a Slimline Desktop for home use and it came pre-loaded with Windows Vista. After a few weeks I was pretty fed-up with Vista. The Slimline is a Duo-core but it's running slower than my single-core PC with WinXP! And I couldn't stand all the fanciful dialog boxes that keep popping up. I called HP Service and this was our conversation. CC : Hi. I bought a HP desktop recently and it came with Vista. If I send it to your service centre would you be able to change the OS to XP? HP Tech : Sorry M'am. We don't support down-grading. CC : Oh. So you mean you support upgrading. HP Tech : Er.. actually we also don't support upgrading. CC : ok.. Let's say if I'll install my own XP will I be able to get the drivers off your website? HP Tech : You'll have to download from the internet. CC: Yeah.. I know... But what I'm asking is, since the parts are installed by you guys, surely you'll have all the drivers right? So will I be able to get them from HP's website? HP Tech : Er... you'll have to download from the internet. CC : So in other words, your website doesn't have the drivers? HP Tech : Er... you'll have to check the internet. heh heh.. Labels: Ramblings posted at 5/06/2008 04:26:00 PM
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