Life For Rent

I wanna blog bout the fun days last Sat but I am too tired to. Anyway Jayme’s blog has all the info and pictures already. I need to rest my eyes, and brain for now.

Coming up next week.. durians? Ubin? And then later on in the month, a full Saturday Seminar with Dennis Ng at the SMU. I should be quite excited. Think however, I’m too tired out talking, thinking, typing the whole day, everyday. Gotta be up early at 6am tomorrow. Shall head to bed early. Have a great remaining week. Whatever is left of it anyway.

I am sitting and lunching on my mee rubus in my underwear and it occured to me furby is missing. Furby has been missing for a whole month. I did remember here and there but have always forgotten to check. No one seems to have seen it. Where are u furbyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy…..

I like the dinner.. 2 chicken thighs and cabbages. It does look like the 2 legs and cabbage were dumped onto a plate and put into the steamer with a lil bit of seasoning. I quite like stuff like that and I am actually hungry for my next steamboat… *hint hint*

And if u have to know, I don’t give a DAMN if I look 10 years pregnant.

Of course after a week normally I will grumble a lil bout it and then I will do something. But when I am eating, I DONT GIVE ANY DAMN TO IT!

Jayme had instant noodles, the best food she calls it. I think so too. In fact the invention of instant noodles is one of the best ever invented. EVER.

And comments came fast and furious from Jayme, check it out -

~ Just Jayme ?(????•?)? ~ says:
*so how u enjoyed last nite?
*btw we find him smart..
*he is not those who brags what he knows..
*he asks questions so that he knows what others feel instead… den analyze

Just Jayme ?(????•?)? ~ says:
*yah
*next time when xxx (filtered as it is proprietary info) is open…. i must be such a boss
*control emotions and not nag but ask qns to know better
*and we find that this man wun hurt u…
*he will instead, take car of u
*good choice

Aiyo. I know what she means. And hopefully she knows what I will say too.

Choice? LOL. Jeff is not some meat on a supermarket shelf or a pet in a pet shop waiting to be adopted lor. But I know what she means. The above is meant to clarify. LOL. While I share Jayme’s sentiments, I’ll like to add while Jeff and I have known each other for years now,  we have sorta grown over the years apart from one another. Which is a good thing… and like what a technical trader would say… we have this gap inbetween that needs to be closed and it is this journey of discovery with a sprinkle of familiarity along with the herbs and spices that keeps the broth sizzling hot and tasty.

And.. I like sizzling hot and tasty soup without any fanciful colors or appearances. I, for one, am used to drinking unsalted soup. And I prefer that over cream of [fill in the blanks]. Anytime.

In my bid to improve my vocab which has since gone fart after I left school, I’ve made it a point to try and have 2 new words which I’ll learn and blog about. With help from Rach, here are some of the words I have learnt over the past few days -

Epiphany – Pronounced “Er-pi-fa-nee”, generally means ‘inspiration’.

Maybe it can be associated with an expression like ‘eureka!’, in the context Rach used it in. “Epiphany! They are gonna kill me!”. Looks like it is a noun, as seen in how ceddy has his ‘epiphanies in the toilet’. I’d use bathroom instead of toilet cause with that line I had a general association linking epiphanies with piles or hemorroids or something, when it is really meant as a eureka moment of sorts.

Epitome – Pronounced “Er-pee-toe-mee”, generally implies ‘the essence of’.

“I am an epitome of a successful banker”. We have a rough picture what a successful banker appears to be like so with that line, I am saying I have essentially the characeristics of a successful banker. When u look at me, you should reckon I am a successful banker, and that’s what an epitome is all about.

Anyone wanna contribute to my 2 words a day, so that hopefully I can better my standard of English. How I got my A1, was probably how Rach got her A1 for her mandarin. I think I can relate. Somewhat.

Here’s an example of some of the stuff I do at work. In the US, information leakage is a very serious thing and everyone on that list of leaked data must be informed through writing. This is in  compliance to laws in the country. We should have that too. If my information is leaked, I should be made aware ASAP. This allows for me to take active steps to remedy it, be it to change my credit card details, etc. Many of the leaks which are non financial related may include data that will ‘personally indentify an individual’, along with data such as medical health records. Would u like your private medical records to be leaked? I suppose not, and that explains people like me work hard to prevent these from happening. The fact is, we put in policies and checks to ensure compliance and if there is a violation, we’ll be notified through monitoring but there is NO way it be can be prevented 100%. Nothing can be prevented 100%a anyway. With the convenience of technology, comes the greater risk of negligence and human errors.. and these are like the 1-2% of the work I do. The others include looking after intentional data leakage (data thiefs), risk assessments, compliance and a hell load of other stuff. It is not easy just like most job scopes under the PMETs group (and now IDA is trying to have a local regulator to ‘regulate’ us, at our cost, even though we already have global ones already..) but I do enjoy it and hopefully over time people will be better educated with knowledge information security. Better much like how CSR seems to be like here in Singapore, except for us in the financial industries, they are ‘forced’ to comply due to MAS regulations, or risk getting their license to operate here revoked. Our government is doing a good job with its never ending list of regulations and compliance requirements but perhaps this is why, we don’t get as much scandals like we hear of in other countries.. especially those in China. I have always known a lot of companies there are crooks! And if you look at the number of suspended counters here in the SGX, you will see quite a few were the darlings of the booming china market back then. The favorite S-shares and all, are now all being suspended from trading one by one.

Security beefed up after staff sends e-mail with sensitive info attached

COMPUTER security is being beefed up across the National University of Singapore (NUS) after sensitive data of more than 15,000 alumni members was leaked in an e-mail.

On April1, the NUS Career Centre sent an e-mail to about 450 NUS alumni, all of whom graduated last year, to invite them to a job recruitment fair.

But the staff member accidentally attached a file full of personal information, such as home addresses, subject majors and phone numbers of 15,794 alumni members.

This group comprises all those who graduated between 1993 and last year with a first-class or second-upper honours degree.

The Straits Times understands that this staff member had been working from an old e-mail, using it as a template. However, she neglected to remove the file attachment that was in the e-mail before sending it out.

Realising her error, she immediately tried to recall the e-mail, but only managed to retrieve some of the messages.

Due to the incident, the university is starting a review on information security across all campuses to ‘evaluate the safeguards that are in place for secure communication and exchange of information, either within or outside NUS’, said Professor Tan Eng Chye, deputy president of academic affairs and provost.

The university is taking no chances and is implementing several processes: Personal or confidential information in all its databases will be password-protected.

The passwords will be revealed to the recipients only verbally or via text messages.

‘In addition, all future e-mail announcements to stakeholder groups will be proofread by at least two staff before they are sent,’ added Associate Professor Tan Teck Koon, dean of students at the Office of Student Affairs.

There was a write up by Sumiko Tan about her dislike for facebook and I think she had pretty much hit the nail on the head with how I felt over the whole thing, especially the last bit where there are far better things to do than to sit in front of a computer screen for longer than necessary. After office and trading hours I scour over data, do my analysis, post my technical entries on market movements and all. In addition, FB is flooded with black hat users with malicious intent to compromise someone else’s machine and steal data through exploits coded within a profile so that anyone who visits it will be exploited if their computer is vulnerable. This is regardless whether the victim realises it or not. The victim may realise it within seconds (rare) till years later when they realise private data about themselves are splashed everywhere, or more commonly, find their computers getting increasingly slower as a lot of ‘bad’ processees are now running in the background.

So I concur with Sumiko, that while it is probably nice and good for many people, to each their own. It is simply not for me. In fact I dropped by my friendster account for the first time in many many months, and only because I needed to dig some info out from a profile within my list of ‘friends’.

For the life of me, I can’t get what the big deal is about Facebook
By Sumiko Tan

Never say never because you don’t know what the future will bring and you don’t want your words to come back and haunt you.

But I’m going to say this anyway: I’m not on Facebook and I never ever will be.

Two hundred million people around the world have signed on to this ‘social networking’ website where friends can hook up with one another.

They can post messages and the goings-

on in their lives for their friends to see, upload photos of themselves, send virtual gifts and take part in quizzes.

All around me, friends, colleagues and relatives have hooked up, even those who had vowed not to do so.

They love how Facebook allows them to keep in touch with current friends and reconnect with old ones.

‘With my closer friends, I always have a window into what’s going on with their lives, even if it’s just a one-line update that they are stuck in Bangkok,’ says a colleague.

‘Sometimes, there’ll be something they saw or read and got excited about that you will want to comment on and vice versa. For that brief moment, you guys are back in touch and exchanging views and gossip without having to arrange to meet up for two hours over coffee.’

A friend notes how Facebook allows people who are shy socially to be better understood. It was through the site that she found out a friend had a miscarriage and how another coped with her depression.

It also helped her get over the death of her dog last year. She posted a photo album in memory of him and was comforted by the comments left for her.

Other fans cite how Facebook can be used to network and for parents to keep track of what their children are up to.

So, if Facebook is god’s gift to friendship and social harmony and 200 million people are having a ball cementing friendships in cyberspace, what’s wrong with me? Why am I resisting? Five reasons:

I have enough friends already, thanks.

I value my private space.

I don’t want to feed my voyeuristic instincts.

The posturing one sometimes sees in

Facebook makes me cringe.

My time can be put to better use.

First off, ‘friends’ on Facebook aren’t necessarily friends as we know the word but people who have agreed to allow each other to have access to their sites.

It’s impossible for anyone to have hundreds of ‘friends’ in real life but in Facebook, it’s not uncommon.

Almost anyone can be your friend. Just click and say ‘yes’. And so they come knocking: primary school friends, secondary school friends, junior college mates, university acquaintances, work friends, ex-cubicle colleagues, army mates of ex-boyfriends and so on.

A colleague found himself with 62 friends after just two weeks on Facebook. He said ‘yes’ because ‘I guess that was the only polite thing to do and it also felt good to have 60-plus friends without trying’.

Leaving aside how the notion of friendship is being devalued, I don’t think I can cope with the idea of my social circle growing at such an exponential rate.

Maybe I’m small-minded and small-

hearted, but I’d rather keep my group of friends as it is – small and select.

True friendships require maintenance and already it’s hard work sustaining those I have in real life.

Do I want to expose myself such that ‘friendship’ is expected of me from former classmates I no longer desire to be in contact with, colleagues I don’t wish to know better, work contacts I have zero inclination to convert to friends, and acquaintances who should remain just that?

The beauty about real-life friendships is that they can die. As we move along in life, some friendships fade, others expire and there will be those you deliberately erase. People change, you change, it’s sad we’re no longer friends but it’s nothing personal.

How exhausting, then, to have all manner of friendships resurrected and indefinitely too. Of course, you can decline to ‘accept’ a friend on Facebook but it will be churlish. You can also ‘delete’ a ‘friend’ from your site but people rarely dare do so for fear of offending the person.

That’s another reason I’m anti-Facebook – I don’t want to waste emotional energy angsting over whether I’ll upset people who don’t even matter to me in the first place. The pettiness involved smacks of primary-school politics.

There’s also the issue of privacy and private space – mine and that of ‘friends’. It’s one thing to share my thoughts and photos with my ‘real’ friends on Facebook, but the site also allows Facebook-level friends access to them.

It boggles my mind how people have no qualms uploading their photos on the site. Don’t they realise how the pictures are so easily accessible, shared and even abused? And once they are shared, forget about deleting them ever.

That photo of you drunk and puking in Zouk which you – or a ‘friend’ – posted? It’s going to haunt you when you’re a 40-year-old mum.

The other day, a colleague and I got to talking about a friend of a friend. I wondered what that person looked like and, hey presto, a photo of her landed in my e-mail. It had been retrieved from his Facebook. No harm was done and I appreciated the photo, but I wonder if she would too if she had known.

The other thing I dislike about Facebook is how it feeds the voyeur in me.

In the name of research, I borrowed a password to enter the site and found myself delving into the lives of people I knew and hardly knew. I’m ashamed to admit it, but a lot of ungenerous thoughts surfaced while I was checking out their albums.

Hmm, is that how her husband looks? Not quite the Prince Charming I’d imagined. Gosh, what an ugly jacket she’s wearing. Why is he posting those ridiculous photos of himself? What’s with the gallery of happy-family photos? What’s she trying to say and prove?

I didn’t like the conversation going on in my head and was glad to log off.

The thing about Facebook is that there is a certain amount of posturing going on. People are making a public statement about themselves after all, from the profile photo they decide on (who uses a passport picture?) to the comments they post.

It’s amazing the amount of effort some put in to depict how successful, smart, happy, trendy, popular and well-travelled they are. I find this pretentious and off-putting.

Which leads me to my final point – life’s too short to be stuck in front of the computer for more than it’s necessary.

Already, I spend more than 60 hours each week staring at the computer screen either at work or at home. That’s more than 35 per cent of my life.

Having Facebook will mean more hours. Don’t I have better things to do, like going for a run or picking up bowling or gardening or knitting or whatever?

To each his own, of course, and clearly Facebook is a godsend for millions of people. It builds friendships, alleviates loneliness and even gives meaning to one’s life.

It’s just not for me.

First of all, happy birthday Paul! To the uninitiated, Paul’s my 16 year old brother. I texted him as he was out. “Finally, NC movies..” he said. I said.. pls don’t get drunk and don’t get anyone pregnant. He said neh he’s innocent and its all guy friends. I replied ‘Prefer guys eh?”. He said no la.. good friends. Tomorow go out with the gf. Zhun bo? I also don’t know.. But happy birthday Paul nonetheless!

I can’t remember what happened during my 16th also…

I managed to sneak a few messages with the date before I packed up for the day at work and all. I explained how neglectful I felt of the whole thing and I didn’t want the date to have the wrong idea. And yes he has a name and that’s, Jeff! Yes the same Jeff who has been commenting on the blogs. I felt really quite bummed out this week.. moodless for a lot of things. Maybe Rach’s crazy studying hours has been sapping my energy too! And it is weeks like this which I need some peace and quiet at the end of the day.. in desperate need to ‘reboot’. I told him how I felt cuz I didn’t want him to feel neglected and in no way did I feel he was being sticky. I also brought up the mindset of putting my heart and soul into work after the last breakup. After the last failed date, I said the same thing to myself. But it doesn’t mean I am not ready to date but rather I need time to transition over slowly. In a way I guess I haven’t quite ‘recovered’ from the last relationship, but I don’t wanna let a perfectly good start to a relationship get ruined that easily at all. I do think he and I sync very well on the intellectual side along with the romance side of things. I’d definitely wanna build this further. I am kinda bummed and burnt out at work but it doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy what I do. I do. If u know what I do, and all to it, you’ll know how draining multi tasking can be but that’s something I have been training myself to do. 3 months into the last holiday and it is like I badly need another one again. I need a nice rub… and I can’t get the spa back in Phuket out of my head. Rach didn’t do that treatment I did so she won’t know but it was OMG… shiokness to the core. All she knew was I snored. I won’t snore if it was bad… and bored.. cuz I would have been cursing under my breath.

I am glad Jeff understands and that’s from someone who has been there done that. I need a patient partner. A partner who won’t throw fits if I am bummed out. A partner who’s as supportive at the end of the day. A partner whom I can count on and be counted on too. I don’t need someone who worships the road I tread on. Good for the ego maybe, but that’s all it does. I need someone to walk that road with me. It is not an easy thing, for most people. Lovers, as I have reflected over the past few months, need not share the same goals. They do however, need to share the same level of respect for each other, self and mutual dignity, and lots of room and personal space for growth. Failure of which may lead to a slow but eventual starvation and suffocation. A relationship needs to be fed continuously with nutrient packed sweetness for one another. One way to set ugliness aside and to focus on the pretty things, is to recall why the 2 of u are together in the first place. What brought u together, and what can make both stay together. Relationships are amazingly simple to begin. It is one of the easiest things to begin, yet one of the hardest to maintain, much less grow. The successful ones find new ways along the way as both parties evolve side by side.

I am quite tired… and I think I’ll just keep more of that for next time. I was in friendster earlier (the long forgotten place) and I took a look at some of my contacts.. mailed some of them to say hi and all. One of my ex classmate Emily Yeo, is now an aeronautical engineer according to the profile. WOW. It is good to see the profiles again… and I saw Jay’s one too. So sweet… especially one of the lines he wrote in the profile. I am sure Jayme is hoping he’d say that and other sweet stuff to her now and then. It is typical of men, like me even, to get so focused and engrossed in so many stuff we forget what’s in front of us…. But.. I shall learn. Hopefully.

And yes, is a date, a date? To the heterosexuals, dating = a state of being attached with a partner.

To us.. a date is like someone of interest? Not in a commited relationship yet as partners. Which means, if 2 people get together, it is the equivilent of being married? I refer a date to someone whom I have special interest for, and with. When someone tells me he or she is going out on a date, I reckon it is someone new they are with. Else they would say I’m going out with my bf or gf. Hmmmm.. not that it matters. Just a thought. Cuz I realised when I use the word date, girls and all may have a different assumption of it.

Good night people. ATIC tomorrow and sunday, with Jayme and Jay. See u both, tomorrow!

I do have this thing bout waking up on some days and feel as if you had not slept a wink. It’s quite disastrous. Which is why if a particular bedding/mattress is really good (is sealys good?) I won’t mind paying 10 grand for a king size even. When you spend 1/3 of your life on it (supposedly), I think it is a good investment. Wake up feeling like a million dollars.

Work is terrible but I am beginning to understand how work can never be finished, and learn how to deal with it. I am also learning to accept how once one is out of school, your command of English just goes fart. Totally. I was typing an email and the auto corrector suggested I phrase it in another way and you know what, it was right! I do have to bring down my standard a little so people around me can sorta understand but I am beggining to feel my command of the language has been downgrading…. it is, quite depressing. How do I deal with it? I have no idea yet..

Worry worry worry. A worry is like a rocking chair. You’re doing something, but it is getting you nowhere.

I shall not complain too much cause I know someone’s going through a tougher time now, probably.

I need a fag, to wake me up a little.

Hello, everyone! WASSUP! I Am just done with dinner of steak (lovely medium rare), BRACOLI and… I don’t know.. lettuce? Juicy steak.. I love it. Hope u guys had a nice dinner to! Just finished the US version of Don’t Forget The Lyrics feat. Wayne Brady.

It was nice! The female contestant was gonna get married soon. Her fiancee is out of town and she hasn’t seen him in half a year. Midway through the show, they put the fiancee on the speaker, via long distance call! So nice! She used the 2-words backup to confirm a 3 missing word song, and her gut was right. And then came the milestone of 25k. Get that right and that would be the base amount regardless what happens thereafter. 4 missing words, she was pretty sure but she didn’t wanna go home empty handed. Fiancee was on the phone and he said, use the backup. She didn’t and decided to go with her gut.. and this is after he said “Baby, I just want you to know, whatever you do on the show, just win a lotta money!” haahaaha… hilarious. He was just kidding of course… and yes, she got it right!

She had to use 3 lines on a song that she wasn’t sure of at all but when the 3 lines came up she was sure one of them was the right one cause she remembered the middle part of the line, and she was right! The last backup came when she had 100k and was playing for 200k. Didn’t know the song, chose a backup singer (her fiancee’s sister!) and phew, she knew the song word for word, all 10 of it. Locked it in, and boom, 200k! Unbelievable! She couldn’t get away with You Sexy Thing (Hot Chocolate) for 350k but that’s okay… she’s gonna fly her whole family to jamaica for the wedding! So sweet..

And u know what’s sweeter? The guy submitted some photos of themselves.. but had one solo picture of her in a totally unglamorous outfit. Specs, baggy shirt and all cause it was a camping trip. And he said.. “That’s the person whom I fell in love with”…. AWWwwwwww…… They’re good lovers.. and they deserve the prize money. Every penny of it.

Next week features bob the builder! Well.. tune in and you will see what I mean.

Moving on, yes my cough is better now. I walked into the office at 12pm and found a colleague who began coughing yesterday on MC. Oh dear I hope it wasn’t my fault. But as soon as I stepped in I coughed again, like mad. What the hell…

And I had a whole bunch of text messages to check on me.. thank you all so much. Julian, Boon Sun, Phoebs.. thanks for being sweet.

So you guys wanna know more bout my date eh. Well I have been ill, like I said so we didn’t hang out but we spoke, we texted, we MSNed, before we slept, after we woke up, during the course of the day and all.

I will talk more as the days go by. Why’s Jayme and Phoebs so excited bout it? LOL. Sorry no wedding dinner round the corner hor. We don’t drive, and there is no backseat!

Jay and Jayme took me to Don’s pie at China Square where they have this famous crab bee hoon and I must say within a month, I have gone with them, with Rach and today with my colleague.  I could do away with the noodles and soup but I can’t get enough of the crabs. A whole crab in a pot of bee hoon soup with veggie (like the slice fish bee hoon kinda broth but a lot sweeter!) at $16 net. I think it is lovely though I hope I won’t be heading back for a while now. I have been… full of CRAB(P)!

I am still struggling with my cough. Saw the doc twice… and come to think of it maybe I should start thinking bout changing doctors. But as a consultant family physican with loads of experience and qualifications I thought he’d know better… hmm.

The whole office is coughing away… sigh. I will have to do some work tonight.. I will prolly go in later tomorrow morning. I can’t wait till April 28th and 29th! I haven’t had time, nor was I well enough to go out with my new date yet. I wouldn’t wanna pass germs over too… some things are NOT meant to be shared.

In all good time.. in all good time. Thank you dear for your patience..