Life For Rent

Good evening my dears! It has been a long time for I have been busy. Extremely busy. Busy with work, busy getting sick, busy trying NOT to get sick., busy trying to earn more money. Busy getting fat. Blah blah blah.

Over the weekend the Chub Club had a swell time eating, drinking, prawning, fishing.. Well it all began with our soon-to-be resident dentist, Dr Crystal Koh. She’s practicing in Perth but wants to practice here and so she was in town for an interview. From Marina Sq we jumped our way to Suntec (mei mei’s office) and then all the way to East Coast parkway for an early dinner. Dr Crystal has the makings of a chub club member I tell ya! We headed off to this prawning place near AMK/Sin Min. It was pretty interesting.. never been to one before.. but at 30 bucks for 3 hours per rod, geez. I parked myself at the beer garden instead. Ordered a bucket of 6 beers and the cost of it all was under 30 bucks man. LOL

Ok so I was the only one who didn’t even hold the rod once..

We were about to leave when we walked past this fish spa. Busybody Princess Rach decided to take a look and subsequently wanted to try. And so we did! Gerald and I dipped our legs in for the first time and OMG.. the sensation was REALLY weird.. I struggled for the first 2 minutes. But I did enjoy the full 30 mins.. extremely weird seeing all the fish zoom towards your legs like piranhas and they are such ugly fishes but Dr Fish is an extremely useful fish. I could actually feel and see the difference! Man! I could do this. I think I wanna set up a home fish spa. Anyone has any contacts? Rach won’t be interested. Of the 30 mins, she had her feet under water for a good 50 seconds in total. Keong has photos… but I haven’t received them yet.

I know our dear Dr Crystal would want some supper before she left the next day… the first place I thought of? Ta da! My beloved Maxwell.. which i havent been to in a while. I miss my hot wok stall and the uncle and auntie who owns it. They deal with the best hot wok noodles in the whole of Singapore I swear. Till today I haven’t found a better place, for that price anyway. Crystal had her carrot cake while we also had porridge to go around. It was a good thing my fairy friends were in the club still probably cuz it was quiet… I was careful to leave before they came out LOL. We left at about 2ish. Phew.

And that was it. Work is terribly terribly busy but in a good way. I love my job and I take on challenges like they were meant for me. Coming up this weekend is a lunch treat from a friend in the investment circle of friends I have. Also kushinbo from my beloved mei mei (gawd how can I EVER lose my frickin pounds?!?), perth trip coming up in September. Coming up in October as well I will be taking my grandma up to Genting for a short trip. I know she misses the place somewhat. She used to bring me around when i was just a little boy so I wanna do this cause jackpot aside, I just know how just being with her thrills her to bits. I don’t wanna live in regret by not doing things I wanted to but turned out too late to do.

Forecast for work in this last couple quarters is gonna be crazy but if all goes well and if I set things right it should be a great year next year for the teams I manage and lead, as well as myself. Next year I wanna focus on revamping a lot of things, send my guys out for OJT, courses maybe, and work on some improvement courses for myself too. This year I will have a certifying exam to take in December. There will be at least 1 more which I will probably work towards next year.

Hope u guys are doing well too. Fill me in on how you guys are! Look me up facebook too!

Have a good week ahead!

Quote of the day – Confused people confuse people.

Source – ST

GOT a Facebook message from a friend claiming to have been stranded overseas and asking for money to cover his hotel bill or air ticket home?

Beware. His account could have been used by hackers to make such an appeal.

A couple of years ago, hackers were breaking into e-mail accounts and using them to claim that the account-holder was stranded overseas and needed money wired over. Now, Facebook accounts are fast becoming a preferred target.

Mr Graham Cluley, a senior technology consultant at information technology security and control firm Sophos, said it is ‘quite a common scam at the moment’ because hackers can easily contact all the account-holder’s friends and lace the message with loads of personal information gleaned from the account.

Sometimes, the scammers wait for a reply before giving instructions; at other times, they ask outright for the money to be transferred via money-transfer services company Western Union.

IT security specialists say such scams are happening worldwide, but no one is tracking the numbers and most cases go unreported.

Mr Venga Tan, a 28-year-old management executive, had his e-mail, instant messaging and Facebook accounts hacked into while he was in Thailand over the National Day long weekend.

He had logged on to those accounts from his hotel room, but later lost access to them. He put it down to a technical glitch, and realised his accounts had been intruded into only upon his return to Singapore last Thursday – when his friends called to check whether he was really stranded in London and needed �1,450 (S$3,500) wired there.

Experts advise account-holders to protect themselves by picking strong passwords. This means not using dictionary words or numbers in running sequence, for instance.

They should also update the security patches for their anti-virus and anti-spyware programs, and create different passwords for their various accounts so that should one account get compromised, the others remain protected.

One in three people disregard this tip and use the same password for all the websites they access, an online survey by Sophos found out in March.

In Mr Tan’s case, the initial message was sent from his e-mail account, but follow-up messages were sent from his Facebook account to give the impression that his appeal was bona fide.

Of course, hackers cannot boast a 100 per cent success rate.

Mr Tan’s friends, for example, were not duped. About 300 of them had received the scam message, and as far as he knows, none fell for it and wired money overseas; seven responded to the message by asking for more information.

Mr Tan managed to recover his e-mail and instant messaging accounts by contacting his e-mail provider, Windows Live Hotmail, which required him to answer more than 10 questions to verify his identity.

As he had used his Hotmail account to register with Facebook, he was also able to get his Facebook password reset.

He has since created more complex passwords and now uses different ones for his accounts.

What if you were to get one of these stuck-in-a-country messages?

Speak to your friends, said Mr Cluley.

And don’t reply directly via e-mail, advised Mr Gerard Tan, who heads the Association of Information Security Professionals here. This is because the hacker can capture some of your e-mail account information from that.

Very late post I acknowledge. Been rather sick all week and am just getting better today phew.

I had a call from my dad. It was very good to know he just had his contract renewed for 1 more year at SIA. Apparently, he was the only one who was renewed. The rest were progressively dropped off as they hit 57. My dad is 60 with 60 being the max age to remain in service. However it could mean he will never have a golden handshake. I thought it was quite unfair considering he has been there since day 1! My mom was a flight stewardess when she met my dad and seriously I don’t know of anyone, who has been at the job since day 1 till retirement. 40 years, and still delivers pride in his work. I find it very unimaginable.  It is little to say how much I admire him. My brother’s bowling has improved tremendously and they were all busy for YOG as well. Apparently my dad volunteered to be involved in YOG next year. I wonder how I can contribute. Eat the leftovers maybe?

I am gonna put up photos here and there in chronological order. Starting with Ubin in the very first weekend of July!

One of the things I really enjoyed was the curry fish head at the zhi char restaurant. All in, among other dishes and drinks was like 12 bucks each? For 4. Sounds good. Seriously if you maroon me on Ubin, I will just die from the boredom. A week or so is fine. A month! No way. Strangely I never had any soreness from the biking. Not on the butt, nor on the legs.. as I anticipated. Maybe I didn’t bike hard enough. Oh that’s right. I pushed my way half the time!

Week 2 we had this BBQ at punggol park. Never knew we could BBQ at such places actually. We did our own thing and there wasn’t anyone or anything that disturbed us. Not many anyway. Maybe the occasional runner. Don’t you feel guilty when people are moving and sweating and you’re standing there sweating the same but from the BBQ fire? *burp*

Oosh happened during my birthday weekend. It was great! Round 1 happened at Red Dot, one of my favorite spots. Apparently it seems to be so for the uni students also. Times have changed. When I was their age, it was Macdonalds or something man. Quite rich these days eh. From giving tuition or perhaps earning their own keep somehow. I earned my own keep and I got to be upgraded to Long Johns Silver. Crumplers laid out everywhere too these days. Wow.

This is what I am talking bout. The ox cheek! Braised ox cheek in a bed of mashed potato (done really well) and grapes. Put all 3 together and it was heaven! Never had ox cheek before. Heck I wouldn’t even be bothered by the damn tail now!

Red Dot also has this green monster lager. Light, refreshing, and has anti viral properties. I am serious! Who said beer was bad?

We had loads of stuff in our little trellis hut @ Oosh. Lovely place.  Very tranquil and no one really bothers you until you are ready to order or require assistance, you can press this button and they’ll come. I quite like the place although I think we probably destroyed the peace and quiet with all our noise. Is it meant to be some lovers’ haunt? I don’t know man. But u can’t really challenge one another with drinks or laugh your hearts out. I tried to giggle but as u can see, it was nearly impossible especially after the rainbow went down.  All 6 of us and I kept the receipt for this purpose. The 6 of us had -

1 cheese platter

1 ice-coffee (who had that?!! Come on it is oosh!)

3 lychee mojitos

1 Rainbow (for me)

1 snowball

1 virgin margarita

2 warm valrhona choc

2 Yuzu sherbet

2 blowjob

1 lemon drop

1 long island tea

2 slippery nipple (yucks I don’t like this)

1 strawberry bellini

Actually I wonder how come we didn’t just order a champagne or wine?!

JJs bought me this t shirt. So of course I had to wear it. But everyone’s very sporting and it was quite fun. I would like to thank Keong and Gerald and Ceddy for getting the food and preparing it (while we were fussing over my new cat, that later) and BBqing it to perfection. I thought it was really good and although we really had too much to go around, I don’t think I’ve had better BBQ food (not that I attend BBqs often though). So thanks guys! Great job and effort. Couldn’t be better.

So, I did talk bout a cat. It happened like this. Rach and I were surveying out the lil huts to see if we could book them for a night in addition to our room. We were mulling over and I was sitting on one of the BBQ pit benches when this cat came out of nowhere towards me. It walked around my legs and rubbed itself against my legs. I carried it up and it seems to enjoy being carried. I felt a certain chemistry and there and then I decided to adopt the kitten. I have never kept a kitten in my life. All I had were dogs and all the dogs I had over the years were either adopted or rescued. Never bought. I have this thing bout buying pets. Sure I bought fishes and hamsters but that’s another story. So I took it back to our room.. (literally, look what the cat dragged in) and everyone began to fuss over it. I texted Jayme cause she was was coming over… I said ‘meow.. could u loan me some cat litter and tray pls? And cat food pls..dry one. I am a father!’.

Her reply was ‘so early in the morning drunk already?’ I said I was serious… can help get some cat stuff from Vivo on the way in? Her reply ‘For fuck?!’. She took a while to believe I really adopted a kitten. Aiya. Am I so unpredictable. This kind of thing cannot predict one ma… on that fateful day at the fateful hour at the fateful place… it happened. Things happen for a reason. I did wonder if the kitten’s mom was around… the ones I saw much later at night… didn’t seem to be looking for their kitten. And the food they ate was… omg. I think Kassey deserves better. Kassey of course was the first name that popped into my head and I used it.

Kassey has been to the vet, gotten a clean bill of health and got his vaccination. I will bring him back for booster early next month. In a few months I will have him neutered too. U spay female cats and neuter the males right?

Just last weekend I was at Genting with the chub club. Good gracious. Freaking expensive place and I really blew my top at one of the outlets.  After being massively ripped off with cold n lousy food, and weak coffee at 5 RM a cup, the last straw came when I asked for napkins from the counter and they went ‘sorry don’t have already’. They were just too darn lazy to replenish. If I could turn time instead of throwing a fit at the table I would have thrown it at her. Bloody lazy people. And seriously I need my coffee first thing in the day. I got the coffee in the usual kopi O glass, which tasted like CRAP, at 5RM. GEEZ. I tell u, I will never go back to that place. The nasi padang and coffee cost me 23RM. The beef steak at this restaurant we went to cause we had free vouchers, was going for 25 ++. I am not fussy bout paying for my food. I am extremely irritated when these people rip customers off and give u crap service in the process. None of the other outlets there gave such issues. Unbelievable. U know what. When I head up there I am gonna take a picture of that place this time and come back with a round 2 bash here and everywhere online.

That aside, I did learn a lot of things in the Casino. First of all, I got stopped for an IC check. As Rach would put it, they stopped me but not here. The last time I got stopped was at Dragon Fly with my mom.  Think that’s some 3 years back maybe but their entry age is 25. Casinos in Genting are for 21 and above. I sheepishly passed him my IC and he sheepishly retuned it back to me…

I have always knew casinos were huge business. But it was only when I saw it for myself I was like OMG…  as for Genting if you don’t already know, their shares Genting SP is traded in Singapore as one of the STI’s components, sitting along side big blue chips like SIA, DBS, Kepcorp, Capitaland and stuff like that.

I have also learnt never to withdraw money from an ATM within a casino. Though it came a lil too late.

One thing that bugs me with playing ta xiao is, I rather they lock in the bets first before dealing with the dice. I really hate the fact that the dice has already been ‘shaken’ and the fate is sealed. Did they actually think we could hear the numbers move in there? What is the rationale of shaking the dice before opening the table for bets?

All that concludes July as I turned 30 yes.. sigh. Coming up, Perth!

Time to head back to FB to upload more photos up there. Hope everyone’s healthy and well unlike me.. Have a  good remaining weekend!