Living It Up

Damnit!  Just realised I’m going to have to set aside time to fix the damn permalinks bug because unless WP 2.6.1 comes out REALLY REALLY soon, all my previous blog entries, where I made url references to other blog entires, would now become a broken link!  Grr…

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A constant pain in the neck with using Meebo in office is that messages tend to go missing.  I’m not sure if this is a Meebo problem or my office network problem (dropped connection) but it is a real pain when you’re constantly unsure if your messages reached the other party.

The worst hit victim of this missing messages problem is Iceman (I suppose that’s ‘cos I talk to him the most on Meebo).  We’ve developed a habit of copying and pasting our messages if we don’t get a response after 5-10min.  Of course, sometimes, the other party is away from the computer and hence there’s no response.  But other times, this lack of response is because the other party never received the message.  Even the copy and paste text can go missing a couple of times… which means sometimes we can end up pasting the same message 3-4 times before it actually goes through.

On particularly bad days, Iceman and I resort to using Gtalk as an alternative IM to communicate.  Sadly, Gtalk disconnects pretty regularly too… but the mitigating factor is that when Gtalk is disconnected, there is an error prompt to notify me that the message did not go through. 

This missing messages irritation culminated in a really crappy incident last night.  I originally arranged to meet Iceman for dinner at 7pm, after which some last minute task came in from overseas and I had to resolve the issue before I could leave.  I told Iceman over Meebo to meet at 7:30pm instead… and I got an "ok, bye" from him and so I thought he got my message.  Unfortunately, Iceman’s "ok" was in response to an earlier message I typed… and he never got my message about changing the meeting time to 7:30pm.

When I finally reached at our appointed dinner venue close to 8pm, Iceman was starving and obviously puzzled why I was so late.  Then the whole missing messages thing came out and well, it was too late to do anything.  So when I got home last night, I decided to do another search on the Internet to see if there were any other IM alternatives (i.e. IMs that can get past my office firewall).  I found a website that had a whole list of the various web-based IMs available.  Amongst those listed were - www.ebuddy.com, www.iloveim.com, www.meebo.com, www.imhaha.com, imo.im, etc. 

I’m familiar with all except the last 2… and so I did a test on both.  Nothing really special about imhaha.com… but imo.im… aha!  I found a gem there.  There’s a downloadable imo.im programme that runs on Windows PCs.  It requires .NET to work and looks very very similar to Gtalk (which is small, neat and gets past most firewalls).  Tested it and it worked pretty ok so far - only 1 missing message occurrence.

This imo.im programme displays a "disconnected" status message when the IM is disconnected so as long as you don’t send a message when you’re disconnected, I think it’s reasonably stable.  Will continue testing it over the next few days but so far, it’s really lovely.  When the programme is minimised, it’s tucked away in the systray and I switched off the notification alert so nothing pops up when I receive a message.  The icons blinks discreetly in the systray and that’s it (just like ICQ).  Sweet.

I highly recommend this programme for all IM junkies! 

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tried the work around solution for the permalinks bug in Wordpress 2.6 but that unfortunately didn’t work for me.  the solution proper requires me to delve into the codes but i’m hesitant to open the floodgates of blogging hell.  the best bet for me, perhaps, is to just wait for WP 2.6.1 to be released and hopefully the bug will be fixed then.

throat started hurting again this morning.  argh.  maybe it’s ‘cos i finished the course of antibiotics last night but my body hasn’t developed enough of its own to fight off the sore throat. 

very sian.  sigh.

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Managed to catch X-Files tonight.  It was a disappointment for me… the plot was thin and the pace slow.  I think you could probably put everything into a 1-hour episode and have it work quite well… but to stretch out the thin storyline into a 2-hour movie just didn’t cut it.

Even more disappointing  was how Mulder & Scully were suddenly an item in the movie!  Gosh!  How could the producers/scriptwriters/director just put Mulder & Scully together without showing how it happened?  After all, one of the things that kept fans chasing the series was to find out if Mulder & Scully would ever get together!  The romantic tension between the two leads was exciting and I think that forms a pretty big part of the whole X-Files package.

To finally make Mulder & Scully a couple just killed the emotional rollercoaster ride where we all wanted them to be together but for some reason they just didn’t get together.  To make them an item with no explanation at all?  That was horrible!  It’s like a double anti-climax!  Highly unsettling.

And if you thought it couldn’t get any worse… it did.  I think it’s due to poor scripting ‘cos you couldn’t tell at all that Mulder & Scully were together till 1/4 through the movie, you see them in bed discussing some problems they were facing individually and you go - gosh!  Since when did they get together?  Did I fall asleep?

Sigh.  I was quite looking forward to re-living a huge TV hit during my teenage years on the big screen tonight.  Sadly, I think this movie only shows it’s time to axe the X-Files.

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I couldn’t remember the plot of the previous X-Files movie so I did an online search.  If you read the plot of the previous movie, you’ll appreciate how it was deeply entrenched in the overall X-Files themes/plots, etc.  Sigh.  I miss the old X-Files.  I hereby conclude this latest movie is crap on comparison.

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Haven’t blogged for an entire week ‘cos I was really busy and was down with a nasty sore throat + flu last Thurs… which stretched over the weekend.  Extremely depressing.  I hate being sick over the weekend ‘cos time just flies past while you’re trying to recuperate and before you know it, the work week starts again.  Bleah.

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The government is currently looking into legalising organ trading in Singapore.  Read in the papers that the only country in the world where organ trading is legal is in Iran.  This stemmed from the US sanctions against Iran making it difficult for Iran to import dialysis equipment and the long war Iran fought with Iraq and thus the Iranian government devised an "organ sharing" scheme which is fully government run (doctors, hospitals, etc, are all on the govt’s payroll).  The govt compensates the donor for his/her "altruism" and provides health insurance for the donor as well.  A "gift" may also be given by the recipient to the donor for the "love gift" aka the kidney.

While there are certain pros to having a govt-run scheme - the poor is also eligible for an organ transplant, transplants are regulated, the donor gets the full compensation instead of a middleman profiting, etc, there’s no denying the fact that these are still monetary transactions that are taking place. 

In Iran, it takes about 1-2 years for a kidney donor to be found.  The average in Singapore is about 9 years and given that many kidney patients in need of a transplant have a life span of 5 years, many do not survive the waiting period.  It is a known fact that those who can afford often travel to emerging markets (China, India, Philippines, Indonesia and the like) to procure a kidney.  The most unfair part about these black market transactions is that the organ broker often takes the biggest cut of the payment and the donor is exploited. 

During lunch a couple of days ago, a senior colleague spoke strongly for the case of legalising organ trading in Singapore.  While I really don’t know how right or wrong this is - how does one put a value on a human organ vs. how can one not save another’s life - what struck me deepest was when my colleague said, "If we can allow abortions to take place, how can we not allow organ trading?  What gives us the right to rob the life of an unborn child and then get moralistic and ban organ trade?  At least the organ transplant will save another person’s life".

I’ve been thinking about this and I have no conclusion what is the right thing to do.  Perhaps an Iranian doctor summarised it best when he said - the world chooses to see this as a cup half empty but we choose to see it as a cup half filled.

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Got this from Azure.  Aren’t they cute?

I love the cute little bunnies!

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Need to say thanks to David for alerting me that the Pages in my blog had broken links - happened when I got rid of the permalinks.  Sigh.

I found another error too.  Went to my WordPress Dashboard and saw I had 4 comments that needed moderation.  However, when I clicked on the Comments section, the "Awaiting Moderation" part was blank!

Managed to get around this by going back to my Dashboard - Manage Posts and under this section, posts that have comments awaiting moderation are highlighted a darker shade. 

Sigh… I hope there’s a new release of WP 2.6 soon… with all these bugs fixed!

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Went to the Night Fest with Iceman last night.  It was packed!  But worth the squeeze, knocks, "tsks", elbows and glares as the dancers in the sky (by Studio Festi) were really really good.

Here’re some videos I took.

Love this ballerina in the air.  Her pirouettes were beautiful! This was my favourite dance item in the entire performance. I love her spins in the air towards the end of the vid!

Ok… I thought this looked a little tacky.  Like those Chinese ghost shows of the 80s… (you can see the people pulling the cables on the ground).

This dancing couple wasn’t too bad either I suppose.

Anyway, my apologies for not having clearer photos.  That was the best my Nokia N82 could do.  I’m sure if you do a search on Youtube, you’ll find some clearer videos.  Heh.

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I was telling my cellgroup about "FCUK The Dark Knight" and they brought up another 2 really really bad names…

1) The world was happy with PayPal… but Google cussed and swore that they would do better… and gave us (well, lmost), Gbuy… (Hokkien speakers will know what I mean).  Thankfully, this was later launched as Google Checkout. 

2) Enfamom, from what I gather, is a pretty popular brand of milk of mothers.  I wonder how popular is Enfakid?  After all, as Jukebox said… did the entire boardroom of marketing people not realise what Enfakid sounds like?

Anyone got anything else to add to the list? 

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Check it out!  I have a Star Wars building in my City! 

Heh… ok… I know I’m being bo liao… but i just needed a place to store how many city develops and I’ve realised this blog makes the best storage place…

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I just went to blog hell and back.  Was really happy when I found a plugin that allows an automatic update of WordPress.  However, after the upgrade, I found that all my Categories went missing!

Thank God, I found the solution here.  I installed the phpMyAdmin programme and managed to add back the categories as per the instructions.  However, after that, all my category links didn’t work!  Kept getting a "Repeat Loop" error.

I thought it was some error on my recovery steps… so I left a comment on David’s blog asking for help.  He very very kindly took a look at my blog and told me that it was another WP 2.6 bug I was suffering from - the Custom Permalink weren’t working.

He also gave me the solution here.  But being the WP idiot I am, I decided it was easier to just disable the Custom Permalink plugin.  Heh.

OK, so most readers of my blog aren’t going to be bothered about all techie speak but I just wanted to give a summary of what happened here in case another person who’s as WP "un-inclined" as me will not have to go through blog hell too.  Heh.

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My favourite game in Facebook now - My City.  Hehe… add citizens into your virtual city and watch it grow.

Two of my favourite so far…

I thought the McDonald’s was so cool!

Then for some reason it changed to Mobil… but that’s still ok given the surging oil prices.  Haha.

A city I created for Iceman!  Haha… cute eh? 

  Okie.. that’s all for now.  Goodnight!

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I’m upset.  This week mega sucks.  I was so looking forward to trying out mineral makeup foundation so I left work at 6:30pm to check out Glominerals at True Colour at Ngee Ann City.  Booze Queen came along.  A non-English speaking woman served us.  While I was ok with it… it kind of annoys me now why should I, as the customer, accommodate a sales person’s incompetency when I should’ve insisted on an English speaking staff serving me. 

But I digress.  The first foundation the woman let me try was a little too whitish.  Made my face look a little ghostly.  She insisted that was the best shade because the colour will "oxidise" after a while.  So I waited a while.  It was still as white.  We left the shop after I found out that the foundation cost $82.80.  That’s twice as much as what I pay for at MAC and I wasn’t sure if it was worth forking out the money for.

We then went to MAC to check out the mineral makeup range.  Unfortunately, the "mineralised foundation" that MAC has only comes in liquid form.  I hate liquid foundation.  Too much trouble to apply. 

We eventually went back to True Colour and I asked the cheena woman to let me try a shade darker than the whitish foundation she recommended the first time round.  This time, the colour she recommended turned out to be a little pinkish.  Which was still rather contrasting to my neck colour. 

Booze Queen then found a honey tone, which looked a lot closer to my skin tone (which is quite yellowish).  We still felt it was a little light so the cheena woman got a darker shade for me to try.  When she applied the foundation on my chin, it blended well with my neck colour.  I also brushed on the foundation on my inner forearm and it blended with my skin.  I was quite pleased and went ahead with the purchase.

After I got home, I removed my makeup and excitedly tried on the new foundation.  GOOD GRIEF.  The colour was so dark!!  It’s sooo dark that my face turned brown.  I can pass off as a Malay.  It’s THAT dark.  I was totally shocked.  How can the colour look so different from the shop and at home?  Was it because of the brush the cheena woman used to apply the foundation?  Did the brush give a much lighter colour?  And at home, using the thin and fur-like sponge, the colour came out too dark? 

I cleaned off the foundation completely and re-applied, using a very light touch of my fingers.  The result was still as dark.  WHAT THE HELL happened?  It’s so dark I could probably give it to Bubbs or XLS to try! 

I’m extremely displeased about it.  Going to the shop to make noise tomorrow.  I wonder if it’s the lighting at the shop that distorted the colour?  I did complain at the shop that their lighting made it very difficult to see the makeup.  But I highly doubt they’ll let me change to a lighter shade.  After all, what will they do with the one I’ve opened?  Not sure if I want to get a lighter shade.  It’s too much money to spend on 1 bloody foundation.  Grrr.  This is a freaky sucky week. 

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This pic was taken some time back… when I was headed to Cityhall area to meet Iceman.  I can’t remember for sure which ECP entrance was this… it’s either the entrance coming from Marine Parade or from Xilin Avenue. 

Anyway, there was this bad jam on the road and I was wondering why on earth was there a jam on a Sunday afternoon.. aha!  Saw from far that some driver very brilliantly drove into the ditch. 

Managed to get this shot when my car was inching around the bend.  No one was injured… saw the owners of the car standing and watching the tow truck yank their car out of the ditch.  Sigh.  Wonder how fast they must’ve been going to have flown off the road.  Really lucky for them that no one was hurt.

Talking about accidents.  NTU Buddy wasn’t so lucky.  Spoke to him briefly over MSN 2 nights ago.  His car is in the workshop ‘cos the back got smashed in quite badly by another car.  He said he suffered slight injuries too but didn’t elaborate (I’m guessing whiplash).  He said he’ll tell me the details when we next meet up but in a nutshell, some guy rammed into his car and almost immediately, another car with 2 guys inside appeared.  These 2 guys said they were friends of the first guy and that they happened to be mechanics.  I think they tried to make a deal with Buddy to fix his car but Buddy said it was damn obvious that the whole thing was a scam.

He’s going to claim on his car insurance policy.  I said he should’ve reported the incident to the police and let the police investigate to see if it was really a scam.  Reporting the accident to the insurer isn’t enough!  Will get more details from him when we meet.

Till then… it’s bedtime once again.  Heh.  Nitez…

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