Dance like no one's watching

Horlicks is one daring bunny.

Actually "daring" is an under statement… "absolutely fearless" is a more accurate description.

This never really crossed my mind before – that those in office might not be allowed to use e-mail or other similar forms of online communication.  I feel Obama’s pain…

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November 16, 2008

Lose the BlackBerry? Yes He Can, Maybe

By JEFF ZELENY

WASHINGTON — Sorry, Mr. President. Please surrender your BlackBerry.

Those are seven words President-elect Barack Obama is dreading but expecting to hear, friends and advisers say, when he takes office in 65 days.

For years, like legions of other professionals, Mr. Obama has been all but addicted to his BlackBerry. The device has rarely been far from his side — on most days, it was fastened to his belt — to provide a singular conduit to the outside world as the bubble around him grew tighter and tighter throughout his campaign.

“How about that?” Mr. Obama replied to a friend’s congratulatory e-mail message on the night of his victory.

But before he arrives at the White House, he will probably be forced to sign off. In addition to concerns about e-mail security, he faces the Presidential Records Act, which puts his correspondence in the official record and ultimately up for public review, and the threat of subpoenas. A decision has not been made on whether he could become the first e-mailing president, but aides said that seemed doubtful.

For all the perquisites and power afforded the president, the chief executive of the United States is essentially deprived by law and by culture of some of the very tools that other chief executives depend on to survive and to thrive. Mr. Obama, however, seems intent on pulling the office at least partly into the 21st century on that score; aides said he hopes to have a laptop computer on his desk in the Oval Office, making him the first American president to do so.

Mr. Obama has not sent a farewell dispatch from the personal e-mail account he uses — he has not changed his address in years — but friends say the frequency of correspondence has diminished. In recent days, though, he has been seen typing his thoughts on transition matters and other items on his BlackBerry, bypassing, at least temporarily, the bureaucracy that is quickly encircling him.

A year ago, when many Democratic contributors and other observers were worried about his prospects against Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, they reached out to him directly. Mr. Obama had changed his cellphone number, so e-mail remained the most reliable way of communicating directly with him.

“His BlackBerry was constantly crackling with e-mails,” said David Axelrod, the campaign’s chief strategist. “People were generous with their advice — much of it conflicting.”

Mr. Obama is the second president to grapple with the idea of this self-imposed isolation. Three days before his first inauguration, George W. Bush sent a message to 42 friends and relatives that explained his predicament.

“Since I do not want my private conversations looked at by those out to embarrass, the only course of action is not to correspond in cyberspace,” Mr. Bush wrote from his old address, G94B@aol.com. “This saddens me. I have enjoyed conversing with each of you.”

But in the interceding eight years, as BlackBerrys have become ubiquitous — and often less intrusive than a telephone, the volume of e-mail has multiplied and the role of technology has matured. Mr. Obama used e-mail to stay in constant touch with friends from the lonely confines of the road, often sending messages like “Sox!” when the Chicago White Sox won a game. He also relied on e-mail to keep abreast of the rapid whirl of events on a given campaign day.

Mr. Obama’s memorandums and briefing books were seldom printed out and delivered to his house or hotel room, aides said. They were simply sent to his BlackBerry for his review. If a document was too long, he would read and respond from his laptop computer, often putting his editing changes in red type.

His messages to advisers and friends, they say, are generally crisp, properly spelled and free of symbols or emoticons. The time stamps provided a window into how much he was sleeping on a given night, with messages often being sent to staff members at 1 a.m. or as late as 3 a.m. if he was working on an important speech.

He received a scaled-down list of news clippings, with his advisers wanting to keep him from reading blogs and news updates all day long, yet aides said he still seemed to hear about nearly everything in real time. A network of friends — some from college, others from Chicago and various chapters in his life — promised to keep him plugged in.

Not having such a ready line to that network, staff members who spent countless hours with him say, is likely to be a challenge.

“Given how important it is for him to get unfiltered information from as many sources as possible, I can imagine he will miss that freedom,” said Linda Douglass, a senior adviser who traveled with the campaign.

Mr. Obama has, for at least brief moments, been forced offline. As he sat down with a small circle of advisers to prepare for debates with Senator John McCain, one rule was quickly established: No BlackBerrys. Mr. Axelrod ordered everyone to put their devices in the center of a table during work sessions. Mr. Obama, who was known to sneak a peek at his, was no exception.

In the closing stages of the campaign, as exhaustion set in and the workload increased, aides said Mr. Obama spent more time reading than responding to messages. As his team prepares a final judgment on whether he can keep using e-mail, perhaps even in a read-only fashion, several authorities in presidential communication said they believed it was highly unlikely that he would be able to do so.

Diana Owen, who leads the American Studies program at Georgetown University, said presidents were not advised to use e-mail because of security risks and fear that messages could be intercepted.

“They could come up with some bulletproof way of protecting his e-mail and digital correspondence, but anything can be hacked,” said Ms. Owen, who has studied how presidents communicate in the Internet era. “The nature of the president’s job is that others can use e-mail for him.”

She added: “It’s a time burner. It might be easier for him to say, ‘I can’t be on e-mail.’ ”

Should Mr. Obama want to break ground and become the first president to fire off e-mail messages from the West Wing and wherever he travels, he could turn to Al Gore as a model. In the later years of his vice presidency, Democrats said, Mr. Gore used a government e-mail address and a campaign address in his race against Mr. Bush.

The president, though, faces far greater public scrutiny. And even if he does not wear a BlackBerry on his belt or carry a cellphone in his pocket, he almost certainly will not lack from a variety of new communication.

On Saturday, as Mr. Obama broadcast the weekly Democratic radio address, it came with a twist. For the first time, it was also videotaped and will be archived on YouTube.

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Attended a really really old friend’s wedding last week.  I classify this friend as my "TPJC friend" though that’s not really accurate.  I was in TPJC during the first 3 months of my JC 1st year.  This friend, NSG, was in TJC during the first 3 months.  After the ‘O’ level results were out, I transferred to TJC while NSG transferred to TPJC.  Coincidentally, NSG was placed in the same class as my ex-TPJC classmates and I also got to know his TJC classmates after I went to TJC.  So through these common friends, we became friends too.

I haven’t spoken much to NSG in recent years but I regard him as a very special, old friend.  During our JC years, I used to borrow his scanner to scan photos for my personal homepage.  Years later, when I was in real estate, he also introduced me to his uncle’s company, of which I closed 1 (or 2) deals with the company.  I was touched that he helped made that introduction ‘cos we drifted apart when he was doing his national service and I was in NTU. 

In that sense, I really treasure the people I got to know in TPJC.  I feel that they are less selfish than some of my classmates in TJC and their sincerity makes me trust them completely.  There’s another friend I made during the 3 months in TPJC… though we never met again after we both left TPJC, he knew I was in real estate when I spammed my handphone address book to market my services.  3 years later, though I had left real estate by then, this friend nonetheless contacted me and wanted to buy a flat through me.  I was truly touched.

Anyway, I saw 4 TPJC friends I knew during NSG’s wedding last week and we promptly exchanged handphone numbers and facebook contacts.  Though I haven’t seen them in the last decade, conversation flowed easily and I was totally at ease with them.  It was like I could laugh with all my heart and not have to guard against anything or anyone.  It was great.

Here’s a group photo we took at the end of the dinner.

From left: Me, LL (gal in pink dress – my TPJC friend’s classmate after I left TPJC), HPY (guy in white shirt), NSG, NSG’s wife (I know her from TPJC too!  Haha.  Don’t you lurve her Grecian looking gown?  It’s lovely isn’t it?), Spacer (guy in light blue shirt in back row), Rain (gal in satin blue dress in front row), Ange (she’s my primary school classmate… we went to different sec schools but met again in TPJC) and Eteo (guy in striped shirt).

Spacer and HPY said I look pretty much the same as when I was in JC.  I think they look the same too!  Here’s a pic of HPY and NSG to prove it!

Remarkable huh?  Haha.  Cheerios people!

Iceman wanted to test his new Nikon D90 so we decided to check out some places that might make for good wedding photoshoot locations.  Here’re some photos from Blair Plain.

Chanced upon some photos of Kampong Lorong Buangkok.  Thought this might be a potentially nice place too.

Looks really rustic doesn’t it?  The instructions I got on getting there is, take SBS bus no. 88 and alight at the junction of Ang Mo Kio Ave 5 and Yio Chu Kang Road, then walk towards Gerald Drive.

Was trawling through my old website and saw these old photos… the first was taken somewhere near Tanah Merah Ferry Terminal… though I can’t really remember the exact location.  Some friends found it on their cycling trip.  The second location was also chanced upon by my friends when they were cycling. 

Heh… these 2 photos are like 10 years (or more) old.  But I think I should still be able to find these places? 

There was total chaos, bordering on anarchy in the Forbidden City last night.  After my dad flew off to HK/Germany on Thursday morning, the bunnies had to stop their usual routine of visiting one another’s enclosure.  (Horlicks & Pinky share 1 enclosure while Peanut & Coffee share another enclosures.  My dad has a nightly routine of taking turns to lock one pair of bunnies up in their individual cages and let the other pair into the locked bunnies’ enclosure.  We have to do this ‘cos Coffee will fight with Horlicks and Pinky). 

Anyway, at about 1am plus last night, I was about to shower when my mom called & said that Horlicks had breached the wire fence separating the 2 enclosures and was engaging Coffee in a fight in Coffee’s enclosure.  In the ensuing chaos, the best my mom could do was to take a polycarbonate sheet to separate the 2 fighting bunnies.  Peanut was terrified & crouched in a corner in her cage.  Pinky… well… Pinky was just nonchalant.  In fact, he took the opportunity to finish all the pellets in Horlicks’ food tray before eating the pellets in his.  Greedy boy.

I tried to carry Horlicks to put her back into her enclosure but erm, her butt was a little wet from spraying urine across Coffee’s enclosure (a sign of marking her territory… it’s the way bunnies harass one another… like how loansharks splash red paint outside defaulting borrowers’ homes) so I didn’t really want to hug her against me.  In the end, I had to lift up the wire fence separating the 2 enclosures and literally push Horlicks back into her territory. 

Next, Iceman and I had to calm all the bunnies down (except Pinky who was still eating) as they were all very agitated.  I was quite worried the stress would give them a heart attack.  My mom, Iceman and I deliberated quite a while over how to prevent Horlicks from jumping over to Coffee’s side again.  Horlicks is quite a high jumper and so it’s extremely easy for her to jump over the wire fence which is about slightly above my knee (I’m 1.62m tall… sorry I can’t quite estimate the height of the fence).

We ended up using a polycarbonate sheet to separate the 2 enclosures as it’s about waist high.  Iceman and I also coaxed Pinky and a sulking Horlicks into the backyard to allow them to run a bit.  That seemed to pacify Horlicks (she has sooo much pent up energy). 

Decided to follow my dad’s nightly routine tonight… which meant taking turns to allow the bunnies to have a free run of the entire side yard and front porch area.  I think they were all happy with the exercise.  Certainly hope this would discourage Horlicks from launching another attack on Coffee!  Sigh.

Ok.  That’s a pretty mashed up title.  Iceman bought a Nikon D90 recently and guess who had the honour of being the first pic the camera took?

Yup.. it’s Muah Chee!!  He was extremely honoured. 

MC thinks his front profile is better looking.

Shots taken from the Singapore Flyer.

Fullerton Hotel

The IR that we hope gets completed.

Pinky (left) & Horlicks caught offguard.  Eating in a not too glam way.  (The flash bounced off a little too much from the wall & their white fur… hence the shot looks a little over exposed).

Pinky & Horlicks glaring at Iceman for taking an unglam photo of them.

But as we all know, Pinky’s a real cam whore.

Horlicks decides to out-do Pinky.

Pinky chiding his mom for showing off.

The bunnies relaxing after dinner.

Finally… a really clear shot of Peanut (w/o her blending into the floor) and Coffee (w/o him blending into the shadows).

Okie!  That’s all the photos for today.  Heehee.  You should be seeing more photos from the D90 here.  🙂

Just as there are venomous scumbags who derive some cretinous pleasure from hacking people’s blogs and ICQ accounts (damn you hackers!  May you rot in Internet hell!), there’re also some altruistic folks who willingly share their IT knowledge with novices like me.

The most recent kind soul I’ve met online is Kelwin.  After he read the "line spacing" problem with the ballerina WP theme I wanted to use, he checked the stylesheet and taught me how to get the spacing there myself.  The codes (other stylesheets may have slightly different codes).  This was how my problem was solved:

===========================

p {
    padding:0px 0px 0px 0px;
    margin:0px 0px 0px 0px;
}

These two lines define how each paragraph will look like.  Notice four sets of 0px each for padding and margin.

The first figure represents the top padding/margin.
The second figure represents the right padding/margin.
The third figure represents the bottom padding/margin.
The forth figure represents the left padding/margin.

In this case, it was defined such that the paragraphs do not have any spaces between them at all (notice 0 pixels top and bottom).

To solve this, change the margins for the top (or bottom) to a value bigger than 0. 

An example of the new code should look like below:

p {
    padding:0px 0px 0px 0px;
    margin:0px 0px 15px 0px;
}

===========================

And he was right!  Tada!  I got the ballerina theme with the line spacing I want and I learnt something new about codes.  I’m really glad about this.  The only dilemma is.. I also like the current "bunny laundry line" theme which I ripped from a blogspot skin… heh.  So I can’t decide which theme to use now!

Oh well, I suspect it’s just a matter of time before I switch back to the ballerina theme.  🙂

Thank you Kelwin!

Sometimes I think too much instant messaging and text messaging is not good.  We get so used to keeping everything brief, we forget that it is important to paint the context of our message.  I have a friend who often uses names in group conversations… but these names that she mentions, are names of people whom the rest of the group do not know. 

For e.g., this friend once went, “Hey, there’s XXX”.  The rest of us were like huh?  Who’s XXX?  She then went over to talk to XXX.  After she rejoined the group, she said, “I haven’t seen XXX for some time”.  I couldn’t help but ask, “Er, who the heck is XXX?  Are we supposed to know him?”.  And my friend replied, “He’s a friend of another of my church friends.  Don’t think you all know him”.  I didn’t say it out loud but I was thinking duh?  If we don’t know him, then why proclaim his presence to us as though we did?.  What made it even weirder was when we met another girl at our lunch venue, the first thing this friend said to that girl was, “I met XXX just now”.  I saw a blank look on the girl’s face so I asked her later, “Do you know that XXX that our friend was talking about?”.  The girl said no.

There was this other time when we were talking funerals and open coffins, etc.  This friend suddenly said, “Yeah, I didn’t look at AAA during her funeral either”.  Once again I paused, looked at the rest, saw no response, so I asked , “Who’s AAA?”.  My friend replied, “AAA from NUS Law Fac?  The one who committed suicide?”.  Once again, I’m like duh?!  Amongst the group of us, I’m from NTU, another gal’s from poly, and the 3rd wasn’t even educated here.  How on earth are we supposed to know who this AAA is, how she died, etc? 

Nothing wrong with citing examples or or names of people that the rest of the group do not know. But at least give some context.  Like instead of going “There’s XXX”… perhaps say something like, “That’s a friend of my church friend.  Let me go say hi”.  Or “did you all read or hear about AAA from NUS Law Fac previously?  The one who committed suicide ‘cos of … (whatever reason)”.  I mean, provide some context.  Some background.  So that the people around you will not be lost mid-conversation.

I told my friend about this before.  That when she talks, she should not say something without clarifying the background.  Don’t use a name without head or tail.  Don’t say things halfway”.  Her reply was, “But my church friends always know what I’m talking about.  I’m so used to being understood I don’t see why you all don’t get it”.  Duh.  Of course we don’t get it… if her church friends get it, that’s ‘cos she’s always talking about people from church.  But don’t expect the rest of us who’re not from her church to know right?  Duh.

It was our company D&D again.  This year, the theme was "Shanghai Fusion" and it was held at The Legends @ Fort Canning.  Here’re some… semi-anonymous photos from it.  🙂

Eon’s Trade Credit Dept with our CEO (in black jacket) and the MD or CEO (not sure) of our M’sian office.

What can I say… the legendary Double Trouble again.  ("Legendary".. get it get it?)

Bubbs & me.

It’s strange taking a photo with your CEO after your team pulls out 3 strands of white hair from his head for the table game… if I don’t get a bonus this year… I know why…

We were staring hard at the 3 strands of hair… making sure we got it well clipped onto the string!

Good employees who stuck to the dress code.

Our CEO is a fortunate man.  Surrounded by beauties… muahahahaha.

My ICQ account was hacked into a couple of days ago. I always thought I could reset the password by sending a default password to an old email address used before (did this successfully a few years ago when my account was hacked).  However, it didn’t work this time.  I tried all my previous email adds (even the ICQ Help Center said this would work) but it didn’t work.

I’m very sad.  Though very few people come on ICQ these days, I HAVE had this account since 1996. I feel attached to it.  Hey, my UIN is 1837295… that’s how early a user I was.  *Sniff*.

I’m sad.  I miss my ICQ UIN.