Book Review: God's Forgotten Truth

I'm reading a book about God at the moment. No, its not the Bible. No, I haven't been converted yet. I was asked to read it by a friend of mine who is Christian. We kind of agree to disagree, and he's not really that intent to try and convert me, but does try to make me understand his point of view. So, knowing that I've got an IT background and that I've got issues with the existence of God, he bought me a book about it. The fact that he actually bought the book and gave it to me kind of gives me the obligation to read it.

At first I was quite open to the idea. It helps me understand better what I'm currently rejecting and gives me yet another perspective on the whole idea of Christianity. Also, it was touting itself as being written from an ITIL perspective, which I guess is something I'm more familiar with.

But then I read the first chapter and got very frustrated. Then I read the second chapter, and got even more frustrated. From each chapter from there, I almost dreaded picking the book up and reading it. The author attempts to debunk the theory of evolution by basically saying its a lie. Oh theres a few good arguments like how its completely feasible for the world to be at the current population level within 4000 years of growth given the history of growth in the US or how theres no human bones next to dinosaurs. But then he doesn't realise that these have perfectly plausible scientific explanations (i.e. the US within the last 200 years is not indicative of the world between 2000 B.C. and now and that dinosaurs did not live at the same time as humans). I remember he explained that science is compatible with miracles like the parting of the Red Sea. If you blow hard enough, water will part, so God made a big wind come up and part the sea. He forgot to mention that if it was blowing hard enough to part the sea, it would make it quite hard to walk.

I got to about chapter six, where it talks about the Book of Revelations, where I laughed out loud while reading it on public transport. As you all probably know, the Book covers a lot of things about demons, the end of the world and judgement day. I don't think I can explain it properly, so i'm going to copy out a bit of the book and let it explain itself:

"In Revelation 9:7-11, he describes the locusts: "The shape of the lucsts was like horses prepared for battle. On their heads were crowns of something like gold, and their faces were like the faces of men. They had hair like wmen's hair, and their teeth were like lions' teeth. And they had breastplates like breatplates of iron, and the sound of their wings was like the sound of charios with many hores running into battle. They had tails like scorpions, and there were stings on their tails. Their power was to hurt men five months. And they had as king over them the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in hebrew is Abaddon (= the destoyer) but in Greek he has the name Apollyon."

It then goes on to show a picture of a Cobra and an Apache helicopter like so:

"The locusts describe by John in his days."

Yes, with that caption.

It then goes on to say something similar about steel horeses with fire coming out of them for tanks. At least this makes some more sense. The helicopter one didn't even say they were flying!

Thats about as far in the book as I think I'm willing to go. I'm not sure if I can take it anymore. It is shaking my faith in humanity.

Oh well

As usual, its been a while. Also as usual, I'm lacking inspiration to write anything. I'd really like to write something inspirational, but I really can't come up with much =(

That damn question

This was originally part of the previous post, but I thought I'd separate it since it probably deserves a post of its own. It detracted too much from the point, and has a point of its own.

This is probably more for the guys. I'm probably alienating the huge proportion of females who read this blog, but oh well! (btw I'm just joking, I don't even have webstats set up on this blog, and I think I'm the only one who reads it. Also if you hadn't noticed, this whole blog is a joke.)

Anyway, without further preamble, here we go.

Heres the classic situation:

"Whats wrong honey?"
"Nothing."
Sometimes followed by: "Just go away, I don't want to see you right now."

Now, does she mean:
a) Nothing
b) Something
c) You
d) All of the above

As contrary as it may seem, the answer actually increases in likelyhood as you go down the list. I shall now attempt to prove this using feminist logic.

A is actually easy to prove wrong. Lets start with the axiom that we want things to be perfect. Women seem to want to change things all the time. This implies that they are currently imperfect. Therefore, something must be wrong - the opposite of nothing. See above for proof of option B.

Now for C to be more correct than option B, you must be subject to more change from women than 'something'. Using emperical evidence, I've NEVER seen a woman want to change a lawn mower, yet women always seem to want me to change things like my clothes, or my hair, or the way my arse seems to take up the whole chair. Assuming that my life experience is a realtively good sample size and leaves a pretty good confidence level, I'd say thats pretty good.

Option D is the weird one. It includes both 'nothing' and 'something'. However, as stated previously, you will find that this option is usually the true meaning of 'nothing'. For option D to be true, the following must be true:

• You must be equal to nothing;


• You must be equal to something;


• Something must be wrong with you

We've already established that something must be wrong with you, otherwise you'd be a lawnmower and wouldn't be able to read this. Though I'm guessing I'll be proven wrong in a few years. In addition, you're also something, even if you're a lawnmower. The problem is connecting you with 'nothing'.

If we can combine the fact that women don't lie about serious things like this, and also that you're being changed by being told to go away (and thereby also being wrong), and also that 'nothing' is wrong, nothing must be something and something must be you, and therefore you must be nothing. Voila! Proof by feminist logic.

Don't try this at home kids.

Elephant in the room

I just emerged from a domestic. Thankfully it wasn't my domestic, otherwise some people might get the wrong idea. Like as if I was seeing someone, or somehow family moved over to Singapore too. Actually it was a domestic of a friends'. Notice how the apostrophe is behind the s? Yeah. Well I guess in a country where you don't have any family, friends are the only family you've got, and somehow you get dragged into it.

The harsh part of me just wants to tell people to take their drama back into their own corner of the world. Its not my business and I shouldn't have to deal with it. But then the realistic part of me knows that these kind of things aren't always the ones you can bottle up, and nobody can stay in theor own little corner of the world for very long without going insane. They have to share their misery. I guess its inevitable.

As uncomfortable as being in the middle of a domestic is when you're there in the middle of the day, I think its probably worse when its about 3am in the morning and you haven't slept in a while. Add on a few more points when you're playing Scrabble, theres only four people and the guy who normally talks a lot isn't talking very much. Did anyone say awkward silence? I think we made it worse for ourselves because we actually said we wanted to play. Not that we knew it was a domestic in the first place though. That only came out during the ride back...

I was actually quite lucky. If I'd gotten the letters to make 'domestic' or 'lovers tiff' or maybe 'awkward silence', I wouldn't have been able to think of any anagrams afterwards. The good news would have been that I would get the extra 50 points for using all 7 of my letters - well, for some of them anyway.

Now that I look back on it, its funny that nobody actually said anything about it. Everyone kind of tip toeing around the subject like it doesn't exist. The elephant in the room scenario. Reminds me a bit of work, where we have those meetings where we get told some people are being laid off, but management puts a positive spin on it even though everyone knows they're just talking crap. The ones who've gone through it before just yawn and move on - its the same old stuff over again. The newbies just kinda sit there and listen. The brighter ones read between the lines, the not so bright ask stupid questions.

Theres also the possibility that I'm reading into it a bit too much. Maybe everyone was just a bit too tired. Maybe my perceptions of social interation were off that night. Maybe we were concentrating on Scrabble a lot more than we have previously.

Though to tell you the truth, sometimes its nice to have a bit of drama in your life. I guess that all the drama I got away from when I left Australia isn't just there. People are more or less the same the world over. We all have things to deal with, and people we don't always get along with. Its nice to know we're all still human even we do speak with a little different.

Clean

1. I found a cockroach in my apartment.

2. Its dead.

I don't know whats more worrying. That I found a cockroach, or that its dirty enough to kill one.

Perspectives

Going to different countries has changed my perspective a lot. So many places which are just so different from what I'm used to. Not just the places, but the people are just so different from what I expected them to be.

I think a lot of it has to do with the different languages people use to communicate with each other. I guess I'm lucky in that I'm partially multilingual, and I know that being able to speak a different language makes a huge difference to my life. Not that I can actually speak anything other than English very well, but I think I know enough to know that thinking in a different language influences what you think about something.

Just make sure you keep this in mind the next time you disagree with someone. They might not have thought that different if they were speaking the same language.

Just a little

I'm just a little bit depressed. Oh don't worry, I'm not going commit suicide and I'm not having suicidal thoughts. I'll get over it eventually. Its just one of those phases where I'm slightly more emo than usual, have trouble getting up for work in the morning, and all I want to do after work is just go home.

Normally I'd write about whats currently making me depressed, but thats probably just going to exacerbate the situation, and today isn't normal.

So instead today's message will be brought to you by a lack of imagination, and also a lack of content.

Its not that bad

I really should write something about the economic situation. The problem is, however, that there really isn't really much to say which hasn't already been said in various news columns, blogs, and chats around the water cooler. Much of this relatively well informed literature probably has it more or less correct. Well, at least as far as anyone can be correct with hindsight and a bit of self assurance with a pat on the back.

So, its time for another ill informed post about something to do with the real world while not actually reflecting it. Actually, that doesn't actually do anything to justify this post or anything else I've ever written. But oh well, its the Internet.

Just as a side note. I'll be referring to bankers and cosmetic surgeons a lot. In this context they're more or less synonymous with rich people.

So lets see what this 'recession' has actually done. This wiki page gives a nice overview about the (likely) events that might come from this 'economic crisis'. It rekons that 20 million jobs might be lost because of the crisis. 20 million is not a small number by any means. But that is 20 million worldwide. We've got 6 billion people worldwide. Thats 0.3% of the total population. In Australia, people don't make too big of an issue about 0.3% of the population.

Granted, I'm overgeneralising a bit. A lot of those 20 million people are centered in a few select places, and if we take 20 million people out of the working population, then that figure gets a bit higher, but still... this 0.3% isn't the group which requires a lot of help.

Lets look at the people who lose their jobs first. That is, the people who are working for those big banks who lost all that money trading what a lot of people are now calling 'junk bonds'. These people, in a good year, make the same as about a gazillion Mexicans making Nike shoes or begging for extra Pesos only a few thousand miles away. If they lose their jobs, they might also lose the ability to get their daily botox injections or that Audi R8. *dribble* Needless to say, they'll survive, even if it means that they can only eat out once a week, and have to skip on the appetiser.

Then of course we got on to all the effects of bankers like these not having botox injections. Less botox injections means less cosmetic surgeons. Less cosmetic surgeons means less medial secretaries. Less medial secretaries means less secretaries and cosmetic surgeons' wives going shopping for Gucci bags on their lunch break. The Gucci salesperson therefore probably loses that extra bonus they might get to buy that box of chocolate cookies at the supermarket. If this happens to a large degree, some cookie cutters at the factory might lose their jobs too. But we all have cookies once in a while. How many bankers and cosmetic surgeons are there anyway? Well, I can't actually find a good link on short notice, but here's what I've got instead. At number 2 on the top 5 list of cosmetic surgeries performed in the US is breast implants. 364,610 breast implants performed in the US in one year. So out of a population of about 300 million, 0.1% of the population gets breast implants every year. At number one on the list was liposuction. 455,489 procedures performed in a year. About another 0.1%... Then we go onto things like eyelid surgery, so that Asians can have less squinty eyes, nose reshaping, so that Italians can look like they haven't been lying their whole life, and Botox injections so that people don't have to try and smile, they're stuck with that expression all the time.

These are all things, I'm fairly sure, we could do without. Instead of lipo, run around the bloody park. I don't care if you can't get out of the room without help. You got in without help right? You can use all the energy you gained in the room trying to get out, losing weight at the same time and thereby saving everyone else a whole heap of trouble. I know I can't talk. I'm a lazy bastard who doesn't do enough exersise and is quite fat.

As for breast implants - Sure, I appreciate a nice rack, but I'm not all that shallow. A nice pair doesn't make up for the fact that your brain probably needs an implant as well. Probably explains why you didn't ask for the 2-for-1 deal. Me? I probably need breast removal.

For Asians who want double eyelids - put on some weight, your eyelids will sag over soon enough. Italians - stop lying to everyone about how its lunchtime and its time for the shops to close. The rest of the world take staggered lunch breaks. We can all do without.

These are the same sorts of luxury industries that grow because bankers have too much money to burn. We don't NEED them. In fact, if someone like a cosmetic surgeon spent his time doing more socially beneficial work, like say, fixing up psychos, that'd be nice too. Though one could argue that the same people who are a bit psychotic are also the ones who get the Botox. Apparently theres no shortage of psychos.

I only know of one person who has lost his job because of this financial crisis. He was a management jargon spewing project manager who was looking after a project that was doomed from the start. So doomed in fact that the project has now been canned. Not to say that it was his fault, (it was doomed before he got there) but I think he was excess management fat anyway and hired only to grow another person's empire. Sure, he's got kids to feed, but he'll get another job. It might not pay as much, but they'll survive.

A colleague of mine recently had a friend who was laid off by one of the big banks. She seemed devestated. From a high flying banker job to being unemployed in New York City is probably a fairly big deal from their point of view. However, the banker salary probably covered a relatively lavish lifestyle compared to what they get in Mexico. So they can't get cable and have an interior decorator anymore. Shucks. Sometimes people don't get enough to eat.

The very same colleague told me during one a lull at work, where we just bitch about how stupid some things are: "Its not that bad." You know, it really isn't.

Credit Cards

I think I've finally figured out how credit cards made money, and also how they make different amounts of money in different countries. Well, at least in this country and at home. Its actually quite a LOT of money when you add it all up. Actually its quite sad the amount of money that they make at the cost of 'everyone else'.

Somehow its really obscene. Before 'plastic money', there weren't that many alternatives. There was cash, which people carried around and are legally worth a certain value. There were also cheques, which are basically IOUs and were easier to carry around for large amounts of money, and first pioneered by the Romans. Then some weird person invented the ATM, and the requisite card that goes along with it. However, in each case you're using your own money, or money that was originally in a bank account in your name, or at least usually.

Then enter the credit card. Here we start introducing methods of paying for things where you actually borrow money to pay for your goods. Not that it appears this way to the guy you're purchasing off. In effect, you have borrowed from the bank and the bank has agreed to pay the amount for you and you have agreed to borrow from the bank. As long as the merchant has the piece of paper with your signature on it, the money is as good as theirs. You still owe the bank money for borrowing it though. For that, you might be charged an annual fee for the ability to have this line of credit, and also any interest you might have accrued during the period that you have borrowed it for.

In addition to this, the bank also has other revenue sources stemming from the use of credit cards. They also run the machines that process your cards as well. For that, they charge a nominal fee per annum to the merchant, plus a small fee on every transaction, plus a percentage of each transaction. All these things start to add up.

Lets start putting some numbers to it:

Annual credit card fee: Lets say an average of $50
Average credit card debt is about $5000 in Australia
Interest rate: 15%

This works out to about $800, assuming that people only have 1 credit card each and ignoring the interest free period.

From the merchant side, we have people spending about $18bn in a month on their credit cards. For your average small retailer, your credit card fee works out to be about 2.5% in Australia. So annually, thats about $5.3bn. Thats a lot!

The number of people with credit cards in Australia.. well.. actually I can't really find a link, so we'll be conservative again. I can see thats theres about 17m credit cards on issue, and even if everyone has 2, I think its relatively safe to say that half that number is about the number of people with at least 1.

So in total, we have 8m x $800 + $5.3bn, plus some extra cash that merchants pay the banks for having the privilege of using their machines, which works out to be $6.4 + $5.3bn = $11.7bn worth of revenue. According to Wiki, the GDP of the entire country is about $760bn USD, which in todays exchange rate, works out to be about $1100bn AUD. So if you work it out, thats about 0.5% of the total GDP comes from the use of credit cards. 50c out of every $100 that goes through the country... That might not sound like a lot, but fark, if I had 50c for every $100 that ANYBODY spent in the country, I'd be bloody happy.

The network is down

I guess I've been looking for excuses to post, but something got in the way. I actually got around to fixing my desktop PC. So instead its because the network at work is down.

It actually worked for quite a while. I mean, back in Australia. Hummed like a chior without a fault. Well anyway, it didn't quite make the trip here unscathed. There were plenty of loose things here and there. I didn't check all of them.

So after a while, I fried the motherboard. There was actually smoke coming out of it somewhere. That was about 2 months ago now. Since I had nothing else to do, I bought another one. Obviously doing what was super quality work, I installed it. The CPU fan didn't fit anymore, so I cut bits off it so it at least had contact with the CPU. Not ideal, but that measn that the motherboard can't go vertical with the case. Therefore it sits on the floor. Also, it doesn't need to be bolted down to the case, so, me being me, didn't bolt it down.

Another mistake.

My new flatmate is moving in with me soon, so I had to move all my stuff out of that room. During the move, something came loose, and kinda went under the motherboard. So after I'd moved it, it wouldn't start again. Usually I like problem solving, in fact, its one of the big things that I miss as part of my old job. But this was a problem I couldn't really find a solution to since there was only really one symptom. The system wasn't powering up.

This was the same symptom I got on my old motherboard, but without the smoke. Normally I'm the one who tells people to RTFM, so I tried to take my own advice. I went to the troubleshooting part of the motherboard manual. 'Check to see whether the motherboard is short circuited'. I checked. 'Unplug everything with only the power supply and see.' I saw. Since I didn't really get any further than that, I naturally assumed I'd done the same thing again, and out I went to buy another motherboard, this time, as cheap as I could find.

Same issue again. No, it couldn't be the motherboard right? Well, what comes before the motherboard? Oh thats right, the knee bone power supply. I took my time getting this one, since I thought I was spending way too much money on this and if I did end up getting it working again, I'd just spend lots more time playing games. However, a friend convinced me to. He needs some help with his MMORPG character.

So back I went and installed this brand spanking new power supply.

It failed =( What could possibly be wrong?!?!

I'm lucky I have a laptop to play around with as well, otherwise I would be totally screwed. So the first thing I thought could be a problem now was the power switch. Maybe I yanked it too hard and it broke.

So I googled atx power switches and so forth. That didn't last long - making a new switch was thrown in the "too hard" basket, and it was a long shot anyway.

Next - testing the power supply. It took a bit more googling to find that some people happen to use the power supply for non-computer purposes. Don't ask me what - I wouldn't know. But they wanted to know how to 'turn on a power supply without a power switch'. Apparently you just short a couple of wires in the ATX power cable thing. Specifically, the green one and any of the black ones. They suggested a paper clip to help with the job.

I didn't have any paperclips, but conviniently remembered that my parents, aunts and uncles told me never to stick cutlery in power points, and in the case of my grandmother, toasters. (What? Sometimes those little toasties get stuck because they pop out at the wrong angle!) 5 minutes later i'm sitting on the floor of my bedroom sticking forks into a power supply in an apartment to which only I have the key in a country where nobody would really notice if I went missing.

Not that the ridiculousness of the situation was on my mind at the time. With the benefit of hindsight, that was probably a bad idea.

It wasn't all that bad though. I've had worse shocks in primary school when kids would deliberately rub their socks on the floor and me around to give an electric shock. It also helped to prove that the power supply was absolutely fine. Both of them. Fan started spinning, and apparently electricity was flowing.

Back to the motherboards then.

Pull out the motherboards from the case, attach it to the power supply, and then short the power switch with a fork. Easy enough right? Yes, actually. The CPU fan starts spinning. Right. So its not the motherboard... back to the switches.

I plugged the switch into the appropriate position on the motherboard while it was still outside the case, lying on the floor of my room.

Whhiiiiirrrrrr....

Seriously considering leaving all the hardware sitting out on the floor while I went back to playing games, I went back on MSN for a break. Who ever thought that shorting your power supply and motherboards with a fork would be so much work?

Later on I found the problem. It was a bit of metal from a SATA cable that fell off when I moved it. It was under the motherboard and was shorting it! Argh.

Singapore Pizza

I had a craving for pizza tonight, so I ordered some. I really wasn't very satisfied. Theres something about the pizza here which makes it a bit NQR. Now I realise why, when I went to Italy with a couple of friends from this country, they LOVED the pizza. Of course, after a couple of weeks of nothing but pizza and pasta, they got sick of it, but the standard is so much different over there. Its a bit like flying from Antarctica to the middle of Botswana and discovering the difference in temperature difference. Thats if you can equate the weather to the taste of pizza. If in some sick way you can't, join the club. I don't understand what I write most of the time either.

I've actually had a couple of pizzas here, and neither of them are any good at all. I thought that maybe the first was just an abnormal sample, but as I'm now doubling the sample size, my significance level is getting just that much better.

So I think I figured out what it is. A couple of things actually:

The Cheese

The first thing is the cheese. Its really not er.. cheesy enough. I don't actually know much about cheese, but normally the cheese I eat on pizzas is melted and stretches when you pull the next piece off the pizza. The cheese here just breaks. Thats just wrong. Theres no slippery slide of cheese between you and the rest of the pizza. It also spoils the whole pizza eating experience.

I don't know if its the same thing that makes cheese stretchy as well as taste better, but its the best that I can come up with.

The Meat

All the Aussies I talk to here all agree that the meat in this country is two things: bad and expensive. The only American I'm on speaking terms here also agrees. I guess it only makes sense. Apart from chicken, all the other types of land animal meat on sale here has to float halfway around the world before it actually gets here. The beef, lamb and pork comes from either Brazil, Australia or New Zealand.

The meat on this particular pizza I had tonight looked like spam. I ordered a super supreme, so I was guessing it was either ham or salami. It tasted like neither, which is a bit scary. If I wake up sick tomorrow, then I'll know why.

So point to note: If you ever come to Singapore, don't eat the pizza, even if you have a REALLY big craving for it. Its also very expensive ($25~ SGD). Try the chilli crab instead.

A night of hilarity

I was reading some of the old posts on this blog and its actually quite funny. I think it has actually made me want to start writing again. That, coupled with the fact that my game playing desktop machine is kind of broken right now gives me the perfect oppurtunity to start trying. So I thought I'd share something because nobody I talk to on a regular basis actually knows about this situation, and I found it really quite funny. I still chuckle to myself when I think about it a few weeks later. It actually happened on one of those rare occasions I went clubbing.

To put it in perspective, I don't actually go clubbing very often. Once every 3 months at the most. The average is probably closer to once every 6 months. I think I've written before about why I don't go. Its somewhere in the plethora of words that somehow made it from my computer to Blogger in the past few years. Personally I wouldn't go searching for it, but suffice to say that I'm not someone who has the personality nor the physical dexterity to make an impression in that sort of environment. Plus, its not exactly cheap.

So anyway, it was a Friday night, and I'd been to a work team building function thing where people just seem to drink and eat, and then drink some more. Throw in some games and collegues making a fool of themselves, and you have a night of hilarity for people to talk about during the next week in the office and to spread rumours about others to those who didn't attend. It was in some ways quite an eye opener.

Instead of staying around to make a fool of myself in front of my boss and the people who tell me what to do at work, I thought I should go catch up with a friend I haven't seen since I started uni. She was at a club down the road drinking, so I went and met up with her. We went in, and I met some of her friends, and we drank. I'm not sure what I was drinking, but I thought it actually tasted quite bad. Normally I wouldn't keep drinking, but it was free, and being from an Asian background, I just can't say no to free stuff. In fact, the only junk mail I keep is where they give you free samples or vouchers for things. But I digress.

So we did the usual thing. Cheers to just about anything you could think of, and cheers to about an equal or more number of things that we couldn't think of. I remember meeting a few people, but if you put them in front of me today and asked me who they were, I probably couldn't tell you. It was dark, and it was a club! I never actually saw any of them in the light. Its probably better that way, they end up looking better.

Needless to say, I probably had about 5 drinks too many, and had to go to the bathroom to make it all come out wrong. At last count I think it was about 3 times. In the end I kind of went back to the table we were sitting at and promptly fell asleep. Not exactly the best impression to have on a friend I used to have a crush on. Oh well. No, I didn't come to this country because of her. It was a long time ago, and girls skipping the country after I start to have a thing for them seem to happen more often than not. I think theres just not enough room in the country for my ego and them, so its usually them who make room for my ego, and now my belly.

The next thing I knew was that I was sitting at a table with drained drinks with another couple who looked vaguely familiar. I think they were my friend's friends. However, at that stage, they could have been complete strangers and I wouldn't really have cared. All that really mattered was that I wasn't quite alone in a club which was rapidly becoming empty. They looked at me sympathetically. I gave a relatively weak smile in reply.

Someone else who looked quite familiar and was probably smoking weed earlier in the night came by with a couple of girls who seemed quite pleasant and started dancing around near the table. Not knowing what to do and too lazy to do anything, I stared. From what I remember, they were wearing things that were quite flattering. Well, actually, anything would have looked flattering in my state of mind. One of them asked me to dance. As much as I would have liked to, I think that would have just led me to falling over again, so I, as graciously as I could under the circumstances, declined her offer. She seemed to take it as a mortal insult and walked away. Now that I think back on it, I think it must have been the way I was slouched with googly eyes talking to her breasts rather than her face. I have, however, been wrong before.

The couple on the other side of the table seemed quite amused about my state of being, and after a while asked if I would like to dance in the usual way people do when nobody can hear what you're saying:

Girl: *Mouth moves while jerking thumb towards dancefloor and a questioning look*

I surprised myself by replying:

Me: *Expression of surprise coupled with a slight nod and a mouthing of 'okay'*

So she led me by my hand towards the dancefloor. Clearly I wouldn't have been able to make it on my own. The (what I assumed to be) boyfriend, however, was not impressed. To tell you the truth, I wouldn't be either, but the expression on his face was priceless. She started dancing and I waved my arms about and shuffled my feet. Boyfriend stood on the side and watched us glumly. I was trying to milk this for all it was worth.

After a short while he pulled her away a bit. Thinking that it would be stupid to stop dancing by myself, I kept going, making a general fool of myself in front of people I'd never met before. Something else which is not the first time. She seemed to look sorry for me, but also had to placate the boyfriend, so spun a few moves and went back to their seats. Feeling more foolish than before, I thought I should make an exit and stop eliciting spurts of jealousy from the boyfriend, however entertaining it was. I announced to my new found pals it was time for me to go home. We wouldn't want him to start off on a worse impression than I was already giving, in the event that I ever meet them again.

I thought that would be the end of it. I would have been quite content to leave him and his alone. But he seemed quite insistent that once I'd made my announcement, he should escort me to the door. Not exactly the most confident move by a guy in front of his girlfriend, but who am I to judge? All my confidence at the time was alchohol induced. He seemed to also have an issue that I left my bag in the cloak room and needed to fetch it. He really wanted to get rid of me.

I shook his hand on the way out.
'Thanks mate.'

I'm coming back with a bang!

How its all been going

The short answer is: Well.

The long answer is, well, long.

Its vague yes. I guess there are plenty of stories to tell, and not all of them flattering, but there are plenty of good things going on too. I'm finally starting to get settled into my job and actually getting some productive work done. Its not actually a job which requires a lot of brains, but its not a job which could be done by me 5 years ago either.

The thing is, I'm almost defining my job scope as we go along. There is of course a certain minimum standard I have to meet, but apart from that, the amount of work is really only constained by the amount of time we have to do it. Technically its only meant to finish up by June next year, so it sounds like plenty of time, but theres a lot to cover.

I need to go through data from lots of different countries and make sure its 'right'. This is all to report figures to regulatory authorities to determine how much money our bank needs to do its everyday things and keep some on the side for a rainy day. Its nice to know the outcome of my work will have a profound impact - think billions of dollars of funds going to or fro.

Apart from my job, I seem to be meeting plenty of people. However, they all seem to be similar to me. That is, they're all from western countries who've moved to Singapore to work. I think now I understand why the foreign students in Australia all seem to hang out together. Its not really that they don't want to hang out with the locals, it can be hard to meet them if you're not from around there. They all have their circles already set up, and its not easy to be a part of them. The background and things which bring them together are likely to be different. Whereas if you're with people who are 'like you', then you have more in common, more to talk about, and therefore are more likely to hang out together.

I guess its not all bad. At least they don't hang out with me because of my money. Yeah you know the stereotypical Singaporean girl who seems to think thats a huge status thing - the ones who buy Gucci bags on credit because it apparently reflects how good a person they are. Well, it seems true on the male side too. However, bags aren't quite so common. Its more about their car or shirts.

Or maybe I'm just jealous I don't have a Gucci bag.

I'll let you decide.

EDIT: Apparently, I've already written about this before

Manila

So I'm in Manila right now. I didn't really choose to come here, but here I am. Actually thats not quite true. I'm only really here because nobody else wanted to come, but I was kinda relishing the oppurtunity while at the same time cautious about why nobody else in the team wanted to come.

Yes, its actually just for work, for the new job. I won't go over what I'm actually do, but more about the city.

The Phillipines is technically still a developing country, so I think there are quite a few similarities to the other many and varied developing countries I've visited (read: China and Thailand, no I'm really not THAT well travelled). So theres this big contrast between the poor and the rich part of the city. The modern shopping malls with the luxury goods from Europe are around, but if you drive 10 minutes down the road, its a very different picture. Slums are plentiful. There does seem to be a middle class though, which is nice too.

Theres not much to do in the capital either, a bit like Bangkok. Well theres the nightlife, but thats about it. Its not really in the centre of the city either, you kinda have to know where to go. Lucky I had a wannabe local (I have a workmate who gets taken advantage of by Philo girls wayyy to easily) to take me around. I'm also told that the beach and tourist places are kinda the same as Thailand too - Really nice but just around the tourist area.

I went to this 'dance club' which was kinda weird. A bit different from what I'm used to, but yeah. Oh well.

What Ez has been up to

Wow its been quite a while huh?

Well, now that I'm spending less time DOTARing, and more time well, doing house work, it gives me more of a reason to procrastinate, and, well, blog.

So, apart from DOTARing, what else has Ez been up to?

Well, actually quite a lot. I actually started to drink a lot less, and play a lot more sport. That was actually quite good until I stopped - We'll get to the reasons behind why later. I started playing soccer for a couple of teams, and there was also regular badminton involved somewhere too. So that was my whole Sundays taken up and also some Wednesday nights.

Drinking less was a big thing too. Well, not really. I had excuses to go home and do stuff. Some of the classics were: haircuts and dinner.

Oh, and I also went to Italy. That was fun.

Other significant events include (but are not limited to) quitting my job, moving to Singapore, and getting a new job. Hence, I've stopped played sport for the time being until I can find a new group to hang out with that also play at more or less my level. That'll be hard.

Also implied is that I've moved out of 'home'. That is, away from family and things. So here comes housework and other associated activities that I normally don't do.

So its a big change, a brave new world, and we'll see where life takes me from here.

Snow & Sun

It looked better on the day. You had to be there. Really. Yeah OKay whatever.

Ideas for the workplace

There hasn't been much inspiration for blogging. Perhaps its the whole routine and the fact that I'm not actually procrastinating from doing anything. When you've got something to do and you don't want to do it, you (or at least I) will always find something else to occupy your time instead of the thing you're supposed to do.

It helps that I haven't had to take work home to do - so I'm not blogging instead of doing work. It helps.

Anyway, onto the whole point of this post!

Once you've been in the office world a little while, you start to notice some things. One of these things is the number of 'buzzwords' people use these days. You know, your conventional office would have phrases such as 'Go Live!' dates, 'steering committees', project 'charters', and a seemingly infinite number of TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms) to cover just about every aspect of anybodys life they could ever think of.

The other thing some of you will notice is that people have a lot of meetings. As one of our glorious directors said the other day: "Feeling lonely? Call a meeting. Don't want to make a decision? Call a meeting." It pretty much sums up the productivity experienced during these meetings. I found out the other day that a number of these so called 'tax meetings' took about 5 and half hours. I think there were about 10 people in this meeting. To me, any meeting longer than half an hour turns into doodling with pen and pad. I just had a look at my notebook the other day, and its not pretty. The doodles tend to be figures of demonic monsters with associated angry scribbles and pagan symbols (okay so I made up that last part but you get the idea).

One of my colleagues at work came up with the great idea of combining both the buzzwords and meetings to create a fun game for all! This idea is by no means original, and it only applies old ideas to new situations - and in some ways readies you for the retirement village.

In a word, its Bingo! Just before your next big meeting, organise with you and your workmates a list of 10 or so different buzzwords your workplace normally bandies about on a regular basis, write them down on a piece of paper in random locations, and photocopy a few. Just before the meeting, distribute the list to a select few.

Now during the meeting, as soon as one of the buzzwords comes up, cross it off your list. First one to get all the words crossed off shouts "Bingo!" As a reward, no action items from the will be assigned to the winner.

Rules:
- No bingo participant is allowed to say any of the words on the sheet, if they do, they are automatically disqualified and their words do not count.
- Management must be present
- Highlighters are permitted
- Chairs of the meeting are also permitted to join
- Challenges to mentioned buzzwords must occur during the meeting
- At least one meeting attendee must be unaware of the game

What is P2P traffic?

In the world where people start shaping P2P traffic, we really have a problem. Firstly, how do they actually define peers, and then, how can they actually filter out these peers and restrict their speed? And finally, is P2P traffic filtering actually worth it?

But probably the more important question is whether shaping P2P traffic speeds is actually hampering what the Internet actually is. In the end, its all really just a bunch of computers connected together. Why should some computers not be able to communicate at either a faster or slower speed than others by artifically slowing the speed down? Aren't a lot of developed nations worried about how they're falling behind in terms of end user data transfer speeds?

It wasn't too long ago when Australian ISPs were selling their products and promoting it on the fact that traffic between peers on the same ISP would not have their traffic counted towards their monthly quota. How did this somehow get reversed? It doesn't really make sense at all. Now certain ISPs are starting to count uploads when determining how much data transfer you get a month. Somehow, I think we're going backwards, not forwards in terms of value.

So then wahts a peer? You can't really do it by the host IP address. Thats a bit too open. Nobody is going to know when IP ranges change, new ranges are used for consumers, and a whole bunch of other reasons. The other way a lot of ISPs do it is via port filtering. So all data which goes along a certain specified port is slowed down. Boo Hoo. The savvy people can just change the port they're using. Finally, you could look at the data people are sending. Usually this is quite unfeasible. Most people won't even bother.

This doens't really make much sense. But then, neither does filtering P2P traffic. I don't understand it at all.

Less bored

I think I'm blogging less and less now. Half the reason why I started one of these things was because I was bored a lot of the time. But now I'm not so much, and it obviously doesn't get the attention it used to. Theres probably serveral things which have attributed to that, so I'll just name a few of them.

1. Work


2. Xbox


3. Drinking


4. DOTARRRR

I think thats most of it.

So if you ever happen to be extremely bored and blog too much, there are some options for you to consider in case you're ever looking for something else to do.

Auditors

Its said that there are two things certain in life: death and taxes. The second implies something which seems almost as certain as itself: auditors. If you've sat down and done your tax return yourself, you're probably feeling pretty smug about how much you've managed to deduct from your assessable income. But what if you're being dodgy, and the $5000 you said you spent on reference books for work were actually spent at the pub after work? Who are the guys who are going to make sure that you've filled in your tax return properly?

Thats right: The Tax Office auditors. They're a necessary evil to keep those who might fudge their tax in line, and to try and catch those who do. For those of us who actually fill in the tax return with legitimate numbers, they're a plain nuisance.

Its not only the tax auditors who get on peoples' nerves. It seems that auditors of all types have to stick their hand in the pile of crap that is your life to make things harder for everyone. Not only that, the fact that the US decided to make things harder for their companies by legislating the dreaded Sarbanes-Oxley requirements have made it so that you can't seem to scratch your back in a corporate environment without getting drawn into the Red Hole of Bureaucracy (RHB). So not only do auditors have to look at the stuff they were always looking at 10 years ago, they're also looking at what you're doing to stay SOX compliant. This is great news for accounting and auditing graduates as theres now plenty of work compared to before the whole Enron scandle hit, and its hard not to find a job if you look hard enough. However, for the rest of us, it just makes life that much harder.

Now we have to deal with things such as Business Continuity Management (BCM), so that when the building you work in decides to fall over after some terrorists have decided that they'll turn into martyrs, you'll have somewhere to go. This is all very well and good. We'll have a plan so that we'll still have jobs if the building blows up. The problem is that if this happens while everyone is working at the building, its not going to help since everyone who knows about the management plan isn't going to be alive to put it into practice.

Theres also other things, like application handbooks which are written so that nobody actually understands what its talking about unless they actually know what its meant to be saying.

Fantastic.

After all thats done, they'll work to put as much red tape in front of your normal work so that after they're done, you won't be able to move unless you feel like untangling yourself from the red cocoon you'll undoubtedly find yourself trapped in. And those are just the external auditors.

As for the internal auditors, they'll make things just as hard, but they have a tougher job. They have the added problem of wading their way through the additional red tape the external auditors put in to slap on some more slightly more pink tape.

The other problem is that they will continue to work with the people they give tape to. External auditors can give 'recommendations' which turn out to be mandatory, and then go away for about a year before coming back for a few weeks to see if its all been done. Internal auditors will give someone a task to do, and have to sit around giving stuff to everyone else in the company while the first one fumes and bitches about the stuff they're given. By the time he gets back, the original person and everyone who he works with and sits next to will hate them. Grrr.

Yes, auditors, we know you're just doing your job, but we loathe you.