Birthday and Friends

Another year had passed and things had remained almost stagnant. There was neither surprise nor excitement. More friends had gone quieter or probably found their fun in other places.
This was the first time my mum was absent in Singapore on my birthday. There was nothing sad about it but merely a new experience to be noted.
The usual trend in this era when social media was dominating was to receive birthday greeting in Facebook. People did find comfort when they received overwhelming wishes from their contacts. As unpractical as it could be, I did not turn off comments by friends because there were reasons to continue receiving the well-wishes.
The greatest advantage of enabling comments from friends on birth date itself was to communicate. We made new friends over the years and strayed away from the old ones, including those we used to chat with daily. It was the best excuse to regain some momentum with friends when they started posting “happy birthday”.
Another reason to be vain was to be able to judge people. Sometimes we had acquaintances who added us into their friend list and we did the same to others whom we found interesting or pretty. Over time, we had too many strangers on the friend list. Besides, we were also uncertain over which old friends would bother about us. Receiving a short text could greatly assure that we did worth something in our friends’ hearts; at least they bothered to sacrifice a few seconds of their time and some energy to move their hands in order to make our days better.
This was the main reason why I had bothered to spend time sending greetings to my friends on their birthdays. It was one of the easiest ways to do my part as a friend to make their lives happier. I doubted everyone would appreciate but I knew I had done my best as a friend or net friend.
The biggest problem with social media network was that not everyone would log in daily even though most young people should have owned an account at least. With the emerging of more platforms such as Twitter, the concentration of users had been diverted or split. As life got more hectic, we began to find friends missing in action from social media.
Social media was kind of an imaginary third dimension. This was the reason why popular school debates had included whether social media was bringing people closer or distancing them away. There was no definite answer.
On my birthday, I had my elder brother and his girlfriend treating me to lunch while Gilbert and Titus showering me with food for dinner. It was far from what my greedy heart had expected. I had the same wishful thinking as most people on their birthdays but I was not lucky enough.
I do not need to own the whole world but just one… just be free for me.

Live Happily for Your Loved Ones

I almost missed the news that Huiting’s dad had passed away. It happened that I went out for photoshoot and did not scroll through my Facebook news feed. On the second day, Ahpa texted me and I felt very guilty for not been there to show prompt concern for the kindest girl I ever knew. Both of us went down but we did not get to talk to her much. After that, I showed Ahpa to the beautiful Henderson Waves. We planned to go over during the last night of the wake with Yonghao to do night photoshoot and then accompany Huiting throughout the night.
On the actual day, Jade went down early. I joined her straight from Tiong Bahru after meet-up with my gang. I had fun shooting Huiting’s cute niece and nephew with my camera. Huiting asked me to take photos of the entire event and I was totally lost as it was weird. Another relative of hers did the job. Ahpa changed her mind of staying overnight since she had to work on the next day but she still came down
at late hour with Yonghao as to wait for the lorry. We had the usual fun of crapping around and I enjoyed the companionship of the innocent people. Yonghao was the kind man who sent bimbo, Ahpa and I home.
Huiting was totally fine in her usual strong self. She did no self pity and faced life bravely.
What I have learnt during the few days are:
1. We should not trust social media to deliver all important news as not everyone log in daily. With the flooding of non-essential information, it is easy to miss out important news as well. If you need any help or listening ears urgently, call me directly.
2. If you want to do something good, just do it. Ever since Huiting’s dad was sick, I wanted to get her family and friends out for a small gathering, probably at Henderson Waves, and help them to take some family photos. It was a long dragged idea that did not surface out until the funeral, I confessed to Ahpa about my regret. Partly, it was due to my lack of photography skill that I had remained conserve about the idea.
3. I need to organise my time better. Before the first night that I went over, Ahpa had told me that Shengyang was not feeling well and had stayed awake the night before. I wanted to get some herbal tea for him but my timing was too packed since I had to meet my relatives for dinner. The idea was to treat Huiting’s boyfriend good so that he could take better care of her.
We should try to live our lives without regret…

我关心的

Wenqin kept texting me random stuffs that might got to do with O level subjects. The following was inspired by one of her Chinese out-of-nowhere passages.
也许爱上你是我这一生最大的错，
但是没爱上你我又如何明白心能这么痛。
你在我脑海里不离不弃，
和现实生活中差异。
不论当初是谁对谁错，如今我只要你幸福，
因为这是我关心的、爱护的。
28 October 2012

No Phototaking Allowed in Singapore

An enquiry to Singapore Tourism Board:

Dear Sir/Mdm,
I have many friends from overseas who are coming over to Singapore for holidays. Therefore, I have taken a day off work to explore places with nice ambiance, unique building and restaurant, which can represent the uniqueness of Singapore. I hope the tourists can take good photos and share with their fellow country-mates.
I was exploring and taking photos around Cross Street. Referring to map now, I realised I was at the centre of the three buildings of Capital Square, which seemed like shophouses. There was a uniquely designed restaurant that seemed to serve Philippines and Thai food, which I wanted to recommend to my friends.
I did not step into any of the buildings. However, I was approached by the security to have the few of my photos deleted, including a few snapshots of the restaurant’s shop front.
May I know:
1. Are tourists not allowed to take photos in the above mentioned compound?
2. What are the other open space in Singapore that are illegal for phototaking?

A compliment to Singapore Tourism Board:

Dear Sir/Mdm,
I have earlier made an enquiry regarding phototaking in Capital Square after being stopped by their security personnel.
I did not expect your team to respond fast within a few hours to me via phone after calling their management up to check on their rules. In fact, I have realised that there are a few missed calls from the same number after I got up from my nap, showing me the seriousness from your team.
I’m filling up this form again to compliment Miss Rachel (I hope this is the correct spelling) from your team for her incredible effort, sweet voice and her extremely good approach to sympathize with my situation. I’m glad because I’m very sure she has the capability and experience to handle any enquiry/complain from anyone, including foreigners.
Hi Rachel, I hope this will put a smile on your face like how you have placed on mine. Thank you for your kind assistance.
Regards,
Skai

Blogspot to WordPress

Many years ago when I knew nuts about the existence of PHP programming language, I had longed to move my blog from Blogspot to my own web server. My aim was to be able to manage my entire website better, which consisted of pages and blog entries. Pages, to me, were more like permanent pages where visitors should have straight access, while blog entries could be archived into the individual months’ links as new entries took over the home page.
Blogspot, at that point of time, did not have the “pages” feature. Even with the late implementation, it did not flatter me with the additional directory URL “/p” on the left of every page’s original URL. I could mask my domain name to Blogspot’s server but I did not want my pages to appear like “http://sillydumb.com/p/introduction”.
Basically, sillydumb.com and my blog had been running on two separated servers – my personal server and Blogger’s server. I had actually synchronized the two websites by using the same layout with some tweaks in JavaScript codes that allowed proper linking of all the pages.
However, I did not like the fact that some friends had linked to my blog directly instead of my main website. I also had problems of having duplicated work whenever I needed to make any changes to the layout.
After years of battling with time, I had finally decided to pamper myself a little by installing WordPress to my server to house all details. It was not an easy task at all and I took much longer than estimated time with unforeseen problems.
Basically, I was not very sure of how WordPress was coded. I took the easy way out by modifying the existing template to fit my design. I was not able to get the final design exactly the same since I wanted to speed up the process badly. In fact, I had spent quite an amount of time just to even make the basic arrangement.
The most challenging task was to import the old entries directly from Blogspot over to my server. There was a WordPress plugin to do that but somehow it did not work. Instead, I started importing the blog entries to my test account at WordPress.com, which was a free blog host like Blogspot with the basic and limited WordPress features installed. After importing my old blog entries over to WordPress.com, I exported the blog entries to my harddisk as XML file. Next, I imported the XML file into my trial WordPress installation in Smart Tuition‘s Singapore server and it worked. After some configuration, I exported the blog entries as a fresh new XML file.
I met one of the toughest challenges when I tried to import the new XML file into my Canada server, which was the home to my personal website. There was an error stating that file size of 2 mb was over and I could guess that the cheap shared server had restricted its users. My Singapore server’s team was much kinder because of the much higher cost and that was why I could import the XML file in without facing such problem.
After doing some researches, I managed to find a solution. I separated the 9 mb XML file into five files. It was not very straightforward since the top and bottom of each file should have the same coding which each blog entry started and ended with both <item> and </item> tags. I uploaded the files one by one and it was a pain in the ass since the server was really slow. Then, I figured out that I could not import my blog entries directly from Blogspot due to the restriction in file size while WordPress.com, running on its own server, was much kinder.
My final task was to import the setting of the blog from my trial blog. I had experiences of backing up the WordPress database and restoring them but I faced another big problem this time since the full URL of my trial server differed from the intended one – http://sillydumb.com. Therefore, I had to start searching through the database tables and made amendments manually before I imported the SQL file directly.
I made quite a number of mistakes throughout the process and had reinstalled numerous copies of WordPress.
Right now, I have to give up on some old features such as my Calendar. Some contents’ display depends on JavaScript with external files and I have to replace them with static texts instead.

The Space to Start Family, Not Sex

I was having dinner with Jake’s mum together with my mum and younger brother on Wednesday when she asked me why I did not get a girlfriend.
At first, I told her I could not get any. Later, I admitted to her that some of the main problems were due to lack of time and financial stability, and that my house was small.
Her response was that it did not matter even if my house was very crowded because I needed not to bring my girlfriend home to do business when I was in a relationship.
I was stunned and embarrassed as my brain went into a daze. For some time until we changed topic, I had forgotten my initial reason.
It was not about the space for sex I was talking about, but the future.
If I were to have a girlfriend and we decide to get married one day, we would need countless bidding for a new BTO flat that is “affordable” (my foot!). It would then take at least three years for the flat to be built and be ready.
No, I would not want to get a resales flat in the ridiculous open market and live in greater debt.
The rich people who always pretend to sound puzzled over why the birthrate in Singapore is falling badly are responsible for the downfall. People hate them for good reasons.
I would never want any girl to suffer with me. People may argue that a girl who is worthy of my love would not mind suffering with me but I would still leave things to fate before I am confident of taking care of another person.

Guys cannot be trusted

Sometimes, saying some words may easily shows your shallowness when you are supposed to be at a certain age of maturity.
“Nowadays, guys can’t be trusted.”
I may not know what you have been through, but this is more of a teenager’s saying. And I wonder do you even trust your dad.
Since the internet has become a free private investigator, you can probably check a person’s information online. If all his details are available and clearer than any other guy’s, and you have decided to add him to your social network profile as a friend, learn to trust him more.
You may not mean it but some words can be very insulting.
I guess any guy who is up to no good would probably target a girl who is prettier and has a better figure. The wolf would have also strike the iron hot when the girl first makes a point to add him as a net friend.
Anyway, the worst person I have come across in my life is a female whom I have met three years ago. I know it well that girls can be even more dishonest and filthier than guys.
I may be corny and talking about pretty girls often but I have been single for nearly three years. If I am so desperate, I would have gotten into uncountable relationships. I control my urge and I think with the head on top of my body. There is so much effort I have placed in and I am so proud of myself that any insult that suspects my integrity would be treated highly as an abuse.
In words of fairness, many guys and girls cannot be trusted – not all.