Johann Low

木曜日, 1月 27, 2005

[Delicious dim-sum and enjoying the sun]

One of my colleague will be transferred to Thailand for a period of 9 months. Thus my boss gave a farewell lunch for him on Tues at Furama Palace (if i rem correctly). Its a Chinese restaurant serving mainly dim sum. I think I have not ate any dim sum as exquisite as what I had on Tues. The dimsum served there were absolutely a treat for the eyes and as well as ur tastebuds. We had

1)There is this ABSOLUTELY DELICIOUS chee cheong fun with scallops as big as a $1 or $0.50coin. The sauce which the soft thin, translucent skin was soaking in simply make it more mouth watering and unforgettable. Mind u, its not those $0.20 which u buy from the hawker center.

2)Har Kow, what most restaurants will sell is they mashed the shrimps with the minced pork. Some of cos more pork to cut cost. The ones i had are bursting with FRESH BIG shrimps.

3)Xiao Long Bao, the one I had had its gravy bursted from the thin underbelly skin. Not quite to my taste.

4)Siew Mai. No, they r not some wanton skin wrapped minced pork with a dot of red color. The siewmai is mainly shrimp meat (whole shrimp not meshed) top with a scallop of a $1 coin size,and on top there is this small reddish Chinese herb called Gou Qi Zi which then again is decorated with shark-fin. Its a piece of art.

5) Steamed pork ribs. Only one miserable dish but the meat was very tender.

6)Fried carrot cake. yes it is fried!! With pieces of eggs and topped with shrimps. A tad bit oily but nevertheless GOOD.

7) This dish I have no idea wat it is called but its some fried skin made from flour and insides were wholesome pieces of scallops.

Lastly we had some seafood egg noodles soup which comes with scallops, huge shrimps,sotong and vegetables. The soup is rich and sweet. All these haoliao was abt $100.00 for 5 persons.

After eating so much, work the next day was tiring. I was out for more than half the day. Due to the lunch the day b4, I cancelled my 1st restaurant inspection. Thus it was postphoned to Wed. It is a rest. which serves mainly Mexican cuisine and is situated at Boat Quay. It has 2 more rests. along side, one is a Thai and the other a North Indian. The place is pretty nice and in the evening, u can actually go to the river side to have ur meals. Of cos not many will do it in the daytime since its so blardy hot these few days.

Later I went down to Funan cos my manager asked me to buy a internet switch and ink catridge. After getting them, I went down to Apple Center /MI to take a look at the k/b cover which i wanted to buy. There was some confusing there haha cos a gal told me the wrong price for the cover as there were 2 differnent brands at diff price as well.

I managed to touch the ipod shuffle!!!! Its such a delight, absolutely simple. The sound is astonishing good as well. It just looks too good to resist. Then I met my ex-colleagues there as one of them was getting her shuffle today. We had lunch together before they went up to collect the Shuffle. I went to visit my ex-ex working place in hope of meeting some of my ex-ex colleagues there. I went there at the wrong time since most of them (who remained) were notin. Managed to meet one but I went off quickly to settle my last duty - to send some ferry tickets to a Jpn client!!! ARGGH~! at some ulu place which i nv heard of. Anyway, its some ulu 19th storey high condo situated in Tiong Bahru.

Went back to office. It was a killer afternoon, with the merciless sun beating down. I think i have not perpired so much since NS!.

I took fancy to a nice Seiko Kinetic Titanium watch. The price tag was $860+. I asked the lady (possibly) just a shop attendant she told me that the best price she can quote is $20 off the $860. The boss was there when i spotted this watch the 1st time but nv had the chance to ask him abt the price personally as he was busy changing batteries.

Today i had the chance to do so, the price quoted to me if I pay in cash/nets was $550!!! $550!!!!!! From $860 to $550!!! Its a $310 diff from that old cb who told me last week!!! It is a limited edition watch leh!!! Kinetics means its does not need any battery and can operate 4 yrs with a single full charge. And its titanium, my faved metal.

1st on my wish list - 20" Apple Cinema Display $1780 cash n carry
2nd - Seiko Watch $550
3rd - ipod shuffle $265

Someone show me the $$$ leh!!!!

elow at 10:14 午後 | (0) comments

日曜日, 1月 23, 2005

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My Mac was working fine with the preinstalled update of 10.3.5. When I 1st started it, I was prompted to download it but I knew from some of the readings in forums that some updates if improperly installed wil cause unnecessary problems, some Mac users even have to reinstall e whole OS.

Anyway to cut the story short, I did an update to my Mac which is now OS X 10.3.7. Everything seemed fine at first, until I launched Azureus, Mac's bittorent client. The damm prgm cannot launch!! I tried to remove to the prgm, do repair permission, re download the prgm, nothing works!! Tho i did somehow got a hinch that if i also download the update to the Java console thingy to my Mac, it might work. But I did not.

My precious files which were like more than 50-60% completed were all removed by me cos I was well, dumb. An online friend who is more experienced in Mac stuff helped me to find the solution, it was in the prgm homepage but i did not bother to look properly. There was another user who had the same problem and his prob was solved when he updated the Java thingy.

Had my 1st Jpn lesson after 5 yrs of absence. Honestly alot of stuff I have forgotten and lucky for me, the 1st lesson was not too hard. haha..But then I was quite suprised that there were a few of my new classmates who had some difficulty reading and pronoucing some Jpn characters. I was dead beat after going home. The blazing sun did not help. The rays were cutting through my flesh like a giant laser. The sun was like a gigantic laser blaster,which led to think of the Death Star in Star Wars..hahaha. It was already evening time and the sun was no less brighter than the afternoon sun!

Anyway tml is back to work again. And soon my colleague will be on leave again and I'll have to cover her duties. Recently, there were quite a number of urgent bookings where the Jpn will be checking in like the next day or 2 days after. WTF is this? Then the best thing is some of the most famous hotels in SG, those reservation officers are not polite, well maybe to Singaporeans. I have to test if there is a double standard if I were to speak in a Jpn accent.

But if there is, I am not suprised. *shrugs*

How shld computing be like? A PC or personal computer should be like the Mac. In fact the first personal computer WAS the Mac in the early eighties. Somehow, IBM and Windoz and its whole brood of clones overtook Apple to be the mainstream PC now.

If u look at computing today, that is if u r a Wintel/Windoz user. The 1st thing u have to worry is to worry abt once u r logged into the internet are trojans, viruses,worms,spyware,adware, malware,whatever-ware there is to exploit the vunlerabilies of the Windoz OS. It is a fact that any PC (meaning Windoz users) which is left connected to the net without any firewall, or anti-virus prgm wil b infected within 16 min. This 16 min is a lenient estimate. It was from a 40 min to a 16 min. Why will anyone have to deal with all these when computing shld be easy and effortless and fun? Why will anyone wanna pay over $500 for a piece of bloated ware which are full of problems?

Anything u can do on a Windoz, a Mac can do it too, if not better.

Take a look at this http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/mwsf05/

This is a presentation of the latest Apple Expo showcasing the latest Apple products. If any Windoz user protest what's e big deal, it is prob that they know that what they saw is what they wanted, in their Windoz...but will nv surface. Longhorn will debut sometime in 2006-2007 making use of a dual core processor which will be the norm by then. It will need at least 4GB of RAM to run it, alone and 1TB (1024GB) of disk space. And u wil need a top end GPU to run its graphics. Which will prob says, u need a $2-3k machine to run a piece of bloated ware which will prob be the same as its ancestors, full of problems, full of holes.

Then again, who will noe?

elow at 8:21 午後 | (0) comments

日曜日, 1月 16, 2005

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Think it was yesterday news but the officers who were charged of causing death to a Commando trainee were found guilty and sentenced to prison. I am not too suprised at who WERE the ones involved. 3 out of the 4 guilty were pundeis.

I am not a racist but I had my views on some races. I do not have many happy experiences with working with pundeis. In army, the ones who gave me the most troubles were them. There was this driver who was always giving trouble. He had a bad attitude and was lazy. Some of them were oke. Then the clerks in the S1 office all thought they were some Bollywood stars. Just a lowly clerk and they thought they were the S1 there.

I believe most people are nice by nature. It's sometimes due to prolong periods under certain circumstances then they will react in a certain way towards certain things. Anyone can ask ard, not many people like Indians. They are often seen as rude, bad attitude,stuck up, lazy. Not to say they do omit some kinda smell.

Well I am just a nobody but I am a Mac user. A new Mac comes loaded with almost everything which you need to get started with. An ibook is only S$1750 (SGL Marketing) It is one of the most delicious looking portables anywhere. A Mac Mini is abt S$1000, just for the CPU. Still I hate the original Apple Mouse!!!! No scrollwheel.haha

elow at 11:11 午後 | (0) comments

土曜日, 1月 15, 2005

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This is my first entry with using a Mac. My first Mac came yesterday all the way from the assembling factory in China. It arrived on SG shores at the shop at ard 6.15+++. Shortly after that I arrived at the shop SGL to take a look at it. Fcuk, the box is HUGE and not to say heavy. It shld at least weigh 25kg+ But me being impatient decided to bring back e whole machine myself.

After booting the machine, everything looked fine. The extra 1GB of RAM was detected successfully. However, when I try to make some changes to the Preference > International settings, the mouse pointer turned into one colorful spinning wheel. Shortly after, the whole machine froze. I had to turn off the whole system by the power switch! WTF!? Later when I was playing ard with the wallpapers, the same thing happened again. My patience was running out. Things became worse when I was running a system maintenance. I was given a message that I will need to reset the whole system. My mouse won't move.

I was dead tired at that point of time and I didn't know what to do. Then I rem something I read at a support forum that there's a high possibilty that the extra RAMS might be the culprit. I did a hardware test. Surely enough, there was an error report saying some RAMs are faulty. I removed them and re-ran Onyx (maintenance s/w), there was no freezeups.

After exchanging the incompatible rams this afernoon, things are looking fine. Surely I hope there will not be any problems. The Mac is meant to be enjoyable. But then it is still a new OS and I have to re-pickup quite alot of stuff. And yes, the original Apple mouse SUX. It feels cheap, ahhahahaha...and there is no scroll wheel!! There is a matching mouse made by another company, it has a scroll wheel and a right click button. Yes I think I might be getting that altho my "old" Logitec mouse is Mac compatible..but it kept rubbing out some obstrusive dirt onto the mouse pad.

Next target, a 20 inch Apple Cinema Display at S$1800. ahahaha and maybe an ipod Shuffle.

elow at 3:53 午後 | (0) comments

日曜日, 1月 09, 2005

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Last Thurs I have made the biggest investment in my life - I have ordered a Mac, the machine of my dreams. It is a PowerMac G5 Dual 1.8 Ghz. But I was not so lucky as the low low price I was quoted was no longer applicable due to Apple's increasing of the cost price for resellers. So I made some changes to my configuration as I wanted a custom built machine (not alot actually)

Initially I wanted a PMac Dualie 1.8 with an upgrade in the video card (ATI 9600 128MB RAM) but due to the increase in cost price, this configuration is over $200 more expensive! So I did some calculations and decide to stick to the default card ( a Nvidia Geforce 5200 Ultra with 64 MB RAM). I was told that even with the better card, I will not be seeing alot of performance boosts except in games. The other option remains which is to remove the 56K modem. $50 off leh!!! Still overall, the price is abit more expensive than my original config. I also added an extra 1GB of RAM as advised on a G5 support forum. I thought of adding only 256 more to make it 512 but dun think it will compliment the PowerMac performance. So now, a total of 1.25GB RAM. WHAHHAAH

Total damage = $3850 -_-

The aftermaths of the killer tsunami is still shocking. The pychological damage done to the homeless children and adults is something we probably will not comprehend. Yet in Singapore, there are some people who deserve a spit, pee and shit on their faces. These are the educated or well-to-do ( IMO) who donated stuff like old curtains, dirty underwear, dentures to the "needy". Since when these victims need curtains? They have no more homes to put the curtains! These curtains are laden with cockroaches' egg sags somemore. What abt dentures? These people dun have enough food to chew on. Dentures for fcuk? Maybe these people are thinking that the dirty underwear can be used as filters for their drinking water.

Worse still, there are some animals who are making use of this to make money. Beware of anyone going ard to raise funds for the tsunami victims with donation cans. If anyone wanna make a donation, just make a call or sms to the respective mobile operators. It is much much safer and faster.

--Lastly, I can't wait for my PowerMac to arrive at my doorstep!!!!!!! WHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAAHaaa...next target is a 20 inch Apple Cinema Display which jut recently have a $500 price cut for their 20 inch models.

For those people struggling with viruese,spyware,adware,malware,Trojans. Just get an iMac or an eMac or for performance nuts, a PowerMac. For those on the road, an iBook or Powerbook. Mac OS X Panther is probably one of the best OS for personal computing. Beautiful,stable (Unix based), secure and easy to use. Some people are concerned abt if they make the switch, what will happen to their MS Office documents, well, there is a MS Office for the Mac. For the creative even better, all Adobe,Macromedia and major graphics and 3D applications run on Mac. why not????

If anyone thinks a Mac is more expensive. Think again. A top end PMac G5 Dual 2.5 with dual 30 inch lcd panels + ipod is only $30k+++ Try configuring something similar from Dell and you have a machine which will cost u $70k. What's more is that the G5 processor is a true 64bit while the Dell is using a Intel Xeon 32bit. $70k+ for a dual Xeon processor???

There's nothing wrong with the normal PC hardware like Intel,AMD blah blah. It is the software / operating system which is causing the problems. Yes, that's M$ which makes crappy OS like Windows which does not operate well, prone to virues,hacks,freezes. There is one big convention where Mr Gates was demostrating the new Win XP Home Media edition. Guess what? While the software was trying to access pictures from a yet-to-be released Nikon digicam, it gives the trademark blue screen. Another event which happened is during a game demo, the game froze and says out of system memory. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA~~~

elow at 11:15 午前 | (0) comments

日曜日, 1月 02, 2005

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If anyone thinks the recent tsunami is a monster, they have seen nothing yet. From a documentory on tsunamis which are now showing on CNA, the real monsters of tsunamis are not created by earthquakes. The most powerful tsunamis created by earthquakes can only reach abt 10 metres in height. The mega tsunamies caused by massive landslides. It sound unbelievable but it is true. Landslides of moutains which throw millions tonnes of rock into the sea at high velocity can cause mega tsunami up to half a kilometer - 500m high. This is higher than any of the skycrapers to date (i think) .

It has happened before. A piece of landmass 10 times the size of Mount Everest fell into the sea before causing a mega tsunami of a few hundred metres high. What is a mere 10m tsunami compared to these mega monsters? Such massive lands occurs once in a few thousands yrs. It happens after the ocean has eroded the base of a small island (created by volcanic eruptions)　Such islands have very steep lands which are cut by rain or the sea. when the land collapse, a few million tonnes of rock are slammd into the sea at high speed and high impact igniting a a mega tsunami.

Tsunamis can occur frm earthquakes on the other side of the globe. These tsunamis can home in on a specic piece of land. From the source, they can be disperse and then merge into one gigantic wave causing devasting effects.

To think such power exists in the liquid we call water, in the liquid which we need to consume everyday to survive.

elow at 10:52 午後 | (0) comments