iphoting's Sink

Having been in my appointment for more than a year, I’ve finally been schedule to go for a course this week to become more “intelligent”. This course will last for four weeks, conducted somewhere near the Discovery Centre, with very poor accessibility from my house.

Long hours and weekend homework, feels much like school with tight deadlines.

My apologies for lagging updates and responses as I’ve been staying in to take advantage of 7 am reveille.

Somedays back, one of my co-workers popped this mathematical question for us to think about. It is fairly simple but complex for our minds. Anyway, here’s the question:-

5 . 5 . 5 . 5 . 5 = 24
Replace the . with any of the following operators: +, -, *, /. You may add brackets anywhere in-between the numbers or operators.

There are many solutions, have fun!

Looking at the Palm Pre concept demonstration videos, I can’t help but smile – the Palm that I’d known in my primary school days.

A simple, unified and consistent interface, efficient access, flawless synchronisation and a huge 3rd party application eco-system.

Assuming that it delivers as advertised, its potential is vast and unhindered. Probably a renaissance for Palm, finally.

I look forward to its launch on the 6th of June, 2009.

In my work place, there’s this phrase which is very commonly used: “小事不要烦我，大事老板不在。” Translated in English, it basically means not to consult me with small matters; as for big matters, my boss is not around and I can’t make decisions.

These are the middle managers that my organisation trains people to be. Fine by me, but good luck to the future of this organisation.

Here’s a nice song, Hallelujah performed by Jeff Buckley.

Yesterday, we had some free gifts in the form of brand new uniforms that are of a lighter shade of green.

We spent quite some time looking at each other exclaiming, “hey, you look different!”.

I’m currently watching this awesome docudrama called Carrier by PBS. It’s a very good watch.

Here’s David Pogue on mobile phones:-

I’m glad that I’m finally back from southern Taiwan. I was there on an assigned overseas exercise and I managed to meet quite a few NSmen there. The reason why I love overseas exercises is that I get to meet and live with ‘intelligent’ people from all walks of life for a few weeks.

Having little real-world experience, learning from these NSmen can be an eye opening experience as they share with us their work and past experiences with this organisation. Within the short stint, many of them have infused their common sense and efficiency into our work processes, leaving with us some cool Microsoft Access files (to automatically generate passes with serial numbers) and various useful Microsoft Excel macros to make our bean counting jobs easier.

Moreover, I finally got to see people using real-world skills, solving unreal problems. Seeing them thoroughly annoyed by the organisation which created all the problems in the first place, namely inefficiency, poor leadership and management, makes me very amused. In fact, it’s quite funny hearing them whine and grumble about the ridiculous lack of directions some people are giving.

Particularly, I’d met a total of three NSmen whose work involves working with computers and technology intimately – ERP consultant, computer engineer and a programme design manager. Other professions range widely from civil engineer to bankers to marketing.

These are the times where NS is interesting.