I Found My Watch!

For the past one week, I could not find my new Timex watch. I looked everywhere: my drawers, my cupboards, my bags (thanks to my dear friends, I have a lot of bags to look through now wor :P), my company desk, my company cabinet, the toliet... basically everywhere I can think of.

It is a free gift for joining SAFRA, so technically the loss isn't very big. But I was very disturbed by the loss because as a child I have lost a very expensive watch which my aunt bought for me. So I am very angry with myself for losing a watch again at 30 years old! I have not been wearing my other watches this week for fear of losing them.

Today I was feeling especially blue, because quite a number of my colleagues either asked me the time or asked why I wasn't wearing a watch.

As I was patiently trying to fixed my MS SQL 2005 Express with Advance Services SP1 CTP installation, somehow I suddenly have the urge to look for the watch again. I went through all the places I have looked previously, but still cannot find it. I was about to give up when I saw something brown sticking out of the inner pocket of my haversack. My WATCH!

Oh goodness! I have looked in that bag at least five times, but somehow I did not notice the watch!

Goldfish (again!)

Blow and Spin Top

It won't spin no matter how much you blow at it! :-(

Goat Head

One of the more amazing origami, especially from step n-1 to step n, the transformation to the goat head is quite surprising!

Green background!

Trout

I realized that the blue background doesn't go very well with the current blue origami papers, so I went to get a red and a green background :P

Investment Tips On Prime Time Morning

I always take a late morning bus to work on Monday morning, because I like to catch a very good weekly investment segment of Prime Time Morning on Channel News Asia. It is very informative and easy to understand.

For those who don't know head or tail when it comes to investment, I strongly recommend this. This week, the topic is regarding budgeting which I find that most people don't do. There is even a helpful Excel speadsheet to download on the website.

Coming Soon to the Wall Near You

For those who has been checking back regularly for updates on my blog, I would like to extend my most sincere apologies. I have been dealing with a lot of issues in the past two weeks and just could not find the time or the energies to write.

But hopefully, all that have ended, and I am back. Over the next few days, I will catch up with my posting, especially my origami which I have neglected for a long time.

I am back!

Mess

Croak Over

Frog?

Instant Gift Wrapping!

I found the most wonderous invention! It is a box of box. In this nice looking package, you have a... box! Hahaha! You can use it to instantly wrap your gift. Available in different sizes and designs.

1) The box comes with nice ribbon and a card. The box contain the box is actually the cover of the box. Confused yet?

2) Unwrapped, and assemble. Put your gift inside.

3) Close the cover and then wrap the ribbon around the box and stick the ends at the bottom using the double side tape provided. Ingenious! Especially for people like me who cannot tie a decent ribbon to save my life.

4) Sit back and shout "Tata!"

Dog Head

Hotwara

Hotwara. Another term I coined. It means looking like going to breathe fire soon after eating spicy food. Here is an example. :P

Piano

Smudged Music

Butterfly

Mechanical Flapping Bird

We went to Ziyean to celebrate (belatedly) Ely's birthday. To confess, I thought her birthday is next week. :P Anyway, this restaurant is in the middle of an old housing estate. It has two parts: a coffee shop selling more pocket friendly and normal but tasty food and a restaurant selling more dear and exotic food. Both are situated in the ground floor of a block of flat.

This is their famous chicken with MeiCai stuff inside.

This is a dish recommended by the waitress. The abalone mushroom tastes sour. Yuck!

The most delicious side dish ever! Bitter gourd!

I am a sucker when it comes to tofu!

This is another famous dish. Deep Fried Prawn Wrapped in Beancurd Skin!

Warart

Basically warart is a new term coined by yours truly which simply means art created by Wara. So far, most of the art form I have seen from Wara involves smileys and boredom.

Like this, umph, smiley is created from chocolate dripped from my ice-cream.

Penguin

Teapot

Don't look like a teapot leh!

Crown

Return of the King (Harrie!)

HTMLEncode and GridView

One of my friends asked me how come this blog doesn't contain anything geekish since I am so geek. Well here goes :D :D :D :D

One of my biggest complaint about ASP.NET 2.0 is GridView which is a great replacement for Datagrid. As usual, Microsoft created a wonderful web control that is simple to use and yet sophisticated. However, it is like all things Microsoft: buggy and do-it-my-wayish.

If you had used the Datagrid from ASP.NET 1.0/1.1 you would know that you can format numeric and date data in the cells using the DataFormatString attribute. For GridView, there is also a DataFormatString attribute. However, there is also this new feature called HTMLEncode which is turned on by default. Basically, it HTMLEncodes the data in the cells to make sure they turn out the way they are supposed to. Sounds like a great feature. But here is the problem. If you use the DataFormatString, you need to set the HTMLEncode to false, otherwise the DataFormatString will not get applied. This is supposed to prevent CSS! (huh?) And it is not mentioned anywhere in the documentation. I spent hours trying to figure out what I did wrong. Only a search on the trusty Google did I find the solution in a blog entry.

One of the guys said in the comments of the blog entry:

I have the same problem. Happy to see I am not just crazy...

That is not the worst. It seems the problem has been around since beta! The least the MSDN people could do is to paste this odd behaviour all over the documentation if they can't fix it!

The other thing I hate about the GridView is that you cannot use it to update a DataSet row using code. It is designed to work hand-in-hand with a DataSource. So you are supposed to use the DataSource to update the row. There is a RowUpdating event (before the update) and a RowUpdated event (after update) but no RowUpdate event. You cannot update the row to a DataSet by code. You need to use a DataSource, in my case, a ObjectDataSource. It is the usual "Do it my way! Or don't do it!" Sigh!

Hey! I might be wrong, if you know an elegant way of solving these problem, it would like to hear from you! :P

Fish (more like whale :P)

The background is my T-shirt in case you are wondering... No? Oops!

Remote Control

I recently bought a fan with a remote control. The other day, when I came back, I was hot and sweaty. So I looked for the remote control to turn on the fan. I searched through the pile of papers on my desk, under my pillow and blanket, in the cupboard and underneath the bed. But it was no where to be found. By then, I was doubly hot and doubly sweaty.

Then it dawned upon me that my last fan did not have a remote control. I walked over and press the On switch...

It's Alive!

My PC (aka Personal Companion) at home went kaput Tuesday afternoon. Suddenly, she refused to power up. I didn't really have time to diagnose her until today. Initially, I tried to single out the faulty part systematically by plugging in and out each component. A couple of combinations later, I decided to give up. In a desperate attempt, I disassembled everything and detached the motherboard from the casing, and then put everthing back again. To my surprise, she miraculously recovered!

The bad news is that she is not 100% well. Her processor is now running slowly at 1100MHz. I've made an attempt to adjust the processor speed in the CMOS, but she died again during a reboot! !@#%!@ Back to square one! To cut the long story short, I managed to revive her again. This time, I just left the processor speed as it was. Another problem is that everytime I turn her on, her floppy always fails.

At least I now have a retarded but working PC. This is better than no PC. Maybe I shouln't push her so hard. After all, she is 4.4 years old now. She is slated for retirement before the age of 5.

Heart

 

Bie Fu Ramen

The Yu Jia Zhuang in Suntec City has been replace by a Bie Fu Ramen. It is of course not call Bie Fu, I simply read the kanji as chinese characters and use hanyu pingyin on it! Muhahaha!

Anyway, I like the ramen very much because it is the closest to the wonderful Ramen I had in Japan. Not that it is all that close to the real thing, but at least I won't go Eeek! I like especially the hell noodle, which is ramen in hot chilli soup. There are five grades of hell hotness to choose from: One, Two, Four, Six and Eight Chilli. Me and Eddie are pretty comfortable with Two Chilli. Wara can also take Two Chilli. Ely can take One Chilli.

Now for citysea, this is a different ball game altogether. He had One Chilli. Throughout the bowl of soup, he was like a bottle of Coke just out of the freezer. Beads of sweat formed all over his forehead, his cheeks, the tip of his nose, his sideburns... well his whole face. Ely had to ask for extra servlets for him. Now that is a sight to behold :P Go citysea go go go!

Jimmy Birthday

Jimmy is the coolest guy I ever met. Never losing temper, never raising voice, never impatient. Happy Birthday!

All together now!

A cake specially for Jimmy by Jenny!

Turtle (err...)

 

Inside-Out Gondola

SwordFish

 

Triad Modular Frisbee

Clever Friends

Oops. I have very clever friends who solved both questions I prepared for an email test for my candidates so easily.

But alas, the deadline is Wednesday and the Google is so powerful, I am afraid they might stumble on the right answer my friends gave. So no comments for that post until Wednesday. :P

I am number ONE!

I usually reach office 15 minutes late. By the time, the same few colleagues would have arrived. Today is different. I walked into an empty office! Where's everybody? Is it a holiday today? Can't be, it's a working day.

Are they having a meeting? I quickly scanned my email to make sure I didn't miss anything. No meetings today. But where is everyone?

Are they somewhere having breakfast together? I looked around my colleagues' desks. No signs of personal belongings. They have not arrived yet. Why?

Nevermind. I just started my work without them. Then when I looked at my computer clock, it finally dawned upon me that I arrived 1 hour early!

Bird House

A little EQ and a little IQ

Below are two questions I gave to my candidates:

Question 1:
There are 15 visually identical balls. All of them have identical mass except for one. (You do not know whether it is heavier or lighter.) With a balance scale, can you identify the ball with different mass with just three weighing?
This is an EQ question. Do not spend more than 15 minutes on it. Also tell me how you found the answer.

Question 2:

If
1 = B
3 = BA
6 = CA
19 = CAB,

100 = ?

This is IQ question. Hint: There is no CAD or DAD.

Wanna try?

Bird