Trick or Treat?

I didn’t have any tricks up my sleeve but I had a treat given to me; Sticky Halloween rock candy.

It was made all the more sweeter when the better looking ones were handpicked and then put into the container. I call it the Sweetest Sweets. And in my 3 weeks of being at Central nearly everyday, I never noticed a shop which sells customized candies.

If you are a little confused on who’s who, just know that Sonia is the one with the guitar.

I fully agree with Sze Kiat on this:

The best things comes in a pair

My words alone mean nothing, so let the video of them singing Tamia’s Officially Missing You do the job of turning you into fans:

I am absolutely blown away by their singing and I haven’t seen anyone else say otherwise. In the times that I am at my weakest, their voices would really energize my soul. Should they decide to start a professional career, I would be fully supportive of them.

x days to fireworks!

where x refers to the number of days to my ORD.

I probably had every fireworks fanatic on my contact list fooled so much that I had buzzes asking me the location and time of the excitement. To disappoint them, the fireworks are my personal ones and happening only around me.

By eyesplash Mikul

So I have waited for this long yet short 2 years to pass me by and it finally has.

I am glad to have had the opportunity along the way to know some really nice people. I could probably write a very long post detailing the wonderful memories we had, but I won’t go to that. These guys will definitely follow me to my later years for sure.

What is in store for me next? I have already found a temporary job to last me till I leave for Adelaide doing what I have always been passionate about – Web Development. And as crazy as it might sound, I will be starting as soon as the week begins.

I do not want to retreat into a phase where I start to relax and go into a slacking mood. By then, it would be tough to re-adjust my body clock while being productive at the same time. Given the short span of time I have, I need to able to deliver results, and fast. A weekday plus the weekend of recharging my batteries would be more than sufficient.

The responsibility on my shoulders can already be felt and I can’t wait to get started in a new environment with new colleagues on a whole new experience which can only help me grow.

By Aym Neutron

He looked exactly like your friendly SBS Transit train service staff walking from carriage to carriage during a journey. Yet I never knew what his job involved, even till now. You must be wondering what was so special about his actions on this very particular journey?

At every stop, commuters would come flooding in. Once they have found their seat or a spot to stand at, he would go to work. Asking those with needs (senior citizens and pregnant women) which station are they headed to and whether they needed a seat. Following that, he would look for empty reserved seats for them.

On quite a couple of occasions, the commuters would quite readily give up their seat so that these slightly disadvantaged commuters can rest their legs. But it wasn’t mandatory and entirely voluntarily on their part.

Whether it was an extra gesture of goodwill by this service staff or the job of a Passenger Service Officer (I came up with that myself), it is something which lightened up the mood and brought a smile to my face.

Through this very simple taken initiative, I also saw bigger and more clearer evidence that not every commuter in Singapore is selfish and only thinking of himself/herself. We are still gracious and considerate.

Exemplary staff should be recognized for their efforts. If you have too seen this service staff in action, please find out his name and write a commendation letter to SBS Transit. Next time, I see him at work, I will do just that.

I am largely an Ectomorph but share some characteristics of a Mesomorph. In short I am a combination of both; a Meso Ectomorph. Compared to others, it is harder for me to put on weight or gain muscle. I have to work twice as hard than Mesomorphs and Endomorphs in my training to gain their results. I will always be on the losing end but I am not complaining.

If you have seen me eating my meals, you will probably notice I down twice as much as a regular person. It isn’t because I am abnormal. If I do not eat enough, I would have painful gastric troubles.

Many have asked me at what point do I intend to stop working out so intensively.

Weight wise, 70-72kg would be ideal for me. Am not too far from my target now. Muscle growth and strength-wise, I have no intention of stopping anytime soon. My ultimate aim is to gain a more larger frame while working on increasing my strength.

At the same time, I still want to remain athletic and agile. I know I have to compromise in some areas, but that is just a small sacrifice which has to be made. Getting the right balance between strength and agility is going to be a huge challenge in itself.

It is nice to hear compliments of how well I have worked out my body though I am well aware that I will never be satisfied on a personal level. The eagerness to better yourself is always there. That is just another source of motivation driving me on to have a disciplined weekly work out routine.

I remember once saying that I won’t ever drop Sony Ericsson for a Nokia phone, I take it back.

My new handy toy is the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic smartphone. Its retail price with the lowest-end plan is set at SGD $348. Fortunately, thanks to the SGD $50 voucher from Starhub and my mum’s SGD $100 contribution, I only needed to fork out a very affordable $198. If only I had traded in my faulty W890i, the payable amount could have been further slashed. Oh well.

Although the touch screen concept is something new, at least to me, I have gotten very quickly used to it. The QWERTY keyboard is definitely more effective than the regular numeric keypad, but it would take some time before I can fully take advantage of it and return to my usual SMS typing speed or even faster.

If I have to absolutely lament about something, it would be not being connected to a wireless network whenever I want. There are only designated hotspots where I can get a connection, except when I am at home. If only I had a SingTel phone line. Things could be a whole lot different in Adelaide though or it may not, I don’t know.

I need to be getting a protective cover for the 5800 too. Any ideas on where to find them? It is times like this that I wished that I had an iPhone instead. At the very least, accessories are readily available.

Some personalization on the phone is desperately needed too, the default message tones just do not cut it except for one. And that seems to be the one every Nokia user seems to have set on their phone.

On the whole, I am satisfied with the 5800 and hope it will be able to last me throughout my stay in Adelaide.

You would notice that some of the photos are lacking in vibrancy and saturation. It was done on purpose to bring out the modern vs olden look. A theme if you will.

A very familiar looking signboard found plastered all over the HDB void decks. Back in my younger days, I would play football there, making loads of noises and disturbing the neighbors. When we were young and wild.

Yet another playing ground. As years passed, I moved on from the void decks to the badminton court. I did not switch to playing badminton, we were still playing football, only this time on a badminton court. I am not kidding. Now you know why there is a ‘No football’ sign.

One of the things which gets me all surprised and excited is the appearance of palm trees. I recall only seeing them at the beaches or in areas near water. I definitely was not expecting them to be in the heart of old housing estates. With such a blue sky as a background, I simply couldn’t resist. The crop factor on my 50mm once again was an obstacle.

Probably my favorite set from the entire catalogue of photos. A nostalgic satay griller in 2 different eras – in colors. To top it off, a close up on the griller. Countless sticks of satay freshly grilled. I doubt we will ever see one of these in action ever again.

This set belonged to one of the residents in the estate and they actually encouraged us to take more photos of it.

To see the photos on a higher image resolution, do check out my flickr set.

When I got there, I was greeted with an absolute shocker. The agent who was previously handling my transfer application had resigned and a new one was assigned to me. Not the best of arrangements but I would rather it happen now than later during the closing stages of my transfer application.

Now after accepting the offer and paying a deposit of AUD$9585 – AUD$9000 for tuiton fee deposit and AUD$585 for the Overseas Student Health Cover (OSHC), I just need to patiently wait for the Electronic Confirmation of Enrollment (eCOE). It is mentioned on my letter of offer that the course commences on 15th February 2010 but on the University’s academic calendar, the orientation week falls on 22nd February 09. Shouldn’t it be lined up before the course commencement date?

It might be best to wait for an official response from Adelaide confirming my admission into the University before making any decisions. Without these crucial pieces of information, I can’t move forward to make bookings for my flight or accommodation.

Once I receive the eCOE, I can proceed with getting my Visa done. Do take note it can only be registered 124 days before the commencement of the course. I am looking at November onwards (hopefully). It would cost me about AUD$540 (subjected to change) to apply a Visa for a 1.5 years stay in Adelaide.

What comes up next is a full medical checkup which will eat close to a good $150 from my fast thinning wallet. Well at this point of time, there is nothing more I can do except to wait.

Originally, I thought it was the battery adapter behind all these. My fears were confirmed when I tested it with a different adapter on my W890i as well as on Meng₂’s mobile.

This may sound silly but I was feeling somewhat down and moody for the rest of the day. Don’t ask me why a mobile has such a big impact on me. I am clueless myself.

I could always get it back to normal by charging it with another mobile which uses the same series of battery. This is but a one stop measure, I can’t be getting favors from people around me whenever my battery starts running out of power.

To get the port fixed and running again, it would probably cost me just under SGD $100. To pay that kind of price with just over 6 months to my phone plan’s expiry is just crazy. I would be better off getting a new set. And it is about time too.

For now, I hope I can somehow find a temporary mobile along the series of the Nokia 3100 or worse just so I won’t be helplessly crippled by the loss of a very important telecommunication device.

What Error?

For those who I have already lost, does this message ring a bell?

Error: Data does not match input character set or default encoding

This occurs when you are trying to pass information to PayPal through your form with an encoding that it does not understand. As a general rule for most websites, an UTF-8 encoding would be the way to go.

How to Fix it

Assume you have already set your page encoding together with the database tables and columns as UTF (if you are retrieving the information dynamically), yet PayPal is still having that wee bit of difficulty in processing it.

To get around this, we have to tell PayPal what exactly is the data encoding type by adding a hidden input within your form.

<input type="hidden" name="charset" value="utf-8"/>

That error message should almost instantly disappear now.

I hope this post has helped you, if you are still having problems, drop me a comment with a working URL and I will take a look.