The Craftsman’s Forge

I know I’m gonna regret ever writing this, but I think its probably necessary:

1. LOSE Weight!!! Like 10 KGs
2. Go on more dates with Christine.
3. Spend more time (quality and quantity) with my family and kids.
4. Take more photographs and videos of the kids.
5. Restart my daily bible devotion time.
6. Start going for cell group by December 2006.
7. Get into a routine exercise program.
8. Stop looking at other cars.
9. Spend a couple of days out in the field watching birds (really birds, and not the human variety lah!!)
10. Go on a longer haul holiday with the family.

I’m sick and tired of my stock ipod headphones which just isn’t delivering the sound I like. Some months back, I tried to see if I could improve the sound by buying a coupe of in ear latex clip ons for the stock head phones. It was ok, but the latex clip ons keep dropping off. Visited the i21 store at cine leisure a couple of weeks back and saw the shere headphones. Beautiful! just a minor problem though… they were retailing at about S$300 to S$500. Damn it! I’m not gonna spend that kind of dough on a pair of measly headphones.

Well, I finally bought a pair of Cresyn LMX-E630 made in Korea in ear headphones. My goodness! the sound is better than the stock headphones, and more importantly, the clip ons don’t fall off easily. I bought a matellic black pair that looks just like this. The best thing? Ha ha… only S$49.00.

Image source: http://www.cresyn.com/eng/goods/read.php?sang_no=30&big_cate=Earphones

As in past years, Christmas Eve is spent quietly as a family, with the exception of a Christmas Eve dinner organised by Christine’s pals which we always go to. We went out early this morning for breakfast at Cafe Cartel aat Suntec City, only to find out that its closed down. So, after a hearty breakfast at MacDonalds (The children’s next choice), we headed out like commandoes to Carrefour to get Milk powder for the kids. We must have been fast, because we were back home by 11:30am, and we just rested until the late afternoon, when we started preparing to head out to Joanne and Chee Leong’s home in Punggol.

With batteries recharged, Kyla and Ariel were excited heading out to Aunty Joanne’s place.

Little Elkan creating havoc at Aunty Joanne’s place.

Simple fare like how we like it, but look at all the dishes. All MEAT!!! Wah lau… but still nice lah.

Merry Christmas everyone!

I watched three movies today. Well… now that its about 2:24am, I guess I watched 2 movies yesterday, and started another before 12am yesterday and just ended it today. OK OK… I watched King Kong early yesterday morning; 11am show at Great World City. I was on leave yesterday, and went to Mc Cafe for breakfast and a read of the papers. I ended up writing a personal e-mail to Mr. Gerard Ee of the New NKF to express my encouragement and congratulations for a job well done in the last 5 months.

Anyways, I probably missed the last 20 minutes of the show as I had to make a phone call to my CEO who was in Brisbane. After that, I headed to Cold Storage to pick up lunch, which was a slab of baby back ribs. Reached home at about 310pm, and started Mission Impossible 2. Didn’t manage to finish it, and had to go pick up Kyla and Ariel from Nursery school at 5:20pm before going to pick up Christine who works in Orchard. Then, its back to the Nursery school to pick up 10 month old Elkan before heading back to my parents place for dinner. Boy…and I was supposed to be on leave.

After the kids and mommy slept at about 9:45pm, it was back to finishing MI2, before starting Erin Brokovich at close to half past eleven.

Sheesh…I’m gonna hit the sack now. Tomorrow’s gonna be another long day with the kids. Groceries in the morning (and we need to beat the last minute Christmas shoppers) and a Christmas party at night. I’m already cringing…..

Its been two days since the release of KPMG report, and even the Ministry of Health has released its response to the report. As I ploughed through the Straits Times on the NKF report and fall-out, one article stood out for me, and in my opinion, she hit the nail right on the head. Ong Soh Chin wrote on the review column that it wasn’t the system that brought down TT Durai. Even with so many apparent checks and balances in place, statutory audit, regulatory checks, etc, the Man still managed to deceive everyone to “chug along comfortably, undisturbed, in its First Class cabin”. It wasn’t a whistle blower who exposed Durai, she writes. Rather, “NKF was felled by its own CEO”. For reasons known only to himself, he decided to sue The Straits Times for libel. Had he not done so, all these excesses and skeletons would never have seen the light of day.

Having been a computer assurance auditor in one of my previous lives in a Big Four audit firm, I understood what the poor blokes were going through the last five months. Having been involved in a cladenstine audit activity investigating potential commercial fraud in the technology front, I had to sneak around the client’s office in the middle of the night after 12am to sift through tons of data left behind in computers, going through files and documents. It wasn’t fun, because of all the late nights. But I guess the entire project would have been a success if you managed to show with material evidence that the guy you’re after is indeed hoodwinking the entire nation. Good work KPMG.

Goodness….. 10 cents out of a dollar! What a shameful abuse of his position of authority. There are really no words left that can adequately describe the man, being unrepentant and confident even after he was asked to respond to the KPMG report. My verdict…. if it were left to me would be the following:

1. Freeze all of his assets, locally and abroad
2. Bring the man to court and sue him
3. Have him backpay the NKF for all the money he fleeced off the NKF
4. Have him apologise publicly to all patients and donors

Technorati Tags: NKF ; Singapore ; Charity

Update: Mr. TT Durai spent S$70,000 for a trip to Vegas, apparently to study how to better market the NFK charity shows. I really hope he wasn’t there to gamble away doner’s monies.

The report on NKF is finally out. I’m still in the midst of reading the report, but some of the KEY highlights of the report was that only 10 cents out of every charity dollar was passed on directly to Kidney patients. Thats quite a shocker!! Mr. TT Durai also appear to receive less when he was actually receiving alot more in the background. Man…if this is true, then this man is indeed dissapointing.

The audit itself started in July, and required 40 audit professionals working close to 10,000 man hours to come up with the report. What a waste of donors’ monies to get this done. I vote that CAD arrests Mr. TT Durai for commercial fraud… or something to the order, and put him in jail, as well as make him pay the bill to KPMG.

Image source: www.channelnewsasia.com

The full report can be found here

Technorati Tags: NKF

What is exactly going through his mind I wonder? Khoo Swee Chiow (the local professional adventurer) yet again created quite a stir when he begins an attempt to stay under water for 212 hours today. Apparently the stunt today will cost a cool S$200,000. He’s got a large 20×10x8 feet tank erected at Tampines MRT station, in which he will attempt to stay submerge for longer than 9 days, or 212 hours 30 minutes. he’s even got the Singapore Civil Defense paramedics and divers from Fisherman Scuba standing by to support him.

Image source: www.channelnewsasia.com

Prior to becoming a professional adventurer, Khoo was employed by SIA (A Systems Analyst, if I don’t recall wrongly). But sometime in 1998, after he climbed Everest, he decided to quit his day job. So… he does these sort of things to pass his days. But… I really don’t understand this guy. He’s climbed several mountains, hiked to the South Pole, North Pole, cycled from Singapore to Beijing, Swam across the Malaccan Straits, and now he’s attempting to become a fish. perhaps you may be able to find the answer from his site Dare to Dream.

I mean… you know a guy’s got problems when he decides to go cycling instead of being with his heavily pregnant wife into her third trimester of pregnancy. And… coming back to the topic of the day, whats possessed him to do this? S$200,000 of public funds? Sheesh…. Might as well give it to me. I can think of a ton of things to do with it. Ha! I’ll buy a 32 inch Apple LCD monitor to begin with. A new Intel PowerPC, Powerbook when it comes out next year, and several months worth of 4D funds.

Rats… I’ll even be able to buy us all a trip to Norway for Christmas! Whats this thing about being a fish, I wonder? Oh well…. I guess some folks need to do this for fulfillment, and some need to watch such folks do this. But…. I’ll probably do the same. If someone gives me S$200,000, I’ll blog my experience in spending the cash. I’m sure people will find it interesting to.

We shop occasionally at Kovan Mall in Hougang south. When we were there some three weeks ago with th ekids, Kyla (the eldest girl) suddenly called out “Justice League!!!” Christine and I turned around wondering what had happened, and half expected Superman to swoop down and rescue us from an unseen danger. Alas…. it wasn’t Superman or any of his Super Friends, but it was a HUGE poster of the Justice League on the side of the building advertising that the Super Friends would be “Live” in Kovan Mall from Dec 10 to 18.

Kyla, we found out that very afternoon, was completely and irrevocably hooked on Justice League. It seems like the children at the school are allowed to watch cable every afternoon for about 30 minutes before the school bus comes to bring them home. The TV is tuned to either Childrens’ Network or to Channel 35’s Cartoon Network. Apparently…. Justice League comes on during this time, and for the last couple of weeks (months perhaps?) Kyla has been getting her regular fix of Super Heros. Her favourite it appears is Wonder Woman, and like normal children who start divi-ing up who they want to be, my little Lyla is the “Electric Wonder Woman”! as she calls herself.

So… last Saturday afternoon, I brought Electric Wonder Woman to Kovan Mall to see her friends. The show started at 3pm, but we only left the house at about 2:50pm as Wonder Woman was catching up with her sleep. As expected, we arrived at Kovan Mall and met with a huge crowd of children going wild. We’re never gonna get close to the stage and to the Super Friends for pictures… Damn.

Anyways…. the show was quite a rip off. If we had to pay for the show, I’d definitely riot. Lasting all of 5 minutes from the time we arrived, Wonder Woman, “Alien” Man (I don’t know who he /it is), Flash, Green Lantern and Bird woman (???) tried to smile for the children and look like proper Super Heroes. Flash looked like he has a boob job went bad, and Wonder Woman just didn’t seem to look very much like Linda Carter.

When Wonder Woman finished her dance number, the show concluded, and went into photoshoot time. Only the first 30 children got “tickets” to take photographs with these morons. I worried if Kyla would clamour for a ticket knowing that there’d be no chance to get one since we were about 5 minutes late. Lucky thing… she was extremely wary of these jokers on stage, saying “I like them better on TV”. She was really frightened of them, and started whining whenever I got too near the stage.
So, I took a couple more shots just for the memories, and we headed to the third floor to get a Green Lantern action figure. For the record, Kyla now has 2 Wonder Woman, 2 Superman, 2 Batman and 1 Green Lantern action figures. Mattel it seems turns out several versions of each Super Hero.

We were back home by 3:45pm, and Wonder Woman was bragging to her sister (Ultraman … this is for another time) and her mummy about how fun it was. Kids are just so much fun.

CNG or Compressed Natural Gas has been around since the 1970s to 1980s during the oil crisis. I remember it being used widely and probably exclusively by taxis during my stay in Perth, Western Australia where I was studying for my undergraduate degree. This was back in 1994. CNG is clean burning and produces significantly fewer harmful emissions than reformulated gasoline or diesel. Commercially available medium- and heavy-duty natural gas engines have demonstrated over 90% reductions of carbon monoxide (CO) and particulate matter and more than 50% reduction in nitrogen oxides (NOx) relative to commercial diesel engines. *Source - US Department of energy. Yet, it is only now that CNG, vastly cheaper, and far safer for the environment is introduced commercially into Singapore taxis.

Image source: www.channelnewsasia.com

This is obviously good news for the environment. With this onset of CNG taxis, SMART Auto is building two CNG refuelling stations in Singapore next year. Singapore’s current and only CNG refuelling station is on Jurong Island. The strange thing though, is that, although CNG is a much cheaper alternative than petrol or diesel, costing about 30% less, the flag down price for these next generation taxis are S$3.00, 60 cents more than the usual S$2.40.

This could be due to the government criterior of the company building at least two gas stations by next year. The cost for each gas station?…. a whopping S$2 million dollars. At the end of the day, consumers are still the ones who bear the brunt of any price hike, cos… it ain’t gonna be the government nor the taxi companies who’ll pay for the infrastructure.

The SANS Institute released a Top 20 Vulnerabilities on the 28th of November 2005, and horrors of horrors, Mac OS X, which has been Virus and Trojan free for the last 5 years was listed among the Top 20, and the only entire Operating System to earn the credit of appearing in this list.

Understandably, this created quite a stir amongst the Mac community, and several friends of mine who are Windows users sent me spite mail to say “Ha! The Mac is not so secure after all is it?” Well, I think this begs a reply of some sort. But, to do so impulsively would be foolish.

Mac OS X was launched in 2001 and has since then been virus and Trojan free. Isn’t that something to count for? To have an institution suddenly release a statement saying the OS is insecure doesn’t erase 5 years of track record. In the words of MacDailyNews, which I reproduce here in its entirety:

“Poppycock and Balderdash aren’t just a nice snack and a fun game anymore. What’s next, is the SANS Institute going to warn Madonna that a Best Actress Oscar is coming her way? Sheesh. Forgive us for not quaking in fear, but we’re not rushing to buy Symantec’s Norton AntiVirus 10.0 for Macintosh.

No operating system is invulnerable, but users of Mac OS X are so much safer than users of Windows, it’s impossible to overstate the discrepancy. Don’t run Mac OS X as root and don’t authorize applications that you don’t understand or trust. Use Software Update to keep your Mac up to date. Turn on your Mac OS X Firewall (System Preferences>Sharing>Firewall) if you wish. Run AntiVirus apps to screen out Windows viruses, so you don’t pass them on to Windows sufferers, if you’re feeling like a magnanimous network citizen.

Zero Mac OS X viruses, spyware or other malware, for five years and counting, and we’re running the one OS deemed a “major security threat” by the SANS Institute? Whatever.”

Clearly the report has hit a raw nerve, and rightly so. A statement made by one Mac user sums it up I think:

“Wow! I guess this means I will tell my clients to switch back to Windows systems because they are so much safer now than their Macs. What a load of bulls**t. I have yet to come across ANY expolitable security flaw for mac OS while I spend hundreds of hours a month patching Windows systems and fixing them because of actual problems caused by exploits. Until I actually see an honest to goodness remotely expoitable security hack I will continue to ignore these idiots at Symantec, etc.”

So, I leave the judgement to you. Alvin, if you can… you should read this entry.