I just realized that I’ve been “offline” for a while. “Offline” in the sense that this blog hasn’t had any updates for almost 2 weeks now. There are a couple of reasons for it. Probably the chief reason is that I’ve been very under-the-weather lately. Then, there are also critical project milestones to meet at work. The two combined together have left me no time and no “mood” to blog anything.

It’s the first time that I’m getting such an acute sinusitis. It was so bad that the pain I had felt, wasn’t headache, but literally pain the sinuses. It was as bad as, or perhaps worse, than the intensity of my typically headaches.

The illness caused my productivity to go down. I haven’t been actively doing any programming for a while, but it just so happened that I needed to do some intense programming this last few weeks. What made it even worse is that it was someone else’s code that I was trying to fix/enhance. If you are a programmer, you’ll understand it isn’t so difficult to fix your own code as it is to fix someone else’s.

Then, I decided that I needed to do major “code surgery”. This required plenty of brain juices to formulate the surgery plan, to visualize the process and the end-result. But my illness meant that I couldn’t think very productively. I sat at my computer, wondering how come the thinking process wasn’t happening. Usually, I can visualize how code flows, how various components would interact with each other, etc. It wasn’t happening quite the same way this time.

Eventually, what had to be done, was done. Painfully slowly. I couldn’t recall a time when programming was so unproductive.

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The most patriotic member of the family this year has got to be Vanessa. She’s been bugging both me and Mummy: “Why we no Singapore flag?” “Why our car no Singapore flag?” “See, Singapore flag!” “Why we no Singapore flag?” “See, another Singapore flag!” “Where’s my Singapore flag?” (She got one from her child care centre.) “Why our car no Singapore flag?” ”Why we didn’t bring my Singapore flag”? Repeat and repeat, in various random sequences.

We just never thought of getting a Singapore flag to put up anywhere… whether it’s to hang from the window at  home, or in/on the car, etc. After Vanessa’s continual bugging, we decided to drop by SPC to get a flag for our car. By then, of course, they had already run out of flags. We did check out a few other places… no one had it.

Looking out of my window, I can only see two flags flying… from a low floor, mostly obscured by trees. Maybe that’s why I don’t feel much of a National Day mood around here.

The most patriotic thing that I’ll be doing is watching the National Day Parade… on TV in the comfort my my living room.

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Not quite riches. But it’s amazing how in a little over a week, all this mess is going to turn into something that actually does look nice enough to be paraded around in a sort of competition. That is going to become a float for NUS Rag Day which, this year, is going to fall on the opening of the inaugural Youth Olympics Games.

The campus is bustling with orientation programmes right now. Week 0, which is the official freshmen orientation week, starts next week. But the noise, particularly when some student groups take their activities rowdy indoors, is starting to cause the peace to be disturbed.

I came across something that is quite funny. One student group had been practising their dance in a certain space, with their loud music upsetting the quietness of the work space of some staff. The said space had to give way to some renovation works. Loud music was replaced by loud hammering, knocking, drilling, etc. You know, the renovation noise. The noise was also upsetting the quietness of that work space of those same staff. I asked them, which do you prefer, the music or the renovation noise? Their immediate answer: renovation noise.

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We’ve finally moved to a new office. Three years late, after the rest of the school had already moved. We joked that we were unimportant third-class citizens, and hence were left behind. (Sometimes we do feel like third-class citizens…) This is only my 3rd room, although some colleagues who worked for slightly shorter time could have had gone through more rooms than me.

I’m quite pleased to get back the original furniture arrangement that I had in my first office. My then colleague and I had this idea of a centre island of work tables that we share on opposite sides. We shared offices two-to-a-room. The design was unique, functional and promoted team work.

That office was very unique. The furniture was custom designed. The side tables had cutouts to fit around pillars, and the furniture configuration fitted exactly the room dimensions. It was too bad that the 2nd office room wasn’t the right shape for us to retain the preferred configuration. This new office now lets us go back to that layout.

The process of moving to our new offices this time was very frustrating. The planning, coordination, and execution was just totally screwed up. Talk about the actual moving itself. Just to move some furniture of two rooms took the workers 1.5 hours. That was all the lorry could take. Travel to new location, unload the furniture into the new rooms, another 1.5 hours. We (my team) had 7 rooms in total, and the “grand plan” was to move us all in a single afternoon starting at 2pm. Oh, I should also add, no one turned up at 2pm. At 3pm, the furniture movers came. But not the box movers. They didn’t know there was any moving to do that day.

It’s only on the 3rd day that, finally, everything had begun to get sorted out so that I can actually get around to doing some cleaning. How many times the contractors try to clean up the room doesn’t make any difference. The vacuum cleaner they brought, for example, simply sucked in dust one end and exhausted it into another part of the room. It’s as if the vacuum cleaner had no dust bag and no filter installed. This machine they call a vacuum cleaner really just disperses the dust so that you notice less of it.

I’m glad that today we managed to unpack and settle down a bit. Tomorrow, we should be able to get back to the normal rhythm of productive work.

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Last year’s ICT achievement was about an arcade game. This year, I couldn’t advance to the next level because the fire button was broken. Oh, too bad. But we didn’t have a lot of time to spend in the mess anyway. What would this year’s most significant ICT achievement be? Hmm, I can’t seem to pin it down to anything specific. So perhaps I’ll just mention a few.

First of all, I had breakfast at the canteen only 3 times. Yeah. Every ICT I seem to spend too much time and eating too much at the canteen. After ICT is done, I feel like I’ve put on more weight. So starting the last ICT, I decided that I shall start cutting down eating at the canteen. There was some small degree of success the last year. But this year, it was down to just 3 breakfasts in 3 weeks.

Then, on a more serious matter, I walked down the runway of Tengah Air Base for the first time ever. Funny that after having been in Tengah for almost 20 years, it’s the first time I’ve actually set foot on the runway.

Finally, there is this matter of the field exercise. Actually, it was considerably very “low key” and relaxed. But everyone’s grown old, gotten unused to mosquitos, bees, and well, out-of-practice being in the field, so it was nevertheless a significant effort for us to be deploying out-field for the exercise. By dinner time of the first day, I was developing a migraine and… hmm, I was having half a mind to fall out. I probably would have had my special indent of panadol not arrived. Thank goodness, the special delivery had good sense to get panadol extra instead of the plain panadol.

Despite some new blood injected into the flight, and everyone being very nice… well, I’m still looking forward to MR.

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I told Vanessa on the second day of ICT, as I was preparing to head out: “Papa has to go army now.”

Vanessa looked at me, her face was painted in shock and disappointment: “Again???”

I told her, “Yes, and there will be many many more days.”

She asked, “But why you always go army?”

And I said, “Well, I also don’t want to go army you know. But the government wants me to go.”

Vanessa: “Why?” Yadda, yadda, yadda… “The government naughty?”

It will be nice if there could be this policy that fathers with kids under the age of 5 years old be excused from reservist liabilities.

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It’s almost 20 years since I first stepped into Tengah Air Base. In all that time (well, mostly just the two years of active NSF service), I’ve been to all over the air base, either on wheels or on my two feet. But there is this exclusive piece of real estate that I’ve only travelled on for less than a handful of times, and until now, never actually stepped on with my two feet. This piece of real estate is actually quite huge, and is, in fact, a significant part of the air base. It’s the runway.

The occasion? FOD walk. I could not understand why, during my active NSF time as a medic, people would report sick to get an “excuse FOD walk”. Back then, I’ve already heard what the FOD walk was about, and I couldn’t understand what was so bad about it that people want to be excused.

Well, I got arrowed for FOD walk. I still don’t understand why people want to be excused. Maybe the early morning sun is too hot for some people. There is no shade on the runway, obviously.

But I thought it was a nice walk. Despite this being inside an air base in Singapore, you could almost imagine like being in a foreign land. A scenic countryside. Huge expanse of flat land, rolling mist across the fields, hazy landscape of trees in the distance. As the sun shines on, and the mist starting to lift, you could make out structures of HDB flats in the “horizon”. It’s a unique view you don’t typically see in Singapore. It’s a view I’ve been familiar with in the past, but now I’m seeing it from a new angle.

As the morning wears on, the heat from the sun starts to get uncomfortable. Ah, maybe that’s why people want to be excused. The sun has been scorching the last couple of months, and it was no different for this walk. There’s the funny feeling of hotness on one side of your body, but coolness on the other. We (or at least a few of us) were suitably attired for the walk, so it wasn’t all too uncomfortable.

So how is FOD walk? Hmm. It would have been great to start on-time.

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We’re seeing more of the e-armed forces. BMT recruits, 2600 of them, were issued with notebook computers at the start of their BMT course last December so that they can do “e-learning” at their own time. They are learning about such things as riffle handling, grenade throwing and first-aid. The learning format sounds like what universities do for some courses: online learning, supplemented by recitations and tutorials/practical labs.

Military training begins to parallel university education. I suppose, why not, since they are both about learning anyway. The lecture time freed up by their online learning were then used for other purposes, like national education or discussion on current affairs. I’m not sure how recruits like this optimization of their time.

But it will really be nice if “national service” could just be an online virtual activity. Since I’m past NSF, I don’t really care about what they do during NSF, but how about for the NSmen. They’ve got to do something to make the NSmen In-Camp Training less painful.

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Earth Hour is coming up again. It will be from 8:30pm to 9:30pm this Saturday, 27th March 2010. Everyone’s encouraged to participate and show their support by switching off their lights during this hour. Earth Hour is a call for everyone to be responsible for our future.

Okay, now the serious part of showing my support for Earth Hour is done, let’s look at other things surrounding Earth Hour. This switching-off-the-lights business, do you think it makes any difference at all? It’s really all about publicity. But could they not do something more meaningful? After all, we have been switching off ours lights for some years.

It’s also interesting what Earth Hour means at workplaces. For example, at mine, a spam was circulated (electronically, so it is still earth-friendly) to everyone. An interesting paragraph read:

“<A long list that basically means all people…> … are encouraged to participate in Earth Hour by switching off their office and room lights on 27 March, Saturday, 8.30pm to 9.30pm.”

I was just thinking. Now, on a day and time when no one is at work, people need to drive their cars back to work, switch off the lights, hang around to enjoy some air-con which now needs to be turned on, then one hour later switch back on the lights, before finally driving their cars back to wherever they want to be.

How earth-friendly is that? I wonder, how much manpower is expended and extra transport is incurred because of Earth Hour related activities at workplaces.

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For many years now, I’ve never been very keen to go to any of the computer shows, not unless there was something specific I wanted to get or to check out. There are probably some marginally better discounts that can be gotten at the show, but those discounts tend to also be available outside the show during that show period. So, there’s little point to jostle with the crowd.

The retailers are also pulling a lot of bluffs with their more aggressive sales tactics. For example, they will announce a very special price discount for a very limited number of items at an appointed time. If you hang around long enough, you realize that they actually have that very special price discount for more very limited number of items many more times during the rest of the day. So basically, you pay a very special premium to buy at the wrong time. I find these bluffs really irritating.

It’s interesting to see how the show has evolved through the years. They now have sideline events. Like clothing sale, bedlinen sale, shoes sale, perfume sale, etc. They aren’t part of the main show itself, but they are there. Even Carrefour advertises discounted beer at the show, although I didn’t quite get to see that. I suppose it is a smart way to capitalize on the crowd that the computer show will draw, and at the same time, perhaps present an all-around balanced attraction for a family outing. Not everyone in the family would be keen to see computers and other electronics, so they could go see other things.

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