Citibank Sweetness!

After signing the contract with Citibank the day before yesterday, I returned to Mellinia Tower yesterday to summit all the forms to the HR officer. Citibank HR Dep is located in level 33 and they have a very nice view over the bay.

Another one from a different angle.

Unfortunately I will not be working there, I have to take 45mins MRT every morning to Tampines Junction. What am I thinking?

After that I went to Citibank Esplanade Branch to open a staff account and I met this young india lady who was given the same position the day before, so we will be colleagues in the next year at least! She has married with 2 children and her whole family have moved here, including her parents. It is always a nice thing to know more about your future working environment and colleagues beforehand.

The staff bank account application went pretty smoothly. Because I will be a Citibank sfaff soon, I naturally had a conversation with this officer Daniel about how life would be in this company, etc. He asked me whether I had any saving or investment plan and gave some advice to me when he heard no. So as the first contribution to the company that I had not yet started working for, I decided to join a 25yr saving plan. Daniel introduced another speciallist Mr Tng, whose wife happens to be working in Citibank as well and holds the same position as me! This is the second colleague that I have known today, and I haven't started to work yet! What a wonderful day! It seems that they have some gifts for all the saving plan partispants. I was given two opitions to choose: iPod shuffle or Sony Walkman Mp3. I chose iPod Shuffle, obviously!

I spotted these cute candies on the table there, and I took three of them back. What a kind of "Citibank Sweetness!".

When I was done there, I went to Republic Plaza for a medical check. Only when did I realized that my day had just started! It took me half an hour to figure out how to get to level 29 and it took another 3 hours to finish all the examation, which includes one hour lunch break! The most astound news is that my vision is only 6/10 now and the doctor recommended glasses! No...I will never wear that piece of shit! I will try to take more care of my eyes and give them more time to rest instead.

I returned home around 4 pm and slept until 8. Then I went to Wuvist's home after that and that is another long story which I am not going to tell here.

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I got a new job!

After so many interviews and months of frusration, I finally got a job in Citi Group as Regional Investment & Treasuary Ops Officer. Start to work next monday! Got a lot of form to fill up tonight!

That's it! I though that I would talk a lot about it, but when it comes, I really don't have anything to say about it! I prefer to stay calm and enjoy my easy days left before I start to work.

He has some foresight and creativity!

I am shocked by this picture when I was browsing my Picasa galley. Does it remind you of anything? Yes, Quick Look in Leopard(bellow). Apple just makes it better in a real Leopard style.

It was a fake picture about Leopard back in Aug 2006, when no one knows anything about what we would get from Leopard. It was done by Eric Patterson during a fake leopard screenshot contest. I don't know if Apple copied his idea or not, but in either way, he does have some foresight and creativity!

It's A Beautiful Day

Today is a very beautiful day, with the sun shining all over the place, from the very deep of my heart, to the very top of the blue sky!

Beautiful Day

The heart is a bloom
Shoots up through the stony ground
There's no room
No space to rent in this town

You're out of luck
And the reason that you had to care
The traffic is stuck
And you're not moving anywhere

You thought you'd found a friend
To take you out of this place
Someone you could lend a hand
In return for grace

It's a beautiful day
Sky falls, you feel like
It's a beautiful day
Don't let it get away

You're on the road
But you've got no destination
You're in the mud
In the maze of her imagination

You love this town
Even if that doesn't ring true
You've been all over
And it's been all over you

It's a beautiful day
Don't let it get away
It's a beautiful day

Touch me
Take me to that other place
Teach me
I know I'm not a hopeless case

See the world in green and blue
See China right in front of you
See the canyons broken by cloud
See the tuna fleets clearing the sea out
See the Bedouin fires at night
See the oil fields at first light
And see the bird with a leaf in her mouth
After the flood all the colors came out

It was a beautiful day
Don't let it get away
Beautiful day

Touch me
Take me to that other place
Reach me
I know I'm not a hopeless case

What you don't have you don't need it now
What you don't know you can feel it somehow
What you don't have you don't need it now
Don't need it now
Was a beautiful day

No Feeding of Cats.

Can anyone tell me why?

I am not a pet lover, but if the government really thinks that it is not a good idea to leave so many wild cats out there, why don't they just get them captured and killed? I think that would be better rather than telling people not to feed them.

I don't like pets for a very simple reason: keeping pets is not the way you should treat animals, no matter what kind of feeling you have on them. If you are an animal lover, don't you feel guilty for keeping an active life under your control and preventing it to breathing the fresh air of freedom? If you are someone like me who believe biological competition, then I don't see the difference between pigs and cats, or dogs. So if you are a carnivorous person, meaning you eat certain kind of meat, please don't be so hysterical when you see other people eating dogs or cats. I won't treat them any differently unless I see the point of doing so for the sake of my own benefit. So I cannot understand those people who blame Korean for dog eating while they can eat other kind of meat themselves. I am a dog meat lover myself. Let me tell you this: they are delicious!

Btw, where did these wild cats in Singapore come from at the first place?

Gmail: 4328MB Storage and IMAP!

One of my gmail account has a storage of 4328MB now, while another account has IMAP support now! It seems that IMAP support is on the way out. But how about the 4328 MB storage? Is it a common practice or just for a fraction of all users?

Some people may say that I would never used out all the storage, so 4328 MB is no different from 2000MB. Well, if you are a Gmail regular user, you may want to take back your words. When I first started to use gmail, I though 2GB is more than enough, but when my usage was up to 1GB, I started to think that 2GB is still a little bit small. So I have this strong believe that there will be one day that I feel 4328MB is still too small.

Update:I am pretty sure that this 4328 MB is not solely due to the Infanity+1 Plan, because according to that plan, my Gmail should only have 2916 MB  as shown bellow:

Never take anything as granted!

I saw this in Sheng Siong Supermarket. So are there people who really eat them? I am afraid there are, otherwise they would not put this notice there. O, man! What are they thinking? Do they really think that they are allowed to pick up some nice labelled apples just for a testing? or do they just want to save those few pennies by eating those apples in front of everyone passing by and pretending that they just don't know it is wrong? That's why you should never take anything as granted, otherwise people will use it as excuse for their stupid doings.

Wuvist's iPod Touch

Ok, I admit that I cannot help myself when I knew that Wuvist got an iPod Touch. So I walked to his home around 12:00(luckily we stay very nearby) and played with this little toy for a while. During which Wuvist had it jailbroken and installed some nice apps. Then we went to Mcdonald's. After that, I returned home around 3:00am. I don't want to act like some crazy boy, but I have to say this: iPod Touch is the kind of PDA device that you really want and need! It is freaking cool! Here are some photos that I took using my mobilephone.

Tag: ipod touch, apple, wuvist.

On Dumbledore's gay thing, which one is the news?

So I saw this news in digg: J. K. Rowling at Carnegie Hall Reveals Dumbledore is Gay; Neville Marries Hannah Abbott, and Much More. First of all, I have to say that I am not a big fan of HP and J.K. Rowlilng, so HP guys, don't judge me on that! My first reaction about this "so called news" is asking myself: Which one is the news? Is it the fact that "J.K. Rowling reveals that Dumbledore is gay! " or the fact that "Dumbledore is gay."? They may look like the same, but they are totally different!

For the first one, "J.K.Rowling reveals that Dumbledore is gay!", it is more like something paparazzi would report and it is more about the author rather than the novel itself. After closing the storyline of HP and settling all dusts down, this once-under-the-spotlight media favourate writer cannot bear the loneliness for staying in the shadow. So she magically "found out"  that Dumbledore is gay and being shocked by this "fact", she wants to share it with other people(especially the media who have dumped her for a while). This is like the English version of CHA Leung Yung, isn't it? Do you love this version of news?

Or, by collecting all the clues and hints given in the books, a HP reader, who happens to be the author herself, found out that the author, who happens to be the reader, is hiding some secret in this already closed storyline. Being a big fan of HP herself, she wants to share this piece of speculation with other fans. This one is more about the novel.

No matter which one you like better, it really doesn't matter that much, does it? Because J.K. Rowling is once again back on the newsline, as an authur, or reader of her own book.

Tag: harry potter, dumbledore

God and Evolution!

I saw this in the St. Andrew's Cathedral Welcome Centre. It is the church on top of Cityhall MRT, if you don't know where it is. God and evolution, this is a very interesting question, and also one of the reason that I don't buy the Christian belief!

For me, a student brought up and educated in Darwin's competitive jungle and who studied biology as major, I really don't think it is a good idea for me to throw all these theories away and believe the Legend of Genesis. Because if I do so, I would feel like denying everything in my past and pretending to believe something that I acctually think is stupid(Sorry, Christian folks, I really don't have another proper word for this)! And that would be the last thing I want to do! I know it is another kind of religion if you just be obedience to the science and don't doubt about it at all! And also, there are still scientists who are not buying the concept of evolution, but the bottomline is science makes sence to me, at lease from what I know, both about science and religion! I just don't think it is a very good idea to have some superman to create this world in seven days including ourselves!

But to some people, God and evolution don't necessarily contradict with each other, such as Francis S. Collin, who is a leading scientist working on the Human Genome Project, and yet believes in God and even wrote a book called The Language Of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief. Here is a interview with Stephen Colbert.

From what he said, 40 percent of working scientists are believers of their personal Gods. That means this is not some kind of rare issue, this is a very common issue faced by the science community as well as our whole society! Even up to now, schools in U.S are still struggling between evolution classes and theology, they just don't know what they should teach their next generation! It is the worst in U.S, why? maybe because of their deeply rooted religious tradition back to the moment Mayflower landed on America soil.

Religion is a very interest topic! I believe in religious freedom, but that doesn't stop me saying something about religions that I don't believe, right? As for my own religion, I used to joked around with my friends with this: "I am an atheist, but ghost scare me to death!"

标签: religion, god, science, stephen colbert

到底还要如何压制？

今天在浏览中文维基百科的时候，无意间逛到了闻一多先生的《最后一次演讲》。发现我们国内学的版本遭到过删减，少了一段文字。这段文字如下：

现在司徒雷登出任美驻华大使，司徒雷登是中国人民的朋友，是教育家，他生长在中国，受的美国教育。他住在中国的时间比住在美国的时间长，他就如一个中国的留学生一样，从前在北平时，也常见面。他是一位和蔼可亲的学者，是真正知道中国人民的要求的，这不是说司徒雷登有三头六臂，能替中国人民解决一切，而是说美国人民的舆论抬头，美国才有这转变。

这里，我们可以展开很多的联想了，比如说这里提到的司徒雷登是不是有些敏感？毕竟同样的课本里面还有另外一篇更加著名的《别了，司徒雷登》。但是我认为最耐人寻味的还是最后一句话：美国人民的舆论抬头，美国才有这转变！

今天我又重读了一边<The Road to Surfdem>, 里面有一段话如下：

It is revealing that few planners today are content to say that central planning is desirable. Most of them affirm that we now are compelled to it by circumstances beyond our control.

看到这个，我想起了“和谐社会”和“稳定压倒一切”。最近我的另外一个博客博客风所在的服务器因为某些重大政治会议的即将召开而被和谐了。

这就是我们现在的现实，悲哀的现实！

Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

------Benjamin Franklin

Terrorism and America!

 

The classic definition of terrorism is violence directed against civilians to make a political point. The term shouldn't be applied to an indigenous population fighting an irregular war against a foreign occupying army, since that would have made everyone from George Washington to the French Resistance to the Afghanis confronting the Soviet occupation "terrorists." Robert Parry Consortiumnews.com.

This is so damn correct! As something I have read before, U.S are using "terrorism" the same way as it did with "communism" during the cold war! A standing point for its military presents overseas as the international police.

American, at least in most of its modern time, was selling its value to other people and has done it pretty well without any big obstructions. They get used of being the propagators and started to take this as granted by God! So when things happen overseas that don't seem to follow the U.S way, instead of observering and learning them rationally, they will jump out of their trench, put a gun againest those guys' heads and put them on knees to follow! After doing this, they feel good about it, because they are making one more piece of this ugly, chaos world beautiful and back in order!

When we are reviewing the history, we always say "They should changed their policy then, and I also think they knew they should have changed it! But why haven't they?". It is true that big power like U.S knows in its gut when and why they should change their policy, but history tells us that few of them made it, eventually vanished as ashes. why?

I think bureaucracy plays a role here! Everyone in the game knows that they should change their course, yet no one wants to do so, because everyone worry about that he may be the one being sacrafied. When there are changes, there are lossers. No one can be sure who will be the lossers before the changes complete. Whey someone find there is nothing more he can lose, he raised up and called and led a revolution to change them all, at lease that's what they said at first. That's why I think progressive evolution has never been the milestone of history course, revolution is! American has never been a revolution nation! With all the respect to their contribution to the scientific innovation and cultural diversity, I think they have been, are and will be scared to death while facing big changes. They take current government as granted and only cycling its presidency; They take stability as granted and confused by the chaos elsewhere; They take freedom as granted and shocked by the way other people live on their way there. They take themselves as granted and deny the fact that there are other people out there equally share this planet.

Terrorism is just an arbitrary term! If there is no terrorism, there will be other-risms, just like terrorism following communism. So don't pay much attench to its meaning, it doesn't mean anything, but it matters everything if you are up to something!

Why is it so hard to admit the truth?

I was reading an article on National Geographic published in 2000. It is called "The New Cold War - Stalking Arctic Climate Change by Submarine", it was written by Glenn Hodges and talks about a science project to study the arctic so that we can know more about the relationship between global warming and Arctic iceburg melting down. It is an very old article published nearlly 7 years ago, you really don't expect to learn anything new there, it turns out otherwise.

Here I quote one paragraph from the article:

"Given that the Poles are widely seen as bellwethers of global climate change, this all looks very damatic. But it may be just another imagined monster lurking in the blank spots of our knowledge. Perhaps the water regularly warms and cools and the ice regularly thins and thickens as atmospheric pressures and water currents oscillate. There's evidence to suggest that, but it's not conclusice. ......So the questions remain: Will currents and temperatures revert to more familiar patterns? Or is the Arctic showing signs of global warming?"  "(Drew Rothrock, University of Washington reserch scientist.)I don't think you'd find many Arctic scientists willing to say, 'Yes, it's all melting up there, and in another decade we won't have any sea ice.'".

So how do scientists think about the issue now? Arctic Speciallist Mark Serreze said

"If you asked me a couple of years ago when the Arctic could lose all of its ice then I would have said 2100, or 2070 maybe. But now I think that 2030 is a reasonable estimate." 

A 2004 essay by Naomi Oreskes in the journal Science reported a survey of 928 abstracts of peer-reviewed papers related to global climate change in the ISI database.^[18] Oreskes stated that "Remarkably, none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position. ... This analysis shows that scientists publishing in the peer-reviewed literature agree with IPCC, the National Academy of Sciences, and the public statements of their professional societies." (Wikipedia)

Do you see how far we have come through in the last years? If you think you can still put out some argument againest this, then please let the data and facts talk themselves:

But are we really admiting the truth? Well, you wish! I just saw this piece of news CNN weatherman considers Gore's An Inconvenient Truth fiction. Or you can watch the video bellow:

I know that there are some debate about the exaggeration of data and fact in Al Gore's movie, but you know what? I believe "矫枉必过正", which means: If you want to correct something, normally you need to act excessively to achive so. When Rob Marciano or other critics talks about flaws in the movie, they may not intend to overthrow the whole movie and the global warming fact, but with the aid and inappropriate propganda of mass media, our mass audiences will get the impression that "Al Gore is wrong!" and eventually "Global warming isn't happening!"

With the obstructions of the bureaucracy, it is natural that government will not actively involved in the fighting againest global warming! So this is what you are seeing: the public NGOs are taking the centre stage while those big government leaders are spitting at others and taking photos.

To be honest, I am very pessimistic about global warming! I really don't think we have a chance to make things right, because we have already run out of time! Hopefully I am wrong!

Free WIFI Signal Booster

After moving to this new house, it is very hard to wire the Lan cable around to get broadband connected! My house mate suggested me to give wireless a try! This is not my first time to use wifi, but to be honest, I really didn't quite trust its stability! After using it for 2 days, I really changed my mind! The WIFI g standard is quite stable and fast.

Although I really cannot feel the lag, I still want to give the WIFI signal some boost! After some search, I found this Top 10 Wi-Fi Boosts, Tweaks and Apps, the second one is what I was looking for! It leads me to this website: FreeAntennas.com. Yes, that's the thing I need! So I made two of such antennas and give them a try! they work like a charm! The Wifi speed stayed below 40Mbps before, but now can stay in the peak level of 54Mbps.

Update: From Here, I learned that I can put one of the reflector on the receiver side. So here we go:

The result is even more amazing, the signal strength boosts from 65% to 85% and stays over there!

My new home!

I have moved to a new home last weekend! I was exhausted after moving all my staffs around! Here are some photos of my new room!