Is money important?

Brian — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 00:33:10 +0000

Went for a job interview yesterday morning at a US listed technology company (As my current job contract end this dec – I need to get prepared if they don’t want to improve my contract – Or I should just return back to NZ?). I have about 5 years’ relevant experience doing things similar to the job requirements, so I asked for 4.5k starting salary (I mentioned that the figure is negotiable). The hiring managers kept asking me questions like… “is money important to you?”, “is your family dependent on your income?”, “how much are your peers earning?”. One of them mentioned that 4.5k is the rate for someone with about 10 years’ working experience (I don’t believe it).

The irony of it is that they know that the pay is low, probably not even enough to feed a family – they are the ones being unrealistic, not me. Welcome to Singapore, where graduates are expected to earn scarcely enough to feed or start a family.

After that I had another interview, a very different interview experience at another company. Unfortunately, the pay being offered is very low again. However, there is a very strong focus on work-life balance in this particular organization – little OT required, plenty of benefits geared towards ensuring work-life balance. I pretty much like the idea of working in this organization… and the job seems to fit exactly what I am looking for. The only downside is the salary being offered. But I might just take the low pay for the benefits.

Back from Cruise

Brian — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 14:23:17 +0000

So I made it back home, er, well, my home away from home at least. I left on the eleventh and got back on the fifteen, I still have until Saturday, but I think I’ll just set in my house and relax for a few days and call this trip off a little early. Trying to blog it obviously came out as me posting slightly incoherent blogs about my trip and then I just thought of gave up because they weren’t even that interesting for me to read.

But anyway, all in all, the first day on the ship was spent at sea with a late stopoff in Port Kalang to disembark some pasengers.
The nights on the ship were spent wandering from deck to deck, watching a one of the great shows in the theatre, gambling in the huge casino and singing in the karaoke lounge. I came second in the ‘you are the weakest link’ show and got a gold medal for my troubles. The last day on board was spent cruising from Port Kalang (Kuala Lumpur) back to Singapore, 9pm (Thursday) till 2pm on Friday. It was good going through Singapore harbour in daylight.

Prevent attacks on your WordPress Blog?

Brian — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 14:28:30 +0000

WordPress is a great software, but to ensure a smooth and hassle-free experience, some security measures must be taken. One great WordPress security plug-in is WordPress Firewall.

WordPress Firewall is a simple enough plug-in to use. Just install, activate and you’re good to go! It automatically blocks any suspicious looking activity on your WordPress blog, including traversal attacks, SQL injections, and other nasty attacks and hacks.

One caveat though: I realised that sometimes, the plug-in will block you when you’re in your WordPress admin panel. I found out when I was trying to upload a photo, and WordPress redirected me back to my homepage. I didn’t realise what was happening until an email came in saying that “an attack was blocked”. If that happens to you, just whitelist the page/variable and try again – it should work after that!

Download the WordPress Firewall plug-in here

Managing one’s expectations in life

Brian — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 04:18:56 +0000

Yesterday night I was thinking, life is so short… although I may have another 50 years to live based on statistics of average life expectancy… but that’s just if I am lucky (and if I take care of my health). One in four Asian will die of cancer. And that’s just cancer only…

What if I am not so lucky and die early, say maybe not too young, but perhaps at middle age (e.g. 50+)? That means from now onwards, I may only have another 30 years or so.

Furthermore, out of the X number of years I have left with my loved ones, a significant proportion of our time will go to career/work, and sleep hours. In fact we may only actually have 1/3 of our lives spent on anything else besides working and sleeping, which perhaps takes up about 2/3 of our time.

Then of course, out of the 1/3 time left, some will be spent on our individual stuff and doing other menial things like housework, etc… so in actual fact only much less than 1/3 of our lives will be spent doing things together with our loved ones…

And whether we make that little amount of time spent together meaningful time spent or not will depend on how we use the time. Thinking about this, I really feel guilty about feeling angry or upset sometimes or being unreasonable because of little things. It’s really meaningless to be angry or upset at each other when you think that we may only have so little time left to do meaningful things together.

But I suppose it is only human to experience emotions. Just a problem of how much or how often such emotions are triggered. Perhaps the problem is that my expectations are too high oftentimes. Expectations of myself, of people around me, and of the society at large. High expectations lead to disappointment and exasperation when there is failure in meeting expectations. Then it leads to frustration and unhappiness, manifested as anger/sadness at myself and others.

There is no way to objectively measure how high or low expectations are, but I guess I am somewhat of a perfectionist. I think it used to be worse. I used to have such lofty expectations that almost always I get disappointed for some reason. Nowadays I am more down to earth, but still, the perfectionist mentality is there in most things that I or other people do. Having expectations about actions or achievements is one thing, having expectations about who/what I am or other people are is probably the worst thing, since it’s much more difficult, or sometimes even impossible to change or improve such things (e.g. the fact that I have family history of cancer and thus have much higher risk of getting cancer too, unfortunately, cannot be changed).

I suppose the only way then, is to manage one’s expectations of self and of others. How do you teach a perfectionist to stop being a perfectionist? Should I see a psychiatrist and pop some pills, go for psychotherapy to do some cognitive restructuring, or learn from religion? Which one of these can give permanent results? Will I end up becoming an under-achiever when I successfully kicked my perfectionist attitudes?

Personal WebMaster Tools

Brian — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 19:12:34 +0000

Detect retards

Brian — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 11:12:38 +0000

This is very simple. All you have to do is find someone who is saying retarded shit, and then you respond with “O rly?”. The typical retards response will be huh?, “yes orly”, or “what’s orly?” Retards will confuse O rly? for Orally and will either be offended or proceed with the perceived command, a win/win.

The Italian Burger – A Homemade Recipe

Brian — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 06:15:47 +0000

I have been making my home made burgers for some time with some various results some of the nicest being a chicken and pork mince burger but it proved quite a hassle to make. The nicest and actually the most simple burger is the Italian burger.

All you will need is:

1. Lamb mince and Rosemary OR Good quality beef mince with parsley
2. Mozzarella
3. Red or green pesto
4. Chopped Onion
5. Pepper and salt
6. Optional quality buns (not the cheap fluffy chavy ones)

Mix the mince meet up with finely chopped onion (and parsley if using beef) and salt.

Make the burgers shaping them with your hands. You do not need to bind with egg etc…

Put them in the oven at 200c or shallow fry in a pan and add Rosemary on top if using lamb (You do not eat the Rosemary)

Turn the burgers over after about 8 minutes of frying and then gently add pesto to the top of the burgers with a spoon.

Slice the Mozzarella to get as much surface area as possible and add it to the top of burger while frying for 10 minutes or in the oven for 5 minutes and then serve the burgers immediately as you see the cheese melt slightly. You may also add Tomatoes etc…

Double booking

Brian — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 19:36:30 +0000

I had not meant to book myself into two appointments at the same time. But I somehow knew my good luck streak would come to an end. Relying on memory and the occasional jot down on my planner is really not the way to go.

Now it is just a matter of trying to extricate myself from one or the other, and trying to postpone the appointment to another time and date.

One of my third quarter resolutions (eep, starting to sound like an analyst now) is to knuckle down and really organise my schedules and timetable. Apparently a neat desk and a neat room is not all that I should have to upkeep.

Time is a tricky thing though. It is one of the hardest things to manage and it throws up surprises when you are least prepared.

Sickie Woes

Brian — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 02:11:38 +0000

I have been having the most prolonged bout of illness the past week. All these symptoms of cold, fever, sniffles, sore throat and achy muscles, came and went at some point, and I was barely aware most of the time, having been doused with high dosages of sleep-inducing medication.

I suspect much of it was induced by the air pollution that is the haze, over the city. But let’s not point fingers to our fine neighbours who are trying to fight the flames of forest fires.

Of course, that did not stop me from living it up over the weekend. Will write more soon, be prepared for a deluge of entries and a couple of protected ones.