The iPod Nano

An MP3 player does not get any better when it comes to the new Apple iPod Nano. The incredibly sleek and slim design beats any other previous portable music players. It’s about as thick as a pencil and easily fits into a pocket. It just goes to prove Apple’s remarkable reputation in product design. Although, there have been many reports from users about the screen getting scratched and damaged easily, I bet Apple would be replacing those devices. Anyway, it is only in the initial phase of product life where the manufacturer would realize these defects and come up with a better solution.

Blacklist

10 things in life which I find hard in order of random priority:

1. Selecting a good birthday gift
2. Impressing a pretty woman
3. Convincing my boss that I'm using the right appproach in work
4. Saving money
5. Buying stuff at the right time and right price
6. Focussing on something for more than one hour
7. Getting out of a losing streak in Yahoo pool
8. Avoiding beer for more than 2 weeks
9. Waiting for people
10. Making excuses to miss a day at office

Movie Recommends

Mulholland Drive
Lost Highway
Blue Velvet
For those of you fond of horror flicks, David Lynch provides the slow, silent and dark action which is nothing short of a terrifying experience.

The Shining
In this Stanley Kubrick movie, Jack Nicholson pulls off a splendid performance of a writer who is the caretaker of a haunted hotel in an isolated location.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
The original movie is a one hell of a violent and bloody show.

The Exorcist
An all time favorite for the story, although it is not all that horrifying in scenes.

And do not read movie reviews by Ong Sor Fern in the Straits Times, they are absolutely rubbish.

Murder Incorporated

What has happened to the state of law in this once crime-free country? I’ve been reading more murder news on the front pages of the newspaper than the Prime Minister’s speeches. And the murderers in this country always get caught within a week.. Why do they ever chop the body into slices and throw them in a river or a lakeside.. This way they still leave enough clues for the police to recognize the victim.. Can’t they just mince the body and bury the pieces in a safe location (like it happens in The Sopranos).. In my opinion, these murderers simply do not read crime novels and suffer from stage fright.

When the levee breaks

Who could have ever thought about the unprecedented level of damage done by Hurricane Katrina? Not only does this raise the issue of disaster management for the victims who suffered terrible losses, it also emphasizes the difference between politics and leadership. In a very different scenario, the Boxing Day tsunami in the Indian Ocean last year triggered the Aceh rebels to give up their weapons in a desperate sitaution. For some people, it would be a matter of political advantage to raise the issue of poverty and disparity among various communities in the United States. It is not a surprise that President Bush’s popularity ratings are at an all time low once again. The last time it was in the situation of the 9-11 attacks. However, he managed to wage war with Afghanistan and Iraq in order to bring back American pride and redeem his own position. Whatever can be done this time around to restore the livelihoods of the victims, there can’t be any war against nature.

On the Road Again

I hate idling around these days, I absolutely hate it. I can’t even sit in the same place or watch more than an hour of television at a stretch. That’s why I have been running a lot these days. I run 10km on Sunday mornings while most of the world is hung over or asleep. I run an aggregate of 15km over the entire week which makes me a fitness freak. Most people think I’ve gone crazy, but it helps me attain peace of mind (reminds me of the scene in Forrest Gump where we see Tom Hanks running aimlessly all around the country).

The Boxer

There has always been a fighter inside me. I have been fighting all my life. That is why I argue a lot with most people. I used to afraid of heights, then I climbed the highest peak in South East Asia (4100m of Mt Kinabalu in Malaysian Borneo). I was an incredibly slow athlete and could barely run a kilometer, now I can run 10km in an hour without much of a struggle. I lost my passport in a tragic holiday once, but it didn’t even deter my travel ambitions.

A Hard Day's Night

I work for a leading semiconductor manufacturing company out here. Even after working here for more than a year, I haven’t grasped the entire terminology and process involved in producing an IC chip from a silicon wafer. My job involves working on several IP telephony signaling protocols which are beyond the comprehension of most fellow engineers, let alone the common people I meet in the streets and neighborhood. It’s impossible to explain to most people what I do – I just tell them I deal with computers to keep it simple. I deal with a lot of new acronyms everyday – just goes to show how cryptic the job is. The work is boring as well as challenging. Thinking of my other personal interests, I would rather prefer to work for a sports management or media broadcasting company. To my thought, the greatest job ever is to be a stand up comedian like Jerry Seinfeld.

Yesterday

As far back as I can remember in my high school days, I always wanted to be a techie dude (not to be misunderstood as a techie geek). In those early days, I had been inspired by the ranks of Bill Gates (Microsoft), Steve Jobs (Apple and Pixar), Larry Ellison (Oracle) and Scott McNealy (SUN). I used to read a lot of biographies of rich and successful people like Akio Morita (Sony), Jack Welch (GE) and Andy Grove (Intel). Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area around California is the holy place most of our kind aspires to visit some day.

Somewhere among the Halls of Nanyang Avenue, I lost my direction in life which I had set out for. The education system in university here was miserable and it never motivated me. It is solely to blame for my performance during that period. I was a typical college fellow with severe lack of studiousness and had a weakness for hard rock music (Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and Deep Purple).

There were innumerable number of hours spent in downloading millions of gigabytes of movies, sitcoms and MP3s from P2P networks around the world. I’m sure this must have jammed the university network and sparked panic among the owners of Hollywood studios and record label companies.

I, me and my PC

A long time ago in a place far away from here, I happened to have been introduced to my first PC (an Intel 286) at the tender age of five. Those were the days when PCs were devoid of hard disks and ran their software from 5.25 inch floppy disks and we stared at their monochrome monitors. I used to be a gaming freak at that point of time and spent countless number of hours playing Pacman, Space Invaders, Paratrooper and Prince of Persia. I was undoubtedly the only person in the neighborhood with a PC, and this made my house a popular hangout for all the kids, resulting in agony for my parents. I used to spend a lot of time drawing those days, and those skills were highly appraised.

Almost two decades later, I find myself sitting in front of a similar but much advanced machine, in a small island close to the Equator surrounded by the Malacca Straits, Indian Ocean and South China Sea. The big difference now is that I’m not a gamer or an artist any more.

Here comes the blog

My decision to start a blog has been a long delayed one. However, I suppose it’s always better to be late than never and the reason does not happen to be peer pressure. I simply think of it is a good medium for self revelation and unleash some creative potential dormant inside me. I find blogging similar to the a situation of a patient being in front of a psychiatrist (exactly like we see the mob boss Tony Soprano confronting Dr. Jennifer Melfi in the TV series The Sopranos to find a remedy for his panic attacks). Probably, this is also why I was inhibited.

I was among the category of people who are blog bashers and anti-bloggers. But now that I have a blog, all that is history now. With the incredible amount of spare time at my disposal, I would attempt to keep the writer inside me alive. Unfortunately, it is the blog reader and not me who is going to suffer like a crash test dummy. My previous attempt to start a blog was in final semester of university; however I posted only 2 articles at that point of time and removed them the next day (perhaps it was the writer’s block).