Forest Trails

Jun 25, 8 A.M : Was up in the forest trails at Maxwell Hills, Bukit Larut.... Its cooling n really peaceful to be in the nature... The resort is abit run down, but rustic =)

One thing though, our bed sheets n washroom had some mysterious blood stains when we first checked-in...( The other bungalows were fully booked)

Jun 29, 1P.M : On our way home, we took a 3 hr bus ride to KL, waited for the delayed train for another 4 hrs, b4 spending another 10 hours on the KTM night train to Woodlands, which stopped for hours at different stations n we reached SG 8 hrs later than the scheduled time! Reached Jurong East at 0930am!

My First Pay/ Helpdesk

During every vacation, I look forward to my time at the helpdesk even though it can mean very long hours and late nights. Its where I picked up my technical skills ever since I was a non technical related Biomed poly student and its where I decided to take up Com Sci as my major in Uni. I'm glad and fortunate to be given the opportunity to learn in the technical field even though I started off without much technical knowledge and am a female. (In the Techie world, its still pretty much a male dominant industry)

I enjoy the company at the helpdesk. My colleagues and I (we are in the late teens or twenties) would go for coffee or late after work suppers and would talk at length about studies, friendships, relationships, our future, bread and butter issues like housing cost, raising cost. We would often calculate how much we need to pay for our uni fees in return to our parent's CPF (for my case its my CPF) and how much we need to in our CPF to pay for a flat. We also chat abt the high housing cost and joke that we should try our hands at lottery. (Naw, the odds of winning are one in a million but we chat about the possibility of the things we would do with a winning sum - migrate overseas, buy a house, car, travel around the world etc) and what we would invest in.

Till date, my biggest investment is my Uni studies (yeah, I spent the large bulk of my savings on my studies after graduating from poly and working for 2 years ). Eh... I guess I will see its returns when I graduate =)

I remember when I had my first pay in 2007, though mum and grandma did not expect nor told me give them monthly allowances, I set aside monthly $200 for mum and $100 for grandma
( after so many of years upbringing, its the a responsibility I should do as a grownup and yeah.. I would like give more but that's the amount I could set aside then after setting aside a bulk on savings for my Uni studies, bills, expenses and insurance.)

I was seating at the living room sofa and wondering how I would pass the money to mum and grandma since it was my first time and passing the cash in the normal way (like how we pass cash to people) seems too hard-cold and normal. I thought, giving the cash in an envelope would look very much like giving a resignation letter and ang pows are meant for elders giving cash to the younger generation.

In the end, I placed the cash in two small mooncake boxes. After dinner, I told mum and grandma I just received my first pay and would like to give some allowances before giving them each a mooncake box and blushing.

Yeah... That's my first time giving allowances and the feeling from getting my first official job pay then was something special (cant really describe it but its a feeling more to independent and grownup).

Avenue of Stars

Velocity

Moving Tram

City in Oil

HK Street painting

Back =)

A year later, I'm back =)
(P.S - Doing some yoga poses in the middle of busy CBD.. Oh yeah... =p )

Technology Literacy

Spore is a technologically advanced country. However, in this advanced pace, its surprising that there is also a large group of people who go up and about their life in the most traditional ways; not owning or using a mobile phone, not using the atm machine and go into the banks to do their transaction, queuing up to top-up their ez-link card at the counter(I cant remember the last time I joined the queue at the counter to top-up my ez-link card) and many more.

My 78 y/o grandma is one of the large group of people who do things the traditional way, even if it means taking a bus and queuing for half n hour or so just to perform a simple transaction. I asked her several times about it and she said " Ai yah, I'm so old. The ATM machine words are too small and too fast for me. So many options, I dont know which button to press. The bank counter is better, the cashiers at the bank counter are helpful."

In grandma's words, the bank counter cashier is more user-friendly. I feel grandma could take more autonomy in her own transactions and after some thoughts, I decide to do an experiment; to take "baby steps" to convince grandma to use the ATM machine. So I wrote a simple application (I named it Withdraw.apps and wrote the program using JBuilder) , which has the options of an ATM machine and a log in module (authentication module). I went to sim lim square to look for a numerical keypad (so it looks just like the normal ATM machine keypad) and a couple of weeks later, I got it up n running.

The most difficult part was convincing grandma to use the application. I racked my brain cells and told her I was testing out a sch assignment for elderly use and grandma said she would help me. So grandma got down at my laptop and started learning to use the "ATM machine app" for the very first time! After a number of trys, grandma said she's getting use to the application. I told her it works just like an ATM machine and took the opportunity to convince grandma to use a real ATM machine.

A few days later, we were in the bank and grandma applied for an ATM card. We went to the ATM machine outside the bank and I could feel the moment coming. I watched with bated breath as my grandma started typing the options into the atm machine and after 30secs the machine chunked and soon, grandma turned with her ATM card and two $10 dollar notes in her hands! Yes! Grandma did it! I apologized to grandma and told her the truth that it was not for my sch project. She said that I was very cheeky =p

Anyway, I believe if anyone would learn, technology is not as difficult or complicated as one would perceive it is.