I had uploaded the files for the new design of http://smokeforwhat.com in the morning, as early as 3+am when most people were still asleep.
The previous design was more of a draft work to get my features up during the development. For as hard as I had been telling myself to come up with a more formal design that would draw attentions of the younger generation, I finally did it.
What I was lacking of were original pictures and more contents. Obviously it was not advisable to talk to Google and strip down all the nice pictures in case of copyright issue. I had to go around asking for help and the response was not really good, or rather, nobody really bothered.
My portfolio focusing on Web Design, Other Design, Photography and Writing are up at http://sillydumb.com/portfolio. It is still lacking of some work though.
1000 fans! (won't be announcing the figure often in future)
Thanks to all the great hearts, especially people who have been helping to invite your friends over.
Remember that we are not discriminating smokers, but trying to help them instead.
If you think the website has somehow assisted or inspired you, please kindly continue to spread it via online and through words of mouth.
Your inputs and suggestions are valuable. Give us new contents if you come across any. Make great contributions to the society by just making a little bit of efforts.
We have purchased a domain name - http://www.lifeissobeautilful.com - finally. Please kindly update the url in your website/blog if you have linked us, otherwise, please start linking!
(The old Blogger's url http://sobeautifullife.blogspot.com will be auto redirected to our new domain name)
Life may be tough and we may face unpleasant issues everyday; however, always look at the bright side of life and think of how we can make others' lives beautiful instead.
Last Friday, the Starhub person had come over to my house to fix up the new telephone line. We switched over from SingTel since we had the cable modem and there was no more subscription fee every month except for the $2 caller id service.
In order to cut cost, we did not apply for calling waiting or private number.
However, since the phone line is tagged from the modem inside my elder brother’s room and he only manages to split the line over to the other room, the living room does not have any phone now, such that, when nobody is around, I have to dig for the phones where my two brothers are keeping inside the messy house.
The stupidest thing is that nobody calls me at my house number and I merely have to act as the telephone operator each time to tell the caller nobody else is at home; the greatest problem is that some of my mum’s friends are old and retarded.
I always make a point to cancel the call from any friend when I am at home and use my house phone to call him or her back. Since the house phone can never be located easily now, I may have to change the trend.
Two weeks ago on a Wednesday, I received an email from Mindef to confirm that my reservist deferment was successful.
It was quite a waste since this reservist would last around twelve or fourteen days, which was considered as a “high key” one. I had to complete at least seven “high key” and three “low key” reservists in order to ROD and wipe my butts from the trouble.
I was quite shocked for I always thought they would probably give me around two days time-off for my exams, which crashed with the first few days of the reservist.
Anyway, what I did before that was to get Weitat to scan the letter from UOW to prove that I was a student there and then I logged into NS.sg to submit a deferment application, and dropping them an email with the scanned letter together with my timetable. At the website, I indicated that I was in the third year and the school fee cost me SGD15,500 per year.
Another confirmation letter by post was received a couple of days later and I was glad to set my mind peace.
On Wednesday, we went to Bukit Timah for lunch. Weitat took the hassle to drive over to pick Mingli up, where Mingfa was already waiting at the void deck. The five of us proceeded to Waffle Town.
The four of them ordered almost the same stuffs and the chicken looked tasty. For my seven-plus-bucks fish and chips, the crews took the trouble to travel to Japan and dive into the sea to catch the fish. They did ask me thrice whether I was served already and it took me two disappointments to finally enjoy my lunch. Though I was dining with four friends, it seemed that I was having lunch alone since their plates were already empty. It was a pity that I rushed to gobble up the food.
We got back to the office in time for the meeting. The usual laughers were there to keep everyone entertained. Our workloads for the next semester were somehow or rather, finalised, except for Jingkun's. There was a great change in the actual plan for my case and I was not sure if it was a good or bad news. I probably could not focus on my own websites then since some new learning had to be done. Another bad issue was that I could not get to see familiar faces with the changes.
I suddenly recalled and felt pressured for my boss seemed to be spreading news that I was an expert in using Adobe Flash. I had embarrassingly touched it only for a couple of months for my final year project, which was more than four years ago when I was in Ngee Ann Polytechnic. For that period of time, I was quite geared with the programming part of Flash but not the common animation, and that I had already lost my memory by now. It seemed that I had to spend time to recap and master it soon.
For that afternoon, I had to redo some documentation since using of Excel to type out the dates was not allowed. Thus, I had to handwrite the dates and resign for the two sets of papers which required 120 signatures each.
I pointed my domain name to the new server without completing the uploading of all files, which had caused problems since the changes were applied.
Access to the control panel (Plesk) was lost and I could not do anything else other than logging into FTP using the direct IP address of Mike's server.
Since the firewall had set restriction, I could not log into my new control panel at work and thus, had to wait until I got home at late night to re-setup the rest of the sub domains.
I have yet to create the database for my other websites.
Mike has informed me that he would be terminating the service from his dedicated server's webhost soon since his website is not making much money anymore; the two-hundred over US dollar web space is too much of a flattery to the low traffic.
Over the past few years, I have been using free services from Ganz, Irwin and Mike, who kindly shared their web space with me. In the end, I use only Mike's server since it is a dedicated server and that I’m able to use domain masking instead of redirection. I’m also given the privilege of experiencing the settings of the web server.
It is time to try getting my own server, be it a cheap and slower one, I have no other choice.
During setting up period, configuration may cause temporary site offline.
My phone had pronounced temporary dead yesterday without me knowing it.
It was all quiet and peaceful without the disturbance; however, I could not communicate with others as well when necessary. I failed to call or SMS anyone, and at first I thought it was just a temporary situation.
When I was given a sudden duty in the morning, I did not receive the usual SMS notice. In conjunction with the missing notice, my laptop’s antivirus was having problem and thus I only checked my email once in the early morning at 8am and did not read the email sent around half an hour later.
When I repeatedly could not send out SMS, I tried calling myself using the office phone and it did not get through. I called Starhub customer service and the lady smartly led me the way to configure my K800i at:
Settings > Connectivity > Mobile Networks > GSM/3G networks
The phone was supposed to be set to "GSM only" instead of "GSM and 3G". The friendly operator told me it was a common problem where the two options were automatically toggled. I forgot to ask her if it was the network or phone's problem.
Anyway, somehow I enjoyed the peace during the absence of ringing.
Having a phone is more of setting up a free call centre for all sorts of services, for free.
My dear sister, Jenrine, has started a business on fashion. I have no idea when she starts to know about sewing and designing of clothes but she has impressed me so much. Please drop by her site to show some support!
The haze is finally dispersing, and in the last couple of days, PSI was much lower. I am now able to view better sceneries and also plan for future journeys.
Die haze, die!
People have been complaining that breathing in the presence of haze is similar to smoking; most people blame the haze on the selfish companies in Indonesia. I agree to them though the assholes might have their own difficulties but this haze problem is bringing out another health issue, which most people have not been protesting enough about.
I want to air out my voice that there are things within our control as humans with brains and conscience; we cannot stop the fire in Indonesia, but we can at least stop smokers from suffocating us in public places.
If you light out a cigarette in public places, you are causing harms to others’ health just like the starters of the haze; you are sinned.
The Indonesians have not enforced their laws well enough to stop the assholes from burning trees, but how about us?
I see lifts bearing “No Smoking” signs but I smell smoke; I know air-conditioned places are not allowed to smoke but I still smell smoke inside at times.
Laws are imposed, but are the enforcers able to carry them out?
