It requires at least three of me to get my tuition agency site fully done sooner.
One of me is to work on existing big features that everyone can visibly see with a “WOW” instead of “You are idling”.
One of me is to fix up bugs and security measures that everyone cannot see due to the rush to implement earlier features.
One of me is to continue with the minor features that are deem not as important but can actually be done much faster than the major features.
If you want to talk about improvement on web design, addition and amendment of web contents, SEO or marketing, you probably need to engage more staffs.
I made some amendment for the tuition agency website’s design. Then, I continued with SEO until 5am.
Mike woke me up after 10am to tell me that he had forgotten to bring his office keys along. I rushed down to the office at 11am and we dined at the canteen. We had the Chinese mixed vegetable rice for the second time. However, we were the first customer this time. The food was much more expensive than other places.
I continued with SEO and we also exchanged ideas on it. I started working on the new article Private Tutor Singapore when Mike suggested going to IKEA for early dinner. We called for a cab and alighted at Anchor Point before crossing over to IKEA. Mike changed his mind after seeing the menu and we went back to Anchor Point and had a feast at the Hong Kong café. Mike ordered extra side dish and I felt sinned because I could hardly finish my plate of chicken chop.
We went back to IKEA to walk around. Mike bought his new lighting for his house before we started eating the famous IKEA ice-cream. The DJs from FM 97.2 were there to conduct a game and they tried to find topics using Mike’s lighting. After a while, we decided to take bus back to office. The taste of ice-cream was bad for I was having a stomachache. Eventually, we flagged for a cab.
After releasing my waste, I started working till after 11pm. We walked back to Tanjong Pagar while Mike went to Amara hotel’s taxi stand to get a cab home.
I had feedbacks from Yuqing, Yaozhong, Yingying and Jianwei regarding the design of my tuition agency website and all of them had different opinions on both the original and new formal looking design. The hesitation was killing me. I continued working on the website on its contents without making any major changes.
I started forwarding some interesting emails and blogged before I went to sleep at around 8am.
I woke up at 4pm in a shock for I had missed my haircut appointment, which was supposed to be at 3pm. My mum was busy packing the living room and had totally forgotten that I had instructed her to wake me up. Luckily, the auntie was available but I interrupted her from packing her house for it was going to be her flat’s HDB renovation soon.
It was a hell morning for me as I tried to match colours for the new design of the tuition website. Eventually I went to sleep at 10am. I woke up at 4pm to continue with my work.
Dinner was at Kopi Tiam at Pinnacle Duxton together with my younger brother’s tall German friend. My elder brother did not join us since his leg was injured. The roasted duck rice did not taste really good.
Since it was a non-working day for my mum, she was able to go down with us to wash up early. My younger brother and I took the side bathroom while my mum had Lucky leashed and tied to the door where she started washing clothes. Since we operated at the same time without waiting for one another, we managed to go home earlier.
I started a little into my Facebook marketing again ever since some setbacks. Blogging took me hours with the numbers of old pending entries. Eventually I went to sleep at 6am.
After waking up at around 2pm, I was more hardworking than ever. However, creativity would usually come when a person was in a happy mood. I was in fact in a very bored mood for the past few days. Nothing much was accomplished although a lot of my brain cells were pawned.
I was disappointed that there was no “Ninja Warrior” game show on channel 5 at 8pm, probably due to the Youth Olympic Games.
My brother downloaded a new 2 on 6 Command and Conquer map and we had a second game together after struggling in the first game. It was 3.30am when I finished clearing up spams in Facebook groups. I made severe tosses on the bed before dozing off.
I woke up in the morning but forced myself to sleep, and eventually woke up at around 2pm. Dreams seemed to come back into me so often and this day, a monk appeared and my family seemed to be close with him.
After touching up a bit on the new freelance website, I could not control myself but to put my new ideas into SmokeForWhat, updating several pages and adding a new page – Quit Smoking Checklist. My perseverance had led to more hits from search engine, displaying my SEO skill; but the cute little Google Bot for PageRank had not visited the site for months that I was so anxiously waiting for the new PageRank result.
At night, there was a very nasty spam in Facebook by someone creating lots of accounts, flooding groups with “add me for farmville and if you love your iphone, but be nice xx”. The asshole could have succeeded in hooking up guys to add the fake accounts before starting to spam them individually, but so many accounts posing the exact same message was too obvious for most people, except for some horny guys who probably could not use their brains. I did my part by removing and banning them in one of my affected groups, which was terribly time-killing for the enormous count of them.
I went to bed as early as 3.30am but it took me some time to doze off as usual. Surprisingly, I did not wake up before noon.
It was at 12.30pm, I checked my phone and realised Tze Khit had dropped me a message that his website’s web form was not running smoothly. I logged into the internet immediately but it seemed to be working fine for me. Luckily, he did not call me directly at 9 plus instead to disrupt my sleep.
I continued with my website until late afternoon before I went to the gym. After that, I tried to sit down to continue with the website but Bobby came to me for some photo editing. I spent some time to help him and after that, I packed up to go home.
My elder brother started removing the tortoises from the big fish tank and I saw hope in having a more spacious house.
I spent the morning waiting for the world cup’s result while playing game. It was a boring soccer match with countless yellow cards and finally a red one before Spain won Holland by a goal during the end of the extra time. I tried to sleep after that but could not doze off until more than an hour later.
Even though I woke up only in the afternoon, I felt sleepy throughout the day. While trying to design a website, I dozed off many times. Nothing much was provided except for a logo.
Firman messaged me to do web design for his community centre. We started talking about his next day’s involvement in their event and invited me there so that I could get some photos for SmokeForWhat.com. I agreed to it immediately since I loved event photoshooting.
I took some self photo for my resume and passport renewal photo, and one of the causal shots was quite impressive somehow. I spent some time editing photos due to the ugly wall and shadow. Eventually I slept at 6am.
I could not get up in time but luckily I targeted my timing earlier like usual. After reaching Seng Kang, I was disappointed that the MacDonald’s breakfast had not ended and thus I could not get my chicken burger. Firman called me just in time for me to get him a pair of slippers at the Bata shop in Campass Point.
I went to find him at the field near Farmway. He lent me his DSLR camera and made quite a basic and good presentation of how to use it. I took a lunch packet and the nasi lemak was quite nice.
The field was surprising wet even though it was on a higher ground, my shoes and socks were soaked soon. I got to use my old Olympus D-750 a lot and I got to appreciate it more for the ten times optical zoom to capture natural faces from far. Firman kept his promise to ask his students to post for SmokeForWhat.com and I could have gotten more supports if one of them did not show craps.
I went straight home at the end of the event even though I was tempted by Long John Silver’s opposite the MRT station. I hated having my feet inside the wet shoes for it would pose me great problems.
My younger brother called me from Germany using Skype and we chatted for more than an hour, such that I called for food delivery near 10pm. I had a packet of mee goreng. My mum and my elder brother got home after I finished my dinner.
I was crazy that I did not stop working until daylight. I took an early bath before going to sleep.
Nothing special happened for the day. I was busy indulging in my world of web design but things were at a slow pace.
It was only after 4pm, my brother asked me if I had taken any food and I realised my mum had cooked mee hoon. There was also a kind of weird dessert, which my brother called “corn sua” since my mum had replaced the usual yellow bean with corn instead for the “dao sua”.
My brother bought ingredients for the dinner but I was not a fish-lover.
I basically spent my entire Saturday working on the new design of SmokeForWhat.com after scribbling the layout on my recycled paper days ago. It was nothing fantastic but the new design was more formal compared to the draft design I did on the live site.
I was lack of images that owners would not forbid me from using due to copyright problem. Although it was a non-profit site and such issue could be more relaxed but I did not want to create issues in future.
I was very surprised when dear chio Vanessa hit me up in MSN to tell me about her recent impression on a website that reminded her of SmokeForWhat.com. It was so coincident that I was sticking my butts on the bed for the entire day to do something about it and she came to tell me to do it as well.
I was too focused on my work to do anything else. The greatest problem was the dropdown menu, which I had not touched for long. I basically used the same technique as my personal website to do it.
Nevertheless, it was a better web design experience this time when I was not totally alone.
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.
In the afternoon, I had a couple of games with my brother before proceeding into marketing for my two non profit websites but it did not seem to be a good time.
Into the evening, I had spent quite a long time trying out on PhotoShop but nothing worked out.
My mum was certain that the painting work at the common corridor was done and she started moving the flower pots back to the formation together with my elder brother. We stacked up the wood prank and tiles properly and carried up the pots. Next, we started securing every one of them with strings to prevent strong wind from blowing them off. My mum made us woodcutters and it had been quite some time since I used a saw.
I slept late like usual and woke up at around 10am. It was either due to the heatiness from the pizza or my bad sleeping posture, I could feel stiffness in my neck, thus I cancelled the meeting with shifu.
I spent the afternoon working on a new web design for Jeremy but the sleepiness took me on a great battle.
I got to rest a while by having a Command and Conquer game with my elder brother. By then, my effort in managing my new Facebook Page had brought in more than five thousand fans. I knew the figure would increase more.
My mind could never stop working then. I knew I was able to reach out to many young Singaporeans and it also meant I could do something to help those in need, in term of mentality poverty. The first person I could think of to work with was Hirman, the greatest creative educator who would do beyond his limit to help the youngsters. It was the greatest goal I had in mind to change all the selfish and wrong thinking of human beings, which was far from possible, even though I had already started http://www.lifeissobeautiful.com.
Somehow, I blamed myself for I had not started looking for job and yet I was thinking of non-profit work again. It was 8am when I hit the bed.
I woke up at 2pm. I tried asking Hirman if he wanted to meet up. I contacted Joei but she had a concert to attend and could only meet us up after 11pm, which was quite late. In the end, the plan was cancelled and I would have to wait until Friday before I could meet the group of wonderful educators at Zaki’s house for the “movie night”.
While doing the contacting, I received an enquiry for web design and I took very long to think of an appropriate reply. I was never a sales person and I hated spoiling things. The focus of the day was on Facebook for the enormous progress.
I was extremely pissed off by myself when I failed to doze off after midnight. I got up near 2am in order not to waste time tossing around, and eventually I resumed my work on the new website – a directory.
I started drafting a new layout for it to enhance the navigation.
In the afternoon, I continued with my work after I got up. I put the new design into HTML and I was quite impressed with the product after spending hours on it.
My mind was clearer than when I first designed the site and I could focus things better. Probably, I owed it to my ex polytechnic buddy, Yaozhong, for making me recap on the importance of it.
Next, I continued with the scripting.
Compared to the past few weeks when I was badly tortured by the thoughts of searching for a job, I was much more productive by setting it aside for a while and started doing what I was best at. It was programming that had killed the loneliness within me when nobody could afford time for me.
I continued my work on web design in my cough and backache. I did not sleep early as usual.
It was a very boring Saturday afternoon and everyone seemed to be too busy for me. I wanted to catch a swim but I hated to go to the pool by myself because of the travelling. Gilbert gave me a negative reply on my new design and I decided to get rid of the old concept in order to solve the limitation of revamping. However, I started dozing off in my terrible back pain.
I had a chat with Wanling in MSN and I realised she had graduated. I could have hanged out with her all these while to kill my boredom of mugging in front of the laptop daily. However, she told me she would be flying off to Japan together with her family.
It started raining for a while and the weather was a bit cooler than usual. However, the temperature did not wish to maintain at its best. I made a breakthrough in my web design for the sCreative site but putting the design into webpage was time-consuming and problematic, especially when I had to debug the code for the sake of the Internet Explorer – it was a nuisance for not following the standard HTML format.
My mum was waiting for me to go down for my jog so that she could tag along but to do some walking instead. I was too enthusiastic on the web development that I decided to give it a miss since jogging might instigate a sharp pain in my lower back in my condition.
I spent a couple of hours helping Xiao Mei with her web stuffs before starting to watch soccer with my brother. I wanted to sleep early but the early Manchester United two goals kept me interested in the match. However, into half time, I started dozing off.
In the afternoon, I messaged my ex colleagues to check out about web design prices but not everyone replied me. I did not have satisfactory answers except from Russell.
I had a game of Command and Conquer with my elder brother and it took us less than forty minutes to take the computers down on a four on four game.
In the late evening, I finally purchased the domain name http://www.lifeissobeautiful.com. It took me some time to configure it to continue to host under blogger. Next was Facebook marketing.
Saturday was finally over. It was days of torment before that, trying to design and do content population for a new site for FYP. I could not take the stress that many works were pending; but luckily, boss gave me a green light to focus on my studies first.
I quite liked my own design of the topmask, but due to the lack of time, my anxious mind could not come to a term with me.
Listening to Mr Prem was a hundred times more useful for the project. His mind was clear and he knew well what were required.
Reaching SIM at 9am, I only got to go home after 4pm. However, I got to see quite a number of babes around as usual, which was enjoyable.
The rush for my two websites is pathetic struggle where time can never be enough. A project that never seems to complete after nearly two years clings on to my heart.
How much time have I left so that I do not need to drag them until end of the year?
