Category Archives: Family

My Family!

Sweeter As The Years Go By

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Here’s something that has kept me a little occupied over the past weeks.

Howmean.com Main Page

To find out, head over to http://howmean.com. This site belongs to the couple to be, Caleb and How Mean. And no, rather than its perceived adjective “how mean!”, I hope one experience some sweetness visiting the site.

There are several talented people behind the making of this site. Graphics and concept were designed by Grace Wong, and the web design was done by Meng Lung of Gold Coast Web Design. My little contributions would be some subjective augmentations to the site and one might make intelligent guesses to what I did by spotting non-traditional elements on the site. For those who aren’t guessing, here’s a list

+ Mouse over the dandelions near the footer, and one may see little particles floating away. On most modern browsers except IE, these particles are drawn with html 5 canvas elements. In unsupported browsers, 1 pixel rendering with css are used instead.
+ Meant to be an easter egg, rolling the mouse wheel renders lighter dandelions particles around the screen.
+ Ajax calls are used for navigation when possible to prevent disruption of the background music
+ To support browsers not running flash (the iPhones and Androids mainly!), flash objects degrade gracefully
+ To degrade the photo gallery for non flash clients, the xml used by the flash slideshow player is parsed and rendered with jquery.
Howmean.com on the android
+ A small widget (which dates back to my legendary ORD count down wallpaper) is used to display the time till or from the wedding date in the credit page.

Of course all these would not be present if not for the weds-to-be.

So this’s my 1st post of the new year, and its a great reminder to reflect whether each passing day gets sweeter. A blessed new year for you readers!

Hello From KL, Malaysia!

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I’m now in Swiss Inn (Jalan Sultan/Jalan Petaling/Petaling Street/Chinatown, Kuala Lumpur), enjoying an hour of free Internet usage.

Its been a day of traveling, eating, shopping (1 day at Sungei Wang), buying and spending on tons of stuff. Among the stuff bought?

A large size Doraemon stuff toy =)

Here’s GPS log starting from the coach ride at Johor Bahru. And yes, it the first time I’m travelling on a double decker aircon bus.
(after I experiencing classic 42-seater (Bus Skolar type), to VIP, to super-VIP, to super-super-VIP buses).

JB to KL 1/2
This is part 1. The laptop battery only lasted 2+ hours, the 2nd part of the journey was tracked usign my phone

More detailed stories later. 3 mins of usage left! See ya!

Blessed 22nd

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Thank you,
to all who gave me birthday wishes.

Happy Birthday

Thank you,
my brother and sisters, dad and mom;
for buying this cake, for celebrating my birthday,
in the fashion of authentic tradition of our family.
22nd Birthday

Thank you,
my fellow brother and sisters in Christ,
for gathering in my school;
for the cakes and presents,
and the company over lunch.

Thank you,
friends from nusso,
for treat out to dinner,
for the walk along singapore river.
Clarke Quay

Thank you,
other individuals who have gave me presents;
Mr Jon Tan, Pei Juan,
and for all friendship and help I never repay.

Cool Gifts

Thank you,
to those who encouraged me;
in my difficult times in school,
and when you learn of my miserable test failures.
Maths Test Fail

Thank you,
for the encouragements in the Lord;
for Sock kwin for sharing your experiences in pain and failures,
and the lessons from Proverbs 3:5-6;
from another, an encouragement from Psalm 31:24,
to be Strong.
SK Present

Thank you,
all those who care and hope for me,
with unspoken words,
with unheard silence,
and long suffering;
2 of them, my earthly parents.

Thank you,
for those who are patiently reading this.

Thank you,
Dear Heavenly Father,
Light from above
despite my worthlessness and unfaithfulness,
thou hast shew me countless mercies in the 22 years of my life;

the glimpse you give of your goodness,
for family and friends; and the showers of love and warmth;

the chance you give to appreciate your greatness;
by the beauty of the world you give us as a temporary home.
Rainbow
Its a beautiful rainbow. Pardon the bad view and quality

Thank you!

累的一天

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二〇〇七年七月十一日、星期四、晴朗

就如当我读工艺学院，有时会疯狂通宵赶作业，在今天凌晨就像疯子班帮助朋友专电脑。

中午，约了朋友一起回中学。之前就有人说：“学校变了，校长换了，好多老师不在了，即使见到他们，都七年了，老师认不了你，回去干吗？”

AISS

不错，学校建筑改了很多，好多老师都不在（新来的老师们都很年轻）。但是，真开心（又惊讶）能见到几位教过我的老师，更动心他们都能记得我！也许我以前太坏了。。。 ：$ 见到的老师们包括教我英语的、华语的、数学的、科学的。

Lunch

吃了午餐后,就配“珥尼”到SLS买电脑.

Dinner

旁晚，照常的到姨妈家练琴，这次她准备绿豆汤、炒米粉和炸鸡膀给我吃，又分享那天她如何做绿豆汤。

骑车到家了，发现眼镜留在姨妈家。但累了一天，想躺下睡觉的滋味太强了！

Choke on a Fishbone

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I choked on a fishbone today.

I don’t have much experiences with fishbone chokes (as I use to stay away from fishes) but I have at least 2 experiences:

  1. Knowing there’s bones my mouth, I kept chewing until the fishbones break down and then swallow it.
  2. Removing a bone from my sister’s throat with a pincer after 1 was stuck in her’s.

Cant remember what’s the fish called, but it has lot of bones. I had used a big spoon and swallow carelessly. One piece of fishbone was felt in the midway of my throat though I tried to spit them out after feeling discomfort down the throat. Juggled and rinsing with some water did not help much.

So the father’s/grandmother’s typed advice was heed.

Swallow riceballs. I took handful of rice and swallow. It helps.

Of course another “grandma” remedies was that you place a finger into your mouth in hope of vomitting them out.

I would think western doctors might have a differing view. Its better out than in. Swallowing down bone might puncture your throat or maybe somewhere more serious deeper down – intestines? Of course I think the size of the fish bone is a factor.

A church member shared that the doctor had to use some instruments to remove the fishbone from his son’s throat. Had they unable to resist his struggling, they would give him GA. Not something nice to imagine about.

Thank God I’m alive and kicking.

Chinese Radical Lookup – Online and Freeware

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There are many good language tools online and free software for learning and studying Chinese, but have 1 website and 1 freeware that I like to recommend after recently used them – CCDICT- the online Chinese dictionary and WAKAN- Freeware tool for Japanese and Chinese language learners for Windows. Infact its a means of improving your Chinese, English, Cantonese or other dialects, Japanese and Korean with them.

Its a world of difference, my dad is well verse in different languages and dialects, but languages are my worst subjects – verbally, practically, and academically (maybe not that bad for computer languages). My dad taught me how to use a chinese dictionary when I was young. The most common method is by “hanyu pinyin” 汉语拼音, the standard way of pronouncing words using roman characters (Chinese Google/è°·æ­Œ has an auto pinyin conversion built into its search). However, at times my pinyin basics are weak or when you don’t know how to read the word you are looking for, there you look up the word via radical stroke. You take what seems to be the “suffix” of the word, and then look-up by the number of strokes in the character. Stroke is also one of the ways you can input Chinese text with on your hand-phone.

So back to the topic, the recommended website – languages of china is a web front to its ccdict database (both downloadable), buts its very powerful yet in a simple interface. You can lookup via radical/stroke, hanyupinyin, english translation, and finding the characters gives pronunciations in Chinese and dialects, simplified and traditional chinese, and explanation in English.

和漢wakan project is what I found after I wanted all these features off-line/ downloaded. Its also very powerful and feature packed, in so you might require some time to explore its features and find out how to get what you need. I recommend you download its installer first.

If you are interested to find much more good tools (both freeware and online sites), you can search for their databases, namely CEDICT (Chinese-English Dictionary), EDICT (Japanese-English Dictionary), KDICT so on… there should be one something which suit your needs – including for palm and j2me ;)

Poor Man’s Dish

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Today, the first time I cook at dish at home (with some help). Reminds me, cooking’s not only what you throw into the wok and dance over the fire. Its planning the dishes (steal some secret recipes), shopping for ingredients (“marketing”?), preparing the ingredients (wash, clean) and utensils, cooking, serving, clean up. I was a horrible student in my Home Economics class, but I covered up by my partner, a top student who didnt complained much (thanks jansy).

The dish I cooked? Char Kway Teow, “fried flat noodles”, ç‚’æžœæ?¡ is my favorite dish, also among Singaporeans, Malaysians, and maybe south-east Asians. Its nice, aromatic, but maybe not so healthy in the long run (oil!). As for links and recipes, wiki, Singaporean, Malaysia, Vitnamese recipe. I spent about $6 for more than 6 plates of serving. Its said that it used to be a cheap labourer’s dish. Nows its a delicacy with many different ingredients added.

My brother told me Pizzas was the food the poor could afford in Italy. My campmate says shark fins were given to the beggars by the fishermen in China last time. Anymore interesting poor’s person food?

Whats my next dish? Due to the extra packet of noodles I bought, maybe I’ll try Hokkien Mee or Hor Fun

(Test) Panorama of the Sky outside my House

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Image: Test (partial) panorama of the sky.
Location: Sembawang, outside my house(hdb flat).
Photographer: My brother
Viewing with: IImage Panorama Plugin (using Java applet – PTViewer3.1.2 by Helmut Dersch )

The orginal sized stitched image

Some problems found.
Panorama wont display correctly view as good if it isnt a full 360.
Wont work if inside single post viewDoesnt takes a img other from its server (java applet restrictions)

Still gallery2′s and dhtml panorama scripts would work better for this case.

But other than that, its pretty cool if u have a full 360 photo. Use the zoom in function, and you will get the nice fish in the tank view.