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11 rules your kids did not and will not learn in school

kennethjayden@gmail.com (kennethjayden) — 2010-09-17T10:39:39+08:00

Rule 1: Life is not fair - get used to it!

Rule 2: The world doesn't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.

Rule 3: You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won't be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.

Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.

Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping: they called it opportunity.

Rule 6: If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent's generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.

Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they'll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time.

Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.

My Burfdae!

kennethjayden@gmail.com (kennethjayden) — 2010-06-09T13:41:20+08:00

As i grow older, i realised the want for material things tend to decrease with age. Thus, when i was posed the question of what do i want for my birthday, i couldn't really find an answer to that. But as i was discussing this with my peer, she begged to differ and insisted that she still has over millions of things that she wants! right...

As i thought about it, i realised that it's true our wants don't really decrease, it just increases with value as we age. We used to want toy cars, now we want real cars. We used to want toy houses, now we want real houses. Generally, people are created with wants, needs, passion & hunger for things, and mostly intangible things, like love, security & a sense of belonging.

And i really would like to thank all my friends & family members for their birthday wishes, gifts & to those who took the time to celebrate my birthday with me! Thanx guys! ;)

Here are some of the stuffs i got, really cool stuffs! & i love it, i really do!

A semi-pro panasonic cam, a LUMIX DMC-FZ35. Thanx to all my family & friends who chipped in for it, i really appreciate it guys! I really never thought i would be getting such an awesome gift. It really was a huge surprise, & a pleasant one! ;)

I also got a really cool gift from my beloved cellgroup. despite our diverse passion in supporting different clubs, you guys put aside your differences & rallied together to get a gift that's from the greatest club! :P Thanx guys, i love the gift & i love u all lots!

I also got an awesome book. it's an autobiography of the world's greatest evangelist, Reinhard Bonnke, Living A Life Of Fire. When i first became a Christian, 1 of the first few books that i read was his book too, Evagelism By Fire. This is an awesome read & i've been reading it every night, extremely captivating & inspiring! Thanx to Eug for the gift, love it! ;) And i got some angpows (red packets) from my grandma, grandaunt & aunt too! kam xia (thanx)!!

I'm really blessed with all the gifts & i really thank God, not for the gifts, but the gift of friends & loved ones that He has placed in my lives. More than all the gifts that you all have given to me, i really want to thank you all for your love & friendship through the years in the different stages in my lives. Though it's really cool to have these stuffs that i got, your friendship & love means so much more to me. Thanx guys!

And i specially wana thank my darling for really making everything happen! from the camera, to the dinner & the meal @ equinox! that totally blew me away! thanx for all your sacrifice, love & patience! You are like the most awesomest gift from God! u totally rock my socks! & i love u lots! ;)

And lastly a big thanx to my parents & God for giving me a birthday! Happy birthday to me! yay!

Learn chinese in 5 minutes

kennethjayden@gmail.com (kennethjayden) — 2010-05-20T16:49:29+08:00

Are you trying to pick up mandarin? Here's some simple phrases you can learn to help you get rolling. :P

I survived NUS!! (hopefully...)

kennethjayden@gmail.com (kennethjayden) — 2010-05-05T14:49:51+08:00

I just ended my last and final exam in NUS on Star Wars day, May the 4th (be with you). geddit? :P

It was an awesome feeling, to finally finish my time in NUS. If all goes well, that is if i don't fail any module. You'll never know what the bell curve might do to you!

Spending 4 years in NUS, especially taking a Computer Science honors degree, is seriously no joke man. Ok... 3 years, i spent a year in Stockholm, Sweden. ;) In Computer Science, the modules are heavy, theoretical and the most taxing of the lot are the programming assignments. Programming assignments are a killer because they are extremely time consuming, where you have to first take time to understand the requirements, design the system, split it into different parts, (program and debug) x 100. I've never ever ever ever fully completed a major programming project, there's always something left to fix or improve. But somehow, I kinda enjoy doing that. The want to code up a working application from scratch and see it working gives me the adrenaline to program. I guess that's why I'm in Computer Science (CS). ;)

This last semester has been the most taxing of the lot where I had to clear all my CS major modules, 4 level 4000s, & 1 level 3000. And when you have 5 CS modules to take, means you have 5 major programming assignments plus the other mini assignments along the way! And every week I was just rushing to clear 1 assignment after another, late nights after late nights in school. And that's why the Computing Building is open 24hr for students, and it's definitely fully utilized every day.

And on top of school work, I'm also working part-time with my Swedish company 3S-Comaea for the last 1.5 years since I came back. More programming work, I just can't get enough of it. ;)

So now that my exams are over, I'm going to start doing some things that I've been putting off.

Travel (going Phuket next week, yay!)

Blog about my trips (Beijing, Santorini, Paris, Rome, Geneva, Spain... etc)

Jamming & Songwriting (with my band Dreamfactory!)

Train for IPPT in June

Catch up with friends

Go to the beach

Some wakeboarding

Go for scuba diving course

Plan & discuss future business ideas

Despite everything, it has been a great journey in NUS. Though it was really tough & depressing at times, but God and my friends around saw me through it all. If not for NUS, i wouldn't have made such great friends that I have today. If not for NUS, I wouldn't have been able to spend a year working in Sweden & enjoying a time of my life traveling around in Europe. And if not for NUS, I wouldn't have gotten to know this wonderful lady called Peiyun. I guess it all works out in the end.

So, to all my friends still in NUS, NTU, SMU, SIM and whatever university you may be in, press on and keep walking the journey. Discover your purpose, reason and passion while you're there, and it'll all work out in the end. ;)

Solution to Time Machine that's constantly in "preparing" state

kennethjayden@gmail.com (kennethjayden) — 2009-10-03T00:27:46+08:00

Does your Time Machine application take forever to prepare? Like more than 7 hrs...? And while it's preparing, it's starts to hang your other applications? And somehow you can't seem to get it to stop despite pressing the 'Stop backing up' option. Well then you might be in a situation that I was once in.

Here's a solution which worked for me. What I did was to reduce the number of items to back up. And then slowly increase it back to my intended items I wanted to back up. And here's how you do it:

Step 1: Go to your Time Machine settings in your System Preferences

Step 2: Click the Option button and include your larger size files/folders to be excluded from the backing up process. (eg. Photos, Movies, Music... etc).

Step 3: Run your back up.

Right now as your Time Machine starts to back up, the preparing time should be shorter as there would be lesser files needed to back up. One possible reason why the previous preparing time took so long could be because "Time Machine keeps hourly backup for the past 24 hours, daily backup for the past month and weekly backup until your disk is full." (as mentioned in your Time Machine settings page). So if you haven't backed up your huge hard disk for a long time, imagine how long the preparing stage would take.

And once your backup is successful, you could remove the files to exclude and backup your remaining data. By now, the preparing phase should be significantly shorter.

Hope that helps, happy backing up!

60 Signs You're a Singaporean

kennethjayden@gmail.com (kennethjayden) — 2009-08-13T17:34:10+08:00

(an article from talkingcock.com)

1. Thanks to SMS, you have an extra large thumb.

2. Tks 2 SMS, u oso dun no how 2 spel n e mor.

3. You pat MRT and bus seats to cool them before you sit down.

4. At lunch, you start discussing what to eat for dinner.

5. Your wedding photos include shots of you dressed up like Louis XIV, Michael Jackson, or Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet in Titanic.

6. When speaking to foreigners, you somehow feel a need to adopt an accent. (If you’re a DJ, this happens even when you’re not speaking to foreigners.)

7. You won’t raise your voice to protest policies, but you’ll raise your fists to whack someone over Hello Kitty.

8. You’re forever talking about businesses you want to set up but will probably never get around to starting.

9. You don’t know ¾ of the people attending your wedding.

10. You separate food into 2 basic groups: ‘heaty’ and ‘cooling’.

11. You’re never completely sure how many times you’ve sung the second verse of the National Anthem.

12. You think that what makes you ‘married’ is not the legal registration but whether you’ve thrown a 12 course dinner.

13. You marry for the real estate breaks.

14. You have kids for the tax advantages.

15. You move to where you want your child to go to school.

16. You feel you can’t walk around naked in your own flat.

17. You force your children to take Speech & Drama classes, but pray they won’t wind up in Arts later on.

18. You suddenly realize you’re very interested in biotech - just like you suddenly realized three years ago that you were very interested in e-commerce, and before that, engineering, and before that, medicine and law.

19. You think being an entrepreneur is setting up a bubble tea/Portuguese egg tart/gao luck/porridge shop right next to an existing bubble tea/Portuguese egg tart/gao luck/porridge shop.

20. You think people are inconsiderate when they don’t leave their table immediately after eating at the food court but think you have every right to take 25 bites to finish the last red bean in your ice kachang.

21. You find it impossible to make suggestions without drawing a fishbone chart first.

22. If you’re a guy, whenever you get together with your guy friends, you invariably trade army stories.

23. If you’re a girl, whenever you get together with your girl friends, you invariably trade stories about how your stupid guy friends are forever trading army stories.

24. You think the most important sporting event in Singapore this year was David Beckham switching from Manchester United to Real Madrid.

25. You somehow feel that food tastes better when eaten by a longkang.

26. It actually makes a difference to you being called an ‘NSMan’ rather than a ‘Reservist’.

27. You’ve eaten more times at the Esplanade than you’ve actually seen shows there.

28. You need campaigns to tell you how to be courteous, to flush toilets, have sex, etc.

29. When you visit the Zoo, you wonder what the animals taste like.

30. You feel the urge to add the suffix ‘-polis’ to everything, viz. Biopolis, Airtropolis, Fusionopolis, Entrepolis, etc.

31. You always feel oddly hungry at 11 pm, and are willing to drive to far away places for supper.

32. You meet in hotels a lot.

33. Your children have a rudimentary knowledge of Tagalog or Bahasa Indonesia.

34. You work at McDonald’s when you’re old rather than young.

35. You’ll gladly spend $50,000 on a car, but will go to great lengths to save a few bucks on ERP charges or even a few cents on a parking coupon.

36. Pork floss and mayonnaise on bread is a completely natural combination to you.

37. If you’re pregnant, you have the strange ability to make people on the MRT fall asleep instantly.

38. You ask for the bill by miming a signing movement.

39. You’ve started referring to foreign employees as ‘talent’ instead of ‘expatriates’.

40. At the dinner table, you’re always discussing which other food places serve better versions of what you’re eating.

41. You copy down licence plate numbers of cars involved in accidents.

42. You think your boyfriend doesn’t really love you unless he gives you part of his liver.

43. During sales, you book hotel rooms near malls to enable you to shop more efficiently.

44. You pronounce the letter ‘R’ as ‘ah-rer’ and the letter ‘H’ as ‘haytch’.

45. No matter how old you are, you keep associating people with their secondary schools. (alternative: No matter how old you are, you secretly need to know what other people got for their PSLE, O levels and A levels.)

46. You’re always on a quest for the definitive version of your favourite local dish.

47. When you explain things to people, you keep (a) using alphabets, and (b) speaking in point form.

48. You believe that you can generate ‘creativity’ through rules and committees.

49. You ‘chope’ a seat by placing a packet of tissues on the chair.

50. You’re very forthright with your criticisms of the Gahmen, unless there’s a chance they might actually hear you.

51. You diligently track the whereabouts of your favourite hawkers, i.e..you know that the famous Tiong Bahru Bao is now in Jurong, the famous Outram Char Kuay Teow is now in Hong Lim Centre and the famous Lau Hock Kien Hokkien mee from the old Lau Pa Sat is now at Beach Road.

52. Your mother probably can’t speak your ‘mother tongue’.

53. You’d rather drink your own pee than pay someone more for water.

54. You secretly find that the best part of the Speak Good English Movement is hearing the Singlish bits in their ads.

55. You have an automatic sensor in your head which categorizes people you meet into stayer/ quitter, cosmopolitan/heartlander, normal/ express/ gifted, etc.

56. You think we’re living in a modern, sophisticated country even when our leaders still insist on wearing their school uniforms.

57. You wish your constituency is in a walkover, because otherwise it’s damn ‘leceh’.

58. During elections, you decide that there is no credible opposition even though you don’t know the name of the opposition candidate in your constituency.

59. You think having a constitution is like the condition you get when you don’t eat enough fibre.

60. You can never quite remember what “the core values” of Singaporeans are.

Summer in Europe 09

kennethjayden@gmail.com (kennethjayden) — 2009-07-15T18:27:12+08:00

Ok i'm back to Singapore, again. :P i guess many of you would have realized by now, but i'm just putting it down for the record. for good? yes. i'm always back for good, it's just that i was over to Stockholm over the spring for a short work trip. ;)

i've always enjoyed being in Stockholm. the weather is amazing, cool and dry unlike in Singapore where you sweat like you're dispensing water. the people there are amazing, beautiful and extremely friendly. and of course, the fact that it's in Europe!

this time, it was a short 7 week trip back to Europe during my school holidays. it's not exactly a holiday trip for me, but a work trip for my company. they decided to fly me back to work with them during my school holidays, and of course while i'm there, i take the opportunity to travel! ;) so for my 1st 6 weeks, i was working in Stockholm and the next 1 week, i was in Prague and Budapest. during my 1 year in Stockholm in 2008, i travelled mainly to central and western Europe, so this time i went to visit eastern Europe. the eastern side is much more cheaper with an old charm to it. time was short while i was there, spending only 3.5 days in Prague and 3 days in Budapest. But it was great while it lasted and i made some cool new friends too. i hope to go back there and also to the other countries like Poland and Croatia as well. i'll save that for my next trip. ;)

i have a few people and friends requesting for some of my trips itinerary and info. so i'm wondering if i should blog about my individual trips to the various cities i've been to. i think that would be rather useful for those wanting to go Europe. sigh. i would love to do that, if i can find the time for it... :P meanwhile, you can look @ my photos/videos and see which are the places that interest you and i can share with you more about it.

you can view the photos of the places i visited in a map view here.

Summer chillout with colleagues

Shallow english football fans

kennethjayden@gmail.com (kennethjayden) — 2009-06-02T05:44:17+08:00

sometimes the media are right. all you read about english football fans being hooligans are not that far from the truth. i am just so amused that i can even get slammed by man u fans when i, a fellow man u fan, actually go to old trafford to support man u and watching them trash stoke city. fans slamming another fan of the same team! how absurd, shallow and pathetic can they get? if those uneducated english fans haven't realized, it is the global (& asian) fans who are supporting the team to help make the team successful. and that's maybe why man u's doing an asia tour this year to reach out to their fans and to build up their fan base? but with english fans like those, man u will have a tough time keeping the fans happy together...

here's the video which i uploaded while i was @ old trafford..

and here are some of the comments..

you can check out more of the comments @ the youtube page.

one of the more hilarious comment was the one by the stoke city fan, "We Outclassed You On That Day So Shut The F**k Up". errr... stoke got trashed 5-0...?

Don't copy if you can't paste

kennethjayden@gmail.com (kennethjayden) — 2009-06-01T15:12:44+08:00

A popular motivational speaker was entertaining his audience. He said: "The best years of my life were spent in the arms of a woman who wasn't my wife!"

The audience was in silence and shock. The speaker added: "And that woman was my mother!"

Laughter and applause.

A week later, a top manager trained by the motivational speaker tried
to crack this very effective joke at home. He was a bit foggy after a drink.

He said loudly to his wife who was preparing dinner,"The greatest years of my life were
spent in the arms of a woman who was not my wife!"

The wife went; "Aaaaaggh!" with shock and rage !!

Standing there for 20 seconds trying to recall the second half of the joke, the manager finally blurted out
"...and I can't remember who she was!"

By the time the manager regained his consciousness, he was on a hospital bed nursing burns from boiling water.

Moral of the story: Don't copy if you can't paste!

Ikea to take over General Motors

kennethjayden@gmail.com (kennethjayden) — 2009-04-23T00:34:23+08:00

Business Update: Just Announced - IKEA to take over GM

IKEA HAS ANNOUNCED IT'S INTENTION TO TAKE OVER GM and TO SELL CARS.

In that case, WE WILL BE IN DEEP TROUBLE.

ALL THEY GIVE YOU IS THIS ...

AND THIS...