I have been having quite a fair number of vivid dreams in the past couple of days, from fantasy watches, to more real-life settings. The one I had last night was pretty thought-provoking, at least to me; and besides waking up thinking that the mind is such a powerful tool, I thought it might one day make a good movie (script) too!

There was some preamble in the dream – and like most dreams, there was a bit of unreal and fantasy stuff thrown in every now and then, but in this dream, it wasn’t too distractive. After taking out all the funny bits that didn’t seem to contribute much to the main idea of the dream, I was at home minding my own business and was watching the television when power was suddenly cut off. After a short while, the TV came back on with news that there was an accident where a motorbike went from one side of a two-way carriage to the opposite side, and in the midst of it, damaging some electrical stuff (which could have accounted for the brief power shortage) and, erm, an ERP gantry (this was really random, but I thought it’s too funny to leave it out – just for laugh’s sake). The motorcyclist apparently flew from his bike on impact with the island (the road divider), headed skywards, hit the ERP gantry, and landed on the bonnet of a convertible, gold coloured car (probably a Beemer). The damage was quite extensive though, because the front window was smashed in between. There were, however, no reports about casualties.

Then I got cut into the next screen of my dream where I was on a bus going up to Genting Highlands, presumably to look for my parents. The bus ride itself and the walk through an eco-garden full of leaves and palm trees on red-bricked staircase was interesting, but I digress (like all dreams). I met my parents, had a meal (can’t remember what it was) and had a look at their room. My cousin was there as well, but I wasn’t sure if he was my cousin or brother in the dream. There was nothing really interesting about this part of the dream though, not until we turned on the TV and news of the accident came on. However, instead of the scene of the accident, the news showed the convertible that was involved in the accident (and how it is, ahem, held together by clear tape – pretty sure there were no cable ties involved), and I was commenting to my parents about why no one has claimed the car (I didn’t know what happened to the drivers or passengers).

The thing is, within the same moment, I had an “epiphany” in the dream. I started thinking, what if I was living an alternate reality. What if I was actually, somehow involved in the accident, but my mind was protecting me from the harsh reality of it by totally erasing everything that had happened in the accident and recreated a new set of memories so that I could move on with life as a normal person. What if, my parents in the dream weren’t actually there, but rather, they were caring relatives (or possibly, my cousin’s parents) who were looking after me? What if, I was already post-recovery from the accident, and had a concussion (I did have an accident and a concussion, in real life); and since concussions sometimes bring with it amnesia, what if the mind had recreated a set of memories for me so that I could move on, and not be in grief?

I then started thinking, in my dream, how powerful the mind is, in managing adversity. It could change a person’s perspective of things, and it could even cause biological (physiological) changes so that everything the body (or the person) experiences is coherent with whatever set of memories that the mind or the brain has created for that person; and just before I woke up, I thought to myself, what if I am actually living an alternate life this very moment, one that my brain has created for me in real life; and I woke up.

There were some random bits of stuff in the dream, like, going to a couple of other places, one of which involved a blue-coloured gate that was just over 2 meters tall, and I was trying to lock J (a friend I knew from my days of social media) out of the place, but anyone could just walk around the gate. The rest of the dream was a little fuzzy, but the crux of the dream was actually clear as clear coffee (yes, there is such a thing as clear coffee now – welcome to, erm, an actual, alternate reality).

I never quite got to find out what really happened in the dream – and if I was really living an alternative life in it; and I can’t really remember when the last time I had such vivid and thought-provoking dream was. I find it really interesting (in real life), and I thought it would be nice to write it down somewhere. I am not exactly the kind of person who keeps a dream diary, yet, at the same time, I thought that this dream was a little too movie-worthy (perhaps a “C-list kind of movie”) to let it pass

Now that I am done writing about this dream, and that I am wide-awake, I think I should go do some reading; while at the same time, spend some time wondering if I am actually living in an alternate reality in real life

I thought it was a bit strange when I started getting emails from HostGator about some files being changed or compromised, but at the same time, they were advertising for their (somewhat new) Site Lock security solution, and I thought it was just some up-selling advertisement to get people like myself to pay more for something that we don’t really need. I mean, I don’t think I am going to pay $40 a month to run a blog that is not even a “business” as per se (well, I am not an influencer; not even a “micro-influencer”, whatever that means).

As it turned out, my blog did get hacked, and although HostGator isn’t technically responsible for restoring my files, I came to the conclusion (after seeing how ALL my other projects on HostGator got hacked, and none of the others on other hosts were hacked) that there was a vulnerability that HostGator was probably not patching. This stands unsubstantiated at this point in time, but I thought the hacking incident coincides a little too closely with them up-selling Site Lock (again, I am a small-time blogger – why do they want us to spend so much money just to write a blog? but of course, this is rhetorical)

In the end, I was pretty put off by them, and eventually offered to pay for a solution. Guess what? They could only offer a $15 solution for a single copy of a backup in the last 7 days, which isn’t even guaranteed to solve my issues. I was obviously very irritated with them, and decided to move my business elsewhere.

And that’s when I realised that things could get even worse from here. Even though I was on a, technically, “unlimited” plan, HostGator does not allow me to have any backups even from the console, if my “inodes count” (which I assume is somewhat similar to number of files, in layman terms) exceeds 100,000. This might not seem like a big deal, but considering the number of projects that I had been doing, that number was easily breached.

So, I was stuck with heaps of hacked projects and websites, and I couldn’t even do a proper backup of all my files (I am sure I have physical backup copies somewhere though). I ended up having to download all my files via FTP bit by bit (pun unintended). That was really agonising. At this point in time, all HostGator was willing to do, was to “move forward to see how we can prevent this from happening in the future” – doesn’t matter that they actually do have a backup that could have solved all my problems.

To cut a long story short, I found 2 other web hosts, once of which was pretty proactive, and another one that didn’t care about their clients (I read 1 bad review about them, but they are really THAT bad). I also found a 3rd one who was really pro-developers, pro-designers, and pro-geeks; and for a pretty reasonable price too – although, when it comes to price, it is not everything – and it is important to note how much you would be paying *in the long run*, since web hosting costing $1.99 per month usually refers to the first invoice (which can be up to a few years of prepayment), following which, it can balloon up to 10 times the initial “promotion”. Always read the fine prints.

Eventually, I settled with 2 web hosts (and 1 useless, uncaring one – that I will just use for rogue projects anyway; since getting refunds from them is harder than getting a pacifier from a baby without heaps of crying) and laid out a rough plan of how I would be managing all of these in the future; and I got all these done in the last 1 month, in the midst of moving house, barely making ends meet, and wondering about my future. It wasn’t the easiest thing to do – having to juggle all of these at the same time, but drugs do wonders.

I mean, pain killers, for all the headaches, that is.

It is also during this period of time that I decided to decouple the name resolution services from my web hosts – because I now know what a pain in the butt this can be when you have to start migrating all your zone files (basically data files containing IP addresses for your (sub) domain names). This definitely requires a heart of steel (hey, it’s the first time I am doing something more geeky than what I am comfortable with) and adds up more cost (thank goodness for free 1-year trials!) but I hope it will be more robust in the long run.

If you are able to see this post, that means I have successfully migrated my blog from HostGator to somewhere else. I will probably have to spend some time “hardening” up my current site, and I definitely hope to do this before this gets hacked again.

Till then, peace out for now

Editor: Geek material warning

This is nothing new, but I thought I’d just put it here just in case someone else needs it (if the original source is taken down), or, more often than not, I forget how to do it.

Scenario
I have 2 accounts on my Mac that I use every now and then – my “usual”, non-geek user account; and my geeky development user account. This is just because it is easier for me to segregate my applications and also for testing purposes. Switching between 2 user accounts, even with “fast user switching”, is not really that fast, since we have to effectively log into the other account. So I thought it would be nice if I could remote into my development user account.

Preparation work (destination)
On the geeky development user account, I have to enable Remote Login and Remote Management in System Preferences > Sharing; and under Remote Management, I just enable whatever access that I’d need as a “remote user”. When this is done, I run Terminal and key in the following command:

ssh -NL 5901:localhost:5900 localhost

What this effectively does is that it is allowing my development user account to listen to port 5901 for an incoming connection request. Since, effectively, BOTH my non-geeky user account and my development user account are potentially listening to the same port (depending on what you do [on/to] your Mac), it is important to segregate the ports. In addition, connecting to the default port using the client app may result in an error anyway – since I may technically be connecting from my non-geeky user account to my… non-geeky user account.

Connecting from the client
This is probably the easiest step of the lot. Apple would recommend that you purchase the USD79.99 Apple Remote Desktop. I nearly choked on my longan (longan, not Logan, not Wolverine). Thankfully, there is a “Screen Sharing” app in “/System/Library/CoreServices/Applications”. You should be able to launch this easily with Spotlight Search.

When you launch the Screen Sharing app, you will be prompted for your destination host. Here, I key in (and you should probably, too):

localhost:5901

When you then click on Connect, you will be prompted for your Name and Password. For myself, I log in using my geeky user account name with my geeky account password. It would then prompt you on “How would you like to connect?”.

Here’s where you choose “Log in as yourself: [Name]”. Whatever you do, do NOT choose to “Share the display”. You would not want to know the consequences. If you do, please save your work first. Another hint is that, the power button will be your friend should you choose to… share the display.

Conclusion
This is a pretty straight forward way of working between 2 user accounts using just 1 screen. In fact, if you have a second screen, you can always drag the Screen Sharing app into full screen onto the 2nd display. There are *many* ways of achieving what I am trying to do, but to each her own I am still at a stage where I am exploring ways of segregating my work without running additional software, such as Virtual Machines and all… because my Mac would start sounding like an Airbus A350. The A380 is now passé.

Source
http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/151151/can-i-remote-desktop-to-another-user-on-the-same-machine (as accessed on 20/03/2017)

It’s been a long while I last posted anything here. To be exact, it was since #Brexit, which feels like eons ago. Quite a fair bit of things have happened since then – some good, some bad, some… simply unthinkable. Looking through my drafts, there were also some posts that didn’t get published; either because they were incomplete, or I just had second thoughts about posting them up. After all, the interwebs never forget, and sometimes, things just stay up there indefinitely and for eternity.

Perhaps just a bit of update about what happened since my last post. Well, nothing much really. As a student, I just study heaps, write my exams, take a short (somewhat well-deserved, depending on how hardworking I was) break; and the whole cycle starts all over again. And then Ashley came. And then I had an accident. And then… well, the new year came.

It almost seems like yesterday that I was longing for “salted-egg-anything”; dragging myself to the nearest Chinese restaurant just to satisfy my cravings. If I didn’t recall wrongly, that probably happened a couple of times. I don’t really remember much of what happened last year, but I did remember being a really sad person. Sad and lonely, to be exact.

And I hated it.

I can’t remember when the turning point was, but I was pretty sure it was when I stopped caring. Stopped caring about how people thought of me. Stopped caring about whether I have friends. Stopped caring about almost anything else. However, the world doesn’t quite run that way. Perhaps humans aren’t really meant to be lonesome creatures.

Speak about being isolated, I couldn’t help but wonder what made me the way I am? I am sure I have no one else to blame but myself – that’s what people always tell me, but I really wanted to know why. When I was in elementary school, I don’t remember being an extremely popular kid; I mean, I thought I fared average in terms of my social circles – I wasn’t the kid that has to be included whenever there was a game, outing or a gathering after school, but I was somehow included. It’s like, if there were 12 of us, and if we were playing team games, I would be chosen by one of the teams when either side was down to the 4th or 5th player. I didn’t feel unwanted, but I wasn’t high sought after.

But that was alright. In fact, that was actually pretty good for me – not to be left to the last.

Then I went to high school – and that was when I spent way more time in school and had more control over my own time, which was really quite a disaster because, as one of my teachers told me, I needed to “get my priorities right”. I actually don’t remember much of my time in high school, but I guess I turned out alright. Importantly, I got grades good enough that would send me to university.

In between, I did spend some time working; and that was when I realised how unpopular I really was. In the earlier days, people would talk about me – and this came from someone who would tell me the fact, but not the contents. It hurt me a lot, because I wasn’t aware of what I did, what I said, or what wrong I had done. I was labelled and isolated, but I just “moved on”. You know, like how your friend would pour out his/her problems to you, and if/when you have no solutions to them, you would ask them to “not think so much about it, just focus on what they have to do, and move on”? Yeah, that was basically it.

I moved on. Or at least I thought I did.

I took on a couple more jobs before finally heading off to university. To be honest, I did struggle quite a fair bit while studying. I had to pick up new terms and new adjectives, and it almost felt like I was a non-English native suddenly studying in an English-native environment. I was almost laughable, except that, it wasn’t really funny when I had to go through it. I probably hadn’t studied this hard before, but I wasn’t going to let that faze me.

However, that was when people started asking me to chill, to relax, and to take things easy; and when all that failed, I became the topic of gossips. Again. It felt like almost a mortal sin to want to understand what I was studying, and if I weren’t out with my group of friends, I was deemed as being too “hard-core”. The most common question posed to me was, “Why are you always studying?”.

Maybe because I am stupid?

Needless to say, I “moved on” again. This seems to be a recurring theme that seems all too familiar. Over time, I started to believe that I have a personality issue and perhaps I was just meant to be all by myself. I also started to feel that I was beginning to be socially awkward and socially inept, which probably didn’t help things a lot.

I could probably go on and on, but I think this is enough to give anyone a brief idea of what kind of life I have right now. Alone. Isolated. Socially awkward. Socially inept. Eccentric, perhaps.

I long for friends, for people whom I can open up to, for people to have me as someone that they can share to. However, perhaps I was overzealous for such friendship and companionship, that I have gotten myself into a lot of trouble; often getting myself hurt in the end. Through this whole process, I lost trust in people around me, and hope in myself. I have already lost count the number of nights I cried myself to sleep, yet resisted posting on Facebook how I really felt. Some would ask, why post on Facebook? Why not just talk to a friend?

Well, here’s where the problem lies. What friend?

To be fair, I do think there are people around me who genuinely care for me, who probably really want to help me, but I guess before I can start having people in my life, I need to “help myself”, or I need to “help myself so that others can help me, or “if I don’t help myself, there is nothing anyone else can do”.

I wish it were this easy – suddenly standing up, looking towards the sky with outstretched hands and exclaiming, “Yes! I want to help myself! I want to break out of this cycle!”

That said, I do think there are many others who are way worse off than me, probably way more broken than I am; and I do agree that I am probably better off, because, hey, at least I get to experience most of life – whatever that means. I think I sometimes give off the vibe that I am a spoilt brat; someone who believes that she is entitled to all the things in the world. To be honest, I do think if I do carry such a sense of self-entitlement, but often, I have real-life issues waiting for me to take care of, before I have an answer to that.

Even as I am writing this, I do have a handful of things that probably need more attention. However, I can’t help but keep wondering what wrong have I done (I am sure something scr*wed up, and I am just trying to figure out how I scr*wed up this badly) and what’s going to happen from now on. I guess I have really gotten myself onto a dead end this time round.

That said, the weather had been getting really cold since the last couple of days. It was apparently the coldest day today (but the weather report had been say that prior days were probably the coldest the last couple of days) and it seems like there is a chance of snow tomorrow! That was the exciting part. The disappointing part is that it’s going to be snowing anywhere else but where I am at. Hmmph.

I finally got down to getting some studying done. I just wish I had this done earlier on. I ended up skipping breakfast and lunch just so that I could finish up my assignments for next week because I know that I’ll end up not getting anything done the moment I stop to grab a bite.

Talk about eating, @keropokman on Instagram was showing off his tub of salted egg chips and I ended up following @irvinsaltedegg as well. I can’t believe that I am so slow into the “salted egg everything” scene and ended up longing for some. I ended up googling for *any* place that would sell salted egg *anything* and found this Malaysian restaurant that apparently makes salted egg prawns! After getting my work done and checking its opening hours, I grabbed an Uber there just to realise that it’s closed! Being the thick-skinned Asian I am, I peered into the restaurant only to see someone looking up and going back to sleep head on table.

Not giving up, I tapped on the glass door and pointed to my wrist hoping that he would not ignore me. He then showed all 5 fingers, and I looked at my watch. Gasp! It was only 4, but I hope it is really worth waiting for.

With my kind of luck, they probably stopped making that dish or ran out of prawns or ran out of salted eggs; but here I am now, waiting outside the restaurant, bag in tow, freezing in the cold, hoping that I can finally get my cravings satisfied :p

Ok! It’s 2 minutes past 5! Wish me luck! (^.^)/”

I have somewhat decided to stop cramming for exams because there’s almost always going to be payback, and the process of recovery simply makes it not worth staying up all night – or for that matter, a couple of nights, just to cram everything in before the exams. I still have heaps to cover, except that I *try* to start as early as I can, or when I start panicking. Usually the latter is trigger

Of course, with exams, I tend to find comfort in… Tadah! Comfort food! Duh! Hahaha… But just to give you an idea of what I really did eat – I had 20 pieces of Chicken McNuggets with Mayonnaise, Aioli and Mustard – separately, of course; a 9-piece KFC Chicken set – because it was KFC Tuesday, and probably heaps of chocolates. And some sweet Mandarin oranges. Of course, I didn’t finish the 20 pieces of chicken nuggets at 1 go, nor the KFC chicken; but now, just the thought of it is making me feel fat.

And of course, I try to keep as far away as possible from the bathroom scales :/

I have the entire semester’s worth of material to cover and I have about 2 full weeks left. Fingers crossed that I can cover *most* of it.

So, what are some of YOUR study strategies? (^.^)

Needless to say, my hopes were all dashed. Like shattered glass all over the floor. Ran over by a lorry. Twice.

Anyway, here’s Sun Yanzi’s 超快感, just to 回味 all the insults that I had been getting from ALL my music teachers

孙燕姿 – 超快感
Sun yan zi – Chao kuai gan

感觉对了我要出发
gan jue dui liao wo yao chu fa
用我自己的步伐
yong wo zi ji de bu fa
告别所有旧的想法
gao bie suo you jiu de xiang fa
别害怕
bie hai pa
不像话
bu xiang hua
你怕了吗
ni pa liao ma
还怀疑吗
huan huai yi ma
放开一切体会变化
fang kai yi qie ti hui bian hua
是否就是情绪化
shi fou jiu shi qing xu hua
被爱迷惑不上不下
bei ai mi huo bu shang bu xia
够了吧
gou liao ba
算了吧
suan liao ba
说真心话
shuo zhen xin hua
你善良吗
ni shan liang ma
往前追
wang qian zhui
不后退
bu hou tui
I FEEL SO GOOD
I FEEL SO GOOD
快提高分贝
kuai ti gao fen bei
为了爱
wei liao ai
把速度都加倍
ba su du du jia bei
没有人跟幸福做对
mei you ren gen xing fu zuo dui
没有时间浪费
mei you shi jian lang fei
做好全部心理准备
zuo hao quan bu xin li zhun bei
心跳起飞
xin tiao qi fei
不能放弃随便彻退
bu neng fang qi sui bian che tui
每次爱的机会
mei ci ai de ji hui
心在醉
xin zai zui
心在飞
xin zai fei
我敢追
wo gan zhui
爱就是
ai jiu shi
超快感
chao kuai gan
俐落干脆
li luo gan cui
不会累
bu hui lei

I chanced upon Jen’s No Makeup Makeup Tutorial which was pretty awesome! The steps were really clear and most importantly, I could get most of the things from a Sephora store nearby! Now I know why all my girlfriends went crazy when they heard that a Sephora store was going to open shop in the neighbourhood

So, here it is – Jen’s No Makeup Makeup Tutorial. Enjoy!

It took me a long time to learn this song; and by “long”, I meant “really, really long time”. Figuring out how to pronounce the Chinese characters was one thing, but I had difficulty trying to figure out how to use my chest and head voice. I don’t think this happens to a lot of people but I became so technical during my choir days that I couldn’t sing a song without first determining how I should sing it.

My music teacher thought I was thinking too much. I thought so too, but I just couldn’t pull myself away from it.

I still hadn’t learn how to “sing in a Karaoke manner”, and to make things worse, I don’t even think I can sing now. But still, this song brought back heaps of memories… because I would shudder when I hear the opening of this song. Nonetheless, it is one of the easier pieces and if I ever run out of ideas, this would be the best place for me to come look for songs and lyrics.

梁静茹 – 分手快乐
Liang jing ru – Fen shou kuai le

我无法帮你预言　委曲求全有没有用
wo wu fa bang ni yu yan wei qu qiu quan you mei you yong
可是我多么不舍　朋友爱的那么苦痛
ke shi wo duo me bu she peng you ai de na me ku tong
爱可以不问对错　至少有喜悦感动
ai ke yi bu wen dui cuo zhi shao you xi yue gan dong
如果他总为别人撑伞　你何苦非为他等在雨中
ru guo ta zong wei bie ren cheng san ni he ku fei wei ta deng zai yu zhong
泡咖啡让你暖手　想挡挡你心口里的风
pao ka fei rang ni nuan shou xiang dang dang ni xin kou li de feng
你却想上街走走　吹吹冷风会清醒的多
ni que xiang shang jie zou zou chui chui leng feng hui qing xing de duo
你说你不怕分手　只有点遗憾难过
ni shuo ni bu pa fen shou zhi you dian yi han nan guo
情人节就要来了　剩自己一个
qing ren jie jiu yao lai liao sheng zi ji yi ge
其实爱对了人　情人节每天都过
qi shi ai dui liao ren qing ren jie mei tian du guo
分手快乐　祝你快乐　你可以找到更好的
fen shou kuai le zhu ni kuai le ni ke yi zhao dao geng hao de
不想过冬　厌倦沉重　就飞去热带的岛屿游泳
bu xiang guo dong yan juan chen zhong jiu fei qu re dai de dao yu you yong
分手快乐　请你快乐　挥别错的才能和对的相逢
fen shou kuai le qing ni kuai le hui bie cuo de cai neng he dui de xiang feng
离开旧爱　像坐慢车　看透彻了心就会是晴朗的
li kai jiu ai xiang zuo man che kan tou che liao xin jiu hui shi qing lang de
没人能把谁的幸福没收
mei ren neng ba shui de xing fu mei shou
你发誓你会活的有笑容
ni fa shi ni hui huo de you xiao rong
(你自信时候真的美多了)
ni zi xin shi hou zhen de mei duo liao

It’s been a long while since I last posted anything, or write anything… so I thought I’d just start afresh all over again.

It took quite a fair while to decide if I would like to start blogging all over again, or even to start one. Then again, life is a little too short to keep thinking about things because we will probably just end up not doing anything at all if we keep keeping it in our heads, or procrastinating. So here I am, trying to write, all over again.

I think I am just going to keep this blog really casual. Usual rules apply for myself – nothing discriminatory in nature, nothing seditious, just pure indulgence in my world

Sometimes, it may just be better this way – after all, who is to say if your opinions are right or wrong?

So, here we go again. Just sit back and relax, and I hope you’ll enjoy my journey (^.^)/”