Here's My Story

Hehehe gosh, good thing Ban pointed this advert out to me. It's hilarious.

I've been assisting the actuary on a routine project for a client for the past few years. Basically, we perform quarterly and yearly valuation. There was of course teething problem initially but at least they learned quickly, especially the finance manager who was our point of contact. So things went quite well thereafter. Unfortunately, she was transferred to another department at the end of last year. So from this year's Q1 onward we were dealing with the new finance manager. There are 4 major sets of data (A, B, C and D) that they normally send us. In the past, there was rarely problem with the data and at most a revised set (of 1 or 2 of them) may be sent after they discovered errors upon our queries. However, in Q1 itself: Set A - 6 versions Set D - 3 versions I had hoped that they would learn from this so that Q2 would be better. Towards the end of Q2, here's the situation: Set A - 5 versions Set B - 2 versions (Set D is not ready yet and I really hope...

I rarely drink coffee and when I do, rarely the coffee is decorated. One night, after a farewell dinner, some friends and I had drinks at a cafe (VCR). I was quite impressed with this art work. The pattern may not necessarily be great but it was the execution that impressed me. Refined and delicate. The taste was quite good too.

Oh yes, the busy period of work is underway and guess what is competing for my time? My sinus. Or pseudo-sinus, as I sometimes call it because I had it checked before and the ENT specialist confirmed there was nothing blocking my sinus passage. The symptom I typically exhibit is stuffy nose (without mucus stuffing my nose!) and sometimes it gets worse by causing headache. I often feel drowsy too and without medication, I can sleep many hours without feeling better. Years later, someone alerted me of vasomotor rhinitis. "Vasomotor rhinitis occurs when the blood vessels inside the nose expand (dilate). Dilation of the vessels in the nose produces swelling and can cause congestion." (from http://www.healthline.com/). Yup, this is it. Unfortunately, there is no known cure for it. What works best for me to manage the symptom is Ceterizine. What a lifesaver...and cheap too compared to other medication :) Normally when I'm healthy, I can work 3 shifts of 45 mins with 5 mi...

Since the previous post on Robocraft , I have built a few plasma bombers :) But boy, it was so troublesome. So many things could go wrong: inclined too much upward, nose-dived too much, not fast enough, not agile enough, too agile, too fragile, can't fly after 1 or 2 hits etc. Initially, I tried to copy Lathland's "Mittens" (the plane featured in the video link in my first post) but I couldn't make it stable until Ban stacked the aeroils together (the longer wing). Since then, I figured out one crucial step to substantially stabilise the plane: align the aerofoils with the pilot. Even after that, I still needed to adjust a little here and there, mainly using thrusters. Here are the results: As you can see, they are basically the same design. All of them, except for the T10 bomber (the last one), have stacked redundant aerofoils and rudders i.e. 2 on each side. Forest Elder (the T10 bomber) has 2 pairs of 3-stacked rudders and 2 pairs of 2-st...

Hehehe this is so funny. I watched this years ago and someone recently showed me this again. I especially love the classic scene between Skywalker and Darth Vader.

Last month I blogged about our close encounter with this interestingly shaped dessert . Ban and I decided to try it just to fulfill a friend's wish :) I was prepared to be amazed by discovering the starch/flour bit and the sweetened peanuts once I cut into the "cake" but it turned out that this dessert was a deconstructed version of mochi. It had the ground peanuts and the syrup separated from the "cake". The cake itself wasn't even made of flour: it was jelly! So the "wow!" factor degraded substantially. Yes, it was still a good effort, especially in conceptualising the water droplet but I guess my expectation was unrealistic? *shrug* The waiter was kind to show us how to consume it: sliced the jelly into smaller pieces, then sprinkled the ground peanuts all over jelly and then lastly poured the syrup all over them. It tasted quite nice, definitely not as sickly sweet as some traditional mochi could be. The jelly was very smooth. Howe...

For past few years, I had been assisting the consulting actuary on projects with a particular client (client A) whereby we were engaged for quarterly and yearly valuation. This year was no different. However, there is another client (client B) that engages us only once every 2 years for (only) annual valuation and, yes, it has been 2 years since the last exercise. Hence, my work schedule would be continuous for the next few months would be: 2nd week of Jul - 1st week of Aug: A Last week of Jul - 2nd week of Oct: B 2nd week of Oct - 1st week of Nov: A There could be some complication (and thus lengthening the work period) for B's project because they are in the midst of data migration to a new system. Pray that the data would be clean. There will be a month break before the yearly valuation for A starts in early Dec. Busy 4 months ahead!

Recently Ban and I had dinner at Hokano. Naturally salmon sushi was among the food I ordered :) Not sure whether I was mistaken or not but this time the sushi pieces looked a little smaller than usual. Sushi Tei's sushi could be the clear winner here but I would need to observe carefully the next time. Perhaps take some photos to compare. One thing completely new was that there were 2 pieces of salmon sushi with irregular shaped slice of fish. It had a small piece attached at one end of the fish. Just before I left, I informed the lady boss of this (she apologised), expressing my concern for the condition of the knife used. Hopefully that was good enough to get her to remind her chef not to be that careless in future. A few days later, I again was served untidy salmon sushi but this time it was at Sushi Zanmai @Paradigm Mall. What was up with these coincidences? Knives at various Japanese restaurants are expiring or something??? Instead of having that extra small pie...

I try to exercise on a daily basis but I take a break a day after yoga classes. Otherwise, it would be a couple of yoga classes, an-hour treadmill session and 3.0mins walk/25mins swim in between. Sometimes I asked Ban to join me in the walks and at times he does join but usually he doesn't. Exercise is not something he does regularly. Here's a recent example: Me: Honey, want to join me walking? Ban: Hmmm *starts rolling his shoulders*. My shoulders still feel sore. Me: Huh? But that's from gym 2 days ago already wor. Ban: *with serious facial expression* There's usually a delay reaction mah. Me: Ello? What does your shoulder have to do with walking ar? Do weights, then can't walk? One has nothing to with the other. Ban: Hee hee hee Lol, oh well :) But he did join me though and so that was good :)

As far as I know, in Japan, wasabi is automatically inserted, by the chef, between the slice of fish and the rice in a piece of sushi. Hence, all the diner has to do is to dip the piece of sushi (holding it with chopsticks such that its the fish portion that is dipped into the sauce) before savouring it. I vaguely remember that when I first had sushi in Singapore, it did have wasabi within it. However, soon enough, chefs there and in Malaysia forwent wasabi and instead provided it to diners to add it to their liking. Perhaps there were complaints of sushi being "too spicy" due to wasabi? *shrug* Anyway, not sure how it came about but what prevailed till today was the act of mixing wasabi and soy sauce in a saucer before dipping sushi in it. Apparently this is something frowned upon by Japanese and anyone who appreciates Japanese culture. One reason is that this method severely masks the taste of the fish which is supposed to be the main ingredient. However, given that w...