Digital Bytes

Welcome 2009! Its going to be an eventful year indeed. Most reports point to at least a terrible first-half economically and beyond that its anybody’s guess. We’re going to have a baby and life is going to be a rollercoaster in some sense, i’m sure we’ll find joy in the new kid - Its a boy btw, but i’m also sure there’s a huge amount of adjustments to our lifestyle and comfort zones.  For one, we’re going to move home again.

No more quick pop-bys to Wala for a night of rock music.. We’re moving closer to  the zoo! So the convenience of food choices and 24-hour supermarkets are all going to be left behind for a tranquil life somewhere in the north. Well, at least it comes with a pool. I guess i can try to pick up swimming to make up for the total loss of exercise these past couple of years.

Here’s wishing y’all a wonderful year ahead…

We finally found some time to do some Xmas shopping over the weekend as both of us took some leave. And apart from the xmas goodies, we were also ambitious enough to take notes on some baby stuff so that we can compare them when the post-xmas sales come around.

But after our round at Tangs, we somehow got inspired to go to Kaki Bukit again and were pleasantly surprised that most of the smaller stuff had 20% discounts and some of the strollers and car seats were heavily discounted because they were clearing their 2007 stock. So after making a last minute head-check that we won’t be getting cool-looking stuff like the Quinnys or Peg Peregos, we booked our kid a Maclaren Techno XT ($388) and Inglesina Moovy ($238). That’s a great price if you’ve seen the normal retail prices on those!

And mummy seems to be a Pigeon fan because she reckons an Asian brand probably takes into account the asian physique…So we’ve probably got 40% of the stuff we need today including sterilisers and breast pumps and playmats etc

I can’t believe it, a friend actually forwarded me a baby stuff list and it’s almost a hundred items! How did people have kids before modern technology?

Wow, its been awhile since i’ve written anything. Many things have been happening in the office which has thrown me into a loop. So i’ve been crazily busy the last month or so. Just saw my previous post and wanted to post a link on my new project - net.acma.sg

Am in the draft stage of this new site for NET and the basic info has been migrated from the old site. Guess i’m just pending some design help and eventually i can load in more bells and whistles to the site too.

Joomla has been fairly easy to implement. As with all tech projects, you need the discipline to read through the installation docs. It also requires you to have a basic understanding of how to purchase a virtual host, domain name and use FTP to load in the files.

Setting up a content structure from scratch might have been a bit confusing so i do recommend loading in the sample data so that all the navigation and articles show in the right place, and then you can change all the content as necessary.

So far i’m pretty impressed with the simple plug-ins i found so far, like the main graphic on the homepage which cross-fades the banners and allows text to be overlayed so you can create titles over it.

Over the past few months now, i have met the committees running NET and ACMA to talk about how they can build community online and improve their websites in phases. As a culmination of this episode, i got invited to a retreat that NET was organising. I’ve already felt my spider-sense tingling since i wasn’t a committee member and i know only the committee members were invited and not my classmates. So imagine my surprise when i found out at the beginning that this was “business” alignment exercise. As in setting up mission statement and values and brainstorming what the organisation does well and should do more of etc And an even bigger surprise when towards the end of the day an org chart was flashed on screen with a newly created “creative” dept. with web and design as components. I guess i’m in the committee…

And to seal the deal, mass in Church after that had the Gospel of the owner who left his stewards with 5 talents 2 talents and 1 talent and the one with 5 made use of it and got another 5 while the owner was unhappy with the guy that just hid the 1 talent he had in the ground. i.e. moral of story is to use your talents!

The bizarre thing was that the priest then went on to try to explain the parable by telling a story he heard about the Holy family hiding in the cave while on the run from King Herod. In that cave was a little cave spider who felt honored to have distinguished guests and was just trying to do the only thing it could - spin web as an honour for them. This actually saved them from the search party because the soldeirs reckoned that if the entrance was filled with spider web, then logically nobody has entered the cave recently. Thus saving them from being discovered. He ended the explanation of the story along the lines of “…since all the cave spider could do was web-making, then just doing that is honoring God …”

I turned around to V and exclaimed “web making!”

I guess there’s no turning back from this one… I’m reporting for work boss…

I’ll be turning 35 in a couple of minutes and today at Church, i was just thinking, it took me 35 years of learning about and running away from God before finally coming back to believing in Him.  So i guess i owe the next 35 to Him to be building His kingdom…

It’s not going to be easy and its definitely going to be a long journey, but i guess we’ll see how that turns out. Nothing is impossible.

Have had quite good meals over the birthday weekend. Started out with a Japanese ala carte buffet for a NET gathering yesterday, a seafood lunch this afternoon and finally a Japanese BBQ for dinner and TCC for desert. Yum!

So after hearing about this Wagyu beef thing for so long and wondering what a $100 burger can taste like, i finally got round to sampling some of this delicious beef at Gyu Kaku in UE Square. Truly amazing! Softest and smoothest beef i’ve ever eaten.  I do recommend this to all meat-anarians out there. You must try this at least once in your life. I guess the next step is to check out Kobe beef.  Although i don’t think i’ll be able to taste the difference.

I gave myself a  birthday gift of a Canon Powershot G10. Have been getting restless without a hobby lately and since V has given me the duties to be cameraman for our kids’ precious moments, i’ve decided to invest a little in a better camera and start to learn all those mumbo jumbo aperture, ISO thingies to take better shots. As you can see from this pic, i really do need a lot more practise :p

Managed to grab some me-time to go cycling about the east coast. This picture was taken before the sky came down on me! Had to take shelter for half an hour before heading back all drenched. Was wondering what the reason was for all the ships to be painted red and black. I’m sure there is a technical reason for this.

Always had this idea that the Esplanade and Swissotel made a great phallic shot. My opportunity came along when we were hearded up a duck-tour recently. Not sure how, but the iPhone even gave a little hazy fish-eye lens effect at the edges

Some cynics may think this is the ultimate symbol of this country where the citizens get done over in many ways.

Enjoy!

As with any of our new life projects, we start it all by doing some basic research. Surfing the net, reading forums and such. And finally this weekend we popped by a baby hypermart in Kaki Bukit and Mothercare in Harbourfront to look-see and check out what sort of budgets we’re looking at.

I guess most couples would experience the same thing where the guy gets to choose the stroller and car seat cos its a more gadgety thing to do. So i’ve been swarming myself with specs like umbrella-folding, rear-facing, height-adjustable, 5-position, ISO fix etc The options are bewildering and you get caught up with thinking about how heavy, how easy to open, does it work with newborns, got brakes, bigger wheels etc  Which just shows how great the marketing of these products are and the way they differentiate themselves when all you need is a blinking seat with 4 wheels which can hold a baby and fold up to be kept.

So although its pretty tempting to treat this as another gadget acquisition exercise, i’m going to keep my head and just go with something that works! And we figured that since the kid won’t be leaving the house much, at least for the first few months, we’d probably get the wheels after we get the kid home first…

V’s RCIA class finally got baptised today! And she did her confirmation as a Catholic because her baptism has already been recognised. Mum and dad were there for the mass and aunt C was her godparent. It brings us to the end of an 11 month journey through the iniation process of the Church and it has opened my eyes onto the inner workings of Church groups etc

Its interesting to note how long and difficult it is to get baptised here as opposed to just saying you believe, and jumping into a pool of water. I guess its kind of a test of committment for the newbies to show sincerity and the ability to go the long haul. We’ve even seen people “drop out” after coming for lessons for 7 months or so. Its nice to know its really not a numbers driven game here to convert as many people as possible and if people are not really ready, they should really think about it more and possibly do it sometime down the road when they are ready.

On a personal note, I’ve got to make it a point never to use the “us and them” syntax with V because we have had intense discussions over the differences between Catholicism and Protestant beliefs. And technically now we’re on the same side of the fence.

I just had this thought cross my mind that its kinda like KFC chicken, original vs crispy… In the end, its all chicken.

Call to reception into the full communion of the Catholic Church

Originally uploaded by gr3gtan