Do you have a better & larger TV than the most powerful man in the world? ---> Credit: Dan 

Funny quote on cricket

Was watching SBS when I came back from work. They were showing a programme which showed verbal comments and call-ins to the SBS station regarding the quality of the things they show. The funniest part was when people start calling in complaining about the clash in timing of Tour De France and the Cricket (Ashes series... don't know what that mean, but apparently that was a big event..). Poor SBS, they got bombarded by fans from both sides and I don't think they've figured a way out to solve that problem.. 1 person suggested they do a split screen thing next time... I was particularly interested in 1 caller's response to the showing of the Ashes series during the Tour De France period (& he's definitely a TDF fan):

Caller to SBS (referring to cricket): I was watching your channel the other night and saw men wearing big white suits playing some stupid ball games. What is going wrong with you guys??

Interesting comment. That's exactly my idea of cricket actually. I don't know & don't understand what's actually the fun of watching cricket at all. Don't mean to offend anyone, but it's probably as interesting as lawn bowling or golf (Yes, I put them in the same category!) to me, if they can even be considered sports at all! (Probably insulted more people with this last sentence than the previous one :) ).

Profile: Michael Jordan

Like many people, my interest in basketball was initially sparked off when I saw this legend tearing through the opponents' defences, as if they were not even there in the first place. Michael Jordan was the hero of modern basketball league, THE ONE MAN who almost single-handedly revived the ailing NBA in the mid 80s (at that time, the NBA was plagued with a lot of problems and its live attendances averaged less than 50%). Although a lot of credit was given towards the new NBA commissioner at that time for reviving the NBA brand, none of the revolutions would have happened without any star attractions. Michael became the face of NBA in USA as well as overseas and NBA viewerships suddenly skyrocketed. He then went on to lead Chicago Bulls to consecutive NBA titles, before retiring in the 94 season to play professional baseball (YES, he was actually in a PROFESSIONAL BASEBALL TEAM before!). However, after 1 season, he came back to play with Bulls again and led them to the title yet again with the famous starting five at that time: Dennis Rodman, Scottie Pippen, Tony Kukoc, ??, & of course, Michael himself. Under the legendary coach Phil Jackson, he formed the famous 'Jackson's Offensive Triangle' together with Pippen and Rodman and became the most feared offensive trio in the 90s.

Michael Jordan's other achievements in the basketball scene included being placed in the Olympics Dream Team of 1992 and also being included in almost all All-Star games throughout his career. He was also the leading scorer in the NBA with an average of 30.12 pts per game, the highest in the NBA history. He's just simply the LIVING LEGEND OF BASKETBALL....

Michael Jordan quotes:

I can accept failure, but I can't accept not trying.
Michael Jordan

Even when I'm old and grey, I won't be able to play it, but I'll still love the game.
Michael Jordan

I never looked at the consequences of missing a big shot... when you think about the consequences you always think of a negative result.
Michael Jordan

I realize that I'm black, but I like to be viewed as a person, and this is everybody's wish.
Michael Jordan

I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.
Michael Jordan

If you accept the expectations of others, especially negative ones, then you never will change the outcome.
Michael Jordan

My body could stand the crutches but my mind couldn't stand the sideline.
Michael Jordan

My heroes are and were my parents. I can't see having anyone else as my heroes.
Michael Jordan

Obstacles don't have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don't turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it.
Michael Jordan

Some people want it to happen, some wish it would happen, others make it happen.
Michael Jordan

Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships.
Michael Jordan

To be successful you have to be selfish, or else you never achieve. And once you get to your highest level, then you have to be unselfish. Stay reachable. Stay in touch. Don't isolate.
Michael Jordan

P.S. leave your thoughts & comments!

Things To Say If You Get Caught Sleeping At Your Desk

I'm sure some of you will have seen this before somewhere, but it's still pretty gd :) (& makes up for my lack of interest in blogging these days :) )

Things To Say If You Get Caught Sleeping At Your Desk

15. "They told me at the blood bank this might happen."

14. "This is just a 15 minute power-nap like they raved about in the last time management course you sent me to."

13. "Whew! Guess I left the top off the liquid paper"

12. "I wasn't sleeping! I was meditating on the mission statement and envisioning a new paradigm!"

11. "This is one of the seven habits of highly effective people!"

10. "I was testing the keyboard for drool resistance"

9. "Actually I'm doing a "Stress Level Elimination Exercise Plan" (SLEEP) I learned it at the last mandatory seminar you made me attend.

8. "I was doing a highly specific Yoga exercise to relieve work related stress."

7. "Darn! Why did you interrupt me? I had almost figured out a solution to our biggest problem."

6. "The coffee machine is broken...."

5. "Someone must've put decaf in the wrong pot."

4. "Boy, that cold medicine I took last night just won't wear off!"

3. "Ah, the unique and unpredictable circadian rhythms of the workaholic!"

2. "I wasn't sleeping, I was trying to pick up contact lens without hands."

AND THE #1 BEST THING TO SAY IF YOU GET CAUGHT SLEEPING AT YOUR DESK:

"Amen"

Credit: Dirty Dan

Current thoughts: Money or experience? ---> July 18, 2005

Dilemma, dilemma...

Here's the situation:

1 year ago, I started work as the export manager for CV Phanie Lestari, a charcoal exporting company in Indonesia (google it & u'll find me there...). After 1 year & many unsuccessful negotiations with a lot of large firms around the world, I finally clinched 1 big deal worth around S$1 million/year for a minimum of 2 years.

A bit of explanation on how we get paid in this industry. I basically get very little basic pay but the bulk of my income comes from the commission I get from clinching the deal (Exactly how much is trade secret, but it's quite sizable for a starter..).

So I thought I would be earning perpetual income for quite some time if this deal gets extended every year & I wouldn't have to worry about my own expenses anymore.. Turned out that there's no one willing to load charcoal onto their ships from Indonesia & carry it to Israel (there's formally no diplomatic relations between Jakarta & Haifa apparently..), & so gone were my opportunity of getting independent & also my earmarked travelling expenses I promised myself if the deal was successful...

Fast forward 1 year to the future.. Kitty found me an internship with NAB. Had to delay the 1st day till tomorrow because of some bureaucratic red tape issues relating to the Uni. & NAB. Good. All ready to go.. till another MSN message arrived from Haifa just a few hours ago (my client still kept in touch often even though the deal was called off..). He told me he arranged for the shipment already & the deal is back on. After 1 whole year...

To resurrect the deal, I have to send him lots of details of the contract, including the company logo. Given that he informed me only a few hours ago, I could prepare everything except for the company logo, which I have only in print & not in soft copy.

Now comes the dilemma. I could just forget he ever called me & start my 1st day of work tomorrow to find out how it's like to work in a finance (my major in commerce, along with marketing..) firm. Everything would work as usual & I can look forward to a 9-5 job for the rest of my life....

Or I could start work on Wednesday & take tomorrow off to send my client the details he needs and possibly clinch a deal. To understand why this is such a dilemma, I'll have to add that this client has actually contacted me several times over the course of the year to revive the deal. Needless to say, each time it ended up with the proposal being thrown into the bin because of problems mainly relating to the freight. This time round though, he claimed to have spoken to the HQ of the freight company and secured approval straight from there & therefore there shouldn't be any hitches. I have some reservations about that, but yet at the same time I don't want to lose the chance to finally make a sizable sum of money on my own and also secure a perpetuity which would serve as a capital base for my own venture next time, even though the chance of success might be just 10%.

So, money or experience? I made my decision: Money. Called Kitty just now to postpone the work experience till Wed, even though I'd really like to start working there. The thought of securing a large income consumed my mind so much that I just have to try it, even if it may mean another failure in the making.

Spirit of entrepreneurship? hardly. It's just that I've been accustomed to failures so much that it doesn't hurt to give 1 last try on every new thing that comes along. For people that knew me since I was in Singapore, they can vouch for the crazy things that I've done so far in my life, even if it means burning up my life savings up to that stage. I've been in some sort of pyramid schemes, purchased $40 Ipods that haven't & probably will never arrive, etc etc. It may sound crazy, but that's me. I'll try just about anything to make it out on my own, provided it sounds logical to me, even though it (the logic) hasn't served me too well in the past :)

Why does the chicken cross the road?

Look at the answers provided by the famous people, past & present:

http://www.chickenjoke.com/

Credit: Dirty Dan

Simpsons!!

1. Grandpa: My Homer is not a communist. He may be a liar, a pig, an idiot, a communist, but he is not a porn star.

2. Homer: [drunk] Look, the thing about my family is there's five of us. Marge, Bart, Girl Bart, the one who doesn't talk, and the fat guy. How I loathe him.

3. Grandpa: Dear Mr. President, There are too many states nowadays. Please eliminate three.P.S. I am not a crackpot.

4. Homer: There's your giraffe, little girl.Ralph Wiggum: I'm a boy.Homer: That's the spirit. Never give up.

5. Mr. Burns: Woah, slow down there maestro. There's a *New* Mexico?

6. Grandpa Simpson: The last time the meteors came, we thought the sky was on fire. Naturally, we blamed the Irish. We hanged more 'n a few.

7. Homer: If The Flintstones has taught us anything, it's that pelicans can be used to mix cement.

8. Ralph: When I grow up I'm going to Bovine University.

9. Titanya: But Duffman, you said if I slept with you I wouldn't have to touch the drunk!Duffman: Duffman... says a lot of things! Oh, yeah!

10. Homer: The only monster here is the gambling monster that has enslaved your mother! I call him Gamblor, and it's time to snatch your mother from his neon claws!

11. Homer: "Marge, it takes two to lie. One to lie and one to listen."

12. Bart: "There's no such thing as a soul. It's just something they made up to scare kids, like the boogeyman or Michael Jackson."

13. Homer: All right, brain. You don't like me and I don't like you, but let's just do this and I can get back to killing you with beer.

14. Homer: I'm not usually a praying man, but if you're up there, please Superman, help me

15. Scully: Homer, we're going to ask you a few simple yes or no questions. Do you understand?
Homer: Yes. (lie dectector blows up)

16. Homer: [Meeting Aliens] Please don't eat me! I have a wife and kids. Eat them!

Go to this website for a very good Simpsons creator clip:
http://www.m90.org/view_image.php?image_id=2192

Credit: Dirty Dan

Review of 1st half 2005 & aims for 2nd half 2005

Haven't been posting anything for a while now. Not that I'm busy doing anything at the moment, just have been too lazy to write these days.. After all it's holiday!! I always feel like blogging the most when I'm stressed up doing assignments or studying for exam (which explains the unusual surge in the no. of posts during June..). Now that when everything in the 1st semester is officially over, including SUG, it's time to review how well it went for me..

I had 2 aims at the beginning of the year: 1st priority, getting honours marks for my subjects & 2nd, qualify for SUG team. Not even close of getting the 1st, & although I did get into the SUG team, overall I wasn't very happy with my own performance. So I guess I can say that I pretty much screwed up the whole semester 1. I have to say that 1 of the reasons I didn't get my 1st priority done was because I concentrated too much of my time on the 2nd one, but on the other hand after looking at this year's papers, I realised I couldn't have done much better anyway if I had spent a bit more time on studying (denial, denial...).

A bit more details about the SUG. Most of the matches there were pretty boring, except for the matchup against Swinburne. There are so much more good players in Melb. Uni. than any other teams in other SUG teams (excluding Swinburne), COMBINED. Every single match was spent on trying to hit the players of the opposition teams and that provided a bit of entertainment for us in an otherwise dull week, competition-wise. I'm so looking forward to making the AUG team so that we could play stronger teams around Oz, & to do that I'm starting my own training regime. Hopefully that will let me finally achieve my aim of getting into the AUG team.....

A friend helped me get an internship in a bank she's working at (Thanks a lot Kitty!!). To be honest, I'm not really looking forward to that as 1) it pays $5/day & 2) I can't get on with my own training program if I'm working 9-5 each day. That said, I want to experience working in the industry where I'll probably spend most of my time on in the future before I graduate. I've also been getting a lot of pressure from my mom and cousin (she's more like a big sis to me than a cousin..) to get some work experience now. So yeah, I will still take up the job and probably figure out some other way to continue the training.

This job actually doesn't matter that much now as I'd definitely be working for 1 of the big companies here next sem. as part of my course. This is actually the 1 I'm really looking forward to as we'll be assigned a project & we'll be working on it for 1 whole sem. The plus side is we don't have to do any exams (yay!) but we'll do hell lot of presentation, which suits me fine as I've done plenty of those before. The negative side is I won't be getting a cent from those tightarse companies as it's part of the course...

These are my aims for the 2nd sem:
1) Get honours mark for all subjects
2) Work on the project assigned with maximum concentration and possibly secure a work deal with the company
3) Get the training program up-and-running ASAP and qualify for AUG

Hmm... what else? that's probably all for now. Be back with more posts later...

Yet another blonde joke...

A blonde (possibly Canadian) carrying a baby walks into a drug store and asks the clerk if she can use the store's baby scale.

"Sorry, ma'am," says the clerk. "Our baby scale is broken. But we can figure the baby's weight if we weigh mother and baby together on the adult scale, and then weigh the mother alone. We just subtract the second number from the first."

"Oh, that won't work," says the blonde.

"Why not?" asks the clerk.

"Because," she answers, "I'm not his mother. I'm his aunt."

Google's latest function: personality judge 

Reasons why you shouldn't post YOUR PICS ON THE NET!

Visit this website & you'll understand why....

http://www.aseltine.com/rhee/

Credit: Dirty Dan

Chinese restaurant menu

Just came back from dinner with my housemate at Shanghai Noodle House (yes, that run-down, crappy place). Food was all right (quantity over quality, I know of a person who would love that...). Apart from filling our stomach, eating there also provided us with some real entertainment when we looked at the menu and discovered some funny stuffs inside. Take a look at the following:

1) Red Bean Steamed cake ---> $4.50
2) Steamed Red bean cake ---> $4.00

WTF?? Can anybody tell what's the real difference between those two??

3) Soy sauce saturated beef ---> $7.00

Hmm... I wonder how they make the beef saturated... Derrick came up with the suggestion that they could have drowned the whole cow in soy sauce before chopping it up, hence making it saturated..

Seems like they're pretty good at making combinations of different stuffs using just 2 basic ingredients. We came up with some suggestions below (using cake & red bean):

1) Cake with steamed red bean
2) Red bean with steamed cake (They actually sell this one there,as pointed out)
3) Steamed bean with red cake(??)
4) Steamed red with bean cake (?????)

Additional ideas (From Sarah, UK):

PLEASE DO NOT BRING SOLICITORS INTO YOUR ROOM - hotel room notice in Chiang Mai

YOU ARE INVITED TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE CHAMBERMAID - hotel, Japan

SALAD A FIRM'S OWN MAKE; LIMPID RED BEET SOUP WITH CHEESY DUMPLINGS IN THE FORM OF A FINGER; ROASTED DUCK LET LOOSE; BEEF RASHERS BEATEN UP IN THE COUNTRY PEOPLE'S FASHION - taken from a menu is Poland

SPECIALIST IN WOMEN AND OTHER DISEASES - doctors office, Rome

SPECIAL TODAY - NO ICE CREAM - in a Swiss mountain inn

All right. Better stop here. Getting pretty ridiculous. Oh yeah, it would have helped if we could read chinese characters, but given that our knowledge of it is so basic, we couldn't figure out any of the dishes there with their funny english translation :)

P.S: Comments & thoughts are most welcome!!