Tower Defense

Had been working all day long and my brain juice drying up....
Time for some relax, and I found this little game from MetaCafe, very simple, but somehow I got hooked up and play until 3am in the morning... :-D

This is how it looks like:


All you need to do is to defense your tower. There's 10 citizens in the tower and the intruders will come in from the upper left entrance, following the dark gray pathway. You need to build cannons which either shoot out fire, water, or wood. There's also thunder and boom that you can use (but I found these 2 rather useless).


My highest score is 68!... had scored 67 many times, but 68 is still far the best for now.

Here goes the URL for the game: http://www.metacafe.com/watch/916942/video/R/CFD_1002/

Update scoring 77:

MOE of Ireland Exam Sheet?

Whether it is true to not an official exam sheet, I doubt, but you have fun doing it.

Credit Card Call, Real or Scam? Time for 2-Factor Phone Authentication?

A couple of days ago, I received a call from a credit card company that I'm holding credit card with them. I was asked for my address to confirm my request of card replacement. Well, I didn't request for any card replacement! That raise a big alarm to me, so I was very reluctant to reveal anything with him. This is how it goes, paraphrased:

Me: I didn't request for any card replacement.
Him: From our record, it shows that you've request for a card replacement, on Nov 7.
Me: (after thinking..) Well, could it be a card upgrade? I did request for a card upgrade.
Him: I'm not sure if it is a card upgrade, as our system didn't show that information, it is a card replacement.
Him: Anyway, I need to confirm your address for the delivery of the card.
Me: Ok, can you tell me the address that you are going to send to?
Him: Before I proceed with that, I need to verify you are the Card Holder, may I have you NRIC No?
Me: Errr... mm... Why don't you just tell the address and I just confirm with you.
Him: Sorry, I have to verify that you are the valid card holder first before proceeding.
Me: (.... pause for awhile to think...) That sounds suspicious! I mean....
Him: (... also paused, he seems puzzled as well)
Me: I didn't ask for a card replacement after all!
Him: Okay, did you hold the credit card no. xyxy-xyxy-xyxy-xyxy?
Me: (After checking ...) No, I didn't have that card. I have 2 cards with you, but none of these 2 has that number.
Him: Okay, let me tell you what cards you are holding, you have one card zyzy-zyzy-zyzy-zyzy and another byby-byby-byby-byby.
Me: Oh yeah, you are right!
Him: Can I ask a few questions for verification purpose?
Me: Yes, please.
.... it continues as usual .. and I passed the verification.

Yesterday, I've received my "replacement" card, which essentially a card upgrade.

But looking at it, it is still possible for someone to imitate the call and I really can't verify since the caller ID doesn't mean anything nowadays (can be forged). I guess next time when I encounter this again, I'll get his name and extension and then make sure that I can call him back thru the bank's official number. Some sort of 2-Factor Phone Authentication? anyone?

Back to blogging...

Had been long didn't blog, and ever since so many things changed, I'm back now and will start to post up what had happened for the past few months... Dizzy in office after eating this big Japanese Food @ Shenton House @ 1pm @ SGD5.50. Thanks for Richard and indirectly Pete that brought me there.

My Wife @ Jakarta, Indonesia

Back dated post, 5 Nov 2007.

What we eat?

We take this time to stay in our new house, so that we can meet up contractors easily.

So that's our old master room wardrobe, being dismantled.



And our cloths hanging... looks like hostel for foreign construction worker?


Subway, our favorite, this is from Orchard Borders.



Without TV and Cooking essentials, we are always "on the go", shopping at orchard to spend vouchers collected from wedding and eating outside of course.


The super big mutabak from Tampines Central.


Also super big, nasi brinari from Tampines Central.

Back dated post, 5 Nov 2007.

Our new old house...

This is our new old house, empty, without furnitures and very old 80's fashion.

Without stove and oven, basically nothing except an electrical kettle in the kitchen, what we can afford is just packet snacks, that's our potato chips and my sleepy wife.


Our classic HDB gate.


The view from our corridor, we are at the 2nd highest floor.

This is how we keep our potato chips tight and "fresh", creative enough?

Back dated post, 5 Nov 2007.

My First YouTube Upload! Wall Sawing

I'm getting crazy?... maybe... or some others are even more crazy?

Saw this uncommon and unmanned wall sawing just outside my office at Cintech I, Science Park I.

How many people in there?

Food and food... from stall to office.

This is what we have last friday night, after my wife and her sister go for chinese doctor.
It was nearby, around pelangi, a small place with stalls.
There's prawn noodle here! RM3 but not as nice as the one I had before.
So my wife had her favourite fried kuei tiao and 3 of us shared the rojak.

JB had been very terrible and peace less, just for the short 30mins when we are having our dinner here, there's a gang of 3 motor bike pass by and try to rob a passerby.
Heard from the stall owners, this is not the first time, it happened yesterday and a few times before too.

Oh, I've forgotten to mention my special drink, as you can see in the picture, it's called DONDONG (沙梨), quite rare to find it and is quite nice.

Saturday morning, fetching my mother-in-law to work, as father-in-law has to go to school to visit teacher and get report card for brother-in-law.

So what is this picture all about? was trying to shot the car in front, which its car plate was broken and left only 1 alphabet, but my hand phone camera was too slow.

Doggie! Cute Doggie @ Tampoi.

In the late afternoon, we went Holiday Plaza, to shop around and buy GOLD, real gold, which is for my sister-in-law's wedding. We saw this funny notice, this is how it read "Sorry!!! I'm on M.C. Leave For .... 3 months (Broken Leg) ,Management". That's a creative one.

Sunday morning, finally we make up our mind to go to church.
We went to 蒙福 Church at Taman Johor, but we are too early and end up shop for 30mins at the morning market nearby.

And are privileged to meet Garfield there, so now I know where he had been hiding.

And its Tuesday, I'm back in office, eating snack before getting to lunch.

Lock Smith Advertisement

Taken with my N70 camera phone, my office @ Science Park 1.

Did you see this before?

This is taken in the gents. I'm wondering if the ladies also have one.

So... what so special about the sticker?

I've passed by so many times and this morning only pay attention to it.

it's the 25 hours!

The Earliest!

Not to ask you to count the number of hair on my harry hand, but it's the time indicated on my watch, its 8:30pm yesterday (well well, the date seems to be wrong on my watch).

This is the earliest time so far we've reach home @ Johor.

Lunch w/Mandy @ Italianics, The Curve

This is where I park my car, best to have a camera phone ya? shot the parking location and you'll never lost the way back to your car after party.

So, I parked at C32, P2.

Mandy and My Wife!
Mandy is my good friend since my third year in secondary school.
She is quite a unique girl, open minded, cheerful, and very helpful.

She brought her wedding registration album for us to view,
it was a 40 pages custom made bounded album.
And that's Mandy, claiming that the cover page wasn't that nice,
so she actually cut a picture of she and her hubby paste it on the corner,
and a 3M scotch tape fixing up the word "Wedding Registration" in the center.
Simple, Creative, Nice.

My lovely wife and me!

Three of us chit-chat and talked about the old school day, where I used to call her almost everynight, asking what homework due for tomorrow and what to bring tomorrow. And that's where our friendship builds up. Well, she is the one that got my ears to songs from 周华健，陈升，李宗盛.
She used to be a big fan of them :-D

This is the cappuccino cake, topped with coca power and layers of ice-cream soaked in thin pool of chocolate syrup. It was really big, and of course nice! My wife simply love it and wanted to much to make one her own.

Caesar Salad w/Chicken, you've got slices of grape and cubes of mango in there, with really fresh lettuces and mayonnaise dressing. Again, big serving, enough for 3 of us.

This is the "main dish", because both me and my wife were very full, so we didn't order any main course, but this starter to fill our crave for cheesy Italian dish. So we have this spinach and artichoke backed with cheese, served with garlic bread.

It was a great meal and a rush one though.
We've bought ticket departing from Pudu Raya @ 4:30pm,
and yet still eating at this nice Italian restaurant till 3:40pm.

So, what we do is... vroom vroooom.. speeding back home.
Manage to reach home by 4:15pm (cool?)
And my dad fetch us to bus interchange station, again, vroom vroom.
We reach there just nice, 4:29pm and broad the bus, which we are the last 2 passenger.

:-) With SAAB Turbo, you'll never be late.

Dinner @ Tampoi Batu Lima

RM4 delicious laksa, I don't eat that though,
mine was hand made noodle (板面) which doesn't taste so nice. :-(

RM5 Clams (鲜蛤), which my wife found very bloody.
What you see here is only half of what it is serving.

And we have a share dish of very nice 猪肠粉 too.

Tuesday night is also the pasar malam (night market) night here,
we had the small yellow beans from there, which is all in my stomach now.

Streamyx up and running!

Finally, the TMNet Streamyx ADSL line at my in-law's house is up and running perfectly now.
I can start blogging everyday again without stealing my office time for that.

So, there's some tips on what I've done (trivial):
1) Call 100 for TMNet hotline.
2) They'll ask you to call 1300-889515 instead, just call it.
3) You'll be greeted with answering machine:
Press 2 - English Speaking
Press 1 - Internet, Streamyx
Press 3 - Technical Support
4) A short note of "simple resolution" will be played to you asking you to turn off and on the modem.
5) Wait till a customer service officer pick up your call.
6) If the attempt to solve you problem failed, you'll be assigned a report number for followup.
7) Wait for 24 hours, if they didn't update you, call them up again, quoting your report number.
8) Do this everyday, bugging them NICELY, and they'll get it solve for you.

So, it end up is that the contact point just outside the house is rusted and need to be changed. And it works perfectly now (I hope it will last of course..)

The symptom for my case is, the ADSL signal is very unstable, sometime you can online for a while and can't for another long while. And when you can online, picking up the phone or somebody called up will break the connection. You'll hear some humming sound on the handset too even though you've put on a working microfilter properly.

So good luck to you if you are having problem with your Streamyx ADSL line, I know that, it is very irritating.

Cane or no cane, singapore spammer?

Quoted from IDA website:

The Spam Control Act 2007 will come into effect on15 June 2007. It aims to address the still-growing and global problem of spam.

The Act will offer a framework to better manage unsolicited commercial electronic messages sent in bulk, otherwise known as "spam". Spam is estimated to make up the bulk of all e-mails sent worldwide.

The legal guidelines are reasonably easy for marketers to follow and for consumers to understand. It will not offer complete respite from spam, but consumers will get a measure of protection from spam.

Under the Act, marketers - particularly those based in Singapore or who have operations here - who continue to spam the "not interested" group face potential financial penalties. The statutory penalty is $25 for each electronic message, up to a total of $1 million.

Globally, similar laws have been introduced for instance in the United States of America, Japan, South Korea and Australia.

Singapore had just passed the Spammer Act, I suppose it is a good thing, and business minded technology venture might start of flood the market with some anti-spamming products for networks.

While I'm reading some tech news, there's this funny article about Why Singapore Spammers Didn't get Canning:
http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/16037

Read it up and don't forget to read the comments as well, let me know your thoughts.

Citibank "Temporary Delay"

I got this message while trying to login to CitiBank Internet Banking, "Temporary delay"? I've no idea what does it mean, what do you think? Result of a policy where keywords like "maintenance", "problem", "error" cannot be appear on corporate website?

Moving Moving!!

Very tired!!! Was looking for my Aztech modem as well as compiling my list of items to move last night till 2:30am.

The summary as follows:
1) 21 unboxed items
2) 56 boxes (big and small sizes)

My K2 Skate and My wife's Tecnica Skate, we'll miss it for 3 months from now.

Scene at my new house.

Lots of boxes at the back!

That's the very old cupboard, originated from NTU Hall 4, by my good yiperng brother!

It was indeed rushing this morning, my mover came late by about 2 hours! and reaching tampines at about 12am and move all stuff in the small room provided by uncle. And then, thanks to Lewis my agent, he drove me to Aztech @ Ubi and I've got my DSL305E fixed in 15mins and that cost me S$15 though. And after that, rush to work @ 2pm.

It's rainbow!

While we went on our way along the road to Singapore Custom last saturday, it rains...
But wait.. it's wonderful, it'ss rain bow!

Genesis 9
12 And God said, "This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come:
13 I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth.
14 Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds,
15 I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life.
16 Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth."

We actually saw the full rainbow (half circle), very significant and very nice.

That lights up my day as we pack and move our stuffs back to JB.
Thanks be to our wonderful God.

I'm crusing...

Crusing on my Starhub Cable, downloading Visual Studio Service Pack from my server hosted in Qala Singapore. As compared to max at 70KB/s at my Robinson Office...

Wedding Photos...

A year passed by... and I still haven't sort it out...

There it goes:
My Google's Picasa Albums

You can also try your luck here:
Riya Visual Search

Wanted to post here as well, my good friend's wedding link.


Mandy and Mr.Cool ROM, which I had the honor to be guest on their cruise.

And Their Wedding Dinner, which I've missed it.

And not to forget also, Brother Andrew, photographer for both mine and Mandy's wedding.

And James Wong, Oon Teng and How Seng, my photographers in Singapore!

How about ... some peers that is upcoming?

My Sister In-Law - Marcus and Nicole
My Good Friends - Kang Hong and See Lai

Let me know if I've missed out yours...

Well, my wife start to nag me.. why they got nice wedding website and we don't have...?
My answer? Busy ma... and ... I love you. (she'll smile and that's enough for now.)