que pasa

I am typig on my brand new wireless Logitech keyboard and using the wireless mouse that comes with it too.  Hadn't realized how small and cramped my laptop keyboard was until this gift came in.  My arms and fingers are more stretched out... IT FEELS GREAT!! 

The keyboard also has all these nifty hotkeys to help you be more efficient, especially if you're a hotkey kinda person (i.e. you don't like to keep moving your right hand from your keyboard to your mouse and you prefer to use combination of a few buttons on your keyboard to achieve the same results e.g. switching from one window to another, copying/pasting text etc.)

My keyboard even makes a little chirp when a new email comes in, or I press the Capslock button, cute.

Plus it looks really nice and it's not a noisy keyboard, you know, the one where it click-clacks with every button you press. 

It's not the ergonomic type... I never got into those keyboards.  I find my right and left index fingers crossing over to the "other side" every now end then.  I wonder if it's because I type funny. 

Anyway, I just read this review of the keyboard and mouse because I wanted to show you some pictures, I feel like I did Logictech an injustice with such a lame review.  But I really like it!

F and I decided to start throwing some frisbee.  We both kinda know how to play, but we're no where near professional.  Found a great pitch though. 

Thought it would be nice to get a group going, been trying for the past month and a half.  We really struggled at first, 5 people, 6.  Yesterday, we got 11.  YES! Finally some action :)

Great weather too.  Sunny.  Might start getting incredibly hot but then I'm just happy that we're getting this going.  Now if we can just hit 14 for a 7 aside game. 

Wow, finally got around to watching Susan Boyle's performance of I Dreamed a Dream on Britain's Got Talent.  Geez, that was a lovely and incredible.  Talk about something bring a smile to your face.  Wow.  :)

This week I was busy preparing for to present our company's projects to a visiting Dutch delegation. They were on tour in China to get a feel of the country, the market, and visit some companies, and I was contacted to see if our company would like to present on Friday (yesterday).

They wanted to hear from a foreign investor's perspective what it was like to deal in China, things to look out for, lessons learnt and so on. They also were interested in companies pertaining to new media and so we offered to introduce 2 of our projects to them.

Jose did the investor perspective presentation and I would prepare the material for the project companies. Since one of the project CEO's was able to speak English well enough, we let him present one and I would present the other project. So it was back to slide churning again.

After you get your final deck of slides, then it's practicing your presentation. The way I saw it, this was an opportunity to get an early stage investment partner in for our projects. And it was also an opportunity to show our value-add as an investor to this project's CEO and to the visiting delegation. So I knew I had to be good.

And now that the seminar is over, I know that my pitch worked. You can feel it when you've connected with the audience, you can feel the high attention level. And you know it for sure when you get complimented repeatedly on an entertaining and really good presentation, applause and all that.

But I know also that the project itself is interesting, it's exploring a new frontier in China. That's why it had gotten people's attention, that's why they were expressing interest. We had dinner with a small group from the delegation last night and after that, 2 of them pulled Jose aside and expressed intent to invest in this project. So there'll be more work after this.

I am encouraged because these are indicators that we are doing something right. And that we are working well together for this project. The CEO does his thing to create and deliver a project that is meaningful and valuable in China, and that as the first and main investment partner, we seek, pitch and sell the project to potential investors, and do the negotiations. 

There is still a very long way to go, and no deal has been made yet. But gosh it feels good to have a sign that says you're headed in the right direction.

I finally got my act together and got an electric toothbrush.  Man, I should have done it a long time ago.  My teeth now have this really nice and clean feeling after using the electric toothbrush.  I now feel like, how could I have held out for so long? 

So about a week after my first brush, my toothbrush started being funky like its motor was working in spurts or something.  I was a bit surprised at first, wondering why an braun/oral-b product would be like that.  Then I realized its battery was almost flat and so I charged it.  Now it’s back to normal.  :)

Anyway, if you’re still wondering whether you should switch to electric toothbrushes, take it from me, I feel good! (na-na-na-na-na-na-na) 

Go get yours today.

For the first time in a very long time I sat down to watch the F1 Grand Prix on Sunday night. It was the British Grand Prix and Kimi Raikkonen, Finnish, representing Ferrari, won. Yay!

I started following the F1 Grand Prix when I was in college. During summers when I was back home, my dad and I would plunk down on the sofa in front to the TV and watch the cars speed around the circuit. Whatever dinner plans we had would work around that race timing. If we were ever late, we’d only miss a few laps and there’d still be lots more to go.

Those were the days when Mika Hakkinen was still around. I was rooting for Michael Schumacher but Mika seemed to be the better driver. Then when Mika left the F1 world, Michael ruled the circuit. His brother Ralph became a driver and seemed to have some potential, but I always supported Michael, well, because I think Ferrari is cooler than McLaren. Then this Kimi came onto the scene representing McLaren and he sure gave Michael a run for his money.

I can’t remember why I stopped watching… but it’s been a few years since I’ve really paid attention to the sport. Michael has since retired. But when I followed the race on Sunday, I was kinda excited about it again.

These days, Lewis Hamilton, British, representing McLaren, is creating headlines with his good and steady performance and the fact that he’s leading the drivers’ ranking. But because I’m a Ferrari supporter, I’m happy that Kimi won. And it helps that Kimi looks better too… haha. (I mean, sometimes you just wonder what they look like… all you usually see is them in their helmet whizzing around in their cars.)

As of now, Lewis still leads the drivers’ scoreboard, and McLaren the manufacturers’, but it looks like this season should be more competitive.  Go Kimi!

You’ve probably noticed, I had a lot to say in June.  A blog post for every working day last month except for the 8th. the 8th was actually a mistake; I thought I had one for that day, but apparently not.

I hadn’t originally planned to blog that much but I guess things just worked out that way. I was reading interesting articles, had more inspiration to write and stuff. And on the 3rd week of June I decided I would make a run for it… see if I could go till the end of the month. And I have.

I wanted to get a feel of what it would be like to be one of those more concientious bloggers who have to post something everyday. I realize that I don't have to think up something everyday. Somedays, I have a few ideas in the same day and I'll generate 2-4 posts and preset the publish date. This then gives me some space for days when I've just got nothing to say.

But I think June was special month, I was on a roll. Lately the news hasn’t been particularly exciting, so I’ll slow my pace down some. Anyway, it was nice to be on a roll, you don’t get those everyday.

I love my new handphone, you know that? It’s a Nokia 6300.

Apparently the 6300 was designed to appeal to the same users who loved the Nokia 6100 – which is also me. My new phone is so gorgeous compared to that old heap I was using previously. (After I misplaced my 6100, I inherited my dad’s phone since he wanted to upgrade and I didn’t see any handsets that I liked enough to buy). I call it an old heap because every time I had to set the date for various reasons, I always had to change the year from its default setting i.e. 2004 – which is probably when that model came out.

I’m not one of those people who want all this cool stuff on my phone. I remember when I was back in Singapore in May, uptowngal was telling me about this phone she really liked, I think it was the N95. Whoa, it was like this hunk of metal that had all these functions (which is doing wonders for her I imagine) and I knew for sure it wasn’t the phone for me because it was just too much for me to handle.

Then meeshell said, “I know just the phone for you.”  It’s funny, her description, and the fact what she said appealed to me might say actually something about me too. “It looks really nice but it’s got nothing inside.” Well, that’s not really an accurate description but in comparison with its contemporaries, the 6300 is simpler. And that was exactly what I was looking for. I just wanted to very beautiful piece to carry around that would fulfill my communication needs.

After 1 month of thinking about it, I finally have it. And I love it. *beam*

The other day, I received a care package from the States.  A friend had casually asked for my address and I did thought she was going to send a card or something. 

It turned out to be a bag of my favorite gummy candy, Swedish fish.

For those of you who don’t know, Swedish Fish candy looks like this.  They are usually red in color.  The normal Swedish Fish gummy is about 2.5cm (1 inch) long.  

And the regular-sized packet looks like this. 

The bag of candy I received though contained giant Swedish Fish measuring about 5cm (2 inches) long!  1.5kg (3.5 lbs) of such red monsters loomed inside the massive bright yellow packaging. 

My Chinese colleagues who had never seen such candy before thought someone had sent me a big bag of clothes detergent powder. 

Apparently they call it the “wholesale pack”.  I call it a “random act of Swedish madness”.  Thanks Mug-mug!

Quick congratulate me...  I just discovered that my post on Generation Gap is being used as a source for a project concerning the generation gap in Singapore.  Here it is: http://www.kn.sbc.com/wired/fil/pages/webdiscussimi.html Look under the "Young Singaporeans' point-of-view" section.  I have no idea who the project leader is, but hey I'm glad she found my post useful for her students. Makes me feel real good... like I have been published or something.  Then again, you never know.  Maybe the students are blasting me in their report.  Oh heck.

So, while we are on the topic of referencing, I still find that I have to do this quite a bit at work.  Always got to cite your sources, I remember my professor telling us repeatedly.  I find that even in my conversations, I like to cite people... only that my memory is so bad that it ends up going something like this.

"Hey, who was it that said that....?"

"I don't know.  When did it happen?"

"You know, that time when we were out with Anna and Paul, and then suddenly whats-his-face showed up?  Yeah, that's the guy I'm referring to.  What's whats-his-face's name?"

Yes, everybody goes by the name "whats-his-face" or "whats-her-face" at some point in time.  Especially if it was just a fleeting encounter.  I do not mean to be rude.  I am just so incredibly lousy with names.  All those tricks they teach you about imagining a picture above the person's head when they introduce themselves (like "Honey Han Ee"), or adding an alliterative adjective before their name (like "Lucky Leonard")... they do not work for me.  The only thing that does work is for me to be upfront and say," I'm very bad with names so please forgive me if I forget yours.  No offence intended."  But of course I try not to let the person know that I have already forgotten the person's name by the time I finish that sentence.  Rest assured once we actually have some experiences together, I will remember your name. 

My parents used to play memory games with me.  They would put a set of items in a box, we would stare at them for 10 seconds, and then they would cover the box and we would try to list down as many things we could remember on our own papers.  I always did poorly.  Which probably explains why I always get lost and have such poor sense of direction - I can read maps fine, but when I walk out of a building I just have no "gut instinct" of which direction we should be headed in.  No worries though, we shall eventually reach the destination.

I have completely digressed on what I really wanted to say on this post, how typical.  I meant to continue on about how this month has been really quite good for my blog.  The search engines have also been kind.  I must be using the right key words in my posts because my blog is showing up more often in search results.  My hits have also been a whole notch higher than last month...  You guys have really been giving the Refresh button a workout huh?  THANKS :) 

Thanks for reading.  For putting me on your Favorites list, for swinging by regularly and leaving comments.  Always good to know that someone cares about what I think or feel.  Or wants to know what sort of new nonsense I have to spout.  Or finds that I can make them laugh, or that they can relate to what I am saying.  Sweet.