Arts or Science Stream
Teenagers in secondary school often face the dilemma of which stream to choose for their education. Arts or science or a combination of both?

My personal experience says that Science in school is a better bet. It has made me a more rounded person who is able to indulge in what ever field that comes my way.

But wait a minute, am I not an accountant?

I find that picking up accounting is easy, no matter how old you are. The foundation is narrow and once you grasp it, everything else is easy. I studied accounting when I took a professional accounting course after high school.

On the other hand, you will need years of study for a solid science foundation. You cannot skimp on mathematics, biology, chemistry or physics. The topics are far and wide and everyone of them essential for further understanding. One would never be able to pick up these foundations on their own if not for school.

Even within the sciences, selecting Biology over Additional Maths widens my scope. But, if one aspires to be an engineer then that is not an option.

Frankly, I dislike accounting as I find it boring compared to science. I would not have picked up on accounting if I had not been forced to study it. However, being an accountant has taught me many skills such as economics and law, besides the various subgroups of accounting.

Sciences on the other hand, are one of my loves. I would devour any science article to feed my insatiable thirst for science.

Computers is a hobby and my tendency to learn IT is natural. I do not need to attend any class for computers.

Strangely, thanks to Wikipedia (an open encyclopedia), I've developed a thirst for history.

Consequently, I can hold a conversation with almost anyone from any profession.

New survey website
Mood:  celebratory
My first LAMP website is up.

Survey of the Leadership Attributes of the President of MCA - www.mcasurvey.info

The survey was written for a good friend who is doing the final part of his thesis for a Doctor of Business Administration (DBA).

The survey uses PHP and MySQL for respondents registration. Upon registration, they are given access to the Adaptive Conjoint Analysis (ACA) survey.

The ACA survey was written using Sawtooth Software Inc. survey software. It is a specialised tool for marketing research.

I enjoyed this exercise thoroughly as I had to learn in a span of 2 months:
1. PHP
2. MySQL
3. shared webhosting
4. Adaptive Conjoint Analysis

I finally learned how the Marginal Utility studied in microeconomics are quantified. Conjoint analysis produces these utiles in numeric format. With these data, one is able to perform 'what if' analyses - what product to produce, any segments that are still not served, etc.

In this survey, we are trying to determine what Leadership Attributes are important to the people. In this case it is what the Malaysian Chinese Association's member look for in their president. Does charisma play an important part? Or must he have high academic qualifications? This survey will find out.

Further to that, we are helping Sawtooth Software Inc in one of their research, using this MCA Leadership survey. They want to test whether one of the steps in conjoint analysis - Importance - is really that important. So, half the respondents would be answering the Importance section, while the other half will not but this is compensated by additional questions in the other sections.

I'm happy to be part of 2 different academic research imultaneously.

So, go ahead and try the survey, but please answer honestly. :-)

MBO
Mood:  celebratory
Management Buy Out - not Management By Objective.

MBO is the way to progress personally. This is where the top management takes over the ownership of the company from the current shareholders - essentially making the company their own.

It beats having to start up a company with all its accompanying risks, from scratch. It is motivating because one is no longer busting their ass for someone else. One's efforts is for ownself.

This has always been my strategy but I never expected it to happen to me so soon. I'm only 33 years young. :-)

But, I've been working for 15 years. So, I guess I've earned it.

Crossroad again
Here's another life's crossroad again.

I finally accepted Jimmy's offer to take over his stake in the company. This makes Thomas and I, equal partners.

So now life becomes unstable again until the business stabilises and recover.

Football fever
Every two years, I become a football fan - World Cup and Euro. After the events finish, the fan will hibernate and I'll lose my interest in football again.

Euro 2004 kicked off yesterday. After watching "The Punisher" yesterday, Boon Ping and Seng Yau suggested crashing at my place as usual. At first I refused, but in the end I relented.

We watched 2 mathes 0000 hours and 0245 hours local time. And those 2 were drowsing off during the 2nd match. Talk about who's the fan.

F*cking adwares
A short while ago, Phang seeked my help to see if I can access a website http://www.zz118.com (do not try this). I couldn't get it but instead the domain name registrar installed an adware without my permission. It hijacked my Internet Explorer to its homepage. Everytime I try to type a url, it gets diverted to that site instead.

These people really prey on the ignorant. They offer a method to remove this hijack - download an uninstaller from their website. And people in forums actually did that and recommend that solution to others. NEVER TRUST STRANGERS ON THE NET. I'll bet my last dollar that that uninstaller is a trojan horse.

Now I've to look for the correct procedures to cure this malady - bloody waste of my time.

Luckily I have mozilla as an alternative browser already installed.

3 bossom buddies
21 years ago, 3 boys happened to become friends because they stayed in the same area - the front of Section 17, and took the same modes of transport to school - walk or public bus.

Although they were not classmates for most of the years, their friendship grew, spending more time together, going around in bicycles and going to the night market every Tuesday. They would sometimes screamed at the top of their lungs "Merdeka!" in the school field, after the end of major examinations, before taking a slow walk home in the twilight.

Fast forward to the present and they're still together. All three surprisingly still bachelors with pressures from their families to tie the knot. They still hang out on weekends either for movies, pool or drinks. They're so comfortable with each other that they have no qualms watching the same movies albeit in seats far apart from each other, all for the sake of catching the movie.

Many girls may have come and gone from their lives but through it all, they can still depend on each other to just come out and hang out together.

They are Chin Boon Ping, Ong Seng Yau and Jason Tan Boon Teck.

I screamed but there was no sound 2
I lost my voice for the second time in my life May 23, 2004. It started when my stomach produced excessive acid due to intense work pressure. I could feel the acid coming up my throat last week. It corroded my throat.

Then, on Saturday, I went to the Savannah Club with Boon Ping on invitation from Jeanne to a fund raising event. A mug of beer that I had relunctantly drank was probably the straw that broke the camel's back.

I could not call anyone for days. Part of my voice finally started returning on Thursday, allowing me to see my clients at Taman Botani, Putrajaya and Dataran Putra, Putrajaya. I'm getting too old for all these stress.

Managed to get back 50% the next day, and could finally use the telephone.

The first time I lost my voice was back in back in 1997 when I had a heated argument with Lee Kien. Luckily there was a hailer in the office - my colleagues can at least listen to my amplified whispers. The fax machine was extremely useful replacement for the phone then.

Mountain (learning curve) climbing again
Temptation got the better of me last night. Not wanting to do anything related to work or studies, I searched around for MySQL tutorials.

Found some, tested it, my MySQL installation months ago were working. Played around with some commands and studied the outputs. I think I've grasped it, since MySQL is a RDBMS, something that I've familiar with.

Tonight, I managed to manually install php4.3.6 and integrate it with my Apache server successfully. Scoured and studied php.

And now my mind is going to go wild thinking about new ideas on how to improve my websites. I won't have any peace of mind for a while. Arrghh!

What you learned in school
Yesterday marks the first time in my life after school, to use trigonometry - you know, sine, cosine, tangent?

I used it to to compute figures while designing the CHAMPINO Grass-hopper for Taman Wetland, Putrajaya, using AutoCAD.

Many times we often hear friends saying they've forgotten everything that I've learned in school once they graduate. Well, I do not agree. I still do remember some things I've learned. Of course, these reduce as one gets older and senile.