Where Lions and Designers converge

"10 Touch Points" is a project that puts people in the center of the design process of our public places. YOU, WE the citizens, can nominate and vote for the top things in our Lion city that can do with some re-design, eg hawker centers, mailboxes, for better living. The top 10 favourites will be picked for local designers to work on and to bring to reality in public.

Designers, you can pick to work on the top 10 nominations by applying online before 11 Jan 2007
Other design competitions can be found at: Design Singapore Org.

Xmas lights 2006

Lots of gold, dripping jewels, hanging birds.

Collaborative doodles

One of the things I have to do now at my new job is to check out what are the tools available online that encourages collaboration among users. We then try and find out how they are used and think about how these features can be adopted in our projects. We can then create the "service concepts" of the tools we could potentially build.

Right, what I just wrote probably sounds like dilbert nonsense "blah blah blah" to most people. Never mind, basically what I am leading to is...the discovery of this fun tool created by GE.
My team ended up in giggles over the bad artwork we created together.

Fool around with your friends at the Imagination Cube.

Squeak and Moo

Here's the unveiling of my sister's crafts blog - squeak and moo - which she set up with an old friend. It shares notes on handicrafts and ideas, plus works of their own crafts made as an outlet for their creativity. I guess it's a way for these two graphic designers to keep a grasp on their sanity whilst putting up with the endless drills of baby feeds and smelly diaper changes.

The stuff there look like great fun, it makes me itch to pick up my needles again and perhaps make that last effort to finish my own craft. The stitchings on my peranakan shoes; it has just this little bit to go and it's a shame (squeak!) that I haven't touched them in over 5 years (boo!).

22 years on

Had a fabulous class gathering yesterday. It was called partly to celebrate the return of Paul and family from Denmark after 3 years. I didn't call everyone, just a manageable few handful. We went to Marche at Suntec and it was packed. So good to see everyone again. We looked not a day older since the time we graduated (I am lying of course); that was all we could hoped.

We laughed heaps and enjoyed each others' company. Regardless of the statuses of our classmates now, MD or lawyers or what-nots, there was no escape from the ribbing. It raised one uproar after another as long buried memories were called up and the discovery of little strange details our classmates remembered of us. We even ran into Adrian Pang at another table, on his nite out baby-sitting his boys while his wife was on duty. Even he was not spared from the teasings of how proud his old chinese teachers must be to have one of their anglophilic "kentang" sons join chinese drama.

My best autographer (see old entry "Mementos"), Tzu.K, was also there, looking gorgeous and slim, and fussing over me like his long lost sister. He questioned how I got such nice complexion. I insisted all the credit has to go to SKII, the poison seemed to work remarkably well. Although at the back of my mind, I secretly believed it was really all that job hopping that has helped to keep some of the wear and tear at bay.

Ms Dewey

This search engine is..a hot babe. With an attitude. A bit of a xiao ting tong and Oh gawd, she swears too.

I wonder when they will come out with a Mr. Dewey. Hmm...

Pastime

Piccahsoh's favourite pastime

SMU

Was given a campus tour of SMU and this place is really something. Collectively five buildings in the heart of the city, the schools are linked underground by a long corridor which is said to be a kilometre long. The underground walkway is actually opened to public and has banks, eateries and shops.

This is the pretty view from the top of the Li Ka Shing Library, so named after the school received $19 million in donations.

An event held in the underground activity area during which the students undergo a challenge of endurance of standing on one leg for the longest period. A game only youth possesses the folly and physicality to participate. The last record is over 5 hours, this one is anticipated to be 10 hours. Who knows?

Our student tour guide raved about their gym which is said to cost half a million dollars.

Their lecture theatres may not be large but are the state of the art and the best ones are equipped with 8 movable white boards, two projection screens side by side, two large LCD panels for video conferencing, two smaller LCD panels for displaying projected material so that lecturer doesn't need to repeatedly turn his neck back to see the projection screens behind him. All these controlled from a small touchscreen LCD panel. They just haven't made the whiteboards capable of erasing automatically that's all.
The projectors can be controlled to show a freezed frame of the previous slide on one screen and present the new slide on the other. The well-wired room also allows the lecturer to choose to project what is on a student's computer onto the projector screen for discussion, displaying it next to the image of his computer screen.

Things have come a long way. In my time, my lecturers were still using transparencies, if at all.

My two front teeth and my funny hair

Mummy mummy, can I get a new haircut soon?

Starting afresh

Recent news report the wife of the criminal who ran off with $10 million has filed for divorce to take over the care of the apartment and childrens' insurance. Wise move. So many people have been betrayed for their faith in the man's character, and no one more so than his wife.

I think to most people, if this event happened to them personally, they would have preferred sudden death of the person than such betrayal. I still cannot fathom how someone who has shown all signs of lovingness to his three daughters and wife, can just abandon them with such ruthless totality. Could greed alone surpassed all that? The situation so challenges your past beliefs about this man that you start to question your own judgement.

Integrity? Love? Faith? Truth? What about this person has truly been real in the past? One doesn't know anymore.
The only plausible theory that I can come up with to explain for his actions is he seized the chance to finally go off to live a life he has secretly wanted all along, forsake easily what had only been a cover, to live above scrutiny and beyond the public reach, given the $10 million to start all over. A life with another man...