Backup

How serious do you take backups?  I dare say very few home consumers take backups as serious as I do, because I do backups, and I do backups for backups.

I bought this current 24-inch iMac in late 2008 when my previous Ah-Beng-at-Sim Lim Square-assembled PC crashed on me.  Then, I had two Seagate hard disks installed in the CPU, but both failed within weeks of one another.  Together with the crash, I lost a lot of materials including a painstakingly-planned Hokkaido trip itinerary with related documents, the photos from a recent trip to Gold Coast with the little sis and most of my ‘technical’ photos taken during various photography class.  During that time, I kept bugging the hubby to get professional help to retrieve the files in both hard disks, but they were certified dead.  There was just no way to retrieve anything useful from them.

I learnt a very hard lesson.  Since then on, I never took backups lightly.  And I steer clear of all Seagate products if I can help it.

I don’t do things in half measures.  At the last count, I have a total of 15TB worth of external hard disk space for my backups.  The hubby thinks I’m insane.  I’ve always known that I am.

74/250

Pot of Gold… Not

Essentially, I’m just referring to my job search because I have to hold a job in order to earn my first pot of gold.  Yea, I know there are others out there who just speculate in shares and what-nots to get there, but that kind of lifestyle is just not for me.

Things have not been going too well.  I’ve gone for 3 interviews, of which 2 I really was not very interested in.  So I was glad when I didn’t nail either of them.  The 3rd one I was rather into it although it required me to travel 25km per way just to get to work.  Some things have transpired along the way, and I think they are just still two-minded about my candidature.  I’m not wasting time waiting for an outcome but honestly, I think the organisation has been rather rude.  So much for a world-class tertiary institution.

The rest of my applications are still hanging there because that particular sector (where I belonged to prior to my sabbatical) is notorious for their slow processing.  But the wait is just killing me slowly.  I have one more month of my sabbatical to go, and I really want to confirm that I have a position to return to at least half a month prior to my return.  Looking at the way things are heading, I don’t think that is going to happen anytime soon.

Overall, the local economy is not doing too well, with the exception of the health industry.  It’s very telling when I flip through the classified ads for job openings.  This is just so not a good time to be looking for a job.

72/250

My Dilemma

With just about a couple of months left of my sabbatical, I have commenced on my job search 1.5 months back.  Although technically I do have a job waiting for me, the  onus is on me to find a suitable position.  In the wake of this gruelling ‘exercise’ (of hunting for a position), I find many of my values challenged and my insecurities surfacing to haunt me.

I went on a sabbatical for my health, specifically to improve it.  But I dragged far too long before going for a full body check-up, and I received the comprehensive report not too long ago.  It’s not optimistic.  Short of announcing to the whole world what my maladies are, let’s just say I am now really this close to knocking on death’s door.  Long-term medication was the first thing the doctor put me on.  That meant a few things… including giving up something very important to me which I would rather not divulge here.

But back to the job search.  Considering how I may not have very, very much time left, I concentrated on jobs that will make me happy i.e. high pay, easy work.  Hey, I know… everyone’s looking for such a job right?  But who knows, I may get lucky.  And anyway, by easy I mean jobs requiring more brain rather than ‘brawn’ – jobs requiring review of policies and strategies as opposed to operation work.  That, to me, is easier work.  But with the plethora of openings available (yes, the economy is not doing very well, but the industry I belong to is rather ‘recession-proof’, if you may call it), I started asking myself if I just want to settle for any suitable opening that comes along, or if I should concentrate on entering the area of specialisation I am particularly interested in.  Without a doubt, aviation and transportation remain as my top loves.  There is a reason why they were my majors in the university.  Following that would be my expertise in top talent management (in particular, talent attraction) and regulation.  Not something I enjoy immensely,  but definitely something I continue doing because I know I can make a difference with my experience and expertise.

In my entire career, this is the 4th time I’m job-searching.  I haven’t had much experience, and I find myself sometimes in want of some career guidance.  Turning to the person who will always avail himself to me i.e. the hubby is no help at all.  After all, what can a person who is still in his first job after almost 2 decades tell me?  But I have help coming to me in the form of some friends that go way back with me, and my cousin.  And if I need support or encouragement, my mum and sis are always there to rally for me.

I’ve always have some bit of luck where job searching is concerned.  In the past, that is.  I’m hoping I have not lost any of that luck.

50/250

ATC

A series of occupation pictures have been circulating on FB lately.  This particular occupation caught my eye, for obvious reaons I need not spell out.  Most of the misconceptions are true, especially what my friends and pilots think I do.  I remember how my friends used to ask if I were the person holding the ping pong balls and controlling aircraft.

40/250

The Art of Giving Red Packets

Today signifies the first day of the Lunar New Year. To be exact, it’s the year of the Dragon, the only animal in the whole Chinese Zodiac that is legendary. It’s a very special year because both my mum and I were born in the year of the Dragon, 24 years apart.

But back to red packets. If you aren’t a Chinese, or Asian, you might not know of this traditional custom about giving out red packets during the Lunar New Year celebration. In essence, red packets are really just red envelopes to put new money notes into. It has several names, depending on which part of Asia you hail from – the most traditional name is called 压岁钱 (literally ‘suppress age money’ or money warding off evil spirits), the Cantonese call it ‘Lai See’, Chinese call it 红包 (literally ‘red packet’). Singaporeans are quite literal, so we have ended up calling them red packets.

Depending on your family tradition (which in turn, is dependent on your dialect group), working adults will give out red packets to children and younger cousins who are still not financially independent. My family only requires married couples to give out red packets – husband and wife share in giving one. I came across another rather interesting tradition from the hubby’s Hainanese family – the husband and wife each gives out their own red packets, but you could expect the amount in each red packet to be slightly smaller.

I don’t know how it works in the other countries, but the banks in Singapore are exceptionally busy near the Lunar New Year because everyone would be queueing to get new banknotes – it is also part of tradition to put brand new banknotes into the red packets. If you think about it, it doesn’t make much sense: after the New Year, parents of children will help deposit the money (with new banknotes) into the children’s bank accounts. Kind of pointless, it seems, to go through the hassle of printing new banknotes. But, I guess it’s one way of ensuring that new banknotes are always in circulation to replace the torn and tattered ones.

It is definitely true to say that the Lunar New Year is for the children because apart from having new clothes to wear, they could play with their cousins and also receive red packets. In Singapore, we get two days off to celebrate the occasion, but I heard that in China, they get the full 15 days off from work and school. Envious!

As always since I ‘qualified’ to distribute them 8 years ago, I prepared the red packets yesterday, on the Eve of the Lunar New Year. I differentiate the red packets for different groups in bundles tied up with rubber bands because obviously, our closest family members are going to get bigger red packets than the old neighbour’s children that I get to see only once a year. In total, we prepared about 100 red packets this year, a number that is somewhat constant over the years, with small incremental numbers for the new babies to the family. You could say it’s an hefty amount we have to fork out every year for the red packets, but unlike many of my childless peers who think it as a ‘loss’, I actually enjoy distributing red packets to the children and our younger unmarried cousins. Well, maybe not as much as I enjoyed receiving them as a child, but it’s definitely good karma to invoke happiness.

天增岁月人增寿，春满乾坤福满门。欲祝龙年吉祥万事顺，财运亨通喜满年！

21/250

Told You So

In air traffic control, there are essentially two types of instructions that a controller could give to a pilot – executive or conditional instructions.  What’s the difference, you might ask?

For clarity of illustration in this case (because I’m about to relate a real-life experience), I shall limit this to aircraft on ground, taxiing to the holding positions in anticipation for entry into the runways for departure.  You see, on the airfield, aircraft ready for departure need to taxi on the taxiways to the runway (and vice versa for the arrivals).  There could be 10, or even 20 aircraft on the move at the same time, and taxiways are not controlled by traffic lights, like the roads we drive on.  At least not in the day.  Aircraft are not allowed to move at all unless given instructions by ground controllers.  And taxiing instructions could be given in the form of executive or conditional clearances.  For example,

Executive Clearance: ABC123, taxi A1, A2, hold short of A3, runway 03R.

Conditional Clearance: ABC123, taxi A1, A2, and follow behind Qantas 744 passing from your left to right on A3, holding position runway 03R.

As you can see, a conditional clearance is a lot more complicated than an executive clearance, but giving conditional clearances during heavy traffic is very useful as it keeps the frequency free.  And more importantly, the onus is now on the pilots to keep themselves clear of traffic instead of the controller having to watch that aircraft all the time to continue with the instructions once it stopped, or is about to stop.

Here goes my story…

A decade ago, on a busy weekday morning, I was a trainee in ground position with an experienced controller who was monitoring my performance.  It was already my third month on-the-job and I was performing relatively well, hence there was little need for all my trainers to intervene much i.e. they were leaving me to my devices.  There was a short interval during that session (when all traffic was already given instructions and no other aircraft was calling the frequency), and the trainer decided to ask me a question that was eating him up.

Trainer:  Why are you not giving XYZ789 conditional clearance to follow behind ABC123 on A3?  Then you don’t have to keep watching him.

Me:  Because I’m afraid he might not be able to understand the complicated instruction (XYZ789 is an airline from a country that are not native English speakers, and their pilots don’t speak intelligible English at times).

Trainer:  No, you should have more confidence in them.  They can understand you better than you imagine.

I shrugged, and followed his instruction to issue a conditional clearance to the pilots of XYZ789.  I spoke very slowly, and made sure that the pilot of XYZ789 readback my instruction correctly before I got off the frequency.  And then my trainer and I began to watch it closely.

Instead of giving way to ABC123 as instructed, it turned into the main taxiway ahead of ABC123 instead.  We were both speechless.  A lecture was necessary because that was disobeying atc instructions and could have resulted in a serious incident.  My trainer told me to do it.

I was stuck.  A mere trainee with less than 3 months of on-the-job experience had to lecture a pilot on an open frequency?  How do I do it?

In the end, I just repeated the conditional clearance and asked the pilot of XYZ789 why he did not comply with it.  His reply was laughable, because in his halting English, he said that he followed the instruction.  What could I say?

My trainer went on to apologise to the pilots of ABC123 (I think he recognised that this would not have happened if he had not insisted that I issue a conditional clearance to XYZ789).  The pilots of ABC123 were very nice and told us not to worry about it.  Point is, we were actually not at fault.  If an incident had occurred and the tape was played back, the pilot of XYZ789 would get into trouble, not us.  But still, it was a judgement error on our part to issue a conditional clearance to him.

I felt like turning to my trainer and say ‘I told you so’ but I decided that I shouldn’t since I was just a mere trainee.

There are a couple other  hilarious incidents that took place in my 6 years, and I cannot remember all of them because most of the incidents did not happen to me but my ex-colleagues.  I learnt a very good lesson with XYZ789 and always remembered to trust my judgement – that non-native English-speaking pilots need special attention.  In other words, they cannot be trusted to fully understand your instructions even if they repeated them, word-for-word.

Now, maybe it’s easier to understand why I swear never to take some airlines, no matter how cheap their tickets can be.

15/250

Home

We are home, and still recovering from jetlag. Be back to blogging about the trip soon. I have several topics planned and I’m excited about sharing!

11/250

Things That Make Me Happy

Inspired to write my very own list after watching an episode of Gossip Girl. In fact, I’m thinking to make this a yearly tradition from now on – every 22 Dec (3 days to Christmas), I shall revisit the list that makes me happy. List might change drastically year to year, or hardly change at all. Who knows.

So here goes my happy list:

1. Baking things I’m good in (does not include breads) and seeing happy faces when I feed my family/friends/colleagues.
2. Playing mahjong and bonding over the session with my good friends. I just don’t like to be perpetually the loser heh.
3. Dining and bonding with the hubby or family at my favourite restaurants or eateries. I’m a huge foodie.
4. Playing and talking with or disturbing my furkids.
5. Shopping at Kinokuniya Book Store. The feel of new books. Oh the crisp pages…
6. An organised study room. For that matter, an organised house (so I would appreciate if someone cleans up after himself).
7. The smell of sun-kissed laundry. Quite a luxury to hope for, of late, what with Singapore’s rainy season.
8. New socks, new gadgets, new bags, new cake pedestals… all these are my weaknesses.
9. Travelling with the hubby to explore new places and taking an insanely huge number of photographs.
10. Christmas and everything about it, except the commercialism aspect. I love singing Christmas carols, love watching Nativity plays, loved being a part of Nativity plays when I was younger, attending Church Service on Christmas eve and the general spirit of loving and giving that is in the air.
11. Surprises. Good surprises, of course. Something that the man I married doesn’t really believe in.
12. Attending concerts and watching musicals. With the right company.
13. Visiting happy places like Disneylands. Happy faces are infectious.
14. World peace. No. Seriously.
15. And last but not the least, crossing all the milestones that I have set for myself.

Christmas Lightings

As a kid, I loved putting up the Christmas Tree together with my granny.  It was an annual family affair and my favourite moment must be completing the finishing touch to the tree – the angel or star at the top of the tree.  Being raised as a Christian when I was under the care of granny (before I started primary school) meant that Christmas is really more of a religious rather than a celebratory festival.  Even the simple act of decorating the Christmas Tree was treated with reverence because it signified Christmas (although on hindsight, I don’t see the connection between the Birth of Christ and Christmas Trees).

This family tradition came to a halt after I left the care of granny and moved in with my parents.  I really missed the times when I sat on the floor with granny, sorting out the ornaments and tinsels.  And so, the Christmas Tree was the first thing I persuaded the hubby to purchase after we got our own place.

The first year when Sugar just came to our home, the Christmas Tree was a very nice touch.  And then during the second and third years when I set up the Christmas Tree, Sugar and Paris both started feeding on the plastic leaves and tinsels.  No matter how I screamed at them or coaxed, I couldn’t make them stop.  The Christmas Tree started balding at about the height of the two girls.  And so it was decided we would stop putting up the Christmas Tree.

Now that it’s a few years in between, I had wanted to bring out the Christmas Tree again.  But for last few years, we had been travelling in December hence the logical decision was not to put it up so as not to collect dust.

Next year, I will see to it that our Christmas Tree stored in the yard gets to see the light of day.  In the meantime, I shall enjoy myself visiting Christmas markets in Europe.

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas…

MAMA

MAMA = Mnet Asia Music Awards.  It was held in Singapore yesterday, and at the last minute, I managed to secure 2 tickets to watch the award ceremony.  No, actually I secured 3 tickets, and at the eleventh hour just seconds before the transaction with the seller, he told me his friend had sold one of the tickets to someone else without consulting him.

Honestly, I don’t care about what transpired between him and his friend but that was really not a very right thing to do.  And he had the cheek to tweet ‘Sorry seems to be the easiest word ever… ‘ after that.

Eventually, only E and I made it for the concert.  Sorry about it, C.

The stage setup was awesome.  The award ceremony was a little boring at some bits, particularly when the South Korean presenters just rattled on in Korean, giving no apparent thought to like perhaps 90% of the audience who didn’t understand a single word.  But it was a good experience.  I’d never attended an award ceremony of such a scale so it was quite an eye-opener.

I will try to revert to normal, regular blogging in a few days.  Busy mugging for my JLPT examination this Sunday.