We formed a drone club in our company earlier this week and organised our first drone flying outing. Turn out was surprisingly good; 6 of us turn up for the outing at Marina South Pier. 1x Mavic 2 Pro, 2x Mavic Pro, 1x Mavic Air and 2x Mavic Spark. Will be looking forward to our 2nd outing.
Took mostly hyper time lapse that night. This is one of the few photos taken.
2 weeks ago, we celebrated my niece’s 1st baby. Not only is she the first baby girl in the whole family (including my relative’s), she is genuinely cute and adorable. Definitely one of the cutest baby I’ve met. Made a video as a present for her. When she grows up and looks back at this, hopefully she will treasure it.
It’s coming to the end of 2018, but this is only the first wedding party I’ve been invited to for this year. My colleague (who happened to be also my ex. colleague), got married this weekend and my colleagues occupied 2 tables. A very good chance for a nice gathering with colleagues.
Decided to stay home this Sunday, cook a nice steamboat for lunch/dinner. This is how my topical home-made steamboat is like.
I really has been on a shopping spree over the past 2 months. If I don’t stop soon, my blog is gonna turn into a blog where I only talk about the things I bought. The Apple Watch series 4, since it was released, the waiting list to pre-order for it is about 1 month of waiting time. And since then, I have been changing my mind, ordering and canceling my order for 3 times. Today, I finally bought it. And I can finally move on with my life… Pairing this with my previous purchased ‘link bracelet’ replica, I say it is really quite nice!
It was probably more than 10 years ago, when I was still in my first job when I met someone wearing a IWC Big Pilot watch. Ever since, it has become my dream watch. So, about 4 years ago, when I was working in Japan in 2014, I jump on the chance to finally purchased it. And it has been my well protected treasure since, probably only been wore less than 5 times these 4 years. I recently decided that I wanted a different color strap and after some research, still decide that the original strap matches it the best. Only problem is, the very expensive price tag. Gonna start wearing it more.
Received my new Mavic 2 Pro this week, one of the item I bought during my September crazy shopping spree. There are some really cool features in this latest version of Mavic. Will be test flight during one of these weekends when I am available. For now, I am gonna be kept busy at work.
Got my iPhone today. And this is my first blog using the new phone. Have to say, I’m really not used to not having the ‘Home’ button. And I had expected so as well. Although I hope I’ll get used to this soon. The migration of new phone for Apple is still not seamless enough and every time there will be missing songs in iTunes, missing apps, need to manual setup of emails and applications, issue syncing of photos, etc. This weekend, I will be out volunteering for 1.5 days. The rest of the 0.5 day, I’ll probably be busy with the iPhone migration.
“Look out for the ‘lion’ in them (people)”
Bought in Feb last year, my first drone, DJI Mavic Pro has been with me for a little over 1.5 years. Today, I decided to sell it to make room for upgrades. Over this 1.5 years, I’ve flew it to different parts of Singapore, Shanghai, Bintan, Maldives, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Thailand. I have used the drone footage on 4 youtube videos, and one of the videos was sold to an advertising firm and featured in this year’s official Singapore Tourism Board commercial! You have served me very well this 1.5 years, and you will be missed.
Side note: I never would have imagine that the buyer turns out to be a really beautiful and nice Korean young lady. My Mavic will probably like his new owner.
“The single most important ingredient that will make any relationship succeed comes down to being genuinely interested in the other person.”
Read the above somewhere recently, and I have been trying to be conscious about this. Even without testing this, it is easy to imagine that this will help.
Celebrated the birthday of my 2nd of the 4 nephews I have. 4 boys and they are all adorable. 9 years old, time flies and kids grow up really quick.
“Success is having what you want. Happiness is wanting what you have.”
Was thirsty and craved for a drink yesterday. Went to a Japanese supermarket and walked out with 11 cans/bottles of drinks…
This month, I really burned a big hold in my pocket. On top of upgrading of my Synology NAS, I also bought the new series 4 Apple Watch and iPhone XS Max. In addition, I also sign up for a new domain name for my new website for a stretch of 10 years straight. In my defence, it has been more than 1 year since my mobile phone contract is due for renewal, thus re-contracting and buying this phone at the discounted price is a logical thing to do. And signing the new domain for 10 years straight offered a huge discount. I am happy with the upgrade of my NAS and the new domain, and I’m really looking forward to the delivery of both the new Apple Watch and iPhone, but getting my credit card bill for this month is gonna be painful.
Every year, my company always gives mooncakes to client as gifts. This is the mooncake design for this year. Obviously, this is not for me - I’m just the delivery man.
“People Buy People First. Before they buy your ideas, your product or your organisation, they need to buy you first. Personal charisma is key.” - Eric Feng, public speaker
Finished my course of antibiotics and finally feeling better. Can’t say I’ve fully recovered from my cough and sore throat, but after eating light for a full 5 days, I finally have the appetite to eat something else.
I believe this is the 3rd time I am sick since the start of July this year. This time, I am down with flu and sore throat. This means I have to have another course of anti-biotics, and I also have to rest in bed most of the time. Most of the medications given to me cause me drowsy anyway, which helps to motivate me to rest more. Can’t wait to get back in action.
Over the weekend, I had an idea to setup another webpage to blog about my Project Management experience. I like the idea so much that I researched, design and build up the website within the weekend. This current website is build on Squarespace, but I have opt to use Wix for the new website. Now, it will take awhile for me to write up the materials before the new website makes sense.
So, after adding a 8TB storage into my NAS last Friday, the expansion (building) of the storage pool just completed; taking a full 4 days! Storage utilization drops from 80% to 39% now. Let’s see how long it’s gonna take before it gets to 80% again.
New toy just arrived yesterday. ‘Mega Series - Odin’
"Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should. - Ian, Jurassic Park"
This week at work, I was assigned to represent my department to attend a local University (NTU) fresh graduates recruitment event. It was a very interesting experience, having to talk to both local and overseas fresh graduates, coming from different faculties. Being a graduate more than 10 years ago, I was really curious about what would be the attitude and job expectations of the present generation of students. I was alittle surprised that not many people heard of the company I work for. Many of them did not come from IT discipline, so my expectation was wrong to begin with. Another surprise for me, not a single student ask about salary package.
[How to Deal with Difficult People at Work -
Demonstrate high-value, high-quality work daily
Become the expert at your job
Engage in important conflicts but avoid the petty ones
Stay away from the talkers but be friendly and courteous]
Recently, I've been getting alot of these at work, and it is getting pretty distracting. The above will be a reminder to self.
This week is Computer Fair (Comex) week in Singapore. I've been waiting looking forward to this. It has been 6 months since I bought my Synology NAS storage, and shocked to find the space filled up really fast (about 80% used up) and I had to buy a 8TB HDD for the expansion. I also bought SSD cache to upgrade the NAS, hoping it will increase the performance. I am paranoid when it comes protecting my content, so I got a 8TB external storage to backup the NAS. Lastly, 3 new microSD cards for my equipment. All in all, S$1,095 of damages. I really have overspent.
And now, I will be spending the weekend configuring upgrading the storages and planning the backup strategy.
Broke one of my favorite shoe on my way home. : (
The first game I completed in Switch. There has been lots of +ve review about this game but I wasn't interested at first and it wasn't even one of the first games I bought. But since I started playing, I'm sold. This game is a massive open world and you would constantly want to explore the different parts of the world. At one part of the world, you would need to climb up cold snow mountains (which requires you to wear warm gears), and at another part of the world, you would be in a dessert (and you will need to wear other gears). The story is about Link, who woke up after sleeping for 100 years and his path to recover his memory, at the same time kill the demon to save the princess and avenge for his friends who died fighting the demon 100 years ago. Now that I have completed the story, I still find it fun and relaxingly to explore the different parts of the world which I have not been to. I would even go as far to say that just this game is enough reason to buy Nintendo Switch.
Double rainbow!
One of the very nice sunset I saw in game
Story about friendship and loyalty
My eye sight has been deteriorating rapidly over the past year and getting difficult for me to read. Did a check and it's at 100 degree now. Never needing to wear glasses for so many years, there were times I was curious and wanted to try wearing one. But now its getting serious that I may really need to wear one, I am really reluctant to.
I had a problem with the GPS system on my Mavic Pro during my trip in Macau/Hong Kong in March this year and haven't flew it since then. This weekend, spending 2 full days, glad that I managed to fix it. Test flew abit earlier and as always, flying drone shots never fail to impress. Now, with the release of Mavic 2 Pro the past few days, the new hyperlapse and hasselblad lense is really exciting. The question is, should I upgrade?
Shot during my test flight today. Never fail to impress.
Afew weeks ago, I posted about me getting really annoyed at having to wait for people. Well, today I waited a whole day, and it was someone who had asked me to help out in something. With a whole day wasted, I decided to go for a basketball workout and do some shopping at the Japanese grocery store at night. Bought more than $30 worth of snacks.
I'm on my 5th bottle of cough medicine and been very strict on my diet, but I'm still not getting better. 5th bottle!!! When can I get better, so I can eat nice food...
Other than work, I've been pretty much staying at home, happily, thanks to my newly purchased Nintendo Switch. Zelda has been so addictive, that I hardly touch the other games I bought.
About 2 weeks back, I received the confirmation of my promotion at work, which was a huge surprise. I have been promoted a few times throughout my work career, but getting a promotion in my present job is the sweetest so far. Probably because this has been my most challenging job by far, and it came really sudden. Definitely an honour, but perhaps happier knowing I got the recognition. But I also know there are still many areas I want to improve on. Where I am now, is still very far from where I want to be.
Today, we celebrated Singapore's 53th National Day. Every year, without fall, I would watch the National Day Parade on TV; there was one year when I managed to get the tickets and watched it live from the stadium. As a Singaporean guy, we need to serve our National Service. That may be the reason why I always look forward to the section on Military (Guard of Honour) march past. Aerial display is another section I look forward to, and that follows by the singing of all the nostalgic National Day songs. This year, the show incorporate a small movie which talks about 'Empathy' using real-life examples in Singapore, which I thought is a really nice touch to the show.
National Day fireworks taken in 2013
