Most people won’t think of a paper distributor as an interesting or a rewarding job. It is probably mundane, boring and has the problem of needing to stand for too long hours while the pay is lousy. However, service level begins right at the bottom, and this MyPaper distributor is actually one of the most important people in the entire company because she’s the one in contact with the readers.

Admit it. Most people will not accept such a job. There are no real benefits to having such a job. Most of the time such jobs are filled by grumpy old aunties who just want to earn some extra pocket money to buy something for themselves. Such aunties won’t be presenting an excellent service.

It is to my surprise that the lady, I won’t call her an auntie because she isn’t a grumpy old aunty, was quite polite and pleasant. Although I did not take the newspaper from her, I can hear her saying thank you when someone collects the papers. How many of us will do that? It is this little thank you that will probably make the person break into a little smile, which will brighten his day in the morning.

Now, how many of us will tell her thank you too? In terms of benefit, the readers benefit more since we get to absorb a plethora of information at zero cost. What we should say when we collect MyPaper from her is to reply, “No, thank YOU”. And give a little smile.

So what do you say? A smile actually goes a long way. Why not smile at someone you have always walked past today? Maybe the security guard who is bored sitting at the desk, or the girl at the Cheer’s stall? Smile and let us make everyone happy.

Do you have a favicon at your blog? What is a favicon? When you bookmark a page, a logo is always “attached” to the title of the page. That’s the favicon. Major sites like Youtube and Google have them, and I just added one for NextTutor too!

If you would like a favicon, you can check out this url.

A little thing to note though. This tutorial is for photoshop users. Non photoshop users can Google Favicon. You also need your own webspace because you have to upload a file up and link it from your website html code.

The recent Hoo-Ha at the education scene is about the Secondary School Principal trying to tell her students to face their reality, and to choose to go to Higher Nitec because most of them wouldn’t pass O levels anyway, and in a very bad tone apparently. One of our *ahem* has also defended the principal, saying that we should see the meaning without the tone.

Honestly, I think that is bullshit. If in the army, I scolded my officer because he forgot something, should he look at my meaning and not at my tone and not give me a charge for insubordination? There is no such thing as selective listening, as I call it, selecting when to listen to the tone or not. Tone is important and it affects people and it should always be considered. Sentences sound differently when different tone is applied.

A simple “What are you doing” will do. Say it out in a concerned tone. Then say it out in an irritating tone. Are they the same? No they are different. But I do not know why our *ahem* wants to defend the principal who was obviously wrong.

Anyway that is not the main point of my post. I want to point out something too: Sometimes, teachers and principals are in the way of student’s progress. I do remember an incident and I wish to narrate it here.

When I was in JC, I formed a group of four with my classmates, and I emailed my ex teacher in my secondary school to try to get permission to teach Math in the school for CIP. I would say that it should be encouraged since I was taking initiative, and I was forming my own CIP which should be considered better than doing CIP which teachers initiate.

However, the process took too long for something which could be done simply. Then I wrote a letter to the principal explaining my cause and my request. The HOD emailed me back quickly after I sent the letter and I got a scolding for the apparent bypass. Perhaps I have been overly enthusiastic.

What I am trying to say is, not every school is encouraging people to take the initiative. In fact, different schools are under different systems, and one should take care when selecting a school to apply to. It is important that a student be given space to grow and take his own initiative, and it should be encouraged and not put down by dragging the matter on and on.

I believe schools should encourage students and not discourage them. No matter what, it is a personal development course when a student and tried and failed. I don’t think it is a good idea to demoralize and denounce them when they are just trying their best to aim for the stars. No matter what, schools should nurture and not hinder. Schools should only step in when things go wrong, and not hinder a student’s initiative.

Well its that time of the year again when the semester comes and as a result you get to see more friends and then people ask you not to mug when you arn’t really mugging. Anyway I have said many times here that working / studying is not mugging. Mugging seems to mean more about intense studying rather than just doing normal tutorials.

Anyway I just hope all this mugging talk will stop. When you see someone working, it doesn’t mean he’s mugging. He may be doing something related to his studies, but he isn’t mugging. You see, lets say if you were configuring your software that the University requires you to have, yet you have certain problems regarding the software,the first logical thing is to find help. If you are discussing with a fellow friend about the software, and is getting frustrated because the software doesn’t seem to be working well, that’s not mugging. That’s not even studying.

In the first place, why do people need to label you as a mugger? What is the purpose? Is the purpose to justify your grades? Or to put you in a lower caste? Or just plain wanting to seem hip and cool and put you in the category of nerds and geeks? By the way people, you may end up working for a geek as a boss, so please don’t think geeks as a derogatory term. It’s these computer geeks that have created so many companies today like Microsoft, Google, Facebook and what have you.

So please stop all these labeling of muggers thing, because it only serves to boost the ego of those who appear to slack, but it actually hurts these “muggers” you call because you use it not as praise but as insult.

Anyway, I think I do have the right to study hard, isn’t it? Besides, I just feel that I need to make use of my time better. I’m not just any undergraduate. I’m interested in many other things like IT and entrepreneurship and I’m trying to make my website work. Hell, would you rather me working on my PHP programming in front of you?

So, the next time you call someone a mugger, think of these things:
1) He may feel that its an insult because you seem to be telling people that he is weird and should be kept seperate.
2) He may not have much time due to other commitments, EVEN WHEN HE DOES NOT HAVE A CCA.
3) There is nothing wrong with studying hard actually.
4) It’s childish to label someone a mugger.

For friends who read my blog, if you understand what I’m trying to say, good. Keep it to yourself and don’t tell anyone else. You have just learnt to understand me better.

Image linked from Asian Drama Addict

I watched this movie the other day and I must say I am quite happy with this movie. This movie is in Korean, and is about two people vying in a competition to win the Royal Chef’s Knife. Their past, as well as their grandfathers all play a huge part in the whole story. Apparantly, both of them are descendent’s of the Royal Chef’s disciple.

This movie is about the good versus evil of people, and in the end, Good triumphs over evil. I especially like it when the person who used despicable means to try to win (like stealing the opponent’s charcoal) lost instead because of his own desire to win. The other guy won because he has love for his grandfather and he prepared a bowl of soup his grandfather prepared for him, and the humble soup actually was the alleged secret beef soup prepared by the Royal Chef for the King.

I guessed correctly what the soup should be about because I could feel the loyalty of the Royal Chef to his country, as well as to his King. Spoiler alert: Thus I knew that because of his utmost loyalty, the dish he prepared should show the King that, and the only way to show loyalty is to prepare a dish with nothing but Korean ingredients and the culture.

I feel that Le Grand Chef is a great movie to catch, and it’s a heartwarming movie like Da Chang Jin. If you have money to spare, why not catch this movie?

The Channel 8 megadrama, The Golden Path, ended on Monday, 21st of January, 30 episodes long. I only started watching the drama halfway throughout the shows when all the bad things start to be done and the hate start to grow.

However I must say I got a little disappointed in the final episode because there were several errors and I shall try to remember them all.

1) It is a little illogical for someone to receive a call from a doctor about being pregnant late in the night.

2) In the last episode, Kai Jie (Tay Ping Hui’s character) is already a lawyer, and has already exit from the police force. Yet, when he led police to catch Jin Long (Li Nan Xing’s character), they call him sir, according to the previous role he played as a officer of the police force.

3) Why does he have a revolver when he has already changed jobs to become a lawyer? It seems weird that he still has a police revolver.

4) The body of Jin Long’s wife is found after Jin Long returned. That should be a period of a few months or weeks, considering Jin Long has to be rescued by fisherman, treated by them and he has to come back and stage so many things and still get shot again and treated by Kai Da (Chew Chor Meng’s character). Considering that it has been so many weeks, shouldn’t it mean that the body have been hidden relatively well? Yet only after a few weeks then they found the body. But they have never said anything about how the body was found. It was found just like that. Weird.

Anyway, I discovered the I zhou kan is not very accurate in its synopsis. There were plenty of misleading errors.

All in all, it was an enjoyable drama that showed that there can be good people in gangs and also bad people in the police force.

I’ve been sick and tired of the volume, network and battery life icons disappearing from my taskbar when I start my computer. The volume may not be important as I mute my laptop constantly, but the network and battery life are very important icons that is critical to me.

Thus, I went to search and I goggled an answer out and this is the blog/website that gives workable instructions on how to get your icons back. The only thing is, its a temporary fix, not a permanent one.

Don’t you think that Friendster is actually one of the worst websites in the world? For the past few months, I have not been able to login properly without having to click Try Again when it fails to load.

Just to navigate to someone’s profile requires me to spend 15 minutes clicking Try Again, and it may not even show me what I want. A few weeks ago we were all so angry with Advertlets when it forgot to renew its own domain name, causing people’s blogs to be automatically redirected to a placeholding page. However Friendster is much worst. There is a domain, and you can’t use it.

Yet many people still use it. Or does Friendster actually hate me such that I have never managed to load things properly at their page? Friendster has tried to improve much, trying to pull its gap with Facebook. However its not working. When it tries to add improvements to the site, I wonder, why do they not improve their server capacity? Their bandwidth issues are horrendous.

Thus, I feel that we should all just migrate over to face book. Leave friendster dead and hope it never bothers us again.

Well I must say that I am happy with my NextTutor website although it isn’t very successful. For a first time solo venture, I am happy that I can achieve a PR of 2 ( I know its low la..but its a tuition site leh) and even attract tutors to post their profiles in my site. The last I’ve seen, I have 120+ tutor profiles on my site!

My main revenue collection comes from Advertisements given by Adsense. I have also recently placed Advertlet’s code in the NextTutor blog.

However this means that I will never be able to hire anyone to help on the site since the money generated is really little and its fuelling on my passion for the site.

I am happy that I finally got the featured tutors thing up and running, though it is difficult getting tutors to give me an email interview. Perhaps I should write a little tutorial on my blog called how to get more assignments, and then link it to NextTutor’s services to attract more traffic.

I am also trying to reformat certain areas because they do not seem to be so user-friendly. The look of NextTutor is only so-so in certain areas and needs more improvements.

Perhaps when NextTutor is more successful, I can add in more sections for revenue growing opportunities and then I can grab another partner in? Haha…

Anyway I have to first revamp and get it out of beta testing mode.

Entrepreneurship is really hard, especially one that doesn’t really generate much revenue.

Don’t you feel that the term foreign talent is used too loosely? Everyone that is not Singaporean seems to be called foreign talent, or they consider them as well. However, to say the truth, most of these “foreign talents” can’t defeat our own local talents, neither can they bring Singapore more prosperity and wealth.

I have a problem with having too much foreign talent in the from of students in Singapore. Everywhere, there are people who take advantage of our system and then leave without contributing anything. People come to Singapore, take Permanent Resident status, send their kids to top schools and then leave to go back to their home country.

Else, its that we recruit “foreign talents” to come to Singapore, study at our top schools or university, take the places of our students and paying the same fees as us (or perhaps on a scholarship and hence pay no fees) and then they leave for greener pastures.

Haven’t you heard from people you knew about certain foreign talents? They come to Singapore and have a good education. If you ask them, they will tell you that they are going back to their homeland after they finish their education. Why do we have to allocate spaces on our top schools for these people? Why not use the spaces and the better quality teaching on Singaporeans, who are more likely to stay and contribute to Singapore?

I find it really puzzling when people start to think they are foreign talent. What is more puzzling is that we have been allowing “foreign talents” to enjoy the fruits of our labour, and yet we are not doing anything, but still consider them talents. Should we then worship them?

I do agree that it is important to have foreign talents, provided that they are real. What are real foreign talents then? According to my beliefs, foreign talents cannot exist in a student form. If you are still a student with no experience, what talents do you have? I’m not talking about art or music or excellence in studies. These are no use to Singapore’s economy. What is of use is foreign experts coming to Singapore to work and contribute their expertise.

The foreign talents we have in our schools are different. If they do not contribute, but go home after everything, they are foreign leeches, not talents.

Why consider building another university? Why allow UNSW to set up shop here? If you tell me that we have not enough spaces in our universities to cater to Singaporeans, then why are we paying money (in the form of scholarships) to fund such leeches to study here? It is totally different if they are paying (without the tuition grant). However, we are wasting places, places which could be given to another Singaporean and enrich his life such that he can contribute more to Singapore.

The sad thing is that such talents are, more often than not, losing to our local population. Mind you, they are losing to those who are in Singapore Universities. We in Singapore public universities are those who cannot get a scholarship, which means we are not the “elite”. Yet they are losing to us. And we are funding their education. Bullshit I say.

I just feel that money can be well spent elsewhere. Don’t waste our tax money on people who take advantage of us.