Interloper View

Palm Sunday just passed this weekend. It is the week we celebrate the sacrifice of Jesus for us - dying on the cross for our sins. As part of the celebration, some members of the church came out with a sketch. This was delivered as part of a song. The story is told from the point of view of Simon, the person who was asked to carry the cross for Jesus on the way to Mount Calvary. The costumes was well done and the whole sketch great. Simon had taken his two children to see the lamb and had just entered the city when he saw the crowd shouting for the crucifixion of Jesus. Here are some of the photos taken during the sketch. Caught a video towards the end but unfortunately my phone did not capture the song and it is rather noisy.

HeartBleed Bug is a vulnerability found in the OpenSSL software using in many servers. Details of the bug can be found in The HeartBleed Bug site. I did not realize the seriousness on this until I started seeing list of compromised sites. A simple to understand list is found in Mashable and a more comprehensive list is found in Github site . However, both sites will only provide you the list of sites they have tested. If you have sites that are not listed and would like to check it yourself, you can use the online tool provided by LastPass . Some sites I tested do not provide enough information to the tool so am not sure whether it is vulnerable or not and whether it has been patched. To be safe, if unsure, just change the password. Addendum: A better tool for checking is available here . Another tool for checking but goes beyond only Heartbleed.available here . A graphical explanation of the exploit can be found here . Found a Q&A on this topic.

A couple of weeks ago, I had an opportunity to go on a trip to Singapore. I have not been to the city state for more than 15 years and was interested in seeing how it has changed. The first impression was when we landed. By the time we reached the baggage claim area, our bags were ready for us. I have not seen such efficient baggage handling anywhere else. Usually, you had to wait at least five to ten minutes before the first bag will appear on the carousel. On the way to our hotel, the driver told us that they were still not satisfied with their performance and are working on improving the number of flights they can handle. There are two runways at the airport - one for landing and one for takeoff. We only went around the area around our hotel. There were many underground walkways joining the MRT (train) and also the various building. One of these areas was large enough for the children and teenagers spend their time roller blading and break dance without having to worry about

Seems that the recent hot spell has caused mosquitoes to appear in large numbers. This went on for a few nights. Each time, I go to sleep, they will start attacking me. The bites will appear as lumps on my hands and legs. Those lumps were both painful and itchy. I tried using commercial mosquito spray but I had to remember to spray my bedroom a few hours before my bedtime because I did not want to sleep breathing the poison. It sometimes works. However, I often forget and even when I remember, the mosquitoes will return after the effect wears off and someone leaves the door open. I decided to use the electronic mosquito swatter we bought a few years ago. We left it aside for a few years after the last mosquito season. Unfortunately for me, the swatter could no longer retain charge. I managed to kill a few but I miss a lot because the swatter ran out of charge quite often after I spot the mosquito and when I hit it. On one of the nights, there was a mosquito which decided that

Dragon from Straw Recently my neighbor had a celebration the night before their son’s wedding. We knew about the wedding and my parents were invited for the wedding reception the following day. We were fine about not being invited, however at about 8 pm, they asked us over. It seems a bit inappropriate and my parents were offended. The last minute invitation was more of an insult. It was an after thought invitation and does not appear sincere. To make things worst, they burned some fireworks at about 12:45 am - way past midnight. If they planned to play with fireworks, they should have done it before 10 pm. Most of us have to wake up early and would like to get our rest. Burning fireworks on the eve of Chinese New Year is accepted because it is expected. As good neighbors we should think of how our actions will affect our neighbors and give some considerations. For example, if you are sincere about inviting your neighbors to your celebration, invite them at least one to two da

I recently visited the Chapel of Immaculate Conception in Sungai Batu (Stone River). I was told that many miracles have taken place there. The chapel is isolated and difficult to get to. Luckily, members of a nearby church gave us direction to the location. I was unable to find the location of the chapel on Google but found a few blogs by others sharing their visit. For those of you who want to go the chapel, the coordinates are: 5.653000, 100.496000 The location on Google map: The chapel may be locked and you will need to call the caretaker (Mr. Francis – 013 4569984) to open it if you wish to pray. Note that the caretaker only understands Malay language. History of the chapel - found at the entrance of the chapel Based on the history, the chapel was originally built in 1935 by the estate management to cater for the needs of the Catholics there but was removed in 1981 by the government to make way for development. In 1987, one of the parishioner donated

If you have a calendar that you want to help a friend subscribe, this is how you do it: Send them a link with the following <url> followed by the calendar id. The url is as follow: https://www.google.com/calendar/render?cid= For example, if the calendar id is 2skpnamedhqnlhfesc3l77qvkk@group.calendar.google.com then send them a link as follow: https://www.google.com/calendar/render?cid=2skpnamedhqnlhfesc3l77qvkk@group.calendar.google.com Try it out by clicking here . When the link opens, Google Calendar will ask whether or not to add the calendar The Malaysian School Holiday calendar is used in this example

I started drinking coffee black a few years ago in the attempt of reducing my calorie intake and to better appreciate the taste of coffee. Initially I did not like the bitter taste but after a while I enjoyed it. I prefer instant coffee since I did not always have a coffee maker handy and did not want to make a whole pot just to enjoy a cup. There are many brands of coffee in the market in various packaging. All the different brands were derived from Arabica coffee. The price of the coffee was almost the same and the taste were also almost the same. Even the ones I had from restaurants taste almost the same. Recently, a colleague of mine gave me three sachet of Starbucks VIA Dark Italian Roast. The taste was very different from all other instant coffee I have tasted before. It is much richer and sweeter even without adding sugar or cream. It also provided a stronger caffeine effect on me. Not sure if this will continue since it is the first one I had. I had Starbucks coffee before b

Instead of setting up a new year resolution, I thought it would be a good time to count my blessings instead. One of the key components in the Law of Attraction is gratitude. In order to feel gratitude, we need to reflect on all the various blessings and gifts we have in our life. Rather than looking at things to improve all the time, we sometimes have to stop and see what we already have. First to be thankful about being alive and here today and being able to write this article. Here are the list of things I am thankful for the year 2013: that everyone in the family is healthy. having a good job. working with great and supportive people. having money in my savings account. having food to eat everyday. living in a peaceful country. having people who appreciates and loves me. having things to believe in. having and knowing talents and gifts I have been given. getting to know wonderful people from different countries around the world. having a great

The Cathedral in Penang finally allowed girls to serve as Altar Girls. This is the first time I have actually seen this happen. I do not know if this is a common practice so I did a search and found that it is not common. It is strange that at age of equality between the sexes, we still see many areas where only male or female are allowed. It might be a minor change but I am sure that such practice can be a shock to conservatives. Since I have not heard of any protest, I guess it is acceptable to all in the parish. 

Since discovering Papa John’s Pizza, I tried making it one of the food outlets to visit when in Kuala Lumpur. However, after two visits, I have decided that it will not in our list of places to visit. Here is my experience. We visited the first outlet at Berjaya Times Square in our previous trip. During the trip, we signed up for the B Card. The card is a local loyalty program covering many food outlets. The service provided in the outlet was decent, however, when I asked about the promotion that was shown in front of the outlet, none of the workers in the outlet knew anything about the promotion. Why would you put a large banner without knowing anything about it? I just asked out of curiosity but was not very happy with the response. This week, we decided to make another visit to Papa Johns. This time it was at the outlet in Sunway Pyramid. The main reason was to claim the birthday treat that seen in the B Card newsletter. However, when I asked about it, I was told that I had

Three weeks ago we came across a body of a young man who just committed suicide. He was a 24 year old engineer. I do not know why he committed suicide at such a young age. However, he fail to realize the anguish his death has to his family and those who loved him. Imagine the amount of sacrifice a parent has to go through to pay for his further studies. Sometimes when we are lonely and have no one to talk to, our mind starts to wonder and ending it seems to be the easiest thing to do. This is especially true when we are also faced with other problems like owing money or being rejected by someone we are in love with. At that moment, everything is all gloomy and sad and we just want it to go away. I felt like that for a moment while in college. At that moment it was very tempting to end it and call it quits. The best movie to illustrate how a person can have impact to others without realizing it is the 1946 movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life”. I recently came across an article of s

cohdra_100_4264.JPG By cohdra (Morguefile) I received a notice with my last OCBC credit card statement that they are revising the cash back rate from five percent in selected categories (and one percent for everything else) to a flat one percent for everything. As part of the change, they removed the cap of RM 50 per month cash back. What is not mentioned in the announcement was whether they are changing any other benefits for the card. The bank also removed another benefit of reimbursing the GST with an annual spending of RM10k and above.   Based on what I read on the Facebook page for OCBC, many customers are not happy with the change. Several customers threatened to cancel the card and encouraged others to do the same.   Based on my spending, the cash back will be substantially lower since my monthly cash back is well below the RM 50 limit with very few exceptions. However, based on what I know about other cards, the cash back is still one of the best in the market. Man

I have used Libre Office and Google Drive for most of my work at home. However, there are times I find it necessary to return to Microsoft to get things done. The alternatives do not seem to be able to get the right functionality. SkyDrive Excel ribbon I do not know if this is due to pattern or because the developers of alternatives do not know how to do it. The one option is the ability to copy and paste banking data and recognize the balances as numbers instead of text. Google Spreadsheet can’t do it, Libreoffice also failed. The balance column consist of the currency sign, in my case MYR and the comma delimiter. I found two products that recognize them instantly and both products are from Microsoft. They are Microsoft Excel and Skydrive version of Microsoft Excel. The Skydrive version of Office provides very little functionality compared to Google Drive but this is one function that works well. I also found that Microsoft provides me 50 Gigabyte for free compared to 15 Gigab

Recently I came across a call to keep healthy by walking 10,000 steps per day. Initially I thought it was relatively easy to achieve. I decided to give it try. I have a pedometer but decided that since I have my phone with me most of the time, I might as well get an App to make my phone a pedometer. Widget Screen I looked at a few apps but found AccuPedo to be the one most suitable for me because of the following reason: It provides both steps as well as a calorie count. It has a widget which makes it easy to switch it to pause mode. You need to do that when driving in order to avoid counting the movement of the car as steps. The battery usage on my phone is minimal. It counts my steps with minimal intervention from me. I just need to make sure that the phone is in my pocket when I walk around. After trying this for a few days, I found that I only managed to exceed the 10,000 steps threshold when I ran on my treadmill. I used the nike plus app at the same time

Recently I attended a training on whole brain thinking. It is provides an interesting way of understanding why people behave differently. It explains the difference in the preference in thinking. The brain is divided into four color codes - Yellow, Blue, Green and Red. Blue Goal Oriented Facts Based Quantitative Yellow Holistic Future Intuitive Green Process Driven Organized Red Emotional Social The thinking preference usually sets in after the age of 18. Once we reach the age of 18, our preference usually does not change. Based on our preference (what makes us happy), we can usually tell which is our color preference. Most of us have have a preference combination but there is usually one trait that is our strongest. Even though we each have a preference, being able to address the different preference will help us communicate better. For example, if you are communicating with a person with a blue preference, you need to provide lots of facts and f