Pouring Rain
Rain poured yesterday, an eventful and welcomed respite after a sleepless night of hot, humid weather. Weather forecasts indicates the rainy season is almost upon us, I'll have to put back the umbrella on bag again and be ready. Singapore has a sophisticated and very well planned flooding system, although last year there was flooding in Bukit Timah, I think it was the 1% out of 100% effectivity, which leaves us with 99% probability of no flooding. Which is leaps and bounds from what we have in the Philippines, no one is thinking long term, the cisterns are small and constantly flooded, the people are not disciplined enough to know that littering will clog up the drainage and they will ultimately suffer from the flooding.
Hot Days
It has been so hot the past couple of days that it feels like the world has become a global sauna. Airconditioning units are struggling to keep up to no avail, we had to turn it off and open the windows, but in a very humid country such as Singapore it sometimes is futile. We'll have to trudge along and try to cope up. One very popular sandwich store at the office yesterday closed shop, a sign was left for their avid customer, "Went off to escape the heat, will be back monday". I was cursing the cold weather in London last November, how I wish it was that cold now, around 10 degrees I think is just a good temperature. Last I hear, London was also nearing 30. Siberia might be a good place to scape and cool off ? Showers over the weekend is the forecast, I hope it brings lots of cool breeze and bring the temperature downwards. Is hoping for 14% hoping for too much?
Respected Tissue
The seemingly lowly and always taken for granted tissue is very much respected here in Singapore. For most of us, we do not even give it a thought, a tissue is a tissue and we often take it for granted, throw it around, wastefully use it, don't bother how it is doing and discard it at will. The only instances where people give it the higest importance is when you really have to go or when we are eating and there is no running water and it's not there in which we would scramble around to look for a roll or even a precious few, After which when we have already done our business we thank the inventors for inventing such.
A couple of months after…
It's been a couple of months since my last post, and beginning today I hope to be able to have an update more often. I have adjusted well with my new job and new country, the family is already here with me and have just recently moved to a more suitable flat. I have also visited the main location of Dow Jones Risk & Compliance in London.
Starting anew
Moving on from my previous company and being expatriated here to Singapore was a very tense, agitating and exciting experience. I have just most recently settled down and have got into the groove of life here in my new country.
Being with my previous company for such a long time, I have forgotten the feeling of being a new guy on the block. The first days where allocated for introductions and orientations. It was a bit embarrings coz I am really bad at remembering names and I was thrust into a situation wherein I had to remember a hundred or so names not to mention multi-cultural names at that with different spellings, accents and intonations, add their positions and their diffrent teams and divisions; it was overwhelming!
Lacoste and Crocodile Garments
THE world-famous Lacoste trademark is a crocodile, which faces right and was used as early as 1933 by French tennis legend Rene Lacoste. As early as the 1950s, Crocodile Garments used a crocodile logo which faces left.
Elance User Data Accessed without Authorization
I checked my mail and I got a disturbing message from Elance, apparently, someone was able to access confidential user data without authorization, some would call this hacking. I would like to commend Elance for informing us and sending us a holistic and informative email wherein they inform us of what happened, what they have done and what they will do.
Phishing Email
I checked my mom's email account and I found a seemingly legitimate email from Yahoo about deactivation of unused or inactive accounts. The email ask that you reply to the mail and input your username, password and other info. After seeing this, I immediately knew the email was for phishing.
Yahoo or any legitimate organization will never ask for your account details. Specially your password. The from email seemed to be legitimate as it had a @yahoo.com domain but, when you click on reply you will see that the recipient is already a @gmail.com account. It is very easy to spoof a from email address but the source of the Phishing email must input a valid email for the reply to, this is also another thing to look out for.
Also in the inbox, a legit email from yahoo will always have a Yahoo logo beside the from name.
If ever you encounter such, forward it to phishing@cc.yahoo-inc.com for Yahoo users and fillup a form for Gmail users http://mail.google.com/support/bin/request.py?contact_type=abuse_phishing.
Hong Kong and Macau
I was able to purchase 0 fares from Cebu Pacific for Cebu to Hong Kong and I scheduled a 3 full day trip with my family and the timing was great as the last day will be my wife's birthday.