Japan investigates after iPod nano overheats, sparks

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Extracted from Channelnewsasia.com

TOKYO - An iPod nano in Japan overheated and discharged sparks, the Japanese industry ministry said Tuesday in a list of recent serious incidents involving consumer products.

"The battery part of the product overheated while being charged and sparked," the ministry said, adding it was investigating the January 8 incident.

Makers Apple in Japan could not be reached immediately.

The company has publicly warned that iPod, iPod nano or iPod shuffle may generate excess heat while being charged in certain carry cases.

 

Baby Contest

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Recently, my department has a mini contest just for fun. All of us have to submit a baby photo of ourselves. Each of us will have to guess correctly who is who and the top 3 will have a prize. Another prize will also be given to the cutest baby. I did not win the top 3 but my baby photo won the cutest baby category. Can you guess which one is me? :)

 

Saturday outing

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Went to Queensway's Ikea for breakfast with Wendy on Saturday. Or rather brunch because we reached there at around 1pm. No, Ikea does not have that fantastic food thats able to attract us to go all the way to Queensway for breakfast. The plan was to go Anchorpoint's G2000 outlet to get some shirt for office wear and shop for some leather shoe at Pedro (up to 50% sales).

As usual, a Saturday morning will see many families going to Ikea for some shopping followed by their Swedish breakfast. We ordered 4 chicken wings, 1 spaghetti and 1 chicken chop rice (new dish). Ikea, being a home furniture business actually able to produce such nice food in its chicken wings and meatball. Applause for them.


I have to say their new chicken chop rice really taste nice and affordable. Its only $5.50, same as the spaghetti which taste crap to me.


Their chicken wing is a must try.


No, the above is not from Ikea. Its our home-made dinner, Wendy's favorite "Len-Mian" prepared by me.

 

US loses 63,000 jobs in Feb as economic woes deepen

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Extracted from Channelnewsasia.

WASHINGTON : A stumbling US economy lost 63,000 jobs in February, according to a shockingly weak report released Friday as the top White House economic adviser warned the economy could shrink.

The Federal Reserve took fresh steps to pump liquidity into the stressed banking system, making up to 200 billion dollars available to fight a credit crunch related to the most severe housing slump in decades.

The Labour Department report showed the second straight month of losses in nonfarm payrolls, seen as one of the best indicators of economic momentum.

Revised data showed a loss of 22,000 positions in January, compared with a prior estimate of 17,000.

February's loss was the biggest since March 2003, at the start of the war in Iraq, and a major disappointment for analysts expecting a gain of 25,000 jobs. "The payrolls report had recession written all over it," said Avery Shenfeld, senior economist at CIBC World Markets.
Expect STI to drop more than 3% on Monday. For the shorters and contra players, I wish you all the best on Monday, please don't get burnt as market is still unpredictable and any good news will push the direction northwards. For the value investors, I understand your pain if you had bought some shares last few weeks. We need to understand that its not possible to predict the lowest. As long as you has substantial reasoning to support your buying, just go ahead with it. Remember, value investors hardly react to market noise in the short term. Happy investing.

 

Good Friday

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The end of another tiring week and its weekend again! I think its kinda unhealthy to keep looking forward to next weekend because this also signify that our life is approaching the end. Sorry for the pessimistic mindset. Anyway, I am glad to sum up this weekday with a super good Friday today. In fact, it even has the honor to be in my dean's list competing for the top Friday award. No joke.

Alarmed rang at 7.45am as usual. Another day of work without Li Ling traveling to Raffles Place with me. I thought I was gonna be late but surprisingly I still managed to reach office on time. Just when I was about to settle down, an unfamiliar number appeared on my mobile phone.

I was stunned for a cool 2 seconds before I confirmed I was called by the 88.3fm DJs! Still in a shell shock state, they clarify the whole picture that earlier on Wendy had sent an sms to participate in their quiz. And fortunately, her sms was chosen. They went on to explain the rules to me and Wendy on the other side of the conference call. Basically, each of us need to answer a question correctly in order to win the prize. One question was regarding Europe while the other was related to soccer. Of course I chose the latter. There was no prisoner's dilemma game shit here because Wendy was vulnerable to both questions.

The first question was about the state in Europe in which Arnold was originated from. Not too sure about the question asked as I was busy telling my colleagues to tune in to 88.3fm only to realise later on that it was not live. Anyway, Wendy's first attempt was incorrect but she did not answer it officially yet. Then later on they gave a bit of hint and she managed to answer the question correctly! huuray! Next, it was my turn.

"Alright Collin, heres your question. In Euro 1996, there were 16 countries participating in it. Which of the following three countries are not one of them? a. Croatia b. Switzerland c. Ireland". It stunned me a while before realizing that I could not ask any of my colleagues because they are not soccer literate! I thought of googling for it but afraid there will not be enough time. Finally, I have decided to analyse the answer by using elimination method. Croatia and Switzerland are better than Ireland in terms of football ranking and ability. Hence, I chose c. Ireland! And I got it! woohooo. Anyway I was kind of confused as there are Northern Ireland and Republic Ireland and their footballing ability is quite significant with the latter being more formidable compared to the former. But heck, I still guessed it right!

Ireland (Irish: Éire, pronounced [ˈeːrʲə]) is a country in north-western Europe. The modern sovereign state occupies five-sixths of the island of Ireland, which was partitioned in 1921. It is bordered by Northern Ireland (part of the United Kingdom) to the north, by the Atlantic Ocean to the west and by the Irish Sea to the east. Legally, the term Republic of Ireland (Irish: Poblacht na hÉireann) is the description of the State but Ireland is its name.[2]

So, you must be wondering what is the prize for this simple and short quiz right? Now, hold on to your chair if you are sitting down, hold on to your bed if you are lying down. Its an opportunity for two to go on a trip to Switzerland to catch one of the Euro 2008 matches!!!! However, it is not guaranteed yet. We were told that we need to go for a draw in one of the days during May where we will be given 4 chance to draw for the grand prize! Alright, still better than nothing. Stay tuned at this blog if you want to know our draw results.

Still feeling excited after the phone was hang, I went around telling some of my colleagues. Soon, it was lunch time. I went to lunch with my colleague who is also my Army friend known from OCS. He brought me to a place which I have not figured out the road name yet. Browsing through their menu, they serve really quality food at a smaller portion. Examples are Stingray with egg and rice (really those quality stingray you see outside selling), the usual sweet and sour pork/fish, mussel, chicken cube etc. I ordered a Stingray with Mussel and rice which cost $6.90. It was really good especially the mussel, one of the best I have ate.



It was a nice Friday afternoon. Even with the sun out, the weather was cool. Knowing that there was a small football game at the open area in front of Chevron House, my colleague and I decided to give the game a try after our lunch. I saw the event during yesterday's lunchtime with Wendy. But due to the drizzling weather and my shoe yesterday, I did not try it as I was afraid of falling down. Imagine falling down in your office wear attire with more than thirty people looking and hundreds other walking by. However, I dressed down today and the weather was good, so I decided to give it a try. Essentially, one is given 2 chance to kick a soccer ball into one of the 6 holes that are attached vertically with the hole facing him/her. Of course the harder ones are those at the top and the prize for them are some music mp3 player. Ya, I managed to "score" one of the lower holes and won a Coke Cola sling bag. I would consider bringing it out only if I have found ways to hide the big and easy to identify logo in front.


The time ticked to 6.40pm and I declared it was the end of another tiring week and a greetings to another precious weekend. I met Wendy downstairs and we agreed that today's weather was really superb. We then took the train to Cityhall to have our dinner at New York New York. She ordered a Penne with Roast Chicken pasta while I ordered the Mushroom and Bacon Aglio Olio. Surprisingly, my serving was larger than norm. Great, I am famished after a day's work.






After the nice and satisfying dinner, we walked around and saw that MPH is having a 20% sales storewide and decided to go in and take a look. As usual, I head towards the finance and investment area. But I have no idea where my GF is! Its either at some wine books section or personal beauty section hah.

There was really a great crowd as most are heading to IT Show at Suntec. We decided to head back home instead. We then stopped by Esplanade and take a seat to watch some performance by a band. They are a band which consist of Singaporeans, Indonesian and Filipino. The singer is a Singaporean and she definitely got a great voice, professional singer standard.



Good lunch, good dinner, good weather, won a small prize, won 4 chances for a super super grand prize. What day can be better?

 

25th month anniversary to us!

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Yesterday was the twenty-fifth month we been together. Thinking out of the box, we decided to take a short bus trip to Shaw Tower to have our lunch at our favorite pasta restaurant Creation! Now, if you have been one of my loyal readers, you would have heard of this famous restauarant mentioned here several times. Have you been there yet? What is it like? Thankfully, I have taken some picture of the restaurant with my new mobile phone.




I bought a black Sony Ericsson K800i from Siong Wei at a decent price of SGD$100 with 1GB memory card. His reason for selling shall not be disclosed here. Don't attempt to ask him, it won't work. This is my third phone I bought since I was thirteen years old. My first mobile phone cost a bomb. Its a Nokia 8210 which cost me SGD$500. The good thing is I managed to use it for a good 8 years until my NS. After which I bought a Sony Ericsson K700i at a cool SGD$98 after SGD$100 rebate from Starhub. So in total, I spent about SGD$700 on mobile handsets for the past 10 years. Seems a decent price to pay eh?





Back to topic. This time round, I decided to order a different pasta which I normally would order (Seafood Marinara). I ordered the Seafood Aglio with Wendy following suit (Copycat!). It taste..... normal. I just can't get enough of Seafood Marinara, I shall order back this on my next trip! This was the first time we went to the restaurant during lunchtime. Their dinner set cost SGD$15.20 with the soup+bread, main course, dessert and a drink. Their lunch set was $11.20 less the dessert. After our hearty lunch, we took a bus back to Raffles Place before going back to work.



After a hard day at work, we went to Harbourfront to collect Wendy's Prada phone. It seems to be working fine... so far (fingers crossed). Then we went to Kovan to meet up with my family for fishhead steamboat dinner. Nice fulfilling dinner. We decided to call it a day and went back home in a cab.


Been some time since I last saw this ticket.

Oh ya, did I mention that Wendy and her friend saw someone resembling Mas Selemat at Raffles Place that morning? They mentioned that he had his hair and moustage cut, left with a little goatie. Her friend decided to call the police during lunchtime. Saw some police vehicles and SOC drove around but unfortunately no news was heard after that. Lets hope that he will be caught soon.

Disclaimer: It might or might not be him. Just remember that he will have the intention to have his appearance changed.

 

Warren Buffett topples Bill Gates as world's richest

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Extracted from Channelnewsasia.

NEW YORK - US financier Warren Buffett has overtaken Bill Gates as the world's richest man, according to Forbes annual billionaire's list, which this year saw Russia, China and India making increasing inroads.

Buffett, the 77-year-old chief of the Berkshire Hathaway holding company, saw his wealth jump from 52 billion dollars last year to 62 billion, pushing Microsoft co-founder Gates into third position after 13 years at the top.

 

Self-Portrait

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As promised in my previous post here, please refer to my first self-drawn portrait in my life. Do comments :)

 

Beware of Mas Selamat's multi-appearance!

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Have you saw N95's GPS in action before?

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Again, this is another video by Mr Brown for The WTF! Show. Quite a nice and neat video review of N95's GPS.