Project Update - new skins, new looks

Couldn't Resist a Post

Saw this in one of the leading groceries stores..., gotta be salty...

Akhir Qalam

My maiden entry was posted on 23 Feb 2008, a month after I began the MPM program at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, NUS, Singapore. Subsequent entries had served me well as a journal of that year-long journey for both the Singapore component and the USA's.

Fast forward a year, the blog has come to its concluding entry for I do not find it useful to maintain anymore apart from keeping it for archival purposes. For this, I am posting here the much cherished picture of us, the MPM 2008 students, at the valedictory Dinner on 9 Jan 2009 taken with the Guest of Honour, The Dean, faculty members of LKYSPP and students of MPM 2008.

Akhir qalam, I wish to thank those interacting with the blog, spending time reading my ramblings and I hope those who stumbled across this blog enjoyed reading as I had enjoyed creating it. Wassalam.

Away too long...

Been away from posting since mid Dec 08 and now it is Jan 09. Will be back with some pictures taken in the last 3 weeks. Back in Singapore...

What Keeps Me Busy These Days?

On top of finalizing my papers, these 2 energy-draining machines are keeping me super occupied.

1st batch of fluffs

Not generous, but just a modest snow shower in Cambridge. It excited the kids nevertheless.

Dealing with the kids

Got my family here with me now after they went through a harrowing journey from Brunei to Boston. They departed on 30 Dec at 6pm, stopped over for 4 hours in Singapore. They flew midnight the same day then stopped for a couple of hours in Frankfurt then they spent 3 hours with me in NY JFK before arriving safely in Cambridge/Boston at 4 pm local time (5 am Brunei time on 2 Dec). That totals 35 hours flights and transit time. I prepared a simple dinner of chicken, rice and eggs (they complained SQ's halal menu was lousy) then they crashed into bed quite immediately. 

On the way back from Logan International I made a deal with my top three children. I bought them some cool gizmos to be echnanged with a pledge from each to keep a journal for this experience. It is their first time in the US so I want it to be special and be remembered. I bought them each a journal from Barnes and Noble which had a 50% price slash on most items over the weekend. I promise them that these journals are their private and personal items and I will never look into what they keep. I want them to develop an interest in writing and keeping records. Let's see if this excites their passion for literature. 

Now I am back into my books and writing to do for which I am actually falling behind schedule. I may procrastinate a little on the blog in the next few days.

Sights

Autumn in Cambridge
Reminiscing 6 Cambridge Center where Marriott RI is located with my trusted Diamond Back in the foreground. The beautiful sight was captured long after I checked out from there but I was cycling to a nearby bicycle shop on Broadway to buy a handle bar basket. The golden leaves are now also long gone.

Black Friday - 28 Nov 2008
This long line of people is formed outside of Micro Center on Memorial Drive, Cambridge. I was driving along towards Hay Market to buy some Halal meats and groceries when I saw this and stopped a while. Micro Center sells computers, cameras, softwares and the likes. So this is a herd of geeks and techies looking for bargains on Black Friday.

Room 327
The above 3 pictures are of the room I am now doing my assignments in whilst waiting for the missus and kids coming into NY tomorrow. The hotel, Howard Johnson Inn is just 10 minutes bus ride from JFK Airport. Not a five star but cozy in some ways.

What blogs can do in crisis

I grabbed these from here. When Mumbai faced the terrorists' attacks, some Web2.0 tools were used and used effectively. One of the tools was the Twitter (mini blogs as the bottom pic) and another was a blog as shown here on the left. So Web 2.0 has gone beyond 'fun'. It's time to take these tools very seriously. An online public participation into NDMC perhaps?

This is the second post of the day as I felt the urgency of uploading this. I hope this inspires and excites more useful and meaningful uses of blogs and other Web 2.0 tools.

Outliers - the Story of Success

Malcolm Gladwell, the author of Tipping Point and Blink, has launched his third book called Outliers - the Story of Success. I only came across the word outlier in 2005 in a brief statistics class. Back to this book, he outlines several interesting and contentious theories. Firstly, he says that the Asians, most particularly the Chinese speaking Asians, are better in Mathematics because of the the language. He further explains that humans store digits in a memory loop that runs for about two seconds. Because of the brevity of Chinese language in their numerical pronounciation, more digits can be stored in a two-second span. For an English speaker, the two-second can fit lesser numbers. He goes further in explaining his theory including the relationship between planting paddy with Asians' work ethics. He also explains the Etnic Theory of Plane Crashes. I never thought that ethnicity played any part in plane crashes before.

This is again another good book by Gladwell, go buy. It is worth the read.  Here is Gladwell talking about his book (source: Amazon.com)

MPM Survival Wiki

I am adding another line to the School Links. This time it is a wiki page of MPM survival kit. It is a collaborative work by members of MPM 2008 of LKY SPP, NUS aiming to give tips on survival in the rigorous period of the program. 

As what usually happens in a collaboration, some are enthsiastic but many are just too cool to contribute. Feel free to browse.It as also a project experiment for my assignment. I am getting good with the Web 2.0 tools and my next page will be a mashup between Google Earth maps and information available online. Whilst I am on the subject of the wiki, here is LKY SPP corporate clip grabbed from YouTube which is now also embeded on the wiki. 

Data and Statistics 2

Here is another data that I converted into a chart. This time it is the blog labels frequency. I wanted to do a scatter-plot but it needed a dual axes chart. So I'll just remain with the RADAR chart for now as I am getting better at reading and unpackaging the data within it.

Data and Statistics

Reading charts and understanding what I can get from them have always been my weakness. One very solid reason why I did not enroll in any ststistics class here at HKS. But I cannot deny that data is important and unpacking it often times reveals things which are not visible without the help of data. I am here posting a RADAR chart on the blog's monthly entries. The causes for the spikes and troughs are for me to understand and I would like them to remain personal and private.

Google Chrome

I am presently using Chrome as my default web browser but I have begun to encounter problems with it. I found help from this blog and decided to give it another go and let's see what happens.

Thinking of going into hibernation this winter?

The weather has turned from mild, but wet, over the weekend to crisp and freezing today. Last night it went down to -4C and now it is -3C outside. Cycling back from school earlier this evening my ears felt rock solid even though they were nicely wrapped in a woolen hat. Wouldn't it be nice just to stay at home and hibernate? Think again. Here is something about that behavior on small mamals like squirrels sourced from here. 

The hibernation that small mammals do consists of deep comatose sleep, body temperature only a few degrees above freezing, and heart and breathing rate slowed to almost undetectable levels. Such an extremely low rate of metabolism, however, is unable to

indefinitely sustain life. The animal must wake up every few days as metabolic poisons accumulate, go out to urinate and defecate, eat and drink something, then drift back down to sleep again. The frequent need to wake up reduces the efficiency of the hibernation so that fewer calories are saved than you might think. This pattern is forced on small animals as they rapidly lose heat due to their small size. They cannot hibernate with meaningful efficiency unless their body temperature is very low. Picture from here.

Comatose sleep...? Er..no thanks. 

Can we take risks?

As managers we always encourage our ordinates to think beyond the box, unleash the potentials of being innovative and be brave to take risks. But do we really mean what we say? May be, partially. Risks are taken because expected returns are usually over the value of what is done along the lines of the norms, if done successfully. What are these returns? A utopian answer is the greater public value created in what we deliver.

I bring this up as I went through our eGovernment portal, I failed to identify where 'the public' or the people fall in in the overall strucure of the design. As they are the eCustomers, measuring what can be achieved against the customers' expectation would be a good start before we decide to say we are setting ourselves the right target. Without it, being 'over ambitious' statement will crop up again. 

Lets eliminate guestimates, lets identify what the customers' needs are, lets prioritise then lets draw some form of targets. And along the way allow innovations to flourish, the buzz phrase that we keep uttering as managers.   

Flowgram?

Another Web2.0 tool that I am trying my hands on. Flowgram allows richer communications through interactive and live browsing. I have been on it for two days and it has proven quite easy to set up and get going. But having own voice over is a little awkward and off-putting especially if the voice is croaky like mine. I have put mine as one of my links. It is still under cnstruction and still very raw but it really is a powerful tool for connecting people together on the Web.

Books and more books

My books arrived today from Amazon and I am looking forward to the weekend to get sunken in them. More on USPS trucks on their way to Massachussetts...

Deadliest Catch

I remember watching among the Discovery Channel documentaries of those brave men going into the raging seas catching Alaskan Crabs. Later, a friend mentioned months ago that they were served at TGIF London. I was curious as to how they tasted and whether catching them was worth all the risks.

To feed my curiosity, and my tummy, I bought a leg of the crab. It cost me US$7.00 from Whole Foods, just for one of the legs, not the claws. The verdict: It tasted like the claws of Katam Suri (blue flower crabs). To be honest I prefer the Australian or Sri Lankan mud crabs more. The shrimps in the picture I bought to accompany the leg just in case the latter turned out revolting. I hear ya...cholesterol.

100 Banks Street pt 2

2 minutes-walk from my front door, this is no house for just anyone but fit only for The Penghulu. Purple yooo...

Peabody Terrace seen from 100 Banks Street. This place has been the convergent for dignitaries from the world over when they were students at KSG/HKS. People the like of UNSG Ban (Kee Mun) and our own BR had once stayed here.