Living in Singapore now for quite some time, I started to think about things that I found a bit strange and/or confusing at first, as I didn't know about them, or because they just were totally different from 'back home in Germany'.  Over time, I got used to them, and I'd even go as far as saying that they're 'part of my everyday life' now.

1. The Yellow Line
   In the MRT stations, there's always a yellow line close to the edge of the platform. The yellow line indicates which distance passengers should keep from the tracks and thus the train in order to avoid any accidents.
   
   (Picture taken by and copyright by siriuslim/Mervyn Lim)
   And it works! People respect that line, you can rarely see anyone crossing it, even when there is no train arriving.
   
2. Bubble Tea
   Some years agoin the 80s, Bubble Tea (or also: Pearl Tea) has become very popular in Taiwan and has then spread to many parts of the world, including Singapore. Basically, what you get is some tea (usually milk tea) with some 'pearls' (seen here at the bottom of the drink):
   
   While I didn't like the 'pearls' at the beginning (it's a bit weird to drink something through a straw and suddenly have some small ball in your mouth), I started to like it more and more over time
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubble_tea
   
3. Takeaway Drink in a Plastic Bag
   One thing that I thought of as "dangerous", "risky", and "doesn't really make sense??!!" is putting a drink into a plastic bag with a straw:
   
   This is actually quite common practice if you buy a drink at a hawker centre for takeaway. And yes, I got used to it and don't mind buying it this way, though I still think that cups are way more practical (this is the cheaper solution, that's why it's in use)
   
4. Love for Escalators
   This is a very common situation that I see nearly everyday inside the MRT stations:
   A lot of people crowd around the 'entrance point' of an escalator, but ignore the stairs right next to it (or nearby). It looks approximately like this:
   
   People here prefer to wait for a short while and take the escalator instead of walking up- or downstairs. Not all, of course Especially in the evenings, when people are on their way home, there are a lot more who take the stairs and walk downstairs.
   
5. Multi-lingual announcements in the MRT stations and trains
   Being a multi-cultural society, Singapore has got 4 different languages in use: Chinese (Mandarin), Malay, Tamil (Indian dialect), and English (to make communication between people of different races easier; basically everyone speaks it). Thus, while on the MRT, announcements can be heard in all 4 of them.
   For example, the following announcement about the Yellow Line can be heard in the stations:
   

   For your safety, please stand behind the yellow line.　Thank You (English)
   各位搭客请注意，为了您的安全，请站在黄线后面。 (Chinese)
   Sila ambil perhatian. Demi keselamatan anda, harap berdiri di belakang garisan kuning. (Malay)
   அன்பு கூர்ந்து பயணிகள் கவனிக்கவும் உங்கலின் பாதுகாபை முன்னிட்டு அன்பு மஞல் கோட்டுக்கு பின்னால் நிலுஙள். (Tamil)

   
   More examples:
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safety_on_the_Mass_Rapid_Transit_(Singapore)#Safety_announcements_and_the_yellow_line
   
6. Food Centre of the World
   Chicken Rice. Mee Goreng. Nasi Lemak. Laksa. Roti Prata. Murtabak. Hokkien Mee. Mee Soto. Nasi Briyani. Fish Bee Hoon. Wanton Mee. Yong Tau Fu. Satay. Carrot Cake. Kaya Toast. Fish Head Curry. Kuih. Black Pepper Crab. Curry Puff. Chilli Crab.
   Those are just some of the dishes you can get here. Singapore basically hosts all kinds of cuisines: Chinese (even there are some differences, e.g. Sichuan cuisine, Cantonese cuisine, ...), Malay, Indian, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Western (generally speaking), German, Italian, French, American (well, there's Botak Jones!), Spanish, Arabian, Turkish, Argentinian, ....
   And if there's one thing that every Singaporean enjoys, then it's eating. Where else in the world would that many people drive half-way over the island in the middle of the night to get the best [insert food name from above]
   
7. Reclaimed Land
   Singapore has grown a lot, not just in terms of people, GDP, or others, but also when it comes to its actual land size. This is due to 'land reclamation', meaning that new land has been created at what was previously sea.
   The following image gives an idea what has been reclaimed during the last decades:
   
   (Note: Image taken from http://www.collate.org/collected/?p=136)
8. NEWater
   Purified wastewater (sewage....). Yes, you can drink it.
   While this may not sound very good initially, the water reclaimed through this way is actually of very high quality. The majority of the water reclaimed this way is used for industrial purposes, but a small percentage is meant for drinking.
   The reasons why Singapore started to 'recycle' water is that most of the water here in Singapore is actually brought in from Malaysia (there are giant pipelines coming in from Malaysia to Singapore) for a extremely cheap price (negotiated many decades ago), however the contract will not run forever, and new sources had to be investigated.
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEWater
   
9. Karang Guni
   Living in a HDB, one sound that you hear very regularly (daily sometimes, even on Sunday mornings.....) is a man walking around outside with a horn, shouting something that you as a Westerner can't understand (it's usually a mix of Malay & Hokkien, as far as I know).
   What they do is collect old newspapers and other unwanted items, and sell them elsewhere and/or recycle them.
   
10. HDBs
    HDB stands for Housing Development Board, the local governmental institution that governs the public housing market. HDB also refers to the type of public housing that they manage. Whereas in other countries such housing is usually meant for people who need social support, this is a slightly different case in Singapore. Around 80% of the population live in such buildings:
    

Yahoo closed the internet dinosaur GeoCities. To commemorate this, xkcd redesigned its website yesterday slightly:

Today, it's back to normal again:

I never had a site on GeoCities, but I have to confess that once upon a time (end 90s) I also had a website with eye-cancer causing colours, annoying animations, fonts that no sane person would use, and some text within <blink> and <marquee> tags....

Looking at my life, I have to say that I can't be much more happy with it than right now, and I am really thankful for a lot of things and thankful to a lot of people.

I have a very interesting job role and great colleagues, my company has provided me with a great opportunity here. My work has allowed me to see many parts of Asia, something that I am really thankful for. Personally and professionally, I learned a lot during the past two years, and definitely grew in many ways.

And last but not least, I have a very lovely girlfriend, who does a lot of things for me (which I appreciate a lot), dotes on me, and supports me in whichever way she can.

Around 17 years ago, my mom pointed out a book in a member's magazine of a nearby bookstore chain to me. As a child, I was very much into dinosaurs (ok, I absolutely LOVED dinosaurs!), and knowing that, she showed me this book with a Tyrannosaurus Rex on the cover, titled "Dino Park".

"Dino Park" was the German title of this book by author Michael Crichton, the English title is "Jurassic Park". Little did I know back then that only a few months later, the movie adaptation by Steven Spielberg would be released. Newer versions of the book were published with a "Jurassic Park" somewhere on the cover, mine is still the "old, pure version" (as seen here on the left).

I absolutely loved the book, once I started reading it, I couldn't stop. It was not always easy to read for a 11 year old, as it talked about things like "chaos theory", "genetic reconstruction", etc., but it definitely became my favourite book at that time.

Naturally, I was very excited when I heard that the movie adaptation would come out. The movie was released in June 1993 in the US, 4 months earlier than in Germany. Thus, we heard a lot of news about it before it actually 'arrived'. The news talked about scared teenagers, who were draumatised by the brutal scenes, and there were discussions what the lower age limit for the movie should be in Germany.

I was hoping a lot that I'd be allowed to see it, and that the authorities wouldn't release the movie under the 14+ years category. Luckily, they didn't, the movie was released with 12 as lower age limit
The only "problem" with that was that I'd only turn 12 in October, the movie however was released in September....

A few days after it was released, I went to watch it with 2 friends (both a few months younger than me) in our local cinema. At the ticketing counter, I asked for three tickets, and when I was asked 'how old?', my heart beat went up a lot and with a not very confident voice I said '12'. And I got the tickets!

The movie was absolutely awesome: great CG effects (when I look back at the technology of '93, the results were just freaking amazing, those dinosaurs look SO REAL!), convincing actors (though the kids were annoying....), and a well composed music score.

Once the VHS came out, I bought it (might've also been a present, can't fully remember), as well as the soundtrack. And I even bought some of the dinosaurs (2? 3?), which I still have somewhere at home. What I never got, however, was the big T-Rex, the crème de la crème among all dinosaur toys! The reason: it cost 100 DM back then, a lot of money (though if you compare it with nowadays, where so many have a Playstation, XBOX, PSP, etc, it's not really that much anymore....). Years later, I was tempted to buy it on ebay, but in the end I didn't.

What I still remember the most about the movie, and what makes this movie one of my favourites of all times, is the scene where we get to see the dinosaurs for the very first time (I still get goose bumbs everytime I see it....):
The visitors just arrived on the island, when their jeeps stop, and Dr.Alan Grant looks to his left and sees something that he cannot believe to be true (the dinos, of course). Ellie Sattler, who sits next to him in the jeep, is busy analyzing a giant leaf, when he turns her head, and she gets to see this:

An 11 year old boy's dream come true

During dinner with friends, shortly after we (mixed group, guys & girls) talked about a woman and her physique (among the words to describe her was "flat-chested").

C: There's actually also another meaning for 'boobies'

[[confusion]]

L: ...like in... 'booby-trap'?

C: no, not as in 'booby-trap'

J: I'm not going to go to google and search for 'boobies', so please tell us the meaning

[[laughter]]

C: ok, there's actually a bird called a 'booby', they're famous for their dancing...

me: ooohhhh, now I remember! I saw some on Christmas Island, I think

C: so you went to Christmas Island to watch 'boobies'?

me: not only watch, I also took pictures!

Birds of Christmas Island (including the boobies)

It's definitely no secret that Singapore has become my primary home and that I plan to stay here (or rather, as I usually say: I don't plan to leave). I am currently "only" on an Employment Pass here, which has the small uncertainty that if I get retrenched, I usually would have to leave Singapore within a few weeks unless I find other employment or get some long-term pass. Thus, end of July, I applied for Permanent Residence (PR) here in Singapore.

Being a PR has got several benefits:

• You are allowed to stay in Singapore even if you're unemployed (though PR gets granted for 5 years only at the beginning, and would not be renewed if you don't work most of the time)
• Switching jobs becomes easier, as the new company does not have to apply for a new work permit
• You contribute to the Central Provident Fund (CPF), Singapore's social security savings plan. Both you and the employer contribute a certain percentage of your salary, rates can be found on that website.
• For many things (e.g. health insurance, credit cards), you are (nearly) on the same level as a citizen. E.g., some credit cards require a minimum income of $60,000 for foreigners, but only $30,000 for citizens and PRs
• You are allowed to buy a HDB flat

One "drawback", that should be mentioned, is that if you are a PR and you have sons who are also PRs, they have to do the National Service (NS) here in Singapore. Though in my opinion this is not a real drawback, rather one way to contribute to Singapore's development.

Sometime in June, I registered an appointment to submit my PR application (this should be done around 2-3 months before, though it's also possible with some luck to get an appointment within a few weeks). The actual submission date was the 25th of July, when I went to the Immigration & Checkpoints Authority (ICA). I was warned before that it could take a while, but I was lucky and only spend around 20 mins inside the building.

For the application, a form has to be filled out (can be found on the ICA website), and several other documents have to be presented in their original and handed in as copied versions (e.g. birth certificated, passport, employment pass, degree certificate, tax assessment, payslips).

The average processing time is around 3 months, but depending on the case it can also take longer. For me, it was shorter, after 2 months I received my letter from ICA. Sadly, I was rejected.

The reason? I have no idea, but there are some speculations what could've played a factor:

• due to the crisis, a lot more people than usual applied for PR as they're afraid that they'll get retrenched
• the goverment has decided to raise the bar and accept less applications
• I haven't been here long enough in a continuous stay. Right now, I've been here for a bit more than 2 years, but the longer you are here, the more likely it is that you'll get accepted
• I don't have a high enough "financial stability", as I am a relatively fresh graduate and not working for too long

In the end, it's not really something that I have to see as a setback. Getting PR would've been a great thing, but not getting it doesn't mean that I'm worse off than before. I will probably re-apply in a few months time, depending on my (probably) new situation (maybe new job, different salary, memberships in local organisations, etc.).

Since the past entry, I went to Haikou (China), Taiwan, and Guangzhou (China again) on holiday:

On a volcanic crater in Haikou, China

Working hard at Sun Moon Lake, Taiwan

 Experiencing the bad weather at Sun Moon Lake, Taiwan

 Posing in front of Taipei 101, Taiwan

In Guangzhou with my girlfriend (middle) and a local friend (left)

The SharePoint team has released a sneak peak into SharePoint 2010:

 http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/2010/Sneak_Peek/Pages/default.aspx

The preview is divided into three areas: Overview, IT Professional, and Developer

In life, we have different goals. Some are short-term goals that we want to achieve soon, others are goals that we want to reach after a longer period of time. Our goals also have different priorities, some are more desirable than others.

As for me, I have 3 goals that are very important to me that I want to reach within the next 4 months. However, I cannot fully control the steps to reach these, for all three I also depend (to a varying degree) on other people.

Nevertheless, as these are probably the most important targets for me right now, I will do my best to get as close as possible to them. Once I reach one of these goals, I write again about it. It could happen next week, it could happen in November, we'll see.

I noticed some interesting, and in my case not desirable behaviour when I was exporting the results from a SharePoint survey to Excel: the order of the questions in Excel differed from the order in SharePoint.

Some further analysis showed the following:
When you export to Excel, the order is determined by the creation time of a question, so the questions that were create first appear before the others. This even happens after you reordered your questions in your survey, which was what I did.

To give an example:
I create a survey with 3 questions in the order 1,2,3:

I then reorder them to 3,1,2:

If I export them now to Excel, the order of the columns however is still 1,2,3:

So in case you need to export to Excel and don't want to reorder your columns there afterwards, make sure you got the order right when you create your survey questions.

I updated my iPhone yesterday to OS 3.0, no problems so far, the whole process went very smooth. First I had to update iTunes to 8.2, afterwards it asked me immediately if I want to update the iPhone. The download took a short while (my internet connection at home has been a bit slow sometimes in the past few weeks), the updating itself was done within a few minutes.

 All settings were kept, all programs that I started so far are running without any problem, and even my open tabs in Safari were still open

I haven't tested most of the new features yet, saw no need to send a MMS yet, e.g.

Since last night 1AM Singapore time, Apple's 3.0 update for the iPhone OS is available. While I haven't updated it yet (I was asleep, and after waking up went to work ), others already tried it successfully.

An overview of the newest features and a guide on how to install the update can be found on Apple's website.

Also, there's an interesting article that explains "How To Use The Best 40 Features of iPhone 3.0".

I discovered that my blog entries could not be found in the various search engines (Google, Microsoft Bing, Yahoo), however the main blog site could be.

In the Lifetype forums (my blog software) I learned that under certain circumstances the person/bot/client/etc accessing a blog entry gets redirected through the error page (error.php), which will send a 404 Error (file not found) first and then redirect to the corresponding correct location (or at least deliver the content).

This means: everyone was able to access the blog entries here without any problem, however in the background they always showed up as non-existant to the browser/other software. Thus, the search engines didn't crawl any further and treated the links to the individual blog entries as dead links.

I changed the URL generation method from custom url to apache mod_rewrite, which basically changes all the individual urls for the blog entries, but the benefit now is that all pages appear now as existant!

So dear search engine bots, please come again and reindex the blog :)