Windows Live Mail

For many years i have been replying on online web interfaces to manage my various mail accounts. The two email management programs that I have tried ended up collecting dust in my computer because 1) The looks of Thunderbird sucks and 2) Outlook is THE slowest program that I've ever ran (apart from Photoshop and MS Word itself).

Managing a mailbox with a browser isn't optimal because it slows the whole browser down and I won't be able to access my mails when the browser is turned off (like when I want to prevent myself from chain-read sites that i forget to study but still want to read incoming mails).

Recently, however, I have put the Windows Live Mail 2009 beta that came with the Windows Live suite (Messenger, Mail, photo manager and bla bla bla programs inside) to a test for the sake of testing, and I found that I've came to like it. It's light, simple, intuitive and fast. I guess finally microsoft can produce something decent and light enough for my old computer to use on after all ;)

I haven't thoroughly tested all the features yet though. Will get back to you guys afterwards on this...

seehua
p/s: It's a long time since the last post in this blog, i know. :P 
My computer isn't feeling that healthy at this moment. The graphics card will crash at least once everyday and I get blue screen errors frequently as well. Reinstalling windows didn't remove the problem though, so I suppose it's almost time's up for my com then. You guys have any suggestions on what laptop that I should be getting next? The new Macbooks looked interestingly inviting now :P

The Secret of Sharing Information

These days we could find information pouring from almost everywhere, be it your neighbour, your friends, your colleagues, the internet, the newspaper... you name it.

Most of the time, people are talking about something, intending to share the information that they know about. And many a times, I myself was caught not finishing my sentences/topic and cause a whole lot of 'boos' from my friends who are listening. They will go like ' why are you saying halfway and not finishing the other half?" Most of the time, I don't tell much of things unless I am pretty sure of what I am going to say.

Oh well. There is something interesting here.

The truth is: I don't know exactly the reason why I am doing that but what I know is after talking halfway, something unconcious will snap in me and say "Hey, are you sure you want to share that piece of information?" And I will argue a while within myself before I decide whether to continue or not.

I am sure there are more people who are in the same dillemma as me, or at least I have caught two person who is having the same habit as me. Haha.

I came across this short article that was passed to me in the buddhist yahoo groups and how true it was.

Have a read:

The Secret of Sharing Information

In ancient Greece, Socrates was reputed to hold knowledge in high esteem. One day an acquaintance met the great philosopher and said, " Do you know what I just heard about your friend ?" " Hold on a minute," Socrates replied. " Before telling me anything, I'd like you to pass a little test. It's called the Triple Filter Test."

" Triple filter ?"

" That's right," Socrates continued. " Before you talk to me about my friend, it might be a good idea to take a moment and filter what you're going to say. That's why I call it the Triple filter test.

The first filter is Truth. Have you made absolutely sure that what you are about to tell me is true ?"

" No," the man said, " Actually I just heard about it and…" "All right," said Socrates. " So you don't really know if it's true or not. Now let's try the second filter, the filter of goodness. Is what you are about to tell me about my friend something good ?" " No, on the contrary…" " So," Socrates continued, " You want to tell me something bad about him, but you're not certain it's true. You may still pass the test though, because there's one filter left : the filter of usefulness. Is what you want to tell me about my friend going to be useful to me? " " No, not really." " Well," concluded Socrates, " If what you want to tell me is neither true nor good nor even useful, why tell it to me at all ?"

Now, don't you think it's a good practice to filter our speech?

Jen

Should we buy things just because they are on sale?

 Image taken from http://www.dylanamsterdam.com/

An article on the site The Simple Doller intrigued me yesterday. It talked about buying things for the sake of buying them when the prices are lows because of sales/deals. I would agree fully to the article that buying things just because they are "deals" is a waste because, most of the time, we will end up just hoarding more and more items that we will only rarely use. 


Consider if I just go out and buy more and more clothes (what I need) during the sales season. In the end it will just pile up more and more that I couldn't wear them all. This had already happened to me even with my extremely limited selection of clothes (not enough to last 2 weeks even, since I only buy clothes twice a year). I think it's a waste to leave them there though.


Anyway, the point to be made in this post is, consider if you really need the item before buying it.  It's sometimes better to not buy an item and save yourself 20 bucks rather than buying one rarely used item and save yourself 5 bucks.

Well, if i cannot resist the temptation to buy an item at the time, what I usually do is to grad the thing, syok sendiri on the thing for a while and then leave it at its rack before I go out :P At least I did get a feel as if I owned the item for a moment.


Anyway, here is the link to the full article. 


seehua
p/s: I liked the design of the new draft version of Blogger. Lots of new nifty features to use during the editing of blog posts ;) Just point your browser to http://draft.blogger.com to try it out :)

A beautiful day

A blind boy sat on the steps of a building with a hat by his feet. He held
up a sign which said: "I am blind, please help!" There were only a few
coins in the hat.

A man was walking by. He took a few coins from his pocket and dropped them
into the hat. He then took the sign, turned it around, and wrote some words.
He put the sign back so that everyone who walked by would see the new words.

Soon the hat began to fill up. A lot more people were giving money to the
blind boy. That afternoon the man who had changed the sign came to see how
things were. The boy recognized his footsteps and asked, 'Were you the one
who changed my sign this morning? What did you write?'

The man said, 'I only wrote the truth. I said what you said but in a
different way.'
What he had written was: '*Today is a beautiful day and I cannot see it.*'

Do you think the first sign and the second sign were saying the same thing?

Of course both signs told people the boy was blind. But the first sign
simply said the boy was blind. The second sign told people they were so
lucky that they were not blind. Should we be surprised that the second sign
was more effective?

*Moral of the Story: Be thankful for what you have. Be creative. Be
innovative. Think differently and positively.*
Invite others towards good with wisdom. Live life with no excuse and love
with no regrets. When life gives you a 100 reasons to cry, show life that
you have 1000 reasons to smile. Face your past without regret. Handle your
present with confidence. Prepare for the future without fear. Keep the faith
and drop the fear. *

Great men say, 'Life has to be an incessant process of repair and
reconstruction, of discarding evil and developing goodness.... In the
journey of life, if you want to travel without fear, you must have the
ticket of a good conscience.'

The most beautiful thing is to see a person smiling...
And even more beautiful is, knowing that you are the reason behind it!

Life is fragile

Second piece of death news of someone that is related to me in a way or another...

Everyday we hear news of death... but we are not affected unless the person is someone that we know.

I wasn't affected until I found out which daniel it was. It is Daniel Teoh. Gasped. I know him. Though not very close, but he is someone we will always greet each other and chat when we bump into each other in IMU. One of the few BPharmers that I know. He is a bubbly, happy, friendly, helpful guy.

The piece of news made me look into life even more deeply. And it confirm once again what i have learnt that life is unpredictable, nothing is permanent but death is certain. These are some of the truth that we have to accept once born into life. When there we come, there'll be day we'll be gone. It's just the time factor.

Everything changes every seconds. We don't know what will happen next. All we could do is to cherish all we have now esp the people we are close to and never take things for granted. Hence my previous post.

It's indeed sad and grieving to know someone we know passed away. But life has to go on. There's no point fighting against the fact of life and blaming god for the cruelty of death. Life is just a physical phase of a person. When the physical part of it is lost, the memory of him is still alive. The memory is something we could keep in our hearts. Life goes on but we remember him. We learn from him that we need to appreciate life and the time we have now.

May he rest in peace and be born into a better plane of life.


Jen

Birthday thanks :)

To my mum and dad,
You are the first to wish me! Love you mum and dad! Cant wait for our next skype session. hehe.

To my dear sis, bro, sis-in-law, thanks for the whishes. I wish u all were here la. Miss u all!

To See Hua, hehe, needless to say la. No PDA here. haha.

To Joo Shin, I miss u so much! Thanks for the birthday wish and for telling me i'll have no presents this year =.=". (My past presents did not reach me EVERY YEAR. So no more presents for me this year). when will we have our next pillow talk?

To Jarryd, the only one who called me all the way from Malaysia, I'm so touched! Thanks for the call. I was very very happy. :) It's so expensive to call straight from mobile to mobile la! It's s very expensive birthday gift, i appreciate it alot.

To Yen Nee, Laura, Mei Wen (my dear housemates),Yieng, Flora, Yi Hui, Hui Yin, Min Tien (my darling neighbours next door), Hui Yen, Shian Yi, Renu, Huey Wuen ( my two doors away neighbours), Soo Fen, Karen, Yeu Lou, Million,

Thanks for the surprise birthday celebration you guys throw for me despite the exam stress. I was genuinely happy that you guys remember and took the extra effort to give me surprise. I practically jumped out of my seat when the birthday song was 'screamed' from outside my door. Haha. I tak sangka u all will sing it so loudly! Thou it happens every year and the tactics are almost similar..hehe.. im still very happy. I'm happy because I have a bunch of friends like you. Each and every one of you.

Thanks for the post birthday dinner ytdy. I'm touched and internally happy for the clebration. Love you guys alot. Thanks so so so much. I'm so sorry if i had appeared tired which was because i had only slept for 2 hours the night before, unhappy over my unanswered questions in my Fmt 1 exam paper and emotional over not bringing my snapfax(so silly to be emotional over such small things, sigh), but I am very touched and appreciative over the plan you guys made. Really touched.

Million, thanks for the special birthday present. Hehe. Very special and unique indeed. haha. Curious? Yeah, curiosity kills. Look here.

To Kean Aun, Nicholas, and Trisha thanks for the mysterious call on my extension. Made me waited so long. Hehe.

To Carolyn, Adeline, Huey Yee, Chun Siang, Yew Jinn, Ka Keat, Wei Thian, Kar Maine, Ee Wan, Jason Lse, Vivian, Alvin Teoh, Keng Yan, Chao Ching, Lee Yen, Micheal Lim, Kai Loong, Kevin Tan, Desmond, Xin Yin, Ah Mai, Amanda Lim, Cheh Shing, Wee Pin, Ah Phiaw, Ek Guan, Png, Jackie Liew, You Zhuan, Shireen Heng...

Thanks for all your wishes that you've dropped me. Whether by SMS ke, MSN ke, facebook ke, friendster ke etc... I'm touched and appreciate your wihses. Happy to have you as my friend and to have known you in the first place. For those not in glasgow, I miss you all la:)

To all names above, I Love all of you!

*hugz*


Jen

Jokes you make in an exam

We were chatting over our exam questions about how we did and how we answered our questions during lunch yesterday and this was what happened.

One question asked us to briefly describe the properties and uses of each of the following polymers

Sodium polystyrene sulphonate
Gum tragacanth
Locust bean Gum

After thinking very hard about what is locust bean gum... This is what my friend wrote in her exam paper:

"Locust bean gum is a gum that is extracted from a locust bean."


Another question asked us to write in context of oral dosage forms write short notes on:

Tablet packaging
Sustained released formulations
Soft gelatin capsules


One friend of mine could not recall what soft gelatin capsule is and wrote this as her answer paper:

"Soft gelatin capsule is softer than hard gelatin capsules"


"...."



These are real answers made in exams by some of my batchmates under extreme conditions. I think the examiner will have a 'fun' time marking our papers.


Jen


*edited*