Category: Observing Life

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I See I Write Photography

Peranakan Museum – A Trendy And Happening Boutique Museum In Singapore

Picture this with me.  Across the road, you have found the entrance to a museum.  It is your first visit.  Outside the museum, there are stalls crowded with curious shoppers, genuine shoppers of all ages.  Stepping inside, the high ceiling hall is brightly lit filled with youngsters dressed in trendy clothing socializing with one another, all appear to be having a good time.  But that is not the first thing you notice.  In the center of the hall, at the reception area, a band is performing for the visitors.  Lively music moves your feet.  And you wonder: Is this a museum?  Some watch the band’s performance.  A line of human traffic constantly moving up and down the stairs on either side of the main hall that leads to different exhibition halls.  And if loud music raises your eyebrows, once you walk into one of the exhibition halls, such as the special exhibition “Ramayana Revisited”, the volume of the live music fades away.  Soon, the things that capture your senses are the artifacts and their descriptions.  Old people, young people, not-to-old people, families, friends, and couples – all having a good time.  And soon you conclude: What a lovely way to spend an evening at the Peranakan Museum.

Cynthia and I were invited for the museum’s open house event.  We have been to a few events organized by the Singapore museums and this must be the liveliest of all.  Before we got a chance to make our own bags (see photos below), we were greeted by Ms Barbara Fras, the Assistance Director of the Programmes Department who took the time to introduce the museum to the bloggers.  Peranakan Museum may seem small but it has attracted 200,000 visitors a year, of which majority are from within Singapore.  The museum does have an interesting cross-cultural collection of artifacts (part of the museum’s collection is now being exhibited in Paris) as well as a good line-up of fun events that prompt visitors to return.  I think the make-a-bag session is a great idea.  We get to keep the bags as souvenirs.  What a lovely to keep a piece of our memory at home in a tangible way.

Peranakan Museum’s website can be found in here.  The museum is located at 39 Armenian Street.  You can check out the upcoming events at their website.  To enjoy the discounted admission charges, you may wish to visit on Fridays between 7pm to 9pm (S$3 for adults).  Below are some of the photos we have taken during the event.

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Diary I See I Write

David Archuleta, And The N8 Launch Event By SingTel And Nokia

Looking back, I think it was the little disagreements that glued Cynthia and I to American Idol.  Cynthia supported Elliott Yamin and I, Katharine McPhee.  We would debate for days that (a) I was not staring at McPhee’s boobs and mesmerized by her look and (b) I thought McPhee really sang well and sang really well.  But who would have thought that Hicks would beat those two?  Have you checked out the latest Christmas album by McPhee?  Even Cynthia agreed with me that she has a good voice, finally.  Season 6, I supported Jordin Sparks and Cynthia, Blake Lewis.  It was a dull season.  Nevertheless, you know how that season turned out.  In the following season, we have David versus David.  I think Cook rocked and Cynthia was in love with Archuleta.  Again, it was my shoulder that Cynthia cried on.  And then something happened in season 8.  Both of us supported Adam Lambert wholeheartedly.  And our hearts were shattered into millions of pieces.  Really?  The idol of the idol did not win?  We have boycotted American Idol since then.  The morale of the story?  I think I have a better chance to pick a better singer than Cynthia.

Ha!

OK.  Jokes aside.  One fine day, a media invite arrived at my mailbox.  It was on a Sunday.  Normally I would think twice because of this work-blog-life balance of mine.  Weekend is a time to do something very personal, may or may not be blog-able.  Before I hit that tentative reply button to that media invite, Cynthia exclaimed, “Can I come?!” and I went, “Erm … your were in love with Archie like 2 years ago.  Are you still a fan?”  I guess her undying love to Archuleta is as strong as mine to McPhee.

The event was organized by SingTel and Nokia for the launch of the Nokia N8 mobile phone.  Our hosts were Muttons (hilarious Singapore DJs) and David Archuleta was there to sing us 5 songs in an acoustic setting.  He does have a great voice, especially on stage.  Cynthia was in high spirit and so were the ecstatic fans in Zouk.  His new album “The Other Side Of Down” was released very recently and the fans already know all the lyrics!

We had Japanese food near Zouk and made it home in time for the final race of F1.  What an eventful weekend.  Here are a few photos to share.

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I See I Write

Building A Smarter Planet

This evening, we discovered a new stall inside Thomson Plaza food court selling Thai food, advertised as “Gourmet Thai food”.  Gourmet-ness is relative.  But inside a food court that sells hopelessly tasteless food, this new stall has way exceeded my expectation.  Over dinner, towards the end of a sumptuous gourmet meal , I recalled that I had a gourmet Penang food in the office’s canteen this afternoon.  It was a one day only food festival.  In a suburb like where I work, variety in food is a rarity.  Many in my office complain about eating the same food every day.  I am OK with that.  I have high endurance.  Whenever I look at the same dish every afternoon, I think about my dog in Hong Kong.  He too eats the same food every day.  He never complains.  And he eats with unparalleled enthusiasm.

Cynthia and I are both working in the banking industry.  Naturally, many assume that we talk about work, after work.  The answer is quite the opposite.  I hardly know what she does and she certainly has no clue what I do at work.  Over dinner, I shared with her my lunch story with my usual healthy dose of enthusiasm, “I had Penang Laksa, Penang Char Kway Teow, one Penang dessert, and a glass of pineapple juice.  And it only costs $6!”  $6 is a lot of money, especially when you are working in the suburb.  I often pay below $4 for lunch, which includes a main course, a serving of fresh fruit, a cup of yogurt, and at times, a bowl of soup (depending on special promotion).  But today was special.  It was suburban Penang food festival.

Of course, my meal today did not come from Thailand or Penang (Malaysia).  Nor did my food produced entirely locally, if at all.  Where does my food come from?  Shall I care?  Does Singapore inspect all the foods that enter our border?

I think not.

That brings me to the intend of this post: Building A Smart Planet.  Last week, I have attended a blogger event hosted by IBM.  Building A Smart Planet is a global initiative on how to build a smarter planet by instrumenting the world’s systems, interconnecting them, and making them intelligent.  IBM has shared many ideas and case studies with us.  And I am sharing a highlight of some of the materials that speak to me.  If you wish to know more, head over to the IBM Smarter Planet Website.

  • The world’s electrical grids today are incredibly wasteful, due to inefficiencies of managing a dynamic global network of energy supply and demand.  Because of the lack of intelligence in balancing or monitoring power flows, the annual wastage is enough to power India, Germany, and Canada for the entire year.  The solution?  Introduce an intelligent utility system that can be linked to the global power sources.  Use the power of analytics to produce insights that empower individuals and businesses, utility companies, governments and societies to make informed decisions on how energy should be supplied and consumed.
  • Due to accelerated urbanization, in 2007 and for the first time in history, the majority of our population lived in cities.  That places strain to the world’s traffic.  In US, 3.7 billion hours are lost every year to people sitting in traffic, 2.3 billion gallons of fuel are burned needlessly.  That translates to $78 billion per year.  Piecewise improvement to the road system no longer works.  We have to look at the relationship across the entire system and all the touch points, including how the people and the cities live and work.  In Stockholm, a dynamic toll system based on the flow of vehicles into and out of the city has reduced traffic by 20%, deceased wait time by 25%, and cut emissions by 12%.  In Singapore, controllers receive real time information through sensors to model and predict traffic scenarios with 90% accuracy.
  • In the past, food on our tables came from the local farmers.  Today, we depend on a global web of growers, fisheries, packers, and entities that process our food, distribute our food.  How can we ensure that the standards for quality are consistent when only a tiny percentage of those foods are inspected when they cross our borders?  Did you know sixty years ago, we could create a calorie of food with less than half a calorie of fossil fuel?  Today, a single calorie of food bought from a supermarket requires 10 calories of fossil fuel to produce.  Hence, supply chain efficiency is important.  In Norway, one of the largest food suppliers uses RFID technology to trace meat and poultry from the farm through the supply chain to the store shelf.
  • Imagine a smarter healthcare system with better interconnectivity and sharing of quality data between the doctors, patients, and insurers.  Real-time information such as patient records is analyzed and turned into actionable knowledge.  We should be able to own our medical records.  Moving away from paper records translates to reduced medical errors and improved efficiencies.  A public healthcare service in Spain has built a regionally integrated system that allows patients to visit any health centers knowing that the doctors will have their up-to-date medical record.  The result?  Lower healthcare cost and better care to the patients and the community.
  • Did you know that it takes 700 gallons of water to make a cotton T-shirt, 2,000 gallons to make one gallon of milk, and 39,000 gallons to make a car?  In the last 100 years, global water usage has outpaced the rate of population growth by double.  Global agriculture wastes 60% of the 2,500 trillion liters it uses each year.  Municipalities lose 50% of water through leaky infrastructure.  One in five people today still lacks access to clean and safe drinking water.  United Nation predicts that nearly half of the world’s population will experience critical water shortages by the year 2080.  The solution?  Use technology to monitor, measure, and analyze the entire water ecosystem – from rivers and reservoirs to the pumps and pipes in our homes.  Smart metering for the individuals and the businesses helps to raise awareness and empower demand management.
  • What about urban crimes? Instead of merely responding to crimes and emergencies after the fact, what if we could analyze, anticipate, and working to prevent them?  Sounds like a science fiction?  Here are some examples.  New York police commanders use analytics and visualization tools to see crime patterns as they are forming.  The city’s Real Time Crime Center system is capable of querying pieces of information to uncover previously unknown data relationships and points of connection.  The result?  A 27% drop in crime since 2001.  New York is now ranked as the safest large city in the US.  In Chicago today, 911 dispatchers have access to video from surveillance cameras citywide with advanced analytics built to assist the operator with potential “eyes-on-the-scene” in the vicinity.  Right services can be dispatched in time.

To bring us back to local context, what does a smarter planet mean to you?  What can be done to your country in that regard?

External Link: IBM Smarter Planet Website

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I See I Write

Dear SBY – Indonesia On Fire And Singapore In Smoke

Dear SBY: I am a huge fan of you.  I voted for you to be the next Indonesia president – in my heart.  The same thing I did for Obama years later.  Guess what?  Both of you have won.  I knew somehow, by the power of the invisible universal linkages, my vote counts.  Anyway, back to the purpose of this letter.  As you may know by now that Indonesia is again on fire.  And Singapore is hence in smoke.  In Spanish, there is a saying: no hay mal que por bien no venga.  That roughly translates to without bad things, good things won’t come.  Or in English, every haze has a silver lining.  It is true.  The other day, my wife and I got into our car, drove out of our condo, and under a thick blanket of haze I pointed at the sky and exclaimed, “Look at that orange salted egg yolk in the sky!”  It was beautiful.  National Geography should visit Singapore for a special tour.  Just like what they did for Australia when the sandstorm appeared not too long ago.  We debated what it could be.  Cynthia said it was the sun.  I said it was the moon and later on corrected myself that it should be the planet Mars.

I read with great interest that in your world, your people set fire on land in order to create land space for agriculture and what not.  I turned to my wife from Indonesia one evening and asked, “Why not chop the trees and sell the wood instead of burning them away?”  I am a big fan of deforestation.  I think we have way passed the point of no return as far as global warming is concerned.  Cynthia’s immediate reaction was that it is much effective and efficient to use fire.  In normal days, if Singapore was 10,000 km away from your country like we to Spain, I would not even care the why and the how.  Like Madagascar that has lost 90% of the original forest due to human activities such as slash-and-burn farming.  Do you care?  Do I care?

I cannot argue with the fact that this haze that lingers despite the heavy downpour we have in Singapore has created some of the most romantic atmosphere.  This dusk, while I was driving on the highway, under the orange color street lamps, I could see rows and rows of orange spheres floating meters above the ground diffused onto each other.  What a beautiful yet unusual sight!  Some cars turned on the fog light, which in normal days I would have cursed upon their inconsiderate act of hurting my eyes while trying to look cool.  But today, I felt the necessity, for better road safety.  Still, there was a terrible accident on the highway.  One car was sandwiched by two taxis.  Was it something to do with the haze?  Nobody knows.  When will the haze disappear?  Nobody knows.  Will your people finally try other ways to create fields?  You tell me.  Nobody knows.

On a lighter topic, I am often intrigued by Indonesia politics.  I like the president who could not see.  I also like the president who was a housewife.  Out of all the presidents you have, the picture of Habibie holding a shoe inside his car is my favorite.  It was featured on the newspapers around the world.  If I remember correctly, he had visited a local market, bought himself a pair of Indonesian made shoes, and the message he was trying to convey was: buy local.  I wish Singaporean could do the same.  The other day, I was eying on the World of Warcraft Headset proudly produced by a Singaporean based manufacturer called Creative.  It features a – allow me to quote from the brochure – professional grade microphone, ensuring everyone can hear your shout of “Heal Me! Heal Me!” in all of its resonant glory.  I want it bad.  But when I compare the price in Singapore with the same headset that is sold in America, it is still cheaper to import from US than to buy local.  Imagine the carbon footprint involved!  Whenever I ponder upon this, the imagine of Habibie pops up in my head, with him holding out his shoe inside his car mouthing: buy local.  What do you think?  Shall I import the headset from US, save some money, and screw the environment?

Where was I?  Oh, I remember.  I am writing to petition on behalf of all the residents including my mother-in-law and my relatives who live next to Bandung Supermal.  Ever since the arrival of a mall – which I must say, it looks grand and suiting to the most beautiful city in Indonesia – the residents have been under severe water shortage problem.  I sincerely hope that you could personally look into this matter and have it resolved asap.  Because Cynthia and I are planning to visit Bandung later this year.  I still wish to shower with water, twice a day.

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For the Geeks I See I Write

Nokia N8 – A Promising First Look

Some of you have asked if I have had the opportunity to touch and feel the upcoming Noka N8.  I would have, had I not missed the last few Nokia blogger events.  Some personal commitments still take priority.  And thanks to your inquiries, I have gathered enough courage to give Text100 a ring to see if a demo can be arranged with the Nokia team.  This post is a brief write-up based on my hands on experience with a Nokia N8.  There will be a follow-up article after I have received the review unit, within this week or so.

Before you continue reading this post, I would like to share a stop-motion animation video with you, shot on a Nokia N8 by Sumo Science at Aardman.  I was skeptical initially because there are many mobile or handheld recording devices that claim to produce amazing video quality.  But this one is special.  On top of that, it is an entertaining short clip.  Watch it on HD if you can.

N8 comes with a new design.  Slimmer, as you can see.  The casing is made of high quality aluminium.  During the demo, the Nokia product manager took out his keys and made some insane scratches onto the phone.  My heart sank as I saw the scratch marks.  And then he used his hand to rub them off.  The phone was good as new.  I probably would not try that on my phones.  But I think the point is made.  Onto the glass surface, I am told that N8 uses gorilla glass – something of a higher spec.  Fortunately, he did not smash the phone in order to show me how durable it is.  Nothing that dramatic.  I am willing to take his words for it.

The crown jewel of the N8, perhaps is the high quality camera, the vibrant screen display, and the HD capability.  The lens is Carl Zeiss Tessar optics with a xenon flash.  The sensor is 12 megapixels.  Video capturing up to HD 720p.  I have seen some of the scenic photos on the Nokia product manager’s personal phone and the details look promising, even when zoomed in.  I love the new and slick photo browser.  I was tempted to ask him to show me photos of those girls he took in a party but I resisted.  Not too professional eh?  Back to the phone, image quality does come with a trade-off on the overall design.  The lens mounting area at the back does not appear to flow with the overall slim design of the phone as the package requires a certain minimal thickness.  However, if the phone does capture images as good as those I have seen (and videos like the one showcased above), I can happily live with that.

New to the Nokia suite of phones is the USB on the go.  It is one nifty functionality.  There is a dongle provided to connect the N8 to a USB thumb drive, even to another phone for data transfer.  Taking about connectivity, there is another dongle that connects the N8 to a flat panel TV via HDMI cable for HD video playback of a good range of formats.  The N8 plays Web TV too.  Installed with the phone are some of the more popular channels such as CNN, National Geography, and E! Entertainment.  There are local channels like Channel News Asia.  If Cynthia gets to read this, she would likely to further monopolize our home TV to watch YouTube and web TV online via the phone on our TV.  Nightmare!

Nokia N8 is powered by the new Symbian^3 operating system.  The phone supports the popular “pinch-to-zoom” function like other mobile and laptop devices these days.  There are three home screens, each comes with 6 widgets.  The capacitive touch (by heat) seems OK in terms of responsiveness.  Probably need a bit of getting used to.  It is precise enough to recognize the Chinese character input by strokes.  Rotating the phone seems responsive in switching between landscape and portrait modes.  There is auto-switching between a full size virtual keyboard and a virtual traditional phone pad depending on orientation.  Nokia N8 comes with the free OVI Maps too.  I have always enjoy using their free navigation service.  Note that Nokia N8’s battery is now concealed by the casing.  Whether this is a wise move or not, perhaps too early to say (so long as I don’t need to pull out the battery to switch off the phone should it hangs due to unstable apps that I install, I am OK with that because batteries these days last).  5 colors are available here in Singapore.  They are dark grey, silver white, green, blue, and orange.

Nokia N8 is now available for pre-order in Singapore. If you have queries, write to me or drop me a comment here.  To pre-order, you can visit the SingTel site at www.singtel.com/n8 or the Nokia pre-order site at www.nokia.com.sg/n8 and click on the “pre-order” tab.

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I See I Write

Transforming Into National Art Gallery, Singapore

Early last month, I have attended a blogger event at the former Supreme Court and City Hall that soon to be transformed into the new National Art Gallery.  Now that the media embargo is lifted, I am here to share with you some photos I have taken, a fly-through video made by the National Art Gallery team, and an opportunity to sign-up for a guided tour to visit this heritage site before the transformation.  From what I envisage so far, this is monumental.  I am proud that we are adding an iconic museum in Singapore … right in front of the F1 track.  Perhaps I shall start drawing some F1 inspired paintings and get them exhibited in National Art Gallery one day.  Ha!

The event was in the late evening.  The rain lately had cast doubt on whether we could admire the sunset from the former Supreme Court.  Fortunately, the weather held up.  After a brief buffet meal by the tall glass windows sealed by the authority that overlooked Padang, we were invited into a conference room and had the opportunity to hear more about the future of National Art Gallery.

Our guided tour began with a climb to the dome of the former Supreme Court.  It was quite an adventure on its own.  The narrow steel spiral staircase looked old – I suppose it comes with the heritage of time – and after going through what appeared as the internal roofing of the building vaguely lit up by some flood lights, we emerged at the bottom of the dome (photo as above).  There were some flying animals in the dark.  We exited the dome and were greeted by the skyline of Singapore.  The business district and the nearby historical buildings.  What a beautiful sight!

OK.  By the time we came down, I thought the tour was almost over (as we had a fair bit of climbing, a fair bit of chit-chat).  But there was a lot more to come as the visit to the dome was especially prepared for the bloggers and media friends – a prelude!  We have visited the Chef Justice’s Court Room and his private chambers.  We have taken the route of the alleged offenders through the tunnels that linked the court rooms and the cells.  We have also visited the “grandest room” in Singapore where the Japanese surrendered to the Allied Forces and where our first Prime Minister and Cabinet took their Oaths of Allegiance to the State.  If you too wish to experience these rare moments in time, you may wish to sign up for the open house event.  Due to overwhelming response, National Art Gallery has added new slots for the English guided tour on 16 and 17 October 2010.  Ready your cameras and witness part of our history!  I too have taken some photos and have included the captions here for sharing.

  1. This dome shaped structure is mysteriously beautiful at night.  To be honest, I was puzzled by what the flying animals were.  I tried not to open my mouth as I looked up.  But it was hard.
  2. This is the skyline of Singapore as seen at the dome.  Below us, the preparation work for F1 had begun.  I tried to beg for a standing space during the Singapore F1 race.  But that did not work.
  3. This stone was laid on April 1937.  I was told that underneath the stone was a mysterious item to be retrieved in 3000 AD.  I wish I had pay more attention to the guided tour on what it is.  If you do visit the guided tour, drop me a comment here on what it is please?
  4. This is quite a scary walk.  We were led from the courtroom, through the tunnels, and into the prison cells.  It was the first time I saw a door not standing vertically but laying flat on the floor.
  5. OK.  Here we went.  As you can see, I was the first one being escorted into this high security area.  I gently reminded the beloved tour guide not to close the gate behind me.  I still wanted to go home and see my wife tonight, I said to her.
  6. This, my friends, is a real life prison cell.  The toilet flashing system is outside the cell, triggered by the guards I suppose.  The organizer joked that we could spend a night here.  Erm.  No thank you?
  7. Looking up at the ceiling of the courtroom, I marveled at the elegance.  However, imagine when this courtroom was in operation, the last thing people would see was the ceiling, I reckon.  Order!  Order!
  8. This is a library.  I cannot wait to see how this beautiful area will be transformed into when National Art Gallery is completed.

Curious on what the new museum will look like?  Below is an artist interpretation of the museum, courtesy of National Art Gallery.  More details can be found in here.

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I See I Write Photography

2010 SingTel F1 Grid Girls Crowning Party – A Media Event

What a great media event!  I mean, fast cars and pretty women should go side by side with one another.  I am an avid fan of Formula One and have been watching every single match on TV.  Singapore circuit is special.  Not only because it is a night race, an anti-clockwise circuit, but also because the race takes place in the city, along the beautiful marina.

So what do F1 grid girls do?  Good question.  I met one of my fellow bloggers at the party.  To me, grid girls are there to hold the flags before the race.  And they are there to clap and welcome the winners at the end of the race.  Beyond that, I have no idea what they do.  My buddy is the hilarious one.  He said there have been rumors that …

Anyway, the venue of the event was at Shanghai Dolly, Clarke Quay.  I seldom write about the event venue (because most are just standard).  I think Shanghai Dolly is a lovely venue.  Great decoration and the house band is simply mesmerizing.  I will be back, for sure.

12 SingTel F1 grid girls, 3 group performances followed by questions for the individual.  I am surprised that no one answered world peace.  I think one girl has a rather noble answer and she went on winning the top grid girl award.  At 10 pm, the winner of SingTel Grid Girls 2010 was announced.  Mabel Lau has won the title, got herself a S$10,000 cheque from SingTel, and will be holding our Singapore flag on the race day.  OK.  I can understand why she wins.  Probably the most photogenic of all.  Personally, I like the 2nd runner up too.  In any case, we will see them on TV during the weekend of 24th to 26th September.

Back to F1, I am being asked a lot of time on which team I support or who is my favorite F1 driver.  The thing about motor racing is that viewers have very short term memory.  The last race’s winner is always the hero – in this case, Alonso.  Webber in this season has pulled off some of the most amazing stuns (and is marginally leading the championship).  Button has won the championship last year, looks like he is still in the game.  And Hamilton, what a committed driver – when he has a competitive car.  I wish he can win this season.  Having said that, I would be delighted if any of four could win.

Where are the photos?  You must be asking.  Well, I have worked double hard and pushed out the contents within a few hours after the event.  Hot from the oven.  Just for you!

Notes:

  • I haven’t got time to narrate the photos.  But they are very much self-explanatory – I hope.
  • Those who carried flowers are the top 3 girls.
  • I wish I could devote the same amount of attention to all 12 grid girls.  But I am a man.  My attention takes direction from my …
  • The girl who doesn’t look like a grid girl won herself a gift from SingTel after some intense competition on the stage that involved … dancing.
  • The girl who was holding the mic is from the house band.  She has one amazing voice.
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I See I Write

Digesting The DBS and IBM Detail Findings Of 5 July Outage

I work in a bank.  Prior to that, I have spent more than a decade working as a IT and management consultant serving primarily the financial services industry.  I am also a customer of DBS.  Certainly, I have high anticipation on the detail findings on what went wrong on July 5th when DBS suffered an unprecedented systems failure which prevented its customers from using the ATM or accessing their accounts (quote from The Straits Times).  A month has passed and the report has been made public.  Before I go on happily talking about what I think, here is a disclaimer (required by the one who pays my bills).  This entry – and everything you read in this website, really – represents opinions in my own capacity.  And I am not a spokesperson for any entity.

I have gone through the detail findings a couple of times (click here to view).  I would have thought digesting the findings should be cake, given my background.  But the findings, to me, are far from detail.  Confusing to read.  As far as the story goes, one fine day, IBM had detected an instability in the communication link between DBS’s mainframe computer and its storage system.  And because of that, an engineer was sent to DBS site to replace a cable.  This happened on July 3, 11.06am.  Here is a rundown of event anointed with my thoughts.

  • July 3, 7.50 pm –  The IBM engineer, as per the instruction given by the IBM support center, replaced the cable.  The report claims that the instruction is incorrect but appeared to have solved the problem.  I deduce from the report that the correct way is to use the machine’s maintenance interface (which I can understand).  So what did the engineer do?  Did he just yank out the cable?  As a IBM certified engineer, would he have known what are the steps involved to replace a cable?  I have no idea.  The report does not say much.  I can only speculate.
  • July 4 – 2.55 pm – All of a sudden, the problem reappeared.  This time, both the cable and the associated electronic cards had gone unstable.  The IBM engineer then escalated the issue to the [IBM] data center.  I suppose that was a logical thing to do.  Because replacing the cable did not seem to fix the problem.  Something else must had gone wrong.  The report does not go as far as to say that if the cable was to be replaced correctly in the first place, the issue would have been fixed for good.
  • July 4 – 5.16 pm –  After more than two hours of, I suppose, deliberation inside the support center located outside Singapore, the instruction was to: try reseating cable (my wild guess is that reseating means unplugging and reconnecting the cable).  So the IBM engineer did just that and the problem seemed to have gone away.  So why did the problem appeared to go away in two counts?  Nobody knows.  This detail findings report does not say.  The support center might have deduced that the problem was due to a loosely connected cable.
  • July 4 – 6.14 pm – Again, all of a sudden, the problem reappeared (by the way, I have worked in the technology line before and I know very well never to celebrate too early).  This time, the support center spent more time analysing the problem and appears to insist that it was still a problem with the cable.  So the IBM engineer reseated the cable.
  • July 4 – 11.38 pm – This time, the problem did not go away.  So as per the support center’s instruction, the IBM engineer reseated the cable again.  It did not work.
  • July 5 – 2.50 am – DBS was contacted to authorize a cable replacement at a quiet hour.  Previously, the cable was changed at 7.50 pm.  So I can only imagine that there may be some batch programs running during the midnight window.
  • July 5 – 2.58 am – The IBM engineer replaced the cable the same way as before.  And unlike the last time, the storage system detected a threat to data integrity and had stopped working in order to protect its data.  The million dollar question is: Why the storage system did not cease to work when the cable was replaced using the so called incorrect steps on July 3?  Something else must have killed the system but the report does not say.  What exactly did the engineer do that was different from before?  Why did the problem seem to have gone away after the cable was replaced the first time, reseated the first time?  Why did the problem reappear?  I am not convinced that these incorrect procedures have caused the outage, as quoted from the report.
  • July 5 – 12.30 pm – The banking services were fully restored.

Half a day to bring the system back up?  Procedures aside, what happened to the disaster recovery system?  You mean, there is none?

We can only read the clues by decoding the extra steps MAS has asked DBS to take.

When I read action items, I often examine the rationales behind each item.  More often than not, gaps are identified and in order to close them, action items are derived.  I doubt if the public would ever know what has gone wrong.  Looking at each item, it seems to me that MAS is concerned on the single points of failure (exactly my thought), not happy with how DBS managed and handled the situation, and above all, not happy with IBM.

It does not come more obvious than this:

diversify and reduce its material outsourcing risks so that it does not overly rely on a single service provider or a single vendor’s products and services

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I See I Write

Summer Blog Episode 10 – A Piece Of Work (Final Episode II)

What is a piece of work?

My friend Barbara from Philippine did some research and noted to me that it either means “someone who, although often interesting, is difficult to get along with on an every day basis” or “a remarkable person, achievement or product”.

For some strange reasons, in my mind, when I asked that question, I was looking at “a piece of work” literally as a piece of work.  As in one unit of work.  An innocent question that stemmed from a conversation overheard, outside my office that looks more like a farm.  Maybe I shall compose an article of frequently used and abused terms in my department.

My colleague from India and I often chat.  One morning, like any other morning, she indicated to me her unhappiness towards the many work issues she has.  But these are just work items, I said.  If we have a process to take care of work items, it is a matter of having an issue dropping into this black box called “my daily job” and coming out as a handled issue, which could still be an issue, but it is handled as per the process agreed.

It is like if my daily job is a toilet cleaner, I see dirty toilets coming in and cleaned toilets going out.  Whether a cleaned toilet is indeed a 5-star clean toilet depends on many factors (some public toilets are just impossible to clean, don’t you think?).  The bottom line is, it is a cleaned toilet.  I am neither sad about the dirty toilet nor happy about the cleaned toilet.  But I am delighted about the money I take home that day.

PS. It is quite a miracle that I can write another ‘final’ episode.  I thought I would stop at 9.

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I See I Write

Summer Blog Episode 6 – Who Created Zipper At The Back Of A Dress?

These cannot be coincidences, the more I think about it.

If you are a man, imagine wearing or taking off a shirt with a long zipper all the way up from your waist to the back of your neck.  Or from the low side of your hip all the up to your armpit.  Whoever designed this concept and applied to the day-to-day fashion for the ladies, I wonder if practicality was something he or she had in mind.  But if that makes me, as the man of the house, feel more useful morning after morning, night after night, I am not complaining.

Opening of jars, changing of light bulbs, hooking and unhooking of bras – perhaps there is a conspiracy out there to make us men more useful.  One scene, in Gossip Girl, when Blair said the word ‘zip’ and Serena immediately sprung into action and helped out with the dressing in such fluidity, I could immediately relate.