Quote of the day

I've read this before a long time ago, and it remains on the my favourite.

Some men see things as they are and say why... I dream of things that never were and say why not."
- George Bernard Shaw

Greatness Held Hostage

I've just come across free access to this CD programme by Mike Litman called "Greatness Held Hostage".

At this point of time, I'm not too sure of how good it is, but if you are interested you can take a look here.

Corporate Compentancy Map

I'm actually quite proud that efforts have been made to identify the skills needed to perform jobs within my organisation. This will help people bridge skills gaps and be able to perform their jobs better.

A competancy map is a structured layout of skills required to perform each job within the organisation. (That's my understanding of it anyhow.)

Needless to say, it has not been implemented yet and is still in its infancy stages. But I believe its potential to upgrade people within the organisation is there. The only thing now is, as my new boss says, the devil is in the details.

Are there any areas for worry?

I'm not too sure. But I suppose some people may be worried about being under-valuated once compared with the map that has been developed. For me, if I've a skills gap that my organisation is willing to train me for. I'm happy.

It doesn't matter if somehow my value appears to have dropped because of the new comparisions (well... actually it does alittle... :P), but even if perceptions are changed, and the bar has been raised; it only means that I can be raised to meet the new standards. So at a personal level, there's improvement for me; and that's a good thing!

Age of Information (Overload)

If one says that this is the age of information, I believe few will challenge the statement. With the rise of internet, we quickly moved wondering where to find information, to how were we sift through the loads of information we have.

I think its safe to save this is not just the age of information; it’s the age of information overload.

I was listening to some time management programme and one idea was new to me- Book clubs and Book Summaries.

Book clubs supposedly help you to identify the good books in the field which you should read to keep yourself up-to-date. Except for Bookworm club in Singapore which is targeted at getting kids to read, I’m not sure if there are any worthy book clubs in Singapore.

As far as book summaries are concerned, there appears to be one highly popular source - Soundview Executive Book Summaries. These are summaries (approximately 5-8 pages for each book) of the original books where the key ideas and main points are captured. You can either purchase summaries of specific books, or subscribe and receive summaries of 2-3 books each month.

Naturally, summaries of the books are not replacements of the books themselves, but at least they provide you with the latest key ideas that are in the market. And if any particular book appears particularly interesting, then a trip to the library should usually suffice.

Standchart Training

Just another quick update.

I've cleared 10km on Thu, and I think the timing is just a little over an hour.

I've been thinking if I should now start taking my training beyond the treadmill. Running outdoors is naturally more pleasant with the fresh air, change in scenery, etc. But the key disadvantage to that is hydration.

I have my bottle of water placed right in front of me when I'm running on the treadmill, but carrying a bottle of water with me when running outdoors is quite a hassle. I prefer to run without carrying anything.

Maybe I'll just give it a shot by dropping by ECP to run one of these evenings.

Standchart Training

I'm on track with training so far, and cleared 8km in about 50mins. Nothing impressive in terms of speed, but I'm glad to be hitting that distance. The target of the week is to hit 10km by this Friday, and perhaps after that, I'll take running out of the gym (I'd been running on treadmill to track time and distance) and go ECP for runs or something.

I realised that it takes me loads of time just to cool down. I ended up sweating profusely on the MRT and had to exit at Bugis to seat down and cool it abit. I looked like I just came from the sauna! Understandably, I had quite a comfortable circumference of space around me.... :P

Next time, I'll make an effort to seat around (a.k.a waste time) to cool down abit more before I board the train.

Weekend Climbing

Did a couple of things over the weekend, but decided that I'll blog abit about climbing yesterday first.

Due to some rare cosmic alignment, we have 3 rare guest from Adsports: Piak, Bowl and KM. JJ, who's in the picture also, doesn't count as "rare" because he's quite a regular climber.

As usual they came fashionably late, but since we already expected that, we started with our climbs first. Sigh... I think I've gotten weaker from lack of climbing, and ended up with rather sore forearms and a blistered finger.

It was nice to have the adsporters down; compared to the first time the adsporters came down, we were more quiet. Mellowed I guess. :) And unlike the first time, none of the girls were hoisted up, and no squeals of excitment.

Overall, good day of climbing.

Quote of the day

The problem is not that there are problems.
The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem.
--Dr. Theodore Isaac Rubin

Training for StandChart

I decided to challenge myself and signed up for the 21km standchart run. I think my last 21km run was also at the standchart run about 3 years back, so can I re-gain my ability to cover long distance after such a long span of time? I'm finding out.

Hadn't been running much for the past few months, well, perhaps more than just a few months, so my stamina isn't really good at this point.

I started running on monday, covering 4km using the threadmill at 1% gradient. The 1% gradient is supposed to simulate the actual effort taken to run on the road. Personally, I think it should be much more than 1% because the roads aren't flat!

I run another 5km today, and targeting to hit either 6-7km on friday. My actual target was 10km, but I really doubt I can hit that distance and I really should be doing progressive training. Actually, since I have about 3 months in total to train, even if I hit 10km (i.e. about half the distance) by end of the month, its a pretty good target right? Hmm.....

Well, lots more running to come!

Continuing Education?

I'd been having some thoughts of learning something new, some sort of a diploma or grad diploma. And basically I have two options - (a) take up some part-time course, or (b) take up some e-learning (aka distance-learning) courses.

Some of the following caught my eye:
PATH - Psychology Courses
Informatics Group - Pyschology or Business Administration Courses

(I'm sure there're many others out there, I just hadn't spent the time to look around yet.)

Each of the courses take about (at least) a year for a diploma, and I don't think I can commit at this point of time. And even if I could, the course fees aren't exactly low. Usually charged per module, check out the websites if interested.

For me, all it remains at this point of time is an intention, one which action is unlikely to be taken anytime in the near future.

Packing up

Have you ever felt like you could never finish packing up your house?

For me that's a norm actually, because I've so many things; many of which I can't bear to throw. Its silly really, but I still have some of my NTU notes and *gasp* JC notes. Why in the world would I want to keep those? Somewhere at the back of my mind, I think I may one day end up giving part-time tuition for Secondary/Primary school kids. Had I ever given tuition then? Nope....

Well, people are irrational to a certain extent yah?

While packing, I found my autograph book(s). Somehow I had one for my VJC Council friends (its the nicer book with cover and all) and one for my class. Judging from the condition of both I can see that the nicer book is more well maintained! No special effort was made to maintain it, but it just survived the years better that's all. I spent some time reading through a few of the entries and thinking about old times. I realised that I've lost contact with some of my JC friends, and perhaps will never see them again. In life, paths cross but for a period, after which we move on and keep what precious memories we have with us; for those whom we have lose contact with and yet has no memories to offer, there's really no loss I suppose.

After spending the morning, I've managed to clear out about 1 box full of bags and plastic bags (I have no idea why my mum was keeping them there) and one shelf full of old soft toys that I know I will not miss. They will perhaps find a better home and bring more joy to other kidz.

Well... there's more packing to be done later. Like I said... one can never finish packing....

Archived Complete

Inspired by Chow's move to archive his blog, I've decided to do the same.

To be fair, I had been having thoughts of archiving my blog, but I just didn't know how. Now that I know I can simply re-name my old blog and re-create another blog with the same name as a means to archive, I've done so pretty quickly.

For this blog, I've done away with the daily quotations... they are still available on my old blog if you wish to visit it. The link is on the left panel "Archive (2 Sep 06)".

I've also decided to give Adsense a try. I think it is very much an affiliate scheme, and I may not have that high a traffic that will generate me any cash. But since it really doesn't look too obtructive, I figured I'll give it a try.

Stay tuned for more blog entries in future. :)