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L-A terrified of cockroaches

In an accidental social experiment with a sample size of 1, I have concluded that children have an innate fear of cockroaches.

This morning, when L-A stepped out of my bedroom, she chanced upon one sluggish cockroach crawling along the hallway and she gave a hearty shout and scream and came running to me. She then proclaimed repeatedly, “Daddy bao bao! L-A scared!”

After the roach was exterminated, Esh and I were bemused. I would have thought that children would have no fear of anything encountered for the first time and maybe would have even picked it up to play with it (or even taste it!) Looks like there is either an instinctual fear or some subconscious social conditioning took place.

Broadband in School

Many years back, broadband was not pervasive yet and the speeds available to the consumers were quite pathetic.

To get around this, I usually got together with a bunch of friends to settle down somewhere in campus where we could surf in peace and enjoy the broadband speed.

Why I was never in the Navy

During my time in the Armed Forces, I was posted to the Army for BMT and for my initial phase in Officer Cadets’ School (OCS). Following that I was posted to the Air Force. Never did I ever step near the Navy… and for good reason.

I’m not particularly good in the water and I think I only really tried learning how to swim in Secondary School. To my horror, there was one day in OCS where all the cadets were woken up early in the morning to go for a dip in the pool wearing our full uniform!

I gamely tried my best but the moment I stepped off the diving platform and hit the water, I had trouble keeping myself afloat and had to struggle to the side of the pool and grab on for dear life.

冤枉啊！！！

This incident happened in JC where a group of us were gathered in the canteen having our ice milos and just having a small gathering in between lessons. The moment we stood up to go, the grumpy old lady in the canteen shouted at us to remind us to pick up our cups. This was uncalled for as we always picked up after ourselves and never left any cutlery or utensils behind.

Unfortunately for us, the VP happened to be in the canteen at that time and he immediately thought the worst of us and sent us to the office to be dealt with. As we knew that we did nothing wrong, we had a standoff with the VP and things remained at a stalemate until our form teacher came to the office to vouch for us and we were allowed to leave.

Adventure Camp at Sarimbun Camp

In Secondary School, it was compulsory for all of us to attend Adventure Camp. It was an interesting experience where we went around the area for orienteering, played sports and games, etc.

The Project Dashboard

The Project Dashboard is a business metric that is sorely lacking in many organisations. Even if it exists, it might not be updated in a timely manner. However, credit should be given to the people in the PMO who valiantly try to get the PMs to update the Project Dashboard in an accurate and timely fashion.

In one of the places where I worked, the management tried to introduce a Project Dashboard through the use of a Knowledge Management tool. I must say that it was a very good effort as it immediately gave the HoD an idea of a project’s status via the green, amber and red indicators. Buy-in was an entirely different story as the people running the projects were already overloaded and could barely contend with their daily tasks and project tasks…

SBC dramas

Back when I was a wee laddie, I was staying at my grandma’s home for the weekdays as it was closer to school. What I can vividly remember was staying up to catch every episode of those SBC dramas that were broadcasting at Channel 8 at 9.30pm on weekday nights.

Well, it turns out that watching Chinese dramas does not improve your Chinese language skills as I can bear testament to that. Perhaps the learning benefits of the drama could not overpower the TV’s power of turning brains to mush…

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