My new office is quite good. It’s not as good as the old one as I got bigger space in my old office but at least now, we are all sitting together. By that I mean my manager was previously sitting at another place and the idea to have one room to fit us all is just so we can operate like a team. However, there are cons where it’s harder for us to reach out to other team which we have to deal with on a daily basis. And our office is situated on the second floor. Anyhow, it’s been like more than a month already and the only complain that I have is the desk. It’s a bit short in a way that I will be to close to the monitor. They are making some arrangements to put in proper table. It will be better but I believe that the office will be a bit cramp afterwards. We’ll see anyway.

Among the other arrangements, there’s one considerably big for me. From next week onwards, I will be on loan to another department for two days per week until further notice. Hence, I will be doing three days on database matters and two days on web matters. To be honest, I am quite excited with that kind of arrangement as it just makes my job more interesting. My “new” manager is trying hard to find a senior web developer and until then, I think I will continue doing two days a week for him. I can’t believe that they couldn’t find a suitable candidate or maybe their requirement is too high. I did submit my application for the post but I was told that they need someone who is know-it-all. Well, good luck in finding one and guess what, I am doing part of the job where the senior web developer is suppose to do. And I designed and developed 90% the whole system which was suppose to be developed by the senior web developer. Okay, quit moaning you might say, but that’s what blogging is about.

On a happy note, it was Mee’s birthday a couple of days ago. Not the best birthday as she has to work at night on her birthday. No cake too but she did receive some presents and birthday cards. We are just not really in the mood to celebrate anything at the moment. Too many things to think about. I guess it will be the same for my birthday too.

My whole body is aching now. I did a free weight session at the gym on Tuesday, Body Attack on Wednesday and Pilates today. Luckily, it will be a rest day for me tomorrow before Body Balance on Saturday and another free weight session on Sunday. Sometimes, I wonder if my body will ever recover. Whenever my muscles recovered, I would try to lift more weight. And then I would work harder during Body Attack. The only time I really have a rest is when I fall sick, normally fever and cough. After that, I have to go through all the training again just to get back up to my normal weight and stamina. I think I sounded a bit daft. Anyway, my plan now is to take more care on my body. Even though I still have late night sleep but believe me, I am trying hard to sleep early. It’s just that I have too much things to think lately.

During my last Body Attack session, the instructor mentioned that she will be opening a new class on Friday. I think only a third of the class was kind of interested in it as the class will be set to start from 1930. It’s kind of late, especially it’s a Friday night. The class is called Bokwa and it’s kind of like the latest keeping fit trend. Much like Zumba fever. I looked at some videos on the internet regarding Bokwa but they didn’t look interesting. I didn’t think it’s as high energy as Body Attack and the routine was like repeating all the time. When it’s officially start, which I believe there will be certain charge since the instructor is going to rent the studio for the purpose of teaching Bokwa, I might go to the gym and have a peek. Chances are I won’t be interested in it though the instructor did mention that it’s more suitable for men than women. However, most of the students in Youtube Bokwa videos were women.

Every since Mee and I came back from our Australia and New Zealand trip, Mee has been texting my cousins in New Zealand through Viber. Most of the time, she was asking about home cook recipes as well as tailgating recipes from my aunt. Since then, Mee has been following those tips and advices in her everyday cooking. One of the problems, which is not related to those recipes, is Viber. Mee’s iPhone is still running on iOS 4.3.3 and I have been urging her to update it to the latest iOS 5.1. Viber is the culprit as there is not way of doing a backup on the messages and neither does iTunes backup Viber. I can’t imagine why such a popular app is so poorly designed. It’s free but there are a lot of free apps that are designed better than that.

The most annoying thing was when I tweeted Viber regarding turning off notifications whenever I received a text message. Viber support then tweeted that I can turn off my phone’s notifications. My phone has its own notification settings, my message app has its own notification settings, Whatsapp has its own notification settings and even my alarm has its own notification settings. Judging from what the Viber support has told me, they don’t seem to have a great deal of knowledge on mobile phone user experiences. I might as well power off my mobile phone if I were to continue using Viber. In fact, it might be a myth why so many users using Viber. It’s free but not great.

On another note, I better ask Mee to copy out her Viber messages manually before her messages get out of control.

One of my housemates is about to move out at the end of this month I think. It’s funny that we never heard anything from our landlord. I thought we should always be informed about anything that is happening or going to happen in our rented house. We wouldn’t want to come home one day and find a “stranger” walking in the house. Anyway, I am going to be the bad guy now and say that it’s good that the fellow housemate moves out. She has been a total nightmare for the past year. Even more ridiculous is that our landlord seems to always listen to what she says without investigate. Due to an incident, Mee and I found out her true colours and we just keep a distance from her. Unknowingly to us, she just keeps complaining to the landlord about us.

We couldn’t care much and if there’s something serious, I am sure that the landlord will talk directly to us. I am pretty sure that we haven’t done anything wrong. Otherwise, the landlord would have spoken to us if anything she says was valid.

Well, even though she is only renting a small single room, I bet that she has as many things as Mee and I have in this house. She starts to pack her stuffs into boxes and moves them into the living room. I saw a brand new dvd storage box and come on, who still uses that kind of thing? I thought everything went digital a long time ago except games and she is definitely not a gamer. On the other hand, there are less and less gamers buying games in the form of dvd nowadays.

I can’t wait for a new guy or gal to move in but hopefully, that person will be a good one though chances are quite slim considering that the landlord doesn’t have a good instinct. Maybe he just wants money rather than having a good tenant.

Ever since Mee and I came back from our long holiday about two weeks ago, my work has been piling up. Well, the very first day at work, I found out that I have a new manager. I have got much opinion about him but he seems like a nice person. We haven’t spent much time together mainly because he has a lot of meetings to go to and he is trying to familiarise himself with our operations. Also, the interim manager is handing over some work to him. Though he isn’t with the team most of the time, we still have quite a lot of things coming directly to us. After all, we have been sort of managing workload half of the time even when we have a manager.

Anyway, my job has been about management information system. A year or two back, I have been tasked to develop websites. Due to a recent restructure, my involvement in web development is getting less and less until today. My manager told me that I will be taking up the web once again just to get some jobs done. I have been to a couple of meetings before, hence, I know what’s coming. Considering that the deadline is in a few months time and they haven’t been able to find a suitable web person, the tasks fall on my shoulder. As to how I shall manage it, it’s easy. As to how my manager will handle it, it’s difficult to say. I am just doing what I am being told and I can only do so much in a day.

I wonder if I should feel happy or sad. At first, when I found out that they are going to hire some web person, I was a bit upset in an angry way as I created the websites from scratch. It’s as though I did the job and then the credit is given to another person. Sometime later, I just thought there is no reason to get upset. Most of the time, the management is only care about getting things done rather than recognising the effort that the staffs put in. So much so for the equality that they keep talking about.

Since blogging, I have joined several types of affiliate network service providers. I must admit that some do work and some didn’t. Well, to be honest, majority of them didn’t work and most of the time, I kind of have to spend a good couple of hours in order to make them worthwhile for my blog. However, there have been quite a few of those companies that actually closed down due to low activities from fellow bloggers.

Recently, I found out about sterkly network and it does look quite promising from its website to how it advertises itself in the world wide web. As I am currently doing some blogging jobs, I have to be quite careful when joining these types of affiliate networks. I better spend sometime reading its FAQs just to make sure that I don’t break any rules. It would be nice to have some clean traffic though.

As I clicking through the TV channels last night, I found a very familiar TV programme; The Gadget Show. The Gadget Show Live 2012 in Birmingham has just finished and I quite glad to see The Gadget Show on TV once again. 5 minutes into the show and I found out that there were only two presenters; Pollyanna Woodward and Jason Bradbury. I thought that the other three would come later in the show but nope. After the show ended, it felt as though something was missing. It’s weird looking at just two presenters and they have kind of changed the presenting style where it looked a lot more like documentary or interview instead. It’s no longer that fun or funny. It’s more like watching a more formal TV programme.

I soon googled for The Gadget Show 2012 and it turned out that the other three presenters; Ortis, Suzi and Jon have been dropped off from the show. I can’t seem to find any more information other than that. However, it would appear that since the new series is all about World Tour where the presenters would be traveling around the world to showcase gadgets, taking all 5 presenters seem a little too much. Anyway, I do hope that The Gadget Show will be back to its 5 presenters after this series and I will still support the current series just to see what it has to offer.

HTC One X

The advertisement of HTC One X has certainly ignited my interest in mobile phones. It’s been quite a while since I acquire my HTC Desire and so far, I have only been following iPhone news rather than Android mobile phones. Not even the Samsung Galaxy range is in my radar. Well, I used to be a fan of Samsung considering that I still own a Samsung Netbook and bought a Samsung Omnia a few years ago. Samsung Omnia could be a great mobile phone but the finish of the phone was just disappointing. All comments that I heard about Samsung mobile phones are just that they have a plastic feel.

The transition from Samsung to HTC has made me realized that how poor Samsung Omnia was made. I have been to mobile phone stores to try out Samsung Galaxy SII and though the cover felt better but it still reminded me of Samsung Omnia. And since Mee bought her iPhone 4, the quality is definitely a lot better than HTC and Samsung.

Anyway, HTC One X looks like a fast machine from all aspects. What I like about it is the internal storage. Yeah, Samsung Galaxy SII has the same and bigger storage but I am comparing it against my HTC Desire. HTC Desire relies a lot on it’s external storage and the problem with external storage is that it just slows down the phone due to the fact that Android operating system is designed to store some files into the internal storage during apps and games installation. With just around 200MB of internal storage, you can see how much I love my next phone to have huge internal storage.

What matters most is actually the operating system. Personally, I think both Android and iOS are great fun to use. Windows Phone is climbing fast but everything I see is associated to iOS first. The most recent example was when I browsed to HSBC homepage. If I had an iPhone, I will be able to check my manage my current account everywhere I go. However, to be honest, I am a little bit wary when it comes to managing money on mobile phone. I had PayPal app on my HTC Desire previously but I have since uninstalled it. It just looked a bit insecure.

Today, Mee and I went to a few supermarkets to stock up our fridge and also to use up some vouchers that we have from taking surveys. Upon arriving at Lidl, we saw a huge queue outside the entrance, waiting for Lidl to open. Was there a big sale going on or was Lidl giving out free gifts? It’s the non-food sales again. I never knew that people queue outside of Lidl during non-food sales. Well, Mee and I had bought some stuffs from the non-food sales before but now, we are just getting a bit fed up. Some of the customers could get a bit rough while rummaging through boxes of items.

While going from one place to another, we saw a market nearby and thought about going there and have a look. When arriving outside the market area, we realised that it was some kind of patio furniture sale. According to Mee, she has heard some of our colleagues mentioning about the market and it seems like it’s not just selling patio furniture. Anyway, we couldn’t find any spaces at all, hence, we just went home.

On my first day at work after a three weeks holiday, I found out that I only had just over 50 emails. Which was pretty good but it didn’t mean that I have less things to do. In addition, it’s the second day at work for my new manager. Yes, at last, they recruited a manager but the interim manager is still there to handover some tasks. The new manager only has some experience working in colleges but no experience in the software that we are using. I guess the management now knows that it will be impossible to hire someone who knows-it-all and can start work immediately.

Upon checking my personal email, I have a few hundred unread emails. During the three weeks holiday, I did check my mailbox once a while and if not, I wonder how unread emails I will have when I come back. I have also set a few mailbox rules where mails from my family will go to a folder named family and etc. To my surprise, I got lots of emails about axis ht details and Maximuscle promotions in the supplement folder. It seems like there have been lots of supplements discount on the internet at the moment. I wonder if I am fortunate or unfortunate as I won’t be needing supplements for the next couple of months.