Rubénerd!

Well there you go, I'm so quick to celebrate pointless milestones here I even have a dedicated tag for the things, but when something genuinely interesting happens I completely miss it. In an ironic comedic twist, Rubenerd Blog post number 1888 was about the 2009.08.06 #TwitterFail of all things. How terribly inauspicious!

For those of you who don't understand the significance, I grew up in Singapore and the number 8 holds a great deal of significance in Chinese culture because it's perceived as being especially lucky. Conversely, the number 4 to them is as spooky as 13 in Western culture because when pronounced it sounds similar to the word for death. WeirdAsianNews.com has a detailed post explaining numbers and their Chinese meanings if you're interested.

As a proud skeptic I don't lend superstitions much credence, but it's still cool to have reached a post number that has three eights in it again. I just wish such things like blog posts with eights in them brought me as much luck as they were supposed to! I'll pretend I was supposed to be hit by a bus today but because I posted 1888 entries such a disaster was averted. Yeah, that works.

Unfortunately one of the problems with essentially living in two different countries is things like bills from phone companies are easy to forget when you're living in the other place. When I'm in Singapore I have a 3G and data plan with SingTel Mobile, in Australia I have a 3G and data plan with Optus.

Despite technically being an overseas subsidiary of SingTel, Optus couldn't be more different. To their credit (puns are hilarious!), an Optus account is far easier to apply for than a SingTel account and has much less fine print, but you pay for this initial convenience by having far slower data speeds, spotty 3G reception and a tiny amount of data. Granted Singapore is microscopic compared to the metro area of Adelaide despite having five times as many people, but in Singapore I have full 3G reception everywhere except in lifts. I also have six times the data, for cheaper.

The other thing has to do with late payments of accounts. With SingTel if I'm late they send a series of warning letters and disconnect me, but they've always had me reconnected within an hour of my bill payment, even if it's on a weekend (yes, even Sunday!). With Optus they claim a business day before reconnection takes place, but it's taken 4 business days each time it's happened.

I'm not denying for a second it's entirely my own fault for not paying my bills, but the difference in support and service is huge. Optus needs to get their act together. I'm bullish that they're capable of it, they just need a nudge. By a huge bull. I'd be scared into changing if a bull came charging at me. Charging... like charging a phone. I'm a genius!

Given I use my iTelephone with these plans, I wonder if Neal from iPhoneUserNews.com has anything to say about this? Wonder if you get a free Guinness and a potato when you sign up for an Irish telco?

It seems somewhat ironic that my latest song obsession would be about a place I'm homesick for since I just left it again, but this time it's the Manhattan Transfer's cover of On a Little Street in Singapore, originally written in the 1930s. I no nothing about music but when I was told it's played in a minor key I could tell it's quite different. The trumpets also sound "old", probably using some specialised mutes which again I know nothing about.

You can watch and listen on YouTube.

According to those dang Wikipedias:

"On a Little Street in Singapore" is a jazz song written by Peter De Rose and Billy Hill. Though now obscure, it had some measure of popularity in the 1930s and 40s, marked by a number of high-profile performances. Artists to cover the song included Frank Sinatra, Glenn Miller, Bert Kaempfert, and Jimmy Dorsey among others. Manhattan Transfer covered it again in 1978. The song features a haunting, lazy hook in a minor key, with numerous diminished chords. The overall impression is both languid and wistful.

They're right, it has a laid back, summer sound. Singapore has changed a bit since then (the understatement of the century) but sitting at the Long Bar at the Raffles Hotel, the Riders Cafe, the restaurant at the Botanic Gardens or even a hawker centre having kaya toast for breakfast the song lyrics still fit :).

Given we moved around Australia and South-East Asia when I was growing up which firmly established me as a third culture kid, I'm glad I was able to live in a place long enough to consider it home... or at least more home than anywhere else.

It's interesting how I'm often asked things in the street and in coffee shops here in Singapore about things that only a person who lives here would know. Tourists say they can tell I live here because I'm caucasian but not drenched in sweat when I walk around!

I was in a coffee shop this morning (no, really?) when a guy at the table next to mine noticed my SingTel EVDO USB modem poking out from my MacBook Pro. Why did that sound wrong? Anyway he wanted to know if I had the same problem as he did on his Mac when using the modem whereby it will sometimes claim no devices can be found or that a carrier can't be detected.

Given I was able to bring up a screenshot of the error message he described, it's clear I've had the same problem from time to time. The extremely high tech solution I've found is to... wait for it... unplug the modem, wait a few seconds then plug it back in again. I've also noticed it helps to wait for a good minute or so before attempting to make a connection after you've plugged the modem in.

And some people claim this blog isn't useful, can you believe it? Grilled cheese sandwiches.

I was asked by a friendly person this afternoon who's writing a book what I thought of the importance of mentors to young people. In 140 character Twitter goodness:

I'd say mentors are applied educators that take help young people develop. You can't learn such experience from books or classes.

I can really attest to this. When I left high school in 2005 I got a job a Veritas writing Perl and MySQL code for a friend of my mother here in Singapore. I drew a paycheck, I had a desk in their offices, I worked alongside other people, and I reported to someone who was genuinely interested in my progress and offered patient help and guidance. I learned more from studying and working with Mr Whiting for several months than I have from several long years of university education that are still ongoing. It's absolutely, 100% true, and I suspect a great number of people who've experienced both would agree with me.

Unfortunately the prestige bestowed upon people with a magical piece of paper that says that person completed a university degree is still far higher than those who developed experience and character in the workforce under the watchful eye of a mentor. I think this really needs to change.

Twitter has become such an integral part of my life that I sometimes forget most people don't use it. Probably everyone else has this thing called a "life" which I hear so much about.

This was a photo I took outside my bedroom window yesterday afternoon after I'd finished a coding session. Since the last time I was in Singapore back in March I can count two new apartment buildings and several more under construction. Time-lapse photography over a period of months would be pretty cool from here, I can tell you that!

What gobsmacks me is how ridiculously tall some of these apartment buildings are becoming. In Australia there's the Eureka Tower and Q1... and that's pretty much it. Then again, Australia isn't trying to cram all it's population into a minuscule island dot!

Thanks to Yohanes Budiyanto for the Singapore night photo. I'll have to take my 35mm lens out tomorrow night to try and top it!

This philosophy post is so philosophical, you may very well go insane thinking about it. You've been warned.

How many grilled cheese sandwiches could a grilled cheese sandwich grill if a grilled cheese sandwich could grill grilled cheese sandwiches?

Or the uniquely Australian version:

How many toasted jaffles could a toasted jaffle toast if toasted jaffles could toast toasted jaffles?

Or the uniquely Singaporean/Malaysian version, which doesn't work quite as well:

How many teh tariks could a teh tarik tarik if a teh tarik could tarik teh tariks?

I spend my Saturday evenings blogging in Starbucks coffee shops in Singapore, and at the Boatdeck Cafe when I'm in Adelaide. This makes me hard core, in case you didn't know.

I was in a hurry to get to sleep last night so I didn't talk much about this aside from posting a screenshot, but yesterday I was able to get my iTelephone unlocked and was blown away by how easy and fast it was.

I got my iPhone 3G from Optus which meant it was tied to their SIM card in Australia; travelling back to my other "home" in Singapore meant the device just became a fatter, glorified iPod Touch. Calling Optus from here though all I had to do was prove my ID and ask for it to be unlocked for it to be activated on their end. Optus claimed they usually need 10-15 business days to push through an unlock but because I was overseas already they "pushed it through" faster and promised it'd be done in 24 hours. And to their credit, it was!

Once I had backed up my iPhone in iTunes I did a complete restore, during which time I was told my carrier had some new settings to transfer which I presume changed the IMEI number to a carrier-neutral setting. When I popped out my Optus SIM and pushed in the SingTel Mobile 3G card I had from my Centro with the data plan, it worked beautifully.

I've had mobile phones for many years but this is the first time I've had to deal with the issue of "locked" phones which is more of an American phone company thing. The iPhone is an American designed phone so I guess this makes sense.

Anyway I'm super pleased I was able to get Apple and Optus to unlock it without question even though my 12 month contract hasn't expired so I can use my iTelephone here. Singapore has brilliant phone coverage, I've been walking around all morning with it and have had full signal strength for 3G the entire time. Back in Adelaide I only get a decent 3G signal in the CBD. The iTelephone was built for places like Singapore!

Little tip for those who use Qmax for their Wireless@SG provider, because you're not using SingTel or StarHub it means you can log into the free WiFi services at both Starbucks and the Coffee Bean (to use the places I frequent as examples) regardless of the carrier and use the "local roaming customers" option, very cool!

One thing you have to keep in mind though is how you enter your username. On SingTel when you select Qmax the username field will be populated with @qmax.com.sg so you just have to enter your username at the beginning. On StarHub when you select Qmax they fill in the email address part but only after you've hit the [SUBMIT] button! In this case don't worry that you've only partially entered your details, when you enter your username and submit the form it'll still work.

Now if I could get the Singapore Information and Development Authority to pay me for help posts like this we'd be in business.

Great news for us who use Singapore's Wireless@SG WiFi hotspot programme, the free service has been extended to 2013! From Channel News Asia:

SINGAPORE: Singaporeans who have become used to surfing the internet on the go will be able to do so for another four years. [...] The government says it will be enhancing and extending the Wireless@SG programme till March 2013.

Acting Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts, Lui Tuck Yew [...] said since the launch of the Wireless@SG programme in 2006, the programme now boasts 7,500 hot spots across the country and 1.3 million subscribers.

The new enhanced programme will include improvements to access speeds of up to one megabit per second, double the current bandwidth, and using a new seamless login process.

I first talked about Wireless@SG on Rubenerd Show 191 back in 2006, ironically when I was living in Malaysia.