Words of Wisdom

Cowboy Caleb is on my blogroll, as a very interesting read. Sometimes irreverent, sometimes adoring (ahem, not adorable).

And sometimes wise.

Excerpts from "Guide To What You Should Not Be Doing With Your Life"

[2] Do Not Study That Which Your Mother Told You Not To
Instead listen to your mother. Your mother is always right. Why? Because 10 years from now when you’re a bitter and frustrated IT Consultant who could have been a doctor/lawyer/accountant, your mother will tell you “I TOLD YOU SO”.

[4] Do Not Buy A Car Unless You Have A House
Instead of buying that sweet ride, why not use the deposit as a downpayment on a 4-bedroom flat or apartment instead? Property appreciates in (in most cases) value but a car will always be a losing deal.

[7] Do Not Stop Learning
Just because you’re no longer in school doesn’t mean you should stop learning. Read wikipedia. Visit the library. There is nothing worse then a boring person at lunch who doesn’t know anything about what’s going on in the world today and cannot hold a conversation about multiple topics. Grow as a person.

Bravo!

I've been updating my other blog

I got bored of cataloguing the insignificant events in my meaningless life, so I got back to updating my other blog (which I stopped in March this year).

Expect fewer postings here and more there.

(Re-)introducing: http://india-aviation.blogspot.com/

Ok ok, don't panic, I'm not in the midst of depression or anything like that; life is good, but damn sian, leh!.

Nothin's fer free.

Over the past couple of months, I've had a few missed calls on my mobile phone, from a strange number that I deduced was in China. I didn't know anyone there, so it was even more puzzling. Like most people, I called back the number, only to be greeted by a recorded message in Chinese, which I didn't understand. I guessed the message said something to the effect of: "This numberis not in use", so it was all the more intriguing.

But last week I got an SMS message in Chinese from another China number. This was the message:

你好!这里是香港中兴集团深圳总代理您的手机中了中兴集团二等奖16.8万美元请以+861348953124陈先生

I ran this through babelfish (oh the hack I had to do to get this from my phone to my laptop in ASCII and to convert that to unicode!), and it came out as:

Hello! Here was the Hong Kong resurgence group Shenzhen general agent your handset has hit resurgence group second prize 168,000 US dollars please by +861348953124 Mr. Chen

Right.

Then I asked a couple of my colleagues at work to translate it for me, and they told me that I had apparently won some money (probably $168,000) and I was to call the number given to collect it. The word "SCAM" ran through my mind, and I quickly forgot it.

Then yesterday's newspaper carried this story. To quote:

Departing from the initial trick of sending text messages to inform mobile phone users that they had won a lottery prize, the fraudsters have also spawned novel ways to perpetrate their scams. Now, they also use missed calls to trick the victims into calling back, and a pre-recorded message — similar to the ones in the SMS scams — greets those who do.

To claim the lottery prize, the conmen would say, winners have to first pay a "government tax" of a few thousand dollars.

Behold: the new Nigerian scam.

Mumbai reloaded

Continuing from my last post on Mumbai.

I had made a date with one of my ex-colleagues from SIA. That's a story by itself. I first met Ninaz almost 14 years ago, when I was signing up to my scholarship bond at the Singapore Airlines office in Mumbai. She was the witness to the contract when my dad and I signed it, together with the then GM of SIA India. We didn't keep in touch (had no reason to really), but for some reason, the name stuck in my head. I reconnected with her a few years after I joined the airline. At that time I was working on a project to re-vamp the entire IT infrastructure of the airline outside Singapore. Ninaz was my designated contact at Mumbai and over a year, I worked with her off and on, and spoke to her perhaps a hundred times over the phone.

We finally met again (after 14 years!) this time I was in Mumbai, when I walked into her office and introduced myself. We had a great time chatting for over an hour and catching up. She offered to help me with my shopping for the bhel puri, and we made this appointment.

So we had some coffee and some chaat at the hotel, and she took me around the back streets of Colaba to one of her favourite snack shops, where I picked up the dry bhel and some chaklis for snacking. We chatted some more, and then she left for home. I walked back to the hotel, stopping briefly to pick up a shimmery party top for Sa. Clothes are expensive in India these days.

Then back to the hotel, packed up, and left for the airport and its dingy executive lounge. It was back to Singapore for me, and for once, apart from the fact that my wife was there, I didn't feel like returning.