I'm finally back to Singapore after almost three weeks of holiday in Jakarta. It was amazing how many people you can meet in the same flight as you. Out of 45 seats of the first section in my SQ flight, I knew 8 of them, wow !!! Holiday in Jakarta was well .... like holiday, wake up later, eat, shopping, going around, and all those holiday-mood activities. Of course, those are not all. I actually spent most of my time in either my parent's or my bro-in-law's offices. To be the technician. "I think this computer infected by virus, can you help to clean it up?", "Hey, I plugged in this thumbdrive to this computer, and then to that computer, and that computer got infected by virus too", or "I can't turn this computer on, any idea why?", or "Can you reinstall Windows to this machine?". You get the idea. There was this nasty virus infected all machines in my bro-in-law's office, which antivirus were unable to even detect, let alone clean it. I believe, it's one of those Made in Indonesia virus. I managed to clean them, of course

As I stay in Kelapa Gading area, the mall that I would visit would be Mall Kelapa Gading (MKG). Last year, they only had MKG 1, 2, and 3. This time round, the is MKG 5, skipping unlucky "4". When I got a Singapore acquaintance who came, I brought him to MKG. I parked my car at MKG 5, then we walked from MKG 5, to 3, 2, 1, all the way to La Piazza, and back. I'm not sure the distance, but it could have been easily 3 kms of window-shopping walk. What could have been better than having Bakmi GM noodles, J.CO. donuts, and ice-kacang-like deserts after that?

The tasty Bakmi GM

 
J.CO. donuts, all very sinful ...


sluuuurrrrrrppppppppp ......... 

I also went to Mall Taman Anggrek, and the new Mall Serpong. Mall Serpong was developed by the same developer who built Mall Kelapa Gading. As such, maybe it is not surprising to find similarities in those two.

The first one was taken from Mall Kelapa Gading while the latter was taken in Mall Serpong, over 50km away from Mall Kelapa Gading. Spot the differences hehe...


I was told off by the security guard that I couldn't take a picture of this shopping mall from its front, but I can take anywhere else. Strange, what's so special about the front-part eh?

You'll also find The biggest stationery store in Indonesia, that's how a store in Mall Serpong entered itself into Indonesia's Museum of Record (aka MURI). It's definitely spacious, but I feel the space could be better used.

The store is big enough that they have a dedicated activity centre for kids, just to keep them busy while adults go shopping.


My niece who certainly starting to get very talkative, and kay-poh, just like me ... :p

From ChannelNewsAsia news about MM Lee visiting dying Suharto, I guess there are a couple of good points that MM Lee brought up. MM Lee said: "Yes, there was corruption. Yes, he gave favours to his family and his friends. But there was real growth and real progress. I think the people of Indonesia are lucky. And the younger generations – both in Indonesia and in the world – do not remember where Indonesia started. I do." It doesn't mean by doing so many good, that we ignore the bad things, coz two wrongs don't make a right. No amount of good can cover one bad thing (by the way, this is one basic principle of Christianity), but I think it's about giving credit where credit is due.

It's just a pity that his end and his legacy don't reflect well on what good he has done over that 32 years he has built.

November last year, I was convinced and signed up for Smugmug online photo service. When I paid that 1-year subscription using my credit card, I am sure that I've put in the coupon code to get that sign-up discount. I also remembered that I've verified the amount. They sent me the confirmation immediately after I paid. I didn't read that email. This year, I checked my credit card statement and noticed that the subscription amount didn't seem right. I tried various USD-SGD exchange rates possible between 1.4 and 1.55, but none went close to the amount charged to my credit card. I checked my email, searched for that confirmation email. To my surprise, they have not applied the coupon code correctly, thus genuinely charged more. I immediately emailed Smugmug support telling them their mistake.

As I've read in forums around the Internet before I decided to sign up, Smugmug support is simply superb. They are very responsive. I repeat, very. I sent them email at 11.20PM, and I got their reply at 11.27PM. An amazing 7 minutes for them to read my email, checked my account, credited my credit card back the differences, and sent the email reply to me. If that's not impressive for faceless companies on the net, I don't know what is. You can't help but feel that you are treated like you are their only customer. Nothing but praise from me. A couple of days later, my credit card was credited with the right amount (albeit a little bit lower as USD depreciates against SGD since November 07 till January 08) right before my credit card statement was sent.

Footnote, if you happen to like to sign up for a Smugmug account yourself, you can use my referral code and enter it, when you sign up, into Smugmug voucher coupon code: C26cqbAfqMjWs. I'll earn $10 for my next year's subscription, and you'll earn $5 yourself, paying $35 instead of $40. Definitely not much, but with this latest impressive support from them, I would whole-heartedly recommend Smugmug for online photo sharing and backup service.

There are LOTS of wealthy people in the world, but not many of them uses their wealth for other than themselves or their family. Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett are two of the most wealthy people in the world, and whose life can serve as a good example to all of us on how to spend our wealth. I just finished reading Melinda Gates goes public article, and felt kinda overwhelmed on what they are doing for the world. Bill Gates will retire from Microsoft in June this year, and he will concentrate on Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The foundation currently has assets of $37.6 billion, have gotten $3.4 billion and will get an additional $41 billion from Buffett. I've read enough about wives of very rich husbands who spends their money lavishly, but Melinda Gates doesn't seem to be such woman. If you read that article, you can see how passionate she is with helping very poor people in Africa and India infected with AIDS and other diseases that has no cure now.

Tell me, how many super wealthy people have that passionate heart to put their hand on one young woman suffering from AIDS and tuberculosis who was "just bones" in Calcutta? How many woman can make the richest man in the world to be less lopsided and more compassionate about the well-being of poor people half-a-globe away from US? The more I read that article, the more I'm impressed with Melinda Gates.

Another good point that I can pick up from that article is how they raised and educated their kids. I've also read enough stories about wealthy parents who didn't educate their kids well enough by giving them too much money. "The Gates children are reaching the age where they want to understand their parents' passions. In 2006, Melinda and Bill took the two oldest children to South Africa, showing them slums and an orphanage in Cape Town." I'm sure that trip alone will have a big impact in their children's heart. When you have LOTS of money, should you give all to your children? I don't think so. Let me pick up the last paragraph from that article. "As Bill says about their children, "They know the money is overwhelming." And of course the kids have asked whether their parents will provide for them as generously as they do for those poor people who receive their billions. "We say, 'You'll be fine. You'll still be very well-off,'" Bill says. While he and Melinda plan to give away 95% of their wealth in their lifetimes, they have not yet decided how much of what's left will go to the children. Melinda says they will follow Warren Buffett's philosophy: "A very rich person should leave his kids enough to do anything, but not enough to do nothing."

I like that philosophy

I almost bought this in an instance when I saw this. Unfortunately, when I clicked to buy, the price was $1099 with no discount.

Windows Vista come with a wonderful feature called "Previous Versions" that does a periodic backup of all your files. For as long as I've used Windows Vista, I never managed to get "Previous Versions" to work. Now, before I start, one of the first few things after I installed Windows (98, XP, Vista, whatever) is to optimise them. One of the many ways to optimise a Windows is to turn off services that I thought unnecessary, and this case is one of example when I turned off services that was necessary for certain feature to work, but which I thought unnecessary. To figure it out, I read lots of forums, I even emailed some representatives from Microsoft to no avail. Finally, today I really put myself into the mood to solve this issue. After much trial and error, restarting my machine countless times, I finally found out two things.

First, it needs Server service to display Previous Versions UI, go figure. Server service supports file, print, and named-pipe sharing over the network for this computer. When I read that, I thought "I don't need any sharing as I'm at home. Fine, I can turn that off." Wrong. With Server service turned off, this is what you'll get when you navigate to Previous Versions tab.


Fine, after I figured that out, I turned on Server service, I got the UI working now, but still it said that there are no previous versions available. This can't be right.


I modified Documents folder virtually every single day, so there has to be backups. As it turns out, in order to be able to find Previous Versions backup, Vista needs TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper service. This service description says "Provides support for the NetBIOS over TCP/IP (NetBT) service and NetBIOS name resolution for clients on the network, therefore enabling users to share files, print, and log on to the network" I don't use sharing, I don't use NetBIOS. Fine, I'll turned it off. It was one of the many services that I thought unnecessary, thus turned off. Unknowingly to me, this is the services that allows Previous Versions backups to be found.


When I turned on TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper service, immediately my backups are there. Gosh !! What does sharing and network level service has to do with backups? Anyway, managed to resolve it, and now I could see that I have TONS of backups of my files, some as old as September 2007, which is good to know.

Browsing old copies of files is easy. Click on the date that you want, and Open it.

There, you'll see all your files as it was on that day. Now, Mac fans will say that the feature is there in Leopard in the form of Time Machine. Yeah, it's the same concept. And don't start on who-copy-who, shall we?

If you happen to own Windows Vista Business or Ultimate on your machine, Previous Versions feature should have been enabled by default. It's a priceless feature, one that you think you'll never need but you'll be grateful it's there when you accidentally deleted or replaced important files in your machine, or when virus strikes. Of course, as the backups are local, it doesn't help in the event of disaster or hard-drive crash. To do that, I highly recommend you get an external hard drive, which are cheap now.

If you're a teenager or a young adult or know anyone who would like to attend, everyone are welcomed to our Gospel Rally this coming Sunday. The details are below. Do come, and hope to see you there.

For teenager, the gospel rally will be in Bahasa Indonesia, translated to English.


For young adults, as the service coincides with our normal Sunday service, it'll only be held in Bahasa Indonesia.