strangers i see at work

and i really do mean strangers that i do not know, not just colleagues i don't talk to much.

Men

• An elderly uncle that is always seated in the morning, at the metal row of chairs in the mini amphitheatre below the blocks of flats beside the multi-storey carpark where my vehicle will be. This is where the 2 resident stray cats will almost certainly be roaming around, or just relaxing wherever.
• A middle-age guy that doesn't seem all that old taking his morning stroll, but it is obvious he is still recovering from a stroke. The crooked face and right arm with limping legs is a tell-tale sign of the condition he is in, so i'd try not to stare. But i really do pity his plight.
• An office worker just like me, this middle-age guy who wears a black polo tee with orange trims works in the same building as me. I assume it is his uniform of sorts, with the emblem of his company visibly shown on the shirt he wears every time i see him.
• Another guy, probably about my age who also works at my building. He usually fashions a pair of bermudas, t-shirt and sandals. He occasionally carries a rucksack, but the most ridiculous thing i recall about him is that he visits the toilet almost as often as i do. more often than not, he will be taking a smoke outside the building before proceeding to the ground floor toilet (unless both cubicles were already occupied) and use one of the stalls. That's not the end of it. He will also blast loud outdated music to cover the "dropping" sounds he makes. Yup, that's the fella.
• A van driver, this man who always parks his silver gray vehicle in a dead-end street under the flats. What does he do there, you ask? Sleep. He takes a nap with the windows down, driver seat leaned back and door ajar.
• The owner of the tyre shop in front of my office building who drives a GTR.
• The employee of the same tyre shop who drives an aged Mazda Premacy.

Women

• Two china factory workers (going by their dark blue attire) on their bicycles that takes the same walkpath.
• A mother with her kid going to the preschool across my office building. Seriously up till now i still can't quite figure out her race... probably malay.
• A short girl that works in my office building with this cool tatoo on one of her shoulders. This one is obvious everytime she's spotted during lunch.
• A grandmother-grade lady who does morning exercises at one end of the walkpath wearing traditional chinese clothes. i don't suppose she's passed away (seriously) because i haven't seen her around for a quite a few months already.

told you they'd all be complete strangers. i just felt like listing these people down.

rt

i've gotten myself enrolled into remedial training cos i'd failed ippt in the last window. sunday mornings and tuesday evenings for now. hopefully once i pass phase one i wouldn't have to continue with phase 2. seems like there's a lot going through my head these days. hopefully once i've cleared some of the stuff in time to come, the sediment ought to settle back down on the metaphorical riverbed.

Ravage thumbdrive

This is so going to be on my wishlist!

Very Dangerous

I was driving on the highway along ECP in the centre lane yesterday night. I was on my way to pick rach up after leaving my RT session. So there was this stretch of the road near a carpark at East Coast Park which I was on. This guy appeared out of nowhere suddenly (probably from the carpark) and was running across right in front of me! Lucky for him I was driving at a constant 80km/h, but he was this close to getting knocked down by me. And then I'd be in trouble because of him! Idiots nowadays... one guy just died recently trying to do the same and yet people still don't wise up and think they're Superman.

In other news, my IT manager bailed out on us. Apparently he's served his 2 month's notice and basically took action even before I did. This also means my direct superior has to take over his position. I don't know if this is good news or not though, despite it being a promotion. Anyway, so the old position of my direct superior will then be open. I figure they'd be better off doing internal hiring as my colleague who is more experienced should be able to do the job well. Okay so it kind of says that I'm being passed over for this position but I reckon if I were in his shoes, I'd appoint the other guy anyway. Although when I first joined this job I was thinking in my mind when they asked me "I want YOUR job" and all... haha.

Your queue number is 03729.

About 10,000 applicants have applied for the 438 flats offered for sale. Applicants with queue position 2,001 and above will be informed of their selection appointment if there are flats still available before their turn is due. You can check the availability of flats on the HDB's InfoWeb or via teletext.

Talk about letting you down slowly yet painfully. Granted, I'd been given a queue number which cost me $10. But if you've got people in the thousands hoping for an equal chance at the 400-odd units, the HDB seems to be giving me hopeless hope to cling on to, as if I really had a chance to have a go at it.

time for a list

*WARNING: LONG RANTING POST*

so here's a short bunch of stuff that's been contending for my attention these days.

1. volatile situation of moving house
   
2. desire to "move on" with my job
   
3. preparation for wedding
4. doing other stuff in my spare time
5. getting enough sleep
6. army stuff
   

read on if you've got the time...

volatile situation of moving house

so my parent's have just received confirmed payment for sale of our current residence. but here's the other side of the dilemma. we're shifting to the newly-built condo further up north-east, and there's much less space there. this means we'll have to dispose/give away more stuff. the issue here is that i'm probably shifting out on my own anyway. so disposing too much stuff (which i normally won't bear to) might have been better off keeping for the new place. what's more is we're waiting confirmation by HDB whether we got the ballot number for the new flat selection. seeing the condo for the first time this weekend, rachel and myself had also wondered the remote possibility of us getting a unit for ourselves too.

desire to "move on" with my job

i'll just come out and say it. i'm thinking of changing my job. i've been to at least one interview (which i wasn't very keen on though) recently and i've been flipping the recruitment pages in the papers on saturdays. would it be better for me to stay and look for any signs of gaining more (experience and salary) or would i be better off searching elsewhere? this is a question that everyone would probably vote for the latter. but in these times of recession, really? crappy job scopes aside, this place has been one big family (at least in the IT department) and seeing the most recent departure of my colleague seated beside me, she was in tears the day she left. we'll see if i have a shot outside this company then...

preparation for wedding

actually there isn't much for me to panic about regarding the wedding. at least not for now. have i missed out something that should be done? we've probably got to re-visit the guest list soon. bridal photo shoot will be in early August. the solemniser for our ROM (before the dinner) should be confirmed some time after that too. taste test session for the hotel food will be done some time in september. and we're waiting for the ballot queue number from HDB for our housing. no, seriously, am i missing out something i should be panicking about?

doing other stuff in my spare time

papercrafts, setting up new OS's on my spare machines, backing up files to DVDs... i've got a handful of unnecessary/unimportant things i'd hope to do. but like i said, they're unimportant, so they're usually the first to be put on the backburner. moving on...

getting enough sleep

i find this a problem. i'm not sure why, but i make it a point to get as much sleep as i can during weekends, as weekdays... i just find the hours put to better use doing other stuff (refer to points 2, 3 & 4) so i'd have a large portion of time on sundays sleeping in real late, or having afternoon naps before my sleep.

army stuff

not much of a big problem here. but i've got RT (remedial training) lined up for this coming 4 weeks. and another 4 if i fail to pass IPPT at the end of the schedule. 2 days weekly, tuesdays and sundays. this would mean less sleep for me (refer to point 5) and doing other stuff. but mostly about sleep.

maybe i should play less of facebook games... but where's the fun in that? either i tend to look for "change", or "change" likes looking me up. i'll try embracing whatever comes at me. i'm sure i can handle it!

lesson #200905051716

*WARNING: GEEK POST*

When doing a .split() on a String in Java delimited with the "|" pipe character, remember to perform double escape (see explanation below). Example:

String string = "boo|and|foo";

Because of how the pipe is used in a regular expression, what one would expect to do as in splitting a typical comma-separated value list,

string.split("|");

However it does not work the same way, and the result would be a messed up array

[, b, o, o, |, a, n, d, |, f, o, o]

Instead, this should be done:

string.split("\\|");

in order to get the desired result of

[boo, and, foo]

Explanation:
The pipe needs to be escaped from the string, but in order for the backslash to be included to let Java know that the pipe is to be escaped, the backslash itself has to be escaped first! Regex has other plans for the pipe character thus inadvertently causing this situation.