Before the golden sun sets,

Before the old calender is destroyed,

And before the mobile networks get jammed,

I wish you all a very happy New Year and a rewarding year ahead.

Had a good chat with some friends the other day about types of boss in our work life. There was a theory that there are two types of boss – one is a control freak who keep yelling to their staff, and one is with mentor style that helps the staff to develop themselves.

I wonder what type of boss I am, but I am a firm believer of the quote from sculptor Michelangelo:

I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.

… in the Year of Rat !! More importantly, stay healthy !!

Ages ago I was told sending a letter to your friends in festive seasons were better than just sending a greeting card. And since the dawn of Internet, people told me sending my greetings electronically via emails or e-Cards to my friends was the better and trendier way.

Then in recent years, we just sent out short messages via our mobile phone, or messaging software.

But just a couple of weeks ago, we didn’t send short messages, emails, and letter. All we did was just forward a tiny picture of (310 x 230 pixels), to a bunch of friends. We didn’t even need to enter the names of our friends, as we just did a “Select all” from the tool – Facebook.

From letter, to card, to e-Card, to short message, to one-click forward … it’s a lot easier, it’s effortless, but are we getting closer ?

I made a set of slides as X’mas eCard (3 Mb) and sent to my colleagues and friends. Many wonder how I made those slides and here are the details …

1. First, I took a lot of photos from shopping malls, those with X’mas decorations [Tool : Olympus E-1, E-300, E-510]
2. Picked 6 to 7 photos, processed them (i.e. resize, sharpening etc.) and prepared a set of B&W version, then a set of colored version [Tool : FastStone, PhotoImpact]
3. I then searched for the X’mas song Little Drummer Boy from the Net in WAV format (i.e. a format that supports by PowerPoint)
4. Processed the song to find a right spot to fade out the song (as the original is too long), and to find a right compression bit ratio (as the original is too big) [Tool : AudaCity]
5. Sampled the song again to determine the best time to advance the photos (i.e. find some good spots to in-sync with the slide transition)
6. Searched a good X’mas poetry from the Net to fit the slides
7. Last step – created the slides, inserted the B&W photos, then the colored photos, added in fade-in effect, added the background music in the first slide, timed the slide, added in transition effect, added in the content, saved as PowerPoint Slideshow … [Tool : PowerPoint]

Not bad, I believe …

Today is the birthday of one of my best friends AL, and also one of the greatest Asian artists ever – Anita Mui.

“Cherish everyone you love and everyone who loves you” … Hope you like this MV by Anita.

Click here to view the embedded video.

One of the skills you need to master to survive in a hospital ward is about “Making friends” (the others are “Swallowing junk food”, and “Be extremely positive” etc.).

For example, be a friend to the doctors, nurses and ward assistants will make your life a bit easier – i.e. they will spend more time to take care of you and you have someone to chit chat when they are not that busy.

And of course you need to make friends with other patients, those just sleep next to you. The only trouble for me is I have to make new friends every few days, since othe patients will be transferred or discharged – while I am still staying …

So what’s the usual ice-breaker ? “Why are you here ?”, “How long you will stay ?” and “You look terrific !” are the usual ones.

I have repeated the same three questions a dozen times in the past 7 weeks !! How boring ?!

We gather only once every one or two years, but really have not much to say every time. I reckon it’s like what George Ebers quoted …

Friendship is genuine when two friends can enjoy each others company without speaking a word to one another.

Indeed, instead of speaking, I played a few CDs that evening … “When I Dream”, “What a Wonderful World”, “If You Don’t Know Me By Now”, and of course “Sailing”.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Clearly it is one of the most visted places in Canada (the view is good only from the Canada side …) and the first thing come to the visitors’ mind after seeing the fall should be “how insignificant am I ?”

My last visit there was with an one very good old friend. He is simply one of the few brightest guys I ever met … but since he decided to work in Canada, we have one less great CTO in town.

Hundreds of nights and weekends’ hard-work … it all ended today … in a close-to-perfect way. That will be even better if …

… all my friends could join me in the ceremony. Two and a half years of study is a long long time for us with a full-time job, especially one works in IT industry, and needs to support multiple 24×7 systems. Anyhow, we DID it.

Lesson Learnt: Go for it !!