16 days ago (August 17, 2010)
It took me a while to dig up the URL of Daytum from my Google reader. I came across it by randomly read in Feld’s Blog.
To be honest, it’s not the easiest tool to use. It was cruise to find out who to navigate around simply because it’s challengingly difficult! Curiosity kills the cat. I signed up an account, played around for a bit, but then just leave it as I couldn’t be bothered to keep track on everything I do, like how many coffee I consumed, or how many gym session I attended.
But recently I found myself in need of a tool like that, because I’ve just got some new goals set up in my life. I’m not saying my life was purposeless back then though. And when you have a goal, it’s easier to quantify the time you spent everyday on working towards the targets. It’s easy to say “I’ve been working hard lately”, but “how hard” is easier to be demonstrated in numbers. So here comes Daytum. I can’t find it featured in Techcrunch or other tech news I read, so it’s worth recommending here. All you need to do is to spend a few minutes to learn how to use it.
Tagged as:
Productivity
{
25 days ago (August 8, 2010)
Queuing at the Overseas Visitors Records Office
As a foreigners living in the UK, you will need to update your status whenever you change your home address, work address or visa status (eg. from studying visa to an employment one). And you should change it within Seven days after you change one of those items, especially your visa status. The address is “The Overseas Visitors Records Office, Brandon House, 180 Borough High Street, London, SE1 1LH”, the closest tube station is Borough in Northern Line. Opening Hours: Monday – Friday 0900 – 1600 (info via homeoffice.gov.uk).
There are two tips I would like to give:
1) Don’t go during lunch hours, because most people can only leave their work during lunch hours, and staffs in the overseas office need to go for their lunches as well. So you will see a maximum number of queuing people and minimum working staffs.
2) Don’t change your home/work address there, because you can change those in your nearest police office. I got a cold look from a staff after I had waited for two hours just to change my home address. She told me “you wasted two hours of your time here when you can do it in a police office in just 5 minutes. They open in the evening as well because there are crimes at night”. I didn’t get what she was trying to say in the latter sentence, but the first one was a valid advice.
Tagged as:
Foreigner,
London
{
59 days ago (July 5, 2010)
Go Borris, you have my support on this! If it happens, we can have it before the Olympic in London! See the letter on My Flickr and read more about this here.
This is the first gov that letter I’m going to respond seriously.
Tagged as:
London,
Olympics,
Transport
{
91 days ago (June 3, 2010)
I had a university talk today and I was late. There were about 60 students in a lecture room waiting for me for 20 minutes. Just imagine if you were a student, in a post exam time, you signed up for a talk which is not compulsory and the presenter turned up 20 minutes late. Pretty unacceptable huh? What’s worse, he’s a professional from a company. What image will you have for that company?
As I ran into the lecture room, students watched me as I walked in. Some were smiling with their friends as if they were saying “Finally!”. Some put on a very disappointed face and I can easily understand why.
It’s a difficult to begin the talk, because I have already left a not very bad impression. And any reasons I explained could just be seen as excuses. But I still have to talk, so I tried…
“First of all, I owe everyone here an apology. If I were you, I would think this is not acceptable! But have you ever had a day that is just not your day? … I left my office at 10am this morning, which according to the railway timetable, I should be here 30 minutes earlier. But the train got delayed for 30 minutes. Then when I arrived, I had to call a taxi, which took 9 minutes to arrive at the station to pick me up. And I happen to run out of cash and the taxi driver doesn’t accept cards. So he had to drive me to a cash point. When we arrived at the closest spot near the station, there were three cash machines, but guess what, none of them have cash…” The students started to laugh. “So the driver took me to another ATM near the student unions, where I have to walk across students crowd who were enjoying the sunshine and beer with their T-shirts but I’m wearing this.” (I point to my black suit with a tie closely tied up to the neck). “It happens…but that still can’t justify the fact I’m 20 minutes late. So again, I’m very sorry!”
That’s my starting lines.
Those are all true by the way. I didn’t make that up. But sometimes when you are late, you are late, even though it’s not your fault. However by sharing the embarrassing story, I quickly built a more personal relationship with the audience. I could have started by apologising, and explained the train got delayed, then jumped straight to the presentation. But that wouldn’t end up as well as telling the story. It took me three minutes, but I was glad to see a few smiles from the audiences. At least, that put me in a better position to start my talk.
Tagged as:
Presention,
Speech
{