quite a week

Been really busy at work. This is the time of year when we are busiest due to the Chinese New Year. Also seems to be the time of year when everyone seems to be falling ill. So as well as the increased workload there are less staff to do the job as well. Anyway, have had to do lots of field inspections daily due to all these morons who bring in container loads of festive plants to cash in on the CNY celebrations. And Agnes thinks I 'eat snake' at work. Problem with all these HQ people. sigh. It is just that I (read : we) am extremely efficient in my work.

Got a letter from IRAS that I am overdue in my payment of taxes. I was to pay $88.09. after the $4.40 penalty for late payment I have to pay the princely some of $92.49.
Think I may have received a letter from IRAS earlier for the initial payment, but may have somehow not opened nor read it as I am liable to do. I do not open most letters I get unless I think they contai something useful. As a result most letters from my insurance and banks lie unopened. I will get around to making the payments tomorrow.
But makes me wonder also how I even ended up having to pay taxes in the first place. This is a first.

In other news, YouTube has removed 2 of my videos.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37D26dQ2aEQ
This one I can maybe understand. The images therein are rather graphic as it details how a maggot got into some woman's head and it had to be surgically removed.
But this one has me stumped!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4P0rHim1LY
It is a 28 second video of my beloved Mimi at play in her cage. Apparently Viacom International felt strongly enough about it to lodge a complaint that the video has copyright issues. I have no idea how that works out. I understand however that one of the stars in their stable may have a similar name to my hamsters. I always knew Mariah Carey was a diva, but picking on my hamster is a bit too much.
Guess they are striking similarities that might cause simple folk to mistake them for each other:

VS

In Flickr news, looks like all of us have been forced to change to a Yahoo password in order to access our precious photos.

Dear Old Skool Account-Holding Flickr Member,

On March 15th we'll be discontinuing the old email-based
Flickr sign in system. From that point on, everyone will
have to use a Yahoo! ID to sign in to Flickr.

We're making this change now to simplify the sign in process in advance of several large projects launching this year, but some Flickr features and tools already
require Yahoo! IDs for sign in -- like the mobile site at m.flickr.com or the new Yahoo! Go program for mobiles, available at: http://go.yahoo.com.

95% of your fellow Flickrites already use this system and their experience is just the same as yours is now, except they sign in on a different page. It's easy to
switch: it takes about a minute if you already have a Yahoo! ID and about five minutes if you don't.

You can make the switch at any time in the next few months, from today till the 15th. (After that day, you'll be required to merge before you continue using your
account.)
To switch, start at this page:

http://flickr.com/account/associate/

Nothing else on your account or experience of Flickr changes: you can continue to have your FlickrMail and notifications sent to any email address at any
domain and your screenname will remain the same.

Complete details and answers to most common questions are available here:

http://flickr.com/help/signin/

Thanks for your patience and understanding - and even bigger thanks for your continued support of Flickr: if you're reading this, you've been around for a
while and that means a lot to us!

Warmest regards,

- The Flickreenos

I am not the only one who thinks this sucks. I know yahoo! bought over Flickr a while back. But how could they ever justify the change in policy. Now all my add-ons and uploaders are in effect ineffectual due to the change in user id and passwords. Another case of big fish eating little fishes.

Agnes and I wanna keep pets when we finally have our own home.
But the thing is Agnes has this allergy thing to animals with fur! So the poor animals (or poor Agnes, depending on how you look at it) have to be housed in a seperate room from her otherwise she will end up feeling all itchy and sneezy. Anyway we are keen to have rabbits now. But the main obstacle for me is to find a place to keep the rabbit that is not in my room and that is also not in biting distance of any felines. I am thinking of fostering from the House Rabbit Society of Singapore or adopting from the SPCA, rather than buying from a pet shop.







Tonight is the big game between Thailand and Singapore over in Bangkok. I think Thailand will throw everything but the kitchen sink at Singapore, but the Lion's should just about shade it. They have a mental strength and tactical awareness not commonly seen in Singapore teams.
And we also bid farewell to the National Stadium.



A new 55,000 stadium is gona be built in its place and be ready. The national stadium and I were born 3 months apart and have grown up together. Above all things that I will miss are the big Malaysia Cup nights we shared.


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