I got a mail last night, a short email from a close friend in Indonesia. She started her line with, “[name]’s mum has just passed away. …”, and ended it soon with two lines of Buddhist chants, “Gathe gathe paragathe parasamgathe bodhiswaha….; sadhu….sadhu…sadhu.., which I did not understand; but I know they are usually said when someone has just passed away.

She said the same chants when her mum passed away some years ago. The years passed so fast; I lost count when I tried to recall how many years have passed.

[name] was our close friend too, she was my wife’s best friend, one of a few whom my wife can share her secrets with. She got married a few years ago, she met her husband in the university, and she has an adorable little daughter.

My last trip to Indonesia, I stayed a few nights at their house, they had just moved in to their new house.

One evening, we had a small reunion at their house, a few of us, friends from yester-years back in the high school, met. We had a simple steamboat meal; her mum dropped by to help out, she fried our favourite pandan fried chicken; we ate, we joked, we laughed, we had a good time together.

That evening, the house was rowdy, rowdy with laughters, rowdy for good, and good for the new house. They said the rowdiness would help to chase the evil spirits away and bring luck for the new house owners. But luck is not even close this time.

That was just last year when I went back to Indonesia to celebrate Chinese New Year (CNY).

Next week, my wife and I are going back home for the same reason. But this year and for the years to come, auntie will no longer be there for us, we all are going to miss her.

Life is indeed short. Sometimes, when we are working so hard, leaving us with no time for our family and ourselves, hearing news like this, makes us wonder why we are doing all these for; if all things are going to lead to the same path, death, and death can be so soon.

I remember there is a quote that I like very much. I found it nicely framed, and placed neatly in a drawer when we just moved in to a new place back in the college; as if the previous owner purposely left it there for us. I hanged it on the wall in our study room, and I always loved to read it every morning, because it reminded me that:

Today is the beginning of a new day.
God has given me this day to use as I will.
I can waste it … or use it for good.
But what I do today is important because
I am exchanging a day of my life for it.
When tomorrow comes,
This day will be gone forever.
Leaving in its place
Something that I have traded for it.
I want it to be gain and not loss,
Good and not evil,
Success and not failure,
In order that I shall not regret
The price that I have paid for it.

– Unkwown

I had been living as a modern-age nomad since 1995. The day when I finished high school, as I stepped out from the comfort zone of my hometown, I knew that life is not going to be as easy as before.

Freedom that used to be a shackle with its keys guarded by my parents were then passed to me. I was on my own that day onwards.

But never in mind, I would have thought that I had to live from one rented room after another, sharing houses, apartments and flats with landlords, friends, strangers for the past 11 years; a period long enough to see Asian financial crisis, September 11, Afgan and Iraq wars, Tsunami, two general elections, jerebu (haze) once each year, friends getting married and having babies, one divorce case and the eldest daughter of a high school friend is now studying in primary school.

It is not that living in a rented place is no good. Things like you never have to worry about repainting your house, paying property tax and convervancy charges are good points, and you get to meet a lot of people too, good housemates like you, not so good ones and even some weird ones.

But since you don’t own the place, no matter how good the place is, it will never feel like a home. A place, where you can just come back from work, and shout “Honey, I’m back!”. And try to do that with your housemates around, see what you get.

A couple of days ago, the day before Chirstmas, after 16-hours packing non-stop and a mere 4 hours sleep, my wife and I moved to a place where we can finally call our home. A small flat, with one room booked for home office, open-concept kitchen, a small dining table, and a three-seater sofa. Nothing beats this feeling of having a home again after so long.

Now, I wish I can say “Honey, I’m back!” each day, but since I’m working from home, it seems like I’ll be the one hearing it from my wife more often. Either way, I’m glad that I finally find home again.

After months of relentless work, finally my body rebelled and said, “Give me a break”. And it succumbed itself to the attack of mild flu and fever. I fell sick yesterday.

Last nite, after popping a pil, I tugged in to bed early. And it was one of the rare good-and-peaceful sleep that I opportuned to have; thanks to my wife who massaged my head while I was on bed. This morning I woke up feeling better, and… well, work must go on again. There is a dateline to catch.

There is a common proverb that says ‘Work hard, play hard’. I have been working hard, so I am gonna play hard also.

Taking a break from work this weekend, bringing my wife to Cameron Highland for a short break, go hiking and visit farms, get some fresh air, catch up a bit with my reading, and hopefully coming back recharged.

Afterall, we work to enjoy life, not live to work.

I went to buy dinner for my wife this evening. As I was coming back from foodcourt, I saw an uncle walking towards my direction while talking on his handphone; as he passed beside me, I overheard he said heavily, “I’m on my way out, to buy dinner for my son, he’s sick…, he got cancer”.

I pondered what I had just heard as I walked through the dimly lit pathway cutting through a neighbourhood park. The time seems to stop for a while, it felt peaceful, and I said a silent short prayer, “Thank you Lord”.

I am getting a lot of comment spams lately. It was reallly getting into my nerves, with message like “Hey, I bumped into your site, bla.bla.bla.” with tons of hyperlinks added behind. So I decided to install captcha, a simple feature that helps to tell computer and human apart. It is a distorted legible image of randomly generated text that you need to enter when you submit a form.

I know it is irritating for the extra step but I just need to tell if you are a computer or a human. I am using Captcha!, a plugin for Wordpress.

In two hours time I’ll be flying home to Medan, Indonesia for my brother’s wedding. I’ve been working non-stop for weeks now, I think it’s a good time for me to take a break, though I’m bringing home two Linux books to refresh my memory to setup the Dell server that has just arrived.

I have just completed the marketing-page design for the next Jetty I have been busying with, but did not have enough time to convert it to HTML template. I will be away up to this Sunday; when I am back, I will be introducing the next Jetty and start collecting emails for those of you who are interested to be notifed for its BETA release. And hopefully the server to host BookJetty should be ready within that week too.

Man…looking forward for a good break and good food in my hometown.

A simple story that I heard on Sunday’s Sermon by Rev. Alvin Chan. A message that we have heard very often, but we often just ignore it.

It is not a verbatim quote, as usual, you will forget 80% of what you have heard from a sermon on the next day.

A young law student was talking to his mentor, and the conversation went on like this:

Why do you study law?
Because I want to get a degree.

What will you do with your degree?
I want to be a lawyer.

After that, what will you do?
I will earn a lot of money and buy a roof over my head.

After that?
I will get married and have kids.

After that?
I will see my kids grow up and get married.

After that?
I will get my first million and retire.

After that?
(paused……) I will…..die?

Exactly, we all will die one day. But, is life just about getting a roof over your head, get married, have kids and retire? Or…should it be more than that? You ponder about it.

Rev. Alvin Chan also heads the Third Place, a place to meet the spritual needs for the younger generation.

I’ve just upgraded Pluit Solutions site to incorporate blogging. The previous design seems to be out dated, as it was done in a rush mid last year.

I decided to use Wordpress, but I was also considering using Typo, with all the AJAX features, I thought, it would be cool too have. But at the end I decided to stick with Wordpress, coz my current server does not support Ruby, and to migrate is just too much hassle. Besides Wordpress has been around for quite some time and loads of plugins available and very well documented.

With the new look to match the spirit of Web 2.0. This year I’ll be focussing on developing applications with Web 2.0 features.