Tech and Gear
It’s my brother James’ birthday today. To celebrate, we hung out with our friend Drawde at his pad. Another friend Jem dropped by later. We did nothing but ate, napped, watch TV, and Xboxed the whole afternoon. It sure was fun and relaxing being with friends and not having a care in the world.
It’s also Mothers’ Day. Happy Mothers’ Day to the first lady in our lives!
Got a heads up from Melvin that Formula 1 is coming to Singapore in 2008:
Singapore will host a Formula One race in 2008, and it may be a night race, Minister of State for Trade and Industry, Mr S. Iswaran told press conference today.
He said Singapore has won the right to host the race for five years, with option to extend for another five years, and it expects annual tourism receipts from the event of about S$100 million.
The rights were secured by Singapore property tycoon Ong Beng Seng, who has been leading the charge to bring the F1 race here.
The first race will take place in September or early October next year in a street circuit around Marina Centre, said the beaming minister, and it could “potentially” be the world’s first night race, but organisers are still looking at safety issues.
“A night race will be unique, different and allow the Singapore event to reach out to television audiences in Asia, Europe and the US. Safety is of paramount concern to all of us,” said Mr Iswaran. Therefore, we will proceed with a night race only if the safety and operational requirements of all parties including the FIA, FOA and Formula 1 teams are fully met. If not, we will revert to a day race.”
Looks like it’s time to plan a trip to Singapore. More here.
Went with the IT Department to Puerto Galera in Mindoro last weekend. I decided to drive to make it more convenient for the girls as well as for GPS data gathering. So with my Garmin Foretrex GPS unit recording a track, I picked up the girls from various points early in the morning. The rest of the boys took the bus.
The trip took about 3 hours taking us through the South Luzon Expressway, the Star Tollway, several national roads, and finally to the Batangas Port where we caught the 5AM boat.
We were informed that boats are scheduled at 15-minute intervals. To our– and the other passengers’– irritation, “15-minute intervals” actually was just one boat waiting for a whole hour! Thankfully, the boat eventually filled up and finally left the pier and in about 2 hours we were in White Beach in Puerto Galera. Aby– who organized the trip (Thanks Aby!)– and her friend Maica welcomed us to our accommodations.
There was an office emergency today. It was mid-morning when I received a call from the office requesting for help. I called people up one by one but ended up Aby’s the only one available. I asked her if she can go to the office. I felt a bit guilty about her going to the office on a holiday so I decided to also go. I got to the office first. She arrived after a few minutes and we were able to fix the problem. It was just a loose cable. Darned emergencies!