Ex company vs Current company

In ex company, we are a bunch of guys working with only a girl in the whole department
In current company, there are a bunch of girls working with me the only guy in the whole department

In ex company, lunch always whole department go out and eat
In current company, lunch usually settle by your own... or maybe with a few colleague

In ex company, need to receive call from people everyday and getting scold by them
In current company, I need to call people to let them scold me everyday...

In ex company, everyone taichi all the shit away making it none of their business
In current company, everyone sit down and get the shit wipe through properly

In ex company, everyday also meeting and meeting and no conclusion comes out
In current company, still a lot of meeting but meeting is very effective and always got some conclusion

In ex company, have to thumb in and out everyday
In current company, no one give a damn what time you come in and leave the office

In ex company, my 1 month salary only can afford me to buy a 16GB iPhone 5 from Apple store Malaysia
In current company, my 1 month salary can buy me 3 16GB iPhone 5 from Apple store Singapore

In ex company, my boss run away not long after he hire me...
In current company, my boss also runs away after hiring me...

In ex company, I'm forced to use a cheap lousy laptop
In current company, I'm still forced to use a cheap lousy laptop...

In ex company, IT department everyday do nothing only...
In current company, IT department is outsourced, even worst...

In ex company, I drive to work everyday and have to wake up at 6am to avoid traffic jam
In current company, I still need to wake up early at 6am to get ready myself and take bus to work

私の物語 Ver. 7.0

Should have posted this long ago since the upgrade or overhaul of my site is usually associated with some changes in my life... So now since I have moved to Singapore and started a new life here, I have updated the blog a little, and should have now make it the version 7... just like Apple realising iOS 7 this year as well... haha... talk about coincidence.

Anyway, still need some time before fully settle down with my life and job in Singapore, but now at least things seems to be going the right direction. Hopefully everything will be fine, it doesn't necessary to be smooth all the way, a few ups and downs are acceptable, but really hope that it all ends up well. If I enjoy my job, I might consider getting a part time MBA as well if it helps, since company will sponsor for the tuition fees, so why not... will see how everything unfolds.

Recently everyone is asking about the same questions to me, like when are you going to buy a car, are you going back KL every weekend, where do you stay, why your name is like that etc. Getting tired to answer the same old question over and over again... I guess there's nothing much you can ask about on a foreigner working in Singapore...

Still planning to improve my guitar, get some photography done, write at least a story by the end of this year... I'll try my best to make sure everything goes on schedule... till then, hope I'll enjoy my stay in Singapore... god bless, and take care for all my friends and family back in Malaysia.

Sony Xperia SP: From Funny Bunny Point of View - Extended

Battery life is considered OK, light usage of calls, sms, browsing and facebook-ing generally will allow almost 2 days usage period. So even if you abuse it more, I think it shouldn’t be a problem for it to last for a day. But one weird thing that I notice is the battery percentage indicator is rather inaccurate. For example, at the moment it shows 70+% of battery, after you put it to sleep for awhile and come back to the phone later, it may shows 80% this time around. The bundle earphone/hands-free is really low quality in terms of make. Last time around Sony has bundled a great earphone for the Xperia Ray, not sure why they can’t do the same here this time. Well, anyway the earphone still manages to do what it should do, but the sound quality is really average. 

One particular annoying problem with this phone is on the wifi reception. Since Xperia Ray, the wifi reception of Sony’s phone has always been below average. Imagine I’m sitting in front of the fiber broadband router, and I’m only getting 2 out of 3 bars of signal. Sony really has to work hard to improve their wifi connectivity. I have also found some software glitches from time to time, like unable to connect to LTE, or music play through the walkman app will pause for no reason by itself. Well, all these glitches can be solved by a simple restart of phone, but it sure hinders the user experience. So, in order to get a “smoother” experience all day, restart your phone daily. 

Google Now can be access by holding the home button down. This is one of the selling feature for Jellybean software, but coming from Ice Cream Sandwich & iOS 6, I’m pretty much new to this new feature Google introduced us. I’m still exploring what can actually be done with it. For the moment, I’m just running the weather card and some transit info on it. On a side note, if you are looking for similar spec mid range phone out there, you may take a look at Lumia 820 if you are willing to hop into WP8’s garden. For the Android side, Samsung Galaxy S4 mini and the rumored HTC One mini can be in your shopping list as well.

Sony Xperia SP: From Funny Bunny Point of View

Just got myself a Sony Xperia SP when signing up a new corporate plan in Singapore... anyway, the reason I got this is just because it is dirt cheap. Anyway, for those who may or may not know, I started my smart phone journey with first device from Asus, which is running Froyo... follow by Sony Ericsson Xperia Ray (from Gingerbread to Ice Cream Sandwich), follow by iPhone 5 running iOS 6. In between, I have got myself with Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7" which runs Ice Cream Sandwich initially and then get an upgrade to Jellybean, which was the worst gadget purchase I have ever made in my life... and now ended up with iPad Mini running iOS 6. So I'm reviewing this Xperia SP from the point of view of a person who used and lived with different OS and brands before this... so let's see what this device has up it's sleeves...

I won't talk so much on the technical spec sheet, for me, user experience is always more important than the spec sheet alone. You may have the fastest processor and the best spec out there, but if people don't feel comfortable using your device, there's no point at all... yes, Samsung, I'm pointing this towards you. So let's begin with the outlook of the phone, this will usually be the first thing which attracts you anyway. From the outside, Xperia SP comes with Aluminium frame, glass front and plastic back. The glass front will be more or less standard for all smartphone nowadays, the Aluminium frame is a nice touch. It feels solid in hand, giving it a "premium" feel. The plastic back is matted, and feels a tiny little bit of rubberised, which again is very nice and comfortable to hold, touch & grab. The other noticeable difference, or perhaps the signature of this device would be the transparent band at the bottom. This band basically flashes different LED light which serves as notification purpose. An iconic identity for the Xperia SP. In terms of physical buttons & port, you'll get your USB port on the left, earphone jack on the top, volume rocker + power button + camera shutter on the right, nothing at the bottom, 8MP shooter + LED flash + speaker on the back. All in all, buttons and ports placement are ok and accessible, although I do prefer the headphone jack to be at the bottom, a more sensible location for me, but it's nothing major here. Speaker on the upper part also prevents your hand from blocking the sound. This device is not to say slim in profile, but all in all it feels solid in hand. Only complain would be the width of the device is a little too much to my liking... sometime it feels uncomfortable to navigate the touch screen with only one hand. If Sony can reduce the width, or maybe the thickness, by a little, the ergonomics should feel much better.

After mentioning the outlook, let's look into operation wise. As I prefer single hand operation, the 4.6" screen is a little too large for that purpose. If the screen size is something like 4.3" to 4.5", I think it would be the best size for single hand operation smart phone (Apple, this is for you to take note). Talking about the screen, it's 720p, so it's crystal clear for sure, but he viewing angle is really poor and the screen do appear washout as compared to other competitors. Anyway, touch gesture is responsive enough to register, so overall it is acceptable. The speaker delivers loud and clear sound thanks to xLoud from Sony. The camera is the major downside of this device though. Picture quality is moderate, most of the time you will get noisy shots, and the camera app is a little slow and sluggish at times. Although you do get tons of settings customization, but all in all it is surely not the camera that you can rely on as a replacement for point & shoot camera. Well, for this price point, I would say it is acceptable, but still it can be better as the competition is fierce in this segment. The transparent LED notification band is nice to use to stay alert with updates, but if omitting this band can reduce the size and weight of the device, I'm more than happy to let go of it. Anyway, it is still pretty cool to have the LED flashing and blinking while you are listening to musics & browsing pictures. The back cover can be removed to insert micro Sim and micro SD card, while battery is non-removable (with power bank getting cheaper, I don't see the need to really have removable battery, it's pointless).

Now, let's move on to the software part: the Jellybean. The Sony's version of Jellybean skin is by far the "lightest" skin I have seen. HTC's are ok, with a home screen dedicated for blink feed, while Samsung is the most heavily customized skin. It's not to say it is not good to have a heavily customized skin, but the problem is if the customization ends up with a phone that constantly lags and having glitches here and there... what's the point of doing so? Anyway, people who knows me knew that I dislike Samsung, well, it's not because I like Apple and therefore dislike Samsung, it's more like the company is pissing me off with their product and services... Alright, back to the topic. You will standard Android Jellybean stuffs here... I particularly like the "tasks" button which opens up recently used apps plus a few short cuts for those gadget we will use from time to time such as notepad, timer, voice recording and etc. This really improves the smoothness of operation and getting into those apps. Other than that, Sony also throw in some nice Apps addition like Walkman, Album, Movies and etc, which user may or may not even use it. Other than that, lock screen shortcut, widget, notification center with shortcuts all are standard Android features that will be more or less the same on all other Android running devices.

So, let's wrap up. All in all, I would say this is by far the best mid range Android phone I have tested in shops and used up to date. With the mid range price point, you are getting dual core processor, reasonable camera, NFC, LTE, Jellybean... what else to expect for the bang of the bucks? The Jellybean here is running acceptably smooth (at least for now), with some glitches and lag once in a while (which is acceptable and not to the point of annoying), pretty much thanks to the lightly skinned Jellybean software. Samsung's version, although there are some features like split viewing of multiple windows at once and etc, which might be useful (the keyword is "might"), but in the end makes a device to be running slow, lag and sluggish resulting in inferior user experience, which is something I can't tolerate or compromise on. I'm not completely stating they are bad, but in the end it is up to you to decide what compromise you want to make, based on your preference. For me, I need smooth, stable, almost zero lag and one hand operable device over functionality and features, that's why I ended up with iPhone 5 before this. And Samsung really needs to start copying Sony on the choice of material used, they are really good at it. Since the days of Xperia Ray, the material & build quality of Sony's phone has been pretty satisfying. For now, I must say I miss the build quality of iPhone 5, with iOS 7 coming soon to address some of the shortage in terms of software side, I believe the next iPhone will be even better and greater to be beaten, in terms of my own preference of course. But I think I might start to miss the slightly larger screen on this Xperia SP when I jump back to iPhone. As often Android device will become slower and slower as time goes by, my personal preference might change with time & technologies may advanced faster than we can imagine, so we'll see what is going to happen in the near future. If I get myself the new iPhone, I'll share with you my experience as well.

Settling down...

After 2 weeks here in Singapore... slowly started to settle down with my job and life... although still need some times to get everything straight, but at least things are working out slowly...

Getting used to travelling by bus to work everyday... so far everything seems to be working out fine. It's quite convenient to travel around Singapore by public transport anyway, so nothing much needed to worry about. As of job, currently still slowly picking up the pieces here and there... hopefully will start to really work on my job soon. Relationship with colleagues still need to take some time to build up... other than that I believe I have a good boss to learn from...

Managed to get myself a room... will move in starting August... hope everything will work out fine here as well... guess where's my room...

Got myself a new phone after signing the corporate plan... iPhone package even though got discount, but still a bit expensive for me to buy it for the moment... so I opt for a cheaper Xperia SP instead... this will be my work horse for the moment before... maybe the next iPhone release... we'll see... anyway, I'll put up a short review of this guy next time, so stay tuned...

Bought myself a few stuffs... and slowly there are more things that need to replace... first up I got myself a new water bottle (I can't bring my ex-company's bottle over there...), then got myself a small notepad (I can't bring my ex-company's organizer either...), shirts, pants, socks... the list goes on and on... wallet and shoes are on my waiting list... when things worn out at almost the same time, it really is going to break the piggy bank... hopefully there's nothing more than this for the year of 2013...

Been busy with all sort of things like getting my employment pass, medical checkup & bank account in July due to just moving into Singapore... and will busy with all sort of things as well in the August due to moving into new room... really don't have much time to relax and live a proper life... hopefully everything will start to settle down soon. Then I can start going around taking some pictures, lazying at home continue reading my books, watching all the movies I had downloaded once upon a time, and perhaps start writing my first story this year... so, all in all, hope everything will be fine for me for the days to come... take care for all my friends back in Malaysia.