Greetings, I bring to you, from Singapore!

It has been 4 full days here in this city state. And I am pleased of the outcome.

T-1 days, I was with dad having dinner at Tanjung Bungah Restaurant near SS2 pasar malam (near Esso). It was good. It was reasonably priced. And they had real authentic Nonya delicacies! Highly recommended.

7th March I took the bus to Johor with Patrick. Cost RM 31, and abandoned my plans for a scenic railway journey. The journey was relatively and surprisingly short. And by 10:45am we were at Larkin Bus Terminal in Johor.

Crossed the border, and had fun walking from Woodlands to Marsiling MRT station. Headed straight to City Hall MRT for the exhibition. The 2 casino representatives were there with their big booths. It was a medium sized expo, but we had imagined the career fair being bigger.

Rendezvous with Joseph and had a fun time fellowshipping and exchange of stories and experiences.

8th March I went for an interview at Ready Space near Buona Vista station. Will be hearing from them by end of the week. Fingers crossed.

We went to Resorts Casino. Next time we wanna try the Progressive Texas’hold em poker. You have to be loaded to play. Each round of bets minimum is $10. I had fun with the slots but that’s about it! (yes, it’s true!)

Got a free bus ride to VIVO city bus stop. Later, we walked 2 station’s length from Dhobi Ghaut to Orchard. It was about 30 minutes, passing the Palace, and along the busy Orchard Road. We had Pasta Mania for dinner.

During the career fair earlier, I kena con by two tarps. The ladies fished a lot of personal information from me, under the disguise that they’re helping me look for a job. Pat pointed out later that these information will be used to sell insurance to my family members. How bloody cruel of them! Ah, at least I learn something new.

Next day, I sent resume to over 10 companies via the internet.

And that’s about it.

I used Starhub 3G roaming. The bill for me has been quite nice. My counter shows about 2MB data usage for the past 3 days so that means my bill will be about RM 24 for data alone. Picked up calls from Pat, so all in all, 4 days, I spend < RM 40 on phone. Not bad, really. I hear Pat kena RM 120 for 2 days! lol..

Three site I would recommend: jobsdb.com adecco.com and st701.com

I will be back on the week of 21st March. IT will be an exciting time for me as I chart out my future! Wooooot zaaaahhhhhh!!!!

See ya’ll in KL later today! United 4 – 4 AC Milan (becks, rooney, scholes to score)

Went to cell on Friday night. Did a poll and found out there were quite a number of DiGi supporters. With their amazing deals on phones, this strategy will pay dividends down the line. A small company undercutting the big giants in Maxis and Celcom, wise move!

Now that the iPhone is coming soon, it would be nice to see how the synthetic benchmarks fair for their network performance. I’m tethered to my Sony Ericsson phone capable of 3.5G HSPDA speeds. I have “H” signal and 5 full bars of network signal. Here is how it went.

Method: Using speedtest.net for raw speed and pingtest.net for latency and how it will perform in real life.

For those of you who haven’t used this service lately, they made changes to the algorithm to show more accurate results. Downloading files, you still get 70KB/s on my informal tests. So a 350 MB episode of TV series would theoretically take 1 h 30 min.

The speedtest is self-explanatory.

The pingtest tests your line quality, and how well it actually performs in real life. VOIP, gaming, and responsiveness is usually measured in milliseconds (a thousandths of a second). It is quite easy to interprete the results. A ping of 91ms locally means that is the amount of time to a local server; the first “hop”! Streamyx, this would be 20 ms (4 times faster). The explanation for this would be Streamyx is wired, and wireless has some overhead due to equipment inefficiencies and background noise.

Note for San Fran (345ms) and Manchester (400ms). Now that is the real benchmark of how good your ISP is. These numbers can be chopped in half if DiGi is willing to make sacrifises and investments in QUALITY bandwidth. Peering with reputable companies like Cogent, Level 3, Global Crossing and paying premium dollar for higher priority, you can see numbers improving drastically.

I will show you this effect in Singapore, where ping to the same servers *should be* twice as fast. Reason being, Singtel / Starhub is willing to pay more for higher priority premium bandwidth. Hence the better latencies.

One real world example why you want this “ping” to be fast is, when loading facebook pictures. When you click “next” when viewing an album, you EXPECT things to just load instantly. If your ISP is able to do that, then it is paying premium bandwidth.

One note: If you call up your Customer service hotline for your ISP, and tell them your speed is slow. And THEIR excuse is “The server you are connected to is slow”. You can call that bull****. All major servers are capable of very very fast speeds, about 500kB/s per user. Even philipkhor.com running on a cheap server can do that speed if your ISP supports it. So it is utter nonsense to put the blame on the “internet” or “internet congestion!”. (ahem, Streamyx, TM Nut..)

If there is one thing you can lobby for, it is latency (bring it down). Not raw speed (higher speeds).

Further reading:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latency_%28engineering%29

http://compnetworking.about.com/od/speedtests/a/network_latency.htm

http://rescomp.stanford.edu/~cheshire/rants/Latency.html

p.s Follow me on Twitter @philipkhor for the next 3 days as I venture to Singapore!

*** Singapore test update ***

This is a test to San Francisco test server via Singnet.

Pinging sfo.speakeasy.net [64.81.79.2] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 64.81.79.2: bytes=32 time=238ms TTL=48
Reply from 64.81.79.2: bytes=32 time=282ms TTL=48
Reply from 64.81.79.2: bytes=32 time=245ms TTL=48
Reply from 64.81.79.2: bytes=32 time=262ms TTL=46

Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 238ms, Maximum = 282ms, Average = 256ms

We need latency of our broadband to be THIS LOW! Come on, Malaysia!

On the 7th (Sunday) I will make a trip to Singapore via the KTM inter-city train. I’ll start off at about 8 in the morning at KL Sentral.

The journey from Seremban to Johor Bahru is 270 km. According to the schedule, it will take 5 hours 10 minutes. So that computes to about 50 km/h average. This is the part of the journey I will be looking forward to.

My previous train trips have been mostly overnight stints. That means, pitch dark, no scenery. Just hop on, sleep, and next morning you’re there. The system is good for budget travellers who can save a night’s hotel fees. That is what my dad and I did in Vietnam / Cambodia; overnight trains.

Should I pack my Mc Donald’s? Or should I Just have a heavy breakfast and be set for the day? There’s a buffet coach, but last time I was there (10 years?) The quality was not acceptable back then.

Called up Digi to confirm my International roaming is active. Tweeting will be at a premium, so I’ll save them up for a one shot, 4 tweet updates. I hear data is RM 12 for 1MB. If I can squeeze it all, I’m guessing that will cost me RM 2 for the updates

Will hopefully meet up with some friends over on the island. Play some pool when all my appointments are done, and things are settled. OH YES!!! CASINO!!! Ch-ching!!!!

Here are my predictions for the iPhone / iPad pricing come July 2010. I used this American article as a point of reference.

Price war between Digi and Maxis can only be good for consumers, right?

I have no experience running a church.

I have no business experience thus far. But I have seen and observed how things happen. There are several key stages that can make or break a business.

Usually, a small church of under 200 regular attendees would have few problems. The management decisions are carried out quickly, there usually is harmony among members because there are fewer “groups” of vocal people. Financially, they are usually struggling but they are still able to manage to pay their bills and pastors. Everything seems good and dandy with the current setting.

A mega church on the other hand have over 2000 people attending regularly week-in week-out. Their ministries are well planned out, and just like a big multinational corporation, they got their departments with different leaders in charge. This setting is my favourite, where everything seems organised and well planned. Mega churches have their problems too, but not as big as what I am about to point out.

Let’s say you have 200 – 800 people attending your church. You are neither big nor small. You don’t receive the “support” or shelter that you used to receive back then when you were smaller. You are not as respected nor organised as a reputable Mega church. You face problems like power struggle, finances for expansion, differing points of views, different sets of beliefs as your new members bring in their old culture and traditional beliefs. Keeping the congregation united is your main focus point now.

When you look back at your past, you see a nice graph showing how you grew from a handful to your current amount. God “tells” you that He has greater plans for you and that you should think Bigger (ala Donald Trump). Your enthusiasm reaches a climax and you’re on top of the world. What you are doing now seems to be working (for the Glory of God).

The leap from 800 to a “mega church” seem steep, but doable. You seem to have a plan, but there are lots of skepticism and doubters holding you back. You bring out your calculator, and compute the percentage growth over the past x years, and project that .. hmm… you might hit a million people in 15 years! You get even more excited.

As a sign of respect, I will not name names. I have seen at least 2 churches in the Klang Valley who got stuck in this “period of accelerated growth” but never moved on. The numbers even dwindled due to certain factions and the “lucifers of the church”. Don’t get me wrong, even big churches like DUMC and SIBKL had their problems when going BIG. Lucky for them, their gamble paid off.

What went wrong for those who failed?

1. Disunity. As numbers grow, more ideas pour in. While that is good, effective people management is vital to your survival.

2. Leadership. Leaders must be brought back to reality; either through failure, or just a BIG bizarre incident. When my friends and I play 9 ball pool, you feel a sense of invincibility once you made a golden break on the first rack. You are on cloud 9, and enjoy this euphoric feeling. Often times, your latter stages will see a dip in performance. As I like to say, “You have just run out your quota of luck, for the day~!!”

3. From Vision to Action Plan. I don’t dispute your visions from God. All I am asking for is that you provide a strategic plan to follow through. It is also good that your members know the framework and timeframe of what you plan to execute. Get people involved, and don’t sideline the big fish. Once you shut out the most talkative or “creative” dude due to personal ego clashes, it will severely hurt you. Not now, but maybe in the future.

4. Money. Money drives a business. Cash flow is like blood in your arteries.. no flow, you die. Have a plan. Blind faith is a risky proposition in light of the current economic climate. Be realistic, yet have faith.

What factors influence those who succeeded?

1. Good core. Don’t be shy to pick your people and leadership team. Put good people in charge of areas of their speciality.

2. Worship team. The core of the church business is good music. Good music to glorify the Lord. You fix that, you’re set.

3. Don’t mention too much about money. Yes, you are in need. But just have faith that God will provide. The less you force this issue, the easier money will flow.

4. Cell church. Everyone is doing it, you should too! Make sure the groups are small. Make sure there is fellowship, follow up so that people feel wanted. As a target, members should meet 3 times a week or 13 times a month. The usual Sunday gathering, the cell group plus one more activity. Have sports, movie watching, it all depends on your demographics.

After everything has been said and done, the most important factor, I believe, is that the leadership must keep in check with reality. Be open to suggestions and opinions, and you should be set. Part A of your plan might have succeeded, but don’t be too cocky too soon!

(** all views are personal and does not reflect the views of any individual or organisations affiliated with Philip Khor. You are welcomed to comment.  **)

via Twitter

w00ts. you asked for it & we listened. DiGi & iPhone = *sweet*. FMI @ www.digi.com.my/iphone 33 minutes ago via mobile web

My predictions:

1. July 2010 in line with new models scheduled. It would suck to sell what is left-over by Maxis right?

2. Plans will be much cheaper than currently. If I were to pinpoint a pricepoint, I’d say RM 999 device, RM 120 plan with unlimited data for 2 years. Just a guess-timate.

3. Digi 3G network will be seriously hammered. It also means iPad will come to Digi! So no more worries about the micro-SIM that the iPad uses for the 3G version. Hopefully more subsidised pricing lah.

4. Digi will pwn Maxis. Let’s see how in August 2010 whether their 3G network will still be as good as it is.

Overall, I’m excited, definitely. Best telco in Malaysia.

It was a good match. Chelsea suffering from Champions League blues.

It is very common to lose a league match after an European night.

Yang Wei and I watched the matched here in Damansara Jaya. Check out our podcast:

(still trying to figure out Premier Pro export settings, sorry)

Calculate the total bowling score below after the 10th frame (the end of the game):