bennyong.com

I woke up at 6.30 this morning and my jet lag has been officially cured. It must be thanks to me forcing myself to stay awake and also the sequence of events yesterday. I had to take my top off in Heathrow, a sight that you would not want to see but it was done in the Health Check area. Apparently, as a work permit holder, I am required to show a X-ray of my chest. I did not make a big fuss out of it because it was free anyways. It would however saved me time if I did it in Malaysia and show them the results there. I was a bit worried as the taxi company was waiting for me for about 1 hour and 45 minutes. I was afraid that he will abandon me but was fortunate that he was about to leave when I spotted him carrying a sign with my name on it.

It was later about 2 hours drive to Southampton whereby we had to find the Apartment because the address provided to me and the cab driver was different. We however managed to track the housing agency which passed me the keys to my apartment in luxurious Ocean Village. (Unfortunately, I will be staying here temporarily as I will be looking to relocate to a cheaper location nearer to the office) Here are a few pics to share with you:

 

Master Bedroom

 

Kitchen

The Living Room

The View From the Patio

Back to today, I went in to the office and attended all day inductions on Health & Safety and Security which I found very helpful and useful for my stay here. My only concern about working in Southampton is that the taxi fare for me to get to work was GBP 7.20 and return was GBP 10.20. This totals up to GBP 17.40 a day commuting. I will however spend the next few days looking for a cheaper alternative. I just got back from Tesco and managed to buy some food. (Yipee! I don’t justhave to rely on the instant noodles that I bought)

Cheers,

Benny Ong

Let me spare a few minutes on this beautiful Sunday morning before I leave for Southampton. I set my alarm for 6.30 but was woken up by my anxious mom half an hour earlier. I requested for a snooze but her advise of getting ready earlier was better and I did not negotiate further.

Just finish showering and did my last checks on my packing. I manage to squeeze in a few more toiletries. I am looking up for the weather report for Southampton which indicates rainy weather for the next two days in London but the lowest of 4 Degrees for Soton with heavy rains. What a time to fly!

I have already made a list of things to be done when I arrive and can’t wait to get it done with. I will be going into the office the next day for a couple of meetings and will get myself familiar with location soonest.

Not sure weather my apartment will have internet connection which might prevent me from blogging in the couple of weeks to come. I couldn’t be bothered to use an internet cafe as I am to spoilt for that. I have already did my housekeeping by tidying up my mail account and also facebook. I stored some files and folders that I will need to use in my e-mail inbox as drafts. This will make it easier for me to retrieve them for later usage.

Well, I am not gonna spend too much time on this post and will carry on with the other activities around the house before the Airport cab picks me up.

Take care everyone!

I dug this out from my vault of compiled softwares that I finally thought I should share instead of it gathering ionic dust on my desktop. I will distribute this to other download sites like what have been done for a majority of the software that I have released. The snake game distributed had brought loads of visitors to this blog which I hope other free applications could be. This is a very good viral marketing tactic.

Back to the Tic Tac Toe Game:

A bit of info from the good folks at wikipedia.com on what Tic Tac Toe is “Tic-tac-toe, also called noughts and crosses, hugs and kisses, and many other names, is a pencil-and-paper game for two players, O and X, who take turns to mark the spaces in a 3×3 grid. The player who succeeds in placing three respective marks in a horizontal, vertical or diagonal row wins the game.”

Click Here to Download the game for free!

This software does not require installation and is small enough to run from your thumb drive.

Cheers

It is quite uncanny for a club to be situated on the first floor of a shopping mall but we were at Scarlet in Cineleisure for Song Yia‘s farewell. Most of you might have known that she will be relocating as well but to Hamburg. I took the liberty to kind of crash the party and made it my farewell as well. This is very well justified as I have valid reasons which includes me being invited there and I am leaving on the same date.  It was no harm having a few drinks to my move in Southampton as well. (Look at how I stole the limelight of Song Yia’s party!)

It was nice to see the turn out and due to the graphic nature of the pictures taken during the night by our in house paparazzi, Angie, I was only able to share the following two pics out of over 250 that was taken. I have to take this seriously because I am certain that the peeps in those picture will abandoned me if I ever post it over the net.

With 50% of Song Yia’s Existing Team

Cheers To An Exciting Year!

Well, I got to catch up with my long overdue packing. I am sure that I have packed everything yet I believe I am missing out some stuff but do not know what!!!

Till my next post. Take care!

Cheers.

I can still recall the craze with name generators and here is one courtesy of BlogThings.com

Your French Name is:

Leroy Beaudouin

A quick search on Google also lead me to discover http://rumandmonkey.com/widgets/toys/namegen/ which hosts an endless list of name generators.

Cheers,

Benny Ong

Another cool website I discovered. Well, a bit later than about a million others but what the heck!

Try this thing out from Imagini.net. It asks you a series of questions with the answer options given in pictures. This will in return used to formulate your personality test results that you can have in a page to share with your friends. Click here to see mine as a demo.

Here is a screen shot of my profile page which I will be customizing shortly.

Below is a widget which you may generate after you have created your account. You can use this to blog and add it on your social network sites like Myspace or Friendster.

Read my VisualDNAâ„¢ Get your own VisualDNAâ„¢

There is also another widget, which is generated from another series of questions similar to the above but is about wishes.

In a nutshell, I believe this site has huge potential and is a cool tool. They better come up with more fun stuff to do on their site moving forward or their popularity might die off. It will no longer have its stickiness factor. We will see about that.

Cheers!

Oh well, the day has finally arrived. I have now received my UK Entry Clearance which means that I am all set for my one year relocation to Southampton (Soton). How am I feeling you may wonder, I am excited and am looking forward to the hectic weeks ahead of working and settling in at the same time. I have to admit that I am leaving my family and loved ones with a heavy heart but I better do it now before I have more commitments.

I am thankful that I going there as UK is not that foreign to me as I have spent about two years in London both working and studying. I am also fortunate that I have this opportunity that I hope I will be able to make full use of.

I have started looking up maps of Southampton and where my new office will be. I am planning to walk to work but I guess this depends on where I will be staying. So maybe, cycling will be a better option. Still to soon to plan and it is best that I settle down first. A couple days on the cab should not be a big issue.

UK is also a famous hub for traveling around Europe, there is an airport and port which hopefully be my gateway to a whole lot more traveling and adventures.

It’s getting late now and I have just gotten home from some shopping. I am getting packed and ready for my trip there which I most likely will be posting a lot about.

Cheers.

I won an Ipod. I won an Ipod…..

Yipee… this is the first ever win for this blog ever and my second Ipod win. I got the first Ipod from a Walker’s Crisp competition when I was working in the UK.

Now, thanks to a winning review on Nciku.com, I have a better model. Although it is not the highest end Ipod. I am thankful for the fact that I am getting one especially through a blog review. I also take the pride for being the only Malaysian in the list!

I can’t wait for the Ipod to be shipped to my house which means all I have to worry is about the postman if it is being delivered via standard mail. I sure hope it will be couriered over which then I have to think about someone being at home to receive it. Why bother, I will cross the bridge when it comes.

Let me take this opportunity to thank the friendly team over at Nciku for developing an addictive and yet very useful site. It is a bonus to get an Ipod for reviewing such an excellent solution.

Let’s hope this is a start to many more wins from competitions and blogging contests. My next target is a PSP.

Cheers.

I was aware of a popularity contest going on between two tech centric blogs and after reading John Chow’s blog post and endorsement, I decided to jump into the bandwagon and participate. (Peeps….That does not mean I am easily manipulated!)

Well, first and foremost, Tyler Cruz and Gyutae Park from Winning The Web has organized a competition which will decide who is the more popular blog. Fellow bloggers may vote by posting about this competition and mention their choice. Each bloggers are arranging incentives to vote for them and the voter of the winning blog will be on the run to win 3 of USD 100.00 prizes paid by the losing blog. Very interesting indeed isn’t it? The full details of the competition are at both Tyler and Gyutae posts respectively.

The moment of truth on who I will be voting for. It has to be Tyler Cruz because of the following:

1) I like the layout and design of the page better
2) I don’t know what EntreCards are and would like to find out with the points given
3) I don’t want another t-shirt as I have heaps in my closet

If it was based on a quick look, Winning The Web offers better incentive but I would still to my judgment.

What they could have done better to win is to come up with a template post that any participating bloggers can use. This will encourage more fellow bloggers to enter as they need to expand the content rather than writing the whole blog post themselves. That is my take on the situation.

Regardless, this is a very good tactic on increasing hits and getting exposure to their blogs. To be honest, I have not heard of these two chaps until the competition caught my attention. I have been living in a cave and reading my own blogs for far too long. I could be a testimony that this strategy is affective.

Do join in the fun by posting your vote on your blog. Do keep in mind the terms of the conditions. At time of this post, you have approximately 24 hours to participate. Although Gyutae Park has the lead, we will see what will happen.

Once again, good luck to both on winning and I will my fingers cross for choice as I want the $100 in my bank account.

Cheers All!

I rarely get invited to weddings nowadays. This could be because of my consistent turning down of invitation that I eventually have the “why bother� response whenever anyone is considering my name for the guest lists. Don’t be that quick to judge me, I am sure I have valid reasons for all the NOs I uttered out last year.

Anne is a teammate of Song Yia’s and a colleague at work. She has always been very helpful in the office and I am glad that she is finally getting married after seeing her getting so stressed out for the preparations.

Besides being invited for Anne’s Wedding, this is the first time ever someone has asked for my help in their wedding and I just could not refuse. We were told to register the guests as they come in for the wedding reception. Although it was not much of help, every little counts.

Posers in the Church

The church wedding was conducted at 4.30 p.m. in St Mary’s Cathedral just opposite Dataran Merdeka. I never knew there was a church there to be honest.

With Anand and Anne, the bride and groom

After the ceremony, it was raining cats and dogs. We however manage to brave through the weather to arrive at Holiday Villa Subang for the dinner. It was held at the Victorian Ballrooms. I was there last time for a close family friend’s 80th Birthday.

The Entrance of Victorian Ballrooms

We soon arrange ourselves and were taking care of the registration. Although we were not the most professional bunch, at least we had fun!

At The Registration Desk

Once the dinner started, we all joined the guests in hall. There were performances by the bride’s friends which gave the wedding a very personal touch.

Another thing, I finally used photobucket to host all the pictures because flickr was down at the time of posting.

Cheers!