Fazz – Page 37 – TheFazz.com

9 June 20069 May 2017

Taking a break at Tanjung Jara

It’s nice to have a break. Totally unwind and away from emails, telephones and work. Tanjung Jara is the perfect place to do that. The distance could be a bit of a problem… it is a 6 hour journey – taking into account of stops along the way.

I was keen to make the most of it. The drive was pretty much ok on the highway – not much bothered by traffic. Poor Ju though, she probably found the drving journey tougher as this was the first time she drove (yeah, we drove in two cars) to the east coast. We had to stop at Kedai Kopi Hai Peng in Cukai. Hai Peng is a quaint but happening kopitiam which serves some good coffee and tea, including some good roti bakar and nasi lemak.

The weather at Tanjung Jara (about 15minutes north of Dungun, or 60kms north of Kemaman) was perfect. It only rained late in the evening on day one. The welcomed shower did help cool the air somewhat.

The kids truly enjoyed their stay. Saiful, our third, is not one to mince his words: “awesome” is how he described it. Couldn’t agree more.

We will come back in the future.

4 June 20064 September 2011

Creative thinking and problem solving

One of the challenges at the office is getting the workforce to generate creativity. Our company is in the internet business, and it is therefore necessary for all of us to be dynamic in our thinking so as to be ahead of the game – or at least at the leading bunch.

However, years of rigid education system, a culture of not challenging status quo & seniority, and an evironment of feeding information (as opposed to seeking information) makes creative thinking something of a curiousity than the norm.

The pity is that all this puts all of us at a severe disadvantage compared to other nations.

Yet, all is not lost. The first challenge is to foster this creative thinking environment at the workplace. There are many tools and techniques available.

The key to the adoption of creative thinking at the workplace is top management buy-in and sponsorship. Transforming an organisation from a passive to a creative one will not happen overnight. The changes will be painful. Some may be counter intuitive.

It is therefore also vital that everybody believes in the process. Not difficult given the existing cultural norms. Sponsorship is also vital given that the cost of change may be significant in monetary as well as human capital terms.

But these are the mere first steps. As usual, I have been doing a bit of my own research on the net – – almost randomly, I came across some material that could be useful. So check out mycoted.com – a site dedicated to improving Creativity and Innovation for solving problems woldwide, with that in mind, we provide a central repository for Creativity and Innovation on the Internet as a summary of tools, techniques, mind exercises, puzzles, book reviews etc, that is open to all – and can be written by all.

Feel free to share your thoughts here.

3 June 200617 May 2020

Differential diagnosis people!

I’ve been working on configuring my drupal code to support multi-sites including this one.

however, I’ve been having problems with the setup. I must emphasise that I have RTFM and still I cannot find what I am doing wrong. Differential diagnosis.. people – Doctor House would say.

I finding it almost impossible to diagnose. Support forums on the drupal website is not so helpful. lots of jargon and assumption that one must have linux knowledge to fix the problems.

Anyway, will keep plugging on.

30 May 200625 January 2016

Cranky Dr House rules!

I’ve been watching the first season of House MD and find it excellent. Hugh Laurie acts as the cranky but brilliant doctor House. For a short time, it was a little difficult to accept Hugh Laurie as a serious and angry character. I’ve known him as Rowan Atkinson’s punching bag in the various Blackadder series. Usually, it is Atkinson that is the cranky bastard. But this time round Laurie pulls off a brilliant act of a flawed genius and genuinely cranky doctor who’s main interest in his work is solving medical puzzles. On other occassions he just plainly verbally abuses his patients either through insensitive comments, or by sharp perception of the patients’ hidden secrets.

Fully recommend House MD as a series to watch. One good thing is that each episode stands on its own, so you do not need to watch the whole series in sequence.

29 May 200625 January 2016

YouTube leads video revolution

I’ve been advocating that local internet companies aggressively promote community-driven only video solutions like YouTube and the many other copycats.

YouTube has within 15 months become quite a phenomenom. Certain reports credit 25million hits per day. People are sharing links and bringing in more people to watch the short video clips (videttes?). There is very little marketing involved, but instead the community does all the marketing themselves.

The challenge for local internet companies is to constantly keep a keen eye on internet trends and move quickly with a solution that meets the online consumer needs.

The internet has always been a community driven phenomena. We need to leverage on this and bring forth one of our own phenomena.