Year 2015

As we are moving towards the end of 2015, let’s review what I had experienced this year and open my heart to embrace the year 2016.

The year 2015 is a year of anxiety and concern. I am always being slapped with different challenges on work, finance and family issues. Thankfully, there are a lot of happiness and hope floating around me every day. I will categorise these experiences by “What I’m proud of”, and ”What I need to learn”.

What I’m proud of:

I had picked up the necessary of forex trading on how is it traded, what are some of their strategies, and also learned about the term “Quantitative Trading.”

Bought my wife to Europe! (Germany, Switzerland, and France).

I managed to continue my startup journey thought-out this year.

I managed to read quite a handful of books this year

1. NodeJs
2. AngularJs
3. Starting with why
4. Everyone Communicates, Few Connect
5. The Gift of Imperfection
6. Don’t make me think
7. Discover Meteor

I managed to learn and develop using node js and mean stack architecture

I had renovated and moved into my new house! yea..

I bought my wife parent to Taiwan for a family trip.

I survived a year in my startup


What I need to learn:

Stop procrastinating and start doing. I had been procrastinating quite often in the year 2015, maybe it’s due to stress from work. I need to learn to focus on my job.

Learn more about quantitative trading as I had just scratched the surface.

Learn to connect with people, rather than being fake.


What I aim for in Year 2016

Every year, I always set unrealistic goals which I can’t possibly believe I can achieve. This year, I will start to make a down-to-ground check on each goal I had made to ensure I don’t make the same mistake. Here is the list I had created:

1. Read 7 non-fictions and 1 fiction book. Topics I aim for (Leadership, spiritual, People, Swift)
2. Brainstorm and create a plan on how to brand me. This will include setting my own website for jarebb.com, improve my LinkedIn profile and Facebook account. This also involves the thought-process on what should I continue to do? How can I get back my interest and etc.?
3. Write a blog post every month range from anything in my personal life to my work
4. Have my first baby!
5. Bring my parent to Perth for a holiday this year, but need to think of ways not to conflict with point 4.
6. Start my first investment portfolio. I had never really stepped into the investment market (except for my insurance). Most likely I will make my first forex trade this year.
7. Buy a mac mini for my master bedroom and living room
8. Reduce my weight to 80 kg. I had been saying this for many years, yet there is never a year I actually tried to do it. The year 2016 is the year.

Stopping my daily topography post

After some tries for couple of months, I think writing my daily todo list here in my blog doesn't help much in my daily routine. I would be better off just scribble notes on my writing notes and use it as a reference of the day. Hence, from today onwards, I will stop posting my daily routine here but this doesn’t means that I will stop posting my blog here. I will still input all my ideas and dream here for anyone who are interested.

Topography of the day [Day 24]

I didn't manage to do up any screens yesterday as there are quite an amount of supporting work we need to do. Furthermore, I had open up an IP address to point to our fbo demo site as calvin request for it. Today I will start on building the demo site modal popup and integrate with boss. Also, talk to guanghong on how is the progress.

Tasks

1. FBO: Admin translations. 
2. FBO Support - Due to launching of guider fx, I will need to allocate sometime for this.
3. FBO: Demo Site Modal popup UI Creation
4. SiiD screen creation - If I have time. 

Personal Tasks

1. Read up on quantitative trading
2. Do some testing using quantitative trading.
3. Come out with a blog post

Topography of the day [Day 23]

Continue the support for FBO as there are quite an amount of problems here and there. If I had time today, I will start building on creation of demo account

Tasks

1. FBO: Admin translations. 
2. FBO Support
3. -
4. -
5. -
6. -

Personal Tasks

1. Read up on quantitative trading
2. Help derrick do up his montage. Prepare something so that I can let him see the look and feel on sat.

Topography of the day [Day 22]

I will be helping boss with the GuiderFX support today to ensure everything is smooth.

Tasks

1. FBO: Admin translations. Translate the remaining files.
2. FBO: Suuport
3. -
4. -
5. -
6. -

Personal Tasks

1. Montage
2. 
   

Topography of the day [Day 21]

Today I will be visiting my father in law in the morning and will continue my work once I reached office. I had resolve the issue with the translation and will continue to do the translation work. I hope I can clear the translation by today so tml I can start doing up the SiiD screens. I will need to also talk to guanghong today on the outcome of his system.

Tasks

1. FBO: Admin translations. This story will take up my whole day time. (5 slots)
2. -
3. -
4. -
5. -
6. -

Personal Tasks

1. Pay my bills. I had paid 3K yesterday as thats my bank limit, will continue to pay a second round.
2. Help derrick do up his montage. Prepare something so that I can let him see the look and feel on sat.

Topography of the day [Day 20]

I found some problem with the translation structure yesterday and will be resolving it today. I will still be delegrating all my time to FBO Admin translation for today to resolve the problem and the translation itself.

Tasks

1. FBO: Admin translations. This story will take up my whole day time. (5 slots)
2. FBO: Admin translations
3. FBO: Admin translations
4. FBO: Admin translations
5. FBO: Admin translations
6. FBO Translate: Resolve the issue regarding loading of translation scripts. 

Personal Tasks

1. Pay my bills. Remember to pay my bills today
2. Read up on mobile design

Topography of the day [Day 19]

Today I will be focusing on doing the translation for fbo admin portal. Other then that, if i had time, I will also continue my one screen design for eLearning.

Tasks

1. FBO: Admin translations. This story will take up my whole day time. (5 slots)
2. FBO: Admin translations
3. FBO: Admin translations
4. FBO: Admin translations
5. FBO: Admin translations
6. If I had time, work on eLearning portal

Personal Tasks

1. Pay my bills. I forgotten to pay my bills yesterday to tonight must remember to clear them.
2. Read up on mobile design

Topography of the day [Day 18]

Yesterday I didn't manage to do much on the SiiD measurement so I will prepare that screen this morning. And also, not forgetting that this afternoon I will be meeting THK for a visitor tracking portal and SiiD at night.

Tasks

1. SiiD: Create a simple measurement plan to go thr with SiiD tonight
2. SiiD: If I have enough time, fill more pages to let SiiD team understand the flow more.
3. FBO: Yesterday boss didn't manage to test the payment gateway, so today we will work together to test the connectivity.
4. Meet THK @ Bedok 2PM
5. Meet SiiD tonight online (Skype). 
6. Taken by point 3

Personal Tasks

1. Pay my bills. I forgotten to pay my bills yesterday to tonight must remember to clear them.
2. Free Time

Topography of the day [Day 17]

Today, I will continue to come out with the necessary screens for SiiD by referencing on how other crowdfunding sites are doing. Furthermore, I will need to go thr with boss on the new payment gateway integration.

Tasks

1. SiiD: Create the screens in sektchup (Project Detail)
2. SiiD: Create Investment page
3. SiiD: Using the new screens, come out with an analogy on different type of measurements we can add in SiiD
4. FBO: Go thr with boss with the payment gateway
5. Taken by point 4
6. Taken by point 1,2,3

Personal Tasks

1. Pay my bills
2. Contact furniture shop on when they can make the change

Topography of the day [Day 16]

Yesterday, I had been researching on how we can improve the siid website structure and today I will be creating all the mockup screens for SiiD.

Tasks

1. SiiD: Create the screens in sektchup
2. SiiD: Using the new screens, come out with an analogy on different type of measurements we can add in SiiD

Personal Tasks

1. Pay my bills

Topography of the day [Day 15]

I managed to applied the necessary translation information in FBO client portal to admin portal. So now, whats left is the manual work of appling translation for all text in admin portal. Today, i will be only be focusing on siid flow and create some basic mockup to demostrate the user flow. And also, come out with some indicators on how we can measure the goals we are looking for. Not forgetting FBO, I will need to discuss with boss on the Guider FX progress.

Tasks

1. SiiD: Take a look at seedrs and siidcap and come out with a plan on how to improve the design, and also the user flow.
2. SiiD: Create the screens in sektchup 
3. SiiD: Using the new screens, come out with an analogy on different type of measurements we can add in SiiD
4. Taken up by Point 2
5. Taken up by Point 2
6. Taken up by Point 3

Personal Tasks

1. Pay my bills

Topography of the day [Day 14]

After the discussion with one of our client (SiiD) yesterday, we have a better gauge of what to do for the next stage. Today, some of my time will be allocated to plan for SiiD and come out with some important user stories. Furthermore, today we will have another person joining us as part time so i will need to help him to understand the core concept.

Tasks

1. SiiD: Remove all the unnecessary 
2. SiiD: Planning on what to do on stage 2 and how are we going to achieve that
3. SiiD: Go through with guanghong on what is SiiD all about, what are the technologies we use and how are we going to continue working together.
4. Taken up by Point 2
5. Taken up by Point 3
6. Taken up by Point 3

Personal Tasks

1. Meet at my sister place @ 6PM (Birthday Party)
2. Read up on AI

Topography of the day [Day 13]

Today my main focus would be to get ready and start the translation process for fbo admin portal. And also, research on ionic material and angular material framework.

Tasks

1. Research on ionic framework and angular framework
2. Taken up by point 1
3. FBO - Plan how to do the translation for admin portal and start migrating the different logic from client portal translation to admin portal
4. Taken up by Point 3
5. Meet Siid @ 6:30pm
6. Meet Guanghong @ 8:30pm

Personal Tasks

1. Understand what to read for AI
2. Read up on AI

Topography of the day [Day 12]

Well, at last I'm back from my long trip to europe (18 days), and need to adapt back into my daily exciting days. Today, as it's the first day I'm offically started my work again, I will need to get my heads up and get to know what had happened in the past weeks.

Tasks

1. Understand from bimsara what had happen and whats urgent.
2. Guider FX - Talk to bimsara about what is required to be done, what are the gap and how we can resolve them. We need to have a talk with sanu too to answer some unknown factor about customizing the system for this new company.
3. LCMS - Get to know whats left to do and come out with a plan.
4. Talk to Guang Hong about the contract and how he can help us.
5. FBO - Start doing the necessary stuff for admin portal translation and come out with a list of tasks we need to do.
6. Take up by point 5

Personal Tasks

1. Understand what to read for AI
2. Read up on AI

Topography of the day [Day 11]

As I didn't manage to finish the curriculum module yesterday, today I need to continue to work with this module.

Tasks

1. LCMS - Fixed Grad - Continue where I left off on curriculum yesterday. For this story, I will add a curriculum type when creating curriculum, I will also add a new column "Number of Terms" in the level. This allows the enrollment and course module to pick up the necessary information about this curriculum and act accordingly.
2. LCMS - Enroll - Ensure that this module is working properly after implementation of curriculum. There are actually not much changes here as booking of course will still be 11 and 8 lessons type.
3. LCMS -  Student Course - I need to allow admin to rebook the lessons for "11, 8 or ad-hoc lessons". So admin can actually add on lessons according to 11, 8 or 1 lessons for this course.
4. Take up by point 1
5. Take up by point 2
6. Take up by point 3

Personal Tasks

1. Plan Europe trip itinerary, road trip and stuff. [2 slots]
2. Take up by point 1

Topography of the day [Day 10]

Tasks

1. FBO - System Check and Maintenance: As boss is back, I do not need to continue this check but I will hand over what happen to him today.
2. Meet my friend to discuss about the freelance stuff for future. 
3. LCMS - Plan about the fix grad on how to be implemented
4. LCMS - Make the basic changes in curriculum module
5. I did some planning on what to hand over to boss during my times at europe. Ensure that things are still moving while I'm at holiday.
6. Go through with boss about what is changed in LCMS and ensure he understand how the whole structure and framework is like.

Personal Tasks

1. Plan Europe trip itinerary, road trip and stuff. [2 slots]
2. Take up by point 1

I have a dream today.

I dreamt of myself inside a hollow shell trying to find the power of life within the lifeless ambiance. Endlessly looking and tirelessly finding, a glance of lights finally emerge onto the bottomless pit of darkness. It’s the light of hope, the light’s that shines through all darkness no matter how deep the darkness penetrates. It’s the light’s of kindness that warm the hearts even in the coldest night. It’s the light’s of love that prevails. 

Topography of the day [Day 9]

Yesterday is a problematic day for me. My furniture is sent to my house yesterday but there are a lot of discrepanies and I had to take my time to resolve them. Today, I will continue my work.

Tasks

1. FBO - System Check and Maintenance: Support FBO, and monitor the nodes apps i created yesterday for pinging midas portal. I will allocate 2 slots to this.
2. LCMS - I had been resolving a bug when student enroll for courses. The bug is mainly relates to merging of 2 course within the same day. This problem is also found when booking studio so today I will need to spend time on this. [2 slots as its a difficult problem]
3. LCMS - Plan and think about how to do the fix grade type.
4. Take up by point 1
5. Take up by point 2
6. Take up by point 2

Personal Tasks

1. Plan Europe trip itinerary, road trip and stuff. [2 slots]
2. Take up by point 1

Topography of the day [Day 8]

Today, I will still be focusing on defer as I didn't manage to touch on it previously.

Tasks

1. FBO - System Check and Maintenance: Support FBO, and monitor the nodes apps i created yesterday for pinging midas portal. I will allocate 2 slots to this.
2. Bulletext - Create a mashup UI frame so that we can understand more about the requirements of the site.
3. LCMS - Enroll of courses: Resolve the bug where different course in the same time slots will not merge together
4. LCMS - Plan and think about how to do the fix grade type.
5. Take up by point 1
6. Take up by point 4

Personal Tasks

1. Plan Europe trip itinerary, road trip and stuff. [2 slots]
2. Take up by point 1

Topography of the day [Day 7]

Today, I will still be focusing on defer as I didn't manage to touch on it previously.

Tasks

1. FBO - System Check and Maintenance: Support FBO, and monitor the nodes apps i created yesterday for pinging midas portal. I will allocate 2 slots to this.
2. LCMS - Defer: Plan and see how defer of course should work. The main area about this is student will be able to continue their course.
3. LCMS - Defer: Add necessary UI element to defer modal popup. Similar to withdraw.
4. -
5. - 
6. - 

Personal Tasks

1. Plan Europe trip itinerary, road trip and stuff. 
2. Read.

Topography of the day [Day 6]

This morning I had something on and didn't manage to do any work. I will continue my work from here on. Yesterday is quite an productive day, I manage to finish the withdrawal of course module and now I will need to think about how to do the defer of course.

Tasks

1. FBO - System Check and Maintenance: Support FBO, and monitor the nodes apps i created yesterday for pinging midas portal. I will allocate 2 slots to this.
2. LCMS - Defer: Plan and see how defer of course should work. The main area about this is student will be able to continue their course.
3. LCMS - Defer: Add necessary UI element to defer modal popup. Similar to withdraw.
4. -
5. - 
6. - 

Personal Tasks

1. Plan Europe trip itinerary, road trip and stuff. 
2. Read.

Topography of the day [Day 5]

I have a slack day yesterday. Didn't manage to finish much work so today i got to buckup and finish all the necessary work.

Tasks

1. FBO - System Check and Maintenance: Support FBO, and monitor the nodes apps i created yesterday for pinging midas portal. I will allocate 2 slots to this.
2. LCMS - For the student module scheduling makeup lesson section: I had finish most of the stuff in booking makeup lesson. As of now, I will need to focus on cleaning up the code and refactor. 
3. LCMS - Withdrawal: Work on wåithdrawal of course. I had already created the modal popup and separated the controller. Retrieve the pending lessons, get the number of paid and check if there are any unpaid lessons. Calculate the cost and display the amount on the modal popup.
4. LCMS - Withdrawal: Allow admin to commit the withdrawal, change all the lessons in the course to canceled status, and update the course status to terminated. The existing amount will be either en-cash on the spot, or as a credit in the student account. This story will take up 2 slots.
5. - [Not used due to point 1 taking up 2 hours]
6. - [Not used due to point 4 taking up 2 hours]

Personal Tasks

1. Plan Europe trip itinerary, road trip and stuff. 
2. Read.

Topography of the day [Day 4]

As the train broke down today, I’m being force to work from home. Nevertheless, I will still plan for what to be done today. Yesterday is quite an productive day as I had finished most of the necessary work in my list. Today I hope I can continue with this effort.

Tasks

1. FBO - System Check and Maintenance: Support FBO, and monitor the nodes apps i created yesterday for pinging midas portal. I will allocate 2 slots to this.
2. LCMS - For the student module scheduling makeup lesson section: I had finish most of the stuff in booking makeup lesson. As of now, I will need to focus on cleaning up the code and refactor. 
3. LCMS - Withdrawal: Work on withdrawal of course. I had already created the modal popup and separated the controller. Retrieve the pending lessons, get the number of paid and check if there are any unpaid lessons. Calculate the cost and display the amount on the modal popup.
4. LCMS - Withdrawal: Allow admin to commit the withdrawal, change all the lessons in the course to canceled status, and update the course status to terminated. The existing amount will be either en-cash on the spot, or as a credit in the student account. This story will take up 2 slots.
5. - [Not used due to point 1 taking up 2 hours]
6. - [Not used due to point 4 taking up 2 hours]

Personal Tasks

1. Plan Europe trip itinerary, road trip and stuff. This will take up 2 hours. And also, remember to buy disney land and the boat dinning tickets online.  
2. [Not used due to point 1 taking up 2 hours]

I have a dream, and not I have a plan.

Recently, I managed to read a very good book with the title of ‘Starting with why’ by ‘Simon Sinek’. It’s a book that I recommend to all my friends to read and to understand what is it about. 

The book mainly teaches a concept called the Golden Circle. 

As you can see from the picture, why exist in the most inner circle, while what and how on the other hand make up the most outer circle. This diagram symbolise that you must know why you do it before knowing the how, and implementing the what. Everything that you do goes from inside out, and will never the other direction.

Just think about it. Have you ever wonder why should  you wake up every morning to work in what your are working now? Have you ever thought about the work that you do now, does it give you any motivation and passion other then monetary rewards? After reading this book, I understand a basic fact that everything we do must start with why. 

I had always wanted to cut my weight down but why do I do it? I never really found an strong answer that will keep me motivated and determine about it. All the initiative about weight loss only last about 1 - 2 week or so and I’m back to my normal lifestyle. Or rather, do I really wanted to lose my weight? Is it that important compared to the time and effort I need to spend? Think about it. But of cause, I had found my reason now and will continue to reduce my weight.

Do take you time to read it and hope it would help you with your future.

Topography of the day [Day 3]

As I had a last min appointment on day 2 [4 Sep 2015] to go to comex, I didn't manage to finish up all the necessary work I intended to finish. Today I will continue with some of the task. Furthermore, I didn’t manage to follow any of these schedules on sat as there are some unusual activities outside my normal regime.

Tasks

1. FBO - System Check and Maintenance: As Bimsara is on leave, I will need to take over these maintenance tasks every day. I will allocate 2 slots for these everyday just in case anything were to happen. To add on further, I will also be creating a simple nodes app to continuously ping the midas website to ensure that the app pool is always there without any lag. Will need to monitor this app just in case it takes up too much memory.
2. LCMS - For the student module scheduling makeup lesson section: This task had been dragging for couple of days already. Need to get this done real quick so that I can give a demo to LCMS before leaving Singapore. Allow admin to save the makeup lessons and update the existing one with linkage between them. 
3. LCMS - For the student module scheduling makeup lesson section: Clean up and refactor if require. Ensure I don’t need to revisit this module again.
4. LCMS - Manage Course: Setup a new modal popup when admin clicked on manage button under course section. Add in necessary files and structure so that we can continue to built on it.
5. LCMS - Manage Course: Plan on what function we should include inside this modal. Namely, we will need to handle withdrawal of courses, deferring courses due to a certain reason and etc
6. - [Not used due to point 1 taking up 2 hours]

Personal Tasks

1. Plan Europe trip itinerary, road trip and stuff. This will take up 2 hours. And also, remember to buy disney land and the boat dinning tickets online.  
2. [Not used due to point 1 taking up 2 hours]

Topography of the day [Day 2]

I didn't manage to finish all the tasks as I found out there are more sections required for the job. Mainly i forgotten that there are a need to select a studio too before saving.

Tasks

1. LCMS - For the student module scheduling makeup lesson section: Retrieve lessons for a specified day. This is used to display locked slots in studio selection.
2. LCMS - For the student module scheduling makeup lesson section: After user had selected the slots for studio and teacher for a specific day, covert the slots into a start date and end date and prepare for saving the lesson object.
3. LCMS - For the student module scheduling makeup lesson section: Save the new lesson and update the existing lesson as changed. The existing lesson should be tagged to the new lesson so that we will know which lesson it is changed to. This will takeup 2 hours as it consist of both front and back end.
4. LCMS - Enroll Student to a course: Update the locked slots so that it will display the student name, course name and etc. Look at student makeup lesson modal popup for reference.
5. LCMS - Manage Course: Add a modal popup for course information and plan about what is required in this section.
6. - [Not used due to point 3 taking up 2 hours]

Personal Tasks

1. Read books "Everyone communicates, few connects"
2. Go to IT show to buy SD Card.

Topography of the day [Day 1]

Tasks

1. LCMS - For the student module scheduling makeup lesson section, allow user to make selections. Currently they cannot make any selection.
2. LCMS - For the student module scheduling makeup lesson section, remove the selected lesson from the list, and add it in as a label on top of the page.
3. LCMS - For the student module scheduling makeup lesson section, ensure that the selected time is the same as the lesson setting, and saving the changes.
4. LCMS - For the student module scheduling makeup lesson section, plan and thing about how to keep track of these changes to be save in database. Should we create another record, or just change the date? Once planed, do the ammendments.
5. LCMS - For the student module scheduling makeup lesson section, plan and thing about how to keep track of these changes to be save in database. Should we create another record, or just change the date? Once planed, do the ammendments.
6. LCMS - For the student module scheduling makeup lesson section,  ensure that attended lesson cannot be changed or create as another makeup lesson. 

Personal Tasks

1. Read books "Everyone communicates, few connects"
2. Accompany my families for shows.

Improving my productivity by mapping out 8 tasks everyday

I had recently read an articles about spending your first 20 mins of your day to map out what are you going to achieve for today. Hence, I had buy into the idea and would like to try out this method if it would increase my productivity. From today onwards, every morning (except for sun or holidays) I will be posting an article about my 8 tasks I will fulfil today.

There are 2 kind of tasks that I will be labelling, first is the normal task which inclusive of work from cloud forest, commitment to any working order, education and anything that relates to my career. Second would be personal tasks, things like running an errand, cleaning, accompany families and etc.

For working days (Mon to Fri), I will be posting 6 office work and 2 personal tasks. Each of them is averagely tagged with 1 hour of my time. If a task is more then 1 hour, I will try to break it down to different pieces.

For sat, the mode will change to 4 office work and 4 personal tasks.

As of sun and holidays, I would not be posting anything as it would give me a break from following this list.

The number of tasks is kind of flexible, but I will try to fixed it to 8 detail tasks every time. 

I am a lucid dreamer with many dreams

I have a dream. I dream that I am a Singer where there are no stage in the world I never been.

I have a dream. I dream that I can connect to anyone in this world.

I have a dream. I dream that I am an inspirer where I can inspire everyone that I met.

I have a dream. I have many dreams.

I delicated this blog to keep track of all my dreams just like a Cartographer producing maps. I am a dream cartographer.