A trip to Tagaytay

Tagaytay is a popular tourist place near Manila. It is a volcano within a lake within a volcano within a lake.


We start the journey by taking a boat to cross the lake. Besides me is our Ericsson driver Rodel.


The climbing part is treacherous, with a lot of dust and rather steep clim on sandy volcanic ground.



Some opt for riding horses. We (me and colleague Sukimin) being our adventurous selves opt for walking!

The end result - a sense of achievement and a feast to the eye!

More about Manila

Manila has some of the best malls in the region - for example this SM Malls in Ortigas Centre - it's easily 2, 3 times the size of Suntec City and with a good variety of shops including art galleries, Bingo lottery center etc.

Fantastic art piece on exhibition on the same mall. Arts culture are wide spread among Filipinos. You see people from all strata stopping by and have an appreciation of the arts work, something that many of the the so called more 'modern' societies in the region has to catch up on.

In Manila

View of Taguig city out of the 20th floor of Manila office

One day in Bird Park

Found it! the excellent 'Muar Chinese' video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6M8fnjPLx6k

Augmented Reality

I did the above work 4 years ago for my Final Year Project in university. If for any reason the video fails to load, please use this direct link. Augmented reality deals with introducing virtual objects into real video sequence. I was working on a trading game prototype based on natural feature tracking (as opposed to marker tracking). The idea was to build a AR trading game, whereby when 2 trading cards was brought together, the virtual monsters on it will fight with each other. Trading cards will no longer be as boring as comparing the statistics printed on the card! Natural feature tracking works on natural feature (any kind of pictures/patterns), whereas marker tracking works on known shapes which is considerably easier to manage. My work uses a fair bit of computer vision and 3D geometry techniques, I shall spare you the details. ;) That FYP earns me an A+ and I was able to produce, according to my professor, the first real-time (30fps) natural feature tracking with considerably stable result in the world! (Consider, it was 4 years ago).

Weeks ago I come across this upcoming new video game for PS3 called 'The Eye of Judgement', and it looks very similar to what I was working on 4 years ago! And looking at the technology, it clearly is using marker tracking, and I bet I was producing a much more stable result than Sony - what is considered stable? The true aim of augmented reality is to make sure the introduced virtual objects will blend into its natural surrounding with perfectly. e.g. In this case, if the virtual objects were supposed to lie on a card, it should move together with the card and maintain its 3D pose. What makes this difficult is the real-time nature of the live camera, and the unpredictable movement of the cards. And I am really not surprise that this is still a working title. It will take sometime for them to perfect the marker tracking part, and make the virtual objects rendering stabilized.

If I were to continue developing into the prototype I was working on, I could be rich by now....only if. ;)

Good bye IPX!

After three years of rather fulfilling career within IPX, I've decided to move on to a new role within Ericsson.

I still remember three years ago, on that morning I landed on Stockholm and seeing snow for the first time in my life. I could still feel the cold, crisp and dry air penetrating my nostril. And I met a receiving Kjell in the Kista office. And there and whence starts my IPX journey. I have travelled to places and met many people, whom I have learned, and worked with throughout these 3 years. I have developed considerably both technically and professionally. There were sweats and there were laughters. Looking back, it's indeed quite an experience, something that will occupy a space within my heart for my entire life. I have also made many life-long friends, and to me, that's invaluable.

And today I've finally embarked on a new phase of my career, with the same jittery of excitement anticipating the uncertainty, albeit with a little bit more confidence thanks to all the experience I've gathered from being in the challenging environment of IPX.

Below are some of the wishes I've received from my fellow (ex)colleagues - and yes, every single piece of such wishes means a lot to me - with these I'll be able to move on, with the same intensity and passion burning within me, and with these I'll be able to move on with the smile in my heart knowing that I indeed have not wasted my 1000+ days in IPX. Thank you guys!

Hi Tze Eng,
Wish you all the best in your new
career path. Will call you when I come to Singapore next time

All the best to you too Tze Eng and once again good luck in your new work!
It has been a pleasure to work with such a energetic and developing person like
you. Do not hesitate to contact me in any matter, business or pleasure.

Bye for now Tze Eng.
I'm sure you'll get lots of these mails!
I've really appreciated all your help over the last year and a bit, whether it was helping me solve problems, teaching me new stuff or pointing out when I was being a bit rash! I've always been very impressed with the wealth of your knowledge and I have learned a huge amount from you.
It was great to meet you the few times that I did and hopefully I'll get the opportunity in future.
Very best of luck to you in your new role!

Bye Tze Eng
And good luck
I will miss you and your bugs

Hi Tze Eng!
I'm sad that you are leaving, you have been doing a great work at IPX.
Wish you good luck at your new job!

Good Luck Tze!!!
We will for sure miss you a lot!
I hope you find your new role fulfilling

Goodbye Zing!
It have been a nice time with u and we will MISS u, buhhuuuu!
If u ever come to sweden in ur new role, promis to visit us!!!
I wish u all the best luck,

Thank you as well, Tze Eng. I hope you'll enjoy your new challenges.

Hi Zing!
We will miss you, keep in touch!
Good luck with the your new work.

Hi Tze Eng,
It have been great to work with you, and I wish you the best of luck on your new career.

Hi Tze Eng,
though we haven't worked together for huge amount of time I'm impressed and thankful to the way you exit from IPX with a very professional handover.
I wish you all luck and success in your new challenges within Ericsson.

I wish you all the best and good luck with your new assignment. I meet with xxxx yesterday and he wanted me to say hello from him and wish you good luck.
Take care!

Best wishes Tze Eng. Try to keep in touch.

Hi Tze Eng,
Good luck with everything and promise to stay in touch! Thanks for everything, it has been a pleasure to work with you.

Hi, Tze Eng:
Thanks for your support in the previuous time.
Hope you have a better development in your next job position.

?? Oh, Man… what a shock! O_o
Well, I wish you all the best too, and thanks for all your help during this time.
Thanks also for the couple of beers that we had in Stockholm… who knows, maybe some day we will meet in SG or in xx and we will have a couple more. ;)
Take care, my friend.

Good luck Tze, you will be missed!

Going back tonight!

Had not been able to post updates due to busy schedule. My flight home is tonight, will reach tomorrow early morning. Home sweet home!

Managed to did some shopping in Delhi city center last Saturday. Here's some pictures:



The Arc de Triomphe of Delhi - the India Gate. Only just passed by this time round, as I've already visited it during my last trip. * picture a bit distorted as taken from a moving car *



Guess what this is? This is cow dung - being sold in a string. What is it used for? It's used as fuel for cooking. In the picture is my favourite driver Chunnu, who has just gotten back to hometown to see his wife and son. He told me that he has to take a 24 hour train back to hometown and he only get to see his wife and son once a year! We sometimes really don't know how fortunate we are... be grateful!





Also went to this wholesale market called Dilli Haat - selling mainly arts and crafts. Prices abit steep though (in local standard of course).




Also went to Lodi Garden, a famous park within Central Delhi that offers rare greenary in Delhi! But it is really a beautiful garden that lets you escape the hustle and bustle of Delhi traffic




Beautiful arc in side a historic temple-like building in the park

Another Excellent Video, super funny!

Yo, another excellent masterpiece from the same guy who made the documentary! It's still in Mandarin + Hok Kien though, but nonetheless music is beyond language!

Note: Unfortunately Youtube has deleted the video 'due to violation', not sure what type of violation this video incur? ;) probably due to posting without the original author's permission? Argghhh the double sword of 'copyright' *

An Excellent Muar Documentary

An excellent documentary on Muar, my much beloved hometown.

part 1
part 2

Good introduction for those of you who are coming to Muar for the first time!

Oh~ I am missing Muar after watching the documentary!

Movie ticket price

dinner at Basant Lock

went this nice shopping-dining location called Basant Lock where I had a pleasant dinner together with Fred and his family. The area is called Vasant Vihar, an upmarket residential area housing many international diplomats and expats. .

me and Fred

taken with hotel pool as background.

Traffic in Delhi

Traffic in Delhi is such a mess and headache. Distance between car and car could be centimeters. and everyone has to horn all the time. Road that would at most fit 3 vehicles lanes in Singapore would easily accomodate 5 or 6 vehicle lanes here, all bumper to bumper and 'door to door'. Hardly anyone follow traffic rules, you get to see cars travelling in reverse direction etc. Quite an experience though.