Nick Pan – Page 40 – nickpan.com

14th September, 201012th August, 2012

Clara Pan

We were having dinner and Pearl thinks her water bag ruptured slightly, we stopped what we were doing and brought our kids home. Showered, changed, we decided to rest at home to monitor Pearl a bit more as water was suppose to be gushing, but it was not as dramatic as we thought. Clié and Cleo was induced, so it was still quite a new experience for Pearl.

We were quite sure it was time, so off to the hospital we go. The nurses checked Pearl’s situation and it was confirmed she was in labour.

The Twitpic Foursquare Check-in Tweet to Facebook Announcement — The Announcement

I made an announcement online with my mobile and realised that I’ve actually use several online services all below 140 characters. So the announcement contained the #ClaraPan hastag, a picture which i uploaded to Twitpic, a Foursquare Check-in into the hospital which was automatically pushed to my Twitter and it also automatically pushed to my Facebook wall + the tweet is also displayed on my Blog’s sidebar. What a time we live in.

All the cables were hooked up and the baby’s heartbeat could be heard thru the speakers. It sounded very much like a choo choo train as depicted by the animated choo choo train icon. Very kid-dish-ly cute.

Alot of people have asked me to update them when the baby was coming, so what better way to announce it thru twitter from 12:30am onwards on an early sunday morning of a long weekend.

The epidural machine always looked fierce.

There was another lady who gave birth at about 1:30am or so, but after that the whole Delivery Ward was left to Pearl. The night was quite uneventful, Pearl waited and slept a bit. I sat on the retro brown reclining sofa chair at the side and slept too. I can only imagine the number of fathers who must have sat on the same chair eagerly waiting for the arrival of their little bundle of joy.

For Clié, Pearl admitted in the morning and delivered her in the evening. For Cleo, Pearl admitted in the morning and delivered her in the afternoon. For Clara, Pearl had to go in at midnight and delivered her in the morning.

After a tiring wait overnight, our gyne Dr Yeoh said Pearl was ready to push as she was fully dilated. I think she just gave 4 real good push and Clara was out. The nurses cleaned her up and baby looked perfect.

A footprint was also taken.

Pearl lost quite a lot of blood, hence Dr Yeoh had to attend to her for quite a while more. I don’t want to go into details, but I’m glad everything turned out well. Its amazing that our doctor knew exactly what to do, who to call, what medication to give, etc. Its definitely not easy being a doctor at all, they can’t Google on the spot.

I would like to sincerely thank everyone who have prayed for Pearl. She is fine now. Thank God!

In the evening, we celebrated Clara’s birthday with a simple cake. It was after all the day she was born.

The next day, after dropping Clié off at school, I headed back to the hospital. Mommy was fine, baby was fine, everything was nice and peaceful.

While the nurses were attending to Pearl, I had a good long period of one on one time with Clara.

I looked at her, hummed to her, talked to her as if she could understand me while she was sleeping.

Thank you for coming into our lives Clara.

11th September, 201011th September, 2010

My Girls

My girls are growing up well. They both have their very own distinct character. Clié is turning 8 and in P2, Cleo is turning 6 and in K2.

Clié Pan

Clié is an emotional girl and can be very sensitive at times. I would say she is rich in her feelings and its clear when she prefers to see drama on TV over cartoons. She will ask things like why this person like this, why that person like that, etc. Plus, she loves to explain to us what she understands too.

She is extremely fidgety and simply can’t sit still. She runs, sings, jumps, dances, twirls and makes loud exclamations as if she is in Camp Rock when she suddenly breaks into song like she is in a musical.

Then five minutes later, its Korean drama where she chokes on her tears and her self esteem takes a nose dive. I think she is a teenager already. With all the makeup, clothes, shoes, accessories, she IS a girl, not yet a women.

Cleo Pan

Cleo is a bubbly girl. She is organised, cheerful and generally a lot simpler. She does not do stuff that will make her parents shout at her, but instead her cute little moves makes her parents want to talk to her softly and cuddly her like one of her many carebear plush. Like today, she tied one of her small soft toy on her hair band and went for class. So cuuutteeeee.

She is not into princess stuff, but into soft toys, fast cars, tools and Animal Planet. To me, she is a cool kid.

HOWEVER, she is one of the most stubborn person in the house. If her mind is set on something, its easier to tell Obama to pull out of middle east then to tell her to change her mind (yah yah i’m exaggerating). But i think that might be the only thing that makes us frown.

She is proactive and well organised. For her birthday this year, she told us that it will start at 1pm, cake cutting at 4pm and party will end at 5pm. Both of us parents were surprised, but thats just how Cleo is. She will nag to do stuff for her if i’m suppose to. Like buy her batteries, bring her somewhere, do something for her etc. So she becomes my default reminder person in the house. She WILL remember and reminds me with a smile with her blinky eyes.

Ms #3 Pan

So Pearl is now 38 weeks preggy with #3, we are all wondering how this person will be like. Will she be more like Clié or Cleo? Will she be more like Daddy or Mommy? Or will she be totally different from the rest of us. Just a few days more and Pearl will pop.

I will be giving live updates on twitter and will announce the Hashtag when we go to the hospital. Follow me on twitter at @nickpan if you want to know. Just a few days away, just a few days away.

8th September, 20109th September, 2010

#AisFor

This is a very simple game on Twitter. You just need to start tweeting “A is for [something]” with the Hashtag #AisFor then your friends can continue with “B is for [something] #AisFor”.

Just started it randomly and it ended with 3 other friends participating at the end. The hashtag only started at J.

@nickpan: A is for Angst
@jackiegay: @nickpan B is for boliao n C is for Cookie!!!
@nickpan: @jackiegay D is for Deadline
@jackiegay: @nickpan E is for Erdinger!
@nickpan: @jackiegay F is for FRIDAYYYYYYY
@chaos_pk: @nickpan G is for gg
@nickpan: @chaos_pk @jackiegay H is for HTTP://NICKPAN.COM
@chaos_pk: @nickpan @jackiegay i is for ipad
@nickpan: @chaos_pk @jackiegay J is for Javascript #AisFor
@chaos_pk: #AisFor K is for Kinokuniya!
@nickpan: @chaos_pk #AisFor L is for LPPL
@chaos_pk: @nickpan #AisFor M is for Me which is also for N which is NICE :D
@nickpan: @chaos_pk #AisFor O is for OMG, P is for PK!
@chaos_pk: @nickpan #AisFor Q is for Quickly! just a little bit more to go ;)
@nickpan: @jackiegay @chaos_pk #AisFor S is for Sleep
@jackiegay: @chaos_pk @nickpan why no J??! J is for no Jam haha! #Aisfor
@chufang: @nickpan #AisFor T is for Tweet @jackiegay @chaos_pk
@jackiegay: @chufang @nickpan @chaos_pk U is for Umbrella cos there’s so much rain!!
@jackiegay: @chufang @nickpan @chaos_pk V is for Vampire n W is for Wikipedia
@nickpan: @jackiegay @chufang @chaos_pk #AisFor X is for XHTML & XML & XXX
@nickpan: @jackiegay @chufang @chaos_pk #AisFor Y is for Y the hell are we doing this?
@chufang: @nickpan #AisFor Z is for what we should be doing @jackiegay @chaos_pk

Its super random, I think it needs to fall into a theme.

Other then it being a casually fun MMOG (massive multiplayer online game) on micro blogging site twitter, there are of cause many other reasons why this game is a good game. ;)

5th September, 20105th September, 2010

Top 6 Digital Agency Super Powers

I do web projects all the time and meet clients and colleagues of all sorts. I’ve come to realise back in 2007 that individuals need to have some superpowers in order to get across everyday. Here are top 6 I got inspired from Heroes.

Telepathy & Clairvoyance – An ability to see into a clients mind and understand what he means by â€œ I want it easy to useâ€, and others such vaguerisms. Need to be able to get into a client’s mind and find out what they want to do.
Persuasion – An ability to convince a client that he does not need a flash splash screen or pages of content that reads â€œUnder Constructionâ€. More importantly to educate clients to know that the rates are very fair.
Precognition – An ability to see into the future and anticipate new trends. The ability to design what the client will eventually accept so as to skip the countless time wasting revisions.
Invulnerability – Even when the style police start picking on the website, this ability stops looking at the negative criticisms and focus on the possible next steps.
Technopathy – Control, configure & commission technological solutions with superb knowledge across all platforms.
Intuitive Aptitude – Ability to analyse complex systems and intuitively understand how they work without special education or training.

So what other “Abilities” do you think is useful?

2nd September, 20102nd September, 2010

BarcampJB2 2010

It was a sleepy afternoon weekend in Johor Bahru on the 28th and 29th August 2010, but thanks to Daniel Cerventus, MC Teng and Alvin Ng, Sunway College Johor Bahru was turned into a gathering of passionate people who got together for BarcampJB2 2010.

Baracamp JB Poster — Baracamp JB2 Poster

As per the traditional way Barcamp is organised, its quite impromptu. The organising committee have not actually met up in person prior to the event. The very first committee meeting I heard was just done 2 hours before the event started.

Setting up and getting ready for Barcamp JB — Setting up and getting ready

The limited T-Shirts were given out, the Wifi was setup, Stickies started filling up the slots and off we go.

The Tee was black, very cool, it sort of had a certain class too it. At the back was a list of the sponsors who made this event possible.

The day started with the Werewolf game in one of the rooms and I heard it was lots of fun. I did not join as I was in another room listening to other presentations.

Hongster sharing about In-App Payment for mobile applications — Leong Hean Hong | @hongster

Hongster presented on In-App Payment on mobile applications on Android and it gave me good insights into the steps required and also the general structure of how such transactions take place and also the available payment modes. The main ones would still be Paypal and Google Checkout.

It was kinda hard to pin point how many people actually attended all the talks, but with 3 rooms in total, people were moving around. I think one of the popular activities was also playing Robert Kiyosaki’s Cashflow game.

KK from Standard Chartered presented Breeze. As he was from the implementation team, he had intimate knowledge of what it took to build this next generation online banking platform. I love it when he said he could not survive with less then 5 cups of coffee a day and that how his team was like Black Ops within the bank.

SCB is my client in Singapore, so I wanted to come over to JB to support them.

Walter Heck sharing on his 3 years of travel — Walter Heck | @walterheck

Walter shared on quite a few things, but the 3 years of his travelling life stood out for me as he shared honestly from his heart the adventures he had, the not so clever decisions and how everyone should travel the world at some point in life.

Rubik Cube for Geeks — Leong Hean Hong | @hongster

Hongster presented again in the lightning talks segment and shared on a few methods one could use to solve a Rubik Cube.

MCTend having Powerpoint Karaoke — Powerpoint Karaoke by MC Teng | @mcavenue

To end of the day’s session, MC Teng did a Powerpoint Karaoke. IT WAS HILARIOUS!! I’ve never heard of this before and I think its brilliant. Basically the presenter (the person doing the karaoke) need to make a presentation, but the presenter does not know what are on the slides so have to make an impromptu presentation. The slides used was a few slides from Love Relationships.

Then we all went downstairs to Buka Puasa (break fast as it was the month of Ramadan / fasting month). The catered food was really nice. In fact it was so nice that i forgot to take pictures totally!

I stayed at Hotel Vistaria for the night and i’m glad they had free internet in the room as I did my slides until 4am that night.

On Sunday morning, I got up to sleepy JB and headed to have prata for breakfast. The whole place was quiet and peaceful. Really nice and relaxed. I forgot when was the last time I had breakfast alone outside of Singapore.

I started the day with the first 2 presentations as I had to head back to Singapore at noon. The first was about “Digital Heroes”. I’ve shared these slides with some of my colleagues last time during a company trip as the aim of the slides was really to motivate people to level up their skills but with a Heroes twist to it. ;) I don’t think I can put the slides up to share as I simply disregarded the concept of copyrights when making the slides as it was purely for internal consumption.

My second presentation was on “Social Media is not a Breeze” and it was about my experience with social media and how its not as easy as it seems to be.

I shared on the last 20 years which lead up to what we know of as Social Media today. From BBS and Fidonet to the very first few Social Media websites like SixDegrees.com and eCircles.com which both burned up after the dotcom crash in early 2000s.

I’m glad to have made the trip up as i’ve made quite a few new friends. @cerventus @MCAvenue @iriskhoo @hongster @alvinSJ @DanevO @saxmachine05 @jipangmenjerit @sweemeng and quite a few more.

Now next up… BARCAMPSG6 9th and 10th October at City Hall in Singapore. See you there.