Author: Steve Ngai

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Articles

The Term Fall Away

Sometimes we hear people use the term “fall away” in church, referring to those who left church. I think that is not a suitable term because maybe, they went to another church. Since we do not proclaim that we are the only true church, we should not judge another church. This means we should not say much on whether they fell away, wondered away or still faithful to God. The more appropriate term we should use is they are no longer a member of our church. I think we learnt this before, just that we can forget about it. 🙂

Categories
Articles

The Beauty Of Second Greatest Commandment

Matthew 22: 39 – And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’

Mark 12: 31 – The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.

God’s Word is so brilliant, practical, realistic and achievable – “Love Your Neighbors”. Who are your neighbors? In my opinion, my neighbors are the people in my circle of daily life. My neighbors can be my real neighbors who stay next door. My ‘neighbors’ also can be the people around my life, example my parent whom I stay together with, my colleagues who sit around me, my team in workplace, my church group, my church small group, my Saturday futsal kakis and etc.

Imagine if the verse changed to “Love every single one in your church” or “Love every single one in your country”. If a church is just 10-15 people, maybe that is still possible. But what if the church is about 400 people? How is it possible to think about 400 people all the time or on regular basis? God knows that we sure got ‘neighbors’ unless that person works alone at his home and stay by himself in one island.

Since ‘neighbors’ can be so plentiful. So, I divide it into two categories. One category is the ‘regular neighbors’ in your life. Another category is the ‘irregular neighbors’. Regular ones are those you meet regular or daily. Irregular ones are those you don’t know when you will bound into them. Since you don’t know when you will meet those irregular neighbors, I think we should give priority to focus on the regular neighbors first.

Categories
Information Technology (General)

How to make your Gmail look ‘cleaner’?

Wanted to removed some of the Gmail features which you are not using? If you are using Firefox browser, then you can do so by going to Firefox’s “Tools > Add-ons” and search for Stylish. Alternately, you can go to the direct link, https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2108/ to add Stylish into your Firefox.

Once you have successfully add/install Stylish into your Firefox, you will be able to see something like below:

Then, click the “User Styles” icon, which is just besides the “Plugins” icon.

Then, click “Write New Style” button.

At the “Name” textbox, I put “Remove Gmail Invites”. You can put your own name. But at the content, you need to put these codes:

@namespace url(http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml);

@-moz-document domain(“mail.google.com”) {

/* HIDE CHAT AND INVITE BOXES */

.nH.s, .nH.pY {
display: none !important;
}

}

Click Save button. Go back to your Gmail to see the suprise!

Categories
Career

Standby Support Phone

One of my job scopes is to provide system support to our customer through a unique phone called ‘standby support phone’. My colleague and I will take turn to hold this phone. If that is my week, I need be alert to receive calls from our end users for 24 hours. This includes midnight. So, the phone has to be on and put besides me the whole night. But I make sure not to place it too near me to reduce the radiation :D.

If I am not able to solve the problem via this phone for about 30 minutes, I need to escalate to higher level of support and at the same time I need to go on-site to continue to investigate and troubleshoot the issue within one hour after informing user that I will be on-site.

This could be one of the main challenges if you want to be in this cheque processing system industry especially you got a lot of calls during your week. I think each job/company/industry has its own challenges and benefits. However, there will be claim for holding this phone. Addition to that, each on-site there is an extra claim, as well the mileage to and fro. And you can also come to office a little late when you receive midnight calls or need to go on-site during midnight.

Personally, during my week, I did once need to go on-site at around 2am. When I got into my car to prepare to drive to our customer site, I wonder if I’m dreaming :D. Once settle, I went back home at around 5am and continue my sleep.

So, when you see my holding three phones, you know what this third phone is for 🙂

Categories
Tips Macam-Macam

Gambit For An Interview / Career Opportunity

In a chess game, a gambit is a chess opening in which a player, sacrifices material, with the hope of achieving an advantageous position. Our career can be like a chess game where strategy is needed. Let’s create a scenario here,

Mr Lim is a fresh graduate. He got no working experience at all. Although he got a degree in Computing but his results is average and his final year project is not so impressive. He went to Jobstreet and found a programmer position which he likes. After applying for this position, he saw that there are another 70 people who applied for this same position. Same are fresh graduate like him. Same are experienced one.

chess-gambit

So, what is the strategy to get a chance to be called for interview in the above scenario? This is the exact strategy that I applied for my first permanent job – ‘sacrifice’ my salary until I got the right job. You might ask, ‘So, what is a good sacrifice?’. You can do it gradually. Meaning, for example, you can start to put your expected salary at RM1800. If you don’t any response from the company, then lower it down to RM1600 and so on until you got an interview. You might ask, ‘What if I lower my expected salary until RM1400 and yet I don’t get to call for an interview? So how?’. My answer for you is keep lowering your expected salary until you got it. My first job’s pay is only RM900! I’m sure most of you all can do better than me.

If you really love the job and at the same time you know that you do not have enough criteria to meet the requirement for this job and there are too many ‘competitors’, try to apply gambit strategy. It works for me and I believe it works for you too. All the best!

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