Sunday August 21, 2005

Backblog

Here are some of the more notable news items. What do you call a "backlog of blog entries", a "backblog"? :)

1. Soaring oil prices 'to hit world economic growth' - "Record high world oil prices will cut world economic growth by 0.8 points in 2005 and widen current account gaps both in rich and emerging economies ..." [link]

2. Pinched at the pump - "With gas prices at an all-time high, MSNBC is asking its readers to discuss ways in which they've changed their lives because of fuel costs ..." [continued]

3. $3/Gallon Record Reaction: "It's Robbery" - "Lots of things cost about three bucks, from a pair of socks to a takeout burrito. But one of life's essentials has never made the list. Until now ..." [link]

4. High oil prices challenge Indonesia's economy - "Indonesia is a member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), and oil and natural gas represent one of the country's largest sources of export revenue. But ... Indonesia has become a net oil importer ..." [link]

5. Ecuador to Declare Emergency, Oil Production Falls - "Ecuador's government will declare a state of emergency in two Amazon provinces where protests have cut crude oil production by state-owned Petroecuador to 29,400 barrels per day from the usual 201,000 bpd ..." [link]

6. Blackouts strike Indonesian capital Jakarta - "Blackouts hit parts of the Indonesian capital Jakarta and its neighbouring province of Banten Thursday after four major power plants on Java island malfunctioned ..." [link]

7. Indonesian outage leaves 100m without electricity - "Some 100m Indonesians were without electricity on Thursday as power outages hit the country's main grid ..." [link]

8. Peak Oil Crisis: Peak Oil & Car Pools - "If we had to rank essential uses for oil, transporting a single person to work would have to fall somewhere near the bottom. At the top would be fueling the tractors that plant and harvest our food ..." [link]

9. Indonesia considers quitting OPEC - "The government said it is considering to quit [OPEC] as the country's oil production has continued to decline to the point where it is barely enough to meet domestic requirements ..." [link]

10. OPEC Reveal Global Light Sweet Crude Peaked - "As oil becomes scarce it is clear that the best stuff will be pumped first, the best stuff is the light sweet crude. The fact that this is now in decline adds more weight to the argument that that the total global oil extraction rates will soon peak ..." [link]

11. The Breaking Point (Peak Oil on New York Times) - "... the energy bill signed earlier this month by President Bush did not even raise fuel-efficiency standards for passenger cars. When a crisis comes - whether in a year or 2 or 10 - it will be all the more painful because we will have done little or nothing to prepare for it." [link]

12. When global oil production peaks (Peak Oil on Business Times - Singapore) - "With oil prices hitting all-time highs and war raging in Iraq, serious concerns about 'peak oil' slowly have appeared on the public radar screen ..." [archive]

(2005-08-21 22:44:50 SGT) [Energy] Permalink

Broadband brought back

According to a poster on the HWZ forums, there has been a landslide at Hong Kong which could be the cause of the current broadband slowdown. Come on, Internet, you can do better than that, you're designed to survive nuclear attack - supposedly :)

tm.net.my :

TM Net Sdn Bhd's Internet service is currently experiencing a slight drop in performance caused by several outages due to service degradation at some of its international links to Hong Kong. Some Internet users in Malaysia and other parts of Asia may be experiencing some delay when assessing websites hosted outside of Malaysia especially to Hong Kong. This is due to a landslide at the Lantau cable landing station in Hong Kong that occurred on 20th August 2005 ...

- Could be the same problem affecting both the Singapore and Malaysian networks. Noticed recently that many of my traceroute's have been going through this REACH network. No problems posting this entry via the tunnel to the office machine, though, they're probably routed differently.

Update : Apparently the Internet does live up to its much-vaunted reputation - broadband service has been brought back to more or less normal by Sunday night. It just takes thousands of complaining customers, one might suppose :)

(2005-08-21 21:58:02 SGT) [Tech] Permalink

Bummed out

"Completely bummed out" - is that what they say? Probably. "Yankee slang" is not a native language here so the phrase may be a little bit off. Anyway, I'm bummed out. It's Sunday already and that's it for the combined paternity leave and annual leave after "Hello Wenn". Wan liao! Finito! Habis! Hasta la vista! Wasn't much of a holiday, imagine two kids crying and so on. And the paperwork!

Let's see, of course it starts with the birth registration, to get the all-important birth certificate and NRIC number which will be the primary key / unique identifier / etc. for the new arrival. Next, perhaps in an effort to prove we're kiasu or something, we then have the passport application. Now it's all done electronically, with a system bearing a rather contrived acronym of APPLES (*groan*, lol). After that, there's the insurance (did I mention kiasu?) - our agent has got to be happy with all the new policies we got. We aren't quite done yet, since there's the investment (I know, I know, kiasu!!), and by the time the documents arrived for the Baby Bonus, it's, yup, Sunday already. Not quite finished yet, you see.

For all the well-wishers, thank you. Particularly to : soonlan who came to visit biow at KKH, lynntan who came to visit us at our home, agill for approving the leave, slsim for the cover fire (work, lah!), and yvonnelee & cassandraong for the corporate hamper. And trisharatna, Zambuk Queen, IJJ, Megan'sMum, vanilla, ris, bobbi_trendy, got2bme, NB, rine07, 3lilangels, Me2u, Daze and all the 4 PhpBB pages or so worth of well wishers over at M4M. And everyone who sent their congratulatory notes whether via YM, e-mail, SMS or POTS - kolow, edmundlim, erictan, skchaw, cheryltan, davidpek, rsenthil (++ others, too many to name already!), thank you.

Well, bumpity bum. "Normal" blogging shall resume soon.

(2005-08-21 20:39:19 SGT) [Musings] Permalink

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