Prulink Protection Account

I have encountered too many insurance agents who deliver financial plans without knowing what they are selling. Most of the time, I have to find my own answer about how the insurance company charges their clients from everywhere except the agents. And I know that insurance policy is never worth your money unless you get lucky to be hit by capital illnesses, or hospitalized, etc.

The latest policy that I'm scrutinising is PruLink Protection Account. My wife bought it with the intention of financing it using her PruCash cashback and additional monthly payment.

The policy promises investment return in the long run while giving us the policy holder protection right now. To justify the cost of protection, 85% of our premiums for the first year will be used to offset distribution cost, and the remaining 15% will be put in our funds account to invest in a chosen fund, which is Singapore Managed Fund for my wife's case.

For second and third year, the proportion for investment will grow to 50% of premiums paid, and from fourth year to ninth year, it will be 100% of premiums paid. Then the policy states that for 10th year onward, the insurance company will even top up our investment to 105% of premiums paid.

What is not stated clearly is that the "assurance charges" for death, TPD, TI, and crisis cover, payable every month, will be taken from the funds account. The assurance charge per $1,000 sum assured starts from $0.74 at age 26, to $86.25 at age 85, to $254.68 at age 99.

That means, if you're still covered at age 99, expect to pay $1699 of assurance charges per month for $80k sum assured! Of course, most people will not live to that age or will have cashed out by then. Anyway, currently the assurance charges including administrative cost for my wife's Prulink Protection policy is $14.86.

So for this first year, my wife will pay monthly premium of $100, in which only $15 will make it to the funds account. Then I discover that the units are immediately redeemed with 5% of its value shed because of the bid-offer spread, to pay for the assurance charges. But the redeemed units are only worth $14.25, which is not sufficient to pay the assurance charges! So we have to top up cash for the difference of 61 cents.

If you have not realized by now, did you see how the $15 just made a futile trip to the funds account and losing 5% of its value in the process? In so doing, our $15 became insufficient to pay for the $14.86 assurance charges.

Now here's the twist - if we could first pay the assurance charges with our $15 premium, then investing the balance, our funds account would have 14 cents in the black instead of 61 cents in the red at the end of the day. Simply reversing the process will earn us 75 cents per transaction :)

To give some sense to the process, I strongly urge Prudential to take the assurance charges from the premium paid, instead of trying to recover it from the units, as long as premiums are being paid. That'll mean more work to Prudential, but consumers will like you for doing it for them. And isn't that what Prudential wants us to believe? O... Prudential has no tagline for consumers?

making sense of new generation of Linux

There are several ways to run Linux:
1) Install Linux from installation CD the traditional way
- need CD ROM drive
- need new partition in harddisk
- can only run one system at a time

2) Run Linux from Live DC.
- need CD ROM drive,
- don't need new harddisk partition though
- only can run one system at a time

3) Load Linux Live CD from virtual machine
- don't need CD ROM
- don't need new harddisk partition
- can easily switch between host OS and guest OS!
- file sharing locally could be issue, but can be overcome through IP applications!

the flavors of Linux

Linux has come a long way since Linux Torvalds days. I was hunting for small footprint linux sometime back and bravo, there are so many of them available. There are versions that can boot directly from CD too - like damnsmalllinux and knoppix. The names they chose were funny too.
Well, I was looking for ways to install linux from ntfs though, and this feat has not been accomplished by many yet. There's this tool "instlux" that I thought I may use, but it turns out I couldn't load the aironet network module for my laptop, so I was stopped from installing the OpenSuse from network.
Then I was thinking maybe I could build a kernel and control the boot process so that it boot directly to open up a browser. In that way I won't have to wait long long for system initialization when all I need is a browser...

bash starteam

I must bash starteam. it's so slow. I don't like to use it at all. more than half my time is spent on trying to start and restart and start again the starteam client when it hangs.. it's a pain in my ass.

Transceiver module

I have a new assignment - make RIU hardcopy work on PDH-IFU... let's see what needs to be done.
1) how transceiver module interact with RIU and ODU
2) what changes introduced in RIU HC - I heard it requires new libHwModule

Founders at work

Hey, I'm reading this book called "founders at work". So far, the founders are all techie.. like google's founders larry & sergey. The most techie guy must be steve wozniak.. he designed the Apple II, add colors to it, and even designed a floppy disk drive for it personally... a tremendous feat at that time... it's amazing! I even read about the guy who started blogger :) he's cool.
It makes me think what's the most doable thing for a startup in this day and age. Cuong is talking about Web 2.0, and I'm like a system guy... well, we're gonna do something anyhow :)

it's hard to keep blogging

It's hard..
Just think about the hurdles you have to pass before a single character can be put online:
1) it takes the PC at least a minute to boot up (you have to do that once in a while when windows filesystem become cranky)...
2) it takes the IE some time to load...
3) the blogger server may be slow...

Will there be a dedicated blogger device in future? just like what I heard google is trying to do - coming up with a google handphone...

JTAG

JTAG is a jargon of the testing industry, and I have not understood it the first time I read about it. But it's not too difficult to understand if you follow the explanation in this tutorial. More advance concept like JTAG clock frequency, bypass mode, daisy chain operation needs explanation. But I guess I won't be needing the understanding any time soon.

GHS debug probe

The GHS probe has its own CPU (don't know what model though). The probe configuration can be accessed in several ways:
1) using serial comm via COM (RS-232) port (need null modem cable)
2) using telnet or web browser via Ethernet (RJ-45) port (need Ethernet cable)
3) using GHS graphical probe administrator via Ethernet (RJ-45) port (need utility gpadmin.exe)
4) using serial comm via USB port (need usb driver)

we can use Tera Term Pro as the serial comm application.

stack frame

was trying to understand how stack tracing work... so went to look it up in wikipedia.

GHS-INTEGRITY

This RTOS is so baffling... I was trying to compile a simple application that prints "hello world" but the elxr linker blurted out this line:

(error) cannot find file C:\NG-PDH\int508\ixdp425\crt0.o

Let me explain a bit. C:\NG-PDH\int508\ is where I place the RTOS system files, which is INTEGRITY version 5.08. ixdp425 is where the bsp files are. I looked into the bsp directory, sure enough there isn't any crt0.o. The problem is, how can this file be generated? or is this file necessary? or did I screw up the build process because of wrong options in default.gpj.

o.. the ccintarm also complain:

Warning: Cannot open library libres.a
Warning: Cannot open library libbsp.a

Visit Singapore!

I came to Singapore in May 1997 - it's been more than 9 years! But only till recently, I cared to take a closer look at Singapore =(

I went to clarke quay this evening with a mission - to find a good dining place for me and my girl friend. I took MRT and alighted at Clarke Quay station, then crossed the coleman bridge into a world filled with partying mood - with potpourri of nationalities. The place is all nicely done up, with glittery and glitz every where.

At first I was distracted by Liang Court, specifically the Audio House, where I stopped over to browse at some portable DVD players. I may want to get one of those to show my friends some video ;)

After that I went to Clarke Quay, where I spotted some places where I would like to bring my girl friend for dinner - Pineoy Jade, a cantonese restaurant, and I can't remember the other two =P. It was only today that I discovered the layout for Clarke Quay, which consist of "mushrooms" covering the passageway between the four blocks that house many of the restaurants, and numerous inverted "daffodil" hanging over the head of diners along the river side.

After brisking through Clarke Quay, I walked along the Singapore river and went to a field beside brewerkz where the goflykite.com buffs were showing off their skills in maneuvering propeller-equipped kites. I talked to one of them to find out how much the hobby is costing them. S$600 for starter. Well, I think I can afford it. Next thing is to ask whether anyone wants to join me :)

Then I continued walking to Robertson walk, and Frasier place, where all the high class diners were chatting. I think I saw a guy parked his sports car conveniently on double yellow lines. Now I know some people think spending S$300 is more worthwhile than walking a few steps. I must say I never thought I was so poor after walking through that place. I think I want to walk there more often to motivate myself to strike out on my own.

Then I walk passed Copthorne Waterfront Hotel, which I may consider taking my girl friend for dinner too. After that it was 1030pm, and I thought it was rather late. So I took a route to Kim Seng road to take bus to Outram MRT, and came home.
All this while I got a Singapore tourist map with me. I think it's time to be a tourist and rediscover Singapore :)

我不明白

This entry is transferred from my friendster page, which I just penned today. The previous entry was dated Jan 06, 2006, with only these words: 万丈高楼从地起,今天开始打地基.

为什么blog这么受欢迎？今天刚发现我的第一个posting是在八个月前写下的。到现在还没有写blog的冲动，哈哈。

写着中文字的当儿，我想起了我中学的华文老师。她的名叫陈屏香，是个令我非常难忘的人。自古以来老师都是受倍受人们尊敬和赞扬的，唯有她是我本人绝不会称赞的“教育家”。

中学时我就读于芙蓉振华中学。一直以来我的华文考试成绩都很不错，总是考80分以上。记得当时是1996年，这位“教育家”也在芙蓉振华中学任教。有一次，我父亲不满学校的财务政策，在争论的同时把她也牵涉了进去，令她很烦恼。她不能挑我父亲的毛病，于是她把目标转移到我身上。在一次考试中，她“挖空心思”把我的文章批得一文不值，最后给了我60几分。这还不算，当我拿着试卷请她指点我的错误时，她用很傲慢的语气和态度当着同学的面前把我奚落了一顿。

那时的我真的很无奈，我的谦卑换来的是批评，我的求助换来的是恶言相象，心灵上的伤害更不用说。从那天开始，我知道有些老师比较适合称呼为“小人”，而不是“灵魂的工程师”。时隔十年，我对这位“教育家”公报私仇的行径还是怀有一点恨意。写到这里，我只希望主耶酥能给我力量宽恕这位曾经恶待我的人。

Learning from scratch

I pride myself as an engineer, yet I have not created a blog! How can that be??
So that's why I'm doing this right now, to create my first blog entry!
And thanks to Yi Jie for lending me two lines of code to beautify the page =)

Who do you want to become?

Think about it, who do you want to become?