Stuff

Sooo, have I mentioned how much I like to get emails from TRIBE?
Well, let me correct that now:
I love these little emails...make me smile almost always. First there's this one

About 2 weeks early, but much appreciated.
Also in that email was this lovely lovely little gem:

I doubt that I'll be paying off my costume before December 31st 2012 (Fast Track collection is sooo cool though), but WOW what incentive. That pass must be worth at least $1000, and the individual cost of tickets to those fetes could probably add up to about $1800 or so.
Siiigh...

btw I will be accepting Christmas gifts in cash if anyone was wondering :-)

Then I got this in email:
Blah, blah, blah gym* wishes to advise its members and the public that in addition to the Aerobic Class that will be held on Christmas Day at 10 a.m., there will also be a Spin Class at 10 a.m. 
Really? Like really?? People go to the gym on Christmas day - In Trinidad and Tobago?!!!! For a serious workout? Seriously????!!!
OH.MY.WOW!!!
Talk about dedication!


*gym name changed to protect the innocent

 Anyways...it's about 60-some odd days till Carnival.
Keep working out and preparing for the days on the road.

Anya for Project Runway Fan Favourite

Once you've been following Project Runway Season 9, you would know that Anya has been in the lead more or less since episode 1.

She is now no longer in the lead...some of us have our theories on why, but no matter.

Getting her back in the lead is easy.

I'm not gonna type it all over...click on Saucy's most recent post for instructions.

Basically, type #pr9anya at the end of each and EVERY tweet, every 5 minutes...that is all!

Keep voting!

"Nirvana - Dare to Dream" - the review

Feting in June.

A reminder: The rating scale goes from: 0 to 5. 0 means not ever to be repeated EVER, 5 means best ever!

Anyways here goes. Fete details:

• Fete: Nirvana - Dare to Dream
• Promoter: The event page on FB listed names, but not an actual committee.
• Fete Type: Premium Drinks inclusive
• Date: June 22nd 2011
• Time: 10pm to 4am
• Venue: The Stage

The flyers:

My sis and her friends were the ones who told me about this fete. Night before the holiday, free drinks, ON THE STAGE?! What was there not to entice me...sooo here goes the review.

• First things first: where to park? No problem at all. The promoters sent this in an FB message "Hi everyone for Nirvana tonight it is very simple:
  your entering the Savannah from the South side/Grandstand entrance of the savannah. This entrance is directly opposite Ministry of Foreign Affairs and/or Chaud restaurant. Drive towards the grandstand and TURN RIGHT. DRIVE around the EASTERN side of the grand stand and proceed straight as you come around the corner. you will see the venue entrance as well as the carpark entrance there. NIRVANA carpark is situated were the NORTH STAND would normally exist for carnival. The entire area is paved so no need to worry about mud. SEE YOU THERE" Then to top it off, when we were actually driving in there were signs pointing you to where to park. Great touch, despite the awful spelling and grammar. Rating: 5
• Entrance: The entrance was draped in white, 'fog' was bubbling up from a mini-fountain, disco-spotlights were rotating and providing a funky lighting effect. Hosts/hostesses greeted you, put the usual band around your wrists and wished you 'have fun'...hope you designated a driver. Rating: 4
• Layout: This fete was held on the stage. Well to tell the truth it wasn't actually on the stage per se. The set up was just in front of the grand stand. Lets start with the bars, the many many bars, they didn't lie bout that nah. Hennessy was distributed from a booth just to the right of the entrance. Immediately to the right on entering was the food station and Tao Sushi. Just down from that was the normal bar. Beers, rum, soft-drinks, water etc were being served there. To the left was the Cold Stone booth, another general bar, then Johnny Green and Johnny Gold bars. These were followed by the Ciroc booth. In the middle was an elevated area about four/five steps up. The Stage. As you got up there you came face to face with the Jaggermeister booth, and at the other end was the Nuvo booth. The DJ, special effects, sound system, lighting were all in the middle of this stage. Bathrooms were to the back of the entire area...normal porta-potties, but with lots of attendants so they were kept relatively clean and decent smelling, with the stalls being stocked with TP regularly and running water and soap readily available. Yes these things matter lots to me! Rating: 4 
• Performances: No live performances. But the DJs oh the DJs...apart from a back in times set that went on for just a little bit too long, it was steady vibes. DJ Private Ryan was the main DJ and he was so hyped...people even continued partying in the drizzle and then in the downpour that came down around 3am. Rating: 4.5
• Food: Sushi, chicken and fries, bake and shark. I only had the sushi though. Rating: 4
• Drinks: For this I'll just list the drinks menu: Johnnie Walker Gold, Johnnie Walker Green, Johnnie Walker Double Black, Johnnie Walker Black, NUVO, Ciroc vodka, Belvedere vodka, Hennessey, Jagermeister, GoldSchlager, Two Fingers Tequila, Tanqueray gin, Angostura Single barrel, Baileys, Fernandes Black label, White Oak Rum, Carib Pilsner Light and a SHOTS BAR. I had Nuvo, Ciroc, Johnny Gold and water! Rating - 5

Fete rating: 4.5

This was a good one-off, free drinks fete...rain and all it was fabulous!

BTW: Five stairs to navigate after about 5 drinks meant there were many stumbles, no-one got hurt from my observations, but it seemed most ladies came prepared, heels were in the minority!

uhm... Email received this morning.

Got a notification stating that I had two new email messages. Checked, and wta?!!! How did these folks get my email addresses? Yes...this was sent to TWO of my email addresses. (I am not a Karma/Ravi B fan for the record ok)
Who has my email address on a list AND sold it or passed it on...cause I do not know this person's email  address natalie.ja.woods@gmail.com sending mail as 'Energy Entertainment Promotion.'  How, why, when...WTA?!!!
I have since replied, trying to find out how they got my email address in the first place, but take a read of the email that was sent in the meantime.


"hi everyone, the moment is here, the biggest moment of the year for chutney soca, this is YOur chance to see chutney soca continue growing. Is either we going forward to the future or we going backwards to where chutney soca was 2 years ago, if u want to see the future of chutney soca go forward in the hands of the only person in the finals who is actually taking chutney soca to the next level, the flag , the journey, the only person who gets up and get out there, seriously, who puts the image, his life and soul into the passion of chutney soca, SUPPORT RAVI B.

I RAVI B PLEDGE TO CARRY THE FLAG FOR ANOTHER YEAR 2011, OTHERS ONLY WANT THE MONEY AND THE FAME, BUT ASK YOURSELF THIS, CAN THEY CARRY THE RESPONSIBILITY, THE REPRESENTATION, THE PROFESSIONALISM, BEAR THE STRUGGLES THAT I WENT THROUGH,GIVE UP THEIR WHOLE LIFE TO CARRY THE FLAG, CONTINUE WHERE I LEFT OFF, OR WOULD THEY USE THE TITTLE WHEN THEY FEEL TO?

RAVI B BROKE BARRIERS, IN JAPAN, JAMAICA AND THE CARIBBEAN, GUYANA, NORTH AMERICA, EUROPE AND AFRICA, DO YOU THINK ANYONE ELSE CAN RISK ALL HIS LIFE SAVINGS JUST TO SEE CHUTNEY AT MADISON SQUARE GARDEN? THAT SHOW IS COSTING 1.5 MILLION USD, DO U THINK ANYONE ELSE HAS THE RANK TO CARRY THIS TITTLE WITH CLASS, DISCIPLINE AND HONOR, RAVI B CARES ABOUT THE CHILDREN, HE IS ACTUALLY DOING A KIDS EVENT ON CARNIVAL SAT AT GUARAKARA PARK JUST SO THE KIDS CAN BE HAPPY TO SEE A CHUTNEY SOCA/ BOLLYWOOD EVENT.

RAVI B IS THE ONLY PERSON TO GO IN WASA FETE OR IN JAMAICA OR ANY PART OF THE WORLD AND REMEMBER TO DO HIS CHUTNEY SOCA SONGS AND BOLLYWOOD SONGS, RAVI B GAVE THE MOST CHARITY IN 2010 OUT OF ALL CHUTNEY SOCA ARTIST AND HAS BEEN GIVING ALL HIS LIFE, SOME WANT TO GIVE NOW, WHY? BECAUSE ITS 2 MIL?, HEY THE CHILDREN AND CANCER FOUNDATION NEEDED OUR HELP LONG TIME AND RAVI B GAVE HIS PERFORMANCES AND FINANCIAL SUPPORT ALL THE TIME, WHERE WERE EVERYONE ELSE? BUT NOW THEY WANT TO SAY THEY GIVING AFTER THE MONARCH.

ON SAT FEB, MAKE THE DIFFERENCE AND LETS CONTINUE TO SEE CHUTNEY SOCA GO FORWARD, THE PLANS FOR 2011 IS OUT OF THIS WORLD...TEXT RAV TO 7622, INTERNATIONALLY, TEXT RAV TO 78247 AND VOTE ONLINE ATWWW.CHUTNEYSOCAMONARCH.COM

THANKS SO MUCH FOR YOUR SUPPORT OVER THE YEARS, KEEP THE THING ON A RISE"

OMG!

Like fuh real this happened???
People popping ecstacy with dey vitamins or what?

Read about the trini retelling of the story here ...or read the original story here
..in a bar dread?! A flicking bar??

smh!

Blog Statistics

I'm admitting now that I've never checked the statistics on my blog.
Sooo I was browsing the stats for the first time ever and lo and behold, here's what I discovered:

• Total page views: approximately 2000
• Referring sites:
• TCD
• There's a Brown Girl in The Ring
• Haitian Queen
• Wining Kriminals
• Trini Angie
• Countries where my blog is read:
• Trinidad and Tobago - home sweet home :-)
• United States of America
• United Kingdom
• Canada
• Netherlands
• Jamaica
• Barbados
• Spain
• Antigua/Barbuda
• Belgium
• Russia

Firstly, thank you to all who've linked to this blog. Thank you, thank you

... and to all who got to my blog via whatever site: I extend an official WELCOME!

Quite an interesting spread of viewing countries there as well.

Who found this site out there in Russia, in Belgium? 

Guess I'll be checking those stats at least once a year to see what's been happening there.

Gmail's 'Call Phone' Feature

I LOOOOOVEEEE my Gmail account, and use it for almost all my email communication.

Then day before i noticed a green phone icon just above my contacts

...when I hovered the mouse pointer over it a pop-up stated it's a 'free-calls to US and Canada' feature.

What, what, what?!!!

Free calling...via your email client? uhhh...ok then

So, being me...I clicked with the intention of calling mih cuz in Canada.

(also being me, I could not remember d number..duh!)

...so ah decide to try a local number...and guess what...

it worked!!! 

dialed 1868#######...and it rang...and I spoke to friend-from the PC-from within Gmail

I am such a geek...but I loooovesssss my Gmail account even more now!

p/s:- a message came up stating that the call cost 10c...but ahm what account they charging that 10c to??

Karma and all that...

Saw this headline on Sauce's blog this morning "Not In with the In Crowd".

It confirmed the email that we saw sometime yesterday.

What amazes me, is that this 'social outfit' (love the term eh Sauce, taking a lil borrow) was MOST upset by having been informed on. The email suggested that the 'social outfit' was displeased and in the strongly worded email stated that people should be more concerned with others, and doh be so focused on themselves.

Now isn't that just 'the pot calling d kettle black'...wasn't the outfit trying to make a lil something off of other people heads?!

We live in T&T, and what this 'social outfit' was trying to do was a lil smart-man something. It could work, BUT just remember d islands small, somebody go know somebody, so be prepared to deal with d backlash when it comes.

My $0.02

Commess in d place

Commess University
Stumbled across this website that's written apprently by a former student of Holy Name Convent Secondary (mih ol' high school). I presume she graduated before me, because of some items of history that she mentions experiencing back when I would have been like four(4) an' ting.

Anyways, take a read.
Once you get over the fact that EVERYTHING is written in dialect then you're ok.

It's interesting.

Amazingly on point...remind you of anyone?!

The Nerd Handbook

Read it.
Digest it.
Maybe read it again.

I am amazed at how eerily accurate this is...


I LOVE IT!

Huh?!

This was on odd-news story:-

First from TechRepublic's article, and then this link to their sister site Gamespot.

What's this world coming to, when you can't even game online without 'Big Brother' looking over your shoulder?

Sexy, BALD men...

i defintely don't agree with all the names on this list of 'Sexy and Bald', but it's an ok start

Know anyone who you think should have made the list?...there are at least 50 pages of comments on who should have been added.

And I know a couple guys in real life who could be added LOL

10 things you can do to keep your IT job from taking over your life

hey, i'm borrowing this from a blog post on a tech website that i get regular feeds from....it's very relevant, especially to my field of work.

" * Date: September 17th, 2007
* Blogger: Jody Gilbert
* Category: 10 things, Career
* Tags: Job, Information Technology, Jody Gilbert
*

IT professionals don’t hold a monopoly on working excessively long hours or having job responsibilities cast a shadow over their personal lives. But for many reasons, it’s a field that invites long hours, persistent worries, and a reluctance — or inability — to mentally clock out when the workday should be over.

Some IT pros are all-but-indentured to a company that expects 24/7 availability. Some face a staggering gap between resources and work to be done. Others discover that effective time management is out of reach because of project volatility and constantly changing priorities.

For those trying to rein in their runaway professional lives, it doesn’t help that “You won’t be able to reach me” has lost its power. Cell phones, PDAs, and remote access tools have all but eliminated the refuge of inaccessibility. They might make your job easier, but they also make your job omnipresent.

All of these factors play into the phenomenon we call the pervasive workplace – when your job seems to permeate every corner of your life.

Discussion threads abound with horror stories of oppressive company regimes that keep IT pros stretched impossibly thin, pager-enslaved, and fearful of retribution (i.e., no more job) if they don’t live to fulfill the organization’s tech needs. If you’re stuck working for a company like that — and assuming that’s not your ideal state — it could be time to hit the job boards. On the other hand, you may be working for a great outfit that has enabled you to maintain perfect work-life balance. But if you’re somewhere in between, wishing you could scale back your work obligations to make a little more room for your personal life, here are a few ways to help keep the workplace at bay.

Note: This information is also available as a PDF download.
#1: Learn to dismiss or delegate

Managing your workload is one key to preventing chores from spilling over into your personal time. If your to-do list is busting at the seams and adding countless hours to your workweek, you have a couple of choices. One possibility is to toss a few things overboard. Maybe they’ll drift back. But if you carefully choose what to jettison, those things may not resurface for a long time — if ever. Candidates for dismissal include things in the “It would be nice to…” category — tasks that aren’t critical to daily operations or maintaining a secure and stable environment. (”It would be nice to update the company intranet to include end user resources… but it can wait.”)

Another possibility is to delegate tasks when you can. This can be tough — especially if it’s work you would have enjoyed doing if you had time or if you assume no one can handle the job as well as you could. But if you’re swamped, you need help. And there are benefits beyond lightening your workload. For one thing, you’ll break the habit of hanging onto everything until you can see to it personally (which may never happen). For another, you’ll be helping co-workers or subordinates expand their knowledge and skills, making them more valuable to the company (and happily, to you as well).

We’re not talking here about dumping a bunch of work on some poor hapless associate. There’s some upfront effort involved in selecting the best tasks to delegate, finding the best person to handle the tasks, and making sure that person has what’s needed to get the job done. But it should become an automatic part of your thinking when you’re thinking, “How can I get all this done?”
#2: Prioritize like crazy

This one goes hand in hand with the previous strategy: To make realistic decisions about what to dismiss or delegate, you have to be able to determine which items are critical (vs. trivial or even unnecessary) and what’s needed to execute on them. The more experienced you are, and the more familiar you are with your organization’s technology and business processes, the easier it will be to target the essential tasks on your list. But you may still find it helpful to develop a set of questions to help you figure out what has to get done and what can slide. It’s a good analytical discipline to develop and it will remind you to step back occasionally instead of just allowing yourself to get swept up in an endless succession of chores.

Here are some questions to help with the triage process:

* What will happen if this doesn’t get done this week (month, quarter, year)? Who will be affected?
* Are there dependencies that make it vital to complete this task?
* Can you do part of the project now and defer the rest until you have more resources?
* Can you permanently reduce the scope of the task or project or implement a simpler solution?

You may need to talk to a lot of people to make your determination, but that’s actually a good thing — someone may come up with a perfect alternative you’d never considered (or volunteer to help).
#3: Cross-train and document

Make sure you aren’t indispensable. If no one is equipped to cover for you during your vacation, what kind of vacation do you think you’re going to have? You’ll be checking e-mail, fielding questions, and putting in an extra week’s worth of work before you leave and after you get back. If you’re a manager, you need a lieutenant — someone who understands the processes, projects, and relationships you handle, even though it’s likely to be at a superficial level. That person can keep an eye on the day-to-day concerns while you’re gone (whether you’re on vacation, attending a conference, dealing with a crisis, or consumed with a full-time project) and worst-case, he or she can escalate matters to your attention or to someone at your level or above.

If you’re not a manager, you may be able to spread your knowledge and expertise by showing co-workers specific aspects of your job and parceling out your chores. Your colleagues should be doing this as well. In fact, a good manager will make sure your team operates this way, providing opportunities to cross-train and sub for each other in appropriate aspects of your work.

If you don’t have time to train someone to fill your shoes, or even a small portion of one shoe, documentation can help. Nothing elaborate — a checklist (”I have to do these nine things before leaving on Fridays”), a cheat sheet (”I follow these steps to double-check backups for the accounting database”), or a simple walk-through of a certain configuration procedure, maybe with screen shots inserted (however sloppily) in a Word doc.
#4: Don’t overpromise

It’s natural to want to look unassailable in our ability to give customers, co-workers, and bosses whatever they ask for. Sometimes, even an outrageous request seems doable because saying, “I can’t get that much done by then” sounds so lame. Don’t fall into this trap. If you’re a seasoned project manager, you know how to make a realistic estimate and establish a work plan that reflects what’s feasible, even given setbacks. But most of us are sitting ducks for misjudging our bandwidth.

No matter how hard it is, try to assume that everything is going to take longer than you think and that there will be obstacles that slow you down. Give yourself wiggle room on your commitments. (”I’ll try to get this done by next week, unless I get pulled into the final phase of UA testing. If that happens, I’ll let you know.”) Of course, not everyone is driven to meet their deadlines and fulfill their promises. But those folks probably don’t have a big pervasive workplace problem anyway. The rest of us need to be careful here.
#5: Nail down expectations before you take a job — or take corrective action

Do your clients or company management expect you to be available 24 hours a day? If you accepted a job knowing that would be the deal, you can either live with your commitment, try to renegotiate the arrangement, or quit altogether. But if you didn’t sign on for that kind of availability, you’ll need to take steps to redirect the terms of your employment.

First, make sure the boundaries are in place. You might tell consulting clients something along the lines of, “You can contact me between 8:00 AM and 6:00 PM. I may pick up messages outside those hours, but I can’t guarantee it.” Or you might tell your manager, “When I was hired, we agreed on some overtime for special projects, but nothing was said about 24/7 availability. That schedule isn’t going to work for me.” Obviously, this may be a difficult conversation to have, and there could be negative fallout. But if your situation is becoming untenable — your work is eclipsing your personal life and driving your stress levels off the charts — you have to be resolute, honest, and clear in what you’re willing to commit to.

Once you make your case, you’ll need to stick to your guns. It’s likely that you’ll be asked to make special concessions at some point (maybe on a regular basis). You can bend your rules where it seems appropriate, but be aware of the effect on the boundaries you’re trying to establish. For your own sanity, sometimes No is going to have to mean No.
#6: Implement a rotation to cover special projects and to staff after-hours duties

Because IT usually requires full-time monitoring and crisis response, as well as entailing work at odd hours to avoid disruptions during business hours, staff scheduling requires extra attention to make sure the burden is distributed reasonably. Things may get crazy periodically and require bursts of overtime — that comes with the territory. But if you’re routinely asked to pull all-nighters and work all weekend on top of your regular hours, something’s gotta give.

Most tech managers are well aware that driving their staff to the brink of burnout and beyond is not the way to establish a smooth-running, productive operation. So if you bring the situation to their attention, it’s likely that they’ll try to work with you to help ease your schedule and build in a decent amount of downtime for you. Does this work for everybody? Nah. There are some stinkers out there who will dismiss your most reasonable request as lack of initiative. But if you approach the conversation with some possible solutions in hand, you may be surprised at the results.

What kind of solutions can you bring to the table? Maybe you can get together with your co-workers and hammer out a rough schedule that spells out a rotation for weekend coverage, a tag-team approach for next weekend’s server room relocation, and a comp day for each person the following month. Maybe you can make the case for an intern to be brought in and then take over the responsibility for hiring and training that person to cover some of the routine tasks that keep you working late most evenings. Maybe you can offer a more efficient plan for handling a major deployment that will mean that nobody has to work all night Friday.
#7: Don’t telecommute unless you’re very good at compartmentalizing

Accessibility is a double-edged sword. No one can argue that being able to handle some of your IT tasks remotely rather than being forced to drive to the office in the middle of the night is a step in the right direction. But if you routinely do all or most of your work from home, you should be alert to the possibility of work seeping into various aspects of your home life.

There’s no shortage of resources available offering pointers for effectively managing your telecommuting environment and practices. One key recommendation is to make a clear separation between work and non-work so that you can focus steadily and productively on job-related activities and then turn them off, disengage, and be fully present in your home life. As a telecommuter myself, I’m especially amused by one prescription that suggests you should dress for the office, get in your car, drive around the block, and return to your house as though you were arriving at work. But as extreme as that gimmick appears, the objective is valid.

If your work is sitting in the next room and there’s something you’d really like to finish, you may find yourself saying no to Frisbee with your kids after supper so that you can knock out that task. “It’ll just take a minute” becomes another lost evening.

Maybe you don’t want to stage a phony drive to the office to put yourself in work mode. But unless you want your job to infiltrate your personal life — with potentially destructive consequences — you should consider adopting these tactics:

* Set up a dedicated area for working.
* Establish a work schedule and stick to it.
* Take breaks just as you would in an office environment.
* When it’s quitting time, quit.

#8: Help users become more self sufficient

If you’re being run ragged by users paging you at all hours, one solution is to try to educate them to handle some situations on their own. Teaching people how to do their own basic troubleshooting will improve their efficiency and decrease your support time and after-hours calls. The most efficient way to handle this education may be to put together a series of tips as HTML pages, organized by category so users can find the information they need quickly without having to scan a whole list. You can publish the tips on your internal network and provide a shortcut to them on users’ desktops or push them to their machines. Alternatively, you can burn the documents onto CDs and distribute them or simply print them out, although that makes updating the information more cumbersome.

It’s also helpful to make sure users understand when it’s appropriate to use the after-hours pager and when it’s not. This can best be accomplished with some written guidelines distributed in a handout. If you send out a regular IT department bulletin or newsletter, this information can be featured prominently as a reminder.
#9: Build in real downtime (and disconnect yourself)

You’ve probably heard reports citing statistics on all that unused vacation time — and how detrimental it is for worker health, productivity, and emotional well being to work without taking a break here and there. Yet time off may seem like a total impossibility, with projects stacked up as far as you can see, staff shortages, or business upheavals requiring all hands on deck. Nevertheless, you need to carve out some vacation time periodically. You’ll be vastly better equipped to wade back into the fray and to take on fresh challenges once you’ve recharged your batteries. And don’t vacation by sitting at home reading e-mails and fretting that you aren’t at work as myriad problems accumulate. DO NOT check your work e-mail when you’re on your own time. Make sure all your clients, bosses, co-workers, and partners know that you’re on vacation and unavailable. No IMs, no cell phone calls, no pages, nothing.
#10: Invest time and energy in building your personal life

Some people are truly passionate about the work they do and seem content to devote themselves to it single-mindedly. But most of us are likely to get a little sick of our work, even the aspects we truly enjoy, if that’s the only thing we have going on. It’s important to have a life outside work, something satisfying and engaging, whether it’s a sport, a hobby, social activities, or family relationships. Maybe you do have those things. If so, you’re done here. But if you’re drained and uninspired and bored when you get home from work, it’s time to shift gears. You need something to look forward to after work so that you can put work out of your thoughts for a while. That’s a good thing." the link is 10 things to keep your job from taking over your life

enjoy

Links, links, links...

Ok, yes I amdit it: I am a chronic news reader. Odd News, Weird news, News satires, real news, doesn't matter. I will read it :-)

Some of the links that I read

The Onion
Reuters Odd News
The Guardian
Trinidad Daily Express
Happy News

Let's not forget those blogs that I read almost daily :-)
Brett
Trinidad Carnival Diary

These sites help me stave off total boredom on those days that I have no 'productive' work to do at the office.

How fast can you text?

I thought I was aight in terms of texting speed, but this just makes me seem like a rank novice :)


November, 13 - 3:23 PM

Singaporean is world's fastest text messager
Article source: http://www.dominicantoday.com/app/article.aspx?id=19620

Singapore.– A Singaporean student broke the Guinness World Record for the shortest time needed to type a 160-character SMS message on Sunday after whizzing through the task in less than 42 seconds in a competition.

Sixteen-year-old Ang Chuang Yang typed the SMS (short message service) message in 41.52 seconds, beating the previous record of 42.22 seconds set by American Ben Cook in July, according to Singapore Telecommunications, organizers of the competition.

"I'll try for 39 seconds next year," said Ang, adding that the trick to speedy text messaging was to use a mobile phone with larger keys on the dial pad.

SMS messaging competitions around the world use the same SMS text provided by the Guinness organization – "The razor-toothed piranhas of the genera Serrasalmus and Pygocentrus are the most ferocious freshwater fish in the world. In reality they seldom attack a human."