Acknowledgments

I would like to show my appreciation to the following friends. Without their assistance, encouragement, and influence this book would never have materialized. They are (in no particular order):

• Viki Williams, Senior Acquisitions Editor for Addison-Wesley (and avid English football fan) for all your patience and assistance.

• The editorial team and anonymous reviewers working hard at Addison-Wesley for picking out all those bugs and errors which I had (intentionally and unintentionally) embedded in the original manuscript.

• Grace, Hellen and Badi of Computer Times, Special Projects Team at Singapore Press Holdings. Writing for you guys opened up new worlds. And Jenny, thanks for introducing me to technical journalism.

• K.C. at Microsoft Singapore for getting me involved with the whole .NET thing, and introducing me to Microsoft's culture.

• Dr Ng Wee Keong, my academic mentor during my days at Nanyang Technological University

• Yixing, Jianhao, Fuzan, Zongrong, and the rest of the NPCC guys. My former classmates Bruce, Robert, Wanwen, Meili, and the late Zhenqiang. It has been more than a decade of friendship!

• Kelvin (aka Cilin), Mathematics whiz and Windows 2000 expert. I would not have got that distinction for that Math paper if not for your coaching (you didn't think I would remember that, did you?).

• My former colleagues at National Computer Systems where I started toying with Java. Huey Min for answering all those weird questions on Java (despite 'being permanently busy') during the years I was mastering that language; Yam Khoon, Chee Ying, Ben, Ghim Howe, Charles, Yong Kwan, Sufen, Otneil, Boon, Amanda, and our PM Ah Hock – thanks for providing me with a good learning environment; Joyce, Bee Ling, Jianwei, and Jiansong – thanks for going through the four-month long IT project management lesson.

• My other family members staying under the same roof who have to tolerate my vampirish life style.