18 December 2014

It was that time of the year again for my company’s annual dinner. Actually we rotate between an all expense-paid trip to a resort or theme park somewhere and an annual dinner. Last year we went to Pangkor so this year it’s an annual dinner.

This year’s theme was Stars of Bollywood night. Since I didn’t want to spend a hundred ringgit for an Indian dress that I would only wear once, I borrowed one from an Indian friend instead. The venue was the fancy Shangri La hotel in downtown KL. Upon arrival we get to collect our lucky dip which I got a lousy Pyrex bowl. The food was okay I guess, an array of Indian and western fusion buffet. There were performances and dance while we dine.

The highlight of the night is none other than the lucky draw of course. Some of the prizes include an LED TV, a couple of Android and Apple smartphones and also a return trip to somewhere in India. I don’t know if I’ve told you this before but I’m like the unluckiest person in the world when it comes to lucky draws. I never win anything (good). And that evening wasn’t any different. The luckiest guy in my department got himself a lousy steamer, that’s about it. I don’t know whether to be suspicious or I’m just jealous but somebody in admin got a smartphone for her lucky dip and also got herself a nice lucky draw present as well. Either she’s really, really lucky or she made her own luck (if you know what I mean). Hmm, very suspicious indeed.

I guess it is only natural to be jealous in a lucky draw especially when you won nothing. There’s only so much presents they or the suppliers can sponsor and there’s bound to be disappointments. Still I hate that empty, disappointing feeling and I wish my company would do a CIMB and give everybody a decent lucky draw present during their annual dinner. Yes my wife’s company actually give everybody a nice little electrical appliance apart from the expensive grand prizes during their annual dinner. Strangely enough that was the first and last company trip/annual dinner that her company had ever organized. Maybe the ran out of budget after that #LOL.

12 December 2014

When my wife started following me hiking, we went up the popular Broga hill trail in Semenyih. Back then she was not very fit and was out of breath even only at the foot of the hill. We had to stop a few times so that she could rest and catch her breath before going up again.

That was then, a dozen mountains later my wife is not a hiking noob anymore. Any mountain I do, she can do it as well. We even climbed the difficult Gunung Nuang together last time without any fuss. So when I went up Tabur East again this weekend, I thought my wife is more than ready to try this moderately challenging hill. Yes the climb was steep, there were sharp rocks everywhere and she didn’t go as fast as I did but she managed to complete it without any problem. Definitely a much better improvement than that first time in Broga. Seriously, I think now there’s no mountain high enough that she can’t climb. So proud of you babe, that’s my girl!

9 December 2014

For three days I went to an ACSP (Apple Certified Support Professional) training in Wangsa Maju. It was fully sponsored by my company who's serious about getting their IT staff skilled and certified. Wangsa Walk Mall is about 45 minutes away from my house including the morning traffic rush. Actually since I leave home around 9:00 AM, the traffic has considerably eased so there's not too much traffic to go through. Plus did I mention I was riding my bike?

If you've been to Wangsa Walk Mall before you may encounter an Apple authorised reseller store on the 1st floor called Futureworld. It's painted black inside and you can't miss it cause it's located directly in front of an escalator. There's a small training room inside where I learned some basic to intermediate Apple Mac OS X lessons in there. I found out we paid top dollars for the training, a few thousand ringgit per head. Still the training center didn't have the courtesy to supply us with any breakfast or lunch or even drinking water for the entire 3 days training sessions. Totally unacceptable. In my entire working career this is the first time I go to a training session and didn't get served anything. Much cheapskate.

So my colleague and I had to fork out our own money to pay for lunch and sometimes breakfast and tea the entire time. Aside from Subway, most of the eateries inside the mall is way too expensive or over our budget. Lucky for us there's a few reasonably priced restaurants outside the mall. We had lunch at Restoran Pucuk Di Cita just opposite the mall.

The training session itself was pretty okay I guess. We finished the 400 page text book in 3 days each time going home around 5:00 PM. The trainer sped trough his condensed slides hence why we finished so fast. Besides, we were already familiar with half of what was taught. So the only thing left now is for us to sit for the tricky ACSP exam some time next month. The pass rate is not really high at 20% so we really got to study hard before the test. And the only time I get to do that is at work. Let's hope my boss give us some time out to study or something.

16 November 2014

Today is my 6 year old's daughter Mia Ariana kindergarten graduation day. How time flies. Felt like it was just yesterday I was cradling her in my arms in the Putrajaya Hospital. The truth is 6 years passed by really quick, one year after another and then another. Before you know it she's about to go to primary school.

As with the tradition of her kindergarten, she will be performing a few dances and also recite a poem. She practiced really hard at home, memorising the words of her poem.

Like last year, the graduation day ceremony was held at the Kinrara Golf Club. They rented a little room there and the entire thing cost us 90 ringgit. Last year I became a douche and complained loudly on Facebook for the high price. This time around I have wisened up and realized 90 ringgit is not bad for the setting, ceremony, food and the goodies that we and my kid got. Kinrara Golf Club is a really nice place for parties or graduation days and such.

You can view the videos from the graduation day here, here and here. We were immensely proud of Mia Ariana and her classmates' performance. Their teachers taught them well.

4 October 2014

This time around next year when anybody ask me to go anywhere during Eid Adha remind them of this massive 10 mile traffic jam that we had to endure for hours. Not sure if it's even worth it driving for 6 hours.

10 September 2014

I have a part time business selling new and use notebooks, PCs and other gadgets in my free time. And like most retail business, I provide after sales service for my customers in case their products become faulty or have any kind of trouble. Usually if it's under warranty, I would fix it for free. Sometimes for special cases though I would still fix it for a minimal fee even if it's out of warranty.

Recently I had one case where my customer's laptop had a faulty USB 3.0 port and the warranty had just lapsed for about a month. I called Dell to enquire whether they could make an exception for my case but sadly Dell would have nothing of it. Later they sent me a parts replacement quotation for RM249 and further revised upwards to RM4200 for the motherboard replace. With that price I might as well buy a brand new laptop for my friend.

So the moral of the story here, always keep in mind when your hardware warranty expires. If you find anything faulty, anything at all, quickly report it to the vendor (like me) so that they can get it fixed for free under the warranty (usually 1 year). While I'm not really responsible for the faulty notebook since it's out of warranty, I still feel somewhat guilty since it only just expires. It's like Dell purposely build their laptop to break down straight away after the warranty passes. Maybe this is just a one off case but it's enough to make me not buy anything laptop from Dell again.

3 August 2014

There's only two hair style that I usually have - short cropped (bald) hair or really-really long hair. For the past 20 months or so I've been keeping my hair long. And it's been growing nicely and bushy since then. Some say I looked like David Luiz, others said Marouane Fellaini. I don't really care actually. I keep my hair not to please anyone but myself. Plus my company didn't seem to mind my hairstyle. Up until a few weeks ago though.

You see, my manager suddenly sent me an email telling me to do 'something' about my hair. I don't know whether it's an official order from the management or she simply doesn't like my hairstyle. I've got the suspicion it's the latter. Anyway, I decided to ignore her for a while until we got into a meeting one day and again she told me nicely to 'fix' my hair. I don't know what she really mean, cut my hair a little maybe? I've got a good mind to just ignore her entirely and go about with my business as usual, torturing her in the process. But since she is my superior and she did gave me a 2.5 months bonus last time for my excellent work, I don't have the heart to aggravate her much further.

So a few days before my Raya break, I went to a saloon and get my hair fixed. Fixed as in I did a rebonding on my hair. 2 hours and RM150 later my hair is a straight as those shampoo models. Last time I rebonded my hair was exactly 10 years ago before I got married. If you see my wedding photo, you'll find out how funky I looked like with my long hair and all.

The thing about rebonding is they don't last long. Eventually when my hair grows, they'll return back to it's former state. In the meantime I had to apply this serum oil thing to keep my hair straight. Plus I can't wash or get my hair wet as much as I like. It's so troublesome. That's the price you pay for beauty I guess.

My new straight hair looks great in the beginning. As you can see I looked pretty dashing in my Raya photo above. But the hair care is just too much for me. My scalp feels itchy all the time and whenever I scratch my hair I had to comb it again. I can't have as many sex as I went because that would require me to shower and wash my hair every time. Every time I wash my hair, I need to properly dry them with a hairdryer. Imagine the trouble. A week later whenever I wash my hair and dry it I started to look like Rosmah Mansur (oh the horror). Furthermore my head and face felt greasy because of the serum oil and I had to carry a comb everywhere. It's like my entire life and routine has changed because of this new hairstyle. That's not how I'd like to live my life. I wanna be free and not attached or depend on anything like combs and hair creams.

So today I decided to do the right thing and shave my head bald again. It was quick and surprisingly painless. Yes I was sorry to see my 20 months old hair gone at first but now I felt free and relieved even. No more hair care or shampoo or hair dryers. Maybe someday, 10 years from now I would keep my hair long again just for fun, who knows. For now I'm back to my other hairstyle which is bald and handsome.

28 July 2014

Coincidentally this year the fasting month goes head to head with the school holidays. Well we actually started fasting for 2 weeks or so during regular school hours and the rest during the shortened school break hours. On normal days, I report to work at 0730 and checks out at 1600. During extended school breaks, I go to work a little later at 0800 and leaves a little bit earlier at 1530. School breaks also means less work or problems arising from the teachers and other staffs. However that doesn't mean we just hang around on our butts all day. There's always stuff to do like the perpetual asset-checking, formatting laptops and desktops, re-installing ipads and the like. Rest-assured my boss will always find something for us to do every day.

Coincidentally also the fasting month starts from late June to late July. For the staff at my place, July is the most eagerly anticipated month of the year because that's when the bonuses come in. It is fair to say that everybody will have their share of bonuses. The amount of the bonus however will depend on how well you did throughout last year. I am pleased to say that I must have did pretty well during the last 3 terms because the management have rewarded me handsomely for my work :)

This year we only left for home just two days before Hari Raya (Eid). Linda had to work up until Friday although I already started my long festive holiday since Thursday. The thing about leaving the city that late is traffic. Sure enough traffic in some part of the road was horrendous. There's a long crawl after the Gombak toll plaza and another along the Merapoh - Gua Musang route. This time around I've been a little bit clever with avoiding traffic. I took all the alternative routes provided to me. Whenever I see the sign for alternative road to anywhere I will turn straight into that path whether traffic is visibly bad or not. That's why I didn't get stuck into as much traffic as I had last year save for the two that I've mentioned earlier. From KL you can use the old Gombak - Bentong trunk road. If you're using the regular Karak highway route, skip Bentong altogether by using the Sertik-Mempaga pass. In Gua Musang, skip the crawl in that small town and also Kuala Krai by taking the Pulai - Jelawang - Jeli road to go to Tanah Merah, Pasir Mas and beyond. Trust me, it'll save you a lot of headache (and knee pain) and makes your journey a lot faster. Alternative routes is the way to go.

Since we take turns to spend the first day of Raya, this year we'll be celebrating in Tanah Merah first. Although I'd prefer celebrating the first day of Eid in my hometown in Pasir Mas (naturally), I've come to terms that spending time with my in laws is not that bad. In fact I've learned to love them as much as I do for my own place. The kids were especially excited to be able to play with their cousins and aunts and uncles and their grandparent.

We didn't have a full house in Pasir Mas this year. My elder sister Lina didn't come home until the 4th day of Raya. Uncle Din and his family didn't come back either and he already visited during the fasting month anyway. Still, with 6 great grandchildren and almost a dozen grandchildren, my house in Pasir Mas is still as lively and happening as ever.

I bought Mom her first ever smartphone. She's been talking about wanting to have one for sometime now. And since I have a few extra ringgit to spare this time, I thought I'd get her one. It's only a second hand iPhone 4 but it'll do and she looks delighted to have it anyway. I was thinking of getting her the Redmi 1S but I thought the iPhone would be better. Now she finally can socialise on Facebook, chit-chat on Whatsapp and maybe post a few pictures on Instagram.

Later in the afternoon, my siblings and I went to visit my Dad in Pasir Pekan near Kota Bharu. Usually we would meet up at Tesco because somehow the thought of visiting him and his wife at home never occurred to us. Actually we have this aversion of visiting our stepmother's place you know, because of the bad things that she used to do to us back in the day. We were genuinely worried that she might do something evil to any of us. This time around however, I thought what the heck. Surely we can't be meeting at Tesco again like complete strangers. So I suggested to my siblings that we should meet at his place in Pasir Pekan for once. What's the worst thing that could happen anyway? They all agreed and we spend a lovely afternoon at his old kampong house eating rambutans and chit-chatting. I'm happy to report that none of us fell ill or anything later on. Although I can still remember vividly some of the things that my mother in law did years ago I have learned to forgive her. There's no use keeping much hatred and vengeance for something that has passed and nothing you can do about except to forgive and to forget. Although I doubt the forget part will come anytime soon.

So that's how my Eid been for this year. The journey home was smooth and uneventful. Again I took the Jeli - Gua Musang route to avoid traffic in Machang and Kuala Krai. Linda had to work on Friday so we need to go home the day before. Selamat Hari Raya to everyone and my sincerest apologies to all that I have wronged or offended before.

24 June 2014

Have I told you the time when I lost 3 of the tires from my Proton Savvy? I didn't? Well some crook stole all 3 of the tires of my car which was parked outside my apartment by the roadside. The car had been parked there for some time since the battery's dead and the crook must have noticed it as well. It could have been all four if not for one of the tires uses a different kind of nuts. We had to fork out some 800 ringgit to get new tires and rims to replace all four. Yes we could change just 3 but they would be unbalanced.

The moral of this story is, don't let your car parked outside at the same place for too long. There's evil people out there in the world and they're just waiting for the opportunity to do evil stuff. I guess it was partly my fault for letting the car parked there for so long. I blame it on the Century battery which died 5 months after purchase. Lucky for us the battery is still under warranty so we could just exchange it for free. Still it's no excuse for some crook to just steal all our tires. Damn you crook.

As a result of this unfortunate incident, we decided to park the car at my sister in law's place in Bentong and even let them use it. I rarely drive the car anyway and rather let the car sit idle at least my in laws could drive it sometimes.

9 June 2014

My wife and her siblings had been planning a family day for her side of the family for a few months now. They had a few places in mind but ultimately decided on Pangkor Island in Perak. I'm cool with that location although I've been there before last year for my last company trip. The island and the beaches are beautiful and it would be a nice place to hold such events. My sister in law and her husband does live in Manjung so that's partly why we chose Pangkor since it's quite near to her place.

We took the regular ferry to Pangkor Island. During my last trip to Pangkor Island Beach Resort, we had a special ferry that shuttled us directly to the hotel's jetty. This time around though we embarked on the regular Pangkor island jetty along with everybody. From there we hired a van taxi to take us to our chalet. Our accommodation was nothing like my previous hotel. It was a small room with two beds and a tiny bathroom with slow flowing water. The air conditioner hardly works at first and we had to tinker with the remote numerous times to get the temperature down. Obviously since the room costs peanuts, we get peanuts facilities. No bath tubs, swimming pool or free breakfast buffet. Just a room with an ocean view a beautiful beach up front. At least the beach is quite pretty and clean.

As it is a family day, we had several activities planned for it. Unfortunately though, I was down with fever and a really bad back pain throughout my stay. My back pain has been ongoing for sometime before but it got worse while in Pangkor. My fever though started immediately in Manjung which I suspect being caused by my allergic reaction to the car perfume. So you see, I don't get to take much part in many of the activities. I did join the telematches but didn't swim in the waters or leave my room much. All I felt like doing was sleep all day and too tired to do anything else.

Overall we had a good time there. At least I thought everybody else did. They bathed at the beach twice a day for 3 days, kayaked in the waters, had barbecue and generally enjoyed themselves by the beach. Me, I was stuck in my room most of the time like a real anti-social. Next time remind me not to buy car perfumes ever again. They're toxic to my nose and body.

15 May 2014

We moved in to our own place here at Casa Riana about four years ago. Back then we had to take out a few loans, personal and housing just to get our dream home. Well, not exactly dream, dream home but a home to call our own nevertheless. After that we can't afford any major renovation save for the grill and some basic wiring let alone a proper kitchen cabinet or worktop. It was only last month that we could afford a proper kitchen cabinet after my wife got her bonus.

I thought finding a contractor to build a simple kitchen cabinet was easy. I did save a few numbers that were passed around by friends a long time ago. When the time come when we finally need a contractor, almost all of them are either busy or unavailable. I didn't know that renovation contractors are so in demand right now. They were all bumiputra contractors though, I haven't tried the others yet. Our initial plan was to buy a simple budget cabinet from IKEA and find a contractor to fix it at home. Of course IKEA does has their own contractors but the fees were a little steep. I thought we could save a few hundred ringgit with an outside contractor.

In the end we did manage to find a contractor who's available and willing to meet our budget. At first we only wanted to expand our kitchen a little bit, demolish the divider in the middle of our kitchen and move the sink back. That alone will cost us 6,000 ringgit. After much deliberation though, my wife decided to go all the way and build a kitchen cabinet as well with the total cost of RM10,000. Yeah her bonus was that much. We thought buying a cabinet from IKEA and asking our contractor to install it is a bit cumbersome. Besides, there's no guarantee they will follow the right instruction or just simply fix it the easiest way they can.

So the contractor came to have a look and we agreed on the design and price. A few days later he came with his workers and measured stuff in our kitchen. The next day he started with the demolition job and the plumbing job which lasted for about a week. During that time the entire house was filled with dust but we had no choice but to deal with it and live our lives as usual. The gap between the plumbing works and the actual installation of our kitchen cabinet was quite long though. We waited for like 3 weeks before our contractor came up with the cabinet and worktop sample. The final installation didn't start until 5 days later. Overall, our kitchen renovation took around 2 months, about a month longer than we expected.

Quality-wise we were quite satisfied with our kitchen contractor. We got everything that we were promised of except for punctuality of course. We got one L-shaped kitchen cabinet with a huge double sink and another independent wall cabinet. To make up for the delay, our contractor offered to paint our kitchen walls for free. A nice gesture I must say.

If you'd like to do any renovation work for your home, kitchen, living room or whatever you can contact DJ Epul (Saiful Nizam) at 012 9194226. I don't know whether he's really a DJ before but he does renovation works now.

15 March 2014

One week later after the disappearance of flight MH370, we are nowhere near finding the ill-fated plane. However there were some interesting new development today. The Malaysian prime minister announced in a press conference earlier today that the plane was purposely deviated from it's flight path and the transponders turned off manually. Which could only suggest one thing: the plane was hijacked either buy one or both the pilots or plane crew or any of the passengers. As of now we have no idea who that person or group of people could be responsible for the hijacking. Since after making the announcement, Mr Najib Razak didn't stay for any Q&A with the reporters (that's why we call him Bapa Pengumuman). Now they have stopped the search and rescue operation in the south china sea and refocused on the corridor between bay of Bengal up to Kazakhstan in the north. I suspect the government knew about this all along but choose to keep it secret until they are really truly sure and corroborated the theory with international authorities.

If the hijacking theory is true, then there might still be hope for the passengers and crews. Or they could have crashed somewhere and yet to be found. If it was indeed hijacked, then the perpetrator didn't make any effort to demand any ransom to anyone up until now. Anyway I hope there's new and positive development in the next few days.

The weather has been extra hot lately. So hot that water levels in reservoirs around the country has depleted and many areas in Selangor had to go through rationing. My home sweet home in Taman Puncak Jalil had been spared the horror for now but I fear that if the drought continues. The hot climate had also cause a lot of forest and bush fires around the state which had resulted in this terrible haze. Not to mention the neighboring Sumatra island also experienced the same fate making things even worse here. This morning I woke up with a strong and acrid smell of smoke in the air. Yet the school where I work chose to remain open when they closed for lesser haze last year. Yeah I was hoping to have an early weekend today :-P

Joking aside, I hope the haze will go away soon. They can't do any cloud-seeding operations lately because apparently all our resources (planes) were used to find the missing plane. I mean seriously? This awful haze is just as serious and bad for the country don't you think? Surely a day of two of cloud-seeding won't make a difference?

8 March 2014

Right about now, the whole country and the world in general are fixated on the sudden disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 over the South China sea en route to Beijing. The plane lost all contact at around 2:40 AM local time and until now, no signs of crash or safe landing had been detected. China national make up about half of all the 239 passengers and crew on board with 13 other nationals including 38 Malaysians making up the rest. 24 hours later it is feared that there's slim hope of finding any survivors from the plane since planes don't just simply vanish mid flight into thin air unless it explodes or got hit by an external force.

My prayers goes to all the passengers and family of the crash victims.

28 February 2014

Today my IT Manager for whole school, Mike clocked in for the final time after 5 years. We had a little farewell ceremony for him. There was cake, speech, nasi lemak and pizza which we pitched in RM41.00 each. Mike was in all, a good manager and a nice fellow. He'd been generally supportive to all of us. Of course there are times that I felt he was rather petty or slightly unreasonable to me. I'd totally understand when he said I can't post any pictures of the school or the people in it to Instagram or any other social media for privacy and security reasons. I stopped doing that. Or mostly stopped checking in with the school's name in the location. One thing I remember the most about Mike is that he has this great aversion to his staff fiddling with a phoned during work. Regardless if the purpose is for work or otherwise. I suspect some overzealous teacher or somebody reported it to him so he had to say something about that.

One time I was formatting a pc, which is an insanely boring and time-consuming work so I read a book on my phone to fill my time. Mike saw this and he gently rebuked me for doing that. He doesn't care if I'm reading a book or scrolling Twitter, he will have none of it. Apart from that, Mike is generally a good manager. He rarely interferes with our jobs unless we're doing something seriously wrong. So far he'd been pleased with my work so I'm told. He's one of those no-nonsense guy and calls a spade a spade. He has years of experience and knows his IT stuff well so I have massive respect for him in that regard. As we chat for the last time this afternoon, I learned that he'll be retiring in Thailand with his wife who secured a job there. Good luck Mike and enjoy yourself in Thailand (I know you will). I should think he had some part in hiring me some time last year so thanks for that too. Au revoir.

11 February 2014

The school where I work had recently let their non-teaching staff to borrow books from the library both primary & secondary. So I didn't miss the chance to borrow some books from the library. They let me borrow up to 9 books for about a month and I borrowed 5. Although most of the books at the primary school library are for students below 12, I found out I can also search for books at the secondary school library and somebody will bring them here so I can borrow it. The last 3 books that I borrowed where the Lorien Legacies namely I am Number Four, The Power of Six and The Rise of Nine. Yes, it was the same book that was made into that major motion picture I am Number Four if you haven't already guessed.

The last time I borrowed any book from any library was 10 years ago when I was unemployed. Today I don't have the time and opportunity to go to the national library or any other library to borrow books. Besides, having to finish and return them before 2 weeks is too much trouble for me. Hence when the opportunity arises to borrow books from somewhere near and convenient, I grabbed it. That said, reading books again is quite time consuming and I had trouble fitting it in my busy daily schedule.

My day starts around 6:00 am when my alarm goes off on weekends and I had to leave for work before 7:00 am the latest. If I had to eat breakfast outside, I must leave even earlier. Work starts from 7:30 am to 4:00 pm. After work I quickly rush home to jog and work out if I don't have any other errands to run. I usually run until just before 7:00 pm and then rest for a while and had dinner. After that only do I have time to read. That is also when I usually watch any one of hundreds of TV series or movies that I have in my collection or write a few lines here on this blog. Not to mention time for my social network like Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. I usually retire to bed around midnight if there's no early morning football on TV. The cycle continues the next day.

The only extra time that I have to read books is the weekend, that is if my family and I don't have plans to go anywhere. Perhaps I should borrow fewer books so that I'm not under pressure to finish them before the deadline.

23 January 2014

I should write more here.

So here I am.

Did I tell you about last Monday when all 3 of my colleagues decided to take an emergency leave and MC at once? That leaves me all alone doing the job of 4 people the entire day. Imagine me scurrying from one class to another up and down a thousand steps every 20 minutes. I understand one of them need to look after his son that was warded the day before. But the other 2, somehow I doubt they had a real valid reason to be absent. That said, I survived the entire day in one piece, managed to solve 70% of all the day's chores and left the office no later than 5:30 PM. I remember something like this happened once before last year when the other 2 of my colleagues and I were supposedly sick and didn't come to work. Then my other colleague had to do almost everything by himself as well. I guess this is payback time. Actually I'm cool with that. If I'm lucky I'll get that extra performance bonus for my dedication and excellent work (really?).

Two weeks into the new year I've actually lost 2 kilos. Wanna know my secret? A healthy diet and regular exercise. Healthy as in very little rice (a fistful to be exact) and sandwiches for lunch. I had sandwiches or bread for at least 3 times a week at work. Sometimes I just got really tired of sandwiches so I had either tom yam, som tam or some noodles at the restaurant opposite the school. Man I think the prices there had gone up considerably this year. I can't see the menu anywhere so I guess it is true. As for exercise, I've been doing the usual run around the neighborhood. My average distance is 4 to 5 kilometers, sometimes 3 if it rains or I got really tired. Having just sandwich for lunch really affects your energy but you know what they say, no pain no gain brother. Right after running, I'll do some body-weight exercise using nothing but my body and a pair of dumbbells. The afterburn from running plus those heavy-lifting does wonders at removing fat from your body. Go look it up.

Ok I think that's enough blogging for a week. I leave you with this lovely song from Iamneeta and Najwa Latif. As you can see, Najwa is visibly fatter or more chubby in this music video. Must be all the good food she had at Unitar. Why Unitar of all place? To be honest, I think Najwa sings a hundred times better than Neeta. But that's just me.

12 January 2014

When my manager picked me to standby at work this Sunday, I was understandably pissed off at first. T remember being the last guy who volunteered to come to work on weekend so why can't she pick another colleague over me? Then I thought my colleagues has in fact been staying back late all through the week and I've been going home on the dot to run and exercise so I'd be quite selfish to let her pick one of them instead. So I just calm down and accept my fate as it is. So I came to work this morning doing what I'm supposed to do. Setting up 3 notebooks for the regional interviews in the office. It involves the very complicated work of turning on the 3 notebooks and plugging them to the power socket. I don't know how'd they do it without me.

But it's not all doom and gloom for me today. For one thing, my wife also had to work today and she's bringing the kids to work the whole day so I shouldn't miss today so much. Then after setting up the notebooks, I had all the free time in the world for myself. So I read some books and browse the Internet while listening to music the entire day. Lunch was also provided and I also get to sample the food provided for the guests. All that and I get paid extra at the end of the day. What's there not to like about working on weekends here?

11 January 2014

When my kids were left back home with their grandparent, I thought they'd be really bored without their usual gadgets. So with heavy heart I decided to leave my beloved Nexus 7 tablet with them. 2 months later I returned to find the tablet with its screen protector off and the tablet itself cannot be turned on at all. Apparently my kids had left them lying around on the floor and my daughter had used it as a skateboard.

Naturally I was furious. It took me a week to get the tablet on again and another 20 bucks to replace the screen protector. The tablet is now scratch and chipped off at the edges. It's even a wonder that we still get to use it right now but it did. Asus quality or just pure luck? Whatever it is I'm wary of leaving my precious gadgets with any kids below schooling age ever again.

3 January 2014

I'ts been a year since I started working here. Time flies? Sometimes it feels that way. Other times it felt like a snail's crawl. New place, learn new things. After reviewing what I wrote on my other blog, I found out that I have more things that I liked about this new place than I don't. I certainly gained a lot of new benefits and perks working here compared to the negative things. It's just that sometimes, all the negative and bad feelings that I remember seemed to leave a stronger impression on me than the good things.

I know we work in a primary school but that doesn't mean that the management should treat us like one. I understand we have to be punctual and most of the time everybody is punctual except for that one guy. If you ever learnt McGregor's theory X and Y, we are sometimes treated according to Theory X - inherently lazy and avoid work if we can. Although we must admit some of us appears to slack sometimes, most of the time we get the job done. I think we are all adults here and a little bit of trust and faith could go a long way.

And then there's this one guy at work. Since I started working here, he's been absent at least twice a week, sometimes more. I understand if your family member is ill but if it's too often one can't help but think otherwise. Surely you're not the only one capable of taking care of the sick? He's been absent for so many times that he basically used up all his annual leaves, medical leave and HR had to pro-rate his wages based on how many days he actually came. Yet for some unknown reason he's still here. Is it possible that he's so indispensable to my managers that they would just look the other way when his disciplinary records are beyond terrible? Whatever it is, he's set a precedence here where no matter how bad your attendance are, the company will not kick you out. Tell me which other company in the world would tolerate this kind of shenanigans?

Apart from that, I can't think of anything else bad about my new place. My work are not exactly difficult but it could be mind-numbingly tedious and boring at times. Imagine taking stock of the same serial numbers and asset tags over and over again. Honestly, it seems that we could never get the numbers right, ever. I'd rather format a laptop or desktop 50 times over than do another asset-checking again. It's that boring.

That said, you have the accept the fact that you're working for a company and they usually have a set of expectations for you. Often times, those expectations are clearly outlined in the job description so like it or not you'll have to suck it up and deal with it.