Brain Ooze

Congratulations! You have gotten yourself a blackberry. Now you can get access to the office email and be a workaholic. So you get a good cheap data package. You think you are so smart.

You got the facebook app installed. All contacts imported. WordPress installed. Personal email pushed to the device.

Then today you found out, after 3 days of trying, that the package does not have BES that you need to connect to the office network.

Called the service provider and they say they cannot add BES into the package cause, they cannot.

I am so depressed, I almost broke down. This is how it feels like to spend money for this feature and not to have it. Might as well go back to prepaid and my trusty 200 ringgit phone.

Recently, the company over paid me for something that I did. It was one of those incentive program by the company and they overpaid me by 40 USD. That is quite a sum for me. I was happy to get the money so I spent it all.

A couple weeks ago I got an email from some lady saying that due to some technical error, I was overpaid. I knew the money was too good to be true! Yes, I stupidly spent it already. This lady is from US and she was quite polite about it. She said I will be given an option how to return the money to the company.

and option?

I have been thinking of how to return the money and the best so far I though of is this.

Hi Lady,

Thank you for giving me the option to return the money that is not rightfully mine. Your mistakes will be forgiven after 30 “hail mary”.

In my country, we often use coconuts as a form of trade in place of real cold hard cash. The exchange rate is about one coconut per USD, this makes the currency exchange between us easy as I am bad with floating point calculation (just like the product we make). Coconuts are used in place of money because they have 1001 uses.

Since I am given the option to pay back the company, I would like do it with coconuts. Please send me the address for me to deliver 40 coconuts. I will remove the husk for ease of shipment and just in case you do not know how to.

By the way, if you do not like coconuts, we also trade using bananas.

I have been trying to refrain myself from commenting on the kampung buah pala issue. The reason mainly I have a good friend who stays there and he is one of the victims ( I saw his name in the papers ). But seriously, I cannot stand it anymore. I am not going to hurl comments on the villagers, I am targeting the so called representative of the villagers there.

I cannot take it anymore because the representative is so stupid. He is so stupid to bring this misery to the villagers. Yesterday when your village was supposed to be demolished, MIC youth formed a barricade between the village and the tractors. You should be asking them where is the 3.2 million ringgit that Sany Vellu proudly say that he will be forking out to save your village? You should be asking the MIC for the money, not sending a bunch of hooligans down.

As a representative, you went to the state government and they acted as a mediator to get you some sort of compensation. Remember that you have been offered compensation prior to this saga, you refused, and now you are asking for second chance. Second chance came with a 1/2 million ringgit house. Yes, I heard that it is just a letter saying that you will get a house yadda yadda.. but at least it is a letter, something in black and white. If all else fails, there is the news paper reports. I think we have enough documentation for the house.

1/2 a million house, personally I think you didn’t want it because you know you could not afford to maintain it. Think of the assessment that you have to pay I know a lot of colleagues, working many years, husband and wife in a white collar job, still they could not own a 1/2 million house. Including myself. I only stay in an apartment. You are just cow herders (that is how they marketed themselves) and given a 1/2 million house.

I blame him for this 1/2 million house issue because instead of saying no, he should be fighting for a better documentation. Instead he just shrugs it off. The reason for not accepting the house, unclear contract. Then clear it up.

And you notice one thing, the representative will come up to the press once in a while to say that s0 and so minister or some politician has said that they will do this and give that to them. But the politician never came out to say so. Or when he met LGE one day and claimed the whole thing is settled, the next day he comes out to say another thing. If I am LGE, I will also be sick of this kind of person. Never seems to be able to keep to their end of the bargain.

I think they have too much time in their hands to think and talk nonsense about their plight. I also think that Penangites are too forgiving and sympathetic, too kind to look at themselves.

When Rent control act was repelled, did the powers that be compensate people for their mass exodus out of georgetown? Whatever happen to SOS, the society protecting the people of georgetown. Remember FARLIM? before Bandar baru air itam, it was a kampung. I was too young to remember anything but i was told that someone died during the demolition of the village.

You know what, I think the developers are very professional in handling this. I have heard of developers who start fires in villages to clear them out. They could also come at night and just bulldoze the whole place down. I mean villagers are just humans.. developers have the caterpillar.

sometimes i do wonder what do the people in workshops do anyway. Before I sent in the car, he said that it could be done in 2 days flat. Then it was 3 days.. now almost one whole week has passed. ..  and still no car.

I called them a few days ago and they said the car had some minor issue with the body and they had to knock it out. I did ask about the body when they did the assessment and they say it was OK, just need to replace the plastic parts. Now they are telling me that they need to knock something out. Fine.

Then yesterday they said the car is already with the painters but there seems to be some problem there. Apparently, when they painted the parts, the colours did not match the rest of the car. I guess this is a common issue when you get a car that does not come with “standard” colours. So they have to repaint the parts again.

since all conversations were done through the phone, I wondered if he was lying. Actually they forgot to work on the car or they took their own sweet time and now they are blaming someone else. But working in a technical field, I also can understand that sometimes, unexpected things happen.

He said I should be able to get the car today. Pray that happens. I booked my holiday away from Penang this weekend. It is going to be a long weekend for folks in Penang because of the TYT’s birthday.

When I started this blog, I vowed to myself that I would never write about work. Too much risk involved. But I guess today is an exception.

I work in a project based job. That means, there are times when I am busy and there are times when I am not, all depends on the project cycle. The project is supposed to “finish” last week whereby on Monday, they will do a build and that should be sent to the customer. Before that, we spent a good 2 months or so fixing bugs caught by the testing department. For once in a long long time, the project was going well. The bugs kept coming in, which means that the customers are going to see less bugs. My colleagues were swatting bugs left and right. We were right at the sweet spot.

I was involved in another upcoming project and was not directly involved in swatting flies.

As the weeks progresses, less and less bugs were filed. This is in line with the projection. As we fix more bugs, they should find less bugs and the data shows.

We were all heaving a sigh of relief last Thursday. Everyobody made plans for the weekend. It is finally over.

When we came to work on Friday, all hell broke loose. Testing found a series of serious bugs. Very serious indeed that we were asked to cancel our weekend plans and come back to work solving these issues. Everyone, whether you were working on bugs previously or not. All hands on deck for the weekend.

As I mentioned, I was not working on bugs but then boss asked me to come back to work anyway and help out. I took a bug and after one and half days, found that it was an issue with the OS that they were using, not our product. What a waste of a good weekend.

I might not sound frustrated in this blog, but seriously, some blood better be drawn when I get into work today. It was a waste of my weekend, a waste of most people’s weekend. The testing department has always been known as a very defensive team. They will come up with reasons for everything, just to save their ass. I want to know what reason the will give for the last minute bugs when all the indicators in the weeks before has shown progress.

I guess it is my beef, and probably a lot of people too.. when problems that were not mine in the first place, is now mine.

It was probably a traumatic day for the wife today. Well not as traumatic as pissed off. This has to do with the car. I had a meeting at work today but the workshop “Service Assistant” insist that we bring the car to the workshop early in the morning for the adjuster to have a look. He promised that the adjuster will only take a while and I can go back to the office. Thankfully, I did not want to risk missing the meeting and spoiling my first impression with a new boss, so the wife lovingly sacrificed to head down to the workshop for me.

Thanks dear.

I know that he is trying to do his best to help me get the car fixed as fast as possible but sometimes, people can make life miserable for everyone. The adjuster was a pain in the ass, apparently. It took him more than 2 hours to access the damage to the car. I was told that he would just have a look at the car but the wife said she just turned around for a while and the whole front part of the car was dismantled. He was taking photos of the car after the front part was taken apart and scrutinizing all the part that was to be changed. It does not matter that he had to take the whole front of the car apart. He wants to see it. And apparently, the workshop has to take some of the mechanics away from their job to entertain him.

He also asked why the front car that we bang did not lodge a report. Like how we know.. he does not want, not that I can force him to. He asked my wife a lot of question that was already in the report. The police report is there, want to question the police?

anyone know how the secret life of an insurance accessor works?

I did not update my blog the couple of days because 1. the internet was down and 2. A lot of work to do.

There are too many idiots running around this country.. or maybe there are too many idiots running this country. Whatever it is, I got screwed this morning. Well I could get screwed deeper but thankfully, there are still a few reasonable men around.

This is regarding the accident I got 3 weeks ago. I was hoping after returning from my vacation, the workshop fellow can say that he has completed the paperwork and waiting for the insurance to settle the problem, after all, I am innocent. But no. Instead, I got a call from the workshop that they still need one more paperwork, the 3rd party insurance.

My car is done by Lowe motors. They are not those tor truck vultures and they don’t have connections in the police and JPJ. Most of the stuff they try to help me but at the end of the day, I have to chase the paperwork for them. Well I got most of the paperwork. We need about 15 paperwork for the claims and I got all but one.

This 3rd party insurance paperwork is easy. I just need to know what company he is insured under. Simple thing is to call the person and ask. Actually, the workshop was kind enough to call for me and guess what. The idiot picked up the phone and did say a thing. It is like he is trying to waste our phone bill money. Idiots. He tried a few times and I also tried to call him. Buggar. Are there no such thing as gentlemen anymore? He could just pick up the phone and talk like a normal man instead of pulling all this stupid crap on us.

He was in the wrong for crashing into me. The least he can do is to make life all easy for everyone. By not helping, he just made me more pissed. At the end of the day, what is there for him to lose of he did help me? He thinks that he can escape from paying me? He will get his insurance claimed anyway, just easy or the hard way. Easy way.. we all make friends. Now he is really showing how idiotic he is. This kind of attitude seems to be the norm these days, gone are the days for chivalry. Screwing each other is the game now.

So the next thing that we have to do is go to JPJ and do a search. Easy right. Well apparently not. 3 different people gave us 3 different runaround. The workshop had this case last week, almost the same as mine, where the 3rd party was a pain in the ass and she had to do a JPJ search. Apparently, I had to go to the insurance company, get them to “link” with JPJ and then I head down to JPJ to do the search. Supposedly, JPJ will not just let anyone do a search. Of course right, for privacy protection.

I went to the insurance company. Guess what. The insurance agent said no such “link” is needed. Then I told him the case and he called his HQ in KL. Apparently, the KL guy also had this same case last week. Where the JPJ refuse to let the owner of the car to make a search. The solution? Get a runner to do the work, that is what the KL people do.

and that is what I asked my workshop to do. Get some runner to do the work.

We all know why the runners can do the work and the rest of us cannot. Some palms are greased and the JPJ officers are well taken care of .

I am bloody frustrated about this system. It gives me the impression that nothing every gets done without some grease. If this goes on, everyone would need to carry a WD40 around all the time to get things done. This is too much.

Well we did go to the police station and asked the kind sargent to help us get the insurance company. He did try and guess what, the JPJ is OFFLINE!

Isn’t this country amazing.

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That was my stand ever since I took my SPM. When it comes to scholarship, you look at the results and whoever is the best deserves to get the money and they should get to study whatever they want.

Yes, a lot of people will come back to me and ask what if… they come from a village school and instead of a more well equiped urban school? What if they come from more impoverished family? what if.. what if…

Well there are some give and take. I am not saying, don’t consider the needy. But are you going to waste the smart ones, those who scored  big time? I say we give those who are smart, studies hard, scored in exams.. then you have the balance? Give to whoever you want to give. Then everyone is happy. I think this is a good formula.

Why is it that I have to go to Form 6, study like mad and my friends who are half as good as me goes to matriculation and we both end up in the same university anyway? Why should there be two standard? Are you saying those people in Matriculation cannot fight in equal field as those in Form 6?

Of course they can. But why do if there is an easier way!

People who met me and heard my story would know that I did terrible in my form 6 in the beginning . I manage to scrape through but I should not have to. Form 6 was not as much challenging in studies as much as it is maintaining my morale. There I was, sacrificing the so called “life”. My friends are either in matriculation or they are rich enough to go to college. Some lucky ones end up in UTM’s diploma. Anything for form 6.

Personally, I spent too much time doing soul searching and forsaking studies.

But those who know me, also know that I had fun in Form 6. More than any other time.

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I was waiting for a day like this to happen.  Read these news clippings

KUCHING – SARAWAK has banned the import of live pigs, pork and pork products from all countries with immediate effect as part of the precautionary measures being taken in the wake of the swine flu outbreak, Deputy Chief Minister Tan Sri Dr George Chan said on Thursday.

He said the State Veterinary Authority under the Agriculture Department would be carrying out active surveillance on pig farms and abattoirs besides activating its alert management team and rapid action teams on preparedness for any emergency.

http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking%2BNews/SE%2BAsia/Story/STIStory_370836.html

To most people living there, the state government’s decision to ban all pork imports may seem to be a good decision. It supposedly protects the citizens from the flu right. It all sounds like a very good decision. But “feeling good” may not be the best judge in situations like this. Leaders needs to make informed decision based on advise from smart people and the facts at that time. Not political moves that make people feel good. WHO, the world Health organisation has been advocating that pork products and healthy pigs do not spread disease if they are handled carefully. I guess if you don’t cook pork well, you will get more than the flu. That is a fact that has existed since man invented fire.

But the sarawak government won’t take any of those advise. They are smarter. They think they are great. This is my land and I can do anything I want. Of course. Probably out of oversight, they forgot to ban people from entering too. The flu is now spreading through humans, not just pigs. They forgot, or maybe, not to piss of humans, they forgot to ban the humans.

And so you get the story below.

KUCHING, May 5 (Bernama) — A 31-year-old man, who has been travelling to the United States for the last two weeks, was admitted to the Sarawak General Hospital’s isolation ward last night after having symptoms similar to influenza A(H1N1).

Health Deputy Director-General Dr Ramlee Rahmat said today the man, a local, returned to Sarawak on May 1 and had fever, cough and flu, symptoms that fit those for influenza A(H1N1), yesterday.

http://malaysia.news.yahoo.com/bnm/20090505/tts-flu-sarawak-993ba14_1.html

I am quite sure the man will be clear of H1N1 flu. He is probably getting a common cold because of the long flight home. It happens now and then. But I still think it is funny. Ban all the pigs but forgot about that loophole, humans can still come in and spread disease.

At the same time, the pigs suffer. Why is it in Malaysia, when something bad happens, it has to be pigs.

Liow: Doc did not do anything wrong

PUTRAJAYA: The doctor at the Kuala Lumpur Hospital emergency department, who allegedly “did his own thing” instead of attending to patients as claimed by Deputy Federal Territories Minister Datuk M. Saravanan, has not done anything wrong.

So after some investigation, the health minister now finds that there is nothing wrong with the doctor who supposedly was reading paper while a lot of people were waiting outside for treatment. It is not a cover up and if you read the news completely, you will know why. The FT minister says there were 20 people outside waiting. I think he means there are 20 people in the waiting room and they may not be waiting for their turn with the doctor. They were waiting for their relatives in the A&E. That is where he got his 20 people from.

I have been to the GH a few times during the ambulance run and I can concur that there may be a lot of people in the waiting room, but they are mostly waiting for their relatives. There are some accident or medical cases we brought to the hospital, where this one person could have 20 relatives waiting for him! Yes, 20 people waiting for one person. Well everyone is concerned for his well being. I can understand.

I want to ask the FT minster how many times has he seeked treatment in the government hospital?

There was once, my wife got measles. We went to a clinic and the doctor just gave her a small bottle of calamine lotion and sends her home without and MC. So what does he expect my wife to do? go to work and spread the joy. Went to GH and immediately the doctor gave 7 days of MC and he says if there are still spots after that, come back for more.

I may be biased cause my parents worked in the GH, but I think not everyone there is bad. Not all doctors are disgruntled. I have met a lot of passionate people working in the hospital.