Category: Information

• Singapore – Business Trip

  12.23.05 |Information, Service, Travel, Work| Permalink | 5 Comments

  
  
  

  I was away on business trip in Singapore for a project. It was a rush trip but I enjoyed it. It is really an experience to be in Singapore a week before Christmas. There is the “Commercialise Christmas” feelings in the streets of Singapore. A true eye opener for me. Of course, not forgetting the power of buying at Christmas time. It is just so crazy that people buy loads and loads of gift. I guess it is a way to get the economy going.

  I wouldn’t say that things are cheap there after currency conversion, although there were lots of sales going on. I didn’t get anything for myself. I got toys for my children that they enjoyed. I wanted to source for a cheap Avent ISIS pump for some mothers who are breastfeeding but I could not get a cheap one. I bet, during Christmas time, they hiked up the price. There was one departmental store, Robinson at Raffles Place giving away 15% discount store wide. The price of the Avent pump with 2 small bottles was SGD87, with 15% discount is SGD74. Upon returning to office, my colleague told me that there is a free SGD20 vouchers for tourist on Christmas season. If he has given me that information while I was there, I can get the pump for SGD54. Sigh. :wall:

  The Orchard Streets were just crowded with people. One thing that I dislike is there are lots of people smoking. Practically the streets were cover with smoke. I saw a couple of teenagers smoking too. At least, the government don’t allow them to smoke in air conditional stores. If I want to breath fresh air, need to pop into an air conditional store.

  By the way, most of the hotels were fully booked. I was about to stay in 2 different hotels for a 4 days trip. Fortunately upon check in, the front desk could extend my stay. I stayed in Grand Hyatt. The room size is pretty normal. What I like the most is the Plasma TV and I wish I could take it home.

  Surprisingly while I was there, I received a phone call from my credit card company, UOB Bank. Wow, they hunt me down. The officer called to check that I was really in Singapore making all those payment transactions. They did the same when I was in US. They provide outstanding service, even waive my annual fees on the spot, even though it was charged to my statement. If you want good service, go with them.

  By the way, my hubby did an excellent job of babysitting my 2 children. He said “No Sweat!” Maybe because we trained the children well, both of them sleep by 9pm. My son was a bit “manja” when I got back. My gal was thrilled to see me, gave me so many hugs. I miss them too.

  Happy To Be BACK!

  
  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  
  

• AirAsia Promo

  12.14.05 |Information, Service, Travel| Permalink | 14 Comments

  
  
  
  Air Asia giving 2 millions free flight tickets and now it has 1.5 million left. I managed to book free air tickets to Kuala Lumpur for my family. Go visit www.airasia.com and congest it. Most free flights are available on Tue/Wed/Thurs. If you are fortunate, return flights are on weekends. All you have to pay is taxes and fuel.

  Booking Period: 7 – 28 December 2005
  Travel Period: 7 February – 10 October 2006

  It is advertised all over the papers but everyone thought that it will be difficult to get seats, until your friends get it. Don’t wait, go search for it!!

• Unclaimed Money

  11.30.05 |Information, Service| Permalink | 7 Comments

  I got a cheque from the government, can you believe it? 😯 I cannot. 😕 Two years ago, I receive a letter from the bank saying my bank account was deactivated because it was untouched for more than 5 years. 🙁 The money in that account will be transfer to an Unclaimed Funds, a Government body. 😡 The reason the money is untouched is because bank service used to be very poor and I don’t have an ATM card for that account. It was open for my payroll transaction for my first company. I never knew I had so much money in that account as my bank book was not updated. Double Whammy!!! :wall:

  By the way, I didn’t receive any notice or warning about the deactivation of my account. :doh: Maybe my parents did and threw the letters away. They send it to my parent’s place in KL and I have been relocated to Penang. I only receive the last notification that said my account has been deactivated. Funny, my parents kept that for me. 😕

  I asked my aunty to check for me in KL branch, she told me that I have to be in KL to process it and the likelihood of getting the money back is zero. Anyway, I called up my bank in KL to begin the process of claiming the money back. The officer told me to process it in KL. I told him that I was pregnant and cannot travel back to KL. The officer asked me to get the relevant documents and form. I did that and send to the officer by register post. Always remember to make a duplicate copy of what you have submitted. Later you know why. I email them to do follow up. After a while, I sort of forgotten about it until after 1 year passed. 🙄

  One day, my email chat discussion group of moms was talking about unclaimed money as it was reported in the newspaper. Suddenly I remembered the unclaimed money which I thought I never going to see it ever again. 🙁 I email the bank customer service to check on the status, giving them all the references. The customer service directed me to another officer. I relay my problem to him and gave him the officer’s name who is working on my case. He told me the officer has resigned. :shoot: The bank doesn’t have any of my posted documents. I have to resend him the documents again. Fortunately I have the duplicate copies which the officer said it is fine. First the officer asked me to fax to them, later he send me a letter stating, he want the original copy. I did what I was told.

  Finally the enveloped arrived yesterday and I got the cheque. 😉 It is an award for me, for my patience and going through so many red tapes to get my money back which was originally mine. 😎 Now should I frame the cheque or should I cash it? :clap:

• Anti-Smoking

  11.21.05 |Information, Penang, ProductReview| Permalink | 10 Comments

  
  
  

  Today I was in the Honda Service centre cum sales office. There is this nut head salesman smoking in the air condition premises. Smokes fly all over the contain space. There were children waiting in the service centre too. All of us become secondary smokers. I walk into the manager office to relay this problem. He gave me a blank face and didn’t give me a positive response.

  Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate smokers. I just hate smokers that make other people become secondary smokers, which are more dangerous. I have come across many cases where smokers secretly smoke in air condition premises like the shopping mall, the car park and in public transport.

  The government is promoting the “Tak Nak” campaign but not enforcing the public sector to follow strict rules about not smoking areas.

  If you know me, I will surely feedback this to Honda and the government bureau. Anyone can give me any more ideas where I can bring this complain to? Please leave the contact and email address.

• Photoshop Tip

  10.28.05 |Information, IT, Technology, Tips| Permalink | 4 Comments

  
  
  

  Everyone is into Photoshop, let me share a very useful tip that my hubby used, to do the picture above. This is the easiest way to select a person or an item in the picture. You can throw away the magnetic lasso after learning this.

  Instruction here: Photoshop Cropping Object

• Giant Landed

  10.25.05 |Information, Penang| Permalink | 9 Comments

  
  

  
  

  Giant Hypermart finally landed in Penang. Not sure when will it open but the structure of the hypermart is complete. I will be looking forward to shop there. Hey it is only 5 mins drive away from my home. I heard that this will be the last hypermart approved in the Penang Island. Now we have Tesco, Carrefour (not on the island), Makro and Giant.

  Tell me what are the best buy items in Giant Hypermarts? Milk powder? Diapers?

• Petition Against Cruelty To Animals

  10.21.05 |Information| Permalink | 4 Comments

  I hope you will join me for this petition that I received today. How can someone be so cruel to the animal?

  If u recall lately in the news that a pup was left to starve to death in a pet shop “WWP” in SS2. The owner disowned the pup coz he had bought a sickly pup, while the pet shop ppl refused to care for him coz they had already sold him off.

  And so the poor pup was tied under the stairwell near the fire exit and left to die. How cruel can one get?! It is sad to see a pup in poor health but even more heartbreaking when one is PURPOSELY left to die. Both owner and petshop ppl are at fault and here is a chance to create an awareness that cruelty to pets is a BIG NO NO!.

  SPCA needs our support and each one of us fwding this mail and adding ur name to the petition will help. So guys, it’s just a click away to saying “I Care”.

  Please sign the SPCA petition at www.spca.org.my. As you may be aware, the SPCA started a petition to the prime minster to raise the cruelty fine from RM200 to a significantly higher fine of around RM10,000.00. The petition, which included the signatures of supporters, was supposed to be handed to the prime minister in October 2004. However, this has not happened, as we only managed to raise 20,000 signatures. Due to the insufficient number of signatures collected during the first phase of this petition, the SPCA is entering a second phase in hope to collect at least 100,000 signatures locally and internationally.

  Therefore, we are now entering a phase II stage of the petition whereby we would like you to join our effort for this cause. Please download the petition forms. Kindly photocopy it and distribute it for signatures to be collected. The more names we have, the better.

  On behalf of the animals, thank you very much for your support.

• SPAM

  10.20.05 |Information, IT, Technology| Permalink | 5 Comments

  Don’t you hate it? Now blogs are hit by SPAM. I wonder why people will go all the way out to create junks that people do not read. It is like creating more garbage. At the end of the day, who benefit from it? The software company that produce anti spam ware. It is so annoying.

  My blogs just attracted SPAM a few weeks back. Initially it was 1 or 2 in a week, slowly increasing to 5 per day. Last week, it was worst, it went up to 10 per day. I decided to put a stop to it.

  I upgraded my blog software, WordPress to 1.5.2 (not sure now whether it is the latest) and install a third party anti-spam ware called SpamKarma2 by DrDave.
  (Source: http://unknowngenius.com/blog/wordpress/spam-karma/).

  It has been catching spam up to 50 per day and allowed genuine comments to go through. SpamKarma2 only work for WordPress 1.5.1 and above. If you have an old version, I suggest you upgrade. For this upgrade, it only takes 5 minutes to do it. Remember to backup before changing.

  I am not sure whether there is any anti spam ware for blogspot, anyone out there know? I have lots of friends who are using blogspot who wants to throw spam to the garbage bin. If you know of any, please comment.

• Barney’s Musical Castle

  10.14.05 |Children, Entertainment, Information| Permalink | 3 Comments

  Someone send me this, today. For those children out there who loves the purple dino, pamper your parents to take you.

  
  
  

  Source: http://www.ticketcharge.com.my/html/detpg.asp?eid=283

• Right or Left Brain

  10.07.05 |Information, Science| Permalink | 10 Comments

  Long ago I took a class called “Think on Your Feet”. It has thought me how to present a topic without preparation. I was given a topic and needs to speak about the topic for 5 mins. Suddenly 5 mins seem a very long time. There are some differences between Asian and Westerners. If you give an unknown topic to a Westerner, he can come up with creative speech where Asian will have some difficulty. Asian is very good in solving problems like maths, chemistry equation and Sudoku. Sudoku is a new game, I read in the newspaper if you solve 6-7 Sudoku a day, you will improve your mental age.

  The differences here are, who actually utilise which part of the brain. The right brain is the creativity side and the left brain is the logic side. When you sing, you use your right brain, when you calculate your monthly expenses, that is your left brain working. Asian education usually concentrates in training our left brain which neglects our right brain. For those parents who take their children to music class, it is very helpful. Western education trained the right brain, in music and studying base on seeing, touching, feeling. In school, they have lots of excursion to places to learn, not just class room learning.

  Now, how can we train both side of the brain? As for me, I usually use left brain for work, especially in solving work issues. My colleague gave me a funny idea, if want to train your right brain, try doing things with your left hand. By the way, left side of the body connects to the right brain and vice versa. Listen to the phone with left ear. I am not sure it works, but it is worth the try. Hey by the way, blogging is a good way to train up our right brain too. Unless you blog about mathematics equations.

  When someone asks you a question, try using your right brain to answer instead of left. That is think out of the box, thinking away from what a common answer would be. Try it, it is fun! Like what I did to mumsgather’s blog this morning.

  Take this quiz if you want to find out which side of the brain you use the most: http://www.blogthings.com/rightorleftbrainedquiz/. Do tell me in your comments.

  You Are 40% Left Brained, 60% Right Brained

  The left side of your brain controls verbal ability, attention to detail, and reasoning. Left brained people are good at communication and persuading others. If you’re left brained, you are likely good at math and logic. Your left brain prefers dogs, reading, and quiet. The right side of your brain is all about creativity and flexibility. Daring and intuitive, right brained people see the world in their unique way. If you’re right brained, you likely have a talent for creative writing and art. Your right brain prefers day dreaming, philosophy, and sports.

  Are You Right or Left Brained?