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Yesterday, managed to get one day off from work. It was Sunday. Supposedly weekends to be off but at my work place, most of us are require to work on the weekends.

It was good  to be off. I went to watched The Book of Eli. Was wondering what the show about all this while.

The Book of Eli

It was about story of Eli, (by actor Denzel Washington…he looks old but good anyway) travels 30 years on foot to the west coast to pass the Bible to Alcatraz where a group of people dedicated to preserving the pre-war knowledge. Along the road, Eli faced many kind of challenges which involve fighting skills and he was protected all these while.

In Alcatraz, those people had all sorts of books except for the Bible. Eli dictates the Bible from memory of those years reading. He died after finishing the book.

Overall boring movie, not recommended to watch unless you have plenty of free time.

I woke up today at 6am and target to be at work at 7am. However when I reached my work place, I have forgotten to bring my smock to work. My work place requires to wear smock in the plant. I went back home again to get my smock.

When I went to my balcony, I couldn’t find my work smock. The wind must have blown it away since I am staying at high level apartment. I tried to spot blue item at the ground floor and spotted one near the terrace house. To be on the safe side, I took another blue smock from my previous factory just in case I couldn’t find the current one.

I quickly drove to the terrace house only to find that the blue item wasn’t a smock. It was a blue plastic bag laying on the road actually.Sigh.

Went to work late for 15 minutes. And everyone is asking me why I am wearing a different smock. To avoid more question, I went to the HR department to get a new smock. I was being instructed to report to the security guard at the guard post that I lost my smock. Wrote the report and bring it back to the HR department ended up paying fine RM24.

What a day.

Recently, I have been thinking to continue back my MBA. I stopped the course last year due to some reason at work. So today, I dropped by PISA since they have the educational fair today. Not much booth being display but I roughly get to know which college would be good for that course.

I am thinking to join back my previous college. The class might not be that good but then again the fees is considerable compare to other colleges.

So how will this MBA be beneficial to me?

Of course I have to do some evaluation what kind of pro and con will I get by continuing my studies or perhaps spending another RM20k-RM30k into education. I am actually looking forward in my future if I quit my job, there will be another alternative for me to become a college lecturer.

These days college lecturers have the flexibility in teaching and their pay is fairly good. I can choose the classes base on my years of experience in manufacturing. Perhaps I can teach operation management, just like my friend suggested.

Anyway that’s just a plan. To execute it might need a lot of time, patient and perseverance especially with my busy schedule these days. Sometimes I really wonder how do those married ppl with family and kids cope up with their studies. Perhaps a salute to them.

I drove out from my apartment today with one violation on the road. Without seat belt. Usually I wear the seat belt after the turning out from my apartment junction.

However my luck today was not good, just as I came out from the gate, few policemen were there stopping cars. I was immediately caught off guard and of course, tak sempat pakai my seat belt. The policeman stopped my car, asked me to scroll my window down and asked for my IC.

I wasn’t in the mood to bribe today. Just gave one bribe a month ago. Why the policemen suddenly so hardworking these days?

I handled him my IC and he questioned me why I didn’t wear my seat belt. I just told him I felt like to vomit and I am heading to clinic now. I didn’t care if my justification not valid, just felt too tired and rushing to go to work actually. He took my name and scribbled something on his note pad. I believe he is giving me a summon. Who cares anyway.

He came to me then and instructed me to wear my seat belt. I didn’t know why I was so daring and bold enough to answer him, ” Dah nak saman,saman la…nak pakai lagi buat pe?! Bagi je saman tu…”

He was taken aback by my answer and I can see he was very mad actually. He showed me his note pad, he was just writing down my car plate no and name on the note pad. It wasn’t a summon actually. Ha! I quickly responded, “Sori le, I pakai SEKARANG!”  Haha…and I drove off smilling cheekily to him.

I just realised if you stop by Ipoh, it is a must to have tau fu fah. My friend recommended me Funny Mountain Tau Fu Fah at Jalan Theatre Ipoh. It is near by Foh San tim sum, along Jalan Dato Tahwil Azar.

Funny Mountain has been there since 1950-s. I bet it is family business running down from generation to generation.

Map to Funny Mountain

The tau fu fah is so smooth and sweet. I can simply die for it. My friend keep asking me if I would like to have another bowl since I keep on praising the tau fu fah is the best tau fu fah I ever tried.

Funny Mountain Tau Fu Fah

Since 1952

Kan and I make a last minute move to go all the way down to Ipoh today to have Tim Sum. It might sounds a little bit crazy but it’s pretty common among the Penangites.

I dragged myself out from the bed at 6am plus and we departed to Ipoh at 7.15am. The journey was quite short and fast because we did a lot of crap talk and gossiping about everything under the sun.

Foh San Tim Sum wasn’t that difficult to find. Our lead mark was Jalan Leong Sin Nam. I was surprised when I saw Foh San restaurant today because the last time I visited 5 years ago it was still a small shop lot?!

Now it looks like a big giant standing infront of me.

Foh San Restaurant Ipoh

One long stretch of shop lots

Fine decorations on the wall

I settled fown for all my favourite food- steamed fishball, pork dumpling,egg tart and my MUST TO HAVE prawn chee cheong fun. All so delicious!

Foh San top stairs

Food counter

Tim Sum

Various of tea

It was very crowded in Foh San Restaurant. Some are not Ipoh locals visiting the restaurant. We have to wait for a while before we actually get our seat.

Crowded Saturday morning

Ground floor - view from staircase

Last but not least, when we reached our car park, a big surprise was waiting for us. Hallo…is that a summon?
We got a summon for not placing the ticket at the car park because we didn’t know where to buy the parking ticket.

Sad case.

And we didn’t even know where to pay the ticket…Lol.

Majlis Perbandaran Ipoh

Usually common things are stuff couples will get together. It is the common things that make relationships enjoyable. The heart is place where we live all our passions.

We have gone through lots of things and walked a milestone to reach to where we are today. To be in love is exactly like having your favourite hot chocolate which keeps you warm for a long time.

You will never know true happiness until you have truly loved, and you will never understand what pain really is until you have lost it.

Today I walked off from the office around 7pm and it was hectic jam all the way at Bayan Lepas Free Trade Zone. Feeling tired and wanting to go home fast, I overtake the car in front of me. It was almost near the traffic light. The next thing I know was a policeman was there and stopped my car.

He told me that I was potong Q and start to take out his note to issue me summon. I wanted to tell him that he is ridiculous but then again I was so tired that I wouldn’t want to waste any time arguing with him. So I asked him to discount for me and he said if you pay at the police station, the most they will discount you is only about RM100, unless I’m the person who is offering you the discount.

I already know that he wanted me to bribe him so I told him I got only RM50 that’s all. He asked me to put the money under my IC and pass it to him. He said he can’t make it so obvious to take my money later other people will see.

Oh well, Malaysian policemen….How to respect them la?!

I have never been to a company which is so bad in their system and management. They have very lousy system which nobody follows and the reason people are not complying to it is due to the lengthy procedures. Many things can actually be simplified. For example to get to Point D from Point A, you have to pass Point A, Point B, Point C and Point D where else you can actually short cut and get the work done from Point A straight away to Point D.

Second thing I can think of it the people working in the company, which many of them are from low education level and all they love about to do is bitch about others and trying to get you. They actually trying to show whoever work longest is the company is the one who has the power and authority.

Third, to get a work done, bosses actually have to say something. This is something I don’t see in other company which I call this as teamwork among department. It is definitely the organization and the management failure to get their people work together and collaborate to achieve objectives and goals. Fun thing said is the GM himself have to get down to the floor to make the execution moving, obvious enough at my previous organization whereby the highest group of management have better things to do than to execute small tasks which their lower level of staff can execute among themselves. Everybody is just trying to protect their own piece of ass and at the end, certain objective takes longer time to achieve in matter of time.

During execution in my previous workplace, people come together when there is issue and everybody supportive of working out the project rather than pushing the blame around. Here even the managers are covering their own departments and pushing issues to each others. Tai Chi in another word I would say is a failure for this place to perform better and bring the organization to the next level.

People mindset and behaviours, ATTITUDE is the main downfall of this organization. I can see people struggling hard and everyone feel tired at the end of the day.

Recognition comes as slow and by the time they start recognizing people, subordinates have actually forget what is the recognition and the hard work is all about. This lead to bad team motivation and when you ask flavour for people on the next issue, people do hesitate.

All about this organization I can say with its policies and procedures are all crap as ever. People who work late and 24 x7, covering during midnight during execution, ended up coming to work late actually gets warning letter which makes the person doubt should they stay during an issue or should they just go back in fear of waking up late the next day.

It leads to the point should I or shouldn’t it? In matters of issue, no matter which ever road you take, when the blame comes, they will try to find a scape goat to be blame in order to survive in this organization.

To improve? I would say it will takes this organization 10 years down the road to change the culture. Nobody actually sees any future staying here, attrition rate is high, nobody is doing anything about it or trying to understand what is happening. If you leave, nobody will say good stuff about you but the amount of bad things will actually fload the whole mountain of Alps. The only thing they will say is you can’t take the pressure and trying to point any bad things or stuff you done.

To survive here is actually a difficult task to do. New employee who comes in have doubt of leaving the organization, some actually stay on due to commitment and people like me, trying to have be positive as much as I can putting in things nicer by saying I am staying here to learn, which actually the fact of stuff I am learning is the way people actually work 20 years ago. Small company I would say, politics is high and motivation is low, the only reason I am still here after a year is because of some certain reasons, some goals I make to myself and I know very much myself, one day by looking back, I will laugh and said, yeah I have been through this ridiculous crap before. I never know they exists until the day I landed here.

Frankly I do not know why government impose RM50 annual service tax on principal credit and charge cards as proposed in the 2010 budget. Maybe to them this will help citizen to prevent unnecessary spending and improvise on their money management. However this will not help to certain group of people.

People who need money for instance, emergency as such turns to credit card for help especially the lower income groups of citizen. This has prevent them from resorting to loan sharks.

Anyway as for me I have lots of credit card from the greediness of getting free gifts. Whenever I see any gifts that I like and being persuaded by the persuasive sales person, I will signed up and thinking to cancel later after I get my free gifts. Somehow another, due to my laziness and time, I did not cancel those cards and it is still with me. I didn’t use the credit card much but somehow I still keep it for any emergency usage.

With the recent government proposal, I went to cancel off 3 of my credit cards yesterday. I redeem the reward and call it off. When the customer service girl asked me to fill up the reason for my cancellation, I simply wrote: Government impose RM50 on annual service. Then the girl offered me a waiver for my RM50. To think of it, if I still keep 3 cards, that means I will have to pay RM150 if the waiver is just verbal talk and no action. So to play safe, I still go ahead with the card cancellation. After all, I don’t use that much of credit card anyway.

Running from one bank to the other actually have taken half of my day. I went to one of the bank only to realized I overpaid them RM30 last few months and not to waste away my RM30, I drove to petrol station to pump petrol and drove all the way back to the bank again. After all those hassle, I finally managed to get all my tasks complete by 5pm and now my legs are aching for running all the errands yesterday. Thinking of that I think I am lucky enough, I am not a housewife.  I really salute the housewife who drives everyday fetching their kids to one tuition to another, battling with the hot sun and traffic, paying the bills, queue at the bank for hours, and the list goes on.