Noisy nuisance

Check your calendars and you'll know that Chinese New Year's just under three weeks away. As a kid, I enjoyed this occasion tremendously, and why not? I get to eat scrumptious food that I'd get to eat only once a year (since that's the only time that I actually get to eat some of my aunts'and uncles' cooking), but more than that there's the ready supply of fireworks! One of my uncles would be the supplier and my cousins, brother and I would rub our hands in glee over the precious loot. And we'd play to our hearts content.

But, it seems that some people nowadays are in an overly early celebratory mood. For the past couple of nights, I've been hearing the sounds of fireworks going off around the neighbourhood. Now, I wouldn't mind so much if it were already Chinese New Year because it's to be expected. But, the New Year's still so far away!

So, I find all these high-pitched whistles and mini-explosions a nuisance and an irritant - more so since these people seem to get itchy fingers past 9pm when Adelle's already asleep. Adelle's not especially fond of all these fireworks going off when she's awake, more so when she's asleep - they wake her up and disturb her sleep. So, whenever these things explode I'd stop whatever it is that I'm doing and wait and see... whether Adelle would wake up or not. If she does, then I'll have to go up and pacify her and reason with her saying how 'naughty' all these people are who play fireworks when it's not even Chinese New Year yet. Only when she's convinced then Adelle will go quietly back to sleep...until the next bang wakes her up, then it's the whole process again. It can be quite tiring - for me having comfort Adelle again and again, but also for Adelle because of her disturbed sleep.

I'm all for celebrating special occasions, but let it be done in consideration for others, especially if the celebration involves loud noises.

Not so funky

I've previously posted about what I think are the three essential characteristics that a restaurant should have in order to attract new patrons and more importantly, keep customers returning. I think this is especially important if the restaurant or stall was new. You just need to make that great first impression on the customer, and if you pass that hurdle, then chances are he or she may just come back and bring their friends even. Nothing makes a business prosper like word of mouth. People like what you offer, they'll come back, they'll tell their friends about it, and those friends will come, and tell their friends about it, and so on.

Well, this evening the whole family decided to try out a new eatery here just in Damai. We got to know about it because, one day, as we were walking to another restaurant for lunch a couple of doors away, we noticed this new place and started looking at their menu. The owner happened to be sitting outside and started talking, telling us how his restaurant's prices were good. From the menu, I thought the prices were pretty standard, but since the place looked classier (not the coffeeshop variety), then it offered slightly better value - the ambiance being considered.

So, I filed this at the back of my head (this was maybe a month or two ago) and finally today, we decided to check out this new eatery. And the place is called Funky Town. If you know where Maple Cafe is, then Funky Town is just two doors away...I think.


We decided to sit inside and what greets you soon after you go in is a whiff of something strange. I couldn't quite put my finger on what the smell was: it was a mixture of something damp, and cockroaches. Not very pleasant. But we later found out it was nothing of the sort. It was the remnant of the smells of one of their offerings: Fried Sambal Meehoon. Apparently, customers had complained about the smell (it was actually the sambal) and so they decided to take it off the menu.

So, anyway we look at the menu and my wife decided to go for the fish and chips, and I decided to try out their lamb chop. Order done, we sit down and relax and I check out the place. It had pleasantly dim lighting, soft background music, and with not many customers at that time, the place was cosy enough to have a decent conversation without having to stress your vocal cords.

The first surprise of the evening was when the fish and chips arrived in front of my wife in about 5 minutes - that was fast! Before Adelle or my wife could lay their knife and fork on it, I whipped out my camera and snapped a few pictures of the dish. Here it is:

Fish and chips - wish they were bigger

First impressions. The fish pieces looked a bit on the small side (as I'm typing this, my wife's eating some instant noodles saying that the dinner wasn't filling at all), but probably the size of the plate didn't help either. The amount of food didn't cover the plate adequately so it looked a bit empty. Perhaps they could have added a lettuce leaf of something together with the coleslaw just to fill in the empty white spaces, or use a smaller plate, or better yet increase their portions! So, presentation was not quite there.

Taste? My wife took the first bite and said, "Frozen dory". I knew what that meant as I still remembered the time we bought home some and attempted to make fish and chips. You see, frozen dory is more or less tasteless, and I suppose the batter didn't help add much to the taste. Luckily there was the tartar sauce. The chips were a bit soggy as well, and the whole dish was a tad on the oily side.

So, that's my take (or rather my wife's take as I only had a small bite) on the fish and chips. How was the lamb chop? Well, I'm still wondering. My lamb never arrived. After waiting for about half an hour (and my wife and Adelle were finishing the last bits of their meal), I see a plate of lamb chop come out of the kitchen window, the waiter takes it, and proceeds to give it to a group of young people seated next to us who came and ordered much later. It was then that I decide to ask the waitress (the one who took our orders) to check on my order and also another order of chicken wings that we had made. She goes to the kitchen and checks and never informs me what has happened.

I wait.

Twenty minutes later, my food still hadn't arrived. Food was coming out of the kitchen so I know the cooks were preparing food, just other people's and not mine. The order of chicken wings finally came and I decided to cancel my order. He apologised. When the waiter put the chicken wings on the table, I stifled a laugh. Before us was a small serving plate with two pieces of wings and nothing else. No garnishing, no sauce, nothing...just the two chicken wings sitting on the plain white saucer. Here it is:

The very airy plate of chicken wings

The three of us shared the wings, and though they were tasty enough they were not enough to lift my mood. Just then, my neighbour and his family walked in. I was almost tempted to tell him to find another place to eat but decided against it. Perhaps their experience would be more positive than mine.

Experience and training were clearly lacking in the staff: a lack of experience in handling a clearly disgruntled customer because of a huge mistake on their part (if I were the proprietor, I would have offered a free meal or if that were too much, offered a free side dish or something for the whole family. After all, you're new and you desperately want your customers to come again!); and a lack of training because an experienced staff would have noticed that my order wasn't filled yet even after so long. The restaurant wasn't very busy, so if the waitress who had taken my order had been alert she would have noticed me just sitting and looking at my wife and Adelle eat and would have checked my order with the kitchen.

Just before we got the bill, the waitress who took our order came and gave us something on the house - a pot of frozen yogurt. She offers her apologies saying that the kitchen had forgotten about my order. So, the yogurt was offered as "compensation"- a peace offering. My wife and Adelle ate some, and I was left the task of finishing off my "meal" while my wife went to pay for the meal. The person in-charge (who happened to be my wife's ex-student) asked my wife how I was and my wife's reply was, "Well, put it this way. A hungry man is an angry man."

The giant and the dwarf - the "peace offering" that was given
next to a standard-sized mug of water.

How apt.

My wife's ex-student went on to say that the kitchen messed up the order, and I suppose she may have apologised again. We walk out of the restaurant, and I was thinking, "Should I ever go there again?"

Maybe, maybe not.

Verdict:
Service - Below average (especially after they dare charge the 5% service charge!)
Food - So, so. Portion could have been better. My wife thinks Fish and Co. offers better value if you want fish and chips: a bit more pricey but a whole lot more tasty and portion is larger.
Value: RM12.90 for the fish and chips and RM4.50 for the wings - not the best value but not too expensive as well.

Update: Well, what do you know? It looks like my boo-boo wasn't a one-off thing. My neighbour whom we met at the restaurant also had a similar experience. Telling my wife this evening, my neighbour said that somehow the waiter/waitress had forgotten to punch in their order of fish and chips, so that dish didn't come out until the error was pointed out much later. They also ordered a lamb chop but this one came out fast. Must have been my order...

Gobsmacked

Has it really been two weeks? Boy. I guess the school break really was a break from any sort of brain work!

But, now that school's started again, I will have to dust off all the cobwebs that have appeared inside my head and get those juices flowing again...which is not a hard thing to do after what happened at work today.

Just before the holidays we had our mid-year examination as is the norm for many schools, and the two-week break was supposed to be time for us teachers to finish marking our student's scripts. I had already marked several classes that had their exams earlier, but for the later ones...like I said, my school-side of the brain took leave as well during the break so none of the papers were marked and I used whatever free time I had at school yesterday and today to finish off.

And I discovered a curious thing about one of my classes. I was marking their objective paper, and everyone of them except one, scored more half right. I would have been overjoyed, except that this particular class was one of the weakest, and their scores suggested that they were better than the best class in the same form which I also taught!

I was gobsmacked!

Could a miracle have happened? Could it be that my students in this particular class were suddenly proficient in English? Then I marked their essay paper and reality came crashing down - none of them could answer the paper properly.

Which begs the question - how was it that they were able to obtain such high marks for the objective paper? I know that teachers are supposed to think good of their students, but the first thought that came to mind was that they had somehow gotten hold of the question paper along with the answer prior to the test and distributed them during the examination. I couldn't think of any other scenario.

So, when I went into their class today, I confronted them asking if any of them had copied. None owned up. So, I decided to do a simple test. I took an clean question paper, and asked them to give me the answers orally . My reasoning was if they really understood the questions then they'd be able to give the correct answer - as was in their answer sheet. After all, it was the same question paper.

But, none were able to give correct answers for all. Out of the 7 questions I asked (seven consecutive questions where more than half the class got all correct), the most they could give me were two or three correct answers. So, what's a teacher like me to do?

I reprimanded them for cheating in the exam and said that I'll deduct marks from their score. That was the end of that.

Or so I thought. The plot thickens! :)

Back in the staffroom, I was talking to a colleague of mine when another colleague approached me and asked me if I had accused a class for cheating. I said yes. And she then proceeded to tell me that they hadn't actually cheated but that she had translated the questions and answers for them so that they could understand.

WHAT???!

I was gobsmacked again. I blinked at her, not knowing what to say or do.

Finding my voice, I asked her what I was to do with the marks. She didn't know. All she could say was that she was sorry. I told her then that I would stick to my decision of deducting the marks. She offered her apologies again and left.

My head was turning then. Not in a million years would I have thought of a teacher going to such lengths in helping a student during a school exam.

Well, now I know better.

p.s. But that still doesn't explain how all the students answers are all similar. Surely, they don't share the same brain as well, right?

Exterminator

Today, the pest control people came. Yep, this house has a pest problem: ants, cockroaches, and mice. After months of putting up with our nocturnal guests (and sometimes swiftly sending them to meet their maker - for the cockroaches, of course), we finally decided to call for some professional help.

Ants is a major problem. They are the black ones, and they seem to be coming from outside from the garden. Actually, the black ones are not the only ones. We used to get rather big red ones as well. I notice that they are seasonal: over the course of a few months, the type of ants that we see in the house changes - black ones, big red ones, small red ones, and then it starts over again. But recently, it's these black ones that are a nuisance. You kill them, more come. Kill some more, and even more come.

Cockroaches (eeeuuuuuwww!) are the next thing. Although they don't show themselves pretty often, we know they're there from the droppings that we sometimes see. They are not quite a problem unlike the ants but they're absolutely disgusting! I can't stand the sight of them, and I actually have a slight fear of them (blame it on some forever-scarred childhood experience that involved a certain "brushing" incident with a cockroach's legs....shivers!). But, my hate for them is far greater and so there's always my trusted slipper to swat them putrid creatures.

And finally, mice. This has been a rather recent phenomena. Almost on a daily basis, we hear the sound of scurrying feet above our heads. And if we're lucky, we even get to listen to their excited squeakings. Mice running between the roof and the ceiling above us is not too bad. But, seeing one running about in your kitchen is!

So, control was the only answer. The technicians came, sprayed some stuff along the corners of the whole house, which were to repel and kill ants and cockroaches. They then threw some poisoned pills randomly outside at the back of the house - this was for the mice. They had wanted to leave it at that, but my wife asked whether they could set a trap as well, and they did.

So, the whole of this evening was spent cleaning the whole house hence this late post. I also repositioned the trap. At first it was in one of the kitchen cabinets, but I put it out on the kitchen floor. And as I was writing this post, I head a snap!

My wife and I checked, and there inside the cage was a mouse - rather small, maybe still quite young, and quite scared. The mouse in the cage is now outside the house, perhaps still eating the bait that we put (pumpkin bread, you know!). In the morning, we're going to call the experts to take it away.

Problem's not solved yet though. Just heard some more scurrying in the roof. But, we'll rid them soon enough.

You'll see.

The crunch

I have been wanting to post something but just couldn't bring myself to sit in front of the computer to do so...until now. Actually, I was compelled to do so.

I was reading the local newspaper just this evening, and what do I see on the front page? A picture of a throng of people with several smoke trails descending from the sky. Yup, it was another demonstration. And of all things, the reason for the demonstration was about the teaching of Mathematics and Science subjects in English?

Huh???

It's absolutely mind-boggling! A protest because English is used instead to teach these two subjects? If there were something that really would make us a laughing stock for the whole world (as some have pointed out about a certain gathering under some certain trees recently), I think that this would be the icing on the cake!

It seems to me that certain quarters of the Malaysian population really have a penchant for politicising issues. The usual scenario: a politician speaks his mind about something trivial and then other people start jumping on the bandwagon giving their sometimes uneducated opinions, and suddenly it becomes a national agenda! Incredible!

Forgive me for sounding so negative, but I cannot see the reason for such happenings. How is it that we call ourselves a developed nation, yet our thinking is still lagging so far behind. A few years back, I heard an absolute stranger commenting on our nation's apparent lack of forward thinking despite all our achievements: "first class facilities, third class mentality."

If anything needs to be politicised, why not politicise the extremely poor healthcare facilities that are available in some states in Malaysia especially Sabah? We don't even have a proper hospital anymore because the current one, the Queen Elizabeth hospital (supposedly the state's main hospital) has been found to be unsafe for operations. So, what happens? Sick patients have to sleep on the floor, doctors and nurses are unable to treat due to unavailable equipment. Who suffer? The people, especially those of us not fortunate enough to afford private healthcare.

What is being done? Discussions, discussions, and more discussions. No Action, Talk Only. I am told that we'd be lucky if Sabah gets a new one within 5 years. The more realistic projected time for the building of a new hospital would be between 10-15 years. What happens till then? People suffer.

It's a sad time.

It's official

Just a short post for this entry. I am now without my computer. Remember me complaining about the BSOD that keeps stopping my computer? Well, three days ago, I decided to get rid of it...by sending my computer to the shop for a check.

The technician says that my graphics is the culprit and since it is still under warranty (I actually don't remember if it is) he's helping me claim the warranty. But it'll take time. Arrrgghhs!

I wonder how long it'll take. I find myself really handicapped without my computer.
Withdrawal symptoms?

p.s. I'm actually using my wife's laptop from school to do this. It's slow, small, but at least it's bearable...considering the circumstances. Sigh...

BSOD

Updates are slow in coming. Partly because my computer has been on the blitz. I've been using this new-ish computer for slightly over a year. No problems whatsoever. Then last Friday disaster struck...

Yep, it's that infamous Windows Blue Screen of Death (BSOD). And somehow, it's got to do with my video card. Ever since D-day (that's Disaster Day), every time I boot up, I'll come face to face with the blue screen saying that this file nv4_disp.dll is stuck in a loop and so, Windows has done the honourable thing by stopping my system before any more damage comes along. Either that, or the computer just decides to hang on me, not so much as even a nice blue screen to inform me that my machine's stopped working (even though it's all garbled nonsense to me anyway). I'm currently running without my video drivers and it's a less than enjoyable experience, but at least no more blue screens.

I scoured the net for solutions to this problem, and the suggestions are numerous and range from the more technical like changing the power supply unit to a more powerful one, updating the drivers (which I've done about a gazillion times by now to no avail), or trying out the card on another computer; to the more zany ones like switching the positions of the RAM modules in their slots and even changing the monitor connection to a different port (both of which I've done...who knows, it did work for the people who suggested them).

So, short of wiping my hard drive clean and reinstalling everything (something I'm not very keen on doing since that means I've got tonnes of backing-up to do!), I'm actually stuck for solutions.

Any computer wizards out there who can help me with this one?

The day the cars stood still

Was there something special I missed about today?

It seemed like everyone else in Kota Kinabalu knew about it except me and my wife. What am I talking about? I'm talking about the JAM! It was ridiculous! It seemed like every household in KK decided to go to town today and so, jammed the whole city up. I wanted to go to the post office to pick up a package (which was delivered when I wasn't home, btw. Why do they always come when no one's at home?), but all my running to the post office from my parked car (it was almost five) was in vain. Upon reaching the counter, the lady said that that section was closed already. Apparently, they close at 4.30 pm (why?). The worst thing was, she also said that I could only collect my package on Monday. Aarrrrgh!

After that fiasco, we headed to Wawasan Plaza because my wife wanted to go to Parkson to exchange her member points for some items. So, we were approaching the place, and we faced a jam into the entry of the complex. Knowing another entry point, I drove round and was enjoying a smoother ride until I faced another standstill. And we stayed in the queue for half an hour, just to get to the parking. Aarrgghh!

So, when we finally got to the parking, we went to Parkson. Wife got her items, and we decided to go to Giant (yes, that same leading low-price leader I talked about before) to get some diapers for Adelle since it was on offer. So, wife took one pack and we proceeded to the counter. And the cashier scanned it, and the price was not the one on offer. Wife told her about the offer price we saw in the newspaper advert (the offer price was RM39.99, usual was RM51.99), but she didn't seem to know anything about it. So, without saying another word she left her counter, and went somewhere (to see her superior, we hoped).

And so, we waited. And waited some more. It was a good 15 minutes I think by the time she came back, and she told us that the offer was for a different range of the same brand. But we insisted that it wasn't. Anyway, wife mumbled about cutting out the advertisement to show her the next time and that ended our rather unpleasant affair at that place again (I never learn, do I?). Right after that, we left, got into the car...

and faced another jam!

AAAAAARRRGGHHHH!

Foul-mood-inducing outing today. Sheesh!

Ain't nothing low here

You see it almost everywhere - that green cursive writing against a yellow background with a red dot dotting the 'i'. I even see it when I look out of my bedroom window. But the low price leader it isn't. I mean, how dare they call themselves that when so many of their things are way so much more pricier than the local supermarkets? Even when their items are supposedly on offer!

I am actually ticked off by their whole charade especially today. You see, this afternoon the whole family went to 'the low price leader' to get a few things - among others, hair gel for myself. So, I was comparing prices between the different brands and seeing which ones would be the best value for money. I decided to buy the biggest packing of the Code 10 Strong Hold gel (what can I say, I'm an old-fashioned kind of guy). The cost - RM8.90. I was quite pleased with myself since I had stood there in front of the rack with all those colourful jars and tubes of gel for quite a while calculating the whole weight/price ratio before making up my mind.

But, then later in the evening, my wife and I went to another shopping complex (after my friend so kindly volunteered to take care of Adelle) just for a bit of window shopping and as we were walking around, we decided to enter one of the local departmental stores here in Kota Kinabalu. We were passing the personal grooming products, and out of curiosity I went to look for the same gel that I had bought. And lo and behold, I saw it - the green 250 ml tub of the Code 10 Strong Hold Gel. And what greeted me when I turned it to look at the price tage? The price of RM7.70!

What???!!!

That was a RM1.20 difference! Not 10 sen, not 20 sen, not 30 sen but RM1.20! That's preposterous! How in the world can a smaller, with limited purchasing-power, local, one-outlet departmental store be selling this 250 ml Code 10 Strong Hold gel for RM1.20 cheaper than the so much bigger, and with so much more capital for bulk purchases, and with dozens and dozens of stores all over the country? Maybe I'm missing some kind of advanced accounting principles that are involved in all these price differences, but to the average consumer like me, that kind of price gap is absolutely absurd! It's totally illogical!

And they dare call themselves 'the low price leader in Malaysia'? Low price leader my foot! I can understand a few cents difference in products between different stores but RM1.20 is just way too much. Isn't there a law or something against proclaiming something you're not?

Well, at least now I know one place NOT to shop for the Code 10 Strong Hold gel.

Sheesh.

Emergency Aids

Life can be pretty challenging sometimes. It's already tough enough without having to endure the many trivial physical discomforts below. How many of these have you experienced before?

• Difficulty in hearing a conversation
• A painful injection
• Sinus problems
• Acid reflux
• Toothache
• Dizziness
• Nervous attacks
• Pins and needles
• Difficulty in remembering a speech
  

Not very serious problems, but when they do come, it can still be quite uncomfortable. But I recently read that there are simple things we could do ourselves to make dealing with these discomforts that bit more easier. And where should I find these tips? A health magazine? Some fashion magazine? No. From a magazine for owners of a certain brand of car for all things! You'd think that all you'd read from such magazines would be articles on cars, their accessories, tyres, motor oils and what nots. But, it was interesting reading. I have not tried any of the supposed 'cures' yet, so I can't verify if they really work or not. Anyway, here's what I found out:

• Hear better - Lean in using you right ear to listen to the conversation as it's better at following rapid speech patterns. However, when it comes to identifying a particular piece of music, your left ear does it better.

• No more pain - Try coughing the next time you have to be pricked with a needle. It's supposed to lessen the pain as the cough causes an abrupt, momentary rise in pressure in the chest and spinal canal, and so reduces the pain-signalling structures of the spinal cord.

• Easier breathing - Alternate thrusting your tongue against the roof of your mouth and pressing between your eyebrows with one finger. It is supposed to loosen congestion and your sinuses will usually clear after about 20 seconds. Apparently this will rock the bone that runs through the nasal passages to the mouth, called the vomer bone, and so frees all the clogged pipes there.

• Stomach acid - Sleep on your left and you're less likely to suffer from acid reflux. Reason? When you sleep on your left, your stomach is lower than your esophagus, and with gravity's help, prevents your food and stomach acid from sliding up your throat.

• Pain in the tooth - Rub some ice on the back of your hand, on the V-shaped webbed area between your thumb and fore finger. This stimulates an area of the brain that blocks pain signals from the face and hands.

• Light headed - Too much drinking can make you feel all woozy. To regain your balance, put you hands on something stable. This provides tactile input to the cupula (that part of the ear that's responsible for keeping you in balance) and makes you feel more in balance.

• Stay to the rhythm - Getting anxiety attacks is not a nice feeling. Remember to blow on your thumb the next you get all nervous. Breathing can control the vagus nerve which is in charge of heart rate. Work your thumb, baby!

• Sleeping hands and feet - When those prickling sensations come, rock your head from side to side and those pins and needles will go away in less than a minute. The action loosens the neck muscles and which in turn releases all the compression of the nerves in your neck, the usual cause of those tingling sensations.

• Memory technique - Finding it hard to memorise that speech you're supposed to deliver in front of a huge crowd? Try sleeping on it. Review your speech just before you sleep and it's more likely that it will be encoded into long-trem memory, as most memory consolidation happens during sleep.

Let me know how it goes. Carol, you can use some of these preparing for that emcee job that's coming can't you?

:)

The back breaker

I've been tagged by Nick with this - to write about household chores I hate. This is an interesting topic for discussion - especially since a guy tagged me with it. I've been reading other people's blogs about this whole household chores things and I must say that I've been quite pleasantly surprised! Everyone enjoys doing one chore or another, but there's always that pet peeve of a household chore.

For me, I'd be in seventh heaven if I had a maid who would cater to all my whims and fancies and I didn't have to do any kind of household chore. But since I don't have one, I help my wife with the housechores now and then. I usually clean the dishes and I must say I'm a pro at it. I've been doing it for over 20 years and I foresee that I'll be at it for many more years to come (at least until Adelle is old enough to for me to pass the torch to!). Sometimes, I'll do the vacuuming, or clean the bathroom, or the electrical appliances, or put clothes into the washing machine and hang them out to dry.

I'm also the designated ironing person (yes, I usually iron both mine and my wife's clothes) and Adelle's porridge cook. I'm also the official cockroach killer. Every time my wife spots a coackroach scurrying around in the kitchen, she'll call me and I'll come rushing with my weapon of choice: the slipper. Then, the cockroach and I dance around a little: me trying to get it into a position which would offer me a good, clean kill; the cockroach trying its best to run behind some cover. It's an ego-boosting job (my wife always calls me 'hero' after a succesful battle with one) but it's one job I'm not very fond of, especially since I'm actually terrified of those pesky pests.

But, if I had to choose one chore that I'd rather not do, it's mopping. Small, three-letter word but oh, so bothersome. You see, I'm rather tall, you see. And the thing with anything that has a stick attached to it is that they're designed for the 'average' person, and like I said, in terms of height, I'm not exactly average. So, it's a back-breaking to mop, plunge the mop into the bucket, squeeze the mop, and then repeat the whole process countless of times. Living in a double-storey house doesn't help things very much, and neither does mopping the whole place twice - absolutely necessary to make the floor have that nice, clean feeling (just goes to show how dirty the floor can become, eh?). So, if I'm required to the mop the house, I'd usually drag my feet and put on my mopey face.

But here's the thing: household chores - if you don't do them, who will? It's your house.


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On not blogging...

Three days of not blogging. That’s not a good sign for this blog. Mustn’t get into the habit of leaving the blog for too long or else this place will die an untimely, neglected death. But, I was going to write something last night when the power supply decided to fail. Anyway, the short time that I was able to surf the net was pointless. The connection was so slow! I was looking at the icons of the two tiny computers and I decided to see how much data was being transferred. And guess what, it was slower than the dial-up connection I had previously! This is ridiculous! I know I’ve already talked about this before in another post, but having speeds that can rival dial-up?

And since I’m on the subject of grievances, if I remember correctly, there has been at least two cases of power failures this week alone. Did you know that there’s a standing joke about Sabah's electricity supplier? Before it was privatised, the power company was known (in English) as SEB, or Sabah Electricity Board. The joke was it should actually be, Sabah Everywhere Blackout. After privatisation, it is now known as SESB, the final SB meaning Sendirian Berhad. But, some creative fella coined it, Sabah Everywhere Still Blackout! Although less frequent now (at least in the town area, but I still hear of irregular power supply out in the kampungs), there’s always the niggling feeling that whenever a blackout happens, it going to be for hours. In West Malaysia, there would have been a public outcry. But here, we hardly hear a whimper.

What else can I say? We Sabahans are a tolerant bunch.

p.s. I know I’ve been tagged by Charlene and Chegu Carol about my 10 most favourite photos, but I’m still scouring the recesses of my hard-drive to find those pics. I’ll post them up once I’m done. Bear with me, kay?

Here we go again...

Decided to settle our credit card bills today, thinking we’d beat the rush of people when payday comes. But, we ran into another kind of rush today. The rush for petrol…again! In case you haven’t heard, word is that all petrol stations will go on strike for 3 days starting tomorrow. The reason? From what I gathered, it is because the government refuses to allow the owners of petrol kiosks to push the 4% credit charges to customers. Too bad I didn’t bring along my camera to get some pic of the whole affair.

So, there we were as a family, thinking what a breeze it’d be doing our errands when we saw a long, a very long queue right as we coming out of the access road from our taman. It was 5 pm then, and it was too late for Tshung Tsin to have finished school, and too early afternoon session schools to have finished. So we took the Tuaran road to head to KK. And we saw another queue! This time from Kian Kok right up till Sunny Garden! Luckily that was in the opposite direction towards Tuaran.

So that got us wondering….what’s the cause? My wife’s car is the family car, and she was almost running on empty. The light was blinking incessantly, a reminder that we needed to pump petrol soon, very soon. There was an Esso station at Sunny Garden, but it was closed for some kind of renovation or repairs. So, we decided to just head on to KK as there was also an Esso station near where we were heading, the one near Maybank. Along the way, we saw Jalan Kolam also backlogged with cars…

It was pretty smooth sailing apart from the usual traffic snarl at that time. But upon hitting Jalan Pantai, there was another jam. And it was long! So we took the back way of the shophouses right up till Maybank, and then we stopped dead in our tracks. It was a gridlock. No one was moving. The cause: the queue at the Esso station, our destination. My face fell. The light never stopped blinking. Fen ran out to find out what was going on and that’s how we knew about the supposed strike.

Rather than keep the engine running and run the risk of running out of petrol, we somehow managed to manoeuvre and go the other way to find a parking. We found one soon enough, parked and walked to the three banks to pay our bills. Stopped by Tong Hing and Home and Garden as well. And when we walked back to the car to put some things in, we saw a car we had seen earlier in the queue in the exact position before. It hadn’t moved! And easily 30 minutes had passed by then.

So, rather than being stuck in the jam, we decided to walk around for a bit. Went for dinner, walked around Wisma Merdeka and then walked back to the car. Jam was still there for that Esso station. But driving home wasn’t a problem. Jalan Kolam was already clear, and so we figured we’d just go ahead and pump. We waited in line for about 15 minutes, pumped to the max and drove home. At that time, two pumps were already out of petrol.

While filling up the car, I asked the attendant whether the news was true. He confirmed my suspicions. There were only rumours. His boss told him that they’d be open for tomorrow; there were no plans for a strike.

I don’t understand why people would spread hearsay without first confirming it with a reliable source. I suspect the cause for today’s mess was spread through sms. And this will not be the first time such a thing has happened, nor will it be the last, I think. SMS is a good thing, but responsible use of it is better.

Oh well…

And did you know that a full tank for a Proton Iswara 1.3 now costs RM112? Yikes! That’s RM50 more than previously. Ouch!

Read here and here for other bloggers' view on the event.

p.s. Is it just me, or am I facing a jam of some kind as well with blogspot. My pages seem to load very slowly…