Funny Boss Day Saying Why You...

Funny boss day saying why you make appointment so late that after meeting over you go home directly. Duh? And what is wrong with that? It is up to customer to determine the time and it is not always you can get earlier appointment all the time. Also in addition is the workaholic culture so inefficient that for the sake of boss imposing their rule they are contributing to the increase carbon footprint of the world. By making the appointment later (which is also sometimes on request by customer) I worked an extra hour in the office which is extra productivity for the company and saves me an extra hour on the commute back to office which contribute to waste of petrol and spewing CO2 to the atmosphere just to show my face and say, "Hey, boss I'm back!" without doing anything else, go back to car and take the hour long drive home. This goes to show what Peter Drucker (quote, "a manager is promoted to a position of incompetancy") says is true all along and it is what is on most employees mind about middle level bosses way of thinking in enforcing policy whether the policy is made up by them or laid down by predecessor or higher up who has a narrow view of things. Duh? Let's see what other funny boss day saying that boss can come up with.

[update 3/1/2013]

Well out with the old, in with the new, and not any better. The old boss passeth the baton over to the new one. Altogether I've experience 4 expat bosses each with their own idiosyncrasies and eccentricities. However I do have a better feeling after each changes with the worst one with the 2nd boss, and now on the 4th with a much likable personality. However, he was still answerable to HQ, so there changes and implementation that were still not much to be desired. Instead of recording the incoming time by one of the staff, we now use a punch in / out timer recorder.


I don't know what's wrong with my HQ who insist on such devices on all staffs. If you were admin and there is overtime pay involve, ok, it makes sense. But if you are doing sales and marketing where your in / out time cannot be measured, the recorder did not make any sense. So for those times you came in late due to appointment, or leave early or not able to punch out as you could not make it back to office, you need to submit application form (preferably before doing it, but how do I know whether I can or cannot make it back to office?). And really, if you have to go outstation on business trip, you can't even punch in/out either, so submit a form too. Thus making more paperwork for everyone concerned.

When they wanted to implement the time recorder, they thought they could make an excuse or a reason to implement it. They thought that without a timer recorder, the insurance company would only pay compensation for during your working hours in the office. But when we informed that the insurance coverage was 24 hours irregardless of where you were, they were dumbfounded. Anyway, HQ already want to implement the time recorder for a very long time. No need to find excuses to slowly break it in to staff. Anyway which way you want to gently break in the time recorder still would not go well with us staff anyway.

For a small branch outfit with so many constraints do make working rather difficult. If the office has many staffs, of course a timer recorder would be required, but it should exclude the sales staff (which I know many companies do not enforce it on their sales staff)

Anyway, just have to live within their rules and bend it where possible otherwise, it would certainly be tough to follow rules to the letter. It was said, "rules were meant to be broken". This was probably one of the situation.

Coke + Ajinomoto / MSG Hoax

Here we go again, received another chainmail urban legend plying around, this time the hoax is about Coke + Ajinomoto / MSG (Mono Sodium Glutamate). This urban legend came about in the wild 2005 and was collected by Snopes around 2008. They call it the date rape drug but of course it won't work.

 

Although MSG (Mono Sodium Glutamate) may cause drowsiness, rapid heart rate, chest pain, nausea, weakness, difficulty in breathing, to certain people susceptible and sensitive to MSG, for the symptoms manifest for the unfavourable individuals large quantities of MSG amounting to about 3 grams or more need to be ingested. (A typical serving MSG treated food is less than 0.5 grams of MSG). However not all people are affected and only a small percentage are affected by MSG.

 

So regarding Canny Ong abduction, rape and murder case (13/June 2003), she was taken at knife point from Bangsar Shopping Centre basement car park and not from a spike drink. Besides, who would in the right mind accept a free drink offer from a stranger? A forced demand with a dangerous weapon such as a knife or gun is far more effective than trying to persuade a victim to take a spiked drink.

 

Source: http://www.snopes.com/cokelore/msg.asp

 

Anyway, I know friends are trying to mean well when they forward messages warning about this and that, but some of this has no truths behind it and some far too improbable that all you need to do is do quick check on the internet and  you would know it is just a hoax started by somebody who thought it would be funny to scare the wits out of individuals who either didn't bother to verify the information or thought it sounded plausible but in fact just a bunch of baloney floating around cyberspace.

 

Perhaps he/she just wanted to see his urban legend creation get listed together with the rest of other urban legend for some anonymous hall of fame or what. This people really need something better to do if they got so much time in their hand to craft such urban legends like this Coke + Ajinomoto / MSG hoax.

Picking Up Baby Routine

With baby around our schedule revolves around baby. In the morning Lena will send baby to her mom's house for babysitting. In the evening after work I go over to fetch baby back. Sort of sharing our travel load to travel from our house to Lena's mom house and work place. It's a little tiring but workable for now. Lena has to wake up rather early as Subang is notorious for traffic jam in the morning, while I fetch baby coz I leave my office earlier than Lena. Beside my workplace enforce a strict arrival to work while my wife's has flexy working hours. For now due to Ramadhan month the traffic is still light so it is sort of like a trial run. Once the Hari Raya festivities are over then the real traffic challenge will come. Hope we will be able to cope!

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Xperia X10 Android 2.1 Update coming soon

My current Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro is running on Android phone version 1.6. Heard about the update/upgrade to Android phone version 2.1 will be released on week 38 or end of Q3. Somewhat earlier than the Q4 released mentioned.

Quick search found the SE blog about the upcoming release for Xperia X10 not just for the X10, but for the entire X10 series, the X10 mini pro and X10 mini.

Ran through the Sony Ericsson website and it seems I can upgrade the X10 Android phone software by ourselves instead of handing it over to the SE service center. If so that would save time but I wonder what are the caveats of doing my own software upgrade?

IOI Mall Parking system needs revamp

IOI Mall parking system in Puchong really needs revamp. they dont have enough parking machines plus the info counter people also don't want to work so late. so when it comes to closing time the payment queue ended up pretty long. to make matters worst, of the 2 parking machines only one is working. it takes at least 20 minutes to settle the parking. the management is oblivious to such inconvenience. they should do something about rather than let shopper have a poor impression about IOI Mall.

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Chicken Lime Recipe Traditional Cure for Diabetes

Received this message in my inbox outlining a Chicken Lime Recipe traditional cure for diabetes. Whether it works or not is anybody's guess, since I'm unable to find any documented information about this traditional chicken lime recipe cure for diabetes.

So if you do try it and if it works or don't work do drop a comment.

----- Inbox Message -----

For those most part, our daily meal consist of many sugars, or glucose that shoots straight into our bloodstream, and our pancreas would produce the insulin to get rid of the glucose quickly because it overshoots the normal working level. We need the glucose for energy and if it falls to low we will become hypo, which would result in lack of energy or worst. And if it is too high, our pancreas and kidney would become overworked from trying to remove the excess glucose.

The trick is to go for complex carbohydrate so that we won't get the sugar rush as it takes longer for the complex carbohydrates to breakdown in the digestive system to be absorb by the body while at the same time avoid the craving for food from sugar crash in the body system.

According to my doctor, diabetes is a lifestyle disease and to control it we need to watch what we eat and when we eat. Perhaps smaller meal at more frequent intervals to avoid the sugar rush and sugar crash situation.

Anyway, for those who reached the stage of becoming diabetic, see if this Chicken Lime Recipe will cure or it could just be another one of those urban legend myth circulating around the internet.



LIME 是青擰檬

My diabetes cured using this traditional recipe

Then I was 55 years old, one day suddenly I felt constant thirst and had the urge to drink more water, I also felt constant hunger even just after taking a meal, my legs often cramp and had severe cold sweat I went for a check up and the doctor diagnosed Diabetes, sometimes it reached 250 and it worried me so much. Doctor prescribed some medication and I was on medication for 2.5 years.




My brother who was staying in Malaysia was very concerned, he was a successful businessman. I went to visit my brother and sister when I was 57 yrs old and my brother told me he was given a traditional treatment recipe for diabetes which was claimed to be very effective. As a Hokkienese who suffered Diabetes for 25 years, previously his had complication and was unable to walk, but now he was cured.

Here's the Recipe :

Steam 4 limes (green lime) together with 1 chicken without head and tail), cut limes into half, add some salts and water level just to cover the chicken. I was given this 4 times during my stay in Malaysia .
The taste was not very good but i still took it in hope of curing the disease. I took me 1 week to finish a chicken (1 recipe), sometimes i drank it as a soup or for supper.

After 2 months I returned to Taiwan and had a medical check up again, the doctor advised me to stop my Diabetes medication as the blood sugar plunged to below the standard count. He couldn't believe it when I told him what I took. From then on I did constant blood check and it was normal. So for prevention, sometimes I still had it once in a while. Lime was not available in Taiwan at that time and my brother sent them to me from Malaysia .

I am now 71 years old, and there's no recurrence. During this time I have been staying in Canada , the USA and I have been healthy diet and the chicken lime recipe once in a while which saves my life.

As the ingredients are all natural, there's no harm at all to have a try and please spread this to your friends or whoever needs it.

----- End of Message -----

Please do your own further research whether the above actually works or doesn't.

Maxis 100MB data plan

Just checked my recent Maxis bill and found out the internet data usage was rather exorbitant. Apparently Maxis has changed the billing block to RM0.10 per 10kb block rather than the 1¢ per 1kb. That means even this simple blog post of about 1kb will count as a 10kb block and Maxis will bill it as 10¢ rather than 1¢. No fair.
So now they have a new simple data plan which allows for 100MB of data per month for RM18/month. Doesn't sounds like much but should be adequate to cover the simple data usage.
I'm basically using my mobile for email and blogging. Not so much for surfing. The small screen of the PDA is just too teensy-weenie to do any serious browsing.
Also to note that this Maxis 100MB data plan is added in addition to any value plan that you have. But I believe I can get cost savings. So going to give this Maxis 100MB data plan a try!

[update 27/12/2012]
Wow! It's been so long since I signed up for data plan for my maxis mobile number. Initially I started with this 100MB plan at RM18/month. It was enough as a starter for my Sony Ericsson X10 mini pro figuring that I would switch it on when needed and swap over to WIFI when in office or at home.
Using this plan is also good if you have a cranky old Sony Ericsson phone which would connect to internet for no reason and there was no way to turn off the data access. Better to pay RM18 than saddled with a RM250 bill! Fortunately nowadays Maxis cap the data usage bill to RM250 max otherwise you may end up paying thousands!
Anyway since I started using data, I have changed mobile phone from Sony to HTC and now to my Nokia Lumia. My data usage was also increasing as I have decided to leave my data connection always on.
For just emails with occasional Whatsapp, Facebooking and Twittering, 500MB at RM38/month would be just enough. But my recent Nokia Lumia Windows Phone, I decided to use more apps as well as Internet sharing to another second spare mobile phone and thus more data was required. Thus I have now up it to 1GB data at RM48 per month. In addition, Maxis has decided not to charge for the extra data usage if one were to exceed the 1GB data plan, (this was not applicable to the lower data usage plan) so it was good to upgrade to this 1GB plan. If data usage were to be exceeded, Maxis would just throttle your speed under the FUP (fair use policy), so I figure this would be the best option for an always on data connection.
Of course the difference between the 100MB vs 1GB at RM18 vs RM48 is quite a lot, but it takes less work to ensure you don't exceed the data usage allotment and being charged on a per kilobyte basis.