What Does StarCraft2 Brought On The Table

It's been awhile since I played a PC game that requires more than few hours job. If not mistaken, my last was Diablo2. Emm, that's like what, 10 years ago?

I'm excited few weeks back when knowing sc2 is going to be released. Colleagues of mine went frenzy about this, and the next days most of their MSN were tagged with sc2related status post. And for me, I don't have luxury of spare time to make up with it.

WTH.




Falling sick. Literally.

White, Orange, Black, Red and White. I wonder where's the little blue?



So the enlightment of sc2 and physical fatigue added up and glued me nicely on my couch.

Flashback. Year 2010.

Crappy year, I'd concluded.




Peanut sized pay increment, groundnut scaled bonus better-than-nothing ang pau, worse-than-expected pink form programme, tighther-than-ever working time, greater but shallower learning landscape, lousy salary and deteriorating health. I can list more, but I guess that's enough.

A phrase crossed my mind. Brain Drain. You can't beat it, You join it.

Yawl.


Time to step back. Time to let go.
Time to ignore. Time to have some fun.
Time to sleep.

Yawl.

Facebook Deactivation

I'd posted up a status update in my Facebook account like few weeks back, saying that my will to stop using its services and not many people seem to believe it. And Ta Da, I deactivated my account yesterday. As a matter of fact, I can't find a link called Delete My Account, so I just settled down with Deactivation. Googled and found that you can actually delete your account but only through a relatively lengthy procedure. Nevermind, deactivation it is.

Face swelling finally subsided and I'm taking some "hard" food today. Can you imagine 2-3 days intakes of food limited to stuffs like mashed potatoes, plain congee, milk and ice creams (no complains on this!)? Cravings are crawling around.

It DO costs you to mess with Wisdom!

O ya, when I read a paper about how XBRL is being analyzed from a postsocial approach and as a socio-technical object, Facebook crossed my mind. I'm curious whether there's any similar study on FB. Maybe yes, but no time for me to look further.

My Naked Wisdom, Literally

Wisdom was troubling me occasionally with residuals and inflammations and this got on my nerves recently when I can't help myself but uncontrollably flirting with its' surroundings with my tongue to calm the irritations.

DMDL!

Went to dentist that did my root canal few weeks back and taught Wisdom a lesson.

Before the extraction:



See how Wisdom collided with its' neighbour?

After the extraction (Pic at the top right):



The process took around 30 - 45 minutes with drillings, crackings and hackings sound. At one point in time, I felt like my jaw bones were shattered into pieces.


Show time. I present to you my naked Wisdom in blood (R-rated):



Post-op gonna be a PITA experience, hope no dry socket forms.

DMDL, Die Mah Die Lo
PITA, Pain In The Ass

One Reason You should hate Anti-Virus companies

Darn. After I signed up and downloaded the trial version of their product. It never stops sending me this stupid reminder, everyday. To stop this, you need to click a relatively small hyperlink at the bottom of the email to unsubscribe yourself.

It's a curse right?

Perkiness of the Strongest and the Confession of the Drop Out

I never expect myself to be caught in any new gadget launching midnight rush fiesta but hey everyone got their first time. It's all started with one of our colleagues yelling and shouting about the HTC Touch2 65 unit 65% discount launching event hosted at Sunway Pyramid, 9-October to 11-October-2009 on first come first serve basis. I thought it would be fun for most of our R&D personnels to hang out together late at night since he proposed that we go there around 2AM queuing up. 10-October 2AM, what the hell.. Could I end up being robbed by some hooligans? Well, I actually reached there around 2:20AM and spent like 15 mins to find the place to queue, and and I gotten myself a "virtual" number of 48, which I counted myself. Then after 30 mins, I count again and this time 53. Well well, looks like many of the queue cutters are on the move. Luckily I'm surrounded by smart fellas, literally. The guys in front of me were supplying the paper and pen and the fella right behind me was spending some efforts to make sure people who spends hours to queue got a queue number in the list. The physical number which had my name craved is #56. Wow, imagine what will be my number when it is 10am later. Anyway, I only to get my hand on the phone around 3:30PM in the afternoon, phew. that's a 13 hours effort for a RM560 Touch2 phone :D

Some hiccups during my queuing experience:

Around 5 or 6AM (Sorry, I really lost my sense of time), a family of 3, an uncle, auntie and their son I guessed making noises until almost 9AM. Wow, very persistent.
I don't really get what's the point they try to make, think it'something to do with why their name was not in the list blah blah... They retreated under the ambience of Booooo-ness of course.

Then around 10AM to 11AM, another family of auntie and her daugthers I think making some complaints like "In the flyer, it stated from 10AM, I don't care whether others queuing from what time, when I reached at 10AM I deserve one unit from the 65"... Bang Head... Joke of the Day.


My first time, turned out to be a very inspiring lesson to me.. When a person gets old and retired from work.. they really have time for non sense.

Phew!

Burn Baby BURN !!

It's darn dry and hot out there and sometimes polluted with hazes. It smells like hell and feels like hell.

And the best is the hell fire burning near my house, right behind my yard.

Apparently some idiotic morons did a open air rubbish incineration and cascadingly it turned out to be a wild fire on the run.



Firefighters spent like 3 hours to put it off and yes, you're right, it smells like hell.

Sometimes it's better to be a defacement

Saw the main page of LowYat.Net turned out to be a kiddie page with a cute white rabbit. Man, it's stinks and reminds me of the act-cute japanese culture that's disgusts me (Anyway there are many bunches of other who loves it). I sincerely pray that it was a defacement rather than a legitimate maintenance notice posted by the administrator. Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, sure it is.

Rabbits have infested LowYat.Net and unplugged it from the Internet. We will be back after the exterminators arrive. Meanwhile play around in our chatroom.

Maybank2U.com is darn slow

My colleague clicked around the site after login and hitted the exception stack trace.

Updated: Bad Experience with BP Lab/BP Diagnostic Center in Klang

Ever heard about love at the first sight? The crucial first impression? Same logic applied whether you are trying to popularize your blog or struggling to maintain the customer base, if a not-so-good first impression was engraved into a person experience, you bet the effects would only be amortized slowly over time. We, human are designed to behave like that, can't really help it.

I received an email from the lab just now and I would like to express my appreciation on the apology given by the pleasant nutritionist, Kentry.

To clarify some facts here, I never being "warned" about the congestion that could possibly happened if I visit the lab during weekend. I listen to good advice and I don't like to waste time. Time is money, even during weekend.

I don't blame any of the staffs for the operation inefficiency during peak period. They can't really do much to reduce the congestions. But I will piss off when the professionalism being compromised due to the operational bottleneck. The professionalism must be persisted regardless.

I will give no comments on how BP Lab managing their resources, but one apparent fact is that for any business, maximizing raw profits means nothing in the long run, ensuring sustainable and recurring revenues while at the same time growing the human capital in the corporation is the only way to strive to survive in a monopolistic competition market. Good management makes a difference.

Well, none of my business anyway. Life's continued.

Dear Mr Eddy,

Good day. I am posting this comment on behalf of BP Klang team. First of all, we, from BP Diagnostic Centre, Klang would like to apologise for all the dissatisfactions caused.

I am the young Chine lady who drew your blood that day. On the discomfort during the process of drawing blood and also all the medical terms that confused you, I would like to apologise to you.

As for the long waiting time during Saturday is something we cannot avoid and control as we only operate for half day. Normally, we do not advice patients to come on Saturday if the patients manage to come during weekdays to avoid long queue as you experienced that day.

Hope to see you again next year in BP Klang. Have a nice day.

Regards,
Kentry
Nutritionist,
BPDC-Klang.

Previous Post about BP Lab in Klang

Unit Trust Funds

I don't have faith in unit trust funds/mutual funds products in Malaysia, seriously.

Imagine you walk into a bank, sit down in front of the investment customer support counter and start to talk with one of the staffs about your desires to make more money out from your savings. The chances are you will have similar conversation like below:

(P/S: Eddy is pretending dumb)

Eddy: I heard about making money by "buying" unit trust funds.

Staff: O yes (Taking out a products brochure), this is our bank offering

Eddy: Wow, there are so many of them. Which one should I buy?

Staff: Basically, all of them are good products (*bang head). It really depends on your specific goals

Eddy: I have RM 10k and which is the best for me?

Staff: Are you a high risk taker? Aggressive? How fast you wanna make money?

Eddy: (Duh! Of course I wanna make money fast lar) I can take risk.

Staff: Emmm.. Then you might (wth, might???) buy this product. The fund actually buy into China mainland bluechips.

Eddy: I heard China market is slumping now

Staff: Well.. err... Then this is a good chance to buy, if you miss the boat previously.

Eddy: (WTH)

Eddy: How much I can earn if I "buy" RM10K?

Staff: The return is non guaranteed because it will be based on the actual performance. However, if the market perform well, then you can earn much higher than lots of other investments like FD (WTH!)

(Ok, at this point, if he never shows you the historical chart, most probably the fund is badly performed)

(Remember, there is always reason why these salesman are pushing for a particular fund, perhaps to meet sales quota)

Eddy: Do you personally buy into any of the funds?

Staff: Of course, I buy in little bit too.

Eddy: (I doubt so)

Ok, the above conversation is fictionous, but I did once bought an Islamic Syariah compliant fund with one of the Malaysia's leading bank in year 2005 and then suffered from losses about 25% of total capital and only recovered during mid-2007 when I sold them break even with my purchase price. Sucks, even time deposit saving outperformed these losers.

My point is most of the sales representatives are incompetent and not in any position qualified to give advice on fund investment. Of course, there are qualified investment professionals but good chance is they only serving high net worth individuals or corporates, not entertaining retail customers like you and me.

I disgust dollar averaging strategy as adviced by most "salesman". Blind monthly contribution is not really my cup of tea. I prefer seasonal dollar averaging particularly when the stock market is slumped. Buy low sell high, it is as easy as that. Why put money in fund when the fund price is high? Higher get higher? Why you want to trade such a big downside risk for a marginal upside reward? Think twice.

One comment about a Malaysia bank, the one starts with 'P' and its funds won lots of awards, is please remember unless you really study and understand the mechanics of their fund manager investment strategy, else no matter how good they are as beautified by these awards, they are really only "Juara Kampung". And yes, you are right about "Putting money in Juara Kampung is better than putting in other Kampung Losers".

Bad Experience with BP Lab/BP Diagnostic Center in Klang

I will update the story soon. Stay Tune.

It's been more than a year since my previous comprehensive health check which I picked to do it in PathLab laboratory. Last year, I went there during week day around 12 noon and the entire process was ok. I spent like around RM1,500 buying a book of coupons that eventually was used up by my family members. No major complaint. I received my test results within 3 working days.

This year, I decided to choose another lab. Reasons? Nothing much, just want to try out more to compare and contrast.

So I went to BP Lab. I did it during a week day.

Firstly, I approached to the registration/cashier counter, picked up a queue number and wait. It doesn't take more than 10 minutes to reach my turn and being summoned to one of the service counter. The person assigned to serve me is a Chinese young lady who kindly registers my information into the system. So far so good.

Then she asked me a series of questions to asses which health check package suits my conditions. Basically their offerings ranged from RM188 for basic blood and urinalysis to RM1000 for everything they can possibly do for you. Mine was the RM550 package covering blood, urinalysis, ECG, bone density, lung function and abdominal ultrasound tests. One thing to highlight is that she flooded me with lots of medical jargons when explaining the package contents. Hey, I can cope with that coz I watched many series like HOUSE and GREY ANATOMY but lots of old folks have no idea what bull shitS you're selling. Bravo to Nerdy.

Summary of the test processes:

• Blood
  I asked the lady to poke my left hand because I'm a right hander. Poked and half way the blood stopped flowing out. She looks panic and don't know what to do so she asked the DC Manager to come by to assist. During that gap, the needle was all the while "connected" with my arm and the blood just stagnant over there. Geez. The DC Manager came, unpoked it, drew out another one and this time I asked her to poke on my right hand on the belief that my right arm got better supply of blood. :p. Done in less than 5 minutes.
  


• Urinalysis
  I did it myself the "extraction", nothing screw up.
  


• ECG
  A "seasoned" nurse did it for me, nothing strew up. We had a nice chat anyway.
  


• Lung Function Test
  I blew a few times to the device and my results still sucks. I'm not sure it's really my lung capacity problem or my blowing skills (Sounds weird :p). Anyway, a down point to the nurse for not providing technical guidance on how to correctly blow to the devide. She just said: Inhale as much as you can and exhale as fast and strong as possible. As a first timer, I thought that my exhaling way was correct but next time I will ask up and down, left to right the "perfect" way to do it.
  



• Ultrasound
  Conducted by the branch doctor, Dr. Tan. She didn't talk much, just asked me to lie down and she starts to do the scanning. The process was professionally done, no craps.
  



• Bone density test
  Nothing much, just put my left leg into the device and it will measure the density without pain.
  

Minor glitches:

• Fuse Breaker tripped in the lab. Resolved in 10 minutes. Bad Omen??


• Printer was offline. Resolved in 15 minutes by restarting the printer.

I will update the story with more juices soon. Stay Tune.

Oh boy, almost forget to update this post.

I think I will just summarize the story.

I remembered the day I went to collect my result was Saturday. I reached there around 9:30am and the place was totally crowded by people/customers. I need to queue (standing) to get the ticket, need to queue (standing again) for my turn, queue again (standing, of course) to resolve my issue and finally wasted some time of my life waiting for the personnel to compile my results.

They are absolutely unprepared for my "arrival", or maybe it's better to restate it as totally unprepared for that many of customers in a single day.

I don't mind queuing. Seriously.

What was pissed me off big time, is:

• When the personnel told me that one of my blood result wasn't ready, due to some non-customer related issue. Ask me to come again some other day to pick up that single result.


• When the personnel told me that the consultant doctor is not free due to too many customers. Ask me to come again next time when pass by so that the doc can interpret my results.

I agreed that the employees there are pleasant but not professional enough to my liking. I prefer a medical expert with HOUSE (TV series) type sarcastism than someone talking silly and bringing you to nowhere near where you want to be.

I shared my experience with my dude, Jack and he told me that maybe my incident was just branch-specific. He used to do his test in other BP Lab branch and so far so good. Emmm.... Ok, no matter what, no more visit to Klang branch.