Thank god for speakerphone

I was preoccupied by this email from HR, which says that some money will be deducted monthly from my pay, as per directive from LHDN. That email set the tone for my whole day. Checked with LHDN Miri and they confirmed I do not have any outstanding payment. When you try to be a responsible citizen and pay your taxes... and they come and deduct your money for no reason.... that really pisses me off.

Pretty much got that settled through the phone(hopefully), then opened my MAS itinerary for my flight to Kuching, supposedly at 6.15pm. I looked at the date and it says 27th august Miri-Kuching. Not again. Thats yesterday.. thats another missed flight. And this is not the first time. All this waste is driving me nuts.

That also means my return flight to miri, on the 1st september, is automatically cancelled. Like I said I have gone through this before. MAS has this idiotic system, which cancels your return flight, if you missed the "first flight", and you booked the return ticket in one itinerary (huh...what is the term for the opposite of return flight??). MAS is cancelling seats that are already paid by their customers (if for some reason they missed the first flight) and open the seat to other customers. That makes absolutely no sense. And they make double profit from the seat, as it is sold twice.

The last time my seat got canceled "automatically", the MAS staff that I talked to that day at KLIA was definitely the more proactive type and customer friendly. He got everything settled for me and put me back on the flight, no problem.

After work I went straight to the MAS ticketing office at Miri airport. There I saw the course director from our Learning and Development, slouching on the stained sofa of the dated and gloomy MAS office, looking really stressed out and tired. Hes a China national and on his way back to Beijing, and apparently missed his flight to KL. He really looked like he could use a shower.

Anyways, i knew I will be getting nothing from the MAS guys at Miri airport, because I have dealt with them before, they just could not be bothered. Apparently the odds of dealing with the same people at MAS ticketing office is pretty high. Its like dealing with the SAP system... they talk like computer with all the codes programmed in their brain. I heeded their advice to call the MAS toll free line just because I felt like I was talking to a wall. I know for sure how bad it is to call that infamous toll free line, nothing is infamous for nothing. However I managed to get a ticket tomorrow to Kuching, albeit on Mas Wings which transits in Sibu.

After iftar called the hotline and immediately transferred to the IT department which handles internet booking etc. I never got thru to the IT guys, they put me on hold until the line went dead. Thats another record for me. I called again and the cycle repeated 2 more times until I have had enough. I called again, and I made sure thats gonna be the last call that will settle my ticket issue. The whole process took almost two hours!! But I managed to get them to put me back on the flight and that gave me that wonderful sense of accomplishment... but seriously thank god for speakerphone.

Panasonic Lumix TZ7

Also known as ZS3 in north America, this is my next big ticket item. Been browsing through photography blogs and sites and reading reviews, and apparently this is one of the leading models in the so-called "travel compact camera" category. Being out of touch with developments in the techie world, I would not have known that Panasonic makes pretty good cameras.

It has got 12 mpx, 12 x optical zoom and other "stuff". 12x optical zoom.... thats quite impressive. It will cost me around 1600.... not sure if its gonna be worth it.I mean no matter how good the camera is, if u just dont have it...

I have been surfing through flickr looking at people's photos, especially travel photos. There are some pretty impressive stuff in flickr. Other than flickr stuff on news websites like nytimes etc are really impressive too. One thing that I have never been able to acheive, whether due to fault of my own or cheapskate camera, is to capture the beauty of a place or moment in photographs. Hence, as a starting point... TZ7!

Cheapskate post

Malaysia airlines is on sale now and i am contemplating to buy ticket to go somewhere. Most probably its gonna be a second trip to Australia, Western Australia specifically Perth, to accompany my parents, as the ever dependable all in one tourguide. Not that I mind.

They somehow have this romanticised fantasy of this foreign land with rolling hills and mountains in the background, with acres and acres of vineyards and grasslands and what not. And the weather is just sunny and pleasant and the markets selling the freshest local produce like apples, oranges, grapes etc. So far for me the closest thing to that is Stellenbosch in South Africa. Such a strange place where you have outragiously photogenic landscape with a shantytown in the foreground.

I am not sure if I can afford all these travelling. It certainly is not sound financial planning. But all these airfare deals are really working for the airlines. I have been buying cheaper tickets, but at the same time Ive been traveling around more, so that sort of evens out. Air asia had a huge sale a few weeks back, and all of a sudden I was buying a return ticket to Hong Kong. No planning what so ever. Who needs planning when a return ticket to Hong Kong is 200 bucks?? And a return ticket to jakarta costs 75 bucks. Thats like buying a bus ticket to penang or something.

I have my tickets booked for this whole year, since two months ago. If not for MAS's "Get the Deal" scheme, I would have booked tickets for half of next year on Air Asia. ("Get the Deal" offers last minute cheap but limited weekend tickets)

Not sure how these airlines do their accounting, but I assume their current cashflow includes advance purchases. I remember not too long ago buying ticket 2 months in advance is considered early. Now people are buying one year in advance! And I notice airlines are selling tickets much further in advance of the actual travel date. Not sure if thats ok, but for me it just does not seem right, even if I cannot explain why.

Ramadan feast

Ramadan is here again and this means a lot of feasting to do. Its not supposed to be that way but what do you expect when you have people who are really hungry, and you have this proliferation of bazaars and buffets and all this food.

We have our fair share of ramadan bazaar here in Miri but I really miss those in KL. I have yet to find nasi kerabu which I have been craving for, found one yesterday but I was certain that the seller was not from West Malaysia and her Nasi Kerabu looked kinda funny. There was this stall claiming to be selling authentic kuching kolok mi, but it did not look like kuching kolok mi, at all.

Today decided to go to a buffet. I chose to go to Parkcity hotel Miri, just because I have never tried it. We had the Dynasty hotel buffet last year, it was cheap and decent. Marriott was RM85.... unlike in KL, if u pay 85 here u dunno what u gonna get, for me unless lobster is in the menu I will think twice.

Parkcity buffet was dissapointing. It is cheap at 32++, almost the same price as Dynasty hotel but Dynasty have so much more variety. It definitely did not look like a feast. Well when u pay peanuts u get peanuts.

There was seafood with a barbecue station near the pool area. I did not have any fishy aftertaste, but it is not necessarily a good thing because the prawns and squids are tasteless and rubbery. Bad seafood is usually fishy, but in this case they are tasteless. I have had "farm" prawns... and they are not as tasty as sea prawns and leave weird aftertaste. I suspect they use farm prawns, but one thing for sure the flavors of the sea are all sucked out of all the shellfish and fishes on display today.

Dessert was nothing much... just some sponge cake and fruits.

What a dissapointment... should have gone to the Dynasty buffet.

On the wonderful city of Miri

I am still suffering from backpain and looking to short cut my way through everything. This evening that meant going to the infamous Thai restaurant in Lutong Baru, 5 minutes away from office, to tapau dinner.

Since its not even 6 and I was tapau-ing dinner, no customers in sight. This place is infamous for making customers wait till the cows come home. One time I had lunch there and had to wait 1 hour plus.

And there are only like 5 tables for sit-in customers. Half of the total space occupied by the kitchen at the back, and half of whats left is occupied by a huge chiller and 2 huge stations in front of the restaurant complete with Thai wood carving, ornaments and what not. They have a whole load of stuff in the chiller like frozen green curry paste, tomyam paste etc. Its one of those type that have glass doors you can see through. And the two huge "stations" or stalls, thats for packaged snacks like potato chips, spicy nuts and a stack of menu, they have like 10 books of menu.

So I stopped by earlier, flipped through the 20 page menu, at least, looking for dinner. It is thoughtful of them to include pictures of the dishes because some of them have long and exotic names; so much easier to just point to the picture and say "I want this".

So I ordered spicy fried rice with fried egg, of the seafood variation. So I reached home, vigorously unpacking the dinner. In the polystyrene is the plain white rice with fried egg, sunny side up, on top. Separated in another plastic bag is the lauk, some sort of Thai style stir fried prawn and squid. It was actually quite delicious. LOLOLOL.

Why am I not surprised?

It is reported in the star that the Bakun dam developers are planning to burn an area roughly the size of Singapore (!!) to clear that area from debris before they flood the reservoir.

http://www.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2009/8/17/nation/4532291&sec=nation

It is mentioned that there is no burning permit (yes... open burning is still legal in Sarawak as long as you get the permit) applied YET for this. I do not think anyone in the right frame of mind would apply, let alone approve of a permit to burn an area the size of Singapore.... thats just MADNESS.

Where are the tree huggers, environmentalists, greenpeace et etc....

It is raining

I think they are doing cloud seeding here in Miri. It was drizzling earlier today for about 5 minutes. Obviously that didnt help the haze situation at all. But it was really dark with storm clouds everywhere... probably thunderstorm elsewhere or intended to target the hotspots ie near brunei border where it was reported that controlling the peatfires is a struggle. Now that would be impressive.

Its 11pm and its drizzling again... hopefully its a thunderstom at the border area and tomorrow I will wake up to smoke-free air and sunshine. It has got to the point that it is so bad that the air literally smells like smoke. The fires are not too far away... about 1 hour's drive.

Open burning is not banned in Sarawak. Apparently people can apply for open burning permit. I dont know the details but that just do not make sense. To my knowledge this is still in effect? And open burning is banned, at least in Peninsular Malaysia, Sabah I am not sure.

Anyways... open burning is still legal in Sarawak. Most if not all of the hotspots are in the Miri division.

This evening, I was home from work and went to my backyard. That is my routine now, go home, go thru kitchen to the backyard and go see my backyard fence. About a month ago someone disentangle the chainlink and made a huge hole. Neighbours saw secondary school kids hanging around in the backlane. Sometimes i feel like I should get a gun... it seems easier. When my house got broken into it took them almost 2 hours to find my house. Sometimes I can have compassion for the Americans.

Went to the backyard and saw one of them neighbours burning stuff in his backyard. Unbelievable.

I could not be bothered... this place just sucks.

this is so weird

Don't know what happened.... but somehow I kind of forgot that I had a blog. Having no internet at home has got to have something to do with it. Well I remembered just now and logged in for the first time since like chinese new year. The message box is gone.... the banner gone. Heck I have no idea how i got to customize the original homepage... where did I put the banner? It has got to be hosted somewhere... I kind of looked at the codes for like 2 minutes and just couldn't be bothered.

Now I start to worry about declining cognitive ability, alzheimer and what not.... how the heck did I forgot i had a blog. Cant get over it. Gotta have coffee....

The banner is gone. The layout is practically gone. I created the banner using photoshop just after graduation, while hanging out in ann arbor doing nothing, waiting for the free ticket home. The layout is just html. Got to find time to customize the layout.

Man i like the banner... I consider it my "artwork". Since my old laptop got stolen... the banner together with loads of pics post US gone....