We are all alike

School project – making Chinese Hat, the children (includes European, British, Iranian, South African, Indian, Algerian, Pakistani, Russian, etc) tried their hands in writing Chinese words. In the end, the characters looked more like profane / censored words.

Although we are all alike, as human living on the only planet livable now that we called Earth...there are so many languages, so many nationalities, so many beliefs, etc, it’s indeed tough to understand or tolerate each other.

One day, my 6 yr old returned home from school complaining, “Mommy, my classmates asked why are my eyes so small. I opened my eyes bigger but it’s not working, they said my eyes still look small.”

So, I told her to say this if her classmates ever ask her the same again, “I have eyes, it doesn’t matter whether they are big or small, I can see. Imagine those poor blind people, they cannot see. We are so lucky.”

If we complain about having no nice shoes to wear, think about those people without legs.

Tenant versus Landlord (Part 2)

Recent advertisements:

“I am looking for 1 badroom apartment to rent....” – poor fella, he must have been an abused tenant in the past, having bad quality accommodation. He should realise that it is tenant’s market now.

“I am looking for an apartment to rent, 3 bedrooms, at AED1 per year...” – this fella is not serious. he’s having fun placing dummy ads to get back at landlords who used to be unrealistic & unreasonable just last year, asking for AED220,000 per year for 3 bedrooms apartment. AED220K can buy a nice double-storey house (a.k.a villa here in Dubai) in Msia.

Another one from agent on behalf of landlord:
“The large balcony of this beautifully upgraded 3-bedroom apartment overlooks the community pool and park area! And when you move into this property, you can not only look at, but you can also use all of the community facilities, including a family BBQ area, large and small pools, gym, play area, basketball half-court and a community room. “

Goodness me...had the previous tenant been denied use of all the facilities?

Can't Wait

Children say silly but funny things, strange but nice things.

The other day my 6 yr old said:“I can’t wait to grow up!”.
Oh man... we adult are trying to slow down aging.
I said “Why do you want to grow up so fast, mommy does not want to grow old fast!”
She said: “I can’t wait to see how I will look like when I grow up.”
Well...I can wait as I certainly do not want to know how I will look like when I grow old...

It is exam time in May. School is having assessment for one week.
At home, after first day of assessment, she looked very happy before bedtime & said: “I am so excited! I can’t wait to go to school tomorrow to do assessment.”

Okay...that’s very strange, I recalled I was nowhere near that kind of feeling when I was having exam ages ago...

I asked:“Why are you so excited?” She said: “I can’t wait to see whether I will get ‘A’.”

So many more years of exam ahead, there is also B, C, D, E or even F. In order not to redefine or change her positive attitude towards exam, I say no more.

Is the IT guy on your buddy list?

People who still get to go to work a.k.a. employed, have no problem getting their PC up & running again sooner, all they have to do is call the IT guy when the PC is down.

Once unemployed, it will be FOY and DIY – find out yourself and do it yourself.

77 full moons ago, I quit my job. It was also the days of awakening. I learned that the hardware hardly talk to the software. And it was a disadvantage being a female as nobody would seriously have a conversation with me when I walked into a computer shop/service centre, etc. They thought only male uses computer and female uses computer as a typewriter.

One day my notebook (on the not-so-respected Vista) decided to pop me an error message that sounded like this: “I don’t like you. And you don’t have a choice. I am going to go into coma soon.” The hard disk was on the verge of failure.

Everything seemed to come to a standstill for many days which felt like years. Picking up the phone for support rarely helped, as you can’t make out what the other person was talking about, with their heavy slang as most such call centre is located somewhere else out there. It’s good to have international warranty, but the ‘special’ localised centre will only provide technical support to locally purchased notebook, you are kicked around and ended up talking to someone who is located somewhere out there.

Then, I recalled news of the infamous HK movie star who sent his pc for repair and soon found his private files being uploaded onto the net. Well, I assured myself, I am not a movie star, and I don’t have any birth suit pictures on my hard disk. Ok, but I still have to get files out & deleted from the hard disk before sending in to the centre, in case somebody decided to steal my pictures and superimpose my head onto an elephant.

So, I had to transfer everything out to a portable external hard disk of 320GB, which I reckon will not be enough in future... I wonder who on earth is still using the yesteryears of 1MB floppy disk.

The only consolation was that my notebook is still under warranty. HP replaced a new hard disk but it was empty, I had to reinstall everything myself, which reinforce the importance of making recovery disks on the very first day.

It was a new experience as an end user, standing on the outside of the building a.k.a. not employed. You are lucky if you have a ‘Buddy Circle’, a circle of either family members or relatives or friends which ideally should include a lawyer, a doctor, and an IT guy, who usually is an unappreciated-abused employee of a company, everybody call this guy when their PCs are down, but some don’t even know his/her last name or worst the first name.

Nowadays, you can’t live without a computer and the net, employed or unemployed.

You should buy your IT guy a cuppa and some nyonya kuih, while still employed.

Tenants versus Landlords

Many moons ago, this was common conversation when a potential tenant was viewing an apartment:
Agent (on behalf of landlord) : “If you do not take up this apartment by today, the rental will increase by 5% tomorrow.” 1 day later, when tenant called agent, apartment viewed the day before was no longer available. You were considered lucky if you had the opportunity to even view one.

A neighbour from Hong Kong who moved into her apartment last year, had to replace the water heater (which is as big as NGV tank) when the owner refused to replace it! Too bad she didn’t think about keeping the old heater. I would be ‘wicked’ enough to reinstall the old heater when it is time to move out! A Japanese neighbour was seen rushing out from his apartment one morning, and demanded the management building to send a maintenance guy immediately, as water was leaking and pouring down from his ceiling, but the maintenance people said he must bear the initial cost of AED200 per 1 hour visit! All these are some of the ridiculous stories many of us had heard over the past many months.

The Shift of Power has already begun, perhaps since January 2009.

Todate, the rent has fallen, ranging between 20-50% or even more, depending on the area.

Today, even the birds are happier, I can actually hear the birds chirping very loudly in the morning, Happy tenants, new arrivals or those who are still able to keep their jobs are seen carrying long check lists when viewing new places to stay.

There are still some arrogant and stubborn landlords though, just ignore them. They are still in denial mode.

An Encounter with UFO...This is based on a true story

Slightly after midnight of 31-Aug-1991, between 00:00-0030hrs (theoretically 1-Sep-91), 4 friends were travelling in a car, just returned from a late night supper, after a whole day of a Taekwondo competition in the Johor Bahru city. They were heading back home towards Pasir Gudang.

It was a quiet, calm night, 2 male friends were fast asleep, snoring in the back seat. The air-conditioning was not on, and the car windows had been wound down slightly.

Back then Pasir Gudang was not fully developed yet, it was mainly dense forest on both sides of the highway, there're no street lights, it was pitch dark, the only light came from the car’s front lights and headlights.

Towards the middle of the journey on the highway, all of a sudden, something flew passed in front of the car at a very high speed.

It was a very bright, silvery or white colour object. It was silent; it made no sound at all, there was no lights from the object or the thing or whatever it was.

The car was driven at around 80kph. The object flew right across and in front the path of the car, passing from the right (driver side) to the left (passenger side) before it disappeared into the darkness in the forest on the left side of the highway.

It happened very fast, perhaps less than 5 seconds.

It was impossible to make out the shape of the object, but it was huge because it covered the entire car windscreen at that moment when it flew across. As the headlight of the car almost blended into the color of the object, it was impossible to make out the distance between the object and the car.

Very focus in driving, the driver just continued driving. There was no reaction during or right after that encounter as the driver thought she was dreaming, or could it have been the Taekwondo training that one should remain calm when provoked... whatever. It was fortunate in a way, if the driver had reacted at that moment when the object flew across, she could have lost control of the vehicle.

Many seconds later, the friend seated in front seat asked, “hey, what was that?!”

The driver did not answer, because she did not know. She had to continue driving, and there was no way they were going to stop to check... no way.

The friend then cried out, “Hantu!!!” (means ghost in Malay/Bahasa Malaysia). Back then, perhaps that was the only thing most of us grew up knowing, anything strange and white must be ghost. At the same time he manually wounded up his side of the car window as fast as he could. Because of that remark, the driver started to tremble with fear, goose bumps and whatnot, and wounded up her side of the window too, because she grew up listening & reading all the ghost stories.

The other 2 friends were still snoring in the back seat.

The driver was trembling & shaking, both hands holding onto the steering wheel trying to remain calm, occasionally peering into the back view mirror, in case the object was behind...the fear factor was overwhelming all the way back.... but all of them got back safely, thankfully.

Thereafter, both the witnesses did not talk or discuss about the encounter.

Many years later when both of them met, the driver asked the friend what was that object, he jokingly said it was a plastic bag... Ya right, if plastic bag can fly that way, Tony wouldn’t be laughing all the way to the bank today. And everybody can fly, without Tony and AirAsia.

Perhaps it was an encounter of the first kind, with an UFO. Perhaps the object or alien and whatnot visited and celebrated with Malaysia on National Day, back in 1991.

This was not based on hearsay, as the driver was me.

The Bail Out

One night, i dreamt of seeing many unidentified flying objects (UFO) visiting planet earth.
I told my best friend about it, and she asked, “Are the aliens coming to bail us out...?”
Oh dear...

I then wonder how do aliens do that?

With this?