Not my money to spend

I suppose this has been the case for many years now. Like most of my colleagues (if what they claim is real), our salary is gone before it enters our account. How so? Credit card bills, installments and whatever loans that you currently have. If you have standing instructions to pay them then its deducted even before it goes into your account. So what is left can also be considered as not your's because if you need some sort of transportation to work, the money that you need to spend is not your's as well because it has to be paid to get you to the place which will pay at the end of the month. Its such a vicious and tight circle that you almost cannot get out of :(

I was offered to go on a trip with a friend to Sabah. I was so excited that i quickly checked airline ticket prices and try to find the best rate. Nice, its just RM500 for return trip. Since the offer was that i would be given free accomodation and perhaps even some free meals so RM500 for a well needed vacation is considered cheap. Then it struck me when it came to paying, i don't have the RM500 to buy the tickets because the money is not for me to spend ...

When i went for a haircut just before CNY a few months back, the hairdresser commented that my hair is thinning and seeing his opportunity to try to sell his treatment package, he offered to do a free hair scan to show the health of my hair. I have done that scan before and know the advices so i fast forward him to intro me the products and the whole package would be something in the region of RM900 for 10 treatments or so. Judging from my facial expression, the hairdresser quickly change his approach and tried to sell only the shampoo + tonic package which was somewhere in the region of RM200. Seeing that its CNY and i have not really checked the damage incurred to me for the festive season, i can only decline. After CNY, i came to realize that i was over-reaching much more than i thought and eaten into a budget which i cannot refill :(

Last week there was a promotion going on in my company's foyer. I found an interesting and very useful item. So i asked for the price of the item and was quickly taken aback by the price tag (after discount) of RM100. Ok, im not going to fork out RM100 for something which i will not be using too often. My colleagues who were with me at that time told me that that was a cheap price to pay. They bought their's for more than RM100 albeit a different brand. I can only politely give a smile back to them.

After lunch, they tried to convince me to buy the item again saying that its really cheap and i should get one. I just could not take anymore of this so i just went ahead and told them the truth that my money now is to prepare (if required) to bribe the headmaster of the school which i try to enrol my son into.

These people whom i have described before in my previous post that they always claim not rich can somehow always manage to afford expensive stuff usually the sums are >RM500 and claims that its CHEAP but when they really need to spend on the other necessities, they will be reluctant to part with RM1 or RM10. For me, wherever possible i will be reluctant to part with RM1 or less. Perhaps they came from a better off family before so they are used to buying those branded stuff. However the strange thing is, most of them are not that is why they are not willing to part with RM1 on necessities but would much rather spend their hard earnedsaved money on the branded stuff.

My current goal now would be to ensure that my son is able to enter the school of my choice NOT because its a good school but rather the distance. It would be convenient in the future if need be to fetch him or to go to his school. Anyways, chinese schools would be expensive anyways so i need to prepare as best as i can. More years of not my money to spend still ...

1000 Chinese Characters

I was once told that if you could memorize 1000 of the most used chinese characters, you would be able to read a newspaper without much problem. In view that i am a banana who is enrolling his son to a chinese school, i must be able to understand or able to teach him if he asks.

There has been several incidences where he asked me to read to him what was in his books but i was unfortunately and very disappointed with myself that i am not able to comply to such a simple wish :(

Since i do not have a co-pilot anymore so i have to suck it up and take up the challenge of learning one of the most complex language ever created with more than 50000 characters in its arsenal. Although i am not totally illiterate in chinese but i fall way short of 1000 characters. Perhaps at a max, i could get around 50-100 characters which is not good enough sometimes to read even the headlines =_="

With a little help from Google, i managed to find this site which offers a flash card like interface to help you learn chinese. I hope to be able to memorize the 1000 characters so i may be able to read a chinese newspaper or rather more importantly, able to read to my son :)

A long time coming

Pfft, can't believe its May and i just started my wishlist :p Seems reasonably achievable

Air-conditioning for the house
Pretty straightforward IMHO

Fix my car's external problems
Though its only bringing me to the LRT station everyday but i want it to look like its old self not the current dented here and there :(

Goodbye Tiger
To be finally able to leave

Really say Goodbye?
No explanation necessary

To weight <=75kg
The below chart shows that im in the overweight section :(



Use my passport again before it expires
As straightforward as it can be ;)

How the hell do you ...

put on contact lens??? Today i took many many attempts to put that small piece of plastic onto my eye but my eyes blinked every time i got the lens about 1 cm near my eye :( Tried again and again but there is just no way i could get the lens nearer to my cornea.

In my final attempt (not because i gave up), i managed to touch the lens to my cornea BUT BUT BUT my eyes blinked before it could properly set and it tore :( To make matters worse its a colored lens ie expensive. Well the upside is that i got it for free :p Downside is that i did not get to look good for a day :(

So seriously how do you wear contacts? I still have a few more contacts which i also got for free to try to wear. Friend who wear contacts, please pass on your tips and tricks or techniques. p/s : as you can already guess, i have not touched my cornea before so putting on and taking off will be a MAJOR challenge.

I really don't like wearing glasses, sorry lar to those who wear glasses. Its so mafan, always will slide down and make me look so uncle :(

Like butter spread over too much bread

I remember i wanted to blog about how stretched i was at work earlier this year. Stretched to the point where stress would accumulate at my neck and it was so stiff that i can't look to the side. Actually we are stretched in terms of staff, 3 colleagues left and no replacement have come in. The boss' favourite tagline, "Nobody is irreplaceable". Sure its easy for him to say, especially now that he is no longer my boss in a way due to a recent restructure. Just 50% of a boss because he is double hatting ie taking care of 2 portfolios.

To make matters worse, we the supposed replacements for the earlier exodus of staff to foreign banks which just established themselves in Malaysia, are totally new to this field of work. Like many people, one will be very motivated to work in what they thought would be interesting. I was actually overjoyed with the initial work. No more programming, no more bugs, no more pulling my hair out thinking what if the fuck is wrong with my codes, etc. After the orientation and honeymoon period, the workload began to pile up because to begin with we were understaffed as a group of 10 (boss included) would support the whole company.

The learning curve was really like the exponential line because i had to be thrown into the thick of the heat because like i mentioned we were understaffed and others have their own work to do. Asking over and over again ticked them off and you can see it on their faces if not in the tone of their replies. Luckily and thankfully, i have other friends who helped me in my work. They guided me away from most pitfalls but one learns better and faster by doing mistakes. So sometimes i was intentionally left in the dark to fall and to learn to watch out for the dangers so that i won't repeat them.

The bad thing about me is that sometimes i am slow to pick up on some things and its quite apparent now that im in quite a big mess now. My colleagues do offer help sometimes to help me catch up to their speed. I was told i was not running fast enough as my colleagues pace in doing work so i need to catch up. Well to be honest, now im really tired of this running. Getting old ei? Huffing and puffing everyday until im exhausted and will need to go to sleep by 10.30pm every night. By the time i get to my bed, my eyelids are no longer able to be open but i still need to make sure that my little one falls asleep before i can sleep in peace.

Taking leave for rest or even the long break during CNY did not do any good because if you are not work, the work will still pile there waiting for your return. If you go any longer, you can be sure that the pile will only get bigger. I so so wished that i could bring my little one somewhere during his school break this week but that is not to be. Sigh, a big project cutover is looming and the top people are focusing on the successful cutover so that their project may finally begin. On second thought, im actually handling 2 big projects which in the project manager's word would be, "It must not fail!".

"Like butter spread over too much bread" is actually quoted from Bilbo Baggins in the movie, The Lord of the Rings - The Fellowship of the Ring.

I won a Canon Ixus ^_^

On 3rd of March, i got a peculiar email titled, "Canon - Capture the Moment" as below

Hi Lawsh,

Congratulations!

You probably have seen from SportsCenter Asia program that you have won the SportsCenter – Canon Capture the Moment contest for [month] [year]. Your caption was the best caption of for the month of [month] [year].

We would like to make arrangements for sending the Canon IXUS 200IS to you, kindly provide your full contact details please.
Name in full
Address
Telephone number
Identification number

We look forward to hearing from you soon

Keep the captions coming!

Best regards,

C*** L**

I went to check on the competition website and true enough, my name was listed there! I quickly replied the email with all the required details :D I was overwhelmed with joy that i went and print out result page and boasted to my colleagues :p When i was finally able to sit down again, i went to check on the prize and its worth :D Available in 4 colors and retailed at RM1398. WOOT!!!

I was told that the prize would be sent to me by Canon's advertising company. So, true to their words, the advertising company contacted me with and email titled "Congratualtions! You've won a Canon Ixus 200IS" --> yes, it is a typo error was made by the sender :p

Hi Lawsh

Thank you for participating Canon – Capture The Moment contest on ESPNSTAR.com.

In our record, you are the winner for the month of [month] [year] . On behalf of Canon, the delivery of your prize will now be arranged immediately. Please reply to this email in order to acknowledge your contact details below are absolutely correct before we activate the delivery

Name: Lawsh

Address: Blah Blah Blah

Malaysia

Contact number: 60-1xxxxxxxx

Please also note that prize(s) are not exchangeable for cash and/or kind and all unclaimed prizes will be donated to charity. Should you have any further queries, please kindly contact V***** H** at +65 xxxx xxxx or v*****@d*****.com.sg.

Thank you again for your participation and continued support. We look forward to hearing from you soon.


Yours sincerely,

V***** H**

Regional Account Director

D***** Singspore Pte Ltd (on behalf of Canon Singapore Pte Ltd)

So i acknowledged this email and chose Gold color and was again happily awaiting for my prize ^_^ A few more days later, i got another email update to tell me that my prize will be delivered using DHL from Singapore. Woohoo! Finally its coming! I tracked the shipment from time to time but today its status was delivered :D

Prize picked up from Singapore --> Hong Kong --> Malaysia.

I was kind of dumbfounded that my camera traveled that far in just 2 days. From a neighbouring country sent to Hong Kong to be sorted @_@ before being sent to Malaysia. However, this also shows the efficiency of DHL in delivering their parcel as promised. *2 thumbs up!*

Now for the pictures of the new camera ^_^

The long awaited parcel ^_^

Inside the parcel was an envelope with my name :D

The prize was carefully wrapped with bubble wrap ^_^

Unwrapped the bubble wrap protector ...

A display of all the items in the box

Singling out the most important item in the box :p

Tada! It is finally revealed ^_^

Real color is brown but now it really does look like gold in colour :D

Down side is there is no memory card :( Luckily though i have an extra memory card from my previous camera :D So now i have 2 great cameras. Will need to take some time to explore the full functionalities but so far, its got both features of touch screen and button menus. You can tilt the camera slightly to scroll to the next picture OR slide it with your finger similar to iPhone :p

I would like to have ...

... another baby. Perhaps mostly from external influences but if things had gone as how i envisioned it, i may have already had a second child. Ideally, a daughter because many a time when shopping, i see a lot of very beautiful girl clothings but it doesn't really matter too much whether its a boy or a girl.

A few of colleagues who got married had babies and some newer weds are very hardworking to produce a baby. Some other colleagues who don't know of my situation would keep on asking the same old question, "When are you going to have your second child?". A recent but more sarcastic one said, "Where is your second child? You tak boleh already is it?" =_=" *speechless* Of course the normal ramblings by those who have had a couple of children would keep babbling about that its not good to have a too huge a gap, should get more while you are still young etc etc etc

Some of my personal friends got pregnant and some just given birth would upload their baby's pictures. The little ones are so adorable and cute. Perhaps its these callings that triggered a desire in me. Sigh ... I also had the chance to play with some of my friend's babies and the baby's smell makes me all warm and cuddly inside.

Today (more like yesterday since now is midnight), i saw a very cute little boy in the train on my way back home. He was looking around curiously at the people who stood around him as the buildings and trees whizz by. He was such a good boy that he did not make any noise nor attempt any stunts that would worry his mother and brother who were catching up on some zzz. Everytime he looked at me, well more like everytime i gaze upon him, i would smile from ear to ear. Such a cute and good boy, i would love to hold and carry him. It was really rude of me to stare at him the whole journey, halfway on reaching my station he began to be more shy as everytime he looked up, i would looking down on him with a big smile, well maybe im not good at smiling and scared him :(

If only ... then i would like to have ...
Sigh ...