Perspectives

I think almost everyone has heard about it. It is imminent. The government is mulling a hike in petrol price, this time by 10 cents or so we read. A week or two after they implement this new subsidy decrement - like it or not - we shall be feeling the snowball effect on other commodities such as food and housing property - just to name a few - going up up up as well.



Unfortunately, the only thing that does not comply with the above clip would be my salary.

-sigh-

Anyway, before you misunderstand me any further, this is not an entry about me whining non-stop. Recently I had an enlightening experience which I think can be applied on a bigger scale and I would like to get some opinions if this is truly relevant.

It is about looking at things from different perspectives - be it wider, bigger or from another angle.

I always eat out for lunch. Whenever the waiter comes over to take my drink order, I would usually opt for those iced drinks in the range of plus-minus RM1. I actually prefer plain water, but I have always been under the impression that it is not a wise choice as a glass would cost me 30 cents WTF?! However, me being me, I started a deep dive into this decision-making dilemma and came to a conclusion that plain water is actually the right way to go. Why is it so you ask?

You might disagree or unaware of this but in a normal everyday scenario, we usually take into account how much the kopitiam (coffee shop) gained from each glass of drink we ordered. Let us assume a glass of iced tea with milk as costing us RM1.

Compared to a glass of iced water with tea extract plus a few teaspoons of condensed milk, a glass of plain water sounds so empty, so unrewarding and too easy for the 30 cents that we have fork out for. Hey, that is almost akin to a donation of 30 cents for the kopitiam each time I ordered plain water!

Now, if we shift our attention to the main reason we ordered drinks in the first place and stop giving a damn on how much the kopitiam earned, things would not appear the same anymore. You drink to quench thirst. Whether the drink is sweet, cold or plain, they still serve the same purpose. However, plain water is healthier and cheaper by 70 cents, hence the definition of a clear winner in my opinion.

As you can see, by focusing on things that are advantageous to us instead of others, a simple object like a glass of plain water can be painted in another light.

Of course, focusing entirely on benefiting only yourselves is not always the best choice out there. Back to the topic on fuel price increase, would you pay more for a cleaner and environmentally friendly public transportation such as monorail or choose to drive to work? If you take monorail, your wallet burns but you will be doing yourselves and the people around you a big favour by keeping the air clean... unless you got yourselves molested in the sardine-packed monorail but that is another story altogether. :P

From the two feeble examples I suggested above, we can more or less deduce that most - but not all - decisions that are selfish in nature or do not go through much thought usually revolve around money while anything else would require you to take a step back and do some thinking for them to reveal themselves. Money is evil, eh? On a side note, have you ever realize that economy - like most of the other human inventions - is ultimately one of the main reasons people were being pushed around, me getting stressed out, nations waged wars and humans extincting themselves?

Anyway, sometimes I do find it a little frustrating when I come to a point of realization that a choice which was earlier on deemed as wrong or illogical actually appears to be the best that I should have made. This sort of situation usually manifests itself when you have something at stake, such as having 16 points in Blackjack. Do you hit or stand? :)

If you find me making no sense or whatsoever, blame the heat... or yourselves for looking at this entry from a wrong perspective. :P

Google <3 Islam?

Try using Google for a day and it should not take you long to realize that the autocomplete feature can sometimes come up with eyebrow-raising results that make you go WTF?! In case you have never heard of it before, it is basically a mechanism that suggests or predicts what are the words or phrases that you are going to type without the need to complete the whole line.

However, recently there has been a big hoo-ha when it was discovered that Google's autocomplete feature somehow favours a certain religion as displayed below. Note that I only tested six religions with the most number of followers.


Christianity is bullshit.


Hinduism is monotheistic.


Buddhism is not a religion.


Sikhism is false.


Judaism is false.


Islam is ?

Go on, give it a try if you are sceptical about these screenshots. Few websites claimed that Google has acknowledged this as a bug but hey, the earliest website that I found to report this issue was written on 17 December 2009; this must be one die hard bug!

-sigh-

Goodbye Mr. Ng Teck Meng

Today marks the last day of this special colleague of mine in Dell. Of all the types of people I have worked with in the span of 3 years, I have only met his twice - the first was Lee Hin.

Magnificent? Outstanding? Impressive?

Ptui! These flowery words clearly do not do them any justice. Worse still, it would be such an understatement to describe them so.


Teck Meng and his Japanese girl in Malacca. Do let me know if you happen to know her.

His departure really got me to reconsider my decision of staying put in Penang, or at least Dell. Perhaps it is time that I step out from my comfort zone and venture southwards to Cyberjaya? This might sound arrogant but I have literally reached the very last stage - or the most advanced position - a Technical Support Specialist can be. It is a dead-end with nothing new to learn. I have to either change my role, move out or join the queue in waiting for someone from the higher echelon to resign. But why wait when Cyberjaya pays so much? 200% is no small amount and let us be frank, what are the chances that I land myself a position high enough to offer that much in Dell?

-sigh-

Looking back, I find it hard to believe that I first got acquainted with both of them as a Phone Buddy and finally parted with Shell as their next destination. What a coincidence!

In case you are reading, I shall hold back my manly tears and bid you farewell, albeit with a heavy heart. The team will definitely never be the same without your presence here.

I better stop here as I am already running late to your farewell party. In parting, allow me to dedicate you this song to cherish these past few years' worth of companionship we have shared:



Gosh, this entry is full of gayness.

Happy New Year 2010

Looking at the number of entries I posted up for year 2009, I guess I have to admit that I am pretty much lazier compared to the years before. Hrm... instead of lazier, I believe the right term should be demotivated. Work has been killing my mood off rather efficiently these few months to the extent that if I were a girl, people would have thought that I have been suffering from menstrual pain almost daily for the past months. :D

Most of my friends who took up blogging have been hibernating for some time too. Take a look at the list of links at the right section of my blog interface and tell me, how many of them are still actively writing? Why the lack of update I wonder? Being the only one with new entries is no fun. It is akin to being the only guy talking in a support group while the rest of your peers are dozing off or minding their own businesses. Is writing blog a hobby that requires commitment, which I am sure everyone is short of since the day we elevated our status into the working society? It seemed so to me, hence the inability of me to keep churning out entries after entries as frequent as I hoped to. Of course, that is not the only reason I am such an inconsistent blogger. I have always tried to avoid writing in a casual manner, leaning more towards professionalism with the aim of improving my English vocabulary with each entry. These, coupled with the nature of being a perfectionist usually leads me to a wall of writer's block whenever I failed to coin a suitable term to describe something I had in mind.

So, it is now year 2010 and to be frank, I am not the type to come out with a list of resolutions each time January comes into view. Are you one to do so? Nevertheless, with such a crazy 2009 I had, perhaps it will be of no harm in trying to pen down a few sketchy 2010 resolutions.

While 2008 was a year full of health problems, 2009 did not begin any better. In fact, it was such an emotional turmoil that I would volunteer to go under the knife three more times rather than experiencing the same April again. However, if I were to look at things from an optimist's perspective, this unfortunate event would later on became a catalyst to the birth of ABCDE and subsequently, landed me a fiancée after 101 months of courting.

The second half of year 2009 was much more stable, though still inundated with all sorts of good and bad news. Weekends were the only days where 24 hours are never enough for me. If there was such a thing as a see-saw with 3 ends, then it would be the best representation of a triangle conflict I had been plagued with all year long - 靖璇, weekend overtime and basketball.

-sigh-

Sunday was the only day I get to do sports, particularly basketball but there were times when my basketball buddies suddenly dwindled due to some new activities they were interested in. However, going to basketball means forgoing Sunday overtime and this did not go very well with boss. In fact, he has been using it as an excuse to mentally deduct a few points off my performance review even though I had contributed various accomplishments towards the team. The fact that 靖璇 is working far away from home did not help at all since she would only be available during the weekends as well. As much as I wished to abandon the weekend overtime due to the overwhelming stress, I do realize that it would provide me with much more financial flexibility at the cost of 靖璇 and me gaining a few extra slabs of abdominal fat. :P

Hence, 2009 saw me trying to make a few amendments to balance out these triple commitments. I have given up DotA to spare myself some quality time for evening tele-conversation with 靖璇. Moreover, realizing that there were way too many things that I was trying to be good at, I have trimmed my interests down to a probationary series of three - basketball, go and StarCraft. With the success of my maiden attempt at half-marathon across the Penang Bridge, I might turn to running to compensate for the lack of basketball which will definitely give me much more space to breath during weekends... if only I can get myself to sleep and wake up early to run. :P

For the final two months of 2009, I was swarmed with more than 5 wedding dinners and these would have definitely made a good curtain call if not for the few close friends of mine who ended their long-running relationships.

I have also started looking for a house to call my own. The price of properties on the island have been ballooning and sooner or later, it will be inevitable for me to move across to the mainland for a home that better suits my current salary. I did locate a condominium project that I was interested in but alas, it only proved to be a bitter pill to swallow that no matter how much overtime I made, my monthly income is evidently insufficient to even secure me a house loan of approximately RM250,000.

Bad news aside, I finally had a passport with my name on it. Just like a credit card, I have to keep reminding myself to be prudent with it. Overall, I have only travelled to three locations for year 2009 - Thailand, Kuala Lumpur and Langkawi. Was that considered as too many trips in the span of a year?

Someone once told me that bank passbook is one of the many items you can use to evaluate the way you lived your previous year. I have always brushed it off as a tad too materialistic method but if it was true, then 2009 must have been a massive failure since I almost emptied my savings. Three rings, a personal computer, a secret project - plus one or two more major spending that escaped my mind at the moment - and BAM, almost 90% of my savings were gone!

Since I had a lot of three's mentioned above - knives, hobbies, vacations and rings - I shall make the list of resolutions for year 2010 short, with another set of three's:

• registration of marriage
• vacation in Singapore
• accumulate and maintain a minimum amount of RM10,000 in savings

So what about you? How do you cap off your 2009 and what do you look forward to in 2010?