Half an hour hassle just for 4 cents

I got a letter from Maybank stated that my 4 cents balance amount has been overdue. To my shock, this 4 cents wasn't stated anywhere in the online banking list of account nor in the e-statement. After a call to the bank, I and my wife got to know that the 4 cents is actually a bank charges on my credit card balance transfer. Argument happened in the phone between my wife and the operator as my wife was concern on our credit point deduction in National Bank due to late payment. Finally, we ask for the manager to handle this case (by issue a letter) because clearly, we have no idea there is a balance and it can't be seen thru online banking nor e-statement. Thus, we can't make the payment.

Today, I went to the bank just to make the 4 cents payment and out of my expectation, there is traffice jam and no parking lot. It took me half an hour to get a parking and another 15 mins to settle the amount. Is it worth the hassle? I just shake my head and couldn't believe why Maybank system unable to show the 4 cents balance and allow me to settle it thru online banking.

Bad attitude

There was one day I went to Sungei Wang for lunch and shopping. I usually go for Low Yat Plaza basement parking because it was much easier to find a parking there than in Sungei Wang. Somehow, there was an event happing in Low Yat and we're are directed to Sungei Wang to look for parking.

As usual, we drove quite a while at the basement car park and finally we saw a couple walking towards their car and seems ready to leave. We putted our car signal on to indicate we going to park this lot once the couple left.

We waited for 5 minutes and the driver still not start their car engine yet. My wife started to get impatient and I can see that the driver was dialing his phone and put the phone towards his ear. Well, all knows that if there is a car waiting for your parking lot, for sure we will try not to make others wait but this driver is clearly seems doesn't care (For optimistic thinking sake, I bet his has an emergency call needs to make at this point of time).

Then I checked my phone (maxis line with the best signal) and it shows that there is none signal bar at all! At this point, I'm not sure whether I should cry because I'm a victim here. Laugh, because of the driver stupidity. Angry, because of the waiting. (Luckily I didn't go crazy because of this mixed feeling).

In the end, I laugh at it, although my wife was angry how could such people exists in the world. All I can say is that stupidity does not have a cure. :D :D :D. The driver finally found out his stupidity in a short while, put down the phone and drove away.

Perth Trip 2010

My sister wedding in Perth on October. There are so much to tell but I let the picture talk the rest (a.k.a. Lazy).

From Perth Oct 2010

P.S. Taking photo is easy, blogging all of them is hard. 

Writting thru cellphone

I have been missing in writting and post to my blog due to packed schedule and unconfortable environment (lame excuses, i know). Later, I found out a way to write using my phone and post the article later with less cost (no expensive smartphone and data plan).

1. Make sure your laptop and cellphone have bluetooth functionality.
2. Cellphone usually comes with notes application. My cheap nokia (2730 classic) note app can support up to 3k character.
3. After finished writting in notes, use the bluetooth function from cellphone and send the notes to laptop. Then post the article to web. (It works using ubuntu client by pushing the note to laptop, notes are stored in /home/public/).

Now I can capture any idea I have at any specific point of time, on road. This also give me less excuses not to write due to lack of tools and caused some great idea slip away.

P.S. 80% of this article is written using cellphone and the rest is edited using open office. I'm not sure why gedit unable to open the text file due to some strange character.

Old car

Having an old car is pain in the ass. This has been the forth time i've gone to the service center to get my air-cond fix.

First, i got the compressor changed and serviced the minor part. It wasn't cheap though. After a month, there wasn't any cool air coming out from the vent.

Back to the service center again, this time it was the leakage on the cooling coil. I have it changed. After 2 weeks, the problem still came back again.

Back the same place for the third time and the foreman unable to identify where is the leakage is. He re-filled the cooling gas without charging me and ask me to come back after 2 weeks if the air cond doesn't work again.

Now i'm at the service center again after 2 weeks (forth time) and he just told that one of the gas pipe is faulty and offer to be changed. He show me the part the is faulty and willing to have it without charging me the labour cost. I agreed and hope this will end this curse once and forever.

I bet everyone would scold the foreman for con or trying making a profit out of me. But then again, the car too bloody old (~20 years) and i couldn't blame all that on the foreman only. Maybe i should have change the car before this happen to me.

In short, saving money without buying a new car is good but spending time at the car service center is really a pain.