CNY is over

Chinese New Year is just over. There is no celebrative mood for me as far as Chinese New Year is concerned, as I always treat it as a reunion with family members especially my younger brothers and cousin brothers and sister. After the long holiday, somehow I feel exhausted as there was long distance traveling over the Chinese New Year, from Seremban to Sitiawan then from Sitiawan to Arau then back to Sitiawan and Seremban again. The traffic jam can be killing sometimes.

Probably what I enjoy the most during the Chinese New Year was accompanying my cousins flying kite in the evening. The winds were too strong and inconsistent and due to the limitation of space, we can’t really fly the kites too high. It was scorching hot in Arau as the temperature went up as high as 36 C. So we could only fly kites in the evening before sunset. You don’t see that many kites on the sky nowadays unlike a few decades ago when I was a small boy. You can ask around and see how many kids know how to fly kites or rather how many of them keen for kite flying.

Perhaps the advancement of new technology not only making our world smaller, even the sky also becoming smaller and smaller, especially in the town, where can you fill a big field for kite flying. But if you go to the northern areas where there are still a lot of padi fields, yes you can still fly kites during the dry spell when the padi is harvested.

As we notice our parents are getting older and older every year, we are also not young anymore anyway. That is how life is, time flies and we can just look forward to every new day and slowly forgetting the past. Perhaps it is good to let go all the sad things and to start all over again. Just let the bygones be bygones.

Probably the biggest shock during this Chinese New Year was the news of my wife’s colleague committed suicide, jumping down from 14th floor on the eve of Chinese New Year. She was suspected to have suffered from postnatal depression. We may never understand what really caused a cherish lecturer to have made such a painful decision to leave behind her new born daughter and jumped down from the 14th floor. But it goes to show that behind every cherish face, there could be some hidden pains deep inside.

We can only hope that she will rest in peace and the family member can slowly come out from this dilemma and the baby girl who was left behind by her mother can grow up healthily as we know that it will be the greatest pain in life for a baby growing up without the love and care of a mother. I have a lot of respect for working ladies especially those working mothers needing to take care of their children. There could be many stresses from the workplace, home, sometime even from the husband as well.

I must say that there are not many good men around nowadays which could provide unwavering loves to their wives. Forget the unchanged melody, even the seemingly good family men like Tiger Wood and John Terry can turn out to be a womaniser. Perhaps it is timely for the government to amend the policy to allow a longer maternity leaves so that the new mothers can have sufficient rest before they have to face the many challenges of their working lives again. Perhaps by so doing, it can help to reduce the stress from the workplace or perhaps the bosses or colleagues need to provide more supports and cares to the newly delivered working ladies.

My own experience is that a female staff was instructed to be transferred to another office located about 80 km away from her previous office and can you imagine a newly delivered woman need to drive almost one and a half hour to her office and another one and a half hour back home? Sometimes, this is how things are going on.

Toyota/Honda recalls

I drive a Kia Rio. A Korean hatchback that not many people are having as it is not popular as compared to its Japanese rivals such as Toyota and Honda. One of my wife’s friend always teases that those buy Korean cars are people envy of a foreign made but cannot actually afford a Japanese, American or European car. I couldn’t be careless about what other are thinking on me driving a small car. I like small car actually as I don’t believe in paying high taxes to the Government just to be a sucker pretending to be rich. If you browse through the internet and do some surveying on the car prices around the world, you will come to the painful fact that we are the suckers paying high taxes to own foreign cars.

I’m very happy with my little Kia Rio, a fully imported car which I bought in 2006 and 4 years have gone and this little car is still serving me well, as peppy as when I first drove it. The car came with an AP and it was stated in the AP that the cost of the car was RM 25,000 and I actually paid RM 68,000 for that small little car which only costs about one third of the price in Korea. What the fcuk, I was cursing and swearing when I saw the price of the car stated on the AP. Probably one third of the price goes to the AP holder and another one third goes to the government. And why we need the bloody APs?

Never mind the small car, as long as no major problem. Sometimes I’m just too good in consoling myself for not being able to drive a fancier car like all my friends are doing. Just look at the all the while reliable Toyota and Honda are also giving a lot of problems of late. Toyota is recalling a few models in US due to a fatal accident arising from a faulty accelerator while Honda is struggling with recalls on its Fit/Jazz worldwide. Well you may say that I’m a sour grape but I’m just not believing in paying high installments every months just to let people believe that you can afford a big car. Or even if you could afford one, are you willing to let the government suck your bloods by paying exorbitant taxes?

Last night my wife jokingly asked me to do a simple test pertaining to the sex addict behavior as she discovered the test shown on the newspaper. I just told her that I have no capability both monetarily and charismatically to be like the rank of Tiger Wood and John Terry so she could stop worrying too much about that. She nodded in agreement after having a glance on me and then she continued saying that man will start get itchy when they have money. Probably yes, I will likely start to think about a big car once I’m richer and a bit more itchier.

Teh tarik again?

Teh tarik is not my favourite as I hate milk. Ever seen I grown up, I don’t take milk or for that matter, anything contains milk. I think I’m allergy to milk products, or what the medical experts call it lactose intolerance. I remember when I was in the primary school when the school was giving free milk, I would ensure my younger brother queuing just behind me so that I could let him take mine. Sometimes when the teachers were around, I got no choice but to hold my own nose and drink the milk, more often than not, throwing out the milk I just drank and all other stuff in my stomach. Can’t help it, I was borne like that.

But this teh tarik I’m talking about is a term used by our company referring to a light meeting up with employees especially executives and our bosses such as managing director or director for R&D department and so on. They call it a teh tarik session probably it is intended to be less official and more of a casual meeting for executive within a same department to share their insights of certain issues or updates on certain development in the company or just for the bosses to give their words of encouragement and so on.

I normally will attend the teh tarik session if I’m not going out station. At least I can get some firsthand information from the bosses be it good or otherwise, but this time around, they put it just before the Chinese New Year on 12 February, 2010. It looks like I’m going to give it a miss to avoid horrible traffic jam to my balik kampong trip.

Police get a pay rise

A couple of days ago I was having a job interview with a few young chaps looking for employment as non-clerical staff in our company. Two of them were employed as contract staff for Jabatan Perangkaan and they were looking for permanent employment for better job security realizing that Jabatan Perangkaan may not have the budget to continue employing them . These are decent people, after a short while of familiarization chats, they spoke up freely and I could see their desire to earn a better living in order to provide more comfort for their families.

One of the chap indicated that his ambition is to be a police officer and he had in fact tried 7 times for the pre-recruitment tests but failed all, and he would try again in the next recruitment exercise. I asked him why he failed in the tests, seeing he is quite fit physically and showing good discipline. He mentioned that it could be his height that failed him, saying it somewhat disappointedly. I like this chap and thought of giving him the job but alas he was quick to reject the offer once he knew that we offered him the pay about similar to what he is getting from Jabatan Perangkaan.

As living expenses are going higher and higher by days, many young people are constantly looking for jobs that offer higher pay in order to stay afloat in a very competitive world nowadays. That’s just normal. I lost two good staff over last year due to the same reason. They would rather choose to work in the factory as if they work harder, can earn up quite a fair bit of overtime whereas those staff in the plantation companies like ours are getting a sickening increment year after year restrained by the collective agreement. Even my younger brother, a new graduate chose to work far a way in Pakistan despite the security issues over there. Not that he can't get an employment here but all is because of money.

It is good to learn that a new pay scheme has been approved by the Public Service Department and the policemen from the rank of Sergeants and above will get a significant pay rise and also higher allowances. The pay revision is timely as our neighboring Singapore already offers a much higher pay scheme to their public servants in order to curb corruptions. With a higher pay scheme, naturally the public will expect a more efficient service and no corruption from the police force.

I hope the young chap who failed 7 times in his recruitment test will succeed this time as just a few days ago I saw the recruitment advertisement for Policeman on the newspaper.