I'm gettin' outta here

My ranting continues here, http://pickholes.wordpress.com/
I found the new place a bit warm and cozy... (o yeah..like you care..)

Whats next?

My eldest daughter will be completing high school this year. SMS me the other day to get my advice on her way-forward. It was 'what-course-to-take-which-univ-to-apply' kinda impasse. I am glad that she consulted me coz it is important for her to be guided appropriately. With peers, teachers, councilors giving all kinda mixed views, I know it could be quite a dilemma for her. I really want to make sure that the line she’s planning to take really best suits her interest. Not much of an advice, but I gave her these two points to take into account in whatever route she is taking.

1. On course/major – just go for what interests you, full stop
2. On University choice – anywhere in this world given that they are accredited, full stop

Bear in mind that the only fun thing about learning is when you are learning something that you like to learn (same goes with working). You like it you’ll enjoy it. And this shall only be the aspect to consider when choosing which course to take. Understood that at her tender age, deciding on this can be hellavu confusion. It is only natural for ones to choose a major that could land them a good and well-paid career in future, but how could you tell now. Why would one consider the market, job prospect, paycheck and other potential goodies at this stage as these external not only can revolutionize over a period time but are completely irrelevant. This is about you and what you want to learn; these external factor are immaterial. The one and only factor shall be your interest and passion - pick a course based on these.

On which u to apply, I’d advised her to just go ahead and apply any accredited u out there. Forget the ranking and shit like that, for all it tells is basically the ranking of the u, not the graduates. There are criteria applied in doing this ranking exercise that 99% of which have nothing to do with the performance of their student…Bush graduated from Harvard and Yale....duh..??.Why jeopardize yourself going for Ivy League when the standard that they need uphold to sustain their ’elite’ status will fail you. All you need is to learn and acquire knowledge, not to be penalized with exorbitant fees and failures.

I told my baby whatever it was, I would be 200% supporting her, it was her future and her life.

A 1.6b for Youtube...*sigh*

It’s a beautiful day today, the morning started with a good weather ergo my mood goes along with it. Looking out from my 3rd floor office window, I could see herds of goats ushered along by an old lady shepherd with a stick. Hundreds of them from all kinda species, from the thick haired (resembling our Persian cat) to a normal Indian black goat you’d see back home. It is so unbelievable observing how this one lady controlling hundreds of these animals, ushering and maneuvering the herd with none dispersing out of the flock. Its kinda neat seeing this from my office. You’d see this lady strolling just behind the flock raising her stick shouting and screaming, reminiscent of a three-crowned general calling all her soldiers to take orders and march straight ahead..!! (I am sure they have a special human to nature language that I don’t understand..). Just imagine the networth of that old crusted-heel lady with hundreds of goats at an average of 1000RM each……

Now that brings me to think of the non-existence of any clear form of standard or yardstick correlating with life fulfillment. Lifestyle, money, cars, houses, fancy dine and wine etc etc these are all man-invented benchmarks, presumably applied as the correct gauge to level ones life accomplishment. This is not a always true though, think about it..

Last night I was hanging-out “sheeshaing” with regular buddy at our favorite joint. Among other smart-ass-topic-of-conversations, we were talking about the recent purchase of Youtube by Google at a hefty 1.6 fucking billions!! Youtube is a program hosting net users around the globe to post their pathetic videos on line for free. It was constructed by three young ex PayPal employees a little over a year ago. God knows how the idea was triggerred…these guys are barely 30 now, they’d probably in their early 20s when the idea crop up! At that rebellious age, whilst others would probably talk craps that revolve around sex and booze whenever they gather, these three nerds here were discussing something that are now shoving their ass up with billions. So un-fucking-believable would you say..

Now…with that much money they’re getting, I'd say what else in life that they shall struggle further for. Common sense will calculate your growing billion over an average life span of 80 years will give your life just about every-damn-thing and any-darn-thing under the sun.. need you go out busting your ass for more……………Unlike the hotmail guy who went partying non stop …(but thats another sad story altogether). I am sure for these three billionaires here, life will continue with more probable prospects and opportunity-ventures.

Like I’ve said earlier, it’s not the money, the wine and dine craps that measure your life realization, its something else that these three dudes and the old shepherd lady have in common…

Cobaan.....

Alright, feel like bitching today...there seems to be lots of things getting on my nerves of late and these are about to start hitting my threshold limit of bursting out into full flame. First off I'd like to say that I really hate it when people take punctuality very light, what more honoring promises. Alas…unfortunately I happen to be living in a society with 99.99% of its populace do not have a tinkling idea of this essence. It is always maddening to deal with this type of pea-brain morons.

As far back as I could remember, never once had I experienced an appointment that turned out on time. That includes appointment made by Services Company here for installation of phone, Internet, Cable TV and other home appliances that required their service personnel skills to hook up or home delivery of certain purchases. In all these occasions, they’d never turned up on time as promised and we ended up house-arresting ourselves at home waiting foolishly for them. These suckers fucked our day!!

The typical chrono-fucking-logy would normally go something like this - an appointment is set, the guy would not come as set, until you call which would obviously result in another time setting, which is knowingly useless as it would never register in his brain until you call again to follow up, and sure enough it eventually end up with another time setting, and these would continue until some shouting and cursing happen (mind you the answer to these calls is always....yes sirrr I am cumming!!).

My A/C was finally fixed in the kitchen last night at 10pm. The arrangement was to come at 4.30pm the day before. I went to this shop two days earlier to get an A/C installed in my kitchen…

Me: So when you can come to fix it.
Pea-Brain (PB) : Tomorrow
Me : What time??…you know I need you to tell me exactly when you can come so I know when I should be home, else I have other plans to attend to ..you know what I mean, I don’t want to be stuck at home the whole evening waiting..
PB : 4.30pm shuuurr (sure!)
Me : (had a feeling that he would not make it at 4.30pm as Iftar would be around 6.00pm, I proposed..) If you cannot make it at 4.30pm tomorrow, you can come on the following day, morning time, say 10.00am
PB : shuuurr I come 4.30 pm sirr…

I wanted to believe though the ‘shuurr’ sounded so thorny and I hate not to believe. But as usual I was fucked, again and I knew it!!

May be this is the norm here, not accommodating to the norm leaves me quarrelling with these numbskull all the times and the fact that all the squabbles are known pointless leave me with dreadful headache and screw up my mood end of the day….

Smart Society..are we?

Ran out of puke to throw up listening to the wedding of an artist back home. Was it necessary to make it that big, I mean real huge! Fine, you are an icon and it was your greatest day … but again with all the hype and publicity, spotlight and exposure, coverage and shit…(arrgghh , I need to puke again..)
Back on vacation last month, all I heard on media, other than rape cases and sick bomoh molesting customer, was the fairy tale of this artist and her grand marriage. Ironic, it was aired live on tube as if all of us were devotees of hers…give me a break! In all fairness, media was also to be blamed for exploiting them.

For me, what it was, is just an ordinary marriage of a desperate 'if-not-would have-been-andartu' artist with an old chap who I assumed is a firm advocate of variety & viagra. That was that. Oh well..selamat hingga ke anak cucu.

And another hit sensation, was the break off of an artist and his cheap-publicity-seeker fiancé…it was also shown live on TV! These two events were covered at national level, and the sickest part of this was the statistic showing millions glued to their TV watching either one of these two sick events.

Now, talk about smart society we are!

Woozy

Finally weekend is here, cannot wait!

I hate first day in office after a long vacation! It’s zillion times worst than Monday blues. Forget the jetlag, I got in the office quite early, thought of checking on my accumulated emails thronging the inbox before other colleague came in, but dang…I forgot my password... it was waaayyy much later that I finally got it right (that was after trillion attempts). Cleaned up my desk and put all papers in order in between greeting collegues, phew .. in this part of the world, do not expect a short greeting of “hi, welcome back”. Not before I really settle down, bosses called in for discussions, meeting, follow up, clarification and what not... (shit.. I felt as if there was a plot among them to brain-fucking people on the first day they came back from vacation just for heck of it!). I was practically leaping from one meeting to another and before I knew it, it was passed 5.00pm. It was busy busy busy and adding to this, the company was fucking chasing me for our “buddy’ who not only left the company but leaving some shits with the landlord and utilities company too! I was hauled up to settle the mess, I was like fuck, do I care?.. but a good man I am, I was shoving my neck in to settle the problem. That went on until today…finally.

I still have hundreds of unread email that I have to go through..

Stalactite-stalagmite

This is my last week here before I go off for my long awaited holiday. I need the break. Last night, I cleaned up the whole old apartment, I mob the floor, cleaned the windowpane and doors, dusted the walls, cleaned up the kitchen and the finale…. cracking-down the stove (hope missus read this and says “..how sweet, my hubby is cleaning up the house…”).

The stove was filthy – never knew that cuz I've never really looked or had any good motive to look at the stove before this. I had to practically use all kind of detergent, anti-grease and what-not to get the old stove spotless. The panel was sticky as dodol, oily and blackened. Scrapping the stove took my entire energy. I just could not believe layers and layers of oil that formed a good 3” of coating on the panel surface and grill (ok, may be that’s a bit exaggerating…but it is thick…).

I had to use scrapper to peel off the layers. Can you imagine it all started with a daily spattered of cooking oil that deposited here and there over a period of time to form a good stalactite-stalagmite-like formation on the panel.

This made me ponder about our health – all the saturated fat that goes in our system through the food we take everyday and how it could ultimately form a lethal coating to our arteries wall over a period of time. Scary…

Helpline from hell

Missus and kids left a week ago, and life without them around sucks big time. I miss them the second they checked-in at the airport. We communicate everyday though and missus sends SMS every now and then. What drives me nuts is my GSM (hand phone) - all of a fuckin’ sudden, I cannot send or replying to SMS. This has never happened before - just when I need it most.

I called the Helpline like a hundred and fucketh times, nicely complaining about this trouble. At first, a lady nicely told me “..yes sir, we’ll fix the problem, and in 5 minutes, you’ll be able to send SMS..bla bla..”. Oh ok, I waited five minutes, but nothing fixed, problem still persist until now. I have been calling the Helpline since then, and they kept telling me that it was a technical issue, and the technical team was still fixing it…now is what, after 5 days, and they are still fixing it…I am getting tired, and what infuriate the hell outta me is the fact that they never bother to call to keep you posted - so I have to call them like, every day.

This morning, I was running out of patient. I called and I was not very well mannered this time, again they told me that it was a technical problem and the technical team was in charge to fix it…oh my God, did I hear that right…. I said fuck the terminology referred to the issue, I don’t fucking care how you term the problem, technical, commercial, procedural, legal or sexual - it is a problem to me, and I need it fixed right away coz I am paying for the service every second of my using your line.

As a customer, I am corresponding with you (so called Helpline) as a focal point, and please don’t tell me what department or subdivision within your organization was responsible to look into it. So, I asked who was this technical team, were they here or residing at some other far reaching planets and asked her to find out what were they doing with my complaint – for all you know, they could be sitting around picking each others nose rather than attending to my problem – I mean I am sure it is a small problem that can be fixed within a jiffy - it has been five nauseating days now.

I gave the lady my last word before I hung up, I want it fixed or have someone from one of your zillion subdivision within your company to call me to update OR I‘ll write a nasty letter to your management, terminate my line and subscribe to other competitor.

I have a feeling that they are not going to do shit about my complain.

Eat shit, choke and suffocate.........

I just could not take how the US and its chums (UN security and G8) are reacting to the Middle East crisis – they’re practically toying with time letting the casualty to go on… . Ironically, the US maintained that Israel has every right to defend its country…give me a break you satan!

You cowboy were so fast in retorting to Iran and North Korea, though on the same principle that these two sovereign countries have their right to pursue on anything that they judged beneficial for their country. I am so peeved by this injustice to write more, I wish great satan to eat shit, choke, suffocate, asphyxiate and die !

Moving day

Swear to God, I’ll never want to move again, not until I am parting the country for good or if there is a confirmed astronomic evidence telling me the building I am staying now is threatened by an incoming comet or some space debris. It was one helluva sweat-squeezing and strenuous chore, my weekend was fucked!

Luckily, bro called a day before we moved telling us that he had the labor ready to help out. I knew he would help…he…he ..my bloody cold silent treatment really worked then...yes!

I was stunned the other day when he told me he could not help…man…!! what was that! I was like, shit…!! I had been helping him with all sorta shits all the way back from our bujang-days, and he was slapping right on my face with a plain NO to my only request!

It was un-fucking-believable just how much stuff we had to pack and unpack. You’d never realized just how much shitload of stuff (or junk) you have accumulated until the time you had to pack and move. Missus learned a lesson though; so in the future, whenever you are in doubt as whether to keep or to throw something, just make up your mind and throw the damn thing because chances are …you will never use the damn thing or find anything useful about it!

Six labors worked their asses up till late afternoon, man… these bunch of dudes are god-made to do this kind of hard work. They were really kicking ass - with the sizzling-heat weather and moving mess, they worked non stop. I treated them with good breakfast and lunch and at day's end, paid them well (by the prevailing standard here).

Actually, my current lease will not expire until September, but we had to move now as missus and kids will be going off for a vacation next week (…I am gonna miss them..). Basically I am paying for 2 apartments until then.

...mudah lupa

Of late, news back home revolved around one butthead (that used to be a super ass kisser) being so rude to our old man. Not that I really fancy anyone here, but the least he could’ve done is to show some respect and listen, I mean… common you rotten ex-fuckhead-lawyer, that old man has done a lot for the country. My point is…take your old folks - you may not agree whole heartedly with them on all matters, but I am sure we would not bluntly blast them off just like that, knowing what our old folks have done and sacrificed raising shithead-devil like us. O well, life is sometime soo unjust…We had plan to move out .. just for heck of it. The apartment we are staying now is quite ok, but the longer we stay there, we notice the smaller the space is getting…may be the building is shrinking…. No, actually, we thought of moving into a bigger apartment… the kids need the extra space, our elder daughter will be enrolling high school next term, so a private room without free invasion by her younger sis and bro would be a special treat for her. We found the apartment, not far from where we stay now and signed the lease couple of days ago. We are shifting this weekend. Missus is busy packing stuff and I am busy thinking of ways to get help. My bro who had earlier agreed to arrange for labor is now refusing to do for un-fucking-knowm reason. O well…like I said, life could be sooo unfair.

Aaargh...

Just one of those fucked-up days when you don’t feel like your normal self. Everything went haywire and screwed your brain up out of tranquility. That’s what I am going through right now.

I feel like bursting out but the thought of keeping quiet is better than to say a word keeps me holding everything up within. These are all work related - some assignment are being held up gratuitously simply because of the ignorance of some lunatics who failed to keep their words and ignored the dateline. Other job that I expected to be completed by now was halfway done for un-fucking-known reasons. Adding to it, some nuisance jackass are tailgating me like hell to get something ready asap, knowing damn well the snarl-up was far beyond my control.

And the list goes on and on...how I wish I were at Bukit Kayu Itam Golf and Country Club (..Danok...Hatyai...Changloon...) right at this moment..

Aaarghh….have a sense that some planned work would not get done before my annual vacation in August… hate that gut feeling, I hope with all these I can still make it all before my planned annual vacation….cross my finger..

The auditors are here.

Just feel like writing out of disappointment.
Yesterday, I was at the warehouses that akin to a burn pit with hell-heat that went on something like 45-50 degree, digging for some ancient files requested by the external auditors. Spent almost 4 fucking hours there, assisted by few dumb labors that moved an inch only when you pushed, else they would not budge.

For the past two weeks, our company is being audited by a group of external auditors. We had been advised by the management to render full support to this group in executing their assignment. On my part, the auditors had been asking me for a whole lot of information of this and that, to which I gave what I do have or knew how to find them, but for others that I had not a single idea to trace, I just told them that we had all these information nicely filed at the warehouse – hoping they’d quit asking for these as time went by. But no sirrr…. an email from auditors was sent to big guy up there demanding whatever documents that was said to be filed nicely at the warehouse to be submitted to them immediately.

Oh boy, I was fucked! Big guy returned an email requesting me, who else, to drag my sorry ass to the F1-sepang-like-heat warehouse.

Truth is documents at warehouse were a big-fucking-mess. Loose documents, boxes and old cabinet were in total disarray (I would not surprise had we found one of our ex-staff we thought left the company buried in it.). I managed to barely retrieve what were requested though, but I would not want to go through this hellish blow ever again. I have no qualm but to put a 300 percent blame on the numbskull who were doing my job two/three years ago. This numbskull apparently did not know how to put things a bit in order, and hell…….look what have you done to poor innocent sole like me!

What a bummer.

Missus has been tutoring (read torturing) our daughter for SAT exam. The exam was scheduled to begin today but we found out from school that the exam paper has not yet arrived from UK…. (I could not fucking believe that!). There was a letter from school advising parents about this deferment until …well..I guess until they receive the paper, which is unknown to them as I am writing this.

According to my daughter, when the school announced about the deferment, most of the pupils were relief, but not she though. What a bummer... she would love to get it over with. A postponed exam means an indefinite time frame for her to continuously study every night, sleep early with no outing, computer and extended hours of watching tv. I can just imagine how stress that is!

I smoke

I smoke, and I don’t protest to the fact that smoking increases the risk of lung cancer. I do know how lethal this habit is. I am trying to quit but…hear me out..

Last night I was walking to my car, passing through a group of some five people who apparently didn’t know how to pick a spot to gather so as not to obstruct passageway. So they were gathering right in the middle of a small path for me to pass by. I excused myself courteously (mind you, I am always polite..), they broke the cluster and gave way. I don’t smoke in the house, so as usual when I left my apartment that night, I immediately lit my fag. When I passed this group, I had my cigarette but I didn’t take a puff or blow a smoke.

What got on my nerves was when I noticed from the corner of my eyes, one guy from the group was looking or rather ogling at me and babbling something referring to my cigarette smoke that he could smell. He seemed to be holding his breath the seconds I passed him …well I guess he was trying to be safe from being a second hand smoker. When I looked back, he gave me that ‘just-kill-yourself-NOT-US-with-your-cigarette’ face. That pissed me off, I mean, first, you were making your little convention in the middle of the road, second, I didn’t take a puff when I passed by and third, you should’ve thanked me coz I could’ve blown a good cloud of smoke right to your face. So I stared back, and gave him a good ‘fuck-you-too’ face!

I am a smoker, and please do not expect me to just throw my pricey cigarette when I pass by you for your fuck sake!
Ok....fact is there are smokers and non-smokers in this world. To me, the dissection does not in any way representing a division between a healthy conscious and non-healthy conscious lots. There are about trillion things that you have to observe to keep yourself healthy, like-wise trillion things to kill yourself – yes, smoking is just one of them.

It is absurd to single out smoking as the culprit to cancer or other heart related diseases. We are all misled by theories and unproven researches done by non-smokers scientist or specialist. What the’re doing is actually trying to impose their personal preference onto others. It has nothing to do with health. Yes, smoking may be bad to you, so is imbalance diet, or not exercising, or being in the middle of highly polluted area, or sunbathing, or driving, or eating seafood, or walking down the traffic-craze roads. Most of us live in a perpetual haze of atmospheric pollutants that have nothing at all to do with cigarette. Fact that you don't choose the one particular risk does not mean that you are not exposed to a more serious risk because of other choices that you personally don't regard as significant, despite the fact that they are more likely to wind up killing you.

Another thing, I read in one article that says, Quote “…there are scientific studies that purportedly prove that smoking increases one's risk of cancer, however, it does not cause cancer, contrary to everything you've ever read. That has never been proved. What has been proved (despite the logical holes in those studies) is that smoking can increase your risk of cancer. That's all. The fact that this proof has gone long undisputed has allowed anti-smoking groups to equate increased risk with cause, but those two terms are not equivalent. If smoking caused lung cancer, one would expect all or even most smokers to develop lung cancer, but the fact of the matter is that only a tiny fraction of all smokers develop the disease, and non-smokers develop it as well, just is slightly lesser numbers.” Unquote.

What I am trying to get to here is that why most of us always pick on smoking when there are actually other equally weighted factors that could harm your health…like lack of exercise and imbalance diet. Smoking is as bad as shoving in food with saturated fat, trans fat or hydrogenated oil. The guy that gave me that look last night was obese as pig with a BMI index of most probably not less than 40 if not more, save that hold-your-breath crap that you did, with that extra pounds you carry for lack of exercise and overeating, you’d probably die of heart attack anyway.

By the way there was a study about second hand smoker that proved all the studies done before are just bunches of lying sack of shits.. Passive smoking doesn't cause cancer....I knew it!

*sigh..*

Man…I was so tight up last week, shitloads of assignment landed on me with unreasonable datelines given. I didn’t even go to my blog to update (or rather to express my ill will). I was thinking why were all these tasks coming all at the same time? Just weeks before that, I was psychologically tortured by the ticking of my watch waiting for the day to end…I was practically doing nothing in office. I may have looked real busy alright… eyes glued to PC with fingers prolifically punching keyboard – shit I was actually writing junk emails, sending jokes and browsing ‘real-strange-sites’ all week.

Had bad war of words experience this morning though, one motherfucker of one uncivilized continent with billion uncontrollable populace origin thought he could get away scot-free by assuming I forget what I said few weeks ago. Too bad you shithead, I happened to record everything and dare to quote what I said. I was quarrelling with him (I should’ve not entertained this moron at the first place), and at one point I just could not take his sordid tongue twisted squabble that I kept quiet and put down the phone. I despised him the moment I first met him (what do you expect of a person who wear sunglasses in office…ok may be he got a bit carried away with too much pathetic bollywood movies), but …nevermind!. I just knew then if our company had to deal with this moronic character, we would be looking at hell in from of us….and true enough we have already felt the heat now...

Mystical crap

There is this one friend of mine spreading a news of a place where he would get a treatment for his diabetic and liver problem. I am not sure how chronic he is (I presume not that life threatening else he would not have the time to spread the news). He referred the place as pusat perubatan traditional – as it is not a recognized hospital or medical center with qualified doctors or medical specialists. The place offers treatment with supernatural medication and numinous surgery to all kind of illnesses. Cost-wise, a treatment is charged at an average of 1 to 2 grand!

I would imagine a place manned by a sick-psycho whose childhood dream was to become a doctor but failed miserably, dressed only in sarong with untrimmed moustache and beard and huge stoned-rings worn at every other finger. Waiting for his prey….ready to con…

Well I don' tknow what to say here …. but personally I’d rather spend that much money getting the right treatment at the right place. I heard there are just too many of these traditional crap centers nowadays (flip Bacaria, centerfold, you’ll see one big ad...and try Mastika too!). Ironically they are all surviving recession-proof up till now. Do these places need to be registered with some ministry or whatever requirements there are?

OK, may be, they are people who actually went there and coincidently recovered thus strengthen their belief in craps they have been prescribed by these centers and off course the most all-time-popular authenticity indicator – when buses of Singaporean thronging the place ..I don’t know why Singaporeans presences at these places justify the genuineness.

I am not totally discounting the genuineness of these sorts of treatment and what wonders they can do (though I truly believe the only traditional way of cure is to go for conventional way of treatment – revert to proper diet and exercise) but there are just too many of these places nowadays... like at every kilometer you go.

Free ride.. no more

Months ago, I registered my interest on-line to one seminar that will be held in KL. It's a 5-day seminar and scheduled in mid May.

The website says crap like “...it is an event that you can not miss.... past seminars were held with great success in Los Angeles, London, Tokyo and Frankfurt…bla bla bla… hear what past participants have to say…it enriches your knowledge in …ba bla bla…"

Yeah right…gimme a break you blood sucking leech profit oriented organizer…all you care is sucking money legitimately from big corporations who do not bothered much about spending money on lunatics who yearn for once in a while be away from their boss or wives. Truth is, nobody wants to sit and listen to something they already knew for 5 straight days if not for the free vacation with food and accommodation that go with it– believe me Mr Organizer! (well…like you care, anyway).

Not that I reaaaalllyyy want to enhance my already rusted brain with this seminar, but the timing of this event coincides with my scheduled trip to KL for some personnel affairs. So it is kinda free flight for me to fly there. I didn’t tell my boss when I made this online registration, until recently when the organizer e-mailed and called me to confirm my participation. So, as a good asswipe employee that I am, I forwarded the email to my boss with a fancy fiction justifying the need for me to attend the seminar. I hope he would read and understand my dire need to enrich myself with additional super knowledge garnered from this seminar, which in turn would be poured down to other poor soles in the company.

That was a week ago, but up till now, no news from boss yet. I kinda wondering what is holding up his decision, (either he bump into my blog and found out my real intention of going or he just don’t feel like letting me go this time).

I know my boss, he’d normally reply to e-mails within seconds he receive them. He is very good at this electronic communication - even if you cough or fart he will reply with an email asking “what’s that?” that’s how fast and efficient he is in replying an email, but not this time…I felt like seeing him personally but again, I detest the situation where I have to orally justify the trip…I guess I am just so spoilt with the marvel of electronic communications.

Whatever it is, I hope he'll reply soon else I have to buy my own ticket. My left hand itch lately…. …*sigh*

Diversification

My brother left the country and moved here last week presumably looking for greener meadow. He’s here taking over the running of a small company owned by this one sheikh. Bro of mine is one heck of a character - the most apparent is his boldness to take risks that are sometime completely avoidable and his bluntness of bludgeoning any damn thing crossing his path. He relented 9-5 job years ago after giving a good punch on his boss face before started his own business.

He was doing fairly ok for the first few years, but suffers badly in recent years, with less and less business secured. I have been observing his progress over the years and feel sorry for him. Though on the surface he seems pretty much independent as compared to me who sometime has to cream boss asses, life is actually shit-tough for his wife and kids… I hope it’ll start changing soon.

The other day I was talking-cock with a colleague about businesses and what actually makes one really succeed. So we, the smart-asses, kinda concluded that one of the thousand principles for success is one ability to fully master the trade he is in, I mean really master it to the extend that if you are into condom manufacturing business, you should not only be acquainted with the very aspect of that rubber such as the elasticity, the grip, the rim, the sensitivity and flavor, the ‘watch-that-pubic-hair-when-rolling-down’ dilemma, but also the market and other external factors that could affect the market. This mastery could only be attained by years and years of doing only that and being only there – yes, we call it specialization!.

In a real business world, specialization provides you with the aptitude to be familiar with the surrounding variables influencing every corner of your business - the complete supply chain that includes market, suppliers, sub suppliers, customers et all. Only with this knowledge gained from specializing that we could sail through various predicaments, adeptly identify the opportunities and the threat, and hence knowing the precise time to strike or to retreat for the business to leap a step forward.

On the other hand, diversification, though it normally associated with an act of business expansion, is actually a risk that could either make or break you. Every business entity envisages to diversify as part of its development – so as to be one big momma conglomerate with seemingly growing turnover and income, but untimely, premature or misdirection to this vision may twirl it the other way around.

Check out big corporations back home who went eagerly on diversifying in unfamiliar playing field only to be backfired a little later with more mismanagement and losses.

I am no couch patato

I don’t really watch TV, beside the fact that TV falls within our little ones territory of control, there is just nothing much to see on TV. Though there are over 800 channels on my cable set to flip, 80% of that comes in languages I don’t speak. Good thing that I am subscribed to Showtime, which avail some 50 channels of an understood language.

When we, me and missus do watch (that’s after the kids sleep), our favorite stations would always be Movies, News and some Arabic music channels. But off late, we experienced a radical shift to our favorites. We are now tuning in to BBC Food channel at every possible opportunity we have. BBC Food is the BBC's international food channel and broadcasts in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. This channel is packed with the best-known chefs showcasing the best food program from around the world.

Watching these great cooks or chef mixing ingredients and turning them into some exotic dishes enthuses me. Everything seems to be so simple (but believe me, it is not as it seems though)! Their finished products are like a masterpiece. My favorite is James Reeson, others that I admire includes Ainsley Harriott, Nigella Lawson, Delia Smith, Jamie Oliver, Antonio Carluccio, Antony Worrall Thompson, Rick Stein, Sophie Grigson, Ken Hom, Madhur Jaffrey and Gary Rhodes.
From my trivial observation, there are these three values that appear to be the common denominators for all these great chefs… swiftness, creativity and presentation skill.

1. 1. Swiftness - they seem to be kicking ass (..amplified by good editing), they are quick in action with ideas come in a flash and almost spontaneous, orders of preparation are well synchronized so one act doesn’t wait for the next, rather some can actually run simultaneous. Not to mention the slicing, cutting, mincing and moving around the kitchen – they all go zas zas zas…done!.
2. Great chefs are creative; they’re practically inventors – crafting something new. You’d never believe the geographical origin of some ingredients thrown in their foods. They must have been scouting around for ideas and inspirations, tasting and trying the whole lot under the sun in their hunt to explore.
3. And most evident, these people are exceptional artist they are so artistic in presenting the food to drool you...

I am hungry....