ringgit.me

For months I have been looking for a good land-line phone so that I could take teleconference from home. I wanted to look for a phone with good voice clarity, ability to mute and to have speaker-phone capability. I have failed to find any - not that I really tried. Anyway, I have decided to stop looking. My handphone has all these capabilities already. And with maxis' 132 option to dial USA for just 20 sen a minute, why would I bother with a land line. Yay me!

Why Some People Have All The Luck By Professor Richard Wiseman, University of Hertfordshire Why do some people get all the luck while others never get the breaks they deserve? A psychologist says he has discovered the answer. Ten years ago, I set out to examine luck. I wanted to know why some people are always in the right place at the right time, while others consistently experience ill fortune. I placed advertisements in national newspapers asking for people who felt consistently lucky or unlucky to contact me. Hundreds of extraordinary men and women volunteered for my research and over the years, I have interviewed them, monitored their lives and had them take part in experiments. The results reveal that although these people have almost no insight into the causes of their luck, their thoughts and behavior are responsible for much of their good and bad fortune. Take the case of seemingly chance opportunities. Lucky people consistently encounter such opportunities, whereas unluck...

Today is the first day of Ramadan, where Muslims all over the world fast for a month - to remind them of the hunger and loneliness that a huge number of people have to go through everyday. It was 2 years ago, around this day, that AR, Bahija, Miss Peace and me went for a tour to Egypt . Time really flies. I have not been out for a overseas holiday since. Looking at the state of financial commitment I am having now, it will be a few more years before I go for another hols. I am glad that I made that trip to Egypt back in 2004. Very memorable and enjoyable trip. So much has changed since them. AR migrated. Bahija found happiness and nourishment to her soul by adopting the Christian faith. Ringgit has a new and happy life with Anne. Miss Peace owns two beautiful Golden Retrievals. Everyone progressed to the better. Let's not forget the less fortunate and take this opportunity to reflect and be grateful for what we have :) Remember, complaints erase good fortune. Grateful prayers build...

I know we are all sick of hearing this. And I am sick of talking about it. Yet I could not resist. I didn't realize that it was already 3 months since I took the team out to the Japanese buffet restaurant in 1 Utama . Time flies! So, this quarter, I decided to try to keep the budget in control. Hey, I am not paid enough to keep on sponsoring for other people! I have a house and life to sustain, you know. Anyway, so I decided to take the team to a Nyonya restaurant in 1 Utama. All was well.. nobody was complaining, except this one lady. Let's called her Seller, as she came from the sales background and loves to tell people she's a seller. Seller has problem with her boss. Often, she would talked to me over dinner and asked for advice. I usually gave her very good advice - so she feels that she could trust and be close to me. When she heard that lunch was at the Nyonya restaurant, she wasn't thrilled. She started telling me that on that same day, the business consulting g...

The Dell 24" Flat Panel Display arrived today. No dead pixel... yet... I am happy... What a awesome display! YUMMY!!

This afternoon, I arranged with the agent for another viewing of the house I bought. My mother, sister and Anne's parents have not seen it. The general consensus of everyone after viewing the house is that it is all THUMBS UP! Mom was very excited about it. She thought it'd be a very run down place (for the price) but after she has seen it, she felt much better. It is new and clean, is all she said the whole afternoon. All of them like the "pinkist" tile that the owner did upstairs. I didn't really like that very much but they all agreed that it is nice and it would be a shame (and expensive) to tear it down. So all of them have some idea or two of what needed to be done to the house.. I am glad that everybody's happy. When I think about it, most of my house buying has some areas that we are not completely satisfied with. You see, I'm not rich. Because of the limited amount of finance I could afford, there are not many places I could see. Unless I wanted a...

The Apple keyboard is really nice to type. Very responsive. There's a very good feel about it. Makes me wanna type more and more blog just to feel the thing. Highly recommended for anyone who is looking for a keyboard. The only thing that is missing is the PrintScreen button because it is relabelled as F14. I used a small little program called SharpKeys from RandyRants.com to change the Windows Registry to map F14 to PrintScreen. Simple and elegant.

"Complaints erase good fortune, grateful prayers build happiness for eternity" These are words that Anne have drilled into me for many months. After dating her for around one and a half years, I must admit that there are some truth to this statement. Most of my friends would probably attest to the fact that I complained less and less these days. And you know what, I do find that a lot of things in my life has improved - relationship with colleagues, managers, friends, families and even "acquaintances". A lot of things go very smoothly when the "people" relationship improves. So, people.. don't complain. You will find that life will be much better than before.. And if you could truly say grateful prayers.. and I mean truly grateful.. you will find happiness. I still have not achieve this level yet.. LOL. Anne said that sometimes when she pray, she will be so grateful for whatever it was she's grateful at that tears fall down her face.. Hmmmm... S...

I have ordered a Dell 24" Wide Screen flat panel display. Hopefully there won't be any dead pixels like what I had experienced previously . Wish me luck.. Because 24" is really huge, I don't think I need to use my ol' faithful Sony 17" monitor. Since I still have a Pentium 3 collecting dust beneath my table, I plan to recycle the P3 with the Sony monitor. I am thinking of getting a wireless PCI card to install it onto the P3. I could then put the P3 upstairs so that the family could also use it. My sis and father could be able to use the Net during the weekends when I am hogging the PC. So, all I need is a mouse and keyboard.. And this morning, I bought an Apple Pro keyboard. Amazing little thing.. very nice to type (dare I say that it feel even better than a ThinkPad keyboard?) - well it does.. there are two USB port behind the keyboard and I could charge my iPod. This is *totally* cool :) The keyboard has a volume up, down and mute key just above the numeri...

... and it is damn, damn cool: 1. auto download album art from iTMS for songs that you do not have album art 2. ability to browse your song as though you are flipping through CDs.. really nice.. 3. new interface when I plug in iPod.. very cool 4. ability to burn mp3 CD from playlist (previously, you can only burn music cd) .. now I can burn all the songs in my fav playlist to Anne. Last time, I had to locate individual files from my hdd to copy to her. Go download it..

I finally bought a place in Bandar Utama for rm415K .. yay! I am happy. That is a very good price. The owner is an Indian lady doctor. She stays in Damansara Heights so she must be loaded. Anyway, her daughters are furthering their studies in the USA and they needed the cash which was why they wanted to sell the house. I have done some homework prior to putting down the money. Have spoken to 3 neighbours and asked them if there are any problem with the house.. you know, like those "dirty" stuff... they said that the house has always been tenanted and they have not heard of any dirty stuff.. I guess that's good enough for me. My immediate neighbour validated the "daughters studying overseas" story. She said that the owner told her about this and asked her to help sell.. at that time, they were asking for almost rm500k but no buyer.. and they get desperate.. so.. I am very lucky! Now I have to find money and banks to help me finance the house.

My colleague is quitting. Her husband, who is working with an international bank, managed to get an assignment to London, United Kingdom, for a minimum of 2 years. My colleague is following her husband to UK. They planned to go there in Nov/Dec. This evening, I heard that my colleague went for a phone interview with my company's UK branch and was offerred a regular job! In one interview! She was jumping with joy. This colleague is a high performer. It's no surprise that she is able to secure a job. I am happy for her! The strange thing is that just this morning, I interviewed and offerred a job to a Peruvian through the phone and I could also hear the joy of happiness over the phone cables. I am happy that I could make someone jumped with joy, thousands of miles away. I probably made his day.. and probably changed one chapter in his life. Now, if only I have such luck...

Yesterday, during breakfast, my mother nonchalantly declared that it was good of me to start looking for a house because I could also start planning for my marriage. I grunted indifferently. She then pressed on and asked me when I am getting married. I said next year is a good year, I guess. She was quite insistent because the third time, she suggested out loudly, why not register first? I was surprised at that statement. My sister was sniggering in the breakfast table. I looked at her and she burst out saying that my mother and her went to visit Twar Ee (eldest aunt) recently and Twar Ee is trying to influence my mother to get me hooked asap. She said, don't wait for him to decide, if need be, you call Anne's mother directly. "Wah lau!", I exclaimed, "So desperate meh?" "With your temper, I scared Anne run away from you," she defended. "Since we are at this topic, I find that she's a really nice girl. She respect old people, she's so...

Last Saturday, I was supposed to make deposit payment for the house in BU12 at 3.30pm. At 11am, the agent called me to tell me that the house was sold. It was sold for RM455K, RM10K more than my offer. Sigh... Perhaps this house is not meant for me.