How things work

Start with a cage containing five monkeys. Inside the cage, hang a banana on a string and place a set of stairs under it. Before long, a monkey will go to the stairs and start to climb towards the banana. As soon as he touches the stairs, spray all of the other monkeys with cold water.

After a while, another monkey makes an attempt with the same result all the other monkeys are sprayed with cold water. Pretty soon, when another monkey tries to climb the stairs, the other monkeys will try to prevent it.

Now, put away the cold water. Remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new one. The new monkey sees the banana and wants to climb the stairs. To his surprise and horror, all of the other monkeys attack him. After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs, he will be assaulted.

Next, remove another of the original five monkeys and replace it with a new one. The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked. The previous newcomer takes part in the punishment with enthusiasm! Likewise, replace a third original monkey with a new one, then a fourth, then the fifth. Every time the newest monkey takes to the stairs, he is attacked.

Most of the monkeys that are beating him have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs or why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey.

After replacing all the original monkeys, none of the remaining monkeys have ever been sprayed with cold water. Nevertheless, no monkey ever again approaches the stairs to try for the banana. Why not? Because as far as they know that's the way it's always been done around here.

And that, my friend, is how company policy begins.

(Picked from basicjokes.com. P/S. I'm starting work tomorrow, working freelance. Oh wait, does it mean that I'm my own boss?)

Then

Had dinner with my uncle yesterday and he asked about my dad. I have no idea what to tell him about my dad. It's really a shame that I don't know my dad all that well. We don't talk as daddy's a busy man and I'm used to growing up in my own room.

Uncle Chai's question does make me wonder what life was, when I was young.

When I was real young, apart from schooling, all the spare times were devoted into building my Lego empire or my Tamiya RC models or computer games. I was a proud gamer back then. That, probably has got something to do with the exclusivity of computer back in 1987. (Yes, if you had to ask, the game comes in diskets. The big ones, not floppy disk.)

Then, I'll get the occasional Harry potter style howler on my desk reminding me to not waste my precious time in my room. I know I'm in my own little world then, but that's okay. They know me there. I grew up normal after all. There's also reminder that it's time to tidy up my room - as dad put it "it smells like toilet!" Man, you don't know how hard it is for the message to sink in especially when the washroom smells nice.

Apart from that, getting lectured for my poor attitude and behavior is just typical. I always got reminded to behave. Yes, I'm a spoiled brat, I'm aware of that thank you. But then, this young boy is in need of hero to look up upon. Then, It's either Disney's Goofy or Marvel's Megatron and that, is like asking Tom Sawyer to choose between a lollipop and a BB gun.

Frankly speaking, I can't be bothered about how many people who's upset with me. If I don't like something or someone, I don't see a point of pretending to like it.

I'm being honest to myself. I say what I mean. People either love to hate me, or hate to love me. I don't live my life according to other people's standard. You do that and your life's no longer yours.

(P/S. I'll think about trying to be nice part. Previous experience taught me that friendliness is not an asset. Bitchiness is. And there is no need to argue about this. Take a look at Barbie. That bitch has got everything.)

$100

Read a book from Stephen Bayley and here's something interesting to share.

Do you know that someone who's being asked to lend a million pounds is faced really with only one simple question to answer: will I get my money back? That of course is not a logical question, because its asking to know the future. There is no logic which can describe what is going to happen a few years from now.

A banker who spends his whole life lending money is endlessly 'deciding' what will happen in the future. But of course, he is not deciding, he is just guessing. He will never call it a guess - thats too scarily truthful.

He'll call it an 'informed estimate', an intelligent estimation', a 'considered opinion' based on your supplied info(i.e. payslips). But believe me, its a guess. No one can foretell the future.

Which leads me to this interesting quote from John Paul Getty - "owe the bank $100 and that's your problem, owe them $100mil, and that's the bank's problem. "

Do let me know if you managed to convince the bank to lend you $100mil.

KL Sentral

My friend got lost in KL and below is a pick from our conversation.

Me : Ok, where are you now?

Her : I'm now in Jalan Tun Sambanthan, how do I get into KL Sentral?

Me : It's beside you only, look for KL Hilton la, It should be around.

Her : Wait, let me see (pause) ok, yeah saw it.

Me : Great, now you just drive towards Hilton. Hilton is build on KL Sentral ma..

Her : Ok, (pause) how to turn into KL Sentral?

Me : Where are you now?

Her : Jalan Sehala

Welcome back people, hope you enjoyed your Raya break.

Coffee

Do you know that there are over 900 compounds that give coffee its flavor? but artificial coffee flavorings typically only have 20 to 30, said Dr. Gary Reineccius, the department head of food science and nutrition at the university of Minnesota.

He also points out that most artificial coffee flavors aren't even recognizable in blind taste tests: "We make it brown and put a label on it. Thats how consumers can tell it's coffee, but otherwise people have no idea."

I'll never trust Starbucks again. Or scientists.

Oops! He did it again!

Noordin Mat Top, Asia's most wanted terrorist, was gunned down in Central Java and our home minister said that the terrorist could have been rehabilitated.

Previously, our dear home minister have also said that Mat Rempits are misunderstood youths who could be turned into future leaders of the country.

Then, SIL of the then PM suggested giving them a more flattering name - Mat Cemerlang. (Cemerlang means successful and Mat is a short name for commonly used name such as Ahmad or Mohamad)

Darn these politicians, haven't they got better stuff to do? Everything they said is always in the same circle. If it's not stupid, it's ridiculous. If it's not ridiculous, it's a lie. If it's not a lie, it's stupid.

It's not for you, It's for your bean

Women want men to support them(both emotionally and financially), provide entertainment, be a source of inspiration and the list goes on. The ugly truth is that men just want a shag.

The movie is predictable enough but no less enjoyable, there's a lot of chemistry between the leads, thumbs up to Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler.

What follows after, was a session in The Library. I'd expected some really chilled Stella. Didn't managed to get that. Nonetheless, I enjoyed my pint. It's served with a lot of bullshit and Mr. Jay Chou wannabe really made my day.

The ugly truth?

I had meeting this morning @ 11AM. I was introduced to a female superior and I thought "Darn, I love women on top!"

At IKEA, you pick up what you want, take it home, and screw yourself

I was in Ikea checking out some furniture and my buddy brought a table and an office chair. While settling for the delivery bill, he was asked whether he want those furniture assembled for a small fee.

To my surprise he approved seeing that he doesn't have a screwdriver at home. I stood there flabbergasted. Isn't Ikea famous for their supposedly value-for-money products that require allegedly simple DIY steps to piece the furniture together?

What's the point of buying DIY goods and then get someone else to assemble it for you? It's no different than a daddy buying Lego for the son and then gets the uncle to build the spaceship so that the son can play with it.

Commuting hitch

After the superb dinner with the guys, we decided to take a spin in KL before we head home for more chilled beers and end up getting stuck in a traffic jam @ 10.50pm! On a Friday night! Yep, that’s our typical KL.

Commuting in Kuala Lumpur is a unique experience. If you happened to own a car, you know how lucky you are as going places became as easy as eating fries. If not, you’ll be depending on public transport, which is somewhat dysfunctional.

Buses and Train while not always on time will definitely get you to your destination. (Well sort-of, it’s kinda like from point-A to point-B and you’ll then have to walk for another 20mins to your destination.) A recent hike of 30% in taxi fare to stimulate the quality of service doesn’t mean much for they still refuse to take you to your destination even though it’s 3 blocks away.

Those that drives are then hit with some silly nuisance such as stupid parking fee and hefty highway toll. One day they decided to build an arc and every other day after, you’ve got to pay to go through. But fear not, our government has got a 20% toll rebate scheme for those who registered 80 toll transactions and above per month. Let’s do the math: -

Imagine you only work weekdays, through and forth you’ll have 40 transactions per month (More on a 5 week month). Add some shopping trips and active socializing and it might hit 80 to qualify. But then again, your car fuel and miscellaneous expenses would have cost you dearly.

Then there’s this incident where this poor guy got denied entry into tube station for bringing along his foldable bicycles. With all this talks of CO2 emission, why is there no policies or proper guidelines to encourage the use of a sustainable and environmentally friendly transportation?

What is our transport minister’s view in this matter? (With his political party’s emergency general election by the corner, CO2 can wait, so should the people. I know.. he’s a troubled man.)

Good music

I'm kind of stressed out lately, and while flipping through my iTunes for some relaxing music I suddenly recalled this sweet website from Kavin Hoo. It's a brilliant piece of work.

Enjoy, people.

Malaysia Airline

17.. 18.. 19.. Arghh! It didn't work!

That’s what Rufi suggested when you got angry. Try counting from 1 till a certain number before you speak again. The numbers greatly varies, depending on how angry you are at that time.

Right, I’m trying to purchase my flight ticket online from MAS as I need to be in KL for my mate’s birthday. I totally forgot about his birthday until his GF called to confirm if I’m joining. So I went ahead and choose the destination, select the date, spend 5 minutes keying in all the required details and finally submit!

(Please wait while we process bla.. bla.. bla.. )

And then it has to happen. It shows a warning about the payment that says I’ve rejoined the MAS booking engine out of sequence when they were expecting payment to be completed. They suggest that I finish entering details on the payment pages (hello? I’m freaking sure I’ve done that before I proceed to payment), or call their hotline quoting a given reference number.

Option 1 is not viable because I could not roll back to the previous page. Option 2 is not preferable. Calling hotline during night time plus when I’m angry? Can you imagine the moment I got connected only to be greeted by the answering machine asking me to press 1 for English language, press 2 for Bahasa..

How about option 3, you upgrade and maintain your bloody booking engine?

I’ve passed the booking reference number to mom and hopefully it’ll be settled tomorrow. (Thanks mom.) So much trouble for Malaysian Hospitality eh?

Perhaps I should keep counting.

People first, Performance now?

It happened yesterday when my friend's bf got hit by his fellow colleague in a heated argument during work and then after he complained about that incident to the manager, he got hit by the colleague again! The manager ignored the incident because he has got related interest with the colleague. He even asked the poor guy to forget about the incident and the chap, with his bleeding lips continued to work double shifts.

When my friend found out about it, she brought him to lodge a police report in Kepong. While in Kepong police station, the policemen asked them to go to Damansara police station to make a statement as the incident happened in that vicinity. Off they went to Damansara police station and the policeman in Damansara asked them to go home and wait as he'll need confirmation from Kepong police station before taking statement.

So now she's at home waiting for the call, which is yet to come. This upsets her as since she was already there in person, why does she need to go home and wait for confirmation from Kepong police station? Why cant the policeman take the statement straight away?

However, like most Malaysian, she does not understand that police and military forces all over the world exist mainly to maintain the status quo on behalf of the power-wielders, viz., the plutocracy (those who rule through the power of money and the resources that they control).

Yes, in Malaysia, the police force and military were established (with our tax money) not to protect us but to protect the power structure from being destabilized by those "rebelling" against the system. For instance the reckless use of FRU during every peaceful protest in KL, I’m not going to name it but then it’s weird the FRU were nowhere to be seen during the cow head protest. *here*

Ok let’s not drift too far from the topic,

What happened to 1Malaysia – People First, Performance Now?

Asking for favors

There was this guy that couldn't get laid because he had a 25-inch dick! So one day he decided to get it shortened and goes to the doctor.

After a few minutes of intense examination the doctor delivers the bad news. The doctor could not possibly reduce it and suggested that he go to a witch in the woods nearby.

So off the guy goes into the woods and he finds the witch. "This is what I want you to do," the doctor says. "Go a little further into the woods and you'll come to a pond. There'll be a frog there that can talk. Every time you ask the frog to marry you and he says no, your dick will decrease by five inches."

The guy went deeper into the woods until he comes across a pond and sees the frog. "Froggy," he yells, "will you marry me?" The frog rolls his eyes and yells "NO!" The man looks at his dick and sees that it has decreased to 20 inches.

Again, the man yells to the frog, "Froggy, will you marry me?" The frog rolls his eyes and goes "NO!" Now his dick is down to 15 inches, and he figures 10 is ideal.

So once more he yells, "Froggy, will you marry me?" The frog looks up one last time and says, "HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO TELL YOU? NO! NO! NO!"

(The moral of the story is - know when to stop when you're asking for favors.)

Web Quizzes

Web quizzes may be fun to take, but they're also a powerful tool for companies to collect your data and even your money - and often in ways you might not even notice.

The very nature of a typical online quiz requires you to divulge all sorts of details about yourself. Those tidbits of info are like nuggets of gold for advertisers seeking to connect to you.

Deciding to take an online quiz comes down to a question of trust: are you comfortable putting personal or financial information into the owner's hand? Even if you don't directly input data, it can be passed along. At Facebook, opening an application automatically grants its developer access to your profile.

Finally, bear in mind that the quizzes results may not mean much. Many tests for instance, are about as valid as my excuse for missing mahjong night at the clubhouse. Think about it.

Ref - PC World, Jr Raphael.

National day as I sees it

Yeah, so yesterday was National day and I did not celebrate it. There's no big deal about that as what I recalled about National day when I was young, was me waving little flags and writing essay about how much I love my country.

Malaysia - a nation founded upon the principles of liberty and justice. She is ever seeking the welfare and happiness of its people. She will be inspired by the ideals of justice and liberty and she is to be a beacon of light in a disturbed and a distracted world.

That was the Tunku's aspirations. And the aspirations of all Malaysians on 31st of August 1957.

Have we all, as a nation, achieved those? No we have not, but rest assured that we are trying. We are working hard to make sure that our country is a better place for our children.

If only the present government discern and uphold the principles. And to our beloved Prime Minister and his 1Malaysia propaganda, Malaysia is my country and it will remain so until I’m told I’m no more a Malaysian, for I need to make way for 1race, 1religion, 1language.

1(black) Malaysia – Keuntungan didahulukan, rakyat belakang kira.