Kacang Botol Salad

I had this hankering to eat kacang botol - I saw it in the supermarket but didn't do anything about it and dreamed of it for 2 nights before I headed out to the supermarket to buy all the ingredients.  I made my nyonya kacang botol salad of lime juice, bunga kantan, shallots, serai, chili shrimp floss, sambal blacan, sugar and kacang botol, merrily tossed around into a yummy salad.

Evidence of my greed is shown to all!  *burp*

Hungry Ghost Month

Today marks the first day of the Hungry Ghost Month where the ghouls roam the earth when they are set free from hell to create trouble - that's what I was told by some old wives years ago.

So fast forward to today and this posting - it is the start of one month of burning hell for me. The people who observe the rituals of the Hungry Ghost Month will be burning all sorts of stuff for the ghouls - usually paper money as far as I know - and also leaving food around. The area around our home will be littered with ash from the burnt offerings, there will be joss sticks stuck along the pavements, and the grass would have been damaged by these inconsiderate people.

Years ago, before the recessions started - we would find these giant joss sticks in the industrial estate waiting to be burnt. What a waste of money!

I don't have a problem with the burning if the people did it sensibly - burn in the bins provided; have fire fighting equipment should there be a disaster; place joss sticks in central zone or in one area instead of a long line scattered all over; and generally clean up after themselves.

These people leave a mess for the cleaners to deal with in the morning - just because they pay conservancy charges does not mean that they have to be inconsiderate!

Many years ago, I could see about 20 small fired within my line of sight around our estate. I called the fire brigade because it seemed like a fire hazard. The fire brigade came and DID NOTHING!!

So to those who must do something for hungry ghosts, please be considerate to those around you. Thank you!

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Rude People at the Supermarket

This evening, I went to NTUC to pick up some groceries. When I had finished, I headed off to the cashier to pay for my stuff. There was this guy in front of me and some stuff on the conveyor. The guy said that those 4 items didn't belong to him so I proceeded to put my stuff on the conveyor.
Suddenly this woman rushes up to me and says that she was ahead of me in the line and those items belonged to her. She wanted to cut my queue.
I think these people are just so bloody idiotic - just think that they can leave their stuff around, then say that they were in line.
I think the cashier was also idiotic - she asked if I minded. Of course I mind and I told her her, but she proceeded to check out that woman's stuff.
What an ass!

Green efforts

We are still on the bio diesel track - we found this place somewhere along Yio Chu Kang Road that opens till 8 pm every day so we are not so stuck for fuel by having to get out during regular office hours. To make things better, the price of the bio diesel is only 87 cents compared to $1 for the other pumps. However, it has been closed the past couple of times we went there - then on the website it says that it will re-open in September. We will be back there when it reopens because of the convenient hours.
So far, we have not experienced any "bad" things with the recycled cooking oil. We don't really feel any loss of power when we drive. No shuddering or strange noises - just smooth driving all along.
We seem to be achieving our optimum consumption of 600km per full tank of fuel - something we had achieved sometime back.
Of course the best consumption we had was 850km for a full tank of diesel when we drove at a consistent speed on the North-South Highway from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur and back. That was years ago we haven't had such good consumption since 2004.
We will know if there is any damage to our engine when we go for our 250,000km service. We had agreed that we will try bio diesel for 10,000 km.
So far, so good and I think we will continue.

Goo speedometer problems

We had some problems with our Goo speedometer - it stopped working!
We were not able to know our speed, so even if we were speeding the needle stayed down. Of course with the needle down, we could not check our mileage either. Not being able to check all these "indicators" meant that we would be off schedule with our Goo servicing. I am very pleased to let you know that the Goo is the oldest agent maintained vehicle still going back to Renault for servicing. They handle everything for me.
So I drove back to the workshop and they changed the speedometer part and we were back on track to check out our mileage and consumption.
Thanks very much to Renault's wonderful vehicle workshop for doing a great job of keeping our Goo in working condition.

Sheares Ng

This guy is to be written off because he is too cowardly to respond to me. However, he is very diplomatic and has no guts to offend his ex-boss so he will do what he can to get onto Boss' good side despite what he has done to me.
My email is up and running.
I certainly won't be recommending him to anyone for any web hosting services of any sort.
There is only one thing to be said - the Heavens have eyes to see.
All will be revealed in time to come!

Being Pissed!

This blog is for me to rant and rave in cyberspace about things that piss me - so here I go ...

For some time I've had my web hosting and email hosting with a company named D'fine Solutions Pte Ltd, run by a guy named Sheares Ng Wee Leng. Sheares used to work for a friend and I was told that he's OK to support for business so I merrily moved it over without nary a thought.

I did have some problems with the service sometimes - could not receive emails and sometimes got flooded by spam, but it wasn't anything that was unmanageable or unacceptable. Yeah, I received porn too, but a murmer to Sheares about the awful porn was resolved. Honestly, I am not hot about receiving emails about improving my performance in bed, how to satisfy my woman and be a hunk or invites to chat on porn lines or how to buy prescription drugs online. Not exactly my cup of tea!

Then last year in 2008, Sheares spent a lot of time in Taiwan and the service standards went to the longkang - literally down the drain. HH spoke with Sheares about it and the excuse was always the Microsoft Outlook problem. We were having problems receiving emails - not problems sending them, so what Microsoft Outlook problem? Then it would be a case of nothing in and nothing out. Not garbage in and garbage out (GIGO) that I learnt in computer programing classes years ago!

But we have other email address with other hosts and those were not a problem so ... the problem had to be with the service.

In June 2009, HH and I took a decision that we should take our web and email hosting out to another service provider because the cost was cheaper. In these difficult times, we have to watch our pennies. We would get about the same service for about half (!) the price - YES NEARLY HALF PRICE. Not much to consider right? The price is right, the service is OK so we should switch.

HH gave Sheares notice of our intention to switch verbally. OK, that could have been a mistake but we all sit in the same office space and work together on some projects, so what's so difficult. Then about 3 weeks ago, absolute silence from Sheares. He didn't come to the office, no response to emails, sms or skype messages - ABSOLUTE SILENCE!!!

We asked for the password for the domain transfer and again SILENCE! Absolutely frustrating. We even asked Sheares to renew the domain, but he never responded. It's not as if we aren't going to pay him. He never raised an invoice for anything until suddenly in June 2009, he threw out 2 invoices. One for last year's service and another for this year's or the renewal. I paid the invoice for last year (2008) that was raised in 2009. When he asked about the renewal, I said that HH had spoken to him about it and that we were moving it out.

Wah - such rudeness and a sulky face. Then Sheares went MISSING IN ACTION. No response to any form of decent communication. This morning I tried to call Sheares - he kept switching me off till I was so pissed that I posted a nasty message on his Facebook wall. After I sent him a Skype mesage, he said that he does not do domain renewals. What sort of half baked service does he provide - you can check out his website http://www.dfine-solutions.com/ and it does show that he does do renewals!!

He got slammed again on his bad service and I threatened him with legal action for damages for lost emails. Then finally at around 4 pm today, he sent an email to HH, presumably from his Technical Support that domain renewals can be done from his website.

Some time back, Sheares told HH that if our clients do not take up his web services after we have done the software development and web design for them, he will not be supporting them. So in the first year, we can place the service with Sheares - but when he messes up then the client gets really angry and moves their service out? Sheares will not handle the work and their websites will all crash!! This is bad service!!

Hey, if this is how he treats customers - how could he ask me to bundle my corporate secretarial services with his hosting services?? I would end up fielding questions from my irate clients when they cannot receive their emails or their websites are down.

Sigh, I am tired of this nonsense. I will now take my business to unknown entities where I can shout at them for service lapses. This is how I can yell at Singtel for crappy telephone service standards and tell them that their CEO does not deserve her S$7million salary. :p

Please do not go to a company called D'Fine Solutions for your web or email hosting - you will be stone walled by the person who cannot grow a business because he will remain a one man show.

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More recycling efforts

I still have this recycle bug in me! Last week, on 4th July (Happy Independance Day USA!), we started pumping BIODIESEL into our Goo. I had been reading articles about biodiesel but often wondered where to find the stuff in Singapore. Finally we struck "green" gold, so to speak. There was an article on biodiesel and where to find the stuff.

We were 1/4 tank down on in our fuel and did the slow transfer over - like we do for dog food for our doggies. We topped up with 21 litres of biodiesel and merrily went on our way feeling really smug with ourselves.

That night, V and I went to the supermarket to get our groceries. On the way back, I kept on insisting that I smelt food in the Goo. I was asking - what food did you buy? Do we have food in the back? NO COOKED FOOD IN THE BACK OF THE GOO!!!

Whilst I was reading up on biodiesel, the source of the stuff etc, I did read that biodiesel was made from recycled cooking oil. Ah - that was the source of my cooked food smell at the back of the Goo - fried chicken, french fries, yew char kuay, vadai and whatever else that is fried food!! Maybe we are getting biodiesel from cooking oil from Kentucky Fried Chicken and MacDonalds and all the shops that deep fry stuff so I am getting strange aromas all around me.

So far, we have not experienced any loss of performance or any strange sounds of any sort in our Goo. We cannot tell you any the mileage or consumption so far because we had a problem with the speedometer in the Goo. Sigh! So much for my green efforts so far, but we are going to keep going at it!

Looks like we are set to continue with biodiesel since it seems to be cheaper than the regular stuff and it is a green option.

For more information of biodiesel and how to convert, go to http://www.biodiesel.org/resources/faqs/ and you can see that we are trying to go GREEN!

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More recycling

I am so pleased to say that the recycling company came to take away our bag of stuff of recycles - full of cardboard, a chipped porcelain mug, some cleaned out tins, some glass jars, a couple of large plastic bottles and an assortment of paper from the unsolicited mail that we get in our letterbox.

I guess that phonecall worked and they are now more vigilant in their collection. We will wait and see how long they can keep this going.

Recycling IV

Yah - this bee is still in my bonnet about recycling!

Years ago, when I was a student in England - we recycled everything where possible. I guess this is where I caught the bug - plus the Malaysia kedekut genes in my blood.

The rubbish collection in our area was done once a week - on Mondays. For the whole week you would wonder what we did with all the rubbish we generated. Please note - I am English in my vocabulary. I use the work RUBBISH not GARBAGE - HH is American in his vocabulary!!

Our food waste would be "gobbled" by a food gobber in the kitchen. We would put in all the bones and other strange food waste that we could not send to the compost bin.

The compost bin would be the recipient of our vegetable and fruit peeling and the egg shells, ground coffee, tea leaves, grass and what have you that could go into the compost bin. This wonderful bin would then make wonderful humus for us to use in our garden after some time tumbling around in a warm area.

There was a glass bank down the road in the large carpark - we would sort all our glass into clear, green and brown piles. Then take a walk to the glass bank and have great fun chucking in the bottles and hear the glass shattering. Quite good for taking our your anger on someone! :D

Newspapers would go paper bank for recycling as well.

We didn't have to recycle milk cartons because we had milk delivery - we left the glass bottles outside on our doorstep and the milkman exchanges it with another bottle of milk.

All those TetraPak containers could be recycled, so we would rinse these out and put them in a pile for recycling as well. Same for the cardboard boxes. There wasn't too much styrofoam to recycle because it wasn't much in use.

In fact I have made it a policy not to cart rubbish home to throw if I can help it these days in Singapore - I will say NO to boxes for shoes if necessary, throw out the uncessary packaging material before I bring it home.

Every week, we would have something for recycling and I guess the bug stayed!

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