On the cellphone today

I whip out my 1 mega pixel wonder at random times to snap pictures. The quality isn’t great, I know, but it’s so handy. I carry it around with me everywhere anyway (mobile phone, remember?) and I just need to press a button, aim press another button and hey, presto! Plus, it can be accurately operated with one hand, which makes it ideal for snapping on the go.

I do sporadic downloads, and because I think everything that I find amusing is also amusing to anyone that might stumble across the website, I post it. Little do I know I’m easily amused. Anyway, here’s what I discovered on my cellphone today:

24-hour Automated Bill Paying

There’s a growing amount of 24-hour pay stations (watch this post show up in Google under ‘play station’) here in Kota Kinabalu. I support this concept, because I work on the fringe of town and only have a an hour lunch, which is carefully timed. I pay most of my bills online, because frankly, I don’t have enough time to pay it during office hours. The fact that I’m a mere 5 minute (theoretically) drive from town, has nothing to do with it. If the traffic jam doesn’t get you (but it will), the lack of parking will. So don’t even think about using your lunch hour for something so trivial. The paystations are therefore handy for people in my predicament, but without online banking (bless their backward souls).

Telekom Malaysia recently integrated their phone bill and ADSL bill. Why they were on two separate bills before I wouldn’t be able to explain, but now they’re on one bill. My bank hasn’t yet updated their online banking system to accommodate the new account number’s format, which is unlike either the phone or ADSL format. This means I can’t register the account online and has taken away the convenience of paying my bill in the timely manner I am used to. So the bill went unpaid.

I’ve delayed before, and even though they took a month to install my line and then another 3 weeks to actually get it working after they installed it, they will you cut off my ass if I don’t pay 5 minutes after the bill due date. This has happened before and I feel like a jugular gets cut when my internet connection gets cut. The urgency of finding a way to pay was thus apparent.

That’s why, flying in the face of conventional wisdom, I ventured out into the mean world of traffic jams and too little parking, to pay my bill. I hate the Kedia TM (or TM Shop), because the queues are long and slow moving. God knows what people’s problems are, but they take forever to get solved – when I eventually make it to one of those service reps I always take no more than 2 minutes.

I had a reason to smile though when I stood around with my bill in hand trying to work out the mathematical probabilities of which queue would be faster, when an elderly security guard shuffled up to me and asked in Malay if I wanted to pay my bill. I said yes, wondering how he was going to solve my problem. He led me into a little space where something akin to an ATM stood and proceeded to show me how to pay my bills without inefficient customer service rep intervention.

1. push a button to start (could have cut this out in my opinion – activate on scan);
2. slip the bill through a scanning cradle;
3. insert money totaling nearest or over the billing amount (more gets credit on the next bill, no change)

Done. I was in and out, bill paid, receipt in hand in less than 5 minutes and even had time for lunch. Best thing is, the terminal is accessible 24-hours a day, so if I can’t get registered online before the next billing cycle, I will just go at 2am and avoid the traffic as well as the queues. I love technology.

Nelly the elephant packed her trunk…

… and hung out in my trousers! This cute little elephant made an appearance at a recent fancy dress. It’s still underwear (oh yes, did I mentioned that it’s elephant underwear? Elephant thong to be exact ), so it didn’t get much stage-time – but the rest of costume was a patient’s robe ala hospital style, so it did peak out every now and again (mainly when I bent over to get a beer from the ice-bucket). Once the other party revelers discovered what I was wearing under the robe I did get molested a few times, but I didn’t file any charges. For the same party, it was a pot luck (or bring-and-braai, or bring-your-own thing), I made a fresh veggie salad. One of the ingredients was a cucumber and I had to stop and gawk at it for a bit, dirty images flashing.

Cracked ribs. Well, as painful as.

I reported a few days ago about the mysterious crack in my computer monitor – the mystery of how it happened is nagging at my mind more than the fact that my screen is broken, but ponder is my only option. On the pics the damage is apparent, as are the points of impact. Perhaps one of the little lizards was flying around radio controlled rocks…

Lights out

I recently overhead a chat between a local and international journalist and the international one asked whether they reported on traffic jams and blackouts. I laughed so hard. If they did, the newspapers would only feature traffic reports and black out reports, because both are viciously prevalent. The blackouts don’t much bother me at work as we have back-up generators and my computer is one of a few selected units that has a UPS. This means power surges and interruptions at least doesn’t cause me to loose any work.

At home it’s much more annoying though. No UPSs there. The other night I was bunked down and ready for a night of serious blogging when “zooop” the entire neighborhood powered down. The first appliance that’s going to conk out will be my fridge. The thing isn’t a year old yet and already it’s making the sounds of a 20-year old, two-stroke motorbike engine. My computer is more resilient (but how much more?).

Anyway, so what to do when you were about to be creative and the power goes out? Well, you make do with what you have I guess.

Sustaining Flabby Gut

Pete’s Corner is my bliss and my bane (more specifically, my bane, Flabby Gut’s bliss) – good food, good prices. I go to town for lunch every so often and then have a single helping of food, but every now and again, I gorge. When I have lunch with Julia, she doesn’t help much as she can often not finish her own helping and then I am left to take care of it. On the occasion pictured I really have only myself to blame as we really ordered too much food for a simple lunch. Burp!

Underparking

Here’s a little variation on the theme of parking problems. This is one of the parking sections at work. A huge space, see? The irony here is that this section is in fact only divided into three. So space enough, thought whoever painted the lines, for only three cars. Sure, Land Cruisers are popular and prevalent, but you can park even four Land Cruisers in this space. Every now and again you find a progressive thinker (or three) who parks way to the one side, which then easily allows 3 more cars to park there. This doesn’t happen often and usually I just have to stare at a nearly big enough space as I drive past a all the occupied spaces.

And if you think that space is big enough to facilitate another car, you are wrong. This space will remain empty, because nobody who cares for their car is going to squeeze in there and risk having the other cars open their doors against their car bodies – because the other people can. And they will.