I can’t be sure when exactly it happened, but at last Maybank enabled all the goodies on their debit card and is it finally the only debit card I need to do everything, even online purchases and PayPal payouts.

Late & Shaky Start

When Maybank first released the debit card with the cherries design, this was a little over a year ago, it was a bit of a half baked product.  It had the very exciting Visa logo on the front, and I, like a many bloggers, thought it was the digital money I could carry in my digital wallet to pay for my digital life.

Unfortunately you couldn’t buy anything with it online, put money into your PayPal account or receive payouts from your PayPal account.  The debit card essentially had no benefit over Maybank’s black-and-yellow ATM card and you had to pay RM12 to ‘upgrade’ to it too.  The only plus point was that because of the Visa system, as opposed to the Visa Electron sub-system of the old card, you could swipe it in more physical shops. Whoop-de-friggen-doo.

For me and those who were hoping to join the effortlessness of having a card that you could use like a credit card, the Maybank Debit Card v1 was a big, fat disappointment.

For my Paypal requirements (it had to be a Visa card), I applied for a TuneMoney pre-paid Visa card (what a hassle that was) and otherwise shopped at websites that was Maybank direct-debit ready.  Not ideal, but my digital life went on.

Fate Steps in and Demands Reassessment

So last week I lost my wallet.

It was in the door of my Myvi – you know, in that handy door-handle / mobile-phone-holder / not-really-a-wallet-holder space, when I opened the door and didn’t see my wallet drop out, had coffee (for which a friend paid) went home and the wallet was never heard from or seen again.

Needless to say, cards were canceled and lost cash was cried over.  The Maybank card was easy to replace and I was going to replace the Tune card too. But when I called the Tune call centre, I was put on hold so long that it drained my already-faulty battery and I never got to re-order the card.

As if fate had not overplayed its hand already, I then stumbled upon a blog post somewhere, which said Maybank’s debit card v2 is now the card it should have been when it was first released. I followed the trail of breadcrumbs and wouldn’t you know it, it’s true.

Activate Your Maybank Debit Card for Online Shopping

First things first. If like me you’ve been paying for your AirAsia flights with the direct debit function, you will have been craving to just whip out your debit card and pay for it right then and there. Now you can – but there’s a bit of a song and dance to do first.

• Log into your Maybank account;
• Right at the bottom under Utilities you’ll see “Maybank Secure Online Shopping Registration“. Click.

• You’re then taken to a page where you have to fill out passwords and stuff. I only have 1 card, so I don’t get a choice, but if you happen to have many cards, then you might have to select the right card based on the 16 digits on the front of the card you’re working with;
• Type a Maybank Secure Online Shopping (MSOS) password. Think about it – don’t make it your Maybank2u password, or your email password, or your Facebook password. Remember, this is your life’s savings you’re working with, so don’t choose a password anybody that knows a bit about you can guess. But remember it;
• Retype that password, just to be sure;
• The Personal Assurance Message can be anything. A yo’ mamma joke if you like. It will be used when you’re about to make a payment – you will be diverted to a Visa verification website to type your MSOS password – to ensure that website you get directed to is an authorised website, your unique Personal Assurance Message will be displayed. If it isn’t, you shouldn’t type your password.
• The Expiry Date and CVV is as it appears on the card you are registering;
• The Hint, I feel, is pretty stupid, because this is likely fairly common knowledge. Choose the question you think the fewest people will know and will be the hardest to find out.
• Answer is the answer to The Hint above. Type it in a way that you will remember it.

Once you’re done, your card is registered and, technically, you can go out and spend the contents of your savings account from the comfort of your plastic card.

Right after doing this I went to buy something online, but for some reason it didn’t recognise my password, even though my Personal Assurance Message was displayed. I can only imagine it takes a few hours.  I’ll update this when I successfully purchase something online.

Link your Paypal Account

Next, of course, you would want to use your Maybank debit card to cash in on your stash of mula that’s been accumulating in your PayPal account. I’m sure you know how this works:

• Log in to PayPal, go to Profile and click on Add / Edit Credit Card (Ha! We’re going to use a debit card);
• Click on the yellow Add a Card button (bottom right);
• Select the card type (Visa) fill in the details, check the address and click Add Card;
• PayPal will query your card in the background, and if everything checks out, it will be listed as 1 of your credit cards;
• On the right of the entry, under Action you will see Link & Activate Your Card. You have to let PayPal deduct US$1.95 from your account to test / verify your card (which is credited back to your PayPal account upon completion);
• Once that’s done, you then have to enter the 4 digit number that appears on your debit card statement to complete the process.  It may take a day or 2 before it shows up though, so log out and go do something else;

And that will successfully link your Maybank Debit Card to your PayPal account, which will enable you to ‘pay’ money from your debit account into your PayPal account, and vice versa ‘download’ money from your PayPal account into your Maybank debit card.

Maybank Debit Card Withdrawals When You’re Overseas

One last thing you might consider is having your Maybank debit card activated for transactions / withdrawals while you’re overseas.

The first time I tried drawing money from Singapore, it failed. I was also unable to pay for my accommodation, although that might have been unrelated. On my return to Malaysia the call centre did say the debit card needs to be activated for overseas transactions.

Since then, I’ve been able to draw money with my Maybank debit card from overseas ATMs that display the Visa logo in Bangkok, Phuket and again, Singapore.

The Journo advised me you can activate this feature at any Maybank ATM in Malaysia, or you can do like I did and give the helpful people at the Maybank call centre a buzz on 1-300 88 6688 if you’re in Malaysia or on +60 3 7844 3696 if you’re not.

Now, life is good. Thanks for listening to your customers Maybank, I’m glad your debit card finally caught up.

Well, last night’s Tri Nations match between South Africa and Australia went very much unlike I expected it to in my blog post on Thursday.

Playing at the grounds in Brisbane where a few years ago the Springboks lost with a massive 0 – 49 against the Aussies, the Boks once against suffered a defeat, albeit with a much smaller margin this time.

Whatever conditions conspired against the Boks to have reduced them to the unorganised-on-the-back-foot rugby that they played last night, the Aussies had… well, a ball.

This loss now puts New Zealand a little closer to the Tri Nations title, albeit still with a slim chance.

Things are suddenly not looking so rosy for the Springboks, and it’s now not just a question of waltzing to the title anymore.  If they want to be crowned the winners of the Tri Nations Tournament and avoid being embarrassingly pipped to the post, the Boks will have to work for it. Hard.

With 2 games left in the 2009 Tri-Nations Tournament

Scoreboard:

Opportunities to score more points:

Fixtures:

So, as an update from my last post, here’s what can happen now:

• Australia are still sure losers, but ironically they could end up determining the winners of the Tri Nations tournament;
• New Zealand has a increasingly better looking chance of squeezing in a win if:
  1. they can win both their remaining games (4 x 2 = 8); and
  2. they can score 4 tries or more in each of those games (2 x 1 = 2); and
  3. they can prevent South Africa from scoring 4 tries; and
  4. they can ensure South Africa loses by more than 7 points;
  5. Australia managed to do 3 and 4 in their games last night, so it’s not impossible;
• South Africa, who still needs just 2 points to win the 2009 Tri-Nations Rugby Tournament, must
  1. win their game against New Zealand next week; or
  2. draw that game (but when last did you see a drawn rugby game?); or
  3. if they’re going to lose, score 4 tries in their last game; and
  4. lose by less than 7 points;

From being so sure on Thursday that the Boks were winners already, I’m now only cautiously optimistic.

Australia have redeemed themselves by handing the Boks their first loss. New Zealand will also love to get on the bandwagon so that they too can claim a defeat over the Springboks in this Tri Nations. And once they’ve beaten the Boks, they only have to beat Australia (again) to claim the trophy.

There will be blood (and if New Zealand succeeds in doing that, there will be tears too).

Were you aware that AirAsia has an On-Time Guarantee? Nope? Neither was I. Until, that is, last night when I received a pleasant surprise in my Inbox.

AirAsia To Singapore

The Journo and I went to Singapore in August for the Singapore Ultimate Open. Partly because of the price, but mainly because of the flight timing, we chose AirAsia, which flew out from KK Friday night and returned from Singapore on Sunday evening. Perfect for a weekend of Ultimate excess.

I have to say, I have no recent memory of major AirAsia delays on any of my flights and as such, the Friday night flight, as expected, went off without a hitch.

Bloody Sunday

We returned to Shangi Airport on Sunday evening with a good 2 hours before departure, which put us there at just after 6pm.

It had been a long grueling weekend of Ultimate, playing 5 almost-1-hour long games on Saturday and 2 70-minute games on Sunday against teams much better than us.  Sunburned, fatigued and in desperate need of sleep, getting onto the flight and settling in was a serious priority.

Our queueless check-in went smooth and we even managed to get seats next to each other on our separately booked tickets. It was when the check-in assistant casually confirmed our boarding time that we were unpleasantly surprised, “… and the flight boards at 10.15pm…”

I did a double take and said “What? That’s not right”, to which she calmly replied as if it was common knowledge, “oh, the flight has been re-timed to 10.45pm due to the late arrival of the incoming flight”, and, in defense of why we hadn’t be alerted, “… it was last-minute, sorry”.

My mind went numb with conflict about what to be angry about:

• that we were not alerted via the cellphone numbers that AirAsia had for us,
• that we now had to wait more than 4 hours to board our flight,
• that we had to miss most of the exciting Ultimate finals to get to the airport on time, or
• that we didn’t get to drink as much of the free beer sponsored by Brewerkz as I wanted to.

Stewing, we stomped off, did some shopping, explored Shangi’s thankfully interesting terminal, had dinner and eventually fell into uncomfortable sleep on seats near the boarding gate with about 90 minutes to go.

Ladies & Gentlemen, this is not your captain speaking

An announcement woke us up before my alarm could: “… AirAsia to Kota Kinabalu has now been retimed to 1am…”. Sunburned, tired, in need of sleep and stewing turned to raging frustration. “I can’t take it anymore, I have to sleep”, I told the Journo, “let’s go to the transit hotel”.

Expensive, this decision, but so worth it. We got nearly 2 hours of solid sleep cuddled under warm blankets on a comfortable bed. Until the phone rang, again, beating my alarm. Dazed and confused I found the phone only to hear the lady from the check-in desk say “Sir, your flight was brought forward to 12.30am. You have 10 minutes to get to the gate. Hurry”.

As if in one motion, we jumped straight out of bed and opened the door while picking up our stuff. I ran to the gate a good 500m aways and stalled for time as the Journo caught up. The security staff looked like they were packing up already, but luckily we made it through. Mere minutes after we boarded they closed the door and we were off.

I couldn’t help but wonder how many people got left behind.

Home Sweet Home in Time for Dawn

As we touched down in KK the clock struck 3am and after I unpacked, did a forced load of washing (can’t let sweaty clothes dry, man), I eventually hit the pillows hard at 4am.

Not one to carry grudges for long, the AirAsia ordeal was forgotten soon after ranting about it to friends for a day or so.

Happy Ending

Last night, just as I was about to shut down for the night, this whole mis-adventure committed to the hardly-ever-accessed part of my memory, I got an email from AirAsia. Subject: Retrieve your OTG Gift Voucher.

With much curiosity I opened the email, checked its authenticity (phishing victim, me? Never.) and followed the instructions. Moments later I received another email with a claim-code for a voucher to the value of RM200 to be used on my next flight or on other AirAsia services.

OTG, as it turns out, stands for On-Time Guarantee.

Having never seen any literature about this before, I did a quick search and found this press release dated 23 October 2008, in which AirAsia announces that customers inconvenienced by a delay longer than 2 hours on an AirAsia flight, will be eligible for a RM200 voucher.

Bonus!  With our next flight planned (but thankfully not booked yet), this voucher will be a mighty handy discount and a pleasant offset against those expensive 2-hours of sleep I bought in Singapore.

And although I had forgiven AirAsia for that hideous delay already, this vouchers goes an infinite distance towards establishing goodwill and restoring confidence in Asia’s favourite airline and proving why they are the top dog.  If only other companies demonstrated their commitment to their customers in such ways.

Good work, AirAsia.

I normally don’t go shopping on Sundays. It’s chaos.  I normally don’t go to City Mall on Sundays. For exactly that reason too. The first Sunday after payday and it being the eve of a public holiday… well, that’s really just standing under the crazy shower and getting soaked.

But I was trapped. I had no food and, you know, a man’s gotta eat. So I thought of a place where I was most likely to find everything I want in one place. There’s my local corner shop, Pick ‘n Pay. But I won’t find the household goods I need there. There’s Merdeka Supermarket a little further away, they’re weak in the toiletries department, if not unnecessarily expensive.

And then there’s the Giant super store at City Mall. They might have most of what I need.  But it’s at City Mall. Crazy, chaotic City Mall. For the sake of a 1-stop-shop, I go there anyway. The 10 minutes I take to drive there is immediately doubled by the 10 minutes it takes me to get into the property and around the building to the open parking lot.

Traffic in the Isles

By the time I’m parked and walking towards Giant with my save-the-earth enviro bags in my hand, I’m already agitated, because I know Giant is a human scale model of the parking lot. People blocking lanes with trolleys and screaming kids, needlessly hanging around the free-sample booths to taste every flavour of Nestle Probiotic yogurt or Maggie mee-in-a-cup the promoter has. I’ve got a shopping list, loosely based on where I think my required items are located in the store, hopefully helping me to navigate through the store as quickly as possible.

I hit a snag on my first 5 items, which suddenly Giant does haven’t. Low fat tuna in water. Don’t have. Really!? My spirits drop. Long beans; don’t have. Celery; don’t have. Gillette Foamy; don’t have.

Inflation mate, free has also gone up

While I’m in the toiletries isle I look for toothpaste. I’m attracted by a free toothbrush, because as it happens, I need 1 of those too. Colgate comes handily packed with a ‘free toothbrush’ already. Only RM6.69, which seems  a bit pricey for something free. I try to find a 175g tube to compare prices and see how much free free really is. I can’t find it. There’s a 100g tube, and a 75g tube, but no 175g tube. Coincidence, or diabolical plot?

Diabolical plot, I decide when I see that the 250g tube is only RM4.99. So if per gram the 175g is the same as the 250g, then the FREE toothbrush actually costs RM2.30!! It must be for that fancy packaging. How many suckers did they catch with this one, I wonder?

Cashing in. Whoa, not so quick, big fella

For a moment I consider leaving my basket right there in protest, but I figure the effort would go to waste. Eventually, after locating 60% of my list, I head over the tills. More chaos.  I try to look for the most intelligent face behind the tills. Their lines usually moves the fastest.

But between some sort of promo that requires the cashiers to give patrons a flier and some stamps according to how much they’ve spent, swiping bar-codes over the laser 3, 4 sometimes 5 times (before manually entering it), packing 2 items only in every cheapo, wafer thin plastic bag and counting every hand full of change 3 times before handing it over to the customer, I’m out of luck.

I choose a lane with 2 brimming trolleys. It takes forever.  Eventually it’s my turn. I empty my basket with deft precision, heavy items in front, light ones  behind. I’m packing my own bags. I intercept the packer on the other side and say “Thanks, I got it”. I don’t think I smiled.

He looks at me the way packers always look at me when I use my own bag and he probably thinks what they all think “hmmm, another one of those strange foreigners”.

So yesterday we had one of our mass movie outings to go see District 9.  Up until last Wednesday night I’ve seen the posters and I’ve read the tag-lines, but I haven’t really paid attention to it, until the Journo told me that it’s a South African director and it’s set in South Africa.

Well, immediately my interest was piqued and I zoomed on over to IMdb to read all about it.  In deed, written and directed by Neill Blomkamp, born in Johannesburg, South Africa and studied visual effects in Canada.  He was slated to film a movie based on Halo, but the stakeholders (Microsoft was mentioned), couldn’t agree on the terms, so it fell through.  The financiers, however, then apparently gave him US$ 30 million and told him to make anything he wanted.

Back in the day he made a short called Alive in Joburg, which is what District 9 was borne from.  Pretty low key in comparison, but it was only a 6 minute short.  He was also in cahoots with Sharlto Copley, another prominent figure in South Africa’s not-yet-prominent movie industry. Sharlto was responsible, amongst other things, for shorts like 2001: A Space Oddity and Hellweek (about extreme animator training), both set in Cape Town.

Then the great minds got together and created District 9, which is now a block buster.  In the vein of low budget box office hits like The Blairwitch Project and Cloverfield, District 9 is filmed part in documentary style.  But before you think “oh, more pukable visuals”, the docu-movie style is blended with normal view and even CCTV cameras, so you don’t have to endure an entire movie of shaking visuals and unbelievable surely-he-would-have-dropped-the-camera-or-ran-out-of-battery moments. In fact, the blend is smooth and effortless and doesn’t distract from the story.

The story is set in Johannesburg, South Africa and, according to the IMdb’s trivia, only the shack in which the main alien character lives was constructed – the others were all there already.  So aliens land on earth, and for a change they don’t do it above New York, but they choose humble Johannesburg.  Americans, as Hollywood have taught us, will shoot the crap out of any alien.  South Africans are much friendlier, and we carjack, so they break into the spaceship instead – there’s irony in that.

Long story short, temporary housing, ala South African squatter camp, is given to the aliens while the world decides what to do, until it becomes unbearable due to crime, violence and appalling living conditions and the government decides to relocate the 1.8 million aliens. Parallels with apartheid are rife and deliberate, but subtle to the uninformed. District 9 apparently is a play on District 6 – an actual housing situation from the apartheid era where the storyline was very similar, humans only a metaphore for whites only – if you’ve read the history of apartheid and the brutality of the police against activists, there will be more than just one hair-raising moment in District 9, and not because of human-on-alien violence either.

The unlikely hero of the story is Wikus Van Der Merwe and if you love South African accents, you’re going to love this guy. Obviously not the sharpest tool in the box, Wikus is appointed to lead the moving of the not-always-friendly aliens. Things go awry and the story gets interesting. Greed and hate fuels the story line.

The movie is multi-faceted. Those with no knowledge of or interest in South Africa’s past will still enjoy this movie as a sci-fi adventure. There’s plenty of action, people die and get hurt, it’s not unrealistic. There’s tons of special effects, but the way it was supposed to be, the CGI supports the story and isn’t the story (Transformers, GI Joe anybody?).

If you do know something about South Africa’s past, there are scenes from the movie that will have you thinking about it a little more.  The comments on the past and questions asked about the future – the reason why we can’t stop talking about apartheid – because like WWII we need to remember it so that it doesn’t happen again. Even if it is to aliens.

Like all great not-so-main-stream movies, District 9 relied heavily on viral marketing for it’s exposure.  MNU (Multi-National United) is the greedy corporate company tasked with moving the aliens (and getting their weaponry to work).  Visit their website as either an human (friendly, informative), or as an alien (commanding, alien script can be translated to English).  Also read an alien activist’s blog (MNUSpreadsLies.com) to find out more about how aliens are treated.

I really enjoyed District 9.  For everything I said above and for its obvious South Africaness.  I’m not sure how much the South African film industry can claim credit for this – all the special effects were created  by overseas companies, albeit with the involvement of South Africans – but it’s an awesome movie shot on my home soil with home-grown actors, and it rocks.

I’m going to go see it again.