Blanks, Blanks and more blanks

I have been really busy the last week. I did go outstation and yes I did have internet connection at the place where I had to work. No I did not bother to connect to the internet for this blog updates at the hotel. Was too tired ended up working till 3 am the first night and 1.30 am the second.

I did try to login from Coffee Bean Wifi at senai airport (my flight was delayed for one hour) somehow my old trusty notebook was unable to get connected to the Wifi AP.

So today I am still stuck with tons of things to finish before I go on leave starting tomorrow. So I will only be able to do updates next week (as if that many people read this thing anyway)

I do have a lot of things to write, about my trip, the politics of business & in the office, the characters I met, my 'durian runtuh' etc etc but time is not on my side at the moment so I will leave it for later. Just hope that I wont forget the details of the happenings for past two weeks


till then more blanks on the blog

Got this in my email

Got this from an email... you know the type that goes around saying distribute this.. share this with other people... there you go

Copy & pasted without any ammendments


A successful business man was growing old and knew it was time to
choose a successor to take over the business. Instead of choosing one of his
directors or his children, he decided to do something different.

He called all the young executives in his company together.

'It is time for me to step down and choose the next CEO,' he said. 'I
have decided to choose one of you.'

The young executives were shocked, but the boss continued. 'I am going
to give each one of you a seed today - a very special seed. I want you
to plant the seed, water it, and come back here one year from today
with what you have grown from the seed I have given you. I will then judge
the plants that you bring, and the one I choose will be the next CEO.'

One man, named Jim, was there that day and he, like the others,
received a seed.

He went home and excitedly, told his wife the story. She helped him get

a pot, soil and compost and he planted the seed.

Every day, he would water it and watch to see if it had grown. After
about three weeks, some of the other executives began to talk about
their seeds and the plants that were beginning to grow. Jim kept
checking his seed, but nothing ever grew.

Three weeks, four weeks, five weeks went by, still nothing. By now,
others were talking about their plants, but Jim didn't have a plant
and he felt like a failure.

Six months went by - still nothing in Jim's pot. He just knew he had
killed his seed. Everyone else had trees and tall plants, but he had
nothing. Jim didn't say anything to his colleagues, however. He just
kept watering and fertilizing the soil - he so wanted the seed to
grow.

A year finally went by and all the young executives of the company
brought their plants to the CEO for inspection. Jim told his wife that

he wasn't going to take an empty pot. But she asked him to be honest
about what happened.

Jim felt sick at his stomach. It was going to be the most embarrassing
moment of his life, but he knew his wife was right.

He took his empty pot to the board room. When Jim arrived, he was
amazed
at the variety of plants grown by the other executives. They were
beautiful--in all shapes and sizes. Jim put his empty pot on the floor

and many of his colleagues laughed. A few felt sorry for him!

When the CEO arrived, he surveyed the room and greeted his young
executives.

Jim just tried to hide in the back.

'My, what great plants, trees, and flowers you have grown,' said the
CEO.

'Today one of you will be appointed the next CEO!'

All of a sudden, the CEO spotted Jim at the back of the room with his
empty pot. He ordered the financial director to bring him to the front.

Jim was terrified. He thought, 'The CEO knows I'm a failure! Maybe he
will have me fired!'

When Jim got to the front, the CEO asked him what had happened to his
seed.

Jim told him the story.

The CEO asked everyone to sit down except Jim. He looked at Jim, and
then announced to the young executives, 'Here is your next Chief
Executive! His name is Jim!'

Jim couldn't believe it. Jim couldn't even grow his seed. How could he

be the new CEO the others said?

Then the CEO said, 'One year ago today, I gave everyone in this room a
seed.

I told you to take the seed, plant it, water it, and bring it back to
me
today. But I gave you all boiled seeds; they were dead - it was not
possible for them to grow.

All of you, except Jim, have brought me trees and plants and flowers.

'When you found that the seed would not grow, you substituted another
seed for the one I gave you. Jim was the only one with the courage and

honesty to bring me a pot with my seed in it. Therefore, he is the one
who will be the new Chief Executive!'

Moral:

If you plant honesty, you will reap trust

If you plant goodness, you will reap friends.

If you plant humility, you will reap greatness.

If you plant perseverance, you will reap contentment

If you plant consideration, you will reap perspective.

If you plant hard work, you will reap success.

If you plant forgiveness, you will reap reconciliation.

So, be careful what you plant now; it will determine what you will reap later.

It has been a while

It has been a while since my last post. I know, I know that I tried to make it a point to update and tell my side of the story as frequent as I can, but shit happens.

I am required to go for a business trip in the southern region tomorrow for 2 days. I just got the agenda, the portion that I am suppose to look at is only for an hour or so on the first day. I mean thats it? spend the unnecessary traveling for hours, which I think air flight is not possible due to two reasons; first its gonna be hard to get flight tickets due to school holidays and second, the MD is not around to approve for air travel (ouch!)

So I am trying my very best to wiggle my way out of going.



So now is the school holidays, I am still tied up with my project which is one week behind schedule from my original plan. However, the actual completion date in stages and the first milestone is actually end of this month, so in a way I am still ok.

So to not let the kids disappointed by not going anywhere for the holidays, I took the whole family for another movie last weekend - "Rattatouille" (did I spell that right?). I guess they kinda enjoyed it, I liked it, my AF1 liked it, my AF2 said she liked it, my Af3 said heliked it, but he did looked bored on occasions, and Mama said she sorta liked it.

So it was fun, they did enjoyed themselves, which was the whole idea anyway. Munching away on popcorns and the movie did evoke laughter from all of them....


My AF3 has a defense mechanism on getting himself out of school. The last week before the school holidays he was very reluctant to go to school. Angin dia masa mula mula sekolah datang balik. He cried and tried to get out from getting me to send him didnt work, so when he got to school, he got himself to throw up so that the teacher would call me up to pick him up and take him home. That worked for the first day (monday) then he didnt go to school on tuesday & wednesday.

On thursday I forced him to go to school. He threw up in the car (fortunately in a plastic bag) but I still refuse to budge nor did I show any sympathy (it was hard but I had to do it... I felt really bad). He didnt vommit in school that day. And the thing was repeated again on Friday, and he was finally ok by the time he got home. Now with one week holiday, I dont know whether he will be worked up again on the first day of school.

So now, my head is in a mess about the traveling issue (the first paragraph of this post). Therefore I leave this post as it is now, and maybe just maybe I will get in some updates later

Wise words perhaps?

Here is something that I read recently that may be applies to nearly everything in life

You would have three things in most solutions in life, whether it is work related or in everyday life

Good, Quick, Cheap

And in most cases you can have only two of these components, no matter what.

Good + Quick solution = Not Cheap
Good + Cheap solution = Not Quick
Quick + cheap solution = Not Good


How does that sounds? Take a pick of what you usually choose




On another note here is a riddle told to me by my 8 year old AF2

If
Farmer A sells vegetables
Farmer B sells fruits
What does Farmer C sells?

It had me thinking.....I said a lot of things and she would laugh at me each time saying I am wrong...


The answer.. Farmer C (pronounced - Pharmacy) sells medicine!



That sure puts a smile on my face...

Futsal with a view and other thots

Last night was my futsal outing with the guys from the office. Well put it this way, the rest of the guys are young.. in their 20s, me and and YBA are touching 40.. sigh.

Anyway, one of the guys arranged a friendly with a team from TV3 (kononnya). It turns out that these guys are training for the upcoming National futsal league this weekend. Ulp! what have we got ourselves into.

Eventually it didnt turn out too bad. We didnt make a fool out of ourselves. Lost 2 matches and drew the other. Score... cant remember.

However, the view for that night is there was a filming going on at that venue... a taping of the tv series Gol & Gincu episode was taking place. So all the main actresses were there. So it was a nice sight indeed.

At home, my AF3 was still in transformers mode. Keep on repeating watching the transformers dvd, just like what he did when 'Cars' came out. The other day when we were in Subang Parade, he saw 'Cars' watch on display, he came to me with his cute eyes....

"Babah... boleh bili jam cars?'

This boy is four years old, cant even tell time, has two watches at home (one is a free faber castell digital watch, the other is a spiderman watch). So me being me, try to divert as much attention away from the topic until at one point..

'Babah.. naik atas pigi toysus' (Toy r us)

'ok nanti kita pergi' I happily replied, knowing if he goes to Toys r us he'll happily browse around, watch the promo on the tv sets until he is satisfied then we can leave peacefully. He is such a darling that he doesnt throw a tantrum.

Selamat duit babah



On another another note, I was at the Shah Alam pasar tani (the one located near the stadium) last sunday. As usual I would browse through the stalls carrying sports apparels. One particular stalls with footbal jersey replicas had the latest Arsenal 07/08 away strip. It was so much like the original. With the printed small print on the strip, the herbert chapman commemorative logo on the inside, with the quality of material... it was like wow? the price? RM40


Then I went to nike shop when I was in subang parade, there it was on display the same replica strip. The sales assistant came up to me started his sales pitch..

"bang, latest Arsenal jersey, tulisan tu semua pakai laser technology"

'yeah.... how much?'

"RM 250 jer...."

'ok... thank you'...

I check the quality, it was like very very very similar. I think only if I worked for Nike that I would know the difference. I am not advocating piracy or anything, but for that price?

Enuff Said.


Final thoughts of the day..... Welcome back my Treo 680. He ehe

New Car?

Yesterday, as I was dropping off my 4 year old AF3 to kindergarten, I parked the car. As I opened the rear door for him, I noticed there were some tears on the rubber lining of that door near the seat. I just mentioned to myself, "Oh Boy koyak pulak getah ni..."

And guess what the response I got from that boy?

"Koyak.... Abah, bili kereta baru la..." Banyak kereta cantik... tu tu " pointing to the other cars parked at the parking lot (among others a kancil, kelisa, getz and a proton)

I just smiled not knowing what else to say..... speechless....

Solat....

Entah macammana sebaik saja selepas solat maghrib two days ago, tiba tiba terlintas dihati, nak suruh my two precious girls AF1 & AF2 start solat on a regular basis. So I called them up, had a nice talk with them (with me doing all the talking actually) The two were initially worried, coz usualy if I called both of them and sit down and talked to them, usually they had done something wrong. But they were very receptive to my instruction and they were ready to do as I have asked. It was very heartwarming to see them eager and willing to perform the solat without me having to throw a fit. All I need is just to remind them (or maybe sometimes their mama or bak ti) of the prayer times.

So far Alhamdullillah, evrything is going well... no tantrums thrown when it is Solat time.