I had dinner with my in-law’s place… And Mrs Tai followed me back home… Yea!!! Someone to pamper me…

I have been looking around for the Thai triangle cushion and have been asking family and friends visiting Thailand to keep an eye out for me. Latest was Sherman who was in Thailand for a short holiday just two weeks back.

Anyway, he was being extremely helpful to the point that he texted my just a few days ago to tell me that he saw this triangle cushion being sold here in Malaysia — Carrefour Subang.

So off I went this evening to Carrefour to check out the Thai triangle cushion and bring one home. At the same time, took my mum to my friend’s diner located close by (the e-Tiara Apartments). My friend owns and runs the diner — Ben and Nick’s Diner. They serve good Western food.

After dinner, we rushed to Carrefour, got the cushion and went back home… I was all excited about the Thai triangle cushion and the four new Wii games I had just bought earlier today. Mum was just as excited and curious about the Thia triangle cushion and pestered my to unpack it and try it out. I have tried out the Thai triangle cushion before at a friend’s place — that’s how I first found out about it. I find it very useful and plan to get a few of this for my new home. Mrs Tai and I will probably buy these Thai triangle cushions instead of sofa sets, provided they are really practical and useful. And that’s why I just got one first… To try it out.

After unpacking it, I rolled it all out and it becomes a bed!

This is really cool, huh?

Then it took me another 15 minutes to figure out how to turn it into a chair… Surprisingly, there are quite a number of combination and I recall getting it right after just the first few tries. Then I remember folding the cushion back into the storage position (all folded up) and then trying to unfold it back into the chair position… That’s when I realised it’s not as easy as it seems… You can tell I’ve never been good with Rubik’s cube…

But anyway, after 15 minutes, I finally got it…

We’re still testing out the Thai triangle cushion. Getting my family and friends to try it out over the next few weeks and see what is their feedback. If everything is OK and I don’t get any sore neck, I’m going back to Carrefour to get more of these Thai triangle cushions… If you wanna try out the cushion, do drop by my parent’s place…

And in case you are wondering, they cost rm69.90 each. Well… Since I can’t find it anywhere else at the moment, I think it’s a bargain.

Have you ever wondered how spammers got hold of your email address?

Well, if you are using Gmail, there is one little feature in Gmail that can help you find out and even manage the spams. I found out about this only a few months ago and have yet to try it out.

You see, some dodgy websites that requires you to provide your email address can sometimes also sell away your email address to spammers (they could actually also be the spammers themselves). With this google feature, you can leave a ‘marker’. For example, if you want to register on my website (www.adriantai.com) and your email address is gmail@gmail.com, you can actually sign up as gmail+adriantaidotcom@gmail.com. Emails that comes from my site will still arrive at your mailbox because Gmail will not recognise anything after the ‘+’ sign.

You can then create a filter to filter out emails sent to mygmail+adriantaidotcom@gmail.com. This way, when you start getting emails that is not sent out by www.adriantai.com, you know something is not right and your ‘email address’ is probably in a spam list now… That’s when you change the filter to direct emails straight to the trash!

But don’t worry… www.adriantai.com don’t do such things…

For more details about this, do check out the Gmail blog. Let me know if you need a step-by-step guide. I’ll be more than happy to write one.

Today is my first day back at work after a month long break. Once again, I have to really say that I’m very fortunate and grateful that my present employer allowed me to take the month off since I’ve only joined them in May itself!

My boss is in town so I managed to personally thank him for the arrangement and approval. I believe the one month break was something very important as it helped Mrs Tai and myself get through the difficult and painful time. Without the break, I really don’t know what would have happened. As it is, both of us are doing fine now. Mrs Tai is now back at her parent’s place as she is still on maternity leave.

Things in the office is fine. I guess everyone’s heard about it. One month away, so as expected, there’s lots of stuffs to follow-up and complete. There is a long to-do list and I definitely want to catch up and complete them all ASAP.

Things don’t stop after office hours. It seems the upgrade of the Setia Alam Residents’ Association (SARA) forum didn’t go as smoothly as planned and I ended up spending about two hours working on it. Luckily the members were very understanding and looked on the bright side (new version means better features) instead of demanding for my head on the floor…

…Would have been our baby’s full moon.

We collected the keys to our new home in Setia Alam today!

We can’t move in yet because we are still waiting for the Certificate of Fitness (CF). We are expecting to get the CF in July. Give or take about two months for the developer to rectify the defects (we’re being generous here by giving two months). Then another 2-3 months for some basic stuffs like grilles, kitchen cabinet, etc…

We should be staying there by end of this year!

Three months ago when I was at Port Klang, I never expected to return so soon… What more, for a similar reason.

It was another ‘closing’ for Mrs Tai and myself. It was difficult to let go because it a way, it meant saying goodbye… But we knew we had to.

Goodbye Seraphine… Mummy and daddy will always love you. Though we say goodbye to you, you will always be in our hearts.

For most companies, SOP stands for Standard Operating Procedures. But for some, they actually stand for Silly Operating Procedures.

I can easily give examples of how these SOPs are designed by people who are not in touch with reality. For example, last year when a tenant moved out in a hurry, I did what was considered the SOP — call the utility companies and check to make sure all bills are paid, etc… One of them was of course Telekom Malaysia. They said there were some outstanding payments. I told them that my tenant had actually ‘migrated’ and will no longer be using their services. My tenant was no longer in Malaysia and could not be contacted. I advised Telekom Malaysia to immediately terminate the phone and broadband services.

Telekom Malaysia then told me that their SOP does not allow anyone other than the customer to request for termination. I can understand the logic behind this… Eventually, the phone service was terminated but not the broadband. When I asked again much later, they said broadband services had to be separately terminated. And if the user does not issue a termination notice (or do not realise the termination notice is separate), the service will still be active. The thing is, the broadband service requires a phone line. So I asked if there is no phone line, how can the broadband service still be active? The customer service people said its SOP.

Fast forward till nine months later… The outstanding amount is accumulating. Since I was still holding some deposit, I told Telekom Malaysia I would use the deposit to make partial payment (outstanding bill is more than the deposit). Again, I told them it is pointless to continue to charge for it since the tenant has left nine months ago… I was told the same thing — SOP. The service will be automatically terminated once the outstanding amount reaches a certain limit… Wait… I just made partial payment… So I asked them, does it mean now it will take Telekom Malaysia even longer to deactivate the account? The answer is — YES.

How silly can things get? I know that TMNet (Telekom Malaysia’s internet subsidiary) will sometimes issue a notice if you default payment just after two months. So how come this one can still go on after nine months? I suspect the notice is just notice and the limit is something like rm1000. So, if you wanna abuse their Silly Operating Procedure, you just need to sign up for the wireless access, which costs an extra rm10 which you will not pay anyway (this way, even after the phone service is terminated, you can access from their wireless nodes). Then don’t pay your bills. If you sign up for the rm66 per month unlimited package and add the rm10 per month for wireless access, you should be able to get 13 months of free internet. But of course, don’t blame me if you get blacklisted or this don’t work. But so far for that ex-tenant of mine, the service is still on!

Another case of Silly Standard Operating Procedure, this time with one of our local bank (this is also the bank that at one time said they will only deal with bumiputra companies for purchases, etc). It seems that to open a joint account in this bank, the relationship must either be parent-child, siblings or husband-wife (we are not talking about business accounts). And for husband and wife, you actually need to bring along your original marriage certificate! This is the first time I have heard if such thing. Banks are now charging service fees so I would expect them to be providing me with SERVICES not DIS-SERVICE! And I think our government’s effort to promote MyKad is definitely not working with LOCAL banks. This bank still requires us to fill up something like 2 sets of forms (that’s like 6-8 pages)…

Mrs Tai and I got annoyed and decided to walk down the block to another bank. We walked to the customer service counter and asked for the form. We also asked in advance if they needed to see our marriage certificate. They said there is no need for the certificate and there’s no form to complete. We just need to produce our MyKad… The process was impressive. The relevant information was extracted from MyKad and the details were then inserted into a form which was then printed out. All we needed to do was just sign! This is service we don’t mind paying. Shame on you, Maybank!

I just have to take another shot at Telekom Malaysia. I am sure many would have seen this advertisement before:

It’s written very clearly in the advertisement… “No fixed line rental*” with an ‘*’. How bad can the ‘*’ be? Look closely at the bottom and it says:

“Streamyx Combo monthly subscription fee is inclusive of monthly TM fixed line rental”. I must hand it to the marketing genius who came up with this… Is this actually legal — to claim NO fees and then say the fees are included (which actually means there are fees to pay)?

This afternoon, we went back to University Malaya Medical Centre (UMMC), formerly known as University Hospital. Seraphine’s hospital bill had arrived in our mailbox last week. We decided to settle the bill today as well as to thank the team at UMMC for doing their best for our Seraphine. We also wanted to thank Professor Lum for all that she had done.

We bought two fruit baskets. One for our doctor and her team of nurses who had attended to Mrs Tai during the ultrasound sessions. Mrs Tai had told me lots of wonderful things about the team when she was there. They were very helpful and friendly. The other was for Professor Lum and her team at the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit. They had been very accommodating and understanding. They were very diligent, caring and had attended to Seraphine (and the other babies in PICU) with all their hearts. We know that. And like Saraphine’s chinese name (Ern, 恩), we are grateful to everyone.

When we dropped by the PICU, Professor Lucy was in. She looked shocked to see us but she remembered us and asked how are we getting on… We told her what we would tell to our family and friends… We are as ok as we can be at the moment. We wish things had turned out otherwise but it didn’t. We have accepted the fact and we are adjusting to it.

Visiting the PICU brought back memories. Painful ones. As we entered, we saw a family sitting where my family was seated just a few weeks back. I could see this lady crying as she spoke on the phone. I know how it feels to have one’s child lying in PICU. I can only pray that everything turns out well for this lady and her child. And how I wish I had walked up to her this afternoon and told her that her child is the hands of a very good team!

We still have a few more items to sort out for Seraphine. After all the items are sorted out (my guess would be by next week), it would be our ‘closing’. It does not mean we will forget Seraphine but just that we have to start moving on…

It has been more than a week since Seraphine passed away.

Both Mrs Tai and myself are still adjusting to the fact that our baby passed away just after two days due to lung complications as a result of the congenital diaphragmatic hernia. Both of us are now still at home, being there for each other and to get through this together. Once again, I have to say that we are very glad to have so many relatives and friends who are there to lend a helping hand, an ear, etc… It makes going through all these a lot easier.

I would be lying if I said otherwise… We still miss Seraphine very much…