I am a father

Those who frequent my blog may be wondering why I have not been making any updates for quite sometime. It was because I was occupied with much more important matters.
I am now the father of a cute baby girl. She was born on the 29th of October (4th day of Ramadan) making her a scorpio like her mother. She was late by a week and we finally decided to induce the birth on the advise of the doctor.
After a long and painful 12 hour labour (I am not sure how my wife went through it as it was tough for me even without the pain) the baby was born by cesarean section. The doctor said that this was necessary as the baby had passed her stool in the womb and might go into distress any minute. I was right there in the operation theatre with my wife. It was really scary and I won't want to go through that again. The doctor found that the cord was wound around the baby's neck and was the reason why her head had not fully descended. Taking out the baby was quite fast as compared to stiching up the wound. As she might have swallowed some of her stool, known as merconium, she was quickly passed to another waiting doctor who cleaned her lungs by sucking stuff out (using some machine) though her nose and mouth . I was a bit anxious as she didn't make a sound as she was taken out of my wife's belly but was relieved when she let out an angry wail after a few minutes. It was a wonderfull feeling to hold the baby in my arms as I said the Azaan and the Qamat.

Rahil the day after she was born. The sleepless nights, feeding, changing diapers and putting her to sleep is a whole new wonderfull experience. Now its back to work after 7 days paternity leave and I really miss her.

Cloned Credit Cards

I was enjoying a well deserved break with my other half when we got a bit of a scare. My wife just received her HSBC credit card statement this Saturday and found a discrepancy. Found a bill for RM80 this month in a Shell Petrol station in Seberang Prai, when she had been in the Klang Valley all the while. Also RM45 fills her car tank to the brim. Tried to call up the HSBC customer service and was rudely told to call on a working day. Unlike Citibank, we found out that HSBC does not have a 24 hour service centre.
Anyway on Monday, the customer service guy told us that her card had been cloned. She promptly cancelled the credit card. At the HSBC branch where we went to report, we found out that several other purchases had been made – all RM80 worth of petrol. We were really angry when the lady at the counter told us that she couldn’t find out the details as she was not authorized or didn’t have whatever. You have a phone don’t you? Well we had to call the Customer service ourselves using my hand phone and found out that the other purchases had been made again from the same Shell station in Seberang Prai and the other one at a Petronas station in Penang. We were relieved to learn that we won’t be charged for these purchases but the hassle of calling the bank, going the local branch and changing the card was really annoying.
It seems that we were not the only ones who had their card cloned as there was another gentleman who was there to cancel his card. He also had a similar bill – Petrol, RM80 again at the same petrol stations. What was surprising was that the purchases were all the same amount - that is RM80, not more not less and all at the same places way up north. Do I see a pattern here?
Be careful guys.

Another conference another hotel

Just came back after attending the 2nd national Conference on Transportation Management with the theme Issues & Challenges. It was held from 20th to 21st October at the Grand Blue Wave Hotel in Shah Alam (Another 5 star hotel). Shah ALam has to the only place in Malaysia with the best signages. Finding the hotel was quite easy but the traffic jam on the way was really bad. As for the hotel, well I have seen better. The Sutera Harbour Resort in KK, Sabah still remains the best hotel I have been to.
The conference was quite interesting and some imporant issues were raised such as the problems of traffic congestion in the Klang Valley and the Trans ASEAN railway project. However, I don't know if it was due to the fact that I missed out a couple of sessions but good solutions were missing. As compared to other conferences, there was a good mix of professionals, private sector as well as student participation from mixed disciplines. I found it very surprising that very few questions were asked in spite of the fact that a number of conterversial issues were raised. Anyway, it was a good experience.
Will be away for a while. Maybe I will have some good news when I come back.

Pics tell a story

Realized that my blog (or other blogs for that matter) look pretty boring without images. Unfortunately Blogger does not provide us free users with a place to save our pics. The only way is to link to images on another host.
After looking around came across this great low frills but great service provided by Village Photos. Now, I can have a few images to go with my blogs now and then. As they say, a picture speaks a thousand words.

Easy Money

You get to make acquaintances with strange people from all over the World on the net. For example, recently BEN SUSU (e-mail:
bensusu@mailsurf.com) who is from the Federal Republic of Nigeria and also the chairman, contract-awarding committee for the country, recently offered me a way to make a lot of money.
He wants to award a Forty million US dollars ($40 million USD) contract in my favour to supply farming equipments tractors and harvesters. A mobilization up front fee of twenty million U.S Dollars ($20 million USD) will be given to me to start the supply.
The catch is I am not supposed to "do any supply" after the "mobilization" and I will be on a sharing basis of 70-30.
He has assured me that "this business is 100% risk free and note that they will apply legally to the various government agencies concerned and get approvals for the
fund, so the source of the fund is legal, all your Bank need see is the genuine remittance of the fund and as a matter of fact you have all the legal backings for the claim, as long you can explain that you or your associate or agents did execute the contract".
His story is quite sad because it seems a lot of people promised and failed him and he doesn't want to die a poor man. I guess no one does.
However, as I have enough money in my bank account, I wish to take this opportunity to help other poor people out there. You can e-mail him at bensusu@mailsurf.com if you are interested. In fact I have his tel. no. too.

For those people who didn't get it: IT IS A SCAM.

Wanted List

Going through blogs, I noticed that several bloggers have a "wanted list". I keep a list of things to do, but not a "wanted list". Actually, there are a lot of things I want but out of the reach of my hands and pocket. Of course, as they say, human wants are unlimited. So I decided, I don't want to have a list as they keep changing but instead, I will write about a new "desirable" product I just came across, starting this week. Just came across this wonderful product, the Digital Binoculars from Bushnell which combines a powerful, long-range binocular with a .35 megapixel digital camera. 

A perfect accessory for birdwatchers (and perverts, I guess). If they could just add a telescopic microphone.. and a video recorder + a higher resolution. Why don't I just get a high-resolution video camera with a zoom lens? 

As I said, we will never be satisfied. Oh! And yes I want World Peace.

Local vs overseas

Just a joke that a friend sent me (with slight modifications). Its quite funny
A fresh graduate from University Sains Malaysia, frustrated at not being able to get a job, was about to kill himself at Penang Bridge. But, before he could leap to his death, a passing pastor/priest/mullah manages to talk him out of it by getting him a job as a "part-time" gorilla at Zoo Negara. The ape, which was one of the popular animals in the zoo, had unfortunately passed away a few days ago... Anyway this guy in the ape suit goes about his job posing as a gorilla. His cage was next to a lion's cage. One stormy day, the gusty wind blows open the gate to the lion's cage and the lion casually strolls out. This guy posing as a gorilla wants to warn the zoo visitors but is unable to do so as this would mean revealing his identity. Finally he decides that he has no choice as the safety of the visitors comes first and starts to yell, "The lion has escaped! The lion has escaped!!!". All of a sudden, the lion rushes towards his cage and silently whispers to him in English, "Shh...shh... quiet... I am a graduate from University Malaya working as the lion, Lah!"
Jokes aside, just wondering about a discussion I had with some of my friends about local vs. overseas graduates. "Local" meaning students who passed out from local universities and "overseas" meaning students who passed out from foreign universities (usually US, UK or Australia. India and other countries don't count). One of my friends was telling me that some of the fresh local graduates he interviewed were terrible. According to him, they couldn't express themselves and couldn't even introduce themselves properly. Of course the problem was the lack of fluency in English. I disagreed saying that local graduates are just as good. I have friends who have passed out from local universities but who can write several pages long articles on the meaning of life and discuss in length the latest current issues in excellent English. On the other hand, I have friends and colleagues who passed out from UK and the US with horrendous English and couldn't even write a simple application letter without making spelling and grammatical errors. Maybe it's due to the fact that many of the Malaysian students would tend to hand around with other Malaysian students only (especially in places with a lot of Malaysian students). Some are even worse, hanging out with people from their own states or own ethnic group, eg., Kelantanese only, with the whole group speaking in the Kelantanese dialect. In fact many of the students come back without even having made a single friend overseas.
What's the difference then between them and local students? For me, one of the objectives of studying overseas is to learn about other cultures, make friends and at the same time act as an ambassador for your country.
Of course studying overseas has its advantages. You become wiser because of the exposure and the fact that the parents are not less than a few hours drive away. Also many of the students are forced to survive on a meager scholarship, stipend or parents money (unless of course you are a Petronas scholar and even better still, lucky kids of some rich business man). Any comments?