The Rules

On a trip to Feilding, about 2.5 hours away from Welly, I came across an interesting second hand shop around Manchester Square. The shop was open, no one's inside, and I saw these rules written on the shop's wall.


It says:
Rules:
- If you like it buy it
- You decide the price
- No items are priced
- Shop is unattended
- Security cameras are watching you
- Please do not steal
- Please pay, be nice
- Thnx

I thought, what a wonderful world it would have been if everyone could play by this rule.

If you like it buy it. Buy only what we like (or what we need maybe?), do not buy things because your neighbors do, or because Paris Hilton wore it on TV :-p.

No items are priced, you decide the price. Shame on the big major companies gang up to set the price to get unlimited profits for themselves. I just read The Truth about the Drug Companies. See how these companies made us believe that we owe them a living for giving us this 'miracle' drugs, therefore they can charge us anything they want. They made us believe that these companies need the money to fund their R&D, while most of it is used to hire spin doctors, while the company owners and CEO are laughing all the way to the bank. On the flip side of it, we often spend countless minutes haggling over a $2 t-shirt in Cambodia or Bali, and later have a $5 cup of coffee from Starbuck while the t-shirt sellers are still living from hand to mouth.

Shop is unattended, do not steal, security cameras are watching you. The temptation is always there, we've got freewill as human being, but remember that the big guy is watching over us. And for the world full of honest people? I'll take two!

Happy Easter guys, Be Nice...

P.S. The shop's owner might just want to have some fun though :-)

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RIP. Sir Edmund Hillary (1919-2008)

I know who Sir Edmund Hillary is, he's one of the guys who reached the Mt Everest summit for the first time. I didn't realize he's a kiwi until I read the news that he'd passed away. Shame on me! He apparently is considered as true great NZ hero, he really is. He's no ordinary mountaineer, and the Nepalese probably won't remember that he conquered their highest mountain for the first time. They will remember him as a guy who respected them and provided them health and education with his Himalayan Trust. What a guy...

Who's my hero then? I've been thinking really hard and couldn't find any face or name who's really touched my life. Back in my school years, we were taught of numerous Indonesian heroes and yet none of them really deserved to be called hero. It might be because we were introduced to so many 'heroes' (I reckon it's more than 100 names to be memorized), that there was not sufficient time to really know what they did in their whole life, except that they'd been involved in one or two wars before they finally died. I'll blame it on education system :-)

"Well, it doesn't have to be national hero", some says. How about international hero? Well, they didn't teach me at school, and I'm just too lazy to read biography, so the answer is none. I have soft spot for Nelson Mandela though (and George 'hey where's me brain' Bush killed him already, bugger) as I believe he is the role model for reconciliation.

Celebrities? Nah, they seem insincere to me.

Perhaps I do set my standard to high?

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Ghost town (Wellington Christmas)

This year's Christmas was our first in Wellington.



The build up to Christmas day was really similar everywhere I guess.. Shops offering Christmas discount and extending shopping hours (it's extended to 8 o'clock only :-) and some opened until midnight on selected day). It's not as bad as Christmas sale in Singapore though, where you need to squeeze through barricade of mad shoppers in orchard road (mostly Indonesian), here you can still have enough space while you're shopping.

On Christmas Eve, it was surprisingly quiet. We went to church, and only a quarter of congregation members turned up. We came late to the service and we had panicked that we would have problem finding seats as in Indonesia where Christmas eve services are always flooded with church-goers and sometimes people have to sit outside.

We drove around the city and it was reasonably quiet compare to usual weekend. It was a contrast to what happened in Singapore when I was still living there. I was out on Orchard Road on Christmas eve a few years back, and it was hell, it was really crowded you could feel people literally breathing down your neck. There was countdown to Christmas day which was really absurd to me. I don't know if they still have it now, but someone needs to stop them!

One of my friend mentioned that it used to be really quiet in Wellington on Christmas day as most of the population actually came from other part of NZ and they usually traveled back to their home town on Christmas day and as the shops are closed as well. In NZ, based on Shop Trading Hours Repeal Act 1990 there is restriction for trading on Christmas day, Good Friday, Easter Sunday, and half a day of ANZAC day hence all shops and restaurants are closed.

Apparently it WAS really quiet here, and I loved it!


The pictures above were taken on 25 December in Willis street and Lambton Quay area which are the shopping belt of Wellington.


There were only a handful of people, and the kids took the chance to skateboard on the road.


Even the ever greedy McDonald's 24 hour chains were closed.

Merry Christmas!
p.s. hun, thanks for the pics :-)

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Visit Indonesia 2008 (read: dumb and dumber)

We're really good at being in the news for wrong reason.
It's not surprising that the Visit Indonesia 2008 (VIY 2008) program is not properly planned and executed, but this is just appalling! It's one thing that the campaign slogan apparently had grammatical error, but the response was just laughable.

"Our colleagues tried their best not to be reckless in creating the slogan, I'm sure," said Thamrin Bachri, director general for marketing at the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. "But we have been advised by several people to change the slogan."

Definitely their best was not good enough.


If you think these people in the Ministry of Tourism are jokers, you haven't seen their boss yet. Check out the minister's comment when he inaugurated the use of VIY 2008 logo by Garuda planes.

The minister said however that basically Indonesia was able to attract more foreign tourists, especially in terms of the money it had spent on tourism promotions.
Wacik said that with US$10 million in tourism promotion cost, Indonesia was able to attract five million foreign tourists, while Malaysia which spent US$80 million managed to attract only 15 million tourists.
"With the promotion cost, Malaysia should have attracted foreign tourists 80 times bigger," he said.

$10 million = 5 million tourists
$80 million = 80*5 million tourist?

Not only your maths sucks Mr. Wacik (can't believe he's an engineer), but also with your logic, if Brunei had spent $1 billion (I'm sure they have that kind of money), they would have got 500 million tourists flooding their their country in a year :-)

You're so fired mate!

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Merry Christmas

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It's time to visit Indonesia!

Just found out that next year is Visit Indonesia Year when I watched the local TV here yesterday. Despite the nasty things you hear about Indonesia, it's still a place to go and have a good time. Enjoy your holiday!

P.S This link might be handy.

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That's probably why I can't be a boss...

Story 1: It's lunch time.. walk to pantry, heat my packed lunch (thanks hun!) up in microwave, and enjoy my lunch while reading free newspaper which is provided by the company (my client's company) in the kitchen.. One of the high point of my working day! I couldn't do it anymore today.. The idea of having free newspaper has been canned. No obvious reason why, but people are getting upset about this. (Cost cutting of $2.5 doesn't seem like a smart thing to do, does it?)
Story 2: End of the year, it's time to party.. some companies throw end-of-year parties, some gives bonus or gifts to their employees.. What's the worst gifts you've ever got? A few weeks ago Stuff asked its readers this question. Two of the hilarious ones:

I remember one year when the company had had a good year and the directors gave themselves a great big pay out and the rest of the staff received two wine glasses with the company logo on it. Miserable.

At a company I worked for in Wellington in the mid-1990s we had a Christmas work lunch that was pot luck, and every year we would get a company diary for the following year (which we needed for work anyway). One year, with a great flourish, the ancient head of the company handed out an envelope along with the customary diary. Was it a gift voucher? Was it some sort of lucky prize draw? Nope, it was a piece of paper entitled "Are you living the life you deserve?". It asked all of us to really look at how we were spending our lives and decide whether it was really how we wanted it to be. Needless to say, once the Christmas break was over an avalanche of resignation letters hit the boss's desk... funny that!

I believe small things count in workplace. There's no scientific proof that a piece of newspaper or corporate gifts can make the employees happier, but I know that it can only make their employees less happy. It's the feeling of being disrespected by someone you put your blood sweat and tears for more than 8 hours day in day out.

I wonder why the big guys in the office just don't get the idea. In the name of cost cutting: no more free coffee and tea, no internet , change catering providers to cheaper one, no more stationaries, you name it, and this does happen to those multi national companies, with billions of $ of profits. I guess it's easier to do these than handling real problems in the company.

Well, enough ranting. I guess I just have to have my lunch in front of my PC tomorrow...

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