Entries from May 2007 ↓

Things started out fine till after lunch when I had to drop my colleague off for what was to be a quick meeting. It turned out to last 1 hour and all that time, I sat in my car under the blistering sun - waiting. With my car devoid of reading material, I resorted to the only available item - the car manual.

Do not laugh. It gets better and it comes in handy. I promise.

After that, we were off to Selayang to pick up some documents. Whee… here we go trundling down life’s highway. Picked up a keat-chai shuin-mui drink (sour plum with lime juice) to quench our thirst. Then a phone call came in.

Could we swing by Berjaya Times Square in the heart of Kuala Lumpur to pick up a check? Could we? I was all of half an hour’s drive away and I was to turn into the city at 4.15pm? I said yes, we could. Its a cheque after all.

This is where it starts to get good.

I drop my colleague at Plaza Berjaya which is just opposite Times Square and I told him I’ll take a turn and pick him up from the front of the building after he’s picked up the cheque. Good idea right? However, as I was pulling away from the curb, something did not feel right.

I was wondering why the road was so bumpy. There was construction ongoing and lots of little stones on the road so I thought it might be that. However, the bumpiness continued as I took my turn to end up in front of Berjaya Times Square.

And this is the part it really gets good.

My car tyre was flat. Punctured. Bocor. Kemek. Flat as the literal pancake.

I wasn’t quite sure what to think at that point. I looked at my colleague who looked back and me and said “Where is the jack?” and I said “In my handbag. Where do you think the bloody jack is?!”

After that question there was no way I was letting him near my car! So a quick phone call to Toyota’s 24 hour assist confirmed that yes, they do help damsels in distress who need changing of a punctured car tyre. So, I settled down for a 25 minute wait for the mechanic while I pondered the irony of my just having read the car manual on how to change a car tyre!

20 minutes later, the mechanic came up on his motorcycle, whipped out his wrench and jack and proceeded to get to work. I was very happy that he did not give me a “Useless woman driver” look but instead was helpful and quick to do the job with minimum chatter. With my conversational cantonese limited to ordering food, I don’t think I could have carried on a conversation with anyone that did not involve me saying “Yat woun hor fan” or “Oi lat chiu” or “kon loh meen” at any point in time.

5 minutes later, I was all ready to go, with my spare tyre in place. It was interesting to note that I was parked right in front of Berjaya Times Square on a busy afternoon with many people walking around and my flat tyre in full view, yet not one single person offered to help change my flat tyre.

I took the car to a nearby tyre shop to see if they could patch it up, but apparently they could not, because the tear was on the side of the tyre which they said was a weak point. It was quite a big hole for the air never stopped hissing out of it - a steady audible hiss. Very worrying. Apparently this could only be caused by a strong impact which means I must have caused the damage when I hit a pothole or a curb. Can I sue DBKL for not patching up the potholes in the city, thereby causing damage to my tyre?

So, I had to get the tyre changed. RM175 poorer and 1 hour later, I was back on the road with a brand new tyre.

So what have we learnt today, boys and girls?

• Always make sure you have your spare tyre in your car. I was very surprised that the Toyota Assist helpline would ask me “Do you have a spare tyre?” Doesn’t everyone?
• Always sign up with a service ala Toyota Assist or AAM or any other service provider or make sure your car insurance has such services. They come in very handy. I read in the manual that Toyota Assist will even deliver petrol to you if you run out and get stranded! I told you reading the car manual came in handy!
• Learn how to change a car tyre. I should have pretended I could, if only so some strong strapping young man could stop and do it for me. Otherwise, call your service provider. Even AAM does it now. They did not use to before.
• Do not drive into potholes or over curbs at top speed or at all. Not only do you damage your tyres, you also damage your wallet.
• Finally, NEVER ever ask a woman driver where the jack is. If you don’t know you’re better off just keeping quiet.

So now my car has 1 new tyre and will be getting a new antenna. I haven’t replaced the one that got stolen. 6 months old and already demanding presents! Kids these days…

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And after all that, here’s an except of a strangely hilarious conversation I had today. An unknown person called my handphone and when I answered the following conversation ensued:

Me: Hello?
Caller: (In cantonese) The number is 73225198
Me: ??? Sorry you’ve got the wrong number.
Caller: (In cantonese) This is Ah Wah’s number! 73225198
Me: ??!!! Wrong number lah…
Caller: Ngor hai Mother! Um hai wrong number!! (In cantonese - I’m Mother, not wrong number!”
Me: o_O

After my last post and having received the responses, I’m totally overwhelmed. I’m glad no one slammed me even as I’m sure there are many out there who read it and thought what a high horse I rode and what a big soapbox I stood on. But they didn’t leave a blistering comment so my “selective reading” borrowed from May will just ignore that aspect.

I guess the point I was trying to make was not so much to justify the writing of paid posts on a personal blog, but more to ask that it be accepted as part of the new blog culture, and that people should not be a hypocrite about it by slamming others and later doing it. Its like TV commercials, as Wuching put it.  I’m sure TV commercials weren’t popular when they first aired, but without TV commercials, we won’t have the Digi-yellow-man-thing LOL… “I will follow you….” and we probably wouldn’t have Heroes (which I haven’t seen) or CSI or NCIS (both of which I live for on Monday nights).

At the end of the day, whether you blog for yourself or you blog for the masses, the traffic matters. It keeps you going day after day, finding something to talk about - something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.

So here’s an “Aww….” post just for all of you my dear readers and comentators. As they say in Malay “Tanpa kamu mana-lah saya…” - without you, where would I be…? Probably still here but not with so many online friends. 

So, enough of the mushy stuff - *sings* Let’s do the care bears countdown…

5

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4

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3

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2

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1

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More and more people trying to earn money online using their blogs. Its a fact that doesn’t seem to be dying out as fads do. I’ve read time and time again bloggers saying that blogs that succumb to the lure of money is a “blog gone bad” or that its the “death of the blogosphere”.

People refer to writing paid posts as “going over to the Dark Side” and they complain about blogs having advertisements.

Why?

Why this introspective post? Because I don’t like it when people say one thing and do another. People say that blogs “gone bad” are proliferating the “blogosphere” and that writing paid posts are “going over to the Dark Side”. Then, 3 months down the road, you see that they too have succumbed. A week ago I would have thumbed my nose at them and said “Eat my shorts!” ala Bart Simpson. But this week I won’t because I’m trying not to be a devil. :) 

They may start with the little oh-so-innocent advertisement. Then, they may may say oh, a little Adsense wouldn’t hurt. A month later, they do their first Payperpost paid post, but “Its only the odd one”. Another month down the road, and they are no different from the people they criticised just over 4 months ago!

So, don’t say it, if you aren’t ready to live it. Don’t tell others off and piss everyone off and then hope everyone forgets your rant 3 months down the road when you too succumb to “the Dark Side”.

Me? I say, blogging for money isn’t a bad thing. In fact, its a good thing. Who else will pay you to exercise your writing skills? Well, unless you are a copywriter or something. It earns you a bit of pocket money on the side and it can be fun, if you enjoy writing, which I do and I also enjoy getting paid to write.

• You may earn enough to stop working, or to supplement your household income or your kids’ education - kudos to you!
• You may earn just enough to buy you that branded bag you’ve been coveting - kudos to you!
• You may earn just enough to buy a good meal in a fancy restaurant - kudos to you!
• You may earn enough to go on a little holiday - kudos to you!

Whatever you do, kudos to you! If you write well enough, whether for your sponsored posts or non sponsored posts, people will come by and they will read your blog and they will come back and read more of it.

Its true that some blogs are absolutely killed, nay, murdered by sponsored posts and advertisements. Others are killed for me because the writers keep telling us how much they are earning. What do you do? Skip them. Its a free world. You don’t have to read it if you don’t want to.

Ah but those who write sponsored posts aren’t angels too. I would happily draw and quarter and string from their toenails people who ping directories with their sponsored posts. Please, we know you are earning money from it. But the same way you don’t ping adsense ads, don’t ping your paid posts. You are only polluting the environment.

And this is something I will say and will stand by.

I had a shock of my life and need to recover so I’m all a twitter now.

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 It all began with my half-assed attempt to upgrade to Wordpress 2.2. Why? Because everyone say “Must upgrade! Its new! Its better! Its da bomb!” So I did and nearly killed my Kitchen Experiments website.

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Moral of the story, boys and girls, never attempt a shortcut to upgrading your wordpress or whatever blogging platform you use. Backup, unplug your plugins and then upgrade and pray like mad to whatever God you believe in that it works. I got lucky and using a bit of logic, managed to get it back upgraded and all.

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Speaking of backing up, I have a confession. I haven’t backed up my sites and I don’t know how to. If anything happens, I don’t know how to restore it either. Help?

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Should I PPP-tize this site? The 3 month deadline looms. Will everyone just hate me if I do?

Looking back at my posts I noticed that every one seems to be ranting at something or another. Very negative chi. So, today being a wet rainy cold Monday, I’m going to infuse positive chi by counting my little blessings:

• that I don’t ride a motorcycle or I’d be wet and huddled by the roadside like the many motorcycle riders I saw on my way to work
• that I have covered parking for my car
• that I don’t have to walk or run in the rain from my car to my office building
• that I’ve found a goal to write sponsored posts towards
• that a dear friend sent me a lovely package from Hong Kong
• that I have a job to go to on this dreary Monday morning
• that I have a lovely Mom who fed me full of birds nest soup last night
• that I have a sis who drives me crazy with her neverending questions about her new site - Pinkelle.com - go visit and drive her nuts. It’ll make me happy

Little things but the lack of any one of them will send your day into a downward spiral so count your little blessings.