Dubai

Arrival at Dubai Airport, at 0510hrs 18 February +4.00 GMT

After getting the entry visa, iris scan.. bla bla bla.. I arrive at the hotel.. London Crown 2 Hotel Apartments in Bur Dubai the picture shows the outside of the hotel

Below is the picture on Bank Street, Bur Dubai.

more pictures of Bur Dubai

Night view at Bur Dubai

The picture below show Dubai Marina (the cluster of tall buildings in the distance)

JLT, stands for Jumeirah Lake Towers

The Metro

What the sign says?

Lake view in JLT

Another view in JLT

Al Bashah

Dubai Marina at night

McDonalds in Dubai.. Dhs17 for Big Mac meal, Dhs4 for beef burger. Not recommended, Malaysian McD tastes better.

Tall buildings in the financial centre.

Another viewpoint of the financial center


More to come...

Influencing styles

Below is an excerpt from hbr.org about an article about influencing styles.

You may have an idea what your style is just from hearing these labels, but the most accurate way to identify your style is with an influence style indicator — a self-scoring assessment that classifies your style based on answers to questions about preferred influencing tactics. But even without the indicator, here are some questions you can ask yourself to begin to understand your style:

Rationalizing: Do you use logic, facts, and reasoning to present your ideas? Do you leverage your facts, logic, expertise, and experience to persuade others?
Asserting: Do you rely on your personal confidence, rules, law, and authority to influence others? Do you insist that your ideas are heard and considered, even when others disagree? Do you challenge the ideas of others when they don't agree with yours? Do you debate with or pressure others to get them to see your point of view?
Negotiating: Do you look for compromises and make concessions in order to reach an outcome that satisfies your greater interest? Do you make tradeoffs and exchanges in order to meet your larger interests? If necessary, will you delay the discussion until a more opportune time?
Inspiring: Do you encourage others toward your position by communicating a sense of shared mission and exciting possibility? Do you use inspirational appeals, stories, and metaphors to encourage a shared sense of purpose?
Bridging: Do you attempt to influence outcomes by uniting or connecting with others? Do you rely on reciprocity, engaging superior support, consultation, building coalitions, and using personal relationships to get people to agree with your position?

While answering these questions, take your style a step further. How often does it work for you? Are you more successful with certain types of people? Have you ever wondered why? Since there are five different influencing styles, using only your preferred style has the potential to undermine your influence with as many as four out of five people.

Gaining awareness about our own influencing style and those of others is especially critical in light of today's fast-paced and stressful work environments, and here's why: When we are operating unconsciously out of a preference (our style) and not seeing the results we expect, we actually have the tendency to intensify our preferred behavior — even when it's not working!

If your individual success depends on gaining the cooperation of people over whom you have no direct authority, this should concern you. The way to begin to increase your odds of influencing more people is to learn to recognize and use each of the five styles.

Becoming aware that there are influencing styles other than yours is a good start. To further increase your influence, you must learn what each style sounds like when it's being used effectively and ineffectively. Gaining this awareness will help you recognize when the style you're using isn't working and how to determine one that will.

What's your influencing style? And what are you going to do about it?

How to repay PTPTN via CIMBclicks

First, what you need?

Your handphone

Your PTPTN pin.
Forgotten your pin? Here's how at Money Magnet

A CIMB account with CIMBclicks activated.

Pop-up blocker disabled.

If not you will be stuck at this step. How to disable it? Click here

Please note that you can only pay online from 7am-11pm

If not you will see this

So now you have a CIMBclicks account, pop-up blocker disabled and the time is somewhere between 7am - 11pm. And you decided to repay your PTPTN loan.

Lets get started.

With your browser, go here https://epay.ptptn.gov.my/loan/ptptnlogin.html

You will see this

Or from the main site of http://www.ptptn.gov.my/web/guest/anjung

Click on E-FES under TREXX ZONE

Now key in your IC no. and PTPTN pin and proceed

You will see your statement. Like here.

Scroll down to the payment section as below.

For example above I paid RM100.00 Ticked the ponjaman 1 and click Pay

You will see the following

Proceed.

You will see the screenshot below

Select CIMBclicks

Then Agree and Continue

You will see this

And a pop-up such as this. Note that your first window will show this until the transaction is complete.

Log in your CIMBclicks account with your UserID and Password

You will arrive here.

Obtain a TAC code. By clicking on the box 'Click Here' You will receive the TAC code on your handphone.

Now key in the TAC code, select a account to pay from and 'Submit'

A confirmation page will follow

Confirm and you will come to the receipt page.

As follows

Your transaction is complete. If you go back to your first window you should see as follows.

Click Print if you want,

If you click Next you will arrive here.

Complete!

You have paid PTPTN repayment!

Note : You can relogin into your PTPTN and doublecheck the transaction.

Dinner!

Had this for dinner

Its a lai liu har ko fun.. or 濑尿虾蛄饭 in chinese.

Nice filling meal for you =D

Ipoh Chee Cheong Fun!

Place to go.

Canning Gardens Chee Cheong Fun in Ipoh.























Said to be the best Chee Cheong Fun in Ipoh.

Claimed by Foodstreet, Motormouth from Ipoh, Cumi & Ciki,

Note: Operates in the morning only.

Where is it? Click here

Black Canyon Cappuccino ^^

Transformers II trailer - HD! (View in Fullscreen!)

We're the boss

From Malaysian Insider

To YB, from your Boss

APRIL 15 –

Dear Yang Berhormat,

You do not know me although I know about you, since you are such a famous person.

I am just one of the millions of voters in this country we call our home. I am one of those who have voted regularly and, through this process of voting, selected our representatives to form the government.

You are one of the representatives elected by the people , even though the votes are secret and you would not know how each and every one of us voted.

You won because majority of the people in your area voted for you, and your party won the majority of the seats in Parliament, which is the place where all the representatives elected by people like me meet to think how to govern this country on our behalf.

Although you owe your position, your trappings of power and your wealth to our votes, you do not need to be grateful to us.

We do not ask you to be grateful to us. We just want you to do the job – the one that you wanted and asked for, and that we have given you – well.

Just like in a company, if a CEO and his team can do a good job and earn good dividends for shareholders, the shareholders will be happy and reward the team with another extension of tenure.

But, when the management team is not functioning well, and the company prospects are affected, the shareholders have the right to choose another team to replace the team.

The situation is the same here. We voted you and your team to power so that you can carry out projects and policies that benefit all of us.

It is our right, as your ultimate boss, to have schools built, and hospitals that are well manned, and roads well paved, and drains that flow.

It is our right to have protection against harm provided by the security forces which are funded by us.

It is our right to earn a decent living by having licences given to us by the very people that we put in place in the first instance.

It is our right to have a well-run civil service, since the civil servants are our employees, so to speak.

So, as the ultimate boss, we expect development; we expect progress. These development and progress must be continuous and should not be on an ad hoc basis.

Projects paid for with money taxed from us should not be used by your team as gifts to buy our votes or withheld as blackmail during elections, by or general.

As the ultimate boss, it is our right to throw out of office any representative who is not heeding the wishes of the people, who is not functioning well, and who is on the take. This is our right as citizens.

And please do not say we are not grateful if we did not vote you, since to function well is part of your job description, and you have to fulfil your job description in order for us to vote you in again, and not through using projects to exchange for our votes.

If you are too busy to remember all that I have written, just remember one thing.

The people – and I am one of them – are the real Boss. Your Boss.

Thank you for your precious time.

Hsu

(A boss)

Dr Hsu Dar Ren is a medical doctor and blogs on socio-economic issues; he believes that a fair and equitable society with good governance is the key to the future of this country.

Meow!

Have a test on Thursday, Report on Friday, Presentation and a report due next Monday, Letter due on 31st March. Best of all its on Wednesday(two days from now) there will be a presentation, OR a test, the lecturer himself doest know, LOL.
So heck busy, but yeah should be able to handle, we can do all things in Christ who strengthens you. So yeah I feel like I'm Superman


Anyway, caught this cat lie stretched, nicely leaned onto the wall
Meow!

Rimba Ilmu

Went Rimba Ilmu, Universiti Malaya two weeks ago, a place my friend worked during his semester break. He took me to meet his boss, Dr Elengo. Dr Elengo took me on a tour first his lab then the herbarium which is known to be the biggest in Peninsula. Then into an Housed garden where exotic orchids are conserved. One of orchid which was hybrided in Rimba Ilmu itself is named Rimba Ilmu!
Below are more pictures from Rimba Ilmu

Blue moon

Get ready your telescopes for there is a blue moon up in the sky!

Dogathon

Woohoo it UPM held an event, a doggy event on Sunday 10/8/08, erm correction: a doggy and owners' event lol, called Dogathon at Bukit Ekspo. It was organized by the vet students of UPM on a yearly basis now. As a dog person(means i like dogs) It was an oppotunity i ought not to miss. Thus, on that cooling Sunday morning, i went for Dogathon.
It started to drizzle on the way there while waiting for the bus, I became worried cause I don't want to see a wet Dogathon with wet dogs around and certainly no one else especially the vets wants to see a wet Dogathon neither. But praise God, before the VIP (me) =.= reach reach Bukit Ekspo it stop drizzling!
I went around Bukit Ekspo and saw many people with their many dogs. All the dogs seem so happy and joyful, some wagging their tail, some found a nice spot to 'buang air' but all seem out of breath o.O
The activities they had were like a maze activity where owners were to guide his/her dog out of the maze, an obsticle course and a dog dancing competition! lol yea that was fun. There were also many booths set up throught Bukit Elspo, some selling snacks, some dog foods, some dog assecories and some were information booths, like WWF and one discribed the importance of dogs to many immorbilized people, to these people their dogs became a inseperable companion, a helper which will always be there when the owner is in need.
Dogs unconditional love for their master is admirable, but what is more remarkable is their ability to listen and obey whatever you say and stay loyal to its master regardless of the consequence.

SCAMs

I am quite sure you have received scams.
I receive many scams thru email and sms, one particular email scam I often receive says that 'hotmail is going to charge money for its services, forward this message to avoid getting charged later' or 'hotmail is running out of user names, sign this message and forward it so that your hotmail accounts will not be forfeited' I received those emails years back, and hey! I am still using hotmail for free with my same account!

Another scam email I received also so funny it says you can use a gold ring to test for lead.. lol How can gold react with lead?!
Most scams via sms have a format, most have 'Win some nonsense by typing I'm an Idiot and send to 33333' but this sms scam I especially remember on the night of the March 8 elections telling me to stop sending false sms regarding the election results, a special body is formed to take action. Please lar we got different different ways to get authentic election results wad.. any sms can be clarified via internet wad.. lol

Bellow is an article about the absurdity of scams from here entitled 'Zombie nation'

I just received this SMS:

“Pls switch OFF all ur handphone 2NITE. According to Metro TV, there will be a BIG RADIATION WAVE circulating thru the handphone towers at 11PM 2nite which is very DANGEROUS to humans. Pls inform ur friends NOT 2 keep their phones with them. Please FORWARD…”

It sounded damn fake to me. So I told the sender it was some scam la. She said her AUNTY told her she saw it on ASTRO. What the heck. So I GOOGLED it.

Apparently, on Thursday (yesterday) night, many people received similar messages, with variants such as the following:

“Please switch off all your hand phones, laptops and computers by 11pm tonite. According to Metro, a large wave of radiation will be released. Please forward.”

“smua HANDPHONE malam ini dimatikan. Menurut METRO TV, pada jam 11 malam ini akan ada gelombang radiasi yang besar yang berbahaya utk manusia. yang akan tertangkap oleh semua hp & pemancar. Beritahu yang lain/teman2 jgan taruh hp dekat kepala”

Of course many people complied, and wasted what I’m sure must’ve been a whole lotta credit altogether forwarding the stupid message to their friends.

Here’s what one of them (Zombie survivor #1 at http://starcladnight.blogspot.com/) had to say today:

So if my family were the only ones who did switch off our phones - much to my dismay, that means we are the only survivors!

Then.. if we are the only survivors… who will be reading my blog?

*GASP!* I forgot one important point!! Mutated cells means clever zombies!! And now these zombies can operate computer! And click on starcladnight.blogspot.com!! And READ!!

Some DUMB people, of course, decided not risk the consequences of being killed by GIANT RADIATION WAVES that are ‘DANGEROUS TO HUMANS’ and mutate their arms and limbs and eat their brains.

They became zombies.

Zombiefied human #1 at http://underseaserenity.blogspot.com says:

I left my handphone on, my laptop on, my computer on and I’m still alive to write this…

Wow… thanks humans for only sending me the SMS NOW. That means I’ve become a zombie too since I didn’t know about it and left my handphone on ALL NIGHT LONG.

SO WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM THIS STORY?

1. Don’t SIMPLY FORWARD messages (be it e-mail, SMS, or any other form of communication) unless you know it comes from a credible source
2. Please please for the sake of credibility (or whatever little of it is left with how easy it is to spread hoaxes these days), do NOT simply quote sources like ASTRO when it’s so obvious that things like this ‘radiation wave invasion’ has not even been anywhere near CREDIBLE news sources - otherwise, we’d have heard about it.It’s irresponsible!
3. THINK. Hoax sign #1 - Why isn’t this ‘big news’ on mainstream media? Hoax sign #2 - It doesn’t even say what is the cause of this wave. Come from where? Outer space ah? Hoax sign #3 - If everyone shuts off their handphones/any electronic device that can emit radiation at 11 PM tonight, that’s going be a LOT of losses for businesses everywhere. YET we’re not hearing bout this aside from informal SMSes thru personal friends.
4. You are SUPPORTING the people who started this hoax if you just forward it without checking reliable sources. That makes you as irresponsible as them. An example of a reliable source would be THIS:

KUALA LUMPUR: Menggemparkan! Ramai pengguna telefon bimbit mula panik berikutan penyebaran SMS yang meminta orang ramai berhati-hati dengan panggilan santau atau ‘tarik nyawa’ yang kononnya boleh membunuh mereka sejurus menjawab panggilan itu.

Lebih menakutkan apabila kandungan SMS itu mendakwa panggilan maut itu sudah meragut sembilan nyawa di Indonesia sejak bulan lalu dan kini mula menular kepada jutaan pengguna telefon di negara ini bagi menagih korban terbaru.

Siasatan dilakukan pihak berkuasa Indonesia mendapati nombor pengirim SMS itu berasal dari Sumatera Selatan dan Kepulauan Riau, Indonesia.

Susulan maklumat dikumpulkan, seorang remaja perempuan yang disyaki mencipta dan menghantar SMS terbabit sudah ditahan minggu lalu oleh polis Indonesia di Riau.

Selepas disoal siasat, remaja terbabit mengaku menyebarkan SMS itu hanya untuk gurauan kepada rakannya.

5. Finally, for everything else, there’s GOOGLE. =P

GOSH. I just wasted half an hour typing out this lame post. Maybe I HAVE been zombified after all. I feel my brains turning to mush.

There's a country...

Whatever a citizen do is against the law:

When you speak – Sedition Acts

When you write – Printing & Publication Acts

When you assemble peacefully – Illegal Assembly Act

When you raise a sensitive issue – Internal & Security Act

When students speak – College & University Act

When you try to reveal the truth – Official Secret Act

When you eat – you have to pay for Halal Certification Act

So, flol what can people of this country do?

This is really cool

but you must see it at least past 1 minute 30 seconds!
First saw this on annjee's blog
Thanks geline :)