A much needed break…
Needed a holiday badly. Needed time to be away from KL’s hectic, political and at times, annoying lifestyle. Hence, I’ll be in Singapore during Labour Day till the weekends.
It will be my short sabbatical/holiday. It will be the time for me to think thoroughly of much needed attentions. These sudden attentions have been bugging me horribly and disturbing my sleep endlessly.
Please stop at zebra crossing!!
In Europe and/or probably elsewhere, it is a must for drivers to stop at zebra crossing in order to let pedestrians cross the road. While I was in Austria for holidays, I was told by my friend that you will be caught and given a penalty if you disobey the rule. And they really mean it unlike our authorities in Malaysia.
Sadly, this is not the case in Malaysia. Most of Malaysian drivers do not stop (or even slow down!!) at zebra crossing. Regardless whether there are pedestrians or not, these drivers tend to drive pass zebra crossing without giving priority to the pedestrians. In Malaysia, you could only cross the road if there is no cars or motorcycles nearby or if there is traffic lights (for pedestrians). Either that or you are up for 50 meter sprint because drivers here are speed devils and they treat pedestrians like moving targets wind…
So, please make an effort to stop when you, the driver, are at pedestrian crossing a.k.a. zebra crossing. Regardless whether it is black and white or yellow and white or yellow and black stripes, they serve a purpose; that is for pedestrians to cross the road safely. If you are being pressured by the cars behind you, show them the International Sign of Language, “ mlm “. At least you are doing a right thing for once.
Lego unpacking iPhone
iPhone unpacking. Originally uploaded by ntr23
I was browsing Wired.com and found an article about Lego men assisting in iPhone unboxing. This idea was by this guy named ntr23 from Czech Republic.
Cute yet brilliant idea!! More in his flickr.
Also, do checkout another one by 713 Avenue in his flickr.
Quality or Quantity??
One always wonder which comes first; Quality or Quantity? I guess It is pretty subjective matter as this might applies differently to various type of fields. Let’s take business for instance. Would you concentrate of quality first then only quantity? Or would your greed take over and open vast amount of chain restaurant/shops/outlets within a given time?
For example, the optical shop that my family, which includes my uncle and auntie, always go to. Ironically, my cousins are into this optical business as well and I do not get my prescription glasses from them. It’s the matter of personal opinion as well as family’s. Anyway, back to my topic. The shop is raking profits insanely because firstly, they only have one shop to handle and secondly, the quality they inherited. They have vast amount of quality products in their shop for customer’s satisfaction. They source for good products and discarded the idea of bringing in cheap goods which I don’t think it will last long. In other words, they have confidence in what they are selling rather than having customers comeback with lots of complaints. Besides, they are providing good, if not great, customer service (before and after). Friendly, cheerful and helpful, and in my honest opinion, these are the ones sales personnel should have in order to succeed in their respective industry. They will give their best advice and recommend suitable glasses for their customers.
Now, take this shop’s scenario and compare it with my cousin’s vast amount of chain outlets that he owns currently. The last thing I know about it is that one of the outlets in a popular area closed down. I’m not sure what’s the reason behind this closure but my bet would be too many outlets till it affects its primary objective, that is to make profits!! In my point of view, he owns too many outlets till the point where he could not control his business effectively. Worst of all, he uses one of the outlets profit to cover another outlet’s account, if you get what I mean. I don’t have any experience in business field but it is no brainer that the way he is conducting the business is deemed to fail in longer term. Having him bragging on how many shops he owns makes me laugh my ass off but at the same time, I felt sorry for him as he really needs to understand what he is about to get into, a big pile of mess that is. Besides, some of his staffs are jokers. They have no passion in their job and giving wrong advice to its customers. They are jeopordising instead of helping the business to grow. And this, in turn, boils down to management of the company (literally my cousin’s fault).
Now, I’m not here to diss about my cousin’s business but it is just an example that I can relate to. This might be prefect case for Quality vs. Quantity issue. You have to make sure that you are making stable profits as well as providing great quality at all times before investing that very same profit into new outlet/shop/business. Once Gordon Ramsay said, he waited for 5 years before he opened his second restaurant. He made sure that his first restaurant’s booking list was full (for lunch and dinner services) everyday before another restaurant pops up.
p.s. : If you might wonder why I brought up Gordon Ramsay’s name suddenly. Well, that is because I watched too much of Hell’s Kitchen and Kitchen Nightmares!!
A (boring) trip to Berjaya Hills
Last weekend, my friend and I went to Berjaya Hills a.k.a. Bukit Tinggi for sightseeing-cum-photography trip. It takes approximately an hour drive from KL. Due to winding roads as well as slow vehicles (heading up there, it took awhile to reach up there ).
However, before we could reach up there, we were greeted by a booth (something like a tol booth) to pay the entrance fees. It costs RM16 for an adult while RM8 (I think) for a child. Exhorbitant, definitely!!
Our first (second actually if you consider the tol as first) stop was Botanical Garden. Lucky for us, the garden is situated right beside the Japanese Village. Therefore, it saved us from driving to another location. We went to the Botanical Garden hoping to get see some beautiful plants/flowers/scenery in there. But this is not the case. We were greated with trees, trees and more trees. Needless to say, there are 90% of various types of trees and only 10% of flowers in there. There are a few beautiful flowers that worth capturing (take photograph of it la, not physically pluck it).
We went to the Observation deck inside of Botanical Garden in hope of taking some scenery photos but it didn’t really turn out to be like that after all. It is more of trees blocking the view of the hills. Total turn off. We had to climb back up (in this case, we climbed the stairs) to the entrance to go to Japanese Village. It takes quite a effort for horizontal-challenge people (fat people) like me. But it is all good exercise.
There are Japanese houses (doh!!) inside Japanese Village. And not to forget, Japanese Kois too which could be found in the pond. There aren’t much things to see in there except you could take photos of yourself dressed up in kimono. We didn’t go in deeper because there was shooting event going on. We had to stop short midway.
After those two locations, we left (with disappointment) to Colmar Tropicale. We really hoped that there is something we could enjoy over there. The place is approximately 10 mins drive from the Botanic Garden. From far, you could see French-theme buildings. These buildings were almost similar to Colmar Village in France. Inspired by them, as they said and so, they called it Colmar Tropicale. However, luck was not on our side as when we reach there, the clouds were starting to be dark. As usual, it rains every afternoon of everyday. We walked around in there and took a few photos of these ‘insipred’ building. Nothing special about it, to my thoughts. There were events in there (team building events organized by companies) so it is a lil bit crowded.
We decided to leave and never looked back at around 12.30pm. True enough, it started to drizzle when we left the ‘inspired’ French-theme village.
More photos in my flickr.
