Three Discoveries from Sunway Pyramid

Sunway Pyramid will soon become the next The Store
All shops are closing down at 9:45pm on a Saturday night. Can't find much people there. Or is it due to H1N1? (From my perception, The Store is doing very badly in the past few years and it's never a place for young people like myself.)

Men's wedding band is much more expensive than women's!
Went to check the price of wedding bands. Men's wedding band doesn't come with diamond but it costs at least 1K more than women's, because of the weight of the platinum to make it look bigger.

Carl's Jr don't serve sauce anymore
Recent years, I started to prefer Carl's Jr than McD's, mainly due to the fries which tastes better, their sauce, and the bigger size of the burger. The sauce, especially the Santa Fe sauce, tastes damn good. Now, they don't even serve Mayonnaise for me to dip the fries.

Amanah Saham 1Malaysia

The Prime Minister recently launched a new fund, Amanah Saham 1Malaysia.

From TheStar:

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak announced the incentive at the launch of the new trust fund, which has 10 billion units, with each unit going for RM1.

Amanah Saham 1Malaysia is the biggest trust fund in the country, and will go on sale from Aug 5.

With the name 1Malaysia, the first thing that came to mind is, we all live together as Malaysian and not separated by races. We will go out claiming ourselves Malaysians, NOT Malay or Chinese or Indian.

But somehow, in contrary, the package is distributed according to races:

To ensure that the units are fairly distributed, Najib said that for the first 30 days of sale (Aug 5 to Sept 3), 50% of the units have been allocated to bumiputras, 30% to the Chinese, 15% to the Indians and 5% to other races.

So, are we really heading for 1Malaysia? Or do we still separating ourselves by races?

Fitness Center Pricing

I went to a fitness center in Petaling Jaya, a chained type of fitness center yesterday. Since I'll be in or crossing PJ everyday, it might be a good idea to get a gym membership in PJ.

I had a strange feeling after I went for a tour and consultation about the package pricing of the membership.

The price starts at:

Joining fee: RM700
Processing fee: RM140
Monthly fee: RM245 (or RM265, can't remember)

My feeling: Impossible. How they can survive with this rate?!

Second price:

Joining fee: Waived
Processing fee: Waived
Monthly fee: RM175
Contract: 1 year

My feeling: Sounds more like it.

Third price

Joining fee: Waived
Processing fee: Waived
Monthly fee: RM155
Contract: 2 years

My feeling: 2 years is a little bit too long.

Fourth price

Joining fee: Waived
Processing fee: Waived
Monthly fee: RM123
Contract: 2 years

My feeling: 2 years is still too long, but the price is good.

Fifth price

Joining fee: Waived
Processing fee: RM140
Monthly fee: RM131
Contract: 1 years

My feeling: The package is just nice, but I'll need a HSBC card, which I don't.

In the beginning of the session, when we tried to reduce the price, the consultant claimed they are one of the premier fitness center and emphasis that they are not pasar malam, we can't simply bargain. So, they are NOT pasar malam, huh?

At the end of the discussion, we were thinking, the package is nice but we think the price can go lower for sure! They have came down from RM200+ to almost half of it now.

Don't ask me about which center is that, I'm not going to tell you.

Not to talk about joining or not because I have not made up my mind. I have a feeling like fitness center is built to cheat people's money. They tried to squeeze as much money from you. We could have agreed at any price before we reach the lowest.

So, they are no different from cheating, agree?

Of course, this is business but why can't they just give one standard package?

What happen if the members are discussing about the pricing after they joined?

Share your experience on this, if any.

Twitter Widget Scripts for Blogger (Good Tip!)

If you added Twitter widget to your blogger, especially you, remember to move the following section of the code to the bottom of your template so that your blog doesn't have to wait for twitter to load first.

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://twitter.com/javascripts/blogger.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/englee.json?callback=twitterCallback2&amp;count=7"></script>

I notice that this blog loaded halfway up to the twitter section, then it stops for a few seconds, then it continues to load. It is caused by twitter widget loading slower than the blog itself. Sometimes, it might fail too. So, it's better to move the actual JavaScript that does the loading to the bottom of your blog, right before the </body> tag.

Got this tip from Twitter while procrastinating.

If you are too lazy to do your own code editing, just go to Twitter's Widget Page to get the code!

Twitter Updates

I have been on twitter for quite some time. You can follow me @englee. I just added my twitter updates to the side bar of this blog.

It's unbelievably easy. Thanks to Bloganol.

Feeling Tired

"You have so many tasks in mind that you don't have the time to finish anything at all. Then, when you look at the calendar, you notice another week is gone already."

That's what happening to me right now. Every time I review my to-do list, the list never go shorter, but it gets longer.

Why is that happening even I have been chasing for it all day? I leave home in the morning (though not early) and reaches home at 10pm daily but why things do not improve at all?

Clients still chasing me for a long overdue project. I still don't have much time for family or girlfriend. I still have to work at home every weekend.

Prioritising working is very important. Discipline is also critical for success.

I need to be more focused on what I wanted to achieve. Let me just sit down in a quiet environment to think about it, rather than rushing without any clear direction....

(This post is probably a rambling after drinking too much the day before and no mood to do anything today)

Which Way?

Lots of things happened in the past few months since my last post. I turned down one partnership offer and took up another offer in a non-IT business (don't feel like disclose the detail here right now, unless I go to create a new anonymous blog..).

This is a question I have been asking myself all the while. Should I really go into another business when I know what I really want is to develop my own software house?

My IT projects are going well. New projects keep coming. The new non-IT business started 2 months ago and the sales started to build up already too. I'm feeling damned happy about it, but at the same time, I felt a little lost.

I'm worried that I'll lose both because I can't concentrate on one. It's the same dilemma I had when I decided to leave Genting almost a year ago (wow... didn't realised I left Genting for so long already).

When I review my IT task list today, I realised that my IT projects haven't progress much since I last updated the list 2 weeks ago, because the other business is taking up more and more of my time. My partner is putting all his effort in the business. I put most of my effort in it too. Staying up late night in the office is a norm now. Even my parents who would always call me back home for dinner don't do it anymore.

On the other side, I will have to start an IT office soon, so that I could begin hiring people to help me on the projects. I find myself struggling to meet project due dates. I can't abandon the projects after they put so much faith in me....

So, which way? Have to seriously put some thought on my next step.