Monday, January 19, 2009

My Chinese New Year Eve

Well, its already Tuesday today and work for another 2.5 days, i.e. Wednesday, Thursday and half day on Friday, its again holiday... Chinese New Year (CNY).

This CNY will be different from the previous years. This year unfortunately, my family will be missing my Dad, as he passed away late last year. Every year during CNY, the thing that I look forward the most is the New Year Eve. Not the New Year day itself but the New Year Eve.

This is the day where my parents and myself will wake up very early in the morning, at about 5am to go to the morning market to buy fresh vegetables, pork, fish, prawns etc from the fresh market for the reunion lunch / dinner.

My Dad is a very typical person and holds on to tradition. I still can remember last year's new year, as my brother and sister-in law is staying in their own house, they will only come to my our house late in the morning, just in time for the reunion lunch, my Dad did commented to me on my sister-in-law not coming back early to help out my mom who was cooking in the kitchen. I still can remember that time I was sitting in the living room with him and he looks kinda disappointed that my sister-in-law did not turn up to help out in the kitchen. He says that being a daughter-in-law, she should come in early to assist my mom in the kitchen and not let my mom cooks alone and then she just come back to eat as this is not right.

Anyway, these are all history already since he is not able to join us for anymore reunion lunches or dinners. I will surely miss you Dad. Hope you too are having a great new year where ever you are Dad! Gong Xi Fa Cai!!

I still can remember that during the Eve of CNY, after the prayers to the ancestors, the whole family will sit down and have our lunch. This is the time I will try to be "sneaky" to bring out some beers and drink it with my Dad, as my brother don't drink at all.

This tradition started back when I was in college. Of course I know drinking is not good, but once a year its acceptable. My Mom will give make some comments but, my Dad being a Dad, he will encourage me. Although we did not drink that much, just perhaps 3 cans per person, the time is really enjoyable as after the meal, we will carry our glasses out to the living room to continue the drinking session until the evening /dinner time.

In the first year drinking with my Dad, I remember as soon as I finishes the first can, I started to have "alcohol rashes" all over my body. It itches so badly and this will last for about 2 weeks. It will be painful when I sweat, but this eventually goes away after my body started to get immune to the alcohol.

About 3 to 4 years back, we started to have reunion dinners with my relatives in restaurant. The bill will be shared by all the families that attended. This year is no different. Last week as my brother had came back, I had told him to come back early at about 10 to 11am to offer prayers to my Dad before the 4 of us can sit down to have our reunion lunch.

Then, as for the dinner, we will be joining my uncle who will host us for the dinner at a local hotel. This year the bill will not be split as due to the passing of my Dad, we are not celebrating the CNY, therefore, the dinner will be hosted by my Uncle.

There is one more tradition that we practice in my family is that at after 12am on the CNY Eve, I will start he cycle of going to my Dad first, shaking his hand and wishing him Happy New Year, then followed to my Mom and my Brother and last but not least my Sister-in-law.

Then, we will pray for the blessing for the year ahead and my Dad will hold the main joss stick and initiate the prayers. Red fire crackers that is 8 ft long will definitely in the agenda after the prayers. My brother and me will bring out the pole to hang the fire crackers and I will be the one who light it.

During the Eve of CNY, the normally silence of the night will typically broken by the fire crackers burning sound way into early hours in the morning.

Well, with the current economy slow down, I wonder if the general public is still going to burn as much fire crackers as previous years???

Ahh.. one more agenda I left out, normally on the Eve or 2 days before CNY, I will typically meet up with my ex-housemates. 2 fellow doctors that is working oversea will come back for the CNY and we will typically meet up for either lunch or dinner or just a cuppa tea. I wonder if this year is going to be the same??

Anyway, Happy Chinese New Year everyone!!! Have a Great Year of the OX ahead!!

Thursday, January 15, 2009

Type of suppliers - Part 2

To continue our topic on types of suppliers, to recap, we already have the following types:
  • Not Keen
  • Call you everyday
  • Never take no for an answer
  • Tai-Chi Master
  • The Black and White
  • The Chinese Medicine Seller
  • The Ali Baba / The Parasite

The next type in my list is "The Cut Throat Type". This type of supplier is the type where they think their customer are all pre-university students who do not know the "value" of goods in the market. For whatever the quotation they give, if you were to make a comparison, you will find that their prices are at times 3 to 4 times higher than other suppliers. This type of supplier do not realise that there are such thing call the Internet and almost everything is available there or at least you can judge the value from there. To handle this type of supplier, I will ensure that I will only ask them to quote once and then "black-list" them.

"The Never Keep to Deadline" type is next type. This type of supplier will normally delays almost everything they supply you. During the negotiation, they will agrees to a certain delivery deadline but when the time comes, their product is either not ready or worse not even being build. Well, you can say you will put a Liquidated Asset Damages (LAD) penalty to them, but they will not respect to the LAD. The most the LAD is up to 10% of the contract value and what more can you do? You can't go search high and low for another supplier at the last minute and re-negotiating all the technical and commercial specifications again. You will not have the luxury of time and also for urgent or fast delivery, it normally comes with cost. For me, when I encounter such a supplier, the transaction will be just once off and never return to them.

"The Cut and Paste" supplier is the next on the list. This supplier will first promise you that whatever products they sells are either manufactured by them or part of their OEM. But, when they deliver the goods to you, you will find that a lot of modifications on the label portions. Either the original brand had been removed and replace or at times, even re-painting is done to change the colour of the product. At times these supplier is even so lazy to remove the old labels, they just stick their label on top of the original label and send it across to you. They try to do a cover job but was too lazy to do it properly. For this type of supplier, again, its a once off supply.

"The First Sweet, Then Pain" supplier is next. What do I mean by this supplier you ask? Well, first, their price is attractive. Then, the follow up is good, they deliver on time and everything looks positive / "sweet". You think you had found a reliable supplier. However, after the one year warranty period, the pain starts. When their product / parts fails, the replacement cost is out of proportions. For every trip their service men make to site, they will charge you from mileage to man hours inclusive of travelling time. Then, when they had identified the faulty part(s), the cost to replace it is as good as buying the new unit. To handle this type of supplier, normally I will ask them to give me a spare part list with their respective cost and the individual expected lifespan of the part(s) so that when I require any spare parts, I will not be "on the chopping board" or at their mercy.

Well, so far I have written 11 types of suppliers... I am sure there will be more available that is not covered here. I will keep this topic open for future posting...

Good luck to everyone out there who need to deal with suppliers.

Type of suppliers

Thru my working career I have been dealing with suppliers. Perhaps due to the nature of my work, I have to interact with suppliers.

There were so many type of suppliers out there trying to make a living. I have encountered so many types of them.

To start with, there is this type that is "Not Keen" type. This type of supplier when you call them, they will only entertain you when they have no other enquiries available in their hands. When you speak to them, they will just give all sorts of reasons, e.g. our company don't do this and that, this is not our main line of business etc. and when you try to make appointment to see them either by asking them to come to your company or for you to visit them, they will always tell you a date and time and don't show up. If I ever encounter this type of suppliers, I will "black-list" them and no longer call them anymore for any other jobs.

The next type is the "Call you everyday" type. This type of supplier is totally opposite to the first type. Just by giving them a call, they will straight away come ask for an appointment to meet you up the very next day even though the things can be just discussed over the phone and the "nightmare" will start when they give you a quotation. They will call and follow up with you almost every half a day asking about their chances of getting the offer. Your peaceful day in the office is practically gone by them calling you twice a day and asking the same question. The way I deal with this type of supplier is by telling them that I had pass the recommendations to the boss and no feedback from the boss and that I can't be asking the boss every half a day for the response. Also again, I will try my best not to get a quotation from them anymore if possible.

The third type is the "Never take no for an answer" type. This type of suppliers will do in whatever way possible to ensure they get the sales. They will bargain and bargain and bargain so many times and review and revise their quotation so many times until you are happy with the quotation. This type of supplier is kinda easy to deal. You have to take advantage of their weakness point which is not taking "NO" for an answer and exert your bargaining muscles.

However, you need to be careful with this type of suppliers. They will give you the cost / price that you want, but they will set in all sorts of "traps" inside their quotation and you might get caught later.

The fourth type is what I call the "Tai-Chi Master" type. This type of supplier is really good when they want the order from you and very responsive to every single request you have during the quotation stage. They make you feel so confident working with them and the table turns when you give them the order and down payment.

If there were to be any technical glitches that pops up after the award of the order, they will just say they are in sales and that their technical department is handling this order now and they are not able to do anything. They will give you some numbers / so called person-in-charge to call to and when you call this person, he will again says that the order yet to reach him etc etc giving you all sort of other sets of reasons not to entertain you. For this type of supplier, I will again "black-list" them. Just deal with them once and forget about their existence.

The next type is the "The Black and White" type. This supplier will adhere so strictly to the agreed scheme and every microscopic change in the scope of supply will be charged with a titanic scale variation order. They will bring out their quotation and their terms and conditions to speak to you. In most cases, you will be the loosing end as they people normally are very good in twisting and turning. This type of supplier is also sometimes known as "The Lawyer", well you should know the reason.

The next type in the list is the "The Chinese Medicine Seller" type. This type of supplier will promise you the product can do so many things and have so many features. Its like the "all in one" product that you will only need and when you buy it, only then you will realise it does not work as what was discussed and when you approach them, they will tell you that this is because you will need to add on this and that for this feature etc etc. This modus operandi is similar to the Chinese Medicine Seller that says their product have 1001 advantage and when you have taken them, nothing seems to change and you will need to take more of other types of add-on pills.

The next type in the list is the "The Ali Baba" type. They can promise you everything under the sun. They will take up the whole scope of work and then sub-divide out the jobs to other smaller people outside and they make a margin from there. This type of supplier will normally have a very nice and impressive sets of presentation slides / catalogues / photos showing you the work they have done everywhere without telling you the fact that they are just the coordinator and in fact they do not manufacture anything at all. All they manufacture is the marketing slides and their impressive catalogues.

They will also go to the extend of bringing you to their supplier's factory and saying it is part of their own facilities and when you reach there, you will see them walking in and out so comfortably as though really the factory is theirs and despite the fact it is not. When you do a financial search on this supplier, you will be surprise that their paid up working capital is only RM1,000 or sometimes even lesser. They are called "Ali Baba" is because they work on other's facilities.

They can also be known as "The Parasite" type. To spot this type of supplier is rather easy. As mentioned above, when the sales comes with a "too good to be true" type of presentation / catalogues, just ask your finance department to do a financial search on this company and the rest speaks for itself.

I will continue this topic again later.... do drop in later for the next update....

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Chinese New Year Dinner 2009

Today there will be a Chinese New Year Dinner for my office staffs. Having a preview on the menu, it is not as what we normally expects to have for Chinese New Year.

The dinner will start with a "Yee Sang" - or raw fish slices with some raw vegetable and sweet and sour sauce. This dish is to be tossed by everyone on the table together which means "Lou Sang" - work for prosperity or work towards progress.

As far as I could remember, this dish is will only be available after the 7th day of Chinese New Year or what better known as "Yan Yat" - Human Birthday. However, as time changes, so does the trend and now it is made available way before the Chinese New Year.

This is the only Chinese dish that will be served today. The rest is kinda mixed style. In the menu, there are dishes like prawns with petai, rendang chicken, pandan chicken etc. All non-Chinese dish. The dinner will be held in a Nyonya (mixed between Chinese and Malays before the independence) restaurant. Therefore, it is not surprising to see those dishes there.

This restaurant is chosen is because this dinner is to be attended by all the staff of the office which include Muslims, therefore, the restaurant chosen must be "halal".

Well, better something than nothing right.

Bon Appetite!!

Thursday, January 8, 2009

Bad drivers

I cannot seems to understand certain drivers when they are behind the wheels. I do not know what are they thinking when they are driving.

First on my list is the road hogs. When people come out from the toll house, you will clearly notice there will be drivers that is driving a small capacity cars hogging the fast lane. Let alone the small capacity issue, they are not bothered to move away and hogs the fast lane creating a bee-line behind them. Even when you so politely follow them quietly for a short while, they don't even realise it. Don't these people ever look at their rear-view mirror? Good drivers always look and check all mirrors every 10 to 12 seconds interval.

Second on my list is the queue-jumper. This are another bunch of irritating drivers. Have you ever sat on a traffic light queue waiting for the lights to turn green, but there comes an inconsiderate driver just jump in-front of you wanting to get into the line. Don't their teachers teach them about queuing up while they were in schools? They think they are the only one rushing for time? Come on man, everyone on the road is on the go and rushing for time. You need to be patience and wait for your turn.

There were once justice was done. While I was queuing up at a traffic light junction on a very long line as the traffic was heavy (after working hours) and there come this queue-jumper. He is just one car in front of mine and waiting for the lights to turn green to cut in the queue.

However, as he waited outside the line, the comes our hero in white high powered motorbikes, and he has a gun... yeah.. he is our good friend the traffic police. He was flagging him down and bring him to the side. Well done!!! Just as he was flagged down, the lights turn green and I manage to come side by side with the traffic police and I gave him a "thumbs up"!! We needed more of this traffic cops around to ensure justice is done for those who waits...

The third on my list is the ambulance follower. This is the scenario.. you hear an ambulance sound near you, you search around for this ambulance, and found it behind you. You will try to give him space by driving nearer to the divider so that the ambulance will be able to "squeeze" through between your car and the car beside you. So as the ambulance move, there comes a few other "follower" tailgating the ambulance so that they too go between the lines. If you are the relative of the victim inside the ambulance, it is to a certain extend acceptable. This type of followers will typically have their hazard light blinking. But, there were another group of people that is tailgating the ambulance and not in anyway related to the victim inside the ambulance, just merely following to speed through the traffic. This is irresponsible!!

Talking about tailgating, there is this fourth type which like to tailgate people. If you do not know what is tailgating, this is the definition from Wikipedia: ".. is the practice of driving on a road too closely behind another vehicle, such as less than the travel distance in two seconds..". This is another irresponsible driver.

It irritates me in the following ways:

The first is the fact that the tailgating car create a fear that this person will rear end my car and putting pressure on my driving comfort zone. Imagine when you just take a glance on your rear view mirror, you see the head of the driver there in the view. You can't even see the headlamps of the car. It appears that the driver of the car behind had came into become your back seat passenger. This is for smaller cars. If a big 4 wheel drive vehicle is behind you, you will get to see the two headlamps as though they are now mounted to your car booth. Its kinda scary.

Second, is that this person reaction to situation might not be as good as mine, hence, when I step on the brakes, the car will come rushing toward my bumper kissing my car. When this happens, comes all sorts of other complications, e.g. negotiations, police report, claiming insurance, no transport while car is gone for repair, etc. etc.

In these situations, typically, I will leave more space between myself and the car in front. This is the logic, I can't stop the driver from the car behind to tailgate me, but I can control the distance between my car and the car in front of me. So, by leaving a greater distance for my car, in case the person in front of me slows down or hits the emergency brakes, I have ample time to react and slow down and prevent me from hitting into emergency brakes, hence preventing the tailgating driver from sudden brakes too and also saving my rear end.

There might be more bad drivers on the road, this article is just capturing what frequently happen to me when I am driving. To all the road users out there, please be considerate ok. Everyone pays road taxes and tolls too you know.

Happy driving....

Sunday, January 4, 2009

Holidays are over

Well, today is the 5th of January 2009 already. Most offices / factories start operations today. Even the schools starts today.

Everyone in the office is well dressed in the office attire, almost everyone had started work today after some long holidays. Some of the ladies in the office is seen to be wiping dust from their workstation with damp cloth. A couple of ladies I saw today came in with new hairstyle this morning. Perhaps over the holidays, Santa did some comments on their hairstyle causing them to change it.

However, there are still some missing people from their workstations. Mostly are parents of young kids sending their kids to the kindergarten or standard one kids their new school.

From today until the end of the month, there were no in-between holidays. Then, when end of the month comes, it will be Chinese New Year holiday mood again.

Till then, 3 solid weeks of work before another break.

Happy Working!!

Thursday, January 1, 2009

First working day in 2009

Today is the 2nd of January 2009 and it is my first day in the office for this year. A lot of people is still on leave today. Perhaps today its Friday, then many would prefer to take today off so that they will enjoy a long weekend.

I told myself a few things I want to change in the way I work. Firstly, I want to make use of the calender facility in my Lotus Notes and allow my boss to see my schedule. This way, he will get to keep track on me and know where am I on a particular day.

Secondly, I also plan to note down my daily work in soft copy as I wanna safe some trees by going paperless. Also by this way, I need not to 'dig' thru my dairy when I prepare my month end report to locate which country am I at for a particular day of the month.

It had been a waste of me not utilizing this feature that is readily available in my computer since the day I started working. I had been a very conventional guy all these while using the dairy company provides me year after year to do my daily work recordings.

One reason being I like the effort of the secretary makes to ensure all managers have their names embrossed on the dairy and when I take the dairy to meetings, my name is visible with one glance. However, thinking of it, it is not something so cool anymore now. It had became a norm thing that I get one of the diary with my name on it year after year, it had kinda became boring.

I hope I can carry out the 2 task above successfully from now on. Also, I can be disipline enough to inputs to those planners on daily basis.