Well, so fast CNY holidays came and went and today I am back again in the office after the break. This CNY is very different from the previous years. I do not feel the atmosphere of CNY this year. Perhaps I am not celebrating it this year, however, this year is totally different with one family member less in my family.
Most of the time, there is only myself and my mom at home. Even my brother and sister-in law did not spend too much time in my house anymore, unlike last year when my dad is still around, they will spend the whole day in my house but for this year, they just came back late in the afternoon on the first day of CNY and went back by the evening without even having dinner.
Deep down inside I know my mom is disappointed with the attitude shown by my brother and his wife, but she choose to remain silence. To be honest, I am disappointed with their attitude too. However, I too choose to keep the peace.
Therefore, I try to spend the most time I could with my mom, sending her to where ever she wants to go, e.g. my uncle / aunties houses, my uncle's steamboat shop etc. I don't know what else I can do besides trying to keep her accompanied as much as possible. I know she is very bored and I can see from her eyes she still misses my dad a lot. Everytime we talk about him, I can see tears developed in her eyes.
I know from now on, I will be the one fully responsible to take care of the well being of my mom. I know I can't rely on my brother, let alone my sister-in-law. That is why I am really grateful that I had an understanding gf / future wife that is able to accept the fact that when we get married, we need to stay in with my mom.
Thank you Dear for your kind understanding.
Well, got to get back to work.... Happy working Guys / Gals!!
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
technical gf
Perhaps some people out there might have the same fate as me, having a girlfriend which is technically sound.
What I mean by that? When you discuss any items with your technical gf, she will use very high-end technical terms e.g. thermal stress, stress concentration, crack propagation etc. Lucky thing is that myself is also a technical person, so I can understand the terms / jargon she uses.
Yesterday, after my weekly game of futsal in the evening, I went back and thinking the famous formula by Sir Issac Newton, F=ma; F = Force, m = mass, a = acceleration.
During the match, as I am being hit by the ball, I was thinking, if the ball is travelling with a constant velocity, i.e. no acceleration, does it mean that when the ball hit you, there will be no force, since the acceleration, a = 0, therefore, F = m*0 = 0, therefore, since no force then equal no pain right? But, how come I still can feel the pain when the ball hit me? Strange right?
Well, I pose this question to my technical gf over the phone conversation with her after the game. Almost instantaneously she manage to explain to me the whole set of technical explanations that clear my mind of the question without a doubt.
Then, only I remembered that it is just that I had forgotten some of the physics that was taught in year 1 engineering school. However, perhaps she once lecture year 1 and 2 engineering students, this physics and engineering mechanics is still fresh in her mind. Therefore, without a sweat she can solve my "mystery" easily.
Not that I want to praise myself, but to be honest, I am really glad and proud and happy and blessed (and whatever positive emotion to show gratitude you can think off) to have found a technically sound gf that can help me solve my 'mysteries' from time to time.
The situation describe above is only one of the many examples that shows the advantage of having a technical gf. Just imagine if I were to have a non-technical gf, the above question will still linger in my mind until this moment as I would have never able to resolve the 'mystery'.
Perhaps I would have open up a forum for discussion with the title "How come when you are hit by a ball which is travelling at a constant velocity, you still feel the pain, even though the force is equal to zero?"
But, thanks to my cute, lovely, smart, naughty (at times), playful (sometimes), adventurous, curious, thoughtful, "touchy" (she will touch everything she sees especially in the malls), creative, sharp, attentive, hardworking and not limited to technically sound girlfriend, the above 'mystery' was solve in no time and safe a few MB of space in the Internet for not publishing it as a forum.
So, to guys out there, without any slightest, most microscopic doubt in my mind, having a technical gf is always GREAT!!
What I mean by that? When you discuss any items with your technical gf, she will use very high-end technical terms e.g. thermal stress, stress concentration, crack propagation etc. Lucky thing is that myself is also a technical person, so I can understand the terms / jargon she uses.
Yesterday, after my weekly game of futsal in the evening, I went back and thinking the famous formula by Sir Issac Newton, F=ma; F = Force, m = mass, a = acceleration.
During the match, as I am being hit by the ball, I was thinking, if the ball is travelling with a constant velocity, i.e. no acceleration, does it mean that when the ball hit you, there will be no force, since the acceleration, a = 0, therefore, F = m*0 = 0, therefore, since no force then equal no pain right? But, how come I still can feel the pain when the ball hit me? Strange right?
Well, I pose this question to my technical gf over the phone conversation with her after the game. Almost instantaneously she manage to explain to me the whole set of technical explanations that clear my mind of the question without a doubt.
Then, only I remembered that it is just that I had forgotten some of the physics that was taught in year 1 engineering school. However, perhaps she once lecture year 1 and 2 engineering students, this physics and engineering mechanics is still fresh in her mind. Therefore, without a sweat she can solve my "mystery" easily.
Not that I want to praise myself, but to be honest, I am really glad and proud and happy and blessed (and whatever positive emotion to show gratitude you can think off) to have found a technically sound gf that can help me solve my 'mysteries' from time to time.
The situation describe above is only one of the many examples that shows the advantage of having a technical gf. Just imagine if I were to have a non-technical gf, the above question will still linger in my mind until this moment as I would have never able to resolve the 'mystery'.
Perhaps I would have open up a forum for discussion with the title "How come when you are hit by a ball which is travelling at a constant velocity, you still feel the pain, even though the force is equal to zero?"
But, thanks to my cute, lovely, smart, naughty (at times), playful (sometimes), adventurous, curious, thoughtful, "touchy" (she will touch everything she sees especially in the malls), creative, sharp, attentive, hardworking and not limited to technically sound girlfriend, the above 'mystery' was solve in no time and safe a few MB of space in the Internet for not publishing it as a forum.
So, to guys out there, without any slightest, most microscopic doubt in my mind, having a technical gf is always GREAT!!
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Fire Drill in the workplace
The office I am working in now is an office + warehouse type. And being a foreign company, safety is our foremost imporant priority. It is almost a routine that at least twice a year we need to have fire drills.
In case you do not know what fire drill is, it is an exercise whereby the fire alarm will be manually triggered, as a mock fire had taken place, to make the alarm sound and record the time to evacuate all the people to a safe assembly area away from the office.
It seems the national ruling is fire evacuation should take no more than 4 minutes from the time the alarm is trigged. However, kudos to my office mates, all the time, we always manage to do it within the allowed time frame with extra time to spare. It seems that everyone is so used to walking down the stairs and head towards the assembly area and can do it automatically without a hazzle. Or maybe perhaps my office mates are so scared of fire that when they hear the alarm, the will go running out like there is no tomorrow and hence, beating the time allowed flat!!
Anyway, the most bizzare fire drill I ever seen is in an electronic factory down south of Malaysia. When I was there, there happens to be a mock fire drill and because the factory is a populated by nearly 500 people, they have called the local firemen to come along for this mock fire drill.
So as the alarm went off, everyone is seen to walk towards the assembly area. Then, about 5 minutes later, a fire engine alarm broken the silence. The mock was so real, there are even 'actors' pretending to be injured and trapped inside the office where the firemen need to evacuate them from the 2nd floor window using the skylifts. There is even blood stain on the 'actor's' shirt. I wonder if they used tomato ketchup or real blood from animals?
Anyway, there comes the bizzare part. As we all assembled at the safe place, the security guard locked the gate of the factory, not allowing anyone to exit the building. I don't understand this action of his. Funny, there is a fire happening inside the building and the security guard to not allow anyone to leave the factory compound??? What logic is this? Good this it was a drill only, if the real fire is sighted, I am sure the security guard will be beaten for not allowing people to leave the building and pretty sure the gate will knocked down by the people trying to run for their life to safety.
However, again as usual the fire drill in my office had went off really well. No injuries was recorded, the time taken is 2 minutes and 56 seconds. 100% evacuated! I wonder if the real fire had taken place - touch wood, will my office mates still able to maintain this record or will they do even better?
Have a safe workplace and work safely peopole.
In case you do not know what fire drill is, it is an exercise whereby the fire alarm will be manually triggered, as a mock fire had taken place, to make the alarm sound and record the time to evacuate all the people to a safe assembly area away from the office.
It seems the national ruling is fire evacuation should take no more than 4 minutes from the time the alarm is trigged. However, kudos to my office mates, all the time, we always manage to do it within the allowed time frame with extra time to spare. It seems that everyone is so used to walking down the stairs and head towards the assembly area and can do it automatically without a hazzle. Or maybe perhaps my office mates are so scared of fire that when they hear the alarm, the will go running out like there is no tomorrow and hence, beating the time allowed flat!!
Anyway, the most bizzare fire drill I ever seen is in an electronic factory down south of Malaysia. When I was there, there happens to be a mock fire drill and because the factory is a populated by nearly 500 people, they have called the local firemen to come along for this mock fire drill.
So as the alarm went off, everyone is seen to walk towards the assembly area. Then, about 5 minutes later, a fire engine alarm broken the silence. The mock was so real, there are even 'actors' pretending to be injured and trapped inside the office where the firemen need to evacuate them from the 2nd floor window using the skylifts. There is even blood stain on the 'actor's' shirt. I wonder if they used tomato ketchup or real blood from animals?
Anyway, there comes the bizzare part. As we all assembled at the safe place, the security guard locked the gate of the factory, not allowing anyone to exit the building. I don't understand this action of his. Funny, there is a fire happening inside the building and the security guard to not allow anyone to leave the factory compound??? What logic is this? Good this it was a drill only, if the real fire is sighted, I am sure the security guard will be beaten for not allowing people to leave the building and pretty sure the gate will knocked down by the people trying to run for their life to safety.
However, again as usual the fire drill in my office had went off really well. No injuries was recorded, the time taken is 2 minutes and 56 seconds. 100% evacuated! I wonder if the real fire had taken place - touch wood, will my office mates still able to maintain this record or will they do even better?
Have a safe workplace and work safely peopole.
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!!
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....
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!!
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!!
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