Category: Tips Macam-Macam

This is how it works. Firstly your wallet or purse got stolen. Then, the theft try to guess your spouse’s handphone number from browsing the contact list from your handphone. Once done, the theft sms your spouse with something like, “Honey, I have forgotten our CIMB bank account PIN. Can you sms me?”. When your unaware spouse receive it, your spouse immediately sms back with the PIN. Once the theft got the PIN, the theft withdraw all the money.

Lesson 1: If you lost your wallet or purse, immediately contact the bank to freeze or block your account. The longer you take to do this, the higher the risk you get.

Lesson 2: Sometimes, we might not realize that our ATM card got stolen. In this case, never sms/whatsapp confidential data like PIN or password even to your closest one. Instead, call that person directly and encode that PIN or password where only your spouse can decode it. Example, you call back and say, “The password is ‘Our wedding day’ “.

In a chess game, a gambit is a chess opening in which a player, sacrifices material, with the hope of achieving an advantageous position. Our career can be like a chess game where strategy is needed. Let’s create a scenario here,

Mr Lim is a fresh graduate. He got no working experience at all. Although he got a degree in Computing but his results is average and his final year project is not so impressive. He went to Jobstreet and found a programmer position which he likes. After applying for this position, he saw that there are another 70 people who applied for this same position. Same are fresh graduate like him. Same are experienced one.

So, what is the strategy to get a chance to be called for interview in the above scenario? This is the exact strategy that I applied for my first permanent job – ‘sacrifice’ my salary until I got the right job. You might ask, ‘So, what is a good sacrifice?’. You can do it gradually. Meaning, for example, you can start to put your expected salary at RM1800. If you don’t any response from the company, then lower it down to RM1600 and so on until you got an interview. You might ask, ‘What if I lower my expected salary until RM1400 and yet I don’t get to call for an interview? So how?’. My answer for you is keep lowering your expected salary until you got it. My first job’s pay is only RM900! I’m sure most of you all can do better than me.

If you really love the job and at the same time you know that you do not have enough criteria to meet the requirement for this job and there are too many ‘competitors’, try to apply gambit strategy. It works for me and I believe it works for you too. All the best!

Rahsia Lulus Temuduga Kerja Kerajaan

Last two days, our apartment got broke in by burglars. Yes, even apartment is not safe. My father and I didn’t seem to lost anything but my mom got losses. I would appreciate if you don’t ask further details because we do not want to repeat the story anymore and my mom hope to quickly forget about it.

My purpose of writing this is to advice everyone not to put a lot of money in your home. (I suspect that burglar has some high technology device which can detect cash). I know some might be afraid to put the money into banks, afraid that someone will steal your money in the bank. Here, my advice for you is to open an account which is just meant for saving, whereby you can only deposit money and without any ATM card. Also, you can perhaps give a special instruction to the bank officer that anyone who try to withdraw money from this account, the bank need to call up the owner for verification. I am not sure if this can be done but you can try. Once again, beware of burglars!

Another real case happened which I wrote about it on 24th April 2008 – my friends’ house got broke-in by burglars

Losses include a laptop, camera and some cashes. I guess this incident should give us a red alert of our house. Perhaps one of the most practical things we can do is to get some good locks. Yes, good locks means they are more expensive but eventually they ‘save’ your money more.

Have the best lock in the world but forget to lock it is equally useless. Other thing came to my mind is we should be reminded of our negligence, which means we should make sure all locks are well locked before we leave the house and not to be careless. Otherwise, our carelessness, even once, can be too costly to bear.

If you suspect someone broke-in your house during mid-night and you were inside the room, don’t try to keep silent or rush out to battle with them. If you keep silent, they will continue to steal more and more things or even harm you eventually. If you rush out to battle with them, you might get hurt or killed by them. What I learnt from my father is just make some noise and them leave by themselves. Another wise thing to do is to lock the door immediately and switch on the room light and make a call to police or call your security guard if you stay in apartment or condo.

This incident happened 10 years ago when we first moved in into the apartment which I am still staying right now. A burglar came in by the kitchen. Those days, we didn’t lock the grill at the kitchen, so that burglar managed to climb over to enter through the kitchen grill. My father heard something not right and make some noise to let that burglar leave. When that burglar left, we saw our HIFI set at the kitchen but we lost one thing, a remote control. I think it is our TV’s remote control.

P/S on 31th December 2014 – Now our home got more ‘security system’. In fact, this ‘security system’ has protected our home before. The house door was ‘open’ by the burglars but that time nothing lost because of the security system alarm I believe. Contact me if you wish to know more how we secure our house and what security system we use.

On Saturday, 27 September 2008 was my first time travelling outstation for work purpose. It was a day trip to Kuantan and I drove all the way to and fro. The distance from Kuala Lumpur to Kuantan is 259 KM and driving at 100 kph, it takes around 3-3½ hours to reach.

Even though I hardly travel outstation, I would like to share something I learnt about this long outstation journey by car. Some lessons were taught by my father.

Few days before the travelling, it is good that you have some car check up. The reason is if your car got problem, the mechanic is hundreds of kilometers away. The other reason is driving a long journey is stressing your car. Imagine running at 100-110 kph for continous one hour. If your car got problems or breakdown often, it is better to not use that car for long journey outstation.

Make sure your car has enough petrol. The next petrol station is many kilometers away in the highway. Trust me. I face this problem when I drove back to Kuala Lumpur. That time, I still got one level of petrol. So, I thought, I think I can pump during the journey. And, that mistake nearly cost my a BIG one. As I keep driving, I couldn’t see any sign of the next petrol station and the level of petrol keep dropping. When the level drop to the most critical level, I started to get panic and get extremely nervous and it was a night journey, everywhere is pitch dark. The person sat next to me fell asleep. Things gets extreme when I began to see redlight. At the end, I surrender and prayed. After that, I saw the petrol sign, which is 1km away. I felt a bit relieved but still afraid, wonder if my car reach there. Thank God, I saw the petrol station at the end. From now, I will always remember this hard lesson. Now, I know the importance of having enough petrol during outstation travelling.

If can, find a good assistant driver. Good one means he can be your backup driver with valid license! And he will be your third eye in case your eyes get sleepy. There is no difference if you have someone sit next to you but do nothing to help and sleep all the way.

I think to be realistic, it is not easy to find a good assistant driver and we shouldn’t overly rely on assistant driver. What what to do? Here, I have some tips for you. These tips did work for me.

• Get a good cup of coffee right when you about to start it. Not too early because the caffein effect might be no more at that time. Yes, coffee is not most health drink but compare to safely here, it is worth it. Alternatively, if you can’t drink coffee for any reasons, you can use healthier drink like ginseng, tea or essence of chicken.
• Sweet. Even though, this might not work for some but the reason why it works is because sugar gives you calori, which is energy.
• Get some fast beat type of music. This is power of music. Some of my favorites are Moderm Talking, Dr Alban, Roxette and Beyond. WARNING, don’t bring those light and easy type, which will create the reverse effect!
• Bring extra money, to pump petrol. Sometimes petrol station won’t accept credit card.
• Make sure your handphone got extra credit and battery fully charged, so that you can make emergency call.
• Take more break. During break, you can get another cup of coffee or take a short 20 minutes nap if needed. Don’t let your pride stops or kill you.

Do you know what you can tell your car to prevent or allow outside air going inside your car? Usually those car who is at the city, will set it to not to allow outside air going inside the car. The reason is because those outside air is pretty polluted. But during outstation travelling, you should set it to allow outside air to go inside the car. Why? Because by doing so, you allow fresh air go inside the car which is good for you. One of the reason which make people more drowsy in the car is because there is no fresh air inside the car. This concept was taught by my father.

It is always the important to focus on safety especially at night or heavy rain and not to focus in reaching to the destination fast. Accident happens so easily on the highway and once there is an accident, it will be a BIG one because of the speed. The faster we driver, the BIGGER the impact. Remember life is more important than anything else here. So, last but not least, pray to God for safety.

Two days ago, I saw an interesting thing from Low Yat Plaza, 2nd floor and it just costs RM9. So, I brought it. It is a battery tester. When I reached home, I started to test it out and it works. It works for AA, AAA and 9V batteries.

This battery tester is really useful because many of my old batteries which I thought low battery level are actually not until I tested them out. So, don’t straight away throw all your old batteries. Get one battery tester to test them out. They might still have good level of battery in them.