Sometimes little things that we didn’t do or forgot to do will cause us some extra money. One of them is during our yearly car insurance renewal. My reminder for you is to check our sum assured. This is because every year our car will depreciate in value (I think could be 10% every year). And you just renew your car insurance with the same premium you did last year, you could paying extra.
Author: Steve Ngai
Categories
Count Your Blessing – Career
Towards the end of last year 2012, I have been searching and applying for some jobs. I even went for some interviews too but not successful. One day, I received an email from member of my church who is in head hunter line asked if I’m looking for job. I said yes. I wonder how she knew I was looking for job that time. Anyway, she hook me up with her colleague to recommend me a job. It was a technical position which I went for the interview. During the interview, I took the short technical test and after that the interviewer also did ask me what I like to do and good at. I said documentation. One reason is because documentation seems lacking in most companies and somehow I like to create those diagrams especially sequence diagrams which I showed some sequence diagrams I did to them.
After the interview, I don’t have that much confidence that I can get the job because I don’t think I did that well for that technical test. But to my suprise, I got a call by the same head hunter who introduced me to his company, that the company was pleased with my attitude and they want to offer me a “QC Manager” position instead and need me to attend the second interview which I did. I felt kinda stun because all these while, I have never worked as even Assistant Manager position, what’s more a manager position. I have mix feeling, afraid whether I can cope with it or not and same time feeling excited to have that opportunity. During the second interview, the interviewer assured me much and at the end, I took the job and the challenge. I knew if I let it go, I might have one of the biggest regrets of my life.
Indeed holding a managerial position has its challenges especially in the beginning but it doesn’t seem to be as challenging as I have imagine in the beginning also. Maybe my department is pretty small to have that many things to manage and ironically the only person under my department doesn’t need to report to me. Anyway, during this probation period, overall I don’t think that I am performing that well but to my suprise, I scored quite okay during the appraisal and last week I got the confirmation letter from my manager. I am grateful to be confirmed even though I don’t deserve it and to receive this blessing from God in a surpise!
As written in A Way Out, I have learnt not to download copyright things illegally. Recently, I was thinking to buy some legal MP3. And some research online, there are two recommendations. At the end, I chose MP3va.com because the minimum purchase for MP3va is lower. I paid USD 15.00 (RM49) by credit card and indeed ‘they’ gave me additional USD 5.00. This USD 20.00 is like a prepaid value in your account.
After some searching, purchasing and downloading of my favorite songs, I got more and more excited. And because also some fear that the website will be ‘gone’, I try to quickly finish up my credits. By today, I just left less than USD 1.00 in my account and have downloaded 127 songs (2 songs are free once you sign up) within one week! Tips:
Some tips for using MP3va.com:
- For the same song, you can search for a few versions to get the best sound quality version by looking at the bit rate (kbps).
- You can preview listen the songs first before adding or purchasing it.
- You can search by the singer or the song name.
In the past, one original audio CD can cost RM40 and usually not all the songs in that CD are my favorites even those greatest hits CDs. And I have bought quite number of these original audio CD throughout the years. But now, I found this website where I only pay RM49 to enjoy about 130 songs and I can choose all my favorite songs! Most of my favorite songs are late 80″ and 90″ songs. So, if you too love to listen to music and download them legally and want to save some bucks, give this MP3va.com a shot 🙂
Categories
Internet And The Devil
According to the statistic, the number of people accessing to the Internet grew exponentially every year especially these few recent years which are the blooming years for the smart phone and tablets. Of course the getting-cheaper Internet data plan also contributed to the statistic. With Internet, we can able to do almost anything with it, online shopping, e-banking (interbank transfer eGiro only cost RM0.10 per transaction in Malaysia here now. It used to be RM2.00!), social networking, researching, entertainment, e-training, cloud storage, gaming and the list goes on.
But bear in mind that Internet is a double-edge sword. The negative sides from the Internet are as much as the positive sides. In short, I would say that Internet or online can cause addiction. We can be addicted to various types of online addictions (aka Internet Devils), examples online gaming (i.e. Candy Crush Saga), facebooking, pornography, online forums, online chating, online gambling, youtube and so on.
For me, I need to confess that I am also an Internet addict. During online, I am easily addicted to some of the types listed above. I would go to the Old Town nearby my house to go online and sometimes stay there until 11pm. One of the temptations I easily fell into during online is Internet pornography. I know in the past I did shared that I have this Netnanny to protect me but what happened was on December 2012, I bought a new laptop which came with Window 8 in default. I could request to change it to Window 7 but if I did so, I won’t be able to change back to Window 8 and one of the features I like on Window 8 is faster bootup time (few seconds to boot up window). That time I had so much dillema and struggling to decide which Window should I choose. This is because if I take Window 7, I could not enjoy Window 8’s quick boot up and other Window 8 latest features. But if I take Window 8, NetNanny for Window 8 is not release yet. I have checked with Netnanny. They said that NetNanny for Window 8 will release during first quarter on 2013. Eventually I took Window 8, thinking “I just gotta persevere for about three months”. But the truth is, many a times I could not resist the temptation. And because of my struggle in this area also, I decided to cancel my data plan last year and not to buy a smart phone (I know even a kid or grandy got a smart phone hehe). Although it is not a must for a smart phone owner to subscribe data plan but it doesn’t make sense having a smart phone without data plan too. Anyway, last month, finally NetNanny for Window 8 was released and I got it installed last month until today. I am also grateful to have my two church brother’s in Christ to keep the password for me. I hope you too have a web filtering software like NetNanny or Family Safety (free from Window 8) if you have the same struggles like me.
Beginning of this month, the whole church was encouraged to take up a 40-days fasting challenge. It can be any types of fasting. Some fast for facebook, some fast for meat, some fast for not solid food, some fast for coffee and etc. For me, I fast for Internet, from 8pm until 8am. Somewhere this month, I also add extra fast which is Astro too. During this one month fasting, it has helped me much to fine-tune my pattern of my schedule. I am thinking to keep this good pattern even after 40 days fasting period. In fact, I want to take it higher by changing the time to 7pm until 8am. Recently, I also discover that Window 8 has this Family Safety feature which almost like Netnanny. In fact, it seems better because I wish to block everything except only a few websites which I can access and to have a daily time limit. It it works, it is going to be really awesome because I do not need to pay licensing fee for NetNanny and at the same with get greater online restriction for my own good.
I remember once a friend said to me, “Board games are for bored people.”. Immediately I have a conflict with him. I told him that his word can hurt those who love board games. But glad that we resolved on that very day and until today he is one of my good friends in the church.
Recently, I have been playing much board games with my church friends. I think it started about two months ago. We played usually either on Friday or Saturday night. Here are the list of board games we have played before so far: Ticket To Ride (we have Asia, Europe + expansion), Citadels, Small World Underground, Carcassonne (+ two expansions), Flash Point, Terra, Tokaido and the most recent one we played last week was King of Tokyo (+ one expansion). One of us just bought 5-6 new games yet to try out.
I really feel grateful to have this little ‘board games club’ whereby I can look forward to join every week to have great enjoyable fun time with my friends. I am grateful to those to invested into so many board games to lend their board games to us. I also appreciate the feedback that the rest should contribute to this club too, example maybe each to buy a board game and if there are 12 person in the club, we have 12 different games to cover the whole year. Personally myself I have one which I bought many years back, Terra. But this Terra is very under utilized since the day I bought it and so I felt a little regret. And now one of my hesitation to buy new game is because I worry that I will buy another ‘Terra’. Perhaps I need to really do more homework before I buy a particular board games so that that game is fun and at the same time easy to teach and learn for majority.
Speaking on board games, I feel that it is a ‘better’ hobby compare to computer games. Reason being is board games usually involves human interaction and not virtual human intereaction (online computer games). Although the board games are not cheap, but if all are sensitive enough to share the burden, example by buying one game for each person, this hobby is not that expensive after all. I mean if the game cost your RM120 and can last for a year, one month is only cost you RM10. This way is so much cheaper than going to board games cafe like Meeples which slash your pocket by charging you by hourly play (around RM3.50 per person per hour!). If you are interested to join us to play board games in Subang area, please contact me ya. We also wish to reach out to more new friends too as we are enjoying ourselves 🙂