Now You See, Now You Don't - SESB

Written by arimi sidek

Electricity: Now You See, Now You Don't
(Sabah Electricity Board, SEB, Sabah Electricity Sdn. Bhd., SESB)

I think most of us still remember the interesting TV commercial not long ago. At the moment I begin to feel that electricity supply in Sabah is quite like that. Its highly unreliable, unpredictable, and really troublesome to many.



Sabah Electricity

Well, it did a good thing to me. Without this unreliable supply of electricity, I wouldn't had discovered that my phone has text processor feature. But that is not the point I would like to highlight here.

Disruption of service simply too much to ignore as if it never happens, as it does and in terribly disturbing manner.

I noticed that there are two types of disruptions. The first, and more frequent is of the quick and short type. It is as if a prank plays off and on the main switch momentarily. It takes only 3 to 4 seconds, and the supply back to normal.



Blackout Cartoon

Others, long and of regular disruption type, lasting from 5 minutes to several hours.

But no matter what, I really hate them both. Sudden supplies disruption had caused me to lost many unfinished writing works. Imagine an hour or two of your work vanish in front of your eyes and nothing can be done about it. Such a waste of effort.

I wonder what is going on with SESB. Are they still using diesel-powered generators? If they are then this answer the short disruptions. It happens during generators switching process. As for the longer type, the only possibility I can think of is due to faulty generators.

I thought Pangi hydro electric station is big enough to provide electricity supply to major towns in Sabah. If station of that size were built to covered only Tenom district and the surrounding area, shutting it down is always the best decision to be made. At the very least, fresh water aquatic lifeforms that are currently trapped inside the huge dam be freed and they can live happily ever after somewhere's else.

Some years ago, former Chief Minister of Sabah Datuk Yong Teck Lee cited a popular joke on the then SEB - it stands for "Sabah Everyday Blackout" instead of Sabah Electricity Board.

That was the situation before Tenaga Nasional (TNB) took over. Now, with TNB the problem persist.

How about we invent a new meaning for SESB - Sabah Everyday Still Blackout.

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Useless Meetings

Written by arimi sidek

This is quite trivial, but sometimes I truly wonder how long will a meeting last.

How long can you stand a meeting?

As a chairman, its deadly serious to observe how efficient you are during meeting.

Useless Meeting Cartoon



Actually I don't want you to answer the above questions for me.

It is sufficient to have momentary reflection on this hog time – eater. Especially if you belong to managerial part of workforce, it going to eats up a considerable portion of your life.

Imagine the continuous and monotonous life that you going to face during meetings. Any meetings at all – PIBGs, Schools, Projects, Workplaces, etc..

I am in the workforce for nearly two decades and had attended many useless meetings so far.

Honestly, I think its hard to put specific time line for any meetings. They can last for hours, days, weeks, months, etc., subject to necessity and degree of the seriousness of matters discussed during the meeting.

But not in single session, please.

How long do you thing human attention span is? Its an oxymoron to think that member of meeting can listen to chairman's mambo jumbo for 4 or 5 hours non stop.

If you still remember, that is why in school, session breaks into several sub-sessions known as “period”, 35 – 40 minutes each. Partly this is to address attention span problem among students.

Unless you practice sufi kind of exercises, yoga, samadhi or the like, you are likely to experience “ghaflah”. That is, among other, short attention span. Just try to focus in your solat [in case you are Muslim] and then realize how short attention span can be. You mind is truly like wild beast that wandering around wherever and whenever it likes. Just matters of seconds after “takbir ratul ihram” you mind already gone else where.

I believe the success of the meeting lies mainly on the the person who lead the session.

But in most meetings, I notice that the real culprit is also the chairman. I have seen many kapurt chairman that are truly oxymorons. The older they are, the more stupid they became. I wonder how the proverb “wisdom begin at forty” come about.

Most of the older chairmen are like antic collectors that trapped in time zone. Often, they spoken their mind off and what come out just like shit.

They only capable of talking about socio-politics, economics and management ideas of 70s and 80s, because that is the only knowledge that they have. They gathered these knowledge long time ago in 70s, in 80s, while study in the university and do not bother to add more as part of the thinking process and thinking dynamics.

Some chair persons think they are so good because they are the head of department and thus, chairing the meeting at the same time.

They think they know more than others. As their ego is so big, it explodes shortly after the meeting begin. Quite often I saw chairmans that “syok sendiri”. They really, really keen on talking off topic subjects and getting lost in the meeting.

Simply put, many of them have terrible time management.

Their time management is so terrible that, if there is a chairman that truly time conscious, that is considered good enough. Others, I think must have some thing to do with their personal thing if suddenly they become time conscious sort.

Such as, picking up their school kid at 12 noon...

I seldom encounter meeting chair persons that capable to hold correct argument with others the meeting. Correct arguments include fairly good art of reasoning, logic and sufficient knowledge on the subject that was discussed.

During meeting, most chairmen just come to know about the matters as written on the minute of meeting per se. These retardos do not even care to read the minute prior to the meeting. In several occasions, they just realize that they brought wrong meeting file and wrong meeting minute 15 minutes after the meeting started.

If you are among those chair persons, please, take long holiday or simply opt for early retirement. Remember, we have passed new millennium eight years ago. Now it is about radical knowledge explosion since the Internet emerges as knowledge super highway, huge source of knowledge.

The younger generation read more nowadays.

They mind are more exposed and hence, tend to know more.

If these old frogs still insist to live under coconut shell, at the very least, they have to accept the fact that they are of ridicule and mockery subject wherever they go.

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My Phone Rocks!

Man, my phone rocks!

In just 2 days, I converted my outdated Nokia N70 into a full fledge word processing machine totally. I managed to get two de facto office suites for palm / hand held machine, QuickOffice and OfficeSuite of MobiSystems [MobileSystems].

My Nokia N70 in Action



QuickOffice - I mean full feature premier version of it, not just QuickOffice Viewer that always came pre-bundled inside your Nokia gadget, includes three standard office documents; word processing, spreadsheet and presenter with full editing capabilities.

Quick Office Premier


OfficeSuite of MobiSystems came in two, word processor and spreadsheet but richer in features compare to QuickOffice.

MobileSystem OfficeSuite



As a writing addict what else do I need now, except continue writing non stop 24/7.

This is perfect, taking into account of upcoming general election of Malaysia. Pak Lah will make an announcement about it anytime soon, and I will surely capable to write about politics as much as I can. It is a frenzy for every 5 year, how can I afford to miss.

Forget about laptop. I just about to buy the cheapest notebook that currently in the market. The notebook produced by Asus with 4GB flash disk and 512 MB memory, available with RM1,299 price tag here in Kota Kinabalu.

But my phone, with 1GB memory card that I currently placed inside, I want nothing more, nothing less than this outdated mobile set to be able to write.

It is unbelievable, the tiny word processors even have spelling checker feature!

If it just about writing in *.doc format, I can type for the whole year of 2008 without having to worry that I will be short of memory space.

I truly regret on why I don't discover this IT luxury two years ago. Now, it is about glued to hand phone, previously with PC - you still the same, my wife started to complaint. But I like my phone more. I can truly sit down, mingle with them, and having good conversation in the living room watch TV while I do all the typing.

It has been a week that I did not sit "properly" in front of the PC – alright, “properly” mean 3 - 6 hours non stop, is it okay for you :^p ?

Email me if you want both softwares, I can send it to you for a mere RM20 ;^) ...

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The Friend & I

Written by arimi sidek

There is a friend of mine who work as a unit trust consultant. He switched career and became full time consultant since two years ago. I think he is doing the job quite well so far. He is one of Sabah's top agents for two consecutive years, 2007 and 2008. He isn't very creative in a way, but he is eccentric and horribly focus to his job.



Toyota Rush

Unlike most agents, he is really aggressive and did not start selling career with family members and friends from the very beginning. He is choosy in picking up clients. He select only towkays or people who are seen as financially sound. He don't mind difficulty in setting up appointments with Tan Sri Chong Kah Kiat or Datuk Dayang Mahani, for example.

He love his job very much, the way I like writing except in my case, I have yet to earn a decent money out of my addiction. And I doubt I will in future. As for the addiction, I can jot down something while waiting for my wife inside the car, or while sitting at the back of motorcycle whenever I felt tired before riding on.

Back to my friend, I think he really excels in selling. His strategy with big clients work quite well and the network considerably expand over time.

But as time goes by, now comes new twists. He starts to talk about buying new car. It is necessary as it will boast my image, he said. He insists that Malaysia's car simply isn't good enough to catch people attention.

Gee, I dunno that. But if he really mean by what he said then, he is not only not creative, but also stupid. I think he just hiding the real motive, that is, he wants to get more expansive car to project better image of himself. It shouldn't because of what customer think of himself. I say this because all this while he performs good sales even though he drive Iswara everyday.

Luxury car is no doubt boast his image and especially the pride but it definitely NOT necessity nor part and parcel of sales activity. Or, it isn't the way we need rice everyday in order to survive.

Take another friend of mine for example. He is also earn a living through sales line for more than 15 years. He does good too, with the sales volume around 2 to 5 millions every month. Imagine if the commission is 2pc, he probably earn about RM40, 000 every month.
Guess what was his car until last year, 2007?

20 years old white Proton Saga. Finally last year he got himself a new car, Kenari.


Comments


Anonymous |2009-11-29



very interesting story looo...

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The Phone & I

Written by Arimi Sidek

I bought a mobile phone set, Nokia N70, two years ago. It was quite expensive back then. I can't remember the exact price any more but sure it was more than RM1, 700. It is bit outdated now, the price hit the bottom down. Last week a friend of mine bought it for a mere RM700.

Nokia N70 Picture



But for more than two years I hardly use it beyond the capacity of phone. That were to make outgoing calls, to receive incoming calls beside short text messaging – SMS. The status quo maintained until yesterday, when a sudden blackout left me in a boring doom. No light, no TV, No PC, no nothing.

Finally I sat down and play with my hand phone to kill time. I noticed then that it has a feature called "notes". I wonder what it was. At first I assumed it was a text like additional SMS feature. Since I had nothing else [and better] to do at the time, I opened it up and started typing something in it.

My initial thought that it just another type of limited kind of SMS texting ability proven to be wrong. As I type more and more text, I realized that it is getting longer than the usual SMS. This plain text processor even surpass the Microsoft Windoze "Notepad" 6Kb capability. I found this out after I had transferred it to my PC.

I wrote this whole article solely using N70 original text processor and I like it. I mean its really convenience to write compare to laptops. I can even continue writing while nature calls.

Some of you probably knew this already but I bet, many still didn't. Neither did I, I sheepishly admit. I think "kabahau-bahauan" fit me perfectly.

I completed this writeup, then sent it to my ever standing nearby PC via bluetooth and wallah, its ready for web upload.

Next, I am looking for a complete office suite for my hand phone.

I heard QuickOffice [ www.quickoffice.com ] kinda popular among palm and mobile phone users, and I definitely wanna try it soon.

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