Monthly Archives: February 2010

Blessed Chinese New Year

Before I go on, probably it be good for all of you who are dog lovers to check out this site.  Really pity these dogs. Malaysian Dogs Deserve Better.

Blessed Chinese New Year To All

Yes, it’s that year again, when all of us decided to take a break from our usual routine and head back to our roots.  This year, was no exception as Deluxe, Esther and myself head back to Miri to celebrate Chinese New Year with the family.  Going back has always been a good thing because it’s the only time that I can pretty much catch up with my brothers and sister as well as my relatives.

Esther Calling out Mei Mei This year, not only did we had lots of food but also Esther managed to meet up with her peers.  Hehehe.  Yes the picture on the right is one of Esther’s cousin, who is about 2 months younger than her.  When these two were around, Esther was calling her Mei Mei, while her Mei Mei decided to run around with her.  Lol.

It was kinda interesting how she could bond straight away without any hesitation.  Probably it’s because maybe she’s the same size and thought we’re in the same boat.  No, Deluxe and I are not planning to have another yet.  So don’t you go start lecturing me on trying to get another one.  Hehehe.  It was indeed interesting how Esther could mix well with other children, be it big or small.  And she was smiling away and talking in her native language with all her Uncles and aunty, who have yet to understand what she’s trying to tell them.  Never the less, it was all good.

Esther with her Tai Pak But during this trip, she didn’t really allow anyone to carry her.  The only people who successfully carried her was both her grandparents and her Tai Pak & Pak Meh.  Who some how surprisingly able to just pick her up after a few minutes of coaxing her.  You should have seen the number of times her Tai Pak tried to coax her few months back, but during Chinese New Year, apparently he finally managed to carry her.

So everyday you can pretty much hear Esther running around the house talking and laughing with everyone.  Especially giving out high fives to every.  Lol, if only I could have brought my video camera along then probably it might be worth taking.  During this time I was also able to catch up with a few of my close friends.  To pretty much catch up with their lives and how they are going.  So far I received one good news, and probably waiting for him to pretty much announce it.  Never the less, there are some who are still pretty much staying alive if you know what I mean.  But it’s great to see all of them again.

Deluxe & Esther @ Taman Awam Miri This year we pretty much had a short trip compared to last year.  As we had to get back home because of other arrangements.  Yes, it was indeed a rush as many thought we seriously need to stay on a little bit longer.  Not to mention that we pretty much missed my brother’s engagement lunch.  So congratulations to them once again, and right now we’re waiting for his big day as well.

One of the morning, I’ve decided to bring Deluxe & Esther to the nearby park.  But the only regret was that, we went there too early too late.  Lol.  We were suppose to go during the evening, but then if it was not raining we would need to do something that day.  But anyway, we didn’t stay long as the sun was scorching hot and was going to give Esther a good tan so we hurried through the park .  But I guess she pretty much understand, as we were sort of trying to catch up with time.  One funny incident during our walk in the park was that Esther was so determine to walk on her own.  So as we allowed her to do it, it was time we tried to climb up the stairs.  Yes, while holding both mommy and daddy’s hand she began her journey ascending these steps with great anticipation.  It wasn’t long before she started to slow down and her steps beginning to get smaller and smaller.  All mommy had to do was asked her if she was tired, and she pretty much said she was.  So that was when mommy had to swoop down to her rescue and carried her up the stairs to car.  We could have swore that she was panting all the way.  Poor little girl, but she pretty much enjoyed the whole trip.  Lol.

Esther having dinner That’s pretty much about it.  And I’ve also been getting emails asking why I have not written any letters already for the past few months.  Well, as much as I want to post these letters online.  I’ve decided to keep them offline instead.  The reason behind it was because of safety issues.  Wouldn’t want to go much into details, and sometimes being too personal online is not really that encouraged as well.  Lol.  I know it’s because people tend to visit your page hoping to get the latest gossips and news.  Which also explain why the less post on my site.  Well apart from time constraints as I’m working on something new for Deluxe, I can’t really find the time to sit down and blog about everything and anything like I used to.   But it’s all good.  Considering that I should spend more time in doing other things, and blogging doesn’t really seem to help me much now.  Especially with the drastic drop of income, which I believe someone here will also agree with me.  Lol.

I don’t know, somehow blogging used to be fun and exciting when I first started out. Maybe it’s because when I started to earn money from it, then probably that was the beginning of the end of my blogging days.  But never the less, I guess it’s a phase whereby I’m into twitter, which I think it’s more simple and you don’t really need to add a lot of things to speak out your mind.  But I’m thinking that it won’t be long soon that I’ll be doing something like this again for a while.  Hehehe.  So before I end my post, may I wish you all a blessed Chinese New Year, and that the year of the Tiger will continue to bring you love, peace and hope.

Digi 3G now in Kuching

3G detected on my HTC TYTN II

Yes, finally 3G has finally arrived here in Kuching. Apparently it was here for quite a few weeks already if I’m not mistaken. Anyway, you can read the real press release here. Miri is expected to receive 3G by mid of this year. So I guess it won’t be long now before Digi will start to dominate in Sarawak really soon.  Apparently Digi seems to have the lowest fare compared to the other telcos.

Before I forget, in order for you to activate 3G for Digi, you need to call in their customer service at 016-2211800 and get them to help you activate that services for you.  You don’t need to change your sim card, so I think that’s great whereby you can straight away use.  If you still can’t get any 3G signal, just make sure your phone is set to GSM & 3G.  If nothing happened after 10 mins try restarting your phone.  Then voila you managed to get 3G connection already.

Anyway, so what happened was that I sort of managed to max out my RM5 cap yesterday and did a trial run with Digi’s 3G feature.  I was told that currently they are only able to make video calls within the same network.  I tried to do a video call to my mom but unfortunately I was not able to get connected.  But I did a test call to Deluxe’s phone and apparently it worked. Quality wise was ok, but due to the fact that both the phones were near to each other ended up giving up feedback instead.  Hehehe.  So I think it’s not really a problem.

Next up, I was testing their internet connection.  Somehow rather I ended up instead of getting 3G, but rather a HSPDA connection when browsing the Internet as well as downloading some stuff through my phone.   Soon another friend of mine from Brunei so by happened to be online last night so I got him to try and have a Skype conversation.  Connection wise started to go a bit funny as it drops down from HSPDA to 3G then to Edge and vice versa.  So my friend asked me to pretty much force my phone to lock it at 3G, which pretty much solve the problem.  And the conversation was clear, despite the 1 second lag and he was using speaker phone.  As far as I know that Celcom and Maxis had already blocked VOIP whereby I was able to hear what my friend was telling me, but he was not able to listen what I said.

I’ve forgotten to try Youtube so I guess I’ll try it out some other time.  I noticed something today, when I was downstairs in my shop my connection dropped to Edge, and when I went up stairs to get something it goes back up to 3G again.  No wonder the customer service person asked me to switch on to dual mode which was GSM & 3G.  But when I tried out forcing it to stay connected to 3G, my phone connection was cut off.  Hehe, so I guess I might need a booster antenna or something in order for me to receive the signal.

I was still able to receive incoming calls as well as SMS during my connection via 3G to the internet.  But I think it got temporarily cut off whereby priority ended up to the phone calls as well as SMS when it came in.  Never the less, I’m pretty much happy with the fact that Digi has finally stepped up its game in providing this service for their loyal customers.  Lol.  And another thing was that I did sort of post Digi a question via Twitter if they were going to provide prepaid users blackberry services.  Well, apparently I got a reply from them “We would if u want us too ;-) Y r u looking at prepaid? Have u seen this hot hot plan? http://cot.ag/c8WWD6“.  And I immediately replied them Yes Please!.  So let’s see how are they going to do this, and see how they are going to beat the other telcos in terms of pricing.

Oh the reason why I asked for blackberry was that, if you notice on the bottom right of my phone there’s a blue thingy.  Well, I just installed the blackberry software which enables my phone to act like a blackberry now.  Which I think would be cool especially when I go out and leave my messenger on.  Lol.  And of course will still be able to receive incoming mails especially from important clients.  But apart from that, it’s all good.  So thumbs up for Digi, and I hope you can continue to make us happy.  By the way, they’re giving out one free BlackBerry Curve 8250 for some lucky person with the most creative post of them with a Blackberry.  You can check it out on their facebook page.

Another funny thing happened, in the midst of trial and error.  Apparently my dual sim card sort of went hair wire because my other Sim which was using Celcom was not able to detect at all.  Whereby, Digi was still able to detect 3G signal despite that I was using that sim card adapter.  Why I say this was that, whenever I would want to use a 3G connection for my Celcom sim card, I need to take out the adapter and installed the ghost sim so that I am able to use 3G services.  But to my surprise I didn’t had to when I switch back to my Digi sim card.  Will try to figure out how to fix it, if I’m able to use both services then I won’t need to switch my sim card all the time.  Hehehe.  Have a nice day everyone!

Paypal To CIMB Bank Withdraw Successful

I’ve made a withdrawal from Paypal to CIMB bank last week which was on the 29th January.  From their website they state it will take 2-3 working days.  Now take note that working days does not include Saturday & Sunday.  So anyway, since I withdraw it on the 29th which falls on Thursday, I was like thinking maybe I will be able to get my funds by Monday.  But unfortunately I never got it until today.  Yes, it took me 6 working days to receive my funds from Paypal.  However from what I was told, normally the first withdrawal takes a little bit longer.  But once you withdraw the 2nd time it will be faster.  So I’m not too sure about that, maybe will try and see how it goes.

Surprisingly when I opened up my account to check, it stated IBG Credit.  So I guess it’s considered a local transfer rather than international transfer.  Who knows, but I do get complaints from people stating that the exchange rate is very low.  Yes, I do agree with that the exchange rates are not reasonable but I guess they pretty much included the transfer fees or bank charges that could incurred during the transfer.  Never the less, I always tell people to set your own exchange rates.  So normally when I sell stuff online especially in USD, I would charge my clients about 1 USD = RM3.1 or RM3.2.  So at least when I do a conversion through Paypal it wouldn’t be so bad, but ended up earning a little bit from the exchange rates.  So why are you complaining about?  Banks exchange rates are not that good either, so you’ve just got to learn how to give and take.

Anyway, I wouldn’t want to go into more details on that.  But here’s the proof of my withdrawal, and of course this time I need to clear a bit, because it’s a little bit sensitive showing how much I withdraw this time round.  Hehehe.  Anyway, I did another withdrawal as well on the 2nd of February to Maybank account, as I heard it was faster.  Well, I’ll just wait and see.

Oh before I forget, the swift code for CIMB Bank is CIBBMYKL.  Apparently previously Paypal made a mistake in placing the swift code information.  Anyway, they have fixed it already and I was able to withdraw no problems.  So don’t just sit there, start selling and get some extra cash for this coming Chinese New Year ;)

Withdraw CIMB.jpg