RM45m City Overtime

That is the staggering amount of Kuala Lumpur City Hall overtime claims for 2007, as published in the local paper yesterday. It paid to 11,200 employees in 27 departments, averaging RM4,017 per employee. Major chunks were paid to staff in petty traders management, health & licensing and public works departments.

The mayor admitted the huge amount showed that there were some discrepancies i.e. poor management of the employees' schedules. He said that clocking long hours did not necessary mean that they were working! (Ooh! he just opened a can of worms! His staff will not like it and the union will 'manage' him!)

A task force will be set up to monitor the work schedules. (Brilliant idea - more overtime claims by the task force members but the best is yet to come). He added logically, if they were working overtime, there should not be any complaint against City Hall. There would be no illegal activities in the city and enforcement would have been carried out in a proper manner. (Genius 1+1 = 2, right baby! Mayor for PM!)

(Now come the icing on the cake). "Lately the public has doubted our ability, reliability and integrity. There have been lots of reports criticising City Hall and complaints keep piling up." (Huh? Lately? Either he was living in a shell for the past 2 decades or our integrity benchmark was bloody high! However hats off to him - at least he realised - whereas many more are still in self denial mode and playing the blame game!)

As the parting shot, he hoped that all employees will change their culture so that City Hall can work towards making Kuala Lumpur a world class city. (Broken records, same old scripts since I could read English!)

pic - My beloved Kuala Lumpur

* And The Winner Is ...

Spend above RM30 and win a car! Buy 2 items and stand a chance to travel to Timbuktu. Everyday we are bombarded by advertisements to tempt us to spend. As a sweetener, the retailers are offering contests whole year round to increase their sales. It is a proven marketing ploy that plays tricks on consumers. The more we buy the more chances to win the cars, electrical items, holidays etc.

Hmm, we did hear stories that some of these retailers were not 'honest'. There was no winner at the end or a model or two will be employed to be photographed as winner. Any real story to share?

Picked this interesting story published in the UK tabloids last week. The BBC has been fined £400,000 for “deliberately” cheating the public with fake phone-in competitions. Telly watchdog Ofcom blasted BBC for “faking winners of competitions and deliberately conducting competitions unfairly”. A probe revealed that the shows had made up names for phone-in competitions or pre-recorded them with fake “winners”.

Another broadcaster, ITV has been hit with a record fine of £5.68m for abusing premium rate phone services in a host of hit shows. Popular shows were found to have “serious editorial issues” and have all been penalised for misleading viewers. The production team of Soapstar Superstar ignored the viewers' vote and finalised results before the lines had closed. ITV made £7.8m from uncounted votes from these programmes in question and some 10 million telephone calls were affected.

So still have the urge to attach the counterfoil and submit the contest form? Or sms to vote your favourite reality stars?

Dance, Little Lady, Dance

Performance by 7 years old students

An Evening With Cancer Patients

Ling, 59 was diagnosed with nose cancer a year ago. He had to stop work as a machine operator as the fainting spells could lead to industrial accident. He has been going in and out of hospital for his chemotherapy. As he has difficulties in eating, he survives on soft diet. At times, he salivated looking at those delicious food on the table. Recently he was able to eat rice but has to drown plenty of liquid to down the grain. He has just finished his evening tea and as he was speaking, traces of tea was dripping from his mouth. He was not bitter. In fact, he enlightened me with these statements. "You can still live if you are poor and have no money! But you can't live if you are not healthy!" "You can consider this illness as a blessing or payback time for all the sins committed. But I consider it as a blessing. My 3 kids have all grown up and I have fulfilled my responsibilities. Imagine if they are still in school - Die Also Must Work! (Malaysian English)

Leong, early 50s has a growth in his neck. He was a tile and marble contractor working in Dubai. Life was good there. Prior to there, he had a stint in Doha. 1 day he coughed blood and did not take it seriously. He thought it could be due to the hot weather. He did visit GP and popped in the normal drug. Then he felt a tumor in the neck. As the tumor was moving around from left to right and grew in size, he panicked. Worst fear was confirmed - neck cancer. He was fasting since morning and was waiting to be wheeled to the operation theater to remove the tumor. He did open up with tales on Dubai. 1 funny tale was on how they went searching for pork. Aagh! Chinaman, must have pork! (Reminded me of my uni days, where we would ride to the nearby town, 10km away for our weekly fix on pork!). Apparently, there was an 'underground' mainland Chinese joint, operating from an apartment room that served the roasted meat - char siew! The shop was always full as tables were limited.

Sik, 80 has growth in his hand. He started sharing his life story in traditional Hokkien. Came from China at the age of 19 in 1947 and had toiled hard over the decades to bring food to the family. Managed to balik kampong in 1995 and said there was massive development there. Asked about my folks and was surprised to hear that they were born here! Exchanged further note and he noted that my ancestors' kampong was nearby to his. I have no clue and just nodded as the only kampong I know is Kampong Air Panas, Kuala Lumpur!

Khairi, mid 50s from Teluk Intan. He 'kerja kampong' - that was what he said when asked about his profession. Stricken with lung cancer, he had since quit smoking. Few kids are still in school. The medical facilities are inadequate thus has to travel more than 100km by public bus to get his treatment in the city. Wife was there to accompany him. They have to depend on their folks back home to take care of the children. Wife has been sleeping on the floor and only on the bed if there is a spare bed in the ward. His only wish is to go home to be with his kids.

Najib, early 20s had his right leg amputated to contain the bone cancer. This boy was pale. Spoke to his elderly mom. They came from Banting. Najib had stopped schooling after SPM as the disease spread. The mom has been at his bedside ever since, taking care of his needs. That's motherly love at the highest level!

Samy, newly wed with a pregnant wife, was emotional to see us. After lenghty spells of headaches and many visit to different doctors, he was diagnosed with brain cancer. My mate massaged him which brought some relief. There was sign of bedsores!

An evening with cancer patients. It reminded me that the big C disease does not follow a quota system. It can struck anytime and has no sentimental value for auspicious dates like 08.08.08 or 2020! It does not discriminate and does not give 2 hoots on the colour of your skin, age, profession etc! And you cannot bribe it away! The scary part is all parts of your body can be 'attacked'!

So let us start leading a healthy lifestyle. Watch our diet, take care of our mental and physical conditions. Curb our anger and spread loving kindness! May You Be Free From Mental And Physical Suffering!

All names had been changed! Pic - strive diligently before you turn into T-Rex!

Rubbish

The article Crude Prediction featured in CFO Asia latest issue caught my eyes. It mentioned that Alam Flora, the solid waste management company that serves 6.4 million Malaysians had come up with a list of measures to cut down oil consumption. This is where the fun begins.

Among the ideas ;
1) upsizing garbage containers so trucks can make one collection per week!
2) moving from day to night time pickups which could reduce drive times from eight to six hours due to lighter traffic!
3) convert to natural gas

What a load of Rubbish! Of course business is set up to make money but do not reduce expenses at the expense of the customers! Will be disgusted if the first 2 ideas are implemented.

1) 1 collection per week? Perhaps you readers could comment and tell me the consequences (I know, I know, pinch your nose and don't let it go.. for a week!) Lately there are an increasing number of scavengers rummaging the bin to look for recyclable items. Nothing against them as they are doing the earth a big favour but very often, they do not 'clean up'. Then it's fiesta for the neighbours' pets! Do I need to say more?

2) night pickups? (worse if idea #1 materialises) Don't like the idea to be honked in the wee hours as you are dreaming 'fiesta-ing' in the Nirvana land or when you are about to score a goal in the injury time against your bitter rival. We have witnessed many times - the drivers would just honked if other vehicles were blocking their paths. Most households own a few cars but the problem is that the garage is only designed to accommodate 1 car! So Malaysians are very creative in parking their vehicles. Of course, they need some tools in order to maintain civil order i.e. business card and mobile phone! Yeah, no joke, parking disputes did claim few lives in the past few years!

Suggest a more holistic ways to reduce expenses. Perhaps for a start, cut down on business travels and 'entertainment'. Lastly, stop the kickbacks and bribes!

pic - a better way to collect the waste? No petrol ma!