Wednesday, December 3, 2014

10 Fresh Grad Mindset You Need to Have

If you had completed your course some time ago, you probably thinking of your career path. Or if you are a fresh grad currently working in a company, you found that many things are missing and different, so different that you felt lost sometimes. Fear not, here are 10 mindset that you need to have in order to make yourself more capable and much motivated as you go through your fresh grad period and advancing into a higher position.

1. Don't care about Salary

I'm serious. The more you think about salary, the more you comparing if you deserve your current paid and that's eventually lead to dissatisfaction. Because as a fresh grad, you usually feel that you need to do a lot more work, so busy that you think that you are under-paid. But the truth is, every thing is tough in the beginning so as you proceed, you became more experience and tend to do things better later on.
So stop comparing salary of different position in many companies. More importantly, you need to remember that company that offer higher pay usually make you do more work.

2. Put Effort in Time Management

It's best if you know how to use time management skill to set up your work priority and managing all your work load, but that's usually required some experience and knowledge to do that. In this stage, one important thing you always need to practice is to get to work on time and attend any meeting or discussion on time. Failing to do so not only make people think that you are lacking of self discipline, you are also demonstrating how much you used to get late for class during college/university time.

3. Work Harder and Learn to Work Smarter

Everything is difficult in the beginning, so you tend to feel that there is no end for your workload. But remember this: no matter how much your workload is, there is a way to manage your work so that you can finish part of the work that ensure your working progress is on the right track.
You don't need to finish everything in one go or by one day, unless your company force you to (then you probably need to beware of company that bully fresh grad). You just need to learn to plan for all the works that you need to complete for next few days and execute your plan. So the main key is to work harder to complete your planned work, and your planned work is depending how well you had plan for it.

4. Accept Good Scolding

Scolding is very common, no matter how high your position is. But there are differences between good scolding and bad scolding, which also means meaningful scold and pointless scolding. Bad scolding are scolds that meant to hurt a person pride and feeling, and in the end of the day you don't learn anything but feeling hurt. Good scolding are words that still make you hurt a little but if you learn to accept the kind words behind it, you definitely learn better in avoiding mistakes and create better work result.
When you are able to differentiate good and bad scolding, and accept the good one, you need to learn on the next one.

5. Manage Your Ego

No one like to get scolded or being command to do things, but that's really common for employees as well as fresh grad. You tend to work under more seniors and managers, that's when you get more chance to get command around or scolded by different level and different type of person. Despite that, you need to learn that while there are people who get mad easily and tend to scold as in spreading their negative energy to you, there are also people who scold because they want you to learn that this is an important matter that you must bear really hard in your mind.
I won't suggest that scolding is a good way to make people learn or remember something. Just that you need to know that usually people scolding is not all about you, but more focusing on the work. So you shouldn't put too much personal feeling when such event happen.

6. Think & Create Your own Solution

Don't expect spoon feeding even if your company used to such practice. You see, there are many loopholes in a company operation, despite how many years they had operated. People usually don't notice, or they don't have the time to notice because they focus more on work to create the expected results. So when people ask you to do something, don't just do it and think that follow is the best practice.
Try to think why there is a need to do it this way, and try to brain storm if there is any other way, then seek advice and discuss with others. Just avoid sounds like you are doubting if they know what they are doing and avoid asking too much like an innocent child who are new to this world.

7. Identify a Role Model

It's the same as an idol, you wish you could be like them in terms of appearance, capability, charm and skill. Having an idol in work place give you a measurable target to know what type of person you want to become. It can be your boss, supervisor, colleague, friend, or any co-worker you known.
Follow the traits of a good role model, and some times when you are in certain tough position, you might be able to guide yourself by thinking what would that person do if he or she is in your position, and you eventually feel like you want to become better, just like him or her.

8. Setup a Long Term Career Path Planning

There is still a long way to go, so you need something to guide you and make sure you know where you are standing now and on the next few years. A long term career path planning able to tell you what you are going to become next year (Example, able to perform certain tasks at top speed with guarantee quality), and who you are in the next 20 years.
Work life is a long journey, especially if you are still a fresh grad. It's important to visualize a solid path for yourself so that you won't easily get into confusion at certain point of your life feeling lost and unsure what are you doing and what type of future you going to achieve.

9. Keep Learning New Things

If you just became a fresh grad, you need to find ways to make your resume looks really nice and fill in all your available skill sets. Not only that you get higher chance of being hired, an employee with multiple field of knowledge also give the impression that you are a good learner and interesting in many things, instead of only focusing on your own preferred field.
If you are working in a company, don't stop learning too because you can't tell your company that you are in the same level one year later. Identify beneficial knowledge and information from your work place, learn them and in the future, you will be able to tell what you had learn now which can be special and your own selling point later.

10. Aim to Become Professional in Your Role

No matter how low your position is, you can always set a higher target to make your role so great that people think differently about you, rather than think of you just like an ordinary employee. If you achieve higher performance and greater productivity in your work, not only that people can see that you are much capable and willing to put effort in making something ordinary to become something special, they will eventually think that you are more suitable for higher position.
Recall any street hawker that sells ordinary food but attracted so much people to visit them because of their unique taste? If you put extra effort and aim to be a pro in what you are currently doing, not only that people would see that you are a special one, you will enjoy more on what you are doing and who you are later.

Thursday, November 27, 2014

Work Life that Demotivate Employee

For many office worker out there, working is a process that kill your time, health, interest, and most importantly, your life. There are people who are capable to seek interest in their own job and find ways to enjoy their work. This is something depending on individual but more importantly, it also depends if the work place provide the opportunity for them to do so.

While many employers wanted to identify the reason why employees sometimes feeling demotivated, here are some of the common reasons that employees felt demotivated in the workplace.

1. No guidance or interest to motivate employees

This is something that I can’t find it in Malaysia. In fact, many people found it funny to motivate the employee. And yeah, all they assume is that employee should be self motivating but the truth is, people here don’t really do that so employee often stay in the company until they used up their interest and passion, then look for another company.

2. Massive Workloads

High workload is normal, but doesn’t mean that it’s okay to keep pushing employees to work non-stop and stay late to finish everything. Work tasks that can’t be finished is usually a sign that the company has problem with managing work tasks, but the employee is the one to take the pressure and impact.

3. Position power is heavily practiced

Understanding that you are a superior, doesn’t mean people are okay to accept your command, judgment, and scolding. No one like to work under an environment where they have to be afraid and concern of their superior judgment and thinking all the time, especially when the superior think that he or she has the absolute rights to talk and behave whatever he or she want.

4. No one care if you are tired or hungry

Most of the time they care about the progress of your work and results. You don’t really find people who ask you to go for lunch and then only continue working, or asking if you had your lunch. Some bosses don’t even care if it’s lunch time, you will be asked to finish the work before they let you go.

5. You are asked to work when you are on leave

How frustrating it is to be asked to work out there when you are in the mood to relax and tend to put all work matter aside? No need to further describe I suppose, but it’s nothing surprising to find bosses doesn’t really care if their employees are on leave when comes to work.

6. Your work plan are so full for six month that it’s difficult to apply for leave

When you wanted to ask when is it alright for you to take leave, they would tell you all your work schedule from now until six months later. I’m not surprise that many companies out there wish to implement “zero leave” system so that their employees can stay in the office keep working like robot. But the thing is, we are not robot, and even machine need down time to rest. There is no way employees can find any enjoyment in working without rest and vacation.

7. You are given a task on Friday, and they want to see the result on Monday

That’s literally means: “I want you to work over the weekend to finish this”. This is nothing uncommon for some problematic company with Monday to Friday working hours. It’s frustrating as this is not even considered OT.

8. Your superior keep nagging rather than listening

It’s still really common to find people of higher position to nag all the time rather than listening to what people trying to say. This is extremely effective to make employee think that their opinion is not important and they should just follow whatever superior said like a puppet.

9. Praises and rewards are rare and minimal

People always think that salary is the only reward for employee. It’s not that people are greedy so they never think that money is enough, but people wish to earn things with better value instead of spending all their life and effort only for money.

10. Frequent last minute work before or during end of working hour

Imagine it’s finally 4.55 pm and it’s just 5 minutes away to step out from the office to rest & relax, and then your boss come to you and ask you to finish some urgent work before going back. And this is nothing uncommon as it keep going on many times. When employees can’t even feel relaxing around the end of working hour, the last thing they feel and think before they leave the office is the uneasy feeling that make them feel unmotivated to step into the office on the next day.

Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Surviving Chinaman Company

Okay, you probably know or not sure what is the term Chinaman referring to. Rather than defining what is a Chinaman company in definition or statement method, the list below is the practice of a common Chinaman company.
  • You are paid with minimal salary compare to market price
  • Your company expect you to work all the time and whenever possible, including at night, lunch time, weekend, and holiday, regardless of your official working time. Best of all, no OT claim for that.
  • Your company has high turn over rate. Constantly recruiting people and people usually don't stay too long
  • It's quite difficult to advance into higher position because the senior will remain for a long time
  • Always stressful and getting angry is normal.
  • Usually the higher position people is the family member or releative of the boss
  • Applying for leave is harder than rushing project with a deadline. You might feel its really hard to ask for a leave.
  • Start work exactly on your actual starting work hour and get off exactly on your actual finishing work hour give a huge bad impression to your boss
  • You will be asked to settle all sort of work that has no relation in the company or your job scope, it's just related to the boss personal thing
  • If you got late 1 or 2 minutes, that's bad employee that has no self discipline and lack of responsibility; if you work extra hours after working hour won't be consider hardworking & good employee
  • They are very strict on the company benefits and usually very stingy in every possible situation
  • You eventually be asked to do work from higher position but your job title remain the same, as well as your salary
  • Your job scope eventually involve the work task of many departments, and then to all departments
  • High office politics and you felt like you are fighting in war sometimes, with the people in your company
  • Standard performance appraisal might be used but in the end, it's all goes back to your boss and manager sense of judgement

A so-call chinaman company might no cover all the traits above. No doubt any company out there might intentionally or unintentionally practice on any of the bad practice listed above, but if a company got more than half of the traits above, it's definitely a chinaman company, even if the boss is not from China or is a Chinese. The term is referring more to the mindset rather than practice anyway.

I have seen many good example of people working under chinaman company, also heard lots of complain, dissatisfaction, and grudge according to their experience and what they see & face daily. In the end, it's all comes up to one thing: They are getting really unhappy about their work, and it's directly making their personal life tough because they are not happy at all. Furthermore, what they earn in the end is minimal. Many people work for money, but if you can get find a better company, you can earn more money when the company is not so stingy and you might get more extra benefits.

Understanding this, a lot of people that I know only stay a short while with the chinaman company and they definitely won't consider any good memory when leaving the company. But still, many people choose to continue staying with the chinaman company despite how much complain and dissatisfaction they had. The common reasons I heard are these:
  • It's not easy to get another job in this field (Usually apply to business-related job)
  • It would be ugly/ashamed for unable to work too long in one company
  • I'm a fresh graduate, so I should not make any complaint and do what other people ask me to do
  • Work should be just like this, it's all about things that we dislike
  • It's my destiny since I chosen this company
Although I'm strongly disagree on all the given reasons above (especially the last one), and I consider the common reasons that I heard to continue staying in a chinaman company is not considerable and reasonable at all, i would not say that the reasons are not true at all.

No matter what you reason to continue staying in a chinaman company is, one thing you need to notice is that many people will continue stay in chinaman company. After looking at the bad part of chinaman company, we will have to look at the bright side as well. Those who work under the chinaman company will usually go through these type of unseen benefits:
  1. You are knowledgeable in many different things and capable of doing wide range of work task
  2. Your stress tolerance are higher than ordinary level
  3. You are more willing to involve yourself to work
  4. You feel more confident because you constantly dealing with challenges
  5. You feel that you have higher value for working under such difficult environment
  6. You develop better skill to handle work task from higher position
  7. You are more used to office politics and know how to protect your own rights & benefits
  8. You may find future jobs a lot easier
Learning the benefits does not tell you that working under a chinaman company is a good idea, of course. In the end of the day, it's your choice to stick with them or not. If we consider deeper, keep on changing to another company and hope that it won't be another chinaman company, and then change again when you found out that IT IS a chinaman company won't get you anywhere too. Rather that, we want to look into the actual practice and things to do when we work, or specifically, "survive" in the chinaman company.

Cautious: Surviving Guideline Start Here....

Don't expect any relaxing or fun moment, seriously. Chinaman company environment is all about rushing work, rushing work, more work, more stress, more bad things and bad things. Working there won't give you much joy and good memory BUT, despite how much you want to hate your job and how much everyone people hate the job there, they are still human being that want to enjoy their life and prefer a good working experience rather than the opposite. Therefore, it's crucial to meet people who are fun to work with and able to chat along.

All time working can be really frustrated and you probably won't have much time to chat even if you get to know good people (except when boss is not around). But hey, life is not all about work, you still need to learn to be happy despite working in an environment that don't really expect you to enjoy working here. So getting to know people who can add some nice moment into your daily working moment can add more joy to you, no matter how busy or difficult your work can be.

But becareful, due to the high possibility of political practice, you need to know who is alright to joke with, who couldn't keep things as secret, and the spy that might be hidden among the first line. Being careful with people is essential, just that you need to learn to meet people and bring joy moment into your working life as well as others working life, but at the same time learn to say what you can say and what you can't. So, trust people with a limit.

When you meet people who can share secret and worries, go ahead and treat them as a friend, you don’t need to be cautious of everyone and keep everything in yourself. In another way round, if you found out there are people who talk bad about you and can’t be trusted, beware of that person but you don’t need to talk bad or wish that he/she will have bad days.

Not to forget to take really good care of yourself because your working time is over, too over, and over-abused. Your boss might make you stay knowing that it's lunch time and after office hour, unless they are also very hungry or they are rushing home.

No matter what sort of reasons they want you to stay and do the work, don't try your best finish up everything then only go for your meal. Food is the essential need for us. We can be starved once in awhile, but you are torturing your stomach and exposing to disease and illness that could be incurable when you practice this often (This is no joke because it happen too many time but usually work won’t get blame, the person will).

Trying to finish up the work before going for your meal is totally bad idea. No matter how you finish up, you are finishing up a portion of the work, but more of them are on the way. You see, the company is considered a chinaman company for a reason.

You can't really finish up the work. Things got worse when you suddenly asked to do urgent work before you manage to complete your desire portion. So go and take some food as soon as you have the time. Or, practice a good habit of filling up your desk with dry food like bread and biscuit, whenever you have space for it. Usually you will be super busy so don't worry about the food causing you unable to concentrate on work.

Other than taking good care of your physical health, which is taking food and water whenever you need it, and take plenty of rest when you have the right time and space, taking care of your mental health can be a great challenge and it won't be easy.

As stated above and as experienced by yourself, your working environment can be extremely stressful and it's not only you, the stress and pressure is pass around all over the place and can hit anyone easily. That's when you not only need to deal with your work load stress, you also need to deal with the black face and frustrating people as if you are the one that offending them.

Well, I wouldn't agree that showing your frustration and negative emotion to others when you are under stress and feeling pressured is fine, because other people are innocent even if they are not behaving in the right way, and personal feeling absolutely won't make your work easier.

Not to mention it's a lot easier to bring up argument that involve more personal feeling instead of trying to settle work issues. In the end of the day, such event causing the work harder to be done when the involving individuals had hard feeling towards each other, and they feel really unhappy when they meet the same person, or maybe deal with him/her again.

This is why, training yourself to put aside personal feeling is a great challenge but it’s really beneficial to you when you are able to put your personal feeling aside and focus on how to seek solution based on actual work problem, you tend to solve more issues and at a certain point, you can learn to look through many unnecessary feeling that only exist to make your days and work life bad.

Understanding that putting personal feeling in the work is a big bad idea, we still need to know that sometimes it’s unavoidable because we are human. We can’t live with dull feeling and doesn’t care anything at all. So I would say putting personal feeling to a certain extend is fine. However, it’s still important that we learn to take care of our feeling and mental health, instead of repeat practicing putting it aside.

If we keep on putting feeling aside, we doesn’t really put it down but accumulating in us, and risk exploding our emotion sooner or later. So training yourself to get away with work is essential, especially if you find it hard to stay away from work when you are tied with too much of tasks.

Taking leave is one of the challenges because as mentioned earlier, you might experience trying to ask for a leave but got rejected in an unreasonable manner, or the management just refuses to approve your leave without a solid reason. You need to bear in mind one thing: Massive amount of work is not a solid reason to unapproved your leave.

If you work as a management level, you might disagree on this because you need to ensure that the work and tasks are done on time and everything is aligned with the timeline. Unfortunately, human are not robot and they are not exist to rush work.

I have a friend who confront his boss and remind the boss of all the hard and tough work he had gone through for many many months and got his leave rejected many times. In the end, the boss allows him to have one day leave, only. When we keep on going, your boss, manager or supervisor probably forgotten that you have the right to take leave. This is why it is important to educate them that you need to take leave and you have the rights for that.

You might concern that if you take leave often, or you want to take leave when you know that they don’t really like it, you can get a bad impression or marked as bad performance employee but seriously, why the hell you want to care about such inaccurate performance measurement that doesn’t follow any standard but just mere feeling? Remember this, no matter how unhappy your management people could be, the problem lies within themselves and they need to learn that you are practicing your rights and responsibility.

Plan and ask for leave, request the solid reason if they reject you, ask them to provide you the right date to take your leave, and get your leave form approved. Don’t believe in verbalize leave because your management people will easily forget it or change their mind later by delaying your leave, and you got trapped into the same cycle again.

Due to the extreme challenges and workload that you need to handle every day, working life will become something that totally consume all your life as long as you keep on working and working. When you are too into it, you might found out that sometimes when you are alone and you got nobody to talk to, you just think about work. That’s a sign that you are putting your own life into it and you definitely don’t happy about it.

At such time, you need to identify one crucial thing that you probably forgotten for a long time: your personal life. No matter how much we want to spend time for other stuff, we are still human being that wish that the best and important belongs to our life. But the things is valueable things don’t come to us, we are to make effort to achieve them.

Chinaman company don’t really cater for the value of your personal life and from the surface, they doesn’t really care how happy you are as an individual. So as an adult, you are suppose to care for how great you feel on a daily basis and how to make your life more enjoyable, rather than submitting yourself to all the stress and workload that make your life terrible.

From now on, stop telling yourself that finishing work is the main priority and that’s the main goal to make you a good employee. Work smart while enjoying life is the trend that define a positive and efficient employee. Working in a chinaman company can make life really tough to enjoy but remember, working in a tough environment definitely make you stronger as long as you learn the right thing and train yourself to know what is the right behavior and mindset, instead of letting chinaman company complete ruin yourself.

Tuesday, October 21, 2014

First experience dialing 999 for emergency

Case Date: 28th September 2014
Today when I was around Kuen Ching high school walking to Tun Sambathan monorail to head to Timesquare, I was about to reach the bridge where it connect to brickfields and monorail station, one malay aunty walked down from the bridge looking worried and tell me: "Boy, ada satu lelaki baring atas jambatan macam sudah mati o... Nampak macam kena pukul tetapi dompet dia masich ada... banyak darah kat badan dia..". Then I said I will go and take a look, as she seems rushing back or too afraid to do something. It's also understandable that the people here prefer not to involve them self in such business. Especially after so many cases of fake injuries to rob and harming people.

When I walk up the stairs and reaching the top of it, immediately i see one man lying on the floor near the staircase. Both of his eyes wide open and lying there, emotionless, without any sign of breathing and no movement at all. Then i thought to myself: "This time kao lik holy liao.... a living salty fish in front of me....". Before I finish thinking that line, his eyes suddenly roll to my direction and look at me. At first I felt like a creepy dead eyes staring at me but soon after that I know he is still alive.

I didn't see any fatal wound on him at first glance. Just abit of bruise here and there. Probably got hit by something or fall down. I found a wallet beside him, not sure if its belong to him or what. Quite a lot of bloodstain around him. Most of the bloodstain are dried so it seems he was there for quite some time.

I ask him what happen and is he okay or not but it seems he is not listening to me. At first he try to get up, so I lend him a hand. Then he stand there like not sure where he want to go. Then i notice there are bloods coming from his foot. Base on his injury, I think i should call the police. Since he is not answering me anything and I can't be with him for few hours. So I took out my phone from my pocket and before I manage to turn on my phone, he suddenly lost his balance and bang on the floor. I failed to hold him because I was trying to use my phone. Then, he still try to get up after that and seems the bang on the floor is nothing to me. I try to ask him to lie down and don't move but he still not listening. He try to grab on anything he could to maintain his balance and stand up. He even grab my hand very tight and his nail left a scratch on my skin. I was afraid that he going to attack me or some sort.... Luckily he didn't.

I don't think I have other choice but to call for help. So i go to the monorail station and look for police bantuan since I saw few of them there sometimes. When I reach the station, there is no police there. So i inform the worker that I found one injured man and I need police to help on this. Then the worker call the police bantuan. Apparently the polis is not in the station but somewhere around the area. Later, the worker tell me that the police bantuan is in charge of the monorail area, they don't have power to do anything. I was like.... okay lo.... I was expecting that the polis can at least call for help even if he don't have the power at places other than the station. Then i return back to the place and make a call to 999 and immediately got respond within seconds (Who says calling 999 no one pick up eh?). I explain the situation and request for ambulance for that man.

After some time, I was still standing at the bridge near to the man to observe him. The monorail worker bring a police bantuan over to the place and check on that man. That man still repeating the same behavior: get up. try to stand still then bang. At first when the polis bantuan arrive on that spot, he look around the scene and I was telling him not sure what's happening to that man. Then the polis bantuan told me he got attack on his forehead by wine bottle because there are a few wine bottles around the stair, and his leg got injured and bleed because of some glass bottle pieces on several spot of the floor. I gotta say that's really impressive because I never notice that after standing there so long.

I was asked by the dont-know-who-and-which hospital people to wait for the ambulance at the monorail station since it's easy for vehicle to reach there. So I wait there for like 15 minutes........................ lol. Then the ambulance came and do their stuff. The police bantuan also call for other police to help before that. While I was waiting for the ambulance, the polis bantuan was there watching that man. He told me that the man repeat standing up and falling down for 4 times. That's kinda make me wondering, why the polis don't do something about it?

The paramedic (not sure if this is the right word, referring to the people from the ambulance with medical equipment) try to talk to that man but he received the same response. The paramedic ask me to talk mandarin with the man so I did, but still result in same thing. The polis and paramedic discuss about something in which I'm not sure what they are discussing about as I'm not good with the typical malays conversation, I just heard something like chit-chating and joking before the other paramedic from the ambulance bring over the some-kind-of-bed-for-injured-person. It wasn't too difficult to put that man on that thing because he was lying on the floor that time.

So the police bantuan and the paramedic tied the hand and leg of that man on that something like a bed with bandage to stop him from moving and trying to get up and bring him over to the ambulance. That man didn't struggle when he was being tied but he lift up his head and like wandering what's happening. Then, i thanked the people around there and case closed.

One thing I learn today: You don't play prank call with 999, they can tell you your full name without you mentioning any details of yourself.

Saturday, October 18, 2014

Unhealty Food & Beverage Strategy in Malaysia

I am a frequent outside-food consumer due to work and other social activities that I need to perform outside, so I rarely have the chance to cook or taste mum's cooking, and I had lots of thoughts and opinion on the outside-food that I experience. But let's not talk about how much MSG or any unhealthy method that the food maker practice, you can read tons of them with Google search.

I call myself some kind of health conscious person. However, I don't avoid fried or oily food, or any form of unhealthy food that I know at all cost. I do consume them but I always limit how long I should stop taking fried food after I had it once, and I consume a drinks that has maximum 30grams of sugar per day. For my usual practice, I usually think about how much protein and fats are contained in the food before I order them. But I won't go to the extend to check how much grams of protein or fats in this steam chicken, vege, favor rice.... then sums up the amount of the protein, carb, fats, and calories I had consumed. I just study a little on information related to healthy eating and the type of balance meal we should consume in a daily basis to ensure our body can have sufficient energy source not only to perform our daily work and activities, but also to ensure we can maintain a healthy body as we ages instead of the other way round.

Obviously, the reason why I created this post is because I realize to achieve a healthy & balanced meal in the outside food environment is a huge challenge for consumer. If you are an outside-food consumer who wish to look for good food that consists of good quality and worth, I believe you are very familiar with the experiences below.

The ingredients are there but the portion.....

"Image/picture is for illustration purpose only". I don't recall seeing this text printed on the menu in most restaurants and cafe, but this is the first thing I had in mind when the actual food presented on the table in front of me. Follow by a great disappointment that the image/picture is too much differences in reality. Although I am, just like you, used to it as it happen at least two times a day for casual outside-food consumer.

It's not only the matter of size where the image/picture shows that the meat stick is suppose to same length with the plate but the actual food turns out that the meat stick is as long as a thumb drive, it's also really common to order a chicken ball noodle that has half a bowl of chicken balls in the the bowl and it turns out only two chicken balls are given to you; A salmon butter teppanyaki that turns out only consists of one 0.5cm height salmon slice with no butter taste, and much more. Believe me, the meat stick as short as thumb drive, two chicken balls, and 0.5cm salmon slice with no butter taste is my true personal experience.

The problem? We are indirectly cheated with the illustration that given to us before we see the actual portion. Especially in the case where we order salmon butter bento where the salmon is the main dishes in this meal, yet it's only 0.5cm with some rice and tiny little side dishes, and it cost around RM15.90. If you order chicken rice out there with RM15.90, you can at least confirm that you are full and chicken give you tons of protein, while tiny slice of salmon don't give you much omega 3 and fish oil. So in the end, if you measure by both cost and worthiness (feeling full or not), it's not worth

Healthier Meal = Higher Cost

When I started my budgeting plan to reduce unnecessary spending in my daily life, I also tried to plan for a list of food I should consume for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks in a daily basis. All the food in my list not only need to be less expensive, but also need to be healthy or at least not-so unhealthy. And I spent tons of effort and time from that time until now, which a few months had pass but I still failed to come out with an expected list. Because eating healthy and cheap food is really challenging here in KL.

Say, if I ask you to recommend me a place to get cheap and healthy sandwich. What's your best reckon? I know sandwiches are available in too much of places such as 7-11, Jusco, bakery shops, and even restaurants. But if we talk about healthy, the sandwiches that you can find contain of two tiny slice of bread, and some tuna or egg in the middle. The cheapest I could find is RM2.00. Let's save the calculation part. How worthy it is for two slice of bread with little content in the middle where we can always pay a few ringgits more to get all the relevant ingredients to produce more than three sandwiches with more stuff in it? Not to mention the tuna or egg can only be seen when you look at the middle part of the bread but not the other side. And it's even cheap and can be considered couldn't get any nutrition at all. I can get a mixed rice by adding two ringgits.

Of course, it's nonsense if anyone here expecting to eat really great food as in healthy and tasty yet really cheap, especially for those restaurant, cafe, and any food stall in the shopping mall and having their own shop. They need to pay rent and spend for supplier, maintenance..... to cut things short, they are setting their price in a way where they could afford to continue their business while earn a little more for their own life. But I still need to emphasize that, despite understanding their difficulty of expenses on all those expected and unexpected stuff to ensure their business could continue, me as a consumer just find it not reasonable and sometimes ridiculous that if I want to eat healthy meal, I have to go to expensive restaurant such as vegetarian shops (which are way more expensive that non-vegetarian shop), Subways, Simple Life, Beyond Veggie and other businesses that promote food for various health benefits. It's really difficult for people with average income to take "healthy" meal here once in a week. What's more, our primary school text book strongly emphasize that we have to take healthy meal everyday.

Furthermore, the so-call healthy meal we can find out there, what so healthy about them? I'm a usual customer for Subways especially breakfast. White bread or any other bread with various nutrition for your selection, choose your lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber, onion, pepper, pickles, olives, and then the sauce. It's true that the bread and veggie provide lots of nutrition, but adding the sauce increase your sugar intake and other stuff in the sauce. It's true that you able to consume various nutrition with such meal, but if measure each ingredient by grams and calculate how much protein and carb you can get, the figure is really small and it's definitely don't worth RM10++. Of course, the problem don't exists only in Subways, if you have few dine in experience in other restaurant that promote healthy life and meal, you can find many things that actually contradict with their initial idea. In the end, cost is still a major issue.

Too much of unwanted ingredients

This issue is quite different from what's mentioned above because I consider this one quite serious as it directly related to how much our body receive the adequate nutrition and benefits to support our body system. I believe there is no problem to find a restaurant or cafe that can easily make you full in an instant. No matter how big or small the portion is. If you take closer look and taste on the food that you eat, it's always full of taste but it's not the real taste of the food. It's the taste of something else that add much more taste into the food.

We all love tasty food. The tastier, the better. But natural food can't be tasty, so adding lots of spice, soy sauce, salt, sugar and etc is a convenient and standard way to make food more tasty. But all these are also well known for causing diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, heart attack, and all those common thing we will face as we ages. It's safe to consume very little of it in a daily basis, but the amounts of those food being added into the food out there are too much.

Not only that the overdosed of unhealthy ingredients produce certain damage to our body system, the usage of butter and other less well-known spices also used to make us feel like we had enough of our meal, not because we are really full but because the spices are reducing our appetite to continue eating. That's why we easily get hungry a few hours later. In the long run, we are not consuming sufficient food for our body, and we are consuming more on the spices, butter, and oil that give more bads and goods.

As usual, I do not have any statistic of how much unwanted ingredient and spices are included in outside food, but I believe you have many chances to taste it.

Wednesday, October 15, 2014

The Typical Breed of Malaysia Public Transport Passenger

Taking on the Rapid Bus, Monorail, Starline, Putra LRT, and especially KTM, can be an extremely dynamic experience that save us from the need of riding roller coaster in the theme park. Personally, KTM is my favorite. No matter how many years have passed, KTM is still remain the same thing for me, which is known as Kenderaan Terlambat Malaysia (Malaysia's Slowest Vehicle). Even after their upgrade...... Oh wait, I'm not here to talk about the quality of services and the way their manage the schedule and so on. My bad......

I'm a common passenger of public transport. Public transport in Malaysia is consider good in the sense that you can reach all type of places and you can depend on public transports to go from north to south, then to the west and east, and make another huge turn to repeat the same thing, and in the end you had travel to so many places. Traveling to many places are good, and the best part is you also meet different type of passenger. The more you have experience being a passenger of different type of public transports, the more you see how dynamic it is as all ugly behavior are being practiced in a daily manner.

You probably encountered them already, or being one of them yourself. Either way, we don't want to consider the passengers below to be a good role model for the next generation to follow.

1. The Pole-Leaner

There exist a certain type of beings that immediately look for a metal pole and "attach" on it with his/her back when they get into the train. It's not a big deal to them if someone or many people need to grab or hold on the pole. No matter how crowded the train is, this being will stick to the pole closely for the entire journey and only "detach" from the pole when they need to get out of the train or, finally some empty seats are available. But that's only provided they desire to sit on the first place.

2. The Side-Queue

At the two appropriate queue line, it's common to appear another side queue all of a sudden. The (initially) correct double queue line then result into three to six queue line in an instant. If you have not meet this type of queue, it's either you are too new in Malaysia, or you are one of them.

3. The Side-Queue Supporter

How do you call those people that stand behind those who take the first action at the front line? Same concept.

4. The Early-Bird

This type practice the mindset of those who take the first action win. But for this one, it apply to people who are suppose to wait and let the people out from the train before dashing in. Look closely, you definitely find the people outside the bus/train to take the first step into the vehicle when the door just open. A crowded train or not is not an issue here. It just happen.

5. The Door-Admirer

What they always do right after they pass through the door and get into the bus/train, they are in complete standstill. I always think this to myself: "There is no crowded bus/train in Malaysia. There are only people who are not willing to move away from the door". It's too common for me to have too much space while looking at the bunch of door-admirer sticking with each other around their idol. One disaster is when the Early-Bird turn into a Door-Admirer.

6. The Unofficial-Pusher

This is suppose to be the practice in Japan and China only. But these type suddenly occur, usually without any true knowledge and not hired by any official group, use the unprofessional pusher method to make sure people in the front will be forced into the vehicle at all cost. Any injury? No insurance claims for that.

7. The Virus-Broadcaster

It's always common to get ill and unable to control your cough and flu, yet you got no choice but to take the public transport. It's just different when these kind practice an uncovering method to spread their cough and flu virus freely in the public transport closed area with extra loud announcement with free atomic rewards to everyone.

8. The Absolute-Defense

An "Excuse Me" do zero damage to their defense. They notice the tiny obstacle trying to break through but they are just in their usual post and behavior: Defend their position no matter what or who trying to get through.

9. The Heavy-Blocker

A suit case or a huge plastic bag consists of unknown stuff is the common blocker. It's just there regardless of the discussion of a much suitable place for these stuff to be placed so that other passengers find it easier to get in and get out. A Heavy-Blocker turning into an Absolute-Defense and/or Door-Admirer is another disaster.

10. The Fast-Seats-Filler

Seats became available when the vehicle reach a certain destination. When the people trying to get out from the vehicle by walking straight to the door, there exist one or a few kind walk past the door to block those who are getting out or going in for the main goal of filling the empty seats as soon as possible.

11. The Anything-Seats-Filler

Destined to be twin with the Fast-Seat-Filler, they put whatever stuff they have on the empty seats to proclaim that their stuff are contain of high value. Even if it's just a small plastic bag of pisang goreng.

12. The Make-Myself-At-Home

"No matter what position is this, be relax~~" is the usual practice. No matter how crowded it is, there are still spaces for them stand like Michael Jackson's Moonwalk post while playing with their smart phone; Or stand and shake with their body in any way they desire even if it means causing more discomfort for those who are feeling really packed. Oh and, don't be surprise to see someone or group of people playing invisible guitar, drum, or any type of instruments.

Life is Dynamic in Malaysia

Let's face this: No matter how great people think about the country you are living in, you feel that it's just normal. It's different case if you gone to a bloody hell country and back to a normal one, of course.

As Malaysian, life is just normal. No matter how people spent each of their day in this country, they just think of how their life had been going through all the time. They don't think much about how their life is going through in Malaysia. That's just an assumption anyway. But if you are a Malaysian, I bet you always get to the point where you don't think of your life in Malaysia, you just think about your life. Unless you are in the daily bloody start-work or off-work jam and you go on with the usual cursing of why Malaysia gov never put effort into reducing the jam but increasing it.

For any of you who are wondering, I gotta make clear that politics issues are, usually, won't be covered here. Kitty is not a political guy. He don't look into the current or previous politics stuff and involve himself into some group of people complaint about the gov or any party and what should be done, what is the right thing.... but result in no action. That's just doesn't change anything. Rather, in our social life, there are at least things that we can change and make things better. Although the issue where the Malays are always given the top priority and power, and the inappropriate behavior such as double park, cutting queue at all the places are here and it will always be here so that this country will remain as Malaysia, life can be dynamic here and it's not as usual or normal as we thought.

At last, think at the positive side more often, the negative side will always be there but you don't need to think of it, it will come to you. So don't bother doing something that will eventually happen by itself. Try to live a dynamic life in Malaysia. There is not specific definition of the terms "dynamic". It can involve all sort of happiness, sadness, anger, depress, hope, sweet, bitter, pain, oil-price increment, KTM delays, traffic jam, extremely-high-and-ridiculous taxi fee... Well, just the way it is.
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