Let’s go super buy things (as Penangites like to call it) :P

In today’s retail landscape, we can see many new retail establishments being categorized as hypermarket, superstore or supermarket. The categorization is mainly done based on the retail floor space that a particular store offers.

Then come an interesting question, for an item purchased in the same retailer, let’s say Giant, will the price be the same in their hypermarket, superstore and supermarket?

The answer is no. All the stores of a retailer are often grouped into different banner. The grouping could be geographical, competition (example Giant outlets neighbouring Tesco or Carrefour stores) or the store’s categorization (hyper, xstore or super).
The grouping would enable to merchandising team to come up with their pricing strategies. Generally, supermarket will have premium pricing because the main selling point is convenience and not cheap goods.

Unwarranted Efficiency

I’ve been using HSBC mastercard for more than 3 years now. I’ve been a good customer, with perfect payment history and I’ve never failed in remitting my payment before the cut-off date until this month.

I missed the payment, mainly due to the fact that I was out of town for the CNY holiday.

I’ve just received a call from HSBC staff :

HSBC : “Hello Mr.Bryan… Ini Mr.Bryan ke??”

Me : “Yes, speaking”

HSBC : “Oh Mr.Bryan, saya telefon dari HSBC credit dept.”

Me : “Yes, anything?”

HSBC : “Ya Mr.Bryan, you ada outstanding bill untuk mastercard anda”

*still talking in malay although I’ve been replying him in english, the World’s Local Bank! Localised indeed as far as the language goes*

Me : “Ya, saya tahu, saya outstation jadi belum ada masa lagi untuk pergi bank”
HSBC : “Oh ya ke, Mr.Bryan sudah tahu. Boleh Mr.Bryan jelaskan bill sebelum minggu ini?”
Me : “Yes, boleh boleh.”
HSBC : “Ok Mr.Bryan, saya akan tuliskan satu note dekat system, jadi you akan bayar sebelum akhir minggu ini… terima kasih.”

Wow, all the effort from the bank to remind me of the outstanding payment. I really admire their determination in doing this, but some how I felt a bit insulted in the process…

My outstanding bill – RM79.85

Taxi… hello Taxi?? – Part One

I’ve never really taken taxi in Malaysia and after my most recent experience with them, I will pretty much avoid them in the future.

On the third day of the Lunar New Year, I was travelling back to KL from Penang. I’ve reached the Jln. Duta bus station and wanted to continue my journey to either KL Sentral or Puduraya. To my surprise, there’s no longer any feeder bus servicing the Duta station to other locations and due to its “unique” location in the city, we’re pretty much sitting ducks to the preying taxis lining up the station.

To side track a bit, the authorities tried hard to alleviated the traffic congestion in Puduraya by relocating the northern bus services to the Duta station, however they’ve only brought the buses here, without the connecting public transport infrasturucture. Trying to get to Duta station pretty much cost me as much as a bus ticket to Penang. Standard half-boiled implementation and short-sightedness of our local authorities.

Anyway, I was greeted with the usual “pick-up” line from the taxi drivers –

Driver : “Bang, mau pegi mana?”
Me : “KL Sentral, berapa?”
Driver : “ RM 12”
Me : “Oii, mahalnya..”
*Silence followed for 5 seconds*
Driver : “Ok ok…. kita pakai meter”

Without any other alternatives, I hesitantly agreed and hopped on the taxi. Few minutes later, we’ve reached KL Sentral with the fare meter showing RM5.40. I was laughing to myself, there you go… RM5.40 only. Who knows……

Driver : “RM7.40..”
Me : “Huh?? Meter tunjuk RM5.40 sahaja?”
Driver : “Naik dari Duta ada RM2 surcharge.”
Me: “Tadi tak ada cakap pun”
Driver : “Ini standard la, u tak tau ke?”

Exhausted from my travelling, I just don’t feel like arguing with him and paid the RM7.40. I’ve later checked the supposed “RM2.00” surcharge claim and found out that it’s untrue!!

To be continued….

Credit cards - Quest for rewards!

Just received the new annual credit card rewards catalogue. Out of curiosity, I made a comparison between the points needed for me to exchange for one x RM100 Hush Puppies voucher between my old and new credit card reward programs.

Old Credit Card
Spending required : RM17,000.00
Points awarded : 17,000
What you can get : 1 x RM100 Hush Puppies Voucher

New Credit Card
Spending required : RM5,000.00
Points awarded : 50
What you can get : 1 x RM100 Hush Puppies Voucher

I need more than 3 times spending to get the similar reward. The numbers speak for themselves.

I can only say that I can’t wait to have more points to bid for better items with my new credit card! All expentidure will go through my new credit card now… at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter which bank I need to remit the cheque, as long as I am rewarded for using the card!

Holiday's over!!! Nooooooooooooooo

It’s the fourth day of the Lunar New Year and I am already back in the office typing away on my keyboard.

Gosh, the number of emails that I will need to go through is mind boggling. It is almost 6.00pm and I am all ready to go home, and suddenly THUNDER + LIGHTING… it is raining cats and dogs now…

Sigh……………

Sun Solaris Holiday Mode….

#init 0
ok>boot HolidayMode -rs
………….
……………………….
#showrev
“Happy Chinese New Year 2007!”
#exit

Yup... I am booting into holiday mode sooner that I'd thought. The sentiment is shared by a lot of my Chinese colleagues, tomorrow will be an extremely busy evening on the highway as many people will be making the trip back to their hometown to be with their loved ones and family members.

To all my readers, drive safely and may you have a prosperous and happy Chinese New Year!

Valentine’s Day

Ah, event of the year… always celebrated with expensive gifts and dinners in posh restaurant in most parts of the world. To those who wants a lengthy history of Valentine’s Day, please click here.

It is most interesting to note that this is the second largerst card-sending holiday behind Chirstmas. Also, in Japan and Korea, the role between male and female is actually reversed! It is more common for women to give candy, chocolate or flower to the people they love. How come our country look-east policy didn’t bring this back to Malaysia huh? hehe….

Mandarin oranges, Anglia Shandy & Me

Mandarin oranges and Anglia Shandy to me, are inseperable from Chinese New Year as mooncake to Mid-Autumn festival.

Having a chilled shandy is just pure pleasure in an hot & humid day. Ahh, that refreshing taste of the drink, gotta have one tonight! :)

Mandarin oranges, well you only get to see a lot of them during CNY period, so they’re not to be missed! Mandarin oranges is also known as “Kam” in cantonese, which sounds like “Gold” in cantonese as well, thus making it one of the must-have during the festive period. You know la, chinese likes everything that carry good meaning!

YEAAAA – NAMASAKE!

Err.. what? niamahsake? No.. no.. no.. it is NA-MA-SA-KE….

Heck, what is that? Sounds awfully like the catch phrase of a japanase manga character trying to conjure a ball of energy or something like that.. :P

Namasake actually means fresh salmon in japanese sushi. Sushi is one of our favourite food and we patronize Nippon Tei KLCC and Sushi King pretty frequently.

Thinking of salmon, there are 2 main types of salmon being sold in Malaysia, there are chilean salmon (imported from Chile) and atlantic salmon (more widely known as Norwegian salmon as mostly are imported from Norway).

People will usually think of KLCC Isetan, Jusco and Coldstorage when they want to buy fresh salmon. Actually, the salmon sold in these outlets are mostly from the same source and one do not taste better than the other. However, Isetan has the most premium pricing follows by Coldstorage and Jusco.

Isetan and Coldstorage usually sell only atlantic salmon and Jusco usually carries chilean salmon as well. For the readers information, chilean salmons are all imported in frozen form and retailers merely thaw the fish before slicing them to be sold in block. Coldstorage some times have smoked sockeye salmon that is imported from the US, however it is only for those with an acquired taste bud (I personally don’t like the taste of it). Occasionally you might see Cold Storage and Jusco selling salmon trout, this is actually from Norway as well (usually imported in frozen form) and the flesh is more reddish in appearance.

The grading of salmon is based on the colour of their flesh. However the colour makes no difference in the taste. The colour comes from the fish feeds and it can be artificially controlled by the farmers.

Fresh atlantic salmon is air flown into Malaysia on weekly basis and one of the major exporter is Hallvard Leroy. They are the world largest exporter of farmed salmon.

The best way to cook a slice of salmon steak, is to add a spoon of olive oil on the frying pan, heat it up and cook both side of the fish steak for around 2-3 minutes. Bon appetit!

Marinated raw meat or seafood - Yummy???

This is only relevant to the people of Bolehland as this is a localized content for Malaysian.

Well, sometimes when you visit hypermarkets or supermarkets, be it Carrefour, Giant or Tesco, you might find trays of marinated raw meat or seafood selling at a premium price. All looking nice and tantalizing, however be warned that chances are the marinated meat or seafood that you’re so tempted to buy is not FRESH.

Most of the time, it is done to disguise the degraded quality of products. So it is always better to choose your meat and spices separately and spend a little more time to marinate them yourself.
The deciding factors of choosing a fresh piece of chicken wing or ikan kembong are the physical appearance and smell of the products. Once those are taken away, it will delude the customers buying decision.

Will the real leader please SPEAK UP!

I am not a believer of seniority at work. I am a firm believer of appraised performance. However, very often we’ll still get people sitting on top of you because of their seniority. It’s downright frustrating that in the event of any incident or problem that requires their position to speak up, they’ll choose to keep mum over the issue simply because they do not understand what is going on to make any intelligent comment!

To manage does not equal to lead. To become a manager simply doesn’t make you a leader in the process. Leaders in any given organization or fields of specialty have clear authority over their comments and speech. We often HEAR our managers but we will only LISTEN to the leaders.

Cai Shen Ye (God of Prosperity) is coming to town…

You better watch out, you better not cry
Better not pout, I'm telling you why
Cai Shen Ye is coming to town
He's making a list and checking it twice
Gonna find out who's naughty and nice
Cai Shen Ye is coming to town
He sees you when you're sleeping
He knows when you're awake
He knows if you've been bad or good
So be good for goodness sake
Oh! You better watch out, you better not cry
Better not pout, I'm telling you why
Cai Shen Ye is coming to town

Time flies, Year of the Golden Pig, will come knocking on our doors on the 18th Feb 2007.

How to make it hard and “melt” slowly?

Hey, dun get too excited, I am running a healthy personal blog here, sorry to disappoint you but I don’t have any remedy to men out there needing a boost or two. :P

For those of you out there that fancy an ice-bed display during your next house warming or cocktail party, you can sprinkle some fine salt on your ice to make them harder. They will stay in shape for longer period of time and will not melt away too fast.

Mousey mousey where are you??

Baby Dee sent it to me today…



Caller : Hi, our printer is not working.
Customer Service : What is wrong with it?
Caller : Mouse is jammed.
Customer Service : Mouse? And how it is related to printer?
Caller : Mmmm.. Wait, I will send a picture.

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Perth -> Here we come!!

If you ask baby dee, the thing that she anticipates most from this trip -> she’ll tell you without hesitation that is to take a picture with joey!

Joey is actually the baby koala :D

The following website offers very good information about Perth, a must-read for people that is preparing for a trip to Perth. -> www.countrywide.com.au/

From my search for accomodation, the following websites came across as very comprehensive with good offers : http://www.wotif.com/ / http://www.asiarooms.com/ / www.australia-hotels.com.au/

Sorry sir, you cannot do that?

I was so excited about the MATF that I actually stayed up until the midnight on the day it was launched just to be one of the first to grab the air tickets, never mind that I was put on hold for more than half an hour -> I finally got the booking number, but here comes the twist, the holiday package is not confirmed as I need to make the payment.

I requested to make the payment via my credit card, but the answer I got is “No sir -> you cannot do that because you need to make your way down to either KL Sentral or HQ (@ Jln. Sultan Ismail) to do that because we need to issue all the vouchers and tickets. Gee whiz, when I was put on hold for half an hour the lady in IVR said to me repeatedly “You can now make your payment using credit cards over the phone, just check with our agents.” .. wat-te-verrrrrrrrrrrrr..

Here comes more, “Sir, please also remember to call in again on 4th Feb 2007, to make sure the hotel booking is confirmed.” I thought with all the advanced booking system now it could have been confirmed on the spot, obviously I was wrong. When I questioned them the answer given to me was 1st Feb 2007 is a public holiday, thus no one will be working, so they need more time to confirm??!!? I was then given a deadline of 4th Feb 2007 2.00pm to make the payment or my booking will be cancelled. So can I make a payment prior to 4th Feb? No sir because your hotel is not confirmed yet?!!?!

Frustrated and getting no help from the agent (whom even told me that they’re doing their best as this is a travel fair and everyone of them is working very hard and late). I just told him to cancel my booking.

Later in the morning, I booked and paid for the air tickets ONLINE and booked myself into the same hotel ONLINE at a cheaper bargain!

Moral of the story : Book your flight and Hotel ONLINE because it is FASTER and CHEAPER and not to mention that you don’t need to waste the time with some operator over the phone telling you that they’re doing wat-te-ver they could to assist you!