OneBigBone

Now, I don’t know how many of you work in an office where it is big and has lots of cubicles surrounding your own mini cubicle.

Usually office like the one I am in, is quiet as hell.

Almost like I’m working in a library.

Not so quiet i think

Occasionally, you can hear someone over the distance talking nonsense or discussing work related matters.

The thing is, the place is too quiet that you can hear people walking.

When I first join the company, I was not really occupied with work, basically I was a free soul in the company told to study the business process with no dead lines given.

And I was seated near the entrance, so I have a clear view on who comes and goes.

As days and weeks passed, I don’t know if it’s just me, I started to notice each and everyone’s walking pattern.

I can describe to you how a particular manager or employee walks.

Some walk with authority, some walk like they have big balls - when they have none, literally - some even walk like zombies.

Of cos there are still a large group that has almost identical walking patterns that needs more analysis.

But since my department was moved to another floor, and things got even more quiet, I noticed I can have 1 more dimension of identifying people’s walking pattern.

You see, my new cubicle walls, they aren’t totally obstructing your view at the cubicle next to you.

These is supposing to encourage discussion and interaction among colleagues.

I no longer sit near the entrance, but i definitely sit beside the highway that leads to the pantry and a side door.

And with you working, with the cubicle walls high enough to block your view on the on going traffic and with the quiet surroundings, you tent to listen to whats happening around you.

For my case, I can identify about 50% - 60% of my colleagues that are walking passed behind me - by just listening to their footsteps and the sound they make during walking.

Mind you, our office is matted with some good quality carpet.

You will be surprise if you tune your mind slightly just to notice each individual walking pattern you can easily identify them.

The easiest are always the ladies.

piak.. piak.. piak.. piak …..

Because of their heels that they wear, it’s so easy to separate them when combined with their walking pace.

There was once that my colleague was referring to another colleague and I didn’t know his name.

So what I did was explained and slightly imitate the person’s (that I think he was referring to) walking pattern to identify the person.

And I got it right.

Sherlock Holmes, surely will have a hard time trying to challenge me.

They say I am crazy and have not enough work assigned to me.

With all the analyzing I did, there are still about 30% of people I still get confused by just listening to the walking sounds.

But what worries me is the 10%.

This is the dangerous 10%, most of them consist of my boss, my boss’s boss, my supervisors and project manager.

Basically these are the people that hardly walks over to my cubicle area.

So there is hardly any data or analyzing opportunities for me to identify their walking patterns sounds.

However, my boss walks to my area often.

But he is special.

He walks silently like the tiger behind the bushes.

When you noticed he is there, it’s already too late for anything.

Dam dangerous i tell you.

Moral of the story is that work when you’re suppose to.

Happymah!~

jump start: Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed there are many rewards, if you disgrace yourself you can always write a book. - Ronald Reagan (1911 - 2004).

For the past few years, probably about 5 to 8 years back, I developed a set of rules about female, regardless of age.

I name it “The 3 Golden Rules of Females”.

As the name implies, it has just 3 basic rules to accurately describe a female, and if a person cannot see if a female fits with this set of rules, then that female is… lets just say “extraordinary”.

Now, rules has to be build base on facts and evidence that the rules really apply and exist to guide us as we live our lives.

Be it the law of the country, the unwritten rule in a society or the rules of a game they all exist based on facts and evidence of extensive research or experience to achieve certain intended objective.

Like wise, to give credibility to the rules i come sense with, i applied and shared this 3 golden rules on all the females that i had experienced with through out my life.

Wait. i think that sound a bit wrong. I mean i applied these rules on female characters (including my mum!) that i had come to know or observed before.

And after at least 5 years of not so continuous research and experimenting, i can safely announce that the rules are indeed valid.

Don’t believe me?

Try it and apply it and see if i’m giving your sense a kick in the ass.

The 3 Golden Rules of Females:

Read my mind you idiot!

1) Every female, thinks that you can read their mind! You are always “suppose” to do or say something that should be either “logical” or “proper” or “responsible for” when they never say a word or even a hint about it.

2) Every female has a characteristic that is easily identifiable within a reasonable short period of time. What characteristic ? They either like to shop, talk, cute stuff, colorful stuff, sleep…. you name it. it’s just identifiable.

I’m NOT thin!

3) Every female will never admit they are thin. NEVER! No matter how thin or how fat they are, somehow or somewhere they will find fat for you. They will tell you that my thigh is huge la, hands flabby la, neck like elephant trunk la, all those nonsense. But never complaint that there is too much fat on the chest. However there is an exception to those who REALLY look like bambo sticks, half of them will admit that they are thin. (NOTE: just thin, not OVERLY thin.)

Leave a comment and let me know if i’m right or wrong, chances are i’m right.

Challenge me!

Happymah!~

So much for the said August’s implementation.

Uncle Lah, our “beloved” PM announced that price of petrol will increase to RM2.70 effective 5th June 2008.

RM2.70.

That’s RM0.78 or 41% increment of petrol price from what we were paying before 5th June. In other words, for every RM50 that you used to pump, is now price about RM71; every RM21 extra for each RM50 you used to pump.

See how long the 2 cement trucks take to move about 100m

And for those who are using diesel, they will be facing a 63% increment from RM1.58 to RM2.58.

Quoted from thestar.com.my

He said the Government would save RM13.7bil through the restructuring.

From the savings, he said RM4bil would go to the National Food Supply Guarantee Policy, RM1.5bil for subsidising cooking oil and RM400mil to subsidise rice imports to make the price uniform in peninsular Malaysia, Sabah and Sarawak.

Those having 2000cc or less vehicles will have RM625 of government subsidy. Motorbikes below 250cc will get RM150. These will be paid though postal order each time you renew your road tax annually.

Vehicles above 2000cc will have their road tax slashed by RM200, bikes above 250cc gets RM50 off.

And of cos no doubt each and everyone would jump in the long queue to fill up their tank before the new price is effective, me included.

Be afraid of what danger you see in front of you, but be more afraid of what you can’t see.

So there the obvious damage has been made visible to us, but we have yet to set eyes on what our eye do not see.

Well, I would plainly put it that the petrol increase is just ONE of our concerns at the moment. Let me illustrate what happening around us.

Rice - The main food source that fill up our stomachs for Asians, has been increasing rapidly since the past year. I was just having a small talk with the lady boss of my favorite zhap fan in Taman U, Serdang.

“My cost of 1kg of rice used to be less than RM2 a year ago, and few months back it was about RM2 to RM3. Now it’s about RM4 per kilo. And i can’t use cheap rice, or else my customers would complaint and that will affect business eventually.”

By the recent announcement on pricing of rice - a control commodity under the Malaysian government, the increase of rice is about 20%.

The last i check at Jaya Jusco, the large pack of Jasmine brand rice is priced near RM50. It’s kind of crazy if you ask me.

Tol - Price of tol around Malaysia has also increased, ranging from 20% to 60%. Worst suffered of cos is the logistic industry. Well, these tol rates has been there ever since there is a highway. Justification is that, the companies who build and develop these highways - with government aid btw, are allowed to collect “a small fee” as a medium to recover cost and some profit.

British truck drivers jamming up major roads in the UK to protest against high fuel prices

So question is how long do the government allow these companies to operate the tol? Well, i have to be fair to the highway operators that a large amount of funds is needed to maintain and service the highways. But is the rate justified? or it’s just that the datuks want more coins in their deep pockets?

Chicken - When uncle Lah made his announcement on the petrol hike, alot of attention was given to the petrol rate. Little that many know that the government also lifted the ceiling price of RM6 of fresh chicken. These means the fresh chicken meat peddlers are allowed to price their meat at a price they deem suitable.

So basically, we will see restaurants of hawkers selling chicken dishes at a higher price.

The same lady boss i talked to also mentioned that she has increased the price of chicken rice. She explained that she didn’t have a choice, price of chicken meat has been increasing in the past week and she that the business could not afford to absorb the increment.

Thats not all, the government also announced a few days back that those involved in the supply chain of fresh chick

en will gradually received government’s review in their pricing and increment percentage.

So it’s definitely on a steep climb on chicken meat.

To the KFC lovers, its time to change to McD.

Electric - Along with the petrol price announcement, the PM too announce that the government has also approved TNB on the new charging rate affective 1st of July 2008. The current rate, if i’m not mistaken is about RM0.218 for every 1kwj used in households. If currently your average electricity bill is less than RM42.60,

then you can just ignore this announcement. But if you exceed this price, you are going to face a 18% increment in your bill.

TNB’s explanation was that they have been absorbing the high increase of coal price which is needed along with gas to produce electricity. So without the increment of electricity tariff, TNB will increase it’s current lost along with the petrol price increase.

Riot police clash with protestors of high fuel prices outside EU office in Brussels.

According to released statistic by the Prime Minister’s Department, 59% of households will not be affected my the 18% increment.

Now, if you’re reading this post with your personal computer, most likely its sucking 450w of power. So if you would have your PC on for 1 hour it cost you RM 0.0981. Now if you leave your computer on through out the night for downloads, then in 30days, your PC ALONE sucks up RM70.632 of worth of electricity. Bare in mind thats with RM0.218 per 1kwj not yet the 18% increment. So go give your 18% a welcome hug.

That’s not all, business operators will face a wooping 26% increment in their electricity bill. They however give those small business like sundry shops, marts and restaurant using less than 200kw of power to “enjoy” the 18% increment as residential households do.

Now whats involved in other sectors and industries?

Taxi drivers can let out a relief breath as their natural gas will not face any increment at all.

Cooking gas is also spared from the price hike, but however the delivery charges of your cooking gas will be affected in line with the petrol increment.

Plastic industry, which is related to the petroleum industry will face similar fate. Increment of operating cost will soon translate into increment of their products.

Palm oil industry will now face windfall tax that was previously abolished. Crude Palm Oil (CPO) producers in Peninsular Malaysia will have to pay 15% for every tonne of CPO exceeding RM2,000, while those in Sabah & Sarawak will face 7.5%.

Mexicans protesting against high food prices

Food industry, most likely the ones that will be the worst hit. From the planting, fertilization, harvesting, processing, packaging and delivering will all feel the impact of high price of oil as they are all interrelated.

Soya farmers are switching over to corn as the demand for corn is higher. Corn has been increasingly being used to produced cooking oil which has a higher demand than supply. So corn price goes up, in the same time, soya facing a incremental shortage, have they fair share of price increase.

And there are many more which i could not list out.

Starting to feel worried?

Please don’t.

The worst has yet to come. The petrol price - currently with a RM0.30 subsidy is just the step 1 of the complete removal of government subsidy on petrol and diesel, that also wont be the worst scenario just yet.

Now, lets put our worries and focus back to the petrol and oil issue. As i assure you, you have a more worrying matter ahead.

I happened to read through autoindustrie’s blog, and what i read surprised me greatly.

He wrote something on Peak Oil, something that not all government is willing to accept.

I’m very sure most of you like me haven’t really heard or understand what is Peak Oil is all about. Let me quote from autoindustrie:

Back in the United States in 1956, a certain geoscientist by the name of Marion King Hubbert was working for Royal Dutch Shell introduced the Hubbert Peak Theory. Of course, in an age of cheap oil where teenagers emptying their loose change in their pockets could poll together enough money to fill up a tank of worth of petrol, nobody took him seriously and the mainstream geo-scientific community labelled him as some sort of a renegade researcher. Almost 4 decades later, in the oil wars of Iraq and the Middle East, crude oil prices were hitting new record highs almost every quarter, and thanks to the power of the Internet, more people began to sit up and listen about Peak Oil.

In short, the popular peak oil reference website www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net gives an analogy of peak oil as;
In practical and considerably oversimplified terms, this means that if 2005 was the year of global Peak Oil, worldwide oil production in the year 2030 will be the same as it was in 1980. However, the world’s population in 2030 will be both much larger (approximately twice) and much more industrialized (oil-dependent) than it was in 1980. Consequently, worldwide demand for oil will outpace worldwide production of oil by a significant margin. As a result, the price will skyrocket, oil dependant economies will crumble, and resource wars will explode.

The issue is not one of “running out” so much as it is not having enough to keep our economy running. In this regard, the ramifications of Peak Oil for our civilization are similar to the ramifications of dehydration for the human body. The human body is 70 percent water. The body of a 200 pound man thus holds 140 pounds of water. Because water is so crucial to everything the human body does, the man doesn’t need to lose all 140 pounds of water weight before collapsing due to dehydration. A loss of as little as 10-15 pounds of water may be enough to kill him.

In a similar sense, an oil based economy such as ours doesn’t need to deplete its entire reserve of oil before it begins to collapse. A shortfall between demand and supply as little as 10 to 15 percent is enough to wholly shatter an oil-dependent economy and reduce its citizenry to poverty.

In my own words, we are already at the peak of oil production, and now we are heading for a downward slope.

The era of cheap available resources especially petroleum has ended. Prices of oil will most likely go up and never down, and when oil goes up, EVERYTHING goes up.

So civilizations will have to fight for oil and other resources in future. Oil wars will commence.

The attack on Iraq might ring some bells.

With the cheap resources, oil, food, electricity which most financial and investment institutions put their money with, lay grounds for the economy’s rapid growth that rapidly drives mankind civilizations to development.

And with all that gone, the growth and economy follows in.

And so the fall of a civilization.

Head over to autoindustrie’s blog, where he paints a better picture with Peak Oil.

I certainly hope that i have illustrated a clearer picture of whats happening around you. It’s not only the cost of petrol you should be worried about.

Having clarity, it’s the ability of being aware of whats going on and understand whats going on.

Now having said that, it’s not the end of the world yet, have a smile, get back to work and save fast.

After all, our PM did mentioned that the petrol subsidy restructure will boost the country’s economy, and with a projected 1% increment of inflation caused by this announcement, will put our country’s inflation rate at 5%-6%. And still our Bank Negara is projecting a 5% growth in GDP from the previously projected 5%-6%.

So why worry, we are at the Boleh land.

Next i will try to come out with ways to overcome this small hurdle we are facing.

Happymah!~

Pictures taken from autoindustrie and pmo.gov.my.