Day-1 in Laos

Laos - a country I step my feet on for 4days 3 nights

Day-0 -we took bus from Kulim at 1130pm direct to KL (thanks Mok for the fetching) and we reached PuduRaya by 430am - day-1. And we took Shuttle Bus StarWira at Terminal 25 (you have to go down as the counter was down there, hidden counter) by 445am and reached LCCT at 6am. As too early to check in, we had our breakfast at McDonald and reading TheStar

newspaper. This was the 1st time I had my breakfast at McD.

• Flight #: AK812
  
• Date : 7 June 08
  
• Time : 905am
  

Touched down at Wattay Airport by 1145am - No tuk tuk to ask for a fetch..I think that is their policy only taxi can fetch visitors out to town.
We shared one taxi with an Israel guy and 2 americans to thinner our fares, which was USD6 per trip. Tour around to look for our hotel which booked online ealier - Vayakorn Guesthouse

Our First Spot was Vat Sasiket.

It was built on the order of Anou, the last king of Vientiane, between 1819 to 1824. It is the only vat in Vientiane surviving in its original shape when Siamese razed Vientiane and forced most of the people into exile across the Mekong River in 1827-1828. All of the temples were destroyed except Vat Sisiket.

Row of buddha status sitting down there

All the statues in the Vat were not preserve properly and you can see a lot of broken part on the floor.

At the ticket counter, we saw the postcard of Buddha Park - which is very attractive! One angmo told us that they just been there by yesterday and found very interesting. This strikes our cells and we fastforward our steps to Bus Station to look for the way to go there. We ended up getting up to a Tuk-tuk which offer us 100,000 kip for both way. The driver brought us to a shop before headed there. We had a very nice noodle soup, I think this is a must to try in Laos. Actually I should not taking beef, however, just give myself an exception since I already far away from homeland and should try out new things here. Lao people have their special-made-noodle, a little bit hard for me. But overall the taste was good!

We were heading to the Buddha Park which is sideway from the city, about 26km from town. And you can see from the picture, we ended up going to the destination with this kind of road. Really salute the tuk-tuk driver who still manage to balance us, actually feel very not secure, anytime the vehicle might fall down.

If not remembered wrongly, the journey took us about 40minutes to reach with low-cc tuk-tuk. But everything is worth when this scenery came in front your eyeview.

This is the combined culture of Buddha and Hinduism. This sculpture park full of those cement-made gods, humans, animals and demons.

This notable sculpture resembles giant pumpkin. It has three stories representing three levels - hell, earth and heaven. I were trying to go up to the heaven from hell through the mouth of the demon.

I like this sculpture as it looks like big-transformer coming out to town :O lol

We ended our first day visit to Patuxai, which is known as Arc de Triomp of Laos. Mmm...different feel comparing to the Arc de Triomp of Paris. We didn't go up to the top, but wandering around the park, seeing Lao people and listening to their music.

On the way to Buddha Park, you may see the Friendship Bridge Lao-Thai. This is the bridge where you can cross from Laos to Thai or vice versa.

We went for massage after taking bath at hotel near to the Mekong River and also had our dinner there. Laos is not like Phuket or Pattaya which are well-developed for tourism and mushroomed with pub and disco. Here is more convervative and they only have some.

When you passing by the tuk-tuk, they would offer their ride and followed by: Lady? lady? Haha.... we were not coming for this!

Team Building 30-31 May 08

Team Building 30-31 May 08 at Tanjung Bungah Resort Hotel

by PSDC

total pax of person: 26
facilitator : 2

we were sitting on each other and it gonna be strong enough to be hit by the facilitator by his body

Girl powers - smile :)


Run for your lives - tsunami is coming ~~!!


Just kidding, we ran for fitting ourselves inside the limited area of rope




One rope to fix in the legs of alls


we had to pass the gate without touching it with the help of team members - basically you just need to lay down


Another gate which was more challenging with gate facing up to sky


Playing free fall games


Yo -amazing shot

macho libre ?

Ninja turtle back to town ?

King (with bunga raya) and queen (with lots of baldi) of the day

Prayer on the dustbin

mmm....gonna balance very well on the rope - to sleep later

pull

wa...finally I saw fresh water for years.... I gonna test the taste!

enemy attack!

big project la..

yeah, lend me your left hand

paintball session

Why buttons on women's clothes on left while men on right?

While waiting for my car to feed petrol in long queue, I browsed through this question which my colleage asked me before. Our director told him he will promote him if he can answer this question.

You wanna make a try ?

Why are buttons on women's clothes placed on the left side while men on the right side ?

** feel free to feedback your answer :) I will announce tomorrow

What are whole Malaysia doing now ?

I believe, you know the answer...
Since 5pm, announcement made by our PM, all people rushing to petrol station to pump their car, motorbikes...
Reading MalaysiaKini at office, thought only effective on Aug. Who knows, my dad called me to pump petrol. Therefore, called up my friend whose dad owing a petrol station to verify, walao eh, confirmed liao.
At first, thinking that, I still have 3-quarter full and lazy to queue up. But, now rise about 40.6% ler! a big amount ler!! So, just go somewhere further, thought got lesser people, lol, I gonna queue for 45min for RM30 petrol. However, I saved about RM12.
Mm... throughput Malaysia, I think this is much more HEBAT compared to jualan Hebat!! Everyone is doing the same activities at this moment till midnight or till the petrol finish selling.
78cents increment to RM2.70 per litre for petrol - what the frightening figure to all of us...
Diesel price also increased RM1 to RM2.58.
For vehicle less than 2000cc, we managed to get the cash rebate of RM625 , payment will be made by money order when renewing road tax.
Also, effectively from 1July, we are going to face another crisis of increasing rates for electricity of 18% for homes and 26% for business.
Please prepare ourselves well to face the increasing price for all items, chain effect from petrol price rising.

On the way back to home after dinner at Raja Uda, I am thinking of methods to save little money from daily life, for your reference - Kulim guys

1. Stay to take your lunch at company's canteen

2. if your canteen's food really sux and you need to go out, just go to Guang Ming, which offering cheap economy rice until today and near to high-tech as well.

3. Buy more bread for your dinner - healthy and save money

4. Don't go to steep road, take flat road on your way to office, to prevent you from pick-up, eg. the way at Kota Kenari or road in front of Uni KL.
Tell boss that you might get late for meeting as we have to drive in constant speed

5. Request company to increase your transportation allowance!

6. On air-cond less as recently rain quite frequent.

7. Car-pool with colleages to work

8. Don't take the chicken rice at town (shop opposite to old cinema), which sell at RM4, I believe they will increase another 50cents later.

9. Buy a motorbike to work


Latest news from laman web rasmi perdana menteri :
http://www.pmo.gov.my/website/webdbase.nsf/w_4?openForm&title=Latest%20Releases%20from%20Prime%20Minister&url=http://www.pmo.gov.my/WebNotesApp/Abdullah.nsf/hv_PMKiniSemasaNew/214AA70091D7F2534825745E003CA153

4 Days 10 Hours ?

A lot of rural areas of US already practising this to cope and fight with the increasing price of petrol which overwhelming day after day. They changed their working day from 5-day to 4-day.
Could it possible ? A lot of you will ask...
They are working 10 hours for 4 days now instead of 8 hours for 5 days. So basically they save up one day-travel expense for petrol. I think this measure is very good, besides saving money for your petrol; may be you can do some part time to earn more to fight with inflation.
For Asian, it is not a problem at all for them to work long hours. For me, now I work about 10-12hours per day for 5 days weekly. So I will agree this implementation but somehow it is not possible for wafer fab. (can just making dream!~)

Date to take note this month

Thing to take note this month - June

1. 1st June is world milk day -> must drink more milk to supply more calsium to your teeth,
bones.

2. 1st June - must start to wear seat belts for rear seat passagers, local cars can get free
installments.

3. 4th June - government to announce new fuel subsidy schemes

4. 7th June - Agong's birthday -> public holiday ~

5. 22th June - Father's day (OMG, crash with my friend's bd, lol )

Work interesting ?

Did I earned anything back to work after joining team building programme?
erm......do I more dedicated or committed? do I get more positive-thinking? do I more co-operative with other's colleages?
I wonder...

Ya...the programme tries to bring out certain message to us:
-factors that make team successful
-heighten awareness of individual role and its impact on team performance.
- practise using effective communications
- trust, collaboration and resource allocation, sharing workload and continuous improvement

Actually all of us know about all of these values on work, it depends on the company's culture and workmanship whether they could be practised or not...

I personnely strongly believe everyone is selfish.. Ya, talking about team spirit; if your member does not care whether the issue is solved or not, he just pick the valuable work to do and he will go back on time..... Then do you still think of practising all these values then ?

When every public holiday hits, each and everyone wish to take leave and no coverage; and it always beneficial for higher position's colleages to on leave and leave for others to do the coverage most of the time. Is this still fair for all? Or should the coverage been taken rotating no matter you are senior or junior ? Don't all these been seen clearly by our blind boss after so many holidays? or you are expecting us to come back on work if there is any issue? what if everyone of us are far away from workplace? The problem will back to cost-saving again and no vendor triggering before own person troubleshooting...who will be suffering after all ?

Managerial structuring brings so many of grey area to this workplace even in team itself or between teams. Everyone pretending to be a good man by not refusing direct face-to-face, making the lower level to fight each others. After all, they claimed there is no alignment or one party is very defensive to other party to accomplish the jobs. Who should be addressed to all the decision-making tasks when a lot of people are making noise? Seeing a lot of designation on higher position's guys, now every managers with the backbone of managing director trying to twist the situation...like telling everyone : we are try to improve, we are going to make you guys better... after all, who don't know the reason hidden behind. Ego-ism is strongly planted in this company's culture and I believe total restructuring will only helped. What you want from the A-to-B or B-to-A plan? they are the same !!

Why gonna putting some engineers under staff engineers? Is it they are fresh and need guidance as per said? or they are honoured to be guided under staff engineer to better and accelerating pace for personel development as per mentioned ? if you see the arrangement clearly, it is arranged so to make the staff 's work easier, or say helping staff to do their jobs (never notice this during the meeting). If you said about the seniority, it is not the case. If you say about the personel development, i believe there are better candidate.So, it is very true my colleage noticed the objective behind. So called "orang bawahan" need to serve "orang atas" for their better performance...are we helping them to promote faster? how about us? anyone sharing us the piece of cake ? For me, it is not important anymore, i don't care all the bullshit around my ears, coz they are a lot of lousy liars. I just treated it as reporting change, I still doing the same, whatever I like. Time is counting, no one is so serious anymore, what kind of changes you want for 30-day ? you think it is a slimming programme?
No-no-no.....

We are expecting to see few more rounds of earthquakes from this company's management. Who knows I will be someone else important later ? Hahaa....just kidding, I'm nothing for all. Just a support ma....less one no less :)