Ugly Devils

The 2009/10 EPL season is about to start in August. I am sad to know that Nike has picked such an awful design for the Red Devil's home strip!

Putting a big V above the AIG logo is just tasteless..... Even as a supported of Manchester United, I would never buy the replica for the upcoming season.

Funny Maid Stories

Throughout my 2.5 years in Palembang, I have heard many stories (funny/sad/horror) about maids. Today I will blog about the selected few stories about the funny things that maids have done.

THE DEEP SLEEPER:
This incident happened to me. We have just started this new 16 year old maid for the 3rd day. She has never worked before, so her first job at our place is I would guess rather tiring. At noon she went into her room for a nap. After 1 hour I wanted to talk to her, so I knocked on her door. There was no answer after 5 mins of continuous knocking on her room door. We thought she might have fainted. Therefore, my driver and me both went out to her window outside the house to check. Luckily we heard snoring noises! Then we continued to shout and knock on her window but she was totally K.O'd! In the end we managed to wake her up after my driver climbed up the chair and called out to her via the air vents above the door. She said she did not hear a thing! I am not sure if she could survive a fire if she slept like a log? Anyway she quit after working for a week.

INSTANT NOODLES:
My company has a mess that has a 40 year old maid. She is a very experienced cook and supposedly have worked many years being a school cleaner. One day my colleagues wanted her to cook a pack of soup based instant noodles. After 10 mins, they found out that the maid had cooked the noodles but dumped away all the soup! They had to eat the dry tasteless noodles because the maid thought that it was supposed to be instant mi goreng (fried noodles)! I still could not believe a person that has lived so long in Indonesia and yet still does not know how to read instant noodles labels.

TOILET BOWL CLEANING:
One day my colleague went home for lunch. The bathrooom was occupied by his maid who was cleaning the toilet. After waiting for almost an hour, the maid came out and said, " Sir, I could not get the water from the toilet bowl out. I keep drying the inside of the toilet bowl but water keeps coming out!"

Photos Of The Week - 1st Week Of July'09

A shot of my son's face after he took a bite off a J.Co donut. When his mother knew that he had donuts from his dad, she said, " donuts are bad! It will make you die!" I think once in a blue moon is still alright though....;)













Broken grasshopper leg. I caught a grass hopper that was only 2" long but one of its legs broke off. I think it is one of its survival or "escape" mechanisms because everytime I catch a grass hopper, it only has 1 hind leg. Playing with grass hoppers helps my son learn how to handle with animal gently.

You must be perplexed after reading this sign?

SOFTEX = sanitary napkins

CLOSED = toilet bowl

"Do Not Throw Sanitary Napkins Into The Toilet Bowl"...got it?

Eating By The Roadside

Today I had dinner with my driver. A couple of days ago, he said he would take me to eat some delicious fried noodles (mi goreng).

He claims that this place along the Universitas Iba (IBA University-business school) has the best mi goreng in Palembang and lots of couples like to visit that place for a meal. He used to bring his wife when they were dating to the place too.

We were there early at 6pm. The sun had just started to set. There were not many people sitting along the wooden benches yet. Many cars and bikes were still driving past as the hawker fried his mi goreng. They had a bucket full of prawn crackers for us to feast on while we wait for our food. Free water was provided but I dare not have a drink there.

Next to me was a bucket full of soap water and some clean plates. I thought to myself, "thank God we were the first ones here". I would not want to eat on some plates that were washed by the roadside. Behind me was a small drain with stagnant water. I could not see clearly what was in the drain but I was sure it was not clean. I also got a mosquito bite on my elbow during the wait.

Shortly, the noodles were served and it was delicious! It smelled and tasted very good especially with the fried egg on top....yummy! It was pretty satisfying.

I only had to pay Rp12,000 (RM4) for the 2 plates of mi goreng. I don't think I would go back there again to eat because of hygienic reasons but at least I have tried Palembang's famous mi goreng for dating couples!

Blackouts, Power & Palembang Dislikes

My wife had just blogged about how she misses Palembang while she was back in Malaysia. Something just reminded me about one of the things that I dislike about Palembang.... As I was about to have my shower after a few rounds of push-ups after work, everything went pitch dark and my emergency backup light came on.

It was one of the regular blackouts in our housing area....AGAIN! This is the 3rd time that blackouts happened this week. It lasted for only 1 hour (better compared to the 2 hours a few days ago) but I could not wait anymore. So I drove out to a nearby shopping mall PTC to have my dinner. I was dirty and hungry. No electricity in the house means no water too because all our water is stored in an underground tank. Every time we turn on the tap, the water gets pumped out from the tank. I could not microwave my dinner from the fridge too.

My company would not get us a generator because the frequencies of blackouts happening (in a year) does not meet the justification. It would cost us too much to buy one on our own, so we had to BEAR WITH IT. The company also would not upgrade our house's power capacity to higher than 2200W (FYI, 1 HP A/C takes up ~600W). This means we could only turn on 2 air conditioners without any other "heating elements" at any point of time. Sometimes we forgot to turn off the hot water heater and caused the circuit breaker for the entire house to TRIP.

During the past few weeks we could not even turn on 2 A/C. The staff from the power company came to check and told us that the incoming power is less than 2200W (what we paid for). When asked how he could fix the problem, the guy just said "that's the best I could do for you". I just have to keep complaining to PLN (Perbadanan Listrik Negara), the one and only government owned power company......until they restore our house's power capacity back to 2200W.

My top-of-my-head below are some of the things that I still dislike about Palembang:

1. Insufficient power supply - have you ever heard of PLANNED BLACKOUTS in different housing areas because of power shortage?? Welcome to PALEMBANG!
2. Mosquitoes - they are everywhere! I get bitten almost EVERYDAY....sometimes by really small ones.
3. Corruption in every process - MONEY IS EVERYTHING
4. Smoking and spitting - huffing and puffing but they are not trains
5. Littering - it IS a norm to just throw a plastic bottle out from a car after you finish it
6. Inferior quality products - everything is cheap but never durable
7. Open burning and haze - continue to destroy our environment
8. Habitual lying
9. People sucking up to the rich
10. Taking advantage of every single good opportunity being given