Melamine tainted milk and Corporate responsibilities (Updated)

After reading yet another corporate statement on the "safety" of their products, I feel compelled to voice out my concerns on these communication gymnastics that these corporations are resorting to.
A) On Sept 24th, Mars Food which imports Snickers, M&M and other dairy based confection from China issued an advertisement that states " We are confident none of our chocolate or confectionery products made in China includes any dairy ingredient adulterated with melamine"
What has confidence got to do with safety of the products? Moreover - those made in China at this time? Get them tested and show the test results (the latest results). Test the products sold in Malaysia. It's not like the problem just happened overnight. It has been on going for quite a while. I am banning Snickers, M&M, Dove and any other Mars Food products from my house with immediate effect!
Updated info for 30th Sept:
Indonesia's food supervisory agency said at the weekend that it discovered some 16 Chinese-made diary products contained melamine, adding that all those products - including well-known brands such as Snickers and M&M's chocolates - would be immediately destroyed. "Mars is extremely surprised about the recent announcement that tests conducted by the... Indonesian regulatory authority, have shown that M&Ms and Snickers products made in China contain melamine," the company said in a statement released late Monday in Hong Kong. "The results announced (in Indonesia)... conflict with and are completely inconsistent with all analytical results received to date by Mars from governmental agencies and independent laboratories across Asia and Europe."

B) Today 29th Sept, the local Pizza Hut (in response to another news article of positive presence of melamine in cheese in Pizza Hut Taiwan) says " we did a thorough review of our supply base last year which demonstrates that none of our supply was impacted. All our suppliers have confirmed that this is still the case". Huh??
Hello - this is already September 2008. What you did last year may have an effect (if any) only for the few months thereafter. How sure are you that you are not affected by the melamine adulteration since then? I am not!! And you asked your suppliers for their scout's honor?? That's like asking people to swear on the Quran that they are innocent. Of course they will swear their innocence - or risk losing money in product recalls!!
Pizza Hut is also off my household list of prodcuts to purchase.

Denai Alam - 98% ready!!

As mentioned in the previous post, my house in Denai Alam has been cleaned up and is almost ready for occupancy.

With a land area of 20 feet by 70 feet, the building itself takes up almost 60 feet of the 70 feet length, double storey. With 4 bedrooms, 3 washrooms/bathrooms, a separate kitchen area (renovated from the original design), a separate washing machine and clothes drying area upstairs - I had renovated the house to be as I would have liked it if I were to stay there. In fact, end of this year, we may just move into it so that I can commence renovations on my existing house.

The security of the house has been beefed up with grills - both front and back, upstairs and downstairs. Even the main gate had been changed to one of heavier iron bars.

Each room has an air conditioner point added as well as lights and fans installed.
All 3 bathrooms have heater points installed.

If anyone knows of any potentials who would like to rent a double storey house in Denai Alam, please contact me by leaving a comment and your contact number.

Thank you.

Alex's 10th birthday

Seems like only yesterday that Alex came into our life and in a blink of an eye, 10 years have passed. Today, we decided NOT to celebrate his birthday. We had celebrated his birthday every year without fail and this year, decided to give it a rest.

Madeline and Vincent showed up unexpectedly this morning as Madeline had urinary problems due to her pregnancy. They got that sorted out in the early morning and decided to check in on us if we were available for breakfast.

So we went for breakfast, then decided to go to Denai Alam to have a peek at my house. Shirley had assured me that the ground floor had been cleared and washed. Only yesterday I was there and could only sweep and clean the upstairs portion. Sure enough, everything looked spic and span!.

After that we dropped in on 1 Utama. As we passed by Chilli's Alex asked if we could take lunch there and so it came to pass that his birthday lunch was at Chilli's (unplanned), together with Madeline and Vincent. We also asked Alicia, the girl serving us if they could have anything special for the birthday boy. Chilli's did have something for him - a brownie with ice cream on top.

Together with another transformer figurine from Anime Tech, Alex was happy and contented as we headed home.

Meeting of body parts and reminiscing

Yesterday, there was a meeting of body parts at the Curve. There were also honorary guests present.These body parts had known each other for coming to 27 years!!

At the top is Khoo TL, who does not seem to have aged!! Now, how can a Khoo be a body part. Well... in Cantonese, Khoo is part of the male anatomy - as in ku ku jiao! Khoo interviewed me for a position in HP in 1981 as a Customer Engineer. I must have exceeded his expectations when I was posted in Singapore for a month, one month after I had joined HP. I was there to back up the CE there who was on national Service (reservist training). With no training (and often no initial understanding of the instruments), I managed to attend to a majority of service calls and installations for both Medical and Analytical products. On my third month with HP, Khoo gave me a 25% pay increment - that was RM300 extra!!

Lip WT was the Sales Engineer for Analytical products. How appropriate - he pays LIP service to customers to get them to purchase our products. His hair is silvery grey now and thinning. He used to say that a sign of success of a man is that he either lose his hair by 30 or have his hair turn grey.

Toh HK was my senior in Support. He used to be a sanitation engineer when he was studying in the UK. Over here, we call them the rubbish collector la!! Toh uses his TOE to prod customers. Kicks them if they don't behave. And he has very strong political views. Here is a classic shot of the TOE and THUMB

and I am the THUMB who gives the thumbs up whenever I complete my assignments.

And hence we were parts of the body!!!

Honorary guests for the night were Kong PH, Tai Hooi Lin (I guess he also qualifies as the THIGH - though I am not sure how that fits into operations) and a long time customer Jaya from PORIM.

We had dinner at the Bavarian Bierhaus at the Curve - ordered a couple of pork knuckles (delicious but pricey), a bunch of sausages and I lost count of the number of jugs of beer that flowed till 11pm.

Picture above was taken in Oct 1984 when yours truly was only 26 years young! We had the Sales Engineer for medical products (Goh), the admin (Siti), the Medical Support CE (James) and the 2 parts of the body.

There is talk of a arranging a major gathering of all ex HP staff in mid October!. Sure like to see that happen. The photo above is just about ALL of HP Sales Malaysia in early 80s!! Only 2 of those people are still in Agilent - Khor AK (in black standing behind me) and of course me!. The next photo was taken on a company outing to Fraser's Hill. Nobody believes that I was ever THIN in my life!!

And this next visual here has Siti (the one in Yellow)- our admin for a number of years. She was from Penang and spoke Mandarin Chinese, English and Malaylast but not least is the Far East management team for Analytical back in the 80s!! Back then Dick Aal had mgmt responsibilities for the Intercon region (which was Latin Americas, Canada, Japan and Far East Asia).

I can't for the life of me remember the names of those 3 at the back row!!

Internal Security Act of Malaysia (ISA)

Reading a recent post and the interview with a possible UMNO president candidate Ku Li, looks like I can also be a candidate for ISA!!

Ku Li: No. We must review it so that it cannot be abused to detain people whom they don't like. Currently. they can detain you because they don't like your long hair or another person who is fat.

Ha ha!!

15th Sept - a tiring week

On the political front, 16th Sept came and went without much happening, though 17th was a lot more interesting! Despite the misgivings of many of the real Anwar, I think it is still worth a gamble to have his party and coalition take over the Government as soon as possible. The current corrupt, racist Government has to go!!!

Spent 3.5 days at my Denai Alam house doing up the electricals. Added lights, fans, and also corrected a faulty wiring. The wireman had switched a wire in one of the panels resulting in one light point with no power whatever you do and another light point having power all the time no matter what you do. Luckily the logical technical me is still there despite the years of doing management!!

Had neglected to wash my cars for the past 2 weeks due to one reason or another and so I decided to wash both of them and wax and polished them after. Took me almost 3 hours doing both cars by myself. Not sure if it was all my sweat on the tee shirt (totally soaked) or water from the wash. I would think it was sweat with just a little from the wash.

Together with the sweat from doing the electricals in my Denai Alam house, I must have sweated a bucket for the week!

Mid Autumn Festival 2008

Mid Autumn Festival is celebrated by Chinese everywhere. In China, it is also a public holiday. It falls on the 15th day of the 8th Lunar Month (which means that if one follows the Gregorian calendar, it kinda move around). This year, the festival falls on 14th Sept 2008. For the sake of convenience, most people celebrated the day on Saturday (13th), because if one were to celebrate it on 14th, you would have to wrap up earlier as the following day is a working day.

For me, this year's celebration was on a very much smaller scale. Only 7th Aunt, Wendy and my brother Danny Kit were invited for dinner. Everyone else has their own families and dinners to attend to. Mum prepared steamed chicken, roast pork , soup (made from dried vegetables - not preserved vegetables) and a vegetable dish of sweet peas, mushrooms, bean curd and other stuff. She had also bought 6 crabs from the market earlier in the morning. So I had to abandon any thoughts of starting on the electrical works in my Denai Alam house as I was expected to prepare the crabs and serve up black pepper crabs. Sorry - no photos taken. Busy day.

After our dinner, My wife, Alex and I dropped Danny back in the center of town - he had his own activities for a Saturday night. And we skedaddled to Vincent's parents house. Alex had wanted to light up lanterns with Madeline. She had agreed and also told us that BBQ would be available!!. By the way, Mid Autumn festival is also known as Lantern festival or mooncake festival. The festival has a story behind it. See here for the details.

We started the night with Alex, Madeline and my wife preparing the lanterns. Once those were up, the BBQ pit was fired up. Took quite a while to get that fired up - and Vincent's dad did all the work. I think I ate too much for dinner. I was feeling lethargic throughout the night (lazy lah!!). There were 2 dogs in the compound - both are NOT friendly to strangers. But Rocky was the fiercer one. Everytime Alex made sudden movements - he would growled and bark at him, I had to remind Alex to walk and talk normally and not act hyper as he is apt to do sometimes.

One thing we learn very fast was that paper lanterns burns and they burn very fast. throughout the night, lanterns just went up in flames in a very sudden manner. So much so, I was waiting with my camera - ready to take a shot of a burning lantern. No such luck.

The nearest I got was seeing smoke from a couple of the lanterns. Took some shots and then the smoke fizzled out. Still, as you can see, the bottom of the lanterns have been burnt. We must have lost at least 5 lanterns that night.

Luckily we celebrated on 13th. Tonight is the 14th as I make this entry and it has been raining since 5pm!!

I got an I-Jerry!!!

Finally - after waiting for quite a while, my I-Jerry has arrived. It is a speaker which works differently. It needs a hard surface in order for the sound to be transmitted. Lift it off the table and it is speechless. Got one for Elaine too. She had been just as anxious as me waiting for it's arrival.

The sound from the little guy is clear and crisp. Been trying all types of music on it for a while. Jerry also comes with 1G of memory so you can input from music players, such as, CD, MD player, or copy from the notebook PC, MP3, MP4, etc, and it can play them on a standalone basis.

Product Specifications:
Fashionable and lovely
Volume control on its ears
Max. output power: 12W
Input AC voltage: 100V-240V
Output DC voltage: 12V
Static current: 1A
Frequency response: 100-17KHz
Sensitivity: 80db
Size: 128*75*75mm
Weight: 740g

If anyone is interested to find out more similar products, go to this site. Or write to

ESSI Asia Sdn Bhd (758945-K)
B-3A-26, Block B, Merchant Square,
Jalan Tropicana Selatan 1, PJU 3,
47410 Petaling Jaya, Selangor Darul Ehsan,
West Malaysia.
Tel: +603-7883 0636 Fax: +603-7883 0955
Email: mailto:info@essiasia.com.my

Thanks Vincent for helping to get them.

Mid Valley/ The Gardens - 7th Sept 2008

My family spent almost 8 hours at Mid Valley and The Gardens today. I think that was the longest time we had ever spent in the shopping complex. Halfway through, Alex was already complaining that his feet was tired...... but they miraculously became okay again when he was told that I had permission from a sponsor to get him his Sony PSP today!!

We were at the shopping complex by 10.30am to avoid the lack of parking lots. Anytime you arrive after 12,30pm on a weekend, you can be assured of little or NO parking lots available. You would have to wait and hope that someone would be leaving near where you are waiting. These waits can be as long as an hour.

First we went to the GAP. I had RM1000.00 worth of vouchers to spend!! Won that some time back and then was told that I could not use it during sales (which was the whole of last month!). Alex and my wife managed to grab a few Tees, some socks and even a backpack. That came to RM802. Used RM800 of the vouchers and paid the difference in cash - all RM2 of it. Got a free water bottle and a free membership added to the whole deal. Okay I guess, since I only spend RM2 cash for everything.

Then we decided to explore the Gardens. We had never gone beyond the 1st floor on all our visits. We got something at Marks and Spencer. Walked into a couple of mobile phone shops. I was looking for a second phone for private use. The Gardens even had ketupat shaped lanterns hanging all over. Was this suppose to be Tanglung Raya?? Went all the way up to Borders (the bookshop) and the GSC Cinema level. By then Alex was thirsty, so we decided to try the "Delights of Gurney Drive" located on level 3 (use the middle escalators, not the ones at the Isetan or Robinsons ends). They had 16 hawker style stalls located all around the dining area offering authentic Penang fare. They claim that they had 16 chefs from Penang preparing the food. You can just make out some of the stalls behind my wife.

Alex and wife are not big eaters, so I ended up ordering Char Kway Teow and Sotong Kangkong (squid with morning glory), a glass of ice lemon tea (which was more lemon and little tea with lots of ice). Wife ordered what she thought was pig stomach noodles. Turns out to be Pig Intestines with kidney noodles. Food was good but pricey. As an example, Char Kway Teow was RM12.80 +10% (svc charge), which Little Penang Cafe in Mid valley only charged RM9.80 for the same thing. Of course the typical hawker only charges RM4 or so in most places.

After lunch, we popped over to Mid Valley. Walked on every 1st and 2nd floors of Jusco, Toys R'Us and so on and by then Alex was complaining of tired feet. According to my pedometer, we had only done about 8000 steps so far. So i suggested that we stopped over at Burger King for a rest and drinks. While he was resting, I popped over to the Samsung shop next to Besk Denki. After a big of haggling, decided on a Samsung SGH-L760 for my second phone. Very basic features - only MP3, 2M camera and 3G. Nothing fancy.

I had SMSed a sponsor if i could buy the PSP for Alex today, since we were there. Sponsor agreed and I told Alex. Eyes lit up immediately. No more tired feet. Made our way up to the 3rd floor. First shop which we had inquired previously had no stock of the Mint Green Slim and Lite PSP. So we went to a second shop. Package, including downloading up to 7 games onto a 4G memory card, came to RM979. By the time we were finished, it was almost 6pm!!

Loooong day!