TimothyTiah.com

Angry Streamyx Customer

Ahhh Streamyx!

Many years ago, Streamyx saved our lives!

While the rest of the world was already moving on broadband, all of us in Malaysia were still stuck with dial-up.

I remember how I used to play Counterstrike on foreign servers with 300 ping where all the other people there had 50 ping.

Yes I got my ass kicked.

And when I killed anyone they said I was cheating because I was a lagger.

For those of you who don’t play CS and can’t relate to the problem, allow me to illustrate in more simple terms.

It’s like I got on a race track to race with some people.

And while everyone on the race track drives THIS

I drive… THIS

So obviously I almost NEVER win.

But on the very very rare unlikely occasions that I DO WIN, I get responses like this

“YOU FARKING CHEATER!!!
YOUR CAR SMALLER SO LIGHTER SO YOU CAN GO FASTER THAN OUR CARS!!! BAN THE CHEATER!!!.”

So be thankful that we have Streamyx.

But fast forward to today and Streamyx has gone from the solution to all our internet problems to the problem itself.

I was reading Hong Kiat’s blog and he brought an interesting audio file to my attention.

It’s a recording of a very angry Streamyx customer calling up because he had made numerous complaints about his Streamyx being down and nothing had been done about it.

Then finally a technician came over to his place and told him that it was his modem problem. He spent RM300 on a new modem only to find out later that the internet still wasn’t working (ie the problem probably wasn’t his modem).
So he wasted RM300.

I can understand his frustration and his pain because for the past few months, my Streamyx at home had been down for at least 20 days in a month (some months it goes down for a full month).

But I can also understand the poor Customer Service Officer on the other end of the line taking in all the vulgarities.Heck… correct me if I’m wrong but it really isn’t any of their faults that Streamyx’s service has been so poor.

Yet, I must say well done to both the customer service officer and her supervisor Kumaran who later took over the call.

They were both polite and calm to the customer in spite of the insults they were getting.

Few people can find the patience in themselves to do that… I know I personally can’t.

Kudos to Streamyx Customer Service.

Download the audio file to the call here.

Trust me… it’s worth listening to.


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Netccentric Pte Ltd

Netccentric Pte Ltd.

That’s what my leetle dotcom is called.

My creative Singaporean partner Ming came up with the name (which is meant to incorporate the words “interNET” and “eCCENTRIC”)
Netccentric Pte Ltd (our parent company) is based in Singapore but we also have a Malaysian company Netcentric Sdn Bhd to handle all the R&D work for the company which explains why I spend most of my time in Penang right now.

For those of you who noticed, the Singaporean company is spelt with an extra “C”.

The joke behind that is, months ago we incorporated Netccentric Pte Ltd.

But when I came back to Malaysia to try and incorporate Netccentric Sdn Bhd, the Registrar of Companies in Malaysia didn’t allow it.

They only gave us the permission to incorporate the company name with ONE C in the middle ie Netcentric Sdn Bhd.

So we settled for that eventhough our company logo was spelt with a double C.

Of course we later found out that used in our context, “Netcentric” is the proper way to spell it so the Malaysian Registrar of Companies was right and they were just trying to correct our bad English.

WOOHOO!!!

Malaysia Boleh!

Anyway, our leetle dotcom at the moment comprises of 4 people though there will be another 2 joining us in the next couple of months.

We have two offices, one in Singapore and one in Penang where I have a tiny office with a table like this.

Notice the fan I have right next to my chair.

The central air-conditioning shuts off after 5.30pm so my office turns into an oven after working hours.

The fan saves my life every day.Our office in Singapore though is a little hidden shop-house somewhere in the city that gives me a very dotcom feel to it.

Every time I walk in there for my meetings I think about the little garage that the Google Guys started Google from.

The Penang Team though is a little more spoilt.

We work from an office located in this building.
So what exactly does our leetle dotcom do?

In time to come, I will slowly reveal bits and pieces here on my blog but as for now, all I can say is… we’re working on something that doesn’t quite exist yet in Asia.

No it’s nothing as certain or tried and true like web designing or e-stores that but rather… something new that will either grow to be really big or fail miserably in the near future.

So it could be anything from having a new search engine to even selling fish online.

An online fish market. How cool is that?

No longer will you have to go to a smelly fish market like this to buy fish.

All you have to do is go online *click* *click* *click* and voila!

You have fish for dinner!

I bumped into the owner of an international publishing company headquartered in our building just a few days ago and he said to me

“Timothy… I should buy some shares in your dotcom then when it grows big, I won’t have to work anymore.”

I laughed and said
“HAHA! Mr Chew*, need I remind you that 9 out of 10 dotcoms fail miserably”.

*Of course… Chew isn’t his real name

My Precious (Part 2)

Alright, some people have been asking me to give an update on how far I am along with my tub of Haagen Dazs ice-cream.

But first… I have to confess that I have SHAMED YOU ALL.

This is all that I have been able to finish.*sniff* *sniff*

Please forgive me… I will TRY to have it finished by this weekend 🙁

ReviewMe.com

This is a sponsored post.

I visited Cely and Jason’s blog and noticed how they both recently made some money from this new site called www.reviewme.com.

What ReviewMe does is they work out a price for your blog using some fairly complicated algorithm and leave it to advertisers to pay the price to ask you to review their site or their product.

A brilliant idea!

Now there seems to be a little stigma when it comes to bloggers making money from advertising, for fear that they have sold out.

But when you are poor like Boss Stewie, you go for it.

So may I suggest to my readers.

Just go to ReviewMe.com and follow these simple steps to make more money than you would probably make from Adsense in a month.

1) Register for an account.

Sign up for an account which takes just a few minutes.

2) Submit your blog / URL / site.

Leave it to ReviewMe to determine your site’s ranking based on Alexa ranking, Technorati ranking, RSS subscribers and popularity of the blog. Once they’ve done that, you would have your price, a range of USD20 to USD200.

3) Take a quick nap while waiting for assignments.

Advertisers who registered themselves would then scout for blogs / reviewers / bloggers who they think can write a review on their products / services.

Once they decided you are the one to write the review, you will be assigned to it and it’s up to you to accept the assignment or not.

4) Accept the assignment, write away and submit to the site.

Upon accepting the review, you have 48 hours to write the review and then submit the URL to ReviewMe for verification so they can make sure you’re not cheating!

5) And for the best part…. GET PAID.

If your review is accepted by ReviewMe / advertisers, you will get paid accordingly.

And earn yourselves some money.

WOOHOO!!!

Stewie By Day… “Pelacur Lelaki” by Night

Google is one of the best things that has ever happened to the internet.

Now whenever you’re looking for something online or even offline, just type your wish in Google and it will bring you to it.

Larry Page (one of Google’s founders) recently said that in spite of having the best search engine today, there is still room for much improvement.

I used to think to myself
What? But you guys are already so good at finding the RIGHT things“.

As of today… I take those words back.

I was looking through my site stats today and I happened to find someone who came to my blog after Googling “Pelacur Lelaki” (Male Prostitute)Naturally, my first reaction was WHAT DA FLYING FUK?!”

And I remembered that I never once wrote those words on my blog!

But when I checked it out I found the reason.

One of my readers (Gwen) had left it in the comments for one of my previous posts here.

Her exact comment read
Menjadi pelacur lelaki adalah satu perkhidmatan terhadap Negara anda. Jangan ditipu oleh orang dewasa, inilah amalan mulia.

Stewie boleh!!!”

Thanks for the “Google Bombing” Gwen…

I appreciate it.

Now would you like to leave more comments on my blog?

Why stop at “Pelacur Lelaki”?

Why don’t go on to terms like “Pemborong Kondom” or “Penghisap Kotek”.

I know the rest of you guys would be itching to make fun of this.

But oh well… what is there if we can’t laugh about it together.

So there…go ahead and make all the fun you want.

You bastards!

You know you want to.

PS: Larry… when you have the time… please fix Google… it’s clearly broken…

Stewie By Day… "Pelacur Lelaki" by Night

Google is one of the best things that has ever happened to the internet.

Now whenever you’re looking for something online or even offline, just type your wish in Google and it will bring you to it.

Larry Page (one of Google’s founders) recently said that in spite of having the best search engine today, there is still room for much improvement.

I used to think to myself
What? But you guys are already so good at finding the RIGHT things“.

As of today… I take those words back.

I was looking through my site stats today and I happened to find someone who came to my blog after Googling “Pelacur Lelaki” (Male Prostitute)Naturally, my first reaction was WHAT DA FLYING FUK?!”

And I remembered that I never once wrote those words on my blog!

But when I checked it out I found the reason.

One of my readers (Gwen) had left it in the comments for one of my previous posts here.

Her exact comment read
Menjadi pelacur lelaki adalah satu perkhidmatan terhadap Negara anda. Jangan ditipu oleh orang dewasa, inilah amalan mulia.

Stewie boleh!!!”

Thanks for the “Google Bombing” Gwen…

I appreciate it.

Now would you like to leave more comments on my blog?

Why stop at “Pelacur Lelaki”?

Why don’t go on to terms like “Pemborong Kondom” or “Penghisap Kotek”.

I know the rest of you guys would be itching to make fun of this.

But oh well… what is there if we can’t laugh about it together.

So there…go ahead and make all the fun you want.

You bastards!

You know you want to.

PS: Larry… when you have the time… please fix Google… it’s clearly broken…

Step Up

Last weekend, a friend of mine asked me out to watch a dance movie called Step Up.

I told him that I honestly wasn’t very keen when it came to dancing movies. Not because I don’t appreciate good dancing, but because I would rather watch dancing without the cheesey plots of their movies.

But since it was the 101th time he had asked me for a movie in spite of me turning him down the rest of the time, I decided to do a bit of National Service and go for it.

There we were, a bunch of guys… all rushing off to watch a dance movie!

I remember how one of my girlfriends in the past always begged me to go watch dance movies with her but I always found an excuse not to go.

And now.. here I was…. going for a dance movie with a bunch of guys.

I surprise myself sometimes.

Anyway, I must say the movie wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. The plot was indeed cheesey and unoriginal but I thought the script was fairly well-written and the actors/actresses weren’t too bad.

What I didn’t quite fancy though… was the dancing.

At the beginning of the movie there was a party scene when the main actor was shown dancing with a girl.

I’m not sure about everyone else but my impression of dancing is… moving with the beat.

All the dude was doing was moving real fast… just like some of the drunk guys I’ve seen in clubs in Penang.

And heck… the camera focused on him like it was the highlight of the show… like it was trying to show the audience what a fantastic dancer he is.

I don’t know.. maybe I just didn’t see it… did you guys think his dancing at that part was fantastic?

(The rest of the dancing scenes in the movie were of different types of dancing and weren’t as bad but they weren’t great as well)

To me… we don’t have to look much further than the streets of Korea to see good dancing.

Check this video out.


Now in my opinion… THAT… is GOOD DANCING…

I’m Bringing Sexy Back

One of my readers happened to say to me the other day
“Boss Stewie… you are not a true blogger because you never camwhore… real bloggers camwhore!”.

And to that I will now reply…

I don’t camwhore because of 2 reasons.

Because I am not a hot girl and because I am not a hot girl
(okay maybe that counts as only one reason
).

And also because…. lets face it… all of you who read my blog do so NOT because you want to see me snap a million pictures of myself and put them up here.

But ahhh… I often give my readers what they want.

So yesterday after work I went home… and took a few pictures for you guys.

And there you have it.

My best attempt at camwhoring!Yes… I looked nervous because unlike other bloggers… I am a little camera shy.

And of course, at an attempt to look less pretentious and more myself, I put on my big fat white cap.

Don’t mind my weird smile.
It’s the result of trying not to laugh knowing how stupid I look with that cap on.

Come to think of it… I think I’m going to consider making this the dress code in my leetle dotcom.

Everyone must come to work in a long-sleeve shirt with tie AND a BIG FAT VON DUTCH cap to make it look like everyone in the company from Malaysia to Singapore has big big brains.

I’m bringing sexy back…

Meeting Readers in Penang

Just a few days ago I decided to meet up with two faithful readers of my tiny blog: Eve and Ai Ling.
Like typical Penangnites, we went for a hawker food lunch which the girls generously paid for before I could get my hands on the tab.

So to return the favour, I bought them coffee later at Coffee Bean where we had a little chat among ourselves.

I was on a trigger happy mood that day when it came to snapping pictures.

So much that both Eve and Ai Ling were bordering PISSED OFF when it came to me snapping candid pictures of them.

The funny thing about photos is that some people look different when they’re posing for the camera than when they have candid shots taken of them.

Candid shots sometimes yield Funny results”.

For example,

This is how I normally would look when I’m prepared for the camera shot.
And this is how I look when the sonofabitch photographer takes a picture of me without warning.
William Hung’s mother once told the press NOT to take pictures of her son from beneath the chin because it makes him look fat.

I shall get my mother to do a similar press release for me.

The good news is that this is only the case for SOME people… not all…

Some people look the same in whatever camera shots you take of them.

Allow me to illustrate.

This is how Eve normally looks when you take a PROPER photo of her.A very very stunning girl in real life… so much that even this picture doesn’t do justice.

And this is how Eve looks… when I take bad candid pictures of her.

Or when I take even worse candid pictures of her.
Now lets move on to Ai Ling.

This is Ai Ling when she’s posing for the shot.And Ai Ling when she’s not prepared for the shot.


See the difference?

No? Because there ISN’T a difference…

Ai Ling is in the category of: immune to “looking funny in candid shots“.

So there you have it.

Everybody…

Meet Eve and Ai Ling.

Eve: You still love me right? Right????

What Women Want

A week ago, I had a long chat with one of my old friends whom I will refer to here as Carrie.

Carrie is one of those rare HOT girls that you can keep as a strictly platonic friend.

In the real world, if a guy thinks a girl is hot.. he’s always gonna keep trying to hump her.

I mean… you guys understand that right?

Allow me to illustrate…

Now unless you have no penis (or a very confused one)

How in the world… do you be STRICTLY FRIENDS with a girl like this
EVEN MORE SO IF SHE’S PERMANENTLY DRESSED LIKE THAT.

Anyway Carrie was telling me about Janet, one of our hot common friends who recently broke up with her boyfriend.

Janet is a whole different ball game altogether.

Being the top in her class at college, Janet is clearly one of those rare girls that are not only incredibly hot and sexy but also unbelievably smart.

Not just book smart… but REALLY SMART.
(You’d be able to tell just by talking to her for 5 minutes)

Janet’s boyfriend (or ex-boyfriend) on the other hand were one of those “cool” guys at college… you know… the kind that always dresses well and wears sunglasses like this So physically, they were pretty much a good match. Hot and Cool.

They went out for a year plus and were pretty much a happy couple.

So I asked Carrie what went wrong in their relationship.

And the answer that Carrie gave me… was a little of a shock.

Carrie said
“She felt that her boyfriend wasn’t very smart or ambitious…”.

Then it hit me, just a week before that I heard about another friend who dumped her boyfriend not because he was ugly or because she got bored of him… but because he wasn’t “smart or ambitious”.

The funny thing though… was that the guy she’s with at the moment… is hardly smart or ambitious!

All he does is play games and surf Friendster all day.So I asked her shamelessly one day (Able to be blunt because she’s a pretty good friend)

“You dumped your previous boyfriend because he wasn’t smart or ambitious.

Your current boyfriend is hardly ambitious unless working to have 10 level 60 characters in World of Warcraft and three Friendster accounts with 500 friends each is the kind of ambition you’re looking fo
r.

He talks about nothing else but cars, football and games… obviously not exactly the smartest person around… so what’s the difference?

She looked at me, giggled and whispered in my ear
“Well this boyfriend is already rich… he doesn’t have to be ambitious.”

So I started thinking…

WHAT HAPPENED TO ALL THOSE GOOD OLD SCHOOL DAYS WHEN ALL THAT MATTERED WAS
“I like you… you like me… lets hold hands and kiss
“?
Now not only do we have to “PRETEND TO BE RICH” but we also have to pretend to be smart and ambitious!!!

I don’t know about you guys but I’m going to get myself a copy of Forbes magazine and MEMORISE EVERY LINE.

Then the next time I’m out with a girl I like I’m going to randomly recite

“The average Japanese couple spends $210,000 per child on food, clothing, entertainment and education”.Then she’s going to say
“WHAT?!”

And I would reply her

“The free linux operating system set off one of the biggest revolutions in the history of computing when it leapt from the fingertips of a Finnish college kid named Linus Torvalds 15 years ago”.

And I’m also going to tell her that I have big big plans to be richer than Bill Gates one day.Then she’ll think that I’m smart AND ambitious… and we’ll both get married and live happily ever after

(at least until she realises that I’m poor, fat, dumb and a slacker… but by then it’ll be too late… BWHAAHAHHA).