End of 2012...

On the brink of crossing over from 2012 towards 2013...
We look back upon the past in an attempt to gaze into the future...
What has been done and what is to come...

- BuLaDiFu -

Happy Holidays 2012

Gradually...without me knowing, I have already passed through yet another cycle. Its been almost one and a half years since I've started on this bold project of mine and one year since I've gained approval from Google's Adsense.

However, up until this point, there's still nothing much to show and assure myself that I'm trodding down a right path. From the past year's records, it does appear that I'm slowly gaining traffic from a couple hundreds per month till now maybe 5k a month. Earnings-wise, it has increased from 0 cents a day till something like a couple of cents a day.

But day after day, time after time, these nagging questions kept surfacing in my mind...
- Should I persevere? Am I doing the right thing? Should I take it up a notch or just give it up? What will I see at the end of this tunnel? Will it be good or will it be bad?

Hehehe....funny huh? How these sort of things just creeps up to you (everytime) during the end of the year. But oh well...no point in that I guess...I'm already in way too deep. Anyway, I've already given myself a deadline of 3 to 4 years to see how deep this rabbit hole is. And if things doesn't work out by then, I guess I'll have to start looking for another way out. Well, enough of these mood-dampening stuff...there's a whole new year ahead of us all so...

Here's Google's 2012 doodle for the X'mas season

And here's me (shamelessly using their doodle) wishing you

Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas

200th Anniversary of Grimm's Fairy Tales

Today's Google doodle features a set of pictures strung together like a picture book depicting the famous tale of "Little Red Riding Hood". This together with other well-known tales like "Cinderella", "The Frog Prince", "Hansel and Gretel", "Rapunzel", "Rumpelstiltskin" and "Snow White" were all written by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm in their first collection of folk tales named Children's and Household Tales (published in 1812).

120th Anniversary of the Nutcracker Ballet

The Nutcracker, is a two-act ballet that was originally choreographed by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov with a score by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. It was first premiered one hundred and twenty years ago on the 18th of December at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg.

Ada Lovelace's 197th Birthday

Today's Google doodle features an English mathematician and writer called Ada Lovelace. She is primarily recognized for her work on Charles Babbage's early mechanical general-purpose computer, the analytical engine as well as a set of her own notes which she added in (as a supplement) during her translation of an article by Italian mathematician Luigi Menabrea (which is also on the said analytical engine).

The reason behind this recognition of the notes is because it contains what can be considered as the first computer program (an algorithm encoded for processing by a machine). Additionally, she and her notes played an important part in the early history of computers as she foresaw the capability of computers going beyond merely performing calculations.

Bank Managed by a Bunch of Monkeys...

I think this would be just about the most appropriate picture I could find on the internet to represent just how "capable" the people working in **Bank is.

Reason
Roughly two weeks earlier, around end of Nov. 2012, I helped my brother go to this bank to inquire about his housing loan as it had been five years since he had been paying for the loan. And according to the contract, after a five year bond period, he should be allowed to do a full settlement without incurring any penalty.

And so after verifying with them that there will be no penalty, we followed the bank's procedures to apply for a full settlement by filling in some necessary forms and whatnot so that they can start calculating the amount that he needs to pay.

Naturally, after handing in the forms, they then told us that they will need to send these forms up to KL for the calculations and then we will have to wait for a letter from them (all this would roughly take up to two weeks according to them again).

So just yesterday, after two weeks have passed and no letter, I went to this bank again to help my brother inquire about the progress. And the person at the bank said that the amount to pay has been calculated and we can just settle the whole thing immediately by paying up the required amount.

Sounds okay up to this point? But here's the insane part...

Upon seeing the required amount to pay, we were shocked by the fact that it was roughly RM 9k more than what we had owed the bank (when we checked for the balance the last time two weeks ago before applying for the full settlement).

And upon questioning them about it.....the person actually told us to call to a certain number and that fella will explain to us why there was such a huge discrepancy in amount to pay. I refused to do so and questioned her further asking why she can't tell me the reasons herself. And after doing that, she gave an excuse of it being a penalty for breaking the contract early. But of course, I questioned her back and told her that we checked and confirmed earlier, two weeks ago, that there will be no penalty (the irony here is that she was the one who told us about there being no penalty).

So next, we demanded that she check to confirm whether there is a penalty or not...which she did and confirmed that there should be no penalty and that the sum calculated is wrong. So I asked her how could those people in KL calculate such a thing wrongly? And then some other excuses came up along the lines of "these were calculations done by the people in KL and they don't have the original contract" or something like that...which imo is just silly since how could they calculate and anyhow hit us with a penalty without even having or seeing the original contract (to confirm if there should be a penalty or not) in the first place?

So now, she wants us to give her a copy of the contract together with filling up the same forms a second time so that she can resubmit the application to "recalculate" the sums again.....when its clearly their own fault for calculating it wrongly in the first place? Now what would you call this? Sloppy work?

Without any choice, I guess we'll have to refill and sign the form, resubmit it and wait for them to recalculate it and hopefully no other wacky numbers get churned out...

Anyway, the most scary thing I can associate with this kind of experience is that they, the bank, have to rely on "US" the customers to point out their error in calculations?? What if we as customers don't realise the error and never brought it up to them? Would we just foolishly pay up whatever they said so they can eat us of our hard earned money?

- BuLaDiFu -