Proving through action

I was at the Jelutong market place this morning when I passed by a man who was selling abrasive sheet to clean the bottom of cooking pots. He told the crowd around him that the abrasive piece is very good as it can remove carbonised coating on the wok's bottom by rubbing it with the aid of water.

To prove that it is really water and not other chemical that he poured from his bottle, he drank the water first before pouring it onto the bottom of the pot he was dealing with. If you look at his action, you will surely be convinced that it is water all right and not chemical of any sort.

The man is really smart. He has proven his point in a simple way.

The three-day rental scam

If you have a house for rent, watch out for people who offer to pay you very attractive rental.

There is evil intention behind their act. Read the following true account of the rental scam.

A man, Mr X wanted to rent a house on a daily basis after having seen the telephone number of the house owner somewhere.

He offered to pay RM200 per day for three days that he would stay in the house. This transpired only through the phone. Being a busy man, the house owner had no time to see this tenant and he would come to collect the RM600 on the third day. Meanwhile he asked the tenant to collect the keys from the guardhouse as he left them with the guard.

On the third day, the house owner telephoned the tenant because he wanted to collect the rental from the man. However, the telephone was not opened. He tried several times and lt went dead all the time. Feeling suspicious he went to his flat unit and sure enough the man had esconded. Hence he locked his house with a new lock.

On the next day, a group of Banglashis came to the flat, telling the guard they were renting a house there. The guard took them to the unit mentioned earlier. They could not open the door of the flat unit. The guard then telephoned the house owner. He told them that he was not renting out the unit at that moment.

Only then did the foreign workers realise that the earlier temporary tenant had cheated them. He collected RM1900 from them, that is RM800 for deposit, RM800 for one month's rent and RM300 as utility bill deposit. He had produced an agreement with fake name and IC number on his part.

In conclusion, the unscrupulous tenant had cashed in on his deal with the house owner, milking money out of the Bangladeshis who worked in a nasi kandar eatery.

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Honesty is the best policy

It was such a coincidence that I witnessed two real cases of honesty shown by two different people, a woman and a man.

This morning, I was on my usual trip to Jelutong market to have my breakfast when I was touched by the act of a woman who bought newspaper from the vendor from whom I bought my newspapers, namely The Star and Kwong Wah Yit Poh. When I was there, I saw a woman returning one ringgit and twenty sen to the newspaper vendor. She told her that it was embedded in the newspaper that she had bought. How honest the lady was!

After breakfast, my wife and I were on our rounds to buy our things. We stopped at a hardware stall to buy a can opener. A Malay lady was beside us buying something too. Then she gave the man five ringgit. On checking, the hardware vendor realised that there were two five-ringgit notes. Immediately he called her back because he wanted to return the extra five ringgit to her. Another case of honesty being displayed right in front of me again.

As I have said in my earlier posts, our lives are full of causes and effects. If your take someone's things or money, somehow or other you will have to repay him or her in this life and the next life and you will have to pay more. That is how karma works. Hence we should not take what is not ours.

In short, honesty is the best policy.

Thoughts on Father's Day

Today is Father's Day. Whenever I think of my father, I will always remember his stern look. I still remembered being whacked by him for not following him to sell sugar-cane, and other titbits at the gambling site at a village near a river. The gamblers would frequent our stall and bought sugarcane of other titbits. By selling these my father earned extra money for the family. He was selling fish in the morning and he made full use of the after to bring in more income. I didn't give a thought to that the at time, being still small and was ignorant of such things.

My father was very good at calligraphy. He signed my report card using a Chinese brush. I still kept my report card just to keep fond memory of the fine calligraphy. He could memorise the
'San Zi Jing' or 'Three-worded Mantra'. Up to now I can still remember the initial parts of this book.

People often came to my father when they had fish-bone stuck to their upper roof of their mouths. When they approached my dad, he would take out a cup, pour some water into it and point his forefinger towards the sun and start to draw something on the surface of the water. Then he would ask his 'patient' to drink three sips and the rest would be thrown onto the roof. Miraculously the bone that got stuck in the mouth would simply disappeared. Unluckily, he did not pass this mysterious knowledge to me and I had no idea how to do it, especially what to draw on the surface of the water in the cup.

I really hope my late father had been born into a better realm than human realm.

Another Internet Scam

I just received an e-mail from 'Public Bank' telling me that my e-banking has been blocked and I have to go to a site indicated to key in my ac number, user id and password. I knew it was an Internet scam.

However, I clicked the site to see what it looked like. My good browser or my genuine windows 7 Internet securities tells me that it is a fake site and refused to take me there. Anyway, should readers come across such an email, do not respond to it or your money will be syphoned by the syndicate.

Charging fees for ten rounds of treament at one shot

I was talking to the lady acupuncturist who inserted big needle to separate my vein from the muscle in the treatment of my 'trigger finger' or carpal tunnel when I asked her where she received her training in acupuncture. She told that she went to China to undergo a short course in this field.

One thing she told me about the practitioners there is that they charge patients fees for ten rounds of treatment. According to her, they have their reasons. For one thing, the effect of acupuncture will only show after a number of treatments. For another, they need not ask the patients to come back for treatment because they have paid the fees and they will automatically come for subsequent treatment.

In Malaysia, she said, the practitioners will charge the patients per trip. Some will stop treatment after two times because they don't see improvement in their condition of ailments. For my case I keep going because I know that one or two times of acupuncture will not produce the desire effect.

Tricked by the cry of children

Recently there have been many cases of fake kidnapping done to demand ransom from the parents of victims. This is how it is done.

A man or woman will telephone the house of the supposed victim in the kidnapping (How they got the number is best known to the crook only). He will tell the father or mother that he has their child and will release him only upon payment of a ransom. The amount is then quoted, followed by a tape recording of a child crying and asking the father or mother to save him. Usually, the parents will be too panicked to discern the voice, thinking that it must be their child's and so pay the money only to find that their child is still in school unharmed. The police cannot put the 'kidnapper' in prison as there is no case of real abduction.

There was one case told by my friend, Yong from Raub. The man demanded RM20 000 and the mother bargained it down to RM5000 but she still did not have enough money and went to borrow money from a friend. The friend told her to check whether her daughter was in school as the school was very near her house. Hence she went to the school and found her daughter safe and sound. Of course, she did not pay any sum of money to the crook.

I hope parents who read this blog will be cautious and not be hoodwinked by the crook who is out to make fast money.

Thank you, Mr Tan

During the recent PC Fair held at Penang International Sports Area or PISA, I went as usual to buy something worthwhile. At the entrance to the first floor, what greeted me were a lot of navigators which prices ranged from RM499 to RM1299. Then came the service providers for wireless who offered very good package but I brushed them off to the accessories section.

After half an hour, I was upstairs to the usual booths. I stopped to buy 50 pieces of Verbatim DVD-R discs. With RM65 I could get the ones made in Japan plus 5 pieces of CDR specially manufactured for recording music. Then I scouted around for external hard disks. When i went from booth to booth, I found that the price for a 250G Hard disk cost around RM230. Finally I came to one booth which offered me RM180 for a Western Digital 250 G hard disk. Alas! I did not bring enough money to buy it and started to leave when the man (whom I later knew was Mr Tan)agreed to allow me to settel the bill partly in cash and partly via credit card. My HSBC card was then surrendered to him for processing.

I left the booth happily for having obtained a good offer without realising the man had forgotten to return me the credit card. It was three days later that one man from HSBC phoned to tell me that a Mr Tan wanted to return me the credit card. This Mr Tan had phoned HSBC to get my phone number. After talking to Mr Tan, he agreed to hand the card to me personally but then he was in Sungai Petani and he could only do it on Monday.

True to his promise, I received the card personally from Mr Tan, as promised. Thank you Mr Tan for being an honest and responsible businessman. If the card goes to other hands I don't know how much money I have to pay for other people's purchases. Once again, thank you Mr Tan.