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There’s something about Kajang Hill

I know it sounds a little presumptuous to say that there are courses that “doesn’t quite fit our eye.” That expression was made famous by a dude called Martin Kaymer when describing the hallowed Augusta, drawing universal derision from all sectors, including his own mother. Augusta doesn’t fit the eye?? It’s like a full blooded male saying, “Scarlett Johansson  doesn’t really fit my eye. I think Caesar from the Planet of the Apes is heck prettier.” But you know, whatever Martin’s inclination is, that’s personal. The fact is, he has the right to say those things because, ummm, he’s good. He’s not great, but he’s a lot better than me or my respected readers…no offense.

Where as for us, Hackers, to say something doesn’t fit the eye is even more ridiculous, because (speaking for myself), I suck at this game. I don’t have a consistent swing or a predictable ball flight, or even a guarantee that I would be able to hit the dang ball…there is no way a course set up has any inkling to my game, because at times it flies left, at times it flies right, at times it doesnt make past the red tees.

But if I were to say a course that doesn’t ‘fit my cock-eye’, it’d be Kajang Hill. I don’t know what about it…I just suck more than usual playing this course!

We teed up on the first nine and I actually played very well…aside from starting the 3 holes like a monkey, I know why: The first hole, a good drive saw my ball plugged into the rough. Playing competition, no way I could get it out. Double. Second hole, pull near the trees. Instead of being in the bunker or at least on the ground…it was literally perched on the roots! It took 3 shots to get out!

The back nine…Oh gosh. I was 11 over 4 holes. I OB-ed the first 3 holes with massive pulls, and almost OB-ed the fourth when my ball was stuck under the ledge in a bunker. WHAT THE…after that, I played good golf, but my gosh, what a string of lousy first 3 holes in my nines!

And this is not the first time. Previous adventures in Kajang Hill yielded the same result…white tee, blue tee no difference. Blue I struggle with the length. White, I struggle with the accuracy, constantly blasting my ball over the fairway OB.

I’m not saying Kajang Hill sucks. It doesn’t…but it’s slowly degrading since nobody bothers about maitenance. It’s closing down end of this year due to housing development I believe. What a crap-shoot. I need to play one more time here to redeem my pride!

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A letter to Samsung: SAMSUNG SUCKS

Wordle: Samsung sucks

Note: In response to my email, Samsung immediately responded and waived the maintenance fee and bumped my fridge up from a ‘couple of days’ to ‘fixed immediately’ with spare parts. It shows two things;

1) Samsung has the right culture to know when they messed up and now did what they can to rectify it, and to improve customer experience. It takes a big company to say, “Look, we messed up, here’s what we can do to fix it.” Of course, if they have thrown in a galaxy tab as well, I’d be a crazy Samsung fan for the rest of my life, as of now, I’m not so pissed off anymore and at least I have back my beloved fridge so I can eat my ice-cream.

2) There is power in the pen. Learning how to write strong complain letters is one way to fight back against perceived injustice…but it takes a good company who appreciates customers to respond to it, and Samsung is one of it. Examples of HORRIBLE companies who treat their customers a little lower than cat-shit because they think we’re cheapskates who suck: Malaysian Airlines, AirAsia, Fireflyz. Basically, Malaysian companies. No wonder we’re stuck in third world service, with first world infra…..

**END NOTE**

Dear Samsung,
My samsung RT72SBSM fridge stopped working after only about 2 years. It took Samsung 4 days to get back to us on support, and now we need to wait for another 5-6 days before it can be fixed. According to the support personnel, you have no ‘spare parts’. Please note, most of my meat is spoilt and my kitchen has been turned upside down due to this incident.

I am writing in an official complaint to the lady dealing my case on 21 September 2011, at 7:43 pm call, in Selangor, Malaysia. When queried as to why after 2 years the fridge is broken, and overall costing me more than RM350 to fix it, she retorted, “I don’t know what our lifetime of our fridges are.” in a highly rude and condescending manner.We do not appreciate that because of Samsung, our meat and food are SPOILT, our house has no fridge for 10+ days.

Samsung SHOULD know the lifetime of their fridges, and if it cannot even last 2 years, THERE IS SOMETHING WRONG WITH YOUR PRODUCT! You cannot release your accountability to make good products by retorting to customers, “We don’t know what our lifetime of fridges are.” This is an ignorant and completely unprofessional way to respond to a customer, demonstrating the lack of training Samsung support has in terms of customer dealing. I am shocked as such laissez-faire attitude and hope that somehow, samsung can find ways to improve their product support, starting with hiring and training correct people to do the job.

I am terribly disappointed with the fridge, and I am sorry to add that I shall NEVER purchase a SAMSUNG product in my life, and I will likewise recommend everyone to not buy anything branded SAMSUNG.

Your abject product is compounded with shockingly irresponsible support personnel on the ground.I would rather recommend people to go ahead and have their throats ripped off by a pack of hungry Rottweilers than to use anything that sounds remotely like this HORRENDOUS brand. Samsung, please do not make anymore household appliances because you clearly have no idea what you are doing and it’s plain to see even my pet Terrier has more brains than all your R&D staff combined in your sorry piece of crap company.

* Note, the last paragraph was not included in the actual letter to Samsung.

** To other Gilagolfers, sorry, just a rant. Need to put up Anti-Samsung for the search engines! Remember, Samsung sucks! Now, back to GOLF!

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A True Hacker

Since the launch of Gilastats a few weeks ago, we have 37 players registered. I always kinda felt with the limited game I am having, I’d be somewhere down the middle…not so great as to shoot consistent birdies, not so bad as to have my family disown me for destroying this beautiful game of golf.

And among 37 guys on the gilastats ‘tour’ I’m split down the middle on all the 8 main statistics! First time I’m seeing that I’m a hacker for all. For those wondering, the eight main stats are ranked according to the following:

Anyone interested, click on the gilastats button on the menu, or go here and sign up.

Happy Hacking!

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Golf more addictive than Cocaine


Or so many of us who have never taken cocaine would think.

It has been debated for years, since the inception of this peculiar game of chopping down acres of pristine forests and beautiful woodlands to make a course where the only purpose is to put a ball in a hole using a stick. In the medieval times, the king of Scotland banned the game because archers were skipping practice to defend themselves against England, to play this wretched game. It has become so prevalent and despised by non-golfers that the term ‘golf widow’ has been incorporated into the Oxford dictionary.

In the history of sports, two games stand above the rest: Football (I mean the real Football, not the American kind) evokes passion. Golf evokes addiction. The difference between golf and football is simple. Football is a spectator sport. 99% of those jokers you hear talking about their Liverpools, Juventus, Manchester Uniteds and what-not like they are the club’s ambassadors–they don’t PLAY football. Or they can’t. Due to their retarded kicking ability, or their asthmatic disposition or just the fact that their leg-eye coordination resembles an African gibbon trying to hump a black mamba. I’m including myself in those categories, so please don’t get too upset. If you are crazy about the premier league, chances are you play football as well as I do: on the playstation. And that too against my terrier, who can’t hold the gamepad and who is constantly concerned with his bollocks.

Golf is another matter. The whole problem with golf is that it’s not a spectator sport at all. And that’s why I think it’s a huge mistake to include golf into the 2016 Olympics. I mean, it’s such a BORING sport to watch, seriously. Except for Tiger, no one else is worth our time, and you’re better off growing petunias in the backyard to pass time. Golf is a player sport. I.e anyone can pick it up. There’s no barriers to entry at all. There used to be, such as expensive green fees and expensive golf clubs. Anyone that uses those excuses are obviously anti-golf activitists who deserves to be strung up at the 100 meter marker at your driving range. Golf is getting cheaper and cheaper, and with that, everyone, from your asthmatic cousin to the African gibbon humping a black mamba, can pick it up. They might still suck at it, but they know they are probably in the majority of golfers out there, who whiff, duff, top, dig their way to a 120 score.

And golf is a lot more addictive. Non-golfers will never see it because it’s not something that hooks you in by the passion or by the watching, like football. It’s by the playing. It’s like the proverbial skeptic, criticising golf while whiffing, digging and duffing his 7-iron on the range, and suddenly hits a pure shot and is immediately hooked because of two simple words: I CAN.

The concept of I CAN is the key to golf’s addiction. I know hundreds of articles have been written to explain why golf is so addictive. Business, challenge, competition blah blah blah. But nothing matters more than the I CAN philosophy. This is an all encompassing obsession that is within the human mind since the beginning of time, the promise of possibilities. For beginners shooting 120, they remember that pure 8 iron into the green on a the par 3 to set up their only Birdie amidst a trail of destruction of sextuple bogeys. For intermediate hackers, they recall the miracle 3 wood fade from 200 meters that lands soft onto an elevated index 1 green. For the experts, it could be the snaking 40 foot putt across a contoured green. And they live for those moments. And they come back again and again to get that high: from a birdie putt, a 250 meter drive,a perfect 5-iron, a bunker shot into the hole: the exhiliaration is simply unexplainable. And unlike other sport, it’s available to every lay man who plays golf…fat, thin, short, tall, famous, criminals etc. It is the only sport that has the ability to replace other addictions like coke, alcohol,drugs etc. Ask Alice Cooper. You can learn more about the intricacies of addiction through courses available from online universities.

Wall Street Journal wrote an interesting piece here.

Golf addicts find themselves thinking about the previous game and the next game, they spend hours practicing like zombies on the range. History Channel attributed the golf swing as the closest in form and practice to the ancient samurai swordplay, inbuing muscle memories with moves and the mental state of the swordsman: swinging a sword to lop of the head of your enemy in some ways represent the same mental process as bashing your ball 230m down the fairway with your driver.

We are the future generation of samurais, my friends.

Happy Hacking for what’s left of 2011!

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Puasa Gilanalysis 26 – 33

Due to the puasa month, it was perhaps the most golf I’ve managed to played in years, including two tournaments, which I didn’t do too well. Here we go:

Gilanalysis 26: Rahman Putra

I hardly have any good outings in a course that I have been playing since 2005, and in all my games in the championship course, I don’t recall anytime that I broke a 90. Again, it was not to be, but having played an iffy front nine filled with bogeys, the back nine of 44 was a welcome sight.

Gilanalysis 27: Impian

It’s annoying when the game doesn’t come together after a good outing. I started very badly on the back nine, thanks to atrocious putting, which plagued me the entire game, with six three putted greens and 3-4 feet misses at least on 3 occasions. The course was great, the game was a wreck, even 5 pars couldn’t save it.

Gilanalysis 28: Danau

The mallet putter came back in play and was immediately proficient in Danau’s undulating greens, with just 30 putts. Played Danau’s familiar and easier back nine without any major issues, but the front nine was horrible. The first hole itself was a lost cause, with two balls into the drink. The second hole was perhaps the finest par I have, having landed my drive down into the valley of death on the right, and a SW onto the green.

Gilanalysis 29: Glenmarie Valley

Took Advantage of the great pricing at Glenmarie at RM80, and played the valley, where previous score had soared to 102. Teed off the back nine and had complete possession of my game, shooting in 43. For some unknown reason, that possession turned into crapnut on the front, having had my sandy par on the first, proceeded to play like a monkey on weed, shooting +10 in the next 4 holes, before steeling with a lucky 300m drive on the index 1 8th hole, skulling my SW which luckily got caught inches away from the water and parring it. +10 over 4 holes? YUCK.

Gilanalysis 30: Glenmarie Garden

Tournament play, but from the white tees, which really brings up the reality that no matter which tee we use, we will still suck regardless. Due to the white tees, a lot of hazards came into play but it was just a breakdown in the second nine, especially on the easy first, where two shanks led to a triple. On the Index 13, was left with an 8 iron after a great drive, and shank the devil out of it into OB. It’s true that once you shank once, you never really recover from it. I shanked 4 times in the back nine which is the golf equivalent to strapping yourself with TNT and jumping off a rocky cliff into a shark infested boiling water.

Gilanalysis 31: KGNS

The next tournament wasn’t that bad, even though the scores are about the same. At least there were no shanking involved. KGNS and I never really agree on any matter, and that might change, as I might be getting a membership there by the end of the year if all things go ok. It was a shotgun start, so I kicked it off at the par 3 fourth, promptly double bogeying my first two holes with some sorry putting, then steadied somewhat. It all came apart at the par 3 15th, a devilish difficult hole, where I thrashed my 3 wood into the water behind the green. I proceeded to hook my next tee shot into hazard, 3 putted the next hole for bogey. Basically, I was +11 over my first 11 holes and +11 for my next 6 holes before parring the last. How to win?

Gilanalysis 32: Impian

Thanks to the Puasa month, weekends were spent hacking golf courses that we wouldn’t otherwise even dream of going. My final outing in Impian for this Puasa was a good one,  but yet again, one nine was good, the other nine was absolutely poor. I seem to struggle a lot these days to put together two good nines. My first nine was just riddled with poor play, only eeking out a par on the final hole, but the back nine, started to play a lot better even if I wasn’t hitting fairways. The par 5 17th for instance, I hooked the ball so bad into the woods, I punched out with a 7, and found myself only 120m from the hole. It’s a weird and extremely easy par 5. I’ll miss Impian. Good greens and thank God we didn’t need to have caddies in all occasions we played there this year.

Gilanalysis 33: Nilai Springs Mango + Pines

Final game we squeezed in was Nilai Springs. After a good outing at Impian I was reasonably optimistic that I could at least break 90 on a relatively easy course. I started very well, +3 over 5 starting on the 10th. Then completely lost concentration over 15,16 and 17, due to some misunderstanding with my flight mate (we made up after, since we’re so easy going!), but the game never recovered after that. The main problem was easy: IRONS. I was completely messed up in my irons, not hitting a single good iron shot in and compounding that with 3 3-putts. Ah well. There’s always next year then.

To all muslim Gilagolfers, Selamat Hari Raya, drive safe, and welcome back to the golf!