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And the stupidest pest company goes to: RENTOKIL

Here’s a formal review I wrote to bloody Rentokil

Been a customer for more than 3 years. Every year they will miss out their scheduled visits. In 2016 they missed 2 out of 6 (generally, they will call you and say, hey can i come today, as in we assume that you are a jobless nutjob sitting around the house waiting for rentokil to call everyday) – so they agreed to move 2 extra ones this year. They did one and still need to provide one more service. Unfortunately, instead of doing that service, they gave an invoice for renewal for 2017. When called, they say, we can provide a credit note (to offset and discount due to missed service last year) – I said, no, I don’t want you guys anymore, just come and do your last service. And suddenly, the lady said, “Oh, according to our records, we don’t owe you any service anymore”.

Rentokil – i know house customers are treated by you as badly as how you treat rats and cockroaches, but remember before you guys were big and doing factories and companies, home owners were the ones you started off with. The arrogance of this company is just too extreme. Enough said, no more Rentokil for my homes. I rather deal with the cockroaches with my Ridsect than to give them anymore business.

Anyone thinking of getting these bunch of idiots better think twice. Worst pest control company by a million miles. I imagine cockroaches and rats doing hi-fives with each other when they see home owner signing up with them.

And really – it’s so sad. At this time and age, when economy is doing so poorly, you would think companies now should give a shit about customer experience. Yet, they are so batshit arrogant that they don’t give a flying fuzzball about customers. Rentokil – I hope you get killed as a company one day.

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The Birdie Run Ends. So Does the Triple!

Well I guess we can’t have our cake and eat it.

I finally played a round without the dreaded triple bogey.

I also finally played a round this year without a birdie. Final score of 48-43, at The Glenmarie Gardens, with 5 pars and a pile of missed putts and a ton of bunker shots.

For some weird reason I have never been able to get the better of the Garden course. I don’t know why. Maybe we underestimate it because from the onset it doesn’t look difficult. But by golly, I am always struggling on it! And today is the same reason, even after taking up the 5 wood tee-off to avoid trouble, I still found bunkers after bunkers. I counted. That is crap load of bunkers. The upside is that my bunker play has recently improved tremendously. I have this old Cleveland 60 degree with just the right bounce on it for Malaysian bunkers and it digs/slide perfectly through. I say Malaysian bunkers because oftentimes, we have that hard layer of wet sand just at the bottom of the top layer. So if you use your Sandwedge, it just hits that wet sand and skulls our ball whereas the 60 degree is able to dig in a little and allow that follow through. In fact it came to a point that I was looking forward to hitting to greenside bunker just so I can try to get up and down for fringes! I was 2 feet away from a Sandy par but putted like a chipmunk.

Speaking of putting – my love affair with the MYR40 Ping putter is coming to an end. I missed TONS of putts today. Either I whiffed it, or didn’t hit it firm or just couldn’t feel it. But like in everything golf, just when you have given up on something, on the last hole, a crucial game wining putt of around 5 feet – managed to sink it and the love affair with the putter begins again. Aiya. Always like that one.

I did have birdie opportunities, though not tons – I think I had 3 clear look at birdies within 10 feet putting and dreadfully squandered all of them.

However – keeping the triples off the card was key and definitely helps. I think its a combo of poor putting and bunker attraction today. In the first 9 itself, I hit bunkers in 8 holes. Reflected in a dreadful score. In second nine, limit to only 3 holes, and once more , the score was 5 strokes better.

Glenmarie is playing quite nice, if not the greens pretty slow, and it seems their caddy service has also improved. Remember the last time we had caddies who stole money from our bags? This guy was one caddy between 4 of us and he was good. Reading the green, distance, getting the right clubs, finding balls.

Best shot of the day? The bunker shot on hole 1 (our 10). It was a high lip and with the 60 degree, I put it perfectly to 2 feet away from the hole. I missed the putt, hell ok – but it is exactly that sort of bunker shot I envisioned and for once, perfectly executed.

Felt good!

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The Call of Immigration

One of my best friend decided to pack and leave Malaysia. After close to 40 years in this country, bye-bye.

It’s obviously with a mixed feeling to see him and his family leave. One – you wish him all the best of course. Two, you wonder, am I being left behind?

To put it – and this is obviously a personal opinion like everything else in this blog, which is mostly garbage, so disclaimer on ranting – sometimes, I feel we have this squatter mentality. When things don’t go right, we look to other places. We never take root on a country or a place and call it home. When I say We – I mean it in a general sense – not about my best mate. He has his reasons and those are very good ones. He loves our country..forced to leave for good reasons. But for the most part, people make a decision based on – oh, my family, oh my work, oh the government, oh the currency, oh the weather, oh the relaxation, oh the nude beaches. One side of the coin is – eh, this is your Home, Malaysia. It doesn’t matter if some shit politician calls us pendatang and tells us to go back to China – that’s politics, man! Don’t get so worked up! Our incumbent politicians will sell their own mothers to slavery to get votes, so don’t be surprise they tell Chinese to pack their shit up and then the next day, grovel to China and kiss their communists feet and ask them to come and invest in Malaysia. Most of these “politicans” are categorised in the same category of lifeform as bacteria, and even the bacteria gets insulted to be associated with them.

But some do take it very personally. They say, “Well, we are not treasured here. Bye Bye”.

The other side of the coin is: What if Malaysia is truly going down the shithole? A lot of us think it is. A lot think this is the Titanic, sinking into debts created by our beloved captain and his cronies. So abandon the country, before it becomes another Myanmar, abandon it before we have to send our sons and daughters overseas to become maids and laborers. Abandon this cursed land because a few fat cats are sucking it dry.

But if all leave, what is there?

I read a facebook post recently about a girl who decided to come back to Malaysia to work after not being able to cut it in Australia. She went on to say “I hope my thoughts would encourage those who made the trek back home that there is life after being an expat, and those who live in Malaysia that they are NOT losers for choosing not to leave!”

Now – I know she means well, but wait. Number one – you are not an expat. You are an immigrant. Even if you are there on a work visa, you are called a foreign labourer, or a maid, or a foreign worker, or some insulting and derogatory term. Oh, you don’t agree? Well, too bad, that’s what you are. Sorry, you are expat only if you go from Malaysia to lower developed places = at this moment is Sierra Leone, the Antartica and Mars. Other countries have taken over Malaysia as more developed. So even if you are paid, we have no right to call ourselves expat. Secondly, why bring up the word losers? Who is thinking of that? And herein lies the great mystery of our generation. We always think its better to go to the west (or in Australia’s case, the East). Why? Why is it better? If you run your own business here, why is it better to go to the most isolated continent in the world? If you have your family rooted here, why trek over to the place where convicts were banished to? The opportunities in Asia is endless. The great bustle of Bangkok, the great financial hubs of Singapore and Hong Kong, the growing opportunities in emerging countries like Cambodia and Vietnam. Why would I trade these adventures for one that I might want to have in a continent far, far away? Where they go to bed at 7 pm and watch a strange game called footy and basically have nothing much to do except having super good coffee. The coffee in Australia is the one thing I look forward to but nothing else. I have friends who constantly post streams of things they do in Australia on Facebook – like cutting grass, or sitting on the beach, or walking the dog, or happily playing with children etc. Eh – we also can do that here in Malaysia. I just don’t post it up so paedophiles can target my kids lah. Anything that OZ has, we have and more. OK – except for shitty currency. But otherwise, man, everything else!

Basically what I am ranting is, no – we are not losers for deciding to stay in Malaysia. If anything, we are fighters. We are survivors. We are likely 2nd or 3rd generation Malaysians – where our parents or grandparents had emigrated from China or wherever to come here to say, look, Malaysia is cool, they have durians and good weather – lets call this place home. For as long as we can, we should stay and fight for our land. Sure, we might not see fruits for this generation, but if it’s worth fighting for our sons and daughters, why not? Why do we want to become first immigrants again and start over? Why go to the other side when on this side, the grass is still green – it’s only hoarded by a bunch of fat and greedy cows. Can change happen? Maybe. I know for sure, if those who value this country remain in this country then we have a better chance. Australia doesn’t need Malaysians.

Malaysia needs Malaysians. I think the country is worth saving.

End of rant. Back to golf.

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Farewell to the Greatest of All Time (GOAT)

Tiger is the GOAT.

Just like Michael Jordan is for basketball. Just like Maradona is for football (sorry, Pele), just like Usain Bolt is for track and field, just like Federer is for tennis.

And sad as it is, the curtain drops.

I recall when Michael Jordan called it quits (the first time, let’s forget about the disastrous comeback ok) – I was really into basketball and I wasn’t bad at it. I represented my school, so can’t be that bad. I had a really good jumpshot and I played good defense, but I was horrible at decision making. So I kinda made the team but never really played because I never listened to the coach. Anyway – I HATED the Chicago Bulls. I hated them. They were too good. I mean, if you see Jordan scrambling down court, with Pippen at his side – my God, it’s like watching Leonardo Da Vinci paint the Last Supper. It wasn’t basketball. It was art. And for some weird reason, I hated the fact that they were so good that everyone was an underdog to them. Even when Utah Jazz faced them back in the 97 finals – everyone thought John Stockton and Karl Malone had a chance. None. They were like schoolboys. We pitied the Utah Jazz. They weren’t just outplayed, they were put in a Baby Bjorn by Michael Jordan and carried around with shit in their diapers.

So when Jordan said, I was done, I am playing baseball – we were like, great! Finally!

But guess what – we started to miss him horribly. Nobody came close to Jordan. And credit to Kobe and kudos to Duncan – nobody ever has come to replace Jordan. He is the GOAT of basketball.

And now Tiger.

When Tiger started, everyone thought he would open the door to more diversity in Golf. Back then, golf was played by a bunch of fat, out of shape and useless, racist white people like Fuzzy Zoeller. Tiger was the Great Black Hope. I am not racist. I am using the term from boxing “Great White Hope” – which is technically somewhat racist, as it refers to any white boxers that can beat a guy called Jack Johnson (who was African American).

But now, the end of an era is here. And we are still stuck with a bunch of white people except that they are not out of shape and probably no longer racist. Has golf progressed over the years?

Yes, I think golf has reached out to many young generation, and the only reason – I use ONLY, not ‘one of the main’ – is Tiger Woods. Like Jordan, Tiger transcended the game of golf. He became bigger than the game. Unlike Palmer, Player, Nicklaus or anyone before then, Tiger represented golf to the world, not just to the elite. And I picked up the game because of him. Because golf was cool. Now golf is no longer cool. Jogging is cool. Cycling is cool. Golf is a waste of time for many of the upcoming generation.

When Tiger opted out of the next two tournaments, we knew the end is here. Sure, he might play a few more majors here and there, but as painful as it is (and those who follow Gilagolf knows I am a rabid fan of Tiger’s) – I have to admit – enjoy this moment. We will never see another golfer like Tiger ever again, so in this twillight of an amazing career, we bid ode to the Greatest of All Time. We will miss that Sunday Red and those fist pumps. We will miss the amazing shots that seemingly are magnetised to the hole. We will miss those ridiculous chip shots that can only happen in movies. We will miss those domination of other players, that destroyed Ernie, Vijay, Retief, Phil’s legacy by them always playing second fiddle. We will miss the super-humanity of one person playing this game that we are all tragically addicted to.

Goodbye, Mr Woods.

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How to Enjoy your golf

I am a great believer that perfection is never achievable. Never in this life. Your job is never perfect. Your home is never perfect. Your kids are never perfect. And God forbid, your spouse is never perfect. You’d be stupid though to say that in front of her.

And in golf, forget about being perfect. The thing is, we are not pros. Neither are we those with a million hours to spend practicing around the greens and driving range . If you are anything like me, juggling between being a driver for my kids, a babysitter, running a business, spending time in my church doing stuff, participating in our home associations, going to my kids’ friends parties and generally being completely overwhelmed with activities in life without involving the game of golf – you will know the only time you are practicing golf is when you are playing it.

Trying to cram in one game a week isn’t easy. Firstly, its the work. Secondly, the family. Weekends are out obviously. Even weekdays, golf tends to eat more into my work hours than family time.

So the expectations of what we get out of golf is a lot less. And when the expectations are less, it makes the game a lot more enjoyable.

Playing golf – one of the easiest way to enjoy it is to play fast. I recently played with someone who took an eternity with his swing. An Eternity. I am a reasonably quick player, or so I think. My ‘pre-shot’ routine if there is such thing is to put the ball to the ground – 2 seconds. I step back, look up and find a spot like a tree, a crane, a bunker, a hill, a building – anything for a reference to aim at, near or far. It’s usually anything off to the right of my line of sight – because my natural shape is a draw. I would mutter to myself “Tree” or “Crane” or “bush” or “billboard” or whatever. That probably takes about 5 seconds. I take my stance, the ball slightly to my left heel, take one practice swing – 5 – 6 seconds. Step back and address the ball again – 5 seconds. I take a practice back swing to set my plane and shift my weight to my right slightly and address the ball again – 5 seconds. Then I rip it. My shot is between 20 – 25 seconds from teeing up to letting it fly. Which isn’t extremely fast but I have seen people go through the 40 second barrier and even one guy who takes a full minute. I am like, damn it, hit the bloody ball! Have you played with someone who just stands there at address on the ball as if he was frozen? Literally, a full 10 seconds go by and he is just there looking at the ball, addressing it. I am like, are you waiting for the ball to say hello?

I get very impatient very quickly; because I am a rhythm player. One of the difference between Kota Permai’s 93 and Palm’s 85 was rhythm. In Kota Permai we played behind very slow players and we were constantly disrupted. In Palm we made sure we teed off in front of a big group that registered and we played with hardly any breakage or waiting. Tee off, walk to the ball and take around 10 – 15 seconds to hit the ball, then go on. I play best when I don’t think so much. In the previous game, I had at least 4 -5 birdie opportunities – birdie putts with 10 feet or less. I missed all except one…that’s more due to the putter than anything else.

So, really, if you want to enjoy this game and have other people enjoy – play a quick pace. With our standard of hacking, it makes no difference if you address the ball for 10 seconds or just hit the ball!

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Gilagolf is back with Tiger Woods!

So now, 2017! I managed to get my first game into the year at Kota Permai and went on to score an amazing 93. Yes. There is sarcasm. I shot 47-46 and didn’t do any favours by struggling at my putting and chipping. I ended up with 1 birdie and 1 par amidst a whole lot of bogeys, a triple and sprinkled with some doubles. New year, same game, it seems. At least my birdie run continues for now with consecutive games with birdies. I did manage to dig up a very old Cobra LD 5 wood out from my store room to test. This is a 2007 model, mind you and by God it is terrific. I am punching this baby further than my 3 wood. In one hole, I flat out outdrove the whole flight who were using drivers. And these are not lightweight guys as well. It was the 11th hole in Kota Permai where I ended up around 70 metres away from green. We were teeing up at blue which was registered at 311 metres.  This is a 5 wood for goodness sakes. On the Par 5 hole 18, my drive around 250 still left me around 210 – 220 uphill to the green. With the wood 5, it went long. It’s ridiculous club.

It didn’t do me much good though in terms of scoring. I still suck at the game. I landed, I think in the bunker like 8 times or so throughout the game.

As for Tiger Woods – the good news is that HE IS BACK! Yes, I basically have given up watching golf for good for a year plus now. Even the majors I don’t give a crap anymore. The only guy out there worth watching is Tiger, and he’s going to be playing this weekend, so I will try to stay tuned!

Happy hacking in 2017!

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Happy New Year and We are BACK!

Happy New Year and Gilagolf is back!

I know, haven’t been writing a lot lately – my motivations have sort of slowed down in terms of playing golf. Am I still playing? Oh Yes, but its cycling through the same courses – Mines, Glenmarie, Sungai Long, Tropicana, Kota Permai, Palm Garden and then on and off back to our haunt at Rahman and also KGNS.

2017 rolls in and RHB tells us now that they are still negotiating with the golf clubs on whether they will continue on this year to provide golfing privileges. To be honest, compared to the other cards, I think RHB is a bit crappy in terms of credit card privileges. The only reason why we went with it is that the golfing privileges are reasonable. If these are taken away, a whole bunch of us will just revert back to our normal cards (Maybank, CIMB, Citi). So RHB – you better buck up!

The secondary reason why my golf has taken a sort of back seat is that other things like moving home, putting kids through school etc now takes precedence. The amount of money spent in moving to a new home and renovating it is ridiculous. And now, education as well – thinking of sending kids over to international schools? Good luck. They better be future Mark Zuckerbergs, else I don’t know how on earth will they make back their cost.

So what are we looking at for 2017 in terms of this game of golf. Well – gameplay wise, as always, I will seek to improve – play consistently in the 80s is a starter. 2016 was actually a pretty good year for my game – birdies became almost one per round for me – inclusive of my last game of the year at Glenmarie. Now, to make it more consistent. My struggles with putting needs to work on. My chipping is still shit, but at least my drives now are less wild and I am giving my chance for regulations.

For golf in general – look forward to see Tiger Woods back. Honestly since he left, I have never bothered to watch or even catch golf. I am always more of a football fan who doesn’t play football, and a golf guy who doesn’t watch golf. But with Tiger back in the hunt, why not?

So will I be updating this blog? I don’t know how often – it seems to me blogging is a bit of a yesteryear activity – now everyone is into anything else. Still, I still get to see a fair bit of hits and readers everyday on this blog and I just feel that I need to get something in here to be fair. So – like I said, I will probably be writing more of other things aside from just golf per se, and an article a week seems like a good plan, as long as you guys don’t judge me too much.

So, for 2017 first article – I just want to say: Glenmarie still have shitty service. OK, I like the course. It’s nearby, it’s accessible and it’s nice and there are 36 holes. But I always disliked the management and service there. There is just something off with it. From the time that they insisted on charging us extra for using the board for our tournament even when no one was using it; or when my playing partner got robbed by one of the caddies (the caddy admitted to stealing around RM300 from my friend’s wallet), and now recently:

Me and my buddy use stand bags for our game. Stand Bags are those bags with the built in legs so we can stand it at an angle while playing a shot, and then carry. Because we sometimes walk in KGNS or Rahman – like maybe 15 years ago. Nowadays, we can’t even walk to the car park without complaining of leg pain. But the bags still remain. Because these days we just dump everything in the cart, our stand bags are filled with full set of clubs with probably 30 – 50 balls etc making them extremely heavy. I instruct the caddies, or the ones taking the bags from our cars to not use the built in legs because the bags are generally too heavy. Additionally, if you use those legs of tiled floor, they have a tendency to slip, causing the bag to collapse.

I told this to Glenmarie and they just went like yeah, yeah.

The next thing I knew, I saw my bag sitting on the legs and almost breaking before I caught it. My friend – not so lucky. Those Glenmarie idiots put his bag on the legs and the one of the legs snapped and the entire bag crashed onto the floor. Worse, the Glenmarie idiots didn’t even bother to pick it up – they just left it. The leg is now broken and can’t be use. The argument is that, we don’t even use it, right? Well, the point is that we don’t like broken bags, Glenmarie. And to the day I die, I will keep repeating – your service suck.

Welcome – 2017.

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Renewing Maid Permit in Malaysia

Due to my limited activity in golf, I’ve decided to start writing about other stuff that I want to complain/bring attention to in this blog. Else, I will probably not be updating it for months.

OK – just to share my experience to renew my maid permit in Malaysia – in 2016. Strangely – it was quite a pleasant one, which is a first.

I think Malaysia has come a long way from the days of absolutely horrendous quality in government services. Those days, simply to renew your IC would be akin to you walking naked in the Sahara desert for 40 days and drinking your own piss. Everyone dreaded going to that place at the old State – where death awaited you in the form of government servants working with the KPI of serving a total of two citizens in a year. I remember one time, I was queuing up for the bloody IC thing for 3 hours from Lunch time. Finally, there were only about 3 people in front of me and I thought I would get through, when they announced they were going off for the day and to come back again tomorrow. W.T.F. Angry also cannot. Shout also cannot. So go back lor. And wake up tomorrow at 6 am and start sitting in front of the bloody office for them to open at 9 am.

We have come a long way since then. Nowadays I go to the Immigration Department in Sri Hartamas. The one opposite Publika. I renewed my IC the other day and really, it was FAST. I mean less than half hour my name was called, I did all the necessary photos etc and in 2 hours time, I can come back to pick up the new IC.

So how about renewing your maid work permit?

a) For maid less than 4 years, it’s mandatory for you to get a health check via Fomema. To be honest, even after that, it would be wise to just go for a yearly healthcheck. We had an incident where previously our friend’s maid had a tumour that was cancerous, which would have been caught if she had gone for regular checkups. Maids are humans too, and they deserve medical rights like everyone else, because they become almost part of the family.

b) So download the Fomema form. Link is as below http://www.fomema.com.my/images/Forms/Foreign_Worker_Medical_Examination_Registration_Form.pdf

c) Fill up the form. If you don’t know your worker’s code, the one starting with W, it’s ok, you don’t need to fill that up. For clinic name, you need to decide where you want to take your maid to.

d) List of clinic found at http://www.fomema.com.my/index.php/doctor-availability?view=doctoravailability

e) I would recommend if you can get a booking at clinic with Allocated X-Ray facility it would help. You can opt not to fill this up and only fill it up later, because you might not get a slot at the clinic you want. So get them to check first. I think those with X-Ray facility is devilish difficult to book. So just fill up what you can.

f) Pay around 200 bucks (for female maid. Never seen a male maid before). How to pay? I think cheque might work, but for the sake of ease, I just went and do an online payment via CIMBClicks. Under Billers -> Fomema Registration.

g) Once paid, get the receipt of payment, and print it out as well as your filled up form. You need to photocopy your maids passport first page as well as work permit page.

h) Now, you need to get your butt to Fomema with all the documents and maid actual passport. We thought everything was online, but no, we still needed to take a day off and go to the Fomema office at Menara Takaful. You can google map it. Parking is expensive there but easy to get. Fomema is on the first floor.

i) Once you are there, pick a number, wait, go to counter and show them all your stuff. You can pick your clinic then and there, show them you already paid and the process is less than half hour. They print out something to you and you just need to take that form to all the clinics you go to. I have no clue what is the value add of Fomema in this instance except that it may just be another scheme to add a middle agency to fleece off our money. I don’t know. Its not very painful though so what the heck.

j) So now you have the Fomema printout and in it you have worker’s code and the clinic you are supposed to go to. You can do it another day once you set a time with the clinic. For me, I went the next day with the actual maid (cannot photocopy maid, mah). I chose a clinic in TTDI called Mahanum and it was FAST. I think looking for parking took longer. Just show the paper, the doctor will see the maid, get all the sample urine etc or whatever and tell you to go to the X-ray. They will recommend one and the one they asked us to go was nearby.

k) There is an X-ray facility clinic Mediviron at TTDI itself, near the VADs building. It has is own parking for customer in front, so we just went there, did the X-Ray and that was it. No need to shuttle back and forth the other clinic. Overall, spent less than 1 hour to get everything done. Take leave for the morning is enough. Got time to play golf some more. And also no payment, just show the Fomema printout.

l) So now, just wait for the results – it should be out within 7 days. You can check online at http://www.fomema.com.my/index.php/online-results?view=onlineresult either the worker code or passport number. If you see “Suitable please proceed to immigration” you are almost there.

m) So here is the weird thing. It tells us to ‘proceed to immigration’ but immigration no longer handles this. They stopped processing maid renewal 2 years back. So if you are an idiot like me who believes everything this stupid Fomema says, you would take another morning off and go to your favourite Immigration centre (mine at Hartamas), park and go to the counter and ask: Where to renew maid work permit, ah?

n) And you will be told you have wasted your life there because now, everything needs to go through the richest middle agency of all time: My EG. Yes. The one that will make billions because everything is forced to go through them.

o) So technically Fomema = Stupid. Tell us wrong thing. They deserve their own bullet point for stupidity. Like it would kill them to just say: “Please contact MyEG now because we are living in the electronic era”

p) OK – now MyEG is like Fomema. Middle guys that sleeps with our government so everyone makes money together. No matter, what to do? You can opt to go to MyEG at Bandar Utama (KPMG building, first floor) and go through the maid renewal there or you can login their portal and do everything there.

q) Depending on whether you are comfortable to transact via their portal (It looks like it was designed by a bunch of Iguanas), you can opt to pay via Visa/Mastercard or via online banking. I selected online banking as I didn’t really trust their system (again – it looks hilariously horrible, which just shows all the billions have been pocketed to God knows where and they paid an online agency RM600 to build the website).  Again – what to do? Complain also useless.

r) So we put our entire personal information and financial information at risk by using their payment facility and pay RM631 for the renewal. That is a lot of money, but I suppose with so many middle men, everyone needs to be fed. The process charge is around 125RM. So if say, 200,000 maids present in Malaysia needs to be renewed, My Eg has made RM25,000,000 just like that. If you put in the other non-maid foreigners, My Eg will make A LOT OF MONEY. Now, why can’t they get a proper portal? Like, even after we pay, for me to go back and see the history of what I did on the portal is impossible. It’s like literally the most hogshit service website in the entire planet.

s) Now, once you have paid you will be given option to either deliver to your house or you can opt to collect onsite (at their HQ in Bandar Utama). I suggest you do the latter because you will not have a clue when these jokers will come to your house. If you need to have someone else be at home (like your angry mother in law), you need to write a proxy letter and make sure she is also holding the maid passport.

t) After 2 – 3 days, I suggest you call MyEg 03-7801 8888 to check if its ready. Good luck getting through. They are a bit like Telekom, Tenaga whereby their call centers are generally manned by simians. It took me around 40 minutes to get through, and you pray dear God don’t let my call drop. Once through you can give the passport number, they will tell its ready and you can come. I did note that if you call early morning around 9 – 9.30 am you can get through easier. Now, hilariously, while waiting on the call, they request you to email them at their support email address and they add: For faster response, please email us at blah blah. They actually said that. So I emailed them for fun. It’s going into 15 days now and the only thing I hear are crickets. Faster response my foot.

u) So finally – you go to KPMG building level 1. First, print out the payment receipts and the MyEg document after you made your payment. Of course, bring your maid original passport and your own IC. MyEg seems to be renovating their office because I was directed to some makeshift waiting area that smells suspiciously funny. Walk in and tell them you want to renew maid permit, you will be sent to a room, and asked for documents, your IC etc. Then you wait a bit and they will call you to another room where the nice gentleman will stick the new work permit on the passport and tell you to go on your merry way.

There. The full steps. Total money will be RM631 for MyEG + RM201 for Fomema medical. Total time taken – around 1 hour for the Fomema form, 1 hour for checkup and x-ray, and 1 hour for the actual getting permit pasted onsite.Online process includes Fomema forms and payment, MyEg forms and payments. I’m writing this down also in part because I am very forgetful and I have to go through this cursed process next year again.

To be honest I am pretty OK with the whole process, except that it cost quite a lot. Because I am flexible in my time as I run my own business (I say take leave doesn’t actually mean I take leave lah), it’s no issue for me, but I suppose it can be frustrating if you have to actually take leave and then find out you are being given the runaround like that Fomema telling us to go to immigration crap. However, I must say this really beats queuing up for the whole day and then being told I didn’t make the cut. Damn you, old IC department in State!

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Birdies Galore

I have recently gone on a purple patch in my golf game of late.

Playing three games previous at Tropicana, Palm and Kota Permai, yielded me birdies in each round. Anyone knowing a 16 handicaper struggles will know that getting a birdie is as rare as spotting a pink hyena doing a riverdance.

The Palm garden birdies were probably the most memorable – two in a row to end the front nine, and for Kota Permai, the very first hole Par 5. Strangely even with these birdies, I still ended up shooting 87,88 and 89 on these courses, showing that gross score improvement is still difficult to come by.

This year, with much less golfing, is turning out overall, better golf. My drives are less wild eversince I decided to shorten my grip to the point of my right hand almost gripping the shaft itself. Another change I did was instead of tackling the green, I am almost always going short of the green. The reason is because I can then approach with a shorter club, and I am not too worried about controlling and can just muscle the whole thing in. I am dropping to a 9-iron now for my 150 meter shots, and a 6-iron for 170 meters. I am not saying I am reaching these distances with these irons, but they are close – even if I drop at 140 meter with my 9-iron, the ball can still roll onto the green without taking those bunkers into consideration.

Where my game need utmost upgrade is in chipping. I am still yipping it like a monkey on opium and I lose amazing amount of strokes due to bad chips, bad punch outs from the woods and overall just horrendous management of these supposedly easy shots.

Also this year I’ve stopped taking in all the statistics on my game and just take in the score. It seems with less calculations on the course and analysis, I am playing better. I don’t care about my 3 putts anymore and I putt better. I don’t care about missing the fairway anymore and I am hitting those fairways. I don’t care about how far I drive anymore and I am booming it. It seems like the less I scrutinise myself, my immense natural talents are now shining and I am achieving my God-given destiny of playing a consistent 16 handicap. Yes. I am being sarcastic.

Also – I have had some emails (thank you) wondering if this blog is ever going to be updated. To be honest, I don’t really have a lot to update on golf. Ever since that Pussycat Woods decided to call it quits and then do a comeback and then decide to quit again, I’ve been more than disillusioned that the game of golf is actually going backwards – which it is. If you look at how Taylormade is struggling and part of it is being farmed out by Adidas, and how Nike has stopped producing golf clubs and how overall, nobody really gives a crap anymore about golf and everyone is into cycling or jogging or swimming or lawn bowling – the trajectory of golf as a popular sport is somewhat declining – even with the yawn fest of Olympic golf not doing it any favours. Of course, this is my opinion based on extensive research of looking at Google for the past 2 minutes.

I can actually see the disinterest in it. In early 2000s, a lot of my colleagues were eager to try out golf. We even set a pool fund and get people together to play golf together, and organised outings to golf clubs like that stinkhole Bandar Utama golf course. We went to the driving range. Of course, the fact that we were all single and there were girls we wanted to tackle also picking up golf had a major impact to our motivations. Especially if you are already familiar with the sport, we can do the “OK, here is how you grip it” and then taking the advantage of holding her hand without getting a slap in the face or a call for harassment. Yup, it was a great maneuver.

But nowadays, when we talk about golf to my younger employees, they just go “meh”. The fact is, we are regressing back to the point where golf is now an old man sport. Because we are, naturally becoming “old men” as we hit our 40s or so. The younger generation doesn’t pick it up. Instead they pick up this strange activity called ‘jogging’. Which is significantly cheaper. All you need are shoes and a road.

So – I suppose, I will consolidate other articles into this blog. I run a blog called Giladad where I write about my travails as a father, but that readership has around 1 person- my wife so she knows what I am complaining about (her).

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The Long Absence

Wow!

It has been ages since my last update. Some kindly souls have actually emailed me wondering if there was a reason for the absence, inclusive:

a) Giving up golf

b) Started another Blog elsewhere

c) Struck by lightning on the course and rotting away peacefully under the trees

As it is, none of the above.

I do have my #2 son and he plays a big part in my limited golf time now. And also my #1 is in school, and we generally start our day as drivers, ferrying one after another – so golf (if any) only can start after 9 am or so and most of my kakis prefer not to do that.

There have been some opportunities to play, and again on some fine courses like Tropicana, Kota Permai, thanks to our credit card. My golf game has yet to improve, but I am feeling OK with it so far. Once, I was struggling massively with my chips but now for some reason it seems to be OK, and now my putts are like bird shit.

Nothing can summarise my current state of golf than a recent game I had in Palm Garden. I was playing pretty normal on my first six (which to say, is not great) – one par, a couple of bogeys and two doubles. Then I meandered to a 47 on my front nine, but managed to hit a birdie on the Index 1 hole. I blasted my driver way left and from the rough, somehow my pitching wedge sailed perfectly to about 1 feet of the hole. Don’t ask me how I ended up with a pitching wedge second shot on an index 1 hole. I must have hit a tree or something and rebounded forward.

Front nine, I went on a crazy tear – birdie, par, birdie, which could have been 3 birdies in a row as I missed a 5 footer birdie putt on my second. So you think I would be playing like a king from there on right?

Nope. Par 5 next hole, instead of laying up which is what I normally would do, I was challenged by one friend to go for 2 on (which is not really possible unless you are extremely accurate, which I am not). One OB and a few hacks later, I ended up with an 8. And from there on, slide all the way into hellhole and ended up with a 46. So, I shot 3 birdies, 4 pars and still ended up with a 93? Man, golf sucks.

Anyway – that’s what it’s been so far – intermittent golf, and I apologise for not writing often – its not because I have given up the game, but it’s just that with the new kid + Tiger Woods retiring, there really hasn’t been much to write about lately at all!