Return to Sender

It has been a long time coming.The payments finally ended!

I started investing in the Australian Scholarship Fund when my daughter was 2 years old in 1992. The guy who introduced the scheme to me was one smooth operator. He promised me the sun and the moon just to get his commission. Being oblivious of downsides, I agreed to subscribe to the fund.

It started innocently with paying a mere initial AUD40 which silly me thought is well within my means. Never did I know that it will move up from year to year. My last payment was AUD150. Then there was the foreign exchange losses and the drop in Australian interest rates that made the fund too small to eke out a reasonable scholarship quantum to support even 18 months of tertiary education (which has inflated crazily upwards)

If I had put the money into a property, it could have given me much more in returns by now. Too bad, poor choice of investment. Gotta live with it.

So next time, if you should be approached by such smooth-talking snake oil sales people, keep away from them. Investing in Bursa shares now is much less risky!

The Invasion of the Greedy Ghouls

'Tis surely must be the season of the hungry ghosts!

I have attended three AGMs of public listed companies thus far and this time I really came into close encounter with a new breed of beasts-the greedy kind.

Who are these people?

Mostly senior citizens. They looked very kind and gentle at first sight. Sitting around and chatting convivially just like ordinary folks. But....when the food came in after the AGM was over,what do you know?

Like Transformers, they mutated into monsters and in a bout of pre-feeding frenzy, grabbed at whatever food that was laid on the tables. With steady and ready platters and well trained hands and fingers, they scooped away curry puffs and cookies, leaving almost nothing for the other less fortunate shareholders and proxies. Really shameless as the scooted away with the loot!

The aftermath? Half eaten puffs and cookies-testimony of greed and inconsideration for others.

Sadly, some of these folks who smuggled out the cookies from the Sime Darby Convention Centre were caught red handed and had to return them to the empty platters on the table.

Alas, what a woeful end for them at the SCOMI Marine and SCOMI Engineering AGMs!

GTG Learning Weblog-Wither Thee?

I had been trying to read this blog for almost two days now but it no longer existed.

So,I emailed Eliz the blog administrator of GTG Learning Centre and she told me that the blog has been discontinued as they could not find spare time to actively contribute to it.

A sad ending for a blog that started ambitiously and had to fall by the way-side because of "work pressure", to put it politely.

My first experience at terminating credit cards.

This afternoon, I went to the Public Bank nearby and got rid of my 2 platinum cards. The Customer Relations Officer filled a form and I signed it. She then cut off the corners of both my cards.

Why, terminate the cards,you may ask?

The short answer-it continues to charge me annual fees. And it is not cheap, mind you. RM333 per annum per card, to be exact.

When other banks can give you a waiver on their annual fees for the cards they issue such as CIMB and EON, I cannot see why a great bank such as PBB need to reconsider the waiver when a customer requests one.

So,as you can see,PBB is very efficient in terms of retail processes but they can surely backpedal on matters that brings in the money such as fee income!

Brilliant!

I watched this movie with awe. What fabulous acting from Merle Streep,Philip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Adams. A simple story with about the best dialogue I have heard in a long, long time.

It tells of a story of Sister Aloysius, an overtly conservative and disciplinarian nun who serve as a principal of a school in the Bronx who suspected Father Flynn, the county priest of untoward behaviour towards an Afro-African student serving as an altar boy in his church. It highlights the issue of doubt and of human failings as we grapple with suspicion and our values.

The last part where the priest succumbed to the pressure to ask for a transfer and the principal in tears because she has doubts about her suspicions speaks volume about the absolute need for proof before you can actually start pointing fingers.

It should have won the Academy Award for best actor (Sean Penn-Milk)and actress (Kate Winslet-The Reader)if the field had not been too competitive in 2008!

Seven Pounds of Kindness

As usual, Will Smith is in his usual self in the movie Seven Pounds. This time sacrificing his body parts that others may live and have wholesome lives.

After losing his wife in a car crash which he blamed himself, he gave half of his lungs to his brother, eyes to a blind pianist, his heart-literary to his girlfriend and his house to a Hispanic battered wife and her two children.

The movie borders on self-pity and the need to be useful even after death so that parts of a person continues to live.

A morbid premise and so at times, it is quite difficult to watch.

Otherwise, watching the beautiful Rosario Dawson in her many moods, is surely delighftul.

The Great Debaters

I do not believe this movie will come onto the Malaysian circuit.

Set in the early 1930s, prior to unionism, a Professor of Wesley University built up 4 great debaters to fight all the way up the championship at Harvard. It was a first for black debaters to trounced the whites in the hallowed grounds of Harvard in Cambridge.

I believe it is based on a real story and there is sufficient excitement especially the lynching of a Negro in Texas and the chase by a white mob when the debaters were en route to a debate venue.



As usual, there is the 2 boys love one girl triangle to take away the 'heat' from the movie.

Produced by Oprah and Denzel,it is quite a good movie and a breeze to watch.