INCOME Motor Insurance

First the good about them.

When my car got rear ended last year, the Orange Force was prompt, professional and helpful. In this important matter they came out shining.

Now the bad.

I never had my insurance certificate. Also they didn't catch that my motor insurance is short of one day when I switched from AIG to them, i.e., there was one day where I was covered by both of them. I only discovered this mistake when LTA refused to renew my road tax recently.

Finally the good again.

I called INCOME on Christmas eve for help. They were very good and helped me to buy an additional day of cover. This time they also sent me my certificate.

I think in the end it was who I dealt with that made a difference. A couple of their employees bothered to do a good job and one of them from her accent over the phone was clearly a FT.

In the end LTA made me pay $20 for renewing my road tax late.

Last Cheque from Google

Last check from Google for the end the year just past. I am surprised that the site still has steam to roll on. It has been almost ten years now.

And it is so troublesome to send this to Guam. What to do? When you don't want to do very much with the bank, that is what they do to you.

Replaced my Electrolux Vacuum Cleaner

After a decade of service the old Electrolux finally began to show its age when its hose tore.

I went out to buy another Electrolux ($369) with a decade of technology separating the two. Although both have the same look and feel they are very differently except for the user interface. Both are s-bag machines and that is why I have gone back to the Electrolux.

The black new one is impressively quiet but I never worried about the noise from the old one anyway.



Update: May 28 2018, 9pm

No good vacuum cleaner which lasted only about four years. Electrolux told me they do not have stock of this piece and I would need to wait six weeks for it to arrive. Also it will cost me $66. I gave up.

New Year Resolutions

Spotted this on AsiaOne just now. This is the last and hardest of the 30 tips.

For as long as I could remember, I haven't made a new year resolution in years. I see it as some silly exercise. Also the most important objectives are multi-year ones and could last a lifetime too. But this year and led by happenstance I would make space for this one here because I often explain, but it is quite hard for the children to understand why it is so difficult to discover what one really want.

If you are humble you will have no problem discovering your purpose and what you want. So much of what we do is for others to think highly of us. Very important, nearly all of us must learn this the hard way and I cannot deny my children these hard lessons. Come on, even most adults missed this. Yet God in his amazing grace allow so many to realize almost too late their mistakes shortly before they die. It is really like the other condemned man who pleaded with Jesus to remember him while the three of them were on their crosses.

Here is the fuller version of Mother Teresa's quote:

“Humility is the mother of all virtues; purity, charity and obedience. It is in being humble that our love becomes real, devoted and ardent. If you are humble nothing will touch you, neither praise nor disgrace, because you know what you are. If you are blamed you will not be discouraged. If they call you a saint you will not put yourself on a pedestal.”

There is so much freedom and personal peace in humility. It was so valuable to her she worked at it when at the zenith of her fame nobody was willing to humble her. Here is the story I told my kids many times - Some lessons cannot be learned and so you can only help them remember with strategic repeats when the time comes and that's when they will learn.

Quoting from Leo Maasburg book:

On an overseas flight to Washington to visit the then U.S. president Ronald Reagan, one of the Sisters who was accompanying her noticed something odd: Mother Teresa went into the toilet at the front of the business-class section, first into the one on the right, then into the one on the left. Then she walked to the back of the plane to the other toilets. The Sister’s curiosity won out over her embarrassment and she asked Mother Teresa the reason for these repeated trips to the toilets. Her brief answer was, “Exorcism!” Mother Teresa had cleaned all the toilets, and it seems that it was precisely in cleaning the toilets that she found an antidote to any hint of pride. This would fit well with the maxim that she often repeated: “How do you learn humility? Only through humiliations!”

Maasburg, Leo (2011-10-11). Mother Teresa (Kindle Locations 2359-2365). Ignatius Press. Kindle Edition.

All these are too hard for me and definitely impossible as new year's resolutions. If I have any hope, I must keep is really simple and here it is in two bold words for yesterday, today and tomorrow:

FORGET YOURSELF

and these have done nothing for me but given me a lot of trouble. I thank God for them.

I think as in years past this year would not be the exception. Somehow, some time my ex boss and I would sometimes argue over this ego thingy again. I could not bring myself to explain why we need to wear it down but she believes a healthy ego is very important. To be practical she is right but it is also fatally wrong. We are all prodigals and we will be allowed the opportunities to leave home and learn the hard way. That's why grace is nothing if not amazing.

Therefore I decry Khong Hee and Lawrence Khong but not Joseph Prince. In the 21st century, we can't make grace cheap enough. Just wait for it to boomerang. It will but not as quick as in a year and it will also abide by an inscrutable personal time table.

Ivan Heng lambasts MediaCorp countdown party

I agree with Ivan Heng. In fact I didn't even last 5 minutes seeing it badly streamed to my PC display over the Internet. That's why I have given up our local programming since we switched to M1 and MiBox.

Looks like Mediacorp is slowly killing itself by becoming so cheap. As we become more global, cheap will no longer sell. Quality is so expensive, don't expect it from cheap companies eh. Some of our local organizations are just postponing their denouement rolling down the slope of cheap. Revenue seems effortless but only because you are falling under gravity. But when you hit bottom it would not be pretty.

Hiring cheaper foreigners is core bit of the cheap strategy.

First eBay buy of the year

First eBay purchase of the year.

I saw something similar at Challenger going for more than $20 yesterday. Of course I wasn't paying up. This morning a new year brings new ideas (not exactly). I logged into eBay and what did I find :-) I can get this for less than USD 2.00 from Yallstock. They are a good vendor. I had bought quite a few things from them before. I like it that this is coming from HK than China as the wait is much shorter.

Wonderful Cheesecake Breakfast

Gobsmacked good cheesecake for breakfast in the new year! I am not used to such quality, which money cannot buy. I regularly refused to pay up anyway. I eat inexpensive, eating to live than many here who live to eat.

I was tugging into this and emailing the experience to the baker's mom searching for the words to describe the experience.