Passion is Thy Name!

Ok, fellow Malaysians, our days may be numbered!

This morning, I received an email titled "May Legal Tip: Unauthorised Wireless Net Access" (fellow Dellians, refer to the email received at 9.46am from the APJ Legal Team).

Based on what I read from the email, it would seem that a lot of folks I know will be put behind Singaporean bar! Not for killing or stealing but for mooching. Not smooching…but mooching.

So, what the hell is mooching?!??! It’s something most of us do or know folks who do - illegal usage of an unsecured/unlocked Wireless connection. Some refer to it as wireless piggybacking but I like the word mooching better.

I already have a list of friends’ names in my head who are guilty of mooching. You know who you are, guys!

So, it seems mooching is the virtual equivalent of trespassing and under the Singapore Computer Misuse Act, people are getting charged and thrown behind bars for this very act.

A 17-year old who was caught mooching got an 18 months probation and if convicted, can get 3 years imprisonment and a SGD10K fine or both. All because his parents confiscated his modem and to satisfy his need to go online, he went outside his home…sat on the curb with his laptop and logged onto an unauthorised access to a neighbour’s home wireless network!

For more info on the Act, refer to the Computer Misuse Act (Cap # 50A) at http://agcvldb4.agc.gov.sg/

I am not sure if such an Act, or its equivalent, has been or will ever be enforced in Malaysia…and if it is indeed enforced, I wonder how many million Malaysians will get prosecuted. 

E: I haven’t seen you much at your cube lately. Been slacking ah?!
M : No lah…I am just very tied up with GAP these days.
E : GAP? What’s that? Is it a newly launched program in our regional team?
M : Not really. It stands for "Graduate Attachment Program" and our company uses this to build the talent pool for our organisation.
E : Oh? I think I heard abt that before. Is that the one which we are closely involved with PSDC and USM (and some other local Uni’s) graduates?
M : Yea..that’s the one. Aiyooo..really headache ler!
E : Why ler?
M : Those graduates ah…can’t even speak and write proper English to save their lives. Instead of doing my job as a skills trainer, I am now unofficially the English teacher!
E : If their English proficiency is not strong enough to support ANZ customers, how about SA customers like Malaysia or Singapore?
M : No need to talk abt ANZ support, SA support also totally out! When my team and I organised their training sessions, we all muntah darah! 80% of them have to struggle so hard to try to translate those English words from their mother tongue….and the sad thing is, they are all VERY technically sound! Such a pity!
E : WTF???? So we are running grammar classes for them so that these technically-sound-folks-with-horrendous-English will be able to keep a job with us??? Why bother??? Just kick them out the bloody program lahhhhh…
M : I wish it’s that easy. These graduates were selected by PSDC and the government for a 3-month program. Unlike our current under-performing employees whom we can "Manage Out" with just a couple of PIP’s, these folks need to be given all the right classes, including English lessons, before we are allowed to kick them out of the program.
E : Ok, I don’t mean to be mean…but man, I’m glad I don’t have your job. I would’ve lost it a looonnnggg time ago with these nincompoops!

***************************************************************
Being a local graduate myself, I am MOST embarrassed with today’s local graduates. What the hell happened to proper language education??!!?!

Is our country and education system totally disregarding the importance of language in its chase for nation development and technology enhancements?

What’s the point of having a world-class International Airport when its own local graduates can’t even speak/write proper English to greet our visitors?

Visit Malaysia 2007……I fear for the tourists….and hope and pray that they don’t bump into the local graduates my colleague has had the misfortune of training….

"Welcome to Malaysia. We are beautiful country people and we erm…macam mana nak cakap…erm…takpe lah…kuat-kan bunyi kompang! Remember, we are beautiful country!" *huge grin*

After numerous hand gestures and lotsa mai kow cai’s, we finally got the teenage girl across the counter to understand our request. With a quizzical raise of her eyebrow, she asked us "1-2-Call ok?". Of coz we had no idea what she meant. She then whipped out a starter kit and said "300 Bhat".

Guess that should do the trick. So, we bought 2 packs of starter kits and paid her the 600 Bhat. The rest decided to stick to their faithful M’sian service providers and pay for the roaming charges instead. I had a personal experience of chalking close to RM1K just on roaming charges in Indonesia…so no more roaming for me! Besides, I didn’t want my sun & sea experience to be interrupted by calls from work going "Hey Eleen, we need your advice/help on this program that we’re supposed to run regionally. The folks at each sites don’t seem to want to play ball. Especially those damn Japs!" No No…those Japs, Koreans, Indians, Aussies and whoever-nots can stay out of my life and mind for at least ONE week of my life, thank u.

So there we were…sitting in the spacious backseat of our rented ISUZU 4-W and trying to get used to being tossed left and right by our designated driver as she zoomed past the mid-day Phuket traffic. Soon enough, we discovered that Thai SIM card technology is not as ‘hardy’ as ours. (but then again, it could be from our lack of experience with prepaid cards locally considering that all of us have postpaid accounts)

One scratch too hard and the entire film that displays the numbers which we were supposed to key into our phone came right off! So, all we had in our hands was an empty white card with some scratched-off silver bits on our hands.  Next thing I heard was "Sorry baby… I think I need to get us a new prepaid card." Oh well, lesson learnt. Don’t scratch TOO hard!!

All in all, about RM 90 was spent just on 1-2-Call!

- RM 30 on the 1st defective starter kit
- RM 30 on the 2nd starter kit…but realising much later that there’s only RM10 or RM5 worth of talk time given
- RM 30 to top up

So, I spent RM 90 just to make short calls and send text msgs to each other on where to meet, what time to meet, how to strategise our shopping agenda, etc… silly but necessary.

This also goes on to show how sadly our lives are dictated by our mobile phones….sad but true…

Of coz it didn’t help that one of our friends was using his local Australian line which meant that every time we called or texted him, we were calling overseas! So, between making short calls and sending text msgs to Malaysian and Australian numbers, it was no wonder that the RM35 or RM40 of talk time was barely sufficient for our 5 days there. Heck, I used the last second of talk time at the Phuket Airport arguing abt the level of gas left in our rented ISUZU with Mie, our car rental guy.

Having said all that, we still had a ball of a time in Phuket! Will upload the pics next week once everyone manages to clear their Inbox and recover from our 1-week break from work.

I for one, am scared shit to logon to the corporate RAVPN to check my emails. Will have to brave myself to do that in the next few hours…or suffer on Monday morning when I return to work. The horror of "U have 8000+ unread emails in your Inbox" is still fresh in my head when I took 2 weeks to recuperate after my tonsillectomy last year! :\