Reality Check

A Happy Meal Only Because Of A Mental Paradigm Shift
I had always asked after 4 pieces of McNuggets rather than the 6 or more that is in a "standard Adult" meal but was invariably told that that came in a Kids' Happy Meal package.

When Mabel told me that it is ok if I bought one and Ashley had, at various times flashed his free toy gifts, I decided that I should buy one today. And I did.

It was much cheaper at $4.60 and I wasn't ravenous enough to wolf down 6 or more pieces, so 4 was just nice. The drink was a smaller cup but the fries wasn't any much lesser.

On top of that I get a free toy gift that changes every week.

What a paradigm shift can do for one, don't you think? And I am a kid all over again!

A Matter Of A Rights Issue
My stock pick had yielded a rights issue. Two kinds of issue in fact.

One a board lot while another is an odd-lot or so it seems. If you ask me, the odd-lot (which to me would be an odd number, thus odd lots divisble by odd numbers that is) sounds no different from a board lot.

Given my free entitlement, I would have thought it qualified to be traded under either lot and after a few checks, I confirmed that it could.

I found out about the rights issue's impending listing online, a few days before what is termed "the trading of its nil-paid rights issue", a really short window period of just 10 days.

I frantically made a few calls to find out what it is all about and what I had to do. Along the way, I was informed as well as misinformed, and I miscalculated my sums too.

It was a 1 for 4 rights issue and from my mothershare holdings, I was able to determine my entitlement. And it was a kind of free giveaway shares too. I was told the subscription was compulsory when the truth of the matter is that I could let the offer lapse.

I wasn't the least bit interested to subscribe for them, as I feel I have more than sufficient of its main stock, but I was certainly keen to dispose of my free entitlement which will yield me some profit for nothing.

More information came to light when I picked up its rights offering prospectus and this was made available only after the trading period started.

So much for all the hassle the past ten days because the whole exercise came to nought when there were no buyers for my lots.

You Aint The Owner, Aunt Sally, So Wassup?
I paid Aunt Sally a deposit for a room, a room I will occupy only in the first week of October.

We flashed our IDs and she is obviously a Singaporean.

She claims ownership of the flat but she travels to KL to help her daughter look after their shop and she is only in Singapore two days every month.

Thus I had to be extra careful . I mean she could just disappear with my money and so what if she had given me her two Singapore mobile numbers and a Malaysian one? They can keep ringing or get answered by an answering machine and how am I to even trace her to her Malaysian shop and residence.

After we signed the lease agreement (and she had no copy for me to take away), she remained mostly uncontactable once she was in KL.

When I checked and found out that the house belonged to a single woman, I had to stop payment on the deposit cheque, just as a precautionary measure.

She rang to say that the cheque did not go through, I excused myself on the grounds that there must be some discrepancy in writing out the cheque and reconfirmed my tenancy.

She told me she needed the money to buy an electric iron and prompted me to purchase one for her as it is now within the promotional period. I checked and found out that it is out of stock.

Let us see what happens in the days ahead.

Security LoopHole No 1 - A Question Of Real Identity
Yes people, we can now check on who owns a public flat. It is an online thingy. Unfortunately the information can be misleading.

For example, a married couple owner should rightfully be addressed with the salutations Mr and Madam. I am not sure what is the criterion our tax people use but couples have been variously labelled Mr and Miss or Mr and Madam.

Single females have been duly salutated as Miss and there is no confusion here.

After we got that right, we now have to verify that the people occupying the places are who they claim to be. One way is examine their identity cards but seriously folks, some of the photographs may look so different from the person standing right in front of you.

I mean a person can change his appearances because of a change of hairstyle or hair color or hair length or of a matter of being with or without glasses or of weight or of age.

So who can tell?

But if it is a fake, meaning that another person's photograph has been superimposed on another person's identity card, you have no way of telling them apart, can you? You just have two persons running around with the exact same personal particulars.

Remember the case of Chris the last time? That could well be what has transpired, couldn't it?

Matters get worse if we only have duplicates because so many things can be altered.

Security LoopHole No 2 - A Matter Of Keying In Or Signing Off Once You Get Hold Of Someone's Visa Card's Particulars Or ChequeBook
Once you get hold of someone's visa card's particulars (and you don't even need the original, just copy and write down or photocopy), you just have to key in all the personal and visa card information presented on it to pay for almost any online transactions.

The same goes for a chequebook if you can forge the owner's signature.

Praise God For Higher Gods - The God Of The Internet And Of The God Of The Computer Age
Seriously, it is to the Internet and in part to the Information/Computer Age and our national efforts to fully computerise and go online (e-government as they termed it) that I owe the debt of receiving the gift of easily accessible and available electronic databases.

If I want to read up on our statutes or learn about a certain policy, I had to buy them or telephone or call on a government officer back then. Sometimes you could be mislead or misinformed if an officer is not well-versed, trained or well-informed.

Nowadays, we have, on hand, most information we need, like say haematuria or urinary incontinence. Of course nothing beats experience and that is exactly the knda reality dosage I am being hit with time and again these days.

It was in trying to hunt down a public flat for myself that I came across a string of discriminatory policies that discriminate on the bases of marital status, parentage and nationality.

Experience is the mother of all learning, as the sages would tell you.

It used to be when I board a taxi that the uncle cabby would be the one whinging but NOW, from the moment I board to the moment I alight, I would be the one furiously spitting bile and vile.

A Small Reunion
Yesterday I met up with my three sisters.

It was a small reunion of sorts. The sorta returning to the fold as I have blogged about. Except that big brother isn't there. He is the outcast for the moment.

My third sis still keeps her 19 cats. My two nephews are fully-grown. My second sister and eldest mute sister have aged and put on weight quite a bit but apart from all that, we seem to be in relatively good health and condition.

We went for lunch at a nearby coffee-shop, had a feast and cabbed down to Ya Kun Kaya Toast much later for tea and chatted mostly about how we were keeping and about Big Brother.

It is a beginning and we will probably have many more of these small reunions.