when I first moved here, there was only my beat up Wira, my battle scarred Unser, my neighbor's Kenari and Jazz.

today l still have my trusty cars, but the parking lot's changed. Over a year my parking lot is something like a luxury car showroom. There's a whole row of gleaming Beemer, a Mini, an Alphwd an an X5. All surrounding my Wira that' missing a piece of the front spoiler.

Sometimes when I wake in the morning and step into the parking lot to go off to work, my car is immediately noticeable.

The latest addition right now is a prancing horse, and I guess upgrading my ride isn't a good idea as it will make my car less noticeable. I should offer my neighbor my services to take care of his pet, the prancing horse, and maybe take it out for a run once a week.

Tranquility

There's something about this place that I like.

Just beyond the Batu Dam, nestled between the trees, is a little Eco Resort.

Its an old one really, but it was recently taken over by new management. There's just something about the sound of water rushing by in a rocky stream covered by thick foliage on the sides.

We had put together a module and this place was selected.

Our program was an indoor one and it was conducted in a hot house of a hall. Thick mudbrick walls and zinc roof. As the sun reaches up we begin to bake. Despite all the fans running at full speed, we were sweating away at our curriculum.

I must congratulate my group for sticking through the program in the searing heat.

However, despite all the discomfort, it is all forgotten when I see the eyes following me intently; faces nodding, or lost in thought processing all the information.

And of the end of the day, the heat is all but forgotten when I stand on the river bank, the shade under the trees providing cool confort, the water swirling around the rocks with a continuous rush.

More excellent service..

My wife had to run around a bit the other day one of those days where when someone delays then everything else gets pushed back.

In her rush, she went off to settle stuff with some government agencies. Finishing with one, she went off to another. It wasn't till she got home that she realized she'd left her file with all her documents behind.

She had planned to go the first thing next morning, but, weary after a long day, she didn't. I came home during lunch to find her all dressed and ready to go out. It turned out that the office where she left the file found her file, found her phone number and called her to say that they have her file and that she could come by and pick it up.

This is a government agency, I must remind you. I had already given up the file as lost when my wife didn't pick it up that morning.

Isn't that a nice surprise? Do you have a similar experience?

Sevice Excellence

There is a particular Mamak Restaurant that's been around for quite a while and has quite a following. The food was quite good then it opened and l became quite a fan of it. As the place grew, I stopped going there regularly as I found the place rather crowded and parking was a nightmare. Though not as regularly, I would still stop by once in a way. But service weren't so good anymore blue to the large crowds.

I soon moved to a new neighborhood. By then, the same store had opened a branch (yeah, mamak shops had branches, too!) in the vicinity. l started to frequent the shop again but again kept being let down by the service. The final straw came when I had bad service over three visits in the same week. This time, a table after mine got served their food first while mine didn't. l chose to walk out and as we passed the manager, my wife took the opportunity to tell him why are were leaving. He apologized profusely but we explained that it was our third consecutive bad visit.

That was about two weeks ago. Today for some reason, we decided to stop there again, expecting the same crappy service. We recieved our orders almost immediately, and the manager came by to ask if everything was ok and to tell us that he had improved his production. I told him that I was pleasantly surprised and that, yes, things are much better this time around. He came by again asking if I needed to 'tambah' my roti canai, which I politely declined.

It was nice to know that things improved and that the manager took the trouble to tell me that I'm important enough for him to want my patronage. I don't go there as often as some people.

But here's the clincher in service excellence that not many people get: its about making every single customer important and making him know that his needs are attended to. Simple common sense, no MBA required.

The Buzz

Amongst all the projects I carry out, this particular one has got to be the most arduous. It was a cross functional project that was thrust to us about two years ago. Work commitments and lack of time ("the mind is infinitely creative at not doing what it does not want to do - Tony Buzan) to really think through the problem, resulted in the project not progressing beyond the initial proposal.
In the intervening two years, the rules changed and got tightened; we found an e-mail in our inboxes requesting a status update. We put our heads together and decided that if at all we were to make progress, we would need to look for a better project.
Fully prepared for the worst, we presented our case to resubmit for a new proposal. Surprisingly, the new topic was well received; there seemed to be a buzz of excitement from the committee and we are on our way.
In all honesty, this is not a project we can afford to ignore. Like it or not, to drop out of this program just because we don't want to do a project would be folly on our part. The only thing is to just get it done. So I guess the only thing to do is to chip away at it, 15 minutes at a time, until the block of granite is smoothed into a sculpture, just like Michelangelo's David, or de Milo's Venus.
What else is there?

Growing Customer service

I had the privilege of experiencing good customer service the other day.
I squeezed through a small door, down a tight little corridor to meet some relatives while another was being treated at he government hospital.
The corridor was guarded by a burly female guard, her desk across the corner of the 90 degree corridor, giving her a view of the the entrance that I sneaked through and the treatment room.
It was going to be a long wait, so we decided to use a tiny room with a long sofa while we waited. The room was dark and we scrambled around for a bit looking for the light switch.
I thought I saw the burly lady with the uniform give me a glare; then with both hands on her table, she shoved her chair back and heaved her massive bulk upright. She walked around the table and headed towards us. I was ready to be given a tongue lashing for stepping into that room.
When she reached us, she politely asked if we wanted to use the room to wait. When I nodded, she said,"excuse me" and switched on the lights, and the fan, too. She even offered us the use of the room while we waited, even though it was obvious that that's what we were there for.
As I sat in that room, waiting, I noticed that this lady continued to check on us, and the others who just like us were waiting. As new visitors came, she would lead them to the waiting area and offer the area for them to rest.
I realise that, appearance aside, the government hospital has very much grown in their services. I do realize its not fair to compare them to the profit driven private hospitals, who, despite the direct link between happy customers and profit, even then have service levels that leave much to be desired; but this service I've got is a far cry from the abusive holier-than-thou attitudes of the past.
I hope that this improvement trend continues, as the dream of a customer oriented goverment department becomes closer to reality.

Dinner with The Stars

It was my Father In Law's birthday and we decided to treat him to dinner. My wife, being the gastronomic adventurer that she is decided to try out a restaurant we hadn't been to.
Looking for parking was an adventure going round tight corners and remembering that parking was RM3 for the first hour and RM4 for each subsequent hour.
The restaurant had a high ceiling with stained glass motif of the zodiac; and we spent a good deal of time figuring out which sign was which. I found out later that there were three levels, the ground was buffet, second japanese restaurant and the third was Chinese restaurant. We ate at the ground floor.






In the middle of the restaurant was a wire sculpture of Atlas carrying the world, standing in the center of a giant compass.









The restaurant had a mix buffet fare white rice, beryani and tandoori, sea food, pie and etc. Of course, the sushi bar rolls the sushi to order, and the thrill for kids is seeing the octopus on a plate.
Taste wise, the food ain't all that great. The buffet ran out pretty fast and wasn't really topped up. The really good thing about it though was having a chocolate fountain as part of the buffet. It makes the trip to the desert train really worth while. Hmm, I wonder if that's why food do not get topped up too fast?