Home Is Where The Durians Are

Below are excerpts of an article I wrote recently for My Malaysia. Happy reading! :)

The Geek Goddess

Home Is Where The Durians Are

I was a young conservation educator at wildlife NGO in Malaysia when I first met Mike. A British national then in his sixties, he sported mostly silver strands on his head and an equally silver beard. This was eight years ago and yes, it’s now my turn to sport salt-and-pepper streaks in my tresses. No signs of a beard though (thank God!).

Fondly known as Uncle Mike, this sprightly gentleman has been a valuable asset to Malaysia’s wildlife conservation as a researcher, trainer and mentor. A multitude of wildlife researchers from different organisations have benefitted from his wildlife study design and data analysis “boot camps”. These special workshops share insights on estimating wildlife occupancy, density, and demographic parameters such as survival.

As for the social side of conservation, Mike was also instrumental in helping me design a social survey for stakeholders living in and around Batang Ai National Park and Lanjak-Entimau Wildlife Sanctuary. These are two protected areas in Sarawak where viable orang utan populations have been found. The social survey was a culmination of years of conservation education activities in these areas, and they served to foster awareness and sense of ownership amongst the communities.

My team and I were very lucky to have Mike on board as our mentor and main architect of the survey.  He assisted us during months of designing and testing survey questions to avoid bias, besides doing simulations and modelling to explore different sample sizes and sampling strategies. Based on results of this study, the first species-specific radio programme in Sarawak was developed and broadcasted to promote the importance of protected areas and the ecosystem services that they provide.

Read more on My Malaysia

The Lost Boys: A Dating Epidemic

Achtung: This post contains strong vocabulary and should be read with a huge glass of scotch.

I guess it's normal to have expectations when it comes to dating. I do expect my dates to have manners, and also the ability to spell properly. Haha.

I also expect someone who claims that they're interested in me to keep maintaining contact. You know, to show that they're still interested to get to know me more. 

See, I never knew how to play dating games that women supposedly play to keep men interested. If I like you, I will try to contact you, and I will try to know you more. That's my only dating M.O.

I have been in the dating scene for the past 11 bloody long years, and it seems to me that there were a lot of guys who claimed to like me, conversed with me regularly, went out with me a few times, then texted or called me semi-daily...

ONLY FOR THEM TO GO *POOF* ONE DAY AND NEVER EVER RETURN!

Or...they are alive but they gave me so many excuses on why they're not regularly contacting me like before:

- My cat died.

- My car died.

- I am busy these days. *I guess we women have all the time in the world, eh?*

- I am overwhelmed by work/family/my stupid team's performance in the World Cup.

Is there a dating black hole for men that we women are not aware of? That maybe there is a secret button on their phone that they accidentally press and their phone screen would swallow them whole and incapacitate them from contacting us further? 

I am very curious to find out why men seemed to drop off the face of the earth after making a lot of effort to imprint their existence in our female brains. I know I am not the only woman to whom this weird disappearing act happens regularly. One of my super nice guy friends said that his female friends also complained about the same thing.

Are the lost boys an epidemic for which there is no known cure?

I guess what I'm trying to say is: if you're not interested in someone, please don't waste their time by contacting them. Ever. Grow some balls and spare us the heartache, thankyouverymuch.  

Because of this mysterious epidemic, I am getting really sick of dating. Sometimes I feel like checking into a convent, swearing men off forever and develop the habit of looking great in a *cough* habit. Teehee.

My *ahem* pragmatic brain always seems to think, "Look, you did your best, but let's face it, this dating shit is not working out for you". My ever-optimistic heart however, begs a different interpretation: "Hey, not all men are bad. There's someone out there for you. You just haven't found him yet". 

I have been searching for him for 11 years, for fuckitty fuck's sake. Where the hell is he? Is his sense of direction so poor to the point of being ridiculous? 

I went through 11 years of disastrous dating attempts and four relationships that went south, yet my stupid heart still wants someone who complements me to grow old with and to raise a family with. Despite my strong objections against having unruly children in public spaces (hello screaming toddlers in a cinema showing a late-night horror movie), I do want to have (well-mannered) children one day. And I know I don't want to be a single parent.  

But as I get older, I have less tolerance for this bullshit called dating. Whenever men give me excuses like "Oh I'm so busy picking up my dog's poo, so I'll text you in another century", all I can hear is this: You're not worth my time, bitch.

Time is a limited resource, gentlemen. If you like me, make it worth my time. And if you don't like me, it's ok to be upfront about it and save both of us a lot of grief instead of playing stupid hide-and-seek. I'm a grown woman. I can handle rejection. *flips hair and roars* 

What I cannot handle are stupid boys who waste my time.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to get back to running my one-woman empire.

The Geek Goddess

What to Do When Your System Software Goes Down

Have you ever gone to a counter at a bank, or a government office, only to find out that their "system" is down and you had to come back another day?

I'm sure a lot of us have faced this situation before. What irks me the most is this lazy response: "Our system is down, so we can't do this for you now."

Or this even lazier one: "Our system has been down for days, so we can't do this for you now/this week/this year/this decade."

Gee, thanks.

Most banks and government offices only open their counters during business hours, so to do something there would require you to sacrifice your lunch break or a vacation day so you could be there....only to find that the system is down and the staff are happily chatting about the latest celebrity gossip.

I also have civil servant friends who keep complaining that their Human Resource Management Information System is always down during their peak filing period. And guess what? It happens EVERY.SINGLE.YEAR.

What is my point here exactly?

1.  THE PROBLEM WON'T GO AWAY UNLESS YOU FIX IT

Pick up the phone and call your vendor. Get them to commit to resolve the issue within a fixed amount of time, say 24 hours. Then call them at frequent intervals to check on their progress. It is your right to demand that your system runs as smoothly as it's supposed to.

As for your end users, inform them of the downtime, apologise for the inconvenience, then commit to a resolution date and time, if possible.

2. IF YOU ARE A COMPANY OWNER, ADD A CLAUSE IN THE MAINTENANCE CONTRACT THAT STIPULATES IF UNPLANNED DOWNTIME IS MORE THAN X%, YOU'RE GETTING A DISCOUNT

It's normal to have planned downtime for maintenance or upgrading. Banks regularly do this a few hours in a day for their websites, usually after midnight when web traffic is slow. 

We vendors usually deploy changes to the system from midnight to six in the morning or maybe earlier if we can finish faster. The key thing about planned downtime is to inform your customer in advance so that they can inform their end users in return. Then do whatever you need to do during low traffic period to minimise the effect on end users.

As for unplanned downtime.....hey, shit happens. However, if you are expecting a peak period of usage (for online banking it might be during payday), have your team on standby to monitor how things go. 

I used to work for a vendor that handles the SMS blast system for a telecommunications company. One of the types of content blasted is news from sources such as The Star and New Straits Times. The system is equipped to blast at regular intervals. However, during special events like the World Cup or the general election, news updates will come up fast into the system from the content providers. If we don't clear them fast enough by blasting more regularly to subscribers, they'll clog up the system, stop it from blasting, and prevent subscribers from getting their updates on time.

Whenever the system gets clogged, our team would have to fix it, even if it happened at 12am when we're in deep sleep and dreaming about kittens. When shit happens, we fix it. 

Like I said earlier, as a customer, you have the right to demand that your system is always up and running except during scheduled downtime. So put in that discount clause to make sure your vendor knows you mean business if shit happens.

3. IF YOUR SYSTEM GOES DOWN WAY TOO OFTEN, YOU MIGHT NEED TO UPGRADE IT...

There is no perfect system or software in this world. When a bug exists, you can either submit a maintenance ticket (which is what people usually do if their off-the-shelf system support is outsourced overseas, such as India) or call your vendor straight away. 

Off-the-shelf software usually releases updates that are automatically sent to you when you have Internet connection on your device. Customised software, however, might require a house call by the vendor.

Like any other business, a vendor is supposed to make their customers happy. So they should be prepared for peak periods, run maintenance checks regularly, and assess if your system is due for an upgrade.

If the system repeatedly goes down because of the vendor's incompetence, the customer might tell them to kindly take a hike, and worse, sign up with their competitors.

4. ....... OR GET A NEW SOFTWARE VENDOR  

At RedBean Software, we provide customised software because we believe each business has its own specific needs. RedBean's customised software can accommodate growth and cater to key business objectives, as our software is designed with your long-term business goals in mind. 

As software specialists with over nine years of industry experience, we make it our business to ensure our customers' businesses run smoothly using our high-quality products and solutions. 

To assess your software needs and craft the right software for your business, please contact us at sales@redbeandev.com and we will get back to you within 24 hours.

The Geek Goddess