Jaywalker at Taman Jurong – 20130522

Luckily I was driving at a slow speed of around 40 to 45 km/h along a residential road, I never expect this old idiot to walk out in front of the car besides me and nearly bang into this idiot!

This idiot is putting himself in harms way as crossing at a traffic junction is definitely a no-no, because at an uncontrolled traffic junction cars are turning in and out of the junctions in many directions which the pedestrian or driver might not be aware of each other presence thus causing a fatal accident.

 

How to unlock Huawei USB modem :-)

Go and google for Huawei modem unlock generator, install it in your Windows and key in he IMEI. You will see a NCK code, copy down the NCK code.

Now use Hyperterminal, Putty or minicom to AT to your Huawei USB modem and issue the following AT commands.

AT^U2DIAG=276   <—- RESET TO FACTORY SETTINGS
OK

AT^CARDLOCK=55341785  <—– ENTER THE 8 DIGIT NCK CODE HERE
+CME ERROR: 3

OK
AT^CARDLOCK?
^CARDLOCK: 2,10,0  <—- IF STATUS IN THE FIRST NUMBER IS “1”, THAT’S MEAN THE USB MODEM IS STILL LOCKED. TRY THE ABOVE STEPS AGAIN.

 

Finally can use my Singtel, M1 and Starhub USB modem with Malaysia and Thailand 3G SIM card 🙂

From where I left off. M1 down – Communication Resilience

In this new era where being able to be contacted is very important for most people. From the M1 Facebook page, a lot of disgruntled M1 mobile subscribers posted loads of comments on the mobile network downtime during the 60 hours period.

To avoid the problem faced by M1 users (btw my main line is Starhub mobile), I subscribed to 2 mobile services, one is a voice with data service and another one is pure data service. In addition, I also subscribed to Pfingo VoIP service.

So how does all these sum up to my own communication resilience plan?

First of all, I’m using an Android dual sim phone, Ino One. My Starhub Mobile voice and data sim card is occupied by the GSM sim slot, while my Singtel data sim card occupied the WCDMA (3G) slot. With this setup, if either one of the mobile service provider’s network down, I’m still contactable via Whatsapp, email and voice calls. In the event my main voice mobile service provider is down (have configured my voice line to divert to my VoIP number if such event happens), I can activate my VoIP application on my Android phone so my family members, friends and colleagues still can call me as my data plan allow me to have 30GB of data per month.

So if you are the kind of person who need to be contactable every hour, every minute and / or every seconds, you can use my communication resilience plan described above.

 

Cheers and have a great weekend.

M1 Mobile Network Down Again :)

Luckily I made the switch many years back to Starhub and have never regretted 🙂

Plus I got discount with Starhub for my mobile plan on corporate discount 😉

Make the switch to Starhub or Singtel!

m1 down 20130115

m1 down 20130116 (1)

From M1 Facebook page on 15 January 2013

Update 15 Jan 2013 1410HRS: Managed to received a test SMS from my colleague who is seated opposite my desk. He managed to connect the lousy M1 2G network but not 3G. Still “psychoing” him to make the switch to Starhub or Singtel and just pay M1 the early termination penalty.

Update 15 Jan 2013 1710HRS: Almost 10 hours, just look at their disgruntled customers posting on M1 Facebook page… lol

m1 down 20130116 (2)

 

Update 15 Jan 2013 2330HRS: Almost 18 hours. Just read a press release statement from M1 that the outage was caused by a fire suppression system and water sprinkler activated in their data centre.

Hmmm… doesn’t M1 have remote backup site to handle such disaster? Tsk tsk tsk. Wonder if my friend, Vijay, is involved in the recovery operation.

Read on various tech forums and M1 Facebook page. Seems like service is still not fully restored as some subscribers have 3G and LTE signal but unable to send and receive SMS; nor receive and make outgoing voice calls. While in some area there’s no M1 signal at all.

Irritating Telemarketing Phone Calls from Bank of China

For the past one month, I have been receiving telemarketing phone calls from telemarketer representing Bank of China.

The first time when I answer the call on 27 November this year, the other party did not greet me by my name and therefore I knew it some kind of random cold-call from these low-life telemarketing firms. I told the other party that I’m not interested in the credit card and loan facilities that she is promoting for Bank of China, but she keep on pitching her sales pitch like a parrot despite me shouting into my phone that I’m not interested. Finally I ended the call by hanging. In fact after this episode, almost every interval of 3 to 4 days I will receive the same irritating phone call at around lunch time from the same phone number. What I did was to answer the phone by hanging it up after one second. This happened today after my lunch too.

After coming to office from lunch, I decided to Google the phone number that was displayed by my phone caller ID. To my surprise, I’m not the only one who receive the telemarketing call from this telemarketing firm out to irritate the hell out load of people!!!

While viewing my call logs, I noticed that I have answer some phone calls from strange numbers. And I remember when I answered these calls, there was a silence before a computer generated “Goodbye” was heard the call dropped.

callshot3

callshot2

Screenshots of strange phone numbers

Few days later, I received the first call from that low-life telemarketing firm.

callshot1

Screenshot of first call from the telemarketing firm

So what have these strange numbers that I answered got to do with the telemarketing firm’s cold-call? Here’s my analysis.

These calls are made randomly to phone numbers in their database to determine if the phone number is “live”. If the number status is “live”, it will be assigned to the telemarketing firm’s call agents to perform a cold-call to push for sales.

After further digging in Google, I found out the firm that is responsible for these cold-calls. The low-life telemarketing firm is Capital Hub & Enterprise Pte Ltd.

Apparently, this low-life telemarketing firm have been irritating people’s life since 2011.

The number so far used by that this low-life telemarketing firm are:

1) +65-62551674

2) +65-62599613

3) +65-65840034

If you are using a smartphone, you can download various call blocker application and add the listed phone numbers in the blacklist to prevent these numbers from reaching you.

On a last note, Google was pretty amazing, with my search for Bank of China Capital Hub keyword. Guess what I found? I found this bitch who is working in Bank of China (Capital Hub). If you are a victim from these irritating calls from Bank of China (Capital Hub) add this bitch as your Facebook and spam her! 🙂

Bitch working for Capital Hub Bank of China

To Desaru Again – 25 November 2012

This is the second time my wife and I drove up to Desaru for our RnR. For this trip we stayed over at Lotus Desaru Resorts.

I like this resort a lot as compared to Pulai Spring, because there’s a water activities park and the unit that we got is a dual floor room. Best of all, for the 2 nights we were there, we cooked up a fest with the electric hotpot that I won during my company’s Chinese New Year dinner even though the resort forbid it guests from cooking inside the resorts room.

 

Lotus Desaru
Lotus Desaru

Alley at Lotus Desaru
Parking alley outside our block

Toilet Kitchenette
The toilet and kitchenette at the lower floor

Living room
The living room

Staircase leading up to our room
Staircase leading to our room on the upper floor

Our bedroom
Our bedroom

View from our room down to the living room
View from our bedroom down to the living room

Nasi Lemak for breakfast
Nasi Lemak for breakfast

We drove up to Pengerang for lunch on the second day, on our return trip back to the resort. We stop by this quiet beach at Kampong Punggai.

Punggai Beach
Punngai Beach

Punggai Beach Park
Punngai Beach Park

Burnt coconut
Burnt Coconut

If I were to visit Desaru again, I will definitely choose to stay over at Lotus Desaru again due to the water theme park and spacious dual floor room.