As soon as I stepped into my office last Monday morning, my boss showed up inside my working area and asked for me to arrange to hurry up and get my passport prepared for the trip to Washington. I never had a Malaysian Passport before so I had to apply for one. I tried to applied for my passport last year at Putrajaya Immigration office but they don’t accept application over there. My brother applied for it last 2 years and it was done in a day so I guess this time it would be the same.

I borrowed RM300 (I’m still broke though) and I was on my way to the nearest Immigration Department of Malaysia which is located in Plaza Metro, Kajang. The parking there is just RM1 and I parked my car just outside of the entrance of the office (4th floor). That’s not so bad right? Here’s a photo of the place:

Pejabat Imigresen Kajang

After I bought the application form (RM1), I photocopied my Identity Card and attached my photographs along with my filled application form. The clerk at the counter checked my documents and found out that I didn’t include my birth certificate. I remembered reading that for MyKad holders, that is not necessary so I argued with her. Unfortunately, I found out that I’m not a MyKad holder. I’m just a regular IC holder since I was the early batch back then that has been changed into a new version of the IC.

I had to drive back home to get my original birth certificate, make a photocopy of it and then decided to try the Immigration Department in Kuala Lumpur instead. The office is located at Pusat Bandar Damansara, only 15 minutes drive from where I live.

Jabatan Imigresen Wilayah Persekutuan KL

The only thing I had to bare is the parking fees which is RM2.20 for the first hour and RM1.50 for the next subsequent hour. The place is definitely bigger than the one in Kajang and there’s larger crowd over there.

Instead of writing about my experience, this time I’ll just draw a diagram about it:

How I Got My Passport Process Flow

Application Form and Supporting Documents

Immigration Processing Counter

The whole process took me less than 4 hours and I was back at my office by 3pm. The parking fee that I had to pay was RM6.70 and now I have my first passport ever.

My Passport

My next step would now is to apply for the US Visa. I am now ready to fly anywhere in the world.

I went home late yesterday night. My team and I had to finish up a few important documents based on the system that our developers have been working on for the past couple of months. The problem arises when things needed to be done or change in the last minutes. That’s when everybody started to jump off from their comfort zone and disregard their working hours to finish off their main objective for that time in order not to have a pay cut. Of course that would include me as well.

I realized one thing, after indulging my own work for quite a while, it is so easy to forget that not everyone knows what you know. I’ve been keeping a lot of stuff that might be beneficial for someone else to know and utilize. I also realize that when you are used to digest a lot of stuff related to a specific task, you will know every single short cut that would enable you to finish off something a lot faster than the rest of the people. It’s time to give back what I know for the benefit of others.

Being in a web developer shoes, I know that bulk data might overwhelm a lot of developers or data entry personnel. This normally would lead to a lost interest of the work you have thus decreases your productivity. It’s a tedious job but someone has to do it. There is however a few tricks to overcome this challenge and one of the tricks when you are constantly online is to use the search engine to find a solution. Still you need to know what are the stuff you are looking for in order to acquire those tricks. I’ll cut the chase for you. One of my system developer needed to resized a batch of images to the same size in order for the system to display it properly. There wasn’t much time left so I helped her out in finding a way for this. I soon discovered a free software called Picture Resizer 2.0:

Picture Resizer 2.0

It took me a few minutes to familiarize with this new tool. After that, a resizing job that would take a batch of 50 images maybe an hour or so to get it done is now can be completed in just under a minute. How cool is that? Then comes another challenge, in order not to replace the origninal files, the software created an extension name to differentiate. After moving all the new resized files into a new folder it’s now time to rename all the files back to what it was before to avoid another job for script editing inside the developed system. If it would be done manually, it will take the same amount of time just as resizing the images manually. I found another software tool for that called Bulk Rename Utility:

Bulk Rename Utility

Now this software may seems complicated at first because you see a lot of buttons and fields to fill up. Our objective is just to removed 4 characters extension and we’ll be done with it. Check out the screenshot above on how to do it or try it out for yourself.

Now here’s an interesting point of view. From a management stand point, I’ve already saved a few valuable hourly pay for my employer for not hiring data entry personnels if they have to do it manually. Secondly, these softwares are free so the company saved some money from buying commercial softwares. Since all this can be done faster and automated, a lot of the existing data entry personnel/system developers would like it since it makes their lives a lot easier. However, it might be a threat to their job position if that’s the only thing they are doing.

That’s my friend is how the management think! Be Productive Everyone!

When I first watched So You Think You Can Dance America, I would have never guessed 8TV would bought their franchise and did So You Think You Can Dance Malaysia. I have great respect for those dance performer because their dedication, hard work of practice and their passion. This is one of the reason when I first met Laadvamore, I fell in love with her because she’s so passionate about dancing, which makes her so special to me. Did you know that passion can be contagious?

It was not until a good friend of mine asked me to join him to a dance studio 3 weeks ago. At first I rejected his idea but eventually I changed my mind. I became curious to know what it’s like being in the dancing shoes. My friend didn’t go for some cheap aerobic style dance class, he chosed a premium one, Linda Jasmine Performing Arts Studio just next to Ampang Point Shopping Mall. So, there I was in a dance studio paying RM50 for the membership fees and for the class I’ve chosen, I need to pay RM110 per month.

Linda Jasmin Dance Membership Kit

The dance class I’ve chosen is called fusion dance. It’s been conducted by the lovely Pamela Chong. Pamela is Vince’s (Akademi Fantasia 1st Winner) sister and she is ‘da bomb’. It was unfortunate that my class wasn’t being conducted by the owner herself, Mrs Linda Jasmin herself but after seeing her conducted a class, I was thinking twice about it. I even heard that she can be so mean. Being a dancer is tough, I mean really really tough. It demands physical fitness, proper technique and a lot of practices. I can’t even swing my feet properly let alone dance according to the step Pam has showed. My whole body got sored by the time my first class ended. Here’s a few picture of the dance studio stolen from SuperStalker:

I finally decided to call it a quite after the second class because I realized one thing, my body is so stiff. The only time I’ve ever been athletic was when I was back in school, that was just for some marathon run which was compulsory for every student. It wasn’t much of a marathon because it’s only like 5 - 10 km of running around. Still, I am blessed with the health that I have. However, I need to work out some more if I want to keep on being healthy.To cut my long story short, I find dancing fun, exciting and very good for me. However being a self-proclaim geek, it’s kind of hard to break off from the habit of laziness. I need some motivation, I think Laadvamore can help me with that, right darling? ;-) Some related links and info about Linda Jasmine Performing Arts Studio:

The Official Launch of Linda Jasmine Performing Arts Studio
• Linda Jasmine Joint Yahoo Group