It seems that Advertlets is not the only one in failing to pay bills in time. The oh-so-famous FBI does too. I was reading the news over at MSN Live and cracked up at one of the headlines: FBI wiretaps dropped due to unpaid bills.

Telephone companies have cut off FBI wiretaps used to eavesdrop on suspected criminals because of the bureau’s repeated failures to pay phone bills on time.

A Justice Department audit released Thursday blamed the lost connections on the FBI’s lax oversight of money used in undercover investigations. Poor supervision of the program also allowed one agent to steal $25,000, the audit said.

Advertlets is just a small fry compared to this. Just proves how twisted this world is. Many crime investigators and authorities worldwide commit crimes behind our backs and play nice in front of us.

Anyways, I’ve been caught up in work and real life this past couple of days. And I’ve been commissioned~ One is an ongoing project of copywriting. It’s a very small project, $1.5 per 200-400 words but I have to do around 5 to 10 per day. For a lazy student like me, $10 - $15 per day is already okay. I get paid on the spot everytime I submit my work. I so love being a part-time freelancer at GetAFreelancer.Com! What I did was the past few days were:

- Sunday: Installed, configured and test-run a Joomla site with Virtuemart
- Monday: Fix scripting on one Arabics football news website
- Tuesday: Write 5 lengthy articles on language and technology
- Wednesday: Made a custom Wordpress template for a maid agency

I guess I can take a break now.

I got a letter from the Scholarship Division of MoE today in which I was asked to fill in a form and fax it to them as soon as possible. That’s what I did, and thank God the phone in my room doubles as a fax machine too. At first, I made a stupid mistake by forgetting to put the form face down, so I pretty much sent an empty fax to them. I corrected the mistake and sent the fax again. A few minutes later, I got a fax from them which irritated me to a great extent:

The fax number 03-xxxxxxxx cannot be used.

Please fax to number 03-xxxxxxxy.

(Jot this down and inform everyone).

Joy. It’s a formal letter and they made a mistake like this? Return the money Telekom Malaysia charged me for the fax!

Okay, I’ve finished ranting. At 8.30pm earlier, I got a surprise visit from Ain, Alia, Daniel, Basir and Jo. The boys went for a dip at nearby hot spring and later, the two girls joined in and they went to the beach. I was surprised when they called me up saying they were going to drop by, but really, I haven’t seen them for a while. Alia, Ain and Daniel attend Australia’s Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Basir at Exeter’s College of St. Mark & St. John (Marjon) and Jo goes to New Zealand’s Victoria University of Wellington (Victoria). We chatted a bit, and had a laugh about the mistake made by the Scholarship Division.

The first Kelantan branch of Tesco is now open. It was initially scheduled to open 2 weeks ago, but the recent flood had caused a delay in the actual launch date. So, this morning, it was officially launched. The complex is big, but not as big as KB Mall. I have to say that the interior is very impressive. The food court is situated just right - you’ll reach the food court once you get into the complex from the parking area. I’d say the placement is convenient. You can can choose to either eat first and then shop or the other way around.

There are a few other shops in the complex. Reject Perfume Shop, Nagoya Textile, InfoMusic, Beauty & Slimming Center and more.Customers rushed to apply for free Tesco clubcard. You can say that the place was really crowded up until this evening before I left.

Bought a few stuff from the complex. I think the complex is off to a good start. Spent around RM150 at Nagoya, and another RM70 at Tesco. I’m thinking of going back to the complex later to buy some discounted perfume. Well, it’s only discounted because we don’t get the perfume box with our purchase. There’s a reason it’s called ‘Reject’ perfume shop. Box or no box, RM150 for 100ml Eau de Parfum that normally costs around RM185 - RM250 is a great deal. Afterwards, I treated Mom and Dad to some ice-cream on the way back.

I don’t think this will be a competition to KB Mall’s Pacific or Kota Sri Mutiara’s Billion. The products available in this new complex differed in quality and brand name. For people who are on tight budget, I’d say this is a blessing for them. We don’t have Carrefour, but at least we now have Tesco. The fact that it’s situated along Sultan Yahya Petra’s bridge which connects the main road to the heart of Kota Bharu is sure to attract customers too.

Nevertheless, Kelantanese should rejoice not because they now has Tesco. Kelantanese around the state should be glad because new store means more job opportunities. Cheers!

I came back at 11 something last night and was too tired to write down the events that entrailed. So yesterday, I when to check out my ASB. I was glad that I got around RM700 of profits out of the whole sum, meaning I had a little over RM700 extra to spend on what I’ll be buying before flying off to New Zealand next month. It’s sad that my long break is finally coming to an end, but at the same time, I’m glad that I’m now a second-year student. Getting through the first year was tough; I hope I’ll do a lot better this year. I withdrew a small amount of RM1,500 from my account to buy some stuff.

Back to the topic at hand..

After going to the bank, I picked up a few blank shirts I I ordered for t-shirt printing purpose. I hoped to settle the order of 20 t-shirts and 15 mugs before next week. Once I’m done, I may be able to get a clean profit of around RM10 per shirt and RM8 per mug. That’s already a lot to me. Sounded a lot for 20 t-shirts, but� those include design charges for 3 different designs. While designing is fairly easy, completing a satisfactory design is definitely not. Especially if your customer is very fussy

And then I went shopping (again)! Initially, I wanted to find a new luggage but later decided to buy one in KL instead. Spent Rm135 on a set of affordable women suit (suit, shirt and long skirt), RM112 on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, RM20 on two cheap black tank-tops and RM105 on lingeries.That made a total of RM372, so I still haveRM1128 left.� I think I’ll go buy some sports wear with them. And the luggage. And maybe, a new mp3 player. Mp4 makes no impression on me because I don’t like to watch videos or anything on small displays (as I blatantly expressed in one past blog post). So now, the important stuff left to buy are:

1. �Sony Vaio CR 23/GN: RM4,488
2. Motorola V9: +- RM1,500
3. Sony DSC-T20-B (RM1,199) or the DSC-H3/B (RM1,399)

Aaah! Lots of money! Feel so sad to watch them flow away from me :((

I can hardly believe that in a few hours, I’ll be leaving 2007 behind. Basically, this also means that I’ve almost used up my 3-month-holiday not doing pretty much anything. Okay, not true, I moved around a lot. I shopped a lot too. But that’s that. My sources of income this holiday are limited to only my part-time designing projects and my t-shirt projects. That aside, 2007 is a memorable year for me. Why?

1. My 1st year as a University of Auckland student
2. I finally hit the big 2. I turned 20 in September, 2007.
3. My niece and nephew now like to play with the less sociable (with kids only) me
4. My English is improving
5. I passed all exams and assignments
6. 2 weeks of School-based Experience in SMK Bandar Tasik Selatan
7. Funny how I struggled for proper, advanced Malay words during my Malaysian Studies (Ethics)� assignment presentation.� That’s how badly we’ve been pressured to communicate in English- so badly that we stutter in Malay. I wonder where all my public speaking wits went off to.
8. I actually freaked out and almost hyperventilated right after doing each exam paper (last finals).
9. A few *ahem* guys expressed their interests in me. But I declined them. I’m simply not ready to open up a place in my heart for anyone. Study (and blogging, ha!) comes first.
10. I finally have my own cards to be used for online shopping! Public Bank Visa Electron and Tune Card are great!
11. My domains stylishgeeks.net, geekdom.info, junjou.info and carameltoffee.net were registered - in that exact order. I’m really happy with the names.
12. I made a total of US $2,586 in online activities. Small sum, but I’m happy!
13. I lost 7 kg in 2 months with simply eating less and counting calories!

That’s for 2007. My hopes for 2008 are:

1. Focus more on my studies. Get the desired A’s and first class degree.
2. Find semester jobs. At least one is enough. NZ $465 is a small sum to live by. Not fair how $800 went to the accommodation only. Not counting mobile and internet bills yet. Aargh!
3. Make more money online. Write more, play less.
4. Update Geekdom.info as often as possible with everything learnt in a day.
5. Update Stylish Geeks, Junjou and Caramel Toffee once a day or once every two or three days.
6. Increase creativity.
7. Increase blog readership.
8. Write more useful and meaningful content.
9. Submit quality assignments.
10. Lose some more weight.
11. Make lots of new blogger friends.

I hope to be able to realise all that in 2008, especially the ‘making lots of blogger friends’ part. It’s kind of lonely on my own in this big space, you know… That, and HAPPY NEW YEAR, darlingtons!