Cars : Wheel Alignment & Balancing

 

How did you spend your 31st of August today? I spent half of the evening trying to find a tyre shop that’s open on Merdeka hols.

To my suprise, all the tyre shops I knew around Bangi were closed, including the one nearest to my house. I remembered that I kept a number of a shop that had ads on lelong.com & was open on all public holidays. After sending an sms to the owner, he replied they were open & I was off to Bandar Sunway (25km away).

I’d say 90% of all the other workshops in Bandar Sunway were closed but the workshop I was heading for was open. Yahoooo…!!!

Not so fast smart ass! If 90% of the workshops are closed, where would all the other customers be heading to? Yup, you got it, the same place I was heading for too! And I was not in the mood to join the queue of customers waiting for their car to be serviced.

So, as much as I really needed to get my wheels aligned (coz I need to drive up to Teluk Intan tomorrow), I had no choice but to skip that task & move on with the next errand I had in mind – getting a haircut. This was to take place in Kajang at my usual mamak ‘hairstylist’ who came to work here as a barber all the way from India 5 years ago.

Upon entering the outskirts of Kajang, to my suprise, I saw more than 3 big tyre shops that were open for business (and to think I had to drive all the way to Sunway.. making me an even ’smarter’ ass).

To make things even rosier, one of the shops had no customers at all. So, I just drove right in (now, you should only do this IF you know what type of service you need for your car & the range of charges involved + a bit of basic knowledge on automotive engineering OR else the workshop owner would be hitting an instant jackpot where the prize money would be coming directly from you!).

I knew that all I wanted was to get rid of the slight vibration from my front wheels each time I exceed 120km/h (erm… don’t try this on Malaysian highways) & also to get my steering wheel straight (currently its swerving a bit to the left). And this would roughly cost me less than RM 50.

I was right about the total bill being less than RM50 … FOR the wheel alignment & balancing that is BUT my front brake pads just happened to need immediate replacement! No wonder I’ve been hearing this slight screeching sound for the past week everytime I slam on the brakes. So, that was another RM 65.

A good advice from today’s experience would be preventive measures :

1. ALWAYS do regular car maintainence
2. Check your braking system every 20,000KM (coz RM65 is a tiny price to pay for your life)
3. Change the engine oil/transmission oil/brake fluid at recomended intervals
4. Rotate your tyres every 6,000KM or 3 months to avoid uneven tyre wear
5. Service your air conditioning system once a year (if possible)
6. Replace your timing belt at the recommended interval
7. If something costs too much to replace, try to get a second opinion
8. Make sure your shock absorbers are not leaking to prevent early tyre replacement
9. Check the level of coolant in your radiator everytime before a long journey
10. Replace your water pump at least every 3 timing belts

Of course this list is a lot longer in reality, but I’ll leave that for all of you to share your ideas/suggestions/personal experience here for everyone’s benefit.

Another appointment at Hospital Selayang

Yesterday my dad had a followup with the specialist. Standard procedure, register at 915am. Appointment at 1030am. Finished at the pharmacy by 1145am.

The duration with the specialist? Not even 10 mins! 

First entry in Buy & Sell : Honda Accord 2.0 iVTECH 2005

 Please refer to the ‘Buy & Sell’ page. Tq.

1hr 37mins

Hmmm… either I was driving faster than yesterday or the jam was not as bad. Well, neither to be exact but the main reason for beating yesterdays time of 2hrs++ was due to the fact that I left the office at 4.45PM.

Though I did reach home an hour earlier compared to yesterday, the rain was even ‘badder’ today as it was almost non stop cauing the some major roads (including smack right in front of my ofice) to be flooded. How bad? I’m sure we’ll get some visual on this matter in Saturday’s printed media.

Again I pose this question : What on earth are the authorities doing about this? The public is tired of lame excuses! So please, please, please do something ASAP. & for those who said “use the public transport” – If its really efficent, why did the putra LRT in Masjid Jamek had to be shut down this evening?

Was the underground station flooded in knee deep waters too ??!

KL – Bangi : 2hrs 17mins

A new movie? Naaaah!

Thats how long it took me to drive home from the office yesterday. Although I drove out at 5.30PM, right after the heavy downpour in KL, the jam just couldn’t have been worse.

Around 630PM (I had only reached somewhere in Sg Besi by then), a freind called (she was on her way home from KL to Seremban & had left the office at 5PM – 30 mins earlier than me) to say that she was still stuck near of Istana Negara on Lebuhraya Mahameru because traffic was at a standstill. Thank goodness I took the NPE! Or else, I’d be in the same mess.

After listening to reports in the radio, it was reported that flash floods had struck KL in several areas where the daily traffic flowed in the tens of thousands… Eg : Chan Sow Lin, TUDM, Kuchai Lama, Kelana Jaya etc. This was the major cause of the entire episode.

So, were any of you also caught in the jam yesterday? And, does anyone have any idea what measures are being taken to overcome this problem? Or are those responsible still in deep deep deep discussion…

What does MERDEKA mean to you ?

Independence?

This was a topic discussed yesterday during a short gathering with some freinds aged between 24 – 54. Everyone had their own opinion & ideas.

Generally, the meaning of independence is more than freedom. It could mean a million things, things that we would have never thought about had we not discussed & exchanged ideas with others.

To me it means transformation in the context of infrastructure, human capital, paradigm & especially the way we go about our daily lives.

For example, the discussion of sex education was a major no-no not only before independence but has been so for the past hundreds of years in our national culture. The idea of having females pursuing tertiary education was nowhere to be seen what more for them to lead an organization. Well, this story goes on and on and on…

On another note, one of my friends yesterday mentioned how he couldn’t sleep the 1st night he went to boarding school. Homesick? Maybe, but that was not the main reason. He said that before that night, for all his life, he had never seen an electrical light bulb nor had he had the luxury of sleeping on a Dunlop mattress with a pillow. All they had then back in the kampung was ‘pelita ayam’ – that lights up with kerosene. This was in the 60’s, just several years after independence.

What is your understanding or perception of independence in the context of Malaysia? Care to share? 

Buy & Sell page

Since its almost every other day I get good offers from my aquaintances which at times are just too good to resist but of most that I must turn down (coz some of the stuff that they need to buy from me or want to sell of does not happen to be within my resources at the point of buyh and sell), its high time that I create this section so you can deal directly with the buyer or seller.

Of course, since this is a public web, the items sold or sought for must be legal by law or else we’ll all end up behind bars ! Although the food there is free 24 hrs, 7 days a week, I think we’d all be better off outside, with the majority of society  at the nearest mamak stall… 

Being the intelligent readers that you all are, my only hope is that everyone who uses this feature will benefit from what it has to offer.

Please email me personally with deatils of your offerings.

Thank you & good luck !

AIA and Aviva come out tops

as published in The Star, Thursday, 17th August 2006 :

THE Ministry of Health (MOH) yesterday released information on five medical insurance companies to make it easier for consumers to choose which policy suits them best.  

The figures show that NTUC Income is the slowest when it comes to settling claims, with only 1% of claimants receiving their money within a week, and only half having claims settled within 28 days. 

In contrast, 56% of AIA and 50% of Aviva policyholders were paid within a week of their claims between April and June this year. Great Eastern Life paid half of its policyholders within 10 days. There were no figures available for the fifth company, Prudential. 

view the complete article at :
http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2006/8/17/asia/15161178&sec=asia

Gone were the days when …

• you had to bring a whole box of 1.44MB diskettes just to save powerpoint files for a certain lecture
• you were playing a few levels of a pc game and had to open the floppy drive to “insert Disk #2″
• you had to insert the diskette labled ‘DOS’ before you could insert any other diskette
• you used to have a hard time using the arrow keys on the keyboard because someone just spent the whole night playing ’streetfighter’
• you play a game up to the last level just to find out that the final diskette that you were required to insert came up with an “error” or “failed to read” message
• you use ‘drivespace’ to compress the files already on your HDD so you’d have more space to stuff in more junk
• ‘alphos’,'raptor’,'F117′,’simcity’ or ’test drive’ was the coolest game around
• you arrive at the computer lab on campus showing off your new 16MB thumbdrive
• formatting a HDD took more than 20 different CDs
• you were the most hightech kid on the block because your PC had a Pentium MMX 200MHz CPU with 32MB of SDRAM & a 3.2 GB HDD
• you used the ‘pack n go’ feature in ms powerpoint to save a 20MB presentation
• an iPAQ with wireless features was a luxury
• burning CDs at home was just a myth, & DVDs was something far beyond the horizon
• wireless LAN, bluetooth, CD Writer, TFT LCD, USB, was optional features for a notebook that would cost you extra money
• 1GB on a tiny SD card wad deemed as a fantasy
• a Pentium II 400MHz CPU cost RM 2,450 for the chip alone
• LCD screens were just for corporate organizations & not for use for home PCs
• 400GB of storange would involve a RAID of 10 x 40GB HDDs
• it was unthinkable to imagine that multitasking would require at least 1GB of RAM

The above transpired in a conversation last night with Kadz, Sir Kamal & Ariff. But to have this kind of conversation, all the people involved must have some basic knowledge & experience with the evolution of PCs…

Since each of us also had experience with troubleshooting PC poblems, here are some personal experiences :

• there was this 40+ teacher who went for a course conducted by Sir Kamal. It was his 1st time with the PC. His problem? The cursor was stuck in the middle of the screen BUT his mouse was already pushed to the edge of the computer table. Just a bit more & the mouse would fall to the floor ! His solution? Using a book, he ‘extended’ the computer table & moved the mouse accross the book, thus he got the cursor to the desired position on screen! that is what i call pure creativity…
• Ariff received a strange call from one of the staff when working at his previous office. His complain, “I seem to have a problem with the cup holder on my pc, could you please come & check?” To Ariff’s suprise, the CDROM or ‘cup holder’ failed to open.

Got your own experiences? Please share them with us.

‘Lepas Geram’ on ERA

I listened to this slot on my way to the office this morning.

One lady caller was very very very angry about negative reports on a new artist who had just won 1st place on a local TV reality show. I’m sure some of you heard this slot on air too.

Anyway, she was really unsatisfied with the way reporters/bloggers were writing on the Net pertaining to the her beloved new artist. She said that it was unfair to write all these negative comments & compare him to his predecessor.

Well, being an artist or celebrity, one shall always be exposed to this kind of environment. It could be for better or for worse but that is the actual price that has to be paid the moment you embark on the frontiers of fame & fortune.