Sunday, October 29, 2006

Direct way to file complaints

Direct way to file complaints (The Star, 29th October 2006)

By V.P. SUJATA

PUTRAJAYA: It is now easier for the public to contact the complaints section of government agencies directly, thanks to the updated website of the Public Complaints Bureau.

The website now has the helpline numbers for over 40 agencies including the police, hospitals, local authorities, banks, fire brigade, Suhakam, Tenaga Nasional Bhd, Employees Provident Fund, Socso, Department of Environment and the National Registration Department.

The additional features in the website, the brainchild of the bureau’s new director-general Dr Chua Hong Teck, will be updated from time to time.

“The public normally finds it difficult to get the correct numbers to make complaints or seek help for their problems,” Dr Chua said.

“With these helpline numbers, it will be easier for complainants because going through the TM operator will only get you the general line, not the complaints section.”

He said the website, www. bpa.jpm.my, was now very user-friendly and with only three clicks of the mouse one would be able to get straight into the page with a complaints form.

“A reference number will be given and the complainant can check the status of his complaint with just another three clicks of the mouse,” he added.

“We are very transparent. Complainants have access to all the correspondences made with the departments. We have nothing to hide.”

He added that he was disappointed that many people did not know about the service provided by the bureau, which falls under the Prime Minister’s Department.

He said letters to the bureau could be sent to P.O. Box 9000, Kuala Lumpur. Postage is free.

Dr Chua also urged the public not to be afraid to complain as it was a form of feedback that would allow the targeted department to improve its service.

He said that, however, Malaysians were not very keen to make complaints as they see it as a negative act.

He suggested that the willingness to make complaints be inculcated in children as they should know their rights as consumers.

Direct way to file complaints

Direct way to file complaints (The Star, 29th October 2006)

By V.P. SUJATA

PUTRAJAYA: It is now easier for the public to contact the complaints section of government agencies directly, thanks to the updated website of the Public Complaints Bureau.

The website now has the helpline numbers for over 40 agencies including the police, hospitals, local authorities, banks, fire brigade, Suhakam, Tenaga Nasional Bhd, Employees Provident Fund, Socso, Department of Environment and the National Registration Department.

The additional features in the website, the brainchild of the bureau’s new director-general Dr Chua Hong Teck, will be updated from time to time.

“The public normally finds it difficult to get the correct numbers to make complaints or seek help for their problems,” Dr Chua said.

“With these helpline numbers, it will be easier for complainants because going through the TM operator will only get you the general line, not the complaints section.”

He said the website, www. bpa.jpm.my, was now very user-friendly and with only three clicks of the mouse one would be able to get straight into the page with a complaints form.

“A reference number will be given and the complainant can check the status of his complaint with just another three clicks of the mouse,” he added.

“We are very transparent. Complainants have access to all the correspondences made with the departments. We have nothing to hide.”

He added that he was disappointed that many people did not know about the service provided by the bureau, which falls under the Prime Minister’s Department.

He said letters to the bureau could be sent to P.O. Box 9000, Kuala Lumpur. Postage is free.

Dr Chua also urged the public not to be afraid to complain as it was a form of feedback that would allow the targeted department to improve its service.

He said that, however, Malaysians were not very keen to make complaints as they see it as a negative act.

He suggested that the willingness to make complaints be inculcated in children as they should know their rights as consumers.

Direct way to file complaints

Direct way to file complaints (The Star, 29th October 2006)

By V.P. SUJATA

PUTRAJAYA: It is now easier for the public to contact the complaints section of government agencies directly, thanks to the updated website of the Public Complaints Bureau.

The website now has the helpline numbers for over 40 agencies including the police, hospitals, local authorities, banks, fire brigade, Suhakam, Tenaga Nasional Bhd, Employees Provident Fund, Socso, Department of Environment and the National Registration Department.

The additional features in the website, the brainchild of the bureau’s new director-general Dr Chua Hong Teck, will be updated from time to time.

“The public normally finds it difficult to get the correct numbers to make complaints or seek help for their problems,” Dr Chua said.

“With these helpline numbers, it will be easier for complainants because going through the TM operator will only get you the general line, not the complaints section.”

He said the website, www. bpa.jpm.my, was now very user-friendly and with only three clicks of the mouse one would be able to get straight into the page with a complaints form.

“A reference number will be given and the complainant can check the status of his complaint with just another three clicks of the mouse,” he added.

“We are very transparent. Complainants have access to all the correspondences made with the departments. We have nothing to hide.”

He added that he was disappointed that many people did not know about the service provided by the bureau, which falls under the Prime Minister’s Department.

He said letters to the bureau could be sent to P.O. Box 9000, Kuala Lumpur. Postage is free.

Dr Chua also urged the public not to be afraid to complain as it was a form of feedback that would allow the targeted department to improve its service.

He said that, however, Malaysians were not very keen to make complaints as they see it as a negative act.

He suggested that the willingness to make complaints be inculcated in children as they should know their rights as consumers.

Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Miss Singapore blogged about her recent experience in the Turkish flight hijack. 1 2 3

Wednesday, October 04, 2006

Lee Kuan Yew's apology letter

Read LKY's apology letter and the annex.

Comments from Rocky's Bru.

Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Mahathir, Rape..


Read about this post in Screenshots.
Also in Rocky's Bru.

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Venting dangerously

Venting dangerously (The Star, 11th sept 2006)

BEFORE you vent all in your blog read these cautionary tales:

Petite Anglaise
www.petiteanglaise.com

Catherine, a British expatriate in France, created a blog where she posted mainly about her up-and-down love life, her daughter and her life as a single mother. Sometimes she wrote amusing anecdotes about her job as a secretary too, such as how, while setting up a videoconference, she accidentally gave the viewers a generous view of her cleavage. However, despite her efforts to remain anonymous, her boss (whom she calls “Old-school Boss”) discovered her blog and fired her.

Catherine is now taking legal action against her employers. And it seems that a book may be on the horizon as well – publishers have already approached her to write one. You can read her side of the story here: commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/catherine_s/2006/07/sec_gets_dooced.html

Opinionista
opinionistas.com

Melissa Lafsky started her blog in March last year where she blogged anonymously about her life as a lawyer in a legal firm. After being discovered by a popular website called Gawker (www.gawker.com) and later interviewed by several newspapers including The New York Times, she received over 10,000 hits a day. Along with the hits came fan mail, requests for legal advice, and “anonymous threats to reveal my identity and get me fired”.

Lafsky found her fame daunting. On an Oct 11, 2005 entry entitled “Ticking Clock” she wrote: It’s somewhere near miraculous that I’ve held on to my job this long. When readers first poured in to this site, I never thought I would still be maintaining the blog six months later. It was a fact then, and is now, that any day at work could hold some climactic scene involving a grim Seventh Seal-esque summoning to the hiring partner’s office, in which I’m sternly informed of my excommunication from the Church of White Collar Orthodoxy and escorted from the building by swarthy security hulks in oversized blue blazers.

Last January, she decided to resign from her job at last.

She wrote: “At the end of the calendar year, ten months and over a million hits since the blog’s inception, I resigned from my job in order to avoid getting canned and prevent potential embarrassment to my co-workers.”

She now works as a freelance writer and is revelling in the fact that she’s no longer anonymous.

Jolie in NYC
www.jolienyc.com

Nadine Haobsh blogged about the beauty industry and the magazines that revolved around it.

When the New York Post revealed that she was the beauty editor for Ladies’ Home Journal, she found herself in a unique situation. Although she didn’t get fired for blogging about her job (she had resigned just before the revelation), she lost a job due to it. She was supposed to work at the teen magazine Seventeen until her bosses found out about her blogging activities. They were not comfortable about it and they withdrew their offer.

Related Stories:
Perils of blogging

Perils of blogging

Perils of blogging (The Star, 11th Sep 2006)

JEEVAN* was frustrated about work. The software engineer had to take on duties that he had no idea how to handle, which meant learning things from scratch and enduring “a lot of boring research”.

Naturally, he took a lot of “research breaks” during work to elevate boredom – and that meant writing on his blog (short for weblog).

And as his job became increasingly frustrating, Jeevan began talking more about work on his online journal.

“Besides my three colleagues (we were a tiny start-up) who were all in the same boat as me, I couldn’t really complain to anyone else – so I blogged my frustrations. This was based on my impression that my bosses did not know my blog, and didn’t even know I had a blog,” he said.

BEWARE: Your boss might read your blog.
“Unfortunately, I didn’t quite realise how increasingly popular my blog was becoming.”

Jeevan started blogging in March 2004, and wrote what he called “typical navel-gazing stuff mixed with some anecdotes and observations.”

Unbeknownst to him, some of these ended up being circulated via e-mail and ended up reaching the company receptionist. “From there, it was a simple matter of putting two and two together, and since I blog under my real name, she quickly figured out my blog,” he said.

Because she liked his posts, she passed them on to his boss, who subsequently found his blog via Google. “He read through each and every one of my blog posts, and came across all those posts that were critical of what was going on,” he said.

Jeevan was called in to his boss’ office for a “talk”. “To be fair, he wasn’t harsh on me or anything, and I never actually mentioned my company’s name or specific details of what we did on my blog,” he said.

Jeevan’s boss told him that it would be better to remove all the critical posts about work. “I wasn’t going to go to war for a blog, so I complied, deleted those posts. I didn’t even keep a backup,” he said.

He then informed his readers about what he did and hinted that he almost got “dooced”.

“And that’s that. My boss has continued, and still continues, to read my blog, and we maintain a civil relationship despite me moving to another company later,” he said.

Needless to say, Jeevan doesn’t blog about work anymore.

“In fact, I’m a lot more discreet regarding many aspects of my personal life. I tend not to refer to friends by name. Usually a nickname or initials would suffice, unless they’re bloggers themselves and want to be identified with a link. I certainly do not blog about family, and I’ve never posted pictures of myself or close friends or family online. I also now password-protect entries that I want only certain people such as close friends to read,” he said.

Don’t get dooced

The term “dooced” is Internet-speak for “getting fired over something you’ve written in your blog”. And as blogging becomes an increasingly popular hobby (according to blog search engine Technorati, a new blog is created every second), so has the number of bloggers fired because of their blogs. Just take a look at this list: morphemetales.blogspot.com/2004/12/statistics-on-fired-bloggers.html.

The term “dooced” originated from the case of Heather Armstrong, who once worked in Los Angeles as a web designer ... until her bosses discovered her blog, Dooce (www.dooce.com).

Besides reflecting on her life as a “recovering Mormon”, Armstrong also wrote scathing anecdotes about her workmates. Calling her boss “Her Heniousness” didn’t earn her popularity points and she once even wrote about “the proper way to hate your job”.

Her superiors were not amused and showed her the door.

Now, she has sage advice for those who blog about work: “My advice to you is BE YE NOT SO STUPID. Never write about work on the Internet unless your boss knows and sanctions the fact that YOU ARE WRITING ABOUT WORK ON THE INTERNET.

However, it’s not all bad. Armstrong’s blog is now so popular that she supports her family via the advertisements on it. (In fact, some fired bloggers actually found fame and even clinch a publishing deal thanks to their sudden unemployment! See sidebar.)

Said blogger Michael Ooi, who blogs from www.michaelooi.net: “In my opinion, there’s no such thing as ‘blogging safely’ when you’ve treaded into the realms of blogging about work which, I believe the majority of working bloggers do.”

It is not unusual for bloggers to blog about work because they spend most of their time at the workplace, he said.

“So, the whole thing pretty much depends on how one’s able to avert their blogs from being discovered by the boss,” he said.

However, one is still taking a risk when doing that.

“When an employer wants to nitpick any person who blogs about work, he/she will be able to somehow find a good reason to do it. It can be a seemingly innocent clause in one of your blog entries, or simply the whole idea about blogging about work. I’ve seen it happened to a few people I know,” he said.

Salmah*, a friend of Ooi’s, was fired because of her blog.

One day, the executive wrote about a senior employer, pointing out her poor skills in management and how she felt about her poor attitude.

“My friend made a big mistake by stating that manager’s first name, along with the company’s name. One day, that manager found out about the entry when she randomly searched for her name and the company in a search engine ... and stumbled on the particular blog entry,” he said.

Although Salmah blogged under a pseudonym, she made one mistake: she posted a photograph of herself ... which the manager found. It nailed her identity immediately.

Salmah was queried the very next day and later asked to resign from the company.

“For myself, I do keep myself ‘disciplined’ to conform to a set of crude ‘guidelines’ to stay as far out of the boiling water aspossible,” he said.

Ooi blogs anonymously, does not reveal his company’s name nor does he reveal the names of those he blogs about. (He usually gives them pseudonyms.) No pictures of himself on the blog, of course. And if he talks about an event or incident, he does not reveal the location or time of the event.

“And be nice to everyone at work, fake it if necessary. If you’re nice, people will have less tendency to be hostile to you,” he said.

Anonymity no protection?

However, blogging anonymously may not be enough anymore, as blogger Catherine Sanderson found out the hard way.

Sanderson, a British expatriate working in France, found herself out of a job when her boss discovered her blog, Petite Aglaise (www.petiteanglaise.com). In a series of unfortunate accidents, her blog was discovered when he used her computer after she forgot to switch it off.

Although she wrote mostly about her love life and her life as a single mother, she did occasionally write amusing stories about her workplace. That, however, was enough for Catherine’s boss to dismiss her on the grounds of “gross misconduct”. She is now taking legal action against her former employers.

Accidents such as Sanderson’s could happen as Internet browsers retain memory of the sites you’ve visited. All it takes is for someone – a boss or a colleague – to click on the right link.

Jeevan, however, doesn’t have any qualms about blogging at work.

“To me, it’s no different than gathering at the water cooler and yakking away. It just so happens that my water cooler is my blog, and the people I’m yakking away to are my readers,” he said.

However, he’s aware that bosses may see it differently; therefore he strives not to minimise blogging at work.

Leow Yong May decided from the beginning that she will not write about work in her blog. (She prefers that her blog URL not be mentioned.)

“This was because I know the danger of blogging about work or of typing an entry during work,” said Leow.

Leow felt fortunate that she came across articles about how some bloggers were fired or warned by their employers before starting work.

“The employees got fired or were warned by their employers because their blog entries spread rumours about the company, backstabbed colleagues, other private and confidential matters relating to the company.

“So, I told myself (and regularly remind myself) not to blog about matters regarding work because that would just create trouble.

“My blog just includes entries on how I feel about life, the people in the world, my observations, my opinions on issues, and a therapeutic tool for me after a stressful day at work,” she said.

It could get you hired, too

But here’s another thing: your blog could get you hired, too.

Popular Malaysian blogger, Kenny Sia (www.kennysia.com), is one such case. One of Malaysia’s popular bloggers, Sia receives about 100 over comments each post – readers love his humorous take on Malaysian life. And, apparently, so did the people at Klue magazine.

Now, Sia writes Blog Roll, a column that highlights interesting Malaysian blogs.

And he says that he’s not alone. He knows a few Malaysian bloggers who were offered jobs thanks to their blogs.

“I also know two people who were looking for bloggers to hire,” he said. Many of the employers come from the communications and writing industry, he said.

“You share your talent in your blog: your flair for writing, photography, singing, etc. These are the things that shows on your website,” he said.

It also makes economic sense for employers to peruse blogs for potential employees. “They can just go straight to the blog rather than publish an ad in the newspaper or have human resource managers to look through applications,” he said.

Hired or fired? In the end, it’s how and what you write about in your blog that determines that.

* Names have been changed to protect identity.

The Star is not responsible for the contents of the blogs mentioned in this article.

Related Stories:
Venting dangerously

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Another side of story about the UPM fracas

OOI TZE MIN-menjadi umpan untuk provokasi 17 julai.Pandai betul dia berlakon buat muka seposen




Some interesting find over here.

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

How To Blog?

I want to blog, too
(Star, 15th August 2006)

WANT to be a blogger, too? Here’s how, in four steps:

1 Choose a site to host your blog

Blogger (blogger.com)

Helps you set things up, with pre-set templates which mean no HTML coding knowledge is required. Ideal if you want a low-hassle blog with an easy-to-remember URL (blogspot.com). You can post from your mobile phone.

LiveJournal (livejournal.com)

Equal parts blogging site and social networking site. There’s a “friends” function so you can read all your friends’ LiveJournals at the same time, plus community sites for diverse interests, such as (http://community.livejournal.com/ alittleawkward) and (http://community.live journal. com/sg_dancers).

You can also post from your mobile phone. And you can read your friends’ new posts on one page, instead of clicking from one blog to the next.

Xanga (xanga.com)

Another with a community focus, with functions to “subscribe” to your friends’ sites so you never miss a post, and to join blogrings which link you to other like-minded bloggers. You can also browse by “metres” – geographical areas where people live – to find friends living nearby.

Very popular are its text formatting functions. Xanga users often beautify their posts with pretty fonts and colours.

Diaryland (diaryland.com)

Offers basic functions in an easy-to-navigate site. Its cutesy design – think pastel colours and cartoon characters – is popular among bloggers who still tYpE LiKe THiS. Good for children or adolescents.

Wordpress (wordpress.com)

Despite its basic functions, Wordpress is popular for its clean, classy templates. It is fast gaining ground as a haunt for “underground” bloggers.

Wordpress templates are available through a service called Blogsome (www.blogsome.com)

Yahoo! 360 (360.yahoo.com)

You can check your friends’ Yahoo! 360° updates from Yahoo! Messenger. Just look for the yellow gleams in your Friends List. Create and share lists, reviews and polls. Also post from your mobile phone.

2 Choose a display name Unless you want to be generic and forgettable, choose something unpredictable that leaves an impression. Names we like; Singabloodypore (singabloodypore.blogspot.com) or Kway Teow Man (kwayteowman.blogspot.com).

3 Upload pictures Every blog host can upload pictures – all you need to do is to click on the icon, which allows you to browse your computer’s folders and choose the picture you want.

Use Adobe Photoshop or any other photo-editing software to shrink your pictures before uploading them. Otherwise, your site will be slow. If you’re afraid of people stealing your photos, add a watermark.

4 Join technorati (technorati.com) This blog search engine is the biggest thing now. Join for free and readers from all over the world can read your posts according to how you “tag” or label them. Examples of tags – Hezbollah, for posts on the current Middle East conflict; or Singapore Idol, on the reality show.



Related Stories:
Seniors who blog
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