I got this SMS this morning.
Something tells me it’s downright fishy.
It’s probably a scam for a few reasons.
I don’t buy petrol from Shell.
I don’t join SMS contests.
I am very skeptical of forwarded emails (especially those that begin with: Send this to 10 people and I get 3 cents for my daughter who is dying of leukemia, you get my point. It started with Bill Gates and we all wanted to fleece that poor nerd-CEO).
I am very skeptical of everything. Maybe it’s because I am a woman or that I am too bloody jaded for my own good. Women are tough when it comes to negotiating money and nitpicking (or what’s called looking at super tiny details). Please correct me if I am wrong.
OK, this SMS comes from this number: 014 374 9309. So beware.
“Shell Promosi”. Anda di Pilih dari Office SHELL tlh Berjaya Meraih Cabutan Hadiah “RM 17,000.00”. Sila dail di Talian 017 837 2718 Terima kasih.
First, let me nitpick.
The Bahasa is like crap.
If you want to scam someone, make sure you can type an SMS properly.
Don’t do it like you’re an illiterate. Unless you bloody well are. (Methinks the scammer is illiterate. Look at how he/she spells ‘di Pilih’ and suddenly it’s a truncated version of ‘telah’ with ‘tlh’).
The modus operandi is probably like this: If I were sillier (and didn’t use my brains), I would happily call the number.
Once I do that, the scammer knows I am hooked. I am a greedy pig. I want to know what I won. Maybe it’s RM17K.
So he/she will get me to deposit some money so I can claim my prize.
It’s not just this SMS.
Once I got a call from a Chinese-speaking woman. Thick accented Mandarin. Probably from China. I knew it was a scam the moment she asks, “Ni hui chiang huayi mah?” (Can you speak Mandarin?) If I were ruder, I’d say something crude in Mandarin that begins with “mah”.
The other type of scam is the credit card/call centre scam. Nic got a call which actually (audaciously) said that this was a bank call centre and wanted to verify his credit card details. Could he verify by saying his credit card number with CVC over the phone?!
Now, it’s normal to get calls from your bank. But one that asks for your credit card number and CVC? First time I ever heard of it.
Luckily Nic wasn’t that stupid. Something didn’t sound right. The guy on the other end sounded too slick, too polished. As if he did this every day. Which he probably does. Call and scam people easily because sometimes you just might forget and think it’s your bank calling up for verification purposes.
The other type of scams is the shopping mall-scam-old-uncles-and-aunties.
My Dad and Mom experienced this once when they were at a shopping mall a few years ago. It was the thing then to catch senior citizens and give them these scratch and win cards. Of course, once you scratch the card, you get this prize.
You are then dragged to the shop (usually electrical item shop selling vacuum cleaner, washing machine, etc) and then there’s this ‘drama’ where the shop employees start this song-and-dance and gush “Oh uncle, how lucky! You won this RM2000 voucher! Can get so many things in this shop for free.”
The problem is, most of the items in the shop are priced OVER RM2K. Either you fork out more money to buy some cheap China-made vacuum cleaner (which breaks down in 2 weeks) or you forfeit the voucher. Most uncles and aunties get pressured at the shop employees can be quite persuasive!
The thing is, many young people also get scammed, if the news reports in the papers are anything to go by. Executives in their 20s and 30s get scammed the hi-tech way – through phone and Internet.
I guess the only way to prevent this happening to you is this: keep Greed away.
If you’re not greedy, don’t care for such freebies, you’re safe.
You know what I am going to do? I am going to email Shell Malaysia and get them to look into this SMS scam. After all the scammers are using Shell to scam people!
UPDATE: I emailed the Shell Malaysia people after I wrote this post. They wrote back. This is what they said:
Thank you for your feedback. With regards to your enquiry below, the SMS received is not from Shell. That is a SCAM SMS going around saying that it is from Shell.
If you were to be a winner from Shell, we shall notify you through phone call and will not send any sms.
Hence, kindly ignore the sms and do not reply to them on any details. For further clarification, kindly call us at 1300 88 1808. Thank you.
Regards,
Shafeela
Shell Customer Service Centre
Best Banana Cake Ever
Don’t you just love the smell of baking banana cake?
(OK. if you hate bananas, this post is not for you. Stop reading now. If you love bananas, then read on for you will find a recipe so simple you’ll run out right now to buy some to make this cake.)
I do. I love bananas fresh but also when bananas turn overly ripe, as they tend to do in our warm Malaysian weather, don’t throw them out. I know soggy, ripe bananas aren’t the best looking items to cook with but wait a minute and you will know why.
Bake a banana cake with soggy ripe bananas and you will have a luscious, moist, 100 per cent lovingly homemade banana cake par excellence (OK, and I am also running out of bloody superlatives here).
Bananas freeze well so even if you’re not in the mood to bake a cake anytime soon, they can sit in the freezer for sometime.
I have made this banana cake so many times I’ve lost count. And unlike my bread baking adventures which can be counted on the fingers of one hand, this one is a sure winner. Unless you don’t like bananas, in which case I cannot help you.
Marsha, my cyber buddy, asked for this recipe so I gave it to her. She promises to courier to me if it is hard as a rock. I assured her, no, I guaranteed her – this is a no-fail cake.
If I can make it, anyone can. After all, look at me. I am not the best baker around – I tend to go for shortcuts if I can (like cake premixes but after sometime I gave up on those as the cake tastes fake!)
OK, for this banana cake you will need:
150 gm sugar
150 gm butter
150 gm self raising flour (with a pinch of sodium bicarbonate)
3 eggs, beaten
1 cup of ripe bananas, mashed
First you cream the butter and sugar. I used to beat them by hand with a wooden spoon for about 15 minutes. Then I got a hand mixer so that made it even quicker.
With a hand mixer, you take about 5-8 minutes on a medium speed. Then slowly pour in the egg, bit by bit. You don’t want the whole thing to curdle like taufufah. I usually pour in the egg about 3 times, each time mixing it well into the creamed butter and sugar.
Once the eggs are all in, use a metal spoon and fold in half the amount of flour first. Fold lightly. Add in the whole cup of bananas. Then add in the second half of your flour. Don’t overfold.
Pour batter into a greased tray that’s lightly coated with flour. I don’t line my tray with greaseproof paper – too lazy for such dainty stuff.
Bake in a preheated oven at 160 C for 20 minutes (using bottom heat) and after that 10 minutes (using top heat). I know ovens can be strange so your oven may take a little longer or a little less. So the final test lies with your equipment. The test of a done cake is a skewer inserted into the middle of the cake and comes out real smooth and clean, no batter bits stuck.
Cool, cut and serve.
That’s it! A superbly yummy cake (which can be cut into 24 pieces) and eaten in a jiffy.
Try and do tell me how yours turned out, OK?
Eat, Pray & Love: Elizabeth Gilbert's Mantra
Jana gave me Elizabeth Gilbert’s book, Eat, Pray & Love when I was in KL a few months ago.
We’re both book-mad in the same way and love the same kind of reads. But Jana’s more feminist than me so I was surprised that this non-fiction was slipped into my hands, with an urgent “read it”.
Have I heard of Elizabeth Gilbert!
She was interviewed on Oprah sometime ago and I had caught that episode but it didn’t make sense to me as I hadn’t read the book yet (then).
And with all things ASTRO, they always have re-runs so I managed to catch the same episode AFTER I read her book.
One Woman’s Spiritual Journey
Elizabeth Gilbert personifies much of the modern woman in a prickly situation. She is a writer. This book is real. It’s based on her one year of travel first to Italy (to eat), to India (to pray) and to Indonesia, Bali island (to love as love found her!). It sounds unreal because she was given a book deal to travel and write so this book is the result of that one whole year.
When she started, or rather before she started her journey to the three countries beginning with “I” (it sounds contrived, does it not? Everything seems to fit. To fall seamlessly into its own place of ironies. Her own journey, looking for herself, “I”…three countries, three different missions, one goal – to discover herself. Maybe I am too bloody jaded about Americans.
Maybe.
Her story is one that most modern women share. She was in a marriage, trying for a baby. Found herself not wanting either. Didn’t know how to get out of it.
When she finally divorced, she decided to go after what she really wanted in life.
To learn Italian in the native country of Italians.
To eat without feeling guilty (the sin of today’s civilisation!)
To spend 4 months each in Italy, India and Indonesia.
To go to an ashram in India and learn meditation.
To find the medicine man in Bali (Ketut Liyer) whom she had met years ago and to become his ‘assistant’ and English tutor.
Eventually she found love in Bali.
She returned home, wrote this book and it touched so many women because it’s adventurous, exciting and deeply philosophical.
Why I Adored This To Bits
Sigh. We’re women lah. We empathise with such books. We flock to such authors. They give us reasons to discover ourselves.
I would be a liar if I said I didn’t like her book. I loved it. I felt I was taken on the same journey to these 3 countries and saw the same landscapes, met the same people, laughed at the corny jokes, loved and hurt, and teared at the same time.
Gilbert is not a soppy writer; her strength is in her words, flowing softly like a breeze. It rushes out at you at certain times, augmented by her love of self deprecating humour despite her heartbreaking circumstances. She kept me glued to the book because I really needed to know if she reached her goal.
If you’re a woman and love travel and culture, Elizabeth Gilbert may make you eager to jump onto the next plane and go in search of Ketut Liyer, her Indonesian medicine man. I loved him because he was just so real!
This book is a keeper.
You would want to dip into it just for fun and accompany her on her spiritual path once in a while to remind you of your own spiritual journey too.
Something you can pass on to your girlfriends too.
While you’re at her website, read her thoughts on writing too. Lovely!
Mentioned in The Malay Mail, Thanks to Robert
Anyone who reads this blog knows that Robert Raymer used to be my Creative Writing teacher when I was an undergrad in USM about 10 years ago.
Fate made us meet again some 3 years ago when we were both speakers at an event that KDU Penang was organizing then. We met up, exchanged news and thought that was it. He was moving to Sarawak anyway as he had taken up a new teaching position at UNIMAS.
Yet, as always, as Paul gleefully reminds me, there are no coincidences in life. We meet for a reason. And that reason may not be clear to us in the beginning but soon makes sense.
In the end, Robert became our client because as a writer, one needs to get the word out there. What better way to show it than through a website that collects all the awards and stories/books in one place for editors and book publishers to find him? It’s a one-stop website for all you ever need to know about Robert Raymer, the author, the teacher, the self-confessed fan of The Secret.
But it went a step further with a blog. I knew instinctively that a blog was the best thing for Robert because he writes and writes and has so many ideas. He needed to share them online.
And so he has. For the past 2 years, he has been blogging in between writing his novels, signing books at MPH, promoting his newest book, Lovers & Strangers Revisited and juggling teaching at UNIMAS. And in addition to raising a young family – he has 2 young boys!
Anyway, go read the interview in the Malay Mail where Robert gets to talk about blogging, what he has gotten out of it and yippee, even I get a lovely mention and blog link! (Thanks Robert!)
What a way to start one’s Thursday huh!
Networking, Anyone?
I’m organising a networking lunch for ladies next Friday, 14 November, at Edelweiss (on Armenian St) as part of our WomenBizSense activities.
While most activities are limited to ladies who are members of our group (our Lunch Bunches and Quarterly Meets), this time we’re opening up to other ladies – if you’re a homemaker or working gal and want to make some new friends, join us for lunch at Edelweiss from 1pm onwards.
But if you want to join us earlier (do we have a surprise for women who love bling bling), meet us at Campbell Street at 12 noon sharp. At Nam Loong Jewellers specifically.
Ya, I know WomenBizSense is for entrepreneurial women but once in a while, we would love to enlarge our circle and meet others too.
Actually we’ve got many requests from ladies who don’t own businesses wanting to join us in the past. So this Networking Lunch is the best way to come to meet fabulous women in business.
OK, so details, yes. Find the details over at our official WomenBizSense website: http://www.womenbizsense.com/pages/events-activities.php
A Tale of 3 Eurasian Sisters
You know, I never miss a play by Mark if I can help it.
Urmm…A Case of Mark Boleh
For one, he’s a good friend and two, if we don’t support Malaysian theatre, where will it be? It’s not that we are major theatre goers lah, I mean, look at the pathetic theatre scene in Penang.
Actually I shouldn’t say it’s pathetic because it is much better now. A friend from PJ came up in July and we caught a pretty good acapella rendition of Celine Dion’s hits and she gushed, oh I wished I could have these in PJ. Which meant that for the measly price of RM20 apiece, we in Penang can attend any theatre production we liked. In KL, she pouts, such prices aren’t available. Anyone can vouch for this?
Also come to think of it, while we do not have the Philharmonic Orchestra that KL people have, we do have our Penang Symphony Orchestra and visiting orchestras which are actually quite lovely to attend.
Culturally I suppose we aren’t left wanting in Penang. Perhaps we tend to be picky but I always think, if it is a toss-up between a play and paying the cover charge for some night hangout, I’d go for a play. And if people can pay cover charges, it’s not about the money then. It’s probably more of interest.
Secrets of 3 Daughters Undone
I caught Mark’s Mama’s Wedding on Friday night at The Actors’ Studio Greenhall, arriving at 8.29pm (plays usually start at 8.30pm). I had earlier SMSed him to see if he’d be around but he couldn’t come up to Penang for this. He’s actually one of the three directors-in-residence at KLPAC so he must be dead busy.
I liked Mark’s style because he writes about what he knows intimately.
Like about Kulim.
Like about growing up Eurasian.
Like growing up with hang-ups (hey, who doesn’t have hang ups!) about love and relationships.
Like about being Catholic.
Like about speaking Hokkien with English and campur with some Bahasa (that’s how real Malaysians speak, not those put on accents you hear on TV. Thank God someone realised that!)
But I’m biased. I’ve been a Mark Beau fan since his Stories for Amah days. Since his Cheet Chat days with my best pal. Since his Ah Steve days.
(He’s also one of the humblest people I know, despite his fame and success. Mark has twice been nominated for a BOH Cameronian Arts Award in the Best Original Script category against Jit Murad and Ann Lee.)
And of course, he was still in Penang then.
He took off for KL because let’s face it, if you’re in theatre and you want to really make it big, anyone in their right mind would relocate to KL. That’s really a no brainer.
So, how did I like this tale of 3 Eurasian sisters? (A sidenote: It premiered in Singapore before it came back to Penang and KL.)
It struck a chord with me because I happen to grow up knowing 2 Eurasians and yes, they do act all uppity and strange, neither here nor there. I can’t say they were silly; it’s how they were brought up to shop in Marks & Spencers, wear flowery hats at church weddings and bested each other with family gossip and acar recipes.
Oh and let’s not forget those incredibly English accents.
The Dresser Envy & Sugar Daddy Goss
This girl I used to know, well, she was beautiful at 16 and everyone loved her gregariousness.
Me, I loved and envied her bedroom because it was all hers (I had to share my cramped space with 2 sisters) and she had a full dressing table (which was one of those crazy things I hankered for when I was a teen!) and she had all these lovely English-y stuff that no one my age knew where it all came from (later I found out those lavender soaps, rose soaps, embroidered handkerchiefs, lacy undies and all came from Marks & Spencers and they still cost a bomb so I really didn’t know if I were to believe the sugar daddy stories).
The other Eurasian was a boy. He was an absolute maddie. Their family were so open that his mom showed us girls her G-string when we visited his home in the middle of a tea plantation (his father was an estate manager).
I formed early opinions of this group of folks whom I found exciting and different from my typical middle-class Chinese upbringing.
Anyway, Mama’s Wedding is about 3 sisters who each have their memories and angst about each other. The dialogue is quite Malaysian and though at times the jokes kind of hang precariously in the air , Mark’s play is always a continuation of family relationships, of how we really do hurt the people we love most and why in the end, everyone’s still family because we’re bonded by the blood that runs in us. We can fight, scream, bitch and groan about each other but we’re still deep inside, of the same kind. Different outside but same same inside.
It’s now playing in KL’s The Actors Studio @ BSC (running till 6 November).
So catch it and tell me what you think of Mama’s Wedding.
What I Learnt from an Indian Memory Champion
Update: I put my photos on Facebook so they’re here if you want to take a look at brainy stuff.
I got the flu bug and now I am feeling completely buggered! I don’t know if going for my Thai massage on Monday had anything to do with this but it seems all toxins have escaped and making my life (and nose) hell.
I’m big on diagnosing my health and at this point, I’m most likely to suffer from Wind Cold. I start coughing if I am near cool air! It sucks of course. And I detest coughing! It makes me very annoyed and disrupts my work.
Having the flu is a trinity of sore throat, running nose and cough – well that’s what a flu does to me. I am not the best of company when I get sick. I am extremely grouchy and sensitive. I start withdrawing into myself.
But I shan’t wallow in such pitiful episodes.
A Day at Forever 21
Wait a minute, it could also be due to my hectic weekend. Lisa came up from KL for a weekend. While we actually spent almost the whole of Friday shopping at Forever21 @ Queensbay Mall like some datin without work to do, I don’t think it was the trying on/changing clothes that created this episode though we were caught in a drizzle as we left the mall in the evening.
The Brainy Stuff at TAR
It could have been the next two days where I attended the Festival of the Mind at TAR College. I helped out at the Mensa Penang booth a bit though I am not a Mensa member but chewahhh….I could explain it all. (My memory since my thesis days are still good!)
An Ant/Anant Taught Us How to Remember
The talks were exciting though. I sat in during Anant Kashibatla’s session on improving memory. Now I can say my memory is like an elephant’s. But still, I’d love to hear what this Indian national memory record holder has to say about memory. He was a cute Telegu fellow with a bit of baby fat and a full head of curly hair, speaking with a dash of Indian accent.
He astounded us all when he memorized a series of 30 random digits in less than 2 minutes (earlier called out by the audience). Ya I know he is a record holder for memorizing numbers but to have seen him in action was another thing. Anant could even recite the 30 digits backwards.
Our jaws hit the lecture hall floor.
Then we were asked to remember 20 items from a slide he showed. “No…” came the long gasps from us scaredy-cat folks.
But he did it. He taught us a storytelling-visualisation technique, linking each item together in a fantastical story. That done, one Chinese lady literally jumped up to volunteer to recall the 20 items. Then came a teenager who also did it correctly. After that we were like jubilant school kids, suddenly excited and totally proud of our memory! We could all recall the 20 items, as amazing as it sounded. Corny as it sounds, we recited the 20 items for him!
Tip to Remember Forever
The key here is to turn the item you want to remember into a picture. Then link the items together with a story that sounds crazy but we’re not looking for logic now.
So to remember items like Twin Towers, hot air balloon, elephant, flowers, tent, rocket, go kart, Jackie Chan, etc. we were asked to close our eyes and imagine “The Twin Towers, where suddenly a hot air balloon comes up, in it is an elephant and it is throwing flowers down to a tent. From the tent comes a rocket which hits a go kart driven by Jackie Chan……”
Good stuff, right? The idea is to recall the story and you would have recalled the random items in proper order! You can even recall the items starting from the last item.
Use Alpha to Get What You Want
The other talk I liked was Mr Sukh Dev’s You Can Program Your Success. He was an energetic speaker with enough actions and energy to rev us all up that mid morning. Some actions were a bit too strange for me – hey, I don’t go around hugging everyone ok? He spoke of getting into alpha brain wave to gain more for our lives, be it love, money or whatever we wish. Alpha brain waves was the core topic for the 2 days (yes, I know, it was all about the brain and mind).
Read 25K words Per Minute Too
Sussanne Lee’s PhotoReading session was rewarding in that she introduced a concept (new to me at least) about how to read, absorb and understand books using your alpha! It’s not speedreading because in this new concept, you read lots more – about 25,000 words per minute. No, that’s not a typo. It’s 25K words per minute.
She didn’t go through everything in a detailed manner (eh, she’s a trainer and trains people to do photoreading so I didn’t think she’d give away her trade secrets!) as it was just an hour of time but apparently it helps you grasp information faster.
Sussanne smartly answered our skeptical questions with a prepared FAQ. Does it reduce the enjoyment of reading novels? It doesn’t. Who can do this? She works with anyone 15 years and above (especially if you’re cramming for exams like PMR, SPM etc). You can audit the course anytime once you’re done with it…it means you can sit in any time for a refresher if you forgot. (Clever comeback – if you tend to forget, the first course you should take is Anant’s improve your memory course before you take this course!)
It was totally mind-bending stuff at the 2-day festival. No wonder I ended up with the flu! I overworked and overfocused my brain!
Finally, My Brain is Old in an Awful Way
Did I tell you that I sat for this quick computer game which analysed my brain age? The 10 questions were simple enough but tested you on the speed of your response and memory. The first time, my brain age was 33 (yucks, close to my real age of 34) and me being me, I played the game again and got a brain age of 28. I asked the crew what is the lowest brain age one could be. He said 20. My friend Cecilia got 20 and she’s a mom to 3 kids (but my consolation is, she is a Mensa member so no fight lah).
Anyway, perhaps too much of brain stimulation that did me in!
My photos are in the other laptop so I will put them up asap once I get home! 😉 This post has cheered me up considerably and brought me out of my snivelling doldrums…. blogging is good for health!
Gotta Love a Man Who Bakes
I realized that a lot of things can be therapeutic and relaxing. For me, it’s beading (that’s making earrings with bling, lots of them), crochet (all I wanna do is amigurumi, that’s cute animal creatures instead of some huge shawl or pullover), gardening (I find peace in weeding and killing mealy bugs) and of course cooking and baking.
Baking is of course a result of getting this cheap oven from Tesco. I mean, I’m still in the testing it out stage so no point in getting the top of the range oven. Anyway, my apartment kitchen is too small!
My latest craze is baking bread but since that last episode (of a successful bread recipe from watching Chef Michael Smith on AFC), I have not had time to bake much bread.
I have relied on Gardenia for bread.
And Gardenia is not exactly the best type of bread there is but one has to eat, so the nearest thing for breakfast is commercial bread.
But BG, a friend (yes, now I know who you are!) is a man who bakes for his wife. He bakes because it is also therapeutic.
Kneading bread is fun and I think that’s why he loves it so. Just like I like to see my dough rising. So excited over such banal everyday cooking but then again, nothing beats cooking. You get to eat the outcome!
So if you are looking for tried and tested bread recipes (BG has international tastes OK, from ciabatta to beer bread) and a no-fail approach to baking bread that is free of preservatives, you have to stop by his bread blog. As he is based in KL, he also informs where to buy bread flour! He does an excellent job of breaking down the art of making bread into something simple and homey and of course, full of love!
Gotta love a man who bakes bread right?
One Girl's Dream…
Woke up to an excited SMS this morning.
Jana’s SMS read told me to read The Star, particularly Anthony Thanasayan’s Wheel Power column (he’s her friend and like her, he is also a local councillor but for a different district in Selangor).
I called her the minute I finished reading “Abby’s Dream” (which you can find at: http://tinyurl.com/6936z3).
Jana promised to email me some photos of Abby and said that the Rotary Club will be giving away wheelchairs to Abby and her siblings this coming Sunday, one day before Deepavali, at the Dewan Sri Jugra in Kuala Langat.
One anonymous person even SMS-ed Jana this morning, asking for Abby’s bank account number so he/she could make a donation to this girl.
Abby is one spirited 24-year old who works for the Jabatan Pengairan & Saliran in Sungai Sedu, Kuala Langat despite her muscular dystrophy. However, there are no disabled facilities at this government department so poor Abby has to ‘tahan’ and wait till she gets home to use the bathroom!
That’s terrible, I wailed to Jana.
Anyway, Abby has got one fantastic thing going for her – she has been nominated Most Outstanding Youth of the Year Award 2008 by the Asian Youth Ambassadors (AYA) based in Subang Jaya, Selangor. You can vote for her and I hope she wins. She’s a brilliant example to everyone because she doesn’t let bad circumstances get her down.
Abby has a few wishes of her own. She wants to get suitable wheelchairs and medical cushions for herself and her siblings (the Rotary Club is helping with this), to get a scholarship to study and of course, if you can, vote for her before the award deadline on Nov 2nd.
If you can help Abby in any way, call Jana at 016-436 2301.
My little community message to help Jana spread the news far and wide!
Unleashing the Mind at the Festival
I will be attending, no, helping out during this weekend’s Festival of the Mind at TAR College as a result of my usual busybodying. (This is what happens when you are the unofficial committee member of Mensa Penang by virtue of your husband being a committee member!)
But lest you think that I’m being dragged there, no lah, I am quite happy really to join in these social events.
This weekend is one of those exciting events – I missed the Tony Buzan mindmapping workshop sometime ago because Nic forgot to tell me about it.
In our relationship, I am the timekeeper, the walking rolodex, the appointment manager so if he tells me there’s something going on somewhere, I make a note and decide if we want to go or not. Apparently it slipped his mind the last round.
This round though I will be going for the Festival of Mind, partly to help out at the Mensa Penang booth and partly to listen to the talks. Which you probably are going to ask me, if I adore these brain games stuff and IQ stuff, why am I not in Mensa?
Good question but I’m not mad. I enjoy sudoku, rubik cube, treasure hunts, vocab games and all those intellectual quests but I am not interested to know if I belong to the top 2 per cent of the population – the high IQ population that is. I might realize I am not in that exclusive population and then, what do I do?
Anyway, if you have some time this weekend and want to learn speed reading, mindmapping, how to increase your brain power, how to be essentially smarter, how to make yourself seem smarter than you already are, then attend any of the talks and demos at TAR College.
Date: 25 – 26 October 2008
Time: 9:30am – 4:30pm
Venue: Kolej Tunku Abdul Rahman
(Penang Branch Campus)
77, Lorong Lembah Permai Tiga,
Tanjong Bungah, 11200 Pulau Pinang
Full details of talks and everything else over at http://tinyurl.com/5b3qkc
Tickets (though free), on a first-come, first served basis, will be issued 30 minutes before each talk. Each participant is entitled to collect a maximum of 4 tickets at one time. So get yours fast. I am sure the tickets will be going like hot cup cakes.
Oh beware of clicking the links at the UTAR website – they are PDFs and open without warning once you click it.
Is it just me or do I hate surprises like PDFs suddenly popping open? Why can’t they just list them down in a table instead of having me open 6 PDFs just to find out what’s what? It’s plain annoying! (I don’t mind if they warn me first that it’s a PDF. They don’t. They expect everyone to have a PDF reader in their PC. Ugh.)
So, see you there then.
I’m going because I want to see what parts of my brain I haven’t enhanced yet!