The Second Chill

Another chill air hit Bangkok again about a week ago. This is highly unusual, I recall that it never happen before as long as I could remember. It's almost February already and it still rather chilly in the city.

Not that I am complaining, I slept better in this weather than in the usual perpetual 33C of Bangkok.

Nothing notworthy happen lately... I am still looking new job, I recently working 5 nights straight, and now I am looking forward to a bit relaxing time around the weekend...

I hope I will found a new job soon...

Anti-Biotic and 950 :)

I recently take TOEIC test per my boss' order. I was slightly annoyed by this at first, as I realize how much I hate jumping through hoops for something that deems unnecessary. But I also quickly realize, this would be a good opportunity to get the score which should be useful in my job hunting.

Prior to taking the test, I tried out the TOEIC software that my younger bro had found. As it turns out the format of the exam in both the software and the real one are identical, and I score 889/990 in the software, so I am fairly confident of the results.

The day before the test, I came down with another infection again... Apparently the same symptoms and bugs as the one I got a few days after New Year's Eve. I know which anti-biotic to takes and I decided to get the generic ones as I already bought the expensive ones for the last times. I also wants to compare the results myself, since I heard several people said the localize drugs are not as good as the imported ones. So far I must say the imported ones are better.... One of my friend hypothesize that eventhough the ingredients are the same but the process of making them might not. He gave an example of generic paracetamol and Tylenol, that while both are the same medicine, Tylenol is better because your body can absorb the medicine better. This might be the case here as well... Since with the import anti-biotic, by the third day I got no sniffle already, while this generic one I still have that and this is already the fourth day....

Anyway back to the test story :P What I was saying is that I went to the exam with congested nose and a bit lightheaded due to the illness. My nose was running almost the entire time during the exam. The exam itself was not terribly hard for me, they divided into listening and reading parts. I got full score on the listening part and several mistakes in the reading part (grammar is not my strong point) so in total I scored 950 out of 990 :D

It is a good score, I am happy about it. Hopefully it will be helpful in my quest for new job.

Museum After Dark

It's been a long time since the last times I had been in the movie theater. Today I have the time and mood to go to one and finally see 'Night At The Museum'

The first times I saw the movie trailer I told myself this would be a great movie. It was one of the well made movie trailer, the kind that instantly say this is a must see!

I heard that the movie was made from a book of the same name. It was a fun movie to see that much is certain. It was particularly fun to see how all the different models and dioramas came to life and interact with each other. I guess the wardrobe designer must have a great time with this movie with the clothes for all the era, nationalities and style.

Hopefully this movie will help your appreciate the museum and take a stroll inside your local museum as well :)

Talk To Me

This is the first times I heard this song from of my favorite singer Anita Baker called Talk To Me.

That smooth Alto? timeless voice...

This song is quite a reflection on what I felt right now... perhaps the question I wants to ask MD the most...

I know that he means well that he wants to help me get out of my dead-end job. But he does not make it easy either. Even after the efforts I put into getting the price quotes from various sources (although toward the end I had called about 6-7 places, he would still call that minimal efforts), I still came up with something.

If he is not willing to pay higher price for the trustworthiness (compare to sign up with the India SEO with amazing price) then let's him come up with whatever he satisfied with himself.

Another blow in the Gut: The continued saga

After a few days of silent treatment at each other (read the details here and here) , I decided to break the ice with MD. After noticing that client's website has been updated with keywords tag but not with the rest of the code, so I thought MD had found someone to work on this. I was wrong.

It turns out that the client update the website on their own according to the advice to get rid of the frame and adding the keywrods tag. And that MD has not secure someone to work for him yet. Time is pressing on and he began to stress out. He lament of how he spend his mornings looking for people to take on the works and how it affect this real job.

I propose the idea of hiring a company to handle this client for the time being and hired the part time worker to work with me on another website. Since we literally ran out of time, I figured this would be the resonable and logical solution. This way we can get let someone else handle the urgent works and the yet-to-be-hired Part time person and I can take time with the less urgent one.

He call my idea idotic, stupid and arrogant... and log off...

Dream Fallen

It's official... The business I mention is official fall through.

I called a freelance listed on a website I found. Turns out she will accept the job in her company's name. I am fine with that. After coaxing a price quote out of her, which is about half as expensive compare to the top company but they are doing it for 100 keywords.

When I told MD about this, he seems to be foaming at the mouth (judging by his chat) asking if this is Europe firm or BKK firm. He said he can get much better service there with the same money and added that he had contact SEO companies in India (the top three listing on Google search) who quote an amazing One Year price, the amount that usually the cost of three months package here. After he told me that I tried to look for that price quote myself. Those that actually listed their price shown that the price he was quote is about the same as the monthly fees in those companies.

Either he understood it wrong or that he must have got the quote for Pay-Per-Click instead of SEO, I don't know. I half wishes that I was right about that... I am very interested to see if I was right or not...

Since Pay-Per-Click or PPC is similar but not really SEO, with PPC you don't need to anything to your website. What you need to do is bid on the keywords on Google and then your website will be seen on every search page resulting from the keywords you bid. The pro is that it generally cheaper than SEO and you can control your budget each month. The con is that as soon as you stop paying then your website will just goes back to obscurity as before.

Eventually he announce that he has enough with me not producing any results and that he had cut me off.

Everybody whom I relay this whole ordeal to: my colleague, my friends, my family members, a complete stranger (whom I was trying to hired to do the job), all say similar things. If they were me they would have quit long time ago (my colleague and my younger bro.), or that I should not waste my time on this unrealistic project (the stranger and my friend), or if I think it's too complicated then I should quit (my mom).

I have never been a quitter, therefore I tried and tired to make this works. It is obvious that whatever I came up with is never good enough for him. I guess it's never meant to be...

Still in Limbo

The *Business* with MD that I mention in several of my previous post, is still not taking off just yet.

The Business is to *outsource* the work (Internet related) from clients he got (five so far...) in New York to BKK to have it done here at much cheaper cost. The initial plans was for me to learn the process and do the work myself. The *work* divided into two parts. The easy part is the starting point and have about 25% significant of whether we will get the result. This part I understood quite well and I think I can do it. However, the other 75% significant fall onto the hard parts, which I have the understanding of how it is done but do not have the exact know-how of it. I am not sure whether MD understand all this... He kept saying he can do this easily but he did not have the time to read the texts. From what he said I think he seems to think that the entire work consist only of the 25% part....

I started by searching on Google to looks for local service company. When I give him their quote he freaks out that I use Google to search, saying he could have done that himself. He would not hear it when I told him that since this is search engine related service, it is wise to look for the company that can proof itself by making their own website appear when search. And then any local companies I found are either charge too high or lack of sufficient guaranteed than those that he had found in US. Personally I think got mixed up with the pricing... He seems to quote from the different but similar service...

After weeks of hair pulling talk on chat program, we finally agreed that since we are only amateur, we should hired a pro to handle the task. MD prefer to hired a Part-time specialist to work at my place so I can learn the process from. I had some doubts about this plan... I had found two local webboards where the experts gathered and I had post in both webboards looking for *Teacher* for this subject. One got no response at all while several people in another board said I should spend the budget on books and trial and error instead.

I would prefer to hired a company to handle the task, even just for this first client who already sign up for the service since I would have little time to supervise and learning due to my 12 hours night shift. Now we still did not have someone to work on the project yet!!

When I agreed on the hiring a person plan and got him the classified ads price quote, MD then nitpick on how I did not read the newspapers that I had called for price quote for evaluation. He would not hear it when I told him that there were only a few well known newspaper with classified ads in it and that I know the looks of these papers and that we do not have tech oriented newspaper here.

I kept asking him which one would he prefer, the Thai language daily news newspaper or English language business newspaper. He just reply with some remarks of how I didn't really agreed with this hiring plan or how lazy I was for not reading the papers or how I spend little time to do research for company or personals. And he kept blaming me for the predicament we are currently in, although there was some truth to that, him repeating it does not really help improving our situation either.

Another annoying thing is that he kept saying that the services in Thailand should be 10 times cheaper than in New York and that would also be the case for this business too. Without regarding the fact that this service is involve around Internet and the cost generated from that does not care which country you are in. And when I failed to find the company that charge low enough to his liking he kept mocking me about that...

According to a long time friend of mine whom I rant with on this situation, he think MD is a disrespectful pusher who is taking advantage of my good nature. That reminded me of the conversation I had with MD about how he criticise me for being too *Westernized* because I was opinionated and more or less did not obediently do whatever he wants.

So on Monday morning I will finalize the ads myself. It would not put a great dent in my wallet and maybe I will be prove wrong. Maybe I will be able to find some capable person to work for me.

What a Bomb...

I had quite a good time, where I shall not say... But It was a good time indeed. I think I gain a new friend. But we will see how it goes.

While I was having a good time I check my mobile phone and saw that there were many (about 40s in total) of miss called to my mobile phone, both from the office and from my family. I call my office first to see what it is all about. That's when I heard of the six bombs that was blasted earlier. My college called because the boss wants to make sure we are alright (and perhaps to see if the schedule have to be change due to injuries :p).

Although I had a great night, it was barred by the fact that I have to work tomorrow night... Otherwise I will be able to stay with the couple who invited me to their hotel room :ppp

Another reason to quit my job...