As Suanie Sees It

So Maxis sent me a booklet filled with discount vouchers for things such as hotel rooms, mobile phone accessories, clothes, food, spa.. those type of things. Normally I discard these things as I can’t afford RM1630 for a 4D/3N stay at Club Med (not including club membership fees), even if getting there and back is free. Well, that was just an example taken from the booklet lah.

But my dearest Pinky just informed me that she will have a week off in late August, as part of her transition to a new job. As she thinks that I am a rather awesome person, she wants to spend that week in KL/PJ with me. She also suggested a trip to Penang, as she has never been there and would like to go try their most wonderful and delicious local fare. After all, appreciation for good food is just one of the two traits we Malaysians share with Singaporeans; the other being giddy with happiness at securing a good (usually shopping-related) bargain.

I remembered the Maxis discount booklet, and something about cheaper rates for a hotel room in Penang. Turns out that the voucher is for the Parkroyal Hotel in Penang. The offer states that you can ‘get a 50% discount on accommodation and receive a complimentary upgrade to the next room category’. Sounds rather awesome, right? I’ve stayed at that very hotel before, and it was a really nice experience.

So I checked out the website, and the rate for a ‘Deluxe Twin-Bedded Seafacing Room’ costs RM420 per night. Fantabulous! Upon confirming the dates and rates with Pinky, I called the hotel to book our room.

“RM 450++ a night AFTER discount.”
“Huh but the rates stated on your website is RM 420.”
“Oh, those are website rates. Already on promotion.”

1. I know that rates on websites are always slightly cheaper. But by a full half price?
2. *Already on promotion* did not appear anywhere on the site
3. I am more stunned than angry.

So maybe it’s just me. But I still feel a bit cheated. And friend told me that I should blog about it, so here it is.

Last Friday I took the day off from work. Was supposed to relax and chill a bit before the Nokia Wireless Adventure II the next day, but ended up going to KLCC to check out the Maxis Venus Affair event.

It was my first time to the KLCC Maxis Centre. To my friends and readers of this blog, Malaysians or otherwise, you know that when you look at photos of the Petronas Twin Towers and you’d sometimes see a shorter building on the side? Well, I wuz there

(I’d also been on the Skybridge twice — that’s two times more than most of you! )

The Maxis Venus Affair was actually just a corner at one end of the service centre. They decorated the corner using pink and white stuff, so it comes off looking very feminine and maybe a bit girly. I don’t know why I was surprised that a lot of men were hanging out at the corner, checking out the products and services offered; I suppose it is time that I shed the association of pink = solely female (even though I don’t get very excited by the colour, so I guess I am not solely female?) Need to update my neurons.

Entrance to the Maxis Venus Affair

People

I didn’t sign up for anything, but using my wily ways, I managed to wrangle a free hand massage from AsterSpring.

I look like the cat who just ate the free hand massage

During the event which was held for a few days in KLCC and Pavilion, they were offering lots of free goodies to new customers who sign up for the ‘Maxis USB Modem’. I am assuming that the USB modem that they got came bundled with Maxis broadband Among the free gifts were a limited edition trinket box (which was rather nice, as I have one in my hands now thanks to my wily ways), a USB modem pouch (to handily fit in your new USB modem), a free makeover or hand massage from AsterSpring (I am assuming AsterSpring is teh femes?), a gift pack worth RM148 including a RM100 cash voucher from AsterSpring and Averine makeup, photo printout(s) from Canon (using the Selphy) and a copy of Cleo or Women’s Weekly magazine. Since I went there on the second last day, they ran out of the magazines so I guess the demand for the package was more than good.

Free gifts and ORLY it’s a modem

My photo bring printed out on the Canon Selphy

But most of my time was spent hanging out with these two geeks:

Miss and Mister Geek

With a Nokia N95 8GB connected to a monitor, Miss Geek showed me the Maxis 3G WAP portal which I never really bothered with before, even though I am an existing Maxis 3G subscriber. But some of the stuff looked interesting, especially the Maxis TV part. You can click on this link to find out the fees and such, but I’ll just say that the streaming ran rather smoothly.

Bestnyer

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Believe you me, I had one of the shittiest Saturdays a lower middle class nobody like me could ever have. This goes way beyond the usual laments of why my mom didn’t hook up with Bill Gates or why a tall, intelligent and smart man considered good looking by all strata of society possessing half of Rocco’s bread and butter wouldn’t deign to look at me at all. This shit is real.

Went to work all sick and woozy and dainty from this miserable flu I’ve had the past couple days… oh yes I know that I am the least likely dainty of all dainty people but the feeling of light-headedness is so whoosh and makes me feel like I’m floating and not as heavy or rough as I normally am and makes me feel like Kate Moss sans coke. See, it’s giving me illusions already.

Didn’t make me feel better when Abang N and I realised that this month’s stars are fubar for me. Chinese metaphysics can be cruel like that.

When I got home, I switched my pc on and of course I couldn’t get connected to the Internet, the DSL light on my modem kept blinking, nevermind that everything was fine and dandy before I went to work.

So I called Streamyx to check if there was any service interruption in my area. Some nice chick took my call, went through the standard troubleshooting ritual with me and asked if I would like to make a report to which I said I would call back later if I still couldn’t get connected. At this point I also found out that the Streamyx helpline is now 24 hours, yay!

Then I drove out to my local pc shop to collect a couple of modems I’d sent for service. I also bought a network card and a network cable, just in case.

Came back, replaced my network card and cable with the new ones, tried using my ‘new’ modems, still nothing worked.

Called Streamyx again, they confirmed that my account was fine and that there was no service interruption in my area, so I made a report. I asked them if they had an alternative number to Telekom’s 100, they didn’t.

You see, Telekom has this standard number - 100 for fault reporting and it’s the only number you get from their website, bill statement etc which you can only call from a house phone or a public phone. Which kind of defies logic and puts you in a catch-22 situation - there’s something wrong with your phone line, you want to call up Telekom to make a report but you can’t because there’s only the 100 number and you can’t call out from your house phone because it’s faulty… Is it weird or have I been missing out on something for all the years I am subscribed to Telekom’s fixed line?

Anyway my house phone has been out-of-order for a bit and I couldn’t be bothered to go get a new set so of course, I couldn’t call the 100 number. At this point I decided to call MAXIS because- hey I am using their service and if I can’t call 100 directly from their line there’d better be something else I could do, save for jumping into a lake.

I called MAXIS’s 123 - I realised that they killed the option to ’speak to someone, anyone for any freakish out-of-the-world incidents that you feel is necessary for MAXIS to know out of the millions of people in the world’. So I picked the most remotely connected option that is fault reporting because it is someone’s fault that I can’t call 100 directly from my MAXIS mobile. Some female half-heartedly listened as I tried to explain what I wanted, then impatiently insisted that I could call 100 direct from my MAXIS mobile line, which I disputed and said I tried it before, I could call 103 but not 100, she said that I could call 100 and 103 and 103 works, ffs I KNOW that 103 works but that’s not the reason I called, no no you CAN call 100 direct bla bla yadda yadda bye.

I called 103 and this really nice female told me that I can’t call 100 from my mobile but she has an alternative number that I could call. So I did, and this really nice male checked my Telekom fixed line status and told me that everything is fine, there’s no problems with it whatsoever. You know the world is changing when the people at Telekom treat you much better than at MAXIS.

Next thing I wanted to know was if it’s normal for the DSL line to be blinking on my modem even after I unplugged the phone line. KY didn’t know for sure, so I called up my local pc shop - they’d sold me all my modems and solved more than half my pc problems so they should know at least something, or that was what I thought. Some chick didn’t understand what I was talking about, and passed the phone to a guy I know and the conversation went something like this:

me: I just want to know if it is normal for the DSL light on my Aztech modem to be blinking even after I took out the phone line.

pc shop guy: That’s what I said, you have to check with Streamyx first to see if there’s any problem with your connection, then if there’s no problem you bring the modem for us to check la.

I was feeling damn sick and woozy and didn’t think I could drive especially with my car’s air conditioning unit’s history fucked beyond imagination, so I called and asked KY if he could drive me the shop which normally closes at 7 p.m. He picked me and my three Aztech modems + 2 adapters + one network cable up, we reached the shop at 6.03 p.m. to find it closed. Some dude who for some reason was standing downstairs told us that the shop closes at 7 p.m. on weekdays and at 6 p.m. on Saturdays. Apparently they had all just left like a minute ago.

Went to KY’s crib, was supposed to join them for dinner but was so exhausted and sickly that I slept on his bed for 3 hours. KY then sent me home and I’d left my purse in his car which caused me quite a bit of distress the next day before I called him to check.

And seeing that I could get on-line now (not really stable though), it must be a connection problem and has nothing to do with my modem.

Sunday was quite alright seeing that I pretty much slept it through.

Saturday just totally sucked.

Of course there would be people who had shittier Saturdays like having a tree fell on their cars causing their pure breed such severe emotional distress that it ran out and proceed to doggy fuck the first stray mutt it sees, or during a weekend contemplation realise that you are doomed for bad sex and spinsterhood for the rest of your life, or finding out that you have an incurable affliction that strikes 1 out of 1000000 people… whatever, get your own blog.