FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE DON'T INVITE US TO YOUR WEDDING!

 
Last week the missus and I were invited to a wedding dinner which promised to start at 7.30 pm SHARP. Like the morons that we are, we thought that the wedding couple was serious about being SHARP and, being well-mannered people that we are, we were determined not to be late. We arrived at the banquet hall of a hotel in the city at 7.25 pm and found that we were the only invitees present, other than members of the family of the wedded couple and a few close relatives. The dinner, not surprisingly, started at 9 pm. I woke up at 3 am the next morning, suffering excruciating gastric pains. I told the missus that that would be the last wedding dinner I would be fooled into attending. If people who invite you to their wedding dinners have no respect for punctuality, I don't see why you should bother to give them face by turning up. In the past few years the missus and I have religiously attended wedding dinners at beach and city hotels, sometimes driving practically half way across the island just to "give somebody face" and attend his/her wedding and without fail there was never ever any respect for punctuality. If the dinner started one hour later than the usual appointed time of 7.30 pm we should be lucky. Excuses given for the delay would be the usual "we had to wait for some important guests to arrive". Once the classic excuse given for the delay was that "the bride's maid's corsage was caught in a traffic jam"! That dinner was one and a half hours late and everybody at our table was griping about the delay. From now onwards we will give a RM24 angpow and cook up a plausible excuse for not being able to attend instead of the customary RM120 for being present, to be abused with uncivilised disregard for punctuality. We save money and we are spared the stress of having to engage in small talk with eight strangers and not knowing when the food would be served. 

PenangFON

 
If you are in Penang and you are a subscriber to Streamyx and you are fed-up with the not infrequent occasions when Streamyx is down or when the Streamyx speed is abysmally slow, then you are lucky if you can subscribe to PenangFON's fiber optic network broadband internet which offers 2 mbps unlimited broadband internet access at only RM60 per month. I have just been given a PenangFON flyer which states that their broadband internet access residential package offers:
1. Unlimited Internet Access
2. 2 Mbps Download/Upload
3. No modem required for ETTH
4. No additional phone line required
5. Reliable Always-On Connection.
6. Scalable from 2 Mbps to 1 GB (1000 Mbps) and Ready for Upgrade.
The only drawback is that this Internet Broadband Service is available to certain condominium and office blocks only at present. When I rang up PenangFON (Tel. No. 04-2274521) the gentleman who answered the phone told me that the company was planning to cover the whole of the State of Penang within 2 to 3 months. If the Company can fulfil its promises, you can imagine the number of people in Penang who will make the switch from Streamyx. For more information visit www.PenangFON.com. I would be glad to hear from anybody who is already using this service.