Living with Sarah

I've been stuck with shop stock take and accounts for almost 2 months. Pening tau. Kira stock yang nampak sikit tapi rupanya... Aiyoo... lepas tu check balik accounts for last year. Awal-awal tahun dulu, masa mula-mula buka kedai, documentation agak huru-hara. Setelah meng-enforce selama beberapa bulan, nowadays, insyaallah, sesiapa yang beli barang akan balik bawa resit. But still, stock keeping is poorly done. I rely on Excel file sahaja. Price of goods pulak turun-naik. Most of the goods are imported, currency mestilah US dollar. Kadang-kadang minggu ni barang tu RM15.00, minggu depan harga baru RM17.50. Most of the times we will try to maintain the price. Tapi, at times, agak susah nak maintain... Sigh... This month our sales dropped drastically. Belum sampai separuh dari last month. Now, that is the effect of GST. People are very cautious to spend. Instead of simply raid kedai nak check peniaga tipu ke tidak, performance of sales pun Gomen kena study. Cuba study before and a...

One productive Monday. Dari pagi rasa macam-macam benda dah buat. Pagi-pagi dah berat sangat rasa nak siap pegi PJ. Ada meeting dengan regular client. Alhamdulillah, berjaya meloloskan diri. Niat hati nak demo Aurasma sekali, tapi semalam ops kemas rumah buat pinggang sakit. So, communicate via Whatsapp saja. Insyaallah dapat one urgent job - proofread report. Yeay... kalau ada small jobs macam ni every month kan best. Sambil jual basikal, boleh mengadap komputer :). Insyaallah another one in the pipeline. Yang ni nak kena keluar pegi interview companies buat articles untuk buku. Yang tu, sebut harga pun belum submit sebenarnya! Hari yang sangat panas ni berjaya ajak Hubby keluar makan mee rebus dan cendol bawah pokok dekat BSN. Masa office kat sana dulu, main intai dari tingkap saja. Nampak gerai kosong je terus turun bawah. Lama tak makan sana memang terasa bertapa deliciousnya mee rebus tulang! Balik kedai ada training AEON pulak. We managed to get AEON for our shop. Ramai jugak...

Today was the first of monthly fun rides by the Bandar Bukit Mahkota cycling group M6, organised in association with #fitmalaysia programme. Our shop menjadi tempat persinggahan Water Station. Pagi-pagi dah sampai untuk prepare. Expected participants around 100. The route was about 10kms only. Around 8.40am, the participants arrived. Less than 5 minutes, all 120 packs of air kotak terus habis. There must be more because 2-3 orang tak dapat air. Since it's going to be a monthly event, and most probably we will volunteer to sponsor drinks, I guess next month kena guna strategy lain. Maybe get a caterer to supply drinks using huge dispenser. Agaknya lah...  Towkey kedai tunggu participants...  The crowd... There were families, kids, teenagers, otais, regular riders... Perasmian KTM bike :) Best, best...

After quite some time, yesterday dapat ziarah pusara arwah my father. Alhamdulillah, semua nampak sangat cantik. Pokok pun, walaupun comel, dah ada putik bunga. As usual, I akan buat bunga rampai dari daun pandan dan whatever bunga yang sedang kembang kat garden. Semalam ada one bunch of beautiful red frangipani. I miss my father so much...

One week after Aliyah got her new phone, her Mommy got a new one too! Exactly the same model, but different colour - black. On Wednesday, a delivery guy came with a parcel for Hubby. He then opened the parcel and gave me the box inside, saying: "Hadiah anniversary untuk awak!". A very pleasant surprise. Anniversary bulan Januari, masing-masing agak pokai nak beli hadiah. Akak sangat terharu ok... :). (Tak sia-sia tulis kat blog my S3 Mini dah slow!). So, these few days agak huru-hara sebab transfer data to new phone, then clean up pulak, then re-install apps yang selalu guna. Mana yang tak boleh transfer kena manually key-in. Today baru siap. My S3 Mini jual pada my Kak Long. Dia belum datang ambik ni. Semoga bertambah meriah group Whatsapp bila dia dah upgrade the smart phone. Dapat phone baru memang best kan? Lagi pulak orang bagi hadiah! Hehehe... But seriously, the last time I bought myself a phone was the Nokia 3310. Lepas tu I sebenarnya tak pernah beli phone. Eithe...

This is Aliyah's current favourite potatoes dish. It's very easy to make, easier than the one I learned to make watching Jamie Oliver cook Christmas feast. A friend shared the recipe which she took from Food Network. But as always, I like to change things my way :) This recipe doesn't require you to boil the potatoes. Just dump them into a roasting pan. Can even share the pan with roasted chicken - even delicious because of the juices from the chicken. - 5-6 potatoes - peeled. I use regular potatoes. If you get the baby potatoes even better. No need to peel. - some thyme or rosemary (which ever you prefer) - salt & pepper - chopped garlic - olive oil Put potato in between 2 chopsticks and slice thinly but not fully sliced (hence the reason for putting the chopsticks). Mix potatoes with herbs, chopped garlic, salt & pepper and olive oil. Put in roasting pan. Roast for 25 minutes at 180. I cook till slightly browned. Optional: sprinkle some P...

This is with regards to my ramblings about GST and lavish spending by the powers that be last week. Belum cerita lagi pasal orang-orang yang banyak cakap, sadly elected by the rakyat, tetapi menindas rakyat yang telah mengundi untuk mereka, yang telah menaikkan gaji mereka sendiri, sedangkan rakyat nak beli barang di pasaraya fikir 10 kali apa yang nak diletak di dalam troli. Sedih sebenarnya dengan keadaan di negara sendiri yang dikatakan aman damai dan tenteram. Hari ni terbaca article di Zaharuddin.net. Alhamdulillah, whatever I have said before was true. Maknanya, kalau kita rasa ditindas oleh pemerintah, no matter what they say to legalise what they are doing, kita adalah orang-orang yang dianiaya. Insyaallah, kalau hati kita jujur, doa-doa kita Allah swt akan makbulkan. Honestly, memang rasa dianiaya. I just can't phantom the logic of certain things being taxed. My personal opinion, nak cukai tu boleh, tapi barang-barang yang dicukai tu mestilah bukan barang keperluan. Za...

Aliyah has been using her Abah's old S1, which was previously Uncle Muzz's. Selalu komplen phone dia slow. One fine night, the phone just died. Attempts to revive it, or restart it, failed. You wouldn't believe how a teenager's face looked like when her phone died - horror, depressed, like her whole world just came crashing down. And she spent her time watching TV sulking, while intermittently borrowing her Abah's phone. So, we got her a new phone. Well, her Abah did. I, being very me, would rather let my teenage daughter experience the primeval life without phone for a couple of weeks. Just for old times' sake. But then, life would be very, very bleak having her sulk and sigh, and sulk and sigh... Anyway, as we always say, Aliyah ni selalu murah rezeki. From the moment she was born. Alhamdulillah. The story goes like this. Just 2 days before that horrendous event (of the phone dying), a friend/customer came and had a chat with Hubby, about a lot of stuff, i...

The last few days has been a time for reflection and deep thinking. From the crash of heli involving well-known VIP to the implementation of GST to the lavish spending of the Government regardless of how difficult time is right now. It all boils down to - "money". Yup, whether we like it or not, or whether we want to admit it or not. If you ask me, GST implementation does affect us as a shop owner. Since 1st April, sale has been quite slow. We have less customers coming in. I personally know the feeling. Even I myself have been very, very cautious in spending. Bak kata my nephew Along Iwan, "nak beli air tin pun takut!". Memang takut :). But then, Malaysians are very well known as a bunch of forgetful people. We make noise for a while, then when another issue comes up, we move on to make noise about the new issue and totally forget the old one. So, in say 2-3 weeks' time, insyaallah, things will get normal. However, my point actually is - money might look li...

Dah dua hari kecoh pasal GST. Macam nak kiamat kena bayar GST kan? Berpinar mata tengok orang post resit kat FB & Twitter. Sebagai seorang consumer dan juga seorang peniaga, here are my thoughts: 1) Peniaga bukan suka-suka impose 6% GST. Peniaga ni posmen saja. Collect tax on behalf of the Government. Bukan boleh guna duit tu pergi tengok Fast & Furious 7 pun (walaupun Hubby saya ada ajak pergi tengok). So, janganlah lepas geram kat peniaga. Kalau rasa suara tu agak tinggi pitchnya, dan hati waja laksana batu granite, pergi lah ikut puak-puak yang berkhemah depan Jabatan Kastam tu. 2) Memang resit kertas beli kat kedai buku mamak tulis tangan tu tak laku. Malah, mengikut kata akauntan saya, boleh kena fine kalau guna. Tetapi, bukan semua peniaga bawak BMW 7 series. Saya hanya bawak Viva yang dah bergegar dashboardnya. Dah lah kena bayar RM2,000 (paling murah ni!) untuk subscribe kepada GST software, kena pulak beli cash register yang GST compliant. Paling murah dalam RM1,80...