Dear Christy Dixon and AT&T

Yesterday, I got an email from AT&T. I automatically thought it was spam because, well, AT&T has no presence in Malaysia. Then I got another one, so I took a closer look. It turns out that a Christy Dixon from Texas is using my email address for her own personal needs.

Being me, I immediately went to the AT&T website and sent them an email stating the following:

I received an email from AT&T regarding an order for wireless needs, and a replacement being sent to a CHRISTY DIXON. I am not Christy Dixon. She was using my email address under false pretenses. Perhaps your company being the "largest digital network in America" should have a simple verification service, which by no means costs very much to set up.

It would help if you could also contact MS CHRISTY DIXON and tell her to stop using my email address. I would do that (you emailed me her phone number), but I'm based in Malaysia and it would cost me a bomb.

Congratulations on managing to annoy someone in a country where your company doesn't even offer services. You are hereby internationally annoying.

And since I have no obligation to respect her privacy, since she clearly did not respect mine, here are her details:

Name: Christy Dixon
Cellular telephone number: 8657654422
Returns authorization number: RMA37825575
Fedex tracking number: 952807912978
Reference: 10658625*47014682X CNG A
Destination: Knoxville, TN

Dear Christy Dixon,

Please stop using my email address. I have no obligation to your privacy, and any future information about you that appears in my Inbox will be published on the world wide web. Thank you.

Dear God, Thank you for the internet

Dear God,

Thank you for bestowing Al Gore with enough brain power to create the internet. Thank you for bestowing Sergey Brin and Larry Page with the knowledge to produce Google, my lifelong companion. Thank you, especially, for bestowing the geeks of the world with enough time on their hands due to a total lack of social skills to do things like hack Super Mario Bros. so that they play automatically while producing music. Seriously.



I thank you also, for giving me internet access for less than RM10,000 (as they cost in Myanmar. True story.)

Malaysian Recycling Directory

A few months ago, I published an entry entitled Where to recycle almost everything in Malaysia, with the hopes of providing Malaysians with a list of where they can recycle their goods (because I thought that as I do, most Malaysians Google when in doubt).

From this entry, a nice lady from Malaysia Nature Society contacted me asking if I wanted a copy of the actual Malaysian Recycling Directory, as published by the Ministry of Housing and Local Government by the Yellow Pages. I said yes, I would, and so I went and picked it up. It turns out that that was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

I asked her why this directory wasn't distributed to all Malaysians, along with the phone book. She said, in the true spirit of recycling, that most people would just throw it away or not use it. She said that she was happy to see someone taking such steps as I did (I felt quite validated, yes), and felt that if she gave me a copy, it would be put to good use.

Not to disappoint her (though it did take quite a long time), I've started a blog dedicated to the complete listings of where to recycle stuff in Malaysia, with a comprehensive labelling system, which should ease the process of searching.

The Blog: http://myrecyclingdirectory.blogspot.com

The Method: All listings found in the Direktori Kitar Semula 2006/2007 will be published by name, with labels. For ease of use, I suggest you go to Google and type in something like -

site:myrecyclingdirectory.blogspot.com [what you're looking for]

And there you have it. A complete recycling directory just for Malaysians online. Now you have no excuses.

Malaysian Quality of Life Index

The Prime Minister's Department (which is actually a Ministry, but the PM didn't like the sound of "Prime Minister's Ministry") has recently published The Malaysian Economy in Figures - 2007. This annual publication usually has some pretty interesting statistics (interesting to me, anyway), including the recently introduced Malaysian Quality of Life Index.

Revolutions in social rights movements have resulted in governments and systems being forced to recognise that the well-being of an economy cannot be measured by money (GDP) alone. Quality of Life indices have sprouted worldwide to measure the levels of other factors that contribute to a nation's overall welfare, such as the wealth distribution, leisure time, etc.

The common way to measure such an index is to set a base year (1990 in this case), call everything in that year 100. Then they use a 'basket of goods and services' to determine if the parameter has improved or not. The measures can be completely arbitrary. Generally, one would think that the government would gloss over any shortcomings and report that we're a blissful nation.

However, take a closer look and see. The environment has reduced by 0.33 since 1990. Or so they say. If I could, I'd contest that and say that the general environment has gotten much worse since then.

Public safety, however, has decreased by a whopping 21.5. That's massive. Goes to show that even the government can't deny that public safety is a huge issue today, with ever increasing crime rates.

I don't really know what my point was to start out with. Maybe it was just to bring the Malaysian Quality of Life Index to light. Not many people know about it. Maybe it was to highlight the fact that we should be careful in day-to-day life. Someone got robbed last night at my office, right in front of the office buildings and next to a busy highway. These criminals are desperate and will do anything to get money.

BBC: US 'cyber-bully' mother indicted

From BBC: US 'cyber-bully' mother indicted:

A Missouri woman who allegedly used a fake MySpace profile to bully a girl who later committed suicide has been indicted by a federal Grand Jury.

Lori Drew, 49, allegedly posed as a boy on the website to befriend Megan Meier, 13, who hanged herself after he broke off the virtual relationship.

It is alleged that she killed herself after receiving several cruel messages, including one purporting to be from the fictitious 16-year-old boy - named Josh Evans saying the world would be better off without her.

That's just really cruel. With everything that's been happening in the world, it's just cruel.

Haven't been posting because work has been quite crazy, but keep an eye out for more recycling news hopefully to be done this weekend, when I'm going to hole up in solitary and confine myself, away from the world's cruelties and the unimaginable hurt that it can create.