January 2, 2020

2020 - Long Weekends and Leave Suggestions

I would say, the suggestions for leave application below are A MUST, so you can enjoy quite a number of off days without spending so much of your leave, so you may plan your leave or travel throughout the year of 2020. Basically, there will be around 10 long/extended weekends in 2020 for Malaysians. However, below are important considerations before you proceed.

  • This listing is based on Selangor, Malaysia bank holidays. So this may not apply to you if you're not working in Selangor
  • Like the company I'm working, we have early-leaving-the-office-time a day before holidays like Chinese New Year, Hari Raya, Christmas, New Year and so on. So adjust accordingly where it needs to.
  • The company I'm working adds an extra day of leave for every public holiday that falls on a Saturday. If it falls on Sunday, the following Monday will be the replacement day.

And for those who are married with kids, I'll list down the term holidays as well, and the suggestion of the number of leave you might want to utilize to accommodate the school holiday.

Additional Leave

Firstly, there will be 4 public holidays fell on Saturdays. For some companies (like the company I'm working with) there will be 4 additional leaves added. This is important so you can add these number of leave into your calculation.

Jan 25 - Chinese New Year 
Feb 8 - Thaipusam
Jun 6 - Agong's Birthday
Nov 14 - Deepavali

Next, we'll go with the listing of the long weekends.

Listing for the long weekends

CNY Long Weekend
January (24th - 27th - 3.5 days)
Jan 24 - Friday - early leave (for some companies) (you might want to consider taking a half-day leave so it can be 4 full days of off days)
Jan 25, 26 - Saturday, Sunday - Chinese New Year. 
Jan 27 - Monday - replacement holiday

Labour Day Long Weekend
May (1st to 3rd - 3 days)
May 1 - Friday - Labour Day 
May 2, 3 - Saturday, Sunday

Wesak Day & Nuzul Quran Long Weekend
May (7th to 11th - 5 days (inclusive of 1-day leave)
May 7 - Thursday - Wesak Day
May 8 - Friday - Take a leave here
May 9 - Saturday
May 10 - Sunday - Nuzul Quran 
May 11 - Replacement Holiday

Hari Raya Aidilfitri Whole Week Off
May (23rd to 31st - 9 days - 2 x Saturday Sunday + 3 days of leave)
May 23 - Saturday
May 24 - Sunday - Hari Raya Aidilfitri
May 25 - Monday - Hari Raya (2nd day)
May 26 - Tuesday - Replacement holiday
May 27, 28, 29 - Wednesday - Friday - Take 3  days of leave here
May 30, 31 - Saturday, Sunday

Hari Raya Haji Long Weekend
Jul 31st to August 2nd - 3 days
Jul 31 - Friday - Hari Raya Haji 
August 1, 2 - Saturday, Sunday

Awal Muharram Extended Long Weekend
August (20th to 23rd - 4 days (inclusive of a one-day leave))
August 20 - Thursday - Awal Muharram
August 21 - Take 1-day leave
August 22, 23 - Saturday, Sunday

National Day Long Weekend
August (29th to 31st - 3 days)
August 29,30 - Saturday, Sunday
August 31 - Monday - National Day

Maulidur-Rasul Extended Long Weekend
Oct 29th - Nov 1st (4 days inclusive of a one-day leave)
Oct 29 - Thursday - Maulidur Rasul
Oct 30 - Take a day leave here
Oct 31, Nov 1 - Saturday Sunday

Birthday of Sultan Selangor Long Weekend
Dec (11th to 13th - 3 days)
Dec 11 - Friday - Birthday of Sultan Selangor
Dec 12, 13 - Saturday Sunday

Xmas & New Year Whole Week Off
Dec 24th - Jan 3rd - 11 days (inclusive of 4 days of leave)
Dec 24 - Thursday - Early Leave - Consider taking a half-day leave today
Dec 25 - Friday - Xmas
Dec 26, 27 - Saturday, Sunday
Dec 28 to 30 - Take 3 days of leave here
Dec 31 - Early Leave - Consider taking a half-day leave today
Jan 1 - Friday - New Year
Jan 2, 3 - Saturday, Sunday

*Alternatively, you can still enjoy 10 days of leave if you're not on early release, and just apply for the leave on Dec 31st

Additional Suggestions for parents who have kids schooling

March (14 - 22 - Term 1 school holidays)
(9 days - 2 x Saturday Sunday + 5 days of leave)
Mar 14, 15 - Saturday, Sunday
Mar 16 - 20 - Monday to Friday - Take 5 days of leave
Mar 21, 22 - Saturday Sunday

June (1 to 7 - 7 days - Second Week of Term 2 School Holidays)
Jun 1,2,3,4,5 - Take 5 days of leave here
Jun 6,7 - Saturday, Sunday

July 25 - August 2 - Term 3 School Holidays
July 25, 26 - Saturday, Sunday
July 27 to 30 - Monday to Thursday - Take 4 days of leave here
July 31 - Friday - Hari Raya Haji
August 1, 2 - Saturday Sunday

*No suggestions for the Term 4 school holidays as Parents may have different preference of when to take the leave but we have suggested taking the whole long Xmas week to spend with kids.


How many days you have left?

Based on the suggestions above,

  • If you don't have to follow kids school holidays, you will only spend 10 days of your leave but you are already enjoying a total of 51 or 52 days off, off office.
  • Additionally, if you have kids and followed the above suggestions, you'll spend an additional 14 days of leave and will enjoy an additional 25 days of leave, making you be off the office for about 76 days or 2 months & 2 weeks

That doesn't include the other 40 weekends; that's another 80 days off the office for 2020, so it makes up to 156 days off the office for 5 months and 6 days?

Do you still think that you're overworked? Maybe!!

September 27, 2018

Is this the new Malaysia we wished for?

ARE WE BETTER OFF NOW, MALAYSIANS?

1. We rejoiced, jumped for joy and congratulated each other the night Barisan Nasional stumbled for the first time in the 14th General Elections.

2. To some of us, we had waited a very long time for something like this to happen and never had we imagined that it was going to come true.

3. The fall of Barisan Nasional was mistakenly compared  to the night when the Berlin Wall came crashing to the ground.

4. 'Politics in Malaysia would never be the same again', so we claimed.

5. In actual fact, politics had always been on the wrong footing in Malaysia, right from the very first day we were exposed to the meanings of 'politics'. Politics in this country will always remain the same. There is no difference between UMNO, DAP, MIC, PAS, MCA, PPBM or even PKR. Every single party had always been racist in nature and struggle.

6. Over the years UMNO had always been at the wrong end of the public resentment.

7. Being the government, UMNO had to face the barrage from every corner of the political fence.  As for the DAP, they needed the chinese support. DAP started to indoctrinate the Chinese that UMNO was a racist Malay party (but aren't DAP racist as well?).  DAP saw that it was the easiest route to topple the BN government and in doing so, created the hatred between these two races.

9. The main reason to the Malay Tsunami that saw the fall of the ruling party in the last general elections was not because the Malays were against UMNO due to the party's mismanagement and bad leadership.The truth is the majority of Malays thought UMNO had failed them. Malays always thought that UMNO were giving too much to the Chinese. In reality UMNO had so many people to please. In the end they became a victim trying to please the Chinese but forgot that the ones who voted for them were the Malays. Had UMNO not try to look good to everybody and focused on the Malays, they might have survived the onslaught.

10. In came PH with all kinds of promises. 'A new Malaysia' they claimed. But soon, we realised that they are no better than the previous government.  Mahathir had the cheek to even say that his government will not be fulfilling the 100 days' promises which were stated in the PH manifesto as it  was not the bible to be adhered to.

11. But that's Mahathir. We all adore him. He can lie all the time and we don't mind a tiny bit.

12. The economy is going down and investors are shying away. While Malaysians are feeling the heat, Mahathir and his band of happy go lucky incapable ministers are having a field day blaming the previous government for their failure to deliver.

13. Mahathir made a big blunder by playing the blame game on China to topple Najib, forgetting that this economic powerhouse is no pushover. In the end Mahathir was the one who got bullied and other countries now don't want anything to do with Malaysia as long as Mahathir is in power. Even Japan has been very cold towards the old man.

14.Corruption is sipping in very fast. If it took 61 years for corruption to get into the way to topple BN, it took PH leaders just a few weeks to be caught with corruption. A Malaccan exco, Mat Sabu's aide and Lim Guan Eng's corruption case, to name a few.

15. The danger that lurks is far greater of what can be seen on the surface. By trying to destroy UMNO completely is actually asking for trouble. To many UMNO members, Mahathir is a DAP puppet. Many have begun questioning the role of the DAP in the actions taken against UMNO and its leaders.

16. As UMNO represents the bulk of Malay support, the 'bullets' directed at UMNO is seen as the attempt to 'massacre' the Malays. "We never did this to DAP when  we were in power but why are they trying to kill our party?", they have started to question.

17. And that is not all. For the first time in history, Malaysia is at risk of facing a split. Sabah and Sarawak are not happy with the government's empty promises.The rift is getting bigger and if not handled accordingly will see the demise of the Malaysian Federation.

Is this the New Malaysia we've struggled for?

(Copied from an UNKNOWN source. Inform me if this is yours so I can put the credit)

March 16, 2018

GA-Z77-DS3H with Intel Core i7-3770k 3.4 GHz Ivy Bridge Running High Sierra [Success]

This is an update I am supposed to publish like almost a month ago.

Yes, I managed to finally run an El Capitan on my machine. Successfully! But I took the challenge to get High Sierra. The usual installation method, Verbose mode, setting all those switches during the reboot didn't work at all. I read some articles telling to remove Signature & MATS section in the config.plists in the EFI partition. I did but to no success.

I had almost given up attempting when I purposely wanted the installation to fail when I let the USB installer run by itself; without turning on any boot switch and I didn't even want to see the Verbose messages.

Surprisingly, it gets to the loading bar, flickers, calibrates the screen and proceeded with the loading bar till it loads the installation screen?

That easy??? That's it. I just proceed to install High Sierra from that point and kept a backup in case things went wrong.

Details

OS: Mac OS X High Sierra 10.13.3 64 bit
Processor: Intel Core i7-3770k 3.4 GHz Ivy Bridge
RAM: 8 GB Corsair RAM 1600 MHz x 4 = 32 GB
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA Z77-DS3H Rev 1.0 with latest bios f11a
Graphics Card: Gigabyte NVIDIA GeForce GT 640 2GB DDR3 RAM Rev2.0
Optical: ASUS DRW-24D3ST
Storage: Western Digital WDC WD30EZRX-00D8PB0 3 TB
Power Supply: Corsair RM Series 850W

Downloads


  • Unibeast
  • High Sierra Installer
  • multibeast 5.4.3 (for audio only)
  • Latest clover installer for EFI boot loader

config.plists
There's a part in the config.plist in the EFI/CLOVER folder which I removed

APCI
DropTables

 
    Signature
    MATS
 

Graphics - works OOB. No configuration needed. I have it running with 2 monitors connected through DVI ports. I have 1 more port for HDMI and the other for VGA, unused. 

Audio
1. Installed ALC887/ALC888 Current driver from multibeast 5.4.3 
2. Run audio_cloverALC-130_v1.0s10.command and restart

Sleep - Works with keyboard delays. It will respond after 3-4 minutes. 

Boot - I copied the whole EFI content of my USB bootloader to the Hard Disk bootloader. Easy peasy.

I just needed those things to work. In fact I disabled the sleep function so I don't have to deal with the delays after waking up. 

Thank you @Apple! This is the easiest installation ever. 

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