I'm a civillian

Income tax
Yes, it’s that time of the year. I went to the bank to get our loan statement last week in full zest, but when I was filling in the form (still the old way, I’m afraid) this week, I couldn’t find the housing loan interest relief!! Aik, I don’t recall the announcement that this relief has been abolished, yet I do remember that the relief amount for books and KWSP/insurance has been increased. Is this the case of selective memory where the ‘bad’ news is filtered out, or is this the case of government PR where the good news is well-publicised, but not the ‘less than good’ ones?

Election time
Rumoured to be late 2007 or early 2008. The media reported that 4.9 million eligible voters haven’t registered yet. That’s a big number! Make sure you’re not part of that statistic. Click here to find out more, or if you have registered, click here to check your constituency.

Telemarketing
Of late, I receive telemarketing calls quite frequently, with insurance, personal loans, and credit card related things usually being the products being offered. Most of the time I can cut them them off by saying “I’m not interested; so let’s not waste both our times” after their first two sentences. But sometimes they still persist – “Hear me out first” (trained, I bet), so I’ll just let them continue the talking while I continue to do my work, occasionally murmuring “Hmm”. After they finish, my answers would still be the unvariable “I’m not interested.” While the calls themselves are annoying, what I found even more annoying is – where do they get my number? Some of them called from organizations where I’ve had or am having business with (even so, I still think it’s an abuse of my data privacy), but some are totally alien. Is there some syndicate selling phone numbers?

Public parks

Seems oversubscribed, no? Dear powers-that-be, I think we need a lot more public parks in the country.

Virginia shooting
What a terrible tragedy it is. Reminds me of how fleeting our lives are (musafir berteduh di bawah pokok?). Also reminds me of something a friend once said, post 9/11 and Bali/Jakarta bombings, with this group and that group being accused and monitored, that “It only takes one person to have a loose screw in the head.”