please excuse me whilst i grumble and bemoan, for what use is a blog if not to unload all the crap that you pick up in your day.

all i want is gas. simple, not that sweet smelling, natural gas. sometimes, when things are going your way, all your have to do is drop by the nearest gas shop, fill in a few forms, pay the money, make an appointment and mr. gas guy will come a-hooking up your gas connection. IF things are smooth sailing and your good karma meter is right to the top.

life for me is never that straightforward. character building i think they called it (rolls eyes). it started out just like everybody else, but when mr. gas guy came knocking, he said that the piping from the wall is not long enough to connect and i will need to contact miss management. which of course i did in a jiffy, and miss management promised to have it done in a jiffy. jiffy, in case you haven't looked at the dictionary for a very long time, means to forget about it and leave it for a couple of months. so, i harassed miss management some more and one fine day, she waved her wand and it was fixed. naturally, the next step was to make another appointment with mr. gas to get him to swagger his bottom over to connect the gas. i must give credit to mr. gas guy because he always call when you ask him to. nicely, of course.

so, mr. gas guy came today and connected the gas. hey presto, and i have fire. definitely easier than our ancestors, the caveman. the fire, however, was too small to cook with and pretty much too small to do anything with but stare at it and go 'ooooooo' and 'ahhhhhhh', like grandpa caveman. mr. gas guy said it was miss management's fault. she needs to modify the nozzle. let's skip the technical bits because i wasn't really interested on the how, why, what and when. i just wanted the solution. anyway, mr. gas guy said miss management will fix the problem, again, and they will come back after that. sigh. this sounds like a never ending story.

i called miss management, and she said that it wasn't her fault. it was mr. stovetop's fault. i have to call mr. stovetop directly and he will come and modify the nozzle, free of charge. after some sweet-talking and whimpering, miss management said she will call mr. stovetop herself, explain the problem and get them to call me. sounds like the beginning of another horror story. i don't get. the same problem probably applies to all the units there. why didn't they just get someone to come in and fix the piping AND the modifying in the very first place, instead of waiting for each resident to call them individually and settle the case one at a time. can you imagine how much petrol, car trips, manhours and time are wasted just for one simple thing? each installation takes so many trips by so many people but yet nobody does anything about it until they are asked. sigh. malaysia at it's best i want to say, but i'm told this happens the world over.

so, anyway, to end the story, mr gas guy then tells me that they can do the job. you probably want to clobber him with the head at his point, or at least i do. the catch is that it will cost me, instead of foc by mr stovetop. if you want to wait for mr. stovetop to call you, wait for them to turn up for their appointment, wait for them to actually modify it, call mr. gas guy and wait for another appointment again, wait for them to turn up again and wait for them to solve the rest of it. and you wonder why there is progress is slower in this part of the world. my head of hair is growing whiter as we speak. i do want gas sometime this century.

what can you do but pay the bugger? well, if you look at it one way, it's efficiency - helping you to solve other people's problem. another way to look at it is....thief!! do you get the feeling that mr stovetop, mr gas and miss management is in this whole big conspiracy? at $45 per unit, i think that they are raking up a fair bundle and enjoying abalone every night.

with all these running around, albeit not physically, who needs exercise? :-p