Game Plan..

Raya Festive Season is coming to an end. It means that my LPPKN treatment is commencing once more. As usual, at the first sign of monthly Aunt Flo, I am supposed to call LPPKN to get an appointment to see my doctor. But seeing that there's too much going on currently with my sister being in confinement, my mother trying to help my sister in confinement, four little tyrants shouting, crying and screeching all at once plus a small baby on the side, we had been running to and fro giving our hand in helping as best we could. I'm not complaining but it is quite tiring with having to go to the office, run errands during lunch time and after office hours.

So, after we talked it over, we decided that we need to take a breather from treatment for this year. We practically kept on being postponed all year long anyways so we might as well be postponed without being told to. Seeing that it is near the end of the year, we might as well wait for next year to continue with all the jabbing, prodding, hoping and being disappointed again. So, that's our current game plan.. Let's hope for the best! \( ^_ ^ )/

Tough Business..

I just started to do an online/word of mouth business recently just to humour myself (since project baby is not going too well, I'd might as well find some kind of activity to distract myself). I found a great indie company based in the US producing vegan and all natural lip balms and lip colours. The products are all made of natural ingredients and they 85% of them are organic. These lip products are moisturizing and they are also animal cruelty free.

So I ventured into this business head on without thinking too much about it. Heck! I didn't even get much profit out of it either. It is just a hobby for me to do since I do like these products and wear them, so I thought, why not share them with whoever's interested? To promote my small non quite profitable business, I engaged some of my dear friends to spread the word about them. I do have good faith in my friends that they are helping me out of the goodness of their hearts.

I guess trying to sell an idea and the actual product itself is kind of difficult (especially when you are a shy person). But in my heart, I feel that a wonderful product will sell itself one day. But not at the moment though. So, for the first week of trying to sell, I encountered the answer to why online sellers DO NOT accept nor entertain requests for exchange. The reason being is that a customer may want to change a product she/he had bought because she/he didn't like it or it didn't meet up to her/his expectations. BUT, in giving in to requests to exchange bought products, the seller may received an opened/used product in return.

For example, a seller just sold a tube of lipstick in a certain shade to a customer via her good friend. The lipstick is unopened and safely sealed. Suddenly, the customer who bought the lipstick decided that she didn't like the shade she had chosen and requested for an exchange of another shade more to her liking. The seller asked whether the tube of the original order had been opened or not? The customer said no, it hasn't been opened. So the seller, not wanting to disappoint her customer agreed. The exchange took place. The seller just put the returned tube aside to attend to other matters. Later on when she wanted to put back the returned and supposedly unopened tube inside her stock carton, she found that the tube indeed had been opened because the seal is no longer intact!

Now the seller is left with the dilema of telling her good friend to tell his friend who bought the product that the safety seal on the dang thing is broken and cannot be sold anymore to any other customers. So, in the end after a loooong battle with herself, she decided to tell her friend about the whole fiasco and hoped that her friend could understand her dilema. What about the opened lip color? Well, since it had been opened, it can no longer be sold to anyone anymore. So it has become a loss to the seller. Tough business.. I sooo pity her.

So there.. I learned the lesson of why "Goods sold are not returnable!" is an important policy for online/small time business owners especially when the products they are selling involves cosmetic, innerwear, and food (plus other stuff I can't think of at the moment).

Hmm.. let's see what I can get my hands on next to sell in a small scale..

Not Again!!

I seem to have a bad luck streak when it comes to IT stuff lately. Just last month I had a panic attack when my external hardisk crashed, then suddenly out of nowhere my PC at my office blinked and died! I tried to reboot the dang thing but all I got was a blank black screen with some error message that a ntoskrnl.exe is missing. Wha?? How did that happen?!

Since it is an official asset, I had to call up a technician to come and take a look with high hopes that my suddenly banged up PC could be restored. She tried to do some recovery with Windows Boot CD but that didn't work. She had to take my PC away to get some diagnostic things done to it. Fine. I'll just hang around doing nothing since I don't have my source of work tool anymore.

Waiting around doing nothing is no fun I tell you. So I asked my dear husband to send me my netbook so at least I have something to do while waiting. Later on, another technician came by my office room and told me the bad news. The hardisk on my PC is dead! What??!! Again??!!!! I nearly hyperventilated when I think about all my work data inside that PC! Oh My God!!!! I begged the technician to try and do some recovery data pronto since there are quite a number of classified information involved. He told me that the vendor didn't cater to recovery of data but they did gave him two numbers to contact regarding this problem. The recovery is quite costly because the cheapest is RM400 and it can go up to RM4000 per recovery! I told him just to try anything and ask the treasury whether it is allowed to be financed by the organization since it is their property to begin with. (Hope it works!!!)

Then, at home I had some trouble with my bluetooth mouse not connecting to my netbook! Arrrghhh! It was working fine during the day but suddenly the bluetooth toggle didn't recognize any devices at all! I feel like killing somebody (my netbook maybe?) since there are too many problems associated with IT lately. I looked up loads of information on how to make my netbook detect bluetooth devices but to no avail. I even tried reinstalling the bluetooth's driver this morning but still it would not cooperate! Lastly I resorted to just using a normal wired mouse grudgingly. I am going to have my brother take a look later with hopes that he can do some miracle with this thing!

Reaaalllyyyy not a good time for me! :(