The Application Of The Spirit Of Pia

Frequent readers of this blog will have been acquainted with The Spirit Of Pia. However this no-holds-barred, take-no-prisoners attitude is not only limited to racing. Indeed I put it to good use today. It all started last night when we got home and found the upstairs bedroom (unoccupied but adorned with Carbo Kid's drawings on the wall) water-logged. Water was dripping from the ceiling and the tiled floor was wet with dirty water. That can mean only one of 2 things: the heavy rain seeped through the roof tiles or a leaking pipe in the roof. Since I thought that although the weather had been wet the past few evenings, the rain wasn't torrential enough to cause the seepage. So I deduced that it must be a leaky PVC piping. After mopping up the mess, I laid out 5 buckets to contain the drippings and got everyone to take their bath and do all the washing up in the bathroom and kitchen so that I can shut off the mains.

 

The next morning, there were no more dripping. The ceiling board had been badly stained and I'd to take a day's leave to wait for the handymen to arrive. In order not to waste the day off, we packed off to the gynae for our monthly medical check-up and was provided a detailed scan on the baby. As tired as I was from last night's cleaning up, I was very anxious to find out if the baby is OK. After waiting for close to 4 hours due to the doctor's delivery duties, he finally was able to run a thorough ultrasound close to noon and gave us the thumbs up and announced that the kid is perfectly normal. I heaved a sigh of relief.

 

Then we hustled to lunch at a nearby McD's and went home. The workers had already called and was arriving in 40mins' time. That meant that I've absolutely no time to rest. While waiting for them to arrive, I washed the car. Their job thankfully was very efficient, thorough and quick. And the charges very reasonable I might add. Nothing near the amount that I feared that I'd be charged. They finally left at 4pm. That leaves me with just 30mins left to rush to the USJ15 local bank to collect my checkbook. My wife asked me "Isn't it too late to be going?". Typical of the never-say-die attitude of runners, I replied "Never try, never know". In any case I was ready to employ a backup plan should I be late. Alas, I took the wrong route. I ought to have taken the SS19 way or even the Sunway Pyramid way but instead I ended up on Jalan Kewajipan. Not only I had to battle traffic lights but road hoggers as well. I got to the bank at 4:33pm (believe you me, it was like racing - trying to meet the cutoff time for medalling!) and leaped out of the car and nearly pleaded (that was my backup plan!) with the bank officer to allow me to collect the item. I was a little desperate because the bank doesn't allow the first checkbook to be collected by a 3rd party even though he/she is authorized! And since they don't open on Saturdays, I've to waste another day's leave just to run this crazy errand. While they have ridiculous processes, dealing with smaller branches does have its advantages sometimes such as the officers can be a bit lenient if they want to. In the end I'm pleased to report that I went home with the book in my hands. Phew! My day has been a productive day already! That was a make or break situation and it's proof to not ever give up so easily.

 

I'm really pooped as I'm typing this and there are 2 more good news waiting for me tomorrow at work. Nope, not the nearly 100 emails that I'm expecting waiting for me. They're the 2 books which were delivered to me at the office. One's the Guide to the Project Management Body Of Knowledge (a bible-standard piece of work but a damn mouthful) and another one on the Bowerman which after some timely intelligence by yours truly one night, PM19 was able to execute the extraction of the only 2 copies from the Kino bookstore.