I received this photo over email, it is a prize winning picture taken by a man called Kevin Carter, he committed suicide shortly after winning the award apparently haunted by his own work.

 

What struck me other than the plight of the little girl is that the photographer committed suicide apparently out of guilt.  According to what I read on the internet, many criticise him for not helping the girl, he apparently waited 20 min to see if the vulture would spread its wings.  He left the girl continue to walk towards the feeding center.  Apparently all the journalists were told not to touch anything to avoid contracting disease.

 

 

In John Chapter 8, the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery and wanted to stoned her to death. Jesus intervened, He said to them "If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her."  Everyone walked away.  Jesus had compassion on the woman.

 

 

I renewed my maid's permit recently.  It all started when the maid agency wanted over 1K for the whole process and I thought I could save same money doing it myself.

 

I thought it would be a long and frustrating procedure but turns out that it was quite simple and I was able to save ~RM500 by doing it myself. For those who wanted to do it, here are the simple 3 steps... I couldn't find much info on the internet when I was doing it so I thought I'll put it here for the benefit of those like me who would like to do it themselves but have never done it before.  I thank my sis-in-law (who has been doing it for the last 5 years) for giving me the info needed.

 

a) Go to www.fomema.com.my to download the registration form.

b) Choose a clinic most convenient for you from the clinic list on the site  (easier if the Xray is also at the same clinic then no need to go to two places in Step 2) and fill up the doctor's code in the form.

c) Buy a bank draft RM190 payable to Fomema Sdn Bhd

d) Go to Pusat Bandar Damansara Block G Fomema Office and give them the form.  They will pass you a slip for you to keep.

The visit to Fomema office only took me 5 minutes, there was no queue. I also bought the bank draft at PBD as there were many banks there.

 

a)  This is straight forward, after it is done.  Just wait about 10 days and go the Fomema website to check if the check up result is positive or negative.  You have to use the maid's worker's code.  The result for my maid was available within 5 days.

 

a) I don't know how they decide which immigration branch you go, but for me I had to go to Shah Alam branch.  When I was in PBD in step 1, I went to Block I to ask them where to go, they looked at my maid's passport and told me to go to either Shah Alam or Putrajaya.

b) You only need to bring the maid's passport, bring RM445 if you r renewing for 1 year.

The whole process only took 15 minutes for me not including the travelling time of cos.

 

Another thing, if the renewal is for the 3rd year, you will need to check if your maid's passport is valid til the end of 3rd year. If not you will need to renew your maid's passport at the Indo Embassy before u do the above.  For me we are only renewing til the maid's passport expired which is about 9 months... so I didn't bother doing the passport renewal.

 

The whole process also brought back some nostalgic memories for me.  I was at PBD as well as the Shah Alam Immigration Office quite often about 10 years back when they were doing the computerisation project.  I was involved in the project and spent coutless nights at the office... I was the vendor and now I am the user enjoying the improved and speedy service.  I also remember us working on the connections between Fomema and Immigration which was also quite a painful project, I guess it all paid off.