Its is 2007

I am sure many people have written on the New Year , what with New Year resolutions and the happenings in the world and in the country.
It seems that the last days of the solar year has not failed to produce its own shocks and for us here in Melaka it was the big floods where places that had never been underwater went underwater , along with chairs and books and clothes and tv sets etc and etc.
My family has been lucky. I think I will now put a notice on my house that says, "Flood Free Zone".
I actually saw this notice in front of a new housing area along jalan Bertam Ulu. It was on high ground and the whole of Melaka would have to be flooded before this area got flooded and the whole of Bertam Ulum would have to get flooded before my house got flooded since the house is on high ground. It has its downers for example , when I get down off the bus from KL, I have to huff and puff up the slope and , when it rains the safety switch triggers off if there is lightning but it has its upside and one of which is no floods.

Today morning , I went to the new Giant's opening day . They had sent a flyer to the house and I thought why not , since it is not too far and, we needed a lot of groceries , now that my maid is onj a holiday in Padang, Sumatra , I have no one to go to the wet marked. Here is a piece of advise from me: Never go to a hypermarket on opening day! There we were it was hardly 10 am in the morning, Giant Hypermarket opens at 8 am , and there were actually volunteers from RELA directing traffic from about a kilometer away from Giant. There were cars parked along the roadside and I was thinking don t tell me they do not have a parking lot ! They have one except it was full! We managed to park in the outside parking lot by waiting for a car to leave.

It was another hassle to get into the building because there were so many people it was like some kind of celebration and I was wondering where all these people came from ! No doubt it was a public holiday and a long weekend and the school holidays were about to end but I felt it could not explain how all these people all converged to this new hypermarked when they were doing their shoping elsewhere just the day before ! So now I was witnessing the power of Branding and the power of advertising. They had posters all over town , on the traffic light poles , on buses as well as sending the mail drops house to house. I was afraid I would not find the place but no fear., the posters all had arrows showing us exactly which roads to take !

Even though there was so many people , to my utter surprise there was still a lot of things on the shelves and we managed to get the fish the groceries the vegetables as well as some stuff that simply called out to me, Dr J and Aimi! Those little slippers for Nayya are a must and oh that wee swimming pool , she needs it...and I must get those paving stones for the garden ...
Paying for the stuff was quite another hassled but I guess Giant is one experienced Hypermarket since they had extra paying counters and staff and we managed to finish our shopping in a couple of hours which is just about the same time as when we went to Tesco about 2 kilometers away from the new Giant !

Aimi said, Ma, this hypermart is Home Grown , born in Malaysia ,we should shop here instead of at Tesco. I replied there are pros and there are cons. Did you notice how Tesco takes care of customers ? They have consideration for the handicapped and they have baby careers on their trolleys as well as special parking for families with babies .Giant on the otherhand have had some problems in the past with selling goods that are not up to safety standards. This is part of the evolution of companies, somehow in order to become caring and ethical , you have to pass through the stages of growing . It is a lot like how people grow, when we are struggling to make a living that takes up all of our time, when we stop struggling , we start to see there are things we can do better and then as we evolve we become more and more concerned about the greater good for self for family and for humanity, it is growing up. So perhaps we will help Giant in its growth by playing our role as members of the public and demand that it sets higher standards of ethics and show more caring for its customers and people!

That picture of Aimi and Dr J was at the kopitiam at the Batu Berendam Giant complex.

And if you want to read the rest of my article on communication via the net , go to my other blog

HERE

The topic is Gagal Memahami dan Menyampaikan