This post over at Engadget says Vodafone releasing iPhone in Australia, Italy, India, and seven other countries. I wonder if Celcom will be the first telco in Malaysia to bring in an iPhone. Hmm….

I needed to enable international roaming for a postpaid supplementary line of mine. Doing what I usually do, I went to digi.com.my to look for the relevant information. Found it here - Postpaid International Roaming. Found out that I needed to:

• approach a DiGi Center (I have one within 20 minutes drive from my apartment, no biggie)
• I need to fill out a form
• I need to bring alone a photocopy of an Identification Card (problem here)

The problem was the person with the supplementary line had already left the country. So I called up DiGi’s Customer service to inquire if I can submit a photocopy of my IC instead of the supplementary line holder. Here’s how the call went (re-phrased but meaning is retained):

Support: Hi, Mr. Eng. How can I help you? (whoa, she called my name +1)
Me: Hi, I need to ask you something. Can I activate international roaming on behalf of my supplementary line holder?
Support: Mr. Eng, I need to do some verification (and proceeds to ask for my IC number as well as billing address)
Support: Thank you for verification. Hold on, let me check the system.
Me: Sure.
(about 20 seconds later)
Support: Hi, Mr. Eng.
Me: Yes, go on.
Support: I’ve checked the system. I noticed that this postpaid line has been in use for more than 6 months. Is that correct?
Me: Yes.
Support: OK, I will be able to activate roaming for you. It’ll take about 2 days for it to be active. Is that OK?
Me: Sure (yay, I don’t need to physically go to a DiGi Center +1)
Support: Is there anything else I can help you with?
Me: Yes, actually. I’d like to request termination of paper billing for my postpaid line.
Support: OK, done. Is there anything else?
Me: Nope, that’s about it.
Support: Thank you for being a DiGi Customer sir.
Me: No problem. Goodbye.
Support: Bye.
I hang up.

She called my name and she helped save my time. I seriously cannot see myself using anything else other than DiGi. It is the sum of small things like this one that makes it worthwhile to stick to something. Not promotions, not fancy ads nor loyalty programs. All it takes is for a front-liner to do their job really well.

Side note: I’ve heard scenarios of people using Maxis (this is a first hand encounter) that went through loops of fire to get international roaming enabled when some friends got stuck in Thailand due to a stolen passport. To cut the story short, Maxis demanded deposits and also the person to be physically around for verification to activate international roaming. Hello? They guy’s stuck in Thailand for crying out loud! And this happened to a long-time Maxis customer, a working citizen of Malaysia.

I frequently hear this - “Fill up your time sheet before xxx date because it affects the company’s billing to the clients”. Now, this is fine, looking from the company’s perspective. However, even though all employees know what is good for the company will eventually trickle down as benefits for them, usually in the form of higher pay or bonus, it’s still not as enticing and you’ll find employees are not 100% motivated to fill in their time sheet. Weekly reminder emails will still need to be sent out.

Fact: people are an emotional and self-centered lot. Given a logical and emotional explanation, people tend to react more profoundly to an emotional one, especially if it is related to themselves. Managers should capitalize on this to get things done. Rather saying how filling up the time sheet will help the company’s billing, an emotional reasoning would be something along the lines of how time sheet can improve a consultant’s review and visibility, by tracking the amount of work done over time and by filling them up by xxx date is useful because you’d still remember it.

Gets exactly the same thing done, but I bet if you pitch it the latter, it’ll work better. Try it.

There’s a book over at InfoQ that attempts to bring architects and developers alike up to speed on domain-driven design. I’m in the early stages of the book and might/will/probably write a short review (or rather, form an opinion on the book lol) after reading it. But then again, don’t hold your breath because I’ve been known to abandon projects like this after reading a book (or I’ll just forget ;)).