Back in KL

Just came back from Kota Tinggi yesterday.

Ying, sorry lor, for not telling you that I went to Johor.. I know I won't have free time there, and I was right..

We departed on 31/12/2008, early in the morning by MAS. MAS is always good with its service. Although it was just a 45 minutes flight, we are served as if we are the kings and queens.

We went to two estates on the first day, 1 mill and another two estates on 1/1/2009. We didn't countdown or celebrate during new year eve, we were just dead tired and spent our moments in the hotel.

It's going to be a very boring post. Advice: stop reading if you wish to read an interesting and not boring post.

It was fun doing the counts in estates, as people there are extremely friendly. Maybe they were afraid that we will report things to HQ, they treated us so well that I think I will never ever forget.

Counting stocks in estate? What actually we need to count? the trees? Nope. We were to count on the fertilizers they kept for the manuring programme. It was quite interesting, and very different from other stock count.

Just imagine a store with thousands of bags of fertilizer lying on the floor, stacked in many layers.. how are we gonna do the count? It is impossible for us to move all the bags (50kg per bag) and count one by one. It's heavy, plus there are thousands of them! The only method we can use is that, we climb up to the top, and count from the top. We are lucky if there is a "pelan" drawn before we do the count; we can spot the difference easily. If we are unlucky, we need to count all by our own; and the work is tidious. The good thing is, most of the estate has a system to arrange the fertilizer, either 10 in a stack or 12 in a stack. Therefore, it is not very hard for us. All we need to do is just simple mathematics, height multiply with length and width. Any variance is to be reconciled later.

As for the mill stock count, it is different. We are counting oil and pk in tank and bunker. For oil, after taking the reading, temperature is also needed, as different temperature has different density. There are formulas and tables ready for us to do the computation. We need to compute everything according to the formula and tables. It was fun! As for pk, we need to count it using formula and table as well, the only difference is that we need not to measure the temperature. We are calculating the unutilized space, hence by deducting the total height of the bunker and tank, we can get the utilized space to proceed with our reading using the table and formulas.

All are so different from the normal count, and I am just thrilled to know more. Although the floor is extremely slippery, and we need to climb few storey high to take the reading, I never regret for the trip. It was fun, and I really wished I can do it again next year.

As for remark, there is no ghost or wild animals in the estates. In fact, the only animals spotted in the estate are cows and chickens. We are not staying in the estate. In fact, we are staying in the nicest hotel in Kota Tinggi.

Oh yeah, Happy new year 2009!