Women Travellers Beware!

It was reported in Parliament that most drug mules are women. More accurately, young and pretty women. They are tricked into carrying bags containing drugs such as heroin, Ecstasy pills and other dangerous drugs into countries they have never been before. More often they are given free airline tickets to several destinations. Places that they may never heard of before. The mules would normally be given multi-destination tickets and would fly from one city to another, including Bangkok and other large cities in Latin American countries like Argentina, Chile and Peru before coming home, if they are lucky to come home at all.


Who would refuse free holiday trips? The only thing you have to do is bring along some luggage or boxes and deliver them to someone.

It was reported that eight Malaysians were currently serving jail sentences in Argentina and Venezuela, 10 in Peru, 21 in Brazil and one in Chile. They were all sentenced to jail after being found guilty of drug-related of­fences. A total of 1,490 Malaysians were currently serving their jail terms in foreign countries and 50% or 756 of them were due to drug trafficking.

The Foreign Ministry has sent a letter of appeal to the Singapore government last week  to plead for a young Sabahan on death row for drug trafficking. Two Malaysians, have been convicted of drug trafficking in China and Japan respectively, but have had their sentences reduced with Wisma Putra's help.

So young people, (that includes my children), please, please do not accept any strangers' requests to carry their luggage. Sometimes a pleasant looking stranger may try to strike a conversation only to request that you add a piece of luggage to yours when checking in at the airport. This is especially true if they see that you do not have much to carry. Do not accept anything from strangers even if they seem nice and religious. Crooks are great actors. One has to be extra careful. One wrong decision, even with good intentions could land you in death row in a foreign land.

Job Seekers' Scam

I got caught watching a local talk show last night. The discussion was on agencies 'helping' job seekers look for jobs.

I did not stay long watching the programme but the following were the salient points I understood what job seekers have to look out for:

• The job agencies have to be licensed by the Dept of Manpower of the Ministry of Human Resources.
• They are not supposed to ask the job seeker to pay any fees except registration fees of RM12 for a local job post and RM20 for an international post.
• However, they are allowed to deduct up to RM200 from the first payslip which normally they don't as they are paid by the employers not the prospective employees.
• If an employment agency insists that you pay RM200 and guarantees that you will get a job, most probably it is a scam!

So those of you who have just graduated and looking for a job, BEWARE!There are unscrupulous

people who do not care that you may be broke and need a job. They just want to take advantage

and make easy money out of you.

Credit Card Scams

I thought with the smart card chip embedded in the credit card, there would be less problems of card cloning. But criminals will always try to beat whatever advances made in technology. I remember reading of a syndicate cloning credit cards originating from Malaysia. I am so ashamed!

Somebody must have have known that my daughter, Zay has just received her first principal credit card. Previously, she has a credit card, but only a supplementary card.

This morning, someone called her from a private number claiming to be from a credit card centre and  requested for her credit card details. The person knew her name and credit card number and wanted the last numbers on the reverse side of her credit card.

First, she has been using her card for some time now.Why should the credit card centre want to verify that she has the right card? Furthermore, anybody at the outlets where she had used her card would be able to see her name and credit card number on the merchant copy of every transaction. Sensing something amiss, Zay did not give the numbers requested by the caller. The caller was quite annoyed, she said.

 When Zay called her Dad and I on the incident, we were quite relieved that she did not reveal the security number as requested. I would like to remind everyone that we:

 SHOULD NEVER REVEAL OUR PERSONAL DETAILS OVER THE PHONE OR VIA EMAIL TO ANYONE. THE BANKS WILL NEVER CALL TO ASK FOR YOUR ACCOUNT NUMBER OR YOUR CREDIT CARD NUMBER.

 DO NOT ANSWER CALLS OR RESPOND TO SMS FROM PRIVATE NUMBERS OR UNFAMILIAR LONG NUMBERS. The latter is normally from outside the country.

If someone knows your name, credit card number, security code number and other personal details, he could use the information to conduct online transactions and you will be cheated by these illegal transactions.

REMEMBER KEEP YOUR PERSONAL DETAILS TO YOURSELF AT ALL TIMES.

A Taste of Success

In Front of the Grand Hyatt Singapore 

A Gourmet's Delight at the Straits 

Kitchen                                                                                            In the Living Room of the Junior Suite

                                                              The All Marble Bathroom
                                                              with Tempered Glass Doors

Sorry no photos taken of the king size bed.