My Okura 2-in-1 foldable aluminium ladder with clothes drying hanger rack

I believe every household needs a ladder for the purpose of ceiling fan cleaning, replacing faulty light bulbs, air-cond filter cleaning, reaching up to things at higher place, etc.

Your ladder would probably sit in your storeroom most of the time, until the moment you need to use it.

What if you have a ladder that has additional function to use it more often, such as being a clothes drying hanger rack?

The Okura 2-in-1 foldable aluminium ladder with clothes drying hanger rack would be the solution. It can function as a ladder, and it can also function as a clothes hanger rack, although you can't use both functions at the same time.

My 4-steps Okura ladder costs around RM150, slightly more expensive than ordinary ladder without the clothes hanging rack function. There are taller 5-steps and even 6-steps 2-in-1 ladders available in the market, selling at more expensive price.

This 4-steps ladder is good enough for condominium or apartment with not-too-high ceiling height. Its highest step is 96cm (3.15 feet) from the ground. It has a pretty tall and firm handrail for you to hold on. Being a ladder, its loading capacity is 120kg.

As you can see from the photo below, it is just slightly higher than a washing machine.

I find the length of this 4-step ladder just nice for it to be portable and easy to carry. Its weight is just 6kg, about the weight of a baby below 1 year old.

It can fit in ordinary sedan car, probably not in the boot, but with the car's back seats folded.

It is pretty robust and solid. Its handrail is covered with soft rubber, which is very nice to grasp. When you fold it and lean it against the wall, the soft rubber will not hurt the wall.

However, its rack is not able to hang too many clothes. The 5-steps or 6-steps model will have a longer rack to accommodate more clothes.

A use case for this rack is: to make use of the washing machine and clothes dryer for most of your clothes, while using the rack to dry your delicate hand-washed items, such as underwear.

My Geekria 170cm stereo audio cable with noise-cancelling boom mic for my Sony WH-1000XM4 headset

The Sony WH-1000XM4 headset can operate in Bluetooth wireless mode as well as in 3.5mm audio cable wired mode.

The audio cable that comes together with this headset only support audio in but not audio out. As such, I believe the 3.5mm AUX port on the Sony WH-1000XM4 headset also does not have audio out function to transmit your voice collected from its microphone to the connected device when it is operating in wired mode.

The built-in noise-cancelling microphone of the Sony WH-1000XM4 headset actually functioning pretty well. However, just like all other wireless headset without an attached boom mic, the location of its microphones is some distance away from your mouth. Your voice will sound a little bit "backwards" and much softer, compared to the situation of using a headset with a good boom mic. If the voice captured is too soft, it might become unclear to your listening party over the other end of a phone call or conference call.

To solve this issue, you will need another microphone, not belong to the headset, to take care of your audio out (which becomes the audio in of the receiving device, such as your computer or mobile device).

If the operating system allows separate handling of audio in device and audio out device, then you can make use of your headset to receive its audio out, while using a separate microphone to capture its audio in. Microsoft Windows can handle this kind of situation pretty well.

I believe all laptops nowadays come with built-in microphone, so you can make use of that for your audio in. For PC without built-in microphone, you can get a 3rd party microphone for its audio in.

There also exists another kind of solution, which is using an audio cable with a boom mic that can work independently on its own. This kind of solution is easier and more convenient to use, as you don't need to mess around too much with the audio settings of your computer's operating system and/or conferencing software. With this solution, you can turn your headset into a gaming or call-centre headset that can capture your voice loud and clear.

There are several brands available in the market, including V-Moda, Headset Buddy, Audio-Technica, Geekria, etc. I have chosen Geekria mainly because of its price of around RM35 only, and it works well like those more expensive counterparties.

My Geekria stereo audio cable is 1.7 meter long, which is a perfect length that is long enough for your convenience to use, yet not too long for easy storage.

Inside its packaging contains:

• Reusable storage bag
• The 1.7 meter audio cable with attached boom mic
• Y adapter cord (to separate audio in and audio out, when needed)
• Leather wire organizer strap
• 2x microphone cap

Its boom mic is attached with an adjustable cord.

If your computer's 3.5mm audio port supports both audio in and audio out, you don't need to use the Y adapter cord, and can just plug it in as shown in the photo below.

If your computer has separate 3.5mm ports for audio in and audio out, you can plug it in by using the Y adapter cord, as shown in the photo below.

This Geekria stereo audio cable with noise-cancelling boom mic is fully compatible with the Sony WH-1000XM4 headset, as well as the earlier versions of WH-1000XM3, WH-1000XM2, and most other models of Sony headset.

With this, your voice will be recorded loud and clear, with unnecessary ambience noise filtered out properly, and with any echoing problem.

Try it out, and you will be able to notice the tremendous difference of using it than using the wireless microphone in the headset.

EPF declared 6.10% (conventional) / 5.65% (shariah) dividend for 2021

After an even longer waiting time than last year, the Employees Provident Fund (EPF, a.k.a. KWSP) has finally declared the dividend rate for financial year 2021.

For year 2021, the dividend declared for conventional account is 6.10% while for Shariah account is 5.65%. The dividend will be credited into members' account soon, and you can check for it by login into your EPF i-Account.

Year 2021 was the 5th year of dividend declaration for Shariah account, while dividend for conventional account has been declared annually since 1952. The dividend for Shariah account in all the years from 2017 to 2021 were lower than the dividend for conventional account of the same year.

The 6.10% dividend for EPF conventional account in 2021 is 17.31% higher than the 5.20%  dividend declared for 2020 (last year).

Calculation: (6.10-5.20)/5.20 = 0.90/5.20 = 17.31%

It is 7.96% higher than the 5.65% Shariah dividend declared for the same year.

Calculation: (6.10-5.65)/5.65 = 0.45/5.65 = 7.96%

In year 2021, there are quite a lot of people has taken out a portion of their EPF savings through i-Sinar, i-Lestari and i-Citra schemes. Hopefully, their money withdrawn from EPF had put in good use. Otherwise, it would be wiser to leave the money with EPF to enjoy the 6.10% dividend.