Renting a Medklinn air ionizer instead of buying it

Among the many air and surface sterilizing products in the market, Medklinn ionizer has been proven effective in sterilizing the air and surface around it by killing the bacteria and viruses,  as well as eliminating allergens, bad odours, smoke, dust, moulds and pollution.

Recently, Medklinn has started to provide renting as an option to use their air ionizer, other than buying it.

Benefits of renting instead of buying:

• You can terminate the rental after a minimum 3 months period. This enables you to try out the product with small cost, after that, you may opt to continue or terminate the renting. Upon termination, you can opt to buy a brand new product, or just discontinue using the product.
• You will get 1-to-1 replacement for faulty, malfunction or damaged unit, provided it is not intentionally damaged.
• You will get free cartridge replacement every year, until the end of rental period after 3 years.

Disbenefit of renting instead of buying:

• After 3 years, when the rental period is completed, you need to return the unit to Medklinn.
• The total cost of using the unit with renting for 3 years is higher than buying the product and buying new replacement cartridge every year.

Other considerations:

• The warranty period of Medklinn product is 15 months, after you register your bought product in their website. By renting, you effectively extend the warranty period of your product to 36 months.
• Normally, Medklinn will come out with new model every 2-3 years. By renting, you can always use the latest model of the product. Even if you buy and keep the product, being an electronic product, it will still have a lifespan and will degrade from year to year.
• If you buy the product, certain credit card allows you to split the cost to 12 months installment. If you rent the product, your credit card will be charged at a relatively smaller amount every month for 36 months.

For the case of Medklinn Asens+20 indoor ionizer:

If you opt for buying, the cost is:

• Medklinn Asens+20 = RM560
• 2x cartridge = 2 x RM139 = RM278

Total cost (3 years) = RM838

If you opt for renting, the cost is:

• 1st year = 12 x RM36 = RM432
• 2nd year = 12 x RM25 = RM300
• 3rd year = 12 x RM16 = RM192
• 2x cartridge = RM0

Total cost (3 years) = RM924

Different between renting and buying = RM86

For the case of Medklinn Autoplus car ionizer:

If you opt for buying, the cost is:

• Medklinn Autoplus = RM439
• 2x cartridge = 2 x RM90 = RM180

Total cost (3 years) = RM619

If you opt for renting, the cost is:

• 1st year = 12 x RM26 = RM312
• 2nd year = 12 x RM19 = RM228
• 3rd year = 12 x RM13 = RM156
• 2x cartridge = RM0

Total cost (3 years) = RM696

Different between renting and buying = RM77

So, which option is better for you? You decide yourself.

Strategic Doing - 10 Skills for Agile Leadership

Strategic Doing - 10 Skills for Agile Leadership is a book published in 2019 by Wiley and authored by Edward Morrison, Scott Hutcheson, Elizabeth Nilsen, Janyce Fadden, and Nancy Franklin. Famous musician Yo-Yo Ma (马友友) has written the foreword for it.

Undeniably, complex challenges are all around us nowadays. They impact our companies, our communities, and our planet. This complexity and the emergence of networks are changing the practice of strategic management.

Today’s leaders need to understand how to design and guide complex collaborations to accelerate innovation and change - collaborations that cross boundaries both inside and outside organizations.

Strategic Doing introduces you to the new disciplines of agile strategy and collaborative leadership. You’ll learn how to design and guide complex collaborations by following a discipline of simple rules that you won’t find anywhere else.

• Unleash the power of true collaboration
• Learn and master the 10 skills of agile leadership
• Apply individual skills to targeted situations
• Introduces a new discipline of leadership strategy

Filled with compelling case studies, Strategic Doing outlines a new discipline of leadership strategy specifically designed for open, loosely-connected networks.

The book’s authors are both practitioners and teachers of Strategic Doing, helping others to master the skills. Solidly based in research, Strategic Doing explains each of the skills in detail and clearly illustrates how individual skills are used as part of effective collaboration.

The 10 skills for agile leadership as discussed in the book encompass:

• Create and maintain a safe space for deep, focused conversation
• Frame the conversation with the right question
• Identify your assets, including the hidden ones
• Link and leverage assets to identify new opportunities
• Look for the “Big Easy”
• Convert your ideas to outcomes with measurable characteristics
• Start slowly to go fast – But start
• Draft short-term action plans that include everyone
• Set 30/30 meetings to review, learn, and adjust
• Nudge, connect, and promote to reinforce new habits

This 188 pages book is available in both physical format as well as e-book format.

Renewed Malaysia passport in 11 minutes during RMCO period

My passport was about to expire in less than 6 months time. I planned to renew it online, but the system said due to their internal problem, I was not able to proceed with the online passport renewal and need to do it by going to an immigration office.

You can click here to try your luck to renew your Malaysia passport online. Before you proceed with the online passport renewal, you need to take your passport photograph at a professional photo shop to be uploaded to the system. After you've completed the online passport renewal process and made the payment online, you will still need to go to the immigration office with relevant documents, including a printed copy of the payment receipt, in order to collect your new passport.

If you plan to do your passport renewal at the immigration office, it is not necessary to take passport photograph, as your passport photograph will be taken at the immigration office, free of charge. Even though you have brought your own photo, the officer will still insist you to take a new photo at their photo booth.

Since I was not able to renew my passport online, I made an appointment to visit the UTC Shah Alam Immigration Office located at Level 2 of Kompleks UTC Selangor (Anggerik Mall). During current recovery movement control order (RMCO) period, it is a must to make prior appointment before going to the immigration office.

You can click here to make online appointment with immigration office.

Note that you need to make separate appointment for each person going to the immigration office. For my case, I brought my kid together to renew his passport as well. Therefore, I made 2 appointments, one for myself and one for my kid, both at the same timeslot.

Kompleks UTC Selangor (Anggerik Mall) is quite easy to reach with the aid of Google Maps. You can easily identify the building with its big UTC Selangor signage as shown in the photo below. It was quite easy to get a parking bay there. The parking is not free, but its hourly rate is pretty reasonable.

The immigration office is located at Level 2 in the building. We need to fill in a form for each person and submit all the required documents to the reception counter there, before we can get a queue number chit to be served.

Required documents for an adult to renew passport:

• Existing passport (original)
• MYKAD (original)
• Printed copy of the appointment email received after the online appointment was made

Required documents for kids below 18 years old to renew passport:

• Existing passport (original)
• MYKID/MYKAD (both original and photocopy)
• Birth certificate (both original and photocopy)
• MYKAD of the parent who brings the kid to the immigration office (both original and photocopy)
• Printed copy of the appointment email received after the online appointment was made

If you forgot to bring any of the required original documents, then that's too bad, you need to make another visit again with the complete set of required documents.

If you forgot to photocopy any of the required photocopies, no worry, expensive photocopy service is available at the shop just next door.

If you forgot to print out your appointment email, also no worry, expensive email printing service is available at the same shop next door, provided that you can access to that email with your handphone.

One more thing! If you forgot to bring the person (such as your kid) along, the passport also cannot be issued to the person, as thumbprints verification is an imperative process. The passport holder needs to be present at the immigration office.

Quite surprisingly, there were very few people coming for immigration office service today, probably because now is still RMCO period. We managed to complete the whole process, from getting the queue number chits for 2 persons, then attended by an immigration officer, had our left and right thumbprints verified, took our photo, made the payments at payment counter, put the payment receipts into a basket at Counter 8, wait for a while and collect our new passport, all completed in just 11 minutes.

Anyhow, the immigration office in UTC Selangor has made a KPI that all passports shall be ready for collection within 1 hour after payment made.

Note that payment can only be made either using credit card or debit card. Cash payment is not available.

Passport cover can be purchased at the passport collection counter. The price is RM5 each. There are 2 types of passport cover, the old type in darker red colour has a more solid feel, and the new type in lighter red colour is a piece of soft plastic. This passport cover is optional.

Choosing the correct cable to connect DVB-T2 television to aerial wall socket

Since August 2019, Malaysia free over-the-air television broadcasting has been switched from analogue to digital.

The good news is, nowadays most newer model of television has built-in DVB-T2 decoder to receive digital over-the-air TV channels.

If your house/condominium/apartment has an aerial wall socket that connects to the external aerial antenna of the building that looks like the one below, you can use a TV cable with male-to-female connectors to connect your TV with DVB-T2 decoder to the TV wall socket and receive the broadcasted digital TV channels.

If your TV is facing problem of missing channels, pixelated screen, snowy screen due to weak signal strength and/or weak signal quality, it can probably be caused by the type of cable used.

Referring to the table below, if you are staying in a highrise building, the cable buried inside the call connecting the wall socket to the external antenna should be coaxial cable of type RG11/U.

If you are staying in landed property which the distance between the external antenna and the wall socket is below 225 meters, then maybe RG6/U cable still be used without much problem.

For the portion of cable connecting your TV to the wall socket, RG6/U cable is recommended. Using RG11/U cable is even better, but its cost will be higher too.

If you are using RG59/U cable but don't face any problem with your TV, then you can continue using it, otherwise, consider upgrade the cable to RG6/U.

In the photo below, the black cable is type RG59/U and the white cable is type RG6/U. You can easily notice that the RG6/U has a much thicker diameter than RG59/U.

If your TV problem persists despite using RG6/U cable, you might probably need to resort to other solution, such as adding a signal booster, using digital TV decoder box, or receiving the TV signal using an internal antenna.