Selecting Electrical Contractor

Sozian called me today to confirm its quotation. Inclusive of air cond 1 horsepower - RM3,000 and negotiable. Err.. I need to calculate first. Jo gave me RM1,800 without air condition and that is included of DB and rewiring at the main house. If air conditioner is included, than it seems Jo's offer is better. So, who shall i choose? The electrical work includes;

- wiring connection from Hj Naza house to the lab
- 11 plug points
- 18 fluorescent light
- 6 switches
- 1 DB 

Problem with Renovation Worker

I saw few missed call from unregistered person in my hp. I didn't bother to call back till late evening. It was Zainol, the person who did the renovation work. He was babbling about not getting paid as what I had promised him before. I was a bit pissed off and asked him how much he has received till now. He said about RM6,ooo, but I didn't believe it. I called Hj and asked him how much he had paid him.. ALL - RM7,500!  Fortunately Hj Naza put it in writing and Zainol signed it whenever he took the money. So what's wrong with this guy? Nevertheless, I said I'll meet him tomorrow evening.

For record purposes, Zainol had asked me RM8,000 for this renovation project. I disagreed and I asked for only RM7,000 by cutting down few works i.e. garage. He did not object and later asked for first payment before starting the work. Only when the work is nearly completed, he made a remark on how much I should add for the additional works (additional works according to him was for changing the new wooden window panel (~RM200) and fixing a new shelf (~RM100). For these additional works alone he asked for about RM1,000 more. Ridiculous!

Lesson learnt ; make sure to get quotation before buying or going into any contract! agree with the person on the job specifications and stick with it! Else, you will be trapped into their game! Let see how much I've paid him...

1st payment - RM2,000

2nd, 3rd and 4th payment - total RM4,5000

5th payment - RM500

6th @ final payment - RM500

Ordering of Laminar Air Flow from ERLA

Finally.. I better ordered the LAF. This is too long already! I should have started ordering it early this month!  Dr. Mihza also has forwarded another quotation from Elit something2 and it's also expensive. Thus, I have decided to order from ERLA. I simply wrote on the quotation of my confirmation and faxed it to Mikhail.

There it is! RM8,345 alone for the LAF inclusive of transport and additional accessories of 1 plug point. Mikhail received the quotation and called me back. 

M - Bro.. send us the PO. We want to order from our factory'. 

H - Perghh.. mana ada PO Mikhail.. This is a small company and I don't have those
      thing. Just send me the invoice la! 

M - Ok lah...
 

Haha..  he said will do and the rest of the items he will confirm it with his boss who is hospitalized at Dubai.. Rotavirus! Aikk.. how come? Well, so many foreigners in Dubai and surely this third world disease spreads easily there! Poor him...

Orchid Shipment from Indonesia

A tiring day today. Not because of the lab work but because of traveling around. I planned to hike but end up driving the car to the top of the so called 'Gunung Tampin'.. haha. It is not a mountain but a hill! Then, end up swimming at Lubuk Petai located at Gunung Dato, Bongek, Rembau.

But.. what I want to tell about is the plants that we ordered from Sumatra, Indonesia. These are plants that we will selected the good ones and use as mother plants - to produce seed pods for our future protocorms. It was about couple of months planning to bring in the orchids to Malaysia. The seller, Mr Afton has finally sent the shipment thru flight and it arrived in the morning. I had to pick the boxes (2) from a person who worked at KLIA. I was so excited as I expected to see few orchids of interests such as D. ayubii, D. tobaense (a giant flower of about 4 inches), V. foetida and V. sumatrana.

The boxes were quite heavy (~50 kg) and the shipment cost was about RM820. Well, better to ship by boat next time as it is much cheaper ~RM200. I arrived at Hj Naza house at 9 pm and we started unpacking the plants. The bill... ops, RM3,856.36! about Rp10 million, my goodness!

Picked up few plants that nite and went back happily... Look at this Dendrobium tobaense, the size is much bigger than the usual one!

Visit to see ERLA Equipment at PORIM

Dr. Midhza recommended us to get quotation from ERLA. This is a lab supplier which used to sell equipment to UPM. I've never heard about it. So I browse the web and called the numbers ... 'sorry, the number is no longer available'. Grrr.. is this company still exist? I call the operator and fortunately got it.The company has changed its office and not yet updating the web.

A lady, Siti Hajar, attended my call and was cooperative enough to get my requests written down. She would send me the quotation for laminar flow first. The rest she had to wait till her boss comes back from Dubai. Aikk.. seems everybody could not give the quote except the boss. I have doubt about this already.

But Hajar finally emailed me the quotation. Item quoted was a laminar air flow, or I shall shortened it as LAF - a 4 and 6 feet. I prefer the 6 feet LAF and the price is about RM7,900. It seems expensive and on top of that so many optional accessories. Good business tactics! nevertheless, the length matters for me, not the accessories though.

Let's learn what is laminar air flow ok!

This is how the laminar flow looks like

There are 2 types of laminar flow either horizontal or vertical air flow

Description on what VFM/CFM does

I kept quite for few days and asked again Hajar to visit the site office - just to check around the equipment. On 22/2, I took half day leave and pick up Hj Naza at Nilai commuter station and off we went to PORIM. Actually their manufacturing site is at Seri Kembangan but because there was nobody there to entertain us, Hajar asked me to meet Mikhail (I kept calling him Gabriel.. haha). We arrived at about 2 pm, and head straight to tissue culture building. Mikhail, greeted us and brought us to a lab - full of LAF. Wow! it was full of ERLA. 'Helmi, we are major laminar flow supplier for PORIM'.. yea, now I believe it.

Before we parted, Mikhail promised to give full quotation for items that we want. I hope he can give us as soon as possible coz the 6 feet LAF order will take a minimum 3 weeks to get ready. Where did we go after that? Haha, we went to Mr. Lee's house to check around new orchids just arrived from Irian!

Visit to Segar Alatan Equipment at Putra Mahkota

A small commercial lab like ours may not need sophisticated items. I've been looking around but thank God that we have friends like Dr. Mihdzar from UPM who has been very helpful in advising us what to look for in buying these expensive items. We visited him at his office and the tissue culture lab at UPM. Surely, the equipment there is first class.. yeah talking about spending 'Government' money, haha.

Looking for advice is something that I think new entrepreneur should do before embarking on any projects. I also remember visited Dr. Kodiswaran (some time in 2010) at FRIM asking his opinion on tissue culture market, how to go about it, the potential market etc. That guy was also helpful and gave me few things which I still remember till now. In fact, 'outsourcing tissue culture work' is one of the projects that I aim to embark once our lab is fully operational.

Well.. back to items that I need... first I visited Segar Alatan at Putra Mahkota in January 2012. A well established local manufacturer. I remember Hj Naza has requested quotation from this company way back in 2009. Due to financial constraint it didn't go thru.

The price was a bit expensive in my opinion but the service was good, quite responsive to my request for quotation and arrangement for site visit. The laminar air flow for 4' was about 10k (back in 2009, it was only about 7,500-8,000). Isk3.. asked why significant increase in price - 'we provide auto nowadays maa. You see ar, no need to calculate manually when to change infra red bulb etc".. yeah2 I agree! How about manual one? They got it as well but the price difference is not significant ~RM500-1000.

Laminar Air Flow

Autoclave

Overall, the items are presentable (reliable in my opinion), service maintenance is provided at reasonable price.  Well. but i'll look for experts advice on this!

The Lab Renovation Is Completed!

Our lab has completed as of 23 February 2012. That guy, Zainol, earned RM7,500 and he's working alone! Talking about reaping the benefits himself.. so difficult to ask him to do more jobs! fine.. this is the first and last time i use your service (really arr?).

New ceiling, door, window frame, painting!

Additional shelf

New door lab. Isn't it too much?! haha...

New lab extension 10'x12'

New roof on existing car porch

Fixing New Roof

Once the trees were cleared, Zainol fix the new roof (transparent and asbestos). This took at least 2 days.

Broken and decayed roof need to be replaced

Old ones are taken down

New asbestos and transparent roof to allow natural light to go thru it

Clearing the Trees Around the Lab

The outgrown trees around the lab need to be cut down / pruned. It took nearly half day to clear up all the leaves on the roof and cutting the trees around the lab.

Cutting the jack fruit @ Artocarpus heterophyllus branches

Clearing the leaves

Nearly finish...

Tadaaa!!

Next, cutting the durian @ Durio branches

Clearing the branches

Trimming the mangosteen branches on top of the lab