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Tough Time Ahead for Average Malaysians

Yesterday evening, it was raining heavily in Petaling Jaya. Uneven roads and those with potholes were all flooding up. However, what caught Malaysian with exaggerating reactions wasn’t the downpour; but, the headline of “Petrol to cost RM2.70 from midnight

Wai Pei: I wan to kaopehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh (then she sent me a link to NST online news citing the crazy petrol hike)

George: wah lao…. diesel increase by RM1

Then everyone started to gather around the area near my cubicle, kao peh about the drastic hike in fuel price. There, about half an hour of working hour was affected with moody grumblings.

Sure enough, town areas everywhere within Malaysia were experiencing massive traffic jam yesterday evening, as almost every vehicle owner was rushing to petrol station to fill up the last tank of RM1.92 per liter petrol. As expected, some petrol stations were running out of stock. All petrol stations were making big money last night.

With 41% hike (RM1.92 to RM2.70) of petrol price, 63% hike (RM1.58 to RM2.58) of diesel price, 18% hike of electricity for homes and 26% for business users, all these percentage increases are converting to screaming of “money not enough” for average Malaysians. This drastic change will make significant economical impacts to low and middle class Malaysians; the wealthy ones can still comfortably cope with it.

I would like to see how the government is going to fool the world about Malaysia inflation rate. Don’t tell me another decent 4 to 5 percents; this is plain nonsense! Fuel is one of the very key daily commodities. Now that fuel price is experiencing such a drastic hike, we will see immediate price increase in all other goods and services that form the basic needs for our daily life. Thinking about it, is surely enough to make us cry for our shrinking wallet. Continue reading ‘Tough Time Ahead for Average Malaysians’

Peninsula Trip Part 2 – Day 1: Kuala Lipis, Gua Musang

Continue from:
Peninsula Trip Part 2 – Introduction

After leaving the schooling life, there are not many reasons to wake up early morning at wee hour anymore; except traveling. I woke up on 17th May at 4.30am to give a few morning calls, took an early cold shower, stuffed some last-minute-recalled items into my bag, put on my new Makan Trip blue jersey and admire myself in front of the mirror for a moment (no no no.. the mirror didn’t break), and finally was fetched by Wai Pei to Jason’s house in Kepong – our meeting point.

Jason and Edwin (both also surname Yap, but not brothers la) have prepared a stack of Gardenia breads for us. Yup, a stack of Gardenia breaks packed in the Gardenia plastic bag.

Jason: “ei! got bread… eat la”
Me: “hm.. it’s ok… you all eat. I took breakfast liao” (but I was thinking in my mind: wah lao eh, white breads only a? never mind la, reached Kuala Lipis only I eat)
Jason: “you think these are plain white breads a? its spreaded with tuna a!”
Me: “hahahaha….. paiseh paiseh.. I thought these are plain white breads, that’s why don’t want to eat haha”

Jason and Edwin: as commented by Micol, next time put a lil bit more efforts in “packaging” hehe. I was conned away by the deceiving appearance of the stack of breads.

At Jason’s house before departure, we have also surprised Wai Pei by giving her a brand new Kata A22Q Focus Q camera bag as birthday present, to house her Canon 450D. At the split second, she just looked too stoned, didn’t know what to respond.

Soon, before the sun brightens up the day, we departed from Jason’s house at 6.43:09am, in 3 cars – Ford Ranger by George, Honda Jazz by Edwin and Perodua Myvi by Blake. Heading to the hilly Karak Highway (which proven to be a tough up-hill journey for Blake’s full-load Myvi), we made our way to the very first food stop – Kuala Lipis.

Kuala Lipis, Pahang

Kuala Lipis town

Location: Kuala Lipis town center
Arrival time: 8.59:35am
Impression: The town center assembles the feel of a typical small old town with a few rows of old shop houses constructed before World War II. Like many other towns in Peninsula Malaysia, you will know that you’ve entered Kuala Lipis town center when you crossed a river – Sungai Jelai. It’s the kind of significant feel that says “after this river, it’s a bustling town”.

Kuala Lipis Food Stop 1 – Jalan Silang (横街)

GPS Coordinate: N4 11.247 E102 03.299 (show location map)

PeninsulaPt2_20080517_03

We went to an ascending sheltered lane with small shops on both sides, and a few sets of staircase accompanying the upward lane. Locals refer to this lane as Jalan Silang in Malay or 横街 in Chinese. Majority of the shops along this lane are selling food. At the middle of the lane, is where our targeted food stop found – Chong Ko Hakka Noodle.

Food stalls at Kuala Lipis Jalan Lintang

Food stalls at Kuala Lipis Jalan Lintang

The noodles are homemade by themselves, thus creating an absolute competitive edge, not easily replaced by new market entrants. Though served in simple and plain broth, but still tasty with the springy noodles.

Chong Ko Hakka Noodle

Price: RM2.50 (S), RM3.00 (B), RM0.50 (add more fish balls)

Sunshine eggs with clams

Fried noodle

We also order a plate of clams served with 2 sunshine eggs and a plate of fried noodles from a food stall neighboring to Chong Ko Hakka Noodle. It was the first time for most (could be all) of us to eat in combination of clams and sunshine eggs; but, it was indeed a very gooooood combination. Continue reading ‘Peninsula Trip Part 2 – Day 1: Kuala Lipis, Gua Musang’

Signed Sales and Purchase Agreement

My gf and I are getting another step closer towards the legal ownership of our new house. After signing for submission of Land Ownership Transfer form a month ago, yesterday (31st May) we went to Yap Koon Roy & Associates again to sign the Sales and Purchase Agreement.

Sales and Purchase Agreement

The seller has his own preferred lawyer, so this SPA process is expected to take slightly longer time comparing to normal cases, as it involves 2 different representing stakeholders at legal side.

Tomorrow I’m going to banks again for financial matters related to house purchase. Though I’m on-leave for tomorrow, but I’ll be going back to office in the evening to wrap up some urgent tasks.

Firefox 3 RC2 in June

As cited at Mozilla Links, there will be a second release candidate (RC) for the next generation of Mozilla Firefox - Firefox 3. At present, Firefox 3 is released as release candidate 1 (RC1).

The Firefox 3 RC2 will include fixes for some top priority bugs causing crashes, performance inefficiency, and localization-releated issues. The RC2 is expected to be available for download in second week of June. Results of testing for Firefox 3 RC1 are available here.

I’m currently using Firefox 3 RC1, and I must say that I’m very happy with the overall experience. In oppose to installation of previous Firefox major RC upgrades, most of the Firefox plugins that I’m frequently using are already having latest releases compatible with Firefox 3, except Google Toolbar, Firebug (Firebug 1.2 Beta is compatible with Firefox 3) and All-in-One Gestures.

Firefox 3 includes a big bundle of notable new features and dramatic performance improvement (the fastest Firefox ever). Yes, go take a look at the Firefox 3 new features now, I’m sure you will find some interesting ones which will create excitement for you :D Continue reading ‘Firefox 3 RC2 in June’

Peninsula Trip Part 2 – Introduction

Last week from 17th to 20th May 2008, the Wild Geeks Makan Trip kakis have executed the second part of the Peninsula Malaysia discovery mission; this time with northern east coast being the main focus of the itinerary. The first part of Peninsula Malaysia trip was done in Dec 2007. No, this second part is not yet the end of cuti-cuti Peninsula mission.

路人甲: “wah lao.. 几 keng 一下咯,半岛游还分成几个 part”

We got to leave our foot prints in as many places within Peninsula Malaysia as possible, before fuel price is raised up (again), before inflation is getting even steeper (who says our inflation rate is around 4%), and before many places are getting more commercialized with their prices.

With the RM204 Makan Trip voucher to me as birthday present, I’ve participated in this trip with some top-ups.

Here are some quick facts of Peninsula Trip Part 2:

Total participants: 14 convoyed in 3 cars

  • Actual distance traveled: 1286 km
  • Actual cost: RM 335 per pax
  • Day 1: Kuala Lipis, Gua Musang, Kota Bharu
  • Day 2: Kota Bharu, Merang
  • Day 3: Merang, Kuala Terengganu, Kemaman, Cherating
  • Day 4: Cherating, Kuantan

Peninsula Trip Part 2 - East Coast: 1286 km

With reference to the above GPS map, the yellow track assembles the journey that we’ve traveled. Thanks to George for keeping record of the trail with his GPS phone; now we can even tell exactly how many u-turn we took during the trip :p Continue reading ‘Peninsula Trip Part 2 – Introduction’

What Am I Doing?

Most of us are using Google Talk custom message, MSN display message, Yahoo Messenger status message, Facebook status message, Friendster shout-out and alike for 1 common purpose – telling friends what am I doing, and what my mood is. Not surprisingly, many people are frequently checking out their friends’ display messages to “keh po” (a better word is “concern”) around, and stay updated with the status of people around us. Many times, you can derive all sorts of interesting facts from a person’s status message.

Before I left for east coast peninsula makan trip on last Saturday (24th May), I thought it would be interesting to publish short message updates in my blog, so that my family and friends could stay almost up-to-date with my itinerary. To achieve this, I need to be accessible to Internet via 3G or GPRS on my phone. Ideally, in order not to be charged for a hand and a leg to enjoy mobile blogging, the interface for posting should be as light-weight as possible, and I should also limit my updates to be short and precise, just like SMS text message.

Twitter

KC and Jack, being active users of Twitter, were trying to sell me Twitter ideas, convincing me to make use of the Twitter account which I’ve created more than 6 moths ago (that time Twitter doesn’t really look interesting to me :p).

So, I’ve decided to give Twitter a serious trial, due to its promising update-via-mobile-phone interface. My Twitter updates are viewable at http://twitter.com/tiensoon

Well, to the uninitiated ones, Twitter is a simple Web 2.0 app designed for us to tell the world “what am I doing?” By default, your Twitter updates are kept private and only viewable by users authorized to follow you. For example, I’ve approved Jack as one of my followers, and so he is authorized to view, spy, peek and keh-po at my Twitter updates.

However, if you don’t feel uneasy for your Twitter updates to be made public, you can alter the setting, and your Twitter updates can also be easily published on your blog, just like what I’m doing. Continue reading ‘What Am I Doing?’

What’s The Name of Your Sony Ericsson Phone?

My gf: “what you doin now?”

Me: “dating with Elena :D”

My gf: “X(

Well… I was telling the truth. Moral teachers taught us not to lie :p

Sony EricssonHehe… actually, Elena is the name of my phone haha. Yes, Elena is the codename for Sony Ericsson P1. I definitely agree that my phone is a she; my personal secretary.

You can check out the codename of your Sony Ericsson phone at Unofficial Sony Ericsson Blog. So far, all Sony Ericsson codenames are female names. My gf’s W880 is codenamed Ai.

Google Search Appliances Launched in Malaysia

Yesterday (15th May), Google search appliances have finally made its official debut in Malaysia. The launch was organized by the sole distributor of GSA in Malaysia – Ingram Micro, at Sime Darby Convention Centre. I was there for this half-day event.

What this means is that, any organization in Malaysia which has always been saying “make it like Google la!” can now opt for a search engine which behaves like Google for his/her organization. At a price of course.

Google Search Appliance and Google Mini

The yellow box shown above is Google Search Appliance, while the blue box is Google Mini. My friend Wai Pei says the yellow box looks like a piece of cheese! Continue reading ‘Google Search Appliances Launched in Malaysia’

Be Delicious

Am I not delicious? :P

My gf’s elder sister, Lee Fang, has just came back from work assignments in US. To my surprise, she bought me a souvenir, which reminds me to be delicious always hahaha

DKNY Be Delicious Men

Yes, it’s a 50ml DKNY Be Delicious for Men perfume. The scent is quite long lasting, it stays naturally with me throughout working hours.

I’m not an all-time perfume user. Will only apply if I have it hahaha. Just FYI, another perfume that I like is Polo Black :D

Thanks Lee Fang sis.

Bought Bus Ticket for the Wrong Date

Yesterday when I reached Melaka Sentral, as usual, I took out the KKKL Express Melaka-KL 4.30pm bus ticket from my wallet. Then, just to reconfirm, I checked the date stamped on the ticket.

The date stamped on the bus ticket was 10 May 2008. I took a look at my watched, but the day display was shown as 11. I was stoned!!! But, optimistically speaking, I told myself that my watch could be wrong. So, I took out my phone, looked at the date, but it was also shown as 11 May 08.

O shit!!!!! F**k! I’ve bought for the wrong date! What a big mistake I’ve made.

Knowing how Melaka-KL ticket is selling like hot cake on Sunday, I don’t think there’s still any ticket available for me to purchase on the spot.

I walked into Melaka Sentral, but as expected, KKKL, Delima and Transnasional were all posted with a paper written: “Kuala Lumpur Today Sold Out” or “Kuala Lumpur Hari Ini Habis

Again, being optimistic, I told myself “it’s ok… I can still buy Monday 5.30am bus, and I can still get into office by 9.30am”

But again….. 5.30am Melaka-Kl bus for Monday was sold out.

Went to the least demanded Melaka-KL express bus operator - Jebat, but the only schedule available was 10pm. This trip is too late for me.

Leaving with no choice, I got to prepare for the much more expensive alternative - taxi.

So yes, I end up coming back to KL by taxi. There were 4 passengers, and each were charged RM40. aaaaahi~~~ what a big big big mistake I’ve made.


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