Thursday, October 30, 2008

"I-Phone" vs "I-Fone"

A friend of mine bought an imitated iPhone in China recently, I called it , "I-Fone". The phone cost him RM500, he emphasized that he want to maintain his anonymity in my blog, so I am not going to disclose his real name.. heheheheh :) Don't get me wrong, this fella definitely can afford to buy ten Apple iPhone 3G model if he wanted to, with cash of course, just that he confessed to me that he can't resist the pretty Chinese sales girl who try to "seduce" him on buying this "I-Fone" for RM500, hahahha, I am trying to quote his original statement here.

While he is uploading some songs to my PC, I can't wait to take a few photos for comparison purpose. You don't need a genius to tell the difference between a RM1500 "I-Phone" with a RM500 "I-Fone".


Okay, here is the number key pad, you can tell the difference by looking at the clarity of the screen. The photos of course cannot compare to the real I-Phone, I doubt they are using a 1.3MP camera instead or may be a 2.0 MP camera but low quality color screen.
The real one seems to have larger interface, battery pointing to the right. The fake one's battery pointing to the left. :) I would say that the the "I-Fone" manage to beat the real I-Phone with its' dual sim cards feature. Nowadays business trip is very often, so I think a dual sim cards feature may come in very handy for a person that travels a lot. I don't even see a RM1k Nokia or Sony Ericsson's phone offer this key feature (may be got but I am not aware of it)
Both phones have the earth wallpaper. The "I-Fone" have a bigger earth.
The fake one got more black plastic. Pay attention on the apple logo, I think the fake one's logo is nicer because it has more "3D" look.
Lastly, the "I-Fone" is thicker compare to the real one on the right side.







Monday, October 27, 2008

Free RPK Candle-light Vigil at PJ


Marina, RPK's wife



Finally I got a chance to check out the Free RPK candle-light vigil on every Sunday night. I always want to go there to show my support to free RPK and other detainees that were held under Internal Security Act (ISA). The ISA has been abused, it was used on those who are against the government, nobody see RPK as a guy that is a threat to national security, I would say more than 95% of the people love him.

RPK or Raja Petra Kamaruddin deserve my respect because people like him don't have to do what he did before. He is rich enough to stay at home to enjoy his retirement being a relative of the royal member. However, he chose to sacrifice himself to speak up for the people of Malaysia, that is how he ended up in Kamunting prison because some politicians want to shut him up.

While we are having a nice dinner, wandering around from point A to point B, noble people like him lost his freedom, having substandard food inside a cell. That makes me really respect him. If this guy is coming out for next year election in any of the cities, I am sure that he will get elected.

I bought a "I-AM-WITH-RPK" T-shirt, RM20 a pcs. I don't like the design but then I have no choice because the color and the design which I preferred were all sold out.

Saturday, October 25, 2008

Dear Mary Wong

Received this phishing letter from "Mary Wong", since she mentioned about Malaysia, I decided to send her my reply.

--- On Fri, 10/24/08, Mrs. Mary Wong <mrs.marywong@yahoo.com> wrote:
> From: Mrs. Mary Wong <
mrs.marywong@yahoo.com>>
Subject: Dear Beloved Friend,>
To: > Date: Friday, October 24, 2008, 5:11 PM>

Dear Beloved Friend,
Let me first of all inform you, I got your email address from a mail Directory and decided to mail you for a permission to go ahead. I am Mrs.Mary Wong married to Dr.Stephen Wong from Malaysia who worked with a construction> company in Asia for twenty Years before he died in the> tsunami disasters, we were married but without Any children.Since his death I decided not to remarry and presently I am 69 Years old.When my late husband was Alive> he deposited the sum of US9.5OO.OOO with a Bank.
Presently this money is still with the Bank and the management just Wrote me as the beneficiary to come forward to receive the money or rather Issue a letter of> authorization to somebody to receive it on my behalf if I cannot come over.I am presently in a hospital where I have been undergoing treatment Cancer of the lungs in a hospital, I have since lost my ability To talk and my doctors have told me that I have only a few months to live. I want a person that is trustworthy that will utilize this money to fund churches, orphanages and widows around the world.
Please assure me that you will act accordingly as I stated here in and Keep this contact confidential till such a time this funds get to your Custody. This is to ensure that nothing jeopardizes my last wish on Earth.I have discuss this matter with my Lawyer and he is going to work with you to secure this funds from the UK Bank where it is been kept in a very proper and legal manners and he will make the arrangement with the Bank in your name, as the new beneficiary of the fund to move the fund from England to your bank account with your data.My Attorney is Peter Brown. Do email him at once and let him commence with the transfer modalities, Note that you must ensure that this is not disclosed to anybody until the money has been successfully transferred to you.

Peter Brown Esq.Tel: +44-762-4155259> Fax: +44-701-4227512>
Email: michealbrown66@yahoo.com

Blessings,
Mary wong

Dear Mary Wong,
I find that your letter is full of shit. You said you can't talk, but then you can discuss with your lawyer regarding the allocation of your fund. Trust me, I think either you or the doctor, or may be your lawyer is lying. With your condition, I think you can live more than 20 yrs, not a few months which you have stated.

Secondly, do you have any idea when Tsunami happened? If you are 69 y/o I bet your husband had reached a retirement age in Asia long time ago, please study your facts right and don't make a fool of yourself. You need to do better than that to 'phish' me.

With some luck, I think you can find some idiots who believe in your bull shit. I respect your so called "Last wish in earth", nowadays medical cost is very high, you can use the 9.5 million you got to settle your medical bills with the remaining of the balance donated to the hospital to support other sick and poor patients. That will save you tons of trouble typing this email and sending out to other undisclosed recipients which we call that an act of 'phishing' in internet space.

Lastly, if you are still alive when you receive this email, I bet you are. Please stop what you are doing and enjoy your final years on earth. Or else I will have your contact forwarded to a FBI agent, so both of them can sit down and talk about your medical condition. Good luck to you!

Friday, October 24, 2008

Coats!




Okay, this is just my humble and honest opinion, please don't scold me. I am not a fashion designer and I don't know anything about fashion. But what I see here, the coat that Guo Jing Jing (on the top) wear really puts her into a "bad taste"category.
Tang Wei's (on the bottom) coat is simple and I think it suits her well. Any guys or ladies can comment on this? Like I said, I know nothing about fashion, please correct me if I am wrong.

Thursday, October 23, 2008

Tara Reid (Now and Then)


Remember the hot chick in "American Pie"? Look at the below photo and see how a sun can do to your skin, and what happen if there is lack of maintenance...Gee... I wonder what happen to her? She didn't give birth to any babies though.


Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Have you bought your votes?

"Rais on money politics: Might as well let highest bidder win" http://www.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2008/10/21/nation/20081021204003&sec=nation

Something is not right with the system here, you get a relatively small numbers of people within a particular party, make sure you gets them nominate you to be the party president, wa lah.... 99% you will end up becoming the prime minister of Malaysia. Is like tapping a pipeline to the rich and famous, you take care of the money or you take care of the weaponary cache, you choose which one you are good at! Er.. hem... or whichever you find that is more 'profitable' or with 'potential growth'.

You see, you need to meet a certain quota on nomination in order to secure yourself to be elected as party president. That is why this guy, Dr Rais commented that might as well let the highest bidder wins". Wow... imagine PM is going for auction at ebay or lelong.com.my. I can understand such quota is to stop too many 'Ahmads' or 'Mohammads' nominations from running the party president or Deputy president, but then, when the quotas is set too high, that is what you get - Money Politics. Some people actually ask this Mr. Rais fella to 'pay' for his nomination. Yeah, that is what people say, you need some money to play politics, is like running a business, you need capital in order to make more money! Don't blame others if you don't have a grandfather that left you with tons of lands and properties.

One thing I am quite fed up with what we call 'leaders' in my Malaysia. They run the country like running their own family business. Once you become the leader of the country, I am pretty sure that your sons or daughters, your brothers or sisters, your father or mother, step father, step mother, god father god mother, etc..will in a sudden become a rising star entrepreneur or CEO/directors, manage to secure a lot of contracts (mostly from the government), because they are really 'capable' and earn it with their own 'merit'. That is why it is so popular that we can find someone's grandfather/father/Uncle/in -laws is a politician, his grandson/son/niece/son-in-law also want to be a politician. "Like father like son"... how nice? Being a politician is their ambition since primary school.

It really reminds me of Patek Philippe watch, I have to use the tagline of Patek Philippe advertisement together with some minor modification that says, "You never own Malaysia, you merely 'look after' it for the next generation". How cool? I think we might be better off if we don't let our country 'look after' by all these greedy corruptors! (I try to be polite and show some respect here, I am using the word 'corruptors' instead of 'fxxxers', I am trying to refrain myself not to use the 'F' word, okay?). I am sure we have a lot more capable Malay leaders than the one that we are having now, sigh....

Sunday, October 19, 2008

A juicy helicopter deal

Referring to my previous article "Swapping LP with PL", a department secretary signed a 'letter of intent' with Eurocopter, two days before our previous defense minister swap his post as a finance minister. It seems that the agreement was signed in a hurry, most of the Malaysians who gives a shit on where is their tax money go starts to wonder how the hell a department secretary can sign a RM2 billion + deal? Referring to: http://www.malaysiakini.com/news/91256

Secondly, the deal is 12 Eurocopters worth RM2.317 billion, somewhere in a country far far away- Brazil, they bought 50 Eurocopters RM4.14 billion (after USD conversion. Ref:
http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/Brazil-Signs-1B-Production-Deal-for-Cougar-Helicopters-04959/ . So you can do your own math how we 'follow' our purchasing procedure when it comes to such a 'juicy' deal.

Yeah, don't you love internet? I got this info from Malaysia today website, one of the key admin of the website - Raja Petra is still sitting in Kamunting having his rice with curry while I am typing this. These are the people that our government wants to shut them up.

Back to the helicopter deal, we are talking about a 2.317 billion deal here. A simple question to you if you are spending your own money. When you want to buy a Rm30k Kancil car, don't you bother to at least have a test drive on it? But when our government spend 2.317 billion, they don't even bother to test drive the chopper! Some companies even offer the government with a 6 months trial, which I think it is fair because the deal involved is not a small amount. But then, the deal just simply awarded to 'someone'. Well, I have to agree that Eurocopter is a better helicopter in terms of spec compare to Kazan MI-172 (I actually did do some light study on them), but hey, the problem is we are spending a lot more on the helicopters!

When most people can feel the economic downturn, to be frank, we are a peace loving country and we are don't have any plans to invade others neighbors. So I don't see purchasing these helicopters are in our top priority list right now.

Nowadays, with the help of internet, more of these shady deals were exposed on the net which a lot of people doesn't know in the past. With such leaders leading our country, I don't see any hope or future with our country if they keep on plundering and raping our country's wealth for their own pocket sake. So when our soon-to-be PM told the public that we should respect the leaders of the country, well, I can only ask him to suck on my middle finger, and here is my foot also!

Saturday, October 18, 2008

Man's best friend



My colleagues's friend wants to give away her dog, little "LeRoy", which is close to 2 yrs old and it is a mixed between Rottweiler and Labrador. The owner is migrating, so they are looking for a kind hearted new owner who is willing to take good care of their dog.
Well, I like this dog the moment I saw it. The dog looks smart to me, my colleague told me that the dog is trained by MKA (which stands for Malaysia K9 Association), I guess the dog must have know where to pee and shit and won't simply bite others. I wonder if LeRoy knows how to pick up the newspaper, of course, not our neighbor's newspaper.
As the 'CEO' of the house, I make sure everybody lived in a democratic environment where we share the same roof. So at night, I brought up this issue about having a dog at home so they can help us guard the house as well when the crime rate is rising in the cities, and even our police force need to close shop because they claimed that it is too dangerous having a 'beat camp' in Chow Kit, KL area.(Ref: http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2008/10/17/nation/2300354&sec=nation) Yeah, I know it is funny, you can't expect police to risk their precious live with their current pay. So you better hire your own security guard, or get some watch dogs.
Okay, come back to my proposal about having a dog at home... Well, it seems that my proposal was not accepted by my mom and sister. My mom ask me who is going to bath the dog and sweep the fur? My sister wants to protect her kids, as you know dog fur can lead to ashma, so she opposed it, and also questioned me who is going to take care of the dog if I go oversea. Well, I guess you need some patient and a kind heart to have a dog though. 2 against 1, I have no choice but to hope any of my friend who is willing to adopt this dog.
I told my colleague, "well, I love this dog, it suits my image, but then my proposal was rejected by my family (that is how you show your democracy), so I have no choice but to drop this idea..." ;(

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Tesco shopping experience

It was raining heavily when I was on my way back, so I decided to drop by the Tesco in Puchong so I can get my Skippy crunchy peanut butter, cuz I can't find it at Giant.
Well, I am not a regular in Tesco, one thing I really hate shopping at Tesco is because their goods are not properly arranged compare to Giant. Try to check out this photo that I took. Tooth paste next to soya sauce and chili sauce!? What the hell is that?? Lucky I didn't find that cooking oil is next to the LCD TVs.
Hmmm... is this their strategy? They purposely put things unconventionally, so it makes you wonder around the store and ended up buying more stuff. OR they purposely did that so you have more personal touch with the Tesco staff; they will greet you happily and give you the assistance that you need so that their staff won't just stand there doing nothing.
I have a hard time locating Marmite and Bovril, something that we use when we eat porridge. So I have no choice but to ask the staff for help instead of wasting more of my time in the store. The staff lead me to where I can get a marmite. Well, it is located in the area where you buy your tooth brush, shampoo or other toiletries. Argghh!! Welcome to Tesco!

Monday, October 13, 2008

Rat War!


I have official declare my war against Rats.... this is because:
1. I feel so annoyed when they run here and there on top of the ceiling while I am writing blogs below the ceiling.
2. They chew off the power cords, Tupperware cover, bananas, clothes and apples on the table.
3. It happened twice that the rat ran into my room, disturbing my sleep.
So for the past two weeks, I really take my effort, install a mouse trap on the ceiling. My result has been fruitful, the two rats that you saw here were cooked with boiling water... Believe me, I want to try other more humane way to terminate it, but there isn't any better way...My mom said that you can left the rat under the sun and kill it, do you believe so? I don't think so, perhaps they just passed out. I want to make sure they are send to hell or heaven when it comes to terminate a pest.
The smell of the rat really makes me feel sick when I try to pour hot water on it, the smoke that came out from the body of the rat smells like burnt iron. When the rat squeaks, it makes you feel that you are cruel for a few second.. I don't enjoy doing this but I can't depend on my mom or my sister to do the job, so I have to DIY.
I know there is one or two left at the ceiling, will try and catch it for the coming few days. Why wait a few days? This is because I doubt that the rat can smell the trap if you know your partners died in the cage. So besides the cage have to wash it with hot water, I will need to leave it under the sun for 1-2 days. So the smell is gone and the other rat won't able to detect the trap. I can't use poison on rats because I am afraid that they will die on the ceiling creating some sort of smells and the scariest one is larvae dropping from the ceiling later on if the dead rat is not removed on time. My mom experienced this before and some larvaes dropped onto her shoulder through the little holes on the ceiling.
Why do I take pictures? I want to find out is there other breed on the roof top, or are they all the same breed. With the photos, I can find out what are their sizes, so you can know is there any younger or older generation up there. Yeah... you have to study your enemy in order to take them out.
Now I wonder why sometimes my streamyx connection is not clear, I wonder if they bite the wires up there. I am really tired of killing rats every week... damn!

Government Tender in Malaysia

Joke taken from Malaysiatoday by a forummer name: asiseesty, with some slight modification by me.

At a project tender interview...
Tenderer 1 Interviewer: Your bid is 3 million. How do you justify your tender sum?
Korean tenderer: 1 million for labour, 1 million for materials and 1 million for expenses and a little profit.
Interviewer: Ok. Thank you.

Next! Tenderer 2
Interviewer: Your bid is 6 million. How do you justify your tender sum?
Japanese tenderer: 2 million for labour, 2 million for materials and 2 million for expenses and a little profit.
Interviewer: Ok. Thank you.

Next! Tenderer 3
Interviewer: Your bid is 9 million. This is way above everyone else. How do you justify your tender sum?
Malaysian tenderer: 3 million for YOU, 3 million for ME, and we get the Koreans to do it for 3 million.

At the end of the day, "Letter of Intent" (LOI) was issued to Tenderer 3...Malaysia Boleh!

Sunday, October 12, 2008

All that money you've lost - Where did it go?


Interesting article. Sometimes I wonder if most people lost money in stocks, who makes money? It is not like a Poker game, got a winner and a bunch of losers. This article explains it all.

All that money you've lost — where did it go?
By ERIC CARVIN, Associated Press Writer Sat Oct 11, 12:41 PM ET

NEW YORK - Trillions in stock market value — gone. Trillions in retirement savings — gone. A huge chunk of the money you paid for your house, the money you're saving for college, the money your boss needs to make payroll — gone, gone, gone.

Whether you're a stock broker or Joe Six-pack, if you have a 401(k), a mutual fund or a college savings plan, tumbling stock markets and sagging home prices mean you've lost a whole lot of the money that was right there on your account statements just a few months ago.
But if you no longer have that money, who does? The fat cats on Wall Street? Some oil baron in Saudi Arabia? The government of China?
Or is it just — gone?
If you're looking to track down your missing money — figure out who has it now, maybe ask to have it back — you might be disappointed to learn that is was never really money in the first place.
Robert Shiller, an economist at Yale, puts it bluntly: The notion that you lose a pile of money whenever the stock market tanks is a "fallacy." He says the price of a stock has never been the same thing as money — it's simply the "best guess" of what the stock is worth.
"It's in people's minds," Shiller explains. "We're just recording a measure of what people think the stock market is worth. What the people who are willing to trade today — who are very, very few people — are actually trading at. So we're just extrapolating that and thinking, well, maybe that's what everyone thinks it's worth."
Shiller uses the example of an appraiser who values a house at $350,000, a week after saying it was worth $400,000.
"In a sense, $50,000 just disappeared when he said that," he said. "But it's all in the mind."
Though something, of course, is disappearing as markets and real estate values tumble. Even if a share of stock you own isn't a wad of bills in your wallet, even if the value of your home isn't something you can redeem at will, surely you can lose potential money — that is, the money that would be yours to spend if you sold your house or emptied out your mutual funds right now.
And if you're a few months away from retirement, or hoping to sell your house and buy a smaller one to help pay for your kid's college tuition, this "potential money" is something you're counting on to get by. For people who need cash and need it now, this is as real as money gets, whether or not it meets the technical definition of the word.
Still, you run into trouble when you think of that potential money as being the same thing as the cash in your purse or your checking account.
"That's a big mistake," says Dale Jorgenson, an economics professor at Harvard.
There's a key distinction here: While the money in your pocket is unlikely to just vanish into thin air, the money you could have had, if only you'd sold your house or drained your stock-heavy mutual funds a year ago, most certainly can.
"You can't enjoy the benefits of your 401(k) if it's disappeared," Jorgenson explains. "If you had it all in financial stocks and they've all gone down by 80 percent — sorry! That is a permanent loss because those folks aren't coming back. We're gonna have a huge shrinkage in the financial sector."
There was a time when nobody had to wonder what happened to the money they used to have. Until paper money was developed in China around the ninth century, money was something solid that had actual value — like a gold coin that was worth whatever that amount of gold was worth, according to Douglas Mudd, curator of the American Numismatic Association's Money Museum in Denver.
Back then, if the money you once had was suddenly gone, there was a simple reason — you spent it, someone stole it, you dropped it in a field somewhere, or maybe a tornado or some other disaster struck wherever you last put it down.
But these days, a lot of things that have monetary value can't be held in your hand.
If you choose, you can pour most of your money into stocks and track their value in real time on a computer screen, confident that you'll get good money for them when you decide to sell. And you won't be alone — staring at millions of computer screens are other investors who share your confidence that the value of their portfolios will hold up.
But that collective confidence, Jorgenson says, is gone. And when confidence is drained out of a financial system, a lot of investors will decide to sell at any price, and a big chunk of that money you thought your investments were worth simply goes away.
If you once thought your investment portfolio was as good as a suitcase full of twenties, you might suddenly suspect that it's not.
In the process, of course, you're losing wealth. But does that mean someone else must be gaining it? Does the world have some fixed amount of wealth that shifts between people, nations and institutions with the ebb and flow of the economy?
Jorgenson says no — the amount of wealth in the world "simply decreases in a situation like this." And he cautions against assuming that your investment losses mean a gain for someone else — like wealthy stock speculators who try to make money by betting that the market will drop.
"Those folks in general have been losing their shirts at a prodigious rate," he said. "They took a big risk and now they're suffering from the consequences."
"Of course, they had a great life, as long as it lasted."

Friday, October 10, 2008

DOW JONES DOWN AGAIN?! What tha hell?

Reminds me of the movie "Falling Down", played by Michael Douglas. I wonder if anybody going to jump off from the building in Wallstreet... or may be ran amok like the guy in the poster.

Day 8 - Going Home


While we are leaving the hotel in the morning, saw these four barefooted monks visited the house opposite of our hotel. These are the real monks that only get food from the people. The one which we saw around the cities, who is asking for money, selling amulets are all fake monks! And in case you don't know, the real monks never show up at night, like those in Petaling Streets.



Siem Reap airport... heard that Malaysian companies built the airport.
Bird view of Siem Reap, the lake is "human-made" for irrigation purpose...
I think the first thing that I want to do when I reach home is get a hair cut and shave myself...

Day 7 - Siem Reap (Angkor Wat) - III

On our way back to hotel
The hotel that we stay while in Siem Reap - Claremont Angkor Hotel (50USD/night)
Alfred settle the bill with the Tuk Tuk driver

Thursday, October 09, 2008

Day 7 - Siem Reap (Angkor Wat) - II



I guess you guys must be very sick of these temple ruins pic, so these are the final pics that I am going to post. You won't get to see these unless you go for the grand tour.


We are on our way back to the town center... passed by the padi fields

Cambodia currencies, 4000 Riel = 1 USD... the back of the currency is all about Angkor.

Had Indian food for lunch...


Check out the Angkor Museum before we head back to the hotel, USD12 entrance fee, quite costly...
Cameras are not allowed inside the musuem, basically you can see a lot of statues which is more complete inside the musuem. Also there is a place where they stored 1000 buddha statues, I was joking with Alfred that we are so 'close' to Buddha these few days...
A few local students kneel down on the mat facing the buddhas, they are shaking a bamboo container, trying to find out what is their luck when one of the bamboo stick fell off from the container and it will shows a number in it. Based on the number, you can find a paper that explain about your 'luck', the chinese call it "“求签", not sure what they call it in English. Alfred, Selina and me all gave it a try...
I got number 21 and it reads:
"Just like a flower, blooming under the angry sun, but manages to look fresh. Like a little bird learning to fly in a strong wind, falls down to the ground. Life would be enjoyable in the future. Patient recovering. Not likely to find a good mate at this stage. Legal case not favorable. Some good luck exist. Despite some hardships at present, would be better not too long."

Day 7 - Siem Reap (Angkor Wat) - I







The color looks like the blood of the "Predator".

I kinda like this photo, but the model seems to be a bit rigid on her post. :)