Leaving Malaysia, going into Thailand

This was my first time leaving my homeland going into other people's place. Yes, after 24 years of life, the journey begun at 4.00AM from home heading towards Butterworth where the van we catered will fetch 8 of us into Hatyai, Songkhla, Thailand. Surprisingly, the route from my house to Inderawasih was shorter than usual, which took only 15 min.

The van drove around 2 1/2 hours from Butterworth to Bukit Kayu Hitam, the border of Malaysia-Thailand. I was accompanied by Sam and Dean Winchester in Ipod touch all the way. There was a long queue of busses and vans (about 1KM queue) all waiting to cross the border.

I think anyone passing through the immigration of Malaysia will agree with me, they suck big time.

1. There was hardly any working toilet available. When we were there, the male toilet wasn't working. We had to bring our urine all the way to deposit at Thailand. Seem like excretes are not welcome in this country. 
2. The officers in charge of controlling the crowds were not at all courteous. We didn't know the procedure as many of us were first timer leaving the country. There was not sign or direction at all. And to make things worse, the "officers" were showing their best service by shouting at us. I guess this is the way the government is treating the tax payers. And this is the way to promote tourism. And I have to deduce that those policy makers do not go on holiday. All they do is stroke their fat ass at home after corrupted enough. Anyways, this is 1Malaysia I guess...Well done!

Read the notice carefully. "Any person who fall to comply..." can be comprehended as "anyone who comply while falling...." or "anyone who falls when comply..." will be prosecuted! I think the board is there for some time and there's no one competent enough to notice the mistake in the department. Or maybe it's a joke to lighten up the visitors? lol. Anyways, leaving Malaysia was pretty "delightful"!

Stay tune for the next post...it shall be about Thailand more than Malaysia.

First Holiday After so Many Years

This blog shall be idle until the week is passed for I'm going to Hatyai, Thailand. Although it's nothing much but it's my very first holiday trip since many years had passed. Since secondary school, it's either work or study all the while. After graduation, all my traveling was done for the purpose of my job. I'm in a serious need of break away before blowing off to another season of hard work. 

Actually, I have long since went to Hatyai and lost memory of everything there apart from the famous chicken rice that I think sucked. lol. Anyways, I'll update when I'm back. Hope it's as fun as I anticipated. 

Don't Blow Your Nose Too Hard!!!!

It's been a few weeks since I feel uncomfortable with my ears. It feels like I went up to 62nd floor too quickly and have an ear block. Hearing is perfect but the pressure is there. Sometimes when I'm tired, it feels like the ear drum's gonna break. So what's happening?
According to the physician, I'm having a flu. Apparently, the virus got into my middle ear. Normally, the virus will start or rather concentrate on the nasal cavity and slowly travel to other part of the body like our lungs (pneumonia). The question is, how these damn flu virus went to my ear? Here's the answer...
During the flu infection, our nose will produce mucus causing nose congestion as battle to the virus (quarantine). Due to breathing discomfort we'll blow the nose. Sometimes we blow too hard, forcing the virus to enter our middle ear. The middle ear is somewhere in between the eardrum and cochlea. Anyways, don't bother that...

As a result, our body balancing organ is disturbed. Yes, some part of the ear function as balancing organ. So, next time, when you have a nose block, don't blow...try using a vacuum. LOL

Storm Warrior 2 review

Went for the movie yesterday at 7.30PM, surprisingly at the first sunday of the premier the tickets are easily available. Anyways, here are the details...

Simple synopsis:


A japanese warlord trying to take over china. Whispering Wind(Fung) and Striding Cloud(Wan) in attempt to overpower the bad guy, looked for means to increase their power...Fung turned himself evil. More fighting...Finally they killed the warloard, Fung went crazy and Wan tried to bring him back to sanity. The story ends with Wan fell off the cliff. 


Casting:


Ekin Cheng - Whispering Wind
Aaron Kwok - Striding Cloud
Simon Yam - Lord Godless
Charlene Choi - Second Dream (Er Mong)
Nicholas Tze - Heart (warlord son)


What I think about this movie? 


All right, storm warrior movie fan, read no further. For anyone who likes to watch action movie, this is definitely the one to go. There is very little conversation in the movie (if there is, it's lame conversation mostly). Actions are good and beyond imagination. The graphics are almost perfect with sharp sound effects. The moves are smooth with the effects making it almost vivid. 


As for folks who are like me, this movie sucks. The story went on chronologically without any twist at all. Most of the conversation are inessential or lame. For example, Nameless told Wan that he has only 10% of his power left, and he wishes to pass his learning and power to Wan. I feel that he's kinda contradicting to himself. The editing are not done properly and the scene jumps surprising here and there leaving us puzzled. 


Some scene are made comical like. People expect movies to be close to the books or comics. We want to see how to directors turn the comic into a live scene. Take Lord Of the Ring for example. The director turned the book into a real Middle Earth. Which is impressive. At some point of the movie, I feel that I might as well read the comic if the scene continues to be drawing background. 


The fight with Lord Godless ended very shortly after it begins. In contrast, the fight between Fung and Wan lasted 0.5 hour which is tiring for the audience. Overall, the movie is only good  for the actions but sucked as a whole. I'll only give 2 star out of ten. 

Bees Wax

I forgot since when I bought this.....

EC4U New Office!!!!!

I have decided, the next thing I hate most next to waiting for elevator, waiting at traffic lights and eating bread with wasabi is...moving house or office. Yesterday was a big day for the company I worked at because we moved from the rented office to our own building. Actually it's only a double story shop lot but my bosses prefer to call it "our own building". 

I woke up damn early yesterday, probably like 6AM to make sure I have ample time to catch some breakfast, else I'll collapse half way lifting stuff. My breakfast was teh tarik (RM0.80) with Nasi Lemak (RM1), but there were breakfast waiting for me in the office....damn!!

That morning, we transfered everything from the old to the new office which are only 684m apart but it felt as if we moved from Penang to Songkla by feet. Anyways, this is the new office...

There a lot of things and rubbish accumulated over the 10 years establishment of this company, the junk alone sold RM172. Lol...

The joker behind the fridge was Tarmizi. He caught me shooting photo, so he forced a smile even the freezer was freaking heavy. Everyone was very involved in moving and unpacking except 1 motherfucker who did scarcely anything. All he did was followed us in and out, grab two files and stood there in the middle of the path blocking the way. Whenever the boss is looking he's doing something; lifting the lightest thing nearby and put it back to the original position. Total idiot. The admin department did helped out too although barely. Ya, I understand that they're "busy" with administrative business when there's no desk or files in the office left. Anyways, this post is not about them, so fuck it...

In the mist of shifting, we managed to grab a few laughters. This is our marketing manager, not a joker but I feel that he's too nice to everyone. 

The party ended with everyone headed towards the nearest Nasi Kandar shop desperately for lunch. Some of us went back to unpack the boxes T_T. Nevertheless, that was an important experience where I learnt that moving needs thorough planning. 

SImple Meal From The Night Market

Totally out of idea what to have for dinner tonight, so I put on my alligator sandals and walked out of my house scouting for food. Wondering what an alligator sandals is? You won't get that style anywhere you search, it's not a brand...

The first destination that came to my mind was the Pasar Malam beside my house. It's been there operating every sunday night forever but this is my first time shopping. Actually my house is very near to Kek Lok Si as you can see from the photo...

For those not residing in Malaysia, the Pasar Malam looks extremely beautiful from the top. There are rolls of stalls offering various merchandise and food. You can probably find Nike for 10% of the retail price (you know that I mean)...

So, my first serving is Char Koey Kak (RM 2.50) with duck egg (my  favorite). I have been having this ever since I can remember anything. It's made of carrot cake and bean sprout. The banana leaf came with the packet but since I don't eat banana leaf, I threw it away .My dog went frenzy over the smell.

Cheese cake (RM 2) came next. With that price, I didn't expect much. The sponge cake layer was about 3/4 of the whole piece. I was too lazy to wash an extra plate, so the same plate and fork was used. It's called recycling, Lim Guan Eng will love this. By the way, I stopped asking for plastic bags every time I went for grocery shopping. How about you?

And finally I had Jambu (hokkien) with table salt, for appetizer. Try that, it actually taste a whole lot better!!!

So, that was my dinner for tonight. Simple right?

Zipcar

Came across this website recently as I was browsing free apps for my ipod touch; apps are like sex, never pay for it.

The webpage was simple yet it struck me like thunderbolt. Maybe living in this country has limited my imagination, I never would think service like this exists.This is the coolest service I ever know. Basically, when you join this zipcar service, we'll need to pay a $50 annual fee plus $25 application fee and we can drive their cars for the rate of $7 per hour or $69 daily.  There are various car models available on the road for us to choose, from truck, SUV, wagon, sedan.....all the way to convertibles. Members will have a card activates the car by scanning onto the windscreen. No more waiting for buses, we may search the nearest zipcars in the net and locate them easily. So, it's more or less like step out side of the house and you can drive any car you like...wicked!

Imagine the service is available in Malaysia....We'll be able to drive this...

 

Or this...

Or this...

Even this...

That are parking on the street without owning them...

The beautiful part is, with the card, we may pump petrol without needing to pay anymore, no more car maintenance headache, no more insurance policies and there are even special parking lots allocated on the streets for these cars (Penang drivers would love this). They even built an Iphone app for this...

 

Using the Iphone, we may lock/unlock or make the car sound the honk. Cool eh? Imagine we just pull our handphone out of the pocket and touch the screen, the car chirps while unlock. Very Bond-like indeed.

It'll be even worthier if these cars are available...

Quite common on the road? How about this?

This is what exactly they called "chick magnet"...lol

I certainly don't mind paying RM500/hour to drive this car...

This vehicle is good when we're feeling a little funky....

But knowing the people here too well, I'm afraid the zipcar will become this...

After the first service...unquestionably Malaysia is not a suitable country for this service. But if I'm in America, I would certainly like to try the service. If there is anyone of you who'll be traveling to the states and worry about transportation problem, you may want to check out their service at http://www.zipcar.com/ .

Reconnected

Got a few calls from streamyx this morning. The 1st call was from from TM Penang technician asking me whether did I check my connection this morning. Second call was from KL asking the status of my connection. Normally this doesn't happen. The caller said he received a call from his CEO and forwarded my letter. I didn't bother to ask who he is, but I did told him all I want is my internet connection back.
True enough, they fixed my line and I can surf the net again. The first thing I did was tested the band width. From the usual speed of D/L: ±400Kb and U/L: ±200Kb, now my bandwidth is D/L: ±2000Kb and U/L: ±400Kb. Obviously it's fast. Previously I had to wait awhile for the babypips page to load but now it appear like a bolt of lightning. I wonder how long will it last.

CFD trading

If you're a newbie who had just entered into the trading world, you may be strucked with many hi-fi terms that made you dizzy and probable go bald if you try to understand all of them. One of them are CFDs. Many traders maybe good at anticipating the ups and downs of the market without really understanding the real entity that they're trading or invest their hard earned money into. So, what the heck is a CFD?

CFD, also "contract for difference" are products that are offered by brokers. For example, we can trade the Citibank stock or the Citibank CFD. The difference is we can only long the Citibank stock and sell it later by paying the full amount of money that the stock is worth while, in the CFD contact, we pay only a fraction of it. That means we are trading CFD with leverage. For example, to buy 1000 shares of $9.60 ABC stock we need to pay $9600. In the CFD contact of the ABC, we need to pay perhaps only $960 (if required margin is 10%) to trade the stock. And in CFDs, we can either long(buy) or short(sell) the stock to make money. It also mean, we can profit or loss in the market is the stock is going up or down. So why trade the stock if we can trade the CFD? Why the heck is it so complicated?

The answer is quite simple actually; online game players will find this a child's play theory. A CFD market is a virtual market created by the brokers using live market data feed. The price of the stock follows the actual price but the market is regulated by the broker but not the government. Stocks in the other hand is regulated by government body. For instance stocks in Malaysia are regulated by Bursa Saham Malaysia.In my opinion, trading the CFD has not much difference with playing an online game. By buying the CFD we are not the actual share holder of the company. If the company announces dividen yield, the broker will pay us if we're in a long position and we'll pay the broker if we're in a short position.

There'll be another trader to buy or sell the contracts from us shall we make the trade. Say you're buying 100 shares of ABC in a CFD contract and there are short position of 200 shares, the broker simply buy 100 shares of the actual stock to hedge the market. If you make too much money, the broker deserves the right to close your trade. In another word, the broker will never lose. So what does he gain for providing all these complicated trades? That will be your trading commission. It also means, it's literally impossible for the broker to lose. Trading in CFD has scarce difference from gambling big and small in Las Vegas. Both has only 2 options for us to choose.

In summary, the broker created a market out of nothing but a computer and license. It is almost like cheating. In this market, it is like playing online game where the  game master is invincible. I will gladly give away my testicle to obtain a license like that. Tell me, who wouldn't?

p/s: this is simplified version for the sake of the noobs. Actually I'm also a noob! lol

Letter to TM

Hi, Below is the letter I sent to TM Malaysia (tmonline@tmnet.com.my, help@tm.com.my, ceo@tmnet.com.my, laihk@telekom.com.my ). I wrote the letter in the simplest english possible so that they can understand. In fact I pay RM2 in the internet cafe just to write this letter.

Dear Sir/Madam/Dato'/Datin/Dr

This letter is not going to be friendly. I'm not even sure whether would you bother to read this, but I'm writing this to express my great disappointment over the streamyx service that I have signed up one year plus ago. I used to surf at the internet cafe and the main reason I signed up for streamyx is to have a stable and convenient connection at home. But here I am now surfing miserably in the internet cafe again paying for internet services despite having signed up for streamyx. I have lost count of the number of time I have to visit the internet cafe since signing up your "service". Is it very challenging in providing a stable connection?

Please check my record for calling tmnet to file complains. My very first complain was the 3rd day after started surcribing to your service. Ever since, I'm making complains almost monthly. I'm getting very fed up of calling 100 for complains. I signed up streamyx together with my phone line which I never use, and I'm keeping it just for my convenient of dialling 100 for complains. In fact, I can recite my username using country names as initials so fast that the operator couldn't catch my words properly. I have had that much practises! Almost everytime, my calls were followed by a series of longwinded diagnosis to find no problem with my computer. The result often ends with me having no internet connection for the evening. I'm sick of coming home after a tiring working day to find that I cannot connect to the internet and be disappointed. Please tell me, the exact date or day of the month I wont be able to use the internet so that I can visit the internet cafe on a fixed schedule. Please let me know which day I should make the 100 calls so that I can anticipate for the worse instead of having surprises. I'm currently having a 1Mb contract but never could i recall having such fast connection. My bill covers for 24 hours service but the technical support is only available during office hour. That is totally not fair for the users. How do you justify the charges?

I remember meeting with the General Manager of TM in City Baview Penang last year for the promotion on the toll free and SME package. He bragged on the marvelous technical support and fast internet line provided by streamyx. My advice to company leaders is, do not boast if the performance is not up to par. To end this letter, I would like to ask, Sir/Madam/Dato'/Datin/Dr, do you use streamyx at home? How much do you need it? How do you feel about your own service? Can you understand people like me who pays a fraction of our limited salary for internet connection and to find it useless?

I do hope that you look seriously into improving your services and make our money a little bit worth paying. Thank you very much if you ever finish reading this letter.

Frustrated Streamyx User.

 

How Jun, Wong