The end of the RM0.01 problem!

Have you ever been caught in a situation where you have to pay a sum of like maybe RM9.31, RM9.32, RM9.33, RM9.34? RM9.98 or even RM9.99? Fret no more, as of April 1, 2008, the Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs has implemented a new system of rounding for over the counter transactions.

This would help prevent both merchants and consumers to have a steady supply of 1 cents for transactions. Apparently the government spends RM18billion yearly to mint 1 cent coins.

There maybe changes in the petrol pricing system as consumers may be charged at a increment of 5cents/10cents instead of the old 1 cent when pumping petrol.

I feel that this move is a good one for me as I have been stuck in situations where I was given a whole lot of 1cent coins as change at a McD joint or sometimes certain merchants who're short on 1/2 cents, they just wont bother to give me back my exact change or sometimes when I'm short of a few cents the merchant would charge me 10 cents instead. Damn too much right?

Anyhow, this is one small little effort from the government that will help make the every day life of a Malaysian living in Malaysia better (By having a slightly lighter wallet/purse).

Would this make the Malaysians happy enough to forget about the PM's response to the BERSIH protest and Malaysia's Information Minister's interview with Al Jazeera News on the BERSIH Protest?

For more reading: http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2007/11/14/nation/19460993&sec=nation

Images credits to thestar.com.my

Cleaning time in Malaysia? BERSIH

For those abroad who are not aware of what happened on the 10th November 2007. Here's what KL looked like.

Photo by jiunpic
More here http://picasaweb.google.com/pemudawp/BersihRally

The Coalition for Clean and Fair Elections (BERSIH) organized a mass rally to demand for electoral reforms in the country as elections are expected for the country in early 2008. They managed to successfully hand over a memorandum to HM Yang diPertuan Agong at the Royal Palace.

The rally didn't get a green light from the government as fears of riots may breakout.
Here's a scene at Masjid Jamek reported by Al-Jazeera news in English



I am no political analysts and do not have a big interest in politics but reading and watching these news about what's going on Malaysia worries me. Can't believe just leaving Malaysia about 2 months now, something this big is going on.

From one of the news reports that i read, New York-based Human Rights Watch commented that, "If Malaysia wants to count itself a democracy, it can begin by upholding constitutional guarantees of free speech and assembly. The way the system works now, only the ruling coalition can get its messages out,".

I agree on the comment above. Malaysia has long been under the ruling of one major political party. And what goes behind the government is all biased towards certain parties, groups and even individuals.

Maybe it's time to change?
Kudos to the folks at BERSIH who's trying so hard to make a change for the better of the country and its people.


For more updates of this rally, go to BERSIH's temporary website @ http://tragedibatuburok.blogspot.com/ due to congestion in internet traffic of their original site @ http://bersih.org/

More news @ Malaysia Today

Warzone

Behind enemy lines


Cross at your own risk


Are you looking at me? (A lil out of focus) Sorry :(


Excuse me... :furious:


Is there something in my nose?


Ready to rumble!




Some features

Tank lid


Tank logo


Tank wheels


It was built by a bunch of Americans last night during midnight. I saw them building it on the way home from my senior's house.

I took these photos after brunch this morning.

What do you think?

Diwali Nite 2007 - Performance

As I promised you, here are the photos from the performance at Rozsa Center. Unfotunately despote taking over 300 photos, most of which are unusable cause no flash photography is allowed in the auditorium. But throughout the event many people broke the rule but not ME! Which is why all my photos suck. Sorry.

By the way, Diwali is the festival of lights, which explains why many candles are lit during this celebration.

Opening performance with dancers with candles.

The dancers with the candles.

2/3 of the guy hosts. The guy in orange looks like one my friend Param. Those who know him, don't you think so?

Kids Fashion Show. The boy is so cute.

Look at what happened next
He was stepping on the girl's dress. He was quickly brought away.

Kids fashion show ending

Another dance performance. The girl in the middle is my senior's gf. Kate. She's Malaysian and a biochemical graduate student. Their dance was too fast, all my shots from this performance was all horrible. So, i'd try to post a video later. My senior, Kate's bf took videos at the show.

Band performance. The girl singer was really good. She was singing a english song in tamil, but I donno what's the title of the song. Sorry. The violinist, my friend Rei Tangko a Filipino was really good.

 There was a lucky draw right before the whole event ended. The grand prize was a 3 days stay in of the local hotel's(Best Western if not mistaken) suite with jacuzzi. Sounds pretty fancy huh. Hehe.

The people who made Diwali Nite 2007 a success.

Missing pictures are the Bollywood style scene where a group of guys and a group of girls have a dance battle, a classical Indian dance by 2 Indian girls and a skit titled "Bean". "Bean" was pretty funny.

Overall the show was really good. Worth the $5 ticket. Get to see all the various Indian dances.

Diwali Nite - Food

The Indian Students Association of MTU organized a Divali Nite event which includes a Indian cuisine dinner at the Wadsworth Dining Hall and a performance at the Rozsa Center. It costs $12 (RM39.79) for a ticket for the meal and performance. But students with their meal card which we use to swipe for our usual meals at the dining hall can use the meal card to enter. However we need to pay $5 (RM16.58) for the performance.

Upon entering the dining hall, the fume of Indian Spices in the air reminds me of the Malaysian mamak stall atmosphere. I was so excited and my stomach started making noises...

And here's what I've got to pamper my hungry stomach...

Here's the menu for today.

1. Mixed Vege Pakoda - Fried flour fritters with onions, potato, chickpeas, bittergourd
2. Jeera Rice - Basmati rice, thinly sliced onion, cumin seeds, cumin powder
3. Gobi Mutter - Cauliflower & Peas Masala
4. Shahi Paneer - Fresh unaged cheese with indian herb and spices
5. Mango Sambhar - Mango pickles
6. Chutney - 3 types: mint, spicy, coconut
7. Dahl - Indian Chickpea stew
8. Naan - Oven baked indian bread
10. Papadum - Indian spiced cracker

Mixed Vege Pakoda

It's cripsy and you can taste the sweetness of the vegetables surrounded with a thick coating of spiced flour.
Tasted really good with the spicy chuntey,

Gobi Mutter and Spicy Chutney

Shahi Paneer

I thought it was tofu initially then it crossed my mind, Northern indians like cheese. I am not a big fan of cheese and thus, this is not one of my fav dish.

Papadum

I had a few bowls of this stuff! I love them!! Even in Malaysia I used to buy the dry papadum and fry them myself. It's a lil on the salty side, but the spices seem to balance it out.

The sauce in all the dishes tasted great eaten with the Jeera rice. It's impossible to describe the taste in the sauces because Indian dishes uses a lot of spices. One thing's for sure... The taste is one of a kind... rich in flavors.

And here's me and my roommate. Yeap, first time meeting him in my blog huh? Surprised? He's from Herpei province in China.

I will try and post photos from the performance when I am actually there at the Rozsa Center. I am writing this right after dinner. And the performance starts at 8pm only.

Stay tuned!

Apple iPhone review

Last weekend I went to my senior's place to cook dinner and also to check out my senior's new iPhone. He bought 2 from Chicago Apple Store at $422.94 ($399 +tax) each. He also knows how to unlock the iPhone. It can be used with any Sim card, even in Malaysia.

First Looks

Main interface with access to all applications.
The touchscreen is not like a pda with a soft lcd screen. The screen is one solid face just like an iPod with touch sensitive feature. The touchscreen was very responsive. A slight tap on the screen will bring up the application you select. Which is why there is a button on top of the screen to lock the iPhone when not in used. The screen will be inactive until unlocked via a virtual slider on the screen.

Safari (Apple's web browser) The screen auto rotates when you use it horizontally.

Webpage viewed vertically.

Browsing the internet was fairly easy, the interface was easy to use, just use you fingers to drag the screen around, zoom in and zoom out pages using a pinching motion on the screen. Having wifi integrated into the phone is a great feature since browsing the web through gprs/3g/edge will cost much more. Nowadays you can easily find many free public wifi access.

The only problem I had was typing using it's on screen keyboard. With it limited screen size, typing on the keyboard was a little hard for my large fingers. I kept on typing the wrong letters. But, I guess it's just a matter of getting used to the keyboard.

iPod interface

iPod interface
The iPod interface was nothing like an actual iPod. Nothing like any generations of the iPod. Which was surprising to me. The interface was pretty boring.
Look below for more iPod interface photos.



The Coverflow interface is cool though. I didn't try it on my senior's iPhone cause... i didn't know how to access it :-p

The speaker on the iPhone was really small and was very soft even at max volume. Disappointing for a music phone, but of course... it's meant to be used with earphones. The speaker was meant for ringing tones only.
Speaker on the left side and mic on the right side.

Youtube interface

Youtube integration. You can search youtube within it's integrated interface without the need to open youtube from a browser.
You can view youtube videos widescreen. Very clear and bright screen for videos.

The google map interface. It's a good feature if you wanna get around town but it's definitely not meant for driving directions. A dedicated GPS would be more appropriate.


The Camera
It has a small pin sized 2MP camera. No Autofocus and flash light. It takes acceptable photos in bright conditions. But very noisy photos in low light. The camera quality is pretty much the same as other gsm phones with a 2MP camera with no AF/flash

Check out photos taken with iPhone's camera here http://www.flickr.com/groups/takenwithiphone/pool/

The downside...

1. No 3G (for video calls)

2. No secondary camera in front for video call

3. No GPS

4. No camera flash light

5. Built-in battery

6. Does not officially support 3rd party applications

7. Supports only Apple's mp4 and h.264 video formats

8. Like any other apple product like the ipod, you have to be very careful with the iPhone as it is a scratch magnet.

So, this is the first gen iPhone. I would love to buy it, but I am pretty sure that the folks at Apple will fix some of the above mentioned cons in their upcoming 2nd gen iPhone. So, I'd probably wait for a 2nd gen one. Folks here http://svenontech.com/2007/05/30/iphone-2g-to-ship-in-december-with-3g-guts/ rumoured that a 2nd gen iphone may ship with 3G and increase in storage size in December 2007.

So, STAY TUNED! ;-)

This is just my personal review on the iPhone. you may oppose some of my thoughts about this phone.

Blogger users, you can now.....

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