Financial crisis hitting Penang

The financial crisis seems to be getting worse. People are losing their jobs. Companies are laying off workers.

The economy

Around the world, we have lots of indicators to tell us how the economy is doing. Not only that, we have sub-indicators for the indicators, much like this pie chart represents sub-sectors for the power industry.

Sub sectors

In Penang, we have the clubbing indicator. They have been empty for much of the last few weeks, especially on Fridays. So it's not looking good.

Empty club

The clubbing sub-indicators help determine the overall direction of the clubbing indicator. Like how much booze have people been consuming. For this measure, I take a look at how flirty girls are. The amount of booze girls consume is directly proportionate to how flirty they are. The more booze they drink, the more flirty they are. These last few weeks, girls have not been as flirty so this contributes to the overall negative direction of the clubbing indicator.

Flirty indicator

Another sub-indicator is the girls to guys in the club ratio. In times of good economic progress, more guys come out as they have additional money to spend on girls. In times of bad economic progress, they stay home and all the money girls saved from guys buying them booze starts being spent. I have been seeing a higher ratio of girls to guy, so this has a negative influence on the clubbing indicator.

Girl guy ratio

Wow! it does seem like Penang is starting to suffer from the financial crisis. Lets hope the economy recovers.

1.7 million views in 3 days.

One more!

BBQ ....xD

More funny bud light commercials

Even though I think the beer isn't that great, I love the commercials!!! ahahah

Real men of genius

Heres to real men of genius! This buds for you!

Tribal Kings does it again

A while ago, I found the French really knew how to make a booty video. Even better than most of the hip hop artists out there. And they basically invented it.

In this video, they demonstrate how to do an "Elevator" music video. Flo-Rida take note. one girl on each floor doesn't cut it these days.


Tribal King's version on how to make an Elevator video.




Flo-Rida's version on making an Elevator video.

I think it's a good time for me too......

This is really funny......

Sales Sales Sales of the Mega type!

I just got back from kl and I am quite satisfied with my shopping expedition. What treasures did I find from the jungles of the KL shopping malls?

KLCC Shopping Center: Concrete Jungle

With sales, one can expect to sift through a lot of trash to find their treasure. Sales are meant for shops to clear items. Quite often they don't have the correct sizes, color, etc on discount. In that regards, yes it's an expedition. I hoped to find bountiful booty, that can help me get booty of the other type.

Traditional Booty


The other type of Booty

Anyways, I needed to get myself more informal formal wear. Apparently my formal wear was too formal and the shirt tails looked a little long untucked. I was able to find buttoned up nice shirts that were meant to be untucked (shirt tails not too long). Though it was a major chore to find them. But luckily this year, Zara carried size "s" which is perfect for me. I like clothes which fit well, and "m" size shirts on me look like someone else dressed me.

So in the end, I found two of these informal formal shirts. One nice tuck-in formal shirt ( I couldn't resisit), and two normal casual shirts.

Major mega sales shopping tip: Go shopping at stores that are more outside the city. Midvalley and One Utama are more likely to have more sales item selection and sizes because 1) they have more floor space and items than the city 2) less people go there than the city shopping outlets.

Signing up for Malaysiakini

Well, I've finally decided to subscribe to Malaysiakini.

Malaysiakini

I signed up for the standard subscription of RM80 for 6 months. That works out to RM13 a month or 44 sen per day. I would say the price is just ok after all it is all online. A normal newspaper would cost RM1.25 a day, but it certainly costs a lot more to publish.

I decided to check if my money was well spent by comparing similar stories to the star online.

On one hand the Malaysiakini article I looked at seemed more detailed for instance they mentioned that certain people were not at parliament when parliament voted for the fuel price increase. The star online didn't mention anything.

I haven't seen the newspaper, perhaps the detail is in there. Malaysiakini made a big deal that the few people (11 in total) weren't there. They sensationalize that fact when 11 reps hardly will make any difference at all, after all 129 votes to 78 against is such a smackdown, those 11 reps if voting the other way would have been insignificant to the outcome, altering the majority a few percent down from 63% to 59%.

Smackdown!

It's a decent publication. But like with every news source it needs to be read with a grain of salt. It is true the mainstream media sugarcoats a lot of information; their methods of reporting lack fire and passion. Malaysiakini on the other hand is all about fire. They are also very thorough in their news reporting, which is a function of their passion. I commend them on thorough news reporting, but the fire, emotion, pandering to the public can be left out. I bet a lot of the claims turn out to have nothing behind them. Conspiracy theorists? Maybe, but chances are most of it is just theory.

Petrol at RM2.70 per litre!

As of now, gasoline prices in Malaysia is no longer subsidized. Energy prices have gone up. Sure there will be pain now, but this is just an opportunity for Malaysia to get with the program. Winners don't complain, they overcome adversity! Subsidies are a thing of the past, Take your lumps now, and begin planning for the future. We all knew this was bound to happen at some time.

Seeing as how Malaysians spend a lot of money on petrol:

Typical KL traffic jam

solutions:

Introduce the new hybrid cars which can get double the mileage!

Toyota Prius

Do a little car pooling!

car pooling?

As in share a car ride to work with a co worker.


Electricity prices gone up? No problem!

Solutions:

Try the inverter air conditioner which saves around 30% of the a/c bill.

Inverter Air Conditioner

Design homes and do renovations which have better insulation to keep out heat and insulate the room cooler.

Eco friendly house

Humans are one of the most adaptable species on the planet. Guess what.... those species that couldn't adapt to changing circumstances are in the extinct category now.

Shopping in penang

I recently was looking to buy a new pair of sandals. A few weeks back my sandals lost their soles. I guess I could try and have their soles replaced, but I figured that I've had my previous sandals for about 5 years and it was time for a change. Where do sandals that lost their soles go? For me, I think they will most likely go into the garbage dump.

Sandals

But before I let them go, I need to find a replacement. I went to three shopping malls: Gurney, Queensbay, and Island Plaza. I first went to Gurney and Island. I found a lot of selection at these places, but none that suited my tastes. Also when I found some choices, they didn't have my sizes. Ah well, I thought to myself surely I will find some at Queensbay, after all with its sheer size, it will surely have more items.

Gurney Plaza

Island Plaza

Queensbay had different stores, but seemed to carry the same items as Gurney and Island Plaza. I think that carrying the same items defeats the purpose of having different stores. Why would I want to go all the way to Queensbay to buy shoes when they have the exact same selection than gurney? In fact, I think Gurney and Island together carry a better selection.

Queensbay Mall

As much potential that Queensbay mall has of being a really uber shopping center, I still don't see any reason I should go there over Gurney and Island. Gurney and Island don't really carry a lot of great items either, but their stuff is much better than Queensbay. Whats the point of an uber shopping center that has so many items, but much of it is junk? They don't use their mass to attract much better retailers. Ah ....the sad state of shopping in Penang.

I'm still looking for sandals :(

Moving and Down to business

Well a lot has been happening so far. I've moved into the family's "vacation apartment" while the normal apartment is just about to embark on a facelift...aka renovation. So, this is home for the next few months.

Although it is quiet and smaller, the apartment does have its charms. For one, the view is quite amazing.

View from the balcony part 1

View from the balcony part 2

Second, the internet is fast. Yes, for some reason the streamyx here is oodles faster than at my previous apartment. I can go see youtube videos with no pause for the video to load. How amazing is that! The internet streams the video faster than the player plays. I think the fast speed has to do with not many users out here. Sweet! ahahah.

Third, my new bed. Even though the bed at my original apartment is quite soft, for some reason, this slightly hard bed at the "vacation apartment" really gives me a good night's rest. Maybe I'm too comfortable at my own bed that any little thing wakes me up. Well whatever, results so far indicate I get a really good night's rest at this new bed that i'm sleeping at. Even after exercising, I never could get a good nights rest, but for some reason I can here. Awesome! I might have to get a harder bed when I move back to the original apartment. Though I do think the other bed is more fun to be active on due to its more springy action. Whatever the particular activity that benefits from the upward reactive force may be...heheh.

my new bedroom

Other than that, I've been trying to study for the CFA level 1 exam in December. This course is for financial analyst or financial analyst wannabes, me being the latter. It really is no joke. They sent me six textbooks roughly 2000 pages of text to read. These pages are huge as well. If I took 24 weeks to finish the texts, I figure that 75 pages a week should put me in a good position for the exam. So it's been about 3 weeks and I am nowhere near the 200 or so pages studied. The lack of progress needs to be addressed by my super speed reading powers..... which will come to me hopefully very soon.... Still waiting xD

My course books

My books arranged prettily...

Ooohh... I bought this really nice tee shirt from NIKE at Island Plaza. It's like the NIKE boutique store not the normal sports store. The shirt had some felt glued on to the front. NEVER buy a shirt with stuff glued on. Once in the dryer, some of that glued felt came off. What the fFFF! Now my very nice tee shirt is kinda messed up. I know I was a bit dumb just to chuck all my stuff in the dryer and not pay attention to this shirt, but for goodness sakes, this is a tee shirt. It's not like a tuxedo. Pissed!

Life's like that Girl of the undisclosed time period*

*I say undisclosed time period because, I don't know when the next girl post will be heh.

As we all know, a lot of asians seem to be infatuated with the opposite gender of the Caucasian type. Check Mr. Gin's post. Well, I think Caucasians do have a very strong look to them. They are bigger, built more, usually they have big eyes which is a desirable trait in the asian culture. Furthermore, its a different color. Blue is a nicer color to look at than black usually. Asians tend to look quite similar, whether they are Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc. So people are usually attracted to the exotic looking, in this case for asians, Caucasians.

On the other hand, I believe asians have their appeal as well. For any one who has ever heard of the fountain of youth story, where this European guy travels half way around the world to South America to find the fountain of youth; they will know that youth is a very desirable trait across the world. Why do guys like Hugh Hefner prefer to shag girls that are one-fifth his age? Oh don't think that women don't do the same thing. Affluent, older women certainly do their share of dating younger men. Youth is more or less equated with beauty universally around the world. Asians generally have a youthful look to them. Ever compare a 30 year old asian to a 30 year old caucasian? Chances are, the asian looks younger.

Hugh Hefner with his girls

So all this begs the question: "Is it better to have youth or desirable features? I say........ Is it too much to ask for both?" (I stole this line from Iron man....hehe)

I present to you, Misa Campo, Life's like that Girl of the "undisclosed time period".



Misa Campo is of both Filipino and Dutch decent, born in Montreal, Canada. A very stunning girl.... she has that mixed look with youth and nice features which well, sounds great in theory, but very few mixed children are able to pull it off. To put it bluntly, mixing usually produces nothing out of the ordinary, neither here nor there.






Ah well, I know her boobs have been implanted with stuff.

Pictures don't tell the full story, here she is on youtube. I think shes cute as well. Caution: the first video has quite a bit of skin.





Here she is getting hyphy =)

Iron Man at GSC, Gurney

I've been wanting to watch this since I saw the preview a couple of months back. I just had a feeling this movie was going to be good. With GSC showing 18 screenings a day, I definitely thought the theaters were going to be packed.

Packed like sardines

Two days before, I went online hoping to make some bookings. Guess what, ZERO tickets for Thursday till the 10pm show. What the hell? Furthermore, I wanted to buy online, and the servers were down. I really don't understand why for paying people, the servers are down?

Anyhow, I went a little early and was able to secure tickets in decent seats. Well the best I could get that day. Pretty decent except at the beginning with people still walking in and periodically blocking the view.

I must admit, I really liked a lot of the movie and wasn't at all disappointed. I just had this feeling it was going to be good. The danger is going in thinking that the movie is good, and leaving the person feeling shortchanged. By far the best scenes involved iron man whooping some Afghanistan insurgents, dogfighting with planes, and in the final stages of completing his armor. Iron Man, seems the weakest of superheros, but he can still lay the smackdown.

Flying Scenes!

I think Robert Downey Jr. did a fantastic job. I've never been impressed by Tony Starks the comic book character. He looked like an uptight royal out of one of the many countries with monarchies. By contrast, Bruce Wayne of Batman is a much more interesting comic book character. Robert did a fantastic job making the character likable, especially given the mundane Tony Starks. I'd compare this to something that Johnny Depp had done with Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Carribean.

Arrrr...matey!

I must mention, though that the Iron man body armor wasn't exactly an original concept. Blizzard's Starcraft 2 introduction movie has a similar set up where a marine's armor is put on a person with machines and bolted into place. Credit to the movie production company for making the graphics work with a human. The Starcraft 2 introduction is all CG.

Sappy song mood

Hmm...i was browsing around youtube, then I stumbled on this song. Old song, bout two years, new to me. The main version is some sort of house version. This is more preferable imo. I'm a closeted sappy song guy once in a while heh. The title "every time we touch" is kinda gaudy, but nice tune. Dedicated to all the couples out there =)

Oh, the FFX thing came with the song. Sorry non fans of FFX.

Malaysian taxes and sometimes it pays to be dumb.

Just yesterday I made a trip to the Penang LHDN office to verify a few meager dividend checks. For tax filing, the tax office will need to verify the dividends through mail in or in person verification. Verifying in person is advantageous to get quicker refunds and reduce paperwork.

Those who are in the lower tax bracket (namely me) can get some of the money back that was taxed at the dividend payout. For instance, A 100 RM dividend will be taxed 27%. For those in the lower tax brackets, they get money refunded back to them. The 10% tax bracket will get roughly the difference, which in this case 17%, refunded back to them.

Tax Returns

I had just a few dividends to declare, lucky me. Some others had 30 or 40 dividend vouchers. So, the officers had to go verify each dividend voucher one by one. But ah....things get even more complicated. Just last year, the tax changed a bit. Depending on when the check was issued, dividend tax for 2006 was 27% and in 2007 was 26%. The company secretaries must really be sleeping on the job because they messed up all of the few vouchers I had.

Anyhow, so one guy next to me was smart enough to do the alterations, probably figuring out ok, I can save the hassle of the dividend verifier correcting all the mistakes. But when the tax rate was reduced, the actual gross dividend being taxed was changed as well. I believe this was a corporate tax change. So from the example before, 100 would probably be reduced to RM98.5 (though it's not exactly 1.5%, it differs from dividend to dividend), and then the income tax rate would also be changed, 28% would be changed to 27%. I just filled out what was on the dividend voucher and put it on the form. It was all wrong of course, but no different than a lot of others who did the same thing.

The dividend verifier went and did all the corrections for me. The guy next to me changed the income tax rate, but didn't change the gross dividend being taxed. So he messed up his thirty or forty dividend vouchers and furthermore, the dividend verifier wouldn't offer to correct it!

I would have at least tried the sad puppy dog face, works a lot of times for me :)

He said this was all wrong and asked him to come tomorrow and redo it. Others who did it like me were fine i guess because I saw others who were in the same situation as me and some of them had a lot of vouchers, and the dividend verifier did all the corrections. It wasn't the amount of checks, but I suppose the verifier required at least a standard base to work from.

Moral of the story: Sometimes it pays to be dumb, and don't try to make work easier for the LHDN, because if you mess up the work you do for them, they'll screw u good!

Cigarette warning pictures

Warning: Some images in this post might be disturbing. Proceed at your own risk.

The trend these days for countries to deter their citizens from smoking by putting disgusting pictures of people affected by the nasty habit. Here are a few examples of our neighboring countries' brilliant ideas to curb people from smoking.

Singapore

Thailand

Unfortunately, we more than likely will see these type of cigarette packs in Malaysia. After all if our neighbors to the north and south are doing it, we might as well join the party. For the most part, I think people will just initially get disgusted but continue buying cigarettes. Well, where there's government regulation, there is opportunity. Louis Vuitton carries these bad boys and I bet they are hot sellers due to the governments around the world deciding to make cigarette manufacturers post disgusting pictures on their cigarette packs. What exactly are they? Cigarette holders!

Put the cigarette packs into these bad boys, and tada....no need to see disgusting images! Throw the disgusting box away! Governments really outsmarted themselves out on this one. This reminds me of a special cd technology that apparently made it impossible for people to make copies. It was very sound technologically and cd burners couldn't burn the cd at first. But people being people, found a way. The way around this was to take a marker and draw around the outside of the cd. The cd technology turned out to be a big waste of money.

p/s: I don't particularly like cigarettes or smoking. I in fact don't like them at all. The world could do without ciggies.

Justin and Madonna's 4 minute song

I was searching for new R&B songs to download, and recently, Justin Timberlake and Madonna came out with a new song called 4 minutes. I think the song overall is decent. Justin T is as good as ever in the video, but I feel Madonna pales in comparison. Maybe her voice isn't current any more. Furthermore, When I see the timeless Mariah Carey still rip out decent songs, I feel Madonna's voice is more of the past and not so current any more.

madonna and JT

I think other female singers could have done a better job in 4 Minutes. Actually, Britney Spears is a much better fit for the song. The song Gimme More sounds similar. Britney Spears can still blow catchy tunes. If I imagined Britney Spears doing 4 Minutes, she would do much better. They really should collaborate. I think there's some bad blood still from their previous relationship, they've not worked together in like forever. But I think they should just bury the hatchet and just make good music. Britney and Justin's 4 minutes just would plaster Madonna and Justin's version.

Britney Spears

I hope the below link to 4 minutes video doesn't get removed due to copyright:

Biting Mangoes

I woke up this morning kind of early, 10:30 am...yeah thats early for a Saturday. I switched on the TV to watch MTV. A show called Popparazi was being played. I guess I don't regularly watch this show, but for some reason, that particular segment, Marion Counter was making some really interesting comments. I got to say it takes a lot of guts to make these kind of jokes on TV. Luckily a lot of people don't really get the jokes in Malaysia.

Marion Caunter

There was this promo of the show Top Model with Tyson Beckford, I believe. He's a black male model/actor. He did this scene of biting a mango to demonstrate how to sell an item in front of a camera, which was the episode's theme.

So Marion says after, "Tyson, you can take a bite of my mango any time." And Dom, the co-host, I think didn't know what to say.

I would have said "I think mango-eating is a great past time" "Mangoes are good because the fruit is usually sweet" "The tongue is really sensitive to sweet fruit" XD

"I also like apples. how do u like them apples?" or "i think mangoes go well with apples"

oh if u haven't seen it....

Mois, MTV night, Key Ng fashion show, Malaysia Dreamgirl

Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of the event. I loathe bringing in my camera to a club, because I think it'll become infested with smoke. I did make it in time to see some of the pseudo-famous people/personalities in Malaysia, Amber Chia and Hannah Tan. I even had a close encounter of the Amber Chia kind. Didn't even recognize her in all her make up and clothes. She was standing right in front of me. When I did realize that it was her, she was already leaving the area.

Amber Chia

Hannah Tan

As we all know, Malaysia has pseudo-famous celebrities, aka bloggers, politicians, VJs, radio DJs. I say pseudo because I don't get the wow factor when I see them. If a Tom cruise, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, or even a Paris Hilton showed up at MOIS, Penang, I think I would get wowed. It was slightly surreal seeing the local media come to life, but they definitely lack the wow factor.

So, I was kind of impressed with some of the models for the Key Ng fashion show. I counted at least four of the women models were tall, statuesque, and close to world class, giving me the impression of a really decent event. Although, I'm not a really great judge of models, at least in the dark they looked the part of world class. Seeing this and the Malaysia Dream Girls web TV show, man I got to say, the quality of people are worlds apart.

Malaysia Dreamgirls

I started watching today, and now I'm going to stop. I'm not sure how over a hundred thousand Ringgit in prizes could not attract really talent such as the ones I've seen Saturday night. The talent exists, because I saw quite a few of them. Maybe, instead of a Nissan car as the top prize, a Mercedes Benz. Now that'll attract quite a few of them, I think! The show should really be called "put a bunch of cute girls in a house and let them try some modeling gigs."

This should attract some really nice models :)

Truthfully, I don't even like Key Ng stuff, I've browsed the outlet in one Utama before, and their items don't impress me that much. But if they can get pretty decent models for their show, I think it exposes Malaysia Dream Girls pretty badly.

Not all this blog is commentary, After the event Mois got closed on account of police shut down. The club was starting up after the MTV event, then after a while, the lights came on. I thought to myself, this seems an awful lot like closing time. About 20 minutes later, they closed the place down. It was a big surprise, no IC checks or anything. I heard a pretty serious event happened the night before, probably the reason why it was shut down. They should have just shut it down earlier. At least we wouldn't have to spend on booze and then cut short the night.

So a pretty early end to a night at MOIS. I went to a place called Hungry Duck just down the road to chill and relax a bit.

Dinner at Spicy Chicken BBQ and Movie night: Be Kind Rewind

Last night my friend Matt, his girlfriend Ching Fern, and I went for dinner and a movie. I suppose I was the third wheel on this date. But as they have been together so long, I guess they didn't mind a little extra company. At least that it was I told myself heheh. Anyhow, we were supposed to eat at pasta mania, but decided to try a place called Spicy BBQ Chicken at the ground floor of Gurney Plaza.

Apparently this place is a Korean fast food chain of sorts. I've walked past the restaurant several times and have had no desire to go in. I had the impression the place was a KFC wannabe. All I saw was fried chicken from the outside. Furthermore, the name Spicy BBQ Chicken doesn't really make sense to a western mentality mind such as the one that I have. Just sounds weird. But I was in a sporting mood, and my friend seemed quite upbeat about trying it out. So I was game as well.

The restaurant is nice enough, but the impression from the outside is just kinda weird. Anyhow, I'll be glad to report that the menu displays quite a variety of chicken. But be prepared for pretty much chicken when eating there. I didn't see any other types of meat. There's a lot of choices other than fried. There is Jerk chicken, BBQ Korean chicken, spicy bbq chicken, grilled, fried, etc. I feel an alternative to fried chicken is something missing from fast food places here. The restaurant fills that void pretty well. Although, I would say it's a step above places like KFC. I would consider the restaurant quite similar to kfc. The chicken dishes come with mashed potatoes and coleslaw as a side dish. In the end, I quite liked the place. A meal will probably end up costing 15 to 20 RM per person.

Well anyways, we took some pictures at the place.

Here's me.

Matt with Ching Fern. Matt showing some pearly whites :)

Matt with Ching Fern in a relaxed pose.

Here's me with my arm around a real imaginary girl. She's imaginary, because she isn't there; but at the same time she does exist in real life somewhere in Germany. I didn't randomly choose her and this is me with my arm around her.

.....I think half of you would slap me, and the other half would just look at me funny. Oh..also we shared a bottle of water. XD


Anyhow, the movie, Be Kind Rewind is kinda nice, but gets a bit boring in the end. "Be Kind Rewind" is the name of the video store, it's a cute name because people always forget to rewind their video tapes before returning it to the video rental store. The movie is about these guys who make home movies and pose them as real movies for rental. This was because the movies were blanked out when Jack was magnetized and they had to fix the situation. Jack Black is what really makes the movie work. He's really funny. I think without him, the movie would definitely fail. His impromptu comedy acting is just so hilarious. Movies like this, really bring the actor's skills to the forefront. Anyhow, watch it if you are a Jack Black fan, for his excellent comedy skills.