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A weblog about life / politics/ impressions of Malaysia through the eyes of a foreigner




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Monday 30 June, 2008
25 Jumada al-Thanni 1429AH

A weblog by Albert. From my home in Yan Kedah. I reside here since 1992. See here to know where Yan is.

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Blog category: all categories. - January 2006
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 Gong Xi Fa Cai - by @lbert
  Posted:27/01/2006 - 11:33 - in category: general
Wishing all chinese, happy new year, and everybody else happy holidays.
Drive carefully!!!!!
Enjoy.

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 School signboards - by @lbert
  Posted:26/01/2006 - 09:58 - in category: general
I saw a picture in the NST about schools having giant signboards to welcome new school children.
What do these billboards cost? Probably thousands, can't they better spent that money on education than on these useless billboards? Afterall they (mis)use the taxpayers money!

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 5 day week for banks - by @lbert
  Posted:26/01/2006 - 09:53 - in category: general
The banks got their 5 days working week.
So when you are off, the bank is closed. That is the way a service industry should function!
Look in Europe, they started with Saturdays off for the banks, and now..... they are open half days on Saturday.
Why, well simply because they are a service industry, like the postoffice and so on.
For transactions they will charge a small fee on Saturdays, but at least you can go.
And here in Malaysia they even don't know what the word service industry means.
Go to a bank at lunch time (when people are off) long queues at the banks, why...because their staff is having lunch hour too!
Mind you they have never heard of having their lunch hour after or before the general public has theirs. And this applies to many other service related industries, they simply give a shit about their customers, just take a number and wait till youdrop dead.
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 Ringgit keeps on sinking - by @lbert
  Posted:25/01/2006 - 09:54 - in category: politics Malaysia
In the past few weeks the Ringgit keeps on sinking. It seems BNM is persistent in protecting the big boys (tenaga and so on) instead of protecting the country.
The Ringgit goes down and down as the US$ goes into the drain.
We are almost on RM1- to 10 baht and RM1 to 2500 Rupiah. That is roughly 15% down to our neighbors.
Would this mean that Thailand has done 20% better than Malaysia since the enonomic crises? While they were hit double hard!
And imported inflation keeps on rising through the roof!
Any brains left in Bank Negara? Well i doubt...
And than saying that export figures are rising and rising, yes all inflation figures as the ringgit is down down down.
Stop comparing the Ringgit to the US$ as the US$ is going to sink further and further, another 10-20% would be no surprise.
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 Flip flop flip flop - by @lbert
  Posted:23/01/2006 - 10:35 - in category: politics Malaysia
That is the sound of the Malaysian government.
Ministers make a memorandum a withdraw it because is pisses off the boss.
I assume they have been thinking before they made this memorandum, so if the boss wants you to withdraw it, than you say no.
Conclusion: either they have not been thinking or they give a shit about their voters and only care about their own asses.
I only know that if this happened in Europe the government would go home, and there would be new elections.
But in bolehland logic does not apply.
You retract and semua ok lah. All under the carpet again.
Lets see what happens to the report of the nude squat commission. There are already voices that say nude squatting will not be abolished.
Malaysia is lucky it has its natural resources, because its leaders are really in a sad sad state.
UMNO seems to think it rules this country together with Utusan Malaysia. It is high time that BN is abolished and that parties have to negotiate with other parties again to form a government. BN lastet to long and party leaders are to comfortable with it.
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 Do you Google? - by @lbert
  Posted:20/01/2006 - 11:58 - in category: general
The Guardian had an item on Google.Guardian had an item on Google and its market capitalization.
They write:
Shares in Google keep marching higher - they are now five times the $85 offer price when the company joined the market 18 months ago. The brokerage firm Bear Stearns earlier this month lifted its price target for the next year from $360 to $550. ....The market currently values the business at more than $130bn.

Mind you this US$ 130 billion!! is 62% of Malaysia's GDP in 2000! And bigger probably than the value of all companies on the KLSE, except Petronas.
That for a single company with no visible assets (except their offices), this is amazing in one word. It really proves that using brains can really pay of big. They have around 4100 employees as of June 2005. What is the value of 1 employee??? Even Petronas cannot beat this. Their 2005 profits US$ 1.26 billion.
They attract 380 million unique users every month to their search engines. All in all it shows there is really money in the www.
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 Who rules this country? - by @lbert
  Posted:20/01/2006 - 10:29 - in category: politics Malaysia
The Federal Territory Religious Department (Jawi) wants to go ahead with its snoop squad, against the Cabinets decision.
Jawi public relations officer Idris Hussein said it was not given the opportunity to explain to the Government the purpose of the units formation.
This is the bloody limit, this Taliban officer openly defying a unanimous decision by the Cabinet! Why is this Taliban Club called Jawi not dismanteled? They cause trouble after trouble this bunch of overzealous idiots.
Really remains my question ' who rules Malaysia'.........
But than in Malaysia semua boleh, semua ok...
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 Fast Track - by @lbert
  Posted:18/01/2006 - 10:07 - in category: TV
Last night i watched Fast Track where Datuk Munir was having an interview with the chairman of Suhakam.
Datuk Munir in many occasions kept on firing shots in order to get a proper answer.
But the Suhakam chairman was weighing his words on a gold scale, and did not want to give a personal vision on the matters brought up. Especially the part on the various police reports was interesting.
It show the arrogance of the royal malaysian police, who accepts the report, and the quickly throws it in a drawer to let it gather dust.
They do not care about all the reports, 90% of the advises is never implemented.
This is sad, really sad.
Anyway Datuk Munir showed that there is still much to wish for in Malaysia.
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 Class Justice - by @lbert
  Posted:13/01/2006 - 22:45 - in category: general
I heard today a guy was convicted to 1 day jail and a fine of 2000 ringgit for stealing a drink packet in a supermarket.
This i call an outrageous punishment, real class justice.
If he would have stolen 1 million + than he probably would go scott free.
So much for justice......the guy was probably not a datuk.
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 Vegy through the roof... - by @lbert
  Posted:13/01/2006 - 01:33 - in category: general
Vegetable prices went through the roof lately.
Of course its almost Chinese New Year, so keep on jacking.
And than our bow-tie minister keeps on telling to keep on buying local produce. He must be nuts!
More import, vegetable prices in Indonesia are a fraction of what they here dare to charge.
Sample: tomatoes 80-100 sen a kilogram! Here 4.00 RM. Sawi, daun bawang the same.
Even Thailand produces a lot cheaper.
That prices go up this high is ridiculous, and its high time that this inactive government gets active.
Malaysia is getting one of the most expensive countries in S.E. Asia where cost of living is concerned, compared to average income.
Dr. Zetti needs a new calculator for inflation calculations, in a few years time almost everything went up by 30-40%!
Is that 3% inflation Dr. Zetti?
High time that this over populated cabinet really starts working, instead of bickering and fooling.
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 Free cigarettes..... - by @lbert
  Posted:11/01/2006 - 14:27 - in category: general
Villagers cannot keep the free find of cigarettes, clothing and processed tiger prawns they found near beaches in Seberang Takir, Merang and Penarik in Terengganu.
This according to the Customs Department director general Datuk Abdul Rahman Abdul Hamid.
This because some containers with goods washed ashore.
Wow, he expects that the people will return the things to him........because duty is not paid. Nothing is paid its free for the finders.
What he probably can get back is the cigarette smoke and the kulit udang.
The clothing you can find at the next pasar malam.
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 What freedom is left now? - by @lbert
  Posted:08/01/2006 - 09:07 - in category: general
TV3, NTV7 and TV8 and the disfunct Channel 9 are now all in the hands of Media Prima another sticky finger of UMNO + rakan2.
This is a great progress for press freedom in Malaysia, now all channels on local TV are UMNO controlled, so long live the free newsgathering.
The deputy PM defended the move by China Press to axe 2 people with something like 'they should learn not to bring the country in discredit'.
Well who brought the country in discredit? Wasn't that the Royal Malaysian Police? They were the once having nude squatting!
What happened actualliy to the investigation which was finished long time ago, and what happened to the Royal Police Investigation report?
Yes of course all under Noh Omars carpet, and again a PM that seems to be powerless, if not to say useless. Than the Moorty case.
Well it was a brilliant start of 2006, Malaysia Boleh made headlines again international and really 'lifted' the image of Malaysia to super negative. Go on like this and more investors will run........
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 Holy cows...... - by @lbert
  Posted:04/01/2006 - 14:00 - in category: general
Cars...cars...everybody wants a holy cow.
End of the 1990's Malaysia was having roughly 5.2 million cars on the roads.
This increased in 5 years time to around 7.7 million (source autoworld)
Out of the increase 72.000 are so called 'asoc' cars, 4 wheel drive vehicles for non commercial use.
Asoc is the term they use for these cars in Europe.
A-social cars, they use to much petrol are to big, and take up twice the parking space of a normal car.
Some European cities dont even allow them in their centres.
7.7 million cars with an average length of 3.5 meters is 27000 km of parking space.
Imagine that if all the cars in malaysia were parked in one line they would span 27000/966 is roughly 28 times the north-south highway (966 km)

The above + the growth figure, lead to the conclusion that this is simply unsustainable.
Every new highway Samy Vellu opens or any elevated crossing opened will just mean moving the jam to another place.
The only solution is real public transport (the double track rail system is 15 years to late)
Real means reliable, efficient and affordable.
City centers should be closed for trafic Singapore style, because you have to force people out of their holy cows.

Cars should no longer be a status symbol, in Europe/US they are not for more than 25 years already, they are a means of transportation, no more than that.
At present loan rates for cars are ridiculous, 7 years finance for something that is a heap of rust after 5-6 years!
A few hundred downpayment and you got a car....figure that out.
But Proton must survive, so cheap loans are pushed through your throat, well wait till the interest goes up.....
Than you will see a real total collaps of the auto market, where even a second hand one has no value anymore.

Dont believe? Well better do....American interest will go up with several percentage points in 2006, because they are actually bankrubt.
Europe will also follow, so Malaysia will be forced too!
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 Islam Hadhari failing?? - by @lbert
  Posted:04/01/2006 - 12:24 - in category: politics Malaysia
The International Herald Tribune featured a very interesting article by Philip Bowring about Malaysia called 'Defending Malaysias diversity'

I quote the last piece of his article here:
Unless Malaysia's prime minister tackles the social gap between Muslims and non-Muslims, it will continue to grow, whatever the claims of tourist brochures about Malaysian multiculturalism. Capital will continue to exit the country, and Abdullah's vision of Islam Hadhari will be stillborn.

The whole article can be found here.
This is a must read article!
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 Again...punish the messenger - by @lbert
  Posted:03/01/2006 - 11:06 - in category: politics Malaysia
China press was given a show cause letter because 'it overstepped the boundaries' in the case of the nude squat controversy.
It was given because it indentified the victim as a chinese national, can you think of bigger crap?
This proves again that there is absolutely no press freedom in this country.
Secondly ministers and parlementarians can overstep any boundary, they can make statements deny them tomorrow, tell you to f**k of out of Malaysia if you dont like it and so on. This all goes unpunished.
The China Press highlighted the nude squat case, and whether the victim was Chinese, Malaysian, or from Azarbyjan is irrelevant!!
The police action was highlighted, but that is now slowly sweeped under the carpet again, as with any other case the goverment is involved.
So it seems that 2006 will bring no change to it all, the goverment remains like the 3 monkeys. With a PM who remains quiet whatever happens. Nice start of the year...
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