June 29, 2006

Are we thankful enough.....?

"I'm very tired of work and world cup matches, " said Izham.

I was totally upset of Brazil's winning over the Ghana. It was an upset result of the Franch beating the Spanish as well. But for French, they really deserved it. They played well and the most important thing is, Zidane scored, despite of all the complaints on him.

As a way out, disheartened and upset, I woke up early, grabbed my passport and took my bath. I decided to go to somewhere quite unreachable and ensure me to at least disappear from 'my life', just for a while, overnight is enough.

As I was figuring out where to go and what to do, I was also checking out my available account balance. There are a few places that was in mind, but at last, I pointed out Tanjung Pinang of Indonesia again as my destination. I have a few friends and relatives there, so they may be a good place to go for help for anything.

I bought the two-way tickets from Stulang Laut to Tanjung Pinang for RM132.00 and waited till 11.00AM to board from the jetty. The journey was quite peaceful as I was sick all the way. The sea was quite wavy and i decided to make myself sleepy so that I can sleep.

I arrived at Tanjung Pinang Jetty at around 1.30PM(MYT) as it was just 12.30(WIT) there. As the ferry approached the jetty, i was shocked to see people jumping on the ferry and rushed in to look for people with baggages/luggages to be carried up, and it's not free! They insisted to help carrying the luggage even though the owner doesn't want to. Luckily I only carry a small bag with me.

Like yesterday, an Indonesian lady was screaming to those who were taking her baggages without her approval, even they explained that the baggages would not lost, and they are charging the cost of carrying the baggages in Indonesian Rupiah. Again the lady refused by saying she has no Rupiah notes at all.

"I was thinking of how desperate these people are."

At first, I was scared when looking at these people jumping onto the ferry and rushing in to the ferry like looking for something. I thought it was a checking by the authorities. Sometimes it looks like the ferry was about to be hijacked too. Secondly, they forced people to pay for services they force people to get.

* Tips #1: So don't take too many things with you. I've heard that this happened in all the entrances into Indonesia, seaports or airports.

Then, I went through the immigration and walked to the nearest currency trader. I think their currency has gone up a bit compared to the last time I went there, the currency rate was Rp1.2million for every RM400 but this time it was just Rp1.005million for RM400. Difference of about 200,000 rupiah means nearly RM80 of difference.

* Tips #2: Change your money in Indonesia as Malaysian currency trader will sell Rupiah much higher than in Indonesia.

Then, I went to look out for the Hotel. I decided to stay overnight as my initial plan was just a day visit but my head was too dizzy. I checked in to Lesmina Hotel which charged me only Rp108,000 per night + Rp50,000 deposit, means only RM40 for charges and RM20 deposit. Cheap man! The hotel was quite nice, air conditioned, clean and well beautified bathroom even though it was pretty small, and the most important thing, TV to watch world cup.

I took almost 4 hours to sleep and woke up just to find out that there will be no match tonight! Haiyaaaa!

I went out and look out for dinner. It was really surprising for me as they gave me the order form myself. I was asked to tick what i want to eat and hand them the form back. I ordered Nasi Goreng and Ice Lemon Tea and a glass of Mineral Water (the weather was really hot and dry) which only costed me Rp19,800, converted to MYR was just RM7.92. I made one simple round in the surrounding bazaars and found a DVD shop selling 10 animated movies in one DVD with a price of humbly Rp12,000, which means RM4.80.

Then I went off to bowling. 2 frames was just Rp16,000. Damn man! Can you believe it was just RM6.40 for 2 frames and the shoe rent was free! Then I shopped for some tidbits and went back to my room and after a while, I realized that it's already 6.30AM in the morning, which it's actually 7.30AM Malaysian Time.

I clean up as I'm supposed to meet a contact today. It would be short as the earliest boarding Ferry after the 6.50AM was 10.00AM, their time. So I decided to see the contact in the KFC (they opened quite early) for the breakfast. I went there and order my as usual favourite of Snack plate with 2 piece of chicken, whipped potato and coleslaw but they don't have it whipped potato and coleslaw. So I ordered 2 piece of chicken and pepsi and surprisingly, I was charged nearly of Rp28,000, which was nearly RM11.20. I would say that it was quite expensive.

* Tips #3: Fast food is not cheap in Indonesia.

While I was having my meal, there come a chinese family, with quite a number of people. I saw that they were taking pictures, maybe while waiting for their meals. But what happened was, only one meal was ordered and it was actually the birthday of one of the family members. The rest was just looking.

I told my contact to finish his meal as soon as possible as I'm very disturbed and sad of the situation. KFC is an expensive meal. I cannot stand looking at other kids who were just licking their lips looking at the one and only kid who was enjoying his KFC meal.

While waiting for my Ferry time, I walked around (and I tell you, you won't be able to stand people riding on motorbikes offering you to use their service to send you to any of your destination. Not to mention the van drivers honking you asking the same thing too). I bought myself two buckets of Buah Salak and sit in a Kopitiam (just like those in the old towns, just like i wanted) and had coffee and toasted bread. I counted not less than 15 people walked passing me offering to sell the newspapers which only cost me Rp1000. What's their percentage?

I witnessed how desperate they are doing things for living and how low their standard of living as well.

Are we thankful enough? It's a refreshing thought of being a Malaysian. From that moment, I'm really thankful I'm a Malaysian.

At 10.00AM (their time), I boarded off the jetty with the ferry, plus another Rp50,000 for open ticket confirmation and Rp13,000 for the port tax. I arrived in Malaysia just to find out that I had miscalculated my expenditures.

* Tips #4: There were a lot of poor people there. Don't hesitate to hand them some money. God is the fairest that He will repay you, who knows.

June 27, 2006

The unfair world.. (even in the world cup)

"Hoi.. I'm busy with world cup la.. can't you see...?" *yawn*

This would be the earliest review for the match between Brazil and Ghana ever in the world.

Because the game has not ended yet.

Who said the world is fair?

It was a very good play by Ghana. As I said, they're currently among the best team in the world right now. They play fairly and I don't understand why people labelled them as one of the team with many 'badboys'? Based on what jurisdiction that these people called them as rough, just by referring to the cards they obtained?

That's very wrong. I think they have not watched the game. And if they watched the game, they didn't know what going on. If they know, they didn't know what football is. And if so happen that they know what football is, they didn't play football.

You can tell everyone that you play futsal but do you really play football?

Football is supposedly the game with some tolerable rough level and we play it with the high spirit of sporting. I can say it again as football if you play it nice, just like Ghana!

As I'm writing this review disappointedly, Brazil is leading by 2 goals versus nil by Ghana. Both goals were the results from offsides that were not noted by the linesman.

And the referee was very one-sided too. He noted even a very small offense by the Ghana but he was blindfolded with all the Brazilians offenses.

And if you say Brazil was playing nicely, you are definitely blind too. They were definitely harsh on Ghana because Ghana was incredibly good!

Ghana has it all. They possessed the ball most of the time (and the TV station was lying when they put there Brazil 47%, Ghana 53%, even my mom noticed that too. Ghana is almost 70% and Brazil only 20% because 10% was by the referee :p ).

Ghana had a lot of opportunities to score. They were just not good at it. Brazil was definitely an advantage takers, especially when the linesman did not raise the flag on the offsides and scored the goals while the defenders were waiving their hands to the linesman asking for the offsides rulings.

For me Ghana played it fairly and clean, as most of the offenses noted by the referee for Ghana were very questionable. They play simple basic game of 1-2 passes, and they conquered the ball. The only they lacked was the GOAL SHOOTER. They just need just one person like Ronaldo to the job. Just that!

As for Brazil, they didn't play very well and still.

It would very stressful to watch the rest of the game now. I would still hope that Ghana would be able to beat Brazil because Brazil just not worth it. They defeated others by having people gving side to them, just like the referee and the linesman of tonight's game.

The first time I feel like crying, even though I already know what the result is.. :(

* a humble comment from an experienced football & rugby ex-referee..

June 19, 2006

The world cup after one week.

After a while, after almost a week, only now i managed to convince myself to watch the World Cup games.

Not to mention there's a lot of people asking me tips for betting, based on my rows of winning without losing a single cent, and even without having to watch the games.

I just watched the Brazil-Aussie game and as commented on Astro, a non convincing play by the Brazil.... Why?

Brazil might not make it through, even though if they win most of their games in the group level.

Aussie, despite of their very well-dirty play, is quite a very good and a must respect team instead. Brazil has a lot of lazy asses on the play field and bad defenders.

I'm having two views on this.

1. Brazil was really not on their top form.
2. Paid games.

For both games, even though Brazil won, it was not convincing enough. In the Brazil-Aussie game, Ronaldo was safeguarded by at least 3 players at a time and not to mention there were times that he was surrounded by 5 aussies, just like a cat surrounded by 5 wild dogs, just waiting to tear him apart.

Seriously, they could just tear him like the leopard. Aussie plays really dirty. A lot of fouls by the aussies + the unfair Mexican referee, really doubted me. Why would a mexican referee has got to do with the aussie by siding them?

I may conclude that, a lot of Brasilians foram feridos meramente (were merely injured in portuguese). So, my other conclusion were the Brasilians were not in their top form and they mave have been 'bought' as well.

Another example of a bought game was England vs. Trinidad & Tobago. WHY?

As they keep the DRAW state till almost the end of the game, more and more people has invested on the 0-0 draw result. Instead, it was reported that people lost almost USD780 million of value, all over the world, just for that game, as the result was turned to 2-0 at the end of the game.

Clever Beckham!

Well, I have to mention here that the most fairplay with sporting spirit match was between the Republic of Czech and Ghana, which Ghana won by 2-0. Ghana was just terrifyingly fantastic. The most most beautiful soccer play I've ever seen in this season!

Long live England!

June 16, 2006

Think i've encountered today..

Oh yeah..

I've been very busy, busy enough to keep me off the Net.

Well, today i've encountered a few things like Tanjung Bin Power, and Hua Yang Berhad.

Got the catch?

Tanjung Bin is actually a place in Johor. It's located near to the most southern tip of Asia, which is Tanjung Piai.

And, it's near to my work place too.

Well, what was so significant about this Tanjung Bin is that there's a new independent power plant (IPO) operating there and it would be selling the electricity that they are producing to Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB).

But that has got nothing to do with what i'm trying to tell you guys!

When we're about to reach there, we'll see the signboard Tanjung Bin Power Plant, but it is written this way.

Tanjung Bin Power
Plant

So, at the first glance, I have always seen it as Tanjung Bin Power. I mean, i read it like Ahmad bin Abu or Salim bin Agus. So here we've got Tanjung Bin Power. The son is Tanjung and the father is Power.

So what about Hua Yang Berhad. It's actually a company name (berhad as limited in English). It would read much better if it sounds Hua Yang Sdn. Bhd (Sdn. Bhd is malaysian abbreviation for private limited) but if it reads as Hua Yang Berhad, can your read it as "Saya Yang Cantik?" (Me that is pretty, as "saya" for me, "yang" for that and "cantik" for pretty. ).

Err... got what I mean?

And just now, I just finished watching a nice and sweet movie with Kevin Bacon and Jennifer Aniston starring in it, Perfect Picture. I really love such sweet movies.

I'm getting busier with my work (even though I'm not working). Well, have I tell you about Angau.Com? I spent a lot of time there too.

Interesting..!

June 14, 2006

Instead of being,

Yeah,

Instead of being busy, I tried my best to go to Penang to attend a friend's wedding. Last time, he was my junior in MMU. Mohd. Fazli, or we just called him Mofaz, was like in the family of the constant IRC chatters back in the year of 1997-1998.

So I went up to KL by bus and my brother fetched me at the Puduraya Bus Station. As I reached USJ, I wanted to straight away continue driving to Penang, but it seems like both my companions, Cop and Hemsem were so sleepy. I was told that they wanted to get up by 6.30AM and get moving.

When I woke up, it's already 8.30AM.... Argh.. Tension!

Both of them had already had their bath and we started the journey straight away. We dropped by at one of the R&R and I took my bath while both of them had their breakfast. Continued the journey and we met with Langsuir just after the Penang Bridge. Then we proceed to the wedding at Balik Pulau!

That was me, Hemsem and Langsuir.

Then Mizan and Cop.

Mizan, Langsuir, Me, Mofaz, Cop and Hemsem. I'm really fat now -sigh-.


Then, as my brother's car was yet being serviced, I serviced the car and we proceed to the Titi Kerawang Water Fall. Wasn't that fun (because MALES only).



Then we went to the beach. On our way to the beach, we dropped by at a new dam and we mamaged to take pictures. Then we proceed to the Famous Teluk Bahang.



After the tiring walk along the beach, watching a lot of people enjoying themselves, we went to a Nasi Kandar Restaurant and Magic happened there.

My friends who did not speak in Penang Dialects will have their Nasi Kandar charged at higher price than the local people, like RM5.60 and RM7.50. So, I decided to get help from Joe to take my Nasi Kandar. Yeah, my nasi Kandar was charged only RM3.70. That was ridiculous!

Then, we enjoyed ourselves in the Karaoke before going back to KL. It was Hemsem's turn to drive back to KL. To my surprise, he took only 3 hours from Juru R&R to Subang. Damn fast with my brother's super slow car. Even an old Nissan Datsun 120Y can easily take over the car. Kidding hehehe...

I spent the whole morning sleeping and only went out for an unplanned movie marathon in Mid Valley. My comment of each movie were

7.20PM to 9.20PM - Omen (the same boring story)
9.30PM to 11.15PM - The Benchwarmers (hillarious and full of laughs)
11.30PM to almost 1.15AM - The Cars (enjoyable)

So here I am, back in JB on the next day!

June 9, 2006

Happy Birthday Father..!

My father was safely delivered on 9 June 1952

So today he's 54!



Happy birthday Abah! May god bless you with all the best things in the world, just for you.

Mahathir Berserked again..

I told myself that Mahathir is worth dying for.

I watched the movie where someone who looked like the president has been called to replace the president when the president went coma. Just before the replacement retired the acting, the bodyguard had told him that he would die for the president's replacement, considering how good he was while doing the president replacement job.

A few days back, this blog had been flooded with the wild racist comments, which i do not know where does it comes from. It must have been a friend of mine, Taiko who managed to comment on some racist issue that had been raised by some unthankful human who manage to live and survive in Malaysia.

Is Malaysia that bad, that racist and discriminative?

I don't know, but as far as I'm concern, we're okay. I've got a lot of chinese atudying allies when I was studying. They copy me, I copied them. In business, i'm allying myself with a lot of chinese. They depended on me for supplies, I depended on them for payment.

Recently, Tun Dr. Mahathir (addressed as TDM in some websites) has voiced out his disappointment towards the current Prime Minister, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi (AAB) which he himself has pinpointed to replace him instead of Najib Tun Razak (NTR) who was the highest voted UMNO's Vice President.

Why not? Most of the Mega Projects had been cancelled. Yeah AAB has been doing good by spreading the propaganda that the government was in a very bad deficit while the country's international fund reserves and bonds were so a lot! (I was working within one of the anchor bank with the most active treasury counter, and i was doing the bank's treasury department so i knew some some, a little a little, well it's very confidential, I'm still a good guy ya know).

Unbelievably, people believed those craps.

As easy as if AAB continued TDM projects, he gained nothing, as people will say it's Mahathir's projects and worse, he gain nothing in terms of monetary. Why? It wasn;t his project.

People (who supported AAB like hell) told me that when TDM leave his office, The money was zero. Idiot! Then how did AAB manage to pay the government staffs wages? FYVOI (for your very own information), government invested in a lot of FDs and Bonds.

Why would TDM leave cash money freely for the country? No wonder AAB said government has no money because all the money had been transformed to non-cash forms. The FD interests were used to pay the wages, to support all the projects that has been planned by TDM and AAB would have just continue the projects, as easy as that.

So should i say TDM is not stupid?

And no wonder AAB desperately sold Telekom's shares to Temasik. Why Temasik eh? Because only Temasik is willing to pay the high price of the shares. The share money is easier to liquidate compared to the Bonds and FDs. And no wonder that AAB cannot control the petrol price as well.

I have to admit that TDM leave the office with the sense that he doesn't want the money to be easily accessible by anyone even the PM.

Should i say again TDM is very clever?

Well, AAB had opened my eyes since 2000. Since then, I know he's not as sincere as what people see. Yeah, we all know and still knew, AAB used to betray UMNO. That's the time when he was not in power. Remember AAB, u personally owe me one. See you in the afterlife.

Once a traitor, forever a traitor.

So imagine who he can betray if he's the prime minister?

* I'm all for you Tun.

World Cup....!

Yeah,

World Cup is about to begin.

Human's activity is expected to be slowing down by 67%.

Me as usual, all for ENGLAND! And people were saying that ENGLAND would champion the competition this time.

Yeah dun tell me Brazil is great. We all know Brazil is the greatest of all but the bookies are the gods in these matches.

If you might want to think about it, why the hell should those teams go playing for friendly matches instead of resting while waiting for the big game to start?

Well, i just wanna tell you guys that i've already know certain match's results.

Who's up for bet :p

* I'm gonna miss the first match. Will be on the way to KL before departing to Penang for Mofaz's wedding.

June 6, 2006

I'm not sure if this is Malaysia..

What? Is this Malaysia?

Have you ever been on any public transportation lately. What's the common view?

Guess... guess..

come on.. give it a guess...

argh.. you guys gave up so easily liao.. kan nineh..

Okay. It may not happen only on most public transportation but i guess it's happening everywhere in Malaysia now. No matter it's Kuala Lumpur, Ipoh, Penang, Johor Bahru, Melaka, Seremban or even at small towns like Taiping, Kuala Kangsar or even Pontian.

Try to take a walk at places with a lot of people around you. Tell me what's the common view.

So I think i may have concluded thought reasons for these problems...
  1. Why malaysians were not keen to use the public transport
  2. Why malaysians pick their work properly
  3. Why malaysians choose to stay at home rather than going out most of the time
  4. Why it is very dangerous to let your children playing without proper guadiance
  5. Why the country was not as safe as before
If we compare our country now and 20 years ago, i would still remember how harmonious we were even we were living in town.

It's not something new. It's also happening in other countries like the USA, UK and all other countries with this common view. It's very related to the crime rate.

Would u guy still give it a guess?

June 5, 2006

Gangster Berlesen.

Masa sedang naik teksi di KL, tiba2 ada sebuah kereta peronda polis bergerak secara beriringan dengan teksi yang saya naiki. Pemandu teksi pun memberitahu yang mereka nak 'pow' pendatang.

Mata kedua-dua polis itu galak melihat-lihat ke dalam teksi saya untuk melihat-lihat sekiranya saya ini pendatang tanpa izin.

Saya lihat kembali sambil mengangkat kepala menanyakan 'Apa hal?'

Lalu mereka beredar menuju ke teksi di hadapan saya dan bergerak beriringan lagi. Kelihatannya mereka sudah menemui mangsa. Mereka himpit teksi itu dan membunyikan horn polis meminta mereka berhenti.

Sayang saya tidak sempat mengambil gambar. Kecewa tak harapkan pagar, pagar balik yang pau kita.

Inilah yang dinamakan 'Gangster Berlesen'.

* Sekarang ni dalam kerajaan memang ramai orang2 macam ni. Ambil kesempatan di atas kelemahan orang lain..

Stilll Considerate Malaysian Are.....

Last week was quite a busy week for me. Starting from doing the inspection, registration and assignment of the old number to the new car, which i have to wait until thursday to get the car.

The rest of the day in the week, i went busy with the work that I had to do all round Gelang Patah, Tanjung Pelepas, Pontian and Tanjung Bin. Getting all the machineries in by Wednesday and getting the work started on Friday.

It was such a hectic week.

The weekend was not bad. I managed to show up in two weddings, despite of my hectic schedule. My family went back to Seremban as well as there are a lot of other weddings goin on, plus they drove back the new car as to do the running in and I may have to drive it back to JB later.

It's wedding fiesta!

After the wedding, I took a cab to the Larkin Bus Station, gambling my luck to get a bus to Seremban.

Too bad!

All of the tickets going to Seremban ran out. If there is one, it's way too expensive. Instead of RM19.90, i had to pay RM 35, for they said the Super VIP seating and what not. The super VIP to KL is just RM25 with the Causeway Link. SO instead of going to Seremban, I took a bus to KL (which the ticket's price was still expensive) and get my sleep on the bus.

In the middle of the journey, there was an accident involving a motorcyclist and a truck.

The motorcyclist did not survive in a very odd way which he was still hodling his bike.

As I woke up a lil bit late the next day, I took my lunch and get a cabbie to the Puduraya Bus Station. As my father informed me about some changes in his plan, I decided to arrive in Seremban quite late.

It turns to be really late!

I wanted to take the express bus to Seremban. What happened was, the queue was way too long. I don't know what going on. So I decided to take the regular bus to Seremban. Even though it's a regular and very bad looking, thank god, it's air conditioned! As I sat on the sit, I felt dizzy with all the other people's smelly odours and fell asleep.

The next thing happened was, the bus arrived in Seremban but it took me 2 and a half hours to reach there. It's already 4 P.M.

And now my father has reached my Kampung in Melaka. I gotta get there as well. So I took another regular bus from Seremban to Tampin, a small town near my Kampung.

I must tell you, it was such a surviving experience.

People were rushing in to get seats for themselves. When I was about to get in, people intentionally pushing others for i can't see any reason why. Not to say that I'm very good citizen but it's such a waste of energy to push other people just to get on the bus.

Looks like they were having a lot of fun doing it.

So I got on the bus and standing. It was hot and smelly. I myself smell like a cow.

It was fun. It's been quite sometime for me not to take the public transportation outside of KL. There's a lot of good sweaty for free antivities you can enjoy. Walking to the bus station, standing in the middle of the hot sunshine, enjoying the sauna ambience in the bus before it's moving and the worries of not standing the very nice mixture of odours in the bus. I sweat a lot man!

Then the bus started moving. As I would see, the bus was the connector of the sub urban areas to get to town, to get their necessities. It wasn't that bad but for those who can't afford to have their own transport, it's all they got! Somekind of a charity, there were some people who were allowed to get the ride for free.

There were these one indian lady with 3 kids. She was not only allowed free ride with her shildren, the people were kind enough to make way for her and hold her children for safety.

I was touched. To the very.

(pardon my intentional grammar ;p )

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