Hung Fever

After two entries about William Hung aka Hong Kong's Ricky Martin, I had decided not to write about him anymore but this guy is amazing, a phenomenon. And for those who think he's a joke, he's the one laughing (with his sexy shining teeth) all the way to the bank. His debut album, Inspiration is now at number 34 on Billboard's Top 200 and number one on their Indy album charts for the 2nd week in a row with more than 38,000 in sales.

Petaling Street Site Down

Just found out that the Petaling Street Project web site is down. I suspect it was due to the enormous traffic it received every day. Anyway hope Aizuddin finds a solution. We should all give him some credit for carrying out such a project in the first place and that too for FREE.

Oh yah! I received a few queries about Gmail. Well! it turns out that its not available for everyone. I guess I am among the first lucky few to try it out (due to the fact that I am an active blogger). So far so good.

By the way, I am looking for a simple and free service which allows you to put up short updates on your website without editing the entire site. Something like the tag board but the difference is that only authorised people can add to it. If you know of such a service, please let me know.

Gigantic E-Mail

I just signed up for Gmail, the much hyped new FREE e-mail service. So! What new? Ok, just read on.
Before I go on about Gmail, let me tell you about my other e-mail accounts. At present, I have 7 e-mail accounts. Many people ask me why I need so many. I still don't have a satisfactory answer. My first FREE e-mail account was with Hotmail. Of course you know by now, that this is the World's most popular e-mail service, which when I signed up, was still owned by Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith (the original co-founders). I still have the account and it's great because I can also use the MSN messenger too with the same account. Actually I have two hotmail accounts, one for friends and another, which I use for subscriptions. However Hotmail only offers 2 MB of storage space and you can send messages up to 1 MB each, including attachments.
I also have a Yahoo! account. I started it to take advantage of all the other Yahoo! features such as Geocities!, Yahoo groups and of course the Yahoo messenger. This service offers free 6MB space, has spam protection and virus scanning for email attachments. I also have a limited mailbox account with a web host where I host my own personal web site. I haven't used it except for some online subscriptions.
The problem with all the above free mail accounts was that the inbox would get clogged up soon and I would either have to delete all the old mail or get extra space (at an extra cost).
I also have an active Jaring e-mail account, which I don't use much anymore and of course my official purposes only 'office e-mail'. Now coming to the new free e-mail service I signed up for - Gmail. The only thing different is that it offers a gigantic, never before head of, 1000 megabytes (1 gigabyte) of free storage. Even my office account doesn't offer that much. According to them you'll never need to delete another message again (which might be a bit dangerous for some people. It’s from the people who brought you Google, the most popular search engine and is still in the Beta testing stage. Anyway, I am taking it for a test ride now.

Trip to Genting

Went up to Genting Highland this weekend with my wife, her brother and Rahil. Two other friends, including Hardy (who makes regular comments on my tag board) joined us later. Since there were 6 of us, we rented an apartment there (Apartment Ria), which was quite reasonable at RM109 for a 2-bedroom apartment.
My wife was able to get us seats for the “New age circus” Fantastica. The 90 minutes show was amazing with mind blowing acrobatic acts. Hardy got to join in too when he was pulled up to the stage with 3 other guys to do some crazy act. Really funny. Despite the loud music blasting from their sound system, Rahil went off to sleep in the beginning of the act and woke up right at the end when the pyrotechnics went off. That’s what I call good timing.
It was nice to sleep without a fan or aircon and feel “natural” cold weather after such a long time.

Golf Club Membership But No Golf

In my last post I mentioned something about playing golf. Yes! I am a new convert to this game and am on my way to getting addicted to it. My wife is a bit worried, as she has heard of Golf widows - wives neglected by guys addicted to golf. I don't think she has anything to worry about.

With some of my colleagues' active support I joined a golf club, its nothing fancy and the monthly rates are quite reasonable. However, I had not put the total investment into consideration - a good pair of golf shoes (about RM150), a golf set (about RM1000 for a good second hand kit), etc., etc. At least I have got a few T-shits and a golf glove (which I received as a present).

In the end I have a golf club membership but I don't even have a golf set because I have so many other monetary commitments. So it’s rented and borrowed clubs for me for now. Anybody who has a unused set in their storeroom can donate it to someone who is willing to put it to good use – Me. ;-)

Now I can see myself hitting the ball pass the 200m mark.

First Visit to Taiping

Drove down to Taiping this weekend with my wife, Rahil and in-laws. We went there to attend my wife's cousin's wedding. The nikah ceremony went off Ok and Mi (cousin's nick name) went through the whole upacara akad nikah (solemnization) in one go. I have heard that some guys had to repeat the whole "Aku terima nikah ......"a few times before they could get it right. Now that they are husband and wife, I am wondering how they are going to settle one problem. Well, Mi's wife is working in Penang while he's working in KL. Guess, they have to do some travelling for a while.

Mi, welcome to the 'Weekend husband club'.

Rahil sleeping in the car

OK! about the town. Taiping about three and half hours drive from KL and about one hour from Ipoh (that is, if you are going at the specified speed limit of 110 KM/hr). In case you didn't know, this quaint and peaceful town with a long history is situated in the state of Perak. Formerly known as Klian Pauh, it was renamed Taiping to commemorate the end of the Larut War in 1874. Taiping comes from the Chinese word Tai-Peng which means ETERNAL PEACE. By the way Taiping is also the wettest place in Malaysia and it rained everyday we were there.

We stayed at the Taiping Inn at the Bukit Jana Golf & Country Club. It is part of MK Land Holding’s Bhd and is situated at the foothills of Bukit Larut. The room was comfy with a real great view of the landscaped golf course. However, I felt that the room rates were a bit steep at RM160 nett. We didn’t get any welcome drink nor free breakfast voucher. They didn’t even have toothpaste. I guess the main attraction is the 18-hole golf course. I would have loved to play a round but I didn’t get the chance.

We roamed around the town a bit including the lake gardens. I would have loved it if we had more time to see more of this town including the much advertised night safari at Taiping Zoo. However, I am working on Sunday (Yes! Sunday is a working day in Kedah). Maybe next time.

Gangsterism

Our newspapers are still carrying articles about gangsterism among the youth and I was able to experience it first hand last weekend.
I was on my way back to KL when the bus I was in, stopped to pick up some passengers from Ipoh. Many passengers got down and a few got up but the bus was still half empty. As we restarted on the journey to KL, I noticed this guy (must be in his early 20s). He was asking for something from girls sitting around. This guy was with another smaller kid. I noticed that one girl sitting on the other row beside me, giving him her handphone. After a while, the guy gave her back the handphone and there was a short exchange (which I couldn't hear). Suddenly the girl got up and sat in the seat right behind me. I didn't think much about that incident and went to sleep thinking that it was none of my business.
As we were nearing KL, I saw the guy getting up and going towards the back. After a while, one of my colleagues (a lady) who was on her way back to KL too, suddenly came beside me and told me that the guy was trying "to kacao' the girl. I looked back and noticed that the girl was looking really scared and the guy was now in the seat behind her. I am not much of a hero and I was a bit apprehensive as that guy had a friend sitting up front. Anyway, I just stood up and asked "ada problem??" and on receiving no reply, repeated it in English. My friend was whispering " be careful!, be careful!" all the time. The girl started to tell me something in tears, which I couldn't really understand. Like all bullies who prey on people who are weaker then them, this guy turned out to be a coward and quickly slinked to the back after a few deadly eye-to-eye stares. I told the girl to complain to the bus driver if the guy troubled her again and he can drive straight to the police station. There were no problems after that. The two guys quickly got down from the bus and walked away after reaching Pudu station. They didn’t even look back but they were walking very slowly so I thought we might have a chance to catch them and teach them a lesson. We escorted the girl to the Police pondok, which unfortunately turned out to be unoccupied at that moment.
The girl later told me that the guy wanted to borrow her phone to make an emergency call and so she gave it to him. After making the call, the guy started to make stupid and obscene remarks for no reason (I guess to intimidate her). Later on he was pulling her bag from behind her seat.
I was really angry with the other passengers the bus. I guess those in the front were not really aware. However, there was one guy sitting on the seat right beside the girl and he was acting as if nothing happened. There was also another lady with her daughter who remained silent. I guess this is one reason why these gangsters can get away with such acts – our lack of action when it happens. We will raise and hue and cry – only after the tragedy has happened but prefer to turn a blind eye- “its none of our business”, while it is happening. However, this might have happed to family member or even to me and I am willing to bet that only one in a thousand would have come to our aid. Really scary, don’t you think?