Accident

I witnessed an accident this Friday. We were just coming out of the mosque in Jitra after prayers when a car came flying past and then I heard a thump at the back. I quickly turned around and saw someone flying. The car had hit another guy who had just come out of the mosque. For a while everyone was immobile then several people swung into action. They quickly took the guy who was lying unconscious to the side of the road. As far as I could see there was no blood, which might be worse as there might be internal bleeding. The hospital was just nearby but the problem was that the car was going the opposite direction and there was no way the car could turn around and carry the guy there.

Two things really made me angry. One was the stupid attitude of the driver. What were you thinking driving like a mad man among the crowd? Another was the attitude of the people. Many were more concerned in driving away first rather than help the person, creating chaos in the front of the mosque. I would have helped but our car was parked about 100 meters away and there was no way we could have gone back in that traffic jam and carry him away. None of the cars going in the direction of the hospital stopped even though they noticed that there had been an accident and a guy was lying unconscious.

It is quite ironical that this happened just after the Friday prayers. Did they even listen to the sermon? I wonder whether prayers have become just a ritual and we are not really concerned with humanity or social service. However, I guess hope is not lost. Some people took the initiative to carry the man aside and even stop the car.. I think they finally got him into one of the cars. Hope he survived.

Anyway, if you had been following my blog you would remember that I had exchanged my car with my wife’s. It’s about 1 year older and has a number of scars from its life in KL. On the side is a nice bump and some letters on the number plate are broken. The first was my fault. It happened when I was reversing in Mid Valley Mega Mall. However, I have no idea how some of the letters on the front number plate were partly broken.

You will notice that I am not blaming my wife. ;-) Unlike some ladies I know, she is a great driver. She is an even better driver then I am. However, she has been involved in two accidents, which required a major overhaul of the cars she was driving. However, in both cases, it was not her fault. I am not being cheeky. It was really NOT her fault. In the first accident, another girl driver lost control and just banged into her on the drivers side. Fortunately it was another Perodua Kancil. I can’t image what would have happened if it were a Volvo or a Mitsubishi Storm. The second accident involved the car I am now driving. It was a head on collision. A drunken old man, who was in a hurry hit her head on and at that time she was pregnant with Rahil. Fortunately, in both cases she escaped badly shaken but without any injuries.

Shows that even if you are careful, and at no fault of yours, accidents do happen because of others.

Now Yahoo!

A million thanks to Google. You must be wondering why I am praising Google when the title of this post refers to Yahoo! Well you will understand as you read on.

It was Google who created a rumble in the "free" e-mail world by offering the unheard of gigantic 1GB storage space. Read my older post. Many others soon followed including Spymac, Lycos and aventuremail.com.

The latest to jump into the bandwagon is Yahoo! which is now offering 100MB of storage for its free e-mail service. This is ten times the old storage space. MSN is yet to increase the storage space for its free service (2 MB only) but I think they will have to join in or they will start loosing their old loyal customers, like me, who have been Hotmail users even before Microsoft took over.

Taking a look at the other offers, Aventuremail.com offers 2 GB storage but they have closed down the free registrations. The 1 Gigs of storage space offered by Lycos is not free. Which means that Gmail is still the best. The only drawback is that Gmail is still in its test stage and is limited to invited users only.

UPDATE 29/6/04
Microsoft is planning to increase its free Hotmail inbox storage to 250MB soon. It will also allow larger attachments upto 10MB.

MAS Against Subang Move

Continuing my previous post. Just read yesterday that the MAS employees union were against the move to make Subang Airport a budget airline hub and also against Air Asia taking over their domestic routes.

Maybe I am ok with the later. However, on behalf of airline passengers I would like to point out that it is definitely not a step back for the airline industry and in fact making use of perfectly good facilities which have been left idle. KLIA can still be the International hub and MAS can continue to use it for their domestic flights if they want. I don't care as I don't fly with them much anymore apart from official trips paid by our organisation.

This shows that they are also aware that a move to reopen Subang airport would mean more people migrating to Air Asia from MAS. From my viewpoint, that's good! As a consumer we want choice and we will choose those which can offer a better deal and of course easy access is one of them.



Phuket Airport

I think we should start collecting signatures to support the move to reopen the Sultan Abdul Aziz Shah Subang airport.

Subang Airport Revival

Just heard this through the grapevine. There has been a proposal to make Subang Jaya as a regional hub for the budget airlines. Praying that this is true and I am keeping my fingers crossed too. I can remember those days when getting to the airport look a mere 10-15 minutes drive from my residence.

I went there sometime back and the whole place was in a mess and looked like some ancient ruins, apart from a few places which have been taken over by some companies. A waste of perfectly good facilities. If this proposal comes through, they sure are going to have a tough time renovating and cleaning the whole place. I guess a few million in contracts.

I don't know why they didn't think of it earlier. I guess its because they never expected the budget/ low frill/ low cost airlines (Air Asia) to take off. It has and even gone on to make a profit. According to the reports, some of the local routes covered by MAS will be gradually taken over by Air Asia. I am sure Air Asia is also looking forward to this plan to develop Subang as a hub, which will mean even more peasengers get to fly.

The cost and time taken to get to KLIA was one important factor which really turned us off from flying to local destinations even at a cheap cost. Take this instance, where we dropped off my parents at KLIA. We were still on the way back when they informed us that they had already reached Kota Bharu.

What Colour is that?

Well! Its time again for one of our favourite pastimes - Proton bashing time. No! Not this time. Only some personal observations - maybe related to my personal taste.

Don't get me wrong. Actually I am among the strongest supporters of the Malaysian car company and both my wife and I, drive Proton Wiras and am quite satisfied apart from some minor service and parts quality problems. However, I hope that our (constructive) criticisms will be heeded by the top management so that we have a Worldclass auto company that we are proud of. One which can compete equally with the South Korean cars (forget the Auto Giants).

Anyway, I noticed that there are already several Gen.2 on the road. I don't know why but all those I had seen were of only one colour - turquoise blue known commercially as Angel blue. That is strange considering that Blue is my favourite colour. I don't know about you but somehow that colour looks really bad on the Gen.2. We were driving down the road and my wife noted "what a horrible colour". When we got closer we noticed that it was a Gen.2. It may look good on the Kelissa or some cute looking car but on the Gen.2 it looks hmmmm what should I say. It up to your personal taste but the Gen.2 is not supposed to look cute. It is meant to be sporty, dashing. Maybe a darker shade of blue would have been better. Personally I prefer the Dune Beige and Energy Orange colours.

By the way, have you visited the Proton web site. They have a new design and regular news updates which are UPDATED regularly. Quite refreshing.

Weekend Husband

Rahil is growing so fast and I am quite sad. No! I am not sad she's growing up fast but the fact that I am away from her and my wife most of the time means that I miss some of the important landmarks in her development. For example, she started sitting up by herself day before yesterday and I was not there. I also missed the day when she started crawling. Thank God for Digital Cameras. At least I can see the pics.



I guess I am not alone, the number of couples living separately have risen drasticaly in the recent years. In my Department alone 3 of us are living separate from our spouses. On the same boat is my Head of Department, whose husband works in KL. Another collegue's wife is working in Johor. However, I think he has succeeded in geting her transferred to Kedah. One of my friends work here while her husband is working in Johor. Their kid stays with her mother in Seremban. The sad fact is that they can all be together only once or twice in a month and that too for a couple of days only. This has given rise to the sad term "weekend husband/wives".

I am not really sure what the effect are on family life but I am sure it can't be good. I am married and am still living like a bachelor (and no that's not good). The only positive side is that we really look forward to the weekends when we can be together with our spouses and it's like a honeymoon every time ;-)

Only in Kedah 1

Noticed this interesting sign near my house today. It says "Danger" in 5 different languages, namely, Malay, English, Chinese, Tamil, and Thai. You can find this only in Kedah. If you are illiterate than there is this symbol consisting of 3 lightning bolts. I thought the international sign for danger is a human skull with crossed bones (like a pirate sign).