New Year Wishes

This has been quite an eventful year. The new year is just 1 and a half hours away. Eagerly counting down the minutes, just me and my wife. The kids are already sleeping.

It's amazing because this is the first time in 4 years, since our marriage, that we are spending a New Year's eve together.

Anyway, here's wishing all visitors to the ah ok lah blog, a very, very different, eventful, prosperous, healthy, fantastic, wonderful, joyous, awesome, plentiful, brilliant......

Saddam Executed

Saddam Hussein was hanged to death at around 6am Iraqi time (3am GMT) at a secure facility in northern Baghdad for "crimes against humanity". Read the BBC news here.

It's no surprise that most dictators end this way but somehow, I feel that in this case, justice was not served.

The purported reason for going to war against Saddam and Iraq, the WMD's, were never found and according to this report, the US Government knew from the start. So was there any other reason?

Why wasn't he tried by a special International Tribunal like in the case of Slobodan Milošević.

If Saddam had not got out of hand and invaded Kuwait, he would have probably remained the CIA's "best friend in the middle east" but as we all know, he grew too big for his own good.

I was talking to this Iraqi friend (who's now a British citizen) and according to him, "Iraq was bad under Saddam. Now it is 100 times worse".

Tags: CIA Iraq Saddam Hussein

Roti Chanai eat all you can

Finally got roti chanai and we had it today for breakfast, lunch, tea and still have some left over in the fridge. Read my previous post here in case you are wondering what I am on about.

Although it looked more like chapati to me at first, it began to look more like the roti chanai I am familiar with after heating up.

I also cooked dhal curry as the side dish and it was not that bad. I took some pictures but forgot to download them, maybe later.

Need to get some sleep now. Going over to some houses for Eid and of course for more Malaysian foooooood.

Tags: Eid Dhal roti chanai

Running around in chilly Chicago

Have you checked out the latest PayPerPost Postie Patrol clip #3 in Chicago?

Postie Robyn is given a number of tasks to do using the HP gear provided. In the video, she sets out to achieve all these tasks in below zero temperature plus chilly wind. I was actually shivering just looking at the video as she makes a snow angel (I think that's what she was trying to do) by lying on the snow and moving her arms around.

The best part comes last and I went Wow! as I saw the prizes she won. Yeah! Robyn, that was great and you deserve it.

I won't tell you what she won. See the clip for yourself.



I would love to participate in a Postie Patrol too but fat chance of that ever happening as I am in far away England.

This post is brought to you by HP, which has everything for all your Digital Photo Printing needs.

Tags: Clip HP Payperpost Photo printer

Selamat Hari Raya Haji

Eid ul Adha or Eid e Qurban, commemorates Prophet Ibrahim's (Abraham's) willingness to sacrifice his son for God. It also marks the end of the Pilgrimage or Hajj to Mecca for Muslims.

Tags: Eid Hajj Qurban

Performancing acquired by Payperpost

If you take a look at the side bar on the right of my blog, you will notice that on top of the lists of partners is a button saying "Advertise here". Clicking on it will take you to a page telling you how to advertise on my blog. This service is provided by Performancing.com, which I had recently joined.

I couldn't believe it when I read today that PayPerPost has signed a Letter of Intent to acquire certain assets of the company, which owns and operates Performancing.com. This includes the domain name - Performancing.com, Performancing Metrics and Performancing Exchange.

"Performancing Metrics" refer to their completely FREE professional blog statistics service, which is aimed at professional bloggers (am I professional?). It gives detailed statistics about posts and even comments for multiple blogs. I hope Payperpost keeps it free.

I feel that this is a great strategic move on the part of PayPerPost, especially as
Performancing.com has a membership of about 28,000 users, most of whom are bloggers. These are all potential users of PayPerPost.

However, this acquisition does not include the Partners ad network nor PFF, their free blog editor for Firefox. This I read, would be moved to a new brand.

In case you didn't know (where were you hiding under anyway) PayPerpost is a Florida based company that acts as a marketplace for advertisers who are willing to pay bloggers for writing about their products and other stuff in their blogs.

This is a sponsored post.

Update: The deal is off. Read here.

Tags: Payperpost Performancing Performancing Metrics

Is your landlord Pakistani

Every Malaysian family renting a house in Coventry (and Birmingham) that I know of, has a Pakistani landlord. By Pakistani, I mean British citizen of Pakistani descent or ethnicity.

I guess there is a perfectly simple reason for that. It's a symbiotic relationship - their rents are among the lowest here and the Malaysian don't like to make much of a fuss.

Our own landlord's father was born in Pakistani Kashmir (called Pakistan occupied Kashmir by the Indians and Azad (free) Kashmir by the Pakistanis. Every one tells us that we are really lucky to have a nice landlord and I guess we are, after hearing some of the horror stories.

I just wonder whether this is the same in other parts of the UK.

NOTE: In the UK, the term "Paki" is considered derogatory, offensive and racist when spoken by non-Pakistanis. However, this term is commonly used by a lot of whites to refer to anyone from the South-Asia including Indians and Bangladeshis and as one of my friends found out, even Malays are included.

Tags: Coventry Landlord Pakistani