Kelantanese Crazy Frog

It was bound to happen sooner or later. There is now a Kelantanese version of the annoying Crazy Frog.

It is sung in the Kelantanese dialect in the Dikir Barat style.

For non-Malaysians, Kelantan is a state on the east coast of Malaysia. It happens to be the only Malaysian state ruled by the opposition Islamic party PAS. It is also famous in history for being the only state ever ruled by a Queen in the peninsula - Siti Wan Kembang.

Now for the clip:


I will try to get someone to translate the words to English. Anyone wants to volunteer?

Drug rehab centres

Have had a few members of my family fall prey into the jaws of drug addiction and alcoholism. And let me tell you, these are diseases as bad as cancer or other life threatening diseases, maybe worse because they can effect people around them in a very very bad way.

I have no research data to support it but I personally feel that people suffering from drug addiction and alcoholism who want to get better should go into a rehabilitation centre rather than getting treatment at home.

When we talk about drug rehabilitation centres in Malaysia, the first thing that comes to mind are jail like conditions where the patients are treated like prisoners.

I am not sure but that might not be the right way to treat any form of addiction. Forcing them to stop will only be a temporary situation. Once they get out, they will most likely get back into the habit again.

Instead of jailers, they should have qualified nursing and medical staff on premises includes members who have actually graduated from the very program. They would be able to relate and understand each and every person that joins their program.

Introducing Ghetto Barbie

I would like to introduce my readers to Danyel aka Ghetto Barbie. The first thing I noticed, when I visited her blog was the big graffiti style logo. Certainly eye catching.

She has 3 themes that you can choose from. The default is the Easter layout but I found that the easiest to read text was the "Erin Go Brah" theme, which incidentally looked like the colors from the Irish or Indian flags.

This 24 year old stays with her boyfriend Mark, baby son Tegan, Mark,s father and (you won't believe it) 25 pets. Go to her blog to find out. I was not sure what a bearded dragon was and had to look it up on Wikipedia.

You sure meet lot of interesting people on the net.

Pingo pre paid cards

We call out a lot to friends and relatives all around the World but mostly to Malaysia. After receiving a shock with our first telephone bill, we decided to go for pre paid calling cards recommended by our friends here. Everybody seems to have their own favourite brand or company and we are trying out a couple.

Recently I heard about Pingo.com and intrigued when I heard that Pingo’s mobile users save 90% or more on their international calls and am thinking of signing up.



I am also thinking of recommending Pingo pre paid calling cards to the philippines to some of my Filipino friends in the US after I learned that the calls rates are as low as $0.138/ minute for a call.

Anybody who signs up with Pingo.com will receive 4 hours of free International calls. There is another great offer for readers who sign up for Pingo through my blog - they will receive US$5 in FREE Calls.

For your information, Pingo is a service offered by iBasis, a public company and one of the largest carriers of international phone calls in the world.

Technology posts

Lucia, one of my regular visitors, recently left a comment on my previous post: "Interesting personal blog" about my posts on technology. According to her,

"you started writing about technology, business and e-commerce was because they are sponsored posts."

First, I was thinking of just replying to the comment but then I thought the reply would make a nice post.

I have to disagree with Lucia. I have been writing about technology ever since I started this blog. Here are my few first technology related posts (All of them were written in Sept. 2003):
1. Are most bloggers, Girls?
2. Lot of great FREE stuff on the net
3. Spy in your computer?

One of my blog posts on "Top 5 Ecommerce Companies of Malaysia", also received a lot of interest from my visitors, which also resulted in some collaborative projects with academics.

But she's right. Of late I have been doing a lot of sponsored posts. It's my source of income now.

Anyway, I am visiting a lot of technology related blogs now to catch up with the latest tech developments. One of them is the "SQKIKI Simple Tech" blog. She has some great tips. Just learned about a new Internet advertising services and promotion website called Dclickads from her blog. I might sign up.

Tags: blogs technology

Loans for people with bad credit

When you start a family of your own you start building debt in so many ways - for buying a car, buying a house and so on. In our case, it was worse because we were working at different place, me in Kedah in the north of Malaysia and my wife in Kuala Lumpur. We had to maintain 2 separate houses and we also had our own cars. We also decided to buy an apartment on a loan which we have to repay for 25 years.

This caused a severe strain on our finances. We were fortunate because both of us were working. However, things would suddenly turn up that we had no chance but to borrow money (using our credit cards). Like the time my wife had to go for a Caesarean birth. We decided to go to a private hospital and as you know these places are not free or even cheap. Fortunately our bank credit history was good.

We are still in the process of repaying of our house loan. Thank God! we got rid of both our car when we came to the UK, otherwise we would have been paying for that too.

I am sure many people are in a similar situation and maybe worse. Some of these people come under what is known as a bad credit history. Whenever we apply for a loan, our credit history is reviewed. If you have a bad credit history, you may have to settle for a bad credit loan, which has less favourable terms including higher interest rates. There are several Loans For People With Bad Credit. This includes Bank loans for financing your business and Secured loans for people with bad credit but who have property, among others.

Interesting personal blog

A friend told me that my blog has become less interesting after I starting writing about technology, business and e-commerce. According to her, it was more interesting when most of my posts were about my personal life.

I don't know why but I too prefer personal blogs over blogs with technology or any other specific theme. Somehow I feel more involved. "Where’s Mommy’s Prozac?" is such a blog. The 30+ mother to two teenage girls and a teenage stepson writes that

"My life is all about drama, drama, drama."

One of the posts I really found deeply touching was about the death of her brother - "In Memory of My Brother".

I also found out that we share the same interest in music. Most of her favourites are also mine too.