Forwards mails, friends and heaven

A friend forwarded me this nice story explaining why he forwards emails:

A man and his dog were walking along a road. The man was enjoying the scenery, when it suddenly occurred to him that he was dead.

He remembered dying, and that the dog walking beside him had been dead for years. He wondered where the road was leading them.

After a while, they came to a high, white stone wall along one side of the road. It looked like fine marble. At the top of a long hill, it was broken by a tall arch that glowed in the sunlight.

When he was standing before it he saw a magnificent gate in the arch that looked like mother-of-pearl, and the street that led to the gate looked like pure gold. He and the dog walked toward the gate, and as he got closer, he saw a man at a desk to one side.

When he was close enough, he called out, 'Excuse me, where are we?'
'This is Heaven, sir,' the man answered.

'Wow! Would you happen to have some water?' the man asked.

'Of course, sir. Come right in, and I'll have some ice water brought right up..' The man gestured, and the gate began to open.

'Can my friend,' gesturing toward his dog, 'come in, too?' the traveler asked..

'I'm sorry, sir, but we don't accept pets.'

The man thought a moment and then turned back toward the road and continued the way he had been going with his dog.

After another long walk, and at the top of another long hill, he came to a dirt road leading through a farm gate that looked as if it had never been closed. There was no fence. As he approached the gate, he saw a man inside, leaning against a tree and reading a book....

'Excuse me!' he called to the man. 'Do you have any water?'

'Yeah, sure, there's a pump over there, come on in.'

'How about my friend here?' the traveller gestured to the dog.

'There should be a bowl by the pump.'

They went through the gate, and sure enough, there was an old-fashioned hand pump with a bowl beside it. The traveller filled the water bowl and took a long drink himself, then he gave some to the dog. When they were full, he and the dog walked back toward the man who was standing by the tree.

'What do you call this place?' the traveller asked.

'This is Heaven,' he answered.

'Well, that's confusing,' the traveller said. 'The man down the road said that was Heaven, too.'

'Oh, you mean the place with the gold street and pearly gates? Nope. That's hell.'

'Doesn't it make you mad for them to use your name like that?'

'No, we're just happy that they screen out the folks who would leave their best friends behind.'

So. Now you see, sometimes, when we wonder why friends keep forwarding stuff to us without writing a word. Maybe this will explain it.

First Commentator
Laymen's Views

Great places for a day out with the family in the Midlands

A lot of people seem to think that the midlands of the UK is a boring place. they couldn't have been more wrong. There are so many amazing places here in Coventry and nearby areas which is great for a day out with the family.

1. Transport Museum - Totally free of charge. Learn how Coventry was once the centre of the British auto industry.
2. Warwick Castle - Going back in time to the medieval ages
3. Coombe Country park - Wide open spaces, ideal for a picnic.
4. Twycross zoo - nearest zoo to us.
5. West Midlands Safari Park - Feed the animals as they come to your car.
6. Alton Towers - the rides said to be better than Disney Land Paris.
7. Cadbury World - Chocolate, chocolate and more chocolate
8. National Space Centre
   

Situated just 2 miles away from Leicester City Centre and on the banks of the River Soar, the National Space Centre has got to be one of the best hidden secrets in the midlands. The Hidayah School, which is run by the Malaysian Coventry Society, recently organised a trip to the centre. I accompanied my daughter.

The first thing we noticed was this building that looked like a balloon. It actually is - the outer walls of the semi-transparent tower is clad with inflated ETFE layers.

Filled with interactive exhibits, the place is really educational and entertaining at the same time.

I guess the highlight of the show was the animated movie projected into the circular dome of the theatre which short of enveloped you and made you feel like you were travelling in space.

We really enjoyed the trip and I recommend the place to anyone with school going kids.




Close up


Lunar Jim


Some rockets


from below


Loading up the rocket


Weight on the moon


Booth to call mars


Soyuz spacecraft


A final shot of the semi-transparent building.

First Commentator
Emila Yusof

How to increase traffic to your blogs

As part of my doctoral research, I have looked at the reasons why some blogs are able to get thousand if not hundreds of visitors to their blog everyday.

Some websites charge to tell you this secret but here I am telling you for FREE.

CREDIBILITY.

There is a huge debate among various scholars and various conceptualisations about credibility but most define it as as "believability".

Some authors have come out with the terms ‘webelievability’ to refer to “the degree to which people judge online information as credible”. Of course we cannot discount the credbility of the source - the blogger when it comes to blogs.

Looking at the credibility of the source, Credibility has been shown to be composed of

1. trustworthiness and
2. expertise.
   

Of course you must note that there is a difference between trustworthiness and trust. While credibility is about believability, trust is about dependability. but they are related. in other words if you perceive the credibility of a blogger to be high, this will then lead to trust.

However, the next question is how do bloggers gain this credibility. This is where it gets interesting. Stanford Persuasive Tech Lab has published a list of ten guidelines to boost your web site's credibility.

Some are not even experts at all but somehow were able to get this perceived credibility and eventually became an "expert". I know of a couple of guys who ultimately went on to become popular speakers even though they didn't have either the professional or educational qualifications but just on the basis of their popularity of their blogs. Some of them have regular columns in magazines and even lecture at Universities with professors sitting in the audience. That's amazing isn't it.

It is interesting to note that many popular bloggers including John Chow don't really follow some of the points listed (for example, many of them carry ads including pop-ups) but they still continue to receive thousands of visitors. I guess that's where branding comes in. It also provides an interesting insight into the human behaviour. Once you get famous, the traffic has a snowball effect. Everyone wants a piece of you.

How you get that break is really important and sometimes it is by pure chance but often due to talent. I saw this with popular Malaysian blogger Kenny Sia when he exploded on the Malaysian blogging scene with his original brand of humour (his big coconuts) and of course his (in)famous Xiaxue pose. Now's he's Internationally known and his blog averages about 14k visits daily.

The lucky break may occur due to a mention in the press, magazine or a mention by another celebrity blogger. For example, a small mention by the ProBlogger can do wonders for your blog traffic.

But as they say, not everyone is lucky and sometimes you have to slog it out for several years before you get famous just by your sheer effort.

First Commentator
Lisalicious

Travelodge tells me to bring a tent

My sister is coming over from Australia to visit us in May along with her husband and my sweet niece. She wanted to rent an apartment but I convinced her to save money and stay in the Travelodge Hotel here in Coventry.

As students we are always on a budget and discovered Travelodge after talking to other Malaysians who have been here in the UK for a while. The first thing that comes to mind when we say "budget hotel" are dirty sheets, bare and tiny rooms and we were really surprised the first time we stayed in a Travelodge because their service quality was quite high. The rooms were neat and tidy, well maintained with clean sheets. They even provide TV and kettle with tea and coffee. You can even get extra pillows, sheets and baby cot if travelling with a baby. Like Air Asia, the budget Malaysian airline, you can get some great deals if you book early with them.

Anyway, we never knew that there was a Travelodge in Coventry until we ran a search and quickly booked the rooms. Later on we found out that the hotel was still under construction.


Screenshot of their website

Naturally we were quite worried and I called up their customer service. The guy I talked to, convinced me that the hotel would be up by the time my sister's family arrived. He also added "You better bring along a tent mate!"

It was quite funny and I laughed - an example of a typical English joke where you don't know whether the guy is being sarcastic or actually trying to be funny with a lame joke. I was narrating this incident to my friend who's in the hotel industry (he prefers to call it "the hospitality industry") and he was shocked. "They actually said that".

According to him, if any of his customer service staff made a remark like that, they would be fired immediately.

I was not offended but they better get the hotel ready in time.

Cheaper flights to London with Air Asia

A few weeks back I wrote about the Ryanair and bloggers episode and mentioned that "they can learn a thing or two from Air Asia". Well, Maxton Walker of the Guardian seems to think so as well.

In his article 'This is budget travel. We demand to suffer' he seems to be pleasantly surprised by the level of service quality and mentions that "If AirAsia X can keep it up, it is on to something".

Experts have always assumed that it is impossible to have a profitable budget long-haul airline service. Air Asia might have cracked it. I mean Kuala Lumpur to London for only RM490 (approx. £93) is crazy.

Tony Fernandes, the CEO of Air Asia says that flying to London is "A dream accomplished".

First Commentator
Bokjae

Online T-shirt store with a difference

Look what came through the door yesterday - a brand new T-shirt.



It is an original Iffyton T Shirt from Iffyton High Street - a new online T-shirt store. It is totally different from other online t-shirt stores I am familiar with. It features a virtual high street with various stores, each with a different theme selling original designs you won't find elsewhere. You can go left or right depending on the position of your mouse and hovering your mouse over a store will give you a brief description below.



You can also start selling your own designs by setting up a virtual store on the site for a one off fee of only £500. This includes store set up, hosting, banking, etc. Found out later on that the guys behind Iffyton High Street are Totally Original T-Shirts (TOT-Shirts), one of Britain’s largest garment decoration specialists (in their words).

My only concern was that the TOS and contact information are not easily accessible. Some fussy first time customers might be put off by that.

Anyway, I had a tough time choosing from the various designs but I finally went for this guitar design in a shop called "A DJ is not a musician".



I don't have anything against DJ's - just thought that the design was cool. It costs £18.60 inclusive of the postage. The delivery was fast and the quality of the cloth (100% cotton) was surprisingly good. I am really impressed. Will definitely be shopping there again.

First Commentator
Angel

New UK immigration rules update

There is one industry that is recession proof and some research actually shows that it does better when the economy is bad. I am referring to the billion pound education industry. British universities have been highly successful in attracting thousands of bright foreign students to the British Isles.

A BBC report in 2008 showed that fees from International students amounted to £1.7bn. The Universities are interested in attracting foreign non-EU students because they can charge them higher. In my case I paid approximately £10300 this year and the fees are increasing. Local and EU students only pay one third that amount. In other words I am paying for the cost of two local/ EU students. I don't mind because a degree from a reputed British University is looked on favourably by employers all around the World (at least I hope so).

The Malaysian Government itself spends millions of dollars every year sponsoring the education of thousands of students in institutes of higher learning all over the UK.

However, recent changes in immigration regulations may change all that. First were the requirement to carry biometric identity cards. I didn't mind that even though there were a lot of protests because I am used to carrying an ID card all the time in Malaysia.

Yesterday we received an email from the University informing us of Pending changes to the immigration rules for student visa renewals. Based on the new rules which will be implemented from the 31st of March 2009, students would need to provide evidence of any remaining course fees to be paid plus £600pm (up to a maximum of £1200) living costs for visa extensions of nine months or less. If more than nine months you will need to provide evidence of your first year’s fees plus £1200 living costs.

The most worrying part of the new rule is the part of dependants. Namely the fact that you will need to show evidence of funds to support them. The amount has not been fixed yet but is tentatively £533 (per month) for each dependant (including children).

I guess this is part of their policy to toughen immigration rules and it has got worse since the economic recession started. All of us can feel a deepening anti-foreigner sentiment - from politicians, newspaper articles and even bloggers.

Now we are blamed for all short of problems ranging from health care to employment. This is plain ridiculous. Instead of creating more employment and reducing the number of people on the dole, foreigners are the perfect bogeyman to take the blame for past planning, economic and financial mistakes on the part of the Government.

I do agree that there is a problem of illegal immigrants but the new policies will affect the students legally staying and contributing to the British economy. I guess they are frustrated because they can't do anything about the rest of the Europeans (since the UK is part of the EU) or the illegal immigrants or the asylum seekers.

The ones worst affected will be the PhD research students with families. Officially most PhD courses are supposed to be of 3 years duration and the visa are given accordingly but apart from rare cases, most will extend to the fourth or fifth year. For example, in the Warwick Business School, I don't know of any single student (foreign and local) who has completed their PhD degree in the stipulated 3 years duration. The only guy I know who completed in 3 years in the whole University of Warwick was a Malaysian in the Engineering faculty and he was lucky because all his experiments went as planned. Sometimes it is not even the fault of the students as some supervisors can take their own sweet time in passing the students.

My friend has 4 kids and he has to have approximately £24588 £29385 + (based on the details given to us) in his account in order to extend his study for another 9 months. Failure to do so might mean going back to Malaysia without completing the degree (after 3 long years of research). It's scary.

First Commentator
Hapi