China's Anti-Corruption Website

The China government has set-up a website where the China citizens could lodge corruption complaints/cases against government officials. That's a good step for China to fight against corruption.

An agency by the name of National Bureau of Corruption Prevention was given the green light to proceed with the new website. On the first day of operation, Monday - 17 December 2007, the website crashed tragically. Did the website crash because of virus?

The reason - the website traffic was sooooooo heavy that the server was unable to handle the traffic and it crashed. In other words, the citizens have at last found an avenue to lodge complaints and therefore, tons of complaints were submitted. The website - jubao.gov.cn (in chinese language). Not surprised to hear that as I have heard about corruptions in China from friends who are conducting business there.

I bet that the same would happen in Malaysia if an online submission was opened to the Malaysian public. Maybe unable to revive that server altogether.

Reading: Anti-Corruption Website Unveiled In China - China CSR
Tags: Corruption, China, National Bureau of Corruption Prevention, Jubao

Frightening Rides?

How frightening can these amusement park's rides be?

Tags: Amusement Park

The Tea Has Infection

A Hangzhou (in China) reporter used tea as his urine sample and asked 10 hospitals to analyze it. Six of the hospitals determined that he had an infection, and four of them prescribed medicine worth about 1,300 yuan in total. The Sanjia Hospital later determined that 90% of the tests on tea should be false positive and this supposedly showed that the problem was not with the hospitals. Ministry of Health spokesperson Mao Junan criticized the media for violation of the journalistic professional code of conduct.

That's funny ...... hehehe. I wonder what will Malaysian hospitals do. Could be even worse.

Reading: Medical Ethics Vs. Journalistic Ethics - Beijing Review
Tags: Tea, Infection, Hangzhou, China, Sanjia Hospital, Medical Ethics, Journalistic Ethics

Video Shoot at Hotel Premise

Our video shoot ventures have now taken us into a hotel premise, i.e. Hotel Maya at Jalan Ampang, located just right across the towering Petronas Twin Towers. We were there on Sunday night.
We had to write officially to them and was required to meet seven conditions prior to being allowed to do a video shoot.

One of the major ones being not allowed to show this video other than in the church premise on 25 Dec 2007 and cannot use it for commercial purpose. So, if you are interested to see what we have done, you have to visit my church on 25 Dec to view it.

We were given the group registration reception area for our video shoot.

Another condition was - video shooting to be done between 10.30pm and 3.00am. Ok, shouldn't be a problem. We were there by 11.15pm and finished the shooting by 2.00am. The bad news for this team that was there - we missed the two giant English Premier League matches on that same night. All we get was sms messages informing us of the results. There were 3 Liverpool fans, 1 Chelsea fan, 1 Arsenal fan and me being a Man Utd fan. You should have seen the 3 Liverpool fans' face when the sms messages came into our mobile phones.......hehehe

Nice bamboo trees just outside its window panes.
Saw this restaurant's table/chairs located just right beside an interior watch catchment area which is very shallow. Wondering whether any children had ran into the area????
The hotel was nicely decorated for the festive season.
As usual, they were anxious on the end results. Just can't wait to see how was their performance.
See that T-shirt which has our The Bridge logo worn by our video cameraman? Yeah, our video cameraman cum multimedia guy designed it and it was ordered by the whole drama team.

In this picture, it was a scene where the three wisemen were discussing about the direction in looking for the the newborn king.


Why were they in modern costumes? Well, I depicted this whole drama in a modern era.

With this video shoot done, we have one tiny weeny video scene left now. Phew! At last!
Tags: Christmas Drama, Christmas, Hotel Maya, The Bridge, Wisemen

Vegetarian Dishes

Went to a vegetarian restaurant by the name of Fan Cai Xiang at Taman Danau Desa during weekend with the family's older folks. It was packed with only one table left when we arrived. Given a choice I won't come to a vegetarian restaurant lah.
This was a buttered fried mushroom. Crunchy and tasty. Forget about whether it will give you high cholesterol due to the butter. It's superb.
This is char siew! Vegetarian style of course. Not bad though the taste is far from the actual char siew of course.








Now this is the ginger fish. Forgot the fish's name. Nice dish but definitely not fishy taste at all. It was partly beancurd.

I paid for the dinner. With seven main dishes, it cost us RM190 for 8 adults and 2 kids.

Always find vegetarian restaurants charge way too high for food that resembled the real thing. I could find a restaurant that cooks the real food at a cheaper price instead.
Tags: Vegetarian Dishes, Vegetarian Food, Fan Cai Xiang Vegetarian Restaurant, Taman Danau Desa

Shell Citibank Credit Card

Shell Citibank Credit Card - A Cash Draining Card
Fancy getting a credit card that offers 5% rebate on shell petrol and 1.5% rebate on other purchases? If your answer is yes, then you are draining your money away!

The newly launched Shell Citibank credit card is not as good as its sounds - to enjoy the rebate, you must have a carry forward balance. Yes, a carry forward balance that you have to pay Citibank 18% interest per annum. But that's is not all, your so called 'rebate' is based on your current month spending. That means if you have a carry forward of RM10,000 but did not use the card at all for the current month, you get 'zero' rebate.

To be precise, this 'rebate' card is an old card - it has been around for about 2 years. But now taking advantage of the fuel cost concern, Citibank co-branded it with Shell.

This is how the rebate scheme works:-
First, you need to have a carry forward balance. The amount of that carry forward determines the rebate rate (%) that the card holder is getting.

Then based on your current month spend, you will get the rebate (as shown by the rebate table above) - your rebate is not based on your total carry forward balance. Repeat: your rebate is not based on your total carry forward balance, but current month spending.

In short, to get your 'rebate' you must have at least of RM2,000 outstanding balance in you card AND continue use the card. The outstanding balance is the net of previous month balance minus current month payment.

If you do that, every month you will be paying RM30.00, or RM360 a year for the minimum RM2,000 outstanding balance.

Let's do a simple math here:-
If you spend RM500/mth on shell petrol and your classic card has a RM2,000 outstanding balance, at 1.5%, you are getting RM7.50 as 'rebate', while at the same time, paying RM30.00 for the interest. The 'nett' profit for Citibank is RMRM22.50. Your are essentially "over paying" 4 times the price (30/7.5)

To 'break even' (so that your RM30.00 interest payment = rebate value), you need to pump RM2,000 shell petrol a month, or charge RM6,000 a month for non-shell related purchases.

The USD100.00 per barrel of crude oil won't kill you, but the Citi-Shell card will (Source: Smart Consumer Banking).

In my opinion, this rebate will benefit only the big spenders and if you own a petrol guzzling motor vehicle. Otherwise, the rebate doesn't make sense at all compared to the 18% p.a. interest that you are going to pay for the balance carried forward each month.
Tags: Shell, Citibank, Citi-Shell, Credit Card, Smart Consumer Banking

Wanna Go To Beijing Olympics 2008?

WIN 2 TICKETS AND ALL EXPENSES PAID INCLUDING AIR FARE TO THE 2008 OLYMPIC GAMES IN BEIJING , CHINA.

To participate, just view the attached photo, correctly answer the following questions and send your answers to: International Olympic Committee, Lausanne, Switzerland.

1. Which student seems to appear tired / sleepy?

2. Which ones are male twins?

3. Which ones are the female twins?

4. How many women are in the group?

5. Which one is the teacher?

Good Luck!

I guess you are not going either !!!!

Tags: Beijing Olympics 2008, International Olympic Committee, Lausanne, Switzerland, Olympic Games