Bigger Better Cinemas in Malaysia

If you are thinking that recession is setting in then you are wrong from the perspective of cinema owners. Malaysian movie goers will get to watch their favourite movies in 51 new cinema screens throughout Malaysia in time to come.

TGV, GSC and Cathay Cineplex - here they come. Heard of Bollywood? Yeah, an Indian company by the name of Adlabs Films Limited, a subsidiary of the Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group, have bought into a local Malaysian company, Lotus Five Star AV (M) Sdn Bhd, that is currently operating forty cinema screens under Star Screen Cinemas. This Lotus Five Star company is part of the Lotus indian restaurants ............. yeah, the expensive indian restaurant. They have made their profits and is diversifying into the entertainment industry now.

Initial capital outlay for the Malaysian operations would be about RM100 million to expand up to 100 cinema screens within the next fifteen months. There would be a change of name as well ............ BIG Cinemas.

This cinema chain is not new as they have cinemas operating in USA, Mauritius and Nepal at the moment. It's proven! Today it has 155 screens in India and 220 screens in overseas investments. In time to come, the cinemas will show English, Malay, Cantonese, Mandarin, Tamil, Thai, Indonesian, Korean, Japanese, Hindi and other language films, depending on demand from the neighbourhood.

Will it become a BIG bang when it has fully expanded in Malaysia?

Reading: Adlabs Films to operate cinema chain in Malaysia - Reuters India
Tags: Adlabs Films Limited, Lotus Group of Companies, Lotus Five Star AV (M) Sdn Bhd, Bollywood, Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group, Hindi Movies, Tamil Movies, Star Screen Cinema, BIG Cinema

New Country to Study Medicine

Two of Romania's universities have been recognised by Malaysia, namely Carol Davila University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Bucharest and Petroleum-Gas University in Ploiesti recently. You can't go wrong when MARA is sponsoring local students to study there. So it must be recognised by Jabatan Perkhidmatan Awam too.

But why these two universities? Cheaper alternatives compared to those ranked in the THE-QS World University Rankings? These two universities are not even ranked amongst the top European universities or even Top 500 in the world.

Funny thing is it was the Ministry of Entrepreneur and Co-operative Development that executed the memorandums of understanding with these two universities instead of the Ministry of Education.

Reading: MARA Will Sponsor 200 Students To Romania - Bernama
Tags: Romania, Carol Davila University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Petroleum-Gas University, THE-QS World University Rankings, MARA, Jabatan Perkhidmatan Awam, Ministry of Entrepreneur and Co-operative Development, Ministry of Education

Indonesia Passes Anti-Racial Discrimination Bill

Indonesia, a vast Muslim nation in terms of its population, has passed a bill against racial discrimination. With the passing of this bill there is no ethnic or racial discrimination rulings in the country as they have learnt through the hard way in the late 90s riots that caught the world's attention.

Indonesia passed this bill in accordance with the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination ("Convention") that was enacted in 1999 in the United Nations, currently monitored by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, joining a host of other nations that has adopted the Convention.

Today, the Indonesian citizens are free from this bondage. If found guilty of any form of ethnic or racial discrimination in Indonesia now, it will certainly land you in jail. Yeah, jail term is there.

Sadly, Malaysia is not a party to this Convention. May I know why? Maybe, have to build lots of prisons prior to adopting this Convention here. Economy down, so can't construct the prisons.

Reading: Bill against racial discrimination passed - Jakarta Post
Tags: Indonesia, Racial Discrimination, International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, United Nations, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, OHCHR

USA Presidential Election

Barack Osama ............. oops I mean Barack Obama ....... won the USA Presidential election (even though some places are still counting). Why did I bother with this election? Well, for one, when USA sneezes the whole world catches the flu at the same time. These are the states that Obama's camp has declared victory:-Not only the Democratic Party's presidential candidate, an Illinois senator, has won his election but the Democratic Party has won the majority votes in both the United States Senate and United States House of Representatives. This will allow Obama's office to draw the political map much easier but certainly not without challenges that are awaiting them. Oh my, the Republicans are licking their wounds now and the Democractics are partying away.

Some people said that with this win, it has transcended over racial issue, that people of other races could have a chance of becoming the president of the United States of America. I'm sure some of the Malaysian politicians will harp on this point as well.

The Obama camp had to thank the virtual world in partly helping them on its course. $$ Millions were raised via the internet. During Bill Clinton's time, there were not many dedicated political linked websites ....... nowadays, you wished that you wouldn't bump into one. George Bush's era does not have many blogs or bloggers didn't realise what they can do then. Nowadays, who doesn't blogs or haven't heard of a politically linked blog. Something similar with the Malaysian scenario.

If you are an United States' citizen, care to share your viewpoint on whether this election was what the people wanted or it should have been otherwise.

What do you know .......... the Malaysian public held a mock USA election in a public forum held last Thursday in Kuala Lumpur (topic of discussion for the forum was - "US Presidential Election 2008: Race, Religion and Economics”) and Obama Barack won by a wide margin. Result was Obama 126 votes; John 16 votes.
Tags: Barack Obama, United States Senate, United States House of Representatives, USA Presidential Election, Illinois Senator, Democratic Party, Republican Party, Bill Clinton, George Bush Jr, USA, United States of America, US Senate, US House

Leadership Summit in Seremban

Two weekends ago, during the Deepavali holidays, I was in Seremban attending a leadership summit.















My identification card plus the programme book that has the various speakers' outlines and for you to write notes.














The musicians, with the keyboardist and drummer from my church, the rest were their good friends.
Dancers from the Christian Dance Fellowship of Malaysia presented us with two dance numbers. Fantastic movements. Made me itch and the thought of me doing it ain't hard ........







The second day of the summit ended around 5pm plus and four of us in one car decided to hunt for the infamous Seremban Siew Pow. We went round and round the small Seremban town but can't seem to see it. Last resort, called friends who originated from Seremban to locate the shop. Found one behind the Maybank branch but it has sold all their siew pows for the day.

Called our friend again and he said that there's one more near the toll exit. This is a real challenge but the signboard directing us to it was big enough even though it was across the road.

Finally we saw it. This shop frontage is actually facing the North-South Highway.

I got Seremban origin fellas questioning me why do I like. Some of them don't purposely go out of the way even though it was located in their own town. Out of town people reacts differently, I supposed.


They have various food products and the fillings for the siew pow could be chicken or pork. It was already late afternoon and I think we were getting the sort of leftovers.













Got myself a box of siew pows and two different kinds of honeycomb biscuits (sak khe ma in cantonese and if you decipher that three words or can't understand, sorry lah. FYI, it's my favourite).

Related post - Global Leadership Summit at Malaysia

Tags: Global Leadership Summit, Seremban, Christian Dance Fellowship of Malaysia, Seremban Siew Pow, North-South Highway

Tainted Malaysian Biscuits

The biscuit brand of Julie's has a special announcement made for a few of their products due to discovery of contaminated ingredient that was sourced from China. The source this time is not the melamine but Ammonium Bicarbonate.

In the first place, the company can't detect contaminated ingredient when it arrived from China? Nobody checked the quality?

Secondly, how could it have left their factory? You mean to say that their QA/QC team can't detect it prior to their products leaving the factory? Really questionable.

Why? Why? Why?

The Julie's brand is being produced by Perfect Food Manufacturing (M) Sdn Bhd based in Alor Gajah, Malacca.

Each time I travel overseas, this is the biscuit brand that I will stuffed into a big box to supplement my meals, in between meals in fact. My favourite is their peanut butter sandwich biscuit and good thing it has not been recalled. Otherwise, I would have lost confidence with this brand.
Tags: Julie's, Perfect Food Manufacturing (M) Sdn Bhd, Alor Gajah, Ammonium Bicarbonate, Peanut Butter Sandwich

New Seatbelt Law in Malaysia

JPJ (Road Transport Department) has done extensive testing on a newly designed seatbelt. Results show that accidents can be reduced by as much as 45% when the belt is properly installed.

This is also in view of the reminder call to all motorists to get use to the idea of getting their rear seat passengers to buckle up as well. Malaysian police will be stopping cars from now onwards if they noticed that your rear seat passengers did not buckle up. By 1 January 2009, they will be issuing summonses when the new ruling is enforced.

If you don't practise it now, you will surely forget by 1 January 2009 and thus giving a chance to bribery again ............... in this case, who caused bribery in the first instance then? The motorists of course.

It's for your own (and others) safety! I do ensure it even if it's for a short distance.

And if you were caught with four rear seat passengers, what will be your recourse?

Anyway, correct installation for the seatbelt is illustrated below .......


Reading: No sure decision yet on whether extra passenger needs to belt up or pay up - Star
Tags: Malaysia, Seatbelt, Motorist, JPJ, Road Transport Department