Thursday, August 26, 2010

Your Shit Is Not Worthless Anymore

Yeah, the title as above will be true once your shit (the one that you dispose of at the toilet) is proved to be usable commercially by the motor industry. Human waste is the alternate description if you can't stand the rude word of "shit".

Wessex Water plc in England is testing shit ....... oops I mean human waste that was extracted from the sewerage.

A Volkswagen Beetle car was fitted with an improvised engine system that could propel its engine with just gas produced from human waste.

How does it work?

GENeco, a subsidiary of Wessex Water plc, used specialty equipment that could turn methane gas during sewage treatment works, a natural by-product of our human waste, into a type of gas useful for motor vehicles. This treated gas is then pumped into the motor vehicle to run its engine.

But I like the following statistic - "waste flushed down toilets of just 70 homes in Bristol is enough to power the Bio-Bug for a year, based on an annual mileage of 10,000 miles."

In order to have more motor vehicles running in this manner, we have to shit more? The more shit produced, the more environment friendly in this case. On the other hand, our country's national sewerage company can earn some extra money by selling our shit to them or we start producing the same type of gas too.

This is really a good sustainability programme. It does help the environment by reducing carbon dioxide produced by petrol / diesel motor vehicles' engines.

Reading: YTL UK unit tests sewage as alternative energy source - ytlcommunity
Tags: Shit, Human Waste, Volkswagen Beetle, GENeco, Wessex Water plc, Methane Gas, Bio-Bug, Sewerage, Sewage Treatment

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

What Caused Educators To Be Racist?

Controversial racist remarks have been uttered by senior educators in Kulaijaya, Johore and Sungai Petani, Kedah in front of school kids. This has brought their teaching profession to question. What have these educators been learning all this while throughout their lifes? The prominent question now is what have they been teaching all this while? Rukunegara is not taught in school nowadays?

Police have taken action by proceeding with the investigation. Then the respective state education department will conduct their own interview. This is followed by the Ministry of Education.

Yes, racist remarks have been uttered but conducting twelve more investigations will not lead to any improvement. One has to go to the root of the problem to stop this rot.

Just look at the newspapers lately. Front page news will surely have articles on racial issues. Some people just want to play up all these racials issues to stir some hatred between races in Malaysia. What one has to gain when the whole nation is in chaos?

Malaysia will be celebrating their 53rd Independence Day and sadly, even educators aren't convinced about having a peaceful nation with those hatred feelings dwelling deep in their hearts.

What had caused them to have those sentiments? What had happened to them to have such a feeling towards the non-malays?

Day in day out, certain groups in Malaysia will keep harping on the issue of non-malays taking away the malay's rights, privileges, rice bowl and political control from them. I'm not surprised if you kept hearing and reading it daily, your mind will make you to believe the crap to be the whole truth. Once in a while certain people and politicians (from ruling party) will remind ("warn" is the actual meaning that they wanted us to hear) the non-malays of the May 13 tragedy.

I'm really proud of what Nurul Izzah Anwar has written in her article entitled "A new script for Malaysia".

When the people in our nation can't even identify with one another, how do you expect Malaysians to identify ourselves as Asean people. Our prime minister has called for state-level programmes to enhance the awareness and knowledge about Asean.

My opinion, it's a waste of time and funds (wonder how much will be allocated for such nationwide programmes) when you can't even handle the racial issues at your own backyard. I call it hypocrisy then.

All the hyped up 1Malaysia motto is also a camouflage thingy. They (government) share with you on the TV, songs have been written and sung on TV and patriotic advertisements are being shown that relates to 1Malaysia.

But when it comes to the real thing - all things changed.

A locally produced chinese movie, entitled Ice Kacang Puppy Love can't even qualify for a entertainment tax rebate because it has been classified as a foreign movie as reported in the Star newspaper.

Now, how was a local movie categorised as a foreign movie then you may ask. Just one simple line - this chinese movie's script do not have a minimum of 60% in Bahasa Malaysia. Now, you tell me who gave this stupid ruling.

If a movie is 60% in Bahasa Malaysia / 40% in chinese language, I would call it a rojak movie. It won't be called a chinese movie at all. A movie which was produced locally, shot in Malaysia, directed by a Malaysian, with Malaysian actors/actresses, in a language understood by local Malaysian chinese - it's considered a foreign movie.

The involvement of Tan Kheng Seong, Lee Sinje, Victor Wang, Gary Chaw and Fish Leong in this local movie showed the love in them for Malaysia. But the government said it's not enough. I think all these famous stars would rather concentrate on their careers in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan and put their investments there too. Was this a good encouragement for future investments? What more for foreigners who wanted to invest in Malaysia? No wonder the FDI for Malaysia is at an all time low lately.

1Malaysia?

Even speakers at a symposium on the 10th Malaysia Plan questioned the government's ability to deliver what they have planned for in terms of socio-economic development.

We will not see any lesser of such racial issues in our lifes in Malaysia as long as greedy and power abusive politicians wanted to hang on to their respective positions. We will see more of it whenever a by-election happens and the mother of all will erupt when the next general election is called.

But where do we, as Malaysians generally, stand?
Tags: Racist Remarks, Racist Educators, 53rd Independence Day, Racial Hatred, 1Malaysia, Ice Kacang Puppy Love, Tan Kheng Seong, Lee Sinje, Victor Wang, Gary Chaw, Fish Leong

Thursday, August 19, 2010

Chinese Jews

Oscar Weil and Benjamin Oppenheimer are Jews, and were sitting in a Chinese restaurant in Shanghai.

"Oscar," asked Benjie, "Are there any Jews in China?"
"I don't know," Oscar replied.
"Why don't we ask the waiter?"

When the waiter came by, Benjie asked him, "Are there any Chinese Jews here in Shanghai?"
"I don't know sir, let me ask," the waiter replied, and he went into the kitchen.

He returned in a few minutes and said, "No, sir. No Chinese Jews."
"Are you sure?" Benjie asked.
"I will check again, sir" the waiter replied and went back to the kitchen.

While he was still gone, Oscar said, "I cannot believe there are no Jews in China, our people are scattered everywhere."

When the waiter returned he said, "Sir, no Chinese Jews."

"Are you really sure?" Benjie asked again. "I cannot believe there are no Chinese Jews."

"Sir, I asked everyone," the waiter replied exasperated. "We have orange Jews, apple Jews, tomato Jews and grape Jews, but no one ever hear of Chinese Jews! If you want, we have Chinese Tea.
Tags: Chinese Jews, Chinese Tea, Jews In China, Funny, Humour

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Conmen Striked Again

The following dialogue was re-constructed by the old folks' son. His old folks were conned and this blogpost is to serve as a lesson and information for all Malaysians.
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PA & MA GOT CONNED BY CONFIDENCE TRICKSTERS

Yesterday at around 11.30am, Ma received a phone call. There was a male voice crying at the other end of the line, saying “he is in pain, got beaten up by people and asking Ma to help him”. When Ma asked who he is, another male Chinese voice said:

Cbinese Male (CM): He is your son, We got him with us.

Ma: What happened? Why is my son with you? What have you done to him?

CM: He owed us (Ah Long) a lot of money.

Ma: How come my son got owed you money. He never borrow from Ah Long.

CM: He got football debts.

Ma: My son don’t gamble, how come got owe you debts.

CM: He stood as guarantor for a friend’s loan. Now that friend runs away, so we got your son to settle the loan. We have been watching your son for 2 weeks.

Ma: How much is the loan?

CM: RM40,000. You bring money to get your son back or we will kill him. Chop him up into many pieces.

Ma: How is my son now? (She already assumed the crying voice is my voice, and she is panicky, fearing for my safety.)

CM: He felled down and knock his head. Got some bleeding on the head. We will take him to the clinic afterwards. You quickly bring the money to bail your son or he will die.

Ma panic and screamed for Pa.

Pa then talked to the CM on the phone. CM warned Pa & Ma not to make police report, or talk to anyone or inform the neighbours or call other people. Demanded Ma to stay near the phone.

CM then instruct Pa to withdraw money RM12,000 from bank to bail his “son”. CM asked Pa where he stays and where is his bank he will take money from. (Amount was later reduced to RM10,000)

Pa told him they stay where they stay and his bank is Hong Leong Bank.

CM then instructed Pa to go to Hong Leong Bank to withdraw RM10,000 and to go to the bus stop in front of the fast food restaurant at the main road and wait for further instructions.

CM warns Ma not to go out of the house. She also cannot put down the phone or cut off the line. She is to hold the phone and keep listening to CM’s instruction.

PA then rode his motorcycle to HLB and withdraw RM10K from his FD. HLB Officer was courious as to why Pa wants to withdraw so much cash. Kept asking him what he wants so much cash for and is there anything wrong? She noticed Pa looked worried and nervous. The Officer noticed that the FD was joint-name with me and she called me from her office (that time was around 1.00pm) to ask if I am aware why my Dad needs to withdraw so much cash. I told her I am not aware of any reasons, and if he needs money, then let him take it.

After a while, I felt it a bit strange that Pa wants to take so much money, so I called home to check. But the house phone was engaged. I tried a few times and then I just forgot about the matter.

(Little did I know that Bank Officer was an angel send by God to try and intercept and stop Dad from giving the money to those confidence tricksters. But I was not sensitive enough to realize that God was doing something to save us from being cheated.)

Pa then took the money all RM10K inside an envelope and walked towards the bus stop. There were some people waiting for bus. Pa sat on the bench and another CM was sitting at the other end of the bench talking on his hp. CM2 then walked towards Pa and said “got call for you”.

Pa took the hp and CM1 asked if Pa has withdrawn the money. Pa said “yes” and CM1 told Pa to pass the money to CM2. CM1 told Pa on the phone, that after they counted the money and found correct, they will release his son in about 20 mins time. Then they will come and talked about “how to settle the balance amount”.

Pa gave the envelope to CM2 and he walked away, climbed up the overhead bridge and cross over to the other side of the road.

Pa went home and waited. After waiting for about 30 mins, and I still didn’t appear, Ma got worried and called my hp, and asked where I was and did I go anywhere in the morning. I told her I was in the office the whole day and got no time to go out.

There are a few things we can learn from this episode.

1. Don’t panic when we received such phone calls. Try to stay calm and rational. Ma wanted to call my wife to find out where I was actually, but the CM warned Ma not to go out of the house. CM got Ma to hold onto the handset all the while when Pa went to the Bank to withdraw money. CM kept talking to Ma to prevent her from going out to make phone calls or seek for help.

2. If we are confident of our children’s activities outside of the house, then we can confidently ignore the caller and can even challenge him to show proof.

3. Make an effort to contact another family member to verify the facts.

4. Demand to speak to the “victim” to verify their claims. Try to stall for time and seek help from police, neighbours, family members.

5. Don’t hand over cash without seeing the “victim” first.

6. There has been many similar cases circulating in the internet. Do take note and warn our children.

7. If there is someone claiming to be from the mobile operator company asking you to shut down your hp for 3-4 hours for “up-grading/maintenance of network / system”; please ignore them. Once your hp is switched off, no one can contact you. That’s when they will move in and try to con your family members to pay money to bail/rescue you. Since your hp is unreachable, family members may be misled into believing that you are being caught by them and the threat is real. You will then succumb to their tricks/demands.
Tags: Conman, Trickster, Fraudster, Con

Monday, August 16, 2010

Finished Product of My ID

Shifted into my new house (still new to me) back in Dec 2009. Although we moved in in Dec 2009, we still went back to the previous home (a condo) a number of times to move many many more stuff to this new house.

How did we stuff so many things into a condo? I really wonder. Anyhow, my Interior Designer did a good job and a professional photographer from a local ID magazine came to take a few shots to be published in the magazine.

If you require any ID consultation, please do contact Ms. Ng Phuay Ching of Be In Design Solutions Sdn Bhd @ 012-3341678.

At first I was quite hesistant to contact an ID with the myth of "expensive". You can actually do your renovation with an ID according to your budget. It all depends on the type of quality and materials that you would use.

I even got my ID to custom make the living hall's sofa (which was made according to my size) and the dining hall's dining table.

My ID helped us with the placing of the respective lightings with all things done on drawings (designer format of course) first before we embark on the hacking.

I have my own faint idea of how my house should look like and with the ID's design concept, the following pictures defined it all:-



Saturday, August 14, 2010

Alaskan Mountain Venture

The Pope took a couple of days off to visit the rugged mountains of Alaska for some sightseeing. He was cruising along the campground in the Pope Mobile when there was a frantic commotion just at the edge of the woods. A helpless Democrat, wearing sandals, shorts, a 'Vote for Obama' hat and a 'Save the Trees' t-shirt, was screaming while struggling frantically and thrashing around trying to free himself from the grasp of a 10-foot grizzly.

As the Pope watched in horror, a group of Republican loggers with 'Go Sarah' t-Shirts came racing up. One quickly fired a 44 magnum into the bear's chest. The other two reached up and pulled the ble eding, semiconscious Democrat from the bear's grasp. Then using long clubs, the three loggers finished off the bear and two of them threw it onto the bed of their truck while the other tenderly placed the injured Democrat in the back seat.

As they prepared to leave, the Pope summoned them to come over. 'I give you my blessing for your brave actions!' he told them. 'I heard there was a bitter hatred between Republican loggers and Democratic environmental activists, but now I've seen with my own eyes that this is not true.'

As the Pope drove off, one logger asked his buddies 'Who was that guy?'

'It was the Pope,' another replied.. 'He's in direct contact with Heaven and has access to knowledge and wisdom.'

'Well,' the logger said, 'he may have access to all wisdom, but he doesn't know squat about bear hunting! By the way, is the bait still alive, or do we need to go back to Massachusetts and get another one?'
Tags: Pope, Pope Mobile, Funny, Humour, Democrat, Republican, Grizzly, Loggers, Environmental Activists, Massachusetts

Friday, August 13, 2010

Koreans Invaded Kuala Lumpur

Forgotten about these photos all this while. Was busy during the World Cup period with office works and the need to follow up with the daily matches.

During the World Cup, I had five South Korean friends in town and knowing that they are fanatic about their national football team, the thought of bringing them to watch a World Cup match that involves their national team came up.

Need to find a place with a giant screen and with lots of football kakis around. That will make the atmosphere superb. After googling around, I confirmed the place.

Off we went to Little Korea. What Little Korea? You didn't know? It exist right in KL.

Drove them from Corus Hotel to Ampang Avenue area, where Hotel De Palma and Ampang Point are on your left and this place is on your left.

First time coming to this part of KL and was pleasantly surprised to see soooooo many Korean restaurants and mini markets catering to the likes of the South Koreans' taste. Apparently, the condos in this area are filled with lots and lots of South Koreans.

We were slightly few minutes late for the South Korea vs. Uruguay match and a giant screen was set up at the car park area.

You don't need to go to South Korea to drool over their beautiful ladies and macho guys, they are all right here in KL. But my eyes were glued to the big screen .... ahem. We stood for the first half of the match and it was quite humid on that night.







You could find a person shouting into a microphone singing those South Korean songs that you would have heard them singing when South Korea hosted the 2002 World Cup. The cheers were loud and the South Koreans actually cheered and shouted the name of the particular player when that player lost the ball or concentration. It was so emotional.


It's like a stadium atmosphere with the people singing the South Korean songs.

There's the lady moving around with a drum trying her very best to drum up the support for their national football team who was thousand of kilometres away.

They will never jeer their players but cheered so loudly for them at all times whether they were attacking, defending or playing badly for a moment.





The crowd got up to their feet to cheer when a South Korean player almost scored.

As the heat was quite unbearable, my South Korean friends suggested to go into one of those nearby restaurants for a meal and watch the second half there.

Can't remember the name of this shop but ensured that I have a good view of the TV first. Yeah, the ceiling has those funny looking exhaust pipings hanging down to cater for those Korean steamboat meals.

The owner, who is a South Korean, came over to our table to serve us and asked for orders. He spoke to me with enthusiasm (in Korean language of course). I looked at him blur blur.

Then my South Korean guest spoke to him (I could guess what was being communicated and laughed about).

The restaurant owner then spoke to me in English. He said this "I thought you were a Korean and your five friends were local Chinese". My South Korean friends laughed and I told them "You see, I told you so. It's even happening in KL".

Wait till I post my photos of my trip to Seoul recently and will tell you those funny travel stories.

Yummy, Korean food. I eat whatever is placed right in front of me (edible stuff lah). This stuff was only for two fellas. Well, forty minutes to finish it off.

My friends didn't have a happy ending as South Korea lost the match to Uruguay eventually.

As we were leaving, I saw a friend trying to pay for the meals. I grabbed her credit card and gave mine instead.

What a commotion at the cashier. Two Korean guys grabbed my hands and shoulders and pulled me out, one lady took back my credit card and the other lady paid for it. Then the lady friend (who paid for it) said this "You are our guest!".

Me? A guest to the South Koreans in a Korean restaurant in the land of Malaysia? Where did it go wrong?
Tags: South Korea, South Korea Football Team, Little Korea, Ampang Avenue, Korean Restaurant, Korean Food

Pattaya International Fireworks Festival

Pattaya is definitely firing up its presence internationally. Covid19 has hit many nations really hard and Pattaya wasn't exempted from ...