simple page for 2006

With 2005 drawing to close. Many of us make resolutions. We have the opportunity to evaluate our accomplishments and sift through our less successful life in an effort to move in the right direction next year.

However, we often make the resolutions bulky with very much thought as to what is overloaded in our lives. Something like a year's to-do-list which has incorporated some unrealistic things. As a result, the resolutions usually achieve incompleteness. Instead of making long-listed resolutions that are almost boundless, why not try a new simple approach? Why not just making the resolutions simple enough to be targeted only for a few major wishes, such as "buy a car for RM50k-RM70k; strive for additional income of RM10k etc." It's important to articulate and justify through your beliefs when making resolutions.

I have a friend who has just started a small business but he has made his new year resolutions to include a BMW & a bungalow that's far beyond his financial ability. I assumed that he has been making his 10 years' resolution, may be.

Do consider what is working in our lives and shall be improved rather than hopping for a big leap. Don't make your already busy life more complex by compounding too many major commitments. Putting all those small things as you come across life into perspective that has to be taken for betterment and bringing them to execution by using a daily to-do-list. In such a way, you'll gradually change your life in a positive way without hassle and without procrastination.

Streamlining can be the way you can change your life. It's a simple process based on a three-point plan.

1. Systemize your attitude - create effective systems to help you functions better on a daily basis, and be willing to change your attitude to handle your daily obligations. Time management and problems solving manner are the essence;

2. Reasoning by elimination - don't clutter your life with a cache of possessions and bad relationships. Limit the things you allow to accumulate in your life. Decide to eliminate bad relationships and decide to trash worthless things;

3. Organize - get yourself, your things, your family and your business be organized. Then keep it that way everyday.

Well, I hereby wish you farewells for the 2006 and having a more meaningful way of life!

a man and a pen

A for apple; m for man; p for pen; and a men and a pen. these were the part of pioneer English lessons I'd been taught at standard vi. I was acquainted with the phase "a man and a pen" coz during that time, man has already been symbolized to pocket a pen which is clipping onto the sleeve of shirt's pocket. In such appearance as a dude, men were fond to carry a pen.

It was nothing crucial with the usefulness of the pen, it was basically used to flash proudly for the pen. A man with a pen didn't necessarily denoted that he could pen with good writing but he would be reckoned as a gentleman who has pocketed with pen. My first pen during that time was a $2.50 Hero, a China makes. It was a fountain pen equipped with a very strong nip and was tough enough that could even be used as a dart shoot-able onto a wooden table. This particular action had became our favorite game to challenge for the strongest amongst our pens during secondary school days. We were loving pen so much and were used to polish it almost everyday in order to give it a shine.

At the end of 1960s, Parker was first being introduced into here and it had fast been recognized as a renowned pen. Those students who had the chance to pin a Parker at their pocket were so regarded as rich kids who were purportedly having a wealthy family to live with. Hero pen users were therefore been categorized as the lower groups peoples.

It is all about a man and a pen in our childhood time. Now some of us, the Hero pen users, have already gone to sell salted eggs (died). This article was penned in memory of our many late schoolmates. My blessing!

the evolution of Santa

Malaysian of my age were astonished to experience Santa & Santarina as we know them today. Santa's life has diversified into more complex with commercial missions, and is not merely giving out presents to children as St. Nicholas did in the 4th century.

Santa was turning up everywhere as a benign source of beneficence during 1950. This commercial success has led to the North American Santa Claus being exported around the world. Santa was life-sized, jolly, and wearing the now familiar red suit. He appeared in magazines, in papers, on billboards, shop counters, and even at sex sites promoting businesses. I've seen many contrivances of this evolution. Santa is about to sell coca cola drinks; to promote Citibank cards by presenting you a bunch of money [today's ad at TheStar]; to sell Apple's Ipod [today's ad at TheStar].

Nevertheless, Santa's life is gleeful, he has today discarded his reindeer and accompanied by beautiful santarinas commercially [pic of holiday promotion at Everland, South Korea, as shown in TheStar today]. And many santarinas are going nude there [sorry no offend no link here]! He embodies holiday cheer, happiness, fun, and gifts-warm happy aspects of the commercial Christmas season.

Anyway, in our matured eyes, there is nothing fulsome and rowdy associated with Christmas ads. These have appealed to our better side at Christmas. They are designated to sell a product and destined to create festive environment as well. They do so by appealing to something in our souls that comes alive in a special manner during this season, displaying something nature, pure, generous and human concerned, something Christmas....

You know, today is the day Chinese celebrate "dong zhi" or the "thang yuan" festival, which rendering "the arrival of winter" meaning. And my family is enjoying our thang yuan besides the Christmas tree and under the environment of Christmas musics. Ya, we got the sensation of winter during which dong zhi and Christmas are coming together. Is that odd? Otherwise I'll call this as 2 in 1 merry Christmas Dong Zhi!

Happy Christmas Dong Zhi to you!

gold or share, take my count

Nine years ago, I bought 5k MBFcap shares at RM0.88 per share for the sum of RM4,400. If during that time, I acquired gold at about RM44 per gram rather than MBFcap, I would have 100 grams of gold in hand.

The present value of my 5k MBFcap shares (being converted to 125 MBFcorp) is RM7.50; and the present value of 100 grams of gold is RM6,177. Relatively I had rugi RM6,169.50!

Nine years backs, you needed 100 grams of gold to buy 5,000 MBFcap shares. Now you only need 0.12 grams of gold to buy 5,000 MBFcap equivalent shares.

Huk! to buy share or to buy gold, my experience tells.

I think the future trend of investment is for gold coz the production quantity of gold is become lesser. On the other hand, shares will be issued more and more for the purposes of corporate funding for working capital since most of the corporations now are needing fund to roll.

Renmin Bi also becomes a favourite. It is polishing RM bimonthly in term of exchange. If I were allowed to place a further 10k of investment, I would definitely choose to kunci (lock up) 10k of Gold or Renmin Bi rather than Malaysian shares. Would you follow pace?

Seasons greetings

Christmas is upon us, new year is coming closed and the Chinese New Year is fast approaching. Like them or loathe them, the temptation of purging your wallet is the order of the day! But don't ever tucker out your saving!

For bloggers, now is a good time to "bing and leap outdoor greatly" (blog). Those of you who aren't obliged to burn the midnight oil should try to get out and about and feel the emotion of the Santa and the god of finance.

But for me, instead of eating, drinking and making merry, I prefer to jalan jalan, see the flowers, see the people, feel the nature.

By the way, I wish you a very merry Christmas and a healthy and prosperous new year.

back to Palm for Christmas!

Just got my new classic Palm TX, my out-of-pocket Christmas present! Simultaneously gave my Dell Axim to my son for his Christmas present too. Yeah! I'm the Santa!

I've been using many palms for many years. From Palm Tungsten T; Zire72 to Tungsten T3. I decided to return to Palm for ease of use or otherwise I'd been feeling distaste on Window pocket PC OS which had bewildered me for TL reactivation of its Outlook system, and also on its incapable memory handling.

I was very impressed with the color screen and the sexy profile. Palm TX seemed faster to me since the Palm OS5 is less taxing on the processor and the simplicity of applications graced my heart. The combination of that gorgeous screen, one-touch to landscape mode and ability of font size adjustment on the move, along with superb handling of wifi, made this the most painless ever-ready PDA I've seen yet!

Palm TX video player is much better than the PPC due to its higher resolution display, better support for file (divx, xvid, mpeg1 & mpeg2, etc.) formats, and much better power management.

Pocket Tunes is just a bliss to sing out good sound for MP3 sound tracks and amazingly it'll be kept running at the background after a few seconds with complete off screen. An Ipod alike!

EReader is having the clarity and freshness of immediate experience with ebooks reading and the association of MSDict (Oxford reference suite) make reading be referential on the go.

Versamail works like a champ. Jogged the GET icon got everything rapidly! The Tasks for to-do-list and HandyShopper for purchase list have served to organize my day-to-day events more easy.

Overall, this was an excellent return to Palm. If I had to grumble, I'd say that Palm's distribution is not stringent. You know, I'd found my default Hotsync username be automatically allocated as "chalie" after the completion of desktop installation. That means the package I'd purchased was not a virgin one! I think the seller who sold the packet to me is going to harm the reputation of Palm!

Let me conclude my commentary on my return to Palm by saying that It's really cool PDA with a classy professional look; nice compact size; tactile buttons; solid; fast; extremely convenient and intuitive interface. It's really the faculty through which my Christmas will be apprehended!

Dunce buying jewelry

My old partner has reminded me to buy a Christmas gift for our granddaughter in order to celebrate her full-moon day aka Christmas eve. Since I already have a nice jade gems in hand which was bought from China not long ago, so I've decided to buy a white gold necklace to pair with it.

At Megamall this evening, I was examining the shop windows and browsing for a preference to any other. The stupid idea was actually I totally didn't know how to make a good selection. By looking me eying in vain of desirability, a sale girl then approached me and said: "Sir, what are you looking for, may I help you?". I therefore told her that I am looking for a white gold necklace for my little grandchild.

"O, you're coming at a right place, we have plenty of selections, come, I show them to you." she said while leading me to their counter.

"nah, this one is perfect and inexpensive." she said while showing me a pick.

"OK! how much is this?" I asked.

"You see, the price is RM510 on its tag. But you're lucky coz gum gum today we have a promotion, now I can give you a special price at only RM388 net." she convinced.

"Wah! so tiny so expensive, I think I better have a price comparison first then I'll get back to you." I responded with an intention to move away.

"Come lah sir, I calculate another special discount exclusively for you," she said and then was making a tit tit tak tak on the calculator and lastly added: "OK! this is the bottom price - RM288, I guarantee you wouldn't find this price at other shop."

"But I still feel inappropriate for the price over such a small necklace, probably I need to feel out a prior cognition about that!" I replied implausibly.

"OK lah! less RM20 again come to RM268 as the last offer in order to compliment your grandchild, OK?" she reconciled.

Eventually I was having a conviction over her many times of discount and therefore made the purchase. Whether it's cheap or expensive, frankly, I'm blur! Anyway It's a good time to be a Santa by giving out the gift.

Bank Negara foreign reserves declining

Malaysia's foreign exchange reserves dropped 3.4% in the two weeks ended Nov 30.

The international reserves of Bank Negara Malaysia amounted to RM275.3 billion or equivalent to USD73.1 billion as at 30 November 2005. During the period, there was a large external loan repayment by the Federal Government. The reserves position is sufficient to finance 8 months of retained imports and is 5.8 times the short-term external debt. Reported BNM.

They have declined 9.1% from a record US80.4bil on Aug 15, according to central bank data.

GST, what's that?

One of my clients came across an article about the GST (Goods and Services Tax) that has published by the Oriental Daily News of Dec 05 and he was not fully comprehended with the illustration as shown above.

After seeing the illustration, I showed him a humorous remark and pointed out that there were 2 printing mistakes on the illustration. The last field of "tax on output" should be written as RM5 instead of RM2; the total GST collected by the government for RM5 should be placed under the last column of "net tax payable" instead of "tax on input" column.

FYI, the simple calculation base on the corrected illustration can be determined as:
Raw M'rial Supplier charges Manufacturer RM0.50 and pay it to Government;
Manufacturer charges Wholesaler RM2.50 and pay Government RM2.50-RM0.50(input tax);
Wholesaler charges Retailer RM3.50 and pay Government RM3.50-RM2.50(input tax);
Retailer charges Consumer RM5.00 and pay Government RM5.00-RM3.5(input tax);
at the end, the selling price to Consumer becomes RM100+RM5 sales tax.

Malaysian GST is expected to be implemented sometime in March or April 2007. With a broader base for goods and services being subject to GST, the revenue for the government is expected to be higher and the consumers are the final taxpayers.

Because of the GST, the inflation rate is likely to be heightened sometime in the 3rd quarter of 2006. It is due to the preexistence of GST rehearsal, importers and traders are likely to pre-align prices of their goods for the advance advantage.

when few old chaps meet

Last Wednesday, few of us, old chaps, met and dined at Chameleon restaurant of Air Itam, Penang with great delight. It has been nearly 30 years we hadn`t met in such a way.

We're of an age now, no longer young yet not entirely "chi cheong fun" (faded out), moving slower and eating less than we did. We had the past in common, were once schoolmates of Chung Ling high school who ate a lot and played boisterously. I remembered them at school, they were minded boys who would study amusingly at class, played games naughtily after school, ventured for sight seeing on weekends and usually tensed up just before examination. One of us, Ah Loong, a cheerful, sandy-haired man of about 280 pounds, was fair being designated to continue as our monitor since the school days of yesteryear. By far, he was the biggest in size and the richest in noesis than most of us.

We touched upon the subjects of sex, health, shares and business but more on health since it was gula that we had always concerned. I wondered why people were only seriously taking good health cares when they had become old chaps. And by no surprise, 4 out of 6 dishes we had consumed that night were vegetables.

When deliberated about the vigra, my introduction of "liap liap cheir", an imitation of vigra which would make man last for few hours as claimed, made them vigorously grasping and shaking their hands to disagree on contrast. Perhaps it was too good for an old chap!

One of us, Ah Saw, queried on how to determine a sounded company by judging on its annual reports. Shit! all the financial reports were man-made, you would not even know the accruals and relays of some crucial items. So I just recommended him to simply weight on the appearance of the reports, thick meant good and thin meant bad. It was that simple!

Another chap, Ah Kiet, was compounding on doing the business of bread maker. According to his imagination, bread would eventually became the major food when the scientists had alas declared that bird flu be transmittable within human. But none of us knew how to bake roti. I think it is time for us to learn making dough from flour before we got flu.

We invariably ended up talking about pain and soul, a spin-off of menopause. Women usually found their menopause when their menstrual cycle ended. Surprisingly we too found our menopause when the "juice of spirit" became lower in quantity and the power of spitting (ejaculation) became nearer in distance. That was how we had chewed out from our talking on this topic. I think this is most probably the general definition of man's menopause, am I right!

By the way of further variation as to rendezvous, Ah Loong suggested that our old chaps' meeting would be made often these days probably before the Chinese new year. See you old chaps!

goose flesh all over

Not long ago, it was "ehh, Malaysia ini negara Islam, you tidak suka, you keluar dari Malaysia." Haji Bahruddin bin Amilrudin, mp for Jerai, 051028.

This time, it's "If foreigners think that Malaysia police are brutal, please go back to their own countries and not to stay here," Noh Omar, Deputy Internal Security Minister, 051129.

The PM's Office was said to have called up all newspapers yesterday evening requesting the story be shrouded.

The owner of DIS, PM Pah Lah has pointed out that his deputy's statement is totally against Govt's policy on visitors. In fact it is against the whole world's nationalities, not only China.

PM Pah Lah is now become a goalie to play the defensive position on DIS department who stands in front of the goal and tries to prevent another scoring of goal after his fullback has scored an own goal.

When the time Mahatir was steering the vehicle of Malaysia, none of his kaki tangan defied to made him "no facesi"

I wonder whether PM Pah lah is steering the vehicle of Malaysia merely with a single hand, loosing grip to the controlling of power that is designed to be held in order to move it....

p/s my blog's value

My blog is worth $1,693.62.
How much is your blog worth?

Germination, enervation

Following a sweet moment not long ago that had irrigated my inner peace , me and my wife were celebrating becoming a grandpa and grandma after our youngest daughter gave birth to a baby girl. It's a fine germination after 27 years!

The baby was born on Thus Nov 24 at Gleneagle Penang, weighing in at a healthy 3.51kg. She is gorgeous, healthy and is suggested to be named as Carmen. We're celebrating every moment with our beautiful grandchild these few days.

The birth of my grandchild is also signalizing that it's the moment I'm climbing down the hill of man's life-cycle. However I'm gaining momentum for every moment to be contemporaneous with her growth albeit the feebleness.

By the time someone is calling you uncle, it's significant that you life is supposed to be anchored. Coming at the last quarterly milestone of life, in fact it's amazing! Inextricably you would find yourself be fancy-free and fascinated with values of association not only to people but to things also. And the power of endurance to physical pains becomes greater. I'm wondering! Perhaps it's rightful that "the meaning of life would be eventually derivable from the understanding of its machanics" which was assumed by scientists and philosophers when converging on the quest of meaning of life.

"I dreamt, and I, so singular, saw myself as plural." -- Lenine