Illegal Immigrants Issue

Perhaps you have already know Sabah having the most illegal immigrants in Malaysia. Majority of them came from Philippine and Indonesia, I'm sure that Sabah is the most strategic and easiest location for them to come in.

They won't worry about hunger, because they can get food, drink, money and shelter easily. No lie. If they lack of money, they can just go around parking lot and collect money from the motorists. If we don't give them, they scratch our cars. Or they can sell lottery result. I think it should be some bastards provide montery to manipulate them. Worse come to worse, they dare to rob you on the street. If they need a shelter, they can just build their wood house anywhere they like, even around the city. Hey, it just sounds so stupid.

They can build seaside housing anywhere they like, but Sabahans have to pay to build our own house.

Surprisingly, we even have statistics on total number of illegal immigrants in Sabah, every year. I wonder who the hell is so free and dumb to waste our tax money to do such stupid statistics. They should spend time and money to eliminate them instead.

Illegal immigrants issue in Sabah already dragging for many years and still yet to resolve until now. Why this can happen? We ask our PM to resolve it for us on last few months back, but he only asked us to form a committee to resolve it ourselves. This kind of committee shouldn't have already form 4 years ago while BN took over?

I saw the local newspaper that the respective officers are doing their works by raiding the illegal immigrants on last week. Good start, but what's the point if there are issues remain unsolve behind this? Hey dude, I heard they able to escape from the illegal immigrants center easily. They can cut the fence, bribe the officers or escape from the main gate under poor security.

Kid: Dad, I've been caught, pls pick me up at 5pm later ok, the FREE food/drinks sucks inside here.

If we managed to send them back, they able to come back here again very fast, perhaps within a week, because the security control over Sabah boundary is just too weak. May be it's not weak, it's about corruption. Sight, our PM slogan seems like not working at all. Some local politicians already pinpointed the same issues many times, but still the inability of decision and management among the leaders remain the issues.

C*st*m: Come on faster, RM400 per head. Tomorrow we can change our Kancil to VIOS already. Yahoo!

As a Sabahan, what can we do now?
Of course, we can continue to enjoy the 'fascinating' view of increasing wood housing along the highway, contribute 'tips' to the illegal jockeys, notice their populations growing dramatically in Sabah and grab our peace & benefits eventually.

Since this guy addresses on the same topic, may be Obama can help us?

Your Virtual Plastic Surgery Preview

If you are interested to know how you and your friends/foes look like after plastic surgery (facelift), you can do it via http://liftmagic.com in just a few seconds now. Perhaps you have heard about this.

Lifemagic offering 14 kinds of facelift operation for you to play around. All you need to do is just upload a photo and start doing the facelift clicking via mouse. You can even can print the output after that.

I found it is so interesting. I sacrificed my girl friend's picture and did an experiment, just because I want to share the Joy to you. ;) The outcome looks better after facelift'ed by me, and I really love it.

Here's the 'before and after'.

I hope she doesn't mind I do this. ;)
Have fun.

The Warlords Special Edition

Have you seen The Warlords? It doesn't matter anymore for now, because you will see how Andy Lau experienced his stock market lesson from beginning till the end, in a funny way.

Some people are just too free to edit this clip, but it's quite funny. Apart from that, other movie clips are also edited to join this clip, but mainly from The Warlords.

Enjoy & have fun :)

Unfortunately, it speaks mandarin.

Down Them All!

What? Down Them All? Sound familiar? yes, "Why just one when you can Down Them All." It's none other than Firefox most popular download manager and accelerator extension, DownThemAll. It is now already exceeded more than 9 millions downloads. With DownThemAll installed in your Firefox, you've gain advantage of download capabilities and speed in your browser.

DownThemAll lets you download the entire links or files found in the webpage. You can refine the downloads via fully customizable criteria to get only what you really want. Cool? Not cool enough, DownThemAll includes the advanced accelerator to increases your download speed which up to 400%!!! That's really impressive.

There are many other download managers/accelerators like Flashget and Download Accelerator Plus are also quite good, but I've use it for few years and I just fall in love with DownThemAll, I can't wait to share it with you.

DownThemAll is a very succeed download manager.

Any drawback huh? You totally don't have to worry about it. DownThemAll is completely FREE and open source, without adware/spyware embedded into the software. What it makes me happy is, it is only works under Mozilla Firefox extension. So if you're an IE user, just download and install latest Firefox 3 now. If you don't know how good is Firefox 3 , just refer to my previous post will do.

You can go http://www.downthemall.net to download DownThemAll now. The latest version is 1.0.3 released on 9th June 2008.

Happy DownThemAll~!

Is Petrol Kiosks Making Money?

Since petrol price is hiked like hell nowadays, we must wonder whether petrol kiosks are making money. Perhaps they are, as we are seeing new vehicles and car plat numbers on the road everyday . Since fuel is under price control item, no one can sell it cheap or expensive, or even open a petrol station easily in Malaysia. Sounds pretty good business.

The petrol dealers ass. (association) chairman Abdul Wahid on news 3 days ago announced they want to ban this and that, because the petrol kiosk owners are hardly to survive, due to high operation costs and overcharges from banks. Nah, unbelievable?

Okay, let's see what he told to the reporters.
1) Petrol kiosks owner only gained as low as 3% from 1 liter fuel sold as commission.
2) Banks are charging them 1% from 1 liter fuel sold, for every credit card transaction.
3) Supplier are charging them also 1% from 1 liter fuel sold, for every credit card transaction.
4) Apart from credit card transaction, supplier also charging them credit card machine rental, and now supplier even requesting 30% more rental fee from them.
5) Operational costs now are higher than the commissions given.

Requests they had made:
1) The ass. has requested to increase the commission to 6%.
2) They will ask all the petrol kiosks to operate 18 hours only, as there will be no profit between 11pm and 7am, so they able to cut down 30% of the expenses.
3) They urge the owner not to accept credit card at this moment, until the commission is being adjusted (they can save 2% commissions from the credit card sales now).

Fine. From what I know, they are getting commission of petrol 9.5 cents per liter and diesel 4.5 cents per liter. To see whether they are making profit or loss, let's do simple calculation based on city kiosks.
1) We assume total average fuel sales per day is about 20,000 liters. 12,000 liters go to petrol and 8,000 liters go to diesel.
2) Gross profit for petrol 12,000 liters x 9.5 cents & diesel 8,000 x 4.5 cents = RM1,140 + RM360 = RM1,500
3) Gross profit per month is about RM45,000.
4) If the consumers are using credit card, they need to pay supplier and bank 1% respectively. We assume 60% of the consumers are using credit card.
12,000 liters x 2% x RM2.70 x 60% x 30 days = RM11,664
8,000 liters x 2% x RM2.58 x 60% x 30 days = RM7430.40
Total = RM19,094.40

Don't forget they need to pay the kiosks rental, workers, electricity & water, and also the credit card rental, pump rental, kiosks maintenance, estimate total expenses is about RM10,000-RM15,000.

After deduct all expenses and other commissions, they still have about RM10,905.60 nett profit per month, RM130,867.20 per year, still okay I guess?

Why there is high operational costs since you are not using advanced technology?

Anyway, It's obvious that they are not benefit from the fuel price hiked. The fuel price is a lot higher now, but they only managed to earn the sales by fixed commission, while bank and supplier is earning commission by liter via credit card sales, as mentioned above.

And the worse is they have to come up with more capital to buy fuel from supplier. Meaning, they have to fork out extra 41% and 63% to buy petrol and diesel from supplier. They need more capital to continue this business.

Will that silly cover scratch the car?

Okay, they won. Government (Datuk Shahrir) had announced yesterday that they can have the new commission rate now. The new commission rate for petrol is 12.19 cents per liter and diesel is 7 cents per liter. It's about 28% and 56% increase. And the ass. chariman Abdul Wahid said "We accept it with gratitude. With the new rates, we can at least survive."

We recalculate the nett profit with new commission rate again.
1) Gross profit for petrol 12,000 liters x 12.19 cents & diesel 8,000 x 7 cents = RM1,462.80 + RM560 = RM2,022.80
2) Monthly gross profit = RM60,684
3) Credit card users 60% = RM19,094.40
3) Monthly nett profit = RM60,684 - RM19,094.40 - RM16,500 = RM25,089.60
4) Yearly Nett Profit = RM301,075.20
Nah, they are gaining 131% extra of the total nett profit now, of course that ass. chairman said they are satisfied la!

Don't force me do this, if the ass. intend to shut down petrol station again.

Hey, seems like this method is working in Malaysia. Can we spread the rumours to stop pumping fuel at Petronas kiosks for 3 years to demand for lower fuel price from government now?

Rumours Spark Petrol Panic, Only in SABAH

This is bad. The history of terrible traffic jam re-occurred again, but only happened in Sabah today. Some interior areas like Keningau, queues reached up to 2km, while some petrol kiosks ran out of supply. The rumours of all the petrol kiosks in Malaysia closing down for three days, because kiosk dealers nationwide were protesting and demanding for higher fuel commissions, as fuel business nowadays making harder and harder. In fact, they just want to decline credit card zeh.

According to the petrol station owner, the traffic jam was started since 12.30pm, and the rumours were dismissed by The Star Web Site around 5.30pm. Since there is not many people seeing newspaper online in Sabah, the traffics are still tense around 6.45pm, when I was on my way back home. I guess it should be end by now.

Luckily Sabah has not many vehicles around like KL.

I was surprise this rumours can caused many thousands of the motorists paniced and queued to fill up the fuel. If we think logically, why many Sabahans believed such rumours, which was not being announced or reported by media and government? For me, they are not fool definitely, because the 2 main reasons below.

The government apparently were not doing their job well. They should have a channel to clear the rumours, or at least an hotline/channel for people to verify whether the news is true or just a rumours. And they should inform the motorists ASAP via proper channel like Digi/Maxis/Celcom SMS, government web sites, require every petrol station put up the notification. Damn, they do it only when it was late. It caused many of the Sabahans wasted their fuels to queue for fuel, and stuck in the traffic jam! It looks true when the first case of 78cents - RM1 fuel price hiked happened in reality. It just made thing worse! I felt very uncomfortable with the existing government situation now.

When you see more and more people filling up at petrol station, and when you see your car's fuel tank is less than a quarter, further you heard rumours and received sms from someone you trust that the petrol kioks will be shut down for few days, you will definitely panic and join the motorists' troop. I can totally understand their situation. We are just lucky because we can online and check the latest news from online newspapers and msn to each other.

What surprised me is that, even after the rumours were dismissed, some motorists still want to continue to queue and they said they don't want to take the 'risk', wtf.

Come on, we only queue for food here.

Okay, I'm not emotional here. But, do you know who spread the rumours? I hope it can be find out soon, let's see newspaper/news on coming few days. The one who spread the rumours is/are smart, I just assume as 'they'. They managed to think of a brilliant reason, which can get bunched of Sabahans in panic and rush to the petrol kioks again! Sabah transportation system is the poorest in Malaysia, so they found the right target this time. Fortunately it's only involves in Sabah, phew.

Some parties definitely benefits from this rumours.
1) Petrol kiosks onwers in Sabah (with such rumours, they can huge profit in just a day, thanks to the one who spread rumour and PDA president Abdul Wahid Bidin).
2) Mobile Service Telco - Digi/Maxis/Celcom (they can laugh for the whole day today).

So what's the lesson of this rumours to us?
1) Don't panic and simply listen to rumours, especially from SMS, unless it's proved from newspaper/government/our PM/CM.

2) Don't simply SMS to others when you receive rumours.

Sabahan Bloggers: When is our turn to be on top news?

Sabahan will be continue to stay on the top of Malaysia news since, starting from Yong Teck Lee and SAPP. Sight.

Firefox 3 Released!

Firefox user anyone? After waiting for quite some times, Firefox 3 finally officially released on 18th June! I have upgraded my Firefox to this cool version in the 1st place. There are a lot improvements made, I have better browsing experience now. But what shocked me is, Firefox claimed that it has more than 15,000 improvements made! Wow. You better try it now and experience it today.

Unfortunately, every new software normally has bugs and vulnerabilit. The new vulnerabilities of Firefox 3 has been discovered by TippingPoint. Perhaps they are not happy with Firefox 3 launched.

If you are still using Internet Explorer 7, I suggest you try out Firefox 3 today. Why Firefox? I have 5 good reasons why you should swift and use Firefox.

For many years, Microsoft IE has dominating Web browser, but not anymore now. Since the release of Mozilla Firefox 1.5 on last year, Firefox has been steadily grabbing browser users market share from IE. According to W3counters, IE had 92% of the market in Oct 2004, where in Sept 2005 it dropped to 86%. IE's market share even dropped to 82% on September 2006, with Firefox rising up to 12.5%. And up to June 2007, Firefox has eroded about 25% of the market. I think this year Firefox should have already up to 30%, as people are aware of making the right choice.

IE share is shrinking til 66% on June 2007.

Reason #1 - Installation Procedure
IE7 installer always asks you to temporarily disable your antivirus and antispyware protection, which doesn't give confidence. IE7 installation requires Windows validation and even a restart, which significantly piss me off and slows down the installation process.

Firefox installation is a lot faster and simpler, where you can complete it in a minute. It scanned my existing version for incompatible extensions, and then update those are available, how nice and convenient. The setup file size is small, Firefox 3 is only about 7.8MB! And what is more satisfy, no reboot is required.

You'll see smart location bar at Firefox now.

Reason #2 - Look and Feel
IE 7 is now easier to find functions via graphical icons. IE 7 thoughtfully offers more customization than in the past, such as the ability to add more search engines to its search field.

Firefox has new UI features, such as a "word wheel" in the search bar. Firefox totally take advantage over IE7 in the extension and plug-in features. There are hundreds of tools for Firefox to enable all manner of customizing. IE has extensions too, but not as excellent as Firefox.

Variety of 'useful' plugins available for Firefox.

Reason #3 - Tabbed Browsing
IE7 copycat other advanced browser to offer tabbed browsing to it's users. IE7 includes a new tab button to the right of your last open tab that takes up unnecessary screen space, I don't like it but I couldn't find a way to remove it. Anyhow, it comes with a helpful tab preview icon displays thumbnails of all your open tabs for any window.

Firefox's impressive drop-down menu next to the tabs is a convenient shortcut to find viewed pages. If Firefox crashes, Firefox always allow you to restore the browsed tabs easily once you restart Firefox, which IE7 can't do.

Improved download window.

Reason #4 - Cool New Features
For RSS feeds, once you've subscribed to a feed via IE7, you can see, sort, manage, and read your subscriptions easily from a two-panel interface. Many people wish IE7 detected available feeds better.

Firefox does a much better job of managing feeds. It allows you subscribe in Firefox's own reader, which awkwardly makes bookmarks of headlines, or in Google, Bloglines, Yahoo, or any reader application you have. IE will subscribe itself only to feeds, and it doesn't display RSS content as reliably as Firefox. Firefox 3 top new features including one-click bookmarking, instant web site ID, full zoom, improved password manager and many many others waiting for you to experience.

Improved search suggestion.

Reason #5 - Security & Performance
Apart from pop-up blocker, IE7 has a phishing filter checks the web pages you visit using heuristics and a whitelist of legitimate sites. IE7 lets you clean out your history, temporary files, and Web cookies with one button, but it's not easy to delete specific files in those groups. Another nice browsing-security touch is the "Web page privacy policy" feature. However, the past history of exploitable security holes in IE is the major concern. Will they improve?

Web forgery warning when you browse.

Firefox's stronger reputation for security and Mozilla's practice of addressing vulnerabilities soon after they're discovered precedes its latest update. Firefox 3 is now includes strict anti-phishing and anti-malware measures, plus easy ways to tell you who is the good guys from the bad, that's instant web site ID.

I like Firefox, because it's a open source software.

Apparently Firefox shines and score among 5 reasons above.
So what you waiting for?

What Bill to Pay First and Way to Save

Still remember I posted a poll previously on what bill we normally pay first? There were 15 people took the vote and the final poll result is stated below.

Apparently most of us pay Streamyx bill first because Internet access is already important to us, become part of our life perhaps. The result also show no one is willing to pay DBKK assessment fee first, perhaps the bill comes only once a year.

We aware that credit card charging us 15-18% interests rate and also possible late payment charge of 1%, if we don't pay our credit card bill on time. So we as a debtors will trying to pay it on time to avoid penalty charges. It goes the same for some other bills. Perhaps you have know about this, I just want to share with you about bill payment and penalty, and perhaps some savings you can do from these bills.

Credit card interest is killing.

1. DBKK
If you delay your payment, they will charge you penalty, and also 'notification' fee. Notification fee? Don't you think it should be free? I, or should say my dad, haven't pay my house tax for about 13 years. The fees suppose to be RM1,201.20. But I'm charged in the total of RM1,541.02, with the BAYATAN PEMBERITAHU RM65 and FAEDAH RM182.42. Hmmm, I wonder whether I should go and complaint abt RM65 additiona charges.

Why DBKK use my money to put a fish here? -.-

Hey, 13 years but nothing happen, it is suppose to be the same as DBKK parking bill that people are not paying for them? Aren't they take any action for it? I'm not sure whether I should clear these bills, or just leave it until I die. I heard some people said can take the bill to DBKK and ask for 'discount', what do you think?


2. Telekom Malaysia
This is a little bit ridiculous. apart from usage charges, we also need to pay monthly charges of RM29 and 5% government tax. So if you don't make any call, you also need to pay RM30.45 monthly. If you using hand phone to make call regularly, then this bill is definitely it is not worth for you. I know some of us just remain the fixed line for Streamyx only.

Why Malaysian don't use Skype phone?

I have a suggestion to cut your phone bill dramatically. If you don't plan to make any call from your house phone, perhaps you can change the fixed line plan to prepaid. You only require to pay a lump sum of transfer plan fees (around RM80) and an initial prepaid fees of RM20, and you can receive call forever without paying a single cent, where your Streamyx line is still ongoing. If you opt for this, you can save at least RM30.45 every month. As for me, I still reserve my phone line because it is not worth in my case, as my mum did a lot of local call monthly.

In the other hand, if you don't pay your phone bill for 2-3 months, your phone line is still remain, without any penalty.


3. Electricity & Water
For water bill, it's relatively okay, as the bill comes around every 3 months and it's not as expensive as electricity.

We feel bad that electricity tariff is being adjusted again, but that's reality perhaps we have to force ourselves to move back to our traditional living style, avoid using air-con and heater. If we still want to continue to enjoy, we have to get more income to cover it. Electricity tariff is calculated based on unit of KWH you used. The more you consume, the more expensive you pay. I don't have air-con at home, only heater, and my average monthly bill is about RM80 with about 360kwh for 4 people, quite expensive.

Ohm: You force me to do this, TNB!

I have tried to NOT to pay the electricity for 3 months and water bill for 9 months, and nothing happen, no cut off and no penalty given. Kind enough.

I will post on how to save your electricity bill in details on my next post.


4. Astro
I believe majority of the middle and upper class people in Malaysia has Astro at home. Astro is not expensive, if you subscribe the basic package of RM37.95 per month. But it already 'tells' you it's a basic package. Basically it's a empty shell for me.

It may be suffer as you have to pay a lot more if you subscribing 'interesting' channel packages, like Dynasty and Movie. You even pay more if you subscribing latest movie or 'Astro On Demand' package. It costs me RM99 a month for subscribing Basic + Dynasty package, but I don't even watch it at all. I have no way to save on this as my mum is watching Wah Lai Toi everyday. That's pretty okay, we love our mums.

Youngster: Why Astro On Demand? I used torrent download what.

Some suggestions from others to cut down your Astro bill.
a) Some experts suggest you to watch YouTube or e-TV instead of Astro.
b) Some youngsters also suggest to download drama/movie from p2p, easily.
c) Some suggest to share the same dish with your neightbor, with an additional decoder.
c) To make it extreme, some people even invest and do illegal adjustments on their Astro machine, and they able to watch full package. You know, I know. I won't share how-to adjustment to help you to save on Astro bill here, it's illegal.

Anyway, I suggest you pay your Astro bill on time. There will be late payment charge of RM10 monthly once it is overdue (30 days), even after a day. It's not worth if you still consider to continue to watch Astro. Astro will also terminating your service if you are not making your payment after 2 months. I, or should say my dad, had tried it many times. It's kinda stupid of paying RM20 extra for service reconnection, and the late payment charge of RM10 accumulated by every month.

Since Astro is the money sucker for us, you can do auto bill payment via bank SI or credit card. It is wise to do so to avoid late payment charge and you are eligible to earn credit card points, and Bonus Link if you pay 3/6/12 months in advance.


5. Streamyx
Streamyx voted as top bill people would pay for it, apart from credit card. Your Internet service will be terminated if you don't pay your bill more than 2 months within the period given. Even though, I still normally delay 1 month to pay my Streamyx bill, no penalty.

Streamyx offering many packages like Streamyx 512kbps, 1Mbps till 4Mbps, with or without modem. The cheapest is Streamyx 384kbps , comes with 10 hours and 5 cents per minute for additional usage, it's RM20 per month. Not worth it if you spend more than 20 minutes in average to online daily.

To save more, perhaps you can go for Streamyx 512kbps RM77 with modem. It's enough for surfing/blogging/chatting for 1-4 persons. That's the best package I found so far, as the modem provided by TM is life-time warranty. You won't have to pay extra if the modem you bought is malfunction and out of warranty. For wireless modem router, you have to purchase yourself. You can opt for Streamyx 512kbps RM44 with 60 hours, 1 cent per minute for additional usage. Worth it if you online less than 60 minutes in average daily.

One of Streamyx latest package

To save even more, you can share the package with your neighbors or house mates, then the bill is divided. Make sure they pay you or pay the bill! You can also apply and become a Streamyx agent. It's easy to apply and free! You just need to online and enter the necessary information for your customer, done and you will get commissions of what package your customer subscribed. For example, you will get RM77 for a RM77 package. Cool?


Can I say this latest package is cheating marketing purposes only?

That's why you see many youngsters running around and ask you whether you want to subscribe Streamyx package, especially during PC fair. You may be not interested to be an agent and think that too many agents are around and most of us already subscribe? Not really, there is always many strategies to do business. They can ask you to re-subscribe to a new/better package, just like your mobile phone. Sometimes it's worth, sometimes don't, you can justify it easily.

When you see PC Fair, you see Streamyx booth.

Another of my favorite strategies is to hire pretty boys and girls as promoters to promote the package, I love it and I use to entertain the pretty promoter as I'm a friendly person. So use the right strategy is very important la.


6. Newspapers
My family is subscribing daily local chinese newspaper delivery. The newspaper man always come to my house and collect the payment On Time, so I expect their newspaper delivery time also On Time. It's about RM46 per month, and they going to make it RM52 next month due to fuel price hiked. Anyway, if you watch The Star, you can subscribe e-Star newspaper via Bluehyppo, you can save up to 50% per month. To save to the maximum, just watch news from The Star web site la. I used to do that every morning before I go office.

Angmoh: The Star? Is this da one?

To maximize your savings, you can pay your bills above via online banking. It is the best if you use your credit card with cash rebate to pay them. You are not only able to get cash rebate / reward point from credit card payment, but you also enjoying about 20-30 days of grace period to repay it to the bank!

Looking for FREE Anti Virus?

Are you afraid of your PC/notebook/smart phone is vulnerable to e-threats such as virus, spyware, trojan or spyware? To secure against these threats, your windows perhaps need a comprehensive protection. The so-called comprehensive protection should consists of anti virus/spyware/phishing and personal firewall, Intrusion Detection System, and perhaps an anti spam if you are using Email client. I believe you already have at least one of them.

What can really secure my PC? Perhaps a pad lock?

There are many FREE version of anti virus software out there, few of the popular and widely use one are:
a) AVG Free AV
b) Free Avast! AV Home Edition
c) Avira AntiVir Free Edition
d) PC Tools AV Free AV
e) BitDefender Free AV Edition
Are you currently using any one of them? What's your comment about them?

BitDefender also want to gain certain market share on Free AV.

I used them before and I'm relatively okay with them. They are FREE and provide basic protection against virus, so I have no complaint about them at all. But, if you think they are good, then please do me a favor. Get a pen drive with any virus/spyware, plug it into your windows installed with any free AV above, and see what can it detects. Or you can just browse any software crack web site, and see what it able to detect. It's NONE. Even it detects, it detects only virus, not spyware or trojan, due to its limitations and it's FREE.

So what anti virus actually offering comprehensive solution we need? There are many paid version of anti virus offering such solution, among the famous and expensive one are Trend Micro Pc-cilin, Symantec Norton AV and McAfee AV.

Norton 360, brings comprehensive protection but it is sooOO expensive!

Why pay more if there is better and cheaper solution? I would like to introduce you Kaspersky Internet Security 2009, a new version of comprehensive anti virus solution from Kaspersky. Kaspersky AV is rated as top #2 anti virus software this year by toptenreviews.com .

BitDefender ranked #1? It must be cheating.

The cost of 1 year KIS license is relatively cheap, for about less than RM200, you can get a 3 users pack license already at any IT retail in Malaysia. Cool?
No, need to pay is always not cool enough, we need to save more instead. How about you can get it FREE trial for 6 months?! Okay, click here to download latest IS 2009 now, and apply the activate code below during installation.
T6B6K-8YK22-VBQH7-ZUZJG

You'll get it to run for 6 months, NO JOKE! For existing Kaspersky user who is still running older version, please upgrade now to enjoy the new version improvements (eligible to apply code above too!). Now you can throw away your free AV and try Kaspersky at home, office or any where you like. ;)

If you think it is really good after 6 months trial, just buy one to support and keep it survive.

KIS 2009 has a lot improvement made.

Besides, good news for mobile users, you can even get Kaspersky AV trial up to 1 year! La-la sound go here, select and download your mobile OS version now!

Please remember to update the pattern after install, and check the latest version of the software from Kaspersky web site from time to time. You also need to tune your first time AV settings to optimize your windows performance and get rid of the protections you don't need.

Kaspersky: I kill virus too, can I become a Legend too?

I have activated mine, you? Let's say bubye to virus and spyware. xD

Sabahan Bloggers Gathering

Are you a blogger? I am not sure whether you attend any blogger gathering before, I didn't. As I visited some friends' blogs recently, I noticed they have a banner attached at their blogs.

No link, no venue & no price attached on every blogger who put such banner.

Oh, it's a Sabahan Bloggers Gathering event. The venue will be Imperial Hotel, Warisan Square and the date will be coming 2nd August. According to the organizer, the objective of this gathering is "to organize a socializing event as a conduit to foster the blogging community in real life, to have fun and to induce business opportunities". It is always interesting when it talks about induce business opportunities, not sure what's in details. But I guess it's about blog's advertisement, and to get Sabahan bloggers introduce to each other, so they can support each other's blog.

Nuffnang blogger gathering at Penang, should be some pretties there.

The attendance can be confirm easily via Facebook, a no cost and creative idea to do so. And the entrance fee is only cost not more than RM30, perhaps they managed to get some sponsors. No doubt it is a good plan, but I doubt the major concern is who willing to attend such event. So far it's only 49 people confirmed attending this event up to today, where the organizer target is about 100 people. 50% more to go.

Is Friendster dreading?

From my point of view, the promotion strategy seems like a little bit lame. First of all, I unable to click the promotion banner to forward me to the full details of the event. The promotion banner did not stated the venue, objective and ticket price of the event. They also didn't specify the limit can attend to this event. To be honest, it doesn't attract me at all.

Let's look at the tentative event itinerary from organizer.
6:15pm - Bloggers Registration
7pm - SBG Official Start / Emcee Intro / Welcome Speech
7:30pm - Song Performance (TBC)
8pm - First Game (Pictionary)
8:30pm - First Lucky Prize Draw
8:45pm - Dance Performance (TBC)
9pm - Second Game (Reaction)
9:30pm - Second Lucky Prize Draw
10pm - Third Game (optional) OR Prize Giving Awards
10:30pm - Third Lucky Prize Draw (Bingo Draw)
11pm - END – Group Photo Session

The event begin from 6.15pm till 11pm, which takes about 4.75 hours, doesn't it seems like too long? If the event has nothing special apart from dinner and lucky draw, I bet the crowd may leave the event early. Besides, I'm not sure whether this event able get every attendance involve and interacted. They should have a session to allow bloggers to introduce and get to know each other. Not every blogger know how to socialize, and some of them are shy, just like me. The organizer should also come up more attraction points of this event in order to get more attendance, a modeling show from bloggers might be funny. Lucky draw is good, but at least announce the grand prize out to draw more attraction la. Hey, I also didn't see any program mentioned about the objective of induce business opportunity.

How about an Ipod or a DigiCam?

Another important thing, the organizer even didn't announce if there is any honor guess will attend to this event. I remembered Nuffnang had their 1st anniversary event since a couple of months back, they managed to invite famous bloggers such as Singaporean Dawn Yang and Malaysian Kenny Sia. This is more than enough for me not to deter to attend this particular event. So far I don't know who is the famous blogger in Sabah yet, perhaps they need to pay to import a famous blogger from other state/country.

Dawn Yang looks a little bit lame in this photo.

Anyhow, I willing to attend this event because I want to be famous too get traffics for my blog too, and see how they make this event, as well as listen to their induce business opportunity. No problem, it's only RM30 cum support as a Sabahan blogger. Who know I able to get my RM30 back from the lucky draw. Due to I unable to confirm the attendance at this moment, I have registered under 'Maybe Attending' in the Facebook of this event.

Whatever it is, they still have about 1 and a 1/2 month to improve and get more people to join. Be it appreciate or not, I will post the comments above to the event's Facebook for them to review. Hope they can organize the event successfully and achieve their objective.

I will try update here again, if the organizer make any significant amendment after this.

Why Raise Our Petrol Price!

Refer to my previous post of talking about savings your petrol, we are paying it for RM2.70 per liter in our country. Most of us complaint it is too much and expensive. That's relatively okay because we are used to pump in RM1.92 per liter.

I'm not sure whether you already know how much other people paying their petrol in their countries. This is very interesting because some of the countries are having very expensive fuel prices, where some are very cheap, until we couldn't imagine at all. Let's get to know and look at the chart below.

The unit price is based on per gallon.

From the chart above, we noticed the people in United Kingdom, France, Germany, Norway, South Korea and Hong Kong are already paying very expensive petrol. But sorry, the price statistics above was obtained from wired.com during May 2007, the prices already hiked about 60-90% from the chart above.

We try look at the latest petrol prices are listed below:
UAE– RM1.19/litre Eygpt– RM1.03/litre Bahrain– RM0.87/litre Qatar– RM0.68/litre
Kuwait– RM0.67/litre Saudi Arabia– RM0.38/litre Iran– RM0.35/litre
Nigeria– RM1.32/litre Turkmenistan– RM0.25/litre Venezuela– RM0.16/litre
China- RM2.35/litre Brunei- RM1.25/litre Malaysia– RM2.70/litre
Singapore - RM5.30 /litre Indonesia - RM2.30 /litre

Most of them listed above are cheap, Venezuela having the cheapest petrol price in the world, RM0.16 per liter. So perhaps nobody care about how to save their petrol in that country. I bet Turkmenistan and Iran also. LOLz.

If we look at the petrol price by continent, Asians and Africa seem like paying a lot more for petrol. Since our country is exporting petrol, we get subsidized from government. Singapore and Hong Kong petrol prices are definitely higher than us, they are NOT export any petrol and they also having higher income per capita than us, so stop compare our petrol price with them (I saw a well-known Malaysian dumb ass blog comparing about them).

It's okay, perhaps lim beh is a dumb ass too. Anyhow, I would like to query our government 2 questions below, or perhaps I better ask for your opinion first, as I don't really understand here. Let's put it to an easier way to ask, as below.

Question #1
1) Petrol in the market 2005 is about USD60 per barrel.
2) Petrol in the market 2008 is about USD130 per barrel.
3) Before RM is floated, if we export 1 barrel of crude, we got USD60 x 3.8 = RM228 in year 2005.
4) After RM is floated, if we assuming the petrol price is remain unchanged, and we export 1 barrel of crude, we got USD60 x 3.08 = RM184.80 in year 2006. We make less profit of RM43.2 per barrel! And today we are even making less profit of RM100.08 per barrel!!! (USD139 x 3.08)
If this is the case, why our government let the RM floated at first? It ruins all the export value. Don't tell me they just want to please International Monetary Fund and World Bank without any benefits like Tun Dr.Mahathir said? I don't know.

Question #2
According to Tun Dr.Mahathir, our country roughly produces 650k barrels of crude per day. We consume 400k barrels and leaving 250k barrels to be exported. From here, there is something I don't really understand here.
1) The reserved 400k barrels supposedly don't affected by market price, and enjoy by Malaysians. Supposedly our petrol price is relatively cheap.
2) The 250k barrels supposedly get export and the profit surging from USD60 (2005) to USD139 (June 2008). It's making huge and huger profit.
3) Other than petrol, other main export items like palm oil, rubber and tin also also making more and more money for the government, why they didn't emphasize on this instead.
Perhaps 20-30 cents is still reasonable. Why our government need to impose the petrol price to that 'high' (78 cents) while it is making more and more profit and some more there is 400k barrels are already reserve for us? Hey, if crude oil raising up to USD250 per barrel one day, you are getting more profit and confirmed you'll need RM6 per liter from us by then? I realizing Mr.Anwar is talking the right thing at the right time.

While we are complaining, our government still plan to hike the petrol price to RM4 per liter. I believe that could be killing us especially the poor. Malaysians used to enjoy cheap petrol all the while, if it is really without rebate or subsidization, that could kill.

Fine. If it is really unavoidable, and our government and our country leader would like to stay long and don't wish to hike our petrol price in 'bulk' again in the future, they better start to think of something effective that can generate better income for the country, instead of just knowing to increase the fuel price while boosting vehicle industry, and cut down the expenses. Beh Tahan!

Have You Make Your Donation?

Cylone in Myanmar and 7.3 earthquake in Si Chuan,China happened few weeks ago had cause more than 100,000 people died and more than 300,000 injured and lost their homes and gardens. And many kind and generous people and countries around the world had made significant donations to these natural disaster victims, in terms of monetary and daily needs support. That's great.

Natural disaster donation require by you and I.

I felt quite touch this afternoon, not because the pretty lady I just get to know last week replied my sms. It's because I saw a forwarding email from one of my friends.

I want to introduce a boy here, he might be greater than anyone of us, in terms of brave and generous. His thinking might be a lot more mature than us. He has about 155cm tall, but you are always a lot taller than him. Please look at his handsome face in the pictures below. He is having physical problem in walking, and he did something out of our expectations that day.

From the picture below, I think the volunteers did not know his purpose initially, and thought that he is just to bypass. They changed their attitude once the boy indicating he comes here to make donation.

He used his hand to crawl, yes, crawl with small slippers.

With the help of the volunteers, he finally can put the money into the donation box himself. He is so man!

After he donated his portion of money, he requested another round of donation, with his remaining money. What?! You see his hands and legs, he is so skinny, but yet he is so kind and generous in helping the earthquake victims.

Our cheerful giver.

I'm totally salute to this hero, do you?

Did you learn a lesson from the real story above? I did. And I would say... hey volunteers, next time don't put your table that high again, so every people can make their donations easily!

M2U Pay your Bill Online Contest

Good news for Sabahan + M2U Online users! I just recalled my colleague and I were discussed about this few weeks back.
Do you know Maybank2u.com is offering a contest just for SABAHAN only, with the theme "Pay your bill online" since early of April.

Yes, you can win the following prizes if you pay your bill online to the payees involved.
Monthly prize may be give to you every 7th of every month during the contest period. However, there is only ONE Grand Prize to won in the end of the contest.

The payees involving in this contest are:
Sabah Electricity Sdn Bhd,
Dewan Bandaraya Kota Kinabalu,
Majlis Daerah Keningau,
Jabatan Air Sabah, Sutera Harbour Golf & Country Club Installment,
Sutera Harbour Golf & Country Club Spending,
Borneo Housing Mortgage Finance Berhad,
Top Max Development Sdn Bhd Court,
Top Max Development Sdn Bhd Villa,
Oi Brothers Motor Station (m) Sdn Bhd,
Pusat Zakat Sabah.

So if you pay your telekom and Streamyx bill online, you are not involving in the contest. Apparently Sabahans owing them a lot of money, if not they won't dump some money and joint up to ask Maybank to award it's users to pay their bills. The prizes even seem like not that attractive la.

But hey, does it looks like quite easy to win? The number of contestants are already cut down to Maybank users AND Sabahan only. How many people are actually do online payment in Sabah? And how many people know about this contest? It won't be many right? You can win if you make the highest number of bill payment transactions with the minimum of RM30 within the period of the contest. Meaning, if you have about 3 years didn't clear your DBKK assessment fees, electricity or water bills, and accumulated more than RM3,000 and above, then you are almost confirm to win one of the monthly prizes. According to M2U terms and condition, selection of the winners will be based on the number of bill payment transactions with minimum of RM30, performed during the contest period. This mean you can just break your RM3,000 debts into 300 times to pay the bill via M2U online, by RM30 per transaction.

However, some drawbacks you might need to consider.
a) You have to click more than 300 times to schedule for the payment in M2u, if it happens.
b) The contest will end on 30th June 2008 (sorry my post was quite late).
c) Maybank reserves the right to disqualify any "incomplete/illegible/unsuccessful entries.
d) You only entitled to win ONE prize.
e) You don't know what you get from Maybank2u.com premium items, if you hit consolation prize. May be it's a RM20 voucher, who know.
f) The T&C also stated for the prize giving ceremony, you are required to attend at your own expense to collect the prize. Why is this in the T&C? Can it be the prize giving ceremony is fall at KL?

To be honest to you, I've tried to do more than 10 payment transactions to DBKK/Water/Electricity on last month, but unfortunately I didn't win any prize. May be others are more hardworking than me, or I were disqualified by Maybank. Haha. So may be you can email/call M2U personal to clarify the T&C. I'm still insist my method works. ;)

So you are you going to try? May be you are the next winner?
Why not now as eventually you have to settle your bill somehow?
Good luck to you then.