Malaysia Education Problem

Guess what, Sin Chew daily newspaper had done a survey on people from different races who received education from Chinese schools. The outcome is surprising, because these people had a better result, but they are also more success than their kind in terms of career and income. What does it indicates?

I've to admit that our country existing education system is not the worst, but it's no good either. We knew it, we complaint about it, but we force to sleep with it without being resolved. With the global competition getting strong and stronger, our next generation might not be able to go far when they grow up. And that's why people prefer study private than public school in Malaysia. Why?

Students normally group by good and bad, they can't mix, except couple.

Let's take an example. I believe most of the students in the urban area rely on tuition after school just to get a better result. Why we have extra money to send our children for tuition? How about those parents who are afford to do so? Why this become a norm in our country? I believe students can make use of the tuition time for other better activities, if teacher really can pay the effort and passion in driving the students learning and growth.

Apart from that, the syllabus also part of the problems. The syllabus seems a lot simpler if compare to the private school. For example, the form 3 students in public school are studying what private school form 1 students are studying, especially on major subject like English. It doesn't make sense to me. The only reason I can think of, it might be related to the students catch up rate issues from the rural area.

Next, the daily schedule also has a problem.The school schedule is short, i.e. 7am-1pm and normally it's up to the student to fill up their time after school. By right, the ministry of education should fix some useful activities for student to learn and grow after school lessons. For example, students are compulsory to be active in the clubs after school, or perhaps have some kind of tuition classes in the school, with the assistant of teachers.

School environment and facilities also very important for students.

And I also always heard that there is always short of teachers. Where are our teachers? I believe some of the good one are converted into full time tuition, or export to other countries which have better pays.

Okay, I just have too much to compliment about it, I would like to stop here. I'm not sure how our PM going to close the gap between the rich and poor. But one thing I'm sure is, I need to get myself migrate from the poor to the rich border, before I able to help others.

Poor me.

Uncivilized Christmas Revelers

So how was your Christmas eve celebration? I believe most of the Christians doing the count down in the churches. Surprisingly, many of the non-believers and believers doing the count down and celebration outside the church. It is okay, because almost everyone celebrate Christmas, isn't it?

However, I just wonder why small portion of the local revelers are so naughty and ruined the Christmas celebration this year. There was an incident happened at Penang where the unruly revelers punching, kicking and attacking 2 Rela members with helmets during a Christmas eve gathering at Penang. They beat them because the Rela members hauled up one of their friends for giving passing vehicles a good "shake".

Apart from beating people, they also sprayed aerosol foam on motorists and banged passing vehicles. Some revelers even lifted the motorists windscreen wipers to prevent drivers from sweeping away the foam. Even pressmen on duty were not spared as some were shoved by the revelers.

So what is this? A crazy celebration or uncivilized barbarians action in the house? They think they are many of them and they can do what they like? Aren't they never think of how their beloved parents, girl friend, friends and relatives feel when they get to know about this?

We hope they had learned a lesson. Let's anticipate the best for the coming New Year eve celebration. :)

Last Christmas

Merry Christmas to you, folks! What a wonderful Christmas Eve I have. I went to dental clinic and suffered for more than an hour in the noon, in terms of physical and wallet. How about yours?

So, have you heard a Christmas song, named Last Christmas? In fact, I have heard many versions about this song, but the best version I ever heard is .......The Beatles version. It's really relax and cheer me up when I hear it.

Ah ha, I'm sharing it with you below. ;)

I really hope you can enjoy it. May joy and happiness snow on you, may the bells jingle for you and may Santa be extra good to you! Merry Christmas, folks!

A CEO Game

Are you dream of becoming a CEO or boss that managing a public listed corporation with multi-millions one day?

Yes, I love to be the boss and have the unusual wealth and status in the society, I believe you may dream about it sometimes. :) I always wonder whether there is such a game or virtual world for me to try on, instead of begin with the real one.

Just to share with you, I found a CEO game in Facebook on yesterday. I was very excited and started to play once I registered an account. This CEO game allows you to operate like an entrepreneur and CEO, including setup your business, locate your shop lots, hire and manage people, get your secretary to arrange something for you, meeting with your investor, try to make money from your business, upgrade your status in the society, and so many more. I found it interesting and excited. It won't spend much time to manage your business, perhaps 30-60 minutes a day should be sufficient.

Unfortunately, it is only available in Chinese version. For those don't know how to read Chinese, I'm sorry that you can't enjoy the game for the time being. Perhaps you have other CEO game would like to share with us here.

Else, you may want to try this game now. Have fun!

Malaysia Soccer Team at 25th SEA GAMES

Congratulations to Malaysia soccer team that they managed to obtain a precious gold metal in 25th SEA GAMES for the 1st 20 years! What a good news and I'm proud of them to be part of Malaysian!

If you haven't know, the result is 1-0 against Vietnam. The interesting part is, with just 7 minutes remaining on the clock, it took an own goal from one of Vietnamese defenders to end Malaysia's 20 years gold drought in SEA Games football tournament.

Thanks to the Vietnamese defender, Mai Xuan Hop for delivering a goal for us. And before that, Malaysia also managed to score 2 goals in last 10 minutes to defeat Thailand team with 2-1. It was a cruel way for the final to be decided, but we've just seen worse in soccer in these days.

Moral of the story? Never, never, never give up. Great works are not performed by strength, but by perseverance.

Good job, Malaysia Soccer Team! We look forward a better result from you again! Cheers!

The Top 10 of 2009

Wow, it's just too fast and now it's the end of the year of 2009. Everyone will be one year older soon. Every end of the year, I used to recall and review what we have done over the year, I believe many people doing so, including media.

As usual, I will be posting what I've done over the year soon. Before that, I would like to share with you what media has about 2009. On the news, Time has published The Top Everything of 2009. Wow, it seems very interesting and attracted my attention to view this web page. And the most interesting part is Top 10 News Stories.

They are listed by sequence, from Top 1 to 10. Even though we knew about all the news listed in the top 10, it is interesting to refresh and review on them, such as the death of Michael Jackson, H1N1 Swine Flu, Sri Lanka Civil War and so on.

So, what about your Top 10 Stories/Matters/Everything of 2009?

The Truth About Our Food

Have you ever think of where and how the foods you eat are coming from,such as chicken, beef, pork and vegetables? All the while I thought they are from farms, and that's what we studied in the school. I changed my perception after I watch a movie about the truth of ours food, I'm not sure whether you have watched it already.

Well, in this century, apparently our demand for foods are greatly increase. Thus, technology is push and invented to boost up the supply, while try to keep the cost to the minimum. Unfortunately, it has some hidden cost with the cheap food we eat nowadays, just look at the fast food industry. No wonder every elder telling us that fast food is unhealthy huh!

The movie is "Food Inc." which released in last year. The filmmaker Robert Kenner lifts the veil on US food industry, exposing the highly mechanized underbelly that was hidden from the consumer. The US food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of the consumer health, the livelihood of US farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment. I believe soon or later, the similar system will be introduce to other developing country like our country.

I don't like to watch documentary movie, but I couldn't stop when I play it, and I'm really glad to know about it. If you are interested to know about wat are the hidden cost of the foods and remediations, you can watch Food Inc. for free via YouTube, it is breaks into 10 parts.

Please feel free to comment below, folks!

The Most Expensive Christmas Card

Oh yea, Christmas is around the corner again! How's your feeling now? I'm glad! So, are you looking for interesting greeting card to send to your love one?

Just want to ask you. How much does a Christmas card cost? And how luxury the Christmas card you have received? No matter how much is the Christmas card cost, or how luxury it is, you would think it is just a card right?

Well well, I noticed a greeting card can be complicated if you want it to be, or as creative as it can be! Have you ever heard of a Christmas card with an iPhone? This is really thinking out of the box. Let's have a look at the short clip below how this fellow made it!

I don't think you going to create one, don't you? Haha!

If you really interested, you can click here to see the ingredients required to make this greeting card. Of course, you need to buy an iPhone first. ;)

Have fun, folks!

The Door is Opened

There is a very strange case happened for my living house on yesterday evening.

The story is like this. On yesterday morning, we locked the house door properly and we went out to work. When my house mates and I went home at around 7.30pm, we were shocked and discovered the house main door is open widely. Since it's already late evening, there is no light switch on. We quickly rushed into the house and check if there is anything missing.

To our surprise, nothing is missing, not a single item. The main door is opened widely, and there is no broken sign from the door. Apparently the suspect has the right key to open it up.

Imagine when you came back to your house and discovered the main door is opened, how scary it is!

After that, we examined outside of the house, and discovered a brand new "Brand" Essence drink is locating at the drive way. What does that means? We have totally no idea what did the suspect wants.

We also checked with both right and left neighbors, but unfortunately both of them are not in the house since 5pm, and they also did not know what is going on.

Heck, is this a game? Or it was just an incident of the door lock doesn't work as usual? I think I should ask the landlord to change the door lock and key soonest. What do you think?

The Launching of My Personal Financial Blog

Hi folks, I'm pleased to inform you that I've finally started my personal financial blog. The objective of this blog is to express my passion on stock market investment, share my perspective on local and global stock market investment, especially on the index and individual company share price movement. Most important, I wish to receive reader perspective so we can share and discuss together about it.

The blog is setup in a simple way, where I already start posting since early of this month. Hope it will be improved gradually with more feedback from the readers.

My new blog: http://klsewin.blogspot.com

As you can noticed, I will update this new financial blog more frequent than my current personal blog. This is because I can find a topic easily, as there is news, trading and movement from stock market and individual company from Monday to Friday. It's interesting and exciting.

I hope you can join me there. It's black Friday today, where the global stock slide. So I don't think we have a nice weekend for stock investors. Anyway, we can choose to be happy.

Cheers. :)

What is the Meaning of Holiday?

Good news, Christmas and New Year are around the corner again! Wow, I felt like it just been a little while for Christmas celebration on last year. I believe you've planned for your year-end vacation and holidays?

In fact, how do you define the meaning of holidays? Some people like to visit other countries, advanced cities, villages, wild life, beaches or islands, historical places, hometown, or perhaps go for cheap sale city to do crazy shopping. And most of the people make their schedule very tight. Perhaps once they finished their vacations, they will need to get back to work immediately. How about you? Do you ever think of what is the meaning of your vacation? To make yourself tired or to relax from the busy work?

Beach is always the best vacation place to go, as it is really relaxing.

For me, holidays should be the opportunity to get ourselves rest and relax, enjoy the sweet time with friends and family. And we are to borrow this opportunity to recharge ourselves and have the purpose to get back to work again, and do it even better. If we are to get ourselves harder and tired for our holidays, then what's the point of having a vacation?

Some people even take leave and try to relax at home without going anyway, by turning off their mobile and computer. Or they opt for beaches and islands. I think this is a good idea to achieve the meaning above, because this is really what you are trying to relax and enjoy your holidays.

Theme park is good for relaxing too, but just make sure it doesn't get too crowded.

For people who choose to visit the busy city or enjoy the nature of the wild life, please make sure you don't get yourself too tired and try not to get back to work immediately. All we want is to eliminate the stress and having a meaningful vacation! As for my own vacation plan, I'll be going back to my hometown for a 10 days vacation until Christmas!

Happy vacation, folks!

How To Build Confident?

Hey folks, so far I've seen 2 votes on the polls, investment and technology. If no doubt after 3 days, I will be focus on these 2 themes to write my future posts. Thanks for the 2 kind people to spend their few seconds to vote for their interests.

In fact, I would like to write a post on step-by-step on how to obtain A-square Anti-Malware 1 year genuine license for FREE. This is a really good threats protection software. But unfortunately, I've jotted down the wrong date and now it's too late to do so. I'm really sorry about that. If you would like to, you still can get 10% discount from the web site, or 30-days trial.

Sorry folks, no free Anti-Malware for this week. Now, I want to discuss about how we can build up confident in a task. Confident in doing something is about inner part. Looking good or body fit doesn't mean you have the confident. When I was young, I always wonder why some people able to show up confident no matter what he or she doing, and some people just able to show in certain areas, and some people just don't have the confident in everything. Why? Are those experts born to be confident in the first place?

If you have self-confident about yourself, you have already success 50%.

And now, I finally understand how the confident can be built up. Logically, if you have been doing the same thing over the years or many times, you tend to be confident in that thing. For example, some people might not confident in driving before they attend to driving class and take driving exam. Even after they obtained the driving license, they still not really confident in it, because they just learned to drive. And after they have drive a couple of weeks or months, they finally see it is simple job to do, and have confident with it. And they can start illustrate and telling others how to drive and so on.

Is the same thing isn't it? Just like a financial consultant has confident talks about how to do financial planning on others, a businessman has confident in setup multiple businesses upon his first few successes, or perhaps a player has confident in how to tackle the pretty girl in a pub.

Just be patient, you will need time to build up your confident.

The problem is, how do we have confident if we are not experience about the thing before? Just do it? I don't think so. Do you think a player feels confident to get his target when he the pub for the first time? Or do you think a fresh entrepreneur feels he is confident to be success for the 1st time? Perhaps they have the initial confident before the failure. It will be totally gone easily if they give u.

For me, it is not about the confident leads to success, it's your experience and skills. It's your experience and skills that build up the confident in you, and work out the outcome of success. And most of the books and sources will tell you about one thing in order to have the skills and experience, practice. Yes, practice makes perfect. For example, if you want to learn how to play World of Warcraft in order to play with your friends who always hang around the cyber cafe, you will start to spend time to learn about the game. Buy the game to install in your computer, learn each character and what strengths and capabilities they have, and then you keep playing the game with the computers until you familiar with the character and possess the skills, and have the confident in yourself that you can play with your friends.

You can always look into compliments to further boost up your confident.

Another good example is going after the girl you like. Initially we feel panic and nervous to approach the girl we like. But as a man, we have no choice and we force to action, perhaps by self or friend encouragement. We normally did it very badly for the 1st few times, due to our nervousness. But if we insist, learn from self and other mistakes, get a mentor, come out with some simple strategy and plan, and keep practicing it, we will finally build up our confident in it, not only approaching attractive female, but in everything, including building our wealth. And soon or later, it would be an easy job for you, just like driving a car.

In a nutshell, apart from self-confident, we also build up our confident by walking out of our comfortable zone by having a positive thinking, insisting our goal, take encouragement, and keep practicing it until we success and have that kind of confident build up in ourselves. This should be the most solid confident we should have in us.

After I typed a lot of craps from my thought, what do you think on how to build a person confident?

What is Going on with Malaysia Stock Market?

I sincerely apologize of no post update on last weekend, as I was on vacation for 3 days. Well, I should take my initiative to update it before I went on leave. Okay, this improvement will be done next time, I mean I'll try if time allows me to do so. ;)

I believe you have gain a lot of profits from the stock market, if you starting to invest since March 2009. We focus on Blue Chips and they are giving us good return every month. But, not for now anymore. have you notice what is happening now? Since 2 weeks back, you would see the top 10 volume companies are strange to you, or a very low share price company on the show. Why? It indicates the stock market has bullish until certain level that investors felt the fundamental companies share prices are already expensive. So they started to turn to invest in penny and PN17 stocks, perhaps for fast profit and lower cost per share.

KLCI index has been raised for more than 50% within 7 months, are you worry?

For your information, PN17 means Practice Note 17/2005 and is issued by Malaysia SEC, which indicates the company are in a financial distress situation.

Practice Note 17/2005 and is issued by Bursa Malaysia; relating to companies that are in financial distress. Companies that fall within the definition of PN17 will need to submit their proposal to the Approving Authority to restructure and revive the company in order to maintain the listing status. Recently, some PN17 companies are successfully uplifted by SEC, and they managed to attract huge investors and make them the top volume of the trading day.

Oilcorp is being fried and rumors saying it will be uplifting from PN17 category soon. Will you buy it?

Are you one of the investors investing into them? What a joke! These companies share price are not supported by the fundamental elements at all, or I can say that they are not making enough money to support their share prices. Since the volatility is so huge, if you are late a little bit, you may making a great loss! But from the look at it, they can make you a very quick and easy profit within a day! If you are lucky, you can get 100% return within a day. No kidding.

Yes, with such a temptation and hot cake, I've followed the best practice of one of my mentors, "wherever there is fish, we will go there to fish!", while another mentor of mine adviced those PN17 stocks are devils, don't go for it.

Okay, temptation is an issue for me. I've invested into two of them twice, without knowing anything about them. Pretty daring huh! And guess what, my daring and decision did not bring me any profit, and I encountered minor loss by cut loss early. See, thing is just simple but not that straight forward, else everyone would have make money from stock market, no? I would say it's the timing problem, and I applied the best practice to the wrong companies. It gave me a very good lesson.

We talk about investment with passive income and risk control here, not gamble and fast money.

As there is no one can predict the right timing to enter and exit every time, for those who already earn money from these companies, you are just lucky by enter at the right timing. If you don't agree so, congratulations, you should be a millionaire or perhaps billionaire by now.

So, what now? Say bye-bye to penny and PN17 stocks, and wait for mid-term correction to buy good fundamental companies with discounted price (if there is any). Have a nice weekend, folks!

Financial Budget Malaysia 2010 Highlights

Our Prime Minister just read out the highlights of the 2010 Budget, themed "1Malaysia, Together We Prosper", as follows:

1. An allocation of RM191.5 billion, consisting of RM138.3 billion or 72.2 per cent (operating expenditure) and RM53.2 billion or 27.8 per cent (development expenditure).
Comment: I thought it should be 50%-50% for a developing country?

2. Special payment of RM500 in December 2009 to civil servants from Grade 41 to Grade 54 or its equivalent as well as those on mandatory retirement.
Comment: Consider as an increment for them?

3. Enhancement of tax incentives for healthcare service providers who offer services to foreign health tourists. Income tax exemption of 50 per cent on the value of increased exports will be increased to 100 per cent.
Comment: Good idea, it can create more competition in this industry.

4. Individual taxpayers will be given tax relief on broadband subscription fee up to RM500 a year from 2010 to 2012.
Comment: I love to hear this. I hope there is no term and condition apply.

5. Civil servants are eligible to apply for computer loans once in every three years as compared to once in every five years now.
Comment: So now civil servant will has more loan to pay monthly by changing the computer every 3 years?

6. Subsidies, incentives and assistance amounting to almost RM2 billions to safeguard the interest of farmers and fishermen.
Comment: I hope this budget won't end up become RM2 millions.

7. An allocation of RM9 billion to finance infrastructure projects, including construction of roads and bridges, water supply, sewerage services, rail facilities, ports and sea services as well as airport projects.
Comment: Can't we just focus on less things at one time with the limited budget?

Budget announcement is an important event to stimulate the country economy including stock market.

8. An additional allocation of RM20 million for small-scale Malaysian-Indian entrepreneurs under the Tabung Kumpulan Usaha Niaga (Tekun), on top of the existing RM15-million allocation.
Comment: Government trying to buy Indian's heart? I hope this will makes more Indian upgrade their standard of living.

9. Establishing a RM200-million Creative Industry Fund to finance activities, such as film and drama productions, music, animation, advertisements and local content development. Establishing "Tabung Kebajikan Penggiat Seni" to ensure the welfare of artistes.
Comment: Hmmm...will see.

10. An allocation of RM20 million for 20 schools to be identified as High Performance Schools (SBT) in 2010.
Comment: They will be the same in the end of the day. Why don't spend the budget to build more schools?

11. Awarding national scholarships to 30 "creme de la creme" students strictly based on merit. These scholarship recipients will further their education in world-renowned universities.
Comment: Why 30 only? What's the story behind? Will these top 30 students will be bond from working in the country after graduation?

12. Converting the National Higher Education Fund Corporation (PTPTN) loans to scholarships for students who graduate with first class honours degrees or equivalent beginning 2010.
Comment: Hmmm, this is a brilliant move.

13. Providing a 50 per cent discount on fares for long-distance services of Keretapi Tanah Melayu Berhad (KTMB) to students aged 13 and above beginning Jan 1, 2010.
Comment: I don't get it. To encourage student to go for traveling? Visit other places?

14. Offering a netbook package, including free broadband service, to 100,000 local university students for a start for RM50 per month for two years, effective Jan 1, 2010.
Comment: Hmm, attractive offer. How do our government select these 100,000 students? Based on races or result?

When it comes to budget year, why most citizens only focus on tax cut?

15. An allocation of RM100 million for the PERMATA Programme to implement various programmes which emphasize early childcare and education in an integrated and organised manner.
Comment: Okay, taking care of our future masters.

16. Micro insurance and Takaful coverage for small-scale businessmen which will benefit from coverage ranging from RM10,000 to RM20,000 with premium as low as RM20 per month.
Comment: More protection for SMB businessmen.

17. Establishment of 14 Special Corruption Sessions Courts and four Special Corruption Appeal High Courts.
Comment: Hope it will works out.

18. Imposing RM50 service tax on each principal credit card and charge card, including those issued free of charge, and a service tax of RM25 a year on each supplementary card effective Jan 1, 2010.
Comment: I think I will need to cancel my credit cardS and drill down to 1 card.

19. All ministries and government departments are required to provide day care and education centres for children. For this, an allocation of RNM200,000 will be made available for every ministry and government department to establish day care centres.
Comment: Okay, taking care of our future masters.

20. Reduction of the maximum individual income tax rate from 27 percent to 26 percent, effective from the year of assessment 2010.
Comment: Why set it at 27% at first? Are they deserve to pay less?

Apart from child and senior citizen care, government also pay attention to citizen's technology update.

21. Personal relief for individual tax payers to increase from RM8,000 to RM9,000 effective from the year of assessment 2010. This means that each individual tax payer will enjoy an increase of RM1,000 in disposable income.
Comment: What a good move.

22. About 50,000 hardcore poor households registered with eKasih and 4,000 Orang Asli households will be given assistance to achieve the target of zero hardcore poverty in 2010. An allocation of RM41 million will be provided to improve the income and quality of life of the Orang Asli community.
Comment: Okay, protection for the original residents.

23. An allocation of RM48 million to implement urban poverty eradication programmes, including welfare assistance and house rental payments. The Ministry of Federal Territories shall now be known as the Ministry of Federal Territories and Urban Wellbeing.
Comment: Hmmm, it might takes many years to work out.

24. The National Housing Department to provide 74,000 low-cost houses to be rented in 2010.
Comment: Okay, good news for low income earners.

25. EPF to launch a scheme that enables contributors to utilise current and future savings in Account 2 to enable them to obtain higher financing to buy higher value or additional houses.
Comment: Okay, more cash flow option for property investors.

26. An allocation of RM224 million to the disabled for the implementation of the Rehabilitation In The Community Programme and an allocation of RM174 million for senior citizens, including assistance as well as the construction and upgrading of two Rumah Seri Kenangan.
Comment: Okay, taking care of the senior residents.

27. Increasing the allowance rate from RM50 to RM150 a month for every disabled child enrolled in NGO-organised special schools effective Jan 1, 2010.
Comment: Okay, taking care of disabled people.

How about yourself? Have you done your personal financial budget 2010?

28. Establishment of 1Malaysia Retirement Scheme for the self-employed, such as taxi drivers, hawkers, farmers and fishermen, to be administered by the EPF.
Comment: Good for them.

29. Effective immediately, employees' EPF contribution will revert to 11 per cent on a voluntary basis.
Comment: Okay, just don't keep changing every year. It will be a mess.

30. Construction of 510 km of rural roads and 316 km of village roads with an allocation of RM857 million, including roads to be constructed in Kapit, Lawas and Simunjan in Sarawak as well as Kinabatangan, Kota Belud and Keningau in Sabah.
Comment: This has been announced earlier on. Please build quality roads, not the roads just look like a road.

Well, nothing surprise about our financial budget 2010, I'm not sure about other developing countries, but we will work hard together to implement our national target.

What do you think?
Cheers.

Something about Property Investment

Have you buy a house or starting to involve in property investment? From what I look at it in details, I really have to change my mind about property investment.

Previously, I thought I've to think like an abnormal people. If everyone going for property and the price keep increasing until sky high, I should keep away from it. I learned this theory from stock market. This is very true, because stock is affordable and easily can buy and sell perhaps within minutes, and you can do it alone. Unlike property, it takes time for us to do the transaction of buying and selling, and you also need some team members such as realtor, lawyer and banker.

Property investment gives a steady income and low risk profile for most investors.

Further more, stock market investment require high rational thinking, and it's risky. Property investment is a lot simpler. Imagine when there is economy recession, which investment will be more sensitive? Why we need to opt for the difficult one? In conclusion, my analysis was wrong, I shouldn't treat all investments the same. The property is already sky high, and it keeps rising. City land is getting less and lessor, pricing will be getting high and higher definitely. I'm so regret that I don't invest it when I was younger.

From historical analysis, property will only slump when there is recession. Oh yes, we just have a global recession, didn't we? But unfortunately, despite the materials cost dropped over 100%, the housing price remain unchanged, and it begins to rise like a rocket. The only benefit is the lower loan rate. It's a different situation in our country here. So I don't anticipate the property price will drop in a reasonable way in short or mid-term.

Stock market return can be higher, but it's volatile and require high rational thinking.

Anyway, let me just share with you a few tips I learned from experts, and perhaps we can take them as advice to do property investment.
(1) Start early. The younger you start, the earlier you benefits from the market value promotion. None of the investment channel is as stable, high return and low risk as than property.
(2) Cut your spending and turn it into installment. The old says, work hard now and enjoy later.
(3) Don't go for luxury property like a bungalow, it's more difficult to find a rich tenant and the rental won't be high as well.
(4) Don't go for low-cost property like very small apartment. Your tenant might not afford to pay the rental most of the time, more risk for you.
(5) New housing perhaps has better quality of materials and structure, but not all of them suitable for your/tenant living.
(6) If you have steady income and you are affordable, suggest to look for a suitable property for investment.

If you want to learn more about property investment, do read up experts recommendation.

If you are free, kindly visit a local blogger, CK Wong who blogging about local property investment. His analysis for local property is interesting. Do check it out.

Happy investing.

The 10-Days MBA

I believe most of you heard about MBA, or even some of you are already an MBA! Let me just briefly explain what is it. MBA stands for Masters of Business Administration. It is an essential post graduate degree in business communication and also one of the most sought after degrees in the world because of its value to people in business and administration. I totally agreed on this.

Normally, an MBA degree can benefit the positions in business and management, especially those in executive and managerial positions, especially in corporation and listed company, business educated people is always highly required. Thus, an MBA degree has great value not only to find an executive and managerial post, but also gain advantage in your business knowledge, leadership ability and networking.

It's MBA is really that important to climb corporate ladder?

Well, I always dream to go further study and become an MBA, preferably to study MBA course in the top business school in US. Unfortunately, I'm not afford to do so for the moment, I believe jackpot might help me round the dream, but I just reluctant to waste money anymore on gambling. So what's the alternative?

Yes, when I visited a unique bookstore 2 months ago in Singapore, I discovered a book named "The 10-Days MBA". I was curious and have a read on the table of content and summary of that thick book. Basically, it stated that the book is a step-by-step guide to mastering the skills taught in top business schools. With this book, everyone can know whats being taught in MBA course of top business schools within days. It sounds very interesting, I decided to buy the book after 1 month time (due to I've quite a few unread books).

The 10-Days MBA

For now, I've finished up the book, and I discover it is not that easy and interested as what I thought earlier. There are 10 topics and almost every topics required to memory tough formula and calculations. The topics including operation, accounting, marketing, finance, organizational behavior, etc, with simple English written. Those are essential topics in business. Without understand the term and formula, you are just flipping the papers only apart from theory. Overall, I'm still enjoyed reading it as now I know how MBA works for the analysis, budget, prediction, judgment based on those theory and formula.

Perhaps due to my age is growing big and bigger, my learning speed is not as what I thought, but it doesn't affecting myself to go for my dream. I have a ex-schoolmate, who is at my age, working as an accountant and doing her MBA part-time study now. She told me it is a little bit tough as she needs to spend efforts and time to do the assignments and projects, while she needs to cover her job works. Well, since we give and take, I believe it worth the effort and time. Keep it up, my friend!

So folks, before you go for MBA study, make sure you have a 'preview' on The 10-Days MBA book first. :)

The Strategy of AirAsia

I believe almost every Asian traveler heard about Air Asia, not because of it's service or quality, but it's lowest fare airline. Well, most of the time cheap doesn't mean good or quality, there is risk we have to bear. In this case, we talk about depart on time.

Just last month alone, I've been traveled with Air Asia for 4 times, with 2 times delayed of more than 1.5 hours. The delay rate was 50%! You can imagine how bad it is. They just don't want to make the delay more than 2 hours in order to compensate me some money. Well, this is the risk we all familiar with Air Asia, but we pay a lot lesser. Fine. I'm not talking about this common issue today, as I've a post comment about their services before. I just want to express my unfortunate on last month.

Complaint is no longer a fresh news for Air Asia

When we talk about Air Asia, we talk about low fares. In order for Air Asia to continue to offer us low air fares, it must keeps its cost as low as possible while making profit. Okay, from what I observed, below's are how they keep their costs "low".

1) Higher volume
When they offer low fares to the consumers, especially when everyone, including business people and family are trying to save money due to economy situation, their businesses will getting better and better. And this can also be advantage to the occupancy rates of the flight, with the same destination.

2) Early Bird Promotion
You must have noticed how often Air Asia promotes their lowest fares ticket from time to time. Even though it's really cheap, but when there is a volume, they can collect your money first and make use of it for other investment or pay debts for greater return. Great.

RM9.99 & pretty stewardess are no longer a fresh advertisement from Air Asia.

3) Build low cost terminal
They build low cost terminal nearby those busy terminal for their advantages. Not only they can save the sum of airport tax, they can dominate the shoplots rental in the airports, as well as transportation from airport the customers destination. Since they have so many airplanes and flights for the same destination per day, it's a wise decision.

4) Lower pay
From what I know from my friend working in Air Asia. The staffs, even pilots and aircraft engineers pay are not as high as other luxury airlines such as Malaysia or Singapore Airline. They also hired most of the locals to do the works, as they can absorb the lower pay work. Well, this is logic as they are running low fares business. Yes, all this is logic, except the management pay.

One thing amazed me is that, they cut the cost of having aircraft engineers station in non-Air Asia airport. How? For short route, one aircraft engineer has to follow the airplane to every destination, and service the airplane at every destination. I can only shake my head for that aircraft engineer.

Since it's low cost terminal, you will be in deep shit if it is raining heavily.

5) Other charges
Well, depends on the low air fare itself might not sufficient to make more profit. They launched a lot of charges related to traveling, such as meals and beverage serving with charges, souvenirs, hot seats with charges, travel insurances, luggage charges and so on. These can be bringing good profit to them too. If you insist that you want to save up your bulks, you can forget about all of them, except the luggage charges.

One thing I wonder, since Air Asia objective is to keep everything low cost, but why, why the meals and beverages are so expensive? They are even more expensive than the airports! To boost up the sales of meals and beverages, I think Air Asia really need to revise about this!

6) Other profit-driven businesses
I think their strategy is playing well. They are not only focusing on airline business now, they also attacking transportation and accommodation, which also related to traveling and tourism. I believe you have heard about Tune Hotel and Tune bus. And they come with one goal, low price. Great. Tune hotel starting with RM9.99, which I haven't try before. I believe more Tune to come. Good job.

This is a embarrassing for the stewardess, she might be too tired. What a naughty shooter.

That's all about my observation. One thing worth to mention is that, many of Air Asia stewardesses look great. That's mean Air Asia also control over the quality of their customer services as well. What a company, keep it up please!

Cracking RapidShare

Have you heard and use Rapidshare before? Well, Rapidshare has been an excellent tool for sharing large files. I'm a regular user of it, mostly for E-book download. If you use the FREE version, you may feel frustrated for the slow download and limited download within the period. Don't worry, there is always a solution.

Recently many users have discovered ways of bypassing the download limits and skipping the waiting time. Just in case you haven't know about it, here's the step-by-step guide for you. Rapidshare traces the users IP address to limit each user to a certain amount of downloading per day. To get around this, you need to show the rapidshare server a different IP address.

RapidShare is free, easy to use and benefits Internet users like us, cool!

Here are some methods for doing this:

1. Short-Out the JavaScript:

1. Goto the page you want to download
2. Select FREE button
3. In the address bar put the following: javascript:alert(c=0)
4. Click OK
5. Click OK to the pop-up box
6. Enter the captcha
7. Download Your File

2. Request a new IP address from your ISP server.

Here’s how to do it in windows:
1. Click Start
2. Click run
3. In the run box type cmd.exe and click OK
4. When the command prompt opens type the following. ENTER after each new line.
ipconfig /flushdns
ipconfig /release
ipconfig /renew
exit

5. Erase your cookies in whatever browser you are using.
6. Try the rapidshare download again.

Frequently you will be assigned a new IP address when this happens. Sometime you will, sometimes you will not. If you are on a fixed IP address, this method will not work. To be honest, I do not know how to do this in linux/unix/etc. If this works for you, you may want to save the above commands into a batch file, and just run it when you need it.

If you want, you may download Rapidshare accelerator, which allow you to download multiple files and accelerate the download speed. Use it at your own risk.

3. Use a proxy with SwitchProxy and Firefox:

1. Download and install Firefox if you have not already
2. Download and install SwitchProxy
3. Google for free proxies
4. When you hit your download limit, clean your cookies and change your proxy

4. Use an anonymous service:

Running your system through the tor network should in theory work; however, it is difficult to use and setup. Plus, you allow others to run their evil deeds through your system as well by using this system. Anonymizer 2005 is inexpensive, easy to use, but not free. Other pay services would likely work as well.

5. You can use a bookmarklet to stop your wait times:

1. Open IE
2. Right Click On This Link
3. Select Add to Favorites
4. Select Yes to the warning that the bookmark may be unsafe.
5. Name it “RapidShare No Wait”
6. Click on the Links folder (if you want to display it in your IE toolbar)
7. Click OK
8. You may need to close and reopen IE to see it
9. Goto rapidshare and click the bookmarklet when you are forced to wait

Okay folks, that's all for my sharing in this post. Happy downloading via RapidShare. Selamat Hari Raya, maaf Zahir Batin!

Online Storage & backup

Are you feeling trouble to backup your data to your USB external hard disk every time?

I know, perhaps you already heard of online storage and backup solution from the Internet. Yes, this is the one I'm going to talk about today. Well, normally online storage & backup solution normally offers in packages, based on storage capacity and speed of backup and recovery. You just try to type online storage in Google, you will got plenty of them.

Yes, most of the online backup packages are chargeable. If you read my blog frequently, you should know that I never promote any software that will cost you a single cent. Yes, there are still free lunches in this world, but they are just rare. So are you interested about it?

This solution brings much convenient to end-users to backup their data online.

Okay, basically I'm using a free online storage solution since a couple of months ago. It's brilliant and beyond my satisfaction. What amazed me is that, it can automatically backup and sync the data up to 2 computers. The application will helps you store the current version of each file, and also the previous 2 versions. Fantastic! In addition, this free plan provides you up to 2GB of online storage. Yes, SugarSync is offering this package for FREE to everyone, including mobile user. So just try it out and let me know how satisfy you are.

Anyway, this free plan has some limitations, including backup and sync an unlimited computers, unable to store more than 3 past version of file, it isn't as speedy as paid plan, and only up to 2GB data. Well, if you really like it, you can always go for the paid plan to overcome these limitation. You can even FREE to try for 30-days with the paid plan, before you really subscribe for it. You even entitled to downgrade back to 2GB free plan right after that enjoy the 30 days free trial.

SugarSync is offering what we looking for.

I think this should be the best plan I come across. If you have a better one, do share with us here. Happy online backup'ing, folks!

Bike Innovation

Do you like cycling? It doesn't matter you to like or not, because you just won't used any energy via cycling with this new bike.

Due to the heavy traffic congestion around the main cities almost everywhere in the world, something has to come up to alleviate the traffics, including bike, which is totally environmental friendly. From what I've been told, many Europe countries are starting to use bike as their transportation, to avoid traffic jam. Well, if you yet to know, China and Japan started to use this transportation since ages ago, until now.

This should be perfect, as it can help us exercise while avoid the vehicle traffic congestion. Perhaps it will makes us a little bit tired and slow to reach the destination. And the worst thing is, it's not really applicable in South East Asia and Africa, due to the warm weather condition, as well as there is no special track for the bicycle which can be very danger.

So there is a brilliant guy from UK came out with a bike which designed to overcome some drawbacks above, excluding weather issue. :) Basically the bike can run up to about 19kmph, by using electric motor. The biker will just need to sit upright and steer the hands at his/her side. It is light and able to fold into a bad at 22lb, for us to carry around anywhere. The battery can be recharged as well, and last up to about 10km.

Well, of course, there are some limitation at the moment, including short lifetime of 1,000 charges, yet to be legal and it's expensive.

In conclusion, I think the inventor did a good job here. What do you think?

Top 10 Habits of Millionaire

On few weeks back, when I was back to my hometown, I saw a very thin book with theme "The Top 10 Habits of Millionaires" came with 112 pages for sale in one of the bookstores in the town. This is an interesting topic, but it is selling for RM37.90. For me it's a bit too much, and it is not justify for me to buy it. Most probably I will read it once and throw it away. To maximize the effort to save and be stingy, I decided to finish the book on the spot without the need to buy it.

By reading it, I found out that the contents are very common, and it's a bit similar to "The Millionaire Next Door". Well, it doesn't matter, I've no complaint since I read it for free. As usual, I would like to share with you some of the vital points from this little thin book. If you think you are interested about it, then you can buy and read it at your own. :)

Have you watch "Who wants to be millionaire" before?

1. Millionaires think in long-term:
a) Thinking day to day, the way poor people do, is where you will find day laborers and street beggars.
b) Thinking week to week, the way poor people do, is living paycheck to paycheck and barely make ends meet.
c) Thinking month to month, the way middle class people do, is being concerned with monthly liabilities such as mortgage loan, car loan, credit card payment and household expenses.
d) Thinking year to year, the way rich people do, is where people learn about fiscal responsibility, financial literacy and investment.
e) Thinking decade to decade, the way very rich people do, is where you will find business plans that reach far into the future.

2. Patience is a millionaire’s asset; impatience is a liability of the middle class:
a) Rich people has the discipline of delayed gratification because they want more freedom in life.
b) Middle-class people want instant gratification because they want more comfort in life.

3. Millionaires talk about ideas:
a) Rich people talk about great ideas and realizing them. They own car companies, sports teams and vacation spots. They produce movies, television shows and music and earn from them. They choose fortune over fame.
b) Middle-class people talk about things from rich people’s ideas and daydream on them. They talk about things like sports cars, soccer teams and holidays. They indulge in movies, television shows and music and spend on them. They are easily impressed by fame.

4. The rich loves to compliment others and gain their help and support; the poor loves to tear down others only to be alienated.

5. People who complain are literally cursing themselves. Always ask yourself what is life trying to teach you when you feel like complaining upon a challenge or hardship.

When we talk about Millionaire, people will think of Slumdog Millionaire.

6. For the comfortable middle-class people, change is feared; for the confident rich people, change is opportunity. Fear blinds you to opportunities; confidence let you discover opportunities.

7. Fear is inevitable. The rich overcomes it with knowledge; the poor submits to it with negligence.

8. If you can live with the worst thing happening from your decision and the most likely thing to happen will lead you to the best thing happening, go for it!

9. We can’t please everyone and rejection is imminent; if you failed, you may be rejected but if you succeeded, you may still be rejected.

10. The rich plays to win; the poor plays to not lose only to lose in eventuality.

11. People often wish they would take more risks in life if they could live all over again, meaning that people have more regrets over things they didn’t do than the things they did.

Entrepreneur should be the most solid way of becoming millionaire.

12. Knowledge is priceless; negligence is costly:
a) Investment on a $20 book read may well worth a $20 000 idea and a $1 000 seminar attended may well worth a $1 million business plan.
b) Being penny-wise and pound-foolish by saving a $50 banknote for shopping instead of buying a good book may cost a loss of an undiscovered $50 000 idea. Worst off, craving for free advices may cost even greater loss when one listens to the opinion of another who thinks he knows something even when he has no real life experience.

13. The rich work for profits instead of wages; the poor trades their time for wages.

14. Happy millionaires are generous because they believe they will receive more in return.

15. Millionaires develop multiple income source by passive income from business that requires little personal management. They build teams of great people that complement one another, not compete with one another, to run their business, believing that those people will do even better than them.

16. Learn to increase your net worth the way rich people do, not learning to increase your paycheck only to be taxed more.

Financial educated people realized investment can fasten their ways to become millionaire.

17. Rich people increase their investment and assets when their income increases; poor people increase their spending and liabilities as their income increases.

18. The rich makes money, spends money, then pay taxes; the poor makes money, pay their tax and left with little to spend.

So, are you already a millionaire or multi-millionaire? If yes, you might reading some of the characteristics from yourself. For those who are not, may be you can try to buy jackpot, if you are thinking of become an instant millionaire.

All the best.