Monday, October 30, 2006

Cheapest city, not so cheap engineers!

Latest release, 2006 report of UBS Prices and Earning Reports

UBS conducted standardized Prices and Earnings survey in 71 cities throughout the world between February andApril 2006. In each city, surveys were conducted independently.


It's cheapest to live in KL!


I don't know how to inteprete this, but we are away from the crowd...?



Net hourly pay. Quite low for us?


Wage level for we Malaysians seem moderate low. Purchasing power is above average due to cheap goods and services.



33 minutes for a big Mac. How about McCrispy? I dont take beef.

Engineers are paid almost the same for KL folks as to counterparts in Bangkok, Mexico, Moscow, Bogota, Caracas, Prague, and Lima. 50% higher than engineers in Beijing and Shanghai and 100% higher than in the Indian capital. Think about it again? Anyway I still wish to work in Luxembourg! hehe


Summary for KL: cheapest to live, moderate wage and purchasing power. Nothing to be so proud about except getting to savour a plate of delicious chicken rice with USD1.

Click at the above link for more. We work too long hours indeed as complained.

KL and KL

The sun didn’t penetrate through the silky costly curtain tailor-made for Miss Teo’s new apartment in Villa Oversea Union Garden, as she loathes rays of light piercing and harassing her peaceful sleep, I guess. I woke up just after dawn rushing to pick Miss Tan up and met up with WCK at the silhouetting double city centers’ basement, getting ready to ascent to the connecting piece of concrete in between.

Alas, it was inaudibly closed. I regard this as an embarrassment for a premier tourist spot to close for 5 days though it was holidays. Almost certainly we thought it was due to the charge-free entrance and lift, for we made our lengthy walk to the neighbouring aquarium that remained open and still charged 28 bucks on the second day of Aidilfitri.

The modestly advertised Aquaria was not a downer nonetheless not too enthralling. Yet my baffling obsession towards deep sea creatures was satisfied though a little. Miss Tan led us in a fine time looking for an obvious angler fish that was tagged as good in camouflage but all we discovered is a piece of 4-legged charcoal with barely noticeable moving gills resting just next to a standing red coral. Her mama must have told her that the most dangerous position is in fact the safest one.


Magnificent movements in every direction


Come baby come, it's time to eat.


Something fishy in the aquarium!


We stopped by the famous-only-to-foreign-tourists palace's front gate.


Acting class I - Frightened yet desperately excited countenance


Acting Class II - Petrified Body

A few fine days later, after multiple shopping sprees in the abound shopping malls in the metropolis and a visit each to the car workshop and the university, Miss Teo insisted to pursue her first visit to the skybridge after a failed first attempt. That very misty morning we headed to the city center once more and this time Kim has replaced Miss Tan who was apparently fed up with the suppose-to-be-in-disguise black angler fish.

It was a few minutes past 8 am in the morning as my bone-jingling wira ran past a saga with passengers who were obviously heading to the same destination as ours. Contentedly we walked up the car park to the tickets distribution counter thinking that we will get tickets at ease. See this picture and you will know how awful the big O our mouths would be at the crime spot.

After a 5-day closure, it was definitely not a good day for us to jointly grasp the tickets and agitate the already-disturbed planned trip of the many foreign travelers that we believed had stayed back a few days just to pay a visit to the icon. But well, it’s Miss Teo’s, my accommodation provider, maiden visit. We were not going to give up, taking turn to line up for nearly 2 hours and ended up seized four four-hour-later tickets.


The twins, as unforgiving as it has always been.


Patient WCK among the impatient hundreds of flockers. Check out the crowd, it's already after the officers requested only one to line up for a group. They are too slow in distributing the tickets!


From the top of the bridge


Another one


The bridge itself


Lightning strikes on KLCC


The group that managed to get a pass to the bridge!


The group that didn't make it to the bridge


After nearly a week in the capital, I drove back to Penang with Mr Tee and Miss Lai, with packs of hard-earned-money-turn-into fabrics and price tags. (Miss Lai too!) Mr Tee’s 9-month service exchange in the States left me and him much to catch up that the long arduous journey felt short.

Reached Penang soon after lunch time. Unpacked, napped, dined, and desserted, that was a pretty and lazy Sunday before November looms.

Thursday, October 19, 2006

Maiden win for Chinese girls in Gymnastic History




*pictures from sina


I have always been thinking that Gymnastics is the cruelest and most mentally and physcially grueling competitive sports.

Congratulations! And the boys won too!
ESPN
Yahoo Sports
Sina Sports

Monday, October 16, 2006

Nerina Pallot


www.nerinapallot.com

Look for Entertainment. It's hard for me to recommend any of the songs to you coz they are all simply fantastic. But the hits are Sophia and Everybody's Gone to War.

Friday, October 06, 2006

中秋

苏轼 『水调歌头 明月几时有』

明月几时有?把酒问清天。不知天上宫阙,今夕是何年。我欲乘风归去。惟恐琼楼玉宇,高处不胜寒,起舞弄清影,何似在人间。

转朱阁,低绮户,照无眠。不应有恨,何事长向别时圆?人有悲欢离合,月有阴晴圆缺,此事古难全。但愿人长久,千里共婵娟。



Happy Mid-Autumn Festival to all!

Cambodia

People in the office were talking about Cambodia, asking why is this beautiful country lagging behind the locomotive of development. Check this out from CIA. It has actually achieved indepedance ahead of us.

Most Cambodians consider themselves to be Khmers, descendants of the Angkor Empire that extended over much of Southeast Asia and reached its zenith between the 10th and 13th centuries.

Attacks by the Thai and Cham (from present-day Vietnam) weakened the empire ushering in a long period of decline. The king placed the country under French protection in 1863. Cambodia became part of French Indochina in 1887.

Following Japanese occupation in World War II, Cambodia gained full independence from France in 1953.

In April 1975, after a five-year struggle, Communist Khmer Rouge forces captured Phnom Penh and evacuated all cities and towns. At least 1.5 million Cambodians died from execution, forced hardships, or starvation during the Khmer Rouge regime under POL POT.




Skull stupa that will stay to remind the Cambodians their murky pages of past.


This smile just couldn't stop you from thinking what was his ideology.


A December 1978 Vietnamese invasion drove the Khmer Rouge into the countryside, began a 10-year Vietnamese occupation, and touched off almost 13 years of civil war.

The 1991 Paris Peace Accords mandated democratic elections and a ceasefire, which was not fully respected by the Khmer Rouge. UN-sponsored elections in 1993 helped restore some semblance of normalcy under a coalition government.

Factional fighting in 1997 ended the first coalition government, but a second round of national elections in 1998 led to the formation of another coalition government and renewed political stability. The remaining elements of the Khmer Rouge surrendered in early 1999.

Some of the remaining leaders are awaiting trial by a UN-sponsored tribunal for crimes against humanity. Elections in July 2003 were relatively peaceful, but it took one year of negotiations between contending political parties before a coalition government was formed.


Do you know why now? Don't frolic around and take what we are savouring now for granted.

Races' race?












cartoons from Zunar


Lately there have been numerous issues pertaining the multiracial elements of our beloved country. Things are going wild. All the many words about perpaduan and how we should take full pride of the harmony admist the divergence that we have been reading and being instilled in our KBSR/KBSM system, seems to be pretty bloviating.

I do not have any comment, but disheartened? Yeah... All the chaos, unwillingness to accept the words of sorry from Mr Lee, and keeping mum of Khairy in a clarification press conference that uses Hishamudin's lips to sort of clarify (not even a word of sorry and intention to apologize here) to people that we'd MISUNDERSTOOD what he has stirred up, is nothing but just a cruel reflection of how our education system has faltered.

I couldn't gather much videos or news on the above matters. Below are just some.
Isn't Mr Lee was right then?

No new school for SRK(C) and (T)
*Should we cry foul or cry over spilt milk?
What Chinese of PRC think about Mr Lee's comments...
*harsh
Mr Lim on this "ask for SORRY, decline to say one" and Chinese Education issue
* u know, last time I dont quite like him...
Read About Khairy on Wikipedia.
* Last three paragraphs are interesting. Was him trying to get some political credits by creating the uproar?