Friday, December 08, 2017

Miascor Lounge at Terminal 1, Ninoy Aquino International Airport

The traffic condition in Manila city is consider very congested. A 5 to 6km distance may take you about 2 hours if you travel by car.

I also heard that travelling from Makati city to the Ninoy Aquino International Airport can take as long as 4 hours, and it is common. Having said that I have never encounter such horrible situation, maybe because I will request to use Skyway instead of let the driver decide which route to go.

Because of the unpredictable traffic situation, my Philippines friends always advise me to depart to airport 4 hours before my flight departure time. I think this is a logical advise, however if the flight schedule is delayed, which is very common in Manila, I will end up having to wait for 3-5 hours before taking a 4 hours journey flight in the plane.

The airport is descent, however with very limited choice of F&B, and the "turtle" speed broadband from Globe or Smart, the waiting time of 3-5 hours are kind of challenging.

The only way out is to find a descent place to chill, work or perhaps a "me time".



The only bet will be the airport lounge.  As Enrich member, I will be able to entity the lounge once I qualify for Gold member. I am 9000 Enrich miles away from getting there, hope by January 2018, when I visit Manila again, this Miascor lounge will be a nice place for me to spend my 3-5 hours time in the airport.

Saturday, September 16, 2017

Fake Egg vs Real Egg

Egg is the most complete source of protein.
As usual, we will prepare half boiled eggs for my family during weekend.

The Village Eggs that bought from wet market

However, when I clean the eggs shell before I put them into the stainless steel mug for soft boiling, I found the eggs look too perfect to be real. It triggers more suspiscous when my wife told me there is some plastic smell released when she opened the cover of stainless steel mug. The eggs were tasteless as well.

The above signs summoned an experiment to clear my doubt.

To test is to compare the suspicous village egg with another farm egg.
The white color egg is village egg, and the brown color egg is farm egg.
Hard boiled both of the eggs.

Village egg and farm egg for comparison

Remove the round (bottom) of the egg shell. Natural egg shal have some air space between the shell and the egg white at the bottom.

Can you see if there is any air space in between the shell and egg white?

What about this one? Is there any air space between the shell and egg white?

The egg shell and the egg white of the village egg leave no air space.
On the other hand, the air space between the egg shell and egg white of the farm egg is clearly visible.

Let's peel off the eggs completely and compare the shape of the eggs.

Village egg has Perfect shape


Farm egg has flat bottom, which leave air space betwen the egg white and the egg shell

The village egg has perfect shape, both top and bottm of the egg has round surface. However for the farm egg, the bottom looks flat where this gives air space between egg white and the egg shell.

I am not sure whether my test result can be conclusive to say that the said village egg is fake. However it is safe to choose for alternative source that I can be assured that the eggs that my family consume is genuine.

If you have more information, please feel free to share your comment.

Tuesday, July 18, 2017

JPJ Petaling Jaya

JPJ, also known as Jabatan Pengangkutan Jalan is a department that deal with driving license, road tax, change of car ownership, compounds, etc.

As usual, I have started to use online application like MYEG for anything to deal with JPJ or government agencies. It is because of issues like:

1. Severe insufficient car parking space
2. Extremely crowded. 

Basically doing one single transaction with JPJ will cost you almost one productive day. 

My question now is why these peoples willingly to burn their productive hours by physically visit to JPJ for transactions? Can't they do it online?

The government is also not learning. The new government offices like those in Putrajaya are also designed with limited car park spaces. It is really counter productive as the visitors need to spend almost 60 minutes to get their car parked before they can proceed to queue for a number. After getting a number they need to queue for 60-360 minutes for their turn depending on luck. The actual transaction takes you less than 5 minutes.

If you really need to visit to JPJ, my advise is you shall take Uber or Grab. At least you save the hassle of looking out for car park.

For any transactions that you can do online, try it and I bet you will love it. So convenient and very productive. It cost you a couple of Ringgit to save you hours, gasoline and tolls.

Saturday, June 03, 2017

A Malaysia political view that resonate with my feeling

Malaysia is still a developing country despite we were once on par with Singapore and having higher GDP than South Korea.

Malaysia is a country that is so rich with natural resources including oil & gas, strategically located in the centre of ASEAN, however until today, we are still categorized as emerging market, a.k.a. third world country.

Below is the article that I received from a chat group which echo my view. Please read on.

*C H I N A*
I lived in Beijing from 1979 to 1981 as a diplomat & was back in China again earlier this month to attend a meeting
The pace of change in China is simply staggering
When I first arrived in the country, China had no middle class
According to some economists, it's wages were just above that of sub-Saharan Africa
Most people lived in mud brick shacks and there were as many bicycles as there were people
Vegetables like cabbage were brought from the communes when available and dumped by the truckloads on the roadside; the smell of rotting cabbage was everywhere
DENG XIAOPING , the paramount leader of China from 1978 till his retirement in 1989, was one of the most remarkable leaders I have ever had the privilege of meeting
He saw what many of his more ideologically inclined colleagues were too blind to see - that if a way could be found to release the industriousness, creativity and ingenuity of the Chinese people, there would be no stopping China’s rise to greatness
In my view, that was his greatest contribution to China
And he set about changing China through the Four Modernisations policy
It was a big deal then, much the same way as One Belt One Road (OBOR) project is today
Less than four decades after I first arrived in Beijing, the city is not just a world-class capital city, it is the capital of the world
The millions of bicycles that once filled the streets of Beijing are gone, replaced by millions of cars both foreign and locally-made
In the week that I was there for my recent meeting, China’s first locally-built aircraft carrier began sea trials while its first locally-built passenger plane took its maiden voyage
Almost everything - airports, roads, mass transit systems, telecommunications - is new and more advanced than anything anywhere else
The old ‘hutongs’ (alleys) are all but gone, replaced by dazzling high-rise condos, shopping malls, stadiums, coffee bars and fabulously expensive restaurants filled not by expatriates but by locals
Except for the famous historical landmarks, very little remains of the Beijing I first encountered in 1979
The people I talked to were confident about their future and proud of what had been accomplished
They were anxious to get the best education, learn new experiences,discover new business opportunities, seek ways to exploit new technologies, and were ready to move to the other side of the world if necessary in pursuit of their aspirations.
As a nation, there is an eagerness to be the best and the greatest, to climb the highest, go the furthest, to build the biggest, fastest and most advanced
It doesn’t take long for visitors to sense that this is a nation on the move, impatient to fulfil its manifest destiny as possibly the greatest nation in the world.
Above all else, it is the strategic thinking and planning behind almost everything that is China today that is impressive
A country like China does not rise that high that fast by happenstance but by careful planning, thoughtful implementation and dogged determination
It seems that when China settles upon a strategy, it pursues it with uncommon passion.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that never in the history of human civilisation has any nation been able to make such a technological, economic and social leap forward in such a short span of time as China
That is the China that we must deal with and we better be up to the challenge if we are not to share the fate of lambs headed to the slaughterhouse
It is not to suggest that China is evil or necessarily intent on subjugation; it’s just that the sheer asymmetry of its power and prowess automatically puts other nations at a huge disadvantage
As I walked around Beijing in awe, I couldn’t help reflecting on our own nation’s journey over the last 35 years or so
In many ways, witnessing China’s exponential rise to greatness also forces us to come to terms with our own performance, our own vulnerabilities and shortcomings
It is a depressing exercise to say the least
During then PM Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s visit to China in November 1985, for example, a few Proton Saga were given to a Beijing taxi company as part of the effort to gain publicity for the recently launched Malaysian-made car
Admiring crowds gathered around the Proton wherever it was displayed, astonished that a small developing country like Malaysia could produce its own cars
It was a proud moment for those of us who were there.
Some 37 years later, here we are , desperately looking to China to rescue Proton from total collapse
In 1985, China produced about 6,000 cars annually; by 2008, China’s annual production had surpassed that of the United States and Japan combined
Time and again, we seem to have squandered the lead we had through corruption, mismanagement and misguided policies or wasted resources on hair-brained schemes
Worst of all, we never seem to learn anything from our follies because we keep repeating them
Unproductive, self-defeating exercise
While China was taking giant strides forward with its Four Modernisations programme, we were arguing over language, race and religion. Instead of building a world-class system of education, we were politicising it and pretending that just calling our universities great would make it so
While other countries were going out of their way to attract the best minds in the world, we were driving them away with bigotry and prejudice
While China’s leaders were experimenting with ways to release the creativity, ingenuity and industriousness of all its people, our leaders were stifling it with discriminatory programmes and self-defeating policies
Even now, when countries like China are focused on technological innovation and strategising how to seize global leadership, we are obsessed with religious laws, what people wear or who’s sleeping with whom, never mind that all these things do absolutely nothing to improve our productivity, enhance our competitiveness or prepare us for the challenges ahead
Of course, we have our great plans - Vision 2020 and now TN2050 - but we have neither the patience nor the determination of China to do whatever is necessary to bring it to fruition
In the end, it’s all just hype, a “syiok sendiri” exercise, and we know it
To be sure, Malaysia has made impressive advances as well but surely it is far less than what could have been achieved when measured against our potential
How do we face external challenges and an increasingly competitive global environment with so much internal baggage ?
If we cannot get our act together, if we cannot exorcise the demons within, how can we ever hope to face the dragon without ?

DENNIS IGNATIUS, a former Malaysian ambassador to China , firmly believes that we should put our trust not in the leadership of politicians but in the sanctity of great institutions - our secular and democratic constitution, a democratically elected 
parliament, an independent judiciary, a free press and a government fully accountable to the people.

Tuesday, May 30, 2017

Little hero is 2-year-old now

My preterm baby is 2-year-old now.
Thanks God he is healthy and growing up.

There are still a lot for him to catch up, especially on his weight. However I believe we shall give him more time. As long as he is progressing steadily, he shall be alright.

We had a simple celebration in the evening. 2 pieces of sliced cake and 2 candles. The ceremony was simple but accompanied by his parents, grandmother, and two adorable sisters.

We let him bite and taste the cake twice as we believe the cake is still very challenging for his digestion system.

My late father came to my memory. He is a very accommodating father, especially for his generation. 

He was a intelligent and hardworking man. He sacrificed multiple promotion opportunities to enable him to have the flexibility to take care of us, including my mother like fetching us to and fro from work, school, tuitions, other activities as well as being able to reach home on time to prepare dinner for the family.

During his spare time, he will focus on study like how to improve his day time tasks. I still can remember very clearly that he mastered Lotus 1-2-3, the most popular spreadsheet software at that time from scratch. He was self studied, via reading the software handbooks.

During the 8086, 8088 or XT/ AT era, he was capable of writing simple programming (something like macro for Microsoft Excel in the present) that automating all the variable data calculations based on certain database and parameters. He did show me and it was really amazing!

He passed away last year. I can only miss him and there is no more chance to repay him for all his loves to us.

I hope I will be a good father, to my 3 kids.

Happy Birthday my baby boy!
Dad, I miss you!


Monday, March 13, 2017

Share Rights Issues Application in Malaysia

It has been a while since my last AMFIRST share rights issue application.

I was applying for IOIPG (IOI Properties Group Berhad) right issues few days back. And I learnt that the bank ruling has change and below is the summary for your reference to prevent dissappointment, especially to those who buy bank draft at very last minute.

1. The applicant him or herself must present to bank for bank draft purchase.

2. Mandatory to bring along Right Subscription Form and Identity Card.

The bank need to validate the transactions.

The new requirements has demotivate investors with small portion of share as the trouble against the value of rights issue share may not be worthwhile.

Monday, January 09, 2017

Biggest regret in my life

My dad was diagnosed with end stage cancer while my wife pregnancy become complicated.

During his toughest period, I spare very minimal time with him as I have dedicated my priority to my son. He survived, born as extreme underweight and extreme premature 28 weeker.

A part from that, I also blame myself for over committed on my day time career.

My dad passed away early last year. I did not make it to be with him during his last breath. He passed on when I was on my returning flight from Bangkok. 

I knew he will be leaving us a week before the trip, I had told my colleagues and my family I will not travel after this Bangkok trip. I wanted to stay with him at his very last stage of his life.

I did not make it, but my wife, my 2 daughters and the youngest son were with him during his last moment.

"Dad, I wish you find peace and healthy at the heaven. Mom just told me that you were waiting for me when you knew you were leaving us. She said you left in peace. Dad, pls forgive me. Miss you."


Sunday, January 08, 2017

Ratan Tata's wisdoms

Wisdoms from Ratan Tata's speech in London

Don't educate your children to be rich.
Educate them to be happy.
So when they grow up they will know the value of things not the price.

 
"Eat your food as your medicines. Otherwise you have to eat medicines as your food"

 
The one who loves you will never leave you because even if there are 100 reasons to give up he will find one reason to hold on.

 
There is a lot of difference between human being and being human.
A few understand it.


 
You are loved when you are born.
You will be loved when you die.
In between you have to manage.

 
If u want to Walk Fast,  Walk Alone.
But if u want to Walk Far, Walk Together.


Six Best Doctors in the World:
1.Sunlight
2.Rest
3.Exercise
4.Diet
5.Self Confidence
6.Friends
Maintain them in all stages of Life and enjoy healthy life.


If   you   see   the   moon ..... You   see    the    beauty    of    God .....   If    you   see    the   Sun ..... You   see    the    power   of    God .....   And ....    If   you   see   the   Mirror ..... You   see     the    best    Creation of   GOD .... So    Believe   in     YOURSELF..... :) :) :).

 
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