Interloper View

Penang is blessed with many different kind of flowers, here are some of them: Ok, this is not a flower but I still like it. Now after the short intermission:

It's been a while since I took the bus in Penang. Several years back, there was a new bus company that was transferred from Kuala Lumpur to Penang called Rapid. This company was to improve the public transport in Penang. It's been more than a year since Rapid Penang service started (July 2007). Since my children wanted to go to town and my car was temporary unavailable, I thought I would take the opportunity to see if the public transport in Penang has improved. We left the house about 12:15 pm and approached the bus stop. When we reached the bus stop, there were about 11 persons there (two senior citizens, 3 children included). We spoke to them and they told me that they have been waiting there for more than 15 minutes but have not seen a single bus throughout that time - passing either side of the road. They were visitor from Medan in Indonesia. This is the busiest road in Penang and yet not a single bus passed by the road for more than 20 minutes unbelievable. My children an

Introduction I remember reading sometime ago of a bad experience of somebody buying a computer from Best Buy and then her mouse broke. She tried to claim on the warranty but was given the runaround. Finally, when she convinced the shop to fix the mouse, it took more than 6 months to get it "fixed". This story shows that we should not waste money on unnecessary warranty. However, from my own experience, I found warranty and extended warranty to save me on several occasions. Warranty saved my butt I bought an Axim x50v a couple of years back and had extended the warranty to 3 years. The PDA died within days after its 1 year anniversary. However, with the warranty, I was able to get a replacement. The unit cost me RM 2K/- at the time. In another case, I bought a Samsung LCD monitor. At the time, they had a promotion and came with 3 year warranty. Again, a few days after its first year anniversary, it just went black. This time the distributor claimed it was out of warranty. Luck

One of the first things we are thought in management is to uphold our credibility, for without it who will trust in what we say. However, looking at the leaders in the countries these days, you wonder if they were absent the day that lesson was thought. In Malaysia, the Prime Minister says that the election will not happen tomorrow and then the next day, it is declared that election will happen on that day!! In the United States of America , George Bush call for war against Iraq because Saddam has started creating weapon of mass destruction. The war is over, Saddam has been executed and still there is no prove that there was ever any weapon of mass destruction. In Zimbabwe, we have a president who declares himself victories because he had no competition. I try hard to find country leaders who show integrity and trustworthiness but can't seem to find any. Past leaders, are plenty. The following are some of the business leaders that I feel reflects the integrity and trustworthiness

My heart was racing faster than I can remember. I have never felt so frightened as I tried to follow my sister and dad. I could barely hear his voice saying, “ If you don’t follow us you will be left behind!! The jeep is waiting for us at the other side. ” My sister was also screaming, “ I am scared, papa! ” Then my father started rambling something but before he could continue, I shouted, “ Just shut up!! ” Then my sister screamed back, “ It’s your fault, you are the one who kept saying, Let’s go to the canopy walk. ” The truth of her words struck me hard but I retorted, “ You are going too fast. ” As I walked forward, the bridge swayed left and right and I shouted, “ Stop shaking the bridge!! ” I walked forward and felt cold sweat streaming down my forehead and my back. I cursed – “ Shit! Shit ”. It seems like infinity but finally we reached the first tree. My father then said, “ Ok, now lets rest until you catch your breath before we continue .” I looked around and saw how high we

There are many options for making money on the Internet. One such way is through blogging and also Adsense. I have been reluctant to follow this path previously because of concern on how to get payment but I found a very effective way of getting payment via Western Union Cash. There is a very good article found here on how to do it. A couple of things that needs to be done before you can make money. You need to blog about something that people are interested in - i.e. build content. Once you have the content, you need to market. Meaning, you need to get traffic to your site. The couple of ways to promote your web site are: Participate in forum. In one case, I just did a post and within minutes I got more than 100 hits. (of course this was a one time hit). Make sure that when you post in the forums, it needs to be appropriate content for the forum. Use the webmaster tools from Google to submit your site map. This can help get your site index by Google's search engine. How

The previous Sunday my son wanted to go up Penang Hill but by the time he told us it was past noon and from experience going up by cable car, it will be about 4 pm before we could start up. So I told him, let's try this weekend. Then on Thursday in the newspaper, the cable car was shutdown and will be down for at least 6 to 8 months. So I thought "Horray! I don't need to bring him after all. " I kept the article to show him but I did not get the response, I had hoped. He read it but zoomed in and said, "Yay, Let's go up by jeep!!" I did not know when to get one so I told him, we can only get a jeep from up there so we have to hike up! Children being children, said, sure let's do it. So we got ready, (my son, daughter and myself) to prepare for the long tedious hike. Imagine, a 5 year old, 7 year old and and 41 year old hiking up 4 km above sea level. My dad, also joined in the fun and urged them saying if they can hike all the way to the peak