Malaysia's first astronaut

I found this article in BBC rather amusing. Once again we are missing the big picture.

Malaysia considers Islam in space

A two-day conference on Islam and life in space is under way in Malaysia, in a bid to answer questions faced by would-be Muslim
astronauts.

Malaysia is due to send an astronaut into space with the Russians next year.

The country's first spaceman is almost certain to be a Muslim, which raises a number of practical issues.

For instance, Muslims wash before they pray but not only is water a precious commodity in space, but it is also impractical in weightlessness.

Likewise, the faithful face Mecca. However, that will mean pin-pointing a moving location while in zero gravity.

And Muslim prayer times are linked to those of the sunrise and sunset, but in orbit the sun appears to rise and set more than a dozen times a day.

Streamyx

After reading numerous posts online regarding Streamyx's poor service throughout the whole last week, I'm grateful that I'm using TimedotCom's Webbit which is nothing spectacular, but at least reliable. I'm quite surprised with Paul Tan's outburst on Streamyx's 'performance'. Not his usual calm and composed style.

The need for competition in this area is way overdue. Furthermore TMNet had left users in the dark over the whole matter. This is definitely no world class service. Buck up GLCs!

Honeymoon in Phuket

Finally I've got my actuarial exam out of the way... This is a long overdue post.

Johanna & I finally received our wedding photos from our photographers myBest and LesChang. We've posted most of them in our wedding album.

The day after our wedding, Johanna & I rushed back to KL to fly to Phuket for our 4-day honeymoon the next day. It's our first time flying together. The journey was shorter than I imagined - a mere one hour and fifteen minute flight.

We checked in to our hotel - Patong Premiere Resort upon arrival at Patong Beach. The hotel has a Balinese setting. Our room, a honeymoon suite, was tastefully decorated, complete with a bottle of Thai wine produced in 1948!

We spent our first few hours walking along Patong Beach, checking out the shops and looking for a restaurant. Finally settled down in Savoey, an air-conditioned Thai restaurant. We ordered 2 raw oysters, some clams, tom yum seafood and a plate of Thai noodles. A sumptuous meal indeed. The price was great too.

We spent our evening in a theme part called FantaSea. The main attraction was the cultural show in the Palace of the Elephants, featuring Thai culture, myth, magic show etc. Among the casts were a herd of elephants, a flock of chickens, a flock of pigeons and a herd of goats!

The next morning Johanna & I went for an elephant ride. Not the most pleasurable thing to do as we wobbled from one side to the other throughout the journey up and down hill. Nevertheless it was worth experiencing once in a lifetime. We also managed to capture the antics of a small monkey at the elephant trekking lodge.

In the afternoon, we're provided with a free half day tour of Phuket by the hotel. Our driver, Peter, drove us along the west coast of Phuket island, passing through Karon Beach and Kata Beach before arriving at the Phromthep Cape viewpoint. The scenery throughout was breathtaking. The view of Andaman Sea was definitely more pleasurable compared to Langkawi.

We proceed to a Buddhist temple called Wat Chalong after that. This monastry is about 500 years old. I was amazed by the details in the Thai architecture. Johanna and I ended up taking a large volume of photos, until Peter told us we were behind schedule.

Next we arrived in Phuket Town. There was nothing much to see and the only activity was to shop for souveniors. We managed only to buy some t-shirts and key chains due to time constraint.

Our last destination before heading back to Patong Town was a jewellery shop - touted as the biggest in the world.

We arrived back in hotel just in time for dinner. This time we went the other way along Patong Beach and arrived at a restaurant called Lam Phat. Another great seafood meal ensued.

On the third day of our trip, we took a boat trip to Phanga Bay, which has 42 isle. But we only visited 4 of those. The activities included canoeing, caves and lagoons visits. We were very impressed with the shapes of the isle. One of them is merely a rock - the famous James Bond Island, made popular by The Man with the Golden Gun. Johanna and I managed to know one couple from Findland - Timo and Linda who were in Phuket for a long holiday. We ended up having dinner together that evening.

The last day of our trip was merely checking out and travelling to airport. This was the most enjoyable trip in my life - the most likely reason was because of Johanna. But Phuket deserved all the credit as well. The tourism there was so well managed that we had seamless travel and touring services. The whole island was also very clean. I hope Malaysia can learn a lot from Phuket.

We managed to take more than 1Gb worth of photos from the trip. We have selected 10% of these to be included in our honeymoon album.

Our wedding day

It has been a while since I last update my blog. Well, for a good reason. I had been busy preparing for my wedding on 25 February. Now that everything is over made me felt so much relieved and relaxed. Johanna & I truly enjoyed our honeymoon after the big day.

Our dinner was held at Evergreen Laurel Hotel in Penang. We were really happy that many of our friends and colleagues turned up despite some having to travel very far - Medan, Singapore, KL, etc.

In the morning I went over to Parit Buntar Inn to bring Johanna over to my place. Of course not without having to go through the custom of knocking on the door and accepting some challenges from her jimui. I considered myself lucky as the challenges were relatively easy. I was asked to answer a number of questions relating to Johanna or our relationship, which I managed to answer correctly for each and everyone. But my hengdai and myself were not spared of drinking some 'cocktails' made from vinegar plus other unkown ingredient. Kok Zhen, one of my hengdai, even had to do push ups - ironically, he used to be the commander of the scout troop in SMJK Krian, who usually made others do push ups. After completing all the other challenges, such as eating bananas and drinking unfiltered coffee, I finally got to meet my bride and bring her back to my parents' house to complete the ceremony by offering tea to relatives.

After the tea ceremony, both of us rushed to Penang to prepare for the wedding dinner. My parents in law had arrived at the hotel around 2pm. Johanna then went to Kuang Yee Penang to get her make up for the night done.

By 7pm, my parents were not even ready to greet the guests. I was getting worried as many guests have arrived. Luckily my cousins had managed to organise themselves to help us ushering the guests. The dinner finally started at 8. Johanna came in in a sedan chair while I eagerly waited for her inside the ballroom. After inviting her out from the sedan chair, both of us marched down the red carpet towards the main table, with our theme song "I finally found someone" playing in the background. The band started playing and the ballroom was filled with songs sang by Tony and Joanne, our singers for the night.

We were very happy to see many of our photographer friends turned up on that night and took our photos. Really appreciate that some of them travelled all the way from KL.

We had our cake cutting ceremony after the second course, before Johanna went to change into evening gown. We marched in together again. Then, the rest of the event followed - champagne pouring, toasting, my dad giving his speech and finally my speech. I didn't have time to prepare the speech and hence I had to just share whatever that came to my mind, perhaps it's the most sincere way to give a wedding speech.

After the speech, we went around the tables to toast with our guests. Johanna's ex-housemates were so active - toasting louder than most despite being all female.

The night finally ended with us saying goodbye and thank you to our guests. We didn't manage to have long conversations with most of our guests as there were just too many guests to attend to.

After all the guests were gone, I finally felt relieved - all the stress is finally gone. Looking forward to the honeymoon to Phuket on Monday. Good that I only have to go through this once. Nevertheless I felt very happy with all the blessings from families, relatives, friends, colleagues, etc. It's finally complete.

I have yet to receive the photos on the wedding night. Will post some when they arrive. Many thanks to Ch'ng OT & co.

Happy Chinese New Year!

This is my 3rd year working, and I could feel that as I progress in career and life, as my workload and other responsibilities increase, it is increasingly difficult to feel prepared for festivals such as Chinese New Year. In fact my mind is still not prepared to balik kampung tomorrow morning.

Anyway, Happy Chinese New Year to you all. Take time to relax and enjoy family relationships.

Man Utd ended Liverpool's unbeaten run

Manchester United did it again!

Two years back it was Arsenal's 52-match unbeaten run, few months back it was Chelsea's 40-match run, and last night it was Liverpool's 12-match run. Rio Ferdinand powered in a header from a Ryan Giggs free kick in injury-time to complete this memorable hat-trick.

United started with Giggs and O'Shea in midfield following a string of injuries and the departure of Keane. The partnership never quite gelled as Liverpool continued to press forward and dominated most of the play. Gerrard provided the played the pass of the match, bending the ball with the outside of his right foot to release Cisse, who managed miserably with the great opportunity, to my delight. Cisse then blasted over with the goal at his mercy, despite being unmarked from six yards out. This came after a goal line clearance by Ferdinand.

Yesterday's goal was also Ferdinand's third in three weeks, after a 140-match drought. Scoring a goal and clearing one off the line marked an overall exceptional performance from the £29.1million defender. He even looked great playing in the midfield against Burton in the FA Cup tie.

Rooney also had a few brilliant run during the game and was unlucky to get his powerful shot inches wide from more than twenty-yards out. Rooney was everywhere during the game - left back, right back, central midfield and up front. This was a stark contrast to Van Nistelrooy who was hardly in the game.

Despite the win, United's midfield will still be Fergie's headache as the midfield was mostly controlled by Alonso, Gerrard and Sissoko. United also owe the victory to Cisse for his unforgivable miss. Perhaps Fergie can try out Giggs and Rooney in the middle to bring out the best of what United has at the moment.

Nevertheless, a win over Liverpool is always sweet, no matter how it happened. Chelsea's draw with Charlton made the victory even sweeter.

I was quite amused to read the headlines in the Star - 'Shortcut' to licence yesterday.

Some excerpts from the article.

An undercover investigation by The Star reveals that some driving schools offer learners an easy passage to obtaining a licence by paying under-table money.

JPJ has, meanwhile, denied such claims and asked for reports and evidence.

Said JPJ director-general Datuk Emran Kadir: “It is illegal to ask for duit kopi. I’ve said it so many times already. These are all cases of cheating.

“Give me the names of these driving schools. I will take action.”

I'm amused that the Star only found out this ongoing practice now. I'm even more amused when JPJ Director denied everything and instead of investigating his own staff, chose to take action against driving schools involved. As usual the wrong people will be responsible - just like the nude ear squat case where the editor who brought this issue public resigned instead of the police chief.

Coming back to the 'common' practice to obtain driving licence. Majority of Malaysians who has obtained driving licence are fully aware of this giving 'duit kopi' practice which comes in all sort of forms. I've some friends who claimed that in certain JPJ branches, one will never pass one's driving test without giving bribe. Some honest citizens have tried to stay clean only to give up in the end after finding out that money and not skill is the only way to obtain driving licence. During my schooling days, everyone in my class are well aware of this practice in certain JPJ branch near our district. Even the illiterate can pass the 'undang-undang' test.

The cycle continues - Corruption within government agencies gets reported, party involved will be in denial, bloggers like me blog about it, MPs promise to investigate, the results will never be known and things will be back as it is and everyone will forget about it until the next discovery/complaint/incident.

Proton Chancellor - 惨死了?

Ever since I saw the advertisements of Proton Chancellor in the newsprint, I've been wondering which group of consumers is Proton targeting. Businessmen who own SME perhaps?

Anyway, I chanced upon an entry in Brand New Malaysian and Screenshots respectively today. It was published in a Chinese daily that Chancellor could be translated into Chinese as something which resonates 惨死了- died tragically.

Just to share my own experience on car naming. I've been given some translation work in London to ensure the lists of names thought up by auto companies are suitable for the Malaysian market. Among the criteria I used was to make sure the names do not sound like something negative in either Malay of Chinese. I don't speak Tamil, so I wouldn't be able to provide my input there. I was paid GBP20 for screening through each list which comprised of roughly 50 names. A small price to pay to ensure car models sound right especially in the region it would be sold.

Wonder what went wrong in the process of naming Chancellor? Have they overlooked the fact that many ethnic Chinese in this country have likings and phobia over homonyms?

The Chancellor is not an interesting model anyway. It's just a stretched Waja at double the price tag. I doubt that Proton will be able to sell that many. Another flop on the way.

Proton: What next?

Looks like the series of blunders have not ended for Proton...

In the latest news, Volkswagon (VW) AG has scrapped plans to cooperate with Proton Holdings Bhd to build and sell VW brand cars for the local market, after the two companies have started talks since 2004.

This came just after the controversial sale of MV Augusta for a mere 1 Euro few weeks back.

"Unfortunately the Malaysian government, Khazanah (Nasional Bhd) and Proton had different ideas, " VW Chief Executive told investors gathered in Michigan.

Arising from this adverse development, Proton share price fell as much as RM1.25 to RM5.10 in early trade before it ended the morning session at RM5.65, down 70 sen.

The future looks bleak for our first national car maker... How will this impact on our National Auto Policy?


Quote from a member of Paul Tan's auto blog.

"National Car Policy killed National Auto Policy

Congrats to Malaysia! The first country to close down a bakery for a loaf of bread. "

ASTRO!

I was very excited with my new ASTRO subscription since last Friday. Finally I will get to watch Man Utd matches on tele!

Anyway, managed my first match early this morning. Quite unfortunately the game was a late one - 4am! On the other hand it's Arsenal hosting Man Utd...

In order not to over stretch myself, I decided only to watch the second half, but I did manage to capture the last few minutes of the first half. Still ruing for that miss by Ronaldo. He should have produced a better finishing.

The second half saw United creating many chances but unfortunately none of them translated into goals. In the end both arch rivals had to settle for a goalless draw. This game could have been a crucial match two years back. But now it seems more like an ordinary one as the both teams no longer pose a threat to Chelsea's 13 point lead at the top of the table.

Back to my ASTRO subscription. I am subscribing to 3 mini packages - News, Sports and Documentary, plus Dynasty, for Johanna to watch her favourite soaps. This also means a monthly commitment of RM85... sob sob... extra burden to our monthly expenditure.

We are also getting a new 29 inch Philips TV for our bedroom, on top of the bed and mirror we have just purchased last week, together with a splash of new paint for the bedroom walls. Many things have been going on in the house, same goes to our $$$. Hope 2006 will bring better fortune.