Malaysia Money Matters

2 seemingly small issues on the news about PAS in recent days: The fines issued by the PAS controlled municipal council to a Chinese-owned hair salon in Kelantan for allegedly having lady hairdressers cut men's hair Wanting to protest (via memo, yawns) and shut down the upcoming Elton John concert in Genting on account that he's gay. Now if I may quote this very old poem: For want of a nail, the shoe was lost For want of a shoe, the horse was lost For want of a horse, the rider was lost For want of a rider, the battle was lost For want of a battle, the kingdom was lost. For right or wrong, I understand that they have their principles and their right to try to enforce them but this cannot fly in a multi-ethnic, multi-religious country like ours.  Give and take, yes.  But imposing your values by force of majority, no. By these two incidences, it seems to me that PAS is not ready to rule because they always get caught up in issues like this, alway...

This is post no. 44, 4+4 = 8 = prosperity. Yes, essentially, this is what I want from our government. Because once we become a richer country, life would be better all around - although granted that not all problems will go away but hopefully there will be lesser and replaced by such 'happy' problems of having to decide what to eat! Instead of the problem of 'is there enough to eat'? Firstly, let's be fair to the existing government and civil servants - we are developing to be sure and it is helped a lot by petroleum revenues as well as private enterprise, but at the same time because the pace of growth has been quite high for a while - a lot of fundamental things are not done well and in the long run it will come back to haunt us. In fact the problems are already here: But lets start with one issue first: Education I think there is too much emphasis on tertiary education whereby it has become a matter of quantity over quality, we have failed in the lower le...

My colleague recently got into a minor accident while crossing the road, a motorcycle knocked her over. The scary part was that she was carrying her infant son at the time, fortunately they were alright apart from scrapes and bruises. Now, the background to this was that a few years ago, she mentioned that she doesn't have a will despite having 2 kids and I was like, "Girlfriend!? Really? I'm all alone and I already have my will done up, what's wrong witchu??" ( ok, I didn't actually say that.. ) And she was so surprised that I had my estate plans all done up and I said, it doesn't matter how much or how little you think you have, what's important is that you make sure that your survivors are taken care of and there is as little hassle as possible.  An uncle of mine died intestate and my aunt went through a long and tedious process to unfreeze his assets; not to mention fending off his greedy sisters who wanted his property, who cares about his...

So I toddled along to the sales gallery for the launch of the Veo which is a high-rise condo in Desa Melawati - north of Taman Melawati proper, it would actually face Tmn Melati across from the MRR2, hence it is close to the exit into the Karak Highway. The developer is Sime Darby and they've launch Tower B ( a calculated move ) which is set slightly back from the main highway, in front of it is the planned Tower A ( with better KLCC views, higher price later natch! ) and the delayed Quarza project which is a commercial development - all by Sime Darby. Onto the Veo itself, it is a mixed bag... lots of 1-bedrooms, posh-ish studio type units at around 700+ square feet going for around RM0.5 million. Then there are the much larger units around 2,000++ square feet including one layout that has the very in-trend dual entrance for the main family unit plus granny flat / bachelor or bachelorette pad, it is a good concept. Priced from RM1.4 million. There is a mid-size layout of 1,...