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,...

Came across a rather shocking piece of news that was in a vernacular paper; seems that Malay teenagers were willing to subscribe to regular porn stories sent to their phones from an Indonesian service for RM17 a month (or was that a week? Think it was a month...). Like, what the hell? They're kids! Go read a Jackie Collins novel and flip to the dirty bits and fap away at that, my son. Can you imagine that if they have 1,000 subscribers, that's a cool RM17,000 a month. I'm sure they have a lot more than that. I tell you, gotta get me some of that ACTION! hehe but how? LOL Just kidding! (maybe) Which brings me to the situation here, in our oh-so very 'moralistic' country where even the word "Beer" can be censored out of Beyonce's 'If I were a boy' single. Imagine, if you will, that censorship were not as hidebound as it is now and that instead of people accessing porn illegally, it was taxed - goodness, it would exceed the revenue from th...

I have been entertaining the thought of adopting a child for quite some time now. However, it will probably be only a pipe dream because given the realities of raising a child single-handedly is not something I can handle in terms of energy and time. Financially, I guess I'm ok but that is only the tip of the iceberg. So what brought this about was that a friend of a friend is getting a child, single also. And really, he's in no shape to do so. Not financially stable, no family support here (they live in East Malaysia, a flight away) and ermm not matured enough yet, I think. Although who is to say, maybe getting a child will force him to get his act together. Anyway, since this blog is all about money, I thought I'd break down the adoption issue in terms of the real costs involved and hold on to your hair, what I'm about to say is not very pleasant: First - there are 2 ways of adopting here: one is through the Welfare department, the other is to find your own baby...

Hands up those who got all excited about the concept of Groupon and other similar websites that offer seemingly impossibly high discounts on goods & services? Frankly, I've always been wary of these deals. Unfortunately, I have friends who love this kind of thing and want to drag you along on whatever 'deal' they've gotten. Sigh... So what happens is that I go along and invariably, it sucks. Here is why: Experience 1: Buffet, supposedly. It was a small pub / bistro in PJ. Well known for their BBQ lunch. This time, they did a Groupon deal for a buffet and free-flow of alcohol. Really got such a big frog jumping on the road*, meh? [* - literal translation of Chinese saying; meaning 'seems to good to be true', ie it (the frog) would have been caught and eaten a long time ago ] Holy crap, I tell you, it was the most painful experience EVER. The drinks were watered down and you can tell it was not a good brand that they used, very harsh tasting. I...