Category: General

Hong Kong 2009

I will be attending another Intellectual Property Conference by the name Asian Patents Attorney Conference @ Hong Kong this November. The event will be held at the Hong Kong Convention Centre. This 6 days event would be a great opportunity for us to network there. Last year, it was in Singapore.

This time round three (3) people from my firm will attend. Once again, I am in charge of registration, fixing meetings and also accommodation. The conference organizers have set out some recommended hotels nearby Hong Kong Convention Centre. We may book hotels through the organizers but the availability is not guaranteed by them. Hence, I decided to book our hotel through the internet.

I browsed this website by the name AsiaRooms.com for hotels nearby the Hong Kong Convention Centre. I was interested in this hotel by the name of Harbourview Hotel. The price is not too expensive than the other recommended hotels. Further, it’s just a few minutes walk from the Convention Centre.

Asiarooms gave me the rate of US137 (~RM490) per night.

It was above the quoted rate by the organizers. So I decided to try out another website called Hotelscombined.com which was also recommended by Melissa.

Hotelscombined gave me the rate in RM320.86 per night.

w00t! RM100 cheaper!

My firm better pay me better bonus for saving them so much money!!

Up

Couple of weeks back, A, Licia, WH and I wanted to watch Pixar’s new animated film Up. Few months back, I read a news about a dying girl’s wish to watch the show Up before she dies. Pixar had a private screening for her but she was too ill to open her eyes to watch the show. Her mum had to describe the show to her. She died 7 hours after the show. That really made me wanted to watch Up.

I was tasked to purchase the tickets and I got a good seat – right at the middle of the cinema.

A and I ran a little bit late hence we got into the cinema late. Fortunately, the show wasn’t about to start when we got there.

Once I sat down, a girl sitting next to me asked me for my ticket. I was puzzled but nevertheless I gave her my ticket and she returned it after looking at it.

Few minutes later, the girl asked for my ticket again. This time round I was a little bit annoyed and wanted to bitchslap her. But I gave her my ticket anyway.

Moment later, she said, “Sir, your tickets are for tomorrow…”.

FML!!!!!

Apparently, I was sitting on her friends’ places..we had to move.

FML x 2!!

So A, Licia, WM and I moved from our seats when the show was about to start. We decided to find empty seats and plonk our butts there. We found a row of empty seats 3 rows from the screen.

We were fortunate that the cinema wasn’t fully packed. We settled down with our pop corn and drinks.

As the movie was about to start, A said, “I dont think we’re in the right cinema…”.

WHERE THE F IS CARL FREDERICKSON?!?!

FML x3!!

Arthur!

250 years ago, there was an Irish man by the name Arthur.

When Arthur was younger, he was bequeathed of £100. With that amount of money 250 years ago, being an Irish, he could have used the money to buy himself unlimited amount of stout everyday until he reaches 100 years old.

Instead, he used to money to provide people with top quality stout by setting up a brewery.

4 years later, he acquired a 9,000 year lease on the four-acre brewery at St. James’s Gate from Mark Rainsford for an annual rent of £45. With his hard work and determination, his brewery expended. He made sure everything he made was of top quality and he put up a good system in place to run the brewery. Even after his death, the brewery continued to grow until today.

And that was the story of a brilliant man who gave us Guinness Stout.

It’s been 250 years since Arthur Guinness signed the 9,000 years lease. If you had been following Sixthseal, kimberlycun, Kim Ong and Cheesie’s vague entries on “Are you going?”, it is actually regarding Arthur’s Day, which will be a global celebration by Guinness to commemorate the signing of the 9,000 years lease. Five landmark cities around the world have been chosen to host Arthur’s Day and Kuala Lumpur is one of the five cities hosting Arthur’s Day on 25 September 2009!!


A copy of the lease can still be seen at the Guinness Storehouse.

Now, imagine.. on Arthur’s Day, you have a pint of Guinness on your hands

A huge venue


With everyone screaming “For Arthur!!!!”

together with the

The Black Eyed Peas!

The Black Eyed Peas together with other international and local acts will be performing in Sunway Lagoon for Arthur’s Day on 25 September 2009.

Tickets will be sold at RM100. For more details, check out www.arthursday.com.my.

So, are you going?

Trip to Penang – Peter & Wuan’s Wedding

Fellow blogger, Peter Tan and his wife were getting married in Penang. They were kind enough to invite me and A to attend their wedding held in Starview restaurant, Penang.

According to the invitation card, dinner starts at 7:30pm but at 4pm, we were still in KL sorting out some errands! /(*O*)\

We booked Royal Penang Hotel, a hotel located nearby Jalan Burmah, Georgetown. I’ve never been to Jalan Burmah and I’ve never driven in Penang before! I thought we’ll be fated to be extremely late for dinner.

Fortunately, thanks to my GPS function on my Blackberry, I found the place without getting lost! We reached the hotel at 730pm, 3 hours 30 minutes from departure time.

Our hotel Royal Penang Hotel is worth mentioning. Notwithstanding it is a 4 Star hotel, it only costs us RM136 per night. It also comes with yummy breakfast. Oh, and an unique parking too!


Buttons to control

Just to see how a rotary parking works, check out the video below

You wont see many rotary parking in Malaysia. However, if you’re interested to check one out, there is one humongous rotary parking machine around Petaling Street.

Back to the wedding, Starview restaurant is a well known Chinese restaurant in Penang. I heard it is one of the best Chinese restaurants in Penang. The food was indeed excellent!

The restaurant was packed with friends and relatives of Peter and Wuan. There were also performances by friends of Peter. We sat on a table with a family who are Peter’s neighbours in Penang. They were extremely nice. They made sure we had our food and even got us refills.

While having our dinner, Suanie came to our table and said, ‘eh don’t eat so much, we’re going to have tandoori chicken later!’ /(*O*)\

Although I tried as hard as I could to minimize my food intake, I couldn’t help gobbling the remaining dishes.

After the dinner, we took photographs with some other KL bloggers.

Thanks Peter and Wuan for inviting us!

One day at the petrol station

I was at the petrol station along Old Klang Road. I got into their store, waived RM50 to the Bangladeshi cashier and said ‘Lima puluh (50 Ringgit)’.

Thereafter, I decided to buy a carton of mineral water and brought the carton to the counter.

I stood by the side of the counter for some time while waiting for the cashier to service two customers in front of me. Since it took some time I went back to my car to pump petrol and left it to run.

The bloody cashier was still with the 2 customers in front of me. When it came my turn, I asked, ‘how much?’. The cashier ignored me and went to service another chap who just came in to buy some cigarettes.

Annoyed. I asked again, ‘BERAPA??? CEPAT CEPAT!!’.

A lady behind me chuckled loudly.

This time, the cashier instructed his colleague to check out the price. He went all around the place to determine the price. 5 minutes later, he came back with one bottle of mineral water and asked the cashier to scan the price tag. Somehow they thought they could get the price of the carton by getting the price of a bottle times the amount of bottles in the carton. The amount came up to rm30 plus. Sensing it was wrong, the Bangladeshi said, ‘don’t know how much’.

I had been waiting for the past 10 minutes and all they could say is, ‘don’t know’.

I was so furious until I said, ‘cheebye buang masa saya!!!’ (You wasted my time!!!) and walked away.

I went back to my car, removed the nozzle and drove out from the petrol station.

Minutes later, I realised that my petrol gauge only went slightly upwards instead of going all the way to the top.

Fking Banglasdehis must have keyed in only rm10 worth of petrol into the system instead of rm50!!!

CHEEBYE!!!!!!

My second payment from Nuffnang

w00t! My 2nd cheque from Nuffnang!

When I received my first Nuffnang cheque, I used it as down payment for my mother’s car. This time round, I am also spending it on a new car. As most people would say, it is not wise to spend too much money on a car. Unfortunately, I have no choice but to replace my car as its getting too old. People will soon know me as the lawyer who drives the noisy worn down Satria.

The sum of RM7K is actually quite small compared to juggernaut lifestyle bloggers like Kennysia, Nicolekiss, Cheesie, fourfeetnine, ShaolinTiger, KY and so on. These bloggers probably have made 5 to 6 digits from their blogs. www.xes.cx is a small blog compared to theirs.

For the benefit of blogger who haven’t made their 5 digits and also non bloggers, advertorials are the most lucrative source of income for bloggers. One advertorial could range from few hundreds to few thousands.

However, writing advertorials is no easy task. It involves a lot of creativity in a short span of time. Usually, we are given less than a week to write an advertorial.

Getting a brief to write advertorial is not an easy task. Most of the time it depends on your traffic and sometimes, your rapport with the blog advertising agency or media agency.

On another note, income made from blog is taxable. I dread the time to pay tax this year.

Yasmin Ahmad (1958-2009)- Part II

There had recently been a big hoohaa over an article by Utusan newspaper over an article about Yasmin Ahmad. Check out the PDF link below:

And for what? Circulation? Ok, they got to sell one extra copy today, but only because Walski needed to see exactly how insensitive these Utusan fucks can be. And what did the front page and page 2 say, exactly? Well, read it for yourself (in PDF).Walski69, myAsylum, Jul 2009

For the benefit of readers who doesn’t read Malay, the article basically claims that Yasmin Ahmad was a man.

It has been reported that the local media and Ad agencies had launched a one month boycott against Utusan and Kwong Wah (presumely who published a similar article). The boycott will start on 10 August 2009.

Related Link
xes.cx – Yasmin Ahmad (1958-2009)

Churp Churp

Tweet Tweet, Churp Churp.. does these sounds familiar? If you don’t know, both of them are related to the well known social networking website, Twitter.

Churp Churp, a Twitter advertising network, has come to town. Now you can earn money by having a Twitter account. The payment structure is currently not clear as the website has only recently been launched. But you can check out the mechanism of this advertisement tool below.

Notwithstanding this brilliant method of doing business, some Twitterers are not happy with it. Some has gone into the extend of “unfollowing” anyone who automates their Tweets with advertisements. I, on the other hand, embrace this new media. When Nuffnang came on board with blog advertisements, it cause some resentment in the blogging community. Many complained that their favourite blogs have been commercialised. I think that the advent of Churp Churp on Twitter would suffer the same fate but eventually may become smooth sailing thereafter. All the best to Churp Churp.

Speaking about Twitter, Messrs Richard Wee Lopez has been appointed by the Bar Council to represent them in the inquest into the death of Teoh Beng Hock tomorrow. You may follow their Twitter for live updates.

… one last time

If you are not living outside Malaysia or in a cave in Malaysia, you would probably heard about Teoh Beng Hock’s death. Teoh Beng Hock, a member of the Democratic Action Party (DAP) and also political secretary to Seri Kembangan Assemblyman, Ean Yong was found dead on the roof of the building next to the MACC in Shah Alam where he had been taken for interrogation by MACC.

His death is still a mystery. Teoh Beng Hock was supposed to get married the next day and his fiancee is current pregnant with his child.

Malaysiakini posted a video of Teoh Beng Hock’s funeral when his fiancee delivered a moving tribute.

The Translation

明福，你没有任何的交代匆匆的离开了我，

Beng Hock. You left me so suddenly without any messages.

你说我们还有很多事还没完成，

You said we have so many things we have yet to do together

有很多地方很想去，

There are a lot of places we were suppose to visit

你还说这一辈子的路都会陪我一起走下去的，

You said you would accompany me all the way

现在的我该怎么办呢？

Now, what should I do?

怎样才能再见到你呢？

How can I see you again?

我的脑海里一直都想著你，

I think of you constantly.

念著你……我只要你回来，回来我的身边……

I’m thinking of you… I want you to come back, come back to my side…

这几天我一直都在等你，

Over the past few days, I keep thinking of you,

但是却让我失望了，

But it has been a disappointment.

我只想知道你现在过得好不好，痛不痛……？

I just want to know if you are alright, are you in pain…?

请你别让我等那么久好吗？就让我再见你一次，一次就好。

Will you make me wait? Let me see you once. Just once is enough.

当哭泣以及呼唤都无法叫醒你的时候，

When my tears are unable to wake up you,

我已不能不相信你已永远的离开了我。

I still cannot believe you have left me forever.

再多的不舍今天还是要与你告别了。

Today, I still have to say goodbye.

我答应你，我会好好的活下去。

I promise you, I will lead a proper life.

但是，你一定要在我身边陪伴我，陪我一起照顾他。

But, you must promise to be beside me, and raise (the child) with me.

明福，虽然今世我与你的缘分已尽了。

Beng Hock, journey in this life has ended.

但是我希望，如果有下一辈子的话，我很想与你再继我们今生的缘分。

But I hope, if there is a next life, I really hope that you can I can continue our journey.

你安心上路吧，愿你安息。
May you rest in peace.

It brought tears to my eyes 🙁