But now the man is back! And he is obviously a wiser and more influential than ever before. After his convincing win late last night, he has officially now an MP, and will be sworn into the Parliament this Thursday, and will also be in the session during the tabling of the 2009 Budget! I can imagine the furore that this will create and the chill in the spine for the BN goons. Badawi would have pissed in his pants, Mahadthir would never have dreamt that this would happen to him in his lifetime! Gosh, this makes for an incredible movie moment doesn’t it?

Now that Anwar has come into the picture, the people are expecting a lot to happen in the next few months, if not weeks. DSAI has promised to take over the government by the end of September. Let’s just wait and see if that happens.

To be honest, I too wish for DSAI to come into power. The BN croonies has been in power for much too long. Corruption and malpractise are happening everywhere. The police force are a pain-in-the-ass; instead of protecting the people, the prey on them, wielding fear to subdue them. The public transport system is a joke, and there are plenty of white elephants all over the country. Proton is getting protection for 20 full years and they still product shit cars. Malaysia has grown into a sissy country, and a lot of its best brains are migrating away. And they are still not doing anything about it. Don’t get me started about the education system!

I am also confident of DSAI’s ability in managing a country, comparing among the oppositions. I mean come on, has Nik Aziz run a country before? Has Lim Guan Eng or Lim Kit Siang run a country before? Lim Guan Eng may be experienced in running a small island in Malaysia, but until now Penang is still recuperating from the switch over from Koh, which in my opinion is not that smooth. DSAI on the other hand was Malaysia Finance Minister in 1991 and a Deputy Prime Minister in 1993. He is a fully qualified person to run a country. He is also the only Malaysian ever to make it to Times Magazine’s list of the world 100 most influential people! If any person is to run a government, it’s him!

There are however opinions of DSAI that I cannot really agree on, especially on the issue of subsidized petrol. He wants it to be fixed at RM2.40 per litre, I say that this is not practical. Malaysia cannot live in the false sense of real commodity price in the world. It only depletes the real feel of consumer price index, and thus our income level will forever be stuck in a low margin. Our products becomes lesser quality, and thus lesser competitive in the open world market. I am no economist, but I cannot agree of DSAI’s point on this. However there is one thing that I can always agree on, and this has been mentioned by our beloved BN-Kinabatangan MP Datuk Bung Mokhtar Radin, bocor (leakage)! It happens everywhere, our court house ceiling, our education fund, our income-tax money, our petrol money that we subsidize.

So there, I will ask this question to our PKR hero, what happens next? We chose you because we expect these BN to be gone. And I do expect results this time!

The name IPSERVEROne is no stranger to those who wants to consider for a complete web hosting solution. It offers a variety of flexible and affordable packages in three distinct flavours, namely Windows, Linux and Java.

Packages offered by IPServerOne, captured as of 21st August 2008

Here are the many packages that is being offered for the Linux flavour.

Compare the price below!

Price starts at a very competitive RM90 per year for a 24-month subscription, for the 3 GB package. However for blogging purposes, this might not be that useful, simply because it does not offer the pre-installed scripts, which I think are like the Drupal, Joomla and the ever popular Wordpress package. You will have to install them yourself, which might be out of league for a non-techie blogger like you and I. Therefore a logical choice would be the 100 GB package, which costs RM149 per year for a 2 year subscription.

I can’t wait for my current package in my current web hosting company to expire. My current web hosting company only gives me 10 GB of disk space and 50 GB of monthly transfer, while IPServerOne gives me 100 GB and 100 GB respectively! I can’t comment on the stability of IPServerOne though, but I have heard positive feedback from fellow bloggers who have experience with them. Looks like I’ll be switching to IPServerOne for my next web hosting solutions! I hope by then they still have this offer.

P/S: Notice that I did not mention about the Windows flavour. That’s because I find this flavour lacking in terms of pre-installed packages and the add-on domains. I personally use two domains, one www.jackyyong.com, another is photos.jackyyong.com, which would otherwise be unachievable in Windows. Way to go Linux and open system!

Head on over to IPSERVEROne to have a look yourself and begin a wonderful journey to blog-dom!

My last road tax paid for the Iswara, EVER!

24th February 1998. That is the date that this car was registered. I still remember the weeks leading up to that fateful day. It was going to be my second year in Universiti Sains Malaysia, Tronoh Branch Campus. I badly needed a transport in Tronoh. I was going to stay off campus, in Tronoh town, starting from the second year, which is about 6 km away. I have been following Jean’s car back and forth from Kampar all these while and it’s not really that good to depend on him all the time like that. Not having my own motorcycle license grants me only one alternative; a car!

My mum and I had been searching high and low for a suitable car. There were a lot of old Nissan Datsuns and Toyota Corollas around, mostly in the RM10,000 to RM15,000 range. These were dependable cars, but I was not knowledgeable in cars enough to know that. Kampar is not exactly a used-car heaven like Cheras Autocity is nowadays. So there was not a lot of good choices.

We saw in the papers an advertisement for a completely knocked down basic feature car, RM36,000 plus plus. The Proton Iswara 1.3, the car that were to serve me for the next 10 years. It was mostly her decision to buy it. Thinking back, she must be thinking, “For another RM20,000, I get a better car, brand new!”. In the duration of driving the car, I found this to be exactly the opposite!

The car comes with virtually nothing! No boot release lever, no clock on the dashboard, the colour was only available in drab matte green. I was lucky to have central alarm, air-cond and a cassette player; half-a-year later two of my friends bought the aeroback version without central alarm and cassette player!

The most impressive things that I did are the bad things about the car, not the good things. Here goes the list:

I remember a splendid “stunt” that I did with the car in Tronoh. It was a wet day, and I was taking on a corner from USM towards Tronoh at about 80 km/h. Bad move. The car slipped, and swerved to the right. I slammed on the brakes and pulled the steering to the left. The entire car landed on a patch of grass on the left side of the road. I felt as if I had just completed a stunt scene for a Jackie Chan movie! I was shaking from head to toe after that, but miraculously the car and I escaped unharmed. Not even a scratch on the car! On the contrary, the steering felt a little lighter from then on, as if I have just accidentally activated a hidden power steering capability on this car!

Towards the end of my university days, I remember driving it alone back home to Kampar on a rainy day. When I arrived in Tanjong Tualang, the road was heavily flooded! The naive me decided to give it a shot and drove it across the flood water. I was nearly towards the end when suddenly I miscalculated the road. There was more of the water but I did not know it and I had let go of the pedal. As a result, water seeped into the exhaust pipe and choked the engine. Water began seeping into the cabin! What to do? I saw some kids and I waved to them, asking them to push my car out of the water. And they did so with enthusiasm. When my car was out of the water, I tried to start the car. Dead. Not a sound came from the dead engine. Maybe I can get some more help from the kids. I told them to push the car again. At first they hesitated. But then when I waved a RM10 note to them, they immediately complied and in no time at all, the car engine roared back to life! I can go off and speed off like that, but I thought, what the heck. It would cost me more to call a tow truck!

Another close shave happened on my way back from Penang. It was 2001, I have started work in my second job, Motorola. With me was Au and his then girlfriend. We were descending the slope from Taiping back to Ipoh. Again, it was drizzling slightly. As I was nearing the dreaded Jelapang toll, a stretch of red lights from other car’s tail lights greeted me barely 200 metres away from me, while I was rolling downhill at 80km/h! Again, I slammed on the brakes; another bad move. Immediately I aquaplaned. I lost control of the car and its direction. Au who was sitting beside me only managed a shout, we were both sure that we would be injured gravely in this. As the car in front of me got nearer and nearer, there was only one thing that crossed my mind. To knock myself against the railing on the right is better than knocking myself on the car in front right? Better me than me AND the car in front, lesser of the two evils! So I twisted the steering slightly to the right, aiming at the railings. Again, lady luck shone on me again. The car in front must have witnessed my fast approaching headlights and decided to change to the next lane, as if to avoid me. It had barely moved away when my car stopped right where the car was! Again, no scratch, no injuries, no nothing! Later Au scolded me for not letting go of the brakes!

How about the close shave in Federal Highway? I was tailing this Volvo on the fast lane, at the MidValley area, when the Volvo in front of me suddenly stopped! It was not raining, else I would not have escaped unscathed like that. I applied the brakes, but at the same time I pulled the steering to the left lane, clear of the car. I tell you, if I did not do that, it would have been a direct hit. The car was fully loaded (with Seow Kok Hooi, Wong Kim Khee and Au sitting with me), the lousy brake would not have stopped the car in time. The tough Volvo in front of me would only mean that I will be in the losing end of the encounter. Lucky there was no car in the left lane.

My latest accident with this car was at the accident in Kinrara last November. My car flew over the divider as a result of bad (but new) tyres, over-enthusiastic driving and sheer plain stupidity of the other driver. The result of the accident was just a dented wheel rim and a very dirty tyre. We still drove all the way to Port Dickson after that!

Muddy wheel!

Well, not all are a lucky encounter. My most major accident was on the final semester of 1998 or 1999, can’t remember. We bunch of Mechanical students went to Ipoh to celebrate Christmas, I think. We were heading towards Ipoh Kinta City along Jalan Tasek. The car in front of me suddenly banged the car in front, and I banged into his rear. I was in turn banged by another car. I was involved in a pile-up. Not only did I had to go through all the hassle of fixing the car, going to the insurance company and all that, I was also summoned by the police for hitting the car in front! It was an eye-opening experience, both for me and those in the car with me. We learnt a lot about the adult world and how we should face it.

All other fender-benders are minor compared to this one. Scratches here and there, a broken light, a hind bumper that came off, a dent with another car on the left passenger door that left the plastic door guard missing, those are all that makes up the history between the car and I. Throughout the years, it has developed holes on the roof and door. Waxing it only once a year is already enough, it does not make any difference anyway! The cheap plastics used made for a very noisy internal cabin, both moving and stationery.

I have driven from Kuala Lumpur to Perlis using the old road with this. This car has been through a lot with me. The more than 200000 km mileage is proof to that. Through driving this car I learn to appreciate what a good car should be. At this very moment, the car must be sitting under a hot sun, waiting for a new owner somewhere in a second hand car dealer shop, or may already be sold off. Or it may well end up in a metal scrap yard. The car will always remain in my heart as the first car I ever had, who has been with me through thick and thin. I’ll miss you old friend. Goodbye!

Stoopid Shittybank

This is not the first time they piss me off. This time, they went just too damn far. Allow me to give you a chronology of what has transpired:

~ 25th June 2008 : Citibank found a fraudulent transaction with my Visa and tried to call me. Got miss call because I was busy. Never call me again. They proceeded to terminate my card without my consent!

26th June 2008 : Tried to refuel, and naturally the card bounced. Thought nothing of it, perhaps Esso’s machine is acting up again. Used cash instead.

27th June 2008 : Got instruction to go to Singapore for a whole week starting the coming Monday (30th June 2008). Called Citibank to inform them so that I can use the card in Singapore. Found out about the terminated card (WTF??) Asked them if it is possible to reverse the termination. They said cannot. Just remembered that I also have a Citibank Mastercard with me. But what do you know, it has since expired, and stoopid Shitibank did not even send me a replacement card! You call that good service? So I guess I’ll have to fly to Singapore without any credit cards with me, and hope that I do not encounter situations where I need to buy extra things. And also hope that by the time I come back (on 10th July 2008) my card will be ready. Hey, 10 days is more then enough to trigger and prepare a new card for me right?

30th June 2008 - 10th July 2008 : The Great Singapore Adventure!

10th July 2008 : Flew back home to KL. Found this great looking mail from Citibank! Must be my credit card!

Great mailer from Citibank

…. but see see only:

Cheh! Stupid offer!

Motherfucker, ask me to spend RM50 and above with my credit card! Do they even care that I have lost the usability of the damn piece of plastic?

11th July 2008 : Called Citibank, they said that they have not processed yet! Fuckers! Then what the heck did you do all these while? I scolded them and asked them to redirect the new card to my residential address, something which they are reluctant to do. They have a policy of sending it to your business address. But how stupid is that if you have my office address from 5 years ago! Do you even have any idea how many jobs I have changed in a year? Even though they have agreed to send it to my home, they said that they will send by normal mail, meaning snail mail lar! Fucker, I’m here dying for a credit card, you still wanna take your sweet time dilly dallying about everything? What if it got lost? (True enough, I later found out that it did get lost!)

14th - 18th July 2008 : Got to know of this Direct Debit Mastercard that offers 2% rebate on all petrol purchases from ANY petrol stations, unlike Citibank-Shell card that only offer to Shell station, and only if you owe Citibank a few thousand ringgits in outstanding balance! I wasted no time to ask my colleague Lily Ng, who is a current member, to introduce me. I delayed a bit before actually sending the application form by snail mail, a week later, on 21st July 2008!

~ 25th July 2008 : Almost a month has passed. Have I seen my Citibank card yet? No. Do I get any love from them? Yes. They are a very concerned bunch. Take a look at the second mail they send to me:

Avalanche of unpaid bills? Bullshit!

This is like rubbing salt to the wound. “You must have received your new Citibank credit card by now.” Imagine how insulted I was by this mail! They should have done a better homework before sending all these junk! And don’t get me started on the myriads of junk SMS they flood into my phone inbox!

28th July 2008 : Got so fed up with Citibank. Called to cancel the stupid Citibank Mastercard. And to remind them again. Feel so stupid calling them again! They promised that a card will arrive within 10 days. Waste my time and money calling them! Meanwhile, CIMB bank called me to verify that I have applied for their credit card.

5th August 2008 : Received a registered letter. About a certain credit card. Okay, no points for guessing which credit card was that. It was Direct Access. Since I did apply a sub-card for Mei Fen, I am expecting 2 cards in the envelope. To my surprise, I found 4 cards! One Mastercard and one Visa each for the both of us!

I can go on and on and on. As of now, 12 am on 14th August, the Citibank has not arrived yet. I received an SMS saying that my Citibank Credit card is being processed and will arrive in three working days. That was two days ago……

Ms Yeoh, Kit’s friend was quite awkward in front of my camera initially. However she has this set of great looking eyes, that gave idea to the eyes in my photo album theme.

Great eyes

Head on down to my gallery to view all the pictures!

Notice the blank empty spaces?

You'll have to scroll all the way down to see the entries

I have also received complaint that some of my friends were not able to comment on the posts in this particular website. I suspect the theme is the culprit here.

Now that I have bid adieu to the old theme, and say hello to the new Photos@Jacky Yong, courtesy of GeckoAndFly. I have modified his Studio Press Black theme to suit mine. Very nice theme, IMHO. Tell me what you think of the new theme!

Having identified the cause is not useful if no action is taken. While all the other people talk about ways to reduce fuel consumption (turn off air-cond, drive at 80 km/h max, fuel additive), nothing is as drastic as what I did for the Wira yesterday. While others only talk, I choose to walk! Go gas!

It feels weird queueing up with taxis on the refueling stations

It was not really an overnight decision, it has been hovering my mind since the last fuel increase in June. Having done a lot of research online and through words from the taxi drivers I have come to chat with, I went ahead with the decision to convert it to NGV. If the price of fuel is sustained at RM2.70 per litre, I should be able to recover the cost of conversion in a year or less.

The Wira is a 4G15 engine, normally aspirated carburetor with 4 cylinder. The cheapest of all conversions compared to other modern injection engines. Here’s how the engine look like after the conversion:

The only clue to its NGV property is the refueling nozzle in the engine bay

There is also this gas release valve that pumps gas into the carburetor

I chose the 70 litre tank to store more gas, lesser stop-overs. The last mileage I got was over 150 km, but I suspect that I can still go further. I’ll update this post again when I have more conclusive statistics.

How does driving an NGV car feel like? Sluggish. Yes, as all other NGV drivers will be able to testify, performance will definitely be affected to a certain extent. More so for carburetor engines I hear. And also you must understand that there is this HUGE cylinder tank at the boot that weight at least 70 kgs. When negotiating a corner yesterday, the car swayed so much at the back. Good, induced oversteer! Here’s how it looks like at the boot area:

Yan Yan admiring the scenery

The tank is barely visible if I cover it up. Even after that, there is still fairly decent boot space left

Starting the car in itself requires some re-learning. In the cold morning, it is almost impossible to start the car with gas alone. So what you should do is to start in petrol, warm up the car for a bit, then cut off the petrol. This will burn off all petrol that is left in the carburetor and the engine. When the engine is about to die, immediately switch to gas and hope that the gas won’t die on you! Sounds complicated? In reality it is. I have not yet mastered the timing to switch yet and I almost always end up killing the engine instead.

There is also the problem of refueling stations. Not much of a problem actually. Where I stay, the nearest stations are in Serdang, UPM, Cyberjaya, Putrajaya, Puchong and Subang. I work in Cyberjaya, so no issues for me to refuel after work. There is also one opening soon in Bangi, and get this, TWO right in front of my house! All the more reasons why I should go NGV already!

My refueling experience in UPM

Somebody did mention on a forum that the engine will be hotter compared to a petrol head. My experience with the car does not show this anomaly. But my car’s coolant system has always been very effective (touch wood). The meter is always lesser than half-way on the temperature readout. Either the meter is broken, or the car has been running coldly all these while.

So it looks like the Wira will once again find its role useful again after the arrival of the Altis. Of course, being an NGV, this will definitely limit the car to areas in and around Klang Valley. Going back to Sagil will be out of the question. However for trip to KL, this car will be most welcomed. Will snap some pictures and update this post again soon with pictures to show you guys.

Which means that I have a lot of photos to share with you! I stayed in Somerset Liang Court, in Clarke Quay, one of the most happening places around. On the second night was in Singapore, our boss Sally came over from Malaysia to belanja us dinner. We went to Hooters, the first Hooters in Asia. Contrary to what you think, the Hooter girls were not as well-endowed as you and I like them to be.

Wipe that grin off your face, ya' pervert!

You’ve got to check this place out. Clarke Quay is brimming with night life. There is this famous place called M.O.S. (not the japanese rice burger, mind you) Stands for Ministry of Sound. I’ve never been there, but currently it is THE place to be on Saturday nights.

There’s this queer pub called The Clinic. The theme of the place is, yes, you’ve guessed it, a clinic. All the props (if you could call them that) are modeled after a clinic, complete with the surgeon’s table and lights. The seats where the patrons sit on are wheelchairs and sickbeds. Partitions are also what you would normally see in a doctor’s room. The best part is, get this, they drink from an IV tube!

We asked him to pose for us, and he acted like a sick man. Notice the "operating theatre" behind him?

Too bad that the waitress and waiters do not wear like nurses and doctors. Afraid that the “patients” might get carried away?

One of my magical moment was Magic Babe Ning. She’s one gorgeous babe indeed!

In the morning, Clarke Quay is a very different place indeed. The pre-war structures is a stark contrast to the bustling activities just the night before.

Clarke Quay in the quiet morning

One fine Sunday we went to Ang Mo Kio, Jane Chong, Swee Shin, Lai Fong, Lai See and I. Michelle Soong joined us too. Lai Fong wanted to survey handphones in Toa Payoh, but we went to AMK for the other stuffs. Shampoos, body wash, lotions, basically girly girly stuffs. They all shop like crazy, they had no intention to lunch, even when it was almost 3 pm already!

Jane, Michelle, Lai See and Swee Shin standing pretty in a row. Notice the bags and bags of goodies they have bought!

We had decent life in Singapore really. We have free wireless internet connection. Some were legal, some were not. The illegal ones we get by “stealing” other people’s connection from block 18-08 and 20-08. I stay in 18-02, directly on the opposite direction. So I have to resort to using McDonald’s legal wireless with Wireless@SG.

McDonald's for food and internet! They don't have Mega Mac though.

The service apartment is really well-maintained and very clean. Huge different from the apartments / condos we know in Malaysia. The security is top notched. Every morning we are provided with breakfast, even on Saturdays and Sundays. There was once a blackout, and the apartment was affected. The management sent us a basket of fruits for the inconveniences caused. But then hor, we were in the office and we stayed until late when it happened, so really, it did not affect us at all. Still the thought was very much appreciated. Errmmm ….. that basket of fruits inspired this post too.

They not only send baskets of fruits for blackouts, they also send ice-creams FOR NOTHING! Check out the Movenpick!

This Movenpick ice-cream is very good!

There is also the standard gym, swimming pool, sauna and jacuzzi to pamper the weary expatriates.

Gym

Checking out the sauna, which unfortunately was broken

Jacuzzi!! The cold one is on the left, the warm one is on the right.

More pictures here.

There is an easy workable solution to this. Just go edit the popularity-contest.php file located in your plugins folder and go to line 59. Just change from this to this:

require('../../wp-blog-header.php');

to this:

require('../wp-blog-header.php');

And everything just falls into place. But that didn’t come with some silly human mistakes as well, mistakes that led me to debug php codes until the wee hours of the morning! My wife is calling me back to sleep already, and Yan Yan is crying for milk. I better sign off now.

The Impalement Cage

The star of the night is Magic Babe Ning. Who? That was also my initial reaction when I heard the name. I later found out that Magic Babe Ning appears in one of the hottest men magazines around, FHM in Singapore. Dubbed as the sexiest woman magician in Asia, she performed one of her famous escape act. Harriette Houdini anyone? This time, the magic is done differently; out in the open, with no covers, no shadowy silhoutte, with live crowd in all 360 degrees! Interesting?

She called up this joker from the crowd to “check out” he props, to make sure that they are good. For all I know, this joker is one of the crews.

Joker on stage

Then it was Magic Babe’s turn to perform. As soon as she took off her black leather jacket, wolf howls were heard across the floor. Can’t really blame them, she is hot!

Sexy baby!

Locked and hooded

She was given 60 seconds to try and dislodge herself before the spikes come down on her. Yeah, you know, the itty gritty stuffs. Well, to cut to the boring stuff, yeah, she freed herself alright. And quite professionally too. At the very last moments, she even managed to grab her hair pin and let her hair flow down! Check this out!

3 seconds!!

2 seconds!! Notice that her hair is still properly pinned

1 second! Quick!! Grab that hair pin!

Time's up! Incoming spikes!!

Great job Magic Babe! You have magically released your hair pin!

All of a sudden she became a sensation. A lot of people became an overnight fan, wanting to take pictures with her, etc. Sheesh…..

Have a look at more pictures here.