Archive | 2007

No Taxi – Malaysian Taxis Are Teh SUCK

Sometimes companies in Malaysia really make me wonder, they make me wonder how they survive..

They make me wonder how consumers can accept them, then I remember ok la, it’s Malaysia, there is no concept of customer service or customer satisfaction here.

Or consumer rights (statutory rights) or anything similar, not that’s enforced anyway.

So people get screwed, and sadly the majority of the time they don’t do anything about it.

In a very Malaysian way, they just bitch about it, or whine at the mamak to their friends, but they don’t write a letter or complain or try and make a difference.

The example I have today is Taxis.

Now Malaysian Taxis already have a very bad reputation for not using the meter and ripping people off when it’s raining/jammed/late or for other random reasons not even picking up passengers (too near/wrong race/too far/don’t know how to go etc).

I’ve never loved Malaysian cabs due to the amount of times I’ve had to give directions for every freaking turn to the taxi driver.

HELLO IT’S YOUR JOB TO KNOW WHERE EVERYWHERE IS, AT LEAST ROUGHLY, IF NOT BUY A FUCKING ROAD MAP AND LEARN TO USE IT.

Like the other day I hailed a cab…he didn’t even know how to get out of the area we were in to the highway…and had never heard of the area I wanted to go to..

So rather than try to hail a cab and get ripped off I got some numbers of cab companies and called them..hoping for something a little better.

The first 2 days was ok..apart from the fact the taxi drivers were about 120 years old and drove at 40-60km/h all the way, frustrating to say the least.

And the first one had no freaking idea how to go anywhere..

Today was even worse, quality customer service at it’s worst.

Timeline:

10:27am – I call a cab from Sunlight Taxis, they take my details as usual.
10:27am-11.03am – I wait and wait and wait
11:04am – Sunlight Taxis calls me, mumbles something and hangs up. I assume they mean the taxi is here, so I go outside..
11:15am – After a reasonable 10 minutes, I work out there is no Taxi and one is not coming
11:16am – I call Sunlight back and ask them where’s my Taxi, I’m informed that they had called me and told me “No Taxi”..I was somewhat dumbfounded. Sunlight asked me “If I wanted to try again”. I asked “Try what exactly?, I just want a Taxi”…”Ok ok, I broadcast again” and hangs up.
11:31am – Sunlight calls and tells me a Taxi will arrive in 10-15 minutes.
12:06pm – The Taxi arrives and he knows the way, w00t.

Got to where I wanted to go about 12:40pm…a full 2+ hours after I first called the taxi.

I was really dumbfounded when they told me “No Taxi”…excuse me, but aren’t you a Taxi company, if I call you…you get me a Taxi goddamnit.

I liken it to going to McDonalds, one that is open and advertising food for sale..Going in and ordering a Big Mac meal, the staff take my order and disappear to ‘get my food’. Then the staff comes back in 15 minutes and tells me “Sorry, no food”.

You’d be in a rage right?

Stomp on some babies and shit, yeah me too.

Sunlight sucks.

Relying on cabs sucks too, I want my car back (more about that later!).

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Continue Reading · 30 Comments · Ranting

So Just Ask..

Someone said I should write more interesting things..

Someone said I should write more about me..

Someone said I should cuss other people more..

Which makes me wonder am I interesting actually, what do you want to know about me?

So, I give you, my dear readers, this chance to ask me a question.

1 question each please, try and make sure the question has not already been answered.

If it’s an interesting topic that I haven’t already answered in my blog, I’ll dedicate a whole post to it.

If it’s an interesting topic I’ve already answered, I’ll direct you to the post.

If it’s something that requires a short answer I’ll either answer in the comments or do 1 post with all the short answers.

So there you go, ask away.

Whatever you like, you can ask something about me, or my life here, or my life in Malaysia, or my opinion on something. Be imaginative!

In between these ‘interesting posts’ I shall continue to post my lame pictures and talk about food, because I like 😛

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Continue Reading · 27 Comments · Site News

Give Me Links – I Want LINKS

After the 50 Most Influential Blogs in Malaysia article by gaman from Sabahan.com (Nice link-baiting dude), I feel sad.

Why?

Because my technorati rank used to be between 200-400 when it was low it was like 500-600..

Now..

NOW IT’S 25,286..

Yah, I need more links.

Well you can do a normal HTML link such as:

Or use one of my fantasic banners/buttons:

ShaolinTiger - Kung-Fu Geekery

ShaolinTiger - Kung-Fu Geekery

  • IF you have a blog, LINK ME!
  • IF you know anyone that has a blog, tell them to.. LINK ME!
  • IF you don’t have a blog, start one so you can…LINK ME!
  • IF you don’t even read my blog often, it doesn’t matter…LINK ME!
  • IF you’ve never read my blog before, it still doesn’t matter…LINK ME!
  • IF you think my blog sucks, it still really doesn’t matter…LINK ME!
  • IF you are cool, tell all your friends, family, pets and other things to start blogs…so they can, yeah..LINK ME!

Basically, the gist is please LINK ME!

Because I used to have loads of links, now I dont..which is kinda sad because I’m an attention whore.

I know I have more traffic than most of the people on the list and non of it is from search engines, you are all real readers.

So my dear real readers, please link me somewhere.

My page rank also dropped to 4, it’s been 5 for about 2+ years 🙁

So it might help me get my pagerank back up as well.

I’ll check back on my ranking in the next month or so and see if it’s gone up, so yeah, link me now.

If I get more links and more traffic and more comments I’ll be more happy so I’ll do more nice posts and you’ll all be more happy too.

Too those already linking me, THANKS!

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Continue Reading · 29 Comments · Site News

Memories of Minehead

The last few pics from my trip to Minehead back in August last year, the weather was pretty overcast so I went for Black and White conversion and a couple of HDR thrown in for good measure.

Happy Train Man

Happy Train Man

Thirsty?

Thirsty

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Continue Reading · 15 Comments · Photography, Trips & Travel, UK

Hmmmm – Good Xiao Loong Pau

I’ve been overdosing on Xiao Loong Pau this weekend, found some good ones..

I’ve followed some of your recommendations 🙂

Xiao Loong Pau

Yummy indeed.

And yes I’ve been practicing my food photography too 😉 New project coming soon..

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Continue Reading · 15 Comments · Food/Eating

Thaipusam at Batu Caves – 1.5 Million People!

Thaipusam is a Hindu festival celebrated mostly by the Tamil community on the full moon in the Tamil month of Thai (Jan/Feb). Pusam refers to a star that is at its highest point during the festival. The festival commemorates both the birthday of Lord Murugan (also Subramaniam), the youngest son of Shiva and Parvati, and the occasion when Parvati gave Murugan a vel (lance) so he could vanquish the evil demon Soorapadman.

The biggest Thaipusam festivals in the world are in Malaysia and Singapore, most notably in Malaysia at Batu Caves, a place everyone that lives here should be familiar with.

This year there was 1.5 million people expected at Batu Caves, that’s an experience everyone should feel I think. Plus the sights, sounds and smells of being up close with the people bearing Kavadi (burdens) and piercing themselves. At its simplest and most common as I noticed, the Kavadi may entail carrying a pot of milk, but mortification of the flesh by piercing the skin, tongue or cheeks with vel skewers is also common. The most spectacular practice is the vel kavadi, essentially a portable altar up to two meters tall, decorated with peacock feathers and attached to the devotee through 108 vels pierced into the skin on the chest and back.

Some info is from here: Thaipusam at Wikipedia

I also spotted The Snark there and a few other photogs I recognise.

I went very early to avoid the chaos that ensues around 7/8am, I arrived at the caves around 4am and found a pretty decent parking place nearby.

Then I headed inside..

I was shocked to find at 4am there were already droves of people, it was chaos!

Arrival at Batu Caves

The piercing and Kavadi had already started when I arrived and floods of people were making their pilgrimage up the 272 stairs of Batu Caves.

Kavadi

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Continue Reading · 20 Comments · Malaysia, Photography, Trips & Travel

Movie Review – The Departed – It’s Teh Good

The Departed

‘The Departed’ is set in South Boston, where the state police force is waging war on organized crime. Young undercover cop Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio) is assigned to infiltrate the mob syndicate run by gangland chief Costello (Jack Nicholson). While Billy is quickly gaining Costello’s confidence, Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon), a hardened young criminal who has infiltrated the police department.

I heard a lot of people saying this movie wasn’t that good and that the original (Infernal Affairs) was much better, so I wasn’t expecting much when I watched it finally.

Suffice to say I pleasantly surprised to find it was a truly excellent movie.

IMDB backs this up, as the movie has gone virtually straight in at the number 76 spot of the best 250 movies of all time.

I have watched both Infernal Affairs I and II but haven’t yet watched III (apparently ties up some lose ends).

Some people say the time transitions in The Departed aren’t very smooth and somewhat confusing, but I have to say it left me a hell of a lot less confused than Infernal Affairs did.

I mean what’s the nonsense with changing actors completely when the character gets 5 years older? It totally threw me off!

Matt Damon and Leonardo DiCaprio played their respective roles excellently, battling against each other through-out the movie.

The Departed

I’m glad to see Leonardo DiCaprio getting some good roles again, he’s been making a comeback since Catch me if you can and The Aviator. I also knew he was a good actor since I saw What’s eating Gilbert Grape.

I thought Jack Nicholson was also excellent as the mob boss Costello, he plays that certain kind of sociopath psycho very well, a lot of people complained it was a bad choice and compared to Eric Tsang..But remember this movie has been changed and a lot of the Asian cultural references had to be removed as they wouldn’t be understood, nor be relevant.

Jack

The cinematography and direction was of course excellent as expected by Martin Scorsese.

The irony of the whole storyline will of course be familiar if you’ve seen Infernal Affairs and this movie does delivery it all, it’s hard hitting and gripping.

If you haven’t watched it, I recommend it.

If you think Infernal Affairs is better…I disagree, in some ways Infernal Affairs is better..but in more ways it’s not.

So The Departed wins.

I give it a gripping 9/10, one of the best movies of 2006.

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Continue Reading · 11 Comments · Movies

The Downfall of Malaysia My Second Home Program (MM2H)

Ah once again another case of something fucking up due to corruption/stupidity/greed etc etc.

This time it’s the Malaysia My Second Home Program (MM2H), you can read about this crap over here at the original site.

Malaysia My Second Home Programme is promoted by the Government of Malaysia to allow people from all over the world who fulfill certain criteria, to stay in Malaysia as long as possible on a social visit pass with a multiple entry visa. The Social Visit Pass is initially for a period of ten (10) years (depending on the validity of the applicants’ passport) and is renewable.

The basic premise is, if you stick RM300,000 in a fixed deposit you get a social visit pass for up to 10 years.

It seem as though some hanky panky has been going on though, fingers in the piggy bank mister?

The news report is kind of shocking too, it’s apparently so messed up…they can’t even tell us what happened? You can read about it from The Star here.

Among the requirements for those intending to make Malaysia their home under the programme is for those below the age of 50 to have a fixed deposit of RM300,000 in a local bank. They are allowed to withdraw up to RM240,000 after one year on condition that the money is invested in Malaysia.

“Unfortunately during this transition period (one year), some of the officers from a department did something which is not nice for me to sa

I can guess it’s one of the following:

1) Officers taking bribes so the applicants don’t have to make the full deposit, just immediately put the RM60,000 in
2) Officers taking bribes so the applications don’t have to make any deposit at all
3) Applicants making legitimate deposits only to find their money has disappeared
4) Applicants withdrawing their RM240,000 only to find it’s rapidly shrunk
5) Something else fishy

Whichever it was, this is a fine case for transparency, they should tell us exactly what has transpired, who was responsible and how long they are going to be in prison for..not some shite like this.

“A few officers from the department have been sacked for not following the stipulated rules and regulations on fixed deposits,” Tengku Adnan told reporters after launching a six-page special supplement entitled “Panorama 6” for the Japanese market in conjunction with Visit Malaysia 2007 at the Putra World Trade Centre here yesterday.

He said he did not want to discuss or elaborate on the problems within the department as the matter was being sorted out.

There seems be another related problem with the agents that ‘help’ people with their MM2H applications…or help relieve them of their money anyway.

As for the local agents appointed by the ministry to help foreigners with their MM2H applications, he said some were charging up to US$15,000 (RM52,500) for their services.

“The agents are only allowed to charge a maximum of US$2,500 (RM8,750) but some of them are known to have charged between US$10,000 and US$15,000 (RM35,000-RM52,500).

Shocking.

The whole thing seems like a huge stinking scam anyway.

Other mentions:

Where’s the Transparency?
Relaunch of MM2H

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Continue Reading · 16 Comments · Serious Issues

Singapore – Little India

After visiting Bugis Street I proceeded on to Little India, which is located just behind around Jalan Besar.

There’s a Little India MRT station so you can get off there if you wish to visit. It’s a very vibrant area with a lot of colours, sights and smell. With hustle and bustle everywhere, even better during the time I was there was Deepvali, so it was lit up very nicely too.

As you can see it was quite hazy while I was there..

Happy Deepvali

Ganesh.

Ganesh

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Continue Reading · 6 Comments · Photography, Singapore, Trips & Travel

Say NO To Adsense/Adverts On Personal Blogs

If you’ve noticed I’ve removed all the Adsense from this blog!

Say no to Adverts for personal blogs, yah!

I’ve also moved the referal stuff down to the bottom of the sidebar so it’s no in your face anymore, I do support Firefox so I might move that one back up.

We’ll see.

You can use this button to support the cause 😉


No Adverts!

You can copy and paste this code to get the banner:

Anyway…now it’s gone I noticed the pages load much faster, and it looks neater of course.

I did it as an experiment anyway, it didn’t make much money, I can show you exactly how much in fact.

Adsense - ShaolinTiger.com

Yeah this is over almost 2 years, kind of sad eh.

(No this is not against the Adsense TOS – As long as you don’t show eCPM or CTR you are ok).

You agree not to disclose ………(b) click-through rates or other statistics relating to Site performance in the Program provided to You by Google; …….However, You may accurately disclose the amount of Google’s gross payments to You pursuant to the Program

So yeah you can say I’ve been there and done that.

I think personal blogs shouldn’t be polluted with ads, that’s why I never put anything else in here like Chitika or similar, I just have Text Link Ads which I’ll keep as they are very unobtrusive.

If you want to make money from blogging, get a domain, and create a real blog on one subject with niche content and real quality articles.

If you blog about a variety of subjects and personal stuff, don’t bother with ads as it’s just annoying and slows your site down.

It doesn’t really earn anything, this money I earned from this domain is barely enough to pay for the hosting.

Personal blogs are destined to make little or no money due to the way contextual advertising works. If your subjects are too scattered your ads won’ be properly targeted so you’ll get all the non-targeted adverts which have horribly low eCPM rates.

So do everyone a favour and take the 3 embedded adblocks out of your posts and get a real job, or make a real nice blog if you do want to make money from the intrawebnets.

Anyway don’t be a sucker, remove your ads.

BTW do keep commenting please, it makes me so happy 😀 That means comments that are relevant to the topic, not just random shite 😛

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Continue Reading · 30 Comments · Internet & Tech