Taken at Berjaya Times Square
Upstairs Downstairs
May 30, 2011 By View Comments
Shisha Networking.
September 14, 2010 By View Comments
Met up with some friends for shisha last night and as usual, we can’t have shisha without Christopher “The Ring Master” Tock. Chris can blow rings like nobody can blow them (in Malaysia), a skill he picked up in Uni. He could blow one big O, have it come out nice and slow while smaller o’s emerge at a higher speed from inside the big O. He’s currently working on blowing the letter P.
I took some photos of him blowing smoke and one shot came out looking quite sinister. I mirrored the image and whoa, it’s…a sheep. Are you getting that goose-bump-from-listening-to-a-song-played-backwards kinda feeling? I am.
Anyways, we had Shisha at Al-Safa in Bandar Utama and I’m creating a list of Shisha places in KL. Do you have a favourite Shisha place to recommend? Also include how much they charge for Shisha and what’s your favourite flavour.
Shisha is the original recipe for social media. Four centuries ago in the Middle East, men would gather at cafes and restaurants with their friends or family to chit chat over a shisha. It brings people together, to talk, share news and ideas. Similar social networking devices are mahjong/poker sessions, communal baths, bingo. Facebook and Twitter are just digital forms of it. So what keeps people coming back and staying? It’s the shisha. Does your business have a shisha?
Anti-pole dancing poles
August 1, 2010 By View Comments
In an effort to curb young women from pole dancing and other lewd activities in public, the transit authority has spent thousands to replace hundreds of vertical handrails in KL’s light rail transit trains with three-bar poles.
At a launch ceremony in Kuala Lumpur today, Mr. Deng M. Soon, spokesman for the transit authority said “We have seen young Malaysian women acting un-Malaysian on YouTube videos. This is not the image we want the world to see. What is in our backyard should remain in our backyard.” Was Mr. Deng referring to an ad created by a certain local budget airline inviting Singaporeans to check out Malaysia’s backyard? Singaporeans may be flocking to Malaysia to check out our backyards but they will not be able to find it on our LRTs any time soon.
A woman in the crowd who wished to remain anonymous expressed her disbelief “This is unbelievable, first they won’t let us practice yoga and now this. Women, pole dancers, exhibitionists and yoga practitioners pay taxes too.”
Mr. Deng could not be reached for further comment.I survived mass transit
August 1, 2010 By View Comments
Yesterday, I took a ride on the wild side – on a light rail transit. Here’s where you get your pockets picked, butt pinched and bag snatched – so I was warned. Thankfully, nothing like that happened even with me holding out my iphone as bait. People just turned away when I pointed the phone at them – was like vampires cowering away from a cross.
The traffic in Kuala Lumpur has gone from bad to worse or has it always been like this? I had to meet some friends in Mid Valley yesterday and I thought I’ll take the LRT instead. Last time I rode on the LRT was more than five years ago. Not knowing the train system very well, I downloaded KL Trains from the app store. I can tell you that $0.99 is a lot to pay for this app. More complicated subway maps for the iPhone are available for free. What would really add value is live notification of when a train is down and it could easily be accomplished with a feature to let users report it through the app. Other features I could think of are:
1. Letting your friends and family know where you are like Silent Bodyguard. $0.99
2. If you should fall asleep on the train, Wake Me Up Anywhere will turn on the alarm when you’re near your destination so that you don’t miss it. $1.99
3. Automatic check in to Foursquare at every train station, this may be spam to some but it’s actually a good way of telling whoever you’re meeting at a destination that you’re getting closer. No app for this yet but is it that hard to build? Once you check in to a train station, the app can pretty much remove every venue that’s not a train station and check you in to the station automatically, broadcasted to twitter or facebook or both.
And for the near future, I’d like to carry less cash and pay for my train tickets with PayPal or in some mobile currency.
Are we better off dead?
July 25, 2010 By View Comments
Has your loved one dreamt of owning that special home? Well she can, if not in this lifetime then there’s the next. Beautifully designed homes are now available through skea.com.tw that can be purchased online to be burnt as paper offerings.
▲ Thermal Green Hill House
▲ Bali Villa
Wherever your loved one’s soul may be after he has shuffled off his mortal coil, rest assured that the quality of her after-life is as good if not better than her living life. Material possessions, desires and addictions can all follow along. Letting go for the living could not have been easier too knowing the departed has been well provided for.
▲ Cancer in hell? Never happens.
The paper offerings industry is now making a killing as the objects of desire are updated to cater to today’s lifestyle. Gone are the mansions modeled after Ming Dynasty architecture unless the person had dreams of owning one while he was alive or she loved the period dramas on TVB. But to each his own. So why not park a yacht next to the ancient Ming styled villa. Is anyone going to question her taste?
▲ Luxury yacht
Today, you will find paper structures, modeled after designer homes complete with an SUV in the garage, jacuzzi, modern appliances like a dishwasher, 500 horse power air conditioner (we know it’s hot down there), LED tv, Sony PS3, Blu Ray player, jewelry from Tiffany’s, a wardrobe of branded outfits with matching accessories, Mac, iPad and stuff any living middle-class soul would envy. Is this really hell or paradise?
▲ Stuff to die for? You bet.
As a marketer, I keep an eye on what items have been added to the catalog. The items reflect the market segment’s needs, hopes or aspirations. Say you work for Apple Inc. and you see iPhone 4s flying off the shelves and into the fire, you know whatever you’re doing in marketing is working. Don’t need to question logic as to why a bill from AT&T (or any telco providing the data service) wasn’t burnt along with it. The living can always burn and send hell money for the dead to pay their own bills. This could really be a chore and lately with global warming on everyone’s mind, a better option might be an iPhone app call Hell Bank Notes.
The ritual of burning material items made of paper to a dearly departed has been an Asian practice for hundreds of years especially to Chinese who are Taoists. The belief is that all life after death starts in hell, like purgatory rather than one giant torture chamber. The torture chamber is on the 18th level. There are many levels apparently though no one has been there and back to confirm this. In any case, it makes a great bedtime story.
If someone has been good while they were alive, their stay would be short before their number is called up for reincarnation. Otherwise their stay in hell could be longer than the life of planet earth itself. The best the living can do is to make sure their dearly departed soul’s stay below is as pleasant as possible so that everyone up here can sleep at night.(This article was written by Carolyn Chan in collaboration with Chew Lin Kay – fellow explorer of life, and death?).
The Khoo Kongsi
May 2, 2010 By View Comments
This is the Khoo Kongsi. It’s a community for anyone with the surname “Khoo” or those who came from the Khoo village in China. Khoo are you? A Khoo? OK, Khoo casa is su casa.
Not too long ago, the Khoo Kongsi was the largest and most successful social network in the straits. The Khoos would live together in a compound with apartments, its own temple (above), an open air theatre (where drive-ins got their inspiration) and a building honoring their Khoo ancestors. If the British occupation did not get children off to school, a regular Khoo had no good reason to leave his Kongsi. It was his home, office and theme park. Not too different from the religious sect compounds of today. Khoo men back then also had many wives.
Not many Kongsies are as rich, elaborate and dedicated to one community as the Khoo Kongsi in Penang. There were many small clans of the same surname or originating from the same province in China. Usually, you’ll find clans going into ‘joint ventures’ with other clans.
The Kongsies were very important in the old days. Without a community to find other people with the same interest and background, a young migrant from China would find it hard to survive. The island’s economy was controlled by Kongsies (imagine the Gotti family). The bigger the family, the bigger the bulk discounts and thus higher margins from sale of surplus goods.
Seduced by the successes of the Khoos, other startups began to spring from joint-ventures among smaller clans. However, JVs rarely succeed due to their inability to agree on who’s name should come first on the ginormous plaque out front. The handful that have survived like the Kongsi below owe their success to a strict policy of marrying only members of their Kongsi so the business will ultimately stay in the family. It was very difficult at first since everyone on the island wanted to marry a Khoo.
A 5-family start-up from the Cheah, Si, Hock, Haw and Kong families.
Today, the Kongsi system is all but abandoned but thankfully the clues to their way of life are not. The evidence of their once great presence in Penang is now recognized by UNESCO as a heritage site.
Kongsi (Chinese: 公司; pinyin: gōngsī) or “clan halls”, are benevolent organizations of popular origin found among overseas Chinese communities for individuals with the same surname. This type of social practice arose, it is held, several centuries ago in China. The Chinese word Kongsi is used in modern Chinese to mean a commercial “company”.
Nokia n-gage Age of Empires III rocks.
July 22, 2009 By View Comments
After accidentally recovering 30MB of free space on my Nokia N96′s phone memory, the phone started to work like new again. So I updated the n-gage app and downloaded Age of Empires III yesterday. Been wanting to play it since it came out couple of months back. I’m on mission #13 now, skill level veteran (a notch up from wimp level ‘Recruit’).
You have two game options: tackle missions or skirmishes. The missions are usually short and fast on smaller maps while the skirmishes throw you into the deep end where the battles are longer and the maps are bigger. Before going into combat, you will have to populate a small town and manage a crew of settlers who has to gather resources needed to build up your army. It’s SIM City-ish but it works well with the game play.
Graphics quality is awesome (for a small screen) with visual effects to match. I usually play with the music off to hear the sound effects which is not bad but not great, only a slight rush from bombs going off and clanging from the blade-on-blade fights. I still like the thumb-trembling sound effects from Resident Evil more, the zombie boss’ roar is still in my head.
Overall — great game! Very n-gaging. Lots of variety in the missions, challenging skirmishes and a community scoreboard to feed your gamer’s ego.
See and download the full gallery on posterous
I forgot to add that there is an Ngage arena where you can connect to and play with other players, live. This is the best part because you really don’t know what to expect from the other party.
Hotel SO. Coolest hotel in the Southern Hemisphere.
June 5, 2009 By View Comments
On my recent trip to New Zealand, one hotel left me awed. It was Hotel SO in Christchurch. It was not high class but it was high tech + high touch. I think whoever designed it is brilliant. The rooms may be small but with well-placed mirrors and space saving features like a fridge doubling as a nightstand, it felt more cozy than cramped.
Lobby
Mac lounge
The bed is slightly higher than average so luggage could be stashed underneath. There are no windows in most of the rooms. One out of the three nights I spent there however, I got a room with a window but it was facing a wall so there was zero view and zero sunlight. Funny I didn’t miss it at all. The lighting system in the room was great. The hotel took the science of sleeping into the lighting design for every room. This impressed me the most.
The first thing I noticed was a blue neon glow under the bed. Blue light is supposed to help you sleep. Then there are brighter colored lights located in the shower. With the bathroom’s opaque walls, it becomes one giant mood lamp when turned on. Couples may want to try red for a romantic mood, says the manual. There’s also the option of blue, violet and green.
The lights also act as an alarm clock. I set the alarm clock to wake me up at 4am and with less than 4 hours sleep, I thought I’d surely oversleep but I managed to get up 5 minutes before 4am – amazingly without a single alarm going off. The lights woke me up! It also had that magical ability of putting me to sleep once I set up sleep mode. I swear I didn’t know about these lights and what they could do until the last day. 
I’m not one who falls asleep easily in unfamiliar places but I slept like a log at Hotel So. I wished they were in every city in New Zealand but no, only in Christchurch for now.
And here’s a video:
