PISA swimming pool closed indefinitely

After all these while of wondering what happen to PISA pool and when will it reopen to public, I finally saw the notice during one of my running days in PISA compound.

It is sad to learn about the pool closure. PISA main swimming pool has been closed since March 2010. The Bayan Lepas folks are now left to swim either in their small condo pool or travel to the nearest public pool (which is not near at all) in Paya Terubong.

No date on when the notice is posted, but I only seen it in April 2011.

Here's how the notice sounds:

NOTICE

POOL CLOSURE

THE main swimming pool at the Penang International Sports Arena (PISA) Aquatic Center is closed indefinitely for repairs.

The repair works will be carried out by the company which will be awarded the tender to build the Penang International Convention Center (PICC), which is next to PISA.

The pool has been closed since last month. According to a statement from the Penang Municipal Council, the swimming pool will only be reopened once the PICC is completed.

The recreational and children's pool still remains open to the public.

Park & Ride Program to Bayan Lepas FIZ

Today (1st March, Tue) is the start of the Park and Ride Programme to Penang Bayan Lepas Free Industrial Zone (FIZ). An initiative by the Penang State Government.

Yesterday (Monday) on my way to work, I saw this new, nice and clean bus stop in front of Pentamaster. Driving past it, I can read the sign on it that says "Park and Ride". At that moment, I thought 'Oh wow, we have such thing as a Park and Ride. That's so interesting!'. I told myself, I must remember to Google this when I get into office.

Not until lunch time when I was sitting down with colleagues that I recall about the bus stop. So we talked about it. Seems like not many people know about the program. Out of the 5 of us around the table, only 1 have read it on the paper (ok, maybe it's our fault for not reading more newspaper).

Anyway, later that day, we received a company-wide email from our facility department informing us of the program. It comes with a 4mb PDF attachment containing some details of the program and time schedule of the buses.

I love the sound of the program launched by the state government and I hope the program will be a success. For it to be successful, it will need participation from targeted people like you and me (people who work in the Bayan Lepas FIZ), especially for those who lives over on the mainland side.

I am playing this small little part I can by helping to spread the news about this. I've uploaded the time schedule of the bus and you can find them at this link.

Some little info from the PDF:
The Rapid Penang bus will start from Bandar Sunway in mainland and travel across Penang Bridge to the Industrial Zone. There are 3 different route, called A, B and C. It's FREE.

Come people. Let's ride! In support of the state government's effort, saving the environment and saving money :)

I wonder how was the response to the program today...

Vision 2020 will stay a dream

Today, I see that in Malaysia we still have a whole bunch of uncivilized people.

Watch the video on Shah Alam temple relocation discussion at Malaysiakini website:
http://www.malaysiakini.tv/video/17727/commotion-at-temple-relocation-dialogue.html
(watch it while you can coz we can never be sure how long the video can stay up there)
Watch min 5:45 - macam budak-budak shj

It will still be a long long way to go before our country will achieve the status of developed country.

I am a disappointed Malaysian citizen.

Daily goals

I have this one goal that I have to meet every single day, or morning to be exact. Every single morning, termasuk Sabtu, Ahad dan cuti umum, no exception! Oh wait, got one exception. This goal will not be applicable if I'm not in Penang.

I'd have a sense of accomplishment if I made it. Else, I might be in a bad mood. But most of the time, I'd be ok even if I did not manage to score because I have iPod + Sennheiser earbuds as my buddy.

Every morning, as early as 5.45am there will be this shitty loud noise shouting through the horizon, polluting the quite morning. When everybody else is still fast asleep, this noise would continue to wake people up, whether that human being is relevant to it or not.

If I am awaken at these time, then my goals are considered not achive. If I wake up after 7am by my phone alarm, then my goals are considered met.

I consider myself an easy sleeper. I can fall asleep anytime anywhere as long as I'm tired and wanted to sleep. But it is very difficult for me to continue my slumber sleep when I have all this anger in me. Why angry you ask? Being awaken by such a disgusting shout every god damn morning at such an ungodly hour, you tell me how would you feel!

Being awaken at 5.45~6am in the morning would be like a reminder telling me "Oi, you have one more hour to sleep before you have to wake up and go to WORK!" What if I cannot get back to sleep? Then I'd be too sleepy/tired to work for that particular day.

At this time, iPod is my life saver. I'd unlock iPod, go to one of the Nickelback album, turn up the volume and play. I have to specifically choose Rock songs as the bass would then be able to cover that disgusting yelling. At the same time, go to the sleep timer function and set it to 15mins. Plug that earbud deep into my ears to filter out external noise and try to get back to sleep.

Other than keeping it to myself, there is nothing else I can do. Doing something about it, anything, might end me in Kamunting.

Life is always not fair. More unfair if you're living in 'other peoples' land', or is it?

Selamat menyambut Hari Kemerdekaan ke-51

Here comes another time-off for me. This round of time-off is in conjuction with Malaysia's 51st National Day. I'll be flying off to my holiday destination on Sun and be back by Wed. I am wishing for a nice weather and a safe trip.

Since stingy Altera don't let us cash-out our leave anymore, I spend all my annual leave on traveling. Been doing that a lot this year (under own expenses of course!), but I still have plenty of annual leave left. That's good news rite? But what's the use of annual leave when you have not enough vitamin M to go with it? Sleep at home? *yawn

Enough with the crap talk. Let's list down what is worth celebrating in 2008 National Day:

1. Our nation is 51 years old but are still very childish, just look at our politician in the Dewan Rakyat
2. Education is not a success. How do I judge? Seeing the younger generation in school uniform throwing rubbish out of their school bus is not a sign of educated children. Enough said
3. Saya NAnti-Rasuah
4. Malaysia got a silver medal in the Olympics!
   
5. Finally, BN won the General Election without a 2/3 majority! Cheers
6. Still have a sucky public transport system after so many years
7. Taxi drivers are still a bunch of suckers who suck money off tourist, what is the use of meter system if you don't want to turn it on?
   

I am sure there a more, but I have to go pack my luggage, it's better than sitting here cracking my head coming up with reasons why we should be celebrating National Day. Feel free to help me expand the list if you want to.

Newspaper hunting

Woke up late this morning, at around 11am, because I stayed up late yesterday night, excited and eagerly waiting for the 12th Malaysian General Election results. I finally go to bed at 3.30am when the RTM1 pengacara said good night. Even at that time, the results were not fully announced yet. Not that the results are not known, some how, our mainstream media just doesn't want to let the people know of the government's defeat.

"The slow pace of the mainstream media in communicating huge gains by the opposition also contributed to viewership."

"Traffic really picked up then because the mainstream media was really blacking out the news of the results," said Malaysiakini's CEO Premesh Chandran, adding it was drawing a million viewers an hour before it crashed.

Quotes taken from Malaysiakini:"News websites crash as poll results pour in"
(need subscription, free viewing only till 10th March)

This morning, wanting to know what are the ministers' feedback on their losses in the election, I need to get myself newspaper because my Taiping house no internet. As soon as I clean myself up, before taking breakfast, I drive out to the nearest kedai runcit to get newspaper to go with my breakfast. To my surprise, all the papers were sold out in all 3 kedai runcit in my area. Malay, English and Chinese paper were all sold out. So I decided to drive out to town for the paper. There's a few spot I know that sell newspaper.

First stop, KTM station. No more. Second stop, nearby bookshop. Sold out too. Next, drive to the heart of town, eh eh, a few stalls that I tried also said no more newspaper. Drive to market, no more too. I practically drive throughout the whole town looking for newspaper but none can be found anywhere. They were all sold out. I finally gave up and drive back home without getting any newspaper. Reach back home at 12pm. 1 full hour was wasted looking for newspaper, my god!! The newspaper were like hot cakes, the whole town cannot find any newspaper. Without Internet at home, I can only resort to TV to get the election news.

----------------------------------

Worst lost by BN since 1969!!
New state goverment in Penang and 3 other states !!
(Kelantan not counted coz is PAS all this while)

I get to decide

I am proud to say that "I am a registered voter". Well, how about you?

I'll be casting my first ever vote in The 12th Malaysian General Election, 2008. Let's hope that we get a better government for the next 5 years to come.

------------------------------

Looking out from my condo window, what I can see is tons and tons of cars stuck in a long queue, all with one common aim; To cross the Penang Bridge! Usually, on Friday the jam would last till about 8.30 to 9pm, but since today (a Fri AND eve of election day), I predict that the jam would last even later into the night, maybe 9.30 to 10pm? We'll see...

Efficiency = None

My initiative to file a complain on the taxi driver that cheat me ended up futile.

In order to prevent unscrupulous taxi drivers continuously cheating tourists and locals in and around KL, I do my part as consumer + responsible citizen to report the taxi driver. I had all the information needed to file the complain, and the only thing left to do is to find out who/where/how I should complain.

As usual, I turn to Google to look for information and I found that there are 3 ways I could file the complain:
1. Email
2. SMS 39900
3. Call 1 800 88 9600

Firstly, I choose to email. The email address was found in an article in the star online here dated 3rd Feb 2007. Below is my nicely written email:

From: liewei@gmail.com
To: aduanlpkp@mecd.gov.my

To the person in-charge,

I'd like to report on a taxi driver who refuse to use meter and he over-charged me.

Where: KLCC, Jalan Ramlee
When: 21 Sept 2007, 1.30pm

What: I wanted to go to Pudu Raya from KLCC. Approached this taxi driver near a bus stop/taxi stand at Jalan Ramlee. He claim that it is peak hour now ( 1.30pm Fri) and it'll be jam on the road. Using a meter will cost me about RM60 to RM70. He said he'll fetch me to Pudu Raya with a fix price of RM40. I insisted of him using the meter but he said it'll be much expensive using meter, he won't guarantee how much it'll cost me.

Details of driver:
Name: [censored]
Taxi plate number: HWB 7992
Num. printed on license (not sure what it is): 0009126

Please email me if you need any other information about this.

I hope you can take action on this driver as soon as possible to prevent more tourist to be overcharged in the future.

Thanks.

--
Regards,
Lie Wei

While I was writing the email, I was wondering if action will be taken against the taxi driver, or even if anyone will read the email I sent. After all, I'm living in Boleh-land. :P

After about 10mins I sent that out, I got the reply, not from LPKP (Lembaga Pelesenan Kenderaan Perdagangan), but from MAILER-DAEMON@hq.mecd.gov.my. The contents:

Hi. This is the qmail-send program at hq.mecd.gov.my.
I'm afraid I wasn't able to deliver your message to the following addresses.
This is a permanent error; I've given up. Sorry it didn't work out.

Ok, so it had only been 7 months from the date of the article and the email had been discontinued. Or maybe the inbox had not been read ever since it's been announced in Feb 2007 that it is so full, no mail can get through anymore.

Next, I tried to SMS to the number, 39900. This number are commonly seen displayed on a sticker at the back of all taxi together with the telephone number 1 800 88 9600.

Guess what? My phone display "Sending failed".

I've give up. No more responsible-citizen from me. 2 out of 3 channel are not working, what makes you think the 3rd one will work? I'm not going to call the number. (anyone wants to help me call?)

No wonder why dishonest taxi drivers are still all over the road although we constantly heard about actions being taken on errant cabbies and whatever crap we heard/read in the media. All those talk are just talk after all, actions were never taken. Even though responsible citizen like me try to help the JPJ or CVLB (Commercial Vehicle Licensing Board) to report them, I ended up unsuccessful. No channel to complain at all.

Commenting more will only spoil my mood, I'm not going to let the inefficiency of government department to spoil the happy mood I have now.

Elections are coming, have you register? Play your part, each vote counts!!

Mr VIP in traffic jam

It is the normal rush hour in the evening around 6pm after work. It was especially jam along the Jelutong Expressway heading towards the Penang Bridge. Actually, the bottleneck is right before entering the Penang Bridge, going from 3 lane into 1 lane caused all the bumper to bumper queue at the Jelutong Expressway, also known as the Coastal Highway.

I know it's a little small, I've zoom to the max but that's the best I can get (click to enlarge)

Lately, the jam along the coastal is getting more and more serious. Previously, such serious jam only happens on Friday, when people travel back to hometown for the weekend after work, but now, I see this kind of jam almost everyday. My guess is because of the development at the other side of Penang Island. There's many houses being built in Juru, houses there are much more cheaper compared to Penang Island. Many Bayan Lepas employees are opting for the cheaper houses in Juru, which caused them to travel between the island and mainland, which I think is the main reason for the Penang Bridge jam.

Sometimes, it lasted until 10pm at night before the jam starts to clear off

I've had my experience in such jam before. Crossing the bridge at none peak hour takes only about 10 to 15mins, but during the rush hour, it took me 45mins to 1 hour to drive to the other side.

What I dislike most in such a jam is the so call "VIP" passing, with their heavily tinted car windows. The loud and noisy siren of the traffic police would be blaring annoyingly, and they kept honking for people to make way for them. Hello Mr. VIP, cannot see we're all stuck in a jam ar? How to make way for you? Does having a Datuk in front of your name gives you the privilege to avoid the jam and make the jam even worst? Yea, I guess it did.

Shouldn't you be finding a way to solve the traffic jam, Mr VIP? Oh yea, right, that's not your problem. You didn't try to solve the problem, instead, you force people to make way for you, caused the jam even more serious and waste the country's police resources to escort you. If the traffic police were to be diverting traffic at jam prone area, it would have reduce some of the jam significantly.

Thanks a lot Mr VIP. You're such a considerate person!

Negaraku

I cannot help but felt pity for Namewee, the Malaysian rapper who uses the National Anthem as his background music. The garblement wanted him to apologize, and they got the apology. Now what? They rejected the apology, or should I say, the Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Seri Mohamed Nazri Abdul Aziz rejected it. And today, Abdullah said on behalf of cabinet that the apology is accepted, but legal action will still be taken against him. There's never a consistent answer from those people.
Maybe Nazri didn't pay attention in the meeting, so he din know that the apology was already accepted.

2 days ago, Namewee apologized to the country. He didn't do anything wrong in the first place but he apologize anyway, just so the media and the country will leave him and his family alone (my own opinion). What he did was just being creative and innovative, and what he mentioned in the lyrics are NOT untrue. All the meaning in the lyrics tells the truth about the condition in the country. What have he done wrong? Being honest is wrong?

Here's 2 other video posted by other people in response to the Negarakuku video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IG96eaqfra8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBFobhJKfTo

LOL, this is from one of the videos --> L.A.W = Locally Agreed Whatever!

Yesterday’s news extracted from The Star:
When asked how Wee had insulted the national anthem, Nazri said the song was supposed to be sung based on how it should be sung, otherwise, it would mean insulting the song, especially when the lyrics were changed (the lyrics wasn't change, just that new things being inserted into the song).

If you've watch the video, you shld know that Negaraku is translated from Mamula Moon/ Terang Bulan. Does that means Malaysia had been insulting Mamula Moon for 50 years now?

People will never improve if they never want to listen to criticism. Whenever they heard any bad comments about themselves, they'd choose to blame the criticizer and find ways to prosecute the criticizer rather than to reflect on the comments and improve themselves. No wonder our country is so much being left behind compared to our neighbor who is so much more smaller in size. I also admire Japan a lot, being a country who is constantly being attack by natural disaster (earth quake, typhoon, volcano eruptions) can still be so much more advanced than us.

Media confusion *Updated

Referring to the media confusion I highlighted yesterday, I guess it is not the fault of the media after all. The contradictions happened to be provided by the RMAF officer themselves.

Today's paper:
“An officer said he was found dead in a campsite toilet, but another officer said he collapsed and died during a running exercise, while another one told that he was found dead below a tree. I don’t know what is going on,” he said (trainee's father).

Don't this already shows that the RMAF guys are guilty? Something fishy there. If they are telling the truth, then there will be only one truth, if there are many versions, it shows something else isn't it?

On another case, there's this video I saw in YouTube some time ago. I find this Malaysian very creative, he rap in Mandarin with some added hokkien. He uses the Malaysia national anthem, 'Negaraku' slotted-in here and there in between his rap. I find what he rap in the song very true, I'd say I agree 99% with what he says. He also inserted some hokkien cursing words, which I find it funny more than offending.

At first, I was thinking to embed the video in this blog, but then on second thought, I don't want to land myself in any court case for insulting the country, as the singer already do. He is said to have insulted the national anthem and are now being investigated. He has removed the video from YouTube but thanks to his fan, it is being posted up again. :) Go watch the video before it is being removed again.
Here's the link again: Negarakuku

Some of the content of rap:
'Mata' (means police in hokkien) have sharp eyes.
Relate 'mata' with teh tarik, kopi-o and 'saman'.
Relationship between mata and rakyat become closer with a cup of tea.

He loves this country. Every morning, there'll be morning call to wake him up.
The morning call sings like R&B, even though sometimes out of tune,but it tells us the time to go to work/to school.
Don't blame the government for only taking care of the bumiputra, because this shows that the Chinese are not afraid to work hard.
This will eventually help us to better ourselves in looking for solution.

People who work in the government department are super.
They can do things slowly, even though there's a long queue waiting.
They wrap up their head, do things and walk slowly on the road.
Even cars have to give way.
Don't be like Chinese, always do things in a fast pace, making life not as relaxing.

It's hard for high school graduate who wants to enter local U.
This is actually one of the government's plan, who wants us to study at other places so that we'll be able to bring back knowledge from other country.
It's a great plan.
You'll be able to find Malaysians in every corner of the world.

Another video also from the same rapper: Muar Chinese

Media confusion

This morning, I was scrolling through The Star online paper. There was a follow-up news on the RMAF trainee who was found dead at the Sungai Pelek Training Camp in Sepang.

What I want to highlight here is not on the case itself, but is on what is written in the news. The news on Monday 6 August with the headline "Special forces trainee found dead in toilet" said that the trainee was found dead in toilet.

What I see today with headline "Airman’s dad: Diary could shed light on his death" said that the trainee 'was found lying near a tree at 7.15am, without a pulse.'

So, is he found in the toilet? Or izit near a tree?

I did not look for this news in other newspaper, so don't really know which is accurate. I think this is not the only news with conflicting info, there are other news too, where one day they said like this but the next day, it's another different info. I'm lazy to go dig up all those inconsistency, and are not planning to do so anyway, just thought I'd have quick post on this during lunch time.

Opps..bocor..

This morning when I was driving to work, I listen to the mandarin news in MyFM. My half-bucket mandarin couldn't really catch everything the newscaster read because she was going sooo fast, usually I catch teeny bit here and there only. What I did hear was something about broken pipe in another government building. *Wtf? Broken pipe again?*

Just recently we read about burst pipe in the Immigration HQ in Putrajaya, then came the roof leaking in Parlimen and now another burst pipe in the NEW court complex??!! What is wrong with all the government buildings? Is the building cheaply build because the economy is bad? I don't think so....spending RM290mil on a court complex is not cheap at all.

Timeline of mishap for the NEW court complex: (info from The Star online)

April 30 (official opening on May 3) --> two ceiling panels collapsed together with some lights
Less than a week after that --> cracks measuring at least 3m long appear outside Magistrate's Court 4
May 7 --> air-conditioning in one of the High Courts malfunctioned
May 9 --> the entire complex experienced a blackout, resulting in several cases being postponed

What do you think is bocor here? The pipe? The roof? Or the secret? (Secret here refers to where did the rest of the money went?)

Our country always likes to do things with -est, e.g. highest, longest, first in everything, and now you got it...the lousy-est goverment building. Cheers~!

Caution!! Long weekend ahead..

All of us love holidays, don't we? A few days away from work, relax the mind a little, is always anticipated by me, which I'm sure you felt the same too.

Since I started the working life, I felt that I don't have much time for myself anymore. With 'time for myself', I mean staying at home alone, doing stuff that I like to do (sleeping, blogging, managing my computer's memory such as pictures, songs and movies, gaming).

Although I love holiday, there's always a bad side of the good things.

Holiday, to me is equivalent to traffic jam. I dread driving through the Penang Bridge, on Fri especially, when there is any festival or long weekends. It always happens that car, bus and lorry likes to break down on the bridge when there is a holiday. Is it because the view from the bridge is nice, the vehicle would like to stay a while longer to enjoy the scenery? This would caused the whole bridge to jam all the way to the coastal highway and all the way to Bayan Lepas. My precious one hour would be spent stepping on clutch and gas.

Holiday also means spending money. On working days, you earn money. What do you do when you're not earning money? Spend them, of course!! You'd go shopping, watch movie and dining some good expensive food.

The Installation of the King, Wesak day and Labour day are all lump together in the next coming weekend. For gov servants, taking Fri and Mon off would means a 7 days off from work. It will be a long holiday indeed. Imagine the traffic jam on the road and human jam in bus stations and shopping complexes. As for me, I only get Mon and Tue off. :(

I had something in mind. What about you guys? Going somewhere far away to spend your time (and money)? Or are you staying home?

---------------------------------------------------------

Never thought the 'Job Description' post would bring so much confusion to all
Haha..Izit really so difficult to understand? :D

---------------------------------------------------------

It's pay back time

This is the time of the year when the IRB officers are working. And the working adults in the country are looking for ways to reduce taxable income LEGALLY.

At 24 years old, this is the first time I need to do my income tax assessment. I'm not sure whether working for 6 months need to pay tax or not but since company had been deducting my pay for tax all these times, I should just declare it and see if I'll be charged. The due date is the end of this month, April 30th. Don't submit it late coz you'll find yourselves paying 10% more for the tax.

I supposed some of the tax collected from citizen (all races) will be use to build those noisy big annoying onion, which have nothing to do with me other than waking me up early in the morning, but still, I think I have to do my part as a citizen.

I studied in a government school all my life. 6 years in primary school and 5 years in secondary school. Although I still need to pay school fees, but it's just a small amount that my father can afford to pay with his mere income back then. And then there's the 5 years in university, studying in a government Uni is very much cheaper compared to other private Uni. Maybe the syllabus and facilities we get are abit different, but to me, the important thing is that after graduation, we are able to get a job.

With education reason alone, I think I should pay back to the gov. By paying tax, I, as a citizen of Malaysia, wish to be provided better services from government department, a better and more reliable general hospital and perhaps, a lower tax rate in the future. ;)

MALAYSIA, MY COUNTRY MY HOME.

A puzzle for all

6.15, 1.30, 4.30, 7.30, 8.30

7 days a week

Sound pollution, annoying. Scream me out of bed every morning

The same thing gets repeated over and over again each time

Can guess the answer?

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

To those who know what it is, congratulations!! You're smart!
(Can guess also diam diam, don't say it out loud..M'sians are not allowed to complain)

To those who can't, keep trying and you will soon get it

Well done to SPM/STPM students!!

The SPM and STPM results are out recently. In this latest trend, students are taking more and more subjects in hope of being the top SPM/STPM scorer of the year. 7 years ago, I took 9 subjects for my SPM, the max I heard people took were 12. But now, students can get as many as 18/17 A's. I'm amazed. Is it really necessary to obtain so many A's?
According to the state education director, the maximum number of examinations that a candidate can take is 21.

So many students are getting straight A's nowadays, sometimes it makes me wonder if it is Malaysian students getting smarter or is it the public examination's standard getting lower.