The Star has some news about some popular get-rich-quick investment scheme in Malaysia.

Since high school, I have seen lots of similar schemes, too many of them in fact that distracts students from their studies and destroys relationships.

The classical signs that the latest "investment" fad is a pyramid scheme in disguise:
-Schemes promising 2 to 3 percent interest per day.
-schemes promising 300% or you know, up to 1000% of gain per year. (mind mind, even Warren Buffet, the world's second richest guy has consistantly got returns in the mid 20s%)
-They use bombastic terms like investment consultant, leverage, natural resources play, credit default swip, derivatives, options that basically mean nothing in the context they're using.
-They claim that they are from Swiss/USA/UK/-insert your favourite advance nation- with a professionnel investment team but they actually are just from Malaysia.

If you really want to invest but don't know much about the stock market, bond market; no loads (or rather low fees) mutual funds are the way to go. A very good example is Fidelity (although their performance is not as good as before recently) and for people in Malaysia, TA Investment Bhd (I don't really like their high entree fee though).

If not, if you really want to get rich quick, join the pyramid scheme, but with the condition that you get in early and get out before it collapse. Or much better, start your very own scheme and name if after yourself .
If not, you can join UMNO and get rich quick.too :)


Gavin

I live in Bordeaux and what that surprises me is that the tram here are connected to an overhead power line in certain stations and nothing at all for the others.

The stations whom the tram is connected to an electric source is numbered at around 4 stations while the rest, like 20+ of them is without any connection.

Is this possible given that the on board battery looks inexistant to me?

And after some research: (from wiki)
[quote]
There are other methods of powering electric trams, sometimes preferred for aesthetic reasons since poles and overhead wires are not required. The old tram systems in London, Manhattan (New York City), and Washington, D.C., used live rails, like those on third-rail electrified railways, but in a conduit underneath the road, from which they drew power through a plough. It was called Conduit current collection. Washington's was the last of these to close, in 1962. Today, no commercial tramway uses this system. More recently, a modern equivalent to the old stud systems has been developed which allows for the safe installation of a third rail on city streets, which is known as surface current collection or ground-lev.el power supply; the main example of this is the new tramway in Bordeaux.[/quote]


and http://citytransport.info/Bod.htm

Apparently, the tram here is the world's first second-generation tram that draw's power from the ground, instead of overhead electrical cables. The choice is mainly due to aesthetical reasons (to not distrupt the architectural views) but the drawback includes frequent distruptions (as the techonology isn't perfected yet), which really do annoy people here.
The manufacturer, Altrom signed a contract with CUB (communauté urbaine de Bordeaux) which promises to share future profits from sales of this kind of tram in return for us being the guinea pig.
Recently, the on time rate is getting better and better, and according to a website, reaches 99% already.
Cities like Anger, Reims and Orléans will have this kind of tram soon.

Gavin again

Recent news:

1. Ijok is up for by-election
2. The Selangor government has allocated RM36 million for various development projects to be implemented within these two weeks in Ijok.
3. Our MB, Datuk Seri Dr Mohd Khir said the projects were not aimed to fish for votes as claimed by the opposition as they had been planned by the state government for quite some time.

Hmmmmm...how come I have this feeling that this idiot thinks that we malaysian are stupid and bribable?

Another tragedy of an indian man being seperated from his family (wife and six children) because the local Islamic police thinks that his wife is a muslim. *_* His family is now in a reeducation camp I believe.
How can barbaric things like there still happen in Malaysia?

I quote a well know malaysian lawyer:

Sad as it is, and as difficult as it is to say, we are no longer the learned or mature society that we perhaps once were. In place of sophisticated and objective analysis of crucial issues, there is now a regime of sensationalist ignorance and belligerence.

Worse still, we live in a state of denial, insisting that we are more advanced and intellectual than we really are. Look at the issues that figure prominently in the arena of public discourse. How many of these relate to the fundamental aspects of our lives as Malaysians. Admittedly, civil liberty issues such as nude squats and burial rites are important, but where do a lack of coherent economic policy, a lack of coherent governance, a lack of political foresight, an overemphasis on vested interests, institutionalised and crippling corruption and a lack of direction for this great country of ours figure? They do not, in any meaningful way. In having allowed these crucial issues to fall by the way side, in having allowed ourselves to become more interested in being titillated by insane billionaires, sex scandals, Mawi and Academia Fantasia, we have begun throwing away our future.

I used to think that this was due wholly to a media block by the authorities, implemented in tandem with a policy of de-education. I have reconsidered my view and believe that a large part of this is due to an inability, and a lack of desire, on the part of Malaysians to articulate themselves anymore. This is why our media is devoted to gossip and our broadsheets reduced to tabloids. We are all to blame.

Malik Imtiaz Sarwar

The least we can do is to voice out our opinion this coming general election.

Gavin

Foreign products

I bought a bottle of hair shampoo and body shampoo back in Prague because I thought that prices were cheaper there. Recently, when I moved house, my current shampoo/body wash was with Adrian, and wanting desperately to clean myself, I took the 2 Czech products and happily went into the bathroom.

The hair shampoo smells weird, and it doesn't produces foams. Ok, nevermind, maybe it is a shampoo for coloured hairs, as it says in it's label: vivid colours.
The body shampoo is even more weird, it smells nice, too nice to be a body shampoo, and mind, it does not spread when you rub it. @_@ I took a better look at the bottle and I saw some polar like house surrounded with ice and hot sun. SUNTAN LOTION!
It took more than 30 minutes trying to rub the cream off my body.

Trust me, it isn't nice at all when you're all smelly and you desperately wants to be clean, next time, don't buy some foreign products if you're not sure if you understand the label.

Gavin