Mabuk Kaki.........Julian's wedding in KL

As you can see the mabuk sien from Penang make the trip down to KL. What a nite it was, BC went all out against BC.

The after effect. Darn i miss out Willie from the cameras target.

Family Trip to Penang Hill

Took my family for an excursion. Well thats not Victoria Peak,HK, but just Penang Hill. Unfortunately, the trip up the hill was a very long one. Its was a long holiday weekend. The beeline was a two hourly apart. We had to buy the tickets and we went over to Kek Lok Si Temple for a quick visit before we went back to the foot of the hill to wait. It was a sunny day with a cold breeze.

The new beginning....women in sports ala Malaysia

We have Nicol in Squash and now Mew Choo is making a havoc in the China dominated world womens badminton. During the 90's the Ladies event is always boring in the Malaysian context.

Now it seems, we have some hope for the Olympic's medal finally. Having beaten most of the higher ranking players from China over the year finally she took the China Open. Non would have think its possible to win the Ladies singles event, in China.

I can say most Malaysian would feel very proud.

Congrats Mew Choo!!!

Hilltop Villas

Pearl of The Island, we used to call Penang. Small island located to the North West of Peninsular Malaysia. Properties on the island used to be snapped up by investors from Japan. A decade down the road after the Financial Crack Down ‘97, prices of properties on the island have shot up more than doubled. CASH rich investors from around the globe, especially MiddleEastern CASHBUMS, Chinese Corrupted Tycoons, HongKong Celebrities, the ever Gloletrotting Indians and the forever KIASU Singaporeans are snapping up SuperCondos and Bungalows newly launched by the local property developers.
My personal favorite so far is the HILLTOP VILLAS by the Asia Green Group.
This particular unit I posted cost RM3.5Million fully furnished. Lower ground garage, high ceilling living room, superb view of the sea from the top of the hill and outdoor family dining are

Penang Blackout

Almost the whole of Penang, were on a blackout for almost 30mins. Whats wrong TNB? How could this be happening at a time like this, where the GE is just around the corner. I hope nothing big happened.

8 months Queue

Who can wait for such a long time. Went to check out the new Merc C-Class. Only the Elegence model is available under the local assembly line. The darn part about it is the waiting list is as long as 8 months. According to the Salesman at LOWE MOTORS, Penang. Damn I bought my E-Class last year during the Raya Promo waited for only 2 weeks.

Setting LIFE GOALS

Personal Goal Setting
Find direction. Live your life your way.
Goal setting is a powerful process for thinking about your ideal future, and for motivating yourself to turn this vision of the future into reality.
The process of setting goals helps you choose where you want to go in life. By knowing precisely what you want to achieve, you know where you have to concentrate your efforts. You'll also quickly spot the distractions that would otherwise lure you from your course.
More than this, properly-set goals can be incredibly motivating, and as you get into the habit of setting and achieving goals, you'll find that your self-confidence builds fast.
Achieving More With Focus
Goal setting techniques are used by top-level athletes, successful business-people and achievers in all fields. They give you long-term vision and short-term motivation. They focus your acquisition of knowledge and help you to organize your time and your resources so that you can make the very most of your life.By setting sharp, clearly defined goals, you can measure and take pride in the achievement of those goals. You can see forward progress in what might previously have seemed a long pointless grind. By setting goals, you will also raise your self-confidence, as you recognize your ability and competence in achieving the goals that you have set.
Starting to Set Personal Goals
Goals are set on a number of different levels: First you create your "big picture" of what you want to do with your life, and what large-scale goals you want to achieve. Second, you break these down into the smaller and smaller targets that you must hit so that you reach your lifetime goals. Finally, once you have your plan, you start working to achieve it.We start this process with your Lifetime Goals, and work down to the things you can do today to start moving towards them.
(If you want to fast-track your goal setting and get the most from it, then either join our Design Your Life program or talk to one of our coaches.)
Your Lifetime Goals
The first step in setting personal goals is to consider what you want to achieve in your lifetime (or at least, by a time at least, say, 10 years in the future) as setting Lifetime Goals gives you the overall perspective that shapes all other aspects of your decision making.To give a broad, balanced coverage of all important areas in your life, try to set goals in some of these categories (or in categories of your own, where these are important to you):
Artistic:Do you want to achieve any artistic goals? If so, what?
Attitude:Is any part of your mindset holding you back? Is there any part of the way that you behave that upsets you? If so, set a goal to improve your behavior or find a solution to the problem.
Career:What level do you want to reach in your career?
Education:Is there any knowledge you want to acquire in particular? What information and skills will you need to achieve other goals?
Family:Do you want to be a parent? If so, how are you going to be a good parent? How do you want to be seen by a partner or by members of your extended family?
Financial:How much do you want to earn by what stage?
Physical:Are there any athletic goals you want to achieve, or do you want good health deep into old age? What steps are you going to take to achieve this?
Pleasure:How do you want to enjoy yourself? - you should ensure that some of your life is for you!
Public Service:Do you want to make the world a better place? If so, how?
Spend some time brainstorming these, and then select one goal in each category that best reflects what you want to do. Then consider trimming again so that you have a small number of really significant goals on which you can focus. As you do this, make sure that the goals that you have set are ones that you genuinely want to achieve, not ones that your parents, family, or employers might want (if you have a partner, you probably want to consider what he or she wants, however make sure you also remain true to yourself!)
Starting to Achieve Your Lifetime Goals
Once you have set your lifetime goals, set a 25 year plan of smaller goals that you should complete if you are to reach your lifetime plan. Then set a 5 year plan, 1 year plan, 6 month plan, and 1 month plan of progressively smaller goals that you should reach to achieve your lifetime goals. Each of these should be based on the previous plan.Then create a daily to-do list of things that you should do today to work towards your lifetime goals. At an early stage these goals may be to read books and gather information on the achievement of your goals. This will help you to improve the quality and realism of your goal setting.Finally review your plans, and make sure that they fit the way in which you want to live your life.
Staying on Course
Once you have decided your first set of plans, keep the process going by reviewing and updating your to-do list on a daily basis. Periodically review the longer term plans, and modify them to reflect your changing priorities and experience.An easy way of doing this is to use the goal-setting software like GoalPro 6 on a daily basis (you can download a free trial version of GoalPro from Success Studios web site.) GoalPro uses a similar set of categories to ones we recommend - either use theirs, or adapt the software to use ours.
Goal Setting Tips
The following broad guidelines will help you to set effective goals:
State each goal as a positive statement: Express your goals positively - 'Execute this technique well' is a much better goal than 'Don't make this stupid mistake.'
Be precise: Set a precise goal, putting in dates, times and amounts so that you can measure achievement. If you do this, you will know exactly when you have achieved the goal, and can take complete satisfaction from having achieved it.
Set priorities: When you have several goals, give each a priority. This helps you to avoid feeling overwhelmed by too many goals, and helps to direct your attention to the most important ones.
Write goals down: This crystallizes them and gives them more force.
Keep operational goals small: Keep the low-level goals you are working towards small and achievable. If a goal is too large, then it can seem that you are not making progress towards it. Keeping goals small and incremental gives more opportunities for reward. Derive today's goals from larger ones.
Set performance goals, not outcome goals: You should take care to set goals over which you have as much control as possible. There is nothing more dispiriting than failing to achieve a personal goal for reasons beyond your control. In business, these could be bad business environments or unexpected effects of government policy. In sport, for example, these reasons could include poor judging, bad weather, injury, or just plain bad luck. If you base your goals on personal performance, then you can keep control over the achievement of your goals and draw satisfaction from them.
Set realistic goals: It is important to set goals that you can achieve. All sorts of people (employers, parents, media, society) can set unrealistic goals for you. They will often do this in ignorance of your own desires and ambitions. Alternatively you may set goals that are too high, because you may not appreciate either the obstacles in the way, or understand quite how much skill you need to develop to achieve a particular level of performance.
This is something we focus on in detail in our "Design Your Life" program, which not only helps you decide your goals, it then helps you set the vivid, compelling goals you need if you're to make the most of your goal setting.
SMART Goals:A useful way of making goals more powerful is to use the SMART mnemonic. While there are plenty of variants, SMART usually stands for:
S Specific
M Measurable
A Attainable
R Relevant
T Time-bound
For example, instead of having “to sail around the world” as a goal, it is more powerful to say “To have completed my trip around the world by December 31, 2015.” Obviously, this will only be attainable if a lot of preparation has been completed beforehand!
Achieving Goals
When you have achieved a goal, take the time to enjoy the satisfaction of having done so. Absorb the implications of the goal achievement, and observe the progress you have made towards other goals. If the goal was a significant one, reward yourself appropriately. All of this helps you build the self-confidence you deserve!With the experience of having achieved this goal, review the rest of your goal plans:
If you achieved the goal too easily, make your next goals harder.
If the goal took a dispiriting length of time to achieve, make the next goals a little easier.
If you learned something that would lead you to change other goals, do so.
If you noticed a deficit in your skills despite achieving the goal, decide whether to set goals to fix this.
Failure to meet goals does not matter much, as long as you learn from it. Feed lessons learned back into your goal setting program.Remember too that your goals will change as you get older. Adjust them regularly to reflect growth in your knowledge and experience, and if goals do not hold any attraction any longer, then let them go.
Key points:
Goal setting is an important method of:
Deciding what is important for you to achieve in your life;
Separating what is important from what is irrelevant, or a distraction;
Motivating yourself; and
Building your self-confidence, based on successful achievement of goals.
If you don't already set goals, do so, starting now. As you make this technique part of your life, you'll find your career accelerating, and you'll wonder how you did without it!

Direct S'pore for AirAsia

Dato Tony Fernandes finally gets his wish.

Air Asia will be getting 2 direct flights to Changi Airport from Subang LCCT daily.

In exchange of that, Singapore will also nomimate one of their Low Cost Carriers, very likely, Tiger Airways to fly to Subang twice daily.

My proposal to Dato Tony, please open up direct flights from Penang to all other destinations as well. What abaout Penang=Macau, Penang=S'pore?

Dont deprive us Penagites.

The New Mercedes C-CLASS

Wow the new Benz C Class

Looks sleek and canggih.

Price range Avantgarde RM258,888.00 w/o rdtax and Insurance.

Elegance RM248,888.00 w/o rdtax and Insurance

Crunching time for banks around the world.

Worst crisis for 20 years, say banks
David Smith and John Waples
LEADING bankers are warning of the worst crisis in the money markets for 20 years, which will come to a head this week when $113 billion (£57 billion) of commercial paper – market IOUs – comes up for refinancing.
This huge refinancing, mainly through London, exceeds the $100 billion that became due in mid-August, and which sparked the most serious phase in the money-market crisis, which has seen banks scrambling for funds and market interest rates rising sharply. “This is a serious pressure point,” said one leading banker.
Another senior executive of one of Britain’s top five retail banks said: “These are the worst conditions I have seen in money markets for 20 years”.
The huge amount of commercial paper becoming due is the hangover from the crisis in credit markets that began with American sub-prime mortgages. Many of the off-balance-sheet structured investment vehicles (SIVs) set up by the banks were borrowed in the form of asset-backed commercial paper.
Related Links
Problems are on scale of Great Depression
America is facing housing crisis, UK next
Now, even if they succeed in rolling over some of this paper this week, they will eventually be forced to take some of it – much of which is of questionable value – onto their balance sheets. To meet this potential liability, banks are hoarding cash and have stopped lending to each other. This has created a liquidity freeze.
“Asset-backed commercial paper is rolling off every day and the banks are taking more and more onto their balance sheets, which is using up capital,” said Paul Mortimer-Lee, global head of market economics at BNP Paribas in London. “It is both a liquidity and a capital crisis.”
His view was supported by a top banker who said: “Even the very solid banks that were not at the sharp end are hoarding liquidity to ensure they can fund the rollover.”
The Bank of England, which last week announced the injection of up to £4.4 billion of extra liquidity into the money markets for each of the next three weeks, is policing the problem, bankers say, but has no plans to change its tactics, which have drawn criticism.
Its first significant response to the crisis came only a few days ago, after weeks in which the European Central Bank and Federal Reserve had injected tens of billions of euros and dollars in an effort to steady the markets. But the Bank’s supporters said the criticism was unjustified, and that it had been right to limit its action. They pointed out that, properly measured, the rise in sterling money-market rates had been similar to that for dollar rates.
The prospect of serious market indigestion from maturing commercial paper is not the only headache for the banks. Globally, they have $380 billion of loans and bonds to be laid off from leveraged buyouts and other private-equity deals at a time when the markets have shifted sharply against them.
The crisis has led to a big change in interest-rate expectations.
After the Bank’s quarterly inflation report a month ago, most economists were looking for a further hike in Bank rate to 6%. Now, according to a survey by Ideaglobal.com, the financial-research company, only 36% think the next rate move will be up, while 64% are looking for the next move to be down.
Most do not expect that to happen until next year, although economists say the situation is changing rapidly.
The Federal Reserve is widely expected to begin the process of reversing the recent rise in global interest rates when its cuts the Fed Funds rate on September 18 in response to the market crisis and weak American jobs data.
Last Wednesday, the Bank and the Financial Services Authority called a meeting with Britain’s top banks to hear how bad the liquidity freeze is.
In the short term, the credit crunch is forcing up the cost of borrowing and the Bank is concerned that this could spill over into the wider economy, making it difficult for businesses to raise long-term finance.
What has compounded the problem is that nobody yet knows who holds the commercial paper that is exposed to the US sub-prime mortgage market and has been dubbed as toxic. Britain’s big banks have varying degrees of exposure but it is not seen as a huge problem. One banker said: “We don’t know yet what we could be holding on our balance sheet in one week or three months’ time. No bank will escape some impact on its profit-and-loss acount. But will it be a mega number resulting in a material hole in its balance sheet? I doubt it.”
Commercial paper is typically soaked up by pension and insurance funds. But until they are able to work out their exposure, many of them are refusing to buy any more. It is this buying strike that has created the liquidity freeze.
Another senior banker said: “What nobody knows is whether this will spill over into the wider economy”.
The crisis is having a huge impact on the way banks conduct their business. Northern Rock, the troubled bank, is facing a battle to raise up to £3 billion in funding it needs from the debt markets in the next three months.
Northern Rock has been particularly vulnerable because it relies on the credit markets for about 70% of the funds it needs to finance its aggressive mortgage lending. Some debt analysts believe that the bank may need to raise up to £8 billion if it is to sustain its ambitious targets and take mortgages that have been written several months ago off its balance sheet.
There have also been suggestions that the funding pressures could force Northern Rock to issue a second profit warning. In June the bank said that £180m to £200m in income had been wiped out after it failed to pass on higher-than-expected borrowing costs to customers rapidly enough.
Other banks, including Anglo Irish, another big user of securitisations, also face a credit squeeze.
The refinancing of the commercial paper is expected to start tomorrow and end on September 20. In that short period the City is braced for huge market volatility.
The big high-street banks are exposed to billions of pounds of commercial paper, a lot of which is high quality. But they will still need the capital to take it back onto their balance sheets. When the markets recover, analysts say there will have to be a post mortem over the different ways that America’s Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank and the Bank of England acted during the crisis. The rating agencies are already being investigated and are expected to be severely criticised.
Have your
say
within this crisis through there is oppotunity for mergers - look at the depressed state of Standard Chartered Bank - where its profits are generated in asia and middle east business is booming and no problems - a timely point for a large instituition with emerging markets ambition to make the bid sooner rather than later
Asian Growth, LONDON, UK
Despite all of this, banks are still offering loans to people ill equiped to make the payments. I have read about a student who was offered a loan, and told that if he did not take it, his credit rating would be viewed as low, and he would struggle to get a loan later on in life. The worst companies are those who always advertise around tea time, offering consolidation loans. If people can't really afford loans, they can't really afford to consolidate them either - these ads play on the lack of financial understanding by people who have no training and little experience, and should be banned.
tony, birmingham, uk
Costas Unfortunatly Cyprus is also not on 'the good diet' - we have a massive property bubble here, fuelled by a massive credit bubble, and an economy that is reliant on consumption and tourism. We are just as vulnerable, if not more, than the UK and USA when this thing spills over into the wider economy. Wake up and smell the keftethes !
Yiannos Ioannou, Limassol, Cyprus
Eric, the UK is much the same as the US when it comes to lending rediculous amounts of money to people who clearly cannot afford to ever pay that money back, subprime mortgages and property flipping. The official figures for our subprime is 8% but I doubt that figure is all that close to the truth, I suspect it will be much higher once its effects kick in with our very shakey economy. The UK is now a nation built on nothing but debt.
Mf Flibble, Cambridge,
It was reported, several months ago, that many that got these subprime loans, were illegal aliens...mostly out West. They should never been allowed to purchase a home, while here illegally or not being a citizen! Reports said many didn't even understand what they were signing.....but oh no...the main stream media and PC folks won't report much on this.
Bobbie, USA, USA
People who complain about the inadequacies of the banking system should perhaps look to the flaws of the alternatives - from the Soviet Union to the UK's own experiences in state planning, other ways of allocating capital are simply much worse. To adopt Churchill's quip about democracy, the global capital markets are the worst way to keep the economy functioning, except for all the other systems that have been tried before.
James, London,
The slow down in home sales in the US is just starting to fall off a very large cliff and by spring we will look back and see the dramatic negative effects to the US and World economy. The slow down in US consumer purchases and lower dollar will slow the US economy and then slowdown the world economy. Witness that the last reported trade deficit for the US was down even though forecasts were it would be up. The slow down has begun already.
Gwilym McGrew, Los Angeles, California / USA
Rank idiocy masquarading as financial sophistication and masked by the most crass and arcane gobbledegook invented to disguise how dumb the financial world has actually become. The bottom line: do you REALLY want your money back when you lend it to someone? Why don't you just give it away and stop pretending you'll get it back!
Chris Thomas, Oxford, England
What happened in the USA - Part 2. The banks really didn't care too much about whether the loans were properly underwritten or not...they simply sold most of the ones they did not want to keep in house. Wall Street ate this up by packaging these into large groups to be sold to investors and hedge funds & insurance companies. The rating agencies did not do a good job of correctly rating these grouped securities as is evidencd by sudden big drops in the ratings starting as early as December 2006. This started freaking out the stock market. The loans they sold these folks started to adjust upwards and they became behind in their payments. European bankers are musch ore conservative and most of these subprime loans would not have been made at all. But the real problem falls squarely at the feet of Greenspan, who after 9/11 flooded the market with low rates and liquidity (good) BUT LEFT IT WAY TO LIQUID TOO LONG. All this cheap capital tempted all the above to people who never should have.
Eric, Washington, USA
Here's what's been happening in the USA the last 4 years: People with poor credit scores (high risk to borrow to and not so good at paying bills, often even coming out of bankruptcy, were loaned money to buy a home. Real estate prices were moving steadily or even rapidly up in some markets. Investors saw rapidly rising markets and bought properties to flip. Both of these groups did not have much in anything to put down, but no problem, the banks and mortgage brokers were glad to sell them loans anyway as they are paid on commission. Many but not all of the lenders lowered their underwritng guidelines so they could compete and get the loan sale. The appraisers saw rapidly rising markets and appraised properties to fit the loans (if they are too conservative then the mortgage brokers do not refer customers to that appraiser and he goes out of business) The underwriters often took these loans without doing a good job of verifying income...just a stated amount will be fine... end Part 1
Eric, Washington, USA
Property is theft. Haha
ZAP, Londonein,
Almost aways, the rich get richer -- no matter up or down. But this time, a rare moment of great satisfaction to the hapless prols, only some of the rich will get richer -- for they all will have to savage each other to see who gets the surprisingly small remainder.
Rick, Orlando, USA
In Cyprus we say "the man who doesn't have the money to buy his bread is lucky because he is on a good diet". This is not the case in the USA and the UK; if you don't have the money to buy something you simply borrowed. Now the time has come to pay and your fat bulk can't move fast enough to adapt to the new conditions. Maybe the man on the "good diet" is more clever than you.
Costas Papadodulos, Nicosia, Republic of Cyprus
Risk is like a wild animal. The fact that you bring it home and cuddle it does not make it tame. This is what banks and investors should have known when they were pricing risk as if it had been outlawed. In fairness to the Bank of England it did warn the banks that they were living dangerously but everybody was enjoying the party too much to listen. There is nothing unusual about what is happening. It's just a simple case of Mr Risk making a collect call on the bankers.
anthony, london, England
As the Chinese appear to wish to diversify their holdings of T bonds and other dollar denominated assets into other assets they are unlikely to be buyers of US government debt. This suggests it will have to be made more attractive to other buyers. So how do you square the circle? Yields on T bonds need to go up to attract the buyers, but US interest rates need to come down to avert a credit crunch. Print dollars instead of issuing debt?
N Reed, Truro, UK
"The Bank Of England's remit is to control inflation. So why are we suddenly keen to feather bed banks who have lent money irresponsibly? Banks have earned fantastic returns in recent years. Let them live with their mistakes. The Bank should concern itself solely with inflation. " Go and watch 'Its a wonderful Life'. If the banks start to fail, as they might, then the financial system goes in to meltdown as in 1929 and the years following. The financial system depends on confidence, as it's all an illusion. I would love to see the scummy bankers and city whiz kids bakrupted and broken. But the scumbags would take us all down with them. "The Bank Of England's remit is to control inflation. " Thought it was look after the financial system as a whole.
Neil Murphy, cromer,
This has all come about because of poorly thought out types of transactions being put together simply to 'justify' paying massive bonuses. Result- nobody has a clue what losses are out there and who has them. Even big banks don't yet understand the possible scale of their own losses, because no-one knows the market value of the 'assets'. What a shambles- all to enrich a bunch of incompetents who clearly don't understand the businesses they run.
Doug, Glasgow,
The sub-prime debt is all secured with real properties with real buildings on them! The shady world of the yen carry market and similar inventions of the "smart money" men to cover their losses in crooked deals in the mid-east and China is a very different matter. These are the same people who bankrupted Barclays. Expect more bank collapses.
Paul Robbins, Alamosa, Colorado, USA
NRK has around £1Bn in cash, if it has to self-fund it's obligations (the £8Bn mentioned), how will it do this, or will it simply default on it obligations (perhaps even go bust)?
Andrew Price, London,
The Bank Of England's remit is to control inflation. So why are we suddenly keen to feather bed banks who have lent money irresponsibly? Banks have earned fantastic returns in recent years. Let them live with their mistakes. The Bank should concern itself solely with inflation.
David B, Larkhall, UK
So we pay bankers £1m+ a year each to lend billions of our money to people who can never possibly re-pay it, who don't bother to take a note of what they lent to whom, then when it all goes wrong and the economy slows, we lose jobs and homes while the bankers laugh all the way to...the bank. Global capitalism is a sick joke, but only the rich are laughing. When are we going to realise it isnt working?
julian, london,
Yippee! Roll the on the mother of all property crashed...
cww, Ipswich,
How do you ensure yourself against this Sue? Buy Gold.
Linus, Leamington,
To quote: "...In the short term, the credit crunch is forcing up the cost of borrowing and the Bank is concerned that this could spill over into the wider economy, making it difficult for businesses to raise long-term finance...." I don't understand this. The Learned Economist at the Times, David Smith and the Council of Mortgage Lenders both assure us that there is no Sub Prime problem and I am sure that they have a logical foundation for this. In the mean time why can businesses and the consumer not keep borrowing against their properties most of which are still 'worth' £200-500k for the moment? Prime Minister Brown Unelect can always put pressure on the BOE to allow the printing of the 'money' For me, I think I will invest in wheelbarrows....
Pete Balchin, Solicitor , Bristol, UK
Is it any wonder that financial ineptitude is apparent in the way a large proportion of the general public run their budgets. Here we have the "clever" money men running for cover in an extremely unstable market riddled with unsupported debt. Those same clever people have just spent ten years encouraging the public by every means possible to rack up as much debt as they, the banks, were prepared to support. Now there is a whole load of chickens coming home to roost I fear for Joe Public who will ultimately pay the price of others incompetence.
mike gee, bournemouth, uk
Typical media scare-mongering. Stock markets will shrug this of imminently, and by next spring will be 20% or more higher than now.
Mike M, Brookline, USA
Are you telling us that banks have loaned more money in total than there exists in total, so the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank, and maybe the Bank of England, are simply inventing more cash from nowhere? They are just printing money and using it as if it has really been created by wealth makers when it doesn't really have value to back it up? This would mean a massive devaluation of every currency this is geing done to, Euros, and Dollars, and Pounds as well if the BoE is involved. We will be back to bartering for goods and services like they were in Siberia! What value my bank balance then? If this is true they are going to have us all in the same hole as Zimbabwe. What do these central banks do if not make sure the money they are regulating is of real value? Wages would be worthless, jobs not takeable. And to reality - what do I do to ensure myself against this?
Sue Doughty, Reading, UK
Here you! Banker. I have a large brown parcel which contains securitys worth £100million but they will be worth £200million in 6months.i,ll let you have them for £75million.Is the financial system that stupid?
colin, peterborough,
There are strong divergent views on the subject:while the IMF says that the subprime crisis will impact the US and the global economy in general, while the World Bank economist (Francois Bourguignon) said that" the US housing finance crisis will be resolved in a couple of months without much impact on the broader US economy...any effect on the subprime crisis on the expansion of the US economy would off-set by the faster-than expected growth in the first half of 2007... as a matter of fact,we aree not even modifying our forecasts". Bottom line: nobody knows really and that is positive.
Clement, Paris, Franc

Fall of a Mortgage banker ...Northern Rock...its not as hard a rock as it sound

Angry savers force Northern Rock to be soldBy Iain Dey and Patrick Hennessy
Last Updated: 12:37am BST 16/09/2007
Northern Rock, the crisis-hit bank under siege from thousands of its customers, was preparing itself last night for a sell-off, The Sunday Telegraph can reveal.Northern Rock is besieged by worried savers The battle to save Northern Rock Small businesses under threat
One plan being worked on by City bankers was to divide the company's £100 billion mortgage portfolio between the other major banks, in what would amount to a private-sector rescue of the lender.

Worried customers besiege Northern Rock's Kingston branch
In scenes not experienced for decades, police were needed to keep the peace at branches across the country as increasingly angry and desperate investors rushed to withdraw their funds.
However, despite many queuing from before dawn, scores were sent away empty-handed when cashiers ran out of time to serve them.
The Northern Rock crisis sparked a wider political row as David Cameron, the Conservative Party leader, pinned the blame on Gordon Brown. Mr Cameron accused the Prime Minister of presiding over a "huge expansion of public and private debt" during his decade as Chancellor.
Writing for The Sunday Telegraph, the Conservative leader declared: "Though the current crisis may have had its trigger in the US, over the past decade the gun has been loaded at home."
advertisement
Personal debt had trebled under Labour to £1.3 billion, Mr Cameron added, as he called on ministers to explain the "chain of events" that led up to the Bank of England's decision last week to prop up Northern Rock.
The bank siege became a virtual stampede, despite repeated assurances by Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, that the lender remained solvent.
However, sources close to the company said that if customers continued to draw their deposits at the same alarming rate, Northern Rock would be forced to break up.
Government and Bank of England officials are understood to be preparing a public statement designed to reassure millions of customers across the banking sector that their savings were safe. Both are anxious to secure a "quick fix" of Northern Rock's woes before the crisis spreads.
One plan under discussion in Whitehall is a co-ordinated rescue of Northern Rock involving other banks and the Bank of England.
"If the run on deposits looks out of control, Northern Rock would effectively be nationalised and put into administration so it could be wound down," said an official.
A source close to Northern Rock said: "Things look really ugly. If the share price falls heavily on Monday, then a fast break-up and sale of the assets looks inevitable."
On Friday, following 10 days of discussions involving the Chancellor, Mervyn King, the governor of the Bank of England, and Sir Callum McCarthy, the chairman of the Financial Services Authority, the Bank of England offered Northern Rock an emergency credit line.
The reputation of Mr King, the Bank of England's highly respected governor, has taken a battering over his handling of the crisis involving the country's fifth-largest mortgage lender.
"Mervyn was being too clever," said one of his officials. "If he had sounded a little less tough, banks might still be lending to each other."
A Whitehall source said: "The governor has handled this badly. He urgently needs to reassure savers."

Northern Rock's near collapse is the latest symptom of the squeeze in world financial markets, which began in the United States late last year when overstretched homeowners began to default on their mortgage payments.
The credit squeeze has made it difficult for Northern Rock to raise money to fund its business.
Although the Bank of England's deal ensures that Northern Rock has more than enough money to honour all of its commitments to savers and mortgage customers, its longer-term future remains in doubt.
"Queues outside our branches are not pretty viewing on TV," admitted Adam Applegarth, Northern Rock's chief executive. "Has our brand been damaged today? Well, of course it has."
He added: "It will be a long slog as an independent company to rebuild that. Our share price has come off 30 per cent. You have got to be more vulnerable [to a sale] if your share price has come down. It's up to the bidders to make a bid."
With frantic manoeuvring continuing in Whitehall and the City, police were called on to calm "boisterous" customers in numerous branches, including Sheffield, Manchester, Glasgow and London.
At least £1 billion was withdrawn from the bank by worried savers on Friday - four per cent of the bank's deposits. Branch staff said they were even busier yesterday.
It is understood that attempts by the Bank of England to find a single buyer for Northern Rock have failed. Instead, it is more likely to be sold off piece-by-piece with possible buyers including HSBC, Lloyds TSB, Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland and Halifax Bank of Scotland.
Merrill Lynch, the investment bank, is expected to oversee the auction, which could begin as early as next week.

See Saw.......what a recovery

Today saw the worst drop ever in one day from BURSA. Dropping 60pts in the early trading hours. Losers outweight the gainers wow.

And also the BEST recovery in one day. Most stocks recovery to a certain percentage where the killing is most sustainable.

BURSA is trying to make a history.

Fruta Vida........power of matrix super explosive

dAMN .......just after one day I sign up. I have a spillover from my uplines into my matrix. I was notified in my email. Why is this not a surprise!!!

This is what happenned when you come into the right network and an explosive one too.

check out !!!!!

http://www.frutavida.com/2295471

Favelle Favco

Favco more projects coming. Destine for more jobs unveiled under the 9MP.

I got mine @rm2.00

Fruta Vida........power of matrix super explosive

I have just signed up for this business. Looking at the compensation plan it seems very easy to do and the return is fast.

Its only USD39.95 to sign up. Theimmediate return after u register 2 new friends into the business we get USD20 each. ROI is after 2 members sign up.

The exponential income will come in as the group grows.

I am giving it a try. If any of you guys find it interesting please do not hesitate to email me.

Or check out http://www.frutavida.com/2295471

Property Boom in Penang.

I suspect a property boom is coming. My banker told me almost all the Penang developers are holding back the launching of new projects.

Nautilus Bay, by IJM, completed but not for sale yet. A call to Mr Teh KM, IJMPROP MD, he said they are accepting registration only and not bookings. They are not even revealing the price.

According to my dad, this scenario is the same as the last property boom.

Wait for what, BUY property counters.

CBOX up and running

Some of my stock followers are requesting for me to put up CBOX.

So now i have put it up. If tak laku i will tak it down again.

Serving the community

This month is always the busiest. I am the organizing chairman for a few ADUN(Ahli Dewan Undangan Negeri) for their KSK(Kelab Sukan Komuniti). In some of their activities they have to run before the end of the month. This is really running me up the wall.

And what a timing it was, I have sign-up for a Network Marketing Business, TIME MANAGMENT really screw up this time.

Family, business, community and network marketing phewwww

Been so busy for the last 2 weeks

Nuts and bonkers i went.

Things just cannot get done on time. The process flow is slow and giving problems all the time.
Slowing down things even further.

Dont you guys go crazy when things just cannot get done on time and the worst part is like the bolts and nuts is just not there.

Driving you up the wall all the time.

Bursa update

SCOMI is now back up >1.75 my cost price.

Looking at Viztel now@0.32

Some news will come out.

Guoco will make another move soon.

MKland is a new target to look at@1.05

Penang CM's post remains in Gerakan

Today in TheStar newspaper, for the first time our dear PM spoke out and I really respect him more after reading it.

Penang's Chief Minister's post will not fall into UMNO'S reign. Its an agreement or contract he has to maintain or fulfill to the people of Penang. Our local state goverment have been under Gerakan Party for some, dunno how many god damn years, but its still refreshing to hear that it will be maintained a Gerakan post.

I dunno why, but i just feel a bit more relief after reading it in the local news and much better the statement came from our PM himself.

Durian The King of Fruits....by credit card.

I was driving back from work yesterday evening and i came across this durian stall with the banner saying Mastercard/Visa.

By the way, i loss my voice for having too much durians.

Walann......even durian sellers are getting more aggrasive now. This durian stall will accept credit card payment for durians purchased above RM40.00.

But if i were them i take cash loh.

Nothing beats the cold hard cash on hand man.

SCOMI @1.75

Took some position in SCOMI @ 1.75.

Would see it scale up >RM2.00 short term.

Punters take it. Surely >RM2.00 short term.

Little Giant Killer......Aedes

Look at the size of this little creature. Never in my 31years on planet Earth have I met with such a big aedes. I have killed many with my bare hands. But, this one is just incredibly big and look at the long legs.

My wife took this one out with one of her magazine. Lucky thing she killed it otherwise, wonder which one of us in the house would be down with Denggi Fever.

I am still keeping it in a palstic container. Showing it to everyone that came to my house.

I am gonna send it to MPPP(Local Council) or Majlis Kesihatan. Least they could do, is to send some one to fog the place.

Adsense Team Fast Reply & Helpful

Very recently i wanted to change the color of the fonts and add more Adsense adds on my blog. I could not do it via blogger. It was due to an email that came the very first time from Adsense enquiring whether or not I continue to allow blogger.com to manage my adsense account.

I denied access to allow blogger.com and from then onwards I could not add or change any of my Adsense that was posted. I could not change the font colors nor place more Adsense.

I email the Adsense support team about my problem and can you believe it they replied within hours. Man, this is a company that handles millions of adsense accounts.

And the best part is, I found the way to reinstall or to allow blogger.com to manage my Adsense account.

I just have to login to my Adssense account and from there I can click to allow blogger access to manage Adsense on my blog.

Darn me. Easy peasy settled.

Any of you guys out there have this problem? Please do let me know. I can guide you.

Speak of the Devil.....Guocoland

Today Guoco added 0.17sen holding on strong till the end of the morning session.

It surprises me, did not expect it to move so fast.

Quick bucks.

Stock market today.......BURSA MALAYSIA

Tale a look at GUOCOLAND@2.8+-.

Foreign investors are picking it up.

One of the strongholds of HongLeongGroup.

Unlucky Kampung......Tanjung Tokong

Kampung Tanjung Tokong have been hit again. This time a fiery fire swipe 11 wooden houses leaving 150 families homeless.

This kampung was struck by Tsunami not long ago. If i can still recall the road fronting house was swipe by Tsunami not long go and now few years after they have rebuilt their houses this fire struck.

The fire broke out at around noon causing massive traffice jams. The whole stretch of Jalan Tanjung Tokong was on a slow crawl.

Affecting also the Vale of Temp Road to a 20 minutes jam.

This lead me to believe that this kampung is really unlucky.

Bad fengshui maybe?

Real Madrid or Barcelona or Sevilla

This weekend we'll know who will take the Laliga.

My wager's on Real Madrid.

Any of you guys think otherwise?

New office environment

Arggghhh.......too many things to do. Especially with my three new staff. Trainning, job function, product knowledge hahhhhh the usuals.

Miss out on so many things to write. Wonder if I can still recall those interesting things i wanted to write about.

I wrote something on 'Employees market' because i was so frustated at those interviewees now I have to swallow it up. Erghhh i guess not...........that is the reality nowadays so i'll stick to that. Just that, now i finally found the right people.

What a relief, the office is back to its usual function. My only headache is i do not have enough sittings for the new load of people.

Haha.....thats the result of bad planning? I leave it to you guys to ponder. Just that over the candidates that came in for the interviews. I found the people i wanted to work with. You know...you just feel it "yup this is the guy i want" sort of feeling. So i just took them in and now not enough table and chairs.

Trying to revamp my bizness site

Been trying to revamp my bizness website for quite sometime liaoo. Hopefully this time i can get it right.

I am getting some help from Dragonhead of http://www.project010.net and most probably will move my hosting to http://www.exabytes.com.

Thanks, Dragonhead for poping by my office.

And for those who have not registered for the Nuffnang do in Foodloft, Gurney Plaza this coming 23rd June. Please contact http://www.nuffnang.com or www.project010.net for further details.

See you guys there.

Hattrick for NADAL, French Open '07

Haha.....Federer just cannot take on Nadal on the clay. This prove that Nadal is much fitter player. At 21, more to come from this Champ. The power and speed of the game is really crazy when this two players meet.

Haha.......Old Glory

I was waiting for some customers to come make payment late one day in the office. Browsing thru the internet, i got to a point to Google myself. Yes, to Google search my own self. Guess what........

International Badminton Federation 26-FEB-97
Mens Singles Ranking
Ranking Date 25-FEB-97
(Reformatted and reissued by NEW SHUTTLENWS)

Pos Id Surname First Name Ctry Comps Points
1 207 HOYER-LARSEN Poul-Erik DEN 14 285.31
2 511 SIDEK Rashid MAS 9 280.67
3 541 SUPRIANTO Joko INA 7 274.65
4 4971 SUN Jun CHN 9 269.48
5 3268 WIJAYA Indra INA 9 265.70
6 437 PERMADI Fung TPE 10 263.98
7 3150 ONG Ewe Hock MAS 10 261.87
8 1333 STUER-LAURIDSEN Thomas DEN 12 258.33
9 4367 SANTOSO Budi INA 9 235.53
10 6926 GADE CHRISTENSEN Peter DEN 10 233.15

219 2033 LEWIS Geraint WAL 3 16.49
220 8393 CHIEN Yu-Shiu TPE 2 16.44
221 10325 FELIX Ooi MAS 5 16.40
222 6907 HARIONO Guntur INA 2 16.31
223 4091 WAPP Stephan SUI 4 16.15

I found my old IBF ranking list.

As you can see, Feb,97 my ranking was 221.

If I m not mistaken my higest WORLD IBF ranking was No 76.

Just before both my knee caps dislocated.

GOLD RUSH

Gold may touch $1000: JP Morgan

Bloomberg / Mumbai June 08, 2007



Gold may rise to more than $1,000 an ounce as demand from India, China and exchange traded funds increases and production of precious metal falls, according to JP Morgan Chase & Co., the third-largest US bank.

Gold, which has risen 5.2 per cent this year, may reach $850 an ounce in the “medium term,’’ on the way to $1,000, analysts from JP Morgan led by John Bridges said in the report dated June 6. They didn’t specify what the medium term was.

Gold-mining companies reduced output to a 10-year low of 2,471 metric tons in 2006, according to London-based researcher GFMS Ltd. Demand for gold from India, the world’s largest buyer, rose 50 percent in the first quarter of 2007 while demand in China gained 31 percent, according to the World Gold Council.

“We would continue accumulating gold and silver positions looking to higher prices by year-end,’’ the analysts said. “A four-figure gold price looks quite feasible to us given the tight supply demand situation in the gold market.’’

Gold for immediate delivery fell as much as $1.30, or 0.2 percent, to $669.45 an ounce and traded at $670 at 11:56 am Sydney time. Silver for immediate delivery fell 1 cent to $13.69 an ounce.

Demand from this year’s Indian wedding season, the Chinese year of the ‘Golden Pig,’ and purchases by exchange traded funds may boost prices, the analysts led by Bridges said in the report.

The Orient's Voice

HP OFFICEJETPRO L7580

Latest release from Hewlett Packard.

Suitable for SOHO 4-in-1 print,scan,fax,copy.

Fastest inkjet printer 33ppm.

I m giving this out for RM 1100.00.

Brand new.

Market price rm1299.00.

Anyone interested please email me at felixooi@gmail.com.

This is not an auction. This is a one time offer price.

Free delivery Peninsular Malaysia only.

Blogging is HOT!!!!!!!in Malaysia and around the world

Blogging is really turning into a trend now. You can see from the newspapers more and more webhosting companies are advertising their hosting plan with promos now. From blogging i can see the new internet era is coming back.

I'll be thinking of upgrading my business website to a more dynamic one. Now i am using a static website hosted by YEAHHOST. Check out http://www.recycsys.com its not really complete yet, but u guys will know what my other businesses are.

I will most likely switch my hosting to EXABYTES soon.

If blogging can really churn in a second income i foresee more and more SOHO will pop up.
I intend to promote more SOHO products in my blog soon.

Look out for more SOHO promos coming soon from HP, CANON, BROTHERS, OKI, SAMSUNG...etc

Employees Market

I have two post to fill in my office. We ran an ad for interviews today and tomorrow. More than 20 enquiries via phone. Can you imagine, these prospects actually interview me instead on the phone. Asking me "what do you do?, what is the working hour?, how much are you offering?".

I mean, they should come for the interview to know the company better rather than just asking me via the phone. Waited whole day, none turn up.

What have the market turned into?

Its called "The Employees Market"

They play the rule, they play the game.............heck some even have 3 jobs at one time.

Mr Trump said "You're FIRED!"

Money is a problem...money is a problem not!

Show me the MONEYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Money, money, money everywhere you go you here money. Why is money giving so much headache or even heartache in our daily life.

Huh.....without it we are non-existance.

So where to get fast or easy money!!!!!Credit cards are easily available, Small credit loans, Loansharks. Nowadays people tend to spend more than they earned.

Money do not fall from the sky. I know just type 'MONEY' on GOOGLE SEARCH and you get long list of sites relating to money. Out of that long list, which is real, which is SCAM. Becareful not to fall into the trap of online scammers, Get Rich Quick Schemes or even a product that requires several purchases to complete the total plan/solution.

Word of advise.......YOU yes YOU make what you are worth.

Massive traffic.....kings birthday....Daulat Tuanku

Yesterday was a very busy day on the road. Most of the time wasted waiting in long ques. It was a school holiday, weekend and a public holiday. All add together we get a massive traffic problem on the Penang Island.

My wifey and I were on our way to Queensbay Mall from Tanjung Bungah. Our fisrt encounter with heavy traffic was at Island Plaza junction. The next problem come as we arrived near Gurney Drive. Took us 20mins to get out of the traffic.

As we were approaching Queensbay, lots and lots of cars coming from the Penang Bridge heading towards the Airport direction. I told my wife "Not againnnnnn!!!!" but we were lucky to get a parking space as soon as we arrived.

Mannn.....after all the car traffic problem. Now we got a human traffic problem. I just could not believe it. The crowd is just crazy.

After 3 hours of shopping, we are on our journey back, traffic was so smooth as it was already dinner time. Traffic on the opposite direction heading toward town along Mount Erskine was bad. So, we decided to head for Batu Feringhi for dinner. Traffic again was smooth. Not till when we call it a day, the cars heading towards Batu Feringhi is just crazy.

We were just lucky to be on the opposite flow of the massive jam. People head to town for dinner, we head to Batu Feringhi, as we left Batu Feringhi on our way home the traffic is heading towards Batu Feringhi.

Pheeewwwwww!!!!!!!!

Hot Head Drivers.

I was in a car driven by my friend this afternoon heading for lunch. As we were coming out from a junction, the traffic was heavy, my friend squeezed his way out of the junction and the on coming car were coming non-stop that time.

He was so furious at this particular car that did not give way for us to come out. He chased that car, which i can see the driver and may be his wife and a little kid, chasing in a crazy manner as we got close, boy, I tell you really close almost touch the back of the car. In the end, that driver was smart enough to avoid further confrontation, he droved into a bank, i can tell you, it is to avoid us.

I was so embarassed by his action that i took up my handphone pretending to shy my face away from nearby vehicles. It came as a surprise to me, i never expect him to react in such a manner.

Moral of the story is...........a person can be very polite and soft spoken when they talk but if we step on its tail wowwwwww. NEVER JUDGE A PERSON BY ITS COVER.

Warren Buffet....and his LIFE

A very meaningful summary from Warren Buffet interview

There was a one hour interview on CNBC with Warren Buffet, the second richest man who has donated $31 billion to charity. Here are some very interesting aspects of his life:
1. He bought his first share at age 11 and he now regrets that he started too late!
2. He bought a small farm at age 14 with savings from deliveringnewspapers.
3. He still lives in the same small 3-bedroom house in mid-town Omaha , that he bought after he got married 50 years ago. He says that he has everything he needs in that house. His house does not have a wall or afence.
4. He drives his own car everywhere and does not have a driver or securitypeople around him. 5. He never travels by private jet, although he owns the world's largestprivate jet company.
6. His company, Berkshire Hathaway, owns 63 companies. He writes only one letter each year to the CEOs of these companies, giving them goals> for the year. He never holds meetings or calls them on a regular basis. He has given his CEO's only two rules. Rule number 1: do not lose any of your share holder's money. Rule number 2: Do not forget rule number 1.
7. He does not socialize with the high society crowd. His past time after he gets home is to make himself some pop corn and watch Television.
8. Bill Gates, the world's richest man met him for the first time only 5years ago. Bill Gates did not think he had anything in common with WarrenBuffet. So he had scheduled his meeting only for half hour. But when Gates met him, the meeting lasted for ten hours and Bill Gates became a devotee of
Warren Buffet.
9. Warren Buffet does not carry a cell phone, nor has a computer on his desk.
His advice to young people "Stay away from credit cards and invest in yourself Remember:
A. Money doesn't create man but it is the man who created money.
B. Live your life as simple as you are.
C. Don't do what others say, just listen them, but do what you feel good.
D. Don't go on brand name; just wear those things in which u feel comfortable.
E. Don't waste your money on unnecessary things; just spend on them who really in need rather.
F. After all it's your life then why give chance to others to rule ourlife.

Blogging for big bucks article in the local daily.

I thought i share with everyone.

Blogging and big bucks
By CHRISTY LEE S.W.
The appearance of blog-advertising agencies is giving Malaysian bloggers a chance to cash in through online advertising. Bloggers share their thoughts on this new development.
According to a March survey on advertising expenditure by media services group ZenithOptimedia, Internet ad spending (adspend) is predicted to grow at 28.2% this year, seven times more than the rest of the market at 3.7%.
Advertising agencies are expected to spend about US$445bil (RM1.56 trillion) this year and about US$495bil (RM1.73 trillion) in 2009.
In the same timeframe, Internet adspend would grow from 7% to 8.7%, while newspaper adspend will drop from 28.3% to 27%, the report said.

NEW VENTURE: Tiah (right) and Cheo, founders of Nuffnang, a local company that puts up advertisements on homegrown blogs.With more people turning to the Internet for all sorts of information, news and services, it is no big surprise that advertisers are also eyeing the online space.
Typically, businesses place ads on professionally-developed content websites with high traffic, such as news portals.
Nowadays, advertisers are also keen to tap into a previously unexplored domain of self-published content sites – blogs.
Though blogs may attract a lot less web traffic than an online news portal but as long as there are viewers for blogs, it becomes a valid medium for advertising.
For bloggers, putting up ads on their blogs would seem like a nifty way to earn some pocket money through user-created content.
A new way to advertise
Timothy Tiah Ewe Tiam, 24, is one of the bloggers who thought he could earn some money through blogging during his varsity years in Britain.
When he and a friend ran a humour-themed blog several years ago, it became quite popular, and they used the advertising system AdSense by Google.
"Our earnings were low and Google made you wait till your account generated US$100 (RM350) before you could start cashing out. We waited forever to get anything out of it," Tiah said.
"So much for wanting to make a fortune from online advertisements," he mused.
When Tiah graduated, he teamed up with Cheo Ming Shen, to set up Nuffnang Sdn Bhd (www.nuffnang.com.my) – a blog-advertising community, the first of its kind in Malaysia.
If you're wondering why it's called Nuffnang; the name comes from a quirky combination of two slang words (spoken in inner city London) meaning "real good" or "real cool", according to Tiah.
Basically, Nuffnang enables local businesses to put up advertisements on homegrown blogs, and for bloggers to make some money off ads from their self-published sites.
"We saw that there was no system here that enables local companies to reach out to the blogging community – advertising on traditional media is very costly and the cheaper method of passing flyers is not effective," said Tiah.
Another advantage of blog-advertising is that it has a more specific audience which advertisers can target for more effective promotions of products, said Josh Lim, director of Josh Lim and Associates.

THE COMPETITOR: Lim (second from left) together with the Advertlets.com team. Wong (first from left) is the owner of the kinkybluefairy blog. Lim’s company deals with blog-advertising and is the direct competitor of Nuffnang.A month after Nuffnang's opening in February this year, Lim's company set up a similar community called Advertlets (www.advertlets.com) – a play on the words advertising and alerts.
"There's no point paying a lot to put up an online banner ad on a major website when it is not relevant to half its visitors," Lim said.
"Knowing that each blog has its own demographic allows advertisers to put up more relevant ads," he said.
Both sites generally offer a similar type of service and features. Both systems also work almost the same way.
Being in direct competition with each other, these two agencies have been diligently improving their offerings to best each other – much to the benefit of our local blogosphere.
While talking to members of the local blogosphere, In.Tech also discovered that bloggers have their own favourites.
At press time, Nuffnang reports to have over 20 million ad impressions monthly (every time an ad loads on a blog) while Advertlets currently has close to three million.
How it works
Basically, bloggers who sign up are asked to provide some initial data through a survey, which the blog-advertising system will analyse to create a profile of the blog.
Tiah believes that asking a blogger himself is an accurate way of finding out what his blog is about and who its visitors are.
"Bloggers know their readers best, and we believe they will tell the truth," he said.
However, these blogs must first have a certain average of unique visitors a day.
For Nuffnang, a blog needs to have at least 20 unique visitors per day, while Advertlets requires 50.
If a blog is deemed ripe for advertising, it will be put on the waiting list for advertisers.
A potential advertiser will then specify its budget and target demographics, while the blog-advertising system looks up blogs that match the advertiser's requirements.
Once the agencies get a nod of approval from both advertiser and blogger, an ad campaign would be created and the ad would appear in selected blogs.
Blogs would be grouped into different "bands" depending on the average number of unique visitors it had received a week ago, said Tiah of Nuffang's system.

BE SPECIFIC: A specific blog that has high traffic of above 4,000 unique visitors a day can net the owner RM5,000 to RM10,000 a month, says Davies."The higher the blog is on the band, the more money it can earn per ad campaign," he said.
Once a blogger has generated at least RM100 in earnings, he will be given the option to cash out.
A cheque would automatically be generated and delivered to the blogger, said Tiah.
Tiah said that in future, Nuffnang would be introducing more advertising models, such as pay-per-click and cost-per-action. Lim said Advertlets would also do the same.
When asked by In.Tech, both Nuffnang and Advertlets refused to disclose how their systems would actually calculate these earnings.
Joyce Wong, 24, owner of the blog titled "kinkybluefairy" (www.xanga.com/kinkybluefairy), modestly admitted that her blog earnings are slightly above RM1,000 – from running two ad campaigns by Advertlets in a month.
Her blog receives an average of 2,500 unique visitors a day, she said. "Seeing that this type of blog-advertising is still new here, it is more than I expected," Wong said.
Lillian Chan, who owns www.5xmom.com, wrote on her site that she earns three-digit figures per week from running Nuffnang ads on one of her personal blogs, which receives almost 3,000 unique visitors a day.
Gareth Davies, 29, who owns ShaolinTiger – Kung-Fu Geekery (www.shaolintiger.com), said his blog recorded around RM300 earnings this month from running Nuffnang ads.
He said his blog had an average of 800 unique visitors a day in that month.
Big bucks in niche blogs
One would think that a blog like Screenshots (www.jeffooi.com), one of the most visited sites in Malaysia, would be raking in thousands of ringgit a month from its ads.
However, its owner, Jeff Ooi told In.Tech that the Google ads on his blog only brings in about US$150-US$200 (RM525-RM700) a month, which is mostly used to pay off its webhosting fees.
Ooi uses AdSense, a contextual advertising system by Google.
Though Google AdSense is commonly used by bloggers, it is not suitable for every type of blog, according to Gareth Davies.
AdSense works by analysing what a site or blog is about and automatically generates contextually relevant ads from a database of advertisers.
The system would then calculate earnings based on several advertising models, including:
If a site or blog contains various subjects from travel to technology, the ads generated would be less relevant compared to a blog that talks about one subject in particular, Davies said.
"Only bloggers who write about very specific topics can use AdSense because the ads generated would be consistent and relevant to the content," Davies said.
Relevant ads means visitors would be more likely to click on them, which generates money for the blogger through the pay-per-click model.
"A specific blog that has high traffic (above 4,000 unique visitors a day) can net the owner about RM5,000 to RM10,000 or more a month," Davies said.
On the contrary, non-specific blogs – even if they have high traffic – would not benefit from the system.
A "general" blog with a fairly decent amount of traffic (around 1,000-2,000 unique views per day) would only generate earnings of around US$30-US$40 (RM105-RM140) a month, Davies said.
Fortunately, the new advertising model by agencies like Nuffnang and Advertlets is excellent for these type of blogs, which make up most of the blogosphere here, said Davies.
"Also, the ads are very localised, so Malaysian visitors would likely click on it as it is relevant to them," said Davies.
According to an online survey conducted by Microsoft MSN in November last year, 74% of Malaysian bloggers said they have no particular agenda for writing their blogs.
However, the big money is still in blogs that talk about specific subjects.
"Some of these bloggers who blog for a living own five or six blogs on different subjects – with each bringing in about several thousand a month, they can earn a cumulative of RM20,000 to RM30,000 monthly," Davies said.
In addition, full-time bloggers could also get paid for sponsored reviews. By signing up their blogs on ReviewMe.com (www.reviewme.com), advertisers could hire them to write reviews for a price, Davies said.
Another way these bloggers earn their keep is through TextLinkAds (www.text-link-ads.com), where bloggers sell the space in their blog posts for advertisers to put up their text links.
For the sake of money
Owner of the Fird's Domain blog, (http://fird.kucing-kelabu.com) who only wants to be known as Fird, says he has sometimes thinks about becoming a full-time blogger, because of how lucrative it has become.
He thinks blog-advertising is a double-edged sword.
"Sometimes I find that those bloggers who earn money from advertising tend to overdo it," said the 25-year-old technical support staff who works for a multinational company. "You can see that some of them focus so much on advertising efficiency that they clutter their blogs with affiliate links and ads everywhere – in the end it becomes almost impossible to read the actual content," he said.
And then there is the problem of splogs, or spam blogs, which are artificial sites created just to promote other websites.
Sometimes, creators of these splogs even copy content from other sites to be republished as their own posts.
"Most people won't complain if you make money from your own blog, so as long as you don't annoy other bloggers by advertising your blogs on their personal sites," Davies said.
Wong (of kinkybluefairy) agrees.
"Blogging for money is fine, it's just like publishing content in a magazine which you can sell,"
"When it comes to blogging, people can see whether you are writing sincerely or just doing it for the sake of money," she said.
Wong believes if a blog does not have good content, it will eventually lose its viewers anyway.
"However, even if a blog is bad, if it has posts containing keywords it will still show up in search engines," Fird said.
"People will go to the site and it will still get hits in the end," he added.
To blog or not to blog
According to Davies, who holds a day job in IT security, online advertising is still not very mature in Malaysia – and blog-advertising is only a small part of it currently.
"Online advertising is already big in North America, but it is still very new in Malaysia as we have yet to cultivate a habit of purchasing products online," said Ooi (of Screenshots), who works as an Internet and e-business consultant.
"There is almost a complete lack of e-commerce here," Davies added. He said that during his time in Britain, he did almost all of his shopping online, except for when he was buying clothes.
Davies added that it also does not help that Malaysia is blacklisted in certain countries as a hub for credit card fraud.
"It is a cultural thing in Asia, where people need to see and touch a product before they purchase it," said Ooi.
For now, Ooi believes that advertising will still mostly be led by the mainstream media, such as newspapers.
"Print media will still be in command and that would be followed by electronic media, while online advertising has a huge curb to climb, particularly in Malaysia," he said.
"Most local advertising agencies have not really understood the dynamics of online advertising," Ooi said. Davies agrees.
"Global companies such as Sony, LG and Intel already know the value and have started to invest in online and blog-advertising, but the local companies are still generally set with print ads," Davies said.
Perhaps this is also because, unlike traditional media, there are no reliable ways to measure the effectiveness of an ad campaigns in blogs or to even verify if a blog has as much traffic as it claims, Ooi said.
"Businesses confidently advertise in traditional media because there are reliable statistics that calculate the cost and effectiveness of it, which blogs currently do not have,"
Ooi believes the situation would improve when the Audit Bureau of Circulations Malaysia launches an audit process for websites at the end of the year, which it announced during its "Lie Detector" campaign in March 8.
However, he believes that in Malaysia, traditional print media will still command the majority of advertising budgets.
In the ZenithOptimedia survey mentioned earlier, even though Internet adspend is growing at a fast rate globally, television, newspapers and magazines will still make up the largest piece of the pie for several years to come.
For the next five years at least, Ooi does not expect that blog-advertising in Malaysia would take off in a really massive way.
"Bloggers could probably earn some decent pocket money from it, but it might not pay the bills well enough for them to quit their day job," he said.
Despite this, Ooi said he would still give local blog-advertising agency Nuffnang a try and even put up one of their ads on his blog.
"They're the aggregators of online advertisement, and I'd like to support the industry so that it may grow," Ooi said.

Vincent Chow's blog.....Paypal and VMI card

After finishing my article on Paypal. I came across Vincent Chow's blog. There happened to have an article on Paypal having a payment glitch to Malaysians account.

There are also alternatives ways to withdraw from Paypal. VMI card or Virtual Money Card to withdraw money from atm machines. But i believed there will be some charges or fees on it.

pAYpaL..........

Malaysia where I am right now do not have any facility to withdraw FUNDS from Paypal. I'd read about how some Malaysians go about to get the FUNDS back into cold hard cash. It seems very troublesome. One of the way is to get a good friend in Singapore to open an account with Maybank. What we can do is to transfer the amount to paypal under your friend's name and ask him/her to transfer it via Maybank to your account back in Malaysia.

I mean, how many of us have friends in Singapore not to think whether they are trustworthy or not. Pheew.......

I am waiting for a friend of mine to come back from overseas. He's a GURU/SIFU in HYIP. I believe he's got a plan.

There's an article in the local newspaper today about Banks clearing cheques in half day rather than the 3 working days period. Local and outstation as well. That is a new development. I used to received US cheques and it takes 6 weeks to clear with high commission too.

I want to get this all right before I am ready to go deeply into blogging for money or monetize my blog. Some bloggers do make some crazy income from just blogging or rather internet marketing.

I have activated my GOOGLE ADSENSE account on my blog. Hope to see some result from it.

Cant wait for PAYPAL to allow us Malaysians to cash out from our own local banks$$$$.

FLASH POSTING

AC MILAN 2-1 LIVERPOOL

New American Idol........Jordin Sparks

One Starbucks Coffee on me. Darn i lose a cuppa.

Good for her...she's really good.

The last song on the final is just simply.....no words can describe...can you imagine from a 17years old.

The American Idols franchise is really making tonnes of money. Not only for themself they do it for charity as well. Over USD70mil were collected over the charity drive.

Simon Cowell, Randy Jackson and Paula Abdul two tumbs up for you guys.

Champions League Finals '07

VS
My heart goes for Liverpool because they are from my favourite league. But....I put my money on AC MILAN.

Look at the the Italian trashed MU in the semis, no doubt they are a much balanced side.

American Idol........Jordin vs Blake

American Idols final day.

Who will it be? Is it gonna be the sweet and big Jordin or the boyband Blake.

My wife picked Jordin, I picked Blake. We bet on a cuppa Starbucks.

Adsense Activation

After just blogging for the past few days. I came across many many sites/blogs promoting Internet Marketing/Online business making money via websites thru Google Adsense and many more.

So, out of curiousity I applied for Adsense for my blog. Hoping...maybe I am able to get some side income out of it or even make a permanent income from it.

Some pioneers are already making good incomes monthly. The figures are really crazy.

Well cant wait to get my Adsense activation...........waiting for Adsense to get back to me.

Counterfeit Printer Cartridges

Well Malaysia is really famous at this trade.

Counterfeiting DVDS, VCDS, BRANDED CLOTHES and now PRINTER CARTRIDGES.

http://www.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2007/5/19/nation/17766911&sec=nation

Cartridge Re-manufacturers have been in Malaysia for a long time. This re-manufacturers normally sell Reman cartridges at 50% the original price.

Preaching Environment Friendly Issues as their prioritites.

Now, it seems their priorities have change. International traders are actually buying the Reman cartridges from Malaysia. It seems the Reman cartridges produce here are of better Quality so good that they could match the Original Quality.

I personally know of a friend, who has been in this trade for more than 16 years.
http://www.recycsys.com

Malaysia Boleh!!!

Gold Savvy

Those GOLD investors out there.

You are are ON for a good time.

Check out this news i got from a fellow investor from Australia.


NEW YORK (Reuters) - Gold prices could trade above $2,000 per ounce in 2010, possibly reaching $5,000, Robert McEwen, chairman and chief executive of Canada-based U.S. Gold Corp. (UXG.A: Quote, Profile, Research (UXG.TO: Quote, Profile, Research, said on Tuesday.
"I expect it to test $850 by the end of 2008, and by the end of 2010, north of $2,000, possibly $5,000," McEwen told Reuters in an interview.
That price is well above the current spot gold price of $669 per ounce. Gold prices have been rising toward the May 2006 peak of $714 in recent weeks, but have failed to break above the $700 mark this year after the sharp run-up in prices last year.
McEwen, who formerly served as chairman of Goldcorp Inc. (G.TO: Quote, Profile, Research, said although demand from jewelry makers would likely drop off as gold prices rise, buying by investors who are seeking a liquid investment would be the driving force.
Reuters Pictures

Editors Choice: Best picturesfrom the last 24 hours.View Slideshow
if(!CMSB_ID){var CMSB_ID=""} CMSB_ID+="051707_MIDART_editorschoice,";document.write('');
That expected investment demand, coupled with rising costs to mine gold and political risk around the globe, should tighten the supply and demand picture for the precious metal.
Among the risks to production are the likelihood that governments will seek to increase taxes on mining operations as prices surge, similar to the measures some nations have instituted on their oil and natural gas concessions, he said.
"You're going to have excess profit taxes coming out of the woodwork," he said.
McEwen's U.S. Gold Corp. is currently operating five drilling rigs on land adjacent to Newmont Mining Corp's (NEM.N: Quote, Profile, Research sites in Nevada. The company expects to spend about $50 million to develop the site over the coming years

hahaha.......found it!!!!!!!SETHGODIN'S BLOG

Went thru GOOGLE SEARCH found Seth's blog.

Loads of info on "How to get traffic to your blog?"
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2006/06/how_to_get_traf.html

I need sometime though to go thru all those recommended steps. Kinda Lazy right now after a long and busy day and since it is midnight right now. Especially after my wife pour me some XO Hennessy.

I gotta go get BUSYYYYYY.

*@#$%&

Now that I have a blog, how do I get people to come to my blog.

Eeeeyer......headache.

Got to go searching for HELP over the WWW.

Anyone out there, read of my problem please HELP.

Election Fever

The BN election units are working round the clock. Mobilising all represetatives to get down to groundroots and start working. Sure sign of election around the corner.

Some fellow bloggers are commenting on whether to continue support the ruling coalition party. In my humble opinion, BN will still RULE Malaysia for sometime to come. Even with all the allegations of corruptions and cronisms. Like it or not, if we do not have the Financial Fredom to move around the Globe why bother just vote for the Party you think is right at your Heart.

HAHAHAHA.......like all chinese would say.............."what to do?"

My Dear Tun Dr Mahathir

NST Online » NewsBreak2007/05/15
Tun Dr Mahathir Flown to IJN.BERNAMA

Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamed, who was admitted to the Langkawi Hospital Langkawi yesterday after complaining of breathing difficulty, was flown to Kuala Lumpur on a special aircraft today for further treatment at the National Heart Institute (IJN).
His press officer, Sufi Yusoff, said the former prime minister had responded positively to the treatment provided by a group of doctors from IJN and the Langkawi and Alor Star hospitals. “The doctors were satisfied with his positive response and as such, he could be transferred to the IJN.” Sufi said.

Malaysia in Badminton

Wowwwww!!!!!!LEE CHONG WEI a local boy from Bukit Mertajam, Penang, has done it again. He was a very small chap thin not so tall when he was younger. Look at him now tall and as tricky with his shots as always. Glad to know our players are no longer "JUARA KAMPUNG".

As for our doubles, KOO/TAN they seem to lose what they are there for. They thought they have the opponents at their finger tips. Still as fast and sharp but they tend to be very cautious with their shots now and dont seem to attack as much. At times playing too many tricky shots trying to fool the opponents. Those are signs of BIG HEADED.

Zakry/Tazari they seem out of place in the Indonesian Open Finals. Personally, I think they are lucky too have qualified to the finals even to beat some of the big names I still think they are LUCKY.

Anyways BRAVOOOO to Misbun and Rexy. I see Pang Cheh Chang was there too with Rexy in Indonesia Open.

Life Focus

Today I decided to start a blog. Hoping to release myself from the daily work stress. Running your own bizness can be really stressful........sales not up to mark.........chasing payment from customers........late delivery of raw material............machine down........grrrrrrr.

Went into stock/equity market get myself some xcitement from the BULLS AND BEARS of Bursa Malaysia and Sgx. Make tonnes of money as an avid investor.

The xtra money from stock market are pumped back into bizness to expand. Now both worlds are equal. Stress is still there equals with the adrenaline rush u get from the stocks market will make my life shorter, but what the heck Life is Too Short to Live anyways.