Looking Ahead - 13 Years & Counting

The girls will be 5 this coming October which gives me approximately 13 years to save up for their tertiary education assuming of course that 1. they qualify and 2. they actually want to do it. 13 years is actually not a long time and the girls being twins do not make things any easier.

But still, this was what I signed up for when we decided to have kids and hopefully I won't let them down when the time comes. I have never given much thought on how my parents managed to give me a tertiary education prior to this despite our obvious penury but believe me I am thinking about it a lot.

Perhaps if it were not to much to ask, my only hope is that the government would have by then scrapped the discriminatory policies currently being employed in Malaysia. Perhaps by then the girls just may qualify for a place in a local university based on merits, but then again I am not holding my breath.

CleanApp

I found this helpful application while browsing online. Basically it removes a program and all the files that came with it including logfiles, plists and caches cluttering folders and volumes on your Mac

After running it I must say that I am impressed. Believe it or not it has somehow sped things up on my old but still reliable Powerbook G4. Well worth the money. 5 stars

What Did You Say To Me?

If you ever go down to Kuantan, you will find this stationery shop right in the middle of town. The stand out feature of this shop (to me at least) is the name. It's a typical Malaysian-style stationery shop run by a typical Chinese boss i.e. it is a stationery shop which also sells sports equipment. And if you look hard enough you will probably find the apparatus which does the 'wiring' of badminton rackets/racquets hidden in the corner

Any kid from any small Malaysian town will know what I am talking about. There used to be more of these shops around but I suspect that they are a dying breed. I hope I am wrong though.

Anyway if you take a good look at the top right hand corner of the picture, you will notice A&A Hotel which is open 24 hours. Personally I wouldn't want to stay in a hotel that opens for less than 24 hours, but that's just me

Kungfu Panda

The kids were hugely disappointed today as we promised them a day at the cinema but failed to get the necessary tickets. So the next best thing was to get them some figurines of the characters (thank you Ronald McD) of the movie as a stop gap measure and this was what they came up with : colour penciled background. Not much, but at least they were occupied.

Esok kita cuba lagi!

Petrol Price Hike

From Paultan.org

No word at the moment on how much Shell V-Power will cost. The new price of RM2.70 includes a 30 sen government subsidy from what the Prime Minister says is a market price of RM3.00 per liter.

The government will be giving an additional subsidy of RM625 a year for cars with engine displacements 2000cc and below liters (joy for Mercedes-Benz C200K and E200K owners with their 1.8 liter engines, I suppose), and pick-up trucks with engine capacities up to 2,500cc. Motorcycles under 250cc will get a subsidy of RM150 per year. RM625 is said to be an equivalent of 800 liters a year, which is roughly 78 sen per liter.

Basically for the first 800 liters of fuel used per year, you’ll still be paying the old price of RM1.92 per liter. 66 liters per month is the equivalent of nearly 2 full tanks for a small compact car, or just over 1 full tank for a typical sedan. Payment of the subsidy will be made via postal order to be issued when you renew your car’s road tax annually.

For cars with engine displacement of 2000cc and below, road tax will also be slashed by RM200. I suppose this would mean no road tax for those who are currently paying a road tax of less than RM200 a year for their vehicle. Motorcycles above 250cc will have their road tax slashed by RM50.

These changes are only temporary. As mentioned by Datuk Shahrir Samad yesterday, this will only be step one in the final plan in restructuring the way we purchase fuel in our country. These prices are still controlled prices - future prices will be a floating market rate that is not capped by the government.

The government will be moving towards abolishment of the fuel subsidy in the future, so we’d better just get used to these new prices.

The following is the new prices of petrol effective from midnight tonight:

New Price Old Price
RON97 Petrol RM2.70 per liter RM1.92 per liter
RON92 Petrol RM2.62 per liter RM1.88 per liter
Diesel RM2.58 per liter RM1.58 per liter