On 21st April 2007, The Star reported that local megastar Mawi have descended on Ijok to make the campaign of the Ijok by-election a carnival-like atmosphere.

However, he has been overshadowed by the unexpected appearance, or rather reappearance of legendary Tamil actor MG Ramachandran (MGR) on Thursday night. The real MGR died in 1987 but impersonator M.G. Lakshmanan made sure he lived on to share the stage with none other than MIC president, Datuk Seri S. Samy Vellu.

The real MGR

MGR (1917-1987) was one of the biggest celebrities in Tamil cinema from the late 40s to early 70s. In 1977 he became the chief minister of Tamil Nadu, a state in India, and remained so until his death.

Now I know Samy Vellu’s favourite songs, for he sang 2 oldie numbers – Aacham Enpathu Madamaiyada (It is stupid to fear challenge) & Aganthamam Un Malaiyum.

MGR resurrected 20 years after his death, on far right. sharing the stage with Samy Vellu

source 

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If you could avoid it, never straight away talk to a salesman. And definitely no impulse buying! I should’ve known better, I ended up buying a below-par digicam back in September.

I helped 2 friends in KL a few days ago with their notebook purchases. I would apply the same method when buying anything (not just IT related things):

1. Decide what is your budget, and how much more than that you’re willing to stretch. In this case, the friend’s budget was RM2,500, but he was willing to go up to RM2,700;
2. Get as many quotations as possible, but not too many that it might get you more confused. We got 12 from Low Yat, although in hindsight, 5-6 would’ve been plenty;
3. Get out of the building, go somewhere to do your homework. We went to Coffee Bean on the ground floor;
4. List out the minimum spec you’re willing to live with; sometimes you have to further trim down your options;
5. Make your shortlist eg, we shortlisted 2 companies listing the same product at the same price i.e. RM2799;
6. Go to all shortlisted companies and see how much more they’re willing to discount, and how many freebies you can get. One company offered RM2680 and 3 freebies: lock, headphones with built-in mike and optical mouse. The other stuck to RM2799 but offered an additional 512MB DDR2 RAM (to make it a total of 1GB DDR2 RAM), plus the same 3 freebies.
7. Make your decision: the friend decided on the former.

Others factors to consider:
- brand – some cheapo ones are not worth it. I saw a brochure for APAQ (if not mistaken) whose prices went down to incredible levels for similar specs with the more established brands.
- local support – easier to fix problems, especially during warranty period. Having said that, local support does not necessarily mean fast. My Acer notebook’s hard disk needed to be changed during the warranty period, and I brought it to Acer’s branch in Sadong Jaya, but still it took them a full month to get me a new notebook.
- Go thru critical reviews – especially ones that compare the notebooks of different make & model at similar price levels.

So how did we do? We got an Aspire 5833 (I cant remember the exact model) for RM2680 (list price RM2799) with 3 freebies. After doing all that, I can safely say that for price range below RM2700, it’s the best notebook money can buy in Malaysia at this point in time. Spec includes the following: Core 2 Duo CPU, 120GB HDD, 512MB DDR2 RAM, card reader, DVD burner, WiFi, Bluetooth. Only thing missing is webcam, but that was the one feature he could live without.
The other friend’s budget is RM2,000 so it’s gonna be definitely lower in specs.

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The 2 dogs are really damn good. Bounty on them increased by people on the dark side to RM50K.

Nowadays, I could not find any pirated DVDs or software at all at Sungei Wang or Low Yat.

But if you really want to find them, there are at least 3 shops in Wangsa Maju still openly selling them. Open till 10pm.

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Saudi Arabia Airlines

Japan Airlines

Air Canada

Air Asia

source: forwarded emails

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From a Jamali Shadat fanatic.

(C) 1974

Video:

Foreword

This is a transcript to jamali Shadat and Hamid Gurkha’s classic comedy “Sains dan Teknologi”. It was originally written on the album sleeve as “Sain dan teknoloji”, and made available on vinyl, although in later years the cassette version was made available, although I have never seen a CD version.

I am of the opinion that this is the only transcript of the subject matter available anywhere.

Time: about 7 minutes

Words in italics or in quotes mean that I am not sure of the actual meaning or pronunciation.

There are more explanation in the footnotes.

Transcribing started May 2006, finally completed (almost 100% accurate) in April 2007, due to part-time nature of work.

You are welcome to distribute this, as long as you mention my email address.

Read the rest of this entry »

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According to Dr Razak Dali, 4th April 2007.

1. MEETING (mesyuarat)
perjumpaan/pertemuan oleh sesuatu badan/persatuan/kumpulan yang terdekat dengan tujuan menyelesaikan beberapa masalah melalui proses perbincangan, dua jenis mesyuarat iaitu:

• taklimat (satu hala sahaja); dan
• mesyuarat jawatankuasa (dua hala) untuk menyelesaikan masalah, mesti ada agenda yang disusun dan perbincangan diadakan secara tersusun dan bertatacara serta dipengerusikan oleh seorang pengerusi mesyuarat, ahli mesyuarat dilantik dan boleh bersuara/memberi pendapat, kehadiran tidak bebas iaitu harus dijemput sama ada sebagai ahli mesyuarat ataupun pemerhati (pemerhati ataupun wakil tidak boleh secara bebas memberi pandangan ataupun memberi cadangan sebab mesti mendapat persetujuan ketua jabatan sebelum dibenarkan membuat sesuatu keputusan yang melibatkan jabatannya) Read the rest of this entry »

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According to Dr Razak Dali, 4th April 2007.

Jika hari ini adalah hari Jumaat,

kelmarin dahulu = day before yesterday = Rabu

kelmarin = yesterday = Khamis

semalam = last night. Ertinya, “semalam” bukan bermaksud “yesterday”, seperti yang disangka oleh ramai orang.

hari ini = today = Jumaat

esok = tomorrow = Sabtu

lusa = day after tomorrow = Ahad

tulat = two days after tomorrow = Isnin

tonggeng = tubin = three days after tomorrow = Selasa

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Useful, and sometimes eye-opening language tips:

Comprehension – kefahaman maksud yang tersurat

Understanding – pengertian maksud yang tersirat

Do not explain something using examples. Examples should only be give in support of the explanation.

Do not gesture with your hands when explaining, otherwise the explanation will come out of your body language instead of your brain.

Visi – nampak (mata) – peringkat falsafah

Misi – perlakuan – what to do / strategy

ialah – mesti diikuti dengan nombor atau kata nama. Kadangkala tidak perlu digunakan langsung.

Contoh:

• Saya isteri Dr Razak. (betul)
• Saya ialah isteri Dr Razak. (betul)

adalah – mesti diikuti oleh sebuah kata sifat atau sebagai penghubung.

Contoh:

• Hadiah ini adalah untuk tetamu. (betul)
• Saya adalah gemuk. (betul)
• Saya ialah gemuk. (salah)

Tidak boleh memulakan ayat dengan “adalah”. Contoh: Adalah saya dengan hormatnya merujuk kepada perkara di atas. (salah)

Gunapakai – X

Tadbirurus – ok

Kuat kuasa – ok

Kuatkuasa – X

Menguatkuasakan – ok

Penguat kuasa – ok

antidadah – ok

anti-Mahathir – ok

se-Malaysia – ok

senggara = selenggara

perlantikan – X

pelantikan – ok

Yang Dipertua – ok

Yang di-Pertuan Agong – ok

berbahaya – ok

merbahaya – X

petender – ok

penender – X

mencintai – ok

menyintai – X

oleh kerana – X

oleh sebab – ok

15 Jalan Mat Salleh – ok

15, Jalan Mat Salleh – X

When listing options, the following is correct:

a. xxxxxxxxx

b. xxxxxxxxx

c. xxxxxxxxx

When listing options, the following is incorrect:
(a) xxxxxxxxx

(b) xxxxxxxxx

(c) xxxxxxxxx

Lampiran 1 – X, because we want to differentiate from the page number format, which uses the same Arabic number

Lampiran I – ok

Lampiran A – ok

Lampiran A1 – ok

Lampiran IA – ok

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Tanda bacaan

Tanda titik (.), tanda soal (?), dan tanda seru (!) sama konsepnya iaitu untuk menutup ayat, selepas tanda ini mesti guna huruf besar.

( ) parentheses/kurungan [bulat] (parentesis) – NOT “brackets”!

[ ] bracket/kurungan siku – NOT “square brackets”!

{ } braces/curly bracket/kurungan dakap

([ ]) dibenarkan dalam penulisan (((([ ]))))

contoh:
Kita daripada pelbagai kaum di Malaysia (Cina, Melayu, India, suku kaum di Sabah (Kadazandusun, Bajau, Murut, dll.) dan suku kaum di Sarawak (Dayak [Iban, Bidayuh], Melanau, dll.)) haruslah hidup dalam suasana aman. Read the rest of this entry »

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These 2 days were spent with Dr Razak Dali, DEd, 62 who’s still the only Malaysian holding a doctorate in reading. Together with his wife, Sharifah Tan Sri Syed Hassan Aidid, they are language consultants to Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka (DBP), public institutions of higher learning and other bodies.We went through the nitty-gritties of academic reading and writing. His teaching style is as irreverent as Zainal’s, but surely with more class. He’s very frank: he said he’s being paid RM400 per hour by INTAN for his services. Hmm… that means about RM6,000 for 2 days’ work. Not bad at all.

It was truly a privilege to spend time with such giants in the national language.

Here are some of the things he said:

• There’s no such thing as a bad book – you dont understand what the author is saying because you dont have prior knowledge of the subject matter. Reading is only effective if information being read can be tied to information that already exists inside the reader’s brain.
• there is no such thing as speed reading – it’s merely a gimmick. You can only read fast (and benefit from it) if you are reading materials which topic is your field of expertise.
• A graduate student should spend their working hours (assuming they’re doing it fulltime): 60% reading, 30% writing, 10% talking (discussion). Reference should be only 30% books (usually based on 10 years’. The majority should be from journals due to its leading-edge nature.

He gave many language tips – he encouraged us to spread them around – they include the following:

Perbezaan antara “sungguhpun” dengan “walaupun/kendatipun/jika”

Sungguhpun – digunakan pada situasi yang sebenarnya berlaku/wujud/nyata.

Walaupun – digunakan pada situasi yang tidak benar/belum berlaku/tidak mungkin berlaku, seerti dengan kendatipun, kalaupun. Contoh ayat: Walaupun hidup seribu tahun kalau tidak sembahyang tiada gunanya.
Read the rest of this entry »

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