Last month, as I usually do while making my way out of Kota Kinabalu International Airport after a business trip (no, I don’t deal in auto parts franchises), I’d stop by one of those duty-free shops in search of chocolates.

That time I decided to buy this:

But when I opened it, the chocolates inside only took the following area:

The taste was ok lah, not spectacular.

Worse, I bought them in a bundle of 4, and cost me RM31+, meaning almost RM8 per box. Supposedly duty-free, locally made, 137g per box of chocs for almost RM8, you think this was reasonably priced?

Can people in Malaysia really spend RM30,000 PER WEEK on 4D lottery tickets? That like RM10K per draw, and equivalent to winning about 10 tickets first prize!

4 months after passing the Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) in February, I went for the EC-Council Certified Security Analyst / Licensed Penetration Tester (ECSA/LPT) course 23-27th June 2008 (you need to pass CEH first before going for ECSA/LPT).

This is the most expensive training I have ever attended, at well over RM7,000 for 5 days.

My instructor was Semi Yulianto, senior technical trainer/ consultant, EC-Council’s Instructor of the Year 2008 for Asia Pacific and a regular feature at hacker conventions in the region. He’s got one of the longest certification lists I have ever seen (23), including MCT, MCSE, MCDBA, CCNP and CHFI.

Semi was born in Pontianak, Kalimantan, Indonesia.

The exam’s held Friday afternoon, takes 2 hours, 50 multiple-choice questions (A to D), online via Internet. Hence if Internet down, can’t take the exam. I passed the exam at 98%.

It seems that EC-Council Phileo Damansara Time.com internet connectivity is rather unstable, some innocuous sites appear to be blocked.

There’s no exam for the LPT, I was informed that I need to pay USD500 (not included in the ECSA training cost, renewable yearly) and submit my CV and letter of confirmation from the police stating I do not have any criminal record to EC-Council USA.

Apparently Malaysia has less than 10 ECSA/LPT practitioners now.

The market rate for LPT work in Malaysia is RM2,000 per day.

For those budding hackers out there, turn your passion into a career. Being a trainer can be a lucrative profession. Semi mentioned that he works 2 weeks a month and gets minimum RM14K per month. If he does other work, that’s extra. Plus he gets to travel frequently to countries in the region.

Spotted at The Gardens at Mid Valley City, Kuala Lumpur, a high-end shopping centre (read: everything is expensive there, hardly any people).

At first glance, there seems to be 2 types of urinal in the men’s public toilet:

But looking closer, the ones on the right are not urinals at all:

Could’ve been easily mistaken for one though, don’t you think?

Therefore, I think these types of sinks should never be installed at places where one would partake of the amber liquid…

Many bloggers have mentioned the second Kota Kinabalu Jazz Festival which was held on the 21st of June 2008 at 1Borneo, that “Largest Lifestyle Hypermall” in Borneo, the 3rd largest island in the world.

It was a great event, and amongst others, the Aseana Percussion Unit showed how to please the crowd. First, get down from the stage and play your instrument among them:

Then take it one step further: give the audience members your instruments, get them up on stage and let them play, in essence let them be temporary bandmembers:

Surefire crowd-winning tactic.

Echoing what others have said, one could’ve seen the concert without even paying anything, and the view from the first floor’s even better than the RM50 seats. Heck, freeloaders had a better view of some of the performers than those in the most expensive seats!

So, for the third festival, you know what to do…

Anyway, on the same level as the concert is surely Kota Kinabalu’s most expensive public toilet, the so-called Platinum Club VIP Toilet, where you had to pay RM1 to enter.

Sure enough, there are aromatics and LCD screens inside, and sinks in every room:

One complaint: it ran out of toilet paper…