About 9 months back, one of my post had the title Lunch at Sri Ananda Bhavan (SAB), Bangsar.

After 9 months, most of my colleagues (myself included) are not planning to go back to this place. Food quality has dropped. The price of your food goes up and down each day… Worse than KLSE. For the same thing, they can charge you rm1-rm2 more! And if you think maybe they are reflecting the daily prices of vegetables, how to explain this incident that happened 2 months back when a few friends of mine came over for lunch.

One guy ordered a naan set. Another guy came late, saw what first guy was eating and said he wanted the same set. Receipt issued… Second guy looked at first guy’s receipt. Hey, second guy is being charged more! He calls the waiter and complains. Waiter takes the receipt and corrects it. Now he pays less than the first guy! Hah!

So, where do we go for lunch these days? Well, there’s Quick Bites Cafe a few shops away from SAB. There’s also HSBC & Gaja. Plus, we’re more adventurous these days and would sometimes have our lunch at Bangsar. It’s not that far and quite convenient since we can park near HSBC (the restaurant and not the bank) and just walk across.

No doubt every individual is unique. No two person in the world is the same. And so, we have different attitudes, different characteristics, different beliefs, different ideologies, different looks, etc…

In a planet filled with diversity, we need to respect each other. Not run them down or chase them out.

We also need to understand some are born less smart than others… Hence the “empty vessels” and their remarks appearing in papers, blogs, etc… In such cases, its always better to just ignore such remarks. After all, when a madman on the street starts talking nonsense or when a mad dog at the road side starts barking, we just cautiously walk away, right?

Recently, USA’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced that they are redefining the term ‘broadband’. Now, broadband in USA means 4 Mbits/s downstream % 1 Mbits/s upstream. That’s 4Mbps download & 1Mbps upload.

Malaysia’s equivalent of the FCC, the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) defines broadband in Malaysia as “any service beyond the scope of existing PSTN/ISDN and 2G cellular networks & with data rates that exceed the normal voice-related speed (56 kbit/s for PSTN and 64 kbit/s for ISDN)”.

56kbps is about 0.056Mbps.

Wikipedia has this entry:

In general, any connection to the customer of 256 kbit/s (0.256 Mbit/s) or greater is more concisely considered broadband Internet access.

Amazed?

No words can really describe the feeling one gets when one reaches home to find one’s puppy waiting in front of the gate, jumping up and down when it sees you coming out of the car…

It gets even better when one looks inside the house and sees one’s baby looking at you… Eyes go all BIG with a happy expression on the face when he sees you… And quickly crawls towards the door, laughing all the way…

That’s how I feel everyday when I get home. I am so happy when I get home everyday…

Oh, of course there’s also Mrs Tai waiting quietly behind the puppy and the baby…

Fruit juice, vegetables and mien sien (some spell it as misua).

Fruit juice, mixed vegetables and mien sien

Yeah, lately, I’m feeling a bit tired and tied up — not much time to update my site. So I thought I’d just post a few photos.

But you have to admit, it looks very tasty, right?

Taken a few weeks back

Father and son having fun together… Gabriel is almost 9 months old now.

Still feeling weak and tired but better than yesterday… I’m going to rest at home. Medication is kicking in…

Headache… Fever… Body aches…

Went to see the doctor early this morning and she advised me to take a rest. On medical leave for the day. Going to sleep now.

This promo is on everyday… Not sure if it is for all outlets or for how long… But I do know this promo is available at the San Francisco coffee outlet near my office…

Wouldn’t it be nice if Starbucks Setia Alam have this…?

From The Star Online:

Thus, effective today, prices of petrol, diesel, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and sugar have increased following a reduction of the subsidy.

Sugar is revised to an additional 25 sen per kg to RM1.90. LPG is up 10 sen per kg to RM1.85.

Petrol RON 95, RON 97 and diesel have gone up by five sen per liter. For RON 97, the Government has decided to withdraw the subsidy later and subject it to a managed float, where the price will be determined by an automatic pricing mechanism.

I’m all for the removal of government subsidies… But I’m wondering if many employers are ready.

Current salary scales used by most employers probably calculate an employee’s expenses based on the artificial prices of items such as petrol which is subsidies by the government. If we remove it and the price of petrol doubles, will employers adjust our salary accordingly?

Government wants Malaysia to remain competitive. But when expenses starts to go up, will foreign investors still be attracted to Malaysia? Will companies relocate their operations to a ‘cheaper’ country?

And what does the government do with the money it ‘saved’ from not having to subsidies the citizens? Spend it on useless corporate bailouts? What a waste of money… And that’s why I’m happy and not happy at the same time…