Just a quick post for the DiGi “Speak Up!” contest. Taken from the office building. I can barely see KOMTAR or the mainland from the coastal highway most days now, it’s pretty scary.  I don’t remember the haze being this bad last year. The first picture you see on the Wikipedia entry on haze is from Kuala Lumpur, which must be a bad thing. Coupled with the El Nino effect which means less haze-clearing rain, I really am afraid to breathe nowadays…

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So my Saga BLM’s power windows recently went bust. Seems that the infamous Proton power window issue persists. My warranty was very nearly up too (whew), which honestly seems rather suspicious. Scenes from the indie local movie Sellout come to mind - do watch it btw, it’s pretty decent. I  guess you really do get what you pay for. To be fair though, I don’t have any other complaints about the car.

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Mat rempits make our blood curdle nowadays, which is why Nando’s new recruitment poster is arresting:

Well granted unemployment contributes greatly to the growing rempit menace, but it still somehow gives me shudders. At least it makes it more likely your order will arrive on time, though?

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I’m quite the seasoned bus-traveller. Spent four years in Malacca and let me tell you the eight-hour Malacca-Penang journey was no joke. Students usually had to settle for the cheapest buses and looking back it was quite hazardous - many companies have poor maintenance for their buses and do this irritating thing where they swap passangers with other companies to save on trips, meaning you could be rudely awakened at 6am in the morning to change buses.

Most travellers will know that if you aren’t going for the premium buses like Nice or Aeroline, safety-wise (at least, relatively) the most reliable companies are Transnasional and Plusliner (Plusliner being the economy version of Nice). Unfortunately Transnasional and Plusliner also only have 32-seater versions so you’re crammed into small seats, four to a row.

Even with the premium on Nice/Aeroline and the discomfort on Transnasional/Plusliner, many are still avoiding the other bus companies like the plague because of their bad reputations. Konsortium for example was the company involved in the recent express double-decker bus crash in April. People in the know avoid these companies like the plague.

What’s annoying though is that instead of concentrating on upgrading their fleet, they instead go for the hard sell. You’ll know what I’m talking about if you buy bus tickets regularly.

(Lime uniform -> Konsortium
White uniform -> Gunung Raya)

It was annoying enough when they stood by their counters yelling at you to come look, now these fuckers actually wait by the doorway and put their hand on your shoulder and ask you to buy tickets from them.Then if you show displeasure they say you are sombong and look as though they want to beat you up. Yea sure that’ll get you lots of customers!

I’m glad I earn enough to shell out for Nice sometimes now. Safety first, not to mention I never really got used to waking up to see cockroaches crawling by the window sill.

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 What possessed me to try the new McD Big N’ Tasty, I had no idea. I guess I like sandwiches and burgers too much.

In retrospect it did give me the authority so tell you how much IT SUCKS though. The normal Big Mac (right) probably comes up to about the same amount of bun + patty.

To be sure the BNT patty is larger, but it still has that rubbery, dry, limp feeling you get from McDonald’s beef burgers, just more pronounced because of its size. Worst RM11.50 I ever spent!

One of the top 10 items on my bucket list just  has to be a visit to In-N-Out, rumoured to be one of the best fast-food burgers out there. The ingredients are prepared fresh every day, and this insistence on freshness means it only operates from a few states in the US. It’s not-so-secret menu lets you order any combination of patties and cheese slices, and you can wrap your burger in lettuce instead of a bun! Jealousness. I wonder if I could get any of my returning US friends to get one for me…

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RAGHURAM!!

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“Not only must Justice be done; it must also be seen to be done”
- Lord Hewart, R. v. Sussex Justices, Ex parte McCarthy

The Altantuya Shaariibu murder case was closed in the eyes of the Malaysian courts last week when Special Forces officers Azilah Hadri and Sirul Azhar Umar were sentenced to death.

Yet it doesn’t take a PhD to know that elite bodyguards - bodyguards assigned to the office of the Prime Minister, no less, don’t simply turn to themselves one day and say “Hey let’s blow up a Mongolian woman!”

When the hullaboo first began, I was skeptical that someone with such a high office could be involved in such a gruesome murder. But the silence is simply deafening. Why is there no effort to find out the motives and the perpetrators behind the murder? Altantuya is going to come back to haunt Najib, again and again and again…

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You put in RM2 to pay a RM1.50 parking ticket at Queensbay’s outdoor car park and you get this…

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I’d missed out on a month’s worth of House MD while in KL, so it pissed me off when I was on Google News recently and got smacked with this [SPOILER WARNING]:

OMG seriously. Talk about potong stim.

I’d also heard that the upcoming X-Men spinoff Wolverine:Origins was leaked. Not that I was likely to have caught it at the cinema anyway, but I was still annoyed to see every DVD shop at BJ screening it. For heaven’s sake, it was decidedly unfinished - some scenes even showed gray 3D model skeletons instead of actors. And yet they were still trying to make a quick buck off it.

Patience is a virtue people! I’d much rather wait to savour a plot twist and have that “wow” moment.

That said, I’ve been mulling over ordering a “Spoilt” t-shirt for some time :). (Don’t click on the link if you haven’t watched lots of movies and plan to!)

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 Was in KL for three weeks recently to orientate a new hire and it was a blast. It was my first time driving down too.

I’d even say I got pretty used to the jam (now I know why a lot of KLites work late!).

YH was good enough to put me up for the entire three weeks(!) in his house at Desa Parkcity. Thanks dude, you rock.

Timed my trip to end with the Nuffnang-Maxis Music Bash. I’m usually relegated to handling the slides backstage but this time round we had a little staff performance so the bloggers got to see my face for once :P

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