Applying or Replacing Your IC

Today I brought my 12 year old daughter to make her new IC. Many many years ago when I was small my dad brought me to make IC in the small town I grew up in. I remember we just went to the NRD. There was no queue, no number machine, no online application coz there as no Internet. All we did was walk up to the counter. Remember those old blue ICs with the strange fish-like embossed pattern?

Anyway things are much more straightforward to apply now.vthe problem is that there are too many people applying now making the queues very long.

i went to the NRD near my house. To check the nearest branch, check out their website at http://Jpn.gov.my. If you are in a hurry, go straight to Putrajaya, you application process can be shortened to a week.

if you are applying for an IC for your 12 year old kid, just bring a copy of your IC (as a parent). For the kid, bring the original birth cert and MyKid (really, who in the NRD thought of this name?!!)

If you are non-Malaysian or if you are a guardian, check their website for additional documents to bring.

Go to the ticketing counter and get a number and an empty form. The form is very straightforward to complete. Then sit and wait. Numbers go pretty fast so make sure you don’t go to the mamas nex door and miss your turn. When we were there on a weekday afternoon, 40 numbers went through in less than an hour.

Once your turn comes, the officer will check your form and documents. Then you need to wait for your turn to take your photo. They’ll call you when your turn comes so stick nearby the photo booth. After your pic is taken, you’re done! Wait 1-3 months and they send you a notice to collect your new card.

If your replacing your lost or damaged card, you can do it online. But you need to collect it in person.

For your child’s IC, make sure you apply within 1 month of turning 12 years old. Any later and there is an unnecessary fine.

So that’s about it. Very simple and hassle free.

Looking for a Bike Shop

My mum gave Alyssa a large angpow for her birthday. When we asked her what she wanted to buy with it, she didn’t hesistate to say “a bike”. She never had an adult bike, now’s probably still not too late for her to start learning. So WY did some googling about where to buy bikes around our area with a budget of RM300+.

This was one of the places we visited in Tasik Prima. This place seemed to be embracing the whole online store plus physical store concept. Nice shop but not in our price range.

This is another shop in Bandar Puteri we visited. It’s quite famous as a Raleigh dealer. The owner was friendly enough, recommending this model and that model, but when we mentioned our budget his interest took a nosedive pretty quick. But nice shop for serious mountain bikers, though.

In the end, we ended in the very first shop we visited. What happened was in some forum there was mention of a cheap bike shop in Kompleks Pasaraya Puchong Perdana. We went there looking for it, but other than seamstresses and carpet shops (if you’ve been to that place, you know what i mean) we couldn’t find it. I asked the security guard, this nice Indian uncle told us if we were looking for a cheap bike shop, there’s one up the road in Puchong Intan.

So here it was. Looks like it was once a fruit shop.

The old refridgerators are still here.

Now THIS is my kind of shop. Lots of choices and AFFORDABLE. Friendly owner too.

These were the few models we were considering.

We finally picked a GTA model. Here’s the owner fixing up the bike.

New bike goes in our car. The perks of owning a Rush.

Space for a passsenger too.

So this is the bike. Suitable for learners, can double up for exercise. I like how the gear levers have now evolved from the days of my racing bike.

A Guide to Maxis Home Fibre Internet using Unifi

A few months ago i applied for the High Speed Broadband (HSBB) connection package introduced by Maxis. The promotion had just been launched, called ‘Maxis Home Fibre Internet’. Basically, it is using TMNET Unifi backbone, but with different pricing from TMNET’s own offering. At that time, the offer was for RM118 per month for 10Mbps. This offer is no longer available, the normal pricing for 10Mbps is RM138 per month.

Comparatively, TMNET Unifi is currently running a VIP promo of 10Mbps for RM199 per month but with extra offers.

How to apply:
First you need to check if your area has Unifi yet. If you see the banners advertising it near your home, then its probably safe to say its available. Also if you are still on streamyx, TMNET’s telemarketeers will be harassing you to upgrade every month if you are within the Unifi area.

Get the form at any maxis centre or you can download it here. Or you can dial 1800 82 1123 (or just 123 from a Maxis) to register via phone.

Installation:
After about 2 weeks Maxis will call you and set an appointment to install. If you want it to be on a weekend, you may have to wait months. I was available on weekdays so the appointment was 1 week later. It is advisable to have a tech savvy guy at home when the technicians come to install.

Two parties should be present when they do the installation – a Maxis technician, and TMNET technicians. The whole installation should take about 3 or 4 hours (more if a lot of drilling is required).

Decide where you want the broadband cable to terminate, either near you PC or at a centralized location in the house. I terminated it near my TV as in future Maxis will be introducing IPTV services. At the termination point you need to provide 3 power sockets (S/S/O).

Performance:
Upon installation i did a speed test, i clocked a little over 10Mbps (lunch time). A week later i got an average of 8.5Mbps (night time). Now im getting an average of of 10.5Mbps. But overall i haven’t encountered any performance problems as yet. However twice, in the first 3 days of usage the connection went down inexplicably, the first time i had to call their customer hotline and they restored it after about an hour. The second time i didn’t make a complaint (as i was going out), connection was restored when i got home 2 hours later.

I’m running 3 devices on the wireless connection, my PC (using a USB wifi adaptor), my iPad and Samsung Android. There’s no significant performance improvement on my Samsung Galaxy S, significant improvement using Safari and Youtube on my iPad.

Digg Goes Down

The news just came in a few days ago, Digg Was sold to Betaworks for just USD$500,000. This for a website that turned down an offer $200million from Google last year. The fall from grace is spectacular, even by dot-com standards.

Most laypeople haven’t heard of Digg, but 4 to 5 years years ago, for me it was the greatest website on the face of the Internet. It’s basically a news aggregator, where people submit in interesting stories, and other people up vote them if they like it. The popular stories stay longer on the front page, the unpopular ones get voted down. It’s a simple premise, and due to some support from some key users in the early years, it became started to become the new cool along with other sites almost similar sites like reddit, slashdot and shoutwire.

It’s kind of difficult to encapsulate why it found I Digg so exciting. It was my newsfeed, i learnt tons of stuff about photography, website building astronomy, politics and the ilk. It introduced me to other cult websites like xkcd, askmen, deviantart. All with the help of millions and millions of anonymous users across the world sharing the same passion for Digg. For a period of 3 to 4 years, I hardly missed a single page of update. Even when i went on holiday without net access, I’d come back read through 40 to 50 pages.

But then something started to change. New updates made the site slower and harder to load, especially the older pages. And subtly, too, the general content started to skew away from my interest. There are tons of articles out there giving the key reasons why it started to go downhill.

But yeah, so now Digg has become a footnote in net history. Reddit is still as strong as ever, with their lolcats and rage comics. Slashdot had always been too serious for me and I had never like the shouty Shoutwire. In the meantime, though, everyone’s too busy with Facebook these days.

Michael’s Western Food @ Restoran Kuan Yew, SS3

I used to stay in University Gardens SS3 for a short while many many years ago. I had first come to the city fresh from school and put up with a family friend for a few months.

This part of SS3 was and still is pretty quiet, I’m not so sure if people still call it ‘University Gardens’ anymore. Hidden between the LDP and SS2, its a nice neighbourhood with a few row of shops, a Shell station, a community hall (or as I like to call it, the Indian wedding hall), a covered basketball court (it wasn’t covered back then) and a few tennis courts. There’s a pasar malam here on the main road, but its nothing much to talk about. Actually the most outstanding thing about this place is the junction on a precarious slope that severely tests learner drivers (they’ve installed traffic lights here now).

But there’s one thing people know this area for – the famous Western food. There’s actually 2 stalls, located in two different coffeeshops back to back. The one facing the main road is the less famous one. The one facing the houses behind is far more famous. It’s called Michael’s (although I’m not sure if its owned by the same guy anymore) and the coffeeshop is called Restoran Kuan Yew.

(a typical corner coffeeshop. The cornerstone of urban Chinese civilization in Malaya…)

(Michael’s stall. Dude, how much does it cost to replace the sign?)

After something like 15 years I went back to this place again yesterday. Nothing much has changed – all the tables were occupied as usual. Three Indian uncles kindly vacated their table for my family. The coffeeshop actually has a few stalls open at nights. There’s a satay lady, a Chinese tai-chow guy, somebody selling fried chicken (?). But the star of the place is undoubtedly the non-descript stall at the back.

(The satay stall)

The place is buzzing with customers. Lots of Indian and Chinese uncles (and I suspect one or two Malay pakciks) enjoying small talk over beer, liquor and fried noodles. Very 1Malaysia. Young couples and families waiting patiently for their chicken chop. Go to the stall and make your order, they’ll give you a plastic cup with a stencil letter on it. Don’t ask questions, just take it and go wait at your table (make sure the server can see your plastic cup).

My cup says ‘F’.

This is their signature chicken chop. They also have a mixed grill platter that looks delicious. My wife ordered a side of soup with garlic bread. I thought the soup was a little too peppery.

So which did i prefer, this or the other one behind? Both are good, definitely miles ahead of anywhere I’ve tried, and much cheaper than what you get at PappaRich or any of the new kopitiams. But i personally prefer the other one, maybe i don’t like the batter on my chicken chop.

KL Alternative Bookfest

I was invited to this event via a FB acquaintance, and seeing that last Saturday was a rare weekend where my family had nothing on, i took a drive down the Federal Highway to Central Market. It was billed as “KL Alternative Bookfest + Art for Grabs” with the catchy tagline “buku adalah sahabat manusia”, i was going there more to check out the art and maybe drop by T-square (I haven’t been there since I started oil paintings). My wife’s main reason for going was to eat in Petaling Street.

Traffic was good and we snagged a parking spot right in front of Central Market itself (great job by the Rela boys diverting traffic and stopping queue jumpers). KL city centre was all prepped with the StanChart marathon on Sunday morning.

Half of the carpark was taken up by a stage and seating area as part of an exhibition on local cartoons. Nothing really of interest here, except there was a LImKokWing counter selling old Guli-Guli comic books.

(response not very good ar?)

Finding the Bookfest can be a little tricky if you’re not familiar with Central Market.

Its located at the top floor of the Annexe, which is the building attached to the back of CM.

The Annexe Gallery is basically a medium sized hall partitioned in the middle. There were a few stall selling art, but majority were selling books and crafts. My girls bought some crafts from the Orang Asli stall and the iheartbadges stall.

There was a special photo exhibition on the Bersih 3.0, where you can see the tear gas attacks in clear HD black and white photographs.

By and large, there were many stalls selling books seeing it a bookfest. Not just your regular books, lots of indie publishers and self published books. i was surprised to find Malay books on anti-establishment topics, socialism, communism, and self expression. It was kinda heartwarming to see not all young Malaysians are caught up with the gahmen propaganda of hate and lies. Maybe i don’t go to a lot of these things, and it only exist in a small bubble in events like these, but for a short time i felt hopeful for our country.

We were quite fortunate to make it in time for the “What la Awards” hosted by the funny Jo Kukathas.

I’m not into the local arts scene but Jo was in her element, taking jabs at our local politicians.

after the bookfest i dropped by T-Square, bought a tube of Lefranc & Bourgeois Royal Blue oil paint for RM20, part of my exercise to try different brand of paints.

After that we trudged down to Petaling Street to drink air mata kuching and eat the famous Koon Kee wantan mee.

Good trip down to the city. Until the next time, then.

Klang Hin Leong Tyre Shop (Kedai Papan)

All these years I’ve been changing car tyres at a shop near my house. Its pretty cheap by Puchong / PJ standards, and for a long time they accepted Bonuslink cards (they no longer do). But i found them pretty good, plus it was convenient. But the price of car tyres increase every year, ironic because Malaysia is a rubber-producing nation. This strangely affects not only imported tyres, but also locally produced ones like Sime.

The last price hike at the end of 2011 have increased the price of tyres of my current car from RM90+ to RM200 since i started using it from 2004. That’s more than 100% increase. Really, what gives? For my previous set of tyres, i opted to downgrade to Sime Astar (big mistake) from my regular Goodyear Eagle NCT5. Well, you get what you pay for, when it comes to Sime. After about a year one of the Sime tyres side wall started bulging, commonly called ‘pregnant’. So for the past few months i’ve been running on a spare tyre, a different tread from the other 3.

Last week i decided to change all 4 tyres. Checks around the usual workshops showed everything has gone up. So my only alternative was to go to Klang. Now if you look around the webforums they all tell you the cheapest place to get tyres are these few well known shops in Klang. And one of ‘em is Kedai Papan, or Klang Hin Leong (the spelling may vary, even they themselves aren’t decided on it).

How do these guys keep tyres so cheap? Not entirely sure, but one of the ways would probably be volume. When i first got there, there were more than 30 people milling about waiting for their cars to be ready. It’s a huge place, they take up the entire 5 or 6 ground floor lots of a building.

Tyres make a lot of money, but what REALLY pays the rent for them are RIMS. We’re talking rims that go up to RM3000-4000 PER rim. Yowzer. I counted they had about 2000 rims on display on the walls, on the floor, in the showroom.

Yeah they have an airconditioned waiting area with free wifi (it doesn’t work!) that doubles up as a show room for more rims. But its better to hang around in the workshop just to make sure they don’t add anything extra to your bill.

After 2 hours, got my spanking new Falken tyres. Yeah i know, Falken aren’t awesome tyres like Michelin or Continental, but at least they aren’t Goodyear Eagle or Sime…

Directions: Pretty straightforward to get there even if you’ve never been to Klang. Go straight on Federal Highway, at the second roundabout follow the turn off pointing to Kapar. If you’re on the bridge over the river you’ve gone too far, turn back. Along Jalan Kapar, you’ll see it after about 2km opposite a Shell station. Impossible to miss.

Malaysia Cup 1991: Johor Wins the Cup

The Malaysia Cup is still running annually, isn’t it? Yes I think it is. I think I stopped following local football around 1997-98. But as a schoolkid growing up in the 80′s, we all followed the Malaysian League and cup. I wasn’t really into watching all that much, but I did follow the league because everyone did. We didn’t have Astro, live telecasts were only for finals or international matches.

The only time we got to watch a little football was the highlight show maybe once a week in season, and short clips during the late English news at 11.30pm.

As far as English football was concerned, we’d get Big League Soccer (late by a few weeks) and Road to Wembley.

Most of the time, we’d listen to the radio and read the news reports, I didn’t live in the state capital to get to watch any of the games live. But yeah, I did follow my team Johor ever since I started watching football from the 1983 Malaysia Cup final. That was the year of the epic Pahang vs. Selangor match.

But anyway, Johor was mostly an average team, except for 1985 when we won the Cup for the very first time. That was the year of Khalid Shahdan, Hassan Miskam, Salleh Md. Noor, Md. Som Abidin and Lahad Daduk. maybe one day I’ll blog about that Cup final, the year I was in Form One, and we all got public holiday for it.

But the only other time Johor won the Cup was 1991, which was also the last time. It was the first year in uni. I remember there was some friendly thrash talking between the Selangor students and my new found fellow Johor friends. It was also mid semester exam week, I remember all of us rushing back at night after sitting for a paper in the faculty to catch the game. Watching the match was a problem – we weren’t allowed to have TVs in our dorms, the only TV was in our dorm common room.

I say common room, but it’s more like a mess hall, and it caters for more than 3000 guys. Well on normal days no one watches TV, weekends it’s quite packed with guys watching movies on the Singapore channels. But that night, man… It was packed. Everyone arranged the lounge chairs facing the TV like a theatre. Guys sat on the floor in the front. Guys standing at the back where there were no more chairs. Guys leaning on walls and glass doors on the side. Guys standing on tables far at the back. Close to 500 guys. All trained on that small 21″ cathode ray tube television with dodgy colour. At least reception was good.

The mercurial Ervin Boban

This was the year of Ervin Boban, Alistair Edwards and Abbas Saad (yes, he of Astro Supersports fame). Local boys Nasir Yusof, Khalid Shahdan and Hassan Miskam were still around. Ervin had been a mainstay in the team since M-League went semi-pro, i bumped into him one day at a bookstore in Kotaraya JB. I was a fitting Cup final, Ervin scored a hattrick to beat Selangor 3-1. With 20 minutes remaining, the Selangor fans started leaving the hall, amidst friendly jeers from the Johor boys. All except one single guy, sitting smugly in the center of the hall, decked in his yellow and red cap and scarf (woi, tak panas ke pakai skarf?)

Ervin Boban is standing next to Aussie coach Michael Urukalo. Alistair Edwards is backrow leftmost, Abbas Saad is seated on the right grinning like he won the lottery.

Short of being in the stadium itself, the atmosphere was amazing. we were singing Johor team songs, cheering everytime Ervin touched the ball. When the camera zoomed in on a beautiful princess from the another royal family, everyone cheered loudly. I had to asked a random Malay guy next to me who that was.

Yeah, those were good times. A short few years later, the EPL took off with Astro’s telecasts, and i started seeing my friends wearing EPL jerseys. A couple more years, and it was no turning back. I guess that was start of the decline of Malaysian football and support. But yeah, thanks to the Johor squad of ’91 for the great memories. And especially to Ervin Boban, probably the best footballer to don the Scorpions jersey. Sometimes i wonder where he is now, and does he still remember the days of staying in this small town across the bridge from Singapore.

(Pics found on Google)

Sun Kok Kee Dim Sum in Bercham, Ipoh

Talking about dim sum in Ipoh, I can probably say in the last 15 years or so of going there, i’ve been to most of the famous places. If you’re talking about the big ones, I’ve been to Ming Court, Yoke Fook Moon, old Foh San, new Foh San and Tai Woo. If you’re talking about old school dim sum, I’ve been to Ying Fa. As for upcoming, i’ve tried this pretty good one called Chef Chan or something like that. For middle of the road convenience, I’ve been to a few of the Tai Thong ones in Ipoh, most frequently the one at Hillcity. And regrettably I’ve also tried this noveau dim sum place in Greentown called Qi Yuan (please don’t mess with dim sum, okay? it never works.)

But the one big name i’ve not tried ever is Sun Kok Kee. Part of the reason is it located in Bercham. I’ve nothing against, Bercham other than the jam at the Tesco junction that takes forever to clear (by Ipoh standards), its just i usually go to town for food. So last Saturday, we hitched up the car and drove there. There’s a faster way via Ampang but we went using Jalan Raja DiHilir anyway.

It’s located behind the market (Tai Pa Sat) in Bercham, drive in past the newer areas towards the new village.

Despite being a public holiday weekend during school holidays, i wasn’t as crowded as other places. It occupies 3 shoplots (one lot taken up by the kitchen) in a row of nondescript shops.

The faux-marble tiles remind me of old Foh San.

Service was a little bit slow, but the food is good. Outstanding is the woo kok and char siew pau.

So another dim sum place done and dusted. Next round I think i want to go back to Ying Fa.

on another note, Ipoh was blazing hot over the weekend. After dim sum it was so hot at home i decided to drive down to Pengkalen to visit Station 18. The jam getting there makes the jam at Tesco Bercham look like a breeze. So what’s at Station 18? Okay, reminded me of Kinta City when it first opened. No MPH, only popular and another bookstore not worth mentioning. But i like malls in Ipoh – where you can go in shorts and slippers and not look out of place.

A Few Things I Learnt Recently

Lots of things occupying my time recently. Besides, the hot and dry weather is giving me a constant headache and hence I’m going to keep this short.

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Painting is an expensive hobby. It definitely isn’t for those with a very tight budget. We’re talking about actual paints, medium, brushes, canvas, varnuish, etc. Poor exchange rate and limited brands here means we pay a lot for something that’s affordable overseas.

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Sushi Zanmai has great sushi! I’ve always wondered what the fuss was with this place – people lining up at all hours of the day just to eat shopping mall sushi. Now i know. Of course, you can’t compare it with high end places like Kampachi or Sagano, but for that kind of pricing, well worth the wait in the line. So its bye-bye, Sakae.

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10K is really far. I’m sure for my friends who run 21k and 42k regularly, 10k must seem like a warm up jog. I’m currently doing 7k (on a good day), so I’m getting there. As a personal challenge, i signed up for the Adidas King of the Road in September. Life’s all about trying new things, right?

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iPad is cool! Hasn’t frozen on me once yet, so they’ve one up on my Android device.

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They’ve apparently stopped manufacturing LCD monitors in favour of LED. And they cost more, too.

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A new UK-based chain of gyms is coming to Malaysia in a big way. That will surely give some healthy competition to the 3 big boys here.