Ekimkee

What is Going on with Malaysia Stock Market?

2009-11-07T22:55:00.000+08:00

I sincerely apologize of no post update on last weekend, as I was on vacation for 3 days. Well, I should take my initiative to update it before I went on leave. Okay, this improvement will be done next time, I mean I'll try if time allows me to do so. ;)

I believe you have gain a lot of profits from the stock market, if you starting to invest since March 2009. We focus on Blue Chips and they are giving us good return every month. But, not for now anymore. have you notice what is happening now? Since 2 weeks back, you would see the top 10 volume companies are strange to you, or a very low share price company on the show. Why? It indicates the stock market has bullish until certain level that investors felt the fundamental companies share prices are already expensive. So they started to turn to invest in penny and PN17 stocks, perhaps for fast profit and lower cost per share.

KLCI index has been raised for more than 50% within 7 months, are you worry?

For your information, PN17 means Practice Note 17/2005 and is issued by Malaysia SEC, which indicates the company are in a financial distress situation.

Practice Note 17/2005 and is issued by Bursa Malaysia; relating to companies that are in financial distress. Companies that fall within the definition of PN17 will need to submit their proposal to the Approving Authority to restructure and revive the company in order to maintain the listing status. Recently, some PN17 companies are successfully uplifted by SEC, and they managed to attract huge investors and make them the top volume of the trading day.

Oilcorp is being fried and rumors saying it will be uplifting from PN17 category soon. Will you buy it?

Are you one of the investors investing into them? What a joke! These companies share price are not supported by the fundamental elements at all, or I can say that they are not making enough money to support their share prices. Since the volatility is so huge, if you are late a little bit, you may making a great loss! But from the look at it, they can make you a very quick and easy profit within a day! If you are lucky, you can get 100% return within a day. No kidding.

Yes, with such a temptation and hot cake, I've followed the best practice of one of my mentors, "wherever there is fish, we will go there to fish!", while another mentor of mine adviced those PN17 stocks are devils, don't go for it.

Okay, temptation is an issue for me. I've invested into two of them twice, without knowing anything about them. Pretty daring huh! And guess what, my daring and decision did not bring me any profit, and I encountered minor loss by cut loss early. See, thing is just simple but not that straight forward, else everyone would have make money from stock market, no? I would say it's the timing problem, and I applied the best practice to the wrong companies. It gave me a very good lesson.

We talk about investment with passive income and risk control here, not gamble and fast money.

As there is no one can predict the right timing to enter and exit every time, for those who already earn money from these companies, you are just lucky by enter at the right timing. If you don't agree so, congratulations, you should be a millionaire or perhaps billionaire by now.

So, what now? Say bye-bye to penny and PN17 stocks, and wait for mid-term correction to buy good fundamental companies with discounted price (if there is any). Have a nice weekend, folks!

Financial Budget Malaysia 2010 Highlights

2009-10-24T19:05:00.002+08:00

Our Prime Minister just read out the highlights of the 2010 Budget, themed "1Malaysia, Together We Prosper", as follows:

1. An allocation of RM191.5 billion, consisting of RM138.3 billion or 72.2 per cent (operating expenditure) and RM53.2 billion or 27.8 per cent (development expenditure).
Comment: I thought it should be 50%-50% for a developing country?

2. Special payment of RM500 in December 2009 to civil servants from Grade 41 to Grade 54 or its equivalent as well as those on mandatory retirement.
Comment: Consider as an increment for them?

3. Enhancement of tax incentives for healthcare service providers who offer services to foreign health tourists. Income tax exemption of 50 per cent on the value of increased exports will be increased to 100 per cent.
Comment: Good idea, it can create more competition in this industry.

4. Individual taxpayers will be given tax relief on broadband subscription fee up to RM500 a year from 2010 to 2012.
Comment: I love to hear this. I hope there is no term and condition apply.

5. Civil servants are eligible to apply for computer loans once in every three years as compared to once in every five years now.
Comment: So now civil servant will has more loan to pay monthly by changing the computer every 3 years?

6. Subsidies, incentives and assistance amounting to almost RM2 billions to safeguard the interest of farmers and fishermen.
Comment: I hope this budget won't end up become RM2 millions.

7. An allocation of RM9 billion to finance infrastructure projects, including construction of roads and bridges, water supply, sewerage services, rail facilities, ports and sea services as well as airport projects.
Comment: Can't we just focus on less things at one time with the limited budget?

Budget announcement is an important event to stimulate the country economy including stock market.

8. An additional allocation of RM20 million for small-scale Malaysian-Indian entrepreneurs under the Tabung Kumpulan Usaha Niaga (Tekun), on top of the existing RM15-million allocation.
Comment: Government trying to buy Indian's heart? I hope this will makes more Indian upgrade their standard of living.

9. Establishing a RM200-million Creative Industry Fund to finance activities, such as film and drama productions, music, animation, advertisements and local content development. Establishing "Tabung Kebajikan Penggiat Seni" to ensure the welfare of artistes.
Comment: Hmmm...will see.

10. An allocation of RM20 million for 20 schools to be identified as High Performance Schools (SBT) in 2010.
Comment: They will be the same in the end of the day. Why don't spend the budget to build more schools?

11. Awarding national scholarships to 30 "creme de la creme" students strictly based on merit. These scholarship recipients will further their education in world-renowned universities.
Comment: Why 30 only? What's the story behind? Will these top 30 students will be bond from working in the country after graduation?

12. Converting the National Higher Education Fund Corporation (PTPTN) loans to scholarships for students who graduate with first class honours degrees or equivalent beginning 2010.
Comment: Hmmm, this is a brilliant move.

13. Providing a 50 per cent discount on fares for long-distance services of Keretapi Tanah Melayu Berhad (KTMB) to students aged 13 and above beginning Jan 1, 2010.
Comment: I don't get it. To encourage student to go for traveling? Visit other places?

14. Offering a netbook package, including free broadband service, to 100,000 local university students for a start for RM50 per month for two years, effective Jan 1, 2010.
Comment: Hmm, attractive offer. How do our government select these 100,000 students? Based on races or result?

When it comes to budget year, why most citizens only focus on tax cut?

15. An allocation of RM100 million for the PERMATA Programme to implement various programmes which emphasize early childcare and education in an integrated and organised manner.
Comment: Okay, taking care of our future masters.

16. Micro insurance and Takaful coverage for small-scale businessmen which will benefit from coverage ranging from RM10,000 to RM20,000 with premium as low as RM20 per month.
Comment: More protection for SMB businessmen.

17. Establishment of 14 Special Corruption Sessions Courts and four Special Corruption Appeal High Courts.
Comment: Hope it will works out.

18. Imposing RM50 service tax on each principal credit card and charge card, including those issued free of charge, and a service tax of RM25 a year on each supplementary card effective Jan 1, 2010.
Comment: I think I will need to cancel my credit cardS and drill down to 1 card.

19. All ministries and government departments are required to provide day care and education centres for children. For this, an allocation of RNM200,000 will be made available for every ministry and government department to establish day care centres.
Comment: Okay, taking care of our future masters.

20. Reduction of the maximum individual income tax rate from 27 percent to 26 percent, effective from the year of assessment 2010.
Comment: Why set it at 27% at first? Are they deserve to pay less?

Apart from child and senior citizen care, government also pay attention to citizen's technology update.

21. Personal relief for individual tax payers to increase from RM8,000 to RM9,000 effective from the year of assessment 2010. This means that each individual tax payer will enjoy an increase of RM1,000 in disposable income.
Comment: What a good move.

22. About 50,000 hardcore poor households registered with eKasih and 4,000 Orang Asli households will be given assistance to achieve the target of zero hardcore poverty in 2010. An allocation of RM41 million will be provided to improve the income and quality of life of the Orang Asli community.
Comment: Okay, protection for the original residents.

23. An allocation of RM48 million to implement urban poverty eradication programmes, including welfare assistance and house rental payments. The Ministry of Federal Territories shall now be known as the Ministry of Federal Territories and Urban Wellbeing.
Comment: Hmmm, it might takes many years to work out.

24. The National Housing Department to provide 74,000 low-cost houses to be rented in 2010.
Comment: Okay, good news for low income earners.

25. EPF to launch a scheme that enables contributors to utilise current and future savings in Account 2 to enable them to obtain higher financing to buy higher value or additional houses.
Comment: Okay, more cash flow option for property investors.

26. An allocation of RM224 million to the disabled for the implementation of the Rehabilitation In The Community Programme and an allocation of RM174 million for senior citizens, including assistance as well as the construction and upgrading of two Rumah Seri Kenangan.
Comment: Okay, taking care of the senior residents.

27. Increasing the allowance rate from RM50 to RM150 a month for every disabled child enrolled in NGO-organised special schools effective Jan 1, 2010.
Comment: Okay, taking care of disabled people.

How about yourself? Have you done your personal financial budget 2010?

28. Establishment of 1Malaysia Retirement Scheme for the self-employed, such as taxi drivers, hawkers, farmers and fishermen, to be administered by the EPF.
Comment: Good for them.

29. Effective immediately, employees' EPF contribution will revert to 11 per cent on a voluntary basis.
Comment: Okay, just don't keep changing every year. It will be a mess.

30. Construction of 510 km of rural roads and 316 km of village roads with an allocation of RM857 million, including roads to be constructed in Kapit, Lawas and Simunjan in Sarawak as well as Kinabatangan, Kota Belud and Keningau in Sabah.
Comment: This has been announced earlier on. Please build quality roads, not the roads just look like a road.

Well, nothing surprise about our financial budget 2010, I'm not sure about other developing countries, but we will work hard together to implement our national target.

What do you think?
Cheers.

Something about Property Investment

2009-10-18T10:02:00.000+08:00

Have you buy a house or starting to involve in property investment? From what I look at it in details, I really have to change my mind about property investment.

Previously, I thought I've to think like an abnormal people. If everyone going for property and the price keep increasing until sky high, I should keep away from it. I learned this theory from stock market. This is very true, because stock is affordable and easily can buy and sell perhaps within minutes, and you can do it alone. Unlike property, it takes time for us to do the transaction of buying and selling, and you also need some team members such as realtor, lawyer and banker.

Property investment gives a steady income and low risk profile for most investors.

Further more, stock market investment require high rational thinking, and it's risky. Property investment is a lot simpler. Imagine when there is economy recession, which investment will be more sensitive? Why we need to opt for the difficult one? In conclusion, my analysis was wrong, I shouldn't treat all investments the same. The property is already sky high, and it keeps rising. City land is getting less and lessor, pricing will be getting high and higher definitely. I'm so regret that I don't invest it when I was younger.

From historical analysis, property will only slump when there is recession. Oh yes, we just have a global recession, didn't we? But unfortunately, despite the materials cost dropped over 100%, the housing price remain unchanged, and it begins to rise like a rocket. The only benefit is the lower loan rate. It's a different situation in our country here. So I don't anticipate the property price will drop in a reasonable way in short or mid-term.

Stock market return can be higher, but it's volatile and require high rational thinking.

Anyway, let me just share with you a few tips I learned from experts, and perhaps we can take them as advice to do property investment.
(1) Start early. The younger you start, the earlier you benefits from the market value promotion. None of the investment channel is as stable, high return and low risk as than property.
(2) Cut your spending and turn it into installment. The old says, work hard now and enjoy later.
(3) Don't go for luxury property like a bungalow, it's more difficult to find a rich tenant and the rental won't be high as well.
(4) Don't go for low-cost property like very small apartment. Your tenant might not afford to pay the rental most of the time, more risk for you.
(5) New housing perhaps has better quality of materials and structure, but not all of them suitable for your/tenant living.
(6) If you have steady income and you are affordable, suggest to look for a suitable property for investment.

If you want to learn more about property investment, do read up experts recommendation.

If you are free, kindly visit a local blogger, CK Wong who blogging about local property investment. His analysis for local property is interesting. Do check it out.

Happy investing.

The 10-Days MBA

2009-10-11T10:15:00.000+08:00

I believe most of you heard about MBA, or even some of you are already an MBA! Let me just briefly explain what is it. MBA stands for Masters of Business Administration. It is an essential post graduate degree in business communication and also one of the most sought after degrees in the world because of its value to people in business and administration. I totally agreed on this.

Normally, an MBA degree can benefit the positions in business and management, especially those in executive and managerial positions, especially in corporation and listed company, business educated people is always highly required. Thus, an MBA degree has great value not only to find an executive and managerial post, but also gain advantage in your business knowledge, leadership ability and networking.

It's MBA is really that important to climb corporate ladder?

Well, I always dream to go further study and become an MBA, preferably to study MBA course in the top business school in US. Unfortunately, I'm not afford to do so for the moment, I believe jackpot might help me round the dream, but I just reluctant to waste money anymore on gambling. So what's the alternative?

Yes, when I visited a unique bookstore 2 months ago in Singapore, I discovered a book named "The 10-Days MBA". I was curious and have a read on the table of content and summary of that thick book. Basically, it stated that the book is a step-by-step guide to mastering the skills taught in top business schools. With this book, everyone can know whats being taught in MBA course of top business schools within days. It sounds very interesting, I decided to buy the book after 1 month time (due to I've quite a few unread books).

The 10-Days MBA

For now, I've finished up the book, and I discover it is not that easy and interested as what I thought earlier. There are 10 topics and almost every topics required to memory tough formula and calculations. The topics including operation, accounting, marketing, finance, organizational behavior, etc, with simple English written. Those are essential topics in business. Without understand the term and formula, you are just flipping the papers only apart from theory. Overall, I'm still enjoyed reading it as now I know how MBA works for the analysis, budget, prediction, judgment based on those theory and formula.

Perhaps due to my age is growing big and bigger, my learning speed is not as what I thought, but it doesn't affecting myself to go for my dream. I have a ex-schoolmate, who is at my age, working as an accountant and doing her MBA part-time study now. She told me it is a little bit tough as she needs to spend efforts and time to do the assignments and projects, while she needs to cover her job works. Well, since we give and take, I believe it worth the effort and time. Keep it up, my friend!

So folks, before you go for MBA study, make sure you have a 'preview' on The 10-Days MBA book first. :)

The Strategy of AirAsia

2009-10-04T10:26:00.004+08:00

I believe almost every Asian traveler heard about Air Asia, not because of it's service or quality, but it's lowest fare airline. Well, most of the time cheap doesn't mean good or quality, there is risk we have to bear. In this case, we talk about depart on time.

Just last month alone, I've been traveled with Air Asia for 4 times, with 2 times delayed of more than 1.5 hours. The delay rate was 50%! You can imagine how bad it is. They just don't want to make the delay more than 2 hours in order to compensate me some money. Well, this is the risk we all familiar with Air Asia, but we pay a lot lesser. Fine. I'm not talking about this common issue today, as I've a post comment about their services before. I just want to express my unfortunate on last month.

Complaint is no longer a fresh news for Air Asia

When we talk about Air Asia, we talk about low fares. In order for Air Asia to continue to offer us low air fares, it must keeps its cost as low as possible while making profit. Okay, from what I observed, below's are how they keep their costs "low".

1) Higher volume
When they offer low fares to the consumers, especially when everyone, including business people and family are trying to save money due to economy situation, their businesses will getting better and better. And this can also be advantage to the occupancy rates of the flight, with the same destination.

2) Early Bird Promotion
You must have noticed how often Air Asia promotes their lowest fares ticket from time to time. Even though it's really cheap, but when there is a volume, they can collect your money first and make use of it for other investment or pay debts for greater return. Great.

RM9.99 & pretty stewardess are no longer a fresh advertisement from Air Asia.

3) Build low cost terminal
They build low cost terminal nearby those busy terminal for their advantages. Not only they can save the sum of airport tax, they can dominate the shoplots rental in the airports, as well as transportation from airport the customers destination. Since they have so many airplanes and flights for the same destination per day, it's a wise decision.

4) Lower pay
From what I know from my friend working in Air Asia. The staffs, even pilots and aircraft engineers pay are not as high as other luxury airlines such as Malaysia or Singapore Airline. They also hired most of the locals to do the works, as they can absorb the lower pay work. Well, this is logic as they are running low fares business. Yes, all this is logic, except the management pay.

One thing amazed me is that, they cut the cost of having aircraft engineers station in non-Air Asia airport. How? For short route, one aircraft engineer has to follow the airplane to every destination, and service the airplane at every destination. I can only shake my head for that aircraft engineer.

Since it's low cost terminal, you will be in deep shit if it is raining heavily.

5) Other charges
Well, depends on the low air fare itself might not sufficient to make more profit. They launched a lot of charges related to traveling, such as meals and beverage serving with charges, souvenirs, hot seats with charges, travel insurances, luggage charges and so on. These can be bringing good profit to them too. If you insist that you want to save up your bulks, you can forget about all of them, except the luggage charges.

One thing I wonder, since Air Asia objective is to keep everything low cost, but why, why the meals and beverages are so expensive? They are even more expensive than the airports! To boost up the sales of meals and beverages, I think Air Asia really need to revise about this!

6) Other profit-driven businesses
I think their strategy is playing well. They are not only focusing on airline business now, they also attacking transportation and accommodation, which also related to traveling and tourism. I believe you have heard about Tune Hotel and Tune bus. And they come with one goal, low price. Great. Tune hotel starting with RM9.99, which I haven't try before. I believe more Tune to come. Good job.

This is a embarrassing for the stewardess, she might be too tired. What a naughty shooter.

That's all about my observation. One thing worth to mention is that, many of Air Asia stewardesses look great. That's mean Air Asia also control over the quality of their customer services as well. What a company, keep it up please!

Cracking RapidShare

2009-09-20T12:24:00.005+08:00

Have you heard and use Rapidshare before? Well, Rapidshare has been an excellent tool for sharing large files. I'm a regular user of it, mostly for E-book download. If you use the FREE version, you may feel frustrated for the slow download and limited download within the period. Don't worry, there is always a solution.

Recently many users have discovered ways of bypassing the download limits and skipping the waiting time. Just in case you haven't know about it, here's the step-by-step guide for you. Rapidshare traces the users IP address to limit each user to a certain amount of downloading per day. To get around this, you need to show the rapidshare server a different IP address.

RapidShare is free, easy to use and benefits Internet users like us, cool!

Here are some methods for doing this:

1. Short-Out the JavaScript:

1. Goto the page you want to download
2. Select FREE button
3. In the address bar put the following: javascript:alert(c=0)
4. Click OK
5. Click OK to the pop-up box
6. Enter the captcha
7. Download Your File

2. Request a new IP address from your ISP server.

Here’s how to do it in windows:
1. Click Start
2. Click run
3. In the run box type cmd.exe and click OK
4. When the command prompt opens type the following. ENTER after each new line.
ipconfig /flushdns
ipconfig /release
ipconfig /renew
exit

5. Erase your cookies in whatever browser you are using.
6. Try the rapidshare download again.

Frequently you will be assigned a new IP address when this happens. Sometime you will, sometimes you will not. If you are on a fixed IP address, this method will not work. To be honest, I do not know how to do this in linux/unix/etc. If this works for you, you may want to save the above commands into a batch file, and just run it when you need it.

If you want, you may download Rapidshare accelerator, which allow you to download multiple files and accelerate the download speed. Use it at your own risk.

3. Use a proxy with SwitchProxy and Firefox:

1. Download and install Firefox if you have not already
2. Download and install SwitchProxy
3. Google for free proxies
4. When you hit your download limit, clean your cookies and change your proxy

4. Use an anonymous service:

Running your system through the tor network should in theory work; however, it is difficult to use and setup. Plus, you allow others to run their evil deeds through your system as well by using this system. Anonymizer 2005 is inexpensive, easy to use, but not free. Other pay services would likely work as well.

5. You can use a bookmarklet to stop your wait times:

1. Open IE
2. Right Click On This Link
3. Select Add to Favorites
4. Select Yes to the warning that the bookmark may be unsafe.
5. Name it “RapidShare No Wait”
6. Click on the Links folder (if you want to display it in your IE toolbar)
7. Click OK
8. You may need to close and reopen IE to see it
9. Goto rapidshare and click the bookmarklet when you are forced to wait

Okay folks, that's all for my sharing in this post. Happy downloading via RapidShare. Selamat Hari Raya, maaf Zahir Batin!

Online Storage & backup

2009-09-12T19:30:00.002+08:00

Are you feeling trouble to backup your data to your USB external hard disk every time?

I know, perhaps you already heard of online storage and backup solution from the Internet. Yes, this is the one I'm going to talk about today. Well, normally online storage & backup solution normally offers in packages, based on storage capacity and speed of backup and recovery. You just try to type online storage in Google, you will got plenty of them.

Yes, most of the online backup packages are chargeable. If you read my blog frequently, you should know that I never promote any software that will cost you a single cent. Yes, there are still free lunches in this world, but they are just rare. So are you interested about it?

This solution brings much convenient to end-users to backup their data online.

Okay, basically I'm using a free online storage solution since a couple of months ago. It's brilliant and beyond my satisfaction. What amazed me is that, it can automatically backup and sync the data up to 2 computers. The application will helps you store the current version of each file, and also the previous 2 versions. Fantastic! In addition, this free plan provides you up to 2GB of online storage. Yes, SugarSync is offering this package for FREE to everyone, including mobile user. So just try it out and let me know how satisfy you are.

Anyway, this free plan has some limitations, including backup and sync an unlimited computers, unable to store more than 3 past version of file, it isn't as speedy as paid plan, and only up to 2GB data. Well, if you really like it, you can always go for the paid plan to overcome these limitation. You can even FREE to try for 30-days with the paid plan, before you really subscribe for it. You even entitled to downgrade back to 2GB free plan right after that enjoy the 30 days free trial.

SugarSync is offering what we looking for.

I think this should be the best plan I come across. If you have a better one, do share with us here. Happy online backup'ing, folks!

Bike Innovation

2009-09-05T19:30:00.002+08:00

Do you like cycling? It doesn't matter you to like or not, because you just won't used any energy via cycling with this new bike.

Due to the heavy traffic congestion around the main cities almost everywhere in the world, something has to come up to alleviate the traffics, including bike, which is totally environmental friendly. From what I've been told, many Europe countries are starting to use bike as their transportation, to avoid traffic jam. Well, if you yet to know, China and Japan started to use this transportation since ages ago, until now.

This should be perfect, as it can help us exercise while avoid the vehicle traffic congestion. Perhaps it will makes us a little bit tired and slow to reach the destination. And the worst thing is, it's not really applicable in South East Asia and Africa, due to the warm weather condition, as well as there is no special track for the bicycle which can be very danger.

So there is a brilliant guy from UK came out with a bike which designed to overcome some drawbacks above, excluding weather issue. :) Basically the bike can run up to about 19kmph, by using electric motor. The biker will just need to sit upright and steer the hands at his/her side. It is light and able to fold into a bad at 22lb, for us to carry around anywhere. The battery can be recharged as well, and last up to about 10km.

Well, of course, there are some limitation at the moment, including short lifetime of 1,000 charges, yet to be legal and it's expensive.

In conclusion, I think the inventor did a good job here. What do you think?

Top 10 Habits of Millionaire

2009-08-29T19:05:00.000+08:00

On few weeks back, when I was back to my hometown, I saw a very thin book with theme "The Top 10 Habits of Millionaires" came with 112 pages for sale in one of the bookstores in the town. This is an interesting topic, but it is selling for RM37.90. For me it's a bit too much, and it is not justify for me to buy it. Most probably I will read it once and throw it away. To maximize the effort to save and be stingy, I decided to finish the book on the spot without the need to buy it.

By reading it, I found out that the contents are very common, and it's a bit similar to "The Millionaire Next Door". Well, it doesn't matter, I've no complaint since I read it for free. As usual, I would like to share with you some of the vital points from this little thin book. If you think you are interested about it, then you can buy and read it at your own. :)

Have you watch "Who wants to be millionaire" before?

1. Millionaires think in long-term:
a) Thinking day to day, the way poor people do, is where you will find day laborers and street beggars.
b) Thinking week to week, the way poor people do, is living paycheck to paycheck and barely make ends meet.
c) Thinking month to month, the way middle class people do, is being concerned with monthly liabilities such as mortgage loan, car loan, credit card payment and household expenses.
d) Thinking year to year, the way rich people do, is where people learn about fiscal responsibility, financial literacy and investment.
e) Thinking decade to decade, the way very rich people do, is where you will find business plans that reach far into the future.

2. Patience is a millionaire’s asset; impatience is a liability of the middle class:
a) Rich people has the discipline of delayed gratification because they want more freedom in life.
b) Middle-class people want instant gratification because they want more comfort in life.

3. Millionaires talk about ideas:
a) Rich people talk about great ideas and realizing them. They own car companies, sports teams and vacation spots. They produce movies, television shows and music and earn from them. They choose fortune over fame.
b) Middle-class people talk about things from rich people’s ideas and daydream on them. They talk about things like sports cars, soccer teams and holidays. They indulge in movies, television shows and music and spend on them. They are easily impressed by fame.

4. The rich loves to compliment others and gain their help and support; the poor loves to tear down others only to be alienated.

5. People who complain are literally cursing themselves. Always ask yourself what is life trying to teach you when you feel like complaining upon a challenge or hardship.

When we talk about Millionaire, people will think of Slumdog Millionaire.

6. For the comfortable middle-class people, change is feared; for the confident rich people, change is opportunity. Fear blinds you to opportunities; confidence let you discover opportunities.

7. Fear is inevitable. The rich overcomes it with knowledge; the poor submits to it with negligence.

8. If you can live with the worst thing happening from your decision and the most likely thing to happen will lead you to the best thing happening, go for it!

9. We can’t please everyone and rejection is imminent; if you failed, you may be rejected but if you succeeded, you may still be rejected.

10. The rich plays to win; the poor plays to not lose only to lose in eventuality.

11. People often wish they would take more risks in life if they could live all over again, meaning that people have more regrets over things they didn’t do than the things they did.

Entrepreneur should be the most solid way of becoming millionaire.

12. Knowledge is priceless; negligence is costly:
a) Investment on a $20 book read may well worth a $20 000 idea and a $1 000 seminar attended may well worth a $1 million business plan.
b) Being penny-wise and pound-foolish by saving a $50 banknote for shopping instead of buying a good book may cost a loss of an undiscovered $50 000 idea. Worst off, craving for free advices may cost even greater loss when one listens to the opinion of another who thinks he knows something even when he has no real life experience.

13. The rich work for profits instead of wages; the poor trades their time for wages.

14. Happy millionaires are generous because they believe they will receive more in return.

15. Millionaires develop multiple income source by passive income from business that requires little personal management. They build teams of great people that complement one another, not compete with one another, to run their business, believing that those people will do even better than them.

16. Learn to increase your net worth the way rich people do, not learning to increase your paycheck only to be taxed more.

Financial educated people realized investment can fasten their ways to become millionaire.

17. Rich people increase their investment and assets when their income increases; poor people increase their spending and liabilities as their income increases.

18. The rich makes money, spends money, then pay taxes; the poor makes money, pay their tax and left with little to spend.

So, are you already a millionaire or multi-millionaire? If yes, you might reading some of the characteristics from yourself. For those who are not, may be you can try to buy jackpot, if you are thinking of become an instant millionaire.

All the best.

Are You Good in Making a Decision?

2009-08-23T09:40:00.002+08:00

Recently, there is an unique quiz advertised on British newsapaper, the question is:
" There is 3 scientists in a hot-air balloon, which is having insufficient air. One of them is an expert can save the world by protecting the world environment from pollution. Another expert has the ability to prevent the nuclear war and save the world. And the final one has the ability to invent & plant food, to save the millions of poor from hunger. However, they must throw one of them out, in order to save the other two experts, to prevent the hot-air balloon is going to crash. So who should they throw?"

After people seen the question, the respond was very good. Most of the answers are discussed about who to throw, some argue with each other. In the end, the answer released and the one answered correctly was a boy.

Does decision making involving strategy, governance & leadership?

The boy's answer is pretty simple, "just throw the the fattest one!". Have you got it correct?

Decision making is always playing a very significant role in our life, including personal and business. We rely on our decision making, should we succeed or fail. How good are you in making a decision? Well, when making a decision, apart from experience and knowledge, there are other factors we should take into consideration.

We need a technique & skill to make a quality decision. If you interested to understand more about it, you may read "The Effective Decision" from Peter Drucker.

How to Save in Reading

2009-08-15T11:50:00.000+08:00

Do you like to read books? If yes, are you wasting quite some money to purchase books every month?

In Malaysia, purchase a book is consider very expensive. For example, I bought Rule #1 for RM50. If you are working in UK, most of the time you'll only get a book for less than 10 pounds, how good it is. Well, we definitely compare in this way, due to currency differences. Unfortunately, due to the money we earn is RM, we are not afford to buy more books as we want to, compare to the high currency country like Australia, Euro and US. Is that one of the reasons we fall behind them?

How frequent you visit bookstore?

But with my disappointment, I surprise some of the local published books also selling with a relatively expensive price. Many local authors and publishers quality are not as good as the foreigners', yet they are selling the same or even higher price as other good books. What a thrill! To be honest, I refused to support them. Is about the quality, and yet they want to sell at such an unreasonable price. They shouldn't focus too much on margin, they should be emphasize more on affordability and quality. Anyway, that's my opinion only.

Due to these reasons and I want to save up my hard-earned money, I forced to discover a few ways to counter the purchase of expensive books issue in our country recently. I started to exchange books with my friends and relatives, or even just borrow recommended books from them, for those who do reading regularly. If I really think that book is worth to keep, then I'll only purchase it. With such trade, I didn't buy any book for this month. Great. The only cons is that you cannot have exactly what you want to read. Hey it's free, I can't expect more.

Do you know Google has e-library for free books preview?

Some people also make use of library. They borrow books from library, which is a very good choice as well. Unfortunately, I don't get what I want from my state library at this moment.

There is a dirt-cheap method, visit the bookstore and just try to finish the book on the spot. Well, a few of my friends are doing that. In fact, nothing wrong with that since you want to save your money. Be the bookstore offers you seats or not, as long as the book is not wrap up or no sign of "Do Not Read", you may enjoy from day till the bookstore close, your choice. I did it a few times, unfortunately I don't like the distraction of people moving around, so the 1st method is more suitable for me.

How many books have you own so far? Do you have space problem?

Another method is not for free, but you can get the book with dirt-cheap price. I believe the membership discount is quite bullshit, as they only give 10% discount, which is beyond the book price. What we can do is, we can try to wait for the bookstore promotion. Sometimes, they offering 3 for 2 pricing, or 30-70% discount off the older book. I got 'Winning' for 3 for 2 promotion price previously, which is a good budget. Sometimes, you also can look for online bookstore promotion.

The last method, which is the method I frequently used, search and look around from the Internet. Sometimes, you will come across bloggers and e-book organization sharing about the particular e-book, or you can try peer-to-peer sharing. Well, whether it is ethical to do this, I leave it for you to judge.

I hope they will helps you save money in reading. Have a nice weekend ahead, folks!

Free Cloud Anti-Virus

2009-08-06T21:55:00.000+08:00

Are you sick with Free AVG or Avast anti-virus software? Or you are sick with paid personal anti-virus software like PC-Cilin or McAfee? Wait a minute, this is not an advertisement post, it's my experience as an anti-virus user.

I used to use the free anti-virus like Free AVG, Avast or Avira, but I’ve found that at some points as below:
1. In every version of AVG I’ve used – it stops updating automatically.
2. Most of the free anti-virus software don't have sufficient protection, especially on web surfing and thumb drive.

AVG Anti-Virus Free edition is the most famous AV software.

So a couple of months ago I decided to try another free Anti-Virus - Panda’s free Cloud Antivirus, and I'm happy with it for now. Updates happen in the background, files and problems are quietly taken care of, and it only ever bugs me if it needs my attention to decide what to do about a detected virus. Anyway, it only supporting Windows XP and Vista 32-bits.

Can Panda Cloud Anti-Virus take over AVG Free AV?

It works well with Comodo Firewall, it's 100% free as well. If you manage to install and use both protection software for your PC/notebook, it will be getting perfect. Trust me.

So what you waiting for? Try it today. Enjoy.

Am I Living Frugally or Stingy?

2009-08-02T09:40:00.001+08:00

After I went through some bad experiences and the begin of doing simple monthly personal budget, I hope I'm doing better on my personal financial management compare to the previous years. Even though I'm still single for now, I believe a person should have learn the basic of personal financial management when he/she has the ability to obtain income, to prepare the path to our goal, such as budget to retire early, get marry and children education etc.

From my opinion, we should have a goal and then allocate a sum of budget from our monthly income in order to achieve this. I hope I'm not doing this too late for now. Today, I'm going to share with you on my total spending over the past 7 months, as well as how I categorized them. I'm not earning much per month, I don't even have side income or great return from investment for the time being. However, I believe it's just too important to track where my money spent, and how can I control it from there. And from the outcome, you can determine whether I'm living frugally or stingy for now.

Have you educate yourself enough on personal finance?

Basically I categorized my savings and spending into the groups below:

Group 1 - Savings
Income, savings & secure return investment with maximum liquidity

Group 2 - Home Expenses
House maintenance, bills, furniture, assessments, others related to the house

Group 3 - Transportation
Fuel, vehicle road tax, insurance, repair, parking fees, others related to the vehicle

Group 4 - Daily Living
Groceries, clothing, meals, any expenses related to daily living.

Group 5 - Entertainment
Movies, books & magazines, exercises, outdoor recreation, traveling, etc.

Group 6 - Investments
Stocks, unit trusts, Forex, foreign funds, REITs.

Group 7 - Obligations
Family needs and contribution.

Group 8 - Protections
Peronsal life insurance, vitamins, health inspection, etc.

Group 9 - Miscellaneous
Others which are not categorized under groups above.

By putting in my monthly income & return into the groups above, the pie chart below is what I see for over the past 7 months:

Average monthly personal budget - Jan to Jul 2009

The biggest spending goes to Home Expenses group, 30%. I always want to contribute a better lifestyle to my parents. The cost of maintaining a house and family is not cheap too! With luck, 25% of my income retain as savings. After I make sure I've enough savings to ensure my family and I can survive for 6 months time, I'll try to transfer 10-15% of the net savings to other investments with greater potential return, and also to increase my sum insured of my existing insurance, which is too small for now.

Are you using a software to manage your monthly budget?

The 3rd largest portion goes to investment, which is 19%. Thank God that I managed to cover up all my previous investments loss during the recent bull trend. I'm looking into real estate investment (for my family living) once I know better about it. So far I know I unable to keep my promise of getting back the loss under my previous Forex investment.

Do you understand the importance of keeping track your spending?

For entertainment and daily living, they took aboubt 8% and 7% respectively. I spent 20% for entertainment such as clubbing and social previously, which was a waste for me. Nowadays, my entertainments are pretty simple, spend time to have casual drinks and movies with friends, purchase some magazines and books monthly. I seldom go for traveling, which it will be changed once my goal is reached.

For personal daily living, I couldn't press anymore from it, as I consider it's already the minimum. I rarely go for expensive restaurants which I think it's not worth, and I only buy clothes once or twice a year. I personally think it's not a totally bad news anyway, I can have it when I get rich, if.

Why most Malaysians are queuing day & night just to buy limited government funds?

On the other hand, I also contribute 6% of my income to my parents and their insurances. It's not much actually. I always hope I can do it better, and I'll try. Besides, I also spent 3% on my life insurance, which is too small for now and the sum insured need to be increase soon. For transportation, I'm using company car at this moment, so it's consider lucky for me.

Now, let's have a look on what's in my previous 1st half year spending by estimation:

25% goes to obligations, 24% goes to entertainment, 22% goes to home expenses. There is totally no savings & investment, and the spending should be more than income. See, it makes a difference now.

That's all about the sharing of my personal budget for the 1st 7 months of 2009. Even though I'm not a guru in personal finance or personal budget, I hope my sharing can help you out. If you want to be a millionaire or multi-millionaire, this should be the starting point. Good luck!

The Difference of Take Care and Not

2009-07-25T20:30:00.001+08:00

On yesterday afternoon, a friend and I went to one of the car dealers to pick up her second-hand Toyota VIOS, about 5 years old car. On the other hand, I was also looking for a second-hand car. The dealer was asking us to try out one of the Mitsubishi Lancer VII in their garage.

From the information given, it shows that it is under 1st hand user and the vehicle has been used for 3 years and 3 months time, while the mileage is about 102,000km, and it's 1.6cc petrol. The price offered is also reasonable. The only bad thing is that the driver used the car up to 34,000km a year, that's a lot.

The basic maintenance is to service your vehicle on time.

With the high mileage, my friend and I decided to test the Lancer with the attitude of 'trying only'. At first, we take a look for the exterior and interior of the vehicle, apparently the car is proper taken care of, only minor scratches were found outside the car. The inside's is proper maintain . We also take a look at the engine, it was like new engine with proper cleaning. When we started the engine, it sounds like good as well. We took a round from the highway and surprisingly, we feel like we are driving a new car, without finding further problem on it. I'm totally impressed with it.

We thought it might be due to the car is only 3 years old and it's still consider very new. So we decided to call up another friend who also intend to sell his Lancer VII. His car is apparently newer than the previous one, where he only used about 2 years and 10 months, and the mileage is 72,000km. Since we directly deal with the owner, he offered us a better price than the car dealer, about SG$1,000 difference.

Please read how-to-maintain-your-tyres brought to you by Ekimkee.

Once we met him up, and we took a look at the car immediately. Firstly, we took a look at the exterior and interior, many parts of the car exterior was scratched, and the interior apparently is not as good as the previous one. From the look at it, the engine part is almost the same. However, when we started the engine, the sound was totally different. The previous Lancer is much more powerful and smooth. When we did a test drive, we can feel that the car seems like having some problems and not as smooth if we compare the previous test drive.

Well, I can only conclude that the difference is made by how well the driver take care of the vehicle, as well as how important it is to maintain the car well in order to have a better driving feel. But as we all know, many people don't know or lazy to maintain their car properly, they know how to use only. This is bad, as they did not aware that they can enjoy the great benefits of proper maintaining a car.

You should have a checklist to maintain your vehicle regularly.

With proper maintenance of the car, I believe we can drive it comfortably, but we also can sell it with higher value regardless of the mileage.

Why Not Real Estate Investment

2009-07-18T19:30:00.002+08:00

If you look at Hong Kees and Singaporeans today, they are very well aware and focus on investment, just because they want to bring the biggest value to the money they earned. Every investment has their defined risk, I believe you've already listened and seen how many Hong Kees make serious loss in real estate, Forex, stock market, Lehman Brothers and so many more. Of course, many of them also earn until their mother couldn't recognize them. Many of them willing to take risk (be it high or low) and go for big return. This is what we call 'daring'. If I ask you to contra $200,000 on one of the hot pick stock on next Monday morning, will you dare to? I think none of us willing to, because we are not confident on that hot pick at all.

Back to this post topic, many people invest in real estate because they think the risk of real estate is lower, or perhaps it is not as volatile as stock and Forex market. I believe it is very true, as everyone and family needs a shelter, so the demand is always there. So no matter how worst is the market, the demand will be there. That's why we dare to invest one, or perhaps as many as we can. And most of the time, real estate price is shooting like a rocket, people tend to get big return from this investment, and it is easy yet low risk.

Have you thought of build them, instead of buy them for rent/sale?

From my opinion, real estate invest wont be my cup of tea for now, perhaps I just need one for my family. My reason is pretty simple, as below:

1) Too Expensive The real estate price is overshoot in Malaysia for now, and with the paycheck I'm getting, I simply cannot afford it. I would like to buy a 'better' and 'bigger' terrace house at my home town but it simply costs me over RM400k, what's the point I need to downpayment my hard-earn money for RM40k and pay the difficult installment for every month? There must be some other investment which has lower risk and higher return than real estate? Or perhaps can I wait for the real estate price to go down? Or will it goes down?

2) Volatility This is a common problem with real estate, where it is lack of volatility and it is time-consuming to settle your real estate transaction, either buy or sell. And to sell a real estate, you have to find buyers and provided they agree on the price you offer. Even though nowadays real estate agent will does all the jobs for you, but you need time to get your investment back. For those who require volatility from investment, real estate definitely not your cup of tea.

3) Interests Rates I always think that real estate investment is design for rich people. For those middle-class down to poor people like me, I do not afford to buy a house or shoplot in cash, or perhaps finish the loan within 20 years. We mostly have to loan money from bank in order to invest in real estate. Okay let's do some simple calculation here ( I copied the configuration below from online loan calculator).

Loan amount:	$
Loan term:	years
Interest rate:	% per year

Monthly Payments:	$

Wow, to buy a 400K terrace house, I need to pay RM1,800 monthly installment, after RM40k down payment! Those are excluding insurance, lawyer fees etc. That's killing me. If I opt for this, let's see what I 'll need to pay for the rests of my working life for the following table.

Please look at how much you are paying for the principal and how much you are paying for the interests. After 3 years, you have paid about RM53,128 amount of interests to bank. So at that time, you better pray that your property is already shoot above RM454k in order to break-even your investment, that's about only 4.31% growth per annum. I believe you always heard people saying this guy or that guy bought this house for RM400k in 3 years back and now managed to sell it for RM450k. He managed to gain RM50k profits from this investment! But once I look at the table above, unless he paid cash, how do that guy gain any penny from this deal? Furthermore, I only take 5% as base loan interest, it might possible to shoot up to sky high in the future.

4) Growth rate As you can see the statistic above, the annual growth rate above is only 4.31%, almost the same as Malaysia Fixed Deposit. I hope that would be the worst scenario, if Malaysia real estate doesn't collapse. If you are very lucky, you may get 10% return a year, it's all depends on the supply and demand.

Will it be wiser if we use other investment money to invest in real estate?

Human beings are always smart. To overcome such problem, we cannot rely solely on the growth rate and just let the property empty. We rent it out in order to bear the monthly installment, and we will gain net profit if we manage to rent more than what we paying to the bank! This is a brilliant and profitable idea from the beginning. I found out most of the properties do not give the net profit or perhaps less than 10% of annual return of the property total price nowadays. That's mean, we still have to pay some portion of the loan to bank, fork out some bucks to maintain & renovate the property, and bear the risk of the property price growth. We also need to pray the tenant does pay us every month.

In fact, there are many alternative investments that can give us affordable, interest-free, better volatility, and return growth rate than real estate, such as invest in a business, unit trusts, stock or Forex. If you think that because real estate lets you leverage your investment, the rate of return is much higher than a business or stock investment and is, therefore, a better place for beginning investors to put their money, think again. I believe Phil Town is with me.

Of course, there are many people managed to gain big and steady income from real estate investment. I believe the rule of thumb is, as long as you spent some times to look into the investment in details, understand the reward and risk, and work out a system and follow it, there you will be another successful investor.

Have a nice weekend, folks!

Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad

2009-07-11T19:30:00.001+08:00

I believe every Malaysian should know who is Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad (some Malaysians used to call Him Tun Ma), including the new generations. In fact, He is our ex-prime minister, from 1981 till 2003, who is the longest serving prime minister in Malaysia and leader in Asia so far, where Tun Abdullah Badawi is the shortest serving and stepped down just a couple of months ago (2003-2009).

It was His birthday on yesterday. Since Tun Ma is one of the very few leaders that I respected, I would like borrow this opportunity to recall what He had contributed to our country for the past 22 years for being a Malaysia Prime Minister. Bear in mind that I respect Him not because he is dare-to-criticize behaviour, but his leadership and competency on his job as a Prime Minister.

Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad

Just to recall a little bit of his background, Tun Ma was born at Alor Star, Kedah. His father was a Muslim half-Indian origin, where His mum was a Malay. He is graduated from National University of Singapore as a medical student. If you haven't know, Tun Ma used to sell banana fritters and snacks to cover his family income during Word War II.

Tun Ma became Malaysia Prime Minister at 16 July, 1981, where he was the 1st PM that came from a modest social background, whereas the formers were from royal families. In 1983 and 1991, He removed the royal veto and immunity from prosecution. Prior to this amendment, royal assent was required in order for any bill to pass into law. Great.

As for economic contribution, his pet projects included biggest local steel producer in Malaysia (Perwaja Steel), local car manufacturer (Proton), and satellite television service (Astro). All he is trying to do is to follow what South Korea and Japan are doing in their succeeded industries. In addition, he also embarked many large scale national projects, included Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC), North-South Express Highway, Putrajaya IT City, Johor's port, used to be largest airport in Asia - Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA), Bakum dam in Sarawak, as well as used to be tallest building - Petronas Twin Towers. Although some of the projects are known as failed today and not success at all, we just cannot blame the leader alone, I believe they were due to the management which having big issues. Our country need big correction here.

He admitted to the public that his biggest mistake was to appoint Tun Abdullah as PM.

During Asian financial crisis in 1997, IMF had prescribed a recovery package for Malaysia but it was rejected by Tum Ma. Indeed, after the crisis, IMS and World Bank acknowledged Tun Ma's approach had worked. Although there were some losses speculations for the country on financial during 1981-1990, it doesn't matter anymore, as we all learn from mistakes.

As for education contribution, SPM and SRP where fully introduced as national exam for all secondary school. To cater lower income population education, boarding schools were constructed as well. And government also offer scholarships to tens of thousands of students for further studies in Australia and UK, which he aspired to achieve par development with. Before he retired, he also promoted liberalization of univeristy start-ups locally, leading to branch campuses being built and tie-ups with some of the most prestigious universities in the world, such as University of Nottingham, MIT, Monash University, Curtin University of Technology and so on.

He never let go the polictics even though he is officially retired.

Even after he retired, he also not forget to concern about the country economy and politics. He even setup a blog to concern and offer his precious opinion on the current politics, education and economy issues. Even though his blog has been banned by goverment indirectly and repeatedly, he is still finding ways to do it. Such outstanding actions indicating he is really like to contribute of what he is doing for the country, bravo! I believe this should be the behaviour a real leader should possesses. Please support his blog if you have free time.

Happy 85th Birthday, my beloved leader!

The Failure of My Investment

2009-07-03T11:05:00.001+08:00

Is investment really important? When I was teenager, I always thought investment is something which able to bring me greater return than normal savings, with certain risks applied. Perhaps investment can make me rich, or at least ready for my retirement. When I listened to my teachers and relatives, investment is very easy, just dump the savings into somewhere offers more interests than your bank savings account for short or long term. Perhaps they are right, because I know nothing about it at that moment.

When I grow up and enter to the society to work, I tried to do what the oldies have told me. I've started to invest my savings into insurance and unit trusts since 2003. I got about average return of 10% a month from unit trusts, which is good. After few years back, my unit trust portfolio average return dropped to -30%, due to economy recession. Furthermore, the unit trust company is sucking my 5-6% of investment amount per entry. What a thrill! I was very unhappy about it, as after few years time, I've got negative, might as well I put the money in the fixed deposit!

I started to avoid diversification after I know how it increases my risk.

I continued to look for alternative investments which able to offer me higher annual return, which were foreign exchange and stock market. Sorry, I burnt my hand for these investments, due to I know nothing much about them. I proceed to look for other more solid and stable investment like real estate, unfortunately, the real estate price is already at the sky-high level nowadays in our country, and a person like me with average monthly income of RM1-2k should not be afford to pay the installment. Furthermore, I found out real estate is not worth to invest for me, for 3 main reasons. Perhaps I'll explain about it in detail in my coming post.

So what's left now? Marrying someone for her money? No, I'm not handsome and cheeky enough. Buy the lottery with return of RM20 millions everyday? No, I lost interest to do it for now, it's kind of wasting my money anyway. Invest my self to become a movie or rock star? Not potential enough. Fixed deposit and live frugally? No, I can beat the inflation and I want to bring a better living standard to my family. The more i think, the more I pissed off, because I don't know what should my plan be, while my age is growing.

Is real estate investment designed for the rich? Pls wait for my next post.

Until lately, I realized investment should be very simple. Not to blame unit trust or real estate anymore for now, as they can make good money very well too, provided we understand and know how to. To invest, we just need to know some basic rules, understand the investment we want, and come out with a system to do and monitor it. I should be invest without any risk! That's what we looking for, isn't? And investment should be just like a starting-up and managing a business. As you already know, business should be the ultimate investment we should look for. If the business is built successfully, it can gives us the good return perhaps until we are off from this world. If you already know what I'm talking about, very good for you. If not, please try to read 'Rich Dad, Poor Dad' again.

So for now, I'm working on my investment plan with a draft system, perhaps I need a couple of years time to prove it works. I really hope it will works and let me have the good return for the remaining of my life. If I'm success, perhaps you'll see me posting up my result here. If I'm failed, well, at least I've tried my best. You won't laugh at me, right.

Is there any giant rich ass in this world doesn't do investment?

Have a nice weekends, my friend.

CommunicAsia 2009

2009-06-21T11:55:00.002+08:00

This week, I've been to CommunicAsia 2009, the 20th international communications and information technology exhibition and conference. It was a great experience for me to explore what are the existing and new IT products, services and solutions, surrounding with sexy models and technologies.

Apart from Singapore companies, the exhibitors also came from Austrialia, Brunei, Canada, Malaysia, Korea, China, France, Germany, Russia and so on. Let's look at what are the interesting stuffs and comments I found from the exhibition.

1) Singtel Booth - Driving F1 Simulation
Perhaps Singtel was one of the heaviest investment in this exhibition, as they managed to get in a F1 simulator to let the vistors to try on. The F1 itself will vibrate, move left, right, forward & backward according to the racing track, just like you driving a real F1. I didn't manage to try it due to long queue. Anyway, it looks fun and good experience.

The most impressive game of the exhibition - F1 Simulator

2) Yahoo! Booth - Nothing surprising me
Yahoo! joined the exhibition for the 1st time, and they have a private party on the 1st day, which I was not invited. They offer light foods, alcohol & beverages but it looks like nothing suprising me. Perhaps this booth is the shortest time I spent in overall.

Yahoo! Booth. Sorry, there was no promoters found.

3) Blackberry
Blackberry was having a short seminar and party on the 2nd day. The booth is displaying the latest Blackberry models, which I'm not really into it, including the Blackberry girls.

Blackberry, very big version of model walking around the exhibition.

4) LG and Samsung - Impressive mobile models & promoter uniform
LG and Samsung, as usual, displaying the latest mobile models to the visitors. Their booths are very big and most of the new models look cool. They hired many sexy promoters with nice looking uniform to explain the features of every new models. The most impressive part was LG hired a professional team of Korean street dancers to perform dancing twice a day. Thumbs up.

Outlook of LG booth.

Outlook of Samsung booth.

Street dancer from LG.

5) Telekom Malaysia (TM) - Lousiest booth compared to the booths above
Not to say I'm not supporting my own country's booth, but it's really sucks. The promoters they hired are sucks and unprofessional. They look like the teenagers on the streets and most of the time sit there and not doing their works. And the only game TM offered is the lousy soccer game. Well, may be I'm wrong. Move on, please!

This is the soccer game, my friend.

6) CBoss - Impressive promoters
Perhaps CBoss is nothing much to display on it's technology, but the promoters. In fact, I don't really understand why they setup a stage just for a few Russian promoters carrying the Cboss board and stand there for the whole day. Perhaps they want to promote the name of CBoss? I don't manage to ask their Boss anyway.

CBoss promoters posting on the stage.

Overall the exhibition is successful, many exhibitors but the crowds seem a bit weak this year, perhaps due to economy recession. I'm looking forward the coming CommunicAsia and hope they will do it even better. Cheers.

How to Look for New Blogging Topic?

2009-06-14T11:45:00.000+08:00

I know, I know. I was missing in action for 2 weeks, due to I was on vacation in the 1st week, and I was lazy of blogging on the 2nd week. Very sorry about that, as I'm running out of interesting topic to be posted here to share with you all at this moment. I believe it should be the hardest time that blogger running out of topic? Perhaps it's related to my lousy lifestyle I have at this moment.

Whatever it is, topic is always there, but depends whether we want to spend time and effort to write the topic out. So how do we find source of topics in order to keep our blog running with new post? There are a few ways perhaps we can look into. Before that, it is important that what category we are blogging about, and then we will find the right source from there. For me, I write about anything I'm interested. So I'll based on my own suggestions for the following ways.

This is the blogging topic statistic generated at 2007.

If you are a social person and always attending certain events, campaign, functions etc, you won't have much problem in updating your blog, because the event itself will drive you to your topic. Perhaps the best candidate would be Kennysia, as he is always invited to attend certain events and on vacation. Sometimes, he also asked to write an advertisement blog from advertisors. He is a pretty success blogger with interesting topics sometimes.

If you are non-social person or prefer to stay at home, a hot and fresh topic can always find out from the Internet, such as online newspaper, magazine, youtube and other people's blogs. For example, swine flu, or perhaps the latest celebrity news of Paris Hilton vs Cristiano Ronaldo.

This is my favorite latest news.

If both are none of our business, perhaps we can look into sharing of what we know or expertise in. For example, an IT engineer will has a lot to share and talk about IT outlook and technologies. Or a salesman has a lot to talk about the value of the product & services. That would be even easier when there is a news related your field or expertise is coming out, you may comment about it according to your opinion. Sometimes, it is good to insert some golden story or jokes, we all love to story and jokes, don't we?

Anyway, whatever we write, it doesn't mean there is a reader. So identify readers need, monitoring and marketing our blog is vital. But seriously I don't have much time to do so at this moment, so I wish you all bloggers good luck and have a nice weekend. ;)

Dollar Cost Averaging Pros and Cons

2009-05-24T10:55:00.006+08:00

Hi folks. Time flew very fast and we have reaching the end of May. With the economy recession still in place, I believe our tough time might have some more time to go through. So good luck to all of us.

Today, I would like to touch on the an investment strategy, Dollar-Cost Averaging, or people used to name it 'DCA'. You might have already knew, dollar-cost averaging in fact is a popular investment strategy where you invest a fixed dollar amount at a pre-determined intervals. Simply say, when the markets are up, you buy fewer shares per dollar invested due to the higher cost per share. When the markets are down, you buy a greater number of shares per dollar invested. This strategy allows us to get an average cost per share over time, meaning you don't have to invest the time and effort to monitor market movements and strategically time your investments.

This is the DCA we talking about today.

Okay I think it's pretty clear what is DCA and how it works for now. Well, I believe you always told by brokers or unit trust agents that, if you invest fixed dollar amounts on a monthly basis regardless of price and theorectically, you'll come out with more shares for your investment, and you make more profits from this strategy. To be honest, I've using this strategy since year 2005 and I found out it does works under circumstances, but definitely it's not the best way to maximize my money.

According to Timothy Middleton, a writter of moneycentral articles, when the market is studied over long periods, dollar-cost averaging almost always produces lower returns than investing lump sums in diversified portfolios, and almost never reduces risk meaningfully. Calculation below are the evident he found:

Three ways to invest

Investment amount and fund net asset value by date
	Lump sum	Dollar-cost averaging	Random
1/2/2004	$3,000 at $25.94	$750 at $25.94
2/11/2004			$300 at $27.22
3/2/2004			$300 at $27.12
3/29/2004			$300 at $26.44
4/1/2004		$750 at 26.75
5/3/2004			$300 at $26.25
5/27/2004			$300 at $26.36
7/1/2004		$750 at 26.56
7/6/2004			$300 at $26.25
7/19/2004			$300 at $25.85
9/9/2004			$300 at $26.29
9/29/2004			$300 at $26.23
10/1/2004		$750 at 26.65
10/27/2004			$300 at $26.61
Closing NAV	$28.55	$28.55	$28.55
Total investment	$3,000	$3,000	$3,000
Value on 12/27	$3,351	$3,294	$3,315
Total return	11.7%	9.8%	10.5%

Notes: Vanguard Total Stock Market Index fund. As of 12/27/2004.

Assumes total investment of $3,000. Total returns include reinvested dividends as follows: 8 cents on 3/26; 9 cents on 6/25; 9 cents on 9/24 and 18.5 cents on 12/23.

Sources: Lipper, MSN Money, Microsoft Money

DCA always illustrated in capture lower prices along the way but finish nicely ahead.

According to Tim, what dollar-cost averaging has become is a salesman's tool to prize away in small increments the larger sum he couldn't talk you out of in the first place. But if that's what it takes to get you to invest, so be it.

Even Phil Town, the best selling author of Rule #1 - The Simple Strategy for Successful Investing in Only 15 Minutes a Week, also complaint about the costly myth of dollar-cost averaging. He emphasized on why we need to buy when there is high cost per share. Will it be better we only buy when the cost is low?

In my opinion, be it DCA, random or lump sum strategy, we only can maximize our investment when we aim at the right time, come with a goal or plan. Since everyone saying we cannot predict the market and most of the time it will goes up and down, it doesn't mean we cannot do anything with it but to stick with DCA strategy. Lump sum investment results in better returns most of the time, because you have the money in the market longer. This is based on the idea that the longer you have your money in the market, the better your returns are over the long run, as shown in the table above.

You should buy and read this book if you haven't.

So what's left for DCA? Indeed, it is affordable for people who treat investing like paying a bill or loan. Some people do not afford to invest $5000 at a time, but they managed to do monthly installment of $417! See, this strategy is being used in everywhere such as monthly installment for car, TV, notebook, EPF contribution, insurance etc. We talk about affordable & convenience here!

I think I've bull shit too much, as I believe you must be better than me on this already. In summary, as what old man said, the bottom line is, whatever strategy you apply, investing is better than not investing. Cheers. :)

How Vendor Make Money from PC Fair

2009-05-17T11:49:00.000+08:00

Hey, you must be hearing a lot of how bloggers make money online, how traders make money from stock market, how conman make money from scam and so on. How about how vendor make money from computer (PC) fair?

Perhaps some of you already knew about it. Well, as part of my entrepreneur experiences, I would like to share with you on the pre-requisition and strategies involved on how vendor make money from PC fair. To be honest, it's not easy for vendor to earn a penny in PC fair nowadays, due to great competition, price wars and every vendor also try to sell the same hot cakes. In the other hand, a success vendor can easily gain RM10-20k from 3 days PC fair. That's why multiple strategies have to be applied in order to win the battle.

PIKOM PC Fair is the largest PC fair in Malaysia.

What are the vital strategies for vendor to win the battle? let's look at some points below.

1. Large Capital & Low Price
First and foremost, you must have big capital, then you only able to sell your product in lowest price. You must ready sufficient cash flow to invest into the stocks in bulk, as you want to get special discount and rebate from the principal. This is crucial. When you have cost advantage, you can sell your product in lower price. Because this strategy is too popular, now every principal will comes out special packages to attract vendors to take from them. For example, 100 units of notebooks @ RM1,800 each. 70 to 99 units will be @ RM1,830, etc.

Normally vendor will force to take the best package with largest cost involved, even though they know they might not able to finish the stock. Well, this is where the big players taking advantage. Imagine they have many retails all over the places, some up to 5, some up to 10, they can spread the remaining stocks and sell it at a reasonable price easily. And they might not have to enter stock anymore after that. The only bad thing is your cash flow will stuck with the stocks.

Booth setup also very important to attract visitor eye sight.

2. Work close with Principal
Secondly, if you must lock down on certain product you want to sell, and then liaise with the principal for the best price vs volume, and ask for booth sponsor. In that way, you can cut down your cost significantly. Get the maximum credit term from the principal for your cash flow advantage.

Besides, you must also reserve the stock with the prinicipal as early as possible, to avoid other vendors grab your stocks and insufficient stock supply from principal.

3. Booth
Thirdly, you may try to get as many booth as you can, if you are selling more than 1 product, what we called booth diversification. As customers walk by and shop, your booths are having high probability of being shopped. That's why you can notice the same vendor is having multiple booths in different corners of the PC fair.

The location itself also very important. Some customers don't do product or price survey, because it is crowded, busy and warm most of the time. Once they get in to the PC fair, they will just buy whatever they spot and leave the fair. So if you get your principal booked the right booth for you, then you are the lucky one.

Distribution of flyers also 1 of the strategies to attract buyers.

4. Free Gifts
Never look down with the power of free gifts. It's a magic strategy every vendor apply every time. For example, a poster written "Buying a digital camera at RM899 with 10 free gifts!". It will definitely attract most of the visitors to have a look. The more people visit, the buying chance are great. And most of the people like free gift. According to the marketing strategy, free gift makes people think that they have earn additional thing from the product they paid for. In fact, the free gifts cost are already bundled within the product price. Well, this method is just works well until today.

5. Promoters
Finally, the promoters play the most important role in PC fair, just like any other field does. In PC fair, experience and sales-talk promoters able to boost up the sales significantly. The promoter must understand what they are trying to sell, so product and basic sales training are crucial for them. When the customer walk-by, they must catch every chance to promote the product and try to explain as much as they can, instead of just sitting or standing there to wait for the customer to approach to the booth. Well, that's why you must have as many as promoters you can around the PC fair, so they can bring the customer to your booths.

If possible, hiring some beauty models also can attract young visitors to visit to your booth, and trying to buy something from your booth in order to keep in touch with the models. For sure, I'll be the 1st visitor to do so. :)

See this promoter? It's too wrong that I don't take the flyer from her!

Okay, that's all for my sharing. Have a nice weekend, folks.

The Perfect Husband

2009-05-10T20:48:00.004+08:00

Happy mother's day to all mothers around the world!

So, have you wish your mum already? And what gift had you contributed to your mum today? Okay, my post today is not about mother's day or the gift. I realized long time I didn't post a joke in my blog, so I would like to try one today. May be you've heard about it, but who care?

Here's the joke goes...

"Several men are in the locker room of a fitness club. A mobile phone on a bench rings and one of the men engages the hands free speaker function and begins to talk. Everyone else in the room are trying to listen.

Man: 'Hello?'

Woman: 'Honey, it's me. Are you at the club right now?'

Man: 'Yes'

Woman: 'I am at the central shopping center now and found a beautiful leather coat. It's only $800. Is it okay with you, if I buy it?'

Man: 'Sure, go ahead if you like it.'

Woman: 'And, I also stopped by a Mercedes dealership and saw the latest 2009 model of C200. I really liked it.'

Man: 'How much is it?'

Woman: 'It's a little bit expensive, $220,000.'

Man: 'All right. But for with this price, I want it with all the options included.'

Woman: 'Fantastic! Oh yes, one more thing honey, the bungalow I wanted last year is back on the market. Now they are asking for 30% extra of $3.5 millions!'

Man: 'Well, you may just go ahead and counter offer them at RM3 millions. They will probably take it. Otherwise, you can go for another $200k, if you think it is really a pretty good price.'

Woman: 'Brilliant! I'll see you later, honey. I love you so much!'

Man: 'I love you, too! Bye.'

The man hangs up the phone. The other men in the locker room are staring at him in astonishment, with their mouths agape. And surprisingly, the man turns around and asks: 'Anyone know who this phone belongs to?'"

The Rape of Nanking

2009-05-03T12:10:00.000+08:00

When I opened my Email on last weekend, I accidentally received a forwarded email from a friend, with the topic of Nanking Massacre, and asked me to anti-Japanese. The pictures she attached in the Email immediately draw my attention. I heard about this incident before since I was young, but I did not bother much about it as there is no Internet access for me to find out more about this incident.

Basically the pictures in the Email depiciting on how Nanking massacre victims being killed and raped by the Japanese during 1937. From my understanding, Japanese managed to conquer Republic of China's capital, Nanking during Dec of 1937, but I have totally no idea what is happening during that time.

Nanking Massacre bodies flooded Yang Tze river.

I studied the history of World War II during my secondary school time. But it is just a brief one, where our education book only talks about how Adolf Hitler conquered and died, and how and how long Japanese dominated our country. Our history book did not mention about this incident at all, so I wonder whether this incident exist or not.

Out of my curiosity, I dig further on documentary web site, watch the documentary movie 'Nanking' and also the latest movie of 'Nanking! Nanking!' to further understand the incident. In the end of the day, I found out this can be highly true. The pictures have proved the incident, but also the Chinese victims, Chinese soldiers and Japanese soldiers to describe what had happen during the incident, according to the 'Nanking' documentary film.

Two idiot Japanese commanders competing on slaying number of Chinese heads.

Basically the Japanese army just spent 3 days to defeat the Chinese army and enter the city. Initially the Nanking General announced the city would not surrender and would fight to the death, by gathered about 100,000 untrained and low motivation soldiers. Low morale, troops in open flight, and an overwhelming enemy superiority in numbers caused the General to retreat across the Yangtze River after 3 days, without officially announcing any intention of surrendering the city to the Japanese military authorities.

Many orders given during the battle contradicted those of headquarters, and many more orders were simply ignored. The resulting chaos, compounded by the inadequacy of pre-battle preparations, gave Chinese soldiers little chance to escape the oncoming onslaught of the Japanese army. The defense plan fell apart from the very beginning because the defenders were overwhelmed by Chinese troops fleeing from previous defeats such as the Battle of Shanghai, and these troops just wanted to escape to safer ground and refused to obey any orders.

Chinese prisoners being buried alive by Japanese army.

From the history, we can know the problems of the Chinese troop and the Japanese army is too strong to be defeated. And unfortunately, the Japanese army had commited atrocities, such as killing, rapes, loot, arson and so on in Nanking city, with the unappropriate management from the commanders and poor discipline among the army. And there was about 300,000 casualites in Nanking, either massive killed by machine guns from the back, raped and killed, abused to death, snap by long knife and the head being cut while alive, and whatever the Japanese army likes. 80,000 women were raped and gang-raped, including infants and elderly.

However, whatever they had done, they have their karma. United States launched 2 nuclear bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki city of Japan to end the World War II at 1945. The bombs killed about 140,000 and 80,000 civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki respectively. Afterward, the Japanese civilians were also suffered rape incidents during the occupation of Japan.

Aftermath of Nagasaki atomic bomb at 1945.

What a upset history.

New Scam Has Arrived!

2009-04-26T21:18:00.001+08:00

Congratulations to fraudsters, you've successfully to scam our citizens again with your new scam method!

Well, I have to say sorry to the victims, it just has too many ways to cheat people hard-earn money nowadays. So far I've heard and seen, or even experienced the following scams:
1. Africa wealth scam via Email
2. ATM card scam by recording your PIN number
3. ATM PIN number scam via SMS
4. Credit card scam via Email & phishing web site
5. Hong Kong jackpot scam via phone & SMS - This is the most stupid way but it worked effectively in Malaysia. Yes it is. I gave a thumb up to the scammers, for their brilliant acting skills over the phone conversation.
And now, what again?

Mobile phone is the most effective tool for scammer to con money.

It never going to finish I tell you, as long as there are still fishes around, I mean the market. Now, I would like to take the opportunity here to share with you the latest scam technique, so you'll be aware of it, and get rid of unnecessary surprise in the near future. That's the best thing Ekimkee can does for you now. As for scammers, don't hate me, I'm just trying to help my friends & readers here.

According to Malaysia's Central Bank, there is a latest scam reported recently. Perhaps you've knew about it, but it doesn't matter to revise it one more time, yeah? To have a better picture, I will explain the scam in a story and point form, as below:

Is it a history for ATM machine scam?

1. One day, Mr.Lee receive a call from a 'bank', inquiring if he had just conducted a transaction for goods via credit card.

2. When Mr.Lee answer in negative, the caller'll informs Mr.Lee in a concerned tone to call a commercial bank's officer with a given the number. (Yes, the scammers making the procedure more complicated now in order to gain your trust.)

3. Mr.lee immediately contacts the officer. And the one who picked up the phone is identifying himself as 'bank' officer. Mr.Lee tells him that he did not conduct the mentioned transaction and Mr.Lee does not have such credit card.

4. But he informs Mr.Lee that the transaction had been carried out according to the 'bank' record and that the credit card belongs to Mr.Lee!

5. He suggests Mr.lee to call Central Bank 'Credit Card Fraud Unit' and gives you the number. (What a lovely unit name thought by the scammers! It doesn't exist anyway.)

6. Mr.Lee then reaches an automated voice message service which says he has reached "Central Bank". Then someone picks up & identifies himself as 'officer'. He asks for Mr.Lee banking and credit card information so that he can lodge a complaint on Mr.Lee's behalf.

7. Without hestitate, Mr.lee gives the necessary details over the phone and the 'officer' assured that 'Central Bank' will look into his problem. The phone is hanged up right after that. (Brilliant, they got a easy business today.)

Scam school available soon, anyone?

So what do you think? In fact, this scam method is very difficult to con over people who are smart, educated, read newspapers daily, experienced in credit card & bank account, or working in the finance sector. But unfortunately the scammers are targeting niche market, such as those people who are greedy, and now they swifted to people who fear to get any trouble related to finance.

Well, it's relatively okay to be greedy just like me, or having fears on related issue. We are human beings and we are all learning from our lesson. To learn ahead of others, perhaps you can refer to the points below to avoid being scammed on related cases.

If these cards are continuously to create issue for us, why don't we just cancel them?

A. Do not respond to any request for PIN or Internet banking user credentials over the phone, fax, email or SMS.

B. Call your bank if you are not sure of the authenticity of a call, SMS or email. Don't be afraid to call and verify, please.

C. Always enter the web site address (URL) directly in your web browser. Avoid being redirected to the website or hyperlinked to it from an email or another website. Don't acting smart and try to be convenient for yourself about this step.

D. Ensure that you are in a secure website by checking the bank URLs to ensure that it begins with "https://'" instead of "http://'" and look for a display of a closed padlock symbol on the status bar of your web browser.

E. Ensure that you protect your personal computer from hackers, viruses and malicious programmes. Invest commercial Anti-Virus/Spyware and Internet Security if necessary.

Always remember, there is no free lunch in this world, and do think-twice and verify any matter related to your hard-earn money! Have a new good week ahead, folks!

Download Web Sites Offline Tool

2009-04-22T21:55:00.000+08:00

This month, I used to visit an encyclopedia web site to study it's content. Basically the contents are fixed but there are a lot of them. So it will takes some time to complete the content of the web site, and to re-read them if necessary. Because the web site contents are so interesting, if the web site or content is being removed, I'll really regret that I didn't save them page by page.

Wait. Page by page? If there are 100 pages, then I have to save 100 times? I told myself it's a very stupid way to do so, but I never try to look around before this. Sometimes when I found an interesting web site, I would like to read it without online. But I don't think I can do so, unless I manage to find a tool to save the pages.

Screenshot of HTTrack tool.

When I look around, most of the good tools are commercial software, until I came across an offline web site copier, HTTrack. Basically this software allows us to download web site to our local hard disk, including html, images and other necessary files. After performed the download, you can browse the web site from your local hard disk, as you were viewing it online. And most importantly, it is a FREE software for us to use.

Another beauty of this software is that it supports multi-platforms, including Windows 9x/NT/2000/XP, Linux,Unix and BSD. Pretty cool huh? Apart from multi-platforms support, it also allow you to choose multiple languages to suit for your needs.

Please don't use this tool to download your porn web sites offline ok!

I have used it for 2 weeks and I'm satisfied with this free software so far. Now I can sit back and enjoy my encyclopedia web site offline. You may want to try it out if you're interested. But please watch out if there is any web site patent infringement. =)