Gas Rush!
Our government announced this evening that the petrol price will hike up 78 cents per litter by midnight. After midnight the petrol price per litter will be RM2.70. This is a drastic announcement after the government decides to cut fuel subsidies when the world crude oil price soared above US$120 per barrel. This will definitely add more burdens after the hike of food prices due to worldwide food shortage.
We went to the hypermarket to see if we can grab something for stocking. On the way, we saw many cars queuing up a petrol kiosks causing massive traffic jam. Thank God I have filled up the tank last night.
Expect to see more crimes after the price hike.
Shopping for CNY
This morning I took everyone to Jusco for some browsing. I seldom buy new clothing for CNY simply because I don’t find the clothing around this time is cheap and of good quality and nice. We went there for the sake of browsing hopefully could pick up some interesting items. We did not find anything interesting for the kids. By this weekend and next week, all shopping malls will be jam-packed with people. I hate to navigate through crowds and queuing up to pay.
Hampers for Chinese New Year
The year of the golden rat is around the corner. This coming Chinese New Year falls on February 7 and 8. It is once in a year time again to shop for CNY stocks and gifts. LoveAficionado.com has a wide range of hampers to offer. LoveAficionado’s hampers are great gifts to share with your families and friends.
All LoveAficionado’s hampers are bundled with high quality goodies. LoveAficionada ensures all products bundled in the hampers have long expiry date. They offer excellent quality products and good service. So, you can enjoy giving without worrying about the quality.
Green Shoes
Po-Zu has introduced “green shoes“, the environmentally different foot wears with wide collection of shoes, boots and slippers. All Po-Zu foot wears are manufactured from natural ingredients without harmful chemical and components. Leather is organically tanned with plant origin substances from Mimosa and Quebracho trees. Wools are made of 100% natural fleece, unbleached and un-dyed. The manufacturing process avoids the use of toxic glue and solvents. All foot wears are stitched together making them breathable, durable, repairable and recyclable. Po-Zu shoes are organic shoes. And the shoe cream is edible!
Goods sold are not returnable
Do you know your rights as a consumer? Read on. Benji sent me this information yesterday. I think it is good to share this information to exercise consumers’ rights to shape a better community.
Legal Issue on Contract Law in Malaysia - Good for us to know
Do you notice that most of the time, the receipt / invoice you received from the merchant carries this exclusion clause or similarly worded statement: “Goods sold are not returnable” or “No refund once sold”.
Please remember that : “As long as your goods is purchased for home use and not for business ( i.e. to be resold), the above exclusion clause is void.
That means, as long as the good is defective, regardless of what is worded, you can get back all your money spent . You do not have to accept a repair on the good or an exchange. You can ask for a refund. And you are legally right and entitled to!
And most of the time the merchant will refuse to return you your money.
You may threaten the merchant with four words: “See you in court!”
The court here refers to the Small Claims Tribunal Court. Any goods which is worth RM25,000 and below can apply to this Court.
However, you don’t have to tell them what court! All you have to pay is RM10 admin fee and the loser (the merchant) will have to refund you the money plus the admin fee!
I have seen that most educated people are cowed by such unfair wordings (which includes a few of my friends).
Please try not to let the merchant fleece you the next time you have defective goods.
You can file this On the 16th floor of Putra Place (The Mall opposite Putra World Trade Centre) . The form cost RM5.00 . The Tribunal will settle within 2 months period.
Tribunal Tuntutan Pengguna Malaysia,
Tingkat 16, Putra Place,
100, Jalan Putra,
50622 KUALA LUMPUR
Tel: 03 - 40492300 / 40424181 Fax: 03 - 40424259
Military Clothing
If you are a military or law enforcement personnel, perhaps you would like to look for some military clothing to add to your standard issued wardrobe. BDU.com is the largest supplier of uniforms to the U.S. D.o.D. (Department of Defense). All BDU’s apparels are manufactured according to highest military standards. All jacket, shirts and pants are sewn to highest military standard MIL-C-43455J for durable wear. Many of the BDU’s military uniforms are treated with a special near infrared coating to minimize detection from night vision equipment. The tactical jackets, shirts and pants are coated with DuPont Teflon to repel liquids and stains. BDU also provides great discounts on selected items.
Great deals on laser toners and inkjet cartridges
With recent increasing of printing volume, my laser toners and inkjet cartridges run out pretty quick. The printing volume is still very demanding as I am printing brochures and flyers to promote our business and karate. These brochures and flyers contain graphical illustration or both sides of page. So the toners and cartridges run out pretty soon.
To reduce the printing cost, I find a site giving great discount up to 80% on inkjet supplies. The site provides links to laser toners and inkjet cartridges of major brands such as Hewlett Packard, Brother, Canon, Lexmark and etc.
You can obtain discount and free shipping coupon of major vendors listed here to enjoy handsome discounts to help you saving.
InkJet Deals also has tips on how to save your ink. I know of printing in economy mode to conserve ink. But leaving the printer on will help to save ink too. A great discovery for me. Every time when an inkjet is switched on, a tiny bit of ink will be used during the start up. One of the tips is telling you how to save ink by using ink saving software, a quite interesting piece of information. The software actually optimizes the printing data so that your printer uses less ink even at high resolution. A considerable option to help saving ink.
Shuttle Lift
If you require reliable material handling, then you should take a look at the Gantry Cranes at ShuttleLift. The company has over 20 years of vast focused engineering expertise and experience in designing and engineering lifting solutions to meet toughest material handling requirements. The products are designed for heavy duty and they are all covered by 2 years or 2,000 hours warranty. All products come with 5 years structural warranty.
Make a copy of your favorite website
Have you ever come to a website and found the contents very interesting, you saved it but later after a month, you can no longer find that page again? Some websites have dynamic contents. After a certain period, the contents will be removed to conserve disk space. But, that article has something for your research paper and now it is gone!
Well, there is a website to allow you to copy web site, save it to your local hard disk. Unlike save page in web browsers, the software saves the html code, grabs the graphics, audio and video at lightning speed. Once these have been downloaded and stored on your local hard disk, you can browse off line anytime even though the original page has been removed.
This Web Site Downloader is an useful application to archive websites and/or dynamic contents for future reference. It is easy to use. Just 4 simple steps: 1. Create your project, 2. Enter the URLs, 3. Begin downloading, 4. Start browsing off line!
FCUK Collections
FCUK presents Autumn & Winters 2007 collections. Quite nice though. But I have never bought any FCUK’s apparels. I’ve visited FCUK outlet at 1U a couple of times. Although the quality is not bad, it is still quite expensive for the range it offers. Certainly, it is no harm to take a look at its design.
Or perhaps, I am a little too old-fashioned!
Cooking Oil Rationing
There is cooking oil rush nationwide when the Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Ministry announced shortage of cooking oil and limited consumers to buy a 5kg cooking oil at one move. This rationing will not affect my family as we are always on healthy diet. Less frying and we loves steamed food.
Steamed foods are more healthy than oily fried food. I guess it is the time for us to eat more steamed foods rather than using oil to cook. If you like fried chicken, you may consider pan fried without oil or pan grilled. The fat in the chicken will be melted and flow out of the meat making it more healthy. It is also very delicious too.
Salad made of fresh vegetables with delicious Italian sauces is another healthy food too. The vitamins in the vegetables will not be destroyed by heat. Our children love salad as well.
The rationing will encourage more hawkers to recycle cooking oil. So, avoid fried foods like goreng pisang (fried banana) and fried chicken.
A change of your diet is not only good for your health, it is also good for your economy. Save more money rather than funding cooking oil producers and hypermarket! Why is there a sudden shortage? To raise price!
Balsamic Vinegar
I had searched all the hypermarkets in Melaka but couldn’t find any balsamic vinegar. Finally, I have found it in Carrefour! Carrefour is a new hypermarket located in the second phase of Dataran Pahlawan.
The building design was really out of taste. The construction is not totally completed yet. The cement odor fills the building. Many shop lots are still vacant. The Carrefour hypermarket is located too high up. It occupies level 2 and 3. Groceries are found in level 3. It is rather inconvenient to push a heavy shopping cart full with groceries from Level 3 way down to ground floor although there are escalators. The lifts will be useless with huge crowd. Do you want to wait for the car to arrive?
The arrangement of goods is a little more messy than Tesco. The price? We find that Tesco is cheaper for its groceries. But, nonetheless, it is the only place in Melaka I can find balsamic vinegar.
I learned to eat bread with balsamic vinegar while I was on Okinawa. It is absolutely delicious!
A great news and a great start
What a great news LA brings home. She makes her first sales to two neighbors. Good saleswoman she is! I am really happy for her to have a great start today.
Today is a happy day for me. She got a great start and I received a great lesson from Gandalf.
Thanks, Gandalf!
Little favor for this holiday season
The holiday season is approaching. Normally, we celebrate Christmas and New Year quietly at home and may be going out for dinner or sort. If Christmas day is raining, the weather will be cozy. Listening to Christmas song at home will be very relaxing.
I may be thinking of throwing a little party at home inviting family, friends and my karate students for some buffet dinner. It will be nice to give little favor to our guests to make their coming a memorable one. There is little favor bundling with some candies of choice at LoveAficionado. It is a new business site we setup recently.
If you would like to surprise your guests and make your party a remarkable one, do drop by LoveAficionado for those cute little favor things. Our new business will also provide event management and event photography services in the near future.
Portable Duplex Scanner
I have a Canon LiDE20 scanner and it works perfectly on my desk. One annoying fact about desktop scanner is that it can scan both side at the same time. The scan job becomes quite tedious and tiring if there are a large number of double-sided document to be scanned.
This portable duplex scanner, ScanShell 3000DN, can scan double-sided document in one pass. Its portability and weighing at 0.59kg make it easy to tuck along on any business trip. Besides scanning documents, it is also useful to scan business cards.
ScanShell 3000DN plugs into any USB2.0 port. The scanner does not require external power supply. It can scan any documents and save to PDF or any of the following graphic formats: BMP, JPG, TIF, PSD, PCX, PNG or TGA.
When I am on business trip or visit project sites at universities, I need to scan some documents during most of the visits. I also like to scan business cards of whom I met so that I can keep organized and I am not afraid to misplace those valuable contacts. Perhaps I should put this in my wish list as this year Christmas present or may be include it in the budget 2008!
Bamboo Blinds
Every year around this time, the sun will shine directly at the window at our master bedroom without fail. It heats up the room considerably in the afternoon until in the evening. When we remodeled our garden in July, I asked the contractor to have a small area built up to about 1 foot higher in front of the window. My idea is to have a small area for some leisure activities such as drinking tea in the afternoon or evening. The only thing which I have not done is to install or build a roof to cover that area.
Until the roof above the area has been built, the sun will still shine at the window at this time of the year. I got an idea about installing blinds after building the roof. I prefer bamboo shades or blinds which give the Zen favor.
SelectBlinds gives 25% off everything until this Sunday and free shipping with FedEx or UPS. They guarantee delivery before Christmas! Should I get something for our home this Christmas?
Perfume for Christmas
I seldom wear perfume nowadays. In the old days, I liked to wear perfume to work and at play. I have tried many perfumes (not all), but still, my number 1 preference is Ralph Lauren’s Polo (Green). My 2nd preference is Dunhill Edition by Dunhill and CK One by Calvin Klein. I still have more than half bottle of Le Male by Jean Paul Gaultier which LA bought me in 2003 while we visited Taiwan.
For aftershave, I prefer Dunhil Edition by Dunhil to anything else. I rarely wear aftershave today. Although I rarely wear any of these today, but I still will wear them once in a while. I like to stick to these scents because they are quite compatible to my style.
What Christmas present are you going to buy for your loved ones? Check it out.
New Coffee Bean Membership Card
LA, Rich, Nik and I went to Jusco to shop for some products and we went to Coffee Bean for a cuppa and to buy D some surprise. At the Coffee Bean, I saw the new membership card with Christmas theme. It was very nice and I asked my friend Umi who worked there if I could change my card. Unfortunately no, she said. I still had to pay RM25 for the card! I decided not to.
After our drink, we went up to Jusco to see some electrical appliances. Umi called and told me to come to Coffee Bean and she had something for us. When I went there, she presented the card to me as a gift. Thanks Umi! It is a nice Christmas gift.
An invitation to hiking and hunting
Last month, a friend of mine, Garry called me and invited me for a hiking and hunting. Garry and I have known each other for 2 decades. We met during a hiking. We are both enthusiastic about archery. Recently, Garry has developed immense interest in archery hunting so he invited me to share this new exciting sports. Too bad, killing animals for joy is not my cup of tea so I turned him away. I did not want to disappoint him totally so I told him I would join him for hiking.
I guess I won’t be able to hike with him because of some other commitments. I have been thinking of getting him a pair of hiking boots for Christmas. Since Garry is so into hiking and hunting, I think the hiking boots will be a great Christmas gift for Garry. MetBoots ships internationally and offers free shipping on items above $100. MetBoots also offers gift certificate for someone special.
MetBoots also has a variety of hunting boots to choose from. I bet people like Garry will be fond of it.
HP 810C DeskJet Cartridge
I have an old Hewlett Packard (HP) 810C DeskJet which I have not been using for a long time. Recently, I was seeing a need to print some color name cards so I took out the printer and connected it to my Apple Mac Mini. It still works but two colors have dried up. I called a few vendors but could not find the cartridges for it.
I came to Cartridge Finder and found the cartridges for HP 810C DeskJet without any effort. CartridgeFinder.com’s user friendly interface lets you easily figuring out which cartridges are required for more than 10,000 different models of printer, copier, and fax machines.
This site also searches PriceGrabber.com’s merchant listings to find you the best deals to save you time and money.
Mobile Marketing
Have you ever received a SMS or MMS for marketing some products or services on your mobile phone? I have received many recently. Many are not local origin.
Technologies such as Internet and mobile phone services such as MMS and 3G have opened up a whole new dimension of marketing channel to businesses and corporation. A new marketing strategy called mobile marketing is increasingly becoming the most popular marketing tools. Businesses can deliver marketing content directly to the palm of targeted consumers.
A survey has found that more brands are ready to spend larger proportion of their marketing budget on mobile campaigns in the very near future. About 71% have projected to spend more than 10% of their marketing budget in mobile marketing campaigns in the next 2 years. The survey have also indicated about 10% of consumers receiving SMS marketing have requested for more information on products and services grew from 32% in 2006 to 58% in 2007. More survey details can be found here.
How do you perform mobile marketing? First, you need to have mobile marketing software. GoLive! Concierge is a industry leader in mobile campaigns management suite. Setting up your campaigns with the software is fairly easy. You can provide services such as: subscription, ring tones and wallpapers download, SMS voting, Text-To-Win, reminders, polling, auction, chat and much more; to your targeted recipients.
GoLive! Mobile is also having an in-house design team to provide your company WAP Site Design or Mobile Website Design. You can host your content with GoLive! Mobile’s WAP Site Hosting or Mobile Website Hosting plan. If you are looking for a complete suite mobile marketing products and services, GoLive! Mobile is the right place to look into.
Holidays are around the corner again!
Well, here comes the holiday seasons again! Shopping for gifts has become a culture and a necessity activity especially at this time of year. First, Halloween, then Thanksgiving and Christmas. The thing I hate most is to negotiate a tremendous amount of traffics en route shopping complexes and finding a parking will be a hassle. I am going shop online again this year in my comfortable home. No traffic, no parking hassle, no squeezing among shoppers!
What am I going to get for my family? I think I am going to get some fun books for learning for my three kids using Highlights coupons. LA is into baking now so I think I am going to get her some bakeware this holiday season with great Pfaltzgraff deals.
Thanks to Coupon Chief, they offer fabulous discount at many online shopping destination, including Highlights, Pfaltzgraff and many more.
It is a real saver for shopping online if you get your coupon codes for wonderful discounts. What’s more, you can save on gas and hassle getting into traffic jam.
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