Last night, I was in Gurney Plaza and took the change to watch Iron Man in Golden Screen Cinemas on the 7th floor. The computer graphics were superb with lots of action. If you have sons, treat them this amazing show and they will surely love it. From Marvel Studios and Paramount Pictures comes Iron Man, an action-packed take on the tale of wealthy philanthropist Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), who develops an invulnerable robotic suit to fight the throes of evil. In addition to being filthy rich, billionaire industrialist Tony Stark is also a genius inventor. When Stark is kidnapped and forced to build a diabolical weapon, he instead uses his intelligence and ingenuity to construct an indestructible suit of armor and escape his captors. Once free, Stark discovers a deadly conspiracy that could destabilize the entire globe, and dons his powerful new suit on a mission to stop the villains and save the world. Gwyneth Paltrow co-stars as his secretary, Virginia “Pepper” Potts, while Terrence Howard fills the role of Jim “Rhodey” Rhodes, one of Stark’s colleagues, whose military background leads him to help in the formation of the suit. Jon Favreau directs, with Marvel movie veterans Avi Arad and Kevin Feige producing.
I have booked online through Air Asia to fly to Kota Kinabalu (KK) from 20th to 22nd June 2008. It is on a Friday to Sunday where there is less work. I did try to check out malaysianairlines.com of MAS Zero Fare advertised in the press now but found that it was about RM100 more expensive with transit in KL. With Air Asia, I can fly direct from Penang’s airport to KK in Sabah. The the cost? For 2 persons return is RM814 including taxes and RM3 per bag to check in per person. After I have gone to KK, I would have been to all states in Malaysia. I was in Bintulu, Sarawak in late 2006 and early this year, I went to Terengganu by car. I have been to Kelantan many times for business previously. And I have also been to all the other states in the west coast from Johor to Perlis. I have also stayed in a local hotel in Johor some time back, also for business.
Since I hate walking, I don’t plan to hike up Mount Kinabalu which will take at least 3 days. My plan for the trip is purely for holidays. What I have heard about Mt. Kinabalu is that it is about two times higher than Penang Hill and the path there is not as steep and difficult compared to Penang Hill. So, next time I can boast to my grandchildren that I have hiked up Penang Hill by foot. Because of the MAS zero fare, my youngest sister and her church friends plan to hike up Mount Kinabalu sometime in November. And you can book online until 19th of this month of May.
I have been staying in KL for the last 3 days. I will only go back to Penang tomorrow afternoon. Before that I need to visit a client’s place to take some photos of our completed project. The traffic jams in KL is bad with too many cars. It is a snarl driving here. Perhaps the governmen should do something about the traffic jams that is getting worse with more people owning cars. They should follow Singapore enforcing the COE so that only the wealthy can afford to drive cars and avoid massive traffic jams. The public and rest of us average Joes will have to take MRT and busses which are very efficient.
In Penang, it is easier to travel from one place to another and takes about 45 mins on average. Here in KL, to travel back and forth from a client’s place takes 3 hours! And you spend most time on the roads and highways, not forgetting the traffic jams. You can hardly do any other productive work as most of your time is spent on the road.
Finally my blog is up and running now after being down for a while. I had to remove the sidebar temporarily which was truncated. It no longer redirects to some silly website. In a short while, I will be going to KL for a few days. My colleague will come pick me up in his car and he will drive down to Subang Jaya where the condominium is. That’s all for now
I stumbled this YouTube video recently and decided to blog about it.
Did you know that the top 8 on American Idol sang Shout To The Lord twice?
First they sang it on April 9th starting the song with My Shepherd. Then then on April 10th, they sang it again but this time they started with My Jesus. Watched by millions around the world, this is a great step forward, indirectly spreading the gospel. And a very cool move by FOX for letting them do it the 2nd night with the full version. This was awesome. Praise God!
There is a myth that says that at the end of every rainbow is a pot of gold. Well, I have yet to see that pot of gold whenever I spot a colorful rainbow after the thunderstorm. But I do have my small tiny collection of gold - from gold coins, gold bangle, gold cross, gold earrings to gold chain. These are gifts from my two departed grannies except for the gold coin which was given by my aunt and the gold bangle was a gift to myself for working hard in giving tuition. I hardly wear gold for fear of snatch theft and for my own safety. I have had my mom, my second sister and paternal granny being victims of snatch thefts of their gold chains and handbag right in front of my house. Despite owning some gold items, I don’t normally wear them as they would be too ostentacious and I rather keep a low profile whenever I am in public places.
The inconvenient truth in financial markets today is that the US is already in recession. The turmoil in the credit and housing markets is prominent. Compounding this is the fact that borrowers are the furthest behind on their debt payments in 15 years. Asset prices soar, borrowing increases and the capital inflow grows. Finally, the bubble bursts, capital floods out and the banking system, burdened with mountains of bad debts, implodes.
The total number of job losses in the first 3 months of this year is 232,000 while unemployment rose to 5.1%. Job cuts were concentrated in the manufacturing, employment services and the construction industry but the damage is becoming more wide spread. US commercial banks alone are forecast to cut about 200,000 jobs over the next 12-18 months. US unemployment rate could potentially balloon to 8% in 2009.
Today’s credit crisis is far more than a symptom of a defective US financial system. It is a symptom of unbalanced global economy. This means that as more Americans become jobless, there will be stiffer competition for freelancer jobs with many trying to earn something from the internet for very low bids.
For the whole of last week, I was busy with writing assignments that this blog was not updated as frequent as it should. After posting my bids in GAF, I got a client from India who contacted me for this project. Yes, the money comes in nicely and I have been paid USD36 yesterday for a whole week of writing. I wrote and revised about 10 articles for her. She has constant job which is good and is earning about USD450 a month as a writer. Due to her overflow work, she contacted freelancers like yours truly who just started a new stint. Since the money is more than my Adsense from my 4 blogs, obviously I took the opportunity to keep myself busy with writing. At least I can still depend on the internet for some part time work.
Last Saturday, I went for an ice-skating performance in PISA. It was Disney on Ice. We sat right in front and got a very good view and we could the skaters’ expressions. I ordered the tickets online at RM135 per person and it was well worth the money. Disney on Ice comes to Penang once in a year. We saw many award winning figure skaters doing flips, turns and twists in mid air. It was all so exciting with the props and giant blow up cartoon characters with fireworks and other special effects.
There was Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, Donald and Daisy. I especially like 101 Dalmations with the lead skater Cruella De Vil. There’s also Lilo & Stitch, Peter Pan, Ariel the little mermaid, amongst others. The show lasted about 2-3 hours.
Do you know that while you open gmail.google.com, you can also chat with other people in your list of Google Talk? Today I had the opportunity to chat online with my client using Google Talk. There is a green round button beside the name if the person is online and happen to open Gmail. Simply click on the name and a chat window will display. Just type in the box and hit enter for the message to be sent over. Easy as that. It works on Windows, OSX and Linux operating systems. Google Talk is very basic and gets the message across without all the features and advertisements of a full blown messenger like Yahoo. You can go and try and see it for yourself.
