Finally, the iPhone I ordered from apple store cost US399 arrived today. I got this for my husband as I wanted a 16G one. Mine will arrive sometime in May. However I am equally excited. Why? Because this is the first time I hacked the iPhone.

Now it is pretty easy to unlock, jailbreak or activate the iPhone so that I can use it with the local telco. I have been waiting for iPhone to come to Malaysia for so long. I couldn’t wait any longer. As soon as I found out from my friend, it can be hacked using a software, I made a purchased.

Here is the cool software:

Yeap, tested and it works. There is cool software you can install in the iPhone if you know how. You can even use it as a game boy. Ok, I can go on and on about it forever but I shall not. It is late and I wanna snooze.

P/S Everyone: Don’t let any sales ppl cheat you of your money, charging you a bundle to hack. By the way, it takes only 10 minutes to do it. Download and unzip, install on yr PC, hook yr phone and start it up, click the button on the software and it does the job.

The other day I was in Singapore Changi Airport getting some toys for my children. I picked up a couple of toys and paid at the counter. At the counter, the sales person was scanning the barcode and discovered there was a price difference. She told me that the price of the toy is wrongly tag. It should be a dollar more. I had to pay the extra dollar else no sale.

I encountered a similar situation in US. I was in the Corelle Store and got a dinning set. The tag was wrongly priced. The sales person apologized and gave me the price that was tagged. It is so nice of them.

You can see both have very different way of providing customer service. One is being too profit oriented and the other, customer centric. If the store makes a mistake, they should bear the cost and not frustrate the customers.

The truth I love shopping in US because they are so focus on customers and yet makes a profit. Do you know that there was once, my meal came late and the restaurant manager apologized? He also gave it to me free of charge. This is what I called customer service!

Here in Malaysia we are way below standard. It is no point hiring some phony managers in the restaurant that come around with fake smiles asking how the food is. Half they time they don’t take bad remarks and improve the service. I really think they are pretty annoying especially when they come around and interrupt our dinner and our conversations. Can’t they pick a better timing? By the way, I think they think too highly of themselves and not really serving the customers. Do you agree?

Anyway, back to the wrong price tagging, anyone know any consumer rights in Malaysia that the store have to sell the price that the goods has tagged? They cannot sell any higher than that? If you do, please let me know.

Often I get frustrated when I see good shots and my digital camera beeps to tell me battery running low. No matter what type of rechargeable batteries I used or alkaline battery I bought, it goes low fairly quickly.

A camera shop introduced Sanyo Eneloop batteries to me but it was too pricey here. Recently I went to Singapore and got a pack with the charger. I found out that Changi Airport was the cheapest. 2 AA batteries with charger were SGD27.00 with no tax. With Eneloop, I can take up to 500 shots with my camera. You can read all the good reviews written about the batteries.

I am happy as long as my digital camera doesn’t beeps. Now I need not buy any more alkaline battery and pollute the environment. It can be charged up to 1000 times. One good thing about Eneloop, you can use it immediately without charging it. This is because the Eneloop has a very low self-discharge. You can keep it for 6 months without used it still have 85% of the energy. It works like a disposable battery and also a rechargeable battery. You do not need to keep charging it every time.

I am doing a Technorati Blog Claim here at this new post. All I have to do is to create a new post here and write this code below which is a link.

Technorati Profile

Technorati is good for generating traffic to your blog. It is free.

It definitely has a great view of the sea and the staffs are friendly. First time I am greeted with a big smile from hotel staffs. While I was checking in with my family, the staff served us all with a welcome ice cooling refreshing lemon tea.

The room was just nice, not too big. I took the sea view room and it was excellent. You are able to sit on the balcony and enjoy the pleasant view. It has a nice bath tub too. Too bad the TV is not a LCD or flat screen TV. It has wifi at the pool area, lobby and the room.

They have also renovated the pool area that gives a Hawaiian feeling with lots of huts, coconut trees and sun bathing benches. It looks like I was in Hawaii for a while.

If you enjoy water sports, there are water ski, sky parachuting, Jet Ski and banana boat. You can also do some sun bathing or walk on the beach. It is really a great affordable vacation!

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Hotel rates are raising in Singapore especially those located in strategic location. I was able to experience a hotel near the heart of the city. What really attracted me was the free complimentary mini bar that was advertised. I was a little disappointed as they only offer drinks and no snacks. There were 2 bottles of oranges, 2 can of coke, 2 bottles of drinking water, 1 can of milo and 2 cans of beer. Where are my chips and chocs?

On top of it, the package came with free WiFi, most hotel I previously stayed I have to pay. The room was clean and not too small. It has a 32” LCD TV. It is also a smoke free hotel. If you caught smoking in the room, you are fined with SGD300. As always, Singapore is a fine city.

Royal Plaza Hotel is situated near Orchard where the shopping arena is. It is also very near the MRT stations.

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I strongly believed that the opposition had a big win in the Malaysia 12th General 2008 election was due to the power of Internet. The news travel fast in Internet and people can read almost anything whether truth or not. It was really up to the people to decipher what is truth and what is fake.

In the previous years, most of the news we get from the general media were usually filtered or modified. Everyone was kept in the dark. However this general election, lots were exposed. Look at YouTube and blogs.

Some of us were kept updated every minute on the results and news about the general election. One of the site, namely MK were hit with lots of traffic that even with many mirror sites didn’t help much.

Let’s hope the change will do us good and help those who didn’t win the seat to improve. Actions definitely speak louder than words.

A few weeks ago, I received my gold elite Krisflyer card from Singapore Airlines. Yeap, after I have accumulated 50,000 miles in the silver membership year. The membership is only for a year. I have to enjoy it while I can.

What benefits do you get for this prestigious Gold card?

1. You get to use the Star Alliance Gold lounge around the world. The lounge has lots of comfortable seats with free internet access. It also has a mini bar for drinks and snacks.
2. You get to check in an additional piece of baggage or extra 20kg when you traveled with SIA. Let’s hope I get another trip to US to loot more shopping stuff back. *wink*
3. Priority check-in without any Q.
4. Priority boarding.
5. Priority baggage handling.

Let’s hope I can enjoyed all the above while it lasts.

First of all, this post is purely my thoughts and has nothing to do with any party bias opinions. Lately most of you are aware that Malaysia General Election is coming up. In fact it is 3 days away.

There is so much news across the television, newspapers, road show speech, internet, sms and even spam. Everywhere you go, political news right in front of your eyes. Most of them are news that put other parties down, personal attacks and digging out each other’s personal secrets. I wonder where is the element of helping the people or the county in this election. If you really want to win the people’s heart, show results of what you have done for the people or the country. Or is it a norm to prove your credibility only during election?

Next, this election is not very environmental friendly. Look at all the plastics and paper used to decorate the roads. I really hope they re-cycle it some how. Some of those sticks are dangling that may cause accidents too.

To vote or not to vote, this is a big question. Will it solve the peoples’ issues? Generally the people wants reduced crime rates, improve education, reduce oil price, less/zero corruptions, respect other people’s religion, racial harmony and a stable country. Let’s hope whichever party wins remembered what they promised and take actions.

Image Credit: http://ms.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pokok_Serai

Lemon Grass (aka Serai) is a plant that can help repel mosquitoes. Lately there have been many cases of denggi due to rainy weather. The easy way to get rid of mosquito is to plant lemon grass. It is very simple to plant, all you have to do is take a bottom part, trim the top. The bottom part will have the root and you can just stick it to the ground. Next you have to keep trimming it as the grass grows to make it need and tidy.

You can also burn sandal wood oil at home. I know not many like sandal wood smell. It smells like mosquito repellent and most mosquito repellent use the sandal wood oil anyway.

Last method is to bath with Dettol soap. It helps to keep the mosquito away too. Make sure you get rid of anything that breeds mosquitoes.