I recieved this email today. Hooray can withdraw EPF annually to pay off housing loan. I didn’t find this announcement in EPF website. So is it true? :sc:

Penang got a second bridge and a monorail.

68. Apart from this, regional growth centres will be identified in several regions to spearhead development. The Southern Johor Economic Region will be developed in a comprehensive and systematic manner. The construction of the Second Penang Bridge will spur growth in nearby areas, including mainland Penang, Kedah and Perak and, will spur economic activities particularly for businesses that benefit from the port facilities and air cargo services

85. A National Commission will be established to regulate the overall public transportation system in the country and a specific commission will be established for the Klang Valley. Integrated transport terminals will be built in Gombak and Bandar Tasik as transit hubs to Kuala Lumpur. The Government will also implement a number of major projects across the country, including the Penang Monorail and the Eastern Dispersal Link in Johor.

Read about it here, the transcript.

For those who have boys at home, I would recommend you get this parenting VCD. It teaches you how to raise boys, not that you don’t already know. It enhances your skills I suppose. It is conducted by the famous Dr. James Dobson from Focus on the Family.

In part 1, he tells you why boys are different to girls. I quote “Boys are different from girls physiologically, emotionally and socially. The series begins with Dr. Dobson examining how God designed boys. These masculine traits can often irritate and confound parents but were intended to be enjoyed and celebrated – as well as molded and “civilized.”

It is a 60 minutes show and plenty of good illustrations. It cost RM19.90 per VCD and RM200.00 for the whole series. I enjoyed part 1 & part 7 and I will get the entire series.

In first part of the series, it tells you how boys are created differently, even from the making in the womb. How the testosterone floods the womb and this hormonal bath alters the way boy’s brain are structure in many ways. The connections between the two hemispheres of the brain are actually damaged. As a result, boys have a harder time integrating and articulating what they know, feel and believe. Boys and Girls are different.

How many of you find that when you are talking to your husband and he is not listening? Men/Boys have the ability to filter things that they do not want to hear. I often find that true. Dr James Dobson has one very useful method, is when you want to communicate something important to your boy/hubby, touch him with yr hand and look him in the eye, you will get his full attention.

One illustration he gave, a father who tried to make his son drink milk and he refused. He asked him 7 times and he refused. Later the father thought that he has a competitive characteristic in him. He told the son, let’s compete and see who drinks the fastest. He divided the milk into 2 glasses and on the count of 3, both finished the milk. Next the son told the father, let’s make it 2 out of 3 wins. Parents do need to be creative, these days.

Have fun with it.

Penang is facing a hot weather spell, the newspaper said it will last till 10 more days. It just rained but no help, it is still hot.

I am on MC for 2 days. I woke up with a swollen eye. I couldn’t open it at all. I was very frightened. I went to the doctor.

Doc: What can I do for you?
Me: Eye swollen, yesterday was fine but waked up swollen.
Doc: What happened?
Me: Weather so hot that it melted my contact lens, I guess.

He applied some eye gel and bandaged my eye. Now I am typing with 1 eye bandage like a pirate. I really have to be careful with contact lens. I do clean it everyday but not sure what happened. It’s the hot spell fault!

I am fine, I still can see.

How come when someone sells insurance to you, they can absolutely be like an angel? Bowing to all your wishes and never saying “No”. The opposite of this is when you try to claim, the customer service officer can really give you a hard time. Don’t ever buy insurance from XIX Company (*name changed, but you get the idea*) because the claim department officers are very unprofessional and the claims policy is ridiculous.

One day my hubby was telling me that my PIL is whining because he cannot claim his hospital bill from the insurance company. You know, elderly people treasure every sen very valuably. He was trying to claim from his company insurance policy because he had the accident when he was working. Apparently he has submitted all his hospital bills to the insurance agent. After a few months, the insurance rejected his claim because of a missing deposit receipt. You know, you have to make a deposit before you can admit to the private hospital, in case you cannot pay.

It is absolutely ridiculous right, in a logical manner that the claim was rejected even though the true copy of the hospital bill is in tact but the deposit receipt is missing. The agent asked PIL to go back to the hospital to issue another but the hospital will never issue another receipt, the best they can do is to certify a copy. The insurance company refuse to accept certify copy. PIL was so upset because he went to the hospital a couple of times. Everyday he complained to us.

I decided to help him out, made a call to the claims department. No one have a definite answer to the claims. The officer asked me to write a letter to appeal. The manager said there is no guarantee the appeal will go through, it depends on the committee.

Me: Why is the deposit receipt so important when you have the actual hospital bill?
Mgr: It is our company policy. *policy to give the customer a hard time* Furthermore, it will prevent the customer to claim from other insurance company.
Me: I am a having a hard time just to claim with the original actual hospital bill from your company. Do you think other insurance company will let me claim using a deposit receipt???!!!
Mgr: *speechless for a few seconds* Please submit an appeal letter.

What a disappointment? I wanted to complain them to Bank Negara. Anyway, I thought of giving the company a chance, draft out an appeal letter for my PIL to sign and send. After a month later, PIL whine again because no news from them. I decided call.

Me: I have sent the letter of appeal a month ago.
Officer: We didn’t receive anything, the computer showed no record. *Excuses*
Me: Can I fax the letter to you?

She gave me the fax number and I faxed it in. After a few more weeks, I called in to check the status else they will probably sit on it. With claims, you have to call in every now and follow through, give them a hard time too.

Officer: The cheque has been issued and has been send to the Penang branch on Feb 12.
Me: My PIL has not heard from the Penang branch.
Officer: You just have to wait for them to call you.
Me: Can I call them?
Officer: If you want, I cannot stop you.
Me: *How RUDE!!!* :wall:

My PIL received the cheque after calling the Penang branch agent. The cheque was RM160 less than the original amount. In the letter, they put “out of goodwill that they have approved the claim” Good will my foot!! :shoot:

Anyway, the whining stops.

*Note, by the way, if any of you have trouble claiming with your insurance company after dealing with them and still negative, you can bring your case to Bank Negara.
Website: http://www.bankinginfo.com.my/index.php?ch=19&pg=31*

I won 1 big one, 3N SuperStar Virgo ex-Singapore Penang-Phuket Cruise for 2. The prize doesn’t cover seaport tax and flights to & from Singapore. Anyway, it is better than nothing. Any one knows a good budgeted hotel in Singapore?

I have won a couple of SMS Contest before. With SMS Contest, you really have to be careful because a lot of it, is out to get your money. I usually participate if I know I have 70% chance of winning. You also have to see who is sponsoring it, so that you will not be cheated.

So how did I do it? One night I was watching Quickie on 8TV during Chinese New Year One of the advertisements flashed on the screen, a CNY contest to win a cruise. I have a lot of balance on my phone so would like to exchange it for a vacation. I am not a phone person, at one time I had RM600 on my phone. The main purpose of my handphone is for emergency calls or locating my hubby in shopping mall.

With SMS Contest, you need to set a target on how much you willing to invest. For me, at most I wanted to invest was RM200. Actually I used less than that. Anyway, this contest is fairly expensive, RM1 per SMS. With that, you know that not many youths will like to participate in it, which tells me higher chances of winning.

I login into 8TV website to read more about the contest and did some research.

The contest goes like this.

1. You need to register your name, IC before you start. (RM1)
2. You need to send XXX to start the game. (RM1)
3. You need to answer 5 objective questions to score points (RM5)

It doesn’t matter how long you take to answer the questions but you need to get them right to get the points. I check up the Internet for answers. They only have a few set of questions and it will be repeated throughout. By the end of the contest, to win you have to score the highest, they called it rank 1. You can also pay RM 1 to check your ranking. See, it is all out to get your money.

At first, I played till I got 200 point and that got me to top ranking. After a few hours, someone went up to the top again. I felt that there is another person who wants to win this prize. Anyway, I score another 100 points and was top again. Next day, I was second. I scored another 100 points to get back to the top but it was not for long. Ok, I need to strategize and cannot keep this going, else you will drive the other person’s adrenaline up to compete with you. You don’t want to do that in a contest.

The contest end on 12th Feb. On 12th Feb, I check my ranking again, it was still 2. It tells me that I have only 1 competitor. It is not hard to win, right. At 11:15pm, I pump up my score till 500, and check my ranking, it was rank 1, to check how far behind the other person was. I added another 200 points at 11:55pm. It is fairly impossible with 5 mins to score so another 200 points right. At 12:00am, I check my rank, it was number 1. Yeah I won.

Warning, not all SMS contest work like this, so try at your own risk!!!

http://lionel.textmalaysia.com/clothes-folding-machine.html

After reading ShaolinTiger’s Post in his blog, I took some shot at this game. If you Eat Full Nothing To Do, you can try it. Good for brain exercise. I find that I score better with FireFox browser than IE browser. Not sure why.

After many shots at it, my best time is 26.655s. Tips, move to the left first.

Game URL: http://members.iinet.net.au/~pontipak/redsquare.html

How to play: Hold your left mouse button on the red square, move without bumping the blue boxes and the black wall.

My Score:

Have Fun! Don’t play while your boss is around. :good:

Penang has the largest toy museum in Asia. It has over 100,000 figurines, toys and models of a variety of characters in the toy world. If you step in and admired every single toy, it will take you days. It is located in Tanjung Bungah, very close to the Copthorne Orchid Hotel. Opens from 9am to 9pm daily. Entrance Fees are RM10 per adult and RM6 per child. It is a great place to visit if you are here.

The toys ranges from Star Wars, Lord of the rings, all action figures like Superman, Spideman, Ultraman, Batman, Incredible Hulk, Toys Story, Chicken Little, Barbie, Disney Characters, Harry Potter and some horror characters too.

As usual, Emily and Tim enjoyed the place. One set back about this museum is that it has so many toys, so tempted to take and play with it, but you can only see and not touch. 😥

Enjoy the pictures:

The place:

Mr Bean:

Jacky Chan

Chow Yuen Fatt

Bruce Lee

Tomb Raider

The Beatles

Elvis

Star Wars

The LOTR

Star Trek

My Dream Car

Batman

Incredible Hulk – Emily can copy this charater very well. Yet to capture it on video.

WWF

Chicken Little

Little Mouse

Monsters

Incredibles

Doremon

Japanese Doll

Warning: The section below contains horror characters, view it at your own risk. Please do not let your children view, they may have nightmares.

The End

Anyone watch Malaysian Most Beautiful, on 8TV Thursday 9:30pm? I only managed to catch a few episodes and saw lots of cat fights during the first few episodes. After they eliminated a few cats, there was peace. However the show was going nowhere, especially the last week episode. There was a huge controversial where by the best choice by popular vote, name Jue, which is also my favourite was eliminated. I like her when I saw the first episode.

Oh well, it was mostly her fault as she broke the rule of sneaking out to make a phone call to settle some important personal matters. She should have told the judges she wants to make a call but she didn’t. I wonder why she didn’t do so and jeopardize her position in winning. She knew and pretty confidant that she will make it to the top. It took the judges 2 hours to decide to kick her out. I think Jue will have bright future even though she didn’t win this competition. She will be a good host, she has body language, beauty and friendly.

There is one I really dislike, not sure why she was kept. She didn’t get down to do the dirty stuff or avoided it but yet the judge kept her. :snooty:

I felt the show is lacking in substance. For one, the judges never mention why the gals were eliminated and what the gals done that was beautiful to win a prize each week. At least in Apprentice, Donald will give his reason upfront, nothing to hide. For those left behind, I shall not comment further, read it yourself in the forum. If any of those win, I will faint, maybe should change the title to Malaysia Most Ordinary. :wall:

Those who missed it, you can download the shows here: http://www.mostbeautiful.com.my/download.asp