Temptations & Ambitions

With the decrease in oil price, Malaysians would still suffer from the aftereffects without fail. It is with my deepest regrets most of the time looking at the national policy with absurdity. Let's ponder upon certain issues.


When the oil price increased to USD $72 per barrel, the government declared the increase in fuel price according to market rate when the oil price increase beyond that. So, further we went from RM1.92 a liter in petrol to RM2.70 a liter. Well, that was in effect from the Pak Lah. The government did even promised to return the oil price to its original value once the oil price dropped. But now? Oil price had dropped to USD $62 per barrel, much lower than before, and yet our fuel price (RON 97) remained at RM 2.15 a liter. Speculations had said that perhaps we ought to complain less if the price looks relatively much lower than the RM2.70 per liter. Regardless, we are now paying 23 sen more than it really was.

Of course, the government would give certain excuses to justify their action. It was the same with TNB. Few months back, TNB motioned for an increase in tariff for electricity usage due to increase in oil price. It causes uproar among the citizens, claiming how is oil related to TNB's increase in tariff. TNB quickly defended its action by claiming that oil is related to transport and its rising cost from oil-related processes as well as logistics are taking its effect on the cost of producing electricity.

Back to the present, TNB released a statment that the electricity tariff will not decrease in view of dropping oil prices as its costs has no whatsoever relation to oil price. Perhaps TNB had thought that we Malaysians do really have short term memory. MALAYSIANS MUDAH LUPA.

I just think that our government should not privatize such precious "commodities" in the first place. And if it is to blame, it is not just Pak Lah, but his direct predecessor who implemented all these nuisance which boosted the Malaysia Boleh! spirit in an always ridiculous and redundant manner. Not to mentioned that our ex-PM had also defended the ridiculous appoinment of Shah Rukh Khan to Datukship.

With these two in effect, it is basically impossible to reduce the "inflation" as it is now. Food costs an arm and a leg if you are the one paying for it. Pak Lah had mentioned that the way to counter the escalating price of goods is to reduce our demands. Perhaps he was snoring off in economics classes during his university years. Inflation happens when everyone is willing or able to pay more. What happens now is that everyone is forced to fork out more for the same goods than before. No one likes that, in fact. The only way to reduce demand is to starve ourselves for months before it could actually alter the market rate by a little. So, let's berpuasa from now onwards for half a year then.

I figured that Tanjung Karang Chronicles could only mark a small chapter of my life, with little but significant effort. Most of the time, my life does not revolve around Tanjung Karang or my medical life. Of course, there are many national issues to list down if I am to debate each and every one of them to qualify me as the world's longest talker.

But me, being myself, remained laidback and would like to share my life for a day, at least.

Went to MV yesterday for shopping, and we got some stuff for Nuffnang's Halloween party next week (1st November). Had lunch at JJ Juice Fusion, which offers good food despite their lack of quality service.

The potatoes are filled with different fillings, one being Chicken Mayo and the other was Tuna. It's pretty delicious, though the price was not on the favorable side for a potato. :P Ala carte pricing is Rm3.90 for a potato and Rm7.90 for a potato with fillings.

But we ordered 1 set and 1 ala carte potato with fillings. The set comprised of a potato with fillings, a bowl of fresh fruits and a big glass of fresh watermelon juice. I must admit that it taste just as it is. The potato has butter seep into it, baked along with its filling to brew a heavenly taste as the aroma strongly lingers in your mouth as your teeth sink into it. It is worth every bite you pay for.

However, since this is a rather 'healthy' food, I don't think I'll come here often. Guys like me with the XY gene can't survive without real meat.

And it's been quite some time since I've visited the Lake Gardens, namely the Green Lungs of KL. Went to the park to hang around before we call it a day of adventure.

Apart from the days of lectures which sometimes lull us to dreamland, coconut is the best refreshment one can find here at a cheap RM1.50, as mentioned in the previous chronicles.


Lunch has almost been irregular, but we soon settled at the economic rice shop since the food here are as expensive as KL price.


For our free time, we learn to utilize them better in the UKM JKM complex as the weather is either too hot, or raining heavily in the evening till night. Ping pong has suddenly become the craze here as everyone starts to pick up a bat and turned into masters overnight. Master of fun, master of injury, master of funny strokes, and whatever master you can relate to ping pong.

And recently, they found a Yahoo games online programme where you can play ping pong online with the mouse, so it became a good practice ground for thsoe who would like to sharpen their talons without standing and in the comfort of the air-cond in the computer room.

Or perhaps, carom is still a choice for those who prefer to play while sitting to avoid having fallen arches of the foot and to promote obesity.


On fine weather ( a rare occasion), we could always jog out of the complex. One would not dare to venture too far off the complex as there's always high chance that heavy downpour will occur. Some may still chose to jog to the beach which was an utmost disappointment, so Caryn, my dear and I prefer to choose the coconut stall as our destination to gives us the boost of motivation to jog.

However, I'd still say that the air is not fresh beside the road as the vehicles here are not well maintained, thus producing much more air pollution than we can absorbed into our lungs, as well as the noise pollution. There goes the serenity of the environment. Oh, not to forget that the environmental hygiene is rather poor in the area, with stagnant water the height of a woman pooling in the drain of each and every house, suitable for all sorts of vector to transmit.


Night time, Satay Hut remain a favorite spot for dinner and supper. Despite the lack of variety (only satay ayam) and the increase in price of satay Besar (RM0.90->Rm1.10), no one seem to mind as the satay are rather tasty, so this is definitely a lucrative business.

Birthdays are something we would not forget for our friends there. Kim Teck's birthday was yesterday, so we'd celebrated on Thursday at Guan Seng Long restaurant, Sekinchan with a cake for him too.



For bloggers at work, there are times when camwhore moments are not to be missed. The trademark of a blogger has to be shown as a proof of blogging. So behold the photo of narcissism!




With this week coming to an end, the weeks would be busy in the near future. Hopefully everything goes well. Until then....

Day 1:
Sunday was the day we started our journey. The journey to Tanjung Karang was a straightforward route, despite being something long-winded and almost monotonous.


Settled into the rented house, and refit the place so that we could stay in a more comfortable environment.


Day 2 and 3 and 4 and probably the rest of the days:
Lecture starts and ends without much attention paid. Students are busy with their laptops during lectures, dwelling in their seriousness as they really do mean business.




For the rest of the days, we explored around and had become regulars at the coconut stall nearby. Cucur udang and pisang goreng goes rather well with air kelapa, or what we had called CSF (Cerebrospinal fluid, the fluid that bathes the brain) since there are quite a number of incidences people called it air kepala.



Enjoying Coconuts before we turned ourselves into CocoNUTS. Apparently, the girl on the left had turned more into a kampong girl in this pic. And my dear is smiling sweeter. Maybe it's just me or perhaps the coconut's sweetness has taken its effect.



And yesterday night? We ventured to Sekinchan for seafood! It's kinda fresh and tasty too.

In the olden times when internet speed of 52kbps was the king that rules them all, we were all too excited and would not seem to mind the snail speed since we felt that it was really fast enough.

But 2 days into Tanjung Karang, the Internet speed of ala-52 kbps meant that we spent the eternity waiting and a few minutes of real surf time. Life here isn't as truly enjoyable as they claimed it to be, but it ain't that bad for a start. I got myself the single room at the 'rumah sewa' in Tanjung Karang which was dilapidated initially, and transformed it into someplace where only a befitting prince like me could afford to stay there. Well, at least that is what I would like it to be.

Night time would be filled with Dota time, since we have 5 Dota-kaki in the rental house, and Thomson might come over if he's free from his gf to join us for 3-on-3. :P

Whether I like it or not, I'll be here for the 6 weeks to come and pray and I'd recuperate for the next posting.

Meanwhile, I'll hunt for food! Air kelapa muda that wasn't that bad afterall! :P

With the conferment of Datukship on Bollywood heartthrob Shah Rukh Khan, I could laugh my way into a morning start. Yeah, I'm sure we'll dance here and there from the mountains to the sea and the trees ala Bollywood style. Along with some Bollywood music playing in the air from nowhere for us to dance. Can't we just be practical on some things? I'm sure many of us (not me though) had a dreamwife or dreamhubbie who are popular hollywood or bollywood stars, but we don't sign an honorary marriage deal with him/her too?

Just because someone shoot a movie here, we give them a title. And how are they going to justify that the increase of tourists in Malacca is due to the movieshoot and not due to efforts poured in by the Malaysia Tourism Board? Are we doing a head count on tourism from India and based our assumptions on that? This must have qualified our country as the laughing stock over one after another incident.

Maybe the next time, they'll claim that India was once part of Malacca, so he deserved the title as an ex-Malaccan who contributes to the society. Well, since there was some politician (who was obviously not a student who did well in his history subject) who not long ago had claimed that Thailand was under the rule of Malacca, so anything is basically possible.

Anyway, now that they've opened up the conferment of titles, I've a long list of names up for submission to any Sultans or Yang Di-Pertua Negeri to consider. Perhaps we could start from Tom Cruise, Megan Fox, etc. Oh yes, the most groundbreaking contribution would be for Pamela Anderson, who had all these while perhaps had help to cure a lot of erectile dysfunction cases through Baywatch and other... erhem... lolz. You've got to take my words on it, just like how they say Shah Rukh Khan help to increase number of visitors to Malacca. :P

So, in short, it is indeed the most stupid decision to make if it really happens.

By the way, did Shah Rukh Khan really even knows where Malaysia is? Is it somewhere in the Caribbeans or a small island off Madagascar?