Travelphotos on mobile phones

Well, ever since we made a post about an iPhone application that rates how good you are in bed with your partner — it seems like mobile phoneness is the way of the future… so, why not? Why dont we make the website mobile-friendly .. it’s the fashion of the day!

So if you are viewing this site from iPhone or Blackberry, you should be seeing something like the photo here — yes, just captured about 30mins ago on 3GS and Bold9700. Why iPhone? Well.. 57% of mobile users in Asia are using it to browse the web according to techcrunch and Quantcast; even though mobile browsing is only abt 1% of the total web users; yet the growth has been really fast; 148% YOY.

Lets go mobile every body!

Hot air balloon @Putrajaya

This is the 2nd event after a hugely successful fiesta when it was first introduced last year. We were told that more than 60 hot air balloons were supposed to be participating this time around, yet only 23 were accepted due to the limited space in the fiesta area. Nonetheless, because of the rarity of hot air balloons flying in our country, the organizer is expecting more than 200,000 crowds flooding the area.

As expected, no rain today — yet the weather was very dull, hot and cloudy. Not expecting much, we did manage to get some photos of the balloons. Judging from the massive traffic jams and extreme difficulties in getting space to par cars; this should be an easy number for them to meet… still, the show today was so uninteresting and pale!

Well, we hope to see this continuing to be an annual event; needs more space for the launch sites tho’ and hopefully more balloons and blue sky in future!

More photos here.

Note to self: wake up at 6am tmrw for hot air balloon ride!

Pudding doing yoga (via mobile)

Well Pudding sleeps like this — often at the most uncomfortable spots and position. Pudding is also sticking her tongue out to you — probably a good defense while sleeping, it will surely keep the mice away :)

Mongolian love!

The TransSib railway … is the longest rail trip in the world. The original Tsarist-era line was built from St Petersburg (which was the capital of Russia at the time) with end-points in either Vladivostok (9265km), or Beijing (via Manchuria – 9001km). In the 1920’s a soviet-era project added a third routing – to Beijing via Mongolia(7865km).

Event planned for Trans-Mongolian route from Beijing to Moscow> 21st August – 13 Sep 2010: Here

ROUTE 1 (Est. budget: RM8,000.00) 7865km

Current Itinerary is @Yahoo Travel here.
Will share the travelphotos soon, hopefully!
2011 note: This trip has been postponed for now.. :(

Freedom? (via mobile)

Use pet harness, please.

There is nothing wrong to take out your cat for a walk! You can buy many types of affordable cat harnesses from many pet shops. Some tips to make the cat walk a little better:

+ The harness should be firm but not too tight; make sure on finger can slide between the harness and the cat.
+ With the harness put on; treat the cat with the favorite food.
+ Keep doing that until about a few times; till the cat is comfortable wearing the harness.
+ You can then start taking the cat outside for a better cat walk! Let the cat leads the walk, after all: it’s a catwalk.

Cheers.

You cut already ah?

Sudah potong kah? You know lah.. cut already? I already cut mine. Feel so good ohh.. Well, certainly! There are many reasons to feel good if you cut it.

Annual fees before cut: RM3165.00
Annual fees after cut: RM1041.00
——————————————-
Savings after cut: RM2124.00 or RM177 per month!

And yes, those are annual credit cards fees after cancelling and cutting them up, throwing them away in pieces. We did have large collection of favorites cards; thankfully without any outstanding balance attached.

You would probably agree with us that if used smartly, credit cards can be our good friends that provide a lot of savings! We’ve actually enjoyed some benefits from these cards especially on cash rebates and discounted pricing with networks of merchants; not mentioning the popular zero interest balance transfers. Unfortunately, the government has a different take on this.

Effective Jan 1 2010, the government has started imposing RM50.00 credit card tax on each principal card and RM25 on each supplementary card. The reasons: governments wants the rakyat to be prudent on credit card spending and that the government is very concerned about the amount of credit card debts — in addition to getting additional sources of tax income (yes, a few hundred millions counts!)

Really? Our take: if the government wants to reduce the credit card debts; they should provide stricter regulations on the min requirement to apply for credit cards rather than taxing the whole lot. How much money are they gonna get from this tax? A lot? maybe not much, but seems like anything that goes in is good during this time.

Our PM did offer something:

“They are getting the RM1,000 tax relief and those paying tax at 27% will now pay 26%. “So, they get two (relief measures) and only have to pay RM50 (per credit card). Don’t tell me they cannot pay RM50?”

Well, not all credit card users are enjoying that tax relief and it’s not RM1000 across the board.  Hmm.. isn’t it that personal income up to RM2500 is not taxable and even if you earn RM1500.00 per month; you can still get credit cards? Btw, an article by SP is rather quite detailed:

Does this RM1000 tax relief really help Malaysians? Lets do some calculations… For example, I have 2 banks’ credit cards (both MasterCard and VISA). (This is very common to all Malaysians, some have even more than 10 principal credit cards). So I need to pay 4 x RM50 credit card service tax, total == RM200. And I am in tax range of 13% which mean that I can only get RM130 back from RM1000 tax relief. In the end, I need to pay RM70 (RM200 – RM130) more back to Malaysia government. So who is benefit from this? Malaysia government or Malaysians?

When we cut up our cards – that has given us another savings of RM450! Certainly, it’s our way of supporting one of the government’s reasons for imposing the credit card tax on the users: to be prudent on credit card spending.

So, which cards would you cut?

Notes for travelphotos

Hey, what’s going on? Just feeling proud right now because we’ve just managed to add “notes” to the photos in our travelphotos section! Try for your self: view one of the images in the album, and click “Add a note” !

Happy weekend, all!

Portrait of Pudding: A year later!

Are you thinking of what we’re thinking? Pudding certainly cant be bothered by the grinning monster behind him! If look closely for a few more seconds at this tag-team, you should be bursting into laughs … already?

Pudding certainly has taught us a few tricks about photography — in this case: get as low as you can and always try to capture the natural moment. With Pudding, waiting for the natural pose is a tall order. The moment we move, yes.. you guessed it correctly; Pudding will also move! He thinks it’s playtime. The portrait here is one of the few snaps we did; naturally!

Garden Residence, Cyberjaya

Bask in the glories of nature within the comforts of your own home. Garden Residence offers residents the opportunity to enjoy that, with its luxurious homes set in a tranquil and serene resort-style setting .. well, at least that’s what was read in one of the property reviewers journal.

Lets hope that the Garden Residence will be true to its contemporary yet resort lifestyle concept with green lungs and lush walkways. We had a self-guided tour of the development area over the weekend — and the verdict so far is extremely good; also noticed that the residence area will be very close to main access highways and communal amenities include The Street Mall in Cyberjaya, Alamanda Putrajaya, IOI Mall Puchong, Giant Puchong, Jusco in Equine Park Seri Kembangan, Pasar Borong Selangor; and the upcoming The Atmosphere in Seri Kembangan.

Development photos (Aug 2010, source: GR Albums) below.. Constructions photos here.

Harvesting paddy

.. taking a week off from work, to be back in my hometown — for paddy harvesting @Soborong, Tambunan SABAH
MORE PHOTOS @Tambunan!

Rate your lovemaking with iPhone

So are you a better lover than your friends? Given a scale of 10, most people would probably rate themselves, say.. 8/10 … err, well, maybe at least 6 — yeah, the usual average number: that’s only because we are being humble, aren’t we? Why cant we scientifically answer this question? Now we can! In fact, with Love Vibes, you can get the exact answer most people have been sweating day and night, and sometimes one in a blue moon, to find out.

I stumbled upon this little iPhone application while browsing the iTunes Store — I put some screenshots here to help excite you; thank me latter once you get to that 8+ range or if you are getting outliers in your horizontal, or vertical axis :)

Step 1: Input how hard is your mattress (yes, go conventional here, no standing up in odd places). Folks, mattress counts.
Step 2: Begin Lovemaking
Step 3: End Lovemaking, Get your score, or have a go at it again!

The scientific premises: Love Vibes calculates how good you are in bed by measuring horizontal and vertical vibrations from iPhone gyro ball; the duration of the passionate action; compares these raw data to many other experience-based data (not sure if real) to come with with your lovemaking score. If you are not satisfied with the score, you can always “Go again?”.

Convinced? Well, the developer of the apps, SparkTooth definitely convinced Apple to have a go at this for the iPhone application. Thank you Apple for loosening up and having a sense of humour while making (m)billions from this app. Help Apple gets richer, buy here.

My score? Love Vibes could not tell.. Aramai tih!

Canon EFS 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM (again!)

Just got a replacement lens over the weekend (yes, we had one but was lost). After about a year of not using any WA lens, the excitement when toying around with this new piece is worthy of a gadget blog entry. Some specs:

• Focal Length & Maximum Aperture: 10 – 22mm; 1:3.5-4.5
• Lens Construction: 13 elements in 10 groups
• Diagonal Angle of View: 107° 30′ – 63° 30′
• Focus Adjustment: Inner focusing system, with focusing cam
• Closest Focusing Distance: 0.24m / 0.79 ft.
• Zoom System: Ring USM
• Filter Size: 77mm
• Max. Diameter x Length, Weight: 3.3″ x 3.5″, 13.6 oz. / 83.5 x 89.8mm, 385g

This is a sharp lens even at the edges when at full angle! Of course, at 10mm, there are some distortions and abberations but this is expected and can be easily corrected in PS. Suprisingly good body quality and looks like it should be an ‘L’ lense? It is quite pricey at Rm2.6K (during Sunway megasale). Highly recommended for those who wanted a super wide angle not found in 18 – 55mm lenses; good for lanscape and buildings shots. You can even make your friend’s nose look sooo long!

.. will share photos soon.