wAntAn productions

Me and ST found ourselves in SS2 looking for some food. We decided at first to go to a particular restaurant that we've spied once or twice but ended up going to the restaurant next to it because there was a healthy crowd there and we deduced that there must be a good reason why. Indeed Chef Loong is a very nice place for Hong Kong / Shanghai snack-like type food.

I went in expecting to be able to order some noodles but after a quick glance through the menu it dawned on me. This is one of those snack places like KTZ. I was a little disappointed that they didn't have a proper main course so I ended up underestimating the dishes and ordered a little too much for 2 persons :)

I saw this lorry on the commute to work. Couldn't resist snapping a picture of it. I really don't think it's wise to call yourself a disposable specialist... lol!

I got to know about this AutoSurf thing today from a friend and I have to admit it's a very tempting way to earn money. In particular he introduced me to a company called 12 Daily Pro (Google for them... I'm not going to link to them).

I don't intend to harp on the virtues of making money through AutoSurfing lest I tempt you into signing up. No... I'm here to tell you why you should not join such schemes. I will be basing this post on the model of 12 Daily Pro (other AutoSurf providers operate in a similar way).

What is AutoSurf?

At the most basic level, AutoSurfing is a way of making money on the Internet simply by watching ads. In the case of 12 Daily Pro, members need to watch a minimum of 12 ads per day and in return the member earns a return of 12% of his initial investment! Sound great doesn't it?

How does one earn money from AutoSurfing?

Now you may be asking; do I have to pay money to earn money? The answer to this question should be obvious... yes! You definitely do.

12 Daily Pro insists that each member perform an "upgrade" to their accounts in order to profit from their operation. Each "upgrade" unit costs USD6 and lasts for 12 days. The amount of money you pay for your upgrade must be a multiple of 6 with a maximum "upgrade" payment of USD6000. The member earns 12% of the sum paid for the "upgrade" each day he fulfills the ad quota (yes, you read right; 12%).

What returns can I expect?

Let's say that you fork out USD6000 and watch 12 of their ads for 12 days. After the 12 days are up your "upgrade" expires. Let's do some simple mathematics:

Payment to upgrade: USD6000.
Daily Interest: 12% of USD 6000 = USD720.
Total earned after 12 days: USD720 * 12 = USD8640.

Holy shit! That's a profit of USD2640 after 12 days! That means a return of 44% after 12 days! Even Ah Longs (loan sharks) don't earn that much.

By now I hope alarm bells are ringing in your heads. If they are not then you are probably already familiar with this scheme.

Just how exactly does a business afford to pay it's investors a 44% return after 12 days of investment? Well if you think it's impossible then think again. It's actually very simple. Have you ever heard of the term pyramid scheme? There's one caveat though, there are much more losers than winners.

Pyramid Schemes

Yes the dreaded pyramid scheme model has been brought to the Net. Unfortunately 12 Daily Pro is not the first operation to bring this scheme to the Internet and no doubt it will not be the last.

What happens in a pyramid scheme is this:

1. Members are promised hefty returns on their investments.
2. Members get interested and pump in money.
3. Members are given incentives to get new sign-ups. Often the upline member is given a commission of the earning of his downline.
4. Members are paid their promised returns.
5. Members are encouraged to re-invest their earnings into the system to gain even more profit.
   

The above is true for 12 Daily Pro except for item 3 as 12 Daily Pro gives the upline member 12% of the "upgrade" fee paid by the downline member. No commision is given from the downline's earnings.

Now if you look at the 5 points highlited above you might have noticed a glaring omission. How exactly does the company operating the scheme earn money to sustain their payoff to members? Where do the profits come from?

12 Daily Pro claims that they earn money through avenues other than collecting "upgrade" fees. Examples mentioned in their website include advertising and off-site investments. Seriously if you believe this than you are quite a fool. The ONLY way for them to raise enough money to pay off their members is through the "upgrade" fees of members alone.

Now what happens when the company reaches critical mass? What happens when inflow of cash from new recruits seize to be enough to pay for the commission of existing members? Well for the company there is only one thing they can do and that is close shop and run away with your money. That my friend is the modus operandi of all pyramid schemes.

Summary

I hope this short article has given you a good idea of why you should not bother wasting your hard earned money on AutoSurfing. If it's not already clear enough let me reiterate:

1. Your investment is extremely high risk. On a scale of 1 to 10 I elect to choose 11. Whatever amount of money you decide to put into the scheme you may lose it the very next second. Really, I'm not kidding.
2. Pyramid schemes by nature will fail and usually in a short span of time. Expect them to fail after a few months.
3. There will be victims... it may not be you yourself but it may be your downline who is likely to be your friend or family.
   

I have to admit that it's also possible to earn money from this scheme. However be well aware of the risks and don't drag any innocent people down with you.

I heard this from a friend yesterday. She in turn heard it from a mutual friend. I have not verified the story from our mutual friend but my friend is straighter than an arrow so I trust this story to be true (unless our mutual friend lied) :)

Now the mutual friend, let's call him Melvin (because that's his name) was in a karaoke place one night in the Bukit Bintang area with eight other karaoke kakis. They had much fun but the night was coming to an end and they had to leave.

They called for the bill and they were charged for 10 persons... except they were a party of nine! So they summoned the manager and they argued over the bill. "This must be a mistake", they said. "No, I have proof!", the manager retorted.

And indeed the manager did have proof. He brought them to the surveillance room and showed them a recording of their karaoke session. They were shocked, they saw the tenth person... a ghostly female figure in dressed white with long black hair. The typical Japanese horror movie ghost.

Freaked out, they promptly paid for the 10th "person" and hastily evacuated the karaoke joint.

There are two lessons to be learnt here (assuming the story is true, lah).

1. That particular karaoke joint is haunted. Best avoid it (No, I'm not going to reveal which karaoke joint it is).
2. They take surveillance videos of you during your karaoke session! This part is really scary. Don't do funny things in the karaoke room. It may be dark and the doors may be closed but there's always someone else watching.

Have the cravings for Nissin Noodles? Wanna eat them Hong Kong style? Don't wanna pay too much for it? I have the perfect solution for you. Do-it-yourself! So simple anyone can do it! Yes, now even you can enjoy delicious Hong Kong style Nissin Noodles at home.

Head down to your nearest supermarket and buy yourself a packet of Nissin Noodles. I chose the Tom Yam flavour ones because I like to eat tomyam. You may pick any flavour you desire. Heck, you may even use Maggie Mee or any other instant noodles you prefer.


Now what makes this Hong Kong style is this; on your trip to the supermarket, pickup the following items: ham, sausages, luncheon meat and eggs. For the meat it doesn't matter if it's pork or chicken or even turkey. They taste just about the same anyway :)

Now once you're home proceed to your kitchen and get busy. You will need to cook the noodles and fry the ham, sausages, luncheon meat and eggs. If you are able to multitask then cook the noodles and fry the ingredients at the same time. If not fry the ingredients first because the noodles need to be eaten right after they are cooked otherwise they become too soggy. Another good advice would be to drain the oil from the fried items before putting them into your noodles. Oil is unhealthy and it tastes like crap.

Voila! An unhealthy but surprisingly satisfying dinner. Enjoy. Oh and btw... I still prefer Maggie Tomyam. It is simply the best instant tomyam noodles I have tasted!


I actually had this in Draft mode for over a week. Didn't think anyone would post something similiar :)

Just came across this scene in Kuchai Lama. I have no idea how the car could ram into the stall. The curb separating the road from the stall was at least a quater of a meter high. Must have been quite a crash. Didn't see anyone getting hurt though. It may not be obvious from this picture but the stall was fairly damaged as well. The support beam for the zinc roofing was hit and it looks like the stall is in danger of collapsing. There were many bystanders and several cops around probably trying to figure out how to get the car out.

Update (25 January 2006): I did it! I won the 50 bucks... now I wonder how The Star will send me the money. It's been a whole day and they have yet to contact me. Check out page N34 of today's The Star to see my picture :)

I'm plugging this blog because I just stumbled upon it and I'm seriously enjoying it. Daniel Wang is a Singaporean blogger who happens to be an extremely talented artist. He illustrates scenes of everyday life with some really clean and neat drawings/comics. He's also got a thing for Chinese swordsman drawings (like those characters and scenes from old style Shaw Brothers kung-fu movies) and he seems to like Star Wars too! Seriously... you have to check out his webcomics here and here. I'm halfway done reading the Star Wars parody. What a superb find. Does Malaysia have a similar blogger?

I'm not going to post any of Daniel's work here because I never bothered to ask for his permission so if you are even remotely curious about the blogger that I'm talking about do pay him a visit here.

This morning as I was about done with my royal business on the ceramic throne I flipped thru the last remaining pages of my required reading. Surprise! I saw the rant I wrote in the Star Citizen's Blog got published. It was 2 days since I wrote the article and I thought I would have been passed over but I guess they had a slow news day :)

I guess this particular news is of no importance to anyone other than myself but if you somehow have the urge to take a look then open up 18th January 2006's The Star and turn to page N33.


Yes I do shamelessly admit that I was aiming for the 50 bucks. But then I'm thrilled enough as it is to actually get publised :p No big deal if you're not me though.

Yes I truly believe this to be the best Hokkien Mee in KL. Better than the Petaling Street cross road stall and better than that hideously dirty alley Hokkien Mee near Central Market (of which both are overrated IMHO). Of course if you know any better place please do leave a comment. Would love to try it. Oh and by the way for you Penangnites it's not that type of Hokkien Mee :)

ST and her family have been patronising this particular establishment for many years and I've heard a little history about them. It might not be too accurate but here goes. The stall started off with the Grandfather who retired some years ago and he let his sons take over. Some of the sons started their own restaurants but the best one remained in Jalan Ipoh.

Before we go on let's give the son of the Grandfather a handle; we'll call him the Father. The Father now operates the stall with his family and one of his sons is his co-cook. His younger son is usually responsible for taking orders and aside from the steamed fishes he never cooks. However I remember once when they were absolutely swarmed with customers his younger son was forced to actually cook Hokkien Mee. Surprisingly he wasn't half bad. Easily as good or better than the older brother.

The best Hokkien Mee is cooked by the Father. Since they have 2 cooks you may sometimes end up with Hokkien Mee from the older brother which is still good but not great. He's getting better though and I don't doubt that he will be a formidable cook in the future.



You can find Ming Hoe along Jalan Ipoh in between Jalan Ipoh the Indian temple and HSBC.

A little warning: I know I praised this place quite a bit but I need to warn you that they are not consistently good. They can quite bad when there is a crowd and they rush to deliver the noodles.

A little tip: You can expect a massive crowd at this restaurant on most days (except Monday which is their rest day). If you do not fancy waiting an hour for your food either you go there really early (6.00pm) or really late (11.00pm).

Update (24 January 2006): This post was featured in blogsmalaysia.com.

Numerous Chinese restaurants have blossomed up in the newly opened shophouses in the Puchong Jaya area. I tried out one of them a few weeks back and was less than impressed. However there are quite a few restaurants to go and 2 weeks ago me and ST headed to Restoran Kong Kee for dinner.

We've passed by here a few times and there always seemed to be an ample amount of customers. Kong Kee is one of those restaurants that sell a variety of noodle dishes all based on the venerable wan tan mee. They also serve the usual assortment of cut meat like grilled chicken and roast pork. Of course they have other things like rice and even boiled soup.





Restoran Kong Kee is a welcome addition to the Puchong makan scene. Unfortunately I still think Puchong is a terrible place for food ;p I don't know a single eatery here that's famous. Here's hoping for better food finds in Puchong. I do live there after all.

Here's my try at grabbing the RM50 carrot ;p... Don't think I will win cause I wrote a very weak entry. Real sleepy now.

=== Begin ===

Disabled facilities are for the disabled!


Really the title says it all. Malaysians can often be seen thumping their chests and proclaiming themselves to be the most caring people in the world. To this I say hogwash. Chest thumping will get us nowhere. Action speaks louder than words.

I can't really speak for the disabled but from what I have observed many shopping complexes have put in a concious effort to make their buildings disabled friendly. By providing exclusive facilities such as toilets and parking bays for the disabled they have succesfully made what most of us take for granted (i.e. shopping) accessible to disabled persons.

However it's really pointless if we choose to abuse the aforementioned facilities. Is it really that difficult to look for a parking bay? Sure we Malaysians take indiscriminate parking as a given but do we have to stoop so low as to take advantage of a disabled person's facility just so we can save ourselves from going around the car park another round.

I took the picture with the intention of getting it published in the newspapers but in hindsight I really should have told the lady to move her car as well.

=== End ===

Now for the fun part... with my immense photoshopping skills I shall now turn this picture into the most controversial picture that will grace the Malaysian blogosphere this year!

Woah! Never in my life would I have dreamt of finding a ramen stall that sells ramen for slightly over RM5. Not only that they're actually quite good too! Even more surprising they are located in KL City and is just a stone's throw from Low Yat Plaza.

Me and ST were in town doing some shopping and couldn't make up our minds on where to go for lunch. In the end we decided to have some good Wan Tan Mee at a stall located along Jalan Bukit Bintang and we started walking from Low Yat Plaza towards the Wan Tan Mee stall. As we were making our way through Federal Hotel a run-down looking shop caught our attention. Surprise, surprise! It was a Ramen place and they made damn sure that anyone passing by would notice their 50% off promotion.



We were ushered in by a lady who made it a point to tell us how cheap the noodles were and frankly they were really quite affordable. The lady suggested we try their Beef Ramen and Kimuchi Ramen and we agreed. We also ordered a side dish of Gyoza (as we usually do).

Got this off the net. Apparently it's a test footage for the new Transformers movie by the wizards from Industrial Light and Magic. Take a look. I'm very very excited about the upcoming movie :) If you didn't already know a live action Transformers movie is coming our way. It's going to be produced by Steven Spielberg and directed by Michael Bay. Not too sure if Michael Bay's a good director for a Transformers movie but I'm pretty confident that he won't screw the movie up.

btw... it's my first time ever trying out embedding videos. Much easier than I thought. YouTube is the bomb!

The unthinkable has happened! Hell has frozen over, pigs are flying, I am rich and KFC is now selling fish! Everyone associates the initials KFC with Kentucky Fried Chicken but did you know that since 1991 the company dropped the use of its full name in favour of the abbreviation? Yes KFC now stands for nothing other than KFC but now I suppose we could call it Kentucky Fish and Chicken :)

The KFC fish sandwich is being marketed with one word in mind; BIG. I have to say the size is quite respectable but as it normally is with fish meat you might have to eat a lot of it to fill the space of your usual meat (like chicken or beef).




If you're familiar with McDonald's Fillet o' Fish you can pretty much imagine how KFC's Fish Sandwich tastes like but keep in mind 2 differences. It's larger than Ronald's burger (probably more expensive as well) and the herb sauce is very subdued. I think I prefer the fish burger from the place wit the Golden Arches. Can't go wrong with mayonnaise tartare sauce :)

** Programming savvy is a prerequisite to understanding this post **

I'm a Java programmer and I love programming in Java. In fact I got myself certified last year. I'm now offically a Sun Certified Programmer for the Java Platform, SE 5.0! Bow before my 1337 hax0r Java skills ^_^

Hehe... okok... the point of this post is not to glorify myself but rather I want to show you some code snippets from a project that I had worked with some time ago. I didn't write the following codes but I sure as hell had to understand and clean them.

The programmers originally hired to work on the project were foreigners from an Asian country that's currently making waves all over the world with their rapidly growing Information Technology industry. I suppose you know which country I'm talking about. Please understand I'm not trying to say that they're all bad just that there are those who are truly so bad that you wonder how they managed to become a programmer at all.

When me and a friend were drafted to join (actually a better word would be save) this project, two of the original programmers were still involved. They were a guy and a girl. The guy was the principal developer and he was responsible for writing 95% of the software. The girl was given the menial task of writing templates for reports.

A short period after me and my friend joined the project, the principal developer decided to run away. He said he had to go back to his home country to attend his sister's wedding and return to the project after that. Well he left and we saw him on Yahoo messenger once. We asked him where he was and when he was coming back. He said he was hospitalised. Hmmm... instant messaging in the hospital. Sounds really fishy. Anyways that was the last any of us ever saw from him. He left us a pile of crap to sort out.

The girl developer wasn't much help. She wasn't really involved in the development process at all so our manager decided to let her do the menial tasks... things like adding in logging and error handling. But even then she screwed up the codes a few times and introduced some bugs. It became a habit of mine to check her commits to see whether she screwed up anything and every other day she did! Sigh.

Ok enough about them. During the project, I maintained a list of some of the more atrocious code that the original programmers produced. The list isn't that long because I wasn't persistent in updating it so enjoy a small sample of their head scratching programming (in no particular order):

1. improbably stupid way to initialise an int

int key = 0;

try {
  key = Integer.parseInt("002");
} catch(NumberFormatException e) {
}

2. super redundant if statement

String resultSQL = "";

if(batchNo > 1) {
  resultSQL = "select " + fields + " from TABLE where status='N'";
}
else {
  resultSQL = "select " + fields + " from TABLE where status='N'";
}

3. error handling with (very possible) infinite loop!

public void check( int count ) {
  try {
      // some JDBC codes
  } catch( Exception e ) {
      e.printStackTrace();
      check( count );
  }
}

4. the ultimate useless method

public void getSomeData() {
  String someData = someDataTxtField.getText();
  // yes!  that's all there is to the method
}

5. obviously never learned Java basics

import java.lang.*;

// the rest of the class

And in case your wondering... all the codes above are true. I just changed the variable names and hid the non relevant parts. Imagine working with these kind of codes everyday... it's a killer. Thankfully we managed to complete the project and delivered it succesfully.

Cafe de Kowloon is yet another Hong Kong styled restaurant. Of course the really famous one is Kim Gary (can be good sometimes) and I reckon the other really famous one is Wong Kok Char Chan Teng (persistently bad!).

Cafe de Kowloon was my first exposure to the Hong Kong restaurant craze. It happened over two years ago while I was still working in Tokuii. I believe it was a Friday and on Fridays we usually take a walk to the Sri Hartamas area from our office in Mont Kiara for lunch.

I remember being quite shocked when I browsed the menu at that time. Firstly it wasn't cheap (well when you earn a sub 2k salary everything's expensive to you) and secondly I found it difficult to believe that people would pay six or seven ringgit for a bowl of Nissin Noodles. Of course this no longer shocks me as I routinely see restaurants selling Nissin or Nong-Shim noodles now.

I'm not a really big fan of Hong Kong food (at least not those that they serve in this country) but I really enjoy the sandwiches that this place offers. Oh and I also routinely eat Nissin noodles in restaurants now :) Me and ST were at Cafe de Kowloon last week for some snacks. Besides the food shown here I would recommend you to try the French toast.

Just some pictures I wanted to post up... took them on the 31st of December. We didn't celebrate Christmas because I was busy studying for a Java Certification Exam but if I was free I doubt I would have celebrated anyways what with not being Christian and all :)

Anyways Midvalley Megamall had the best Christmas decoration in 2005. Here's hoping for something even better this year around.

I find this very interesting news. I've read a few blurbs on the Internet about a new movie starring Jackie Chan and Danny Devito to be shot in Malaysia as early as next month! There are a few news items attesting to this on the net but they are all syndicated from the same source. If you wanna read the blurb here's a link.

Apparently the movie is titled "90 mins" and will tell the story of 2 school football teams and I quote from the article "striving to win some major loot for their schools"... whatever that means. It's a football movie so they're going to try to capitalise on this year's World Cup.

What's truly mindboggling is that they're slated to shoot in Kuala Lumpur, Selangor and Genting Highlands and they've got an Indian (as in from India) director named Iqbal Rizvi although a quick search on Google says Iqbal is from Pakistan.

Picture this... Jackie Chan... Danny Devito... school kids playing football... and an Indian (or most likely Pakistani) director... in Malaysia! Lol... the dots don't connect for me. The concept is so bizarre that my mind is getting warped. I wonder when the local press is going to churn out some Malaysia Boleh articles on this.

Me and ST went to this place in SS2 specialising in Taiwanese noodles. The very first thing that strikes you about the place is how inconspicuous it is. It looks exactly like what you would expect a typical Chinese coffee shop to look like. Maybe it's just me but when ST mentioned to me that she was going to bring me to a Taiwanese Noodle place in SS2 I was thinking that it's probably another one of those swanky new restaurants. How wrong I was.

I was busy the past few days so it took me quite some time to post this and as usual I've forgotten most of what I wanted to say at that moment. What I do remember however is that 90% of the customers there ordered the Pork Chop Noodles and quite frankly it looked really really nice. Since it was my first visit there we didn't really know what to order... we only noticed the popularity of the Pork Chop Noodles after we were seated for some time. Another day I guess ;)

We had 2 bowls of noodles and a bowl of dumplings that day. The noodles itself were quite good. In fact they are so good they actually self package their noodles (just the plain uncooked noodles) and sell them off. They also sell mee-sua.

If I'm not mistaken every noodle dish on the menu comes in 2 versions; a soup based version and a dry version. Of the 2 bowls of noodles we ordered the Zha Chai (it's a name for a picked vegetable) Noodles was really quite plain. Not really my kind of dish. The Szechuan Beef noodles however was a totally different experience. I loved the soup base though I would have liked it to be spicier (I guess Taiwanese do not have the tolerance to spicyness that Malaysians do). What was quite outstanding were the pieces of beef they gave. Tasty lean meat. None of the fatty uneatable pieces.

The dumplings were quite big and really meaty. But where its size impresses it kind of falls flat on taste. I don't think good dumplings can be made based on a filling of meat alone. I like them filled with some fragrant herbs or vegetables.

Taiwan Noodle House is not a bad place to go for some Taiwanese styled noodles. It's fairly cheap. You should be able to get by with RM10 per person.

Ever since the very first day I started this blog I had been itching to change the template but I just never had the heart to go through learning up all the CSS crapamolies and Blogger specific tags. After procrastinating for one and a half years(!) I finally did it. Presenting wAntAn productions' newest template for blogger. Current version is v2.0b001 which means it's still in beta and will undergo more changes.

What's different?

1. New masthead placement. In the original template the blog's name and description overlapped the masthead image. The blog name and description has been moved away and now you can enjoy the random mastheads in full view.
2. New menu bar (in red). Currently it's a little empty. As I add more features to the blog (e.g. photo galleries) it will be linked there.
3. With newer entries the embedded picture sizes are going to be significantly larger. All the while I've been using 320x240 but these days I've got a lot of bandwidth to waste.
4. Moved the random avatar towards the bottom of the page. Originally I was planning to have a great variety to them but I lost interest in pixel art. They aren't too interesting but I couldn't bear to throw them away.
   

What's not so different?

1. The colour scheme is not that much different from the old template. The biggest change is the introduction of red to the theme.

What's to come?

1. There are a few font issues I need to look into. I'm not happy with the way the posts look but it'll do for now.
2. The sidebar blends in with the posts section. Perhaps colour diffrentiate the background... it's a fair bit of work but this one's really irritating me :) Gotta change this soon.
3. Make a few icons and place them in. Will see what I can iconise.
   
4. Would like to make the comments section less plain looking.

Okay, that's it... comments appreciated. But don't kutuk kau kau lah.