The Star (my favorite local newspaper here) published an article on Super Travel Systems on June 22, 2008. In this article it highlighted the excellent public transportation systems of five cities, namely Portland (Oregon, United States), London (England), Curitiba (Brazil), Paris (France), and Hong Kong. It then invited readers to write in about their views on the state of our local public transportation (in a word: awful). So I wrote in, and here’s my two cent’s worth.
Just read in today’s The Star that the Federal Government has decided to defer two major projects for Penang: the Monorail and the Penang Outer Ring Road project (PORR). And the reason for this decision? “Soaring costs.” So why the hell didn’t they do it years ago? And if they “defer” these projects to 5 or 10 years from now will the costs decrease? Will the traffic madness decrease? Give me a break! They might as well use the word cancel instead of defer.
The short-sightedness of politicians is something that makes me want to throw up. I guess it’s the same all over the world. And it’s always the citizens who have to suffer and pay the price for their dumb decisions.
Alright, end of my rant. Enough of this political BS.
Well you can call them Bond II if you like, but personally I prefer Scala to Bond. This stunning looking foursome play with an intensity that keeps me enthralled. Not just because they are nice to look at, but the sounds they produce from their electric string instruments are simply amazing. This is definitely one hot British quartet I’ll be checking on.
Comparing them to the violinists we have here–argh. The less said, the better.
…is like making love to a beautiful woman. I couldn’t agree more. During my years in the States, I’ve been fortunate enough to have played on some wonderful concert grands (courtesy of the University of Arizona’s Music Department) such as a Steinway and a Baldwin (we had one signed by Liberace). When I play on a wonderful piano, I can get carried away and play on and on.
On the other hand, I’ve played on my share of crappy pianos too. Argh, these are the instruments of death and torture that make me wonder "Why am I doing this?" For non-musical people who think that if a piano is OK if it sounds, that could hardly be further from the truth. Not that I expect the best piano to be available before I can "get in the mood." But it wouldn’t be fair to expect a carpenter to produce beautiful furniture with mediocre tools, would it? Likewise with artists and musicians.
Fortunately, piano makers such as Yamaha have come to the rescue. With their wonderful range of Clavinova digital pianos, musicians don’t have to worry about playing on a sub-standard instrument, or one that is out of tune. And get this: the piano sounds are actual samples of Yamaha’s grand pianos, digitalized and stored in the Clavinova. With the Clavinovas costing a fraction of the price you’d have to pay for an actual Grand, I’d say that it’s definitely worth the money and the savings.
I’ve been using the Yamaha CVP-105 Clavinova for a few years now, and it sounds just as good as the day I bought it. No need for tunings, virtually maintenance-free, and having a host of other cool features like auto-accompaniment, MIDI, recording capabilities, etc. No regrets as far as I’m concerned.
My friend Lisa was describing her agonies of doing the refillable ink cartridge thing in one of her latest blog posts. I just have this to say: never buy or use refillables! It isn’t worth the savings, sooner or later (usually sooner) you’ll run into trouble with them.
What harm can refillables do? Plenty:
They can damage your printer head, voiding your printer’s warranty.
They can leak all over the insides of your printer, creating a really big mess.
Their ink quality is usually inferior to that of genuine OEM inks.
They might not show up in your printer’s status monitor. For instance, my Epson CX3900 AIO has a status monitor showing how much ink is left in each cartridge before printing. Put in a non-genuine cartridge, and it shows up as empty.
And so on and so on. The moral of the story here is this: before buying an inkjet, ask about the cost of its replacement cartridges. From experience, I’ve found that genuine HP and Lexmark cartridges are the most expensive, which is why I steer clear of their printers. Canon and Epson sell their replacement cartridges at a more reasonable price, which is why I’ve been using Epson inkjets for years and years. And the after-sales service is excellent (thank you, Mr. Lau, if you’re reading this)
I also have a Samsung ML-1610 mono laser printer, which is perfect for times when I don’t need color copies. This model has now been replaced with the ML-2010, which is still cheap. Moreover the cost per page is far less than printing on an inkjet, as one laser toner cartridge can print around 2000 pages. Laser printer prices have also been decreasing, which makes them a viable addition to your computer printing needs.
Well this WordPress.org thing is certainly different from my old and free WordPress.com. For one thing, much of everything is customizable. That has its pros and cons, but a big hurdle for me was, where to start? I missed the Blog Stats from my old blog, you know, the counter on the first page which tells you and me how many people have visited my blog. I found that this was not among the list of widgets available in the theme or themes I had selected. What to do? I managed to install a Blog Stats plug-in from WP’s plug-in directory, but that only shows up when I access my dashboard. And so far it hasn’t even updated yet: it’s showing that no one has visited my new blog home. This can’t be true!
So yeah, it’ll take me a while to get used to this new place.
Well, after a lot of hair-splitting and headaches, I’ve finally managed to migrate my old WordPress.com blog to this new space in my new website. I would really like to say a big thank you to Doris for all her help and encouragement
Of course it’ll take some time to really get things working 100% but rest assured I’ll be doing a lot of renovations here.
Time to get started. Please comment, I’ll save the housewarming for later.
