July 14, 2013

Seafood at Tanjung Tualang

Being a final year of engineering student has been extremely busy, which is the main reason why the blog has been inactive.

This post is especially good for those seafood lovers who crave to eat a good meal of prawns or crabs. I have tried them and I think they are good even though I am not into seafood. Located in the state of Perak, Tanjung Tualang is the place to go especially for those who are on the way to Lumut from Ipoh.

There are several style of the prawns being cooked but the favourite was definitely the prawns and crabs that was fried using sauce (9 o'clock- prawns in sauce, center- crabs in sauce). As for the butter prawns (4 o'clock), the cooking didn't create much "hooHAA" that I want to praise much but because of the quality of the prawns, you can actually taste the real flavor of the prawn.

The price is typical for the other dishes such as pork, clamps, vegetables but you would have to pay more for the crabs and prawns, isn't that usual? 1.5 kg of the prawns costed about RM 80 to RM 120, and of course this would also depend on the time that you go. The prices aren't fixed. This serving was for 6 - 8 pax. Other dishes were less than 20 bucks.



(Crabs friend in their special sauce)



The Politician

June 10, 2013

Just 16.7% to win simple majority in Parliament (Taken from The Sun Daily)

PETALING JAYA (June 9, 2013): Astonishing as it may seem, it is technically possible for a political party to win a simple majority in Parliament and form the government by garnering a mere 2.21 million votes (or 16.7%) of the total electorate.

Because of the imbalance of registered voters in the 222 parliamentary constituencies, there are currently only 4,408,975 voters or 33.22% of the total electorate of 13,268,110 in the 112 seats with smaller numbers of registered voters.

The 112 constituencies have a very much smaller number of registered voters, ranging from 15,791 (Putrajaya) to 56,280 (Kuantan), in contrast with the remaining 110 constituencies with more voters, some in excess of 100,000, with the highest being Kapar with 144,159 registered voters.

As such, a political party needs to just win by one vote in these 112 seats – a third of which are in Sabah and Sarawak – to obtain a simple majority and form the federal government.
Calculations by theSun show that if a party were to win 50.1% in each of these 112 seats, it would only need to get about 2,209,000 votes (or about 16.65% of the total electorate).

The actual calculation based on half the total voters plus 1 in each of the constituencies, puts the actual number at 2,208,353, which is a mere 16.64 % of the total number of voters in the electoral roll during the recently concluded 13th general election.

And if one were to consider voter turnout on polling day to be around 80%, it would mean the actual number of votes needed to win the 112 seats would be even less, at around 1,767,117 or a mere 13.4% of the total electorate.

Hence, the numbers are very compelling reasons for the Election Commission (EC) to ensure that each vote should, as much as possible, be accorded equal value or weight in all parliamentary constituencies.

On Saturday, the EC denied claims of inequality among constituencies, claiming that critics had not considered the increase in voter population over the last decade.
EC deputy chairman Datuk Wan Ahmad Wan Omar claimed the voter population had increased and there had been much urban migration since.

"The inequality among the constituencies was not that large when it was drawn up in 2002," said Wan Ahmad, adding it is unfair to compare the number of voters like Kapar (144,159) to Putrajaya (15,791).
"When people talk about 'malapportionment', they refer to the 2002 numbers. It is not fair to compare the present figures to the 2002 numbers," he said at a public forum themed "Constituency Delineation – Knowing where to draw the lines", organised by the Bar Council.

Wan Ahmad said the EC would consider the 15% voter variance rule for seats in the same category namely urban, semi-urban and rural seats when conducting the next review.
If this rule is applied, the difference in the number of voters between two urban constituencies or two rural constituencies would be less than 15%.

Wan Ahmad said there have been many complaints over the high variance percentage of voters between constituencies, adding that he agreed that there were areas like Baling which were "hard to justify".

Baling, which is considered a rural seat, has 93,376 voters compared to Alor Star, an urban seat in the same state with 69,189 voters.
The EC had last month announced it will study all proposals thoroughly when it conducts the redelineation process.

Opposition leaders have also called for the "one man, one vote, one value" ideal to be practised in light of the recent election, where Pakatan Rakyat won 51% of popular vote, but only secured 89 of the 222 parliamentary seats.


Under Article 113(2)(ii) of the Federal Constitution, a redelineation exercise should be conducted between eight and 10 years from the last one. The last time the EC conducted the redelineation exercise was in 2003.

Taken directly from The Sun Daily.

June 07, 2013

Playing games is good?

I was tasked to conduct a plant design project in order to complete my Bachelors of Chemical Engineering. The project requires, of course tremendous amount of technical background on the subject matter. The team which I was in consisted of 5 members of the same discipline. In the initial part of the project, we were required to proposed a site for the production of ammonia and urea plant. Of course there are many references which one can refer to. I am sure you are now thinking how does this relate with the title? Easy!

The task brought me back to my younger years when I was playing SimCity 3000. If you have no idea what is it about, go check it out. The game has taught me a lot on planning and some may not realise that it has also taught some good points of placing plants especially landfills, incinerator and power plants. In order to ensure that the surrounding areas aren't affected so much.

A snapshot of SimCity 3000


That said, I realized that the whole team wasn't aware of other factors. They kept mentioning buyer and raw materials only. With the knowledge learn from the games, I told them that there were many other factors like environmental impacts, flora and fauna, utilities, noise pollution, transportation and etc. They were shocked that there were so many factors.

SimCity 3000


So, do you think games are good for kids (or even adults)? Of course, just don't overplay till one not see the sunlight. :)


May 14, 2013

Perhentian Island, Redang Island & Lang Tengah Island (Malaysia)

About a week ago, as stated in the title, I went to those island. To my surprise, they are well preserved. Due to the timing I went which was on weekdays, the number of tourists at Perhentian could be counted. However, the same can't be said for Redang, the island has more to offer, nicer accommodation with high class resorts compared to Perhentian Island. Perhentian Island would be the choice for those who prefer a more village style kind of accommodation.

Let's say if you insists to stay at Perhentian, there is still nice resort called Awana (if I am not mistaken). But I would highly recommend one to stay at Redang.

Enough with accommodation, I will be showing some pictures of my snorkeling experiences over there. Except for the involuntary sun tanning that I had to go through, it was a good experience.

Clown Fish

At the Perhentian Island area

A huge turtle

One of the view at Redang Island

Quite a number of fishes surrounded us

Feeding them

A coral. The locals call it Christmas Tree







More corals

I wonder why was the fish surrounding that person only...

Morning view at Perhentian Island

On our way to Redang Island

Arriving at Lang Tengah Island





View at Perhentian Island in the evening

Another side of Perhentian Island

Night activity at Long Beach

May 04, 2013

Jokes That Cannot Be Missed for GE13

The very much anticipated general election, where, one has a choice to choose aside from the National Front. Some of the jokes created by them are as follows:

A song created by MIC:



Another idiot who created an album:



Their attempt has been nothing but a joke unlike the one that was directed by Tony Pua:




April 17, 2013

Rafizi Ramli Explaining How To Achieve PR's Manifesto

Pakatan Rakyat (PR) has decided to use the alternative media to engage the people. Of course, they have anticipated that they won't get to do any promotion on the mainstream media.

Some video clips of him explaining on how PR can implement their manifesto. Pretty intriguing way of explaining.






March 30, 2013

Fake Handphones (Fake Samsung S3)

Last week, I personally encountered this incident in Seremban, Malaysia. For the local readers, this happened in Terminal 1, Seremban on the 2nd floor.

As usual, you would want to get the best price offered after surveyed some shops around a mall. At that time, Samsung galaxy S3 was about RM 1,600++ in Malaysia (that's about 500 USD). Friend said he would only buy if the price was RM1,400, the shop owner said yes. We were astonished that he was able to give us such price, so we agreed.

Mentioned to him that we wanted an original one and not the fake one, he said, "yes, original." Mind you that we questioned him 3 TIMES! After checking the phone thoroughly, we bought it and went home. While my friend was playing it in the car, he suspected that the phone feels different. He is a pretty IT savvy kind of guy. He reached home, check it on the internet,discovered that it was a fake Samsung S3. If it was me, I wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

So people out there, be cautious of these irresponsible conman.

(Fake S3 (left) and the original one)

The Politician

(Ps: sorry for the short story, I was too lazy to type it in a more exciting way)