MAS does it again!

Just about 20 minutes ago, I decided to plan a trip to Adelaide sometime in the middle of next year, maybe around June. In order to plan things out, the first thing that comes to mind is that how much must I save for the airfare. Being a patriot and loyal to Malaysian companies, the first website I visited was the Malaysian Airlines website.

Upon doing a quick search on Google, I came upon the Malaysian Airlines website, it looked great and very professional with plenty of web adverts around but easy navigation. So I keyed in the destination, date and, of course, economy class. And behold, my results? Well a picture is always worth a thousand words. So see it here for yourself.

Now I know why MAS is losing money and customers

Look at the price they are charging me for! RM10k for a ticket. Oh well, being the extreme cheapskate I am, I decided to go around bugging my colleagues asking them for good prices online and finally I came upon Singapore Airlines' website. Now this is the proper pricing for a ticket.

The real price? RM2.7k?

So much for efficient or reliable data obtained from our flagship carrier, I wonder if AirAsia ever face this kind of problems in regards to getting ticket prices correct. Unless this is just the air hike which MAS did mention earlier.

I am just worried that if this is the kind of service we would get from our local companies, how are we supposed to compete internationally on level ground where they have no one but themselves to rely on? Too much spoon feeding for MAS? I think so.

Eat less pork??!?!

Usually every morning I would love to glance through the newspapers or read some news online before starting my day. Being based in Cyberjaya isn't exactly my perfect area to work in due to the fact that the food in this area suck extremely badly and, oh yeah, its pork-free. Fine, I would take my time to drive to the neighbouring towns (Sri Kembangan and Dengkil) to indulge myself in a little "bak kut teh" and "char siew siew yuk" rice.


Now as stated in the newspapers today, Mr. Chua has advised all of us to eat less pork because some farmers are injecting super poison or hormonal drugs into pigs so that they can grow faster and be extra fat in order that people like me can enjoy the crispyness of "siew yuk" everyday. Well according to facts, we consume about 3,500 pigs a day in Malaysia which I was totally shocked.



I think the curse is continuining for me because previously I was cursed with eating in my factory's canteen for over a year with no chance of getting out to taste some delicious pork but alas, here I am, back to square one all over again.

Anyway I should stop complaining about my pork diet, and start concentrating on my training for the next 10km run which I am unsure of when it will be held. Hopefully I can beat my previous time during the Subang Jaya run.

Ok, my legs are killing me right now but it was all worth it. I can now finally say that I ran 10km in the recent Subang Jaya run. I would say marathon but my Dutch colleague told me that 10km is definitely not a real “marathon”. Oh well, in my mind it definitely was yesterday.

Image taken from TheStar

Being my first marathon, I was rather excited but rather nervous as well before the run. Thoughts kept flying through my head wondering whether if I might end up last of the pack or die halfway during the run. So what I did was to pace myself slowly throughout the entire run with the hope of being able to make it back in time to get a certificate.

Unfortunately that did not happen, total overall time was about 85minutes (according to my Dutch colleague who ran with me during my last 100m of the race to cheer me on). It was pretty good according to my own standards, as I am not totally fit. To be honest, I enjoyed every single minute of those 85, which I took, I truly did. Either that or my endorphins were kicking in thus causing me to cloud my own judgment. But if you ask me to attend another 10km run, I will definitely sign up for it.

The funniest thing about it during the run was that not everyone was serious about it. It was all about having fun while living a healthy lifestyle. Why do I say that? Well for one thing, I saw some people on roller-blades with the 10km tags on their shirt. Of course they weren’t seriously competing but just to have fun with friends I guess. Next I saw a couple of couples holding hands while slowly jogging and walking throughout the race. To me the best thing I saw were families joining the race as one, well not the 10km one but the shorter 3km one. Mothers were carrying their babies or pushing them on their trams, fathers guiding their sons throughout the race and brothers and sisters were running around having fun. It was an amazing moment, well personally. The babies were rather cute as they even had the running tags with numbers on their clothes.

I knew I ran rather slowly, well for one thing, there was a point within the race where there is an intersection where the 5km mark of the 10km route would meet with the last 300m of the 10km route. By the time I reached the 5km mark, I saw the first runner running towards the finish line, man, he was extremely fast. My next target for the next 10km run would be to run it within 1hour, which would allow me to earn a certificate.

The weekend was a real blast, namely because Liverpool beat Reading and Sheffield United beat Newcastle. Other than that, Chelsea and Arsenal lost so that is good math for me. I hope these kind of results continue the rest of the season with the exception of Manchester United losing more.

Bad carbonarra

Yesterday was a good day, why? I guess it was because I ate my favourite carbonara pasta twice, once for lunch and again another time during dinner. Well during lunchtime, the rest of my colleagues decided that we should try out the Italian restaurant at the Street Mall in Cyberjaya. My comments? The food was not even worth taking a photo of and the prices were incredibly high. What do you get for RM20? A plate filled with pasta and some salty carbonara sauce that did lack cheese and had extremely little portions of mushrooms and bacon. Enough about that crap though, don’t even consider coming to Cyberjaya and finding any sort of decent food around here.

The second carbonara dish that I ate was at Modesto’s in Desa Sri Hartamas. Having been there a couple of months back, the place had a total makeover. Where the restaurant used to be is now turn into Chinois and where the bar used to be is now remodeled to the new Modesto’s with a fancier set of furniture and design. Unfortunately with all those changes, the level of service you would expect from a place that high class would be decent but to me, they were totally appalling. For one thing, the waiters were extremely blur, it took them a while to get a cup of water and let alone bring our orders. They had to carry the dishes around hoping that a table would recognize their order and then wait for the customers to shout out, “I think that is ours”, before going to that table and giving them.

I should have just said that everything was mine, since I was rather hungry then. The next beef I have with them is that their main waiter, who was this rather old looking Chinese man, (I presumed that he was the manager or something of high rank) had totally no manners whatsoever. We could be extremely polite to him and even thanking him plenty of times but not even a word of “You’re welcome” or “Hope you enjoy your meal” or any sort of response. The only respond you can make out from his extremely soft voice would be, we offer a 20% discount to all Citibank card users here.

But hey, as a Chinese I guess that you would probably have money floating all over your mind and head all the time. So forget being polite, forget having manners, just flash cash about and everyone will grovel at your feet. Oh my, where are we going, honestly?

By the way, the carbonara I had at Modesto’s was really good but the helpings aren’t as big or great as that you would get from Fasta Pasta or Itallianies from 1Utama and the Curve.