Where to buy Nissan Almera?

I have been shopping around for cars – not because I can finally afford one, but just to see what the local car buying market is like (this protecting the local car industry is a bit BS, in my opinion). Because I don’t consider myself a car person per se, I don’t like going to individual car show rooms (not by myself anyway, because I feel preyed upon) until I’m ready to actually purchase, it’s actually less stressful to browse online.  And you don’t even have to get dressed, leave the house, waste petrol and cause wear and tear on your car driving around to different car lots, dealers or show rooms.

One of the things I like about Carsifu.my is that you can search the listings by location – no need to waste your time and energy looking at car listings in Perlis when you are based in the Klang Valley.

Other handy features of Carsifu are the car loan calculator: just plug in the loan amount, interest rate, and the number of years it takes to service the loan and voila, you get your monthly instalment tout suite!

Just for the heck of it, I’ve been looking at listings for the Nissan Almera, which looks such a pretty car. 

My only niggle is that you can not search the listings by ascending/descending price, which is important especially if you have a budget that you would rather stick to. 

I don't know if it's just me, or... what is up with the "Car Comments" section on the site? It's not so much user reviews but are just press releases / pieces about the cars that you could possibly find elsewhere online or in the car magazines. Or if you don't like to read, just watch the British car show Top Gear.

Just a thought.

Malaysia Properties on Auction @ Propwall!

You know you're getting a little long in the tooth when real estate becomes a conversation topic amongst your peers however often you get together – which neighbourhood and where, what kind of house, how much is it, who’s got the best security, news about developers’ new housing developments, so on and so forth. Buying one’s first property is quite a major life event and it probably feels pretty epic.

But before that could even happen, you have to first need to have some money set aside, and to scout out a suitable location. Even that’s not enough these days with property prices in the Klang Valley so high and people having to move further and further away so that they don’t have to service million ringgit mortgages for 30 years.

Of course if money isn't an issue, then there's Propwall.

There’s a mortgage calculator, maps (powered by Google), property reports and a Q&A tab on the site where people can ask questions about the properties and get answers from other users and also actual real estate professionals. The pictures posted are also of pretty good stock, short of a virtual tour (which would be a really nice touch, but that might not be cheap). Propwall Auction is a pretty handy tool to have. You can browse the listings for free, but if you actually want to conduct transactions on here, you have to register for an account, which thankfully, is also free.

I wish that there are better sorting options in the search results like sorting them by price either in descending or ascending order as it’s easier than wading through the results looking for a low price with no end in sight. It’s times like this I’m glad that it doesn’t have Pinterest’s infinite scrolling :P On the plus side there are now  classified ads from outside KL and Selangor.

Zaggora's Design Your Own HotPants

A friend sent me the link to Zaggora's Facebook contest app where they were giving away a pair of Nude HotPants every hour (and I mean, every hour) when you design your own Zaggora item (you choose from not just the bottoms, but also the tops).

From the Facebook Page... 

Create your own Zaggora product design to win a free pair of Hotpants every hour! 

Every hour we choose a random lucky winner of a free pair - you'll get an email if you win! Every month we choose the most voted design and we'll make it and send it to you and your friends so don't forget to share with friends! 

You'll get a email from them whether you win or not; when you don't, you get a coupon code for free shipping; when you win you get an email with a redemption code that you put in when you check out. Winners are also randomly selected, so you never really know.

After submitting half a dozen designs over several days, I finally won a pair of Zaggora Nude HotPants yesterday myself. After hemming and hawwing about the size, I went on the website, picked a size and paid the 10 pound shipping with Paypal. I heard that it takes several weeks for shipping, which is normal.

Cheeky me tried to combine the two coupon codes so that it would be totally free, but that didn't fly :P Oh well - shipping's cheaper than the actual thing, anyway... 

I don't know how long the contest is running for, so what are you waiting for?

iBilik Philippines

Moving out of the family home to venture out on your own is a good thing; it is an important step to take when you go to college or university. You need to get out there and expand your horizons while you're still young and still able to do so. Even when you find a job that’s not close to home, you would need a place to stay. Realistically, unless you have a boatload of money, you might not be able to get your own apartment right away. But you would still need a roof over your head, and conversely a room, right? Have to start small, what.

What used to be CariBilik is now iBilik, and not only can you find rooms in Malaysia and Singapore, but now you can also find rooms like for school, or for a temporary work assignment away from home to rent in THE PHILIPPINES. 

The short term stay part of the site is sort of like AirBnB, where you stay in people’s domiciles instead of a hotel or backpacker’s hostels. You could also read other people’s reviews of the property that you are thinking of renting, if available.

I have not tried renting rooms through iBilik myself, but it seems intuitive enough – you can start the search by clicking on your preferred area by name, and then by the type of tenant (male, female, expat, local) and other factors just by plugging in a few key words. There is also a Google Map and availability calendar in the listings as well, which makes life a lot easier for everyone. You also don’t have to wait long to get confirmation. 

It’s free registration if you ever want to put a room or apartment up for rent, or to contact the person whose room or apartment you’re interested in for follow up, or to actually rent a place.

I'll put this on the KIV pile.

Shit Malaysian Bloggers Say (VIDEO)

Finally got round to watching this video just now (as it was in my YouTube viewing history, but I saw it sans audio the first time), so hilarious.

I like to think that not ALL local bloggers are that obnoxious (but what do I know - I have friends that occasionally blog, but no blogger I could sincerely call a friend), but I'm sure there must be some grain of truth in it, am I right? I only find it funny because I don't really say these things myself as a blogger: I show up, thank them for the swag, take everything in, take pictures, leave, and blog about it as soon as I can. 

I already don't get that many event invitations, but the few that I do get, I accept for the adventure. One can never have enough fodder.

It's hard for me as it is to bring non-bloggers to a blogger event, so I usually show up alone. And I'm not pals with most of the local bloggers (who really are busy posing for pictures with each other at events) - I'm that wallflower you see at events.

So don't be like those people in the video. Be nice.

Malaysia Cars For Sale?

If you're in need of a car but not necessarily a brand new one, you can check this site selling Malaysia cars called Carsifu.my. In case anyone doesn’t know, the word "sifu" means "master". 

The main page itself is pretty minimalist, not very cluttered and easy on the eye, as well as it does the job. The site is for you to SELL your car, so if you're looking for a car to rent, you might be disappointed and would have to go elsewhere. But if you’re looking to sell your car on this website, you would have to register a seller’s account on Carsifu, which is fast and painless. 

What I liked was that it’s not just that it lists Malaysia’s favourite car manufacturers like BMW, Honda or Hyundai, but also the lesser known car brands like Opel, Renault, Skoda, etc if that's where your interests lie.

What annoyed me a little was that the listing prices were in no particular order and I could not sort them either by ascending or descending order. There also seems to be repeat listings, which you can tell from the wording and pictures used. I hope it’s not to bump up the numbers. 

Browsing listings of cars that came out in the last few years (to the decade) was too easy, so I decided to see if anyone’s selling a more vintage car on the site. Doing that yielded several old school Mini Coopers (think Mr Bean’s car) and Volkswagen Beetles (Herbie the Love Bug) for sale on the site. 

I found one listing that I thought was too good to be true – RM94 for a Honda Accord, which I thought must be missing at least a few zeros in the listing. I can’t say the thought of contacting the seller didn’t cross my mind to check if he was really selling the car for under RM100, haha. 

Carsifu needs some time and some more work, but it appears to be pretty viable.

TED Talk- The demise of guys?

If you've taken a Psych 101 class, the name Philip Zimbardo might sound vaguely familiar to you because of the Stanford prison experiment (look it up yourselves).

Here he is at this year's TED, giving a talk called "The demise of guys?"

From the TED site,

Psychologist Philip Zimbardo asks, "Why are boys struggling?" He shares some stats (lower graduation rates, greater worries about intimacy and relationships) and suggests a few reasons

It's under 5 minutes, so it should be digestible.

Until they perfect artificial sperm, that's the only role guys have left....

Dealshelve, the Deal Aggregator

As a sucker into the group buying craze (to an extent), I subscribe to close to a dozen sites that sends daily emails with all sorts of deals, which can overwhelm a person's inbox every morning on top of the other types of email a person gets. I had been wondering when will someone come up with a deal aggregator a little closer to home.

Fortunately, there's Dealshelve - they collect deals from a total of 44 different group buying sites (in Malaysia - who knew?) and compiles them in one place. You can search for deals on the site by locale (Klang Valley, and the rest) and by category (F&B and services). You can also subscribe to Dealshelve emails and get just a single email for a less-cluttered inbox. It's not just deals in Malaysia, but also Singapore and the Philippines. 

It's also available for iPad, iPhone and Android platforms, but I haven't tested those personally. Let me know if you have. 

Meanwhile, I guess I have some unsubscribing to do... 

Pottermore - What Is It?

I had heard whispers about Pottermore for the last week or two, but I don't have the energy to speculate what could it possibly be.

But you can watch JK Rowling's announcement about it below... 

From what I gather from the video - it's basically an interactive way of reading the Potter series all over again and users also get to experience the Potter world for themselves (getting sorted by the Sorting Hat, picking a wand at Ollivander's, etc). I'm not sure if I'm willing to read the books all over again, honestly. But I do want to see what information she's held back about the characters all these years.

I don't know about anyone else, but I think I would prefer a Harry Potter encylopedia. I'm just saying.

The Nerdist has also linked the official press release here, if you're so inclined to read it. 

Find Malaysia's Homestays

When looking for a room to rent, one would typically scour room listings in the local newspapers or on the community notice board at your nearby convenience store and what not, but if you're in a different town, that might be hard to pull off, sight unseen.

Or perhaps you and your family (say it's not just your immediate family, but perhaps the extended family as well) are looking for an apartment to stay for a little whole or a place to stay for brief work contracts but balk at the idea of staying in hotels for too long, you might want to check out this listing site for Malaysia Homestays called CariBilik.com. 

The website design is clean, simple and intuitive enough - you can search the posted listings by state and also by town, and then you can also search them by keyword. It’s free for users to browse and respond to the listings, and it’s also free for anyone to post a listing but prior registration is required.

You can search and filter the room rental listings specifically by gender and race acceptance as mentioned in the listings, and the short rental listing by whatever specifics you have in mind as well as by rental rates. There's also pictures that you can also check out to see if it's right for you and your situation.

Oh, and you can also search the room-to-let listings in both Singapore and Indonesia as well on CariBilik.com - which is really convenient especially if you're relocating to say, Singapore for work - you can find a room to live in before you leave. My only niggle about this website is that I have no idea why there are no homestay listings on the Singapore and Indonesia sites, but they should because decent hotel rooms are not cheap in Singapore, particularly when travelling with a large group of people.

Otherwise, I say it’s a great resource for anyone looking for a room or a homestay, especially in Malaysia.

Lifehacker - The Web Video Series

Lifehacker finally launched their online web series (produced by Revision3), which gives you the live action, demonstrative version of some of their previously published articles like how to use a hoodie as a laptop bag (in a pinch), etc etc.

I suppose one way to look at it is that it's the Lifehacker experience for people who can't visualise some of the how-to videos or just don't really like to read.

Group buying sites - yay or nay?

I've been hearing about group buying site Groupon and the group buying concept for months (even the ones in China, which predates the Western sites) before I had any idea that anyone's doing the same thing here. Whatever you want to call it: Deal-of-the-day or group buying, the craze has hit hard in Malaysia, especially the Klang Valley because it's commonly believed that people in the Klang Valley have more money, hence got more disposable income to blow on these things :P

Image via WikipediaUnlike the US counterparts, most of the deals here go on for at least a few days so that people would have time to get in on the action to buy the vouchers for themselves, friends and family. That, and we've only got less than 10 million people in the Valley, so chances of a deal getting sold out really quick is not likely.

Payment options are also pretty abundant and easy for you to part with your money - from online banking (via your bank's internet banking portal), credit cards, offline cash deposit (for people who don't have credit cards or internet banking) and also Paypal (woo hoo).

A quick poke around Google also yielded that it only costs $400 to buy a script for group buying sites - which you can recoup easily enough if your deals are any good. This kind of explains why all the sites look so damn similar. 

I got to know some of the first local group buying sites from cold-call emails, asking me to check them out. The rest I got to know from all over the Internet, particularly the Facebook ads (which I admit to clicking). Fortunately I haven't been getting a lot more of these emails recently, as there are plenty of them now from this blog post (who knew there were so many more - holy cow!). 

As far as the deals go, most of them I could do without, but I still stalk the sites regularly in case they had a deal that I finally want in on and I'm on several email lists. If you look at enough of them, you'd see some of the same businesses advertising the same deal on different sites. 

As far as my buying habits go - I won't buy vouchers that I'd have to travel too far to redeem, but I'd buy vouchers for things/places I've been wanting to try (that's not too far), and also cheaper wax sessions, because let's face it, it's not cheap to look good, even decent :P

I've bought vouchers from several sites over the last few months and I've had okay experiences when purchasing and I've not had a bad experience redeeming them at the respective outlets. The actual product or service however, is another matter. If you want me to try buying and redeeming from the rest, you'd have to reimburse me :P Makes me wonder how much repeat business the retail outlets get post-deal. 

What I'm a little annoyed with is that these sites don't have a freaking RSS feed, which makes it a little tiresome to check sites out everyday and there are only so many emails that I can glance at and delete. Even when I check into these sites from the same place each day, I get bugged with the prompt to enter email address to subscribe to their site updates. Oh, and the Facebook Connect thing - I know it's a convenience thing so that you're not stuck with remembering multiple login details, but seriously, Facebook already has its privacy problems.

I know I sound really sarcastic about the concept, but as a consumer, I like it because no one wants to buy something at retail price if you can get it for cheaper.

Go, group buying sites.

Radiohead's Lotus Flower video

Radiohead tweeted the link of the first music video off The King of Limbs, called Lotus Flower. You can watch for yourself...

The sight of Thom Yorke dancing like he's having a fit and in what appears to be in JEGGINGS was so bizzare I wasn't paying attention to the song. Now I have to hear it again and NOT get distracted by the video.

Anyone got their copy of The King of Limbs yet?

Craig Ferguson's Doctor Who tribute

Not too long ago, Craig Ferguson did a musical song-and-dance cold open where they made up lyrics to the Doctor Who theme song because the current Doctor Matt Smith was on the show that night. But they couldn't show it then because they hadn't secured the rights to the song. Whoops.

Well, it's now on the internets, muahahaha....! Well okay, it's been hinted (not too subtly) that it will find its way online at some point and it was just a matter of time.

Malaysia Property Investment Website

So I stumbled across this local online property listings site one way or the other (I can’t recall) called PropWall. Propwall sets itself up as a one-stop property site where it not only has property listings, but it also has articles and other helpful elements to make buying or renting property less painful than it normally would. 

Propwall has classified postings where one can sell, buy or rent not just homes, but also commercial spaces for businesses. So far the majority of the listings seem to be in the Klang Valley, but I’m sure once it has gained momentum, there will be listings from all around the country. 

Unlike other property sites, there’s also a mortgage calculator, maps (powered by Google) and a Q&A tab on the site where people can ask questions about the properties and get answers from others. The pictures posted are also of pretty good stock, short of a virtual tour (which would be a nice touch, but oh well).

I wish that there are better sorting options in the search results like sorting them by descending or ascending price order as it’s easier than wading through the results looking for a low price with no end in sight.

The Malaysia Propertymarket has been on the rise in the last few years; while I doubt that I’ll be able to afford my own space in my own lifetime, but if I ever do, I’ll definitely use this site.

GetGlue

I heard about GetGlue on one of the TWiT.tv podcasts, net@night, which is a little like foursquare but you "check in" to movies, music, books, TV shows and whatever else you might like or dislike or perhaps can think of. Because it is a Web 2.0 thing, you can also check in with smartphones, iPads as well as through the website.

When you "like" and check-in to stuff, there will also be suggestions for what you might like also.
 
Unlike foursquare where you get virtual badges, GetGlue promises its users actual stickers that one can send out for once you've accumulated at least SEVEN stickers, which is not hard but the first few stickers you get might not be what you want rightaway. It is a race for users to accumulate stickers since they're free.

 
You get stickers when you check in to certain things on the sites/mobile apps, like when you check into certain TV shows on networks that have partnerships with GetGlue like HBO, AMC or FOX. You find out what to check into for stickers by following their blog or their Twitter feed.

Personally, I've collected a few stickers that I wouldn't mind having, but it's gonna take me awhile before I send out for mine. I sent out for the stickers I collected with the first account (damn Facebook Connect) I got, but I still haven't received them because while it takes them about 8 weeks domestically, it'll take them longer for overseas users.

Yes, I will admit that the site is a bit of a time suck - the only downside to this site is that I find it a little slow - it takes awhile for pages to load, which might be intentional as it'll slow people down in getting as many stickers as they can.

Since there aren't many sources of information about how to earn certain stickers (I won't go on about how to get the usual ones, once you have them it's self explanatory), I might do a post while I can still remember how.

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MyDeal, Groupsmore and Groupego

There have been "deal of the day", collective buying sites popping up in Malaysia recently - there is nothing Malaysians love more than a good deal, especially on new businesses like restaurants, spas and everything else in between. How it works is that there would be a new deal every day (usually) which needs a minimum number of buyers before it is officially a deal. Because the concept is still pretty new here, these deals run for a few days so that people won't miss out.

It works out both ways - the businesses get some marketing and promotion with the deals they set up with these sites, and we as consumers get to know that these businesses exist and get to try out something new at at least half the price.

I only found out because I get emails from these sites beckoning to check them out . Being the curious cat that I am, I did.

One of the first that I know of was MYDEAL.com.my - the only deal I've bought so far was a full car wash, vacuum and tyre shine deal at Regal Valet for RM7.50 (u.p. RM15), which I didn't get to use in the end because my bro wanted it for himself (he couldn't buy it online due to certain circumstances), but he said it was pretty good. Hmph. (I made him wash the Jeep in lieu of)

After weeks of stalking, I finally bought in a deal at Groupsmore, which was RM39 for either a (u.p. RM98) Brazilian or a full leg wax (u.p. RM108) at Apronbay, a new place in Bangsar.

The buying experience was also pretty easy on both MYDEAL.com.my and Groupsmore - I bought both deals via online banking (remembering to kill the popup blockers for a bit to do it is one thing). Groupsmore also lets you bank in payment at a cash deposit machine as an option. Hmm. 

And today, I got an email from Groupego, which is still currently on its first deal, which I doubt I'm getting even though it's only RM1. I'll just keep checking in, all the same. 

This is gonna be interesting. 

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Clint Mansell - Requiem for a Dream

I keep hearing this song on TV and it was getting to me, most recently on the second season premiere of NCIS:LA. Trust me, you would have heard this at least ONCE.



Thanks to the internet, I finally found out what it's called and who it's by. And, I also found the exact remix that I keep hearing thanks to YouTube.

Excuse me if I didn't know it was from that movie Requiem for a Dream. And no, I can't be arsed to watch the movie now.

The song is epic (scale-wise), but is suffering from overuse now, IMO.

David Tennant revisit: Casanova

Still on my David Tennant kick, I finally saw the 3-hour comedy drama serial Casanova on YouTube. Oddly enough, was also on Masterpiece Theatre. Don't ask me why I never saw it when it first came out in 2005 - I had things to do :P

It's basically Giacomo Casanova (played by Peter O' Toole) in his later years, in his final place of employment as a librarian. He relates his life to a young servant girl Edith (played by pre-Damages Rose Byrne), exploits and all. David Tennant plays the younger Casanova in the flashbacks. He found the love of his life that he could never have due to circumstances beyond their control, a fugitive most of his adult life, yada yada. He also got landed with one of his illegitimate kids, Giac along the way.
Image by lisby1 via Flickr
The sight of David Tennant with blue contacts just because O' Toole has blue eyes was a little disconcerting, mostly because people are familiar with his brown eyes. But on the plus side, he got the Doctor Who gig as a result, which lead to him being people's favourite Doctor.

Because he had to raise his son "Giac" (whose mum was one of the nuns he bonked) on the run, I thought it was a little odd how little the father's aged compared to the son, who was a child in the first episode to emo goth teenager by the final episode, ready to bonk his own sister (from another woman). Eep.

The show was pretty campy and a little ridiculous - the "sex" scenes were more comic than carnal. The ending was pretty bittersweet as well.

I think I'll go back to watching Hamlet again.

Idiot drivers, beware...

Was flipping through the latest issue of KLue at MPH and there was a brief mention of the site Idiot Drivers in KL, and there was a thumbnail of one of the pictures I had submitted...