Archive for November, 2009
Tuesday, November 24th, 2009
For 2008, the official figures are:
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin earned the equivalent of USD137,000. Assets included a large plot of land, a 77 sq m apartment, a garage, 2 classic cars and a trailer.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev earned 11% less. Assets included a 368 sq m apartment, 3 million roubles in bank deposits, 4,700 sq m of land, a Volkswagen Golf and 2 parking spaces.
Wonder if they’re required to list every small detail down to say, horse riding breeches. What if it’s a pricey one?
Mitigating factor:
- they are not compelled to disclose the income of any children or relatives.
- no independent taskforce to verify the truth to the figures.
Source
The BBC, 7 Apr 2009
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Saturday, November 21st, 2009
It was reported back in May 2009 that Australian bank Wespac made the probably the biggest blunder any bank has ever made: instead of depositing NZD10,000 into the account of a Kiwi couple it added 3 more zeroes i.e. NZD10 million.
The couple had applied for an overdraft. Imagine their shock at finding the equivalent of USD6 million (more than RM20 million!) in their business account. That shock quickly turned into something else – they have now disappeared out of the country with part of the money.
Police said some of the money had been recovered.
Needless to say, the bank staff who was resposible for tapping the final “Enter” on one of the bank’s laptops authorising the transaction won’t be getting any sleep soon.
Source
The BBC, 21 May 2009
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Friday, November 20th, 2009
The creators of the wildly popular online role playing game (RPG) World of Warcraft (WoW), Blizzard Entertainment, is the world’s most profitable games studio.
World of Warcraft has more than 10 million subscribers worldwide – an incredible number; for sure they communicate via live chat software during gameplay.
Blizzard’s revenues is more than USD1.34 BILLION (more than RM4.5 billion) every year.
Trailing behind in the profitability game is
- Nintendo
- Rockstar North (of Grand Theft Auto fame)
- EA Canada (this is the highest placed amongst 14 of Electronic Arts’ developer studios which made the top 100 – EA is the world’s 2nd biggest games publisher)
- Capcom
- Ubisoft Montreal
- Treyarch
- Infinity Ward (this and Treyarch alternate the creation of Call of Duty games)
- Epic Games
- Bethesda Softworks
Develop Magazine’s editor-in-chief Michael French said of WoW:
… truly penetrated pop culture, inspiring everything from web memes to episodes of The Simpsons, showing Blizzard’s ability to not only create compelling experiences but also court user expectations.
The highest mobile game developer in the list is PopCap at 35th.
Source
The BBC, 11th May 2009
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Wednesday, November 18th, 2009
Probably the biggest-spending twentysomething Malaysian now, eyebrows raised due to his doing so in the current economic climate.
Name: Low Taek Jho a.k.a. “J Low” / “Joe Low”
Age: 28
Hometown: Penang
Education: B.Econs (Finance), Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
Employment: UBG Bhd [listed]. Its annual report in 2008 apparently listed him as group advisor/non-independent non-executive director.
Additional bio: according to the UBG Bhd 2008 report: “… he currently serves as group advisor of several international corporations, involved in global private equity, mergers and acquisitions, buyout, government-togovernment offset structured investments and financing, networking and financial aid, amongst others.” Low’s a rep of Majestic Masterpiece Sdn Bhd & Abu Dhabi-Kuwait-Malaysia Investment Corporation (ADKM), which holds 53% of UBG. Incidentally, UBG’s chairman is Mahmud Abu Bekir Taib (son of the Sarawak CM).
Living it up with celebrities: Mr Low and Usher [source]
Pad: Park Imperial, New York
Ride: Cadillac Escalade
Reported spending sprees (truth?):
- “helping” to run up a USD160K tab at Avenue, but apparently paid for by Hamad Alwazzan, a Kuwaiti friend
- flying over a group of Pink Elephant waitresses to Malaysia
- sending 23 bottles of Cristal to Lindsay Lohan at 10AK
- recently bought at least 6 exclusive memberships totalling USD300K at “an upscale club in Midtown”
- always surrounds himself with models
- this month celebrated his 28th birthday at Ceasar’s Palace, Las Vegas:
(i) Megan Fox specially flown in to party with him
(ii) Usher and Paris Hilton also attended
(iii) hotel pool had encircled by caged lions and tigers, filled to the brim with bikini-clad girls
(iv) bought 120 bottles of Cristal to give away to partygoers
(v) received a red sports car from Jamie Foxx as a present
Spokesman: David Tan
He might be checking out hawaii hotel deals right now for his next escapade.
Source
anilnetto.com
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Friday, November 6th, 2009
Toyota, the world’s biggest automobile maker announced it’s worst ever annual net loss: equivalent to USD4.4 billion in the year to 31st March 2009. Amazingly, it scored record profits just the previous year.
The carmaker blamed it on high prices of raw materials and a strong yen (the Japanese currency), making Toyota cars dearer overseas, especially in its biggest markets: the US and Europe.
Worse, it expects to make a net loss of the equivalent to USD5.5 billion in the financial year ending March 2010.
Ouch, that hurts: perhaps Toyota needs to diversify to making other things like faucets?
The last time Toyota made a net loss was way back in 1963.
Source
The BBC, 8 May 2009
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Friday, November 6th, 2009
Saffron is a type of spice used in seasoning, perfumes, textile dye and medicine. It is the world’s most expensive spice.
It is usually made by plucking stigmas from the saffron crocus and then drying them into red-coloured threads.
It tastes bitter, smells like hay and has “metallic notes.”
Half of the world’s saffron production comes from Iran. The rest mainly comes from Spain, India and Greece.
It is used for both food and drink, in baked foods, curries, even liquor.
In medicine, saffron has been shown to have potential anti-cancer and anti-aging properties.
It is pricey because of the difficulty in extracting big amounts of the small stigmas, and that large amounts of flowers are needed for this purpose. A mere 0.45kg of dry saffron requires the harvesting of a whopping 50,000 flowers (some say 75,000) – that’s a football field’s area of planting! That works out to be 40 hours of intense manual labour to produce a mere kilogram of the stuff. After harvesting, there are many other processes that need to be completed before the final product is arrived at.
Even the price of bulk low-grade saffron can reach USD500 per pound.
In Western countries the average retail price is around USD1,000 per pound!
That’s even more expensive than gold? I wonder if smuggling of saffron is rampant since probably several hundred dollars’ worth of it can easily fit in a hollowed-out Logo flash drive.
The spice is used sparingly: only a few grams for medicinal use and a few strands in cooking: a pound of saffron has between 70,000 and 200,000 strands.
Source
Wikipedia
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Friday, November 6th, 2009
That’s according to the Global Corruption Report 2009 published by Transparency International.
Others observations in the report include the following:
- Malaysia placed 47th among 180 nations – meaning 47th least corrupt country, with a 2008 CPI score of 5.1
- Denmark, New Zealand and Sweden jointly topped the list with a 2008 CPI score of 9.3
- Singapore is the only Asian country in the top 10, placing 4th with a 2008 CPI score of 9.2
- almost half of companies who responded admitted to handing out bribes or knowing someone who did, mostly to get around inconveniences
- corruption is most rampant in developing and transition countries
- in Malaysia, corruption is number 2 obstacle against doing business
Having read all that, I wonder if Eagle Creek luggage would still consider opening a branch in the country…
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