After huffing and puffing for 1 hour, with practically the whole nation watching on the edge of their seats, Lee Chong Wei defeated Kim Hyun Il 21-18, 13-21, 21-13 in the semis and is guaranteed at least a silver medal.

Therefore, he’ll be only the sixth Malaysian who’ve ever won an Olympic medal, after Razif and Jalani Sidek (1992 Barcelona Olympics bronze medallist), Cheah Soon Kit & Yap Kim Hock (1996 Atlanta Olympics silver medallist) and Rashid Sidek (1996 Atlanta Olympics bronze medallist).

As special as it is earning an Olympic medal, there are the monetary rewards too.

As mentioned back in June by the Deputy Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak, for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Malaysian gold medal winners will get RM1 million “incentive.” It used to be RM160,000.

For teams sports, players of a winning team would get at least RM150,000 each.

Apart from the one-time payment, and presumably a barrage of other awards like Datukships, land and more money from others, gold medal winners would also get a monthly pension of RM5,000. It used to be RM3,000 per month.

He explained that the huge jump is justified because:

to win a gold medal is not easy because the competition is getting tougher. We can see that from one Olympics to another, the standard is increasing. We should therefore set a higher target, and provide a more attractive incentive.

In fact, other countries have even bigger incentives, like Singapore who offers S$1 million (>RM2 million) to gold medallists.

Lesser medal winners should not fret either.

Source

Silver medallists will get RM300,000 one time, and RM3,000 per month.

Bronze medallists will get RM100,000, and RM2,000 per month.

I took down Advertlets from my only blog running it some time ago (probably 1-2 months ago already) after reading about the many negative comments about the company.

Then today I received an envelope from HSBC KL. I had no idea - because I don’t have any account with that bank.

Then, upon opening the envelope, lo and behold:

So, will this make me return to Advertlets? Well, I think I’ll run the other Malaysian web advertising company’s product exclusively first, then compare them.

Final decision should come in a month or two.

Terry Ng of kineda.com mentioned that the design took him 30 minutes on photoshop. No too fancy stuff, just the line “There is No Charge for Awesomeness,” taken off the movie Kung Fu Panda.

Then he posted the design for sale at RedBubble.

So far, less than a month later, he’s sold 85 shirts for a profit of USD628.85.

He said you control the price and decide your level of profit. RedBubble doesn’t charge commissions but rather a base price of USD19.95 per shirt. Terry set his markup to 37% i.e. profit of USD7.41 per shirt sold.

He compared that with a local printing shop, where production costs would be lower. Still, selling via RedBubble entailed much less work. For every shirt sold, they’d send you a notification email.

RedBubble is not only for tshirts, you can also sell other art: photos, designs and illustrations in the form of framed prints, mounted prints, greeting cards or even posters.

Terry said it’s easy money, why not give it a go???

source

In 2006, a survery on smoking in Malaysia was conducted by the Health Ministry.

Result:
- Malaysians spend RM8.59 million on cigarettes every day
- that’s equivalent to 33 million sticks
- youths aged 13-17 formed the bulk of smokers: 422,710 of them male & 45,807 female, spending RM272,132 on cigs daily
- More than 2 million adults in Malaysia are smokers.
- Number of smokers in Malaysia is increasing because of “various tactics deployed by tobacco companies in promoting cigarettes, influencing many to take up the habit.”

Source

Bernama reported on 21st May 2008 that former Ustaz Zulkifli Yaacob, 44 is now a livestock entrepreneur in Pasir Mas, Kelantan earning RM50,000 per month.

He operates the “Sunnah Ternak” goat farm at Kampung Rong Chenok.

His 450 square feet [I'm not sure if this is a typo or not] farm is apparently the largest goat farm in Malaysia and has about 2,500 goats of various species. Not bad for a farm which started only 1 year ago with 500 animals.

He has 15 workers comprising farm hands, veterinarian, manager and accountant.

They all stay at the quarters located at the centre of the farm. They need to be at the farm round-the-clock to keep watch over the livestock.

Zulkifli said he started with an initial capital of RM1.5 million to set up the farm.

His motivation to start the farm: to turn Kelantan into the country’s major mutton producer.

The animals are kept in two huge enclosures built at the cost of RM900,000. Each hold over 1,000 goats.

Breeds at the farm include Jamnapari Anglo and Jamnapari Cross.

He also has some sheep from the Barbados: Pull Marino and Dambagarul breeds.

Zulkifli also practises the “pawah system”: sharing his livestock with others, particularly the unemployed graduates: allowing 5 pregnant nanny goats to be reared by an individual. After they given birth, they are taken them back but the individual is allowed to keep the kid goats as livestock. So far, 250 animals at his farm goats were bred under the pawah system.

He plans to increase the number of livestock to 20,000 over the next 5 years and to turn the farm into a safari-style tourist destination.

A course on commercial goat rearing would be held at the farm from June 2008: open to all. Fee: RM180 per person, room and board included. For unemployed graduates the fee is even cheaper: RM50. Interested? Call him at 019-9678787.

Source

Staggering. Even with all the food and grocery price increases, people still spent more in 2006 than in 2007.

Shoppers (Malaysians + tourists) spent almost RM67.1 billion in 2007, a 12.8% increase from the year before. It was the fastest growth since 1991.

Tourists accounted for 10-12% of the total.

For 2008, the forecast is even more: RM71.8 billion.

Most of purchases went to:
-”specialty subsectors”, eg toys, fitness equipment and optical products
- fashion and fashion accessories.

Source
New Straits Times, 14th May 2008

As revealed in the Dewan Rakyat on 8th May 2008 by Zulkifli Noordin (PKR - Kulim Bandar Baru):

The government is paying a total of RM1.14 million each year to 3 government advisers:

- Petronas adviser Dr Mahathir Mohamad: RM180K per year => RM15K per month
- Women and Social Development Affairs adviser to Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi: Datuk Shahrizat Abdul Jalil: RM404,726 per year = >RM30,000 per month
- Religious adviser to the PM: Datuk Abd Hamid Othman: RM549,675 per year => >RM45,000 per month.

Source:
Malaysiakini, 8th May 2008

Web 2.0 is set to be embraced by Enterprise 2.0 as businesses prepare to spend nearly USD5 billion by 2013 (that’s 5 years away) on social networking tools.

Over half of the companies in North America and Europe see Web 2.0 as a priority for next year.

Full story

UPDATE 1.00pm, 9th January 2007

As of now, OK already.

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UPDATE 7.31pm, 7th January 2007

As of now I STILL can’t access advertlets website the usual way (but I could in an *unusual* way).

Going to www.advertlets.com directly, I will still be redirected to apps.advertlet.com [full URL here]:

But the twist is that, at the top it says: “This domain name expired on Jan 03, 2010.”

As far as I know, 2010 is 2 years away. Then why is the sentence in the past tense? What is going on?!

If instead I go to www.advertlets.com.my, the advertlets website will be displayed but only for a few seconds, before I will be redirected again to the above site.

Then I found that forcing the browser to stop loading the advertlets website BEFORE it gets redirected, I will be able to login as usual.

But that isn’t an elegant way of going about it.

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UPDATE 10.19pm, 6th January 2007

Up till now I STILL can’t access advertlets website.

Josh Lim has set up a temporary blog to inform of updates in resolving the issue. There, he wrote, timestamped about 1am, 5th January that things will be back to normal in one hour or less. Well, it definitely has been much more than an hour as I write this!

Some people are not happy with either Nuffnang or Adverlets: payment delay issues.

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I thought my browser was hijacked - going to some websites I will be redirected to adbaaz.com:

But then I realised that this would only happen if the sites have advertlets ads in them. Other sites are perfectly OK.

When I went directly to advertlets, I was confronted with:

The domain advertlets.com expired on 3rd January 2008 and was not renewed?

Doublechecking confirms this.

However, they have until 13th February to renew it, before it’s up for grabs.

Still, this does not speak well for the company at all!

Permodalan Bumiputera Sabah Bhd (PBSB) is (or was?) the investment arm of Yayasan Bumiputra Sabah (YBS).

On 10th November 2007, Daily Express reported the following:
- former GMD Mohd Shukur Abd Mumin was hired by PBSB on 1st July 2001 on a 37-month contract. It was supposed to end 31st July 2004.

Basic salary: RM11,025/mth
Housing allowance: RM1,500/mth
Entertainment: RM1,000/mth
Annual contractual bonus: RM11,025/yr
Annual gratuity: RM11,025/yr
Transport allowance: RM8,800/yr
Housing loan interest subsidy: RM7,933/yr

That would work out to be about RM16,700 per month.

- However, his contract was terminated only 5 months later.

On 7th March 2003, the executive chairman of YBS, Datuk Amirkahar Tun Datu Hj Mustapha was quoted by Daily Express to have said that PBSB was presently insolvent and its closure was imminent. Its liabilities then have exceeded its assets by RM30 million.

Source
Daily Express, 10th November 2007, Page 4 (Local section)
Daily Express, 7th March 2003