In Malaysia, the taxi drivers job, comes with a lot of perks, or sure there  are laws, but hell very few drivers follow them. They get to choose who you want to take, where they want to go, and for how much.

The first step to get a taxi here is to stop and negotiate, you tell them where you want to go, then they stop,  and think about it for a while, you will have 50% chance he would agree (on a good day). If not you have to try the next one.

Then you would have to ask them “Meter?” , or more often “How much”? (This is a metered taxi, sign is there for decorative purposes, it doesn’t really do anything). The driver will then give you a quotation, if you are lucky you can negotiate it down by a few ringits.

There are many other ways the taxi can charge you, if its the rush hour, driver will ask for more money, if your going somewhere more than a few miles away he will ask for the fare back ( because they are territorial, eg:- taxi drivers in bukit jalil don’t take passengers from anywhere else). Then there is the bus fare rule, this applies if there are more than one passenger, he charges you separate fares, fixed amount each,i.e the taxi works like a bus only more expensive.

Each taxi driver is limited to knowing 4 condos, 3 shopping malls, and 2 high ways, Anywhere else they would not know the way even if they been a taxi driver for more than 20 years. They just don’t have the ability to memorize anymore so you better know your way around town.

They don’t shower ( i think this one is universal), they eat , sleep or do what ever else they have to do in the taxi. I have seen bra’s in glove compartments of taxi’s.

In Some parts of KL, if your know where to look, its now possible to get a taxi to go for meter, But in places like cyberjaya, shah alam, serdang, KLCC, sunway, (to name a few) you are out of luck.

(oh yes! and in know there is this number to call or text, to report the the unlawful taxis, i have tried it, it doesn’t really do anything either.)

Enjoy.

I have cut down on the side projects, but my weekends are still busy with the one or two I do decide to engage my self in.

I joined a cheap gym, which is why i don’t feel bad for skipping weeks in a row. Been trying to pick up running again with very little success, but august is coming and I look forward to Adidas king of the road.

Between all this I still find time to socialize,enjoy the f1 races amongst other things, Well, not so much, but I do.

So like I said life is hectic, but I am not complaining.

Here are some interesting stats about our time together.

Total Mileage: 645 Miles. (748 Km).

Thats the equivalent running 144 laps around Male’.

quiet a feat. for a shoe.

R.I.P

No expectations, no disappointments.

that will be all.

Here in malaysia if you want to use convert anything to past tense its dead simple. Use the phrase “Last time“ in front of of any sentence. Please note that this refers not only to the actual last time you did something but any event in the past can be referenced using this phrase

eg:  I am learning algebra now. (Say this was many years ago).

when converted to Malaysian English past tense referenced today would read: 

Last time, i am learning algebra. ..

Posted via web from jinah adam’s posterous

When translated to malay would read:

“Now is cannot use all the labs”

I have used paid services from all the four, skype, yahoo, raketu, and gizmocall. I started off with yahoo voice, i don’t use yahoo email or IM, but i installed the client just for the voice functionality, there rates were cheap, cheaper than the local Telecom companies, or calling cards, and there voice quality was excellent. But overtime i had payment issues, like them charging my credit card and not toping up my account. Then i would have to write to there support which would take a couple of days to resolve, even worse, they don’t offer packages for the excessive caller, and there is no flavor of it for linux.

Then i tried gizmocall, they do a lot of advertising and fill yout inbox with junk mail, there client is confusing, rates are high. They also have this criteria where you qualify for free pc-phone calls, with a million conditions attached to it, like regular calls, regular usage of there mobile client, and many more annoyances. Another thing that they don’t mention is the website or when you top up your account is, once you have made your payment your account is not credited instantly, it takes 24 hours or more i think. This is by far the worst piece of telephony software i have tried.

Then i switched to skype, there unlimited calling packages were very appealing. The client was good, stable and user friendly, there rates were cheap, I used it for months and one day there automated system blocked my unlimited account, I wrote to there customer service, a few days went by, i got no reply, the i did some research about there customer service and it turns out they had the worst customer service ever. It took them 2 weeks to fix my issue and send an apology email.

That was the only time i had a problem with skype, other than that its my favorite mainly because they have a linux version and now an MID version. ( even with the pulse audio issue).

During the brief period my skype account got blocked i got the chance to try something new, Raketu. Raketu is a skype clone with sms call me back service. They offer pretty much everything skype does. There customer service responds with hours ( I had an issues with them too ). Raketu had just one problem for me, for there unlimited packages to work there has to be credit in your raketu account .

So to summarize ..

FYP's

and what about design you say?

The Story..

As some of you might be aware,  almost about a year ago i wrote a gadget for google desktop and scraps the Apiit time tabe from there webspace page (taking week no, and intake code as parameters).  This is the follow up to that..

I been using Google Calendar for quite some time now, and over the time i been using it, i also wanted to try out the API just for the hell of it, but i never really got around to it, then a few weeks ago, i noticed they they had enabled mobile services for malaysia,  allowing sms reminders for your events.

This gave me the push i need to finally play around with the API, it was simple enough. So anyway after playing around with it for a few hours it just occured to me that i wud be really cool if i could add my class details to the calendar thereby getting sms reminders before every class.

But anyone who uses Google Cal would tell you adding them manually with there interface is a lot of work, (i.e alot of writing in text boxes, drop downs that sort of thing) . So i thot it wud be convinient if i could write a js script to do the job for me. which is where greasemonkey comes along.

Anyway, so i wrote a few lines of js for greasemonkey that adds a button to the end of every class once you go to the webspace time table page. The button once clicked takes you to the server page thats prompts you to login to your google account and then it automaticaly adds the class as a reminder to your GCal. which sends you an sms with the location of the class and time time, one hour before every class.

Pls Note that you have to manually add reminder once a week, i could have created a recurring event but i didnt think it would not be practical as some weeks we dont have classes and location and time might change.

So here is how to do the setup to recieve sms reminders for your classes, its a few steps, but really useful once you start getting those reminders.

Setup sms reminders for your classes

1. Setup a google acoount ( if you dont have one). then go to http://google.com/calendar to do setting for you mobile. its under settings at the top right corner
2. Install Greasemonkey for firefox. via this URL, and yes it only works in firefox. sorry microsoft pple
3. Go to userscrips.org and download my script to modify the webspace timetabe page, here
4. Once the script is installed you should see a link next to every class in the timetable that allows you to add a reminder to google cal.

Enjoy…

your touch, like a cool winter breeze,
it’d make the fires of hell freeze,
sendin charms, up and down my spine,
the pinnacle of what god define’d,

beautiful,like the sky you are,
in the night like a shootin star,
when it rains, the rainbow you are,
like its colors, complete you are.