Scuderia Fisher-Price

Have you seen Ferrari's new F60? No, it's not a replacement for its Enzo flagship but rather, its latest in a long line (make that 60 years long, hence the name) of Formula One contenders. And certainly when you look at it, the words that flow through your mind are less "world-class racing" and more "Fisher-Price"...


Like a few people who've seen it, I initially thought that this would be a look that we would eventually get used to. But after a few days, some thought and the subsequent launch of Toyota's own TF109...


...my opinion changed.

This year's crop of cars will never look "right".

Some people may argue that with every rule change - and it's always the rules that dictate the shape of the car - there's always a certain time before a car's new look becomes comfortable to look at. But in the past, no matter how revolutionary the changes were, all the cars had a certain rightness in their proportions.

Take, for instance, an F1 car from last year (like this BMW Sauber, and spamming my own blog with my photo in the process)...


...and one from, say, 1950 (like this, Nino Farina's championship-winning Alfa Romeo)...


The two of these cars couldn't be more disparate, yet they are both pretty in their own right. One, heavily-bespoilered yet somehow sleek; the other - devoid of any aerodynamic devices - elegant and pure. And most importantly, both look proportionate.

Which is more than can be said of this year's cars. The huge new front wings make the cars (despite undoubtedly occupying the same footprint as their predecessors) look small, almost go-kart-like - a look exacerbated by the narrow-yet-tall rear wings.

True, these changes are due to new rules designed to make races more interesting (the new wings are said to encourage overtaking), but surely there are better solutions out there. I mean, '90s racing was close, and they didn't have to resort to this...

But one thing's for sure - with all these new rules and regulations - and the teams struggling to cope with them - this season is shaping up to be a good one. Who knows, maybe these new appendages do work after all.

Oh, and by the way, Ferrari, lose the spinners/wheel covers. Yes, they're there for aerodynamic reasons, but nothing says 'cheap' like hubcaps on a US$25m car.

WTF. Was doing some stuff on the computer the other day, heard a loud commotion. Ran out, and sitting there on that old crappy coffee table, like some space-age battleship that had just landed on some cornfield, was my new housemate's black PS3. Metal Gear Solid 4 was awesome.

Still no update on the camera. Got a new pair of shoes to replace my outgrown and outworn Adidas, though. Converse, black, low-cut, RM95.90.

Me against the gadgets

I've come out - briefly - from my blogging hiatus to vent my frustration.

The month of October 2008 should really be called the month of the fragile gadgets.

It all started when my new Sony Ericsson W200i (which hasn't even racked up two months of service, I should say) started having problems. After syncing with my computer one day, every file on the Memory Stick goes corrupt, necessitating a reformatting of the card. This became increasingly frequent and, thinking it was a problem with the Memory Stick, I upgraded to a 2GB card and bought a card reader to minimise the risk of file corruption while connecting and disconnecting from the computer. Then a new problem emerged - the phone started to have difficulties playing M4A audio files.

It would be able to play a number of files of this type in succession, then flag up a "playback failed" message. Switching to an MP3 file and back would cure the problem, but only for a short while before every file - M4A, MP3, even theme files - becomes unreadable and the phone has to be restarted. And then the cycle repeats itself. Doing a master reset on the phone has no effect whatsoever.

To rub salt in the wound, just last Monday, while trying to add pictures into the phone to bring to the school's print shop (I don't have a pen drive, see) both the phone's USB cable AND that stupid cheapo card reader I just bought cease to function properly. But the biggest, most important and possibly the most expensive failure came later that day.

While using my beloved Sony A200 camera, the 18-70mm lens had a tendency to get stuck while focussing. Perplexed, I switched to manual focus mode and rotated the focussing ring to try to free it up a bit, then flicked it back to auto focus. Without warning, the camera vibrated so violently that I had to switch it off to prevent anything else from breaking. Clearly, something was broken in the lens.

Annoyingly and disturbingly, three of the four products mentioned were Sony products.

So today, I brought the phone to the dealer who sold it to me to claim warranty. Idiotic salesman argued that AAC (which Sony Ericsson says the phone can support) and M4A files are two different formats and insisted the I had put in files of the wrong format. He is wrong - AAC is the encoding scheme for audio files, M4A is the file created from this scheme.

Whatever. I'll ask the Sony technicians when I bring the lens (which I seriously hope would be covered under warranty) to the service centre another day (it isn't open on weekends). Until then I'll continue to be worried - the month isn't over yet, and I've still got one working Sony product left (the PSP).

Fingers crossed.

P.S. Pictures of Limkokwing University of Creative Technology's kolam project at Pavilion Kuala Lumpur are now up on Facebook. Check them out.

UPDATE: Checked across forums and it turns out that the playback problem for M4A files is a known bug. Which is depressing - was hoping to take advantage from the higher sound quality of this format compared to MP3s. Ah, well, shit happens.

Walking Disaster

The rules of this tag are relatively simple:
1. Put whatever music player you're listening to (iPod, iTunes, Windows Media Player, etc.) into shuffle mode.
2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer.
3. Type out the song title, no matter how incredibly ridiculous it sounds.
4. Put any comments in brackets after the song title.

1. If someone says, "Is this okay?" You say?
Infernal Dance of King Kastchei from The Firebrid Suite (1919) - Igor Stravinsky
(My brain cannot imagine the look on that someone's face when I say that.)

2. How would you describe yourself?
Be At Home - Isamu Ohira
(Um, because I actually am at home?)

3. What do you like in a girl?
Hold On - KT Tunstall
(Yeah, sorry, I still haven't decided...)

4. How do you feel today?
Fake Tales of San Francisco - Arctic Monkeys
(Whud?)

5.What is your life's purpose?
The Devil in the Wishing Well - Five for Fighting
(Yes, my life's purpose is to be red, have horns, have a particular liking towards the numbers 666 and sit in a wishing well. Yeah.)

6. What is your motto?
Underclass Hero - Sum 41
(Uh huh.)

7. What do your friends think of you?
Jeux de Vagues from La Mer - Claude Debussy
(Which, according to my translator widget, is "Sets of Waves from the Sea". Riiight...)

8. What do you think of your parents?
One and Only - Timberland featuring Fall Out Boy
(Yes, you are. Love you.)

9. What do you think about very often?
Love Song - Sara Bareilles
(Okay, I don't do that. Honest.)

10. What is 2 + 2?
4 Minutes (feat. Justin Timberlake and Timbaland) - Madonna
(Partly correct, but what in the name of all that's holy is this song doing here?)

11. What do you think of your best friend?
What If - Coldplay
(What if... you were less of an opinionated bastard. You know who you are.)

12. What do you think of the person you like?
Me, You and My Medication - Boys Like Girls
(My medication, kononnya...)

13.What is your life story?
Auto Rock - Mogwai
(*acts confused*)

14. What do you want to be when you grow up?
The Angry Mob - Kaiser Chiefs
(We are the angry mob, we read the papers everyday, we like who we like, we hate who we hate, but we're all so easily swayed...)

15. What do you think of when you see the person you like?
Sweetness - Jimmy Eat World
(Oh, yes.)

16.What will you dance to at your wedding?
Kiss You Goodbye - The BAD
('the f*ck?)

17.What will they play at your funeral?
Everybody's Changing - Keane
(When we die, we change. From a house to a coffin.)

18.What is your hobby/interest?
The Carpal Tunnel of Love - Fall Out Boy
(Pfft.)

19.What is your biggest fear?
On Top of The World - Boys Like Girls
(Which is sorta true, actually - I'm a bit acrophobic.)

20.What is your biggest secret?
Pastorale from L'Arlésienne (Suite 2 No. 1) - Georges Bizet
(Er...)

21.What do you think of your friends
This Ain't a Scene, It's an Arm's Race - Fall Out Boy
(Yes, all my friends are engaged in an arms race...)

22. What will you post this as?
Walking Disaster - Sum 41

Well, that's about it. I'm tagging Philbert. Can't wait to see how he answers, with his MacBook full of Chopin.

I'm quite a big fan of the British motoring magazine, Top Gear. Sure, it's not the most detailed magazine of all, but its blend of stunning photography, great graphics and witty writing makes it excellent reading material (and of course, who can forget the great Jeremy Clarkson, who has his own column in it). So when I heard that someone was going to create a Malaysian version of it last year, I couldn't wait. Then that someone turned out to be Donald Cheah...

Before Top Gear Malaysia, Donald was the usual Malaysian motoring mag editor - average, and frankly very dull. But when such a big name came to his hands he obviously had to do something to stand out from the crowd. And he did.

As a result, TGM isn't so much a motoring mag as a men's mag with a few car reviews in it. Of course, quite a bit of what makes the original great is still in it, but the rest is a total letdown.

Let's start with the adverts. Normally, this wouldn't be an issue, but in TGM there's so many of them that it simply becomes annoying. Yes, the original also relies heavily on ads, but at least they were car ads. Flip through a copy of TGM, on the other hand, and all you see are watches... watches... more watches... men's clothing... men's fragrances... men's undies (!)... even more watches...

Then there's a problem with a section of Top Gear called - creatively enough - Top Gear. This is one of the more likable sections in the original as it is essentially a collection of really, really cool automobile-related merchandise (like watches, jackets, toys and the like), complete with great (and sometimes hilarious) descriptions. In the Malaysian edition, however, the entire collection is replaced with - you guessed it - men's stuff. Clothes, fragrances, phones, computers, belts, ties, wallets, briefcases, pens, cufflinks, rings, teddy bears (eh?) - you name it, they have it, the list goes on. Even more annoyingly though, almost all of them have absolutely zilch to do with cars. And just to make the section even less appealing, the descriptions look to have been written by a ten-year-old one afternoon.

Amazingly, you think, they've left out the watches. You let out a huge sigh of relief, only to turn a few pages and find out that Donald Duck really did have a watch fetish after all.

THERE'S AN ENTIRE SECTION DEVOTED TO WATCHES.

OH MY GOD.

YOU CAN'T BE BLOODY SERIOUS. YOU JUST CAN'T.

Yes, it's only a small section. Yes, I was overreacting. But Donald, this is a car magazine! Stop diluting it! You're only gonna make it worse! If I was in the market for a watch I'd have gotten a men's mag instead so please, STOP IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIITTTTTT!!!

And then things get really bad. They loped-off the Lifers (i.e. long-termers) section. For those not familiar with the concept of long-term testing, it's basically about a group of the staff of the magazine (writers, photographers, editors, etc.) who are each given cars to live with for a long period of time (usually a year) and asked to write on their thoughts of their cars every month. It's a great concept, since it tests things (like reliability and customer service) that usually cannot be evaluated in a usual, short review. But obviously, the Malaysian team must have decided that, since local car companies would never loan cars for that long a time and that the Brits only test foreign cars in their own country's conditions, it doesn't deserve a place in the mag. And that is a great shame.

If you've seen all that and still want to read the Malaysian-made articles, do proceed with caution. Because there are problems there too.

I'll start with the pictures. Phtography in Malaysian car mags are usually well below par. TGM improves upon this, but it still lags horribly behind Getacar, which is easily the local magazine with the best photography.

Then there's Donald Cheah's writing. It's typical of most local scribes - boring. He does improve upon arriving at TGM, but it's still a bit anodyne.

That wouldn't be so bad if he had a team of much better writers to back him up. But the only other writer in his stable is Ben Tan and to be honest, he's even worse. Much, much worse. Reading his articles is a bit like watching a Windows computer start up.

It truly is page after page of eye-drying boredom.

And this leads to the crux of the problem with TGM. Most publications can get away with monotonous writing because the foreign magazines they're based on aren't really known for their bunch of entertaining writers. But Top Gear UK is, and this is where the local team falls the hardest.

And they still make mistakes that should never happen. I'd like to direct this one in particular to Ben Tan - how incredibly stupid can your Mathematics teacher be before he/she can make you think that a RM69,888 Suzuki Swift "easily undercuts" a RM65k Proton Waja?

Last but not least, there's parent company Astro's approach to censorship. Yes, Top Gear isn't the magazine out there with the cleanest language and sure, there's the obvious stuff to asterisk. But just to show how narrow-minded they are, turn to the last page. This is the Campaign for Real Racing Drivers section. On the original, there's a badge that says, "Sex: Breakfast of Champions" on the top left. They removed it from the Malaysian version. Enough said.

Learning to drive a car with a manual transmission is scary.

In an auto car, you only have to deal with the steering, brakes, accelerator and the world around you. Throw into the mix a clutch and five gears (including reverse) you have to row yourself, however, and it becomes a one-ton, 40 km/h juggling game. And while you're busy dealing with all that, you also have to put up with a particularly irritable instructor who speaks in a language you're not familiar with.

And you have to do all that without stalling (at the lights) or crashing (everywhere else).

The Petrol Dilemma.

Ah, yes. Petrol. What's a Malaysian blog without a post on the now-infamous price hike?

Some people have been whingeing about fuel prices since their cars started running on the stuff. They put all the blame on the government for letting it burn a massive black hole in their pockets. My advice to them is to just stop the nonsense and get on with it.

It's not like the price of fuel has sat on a finely-tuned balance in the previous years. If you would just cast your mind not too far back, they hiked the price by 30 sen barely two years ago and 10 sen twice the year before. You may think, sure, this is nothing compared to 80 sen the petrol station now asks extra for, but bear in mind that world oil prices increased twofold since 2006. Plus, the last time I checked, not a sen was added to the proce of petrol last year, which was an attempt by the government to "protect the people".

Also do remember that despite the exponential hike, we still enjoy one of the cheapest fuel prices in the region (I said "one of" because Brunei takes the cake - but more on that later). You only need to see how the Thais are still trying ever-so-cunningly to smuggle our petrol to see my point.

But no, said the detractors. They said we should only compare our fuel prices to countries that actually produce oil. So they put up a chart comparing petrol prices... to countries in the Middle East.


What, to use a more euphemistic phrase, on the face of the Earth, the Solar System, the Milky Way and the Universe combined were they thinking? The oil we make compared to any one of these countries is literally a drop in the South China Sea. Let's look at the evidence - even United Arab Emirates, the country with the most expensive petrol of the list, makes about 2,500,000 barrels a day. Take a guess, if you will, how much we make in comparison.

1,500,000? 1,000,000? No. 800,000 barrels a day. No wonder our petrol costs twice as much.

And besides, if we did make anywhere near that amount of oil we'd all be obscenely wealthy and drive chrome Ferraris and Burberry Maseratis. Would you really want to see stuff like that? Really?

Ah, but the more discerning of you would point me towards Brunei. Compared to Malaysia, they make a drop in the bucket - 200,000 barrels a day - yet they are still able to peg the price of petrol at RM1.22 a litre. The reason? Simple. Brunei's size and population is also a drop in the bucket compared to Malaysia.

Larger land + Higher population = More money spent on the people + More money spent on development + More money spent on corruption. The end.

And why is every father, mother and son making Petronas a scapegoat for everything? It's not like they're the petrol overlords and are able to change prices at will. Blaming them for the rise is like blaming Maybank for the decrease in value of the Ringgit.

But what really pisses me off was when people started putting the blame on Petronas' expenditures. There was an article in The Star that talks about the exact same thing and I agree with everything he/she said. Take, for instance, the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra. This drew a lot of ire from some members of the public because the members are mostly foreigners and that it was a waste of money. Right. And who do you want to see playing instead, a bunch of ill-advised locales who can't even differentiate between a violin and a cello?

People seem to be forgetting that the foreigners are only here to lead the way for Malaysian musicians to join the orchestra. Petronas should really be commended for reigniting interest in classical music, a genre that is fading fast in the face of sometimes awful modern music. And what about the Youth Orchestra, which I think I'm right in saying is all-Malaysian? Is letting young local talent show their skills to the world a waste of money?

And then there's the problem with their involvement in Formula One. You might think that it's unreasonable that we should be paying more for our petrol whilst they're out feeding some very thirsty race cars to go basically round and round a set path. But come on. State-owned it may be, but Petronas is still, to all intents and purposes, a profit-driven business. And what a better way to bring more customers to their fold than to sponsor a seriously competitive race team (BMW) in what is arguably the highest-profile motorsport championship in the world?

And don't go on blathering about the fact that there aren't any Malaysian drivers in the team. Petronas sponsors fuel, not drivers. Yes, BMW's presence in Malaysia has skyrocketed since the takeover of Sauber (in which Petronas was a team partner). And yes, BMW has given opportunities for local talent to enter the world of motorsports with Formula BMW and so on. But the choice of top-flight drivers is still BMW's. Which is a German company. Michael Schumacher or Alex Yoong? Exactly.

So while you can knock the Government for many different things, fuel prices aren't one of them. Yes, they are getting expensive, but they're not unbearable. So please, move on. There are much better things to focus on.

Like spending some of that subsidy money on the stupid bus system.

A few weeks back, I've started working again. Well, it's not actually a job. Basically, my dad has persuaded his friend to let me learn and do some stuff at his design studio for a couple of months before I head off to Lim Kok Wing on the 28th. The problem is, the studio is at the other end of the world - Subang.

That meant that due to the rise in fuel prices, my mother wouldn't send me all the way. For the best car-to-bus ratio, she decided that I'd be dropped off at the crossing point between Jalan Gasing and Jalan Universiti. But that still means I had to take two buses en route to the studio.

So just imagine what it was like for me, then still an amateur public transport rider, the first time I had to take a bus there. The first bus got me to the bus stop at Subang Perdana. Pretty uneventful. So I was thinking the second local bus would be the same. So I waited.

And waited...

The longer I waited, the more agonising it became. The sun was rising, heating the place like some oven that was permanently stuck at the maximum setting. But the bus, however late I was for "work", wouldn't come.

Honestly, more planes flew by than there were buses. So I got fed up and decided to walk.

And promptly got lost in the process.

In the end, tired and furiously late, I hauled a taxi. Which cheated me of my tenner.

Turns out I waited at a bus stop which the bus doesn't stop at, even though it was supposed to. And you know what annoyed me most of all? The "proper" bus stop turned out to be just a few feet away from where I was swearing profusely from.

Bus services are a nightmare in this part of the world. You are more likely to contract polio after being vaccinated than to get to your destination on time in a bus.

And the problem is actually not punctuality - because the buses always arrive at a set time. I've checked the tickets from previous journeys and it turns out that most of them arrive within 5 minutes of each other every morning.

No, no. What is the problem is the frequencies of the buses. A half-hour wait between buses is the norm on normal routes. And it's even worse on local shuttle routes, because there's only one bus per route. And they're so irregular - you can wait hours for the next bus only to find that the one after that is literally behind it.

What we need are more buses. And the worst thing is, instead of fixing something genuinely wrong with the public transport system, the government has decided to spend all its subsidy money on the one link in the rusty chain that isn't in dire need of repair - the rail transport.

That's the problem with the mentality of the truly abysmal ignoramuses at the helm of the government today. The Japanese would acknowledge a fault and mend it. The Singaporeans would acknowledge a fault and mend it. The Malaysians? They will deny the fault outright and will remain ignorant until a significant percentage of the population comes knocking on the doors with guns and swords. And even then they'll only do the easiest, most idiotproof work, then skive off and, oh, I dunno, insult Indians.

It's like a Titanic. You use all the effort in the world to try to manoeuvre the ship away from the iceberg, only to realise, slumped on the floor, that you're still heading towards the iceberg.

And then there's the problem with the bus drivers. Has anyone seen how arrogant and ignorant can they be? How can they possibly expect everyone, especially foreigners, to bring exact change everywhere they go? Show them anything other than the right amount and they'd act as if you'd just mentioned some unutterable two-syllable, four-lettered word. And nobody dares argue because they'd otherwise be stuffed into a hospital with blood coming out of every orifice.

And - this is what pisses me off - why the hell do they ever so often "forget" to turn on their electronic signboards? They're there for a reason, you know.



They may argue that there's no need to have the electronic signboard because you can read the plastic one below it. They are wrong. How can you expect someone like me, who's a bit dopey and has poor eyesight, to read some text printed on a panel the size of a postcard 500 million metres away? And no, I can't wait for the bus to come closer. Any nearer and the driver will pretend to not see me and speed off to oblivion.

And why, oh why do they stop for so long at the end of the route? It's okay is the route is quite a long one, where the drivers need to rest. But come on, the local shuttle route? Which is usually less than 10km? And it's not like they're actually resting - all they do is chat up the passengers and some bloke who comes and writes on paper. They should have this cast iron plate blocking the driver from the rest of the bus. Then watch them whine about exact change.

And last but not least, who the fuck decided to put up the route map of a bus that DOESN'T STOP THERE?

All this rambling brings us down to a question. Why can't we - the people who made the world's longest heated box made of chicken wire that can also be used to cook fish, remember - make a half-decent public transport system? In Japan - where people can't be bothered to actually cook their fish - the average delay of a train is six seconds. For them, a late train is anything over a minute late, by which time people get to ride the train for free. And if they're five minutes late, they get a verbal apology from the conductor and a delay certificate to explain to their employees why they were late for their morning exercise.

Now I will admit that it was a pretty exaggerated example. But even if we were able to do 0.005% of what the Japanese did, we'd end up with a system miles away from what the cocks at RapidKL have done.

So there we are. I spent all of my time trying to get everyone to stop blaming the government about the fuel prices. Only to be pissed off by the government like everyone else.