Lowyat.NET: Latest topics by pucman

Snailx is slow again

pucman — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 22:59:34 +0800

streamyx is moving at snail speed again these few days.

anybody experience same thing ?

High speed railway: Shenzhen to Fuzhou

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 07:30:00 +0800

High speed railway: Shenzhen to Fuzhou

pucman — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 00:02:28 +0800

http://www.railpage.com.au/f-p1266285.htm

FUZHOU, June 30 (Xinhua) -- The first high-speed railway in China's coastal mountainous Fujian Province began trials Tuesday, local authorities said.

The railway, linking Fujian's capital Fuzhou and Wenzhou City in neighbouring Zhejiang Province, began trials at 8:36 a.m. in Fuzhou. This is the first railway linking the two provinces, said an official with the Fujian Development and Reform Commission.

The railway will be formally put into use in October, the official said.

The 298.4-kilometre-long railway costs 12.66 billion yuan (1.85billion U.S. dollars) to build. Nearly 230 kilometres are in Fujian.

The railway has a design speed of 200 to 250 kilometres per hour for passenger trains, and the journey between the two cities will be shortened from five hours to two hours. Construction began in August 2005.

The new line will be an important section of China's coastal railway artery. The other two railway lines in the project, including one rail linking Shenzhen City in Guangdong Province and Xiamen City in Fujian, and the other linking Fuzhou and Xiamen, are still under construction and are expected to be finished in 2010 and 2009 respectively.

"By then, the railways will stretch along China's booming southeast coast, linking the Yangtze and Pearl River Deltas, China's two biggest economic powerhouses," said Yu Xuanming, deputy general manager of the Southeast Coast Railway Fujian Co. Ltd., the railway operator.

Hawker food prepared by foreigners are dirty

pucman — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 04:30:32 +0800

http://thestar.com.my/metro/story.asp?file...156&sec=central

FILTHY food preparation practice and a closed eye on cleanliness puts a food outlet in Subang Jaya’s USJ 14 as the dirtiest eatery in the neighbourhood.

This also resulted in food poisoning where at least three families were affected on different occassions.

StarMetro was alerted by reader Alan Neoh on the condition of the said coffee shop in Jalan USJ 14/1P where food is prepared at the backlane and on top of a drain cover.

Messy: Hawkers use the coffee shop’s pavement area to wash and prepare food.

Neoh said his wife and three-year-old son had stomach cramps and diarrhoea after they patronised the outlet over a weekend.

“The food there was excellent and we are regular patrons there. On days where the outlet is packed to the brim with customers, I can see the stall workers cleaning plates, bowls and eating utensils on top of a makeshift cleaning area that sits directly on a drain cover.

“My entire family was down with food poisoning after consuming curry laksa and chicken rice at this coffee shop. Having seen how they clean their utensils, I am never going back there to eat,” he said.

Another resident Walter Yeoh said he used to pack food for his family from the outlet. But after he saw a foreign worker cleaning pig organs by the five-foot way, he decided not to patronise the shop ever.

“I was disgusted at the sight of a woman cleaning pig’s heart at the entrance of the coffee shop. She was going about her business as usual and disposed of the animal’s blood directly into the drain.”

Not a pretty sight: The dirty backlane at USJ14/1P in Subang Jaya.

Yeoh said it was a norm for the hawkers to clean used utensils at a small area, which was designated for washing at the stalls.

“This is not a good practice because food scrap is dumped directly into the monsoon drain. Whatever that is left stagnant there becomes food for parasites and larvae.”

He urged the Subang Jaya Municipal Council to conduct regular health checks on the coffee shops to prevent the outbreak of communicable diseases such as typhoid.

The authority, he added, must also act on coffee shops that place tables and chairs on the road during weekends.

Yeoh, who lives in a home directly opposite the coffee shop said as many as 15 to 20 tables are placed on the road on Saturdays and Sundays.

“The coffee shop owners are taking advantage of the lack of enforcement during weekends. After they are done with clearing the tables, plastic bags containing stale and discarded food are just left on the road.”

His neighbour, Steven Joseph, said he was apalled to see rats feasting on the backlane of the coffee shop.

“These makan places open very early in the morning and close late at night. On several ocassions, I saw rats and cockroaches feeding on discarded animal parts near the drain.

“I am disgusted with this and even the mamak shop at the end corner has the same problem with hygiene. People kept getting diarrhoea and boycotted the outlet,” he said.

Checks by StarMetro recently showed that the hawkers were going about their business of preparing food and washing eating utensils by the pavement.

A small area at the back of the coffee shop is used to roast meat and poultry and bags of dressed chicken can be seen on a drain cover, waiting to be processed.

The backlane at this particular coffee shop is also filthy. The road surface is stained with cooking oil caked with dried dirt - a sign that years of food preparation and cooking had taken place on the same spot.

We also found a large garbage bin placed at the backlane which was filled with maggots.

The local council should act fast on clamping down dirty outlets such as this.

Hell drivers in Msia

pucman — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 21:11:50 +0800

This is what happened when those hell drivers zig zag without turning on their signal lights.

http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=...0036&sec=nation

The bus driver, in his late 30s, declined to be named. He said a blue Satria was driving very aggressively and in trying to overtake, forced the bus unto the side of the road

Mandarin = manchunised chinese language!

pucman — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 17:07:58 +0800

[YOUTUBE]_9lwbt-7HQ8[/YOUTUBE]

Top accident prone areas in KL/PJ

pucman — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 09:37:50 +0800

http://thestar.com.my/metro/story.asp?file...130&sec=central

AN average of 18 persons die on the road every day, according to statistics from the Road Safety Department.

The country’s road fatality rate last year was recorded at 3.9%, with 6,527 cases compared with 6,282 fatalities in 2007.

In Petaling Jaya, which has a high number of motorists due to the convergence of highways as well as its fast development, there were 21,504 road accidents last year, 124 of them fatal and 197 involved serious injuries.

Almost half of the cases (10,203), according to the traffic police’s statistics, occurred at the same 10 locations and many were at almost the same spots.

High accident rate: Damansara-Puchong Highway has the highest occurence of road accidents among all locations in Petaling Jaya, with 3,092 cases in 2008. This stretch near Damansara Utama is one of the dangerous spots.

The Damansara-Puchong Highway (LDP) tops the list, constituting 30% or 3,092 of the total cases at these locations. The accidents happened mostly at the bends or junctions near the LDP Furniture Plaza, Penchala toll plaza, Leisure Commerce Square, Western Digital and Damansara Utama.

It is followed by the Federal Highway where 2,164 accidents happened last year, especially at the Motorola junction, the Subang Airport access as well as the stretches facing the Lam Soon factory, the Guinness Anchor plant and the Naza World showroom.

The third on the list is the New Klang Valley Expressway (NKVE), with 811 cases, mostly around the NKVE-Subang toll plaza, Damansara toll plaza, NKVE exit toll plaza, KM459 Sungai Buloh-bound and the Damansara access.

The other accident hotspots are the Sungai Buloh-Kuala Selangor road (715 cases), Jalan Sungai Buloh (673), the SS2 commercial area (670), the Sprint Highway (609), Kota Damansara (561), the Sungai Buloh-Kampung Subang road (496) and Persiaran Surian (412).

On the Sprint Highway, the accident-prone spots are stretches facing Damansara Jaya, the Muslim cemetery in Bukit Kiara, Kampung Kayu Ara, Phileo Damansara and Damansara Jaya.

The high occurrence of accidents at specific spots shows that our roads are like death traps awaiting their preys, and this is compounded by the selfish, careless and haughty attitude of the motorists.

Traffic consultant Goh Bok Yen, after analysing the statistics, agreed that there were weaknesses in the design of these stretches that posed a danger to motorists.

“On the 10 selected roads, there is an average of 28 accidents daily with the highest on the LDP with 8.5 accidents followed by 5.9 accidents daily on the Federal Highway. Will these figures surprise the public? If so, obviously there are good reasons for the public to question,” he said.

According to Goh, a dual carriageway (with a central divider) was generally safer than the single carriageway (two-way road with no central divider) but unfortunately these 10 accident-prone locations are along the divided roads.

He pointed to the roads’ fundamental design flaws, which haunted the road users every day but were surprisingly overlooked by the road builders.

Goh identifies the common characteristics (weaknesses) of these locations as:

l Design deficiency (below the safe/allowable standards) due to high physical and engineering constraints. Sometimes it is unavoidable in urban situation but it should be supplemented by other safety measures such as warning sign, speed control or other traffic calming measures;

Dangerous: Imagine the risk motorcyclists have to take when they want to go to Subang Jaya (far right) from this motor lane, on the New Klang Valley Expressway after the NKVE-Subang toll plaza.

·High weaving traffic movements (criss-crossing) with short weaving length, meaning too much lane switching within short distance due to the large number of exit and access junctions along the main road;

·Accidents usually take place before diverging and climbing to the on-ramp or merging movements after the off-ramp, as well as the turning movements on the slip roads; and

·Sharp curves without adequate warning signs or other safety measures.

“We cannot deny that these locations have unsatisfactory designs. However, the design can be optimised either by physical improvements or additional safety measures. The statistics show clearly that such reviews are warranted,” Goh said.

Also notable is his company’s findings of a traffic weaving research which shows that the local drivers have more or less become accustomed to the rude and reckless driving manners.

It has been found out that, while the gap that an American or a British driver would feel comfortable when another vehicle takes over is 2 seconds and 1.5 seconds respectively when they are travelling at 60km/h, Malaysians can accept 1 second at 90km/h.

“We have even seen drivers doing it with only 0.5 second, which is certainly unsafe, but it is rather normal in the Malaysian scene,” Goh said.

High risk: Accidents happen often at this stretch right after the NKVE-Subang toll plaza as motorists criss-cross to access one of the two diverging roads. Motorcyclists have to negotiate through multiple lanes from the motor lane (far left) to the Subang access (right).

Petaling Jaya OCPD ACP Arjunaidi Mohamed and Traffic Unit head ASP Wong Siew Choon endorsed Goh’s comment on the potentially fatal driving attitude of Malaysians.

“While the physical aspects of some roads need improvement, the drivers’ attitude contributes significantly to the high accident occurrence at these locations,” Arjunaidi said.

He said the local motorists tended to speed when negotiating sharp bents, when traffic light turned amber and when criss-crossing at busy junctions.

Arjunaidi noted that Petaling Jaya had the highest collection of traffic compound fines among all police districts in the country - RM6.8mil last year and RM10mil in 2007.

“The police have been conducting operations, including Ops Sikap, as frequent as four to six times every day at various locations in the city,” he said.

“Still, no matter how much we have tried to drum the right values to the motorists, they still need to take their own initiative to change,” Arjunaidi said.

According to Arjunaidi, road accidents in Petaling Jaya involved mostly motorists aged between 26 and 30 years, the group constituting 18% of the total cases last year.

Most accidents involved cars (75%), followed by motorcycles (7%) and lorries (5%).

Arjunaidi said that the police had also been having regular discussions with the Petaling Jaya City Council (MBPJ) on how to enhance road safety at the accident hot spots.

Wong, meanwhile, pointed out that there were as many as 800,000 vehicles plying Petaling Jaya roads every hour at the busiest time of the day, with the city having six major highways and a population of 1.6 million (according to 2004 census).

“Road safety deserves everyone’s attention. The extent of casualties and the amount of property loss are among the top in the country, even when compared with disease and natural disaster,” Wong said.

LRT near KL Land office

pucman — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 20:42:21 +0800

Is there any LRT that is nearest to the KL land office ?

Mr Siao mandarin class: Come learn mandarin

pucman — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 23:04:00 +0800

Anybody watched this series ? Is it good ?

http://star-ecentral.com/news/story.asp?fi...40&sec=tvnradio

Teacher name = Siau Lang (mad man)

Indon workers earn more than msian graduates

pucman — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 20:39:35 +0800

Yes, it is true. Indon workers earn at least rm 80 per day to work from 9 to 5 (no overtime).

Msian graduates earn 1800 per month ?

No need to go to university, just become construction worker.

Astro going to launch new satellite

pucman — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 12:53:58 +0800

KUALA LUMPUR, June 19 (Bernama) -- Five Malaysian students, specially selected to witness the launch of the new MEASAT-3a satellite from Kazakhstan, departed from the Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) Thursday.

The students departed on a flight to Moscow from where they will fly to the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, to witness the launch scheduled at 3.50am (local time) on June 22, MEASAT said in a statement Friday.

Flying out yesterday were Ahmad Ruiz Mohd Asri, Lina Na'ilah Abdul Talip, Chandra Sekhar Kuppusamy, Cliff Asher R Ongil and Edmund Lau Chen Min.

They will be joined in Moscow by nine other students from India, Indonesia, the Philippines and the United Kingdom -- countries where MEASAT currently operates.

It said Malaysians can follow the student's journey to the launch and back by logging on to the MEASAT website.

Which country's maid you want ?

pucman — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 10:40:34 +0800

http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/index.p...-employees-only

Astro increase price again ?

pucman — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 23:37:01 +0800

http://www.petitiononline.com/astropce/petition.html

Are people walking in Malaysia dumb ?

pucman — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 10:39:23 +0800

Other countries:

Road: cars

Pavement: people walking

Malaysia:

Road: people and cars

Pavement: putting desk and chairs

I have noticed that when accidents occur where the people walking the road get run down by cars, they will curse the drivers instead of blaming themselves. Then there are people who walk slowly along the road (not crossing) because they are too lazy to walk the pavements. Accidents have occured where these pedestrians were killed or injured.

Furthermore, they don't cross the road quickly but stroll slowly along as if something higher up is going to protect them .

Public buses sucks

pucman — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 11:20:28 +0800

http://thestar.com.my/metro/story.asp?file...469&sec=central

Singapore has been having a good public transport since 30 years ago. Why don't they go and emulate singapore ?

We don't need some dumb 'advisor' who just talks about improvements but after 50 years , it is still the same.

Best album maker software

pucman — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 14:06:39 +0800

Anybody tell me which is the best album maker software in terms of features and easy to use ?

Go to china via rail

pucman — Tue, 19 May 2009 01:33:53 +0800

http://www.voanews.com/english/2009-05-15-voa15.cfm

Origin of KL Hokkien Mee !

pucman — Sun, 17 May 2009 22:34:21 +0800

Just now I saw the food talk in AEC, astro.

KL hokkien mee (the black type) originated from KL chinatown, petaling street.

The shop is still there and it's called 'Kam Lin Kei' 金蓮記.

That's why you cannot find this hokkien mee in china, penang, singapore.

The star newspaper hire lousy programmers

pucman — Fri, 15 May 2009 11:12:00 +0800

http://star-space.com/classifieds/malaysia...Let&Keyword=xxx

: An error occurred during the processing of a configuration file required to service this request. Please review the specific error details below and modify your configuration file appropriately.

Parser Error Message: Unable to load file 'Money3SmsAPI'.

Source Error:

Line 256: <add assembly="System.EnterpriseServices, Version=1.0.5000.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a"/>
Line 257: <add assembly="System.Web.Mobile, Version=1.0.5000.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a"/>
Line 258: <add assembly="*"/>
Line 259: </assemblies>
Line 260:

Source File: c:\windows\microsoft.net\framework\v1.1.4322\Config\machine.config Line: 258

Assembly Load Trace: The following information can be helpful to determine why the assembly 'Money3SmsAPI' could not be loaded.

Check properties owned by a person

pucman — Thu, 14 May 2009 17:33:59 +0800

Is there any where to check how many houses owned by a person ?

Where is the place to check for KL and selangor ?