Proton Satria Neo and Perodua Myvi, bashed on Top Gear

// July 13th, 2009 // No Comments » // Entertainment, Thoughts

If the headline didn’t grab your attention yet, wait til you watch the video. Top Gear season 13 episode 4 featured 3 cheap cars that you can get in Great Britain on its show. The folks at Top Gear got a Proton Satria Neo, a Perodua Myvi and a Chevy Aveo. Proton and Perodua are both Malaysian car manufacturers and being a Malaysian, I was pretty sad and disappointed when most of the adjectives used to describe the Satria Neo and Myvi were either negative or unpleasant. Same goes for the Aveo although I could care less for a shitty car from a shitty company that have just “recovered from bankruptcy” after receiving billions of Government aid.

Watch the video:

Malaysian car makers have light years ahead of them before they start producing cars of the same quality as those of the Japanese or Koreans. Until that day comes, we will have to bear watching Malaysian cars being labeled as cheap, plasticky, distasteful and awful because that’s the truth and the truth hurts!

p.s.-Dear Tun Mahathir, I am pretty sure when you had your cronies starting up Proton, you probably envisioned a car company producing cars that will make Malaysians proud, didn’t you? After 24 years in business and many billions of Ringgits later, Proton is still manufacturing lousy cars!

If anyone from Proton or Perodua happens to be reading this, please improve the quality of the your future cars. Please do this for the sake of your companies, Malaysia and its people!

“I’d rather be in Paul Scholes” – Jeremy Clarkson describing the Myvi.

-Boon

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Getting ready for work under 5 minutes? Let the Japanese show you!

// July 13th, 2009 // No Comments » // Entertainment, Thoughts

Were there times when you overslept and were late for work? In those situation you would need to have a master plan or rather have a speed like that of Superman to get ready for work. In Japan, there is a game show  that shows you and I how to get ready for work in under 5 minutes. As an added bonus, you will be shown how to prepare a complete breakfast consisting a toast, an egg, a slice of ham and a cup of drip style coffee!

Oh yare, yare.

Enjoy!

-Boon

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Visiting NYU Stern

// July 10th, 2009 // No Comments » // Thoughts

On a beautiful sunny Thursday evening, I headed out to NYU Stern School of business, conviniently located in the Greenwich Village. A few blocks away from the West 4th St subway station, which the E & F lines pass through, NYU Stern School of Business is one of the many different schools under the New York University Family.

My tour guide was Mike Berger , an assistant director of the MBA Admissions Office. He started off the tour by having all the participants introducing themselves. Mike was accompanied by one of the Associate Director of the Admission Office, Lauren Levine and her presence just gave me a sense that NYU Stern cares about the prospective students who are visiting and NYU wants to know about them them.

Mike brought us around the building and we visited areas such as the Club center, Career development office, Library and the quiet study area. We ended our tour in a classroom where Mike explained more in details about the application process. The application process at NYU Stern will be assessed holistically and there are 3 main aspects of the application that students applying need to consider. The first aspect is academic records which consist of your GMAT or TOEFL score, Undergrad of Grad records. The second aspect is professional aspiration which consists of Essay #1, letters of recommendations, resume and work history. The third aspect is personal characteristic which will be assesed through essay#2, #3, #4 (Optional) and an interview (if you’re lucky enough to be granted one).

The tour started at 4.15pm and ended at 5.30pm. A very informative tour and it has given me an insight to my application process. Thank you Mike, Lauren and NYU!

-Boon

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Recession and Housing Market Downturn? Not in Forest Hills

// July 7th, 2009 // No Comments » // Thoughts

With the national unemployment rate at an all time high of 9.5% and the collapse of the housing market, our country seems to have entered an economic black hole. Everyone is tightening their budget by spending less on entertainment or dinning out because disposable income is hard to come by these days. When the economy and housing market seem to be taking a bad hit, some residents at my neighborhood, Forest Hills – NY, seem to have a lot of extra money to spend. Old houses are being torn down and new mansions are being built from the ground up. I am really curious as to where and how do these people get the money for such expensive constructions. While Detroit is experiencing the worst housing market collapse, Forest Hills doesn’t seem to be facing similar fate.

Here are some of the houses that are being constructed in Forest Hills.

-Boon

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Think you know the differences among Jesus, Muhammad and Ron Hubbard?

// July 3rd, 2009 // No Comments » // Thoughts

Found this interesting chart from madatoms.com comparing Christianity, Islam and Scientology. No offense anybody buy I personally think it is quite humorous, especially the section on “Best Bullshit Story that ever happened”.

Enjoy!

-Boon

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“How maths killed Lehman Brothers” – Horatio Boedihardjo

// June 30th, 2009 // No Comments » // News, Thoughts

Suffering from jet lag, I was browsing digg.com at 4.30am in the morning when I stumbled upon this interesting article written by Horatio Boediharjo, who is currently 19 and is studying for his Doctorate in probability at Oxford University. Horatio’s article, which highlighted the events and factors, with subtle sarcasm and wit, that drove the nails to the coffin for Lehman Brothers, is published at + Plus Magazine (http://plus.math.org).  Horatio was awarded the Plus new writers award 2009 under University Category for this piece .

Below is an excerpt from Horatio’s article and you can read the award winning piece here.

“Whether you can make money from selling the CDO insurance for the bank depends on whether the borrowers return the money, which in turns depends on the economy. So if the economy goes down, you are a lot more likely to lose money. If you are an active investor, then you probably have invested in the stock market as well. Now if the market crashes you lose both the money invested in the stock market and in the CDO. Suppose, on the other hand, that instead of spending the money on CDO, you bet on whether Manchester United will win the European Champion League. This time in order to lose all your money you need both the market to go down and Manchester United to lose their match — this is less likely than just having the market go down. Therefore, investing on CDO is a riskier choice than betting for Manchester United. The error in our model is that we have not taken into account this extra risk due to its dependence of CDO on the market.”

-Boon

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R.I.P Michael Jackson 8.29.1958 – 6.25.2009

// June 29th, 2009 // No Comments » // Thoughts

This post may be a little late but I still want to make a tribute to the late King of Pop, Michael Jackson. He is definitely one of a kind and his contribution to the music world is tremendous. Michael Jackson is truly a Phenomenon!

Here is a video of Janet Jackson’s tribute to his late Brother at 2009 BET Awards:

Below are some of my favorite songs by the King of Pop:

Jackson 5 – I’ll be there

Michael Jackson – You are not alone
watch?v=o8rYl6K2STc

Michael Jackson – Heal the world
watch?v=W61Q-EZ8R7M

Michael Jackson – Will you be there

Michael Jackson – Thriller
watch?v=z-TZnNXXQrI

Michael Jackson – Bad
watch?v=ACPsfcsg4ZE

Michael Jackson – Earth Song
watch?v=tfnkq4pQ2vE

Michael Jackson – Billie Jean
watch?v=En-cHBv7UpA

Michael Jackson – Beat It
watch?v=Uqxo1SKB0z8

Michael Jackson – You Rock My World
watch?v=e3wShd_bX8A

RIP Michael Jackson!

-Boon

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Mispelling Local Edition: Flushing, NY

// June 24th, 2009 // No Comments » // Thoughts

I was browsing around my local Korean Supermarket, in Flushing, when I saw some pretty funny signs. Nothing too extraordinary, just some misspelled signs which I thought were pretty amusing.

Here they are:

I wonder if the extra ‘n’ makes Organic more Organnic?

The person who printed this sign must be having “Yallow” Fever =P

Extinct and Sour Plum?

-Boon

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Being paid to be the mediator?

// June 20th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // Thoughts

The idea of service for hire was thought by me to only exist in movies and novels until my landlord told me that there is such a service available in New York City. People would hire someone to run errands for them. He or she will be paid at an hourly rate to buy groceries, walk the dog, pick up the laundry or even clean up the house. The idea here  is that you’re pretty much the butler but without the long term commitment or the obligatory benefits that the employer has to pay.

There are many websites that offer service for hire and my landlord told me about one particular company that his friend works for. I thought I would submit my resume to them and see if they would hire me, a hardworking and able lad, to work part time running errands for people in NYC. I did submit my resume, I did get a call back from Alison (name has been changed to protect the original person) this morning about a position with the company but it was not what I expected. They are looking to hire a person that will be a mediator between a company and its employees. Company X is consolidating their office spaces by moving staffs from different locations to one central location  and because of the drastic change, many employees are disgruntled, although no one should be unhappy while they are still employed in this economy, and therefore the employer wants to hire someone who can remediate the situation by making the employees adjust to the move and by ensuring that their demands are met.

Some of the responsibilities of this mediator include organizing get – together among the employees from different locations who will not be working in the same office, encouraging the employees by telling them how great the new office is and organizing happy hour events after work. Although the work sounds interesting because of the heavy interaction with employees but the pay wasn’t too enticing. So, I didn’t take up the offer eventhough she did try to sell me the perks of employee benefits and health care.

I declined the job offer and we bid our farewells. I guess my job hunt continues!

-Boon

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$2000 Less in my pocket and all I got were…

// June 17th, 2009 // No Comments » // Thoughts

Spent 5 Hours and contributed $2000 to the American economy at the premium outlet and I got were these bags? Drove for about an hour from my place to the outlet located in Woodbury, NY.At the outlet, we went to Coach, Gucci, Kate Spade, Longchamp stores and we bought some bags. I never knew shopping can be so tiring until I was the one participating in it. All the women in the world who have endured those many hours walking, standing and trying on the countless clothes, shoes and bags have earned my utmost respect. SALUTE!
There’s a lot of work to be done and I better be getting some sleep for tomorrow is going to be long day!

www.myippoinc.com

-Boon

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