OBW2008 Credit List

Assalamualaikum semua.
Kepada semua yang hadir, bak kata pepatah, yang bulat datang bergolek (jangan marah ha...) , yang pipih datang melayang, perhimpunan kali ini mengembalikan kenangan pahit manis 20 tahun lalu, 60 purnama bersama di Lorong Harimau. Tak habis kalau nak diceritakan hanya selama 2 hari bersama. Kepada kawan2 yang aku tak pernah jumpa since kita habis SPM, Nairul, Alimon, Goyang, terubat sudah rindu kami kepada engkorang semua. So kepada yang masih tak jumpa kengkawan lain after these 20 years of absence, make sure engkorang datang Reunion @40 nanti.

Ucapan terima kasih yang tak terhingga kepada contributors ($$$) terutamanya penaja utama OBW2008, ECE Bro Mahyudin (Green 86) dan COO yang hensem & macho, Long John. Sebagai tanda penghargaan kami, kami dengan besar hati akan mengekalkan iklan ECE di atas sana.
Juga tidak dilupakan sumbangan tenaga anda semua yang bermula dari bulan Nov07 lagi especially,

Jebat - registration, aku totally lepas tangan, aku nak kira duit je & the ransom negotiator! Salute you my man...

Pendekar - games , betoika yang menang Explorace tu team Satu, Dua , Tiga - bunyi macam hang tembak je...

Ustaz Zul - Tahlil, AGM - aku rasa depa ingat hang yang propose invite Ketua Bahagian PAS...

Dr Anuar Arshad -tima kaseh for the Kuliah Subuh and the motivation

Super Mokh - Emcee, hang boleh ganti RAB babe..

Jay, Nairul, Goyang & Long John -Keep the jokes flowing. Kalau tak dak cincin...

Sam Berg - nasib baik ada mini compo hang & also for the arrangement in SUK. Kalau nak beli hamper, gi beli kat Ipoh Garden, sebelah CIMBeng...

Kodiang, Ron & Wan - hey thanks for the hockey sponsorship & arrangement.

Goyang - sudah2 la dengan Venny tu...Sheri hang sms gambaq hang last year kat Goyang.

Mudin - you're the Superman mate... Total Back-up System

Pot - hey thanks for the collaboration for a ciput pay. Banyak album hang jual hari tu.

Naza - we can try again at Reunion @40 nanti...

Hijaz & prefects - yo bro thanks a lot for your support, hope engkorang enjoyed the dinner.

STAR Wind Orchestra - my man, thats the STARIANs spirit, rain or shine we will go out there and give our best shot! Oh when the STAR goes marching in...

Cikgu Zul - thanks for the support, it has been wonderful working with you.

Tuan Pengetua - semoga aspirasi cikgu menjadi kenyataan.

Last but not least, kepada STAROBA Committee Dato Hamzah, Dato Dr Awang, Abg Azlan, Saudara Syed Wazir, Saudara Anoiar, Saudara Tamunif dan committee yang lain, Fiver 86 Yazit Yeop Arbi, terima kasih atas support dan panduan anda semua.

Juga tak lupa kepada semua yang hadir dan REGISTER...

Over to you '89ers...

Change of Programme - STAROBA AGM Rescheduled

STAROBA AGM is being rescheduled to Saturday, 19th Jul 08, 3pm~5pm in the School Hall.

Clash of the Titans will start at 2pm~3pm on the same day and venue.

Rgds.

Unfolding the recession?

I think, and most people believe that the big "r" is just around the corner. I over heard people say the governor is ready to raise the interest rate...However I believe the governor doesnt think that way. She has been sticking to the rate for quite some time regardless of the situation, even when the US was cutting the rate, she kept the rate firm, and this time I believe she is not going to increase the rate. Why??? Because she had learned from 97 crisis to not to choke the economy when it is gasping for air!

I hope the governor can be more creative this time, forget about the oil price, dont just focus on the financial levers and switches, look at other things like how to contain the prices by neutralizing the demand by supplying enough to the market.How to channel the excess liquidity to higher return instruments without raising the rates, or conceptually how should we ease the demand bottleneck without raising the rates?

I believe there are many other mechanisms that can be used to ease the demand congestion that propel the price higher. In the US mainly, they prefer to tweak the rates lever simply because thats the only system that "they" control.But for us, there are many other things that we can do to cushion the freefall. Just like the oil price hike. Oil price shooting through the roof is not a problem to us, as we are making tonnes of money out of it. Our problem is that we dont have enough money for the development programs. That's why immediately after the subsidy restructuring, government announced an additional allocation of 30BilRM for the RMK9 initiatives.But is it wise eliminating the oil subsidy for the sake of growth as eliminating the subsidy itself is a huge drawback to the growth of the economy? The worst case is that even though we get back our RM625/Year, we have to pay more for other things. For instance the price of nasi ayam in my neighbourhood had been raised from 3.50 to 4.50, of course this one was the effect of compounding together with the rice price increase. So lets go back to the problem which was, the gov dont have enough money for development project! And the easiest way out was, take it from the subsidy!?

Why dont they think of a more adventurous move, like why dont we establish another petronas to double up the nation income so that we dont have to eliminate the subsidy or even why dont we set up another mof companies to dig out our minerals as commodity prices are exploding so that we dont have to eliminate the subsidy, or why dont we restructure the government operating costs so that we dont have to eliminate the subsidy, or why dont we raise a Sukuk or even initiating a PFI so that we can keep the subsidy or get a soft loan, which is very much better than raising the inflation rate for no reason! There are so many options out there that could be explored and saved our subsidy and spared us from this unnecessary inflation!!!

Hope the governor will think deep and wide this time, before she blunder unnecessarily!

EURO 2008 Finale

A quote from Gary Lineker, "Football is an easy game. 22 men chasing 1 ball and in the end, Germany will always win". See how true this quote will end up tomorrow.

I've never been a Spain fan, because they look strong on paper but always fail to deliver. But looking at the way Fabregas penetrating the defend line with short passes through the middle, the trick often or traditionally deployed by the latins, exposed the secret of their winning streak.

But the Germans are strong tactically, they can revamp and execute their strategies efficiently, that's why they can pace-up their game whenever required.They can win against any team, as the manager will customize the prescriptions according to the problem. If they play double layer defend, with 5 in the middle, then they have a good chance of blocking the Spaniards from scoring. Else, Lineker might have to come up with a new quotations!

Cenggini baru best....

Thanks Azam for your time. I really hope more of us can spend some time contributing their materials to this blog, as we have members from various background, residing in different region, culture, climate etc. It believe it would be nice if each of us could write something here.

Anyway, talking about the economy, I think its going to take sometime for the economy and especially the KLSE to go back into high gear. This is because the situation right now is not about the region, like the previous one, but something of a global scale, the inflation.Imagine people around the world losing their monies and all are being sucked into the middle east.The richer the middle eastern governments are, the more monies they can hand out to the hedge funds, and the more monies handed out to the hedge funds, the higher the petrol price is going to be.The higher the petrol price is going to be, the richer the middle eastern government will be and the cycle will start all over again and leaving us with less money!

The only opportunity to reverse the cycle around here is to make the speculator start making money by "shorting" the market. Then only we can have some breathing space. I hope the media could start playing the negative song about the global economy soon, so as to hint to the speculators to start selling and create a negative cycle.

One thing I can say about the government is that they are not creative and entrepreneural enough to take care and solve our problems. Obviously they are not leveraging sufficiently on our resources to combat the rice price hike, gasolene price hike etc. In short, they are not thinking enough.

Anyway AY, thanks for the material. Pendekarg, Ron, Kodiang, Pak Salih and others, please dont hesitate to publish your materials here. Just send them to me.

Rgds.

Confusion and uncertainty

Apologies for the lack of postings. As usual, work is still a priority so I couldnt write much. But there were plenty of stories to tell, most notably the fuel and electricity price increase and more political twist this week with the SAPP's no confidence on the PM saga.

The KLCI today closed 10 points higher at 1206 points. But that comes after a series of declines over concerns on inflation and political uncertainty. With the energy price adjustment, the market is worried that inflation might exceed 7% from its usual 2-3% range (from what I last recall), which could also lead to interest rate hike of between 25-75 basis points (from what brokers been telling me).

For an average guy on the street, all this means higher cost of living. Suddenly your take home pay is not worth that much any more. You may need to adjust your lifestyle and cut leisure spending, dining out etc. The low-income bracket might not see direct hit on their electricity bills, or will only see a small increase in petrol expenses on their motorbikes, but prices of other products are rising too because of the general increase in energy cost. So all in all everybody is affected, both direct and indirect way.

The political drama is not helping either. Foreign investors often ascribe a premium to political stability, though the exact premium amount is still debatable. With all the noises of political defection and power transfer, investors are likely to take the sideline and wait for things to unravel. Shorter term investors might even decide to sell first and worry later. Perhaps one might not see rampant selling by all of them, but clearly there's no reason to favor this market when there is political and social tension on the ground.

We're lucky in the odd sense that the rest of the world are also facing challenging times. So the impact on Malaysia is not isolated. China market, for example, has fallen over 40 percent ytd. But this makes their market no longer expensive when compared to Malaysia. US is still unravelling the sub-prime losses on its financial sector and now coming to feel the effect from the spiralling fuel cost. It is a worldwide phenomenon not unique to Malaysia.

I think it is going to be a while before we see market recovery. Right now there are so many theories on how the market will react. Any data releases can have double meaning. Even further increases in oil price can be seen as a positive sign that demand is still strong. Less than three months ago the US Fed was cutting rates, now there are talks of a rate hike soon. May be the market is confused. I know I am.

-AY-

Anti Ghout Cocktail

Assalamualaikum friends.
Kepada kengkawan yang suffering from Ghout, please try this at home.
Kawan aku yang dah kena dan sembuh yang mengajarkan resepi ni...

Segenggam Ibu Kunyit
Segenggam Ubi Cekur
Segenggam Lempoyang

dibersihkan dan dibuang kulit.

1 Cawan Air Masak

Blenderkan semua ramuan di atas dan minum 1/3 resepi ini setiap kali, dan minum 3 kali seminggu,i.e Isnin, Rabu, Jumaat selama 3 bulan dan pantang makanan yang boleh trigger ghout seperti kekacang, daging, ayam, telur, tomato etc. dan banyakkan ulam, ikan dan banyak air kosong.

Semoga Allah taala menyembuhkan penyakit anda.