Sunday, May 25, 2014

Jaja & Binks

While watching the Thomas Cup Final (Malaysia vs Japan), I thought I'd try to update an entry in this blog between breaks. Well not many breaks since this is a rather fast paced match. Around 9 months back my sis brought us 2 niece looking cats (kittens at that time). They're mix Persian + Local breed it seems. Once has longer fur, and the other has slightly shorter fur but a unique color combination.

 Here's Jaja. I'm no connoisseur of Cats, so I can't really stress the key features. But from what I hear nice fur, nice eyes. Good fur.



And here's Binks! She's got very nice eyes, and an impressive fur colour coordination. 

So some months back, both of them got pregnant...I would say un-planned pregnancy Both Jaja and Binks gave birth on the same day ~9th of May to a litter of kittens. 

Here's a view of them. 

An interesting mix of colors and plain ones as well. There's one like a Panda (black ears and tail) white body with a small spot of black in the body. Then there's one with a perfect mixed of like a bengal tiger black and orange red. 

I am planning to sell some of them as probably won't be able to provide optimum care for so many of them. If you are interested to buy, drop me a message / comment. I'll probably be looking for hand them over end July / early August, once they're on food and off breast feeding.

Per Wiki  Kittens are highly social animals and spend most of their waking hours playing and interacting with available companions..

Btw, I also wanted to share a tip. As every first time cat owner goes through the ritual of owning a pet, one question that always comes up is what type of litter / poop sand to buy. There's bio-degradable (natural) then there's synthetic. There's clumping and non clumping. Most clumping litter are synthetic, and also come with some fragrance. I frankly haven't found the fragrance to make much of a difference. It's like spraying perfume over poop, what do you think the result will be. I also found that the synthetic one attracts more flies. So for now I've reverted back to natural litter. It does get 'sandy' / berpasir as it is not clumping, but well attracts less flies so I'm good. 


Saturday, May 17, 2014

Useful youtube stuff

Many of us who surf the net on a daily basis know that if you need a step by step to do something, fix, install or the like, we usually go to sites like youtube or wikihow.

This usually works well for common electronics, since most of the source of reviews, (English) how to videos / step by steps are done by Americans (USA) or Indians or mostly non South East Asian nationals. So when you are looking for a How To for something that is only common here (Malaysia), it usually becomes tough to find resource. I had this problem with a number of things, piping comes to mind - e.g how to connect multiple pipes (PVC pipes e.g. for your washing machine outlet) - I found out some plumbers just use silicone . Even at times the terms or material sold is quite different. For example usually here we use PTFE tape to wrap around the each tap / piping connection, but in the many youtubes you would seldom see this used.


Here's just one that I google'd. The tap he removed had PTFE tape around the but when he placed the new taps, using a washer was enough. Interestingly here, you ALWAYS put PTFE tape, and I have tried just with a rubber washer w/out PTFE and it usually does leak. Maybe we've got sub-par rubber washer?

I was trying to figure out how to replace my indoor room door knob, and again, I went through a couple of 'international' videos, but couldn't find the same type of door knob used here in Malaysia. Until I came through this video by Hani Mador.



Any frankly his video on replacing your door knob was quite entertaining as well. See for yourself. And well I think I saved some $$ since usually (& obviously) when you pay someone to replace your door knob, you pay for the new knob and labor changers (upah).

So when I posted this video on FB, I was expecting friends to go "Come on, you mean you didn't knob how to change a door knob"? (Takkanlah tak tau nak tukar tombol). But well there is always a first time for something, wouldn't you agree. And this guy's video (as of time of blogging) has got 11k+ views, and 37 likes. So I'm guessing at least around 10k people were trying to figure out how to replace / change their door knob. And well, this is only one of the many videos on youtube of changing your knob. And his video has received alot of comments of thanks, so yes, it has helped many.

Monday, May 12, 2014

Gold - was the land of promised - a myth maybe

Some years back, many people including myself were all hyped about gold. Many said it is the THE hedge againt inflation - e.g if 50years back you could buy say a camel with an ounce of gold. Supposedly after 50 years you can still buy a camel with 1 Oz of gold. This seemed very true while the gold price was going up.
My previous write up is here : Gold, Oil and you.

Well if you look at the below chart which I've taken 10years back to date of posting - this statement seems rather true up until probably 2012.

 
gold price charts provided by goldprice.org


But from 2012 to 2014 as below, you will see it has fallen from a peak of ~USD1,800 to ~$1,300 per Oz. And no, I don't think neither the price of camel or any other things you'd measure inflation against has fallen by that much. That is a ~27% drop in 2 years. Year from 2005 (and prior) gold has risen, and steeply getting from 2007-2012. But my opinion is making a statement gold is a hedge (guarantee) against inflation is not true. Now if you take maybe a 50year average this might be true, but remember if you jumped into the gold frenzy in 2012 buying up a lot of gold, you might feel the pinch now.

gold price charts provided by goldprice.org


So what's my thoughts? I think as other items like stocks, property, FD - Gold is a good commodity to place in your basket of investments, to even out the risk. One of the latest buzz going on is when there is un-certainty in the world - e.g war, economic turmoil etc, gold will rise. I am not sure I see this co-relation 100% of the time. But if this works out, e.g when stock markets go up, gold goes does, and IF gold goes up when markets crash - then having gold in your basket of investment is a good hedge against being too heavily invested in the market.

There is another option - investing in gold / mineral mining companies via ETF or unit trust - e.g AmPrecious - my experience - it is even more volatile then gold, as it depends on gold prices and local factors - cost of mining, strikes, etc. Probably when time is good, it goes up to, but I'm guessing when gold drops, it will drop at least similarly or worse.

Well that's my two gold coin cents on this topic.

ps - if you are reading this entry - how do you like the formatting of this site vs my more active site fyi-penang?