PLUS Highway...

Now tell me frankly, all of us use this highway at one point or another. RIght? Some use it during the weekends and for some, they use it daily. I for one, can be considered as a 'daily' user. For the last couple of months or maybe years, I noticed that the traffic has become steadily heavier on the highway. It get worse during the festive season (which is understandable)..

But what I don't understand is, the amount of money that we are paying to use the highways. Especially when it is heavily congested (for example, in weekday's mornings & evenings) and during holiday period. Some of us are paying about RM5 or RM10 one way to use the highway but we are stucked in the traffic madness for 85% of our road time especially when approaching the toll booths. What is the point of paying only to be stucked in traffic. In short, we are paying the money to help us to stay longer on the highways and perhaps spend more money on the R&R areas. A good example of a highway is the DUKE highway. I don't mind paying RM2 just to evade the traffic madness of MRR2 to go to Ulu Klang. I thought the traffic on the DUKE highway is smooth (however, i'm pretty sure that it will not be the case in a few year's time when the majority of people start realising that it is worth paying the toll rather than to go through the hassle of the infamous MRR2).

Highways are supposed to provide us with safer, comfortable and shorter driving period. But it is not the case anymore nowadays. With the errant attitude of KL drivers nowadays, queing up to the touch n go booth or the smart tag booths becomes a no holds barred contest of drivers trying to squeeze and outwit each other. There are no longer the sense of mutual respect between one another. In short, for some, when I'm on the road, it is all about ME, MYSELF and I.

On the other note, I noticed that we are losing our citizens on the road more then we can ever imagine. We see more death on the road more than we see our heroes die in the line of fire. Ignorant and lack of self respect perhaps the most apparent reason for it.

Anyway, back to my point about the PLUS highway. Something gotta be done to lessen the traffic flow. It's getting ridiculously ridiculous for some to drive on the PLUS highway. We are spending our hard earned money to pay for the usage of the highway for the safety and comfortness of driving. We are not paying them just to be frustrated or cursing other drivers. In short, we are not getting our money's worth for the usage of the highway.

I totally understand and wouldn't mind paying a wee bit more to travel with ease. But not in the current situation. It's a joke and somehow I felt being robbed in a very supple way. Might as well take out the booth and let us travel for free as we have to go through the traffic madness anyway. I'm all for profitability but not at the expense of robbing us the comfort of the highways....

Rant over again...

a conversation..........

Earlier today, a friend called me up asking me to join him to venture into a business of supplying snooker and pool tables.

To be frank, I'm not a fan of the sport and I'm not going to lie that I really suck at playing the game, be it snooker or pool. Anyway, below were his conversation with me...

Mr R: Yo bro...how's things?
Myself: I'm good bro, how are you....?..

Mr R: Oklay, cukup makan je bro...Anyway, I got something I wanna share with you..
Myself: Ni musti MLM laaa.....

Mr R: Nope. Something else. There's this golf club, the management are looking for someone to supply them with some snooker & pool tables.

Myself:...oo..ok..carry on...

Mr R: I was thinking....perhaps, we could get into somesort of an agreement with the club to lease the stuff from us. The club mentioned that they are willing to pay RM6,000 per month for the stuff.

Myself: huh....is that so?

Mr R: But...I'm looking for an investor who willingly invest about RM30,000 for this project. I would assume that we can re-coup our investment within 6 months.

Myself: Hrrrmmm....sounds good on paper bro. Tapi, is it true that the club is willing to lease from outsiders. I would assume, for a club of their stature, they wouldn't mind investing way below RM30,000 for the stuff to be used by their members. For a club to pay (even with an agreement) RM6,000 per month for some snooker and pool tables doesn't justify their business sense.

Mr R: Maybe the management don't want any liability or maybe they have lots of money. Plus, they are willing to enter into a contract of 3+3. (which means 6 years at most)

Myself: Hrrmmmm............

Mr R: So what do you think? Perhaps, you may want some time to think it over the week. If you are interested, we can go and see the club...

Myself: Hrmmm....ok then...let me get some info with regards to this thing and let's see how it goes...



That's how the conversation ended. And then I took about 5 minutes to think over. I believe and insist that it is not economical for the club to lease the tables from someone else. It's like throwing away good money for something that is not their business focus in the first place. A golf club would focus on giving their members the utmost satisfaction which is to provide them with good golf course and good service.

That's my opinion anyways........what do you think?

a business plan...

Earlier, I had a discussion with some friends who apparently wants to open up a new business. So we had a chat about things and how to do it. Nothing fancy and nothing beyond the extraordinary as they say. However, sometimes, when people talk to you about something that they are passionate about, you can sense that their tone is different from any normal tone. It's passionate. As if, if possible, they wanna do it tomorrow. Hehehe.

So as we progressed chatting into the night, I thought it will be a very good idea to put the ideas in writing. Nothing formal, perhaps 1 page summary of what we want to achieve. The question of how and when depends on what we want in the first place. Is that right? So we thought, it'll be brilliant if we could come with a business plan.

Of course, a plan will remain as a plan if nobody does nothing at all. However, a plan does has its importance in ensuring that we or whoever, do not loose our focus on what we wanted to achieve in the first place.

Hence, I thought to myself, I'll write a dummy business plan myself. Let's see how it goes. Perhaps, if it's nice and cheesy, I will post it here later...

C ya....

The end of the year...

December's coming up really soon. It's time for me especially to assess my successes and failures for 2009. the month might also give me the opportunity to look back at some 'plans' or 'things' that I've should've done for this year but for some strange reason....it wasn't done at all....Egggettt!!!


Anyhoos, I have a couple of things in my mind and this will be my wishlist for 2010.

1. To buy another 2 properties with a MV of RM250k each before Dec 2010
2. To make full use of my other company with a targeted RM100k turnover before 2010
3. To write more frequently that I might be able to write a book about myself...hahaha
4. To seek further alternatives in improving my assets
5. Targeted ASB balance as at 31 Dec 2010. RM100k
6. Go to Australia with the princess and my wife


That's all for now. There will be more I'm pretty sure of it. Hehehehe...

Have a good week ahead...

4001..

It's been so long since I last viewed my stat counter page. So I decided to look it earlier today. Wow!!.. to my surprise, my blog has been visited 4001 times. I do wonder actually, who actually read or view my blogs??.. Anyhoos, whoever you are, thnx for reading and I'm sure some of you have your own blogs to share. So keep 'em coming yeah!!!

A piece of mind on properties....

It seems that there's a trend of buying properties via auction nowadays. From my own point of view, I thought the trend has shot up tremendously and heard that some bidders now bid certain properties up till the market value prices perhaps even more. It shows that in general, some of us has lots of cash. I means LOADS of cash to spare. Hehehehe. That's good isn't it...

I for one, I would love to be involve in auction again but I have a srange feeling that I don't think it's the right time as yet (this sentence is a little bit vague..I know...) Like Azizi Ali said in one of his books, if you miss out on a property that you targeted earlier, there are a thousand more properties with your name written on it, provided you seek it properly.

Now, there's the catch. The word PROPERLY. It is always a catch 22 situation with this kind of thing. Building wealth through properties takes lots of patience and a strong will to succeed. For some it might be a walk in the park and for some, the road to success tend to be a little bit harder. What matters I guess, is to try few ways to achieve it.

I have a few targets in mind for next year's project which I hope can be materialise before June 2010. If and only if I can get/purchase another 2 properties with a market value of about RM250k each, I'll be a very happy man...hehehehe...However, we humans especially guys always do not think properly when they do wanna do certain things. I do accept the fact that sometimes when I walk past some developer's booth at some mall, I'm sort of keen to purchase but conscience told me not too.

Anyhoos...like I mentioned earlier, it's all gonna be next year and I do hope and pray that I can make it happen.

Have a good day

worrdddd..................

Have you come to a point in your life that you felt a bit low and you don't know what you want? I mean, seriously, when people ask you certain question like, where would you be in 10 years time, would you be able to answer that question confidently?

It sounds simple but it's a very difficult question to answer actually. Do whatever we can but we cannot and will not be able to predict what's gonna happen tomorrow.

Sometimes, we know what we want but we don't have a clear idea on how to get what we want. There will always be some things that deprive you from getting it. There will always be limitations in some form or another. These limitations can be damaging if you let it creep into your head.

I noticed that for me, I have to work within these limitations. In order to get something, I need to do it from scratch. I mean, really, REALLy from scratch. Sometimes, in the process of doing it, I felt a wee bit down but then I realised, nothing is ever easy in this world.

I also learn that you must make full use of what you have and maximise yourself to the limit. There are things that I wanna do but I noticed that sometimes I don't do things correctly. In other words, I don't do things seriously. That's one aspect of myself that I desperately wanna change. Sometimes, I would delay certain things that can be done easily within minutes and I might end up not doing it at all. Hehehehe..

Anyway, that's how I felt this morning. Perhaps, another kick in the arse would wake me up and smell the coffee....

Have a nice day....

RaNT again....

Bangsar, more specifically somewhere near to Dataran Maybank is notoriously known to have severly lack of parking spaces. Unfortunately, buildings has sprung up like mushrooms especially for the last couple of years. The traffic here used to be busy but not heavy. However, now is not the case here. With the LRT, newly built UOA building, traffic has become a madness. Plus, parking spaces has becoming severly limited. Only the chosen few would have the opportunity to park their car here in Jalan Bangsar Utama.

Which comes the point...I have an office here. We lease this place from a Tan Sri that owns lots and lots of properties in Malaysia. For an X amount, we rent the whole floor for ourselves but unfortunately, we only get one parking space (which is for my usage). To get to my car park, I had to make my way towards the other side of the building.

This is where it gets interesting, even though I have my own space, but to get into that space, sometimes can be very difficult as some people just couldn't afford to pay their monthly parking fees and so they ended parking their cars anywhere as long as there's a space. Sometimes, even blocking my path to get to my parking space.

What I really don't understand is, if you do not have a parking space, use the public transportation instead. For heaven's sake, don't be a nuisance to other road users. I'm getting fed up of seeing another car sometimes occupying my space without leaving their number. And this has been going on for quite awhile. I even spoke to the DBKL traffic officers but they say they can't do anything....So are they implying that I can park anywere I want here?...

I might be wrong in saying this, but I think some of us here in Malaysia, we just don't think about others but ourselves. That's not right at all. It is blatantly evident when you see people driving on the road nowadays. They just don't care about others. There are no courtesy or what so ever. I really hate when people 'jump-the-Q' especially at traffic lights and toll gates. I noticed taxi drives (some of them) are some of the apparent drives that have no regards to other road users.

Well, blame it all on the government or whoever, but like I always believe, we can change things provided we change ourself first....

Urghhhhhhhhhhh..........

A dreamer....

When I was a little younger...I meant when I was 20 or 22 years old, I had a dream. My dream was to make my first million by the age of 30. At that time, I can remember that I felt proud that I can say that I want to make my first million before the age of 30. But I didn't realised that I was on only saying it for the sake of saying it. Yes, it was a dream but it never materialized.

Why? What happened? I was asked by some friends.

Well, what happened was, instead of making a million, I ended having lots of 'liabilities'. Especially credit cards, and of course personal loan. I spent quite a sum of my salary on my car (rims, tyres, in-car entertainment). I even ended buying a big bike (something that I felt partially regret). Well, as they say, 1 thing led to another. I got married, but even during that period, I wasn't doing anything to make my first million. You see, I don't mind admitting, during those period, having 4 credit cards and happily swiping the cards made me felt big. But I didn't know that everytime I used those cards, I am getting closer to have bigger debts.

One fine day in November XX, I had a brief chat with a friend over a cup of teh tarik somewhere in Sungai Buloh. We spoke about our life in general and what we have achieved. Then it struck me that....geee...I nearly forget about my dream. Unfortunately, I was already in my 30s that year and still have not achieve. Even getting half a million was like too far away.

I went back home...I really gave myself a good thought about things. I mean everything. I needed some answers and needed some actions to be done as soon as possible. Hence, I have a new dream. A new aim. I might not be able to achieve my old dream before the age of 30 but I am dead focus in achieving it before 35.

I believe I can as at the time of writing this blog, I'm already more then half-way there (in terms of my assets). If I can achieve it next year, I would be super-duper happy.

As of now, I guess, I can say that I need to further strengthened my financial position. Hopefully healthier. I still need to learn more in searching for my ultimate dream which is to play golf everyday and money gets lodged in my bank account even when I'm sleeping. Hehehehe....

Oh btw,....I noticed that currently, prices of landed property in Klang Valley have increased to unbelievable prices. It's madness. That is one thing that I'm a wee bit worried about. As of now, I have yet having the urge of buying a landed property but who knows. Life's full of unexpected turns and twists....

For now, it's about playing the waiting game (which can be a little bit annoying)and choose the right one for myself. I've got lots of offers but I need to have a little patience.

Have a good week ahead...

why?

We've been targeting this company for all this while. Perhaps, we've been doing business with them prior to 2007 (if i'm not mistaken). When suddenly the shit hits the fan and they decided that they don't want us to be in their panel any longer.

We've been scratching our heads to find reasons why they did not renew the panelship? What makes it worse is that, they chose other companies to replace us. Fine by us by we would like to the reasons as to why we've been kicked out?

Was it because of we are not capable enough?
Was it because of we are not complying with their request?
Was there any standards at all in the first place?
We've always heard that a BUMI company should help another BUMI company, but it is not the case here. Here it is more...let the BUMI company have a slow and painful death and fall into oblivion..
We've heard the comment that we're not good enough. Well, tell me, how good is good enough?
Was it because of we are not paying your monthly car installments
Or was it, we didn't give you any ang-pow for hari raya?

Is it all about money nowadays?

Has everyone here has lost their dignity?

In another matter, why is it, a fellow malay, with a wee bit of a managerial status, always acts as if he or she owns the fecking company? It's strange when she smiled at someone else and when we met her, her face frown like an old pitbull. Maybe we should brought along a brown paper envelop and who knows, she might smile a bit.

Rant over.........

things aren't so smooth after all....

Sometimes, we can have all the magnificent plans to make things happen but when it matters most, things can get pretty nasty. It sucks though...but what we must do is to never loose the focus and try different things to make it happen. Maybe it won't happen as much as we expected it. Perhaps, it'll take a wee bit longer for it to materialise. Hence, I learnt that if things doesn't go your way, take a step back, think and then act.

Have a good week ahead..