Switchblade

Last weekend, I had dinner at a Switchblade restaurant in Dutamas with the family...

To be honest, I love western foods and my favorite restaurants will be TGI Friday's and Chilli's. Hence, when I saw an ad about this restaurant at FB the other day, I decided to give it a try.

Upon reaching the place at Dutamas, I wonder how does the owner pays the rental for this place. It could cost him loads of money!! I would assumed that the overheads in operating such operating at an expensive location would be enormous!! I salute him for taking a big risk in running the food business!!

Anyway, I like the way the owner sets up the restaurant. It's totally different from any other restaurants that I've been too.

With regards to the food.....I have to be honest...it's freaking delicious weii!! Habis semua diet2....hahahaha.....No doubt it's a little bit pricey but that's understandable.

I will certainly come here again...but not so soon lah.....

Dough-nuts anyone??

I'm not a fan of doughnuts.....but when a colleague of mine bought some from Big Apple, I thought it was good, although it was super sweet....

Jemput makan......

What???

How things have changed eh?.....Wonder how life was in the 50s or 60s....

Nov 2011

Right.....

It is now Nov 2011. In a about an month and a half's time, we would celebrating the new year.

New year means new resolutions. New aims, new objectives and so forth....

I think it's a good time to sit down and jot down your achievements for the last 11 months or so. Not to forget, to write down the things that you should've done and the things you wanna do for the next couple of weeks....

Perhaps, it's a good time to start planning what you wanna do for 2012.

For me, in terms of investing, it has been very 'stale' especially from the property side. No doubt that I've save some money that I invest in various places but I think I could do more....Earlier, I planned to add another 2 properties under my name but haven't be able to do so. Nahh, I won't blame it on BNM with their ruling but I blame myself. It's ok as I think I learn my lesson.

2011 for me is about discovering new things in investments especially being a landlord. Previously, you only read stuff from the books and hope you learn bits and pieces from it. But to be honest, nothing beats experiencing it by yourself. There are things that I should've done but for some strange reason or another, I didn't.....

Whatever it is, I thank Allah for opening my eyes in becoming an investor. I had nothing prior to 2008. Nothing...Zero....Zilch...even my ASB balance was pretty depressing to see....I had very limited savings.....but now, I guess, I can be a little proud of the efforts that I had put in for the last 3 years. However, I do realize that my journey is still at its infancy stage. I hope I can double up my efforts, take a wee bit of risk and pray a little harder for 2012....

Some time, my friends asks me why would i be an investor (part time that is....)...My answer is simple, to make sure that the financial being of my daughter is taken care off when the time comes. Having a kid changes your perception towards life. Especially when you start to think about her education, her needs as well as her wedding day. Hahahaha. I'm told not to worry about it but how can I not...:P

Anyway, at this moment, all I'm thinking is to maximize my wife's ASB savings. If I can achieve that, that's a big, big achievement. Hehehehe. On my part, since I wasn't able to purchase a property this year, I might do it next year....but having need to pay 30% deposit with your own money, I don't think it's a wise move....Thank you BNM!!

Have a nice day

Spelling mistake?

During my way back to Ipoh for the short raya holidays last week, we decided to skip the highways and hit the old trunk road from Behrang uptill Tapah as we received some news stating that the PLUS highway's traffic was bad....

Hence, we decided to have our lunch at some nasi kandar restaurant in Slim River. And over there, I found this rather disturbing 'advertisement'....

Is that how you spell kuay teow nowadays? I'm not even sure whether I spell it right or not. Heehehe....Anyways, the food wasn't great at all but the teh tarik was good!!!

By the way, the traffic was bad on Saturday. The heavy rain didn't help either. We took about 5 hours to reach the destination....huhu....I dread to think if I were to use the PLUS highway, it might even worse at Tapah....

have a good day

Hell-o-ween parteeee

Last weekend, myself, wifey and kecik attended a helloween party at Royal Bintang, The Curve.

To be honest, I've never been to a big scale helloween party before. And I really thought, the party was just for kecik and her classmates. But to my surprised, the party was held in the grand ballroom of the hotel and everybody seems to be dressed up except me and wifey.

I felt a bit out of place though but I thought everyone were sporting enough to dressed up. It was an interesting event and I was wondering, the organizer must have spent easily more then RM30k. Loads of free gifts, free foods, games, face painting, monsters, ghosts, smurfs, pharaoh, cat women, you name it.......and booze for the drinkers as well...

Anyways, kecik enjoyed herself and was playing around with one of her classmates. It's bit unfortunate we came a bit late as most of her classmates has returned home. Perhaps, if we are invited the next time around, I'll dressed up like a rock star!! hahaha

Stamping of tenancy agreement

For the last couple of years, for the purpose of stamping of tenancy agreement(s), I would ask the help of a friend. So I would pay him some of amount of money and he gets the things done for me. Usually, he will take about a week.

Anyways, since I've just leased out my desa view condo to this new tenant about a couple of days ago, I decided to stamp the agreement myself. I have to be honest here, I've been a property investor for about 3 years now (I know, i'm still a baby...and still learning) but I've yet to do this stamping thingy on my own. Pemalas would be the exact word!! Hahahaha

So I spent a couple of hours yesterday settling this matter and pretty much a wee bit proud of being able to do it myself. Save me a few quid instead of asking some friends to do it for me....

Just a short note on the procedures for stamping of tenancy agreement

Step 1. Upon signing of the document between you and your tenants, you need to calculate the stamp duty required for stamping. So how do you calculate? I can only talk about my experience as I think there's more to it than what I already knew...

Supposed the monthly rental is RM850. So annual rental income is RM10,200.

There's an exemption of RM2,400 to be deducted from the annual income which comes to RM7,800 (10,200-2,400). Assuming the agreement is for one year period hence, the rate of the stamp duty will be RM1 for every RM250 exceeding RM2,400.

So, the stamp duty payable for the agreement is is RM7,800/RM250=RM31.20. (Rounded of to RM31). Hence, what you need to do is to go the post office and buy the setem hasil. Easy?

Step 2. Go to the LHDN office together with the original tenancy agreement, in which for my case, I went to kg Attap. I think if I can remember correctly it was on the 20th floor. Went straight to the stamping office. I was told to fill-in a form and need to wait a wee bit as the crowd can be large at times. I waited about 40 minutes before they call me up. Hahaha

So there you go, never that I thought it would be that easy but time consuming at the same time. I know that if we ask someone else to do it for us, they will certainly charge an amount but I think, it's better to do it yourself. Agents would probably make hefty money from offering this services to the masses. That's my opinion anyways. But again, if you don't have the time, you can always ask the agents to do it for you, and of course, it comes with a price.....

Finally...

Finally, my cozy little condo at desa view tower has been rented out.

I think I started to advertise for the place about 3 months back. Anyway, I'm happy that I finally met with this young family and hope we can a have a nice 'working' relationship for the next one year....

So to Shahizan & family, welcome on board......

On the other hand, the tenants in my other place at Unipark condo has moved out about 3 days ago. I had some major issues with the tenants at times, but never did I expect to see the condition of the house after they moved out. It was bad. It was so bad that I need to employ 3 Indonesian clearners to clean the place.

A lot of people have been saying against renting the place to college boys and I certainly felt that they did not take good care of the place as they should be. Well, boys will be boys with posters in every rooms. One good thing though, they pay their rents on time. Hahaha...

Anyways, who said that it's gonna be a smooth ride all the way kan?? The place now is clean and I'm going there again later today to check out the place.

Have a good week ahead...