You could buy chapfan, including a ice chinese tea for RM5, 3 times a day for 10,000 starving kids, for 14 years.

or

you could build a palace for a king that doesn’t add value to the country anything.

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By Agence France-Presse, Updated: 10/19/2010
Malaysian king’s palace to cost 258 million dollars

A massive new palace being built for Malaysia’s king is expected to be completed next June, at a total cost of 258 million dollars, parliament has been told.

The “Istana Negara”, or national palace, which is taking shape on a hilltop in a Kuala Lumpur suburb is an enormous complex of dome-topped buildings linked to the city’s highways with special access roads.

The palace sprawls over a 100,000 square metre (one million square foot) site which was annexed in the 1990s in what has since become a prime residential area.

Works Minister Shaziman Abu Mansor said the palace is expected to be completed on June 30 next year, at a total cost of 797 million ringgit (258 million dollars).

The figure has risen from an earlier allocation of 650 million ringgit (210 million dollars), he said in a written reply issued Monday after a query from the opposition.

“The additional allocation is needed to fulfil costs which were not included in the earlier contract, among them being the security system, utility payments and also interior decoration,” he said.

The historic project also entails the construction of a highway flyover and an access road, at a cost of an extra 138.5 million ringgit.

Malaysia’s opposition has criticised the government’s decision to award the development contract without a tender, and said the company which will handle the construction is controlled by a senior figure in the ruling party.

The Star daily said the government had explained that there was no open tender because the special project was subject to security considerations.

Malaysia has a unique rotating monarchy shared among nine sultans, who are the royal rulers and guardians of Islam in their respective states. They each take turns to rule for five years as the nation’s king.

The current monarch, Tuanku Mizan Zainal Abidin from the northern state of Terengganu, was sworn in in 2006 at the age of 45, becoming Malaysia’s second-youngest king ever.

His current palace is a colonial mansion built in the 1920s which was originally the home of a self-made ethnic-Chinese tycoon, and was later bought by the government.

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The king of Malaysia just deprived 10,000 hungry kids food for 14 years.

Kickboxing is avoiding me.

Last Friday I tried to go kickboxing in the morning at 9.30am. I tried to sleep early so that I would be fresh and ready to go for the whole day. Woke up once at 3am to shit, and another time at 6am. Stomach wasn’t feeling so good so I knew, if I didnt’ have enough sleep, I’d not be doing well at all for the whole day. So skipped kickboxing.

Today’s plan:

5.30am – wake up

6am – leave to send Huiwen to LCCT

7am – reach LCCT and have breakfast

8pm – head to Hartamas for kickboxing class

9.30am – kickboxing class commence

11am – kickboxing class ends

12pm – lunch with client

2pm – come to Nuffnang office

8pm – meet college friends to catch up

Today’s actual day:

5.30am – wake

6am – leave to LCCT to send Huiwen

7am – have breakfast at LCCT

7.45am – Huiwen went into boarding area, I walked to car

7.50am – Arrived at car. Realized car keys not with me. Remembered that Huiwen was holding on to it for me when I took a shit. Ran back to security gate.

7.55 am – Arrived back at security gate. Asked AirAsia staff to look for Huiwen at boarding gate. Gave him her name.

8.10am – AirAsia staff came back and said no response to the name. Paged her all the way from boarding gate to plane. Me frantically running up and down to see if I can get any other help for me to be escorted into boarding area.

8.18am – gave up hope.

8.30am – Jumped onto Skybus to get back to KLsentral. On me: phone, wallet, sporting attire ready for kickboxing.

9.45am – arrived KL Sentral. Board LRT back to Taman Bahagia

10am – arrive Tmn bahagia, went home to take a shit. (real one this time, the rest were all shit scares)

10.45am – Dad sent me back to LCCT (so nice of him). Went to petrol station to buy battery for the spare key remote control

11.30am – Arrive LCCT 2nd time today. Picked up car and drove home

12.15pm – Arrive back home again. Shower.

1pm – Arrive to pick client up for lunch.

3.30pm – back to Nuffnang office.

–

Not happened yet at this point of time:

8pm – hopefully I get to go kickboxing. I’ll let you know if anything stops me again.

9pm – hanging out with college friends at hartamas, hopefully.

I guess it”s not hard to guess the first thing I did went I just got back to Malaysia. Yep, I played golf. Actually, set it up even before I got back. Hit a 102 with 5 pars. Can”t complain, can”t gloat either.

Hanging out with the Nuffies was has always been a fun thing to do here in Malaysia. So on Friday, today, after my swim, I came by to go to lunch with the Nuffies to Quans! the place pokies no download with the value lunch for RM10!

Can”t complain that the guys didn”t join in. Made me look like da-man.

Anyway, got a activity filled weekend up ahead. Huiwen will be coming and going for jazz an all that!

Choochoo came all the way from ShenZhen to visit me for a few days. I haven’t seen her since 5 years ago. So on the last night that we were here, her good friend Simon wanted to take her to the Karaoke. I came along to hang with Choochoo of course. The place was called Partyworld.

The more I spoke with Simon and Choochoo the more I keep finding out more about them and their group of friends. We already learned that Simon used to be a fashion stylist for the Zhangziyi and Michelle Yeoh’s of the China world, and his bf, Fugui, is a fashion buyers who goes to the fashion shows to pick up stuff for his butique. Yesterday I met even more of their friends at the KTV. Although I didn’t speak much with them, I sure did learn a little about what they did, and of course, their drinking games, of which I didn’t really drink much. haha.

This is a quick picture I snapped.:

This dude sitting closest to the camera is a talent agent; Simon is 2 away from him, which I learned that his first collection will be launched in his fashion show next March; his bf is sitting right in the middle with the black shirt who was the fashion buyer and butique store owner; white tshirt sitting next to him is the famous singer? which i had no idea who; and we had people from PR, and also a plastic surgery office, and more cool jobs.

They were all carrying Iphone 4s, which in China is about RMB5000-RMB6000. So, gotta be doing pretty well.

Unless of course you’re Angeline , nice new Chanel bag you got there girl!

I don’t have any pictures for this post, because I was too terrified to take out my phone camera to snap pictures.

Today was a working Saturday. The last weird weekend workday for the year I think. I did quite a bit today. Rented an office in the morning. Interviewed and hired a new Nuffie in the afternoon (will tell you more about her later), and then ChooChoo came from ShenZhen (Choochoo is the friend from Indiana University that bought me my watch for my 2004 birthday which the Thai Airport people stole from my check in luggage), so we had dinner with Juin Yi, Choochoo, her school friend from Singapore Simon and his boyfriend.

We did have some awesome dinner at this SunFeng123 restaurant. It was a SzeChuan restaurant and the food was really amazing. Then after that we headed to Sanlitun for drinks, and after that we left to …………

The Destination.

Simon and Fugui (Simon’s bf), yes Simon’s a dude took us to the biggest and most famous gay club in Beijing. They asked me, so David, have you been to a gay club. I was like, yeah we (juinyi, choochoo and i) have all been to this one at Indiana coz there are only 2 clubs at Bloomington, IN anyway. But in Bullwinkles (the gay club at Indiana, there are actually 50% of the dudes in there that are straight, and there are girls that go there for the techno music as well.

Destination is a completely different thing. It’s 99% dudes. (they don’t call it the most famous for no reason). I see loads of dudes grabbing each other, making out, podium dancing, grinding, dirty dancing, whatever you could imagine, you could see. They’re a bunch fo friendly gay people having fun. And I have no problem with them. Just that I guess I was terrified to be in their territory that was meant for them to openly express themselves. I tried my best not to make eye contact with anyone in case they took that as a different signal.

As you can imagine, we (Juinyi Choochoo and I) left shortly after and left the boys to have fun themselves there. They had a lot of friends there and I’m sure they’d have a good time.

Anyway, an experience worth sharing. I’ll be playing bowling with gay boys tomorrow!!! WOOHOOO…..

Last weekend I hung out wiht Juin yi and we decided to go try this Donkey burger near Houhai (???? Houhai is this Clarke Quay kinda place that has lotsa bars and along a river. We had dinner on the way to Houhai, then went o Houhai to find this Jazz place that I found online but never really found it. Then just walked back towards the subway station.

On the way back to the subway station, we’ve just been going into random shops to take a look.  They have a lot of random shops there that sell lotsa small little shits so Juinyi and I had nothing better to do so we went into almost every shop to just take a look. I guess we know each other so well there weren’t much to say, so we both just walk in, see, walk out, next shop, and it keeps goign on and on. hahahahah

One of the last shops that we went in, I saw a poker chipset on the floor, closed. I’m like hhmmmm…..let me just touch that, since nothing else in the store interest me. I kinda guessed that thing wasn’t for sale since it wasn’t on display and it was closed. So I touched it, and sure enough the store guy comes and say, oh that’s not for sale, we just play poker amongst ourselves everyweek, with some of our friends. HHHMmmmmmmmm…………………….I’m like…..oh reeeaaallllyyyyy???????….texas hold’em? he said yep. Oh niceeee……what kinda stakes you guys play?…and so on so forth type of poker questions. In the end, I guessed I spoke enough to signal to him to say, hey invite me over to play when you guys play dude. hahaha..

So we exchanged numbers and he said he’d call me for the next game. Crazy eh?

Don’t worry I did this in Australia before. Just finding people that play home games from meetup.com, and just call them and go to their house to play. hehehe

Today, the dude, Steven (???  called and said, hey we’re having a game, you wanna come play?

My friends thought I was crazy to go. I was thinking, how bad can it get? I’ve been to random’s places before, everyone’s always super friendly, and the stakes are small too. So I went. Alone.

Didn’t wanna take anyone’s faces, since we already know of 2 arrest stories (one in KL and one in HK). But I did have some great fun tonight. Met some cool people, played some poker, improved my mandarin, and made some money.

Can’t complain. Would probably do it again if they call. MUAHAAHAHAHAHAHAA…..

I’m at the Starbucks hanging out with a blogger and Daixia right now. The blog name is wonaerduo, like ????? That means “that ear of mine” , fua I sound like a pro in chinese now

Anyway, I think we’re getting the hang of hanging out with bloggers. Daixia, from what she told me, she doesn’t really like hanging out with people. But after meeting bloggers a few times, she seems to enjoy it. Just hanging out with them and spending time. As I’m writing this blogpost, they’re busy talking away. Each of this bloggers meeting is taking us about 2 hours. I think these bloggers really enjoy spending time with us. That’s a good thing! And I guess we can afford that now, but if later on we get more and more bloggers, we probably have to cut short the time that we spend with them!

Oh well. Let’s hope we meet more.

Branding for Lenovo there if you can notice. hehehehehe

So I was supposed to eat with Vig tonight, and he forgot last minute that he was going for dinner with his language partner. Then I called Soon Chern, who had no idea where he was going for dinner until he was there, and he still didn’t know where it was. So I was like. gahh…fuck it. I’ma go eat myself.

Just spend the whole afternoon sending a bunch of emails out to bloggers and also spamming their comment section with my introduction, so I really wanted to get out and get some fresh air. Took a shower and headed out to some shops which I thought I could explore again for food. I stay opposite this Scitech Plaza, which is kinda like a small but expensive departmental store here in Beijing.

Gosh I still haven’t learned how to take proper pictures. I’m so well known for it in Malaysia none of the bloggers or Nuffies would let me take pictures for them. Anyway, as I was walking, this girl walked up to me and started talking to me. She was pleasant, normal looking, 20+ year old, with a small jacket and a small sling bag. Straight away I sensed that she was asking for money, and yes sure enough she was. I quickly thought to pull off the “Oh what are you saying?” in English so that she’d give up hope and go get someone who actually speaks Chinese. DAmnit she was persistent, she tried speaking in English and it was broken. I knew exactly what she wanted but I didn’t wanna give in. It’s my fault for stopping to talk as well. She didn’t give up. She kept saying she was hungry and just wanted to buy something to eat. GAAAhhhhhh….I kept saying, oh. “go to the ATM” you can get money there. I guessed she didn’t get that, so she kept asking. Then she said all she wanted was 2 Yuan. I was like, gahh fine, how bad can 2 yuan be. So I took my wallet out, and FML, the smallest I had was RMB20.

My dinner tonight was RMB20 as well.

I guessed she had just as good food as I did.

——

Btw, these ? (pronounced “chuan” or “chuan’r” if you’re using the northern accent) that they sell almost everywhere are killer! They’re awesome. Some use charcoal, some use electricity, and they’re all about RMB1 each stick. Some use a manual fan to fan it, and some use hair dryers. I don’t know what’s the difference but they all give me some good shiting time after about 12 hours. Something like spinach, where after you eat it you shit more. This is China version of spinach.

I had my first Sanlitun experience 2 nights ago. Sanlitun is a bar street like a “the curve” in Malaysia or “clarke quay” at singapore. Had dinner with 16 other people which half of which i didn’t even know but it wasn’t hard to get to knwo everyone coz we starting playing ice-breaking games. Stayed out til 2am then went home.

The next night went back there again for some indian food with Klelia, Wai, Julie, Kevin, and then I invited Juin Yi, Marissa and Rachel along. After dinner we planned to watch a movie, 4 of us, but bought the ticket 1 hour earlier before the movie started. So we went to a bar and got caught in the rain.

This is us stuck under one big umbrella of a stall selling cigarrettes. From left: Wang Ting (Rachel’s roommate), Rachel. Juin yi and me.

Still made it in time for Legend of ChenZhen where Donnie Yen died. …..NOT. hahaha..yeah right how can the main role die.

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Then went to HouHai tonight with Juin yi. WAnted to look for the Jazz club there that we found online, but couldn’t find it. Will go try for it again. It has to be somewhere.

Jazz I’m looking for you.