A Potong(Proton) in NZ!

I was walking home from school, and guess what I saw?



Front side wiew.

Yes! I thought my eyes were sot, but no, it was true, and right there in front of me!


It is a Proton Saga! A real Proton Saga, complete with Proton badge and all! In New "cheap car land" Zealand! Its amazing!

Acctually, when you think about it, its not that weird. NZ was one of the earliest export markets for Proton, so its only natural that there are Proton cars here. But cars are insanely cheap here. I have no idea why would anyone want to buy this hunk of metal.


Rear view. There was something weird about the back, so I looked a little closer......


I'm not sure if its clear on this pic. Click for a larger image. It says "Imported by Mitsubishi Motors New Zealand Limited"! Gosh, I think Mitsubishi did everything for Potong, from design to engine to building to exporting the cars! No wonder poor Mitsubishi is in the red. I think its all from listening to Mahathir.


I'm very scared when I see this. Back home it says "lulus". But whatever language it comes in, I dont trust the quality of Potong cars. They may claim it "lulus" or "ok" but people want "Excelent" or "cermelang" cars, not cars that just pass........


Comes with power windows. Dunno whether they work. Proton cars are notorious for their non-working power windows. Proton is the only car maker in the world that gives a 3 year warranty on their Savvy power windows. And their savvy aint that great anyway. Says volumes really......


Its old. Very old......... its older than some of the people I know........


The inside of the car. Manual gear. Sorry for the bad pic; damn reflection.


Click if its not clear. The car has gone around 1,859,627KM. Its not that clear on this resized pic, but its clearer in the ori high res picture. 1.9 mil KM in 14 yrs?!

I dunno what would make people here buy a Potong car, unless it was given free. Cars are insanely expensive in Malaysia, but amazingly cheap here. Example? The Honda Odyssey. Its a MPV like the Avanza. But has 1.5 times the space, twice the power of the Avanza, and the bast part? Its HALF the price of the AVANZA! Yes, u can pick up a new Odyssey for NZ$18,000, which is RM45,000. The avanza is RM 65,000.

Go figure. Damn Rafidah!

Auckland, part 2

Part 2 of the Downtown Auckland series. More pics as usual. Please view this page with a fast connection.


I just stupidly resized all my images of downtown auckland, so the images of part 1 and 2 are now permanently 400x 300 size. Didnt make a backup.


Huge ship by the Quay. Heard that crusies are quite popular here.


If u look closely at the bottom left, it says "This product contains peanuts." Well duh! How can anyone eat satay with no peanuts! Ang mo's...........

Just one side rant:when the British came, they laft sensible names for things like satay. Anyone can pronounce that. Correctly.

But came along DBP, and it HAD to change "satay" to "sate". WTH? No one I know can pronounce "sate" at all! Damn Malaysian beaucrats and "nationalists"......



Some huge yatch of importance. Its insanely huge! Makes a good shade too.



Sorry. I resized it the wrong way. So now it looks squashed. i didnt have a backup, so this is all I have left. Essentially, its an important boat that won NZ some things. I'm not a yatching fan, so I cant say. The thing is 35.4 m long!

This was outside the National Marintime Museum. I didnt go in. Still waiting for my student card to get discounted entry.

While walking along Queen street, I saw my first protest!


It was a group of people making a hell of noise outside a building. Cant really remember what they were protesting, but it all boiled down to empowering the unions, having higher pay, and secure jobs. Sure, we all want that, but you'll never see this in Malaysia. Not with our ISA.



They held up place cards and kept shouting, while one guy was shouting into a bull horn. They called for higher pay. Many people stopped to look at them. but not the drivers. The reason the cars are stationary is the light was red.


Traffic kept flowing even as they held place cards saying "Honk if you support us" Quite a few motorists did. This is not Malaysia. NZ drivers are amazing. They dont be keh poh. They dont slow down just to see an accident, much less a protest. In Malaysia, this road will be jammed up with all the people slowing down to look!



A flattened sky tower. This was taken as I approached it on Victoria street.



Saw this billboard just near the sky tower. When Jeremy Clarkson says something, everone takes it to heart.

Part 3 coming in a not so recent soon time.

Down town Auckland Part 1

Heres my long over due report on central Auckland. I went down town to central Auckland on the 3rd week of Feb. Took a bus. The fare was NZ$6 one way, so going and coming back would make it $12. Please dont convert. Buses here may seem not that cheap, but they are 100 times more realible than Malaysian buses, 5 times for comfortable, and freezing! (It was so cool that day, dunno why they need to turn on the Aricond!)

No1: They have a timetable. Try asking that from any Malaysian bus company
No2: They come more or less on time on the time table. The longest I had to wait was 10 mins more than the time said on the timetable. Still can.

Oh, and 56k'ers, be VERY scared of the next few posts. Filled with images.




Heading towards to Central Auckland. You can see the suburbs give way to the city view.




Slowed down by road works. Thats the bus driver, and his machine. You give the bus driver your fare, and he gives u a ticket as a receipt. The cash box is below the button machine thinggi.

Oh, and heres one tip to all going overseas, be it Australia, NZ, England or what ever: Learn cantonese. 出国之前，学广东话。因为外国的华人都是广东人！Chinese here=cantonese! You'ee see why when you continue reading............

Something quite interesting happened on the way to the city for me. This old chinese lady came up on the bus, and clearly, she couldnt speak English very well. She told the driver she wanted to go to Green Lane. Despite its name, its a district of Auckland, not a road. The bus driver asked which part of Green Lane. Its a big place. Seeing communication problems, she took out a piece of paper that read "I want to go to Green Lane please".

Didnt do much good. So the bus driver just gave her a figure to pay up (money talks in any language), and she got on the bus. I was looking at her all the time, watching the "drama" unfold. She got her seat, and the bus moved on.

5 mins into the ride, she turned to me, and spoke out rapid fire Cantonese!

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

One thing I regret now is not learning any cantonese while in Kuching. Through living in the Hokkien capital of Malaysia didn't need me to learn it. Watching all those TVB dramas didnt work either: kept reading the subtitles all the time.

Despite this through, I could understand 40% of what she said, which was most probably "Do you know if this bus goes to Green lane?" after I applied some error correction. I told her: “你会讲华语吗？” She was taken aback a bit, and after 30 secs she said "会讲一点。”

Anyway, the subsequent conversation was mixed with Cantonese and just reconisable 普通话，as she called it. I read the piece of paper, and after some talking, I found out she was from Guangzhou! Mainland chinese, yet dunno how to speak 普通话. What is it with these Cantonese? They keep speaking cantonese, while Hokkien is almost dead in Xiamen......

The bus driver then asked me:"ask her where she wants to go." So I then became The Intepretor, who cant speak Cantonese. Somehow it worked, and I managed to deduce that she waned to go to a place near the chinese enbassy along the great south road that goes through Green Ln.

With this, and after she managed to reconise the road after we hit Ellerslie (no, I still cant pronounce that either!), she managed to get to her destination. We passed the embassy and after 5 stops, she got off. Not very "near" the chinese embassy.

Moral of this story: LEARN CANTONESE!

Anyway, back to the trip heading to Auckland....


The bus went through Auckland U, this is the North Part of the U, just befor the city center. Couldnt get any good pics of Auckland U through. Must be great; having a U in the middle of the city!



Arrived at The Britomart bus station. This is how the bus stop of my bus looks like. Bus stop D12, and it tells you how long agak agak you hav to wait b4 the net bus comes. Dunno why the display ended up like this on the camera.

So I went to the nearest shopping center. Downtown shopping Center, which is is next to the bus terminal, which is next to a Queen Elizabeth Square. Went in, had a look around, and saw this:


MALAYSIAN FOOD!!!!!!!!!

I'll let the pics do the talking.



Laksa at NZ$8. (RM 20) Nasi lemak at the same price. Note to hawkers: EMIGRATE TO NZ ASAP! EARN 5 TIMES MORE!

I'm scared to eat Malaysian food here. Looks suspect, and costs 4 times more........... I want my favourite kolo mee stall! RM2.50 (NZ$ 1!) a bowl.

Anyway, got out after a while, and walked along Quay street, which is next to the port. If you walk an extra down, away from the touristy area, you can see the docks, complete with warehouses and semi-industrial areas. Very run down, and dubious looking.


My first view of the Sky tower! More on that to come!


Saw this bus. Its a tourist bus. This is the only double decker bus I saw. You pay $2.50 to get on one, but there is a running commentry on the bus, pointing out the points of interests. I didnt go; remember, I'm just a poor student here!

And where the hell is Parnell? Its not a MAS destination.



This is the ferry building. You buy your tickets here and board it here. Nothing really interesting really here, unless youre taking a ferry. A you can see, it was noon when I walked around.


End of part 1. Part 2 to come soon!

Auclkand city

Still tired, but has a good sleep in this morning.

Went down to central Auckland last week. Took tons of pics, but heres just a teaser pic while I try and finish my homework.

Results.......

This is sad..... very sad.......

Only 3 people replied, my sis, Cryst and Vallentina!

Surely I know more people than that!

Anyway, my sis said: "theyre chinese lah!!!so duh..."

Cryst said: " i think they either chinese or japs. or maybe mixed chinese and jap living in japan."

Vallentina said: "i tink there r Koreans."


Well, guess what? What are these girls? Are there Chinese, Japanese or Korean?

Well, they are...................


CHINESE!

Dont believe? Look at this website. The original source for the pics.......


If you were observent, and paid close attention to this pic:


Click for larger view

You would see the chinese words in the background in Mc Donalds!

Compare and see what u missed!:

MAS plane skids off the runway at Kuching Airport

The original article here. Heres an archived copy of it from the NST on my blog:

MAS plane skids off the runway at Kuching Airport


KUCHING, Sun: A MALAYSIA Airlines (MAS) Airbus A330 skidded when it was preparing to take off from the Kuching International Airport today.

In the 11.15am incident, the Kuala Lumpur-bound flight MH2507 aircraft’s front wheel was stuck in the soil at the end of the runway while making a U-turn.

The incident caused the runway to be closed for a few hours and several flights to be rescheduled

I got word of it from a realible source when they closed KIA for a few hours, affecting flights even 10 hrs later! Some MAS pilot we have!

A quick run on google news shows 3 items, from Bernama and Malaysiakini. Have a look at the Bernama report, time stamped 19 Feb 2006 at 7.53pm!

MAS Plane Skids At Kuching Airport

A Malaysia Airlines Airbus A330 skidded off the runway when preparing for take-off at the Kuching International Airport. Pix: Hairul

KUCHING, Feb 19 (Bernama) -- A Malaysia Airlines (MAS) Airbus A330 skidded off the runway when preparing for take-off at the Kuching International Airport here Sunday.

Flight MH2507 was getting ready to depart for Kuala Lumpur when the aircraft's front tyre got stuck in the soil at the end of the runway while making a U-turn at 11.05 am.

None of the passengers or crew was injured in the incident.

Also on board the plane were Deputy Transport Minister Datuk Douglas Uggah and several state executive councillors who had attended the Barisan Nasional Backbenchers Retreat Programme here that concluded Sunday.

Kuching Airport Manager Abang Abdullah Abang Joss confirmed the incident but declined to give details.

Following the incident, the runway was closed until 4 pm, forcing the cancellation of two flights and the rescheduling of several others.

Sarawak Deputy Chief Minister Tan Sri Alfred Jabu, after being briefed by Abang Abdullah, told reporters that about 1,000 passengers on 18 local and international flights were stranded in Kuching due to the closure of the airport.

Sixteen flights to Kuching were also affected, said Jabu, who is State Infrastructure Development and Communications Minister.

"The Department of Civil Aviation (DCA) is investigating the cause of the incident," he said.

Uggah commended the pilot and crew for their calm handling of the situation.

"We were told that the aircraft was waiting for the signal to depart and after 30 minutes of waiting at the end of the runway, we were told that the aircraft was having a technical problem and we got off the airplane in stages calmly," he said.

A passenger, Zuliati Sapawi, 30, said: "The aircraft was stuck at the end of the runway until 11.20 am during which time I could feel the aircraft moving forward and backward, trying to dislodge."

Ten minutes later, and after several attempts, all passengers and crew were told to disembark through the emergency doors.

-- BERNAMA

And of course, the independent pro-opposition press has to say something.......

Ground-level problems with MAS pilots
SAM
Feb 20, 06 5:22pm


As I sit at my desk today, (Sunday, Feb 19) reading one of your letters about the efficiency and accountability of Proton and MAS, I can clearly see the MAS’ Airbus for the 11.05am flight from Kuching to Kuala Lumpur stuck at the end of the runway of Kuching Airport where it has been for the past three hours or so.

It is surrounded by lots of people scratching their heads and with a crane and tractor rather carefully (I hope) trying to dig the nose wheel of the aircraft out of the mud.

What has clearly happened is that whilst the aircraft was taxiing and turning at the end of the runway prior to takeoff, the pilot misjudged the situation and ran off the tarmac runway and onto the soft apron at the end. Not unexpectedly, the nose wheel has sunk and the aircraft is now firmly stuck and the airport has been closed with no takeoffs or landings for the past three or more hours.

This is clearly an embarrassment for the pilot and of course for MAS. But there is a bit more to it than that. We have the right to ask whether MAS is properly exercising its duty of care to the public if it allows its pilots to be so lax and incompetent that they can't even drive the aircraft properly on the ground in just a two dimensional situation?

What happens when 'up and down' is added to the equation in addition to 'forward and back' and 'left and right'?

I feel sad for the pilot who was clearly thinking of something else at the time (maybe he missed his morning laksa). But on a more serious note, can MAS assure all citizens that this particular pilot and co-pilot will be suspended indefinitely and sent for a refresher courses on simulators etc?

They should not be allowed to fly again with real passengers on board until they have satisfied the most stringent standards with respect to all aircraft operations - taxiing as well as flying!

What have they done with my beloved KIA? Sheesh, I know MAS has financial difficulties, but surely a pilot is above all the political junk bickering?

Well, looks like Ting Pek King has more ammuniation to push for the upgrade of KIA: "our runway is not long enough!" I dunno, we had 747's in KIA with no muddy problems........

I'm still tired, but I had to blog about this!

Recording voice with Audacity

Want to record your voice? Or anything? Sure, theres Windows voice recoder, if u dont mind a nice BIG wav file! There are a few mp3 voice recoders here and there, but there are hardly any free software to just record. Most of them seem to be able to do mixing to audio editing. When all we want is to record our Voice!

Well, theres Open source, and its a program thats fairly easy to use. Its the encoding to MP3 thats the difficult part. I could go on why for the next hour or so, but basically it all boils down to patents. The mp3 format is patented and copyrighted. All programs who want to use it have to pay a royalty. Is the decoding (playing mp3's) that u dont need a royalty. Its the recording. Dont ask me how. I'm just typing what I know.

Anyway, U need

-audacity
-LAME
-ninghua.blogspot.com
-a microphone

Step one : download audacity here. Chose the stable builds, but even the betas can be quite stable. But it doesnt really matter. Were just recording voice. Beta, final, its all the same.

Step 2: find and download the LAME mp3 encoder. Try google, or this site. Its a zip file. Just pick any one of the mirrors. Its all the same.

step 3: Install audacity. If you cant do this, u dun deserve to be next to a computer.

step 4: Extract the files from the LAME zip file to the folder you installed audacity. If its c:\audacity, plonk it in there.



Step 5:run audacity. Record some voice. Anyting will do. This first test is to just get the mp3 encoder working. Look at the above pic to see how It looks like.



Step 6: Like the above pic, click file and hit export as mp3.



Step 7: This should pop up when you try to save what you just recorded. You have to find the LAME mp3 decoder library. So hit Yes.



Step 8: browse to the LAME folder in the directory where you installed audacity. Find lame_enc.dll and select it.

Thats it! You should be able to save your recorded voice as a mp3 file now! What you want to do with it, is all your choice.

I know audacity has MUCH MUCH more features than just recording voice, but I'm too lazy and not interested to know. If you want to learn, there are plenty of help on the net, and you can use this guide as a stepping stone to start using it.

Thats it! Have fun!