Are we going up?

I picked this from the on-line version of the Business Times Singapore on June 8.

This is how it read:

Malaysian export figures for April were a disappointment for all those optimists looking for slower rates of decline as proof that the recession was bottoming. Exports actually contracted by a larger 26.3 per cent year-on-year - the market consensus had been minus 22.4 per cent - as opposed to minus 15.7 per cent year-on-year in March.

Malaysia’s growth in real gross domestic product (GDP) terms contracted by an unexpectedly larger 6.2 per cent. So we are seeing a similar, if not worse, trend here. Indeed, Bank Negara governor Zeti Akhtar Aziz said as much, warning that the second quarter could prove to be as damning as the first.

Should we worry? No, we should look at it, instead, as the proverbial glass being half-full.

A number of features present itself. First, it would seem that the rate of “recovery” (for want of a better word) in the region is patchy, because less painful export declines in April occurred in Hong Kong, Indonesia and South Korea.

In Malaysia’s case, the export fall in April was exacerbated by the fall in exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG), crude and refined petroleum products. The LNG falloff was worsened by a plant shutdown for maintenance purposes.

What this also tells us is that the recent commodity price gains have yet to translate into less bad commodity exports. The price rally has yet to filter into the data, and that can only be good going forward.

Meanwhile, imports fell 22 per cent year-on-year but rose almost 9 per cent month-on-month - a gain that was largely due to higher imports of intermediate and capital goods. It would appear that corporations are slowing down their rate of inventory reduction and we could see a rebound.

Indeed, we should see a return to slower export declines because the data coming in from the rest of the world indicates a snapback.

According to the Semiconductor Industry Association, global chip sales rose to US$16 billion in April – an increase of over 6 per cent, month-on-month.

The surge has been attributed to sale improvements in a number of end-users (mobile phones, for example). The personal computer market is also coming back.

The current consensus forecast is that unit sales of PCs will decline by about 6 per cent in 2009 compared to earlier forecasts of a 12 per cent decline. Similarly, the current prediction for cellphone sales in 2009 is a 7 per cent decline compared to earlier forecasts of a 15 per cent decline.

In the United States, inventories have fallen drastically, which could signal a pick-up in manufacturing going forward.

And both China and India have posted stronger-than-expected first-quarter growth, both driven by domestic consumption and infrastructure investment.

The performance of both the giant Asian economies bodes well for electrical and electronics exporters in Malaysia. As enormous consumers, they could be the tide that lifts all ships.

Given the global outlook, which seems decidedly better, the export declines going forward will narrow.

Bank Negara thinks so, predicting that things will begin turning around in the second half of the year.

Things will get better, if only because they cannot get any worse.

So, can we start buying into Bursa?

Adrenaline Driving Excitement

I am currently copying some of my movie reviews from another blog.

We Own the Night is the first of them.

A super movie to come out of Hollywood last year. Mark Wahlberg, Joachim Phoenix and Eva Mendes really hots up the screen. There was a sensational steamy scene in the beginning of the movie between Eva and Joaquim. I believe this set off Eva's rise to stardom in Hollywood.

The story is simple. A son of the current police chief, managing a club financed by a Russian drug lord battling with the police force, is forced to choose side with his family after his brother was shot and his father was killed by the drug lord.Succeed he did.

Pulsating and tense through out.

One great movie,this!

Strangers No More!

This is very interesting with a wonderful ending to boot!

A few years after I was born, my Dad met a stranger who was new to our small Texas town.From the beginning, Dad was fascinated with this enchanting newcomer and soon invited him to live with our family.The stranger was quickly accepted and was around from then on.

As I grew up, I never questioned his place in my family.In my young mind, he had a special niche.My parents were complementary instructors: Mom taught me good from evil,and Dad taught me to obey. But the stranger...he was our storyteller. He would keep us spellbound for hours on end with adventures,mysteries and comedies.

If I wanted to know anything about politics, history or science,he always knew the
answers about the past, understood the present and even seemed able to predict the future!He took my family to the first major league ball game. He made me laugh,and he made me cry. The stranger never stopped talking, but Dad didn't seem to mind.

Sometimes,Mom would get up quietly while the rest of us were shushing each other
to listen to what he had to say,and she would go to the kitchen for peace and quiet.(I wonder now if she ever prayed for the stranger to leave.)

Dad ruled our household with certain moral convictions,but the stranger never felt
obligated to honor them.Profanity, for example, was not allowed in our home... Not
from us,our friends or any visitors. Our long time visitor,however, got away with
four-letter words that burned my ears and made my dad squirm and my mother blush.

My Dad didn't permit the liberal use of alcohol.But the stranger encouraged us to try it on a regular basis. He made cigarettes look cool, cigars manly and pipes distinguished.

He talked freely about sex. His comments were sometimes blatant,sometimes suggestive, and generally embarrassing.

I now know that my early concepts about relationships were influenced strongly by
the stranger. Time after time, he opposed the values of my parents, yet he was
seldom rebuked... And NEVER asked to leave.

More than fifty years have passed since the stranger moved in with our family.He has blended right in and is not nearly as fascinating as he was at first. Still,if you could walk into my parents' den today, you would still find him sitting over in his corner, waiting for someone to listen to him talk and watch him draw his pictures.

His name?.... . .

We just call him 'TV.'

He has a wife now living we us....We call her 'Computer.'

What a perspective!

(Taken from the WWW-source unknown)

Why Go To Church?

If you're spiritually alive, you're going to love
this! If you're spiritually dead, you won't want to
read it. If you're spiritually curious, there is still
hope!

A Church goer wrote a letter to the editor of a
newspaper and complained that it made no sense to go
to church every Sunday. "I've gone for 30 years now,"
he wrote, "and in that time I have heard something
like 3,000 sermons. But for the life of me, I can't
remember a single one of them. So, I think I'm wasting
my time and the pastors are wasting theirs by giving
sermons at all."

This started a real controversy in the "Letters to the
Editor" column, much to the delight of the editor. It
went on for weeks until someone wrote this clincher:
"I've been married for 30 years now. In that time my
wife has cooked some 32,000 meals. But, for the life
of me, I cannot recall the entire menu for a single
one of those meals. But I do know this ...They all
nourished me and gave me the strength I needed to do
my work. If my wife had not given me these meals, I
would be physically dead today. Likewise, if I had not
gone to church for nourishment, I would be spiritually
dead today!"

When you are DOWN to nothing.... God is UP to
something! Faith sees the invisible, believes the
incredible and receives the impossible! Thank God for
our physical AND our spiritual nourishment!

All right, now that you're done reading, this is what you should do.

So, every time when you hear Satan knocking at your door, simply say, "Jesus, could you get that for me?"

The Beauties of Hollywood

To make this blog more attractive, it certainly needs more pictures.

So I will be adding pictures of beautiful actresses, wonderful scenery and others to pep up the blog.

To begin with I will feature four beautiful Hollywood actresses namely Julia Roberts, Charlize Theron, Elizabeth Banks and Radha Mitchell.

I consider them the best when they are in their prime though all of them continue to emit such charm even today.

Here goes. Hope you like the selection.

The Curry Antidote?

Is this true?

Eating a curry once or twice a week could help prevent the onset of Alzheimer's disease and dementia, a US researcher suggests.

The key ingredient is curcumin, a component of the spice turmeric. Curcumin appears to prevent the spread of amyloid protein plaques - thought to cause dementia-in the brain.

But the theory, presented at the Royal College of Psychiatrists' annual meeting, has been given a lukewarm reception by UK experts.

For us in the Orient, eating curry is almost a daily affair so are we really spared from Alzheimer's or is this another wild goose chase propagated by the West?

Morrie's Lesson: Marriage

So what is Morrie's take on marriage?

I remembered way back in the early 90's when I was in Sri Lanka. It was dawn when we got up. Three of us-Devendra Agochiya, Ong Ang Ieam and I sat along a corridor, faced the horizon, hoping to catch the first rays of the morning sun in Columbo. We were at the International Youth Centre, a couple of kilometers away from the city.

It was a day after the hartal, the first anniversary of the death of Rajiv Gandhi. Things were very tense in Sri Lanka then as no vehicles were allowed on the road for a day by the Little Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). If they are, they will be bombed! I am digressing.

I remembered Ong asking Agochiya this,"What is marriage?"

"It's a commitment," Agochiya replied.

So when I read this word" commitment" in Tuesdays with Morrie, I am again transported back to the halcyon days I was in this troubled island state.

So what are the pointers from Morrie on marriage?

A general statement first-almost everyone has problems in marriage; so you are not alone.

Morrie's pointers are

Firstly, marry someone who has the same set of values

Secondly, respect your partner always

Thirdly, be open to your partner

Finally,learn how to accommodate and compromise

Why is marriage important to us all?

He says we need someone to care or to be cared in our hours of pain like in times of sickness. Friends can be dear and near but they are not at hand all the time. They is no substitute for a family and its members.

Morrie says that marriage was a commitment for him and his generation. Today, that no longer holds true. The younger generation seems to get in and out of marriages and divorce is almost a norm.

Morrie contends that partners jumped into marriage out of selfishness. Actually they do not know themselves well when they jumped into holy matrimony. So,what would you expect-when you do not know your own self well, can you actually know your partner well or care to know the partner well? Do they actually know who they are marrying?

What does marriage do?

Marriage test us.

It allows us to know ourselves and to know who is the other person.

It allows us to accommodate any differences.

His advice: Every one should marry. If not, they are missing out a lot.

Morrie likes to quote W.H. Audern: Love each other or perish.

Remember the other saying?

It's better to have loved and lost than not to have loved at all?

Taps in the Economy

How do you make a layman understand what brings cash into the Malaysian economy?

A simple analogy is through the taps scenario.
So how many taps are there that flows in cash into the Malaysian economy?

Off my head, these are the ones.

Manufacturing
Construction/Housing
Tourism/Hotels
Plantation and Commodities
Tertiary Services
Others

What are the main elements of manufacturing? The bulk of it is Electrical and Electronics in the free trade zones in the form of semiconductors. The others could range from textiles to automobiles assembly, furniture to component manufacturing.

Construction and housing refers mainly to highway construction,civil works for the government and the private sectors and housing projects.

Tourism are for inbound, air transportation,hotel accommodation,restaurants, tourist destinations and theme parks.

Plantation and commodities refers to oil palm, rubber, timber, pepper, minerals and crude oil and gas.

Tertiary services include transportation, banking, shipping,and insurance.

Others will include health services, health tourism and education.

So how did Malaysia fare in the first quarter of 2009?

Every tap gave less cash except for construction which added 0.5% more. Manufacturing took a beating losing 17 sen to a ringgit. All the rest were negative in contribution.

The jury came in with a minus 6.6% contraction.

So what about Q2?

So say we will still be swimming in red ink but may be not as great a volume as in Q1.

So let us wait for late July or early August for the figures to show.

Give us Moola Direct!

So why is the Malaysian government not doing what Japan, Australia and Thailand has done?

To expedite economic growth, these three governments have decided to give outright cash to its citizens.

Why? So that they can spend,spend and spend to quickly bring back growth to the local economy.

The Malaysian way? Stimulus packages are implemented in a too round-about way and will not get to the people who really needs it.

Perhaps only to the contractors. Sad, sad,sad.

So, please consider giving outright cash gifts-it certainly works.

Give more to the senior citizens as they are badly affected by the gila inflation and the siow low interest rate.

We are waiting.....

Studying in Malaysia

I was posed this question.

How does one get a student visa to study English in Malaysia?

"Where is the student from?" I enquired.

"China," came the reply.

So I asked around.

Not a difficult process.

This is how it goes.

Call up any institute offering Adult English classes.

Ask them whether they take in foreign students from China.

If the answer is affirmative, the institute itself will do the processing with the Immigration Department for a student visa as well as obtain security clearance with the Ministry of Home Affairs.

I will get back to my friend on this.

Teaching Bahasa Malaysia

A friend asked me whether I could teach him Bahasa Malaysia as he needed it to converse with investing partners in Kelantan. However, he could not spend much time with me. So face-to-face contact is out.

So I suggested using cyberspace. What I would do is to teach him words thematically.

Take for example the word-makan. It means to eat.

Next, add prefixes and suffixes to it.

The common ones would do. The words generated could range from: makanan (food), dimakan(to be eaten), bermakan (to eat-depends on context), memakan(to eat-depends on context), pemakanan (nutrition,diet)and so forth.

Then these words will be shown its usage in the literal form. For example:

Mereka sedang bermakan dengan kawan-kawan sepejabat. (They are eating with their office mates.)

The usage in figurative sentences are also provided. For example:

Kita bukan orang kaya. Kita makan gaji.(We are not rich. We work for a salary)

I have yet to get a response from my friend on this mode of teaching.

Nordic Time-Warp

Just saw Outlander as my afternoon matinee.

Out of sheer greed,an intergalactic race seized upon a planet owned by ghastly giant bug-like creatures called the Moorwens. Unfortunately, they failed to kill all of them and one of these creatures stowed away on the protagonist's spaceship when it crashed into the Nordic Coast of Planet Earth.

How he came to be accepted by the Norse,fought alongside with them in their battles, married the King's daughter and finally became king is a short brief of the plot. Nothing really great about the movie except that it could have borrowed wholesale the monster in the Alien movie.

Quite predictable and lack thrills.

Stars: James Caviezel, Sophia Myles and Jack Huston. No great acting performances here.