BooooooN!!!

Half Kuala Lumpurian, Half Penangite, Another 0.01 Singaporean

the OLD must GO…

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It’s a long 1.5 years at https://boonming.wordpress.com/ and thanks everyone for spending your time to be with me, high and low.

I am moving to http://boonming.com/ for a brand new start!

 

So from now on, remember it’s

BOONMING.com

Please change your bookmark or link to my new address. 🙂

Written by Boon Ming

March 12, 2009 at 9:00 pm

Posted in Updates

My Darling Tibby!! (Nokia 5800)

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My Darling has finally arrived. (actually 1 week ago)

Photos are not taken directly from my darling. My darling a bit shy ’cause still new here.=)

Being the first touchscreen phone from Nokia. My darling has definitely caught my and a lot of other people’s eyes!!

I am sorry for posting up this late because I am afraid that my parents will find this out but since in anyway they are going to find this out so I decided to post this up now. =P

Sorry daddy and mummy I really cannot save for this one! =(

I will die die diet until I save more on other stuff lah… I cannot live without my darling already…

 

More update and review coming up!! So stay tuned!!

Written by Boon Ming

March 12, 2009 at 8:44 am

My Article

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Hey all NTU students out there, please grab a copy of Nanyang Tribune starting from now as I will be covering a special column called “Touching Heart”. This column is cater to increase the awareness of volunteerism among the students.

For this issue, my “Nobel Prize Runner-Up” article was published with honor. Hope you can support my every issue! =P

Click the image for the full article.

Written by Boon Ming

March 12, 2009 at 8:29 am

The Budget Airlines Battle

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Thanks to the budget airlines available nowadays. It is no longer a dream for someone average poor like me to fly to places that were once inaccesible by land transportation. Moreover, it is so cheap now that you can even use it to replace the typical land transportation!

With the rise of Air Asia in the region, Malaysians are happy to see chances to go for longer and better holidays to better location even with their limited budgets.

Destinations

To be honest, the three major budget airlines that I am going to discuss later has their own interesting points.

 Air Asia

Being one of the most successful Malaysian company in the world, I am definitely happy to promote Air Asia to you all. In fact, for all the 6 flights that I’ve taken in the  past 2 years, it’s all Air Asia. One of the major reasons I chose them was just because I am staying in KL and thus very near to take the flight there. 

Air Asia has definitely expanded huge enough now, with future flights to Taiwan and more China’s destinations are definitely a very interesting thing to see for a Malaysian like me! =P You know what’s the BEST thing here?! Flying to London now may cost you less than RM1500 for 2-way!! How amazing isn’t it?!

 

 Tiget Airways

Well Tiger Airways is quite similar to Jet Star so I would focus more there. =P

 

 JetStar

Another budget airline (Australian company based in Singapore) that actually served quite a lot of interesting places. Where else you can get two-way ticket from Singapore-Perth for only SGD178 all-inclusive???!! (That’s like RM400!!!) If you’re going to Australia for a fun holidays, I would recommend JetStar!!

By looking at the destinations that each airlines can offer, obviously Air Asia beat the other two by offering more choices to other places while Jetstar is concentrating on both Australia and New Zealand. But JetStar still need to work more on as those who stay in KL and Singapore still cannot access direct flight to New Zealand.

Air Asia, being the first budget airline in the region surely has an advantage in exploring new routes and thanks to their effort we can now fly to Europe and Beijing!!

So Air Asia wins the first round!!

Air Asia 1 – JetStar 0 – Tiger 0

 

 

KL – Singapore

I am going to focus on the air fares particularly on the route KL-Singapore on March 30 to make a comparison on their usual charges. There is no annouced promotion for any of the three budget airlines (Air Asia, Jet Star and Tiger Airways) thus far and I am just purely searching through for their ‘normal’ price and what they can offer me if I decided to go back suddenly from KL – Singapore (or vice versa) in a 2 week advanced notice.

First, their price.

i. Ticket ‘Base’ Price

I browsed through 3 airlines for a ticket from KL to Singapore on March 30 and chose roughly the same time for the lowest airfare that they can offer. Surprisingly all of them offer a very good and low price even there is no promotion! In fact both JetStar and Tigerairways offer ZERO-AIRFARE while Air Asia lost a little bit with RM1.00 price ticket just slightly lgging behind.

But… !!!

Air Asia

Tiger Airways

Jet Star

I bet you can see the difference now clearly. Though both JetStar and Tiger offer zero airfare, their admin charges and taxes are obviously higher than Air Asia. Eventually the air fares become…

Air Asia – RM48.50

Tiger – RM57.00

Jet Star – RM68

Airasia wins again this round by clear mile!! Followed by Tiger.

Ticket ‘Base’ Price: 

Air Asia 3 (+2) – JetStar 0 – Tiger 1 (+1)

 

 

 

ii. Food Menu

Again, I browsed through the 3 airlines for their food. To be honest with you, I’ve not tasted all three of them and so I cannot judge them by taste. But I searched through their menu and the results are …

Air Asia

Since last year they have revamped their menu and now it has quite a variety of food available from local delicacy like Nasi Lemak to Western Chicken Folicia. “Heavier” meal costs RM7 if you booked online together with your ticket and RM9 if you bought it onboard. Quite reasonable I can say.

Tiger

Surprisingly there is no “heavy” or hot food served onboard. I’m not sure whether it’s good or not but the price seemed reasonable for a Singaporean but much more expensive than the already-expensive-AirAsia’s food.

The only good thing is that… They serve liquor onboard while Air Asia don’t… (Air Asia X do serve liquors) But doesn’t matter as I’m not an alcoholic and I can live without alcohol for a simple few hours flight!!

JetStar

Tell you what. Their menu is so mysterious that I cannot find anything on what they served onboard (for short course) but based on the internet user review. Thumbs down! I give them a thumb down too for not disclosing anything on the internet!! Oh gosh?!! What era is this?? Is your food so mysterious that you want to keep it secret to surprise your passengers onboard?!!

 

Definitely go for Air Asia for their HOT FOOD and reasonable price!!

Air Asia 4  – JetStar 0 – Tiger 1

 

 

iii. Add-On Services

And there are lots of add-on services like seat selection, luggae add-on, insurance etc that just work the same way like your Telecommunication Company that plan to suck as much money from you as possible. Anyway I’m going to explain how it worked in these 3 airlines.

For all 3 airlines basically they worked roughly the same in Seat Selection where you select a seat that you like, pay a nominal fee and there you go!

Air Asia just introduced this system 1 or 2 months ago and this definitely relieved their passengers as I need not to walk faster or run or splint or jump or scream or whatever to get on the plane fast enough to get a window seat.(Anyway window seat isn’t any better either..) Simple enough, pay RM25 for ‘special’ seat or RM5 for other seats.

Tiger charges the most expensive fee for seat selection. That’s RM12.50 for standard seat and RM62.50 for ‘HOT’ seat. Hot your head!!

For Jet Star, they only charge if you are choosing those ‘special’ seat for RM45. It’s RM20 more expensive but what’s good about their system is that they don’t charge for all other normal seat that you choose. How good, aren’t they?! It’s like the dracula’s fangs have reached your neck so close that they just let you go ’cause they stok stok don’t want to suck your blood anymore. (maybe they suck somewhere else…)

 

Other add-on services offered by Air Asia are insurance that comes with the online booking system which allows you to suck the money back from them if they ever fuck mess up with your holiday schedule with plane delay, luggage trouble or etc. And the bus service from KL Sentral is a lot cheaper if you booked together in the online booking system for just RM6.50 (normal price RM9). 

Do you want to buy a medical box onboard?!

Air Asia just won’t let go of a chance to earn the money…

 

Really… Air Asia is my BIG CHOICE kicking the other 2 airlines’ asses so hard!!! Now I shall annouce the winner of this battle…

 

To be fair, all the data I’ve got are at the time of publication of this log post was made. If any of the marketing officer from the any other airlines that would like to make clarification or sponsorship or anything, you may do so via my email address that you can find on the top right corner of this blog.

Since Air Asia did not pay for this post. I cannot let them win so easily!!

*****Air Asia Marketing Officer can choose pay certain amount of premium to take down the section below*****

Try Malaysia Airlines too!! They are having promotion too!! Though the price is more expensive but what you get is totally different!!

I’ve checked. Air Asia ticket final price costs me RM55.50 w/ food w/o insurance. While the better service MALAYSIA AIRLINES offer you RM99 for all the comfort that you may get onboard. Choose yourself!!

 


Food Review: Ya Kun Kaya Toast

with 3 comments

Walao eh…

The moment I walked into this coffee shop, the price is like SLAPPING me on the face.

Ouch!! That hurts!!

To be honest with all of you la… The taste of kaya toast, coffee, half-boiled eggs, can it be much different than those in the common KOPITIAM ?? How good is it that you willing to pay way so much for this?!

Well I am not a breakfast or KOPI type of person and so I am in no position to comment on that. But to me it’s just no worth it at all.

For what you want to “upgrade” the usual chinese kopitiam to STARBUCKS-like class and increase the price like there’s no tomorrow to earn money anymore?!!

So I am giving back a SLAP to them.

Nah!! Give you back!!

I can simply get a similar version of the same food for just SGD1.50 to SGD2.00 in my campus or SGD2.50 in any kopitiam outside.

Conclusion: Based on the price itself… 

Written by Boon Ming

March 10, 2009 at 3:24 am

Posted in Food Review, Singapore, Updates

Tagged with ,

it’s GOOD to be here…

with 2 comments

After a week of sorrowful atmosphere in the campus, I urge you to watch this before we proceed further.

 

Well.. It’s GOOD to be here, isn’t it?

 

If you think that there’s nothing left for you to care, think again…

 

If you feel hopeless, think again…

The Best Things in Life aren’t THINGS

 

If Nick Vujicic, can do it. Why can’t we?

If you think it’s the end for you… How about him?

Imagine, what would you do…

 

Usually when we lost a game we would swear to our heart that we tried so hard yet we couldn’t get what we wanted. When we jealous of something over another person that we couldn’t get. When we tried to hard to complain of our lives that we never get satisfied with.

“Argghhh~~~ My results sucks big time!!”

“My parents won’t pay me for the school trip…”

“My friends bullied me..”

… …


Remember, time passes. No matter what you do. One second of anger. One second of jealousy. One second of sorrow.

We have to spend the time anyway, why not spend it in a meaningful way? Or simple — HAPPY WAY??

 

Yes, Life is full of mess and craps that we need to take care of. But not just you! WE ALL NEED TO TAKE CARE OF OUR OWN MESS! But what makes the difference is HOW you face your mess…

Turn around, look it at another angle. It might be all different…

Enjoy loving others and enjoy being loved. Appreciate life! Because it’s so GOOD you can be here.

VERIFIED: Another Suicide in NTU

with 17 comments

Update:

============================

Verified: The second death in NTU has been confirmed as a suicide case and that just made everything even scary!!

Source: http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/413708/1/.html

11.40am: NTU President has sent an email to NTU population of this latest incident. But inside his email there is no further clarification on the cause of death. Also remained unknown is the nature of death whether it is suicide or by accident or natural death. I shall not come into any conclusion, but to express my condolences to the family of the passed-way. Another incident in NTU in not even a week. That’s creepy…

Dear Faculty, Staff and Students, 

It is with a heavy heart that I inform you that one of our colleagues, Mr Zhou Zheng, an infocomm project officer was found to have passed away in an apartment at Nanyang Heights at about 10.50pm on Friday, 6 March 2009. The Dean of Students, the university counselling professionals and other senior university officers were on site immediately to offer support and counsel.

The university is deeply saddened by the tragic loss of one of our staff. Mr Zhou’s family has been notified. We are doing our utmost to help his family and friends, residents at Nanyang Heights and anyone in the NTU community that may be traumatised by what has happened in our campus this week.

The university board of trustees, management and the NTU community, send our heartfelt condolences to the family of the late Mr Zhou. We will extend every assistance to the family to help ease their pain.

We shall rally together and pull through this difficult period.

DR SU GUANING
PRESIDENT

=============================

It has not been confirmed yet. I dare not to comment anything. But when I woke up this morning, 2 friends had told me about this incident that happened in Nanyang Height again.

Another jumping/suicide incident had happened in NTU. That makes it 2 cases not even in a full 1 week!!! Now that’s creepy!!

I had been worried that the previous incident might have effect or trigger a series of actions that has no return, hopefully this news is just some fake news.

Let’s pray. If not NTU will be full of haunted spirits. Or the management might decide to put safety nets all over the campus to aoivd these kind of incident again. I will keep you all posted on the updates.

No…

Written by Boon Ming

March 7, 2009 at 10:47 am