I got my husband to cancel our home broadband subscription recently to opt for a more affordable package which will be installed in a week’s time. At the moment, I am blogging through my mobile Internet connection.

See those stuff? That white 3G modem costs me RM 788.00 and the EDGE PC card costs RM 999.00. Therefore, I’m supposed to be lucky (sort of) that I’m able to test both 3G and EDGE connections. The reality is, I’m only able to experience Digi’s EDGE and Celcom’s crappy GPRS, because Celcom’s 3G coverage doesn’t include the area where I live in.

Both Digi EDGE and Celcom GPRS claim to have the same speed of around 300+ kbps. In terms of actual line quality, though, Digi’s claim seems to closer to the truth compared to Celcom’s data transfer of only around 5 kbps or so. Imagine how “fast” Celcom’s 3G speed claim of 3 Mbps would be? I might as well go dial-up, rather than risk a severe heart attack and migraine from waiting too long for a web page to finish loading.

KICK-ASS, is what this movie is all about! I haven’t seen a movie as exciting as this since Speed (yes, it’s up there in my all time favourite action movie) and The Matrix, with its unique storyline and amazing camera and action effects. Even with all the censored four-letter words being made on this movie, it hasn’t affected how amazing yet violent this movie is. I won’t give you any spoilers, as this movie is too amazing to talk. You need to go watch this yourself! Now!

Malaysia is currently in a fury and flurry over the the recent overnight price hikes over fuel by almost 50% beginning today, due to the pull-out of government subsidies. However, I’m more distraught by the fact that Malaysia, and especially Sabah, hasn’t tried to promote alternatives like initiating the use of biofuel or natural gas for our vehicles.

My state of Sabah is the largest producer of palm oil in Malaysia, which causes Malaysia to become the largest palm oil producer in the world. And yet no one, not even the state government, the state media and anyone else in this state ever brought this alternative fuel matter up?! Was it my imagination, or did I read an article a year or two ago in the local papers about the success our Malaysian R&D in creating bio-diesel out of palm oil, ready for commercial use, and how it doesn’t require any modification to our car engines in order to use them? And several months ago, didn’t Malaysian TV stations aired ads featuring a prominent company selling off car fuel in the middle of nowhere and getting its fuel source from palm oil trees? Why aren’t we seeing them implemented already?

My trip five years ago to Kuala Lumpur brought me to experience riding an airport taxi cab that was fueled by natural gas (yes, like the ones we use for our cooking stoves); we even stopped by a gas station with a natural gas pump, and I had the pleasure of fascinatingly watching how the pressurized refueling works. So it’s been so many years down the road, and no initiative from the fuel companies nor car companies to implement them on a wide scale.

And where are our hybrid cars?! We claim to have two local car manufacturers, something that not all our neighboring Asian countries — not even Singapore — can claim to have, and none of them have the brains to develop and produce a hybrid?! Aren’t those companies suppose to be tight partners with the likes of Daihatsu and Mitsubishi of Japan, that they even show off those Japanese companies’ logos in several of their publications?

Malaysians should stop whining, and instead invest our energies in aggressively getting all these alternatives up. Sabah, especially, are rich in all sorts of natural resources (including mineral oil and timber — heck, we can even set up a fossil fuel powered electricity plant, which goes to show how much mineral oil we can make by ourselves) and can benefit much from these changes — once the Federal government give in to our state’s demand to increase the royalties out of the sale of these resources, something Sabah has been cheated out of for as long as I can remember.

My recent bloghopping led me to AhKong.net’s post of how to save money in electricity bills in Malaysia. The post recommends that you use a power-saving gadget to lower the cost. The gadget itself costs around RM350, which I’m sure is a good investment in the long run if the gadget does work.

However, there is an easier and FREE way to save in electricity bills. It’s a technique that I use and works without fail, doesn’t require any gadget, and applicable wherever you are in the world.

The key is to eliminate what is called “phantom power”, whereby any appliance or charger left plugged into an electric socket, even though switched off and not in use, continually uses bits of electricity. An accumulation of these phantom power are still counted towards your electricity bill and causes you to have to pay extra for energy you’re not utilizing in the first place.

So, how do you eliminate phantom power? Easy. Just unplug your appliances and chargers once you’re done. That’s it! The only appliance I leave on 24/7 is my refrigerator. If you read my post concerning my experience eliminating phantom power, you’d be motivated to do so yourself, since I saved almost 25% off my bill, the same amount that the power-saving gadget claims to help you save.

Sounds good, yeah?

Yep, as I’ve posted in the Blog of Rugrats, I’ve given birth to a bouncing baby boy named Ezra Yoel Dony in the wee hours of 22 May 2008. I was only slightly past my 36 gestation weeks, so he caught me by surprise.

I’m not sure what else to say other than I’m glad I can now sleep on my back like I used to!