Focus Lumber Berhad

I applied for this Bursa mainboard IPO last week, at offer price of 60 sen per share, par value of 50 sen. The Sabah-based company (its bosses are mainly Taiwanese nationals residing in Sabah) exports plywood and veneer finished products to USA's recreational vehicles industry, amongst its export destinations. It was over-subscribed by close to 64 times so i don't think that i will get it unless i'm exceptionally lucky. Keep my fingers crossed. Allotment on 26th April and listing on 28th April.

Post-Blog Note: I didn't get any. On listing day, Focus Lumber Berhad (FLBHD) went up to as high as RM1.20.

come rain or shine, the mail just doesn't come through

Not many days ago i bought an electrical item and posted its warranty card back to the manufacturer in the state of selangor. The warranty card which bears the manufacturer's address on one side and my particulars on the other side (filled in by me), states that the manufacturer is to receive the warranty card back within 7 days of purchase or the warranty would be voided. I posted that warranty card on Monday last and yesterday (Tuesday) it promptly returned to me, in malacca, with the stamp duly engrossed. Apparently the people at the local post office couldn't be bothered to read the side with the stamp stuck on it as the address that the warranty card was supposed to have been sent to and simply just read the reverse side of the card and delivered the card back to me in Malacca. A simple, yet alarming lack of care on the part of our postmen. I can go on and on about how the quality of our postal services in recent years have declined. From my own experience alone, i have had letters delivered to me that were clearly addressed to another house, my own cheques never reaching their intended destination, late deliveries, the postman coming at irregular hours or much later than usual, etc etc etc. And recently, the case of the dozen or so posties hauled up by the anti-corruption body MACC for allegedly stealing credit card chips through the mail and replacing them with forgeries. What i don't understand is why we are paying a 100% hike in postage when the quality of postal services is going downhill so badly. Something is not quite right somewhere. We used to pay 30sen for local letters weighing below the minimum fixed scale, then from 1st July 2010 they increased the postage for local letters to 60sen. They also made all kinds of rulings as to the type of envelopes you used so that if you used a brown envelope you paid more in postage. And all correspondence to Singapore costs as much, nay, sometimes even more than to Australia would you believe it - now how is this possible when Singapore is just next door to us? And lately Khazanah Nasional Berhad wants to divest its 32.21% stake in Pos Malaysia Berhad without triggering a mandatory general offer leaving its minority shareholders out in the cold. Sounds like another rip-off job from Pos Malaysia. I'd be understating it if i'd said that our local postmen's on-the-job performance have been less than stellar. Obviously, the motto: "Come rain or shine, sun sleet or snow, the mail must come through" doesn't apply to Pos Malaysia. What then is our local posties' motto?Laziness, indifference, inefficiency, pilfering from the till? Good Grief.

Freedom of Information Bill ala Malaysia

Selangor has passed the Freedom of Information Bill ("FOI") after the Third reading. This is a first for Malaysia. The FOI bill in almost the same exact form and content is also on the plate in Penang. From what i have read so far, the FOI bill is not a carte blanche opening of the flood gates to quench every citizen's thirst for information and government accountability. It's a pale shadow of what developed democracies have. You gotta pay for information, they have 30 days to consider whether to give you the info you asked for, and if you misuse the information it's a compoundable and jailable offence. But it is a significant first step, if only just symbolically, for a developing nation like Malaysia. It's better than nothing. And I for one support it whole-heartedly.

poor sleepy hollow

i promised myself sometime late last year that i'd refrain from commenting on local politics for health reasons - namely, my own! But events of the past week have proved too mind-bogglingly crazy to remain silent. And hence, it is with deep regret that i, dukuhead, blog as thus:

Rahim Tamby Chik, ex-chief minister of Malacca, was credited (still is credited) by most people as a chief minister of true ability who brought substantive progress and development to malacca state. Yes, he was a bright and able administrator, not without the usual flaws in malaysian politicians that we have grown so accustomed to now (especially so in recent years). His fall from grace and the subsequent events that followed need no repeating here. He was quoted to have said that after he was no longer chief minister, the traffic of people coming to see him dwindled, nay the flow disappeared even and he knew then who were his true friends and who were mere fair-weathered friends. It is remarkable and sad that in local culture and politics, a disgraced former VVIP becomes less than a commoner - he becomes invisible. You heard rare utterances from Rahim Tamby Chik in the occasional comments he makes during UMNO general assemblies and such but they were reported more as a matter of old curiosity than that any prominence is given to him. So it is rather sad that Rahim now has apparently been reduced yet even further from a political has-been to a messenger boy and the bearer of dirty laundry. This has nothing whatsoever to bear on the truth or the consequences of the sex video case. I am merely commenting on how terrible the descent has been on a man of talent who is still remembered by many Malaccans as the developer of the state during the 80s, on whom in his hey-day, lavish praises were heaped and the local press fawned upon appropriately. And now that his name is going to be dragged through the mud, along with the stereotypes people often associate Malaccans with (it's going to get even worse for us now I expect), we can but sit and weep silently.

trash collection blues

I just read a news article yesterday about a local man who dumped a whole bin-liner's worth of trash in front of the office of his municipal council in protest against irregular trash collection in his neighbourhood. I think that this man spoke for countless citizens across the country when he drove over 10km to deposit his waste in front of the powers-that-be to amply demonstrate his frustration with local councils' waste disposal services or the lack of thereof. In my own housing area the trashmen have been irregular on many a day. They are supposed to collect the trash thrice weekly in my neighbourhood. But sometimes they make it only twice a week, giving the excuse that the dumpster truck broke down or they are sick etc. Or they come as and when they feel like it. On the days when our rubbish remain uncollected, stray cats, dogs etc would chew through the binliners and the rubbish would be strewn all over the place and the resulting festering stench and mess is quite quite unbearable. Not to mention a danger to public health. I am with this citizen totally - I'd like our municipal councils to be more circumspect and discerning when giving out trash disposal contracts to companies that provide such services. If they can't tender contracts out to the best people to do the job but merely dole out contracts to whoever is paying them more kickbacks or whatever greases their palms, then we, the end-users of crappy services, have the right to collectively dump all our rubbish in front of the municipal council office just like what that man had done.

a perfect day

I'd seen it coming near the end of the holidays season, the looming black hole, the mood swing, the old familiar downwards spiral. But when it actually hit me that realisation earlier didn't numb the effects anyway.

As i was driving home today in a near-catatonic state, i came across a man who looked like a tramp or a model, which is it i don't know. the reason i say so is because he had on torn jeans and a scruffy dirty t-shirt, a goatee beard but had a surprisingly handsome, chiselled face much like a model's and he carried three bags full of plastic materials and other cast-away waste materials they pay cash for recycling. He was dirty and dishevelled but he looked sharp, nonetheless. Had i a camera on me then i'd have taken a shot of him (should i ask for his permission first? i don't know). At that moment i thought how lucky i was, how unlucky he was (but is this really true?). Yet there i was, sitting in my nice clean comfy air-conditioned car, feeling sorry for myself.

But anyway, here's something from Hunter S Thompson's letters in his autobiographical "The Proud Highway". Hunter received a letter from a 14-year old boy who expressed great admiration for the Hell's Angels, a motorcycle gang in California, America. Hunter promptly responded with this letter (excerpt taken from his letter dated July 6th, 1967 from Woody Creek, Colorado):

"When I was 14 I was a wild, half-wit punk who caused a lot of trouble and wanted to tear the world in half for no other reason than it didn't seem to fit me too well. Now, looking back on it, I didn't think I'd change much of what I did in those days...but I've also learned at least one crucially important thing since then. And that's the idea of making your own pattern, not falling into grooves that other people make. Remember that if you can do one thing better than anybody it'll make life a hell of a lot easier for you in this world - which is a pretty mean world, when you get to know it, and a lot of people in it can ride big Harleys...especially in California. The best of the Angels - the guys you might want to sit down and talk to - have almost all played that game for a while and then quit for something better. The ones who are left are almost all the kind who can't do anything else, and they're not much fun to talk to. They're not smart, or funny, or brave, or even original. They're just Old Punks, and that's a lot worse than being a Young Punk. They're not even happy; most of them hate the lives they lead, but they can't afford to admit it because they don't know where else to go, or what else to do. That's what makes them mean...and it also makes them useless, because there's already a big oversupply of mean bastards in this world."

Winds of Change

 

What a tumultuous first 2 months of 2011 it has been! First, on Jan 14th in Tunisia, strongman Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia with family in tow, but not before spiriting out 1.5 tonnes of gold. The Interpol is out looking for Ben Ali and family as we write this. Then, on Feb 11th was Egypt's Hosni Mubarak's turn to abdicate. Shortly after state media played out his pre-taped speech vowing that he, Mubarak, would NEVER step down, Mubarak deftly abandoned the seat of power in Cairo for a Red Sea resort, His ex-Pharaonic Majesty's current whereabouts unknown. Meanwhile, demonstrations across Jordan, Syria, Libya, Bahrain, Yemen and a string of other Arab countries are almost a daily occurance.
Closer to home in Malaysia, a PAS-fronted opposition crowd bravely chanted solidarity with the Egyptians bringing a swift response from no less than the 1Prime Minister himself that demonstrations ala Egypt/Tunisia will not, I repeat, sternly, NOT be allowed here. haha, what genius. Of course they won't allow demos that lead to revolution now, would they? But anyway I don't see much danger of that happening in staid old Malaysia. People here are simply too well-fed, too contented, too afraid, too complacent and generally too lazy to risk having their skulls cracked instigating for regime change. And judging from the performance of the hapless opposition in the last couple of by-elections, evolutionary change will probably be slow to come too.

But of more pressing concern now is whether food prices are going to sky-rocket this year. Petrol is going up for sure (well, at least the price of Ron 97 petrol will be reviewed at the end of every month), as are property prices. How anyone earning RM3,000-00 a month in the Klang valley is going to make ends meet especially if he has a family, a house loan and a car loan to service, is beyond me. And a government minister had sanguinely observed that RM3,000-00 would henceforth be recognised as the new threshold for the high income group. Hahaha, Really Datuk. I had no idea.