Random happenings.

I don't miss Malaysian food as much as I thought I would, in fact, not anywhere near as much as OTHER people think I should. It's like commiting treason or something. =p But yeah I had the best Asam Laksa and Ais Kacang I've tasted for a loooong time. In a suffocatingly hot and smoky underground hawker center.

The first thing I noticed when I touched down in Malaysia was... the Malays. Working at the McDonalds where I tried to get a packet of chips. If you're from Malaysia you'll know what I'm talking about. About the level of service you get. The more exposed you are to other cultures I guess the more chance there is for you to cement in racial stereotypes. Well like it or not this is the country we live in.

Petrol prices here rise another 10 cents to much uproar and consternation among the public. Petrol in Malaysiai is subsidized : the general idea is that rich people pay (higher proportion) taxes to government which the government uses part of it to subsidize petrol, which benefits all members of society... achieving income redistribution.

On the other hand it's more rational for the government to apply a high tax on petrol as a way of paying for road maintanence. Eh. Can't be bothered to go into the economics of it.

Introducing further subsidies and taxes this way distorts the system. At the moment the government pays for road building and maintanence through car road tax and general income tax. The idea is generally that the people who use a service should be the ones to pay for it. But right now, the people who use roads the most (and create jams and force the government to build multi million dollar flyovers and intersections and highways) are being SUBSIDIZED by the government (in terms of fuel subsidies) rather than being TAXED and being made to pay for what they use. In other words, highways and other road infrastructure looks like they're being paid out of the pockets of people who don't drive??? At least that's what it looks like to me.

The Dawn of War patch 1.3 was supposed to be released this week Tuesday... but... omg... I forgot their headquarters is located in Canada which is possibly the slowest part of the world to REACH Tuesday. Which probably means we'll probably get the patch on Wednesday. Then I have to update my website and reinstate the subdomain.

Apparently lots of people "missed" my DoW site when it went offline. Wah. Ego!!!

Uh... my friend online messages me and says my beer tasted good. Someone's raiding my fridge while I'm away. -_-