My Petaling Street

Everyday raining

2008-11-22T16:14:00.005+08:00

With the troubled economic news, the daily raining session is not doing anything to lift my spirits.

I got caught in another one of those heavy rains in Petaling Street.

I was at Pasar Seni LRT and badly needed to attend my class near Petaling Street. Already late and no umbrella.

What do you know? There's this guy at the steps selling umbrellas for RM 5. How enterprising?

I was kicking myself for not bringing an umbrella knowing how it's been raining the past few days. No choice. I wasted 5 bucks buying yet another umbrella to add to my colection of emergency umbrellas at home. This won't do any good to my wallet but I didn't want to be late for my class :(

Entrecard calling me a scraper!

2008-11-22T15:53:00.003+08:00

On the blogosphere it's regarded one of the scum words to use against a person and as a blogger it's just plain offensive when you are accused of being a scraper.

In case you don't know a scraper site is defined as follows:-

A scraper site is a website that copies all of its content from other websites using web scraping. No part of a scraper site is original. A search engine is not a scraper site: sites such as Yahoo and Google gather content from other websites and index it so that the index can be searched with keywords. Search engines then display snippets of the original site content in response to a user's search.

This according to WikiPedia.

I got this in my email from Entrecard:-

Your account 'My Petaling Street' on entrecard.com has been deleted. The administrator gave the following reason:

Scraper

Please contact support@entrecard.com if you have any questions regarding this action.

I admit that this blog has not been active in many months because I had exams and lost touch with blog updates but to label me a scraper boils my blood. None of my blog post here is copied from anywhere. I challenge Entrecard to prove otherwise.

Of course I've written back to Entrecard asking them to reconsider but they must be using some stupid bot to check Entrecard member website because they've seriously got it wrong in my case. How much sillier can you get?

I wish to cook

2008-11-22T15:36:00.003+08:00

I am a lousy cook. I can't cook anything decent to feed myself :)

Still, I'm willing to learn. I'm beginning to Google search good recipe sites in order to self teach myself. I'm definitely going to start small and work myself up so the first thing on my to do list is to go for those dishes that can be prepared in the rice cooker steamer or in a crock pot or just baked in an oven.

One site I've currently bookmarked is "Mom's who think" cookie recipes. I'm a sucker for cookies and frankly the cookies I buy in a jar from Petaling Street is a little bit expensive. The buttered bread cookie in the plastic container is RM 20 (USD 6). And it's a small container!

Anyway I'm experimenting with the Ginger Snap cookie (picture above) which I hope will turn out successfully. With Christmas just around the corner this will be my "show off" masterpiece to my family (hopefully).

Payday loans

2008-04-22T12:21:00.001+08:00

Being a student working part time I certainly know the difficulties of shortage of money.

You have to be very careful with the way you spend your money. But sometimes there are just the emergencies like spotting a a great sale or hopping on a taxi instead of a bus because you are late. Well at least, those were the two most common emergencies for me.

That is why I'm attracted to something called payday cash advance - this is the first time I've heard of such a thing.

Apparently this is a loan that is given to bridge the gap between pay days when you just need the cash in an emergency. Of course you have to be responsible as the money is still your "future" money and overusing is just going to be BAD. However, if it's only to "bridge the gap" in case of emergencies then this is a good idea of using those payday cash advance. Of course you have to take in consideration the interest that is charged also.

Online, there are websites such as www.powerpaydayloan.com that will match you with lenders with as little fuss and muss as possible. Whatever it is, just be careful about using your "future" money.

Banjir Banjir @ Petaling Street

2008-04-22T12:02:00.001+08:00

It's been like this last week almost everyday.

I come out of my college and it rains like cats and dogs.

Even with an umbrella I get wet. Have to wade thru water while crossing the street.

Worst experienced is getting splashed by speeding cars. I hope your engines gets wet you get stuck in the middle of the flood.

Oh I love the rain but only if it's when I'm sleeping...

Shopping carts the easy way

2008-04-16T17:03:00.004+08:00

Just last month I was given a group project from the college where I studied that involves a fictitious selling of handicrafts items using the internet. It was part of our course syllabus.

The difficult thing was that we are not studying computer programming and ar more into the marketing aspects of business. Luckily we had a person who as a geeky technical guy who did all the programming for us while we completed the manual task of producing the website content.

I wished I had found this website earlier. It's called Ashop Commerce which provides specially hosted shopping cart software. Even though our website was an imaginary one we would not have hesitated to pay for the convenience of having a ready made shopping card facility for our website as this was a major project with important credits. Why go thru the sweat and risk of building things from scratch when you have a a complete shopping card software solution for merchants to sell products online. I can see that the site is professional and we would have saved so much time in debugging and designing things.

Anyway, lesson learnt and we are taking note of this site when we build real e-commerce websites in future. No more time wasting with programming and more emphasis on marketing and promotion. That's how it should be anyway.

Bookmarking it here so that I can reference it in future.
AShop's ecommerce software.

Heavy Rains in Petaling Street

2008-04-16T16:59:00.001+08:00

It's been raining kinda heavy these couple of days and I could not help getting stuck in Petaling Street a couple of times. Wished I had an iPhone or some other internet device to keep me company while waiting for the rain to stop.

Well on this occasion I brought along my camera and took some pictures. At that'll keep me occupied for a while.

Now back at home I am posting these pictures up.

online Casino gambling is legal in malaysia (more or less)

2008-04-03T22:57:00.001+08:00

Thanks to the two comments and further explanations from the tech guys in my class I finally conclude that gambling online in Malaysia is legal (somewhat) :)

Because you can fund your PayPal account via your credit card and most online casinos accept PayPal to start up an account. It's like prepaid credits. When funding your PayPal with credit card, there will be no records or indication in the credit card that the money is used for online casinos as PayPal will be the middle man.

This makes it hard for anyone to be caught but I think officially it may still be classified as illegal gambling. I remember seeing the TV News for crackdowns of Malaysians caught in online betting during the football fever. Still, I haven't heard of anyone arrested for playing poker online on his home computer :)

Online gambling legal in malaysia ?

2008-03-25T20:41:00.001+08:00

After I reviewed some casino websites I am now curious if I can register and gamble online. I leave the comment open to everybody even for anonymous. Throwing the question out here..

Can anybody tell me if you have tried out online casinos and whether it's legal here in Malaysia?

PM acknowledges the power of blogs

2008-03-25T15:57:00.001+08:00

Malaysia's premier Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said Tuesday his "biggest mistake" in disastrous elections was to ignore cyber-campaigning on the Internet which was seized by the opposition.

The powerful Barisan Nasional coalition suffered its worst-ever results in March 8 polls that left five states and a third of parliamentary seats in opposition hands.

"We thought that the newspapers, the print media, the television was supposed to be important, but the young people were looking at SMS and blogs."

I too now acknowledge how powerful blogs can be in disseminating information as well as letting people know what you think. Glad to see that the Government is picking this up too.

Would the results have been that different if BN actually went and campaign hard on the internet ?? Hmmm.. I wonder.

4.12pm at petaling street

2008-03-25T14:35:00.001+08:00

That's the exact time when Petaling Street is closed to cars. That's the time stamp on my camera anyway. Quite early considering they are preparing for the night market. I don't quite like to walk in the shops at night. It's just too narrow and getting from one end to the other is so slow, and you don't really get to see much.

Hey what are you looking at?

Don't know why these people need to set up the roof cover. I thought the big roof built by the city council was good enough for cover.

My Dream Phone

2008-03-21T10:25:00.002+08:00

Yes I know I'm late to know about this and my friends tell me I must be living on Mars for not having heard about the iPhone.

Anyway, my first encounter with this phone when I was going shopping in Sungai Wang Plaza (NOT Petaling Street la..). There were many shops selling the iPhone locked and unlocked. Prices are still around RM 1800-2000. I spent some time playing around with the phone and I am in love with it.

It works on facebook too!!

Attractive CAsino sites

2008-03-21T09:40:00.001+08:00

I'm still flirting with playing some casino games online. I think I will do this when I can have several of my friends together so we sign up and try it out together on our notebooks. It's more fun that way.

Here's another online casino site I've been looking at: http://www.joylandcasino.com

As with all other online casinos sites, the overall look is attractive and simple. Downloading their client software is placed prominently on the first page. Their FAQs section pretty much anticipates all the questions a newbie like me may ask about casino games. Overall a good site design and easy to navigate site. At least it will pull in beginners. Perhaps what the site needs now is good marketing.

Microsoft Live Writer + Picasa+ Blogger = HEAVEN !!

2008-03-06T23:25:00.001+08:00

I have to admit I'm not a technical person and I can hardly use the computer to save my life.

So when a friend installed Microsoft Live Writer and showed me how easy it was to use, I was amazed.

Inserting images is one of the thing I'm very happy about using this Live Writer. It's so easy and the images I saved is uploaded automatically to Picasa and then linked into my blog. To me that's like magic. No more manually clicking on blogger's "insert image" icon and wait for the dumb spinning thing to complete uploading.

Also viewing my edited post in real life together with the page layout (see picture below) is amazing. My friend tells me that this is an incredible feat integrating pictures from Picasa with Microsoft Live Writer because Picasa a product of Microsoft's corporate enemy - Google. Imagine creating a software tool that seamlessly work with your competitors tool.

Anyway, I'm glad these two are working hand in hand to make my blogging experience better :)

I'm definitely not going to log in and blog from the old blogger editor anymore now that I have Live Writer.

Petaling street domains not about petaling street

2008-03-06T23:01:00.001+08:00

Why oh why do you register the domain name Petaling Street when your website is clearly NOT about Petaling Street.

Here's PetalingStreet.com
This site is about GaryTay.com - Digital Agent of change whatever that means. But one thing is for sure. It has nothing to do with Petaling Street.

PetalingStreet.net is a squatter page.

PetalingStreet.org is a 'blogtal' of Malaysian so called interesting posts. I don't mean to be a cyber police or anything but I seriously like Petaling Street and I'm hoping other domain names using the word "Petaling Street" IS about Petaling Street. Don't you?

And to answer the latest comments. Yeah la.. I understand the Kopitiam analogy but Kopitiam is a general place which can mean any kopitiam in any place. But when you say Petaling Street - it is SOOOOO specific, right ?

Oh, I chose mypetalingstreet..blogspot.com because petalingstreet.blogspot.com was already taken - also by someone who just made one and only post on July 2007 (another wasted URL). Take MY = Malaysia la... not My Petaling street :)

List of online casinos

2008-03-06T22:44:00.001+08:00

I love going to Genting but I am such a gambling junkie that I lose all my money when I go into the casino. But I'm not a big gambler and I like to play on the smaller electronic poker or blackjack machines instead of sitting on a high stakes table.

So it's only natural for me to be attracted to playing the same games on the computer screen. There are online casinos where you can get the same 'kick' of a real casino. You can bet real money and lose it too :)

Here's another site that reviews the online casino sites so that you more or less get the idea which sites are popular, good, or/and credible.

I like the fact that the site has both editor votes as well as players votes for the best online casinos. Also, there is also an unbelievable thing that online casinos do to attract membership. There give out sign up bonuses. But be aware of the term and conditions as it is usually harder to withdraw the bonus money than to use to gamble. Still it's a fun thing to start gambling with "start up" money and not your own in the beginning. Just be aware of the addicting dangers and don't become a chronic gambler. :)

Oh the website also lists the casinos offering the best sign up bonuses. There are some sites offering up to USD 1000 in bonus!

Chinese New Year is finally over

2008-02-25T14:44:00.004+08:00

A few days ago was the 15th Night of CNY or something like that - so it should be the end of CNY.

Thank heavens!!

Not that I don't like Chinese New Year. I just don't celebrate it. Looking forward to normalcy to befall Petaling Street again. I like it boring and NOT hyper filled with last minute shoppers before CNY and terribly empty on the first few days of CNY.

Now it's just back to normal.

Typical view of Petaling Street. Just the way I like it.

New thing is that not only is DVDs sold, there are even DVD players being sold too !!

Then and now

2008-02-18T20:23:00.001+08:00

I still visit my favourite Hotel Lok Ann noodle shop.

This is what I posted on October 2005 - more than 2 years ago!

Lunch - Mee Hoon. Prices have gone up slightly since I last ate here.
Mee Hoon - RM 3.70 (large)
Teh O Ais - RM 1.50

I hate the same exact lunch this morning and it tasted exactly the same.
The price today was
Lunch - Mee Hoon. Prices have gone up slightly since I last ate here.
Mee Hoon - RM 4.30 (large)
Teh O Ais - RM 1.70

Blogged with Flock

What do you know, I'm on Yahoo page one!

2008-02-18T20:02:00.001+08:00

Finally this insignificant blog of mine has landed on Yahoo's first page. Quite an achievement, no? Considering I didn't even submit to Search Engines like Yahoo or Google. I don't even know a single trick used by those experts like 5xmom, LiewCF and Sabahan.com

Blogged with Flock

Cafe Sandiego

2008-02-12T19:54:00.000+08:00

Just wished that Petaling Street had a search engine to find different food stalls. Look at the concept used by this website Cafe Sandiego. The website is essentially a san diego restaurant guide.

Coupled with a good search feature, it has a good database of the best san diego restaurants you can find on the net. Great idea and very useful service this website is providing. In addition, a great bonus is the site comes with san diego restaurant coupons you can use to get discounts and fantastic deals.

Smoky Day in Petaling Street

2008-02-12T19:48:00.000+08:00

Chinese New Year may be over but Petaling Street life still goes on. Even the dried meat seller is doing brisk business. They are still barbequeing those delicious thin slices of pork meat just beside the road. I can smell the sweet smell of burning pork across the street :)

Walking across to buy a box of dried pork meat! :)

Online casino anyone?

2008-02-09T21:13:00.000+08:00

I know that behind the back-lanes Petaling Street you can find people gambling playing some card games or even chess. I'm surprised to find that people can actually go online and gamble too. I'm curious how all this can be legal and how people can win and lose money in front of their computer screen.

I've been looking at some online casino websites and ran into a review site of the sites I was looking at. Certainly saves me time in my research for good and reputable www.Pro360.com website. On the very first page of that website, you'll find the top 20 casino websites listed based on their ranking given by that website. In total, they've already reviewed 75 websites!! Yeah, there are that many online casino sites.

Next time I see some gamblers in Petaling Street, I will tell them to go home and gamble online :D

Delicious Pork chips

2008-01-24T16:25:00.000+08:00

I have passed these shops selling pork chips many times but have never had the guts to try it out until today. Bought about RM 28 worth of Pork chips to go home and try out. I must say it is delicious although with the amount of pork fats it really isn't really a healthy type of food to be consumed in large amounts :)

Making money writing reviews

2008-01-24T15:11:00.000+08:00

I'm learning about these new programs that many of my classmates are doing for extra pocket money.

The first one I'll look at is called Smorty. Basically you get paid for writing a review for an advertiser on your own blog. Smorty acts as the middleman and lists down all the review titles you can pick on their site.

Most reviews are about 150 words and each is minimum $6 which is ok for a student like me. After writing your review there is a period of a few days before your post is approved. I have a friend who has a popular blog and writes about 3 reviews a day. He says his income from Smorty alone is $400-600 per month. That's certainly a lot of money to me. All that just to have some company advertise on blogs!!

I'll check out this program and report on it more once I know more about it. Stay tuned to this blog!

Google Page Rank Update

2008-01-14T11:09:00.001+08:00

A friend just told me that he had gotten a PR update from 1 to PR4. I checked my own site and (sigh) it's still PR 1. Guess I have to live with a PR 1 for the rest of the year. :(

Original Nudie Jeans

2007-11-26T22:32:00.000+08:00

Strange brand name ain't it. Nudie Jeans ! I saw the imitation brand in Petaling Street. I went back to my college and immediately logged on the net curious to find out how well known the original product was. With a brand like nudie you'd think they have holes in the ass section or something :)

The picture you see is one I stole from Tobi.com. It's seven for all mankind line of jeans. Well now that I know how the real nudie jeans look like, I think I'll save money to get the original. They look pretty cool. :)

Cancelled trip to Petaling Street

2007-11-11T22:20:00.000+08:00

My notebook backpack was ripped so I wanted to go to Petaling Street to get a new one. What to do? I'm cheap! Anyway the one I got was also from Petaling Street and it lasted over a year. I expected that already. With the torture I put the bag thru I'm happy that only the bag suffered as it protected my precious notebook.

Anyway I was half way there on the bus when my friend called me on the cell. "Wey, don't tell me you are going down to town". I replied "Yeah. Going to buy a knapsack for my notebook". My friend was alarmed and told me: "Don't go! Anuar and his supporters are having big rally in town and there may be trouble! Turn around ! Turn around!".

I was panicking as this bus cannot turn around. I got off at KL Sentral and took the KTM back home.

Only later did I find out what really happened via reading PetalingStreet.org pings. Today newspaper was blanketed and silenced. Nothing about what happened on Nov 10.

Anyway it's all over the net if you want to search for it as well as all over the local blogs.

Google PR Update

2007-10-29T15:38:00.000+08:00

I didn't know about this thing called a Google Page rank until a friend of mine told me my blog is now ranked 1 out of 10.

I think it's so demeaning to give a number to my blog. Sheesh only a 1 ??

If anyone knows how to increase a Page Rank please do tell me. I want to be at least a 6. :)

Rainy Day at Petaling Street

2007-10-03T09:10:00.000+08:00

After the hot afternoon spells here in KL, I welcome the rain ...

It's refreshingly cool for a change.

I stay dry by having a cup of hot tea in the corner shop.

When the rain becomes a drizzle I walked across to Petaling Street to see the hawkers getting ready for the night market.

Even though the whole stretch of Petaling Street is roofed, rains still get thru because some of the plastic roof covering is damaged and are broken allowing rain to get thru and certain spots.

Someone should repair the roofs...

Corner Shop again

2007-09-28T19:53:00.000+08:00

Ah... back to my favourite corner shop at Petaling Street.

You can see "Auntie" busy preparing her food as she is the only shop preparing Noodles for the customers ever since the chicken rice shop closed several years back.

I still like the cosy atmosphere here.

Across the street is the famous Petaling Street entrance

Another satisfying walk

2007-05-19T15:59:00.000+08:00

It's been a long time since I posted here. Just didn't have the time..

That doesn't mean I have not been to Petaling Street. Quite the opposite. I've been here for lunch

Feels good to post again. Also discovered this thing called MyBlogLog where visitors and I think it's pretty cool.

Meehon Dry (Kon Low)

Is it our Visit Malaysia campaign or just my imagination as there seem to be more foreign tourists in Petaling Street?

Of course lunch is not complete without SOYA BEAN!!

Mee Suah

2007-05-09T15:17:00.000+08:00

This is Mee Seen (cantonese) or Mee Suah (hokkien).

Of course the place is my usual corner shop.

Petaling Street from Google

2007-03-12T18:46:00.000+08:00

Here's a satelite view of Petaling Street area from Google :)

Saturday morning breakfast at corner shop

2006-10-13T18:16:00.000+08:00

This is what I usualy have as breakfast at the Petaling Street corner shop. :)

I miss my Tau Foo Fah

2006-06-20T18:13:00.000+08:00

It's been almost two months since my soya bean stall went missing.

Today it's back again. My lunch is never complete without a packet of Tau Foo Fah mix with Tau Cheong. :)

Aunty's Corner Shop

2006-06-06T07:51:00.000+08:00

All the post on the food I eat comes from this shop at the corner shop at Hotel Lok Ann, Petaling Street.

Burnt stalls

2006-05-30T13:07:00.000+08:00

Burnt stalls, originally uploaded by mypetalingstreet.

Looks like a fire took place here.

Petaling Street Porridge

2006-04-17T15:04:00.000+08:00

The doctor took my blood pressure and says that's it is a bit on the high side.

So I'm changing my diet a little and taking more porridge during my lunch visits to Petaling Street.

It always takes me a little longer to finish off a bowl of porridge because it's quite hot. I rarely take poridge because the other dishes are more tasty like mee, mee hoon and hor fun. But after finishing off this bowl I must say it's quite good. It's not bad at all and I guess I can get use to this.

technorati tags: Malaysia, Petaling, Street, Porridge

A Wet Petaling Street Day

2006-02-19T10:43:00.000+08:00

Arrived at Petaling Street via Putra LRT and it was pouring cats and dogs.

No umbrella so had to navigate my way via Klang Bus Stand and UDA Ocean Supermarket.

Don't know why the police blocked off the road here. As if it was not jammed enough with the heavy downpour.

Still couldn't reach my favourite corner shop to have my porridge so went shopping for a while in UDA Ocean.

You know what? Just my luck! The thunderstorm caused a blackout in the store.

Finally got to have lunch at the usual corner shop when the rain subsided - an hour later..

Just look at the Klang River. I've never seen The water level this high before..

The New Year!

2006-01-19T16:55:00.000+08:00

Happy belated New Year everyone!!

Ha ha.. I've been away from the online blogosphere recently. But I am back in Petaling Street. Guess what? The first dish I took for lunch this year is my all time favourite Lum Hor Fun at my all time favourite food stall.

This is how I take my Hor Fun.

I pour my sambal chilly into the plate.

After that is off to my usual 'jalan-jalan' session in Petaling Street itself.
I must say say that the place has changed a little. The day time stall on the street has been pushed to the side. So the street is pretty clear. Even the DVD pirates stalls are missing.

Lum Hor Fun again

2005-12-16T18:29:00.000+08:00

Had Lum Hor Fun again.

Just love the black stuff - what do you call it?? Chinese Fungus or something :)

Also love the mushrooms.

The corner shop was quite full as usual.

Had some Soya Bean opposite the Air Mata Kucing stall.

Eating Out

2005-12-14T13:56:00.000+08:00

Ok. Today was unusually crowded in the coffee shop of Hotel Lok Ann so I had to eat 'outside' at the pavement sidewalk area. But it was a good thing. Had a nice view of people walking into Petaling Street and the weather was cool and nice.

Here I am having Ee Meen with Teh Ais and enjoying the view.

Cat's Tears at Petaling Street

2005-12-13T11:15:00.000+08:00

Petaling Street Famous 'Cat's Tears' or more commonly known as Air Mata Kucing stall at the cross junction near Hong Leong Bank.

I remember the same stall back in 1990. That's over 15 years already!!

Lum Hor Fun

2005-12-06T10:55:00.000+08:00

This is Lum Hor Fun. Those who are not familiar with it, it's almost the same as Lum Mee but instead of Mee it uses Hor Fun or Keow Teow.

The difference?

The Hor Fun texture is smoother and it's softer. Served with shredded chicken, mushroom and soaked in yummy black sauce. It's my favourite dish.
I had it the corner shop below Hotel Lok Ann (as usual).
RM 3.70

technorati tags: Kuala Lumpur, Petaling Street, Food

Ee Mee

2005-12-02T16:47:00.000+08:00

RM4.00 for a bowl.
Comes with shredded chicken and an egg.
Again washed down with Teh Ais.
Taken at Hotel Lok Ann.

Hotel Lok Ann - Petaling Street

2005-12-01T13:20:00.000+08:00

This is where I normally eat. The three 'food reviews' are made from the same shop.

I go there almost everyday for years except weekends.

Kueh Teow Kwon Low

2005-11-30T15:41:00.000+08:00

Had this for lunch at the same Hotel Lok Ann corner shop.

Kueh Teow Kwon Low = RM 3.70 (with soup)
Teh O Ais = RM1.50
Result = pure satisfaction

... particularly when I missed breakfast.

Lunch at Corner Shop

2005-10-25T14:28:00.000+08:00

"Corner Shop" - located opposite the entrance to Petaling Street (near the traffic lights).

Lunch - Mee Hoon. Prices have gone up slightly since I last ate here.
Mee Hoon - RM 3.70 (large)
Teh O Ais - RM 1.50

Still it's pretty reasonable pricing in this area of town.

Love the Mee Hoon.

Breakfast in Petaling Street

2005-10-13T11:37:00.000+08:00

Ah... this is one of my favourite breakfast to take in Petaling Street.

Half Boiled eggs with some steamed buns. Washed down with Teh-Ais.

My Petaling Street

2005-10-11T11:57:00.000+08:00

I've 'known' Petaling Street for almost 20 years. I remember my first job where the office was near Petaling Street. I spent countless lunch and dinners as well as tea breaks at this street.

The above picture was before the whole street got a facelift with the road paved and roof installed. That's how I remembered the old petaling street.

It is one of the most "happening" areas of Kuala Lumpur, namely near Kota Raya and Pudu Raya which are the central bus stations in the capital.

This is my first post. I'll be getting more pics and stories up here soon...