Picatho's causeries

Just got my new classic Palm TX, my out-of-pocket Christmas present! Simultaneously gave my Dell Axim to my son for his Christmas present too. Yeah! I'm the Santa!

I've been using many palms for many years. From Palm Tungsten T; Zire72 to Tungsten T3. I decided to return to Palm for ease of use or otherwise I'd been feeling distaste on Window pocket PC OS which had bewildered me for TL reactivation of its Outlook system, and also on its incapable memory handling.

I was very impressed with the color screen and the sexy profile. Palm TX seemed faster to me since the Palm OS5 is less taxing on the processor and the simplicity of applications graced my heart. The combination of that gorgeous screen, one-touch to landscape mode and ability of font size adjustment on the move, along with superb handling of wifi, made this the most painless ever-ready PDA I've seen yet!

Palm TX video player is much better than the PPC due to its higher resolution display, better support for file (divx, xvid, mpeg1 & mpeg2, etc.) formats, and much better power management.

Pocket Tunes is just a bliss to sing out good sound for MP3 sound tracks and amazingly it'll be kept running at the background after a few seconds with complete off screen. An Ipod alike!

EReader is having the clarity and freshness of immediate experience with ebooks reading and the association of MSDict (Oxford reference suite) make reading be referential on the go.

Versamail works like a champ. Jogged the GET icon got everything rapidly! The Tasks for to-do-list and HandyShopper for purchase list have served to organize my day-to-day events more easy.

Overall, this was an excellent return to Palm. If I had to grumble, I'd say that Palm's distribution is not stringent. You know, I'd found my default Hotsync username be automatically allocated as "chalie" after the completion of desktop installation. That means the package I'd purchased was not a virgin one! I think the seller who sold the packet to me is going to harm the reputation of Palm!

Let me conclude my commentary on my return to Palm by saying that It's really cool PDA with a classy professional look; nice compact size; tactile buttons; solid; fast; extremely convenient and intuitive interface. It's really the faculty through which my Christmas will be apprehended!

My old partner has reminded me to buy a Christmas gift for our granddaughter in order to celebrate her full-moon day aka Christmas eve. Since I already have a nice jade gems in hand which was bought from China not long ago, so I've decided to buy a white gold necklace to pair with it.

At Megamall this evening, I was examining the shop windows and browsing for a preference to any other. The stupid idea was actually I totally didn't know how to make a good selection. By looking me eying in vain of desirability, a sale girl then approached me and said: "Sir, what are you looking for, may I help you?". I therefore told her that I am looking for a white gold necklace for my little grandchild.

"O, you're coming at a right place, we have plenty of selections, come, I show them to you." she said while leading me to their counter.

"nah, this one is perfect and inexpensive." she said while showing me a pick.

"OK! how much is this?" I asked.

"You see, the price is RM510 on its tag. But you're lucky coz gum gum today we have a promotion, now I can give you a special price at only RM388 net." she convinced.

"Wah! so tiny so expensive, I think I better have a price comparison first then I'll get back to you." I responded with an intention to move away.

"Come lah sir, I calculate another special discount exclusively for you," she said and then was making a tit tit tak tak on the calculator and lastly added: "OK! this is the bottom price - RM288, I guarantee you wouldn't find this price at other shop."

"But I still feel inappropriate for the price over such a small necklace, probably I need to feel out a prior cognition about that!" I replied implausibly.

"OK lah! less RM20 again come to RM268 as the last offer in order to compliment your grandchild, OK?" she reconciled.

Eventually I was having a conviction over her many times of discount and therefore made the purchase. Whether it's cheap or expensive, frankly, I'm blur! Anyway It's a good time to be a Santa by giving out the gift.

Malaysia's foreign exchange reserves dropped 3.4% in the two weeks ended Nov 30.

The international reserves of Bank Negara Malaysia amounted to RM275.3 billion or equivalent to USD73.1 billion as at 30 November 2005. During the period, there was a large external loan repayment by the Federal Government. The reserves position is sufficient to finance 8 months of retained imports and is 5.8 times the short-term external debt. Reported BNM.

They have declined 9.1% from a record US80.4bil on Aug 15, according to central bank data.

One of my clients came across an article about the GST (Goods and Services Tax) that has published by the Oriental Daily News of Dec 05 and he was not fully comprehended with the illustration as shown above.

After seeing the illustration, I showed him a humorous remark and pointed out that there were 2 printing mistakes on the illustration. The last field of "tax on output" should be written as RM5 instead of RM2; the total GST collected by the government for RM5 should be placed under the last column of "net tax payable" instead of "tax on input" column.

Malaysian GST is expected to be implemented sometime in March or April 2007. With a broader base for goods and services being subject to GST, the revenue for the government is expected to be higher and the consumers are the final taxpayers.

Because of the GST, the inflation rate is likely to be heightened sometime in the 3rd quarter of 2006. It is due to the preexistence of GST rehearsal, importers and traders are likely to pre-align prices of their goods for the advance advantage.

Last Wednesday, few of us, old chaps, met and dined at Chameleon restaurant of Air Itam, Penang with great delight. It has been nearly 30 years we hadn`t met in such a way.

We're of an age now, no longer young yet not entirely "chi cheong fun" (faded out), moving slower and eating less than we did. We had the past in common, were once schoolmates of Chung Ling high school who ate a lot and played boisterously. I remembered them at school, they were minded boys who would study amusingly at class, played games naughtily after school, ventured for sight seeing on weekends and usually tensed up just before examination. One of us, Ah Loong, a cheerful, sandy-haired man of about 280 pounds, was fair being designated to continue as our monitor since the school days of yesteryear. By far, he was the biggest in size and the richest in noesis than most of us.

We touched upon the subjects of sex, health, shares and business but more on health since it was gula that we had always concerned. I wondered why people were only seriously taking good health cares when they had become old chaps. And by no surprise, 4 out of 6 dishes we had consumed that night were vegetables.

When deliberated about the vigra, my introduction of "liap liap cheir", an imitation of vigra which would make man last for few hours as claimed, made them vigorously grasping and shaking their hands to disagree on contrast. Perhaps it was too good for an old chap!

One of us, Ah Saw, queried on how to determine a sounded company by judging on its annual reports. Shit! all the financial reports were man-made, you would not even know the accruals and relays of some crucial items. So I just recommended him to simply weight on the appearance of the reports, thick meant good and thin meant bad. It was that simple!

Another chap, Ah Kiet, was compounding on doing the business of bread maker. According to his imagination, bread would eventually became the major food when the scientists had alas declared that bird flu be transmittable within human. But none of us knew how to bake roti. I think it is time for us to learn making dough from flour before we got flu.

We invariably ended up talking about pain and soul, a spin-off of menopause. Women usually found their menopause when their menstrual cycle ended. Surprisingly we too found our menopause when the "juice of spirit" became lower in quantity and the power of spitting (ejaculation) became nearer in distance. That was how we had chewed out from our talking on this topic. I think this is most probably the general definition of man's menopause, am I right!

By the way of further variation as to rendezvous, Ah Loong suggested that our old chaps' meeting would be made often these days probably before the Chinese new year. See you old chaps!

Not long ago, it was "ehh, Malaysia ini negara Islam, you tidak suka, you keluar dari Malaysia." Haji Bahruddin bin Amilrudin, mp for Jerai, 051028.

This time, it's "If foreigners think that Malaysia police are brutal, please go back to their own countries and not to stay here," Noh Omar, Deputy Internal Security Minister, 051129.

The PM's Office was said to have called up all newspapers yesterday evening requesting the story be shrouded.

The owner of DIS, PM Pah Lah has pointed out that his deputy's statement is totally against Govt's policy on visitors. In fact it is against the whole world's nationalities, not only China.

PM Pah Lah is now become a goalie to play the defensive position on DIS department who stands in front of the goal and tries to prevent another scoring of goal after his fullback has scored an own goal.

When the time Mahatir was steering the vehicle of Malaysia, none of his kaki tangan defied to made him "no facesi"

I wonder whether PM Pah lah is steering the vehicle of Malaysia merely with a single hand, loosing grip to the controlling of power that is designed to be held in order to move it....

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Following a sweet moment not long ago that had irrigated my inner peace , me and my wife were celebrating becoming a grandpa and grandma after our youngest daughter gave birth to a baby girl. It's a fine germination after 27 years!

The baby was born on Thus Nov 24 at Gleneagle Penang, weighing in at a healthy 3.51kg. She is gorgeous, healthy and is suggested to be named as Carmen. We're celebrating every moment with our beautiful grandchild these few days.

The birth of my grandchild is also signalizing that it's the moment I'm climbing down the hill of man's life-cycle. However I'm gaining momentum for every moment to be contemporaneous with her growth albeit the feebleness.

By the time someone is calling you uncle, it's significant that you life is supposed to be anchored. Coming at the last quarterly milestone of life, in fact it's amazing! Inextricably you would find yourself be fancy-free and fascinated with values of association not only to people but to things also. And the power of endurance to physical pains becomes greater. I'm wondering! Perhaps it's rightful that "the meaning of life would be eventually derivable from the understanding of its machanics" which was assumed by scientists and philosophers when converging on the quest of meaning of life.

"I dreamt, and I, so singular, saw myself as plural." -- Lenine