There’s a new shopping mall just 5 minutes away from my house. In less than 2 years, a huge building that was under construction is now finally opened. The parking is still free but don’t expect anything yet since only a handful of shop is opened. The mall is called Kepong Brem Mall. While walking on the concourse area, I saw this small pool containing small fishes. I was then handed this flyer:

The Soft Fish Spa Flyer

I was with LV and she insisted for us to try it out. The girl gave us a RM3 discount so we just had to pay RM10 each for a 20 minutes soft fish spa experience. I was first kind scared by the fish. I kept on thinking of “what if the fish bite the flesh of my feet like the piranhas “. The promoter girl calm us down and said there is no such thing, it might be ticklish the first 5 minutes but that will all go away once you’ve adjusted. I trusted the girl so I dip my feet first since LV was scared too.

Trying Out The Soft Fish Spa

The picture was like after I had adjusted myself. The first 5 to 7 minutes after I dipped my feet in, I was attracting kids and adults who were passing by laughing out loudly and giggling non-stop. The fish was really tickling my feet. LV was scared by my laughing so she decided not to pursue eventhough she was the one who wanted to try in the first place.

Dipping My Feet into The Soft Fish Spa Pool

The so called ‘Doctor Fish’ is a toothless fish and they were like kissing my skin which result in the ticklish feeling. The fish after a while kind of avoided my feet (maybe they were too tired I guess) but then they came back. I was annoyed at some kids who scared the fish by hitting the plastic pool. After the session finish, I can still feel the tingling sensation on my feet. There isn’t much difference after I washed my feet before I went to bed that night.

I did some Googling and I found out that in Sunway, there is another bigger Fish Spa outlet called Fisho but instead of just your feet, you can dip your entire leg in. You can also see Jiaming’s First Fish Spa Experience where the fish were really hungry for her feet. There’s also another Fish Spa in Pavillion, Jalan Bukit Bintang. I don’t think I’ll be trying this again so soon.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted something about cars. On my way back from Terengganu, my family and I stop over at one of my cousin’s house somewhere in Paka. While waiting for lunch to be served, I spent some time flipping through a few stacks of magazines. My cousin is a big fan of compact car. He converted his Kancil into a Mira. While I like things to remain exactly what they are, I do admire his enthusiasm to customize his car.

K-Kompak Magazine

My cousin’s car doesn’t look like the above picture. Flipping through the magazine a little bit more, I found this article.

Kelisa Club.com 2nd Anniversary

The magazine is already a year old but look who I found:

LadyAzurt and her friend

LadyAzurt is a blogger friend of mine (I’ve never met her in person yet). She was actively blogging before her lately seldom posting on her blog. A lot of her recent blog posting is more towards channeling her frustration from my opinion. Not that I’m criticizing her writings. I think she needs some cheering up and stop focusing on bad things in her line of work. Maybe what she can do is to cherish her fun moment by looking at fun and exciting activities she has done.

Anyway, I would buy a compact car if I could trade-in my red Iswara for a less monthly installment of what I am paying right now. Enjoy this piece of video review of the Perodua Kelisa done by Top Gear:

This would be my first blog post for the month of May. I’ve been pretty much occupied the past several weeks with various types of work. At the same time I’ve been eyeing on a new laptop for the past several weeks to replace my loaned Acer Aspire 3683 laptop (technically it’s my brother’s laptop). After looking at this brochure, I’ve already decided which laptop that I’m going to buy since the spec and the price is within my budget:

Compaq Presario V3751AU on Brochure

At RM2199, it’s quite an affordable price to pay for a decent laptop with the technical spec listed. However, I needed more financial leverage since I wanted a monthly installment over the full amount which I needed to pay. I don’t want to pay in full cash because it will affect my monthly budget and savings.

So I started making some analysis on ways I could do to finance my new laptop. At first I wanted to apply for the RM125 per month under AEON Easy Payment scheme. However, after getting the information and did a rough calculation, the total amount I would have to pay under the Easy Payment plan would be (RM125 X 24 months) is RM3,000! WHAT? That’s RM801 more than the selling price! I’m not going to pay the credit company (in this case AEON Easy Payment scheme) that amount. On top of that, there is another 0.84% of interest per month equivalent to 10.08% a year.

My second option is to reduce the throat-choking Easy Payment scheme interest to a personal loan. The idea was to apply for a RM3,000 personal loan and pay back on a monthly payment. There was 2 option (CIMB Cash Express Micro Finance and AEON-Cash Personal Financing) since a lot of personal loans are not meant for small amount. I had to eliminate CIMB Cash Express because it’s a financial killer. At 24% interest yearly, it is one of the highest interest personal loans ever based on my findings. As for AEON-Cash Personal Financing, I had to apply for an AEON Credit Card in order for my loan to be approved. If I went for this, I would have to wait for another week or so to get my credit card approved and so on so fourth. Not what I had in mind.

My third option is to use my Petronas CIMB Bank credit card I just received a month ago. Utilizing the 0% monthly installment, I can just buy a laptop by just dividing the price of RM2199 with 12 months. That would make RM183.25 per month and best of all, interest free. The only issue is there aren’t many shops that provided this facility. Most of the shop I found have Maybank and Citibank 0% interest free payment plan. I’m not going to get another credit card for my financial sake. From my reading in forums and some blogs, I find that in order for me to get an interest free plan with CIMB Bank, I need to find a shop that uses a CIMB merchant processing machine. So, my quest for searching for the right shop begins.

After searching high and low at Low Yatt Plaza, one shop that I’ve found charge 4.5% on top of the laptop price before dividing it with 12 months. I didn’t go for that one. I finally found a shop that provides me with the monthly installment facility using my credit card. The shop wasn’t as busy as any other shop; in fact I was the only customer inside the shop. After dealing with the sales guy for 15 minutes, my transaction went through and I was on my way back with my brand new Compaq Presario V3751AU.

At home, I joyously unpacked my new laptop:

My New Compaq V3751AU package

Unfortunately the package I bought only got me an original Targus HP laptop bag and a RM35 optical mouse. By the way, the laptop I bought only comes with FreeDos so there was no Windows or any other operating system. I had to add more money if I wanted an operating system installed. This is where the hassle begins.

My Brand New Compaq V3751AU Unpacked loaded with FreeDOS

It took me one night for me to install a fresh copy of Microsoft Windows XP and then another 2 days for me to search for all the drivers since the package doesn’t include a driver CD. Even worse, the system is configured for Windows Vista when I tried searching for the drivers on HP Compaq official website. After searching around, I’ve gathered all the necessary download and bundled all the driver’s link into this single URL link:

I downloaded most of the drivers but only a few of them really work. Here’s a list of it which I did managed to note down that really works on my Compaq Presario V3751AU:

• SP34842A - BlueTooth Driver
• SP35333 - Wireless Assistant
• SP37950 - Network Controller Driver
• SP35414 - Webcam Driver

After all the driver was done installed, it was then time to make the transition to transfer all my working files from my previous laptop to my new laptop. I’m not the kind of person who uses back-up software because I know there will be a point where complication will arise. So I did it manually using a portable hard drive and thumb drives:

The Manual Side by Side Laptop File Transfer Process

It took me my whole Sunday weekend to complete the transition. Performance wise, since the processor is a dual core processor, there is a huge improvement when I’m running heavy multiple applications. The temperature is cooler and the CPU utilization is less likely to reach 100%. My only problem is I can’t play my Simcity 4 most probably because of my display card issue.

My Compaq 3751AU on Windows XP is ready for action

Why I didn’t choose Intel Core 2 Duo over AMD Turion 64 X2? Based on my finding from benchmarking charts, using Intel Core 2 Duo is slightly ahead of AMD Turion 64 X2. Then again, I’m looking for a bargain and not performance so I think I made a good choice.

Last Monday, I went for a meeting with my boss at the outskirt of KL City. After the meeting, we had a 3 hours gap before the next meeting. After taking lunch, my boss decided to check out the IT Heaven at Bukit Bintang namely, The Low Yatt Plaza. A junior colleague who tagged along never went to Low Yatt before so this was his first time there. He got overwhelmed by looking at so many IT products inside the mall.

Anyway, my boss owned an iPhone so he checked out The Mac store at the ground floor in Low Yatt Plaza. Inside the Mac store, I saw this:

MacBook Air Display at Mac Studio Sdn Bhd Low Yatt

Taking a closer look at the MacBook Air:

The MacBook Air

Testing the Mac was like the last time I tried using Ubuntu. Although it seems exciting and more fun to use Mac compared to Windows, I don’t think I’ll ever fit in being a Mac user. Here’s a list of why I will never use a Mac:

1. Change requires time to get used to, to learn new features, to utilize it to the max thus is can waste your productive time and lowers your output productivity
2. A lot of application I’m using is not built for Mac.
3. A Mac is just too flashy for me.
4. The current price for a MacBook Air is RM6229. I can get three lower end Core 2 Duo blank laptop for RM2,000 a piece.
5. I will never convert to a Mac

Now you have it, my 5 top reason why MacBook is not for me.