Don't Cha wanna be Happy??

By now, I'm pretty sure many of you would have heard about HAPPY, or even seen the advertisement on the idiot box. Happy, the lastest prepaid package in town is a no frill prepaid plan aim at providing the user cheap local calls. You need not be worry about network coverage even though the Happy is a relatively new product in the market, cause its riding on DIGI's network. Yes, Happy is another product by DIGI, but runs on a low cost structure just like Airasia. So what's so special about this new prepaid plan you may ask.

Happy as I've said is a prepaid plan aimed at providing the user cheap local call rate, for as low as 1 cent per second, you make a simple short call for less than 5 second to say "Hi, I miss you!! Bye" and only be charged RM0.05 for that call. For the same call duration, conventional prepaid plan would cost you 18cent(both DIGI and Maxis). Thats 72.22% saving.

If you feel like talking, Happy charged you only RM0.99 to talk for 45 minutes(regardless of peak and off peak period). This is still cheaper than Hotlink's Extended Super Saver which charges RM3 for 60 minutes talk time(only valid from 12midnight till 9am). SMS will be charged 10 cent per SMS to any network.

The special thing about Happy is that you can reload any amount between RM5(minimum reload required) t0 RM200(maximum reload allowed). This simply means that you could reload RM19.78. And with any amount of reload between RM5 to RM200, you will get 60 days validity. Now thats really great, especially for people who uses a mobile mainly to receive call.

Because Happy runs of a no frill structure, every call to the Happy call center will be charged RM2 per call(its normally free for conventional prepaid). International Direct Dialing(IDD) is also very expensive, at RM5 per minute to any country. Current DIGI IDD call rate is as low as 18cent to countries such as US, Singapore and 28 other countries. I've attached a chart to give you a better understand of Happy's services and its rates.

If you make alot of calls locally, whether to mobile line or landlines, then should seriously consider using Happy. However please bare in mind that its a no-frill prepaid plan, thus you have to pay a premium for its other services, like calling the call center, making IDD call, sending SMS and MMS internationally. Those who makes lots of local call to mobile and fix line, its time to change and let the savings make you HapPy.

To know more about the product, kindly visit http://www.happy.com.my

**Please take note that this is not an advertorial and I am not being paid for this article. Everything mentioned here is merely my opinion and I shall not be held liable for any financial loses which might incur after using Happy.

Prosperity Meal is back

Yes, you wanna be wealthy, you got to eat. And its not just any food available at the any restaurants, F&B outlets, or the pisang goreng store by the roadside. To be wealthy you got to go to the nearest golden arches restaurant outlet to get yourself the Prosperity Meal, which comes with a prosperity burger (comes in either beef or chicken), a cup of prosperity green tea(to make you feel as if you are gonna be rich after drinking it, the green tea is gold in colour instead of green) and a pack of curly fries.

These are printscreen's from McD's website.

This promotion is only available at McDonalds and its for a limited time only(until 31st January 2008). Gee, I don't understand why they cant have the promotion till Chinese New Year which falls on the 7th of February of 2008. Maybe its their marketing strategies to make people rush like to their outlets.

My Prosperity Meal which cost me almost RM12.

Anyway, if you are a superstitious person and believe that consuming anything that is being promoted as prosperous could make you much more prosperous, then you wouldn't wanna miss this once in a year opportunity to do so. If you are not the superstitious type, you can still go ahead and try it, cause the burger taste good compare to the normal menu available all your round. Hope I will become more prosperious this year.

Finally the election.

After a year, the election was here again. Yes I mention was cause the election took place yesterday. This year, AIESEC Malaysia's Member Committee's Election was held at Taylor's University College. It was an intense event,with 2 candidates running for the President and 8 others candidates running for the Director's position.

I arrived there 10 minutes before the scheduled event starts. There were about 180 people attending the event, both with voting rights and without voting rights. The entire event was packed with energy, yes full of energy, thanks to the Chairperson of the day who flew in all the way from Indonesia(that's quite international to have a foreigner involved in an election). Mr Edwin, the Chairperson of the day politely requested the crowd to cheers energetically for the candidate's. Candidates were suppose to wait outside the election hall and are only allow to come in when they are being call in to give their speech to convince the crowd to vote for them. Each time a candidate walks in, the crowd would stand up, cheers and clap. And the same goes when a candidate walks out of the hall when the candidate finishes his/her speech.This was to support the candidates who have had sleepy night prior to this big day and also to calm their nerves.

The event, begun with a short multimedia presentation, short speech by the current President, then the introduction of the election's chairperson. The chairperson then took over and introduces all the candidates to the crowd before requesting for the candidates to proceed outside of the hall. This were done in two session, first being the presidential candidate and second for the director's candidates. Each candidate were call in one by one to give their election speech after which the candidate are required to make an orderly exit from the hall to make way for the next candidates. A question and answer session was open to the crowd after all the candidate for the session gave their speech.

To cut the entire event short on from 9am till about 6 plus when the election result was announce. Out of the 10 candidate, only 5 manage to garner 2/3 of the total votes to run the office for the term 2008/2009. The new team would be James, William, Sharon and Daryl with James being the President while the latter 3 being Directors. However all these 5 lucky people who have garner enough vote of confidence from the voting crowd would still be required to go for an interview session and pass it of cause before they could proceed on the transition process with the current board of AIESEC.

Sadly 5 candidates didn't managed to secure enough vote. And there were 8 spoiled votes, that otherwise could have change the fate of some candidates. Anyway, I believe that when you don't get something, it simply means that god have other plans for you. So to those who didn't make it, don't be sad and be alert for opportunities cause when one door closes, another door will be open.

Pictures will be up shortly

Names of all candidates were not mention so as to protect their identity. However if you are one of them, and are reading this now, and feel that you have what it takes to let people know who you are, you are most welcome to drop a comment here.

Will DIGI get its own 3G spectrum?

Well if you read the news paper tomorrow morning (26th Jan 2007), you will most likely read about DIGI and TimeDotCom(TDC) signing a partnership deal which will see the transfer of 3G ownership from TDC to DIGI and corporation in various aspect. However this is just the surface of the deal as this deal still require approval from 6 relevant party before it could start the transfer of the 3G spectrum or licence. The deal involved is DIGI issuing of new DIGI share to TDC as payment of the spectrum. The 6 approval needed are:

(a) the approval of the Securities Commission ("SC") for the issue of the Consideration Shares to TDSB or its Nominees and the listing of and quotation for the Consideration Shares on the Main Board of Bursa Securities;

(b) the approval of the SC, under the Guideline on the Acquisition of Interests, Mergers and Take-Overs by Local and Foreign Interests of the Foreign Investment Committee for the issue of the Consideration Shares to TDSB or its Nominees;

(c) the approval-in-principle of Bursa Securities for the listing of and quotation for the Consideration Shares on the Main Board of Bursa Securities;

(d) the approval of the MCMC for the Proposed Transfer, TDSB to be released from its obligations in relation to the Spectrum on DiGi Telecom’s receipt of the Spectrum and the release and return to TDSB the bank guarantee of RM50 million issued in favour of the MCMC in respect of the Spectrum on DiGi Telecom’s receipt of the Spectrum;

(e) the approval of DiGi’s shareholders for the Proposed Transfer;

(f) the approval of TdC’s shareholders for the Proposed Transfer;

Why does DIGI needs it so badly that they are willing to fork out such a huge investment to buy it from a company that is near bankruptcy? The main reason is to compete with existing telco(namely Celcom & Maxis) as well as new telco(UMobile) which owned a 3G spectrum each.

** For your information, UMobile is a newly establish telco company operating the 018 prefix. It's formerly know as MITV, a cable TV company owned by Tan Sri Vincent Tan Chee Yioun.

It has been the talk of the town, especially among investors(both institutional and retail) and analysis that the main reason DIGI was deprived of a 3G Spectrum was because it is a foreign owned company. Yes, in case you do not know, DIGI is owned by Telenor, a Norwegian Telco Company. Even Malaysia's Energy, Water and Communications Minister Datuk Seri Lim Keng Yaik was quoted by the media for making the statement that, the 3G Spectrum is a national asset and local company would be given priority to own and use this valuable national asset.

So do you think DIGI will get the 3G spectrum at the end of the day, considering that DIGI is a foreign company?

If you ask me, I think the likely hood will be very high because TDC is not doing very well financially, it did so badly that TDC had to sell Time Cell(017) to Maxis. TDC will also benefit from the issuing of new DIGI share to TDC as DIGI is making good profit and distributing good dividend. Being a DIGI shareholder with 10% stake after the completion of this deal and also with the purchase of DIGI's share from the open market, TDC's stake in DIGI will be generation a pretty handsome recurring income for TDC in years to come.

However it is still rather early to tell if DIGI will get the licence's for good because the Malaysian government never fail to surprise the Malaysian public by interfering in business deal within Malaysia. A recent example was the rejection of Volkswagen from forging a partnership with Proton(Proton Management and Majoring stakeholder Khazanah were keen on the partnership however our Pak Lah wants to keep his pride and rejected the partnership.). Another good example is the case between Gamuda-MMC and the Malay Chamber of Commerce Malaysia. If you do not know about it, kindly click here to read about it.

So whats your opinion? Will the government intervene and stop the deal from going through because DIGI is owned by a foreign company? Lets hear what you have to say.

Malaysia PM say its unlikely to match 2004 Poll Win

According to Reuters news release on the 22th of January 2008, the Malaysia Prime Minister(PM) a.k.a Pak Lah was quoted saying that "Malaysia's ruling coalition is unlikely to repeat its record 2004 election victory in the coming polls". Pak Lah and his coalition who has a landslide victory of 199 seats out of 219 seats during the 2004 General Election also mention 2004 was an exceptional time.

With so many problems haunting the ruling coalition in recent months, ranging from scandals, corruption, poor leadership, and price hike of essential goods. By making such a statement proves that our PM is not a sleeping minister, but when will he show his leadership skill in steering our nation towards achieving vision 2020. At the rate that we are developing now, I've serious doubt that they might actually extend it by another 10 to 20 years. Over the last 18 months the PM has launch various development project such as the Iskandar Development Region (IDR), Northern Corridor Economic Region(NCER), and Eastern Coast Economic Region (ECER) which was reportedly worth billions of ringgit and create millions of job opportunity.

While those projects is said to be worth billions, it will only materialise if investors put their money into this project. With the rising uncertainty in the global economy, especially the fear the world biggest power house, America falling into a recession, investors has become more cautious about where they put their money. Besides the external factor, the piling number of internal factor such as the current poor leadership and the various problems surrounding the ruling coalition. Investors might choose not to come into Malaysia, especially with the ridiculous requirement such as bumiputra must have at least 30% stake in a company. I've nothing against the bumiputra, in fact I think the governments move to imposed such requirement actually underestimate the bumiputra true ability and make they lazy to fight for their own right.

Why should they be given 30% compulsory stake? Why cant they work their ass just like the non-bumiputra and enjoy the sweetness of success at the end of the day. I think its high time that the government wake up from having the bumi and non-bumi mentality. Malaysia being a multi racial country should practice the Malaysian spirit and gives everyone equal rights to ownership, education, financial aids and all the benefit that a Malaysian enjoy. They may say that its already written in the constitution and our forefather has agreed to it. But then again, we are living in the 21st century where the world is no longer like what it used to be, so we should be moving forward and not let the constitution tie us down. If we don't move forward, it will be like living in today's hi-tech world with a 486 computer.