The ridership on the Bridge Express Shuttle Transit (Best) is gradually increasing.
From 60 passengers on 1 March, it reached 215 passengers yesterday, 3 March, a source told me.
Everyone needs a laugh sometimes. A good break from depressing news.
That’s a father tearing up his job application rejection letter. I suppose the laughter, shared around the world, more than made up for the disappointment!
The Bridge Express Shuttle Transit (Best) system between mainland Penang and Penang Island has been launched. Definitely a move in the right direction – and we cannot afford to let it fail.
For a start the buses are running from Sunway Carnival in Seberang Jaya, where people can park their cars, to the Bayan Lepas industrial zone. Let these buses run for a month or so and then conduct a review to iron out the chinks kinks – or better still conduct weekly reviews.
Over the last couple of years especially, property market prices have shot through the roof as investors and speculators and sellers worked themselves up into a frenzy. Prices have almost doubled in some places.
In some countries, the real estate bubble has long since burst. For how long more can we see prices rocketing in Malaysia? House and apartment prices are being priced out of the reach of many working- and even middle-class Malaysians. That is why housing loans for the purchase of residential property have soared from RM167bn in May 2007 to RM230bn in September 2010.
Entering the Great World Park of Penang or Tua Seh Kai was like being teleported into a dreamy entertainment world, the stuff of fantasy and gastronomical delights, recalls tunglang.
This was definitely a happy world of nightly entertainment for Penangites of the 1950s, 60s and 70s. Located at the present Prangin Mall, it was like entering another dimension of amusement arcade, cinema, food and merry-go-round. Just pay 10 cents and you were teleported into a world of great entertainment. (Mind you, 10 cents then was like a bullock cart’s wheel).
Former senior CIA analyst-turned-peace activist Ray McGovern was forcibly ejected and injured when he stood up and turned his back towards Hillary Clinton in silent protest during her ‘Freedom Speech’.
Protests are picking up against the 30-year rule of Sarawak Chief Minister Taib Mahmud. This one was held in the UK on 28 February.A protest outside the Central London headquarters of the wealthy property company Ridgeford Properties - Photo credit: Sarawakreport.org.
Taib completes three decades in power on 26 March 2011.
The Federal Court has fixed 28 April 2011 to hear a full appeal on a couple of cases involving native customary rights to land that could have far-reaching implications.
The main issue before the court: is Section 5 (3) and (4) (on the land acquisition procedure) of the Sarawak Land Code ultra vires Article 5 read together with Article 13 (on the right to life and right to property) of the Federal Constitution?
While people power protests in the Arab world are in the spotlight, the corporate media seem to have downplayed the public sector workers’ 100,000-strong protest in Wisconsin over moves to strip them of their collective bargaining rights.
The level of illicit cigarettes in Malaysia remains high.
According to a press release by JT International Berhad, the results of an Illicit Cigarettes Study, commissioned by CMTM, showed “the incidence of illicit cigarettes from June-August 2010 remaining critical at nearly 40%”.
The revolt in the Arab world is not just about getting rid of authoritarian leaders and dictators. It is also about ending economic injustice and exploitation.
The media would have us believe that the popular discontent is solely due to the dictatorships and repression in the Arab world. But there is more to it than that. A lot of the disenchantment is also the result of people’s hopes being crushed by an exploitative economic system that undermines essential public services, reduces nations to little more than sweat-shops, and concentrates wealth in the hands of a wealthy elite and their well-connected or crony corporations.
Tunglang takes us on a journey half a century back in time to relive his childhood experience of savouring street food in George Town:
In my half slumber mode, if my memory is still intact, I can visually relive a moment in the early 1960s, standing at the junction at night in front of Craven A Cafe.
I am a small child in pyjamas looking up to a tall, passing rickshaw with a running puller. I guess this is the last of the rickshaw breed in Penang.
Over a hundred demonstrators unhappy over the controversial Interlok book have been arrested and detained all over Kuala Lumpur ahead of and during a Hindraf/Human Rights Party rally to protest at what they perceive to be racism.
According to a tweet by a Hasbeemasputra, six were held in IPD Sentul, 120 at PULAPOL (they are now believed to have been released), and an unknown number in Dang Wangi and IPK KL.
Among those arrested or detained were Human Rights Party leader P Uthayakumar, who is being held at Jinjang police station, where a crowd of about 300 has gathered. Other Hindraf supporters are believed to have gathered at IPD Sentul.
Just over a dozen years after it was first opened by Mahathir, the Sepang International Circuit has been plagued by leaking roofs, rubbish and declining attendances.
Apparently, the grand roof needs to be replaced – after only a dozen years, purportedly its life span. (See AFP photo of leaking roof above paddock building here.) The circuit’s boss has admitted there were shortcuts during construction – completed in a “record time” of 14 months – and shoddy maintenance since then. Another pet project under the Mahathir administration that even clinched a Special Project Award at the Malaysian Construction Industry Excellence Awards 2001.
It’s going to be straight fights – BN vs Pas – for the Kerdau and Merlimau by-elections, the 15th and 16th by-elections since the 2008 general election.
The score as it stands now is 8-6 in the Pakatan’s favour. The BN has a good chance of levelling the score, if, as many expect, they win both these both by-elections. In fact, a source within Pas, who has been accurate in his predictions so far, told me the party has little chance of winning these by-elections.
These by-elections will be the prelude for the Sarawak state election, expected to be held in early April 2011. The BN will be watching all these polls carefully, and if all goes well for them, maybe we can expect a general election a few months later.
The Penang Island Municipal Council (MPPP) has ordered Klassik Tropika, a subsidiary of the Mah Sing Group, to rebuild an illegally demolished colonial-era bungalow to its original condition.
This is a step in the right direction. The even bigger question is, what’s going to happen to the RM280 million high-rise plan for the Pykett Avenue site? Will MPPP reject the plan as a lesson to all? Or will the plan eventually be approved when the uproar has died down? The developer had bought the site from a private company in December 2009 for RM38.7 million (RM262 per sq ft), according to a filing with Bursa Malaysia.
See this report from theSun:
Restore building to original condition, developer told
Himanshu Bhatt
GEORGE TOWN (Feb 23, 2011): A developer that has been ordered to rebuild a colonial-era bungalow here after illegally demolishing it last year is required to restore it to its original condition, the Penang government has clarified.
Here’s an interesting series of seminar lectures on Culture, Media and Identity brought to you by the Centre for the Study of Communications and Culture, University of Nottingham Malaysia campus.
Farish Noor is first in line to speak at these Saturday talks beginning at 10.00am tomorrow at the University of Nottingham KL Teaching Centre,
Level 2, Chulan Tower, 3 Jalan Conlay, 50450 Kuala Lumpur. If you are interested, the Centre requests you to email agnes.selvaragi@nottingham.edu.my to confirm attendance, mainly for catering purposes.
Here’s how the Centre describes these series:
The series will be in three parts, each comprising six lectures or multimedia presentations by renowned scholars and cultural activists. The main aim of the series is to examine and evaluate the importance of culture and the media in the construction of identities in an increasingly globalised world. This is important in a region comprising multiple cultures and at a time when greater cultural awareness, understanding and respect is needed but, unfortunately, has not been forthcoming.
Who is responsible for Taib Mahmud’s worst nightmare? Clare Rewcastle Brown, sister-in-law of Gordon Brown, and Peter John Jaban aka ‘Papa Orang Utan’, the grandson of a Dayak headhunter, are the driving force behind the mysterious Radio Free Sarawak.Clare and Papa - Photo credit: London Evening StandardThe report in the London Evening Standard
Clare, a former BBC investigative journalist, is also the author of the Sarawak Report website.
The Seberang Perai Municipal Council (MPSP) continues to climb to a healthier financial position after wasting lots of money on mainland Penang pre-2008.