Internet is archaic? Are we?

I tried to buy my ticket back home this morning on Malaysia Airlines, to no avail.
The reason was as I proceeded to the payment process, the website suddenly encountered an error.
"Please contact web administrator," said the notice.

How on earth(internet) am I supposed to contact the web administrator. I know that error has been well used for a long time, but maybe perhaps they can change it into something more informative?
Such as, "there is an error no 99XXX, please email support at info@mas.com" or something to that extent.

5 Stars don't translate into profit if customers can't buy ticket, right?

I vented my frustration on twitter, where a conversation ensued with a friend of mine. I compared my experience booking with MAS to buying tickets with Emirates. We agreed that Emirates has a better web service, 'smooth experience' as according to my friend.
MAS has improved its marketing but that itself is not enough. In the era of online shopping - cewaaah...but no seriously, people rarely buy offline this days- MAS should step up and improve their websites. It is not enough that it is working, if possible people should be amazed at the website design. An analogy would be if you were to renovate your shop, you would probably paint your front new.

MAS should redesign its archaic website.

One would then dismiss, "Malaysia memang macam tu.." or something along the line, but afterwards I wanted to give review on Ebay to a seller whom was very pleasant to deal with. He had mistakenly sent a false set of items(I bought a deck of cards). I emailed him and he said that he'll send the correct item and I can keep the old one. In short, I got a free item. Although it's only €2, the kind gesture appeased me.
So I decided to write a positive review.

Now, if you ever read review's of seller on Ebay, they are normally short and formulaic. Most are copied paste.
I wanted to write a long and positive one, describing my situation above but then I discovered and was reminded that the review can only contain 80 characters. What can you exactly write in 80 characters? Even twitter has 160+ characters. Therefore I had to write a very simple and short review.
"Nette kontak, gerne wieder"- Good communication, love to do business again.
Which is a rubbish review and not at all helpful.

80 characters is too short to write anything useful beside saying this is rubbis

A seller once wrote in his/her description that positive reviews on Ebay are hardly true, the negative reviews are mostly exaggarated.
I agree.

My point I bring this up is to show that even a website that is widely used such as Ebay has its similarity with MAS' website. Both have archaic part on them, that is hardly useful but people simply used because of 'tradition'.
And the reason I blog about this is in all of us, there are parts where we are archaic and habitual, where we do stuffs that is hardly beneficial but we do them simply because we have been doing them for years. Programmers: clearly, you must design better website.
User: you, and me, not so clear but we should redesign some parts of our life.

Thank you for reading.

Kindle, rumusan ringkas

hai! bought a new kindle.

so some friends asked for a review and since I think some things need to be shown, so here's a video velow. yes, velow.

okay, negatif dulu.

Kindle(4) tak boleh

-baca dalam gelap

-tengok flash(i.e. video)

-sentuh/touch screen. jadi kena guna butang analog

 ada kindle yang boleh(kindle touch), tapi lembab. lagipon takdak butang kanan kiri(turn page). kena swipe.

-dengar lagu. (version lain selain ni, boleh)

pendek kata, kindle ni bukan tablet, hanyalah sebuah e-reader.

dan lagi spesifik, kindle 4 ni versi yang paling habis jimat. stripped down to basic functions, which I think is useful. 

okay, positif pulak.

Kindle boleh

-baca tengah cerah, tak macam lcd. tak silau.

-baca dalam gelap, dengan lampu. tapi tak sakit mata macam baca lcd dalam gelap.

 yes, I've tried reading the whole night with the phone. got spasm afterwards.

-simpan 1000-2000 buah buku. no external battery tho, but who can read 1k of books anyway?

-tahan sebulan, bateri. tu kalau guna sehari sejam, macam amazon cakap. tapi kalau berterusan, rasa seminggu lebih jugak tahan.

-sync buku antara apps. so if you read on the kindle apps on pc/phone, the bookmarks syncs.

-oh oh, ni koool tapi aku macam kurang guna, kindle boleh cari maksud perkataan tu dengan highlight ja. tapi semua apps sekarang bleh buat macam tu kan? still, cool.

Selepas seminggu:

Baru sempat habis "Pillars of the Earth" buku 1&2 tapi setakat best lah.

Cuma kadang-kadang bila nak tekan butang forward tu susah skit kalau guna sebelah tangan. ikut tangan gak la. bagi aku, samada tahan belakang kindle dengan benda lain, ataupon beli cover yang belakang dia ada ruang nak masukkan tangan. Kalau pegang dua belah tangan tak jadi masalah benda ni.

So, hope that helps. Just bear in mind it's not an ipad.

Oh and if you wanna buy one (through amazon.de), please click this link for your Kindle

I'd get a commission, teehee. Not sure how much tho, a penny maybe.

Thanks for reading, wasalam.

e-buk, ini mau diletak di mana ya?

This is not a goodbye post. I'll write that later.

Anyway I am going back in two days time and like any student studying abroad(really?), there are numerous shopping "process to be done". Honestly though I don't know about everyone else but for me it is like ritual to buy things - foods, electronics, books etc- in Malaysia before going back oversea since the price is much cheaper and the options are much, much more. Contohnya, kat sana takdak sos cili beb. Sadis gak nak makan sos tomato setahun, nak beli kat kedai asia kadang takdak, selalu mahal. Hence the frenzy shopping for me.
However in order to shop with a clear conscience(clear lah sangat), I decided to log in and check into my account bank to see its balance. Somehow the password is wrong. It seems I have forgotten the passwords or mix up the sequence, hence I cannot see my balance. I still remember my www.amazon.de though, where I usually do most of my shopping online. oh, Irony.

Local shopping in preparation to go back aside, I began browsing amazon.de. After all, it's been two monts since I logged in and most of the catalogue seems to change, plus it wouldn't cost a thing right to do a bit online window shopping, right? Right? RIGHT?? I'll leave that to individual preferences. So anyway I browse through amazon and if you've been on it recently(i.e past two years), amazon has been pushing its kindle device and all the e-books so agressively, that one article said, "short of changing its name, Amazon has tried everything to promote its Kindle."

Here's what a Kindle looks like

The reason Amazon is promoting Kindle and its e-books, is mostly because of the advance of portable device and decreasing interest in buying paper books. I know people who would swear they would print the entire book than reading it in digital form but the majority prefers convenience, hence the popularity of e-book.

E-book is convenient.

It can be bought and read within minutes, can be carried through the air, has almost no weight burden. And it is cost efficient, so it is cheap. Wait, I crossed that out because e-book is NOT cheap. Actually, its price is preposterous(unless you download illegally, but that's a different story)

"Really?" one would ask. Is it that expensive? 

Yes. Lotsa talks is useless. Here's an example.

the kindle price is the topmost, while the taschenbuch is the 3rd. 

kindle 5.99 euro

paperback 5.60 euro. 

wtf anyone?

eh, apsal ambik contoh twilight. dem!

okay, okay, here's a comparison of one of my favourite book, The Godfather.

Kindle 5.89 euro

Paperback: Amazon: 6.60 euro, 3rd party: 5.76 euro

well the kindle is slightly cheaper but for a 30 years old classic, it's still dissappointing. Really, it seems to be such a rip-off.

It is almost the same in other publications such as Guttenberg and what-not, most of which I surveyed charged expensively for an e-book. The reason I say expensive is logically the book has skipped the part where it has to be printed on paper and post to the readers. Yes I know the servers also cost money and the digitalization of old books is not magical, still the cost would be covered with multiple purchase as the cost per unit is almost neglible, unlike paperbooks.

If the royalty is said to be the factor, one would accept if it is not free, since even e-books sold by unknown authors on amazon cost that much, but what reasons can it be when famous e-books such as above are sold more expensive than their paper counterpart?

What I really made me turn off by these e-books sold by amazon is that they have the same price with paperbooks yet they cannot be shared or lent. Let say if I buy an e-book, I have to lend my account if I want my friend to read it(strictly legal speaking, that is). For a paperback, I can lend it to anyone I want, gift it to a friend or famil, donate to library, even sell it back as second hand books. 

If you buy an e-book, you DO NOT own it. Of course in paperbook you do not own the writings and idea but at least you get something for the money. With e-book you do not. Amazon even have the right, which it did on one book, to pull the book from your library.

Such a nuisance. conveniance turned into nuisance, such is the corporate manipulation. 

And all that for the same price(or even higher) of an ebook to the paperbook.

Well, that is my babbling for now. At least it stopped me from buying anything from Amazon and keeping me distracted long enough that I can now go shop physically to bring back to Deutschland soon.

Thanks for reading(and helping me save)!

p.s. sapa nak pesan sos cili?

Can you drink your shampoo?

I realized the last post was a bit sombre and serious, hence this I hope would lift the mood. Initially I wanted to write chapter for my novel but got distracted by Restaurant Makeover in AFC(asian food channel) which halfway made me sleepy. This post is a write off for the night.

Last year when I came back for holiday, I stayed at my sister's house. During the time there, I noticed my brother-in-law routine of mixing powdered goat's milk with water and drinking it. He did promoted it to me once or twice but I am almost always reluctant, hence decided not to try. This year it seems my mother and my brother have also caught the practice and take one packet daily. During one of my sneeze bout(I sneeze alot), my mother 'suggested' taking the drink for sahur.
"Cuba la minum tengok, orang cakap bukannya pernah nak dengar."

So I picked up a packet of them. First and foremost, alternative healing and additional/traditional supplements always leave me with doubts, and it doesn't help that they have dubious claims. You know, the one that claims it can heal flu, cough, joint pain, chest pain, uneasiness in sstomach, headache AND cancer. If we use our minds just a little bit, we will question how can one tablet/pill/bottle heal all those things altogether. Allah cipta setiap benda ada kegunaan, takkan satu bahan boleh guna untuk ubat semua penyakit. I used to be perplexed by these claims long ago but recently after reading quite a dose of Aidid Muadib's blog which vehemently oppose this type of marketing, it occured to me that these are malpractices which are very dangerous. Moreover the fact that most Malaysians are not inquisitive enough to counter the misinformations.

Nowadays any type of hyperbole marketing, such as detergent that cleans 99.99% bacteria, will cause me to avoid the product. I understand it is the marketing team which produce these hype but if you are willing to let your product be advertised in wrongful manners and dubious claims, than you might as well not need my money.
Lest you forget, I was suggested to drink the milk, so I took a packet of the powdered goat milk to read it labels and fortunately I find there are no outrageous claims. Except maybe for one small thing.

"No goaty taste."

top left : No Goaty Taste!

 I can't imagine the possibility that other milks has the taste of a goatee. An image of a man with a goatee comes in mind...

Anyway I did drank the drink and initial review seems favourable. No side effects though the positive effects are still not clear. I may need to drink it for one week, then stop, to see its effect. Let us see in a week.


On another note, a few weeks ago my mother asked me to buy a shampoo for her. I went to the Giant, where upon the overwhelming choices and types of shampoo, I settled for one that I thought my mother would feel okay with. Later that week, my brother struck up a conversation during sahur.

"Sapa yang beli syampu tu?" he said, smiling.
"Awatnya?" I asked.
"Takdak la, ada gambar muka kat depan tu, nak guna pon rasa tak berani," he said, to which we laughed.

Guess what shampoo I bought?



Guess.



Shampoo...

The goat model on the packaging is now quite famous and about to star in its debut film.

Talk about cross-breeding, eh? Or cross marketing
To my defence, I thought my mom would like the shampoo since she liked the drink. My brother however said a goat-milk shampoo is kinda oxymoron.

oh well. thanks for reading!