Today’s fun and utterly pointless observation is a Google Image Search for "Kuala Lumpur". The first result is a photo of… Singapore!
To lend some possibly needed perspective, that would be akin to having a photo of Melbourne appear if you typed "Sydney", or London if you typed "Dublin", or Sarah Palin if you entered "intelligence is sexy".
After several long months without any activity, Ms. Guilty Cubicles has updated her blog with a brand new entry so brilliant in its execution I had to wear sunglasses while reading it. Then I discovered something.
This is a public service announcement for people who discuss aviation. It is "Malaysia Airlines" and NOT "Malaysian Airlines". Can you tell the difference?
Referring to it as Malaysian Airlines on your website doesn’t do much for your aviation credibility, especially considering the correct spelling is in the logo! Ditto for Qantas. Don’t worry, even high profile sites like Dynamic Business Australia are guilty of it.
Just came back this evening from our (brief) trip to KL, as evidenced from the view from our hotel window above! I lived here in 2007-08 so it was good to go to all my old haunts. Will be posting proper photos and whatnot later this week.
We’ve got Tuesday in Singapore (going to make the most of it), then 09:00 on Wednesday morning I’m back to Adelaide to face those "people" at that university. Can’t wait.
With that in mind they’re will probably be a further interruption to your regularly scheduled blog posts here. If you feel the urge to read more Ruben sanctioned nonsense, feel free to browse the archive or barring that visit any of the fine folks on the site sidebar. They’re far more interesting, succinct, eloquent and funny than me anyway.
Danke schön, see you on the other side ^_^.
While we did live in Singapore most of my life, we did spent a short stint in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia for my dad’s bidness, and I remember all too well when I used to sit at the airport waiting for my sister while I drank coffee at the Délifrance. Julee on Twitter just sent me the photo above a few minutes ago, glad to see its just as I remember it :).
As I eluded in the previous post where I was talking about eBay nonsense, earlier this week I spent two days and one night back in Kuala Lumpur. Doing errands mostly, nothing too exciting.
One thing I was able to do in the spare time before we boarded the bus back was to go to The Ikano Power Centre in Damansara. Because my family lived here from 2006-07 my dad and I often went there to pick up IKEA furniture and we’d always grab a bite to eat at the Norwegian sandwich shop. They desperately need to open a franchise in Singapore, their salmon sandwiches are incredible and the outdoor atmosphere was great.
It’s funny the things we remember isn’t it? Going through my blog archives here for example I remember I talked a lot about internet and phone problems in Malaysia. Also funny that the design of this site hasn’t changed much at all since then either.
I’ve felt embarrassed for Microsoft when they introduced the Zune, Windows Vista, the Office Ribbon interface, Windows Genuine Advantage, MSN and Windows Live search, the near constant security threats, their latest announcement of a Windows 7 version that will only run 3 applications at a time… but this could very well be their crowning achievement.
As someone who grew up in Singapore, I was buckled over in fits of laugher when I saw this report from Microsoft’s Research division!
We introduce Cibai a generic static analyzer based on abstract interpretation for the modular analysis and verification of Java classes. We present the abstract semantics and the underlying abstract domain, a combination of an aliasing analysis and octagons.
We discuss some implementation issues, and we compare Cibai with similar tools, showing how Cibai achieves a higher level of automation and precision while having comparable performances.
Clearly they don’t have any Hokkien creole speakers in their ranks! Then again to be fair, I’m sure plenty of Microsoft employees in their research division would like nothing more than to do more cibai research ;) A cibai [...] analyser? Cibai [...] tools?! :D
It’s official, S. Manikumar has won the by-election for the seat of Bukit Gantang for Anwar Ibrahim’s PKR (People’s Justice Party). From The Malaysian Insider:
SUNGAI PETANI, April 7 — First-timer S. Manikumar has ensured that Bukit Selambau is represented in the state executive council after a hard-fought but convincing 2,403-vote win over Barisan Nasional’s Datuk S. Ganesan.
The PKR candidate polled 12,632 votes to defeat the former Lunas assemblyman who managed 10,229.
This of course is a huge win for Anwar Ibrahim’s PKR party and a particularly embarrassing one for the embattled UMNO coalition which only just recently got a new leader in Datuk Seri Najib Razak who, I have to be frank, scares me a bit.
I barely lived in Malaysia for over a year, but I still like to keep informed with what’s going on. It’s proximity to and shared history with Singapore where I lived since the mid 1990s also means what goes on there has a rippling effect. Plus I want to know how it’s affecting my friends over there.
ASIDE: If you’re one of my regular readers outside South-East Asia and I’ve lost you with this post, I hope to write more about this and to do some more explaining sometime later this week.
In the meantime if you’re interested, Wikipedia’s articles on Anwar Ibrahim and to a lesser extent The PKR, UMNO and the Controversy section of the Bumiputra article give you a pretty good idea. To say Anwar has put up with and been the victim of political mudslinging is the understatement of the millennium.
Congratulations to S. Manikumar, The PKR and to Anwar Ibrahim. Merdeka!
Singapore photo by User:Majush on Wikipedia
This is yet another example of why growing up in multiple countries and cities stuffs you up as an adult. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t have traded living in different places for anything in the world because it really opened my eyes and allowed me to expand my views of the world outside Australia, but it wasn’t all a free lunch. Like having prata and teh tarik at 3am. Where was I going with this?
Today’s example is the XML language attribute which the relative XHTML standards demand. I could just define the xml:lang and lang tags in the html element as "en" for English. The problem is English is so generic these days as to be next to useless. I use the original English spelling instead of American spelling for most words given I’m an Aussie, but I also use more than a few Singaporean colloquialisms. Aiyo. For this reason using "en-au" probably wouldn’t be completely accurate, but "en-sg" would be even less accurate. "en-gb" would reflect the spelling, but then there’s the problem that Google might index my page as one originating from the UK.
Do Austrians who have since moved to Switzerland or Germany have this problem? Or Germans who have since moved to Austria or Switzerland have this problem? Or do Schweizerdeutsch speakers who have since moved to Germany or Austria have this problem?
Perhaps I should just set my language to Klingon and be done with it.
Hi! I'm Ruben Schade and this is my labour of love blog from beautiful Singapore and Sydney.
I also lurk on Twitter, Flickr, Google Reader and lots more places.
