Babies Affected By Price Hikes

I hate getting a bad news in the morning. I was saddened reading an article this morning, where some babies are now being fed only twice a day instead of an average five times a day. All of because commodity prices are skyrocketing recently. Parents with low income, can’t afford to feed their infants adequately. The article claims, some parents even resorted to condensed milk and sugar to substitute the pricey formula milk.

How can the government lets this to happen? Government must work in haste, to setup a procedure for a low income family to get a subsidized food supplies as what is happening in the developed countries. In States, even the foreign students with a family of their own, eligible for a weekly food supplies which comprise of breads, milk, sugar and etc.

With the increasing of commodity prices, the number of low income families is increasing as well. Although currently, I’m might not be affected as bad as the low income group, but if the prices keep going up, there is no doubt that I’ll be joining the group.

Is Old Town White Coffee Halal?

Last couple of months, my wife had planned a reunion for her cousins. One of the initial landing spots was Old Town White Coffee cafe. My wife and I went to check out one of the cafe’s outlets in Kuala Lumpur.

Our first impression of the cafe, was good. The ambiance was a reminiscence of an old time kopitiam but with cool air-conditioners and well lit. My wife ordered an iced lemonade and I ordered the famous Iced Hazelnut Coffee drink. After sitting there and admiring the place for quite a bit, we began browsing the menu to check whether the prices were reasonable. Then we noticed something that bothered us. At one of the pages, with a fine print, it stated something like this, “No pork is served with all the dishes”. Well, I can’t really remember the exact statement but I guess you should really getting my point here. Is this cafe really serves Halal food? Then we approached the guy at the counter (, which the nationality was hard to guess,) for the Halal certificate, but with disappointment, there was none. We we’re asked to surf their website which claimed to contain the Halal cert. So we went home and did exactly that, and yet with another disappointment we saw the cert below (which is linked from the original website)

From the cert. above, we can only see the drinks being listed as Halal products. But what about the other drinks and food being served in the menu? Plus, is the cert. had expired?

We are saddened with this issue which came to our attention and knowing each day, there are lots of Muslim patrons spending their time in these cafes. Attention for the owner of the cafe, please put up the proper Halal certs for your customers viewing at each of your outlets and in your website. If not, just displays a huge Non-Halal signage to ward off any Muslim customers.

Fuel Price Chaos

If you’re living in an area which has lots of fuel stations, yesterday most probably was a nightmare. After government announced the hike of petrol price last evening, seems like everybody queuing up their cars for a refuel. The traffic was even worst than the normal rush hour in the morning. To make matter worst, yesterday I was out with my wife for a nice dinner to celebrate our anniversary. The bad traffic really spoilt our night. Fortunately, the dinner was really nice and it really offset the bad traffic experience.

Back to the fuel price. After the fuel price has increased to MYR 2.70/liter , I’ve to fork out additional RM 0.78 per liter . Now let me calculate my new jacked up fuel cost. I’ve to travel back and forth to office every weekday and the total journey is around 85km. Assuming my Gen2 car dashboard system has correct computation, it showed me that I used 7.4 liter of fuel for 85km journey. Times that number by the new fuel price (MYR 2.70), it will cost me MYR 19.98 per day. Assumming I’ve to work 20 days in month, then my total cost for fuel monthly, going back and forth to office, is MYR 399.60. WTF @#$@#$$%. So to take into account all the weekend drives I usually took with my family, I’m assuming the total cost of fuel for me monthly, would be around MYR 600. But wait a minute, this was my fuel cost incurred before the fuel price hike. So, I guess it will cost me more than this. There must be something wrong with my calculation or my Gen2 dashboard system :p.