Jajah

Online service Jajah is giving free local and international calls on your handphone and landline, for communication within these six countries - Canada, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and USA. What I like is no software purchase or installation needed.

There are no charges as long as both communicating users are registered with Jajah and have a local number in one of the six countries. Calls outside of these six countries carry a charge. charges are listed on the site.

Here is how it works:

1) go to http://www.jajah.com and register.
Make sure the person you want to call is also a jajah member.
All you need is a landline or handphone number and an email address.

2) Key in your phone number and your recipient's phone number on the Jajah website and you will be connected.

Voice quality is a tad inconsistent but you get what you pay for or don't pay for. Still, worth a try.

Hantu Glossary

The chinese seventh month started a few days back. It is going to be a loooong seventh month, as there are 2 seven months in the lunar calendar this year. Imagine; the ghosts are taking a 2 months' break this time! If you think you will be safe at home, think again, prepare for the onslaught of horror movies on tv.

Was catching up on my reading when I came across this article in the Peranakan magazine which has a writeup about baba folklores and 101 on ghosts. According to their culture, there are several categories... I am reproducing the glossary here so you know what you have encountered while out at night this time of the year. Good luck.

Pontianak
Spirit of a woman (mostly Malay) who dies at childbirth. Attracted to pregnant women and newborns. Insatiable lust for men, sucks life-blood from their genitals. Destroyed by nailing her head with a nail embedded with candlenut.

Hantu Polong
Spirit without a body, with bloodied entrails hanging as it flies. Known to stain white sheets left to dry at night and may get trapped by bamboo poles and clothes lines. Now you know why mothers say don't hang clothes at night.

Hantu Jerangkong
The fiercest, ugliest hantu who will savagely attack humans.

Hantu Tetek
Spirit with big breasts. Targets children by suffocating their faces between her breasts, ie, kena sumbat tetek.

Hantu Galah
Tall and slender. Clamps you tightly with his long legs, like a pair of chopsticks, until you die of suffocation. Emerges from the earth. Best to avoid by lying flat on the ground.

Hantu Tak Kepala
Headless spirit in search of its missing head. Likely to be a victim of decapitation.

Hantu Laut
Spirit of a victim drowned at sea. Seeks more souls for company..

Hantu Pokok
Banana and kapok trees are known to be the favourite playground of the spirits.

Hantu Perempuan
Female ghost who loves to sit on a swing at night. Best not to be on a swing at night.

Wangi malam
If you smell but see no fragrant flowers at night, beware of spirits out at play.


If you are lucky, you might meet a lustful one and have a good time.

Lotus notes 2

Boohooo...my lotus flower lasted all of two days only. On the third morning, all the petals fell off, leaving the core. I guess it is a little better than the keng fa (琼花) which is like a one night stand.

Now I am just waiting to see the right time to harvest the seeds (莲子). To eat? To germinate? Not sure yet. I have watched a program which said the lotus seeds can be stored for hundreds of years. It is that resilient.

Lotus notes

My first lotus flower blooms this morning. Happiness..!

10 months

Enjoying his first summer in england

Pong Cha Cha Cha

The Economist made a recent mention of a top banker who had agreed to pay for eight years of dancing lessons with HK$120 million (you didn't read wrongly) and caused a little ripple in HK.

Mimi Wong is now suing one of her teachers - Mirko Saccani and Gaynor Fairweather, a 15-time world champion Latin dancer - for the return of HK$62m she had paid them up front, after this Mirko abused and threatened her before a large group of dancers two years ago. This Mimi Wong is the chief executive of private banking at HSBC.

So let's see..$120mil over 8 years would be $15mil per year or $1.25mil per month. Since this is in HK dollars, it would work out to be.. almost S$255K /month..US$161K/mth...UK$87,500/mth. And these guys don't even work 9-5. Wouldn't it be like getting one flabby busy executive into a sweat under one lesson a week for 2 hours? I am not even going to calculate their hourly rate now. The thought is staggering.

In NKF terms, that's like 5 peanuts per year.

Er..is dancing all they do?

Wah lao. If this is what she hands out for ballroom dancing, what is she being paid?

Alter Ego shirts

According to Ade, there's a lady artist, at Bugis Village, who designs t-shirts like this. They are hand-drawn and the font are very pretty. Her first design reads Angel<==>Devil (in the mirror).

Parking Challenge

Loads of fun - Take the challenge

Ketapang power

Several colleagues of mine rear fighting fish in the office, keeping each one separately in chinese new year cookie plastic tuppleware. So it came about that this morning I saw a dead brown leaf soaking in one of the fish 'tank', leaving the water a yellow tinge. I asked what's the leaf doing there. Robi told me this was for anti-fungal prevention, to keep the fish from falling sick.

Wow, what a revelation! A natural remedy - awesome! This leaf is very common in sgp, I have definitely seen them before, especially in the drains along roadsides and puddles.

According to Robi, this leaf is called the Sea almond leaf or Indian almond leaf or known as "ketapang" in Malay. He pulled out a plastic bag of these dried leaves, informing me that he has washed them and offered two to me. I was so happy, they would be perfect for my guppies!!

I went to dig around the websites and discover Ketapang to be sold on websites. eBay has sales of it at USD20 per 100 leaves. Maybe I should start picking them off the streets..hahaha. To think what we consider rubbish has market value. It has lots of medicinal properties. Really impressive. I feel a greater appreciation for this plant now and will try and look out for this specie of leaves again when I walk around our parks.

More about Indian Almond Leaf

Fishy business

See how colourful my guppies. I deliberately select and buy guppies which have luminous backs, that is visible from the top. Do I like my fish more or my lilies more, I can no longer tell.

Alley to be changed

Inside the alley, a boh liao security guard forbade me to take photos and followed me until I left the corridor. There were no signs saying "no cameras". I challenged him for a reason and he said because his management says no. Real or not? Just throwing his weight around issit? The only time he can feel some power in his pathetic life?

No more ferry

Another Grand Lady soon to be demolished ...

Vision into the future

Most of the stuff at Communic Asia went over my head. Too many gadgets to fiddle with, pray, who has the time? Fortunately all my time there was not wasted, by the presence of this creative 11 minutes video clip screened at the Docomo booth on what they envision life in the future to be like.

Using four musicians in a concert as the main characters, the video shows personal stories of each musician with different themes; glimpses into relationships between young loves, mother and child, elderly parents in family, father and daughter. We see how mobile technology is integrated into their lives. My jaw dropped when given the insight of perhaps radio frequency (rfid?) technology employed in schools; the reader at the school gate beeps as children run out of the schools, thus informing the school about which student has left school for the day or..er, play truant. hmmm..

The clip is just way cool. To be able to pack all these many interesting stories and ideas into 11 minutes..oh, so brilliant!

Latest models in technology

In the Communic Asia recently, the major brands and their gigantic booths competed on the latest super slim technology, um, super slim cool new models.