Phuket has been unexpectedly fantastic so far.
One of the best things about Phuket is the food, and seafood in this little Thai island is said to be legendary. On the first night of our arrival, we set out to fill our stomach with the best Thai food and seafood in town.
The problem is, we don’t know which restaurant serves the best Thai food and seafood in town.
Luckily the Thais are nice. They point out to you which restaurant serves the best Thai food and seafood in town.. And they do so by proudly proclaiming it on their signboard.
Like Cocoa-Nut – The Best Thai Food Seafood In Patong Beach.
If you wanna know where this is, it’s located just right next to Dang – The Best Of Thai Food and Seafood.
It is also located on the same road with Sakron – The Best of Thai Food and Seafood In Patong.
And they are all not far from Yoyo – The Best Food In Town.
In Phuket, every restaurant is also the best Thai food and Seafood in town.
I Look Like An Egg
The deal was, I would go bald if donations reach RM 50,000.
Well, we did not get RM 50,000.
The final amount was more like RM 65,325.01
Sixty five thousand three hundred twenty five ringgit and one sen. That’s at least RM 15K more than the target I had hoped to achieve!
As a result, this is how I look like right now.
Don’t laugh.
I said don’t laugh!
It’s not easy going through the process. As the lady from The Cutting Edge runs the trimmer through my head, all I could see were cameras flashing all around me.
Little did they know that I was fighting really hard to contain my emotions. Not because I was scared I might look weird., but parting with your hair is almost like losing a best friend.
You had it for so many years, and suddenly it’s all gone.
Well done to everyone who has donated towards the Sarawak Children’s Cancer Society. You made me real proud.
I have been receiving tons of “congratulations”, “thank yous” and “well dones”. None of which I felt I deserve. Because all I did was reaching out. It was those 500 over donors who responded to my plea for help that deserves the applause and recognition.
It is so heart-warming to know that even when every other person on the streets is talking about the economic crisis, people are still very generous when it comes to giving out for charity. This fund-raising activity has proved that by wildly surpassing our expectations on so many fronts.
Donations came in from as far as Canada, USA, Europe, Australia and Singapore. Some had amounts so large, I needed convincing before recording it down on my list of donors.
The most generous is this reader of mine from Penang who had no idea how much to donate, so he donate an amount equivalent to his car plate number: RM 5,890.
I seriously thought he was joking until he sent me the receipt.
How many of us would part with RM 5,890 to help people we don’t even know?
Coming in closely was Dato’ Seri Tony Fernandes, a businessman I’m emulating after, who made a personal contribution of RM 5,000 directly to the SCCS. Tony’s donation was so outrageously large that I almost felt obliged to shave AirAsia’s logo on my head.
A quick thank you also to Peter Tan and JoyceTheFairy, two other bloggers who previously also shaved their heads for charity, which in turn gave me enough courage to go through with this one. Hopefully many other people reading this will be similarly motivated.
Then we’ll have one whole breed of botak bloggers!
(Ironically, Joyce and I are both the official online judges for an online model search show called Malaysian Dreamgirl. We will be two botak judges!)
But in amidst the euphoria of a highly successful online fundraiser, let us not lose focus on the real reason why we’re doing this. This fundraiser is not about me nor my botak head. It is to help those underprivileged children suffering from curable forms of cancer, and yet lack the funds to seek treatment.
And this is where we come in. Although kennysia.com’s target of raising RM50,000 is reached, the SCCS’ target of RM200,000 is still far off. This Sunday if you go to The Spring, you will see 100 other Sarawakians shaving their heads all in support for childhood cancer awareness.
Last time getting a haircut in Kuching costs RM8. Now it is RM65,325. Prices have sure gone up a lot these days. 😉
Well, we’ve done well.
On a completely unrelated note, I got one good news and one bad news.
Tomorrow is 14th February. Somehow, I managed to con a… errr, convince a friend use up my extra spare air ticket to Phuket. So yes, the good news is, I unexpectedly now have a (casual) date for Valentine’s, and we’ll be going to Phuket.
The bad news is, my hair will not be coming with me.
ADV: How To Save Money This Valentine’s
The last Valentine’s Day present I bought was also the most expensive.
Yet, I didn’t end up giving the present to her.
I bought the present three months ago. Five days later, we broke up.
So now I am left with an extra return flight ticket to Phuket and nobody to go with this 14th February.
The worst thing is, because the trip is over the Valentine’s Day weekend, it’s almost impossible to find anyone else to go on this trip with me.
I can’t bring my female friends along because it’d give them the wrong idea, and I can’t bring guy friends along either because it’d seem like I’m gay!
The moral of the story to guys is: don’t spend too much money buying unnecessarily extravagant gifts on your girlfriends. You never gonna know when you’re gonna end the relationship.
Instead, a better Valentine’s Day present would be something simpler and more meaningful.
Like a box of Toblerone.
Because at least if you do break up with her afterwards, you can still eat the chocolates yourself.
Even better, don’t give them the box of Toblerone. Keep the chocolates for yourself.
After all, many girls these days have open declared that they don’t mind not receiving extravagant gifts. According to them, “it’s the thought that counts.â€
If that’s the case, then send her a “virtual gift†from itobleroneu.com instead.
Sending a “virtual gift†is not gonna cost you a single cent and besides, “it’s the thought that counts.â€
She can’t say you’re insincere because it is something you build yourself.
She can’t say you’re kiam siap either because if your virtual gift pack is selected as the winner, then Toblerone will physically put together the gift pack and send the real deal to you. So you can give it to her or pass it on any of your friends and families you choose to send the gift to.
As for me, I have no girlfriend to give a present to this Valentine’s. So I guess the only person who will be getting a gift from me…
… is my 2-month-old nephew Ethan.
There you go Ethan.
Happy Valentine’s Day.
Oh wait, you don’t have teeth yet.
Nevermind. Uncle Kenny will eat all the Toblerone for you then.
More Help Is Needed
Five days ago, I said that if I could raise RM50,000 for the Sarawak Children’s Cancer Society, I will shave my head bald.
As of writing, the total amount donated stands at RM28,854 – slightly over 57% of the target we are hoping to reach. Response from the public was particularly overwhelming within the first two days of the announcement. But sad to say, less and less people have come forward with help and it seems like the donation has already slowed down to a trickle, and I’m unsure if we might even reach the target.
Thank you to all generous readers who have contributed. To date, the number of donors stands at 128. That is good.
The bad news is, this number represents only less than 1% of my daily readership. What happened to the other 99%? Either 99% of readers have no means of donating. Or 99% of my readers love my hair too much to see me go bald. 😉
Well, I figure if we wanna do good for society then we should go all out. For me, the first step is to make that huge sacrifice to let go of my hair. I’m also putting in half the advertising revenue generated from this site into the pool.
But alas, still not enough people are contributing.
So here I am again, pleading for more to come forward and donate towards this cause that I am adopting. Why am I doing this? Because clearly not enough is being done to help the faceless Malaysians quietly working behind the scenes to make the world a better place.
Let’s put it this way.
If everybody reading this can stop what they’re doing right now and spare just one ringgit for the Sarawak Children’s Cancer Society, we would have got RM20,000 and we would have reached our target already.
Of course, if you can contribute more than one ringgit, please do. We can all drink that a glass of beer less, give up that one stick of cigarette, or put away that one piece of fried chicken wing. Don’t have to break your bank. Just give whatever you can within your means to help those less fortunate than you are.
The amount you contribute may not be much on its own alone, but when pooled together it will be big enough to change people’s lives.
And it could change my hairstyle too!
Can you spare a ringgit?
Please click here to contribute towards my Botak Fund. It’s for a good cause. 🙂
ADV: More Flexible Than Plasticman Doing Yoga
The most annoying thing about air travel, is not the crying babies on every flight.
It is not the smug look you get from those rich first class passengers as you walk pass them miserably towards your economy seats.
Heck, it is not even that overweight bastard seated right next to you, with his bulgy arm monopolizing the entire arm rest and his layers of fat overflowing from his guts right onto your seat.
Oh wait, that’s me.
No, the most annoying thing about air travel, is when you make plans for a holiday six months in advance to go to say, Bangkok. But when the time comes, something urgent pops up and suddenly you can’t go to Bangkok anymore.
Maybe some disaster happened at work. Maybe you found out you’re allergic to Tom Yam. Or maybe the girlfriend making a big fuss… in which case, it is still okay to go to Bangkok. Can just get a new girlfriend there.
The point is, when something unexpected happens and your holiday plan is ruined, if you wanna change it, suddenly there’s this whole change fee and penalty thing to fork out. And those fees aren’t cheap, especially if you use low-cost airlines.
Low-cost airlines traditionally built their revenue stream around people changing, cancelling or making last-minute bookings. That is why their fare conditions are extremely inflexible, and that is why their promotion are often several months ahead of time.
Old-school airlines like MAS are more flexible to changes. Although their fare prices generally cost more, there are always people who are happy to pay for the privilege of that extra flexibility.
But of course, it’s not always that we have to sacrifice flexibility to save money. We are all different types of travellers at different times under different scenarios. And with a revamped fare structure, there’s something for the different types of travellers in us.
For the student / backpacker / “kiam siap” people in us, there’s the MHlow Fare to look forward to. It’s inflexible because you cannot cancel your flight, but as long as online booking is made at least 21 days before travel, they’ll give you 70% off the full fare, even throwing in hot meals and 20kg baggage limit as part of the deal.
But sometimes when they’re doing their Everyday Low Fare promotion, like right now, the air fares would be even lower than that.
I just booked my flights for the adidas King of the Road half-marathon in Shah Alam on 2nd August and was shocked out of my red undies when I saw it selling at this price.
Bear in mind this is for Malaysia Airlines ok.
Which means I’ll get to utilise the KLIA because everyone is saying it’s so under-utilised right now!
For the tardy business executive in us, who but can only be certain of our schedule 2 weeks before departure still wanna save money, then MHbasic Fare is more suitable.
The restrictions are almost the same as the previous one, but with 50% discount off the full fare and the flexibility to change your flight if you want. The penalty fee here is also more reasonable at RM65 flat.
For the loving boyfriend in us, who wanna spoil our girlfriends on a shopping holiday without compromising our tight schedule, it’s wiser choose MHsmart. We can book our flight as late as 4 days beforehand, get 20% discount and it even comes with added frills like Enrich points and a large 25kg baggage limit, which she’d find lovely for her shopping.
The best thing is, if you book by phone, you don’t have to pay anything up until 48 hours later. So if suddenly you decide to dump her, you can always cancel the trip and not pay a single cent!
Bumped into my ex at Starbucks last night. It was weird, really weird, seeing her with her new guy. Not that I didn’t expect her to move on of course. I mean, eventually we all move on. But what I didn’t expect is that she managed to do so so quickly. Like, less than two months after we broke up. I guess that goes to show what an easily forgettable person I am. 😉 The surprising thing is that I wasn’t as bitter as I thought I might be. At least I didn’t storm out of Starbucks in tears crying to my mommy. We I had our good times and I am content to let those two years we spent together be nothing but memories. Since there is a better man who can take care her the way I couldn’t, I guess I should feel happy. There’s another reason why I am not feeling bitter – I too, have begun seeing someone new as of late. I am still in the process of getting to know her. She is Japanese, so I know we have our differences. But the good thing is that we are seeing each other a lot. In fact, over the Chinese New Year break, we spent almost every single day and night in the company of each other. Her name is Soni. Full name Soni Playstation Three. Oh yes. There is nothing I desire more than coming home every night and lay together with her on the couch, hands on her shoulders, feeling her shake and quiver as I touch all the right buttons. I love you my Soni. The best thing about not having a girlfriend, is that there’s now plenty of time for video games. 😀 It’s the new year, and I want to start it off on a good note. I have always recognised that bloggers have a lot of potential to do good for charity. In my capacity, I’m always happy to lend publicity to several charitable causes on my blog, so long as they are legitimate and transparent. But late last year, I was approached by folks from the Sarawak Children Cancer Society. The society related strongly to me for two reasons. One, I know they have been very active in providing support and care for childhood cancer sufferers, and cancer support is one of those things I keep very close to my heart. Having gone through the pain of losing my father to kidney cancer, I know what a dreadful experience it is, and I would never ever wish that upon even the worst of my enemies. Secondly, the society is based in Sarawak. It is a fact that Sarawak-based charities don’t receive as much attention as their Peninsular-based counterparts. Personally, I find that very unfortunate considering Sarawak has a very large rural population, many of whom still live in poverty. They are the ones who needed help the most, and yet there aren’t enough of us who reach out to them. Due to lack of medical facilities in the rural areas, many parents of childhood cancer sufferers frequently travel long-distances, hours at a time, just bring their sick children to Kuching to seek treatment. As a voluntary organisation, Sarawak Children Cancer Society has always provided care and support for the poor and needy in the State. One of the best things they come up with among many fantastic ones, is the Children Cancer Centre located minutes away from the Sarawak General Hospital. Families of outstation patients are offered to temporarily stay in the Centre while their children undergo treatment at the hospital. Food, amenities, counselling, and sometimes financial support are all provided by volunteers and their three full-time social workers. And this is just one of the many things the SCCS do to help lighten the emotional and financial burden faced by these families. Childhood cancer is in fact a very curable form of cancer. Unfortunately, many sufferers in Sarawak needlessly die every year either due to lack of funds or access to hospital. That is why I am very happy to give my support to the SCCS. Of course, the running of the Children Cancer Centre is not free. Worse still, with the increasing number of outstation patients utilising the facility, their resources have been stretched thinner a plate of roti tisu. Someone has to pay the bills. Most of the time, this is done through public donation and the many fund-raising activities that they organise. However, when I met with the SCCS a few weeks ago, the support they asked from me for this time round goes beyond just monetary donation and publicity on kennysia.com
They want me to shave my head bald for charity. “What! Wait, wait, wait. I cannot confirm yet. Do I really have to do this?” I groaned. “Well, it’s to create the awareness,” said Rodney Wong, the SCCS publicity chief when he pitched the idea to me. “We can raise funds doing food fairs and stuff but few people would pay attention. Once you say ‘Kenny Sia is willing to shave his head bald for charity’, immediately everyone takes notice.” I say it’s a I never like saying no to people. In this case, I find it very difficult to give up my hair eventhough it is for a good cause. Everybody is vain to different extent, including me. I go through great lengths to preserve my hair. I’m already not very good-looking, but if I go bald I’d become uglier. I certainly don’t want nother adjective people can use insult me! “Rodney, I spent RM150 a month on Propecia just to keep my hair from dropping. And now you want me to lose all my hair?” “You can think about it,” replied Rodney. “Our target is to raise RM200K in total. But if you’re in, I think you can raise RM50,000 no problem.” RM50,000 to give the hope of survival to children suffering from cancer, in return for all of my hair. Suddenly this does not seem like such a difficult decision to make anymore. “Alright Rodney. Let’s see how generous kennysia.com readers are then,” I said with a painful smile. “If I can raise RM50,000 by 12th February, I will shave my head bald.” “Let’s do it!” And so the race is on. The deadline is Thursay,12th February. The target is RM50,000. Everyone from all parts of the world can donate, and all major forms of payment are accepted. Once we hit the target, I guess I’ll be sporting a new hair cut (or lack there of) just in time for Valentine’s Day. Guess I will be date-less for the next 12 months, at least. It’s too late for me to back out now. I’ve already made my promise to the SCCS. Now it is all up to you, readers of kennysia.com to decide whether I can keep my hair. Or not. To pledge your donation, CLICK HERE. 🙂
Looks like the Year of the Cow has started off pretty good for me. Visited five houses today, gambled in two of them and raked in RM320 profit. That’s not bad, considering I had been losing hundreds continuously in my previous attempts at playing blackjack during Chinese New Year. Maybe I should be thanking the Cow God (the Holy Cow?) for smiling so bright upon me. But being a superstitious Chinese, I gotta say thank you to something else instead. So thank you, my new good luck red underwear! I wanna take a break from writing about silly things on the net to focus on something slightly more serious. Over the past few weeks, there have been some intense debate online and offline over AirAsia’s intention to build their own airport. The gist of the story so far is, due to AirAsia’s rapid expansion, it is fast outgrowing the current LCCT airport it is operating out of. So AirAsia approached Sime Darby and a proposal was put forth to the government to build a new budget airport called KLIA East. The new airport will be completely funded by private funds, and it will be located 20km to the east of the present KLIA in the Negri Sembilan town of Labu. Not only will this new airport be able to accommodate AirAsia’s growing size, it will also be better connected by road and rail to both KL city and main airport. The government had a look at the proposal and subsequently approved it, but almost immediately a huge uproar from the public resulted. Some were saying that the proposed Labu Airport will be located too close to KLIA to be safe. Others were saying that it is located too far from KLIA for transferring of passengers to be convenient. Most people were saying that it is a waste of money for a fourth airport in KL to be built after Subang, KLIA and LCCT – never mind the fact that AirAsia assured that not a single sen of tax payer’s money will be used. Then there are those who resort to insults and personal attacks, slandering both AirAsia boss Tony Fernandes and the government, accusing them for being corrupted and uncaring towards the ordinary Malaysian. Among the fiercest critics of AirAsia’s plans were several prominent social-political bloggers including Jeff Ooi, Rocky and PKR MP Wee Choo Keong. Even our former Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir got nasty with his words, eventhough he is that very same man who sold AirAsia to Tony Fernandes for RM1 eight years ago when the airline was making huge losses under DRB-HiCom. The outcry from the online community was so loud that someone even set up an online campaign to boycott AirAsia. Faced with such intense and public online controversy, AirAsia did something remarkably unprecedented in Malaysia. While most corporations would’ve kept quiet and carried on with their business (after all they have already got the proposal approved), AirAsia decided to respond to their critics, sceptics and haters by launching a micro-site on KLIA East. Providing facts and figures, AirAsia tactfully explained the need to build a new airport and showed how such a project would bring more benefits than harm to the rakyat. To anyone reading through the FAQs, it is clear that AirAsia is pointing a large Airbus-sized finger squarely towards Malaysia Airports Berhad, the sole operator of the three airports in Kuala Lumpur. AirAsia said that all three airports are not suitable because Subang is too small, KLIA is too expensive and LCCT is not expanding fast enough to cater towards their rapid growth. AirAsia is pretty much forced out due to the incompetence of Malaysia Airports. To much surprise from everybody, Malaysia Airports did not sit still when faced with criticism either. Instead, they launched a series of announcements on their own website to rebuff AirAsia’s claims. Normally, people can’t be care less to log on to Malaysia Airports website. But because of this fiasco, web traffic at malaysiaairports.com.my suddenly shot through the roof! According to Malaysia Airports, there are indeed plans to develop KLIA North, a dedicated budget terminal located just next to the existing KLIA main terminal. The only problem it’ll take longer to build and estimated to cost twice as much compared to KLIA East. Therefore it is AirAsia’s fault that they are impatient and instead run off to build their own airport. So to summarised what has happened, Dr Mahathir points his finger to AirAsia on his website, AirAsia points its finger to Malaysia Airports on their website, Malaysia Airports claimed innocence and pointed its finger back to AirAsia. And I thought “blog wars” are the domain of bored teenagers who got nothing better to do with their lives. Who would’ve thought a “blog war” would occur between AirAsia, Malaysia Airports and the former Prime Minister of Malaysia? Reading through some of the harsh comments online, I honestly cannot help but to feel terribly sorry for Tony Fernandes. I can see that AirAsia’s intentions are noble. Tony Fernandes wants to build a cost-efficient airport, so that savings can be passed onto the consumers. He wants a large airport so that AirAsia can connect Malaysia to the rest of the world, so that Kuala Lumpur can usurp Bangkok and Singapore as South East Asia’s aviation hub. Tony Fernandes truly believes that this project is good for everybody, and he has even worked out a way to do these without spending much of tax-payer’s money. KLIA East seems like such a great win-win solution for everybody. But instead of being lauded and praised for taking the initiative to bring about positive change to KL, Tony Fernandes was attacked, insulted and ridiculed by the online community. Instead of getting even a For a businessman as far-sighted as he is, the ugly fallout from this incident is perhaps something he had least expected. And that is why I felt compelled to write something here to show my support for Tony Fernandes. Then again, who am I? I am not a politician. I am not a businessman. I am just a 26-year-old guy with a naive understanding of the world. No where am I ANYWHERE near the calibre of Jeff Ooi and Rocky, let alone that of Tun Dr Mahathir. If there is one credential I have over them, it is the fact that I have used the LCCT airport more frequently than all three of them combined. That’s a fact, because I have been travelling in and out of LCCT so frequently, I see the immigration officers there more often than I see my mom’s face. I am a consumer. And the only thing I can say about the LCCT is that it sucks. The airport sucks so bad, we could’ve make more money if we market it as a porn star. Make no mistake about it. I hated it when AirAsia moved out of KLIA four years ago, and I am still hating it every single day until today. The LCCT is such an overcrowded slum that if the fare difference isn’t much, I’d rather pay extra to fly MAS. Gimme the frills of checking in at KL Sentral and riding KLIA Express anytime. Clearly AirAsia cannot stay in the current LCCT. So that leaves us with two options: (1) move to Malaysia Airports’ KLIA North, or (2) let AirAsia build their own airport at KLIA East. On the surface, KLIA North sounds like an ideal option. I too, would’ve supported AirAsia moving back into KLIA or at least somewhere close to it. But due to problems with the soil and the train tracks, it will take twice as long to build and cost twice as much. As consumers, are you prepared to pay extra for that? Do you all want to pay more for your air tickets? If they wanna develop KLIA North, they could’ve done so four years ago before the current LCCT is constructed. Building KLIA North apparently will involve a significant portion of taxpayer’s money. OUR money. Money that could be better spent on things like education, healthcare Now, compare that with KLIA East, which can be constructed ready in two year’s time and won’t even cost the government a single sen. While other cities in Malaysia on their knees are begging for an airport, AirAsia is willing to give one to KL free of charge! Please remind me why are we having this debate again? True, people do not like redundancy – having two set of control towers, immigration and customs instead of one is wasteful. But come on, if you wanna talk about redundancy, why don’t you talk about how many redundant shopping malls we have in KL first? Why not shut down Subang and move Firefly and Berjaya to KLIA? People are scared AirAsia may compromise safety to save costs. For example, instead of building airport runways, AirAsia might land on Amber Chia’s chest. But are these rational fears? Why would AirAsia wanna compromise on their unblemished safety record? To put it simply, it is bad business for any airline to crash their planes. Of course, as private entities, profit-making is their primary aim. But the intense competition between the two airlines has virtually left them no room for errors and plenty for improvement. These airlines know that if they screw up, we the consumers will switch to their competitor just like that. Letting AirAsia build their own airport is sure to bring the already fiery and intense competition between the two to yet another level. Don’t forget that at the end of the day, the one benefiting the most out of these competition is us. Don’t we all want cheaper fares? The next question people would wanna ask is: why is Kenny Sia writing all these? How much did AirAsia pay kennysia.com? The answer is zero. AirAsia has not paid me a single cent to write anything for them. In fact, AirAsia has never even advertised on kennysia.com. On the contrary, their direct competitor Malaysia Airlines is among my biggest advertisers. For me to write this entry, I am risking not just having AirAsia critics attack me, I am also risking my website’s revenue stream. But I am saying what needs to be said. And the reason I am writing this is because I feel that maybe Malaysians can get a bit too negative sometimes. There are FAR wasteful and controversial government projects in Malaysia that warrant our attention, like the CIQ Complex in Johor and the Bakun Dam in Sarawak. Yet I cannot help but feel that in this particular instance we are beating up the good guys. Something is very wrong here. Airlines like MAS and AirAsia, in my mind, are doing a great service for this country. For that, they deserve our commendation. But what I am seeing here is that instead of supporting them, we are beating them up with a stick. It’s like helping a fallen girl off the floor, then getting wrongfully accused for molesting. That is why as a frequent flier, I am throwing my support behind AirAsia to construct KLIA East @ Labu. Because I believe Malaysians should not be so pessimistic and negative about everything. Because competition is good for the consumers. Because if AirAsia can do what Malaysia Airports do, but in a way that’s faster, cheaper and more efficient, then for us consumers the choice is clear. Don’t say no to KLIA East. Supporting this project is the way to go.
Girlfriend
Starting The Year On A Good Note
bald bold move.
Chinese New Year Windfall
Obligatory Chinese New Year Greeting
In Support Of KLIA East @ Labu Airport
little bit of appreciation and thank you’s from the community, he was accused of undermining national interest, of robbing people’s money to achieve his own selfish aims. 
and luxury mansions of corrupt politicians. 
