Thursday, September 8, 2011

For whom the bell tolls, it tolls for you Malaysia

Anyone crazy enough to drive in Malaysia will quickly notice that the highways have a significant number of toll booths on them. While the costs per booth are not high, it's not uncommon to go through 6 or 7 on one drive, some seem to be no more than 4km apart. It's quite annoying and quite the make work project for a large number of ethnic Malays. Some tolls are based on distance, you get a toll ticket at the entrance to a highway and they calculate how much you owe when you get off.
The money is supposed to go to new highways and to maintain the existing ones, however this being Malaysia, one is never really certain where which pot of money goes where.  A well known Malaysian cartoonist drew a great cartoon showing the government throwing up an inflatable toll booth, to the dismay of approaching drivers.

Monday, September 5, 2011

Finally got the computer working!!!!

Yea, seems that IE8 does not work well here in Malaysia, but Google Chrome does. The internet here is all based on the Cellular network and is not exactly fast by our cable standards. Seems also the new blogger interface works better here than the old one. Very strange.