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Life is about choices. A good govt will provide a range of choices for its pple so that the latter can choose based on affordability. Lets look at food. Way back, there were many hawkers centres, simple coffe shops round the corner to provide affordable, no-frills, and generally tasty food for day to day meals. For those who prefer a better ambience or aircon etc, they can go to restaurants or the few foodcourts around. Higher-end eateries were also availabe. Overall, the choices were wide and quite evenly spread out. The people had the choice in terms of price range or ambience etc. Today, the choices are limited as far as low-end food is concerned. The people, especially those who live on a relatively tight budget, or prefer to spend their money on other items in life, have to search high and low for affordable or value4money meals. The cause of this?.... Well, ever since some 30 years ago HDB has decided to stop building simple, comfortable no-frills hawkers centre (which usually come with low rentals and therefore cheaper food), and at the same time lease out coffee shops using the tender system (where highest bidders get to run the coffees shop and sublet the stalls), we see million dollars coffee shops mushrooming all over the place. The stall holders are forced to pay high rent to the head-leasees and have to recover costs by selling a simple plate of noodle at $3 or more instead of the previoius $2. Granted the costs of raw food/ingredients and power/water rates have gone up over the years, but the key and most significant cost is rental cost. It took pap a good 20 years or more to admit their promotion of expensive coffee shops and foodcourts may not be a good move and that it denies the ordinary people affordable daily meals. They'd better put up new no-frills hawker centres (but with good ventilation and lighting through decent designs), cut out the fancy decorations and seats/tables in 2-3 years (more than enough time to build as compared with casinos' construction) instead of 10 years. If miw really cares for the low- middle/low- income groups, they'd better show it with actons, otherwise its just mere cheap talk.

1. There have been some threads on fancy and expensive GPS devices. 2. However, even for a frequent traveller to the North, I thought a GPS would still be of help to reduce time spent on searching for locations. So I thought GPS would save me precious time. 3. I don't think I would spend money on a fancy GPS device. All those Bell and Whistles like MP3, video and etc are just not practical at all. A GPS device should be good at telling accurate road direction. While driving, map is of less use since concentration is on the road and to watchout for signboards. 4. It looks like what I need is a normal PDA (don't even need sim card) that is able to use a GPS receiver. I heard free map is easily available but wonder what is the error rate? Perhaps add another mounting kit and there we are. What do you guys think? Who have DIY such GPS setup before and would like to comment and share ideas? Thank you very much. Regards,

1. It seems like AirAsia has started thier 1st no-frills hotel in KL. It is near to Medan Tunku monorail station. 2. At 1st I thought the room rates is cheap for a double room at about RM120 for 2 nights then I realized that you have to pay extra for these: a) Aircon - 5 hours for RM$4.99 and 12 hours for RM9.99. b) Towels - basic range for RM$9.99++ and superior range for RM14.99++ c) Toiletries - everything chargable like your soap, shower caps and etc. 3. Check this out at www.tuneshotels.com when you're looking for a cheap hotel in KL when driving up there. Regards,

the blaunpankt (spelling)toronto ram 126 HU that came wif my car kena problem.. that HU needs a keycard to work and now, the contact point reader of the HU spoilt so cannot detect the keycard.. sent to blaupankt service center in jln pemimpin for diagnosis and was told that it would cost 55 to repair.. its already 5 yr old... 1) would it be more worth it to repair or to buy a another HU? 2) if buying another, should i consider a 2nd hand one? funds r quite low at the moment.. 3) i'm looking for a cheap and no frills HU actually...as long can play CDs and listen to radio can liao.. dun need changer or watever.. hoping to find one for under 150 if possible... anyone got any suggestions or solutions?