Merseyside Bankers

Liverpool FC has recently unveiled their new home kit for the 2010/2011 season featuring their new shirt sponsor Standard Chartered. It is similar to the shirt won by the championship winning team in 1990 (hopefully this is not the only way they are thinking of improving the squad after a dismal season). 'Oh we wear the same kit...so we can win the league next season'... righhhttt

Over the years Liverpool FC has been synonymous with Carlsberg. Their partnership dates back to 1992 and such a tenure creates a feeling of attachment and nostalgia. I was quite disappointed when Standard Chartered were taking over from Carlsberg...until I realised how much more StanChart were going to pay.

Under the old agreement with Carlsberg, Liverpool got a paltry £7 million pounds a season. Their peers were getting:

Chelsea - £50 million for 5 years with Samsung (£10million/season)

Man Utd - £54 million for 4 years with AIG (£13.5 million/season)

Tottenham - £34 million for 4 years with Mansion House (£8.5 million/season)

Let's talk home loans and interest rates

StanChart's deal costs £80 million over 4 years, bringing in the much needed £20 million each season to the debt ridden owners. Its a lucky thing they signed this last year before Liverpool bombed in the league, heheh. I doubt they will ever get this amount if it were being negotiated now.

As for Carlsberg and all the nostalgia? Nahh... long forgotten. Cash is king.

What's In Your Water? - Six Degrees of Lipitor

A couple of years back, I recall a conversation I had with a friend regarding the many cases of ovarian cysts among our female friends - with some of them requiring surgery.

'I tell you, there's something in the water!' he said...

Well it seems he was right. There really is something in the water. It may or may not be the actual cause of the above mentioned predicament, but then again no one knows at the moment how it affects us. So what is in your water?

It has been discovered that drug residues are increasingly being present in the water supplies in the US. How did it get there?

1) Flushing your unwanted medications in the toilet or emptying the syrups into your kitchen sink.

2) Peeing. What goes in must come out - and some drugs are excreted in the urine almost unchanged chemically, so its just like step 1.

3) Bathing and showering. Imagine lathering on steroid and antibiotic ointments during the day and then washing them off during a shower. Previously a lesser known contributing factor, a recent article is bringing awareness to this route of contamination.

A partial list of the drugs found include birth control pills, antidepressants, anticonvulsants, tranquilizers, antibacterials, antipsychotics, ACE inhibitors, nitroglycerin, steroids, ibuprofen and caffeine.

You may think 'Oh this doesn't affect me, since I have the latest water filtration gadget that costs a kajillion dollars at home and my family drinks exclusively from it.' Do remember that the meat you eat didn't have the luxury of drinking that water when it was still moving. Neither do the vegetables that go on your dinner plate, I doubt if anyone will use Diamond water for their livestock or crops.

So how has it affected us? The worrying thing is that no one can say for sure yet. More research will be needed before a definite conclusion can be drawn. It has however, created a new breed of Fishy-Gagas.

In the 1970s, scientists began detecting pharmaceutical residue in waterways, but in an era when rivers were choking on industrial sludge, traces of drugs seemed a small matter. It would take until the 1990s for that view to change. That was when pharmaceutical estrogens, principally from birth control pills, began showing up in the water too, leading to male fish with androgynous sex organs. Scarily, it did not take much estrogen to affect the fish — just 5 or 6 nanograms, or billionths of a gram, per liter of lake water

Sounds frightening eh? I'm not sure how stringent the testing of water quality is in Malaysia, but I'm guessing this will be a bigger issue in the future.

iPhone Comes To Digi

Digi has caused lots of speculation and anticipation since it first announced that it will be selling the iPhone quite a while back.

Digi announced its packages two days ago and those who were hoping for an iPhone price war have been greatly disappointed. If you had been following the local iPhone forums, you would have known that Apple strictly controls the pricing of the phone itself and the only thing left for the telcos to fight over will be over their subscription plans. In fact the only way to reduce the price of the iPhone - and we have to do this together - is to convince Encik Leher-Penyu that we don't want what he's selling.

Encik Leher-Penyu explaining how all our wallets are belong to him

Think about it. That's the reason why there are clearance sales. It's not that nobody wants the products but rather not many people are willing to fork out the cash for the retail price, but if it were sold for less...they may just be convinced to get it. So even though we cry and have vivid wet dreams at night over the iPhone, when Encik L-P with his Levi501 blue jeans walks up on stage and shows us his latest gimmick, we look him in the eyes and say 'Hah! We're not buying one.' Encik L-P will be negatively affected by this given his health considerations and will decide to relent and sell the iPhone cheap cheap till they are as worthless as Po Chai Pills.

Ok so that will not work. In a stare out game with Apple, I blinked first and bought myself the iPhone. I am at your mercy, master...I'm not worthy... Yes master? The iPad? Ok I'll order three now...

Big Brother's Watching

The delivery service at Amazon.com has always lived up to my expectations. Yes, I always choose the cheapest option, which in turn takes quite a while for the book to reach me, but I don't mind. However, the latest package took a couple of weeks longer than the stipulated time. When it arrived it looked like it just barely survived a journey in a Toyota.

Not so virgin package

The culprit

So Big Brother is the cause for this delay and mess heh? This is the first time I've heard of KKDN (Kementerian Keselamatan Dalam Negeri) and the first time I've had one of my packages opened by them. I imagine there must be this group of people sitting in a room opening packages and reading other people's books and touching people's things? Sounds like a dream job! Note to self : Never buy lingerie or underwear online.

A Time for War

WARNING: PLEASE DON'T READ THIS POST RIGHT BEFORE YOUR MEALTIMES. COME BACK AGAIN AFTER YOU'RE FULL. BUT NOT TOO FULL - YOU MAY HAVE TO CLEAN UP YOUR KEYBOARD...

Almost 2 years have gone by since we've caught any rats. Though we hardly see the nocturnal pests, they leave behind their wastes to remind us that they had a blast while we were away. Rat glues were set but they did not fall for it this time. The steel cage fared no better.

We were told to adhere to strict rules while preparing the traps - that is you must never ever under any circumstances make any obvious reference to it. Words like 'rats', 'mouse', 'tikus' are forbidden. So we called it 'our friend'. Somehow I think it figured this out too and they didn't bite.

So we gave up. Since they were able to hear us, we verbally told the rats not to disturb our stocks and we won't disturb them. Miraculously for over a year, our stocks went unharmed. Sure, we had to clean up their feces and urine but occasionally they showed some affection and brought over Kit-Kats and Smarties (which we don't sell). Paying their rent maybe... how cute.

Our contract grew sour when they began to make more of a presence. Our stocks were still unharmed, but their colony grew to a stage that our shop reeked of their smell and I truly understood what the phrase 'I smell a rat' meant. So we were forced to act.

Kit-Kats and chicken wings

The hungry fella

Almost immediately, they retaliated.

So we retaliated too...

Seems they've bitten more of my stocks this morning. My staff summed up my thoughts by saying 'Maybe we should let them be and don't kacau them again?' Hmm... maybe, but not without a fight this time. These rodents should be put in their proper place and know who's the boss here. Then after that we can negotiate a re-settlement project or something. Go bother the bakery next door or something!

Food Chain Haiku

In this game called Life

Nature conveys its bias

Lucky predators!

Power clouds judgements

As moss ravages concrete

How the tables turn!

Weekend Getaway

It is interesting to note that there aren't any public holidays in March. So we decided to utilize our complimentary voucher for a night's stay at the Shangri-La Tanjung Aru Beach Resort and give ourselves some time off.

This was the very same venue where we held our wedding dinner a year ago and the service provided by the team at the hotel impressed us very much (In fact, they were so much in demand that when we attended a wedding dinner at an auspicious date here last year, we got lost trying to look for the correct venue. A manager found us wandering aimlessly and took us to the correct venue. We were told they were hosting six wedding dinners that night!) This time round, they were able to match that top notch service again.

A handwritten welcome card found in the fruit basket

L'Occitane Toiletries!

Our stay was a brief one but we've managed to squeeze as much into it as humanly possible.We hit the gym, played some tennis (or rather spent most of the time picking up balls), did some swimming, roasted in the steam bath and the sauna, simmered in the jacuzzi and had a great 5 star buffet breakfast. The only thing that we failed at was getting access to the Wii consoles at the Kid's Club - our impersonations of 10 year olds failed spectacularly.

The view from our patio

What a weekend it has been! If you have any more complimentary vouchers Mr Andrew Steele, please don't hesitate to send it my way. You know how to contact me, heheh.