Tuesday, April 26, 2011

So Malaysian

Guys, Gals. Sorry for my long absenteeism. In the world of blog, 2 - 3 days absent are considered very long. I'm extremely busy lately as I'll be moving to a new house soon. (I'll write an entry some day in the future why I bought a house last year. In short, the main reasons are low interest rate, income tax exemption on interest expenses, "good value" and good stock market return :--)

I've no idea it takes up so much time but I enjoy doing it. I've pretty good idea of what the interior of my new house going to look like and now working on my garden. I went around Penang to take plant photos so that I can have good idea what plants to be in my garden.

Of many places, I went to Botanica garden yesterday and was shocked to see the place is getting more and more popular but is getting more and more runs down. We are talking about a major tourist attraction here(1 - 2 million visitors/year?). OMG, the fountain at formal garden dry up and yet we are talking about making a largest water lily garden in the world. I am so ashamed when I look at the face of foreign visitors, here we claim we want to make the greatest, the biggest yet the smallest fountain dries up.



I was already sweating and wet my whole shirt walking in the morning and finally reached a few sections of caged plants. Don't ask why it was caged. The reason is embarrassing enough but alamak, caged houses turned into bushes. My red face already red turned even "red-er". I am very sure I look like a red cooked lobster that morning. Very malu again.



I wanted to design a small corner of my garden to be a bit of Zen plus cacti, "Cacti-Zen concept". So a caged cacti house interest me, certainly. But those cacti look so sick -- pale, "under nutritional", skinny like supermodel minus the sex appeal. Guan Eng, yes - I call you by name, please do something. I'm sure you can do a better job. Call up whoever in charge and demand for accountability!



What I found Malaysians are lack of entrepreneurial spirits and keep complaining lack of funds. Instead of just turning the place of selling ice cream, teh-tarik and few coconut drinks, they need more creative ideas of turning into first class SPA, mini-golf, restaurants and etc. If you can get RM 50 per visitor, that will turn into RM 100 million/year recurring revenue. It's so Malaysian again -- infected by subsidy mentality and lacking of execution culture.

So Malaysian. As usual, the writer will complain and the authority will just ignore. I've made a long list of what went wrong but those photos "eat" up my photo upload quota but I hope with limited highlights, my message is already getting through.

Mama said after you reprimand somebody, you need to remind them that they are good people and say something nice. Surprisingly, their seeding backyard look the best.

5 comments:

pacific said...

congratulations!!!

elizabeth said...

erm... turtle, I think interest exemption only for houses below RM250k (or 300k but not more!!).

Turtleinvestor said...

I called up Income Tax dept and informed them that the purchase price(higher than 250 or 300 k) and timing of the purchase was May '10. They confirmed that there is no ceiling on the value of the property and I can make the interest expense relief deduction. However, if you buy the property under joint names and making the loan under joint names, you can only booked half of relief.

Kris said...

Do you know how to get the tax income deduction on the housing loan interest rate?

Rgds,
KnowThyMoney

Turtleinvestor said...

kris,

this is what i found from their website
http://www.hasil.gov.my/goindex.php?kump=5&skum=6&posi=9&unit=1&sequ=1

Point 4:
"4. What are the conditions to claim deduction on housing loan interest?

Interest expended to finance purchase of residential property. Relief of up to RM10,000 a year for three consecutive years from the first year the interest is paid.
Subject to the following conditions:
i) the taxpayer is a Malaysian citizen and a resident;

ii) limited to one residential unit;

iii) the sale and purchase agreement is signed between 10th March 2009 and 31st December 2010; and

iv) the residential property is not rented out."