There’s another article on the plight of foreign spouses at The Nut Graph today. Just love The Nut Graph. This article highlights the difficulties faced by foreign spouses in Malaysia, like the previous article, but delves a little deeper into the issue. The mysterious Foreign Spouses’ Support Group, which none of the many foreign spouses [...]
Categories: Commentary
Tagged: immigration, Malaysia
I don’t have any personal news to report on the PR front, because I haven’t applied yet. We’re planning to dive into that process after Leen opens her dental clinic, which will be in the next couple of months. So maybe we’ll start the application process around the end of the year.
Meanwhile, here’s a quick [...]
Categories: Commentary, Life
Tagged: immigration, Malaysia
This is coming a bit late, but better late than never:
March 27 (Bernama) — Domestic Trade, Cooperatives and Consumerism Minister Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob said the government will amend the Hire Purchase Act 1967 to protect the rights of consumers, including preventing them from being victims of car repossessors who act over and above [...]
Categories: Commentary, Life
Those who have been reading my blog for a few years now might remember that back in 2007 I wrote a post calling out Malaysia’s Information Minister for things he had said about children of mixed parentage. Basically, the Minister at the time, Zainudin Maidin (aka ZAM), didn’t want to see such children in local [...]
Categories: Commentary
Tagged: English, family, language, Malay, Malaysia, twitter, Youtube
In January, Celcom invited me to a “media sneak preview” of the Blackberry Bold 9700, aka the Bold 2. The best part of the event, other than the awesome food (it was at GSix on the top floor of the Gardens), was the fact that I was given a Bold 9700 to use for a [...]
Categories: Commentary
I finally received an official response from RHB Bank today (for background read this, and this, and this). Here’s what they said:
We thank you on highlighting the above incident to our En Mohamad Zaihan on 29 January 2009.
We took note that your wife as a passenger had an unpleasant encounter in the above incident. [...]
Categories: Commentary, Life
Tagged: Malaysia
I’m not a big fan of the Royal Malaysian Police. As far as I know, none of the police reports I’ve made since coming to Malaysia have resulted in anything resembling a thorough investigation; no one I’ve ever made a report against has ever been held accountable for whatever it was they had done. I’ve [...]
Categories: Commentary
Tagged: Canada, Cape Breton, family, MacVay, Malaysia, Nova Scotia, photos, police, Sydney
I was kind of hoping this case would be resolved by now, considering it’s been just about a week since I first contacted RHB Bank. But there’s been no official word from them beyond messages from their Corporate Comms guy that he hasn’t heard back from HQ yet, and assurances that he’s on the case. [...]
Categories: Commentary, Life
Tagged: Malaysia
This morning Leen called me from work to tell me someone from RHB had called H. It wasn’t someone from the head office, she said, but rather someone from RHB’s PJ Business Centre. He wants H to go to the bank on Friday for a face-to-face meeting with him and the repo man. She said [...]
Categories: Commentary, Life
Tagged: Malaysia
Wednesday was turning out to be a pretty good day: I had a very smooth, efficient visit to Immigration in Shah Alam; I got paid; I got an awesome, free lunch, not to mention great company and conversation. Yes, it was shaping up to be a pretty good day. I did some banking, paid some [...]
Categories: Commentary, Life
Tagged: Malaysia
When I logged into Facebook today I noticed a whole bunch of people on my list were posting one-word status updates, all colours. Then I noticed only the ladies were doing it. Then I noticed guys leaving comments asking them what it was about, and the ladies were almost all at least a little cryptic [...]
Categories: Commentary
Tagged: cancer, Malaysia, testicular cancer
I guess the timing of all this talk about ancestry and Bumiputera status couldn’t have been better. In the comments to my recent post about ‘official’ ancestry and the new birth certificates, there was some mention of the differences between West Malaysia and East Malaysia, particularly with regards to Bumiputera status. Basically, while someone [...]
Categories: Commentary
Tagged: immigration, migration
I’m on fire today! Two very productive calls to Malaysian government departments — both conducted completely in Malay (yay for fluency!) — and look at this, two blog posts. After my conversation with a surprisingly friendly and helpful officer at the National Registration Department, I called the Immigration Department to see if I could get [...]
Categories: Commentary
Tagged: immigration, Malaysia, migration
Some of you may know by now that Leen and I are expecting our second child (you can call him A2 for now) sometime in March. That means I’ll be doing all that baby stuff again, which includes not only sleepless nights (woohoo, can’t wait) but also a visit to the National Registration Department to [...]
Categories: Commentary
Tagged: immigration, Malaysia, migration, parenthood
Chong Gets it Wrong 5
Yesterday there was an article in the Sun that had me shaking my head. It quoted Michael Chong, head of the MCA’s Public Services and Complaints Department, as saying that “Malaysian men should not marry foreign women if they can help it.” He was referring to cases in which mail-order brides from China, Vietnam and [...]
Categories: Commentary
Tagged: family, immigration, Malaysia