I stumble upon this group buying site that seems to be a hot topic right now for bargain hunters. Group buying is basically harnessing the internet and buying things from a merchant with huge discounts. It is also another way of marketing for the merchant for a very low fee. It is a three wins kinda situation where everyone gets a good deal out of it.

Back to the topic of what I was gonna blog about.

It was this particular Facebook advert that I was looking at. About this one particular group buying site named Dealmates. While the name is interesting, but what interest me is they are throwing RM100k on a marketing campaign, that is going to make the company look cheap, or the people that believe that they are actually giving out the RM100k look stupid.

Let’s put it in a very simple way of looking at things.

Do they have the money? Probably. Since they have recently signed some deal with Intel Cap, which in no where did I see any figures mentioned. Dodgy.

Are they going to give out the money? Probably not. The ‘contest’ is based on a lottery system. There are no mention of the mechanics of how the winning person is going to be choosen. The biggest issue would be, it needs to be tipped by 100k users as well.

Looking at the rate of how the numbers are growing, I do not think it will reach the tipping point. In fact, I do not even think it will reach 1/4 of the tipping point.

So what are they trying to do? Do they really have the real money to actually do advertising? I doubt.

So I dug further. I signed up, and I was disgusted by how I was greeted by “Hi friend” in an email from Dealmates.

“Hi Friend”?

Seriously?

No wonder it went into my spam mail.

Then, the list was called “kualalumpur”, and it as signed off by a dude called Joshua Wong.

So I went further to find out who is this Joshua Wong.

It turns out to be a very well connected china man that relates back to Catcha, and iProperty. Why would I want to call him a china man when I know so little about a person? Well, china man companies usually like to put their name on everything they own, in this case, the mailing list of “kualalumpur”.

What I dislike is how you have made me fill up the form, by signing up to your site and then you call me your friend. Can’t accept that.

The website loads fine, but it felt sluggish even with my brand new Macbook Pro that I have bought. The only reason for that is bad codings, and hell load of unnecessary widgets. Need or not? What’s with that lazy blueish website that is static at the background? This is so year 2000.

I saw this Brotzeit deal that was going on, and I thought it was a good deal and since I will be back for F1 in Singapore, I might as well drop by to see mom and dad and stay over for a week or so. So I paid with my credit card, and wanted to share it out to Twitter.

All I got was RED. Red because the character limits.

What is interesting also is that, their RM100k deal is also appearing on my blog. Which I am wondering what kinda keywords are they targetting, and how much cpc are they paying.

I have successfully run so many dot com companies, and I never needed more than 50k to get the kinda traffic that I want. Of course, as much as I see the intentions of driving traffic, I also see that they are being very cheap. Cheap in a way that they are doing it by not having any money, and they are doing it for free. Any merchants or buyers or whoever should just totally avoid dealing with Dealmates, or whatever.

On the backend, they are running on .NET. With known URL like admin.dealmates.com.my. Interesting.

So I asked a few Malaysian friends who so happened are also fans of their Facebook page. Non of them think that it will be tipped, and they also think that Dealmates just do not have that edge to stand out.

What else can I say.

Group buying is all about harnessing the power of the internet and connecting people into buying a certain product or service. In this very scenario, we use social media like Twitter and Facebook to drive the traffic and the people; When I see a deal that I like, I tweet it just like how I tweet news and things that I like. However, because of bad web codings or whatever, I can’t tweet. What’s the point of having a tweet button then?

Secondly, they have a Twitter account. Good idea, promote the deals via twitter. However, they are just using their twitter account to further promote deals, and instead of communicating with potential customers, or whatever. No wonder they have so little followers.

Their Facebook replies to customer is very idiotic as well. If I have reach through you from a social media platform, with my name clearly displayed, I’d expect you to address me by my name, instead of calling me Dear Sir.

So, social media you tak boleh, customer service you tak boleh, web site tak boleh, what else can you do?

Update: I just check on Dealmates page again. I sometimes wondering if they indeed hired a photographer (They stated that they are hiring). Some of the photos look pretty bad, some are decent and some are just pure nice.

Update 2: I called the number on their website only to be answered by a china man, who speaks broken english and oic. Which confirm my theory about Joshua Wong.

Update 3: Their SEO is bad, web coding is bad, but judging from Joshua Wong LinkedIn, I won’t be surprised it’s so 2000.

While I might not be a group buying site, but having 100k uniques’ a day on my blog, I think I can do better than you.

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I mean, what happened to free media? Why are there so many lies in it?

Where there so little people in the Bersih rally? I was there, and with my own eyes, I could not see the end of the road. It is as massive as a rave party in Amsterdam, no it is more massive than a rave party in Amsterdam. That’s how huge it is.

First lie they ever told, was that they never ‘attacked’ the hospital. Either the Ministry of Health is blind, or just in plain denial. There is an abundance of video footage, photos of water canons aiming to the hospital compounds. Of course, someone said it was because of the wind that blew it over. Just like how technology increase the changes of being hit by an earthquake and a tsunami by Rosmah, right?

Then of course there is that denial about excessive force. It is not the first time the Malaysian Police Force being on the news for being violent, trigger happy and cover-ups. There was a footage of a civilian with a head injury, bleeding and only being cover by a cap by another police officer. What was that?

A journalist was being arrested for doing his job, taking photos of protesters being arrested, by force.

Tear gas being deployed on both ends of the rally, trapping protesters in the middle, no where to run.

What is the role of the Malaysian Police force if not to create harm and havoc to the people? Aren’t the police, the friendly neighbourhood police that we grew up to believe and respect supposed to protect us? Was there rowdy protesters attacking the police? I don’t see any. Was there the police hitting on the civilians, armed with nothing but water bottles? Aplenty.

So, who is the bully now?

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Just yesterday, news of a new technology that the Japanese would love to get their hands on was highly publicized on local and foreign news wires. To sum up for the day’s news, Malaysian Prime Minister announced that all Malaysians aged 18 and above would received a complimentary 1Malaysia email accounts.

Well, if I get his idea right, I think he is a very smart businessman. Give the citizens email accounts, bombard the said email accounts with seasons greetings and promotional materials, thus saving the trouble of hiring a marketing agency and purchasing email address from companies to sell them.

To top it off the business, one would need to have access to the internet to access to their emails. Which means, more business for TM Malaysia, which is a government linked company.

Good profit margins, if you were to ask me.

Curiosity kills the cat and it certainly killed me; from dying of a bad sour and stale joke.

It started off from a link that I saw on Twitter, the link for the beta usage of the 1Malaysia email. I clicked and tried to register myself.

Clean nice interface, very good for the visually impaired. Teal color scheme, not too bad, compared with other government or related websites.

I wonder though, why would I need to provide an alternate email address, when this 1Malaysia email is supposed to be my 1 inbox that I will be using for my life, or at least as a citizen of Malaysia? Where is the 1Malaysia.com.my as claimed by our lovely Prime Minister? Maybe they are only giving myemail.my during the beta testing period, I thought.

Things gone wrong with I pressed the ‘Register’ button. I thought my mouse was having issue since it’s a black mouse and it might have some racial issues. I switched to my Wacom Intuos4 tablet, and still have an issue.

I thought maybe the system has already registered me, so I went ahead and tried to sign in to the system.

Alas, I was greeted by a very ugly and unsightly screen that most system administrator would try to stay off from.

They did not even have a custom error page!

So I guess, in Malaysian ways, “Beta” generally means, enter at your own risk, nothing else is working.

I fail to understand though, with Najib’s administration where he tries to kill off the racism amongst Malaysian, but having to do more branding than the action, was it really necessary ?

So you have a 100 storey proposed building in construction, instead of spending the money on useless things.

Forget about free broadband, forget about free WiFi for the country. What the country really need is to get off from racism and corruption.

Get your 100 storey buildings, put in the homeless and really poor people. Demolish the old wooden houses in the city. In the 100 storey building, do not separate them with races, instead, alternate them. They can’t fight because that way they will be kicked off the building and left homeless.

So whats so bad about that plan? This way, the general Malaysians would not complaint that you are putting money into waste, secondly I am sure the news of Malaysia’s charity will hit international. Why not? Good publicity stunt too!

So you want to give the public email addresses. Even if the company is working together with Microsoft to provide the service, how reliable is the service itself? Will it be monitored by the government? Are we even going to check that one email account if not already an overwhelming amounts of email accounts that we have? I certainly will not.

How much space are you giving? How many man hours are you going to spend on system maintenance? What about softwares and hardwares? Are they sufficient?

If you really want to leave a mark whilst you are still a Prime Minister, get rid of all the bad things, and leave what is what alone. No point trying as you are already trying too hard.

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One got to be vary of this man shown in the picture; He is known with the by-name of Razali Daud, currently serving directive duties with the Ministry of Education of Kuala Terenganu, a state in Malaysia.

At a glance, there is nothing wrong with this man. However, if you have read the recent news that had made the headlines, you will read that this man is responsible of sending 66 boys into a rehabilitation because these 66 boys were ‘infected’ with effeminate tendencies.

Yes, send them all to the ‘straight camps’ and see how many these boys will turn out to be. I never knew that being a homosexual could be judged by being sissy or not. Heck, I thought most gay dudes hide their homosexual tendencies by acting straight, that’s why the term ‘straight-acting’.

I once had a thought to myself, did God really meant to strike Japan with the earthquake? Perhaps God had mistakenly strike Japan whilst aiming for Malaysian shores to get rid of the dumb arse Malaysian politicians, the man above, serve as a great example as one.

Wait till the Japanese gets hold of our technology, the one we created to make homosexual individuals into straight. Perhaps the Russians and the Americans would be interested too, to be deployed into their armies.

I am very sure that Malaysia is the only country that is plagued with the disease, the one where we have stupid politicians that have brains as big as their buttocks, in their buttocks. Why is the Education Department meddling with personal sexual welfare is beyond me. Aren’t the State Education Department supposed to be putting more effort in say, the English language instead? No wonder many foreigners thinks that Malaysians actually still live on trees.

Fucking a Chinese prostitute is a choice, framing another politicians of a sexual act is a choice; Being gay, is NEVER a choice. Do you know what kind of life a homosexual individual got to live with? Try fucking a hole full of shit, you will get what I mean.

A colleague of mine told me that it is already scientifically proven that homosexuality is in the genes. If our beloved Education Minister thinks that he could ‘fix’ homosexuality, then the more the Japanese needs to acquire our technology. How did we even kept the secret for so long?

I look so gay because I am walking down the street with my dick swinging left and right. Send me to boot camps so I can get butt fucked by the State Education Minister that looks like a faggot, please.

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Then, when other people post celebrity pictures as their profile pictures, they are not being fake. Why is that so? I hardly could comprehend. I figured, if the said person is using a picture that is not his own, but of a celebrity, he is spared from the public persecution, but however if the said person is using a picture of another person who isn’t quite as famous, is he then a faker. Does that make sense?

A profile picture is a picture that I feel much represents me at that moment of time, perhaps a picture that I think is good, well taken, or have some artistic forms in it. It does not automatically make me a ‘faker’ because in no way did I mentioned that the picture represent me. Just like if I would to put my puppy dog picture as my display, it does not mean that I am a dog.

Even more that I could not comprehend is that people claiming to know me by person, telling another person stories about me that he conviniently made up. The said person knows me by perhaps a few ‘hi, how are you’ messages sent on MSN or Skype but never anything else. What is there to know about me then?

How can one judge that I am a bad person, when you have only heard stories about from another person who has probably heard stories about me that heard my stories from another person that got the story from his friends who got it from his another friend?

What’s worst is back in the days when you could tell me about your life stories about how you have ran away from home and how you have managed to deceived so many people thinking that your dad is actually not your real father but in fact your sugar daddy really amaze me. I mean, you have to trust me at least to a certain high level to tell me such things, which in return I have kept it as a secret for it will ruin your reputation as a person and as a famous blogger.

You instead choose to listen to rumors and based on your silly assumptions that you thought I was the one behind the things that someone else was doing because you felt that it was my ‘tactic’.

Do you think I would even be bothered?

How old are you already? 21 and you still have this kinda kiddish perception. God, save me already.

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I wonder what is it this time. Could it be because of Alviss Kong’s suicide note that now the government is afraid of more copycats emerging and expressing their feelings on Facebook before the attempt to cause grievous hurt to themselves or was it because of the recent uncovered slander that put Malaysia in the world headline. Should we all be screaming cover up now?

We all knew more or less about the truth towards the Anwar’s sodomy case. It was a pure set up. I mean, how could one still not take precaution for the second time that he is going to get caught. Could it be because of that long period of time that our ex deputy prime minister has forgotten?

Not that we are bunch of clones that only could react to a certain command issued by a certain entity to perform certain task, even without Facebook as the medium, one would still find ways insult towards Islam and show disrespect. I for one feel that by limiting and banning such privileges from us only shows your insult towards how you are handling the situation.

I think it is an insult to our intellegence if the government would allow the censorship of such act, loosely based on a single Facebook account that was said to have certain negative remarks on certain political members.

Well first, Datuk Seri Dr Shahidan Kassim got to convince Malaysia’s Prime Ministry Dato’ Sri Haji Mohd. Najib to drop his very own Facebook account.

It is when politicians no longer able to take on critics, they have the power to turn everything in the name of insult and national security. Good job.

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Two days ago, after I posted the Ash Stymest post, this organization came into my blog and posted a comment.

I love it when people post comments on my blog. I even love it if it was a lengthy comment instead of a “Hi, I am just dropping by, keep it up” kinda comment. I mean, I feel very well appreciated when people actually drops a comment and actually tells you what they think about the post that I wrote.

So, not only this organization did not comment about Ash Stymest, it was clearly a copy and paste job across any other gay blogs out there. In another word, spam.

Given by the English that they used, it was a very well written ‘comment’ by itself. I do not suspect anyone disguising as them because of the origin of the said ‘comment’ and the purpose of the said comment.

However, I was disgusted that Pink Triangle Foundation (PT Foundation) had not had paid attention when they decided to post that ‘comment’. Anyone could have just Google’d “Gay Boy Malaysia” or something and then just spam post comments.

Heres the thing that I want point out. Firstly, I have been to your center, and I had not had a good experience.

I was questioned and treated as if I am a criminal. Being stared at, being judged by the prejudice ‘volunteer’ workers. While the scare tactic could have work on other less intelligent beings, I hate it when people use it on me. I am after-all a major in Psychology.

Your place is dark, it make me and my boy uneasy. The waiting room makes people feel uneasy, the constant stare from those “I am so going to get in your pants” type of people at some anonymous HIV test center is wrong. Seriously.

I have emailed you regarding my concerns, yet there was no reply from you. I have called, only to be answered by “I don’t know.” If this is the way that I am going to be shoved around, it is not surprising that people are actually avoiding being tested than to endure the kind of torment from you people.

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Right now, I am about 5,000 feet above sea level enroute to Kuala Lumpur from Bali, Indonesia. I can’t move because I am at the window seat, and there is nothing to see outside beside some lights, perhaps from Singapore or something.

I had a chance to catch the Sunday service when I was in Bali. Despite having a great night out at Klapa with Max Glazer, I was really well awake during worship.

Allah? Isn’t that what they say is the ‘property’ of Islam, and no one but the muslims can use it? It was a familiar song that I know, but it was sang in Bahasa Indonesia, with Allah the only word that I understand; is this the Allah the Allah that I know? Or did I just hear something wrongly.

You see, back in Malaysia, someone could have been beheaded if was found using the word Allah. Well, not that bad but at least someone decided that it was cool to torch down some church, to show that Allah belongs to them.

Some went over the extreme, perhaps to create some tension between the Christians, and torch some suraus. They could not reach the mosque, because those places would have been heavily guarded, no?

Human beings are always like that, I felt. Why are we so fast in claiming some certain properties as being ours when it is a well known fact that it isn’t?

I don’t understand.

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It was all fun and games.

The story was a little different the week before.

It was the Malaysian-International Fashion Week organized by M-IFA. Think of it as the Grammy Awards for fashion.

There I was, alone at Pavilion. My friends that had promised to come to the Fashion Show with me could not make it.

I was hungry, I thought perhaps a nice meal could help with the disgust that I had at that time on my friend that had missed our outing together; and a meal I had.

I thought the place was invitation only. Yet I am seeing flock of people at the place, signing up at the entrance with “Photo Kaki” credentials as media accreditation.

Much to my surprise, the show was tad boring. Boring in a way that the models looked messy. The designs were good. It was a showcase of local designers, or something. I was being pushed by people, people shooting me off and stuffs. Yes, these photographers who has got fake media accreditation shooed me off because I was a guest, and I was sitting by the stairs, minding my own business. Perhaps it was because my camera were bigger than theirs.

I got bored, not being able to enjoy the fashion show like how I wanted to, I walked around, sat the the place where I was supposed to seat, oogle at some cute guys, looking at the clueless people, looking at some of the not so well dressed guests. I kept my big camera, and whip out my camera phone, I feel more into place than the others, without the big big bulky black box thing.

I enjoyed myself, not the fashion show, albeit it could have been better.

Maybe, we can try tomorrow. Or perhaps, I am better off sleeping at home. We will see.

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It was an outing that turned out to be a tragedy.

When we arrived at Chiang Mai, we wanted something different. People normally go for cruising, or shopping, but instead I planned to explore the wilder side of Thailand. The jungle.

I hired two porters this time. They are both siblings, and very well versed with English. Despite their age, they are very capable and with the locals recommendation, must be a very good guide.

The entrance to the jungle trek is only accessible via the waterways. There were two groups that morning. One just arrived from Bangkok, and another from elsewhere. There were not enough boats, and I was forced to share mine with one of the groups.

Eventually, I would not mind, but throughout the journey, I was starting to get pissed at the passengers.

Noisy, shouting and a bunch of raccoons, thats what I could describe them. While I was enjoying the journey taking pictures of the wild life the first 15 minutes, they were shouting, and throwing stuffs to the water. Acting like a total monkey, with cloths on.

They started talking in Mandarin, thinking that it might be foreign to me. Well guess what, I understand whatever you are talking, and don’t bother to whisper because your whisper is as loud as the motor at the back.

2 fucking hours I had to bear with them monkeys. Upon reaching the jetty, two of the buggers stood up on the boat. With the help of the current, and the position of the boat, the boat overturned, and everyone fell into the river. (the boat was trying to turn to the other side of the bank, going across the river).

You monkeys should have never stood up, thats for one.

You monkeys should have never wear the life jacket, I would rather you drown in the crocodile infested water, than to dirty my hands murdering you later.

I lost my beloved camera, and a bunch of high end lenses.

And mister, my camera cost more than USD500 that you offered me. It is a Nikon D3x, and it is digital. (they called it the old fashion camera, while waving their 5 megapixel point and shoot).

I was pissed, yes.

I guess, there is nothing I could do. Good thing I have got my equipments insured. Now the problem is, should I report it as stolen, or should I report it as lost in the middle of a crocodile infested river?

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