TV Smith's Blog – Page 24

Son Of A Hotel Owner.

I had a childhood friend whose family operated a hotel with the grand sounding name of Hotel De Luxe.

When he went to London to study, his reputation as a hotel owner commanded a lot of respect. His uni mates thought it must be a legendary hotel like the ones in Hollywood or Rome, housed in an art deco building. He told them the hotel had a casino.

In reality, it was a ‘rumah tumpangan’ or a budget lodging house above the family’s coffee shop or kopitiam. The casino was the mahjong table in a corner. Lol.

The friend has since migrated to the states. I am sure he will make it big.

I know about rumah tumpangan as I worked for the late Malay movie legend Mustapha Maarof. He owned a production house and was very frugal. We, the film crew, must look for the cheapest hotels when were were outstation. It may sound tough but I now appreciate the experience and challenges of traveling on a shoestring budget.

Those ‘rumah tumpangan’ were the predecessors of today’s slick budget hotels. The walls or partitions don’t touch the ceilings. That means you can hear everything from the next room. There is usually a ceiling fan in the middle, a spittoon and a mosquito coil provided. A thermos flask for hot water and a bar of 999 Chlorophyll Soap were also provided. The anti skin infection soap was a good idea as the blankets were furry from wear.

If you are lucky, you can order food from the coffee shop downstairs. Famous Yong Suan and its nasi ganja in Ipoh is a good example. When the highway opened up, it eliminated travel time and the need to stop overnight. Unfortunately, the owners were not online savvy and made no affiliations with online agents and were unable to compete relying on walk in guests alone.

There was one in every town, big or small, to cater to the traveling salesmen and van drivers or delivery men. It is a legacy institution fast fading,

Picture of Lok Ann Hotel from 1938 boarded up and awaiting demolition to make way for the MRT. The Chinatown hotel is a venerable landmark with a coffee shop on the ground floor. Pic was taken in April 2015. The giant flag bearers were part of the flag vaulting team in a chingay parade. .

#history #rumahtumpngan

Got Discount Or Not Ah?

Sometimes when I try to promote my hotel booking site to a friend, and the friend will ask “can I get discounts?” That’s a very typical Malaysian response. Not just about value but friends must always give discounts, it seems.

I love to give you a discount but it is not within my control. I understand the sentiment and the desire to get maximum value as a Malaysian myself. That is why I recently launched the Hotel Deals Finder feature.

For each city featured, you can find special discounts and reduced room rates for certain properties. Save up to 50 % or more, where available. It depends on the deals made by the hotels and my affiliate partner and are subject to availability and booking dates.

I am trying out the Deals feature and am kicking off with discounted rates for hotels or deals in some of the destinations popular with Malaysians. However, any one from anywhere in the world can enjoy the discounts.

These are some of the destinations popular with Malaysians. I hope to include hotels in Taiwan, Korea and Japan soon. It is tough work and as luck would have it, I suffered an Internet outage over the weekend, slowing down the building of more pages.

You can use built-in Hotel Search and you’ll probably find some existing deals or flash sale. For your convenience, I’ll add more cities. as we go along and as I gauge usage and understand the algo better. Thank you for your support. Contact me directly, should you need help.

Since I am so tired, I didn’t use Photoshop to build a collage. Tip: I merely screen capture the directory thumbs view generated by the excellent and free Faststone Image Viewer. I like that it looked natively like cardboard-mounted travel slides from film days. Start here for discounts: http://www.mycen.my/ #mycenhotels #hotels #discounts #deals #rooms #travel

I Met The Teh Tarik Poster Boy Called Hang Tarik

I Met The Teh Tarik Poster Boy Called Hang Tarik.

F&N Beverages Marketing launched the F&N Teh Tarik Mega 2017 event at Mydin Hypermart USJ yesterday.

On hand was Radhi Khalid, aka Hang Tarik F&N. He demonstrated his skills in making the frothy or pulled tea while performing Malay martial arts or silat, and dancing to traditional Hari Raya tunes.

The tea is a unique Malaysian concoction where it is a popular drink at roadside tea stalls. A cultural icon in many ways.

The pulling is the mixing from two containers to mix the milk and tea well and also to cool the brew, and to make it frothy. It is the showmanship element in dragging a long stream of tea between two vessels that made it appealing and legendary.

According to Hang Tarik, who is also the brand ambassador, the secret to a perfect cuppa is to ‘kahwin’ or marry F&N’s Sweetened Condensed Milk with F&N’s Evaporated Milk.

I had one iced version served there, made with F&N’s Evaporated Milk and I loved it very much as It is less sweet. Will try this at home.

Pic of Hang Tarik pulling hot milk tea pulled from publicity posters.

#fn #fntehtarik #tehtarik #tea #milktea #posterboy #fntehtarik #fnmilk #malaysian #mamak #hangtarik

Valuable Lessons Learned

Valuable Lessons Learned.

Sharing my experience so others may learn or benefit when it happens. My Unifi Internet broadband connection went down with the landline since last night. Contacted a friend in TM but she couldn’t help much. She did suggest something helpful. She said one surefire way to get their attention is to tweet @TMConnects.

Interestingly and unexpectedly I received a SMS text via my mobile phone saying “Dear TM Customer apolozize [sic] there may be some delay in restoring svc (my phone number) at your area. Expected new restoration date by 20/05/2017 06:59 PM”. Unexpected, because I have not made an official report to TMnet as yet. What does this means? It means TMnet is now proactive and is able to detect a fault on its own! Wow. Haha. It is contacting customers automatically when they detect a fault? Amazing!

Anyway, I tweeted TMConnects and received a prompt reply. The reply said they checked and a fiber cable was broken about 1 km from the exchange and that immediate restoration was underway. Damn. I thought this type of problem was over without copper cables but improperly done digging can still damage optical cables, if that was the cause.

The Twitter Support is much better option than calling a support number with an endless queue and clueless operator. You get quick answers on Twitter DM. The handler is friendly and good humoured. But have your TM account number ready. And always have a backup via a phone with data and a Twitter account to have access to this support option. Get both done before disaster strikes.

Then another problem came about.

I have preciously tethered my PC with wireless hotspot with my previous Samsung phone. Oddly, it no longer works with my new Asus phone this time. Didn’t work with my mom’s Samsung too. I surrendered and let Microsoft troubleshooter analyze the connection problem. I rarely do that. It found another connection active. The PC has its own wireless receiver or dongle on the motherboard. I forgot all about a network cable plugged in. Pulled the cable out and wireless hotspot started working again. Phew!

If you find the tips useful, save it somewhere accessible offline. You won’t have Internet to read this when you are in a similar spot.

Pic: Slow speed capture of streaming evening city traffic made it looked like light pulses (data) passing through a fiber optic cable.

#tmnet #unifi #fiberoptic #fiber #fibre #optical #telco #internet #tm #tmconnects

Let’s Go Kosovo

OK. I’ll jump the gun a bit and reveal some happy news. I received a booking for a hotel in Pristina, the capital and largest city of Kosovo. Kosovo is a partially recognised state in Southeastern Europe that unilaterally declared independence from Serbia in February 2008.

It became the Republic of Kosovo. War torn Kosovo’s capital is Pristina and it has a strong Albanian community with a very rich historical and cultural heritage.

I am happy not just for the unusual travel destination and the chance to learn and see more of the unfamiliar country. The “booker”, a friend, soon messaged me to tell me it was her who booked the hotel. It made me doubly happy not just for the sale but because she had previously visited 23 out of 48 countries in Europe.

It is gratifying to know such a savvy and experienced traveler has confidence in the system I set up in the form of MyCen Hotels (http://www.mycen.my/). Looking forward to her pics and crediting her when she returns.

Mother Teresa, known in the Catholic Church as Saint Teresa of Calcutta. was from Albania, the neighbouring country of Kosovo.

Pic: The Great Hamam of Pristina (an Ottoman era monument) and the Imperial Mosque. (left) The Catholic Cathedral of Blessed Mother Teresa. (right)

Pic by Bujar Imer Gashi (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons