Asian Tiger

Beginning today, Malaysia Airlines is giving away zero fares for its domestic fares.  There are terms and conditions attached to it; something on the line of no change, no show, no refund, no flight change, no passenger change, etc etc.  Best to read their fine prints on their website.

I’m a little surprised that Malaysia Airlines is going this route (i.e. free fares) similar to that of AirAsia’s. I’ve flown both airlines before and frankly, 90% of my flying is done with Malaysia Airlines simply because of less flight delays, no hassle during check in, no need to line up to board the plane, no need to elbow the person next to me who is trying to get the best seating, no need to argue with fellow passengers who booked an entire row for his/her friends, no need to pay for checked in luggage, no need to pay for water or maggi mee.
Now that these 2 airline giants are competing against each other aggressively, I as the consumer wins.  Now with this latest offerings by Malaysia Airlines, I get cheap flights with great service.  About 15 minutes ago, I’ve just booked 6 seats to Kuching on this offer which cost me RM1,440. I did a quick comparison (kiasu-ness kicks in) with AirAsia’s economy promo price and that ended up with RM1,560.

With Malaysia Airlines, I’m getting best of both worlds.

Heard of the age old saying “charity begins at home“? I’m sure we all have and I’m pretty sure there are many out there who is as baffled as me on the meaning. We all know that charity is good and we should practice giving away to the needy when possible. I would understand that most of the time, we have our own constraints and our wallets/pockets don’t seem to fatten up. Who says you need to be charitable from your own pockets?

FreeRice.com which is a sister site of Poverty.com has came up with an ingenious way to help people be charitable. It combines a vocabulary puzzle and prize for every correct guess. Each correct guess earns 10 grains of rice which will be donated to the needy. All you need to do is make correct guesses. You have nothing to lose and all gains go to the poor.

The puzzle does work up your brain muscles as some words are unheard of. I had a great time testing myself and managed to reach a vocabulary level of 27 with over 2000 grains of rice won. They had me at “twaddle“. If you want to know the answer, it’s nonsense. Now, do your bit for charity and enjoy yourself at the same time.

Thanks to nemo of Asiayak for a kind invite to participate in Asiayak’s Photo Contest. The winner stands to receive a return air ticket for any destination served by AirAsia. If you do not already know, AirAsia is Malaysia’s very successful budget airlines that fly regionally. They are poised to be the next major airline to fly long-haul on a shoestring but that’s another blog post altogether.

Back to Asiayak’s photo contest. Though the prize is an air ticket, should you choose not to accept that, you can opt for the cash prize of US$150; approximately RM517.00. Not bad for just submitting photos and praying for it to win.

Here’s my submission for the contest. I took this photo while sitting in a tour bus at a roundabout in Bali. The bus was driven at a high speed which made photography difficult. I’m glad the photo turned out alright save for some reflections visible at the bottom left.

Hope I can make it to the finals, if not winning the prize.  I urge you to participate in Asiayak’s photo contest; you never know if you’ll land that free air ticket for a nice vacation or cash money.