Buying 3-ply surgical face mask online, and the correct way to wear it

Just to share that, in case you are looking for 3-ply surgical face mask and unable to get it from store/pharmacy around your area, or the price has already jacked up, you can actually buy from the Internet, which will deliver to you at your doorstep within 1-2 day, and the price is reasonably cheap.

For example, if you look around in Lelong website, you can find seller selling 5 boxes of the 3-ply surgical face mask (50 pieces per box) at the price of RM33 only, which is equivalent to RM33/250 = 13.20 sen per piece.

If you are looking for lower volume like 1 box (50 pieces), there are sellers selling as low as RM10 per box, which is equivalent to RM10/50 = 20 sen per piece.

As for the correct way of wearing the face mask, the right one should be the coloured side face away from you, while the white side touches your face. There are some rumours spreading around the Internet saying that in certain cases you should wear with the white side in front, which I believe is not true. Whether you are sick and want to prevent virus spreading out, or you are preventing yourself from inhaling harmful substances from outside such as haze/dust/virus, just wear the face mask with the coloured side in front. You can refer to many professional medical websites or government healthcare websites to get the correct info. One of the websites is this: http://www.primed.ca/ClinicalResources/MaskStandardsandFAQ.aspx

All schools in KL, Selangor, Melaka, Muar, Ledang, Segamat, Kuantan, PD, etc. to close on 24/6/2013 due to haze

The haze condition in Malaysia and Singapore, which is caused by forest fires in Indonesia, has worsen today.

The Natural Resources and Environment Minister Datuk Seri G. Palanivel has just instructed for the  closure of all schools in Kuala Lumpur and Selangor on Monday 24/6/2013, as advised by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak.

Meanwhile, the Melaka state government earlier instructed all 313 primary and secondary schools plus all pre-schools, including Tadika Perpaduan, Kemas, to be closed on Monday 24/6/2013 due to the haze.

Pahang Menteri Besar Datuk Seri Adnan Yaakob also ordered schools in the Kuantan district and areas badly affected by the haze to close on Monday 24/6/2013.

Johor Education director Mohd Nor A Ghani announced 110 primary and secondary schools in Segamat have been ordered to close on Monday 24/6/2013 following the Air Pollutants Index (AP1) reading having reached the hazardous level of 400.

The closure order for 117 schools in Kluang and 175 schools in Batu Pahat, involving 134,872 students, has not been withdrawn, but the order has been extended to 171 primary and 40 secondary schools in Muar and Ledang following the haze emergency declaration for the two districts (Muar and Ledang) by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak today.  

In Negri Sembilan, Menteri Besar Datuk Seri Haji Mohamad Haji Hasan announced schools in Port Dickson to be closed on Monday 24/6/2013  after the API recorded at 295.

However, 300 schools in Kota Tinggi, Pontian and Pasir Gudang, which were ordered to close because of the haze problem on Friday 21/6/2013, would REOPEN on 24/6/2013 following a drop in the API readings for the three areas.

Free Celcom 4G LTE SIM card upgrade for postpaid customers

Celcom postpaid customers who are subscribing to a monthly mobile Internet plan (1GB and above) and owns an LTE supported device including HTC One, Samsung Galaxy S4 or iPhone 5 can now get a new 4G LTE SIM card upgrade for free from either Blue Cube Menara Celcom or Blue Cube Sunway.

HTC One and Samsung Galaxy S4 users will get a Micro SIM card, while iPhone 5 users will get a Nano SIM card.

Click here to check for Celcom 4G LTE coverage.

The download and upload speed of Celcom 4G LTE is quite impressive. I can get a 44.68Mbps download speed and 18.1Mbps upload speed when connected to Celcom 4G LTE.

Symphony Life (SYMLIFE, 1538, f.k.a. BOLTON) transforming to unleash its value

Talking about property stocks listed in KLSE nowadays, few will thought of Symphony Life (SYMLIFE, 1538), but I think this counter worth for investors and analysts to take a look.

In fact, SYMLIFE is a rebranded name from BOLTON just a few months ago. The company said the name change was the 1st phase of its transformation exercise, expected to be complete by year-end.

SYMLIFE transformation involve selling off non-core businesses, and refocusing to property development. Their immediate aim is to return  to the premier league of property developers. Their property development unique selling points focus on quality lifestyle, which brought about their new name Symphony Life.

BOLTON is an old-timer property stock, listed in KLSE since 1973. Its chairman Datuk Mohamed Azman bin Yahya was one of the six individuals in Najib's circle while Najib was appointed Finance Minister in 2008 before becoming the Prime Minister later on (click here to read the news report about Najib's circle). Datuk Mohamed Azman Yahya is also director of Khazanah, founder and group CEO of Symphony House (SYMPHNY, 0016), and ex-CEO of Pengurusan Danaharta Bhd.

SYMLIFE current project includes:

• Surin in Tanjung Bungah, Penang (GDV: RM201m)
• Lavendar Heights in Senawang, Negeri Sembilan (GDV: RM370m)
• Bandar Amanjaya in Sungai Petani (GDV: RM490m)
• Arata in Bukit Tunku, KL (GDV: RM120m)
• Sixceylon in Bukie Ceylon, KL (GDV: RM180m)
• The Wharf in Puchong (GDV: >RM650m)
• Summer Homes in Puchong (GDV: RM55m)
• Tijani Ukay in Ukay Perdana (GDV: RM300m) 
• 51 Gurney in KL (GDV: RM210m)

Note that along with the transformation exercise to bring in more value to investors, the estimated GDV of some of the projects above has been revised in their quarterly report, mainly resulting from the change of project blueprint:

• Tijani Ukay: from RM323m to RM300m since 2012Q4 report onwards.
• The Wharf: from >RM500m to >RM650m since 2013Q3 report onwards.
• Summer Homes: from RM40m to RM55m since 2013Q3 report onwards.
• 51 Gurney: from RM207m to RM210m since 2013Q1 report onwards.

SYMLIFE has a total GDV of RM2 billions worth of new projects to be launched in 2013-2014.

Their reported quarterly revenue and unbilled sales is as below:

Note that its revenue has surged to RM140.518 million during last quarter, at the same time its unbilled sales doesn't decrease following the recognised sales, but in fact increased from RM514 million to RM517 million.

Dynaquest has in its Stock Performance Guide 2013 March Edition estimated the EPS of SYMLIFE in 2013 to be 30.7 sen. With its today's closing price of RM1.18, its PE is only 3.84 which is unbelievably cheap compared with other property stocks in KLSE.

Disclaimer: This article is intended for sharing of point of view only. It is not an advice or recommendation to buy or sell any of the mentioned stock counters. You should do your own homework before trading in Bursa Malaysia.

Download and read the complete HTC One User Guide

HTC One comes with a small printed Quick Guide, which is definitely not sufficient enough for new user to learn about the phone features and get the best of the phone.

There are 2 ways for HTC One user to learn more and get the best of the phone:

• Tips & Help - it is in your phone inside Settings > About > Help > Tips & Help. There, you will find some video tips as well as detail how-tos about the phone's features and apps. The Tips & Help content is updated from the Internet.
• User Guide in PDF format - this 179 pages User Guide is available in the Internet. Click here to download the HTC One User Guide.

Among the tips are:

• The function of 2-finger swipe and 3-finger gesture.
• Double-tap Home button to see recently opened apps.
• Removing an app from Recently Opened Apps list by dragging it up.
• Capturing the screen by pressing both the Power and Home buttons together.
• Using the Trace keyboard
• Optimizing battery life
• ... and many more

HTC One (M7) - my 3rd smartphone

4 years ago, I bought my 1st smartphone running on Symbian OS. It is a Sony Ericsson P1i with physical QWERTY keypad, 208 MHz ARM9 PNX4008 processor, 128 MB RAM, 256 MB ROM, 160 MB internal storage, 2.6" touch screen, 240x320 TFT display, Wi-Fi 802.11b, 950 mAh battery, and a stylus. It is a 3G phone.

2 years ago, I bought my 2nd smartphone running on Android OS. It is an HTC Incredible S with 1 GHz Qualcomm MSM8255 Snapdragon Scorpion processor, Adreno 205 GPU, 768 MB RAM, 1.1 GB ROM, 8 GB internal storage, 4" multi-touch screen, 480x800 WVGA display, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, 1450 mAh battery. It is a 3G phone supporting HSUPA/HSDPA/HSPA+ connection. I have just upgraded it to Nik ROM with Sense 4.1 Lite and Sense 5 visual.

Recently, I bought my 3rd smartphone, also running on Android OS. It is an HTC One (a.k.a. M7) with quad-core 1.7 GHz Qualcomm Krait 300 processor, Adreno 320 GPU, 2GB LPDDR2 RAM, 29.8 GB ROM, 32 GB internal memory, 4.7" multi-touch screen, 1920x1080p HD display, Wi-Fi 802.11 a/ac/b/g/n, 2300 mAh battery. It is an LTE 4G phone.

From the specs of the 3 smartphones that I have, you can probably see the evolution in smartphone  over the past 4 years period. By the time I purchased those smartphones, they were the topliner in the market at that particular time period. The One is currently the flagship phone of HTC.

The speaker sound of HTC smartphones had be criticized for being too soft until they finally made significant improvement with Beats Audio from the Sensation series onwards (Sensation was the successor of my Incredible S). Now the HTC One comes with dual front-facing stereo speakers with built-in amplifiers and Beats Audio enhancement (they call it the BoomSound) is a real breakthrough. The sound quality is really good, loud and clear.

There are lots of comparison made among the HTC Ultrapixel camera with F2.0 aperture with HTC Zoe features and the camera of Samsung Galaxy S4, Apple iPhone 5, Nokia Lumia 925, Sony Xperia Z, etc. The camera quality in smartphones has been improved a lot especially over the past 1 year, which is a good competition. Perhaps sooner or later, the photo quality developed by smartphone cameras will be comparable to those taken by my Canon PowerShot S95.

One thing I noticed is you can launch the camera from lock screen directly by pulling its icon up, bypassing the security checking (password/pattern/etc.). This enables us not to miss the precious moment by having quick access to the camera and make it ready to shoot photo soonest possible.

I don't quite like the BlinkFeed on the default home screen. A lot of people find it annoying especially when linked with Facebook. I have unlinked it with my Facebook feed too. The BlinkFeed news photos can only be fed with a handful of predefined websites. It would be more favourable if the user can self define the feeds from the web.

The HTC TV Remote works well with my LCD TV, Astro B.yond STB and Panasonic hi-fi system. I am able to get the Astro TV guide too. However, I am not able to configure it to work with my UniFi HyppTV STB.

The NFC function well, able to detect the Touch 'n Go chips embedded in Zing card as well as MyKad.

Google Now is accessible by long press the Home button (double tap the Home button will open the Recent Apps screen). When Google Now is off, it will show a normal Google Search screen. If you are unable to find Google Now there, try switching your system language to another, such as "English (Singapore)". At the moment there is nothing much available in Google Now for Malaysia user yet. It will show the weather information, estimated travelling time to home, to work, and to other user-defined places.

I use the Metal-Slim transparent hard case to cover the phone. The case provides protection to the phone while keeping its nice full metal body unhide. However, it makes the phone heavier and bulkier. I am thinking of getting the Mophie Juice Pack, but its price is a bit high, especially after adding in the shipping fee.

I have been searching for the DestraShield nanoliquid screen protector that I applied on my HTC Incredible S before, but it seems that this product has disappeared from the market. I ended up applying the Kristall nanoliquid screen protector on my HTC One. They seems to function the same, except Kristall is cheaper but doesn't have Ag+ anti-bacteria formula in it.