Wednesday, May 6, 2009

National Career & Entrepreneurship Carnival 2009

Organised by Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE) and managed by My Events Sdn Bhd, the National Career & Entrepreneurship Carnival 2009 (Karnival Kerjaya & Keusahawanan Kebangsaan 2009, K3G 2009) to be launched by the prime minister is targeting for the largest career and entrepreneur fair in the country entering the Malaysia Book of Record.

Theme: Realize Your Dream Job
Venue: Putra World Trade Centre (PWTC)
Date: 15- 17 May 2009
Time: 10 am - 7 pm
Dress code: Business casual
Admission: Free

This event provides exhibitors from GLC, corporate company and entrepreneur a great opportunity to meet face to face at one localized place with a variety of talented job seeker and aspiring entrepreneurs from all over the country. The exhibition will also serve as an exclusive platform to showcase exhibitors’ jobs which are in demand in the job market.

The floor plan for this event is as below:


Activities including:

  • Resume Clinic
  • Stage activities
  • Internship corner
  • On-the-spot interviews
  • Consultations on career and enterpreneurship
  • Career talk by industry experts and successful enterpreneurs
Click here for more information about the National Career & Entrepreneurship Carnival 2009.

Gold investment with passbook account

Gold is a kind of precious metal that is internationally recognised and accepted to be always interchangeable with cash based on the exchange rate in its own market. It is well-known to be hedge or safe haven against any economic, political, social, or currency-based crises.

Besides keeping the physical gold (in forms of coin, wafer, ornament, etc.), Malaysian can also invest in gold with passbook account in the way similar to passbook savings account with Maybank and Public Bank. The gold price offered by these 2 banks are pegged to international gold commodity prices in the market.

The benefit of investing gold with passbook account is that you don't have to keep the physical gold. This will save you from the hassle or risk of:

  • storage cost (eg. keeping in a safe box)
  • lost, theft, etc.
I have made a comparison between the Gold Savings Passbook Account (GSPA) of Maybank and Gold Investment Account (GIA) of Public Bank as below.



Generally, Public Bank trades with you in a smaller gap between the selling and buying price of the gold. This also mean that Public Bank sells to you at a lower price than Maybank, and buys from you at a higher price than Maybank, which is more beneficial to the investor.

However, Maybank also has some other advantages, such as:
  • They have more branches nationwide available for you to make the gold transaction with them.
  • They allow you to withdraw your gold in physical gold wafer or gold certificate format.
  • They don't impose annual service fee even though your balance is below 10 grams.
  • The minimum initial deposit and balance required is lesser.
The gold price has been in the rising momentum since 2001 until today. There is a nice website (http://goldprice.org) for you to check for current and historical gold price with charts.

Is now a good time to buy gold? What I can tell you is that now the price is at the historical high end of a long term bull. How long can this bull go further? You have to do your own homework.

Click here to check the gold rate of Maybank GSPA.

Click here to check for the gold rate of Public Bank GIA.

Friday, May 1, 2009

What can you do if your Ubuntu display screwed up

When I upgraded my Ubuntu Linux in my laptop from 8.10 (Intrepid) to 9.04 (Jaunty) using the "Upgrade to 9.04" option in Synaptic Package Manager, it didn't go smoothly.

After the packages download, upgrade, cleanup and restart, the login screen can't show up, and it jammed up in a distorted screen. My first tought was that the display driver or setting was not working well with the display hardware of the laptop.

Luckily, I managed to fix the problem within half an hour. And here is my solution:

  • Press the Esc key during Grub bootup to bring up the kernel menu.
  • Select the 2nd option "Ubuntu 9.04, kernel 2.6.28-11-generic (recovery mode)" to go to recovery mode.
  • When the Recovery Menu show up, you can try to select "xfix - Try to auto repair graphic problems". However this didn't work for me.
  • Therefore, I had to try another way and selected "netroot - Drop to root shell prompt with networking". I think you can also select "root - Drop to root shell prompt" as well.
  • Key-in the root password, and you will enter to the root's shell command prompt.
  • Key-in this command to manually configure the Xorg-server settings: "dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg".
  • You will need to configure for the input devices (eg. keyboard) as well as the output devices (eg. display and monitor).
  • When you get back to the command prompt, key-in "exit" to end the shell session and go back to Recovery Menu.
  • Now, select "resume - Resume normal boot".
  • If the display problem is fixed, you will see a beautiful reddish login screen with a stylish 3D Ubuntu logo on the bottom right.
  • Welcome to Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope).

Hint: Click on the "Older Posts" link to continue reading, or click here for a listing of all my past 3 months articles.