quaint melody | A Malaysian's life in the bungy land

Melody of the day: Anyone know how to fix the encoding problem? After upgraded to the latest version of wrodpress, all the Chinese characters showed up as ????? again. I have removed ‘define(’DBCHARSET’, ‘utf8′);and define(’DBCOLLATE’, ”);’ from wp-config.php to no avail. Please help!

As for the topic that is on everybody’s mind now, petrol hike. YES it’s pretty much the same over here, albeit not up 40% at one go, but gradually. Like 6 cents in 2 days for the latest increase. If I remembered correctly, it was about $1.30 per litre for regular unleaded around this time last year. Someone raised the possibility that it might go up to $2 per litre back then, but most people just brushed it off. Now, the price has peaked at $2.12 per litre and the thought of $3 per litre is becoming so horrifyingly real. A lot of secondhand car dealerships have already taken the hit and closed down in the past few months.

Don’t even get me started on food prices. A research done by NZ Herald in April showed that food prices have upped 28% in the last year and is continuing to soar. Although NZ is a agriculture-based country, the prices of dairy products have surprisingly shot through the sky, with cheese up 45.5 per cent, milk up 21.1 per cent, bread up 13.1 per cent and butter up by a gob smacking 86 per cent, all in one year! By the by, all these prices seem to be on their goal-setting road of soaring to new heights. There you have it, my rant of reality. Now let me go curl up in my blanket in my cold unheated room, as the cost of power has gone up as well. ARG!

Byebye cheese, I will miss you! (photo taken in Nov 2007)

Quaint melodies: Hey, I received another call from the Australian number again. This time I answered the call and true enough, it’s some resort company. The lady told me I’m selected to win a $1000 reward, and I’m entitle to it as soon as I answer some questions. I got bored and hung up.

On a lighter note, a 20 year-old Christchurch student has gone creative and got lucky! He listed a ‘mystery item’ on the local auction site Trademe, the item generated a huge interest and after an initial bogus $1000 bid, it eventually sold for $440! All he wrote on the listing was ‘I will not describe this item in any detail, other than it is a physical item, i.e. it is REAL’.

What’s the mystery item? A freaking old $10 note! Haha, sucker! Once again, curiosity killed the cat! The seller did said he felt guilty the bidding went that high and decided to throw in an Armani belt though. According to the seller, the buyer has yet to contact him after learning about the ‘great deal’ he’s getting. Woops, look like someone’s not that lucky after all!

Like any weekday afternoon, I logged on to the local newspaper website for my dose of current events, while a news piece caught my eyes. It’s a photo article that’s placed in the middle of the front page. In gist, the Labour party Budget pamphlet features a happy family photo. The people in the photo are actually Americans, instead of Kiwis. Yup, it’s a stock photo purchased from iStockphoto, and some nitpicking blogger caught it out and called the newspaper because ‘it’s not kiwis’.

Well, I don’t know about you, but what’s the big deal here? So what if the Labour party spent about 10 or 20 NZ$ to purchase stock photo to use in their Budget pamphlet; So what if the family in the photo is actually American instead of Kiwi?! Big freaking deal! It’s an advertising campaign for pete’s sake! They certainly looked kiwis(and not only I said so).The photo is purely there to act as a portrait. No harm done, no law broken! Most people can’t even tell! Yet some people are making such big deal out of it! Seriously folks, do you really go through all the pamphlets and flyers to scrutinize every single stock photo for originality and authenticity? Some people just have too much time on their hands! I love New Zealand, but every so often, little things get blown out of proportion here. Some trivialized news like this is simply not worth a place in a prominent newspaper, much less on the front page. Yet there you have someone jumping up and down shouting blue murder! As one commentator simply put it, ‘The only embarrassing thing about this is the fact that it’s seen as a newsworthy story here in NZ. Get over it, get a life and move on, it’s a photo for christ’s sake!’

On the side note: Here’s a question. Do you really think every single advertising, say holiday promotion uses the exact photos taken in the said destination? Newsflash! All advertising agencies use stock images, and they choose the ones that suit the champaign best. Most of the time, they are not the same place! It’s all make believe! The most suitable pictures that depict the product in question are always chosen. Photos, so often are just a tool to give people a sense of what the company is marketing. Agencies use whatever that is most relatable and most eye-catching to promote their products. Why do you think Celcom used Leehom as their endorser? He’s not Malaysian and surely is not using Celcom network, but the campaign caught our eyes and it’s a success!