Rice prices in the UK

I have realised increase in prices everywhere including restaurants and their smaller rice portions. But when I finally went grocery shopping (for rice, after a long time) over the weekend, it really hit me. These are the prices of Basmati rice in Tesco London:

1kg:   £0.94 —–> £1.76  (87% increase)

500g: £0.54 —–> £0.90  (67% increase)

Why are there discrepancies in the rate of increase? I presume the 1kg was priced lower before to encourage people to go for bigger things (like most products do).

Good time to go on a diet innit?

The Big Mac Index, by the Economist

The Economist used a very interesting way to compare the exchange rate between different countries in the world. The only comparison was the price of a Big Mac. They kept the US Dollar as the benchmark and see how many more burgers can one buy in other currencies@their country. The index as shown in the graph below shows currencies that are overvalued(right) and undervalues(left).

Correction: Interesting to know that Malaysia is the most under-valued in the list presented; which we can see from inflationary prices.

Feeding the power – taken from E&T Magazine(VOL3, ISSUE13)

Regarding biofuels and food competing with fuel, > 14 countries have been involved in food-related violence and amongst them, Malaysia was the first on he list. A few interesting ones are outlined below:

In Malaysia, Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi is struggling for his political survival because of voters furious over food prices.

In India, food markets stand empty and the number of milk offerings to Hindu deities that take place daily across the country has plummeted.

Egypt’s President ordered the army to start baking bread.

The Philippines has made hoarding rice punishable by life imprisonment.

Japan, despite a long-standing cultural aversion to GM rice, has been importing it for the first time.

Well, food is a necessity and once this is threatened, politicians are forced to face this problem before they can focus on development or other issues. Hence, watchdogs/government institutions need to play an increasingly strong role in making sure that biofuels do not compete with food(although it might seem more lucrative).

On the other hand, this article also mentioned that farmers can benefit from the higher prices tha they obtain for their crops now – which in turn reduces the need for subsidies for them to be sustainable.

Doubling of Malaysia’s CPI in one month!

The CPI for June is recorded as 7.7% which is more than double the amount in May(3.8%). According to TheStar, this is the highest in the past 27 years(highest in my life)! Obviously this has everything to do with the increase in petrol prices which led to increase in electricity tariffs.

Looking back 27 years ago, the CPI was at 10.8% in April 1981. The relation we can get here is that during Tun Mahathir’s time as a Prime Minister, the CPI index was never at an alarming rate.

However, the question remains as to what are the items that are put together to form the basket in order to calculate the CPI and is it truly reflective of our current price of goods? Any thoughts or pointers are very welcomed.

Fuel Cell Vehicles

On Friday, there was a presentation in Imperial College about fuel cell vehicles by Nissan. We also got a ride in the car after that. It is still very pricey but the car is so quiet, has good mileage(can last up to 250 miles per full tank(of hydrogen). However, it is still in its early stage of development and will take few years(their target is 2015) to reach out to the upper market. Mass market production will take longer to reach and the chain of hydrogen fuel stations need to be improved. But it’s a good start for Nissan(joint venture between the US and Japan).

The picture above shows how the fuel moves from the hydrogen tank to the motor/battery.

Growing Blog Status in WordPress

Just because I had a post about the Anwar-Shabery debate two days ago, the number of hits on Soha’s Quill increased a lot – creating the new record for the most number of visitors in a day(yesterday). Also, this blog is ranked at number 23 as a growing blog status!

It is interesting to note people’s inclination towards political write-ups and one thing I realised is that title plays a huge role. It’s is the same analogy as first impression counts!

Racial Integration and the Malaysian Education System

The Malaysian education system has been criticised by many people. Whenever a new education minister comes into power, there are changes made to the system. Why is that so? Does he/she want to leave a mark in history? Or because the system is so bad, that if he/she does not do anything, people will say he/she is not doing his/her job and by changing it(although negative) changes people’s perception?

Well, let’s not dwell into the politicians’ agendas. Our education has a lot of flaws and there is no doubt about that – but we can’t wash our hands and let the future generation go through something that we think is flawed. Things have to change and people have to be more accepting – but change does not come easy.

The focus of this article is about the racial integration aspect of our education system. From a personal experience, I believe I was well integrated in my school (a daily public girls’ school), where I knew all my classmates, most of my batch-mates and some of my schoolmates, without even considering their racial background. Personally, I did not feel any discrimination in school, let it be in terms of academics or any other activities – opportunities were based on merit and talent. Although people say that the bumiputeras are given priority in many aspects, I did not experience it myself and hence had an idealistic view that things are just going to be like it was in school. The only segregation experienced was during our split for Moral and Agama lessons – which I thought was a bit unfair as Moral Education was harder to score in – until we had a good teacher from a different school telling us tips and tricks to score in this subject during SPM.

Having left school, I was blessed with the opportunity to meet remarkable people during my A levels where racial tension did not exist and people were open minded about many things. Here, I had the experience of living in a residential school setting, but with a British twist in preparation to study in the UK. However, the allocation of scholarships and university courses did resemble some form of unfairness if you look at it from a merit point of view. I have few friends who had to do Form Six in order to get into university. However, as we all know, Form Six is super hard and it was unlikely that they were placed in courses that they enjoy; leading some to fork out money and go private. All these can be seen as unfairness in the system.

However, coming back to my point about racial integration, I realise that the way we are educated in school plays a vital role. Due to that, we can easily mix with people here (in the UK) and blend in, not forgetting our culture and values. However, it is different for certain ethnic community in the UK (first immigrant generation and their children always stick together). I draw this conclusion based on the Sri Lankan community in the UK – they always stick together and adhere to family/racial values although residing in the UK. But we Malaysians easily mix with everyone (especially those who reciprocate the easiness to blend together) – and I give credit to the national schools in Malaysia (at least until the year 2000).

I just hope the political turmoil in Malaysia would subside and we all can see a silver lining. There is just too much drama now, so much that essential aspects of the economy and country are easily lost sight of.

Anwar-Shabery Debate Review

A live one hour debate between Dato Seri Anwar Ibrahim and Dato Seri Ahmad Shabery Cheek was held on the 15th of July in Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka(DBP), Kuala Lumpur on Fuel Subsidies where Anwar proposed reducing the fuel price by 50 cents/litre whereas Shabery stands by the government’s decision in reducing fuel subsidies.

In order to reduce each litre by 50 cents, the government needs to provide an additional total subsidy of RM5billion. According to Anwar, contribution of Petronas to the government must be used for this purpose. On top of that, he touched upon renegotiating the contracts with the Independent Power Producers(IPPs), which I totally agree. The energy supply contract that TNB did with the IPPs has very bad terms for TNB in the long run and this results in higher electricity price for consumers. Another point that Anwar raised was to reduce the spare capacity that TNB owns. Allegedly, they have about 40% excess capacity(this is higher than most countries who only have about 20-30%). This is a very valid point. However, according to Anwar, cutting the spare capacity by half saves the government RM2 billion for capacity and fuel. I agree with him that 40% is a bit too much of a capacity. However, I do not agree with reducing the capacity to 20%. The power plants have been built and ‘unbuilding’ it would not save money. Another point to note is that these spare capacity do not consume any fuel(maybe slightly for maintenance or occasional start ups); hence I do not see a huge reduction of RM 2 billion here. What TNB can aim to do is to utilise that excess 20% to generate and maybe export electricity to neighbouring countries(i.e.Thailand and Singapore), bearing in mind contracts should be short term so that future increases in prices/cost of fuel can be taken into account and contracts can be revised. Therefore we should redistribute our capacity and not try to disable perfectly capable power plants.

Another interesting point raised by Shabery is that countries with very low fuel prices have really high inflation rates. This is a very interesting and valid point – nations with highly subsidised petrol have excess money to spend; hence they demand more of other goods which leads to increase in price, given that supply stays constant. On the other hand, nations that reflect the market price tend to keep their inflation under control, e.g. western and developed countries.

Drawing from the debate, there are good points from both parties. As I pointed out in one of my previous articles, the aim of reducing subsidies and providing rebates is so that everyone benefits equally, i.e. if you drive more, you don’t gain more subsidies(as would be the case in the past). Therefore, hopefully people will optimise their vehicle usage and reduce time on the road. If you look at things objectively, most higher income earners drive a lot; hence would have benefited a lot from government’s subsidies(tax payers’ money). However, I do hope the government will channel this excess saving for fiscal expenditure in improving public transportation systems and helping the poor.

Since the increase has been done, there is no point turning back. The people will get used to the new lifestyle. The government however, should help those who are really in need of financial backing in the midst of this crisis.

IDEA League Research Summer School(8-11 July 2008)

5 universities in Europe, 40 students and facilitators from the 5 institutions, mainly Imperial College. It was a fun-filled 3 days full of activities and discussions. Also, a trip to Eton College(the elite boys’ school where most royalties go to and where 19 of Britain’s Prime Ministers were educated) as well as Windsor. We had really bubbly and knowledgeable tour guides for both the tours. One set back was that it was raining the whole day!

I found it amusing that the Europeans were so keen on trying everything English-food, ale, culture etc. Personally, I do not find British food very appealing – I long for the occasional English breakfast, but when it is served three days in a row, one can only lose interest. However, the food served at Easthampton Park were of good standard-buffet style is always welcomed! The last dinner was awesome – proper seating with wine and we were served.

The activities were fun but I did not find them very challenging except for the last one – a competition to work with another participant from a totally different field of study and different institution. I worked with Freddy who is from Aachen, Germany. Imagine an Electrical Engineer and a Biologist(who’s concentrating on immune cells) – we came up with something bizarre: to discover the network that exist between the components in the immune cell.

At the end of the course, when we were meant to reflect upon the things we did and what we could extract form the course, many of us had to think hard to actually see what were the benefits. No doubt we learnt a lot, but mostly were reinforcing things we already knew. Personally, I found the ethics lecture boring but it opened my eyes to teh existence of ethical issues in certain scientific study – which I was totally ignorant about before this. The only ethical thing in my field would be concerning the environment, not really impacts on human(at least not directly). For me the best aspect of it were the network built during this course and the chats we had after dinner(with or without drinks) – regarding so many different things in life!

IDEAL Research Summer School

For the next 3.5 days, I will be away for a ’summer school’ at Easthampstead Park, Wokingham, Berkshire.

I can live with not updating my blog, but can I live without access to the world(via internet) for three nights in a row??? Well, it is good to escape from the normal routine/friends/environment from time to time.