Apartment For Sale

Technorati Tags: Melalin, sabah, Seri, Tuaran, Vista

We all followed 3 years ago how Jamie Oliver asked Tony Blair to reform school dinners in good old England. Both men had a constructive chat and it seems that there was a light at the end of the tunnel

3 years later, lots of English children are still eating industrial rubbish and Tony Blair is no longer in charge.

And that’s once of the main problems democracy is facing: unlike Mahathir in Malaysia who managed to stay in power for 22 years, most democracies don’t allow the same person in charge for an extended period.

Take again Mahathir: although 22 years in power, he actually had a vision until the year 2020. That would mean he would have to live until reaching 100 in order to see his vision come through. That’s quite unrealistic.

But few years after he left power, and after the crushing defeat in the last elections in March 2008, Malaysian politics are reduced to:

• the Prime Minister should go
   
• they set a date and agree that he should go
   
• they review the date he should go
   
• they already have a successor appointed
   
• they want to contest the place of the successor

And all this is done inside the ruling party. On top of that the opposition party also thinks that it should be the opposition who should be ruling the country.

But with all this bickering about, one really wonders if there is actually anybody ruling the country in the first place or is everybody waiting until the Prime Minister steps down?

Even without bickering: problems stay, politicians go

Back to Jamie Oliver and Tony Blair: even without power struggles, Tony Blair is no longer on top, so whatever deals were made in the past, are they going to be continued in the future or are they going to be revised, especially in times of economical recession as today?

And it gets even worse in the US: Clinton managed to get the US economics back on track, to see it utterly butchered by president Bush in the last 8 years. So incredibly butchered that the US deficit is in trillions of dollars and the whole world economy is in recession due to useless spending of the US.

Can you really imagine a CEO of a leading US car company begging for money? well, that’s exactly what happened a few days ago, just that those CEO’s beg in style, private jet included.

So there are the problems, there is the mess and the person who was on top of the country can just wave his hand, say goodbye and let his successor deal with the mess.

Maybe it is time that we revise the democratic system or even better: people who mess up should be personal accounted for.

Just combine the corporate world with the student loan world: whatever you use up now, you will have to pay back sooner or later and there is no room for bankruptcy.

Who would be ready to take that challenge? For sure not your power hungry politician who knows nuts about economics.

Technorati Tags: barak obama, democracy, george bush, politicians, tony blair

Are we still welcome in Malaysia? It seems MM2H or "Malaysia My Second Home program" is going from bad to worse…

What happened to "you ‘ll be forever at home" in their MM2H slogan?

Malaysia my second home

As the name implies, Malaysia my second home is an opportunity to buy yourself a home – property that is – in Malaysia.

It was targeting retirees like me who wanted to buy a house in Malaysia and stay for the rest of their life.

Under the MM2H program you apply for a visa for Malaysia that will give you the possibility to go in and out Malaysia as many times as you want for a period of 5 years.

It’s better than :

• those tourist visas that only give you 3 months
   
• those fiancee visas that only give you 6 months

How unpractical is a 5 year only Malaysia My Second Home program

• Take the fiancee visa: you are married but you can only see your wife for 6 months? Although the spouse visa should at least gives the spouse 5 years, in reality the spouses I know in Malaysia visit immigration every 6 months to get their spouse visa renewed (and pray that they get it…).
   
• The same problem with the MM2H visa: it’s only valid for 5 years. Now who want’s to buy property in Malaysia when he is not sure that he can stay in his property after 5 years living in Malaysia?

Confusing Malaysia My Second Home program

The first applicants, got their MM2H visa for 5 years. Then the law changed and new applicants could get a visa for 10 years.

What about those of 5 years? For no logical reason they still have to apply every 5 years for their Malaysian visa, where those having a 10 year MM2H visa only apply every 10 years.

MM2H visas started under the immigration department, then suddenly they moved to the tourism department (which is also understandable as we spend our money here traveling around the whole of Malaysia) and now it seems to be under 2 departments.

"Seems to be" because nobody really knows what is happening. A pain in the butt when I want to open a fixed deposit and the bank insists I put my employer’s name.

As a retiree I have no employer, as an MM2H holder I am not allowed to have a job in Malaysia, but if you tell the girl in the bank that these are the rules of MM2H… MM2H seems to be as well known as "the amount of socks my grandmother had when she was 8"…

If you don’t like Malaysia, then don’t buy property, then don’t come

This is the real truth: if you want to complain too much about a country, then why do you stay there in the first place?

Since I stay in Malaysia, I will repeat the benefits again: the cost of living in Malaysia is low compared to anywhere in Europe and if you look around a bit you will find almost anything that you would find in Europe.

But if I want to tell my friends about MM2H I can only say now: apply and see what happens.

Where at the beginning of the Malaysia my second home program I could advice people overseas what they needed to do to get their visa application approved before selling their houses and start all over here.

In these unstable economical times, people don’t want to sell their property overseas hoping they will get approved to buy property in Malaysia under the Malaysia My Second Home program.

Technorati Tags: fiancee visas, Malaysia my second home, Malaysia my second home program, MM2H programme, tourist visas, visa for malaysia