Yahoo! Answers Blog Malaysia

Tomorrow is Malaysia’s 51st birthday!

There have been so many different events happening throughout this month. But the most exciting would have been the “Perayaan Ambang Merdeka” tonight at Dataran Merdeka, Bukit Bintang and KLCC. And of course the Merdeka Day Parade, “Perbarisan Hari Kebangsaan ke-51″, tomorrow morning at Dataran Merdeka! 51 years is actually pretty long, so many things have happened, and nobody knows what the future will bring. Talking about the future, did anyone catch the movie “Wall-E“? I just watched it today and even though it’s a cartoon, it has some really good messages. Let me just give you 3:

1) Waste Not - We’re starting to become more commercialised, and we produce too much rubbish. So let’s save our earth and recycle and cut down on waste.

2) Want Not - Sometimes we depend so much on machines that we forget to look around us and smell the air (hopefully minus the pollution). So look around you, you may discover things you never knew existed right next to you.

3) Hey, robots can fall in love too!

But no matter what the future may be, let us just enjoy this day, unite together, and wish each other and our country, a very happy birthday.

What are the similarities between Yahoo! Answers and your loved ones? No, your loved one is not a walking Q&A. No, you can’t hug Yahoo! Answers while you sleep. The similarity is…. we sometimes take both for granted! Sama sama lah! You know how sometimes when we take our loved ones for granted, we can be quite rude to them? Well, we can be rude because we know that deep inside, they love us, so they will forgive us. But there is a limit to how rude we can be before we actually hurt them. So similarly for Yahoo! Answers, we take each other for granted and will sometimes forget and reply questions with rude answers.

So here’s a reminder: Community Guidelines 101 - Be Courteous! “Courtesy helps foster a respectful and knowledgeable community, and that benefits everyone.” Don’t forget that Yahoo! Answers has a big community of people with different opinions, so it’s up to us to be polite and treat each other with respect. Please don’t insult the other members and call them or their replies to the same question “stupid” or worse. That’s not very pleasant nor mature, and as some of the Yammers always say, “peace”! Be nice to others and peace to all. I’ve seen some really rude replies in Answers and I shall not name any names, but do remember that offensive replies will be reported and deleted. Let’s just make Yahoo! Answers a pleasant place for all of us to share our knowledge, experiences and opinions by following the simple Community Guidelines.

The Olympics just ended with another bang of fireworks tonight (though not as impressive as what was presented during the opening ceremony). 16 days after the start the Olympics, it has ended and once again we have to wait for another 4 years before the whole thing starts again in London in 2012.

(Photo thanks to Between a Rock)

Even though I’m not a big fan of sports, I still enjoy the true spirit of the Olympics. The Olympics really emphasise the fact that it is “One World, One Dream”. “One World”, because to put it bluntly, the event is like a mini-United Nations. You have athletes representing so many different countries, it’s like having the whole world under one roof. And “One Dream”? Well, all of them have the same dream, and that is to win an Olympic medal and bring glory to their countries and to themselves!

(Photo thanks to yvettiefred)

It doesn’t matter if there is a war between Russia and Georgia, it doesn’t matter if North Korea is in a dispute with the States, it doesn’t matter if the by-election this Tuesday will change Malaysia’s political history. Actually, of course all of this matters! But the main point is, even if there is upheaval in the world, during those 16 days, all these were put aside and the world came together as one. As One World, so as to compete fairly, between one sportsperson to another. This is the best example of how sports can overcome boundaries and wars. If sports can do that, why can’t we humans do that too, to overcome hatred and wars? Aren’t we in control of our own lives and world? Something to think about…

We’ve been thinking. How can we make Answers more interesting and relevant to our Malaysian users? I know that some of you are shy and maybe don’t wish to ask in-your-face kind of questions. But you probably have strong views and are willing to share your knowledge and experience with the rest of the users on current events and what’s near and dear to our hearts.

(Photo thanks to Kervinchong)

So the Yahoo! Malaysia Editors have decided to get together and we’re gonna ask you the questions! What we want is to hear your say on the hot topics in Malaysia. Share with us your knowledge, experiences and views on current events and happenings, as the questions will be linked to the current news topic. For instance, we started off with “How do you feel about Malaysia’s performance at the Olympics so far?” which was linked to the news articles on Lee Chong Wei’s Silver medal win at the Olympics. And 48 of you replied so far. Yay!

Well of course Answers is not a forum, so it should not be treated as a place for you to rant and rave. But we’re very keen to collect all the knowledge and experiences that make up a Malaysian. All questions posted will be open for 3 days, and then you, as a community, will vote for the best answer.

So answer, vote, and let Malaysians hear you!

Remember how I said that there were a few Malaysian athletes to look out for? And in Badminton, Lee Chong Wei was one of them. Chong Wei did not disappoint us! He just won the Men’s Singles Quarterfinal match against Indonesian Sony Dwi Kuncoro (who won a bronze medal in the last Olympics) 2-0. Now Malaysia will have a fighting chance of winning another medal at the Semi-Finals on Friday evening!

As for Archery, even though the team didn’t get into the semi-finals, they still did well enough to compete in the quarterfinals. Good for them! Cycling (track) will only commence this Friday, so we’ve still some hope.

All in all, it has been an exciting Olympics so far, with American Michael Phelps becoming the “greatest-ever Olympian” with a record-breaking 11 Olympic golds in Swimming in his bag so far.

What do you think of Malaysia’s performance in the Olympics thus far? I know that even though many of us are keeping a look-out on the political situation here in Malaysia (Will Anwar really succeed in toppling the government in a month as he promised? How will the Penangnites vote?), we should still put aside all this and unite together to support our Malaysian athletes at the Olympics!

(Photo thanks to geckoam)

So cute! Why don’t we have Animal Olympics?

We’ve been getting more great questions and better answers on Yahoo! Answers and this deserves a big cheer! But sometimes it’s hard to feature these brilliant Q&As as…. yup, we’re missing the avatars! It is visually unexciting to see two gray silhouettes on the main page, hence even though the question asked may be really interesting, and the answer given may be really detailed and to the point, we won’t be able to feature them.

We’ve noticed that many of the users do not upload either an avatar or picture to represent themselves, and instead, just uses the default gray silhouette. It is actually very simple and fun to create your own avatar. And you can even use the same one for the Yahoo! Messenger.

So why don’t you give it a try at Yahoo! Avatars and create THE avatar that captures your personality and spirit?

Another 4 years have passed and the Summer Olympics is here again.

(Photo thanks to carinasuyin)

8 is considered a lucky number amongst the Chinese community, so is it any wonder then that Beijing will be conducting the Opening Ceremony of the Summer Olympics 2008 at 8:08pm today, the 8th day of the 8th month of 2008? Malaysia will be showing its might to the rest of the world by sending 33 of our best athletes to compete this year. We will be competing in 9 sports categories: Archery, Athletics, Badminton, Cycling, Diving, Shooting, Swimming, Taekwondo and Weightlifting! Malaysia had done us proud over the years by winning 3 Olympic medals at badminton so far and this year promises more exciting action!

The hot Malaysian athletes to look out for:

Archery - Three-man archery team: Cheng Chu Sian, Muhammad Marbawi Sulaiman and Wan Khalmizam Abdul Aziz, currently ranked 4th best in the world.

Badminton - Men’s singles Lee Chong Wei, number 2 in the world.

Cycling - Men’s cycling quartet: Azizul Hasni Awang, Josiah Ng, Rizal Tisin and Muhd Edrus Yunus, who achieved success at this year’s Asian Cycling Championships.

So let’s wish our athletes all the best and tell them, “Selamat berjuang, Malaysia boleh!”

I’ve talked about taking naps on weekends, but have you even heard of “power naps“? According to a Dr William Anthony from the USA, who wrote a book “The Art of Napping at Work” with his wife, sleeping on the job can actually be beneficial to both you and your boss! Well, of course not sleeping for 8 hours, but a short nap of about 20 minutes will help to increase alertness and overall productivity in all of us. And this energy spike can actually last several hours.

While this sounds like good news to many of us, I’m sure our bosses would not agree. They would think that we’re just being lazy instead. How many of you actually feel sleepy after lunch? It’s really strange but my eyelids will start to drop at about 3pm everyday, like some flag lowering ceremony: Negaraku~! So if we’re not allowed to take naps at our tables, how do you deal with the sleepiness? Some of my friends drink kopi (kopi doesn’t work on me), some will take a quick jalan to the photocopy machine or toilet break, but for me, I like to keep my mouth busy… by stuffing it with food! LOL! It can be simple Tic Tacs, chocolates or sour plums. Those can really wake me up!

What about you? How do you slay the sleep monster at work or in school?

Our engineers have been working hard trying to improve Answers to make it a better experience for you. What you may have noticed is that the Ask and Answer pages have been changed to incorporate tips to help you ask and answer easier.

Now when you ask or answer a question, you will see a yellow speech bubble giving you some tips:

If there is any spelling mistake (you know, we all type too fast sometimes), you will be warned and, with help of the Spell Checker, be able to correct all mistakes:

Ignore, Change and click Done when ready. This will make your questions and answers look bright for sure!

We will also warn you if your caps lock is on.. as you know, in the Internet world, writing in capitals is often seen as shouting and regarded as bad netiquette:

These are just a few of the tips we have for you. So what are you waiting for? If you feel that you don’t need these tips, they can be easily closed by clicking on the “x” on the top right of the speech bubble.

Don’t forget to leave your comments about these tips - we love hearing from you!

Recent news hints that AirAsia X will most likely drop Japan off its list of flying routes next year due to the hassle Malaysians will face when trying to get a Japanese visa.

But to be truthful, how many of you really want to take a (approximately) 7 hours flight on a budget airline? Even though budget airlines are generally good idea, personally I don’t like to take them. Top 3 Reasons being:

1. Budget airlines are not really that “budget”.. if we add the airport tax, petrol tax, security tax etc, the taxes add up to be more than the cost of the flight ticket itself!
2. There is a limit on the amount of luggage you can carry, and food is not provided, but they’ll sell it to you at an astronomical price (You’re forbidden to bring your own. Ka-ching! $_$ ).
3. You have to fight for your own choice of seats at AirAsia AND the plane I took from Senai Airport to Kota Kinabalu Airport was so old that the toilet door banged open when the plane landed on the tarmac! What a scary landing.

The scary toilet door that banged open.

Would you take a budget airline?