1. Use our Public Transport

With the recent hike on petrol price, it is wise to use the public transport. It’s cheaper if you’re travelling from a far place, and you’re saving the environment in the long run because you no longer emit any exhaust gas that contribute to the global warming. Think green.

Don’t worry about the 30-60 minutes wait in the bus stop. You just have to adjust to the unsettling schedule in our public transport. If you start work at 8am, just wait in the bus stop at 6am so that you won’t miss the bus. Waking up early is good for health too. Don’t go clubbing till late at night. Sleep early, wake up early, and wait in the bus stop early.

Don’t talk about other public transportation because there’s no other choices in Miri. We just have to adjust to the efficiency of the bus system here in Miri.

2. Car Pool Whenever Possible

Perhaps you don’t like to wait in the bus stop? Well, car pool whenever possible. If you have colleague that drives a Hilux, well that’s the best option. He could probably drive your whole department staff consisting of 7-10 staffs to the office. You see, if there’s 10 staff in your department, and if all 10 staff drives a car, imagine all petrol used in the 10 cars. Imagine all the gases that the exhaust emits from that 10 cars. Again, think green. Save the petrol. Everyone in your department should car pool. You can always exchange the driver of the day. Perhaps every Monday is Driver A, and every Tuesday is Driver B, so on and so forth.

3. Use Motorcycle

Motorcycle is definitely more fuel efficient than cars. You could probably save a lot here. If you have a family of 5, don’t worry, a normal motorcycle can carry that many people. You see, not only you can car pool, you can motorcycle pool too.

(Found this picture here)

4. Get a Bicycle

This is the best option out of the three I mention above. Bicycle doesn’t require any petrol, and you are exercising at the same time. It’s healthy, and it’s environment friendly too. I know normal office worker don’t exercise much, so think of cycling to work is a form of exercise to keep you healthy. You’re killing two birds at once, not too bad right?

5. Save your Electricity Usage

Turn on the lights only when you need them. Don’t turn on your PC 24/7 downloading illegal stuff. When you got home after work, go to sleep. Don’t eat, don’t turn on the lights. You’re saving electricity there, and a meal there. Think about how much you can save by skipping a meal and not turning on the lights.

Don’t use the fan or air-cond. Just fan yourself. Think of it as a form of exercise for your arm. Whenever you want to go to sleep, fanning yourself is definitely not an option. So, rather than turning your fan or aircond for the whole night, set timer to it so that it turns off after 30 minutes or an hour. You’re saving 7 hours of electricity by doing so, assuming you sleep 8 hours a day.

6. Save your Water Usage

I know, 70% of our planet is covered with water, but why should we save our water usage? Saving on water definitely can save your utility bills. Saving your utility bills can reduce the impact of rising living cost.

You can start saving your water usage by taking bath once a day. Do you know that the water used every time you shower or take a bath is around 40-100 litres? That’s like 1-2 months of drinking supply! Think about the savings that can be made.

Also, try not to flush the toilet after you have done with your business. Either big or small. Leave it there until the end of the day, then you flush it. Every flush is like 7-10 litres of waters. Just imagine how much water you have wasted if you got to the toilet 4-5 a day.

You also can try not to wash your cloths daily. You can re-wear your cloths after spraying it with fragrant spray and then hanging it under the hot sun to kill of bacterias. You’re saving both electricity and water when you don’t wash your office shirt, because you don’t have to iron your shirt. Everyone knows your shirt will wrinkle when you wash them.

You can wear your underwear at least 4 times before you wash it. Use them normally, then turn it around, then reverse it and you can use twice again. I got this from watching Ah Wong, a HK drama.

7. Save your Gas Usage

If possible, cook under the hot sun. We should be glad that Malaysia is a country where we can see hot sun almost everyday. Get a magnifying glass to get concentrated heat to your food. Cooking your food this way may be slow, but just think of it as a test of patience.

8. Don’t Eat Out, Eat In

What I meant by eating in is eating in your house. Don’t eat in those fancy restaurants or coffeeshops. Go to market to buy veges and meats and cook on your own. You can save a lot than eating out, and it’s healthier this way. You don’t know how much MSG they put in their food.

9. Plant your own Vegetables

This is another option to save the car petrol every time you drive to the market to get your foods. Planting your own vegetables can save a lot of money, all you need is your time to take care of the vegetable. For those living in an apartment, you can use hydroponic to plant your veges.

Well, if you think you don’t have the time to plant the veges, you could probably learn how to cook grass properly. You can get grass anywhere, and it’s free of charge. Grass is healthy, I mean, how do cows get so strong? They’re full time grass eater

10. Don’t Eat Rice

With a hike of RM20 per 10kgs, one have to eat less rice. Or better yet, don’t eat rice at all.

Eating too much rice isn’t healthy. If you’re an office worker, and what you do mostly is sit in front of the computer, typing documents or spreadsheets, or spreading office rumours and gossips, then I must say that rice isn’t necessary for you. Rice is full of carbohydrate and you don’t burn that much energy by typing and gossiping. Besides, all those unused carbohydrate converts into fats if you don’t utilized them. Instead of risking yourself getting obese by eating rice, don’t eat them.

BONUS! 2 Ways the Ministers HAVE to do to Change Their Lifestyle

1. Don’t Use Private Jets to Travel

I remembered reading it somewhere where our PM and his deputy spend hundred thousands of ringgit just to pay for the fuel of their private jet. If they’re traveling domestically, they should use Air Asia, and save the fuel cost. If they’re traveling to other places they can use MAS. Why waste the taxpayers money on private jets?

2. Don’t use your Luxury Car.

I happen to notice that our ministers uses luxury cars like Mercedes. Do you know that those luxury cars drink car petrol like us drinking water? Instead of the ministers asking us to change our lifestyle, why don’t THEY too change their lifestyle. They should be driving Kancil instead of Mercedes because Kancil doesn’t have high fuel consumption, and it’s our National Car! We should be proud of our national car right? If you think the Kancil is too low class, perhaps they can drive a Perdana. It’s a luxury car after all

That’s all for today folks. Let’s start changing our lifestyle

Some say the move is a must because the people can’t be subsidised and the government will end up subsidising more in the future. Some say we should use less car, and use the public transport instead. Some say car is just luxury. Some say the move is to cover up the rising cost of petrol. Oh not forgetting, the Prime Minister says that we have to change our lifestyle to cope up with the rising cost of petrol.

Well, this is what I say. Fuck That.

I personally think that this move is simply stupid, and I can predict that prices for goods will inflate at a high rate in the next few months. Oh wait, I guarantee that it will happen. Costs and prices are on the rise, and with the sudden hike of fuel, I am sure it’ll speed things up.

In the end, who suffer? Small businesses like hawkers or coffee shop operators. These people are already having a hard time trying to keep ends meets with the rising costs of other stuff, while trying to run their business, and to pay wages to their workers. A sudden hike in petrol cost will definitely kill small businesses like this. Business operators have to increase the wages of their workers because workers demands it due to petrol price hike. And to cover the cost of increment, business operators have no choice but to increase their sales price. It all happens in a vicious cycle, and I can say petrol can be the root of it because almost everything relies on it.

Let’s take an example. A manufacturer produces goods. Due to increase in petrol price, they have no choice but to increase their transportation charges to keep their profit margin at par. Now the goods is in the wholesale retailers hand, those retailers have no choice but to sell at the a higher price due to the higher transportation charges when they buy it from the manufacturer. Next, when a business operator, say, a coffee shop owner buys his goods from this retailer, he have to pay more because the retailer increased the selling price of the goods. The coffee shop owner uses his own car to get the goods from the retail store to his shop. And due to rising price of petrol and also more expensive goods, he increase the price of his drinks and foods in his shop. In the end, the one who absorbed rising costs is the consumer themselves. That is you and me.

As usual, the government say, “Change our lifestyle to cope up with the petrol hike”. Oh, and their famous “Our petrol price is still lower compared to other countries”. Usual bullshits, and I bet they’re going to say the same shit when they decide to lift the subsidy somewhere near the future. So, let’s see. If more people are changing their lifestyle, then most of them would be eating at home, right? Then, the coffee shop owner would have lose his business. He have no choice but to fry sotong his worker. Business slows down for the retailers and manufacturers. With no one buying your stuff, how do you expect the economy of a country to grow? This is just a really simple example, but it will happen.

A lot say the hike is inevitable. I do agree with this, and yes indeed, the government cannot keep subsidizing our petrol. But hey, all these 78 cents increase happens in less than a week. It started with they’re going to hold a meeting and discuss about the petrol subsidy. Then they say they will ban foreigners from buying our petrol. And just 2 days ago around 5pm, they announced an increase of 78 cents, starting 12am on that same day. That’s like less than 7 hours notice. Everything happened too fast.

So, let’s get back to the subsidy. Now that they’ve ease themselves with the 78 cents per litre of petrol, and they’ve expected to save 30 billion or so because of their action. Let’s see, what are they gonna do with the 50 billion? Send another idiotic space flight participant to space? Build the second eye of Malaysia? Put in more developement to KL? Build another twin tower, oh wait, perhaps a triplet tower? Hey, look at Sarawak lah please. What kind of developement we have here in Sarawak? And Sarawak has the lowest paid employee in Malaysia. Wow, me, as a Sarawakian should be proud of this. And all we get is 1 cent cheaper petrol than West Malaysia.

Enough my rant. I actually have more to write, but I’m very sleepy at the moment. Well, I’ll continue a part two if I feel like it