Let's Learn a lil' Accounting Equation

1. Capital: Boss, Owner or Proprietor. Owner is the person who brings money to the company or firm.
2. Assets: Land and Building (e.g house, land, factory, shop, office) - Fixed Asset, Freehold Premises, Furniture & Fitting (e.g motor car, motor van, tractor, lorry etc), Equipment (e.g fax machine, water dispenser, microwave etc), Computer (e.g scanner, pendrive, UBS accounting Software), Stationery (e.g ink, pen, paper etc), Plant and machinery (e.g Carriage, transport fee for new machine, installation cost for new machine), Investment (Share), Stock (Unsold goods, unused goods), Debtors (Customer who owe money or sold goods on credit to customer) - Current Asset, Prepaid (Pay in advance), Bank (fixed deposit account, current account for company, saving account for individual), Cash (Money)
3. Liabilities (owed): Creditors (Bought goods on credit from supplier) - Current Liabilities, Loan (borrow money from bank or other company) - Long term liabilities, Bank Overdraft (only for current account), Mortgage (owe money with high interest), Unpaid (Owing, outstanding, accrued, arrear).

Accounting terms:-

• Fixed deposit: Money put in bank, Give people deposit before taking the product (e.g car, house)
• Bill receivable: Agreement, sold good on credit
• Expenses: Telephone bill, electric bill, water bill, salary etc
• Prepaid expenses: People still owe you money because you pay more for the item
• Revenue: Income
• Unpaid revenue: People owe you money.
• Debtors: Customer
• Creditors: Supplier

Tenant Renting Guide

I use to rent a place with a few friends while studying at KL back then, it wasn't easy looking for a house when budget is tight. I can recall a few times when we got cheated by fraud landlord. The first time was when we place a booking on an apartment, only ending up not getting back our money and not having a place to stay because the landlord apparently suddenly vanish after we pay the deposit. And the second time we got cheated not by the landlord but by the head tenant (the person who collect money from us and give it to the landlord), when we decided to move out, she refuse to return our utility deposit money and claim that we were the one who cheated on her (that's another story).

Although people may say that it's good that we can rent a place to stay (instead of staying with our parents or relatives), atleast we're more independent and allow us to grow up and be in control of our own life. But it's not fun renting a place that is not your own, you can face problem like cheated by landlord, agent or housemates, sometime get evicted without prior notice. I can certainly says that looking for a place to stay is not the easiest thing to do and especiallly looking for a good landlord who won't cheat you of your hard earn money. Renting a place to stay means paying deposit, monthly rent and water & electricity bill.

Here are a few tips for tenants:

1. Determine your requirements: Budget, Location, Type of Property, Property Size, Duration of Tenancy, Furnish or unfurnished.
2. Budget: The standard procedure for renting a house or apartment as required by the landlord is 1 month deposit + 1 month rent + Utility Deposit or 2 months deposit + 1 month rent + utility deposit. So you need to make sure that you can afford to pay your monthly rent on time.
3. Location: (A) Proximity and access to work place. (B) Access to schools (C) Nearby sundry shop, leisure, religious facilities, parks. (D) Safety
4. Types of Property: Landed and non-landed property. Landed means house that are detached, semi-detached, and link-house. Non-landed include condominium, apartment and flats. Rooms are also available to let in a private homes.
5. Property size: Make a checklist of your requirement e.g number of rooms, bathroom, kitchen size, land area, built up area.
6. Duration of tenancy: The normal tenancy term is 1year. You can negotiate with your landlord for a term which suits your requirements. If you want to move out, usually you are required to give 1-2months notice to the landlord (as written in the agreement), so that he/she may be able to find a replacement soon.
7. Furnished or Unfurnished: If you're a student or working adult, it is usually preferable to rent a house with utilities such as fridge, gas stove, microwave, kitchen cabinet, TV, sofas available. So that you don't have to buy it yourself since you're only going to stay there for a couple of years.
8. Arrange for viewing: You can find places to rent on the classified section of your daily newspaper, the Internet (www.mudah.com.my), poster or notice on the notice board of the apartment you want to rent. During viewing, note down the property details and your evaluation of the property, this will help you compare the properties. Take your time during viewing, don't hesitate to open windows, water taps, lights and fan, just to make sure that everything is in order.
9. Make an offer: A landlord asking price is usually higher than the price they will actually settle for and usually negotiable. Rentals on similar properties allows you to know the market rent should be. If there are a lot of other people asking about the house, then negotiating might not be easy. Landlord may either accept, reject or counter-offer, and neogtiations will continue until a rent is agreed.
10. The rental agreement: Upon signing of agreement, you will be expected to pay 1month deposit + 1month rent + utility deposit. Rental agreement will have the landlord and tenants particulars, address of the property, the agreed rent, the term and commencement date, as well as the tenant's and landlord's terms and conditions. The tenancy agreement also include the inventory of the items in the property, before signing the agreement, make sure everything is in ordered to avoid any dispute at the end of the tenancy. You may also take pictures when you move in to avoid any dispute as to whether any defects were already present when you moved in.
11. Leaving the property at the end of the tenancy: If your tenancy is coming to an end and you do not wish to renew, you need to check your rental agreement to make sure whether you need to give notice to the landlord that you wanted to terminate the tenancy. Before leaving, go through the inventory to ensure you are leaving the property as you got it at the start of the tenancy, otherwise the landlord may be entitled to keep part or all of your deposit. Make sure you pay your outstanding bill because if you fail to do so, the landlord may not return your utilities deposit.

House For Rent at Menggatal. Interested anybody???

My sister house will be available to rent on December 2008 onwards. The current tenant has bought a new apartment at Country Height, and they'll be moving out on end on November due to the agreement that stated that they need to stay at least 1 year.

The neighborhood is very pleasant, and the people in the neighborhood are very friendly. The house itself is very well maintained. There's a small garden at backyard where you can plant vegetable or fruit tree. The front yard is big enough to park a car, and you can also keep a guard dog in front.

The house have 3 rooms: 1 master bedroom (with toilet attached + water heater), 1 small room, 1 medium room with bay window. It has 2 toilet, one attached with the master bedroom and the other one outside. The living room is spacious (with sofa and coffee table) , also have a dining room (with dining table and chairs), the kitchen got fridge, gas stove and cabinet. All the windows are covered with natural color curtain. There are light and fan on each room. The living room and dining room have light and fan attached on the ceiling. You can also installed Astro disc (already got a stand for it).

Location is very strategic, nearby a church (Good Shepard Catholic Church and Basel Church-BCCM), secondary-primary-kindergarten school (Good Shepard), Menggatal town (entertainment outlet (e.g snooker), cyber cafe, food stalls, 7-11 store, sundry shop, cold storage, 4D outlet, computer shop, hair saloon, handphone shop etc etc etc), bus terminal (to KK, Telipok, Inanam), wet market (fish, meat, vegetable). At the Menggatal town, there's a tamu (flea market) on every Wednesday, you can buy fruits, vegetable, plant, fish, 2nd hand clothes etc etc etc and the price so cheap.

To summarise it all, the area is very convenient if you work in Inanam, Menggatal, 1Borneo, UMS, UiTM, Putrajaya, Politeknik, Telipok. It has less traffic jam, maybe only takes you 10-15min to get to your destination. If you want to book, you are required to give 1 month deposit (or RM850). And upon signing of agreement, you are required to give 1 month deposit (or RM850) + 1 month rent (or RM850) + utility deposit (RM200). Utility deposit purpose is for just incase anything is broken in the house or overdue water or electricity bill which will be deducted from there.

Who doesn't HATE traffic jam?

Eventhough they say the KL traffic jam is the worst in Malaysia, I feel that KK also has it own share of traffic jam. I use to hear that people in the West Malaysia was surprise to know that even KK have traffic jam. Well, the truth is "YES we do have traffic jam here and it is as bad". I know this, because I stay in Putatan and my office is in Likas, what usually took a mere 20minutes to arrive to my office during a good day, can take as long as 1 hour to reach the office and it's equally bad when going back from work. I can conclude that traffic jam in my area are due to the factors below:

1. Bad road structure/condition (Potholes everywhere).
2. Its raining all the time.
3. More and more people have car (one family can have minimum 2-3 cars).
4. Never ending construction which cause people to slow down each time they drive by a road construction (or reconstruction).
5. There's an accident ahead (minor or major = equally bad).
6. Cars jump queue.
7. Police traffic (They are there sometime for no apparent reason and this include even when the traffic light is working perfectly - very mind bogling indeed)
8. Car brokedown in the middle of the road.
9. Idiot on the road. Drivers who think driving with 60km/hour speed allowed them to drive in the fast lane. Bad driving ethics.
10. Traffic light not working (and no police traffic)

Wassup 1Borneo on Sunday?

Sunday I went to 1Borneo for a movie. The new movie called Max Payne, my friend recommended to watch this movie, although I don't know what is it about. My fiance being an avid gamer, told me that it's base on a PC game, about a guy cop whose family got murdered and went on a rampage killing to avenge their death. I like the fact that it's Mark Walberg who played the main actor here, despite his good looks, he's also a fairly good actor :-) (i think so).

Anyway, 1Borneo cinema is really nice, firstly because it's still new and I think they've like 8 screens in side. What I like most about it is that it has a retractable arm and cup holder (suitable for couple ;p), not to mention the wide leg room for people to have easy access (to go out or to the toilet) at any point of time ( I hate it when I came in late and I bump into people head or knee or leg or whatever). If you want comfort, this is definitely the place to be.

1Borneo always have surprises each week for their shoppers, and last week is the "Car Show" and the "Sabah International Expo" which consist of local and international exhibitor. Among the international exhibitor are from Nigeria, Taiwan, Netherland, India, Singapore, UK, Philippines, Spain, Poland, Japan, Indonesia, Germany, South Korea, Brunei, Australia, Canada and Slovakia. The local exhibitor are from Sabah itself and some from the west.

One of the attraction in SIE is the property component for property developers, real estate companies, building materials and home furnishing. This event called PropEx08 (for property exhibitor) coordinated by the Sabah Housing & Real Estate Developers Association. The exhibition is suitable for people (like me) who wants to buy a house or for rich people who wants to invest in real estate. The property not only covered places in Sabah, but also those in Peninsular. Some of the house which are low cost and medium cost sold like hot cake, on the last day of the exhibition, housing cost around RM100k are mostly if not all are sold out. I find it interesting however that some developer want to sell their houses for RM998k each, which I find the price ridiculously high considering the location is almost 40-50minute from the city.

I manage to catch a few photo of the event.

The car show at the center ground floor of 1Borneo. Consisting of both local and international cars such as Lotus, Ferrari, Mitsuoka.

The elegant Mitsuoka, their car show has just been launched at their show room at Iramanis.

Yummy delicacies! Guess what are these? They are actually chocolate-covered-grapes, very creative indeed, but the taste is so-so. Some fruits are better eaten naturally.

And these are the "Borneo Cocoa Valley" people whose "creative" idea in coating the grapes and apples with melting chocolate and sold it for RM1 each. And we (not in the photo) are the "gullible" people who bought it simply cos I want to support our local people ("Borneo") and only to find out that the people who are promoting or selling it is "not so local" after all (what a disappointment indeed).