Raffles to invest RM200m in Iskandar

I recently met with some representatives from Raffles school and learned that the education group is building a new campus in Iskandar.

It's a pretty exciting news, so I Googled and found this past news article related to the topic to share with you all:

Singapore-based Education Corp Ltd (REC), which aims to set up a multi-institutional education campus at Iskandar Malaysia by 2011, hopes to invest about RM200mil in the proposed venture over the next five years as part of its move to fortify its education business in the region. Click here to read more.

Model Jets Hobby Group

While riding, Ian found a group of people flying their model jets. This group gets together in the weekend. They used to fly the model jets in Singapore but since the aircraft hangar has been closed, they now frequent the hangar nearby East Ledang.

Some planes are quite costly, one of the model is estimated to cost around SGD8K.

Here are some pictures we took:


Picture of the hangar:

Masteel, KUB propose rail transit in Iskandar

MALAYSIA Steel Works (KL) Bhd (Masteel) (5098) and KUB Malaysia Bhd have proposed to develop and operate a RM1.23 billion-intercity rail transit system project in Iskandar Malaysia, Johor.

Masteel, KUB propose rail transit in Iskandar

M’sia-S’pore deal leads to property openings

M’sia-S’pore deal leads to property openings

Home Internet in Johor East Ledang

I've been asked this question by quite a no of people, so I thought it's worth writing about.

The home internet we are using is broadband internet by Unifi. We subscribed to the VIP50 plan which costs 149RM/month and includes:
- 60GB download/month (though not monitored and imposed currently)
- download/upload up to 5Mbps
- a home line (free calls to other TM fixed lines)
- basic TV channels (which includes Channelnewsasia)

To subscribe, you will need to call their hotline and schedule for an appointment. This can be quite troublesome as their technicians are quite busy so the open slots are quite limited and you may have to wait for a couple of weeks. My advice is to call as soon as you can to book for the appointment.

The connection runs on optic fibre backbone and is very fast, much faster than Starhub in Singapore. There were a couple of incidents of internet connection not being available for about an hour (apart those caused by occasional power outages). Other than that, I've not had any other problems and am happy with the speed we're getting. We use internet for Skype calls, download files and watching Youtube is not such a hassle now :)

Here's more information on Unifi's website:
http://www.unifi.my/unifi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=58&Itemid=58

Update (20 Feb 2011):

We've been having continuous problems with our home internet this whole week. We found out that the TM modem keeps resetting itself, therefore dropping connections at certain intervals in the day. My husband found this issue reported in this forum. We're looking at buying our own modem which should fix this annoying issue.

Let's look at the trends for searches for "East Ledang", "Nusajaya" and "Iskandar Johor" in Google

Google Insight for Search for "East Ledang" all time:



These graphs represent the interest of Google.com users on terms East Ledang, Nusajaya & Iskandar Johor. Both graphs show that there have been an increasing trends for these. The increases are usually triggered by PR pubicities period such as news coverage. For example, this news article http://business.asiaone.com/Business/My%2BMoney/Property/Story/A1Story20100112-191271.html raised awareness of Nusajaya development and triggered more people to search for Nusajaya and Iskandar Johor on Google.

This tool is great to quickly research and compare trends. Check it out!

Food - Chapter II

Restaurant Ah Koong

This place is a fishball paradise for fishball lovers like me. You can choose from fishball in soup, fishball noodle, slice fish, fried fish cake, fish fish fish and more fish dishes.

Here's a picture of their menu:


Here's a rundown of what we tried:

Laksa, fried fish cake and mix fish ball kway teow soup:


You can find the list of branches in their website: http://www.ahkoong.com/contact.asp

Overall: I really like the fishball kwayteow soup which includes cooked oyster, fish maw, fishball & more. The laksa didn't do it for me though. The portion is quite big and is very filling. I cannot remember the total cost of the meal, but it's definitely very reasonable and worth going back for.



Hawker Centre at Johor Jaya

Unfortunately, I cannot remember where this place is exactly located. It's not too far from Tebrau City. I think it is located near to Jalan Dedap, Johor Bahru, 81100, Taman Johor Jaya, which is around 30 minutes drive from East Ledang.

There's an area with night hawker market which is like Singapore's Lau Pa Sat in the evening.



I ordered otah(otak-otak), claypot rice and shared my friend's Zhu Jiao Chu (pork leg stewed in vinegar).

Overall: I like the otah best (though Indonesian otak-otak is still the best :), followed by the pork leg stew which has interesting nice taste. The meal is super cheap. There are so many stalls to choose from, so it's definitely worth going back.



Night market at Gelang Patah

We stumled across this night market which I think is on every Tuesday night. This place is located just 10 minutes from East Ledang.

There are lots of stalls ranging from clothing, variety of food, drinks, toys, fish market, dried fish products to bags. I found this site which has plotted the coordinates of this location (I'm not 100% sure though): http://wikimapia.org/12788246/Gelang-Patah-Night-market

Some pictures I took:



Overall: This place is so close to our place, so I love it :). We walked around for about 15-20 minutes and tried quite a few type of food and this is my favourite (reminds me of my hometown food):


Price is super cheap - each meal ranging from 2 to 4 Ringgit generally. We'll definitely be going back again.

Anyone interested in adopting puppies?

Puppies living near workers' hut in Phase II: