Our neighboring country Philippines announced a 7.8% jump in Q1 2013 GDP.

All Southeast Asian countries seem to be doing quite well. The Philippines need not have to liberalise or even transform their economy to achieve consecutive large % growth because by doing so all the profits only benefitted the foreigners.

Singapore and Malaysia are underperforming.

This post has been edited by accetera: May 30 2013, 10:11 AM

Intereting things for we Malaysians:

In Philippines, it is a normal culture for youth after their college or pre-college (>21 years old) to leave home and find work in Manila or Cebu, mainly in the BPO industry (shared services and call centres). These youths have huge appetite for renting apartments - they normally do not have such thing as terrace home. Hence, rental market is very high in demand. It is also Filipino culture to pay rental ahead or sometimes 1 year of rental in advance instead of making downpayments to buy new home. Most of the new homes are bought by Filipinos working overseas as Philippines have the highest remittances economy (working abroad and transferring their earnings into home country, nowadays they buy property in Manila) in the world with about US$25 billion receipt last year beating any need for FDI or liberalising the economy.

Corruption and mismanagement are still key issues but they believe Philippines' GDP of about US$250 billion is on track to beat their nearest peers Singapore and Malaysia in terms of nominal GDP.

This post has been edited by accetera: May 30 2013, 10:40 AM

Our concept of terrace is inherited from British and non-Commonwealth countries have different concepts on landed homes.

Supply lesser? Manila easily got 2-3x more supply than us. Check out their latest project, alot of city apartments are small-szed in over 50-storey towers. http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=302340

Transformation plans? Well, in Manila, there are plans to build 10 casinos to sustain their economic growth especially in boosting real estate. Joseph Estrada, a believed to be corrupted leader, was recently elected as Mayor of Manila.

The fact that in ASEAN forums, most other ASEANers laugh at Malaysia for making a big noise about our transformation and anti-corruption plans when in fact our growth is lower than them.

Accordingly, they mentioned that it is about bringing vibrancy to the economy and matters like corruption should not be prioritised for the sake of economy. No doubt, this is a developing world mindset.

Why I believe what's happening in the region is very important for us to know.

Kuala Lumpur real estate is fighting for the same tourist profile, same foreign investors and same hoteliers and retailers across the region. Our out-of-ASEAN tourist arrival is not very high if you take out all visits from ASEAN: Singapore 14m, Indonesia 2m, Thailand 1m, Philippines and Vietnam: 1m. Almost 18 million out of 25 million are from ASEAN.

What's happening in neighboring capital cities definitely poised a competition to KL.

Bangkok - big in hospitality and retail industry, the abundance of out-of-ASEAN travellers both the budget and rich ones
Jakarta - to go all big in luxury shopping, widely known as the new Shanghai of luxury retailers
Manila - to go all big in casino, casino, casino and BPO

Kuala Lumpur - what is our niche? well, KL is trying to steal some business from Singapore, a city that is beyond our league as of now (>720 financial institutions are operating in Singapore with less than 100 in KL)

I wouldn't even want to say these cultural things because many expats that lived in Malaysia actually mentioned we are not entirely Truly Asia like what we wanted. Most times all they see is Chinese makan with Chinese, Malay makan with Malay and Indian makan with Indian. No matter how much we deny it.

Big news in our neighboring country:



This post has been edited by accetera: May 30 2013, 01:19 PM

Unfortunately I don't know that many expats that really like Malaysian food... at the most they only like one or two dishes - and most times it is the same old type of food - mostly the Penang type.

Generally, Malaysian food is considered spicy and blowjobly-mixed of tastes. I know many Middle Easterners who dislike our food because their taste buds are rather more bland and they are not into rice. Many of my Indian bosses say that North Indian cuisine in Malaysia sux to max.

For British, I know they are insanely in love with Malaysian food, but not all Europeans or Americans. Generally Thai food still tops their list.

For Chinese food - no, the Chinese food in Hong Kong beats KL down to zero. Interesting to note, Taiwan's Din Tai Fung is considered the most tasty restaurant.
For Malay food - many Americans prefer Indonesian food.
For Indian food - we don't really serve authentic Indian actually, ours is more like Mamak. For Indian, you cannot get any better Indian cuisine from India.
There is no Malaysian food or restaurant in the latest top food survey.

But c'mon, food is not a priority list for foreigners unlike we Malaysians especially me who are obsessed with food.

If our food is really that great, our food would not have to rebrand as Singaporean or Southeast Asian in overseas. As compared to Thai or Vietnamese, the general perception of Malaysian food is still low even in London or Shanghai or New York City.

This post has been edited by accetera: May 30 2013, 08:28 PM

And btw our satay, curry chicken, mee goreng, char kway teow, roast chicken rice, fried popiah, pak chang kai (nasi ayam hailam), curry mee, roti canai (or famously called pratha), chapati, murtabak, teh tarik, cannot be considered as Malaysian in overseas as too many countries are claiming them...

The real Malaysian is nasi lemak, asam laksa, rojak and rojak mee, nasi kandar, etc.

Interesting to note that when I was in Australian college residences, some of the ignorant Aussies thought Satay was from Thailand because our college served with Chicken Skewed with Thai Chilli Sauce. Satay is originally from Indonesia - same as batik, some of the joget dances, etc.

Talking about that, how can we promote our niche as Food when an expat walking around in our top shopping malls would more than ever be influenced by all the foreign food. Where is our local food? Papparich? Oldtown? Food Court? KFC? McD?

This post has been edited by accetera: May 30 2013, 08:40 PM

Singapore say bak kut teh is belong to them. Noticed how popular is bak kut teh in their food court these days.... but sad, their bak kut teh is pepper type one.

A Scottish guy asked me does Malaysia has its own local beer? He considers that as local beverage - a proud distinctive identity and heritage of an emerging nation.

Philippines - San Miguel Beer
Thailand - Chang Beer
Indonesia - Bintang Beer
Cambodia - Khmer Beer
Vietnam - Bia Hoi - world's cheapest beer
Singapore - Tiger Beer

Malaysia - Apanama Beer?


Malaysia, like its food, is actually a jack of all trade. We are a collection of all the local things of those neighboring countries. That is our advantage, because Malaysia represents abit of every part of Asia, hence we call ourselves Truly Asia - a very successful tourism slogan in the world!

This post has been edited by accetera: May 30 2013, 08:57 PM

In Dubai, most supermarket sells beer that says "NON ALCOHOLIC".

We need to brew our local beer Plus that non-alcoholic beer to satisfy the majority. We be good citizen willing to pay more tax. Settle get the licence now.

Here Perkasa say cannot sell.