i have no idea about the esi brand. Most i've heard is the emu, which i never tried myself too. But i've heard good stuff about emu.

But if you are stuck between the esi maya and esi juli and based solely upon the argument that the maya has phantom and the juli doesnt, i would say get the maya. Phantom power comes in handy at times. A phantom power unit is fairly cheap but if it's already built in, why not? May come in handy when you decide to use condensers to record vocals or guitar. Plus the maya saves you RM50. Of course this is disregarding all other functions and also latency of both cards. So maybe you may want to ask about latency. Quite important for soundcards for recording. Lower latency is always better. And also, the Juli has both 6.3mm jacks and TRS coaxial connectors so it should ease abit on the look for adapters. And i may be wrong but 6.3mm cables can deliver balanced signals (although not sure if the sound card supports it or not but usually it does) and TRS can't.

I don't know what the midi-usb cable looks like. I have a USB keyboard-controller which is USB-USB so i don't need a midi cable. For recording it works well enough without significant delays. Unless your keyboard doesnt have a USB port.

My advice is to read up yourself about recording before rushing into buying a soundcard. Don't believe 100% what people tell you, no offense to anyone of course  .Know what you want and need and get it. It saves you quite abit of money in the long run.