For The Better For The Worse For The Cheapest..

I am sure most first time overseas travellers experienced this. The moment you want to buy something, you tend to convert the price to Malaysian Ringgit. If you are in Indonesia or Thailand, whoa... you have a good deal.. or in any other countries that the currencies are lower than Malaysian Ringgit. But when you are in USA or Britain, you tend to think twice...no, not twice but many times over before you start to depart with your money.Sometimes you ended up not buying anything at all.

But if you were to stay in these so called expensive countries and earn in their currencies, you will realise that their cost of living is much lower. Let's say you are earning RM3,000 a month in Malaysia and the equivalent US$3,000 in USA. You are buying a ' Kitchenaid' mixer. In Malaysia, you will have to fork out more than RM3,000 for it, whereas in USA you will only pay around US$300. You may say that this is an imported product, therefore it is very expensive.. but most of the mixers in our country are imported therefore they are quite expensive. Perhaps the lower range may be cheaper but still you have to pay around 10% of your salary to own it. And yet in USA , you pay 10%of your salary for a better product.

How I wish our government stop comparing prices in other countries by converting it to Malaysian Ringgit.In Singapore, the price of gas is around S$1.53/litre [6 months ago], that is around RM 3.67/litre [ 1.53 x 2.4 exchange rate] which is very expensive compared to Malaysia. But if we are earning in Singapore dollars and paying in Singapore dollars, the price of gas is still cheaper if you know what I mean. In Singapore, we are paying S$0.35/hour for parking in a shopping complex along the Orchard Road, how much do we have to pay for parking in KLCC? It definitely costs less to park in Orchard Road. So.. it does not make sense to me if our government say that the cost of living in Malaysia is cheaper compared to other countries. To me, it is only cheaper if you are earning , let's say in Singapore dollars and paying in Malaysian Ringgit.

That is why I am totally against building a new bridge linking Singapore to Malaysia since it only helps Malaysians who are earning Singapore dollars, paying Singapore taxes but lives in Malaysia for cheaper cost of living. Mind you, these Malaysians do not pay taxes to the Malaysian government and yet have the cheek to ask our government to use taxpayers money to make life much better for them. Does it make any sense to you? Well, these Malaysian can't have their cakes and eat them too. And do not say that they are helping in the Malaysian economy as an excuse.