fuel hike

I'm sure all of you aware of last night's big news. The increase of fuel price from RM1.95 to RM2.70. It was raining super-heavy yesterday evening, and I didn't know about it until I get to parents home. No wonder it was jammed on my way (I thought it was due to the heavy rain). When I got home, my dad was busy filling up fuel all the cars at home. And... in Papar there's only ONE gas station which is near Papar Superstore. The other one closed at 6pm (What kind of gas station closed early???).

My car previously for 10 ringgit can last for 60kms, now it's only for 40 kms.
Home to office 25kms ~travel time 40 minutes to an hour one way
Parents home to office 60kms ~travel time 1 hour to 1.5 hour one way
* I wonder if there's any shift work in kk I can change to. lana/mel said working in shift has an advantage of not having to go through heavy traffic during peak hours.

With this new fuel price, I am pretty sure there will be price hike in other things. Food, groceries, transportation, and everything else. The hawkers also will take advantage of this. Example, for breakfast, mee goreng will be rm2 from rm1.50 and fried egg from rm0.80 to rm1 - so that's rm3 just for breakfast! Okaylah, maybe for some people rm3 is nothing, but still, every small thing adds up.

I think this would be hard for the low-income group. People might now know about unemployment rate in sabah. It's a sad thing to see many graduates with degrees but without jobs. Since malaysia doesn't enforce any minimal wage, employees take this as advantage and freely give low-salary to these people. Being a clerk with RM500 pay is considered very normal in kk. You're lucky if you get your first salary above 1k. My first pay didn't even qualify me to get a credit card, so I'm pretty grateful now...

Crimes of course expected to go up (obviouslly). Pencuri also have to work over-time to overcome this price hike.

I remember the last fuel-price hike, they say they would be using the subsidy money to improve public transportation. But in KK, I don't see any difference in the public transportation. The buses still the same, they're driven by reckless and dangerous driver, stop as they like without signals, come out from junction as they like. I don't even know if the drivers even hold a legal mykad/driving license. Scarrrry... Train/Tram/Lrt are non-existant in kk (for now). Right now, they're building new railway for the KTM train from tenom-beufort-papar-kk. No, it's not the super-fancy fast train. It's the leisure old-fashion super-slow train which takes longer time than driving. I think that's why people in sabah mostly drive personal cars (4wd - to compensate the bad roads!).

Altho, eventhough it's 40% price hike, they say it's still considered one of the lowest price in the world(aside from brunei). Maybe we need to get away from this subsidy-mindset, too bad they had to do it sooo drastically rather than slowly. Hopefully the subsidy money would be diverted to something that could benefit the people (not one of those space programmes again!)...

Since it's World Enviroment Day today, I take this as a good sign to start thinking of energy conservation. On my way home everyday, I always see many maaaaany cars with 1 passenger(driver) only. Maybe it's time to consider car-pooling. Also other things like only use the needed water/electricity. Reduce-Recyle- and what else? Oh maybe we should go back to nature like plant our own vegetables (whimsy's plant looks soo nice).

Here are my frugal websites in my google reader:-
http://www.frugal101.com
StopBuyingCrap.com
Fisforfrugal
thesimpledollar