Gaining weight is so easy nowadays in Malaysia with a wide abundance of tasty and fattening foods and a more sedentary lifestyle thanks to our office jobs. As a result of this, Malaysians nowadays resort to a variety of different diets, pills and even surgery in order to lose weight and feel more confident about themselves. Although these drastic methods do very frequently work, they can come at a very high cost to your health (as well as to your wallet) and, really, we think that the natural ways work the best in losing weight sustainably, but they will require personal effort and will take time.

In theory, the strategy towards sustainable weight loss is quite simple: as long as you expend more calories than you consume and store, you should be on track to losing weight. Of course, that’s easier said than done – our evolutionary history as hunter-gatherers means that the human body has had to evolve dealing with extended periods of food deprivation by learning to store as many calories as possible in the form of fat. Read the rest of this entry »

While we’ve talked about individual efforts by Malaysian companies to promote corporate social responsibility, we don’t think we’ve done this topic enough. We’re pleased to see more companies getting involved in corporate social responsibility, including the largest and most visible corporates. Here are some of the programmes that are being done by some of Malaysia’s largest corporates, and we hope that readers can get involved in the programmes or even start a corporate social responsibility movement within your own company if it doesn’t already have one: Read the rest of this entry »

Living as we do in the tropics, we end up perspiring a lot during the days if we are exposed to the heat and sun for even short periods. So it should be no surprise that an active industry for deodorants and antiperspirants has sprung up, particularly catering to women who are afraid of having unsightly sweat marks around their underarms. In an effort to make sure that we don’t have those sweat marks, we are happy to apply liberal amounts of antiperspirants to stop the sweating, followed by some deodorants to ensure that we don’t smell unpleasant. We don’t always take the effort to think about what exactly we are putting on our bodies.

Most commercial antiperspirants contain aluminium compounds that chemically combine with the salts in your sweat to form a gel like substance that plugs up the pores in your skin and creates a physical barrier that prevents the pores from secreting any more sweat. The gel also makes the pores contract, further reducing the amount of sweat produced. Even though aluminium is used in so many places in industry and is one of the most common elements present in the Earth, there has been some research that suggests that Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve talked briefly before about using rainwater around the home but we think this point cannot be stressed enough. Note that in some water distressed countries, particularly in places like India, rainwater is actually a very valuable resource and almost all homes collect rainwater because there just isn’t enough clean piped water to go around. Although we’re lucky here in Malaysia to get more than enough piped water for our use, do note that not everyone around the world is as lucky, and we shouldn’t abuse what we have because there may come a time when there just won’t be enough clean piped water to go around.

If you’re particularly interested in using rainwater, you can always try installing a rainwater tank that’s specialized for collecting rainwater. It’s a lot more effective than simply spreading buckets all over the place whenever it rains! Of course, it’s even more effective if you live somewhere with low population density, as it means that you’ll have more space to collect rainwater, and if you collect enough of it, you may never even need to use any of the water from the tap. Read the rest of this entry »

Margarine is very commonly advertised as a healthier alternative to butter. After all, butter is mostly saturated fat and we know that too much saturated fat is very bad for the health, right? In fact, we’ve collected a few facts about margarine that might make you want to think twice about whether or not you should be eating that much margarine and also to dispel some of the myths we’ve seen thrown about the place.

٠ We got a chain e-mail that says that margarine was originally created as a cheap way to fatten turkeys for eating. However, according to this site that commonly evaluates chain e-mails and tests whether they are true or not, margarine was actually invented as a cheap substitute for butter and not used specifically to fatten turkeys. The site goes on to mention a few other facts about margarine. Read the rest of this entry »

We’re starting to see more articles now about the state of fishing around the world, with many articles decrying the depletion of fish stocks around the waters of Europe and questioning whether the endangered bluefin tuna will manage to survive the turn of the next century. We’ve already talked about what fish to eat and what to avoid from an environmental perspective, but in this article, we’d like to focus more on sustainable fishing and use the United States as a case study because some of the best sustainable fishing practices are being done in and around the US and have actually led to an increase in fish stocks rather than a decrease as found in many other regions in the world.

No sustainable fishing policy can be successful unless there is effective action from consumers, advocacy groups, and enforcement authorities as well as fish suppliers throughout the supply chain. In 2006, for example, Read the rest of this entry »

When Singapore’s Minister Mentor, Lee Kuan Yew, visited Malaysia recently we picked up information on discussions between the Minister Mentor and the Menteri Besar of Selangor, Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim, where Selangor was seeking advice from Singapore’s experience with cleaning the Singapore River so that the same could be done in Selangor. Previously, the Singapore River used to be heavily polluted as Singapore’s historical background as a international port and trading city meant that many vessels plied the waterways and rubbish inevitably got thrown into the river. Nevertheless, the Singapore government has made an impressive effort in cleaning up the river such that it is now a fashionable area for luxury property projects.

While it’s probably only government or corporate efforts that can truly regenerate a river on such a large scale, as citizens we can also make a difference in cleaning up rivers. The process of cleaning up a river is actually a very involved one which involves a lot of environmental impact studies, dredging up all the rubbish and silt deposited over years on the river bed and time before the river can once again harbour a variety of river life. Nevertheless, it’s a great effort to preserve what is really a natural heritage to be enjoyed by everyone. Read the rest of this entry »

When you’re outside mowing the lawn if you do indeed have a lawn or a garden in front of your house, the thought must have crossed your mind that this is a really annoying chore and isn’t there really a better way to do it than to have to cut the grass all the time? If it does, you’re really not in the minority and lawnmowing is sometimes one of the tasks that most people dislike doing because it seems like such a terrible chore. In fact, we were just thinking more about lawnmowing – does it make sense to have a lawnmowing schedule and are the benefits of having a lawn really going to compensate for the time, energy and petrol that you will use operating the lawnmower?

Actually, having a schedule is important to care for your garden appropriately and the amount of time that you need to wait before mowing the lawn again depends very much on the type of grass that you’ve got growing. A very quick and easy guide can be found Read the rest of this entry »