Recession in Malaysia & China?

Signs of Malaysia being in recession seems to be more apparent now.

Apart from the retrenchment of 5 people in my office, I also read that Dell is offering VSS and will be retrenching 5% of their work force in Malaysia. A friend who works in an electronic manufacturing firm may be out of a job when the company shuts down his division in the second half of this tear.

But we're still doing fairly well comparatively.

And China is still booming despite The Star today reporting massive loss of jobs there.

And I know this because I recently received calls from headhunters regarding jobs in China. These are fairly high level jobs and they're offering expat packages with the pay range of RMB35,000 to RMB60,000.

Here I was thinking the the RMB is a large denomination currency and therefore it does not amount to much.

So I went to my favourite currency converter site, coinmill.com and checked how much is RMB60,000 in RM.

I almost fell off my chair when I found it was in access of RM30,000!

It is a lot of money for me anyway, considering the level I'm at and the exposure I've had so far.

So if China can pay an expat that much (and I have loads of friends who have moved there a few years ago with no signs of coming back), they can't be in recession, can they?

The Sassari

The quality of Crocs since they moved their production to China is very disheartening. Sure, quality of products drops when they’re manufactured in China. But the drop of quality is so significant (with the price remaining the same) that I feel so cheated. I’m paying for sub-standard products now. The first batch of Crocs molded to your feet so that when you slip into them, you almost go ‘ahhhhh’ in contentment due to the hold and support. It just cradles your feet.

Now, u slip it in and while it’s still soft, there are gaps which should not be there and it even squeaks more.

I’m a big fan of Crocs and own one Beach and 2 Mary Janes. These are my official work shoes as they are for many of my colleagues due to the amount of running we have to do sometimes within the office and out. I’ve also wanted the Sassari for the longest time. It’s their first attempt at introducing heels into their line of casual footwear. Good looking heels are never comfortable but Crocs may just have broken the unwritten fashion rule. The stores have one side of the Sassari displayed for the past 4 months at least and it’s still not hit our shores yet. Thanks to Lola who bought me a pair while in Singapore for work, I now have my 4^th pair - A pink and white Sassari.

I’m also eying the Capri. But now I’m thinking twice.

Maybe I should just forget about Crocs and remember to wear the other 50 pairs of shoes I own.