Other favourite destinations are Singapore, Tokyo, Bali Island, Penang, Hong Kong, Ho Chi Minh City and Kuala Lumpur. It said closed to half of Malaysians booked their air tickets and hotel one month before departure.

Where to countdown this year?

According to Expedia, a travel company that operate several travel websites and travel metasearch engines, Malaysians love to visit Langkawi Island, Taipei and Bangkok in end of 2016, this is based on its search data captured for 26 to 31 Dec 2016.

However, Langkawi, which was ranked top last year, dropped to third place this year based on search carried out online.

Apart from the three destinations, other favourite destinations for Malaysians to spend the last few days of the year according to order are Singapore, Tokyo, Bali Island, Penang, Hong Kong, Ho Chi Minh City and Kuala Lumpur.

The 10 destinations which offer cheapest airfare are: Subang, Kuala Lumpur, Penang, Sandakan, Langkawi, Johor Bahru, Kuching, Ho Chi Minh City, Singapore and Krabi.

Expedia offered some strategies on purchasing cheap air tickets even at last minute.

One of the strategies is to purchase air tickets and hotel accommodation together, which helped to save 30 % of expenses, accommodation on Saturday help to save 57% in return air fare, domestic flights on Sunday and flights to destinations in Europe are able to save 11% and 16 % respectively.

According to survey carried out by Expedia from June to August, close of half of Malaysians only booked air tickets and hotel one month before the travelling date and 37% of them only finalised travelling plan two weeks before departure.

“Statistics of Expedia showed that Malaysians who buy air tickets seven to 13 days before departure date can have 15% cheaper in air fare. This means Malaysians are good at timing travelling period and making decision.”

Malaysians are able to save about 10% in air fare if the tickets are booked 21 to 30 days in advance.  Air tickets booked 91 days in advance are cheaper by 15% compared to summer air tickets during the same period.

However, air tickets bought three months in advance can be 12 % more expensive and air tickets bought a week before departure can save up to 14 %.

    Once officially sworn in next week, Kurz will be chancellor and his People’s Party (OeVP) will occupy the finance, economy and justice ministries, among others.

The head of the populist FPOe, Heinz-Christian Strache, will be vice-chancellor and his party has secured the interior, defence and foreign ministries.

Here are the main FPOe figures:

– The statesman –

Strache flirted with neo-Nazism in his youth but over the years has mellowed and now aged 48, besuited and with severe new glasses, portrays himself as a mature statesman rejecting extremism.

When he took over the FPOe in 2005 at 35, the party created by ex-Nazis was a mess. But gradually, with deft use of the internet, it has gone from strength to strength.

Remaining fiercely nationalist, he dubbed German Chancellor Angela Merkel in 2016 “the most dangerous woman in Europe” and says Islam “has no place in Austria”.

Nicknamed “HC”, he forged a partnership with Russia’s ruling party, wants EU sanctions on Moscow lifted, closer ties with the eastern European Visegrad group and the Austrian embassy moved to Jerusalem.

– The brains –

Herbert Kickl, 49, the FPOe’s diminutive and sharp-tongued general secretary since 2005, has long been seen as the eminence grise and the brains behind the party’s rise.

Kickl used to write speeches for Strache’s controversial predecessor Joerg Haider and has been responsible for some of the party’s borderline racist slogans like “More courage for our Vienna blood”.

He is credited with masterminding the shift to more subtle messages and winning over voters alienated by globalisation and fed up with the cosy centrist establishment that has run Austria for decades.

At the same time Kickl appears not really at home at the party’s smokey, flag-waving, beer-swilling meetings — where Strache is king — and will now turn his brainpower to the interior ministry.

– The nearly-president –

The FPOe came very close in 2016 to winning the largely ceremonial Austrian presidency when its candidate Norbert Hofer surprised many — including some in his own party — by proving a hit with voters.

In his polished campaign, based around the slogan “Unspoilt, honest, good”, the softly-spoken aircraft engineer with a disarming smile presented himself as the FPOe’s friendly and moderate face.

But behind the grin lurks a steely, true-blue ideologue — his mask slipped a bit in the final stages of the election — and his success was such that he has been touted as a possible successor to Strache.

Hofer, who walks with a cane after a paragliding accident and who takes a keen interest in disability issues, will now be infrastructure minister — and remain a potential future leader.

– ‘The female Kreisky’ –

Hofer had been rumoured to be in line for the foreign ministry but in the end Karin Kneissl, 52, a respected and multi-talented career diplomat who speaks Arabic, Hebrew and Hungarian, was tapped.

While not a member of the FPOe, Kneissl shares many of its views, talking tough on immigration and the European Union.

After the Brexit vote in 2016 she dubbed European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker “boorish” and “arrogant”.

Strache has said she could become “the female Kreisky” when it comes to “promoting Austria abroad”, referring to Bruno Kreisky, chancellor from 1970-83 and the towering figure of postwar politics.

But perhaps to soothe any worries in Brussels, particularly given the FPOe’s ambivalence about the EU and with Austria holding the EU presidency in the second half of 2018, Kurz’s right-hand-man is set to retain responsiblity for European affairs.//AFP

The 59-year-old naturalised Australian citizen of Korean descent, named in local media as Chan Han Choi, was attempting to broker illicit deals that could have generated “tens of millions of dollars” for North Korea, the Australian Federal Police (AFP) said.

Choi was involved in discussions to set up a ballistic missile production facility and the supply of missile construction plans in addition to components, software and the transfer of technical expertise from Pyongyang, police alleged.

AFP Assistant Commissioner Neil Gaughan told reporters the case was “like nothing we have ever seen on Australian soil”, alleging that the man was in contact with high-ranking North Korean officials.

“This man is a loyal agent of North Korea, believing he was acting to serve some higher patriotic purpose.”

The alleged agent’s plans did not involve other governments or officials, police said. Authorities did not reveal which individuals or entities the man was allegedly trying to trade with.

North Korea is under tough United Nations sanctions aimed at choking off revenue to Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programmes.

“This is a very important arrest, the charges laid are of the greatest nature,” Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull told reporters in Sydney.

“North Korea is a dangerous, reckless, criminal regime threatening the peace of the region. It supports itself by breaching UN sanctions.

“It is vitally important that all nations … enforce those sanctions because the more economic pressure that can be brought on North Korea, the sooner that regime will be brought to its senses.”

Choi, who has lived in Australia for three decades, allegedly used encrypted communication services to facilitate the attempted trades, which included the transfer of coal from North Korea to entities in Indonesia and Vietnam.

Choi was refused bail on Sunday after being arrested in the Sydney suburb of Eastwood on Saturday. He faces a total of six charges, with maximum penalties of up to 10 years in jail.

Police starting looking into his activities earlier this year after a tip-off from a “foreign law enforcement partner”, Gaughan said without giving further details.

Police would not rule out further charges, and were probing other attempted commodity trades involving oil and gemstones, as well as investigating Choi’s activities as far back as 2008.

This is the first time charges have been laid for breaches under Canberra’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Act and for violating UN sanctions against North Korea in Australia.

Global anxiety about North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un’s authoritarian government has steadily risen this year, with Washington calling on other UN members to cut ties with Pyongyang in order to squeeze the secretive regime.//AFP

But at Projek Nasi Lemak Box at the Esplanade, the crustaceans are paired with Malaysian’s favourite dish – nasi lemak. The cheese-baked lobster is served with fragrant rice cooked with coconut milk and dyed blue with butterfly pea flower.

It is served on a rattan tray, on a banana leaf, to go with anchovies, pickled cucumber, peanuts, egg and sambal.

Malaysian favourite: Chor showing the lobster nasi lemak at Project Nasi Lemak Box in Esplanade, Penang.

“The idea is to make eating lobsters affordable. We cut down on the marketing cost when we spread the news through Facebook,” he said yesterday, adding that the first 30 customers who order the lobster nasi lemak need only to pay RM39, instead of the usual RM69, during the promotion today.

Besides lobster, the nasi lemak can also be served with chicken, fish, prawns or squid.

Since its opening on Friday, holidaymakers have made a beeline to the stall located next to Fort Cornwallis behind the food court.

Nazian Zainal, 39, from Sepang, came for lunch with her family yesterday.

“We have never tried lobster nasi lemak before. We decided to give it a try since we are in Penang for the weekend and it turned out to be quite nice.

“My family enjoyed it, especially the pickles and sambal. We will definitely be back again here in future,” she said.

Co-founder Nigel Law said the idea was to create an enjoyable ambience of eating lobster nasi lemak in a shady park while enjoying the sea breeze.

As for “haha”, it is seen as a perfunctory response where the user is not really interested – it’s as good as telling the other party to get lost.

“I don’t find ‘haha’ offensive, but I usually won’t use it. I will try to use as many ‘ha’ as possible to show I’m genuinely laughing,” said Mr Li.

Refrain from responding with a single word

Replying using a single “En” (meaning okay) or “Orh” (meaning noted) is extremely unfriendly and indicates that you want to end the conversation. Always use “En, en” or “Orh, orh” if you want to carry on chatting with the other party.

Not all smileys are created equal Youngsters also generally avoid using the smiley emoji, which they describe as “strange” and “vague”. To truly express one’s happiness, different people have different preferences. Some prefer the shy smiley, others the wide-grin smiley.

Ms Huang Yonglin said the smiley face with a waving hand emoji is one that she swears against. “It means farewell, I won’t see you again, and our friendship will end here,” she said. “The older folks in my family like my grandparents will send it to me, to genuinely mean goodbye or good night.

“My teacher will sometimes use it too. I feel upset just looking at it. I understand they don’t know the underlying meaning to it. But I’d still feel uncomfortable receiving it in text messages.”

Ways to end a conversation tactfully

When the other party tells you he or she is going to eat or shower, it is usually a polite way of ending the conversation. Please do not ask why is he or she having a meal at 3pm. When you receive several Internet memes in quick succession, it also means the other party would like to end the conversation.

Messages such as text, emojis and Internet memes are always preferred over voice messages

Visual aids such as emojis and memes can relieve the nervousness or sense of unfamiliarity of people who are chatting virtually. It helps contextualise the meaning of the text in a more vivid way as the parties chatting cannot see one another’s expressions and body language.

Youngsters tend to avoid sending voice messages, especially with people they don’t know well. “It’s an intrusion… They can’t see the messages and got to go listen,” said Li.

    The 34-year-old sailor crossed a virtual finish line drawn between the island of Ushant off France’s northwest tip and Lizard Point in southwest England at 0145 GMT, comfortably beating the previous record set by compatriot Thomas Coville last year by six days and 10 hours.

The race time was announced by an observer from the World Sailing Speed Council but will be subject to checks of the boat’s black box and its GPS data before final confirmation.

Father-of-two Gabart becomes just the fourth title-holder for a world record of sailing the globe solo without stopping.

Since the record was first set in 2004, nearly 30 days have been shaved off.

The debut record holder was Frenchman Francis Joyon who completed the odyssey in 72 days and 22 hours.

British female sailor Ellen MacArthur took to the seas a year later, racing against the clock to break that record by just a day and a half (71 days, 14 hours).

She remained undefeated until 2016 when Coville set a new record of 49 days and three hours which many predicted would be difficult to topple.

Gabart’s 30 metre (98 foot) long new generation maxi-trimaran was helped by good weather throughout much of the voyage, particularly during the long and arduous Pacific section.

He set a number of new solo race records along the way, including the fastest navigation of the Pacific (7 days, 15 hours, 15 minutes) and the longest distance covered in 24 hours (851 miles or 1,576 kilometres).//AFP

    The quake struck at a depth of 91 kilometres (56 miles) just outside the coastal town of Cipatujah on Java island late Friday, the US Geological Survey said.

The tremor was felt across the island including in the capital Jakarta, some 300 kilometres (190 miles) from the epicentre.

A 62-year-old man in Ciamis and an 80-year-old woman in Pekalongan city were killed when the buildings they were in collapsed, national disaster mitigation agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said, while a 34-year-old woman from the city of Yogyakarta died when she fell while running out of her house.

“Several hospitals in several areas have also been damaged and patients had to be evacuated,” Nugroho said.

A hospital in Banyumas suffered damage to ceilings, cracked walls and leaks to oxygen pipelines, forcing around 70 patients to be moved to temporary shelters.

At least nine hundred houses were also damaged in addition to schools and government offices across West Java and Central Java provinces, the national disaster mitigation agency said.

Jakarta resident Web Warouw, 50, was on the 18th floor of a building in the capital when the quake struck just before midnight local time (1700 GMT).

“Suddenly, we felt dizzy… We then realised it was a quake and immediately ran downstairs,” Warouw told AFP.

Aid is being distributed and temporary tents have been set up for those who have lost their homes.

The agency was still evaluating the impact of the disaster and urged people to be cautious and stay alert.

Indonesia experiences frequent seismic and volcanic activity due to its position on the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, where tectonic plates collide.

Some 170,000 lives were lost when a 9.1-magnitude quake and tsunami struck Aceh province in December 2004, which also hit coastal areas as far away as Somalia.

An earthquake struck Aceh again in December 2016, killing more than 100 people, injuring many others and leaving tens of thousands homeless.//AFP

The quake struck at a depth of 91 kilometres (56 miles) just outside the coastal town of Cipatujah on Java island late Friday, the US Geological Survey said.

The tremor was felt across the island including in the capital Jakarta, some 300 kilometres (190 miles) from the epicentre.

A 62-year-old man in Ciamis and an 80-year-old woman in Pekalongan city were killed when the buildings they were in collapsed, national disaster mitigation agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said.

“Several hospitals in several areas have also been damaged and patients had to be evacuated,” Nugroho said.

A hospital in Banyumas suffered damaged ceilings, cracked walls and leaks to oxygen pipelines, forcing about 70 patients to be moved to temporary shelters.

At least a hundred houses were damaged across West Java and Central Java provinces, the national disaster mitigation agency said.

The agency was still evaluating the impact of the disaster and urged people to be cautious and stay alert.

Jakarta resident Web Warouw, 50, was on the 18th floor of a building in the capital when the quake struck just before midnight local time (1700 GMT).

“Suddenly, we felt dizzy… We then realised it was a quake and immediately ran downstairs,” Warouw told AFP.

Indonesia experiences frequent seismic and volcanic activity due to its position on the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, where tectonic plates collide.

Some 170,000 lives were lost when a 9.1-magnitude quake and tsunami struck Aceh in December 2004, which also hit coastal areas as far away as Somalia.

An earthquake struck the country’s western Aceh province again in December 2016, killing more than 100 people, injuring many more and leaving tens of thousands homeless.

THE US has an expectation that Thailand, as a regional Asean country, would play a “constructive role” in the stand-off between the Western giant and North Korea at a time of sky-high tensions related to the latter’s nuclear weapons tests, according to the US envoy who visited Bangkok this week.

An expert on US affairs viewed the American diplomat’s trip as a reflection of the US State Department’s agenda to raise negotiation as a possible solution to tone down the Trump White House’s emphasis on sanctions and hard power military exercises.

“I think we should exercise both direct diplomacy as well as sanctions,” Joseph Yun, the US Special Representative for North Korea Policy, said yesterday. “That’s our policy based on pressure and engagement and we do want to engage in diplomacy.”

Yun was in Bangkok for two days to discuss denuclearising North Korea with Thai second-ranked officers.US envoy Joseph Yun meets with Thai Deputy Foreign Minister Veerasak Futrakul on Thursday

Though long scheduled, the meetings happened to be held just couple of days after Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that the US is ready to talk with North Korea without preconditions.

Yun has been going to Europe, Asia and Asean countries, namely Myanmar and Singapore, to promote the campaign against North Korea. He also went to Japan ahead of his visit to Bangkok.

On Thursday, he had a 30-minute meeting with the National Security Council (NSC) secretary-general General Wanlop Rugsanoah before talks with Deputy Foreign Minister Veerasak Futrakul.

Yesterday, he also had an informal lunch meeting with the Foreign Ministry’s director-general of the American and South Pacific Affairs department. The meetings were meant to be diplomatically friendly as Yun said there was no talk on tangible measures, enforcement issues or any specific request.

This could be despite last week’s report from a US-based think tank that Thailand might have facilitated continued trading by North Korean vessels.

“Obligations that govern what countries do are the UNSC resolutions. We will leave it up to the authorities in each individual country to deal with that,” the envoy said.

“We also looked at the data. There is virtually no trade, as the Prime Minister [General Prayut Chan-o-cha] mentioned, between North Korea and Thailand.”

He was referring to Prayut’s rejection of a report on Tuesday, when he stressed that Thailand did not help any shipment and had already stopped trading with the pariah country.

Prayut had said that Thailand’s actions are in compliance with the Asean consensus to follow United Nations Security Council resolutions.

During the first nine months of 2017, trade amounted to US$1.61 million (Bt52 million), a 94-per-cent drop from the same period in 2016, and a tiny 0.0004 per cent of Thailand’s total trade. Thai companies no longer have investments in North Korea.

Yun, meanwhile, praised Thailand for “playing constructively” at international levels. Thailand was also successful in encouraging North Korea to join the Asean Regional Forum during its chairmanship, he said.

“It’s clear that Thailand, as a US treaty ally and with its long-time connection with the Korean Peninsula, is a regional leader and has a rightful role to play,” he continued. “I would welcome all kinds of help. Any constructive help is welcome.”

Viboonpong Poonprasit, lecturer on international relations at Thammasat University, said that the US would expect Thailand to merely serve as “good offices” for negotiations without expecting prominent comments from the Kingdom.

“Thailand’s current geopolitical stance is not dependent much on either the US or China. So, it will be a good place to talk,” the academic said. “It is also not a party to the Korean Peninsular tension or the South China Sea [tension]. It is a rather neutral party compared with some other Asean countries.”

It would be wise for Thailand to follow the Asean consensus and international law and not put itself much in the spotlight,” said Viboonpong.

“It’s about maintaining a balance between major powers. The Thai junta has recently seen good signs from the European Union. So it’s better not to pull any strings for the authoritarian country.”

The meeting of the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation (LMC) brought together senior diplomats from China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.

The plan will take the LMC to a new level over the coming years, said China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who chaired yesterday’s meeting with his Cambodian counterpart Prak Sokhon.

The LMC has identified 45 projects since its first summit in China’s Sanya last year and many of them have made significant progress with strong financial support from China.

The plan, the list of projects and other reports of joint working groups, will be forwarded for final adoption when leaders of the six countries meet on January 10 in Phnom Penh, said Cambodian minister Prak Sokhon.

Established in 2015, the LMC is a cooperation scheme among countries in the Mekong basin.

“The LMC is not a talk shop, but a bulldozer moving forward steadily and firmly to make the cooperation become true,” Wang Yi said after the meeting.

He said the LMC would not replace other regional and sub-regional cooperation schemes in the Mekong basin but would supplement their frameworks.

The LMC is sitting well in Asean with three pillars of cooperation – political-security; economic-sustainable development; as well as social-culture and people-to-people exchanges – to help fulfil its work, he said.

The LMC is important to help support and supplement China-Asean relations, he said.

The LMC has five key priorities – connectivity, productivity capacity, cross-border economic cooperation, water resources, agriculture and poverty reduction.

Wang said the group agreed to synergise the LMC with the development strategy of each country, China’s One Belt One Road Initiative and relevant development programmes of Asean.

In order to realise their cooperation and projects, individual members have set up secretariats. Wang said there would be a joint secretariat to run the LMC in the future.