I have recently found out that in order to register a new born child with our National Registration Department (JPN), a number of documents need to be submitted, including a marriage certificate. I was told, on authority, that without a marriage cert, it may not be possible for the father to have his name listed as the father of the child. I was also told that this policy is something recent and things were not like this in the past.

Mater semper certa; pater est quem nuptiae demonstrant.
Mother is always certain; the father is whom the marriage shows

To me, that just does not quite make sense. It may have been true in the past, when proof of biological parentage was difficult to obtain. However, DNA tests have changed all that. It is fairly simple to prove that someone is a biological father of a child. Therefore, it does not make sense to me, that such a policy is now in place when it was not in the past.

So, the fact that a man is the biological father of a child is less important than he being married to the mother of the child. It does not matter if the child is carrying your genes or otherwise, as long as you are legally bound to the mother. If any sort of statistics are to be trusted, many men are not biological fathers of their own children anyway.

If our government denies the biological father the right to list himself down as the legal father of the child on the birth cert, is our government denying him some form of fundamental right? I’m too naive on issues of human rights and such. Therefore, I don’t really know so much about these things. But somehow, I just think that something does not smell quite right.

I can imagine one very sad scenario, where a new born child of a single mother who died at childbirth is considered an orphan because the father was not married to the mother. It doesn’t matter if the father was present and loves him very much. But because the father failed to get himself legally married, the child is now considered an orphan. This just sounds a bit screwy to me.

Anyway, I was just ranting off. I have a feeling that this is a bubble waiting to burst. As far as I understand it, there are many people who are not ‘legally’ married in Malaysia. Of course, everyone should get their marriages registered. However, this does not stop them from happily procreating. There may be some problems, particularly if the mother was a foreigner, with citizenship issues.

And if this is not something that is written in Law, and turns out to be the workings of some little Napolean in the government, then it is even worse. If JPN wants to insist on some sort of proof of being the father, I suggest that they insist on giving everyone a DNA check. Unfortunately, that opens up a whole other can of worms.

Someone asked me the other day, why it seemed like I was blogging less, particularly about politics. It has entirely got to do with the fact that I am back home. Part of it is because I have to be careful about what I say, while the rest of it has to do with the sandiwara saturation that I am experiencing back home. After being saturated with all the antics on both sides of the political fence, I just feel like saying: “I give up!”

Seriously.

Just look at the way that things are going. Not a day goes by without political news making the front page. Not a week goes by without some new scandal getting uncovered. Hardly any month goes by without another bye-election. You know what? I am sick of it all. When the hell are the political parties going to get down to the actual work of governance.

Reading my blog post here on the day of GE12, I am reminded by the fact that none of the promises have been delivered. It has been more than a year since then and the opposition has proven itself to be no better a mess than the present government. I still do not understand why they are such retards. They can just ignore everything jibe that the government throws at them and just get down to doing the actual work.

Where are my local council elections? When some local assemblymen in Perak wanted to trial some sort of village leader elections and got shut down by the MB. I just don’t understand the logic behind it. At the very least, they can try to run some basic trials, to identify potential problems and to get things moving in the right direction. But no, they decided to continue ‘awarding’ leadership positions like the BN.

Where is my shadow cabinet? Our opposition leader has promised, time and again, that they are going to come up with a shadow cabinet. At first, after the GE and then after Najib announces his new cabinet. Dear sir, it has been ages since then and I have yet to even smell the slightest hint of a shadow cabinet. Regardless of what the DPM has to say about it, a shadow cabinet is a good thing to have. Get your act together old man!

Where are my concrete proposals? In this respect, we require a functioning shadow cabinet to be able to push things through. At the moment, efforts are scattered and things are not moving anywhere beyond bitching and calling names. I don’t really see many people doing anything besides maybe one or two politicians in the Klang Valley. The rest of your losers should just go ahead and resign from your post as MPs and force a new General Election!

You know what, just writing up to here has already saturated my stress meter. I just feel like kicking some of our politicians ass and cekik their necks. However, I’m just a little nobody and whatever I think doesn’t really matter. This is my own little personal rant space after all. Piss off.

This is real news man. I read it on M’kini but it has been picked up by all the international press, since it’s an AFP story. Proton is going to produce electric cars for Europe! From the news, it seems like a done deal and will materialise soon enough.

My first thoughts were – WTF??!! (1) We do not have the necessary technical expertise in the design of electric cars; and (2) We are finally going to do something right! Both these seem a little contradictory at first, yar.

Lack of technical expertise is not so much of a problem. At first I thought that we were merely going to be manufacturing someone else’s cars. However, according to the M’kini article, the electric cars will be based off the Gen2 and Persona models. This probably means that we are buying the tech from somewhere, unless someone had successfully hidden a Proton skunk-works programme. This means that we are spending money again, on technology transfer. Personally, I have nothing against spending money on tech transfer as long as we copy-smart and not copy-dumb. So, that solves the problem.

I think that Proton is finally doing something interesting and sexy. Electric cars are the way of the future. It is good that Proton is trying to get into the game while things are still relatively young. However, I do question the idea of Proton going it alone. We have wasted money designing the E01 engine and I hope that we do not end up wasting more money designing electric cars that nobody buys. However, Proton seems to be targeting the low-cost electric car market. This if a good idea. Let the otherse like Tesla mop up the designer car market.

Personally, I hope that Proton goes all electric and does not even step into the realm of hybrids. There are too many major players in the hybrid vehicle market now. If Proton decides to make electric cars, it will be one of the first movers in this market. It could very well establish itself as a brand for cheap, reliable, electric cars.

But then again, this is Proton that we are talking about. I sure hope that the government does not politicise it to death.

PS: All hail the new Proton Kilat! :p

Like I said before, I’ve been busy ‘spring cleaning’ my house these last couple of week – tossing out 30 years of junk is not an easy undertaking. As a result, I have come across a lot of old memories and treasures from the past. Surprisingly, I found a copy of my undergraduate scholarship offer letter in my pile of junk last week. That brought back a lot of memories.

Those were trying times – an emotional roller-coaster. I can still remember receiving the phone call during my SPM examinations, to double check my choice of course and destination country. It was on the day of my Biology II paper. That got me all excited for days, about the prospect of going overseas for my degree. Shortly after that, came the letter that brought me crashing back down to earth.

It was 1997 and our currency had just been devalued by half in the short span of weeks. Funds were running dry and budgets were cut. Due to this, our government had decided to cut the number of scholars flying off. Thousands of students from all sorts of agencies were affected. I received a letter right after my SPM examinations. It was short and terse. In it, it said that in-line with government policy, the scholarship programme was being cut, and I, with it.

Now, that sucked. To a 17 year-old, it seemed like the end of my hopes and dreams.

After that, I received a scholarship offer to pursue my degree at a local private university instead. So, things didn’t look so bad after all. I would still be able to get a degree and I was quite excited by the prospect of joining a new university. I’ve always liked being a pioneer and I looked forward to all kinds of new experiences at this young university. In the end, I got to do a lot of cool stuff, more than I would have had the opportunity to at any old foreign university!

Then, the SPM results were announced. I could still remember the look that I got from teachers as I walked into the school to get my results. They already knew what I was about to find out. I did not do as well as all of them had hoped. It was not just me. Turned out that my entire batch did not do as well as the school had hoped. There was only one person with an A1 in BM that year, which was an anomaly, and it wasn’t me.

For me, while it was a sad occasion to have let down the entire school, I did not think too much about it. It was soon time to pack and get ready anyway. I already had a spot offered to me at a university, where I joined hundreds of other stranded government scholars. Orientation week there was thoroughly depressing like an AA meeting. We would all introduce ourselves in the following pattern:

“Hi, my name is [name]. I am supposed to be in [country] doing [course]. Instead, I am here now.”

Life likes to throw a wrench in the works sometimes. We went on to have some of the best years of our lives. I think that having the shared experience of being hapless victims of the financial crisis really helped us to bond. For me at least, I found the entire 5 years spent, a meaningful journey. It taught me a lot about how to take what life throws at me and not to ask too many questions about it.

Although there has been several more wrenches thrown into several more works since then, I think that my life has generally been a smooth one, so far. I’ve had to fight a few battles, but nothing yet that I could not handle. I’m looking forward to living my life to its fullest.

I don’t think that anyone really knows what is happening in Perak. Personally, I don’t even want to know. I just hope that the Sultan/Regent will make the right decision and leave such decisions to the people. Although I have been down for the last few days, I have been following events as best I could.

However, I would like to quote our opposition leader, Anwar Ibrahim:

BN is trying to form the state government by hook or by crook – more by crook.

He says the funniest things sometimes. I assume that he is saying this in respect to the froggie state reps who have jumped ship to the BN. Funny thing is that he croons a totally different tune when someone decides to defect over from BN to the PR side. I guess that it is just another day at the office for these politicians. Just remind me never to turn into one.

In a recent blog entry on Education Malaysia, Ong Kian Ming mentioned setting up a neighbourhood network (NN) so that kids would be able to play multi-player computer games at home and they would not need to hike off to the seedy cyber-cafes (CC) for their regular fix of group fun. However, it dawned on me that this NN is an excellent idea.

Disclaimer
The kind of network that I am describing can be seen as a form of wireless mesh network. Incidentally, the OMRP, which is an open hardware/software platform for implementing wireless mesh networks, uses my aeMB processor at its core. However, none of what I have to say, is processor dependent.

Installation
It is extremely easy to set up a NN today. Gone were the days when cables had to be lain from point to point. Today, we can just do the entire thing with WiFi. If every family buys a wireless router and sets up a home zone, all these zones can be combined together to form a blanket network. This can be achieved using something called the Wireless Distribution System (WDS), which is present on almost all modern routers.

Applications
There are some very obvious applications with the NN.

It would now be fantastically free to call up your neighbours on voice-over-IP (VoIP) technology. There is no need to use any phones to ring up your neighbour. Furthermore, you don’t need to limit yourself to just streaming voice, but you can also stream video over the network. So, it would be easier than ever to bug your neighbours. Of course, there are many other more creative pursuits that one can pursue using this technology.

With a network communications infrastructure in place, it would be trivial to install various IP-security devices. There is a lot of interesting work being done in the field of sensor networks, which generally employ a large number of simplistic sensor devices to produce all kinds of telemetry data that can be analysed for any number of applications. This brings the neighbourhood watch to a whole new level.

Issues
There are some legal issues to deal with, especially if the NN shares multiple Internet connections. The NN can combine and aggregate these multiple connections into a single large pipe. However, ISPs often have legal restrictions in place on the freedoms of end-users to ‘share’ their connections. Obviously, if a resident does something illegal on-line, it creates a whole host of legal issues as well.

Anyway, this sounds like a great idea to me. Maybe, instead of rolling out a state-wide WiFi infrastructure, our local governments should actually focus their resources at setting up and linking a number of neighbourhood networks. The people can help fund the project by supplying part of the equipment while the government takes care of the pipes linking the disparate networks and the Internet.

Our dearest former PM has recently suggested that Malaysians should show our disgust at the events happening in Gaza by boycotting American companies and products. I guess that he meant that we should stop doing things like buying our Frappucinos from Starbucks. This had many of our local franchisees up in arms as they feared for their businesses (never mind the fact that our dearest former PM was the one who encouraged local bumiputera businessmen to engage in franchise businesses).

The fact that our country is so small, means that any boycott that we engage in, would inadvertently only harm ourselves. If we wish to use economic power as a way to send a message to certain super powers, it needs to be coordinated internationally. Farish Noor mentioned in his recent blog, some previous examples where such tactics were successfully employed in applying economic pressure on political regimes.

In addition, the boycotts would need to be directed at very specific entities. A blanket ban on all American products is stupid as we will ultimately feel the problems ourselves. So, the boycotts should be targeted at specific companies that invest heavily in Israel and be coordinated globally to have any sort of affect on them. Now, that is the difficult bit to achieve.

As for myself, I have been doing a quick mental inventory of things that I buy. Surprisingly, I have already been avoiding many American made products, particularly those with investments in Israel. For example, I typically buy either AMD or VIA based computer systems and not Intel ones. As for software, I have avoided Microsoft products like the plague and they have investments in Israel too. So, even though I have not been actively trying to boycott US companies with investments in Israel, I have been doing it anyway.

I cannot avoid using Google though.

PS: I like the fact that our government had convened a special session of parliament to discuss the war perpetrated by a state that our country does not recognise. I wonder how does one send a message to an entity that does not exist.

It has happened to me again. I went to my local Steven’s Corner to have dinner today and was greeted by the person at the counter: “Yes uncle, sudah order?” (Yes uncle, have you ordered?). Uncle??!! My oh my, I must’ve looked damn terrible today to have been called ‘uncle’ by someone who was obviously older than me. Fortunately, since I like Steven’s Corner, I will forgive this particular slight on their part.

Right outside Steven’s Corner, there were a bunch of really young pups who were doing a roadshow for P1WiMAX, a new wireless broadband provider in Malaysia. It is a subsidiary of Green Packet Bhd, which is one of the 4 companies to get a WiMAX license from our government. It is good to see that there is more competition in Malaysia for the broadband business but it is very sad to see that Telekom Malaysia is still entrenched as the fixed line monopoly.

Pretty much every phone line in Malaysia is installed and run by Telekom Malaysia. As such, they have practically been the sole provider of broadband services to homes in Malaysia. Since it is a giant government linked monopoly, it does not need to worry about competition much. Therefore, service has been terrible and the ‘broadband’ speeds that we get are technically defined as ‘narrowband’.

On the wireless side, we have our mobile service providers selling 3G/HSDPA wireless broadband access. However, from my own tests and reports from others, they are no better. Both Maxis and Celcom ‘broadband’ also fail the definition easily. It is extremely difficult to achieve high speed connections on these services. Furthermore, there is something wrong with the Maxis network implementation that I am unable to access GMail (I have figured out what it is and have come up with a work around but that’s the subject of another blog entry).

Now, there is a new WiMAX service provider. The touts were happily showing us YouTube streaming on the wireless modem. While I do believe that WiMAX technology is far superior to the rest, I am not jumping for joy and I will tell you why. It will suffer the same problem that we have with Telekom Malaysia – lack of competition. With only 3 WiMAX licensees in peninsular Malaysia, it is trivial for them to cut things up between themselves (northern, central and southern regions).

That is why I do not believe that they are going to be any better than any other monopoly. While their speeds may be extremely impressive at the moment, once their network bandwidth is saturated with subscribers, things will get bad and there is nothing that any consumer can do. WiMAX has about a 10Mbps bandwidth at 2km. That is not much bandwidth once the slots are fully utilised.

So, as much as I hate the ADSL service provided by Telekom Malaysia, I loath switching to some other provider who will ultimately turn into another monopoly. Now, if only our government would open things up thoroughly.

The most significant thing that happened to me today was being addressed as ‘uncle’ by some girl who worked at the local Carrefour. I was in the store shopping for some daily provisions. I paid for my purchases at the cashier counter and the girl who worked there asked me, “uncle, do you want the 5 sen back?”. Uncle??!! I didn’t know that I looked old enough to be called ‘uncle’ except by my niece and nephews. This girl working at the cashier counter was probably some school girl earning some pocket money over the school holidays. However, it still meant that she was at least 16 years old. However, this does not explain why she called me thus.

In other news:

I read an article in TheStar today with regards to the PMR results for science and math in English. It quoted a representative from that which was formerly known as UCLES. The representative said that, “the standard of our Mathematics and Science paper was higher than the United Kingdom’s”. Incidentally this is nothing to be proud of.

In the UK, the scientific community has been complaining about the dire straits of their math and science standards for many years. They know full well that they are falling behind the rest of the world in this respect and are understandably worried about it. A mathematician PhD that I once lived with also made a similar remark before. The scientific community over there tries their best to raise awareness and pressure the government to upgrade standards.

However, it just dawned on me that our recent arguments about teaching math in English is rather moot. Everyone knows that math is a language unto itself. Hence, it should be just as easy (or difficult) to teach math in any language, alien or terrestrial. This article may be of some interest. The case for science is rather different though.

On another note:

I have come to notice that a lot of Korean sentences end with the phrase ‘su-mi-da’ or something to that affect. I should really ask my Korean friend what it means.

PS: My friend says that it is something like ‘desu’ in Japanese. Now, that makes some sense.

There has been recent suggestions by the government that all muslims should go for mandatory pre-marital HIV screening. I would go further and actually suggest that everyone, muslim and non-muslim, go for pre-marital HIV screening. In fact, I would suggest that we do not stop at HIV screening but to screen for a whole host of diseases and genetic anomalies, anything that may cause problems in the marriage later.

These days, the local labs like PathLab, do provide various pre-marital health check packages that range from the dirt cheap to the really expensive. It all depends on the battery of tests the couple would like to do. All it takes is a trip to the local GP to extract some biological samples, which are then sent to them for analysis. However, even this good practice is not often performed by regular couples.

There are a host of genetic incompatibilities that can be detected through some of these tests. The couple can then be told of their chances in having children who may end up developing certain illnesses. However, all this information should be presented to the couple and the final decision on whether or not they should wed is still up to the couple. I personally believe that this should be the right thing to do.

However, our Perak MB believes that people with HIV should not marry. He thinks that it is a gross error to allow someone very sick like this to marry. I think that he must have mush for brains. Personally, I wonder what sort of medical pre-conditions he might actually suffer from considering that most of us suffer from some sort of ailment that may one day kill us.

Furthermore, he suggests that a HIV couple will definitely copulate and have HIV infected babies, he is grossly misinformed. First of all, it is perfectly possible for people to engage in sexual intercourse without having babies. You know, there is something called contraception. It is kind of sad that the MB is probably ignorant about their use. Secondly, even if the parents were HIV positive, the baby need not necessarily be infected. According to wikipedia, perinatal transmission of HIV is 25% in the absence of treatment and 1% with the right treatment and tools in place.

Then, he goes even further and to suggest that HIV carriers should be quarantined away and everything should be done to treat them. I think that he deserves to receive the ‘straight-jacket award’ for making this particular nutty statement. One really needs to wonder what kind of gestapo-esque MB did the Perak people end up with. It seems that our local politicians lack certain quality, regardless of which side of the house they come from.

Dude, you really need to do your homework before mouthing off and exposing the ignorant facist that you are.

PS: Of course, all this assumes that the news reporting has been accurate. For some unfathomable reason, our politicians are so often misquoted by the press.