Since this is an annual thing, I thought that I should just put a few words down to tell the kids who got rejected by JPA – Don’t Give Up!

Dear JPA Reject,

I shall use the words that I had once heard, from a good professor of mine: “Although you may feel dejected, do not feel depressed.” The reason is really simple. The JPA scholarship is not the be-all-end-all of your dreams. Your dreams are yours to keep. So, keep them alive!

I have been fortunate enough to get multiple education scholarship offers in my life and I had turned down a few of them. I have also made many friends who are both government scholars and non-government scholars alike. So, I would like to share some of these experiences.

First and foremost, the JPA scholarship scheme is just one of the many scholarships available, both local and overseas. You should realise that there are many scholarship awarding bodies in Malaysia. For those who will be facing their SPM examinations in the future, please remember to apply for multiple scholarships, if only to increase your chances of actually getting one.

You see, everyone has a different set of criteria. You may not agree with the JPA selection criteria and you may not fit in with it. However, there are also other scholarship bodies who do not agree with the JPA selection criteria and apply their own criteria in scholar selection. So, while you may not fit into the JPA mould, you may actually fit into some other mould.

There are also many overseas scholarship schemes available. In fact, many foreign universities are able to provide some sort of financial aid for their students. You should check to see if you qualify for these. There are also various international foundations and bodies who offer scholarships. This is particularly true if you are able to secure a place in a top university.

This brings me to my second point. This is not the end of the road. You can still try again at the post-STPM (and equivalent) level. There is nothing to stop you from continuing your education to a pre-university level and trying again. There are plenty of Malaysians who have done exactly that – do their pre-university education themselves and re-apply for scholarships again.

If you cannot afford to study your A-Levels/IB at a private institution, you can always do your STPM. You may not realise this but the STPM is actually a very well recognised pre-university level qualification. You will still be able to apply for various foreign universities with the STPM. Do not always believe what the private colleges tell you about the STPM.

However, some of you may be turned-off by the lengthy duration of the STPM exam. For this, I have only one advice – a single year is nothing, in the larger scheme of things. Think about this for a minute. What is a single year difference when compared with an entirely lifetime. In fact, it is a common practice to take a ‘gap-year’ to go explore various avenues in life. This can even help you figure out what it is that you actually want in life instead of blindly going with the flow.

This brings me to my next point. Not everyone is made out to be a doctor. In fact, you are probably not made out to be a doctor. The medicine path is a long and arduous one and if you are not made out to be a doctor, studying medicine is going to be hell. I have seen this happen to many friends. So, you should really ask yourself if you really love medicine or if you’re doing it just for the heck of it.

You can be a success, if you do something that you truly like – be it something as dull as accounting or something as exciting as engineering (alright, I’m biased!). But seriously, you need to think carefully of your career choice. It is something that you will be living with daily for the rest of your life. If you find that you hate medicine after so many years of study, you will lose more than just a couple of years.

And finally, do not let this little hurdle stop you from pursuing your dreams. There are many paths that can lead to your dream. Sometimes, it may actually be better to take the path less tread. So, do not think that your world has ended as a result of this rejection. Learn to handle rejection and to use it positively to improve yourself so that you will ultimately, still achieve your dreams.

PS: Do not stop dreaming!

with metta,
Shawn Tan.
(Still trying to achieve my dreams!)

I had just read a response to my comment on the Education Malaysia blog. In it, the author claimed that I was “out of sync”. So, this got me thinking if I am truly out-of-sync with our education issues. Granted, I have left school for more than a decade and I do not have any school going children. However, the issue of Chinese schools being better than National schools have been ongoing since before I went to school. So, while the players may have changed, the arguments have not changed much.

Sigh. Ad nauseum

The reason that I had pointed out John Lee’s statement is because I doubt that either Kian Ming or Tony Pua would have made sweeping statements like he did without the numbers to back them up. In fact, that is all I was asking for – the necessary facts to back up his statement. As evident in some of my previous posts, I’m biased because I personally think that all vernacular schools in Malaysia should be shut down.

But the question here is whether or not I am in-sync or out-of-sync.

Anyone who reads Coltz’s reply to my statement can immediately see that he does not have any numbers to back up his statement either. He has to infer that that Chinese schools are better from a bunch of disconnected ‘facts’. Or are they? Correlation does not imply causation.

Firstly, he pointed out crime rates in schools. While I am not sure if the police actually publish statistics down to that level of granularity, I do have a simple answer to his assertion. There are more delinquents in national schools simply because the national school delinquents still bother to go to school. The Chinese school delinquents would have dropped out of school by then and are busy peddling VCDs in the market or earning some other form of work. That takes care of your bottom 30%.

Secondly, he posited that based on the National Math Olympiad results, there are a disproportionate number of top Chinese schools as opposed to National schools. So, I just quickly browsed through the list and this got me wondering, where were all the top National schools. Then, I suddenly recalled something from my past. My school never joined any National Math Olympiad. Instead, we joine the International Math Olympiad. I did okay enough. Granted, I do not know if this was still the practice today, but it is a possibility.

Thirdly, his assertion that Chinese schools have the ability to fire incompetent teachers, which may result in better teachers. Well, I would like to point out the fact that many of the Chinese schools do not even have teachers whom were qualified to be trained as teachers in the first place. Many of them enter teaching by first becoming a volunteer/substitute teacher at schools and then use that experience to then have the schools forward them for teacher training before being assigned as permanent teachers. This does not happen in national schools, which largely get teachers straight out of teacher training colleges. However, which is better is open to debate.

So, I’m not quite sure if I am in-sync or out-of-sync. Personally, I would like to think that my personal background does give me some insight into the system that I would otherwise not have.

Oh, I’m in love – with a Chinese restaurant. The name of the establishment is Kim Ma Restaurant. It is located at the Palace of the Golden Horses, Malaysia. I have to say that the food is not your regular food.

According to their Captain, they’ve got modern Chinese food. Essentially, they just do not have your traditional Chinese dishes. For example, their shark-fin soup is served with dumplings instead of your regular crab meat. The fried rice has fish-roe and mushroom gravy in it. Nice!

When my sister casually mentioned that I love the restaurant so much that I would like to ‘treat wine’ there, the Captain very quickly gave me his name card and explained to us that they are not part of the package and I will need to request for them separately.

I don’t really know how to illustrate the quality of the food. However, I hope that the photos will be able to do it some justice. All the food was served in individual portions. I forgot to mention but the service was excellent too. Yum!

While I think that there are valid reasons for not liking what Wong Chin Huat did, I think that our police needs to learn some lessons in public relations. The police have been so heavy handed for so long that they don’t seem to know how to act with an even hand.

I would think that on the governments’ side, they would argue that he was the ‘ring leader’ and tried to stir things up by getting everyone to wear black on Thursday. Incidentally, I would be wearing black, if only because I have only black shirts left in my clean pile.

I think that this is quite different from getting people to wear yellow, like for Bersih. With yellow, it is easy for the police to catch the people who are involved. Not many people wear a bright yellow shirt. But for black, things are a little more dicey. Lots of people wear black, if only to blend in.

Moreover, they have probably learned that it is difficult to catch the masses. Instead, they should focus on the ‘leaders’. However, what the police and the government may have failed to understand is the nature of the present fight. There are no ‘leaders’ per se.

What the Internet allows is the flattening of hierarchies. Anyone with a connection and some perseverance can be a ‘leader’. Anyone with a blog can shout his mouth off. It’s kind of difficult to identify ‘leaders’ in the traditional sense anymore.

So, maybe the cops should bear this in mind for the future. Denying him an audience with opposition politicians is fine. But denying him an audience with his lawyers is definitely illegal in some book. They should have at least given him a chance to speak to the lawyers. That would have been good public relations.

In fact, the police could have even issued a public statement to the press, to explain the motivations behind their actions and what they plan to do. At the very least, that would neutralise the FUD that the opposition politicians try to create with this situation. The police are trying to create their own FUD too, but it does not work anymore. The people have gotten tired of it. Plus, the opposition politicians are much better spinners than the government.

So, I’ll be wearing black tomorrow, if only because I only have black shirts left in my clean pile and I do not want to wear some stinky shirt.

I’m copying ad-verbatim from Zubedy’s blog. I certainly think that it makes plenty of sense.

We want a Social Contract that …
1. Sees wrong as wrong and right as right, no matter who did it.
2. No individual or community is left behind regardless of race or geography.
3. We work towards zero poverty – it’s superfluous to have skyscrapers and state of the art structures when there are Malaysians who do not have a place to call home.
4. Recognizes the Malay and indigenous customs form the core culture while the Chinese, Indian and other cultures play strong supportive roles to make our nation a unique and exciting brand.
5. All Malaysian children receive a first rate education, every child is supported and encouraged to achieve his or her maximum potential.
6. Encourages us to practice sustainable development without corruption.
7. Allows us learn and appreciate our own religion while at the same time encourages us to understand the religions practiced by our fellow Malaysians.
8. We help each other in business and transfer knowledge and skills from one community to another.
9. Treats non-Malaysians serving in our nation, Bangladeshis or Europeans; with equality, respect and dignity.
10. Does not introduce racism and division to our children at school or at home.
11. We provide adequate health care for all.
12. We look at our constitution as a whole and not pick and choose out of context to suit an argument.
13. Do unto your Malaysian brothers and sisters as you would like them do unto you.
14. Acknowledges that we are Many Colors, but One Race, Bangsa Malaysia

Well, I’m never going to be able to live this down. My photo was broadcast to the entire company recently, during a company-wide gathering. Unfortunately, it was not the most complimentary photo. Honestly, I have never been very photogenic but this photo was down-right sad. This has been confirmed by all my co-workers.

One of my co-workers commented that I looked extremely depressed in the photo. Another one commented that I look extremely geeky. Overall, the consensus was that my saham jatuh (stock fell) in the company. Furthermore, I met a bunch of new people yesterday to discuss some stuff and one of the commented that he can visibly ‘see’ that I look very geeky.

So, I guess that the thing is that I just look very geeky. I’m pretty sure that it is not a bad thing. I look the way I feel, which is basically expressing myself truthfully. The pretenders will merely express ‘geek chic’ but would not actually be geeks. True geeks are very hard to find, particularly in a country like Malaysia. I hope to do something to change that at some point.

I have always been proud of being a geek. In fact, my master plan is to be the #1 geek in Malaysia. That is going to take a lot of hard work to achieve though. It is not very easy to be a true geek because a true geek isn’t about appearances. We can smell a fake one from a mile away. A true geek is about mastery of a specific area of serious study – in my case it is computers. The visual appearance is just an unintended side-effect.

Geeks are way cool!

I can now talk about the incident that happened at the beginning of the month, to make me think that people are essentially selfish beings. I was involved in an automobile accident. As a result, I had to go through the hassle of making a police report, assisting in the investigation and making insurance claims. Therefore, I got to experience the process.

Due to the constant interaction that I had with the traffic police, it brought some random thoughts into my head. One question that I asked was – how could we reduce corruption in the police force. Then, the idea that came into my head was to separate the money from the authority. People with authority should not deal with the money and people who deal with money should not have any authority.

You see, when we commit a traffic offense in Malaysia, the police are the ones who will issue the fine and we pay the fine at the police station. We can choose to pay the fine at any other police station in the country. However, if we pay at the station that issued the fine, we may be able to talk to the officer in charge to reduce the fine.

This is just a recipe for disaster. We have just given the people with authority, the power to deal with the money.

It would be better if we had a system where the police issued the fine, but payment was made to a totally separate body like the banks or post-office or some thing else. The whole idea is to have some sort of power separation. So, there will be no incentive for us to bargain for a reduction. There is also no room for the people collecting the payment to give us any discount.

We should not just stop at the police. In fact, the principle of power separation is something that is supposed to be practiced. However, things are not always the case with us in Malaysia. Anyway, I’m presently trying to draft up a rather long article about technological steps to reduce corruption. It’s taken a while to put things down. So, I’ll only publish it when I am satisfied with it.

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.

“I’m just tired of people. Human. Cylon. Whatever.” — Galen Tyrol

Recent events have taught me one thing. People are selfish and greedy. I guess the Buddha was at least right about one thing. There is a reason why I personally prefer to deal with computers. Things are so much easier to do when you are just dealing with computers.

You see, with people, things are always fluid and dynamic. You need to do several orders of differentiation before you get a meaningful figure that you can deal with. With machines, everything is static. So, what you see is what you get.

That is why I think that our bureaucracy in Malaysia should be entirely computerised so that things are easy to deal with. The manual systems should just be kept as a secondary system to help those whom are less competent with computers.

The thing is that the bureaucracy will resist change – that is the nature of the beast. Too many people will have to lose out if everything is computerised. However, what we will get is a cleaner and meaner system.

Anyway, this is a vague rant for a reason. Don’t ask.

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