Month: August 2008

Well, technically it is still 31 August in Malaysia. So, I will just write down some of my hopes and (dare I say) dreams for the country, on her 51st birthday. I think that most of these things are very obvious although there are a few little things that I would like to change that may be a little less so. So, in no particular order, here they are:

• Changing our Rukun Negara (National Creed)
  Like most other Malaysians, I am totally fed up by how religion has become a political tool. So, I would suggest that we get rid of the first item in our creed, Kepercayaan kepada Tuhan (Trust in God). I have a problem with that because I do not believe in God/Gods. So, that means that I cannot honestly pledge myself to that belief. So, let us just get rid of any random religious references that are thoroughly irrelevant as a nation.
• Changing our National Anthem (Negaraku)
  There is that line in the anthem that refers to God again: Rahmat bahagia, Tuhan kurniakan that I am not particularly comfortable with. It just serves to reinforce certain religious believes of some people over the others. I see it as a form of discrimination, forcing someone who doesn’t believe in God/Gods to ask for diving blessing. Also, we should use an original melody instead of borrowing the tune from an old love song.
• Changing our Perlembagaan (Constitution)
  Okay, there are lots of bits of the Constitution that require changing. However, I doubt that this would be possible simply because neither alliances in parliament have the sufficient majority to amend things. But if they did, I would like all religious references taken out of the Constitution. Islam will always remain the majority religion in Malaysia but Malaysia cannot possible profess any religion, it is silly to suggest that Malaysia (as an entity) is a Muslim. It is not even a living creature.
• Changing our Politics
  Of course, politics has got to change. While the racial based politics may have worked well in the past, it is kind of outdated today. People around the world are transcending national boundaries and racial identities. The same thing is happening in Malaysia. We are global citizens and it is silly to think that we can still so easily dice people up by skin colour and expect it to go down well. So, the politicians need to find some new way to dice us up and I am sure that there are many other equally arbitrary ways to do it.
• Change our Polis Di-Raja Malaysia (Royal Malaysian Police)
  The only reason that a former house mate of mine wanted to join the police force was because it paid better than any other graduate job on the market and when he said “pay” he didn’t actually mean the official salary, which isn’t very much to begin with. So, people no longer trust the police to actually do any policing and recent cases in Malaysia don’t make things any better. So, let us try to turn our police force into a respectable occupation that people would aspire to join, in order to make a positive contribution to society.

I had a wonderful dinner with my supervisor and his family tonight. The dinner lasted for just over 3 hours and it wasn’t because the service was slow. It was just that the company was great. I think that I got to know my supervisor and his family a lot better tonight. We exchanged a lot of stories about our lives and our past. Regardless of what other people may think, I think that I’ve got a really nice supervisor.

As I would be leaving for home soon, my supervisor decided to have a going away do for me with his family. So, he suggested Chinese food and asked me for a recommendation. Seeing that there were only two edible restaurants here, I brought them to the nicer one on Regent Street (J’s Restaurant). The other one is a little dodgy. We ordered 5 different dishes and rice. As usual, the food was good. However, I did note that certain things were different in the service.

When I visited J’s in the past with friends, we were treated differently than this visit with my supervisor’s family. For example, they served us rice on a plate instead, while they would normally serve us rice in a bowl, just like any other Chinese restaurant. And when they made a mistake on our order and missed out a dish, the restaurant owner touched me on my shoulder apologetically. And when we left, he placed an appreciative touch on my shoulder. He has never ever touched me on my shoulder ever, in all my previous visits.

For our dessert, we had leong fun or what they called “minty jelly” at the restaurant. My supervisor’s wife was trying to figure out where the mint went. So, I explained that it was a translation of the Chinese name, which meant “cool” or “minty”. She was also trying to figure out the odd taste of the thing. So, I explained that there is a slight tinge of bitterness in it and all that. But it is something easier to savour than explain.

My supervisor’s family was really nice to be with too. Even his son, who is normally a little quiet, also joined into the conversation. We shared a bit about our past with each other and I told him a bit about my plans for the future. His wife also told me some stories about her childhood, which was very funny to hear. Britain in the past, was a very different place from what it is today. I even got to find out how my supervisor met his wife, which made me think that fate (not in the deterministic form) always plays a role in these things.

There aren’t very many things that I will miss about Cambridge but I think that I will miss my supervisor in some ways. He is a really nice guy. I do hope that we will be able to keep in touch. He is on Facebook and while I am not, he is on my MSN list after all and there should be no difficulty there. Oh, and I think that he’ll miss me too. d:

I had just taken this photo of a sunset, a few hours ago. This was taken from behind my house, in the bit of green right opposite Midsummer’s Common and Jesus Green. I just stood up in my room and saw this beautiful sunset outside my window. Knowing that it would not last for long, I picked up my camera, tripod and lenses, and ran off towards the sunset. It was beautiful.

Although it may seem like it has been post-processed extensively, this photo was surprisingly original. All I did was set the white balance. There was no other post-processing step and certainly no HDR work. The photo was a 30 second exposure, taken with the use of my new remote shutter. That is why you can see the floating lines above the roads, where the lamps from the vehicles and cycles passed through.

I think that I kind of like how vivid colours can get in the dark.

If this is allowed to continue, it is the beginning of the end for us. According to various reports, it seems that the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission has stepped out of its bounds and ordered Malaysian Internet Service Providers to censor Malaysia Today, an extremely popular anti-establishment blog. Seems like our MSC bill of guarantees is going out the window for political expediency.

Well, although I am not in Malaysia at the moment, there are many ways to get around any form of blockage that the ISPs can put in place. If people can even work around the Great Firewall of China, there are definitely ways to work around the problems in Malaysia. If I was running an ISP in Malaysia and was legally ordered to block access to a particular website, I would choose a couple of ways to do it.

The Internet works on IP addresses, which are a series of user unfriendly numbers. So, most of us depend on a Domain Name Service (DNS) to translate human readable domains such as http://www.malaysia-today.net to a series of numbers such as 202.71.97.141 in this case. Most users would automatically use the DNS servers of their local ISP to do this conversion. So, the first step to blocking a website would be to modify it’s setting in the server to point to some other series of numbers. This can be useful to redirect a user to a special page that announces that the website has been taken down by court order.

For the home user, the easiest way to work around this problem is to set our computers to use a different set of DNS servers. This will need to be done on the device that is directly connected to the ISP, such as the ADSL router or the host PC. There is a public DNS service provided on the internet called OpenDNS. Their website has detailed instructions on how to configure various settings to use their service. That will fix any problems with poisoned DNS entries in the local server.

Another way to block a website would be to configure the ISP firewalls to drop all traffic to and from a particular IP address. However, this is a very damaging step. Due to the way Internet hosting companies run, sometimes several websites share the same server and the same IP address. So, this step may end up blocking out other innocent websites sitting on the same server as well. However, this is a surer way of taking out any website.

But even filtering traffic to and from a specific IP address(es) can be circumvented. All that a user needs is to use an external proxy, one that is located outside the network. A proxy works as a middle man. So, if traffic between the website and the proxy is clear, and the traffic between the proxy and the user PC is clear, then all is clear. However, this also means that the proxy server has the ability to snoop into the traffic conversation. So, use this with care.

So, it is definitely not a problem to circumvent this little bump in the road. However, most people do not understand networking enough to know how to work around it. It takes about 30 seconds to make the changes and everything will work fine again. The larger issue is the morality of censoring the Internet just because the authorities do not like what is being said on it. That is just so wrong and smacks of incompetence and desperation.

Alright, maybe the term ‘kid’ is not right in this particular instance. However, all media reports seem to indicate that Anwar Ibrahim has won the Permatang Pauh bye-election. I will forever remember the name of his constituency as it was the question that knocked us out of the Quiz Perdana qualifiers. We were tied with another school and my team mate dropped the ball when he failed to remember the name of the constituency.

So, the question on most peoples’ minds now is whether or not Anwar will be able to back up his words and takeover the government. Personally, I’m not really bothered with this. What I am more concerned with is does Anwar have any right in taking over the government by crossing defectors over to his side.

Personally, I don’t think that political cross-overs are a very democratic thing to do. The voters generally vote for a party and not the individual. Hence, if someone voted for BN and put BN into power a constituency, I don’t think that it is right for the MP to then change flags and cross-over to the opposition 6 months after the election.

The proper democratic way of doing this would be for the cross-over MPs to call for bye-elections in their individual constituencies and run on a different ticket. They can either run as independents or as candidates from PR instead of BN. The whole idea is to let the people voice out their choice, which is the basic essence of democracy.

Personally, I don’t think very much of politicians but I think even less of party-hopping MPs. These people are only looking out for their own hide and I don’t think that it will do anyone any good in keeping them around.

As I have always said, a coin has 3 sides. Yes, many of us want to see a (hopefully positive) change in the government. However, there are different ways to do it: the politically expedient way or the right way. If PR comes to power because of a few snakes, I don’t think that makes them any better than BN.

I woke up today and found out that they were doing a promotion for the sexy Slimline PS2 at £50. I have actually been waiting for such a promotion for quite a while now. You will be hard pressed to even find a pre-owned one at that price. I told my self a long time ago that if the PS2 is sold at £50, I will go pick one up.

In case anyone was wondering. I am not buying this PS2 for myself! I am buying it for my ahem nephews and niece. You see, I had even had the option of choosing a bundle for ages 12+ or 3+ at the price. I elected to buy the one for ages 3+ since two of them are almost 3 and the other one is just in school. So, for anyone who thinks that I bought it for myself, that is just nonsense ahem.

Aside from the sudden promotion, the thing that made me decide to get a PS2 instead of a GC is mainly the game library. There is very limited choice when it comes to getting GC games while most stores are fully stocked with PS2 games. So, it would be possible to quickly build up a fairly sizable game library for the PS2. I had recently bought a brand new copy of Viewtiful Joe for £1 and pre-owned games start at £2 per game.

So, the next thing that I’ll need to do is to build up a library of games. I think that I will budget £50 for a variety of games. Some of the titles that I am looking at are popular PS2 titles like Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy, Devil May Cry, Grand Theft Auto and various other major franchises. Alright, maybe these games are more suited for late teens and adults like me. Alright, I should not forget my niece and nephews too. So, I will need to get some games suited for kids under 12 as well. Then, they can play some fun and educational games.

Oh, and accessories. I will certainly need to get a memory card for the PS2. I think that most pre-owned ones come at £5 each. One unit will do as I do not intend to keep any saved games permanently.

As for pirated games, I will be hard pressed to get legal ones back home and my PS2 is not modded to play pirated ones. I have told a friend of mine that I intend to give up my old decadent ways and only buy original software and DVDs from now on. I already have a 30kg collection of original DVDs that I built up while I was here and I think that some of the online stores deliver to Malaysia. It will also reduce the amount of games that I will end up buying for the system, which can only be a good thing.

PS: This is my first ever game console. I used to play games on the PC. But as I grow older, the PC seems to be more a work machine than a gaming one. So, I’ll probably stick to consoles for gaming in the future. But this PS2 is for my niece and nephews anyway. I’ll get something else for myself later. Maybe a Wii or PS3.

The houses in the UK have very thin walls, floors and ceilings. I first noticed this when I came to the UK for a holiday many years ago. I guess it is just the way that the houses here are constructed. The reason that I am writing about this is because my upstairs neighbour was at it like rabbits last night. This always happens when the girlfriend comes over to visit, but never to the kind of marathon that it was last night. It all started at about 10pm.

At one point, after I had already fallen asleep, I heard some creaky noises in my dream. For some reason, my dreams tend to incorporate stuff that is happening around me. So, this caused me to wake up to hear creaky noises coming from a corner of my ceiling. The rhythmic creaky noises were quickly accompanied by a rhythmic staccato of a female voice sounding the first vowel. And this was happening at about 4am.

When I told a friend about this, my friend was fairly disappointed that this didn’t happen more often in undergraduate accommodations. I can only guess that undergrads do not get as much action or that they go for sprints, rather than marathon runs. Also, most undergrads are not in a stable relationship which may explain the irregularity of it happening. Possibly too, thrill seekers just do not do it in the rooms.

I can say for certain, that it happens very often in graduate housing, especially among stable couples. In my previous house, a couple used to rendezvous in the communal shower, every so often, for a tryst. Another previous neighbour of mine even apologised to me in advance, for making too much noise, claiming that his sub-woofer was placed right next to my wall (must be a creaky sub-woofer).

Now, I had recently purchased a set of in-ear SONY earphones, the kind that extends slightly into the ear canal. Aside from being excellent earphones, they work like an ear plug and can insulate outside noise. So, I guess that the next time that I wish to go to bed while the girlfriend comes for a visit, I should put on the earphones before going to sleep. I’m not getting enough of that as it is.