Category: Uncategorized

It seems that the show is starting…

RPK has just been arrested under the Internal Security Act, today. He obviously knew that it was coming and he has been well prepared for it. Whether or not it was right to detain him under the ISA is another question altogether. Some will think that the government has abused it’s powers while others may think that it was justified. We can argue about this till the cows come home and it won’t change a thing. Personally, I am not really sorry for him as he is well aware of the consequences of his action.

The person that I’m feeling sorry for is the reporter from SinChew who reported on the idiotic remarks made by one specific UMNO politician from Penang. All that Tan Hoon Cheng did was to do her job, which is to report incidents as they happened. Nobody has come out to deny the reports. In fact, the person who uttered the remarks has since admitted to doing what was reported.

So, it is really funny when the person who uttered the racist remarks, is still free while the reporter who merely reported the issue, is now under indefinite detention in Kamunting. I think that the government is doing her a big favour. Her future is now secured.

Since she is from Penang, all she would need to do is to run under a DAP ticket for either a state seat or a parliamentary seat. ISA detainees are not criminals and have the right to run for office. Then, even if she is still languishing away in Kamunting, she will need to be paid a salary as a politician. If she stays long enough in ISA and wins for two terms, she will then qualify for a full government pension.

And the latest news is that Teresa Kok, the MP who won with the largest majority in parliament of 36,600 is now under ISA detention as well. I cannot possibly imagine how much her majority is going to be in the next general election. They should have a new category in the Malaysian Guiness Book of Records for her. I think that her majority in the next GE is going to be enough to form a small town by itself, probably in the 50,000 range.

This is a live action comedy in the making. I should go get some pop corn and sit and watch.

It seems that the government may just end up reverting the teaching of science and mathematics back to the mother tongues, instead of the present system of teaching it in English. The logic and evidence behind this decision is also highly flawed. Personally, I do not think that it is a good idea.

Educational policy should never be dictated by the electorate. Parents do not know what is good for their kids, especially parents who are themselves, products of the non-English education system. It is undeniable that English is the lingua franca of the sciences and the children will have to face it at some point. If we choose to let them face it at university, it is no different from what we have today and we will end up producing graduates who are forced to study with a dictionary by their side, have a poor command of the language, and are unable to find jobs inside or outside the country.

Many people blame the fact that the content isn’t as important as the delivery. So, there is no point teaching it in English if the teachers themselves are unable to deliver the content in English. This is precisely our problem. The current crop of teachers today are the very byproducts of a system that reverted away from English, decades ago. If we decide to revert away from English again, we will just end up producing more of the same teachers who are unable to teach in English. Those who do not learn from history, are doomed to repeat it.

Statistics given by the government reveal that the kids themselves are not doing as well in primary school, as their seniors did when the subjects were taught in non-English. Obviously, if the kids have parents who are unable to comprehend English and are unable to help them in their school work, it is perfectly understandable that they will be at a disadvantage. So, the parents will not be able to brag about their child’s progress in school. So, what?

The correct response to this problem should be to fix the delivery of the curriculum instead of reverting back to the mess it was before. I can appreciate that it is going to be difficult to retrain the existing crop of teachers, whom are byproducts of the previous mess. Heck, even the trainers themselves are probably from the same mess. So, I would propose an alternative solution. One solution is to bring in existing people who are already capable of speaking English.

This may entail recruiting expatriates into the teaching fraternity. As there are many unemployed foreign spouses around, this may not be as difficult as it may seem at first. I am sure that almost everyone of them would be capable of teaching primary school mathematics and science, once they are given some teacher training. It would also solve the problem of them not being able to secure jobs within the country.

If there are not enough foreign spouses to go around, hire in other expatriates. Considering that we are not really paying the Phillipino maids more than a teacher, it may actually be a good idea. Many of these maids are actually graduates themselves, and have a good command of English. They may actually be willing to teach, which is far easier to being a maid, and pays just as well, if not better.

If this isn’t enough, hire actual expatriate teachers from any country. Open up the teaching profession to anyone from anywhere, as long as they are properly qualified to teach science and maths. Pay them better than the other teachers. In fact, any local teachers who are willing to retrain themselves to teach in English, should be paid equal to these expatriates. That should be sufficient encouragement to induce people to actually make the switch.

We will not need to do this forever. We will only need to rely on the expatriates for several years, until the current crop of students make it through university and are reinserted back into the system.

Anyway, I am biased. I personally think that regressing back to the old mess is a bad idea.

http://picasaweb.google.com/s/c/bin/slideshow.swf

Alright, as promised. Here are some of my photos from Singapore! You can also go directly to the album by clicking here. I tried to take different shots of Singapore. On this trip, I managed to exercise my new 50-200mm lens to the fullest. I had only switched over to the 18-55mm lens for a single shot, when I had to shoot something on the ground.

As for the photos, none of them were post-processed, besides merely some simply white-balance adjustments and inserting my little signature brush here and there. Aside from the obvious long exposure shots, the rest of the photos were taken hand-held. I truly think that this long lens was a good buy. It produces excellent shots, even at a distance.

Even the various Night Safari shots, were all taken without flash, hand held and with the long lens. I am quite surprised that as many of them turned out as good as they did. You have to understand that the lighting was barely enough to see by, much less take a photo with. I could not even see much through the lens and had to use a lot of guesswork to manually adjust the zoom and focus.

Enough about the photos. Just go look at them and leave comments if you so wish to.

I have always been telling my father that it costs a lot of money to live a middle class life in Malaysia but he never believed me. Finally, I managed to explain it to him personally and show him that it is not cheap for me to live a simple life like him, in Malaysia. I just used our life as an example of how expensive things have gotten in Malaysia.

When my dad was about 30, he bought the present home that we have in KL. It is a very typical double-storey linked house that most middle class families have. It is not terribly big nor terribly small. He also owned a little Volkswagen Beetle at the time and he was able to support all of this on his salary by financing the purchases using loans.

So, I did a very quick calculation for him.

If I were to buy a regular double-storey linked house in KL today, it would cost about RM400k. Financing this through a long term loan would mean making monthly installment payments of about RM2,500. Now, if we factor in owning a regular car (certainly not the new Volkswagen Beetle), that would cost an additional RM1,000 or thereabouts, in monthly payments.

By law, the installment payments cannot cost more than 33% of my monthly salary. Therefore, in order to afford a simple life as he did, I would need to be earning RM10,500 each month. This was when it dawned on him that a simple life is not so cheap afterall. Of course, this only assumes a single sided income. If we assume that this is the combined total income, I would still need to bring in more than RM5,000 each month.

And all this does not take into account other expenditures. I told him that university fees are not as cheap as they used to be. While things cost less than RM10,000 for a university degree at a local public university during my sister’s time, it had already increased dramatically during my time. If we were to assume that the trend continues, even a local public university degree is going to cost a small fortune in the future.

I am just glad that I finally got the chance to explain to my dad why I cannot be contented with a regular civil service job like he was. If I were to just take the path of a regular civil servant (or equivalent), I would be living a lower quality of life than he did and he certainly would not want that for me. So, that is why I have to chase after money like I do.

Hopefully, now that he understands, he will stop pestering me to just lead a simple life.

I went down to Singapore last week for a number of reasons, one of which, was to visit the place again, as an adult. I used to visit it when I was a kid, as my dad’s family hails from Johor Bahru. So, I packed my bags, took out some cash and just went down.

My first problem came as I did not know how to get down to Singapore. I knew that I was going by bus and I knew that there were definitely a number of buses that go down each day. However, I did not know where to get the buses from. But I decided that KL Sentral was the place where everything was connected to. So, I started by journey there.

From there, I was told by the information counter that the buses to Singapore left from the old KL train station, and not Sentral. So, I took a short Komuter hop over to the old station and made it just in time for the next Nice++ executive coach. It cost me RM80 for a one way ticket but it was well worth it. Taking the bus was just like taking the plane.

The seats were really comfy business class seats. There was also a lady that went around taking care of us. She served us lunch, tea and a late refreshment. She also gave us pillows and blankets and tucked us in. Each of us were provided with a headset that we could use to watch some TV but there were only 4 channels to choose from. Since I slept most of the way down, I didn’t really mind this.

When I got to Singapore, I took a cab down to the YMCA. I did not research much on youth hostels either but I assumed that the YMCA was a basic standard and I just booked into the dorms, which were pretty decent. Unlike some of the youth hostels I have been to in Europe, house keeping would come around each morning to change our sheets and towels. We were also provided with soap and water in the dorms as well as an ensuite toilet and shower. There was also a pretty decent buffet breakfast included in the price.

One morning, I ended up chatting with Kelly, a nice young lady who had just passed her Bar exam recently. She is a Malaysian who studied at Manchester and was in Singapore visiting some friends. So, we had a nice chat over breakfast until the people at the cafe chased us off.

So, while I was in Singapore, I got to attend to some personal business and take in a few sights. On my first evening there, I met up with three other friends and we ended up spending some time at the Esplanade. I managed to get a few good night photographs there and you can see them in the gallery. For most of this trip, I used my new 50-200mm lens and I have to say that it is quite useful for holiday purposes.

Then, on the second night, I went for the Night Safari, which cost quite a bit. Moreover, due to the nature of it being in the dark, we could hardly make out most of the animals. However, I still think that it was worth the trouble. Again, most of the shots were taken, handheld, without any flash, using my new 50-200mm lens. Most of the photos ended up being fairly blur.

As to my overall impression of Singapore, it is this: If you do not look too carefully, you will just think that you are in KL. When I say carefully, I mean:

• No Protons in sight.
• Different high street brands.
• Cleaner streets.

Otherwise, it feels very much like home. I even took the long northern MRT round the out skirts of the island and back. Looking out the windows, I can even identify the different parts of KL that the areas looked like. It was like deja-vu, only not quite.

Anyway, I’m back now and I will be uploading my photos soon. I will then link to the album here.

I successfully made it home in one piece, although there were several interesting things that happened along the way. I think that this is probably the most eventful flight that I had ever been on. So, I thought that I’d share a few of the things that had happened on that fateful day.

It all started with the coach ride to the airport. When we left Stansted, the coach driver informed us that all reports indicate that the traffic situation was fine and we should arrive at Heathrow by 7pm, which gave me 3 whole hours to get myself checked in, have a light dinner and then fly off home. However, fortune was not as kind and it rained heavily causing the M25 to jam up. Therefore, by the time the coach arrived at Heathrow, it was already well past 8pm.

So, I quickly rushed to the check in counter and had my luggage weighed. I was really unfortunate and got an extremely unhelpful person at the check in counter. He even asked that I weigh my hand luggage and he added all that to the total combined weight. This resulted in an additional 20kg and I had to go to the service counter at the other end of the terminal to check the price. When I was told that my excess luggage would cost almost £900, I balked. That was the price of two whole tickets!

I was hungry, tired, late and now this. So, I decided to dump all my clothes. I sat in the middle of the terminal and started tossing almost everything out except for my suit. I thought that for RM7,000 I could easily afford an entirely new wardrobe of clothes. So, I tossed everything out including the few nice barong shirts that I had. This got my weight reduced by about 7kg but it was still too heavy.

But I met the same unreasonable counter staff again. He told me that I was still over by 10kg but that I would have to pay 15kg of excess. I could not understand this logic and called his supervisor over to discuss this with. After some reasoning, the supervisor decided to raise my baggage allowance and only charge me for an extra 5kg, which came up to about £200. This I gladly paid as I could possibly get it reimbursed by my sponsor later.

After checking into the flight, I decided to go back to the place where I tossed my clothes to collect them and properly dispose of them. But by the time that I got there, the place had already been thoroughly cleared. I guess that passengers tossing their clothes must be a very common thing and the efficient airport staff and already disposed off it on my behalf. So, I went through security and got on my way.

While in the departure hall, an elderly Malay man came over to sit with me. So, I struck up a conversation with him which invariably led to the talk of Malaysian politics, which is quite interesting at the moment. But I noticed several people staring at me with an evil eye when I was chatting with the elderly chap. Then, I finally asked him what he did for a living and he told me that he was the MP for Bukit Gantang, one of our opposition politicians. He promised me that they would seize power by September 16 and I reminded him that it has to be done legally.

Then, as I boarded the plane, I ended up sitting next to a young girl that looked extremely familiar. So, I asked her if she was a Part II engineering student at Cambridge and she said that she was. So, I asked her what she was doing going to Malaysia and she said that she was going home. This kind of shocked me as I didn’t ever realise that she was Malaysian. I can chalk this up as another random Malaysian whom I know, that no one else knows. So, at the very least, I had someone else to talk to during the flight and it wasn’t as dull or boring a 12 hours as I thought it would be.

So, anyway, I’m back!

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.