Sybreon Ones Nought

This was our first proper day tour in ChiangMai. What amazed me when I first got out of our hotel was the conditions of the streets outside. While the area was lined with the night market the night before, it was totally cleared up by morning. Not a single speck of rubbish was to be seen on the streets and the only visible evidence that anything had actually been there the night before was bags of trash being piled up by every street corner, which was promptly taken away later that morning. I seriously wonder if this was the common practice or if it only happened in tourist districts.

We were kind of lucky to have arrived during the King’s birthday celebrations. So, there were some rather interesting things to learn about Thais. Thais love their king and he is like a father to them. Since it is his birthday, there were many altars set up around town where people placed offerings to him. While we were being driven through the streets to our first tour stop, we were witness to a pindapata ceremony, where people lined the streets giving alms to the monks who came out in full force that morning. This reminded me that Thailand is a very Buddhist country in the Hinaya tradition.

Our tour guide also regaled us with stories of his time spent in the monastery. According to him, it was fairly standard practice for poor people to go into this sort of life after they reach a certain age. For one, they would have food to eat and they were given an education in the monastery. After spending 16 years of his life in the monastery, he left to find a way in this world. So, although Thai people may be poor, they are not poor-poor. At the very least, they will have food to eat and a chance at a basic education. Personally, I think that this is something that we are sorely lacking in Malaysia. Our poor are reduced to begging on the streets (although it can be argued that even beggars make quite a good living in KL).

Anyway, our first stop of the day was to visit some local tribes who worked the poppy fields. Alright, that’s not all that they do, but according to our guide, it is their primary source of income. If you’ve never seen a poppy plant, that’s one in the photo. It’s a really lovely flower and it will not be our last encounter with the plant during our trip. Northern Thailand is afterall, part of the Golden Triangle. According to our guide, it is called such because drugs used to be traded in gold in this region, weight for weight. He then told us grand stories about the King of Opium who lives further up north and stuff that would make the Corleone family look like sissies.

Seeing that we were a family of Buddhists (Theravada tradition), our guide decided to take us to see a touristy temple – Doi Suthep. The reason that it is a touristy temple is because it is located on top of a mountain and provides an excellent viewpoint overlooking the entire city of ChiangMai. However, it was particularly misty (or foggy or smoggy) that day and I did not manage to get a clear photo of the city. It would be a great place to take a night-shot of the city though. To make matters worse, the golden Chedi that was built 700 years ago, was being refurbished and there was too much scaffolding in place to get a good photo as well.

After lunch, it was time to do a little shopping. No trip to Thailand would be complete without a visit to the local jewelers who sell precious stones. I even managed to snag myself a tie-pin there, though the selection was severely limited. The entire store seemed to be 99% dedicated to women, which doesn’t surprise me one bit. We also visited a honey factory. Now, you may not think that there’s anything special about honey, but these particular honey bees, feed off poppy flowers! It’s a bit of a stretch but I guess that the bees must be buzzing all the time, while spreading all the pollen. Anyway, it was an interesting visit to me because I managed to learn a few things about honey that I did not know before.

No shopping visit to Thailand would be complete without silk. So, we visited the local Shinawatra Silk factory. Now, if that name rings a bell, it’s the family business of their deposed PM, Thaksin Shinawatra. I ended up giving them some of my money in return for a few custom made silk shirts. They sure have a huge selection of silk cloth of every colour imaginable! It was at this point that our tour guide began to tell us some stories about Thai politics (for some reason, the Bangkok Post seems particularly thin on this subject). According to him, Thaksin’s power base is the North and the people up there love him. Thaksin basically took a page out of the old political playbook by helping the poor clean up the streets and giving them an education. That is why, when there are political problems, it only seems to happen in the south.

That evening, we ended up having a touristy dinner, with cultural performances to boot. During the dinner, we were once again visited by the cute local girls in costumes and photographer and had our photographs taken again. Anyway, it was during these cultural performances that the mythical Thai beauties began to appear. Our guide kept raving about ChiangMai beauties but there were few to be seen on the streets. According to my friend, most of the beautiful ones would have all gone down to Bangkok to work, which made perfect sense to me. So, the only ones left seem to be the ones who managed to secure gainful employment locally. According to my sister, the local spa (recommended by our guide) was also filled with beauties. Unfortunately I did not join them for that.

After our dinner, we once again visited the night market. This time, I noticed something else that was very entrepreneurial – mobile bank kiosks! The streets were littered with these little things. They are both an ATM machine and a Bureau de Change in one. There were different ones from different banks and financial institutions. It is so obvious a tourist thing, to make money off tourists, but it certainly beats having to go around hunting for a money changer when you’re trying to haggle down the price with a stall owner.

One last thing that I feel needs to be mentioned – there are so many skilled craftsmen in ChiangMai. They literally fill the streets. You can actually see them working alongside their little stalls at the night market. That is why the labour cost here is so cheap and the reason why a lot of these things are selling really well. Of course, there are a lot of standard goods and our guide literally warned us about the Made in China syndrome inflicting his city. However, you can also clearly see that there is a lot of products that are locally made, and of high quality. The suit that I had tailored, was certified by our family tailor as being of extremely good craftsmanship – certainly not something we can get in Malaysia without paying a handsome premium.

Okay, I thought that I should get this all written down while the memories are still fresh in my head. So, here goes.

We left for the LCCT at the wee hours of the morning and drove two cars there. Since this was my first experience with AirAsia at the LCCT, I would like to put on record that it is nothing like my experience with Stansted and Ryanair. The place was jam packed with people and as you can expect, the check-in counters were awash with humans. It was fairly chaotic and the staff were not very friendly either. Although our flight and group did not have any problems, I saw some rather disgruntled passengers at the counter next to ours who were told that they were at the wrong counter (after lining up) because the airport had displayed the wrong information on the notice board.

After checking in our luggage, we went through the rest of the usual airport processes without any hassle. Then, the time came for passenger boarding. While almost every other airline would allow babies and senior citizens to board first, AirAsia does not. It only allows people over the age of 65 to board first. Seeing that we had 4 senior citizens below 65 and 2 babies, it was rather cumbersome for us to find suitable seats on the plane. However, everyone got seated in the end and the flight took off and landed without incident (except for the rather bad landing with the plan touching down on one side).

The moment we arrived at ChiangMai International, things were rather a breeze. When we walked out of the arrival gates, we were promptly greeted by a bunch of cute looking girls with flower garlands whom immediately posed with us water fish for photographs. We will soon discover that this is not the last time that we will see this particular group of people. They seem to know exactly where we will be as they popped up during our welcome dinner at the restaurant and correctly brought our set of photographs to our dinner table, to sell it to us for 100 baht each. Wonderfully entrepreneurial!

Anyway, our family had opted for an extended tour. The typical tour was a 5D4N tour while we opted for a more relaxed 7D6N tour. So, our first day was a free and easy day and we decided to roam around the hotel area on our own. That was when I caught sight of my first engineering marvel in ChiangMai – the electrical poles by the road. It gives a whole new meaning to the word SNAFU (pardon the parlance). I have a whole lot of respect for the engineer who has to figure out which power line is causing the problem, when there is a fault in an area!

Another interesting thing that I came across while exploring, was the sale of foreign newspapers. While these are also available in Malaysia at certain news outlets, they are not always up-to-date. However, these entrepreneurial Thais have taken it upon themselves to actually print their own local copy of the papers, up-to-date. The papers are printed on quality white paper and sold at a premium. It is exactly the up-to-the-day version of the paper that is sold in newsprint all over the world. How wonderfully entrepreneurial again!

That night, after our welcome dinner, we explored the local pasar malam as well. Even this impressed me tremendously as it was extremely well organised for a night market. At about 5pm, the stalls began appearing and people were setting up. Unlike the night markets in Malaysia that inevitably end up hijacking the roads and blocking all vehicular traffic, these night markets were arranged in such a way as to face the pedestrian walkways. So, the vehicles were still able to pass along the main roads, albeit at a slower speed. While our experience at the ChiangRai night market was more similar to the ones in Malaysia, this one at ChiangMai was still pretty impressive to me.

After all the hassle of waking up early in the morning and flying over, we decided to call it a night and went to bed early. Oh, I forgot to mention that I decided to tailor myself a new suit and went to visit one of the local tailors to decide on the design and material. I’ve been meaning to tailor a very specific kind of suit for a while now. So, since the opportunity presented itself, I thought that I’d give it a try. These tourist tailors loved to display glowing letters of recommendation by foreign tourists but there was one particularly odd one, where a french tourist (wrote in French) telling other french tourists to go next door instead as the quality and service was better!

There is good reason that my blog has been silent for a week. My whole family decided to go to northern Thailand for our holiday this year. So, we all packed up for a 7D6N holiday in Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai, which was filled with a lot of interesting activities. I will be writing more about the things that I did over the course of the week, after I upload some of the photographs. However, I will just put down some overall thoughts for now.

My family has only traveled to parts of southern Thailand in the past and this is our first trip north. Although we have never ever been to Bangkok before, I do think that Chiang Mai is quite a beautiful city. We had an excellent tour guide who also doubled as a baby-sitter for my niece and nephews. He told us many stories about local things including local politics. He also brought us to a lot of local places, instead of just the touristy places. So, it was quite an interesting experience.

I thoroughly enjoyed my trip there although it was really tiring and I also fell ill on the very last day. There are may things that I will take away from this trip, including several tailored suits, tailored silk shirts and other souvenirs that I bought from there. It seems like a great place to go shopping for clothes every few years as the prices are really good while the workmanship quality is quite impeccable.

One big lesson that I learned from this trip (and from my other trips around South East Asia) is that we have been exceedingly lucky. The main reason why Malaysia and Singapore has managed to emerge as leading nations in this region is not due to any magic sauce or economic miracle of our doing – it is simply because our neighbours have been far to busy shooting themselves in the foot for them to exact any sort of significant progress. In the case of Thailand, they have been rewriting their own constitution so many times that even the constitutional lawyers have trouble keeping up.

So, the only countries that I have yet to step foot into in SEA are Cambodia, Vietnam and Myanmar. I plan to fix that soon. I would certainly like to visit Angkor Wat some time soon and get some good photographs there. I fancy that Vietnam would be another interesting place to visit, particularly the north. As for Myanmar, I’ll just wait till the Junta sorts itself out before dropping by for a holiday.

Anyway, I’ll need to go sort through the hundreds of photographs that I took and upload the more interesting ones. Stay tuned for a more detailed account of my experiences there.

A rather odd thing happened to me recently. One day, while checking my email, I came across an email from an old friend – someone whom I’ve not seen or heard from in more than 16 years. It was a rather strange sensation, being contacted by someone from my distant past. However, it was also a very curious and interesting experience too!

Anyway, my friend, Angeline had recently dusted off an old photo album while cleaning out her cupboard. So, on a whim, she decided to try to contact some of her old friends. She tried looking some of us up on Facebook but she couldn’t find me. As you all know, I don’t have a Facebook account for numerous reasons. However, as I have a heavy online presence, she found me through Google instead.

After catching up with her, I decided to help out in the hunt for old friends simply because I think it is terribly exciting to do so. I’ve managed to contact another old friend, Umi, who is finishing her PhD at Oxford (they call it a DPhil over there for some reason). She’s now married with child. How terribly fun! If I had known that she was over there, I’d have dropped by for a visit at some point.

She in turn, told me that there’s another friend at Oxford as well! So, we’re trying to get hold of her as well. I managed to recall the last name of another friend and found her on LinkedIn and tried to contact her through that method. I’ve also asked my sister to help me track down another friend who is also a doctor.

I think that Angeline is probably going to try to gather as many people up as possible for a Christmas dinner or something. Well, I never say no to makan especially when it is home cooked food. This is just some totally random luck that happened in my life. I think that it will be good to catch up with the last 16 years of all our lives.

Man, I should also try to hunt down my secondary school pals. I’ve already managed to contact one through LinkedIn. I think that I should try to organise some sort of get together for everyone too. It will also be fun to hear what everyone has been doing this last 10 years or so. However, I’ll only do this after I settle my own stuff first.

According to a MalaysiaKini article today, Lim Kit Siang claims that, “Umno Youth chief aspirant Mukhriz Mahathir had committed sedition in calling for the closure of Chinese and Tamil primary schools. He pointed out the Constitution Amendment 1971 had imposed absolute prohibition on Malaysians from questioning the four issues, which includes anyone who propose the closure of vernacular schools.”

Does this mean that my previous blog entry might be seditious as well? As I am not a lawyer, I wouldn’t know for sure. So, looking at the Sedition Act 1948, it mentions in 3(1)(f) that:

“A seditious tendency is a tendency to to question any matter, right, status, position, privilege, sovereignty or prerogative established or protected by the provisions of Part III of the Federal Constitution or Article 152, 153 or 181 of the Federal Constitution.”

As we all know, Article 153 deals with the special rights and privileges of the Malays and Bumiputra while Article 181 deals with the royalty. However, Article 152 does deal with the issue of languages. So, let’s see what it actually says:

The national language shall be the Malay language and shall be in such script as Parliament may by law provide: Provided that-
(a) no person shall be prohibited or prevented from using (otherwise than for official purposes), or from teaching or learning, any other language; and
(b) nothing in this Clause shall prejudice the right of the Federal Government or of any State Government to preserve and sustain the use and study of the language of any other community in the Federation.

While Mukhriz had called for the closure of vernacular schools, he has not called for an end to the study of any of the vernacular languages. Quoting the M’kini article, “We can make it compulsory that the Chinese and Indians study their own language in their mother tongue while these two languages can be optional for Malay students to learn or we can make it compulsory for students to learn at least three languages.”

Obviously, our respected Lim Kit Siang and all the other politicians who are rising up to the defense of vernacular schools, have been misinformed. They are also in the business of spin and trying to play this issue up for their own political mileage. What Mukhriz is calling for is in fact an reinforcement of Article 152 of the constitution, a fairer and more sustainable way of doing things.

If there is anyone who is acting seditious, it is the Dong Jiao Zhong who have fought previous attempts at introducing vernacular languages in national schools. So, if Mukhriz gets elected in as UMNO Youth Chief and then gets appointed as the Minister of Education, I will support any attempts that he makes at phasing out the vernacular schools.

However, he must put his money where is mouth is and introduce a third-language into our schools. We already have the option of taking Arabic, French, Mandarin, Tamil in SPM. So, please introduce all these languages in schools and allow anyone to take any languages that they wish. It will make all our kids trilingual and that can only be a good thing, particularly for national unity.

I stand by my previous statement that vernacular schools need to be “burned down” (not literally of course!). However, we should also open up all our national schools to everyone, meaning that there should not be any measly quota restrictions anywhere. Let’s all play fair now!

Okay, this topic keeps coming back again and again. So, I thought that I’ll try to put down a more cogent argument on what it is that I think is wrong with our vernacular schools, Chinese ones (SJC) in particular. I was out at Ace Hardware shopping for some stuff for my car when I heard on the radio that Mukhriz has called for the closing down of vernacular schools as they are a cause of racial polarisation in Malaysia.

I would like to put on record that I am in agreement with Mukhriz on this issue. By its very nature, vernacular schools are divisive and nobody can argue against that. They are little ethnic bubbles that are just just waiting to burst. Recent statistics have quoted that almost 90% of Malaysian Chinese parents send their kids to SJC schools these days and I think that it is a bad idea. I will try to outline some simple reasons below.

1. Perceptions on quality
   There is a public perception that the SJC schools provide a better quality of education than our SK schools. I say that this is a perception because there is no truth to this matter. Let me put forth a couple of counter arguments. Any logical person can instantly see that SJC schools cannot possibly provide a better education.

   The students need to learn certain subjects in multiple languages, which reduces the amount of time a teacher can spend on each. As a result, the syllabus is spread too thinly across and the students end up learning little in all the languages. Furthermore, the classes are packed full with easily 60 students in a single class, thus worsening the teacher-student ratio and further acerbating the above situation.

   As a result, the parents end up having to send their kids to a series of after-school tuition classes. These things are mushrooming everywhere. If the quality of the SJC schools were truly that good, these tuition centres would not be flooded with SJC students, of which they are. Of course, there are also SK students at these tuition centres but my point is that, whatever perception of quality that the SJC schools have is exactly that, a perception only.

2. Lies, damn lies and statistics
   Of course, one can argue that the examination statistics and anecdotal evidence seems to show that SJC schools provide students with a better education. However, we all know that statistics lie and these ones are lying more than others. I will put forth more statistics to show why everyone has been hoodwinked into thinking that SJC schools are better.

   According to some statistics quoted by MCA, about 30% of the SJC students drop out of school before finishing SPM. One can assume that these are the bottom 30% of the student population and drop out of school for more lucrative market opportunities. That is your reason why the statistics favour SJC schools. The bottom 30% of the SK student population does not drop out of school but will linger on until they at least finish SPM. Granted, they will cause all kinds of social problems but at the very least, even the bottom 30% finishes school.

   Then, there is the anecdotal evidence of SJC students who move from a SJC primary school onto an SMK secondary school. They tend to see that they perform better than many of the students in the SMK school. However, what they don’t realise is that the top students from an SK primary school take a very different education path from that of SJC schools.

   To most SK students, the most important examination is the UPSR examination and not the SPM examination. After finishing primary school, all the Tier-1 students are taken out of normal schools and placed into elite schools such as MCKK, TKC and other residential schools. The ones whom are left in SMK schools are the Tier-2 ones who then leave after PMR, leaving the Tier-3 ones to finish their education in SMK schools.

3. Cultural shock therapy
   Which leads me to my main point. The SJC students generally live in an ethnic bubble. I use the term “bubble” to indicate not only the isolated nature of its existence but also how fragile it is. This existence is built on an foundation of unfounded lies and statistics. Of course, it gives everyone inside the bubble a feel good factor but we have all got to confront reality at some point.

   We have all got to realise by now that the Malaysian Chinese community only make up about 25% of our population. Once we leave the SJC bubbles, we will need to meet the other 75% of the country. I have seen this many times and the pupils from SJC schools have problems interacting with the other 75% either at university or at work.

   This is easy to understand when you consider that the typical SJC student is generally only proficient at speaking Mandarin. Often, they have trouble speaking any other language and when you are unable to converse with your friends, you cannot possibly interact well. As a result, SJC students tend to stick to other SJC students and end up in an exclusive club of Mandarin speakers.

   While there is nothing inherently wrong with this, it is a problem when it comes to issues of national unity. Most SJC students will defend the use of Mandarin to its last, including those in the political parties. However, doesn’t anyone find it curious that the current spat between the #1 and #2 of MCA is being fought in English?

Anyway, this entry is much longer than usual and I would like to end with a simple point. The SJC schools provide no significant benefits to the community and country when compared with SK schools. Instead, they are an exclusive ethnic bubble that is waiting to burst. Granted, they are not the only factor, but nobody can deny that they are a contributing factor to the worsening ethnic situation in Malaysia.

So, I will support any motion to dismantle the vernacular education in Malaysia and to force everyone into national schools while there is still time to undo the damage. However, I will also add one final caveat. If the vernacular schools are to be shut down, then we need to also open up MCKK, TKC and MRSM schools to everyone.

PS: Comments are open below.

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Oops, I have just realised that I had not published a blog entry about my new car. More importantly, I have not shown you all any photos of it! So, here are a few photos of my new car. I took a few internal and external shots. It is what I call a “starter car” as it is a rather basic car with limited features.

Driving the car has been an absolute terror joy recently. Initially, I was not used to the responsiveness and power under the hood. Also, the brakes had a noticeable lag in responsiveness. The car is supposed to come with some sort of pseudo-ABS system, which might explain it. However, I’ve now grown better accustomed to it. These things take a few days after all.

I have even taken it for a long distance drive, down to Melaka and back, which is about 250km in total. I will be taking it for another long distance drive, down to Kluang and back, which will be about 500km in total. So, I will be needing my first 1000km service soon.

Like I mentioned earlier, manual cars are fun to drive. Only in manual cars can you actually feel the acceleration of the engine. Only in manual cars can you actually feel everything moving immediately to your commands. However, it is also only in manual cars where you can feel the aches and pains of driving through a 3 hour traffic jam.

I am also going to keep a log of the amount of fuel consumption for the car. I will then analyse this data to see how good or bad the fuel situation is. I have a feeling that the results will come back something like this: bad for traffic jams, great for driving long distances.