Sybreon Ones Nought

A couple of friends of mine from China decided to drop by to visit recently. One of them was attending a conference in Singapore and decided to spend a week in Malaysia as the air ticket only cost an additional £30. So, I played host for a few days and brought them around to a few places. I can only say that it has been an interesting experience for me as well.

On the very first day that I was supposed to meet them, we arranged to meet at KLCC. However, at the last minute, they went over to Bukit Bintang for some shopping. So, I drove from Jalan Ampang over to Pavilion and I learned an awful truth about my car. It does makan minyak (eat oil) as others have so rightfully mention.

Although the journey typically only takes about 5 minutes, I was stuck in a traffic jam for an hour, just trying to get there and another 2 hours, while trying to get out. It was during this time that I saw my fuel gauge drop from about 85% to about 65% full. Man, it really guzzles the petrol when the car isn’t moving. My friends commented that they hate the traffic and they hate spending their vacation in a jam. Well, I can certainly understand that.

I decided to take them away from KL as there were other things to see and eat outside. Since they’re from Guangzhou, they can always go to Hong Kong to do their shopping anyway. So, I brought them out to Kajang for some satay. I introduced them to the differences between nasi himpit and ketupat. I also happened to mention that the town of Kajang is famous for two things: the satay and me! :p

I also brought them to Putrajaya at night, which was a nice experience for me too. They managed to see the layout of our new administrative capitol and I realised that I can still remember the roads in the area, from when I was working there almost 8 years ago. I have never been there at night though, and the area does look a lot different at night. We were even lucky enough to encounter a pasar malam night market and I introduced them to our version of it.

I also brought them to Melaka for a day trip, which was also another interesting experience for me. The last time that I had been there was when I was still a kid. So, I have absolutely no memory of the place, much less the roads. However, I decided that it was an extremely small place and we could just randomly walk about. I brought them to the Jonker Walk area and also the A Famosa area. We had chicken rice balls for lunch and then came back.

In the process of spending a couple of days with them, I explained to them about our unique history, politics and geography that made us what we are today. We also took turns at bashing, Singapore. Seems like my friends didn’t like their time there. Their complaints were: bad food, fugly girls and downright boring place. They commented that Malaysia was much better in all ways. To me, this meant that my tour-guide work was successful.

Anyway, this was a chance to test my car on the highway, driving at speeds of around 100kmh for a long distance. All I can say is that I have been quite happy with the handling of the car so far. However, I have this bad habit of always forgetting to lock my car doors. This is a habit that needs changing – pronto!

** Photo courtesy of Feng’s camera and my tripod!!

According to this article in TheStar, “The Regent of Negri Sembilan, Tunku Naquiyuddin Tuanku Ja’afar, has called on royal immunity to be reinstated so the constitutional monarchy can be restored to its full sovereignty. He said that if the Ruler were to exercise his duties in a fair, just and impartial manner to protect the Federal Constitution, his sovereignty needed to be protected too.”

I think that this is a potential political coup, if only our political parties are able to look beyond their noses. If we wish to undo some of the things done in the Mahathir era, this is potentially one of the things that we need to look into. Our former PM had effectively clipped the wings of the monarchy and relegated them to a purely ceremonial role. However, if we wish to undo this, we will need to work through parliament.

And this is the political gem. As neither side of the house has a 2/3 majority, none of them can amend the Constitution on their own. In other words, there needs to be cross-party consensus and cooperation. If I was a PR/BN MP, I would think of using this as a potential platform for reaching across the table. The way I see it, it is a win-win situation for them.

If the other parties decide to tag along and agree to the amendments to the Constitution, the one who pushed for the amendment would score a public relations victory as they have shown the ability to work across party, to undo some of the harms done in the past. If the other parties decide not to agree to the amendments, the one who pushed for it would again score a political victory as they will be seen as defenders of the monarchy. At this time, when the monarchy is being seen as our last bastion of freedom, this can only be a good thing.

Of course, any amendments to our Constitution needs to be studied in depth before being made. There are reasons that the wings of the monarchy were clipped in the past. However, times today have changed and the younger generation of monarchs seem more educated and more professional in discharging their duties. The opposite has happened in our other branches of government, who seem to have become lackadaisical.

Anyway, this is just a random thought.

Looks like there might be a fight brewing between our estates on the issue of the yoga fatwa. According to the news articles, the Sultans of Perak and Selangor have both stepped in on the issue. So, there may be a small battle brewing between our different estates. This is something unique about our Malaysian system of monarchy and democracy. While the separation of powers between our various branches of government have been eroded in recent years, we still have an additional check and balance, our Sultans (emphasis – S).

The state Islamic councils may agree with the fatwa and wish to ratify it. However, in all matters related to Islam in Malaysia, the state rulers actually have the final say even if our Council of Rulers does not need to approve any national fatwa. However, nobody questions the fact that the Sultans are the heads of the religion in their respective states and the ratification of the fatwa by each state requires their consent. If they do not consent, the fatwa just gets relegated into an official opinion on the matter instead of a ruling.

At the very least, the rakyat (people) have now an alternative avenue for taking their case to. It seems that some of the Sultans may want to study the matter in detail first before deciding on the issue. Even if the decision ultimately lies with the Sultans, they can possibly be swayed by popular opinion. Afterall, they are rulers of the people and care for our well-being. So, this is heating up to be an interesting case with plenty of opinions on all sides. I love our convoluted system of checks and balances.

I think that this and other recent event, highlight a fundamental flaw in our government. Our authorities have had it their way for far too long and they are beginning to think that they are the rulers of the land. While the real rulers have generally chosen to play silent, the younger ones are now beginning to assert some of their royal influence. Thankfully, they have been asserting their powers in very subtle but rational ways and not abusing them like some of the previous rulers.

However, the biggest joker has to be Samy Vellu. According to news articles, “Samy Vellu said the council had every right to make a decision on Muslims and Islamic matter. He, however, said the description by the council on the yoga as haram may have caused confusion among the non-Muslims, particularly the Hindus.” I think that it is funny that Samy is barking up the wrong tree.

For the rest of us, it may be time to kick back, relax and take out the pop-corn.

According to MalaysiaKini, Wee Meng Chee (aka NameWee) is once again embroiled in another stupid saga. However, I personally think that he is acting like an idiot now. I think that his touch with fame has gone to his head and he is now attention hungry. It speaks volumes of his musical talents if he has to resort to constant controversy in order to sell his music.

According to the article, “The video featured a school teacher teaching English in a class, using vulgar words. The clip also included several semi-naked scenes. The first part of the video was four minutes and 54 seconds long, the second was four minutes and 47 seconds and the third clip was three minutes and 3 seconds long. Wee had shown the name of the school in the third clipping.”

Personally, I have not seen the video myself as it has been flagged as inappropriate on YouTube. However, I can already draw some conclusions from the news article. They quoted him as saying that, “I think the school wanting to take action against me is a good thing because this will allow more people to get a chance to see the video and understand the issues.”

He claims that the education system in Malaysia is all screwed up for Chinese schools. The example given was for mathematics. The students learn it in Mandarin in primary school, switch over to Malay in secondary school and then switch over to English again at the tertiery level. While I totally agree with his observation, he should not blame the government entirely for the predicament.

At present, Mathematics is taught in English at all levels but there are certain quarters who want to revert the teaching of it back to Mandarin. These quarters claim that it is easier to switch the students over to English at the secondary level while maintaining Mandarin as the language in primary. To these people, I say “hogwash”. If the foundations were built with Mandarin, they would have to play catch up with the rest when they get to secondary school, which isn’t all that easy.

However, I think that NameWee is an idiot. While I think that he is free to comment on a pertinent issue, I vehemently disagree with him using the footage of his school in the video. There is absolutely no reason for him to do so. He can still raise awareness on the issue without naming any specific school. Afterall, this is a national issue, not a specific issue with the teachers in a specific school. This smacks of idiocy to me. I thought that after his Negarakuku saga, he would have learned to put a little more effort into his work.

Not only do I think that it is stupid, I also think that it borders on illegal. Schools are not public grounds where one can freely enter or exit. Moreover, his school is not a public school and I am sure that he has no grounds to use footage of his school in his video. Any person with half a brain should know that you will need to apply for permission from a school before you can shoot footage on their ground. I know because I had done it before in the past.

So, I think that NameWee is an idiot. He hungers for publicity, has to sell his songs through controversy, and has no respect for the law at all. I personally hope that the school sues him for every last sen that he has.

See, like I mentioned in an earlier entry, our Royal Malaysian Police Force is a very compassionate police force. I doubt that you will be able to find another police force like ours in this world. According to this article in TheStar today, a 19 year old involved in a car-chase, tried to run down a policeman, got shot at by the police, got caught with drugs, is under investigation for attempted murder and was still released on bail to allow him to sit for his STPM examinations.

Read that statement carefully again. This is a 19 year old, who is probably a druggie as he was found with a small quantity of drugs in his possession. He was involved in a car chase with the police. He will probably be charged with attempted murder for trying to run down a policeman (it is unlikely that he will be able to evade the charges as he is no longer a minor and potentially a druggie). Now let us see what his potential charges are:

1. He is charged with attempted murder for trying to run down a policeman with his car.
2. He is charged with reckless driving as he was driving without a license and got involved in a police car chase.
3. He is charged with drug possession of various illicit drugs.
4. He is charged with a combination of the above.

After all this, the police were still compassionate enough to let him out on bail in order for him to sit for his STPM examinations, so as not to ruin his future. If he passes his STPM, he may even get a place to study for a degree in a local or foreign university. However, his future is quite likely ruined in any case. The police will probably file charges after his examinations.

Personally, I think that his only defense is to claim to have acted under stress. Everyone knows that STPM is a grueling examination. So, he can claim that he is not a druggie, but he had to resort to drugs to help out with his stress. He got afraid when caught by the police and ran. He didn’t mean to run down the policeman but was only trying to get away.

Can you imagine this happening in any other country other than Malaysia?

It is always interesting to hear about Malaysian news through foreign news channels. However, it is even more interesting to find it as one of the top stories on Reddit. According to the BBC, “The Islamic authorities have issued a ruling, known as a fatwa, instructing the country’s Muslims to avoid yoga because of its Hindu roots.” Personally, I have nothing against the practice of Yoga nor JAKIM. Further reading on this subject does reveal some truths in what is being said.

According to Wikipedia: Yoga refers to traditional physical and mental disciplines originating in India; to the goal achieved by those disciplines; and to one of the six orthodox (āstika) schools of Hindu philosophy. I think therein lies the problem, which is one of definition. Yoga refers to the exercises, the goal of said exercises and a school of Hinduism.

However, before we begin to criticise the Malaysian religious authorities on their short-sightedness, we should understand a few things. Like Christianity, Islam is an evangelical or prostelysing religion. This means that it spreads by direct marketing. So, it has to brand its competition as sub-par and encourage customers loyalty by tying them down. So, it should come as no surprise that such an action was taken and the reasons should be plenty apparent.

If a religion requires that its followers stick to the one true way without question, the only way to ensure that its followers stick to it is by enforcement as the said religion cannot logically explain things away. So, when something that is foreign and contradictory comes along, said religion would need to brand it as deviant in order to keep its followers away from it. Otherwise, it would risk losing its followers as time passes and it will ultimately vanish as a religion (along with all its accrued benefits).

Personally, I think that the action taken by the religious authorities is not only understandable, but also unavoidable. Everyone should have seen this coming from a mile away. I don’t see it as wrong per se, because from the point-of-view of the religious authorities, their hands are pretty much tied in this matter. Yoga is a religious practice and they cannot possibly issue a fatwa encouraging the deviant practices of false religions.

However, none of this takes the fun out of the statement issued by the chairman of the fatwa council: “There are many other forms of exercise that Muslims can partake especially when the religion promotes healthy living and lifestyle. Performing prayers for example is a good form of exercise.” I just cannot believe that he said that with a straight face. While I do agree that prayers tax the mind and body, it isn’t quite the same thing as doing physical exercises.

The NVIDIA Tesla is a fairly interesting computer from NVIDIA, whom are famous for their graphics chips. The Tesla is a supercomputing workstation that combines a number of graphics chips and a regular processor. The result is a remarkable desktop machine with the total computational power of 933 GFlops at under US$ 10,000.

While the computer is being touted towards the scientific and engineering community who have to deal with complex simulations, the more exciting application for this computer is – games! As a comparison, the PS3’s Cell processor has a computational power of 204 GFlops while the Xbox360’s Xenon processor has a computational power of 115 GFlops. All these Flops are good for graphics, audio and physics processing.

The way that the Tesla is configured, it comes with a quad-core processor from either AMD or Intel, which serves as the main processor, just like the PPE on the Cell. This main processor will be in charge of running the operating system and allocating tasks to each graphical processing unit (GPU), just like the SPE on the Cell. There are up to 4 GPUs in each Tesla with 4Gb of memory each. You can think of it has a more powerful Cell computer.

Considering that it is based on a regular PC design, it should be fairly trivial to create games for the Tesla. If only it did not have the price tag that it has, it could fairly well be the most powerful gaming platform on the planet, but now it will just need to be satisfied with being the most expensive gaming platform on the planet.

I reckon that is why it is being touted as a scientific computing platform. Although there are efforts at bringing scientific computing to the PS3, for example, it is kind of a hack. The gaming consoles were not designed for scientific computing and the people who wish to use them for it will have to jump through a few hoops first. With the Tesla, the platform is ready for them.

Ultimately, this will be a niche product as Joe Blow will not be shedding ten grand for such a rig. Also, the power consumption of such a system is fairly high (at 1.2kW). However, it would still be interesting to see someone hook a bunch of these machines together into a compute farm. It would be interesting to see the Tesla enter the supercomputing Top 500 list.