Sybreon Ones Nought

This Korean film, The Classic, is one of my favourite Korean films. Therefore, I have been looking for it everywhere in Malaysia. However, I have been unable to find it until today. I went to the nearby Carrefour to purchase a new DVD player to replace the busted one at home. Then, I went to one of the little shops outside selling DVDs to see what shows they had and lo and behold, they had a copy of the film.

The first thing that I checked was to make sure that the DVDs had the original seal of authenticity. This entailed checking the front for the hologram sticker and the back for the original certificate of authenticity issued by the board. Satisfied that it had all the marks of originality and it was fully sealed, I picked it up and gave it to the shop attendant who happily gave me a 10% discount off the retail price.

Then, the store attendant asked me if I would like to have it tested. I said yes and he proceeded to rip open the packaging and play the DVD for me. Satisfied with the film, I asked him again, “is this an original DVD?” and he replied that it was. So, he then placed it in a plastic bag and gave it to me. I then paid him the money and left.

After getting home, I wanted to play the film in the new DVD player that I had just bought as well. So, I took out the DVD from the plastic bag and immediately noticed something wrong. The cover image on the DVD cover was a different one from the one that I had originally picked. It was still the same film, just a different cover. Also, it had the look of being printed on a high quality colour printer on A4 paper. Furthermore, the authenticity seal and certificate was missing.

Then, looking at the actual DVD disc itself, revealed that it was a DVD-R with a sticker label on it, that was also printed with a high quality colour printer. Man, was I pissed. I had paid for an original DVD but I ended up getting a pirated one instead. So, I immediately drove back to the store and confronted the shop attendant.

I told him that I would like my money back and that he sold me a pirated DVD. He proclaimed innocence and told me that it was not pirated. Then, I took out the DVD and pointed out that it was a DVD-R with a printed sticker cover on it. That was when he realised that I was not going to be cheated. So, he relented and told me that he will give me a refund.

Then, he opened up the cash register to show me that there was no more change in it and the only cash he had was a RM50 note. So, he asked me if I had change for RM50. I was not about to hand over even more money to someone who is a cheat. I had no way to know if this RM50 was a fake note or otherwise. So, I told him to go change it in the bank down stairs.

The shop attendant then left the store and went off somewhere. After waiting for a few minutes, he came back with a bunch of change and refunded me my money. Happy that I had gotten my refund, I decided to leave it at that. I understand that everyone has to make money and some people have to resort to these unscrupulous means to do so, as long as they don’t do it to me.

Anyway, this is a lesson and I have learned from it. I will always triple check my purchases in the future to ensure that the thing that I chose is the actual thing that I received. I hope that this will also serve as a lesson to others on some of the tricks employed by these pirated DVD sellers. They are now masquerading as original DVDs sold at original prices!

As part of my recent adventure into buying cars, I had to take into account the total cost of ownership for each car. This was where I had to make assumptions about the price of fuel. A lot of people kept telling my that Korean cars have bad engines that will makan minyak (eat fuel) as compared to Japanese ones. However, the Japanese ones were also priced slightly higher than Korean cars.

So, as part of my decision making process, I had to make certain assumptions about fuel prices. As global fuel prices have been steadily falling, it dawned on me that pump prices may return to the low values that we once enjoyed. Taking this into account, I ended up with the decision to buy the Hyundai instead of say, the Toyota Vios or Honda City (local cars were definitely out of the picture). If the fuel prices continued to stay low, my purchase would be justified.

However, as I had previously blogged, I am also not quite happy with the way that the government has to artificially depress our economy. One of the ways to allow people to survive with this artificial depression is to keep prices of commodities low, including oil. So, I would also like to see a raise in the oil prices, as long as it is accompanied by a raise in basic wages as well.

(As you can see, I am full of contradictions!)

That is why I am none to happy with the idea mooted by our Minister of Consumer Affairs that a floor price be set for petrol. His argument is that with the lower global fuel prices, our government no longer had to subsidise fuel and should instead, take some profits by enforcing a fixed margin for petrol companies. This idea just makes my head spin. The government intends to fix both the price of oil, and also the profit margins of these companies.

In effect, our government intends to behave like a thug and rape reap all the profits from oil. Unlike monopolies, our government has the force of law behind it. This smells to me like an abuse of power and it stinks. This is akin to a stealth tax as the people will be pouring money into the government coffers whenever they purchase oil at the pump. Let us just call it what it is, a fuel tax.

Man, I finally put a close to my car saga today. I finally agreed to top up an additional RM1.2k but in return, I bargained for an additional year of free service. While it isn’t much, it was a potential way out of the impasse. The only catch is that I have to go to one specific Hyundai service centre for each service. Thankfully, it is one that is situated fairly close to my family’s house. I guess that it is easier that way for everyone.

This morning, I decided to call up another branch to find out the actual price of the car, to see if what they have been telling me is true. So, I randomly called up and spoke to another sales agent (SA). This sales agent was even more creative and actually told me that I could get the car at a price, with no down payment (meaning that she could jig the numbers for me so that I could get a huge loan and basically not pay a sen, or even get a cash advance if I wish to, which is kind of stupid).

However, when I asked her about the price, she quoted me a price that was RM3k more than the one I was previously quoted at. I also asked if there was any discount as I felt that if this new SA could give me a competitive price, I will just switch over to them immediately. However, I was told that there was no discount and this is the best price that she could do for me. So, at least I know that the previous SA was not trying to pull a fast one on me.

Armed with this new information, I looked at it from the point of view that I am actually getting a small discount (RM1.8k) from the previous SA. With this point of view, things began to make a lot more sense. So, I decided to call up the previous SA and close the deal with a caveat of free service. Then, I went over to the showroom before lunch, signed all the necessary documents and wrote a cheque for the down payment.

Ultimately, I hope that this saga ends well. I just want to have a car to go around KL in. Everyone knows that you cannot get around KL much without a car and I am kind of sick and tired of sitting at home for the last few months. From now until I take delivery of the car next week, I will have to pray real hard that my car arrives in one piece, with everything intact. As long as it does, I think that I will be quite happy with it.

Malaysia is actually blessed with one of the most compassionate police forces in the world. While some may deride them as polis raja di Malaysia, they are actually quite fun to deal with in certain situations. Unfortunately, I did not read this article in TheStar until much later but it still does not change some of the examples of their compassion that I wish to highlight here.

1. Our police force is extremely efficient at issuing summons. We can witness this in KL all the time, on every major highway. The police will regularly slow traffic to a halt in order to catch those who flaunt traffic regulations and issue on the spot compounds. Sometimes, they will even conceal themselves behind some bushes, trap us with speed cameras and then mail us our summons using our ever efficient postal service.
2. Although extremely efficient at issuing summons, each summon comes with a fairly long grace period. I had only recently received a summons for a speeding offense that I committed in early 2004, before I started my PhD. In the intervening years, no warrant was ever issued for my arrest. However, I did not want to take any chances and decided to settle the summons before the next Ops Warta, which is when they decide to issue arrest warrants.
3. They always give ample warning and advice before acting. In the case of Ops Warta, the police will go through a house-to-house arrest operation for anyone who still had outstanding summons. But before doing that, the police would issue several calls through the newspapers and advise everyone to settle all outstanding summons to avoid arrest. On their part, it would really simplify the paper work if they didn’t need to get that many arrest warrants signed.
4. Instead of settling summons as they arrive, Malaysians can look forward to the annual clearance season where discounts are given on various offenses. This is like one of those clearance sales when we all go out in droves to shop for the latest bargains. A 50% discount is typically given on regular traffic offenses except those that were committed during a special Ops Sikap during festive seasons.
5. The rest of the time, we Malaysians are blessed with a police force that is open to haggling. Just like everything else in Malaysia, police summons are infinitely haggle-able. Depending on the severity of our cases, we can either haggle directly with the officer at the counter or we may need to speak personally to the sergeant in charge for special cases. After a little rayu, we can usually get a discount.
6. In line with the compassionate image of the police force, if we were to show that we are repeat offenders with a tall stack of summons in our pocket, we are very likely to get a bulk discount. It is fairly common for us Malaysians to collect all the summons that we have incurred in a year and then pack it all to the police station to ask for a merciful discount simply because we would not be able to afford paying them all.

Evidently, we are blessed with a truly compassionate and understanding police force. I doubt that we can find such service and understanding from any other police force in the world. The arm of the law is a long but gentle one. I love our Royal Malaysian Police Force!

I was just wondering about this issue recently. The civil service employs about 2 million people and while I do not have the exact numbers, I have a feeling that there are a significant number of pensioners as well. Unlike the private sector, civil servants are given a lifelong pension. Even after their death, this pension can be collected by their spouse or any child under the age of 18.

As a direct result of this pension scheme, the government has a heavy burden to bear on wages. Therefore, the government is unable to raise the pay of the civil service significantly to meet inflationary rates. As a result, the private sector does not need to pay too much either as long as they pay similar to what the civil service pays. Therefore, the entire remuneration system in the country is kept depressed artificially by the government.

In order to ensure that people are still able to afford a decent life style, they government has to artificially depress the prices of certain commodities by imposing price controls and other subsidies. As a result, Malaysians are actually living an artificial lifestyle that is not sustainable in the long run. Everything is being kept low artificially and this lifestyle bubble that we live in will burst at some point and everyone will suddenly realise that our ringgit savings are worth a lot less than we thought.

We have to find some way of releasing the pressure on this artificial bubble by allowing some level of inflation of good, accompanied by a salary inflation as well. But in order to do this, the government will have to have enough cash to pay its workforce and pensioners as well. Therefore, I jokingly suggested that maybe, it’s time for all the pensioners to just grow old and die (this statement is not meant to be taken seriously).

However, with the increasing quality of health care in the country, plus the fact that it is free for pretty much anyone (especially pensioners), this is unlikely to happen soon. So, instead of hoping for them to expire, we should come up with some other ways to reduce the number of pensioners in the country. One way of doing it is by privatisation of course. Just privatise different departments of the government until there are none left to privatise.

Anyway, this is just a silly blog about a random thought on one way to help increase the basic wages in Malaysia. My parents had a nice laugh about it (and gave me some other ideas) when I threw this idea at them. They are both pensioners by the way. I love my parents. We can talk about death and taxes just like we talk about any other random thing.

I just read this article in TheStar today, where our DPM (and soon to be PM) openly questioned the quality of the Malaysian education system. Quoting the article, our DPM said that: “Our education system must change. Our children are just not curious enough. They must be curious about the world. They must ask questions.”

This brought back memories of the time when I was training to be a lecturer. The professor that I was under, was telling about how we need to challenge our students to think. As my task at the time was to design a series of experiments for the students, I had to make sure that the experiments had a purpose and that the questions raised during the experiment would force the students to think and constantly question the theory that they were taught in class.

In the end, I ended up designing experiments that seemed to show that the theory was consistently wrong (didn’t matter how many times you repeated it). Instead of getting the result that they expect, they would consistently obtain results that were significantly different and cannot be attributed to simple experimental error. Then, I would ask the students to suggest reasons why the results were the way that they were.

At the meeting where I presented the draft copy of the experiments to the professor, even he had some trouble figuring out the reasons until I pointed out the trick to him. The trick that I used was to move the problem from the theory, to the underlying assumptions. So, the student would not only have to question the theory involved, but work their way back to the basic assumptions.

University education should never be about rote learning but this brings back another memory. During one of my tests for a humanities subject, I actually wrote down, “I know that you expect the answer to be XXX but I disagree and think that it is YYY because of …”. In the end, the lecturer gave me the mark but told me under no uncertain terms, that I should refrain from doing such things during exams and stick to the answer script.

I do agree with our DPM that our education system stresses too much on rote learning, and needs changing. Students need to be challenged to think and the easiest way to do it is to ask them difficult questions. However, the problem would be with the teachers who will have to evaluate the students’ answers. If the teachers themselves are only capable of rote evaluation based on a specific scheme, they would need to adapt to an entirely new style of teaching, which isn’t always easy.

A teacher must be fully versed in his/her subject area in order to be able to handle anything that the students are able to dish out. Otherwise, the teacher will often end up looking foolish in the eyes of the students. This challenges the established power structure and may make a lot of teachers uncomfortable. Considering that our teaching profession is staffed by many people who generally took up teaching because they had no other choice, this doesn’t bode well.

We need to do what Obama promised to do in the US. We need to hire new teachers, pay them better wages, and demand for higher standards and accountability from them in return. However, this raises a big budget problem for the government. The teaching union is the largest work force organisation in the civil service with about 150,000 members. So, I don’t see this happening anytime soon, particularly in the present global economic climate.

A religious issue, when it applies to online mailing lists and discussions, does not necessarily mean anything related to religion per se. I had recently commented on a mailing list and suggested that the mailing list be kept free of issues related to politics and religion. Anything else should be fair game. However, I think that a lot of people misunderstood what I meant when I mentioned religious issues. So, it flared up resulting in someone leaving the list, which he didn’t have to actually.

So, I’m thinking of taking some time out to explain to the readers of my blog, and maybe educate everyone a little on some online etiquette. You may not know this but a religious issue when it relates to online discussions and such, is defined as:

religious issues n. Questions which seemingly cannot be raised without touching off holy wars, such as “What is the best operating system (or editor, language, architecture, shell, mail reader, news reader)?”, “What about that Heinlein guy, eh?”, “What should we add to the new Jargon File?” See holy wars; see also theology, bigot.

This term is a prime example of ha ha only serious. People actually develop the most amazing and religiously intense attachments to their tools, even when the tools are intangible. The most constructive thing one can do when one stumbles into the crossfire is mumble Get a life! and leave — unless, of course, one’s _own_ unassailably rational and obviously correct choices are being slammed.

As you can see from the definition, a religious issue is essentially anything where irrational personal beliefs and unjustifiable personal opinions rule. Of course, this includes religions themselves but also include things like “climate change” and even “George Bush”. The whole idea of keeping religious issues out of online lists is to ensure that discussions stay exactly that, discussions.

However, I think that I probably committed another social faux pas by assuming that people understood what I meant when I said that politics and religion should be kept off the list. Well, as I said in an earlier post, my faults are social, not moral. I have since, sent a personal apology to the person who felt slighted by my comments as I think that the person might have taken it personally.

It’s really not easy to fit into society, especially one where I have always been considered a misfit.