Profound Thought Number 1

The problem with this bloody country
is a damn lack of humility.

go figure.

This is the love supreme

sweetly subtle. deep yet mellow. powerful yet velvety smooth.
( kind of like good payasum )


acoustic energy - aego m

If it's worth loving, it's probably not cheap. 700 bucks of not cheap to be precise.
But what can I say, I'm in love.

Sandwiches and orange juice in the rain...

The irreplaceable things in life are simple - like picnic breakfasts on a hill with dear friends.

Enocomicality ...

eno - comical - n. colloq. a term used to refer to policies of the government that are totally indigestible to the people, yet so absurd as to be hilarious. Used with regard to Malaysian political party manifestos and government policies of an economic nature. [Origin - eno, brand name of commonly available indigestion medicine in Malaysia + comical. Wordplay on economical. ]

Why listen?

because ...


just love the sentiment here.

comic excerpted from www.xkcd.com

digi. i like.


feels like a new phase of life. the postpaid world. lol.

to a friend who knows me well....

thanks a million cp! hugs! this really made me smile. now for that heineken bottle to get the look just right...

Porcine Bliss

He might be ugly, but he sure as hell is happy.

A visual snippet of life

Best way to start a morning. :)



LoL. No, the next pic isn't part of breakfast, just happened to see it and take a snap of it. A flower that looks like birds having a meeting. Pretty amazing.

Poke a bear,

then smack it on the nose and you can't expect to get away with it.

Kosovo, high oil prices, reemergent nationalistic sentiment and the restoration of national pride.

The Russian medved has just roared.

Lesson of the story, don't mess with a bear unless you've got a really really big stick.

there are many fish in the sea,

but few are worth fishing for.

(Little) Monsters

Being unable to sleep till dawn is never a good thing. Last night therefore was not filled with good things. Anyhow, the insomnia meant i ended up watching the movie 28 Weeks Later at 4 in the morning.

About 30 minutes into the movie, I got this strong urge to take a gun and put two bullets in the young boy's head. By 90 minutes, if I had been in the movie, the kid would have been stone cold dead. Understandably, if I had been there, it would have been a very short movie. LoL.

Yep, I am reading too much into a movie. But I'm doing it because this happens to be a convenient vehicle to explore the idea of the responsibility of child offenders and whether and how they deserve to be punished.

These kids broke martial law knowing full well the dangers of leaving the safe zone and in essence were responsible for bringing back a virus known to be able to decimate the entire population. And yet, the whole premise of the movie was about protecting these kids and getting them away safely.

I just don't buy the argument that kids cannot be held responsible for any of their actions. In such a case where the effects included deaths and serious societal damage, and where the children could see full well the effects of their actions, there can be no excuse. They do not deserve to be protected completely from the consequences of their actions. Why is it so hard to admit that monsters can start young too?

Additional reading can be found in 28 Articles (David Kilcullen, 2006) accepted as a must read for active duty soldiers in the US Army. Written as an unofficial manual of the do's and dont's of being a soldier in an occupied zone, at one point it deals with the relationships formed within the community. The gist of one of the articles is not to trust the children. Why? The explanation of Article 19 "Engage the women, beware the children." explains, "Conversely, though, stop your people fraternizing with local children. Your troops are homesick; they want to drop their guard with the kids. But children are sharp-eyed, lacking in empathy, and willing to commit atrocities their elders would shrink from. The insurgents are watching: they will notice a growing friendship between one of your people and a local child, and either harm the child as punishment, or use them against you."

This isn't a statement based on obscure theories, but rather one based on observations culled in the first two bloody years of the Iraq war. The writer is one of the chief strategists on the personal staff of General Petraeus, the general responsible for the success of the complex task of stabilising post war Iraq.

The young boy in the movie was exactly like this, selfish and unthinking. And for this little runt, the soldier dude shot another soldier dude who was carrying out his orders necessary to control the epidemic. And the kid didn't even show an ounce of remorse or emotion.

People would argue that kids aren't able to understand the world around them fully or comprehend the weight of their actions. That, is irrefutable. But I argue that we should also take into account what they ARE able to understand and based on that kids deserve to hold some sort of responsibility. Kids know what death is, and they too are afraid of death. When someone dies, they know it's sad, and they know causing pain and sadness is wrong. They too have free will and they too can make choices. This is a reference to that internal compass that we know as the conscience the bases principles of which do not have to be taught. If we celebrate the fact there are many people out there who have had massively troubled childhoods and yet turned out right, we must also accept what it implies, that children/teenagers are able to take control of their lives and make decisions for the better. Conversely, they're also able to make decisions for the worse. Horrible crimes are not a one-off thing, they're a result of a series of bad decisions which ingrain and reinforce negative attitudes. At any of these points, the child/teenager can choose to listen to the conscience and yet they've failed to do so.

Therefore when the consequences of an action are of great detriment to the very society and the societal rules that protect them, it only makes sense that they carry the consequences as demanded by the weight of the detriment caused and what they are able to understand. This should be particularly applicable in cases where death and great detriment to sections of societies is involved, murder and intent to cause harm should certainly be examine in this light.

Don't get me wrong, I love kids. But just as any successful parent will be able to tell you, kids who are totally shielded from the effects of their actions will never be ready to enter society.

Society functions based on societal rules. When these are damaged to a huge degree, the damage must be corrected to the degree possible taking into account the individual causing the damage irrespective of age.

Kids are not totally helpless, neither should they hold no responsibility for their actions. We treat adult monsters as monsters. It's time we treat child monsters as little monsters.

Future Posts

I know if I don't make these an obligation, I'll never get to writing them. So here goes the planned posts. Expect them in the next 3 months or so.

1. A solution for the Israeli Palestinian conflict geared towards the Israeli geopolitical reality.
2. Discussion of the rightness of using performance enhancing drugs. Is the eliminating of all congenital disadvantages and differences a suitable aim? What are the motivations behind these and how do they affect the argument?
3. The Dalai Lama and his relevance in the new realities of Tibet and China.
4. The next level of the Thought War.
   
5. Review of Counter Insurgency Warfare - Theory and Practice
6. A primer on the Right to Protect.

"Please Submit Your Urine Sample Here"

Attached to the bottom of our official university exam slip is a little notice to present your student ID along with the exam slip. If this article in the BBC is anything to go by, it could soon read like this.

"b) Kindly present your Student ID and Fresh Urine Sample along with this Exam Slip. "

Apparently, there are drugs out there that can be used as a quick fix for poor memory and alertness and there are actually people out there using them. Scientifically, these drugs are also known as cognitive enhancers.

Do these constitute and unfair advantage? The dudes at the UK National Academy for academic sciences seem to think so. A scenario foreseen is one in which we will need regulations and testing to ban the use of these drugs amongst the 'normal' population to maintain fairness in examinations and testing.

One of the dudes, Sir Gabriel Horn likened the emergence and usage of these brain enhancing drugs to the usage of performance enhancing drugs in sports. He's probably right
on that. Fact is that anything that will give people an edge over their peers is going to be in high demand in this super competitive society.

So if after this article, there's a sharp leap in the official number of people classified with mental problems, we know why.

Oh and for those of you who are asking, where can I get this stuff or what is it called? Nope, I'm not telling you. Don't want you ending up as druggies. (Or rather, I'm not sharing the good stuff with you guys. :P ) A hint is the stuff they use to treat Alzheimer's and ADD.

Did You Know?

i) The earth has two holes at the top and bottom.
ii) Viewed from on top in Google Earth, it looks like a giant eyeball.

lol. Apparently they clip the sat images at both poles. So all that's displayed there is a BIG black hole.


Behold the eye-ball.

Letting the Yes mean Yes and the No mean No

There was a time when a man said yes, he meant yes. When a man said he would do something, he did it unless there were circumstances totally beyond his control. Those were times when honor actually meant something. Those are times that no longer exist.

I don't know about the rest of you. But a man who can stand by his honor is a man worth having as a friend. Friends are honest, and friends are not hypocritical.

Honestly I tell you, there is more to a man than success of the material type. There is also the trustworthiness of his word, the meaning of his name and the change that he brings to the world.

Facelift required!

This blog needs a facelift and I'm too busy. LOL. Anyone want to offer their services?

Renumeration :

1. Lots of my love and care (preferably offered only to female applicants.)
2. Eternal gratitude
3. Dinner on me

Bid here... ;)

The Arrogance of the Educated

Demos-kratos : People/Mob – Power/ Rule. Rule for the people, by the people.

[Too lazy to polish this post. What you see is the raw product of a session of the thought war. Logical links not included. Go figure.]

There is a basic problem with that phrase. It emphasizes the right of the people to choose their own path. It says nothing about the rightness or wrongness of the choice.

However, do people have the ability to make rational decisions? Yes, No? Irrational herd mentality. Emotions influence decisions. Pull the right heart strings and you get them on your side.

When it comes down to the question of who knows best how to rule or what is the best path forward, all that can be heard is the chorus of “Me! Me!”

It is one thing to say that the rural folk are unenlightened and uneducated, another to deprive them of their rights. Doing so would be the imposition of your opinion and believes upon them. In no way is that compatible with the spirit of democracy. Or do we believe in the idea that a selective democracy can exist? Do we have a right to choose who is the demos of this demos-kratos?

Fact is that the demands and concerns of the rural population differ from that of the urban. Who should determine the party that has the right to rule and who should determine by what measure this right is attained? We do have historical precedent, the Communist party within the Soviet Union and even now the Communist party in China. They believed that the power should be held by a few who were enlightened. The party knows best. This was and is the ultimate form of arrogance in government. In much the same way, we’ve the urban aristocracy. What about in Thailand? The removal of Thaksin was supported and engineered by the urban population without the support of the majority of the population that lives in rural areas.

Populist measures ? Have been in practice since the beginning of human government. Bread and Circuses, first popularized in Satire X of Juvenal. To give an acceptable veneer to the masses. By and large, we know that the vox populi is not always the best. The fact that most people agree to choose government over anarchy is that we realize that the vox populi is not always consistent and doesn’t always make the best decision. This is due to the fact that the populi has to feed themselves and get on with daily life. So we think it a safer bet that we’ve someone who can take care of our interests at the top. This returns to the original problem of a divided populi of which different sectors have different needs and wants in life.

A reminder, not all education is equal. The worse type of education is the type that makes you think you know everything (exactly what is taught in Malaysian Unis) . The best type is summed up by the phrase “The wisest person knows that he knows nothing.” In other words, an educated person is always open to new debate and synthesis of ideas. See two sides of the coin to everything.

Propose a solution to the problem.

How do we handle this? Education of the correct type, education which more important than imparting facts, imparts a thought process, that teaches to make the division between cause and effect, that encourages curiousity.

Education reform. Languages in which it is taught is not the ultimate barrier. The symbol is changeable, the intent is not. Misinterpretation is the danger to be guarded against.

• Single unified language of education. Reduce chances for misinterpretation. Reduce differences between sections of society in communication. Different languages only serve to reinforce classes and restrict social mobility.
• Revision to the history syllabus. No longer the dead subjects which serve no purpose but to glorify now insignificant actions but rather the intercourse between nations, the motivations for these actions and a discussion of the implications of history. It is not something which is static for the lessons that history teaches are many. Remember there is more to be learnt from our mistakes than our successes.
• Teaching of economics. Economics examines the allocation of scarce resources among competing needs and wants. Defined too as study of the means by which society uses human and natural resources in the pursuit of human welfare. As such, economics extends beyond the boundaries of a single organisation and is inextricably linked to both the environmental and social elements of sustainable development.
• Ethical training at secondary level. Exposure at an early age ensures the development of interest and also helps in the development of critical thought processes able to comprehend multiple factors and perform weighted selection.

How To : Go for an 8am class the morning after a bottle of premium baccardi a bottle of anejo tequila at 2am the night before

*also for the same assignment

 

Throw in four guys with an 8am class. Ah! What would university life be without experience(s) like that?

Of course, some sensible souls out there are going to point out that a simple solution to the matter would be to abstain from the alcohol. Certainly, it will save you the feeling of your head thumping like it's about to explode, a stomach that will feels like a washing machine, and the awful feeling that you mopped the floor with your tongue. However, these people are unenlightened ones who do not realize that for some of us, excluding the alcohol is just not an option. To these sensible ones, please stop reading now, and go back to drinking your chocolate milk.

Thank you.

 

Welcome, true believers.

I, am here today in the spirit of the kudi brotherhood to show you the way to enlightenment. Learn well and I will teach you much. You will learn to turn the jackhammer thudding in your skulls to the sweet singing of birds of paradise, bring peace to the churning of your foaming bellies and the feeling of having mopped the toilet floor to the sweetness of a light champagne.

If you believed that, sorry dude, you got the wrong messiah, I'm no miracle worker.

Let's set a more realistic target eh. Say, surviving the experience and making it for that 8am class without collapsing on the way to class or puking in the lecture hall ( Not cool dude. Not cool. ). This is important to reduce the chances of you, the true believer, getting barred for less than 75% attendance. Of course, I would never recommend skipping classes just for alcohol. If you skip classes and graduate slower, you the true believer will start working later. This is a bad thing because without working and earning your own money, you will never be able to taste the true glories of the real liquors.

As we've been taught as good engineering students, we will first define the problem. Then we will explore the underlying factors and then propose the solution.

You may choose to understand this great work as a whole, or to do as most MMU students normally do, to memorize this formula for success and just regurgitate it. Unlike the EHM3066 mid term exam, memorizing this formula is highly likely to get you through to the class.

The wise sages of the ages have a name for these symptoms caused by ingestion of too much of a good thing. It is called "Veisalgia." Okay, obviously the dude who coined this term was himself drunk. To those of us who are sober at this point, we call it by a rather more pronounceable term, "the Hangover".

What is the Hangover?

In short it's your body screaming at you for poisoning it very very loudly. Alcohol is actually a fuel just like petrol. Burn petrol and you get by products such as CO2 and small icky black particles from the impurities in it. When you drink alcohol, your body burns it and produces a whole bunch of by products. Metabolized alcohol produces acetaldehyde, a nasty little poison that your body does not like. In addition, many alcohols have impurities called "congeners" which are also toxic. Alcohol itself also has a diuretic effect which means your body is going to be dehydrated. This is bad because there is even less fluid in your body to dilute the poison's effects. Along with all that water flowing out of your body will also be all those nice vitamins that are water soluble such as vitamin A, vitamin B and vitamin C. Alcohol in it's raw form is a depressant drug and when you have a hangover, it's actually like a drug overdose which makes the road to the CLC feel like the road to hell.

Dealing with the Hangover

We see now that there are 3 things to handle,

1. Get rid of all that acetaldehyde and congener by products
   
2. Replenish all the good stuff that your body needs, water and vitamins
   
3. Reduce the depressant effect on your brain
   

The bad news is, there is no way to directly stop the effects of the alcohol on your system until it has been excreted.

The following are some ways we can deal with these effects.

1. Choose your alcohol – Dark liquors contain higher amounts of congeners. This means more poison for your body to deal with. Vodka or gin have less of these.
   
2. Modulate alcohol intake – Drink alcohol yes, but drink water or juices too.
   
3. Bananas – Eat a few or put them in a banana milkshake with honey. Bananas are rich in electrolytes, magnesium, potassium and fructose all of which your body has lost. Additionally the bananas will sooth the stomach while the honey is also rich in sugars, especially fructose. Fructose here has the additional advantage of helping your body metabolize the alcohol faster thereby shortening your suffering.
   
4. Activated charcoal – This will help to absorb the toxic impurities in the alcohol which worsen the effects. Don't do this too often because activated charcoal absorbs just about everything including all the good stuff in your body.
   
5. Rehydrate – Drink lots of juice, slightly acidic juices work best. 100 Plus or other isotonic drinks work well too. Tomato juice is excellent so is orange or lemon. Again these contain fructose and other sugars along with replenishing bodily fluids.
   
6. Raw cabbage – Eat some raw cabbage leaves. This helps to relieve the headache.
   
7. Probiotic pills (good bacteria) – Helps your stomach to repopulate with good bacteria. Reduces the churning later on
   
8. Berocco tablets – A vitamin supplement that dissolves in water to release vitamin B. This is abit to hard to find in Malaysia, but you can substitute it with any vitamin B and C supplement.
   
9. A SINGE Bloody Mary – A little bit of alcohol to sooth the withdrawal symptoms along with tomato juice in it which does all the good stuff mentioned earlier. Don't go overboard with this treatment however, or you won't just not get better. You will get worse.
   

This then is the way to successfully make it to the 8am class. Drink up kudis! Of course don't forget to set your alarm clocks. LOL.

 

Malaysia, where to now?

Note: This post was actually written for an assignment. We all had to come up with a bunch of blog posts and this was mine.

“To look backward for a while is to refresh the eye, to restore it, and to render it the more fit for its prime function of looking forward.”

Mark these words. The world is changing. For the first time in living memory, the Pax Americana hangs in the balance. For the first time in post world war history, a nation has emerged with the geographical depth, the social cohesion and the economic strength to challenge the established superpower of our time.* The Chinese dragon has twisted communism beyond recognition and implemented the semblance of a market economy. The Russian bear awakens. Islamic civilization is beginning to stir. At the same time, the world is waking up to a reality that our environment is damaged, that the mother earth can no longer take the damage we throw at her. International standards of conduct are now no longer held as sacrosanct. These are dangerous times.

Amidst all this chaos, a tiny country in South East Asia stands at a fork in the path. Malaysia too is a nation facing a troubled teenage hood. Too small and too few in number to tilt the global power balance, Malaysia is in most things a decision taker and not a decision maker. [ Lets talk geopolitical realities eh, not sentimental word pictures. ]

Where are we heading?

I find that a question hard to answer in concrete terms. I find it hard to answer it in any form, because honestly, I have no idea where this nation is heading too.

A general election looms on the horizon, this should be a time when people are all geared up to choose where the nation is going too in the next five years. Yet, tell me honestly, do you know where the government plans to take the country in five years? Do you know where the opposition plans to take the country in five years?

One thing which is so obviously missing from the campaigning is any sort of gameplan for the country. Campaigning in our country plays along racial lines, on racial issues, on short term effects. They tell us they’re going to make us rich and prosperous. But they never tell us how. I suspect part of the reason is that they’ve no idea how either. It just sounds really good.

A simple answer would be that our political leaders are bankrupt of ideas. Get over it already opposition. The reason why you’re not in power is not just because media coverage is unfair etc etc, but plainly because you don’t have the answers to the questions that face this nation. You can’t answer the simple question of where should Malaysia be heading. How can a thinking rational person support you based on the hope that because you’ve made so much noise about what you think is wrong, that you then deserve to rule the country? We know what’s wrong, what we need is solutions, not an echo in our ears.

As for the government. Yes, the ruling front has a great track record. Malaysia has prospered greatly since independence. There is a difference between then and now though. Our forefathers had vision. They knew what was needed to forge the way forward. There was a spirit burning that we were all brothers, that it didn’t matter so much that we came from different races, that we had different religions. Our forefathers were no idiots. They didn’t try to hide that there were racial differences or to gloss over them. But they knew that no matter whether one was indian or chinese or malay, our sweat and blood are the same colour. And when it got down to putting those drops of sweat and blood into forging a path forward for our country, the strength of that torrent was what mattered. The strength of that river of blood and sweat laid the foundation for the progress we have seen. Answer me honestly, does our current government dare admit that all sections of the population are equally deserving, and play important roles in the development of this country? Because as long as they fail to recognize this, there can be no step forward as a unified nation.

To demonstrate. Let’s take a basic question, where is our economy heading? In the brief years that I’ve been around, I’ve variously seen the government try to turn Malaysia into a

1. Knowledge Economy
2. Biotechnology Hub
3. Hub of Higher Learning
4. South-east Asian Financial Center

Last I heard, the bio technology city in Putrajaya is still a bunch of uninhabited buildings. As for our National Universities, they’ve almost fallen out of the Times Higher Education ratings. Our South-east Asian Financial Center plan doesn’t seem to have brought in large numbers of traders and our knowledge economy is still stuck in a rut because the kids who should be getting this knowledge can’t use the computer labs for fear it might collapse their heads.

You see, we need to stop talking about unity and racial harmony. Start walking it. Stop believing that you’ve a God given right to the land. No one does. A steward of the house has to take care of the house well or else the master of the house comes in and throws him to the darkness outside. Get that out of the way and perhaps we can then start pointing our country in the right direction. But that’s your choice.

There is no vision, there is no passion. We’re a nation without a soul. We choose to spend our time bickering amongst ourselves, we want to split ourselves by race and we all want to claim our own race as superior to all others. And we do all these, in that little country called Malaysia. We all want to be “jaguh” tapi, jaguh kampung lah tu. Kampung to keci lagi. And while we’re so preoccupied being first in our own kampung, we don’t realise that our kampung has been left years behind by the world.

A pity isn’t it?

Can you love a country, but hate the nation? I can.