Malaysia ----in the club of doom....

Fear of the future.....the club of doom....& Malaysia.....can Malaysia spiralled downwards to become a failed state.....this a book I had just started to read by a Malaysian named Syed Ali....

His thesis is that unless Malaysian leaders start addressing these issues...we are slowly but surely ushered in to this "club of doom"....

Wow...very pessismistic and depressing....no escape???

Expanding the cake before there can be bigger slices of it to share...

Listening to the debates at recently concluded UMNO general assembly, really makes one sad..... are the malays so weak that despite being in control for so many years that they cannot make any headway economically.....or are they so dull that they no matter how much assistance they are given they cannot pull themselves out of the hole they had been confined in since their colonisation by the british....

I don't think this reality portrayed by UMNO is true....the Malays I know, the culture and arts they produced cannot be but be products of a people of sophistication and high intellect....

Its sad day, to see leaders emphasing the negative and pertuating a negative stereotype of their own people so that they can "milk" the system of more priveleges for themselves, family and friends....at the expense of their own community.....reminds me of the "do-gooders" parasites championing the "rights & privileges" of the aborigines in australia and the "harijans" of India.....
Using their own community as an excuse, the leaders begin to milk the priveleges for themselves....

Can the biggets party in Malaysia wean themselves of this milk...or will they suck it till the country grows weak.....and can no longer produce good quality milk in sufficient quantities....

Remember, how can you have bigger slices...if the cake is not growing any bigger or worse...it reverses itself and starts shrinking.....

Remember, Vietnam and the rest of the world are bitting at our heels....

As a Malaysian Chinese, I desperately want my Malay brothers to succeed!!!!. If my Malay brothers fail...then Malaysia cannot succeed!!! And if Malaysia fails.....then there is no way for the Malaysian Chinese to succeed....

My ability to succeed is tied to theirs...we are inticately interwoven.....we for better or worse...ar conjugal twins...tied together....with a shared destiny...like it or not....

Living in a make believe world.....Malaysia?

Are we blinded by the little success we had......depending on how we measure ourselves...we can be succeeful or failures.......

Measured by the standards of Bangladesh, Indonesia and Philippines...Malaysia would seemed to be successful...but measure ourselves by Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea...we far behind....Some even say Thailand has overtaken us....and last year Indonesia have more FDI than we did...for the first time in more than 3 decades.....are our leaders sleeping ???? .......soon may be Vietnam.....but then maybe Malaysia can be champions in the minor league with the likes of Bangladesh, Philippines and Nepal.... while those who were behind us before had leapfrogged over us into the Major or even the Champions League..while our leaders are like Nero fiddling around while Rome was burning......

Learning from China, where with tenacity and focus they managed to overcome great odds to build a nation for themselves..proud and strong..pragmatic and dilligent...no rent seeking......

China awakens, flattens the earth......lessons for us in Penang & Malaysia

To see China now and China three decades ago as it emerges from years of self-imposed isolation and the madness of trying to apply Mao's theories to the real world...is to see the unleashing of China's greatest assets....the great genius of its people, their diligence, their ability to toil under tremendous difficulties and its culture that withstood centuries of onslaught from all quarters including Western viruses of both capitalism and socialism.

This one man willing to resist Mao and the prevailing popular cause and got into trouble, not once but twice. He was dealt harsly and landed himself in labour camps, saw his children brutalised.......

Yet today, because of his belief that pragmatism and empiricism should prevailed, China is able to pull herself out of the deep ideological grave that she has dugged herself into after the 1949 revolution....SEEKING TRUTH FROM FACTS ....He urge his nation to abandon ideological positions and preconceptions, but rather to seek to use what works.....to see the world as it is rather than what it ought to be......By just doing that China was set free to develop to be what it is today.....

Can Malaysia and Penang, do that. Are we still trying to see the world as it ought rather what it is? Are we trying to mould the world to our ideological framework or whether we are willing to take the worl as it is and work out the best solution one step at a time....as our Chinese friends up north like to say......yi pu..yi pu ...lai ... one step at a time.....

Lessons we ignore to our peril........and slowly our rankings slip......further and further down...the world is flat and it gets flatter everyday.......only the quick and nimble survive.....We in Malaysia will learn soon enough that the world does not owe us a living.....

Stunned by China.......

Went to China the later part of September this year. Visited Quilin, Heipu (near Beihai) Kwangsi Province. This Province is borders Vietnam. Guilin, Heipu and Beihai are located in this province.

While Guilin is almost 600 km further inland, Heipu and Beihai (Heipu is only 28 km from Beihai and connected by a four lane expressway) is along the coast. Both these towns are located along the Gulf of Tonkin. During the Vietnam War, much of Vietnam's supplies pass through these little port, along the coasts into the fishing ports in Vietnam. Moving undetected thes fishing boats brought much needed supplies for the war effort.

Today peace reigns......like the times of the Han Dynasty, the Beihai Port was one of the silk road ports...much like Quanzhou in Fujien Province......And there are plans to build a USD80 billion petrochemical port and industrial estate here....

What is quite astounding is the growth of China.....Yes, you must have heard of it until you are probablu sick of hearing it again....China, the sleeping dragon has woken up....and the world trembles in trepediation or in anticpation.....

Within less than 3 decades......they had developed so much......it can only be described as stupendous....four lanes and sometimes 8-lane expressway criss-crosses the whole country......more & more later...BUT SEEING IS BELIEVING>>>>

In Penang and suffering from food poisoning.....

We need iron stomachs to live in Asia and devour our street food.....The food is definitely good but the hygiene part of it is questionable.....Must be the pasembour that I had taken.....12 hours later I started to purge.....

its about the longest duration from Saturday until today....although it has been much better yesterday....still I have been gentle on my alimenatry system...lest it rebels and sends me back to the toilets again.....

why is it we can't have cleaner food preparations, running water....proper toilets...education, awarness, training and constant reminders.....again and again....

Penang...what good can come out of it

This is taken from what Nathanael said about Nazareth when someone invited him to meet up with Jesus who is from Nazareth.....yes God mandated that Jesus should grow up in Nazareth.......so that scripture be fulfilled....so it was....Nazareth may be a border town with a Roman garrison located near it....thus acquiring for itself a rather unsavoury reputation.....

So Penang...what good can come out of it.....

Penang -Bogor, Indonesia.....compare & contrast

One thing that hit you when you are in Jakarta-Bogor, Java....is the mass of humanity and congestion. Yet despite such hellish conditions, the Javanese i met are a cheerful lot....maybe it is something in their water.....Well one thing for sure, there are not affected by haze.......the winds blow them from Sumatra and Kalimantan to us neighbours...Malaysia and Singapore....

I went to a place about 30 km from Bogor, called Suka Bumi...or literally Happy Earth. The photo is a floating restaurant near Happy Earth....the rafts are made of bamboo...like the rakits we find in Sungai Kelantan, Jelai and Pahang.....You order your food and when it arrives....the waiter will then paddle you away in the rakit...while you enjoy your lunch and scenery....No life jackets here....I wonder if there are any mishaps before....

Yes, Happy Earth......Suka Bumi...relax.....