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.....

Rains and the hidden realities

The rains in Penang, they are refreshing. Like a gigantic car wash, they give the atmosphere over Penang a big spring cleaning........washing away all the small particulates in the air that make up the haze...that hovers over the island and much of the country.

Clean air and not the smell of smoke, of something burning in the air. Gone are the irritation to the nostrils and the eyes. Yes I can see clearly now, and depending on where I gaze, I can see natural landscapes pockmarked by unnatural scars made by men to fatten their pockets.

I don't know which is worse, to see the hills of Penang marred unnaturally by men in their homage to mammon; or to have it hidden by the haze caused by people across the straits in their worship to the same god....

Maybe clear blue skies not filtered by smoke, where the verdant hills gleam, interupted by the red lateritic earth exposed by builders, is the better alternative. Seeing realities as it is.....not hidden but well exposed......a window to our souls and our hearts....

Trees, plants and flowers of Penang

Trees, plants and flowers soften up the urban landscapes......like balm to my soul and salve to my eyes....they ease away the toils and smoothen the rough edges of a crowded urban city.....

Their shapes and colours...unplanned yet created with natural symmetry...beguiling...subdueing the angry spirits arising from bruises suffered when people and thoughts collide

The peace they evoke....feelings that lay buried...crushed by the onslaught of daily living...foraging for crumbs that the system throw out to feed the hungry masses.....forgotten for awhile, but awaken.....as I sit and feed my eyes on God's creation.....

Reminded of His grace and tender mercies....I rest,.....assured of His love I find strength to move on and live for another day.......

Looking for a CEO/General/Dictator to run Penang's Public Transport System...

The Penang State Government is looking for a CEO to run the state's public transport system....or someone to spend the RM50 million loan they got from the Feds.....Who will they get??? ...that's the RM50 million question????

Someone with the experience and record to run a successful public transport system? To begin with...there's not much of a system in Penang.....as I said we had a system for much of the fifties and even up to the mid 80's...then wiser folks killed it....all in the name of ??????

We designed our cities for cars....& then kill the public transport by refusing to allow the operators to increase their fares when fuel costs, spare parts and cost of labour skyrocketed...all in the name of protecting joe public....we begin to "educate" joe public to expect pay peanuts for good services, we all love free rides....yet as Milton Friedman says "there's no such thing as free lunch".......in end, joe public have to end up paying more for transport because he has to buy a car that he only uses for about less than 10% of its life span...spending most of its time in car parks either at home or at the office or factory.....unless of course he moonlights as a taxi sapu.....that is the price we pay because the public transport system had broken down....

Why control fares?.....why control taxi licences....let there be no barriers to entry...& let the market dictate the fares people pay... free market...except to control ciminals or pyschopaths or peadophiles from becoming taxi drivers...anyone who wants to get a tax licence gets one...no renting...no special permits for special people.....no rent seeking opportunities....c whether we can get a good service... free market always....gives better services....its only when politicians come in and temper them all in the name of protecting joe public...that we get clobbered....remember wise man of old have this to say about governments..."a good government governs least..."

Well good luck to whoever the state appoints as a CEO....tough assignment ....thankless task...hopes the pay is good.

The haze.....but for the miraculous rain....

Yesterday the haze was pretty bad.....the visibilty was probably less than 50 m......the sky was already quite dark by 5.00 pm yesterday...and you literally smelled smoke or something burning....that's how bad it was.....pity the asthma sufferers and ppl with chronic respiratory problems....

i prayed for God to send the rain....and it came this morning....around 7.00 am...lasted till 10.00 am.....the rain send the haze away and clean up the mess that our greed created...burning the jungle to make way for oil palm....sustainable oil palm.....what a misnomer....

Homeless in Georgetown

The Komtar in Georgetown is a home for the homeless in Pg. Every morning along Pg road just opposite the Ong Kongsi, you will see a group (maybe 7 or 8) elderly Chinese man and woman sitting around. They have not come to shop because the shops are still closed nor come to have their breakfast in the coffee shops....bec they have just open and are getting ready for the office crowds.....

They are the homeless residents of komtar.....pg's tallest building.....at night they would sleep along komtar's corridors along prangin road..where the ground floor of the Departmental Store Super Komtar used to be....

I wonder whether any of our wakil rakyat ....people's represantative knows....it reminds me of many songs....the streets of london....an old lady carrying her whole world in two carrier bags or the song another day in paradise

We can do anything.... feed them.....find them a place to sleep.....its a good thing we don't have winters....or they will be frozen to death...as winter takes its toil....

Dough-nut effect - the hollowing out of Georgetown

The city of Georgetown is hollowing out.....as more of its residents moved out of its center.....it will become like a dough-nut....with nothing in its center....

Every nite just after 9.00 pm....the city is a ghost town except for some sections such as the UPR (Upper Penang Road for the uninitiated)...the city is dead as a dodo.....as most of the happenings are located on the fringes of the city in places like the gurney and pulau tikus and bayan bahru....

One of the consequence of this dough-nut effect can be felt in the morning. The formerly busy markets of penang, like chowraster, campbell street, kuantan road markets are dying a slow death.....it is so "uncrowded" compared to their hey days in the 60's and 70's.....some of the best and cheapest hawker foods are found there....

I am lamenting the closing of my favourite malaysian pan cake store at Anson road market....the store owner can make enough to make it worth his while to continue his business....so is my favourite curry mai fun man.....his curry laksa is one of the best...very subdued and yet aromatic and delicious and yummy....he complains that he can even sell more than 5 katis about 3 kgs of mee per day...he too will be looking for another place to ply his trade.....how sad.....that's progress

Yup, i am fed up, with progress....

The very rude drivers of penang

There is a sub-species of drivers in Penang that are impatient and and will do anything to beat the queue at road junctions and traffic lights.

They just want to go first, and to wait for the lights to turn green or for other drivers to turn is just too much for them.....they behave as if they are holding on to their urine or shit and have to rush to the nearest toilet or all hell will break loose and they will literally burst.....

These drivers break all traffic rules and norms of courtesy.....it shows their character...who they are .... is displayed for all to see....badly brought up and disrespectful, selfish and destined for destruction.....

Rain rain go away

The rains never seems to stop.......as i can recall the rain in Pg usually starts around March-April during the inter-monsoon months. Then it eases off by the beginning of June, until after August, it starts again, unleashing its fullest onslaught around mid-September and then easing off again towards the end of October. By the mid-December, the dry season starts and ends with the onset of early april showers, the next year.....

2006 seems to be an exceptional year....the drought was not as pronounced nor was it as prolonged.....april showers actually came in early March, then it left us for a short while...but it never seems to go away....it continues....on and off....weird....

Somethings going awry....the rain pattern may be out kilter......global warming perhaps.....

Penang - Public Transport a major flop

Knew all along that the revamped transport system would failed miserably. They changed nothing......as the saying goes....our system is perfectly designed to produce the results we are getting.....if the State governement or rather the Federal Government run CLVB did not changed anything.....how can the system produce different results.....

Madness or insanity is defined as doing the same thing and expecting different results.....

Sigh.....gets more depressing with each passing day......thats why i stopped blogging about penang......there is not much positive things to write....phew....

Is the second bridge really neccessary?

It was reported that the ADUN for Sg. Dua raised the issue of the second bridge, saying that it should not be build as it would lead to more congestion in Penang. Instead the ADUN for Sg. Dua suggested that the Pg bridge be expanded and that the proposed monorail system be expanded to include Seberang Perai and that both the monorails systems in the mainland and the island should be linked. In this way congestion be reduced and public transport be given a boost. Syabas....its been a long time since an ADUN has suggested something against conventional thinking but a great and good idea nevertheless.

However, I am truly disappointed with the knee jerk response of of ADUN for Batu Uban, saying not building the second bridge will not solve the congestion problem on the island.....of course it will not solve the problem.....BUT IT WILL DISCOURAGE VEHICLES FROM THE MAINLAND TO COME TO THE ISLAND & THEREFORE KEEP THE CONGESTION PROBLEM FROM BECOMING A EVEN BIGGER PROBLEM. It just like saying that if you don't add inflammable liquid or fuel into fire will not put out the fire but it will stop the fire from getting even worse.....CAN'T THEY THINK OUT OF THE BOX.....PUBLIC TRANSPORT NOT ANOTHER BRIDGE TO ALLOW MORE CARS TO CLOG UP THE ROADS IN THE ISLAND...SOON WE BE BREATHING IN FUMES FROM MOTOR EXHAUST THAT'S ALL....

Urban renewal or development.....Jelutong west

The area lying between Perak Road and Jelutong Road is slowly turning from a squatter zone into a new urban area. In the recent past this place was so notorious for its gangsters and communists.

In the fifties and sixties, it was the stronghold of the Labour Party.....the party was so infiltrated by the communists and chinese chauvinists that riots would should just explode from this place.....

This place is also the happening place for illegal gambling and drugs. In 1970s, when the communists were eventually hounded out of this place....the gangsters took over the turf.



This was also the stronghold of DAP stalwart, Mr. Karpal Singh until 1999 election when DAP stupidly joined PAS in a pact to unseat BN.....all their Chinese deserted them......Chinese just don't trust the Islamists, no matter what they proclaim during the elections.......

Police would tread warily here.....almost like the walled city of kowloon in Hong Kong.....a no man's land....

But development and urban renewal has finally arrived, nice shops with trees planted along its thoroughfares..... I hope the City Council will keep it safe and clean and not let it turn into a slum.....

Food Hawkers in Penang - a catalyst for urban renewal??

The area around Swatow lane and Nagore road is experiencing a renaissance of sorts. The old houses along nagore road had been recetly renovated and turned into rows of offices, retail and food outlets.

After the New World Park closed down in the 1970's, the place around these roads slowly went downhill except for the ice kacang stall, that was there. Even though New World Park had closed, customers continued to stream in bcause of the ice kacang........later on that attracted other food vendors who set up their stores to take advantage of the 'anchor' hawker store...the Swatow lane ice kacang man.....

For over 30 years, the ice kacang man thrived.....but for reasons best known to himself, he never took advantage of his position to buy or lease the property/house outside which his hawker store stood....in fact the owner of the property opened up a coffee shop in the 1980's and they probabaly quarreled and the ice kacang was banned from "entering" the coffee shop although it remained outside the shop...

But about a few years back, someone else took over the coffee shop and got it renovated and brought in a new set of stores to sell food in the shop including a store that sells ice kacang (to 'fool' outstation people who heard of the ice kacang but don't know where the store is)....the original Swatow lane ice kacang man had to move across the road......

But the human traffic it attracts everyday from 11.00 am to 5.00 pm is quite substantial.....this lead to property owners taking advantage and renovating those rent control houses and putting them up for lease as restaurants and offices....

Other examples of hawkers being catalysts of urban renewal is along Cintra Street (lesser extent) and New Lane......