No more PORR..so what's the fuss..I thot you were against it...

Politicians...ha, they are all the same. Lim Guan Eng & all DAPers should be rejoicing that PORR is scrapped....when they were in the opposition they were so dead against it. Now they are the Government, they are fuming because PORR had been scrapped.

Maybe, now they see that maybe without PORR and the Monorail, Penang's economy may be headed for a recession....it is a real possibility...with everybody expecting a global recession to hit us because of a perfect storm created by a confluence of events...the US sub-prime meltdown and the skyrocketing oil prices.....

Talking and screaming from the sidelines seems easy enough....now it is different when you have to perform...nice speeches don't bring home the bacon...

Good luck...

New thinking for Pg's age old problem - congested roads

Should we lament the loss of two projects in Pg........ from monorail to nomorerail & porr or porrah to most Penangites....

While abandoning PORR is most welcome.....giving us a nomorerail system in place of the monorail is a big disappointment..... A GOOD PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM IS WHAT PENANG DESPERATELY NEEDS.....

Penang does not have the capacity to contain more cars...(with limited land available and we treasure our green spaces and do no want to turn them into parking lots...where one day we might just have to look for trees in a tree museum....) Public transport is the most environmentally friendly solution to our woes.....

Can our new state Government come up with a Bold, New and Innovative Master Plan to overcome this setback dealt to them by the BN Fed Government?

Is our new PR Government up to it? ..... From what we can see in Tanjong Bungah Zoning issue.....probably not???

If they can, they will probably stay in Government for a long time....

New thinking..... from quotas for cars...peak hours...non-peak hours.... buses....cycle lanes.....water taxis...from batu kawan to bayan baru.....

Benefits of higher fuel prices

Obviously the main benefits of the higher fuel prices is "health". We all should be getting healthier... from the forced physical exertions we have to take...ie. we walk more because prices of fuel has make it more prudent for us to reduce the usage of cars especially for short distances....

More physical exertions means we get to exercise our hearts by walking more....Secondly the combined effects of the reduction in the usage of of our cars means less air pollution and smog...surely this could only bring better air, less asthmatic attacks, coughs and colds and sore throats...the reduction in the contaminants in the air...less cancer????

Besides better health....we would have less CO2...this translates to less global warming..every little bit helps...

Hooray for costlier fuels...

Penang - Walks

One of the joys of living in Penang is the numerous walking trails that we have here. We can walk to Penang Hill or rather hike there via the different trails available. One thing for sure, no matter what trails one takes one is sure to have pleasant views and most important of all, lots of work outs and buckets of sweat.

For the more adventurous the National Park that starts at Telok Bahang beckons. Here, one enters into a world, "millions" of years away from the hustle and bustle of the "normal" Penang we are so accustomed to. Situated at the North-western corner of the island, isolated from the rest of the island, this Park is a haven for those who seek the tranquility that emanates from Nature. Listening to rustle of leaves high up above the tree-tops and the bristling streams, where crystal clear water flows down and through stones...takes you to a zen like trance.....at peace with the world....

Yes, walks are not only good for your physical being but also nourishes the spirit...as you let nature, its sights and sounds lead you and take you to the essence of life, of being connected....as one with nature....

You get all that in your morning walks...

Laos - land of the gar fish

I met this fish in a floating restaurant in Laos. Just north of Vienchang, there are floating restaurants on one of the tributaries of the Mekong river.

The fish actually looks like a dwarf crocodile......with an extended mouth. it must be a very ancient fish that did not eveolved into a crocodile????? Does not make sense.....neither do evolution makes sense to me...

Laos......land of a thousand elephants

Sunset over the Mekong River. Picture taken in Vienchang or Vientianne the capital of Laos.

Relatively unspoilt, like Thailand in the fifties....people still cling on to their traditional customs....

People here have a polite and gentle culture.....greet you with "Sabai dee" instead of "Sawadee karp"....

Will be going to this land more often as we contemplate setting up a business there......

Lembu punya susu sapi punya nama.....

Its hilarious, reading about the spat between DAP & Gerakan over who is responsible in bringing the recent investments into Penang....

Of course, Lim Guan Eng tries to "hint" (to be fair he did not claimed he was solely responsible for bring those investments in but his underlings trying to claim all the credit) of the link between him & the investments......that got the Gerakan real upset....

But really the Pg DAP government got better things to do...anybody who knows how foreigners or for that matter even locals make investment decisions...know that it is usually a long drawn out affair...you do not make those decisions in month or two...it takes months and sometimes even years....

Hey, both of you DAP & Gerakan guys stop it. We Penangites are not stupid ok...we know how and who to give credit to.

Get on with the real work....the challenge for DAP is how to get Penang GDP growing in the midst of an impending slowdown in the world economy...how to attract FDI in at lest favourable climate...

It is easier criticize than to take action.....I wonder "how would Jeff Ooi advice the CM" on the Motorola investment that Jeff so savagely attacked Koh Tsu Koon....Would he still call it"bribery"...would he sacrificed the wellbeing of people in Penang so that he can be "politically correct"...

What would his advise be to Lim Guan Eng?

Penang - from the air

Thirty-five thousand feet from the air, one can see Georgetown or Tanjong and Butterworth or Bagan.

The inhabited places on the island is so "small" in size compared to the huge swathes of green behind it.

PKR-DAP Government in Penang

About 17 months ago, back in 30th & 31st January 2007, I was pondering about what the consequences would be if the Opposition was to take over Penang.....would the people in Penang suffer as a consequence.....Now that this has become a reality not only for Pg but Perak, S'gor, FT, Kedah & Kelantan.....collectively these states account for 57% of the country's GDP......

Will the federal BN government be the Government of all Malaysia, or just the government of the states where they are in control...thats the RM500 billion question?

How would the civil servants react? How are they are reacting now? Will they remain "the obedient servants or defiant servants"? Having serve just one party for almost 50 years (Pg during the short time when Gerakan was in the opposition)...can the civil servants learn to serve the new master?

Unlike, the former Unfederated Malay States, the former Straits Settlement and Federated Malay States do not have their own state civil service.....their civil servants come from a pool of governemnt officers who are dependent on the JPA & the KSN for the advancement in their careers.....and not on the respective MBs or CM.....how then, can the CM or MB "ensure" that these "civil servants" remain obedient and not defiant....

Not that easy....having serve as a Forest Officer i.e. a Federal Officer seconded to the state...I know what it is to serve two masters.....a matter which the Lord Jesus Christ had strongly advised his disciples from doing....as Jesus said..."no man can please two masters" ......
Interesting.....

It has been more than a year since my last entry

Yeah, it has been more than one year since i last blogged.....i sort of lost steam and interest....in between that time...lots of things had happened...the 8th March Political Tsunami had turned the politics of malaysia...more and more like the politics of thailand & philippines....

We seen how our TDM has morphed back into the DR. MAHATHIR...the Malay Ultra of the 1960's...it seems like he was retrofitted for action as the marginalised outsider he was in the 1960's.....

What a shame...instead of leaving behind a legacy albeit a tainted one, but a still a 'legacy' which the opposition MP for Jelutong admitted was 80% good...(don't know about that...but I'm willing to concede he did left more good than bad)....but with his "race baiting" .....had left him looking like kucing kurap politician that indulges in the politics of the gutter....

Instead of remembering him, as a PM who inspired Malaysians to be Malaysians, alas what we have fresh in our minds were his fear mongering.....

What a shame.....and how sad.....

Heritage Street....Beach Street...# 1

The old Wall Street of Pg, Beach Street, is getting back its old looks. The looks that was hers in 1930's, I presume, before all the facades were put up.....but now after 50 years of rent control with its repeal, some owners are bringing back its old looks....which is gives it real character..some photos will be coming ....watch out for this space...a picture is worth a thousand words...

Defending the 1957 constitution.....

In a talk organised by ASLI, Raja Nazrin, the Raja Muda of Perak, defined the 7 steps towards building a sense of belonging and common destiny binding all Malaysians of all races, religions and origins together in a common purpose....

The first step is to defend the integrity of the Federal Constitution, Rukunnegara and Vision 2020....of these the first is particularly important.

Yet, today many in the legal fraternity believes that our High Court Judges are abdicating their role as defenders of the constitution because of their reluctance to to be involved when there appears to be an overlap in the jurisdiction of the syariah & civil law as in the case of Moorthy & now in Subashini case.

Appears to be our judges are behaving like Pakistani judges now.....or rather our justice system have gone the Pakistani way.....hope not, it may lead to the complete breakdown of law & order....& the beginning of the end for malaysia....

Why Chinese parents shun national schools

While there is no denying that alot of Chinese parents are attracted positively to Chinese schools, there are many (particularly those who had been educated in the English medium schools of the past), find that they are push to the Chinese schools because the alternative is even worse.....for many of them it is a Hobson's choice....

Chinese Schools may grab headlines of brilliant students...the sad truth is that many hide their average and poor students...worse many discouraged them from attending their school so that the school's brilliant academic record will not be tarnished....thats why the dropout rate amongst chinese schools is very high ....almost 25% of the students who start off in std one, do not make it to form 5.....that's how great

So if your children are not academically inclined or if he is creative or likes to dream, and watch the clouds above form beautiful butterflies and dinosaurs...Chinese schools are definitely not for your kids....the system there will kill your children's love for education and books, his imagination...and the creativity and curiosity in them

But why national schools are not attractive to Chinese parents.....here we are dealing with the perceptions, not facts, but these perceptions determined the choices of the parents and like the PEPSI blind tests that showed that although the majority like the taste of PEPSI, yet when it comes to buying...Coke wins hands down...ie the perception that COKE tastes better than PEPSI determines the buying decision...SO IT IS WITH CHINESE PARENTS... the National School suxs.....period

Why???, the belief that the schools lacks discipline, the teachers lack commitment, and that the agenda of the school is to promote islamic beliefs rather than to educate and prepare their children for the future and for life....

So parents like me, who do not like the Chinese school system but are apprehensive about the national school system....are caught between a rock and a hard place....yup....better international schools if we can afford them...

Disunity amongs teenagers...and non Malays get the blame....

Everytime the issue of disunity that arises in the country the non-Malays get the blame...according to some government official who attributed the disunity to children going to vernacular schools...

Again an easy target and knee jerk reaction......instead of looking at the reasons why non-Malays are deserting the national schools.......because during my time in the 1960's and 70's the vernacular schools were actually growing smaller...but changes in the medium of instruction in the English medium schools led to even non _Mandarin speaking chinese (english educated parents ) to send their children to vernacular schools...because they knew the quality of teaching had deteriorated....no hope and no future...dead end...no language skills just like the current pool of unemployable graduates.....

Attending a High Court auction

Today was the first time I attended an auction in Malaysia...it is very interesting as they was much interest in the property. However, the court should exert some discipline on some of the regulars....there is one chinese man, apparently a regular, who started to make all the "sour grapes' comments when he failed in his bid...I saw him twice being outbidded....the moment he was out bidded he tried to get the crowd to follow him out of the room even though the auction was still going on...

I believed the court should bar him from all future auctions until and unless he starts to behave....otherwise the dignity of the court will be held in comtempt by the likes of him...

Doing a search on houses put up for sale at the land office

The land office in penang is pretty efficient for doin a search on landed properties in Penang....however there is a caveat for this statement...you must know the grant number , the lot number, the daerah and the mukim or seksyen.....otherwise its no go....how many people you wonder will know all this....most of us go by addresses and thats all...sure push us a bit harder, maybe we know whether it is Georgetown, or Bayan Bahru...district or daerah...most Penangites would not have a clue on which Daerah or district you are in let alone mukim or section....

Maybe the state goverment should think of something to relate all addresses to a database instead of this cumbersome way to go and get this info....

Anyway anybody know the names of the districts in the whole of Penang State.....9there are five I'm told--- 2 on the island & three on the mainland)....

Location upgraded...but ice kacang quality heads downwards...

The popular hawker stores at Swatow Lane have found new homes...in a newly constructed hawker center built on the site of the old "New World Park"....

The facilities are new, clean and certainly better then the days of yore....but unfortunately I think, the quality of the food had gone down in an inverse proportion to the quality of the premises....

Maybe ice kacang was never meant to be savoured under nice conditions but under the shade of an angsana or rain tree....

Views of the bridge from Queensbay Mall

The scene from the southern side of the bridge is quite panoramic....with pulau Jerejak at the side and the bridge spanning across two land mass is quite stunning...and more so if there is a small yatch steaming pass....

Pulau jerejak located temptingly near, just across a little stretch of sea invites us to savour its idyllic beaches and calm seas...the forested hills just behind it is quite pristine...one can see the meranti and seraya trees with its majestic crowns like cauliflower tops nestles just above the hills...and it is hard to imagine that just lying across the stretch of sea are the Intels and AMD and Dells producing the 21st century tools of which we acannot live without..yet just across the tiny stretch is a pristine jungle still unchanged for hundreds if not thousands of years...

Lost my wallet...but found hope in Malaysia

When I discovered I had lost my wallet, a sudden anguish comes piercing in my heart...I am not pining for the money lost but for the pain and agony that I thot awaits me when I go to the Government Departments to get a new set of documents.....

Well, the first thing one does with the loss of a wallet is you start ringing up the banks to inform them that your ATM and Credits card's lost....well HSBC scores high in this category compared to the one handling my problems at CIMB....compared to the HSBC guy, the CIMB person rates as one of the members of the Keystone Cops or an offspring of one of the 3 stooges, totally incompetent.....so hurrah for the world's local bank...CIMB have along way to go to match HSBC....

The next morning, the first thing I did was to make a police report....the Corporal (policewoman) manning the counter at the Patani road police station did the report efficiently...ask me a few questions on where I lost it...and in a matter of minutes, got my report....no sweat...syabas....

then its off to the National Registration Dept...and surprise surprise took me less than 40 minutes to get my temporary IC and in about 3 weeks time my new MyCard..wow...good no hassle service...again syabas..,..

i was full trepedition...when i have to approach JPj...my past experience tells me its a hell hole...frequented by touts and all sorts of low life trying to scrap a buck or two from the public...because of the incompetence of the JPJ system..BUT Lo and Behold...I managed to get my new drivers licence in less than 30 minutes...no kidding..

Well, all I can say is I lost my wallet but found faith in Malaysia

Penang-the 10th most livable city in Asia

Should be a better ranking, if we only can get our public transport right and enforce our hygiene and littering laws....