Merdeka Post

Semperna menyambut Hari Kemerdekaan Malaysia yang ke 48,post ini akan dilakukan dalam Bahasa Melayu.

memang kini ramai yang menyatakan bahawa hari kemerdekaan tidak begitu bermakna bagi mereka. saya termasuk dalam golongan ini.

betulkah kita telah merdeka jika dari segi pemikiran, kita masih dijajah. legasi penjajahan British yang menjajah secara 'bahagi dan jajah' masih lagi diikuti tetapi dengan cara lebih halus.

masih lagi tiada kesamaan untuk semua walaupun pada saya ianya adalah satu punca negara ini ingin mendapatkan kemerdekaan.

nasib masyarakat luar bandar masih belum terbela. ini jelas apabila kita melalui kawasan kawasan luar bandar untuk sampai ke tempat peranginan bertaraf 5 bintang.

ada banyak lagi isu yang menyebabkan saya berfikir begitu.

tetapi pada diri saya isu yang besar ialah menukarkan Bahasa Malaysia ke Bahasa Melayu. apa salahnya Bahasa Malaysia yang berasakan Bahasa Melayu? mungkin ianya adalah untuk mengingatkan kaum-kaum lain yang kita 'menumpang kebahagiaan' di tanah kepunyaan orang Melayu ?

saya sudah menganggap negara ini negara saya dan jika diberi peluang untuk berhijrah ke mana-mana negara di dunia ini, saya tetap akan memilih Malaysia. negara ini memang aman dan orangnya memang pemurah dan baik hati. makanan di negara ini tiada bandingannya dan harganya berpatutan. banyak peluang pekerjaan jika seseorang itu tidak cerewek.

berapa generasi lagi patut orang bukan bumiputera berada di bumi bertuah ini sebelum diterima sebagai penetap dan bukannya orang asing.

jika hari itu muncul barulah Kemerdekaan it bermakna bagi saya

my new batu oai

after much consideration and holding it off, i finally bought a new pair of 'official' office shoe. the last i bought a pair of office shoes was .......maybe a good 4 years back.

for me, office shoe is any shoe that you can get away with when worn with office attire. i've been wearing boots and hiking shoes to work. but before you pengsan*, they're nice looking ones and with the dockers covering a better part of the mid cut, no one will notice it's not office shoes.

so far in my working life, this is the 2nd pair of official office shoe. the other is a wonderful Dr. Martin (which was my wedding shoe as well). if shoe company were to rely on me for their survival, they long time chap lap** already.

my other shoes are, a 8 eyelet Dr. Martin, a mid cut Timberland, a 6 eyelet Timberland hiking shoe and a pair of Hush Puppy loafers. that's it.

the Timerlands i like a lot as i use them when i go hiking and go climbing as well, basically any rough activities.

the Hush Puppy i use it when i'm in a hurry or when i don't feel like wearing socks - never without socks to work ok, so don't go pinching your nose or do some disgusting actions .

i've just worn this new shoe for 4 days and i like it very much already. the padding is excellent and i must say it looks good. i still feel i look a bit odd with this pair of shoe, it's so shiny and official looking.

yes, people who noticed have tried to step on it already. but they also know to actually step on it will mean a certain death !



* pengsan = faint
** chap lap = bankrupt

weekend

this morning i woke up and tell myself, there's not enough weekend to do all the stuff i want to do during the weekend.
one thing out of the ordinary and it'll be some time before catching up on the regular weekend schedule again. sometimes i wonder if it's worth it to do some unscheduled stuff and catch up on things during the week.

KFC/MNS/NTV7 field trip

Soft Shell Water Terrapin, the 'highlight' of the trip very difficult to spot.
can you find it ?

the mns officer was actually trying to show us some shrimps and disturb this guy instead. it quickly moved to a new spot but was tracked by many pairs of eyes therefore can be spotted even very well camouflage.
it was very flat and had a 'clear' colour. quite a long neck and is only the size of 3/4 of an adult sized palm
i'm sure we were as startled as it was. anyway we soon left it alone to hunt in the night.

holiday camp

now a days during school holidays there will be lots of company organising holiday camps. i guess we've sort of pick this up from the Americans. now we have leadership camp & what not camps for children. used to be, the only camps that were available were scout camps and red crescent camps.

guess as the population grow in their wealth and education, they see the benefit of these camps, not to mention getting rid of the children to learn some new skills (besides memorizing).

i'll be going for 1 tomorrow at FRIM. just a 2 days 1 night nature education camp. too bad it's not a camping camp,i think we'll be staying at a hostel there. will be doing some eco stuff.

will blog more about it monday-lah.

Copyright

Went for a copyright seminar for creative and multimedia industry guys this morning.
was terrible fashionably late. woke up today and thought it was still very early, then when sending son to kindy, it rained, and went to the wrong MSC building and spent 15 -20 min looking for the correct building.

people there must navigate with GPRS as there were no sign on the building to say it's housing the MSC innovation lab. i pass the building twice before finally asking the guard at the gate if i'm at the correct place. his answer - ini-lah dia ! disinilah !* like Duhhhh.... how come you don't know ??!

it was a good talk till the RIM guy came up. he was basically telling everyone there to make they pay royalty for all the audio/music tracks that's being used. they're the 'music police' as he puts it.

come on man... police the petaling street and take care of the illegal cd & mp3 cds first-lah. i'm sure they're a bigger problem.

came back to PJ also lost the way. i really kabur when it comes to directions. can't wait to get a car with one of those canggih** navigation systems.

psi - Malaysian always copy right the originals wad!

* this is the place, it's here !
** sophisticated

frog pix

this one they call golum because of the orange ring around the eye. it's really small. sometimes i wonder how they can spot it. this was the 'bonus' of the trip as we were frogging at riverside and this species (sorry cannot remember it's actual name) only comes near the stream/river when they're mating.

Frogging

went frogging last Sat nite at Bukit Gasing. frogging is actually to look for frog and try not to eat them but to see how many species you can find/identify. take photo of them ( make them go blind temporary, get them disoriented ) and leave them where you found them.

it was a good trip as we manage to find 4 which is not bad. i get to test out my powderful surefire in forest condition and test out a new small torchlight that i bought. ok i really don't have a thing for frogs but went to test power my torchlights. i actually brought along 5 of them( all small ones-lah !) just in case.
except for the incident below, i had an enjoyable time and will be looking forward to more frogging trip

the incident that marred my 1st frogging trip.
everyone had slapped on insect repellent before starting out but after a while this guy's doesn't seem to work so well. what does he do? he stops dead in his track pulls out his aerosol insect repellent and started spraying it on himself ! poor me who was right behind him had to duck, when he has sprayed enough on himself to keep even the humans away, he continued on like nothing happened. @#$%^*@#$%%

NATO

Thank you all the people in Klang Valley.
thanks for breathing in the haze, bringing the API down to a tolerable level.

i sincerely hope the gomen will do something about it since this time the haze is so bad that even the twin towers cannot be seen by tourist and flights have to be diverted to Singapore (losing us some tourist monie).

to the Indon gomen, please-lah, if the malaysian company in indonesia is at fault, fine them-lah. the responsibility of putting out the peat/ forest fire is yours. it's not the malaysian own companies. they're on your soil what. if we tell you guys what to do, you say we meddle in your local affairs and say we don't have the asean spirit. better change name to NATO (No Action,Talk Only)!

Call me Dr.Chief

The haze is so bad that !!
the Pantai Medical Center guys were here distributing surgical masks. don't play play, not the chu kia* one but the ones used at hospital. so now i'm wearing it and feeling very much like a doctor.

Just on the news, we're in a state of emergency ! wow ! imagine that.
no school, no work, stay at home and breath in more haze.

i think it's an excuse for the government not to take responsibility if anything happens to us. now a days i've got lots of conspiracy theory

if we fall sick at work we can blame it on the gomen, company etc. by being at home we cannot blame anyone. They will just say - you're at home what, why didn't take care of yourself properly.

anyway going home now, stay tunes to the news, the whole of Selangor might be in a state of emergency tomorrow.


chu kia - inferior quality

Haze so bad

I braved the haze to go out for lunch. thought it was bad but after lunch it was worse. later in the evening on tv a Dr. said this time the haze is even getting into homes.

that got me thinking, in the Bible it was written the Egyptians encountered a darkness unlike any. it was a darkness they could feel(Exd 10:21). how terrible it must have been, them in darkness while the Israelites had light.
i'm not trying to say that God's chosen people all live in Penang/up north where there is no haze, so all you northern guys don't 'perasan'ok.

good thing i've got an air purifier at home, so have asked mrs chief to put it on high to minimise the impact.

Space Shuttle

my colleague and i have been watching live NASA tv video of the space shuttle since yesterday and if they land tonight will miss the landing. they tried to land 3 times yesterday but was aborted. today they're into their final try for the day.

we don't watch it all the time just let it stream in the background as we do our work. it's quite interesting, as you can hear conversations between mission control and space shuttle and from time to time commentary from NASA guys. for visuals you have the position of the shuttle and the orbit path it's taking, mission control and visual of earth from space shuttle.

it's both exciting and scary.
exciting as we can get stuff direct for the source, and tune in to only what interest us - with commercials!

scary coz everything is now happening 'real time' and if one does not have the tools, they'll fall much more behind than ever.

wonder how long it'll be before blogs will be streaming live what the blogger is doing.

Bah Kut Teh

If you're from Klang, you'll take to bah kut teh like fish to water. it's even said that Klang has the highest heart attack cases in the country !
i guess of you don't over do it then it's ok. it's pretty hard to do when most of your Klang clients love it.
my brother in law just told me that most of the meeting he has with clients are over bah kut teh. one in the morning (BKT for morning tea), lunch time (power lunch), tea time (BKT again). wow, 3 servings of BKT a day!!! i hope this is not his schedule everyday.
Bring out the 'bad cholesterol cleansing tea'.

my family & I had BKT last Saturday and half way through our breakfast, the wind brought some fouls smell our way. my daughter and sons quickly pinched their nose, breath through their mouth and asked what smell was it and where did it come from.
of course we adults were not spared the smell but we could not react the way my children did (so if you want some honest answers, go ask the children/toddlers).
it was the smell of processed rubber and for me it brought back wonderful childhood memories.

my maternal grand-dad owned some rubber estate in Kuala Selangor and i used to go with him when he go inspect the estate. we (uncles, cousins, 2nd cousins and a whole lot more)would jump into the small river terrorising the fishes that winds around the estate and what nots in it, meet up with him later at the small rubber smoking hut.

my uncle was a rubber 'middle man' and his shop would be stacked high with rubber sheets that of course gave out some foul smell. but i would sometimes stay over (the family stays on top of the shop lot) and play with my cousin who have the coolest toys.

all these from a 'foul' smell, well.....it's not so foul to me.

Slow week

i hate it when i have slow days. this is has been particularly slow during work and fast after work.

i sometimes feel i'm drifting along with not enough resolution to move to where i want to. maybe it's lack of planning or not taking responsibility.

well next week it just 2 days away. i mean i don't want crazy days where you've no time to breath and you get home exhausted, just a busy enough day to feel that you've accomplished something as the end of the workday.

actually i know the problem but the medicine is a bit bitter. makes me feel like 3 yrs old again. guess i'll just have to pinch the nose and swallow it !

Haze

have you notice now a days whenever there's haze, it'll be raining on the same day or the next day ? Hmmm...the gomen must be very busy doing cloud seeding.
well whatever they are doing it works and helps to clear the haze.

but... the million dollar questions is.....

are they doing this for us - malaysians or for the tourists ??

for malaysians, they'll just tell the newspapers not to publish the air index, tell everyone air quality is safe and ask everyone to carry on as usual.

happy breathing !

kena tangkap

got caught

last friday i was feeling a bit lazy and did not feel like going for Prayer Meet(PM). instead i was in office surfing. i was around 7.50 and suddenly an MSN messenger message came on.

it was a 11yr boy from my children church. how come you're not at prayer meet yet ? he asked. Oh...shit, kena tangkap. have to evade, quickly put on thinking cap. i was going to ask him the same thing and remembered his parents don't go for PM. Plus i must set good example mah... running out of time and option, i replied, finishing up some work and going soon.

after that promptly got my desk in order, switch off computer and went for PM.

from time to time i need such things to keep me in check.

note to self - must remember to log off after office hours !