Neutral Opinions: May 2009

Sunday, May 31, 2009

World Heritage Sites

World heritage sites can be anything – a lake, mountain, building, city etc that is on the list maintained by the international World Heritage Programme administered by the UNESCO World Heritage Committee, composed of 21 state parties which are elected by their General Assembly for a four-year term. A World Heritage Site is a place of either cultural or physical significance.

In Malaysia, Georgetown, Melaka and Mount Kinabalu are accorded the status of world heritage sites. That means, if you are a Malaysian, these 3 places are must-go destinations, if not, please don’t call yourself ‘Anak Malaysia’.

Personally, I have been to Georgetown and Melaka and I love both places, the only place that I am still yet to go is Mount Kinabalu.

Hehe, I shall make my planning to conquer this south east Asia tallest mountain.

Kyoto Protocol

If you are a Malaysian, you will definitely feel the heat in recent months. Yes, the world is getting hotter and hotter, thanks to the emission of green house gases (GHG) by all of us – human!

Currently, China tops the chart as the biggest emitter of GHG, surpassing the United States on August 2008. China, U.S., European Union and India are the top contributors to world GHG.

Kyoto Protocol is a protocol aimed at reducing the emission of GHG to prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system. Details of the agreement can be read here.

As human becomes more civilized and countries becoming more developed, how can we avoid emitting GHG? I really don’t know to what extend Kyoto Protocol is useful in curbing green house effect, but I can be certain that the temperature is going to increase, the ozone layer is still thinning, and we are going to live in a hotter earth.

Let’s face it, one day, sinful human who destroys this earth shall extinct.

Boycott the newspapers!

Boycott the newspapers!

A cause everyone can support

To sign the online petition, click HERE

Anybody who is a consumer has the power to boycott. We are in reality empowering ourselves when we say to the mainstream media (MSM): “We refuse to buy into your lies. Therefore we’re not buying newspapers.”

Newspapers are enablers allowing Malaysia’s ancien regime to sustain its self-serving shaping of our world. We believe that civil society is informed enough to protest against being brainwashed by MSM disinformation.

The newspapers claim Hindraf are violent and racist troublemakers. Well, we know who the real racists and troublemakers are. The newspapers claim police did not use force against Indians at Batu Caves on the eve of the Hindraf rally. Photographs show the Indians herded behind the temple gates, locked in, gassed to tears and doused with chemical-laced water.

When our authorities bully the most marginalized of communities, and newspapers blacken these victims of marginalization, then our country has reached a watershed. Civil society has no other choice but to be morally outraged over this spindoctoring.

The newspapers also misreported the numbers who supported Bersih in our capital city, saying few when there were many; they misreported the numbers who supported MIC’s show of force at Cheras stadium, saying many, many more than there really were.

MSM have lied too much on too many matters for too long. And they will keep on lying unless we tell them ‘Enough already!’

We are not breaking any law by making a personal decision not to buy newspapers.

We are not causing trouble nor promoting racial or religious disunity by boycotting newspapers. In fact, it is newspapers that are promoting a distorted communalism to keep their political masters – Malaysia’s racist political parties – in power, and us in a climate of fear. And the longer this parasitic power structure remains unchallenged, the more the lowest strata of society will be affected.

Because we are Malaysians with conscience and our conscience isrightly troubled by government mouthpieces spinning webs of deceit,The People’s Parliament is calling for Hartal.

We are all doing the conscionable thing to check the unrelenting anddangerous indoctrination by newspapers. This signature campaign is about how ‘we, the people’, can stand up and be counted. It’s about reclaiming Truth and taking our country back.

Thank you for your support against the falsehood-mongers. We thank you for caring enough to reform your reading habit.

To find out the truth, please visit us here:http://harismibrahim.wordpress.com

[The People’s Parliament, an advocacy website for civil society aspirations]

Saturday, May 30, 2009

V & O Cafe

Yoyo, time to hang out. This V & O Cafe is situated beside Sunway College ( 5 minutes away from Austin Hill Resort).

This is Yew Joe’s gf – Yu Pei.

This is the chicken chop i ordered – RM 15. The drink below cost me RM 5. So, I haemorrhaged RM 20 in total…. :-(

This bird-nest light is similar to Second Sister’s.

This is Chia Sin.

This is Yew Joe.

Which is the strongest insect?

I watched an interesting video on YouTube today. It was about an experiment involving 3 types of insects, namely cockroaches, fruit flies and flour beetles. All of them are exposed to 3 levels of radiation:1000 Rads, 10,000 Rads and 100,000 Rads

The lethal dose for human is 1000 Rads, virtually no human can survive at that kind of radiation exposure. But at 10 times that exposure (10, 000 Rads), 30%of cockroaches are still kicking. At 1000 Rads, 50 % are still alive. That’s pretty amazing, as expected, cockroaches out survives human in terms of radiation exposure, that’s confirmed.

However, fruit flies and flour beetles performed even better. Flour beetles, in particular, survived the highest dose, which is 100,000 Rads, At this level of radiation, none of the cockroaches survive but there was still 10 % of flour beetles survived after that kind of exposure.

Conclusion, if there is a nuclear blast, all the insects above will out survive human. But the strongest of all is not cockroach, it is actually flour beetles.

Although this experiment shows that flour beetle is the strongest, but I still think that cockroach is the strongest of all. The reason is because this experiment tested only 1 variable. Survival is not about withstanding radiation alone, it’s a multiple factorial thing. The fact that cockroaches can feed on a wide variety of food (even the gum of a stamp!), their mechanical strength (they can survive even if you hit them, the only way to kill is to crush them!), etc make them a better candidate of survival.

Friday, May 22, 2009

Logic is no longer logic

To normal people, the logic is the further you travel, the more you have to pay, am I right?

But in this ‘boleh land’, everything logical can become illogical, just because we everything ‘boleh’! Yeah!

My colleagues will be travelling to Sarawak on June and their to-and-fro flight tickets costs less than RM 200. Whereas if I drive to KL, it would have cost me about RM 200. JB –> Kuching costs less than JB ---> KL.

Where is the logic? I am puzzled.

We should thank the g@vvv cronies for sucking the blood out from us thru the highway tolls, we should thank our oil-producing g@vv for subsiding a ‘whopping’ 3 sen per litre petrol. All these have made logics into non-logics.

Malaysia boleh! Yeah!

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

In case you fall sick……

Procedure

Average Length of Stay (Days)

Fixed-Fee Package (S$) Standard Room (4-bedder) (at Gleneagles Hospital and Mount Elizabeth Hospital)

Cardiology

Coronary Artery Bypass Graft (CABG) (3 Grafts or less)

S$ 23,000

ENT (Ear, Nose, Throat) Surgery

Tonsillectomy

S$ 4,990

Total/Subtotal Thyrctomy

S$ 9,000

General Surgery

Breast Lump Excision (2 Lumps)

Day Surgery

S$ 3,530

Breast Tumour Segmental Mastectomy

S$ 7,000

Stapler Haemorrhoidectomy

Day Surgery

S$ 4,370

Orthopaedic Surgery

Total Hip Replacement (Unilateral)

S$ 22,050

Total Knee Replacement (Bilateral)

S$ 19,000

Total Knee Replacement (Unilateral)

S$ 24,840

Urology

Transurethral Resection of Prostate (TURF) – less than 30 gm

S$ 8,500

I received an advertisement flyer in my mail box. It’s an ad by Parkway Health (Mount Elizabeth, Gleneagles, East Shore Hospital), Singapore.

In case you fall sick, these are the price you have to PAY!!!

So, let say you sit in office for too long and you got hemorroids, 痔瘡, please pay S$ 4,370. I think the price given is just the fee for operation, still excluding medication fee, hospitalization and other hidden charges.

Prostate problems are common among old guys. The price to pay is S$ 8,500.

If you have heart attack and want to do a bypass, huhu… you gotta pay S$ 23,000, cheap cheap nia lah……

Suddenly, I feel blessed living in Malaysia. Although this country sometimes ‘sucks’, but at least the healthcare is good. We can still access to very low-cost healthcare services.

Institut Jantung Negara (IJN) provides by-pass surgeries at a fraction of the cost only.

Affordable health care is one of the reasons we love Malaysia!

Monday, May 18, 2009

Canadian H.E. David Collins

On 5 May 2009, His Excellency, David B Collins, the High Commissioner paid a courtesy call on the President of the Malaysian Bar, Mr Ragunath Kasevan.

I would not elaborate long on the meeting but would just like to point out a few main things that I am interested.

Firstly, regarding the notorious prevention detention, ISA, H.E. David Collins said that there was no equivalent to such preventive laws in Canada.

Secondly, legal aid in Canada is FULLY funded by the Government. Law students in Canadian Universities are encouraged to take up legal aid cases during their 2nd year study and that some legal firms were known to survive purely by handling legal aid cases.

Malaysia’s legal aid is currently provided by the Government as well as Bar council. Bar council is pressing so that the Government widen the scope and availability of legal aid services in the country.

For full story. See here.

Friday, May 15, 2009

东方人对西方人的误解

我们东方人往往对西方人有一番误解。我们总以为“鬼佬”一定就是思想开放，热情外向，社交随便。

事实上，这可能只适用于一部分的美国人，对于欧洲人，他们其实是非常冷淡、害羞、保守的。我的一位朋友的朋友-玛丽，是一位瑞士女孩，她今年26岁，26年来认识的人不超过300人。天啊，这简直难以相信！我们从幼稚园、小学、中学、大学、工作、生活营、团体活动等所认识的人，随随便便都超过3000人吧！但是事实就是如此，欧洲人（例：英国人）就是如此不擅社交。

玛丽最近暗恋了一位合唱团的男孩，却不敢主动去认识他，可能是害羞？或是女孩的矜持？这跟我们印象中的‘洋人’真的很不一样！洋人不都是见到人就说：“Hi，how are you？”的吗？不管你是陌生人还是什么人，洋人不都是微微笑，与你打招呼的吗？现实里，其实并非如此！太奇怪了。

洋人分成好多好多种，每一种洋人都有不同的文化。就像我们东方人，有日本人、韩国人、华人等等。华人又分成中国华人、台湾华人、新加坡华人、大马华人等，各不尽相同。

开放的大多是美国人而已。欧洲人其实很讨厌美国人的。他们认为美国人没修养、没文化。