Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Horrible Pun #1

Hello everyone. I know I’ve not been updating for awhile, so here’s something to whet your appetites.

So right, we were feeling really lame in Math one day. Yeah, I know. Statistics are hilarious.

Then in the spur of the moment, I came up with a pretty bad pun. No matter, I’m here to inundate your brain with the redundant and the ridiculous anyway, so here it is.

How does THIS:










Equal THIS?






















Think about it for awhile. And scroll slowly.



GRAPH








G  R  A  P  H








G      R      A      P      H







G      R   A   P   H







G      R A P H








G-RAPH!








GIRAFFE!







:D







Don’t start pelting rocks at me, I told you it was a horrible pun.

Have a good day!




Postscript:

I tell you, this post was heck tough to format, in terms of HTML. The upside is, I learnt something new! Like this nifty cool line above this PS section.

Antoine de-Saint Exupery says that we learn through resistance. This, I believe to be true. If you haven't heard of the man, go read up one of his books. He's an excellent writer, and his book 'The Little Prince' is now clamouring for first place in my favourites list.

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Quasi-political ramblings

The infamous good friend of mine, Khairul Syahir, has authored yet another post (man, I love this guy, I really do). Instead of disagreeing though, I very much agree with what he has to say.

If you actually have the time, go read this excellent article up on Malaysiakini.com - here.

What the writer has to say is that if the voters had earlier known that as many as five states would fall into Opposition hands, they wouldn't have voiced their protest through the ballots boxes as loudly as they did. It's simple, really. Regardless of however much voters were against the ruling coalition, it's a fact that the Opposition has no experience whatsoever in ruling a state. So we're all worried now for the state of our states in the coming future.

We've given them their mandate to rule, but the question on everyone's mind is whether or not they can do so efficiently? Most are worrying about dissent among the Parliamentary leaders, seeing that they come from different parties. Some are worrying that with a weakened majority, the National Front (BN) coalition will be quite crippled and thus rendered quite useless (more than they already are, at any rate).

But there is hope yet.

I've been quite an avid reader of Malaysia Today, an news site, independent of any one political party, since about a year ago. Raja Petra, the site's owner and author recently write an article titled 'The Aftermath of the Bloodbath'. Don't let the title faze you. It's been what I've been wanting to hear ever since the elections took place.

Quote: 'Malaysia Today, which is already a nightmare for the ruling party, is going to now also be the nightmare of the five opposition-led state governments. And we are going to monitor these five states even closer than we watch the federal government.

So remember who put you where you are today. Remember who gave you your job. The rakyat can hire and the rakyat can fire. We, the rakyat, made you and we, the rakyat, can break you. Just remember that and with God as our witness we shall not fail to do that if you fail to do what you promised to do.'

The rakyat have spoken, and they will again if the Opposition fails to deliver.

Another point that I feel gives us a little more security is the fact that our elected MPs (here is Selangor, at any rate) are actually accessible and contactable people. I'm sure the young generation of voters and to-be voters (like yours truly) will have familiarized themselves with the political web scene, which have seen the uprising of political figures like Jeff Ooi.

If the people doesn't like what he's doing, do you think we'll let him have it off that easily? No, we'll voice our dissatisfaction, we'll spam his site till it crashes (okla, we don't have to be so mean).

And it's not just him. We have bright, young figures like Tony Pua, Hannah Yeoh, Teresa Kok and Fong Po Kuan, to name a few. All of whom have their own blogs, all who can at any time can be found by the people, and not only when the elections swing around.

Like Raja Petra said, 'We, the rakyat, can make you, and we, the rakyat, can break you'.

We'll be watching them.

----------------------------

Alright, that sums up my political ramblings. Be prepared for more mindless posting about pointless things in the days to come. :) I'll be off to Guangzhou, China tomorrow, so no updates for 5 days (heh, not like I actually update that often). Tata, humans!

Monday, March 10, 2008

Let's talk politics

If you've noticed, I've kept politics out of my posts since I started, but I've been compelled to reply to this. Recently, my good friend Khairul Syahir authored a post, titled 'Don't talk about politics with me'. He cites three main reasons for his stand:
  1. We're 19.
  2. We don't know much about politics
  3. When we base our judgments solely on biased sources, it is only right that our judgments are biased too.
Go read his post for the full context of his claims.

Anyway, the past week has been fraught with these 'political discussions', and just about everyone, from the canteen lady to a particular Business teacher we have has been heatedly discussing the political happenings around us. But the have every right to, seeing that they're eligible voters.

How about us then? People like me, who can't do pretty much anything but talk, talk and talk about the elections?
  1. We're 19
Actually, I'm 18. And you'd be in for a shock when you find that many others younger than us do 'talk politics' as well. You might think it's a waste of time, since we can't vote or anything, but I beg to differ. Apply the same logic to say, a football fan.

Quote: 'No matter how hard we believe in any party (or team) , we are not eligible yet to vote (we can't do anything about it). So I might as well save my energy and time doing something else like doing my EE or writing my Maths IA or reading up on Special Theory of Relativity that would actually benefits me as a 19-year-old instead of indulging in politics that I cannot do anything about (watching football which I cannot do anything about).'

Why then do 19 year olds everywhere continue watching football, or even talking politics?

Look, I'm pretty darn sure that on the 9th of March, a day after the elections you picked up the newspapers and read about how everyone fared this elections. Why so?

It's simply because we have an interest in the outcome. Like the football fan, he can go die happy if his team Y wins the whatever cup. Likewise, as Malaysians, we are all stakeholders in the governing body. Whatever happens to them will inevitably affect us in some way or another. So we talk politics, to keep ourselves abreast with the news. Don't get us wrong Khairul, it's not all about bashing certain Son-in-Laws or other politicians. It's also healthy discourse, and this leads to more critical thinking. Maybe we've come across as BN bashers and Opposition worshipers, but really, we point out flaws in both, give merits where we can. It's really idiotic of us if we were to delude ourselves into thinking that any one party is perfect. We're not that stupid.

And heck, talking politics is pretty darn fun.
  1. .
  2. We don't know much about politics
Honestly, I see no reason why we have to dig up the history of the ruling parties, read books by leaders of parties, etc etc. What we want to know is what is relevant today. What we want to know is simply whether or not the contesting parties can deliver the points stated on their glorious manifestos. You don't have to dig that far back. Just look from 4 years ago, the previous elections, when many promises were made and not so many were fulfilled. It's not hearsay, it's not biased opinions or dubious secondary sources. It's the facts. Crime rates, inflation, economic growth. These aren't things you come by digging up the history of parties or leaders. It's facts we've felt around us, facts that have been drilled into our heads every time we read about a missing child, a horrific murder and increasingly commonplace crime. We don't have to know much about politics, we just want to know who can deliver, and who the real incompetents are.

Admittedly, I understand where you're coming from, when you consider all those bandwagon jumpers, who only stop to gossip about politics when the elections swing by. Your points would be validly justified on those people. But some of us aren't that fickle. We have a real interest in what goes on in the country.


3. When we base our judgments solely on biased sources, it is only right that our judgments are biased too.

We've been studying fallacies in TOK (Theory of Knowledge) for a year now. Do you think I would subject myself to such non-objectivity? And don't you think that through discourse we are able to apply, first hand, all we've learned in our TOK lessons, like identifying fallacies in certain ideas or thought? Like I said, there's probably nothing dumber you can do than do delude yourself by only reading one-sided views. Personally, I do try to get my news from as many sources as possible. Unfortunately though, not everyone tries.

Quote : 'When we support one view, we tend to look for everything that goes in support of it. If we support PAS for example, we read Harakah and accept all while dismissing all in the national newspaper.'

Maybe you're referring to the anti-establishment sentiments that have been running hot in the veins of young urbanites like some of our classmates. It's partly true that we can't do anything about it, but at the very least, as rational thinkers, by engaging in a discussion you might bring them to the 'light', so to speak.

There's probably a lot more we can say about this, but I'll stop here. You've chosen not to talk about politics, fine and well, I respect your choice. I, however, will beg to differ.

I will talk politics, and if not with you, with another.

Sunday, March 2, 2008

A new cousin!

Eh, my titles are getting more and more literal.

Anyway, on the 29th of February my aunt gave birth to a baby boy. the 29th! Poor kid, imagine growing up only once every 4 years. Oh well, it does make you unique, and set you apart from most of the other kids, if you like all that.


















And here it is! I say it, because somehow or other the gender of the baby isn't really so evident. Like in class the other day, Kay was mentioning about how Mr Michael brought his daughter/son to school. It was pretty funny, because we were initially staring blankly at her wondering if she couldn't tell the difference between a boy and a girl.

'It's a baby laaaaa.......'

And so, congrats to my cousins, you've got yourself (another) brother.

If you look through the picture below, you'll find that the cousins are ALL very much male, with the slight exception of my two sisters.

















And now we've got another boy. Everyone's happy, but I do think my aunt and uncle were hoping for a daughter. Think about it, with three boys they'll really have their hands full.

Oh well, you know what they say . . . if at first you don't succeed, try and try again ;)