Amazing Guitarist Tony Melendez

Have you heard about Tony Melendez? Neither do I until a good friend of mine FT Fun emailed me a video clip featuring an incredible guitarist singing "Let It Be", strumming guitar with his feet. I was so moved by Tony, who was born without arms as his mother took Thalidomide while pregnant causing him the disability.

Tony began to learn guitar at the age of 16. His friends told him that it was impossible for him to play guitar without his arms. He succeeded with steel-like determination. As a lousy guitar player, I know that it is not easy playing guitar, more so without both arms.

On September 15, 1987, Tony sang "Never be the same" while playing guitar with his feet in a special performance for Pope John Paul II. The Pope was visibily moved by Tony's performance, he embraced Tony and told him that, "My wish for you is that you continue to give hope to others and continue in what you are doing", which had inspired Tony. Since then, he tours as a full time musician, delivering what the Pope called " a gift of hope".

Friends, take a look at the video clip, listen to this amazing guy singing "let it be" and playing guitar with his feet, so calmly as though whatever misfortune or bad luck that fall on him he would just take it as it is. When you are down for whatever reasons, you can't be worst than Tony who was born without arms, so why not just let it be.

A bumper crop but low price

Since my younger days I know that a farmer would not be a rich man even though he works very hard to raise up whatever he plants. Simple, you may have a bountiful harvest but the price of your produce may not be good depending on demands and other unforseeable factors. My father was a padi farmer cultivating a few acres of padi in Arau, Perlis way back in the sixties and seventies and becoming a fishmonger in the eighties as it was difficult to earn a living planting padi. Sometime, the whole padi field could be flooded just before harvest rendering huge damages and alas, wasted effort for the past 3,4 months with a dismal return. Such is a life of a padi farmer.

Knowing the difficulty and hardship of those people raising their families by farming, naturally I would not want to associate myself with anything to do with farming as I grow up. But then I went to university studying plant breeding and ended up working as an oil palm agronomist since 1995. I remember I attended an interview with IOI Corporation way back in 1995 when the human resource manager Mr. T.M.B Krishnan asked me can I work in a plantation with a doubtful-look as I was thin and skinny at that point in time. I told him I was raised up in a padi planting family in a small kampung and he nodded instantly seemingly agreeing that a young man coming from a padi planting family should have no problem working in an estate.

Of late many smallholders crying foul as they are unable to sell their oil palm fruits to the millers as the millers limiting their intake due to poor CPO price. Despite the bumper crops, some smallholders are desperately seeing their crops rotting on the trees as the price was too low for them to make a decent profit should they harvest. The cost of production for smallholders is always on the higher side as compared to plantation companies as they need to pay higher harvesting and transportation cost. Smallholders normally depend on FFB collectors to buy their fruits as they do not have transport to deliver their crops directly to the mills.

Time changes, technology advances, but the hardship and grievances of farmers seem uncontainable.

Lousy move by PLUS to reduce toll rate after midnight

I wonder how many people will stay right up till mid night or waking up early so that they could exist the highway before 7am just to enjoy the 10% offer given by PLUS. This is the lousiest offer I have ever come across for years. I suppose PLUS is doing it half heartedly for the sake of their corporate social responsibility where not many people will benefit from it. Only Mat Rempit stand to benefit from this offer as they are nocturnal who are active at night as opposed to the diurnal human lifestyle. But then again, Mat Rempit will not normally pay tolls.

PLUS said that mid-night till 7am is the off-peak hours. Of course it is off-peak as most of us will be asleep during that periods. And I wonder how effective is this programme to distribute traffic volume so as to improve traffic flow. The Work Minister hailed PLUS for its " historic move", as he thought that it would bring relief to millions of highway users. Historic offer indeed, but the lousiest one. And our Work Minister is anticipating people will wake up early to enjoy the sickening 10% discount and start to work longer hours to increase productivity. Good luck, Malaysians, me included.

Crude oil, oh crude oil

I was in Padang, Indonesia the whole last week. While working in an remote area in Pangian, there were nothing to do at night except for TV watching. In Indonesia you can get a big parabola that can receive almost all TV channels around the world. Such is a way of life in a vast country like Indonesia, no matter rich or poor, the house surely has a big parabola for their TV watching. All these channels come for free, unlike in Malaysia you have to pay Astro to watch other more interesting channels apart from what available for free.

We followed Bloomberg closely every night seeing crude oil going up and down. When crude oil was down, Dow Jones was down and the next day KLCI will follow suit. This friend of mine that I was staying with throughout my visit in Pangian is an active investor, so naturally he keep close track on the performance of share markets and also derivatives. When crude oil breached the US58 a barrel mark, my friend was very anxious, because according to him, crude palm oil will follow suit and there gone our bonus and increment for this year.

I joked with him that we were in such a paradox, when the crude oil prices go skyrocketing, everyone complained aloud, fearing for high inflation and what not. When the crude oil going down and down, we are also complaining, fearing for recession and low palm oil price and what not. I then asked him to switch to Fashion TV ( a French channel) that were showing a fashion show by the name of Mid-Night Hot. The show was show casting the sexy, voluptuous and half-naked models featuring with the latest lingerie. We watched until our eyes almost dropping and our saliva coming out.

Taffic police going after errant motorists

Be careful folks, the traffic police will be knocking on your doors in a nationwide crackdown for traffic offenders who failed to pay their summons. The police call it Ops Warta VII. They do it every year so that the errant motorists will pay their summons. The police may even go to your office to arrest you.

Traffic summons especially those of speeding are very common for motorists. Not that I'm driving like Lewis Hamilton on the roads but still I have received many speeding tickets over the past few years. The highest record was two years ago when I got the summons worth a total of RM1500. Painful experience isn't it, but what to do, it is hard to keep a constant speed below 110 km/hour on the highway especially if you are rushing for meeting or sort.

But if the police can send so many traffic police to look out for the errant motorists, why not they spend more time to patrol crime prone areas in Penang, PJ, KL, JB so that criminal activities can be prevented. If you flip through newspapers everyday, all sort of crime will scare you to hell. Gang rape, mat rempit robbing people at the petrol station, break-ins, assassinations by hired killers, bank robbing, what else? Simple, the IGP will wash his hands by saying that they are under staff. Well, I suppose it is easier to go after the traffic offenders than nailing down the more sophisticated criminals that would exhaust their investigating skills.

Global recession affecting the livelihood of kampung folks

I was in Padang, Indonesia for the past one week, visiting my clients' oil palm estates for fertiliser recommendations. One of the estates that I visited was facing the problem of estate workers staging a demonstration. Around 300 workers who were suspended from work due to cost cutting exercise taken by the estate gathered at the estate's office to demand that they be reinstated for work. These workers were considered non-productive general workers who carried out odd jobs such as manual applications of empty bunches in the fields, loose-fruits collection, fertiliser applications and so no. Some of them are already very old but still clock in everyday to earn some money. In the past, the management kept an close-eye on these general workers as the profits were good and thus they won't want to terminate the so-called unproductive workers comprising kampung folks so as not to create any unrest or chaos in the estate. Most of the productive workers such as those involved in harvesting are trans-migrated from Java, they work hard and thus earn a better living than the local kampung folks who are more keen in odd-job. Now, palm oil price is bad and the management is forced to take drastic cost cutting exercise to maintain profit.

Demonstrations like this is very common in Indonesia. In town, urban or even in a remote oil palm estate that the one I'm visiting, the people frequently gather themselves in order to protest or to voice out their grievances. Normally, negotiations will be carried out to look for a win-win situation. However, too often that not, there will be some sort of damage such as the demonstrators went amok and set the office or factory on fire.

It seems that the global recession is not only affecting the businessman or big corporations, it goes to impact the livelihood of the commoners like you and me. Our government should therefore pre-emptive any probable occurrence of retrenchment or sort so that a mutual agreement can be reached so that there would be win-win for both employers and employees should retrenchment could not be avoided.

Anyone can be PM of Malaysia?

And now Pak Lah said that anyone can be the Prime Minister of Malaysia after Senator Obama won the 2008 USA President election. Unfortunately in Malaysia, the Prime Minister is not elected by its people but by the out-going prime minister. Isn't it not true. Pak Lah was hand-picked by Mahathir, then Pak Lah picked Najib to be his successor. Do the people have the right to pick the prime minister? No, they can only vote for their member of parliament and state assembly.Traditionally, the Prime Minister of Malaysia is the president of UMNO.

In Malaysia, it is sad to say that people are still largely segregated not by race or religion, but by the narrow-mindedness that propelling race supremacy. PAS spiritual adviser Datuk Nik Aziz said that Islam did not differentiate between race and creed. He hailed the victory of Obama was a victory of sorts for Islam as reported in the Star on 6 Nov, 2008.

Judging from the constant politicking on race issues of late, our mindsets are still far from that of the American, whom most people here see them as devils.

A Black President for America

American have spoken. Senator Obama is elected as the first African-American president. Many of my friends, colleagues or people that I know hate American. They said American are just a bunch of capitalist victimising people from developing countries or third world countries. American are the biggest bullies in the world. They produce weapons and sold them to third world countries like Latin American or African countries causing major unrest and chaos here and there so that they can reap abundance profits.

But this time around the majority of American supported a black man of a mix origin to become their president. American trusted Senator Obama's capability to steer the country out of the current financial turmoil. They believe in him because of his credibility and capability,hence, skin color is of no influence on their choice of candidate. The American want a good President, regardless of his origin and his past. Obama had admitted that he used marijuana, cocaine and alcohol during his high school days. But does this make him a bad president?

The former leader of the People Republic of China, Deng Xiaoping said, whether it is a black cat of a white cat, a good cat is the one catches rats. Malaysia is blessed with the diversity of multi races and heritage. Whether we can turn diversity into prosperity hinges upon the mindset of the people.

Motion to discuss multilingual signs in Parliament

Speaker of the House Tan Sri Pandikar Amin Mulia did the right thing in rejecting a motion by MP Ibrahim Ali to discuss the decision of DAP-led Penang state government to put up road signs in multilingual. What a big deal about putting up road signs in different languages? Apparently Ibrahim Ali thought that it is an insult to the status of national language if road signs are in languages other than Bahasa Malaysia.

Road sign is just a road sign, as long as the main ones are written in national language, what so wrong about having similar road signs with other commonly used languages such as Mandarin, English, Jawi or Tamil. Doesn't it reflect the diversification of a multi-cultural society? Tourism hot spots like Penang, Melaka etc should in fact put up multilingual road signs so that it would reflect our multi racial and cultural heritage. Only people with narrow mind would think that multilingual road sign is an insult to national language as they do not treasure the beauty of multicultural society. Or put in another way, some politicians are simply politicising patty issues like this to get attention. Why not these MPs take a trip to big towns in Sarawak like Kuching or Miri where road signs are well presented in multilingual since years ago.

Investor friend getting excited again

A friend of mine just rang me up and very excitedly asked me have I bought any shares recently as the KLCI seems to be clawing back again. I said no. He asked why not, he continued to say that Barrack Obama is going to be the next President of America and the American economy is going to recover and thus global equity market will surely going up again.

I caution him not to be over optimistic as many financial experts still see the global economy in very uncertain condition. He said never mind, no pain no gain and asked me to buy some shares as he is going to buy more shares so that when the market actually rebounded, he could recoup some heavy losses he suffered last year till now. I said good luck to him and told him that I would rather stay at the sideline waiting to see either he is going to make money or suffering more losses. My friend was then very angry with me as my pessimism spoilt his mood to increase his portfolio.

Such is the way of investing nowadays, people get over excited upon slight optimism and also become very fearful for minor negativity. Someone say equity market is a zero-sum game, some make money and some lose. But then again, majority of the retail investors are those scape-goats suffering the most as they are easy pray to the abundance financial information available on the media where the genuineness of the information is a question mark. The smart investors who are carefully examining and verifying the available information and then make a long term decision will probably last the distance. The too many small fries who prone to knee-jerk reaction and follow the herd would most likely lost their way in the highly sophisticated and volatile equity market.