Chinese schools produce 'copycat' ?

The issue of single stream school has been much debated of late, especially when prominent historian, Prof Khoo recently remounted his idea of replacing the current vernacular system with a single stream school in the way demolishing all Chinese and Tamil primary schools. Race unity and harmony is of utmost importance to a nation, especially a multiracial and young nation like Malaysia. However, even if we implement single stream school, putting all the young kids of various races under one roof since the very beginning of their formal education, can we be assured that a better race unity will be achieved? Race issue is a very complex one. Even in the country like USA or other European countries where all black and white and other races are studying in the single stream school, is racial harmony really that better than our country? Just look at Indonesia, is racial harmony really better than that in Malaysia with the practice of single stream school?

I supposed a prominent historian like Prof Khoo should know better that the existence of vernacular schools is an integral part of the nation building history of this country. Since independent, countless of students which had gone through the vernacular schools had been serving various economic sectors and contributing to the success of the country. Sadly, when the deputy Prime Minister praises the Chinese primary school for producing students who are capable of better mastering Science and Mathematics, Prof Khoo is of the different opinion that Chinese school is only capable of producing “copycats”.

Prof Khoo questioned that how many prominent scientists or innovators that are actually coming out from Chinese school. What clearly amiss is that he forgets to ask how many prominent scientists or innovators are there in this country regardless of their schooling background? May be our present education system needs a major overhaul as it is incapable of producing great scientists or creative minds such as that of Albert Einstein, Newton or Steven Hawkins and only good in producing historians and politicians. But as a young nation such as Malaysia we should indeed inculcate young talents based on merits and all the talented minds should be given the equal opportunity to acquire higher education so that these young generation will form the moving force to prosper the country through the next millennium.

In a time when our diversity in races should be capitalized as it provides better flexibility in the face of globalization, it is too bad that if we were to close down the Chinese or Tamil primary schools simply because 0f the narrow-mindedness of certain people.

Poor planning of state government

End of the year is the monsoon period, rainfall is high and flood is everywhere. The whole nation knows about this. But apparently the state government of Negeri Sembilan doesn’t know about this, why? They are resurfacing the roads during this monsoon period when there are rains almost every day. How would you expect the roads to last longer than they supposed to be? I guess the state government is rushing to finish off their budget for the year.

That’s why they are now rushing to resurface the roads wherever they could, do not give a damn on whether the roads resurfaced during high rainfall period will last for a year as come the same time next year, they will do exactly the same thing again.

Good gesture inviting criticism

A person of Barack Obama’s status will have to be very careful on what he does. Even sometime when this person is doing something that is not wrong but the media or the people at large will still make some criticism. For instance, Barack Obama took a deep bow when greeting Emperor Akihito of Japan a couple of days ago. Would you think that is a problem? Or we can just perceive that he is just a young man greeting a much older person following the Japanese custom by doing a deep bow?

Barack Obama is no ordinary person as he represents the people of United States. Hence, a lot of Americans will think that taking a deep bow is as though their president had disgraced his countrymen. To me, it is just a very nice man following Japanese culture of bowing to an elderly man while greeting him.

A murderer comitted suicide

A murderer who killed his own mother, chopped her body into pieces, stuffed them into a traveler bag, arrested by police, was found committed suicide in the jail. Would you care whether he was really committed suicide or would you suspiciously think that there could be foul play at the police custody?

I would not give a dam, would you? This guy was a murderer and he murdered his own mother and was linked to another case of murdering a girl in which the body was thrown inside a well. A murderer gets what he deserved, that is all in my mind, even though the family of the murderer who committed suicide wanted to know the truth as they suspected foul play in the police custody. They even linked the death of this murderer who they curse and swear with the sad incident of Teoh Boon Hock who was found dead after the investigation by MACC.

We often heard that too many criminal were set free by the court due to insufficient evident. Sometime, it is very frustrating to see bad guys not getting the punishment that they supposedly are getting. We blame the god for unfairness but sometime a person is getting the punishment that he truly deserved without a doubt, there are people simply seeing another opportunity to gain some publicity.

Sick world

There are sick people all over nowadays. A son murdered his mother due to jealousy as his mother treated his brother better than him. An old man killed his wife as the wife asked for a divorce. A father killed his own son and daughter before setting his house on fire and committed suicide.

You would think that there are a lot of people who are seriously sick, so severe and incurable that they decided to do things in extreme ways. The worst thing is that a problem or problems for a single person can become big problems for other, especially the loved ones. Why the father killed his daughter and son before committed suicide? He can solve his own problem by ending his own life but why must he kill his children? It was quoted that the man could not live with the fact that he might lose both of his kids if his wife divorced him. May be we can’t apprehend why the person who loved his children so much can resort to kill them simply afraid of losing them.

This world is sick. People are without love nowadays. We don’t know what love is all about. We end up hating each other. The world is slowly full of hatreds and there will slowly be no peace in this world. If a person can resort to kill his children to solve his own problem, what do you think of the worst ever thing that could happen in this world.

Burning taxpayer money again?

Rumours are rife that Renault is withdrawing from F1, becoming the fourth car manufacturer to exit F1 starting from Honda, BMW and Toyota. The financial turmoil has certainly caused a toll on motorsports as decline car sales is seriously affecting the financial status of the car manufacturer who took part in F1 and also other major sponsors.

As a faithful fan of F1 over a decade, I’m not at all excited when Malaysia is announcing its participation in this extremely expensive motorsport. How can we benefit from F1? If the car giants such as Toyota, Honda and BMW are withdrawing, why is Malaysia, with its people-subsided Proton, a meager car manufacturer, taking part when other big giants are exiting after suffering great investment losses?

The government ensures that there would not be any government fund involves in One-Malaysia F1 Team. We have to open our eyes wide to see if that’s indeed true. Let’s recall a few years ago we had sent an astronaut up to space. Do the ordinary people stand to gain anything except that the government is getting publicity from the live telecast? We burned millions and millions of taxpayers just to sent an astronaut to the space making him a hero going everywhere given speeches gaining more money and what the people are getting out of it.

Floods are still there every year in and out and people’s home get damaged and livelihoods badly affected. Why not the money spent on all this nonsense be more wisely used to upgrade infrastructure so that our people can live a better life?

Second wave of H1N1

Of late, the Ministry of Health has been sending out warning of the probable second wave of H1N1 infestation. You can read about the warnings on all major dairies. When I was in Beijing two weeks ago, the second wave of H1N1 already started there. With the bad experience in handling SARS some years ago, the authority was quick this time to put up very strict health screening at the airport. In addition, the private sectors were also quick to take preventive actions. In the department stores, you can see all the employees were checked for their body temperatures before started working. It seems those with body temperature higher than normal will be sent back for house quarantine.

I guess the China authority which was under scrutiny few years back due to their poor actions to SARS pandemic are taking serious preventive measure to safeguard its people. When coming back to Malaysia on 25^th October, we were requested to fill in the health declaration forms by the tour guide. But when we were passing through the health screening check point at KLIA at about 11pm that day, nobody seemed to be interested in collecting the health declaration forms from us as we were just walked through the thermal scanner without any screening.

I guess the authority is just saying one thing and doing another. When the first wave of H1N1 hit our country, there were very strict health screenings at the airport. I remember when I came back from Indonesia at that time, I had to go through long queue for health screening and the officers were collecting the declaration forms from each and every passenger. Merely after a few months when the infection rate becomes lower and lower, the authority starts to get slackened. Lip service alone is not good enough to prevent a second wave of H1N1, or the Health Minister is currently too busy for the infighting in his own party.

Three Kingdom

Animals in the wild often fight for territory. The best part is the loser will leave the place, looking for another piece of land to build its new territory. Harimau thought that he could have easily saw off his enemy Tiger but he was indeed wrong as Tiger is never an ordinary Tiger. He fought back swiftly by successfully calling for a tribunal. The tribes were sick of these two fighting cocks and their seemingly never ending meaningless fighting. The tribes then spoken; they voted against both of them. So, both were losers. A wolf seeing two tigers have already half dead after intense fight, smiling quietly thought that his time has come finally.

Harimau and Tiger then realized that both of them were loser at the end. If both also leave, it will only benefit the Wolf. What the heck, that was not supposed to be like that man. So Harimau and Tiger secretly met up for a peace talk. Harimau apologized to Tiger, saying that he should not be overly jealous on Tiger, who at the age of above sixty, still so good in the art of commanding the tigress. Tiger said ok-lor, since you have apologized already, I will accept your unity plan provided you compensate for my losses. Harimau said no problem, now friend already, what you say I follow. But inside his heart he realized how painful it was to have put the worms inside his own ass.

Harimau and Tiger become friend once more. They said that a unity plan has already been achieved as though the whole tribes were their puppets playing to their tune. Now, Wolf cannot tahan already. His golden opportunity has bubble burst in split second, second wave of war is on the way for sure. This animal kingdom will never be at peace.