Friday, January 14, 2011

Inland tsunami

I must say that we are quite lucky in Malaysia as there are fewer natural disasters as compared to other countries like Australia, China, India, Pakistan and many others or even our immediate neighbor, Indonesia where occurrences of natural disaster such as earthquake, typhoon, tsunami and so on not only causing severe damage, affecting livelihood of millions of its people but also causing thousands succumbed to death.

After seeing how the floodwaters swept through Brisbane, the third largest city in Australia, I couldn’t imagine if similar thing happens in Kuala Lumpur and couldn’t stop wondering is our government ready to face such catastrophic disaster? Coming from a northern state Perlis where floods are common occurrence during monsoon season, I still couldn’t believe my eyes after seeing how severe was the floods in Australia and no wonder some people described it as inland tsunami, the water rise at a lightning speed and everybody caught off guard, houses and properties were swamped, cars were swept away by strong current.

As one of the victims put it; “while we can rebuild, you can’t replace people”. Once again, Mother Nature unleashed something so powerful that lending people powerless to do a thing. The experts were saying that the catastrophic flood was due to the occurrence of La Nina but again what causes La Nina?

It is perhaps a timely reminder to all of us, do more to conserve the environment or our future generations may suffer more such disasters in their time.

Thursday, January 13, 2011

好的不灵,坏的灵

Whenever I read newspaper early in the morning, I always glance through the horoscope for the day and believe it or not, these predictions are sometimes quite accurate. Last Friday, my horoscope said that there would be a leak, but fortunately it won’t affect me in any way.

After reading the horoscope, I just laughed it off as usual. When traveling back from work that evening, I heard a strange noise coming out from the bonnet of my car, it sounded as though some thing was leaking. At first I thought that it was air con gas leaking but when the temperature went up high, I stopped my car at the road side and it was indeed due to the leakage of one of the radiator hose.

I then drove my car to a small work shop at Labu and the foreman confirmed that it was a leak and dismantled the hose just to find out that he did not have any similar one to replace my leaked hose. It was already passed 7 pm at the time and there is no way to get a replacement from any nearby shops. So this nice guy used a roll of adhesive tape to fix up the leakage so that I could drive home safe. I ask him how much and he didn’t intend to charge me as he said that he did not fix up my problem. I paid him RM 20 and drove back home after thanking this bold mechanic many times.

As I reached home, taking bath and having dinner with my wife, I recalled the horoscope that I read that morning; “there will be a leak but it won’t affect you in any way”. Shit, there really was a leak as predicted, and it wasted me a few hours at a small workshop at a small town Labu.

The following day, again when I read newspaper early in the morning I checked my horoscope and I was so delighted when my horoscope said that a small win is possible. After accurately predicting the leaking incident, I thought that the “winning” prediction must be accurate as well and I went to the 4-D outlet and put up a bet, a big one indeed.

The following day, after checking the winning numbers in the newspaper, the number that I bought didn’t even come close, I laughed at myself and then remember my wife always says 好的不灵,坏的灵, meaning good forecast will never materialize but only bad one will.

Damn it.

Short term contract for long term success??

The president of BAM has said that nobody is indispensable in corporate world or for any organization for that matter, as he was referring to the recent spat between BAM and Misbun. He is probably right as in the corporate world that’s what it is, they will offer a short term contract to a person, giving him or her all the good perks and expecting results within the contract periods of 3 to 5 years. If there is no good results, they will fire that fella, hire and fire is the name of the game.

Misbun’s contributions in coaching and leading Lee Chong Wei to become the world best player should not be undermined by any parties even though Lee has yet to cross the last hurdle of winning the Olympics. Lee’s failure to champion against his nemesis Lin Dan in major events is also frequently criticized by some BAM officials. It is not easy to breed a world bidder in any business, sport, education, research, art as talent is not so easy to come by and even if there is one, we need a solid team to galvanize these talents so that they’re complete enough to be a world bidder.

As our former Chinese coach Han Jian put it; the success of Lin Dan is not possible if not because of China’s rich resources of coaching expertise and also competitive sparring partners provided to Lin Dan. We have to ask BAM do we have those resources. Han Jian in an telephone interview with the China Press had pointed out that Misbun should not be held entirely responsible for Chong Wei failure against Lin Dan as he opined that Chong Wei is lacking that sort of resources that a big country like China can provide to Lin Dan. For that matter even the legendary coach Tang Xian Hu (湯仙虎), at the age of 68 has to come out from retirement to guide Lin Dan from one tournament to another. The chief coach Lee Yong Boo who was a student trained under Tang, realized that only with the legendary status of his old master can tame a tiger like Lin Dan.

We have to recognize that apart from Lin Dan, no other Chinese players can actually pose a threat to Chong Wei, and for that reason, Misbun’s effort and passion in guiding Chong Wei should be complimented. As Olympics is just not too far away and instability is not going to do any good for Chong Wei’s preparation for our best bet in the gold medal.

BAM should retain Misbun, that’s no doubt about it, and BAM should in fact examine their policies or whatever shortcomings as it seems that all the world class badminton coaches such as Han Jian, Yang yang, Morten Frost, Lin Mao, Pak Joo Bong and so many others never last long and leaving BAM not without any grouses.