1 against 3

It seemed that Lee Chong Wei was still haunted by the defeat to Lin Dan in the World Championships and he was visibly not himself and lacking his usual supremacy and confident playing against another Chinese player Chen Long in the final of Japan Open. It was already a disappointment not seeing a re-match between Chong Wei and Lin Dan as the later conceded a walk-over to his younger compatriot, Chen Long in the semifinal. The fact is that China has 3 excellent players namely Lin Dan, Chen Jin and Chen Long that are capable of winning tournaments, and as such their head coach could put up some un-sportsman tricks to manipulate the outcome.

This is not the first time Lin Dan conceded a walkover to his compatriots in helping them to gain more tournament points for qualifying into next year Olympics. But there is nothing the rest of the world can do about it. They have the most number of competitive badminton players, men and women alike, and with the aging of Peter-Gade, Taufik and Lee Chow Wei and the budding new players around the world are in no way close to the Chinese, we can expect the Chinese players continue with the walkover trick to favor the best chance of winning or to help up the players to score more qualifying points. Fair or not fair, that’s not the issue as the winner takes it all. We can say that the defeat of Chow Wei wasn’t fair as his opponent Chen Long had a rest day courtesy of his compatriot Lin Dan conceded a walkover to him in the semifinal. But whatever tricks your opponents play, the winner is a winner and likewise a loser is a loser.

Despite his defeat to Chen Long, Chong Wei could still walk tall as he is the most consistent player this season, successfully reaching all the finals in the nine tournaments he participated this year. But he has to quickly get out of the blue of losing to Lin Dan in the World Championships as without the confident, he simply could not bring out the best of his game and Olympics is just not far away.

李宗伟，加油！

Draconian

Last Thursday, a day before the Malaysia Day, I read in the Star that the Prime Minister would make an important announcement at his speech for the Malaysia Day celebration. And according to some insiders, the announcement was so significant that it would give a great impact on the people of Malaysia. Well, I didn't really pay any particular attention to such piece of news, what could it possibly be, how could it change our lives?

That evening, I was rushing to PJ to fetch my wife after work thinking of saving some time. My normal practice would have been going back to Seremban first after work and then going to fetch her at around 8 pm to avoid traffic jam. I left Banting at 5.30 pm sharp and guess what? It took me about 3 hours to reach PJ as there were massive jams all over, at Kesas highway and along Federal Highway. Under normal traffic condition, despite some congestion, I would still be able to make it in an hour from my office in Banting to PJ but I needed triple the time to be there that night, probably because the following day was a holiday.

So I had save some mileage for sure but had to endure such a crazy traffic jam and we only managed to reach home at about 11 pm after a nice dinner taken at Section 17. As I was driving back to Seremban, I recalled that piece of news on PM making important announcement on his Malaysia Day speech. I tuned on the radio and the PM was already addressing and the so called important announcement was none other than the abolishment of ISA.

To an ordinary person, what is the impact of the abolishment of ISA which was regarded as draconian to some politicians, opposition especially who were crucified by such act. But to an ordinary person, the bread and butter issues will perhaps be more important than the ISA per se, or perhaps minimizing the traffic congestion is more important to us than the abolishment of ISA?

Will the abolishment of ISA give more freedom to the people then? That we have to wait until the passing of new laws in place of the ISA, but one thing is for sure, with or without ISA, there are still plentiful of laws that could be used with ill-intention to undermine the opposition. Mat Sabu for instance, was charged in a session court today with criminal defamation on the policemen and their families on his alleged remarks that communist guerillas who attacked a police station in Bukit Kepong in 1950 were the true freedom fighters.

Whether Mat Sabu will be convicted or not only time will tell but it goes to show that with or without ISA, the politicians, opposition especially better think before they speak.

Can history be rewritten?

A few weeks ago I was having lunch with a gentleman who was my former colleague that I have never worked with, he retired long before I joined the company. He was such a friendly chap that willing to share his views on a wide range of issues, from politic, history to even the origin of the human race on this planet. Well, depending on what religion you are believing in, the origin of mankind is always a mystery as no one has live long enough to be able to tell you the truth.

He then told us the theory of inter-planetary war that had resulted in our ancestors, originally alien to this planet, lost the battle and seeking asylum on earth which was then occupied by prehistoric creatures such as dinosaurs. These ancestors which were highly intelligent probably realized that their intelligent was destroying their entire race and chose to not transmitting their intelligent genes to their future generations and as a result, they were designing a new path for their decedents, sharing the common ancestor with apes, making their decedents, our ancestor, dumb so that they would not create weapons to kill each other and could live peacefully on the earth for a long long time. With their advanced technologies at that time, they could easily kill all dinosaur to make the earth safer place to live.

His argument was that our ancestors were smarter than us, because in the ancient time when there was no machinery, the people then were capable of doing wonders such as building the pyramids and so forth. The cavemen, according to him, without modern technologies, could go deep inside the caves, crafting amazing artworks without proper light and so on.

Of course his story sounds fictional, but there are too many things which are until today not explainable, still so mysterious. The fact is that even the historians cannot tell you what was happening in the past. No one will live that long to be able to tell you what happened hundreds or thousands or millions of years ago. We can only apprehend the past by studying the literature written by historians but then again, it was the interpretations of the person who wrote the literature that we are now reading to comprehend.

So when Mat Sabu got himself into trouble by saying that Mat Indera, the communist who attacked the Bukit Kepong in the 1950 was freedom fighter who fought against the colonial British, a knee-jerk reaction by a few local historians shocked us by saying that this land was never ruled by the British. In other words, what we have learned so far from the history books was all rubbish. In that case, we should not even celebrate the 8-31 Merdeka Day.

Mat Sabu has no doubt stirring up shit, as a result, aplenty of flies were quick to be attracted to it, until such stage that prominent politicians and historians alike, were bombarding us for the past few days with their own interpretations of history, which are making us so confuse as to what is true or otherwise.