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.