The difference between a Third World parliament and a First World parliament.


The infamous "Malaysia ini negara Islam, you tidak suka, you keluar dari Malaysia!" ("Malaysia is an Islamic state, You don't like it, you get out of Malaysia!") statement by a BN MP. Funny how BN always demonise PAS as a party ran by stupid old men who are hell-bent on Taliban-ising Malaysia.


The infamous "Bocor."

Now constrast the previous scenes those below.


Nominated MP Prof. Thio Li-Ann of the Law Faculty of the National University of Singapore presenting her arguments on the controversial legalising of homosexuality in Singapore.

Smear tactics indicate the poor quality of debate and also of character. Let us have rational debate, not dire straits and deception, free from abusive rhetoric and childish tantrums. As Singapore approaches her Jubilee, my hope for the post-65 generation is that we will not become an uncivil civil society born from an immature culture of vulgarity which celebrates the base, not the noble. Well said. And what a far cry from the usual shallow rhetorics that we are used to hearing from the clowns masquerading as Members of the Parliament in our Parliament.

Both parliaments are far from perfect. Both suffer from the same issue of being overly dominated by a single party, BN for Malaysia and PAP for Singapore. Both are frequently criticised by Western circles as being stifling the development of democratic processes in their respective countries. But there is one stark difference - one chooses the best brains to represent them while the other has idiots with dubious academic qualifications.



Below is a scene from the Australian parliament. There were controversial issues being tabled out but still...nobody made a fool of themselves.


Malaysians, please do your country a favour, please vote to keep idiots out of our parliament. For goodness sake has people no respect for the strongest symbol of our nation's democracy, passed down to us from our founding fore-fathers? Has it all gone to the dogs and its worth reduced to mere cheap stand-up comedies, funded by tax-payer's money?

If that's not bad enough, watch this recording of how an opposition party politician was barred from entering the parliament compounds and arrested under the disguise of "safe-guarding national security."


How an unarmed man, wishing to enter the parliament to hand over a memorandum can be considered a threat to national security baffles me. Since when did UMNO owns the parliament? Our PM says that lawyers and opposition party members are not above the law, and that the parliament is not a shelter for criminals. So then is UMNO above the law? That they can arrest anyone as they wish without any regard to the necessary protocols, in accordance to basic human rights?


DAP has stated their stand that they will never cooperate with PAS until PAS drops their Islamic state agenda. Despite their differences in partisan politics, it is heartening to see two DAP members standing up for a PAS politician. Let's not be overly cynical about this for a moment and just put all the above into perspective.

Where do you stand in the midst of all these happenings? What is your role, as a Malaysian, as a Muslim, a Christian, a Buddhist, a marginalized Hindu, etc etc? What does your faith requires you to do? To be a voice for the marginalized, for all that is wrong and unjust? Or do you choose to stay on the sidelines, which by itself is already a decision. That you simply couldn't care less about anything other than yourself, and maybe your after-life rewards if you are one of those dudes who keep talking on this life after this earth.

The season of annoying repetive seasonal musics has arrived.

As usual, it will be just another angry Christmas for me.

I hate the traffic.
I hate the crowd in malls.
I hate the price mark ups.
I hate the annoying carollers. So many of all these happy people. Where do they come from?
I hate the stereotypical self-righteous Bible thumping Christians around me.
I hate shallow people trying a bit too hard to be cool by doing their annoying highly over-rated countdown parties at the usual watering holes of wanabes - Bukit Bintang, Bangsar and Sri Hartamas.

And then there are the churches and pastors who will being organizing themselves another round of "saving souls of the lost" evangelistic events. This is the time where churches will be busying themselves staging Christmas plays to "spread the Great Commission." Church goers will be told to practise their "testimonies," follow the SOPs, keep it under x minutes, etc etc.

I have been there. Done that. But got out of the system when I realised that there is a lot MORE to this overly manipulated thing called Great Commission. But that's another story.

I hope to do something different from the usual Christian cliche this year. I want to be part of this.


It's a message that I found out from my church. Yes I am quite an oxymoron and a bit of a hypocrite. I am not very fond of Christians but I am one myself. So sue me. Then again, I never really liked myself. So it's not surprising that I dislike something that I am. Nevermind.

Find out more here. Just ignore some of the weirdly dressed people and the assorted weird red-neck American churches there.

I like the slightly covert psychological-war elements in this movement. It's not something that you have to pay money or sign up to join. It's a whole mentality and lifestyle choice.

I will be part of this Conspiracy by supporting this.


Go download this small catalogue to understand what I am banging on about.



I was a bit surprised to realise that in this age of ever increasing inflation, as little as RM 30 can have such a powerful impact to communities around me.

RM 30 is all it takes to sponsor the purchase of a school desk for rural schools in India. RM 20 is all it takes to keep a family from malaria by providing them with mosquito nets. RM 15 for a school bag.

And if you are feeling lucky, there is always the cow for a Vietnamese family. RM 1050 for a moo anybody? RM 350 for a goat.


Also, RM 100 is all it takes to sponsor a sea turtle rehabilation programme by UMT's Sea Turtle Research Unit (SEATRU).

Below are extracts from SEATRU's 2007 report :
Turtle / Terrapin Adoptions
We received 37 marine turtle adoptions and 75 terrapin adoptions in 2007. Among the 75 terrapins, 70 were adopted by the Persatuan Penganut Agama Buddha Amitabha Huayan Selangor and the balance were individual adoptions.

Nest Adoptions
We received 382 nest adoptions, of which 152 were adopted by some Taiwanese supporters, 70 by the Persatuan Penganut Agama Buddha Amitabha Huayan Selangor, 53 by some Johorean supporters and 19 by some Australian supporters. The balance were
individual adoptions.

Foreigners from Taiwan and Australia are actually supporting our local sea turtle conservation programme more than we Malaysians ourselves. What a shame. I have this mix of emotions; that I am glad that there are people who recognise an urgent need to protect our natural heritage, but at the same time I am disappointed of the apathy of the locals to a point where foreigners have to step in to do our duty.

And also, thank God for the Buddhists. I have always respected the Buddhists ability to understand the need to protect what is here on earth right now at this moment. I am glad for their efforts in organizing recycling programmes in the major neighbourhoods of Klang Valley.

As for the Muslims and the Christians, well sorry to say that they are too busy ensuring their reward in the after-life, in heaven. They are too busy "claiming souls" for God.

Dear God, I know your ways are higher than my ways and that I can never understand them. Your track record throughout history seems to suggest that you have a really weird and sometimes sarcastic sense of humour. But you can't be serious about these people right? Especially when your name is often misquoted....nevermind. I know. It's not for me to understand....

I am glad that most of the practising Buddhists have not been "convinced" by their leaders of the need to built great and mighty temples doing great works of mission in the far regions of the world. I cannot imagine an orange saffron clad event proclaiming the way of Karma. Or a fancy stage play spreading the message of "The Middle Path." And it will end with passionate speeches from the pulpit and a call for a show of hands of who will want to be a part of us. That will be rreeaallyy weird....

My thoughts are now with the Burmese Buddhist monks detained by the military Junta. Western news agencies have moved on to newer sensations.


Have yourself a Merry Christmas. Yea right...

Why is it that in every festive season, people like to spam my phone inboxes with stupid X-Y-Z festival messages? And some of them even have other people's name on it!

This year, I have only read ONE Christmas well-wishes text message in its entirety. It came from a friend and I paid attention to it because it was personal and I believe she took time to compose it.

Rest of it are deleted without even me going through a quarter of its contents. In the early days, I thought signing masses of festive cards and sending them out by snail mail is only something business organizations do to their clients or simply a politically correct thing to do to someone whom you are not very personal with. But forwarding copies of insincere text messages to your friends bring festive well wishes to a whole new level of cheap and shallow relationship building.

The paradox of communication in this time and age is that we have built hundreds of billions of dollars worth of under-sea fibre-optic cables and satellites but yet the value of communication have actually decreased. It seems like the cost per x-byte of communication is inversely proportional to the human value of our communication.

While a huge chunk of data packets transfered around of the world's collection network switches and routers are mission-critical information or serves important academic purposes, I believe most of it are junk loads of porn, mindless chats over IM networks and the ever increasing forwarded mails and spams.

The Internet can help me communicate with my far away friends in Germany and Finland, but yet I still see hardly see my fellow housemates, or even my ex-house and uni-mates who lives in the same neighbourhood!

I have noticed this when I left high school, and now I am again noticing the same "socio-psychological" pattern here - the people / groups that you grew up with are not necessary the same group of people who will stick with you. In fact, the converse might be true.

The groups of high-school friends that I continued to keep in touch with are those whom I hardly thought much of during my days in SMI. And as expected, the cycle repeats itself in my post-grad life. It's nothing negative to be emo about. It's nothing personal. People grow up, they adopt different lifestyles and their priorities changes over time.

My point?
1. Treat all your friends well. You never know who will stick with you and who will grow "away" from you.

2. Realise that we often don't realise who are the "friends" and who are the "leechers" until we look at our lives on hindsight. But you will be very miserable if you operate on that level all the time. There isn't much respite from that carnal human nature other than to exercise some simple wisdom and of course...let it go.

3. People, friendship and their company should be enjoyed and cherished in the present and not to be romanticised in the past nor wished for the future.

Some of those whom I used to hang out a lot with, well I hardly bother to keep in touch with them anymore. It's hard enough to juggle one's work and personal life, let alone keeping in touch with others who don't really bother. Those that I actually spend more time with, are those whom I hardly see during my student years. That's the irony of investing your time and attention to people.

The Paradox of our Time!

The paradox of our time in history is that...

We have taller buildings, but shorter tempers.
Wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints.
We spend more, but have less.
We buy more, but enjoy it less.

We have bigger houses and smaller families.
More conveniences, but less time.
We have more degrees, but less sense.
More knowledge, but less judgment.
More experts, but more problems.
More medicine, but less wellness.

We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly,
laugh too little, drive too fast, get too angry too quickly,
stay up too late, get up too tired, read too little,
watch TV too much, and pray too seldom.

We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values.
We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often.
We've learned how to make a living, but not a life;
We've added years to life, not life to years.

We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet the new neighbor.
We've conquered outer space, but not inner space;
We've done larger things, but not better things.

We've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul.
We've split the atom, but not our prejudice.
We write more, but learn less;
We plan more, but accomplish less;
We've learned to rush, but not to wait;
We have higher incomes, but lower morals;
We have more food, but less appeasement;

We build more computers to hold more information to produce more copies than ever, but have less communication.

We've become long on quantity, but short on quality.

These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion; tall men, and short character; steep profits, and shallow relationships.

These are the times of world peace, but domestic warfare; more leisure,but less fun; more kinds of food, but less nutrition.

These are days of two incomes, but more divorce; of fancier houses, but broken homes.

These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throw away morality, one-night stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer, to quiet, to kill.

It is a time when there is much in the show window and nothing in the stockroom; a time when technology can bring this letter to you, and a time when you can choose either to make a difference, or to just hit delete...

Dr. Bob Moorehead

The essay appeared under the title "The Paradox of Our Age" in Words Aptly Spoken, Dr. Moorehead's 1995 collection of prayers, homilies, and monologues used in his sermons and radio broadcasts.