Where's My Noose?

Oh good, the damned thing is finally up.

2010-06-16T20:43:00.004+08:00

For even more information of what it is I'm spending my time on these days, go here. I'm quite pleased with how the whole site turned out, myself. While you're at it, check out my company's website as well, of which I also had a considerable hand in, hah! (Thanks also to Daniel, Ben, Wooi Leng, Richard, Agnes and of course website designer Khoo Teng Hooi. Couldn't have done it without them.)

So yeah, no point hiding it anymore, I guess. I'm the assistant editor of Penang Economic Monthly, a 64-page magazine about socio-economic issues relating to Penang. Distributed and sold nationwide, with a cover price of RM10. Surely you've heard of us. (...right?) I do... whatever it is assistant editors do, plus quite a bit of writing. No ranty-political drivel, no matter how much you or I might miss it. Quite a bit of travelling (at least initially), plus meeting some pretty interesting people for interviews and such as well. It's a pretty sweet gig, and though my dream job is still making comics that have tons of explosions in them, I'm quite pleased with where I am right now.

So, yeah, the blogging thing. No, it's not quite dead yet. I actually thought it was, until I happened to go to Blogger. They've got some funky new designs that I really like and just had to try out. I like how it looks now, simple and no-nonsense, but still easy on the eyes. We'll see how it goes.

For now though, the majority of my non-professional writing is done on... Twitter! I know, I never thought I'd do it, either. Never got the feel for it the first time I used it, but now it's ridiculously addictive. Plus everything you write has to be short and sweet, so there's much less pressure to churn out the essays I usually indulge myself in. Forces you to be concise. I like that challenge. That's pretty much where my train of thought is these days.

Met the chief engineer of Penang Bridge the other day with my boss. Interesting guy; he and his wife are very generous people. One of my favourite things he told us was that the projected budget of the bridge had been RM800 million. By the time they finished, it ended up at RM740 million. Imagine that happening today.

We interrupt this extended period of non-blogging to bring you some shameless self-promotion

2010-06-03T16:53:00.002+08:00

Because some loser got himself published on Malaysian Insider:

It was a Thursday, and Loh-Lim Lin Lee was buying fruit in the Penang Botanic Gardens. The next thing she knew, a man drove up to her on a motorcycle and began scolding her furiously in Hokkien: “How did you allow these monstrosities to be built?” He gestured, but Loh-Lim knew exactly what he was talking about.

Okay, technically it's an article from my gig at Penang Economic Monthly, cross-published at Insider because they have, like, x1000000000 our readership at PEM, but who's counting, right?

April Uprising

2010-04-11T21:35:00.003+08:00

I'm a huge John Butler Trio fan, and it felt like this album was taking forever to come out. This is the first album John Butler's done with his new lineup, ostensibly because he was looking for a different sound, and mission accomplished, it does sound a lot different from his previous stuff. Not to knock on Michael Barker and Shannon Birchall, those two are great fucking musicians, but Butler's meshed pretty well with new drummer Nicky Bomba (who's actually his brother-in-law and was Butler's original drummer way back when) and bassist Byron Luiters.

April Uprising's easily John Butler's most polished work to date. Gone are the overindulgent guitar solos; brother's no longer concerned with showing off how great a guitar player he is, and is actually being a bit more adventurous with his music. There are all kinds of styles at work here, townhall, reggae, country, even rock (he's playing the electric guitar for the first time on a studio album). You can tell he's been challenging himself quite a bit, yet the album still feels like three guys just jamming in someone's home studio and throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks. I love that. I love how he switches gears so effortlessly, from the fast, fun rock stylings of "One Way Road", to subtle politics of "Johnny's Gone", to the genuinely brilliant desperation of "Take Me". I love watching (or in this case, hearing) growth, whether it's from my favourite writers or musicians.

"Close to You". It could have been a typical preachy John Butler song from five years ago, a humourless rage against The Man. But that was the old JB. There's a fun, uncharacteristic rock vibe, and it does sound like a rage at first, which makes the sentimentality of the lyrics a pleasant surprise. There's a funky hook at around the three-minute mark of the song that I just can't get enough of.

Which isn't to say that John Butler's suddenly transformed into the Brandon Flowers of hippie songwriting or anything. I mean, check out this first single from the new album:

"It's never enough because they can't relate
To the real world, thinking that the oyster is just for the pearl"

Now that's the John Butler I remember. But you forgive him, because it's such a goddamned fun song.

There are one or two missteps here and there. "To Look Like You" is... I mean, I like it, don't get me wrong, but I don't know if a 34-year-old hippie should be singing about what it's like to be a teenage girl. (It's a song about body image issues and is actually quite decent, but still.) Overall, though, April Uprising's a triumph for Butler, who's come a long way from busking on the streets of Fremantle. I could listen to this album over and over every day (and, in fact, I am). It's his best work yet, and really a testament to what you can do when you've reached the top of the mountain, but aren't content with resting on your laurels, and want to reach for the sky.

In which I put on my Captain Obvious hat

2010-03-28T20:58:00.002+08:00

You know what I really like about my KL trips? Not having to deal with stupid office bullshit.

Unfortunately, stupid office bullshit never go away; they're just patiently waiting for you to come back fresh and re-energised, then they ambush you, pulverising your spirit once more to that they can lick your sweet, sweet tears.

Since I've never been an anonymous blogger, it's kinda hard to bitch about work stuff here in really explicit terms, but I'll try to be discreet. Basically, we had a charity concert thingy last night, which the company was preparing for the last couple of weeks, basically making everyone work the phones, design posters, carry furniture, etc.

Now, I was in KL for the magazine work, so I got out of most of the preparation stuff, and I got back to Penang just in time for the thing itself. Before yesterday though, I've been hearing rumblings from a couple of co-workers about how everything was going to hell and people were yelling at each other, etc. It sounded pretty bad, to the point where I was mildly surprised to see the office building still standing, and not torched in the righteous inferno of the Revolution.

Everything came to a boiling point yesterday. Long story short, tables were slammed and people brought to tears. This isn't just a typical "everyone snaps once in a while when the pressure's on"; people simply didn't like each other. The soprano we brought in for the show happily sang on for the audience, oblivious to the little meltdown happening indoors.

Other than that little hiccup, the concert went shockingly well. People seemed to be enjoying themselves, and I didn't have to do any literal heavy lifting after all, which is always nice. Blood will probably be spilled at the inevitable function post-mortem, though. They won't directly involve me, thankfully, but it's going to suck just sitting through it.

Marie's right: the really, really sucky thing about office politics is that they're so emotionally draining. Someone's always trying to screw someone, and you don't need to be the screwee to be emotionally invested in whatever's going on. No one likes to hear about how A is getting fucked over by B because of something C said. You come to work to work, not to get fucked because the office made the mistake of hiring a sociopath.

Singapore

2010-02-01T00:16:00.003+08:00

The last time I visited Singapore was 16 years ago, during a school field trip in the last days of my primary school years. Don't remember much about it, other than that it was okay. I did stop by Singapore a few years ago in transit from Penang to Melbourne, and did a day trip thingy, but that hardly counts, does it?

Anyway, after purchasing RM360 of now-worthless Killers concert tickets and RM240 in flight tickets, I ended up spending the weekend in Singapore following people around shopping. Which actually isn't nearly as bad as it might sound.

I got more exercise than I ever did in the past year just by walking around.

Oh, and comics. I bought a fucking library's worth of comics. Fuck me, have you seen the size of their Kinokuniya? The one in Orchard Road. Ho-lee shit. I could honestly spend half the day there, if I could get away with it. I thought I was in heaven. Their graphic novels selection certainly has a much wider variety than ours (which actually is pretty solid to begin with). The Kino in Bugis isn't nearly as impressive - quite pathetic, in fact, but then I happened to find Absolute Comics right next to it and that was impressive. I think I bought way more comics than I paid for the tickets.

Oh, and we stopped by Clarke Quay Saturday night. Upon which we did this:

Followed immediately by this:

(These aren't videos of me, by the way, as far as I know no one took any vids. But take my word for it anyway.)

The first one, the Slingshot, actually isn't so bad, mainly because you're staring up at the sky and not the ground. I didn't care for the constant bobbing in mid-air, but other than that it was fun.

The second one, the Xtreme Swing, should be classified as torture and banned under the Geneva Convention.

I have no idea how high up we were (though looking at that video, the answer is "probably pretty fucking high", but how it works is that they position the car parallel to the ground, and you're staring down at the ground as you're slowly pulling backwards and up. So you get to see the entire world shrink away from you as you go up higher... and higher... and higher. Seriously, I couldn't recognise anyone on the ground by the time we reached the peak. (Though that might be because they made me take off my glasses.)

The exact moment my entire body weight started to rest on my chest straps was when I came this close to wetting myself. I'm not proud of it, but I'd like to see you handle it with any semblance of dignity. Okay, Leanne (the only other person in our group who went up, after everyone else, including Kean (food poisoning my ass), chickened out) handled it a lot better than I did. She's got ice water running through her veins, that one. Me, I barely saved my membership in the Manliness Club by not bursting into tears. Barely.

Unlike the Slingshot, we actually get to pull the lever once we're up. Shirley, a nice Indian girl who coincidentally also came down for the Killers concert, ended up pulling the thing. We warned her to let us know when she'll be pulling it, under pain of an ass kicking. The drop was nearly as bad as being stuck up there - I actually screamed like a girl as the ground rose up. Screams turned to desperate laughter, because if we didn't laugh we'd fucking cry right there and then.

There are Facebook pics out there of me looking either bug-eyed or pretty damn pale. No, I'm not linking them, you go find them yourself.

In any case, we survived, and I honestly didn't think I had it in me to go up at all, so, er, that ought to make up for nearly wetting myself going up, right? Or literally having nightmares that same night about chest straps disappearing and me falling down to the ground, right? Right?

Crap.

Ah, screw it. I went up, you didn't. HAH.

Leave the bourbon on the shelf.

2010-01-22T16:01:00.001+08:00

I was looking forward to The Killers in Singapore this Sunday. I really was. I mean, when I was first asked to go, I only heard, like, one song from them (the "I got soul but I'm not a soldier" one, which remains one of the best-loved lines in a song that is also utterly meaningless), but I thought, okay, why not? I then spent the next month-plus listening to all their albums and memorising their lyrics so that I wouldn't look out of place in a mosh pit. I worked hard at it. Then, after two weeks of tiring production work in KL, I have a whole weekend in Singapore plus my first concert in years! Yay, right?

The gods, they mock me.

All sorts of rumours are flying about right now, and I know a lot of people who are literally in tears about this. Me, I was disappointed at first. Now I'm just pissed. Fuck you, Killers, The. I hope you lot get caught with a ton of drugs and have to do Celebrity Rehab or something. (I'm well into the second stage of grief, as you can tell.)

Meanwhile, I guess this is the closest I'll ever get to a Killers gig:

Sigh.

How they have fallen

2010-01-20T13:16:00.003+08:00

Or: Mahathir has turned into a goddamn idiot. Or maybe he's always been like this, but everyone was too scared of indefinite detention without trial to say anything.

Also, I've been accused of being an Obama shill (why ever would people think that?), but this annoys the hell out of me almost as much as the insane 9/11 conspiracy theories:

“Well, I am a bit disappointed because so far none of his promises have been kept. He promised to get out from Afghanistan but he ended up sending more troops there instead. He promised to close down Guantanamo but he has not closed down Guantanamo. Even other things he has not been able to do."

Okay, firstly, Obama's never promised to get out of Afghanistan. NEVER. Iraq, yes. Afghanistan, nope. Believe me, I followed his campaign very closely in '08. Also, the Guantanamo thing is a stupid thing that got shut down by stupid, scared, corrupt Senators, but that's a whole other thing.

But seriously, Mahathir, you're a goddamn idiot.

Just when I thought I was out, they drag me back in.

2010-01-19T23:03:00.000+08:00

A lot of people have been bugging me to hear my thoughts on the whole "Allah" thing. Which is both flattering and kinda weird, but okay. So here goes: I don't really care either way.

Oh, don't get me wrong, I think firebombing churches are stupid and very close to being acts of terrorism when you think about it. (If you're a Muslim in the West and you're throwing Molotov cocktails at churches, then it will be terrorism. Trust me on this.) Actually, okay, this is the part about the controversy that I genuinely care about: I desperately wish we Muslims could protest over something we don't like and not look like insane people. Is that too much to ask?

But use it, don't use it, who gives a shit, really. Yes, a lot of people, including those whose opinions I usually respect and really should know better, like to say that it's a conspiracy to confuse young Muslims or whatever. Which is fucking retarded, because there are already laws against converting Muslims in this country.

There's the sense of ownership issue, in which "Allah" belongs to Muslims and nowhere else. Except for all the historical evidence that suggests that the word "Allah" actually predates Islam. Except that technically it's not the same Allah. It's complicated.

All of which is utterly pointless and I really could not care less. Except that I've already written 200-plus words and counting, so, er, I guess I do on some level. But anyway. Use "Allah", don't use it. What do I care?

Though I do find it amusing that so many people are suddenly caring about the issue and saying that they should have the right to use the word "Allah", when no one cared until now. Tell people they can't do something, they'll scream at the top of their lungs for their right to do it. Look at me for example. I didn't want to write about this at all, until my mom pointed a finger at me and warned me not to write about it. So I sure showed her!

(I'm so, so sorry, Ma.)

And another thing that annoys me about this: it puts me in a position to agree with Mahathir. International press hasn't been kind to Malaysia over this issue, and they shouldn't be. But Switzerland bans minarets and no one so much as shook a fist in outrage. As a Muslim, that annoys me. Though Mahathir naturally avoids the subject of people firebombing churches. Which is a pretty Mahathir thing to do, actually. Something bad happens in Malaysia, wag your finger at the West, then ignore the problem completely.

But a dialogue probably needs to be done. There's an extreme disconnect, I'm noticing, between Muslims and non-Muslims over this issue. (All anecdotal evidence with no scientific merit, of course.) I hate to say this, but while Muslims can certainly try to chill a little bit and not get all outrage-y all the time, I don't think non-Muslims are doing enough to understand Malay Muslims. To them it's just a word. To a lot of Malays, it's so much more than that.

(523 words. I must really not care about this.)

Ugh.

2009-12-13T17:44:00.002+08:00

This. Not so much surprising as it is just eye-rollingly backward. I'd even venture to use a big word like "anachronistic" just to show off, except that, well, when we see so many decisions similar to this with regards to Islam and Malaysian women, that word just doesn't quite fit anymore, does it?

The Syariah High Court here ordered Manohara Odelio Pinot to be loyal and pay back RM1,112,250 owed to her husband, Tengku Muhammad Fakhry Sultan Ismail Petra, the Tengku Temenggong of Kelantan.

"The plaintiff was a perfect husband and the question of torture does not arise. As such, the defendant has no reason to act in such a manner," he said.

Missing from the judgment is an expectation that the wife get dinner ready by the time the husband gets back from a hard day's work of being royalty. Also:

Asked whether he was hopeful that Manohara would be loyal to him, Tengku Muhammad Fakhry replied; "Certainly".

Sorry, ladies, he's taken!

Awwww.

2009-12-11T10:54:00.004+08:00

Baloo and Shere Khan chillin' out. (Those are their actual names, and this is an actual zoo.)

Continuing Adventures in Hotel Sucky

2009-12-10T21:25:00.004+08:00

So I accidentally locked myself out of my room this morning. No problem, I thought as I took the elevator down to the lobby. I'll just show them some ID and they'll get me a new key. But previous experiences here started making me a little dubious about how smoothly it would really go. How much of a fuss would they put up to make sure that I'm who I'm saying I am and that I wasn't trying to sneak into someone else's room?

"Hi, I'm from Room ***, I locked myself out."

"No problem, here you go."

Now I'm not entirely sure if I should be pleased with the quick, painless service, or worried that the front desk just gave me a hotel room key without checking to find out who I was. I suppose they could have seen me around before, but still!

Okay, maybe I'm complaining way too much. But next time, I'm not leaving my 20-carat diamond collection behind anymore.

More on Hotel Sucky

2009-12-09T21:53:00.002+08:00

It is seven minutes to 10pm. I had gotten back from work less than an hour ago. Okay, had dinner with some co-workers, but still. Was tired, a little fried, very much looking forward to a nice hot shower. I mean, missing cup noodles aside, surely the hotel couldn't screw that up, right?

I opened the bathroom door and found myself staring at an empty towel rack.

Guys, at some point you've got to at least pretend to try, you know?

Chee Beng Kean...

2009-12-08T01:05:00.007+08:00

...would like to know where his fucking money is, asshole.

Incoherent Stream of Consciousness

2009-12-08T00:55:00.002+08:00

It's 12.39am and I'm tired and I have work in the morning, but I don't wanna sleep. Outside my window hundreds of cars are zipping back and forth in the Federal Highway. I see skyscrapers in the distance, their lights still turned on. There's another life happening right this very minute while everyone else is sleeping. I want to reach out and touch it, let myself get sucked into that other world.

But it's 12.43am and I'm still here typing/rambling away, with nothing but cold Kenny Rogers leftovers, a glass of Coke and hot instant cup noodles to keep me company, The Killers blaring in the background. I'm tired and vaguely annoyed but not sure at what and that's annoying me even more.

12.46am. It's almost like I'm waiting/expecting/hoping something to change, but all that's happening are my fingers tapping away on elegantly-designed Vaio keyboards and Brandon Flowers screaming away. I'm getting more and more annoyed, and I don't know why.

"I don't wanna be kept, I don't wanna be caged, I don't wanna be damned, oh hell"

It is 12.50am. I'm still in the same exact position I was 11 minutes ago. Everything's the same, and nothing's changed.

Shit.

Seriously? Of all the things you could grab you pick that?

2009-12-08T00:08:00.006+08:00

Ahh, KL. Back here for more work stuff; we've set production time for our magazine at two weeks, and hopefully we can cut it to one by the next ish.

I can actually see myself living here. I never thought of myself as a KL person, but there seems to be so much more life here. Penang is so blek these days, with highrises popping up at the least appropriate places. At least you expect highrises in KL. The people I work with are smart and friendly, and traveling around the city is so much easier with a GPS it almost feels like cheating. Though one time I followed the GPS's route from Tropicana to Solaris Mont Kiara, and I found myself in the North-South Highway, looking at a helpful signboard telling me which direction Sungai Buloh was.

Cons of permanently moving to KL (if that ever happens, which hardly seems likely at this stage) is of course leaving friends and family behind. Yeah, you can make new friends, but starting over from scratch has never been easy, at least for me, and I'm pretty shit at meeting new people. Which... would pretty much be the same scenario if I ever move back to Melbourne, come to think of it. Goddamnit.

Pros of temporarily working in KL: Company puts you up in a hotel, albeit a cheap one, and you're working more or less unsupervised, not in a dusty cubicle all day while dealing with endless meetings and office politics. There's a bit more pressure with that lack of supervision, but it's also very freeing.

Cons: the hotel I'm staying at is THE WORST GODDAMN HOTEL IN KL. I mean, there are at least two lamps that aren't working due to power socket failure, a front desk and room service centre that take forever to pick up the damn phone, and housekeeping is, arggh. I'm still too pissed off to be coherent. I found one of my brand new books a little mashed. Oh, and one day I bought some instant cup noodles for supper, left them in the hotel in a plastic bag by the corner, and when I came back later that night from work THEY WERE GONE.

Motherfucker. I have half a mind to fill in their customer review questionnaire. You know, the one that they'll just ignore in the end.

Had dinner with Zai and his wife Ulfah last week. I think it was the first time I'd seen them in person since... shit, their wedding a couple of years ago. Their daughter was born around this time last year. They looked like they hadn't slept in years. Suckers. Kidding, lovely people.

KL. Sigh. Decisions, decisions...

Saturday Night Music Video

2009-11-14T20:18:00.002+08:00

It's Saturday night and it's raining out. Ugh.

"My Favorite Things" by Pomplamoose.

The end of the world looks so pretty

2009-11-14T00:32:00.001+08:00

Daniel watched 2012 with his mom last night. He took MC from work today.

Was it that bad?

Well, I had extremely low expectations to begin with, so I ended up being reasonably entertained. Hey, when a movie promises to blow up the world and delivers exactly that, you can't be too mad at it, can you?

It's a Roland Emmerich film; you know what to expect by this point. (And what you expect not to see are subtlety, moderation and logic.) Shit blows up, in expensive-looking CGI, in increasingly ridiculous ways. (The moment the aircraft carrier scene happened, I wish Danny Glover's character would've said, "I really fucking hate symbolism." You'll understand why when you see it.) Plus, I'm a big fan of Chiwetel Ejiofor ever since he nearly stole the movie from Nathan Fillion's hands in Serenity, and he's pretty much the soul of 2012. (Sorry, John Cusack.) Seriously, if you expected anything, I dunno, substantive out of this movie, you're an idiot. (That criticism doesn't apply to Transformers 2, which is objectively shit, I don't care how much money it's made.)

Overall: I'd pay maybe RM8 for this movie.

We're so screwed.

2009-11-11T21:12:00.002+08:00

Why? Because it turns out that we don't have nearly as much oil as we've been led to believe:

In particular, the allegations cast a shadow on the prediction in the last World Economic Outlook, believed to be repeated again this year, that oil production can be raised from its present level of 83 million barrels a day to 105 million.

External critics have frequently said this cannot be substantiated by firm evidence and that the world has already passed its peak in oil production. Now the ''peak oil'' theory is gaining support at the heart of the global energy establishment.

''The IEA in 2005 was predicting oil supplies could rise as high as 120 million barrels a day by 2030, although it was forced to reduce this gradually to 116 million and then 105 million last year,'' said the IEA source, who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals inside the industry.

''The 120 million figure always was nonsense but even today's number is much higher than can be justified and the IEA knows this.

Malaysia's oil reserves will last for just another 20 years. Worldwide reserves... well, it looks like we can't trust the official figures anymore, if the whistleblower turns out to be right. Solar tech is advancing rapidly, but even then it'll be another 50 years till it gets to the point where it can start to replace our oil dependence, if not longer.

I've started to revise my previous anti-nuclear stance. It looks like we'll need nuclear tech after all, if only in the short to medium term, until alternatives prove more viable. The problem with nuclear power plants is that they're too big, too damn expensive and too dangerous. Hundreds of millions to build, an additional hundreds of millions a year to maintain... plus Malaysia doesn't exactly have a good record with maintaining standards. Present nuclear plants are just too heavily entrenched in the Cold War model, and not what we need now. We need a new kind of nuclear power plant, one that's relatively cheaper, causes less havoc on the environment, and less easily weaponised. As hard science fiction writer Charles Stross points out, nuclear technology had the bad luck of being discovered right around the time a major war was brewing.

Will we ever get to the point where widespread, peaceful applications of nuclear tech is possible? We might be closer than you'd think: India is preparing to export plutonium-free nuclear reactors to other countries.

Found: 50,000 soldiers

2009-11-11T14:20:00.004+08:00

Morbidity aside, this is a pretty breathtaking find:

The remains of a mighty Persian army said to have drowned in the sands of the western Egyptian desert 2,500 years ago might have been finally located, solving one of archaeology's biggest outstanding mysteries, according to Italian researchers.

Bronze weapons, a silver bracelet, an earring and hundreds of human bones found in the vast desolate wilderness of the Sahara desert have raised hopes of finally finding the lost army of Persian King Cambyses II. The 50,000 warriors were said to be buried by a cataclysmic sandstorm in 525 B.C.

"We have found the first archaeological evidence of a story reported by the Greek historian Herodotus," Dario Del Bufalo, a member of the expedition from the University of Lecce, told Discovery News.

(Via.)

Eye over Mars

2009-11-10T21:52:00.002+08:00

Courtesy of The Big Picture, false colour and greyscale images of the Red Planet:

Sigh. Why can't we visit weird alien landscapes? More here.

Brain drain

2009-11-10T15:32:00.005+08:00

Okay, so Malaysia's brain drain problem is starting to bite us in the ass. Actually, it's already been bit many, many times over the years, but this might be the first tangible case that'd make people sit up and take notice.

Of annoyance is Gerakan's Wan Sun Keong, who keeps harping on about how Penang produces "6,000 engineering graduates" a year. I don't know if those figures are true, but even if they are, that's not the point. The point is that we're producing 6,000 engineering grads a year, and an MNC took a look at them and said, "Not good enough" and walked away.

Fact: we're losing Malaysians every year. 40 percent of overseas Malaysians are in Singapore, including a couple of MPs. Opportunities to grow are extremely hard to come by, and there's way too much red tape that gets in the way. Sheena can regale you guys numerous horror stories about trying to make it as a doctor in Malaysia. (But only when you buy her a drink.)

Plus that engineering thing? Malaysia has one of the, if not the lowest number of patents produced in the region. You know why? We don't have people to do the R&D work, but even when we do, the patents go overseas. Why? Red tape. Do you know how long it takes for a patent to get approved in Singapore? One year. Do you know how long it takes for a patent to get approved in Malaysia?

Three years.

The tax structure thing the article floats at the end isn't going to cut it, not on its own. There are much deeper, more fundamental issues involved, most of which involves the fact that Malaysia is a crappy place to grow talent.

I almost wish I could frame this comment

2009-10-20T20:07:00.002+08:00

I usually don't bother addressing comments made on old posts, never mind posts from almost two years ago, since they're usually critical and insulting at a time when no one else would be reading them and be ready to call on their bullshit. But this is just too precious to pass up. If you didn't click on the link, the post in question was referring to a case in Saudi Arabia where a woman who was gang-raped was sentenced to be lashed repeatedly.

Two years after I made that post, I got this comment from Anonymous:

ok lesson i dont know whats your problem with saudi arabia but lesson have you ever wonderd why saudi womens wear that black and we call it (abbaya) we wear it to protect our selves cause our women is like i dimond not a segret we are protected we are not a segret any one can smoke and when he finesh he throw her and thats ok for you selling womens having money for sex we have a degnty and if i give you two kind of choclaits one of them is clean and covered and the other is open and dirty tell me wich one you will gonna choose iam pretty shore you will choose the clean and covered one and stop talking about freedom cause this is our freedom we choose it and thats what we want cause we feel save and btw iam from saudi arabia and iam proud to be saudi

I like that he goes on a bizarre rant that is only tangentially related to the topic in question. I love how he inexplicably compares women to cigarettes and chocolates. I love that he talks about how much he's proud to be a Saudi, but after spending all that time writing this comment, never actually talks about the woman who was sentenced to be punished for being raped.

Most of all, I love that he never uses a full stop, not even once. Please, read that again and bask in its glorious brilliance.

My poor babies

2009-10-19T20:44:00.005+08:00

I will likely have more to say about my weekend in Langkawi (short answer: WOOOO!!), but I will say this: whenever people talk about parasailing, no one ever, ever, mentions the fact that it has the curious side effect of crushing your balls.

Crushing disappointment.

2009-10-15T18:26:00.002+08:00

Log on to Gmail account.

See a link to "Reuters: Oddly Enough - Free honeymoons to halt divorce rate?".

Click on link.

Please don't be Malaysia, please don't be Malaysia, please don't be Malaysia...

...

GOD DAMN IT.

The stupid, it burns

2009-10-14T22:03:00.001+08:00

Puteri UMNO has decided they don't like how they're being treated and demand to be taken seriously:

Its chief Rosnah Abdul Rashid Shirlin said Puteri must prove that it is not merely a cosmetic job and that it is not only good at canvassing for votes during elections.

"Please don't sideline us when it comes to bigger things. We want to be on equal footing with Umno Youth and Wanita Umno.

"We want to fly with wings just like them and become the backbone of a house which stands tall without nails," she said in her maiden policy address at its general assembly today.

Okay, fair enough. You may be UMNO scum, but I'm willing to give you a chance. Go:

The call was contained in one of the motions that were passed without debate at the movement’s general assembly on Wednesday. “In view of widespread screening of movies with ghosts, superstitious and mystical elements, we urge the Government to empower Jakim to ban their production as they do not carry any positive message, but instead may destroy the faith,” it said. The movement also called on the Government to issue a similar ban on all foreign movies of such genres. It said film producers should concentrate on producing films of different genres that could serve as lessons, rather than show horror and superstitious ones which might not even deliver the intended messages.

Sounds like a perfectly non-controversial thing to say...

2009-10-14T18:23:00.002+08:00

This isn't going to go down well:

According to Judeo-Christian tradition, God created the Earth out of nothing.

Prof Van Wolde, who once worked with the Italian academic and novelist Umberto Eco, said her new analysis showed that the beginning of the Bible was not the beginning of time, but the beginning of a narration.

She said: "It meant to say that God did create humans and animals, but not the Earth itself."

She goes on to say that she hopes her findings would spark a "robust debate". If by robust you mean bringing the crazies out, as evidenced in the same webpage's comments section, then Mission Accomplished.

Saturday Night Music Video/Surrogates

2009-10-11T00:33:00.002+08:00

Not going to go into a whole lot about Surrogates; I never read the original comics (shock!) so I can't compare it. The movie, though? Sucked. For a movie with robots in it, it sure is boring. Even the action scenes are just kind of there. And for a movie with Bruce Willis, Ving Rhames and James Cromwell in it, none of the characters are remotely interesting. The strongest scenes are the ones with Bruce Willis's character trying to convince his wife to ditch her surrogate; they felt the most genuine in the entire movie, and even then I thought they didn't take enough advantage of that storyline. And for a movie I went in with little to no expectations (I was only vaguely aware what the plot was), it just wasn't good at all.

But enough about that:

"Motorcycle Drive By" by Third Eye Blind.

Peace Prizes and phony polls

2009-10-09T21:29:00.000+08:00

I'm as surprised as anyone that Obama's won the Nobel Peace Prize, less than nine months into his first term. He hasn't done anything other than not be George W. Bush -

Actually, you know what? That's a fantastic reason.

But that's just my opinion. Others would no doubt beg to differ. Others like the conservative Washington Post, which just put up an online poll asking readers whether they thought Obama deserved the Prize or not. At the moment, the results read 50/50, but that hasn't stopped editors from saying, "Fuck this shit" and doing a little bit of creative graphic design:

Absolutely shameless. I almost admire them for it.

Not a career highlight, I'd wager

2009-10-08T20:10:00.000+08:00

At first I couldn't believe Australians actually went and did this:

US crooner Harry Connick Jr, who made a guest appearance on the Nine Network show, took offence to the skit and forced an apology during Hey Hey's second reunion special last night.

During the show's Red Faces talent segment, five men were covered in black face paint and black wigs and re-enacted their skit Jackson Jive, which appeared years ago when Hey Hey was originally on air.

The Michael Jackson character this time had his face painted white.

Then I remembered that it's Channel Nine. Duh. Good on Harry Connick Jr., though, for educating viewers on why blackface isn't funny and forcing the show to apologise on air. I like the guy already.

For those of you who don't know what the fuss over blackface is all about, Crikey has a handy guide. Saying you're not racist doesn't alter the fact that the whole damn thing is racist.

Mixed Messages

2009-10-04T09:55:00.001+08:00

Hypothesis:

“The government will not let the opposition exploit the minds of the people. I believe the prime minister and his 1 Malaysia vision has injected a new spirit of optimism among the people, especially Bagan Pinang voters, to support the government in realising the country’s aspirations,” he said.

Muhyiddin also said that he was confident that the Chinese voters, which form 10 per cent of the total electorates, would vote for the BN.

Reality:

One book, entitled “Wajah Sebenar Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim: Nasib Orang Melayu Selangor” (The Real Face of Tan Sri Ibrahim: The Plight of the Selangor Malays), accused the Selangor mentri besar of sidelining the Malay community in the state.

“They wanted People Supremacy so much after they were fooled by Pakatan Rakyat, and were willing to risk the future of their children,” reads the opening chapter of the 49-page book.

“After ruling the state for 16 months, Pakatan Rakyat led by Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim has done a lot of things that have disadvantaged the Malays and Islam,” it adds citing, among other things, Selangor's proposal to hold elections for local councils.

“If this happens almost all local councils will be controlled by the Chinese because they live in towns while the Malays live in villages,” said the book.

You really have to admire the balls these people have...

Animals with Lightsabers

2009-10-04T09:39:00.003+08:00

Man, that's... something. I mean, "Animals with Lightsabers". That's such a dumb idea. But also... kinda brilliant at the same time, you know? I can't look away.

Saturday Night Music Video

2009-10-03T23:30:00.002+08:00

Hard Rock Hotel was pretty cool.

"Always Midnight" by Train's Pat Monahan.

Paalam.

2009-09-28T23:31:00.003+08:00

Interrupting this non-blogging period to present to my readers a Real Man:

He ended up making many trips, and eventually saved more than 30 people from drowning, witnesses and survivors said.

Tired and shivering, Mr Magallanes was back on higher ground with his family when he heard Ms Penalosa screaming as she and her baby were being swept away on the polystyrene box they were using in an attempt to cross the swift currents.

He dived back in after the mother and daughter, who were already a few metres away and bobbing precariously among the debris floating on the brown water.

"I didn't know that the current was so strong. In an instant, I was under water. We were going to die," said Ms Penalosa, her eyes welling with tears and voice choking with emotion.

"Then this man came from nowhere and grabbed us. He took us to where the other neighbours were, and then he was gone," Ms Penalosa said.

Ms Penalosa and other witnesses said an exhausted Mr Magallanes was simply washed away amid the torrent of water.

Neighbours found his body on Sunday, along with 28 others who perished amid Manila's epic flooding. The official death toll stands at 100 with 32 missing.

Respect.

Saturday Night Music Video

2009-09-19T23:45:00.002+08:00

Drove back from KL to Penang today. When they said that the traffic jam on the highway would be bad, they weren't kidding. Then of course it rained.

"Pencil Full of Lead" by Paolo Nutini.

That wasn't so bad

2009-09-18T23:00:00.002+08:00

And my one working week in KL comes to a close.

Gotta say that in the last couple of months I started my job I don't think I felt more excited about my work. Not to say that I haven't had a good time before; the people at the office are uniformly friendly, and we do get to be involved in some interesting projects. But little of it to do with publishing. This week in KL, on the other hand, is all publishing. I was challenged, and sometimes felt a little out of my depth.

Which is fantastic, because I'm actually learning new things on the job, things that I'm interested in. Again, not a knock on what I've been doing before, but it really feels great to finally be doing some publishing work and getting experience.

No thanks to the Hari Raya holidays, I've had to cut back my work week to balik kampung; everyone else will be working through the holidays, which I can't even fathom but I suspect is something I'll have to get used to in the near future. Hey, a career's a career, right?

Anyway, great experience, got to work with friendly and extremely talented people, and had the best mentor you could ask for. Looking forward to more of the same.

Short and quick and slightly painless

2009-09-14T22:25:00.001+08:00

Let me tell you, there's no terror like being stranded in the middle of KL and the goddamn GPS doesn't work HOW AM I GOING TO GET TO THE HOTEL NOW WHY DO YOU HATE ME GOD oh there's the signal phew.

Our business manager was kind enough to treat me to dinner at Whipped Into Place in Bangsar. Holy shit what a great place. Food's decent, but the atmosphere's great and the music selection's fantastic. Why can't we have a place like this in Penang? Oh, that's right: WE SUCK. Sigh.

It doesn't help that I'm currently on a Taylor Swift kick, but Kanye West is a goddamn jerk.

Malays drink beer during Ramadan! Shock! Horror! Oh, wait, Metro Ahad reporting the story? Yeah, fuck those guys. Not saying that there aren't any Malays drinking right now, but... it's freakin' Metro. C'mon.

And someone please explain to me why we're taking PAS Youth so, so seriously.

From a hotel room in the heart of PJ

2009-09-13T20:24:00.004+08:00

My first drive down to KL ended surprisingly uneventful. No real surprises or drama. I'm almost disappointed. Also, I really really love this GPS thingy. God knows I'd still be driving up and down the Federal Highway trying to find the damned hotel without it.

Thirty seconds after I close the hotel room door, though, a hotel staff opened the door and walked right in without so much as a knock. "Oh, you checked in already?" he said, and scurried off. Like hell I'm leaving my brand new baby Vaio in the room now.

To the asshole taxi driver at the LRT stop this evening: I know it's only like three or four bucks from the station to the hotel, but fuck you for blowing me off, asshole. Having said that, you guys are still a hella lot better than Penang taxi drivers.

The buffet dinner was okay, but goddamn was it overpriced as hell.

Still, can't complain too much. I'm chillin' by my lonesome in the hotel room on my laptop and Fareed Zakaria's running in the background. Tomorrow I work in strange, exotic new environs (ie. graphic designers' office). Brought in a nice haul from Kinokuniya earlier in the day, and Samy Vellu in position to cause more headaches for Najib made me snicker.

Overall, things could be a lot worse.

road trip wooooo

2009-09-13T09:05:00.002+08:00

Getting ready to go to KL for work stuff right now. I'm kinda excited; it's the first time I'll be driving to KL from Penang. It's almost like a kind of mini-adventure! Well, it would be, if my parents didn't insist on tagging along. Still, I bet it's gonna be fun! Unless I miss the KL exit and end up in, I dunno, Johor or something.

(awkward silence)

2009-09-11T19:12:00.001+08:00

Jonathan Charles, giving us a bit more information than we're comfortable with.

I wish I have this thing right about now

2009-09-09T12:50:00.002+08:00

Three days after I purchase my first laptop in about five years, I'm really, really appreciating this new development:

Ooh, shiny

2009-09-09T10:41:00.005+08:00

Yeah, things have been dead in here for a bit, haven't they? Work's been kicking my ass, but that's nothing new. Nothing new in politics, though it's nice to see that the idiot cow head protesters look like they're going to be charged. It'd be nicer if the government didn't flip-flop so much over it earlier on. Will anything actually happen? I'm not holding my breath.

I'd make a solemn vow about more regular blogging, but we all know how that'd turn out.

Ramadan's been pretty solid, though. I've been doing this for 15+ years, and it's really no big deal at this point; it's really just like having a really early breakfast and skipping lunch, or even no breakfast at all for some people. Nice thing about the office is that if you stay in to work during lunch hour you can get off an hour early. But I usually like to head out anyway. I can't do the "spend the whole day in the office non-stop" thing like some people.

Was supposed to head down to KL... today actually. Work stuff. Never driven down to KL before, or even around KL, and was kinda looking forward to the adventure of accidentally missing the KL exit and ending up in Johor or something. But real life reared its ugly head and it's been postponed for now. The tricky part is that the original trip was supposed to be for 10 days, which was the maximum number of days needed to finish this work thing. Now it's been cut short because of Raya, and I have to go back for Raya. Because my mother will murder me if I don't. (I'm only half-kidding.) So... yeah, tricky, but I guess it's playing by ear time. I've been hearing a lot of that lately.

On the plus side, I did get a shiny new toy:

Spent the whole weekend with Kean and Alicia (who, incidentally, hooked me up on this guy named Paolo Nutini, and now I can't get enough of the guy) agonising over what laptop I'll be spending the rest of my life with. Kean's actually a hella lot more particular about my laptop choices than I am, so he's a good wingman to have around. This one has nice specs and retailed for RM3,999, not counting the extra two-year warranty. A bit pricier than what I was targeting, but what sealed the deal for us was when the salesgirl asked us to touch the top area of the laptop lid. This happened:

It glows when you fondle it.

Even Apple never made anything so gloriously useless. God bless the Japanese.

They did WHAT now?

2009-08-29T00:28:00.001+08:00

You know, I allow work to pile up and distract me from all things that piss me off and/or depress me (i.e. Malaysian politics), and the very moment I take a glance back in that direction, I get to read about the most hateful, stupidest damned thing I've read about all year (and that's saying a lot):

Dozens of Malaysian Muslims paraded Friday with the head of a cow, a sacred animal in Hinduism, in a dramatic protest against the proposed construction of a Hindu temple in their neighborhood.

The unusual protest by some 50 people in Shah Alam, the capital of Selangor state, raises new fears of racial tensions in this multiethnic Muslim-majority country where Hindus comprise about 7 percent of the 27 million population.

The demonstrators who marched from a nearby mosque after Friday prayers dumped the cow head outside the gates of the state government headquarters. Selangor adjoins Kuala Lumpur.

Protesters stomped on the head and spat on it before leaving the site, Xavier Jeyakumar, a state government official in charge of non-Muslim affairs, told The Associated Press.

WHAT.

Seriously, first the beer thing, now this? What the hell's in the water down there in Selangor? Kelantan - fucking Kelantan - never had this kind of problem. Three days before Merdeka Day, no less. At least Najib's smart enough to realise that this demo isn't exactly in support of the 1Malaysia thing he's been espousing since coming into office.

Except that... come on, how many of us actually expect any of these racist fucktards to actually get anything more than a slap on the wrist, if even that? Ahmad Ismail got off relatively unscathed, and the fact that the cops stood by and did nothing while dozens of crazy racists stepped on a cow's head during freakin' Ramadan doesn't help either. (If it's a bunch of Indians dragging a pig's head into a Malay kampung, on the other hand...)

It's coming to a point where I honestly don't know what to expect from these people anymore. I fancy myself jaded and cynical about Malaysian politics and racial attitudes, then I read about people jumping on a cow's head in the street. Holy shit.

"Meridian points".

2009-08-12T22:14:00.004+08:00

If you asked me, I wouldn't be able to tell you when Steven Seagal was last relevant. But this long piece on Seagal is well worth your time, detailing the "actor's" many bizarre claims, as well as his connections to, of all things, the Italian mob:

On February 11, 2003, Steven Seagal arrived at the Federal Courthouse in Brooklyn, wearing, as Anthony DeStefano reported in Newsday, "a chocolate-colored silk Mandarin jacket and blue jeans." He had a "deep tan," having just flown in from Thailand where he was shooting his latest film, Belly of the Beast. But despite his Eastern garb, Seagal was not at peace with the world that day. He clearly did not want to be there, but he'd been subpoenaed to testify for the prosecution in the government's attempt to put away 17 alleged members and associates of the Gambino crime family. The various defense attorneys made it plain that they had their legal knives sharpened for the movie star.

Utterly bizarre. Go read.

The universe realigns itself

2009-08-12T20:57:00.000+08:00

Okay, when I read the first couple of paragraphs, I was racking my brain trying to figure out just what was so objectionable about local government elections that 11 BN MPs had to stage a walkout. Then I came to this:

Datuk Jahara Hamid (BN – Teluk Air Tawar) said Pakatan Rakyat MPs must raise the issue in Parliament because the state assembly did not have the power to amend the Local Government Act.

Fair enough, although Chow Kon Yeow insists that he already did bring it up in Parliament, and I'm sure you all can imagine how that turned out. Local government elections - as in, the local council elections where Penangites get to vote on who their councillors are, at least that's how I understand it - are strangely under the purview of the Federal Government. Which is retarded, but that's neither here nor there. It also makes this bill, which is to urge for the "holding of local government elections", seem kinda toothless, other than in a "get the idea out there in the public consciousness" kind of way. So I guess BN does sort of have a point, though I'm not sure if it's something worth staging a dramatic walkout for.

Penang UMNO making some sense? I guess we really are in trouble -

On Penang Hill Corporation, Datuk Jasmin Mohamed (BN – Sungai Dua) said all Muslim assemblymen must reject it because Section 32(d) mentioned the repaying of borrowed money and the interest due.

“This charging of interest is riba and is forbidden in Islam,” he said.

Never mind.

Sure, why don't we ALL run away

2009-08-08T18:20:00.002+08:00

Government cancels meeting with parents and teachers at last minute. Way to show your spine there, guys.

Of course people are pissed off with how you've been handling the Science and Maths in English switch. Never mind the politicising of the issue (what isn't politicised in Malaysia?), but even from a practical standpoint anyone can tell it's an utterly retarded way of handling it. One of my section head's sons has been studying Science and Maths in English throughout his whole student life.

But immediately after he hits Form Five, he'll have to adapt to doing things in Malay. Someone kindly explain to me how that isn't just stupid. And I don't think running away from a bunch of parents and underpaid teachers is helping, either.

It's a fucking miracle that this country hasn't imploded by now.

WHAT.

2009-08-06T21:17:00.004+08:00

Meet fuckyeahanimalswithcasts, a website dedicated to showing you pictures of animals in casts.

Because, the website insists, that they are "cute".

Thanks a lot, Internet. Really.

(h/t Marie)

Just sick of it

2009-08-05T21:40:00.001+08:00

Cleaned up the blogroll a little bit and updated the webcomics section after finding a couple of really neat ones. They're all solid, if not good, if not outright great. Nice to see the long-running ones still going strong; Achewood consistently brings the surreal and absurdity, while Order of the Stick still manages to make its loooong fantasy epic smart, funny and surprising. Dresden Codak is gorgeously drawn and I love how it revels in hard sci-fi. Right now I'm reading Rice Boy, which just blows my mind with its confident storytelling and massive scope. Seriously, if you're bored at the workstation, give 'em a look.

Now, on to what's the latest Stupid going on with Malaysian politics...

...

Seriously, PAS? Beer? This again? You have a major, suspicious death and massive anti-ISA protests all in the last three or so weeks, and this is your chosen crusade?

I think DAP and PKR need to decide one day if it's really worth having PAS around. I am so sick and tired of writing about how stupid the whole thing is, how insulting they're really being to Malays by implying that they have absolutely no self-control, that they'd be compelled to buy the first available beer bottle they see. I'm sick of reading about how Chinese and Indians need to be "sensitive" to Malays/Muslims while these kinds of laws and regulations just serve to screw them over. Also, seriously guys: if a Malay really, really wants a bottle of Heineken, there's really nothing you can do to stop them.

We really need to ditch the whole "Islam is about controlling what people do" thing, fast. Nice to see that Khalid Ibrahim does have the balls to stand up to these dumbasses.

Fake lug nuts?

2009-08-04T18:25:00.001+08:00

Are you kidding me? Fake lug nuts?

The "lost investments" myth

2009-08-03T21:27:00.000+08:00

The ISA protests. Like it, don't like it, you're completely entitled to your say. Except this guy. He of all people really should know to keep his damned mouth shut when it comes to ambition and governance. Fucking hell...

Ah, we're still going to the whole "protests are chasing away investors" thing, are we? It's a bullshit argument, of course. It's like blaming the doctor for your AIDS. This is what's completely flown over the heads of our so-called leaders: the protests aren't a problem, they are a symptom of a problem. If people are protesting, well, that's a sure fucking sign that something's off, right? So you go ahead and do what you can to fix the damn problem. You don't cover your ears, go LALALALALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU and arrest everyone left and right to cover up the problem.

But that's exactly what you do every. damned. time. this happens, and you bitch and moan about how people are too scared to invest in a country that has people complaining about unjust laws every once in a while. Yeah, why on earth would anyone be scared away over something like that?

So traffic in KL was worse than usual or something?

2009-08-01T20:46:00.005+08:00

Hats off to the thousands of protesters in KL demonstrating against the ISA. Police action was predictable, which just made the whole thing even more... I'm not sure if "spectacular" is appropriate but I'm hard-pressed to think of something better.

Pic by Malaysiakini

I've said it before and I'll say it again: the police action against these kinds of protests just don't make any damned sense to me. I mean, what's the worst that could happen? It was, by all accounts, a peaceful demonstration before the cops showed up. The crowds show up to wherever it was they're supposed to go, make some noise, then after a couple of hours everyone gets bored and goes home. Weeks later, everyone forgets the whole thing. END OF STORY. Sending out the riot police doesn't exactly allow stories to die a quiet death, you know. Three words that I find myself repeating over and over again for the last couple of years: they never learn.

This made me laugh, though:

Mohd Khairul Azamdin, legal adviser to pro ISA Majlis Gabungan NGO Pembela Negara walks through police blockade and is now at the the Palace to hand over a memorandum urging that the ISA be retained. He is alone.

I'll bet he was.

Also hilarious is the fact that, even though just about every major outlet in Malaysia is covering the demonstration, Bernama has literally nothing on the protests. In fact, as of this writing, their lead headline is about Najib asking Nik Aziz not to hurt UMNO members' feelings or something. Seriously.

Why do they have to bring "black magic" into this? Can't they just say that he was freakin' horny?

2009-07-27T20:40:00.005+08:00

You must, must be joking:

Two women have filed for divorce on grounds that their husbands’ unusual sex drive is linked to black magic, reports Metro Ahad.

Syarie Lawyers Association deputy president Musa Awang said in the first case, the couple had been married for a year.

“The riddle to the husband’s unnatural sex drive was answered when a relative of the wife saw the husband in the house when the family had seen him leave for work earlier.

“The relative heard the husband’s voice in the bedroom and upon checking, found an ‘individual’ in the room looking exactly like the husband,” he said.

Musa said that the wife had since filed a complaint with the religious department and applied for fasakh.

Some people would want to know if there really was a ghost in the bedroom. I want to know what the hell the wife did when SHE SAW A FUCKING GHOST IN HER FUCKING BEDROOM JESUS CHRIST AND MUHAMMAD WTF?!?!?! If it was me I wouldn't have asked for a divorce, because I would have been too busy FREAKING OUT.

(Hat tip: Al.)

Sunday Catblogging

2009-07-26T18:46:00.006+08:00

No matter what we did, Bendi would always, always, somehow manage to escape the house. This is actually true of most of the cats we have/had, but Bendi was a particularly stubborn bastard of a cat. She'd either jump out of the balcony of the first floor onto the neighbour's roof, then down to the ground, or she'd scale this fence. Sometimes, when she's out long enough, she'd walk back into the house herself if you open the gate for her. Otherwise it's 20 minutes of searching the nearby longkangs or underneath random cars, then dragging her resentful arse, claws and teeth and all, back into the house.

We finally solved this problem by putting a wire fence and bent it backwards, making it impossible for her to climb out. So now Bendi spends her afternoons forlornly underneath her former escape route, lamenting the long-gone days of exciting escapades and being a pain in the ass. Now she rests, plotting her humans' violent deaths in her sleep.

R.I.P. Yasmin Ahmad, 1958 - 2009

2009-07-26T14:37:00.004+08:00

Yasmin Ahmad dies. This probably isn't the best time to mention that I've never seen Sepet, is it?

Saturday Night Music Video

2009-07-25T21:27:00.004+08:00

It's Saturday night! You know what that means: me being home again! Wooo! Hooray for the status quo!

(Seriously, it's Penang. What would you be doing?)

On the plus side, I finally got confirmed at my job after the three-month probationary period, so yay that.

"B.O.B", or "Bombs over Baghdad" by OutKast, from way back in 2001. Most notable for being the fastest, nuttiest damned thing they ever did.

Those special, special UMNO minds

2009-07-22T21:25:00.002+08:00

I didn't exactly cover the news of Teoh's death much on this blog, mainly because everyone's already had their say (with more to come) and, really, what else is there to talk about? I don't care what anybody says, none of us know the circumstances behind his death. Maybe he was killed. Maybe he committed suicide. Maybe it was an accident. Nobody fucking knows, and I'm not interested at all in adding to speculation upon speculation. And writing essays about how this would be the "death knell" for Najib seem both premature and more than a little ghoulish.

I will say, though, that it takes a special, special kind of mind to see the uproar over Teoh's death and interpret that as an attack on Malays.

Saturday Night Music Video

2009-07-18T21:18:00.001+08:00

I'm stuck here in Penang on my own. Rest of the family's in KL for, I dunno, some kind of football game. Supposed to be pretty big.

"Some Surprise" by Lisa Hannigan and Gary Lightbody.

Who calls themselves "Half-Blood Prince" anyway?

2009-07-18T11:23:00.005+08:00

Maybe it was because Transformers 2 was so friggin' terrible, but Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was outstanding. Hell, almost shockingly good. The last movie, as I noted in my review of it way back, felt kinda pointless, but this was just good.

The plot's taken a much darker turn, with a couple of genuine surprises, and the always outstanding acting. All the main players are on top form, but standouts were Daniel Radcliffe, Alan Rickman and Jim Broadbent. Broadbent completely embodies an old professor past his prime and looking to hang on to past glories, while keeping a dark secret buried as deeply as he can. Radcliffe was hilarious (you'll know the scene when you see it). And Alan Rickman... man. There's acting, and then there's acting. A lot of actors like to show off to the audience that they're ACTING. RIGHT. NOW. (see: Edward James Olmos, Denzel Washington), but Rickman is so much more subtle than that, conveying a plethora of emotions by barely changing his facial expression. Has he won an Oscar before? He should've.

What else? The effects take a big leap forward, most noticeably in the Quidditch scenes. They actually look natural this time. Rupert Grint gets the best lines. Tom "Draco Malfoy" Felton not only gets to look like the snappiest dresser in the Harry Potter universe, but takes a big leap of his own, getting more screen time and showing off more range than I expected him to have. I always thought he was the weak link in the movies, but he's not bad at all here.

Also, Bonnie Wright as Ginny is totally awesome. I love that she's taller than Harry, a surer leader than Harry, and, ultimately, she's the one who chose Harry, rather than the other way around. That's pretty cool.

I wish I could say the big death scene shocked me, but anonymous assholes on World of Warcraft spoiled it for me years ago when the book first came out. Motherfuckers.

But yeah, watch it.

Damn

2009-07-16T21:30:00.003+08:00

What started out as yet another, almost routine corruption investigation turns out to be something more serious.

Like most people I don't have possession of all the facts so I'm not going to be part of the speculation that's bound to come about. I'm just sorry for the family, and I hope (against hope) that the police step up.

Glancing at the major English news sites, everyone seems to be pretty objective. In fact, any complaint I might have involves a non-mainstream entity for once. Malaysiakini, as of this writing, has put up a large photo of Teo Beng Hock lying on the ground and surrounded by the police. I'm not up on my legalese, but that's not cool.

Going Undercover: You're Doing It Wrong

2009-07-14T22:20:00.005+08:00

How stupid was the Bush Administration? They tried to set up a secret assassination programme and stuffed it up via the stupidest way possible:

The perpetrators in Kenya also quickly discovered that white boys born in the American south sporting crewcuts and speaking no foreign language had difficulties in blending in as foreign businessmen.

As much as Bush and Company have broken the world, stories like this make me wonder how we're all still alive.

(Via.)

Stupid people will do stupid things.

2009-07-14T20:42:00.003+08:00

I probably should have weighed in on this issue last week, but, you know, work.

When I heard that Malay journalists went undercover to infiltrate a church to find out if there are any conversions going on, went through the Catholic communion ritual thingy and then desecrated the practice... I wish I could say I was surprised. I was disgusted, but surprised? The only thing that's surprising is that it took this long for something like this to happen.

Now, us Malays generally aren't like that. I think. But there are a lot of Malays out there who simply don't have any kind of empathy towards other races and religions. Hell, some of them are my cousins and uncles. (Only by marriage and not blood. As far as I know.) A cousin of mine walked past a little Buddhist shrine outside a shophouse in Langkawi about ten years ago and casually kicked it to pieces. An uncle said some stupid shit about Hindus a couple of years back and fortunately got his ass reamed by an aunt.

I don't know if it's because of some kind of segregation that's going on or what, but it's a problem. You have people making a mockery of other people's beliefs and don't see anything wrong with that. Why would they? If Allah's the one true god, why should they give a shit about the kafir?

It's not a religious thing. I saw my ustaz yell at someone over the phone in perfect Hokkien and my mom thought some triad gangster must have broken into the house. I don't believe it's a religion versus religion thing. It's just people being stupid. And feeling damned smart about it.

And people will keep getting stupid if there's no one to smack them around and tell them what they're doing is wrong. Not if Utusan Malaysia keeps printing racially inflammatory shit and gets away with it. Not if we get another Ahmad Ismail. And not if these dumbass reporters get away with a slap on the wrist. Because you know there'd be hell to pay if it was the other way around.

Who are you and what have you done with Zam?

2009-07-13T22:03:00.003+08:00

The Star published a fluff piece on a former politician now writing his memoirs today. A completely unremarkable interview, if it wasn't for the fact that the subject is Zainuddin "Zam" Maidin, who sounds shockingly reasonable and not at all insane.

Sunday Night Firefly

2009-07-12T21:08:00.003+08:00

"You know what the chain of command is? It's the chain I go get and beat you with 'til you understand who's in ruttin' command here."

This is fantastic.

2009-07-12T20:38:00.004+08:00

Zulkifli Noordin almost wins this week's Stupid Awards for celebrating the fall of the Science and Maths in English thingy and recommending that Malay be taught in Jawi. Almost. But after the way Patrick Teoh built up the man's Stupid, it's kinda disappointing when you actually read the man's blog. Way to misrepresent the man, Teoh.

Then again, maybe we should be thankful to Mr. Teoh. Because if he didn't bring Zulkifli's blog to our attention, the world would surely have been deprived of this:

Yes, you look reeeeaaal badass, sir.

BWA-HAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA!!!!

"The Riding MP"??? Oh my god, this is fucking gold.

Saturday Night Music Video

2009-07-11T20:45:00.001+08:00

What a weird-ass weather we're having. Been raining almost non-stop for nearly 24 hours now. Crazy.

"Crucify" by Tori Amos. Can't believe I've only just discovered her.

100th

2009-07-11T20:16:00.002+08:00

I hardly read newspapers anymore these days, and today gave me a good reason to be thankful for that. Every single paper seems to dub Najib's 100th day as prime minister the Suck Up to Najib Day. It's embarrassing. Did any of those papers mention, oh let's say, Perak?

One good thing I will say about Najib: no one's going to mistake him from ~~Sleepyhead~~ Badawi. He does at least give the impression of doing something, especially with the economy. Whether it's a good something, well, we'll have to see, won't we?

Blogging's scarce due to me working, and blogging will be scarcer over the weekend due to me, well, working. Glargh.

We're screwed.

2009-07-08T22:47:00.003+08:00

Say goodbye to our economic future.

Some of you might think I'm exaggerating a little bit, but I don't think I am. We needed English proficiency up and running ten years ago. As it is, the rest of the developing world has not only caught up to us, but we're left eating their dust. India is taking our jobs not just because they have crazy good computer programmers and cheap call centres, but they speak English. Closer to home, Singapore keeps extending its lead over us and Indonesia's caught up. The only reason Thailand hasn't done so either is because that country's got a ton of issues. But once it gets its act together... well.

And don't get me started on Eastern Europe.

It used to be that Malaysia could at least compete in terms of cheap labour and, if in Penang, some pretty good manufacturing expertise. But we're very quickly losing whatever advantage we have. Our skills are growing outdated because the country as a whole isn't investing enough in R&D. (The UN recommends that governments spend something like eight percent of GDP on R&D. Malaysia spends a fraction of one percent.) The economy is getting worse and worse. And now it looks like our kids won't be able to speak the same language as the rest of the world.

We're falling further and further behind. And no thanks to the government, we're losing the skills we need to even think about catching up.

Carpooling, the Indian Studies department and watching Buffy beat the shit out of the Twilight guy

2009-07-07T21:34:00.006+08:00

I was minding my own business in the office this morning when my mom called me. She's on her way to my building in a taxi; her car's in the shop and she needs my car, no questions asked. So now I'm car-less for the rest of the week. I get to carpool with a co-worker who lives close by, though. Which means it's time to cross off "Carpool to Work" in my list of Things to Do When You Get a Job. Yes!

What? It always seemed like one of those things you do when you get a job, you know? Like eating assam laksa when you drop by in Penang. Or checking out transvestites in KL.

...

Don't look at me like that.

Am I the only one who doesn't see what the big deal is in the appointment of a non-Indian to head an Indian Studies Department? If the appointed person is well-versed in Indian culture, isn't that what matters? You don't see Asian Studies departments overseas being headed strictly by Japanese people or whatever, and they don't have any problems. If they can do the job, who gives a shit? And don't give me that whole "only Indians can understand Indians" argument, or whatever Muslim/Chinese/Malay/etc. equivalent. That's what a coursework's for. Stop politicising every damned thing under the sun. With this protest you're just cutting off the new person's legs from under them before they can even get started. He or she doesn't deserve that.

On a lighter note, here's the matchup I never knew I wanted to see, until I saw this video: Edward Cullen from Twilight meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer:

"You're my own personal brand of heroin." "Oh my god, what are you, twelve?"

Sigh. I miss Buffy.

Armstrong

2009-07-06T21:18:00.002+08:00

Neil Armstrong: leading the quiet life.

"To my knowledge he has done two television interviews in the last 40 years - and he says nothing about what he felt about anything. He will talk about matters of fact and that's it," says Smith. The author has been repeatedly refused an interview with Armstrong despite many requests, although the pair have had e-mail correspondence.

"And he didn't want to profit from it financially - even though a lot of the other Moon walkers have done - and amazingly he's stood by that. An auction house told me that if Armstrong spent just one afternoon signing autographs he could make a million dollars, but he's always refused."

Kinda says it all, really

2009-07-06T20:49:00.003+08:00

We're rather miserly, aren't we? (Taking online polls for whatever they're worth, anyway.)

Saturday Night Music Video

2009-07-04T19:13:00.002+08:00

What am I doing on a Saturday night in freakin' Penang? Why, absolutely nothing, of course! Dumb question.

"Zebra" by John Butler Trio.

I'm calling her Doc and so should you

2009-07-03T22:22:00.003+08:00

Sorry if I'm not as enamoured as people seem to be regarding the so-called split happening in Kedah right now. A PAS government ignoring the lone DAP assemblyman in a Malay-dominant state? What a surprise. On the other hand, while I'm sure the PAS government has been acting like little shits, I'm not sure if quitting over a freakin' pig farm is the most dignified way to go.

You have to scroll down a bit, but this piece features what is undoubtedly the Greatest, Most Frightening Story about Comic Book Fans Ever Told, as experienced by writer Mark Waid. I'm still amazed by the whole thing.

The flight--on one of those twin-engine jobs where they discount your ticket if you bring your own helmet--was, despite the tiny cabin, spectacular. Honestly. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky at any point during the trip, and I just stared out the window at the beautiful farmland below. Landed around noon. My hosts were there to pick me up. They were a little younger than I’d figured they were going to be, but at least they were there at the gate like they’d promised they’d be and, besides, I’ve never been very good at picking up on Giant Red Flags.

Read the thing.

And finally (I'm embarrassed that I forgot to mention this earlier), everyone give a shout-out to longtime reader/stalker Sheena Toyat. Or rather, Doctor Sheena Toyat. Yes, the United Kingdom has, against all logic and sense, decided to give her a medical license. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

What's the over/under on there being a follow-up investigation?

2009-07-01T21:39:00.003+08:00

Not really sure how I missed this piece of news (hat tip to Alvin):

Five policemen, including a chief inspector, tested positive for drugs after a Bukit Aman narcotics team raided a nightclub in Jalan Kepong in Jinjang at 3am Friday.

They were among the 15 off-duty policemen at the newly-opened club.

Out of the 306 club patrons screened, 70 tested positive for ketamine, methamphetamine and amphetamine.

First of all, ketamine? Amphetamine? Meth? Those aren't weak-ass drugs like marijuana or something. Those are hardcore drugs. Surely I don't need to spell out the implications.

And secondly, I love this quote from Sentul OCPD Asst. Comm. Zakaria Pagan:

“This shows that the police are not biased. Action will be taken against anyone found breaking the law, without fear or favour.”

Yeah, kinda missing the point there, Zakaria...

Harping on just a bit more on Transformers 2

2009-07-01T21:02:00.002+08:00

Man, I make one innocent status update on Facebook about how much I disliked Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen ("I'd rather have a nail driven into my brain than watch Transformers 2 again") and I get flooded by people telling me to chill and enjoy it for what it was.

And I do agree with that sentiment generally. If I thought too much about the science of Star Trek that movie would drive me crazy. Instead I saw it twice. Same with Superman Returns or whichever movie. But with those movies, at least if you looked past the plot holes, they still offered you a lot. Intelligence, fun, acting, writing... those pluses made up for the negatives.

With the first Transformers movie, its pluses were some fun character moments and great action. With the sequel, well, it couldn't even count on those things. Sorry to all the people who liked it, but it was a stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid movie, and the action scenes sucked.

So there.

Transformers-related links ahoy!

io9 interprets the movie as Michael Bay's first art movie:

Since the days of Un Chien Andalou and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, filmmakers have reached beyond meaning. But with this summer's biggest, loudest movie, Michael Bay takes us all the way inside Caligari's cabinet. And once you enter, you can never emerge again. I saw this movie two days ago, and I'm still living inside it. Things are exploding wherever I look, household appliances are trying to kill me, and bizarre racial stereotypes are shouting at me.

Christopher Bird brings up the issue of negative racial stereotypes and points out that, yes, it could have been much, much worse.

And Topless Robot helpfully explains the movie for us in an astounding FAQ.

So it turns out that the reason my latest paycheque didn't clear is because the guy responsible for transporting the cheques got beaten up and it got stolen. Which isn't exactly the kind of thing you're expecting to hear. Welcome to the Working Life, I guess?

Sunday Catblogging

2009-06-28T19:26:00.006+08:00

Yes, I'm turning out to be one of those people.

That's Kiwi, staring at my toes in silent contemplation, two seconds before she starts gnawing them off, the little bastard.

Transformers 2

2009-06-28T01:32:00.003+08:00

Okay, this post is, strictly speaking, probably going to end up being less a review of Transformers 2 and slightly more of a "critique". (As much as you could critique something called Transformers 2, at any rate.) Which means that there are going to be SPOILERS. If you want a non-spoiler review, here's this: regardless of whether I say it's a good movie or a bad one, you've already made up your mind whether you're going to watch it or not.

(Okay, it sucks.)

Now, on with it:

Pre-movie Observation #1: There were a ton of people. I don't remember seeing Gurney Plaza as packed for a movie before. Maybe my timing's just off, but people really, really want to see this movie...

Pre-movie Observation #2: ...something which advertisers clearly realised judging by the amount of commercials they peppered us with before the movie started. How many ads were there? I didn't count, but there wasn't a single movie trailer shown at all. I don't think I ever saw that happen in any cinema in Malaysia or Australia. Pretty sure Dark Knight had trailers, and that movie made more money than God.

And that's the real tragedy of Transformers 2. It's going to make so much money that Michael Bay will continue to have a lucrative career in Hollywood.

I liked the first Transfomers just fine. It had the usual Bay problems (overdirected action scenes, paper-thin characters and so on) but I had fun. Naturally, the filmmakers thought that more of the same would work for a sequel. Unfortunately, "more of the same" also meant that any overlooked weaknesses in the first film would be that much more pronounced this time around.

Was the first movie loud? This one's louder. Were there confusing action scenes in the first movie? Well, be prepared to be even more confused here. And so on and so on and so on.

But wait! We have politics this time! We get to hear about how negotiations are Bad! So what are the Decepticons supposed to be, North Korea or Iran? Who the fuck knows. (I do think it's hilarious that the bureaucratic problems the macho good guys face were indirectly blamed on Barack Obama.) But all those issues are bulldozed and exploded over, just in time for (American) Men of Action to save the day. The U.S. Army, incidentally, could not have asked for a better movie to fellate them.

And good god, the racism. The racism in the first movie was kinda vague and eye-rolly, but ultimately not that big a deal. (I'm referring specifically to the jive-talking black Transformer, who incidentally ended up being the only Autobot to get his ass killed.) Transformers 2 on the other hand, takes that vague racism, doubles it and kicks it up several notches with the introduction of a pair of twins whose names I don't recall the movie ever mentioning, with "urban" accents, comically ugly faces and slapstick stupidity. Whose bright idea was that, Bay?

At least neither of them die. Which is more than can be said for the only female Autobot in the movie, who doesn't speak throughout most of the movie, then finally gets to speak most of a line of dialogue before her face gets shot off.

Which isn't to say that the movie didn't have any good parts. The best bit in the entire movie was Optimus Prime single-handedly kicking half a dozen Decepticons' asses in a forest. It was a genuine badass moment, something that the first movie lacked. That was such a great scene we're willing to overlook the fact that Prime had little problems smacking Megatron around, when he had so much trouble with the Big M in the first movie. Then again, Megatron did end up killing him, I guess.

Except that you apparently can't have a Transformers movie without Optimus Prime, so he gets resurrected in the climax of the movie by yet another magic plot device. (We're starting to see a pattern with that "more of the same" thing.) Prime's sacrifice and fall is invalidated, just in time for him to save the day in an extremely quick and disappointing "fight" with the main bad guy.

(Is it me, or is Optimus Prime a little sadistic? He stabs motherfuckers in the face, tears them in half and rips off The Fallen's face while taunting him like an NBA player. He may be the ultimate Autobot warrior, but the dude's got deep-seated anger issues, and none of the Autobots have the guts to tell him that.)

The action scenes, the movie's biggest selling point, are, overall, quite shitty. Yes, the aforementioned Optimus Prime scene was pretty badass, but everything else was worthless. I mean, there are lots of shootings and explosions and stuff, but it's like as if the director couldn't decide between picking just one fight scene and thought, fuck it, let's just thrown them all on screen at once, and see how awesome that'd be. So while a lot of things seem to happen, you can't focus on them at all, because of the sensory overload. And when you can't pay attention and invest in what a set of characters are doing because there's just too much shit going on, you can't really care about what happens. And you don't.

As for the "story", don't get me started. For a movie like this you don't need much more than "make A and B go from here to here, preferably by exploding things", and that's fine. But the movie seems to think that covering up the existence of giant alien robots is possible, even though said giant robots spent the last movie tearing up an entire city. That was the dumbest retcon possible, because not only did it not make sense, it wasn't even necessary. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

(Another thing that didn't make sense (I could make a list, really): the Decepticon who switched sides and lovingly humped Megan Fox's leg... the same Megan Fox who had last locked him in a suitcase and blowtorched his eye out. Stockholm syndrome, I guess.)

I think I'll stop here; I've written long enough and it's 1.30am already. I'd probably spend the rest of my word count ranting on and on about the movie. But this movie is a perfect example why Michael Bay is a hack. Crazily, it's also the movie that's going to guarantee that he'll keep finding work, simply because of how much money it's going to make. And that kills me.

If you're in a hole, stop digging

2009-06-27T08:15:00.005+08:00

I avoided comment on the rape/torture allegations against Tengku Muhammad Fakhry by Manohara; it can get a little messy to talk about Malaysian royalty stuff. But this was just too much to pass up:

In his first media statement since the controversy came to light in April, Tengku Muhammad has issued an ultimatum to his estranged wife.

"As her rightful husband, I am ordering that she as a loyal wife return to my side and execute her duties as a wife as stipulated by Islamic laws and as a princess," he said.

"If she does not return as instructed by July 2, I will not hesitate to exercise my rights under the Islamic law and common law without referring to her," he warned.

Tengku Muhammad also stressed that a wife's place is with her husband.

"It is incumbent upon a wife to adhere to her husband's orders as long as the orders do not contravene Islamic or common laws," he said in the one-page statement.

That's a real ladies' man, right there. I'd honestly like to know if he cleared that statement with his publicist first. Or, you know, someone with a brain.

"Even the sunlight seems staged."

2009-06-26T20:54:00.003+08:00

Ray Smuckles says everything that needs to be said about Michael Jackson's death, and our reactions to it. (Click on the link, then "On the Sudden Passing...") An excerpt:

What I think a lotta folks are feelin’ now is a regret. Not regret that a man died; no. They regret that for almost three decades they been mockin’ this guy. This guy who wrote Thriller, and PYT, and Billie Jean. You know who you are, you Michael deniers, listenin’ to your The Cure or Aerosmith. You always considered Michael’s music silly. Not serious. Lame, mainstream. “Popular.” And his life — everyone gets a kick outta’ watchin’ the mighty fall. It sells paper. It makes us feel falsely superior, from our low places. Yet now, now that he’ll never sing another note, you listen to those songs anew —ABC, I Want You Back, Beat It — and you know who he was. Michael had more talent in his little finger than any act today has among four men. Try wakin’ up tomorrow and writin’ We Are The World. See what you come up with. See if you can get Stevie and Tina to come down to the studio, along with Bruce and Billy and twenty other people who cost a whole hell of a lotta money at the time.

Michael Jackson Mourning Fail

2009-06-26T20:26:00.004+08:00

Don't have much to add to the outpouring of grief over Michael Jackson's death, except to say that I felt Farrah Fawcett's death a bit more. Which is weird, because I never saw a single on-screen thing she did. Michael Jackson? I liked his music and I recognise his contribution to pop culture, but other than that I got nothing.

This, however, is freakin' hilarious:

Musician Tyson Stevens, center, joins other fans to remember Michael Jackson at the star they believe belongs to pop star Michael Jackson but that belongs to a radio personality of the same name on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Thursday June 25, 2009 in Los Angeles.

The King is Dead! Long Live the King!

2009-06-26T09:19:00.005+08:00

Image from Sleevage

No, it doesn't have anything to do with meats

2009-06-24T15:47:00.003+08:00

Before we go too far into the whole "Mousavi is a martyr for the freedom of Iran" thing, it's probably worth it to keep in mind the fact that Mousavi doesn't exactly have what you might call a pleasant record:

He may yet turn out to be the avatar of Iranian democracy, but three decades ago Mir-Hossein Mousavi was waging a terrorist war on the United States that included bloody attacks on the U.S. embassy and Marine Corps barracks in Beirut.

Mousavi, prime minister for most of the 1980s, personally selected his point man for the Beirut terror campaign, Ali Akbar Mohtashemi-pur, and dispatched him to Damascus as Iran's ambassador, according to former CIA and military officials.

I suppose he may have mellowed out a little over the years, but when people call you "The Butcher of Beirut", that nickname's usually there for a reason.

So much for that.

2009-06-23T21:36:00.005+08:00

There was a fair bit of scuttlebutt about how the clerical council, the true ruling power behind Iran, might be at odds with one another over how the elections were done. Any hope that they might help turn things around, though, has just been extinguished:

Iran’s most powerful oversight council has refused to nullify the contested presidential election just one day after it announced that the number of votes in 50 cities exceeded the number of eligible voters there by three million, Iranian state television said Tuesday, further tarnishing a presidential election that has set off the most sustained challenge to Iran’s leadership in 30 years.

Also, the Iranian authorities? Apparently much, much bigger bastards than anything in the past two weeks showed:

The Iranian authorities have ordered the family of a student shot dead in Tehran to take down mourning posters as they struggle to stop her becoming the rallying point for protests against the presidential election.

Neda Salehi Agha Soltan, 26, was killed as she watched a pro-democracy protest, and mobile phone footage of her last moments have become a worldwide symbol of Iran's turmoil.

The authorities had already banned a public funeral or wake and have prevented gatherings in her name while the state-controlled media has not mentioned Miss Soltan's death.

Today it was reported that they had also told her family to take down the black mourning banners outside their home in the Tehran suburbs to prevent it becoming a place of pilgrimage. They were also told they could not hold a memorial service at a mosque.

I just realised that Neda is my age. Goddamn it.

NOW can we move on?

2009-06-22T20:20:00.002+08:00

It's actually shocking how long it took PAS, DAP and PKR to issue a joint statement like this, though I liked the "no unity government unless DAP and PKR is involved too" statement from last week. PAS, I think, lost a fair bit of face and favour thanks to certain members who aren't quite as smart as they'd like to think.

If they bring up a "unity government" again, though, I say we let Thailand take Kelantan back.

Someone explain to me the purpose of all this

2009-06-21T20:51:00.003+08:00

Because it's just seems so bizarre and stupid to me:

The police have cordoned off a DAP fund-raising dinner for some 3,000 people in Klang and confiscated the PA system.

There is a large police presence outside Klang MP Charles Santiago's office in Bayu Tinggi, where the dinner is scheduled to take place.

Spotted at the scene were several Federal Reserve Unit (FRU) vehicles, including water cannon trucks.

In a twitter update earlier, DAP stalwart Lim Kit Siang described the area as a 'war zone'.

"Bayu Tinggi Klang a war zone, FRU trucks and water cannons. Police armed with M16. Area sealed off.

"Terrorist attack? No. Because of DAP dinner," he stated.

Crowds have been gathering since evening because of the dinner and just after 8pm, people started crossing police lines to join Santiago and Kit Siang for the dinner.

Why do you need M16s to shut down a dinner? Were the people attending the event armed or something? They have to realise that they don't look intimidating at all when they do this, right? They just look really really stupid. What the hell do they get out of this?

Final Crisis: A Review

2009-06-21T17:43:00.003+08:00

I read Final Crisis over the course of about three days. At 350 pages and just over RM102, it's a very dense book, each page full of information and featuring almost no padding at all. I'm not sure if that's to its benefit or detriment, to be honest; the book could have used a couple of places to stop and take a breath.

But writer Grant Morrison is essentially saying, among other things, that that superhero comics isn't about taking a breather. It's about wall-to-wall imagination and energy. Superhero readers don't read superhero comics just because of the colourful costumes and superpowers. They read them because they're just so dynamic and imaginative. Final Crisis is Morrison's tribute to the true potential of superhero comics. Alan Moore once famously said that, after Watchmen, nothing more could be done with superheroes. Final Crisis is Morrison's attempt to challenge that statement.

The book starts out with a 2001-ish scene between a caveman and the god Metron, who introduces man to the concept of fire as a weapon. We then cut to the present, where a cop, in the midst of investigating the disappearance of several children, finds a dead god lying in the trash. This is the first clue to the superhero community that something terrible has happened. But no matter what they do, it's too late: evil has already won, and the good guys don't even realise it.

The best thing about Final Crisis is that it's so dense. Every page, every panel is there for a reason, and the book practically demands that you take your time and soak in every detail. And that's for the best; skim past a couple of seemingly innocent details and it can get confusing pretty quickly. Morrison writes at a methodical pace, taking his time to set up his pieces, only to smash the board by the end of the third chapter and turn the book on its ear.

That's one of the impressive things about Final Crisis. It changes gears effortlessly; one minute the heroes are investigating murders and preparing for what they think is an all-out assault, and the next minute they're reduced to a ragtag resistance scattered all over the world... and they're losing. It's very very very hard to write mainstream superheroes these days and instill any kind of danger or dread to their stories, as everyone knows the good guys win in the end. But Morrison somehow pulls it off.

By the middle of the book, you actually feel the characters' despair as the evil gods reduce their world to a literal hell. These gods aren't interested in something mundane like killing heroes, they're here to break their hearts and minds and turn them against one another. A single, normal human is desperately trying to fight off the will of a god by himself, and you're desperately pulling for him to win, but when he fails... goddamn it.

Most of Final Crisis is pretty bleak, but that's necessary to make the optimism and heroism stand out. Superman assembles a small army of alternate reality Supermen to save a crumbling multiverse and the love of his life, and finds himself playing the role of protector of fictional worlds. Japanese wannabe superheroes get caught up in an unholy invasion. A literal wishing machine is assembled to try and make things right again. A secret plan to usher what's left of humanity into another reality is put together. Barack Obama makes a cameo. And we find out who's the fastest draw: Batman or God.

There is so much imagination and wonder filled within these pages than most people would come up with in a lifetime. Because that's ultimately what Final Crisis is about: no matter how desperate things get as entropy closes in around us, human imagination will always come out on top.

The book isn't without its faults. Grant Morrison chose an ambitious story to tell, and he doesn't quite pull it off. There are moments that can be confusing unless you reread the book, and the book is a little all over the place with its ideas and goals. I don't know if this is a failing on Morrison's part or DC Comics for not giving him enough pages to tell his story.

The art is mostly outstanding, if a bit of a mixed bag towards the end. J.G. Jones, the primary artist, does an excellent job with these pages, doing an equally good job on the gritty, down-to-earth scenes and the fantastic. They're not just pretty pictures to look at, though; there's a genuine emotional connection that he instills in his careful, detailed line art. From the despair of Dan Turpin as he tries to stop a deity from eating his mind to two old friends hugging each other, he does such an outstanding job in grounding this series that he really should have been allowed to finish the book at his own pace.

But that's serialised corporate comics for you, and eventually other artists are needed to finish the book on time. Carlos Pacheco, Marco Rudy and Matthew Clark do a generally good job (though Clark's work looks awfully rushed), but next to Jones they look rather ordinary. Doug Mahnke, who illustrates a two-part Superman story and was eventually asked to draw the entire final chapter, does the best job out of the non-Jones artists, his powerful style asserting itself in the chaotic closing moments of the book.

Even with its faults, Final Crisis remains a triumph for superhero comics. I'm amazed that DC Comics allowed Morrison to write something so experimental and bizarre for their 2008 summer blockbuster series. And even with its faults, the fact is I'd rather read something that is ambitious and innovative whose goals fall just shy of its reach, than a well-told but ultimately conventional tale. And when I closed the book, I stopped to process everything I read, then reopened the book and started all over again.

Grant Morrison and company have come up with a book that is sheer imagination and wonder, with huge stakes and characters you hate and care about. It's an exploration of the DC Comics universe and the gems you can come up with if you look hard enough. It's a bleak book, but also an optimistic one. (I counted at least one "oh shit" and two "fist pump" moments; your mileage may vary.) The creators were tasked with coming up with a summer event, and gave us one of the most fun books of the year.

It's been a joy to read.

Saturday Night Music Video and other miscellany

2009-06-20T20:31:00.005+08:00

This might be the least productive weekend in my life. Seriously, so far half of it was spent either reading comics or sleeping. Ugh. Not looking forward to Monday at all.

Been reading Final Crisis over and over. The first time I read this I finished it at about midnight, and my head was just so buzzing with excitement and ideas I couldn't sleep until 3.30am. Is it possible for a book to be both the most depressing and the most optimistic thing I've read in a while? I might post a review over the next few days, but... yeah, get it if you can.

I really need to do a thing about my favourite webcomics one of these days.

And finally, in a week that's filled with annoyances, this is easily the most goddamn outrageous thing I've read today. Seriously, how fucking stupid were these people?

Visit Malaysia Year

2009-06-20T11:37:00.003+08:00

Two days ago:

Malaysia has been named as the worst place for refugees for the second consecutive year.

The annual World Refugee Survey 2009 report has placed Malaysia in the same basket as six other countries - South Africa, Gaza, Thailand, Kenya, Egypt and Turkey - in their treatment of refugees.

The report, which was released today, came in the wake of the US State Department putting Malaysia on the blacklist of countries trafficking in people.

Najib Abdul Razak, who was then deputy premier, has last year rejected the findings of the report.

“How much more open do you want Malaysia to be? Already people are complaining (of Malaysia's situation for letting in too many illegal immigrants). I would certainly disagree with the report," he was reported as saying.

Yesterday:

A team of 50 police officers broke up a gathering in Petaling Jaya to celebrate Burma’s Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi’s 64th birthday at about 9pm and detained 16 people.

Those arrested are believed to be refugees from Burma who were at the birthday celebration to express their concern for their country’s democracy icon.

It's going to suck for Malaysia, but if we ever get sanctioned, we deserve it.

Shit.

2009-06-19T16:40:00.005+08:00

Not since the election story from last year have I felt like punching anything more. DAMN IT.

Wankery

2009-06-17T08:09:00.005+08:00

It's early yet in the morning and this post probably isn't as coherent as I'd like it to be, but I'm writing it anyway. I just read an article in The Sun (can't find the web version) by Sulaiman Dufford about Obama's Cairo speech several weeks ago. (Way to be timely there.) Basically it's a bit of wankery about whether or not Obama "really said anything". Why didn't Dufford feel that there was any substance to his 50-minute speech? Well, apart from how Obama never mentioned the Golden Dome (no, seriously), it's about "wrist-slapping":

For example, Obama appeared to admit former excesses of colonial powers, and yet he did not in any sense apologise as one of those himself.

Firstly, Obama is the first sitting president to publicly admit American involvement in the Iranian revolution. No one previous president had ever done so. You'd think that would be a pretty big deal, but apparently it's not enough for some people. And apologise for being an imperialist? He's been in office for five goddamn months and his economy is in the toilet. Does he even have the time or money to be imperialist?

As for the alleged lack of substance... the guy called for a two-state solution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and he's getting crap thrown at him by right-wing Israelis. And yet his position hasn't changed. Isn't that worth something?

Also, this:

I know there has been controversy about the promotion of democracy in recent years, and much of this controversy is connected to the war in Iraq. So let me be clear: no system of government can or should be imposed upon one nation by any other.

That does not lessen my commitment, however, to governments that reflect the will of the people. Each nation gives life to this principle in its own way, grounded in the traditions of its own people. America does not presume to know what is best for everyone, just as we would not presume to pick the outcome of a peaceful election. But I do have an unyielding belief that all people yearn for certain things: the ability to speak your mind and have a say in how you are governed; confidence in the rule of law and the equal administration of justice; government that is transparent and doesn’t steal from the people; the freedom to live as you choose. Those are not just American ideas, they are human rights, and that is why we will support them everywhere.

Not only did he just admit that America has been imposing preferred governments on Arab nations, he's also saying that it hasn't worked. That people should be allowed to vote for their own governments, decide for themselves a government that reflects their will.

Two weeks later, Iran had its elections.

I'm sorry that Obama didn't say things the way you want him to say them, but for god's sake, he's not your president. No, he didn't join in Muslims prayers, but that's because a lot of neocon Americans are crazy. Just for saying "Assalamualaikum", he's already accused of being a Muslim. And you want him to join in prayers at a mosque? Are you stupid?

Dufford also mentioned that he wanted to condition American support for Israel on the condition that no one builds anymore illegal settlements. Except that the settlements issue isn't black and white. Obama has been pressuring Netanyahu to tear down more and more settlements; why do you think Israeli leaders are so rattled with Obama they're pressuring their contacts in the U.S. to get him to change his mind? Plus, again, the settlements issue is actually pretty complex:

The most offensive are the outposts.

These are literally shanty towns thrown together atop empty hills by fanatic settlers, all of whom think they are fulfilling a promise to build up the entire Biblical land of Israel. The government occasionally tears them down, and under Obama's pressure, will probably tear down even more. No one- really no one with any realistic understanding of this topic- thinks that these settlements are actually going to be a part of any future Jewish state. Its just Israel's fanatics acting out, testing the government and usually prevailing because everyone is too lazy/scared to deal with them.

Just last week, Netanyahu had a few of these dismantled. They were back up the next day, which goes to show both how non-permanent they are, and how outrageous these crazies can be. The Supreme Court has repeatedly called on the government to tear them down and the state has basically dragged their feet, time and again. Embarrassing.

So, yeah, complicated.

And, again on the subject of Obama not putting pressure on Israel: you did realise that Netanyahu just publicly laid out terms for a Palestinian state, right? The terms are a little shitty, but the idea's finally spoken by an Israeli prime minister.

In the Cairo speech, he called for an end to anti-Semitism (which is a big deal no matter how much you want to dance around the subject), he's basically said that America won't ever overthrow legitimate governments again, and he's rebuilding long-burnt bridges with Muslims. Iran is currently going through a revolution, and Israel is finally understanding that Obama's actually serious about the whole two-state thing.

Obama hasn't been perfect, and he won't be. But the fact is, in five months he's done a fucking lot. Also, he's not your president. He doesn't fucking answer to you. As far as foreign affairs are concerned, he's done a damn good job so far.

Yes, I'm going on about Iran again. But this time it's relevant to Malaysia, seriously

2009-06-16T21:25:00.004+08:00

In an attempt to at least slow the huge demonstrations that are going on in Iran, there's apparently been an official call to recount the votes.

This is not a good thing. The problem isn't just that the vote-counting was fraudulent, but the elections themselves were rife with irregularities. There were reports of voter intimidation by Iranian security forces and lost ballots. More importantly:

The point that few commentators are realizing is that this story really isn't about the way that the votes were counted. It's about whether Iran is capable at this point of having an election in which the democratic will of its electorate is properly reflected. If Ahmadinejad hired a bunch of thugs to hold every Iranian at gunpoint while they were casting their ballots, it would not have been difficult for him to get 63 percent of the vote -- indeed, he'd probably have wound up with very close to 100 percent. This would be an election -- and there would be no need at all to tamper with the results. But it wouldn't be an expression of democracy. We need to separate out those two concepts. Ahmadinejad, as far as we know, did not go so far as to hold anyone at gunpoint. But the tentacles of fear in Iran run deep.

Meanwhile, protesters are being shot dead... and Iranians are still marching on. I can't say it enough: I wish Malaysians had their guts. Our leaders certainly don't have their testicular fortitude, getting antsy and firing tear gas at the slightest provocation:

Brickfields OCPD Asst Comm of Police Wan Abdul Bari Wan Abdul Talib said the group was to leave immediately after handing over the memorandum.

“Despite our warnings, they refused to budge as they had wanted to give a speech for half an hour but we refused because they did not have a permit.”

“They continued shouting slogans against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and singing the Iranian national anthem,” he said, adding that the police had no choice but to fire the tear gas to disperse the crowd.

Bet those protesters felt right at home once the tear gas started to fall, amirite?

New Home Minister Hishamuddin Tun Hussein demonstrates that he's eager to pick up where his predecessor, Syed Hamid, had left off in the Stupid Department:

Referring to the demonstration by 700 Iranians, mostly students, in front of Wisma UN here on Monday, Home Minister Datuk Seri Hishamuddin Tun Hussein said he had instructed the relevant authorities not to hesitate to take strict action against those that threatened the peace.

“I warned them: Do not use Malaysia as a stage and create disturbances and chaos.

“I have spoken to them and told them not to go overboard on Malaysian soil because the safety and security of Malaysians are most important,” he told reporters in the Parliament lobby Tuesday.

Yeah, a bunch of foreigners giving a speech to protest the treatment of their fellow countrymen is reaaal dangerous. Grow a pair, Hishamuddin.

A Revolution is Happening

2009-06-15T23:33:00.001+08:00

The protest is, as we speak, going ahead as planned after all.

Balls. As in, Iranians have damn big ones.

A glimmer of hope

2009-06-15T22:02:00.003+08:00

Earlier I mentioned reports of foreigners brought in to crack down on the protests in Iran. At least one person is skeptical about the truth of those reports.

The BBC reports that plainclothes ~~thugs~~ security forces have been authorised to use live ammunition, which likely played a part in Mousavi calling off a scheduled protest. Nonetheless, this hasn't stopped angry Iranians from going ahead with it anyway.

More reports on what's allegedly the true vote count. Ahmadinejad actually came in third, according to these reports. Take them with a grain of salt.

The real news, though, is that the Supreme Leader is calling for an inquiry. This after twice declaring the legitimacy of Ahmadinejad's win. Chances are it's just for show; he can only pretend the protests aren't happening for so long. But maybe he's finally realising that his coup isn't working out as well as he thought. The people of Iran aren't letting him get away with stealing an election.

This is why people resist. This is why people fight, and protest, and demonstrate, and scream and shout and take to the streets. Because they're pissed off as hell and they're not going to take it anymore... and maybe someone will finally get it into their thick heads that they screwed up.

If only people didn't have to bleed and die for that to happen.

The best (or worst, if you're me) thing about the Iranian protests is how big a role Twitter has played. Now, I HATE Twitter. I think it's fun if you want to send out short messages to your friends, but people keep treating it like it's the next big thing, like it's going to revolutionise the Internet. Except that you can't hold a revolution with 140 characters or less, and 99 percent of Tweets out there are shit anyway.

But with Iran? The fact is the protests DO NOT WORK without it. Iranians have been sending hundreds, if not thousands of Tweets, keeping the rest of the world updated as to what the hell's going on in the ground. With their local websites and blogs shut down by the government (the BBC's Persian service was also affected), this is their only avenue to get the truth out. I hate to say it, but Twitter actually served a good purpose.

Sigh.

2009-06-15T15:35:00.002+08:00

I'm constantly amazed by the kind of things that freak people out:

Pandemonium broke out in Kampung Banai in Jitra, Kedah, when a doll was found wrapped in kain kapan (a piece of white cloth used in Muslim burials) at a Muslim cemetery, reported Berita Minggu.

A villager, on his way to visit his father’s grave, had a shock when he saw the wrapped object at about 6pm on Friday.

He informed other villagers as he was worried that someone would bury the “corpse” in the area.

Kampung Banai Village Development and Security Committee (JKKK) chairman Mansor Din said he rushed to the scene and saw a hole nearby and immediately alerted the Kubang Pasu police, who sent a forensic unit to the area.

A clear sign that your superstitions probably need to be kept in check: when you find a doll in a cemetery and bring in a forensics team to investigate.

They're surrounding the hospitals

2009-06-15T10:03:00.000+08:00

And here I was thinking that Malaysians have it tough when it comes to general elections.

(A useful guide on how Iranian politics work, by the BBC.)

Firstly, the results. It's obviously bullshit. Stunningly so. Every time I see someone saying, "The results could be legitimate, maybe Ahmadinejad really is that popular" I want to scream. Even ayatollahs are calling bullshit. We are talking about a man who is hugely unpopular with women, has proven himself to be an embarrassing representative on the international stage... and then there's Obama. Back when Bush was in power it was easy for a guy like Ahmadinejad to stay in power by keeping the anti-America sentiments stoked. It's even easier when Iran sends its condolences to the U.S. after 9/11, its first diplomatic outreach to America in 20 years, only to have Bush throw it back in their face.

Then you have Obama, who not only doesn't seem to hate Muslims, but is actually very popular in Iran. His speech in Cairo only affirmed that. Iranian conservatives were shitting themselves. Things were great with Bush. Obama, just by being who he is, threatened to change their status quo.

Then of course you have the explosive violence. The riots were spontaneous and happened all over the country; people knew they were being fucked with. It doesn't help that the fake results weren't at all subtle. Maybe if they had Ahmadinejad winning a close race, they could have avoided this. But they had Ahmadinejad winning in a landslide. Yeah, right. Credit to the Iranians, they're not taking it well.

The reaction to the riots, though, is kind of frightening. Every time we see the Malaysian police's heavy handed response to a bunch of people wearing black, it could help to look at Iran and think, "It could have been worse. They could have murdered us." Which is what's happening in Tehran right now.

The police are running around with knives, for god's sake.

(Pic via Sully.)

There's even been reports that Hezbollah Arabs have been "imported" to crack down on the protestors, because a lot of Iranian cops are refusing to beat the living hell out of their fellow citizens.

For what it's worth, the results according to Mousavi's camp, which were supposedly leaked from the Interior Ministry has Mousavi winning with more than 57 percent of the vote with 80 percent of votes counter. Ahmadinejad is a distant second with 28 percent.

Ahmadinejad has refused to guarantee Mousavi's safety.

Tehran Bureau, one of the best websites covering the chaos in Iran, had just been DOS'd by the government.

Security forces surround hospitals, preventing the wounded from being treated.

Again, credit to the ballsy Iranians. They just had their elections stolen, they've been beaten, tortured and killed. Student dorms are getting shot at. But they're still fighting on.

We're all going to die

2009-06-12T08:14:00.003+08:00

Yup, it's officially a pandemic, meaning that it's spread from human to human across more than one region. Does this mean we're fucked? If you're living in Australia, the answer is probably yes.

But really, it isn't that bad:

But health experts are keen to defuse any "we're all going to die" reflex after the World Health Organisation (WHO) on Thursday announced a flu pandemic was underway.

For one thing, "pandemic" is only a technical term that indicates the geographical spread of a disease.

Despite its scary connotations, the word is no indication as to how contagious or lethal the disease is.

"Your can have serious pandemics, and you can have wimpy pandemics," notes Albert Osterhaus, a well known virologist at the University of Rotterdam in the Netherlands.

Nor does the term apply only to influenza: the world already has pandemics of AIDS and malaria.

Gee, that makes me feel so much better.

Here's to another 1,000

2009-06-08T23:46:00.000+08:00

Wow, ulamas taking hold of the PAS leadership? I never saw that one coming, no sir.

/snark

Seriously, though, it probably isn't all that bad. Bridget Welsh argues that the results turned out that way less due to a strong desire to return to what they know best, like talking about installing hudud laws and protesting Avril Lavigne concerts, and more because of... politics. Hey, PAS is just like any other political party! At least we have my new favourite person in the limelight for a short, short time.

They really need to shut the fuck up about "talking" to Umno unless they're serious about joining them. It's like a guy telling his girlfriend over and over again about how much he'd like to see his ex again sometime soon. It will only end in tears.

God, I can't believe I was ever willing to give PAS the benefit of the doubt...

This is not what I envisioned my 1,000th post to be about

2009-06-07T22:46:00.002+08:00

Terminator Salvation (is a colon supposed to be in there? I'm too lazy to check) was actually kinda fun. I mean, it probably deserved the shellacking it got from critics, but I went in with low expectations and came out reasonably entertained. McG is a bit of a hack director, but he acquits himself pretty well here (given his usual standards at least). However, it's Sam Worthington who carries the film. The Aussie's character, Marcus, is the toughest human-looking character in there, but he was also the only one to have any real depth. There's a surprising amount of subtlety to his acting in a movie like this.

Less good is... just about everyone else. Christian Bale is only okay. I mean, he commands your attention, but he's a little one-dimensional, and isn't nearly as interesting whenever he shares a scene with Worthington. None of the other actors get to do much other than act tough or look worried.

It must be nice to be Anton Yelchin, though. He gets to be Kyle Reese in one big summer blockbuster, and then as Chekov in Star Trek, all in the same year.

Effects were excellent. I think it's great how far computer special effects have come. It used to be that whenever CGI is involved, it tends to take you out of the movie. "Oh look, here's the movie's big CGI moment." Now with movies like Iron Man, Terminator and Trek, everything blends together a lot more smoothly.

The overarching story, on the other hand, seems innocent at first, but proceeds to completely fall apart once you spend more than five seconds thinking about it. (SPOILER ALERT) I mean, SkyNet's big masterplan is predicated on Marcus stumbling across Kyle Reese. That was the best idea future genocidal computers could come up with? Really? Why haven't the humans won yet? (END SPOILER)

Still, keep your expectations low, and you'll probably be entertained.

The most important speech he'll ever give (until the next one)

2009-06-05T13:55:00.003+08:00

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

I can't get over the fact that a U.S. president just said "Assalamualaikum." One of his best speeches.

Greatest Headline Ever

2009-06-03T15:44:00.002+08:00

"Tom Tancredo Staffer Pleads Guilty to Karate-Chopping Black Woman"

Even better is the content:

On July 7, 2007, at approximately 7:15 p.m. at Jefferson and M Street, Northwest, in Washington, D.C., defendant was walking down the street making offensive remarks when he encountered the complainant, Ms. [REDACTED], who is African-American. The defendant uttered, “Nigger,” as he delivered a karate chop to Ms. [REDACTED]’s head.

Which is like, the most random thing I've read this month so far.

You try working for 12 hours straight, see how you like it

2009-06-03T15:33:00.003+08:00

Okay, apologising for bad blogging habits is really something I should be stopping. But work in the last week and a half was kicking my ass, especially in preparation for an event thingy that happened recently. I even had to work on a Saturday. (gasp)

I took this morning off to send my parents, youngest brother, maternal grandmother and various aunts to the airport. They're off to Mecca to do the umrah, which is like a haj, except that you probably won't get trampled to death.

And now I'm back (again). It's not like I missed anything big. I mean, Penanti? Zzz. Even after milking the attention she's gotten over her accusations (and she was milking them for all it's worth; if she was really serious about the corruption allegations she would have released the names/records all at once, rather than lamely keep the tension up for the next couple of days), she couldn't even muster second place. That's sad.

But not as sad as Najib trying to play down PKR's Penanti win. That's just pathetic.

And in spite of this, and Perak, and a shitty economy, he still enjoys a 45 percent approval rating. Malaysiakini and the Opposition like to insist that it's a low rating, but considering how tainted the Najib name has been, I think 45 percent is actually pretty solid. I would have expected something in the 30s. Oh well.

"What the hell do they want from me?"

2009-05-30T00:27:00.003+08:00

A great behind-the-scenes piece on how the Obama administration has been handling the Israel-Palestinian conflict:

In the 10 days since Netanyahu and President Barack Obama held a meeting at the White House, the Obama administration has made clear in public and private meetings with Israeli officials that it intends to hold a firm line on Obama's call to stop Israeli settlements. According to many observers in Washington and Israel, the Israeli prime minister, looking for loopholes and hidden agreements that have often existed in the past with Washington, has been flummoxed by an unusually united line that has come not just from Obama White House and the secretary of state, but also from pro-Israel congressmen and women who have come through Israel for meetings with him over Memorial Day recess. To Netanyahu's dismay, Obama doesn't appear to have a hidden policy. It is what he said it was.

Obama's been a mixed bag for me so far. I'm a little iffy on how he's been handling the economic crisis, and his refusal to prosecute torturers has been disgusting. But so far he's been holding steady on the "no settlements" issue, which is a pretty big departure from past presidents. Nice to see a White House that's refusing to deal with Israel's constant bullshit. Hey, maybe that two-state dream isn't that far off after all...