The Immature Collection of Malaysia

P. Gunasegaran had some points made out. Compulsion cannot be used against people. It is forcing people to listen against what they wish, even what you say may not be totally right.

The caning incident doesn't make things and Malaysia better, instead it embarrasses more for Malaysia. People involved in that proceeding that caning has lack the sense of maturity like in the case where NGOs associated filing a report against Star paper and SIS. The main argument didn't really give much of persuasion to call off. Instead, it raises more doubts, and shows more of elements of compulsion. If you have a knowledge and think that there is somewhat inaccurate in their arguments, you are actually encouraged to go ahead!

This is the main attitude problem and wrong mentality that is visible and revealed by the NGOs involved.

As for the Star, they were called in by the Home Ministry and was told to put an apology and remove it online, well, it is simply because they are under the mercy of the Ministry simply because of the annual permits. The ministry simply buckled under the pressure of the NGOs without further consideration into the merits of Guna's saying.

The line of which law are we following is blurred already. If you are a Malay in particular, you are bound by two sets of laws, which is a secular and syariah laws. Sometimes two sets of laws can be confusing in particular, and looking at India, they are starting to become successful despite multiple faiths including Islam because they use secular laws only. Remember that during the independence, secular law is first, Tunku said that Malaysia is a secular country with Islam as official religion (by official definition), not an Islamic country as some leaders right now say. The latter declaration is possibly one reason why such charade is happening today.

Perhaps this mirrors to one saying that is a comparison of two religions. Submit or decide. Decide means that you can choose to accept it or not, is up to you. Submit is more on forcing, meaning to make you take that against your will. I am afraid that what Guna describes here could happen in future:

"We have all seen what happens when religion – no matter what religion – is carried to extremes and hijacked by bigots. We don’t want public flogging, we don’t want arms chopped off, we don’t want people to be stoned to death, and we don’t want people to be burned at the stake."

The real fault is actually lies in the immature people who hold high positions in organization. Educational qualifications is one side, the other side is approach not beyond the shell they have.

Off She Goes To The Executioner's Block

Well, some people never learned after the March 8 thing. And this time, these people are playing the race card again and this time it involves 'brainwashing' the students in primary and secondary schools. From this piece by The Star:

KUALA LUMPUR: A Malaysian group condemned the uniform worn by girls at government schools, saying it encouraged rape and pre-marital sex.

“The white blouse is too transparent for girls and it becomes a source of attraction,” National Islamic Students Association of Malaysia vice-president Munirah Bahari said in a statement.

“It becomes a distraction to men, who are drawn to it, whether or not they like looking at it,” she said, calling for a review of uniform policy so that it did not violate Islamic ideals.

In multicultural Malaysia, home to majority-Muslim Malays as well as ethnic Chinese and Indians, female students at government schools have a choice of wearing a white blouse with a knee-length skirt or pinafore.

They may also wear a “baju kurung” and a headscarf is optional for Malay students.

Munirah said that “covering up” according to Islamic precepts was important to fend off social ills, including “rape, sexual harassment and even premarital sex.”

“This leads to babies born out of wedlock and, to an extent, even prostitution,” she said.

“Decent clothes which are not revealing can prevent and protect women from any untoward situations,” she said, suggesting that girls wear a blouse of a different colour or with an undergarment.

However, the girls themselves also came in for criticism, with the association saying that some used the white blouse to lure men.

“This is the source of the problem, where we can see that schoolgirls themselves are capable of using this to attract men to them,” Munirah said.

“This could see them getting molested, having premarital sex and all sorts of things.” – AFP

The main purpose of school uniforms is to establish the definition that whoever is wearing that is a student of a school or something. Establishing the definition is the secondary reason of having clothes. First reason is to keep you warm and covered. Religion does not take into account or whatsoever in school attire.

My dear Munirah, if your intention is to have every student, Muslim and non-Muslim to wear everything to cover for the sake of religion, you are wrong. This is not a country with four-seasons. Instead it is either a hot or a rainy day, and since every student is given the chance to participate in physical activities, you do need to wear those tight and covering clothes. Have you forgotten about basic health, to keep you body in a consistent temperature. Having that thing just for the sake of religion contributes indirectly to a person's health, that includes blood circulation, body temperature, and well a few things. As long as you are not naked or wearing something that is not supposed in school, then it's okay. Nothing more, and why do you need to make the fuzz.

According to my friend, Edmund from Jeremiah Blues, he told me that some non-Muslim female students in Johor were made by Little Napoleons teachers / HMs / principals to wear baju Melayu and tudung, physically appearing as a Muslim girl against their will. This is not an Islamic country and it never will be. In English schools, standard uniforms that school students wear is enough to establish the physical definition of a student. Sweaters are allowed especially if it's in the winter time, that is an exception. There could be a small number of liberal Malay students, I've seen one before back in school days BTW, that wear school uniforms like non-Muslim female students. What is wrong with that? Liberal minded people would say it is the comfort that is taken into account as well!

For too long, students have been shaped into ideals that are actually wrong against the current tune that the world sings. A perfect example is on language. While it is essential for everyone to have the understanding of the National language, English has taken a step back for that thing, and as a result, many could not speak English well or not as perfect. In multi-national companies or in working environment, English is the foremost language that you must be good in otherwise you can't work in big companies. The education policy is still misguided.

My dear Munirah, whatever you say here warrants the definition of walking one step backwards. In situations where someone is playing by the race card, that person most probably is going to lose in the long run. And if this time is World War II Russia, walking one step backwards means that Munirah has 'signed a death warrant' and has consented a Comimssar to shoot 'a traitor to the Motherland like her' on sight.

Let me remind you that other people and youngsters don't put too much stock into religion nowadays and they are not too straight or too zealous in this. They have been angered by the fact that another group similar to you has protested over the Beyonce concert. She could have performed here, but they believed conservative groups like you have blocked her appearance here. People are more liberal, having a good life with religion as a rough guide is good enough. If you are attempting to force ideals on people, it is another form of communism, just as attempting to force Islamization on everything in Malaysia, that is the new form of communism!

BN's Race Based Politics In Employment Process

In the last week or so, I have attended numerous interviews with mostly local IT firms with an objective to secure a job by March. As a formality, each person intending to go for an interview will be asked to fill in an employment form which usually is split into three sections, primarily, personal details, education and work experience details, and finally the miscellaneous section which includes referees that the company can refer to.

The problem lies in the first section, personal details. In the personal details section, you are mostly required to specify your race, religion, marriage status and sex. This has been seen in mostly local and private companies. And here are two examples of some forms that I managed to take a screen shot of.


This was based from the shot I took when I went for today's interview at CUSCAPI in Shah Alam. It has religion, gender, marital status, languages, sex and nationality. In certain companies, multi-national companies that I went to for interviews, none of these fields existed in the employment form except for citizenship and sometimes gender.


However, in Malaysian GLCs, those fields are a requirement which irks some people but according to the reasoning by the government, it was primarily used to conduct statistics in fields, divided by religion, race, sex and etc. Manulife is a prime example of a GLC company that will ask for those ridiculous details, see second screen-shot above, in which my interview was on the 18th recently (which I got turned down).

In Singapore, such fields above are considered as taboo and it is strictly outlawed in employment forms and job advertisements. The photograph of a person that might be required in employment is also considered taboo. This was part of the government's effort to promote fair practices, equal opportunities and no discrimination to people in applying for jobs. The Tripartite Guidelines on Fair Employment Practices, enforced at end of April 2007, and based on The Tripartite Guidelines on Non-Discriminatory Job Advertisements 2006 has the following criteria that is said 'SHOULD NOT' appear in job advertisements or job employment forms :

1. Age - Should not be used as a requirement for employment. This also includes phrases that suggest preference of age in job advertisements. Alternatively, for cases where jobs which is in physical nature, required physical attributes instead of age-cut off are used.

2. Race - totally outlawed as Singapore practices multi-racialism. Selection on race is unacceptable. Tenders for Shell petrol station is practiced under race.

3. Language - it might create ambiguity and misunderstanding between the recruiter and candidate. If it is a must, an explanation is required especially, if it is part of the job scope, such as dealing with Arabian customers and etc..

4. Sex - unless it is part of the practical requirements of the job with explanations. Preferential phrases are not allowed in forms or job advertisements. Example: fashion modeling.

5.Religion - totally unacceptable unless religion function performing is part of the job.

The fields are primarily not allowed in job-advertisements in addition to job application forms, that extends to photograph, marital status, pregnancy (for females), The main reason is that it creates a perception that employers are doing a preliminary assessment based on the criteria above.

The problem is Barisan Nasional is practicing race-politics based on the 'social contract' drawn out. The time is over and it can be done away as it is a much better approach in encouraging multi-racialism. True, as Anwar said in all of his 'ceramahs', in order for Malaysia to return as one of the top Asian nations, they must do away with old out-dated policies and bad practices / management as well as corruption.

Race Factor or Illegal Land?

In this past week, Selangor Chief Minister, Dr. Khir Toyo is one subject that is vilified by the non-Muslims of the state. Yes, last week, the Shah Alam Municipal Council, perhaps under his jurisdiction and direction demolished an old Hindu temple in the state itself, despite protests from the Indian community over the excuse of the site being on the unapproved land.

The actions of the municipal council has drew anger from the community and even the Indian cabinet ministers themselves including Samy Vellu over the fact that nobody even Khir Toyo would not bother listening to their pleas before proceeding with the demolition work. I'm sure this means that they have no respect for the Malaysian minority community. Two weeks ago, a question has been raised over why municipal councils imposed the bumi quota over number houses to be allocated to them in each housing estate, that is not stated in law. Why would municipal councils do that?

If people are not happy, there would be a fracas, in which 14 people got remanded. But then the argument of illegal land seems legit, and the timing of the MIC stepping in shows that they are not sincere and not really showing their true intentions of representing the Indian community. All in all, they are just the same as the MCA, enjoying money and privileges, while the big community suffered. Beatings were reported on the day and the municipal council is blamed for the ruckus started. It's just like the police supposed to safeguard the welfare of all only to foment ways to create trouble out with the ordinary.

Image by Mob

Lawyers are not spared from the beatings. And now the MBSA will paying for it with damages of up to $100 million as they and the police are being sued by them. Then, as to show how Khir is vilified, they (MIC) decided not to throw a state Deepavali open house, only to retract it later on finding it is too harsh over one decision as what Malaysiakini says.

Some say that Khir Toyo boasted that Selangor was the first state in Malaysia to have a pork free zone. No more pig farms to beat river pollution. No exporting of pork to other states. The latter statement seems to show the sentiment of disrespect for the Chinese. Maybe it's because Singapore generates a high demand for pork, I supposed. But then, maybe logically it's a temporary reprieve until a centralized facility is built. Then again, building one facility has its own cons: just like a computer network, the risk of site down is high if all data is centralized into one machine. Maybe not, for we have forgotten about the east coast states. What about there?

Khir wasn't the only one that is vilified. Last week, Malacca CM, Mohd. Ali Rustam got into the spat with the PPP over the allocation of seats. There was famous remark. And then UMNO didn't bother to go deeper over his remark and found him nothing wrong. Four months ago, he got into the spat with pig farmers with demands to reduce output of pigs maximum in the state only to agree to the 48000 with the intervention of the MCA.

Updates:

I came to notice that many of commentators here have clarified and updated some info regarding the incident above as of this time. First, thanks for the feedback. Secondly, I've made some revisions of taking the last piece of portion out to get things to the point.

Well, let's pay more attention to the potential election matter as we, citizens, have the right to say who is fit to run the state or the nation. If you do not like how things are in Malaysia right now, then don't vote for the incumbents!

Iron Jim Doing Harry Potter?!

I really wanted to write about the fifth Harry Potter movie that I've seen with my friend more than two weeks ago, but I just simply did not have the time nor the space to write about it.

A week before the show hit cinemas, I often drive back and forth from work noticing a poster of the film with all the six kids on magic brooms where something stirred inside me. They said that there's a chase across the Thames river. Two weeks after that, and just days after the book was out, my schoolmate called me out and invited to watch the show.

It is then I started to play a little fool out of it. I pictured something as similar to the storm-drain chase in Terminator 2. That liquid-man T-1000 driving a tow truck down to the canal chasing a kid who is of course the leader of the human resistance of the future.

Haha..


I got disappointed that the thing that I missed the first 15 minutes of the show due to my friend being late. He got up late - he had to work earlier than I - and then he had to go back to his house and retrieve his wallet. All and all, I just missed the opening and the Dursley segment. Damn!

I was quite astonished to see how an 870 page book (count 776 in UK cover) has been compressed into a 138 minute movie. The book that I've skimmed through is like a Dickensian style of text, full of humor and sarcastic moments but the movie was like removing the fat and getting things to the point, something that I think Mike Goldenberg (Peter Pan, Contact) - incidentally he lost the writing job of the series to Steve Kloves back in 2000 - should be commended for the effort that he has done. And the backstories - outside events that run parallel with the events in Hogwarts was interestingly placed in the form of newspaper matinee style sequence as what Coppola would do in The Godfather.

The one character that I like most in tha film was the crazed banshee Bellatrix (1951-1998). Helena Bonham Carter (Tim Burton's partner) did better than the original choice Helen McCrory would do. But everyone is looking forward to have either Kate Winslet or Naomi Watts as Narcissa but my choice would be Spooks' Keeley Hawes. In the book she has about 15 lines, but she speaks only less than 5 in the movie, which is more menacing than ever. She could speak the style of Gamal (the lead villain in Thief III) - which is the kind of old-woman witch type as of Snow White story could be!

One crazy banshee coming up to be skewered later on

They said that Evanna 'Loony' Lynch aced the role well before coming in. They are right, she is Luna - vegetarian, hippy-figure and the kind of person that relies on faith - a complete opposite of Hermione. The kind of anti-war women in the 70s particularly like Yoko or Jane Fonda...

But somehow, the movie just can't the narrative strength as Terminator 2. Maybe it's because of the stunts. But it is the story depth that just misses out. The character progression of Harry is just close to what I think it should be. According to the novel, he goes a little crazed after his friend Hermione got hit by a purple spell.

You can't beat Iron Jim in terms of narrative. He did better judging from the record in the first two Terminator movies and Aliens - remains the best narrative scope film that he has written.

Iron Jim had a hard time working in UK while making Aliens when an assistant director had inspired a crew revolt against him and Gale Anne Hurd - people would complaint to the studio of letting a little girl producing it!? He could be hard on our three heroes, Daniel, Rupert and Emma or even to those theater-trained veterans like Maggie Smith, Michael Gambon or even others...

Iron Jim would say to them: "That's okay. I worked with kids before."

or he would say this: "That's what I don't want!"

Autonomous as what people think of Jim Cameron...many people feared him but the studio executives are yelping as they would try to outbid each other to fight for the next movie.

I often felt that the forthcoming fight between Harry Potter and Voldemort is like what Iron Jim said before. "If the 800 series is a human panzer-tank then the 1000-series is a Porsche." This parallels to Voldemort - killing people since 1943 (noted in HBP) as a panzer-tank and Harry - plunged into this situation must become a Porsche. How about the T-X? In the context of the story, not as I see it as of now.

Hahaha.

I could have covered the whole thing but not if my friend had screwed the first 15 minutes. I thought of going into the room first and have him tell the attendant that I had the ticket with him. But he was begging me quite hard to wait for him and each minute past 8.45 p.m. on that day, my heart was beating stronger and there's a sense of tension like watching football!

Test Photos

In my previous post about DSLR, I have done some testing by taking landscape photos at the nearby lakeside yesterday evening. I've testing in terms of lighting and colors.

I did some tweaking to the tones and the RGB levels to achieve some picture effects. Although the tool accompanied with the package is not as great as Adobe Photoshop, none the less, it has the essential features that includes crop as I like to compose my images in the 2.35:1 style images and improving the shots from the raw image.


I had these settings used when capturing the raw images - see the sample above.

1. ISO of 200 - usually used at outdoors day time.
2. Shutter speed of 500. I thought of 320, but I am worried that the images will not be captured nicely.
3. Aperture of 2.8 on wide angle and 3.2 in telephoto mode. I feel that the bigger the aperture, the better the images are when captured with natural light.
4. No flash at all.
5. I used the Neutral color setting to achieve actual reality images.

I went home and did some and I find it behaving nicely. The only problem I have is night time shots, something which I did by doing a test shot in the room with one small light source but it is a little too bright.


I noticed that the composition above is like the un-squeezed widescreen frame - 1.85:1. The raw image here is that there is no blue tones here. It's more or less the cloudy, greyish look unlike this. It was also slightly bigger at full frame. I added more blue tones in there with a little red so that the picture above looks like it's shot in morning magic hour.

Magic hour is somewhere between 7 to 8 in the morning and 6 to 7 in the evening.

Unfortunately, loading this picture up here on the post is a little long. Maybe about a few minutes despite having a good connection. That's because the size of the file is at 1 MB plus, given that it is shot at 8 MP.



This self-portrait was re-framed as the squeezed widescreen format. I added sharpness of about 30%, 0.25 pixels and 5 levels.

Overall, I think that the Canon ZoomBrowser did at least accomplish the basic features but isolation of the picture element is not possible. But if you don't want to get the hands dirty on, it's okay. But cool thing about this is learning to do everything yourself - without the advance guide included in the package!

Robots In Disguise

On Friday, I wanted to watch Die Hard 4.0 with my schoolmate of mine. I was sure that I could get tickets for the show. I tried to call him many times to let him know that we can get tickets and ask him to come to town. Unfortunately, he was asleep and by the time I am at the counter, it was too late. The 8.30 tickets are selling out and rather than waiting for him, I decided to watch Transformers..something that he had already watched.


Of course I know that Michael Bay's films tend to be more of a crowd-pleaser, putting in tons of set-pieces into a thin-wafer plot. This too happens in his previous movie The Island. The two guys, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci - the guys who wrote Alias and M:I3 - has sacrificed the film's narrative (I mean lack of depth) for those impressive set pieces. The cliche is there...big war between to factions entwined with a kids story of Sam and Mikaela...and what?

Given that Bay did tons of action films, The Rock remains his best of the lot. He could have matched "Iron Jim" Cameron in terms of creating blockbusters, but he still lacks the capability of Iron Jim did. I remembered that Iron Jim was handling three fronts of a movie - writing, producing and directing his movies. He has total control over all aspects as Kubrick, Lucas and Coppola would do in their prime period. The auteur period. But since this movie has Steven Spielberg as the exec. producer, you got no problems getting the financial need to produce this heavy-effects laden movie. $150 million . But Iron Jim is different. He is the first guy to have his movies breaking the budget at that time. When True Lies hit out, it was the first film to break the $100 million budget -final was $120. When Titanic came out, it hit the $200 million budget and made 5 times back the amount.

T2 remains the best of Cameron's movies because of one reason, a sensible balance of narrative and set-pieces. Narrative should come first. If there's lack of narrative progression, how can you call that a good B+ or an A grade movie? Not many people love art-house movies. Before T2 came out, no one has ever heard or seen the infamous insane T-1000 suicide jump to the storm drain to chase a kid.

The idea of having Transformers on the big screen was the idea of Tom DeSanto - the walking "Marvel Encyclopedia". Okay, and weeks before the show is released, Mike Bay asked everyone from his website of one question: "Should I release it on the 3rd or the 4th?" Of course producers would agree of having it out on the 3rd because it generates more money on the 4th. People want to relax on the 4th, right? Uber producer Mario Kassar (Total Recall, Rambo, Basic Instinct) was also right. He was sure that T2 would be out on July 3 1991. He had the date locked in. So, there was a frantic scramble of completing T2 from May 1990 until its release date. He hit that right.


Of course fans are quite happy that the legendary Peter Cullen reprises his role as Optimus Prime in the movie. He's the only guy who can do that signature voice of Prime. The worst of the cast would be John Turturro "Mr. Barton Fink". I find it like an attempt to re-enact a modern General Curtis LeMay or another Buck Turgidson - he indeed behaves like Turgidson. Of course there's humor peppered along the way and Bernie Mac's cameo remains the most humorous of all the comic-relief scenes in the movie.

Pottermania?

Coming the next two weeks is Pottermania. Hitting back to the town after a 18 month hiatus, Order of The Phoenix is hitting out next Thursday. The interesting thing though is that the thickest book in the series becomes the shortest length feature of the series - just 138 minutes! But the initial reviews find that the narrative still lacks of depth but Ron and Neville - the supporting characters are beefed up tremendously in the film.

After that, 21st..midnight GMT - final book is out. A lot of people are asking what will happen to Harry at the end?...who are the two other main characters to be killed off? What are the last words of the book..blah..blah. But I find that the timing is a little bit off. Maybe it is best to put the book release date to say September and let the film finish playing in the cinemas. The tension is there.

A shame though that IMAX KL never plans to release films that has IMAX 3D feature in it. A lame move by the management. DIGI, especially Morten Lundal will need to take the initiative rather than losing this to Singapore. People will rant why Singapore has films with IMAX 3D feature but not in Malaysia. Digi IMAX has screwed Superman Returns and this feature. But it is beyond IMAX America control of determining what is to be shown or not. If you don't have this, what's the point of setting up IMAX in KL? In 2008, The Dark Knight - sequel to Batman Begins has 4 segments shot in the 15-perf IMAX camera. If this is never shown, too bad really.