Twitter gems, part 12

The more things change....

17 Sept 2010: The Malaysian Mirror publishes a [l]etter from A Very Frightened Malaysian Abroad.

18 August 2010: Malaysia Today publishes a letter from a Malaysian professional can't wait to come back to Malaysia to serve.

19 July 2009: A very frightened Malaysian abroad cops a "Grrr" from Vin1979.

6 October 2008: A very frightened Malaysian abroad writes.

11 January 2007: Frightened Malaysian writes to Raja Petra Kamarudin.

11 December 2006: Frightened Malaysian makes his fears known over bad formatting.

17 July 2006: Tzy Shih finds something hilarious.

What do they all have in common?

Back in 30 May 2005, Jeff Ooi wrote about (Malaysian) Higher education in crisis. He gives space to a "From a Frightened Malaysiann (sic) abroad".

The fact that this letter can still ring so true after all these years shows how little has changed.

Talikhdimat case number 20100906-018

Yes, I spend my days browsing through the list of complains lodged with Talikhidmat. Nothing wrong with it.

Now most Talikhdimat cases tend to be rather mundane, like blocked drains, loss of electricity, bad roads. Y'know, the standard municipal tasks. Case 20100906-018 on the other hand, is really unusual and interesting.

(Before I continue, can I just say that the new Talikhidmat website is not as good as the old one. Whose "bright" idea was to make accessing individual cases a POST(back?)? Just makes it harder to browse.)

For the benefit of those who can't read Bahasa Malaysia, the complaint is towards this Maybank commercial:

Its a Maybank television commercial that first saw the light of day around 2008, and to be best of my knowledge is probably the first Bahasa Iban commercial ever on national TV.

The complainant, who is at pains to emphasise his Iban heritage, is raising the issue of the phrase "Duit Ukai Semoa Utai" which is used by the main protagonist in the Commercial. He says that in all his (32) years he has never heard such a phrase. And to be fair, even with my minimal grasp of Bahasa Sarawak (which is essentially a mix of Bahasa Iban and Bahasa Bidayuh), even I can tell it sounds awkward.

Talikhdimat actually forwarded the complaint to the Sarawak branch of Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, which in a nutshell replied that "Duit Ukai Semoa Utai" is indeed a (awkward) literal translation of the Bahasa Malaysia phrase of "Duit bukanlah segala-galanya" (Money is not everything).

The case was then forwarded to the Public Relations & Corporate Affairs Unit of the Chief Minister's Department, which forwarded it to RTM, Media Prima, Maybank and the Federal Public Complaints Bureau!

If nothing else, this is one Talikhdimat case that deserves to be monitored!

Starcraft, Angel Mod

I seriously need some time to try out Starcraft 2.

Ah How, the Ice cream man

Back while I was still in Kuching, there was this old man who usually was around the Ellis Road/Tabuan Road area, selling ice cream. What was unique was that he sold ice cream from a bike.

To be honest, I felt a pang of nostalgia of sorts seeing him. Its not often one sees ice cream being sold from a bike even in Sarawak. They're all been taken over by motorbikes in rather going around with rather odd jingles.

Nadai Nama, better known as Desmond Jerukan (the most public administrative officer in Malaysia, works with the Sri Aman Residen office) recently blogged about the ice cream man when he was in Kuching.

The last time I saw him was when I took that picture, which was in early 2006. Just before I left. Looking at Nadai Nama's pictures, it looks like he has aged a lot. At least I now know he's called Ah How.

Picture courtesy of Nadai Nama. Its a good blog, with a rare glimpse into the Sarawak public service.

He's a part of Kuching's local history and culture, and I feel blessed to be a witness to this. I just hope that in the dizzying rush that is modern life, fellow Kuchingites take time to stop and support the last of a dying part of what makes Kuching truly Kuching.

National Broadcasters

School Rumble ni Gakki, ep 1

I've observed that national broadcasters don't have a good reputation in many instances. Allow me to proffer some of my observations:

Observation no 1:

In NHK no Yokoso, Tatsuhiro Sato believes that the Japanese national broadcaster, NHK, is a evil conspiracy whose purpose is to turn people like Sato into NEETs, by broadcasting a "steady diet of anime materials featuring cutesy girls" to turn people into NEETs. He believes that the initials NHK stand for Nihon Hikikomori Kyoukai (The Japanese hikikomori association).

Observation no 2:

Read The Australian long enough and you'd notice that claims of alleged Left-wing bias is rampant supposedly towards the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Beware of Janet Albrechtsen.

Observation no 3:

Radio Television Malaysia, the Malaysian national broadcaster. Usually its mention is met with blank stares by people under 25, and many over 25 have opinions about it (usually along the lines of "Everything they show is boring and crap") More academic studies have shown consistently low levels of trust of RTM's news division.

To show 2 examples, see Ethnic identity and news media preferences in Malaysia by Amira Firdaus, and Privileged Culture and Polarized Public Spheres: State Broadcasting in Malaysia by Umi Khattab.

Observation no 4:

I once had interaction with someone who postulated that Korean girl group So Nyeo Shi Dae (better known as SNSD) was a evil conspiracy by the Korean Broadcasting System (KBS) to "steal the hearts of young boys" and stupefy them into dreaming and fantasizing about group member Taeyon. Or Seohyun. Or Yoona. (I don't know which one was mentioned. They all look and sound the same to me.)

I can understand the "steal[ing] the hearts of young boys" part. Even I was young once. And I am aware that (a) they are big in most of Asia (b) they have performed on KBS channels. But evil conspiracies? And why the Korean national broadcaster?

Somehow national broadcasters (across cultures if I may add) consistently have issues with their image. I wonder why?

MyConstitution and the myth of the Malaysian constitution

10 September 2010: Shaila Koshy talks about the Malaysian Constitution and its citizens who live under it.

There are a few imputations that I want to raise in relation to the article:

Imputation no 1:

[T]he Malaysian Constitution has been amended more than 40 times since Malaya obtained independence on Aug 31, 1957, that is, 53 years ago.

That, by itself, is not wrong. The Malaysian constitution has been more than 40 times since 1957. I count no less than 600 amending acts in the footnotes of the Malaysian Federal Constitution.

Imputation no 2:

[H]ow do you know whether your elected representatives have upheld the integrity of the supreme law of the land or amended it for political expediency?

It is somewhat of a myth that the (at least) 600 times the Malaysian Federal Constitution has been amended means its a bad thing.

If one actually took the time to read the annotated version of the Malaysian Constitution, one would realise that a lot of it was done between 1963 and 1965. The fact that Malaysia was formed in 1963 and Singapore was ejected in 1965 is no accident.

While I have not done a critical study, from my gaze I guess that around 25% of those amendments were to lay the foundations for the establishment of Malaysia. For starters, the original title of the constitution was "The Federal Constitution of Malaya". That needed to be changed.

Singapore had significant provisions in the original 1957 constitution. When Singapore was ejected out, the Constitution of Malaysia (Singapore Amendment) Act, act 53 of 1965 removed a lot of provisions. All in all, I would say that almost half of the amendments were done before 1970, and in a time of great change.

The real issue is not how many times the constitution has been amended, but what has been changed. Sadly I am no expert on Constitutional Law, so it is hard to qualify how much of those changes were for good and for bad. For instance, the 1963 constitution made reference to "Borneo States" in their Malaysia provisions. In 1971-1972 much of that was amended to read as "Sabah and Sarawak". Is that necessarily a bad thing?

On the flip side, it has to be noted that the number of amending acts is not equal to the number of amendments done. Unlike the "Washington system", in the Westminster parliamentary system, a amending act can change multiple sections of the constitution. Thus, the real number of amendments can actually be higher than 600.

Short of having access to every one and single of the 600+ amending act, it is impossible to know qualitatively how much the constitution has been changed, much less being able to come to a conclusion that the amendments were "good" or "bad".

I personally support the MyConstitution project. Exactly how much of an impact it can have on the voting masses in making a informed decision at the ballot box through, is another question.