Crap From A Learned Man: Do You Believe Him?

We are hearing more and more crap from our former PM. I wonder how come he's allowed to say something that all this while the government said is sensitive. Please allow us to openly say as to how he's saying. Just because he was a former PM doesn't mean his identity and position is special.

Again, we are hearing people from the government side, not necessarily ministers, talking about racial issue. We have had enough of the blaming, either on Chinese or the opposition on what ever that is happening or has happened that made the Malays becoming inferior and threatened. Never have I heard the opposition mentioning about racial stuff. I think they do not have the time for all this petty stories that only our former PM is interested to write or speak, especially after his retirement. It's true from what our former PM said that the politics has became more about race because the opposition is now more focused on what is close to the people's heart and attention such as the Rice (economy), Anti-corruption, Competency and Education (= RACE).

For whatever he has said, it is definitely not wrong if you choose to be on his side of the court. For me and the other urban people, we know that this is just a story that will get an A in the STPM Pengajian Am papers. We do not need to read the full article to get the meaning of his mind and will not misunderstood his intention even just by reading the title.


Let us hope the GE13 will come tomorrow, and show to this man that it's always sweet to win from a disadvantaged position, like how Italy beat Germany yesterday morning.

Germany Or Italy?

Based on the past experience watching World Cup, both teams are considered traditionally boring because you cannot expect them to score many goals in one match. Besides, they don't display fancy individual skills like the Latin American countries and their players are not as famous as those from English, or Spanish league. Most of the players played in their domestic league, especially the Italians.I believe many people are able to name more Germany than Italy players due to their performance in the World Cup 2010. Frankly, I only know Buffon, Pirlo and Balotelli from the Italian team.

 

However, in this Euro 2012, Germany is the more exciting team, having scored in every matches so far, and beat Greece in the quarter finals by 4-2. I would like to see Germany win this match, but my gut feeling told me that Italy will be the eventual winner. Italy somehow has the ability to win when they are not expected to.

My pick: A win for Italy.

Score: 2-1

 

Kuala Lumpur Losing Landmarks

I read about this unpleasant news that another landmark of KL, BB Plaza will be demolished soon. This time, it is again sacrificed for the sake of building a large underground MRT station.

This made us question why there is such a need. Though we know that this building belongs to UDA, a government-owned firm, it just need some common sense and engineering study to avoid all this. First, we knew that part of Jalan Sultan will be demolished, also because of MRT, now it's BB Plaza's turn.

Little did the government or City Hall realized that many of the landmarks has been taken away and transformed into something modern. This also resulted in KL becoming more and more a modern city, that doesn't have anything to show to people that it was actually built in the 19th century. Instead of putting us in a proud position as a well-maintained heritage city, we chose to be a continuously developing young city such as Dubai.

Few of the gone and soon to be gone landmarks are as below.

1) Stadium Merdeka
2) Stadium Negara
3) Chin Woo Stadium
4) Pudu Jail
5) Klang Bus Stand
6) Jalan Sultan shops
7) BB Plaza

If you have the chance to go to Europe, you will notice that you won't see a megamalls or shopping complexes in the city center old town area such as Gamla Stan (Stockholm), Montmartre (Paris) and Barcelona.

What the MRT company is doing is really unnecessary and unfortunate. They choose to let their kids learn about this buildings from History books, rather than Geography books.

Entrepreneurship Lesson: Separating Business From Pleasure

I read about this article on Mywifequitherjob.com, and found that it is interesting and true to an extent. He shared the reason why he thought that selling what you like to do may end up you hating what you previously liked to do.

He gave a very valid example about his wife who likes to do embroidery as a hobby, but eventually became a stressful kind of activity when they started to sell the embroidery products. This is because when it is put up on sales, and there is a customer demand, you will tend to do what the customer is requesting because they are paying for it. This will in turn create a conflict where you are thinking whether it work because of passion or because of sales.

Excerpts from his blog:

> Once we started offering personalization and custom embroidery, customers wanted designs that were all over the place. Some customers had really tacky taste and wanted my wife to create some truly heinous designs and some customers were extremely anal and picky.

> Most orders required several iterations of back and forth correspondence and all of this customer interaction took a toll on my wife’s psyche. What was once fun for her became a chore. She wasn’t creating designs for herself anymore. Instead, she was catering to customers for a couple of extra bucks. 

>  What was worse was that nobody could help her out in this department because she had all of the expertise. Her skill set was not easily transferable in a short period of time. And because her time was so valuable, the money wasn’t worth it and there was no way the business could grow in this way.

Yes, I believe now in what he said, and I see the point in not mixing what's like to do and what's do to make money. However, it seems more possible to like what you sell.

Survival Skills: No Tissue and Water In Toilet

I have heard about this survival skills many years back, and it has been retold a few times. Many of the people haven't heard of it. Therefore, I decided to post it in this blog after seeing it appeared in the internet with pictures that I can use.

This is an important skill to learn because Malaysian toilets often doesn't come with a tissue dispenser. This is either because majority of the Malaysians does not use tissue paper for "big business" due to their culture, or the tissues are given by the cleaner at the entrance, or the tissue is sold upon request (just like the low-cost kind of business model).

I would say, smokers are the safest bunch of guys because they always carry a box of cigarettes in their pocket. In case of emergency, they can easily take out a piece of paper from the cigarette box and use it according to the SOP.

In addition to this, if there is only 1 piece of tissue left, there is something you need to know also. The tissue paper quality is down nowadays. So, you need to fold it on the short side to use without failure. If you fold it on the long side, what will happen next is that your finger will get the "cream" of your business. This is because the fiber of the paper seems to orientate on the long side. Hence, any force from the finger will result it to rupture effortlessly.

I Found My First Inspiration

Last Friday was a day of mouth and brain activities for me. I had a chance to have a lengthen deep chat with a pal on the future. It seems like the wonderful future lies just in front, and if we don't act fast, this future will just be a history.

Both of us doesn't like what lies ahead of us. We thought that something is not right, and we know a strong  regret will come if we are still in a state of denial. What used to be fun for us will evaporate soon. Since there is no hope in the segment of things that we like to do, we might as well move to where our passion can flourish.

Hope what my internal eyes see is correct. We aim to built further up from what foundation we have now. We aim to utilize our left brain experience to enhance our right brain future.

We need to accept that we are given unrealistic goals, and it has effectively killed off any passion left. The longer we are still sitting here doing nothing, the risk becomes higher. Therefore, it's wiser to move before being moved. Dollar and cents are what making us move, and no denying, they can also make us scared to move.

Here are the smorgasbord that motivate me to follow up with my plan.

 

 

Divided Malaysian : I Don't Think We Are

I read about Dr M's speech today at Malaysian Insider. He was commenting that Malaysian became divided because of vernacular schools (hope I interpreted it correctly, else I will be sued). After reading the news, I think what he said was half correct.

Malaysians are indeed divided in education, especially when there are some Chinese attending Chinese medium school and the remaining attending the national schools. I don't see the problem in unity, but I see the division in the education standards. The division resulted in the clever and not-so-clever bunch of kids in school.

No one can dispute that China is the new economic superpower, and everyone in the world including Malaysia knows that it is essential to do business in China and with Chinese in Chinese language, as well as able to read in Chinese. Can you tell us, how our Malaysians who don't get formal education in Chinese, and not encouraged to attend vernacular schools in the name of unity can become part of the economic driver?

How?

Satay Fish : Smart Marketing Or Con Man Job

Someone brought a packet of satay fish to treat us, and it was bought in Pulau Pangkor. On the front side of the packet, you can see the whole surface of packet was printed with logo and the other side was clear. The brand is Cap Ong.

I was the one who opened the packet, and I didn't realize it at first about the content. Initially, I wallop 2 mini packs that was packed on the outer side. When I took the 3rd mini pack from the inner side, I realized that the size of the satay fish was half of the earlier 2 packs. After checking through another 7~8 mini packs, I can make the conclusion that this manufacturer had cleverly or cunningly packed the bigger size fish on the outer side for customer to see, and attract their attention. However, on the inner side where there is no way for customer to see the content clearly, they put in those smaller pieces and orientated the packet in which the logo faced outward.

Judge by yourself from the pictures below. Was it a coincidence that the packet was full of smaller fishes, pure unlucky to have picked it up by my colleague, or really a con job that happens on all the packets originated from this factory?

> The side where you can see the content. The fishes are bigger.

> The front side with logo printing. You can't see the inside from this side.

> Comparison between the big and small pieces.