Monday, May 3, 2010

Double Standards and Hypocricy

Description unavailableImage by may the circle remain unbroken via Flickr
Recently I received a joke through the email from an acquaintance and it was also send to several others. The butt of the joke are several people, even though the names are not full names but you can imply who they are and the other thing that you would observe is that these people have a certain political affiliation and the joke is about Marketing Techniques
I paste some examples below:

Samy Vellu sees a gorgeous girl at a party.
He goes up to her and says: "I am very rich. Marry me!"
That's Direct Marketing.

Mukhriz sees a gorgeous girl at a party.
One of his loyal UMNO friends goes up to her and pointing
at Mukhriz and says: "He's very rich.. Marry him!"
That's Advertising.

Khir Toyol sees a gorgeous girl at a party.
He goes up to her and gets her telephone number.
The next day, he calls and says: "Hi, I'm very rich. Marry me!"
That's Telemarketing.

Of course there's a little bit more to that. Nobody in the mailing list made any noise about the joke or about who became the butt of the joke. Not that I care. However a thought struck me, 'what if the butt of the joke is on an name impliedly associated with a different political affiliation.' So I penned the joke below:

Anwar is at a party and sees a gorgeous guy.
He gets up and straightens his tie, walks up to him and pours him a drink, and invited the guy for a ride with Nalla driving to Tivoli and to enter the compound the codeword is “Mokhtar.”
In the room in Tivoli he said "By the way, I'm rich. CIFUT?"
and don’t let Wan Azizah and everyone else know about this.
That's Guerilla Marketing.

And send it out to the same people in the list. One thing, several of what are contained in the joke above were published in the news about a pending court case.
 
True to my assumption that double standards and hypocrisy existed, I received responses from 2 people fromt the mailing list, quoting from the Quran, the Prophet and the Sahabat somewhat telling me the perils of hearsay and fitnah. While I can understand and appreciate the reminders, my question is why only after I send the joke out about Anwar that these reminders spew forth. Why not when the butt of the joke were first about Samy Vellu, Mukhriz etc.?
 
Why? Is it ok to make fun of people you are not affiliated with, and it is not ok when it is about the others?
 
Hypocrisy is the act of persistently professing beliefs, opinions, virtues, feelings, qualities, or standards that are inconsistent with one's actions. Hypocrisy is thus a kind of lie.

The hypocrite thinks that what he usually professes do not somehow apply to him. It is not simply an inconsistency between what is praised or admired and what is done. Samuel Johnson made this point when he wrote about the misuse of the charge of "hypocrisy" in Rambler No. 14:

Nothing is more unjust, however common, than to charge with hypocrisy him that expresses zeal for those virtues which he neglects to practice; since he may be sincerely convinced of the advantages of conquering his passions, without having yet obtained the victory, as a man may be confident of the advantages of a voyage, or a journey, without having courage or industry to undertake it, and may honestly recommend to others, those attempts which he neglects himself. Wikipedia.


  I stand by my opinion, and I stand corrected.

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Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Becareful of whom you ask

I found this gem of a story.... scary!!!!





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Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Missing Persons

Just to check whether you are familiar with the missing persons whose posters I put here.


He/She had been elected to act on the best interest of the rakyat. Seem to be missing from the constituency.
Why the photofit? Simple, I just seem to not remember exactly how the MP look like.


Too busy politicking I bet at the same time busy enriching themselves and their cronies. Or as people who are visionary, they might be holed up somewhere planning for the 13th general election.














This is the other person missing, since the same period. People are saying this person is seen around town but elusive, just like the Yeti or Bigfoot or Loch Ness monster.















These 2 may or may not be related, should you not be able to contact me when you find them, please contact the nearest zoos or SPCAs or national park administration.


 
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Saturday, April 3, 2010

Learning and challenging

BALTIMORE - OCTOBER 05:  Professor Carol Greid...Image by Getty Images via Daylife
I am presently undergoing my post-graduate studies in one of the universities, something that had been long delayed due to commitments, work and otherwise.
To a certain extent one reason for me doing this to get a piece of paper that would allow me to speak with authority, a paper...
I had been working for more than 20 years and garnered experiences from the length and breadth of corporate organisation.
In the first semester while I was introducing myself to everyone in the class, the professor asked why am I doing the program, my rely was "I want to validate what I had done in the corporate world with the concepts and theories that you are teaching." Hence even though I want the piece of paper what I want to do is to learn (old and new things), find congruence, challenge ideas and maybe come out with new thinking... just like any good post-grad student is supposed to do.

Today the last tutorial class, the subject Strategic Management, I challenged an idea in class, telling everyone and the professor about what I thought regarding compliance to norm, when I said is it wrong to be different? Breaking away from norms... then the professor started to rant about something else and instead of understanding he started to something else...

Maybe it's just me when I disagree I would challenge, maybe it'sjust me who has a temper as short as my hair (I am shave my head bald by the way) so you know what kind of temper threshold I have... I blurted to the professor "that's bullshit! Why do I need to comply to norms?" The professor then ranted more... I was shivering not for being cold, I was trying to control my temper! I was about to blow in the class when someone asked for a tea break.

What I cannot stand is when he said that you cannot speak of a subject when you don't have a qualification i.e. MBA etc.... well I may not have that, yet, but I do have the experience to go with that. What have you?

I am not disagreeing to fact that I am here to learn, but post-grad students are not like under-grads where you accept, remember, comply. Post-grads are people who generally have experience, a certain point of view, we want to challenge ideas and find new ideas, dialogue, engage, learn, unlearn, expressive etc.

But I did not know well enough to understand that this Professor is not one to be challenged by a mere student.

Thanks to my classmates who read my temper and asked for the tea break LOL.



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Thursday, April 1, 2010

A Zoo in Ipoh - The Perak State Assembly

It was amusing to have read that on the first day of the Perak state assembly sitting on April 30 went on smoothly despite an attempt by the former Speaker Siva to take the Speakers' seat on the that day. He was twarted by the sergeant-at-arms. Calm before the storm.

Then the next day all hell broke lose. Why did I say it was amusing? The situation on the second day was something that was anticipated the only thing was how much a trouble the opposition members intended to make.

I think it is high time for the opposition members to play the constructive role of opposition, rather than a destructive role. I call these 3 Stooges, Nizar (the former MB) and the cousins Ngeh and Nga and the clown Siva to stop the whatever that they are doing or planning to do. It seemed to me that they had put in much effort to strategise to distrupt the proceedings of the assembly rather than putting in the brains together (should they have any) in thinking how they can improve the rakyat and help the people who had elected them to be the YBs they are today.

Sometimes I think they don't understand and respect the law, that the court had decided who is the government of the day. Nizar ever since the shift of majority, and by default no longer the MB and also after the court so decided who is the rightful MB, seem not to be able to accept the decisions. He is from PAS, the Islamist party (or shall I say a party which rides on religion, politicing religion, rather than practicing politics guided by the principles of religion) had been acting like gila talak, a husband who cannot accept the fact that he is now divorced.
Siva the clown, seem to love the Speaker's seat or the robe that the Speaker wear or is it that he loves the power of the Speaker that he send out invitations on the Speaker's letterhead when he is no longer the man. Grow up la brader.

Yes one of the posters the oppostion members were carrying said "The World is Watching," how ironic the it cuts both ways, the world is also watching the new zoo in Ipoh.

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Thursday, March 25, 2010

The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

Image by MacQ via Flickr
It's not the title of the movie that I used to watch when I was a boy, a cowboy movie starring Clint Eastwood. A spaghetti western.

I just want to mention a little about the the Malysian Parliment, the august house that passed all the laws we live by today in the country.

clint eastwoodThe Good - it is good to have a parliment. This means we as a country practices democracy , has a forum to discuss, dialogue and debate the laws and also the welfare of the country. We voted the members of the house in the general election. The expectations over these elected members are to highlight the concerns and the factors that effect the citizens and the people they represented. A healthy debate that we expected to happen in parliment to enable the parlimentarians to find out ways to enable the citizens to prosper.

The Bad - the bad thing that can happen in parliment is when the 'wakil rakyats' are not really interested to understand the public. They are more interested to play politics in parliment at our expense, with their theaterics and their public show of spats. The bad thing is when the members of the house opposed because they can oppose, opposed because they are oppositions, opposed because they are seating across their political rivals.

The Ugly - it is an ugly thing when the members of the house can simply throw allegations and heresays without any evidence because they are protected by their august house. You are protected by the rules of law hence you can say what you want to say and not worry about the repercussions.
What is ugly is when you see the members of the house shouting, yelling and raising their voices and heckling, staging a walk out. Just like school children, I would hazard a guess that kids do not stage walk outs.
What is ugly is that the show of stupidity and uncouth and uncivilised behaviour by the Yang Berhormats (It should be changed to Yang Berkhidmat).

Who are they trying to kid?



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Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Move On

sPrayerImage by Astig!! via Flickr
When I started this blog my intention is to avoid writing about politics, the operative word is "avoid," hence if you check on the previous posting maybe one or two of them are about politics.

What had happened several day ago in parliment, seem to be something worthy of mention.
Anwar Ibrahim, as alleged by Dato' Zahrin had master minded the September 16 conspiracy and his allegation had made Anwar Ibrahim so hot under his butt, and he left the proceeding a bit later. He was also absent from parliment the next day when Zahrin continued with his speech.

I wonder why didn't Anwar Ibrahim sit through the speech and be like a gentleman.

On one side of things over the last 2 years or so after the last general election, too much politicking had been the thing.

I would like to suggest to the parlimentarians, please shut the hell up, stop making accusations and counter-accusations, don't waste you bloody time in parliment. We the citizen are tired of your politicking.

Grow up!
Move on, do the things you are suppose to do, help the citizens to grow. There's time for politics and there's time to do your job. Enough politics! Go out and start doing the job you all were elected to do.

Anwar Ibrahim, just get your butt to court, we are just tired of your delaying tactics... and why the hell lobbying for support from the Australian and British politicians?




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Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Alice in Wonderland

The Hatter, illustration by John TennielImage via Wikipedia
I recently gone to watch the adolescent version of Alice in Wonderland... Johnny Depp played the Mad Hatter.
He kept on asking Alice, "What's similar between a raven and a writing table?" It is like a teaser/teka-teki kind of thing....
So what is the answer?




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Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Queue Jumping at the Highways

Looking south above Interstate 80, the Eastsho...Image via Wikipedia
I read in the news today that the police had been stationed along the highways to summon Q jumpers. In fact beside issuing the drivers with summons they were also delayed for a further 10 minutes as a penalty for driving along the emergency lane. I applaud the move but its not enough to just do it during the long holidays.

Usually when I drive during the weekends or even the wekdays, particularly when there is a heavy traffic on the highways, there will always be these drivers who make it their business to drive along the emergency lane. How I wish that the policemen were stationed there and then.
Look at the picture on the left... fat chance that this is the Malaysian highway... look again, besides the cars are on the wrong side of the road, no cars on the emergency lanes.

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Saturday, February 13, 2010

How you dress is not what you are

Last night I frequented my regular capati joint not far from home with my wife and son. Mat, a Bangladeshi, makes one of the best capati I've ever had, its soft and light.
I've known Mat for some time and we can talk about many things just like how friends would do. If I had not visited his stall for sometime, he would fret, thinking that I did not like his capatis and the teh tarik-maker would also enquire about the long absence.
Mat came to Malaysia many years ago to work as a production engineer with a factory but decided to leave and work as a roticanai/capati maker with a stall here, when the factory was right sizing people.
He decided that working at the stall enable him to make more money so that he can send it back home to Bangladesh. Last year he got married.

What happened last night was that, sitting at another table were 2 elderly men, both of whom I guess just got back from the surau, and having their round of teh tarik. One of the man, with his kupiah (skull cap) and his janggut (goatee) and on this account alone you would say this is an orang alim (religious man). But what came out of his mouth and how he sounded was not becoming of him.

He asked Mat about chicken, Bangladesh has no chickens, and the way he sounded was that chicken is somewhat strange to Bangladeshis and Bangladeshis would not have had chicken if they do not venture out of Bangladesh... he sounded patronising and demeaning.

Mat, smiled and said there are plenty of chickens in Bangladesh just like Malaysia, chicken is not something strange or that Bangladeshis are deprived of them.

The elderly gentleman was not to happy with what sounded like a rebuke from Mat to him and said something like Bangladesh is a poor country, many poor people, that's why they leave Bangladesh. (By this time I told my wife, this is the kind of man (the elderly gentleman) that I don't like.... the one who sounded ego driven and everything must be from his point of view).

Mat calmly said to him that yes, just like Malaysia there are poor people in Bangladesh, but there also plenty of rich people... houses with swimming pools and, he pointed to the gentleman's Mercedes Benz 200E (not E200), saying there are many people who drive Mercedes too....

Touche' Mat, the man decided his mouth had confirmed how stupid and obnoxious he was.... if you are not sure if you are stupid just close your mouth, opening your mouth only comfirmed your stupidity.

What saddened me is the fact that the personality of the elderly man, with his kupiah, janggut he looks like a pious man, but when he talked and the way he talked he sounded like a snob, patronising, egoistic... I know fullwell when you are just having a friendly banter (bergurau) but he was not.....

Can't just judge a book by its cover.......
But hey, who am I to judge... I judge you not.

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