FIFA World Cup - 2nd Round

The World Cup in South Africa is now in the second rounds. Just look at the casualties in the group phase; Italy and France; one the defending champions the other was runners-up in the last World Cup.
Not that I shed any tears for either of them. Italy is full of senior citizens, even Canavarro is not playing in the Serie A anymore, he is with one of the clubs in the Middle East... bidding his time to retirement.

France is a disgrace and underachievers, rebelling and revolting againsts the coaches, a sign of a team breakup.

England just barely made it.. and now kicked-out of the second round by Germany. Anyone of you watching the game will notice that Gerrard and Lampard have bags under their eyes... signs of tiredness? They were outclassed by Germany. Many who supported England do so coz of the EPL I believe... again not bloody tear I shed... good riddance.

I do wish a Brazil - Argentina final...













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FIFA World Cup 2010

Image via Wikipedia

The event every football fan in the world has been waiting for and anticipating every 4 years had started on June 11. I believe it will affect the way people run their daily routine, particularly if you intend to catch the early morning (2.30 a.m. Malaysian time GMT +8).
In fact one factory I know of had anticipated a lower productivity and higher number of absentism due to the the World Cup....

All the best to Brazil and Argentina, the 2 teams I am supporting...
England is simply over rated, Signor Capello... is the escape clause still valid in your recently signed extension contract?
Germany had been underachieving since they had beaten Australia.
Netherlands is a rank outsider.

Many late mornings!!!!!


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Double Standards and Hypocricy

Image 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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Becareful of whom you ask

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

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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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Learning and challenging

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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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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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.

The 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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Move On

sImage 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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Alice in Wonderland

Image 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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