civil...eh?

Are our civil servants less than civil?


Malaysia’s public delivery system has seen some degree of improvement, over the past few years, thanks to the efforts of the Abdullah administration. However, the Public Complaints Bureau has in recent months seen complaints against government frontliners piling up. once again. NURRIS ISHAK finds out where are civil servants going wrong

THOSE who grew up in the 1980s would remember an advertisement by Filem Negara Malaysia on government department frontliners.

The advertisement featured a man waiting in line early in the morning to buy stamps at the post office. The problem was he had no small change and ended up being berated by the clerk behind the counter.

Have things changed since?
Will things ever change?

Over the years, there have been many directives from ministers and chief secretaries to the government directing civil servants to be more courteous and efficient.

Admittedly, some things are much easier. Renewing your passport, for example, is only a matter of hours instead of days.

And gone are the days when getting your identity card would mean waiting for a few months. Now you can get it between 10 and 14 days.

These changes are the result of the push by the administration of Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi to improve the public delivery system in the country.
Yeah, right. Look what his changes did to him.

Recently, though, frontline officers in government agencies have come under fire again.

Statistics from the Public Complaints Bureau (PCB) shows that the number of complaints against government departments and agencies has more than doubled in the past three years.

The complaints range from delays or failure to take action, unsatisfactory quality of service, failure of enforcement, unfair action and failure to adhere to procedures to abuse of power and misconduct.

For the past three years, police recorded the highest number of public complaints received by the bureau, followed by the Public Works Department and government-linked Tenaga Nasional Bhd.

When it comes to states, the most number of complaints in 2006 and last year were against the Selangor government, followed by Johor.

However, Johor tops the list of complaints for the period from January to October this year.
Hmmm...should I emigrate, say to KL? Blueks...I rather endure. But I don't do much government agencies anyways. Just them hospitals and land office to pay their yearly homage. Them hospitals peeps are cool. Them land office counters are fast. No complaints there. But why on earth the government, having the MSC, with a ministry to take care of it and shit doesn't heavily promote the online way? It could easily cut government servants who manned them counters by half. They are the rude and lousy ones anyways. If you're bad, you don't deserve shit. Unfortunately in this real world, those suckers are probably going to be the ones staying. Because they're the better ass-lickers. Hmm...it'd be a pity if the good and polite ones are being unfairly terminated. Maybe we're doomed to pay for incompetencies in this country of ours. Hard luck...

Last week, Chief Secretary to the Government Tan Sri Mohd Sidek Hassan said the rise in the number of complaints should be translated as "the public's response" on how to improve it.

He said the more complaints received, the better it was, because it would help the civil service to see where it was going wrong.

Public Service Department director-general Tan Sri Ismail Adam thrust the much-maligned service into the limelight recently when he said the quality of service among civil servants was on the decline.

Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister's Department Senator T. Murugiah said the Public Service Department should hire quality people to work for the government.

"They should not be taking in their friends or family friends or family members into the service. They must look for quality, not quantity, when recruiting those who want to join the government sector.

"They have to look for those who are academically qualified and disciplined."
About time too. We're a country with too many bureaucratic shit and quotas if you asked me. And this is the result.

Those in the public service sector should also be proactive in dealing with the public and not wait around for the people to call on them before taking action, he said.

"Even then, one of the most common complaints is that the officers in government departments don't answer phone calls. As public servants, they should be serving the public.

"They should go to the ground and meet with people. Most importantly, they should like their jobs.
Hahaha. This is a good one. If you don't land a fat paying job. Or any job at all. Look for one in the public service. Put your legs on the table, spread them wide so that they won't cramp your balls, open the pc and maybe browse for porn, maybe take a nap and wait for your monthly paycheck. If the suffering public dare to even disturb your quality time, it's your bloody right to spew out them nasties and maybe humiliate them for good measure.

"They should realise that they are collecting their salary from the government so they have to perform their duties well, they are obliged to serve the public."

The problem does not lie with the leaders, said Murugiah. Most times, the department or agency leaders are good, but their subordinates fail to follow instructions for whatever reason.
You sure on this Mister Minister? Care to tell the number one or two?

"This is where the problem lies. The order would come from the upper levels, but either it is ignored or executed halfheartedly.

"Some ministries have complained about me, saying that I am interfering in their affairs but I'm only trying to assist them in rectifying the matters."

He said many people had complained that despite having written formal letters, making calls and having spoken with the officers in charge, no action was taken on their complaints. Thus they have no choice but to go to the Public Complaints Bureau.

"The problem is when a ministry or a department has to be represented during the mediation process, they would send officers who don't have the authority to make the decisions. These officers will excuse themselves by saying they have to refer the matter to their higher-ups as they are not the decision makers.

"The problem would then remain unresolved or matters have to be postponed for them to get the approval from their bosses.

"I've tried to explain to all the ministries that when there is a meeting with the PCB, they should send someone who can make decisions.

"It's hard to do my duty. We give the instructions but they don't follow. The leaders want to do their job well. But when the instruction is given, the officers don't want to follow, so the files move very slowly."

The PCB has 270 officers specialising in different areas, and all are well-trained to assist complainants.

"My office is open to the public every Tuesday, from 10am till late at night so that they can come in and lodge their complaints directly to me.

"I have engaged three other officers to assist me, as sometimes we would get between 200 and 300 people coming to lodge complaints."

The director-general of PCB, Dr Tam Weng Wah, said the government had been trying to ensure that the public delivery system was working well, finding out what was lacking and resolving problems.

"The PCB monitors all departments and agencies, and some may be more difficult to deal with than others, sometimes because of the bureaucracies.

"But if we were to compare the number of complaints against the size of the population, it is quite low.
You want to wait until the number of complaints is comparatively big? Most don't bother complaining, stoopid. They just vent their frustrations by voting the government out the next time around.

"The delivery system has improved by leaps and bounds in certain cases. As the technology changes, we can still improve it further."

maybe...
yeah...maybe...

lemon republic...eh?

ROBERT SKIDELSKY: This is a crisis of deviant economics

ECONOMICS, it seems, has very little to tell us about the current economic crisis. Indeed, no less a figure than former United States Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan recently confessed that his entire "intellectual edifice" had been "demolished" by recent events.
Scratch around the rubble, however, and one can come up with useful fragments. One of them is called "asymmetric information".

This means that some people know more about some things than other people. Not a very startling insight, perhaps. But apply it to buyers and sellers. Suppose the seller of a product knows more about its quality than the buyer does, or vice-versa. Interesting things happen -- so interesting that the inventors of this idea received Nobel Prizes in economics.

In 1970, George Akerlof published a famous paper called The Market for Lemons. His main example was a used-car market. The buyer doesn't know whether what is being offered is a good car or a "lemon". His best guess is that it is a car of average quality, for which he will pay only the average price.

Because the owner won't be able to get a good price for a good car, he won't place good cars on the market. So the average quality of used cars offered for sale will go down. The lemons squeeze out the oranges.

Another well-known example concerns insurance. This time it is the buyer who knows more than the seller, since the buyer knows his risk behaviour, physical health and so on.

The insurer faces "adverse selection", because he cannot distinguish between good and bad risks. He, therefore, sets an average premium too high for healthy contributors and too low for unhealthy ones. This will drive out the healthy contributors, saddling the insurer with a portfolio of bad risks -- the quick road to bankruptcy.

There are various ways to equalise the information available -- for example, warranties for used cars and medical certificates for insurance. But, since these devices cost money, asymmetric information always leads to worse results than would otherwise occur.

All of this is relevant to financial markets because the "efficient market hypothesis" -- the dominant paradigm in finance -- assumes that everyone has perfect information and, therefore, that all prices express the real value of goods for sale.

But any finance professional will tell you that some know more than others, and they earn more, too. Information is king. But just as in used-car and insurance markets, asymmetric information in finance leads to trouble.

A typical "adverse selection" problem arises when banks can't tell the difference between a good and bad investment -- a situation analogous to the insurance market.

The borrower knows the risk is high, but tells the lender it is low. The lender who can't judge the risk goes for investments that promise higher yields. This particular model predicts that banks will over-invest in high-risk, high-yield projects, i.e. asymmetric information lets toxic loans onto the credit market.

Other models use principal/agent behaviour to explain "momentum" (herd behaviour) in financial markets.

Although designed before the current crisis, these models seem to fit current observations rather well: banks lending to entrepreneurs who could never repay, and asset prices changing even if there were no changes in conditions.

But a moment's thought will show why these models cannot explain today's general crisis. They rely on someone getting the better of someone else: the better informed gain, at least in the short-term, at the expense of the worse informed. In fact, they are in the nature of swindles. So these models cannot explain a situation in which everyone, or almost everyone, is losing -- or, for that matter, winning -- at the same time.

The theorists of asymmetric information occupy a deviant branch of mainstream economics. They agree with the mainstream that there is perfect information available somewhere out there, including perfect knowledge about how the different parts of the economy fit together.

They differ only in believing that not everyone possesses it. In Akerlof's example, the problem with selling a used car at an efficient price is not that no one knows how likely it is to break down, but rather that the seller knows well how likely it is to break down, and the buyer does not.

And yet the true problem is that, in the real world, no one is perfectly informed. Those who have better information try to deceive those who have worse; but they are deceiving themselves that they know more than they do.

If only one person were perfectly informed, there could never be a crisis -- someone would always make the right calls at the right time.

But only God is perfectly informed, and He does not play the stock market.

"The outstanding fact," John Maynard Keynes wrote in his General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, "is the extreme precariousness of the basis of knowledge on which our estimates of prospective yield have to be made."

There is no perfect knowledge "out there" about the correct value of assets, because there is no way we can tell what the future will be like.

Rather than dealing with asymmetric information, we are dealing with different degrees of no information. Herd behaviour arises, Keynes thought, not from attempts to deceive, but from the fact that, in the face of the unknown, we seek safety in numbers. Economics, in other words, must start from the premise of imperfect rather than perfect knowledge. It may then get nearer to explaining why we are where we are today.

The writer, a member of the British House of Lords, is professor emeritus of political economy at Warwick University, author of a prize-winning biography of economist John Maynard Keynes and a board member of the Moscow School of Political Studies

____________________________________________________________________________

Deviant indeed. And to compound it, the herd mentality. We are in for some zingy shit here mates.

Image nicked as always from Bizarro.

maybe...eh?

Operative Note.

Perioperative Procedures

Perioperative Findings

Intussusception noted at rectal area.
Easily reducible intra operative.
Cauliflower ulcerated rectal tumour noted which was not circumferential.
No ascites fluid noted in the peritonal cavity. Liver palpated, no nodule felt.

Operative Procedures.

i) Access:
- Lower midline

ii) Procedure:

- Pt on supine position and under GA.
- Area clean and draped.
- Lower midline incision.
- Peritoneal cavity entered in layer.
- Findings noted as above.
- The small intestines are walled off and a self-retaining retractor
is inserted into the wound.
- The peritoneum is divided anterior to the rectum at the level of
the base of the cervix.
- After the peritoneal attachments have all been divided, and the
rectum is freed both posteriorly and anteriorly.
- The inferior mesenteric artery is ligated as it arises from the aorta.
- Inferior mesenteric vein is divided.
- Demartel clamped at proximal part and divided between the clamps.
- Distal segment is mobilised and cut using linear cutter size 60.
- Rectal wash done from elow using Povidone iodine.
Hemostasis secured and end to end anastomosis done using circular stapler size 29.
- Proximal and distal doughnut checked.
- Anastomosis site reinforced as its serosal layer with safil 3/0.
- Insufflation test done with negative finding.
- Passive drain inserted at the pelvic region.
- Rectus closed with loop dafilon 1/0.
- Skin closed with stapler.

iii) Specimens sent:
1. Low anterior resection specimen
2. Apical lymph node
3. Mesenteric and mesorectal lymph node (>11 nodes)
4. Proximal doughnut
5. Distal doughnut

NBM

IVD 2.5l/24 hour
Monitor BP/PR/RR hourly then 4 hourly if stable
O2 3l/min with Spo2 monitoring 4 hourly
IV augmentin 1.2g tds
Analgesic - PCA morphine
Flatus tube and abdominal drain chart
Chest physio and deep breathing exercise
Wi D3
Stapler removal D7
To get gastrograffin enema at POD5 - POD7
___________________________________________

I can't decipher any of these medical geeks wordplay. But reckon it's a good sign. Gotta have Doctor Rocky decipher them for me. Yeah, his straightforwardness is a tad brutal but at least he's not one to give false hope.

The important thing is Ma is recuperating and responding well post operation. And her nervous smiles pre-operation was replaced by more radiant ones. She's always been a strong lady and reckon this is not the time she's gonna go soft. She's always been a fighter. And this is a fight she intends to win.

Thank you O God, The Merciful and The Compassionate. We'll always accept what is planned for us. The good with gladness and some. The bad with redha and open heart. For this life is always for You O God, The Merciful and The Compassionate.

ma...eh?

Radiology Report.

Patient: Female 61 years 2 months

Radiology report: Abdomen/Pelvic CECT
CT 7 mm slice thickness with 1.5 pitch from the dome of diaphragm till the symphysis pubis.

Findings:
There is short segment luminal narrowing with a mass seen arising from the wall of rectosigmoid colon.
There is loss of normal clear margin of the serosa.
There is streakiness of the pericolonic fat.
There is still a plane between the rectosigmoid lesion and the bladder.
There is no enlarge pelvic nodes.
No fluid or air seen within the uterus.
No loculated fluid collection in the pelvis.
Hypodense liver lesion in segment 6.
No dilated intrahepatic duct. No gall bladder stone.
CBD not dilated.
No focal lesion in the pancreas and spleen.
There is staghorn calculus on the right side.
Small cortical renal cyst on the left kidney. No hydronephrosis.
No enlarge pareaaortic paracaval node.
No lung nodules in the lung bases.
No pneumoperitoneum.

IMP: Rectosigmoid mass with liver lesion.
This represent cancer rectosigmoid colon stage D
Right staghorn calculus.

Gribbles Pathology Report.

Clinical History

Ca sigmoid colon.

MACRO

Specimen designated --- Sigmoid colon.

Four fragments of irregular greyish brown tissue measuring 1.8cm in aggregate diameter. Sectioned and entirely submitted in one block.

MICRO

Section shows fragments of tissue composed of malignant epithelial cells forming closely packed glands and nfiltrating the stroma. The tumour cells are pleomorphic, columnar in shape, have vesicular nuclei with prominent nucleoli and eosinophilic cytoplasm. There is increased mitotic activity. Histologic grade - moderately differentiated. Areas of ulceration and necrosis are seen. Tumour necrosis is seen in the lumen of some of the glands.

Sigmoid colon biopsy: Adenocarcinoma, moderately differentiated, infiltrating.
______________________________________________________________

Wished Biology interest me when I was in Form 4. And I got on to do medicine. Guessed I chickened out when I took the easier Social Science class instead. But what's the point, out of 110 or so of us from back then, only 2 got to be doctors. Looking back, there are a million and one things I wished I could have done differently. But what's the point, apart from unnecessary heartaches and that bitter feeling of being stupid.

And it won't helped Ma a bit now. We had done and will be doing all we can to ensure her full recovery and make her as comfortable as possible. All she need right now is the gift from Allah The Merciful, The Compassionate. He is the One Who Determines.

Oh Allah, The Merciful and The Compassionate.
Please take care of me Ma as she had taken care of us from birth.
Please protect her from harm as she had protected us from birth.
Please rid her of all her ailments, rid her of her pains and sufferings.
Please give her courage and strength to face these tests of Yours.
Please protect her from evil, by things seen and unseen.
Please pave the way for us her children to be able to assist.
To offer financial assistance.
To offer our energy.
To offer our time and help Ma be better again.
Please Oh Allah, The Merciful, The Compassionate.

sports illustrated...eh?

This is one of the sports that get me a tad delusional. Yeah, they are all talented girls alright. If you think that being able to swim around in circles in unison with one another or in a group is actually a talent. Maybe I'm putting me foot in me mouth. But what do I know, as a guy who's into contact sports.

Foot in me mouth?

Hmmm...maybe it's a sport after all, especially when they have twins Bia and Branca Feres in their sport. Am getting delusional.

morons...eh?

I dunno. Reckon that dude from those many years ago in the American automobile heartland had had enough of using his hands to indicate where he's going. And so he created the turn signal lights. Them lights did all the signaling right or left since, and his right hand could then get busy with that sheila next to him. Unfortunately some drivers don't only fail to use their brains but the turn signals as well because they expect everyone else to know where they're going. Turn signals are definitely the most underutilised device on a car, thanks to them assholes. Yet signaling is one of the most important actions you can take as a driver, warning other drivers of your impending moves to minimise nasty surprises. There's only one Nostradamus, stupid! Failing to signal may be the cause of quite a few accidents, and is probably a big source of road rage as well. Not to mention traffic gridlocks.

We seem to be getting more and more of them moronic drivers. And some drive flashy cars that could cost few hundred thousand ringgits, with stylish indicators and all. But the lever is never utilised. Don't let me start on them souped up Kancils zigzagging between lanes without signaling because the drivers thought they were still mat rempits on motorcycles. You can only shake your head in disbelief sometimes. You almost run into them some other times. Hopefully you don't run into them. If I were to run into one of them morons, I'll make sure they die. And should I know where their parents and siblings live, I'll hound them down and if the chance present itself, I'll run them over as well and make sure the whole litter get buried in the same hole. Never let inferior genes evolve. Darwin couldn't agree more.


I dunno. Maybe for every pack of diapers purchased, they got them stickers. And since each household purchased 2 packs a week, the neighbourhood is littered with them stickers. And soon the whole fucking postcode is sticking them stickers on their cars. So the stickers tell us to be mindful and watchful because they got babies on board. I can certainly live with that. Babies are cute anyways and I can tolerate them anytime. But when the cars they're in are driven by moronic parents, here I draw the line. Don't give me an excuse to run you over because I'll make sure you're dead. And if those precious cargo of yours, the ones your stickers keep telling me to be mindful and watchful of, didn't follow your footsteps, I'll place it in the middle of the road so that some crazy express bus driver high on amphetamine could run it over. And bad genes won't go about evolving unnecessarily.

unkindest price cut...eh?

It was the unkindest cut

VALLEY VIEW
By Datuk Shahrir Abdul Samad

I refer to the Valley View comment by Tommy Lee entitled Can’t stomach high food prices – Traders and hawkers getting away with it due to lack of clear guidelines in StarMetro on Dec 15.

First, I acknowledge Lee’s right to lament the higher cost of cooked food in Kuala Lumpur compared with his hometown Penang.

I am happy to note that he will no longer patronise the nasi kandar shop because he “nearly choked when the bill came to RM10.10.”

Since nasi kandar originates from Penang, Lee will certainly be a more authoritative commentator on the taste and price of nasi kandar than a Klang Valley-bred resident.

However, I have to respond to his assertion that “the government is hardly doing anything to get food prices down other than getting the big merchants like Giant and Tesco hypermarkets to lower their prices.”

For the record, it is true that both Giant and Tesco were the earliest of hypermarkets and supermarkets to participate in the Price Reduction Campaign organised by the Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Ministry.

I officiated at the Giant campaign on Oct 20 and at that of Tesco two days later.

Since then, Carrefour and Jusco, local hypermart Mydin, other local supermarket chains such as The Store, Econsave, UO Superstore, Tunas Manja and Sunshine, and the smaller retail chains like 99 Speedmart and Terus Maju have joined in the Price Reduction Campaign.

Even D’mart, a chain of retail stores operated by the Felda Cooperative in several Felda schemes all over peninsular Malaysia, has participated in the Price Reduction Campaign.

Consequently, Lee’s assertion is only true from the perspective of someone who lives and works (and eats!) in the Klang Valley.

Participants of the campaign located at the margins of the Klang Valley, and what more of those smaller local enterprises located in Pahang or the Felda schemes, will not be appreciated by Lee.

It is not that The Star reporters were not invited to each launching of the campaign. They were. But I can understand the fact that since the campaign was launched in the last week of October and is now almost two months old, it has since become less newsworthy.

Thus, what has happened following the involvement in the campaign of Giant and Tesco may well have escaped Lee’s attention. But it is no excuse for him to claim that the government is “hardly doing anything”!

Lee further asserts that my reply is “most amusing”. This is in connection with my explanation that the full impact of declining raw material prices will be felt in the first quarter of next year.

Lee claims that I had the “audacity to ask consumers to be patient with the current high cost of goods” and adds an emotional twist by asking: “How can one be patient when your baby is crying because she is hungry?”

This is a paragraph which is the unkindest cut of all.

Does Lee really want the reader to believe that the ministry’s Price Reduction Campaign has not gone beyond Giant and Tesco when he should know that what he asserts is patently false.

In fact, just the day before Lee’s article appeared in StarMetro, I was in Penang, his hometown, to launch the Sunshine supermarket group’s participation in the campaign.

What pleased me was that the prices set by the supermarket group were very competitive with those set by the earlier participants of the campaign.

The ministry will eventually publish the prices of selected food items of all participating retailers in its website and the price information will be on a district-by-district basis.

It is hoped that such information will not only allow a consumer to be better informed but may well encourage competition among the participating retailers for the consumer’s benefit.

I read Lee’s article right down to his parting shot: “Mr Minister, spare us the excuses and get the whip cracking.”

Lee has adroitly complained of my inaction over prices but the examples he gave of high prices were mostly of cooked food although he did include that of the trousers pressing service.

He argued that “the government should seriously consider some price control initiative if it has the welfare of people at heart. You can never, never find shopkeepers or hawkers who would voluntarily lower the prices of goods unless there is pressure from the government.”

I worry that Lee wants me to crack the whip, i.e. use force or the threat of force, against shopkeepers and hawkers.

At almost every press conference after launching the Price Reduction Campaign at a participating retailer, I will explain that the ministry has no legal power to get retailers to reduce their prices and all the participating retailers are doing so purely on a voluntary basis to cut their own margins and supported by their suppliers.

Thus, it has been voluntary all this while, rebutting Lee’s claim that they will “never, never” do so!

However, I agree with Lee that the problem is with the prices of cooked food. All the examples cited by him are cooked food (char koey teow, chicken rice, wantan noodles, nasi kandar, cup of tea) rather than of fresh and manufactured food items.

His decision not to ever again patronise the nasi kandar restaurant is one way to protest against the high price of nasi kandar.

To expect the federal government to “crack the whip” against the hawkers is unrealistic since it means government intervention right down the supply chain beyond retailing.

Furthermore, the hawkers know that there will always be customers even if they raise their prices.

The local authorities may have more influence than my federal ministry over the food hawkers in state-owned hawker complexes.

Currently, licences are issued for the purpose of health control. Perhaps, the privilege of location can include the additional and voluntary adhering to reasonable prices.

As a journalist, Lee is expected to be better informed than his readers of events and even of the country’s laws and governmental structure. This is because it is expected that what he writes is well-informed, fair and accurate.

He has no excuse not to know that the Price Reduction Campaign has been voluntary and in spite of the ministry not having the necessary legal powers to “crack the whip” beyond the limited range of price-control items, the campaign has been successful in bringing down prices of manufactured food items.

He has also has no excuse not to know that the campaign has gone beyond the “big merchants” and has reached not only the margins of the Klang Valley (to Banting and Kapar, for example) but also to the rural Felda schemes.

He absolutely has no excuse to take my remarks out of context and then use them arbitrarily to justify his unhappiness with the price and taste of Klang Valley’s cooked food.

I can appreciate his longing for the taste and price of Penang food. However, since he writes for StarMetro through the Valley View column, which presumably has to be helpful and useful for readers in the Klang Valley, Lee should refrain from half-truths and distortions.

Being snide also does not help in Lee’s battle against his homesickness while he is expected to explore and highlight life and its highs and lows in the Klang Valley.

Note: Datuk Shahrir Abdul Samad is the Minister of Domestic Trade & Consumer Affair
______________________________________________________

Hmmm...I thought this piece is about Lorena 'the unkindest cut' Bobbit. Wishful thinking.

Political speak is too predictable. Always a long-winded nothingness. Did I detect ample hints of sarcasm there too, Datuk? Is that the way to make us believe the government is actually doing something? A few widely publicised events? That we already bloody aware of, thank you. We want to know them steps and measures that are to be undertaken so that our confidence in you do not dip. So your Ministry don't have the necessary power to go against blatant profiteering? Why bother having Kementerian Perdagangan Dalam Negeri dan Hal Ehwal Pengguna when all that is needed is for us to boycott shops and hope things can get really rosy? You peeps make them rounds during them festivities and check on chicken and chillies and long beans and then do what? Rally for increase pay?

With all the supermarkets and wet markets Price Redundant Campaigns you had to officiate, who's writing this piece of shit? You got your own 4th floor lackeys?

How people changed. Where's that guy who left the Backbenchers' Club for something he believed in? How belief changed.

I don't have a craving for some Penang exotic food spreads or Kelantan or French. I don't have the time nor money to travel more than 50 metres on a weekday just to satisfy me palate. I just need some basic food that can fill me guts and give me the strength to survive another day. I just need to have access to a price list of some basic food items. A list of errant shopkeepers will help. If you can list all them good guys, why not them bad ones as well. If I'm a bad paymaster, me name will be splashed all over the financial system. Why can't an errant shopkeeper be shamed as well.

I can't shake off this feeling that this government which is elected by the people doesn't have the people as their priority. To reduce the price of fuel, they think about the losses that could be faced by the kiosk operators. True, they are people too but what about them gains when price increases. Why are contractors compensated when time is bad? Business is always a calculated risk. That is why you either do well or go bust. It all depends on how you manage your capital, manage the prevailing economic situation and how well you predict future trends and costs. Not everybody can do that well or at all. The better ones survive and evolve into bigger entities. Good on them, pats on their backs. But when them failures came running to the government and being compensated, where's the element of hard work and good management? It's like telling me to get me butt involve in a government project and if my cut fell below my expectation, it's me prerogative to ask for compensation. And I'll be well compensated. In the process the government and all its MLCs are being taken hostage by business peeps and cronies in lopsided deals and the money that is meant for improving our lives is being channeled into a few pockets. Is everybody in the government machinery that gullible, do not read law? Or do they have some other vested interests? Government peeps, especially those of the praying kind, you must've heard and read the oft quote, you're what you eat. And your children are what they eat. Can you ensure that they are eating food that is meant for them? And can you yorself too for that matter? Halal is not good enough. It must also not from sources that deprive others of their rights.

So can I have a government project or two, Datuk Minister? No? Meant for cronies? Oh, I thought so.

Datuk Minister, spare us some change and get us them whipped cream crackers.

jom bodoh...eh?

I dunno. Reckon that's why God created us differently and then spread us as far as possible from each other so that nobody could easily get on each others' nerves. But being humans, we wanna prove to the Almighty that we're a tad cleverer than His other beings, His plans. We got out of our caves, we created things, we explored the world and we started to get on each others' nerves.

I dunno. Reckon some peeps are born just to go to them Jom Heboh carnivals. Then they die. And if they behaved themselves at them carnivals and didn't miss their Asar and Maghrib, they'd go to heaven. But if they leered at too many cleavages, thought about grasping the many butts on offer, with them g-strings showing 3 inches above the belt, and took home too many freebies, reckon they got to open the door to the red hot room without a view.


So imagine if 17 of these peeps who were born to Jom Bodoh for eternity came to visit one of their clansperson in a 30 bed ward at the Hospital Sultanah Aminah, whose bed unfortunately was next to me mother's. Taking turns being photographed with the sick girl as though she just won the Juara Lagu. Was expecting them to do the naughty on the bed and on the floor at any moment and have their acts recorded on their mobiles and later bluetooth to the whole fucking world but by then everybody from the other beds were looking at them with annoyed sympathy. I haven't seen so much grapes and so many apples since that summer of '86 at that German sounding farm in Adelaide. And the poor girl was to have her vermiform appendix removed the next day. Reckon another half of the clan would be coming over to collect them freebies later.

Reckon that's why God created that many levels of heaven and hell. He knew humans just love to get on each others' nerves, even there.

crisis...eh?

Financial crisis explained.

Now you know your bank sucks. And you'll die dry.

pretty in pink...eh?

All me life playing rugby, the jerseys I had ever wore were black shorts with yellowish orange top and white shorts with reddish maroon top. And them were proud moments those many many moons ago. Especially when worn against fave opponents King George V. Ah...those were them days, when we just live life.

Been following the French Top 14 awhile now. And the team that never cease to amaze me is the Stade Francais, the only team from the north. A very stylish team at that. Just look at them kits and you know what I meant. Imagine a group of 15 men, almost all 6 footer with an average weight of 90kgs charging down at you, in pink kits.

Hey, you're hard! Damn!