Horror

It never ends- news of rape and murder. The newspapers just stopped carrying stories of the Noritta Samsudin case and we were getting tired of the ongoing court drama of the Canny Ong murder case when we are faced with yet another. I thought that I had become desensitized with all these news and by watching countless cut and slash movies but the feeling I had when I read the news about the rape and murder of an 10 year old girl was a mixture of anger, sadness, disgust and fear not in that order and in waves. Maybe becoming a father of a girl recently was the reason I felt so strongly about this case. This could happen to anyone, to your sister or daughter. I can only image what Nurul Huda's parents are going through. I would rather not think about what she went through.
Killing these devils (I would not call them animals because animals would not behave like that) would be too good. Now I am sure we are going to hear a lot of excuses and action taken by the authorities in the days to come but the question is why do we have to wait till something like this to happen before we take action. From what I read, it was already known that the guard house where the crime was committed was the haunt of dadah addicts. Why didn't the police do anything inspite of complaints? Also why has there been an increase of such crimes over the years? The authorities definitley needs to look into this. And I don't want to hear another so-called Ulama talking about need to cover up to avoid rape. I think you need to focus on these saitans lurking around preying on babies.

Does Malaysian companies think we are morons?

Have you ever come across an advertisement that sounded too good to be true? Recently I came across this promotion by Senheng in the Star newspaper, where they are offering an I Bhd video camera for only RM66 for all Mastercard users. So I went to the nearest Senheng outlet in SS2 Petaling Jaya and this is what happened.
While we were looking for the camera, a very helpful sales assistant came and asked what we were looking for. So I asked him for the video camera (on promotion). He asked us to wait while he went to talk to one of the senior staff. After a while, he came back and gave a lame excuse, “Sorry ah! Out of stock.” So we asked him whether there was another Senheng outlet nearby where we could go. His reply was “all out of stock”. Anyway, since we were there we decided to look around at the other stuff on sale. While showing us around, this guy told us that the normal price of the video camera was around RM700. So??? So if we wanted to buy it for RM700+, it was available. Then he went on to tell us that it was on offer for MBF credit card users. I thought it was out of stock. And its AM bank now, moron.Thinking about it later. Maybe I was a bit harsh and I don't think its that porr guys fault. He was going on and on about how there was no proper instruction from headquarters till we realized that there was some bullshit going around here. We decided never to go anywhere near another Senheng outlet again.
A lot of companies seem to think that we are all morons out here. They also seem to have forgotten that there is something called ethical advertising. A recent case was that of Air Asia. I agree with the transport minister when he stated that there was a misrepresentation in the airline ads. Of course Fernandes can say that only a few complained. The problem is that not many or only a few customers are complaining. That is because most of us couldn’t be bothered to go through all the shit just to complain. Their attitude seems to be "You pay peanuts, you get monkeys!" Right! So don't complain Of course, the tidak apa attitude also takes its toll and in the end companies think that as long as customers don’t complain, everything is alright. The company has a duty to inform the public that the super duper offers are for a limited number of seats (mention the number of seats on offer) and that you have to book early. Also look at the number of contests encouraging people to buy stuff – draw their logo in the most creative way, count the number of items in the car, the most creative slogan and so on. Well I am one those contest freaks and so far I haven't won any. Call me a poor loser but I noticed that many of these contest lack transparency. In many cases the pubic is unaware how they select the winners. And its not the first time that I heard rumours that many of these contests are fixed so that the prizes go to relatives of the organizers. The Govt. definitely needs to look into this and fix proper guidelines for organinsing contests. In other developed countries like the UK and Australia, all these companies would have been sued left and right. What are all the consumer rights bodies - ERA consumer, FOMCA, CAP, Consumers International etc, etc - doing.

Vegetarianism

Well I am really busy and have work piling up on my desk. "And you still have time for that stupid blog" I can hear my wife saying. Yes! She thinks that blogging is a waste of time but actually it only takes about 5 minutes for me to write what I think (OK sometimes more, when I have to do some research). That’s why there are sometimes a lot of grammatical errors and spelling mistakes.
Anyway, here I am taking a break from my work to tell you a little bit about myself. I am a vegetarian. Have been for quite sometime now. No! Its not for religious reasons and none of my family members are vegetarians. My mum tried to change me, even slipping in a little chicken soup in our curry but in the end she gave up and left me with my choice. My wife accepts me for what I am even though she told me that she can’t live without meat or chicken or fish. Its hard to be a vegetarian in Malaysia but it is not impossible and many now understand the concept as compared to a few years ago. Over here way up north, its still quite foreign and it was quite hard to find vegetarian food but as they say "I will survive". Sometimes people ask me “how do you survive?” I always have to mention “sayur sahaja” “tamao daging (meat), ayam (chicken), ikan (fish), sotong (squid), tamao samua laut–laut” because sometimes if you say tamao daging they will put in either ikan bilis or prawns. I have had to explain several times that Ikan or prawns are not vegetarian to a grumbling waiter.
I do take eggs which means that I am not a pure vegetarian. Some would call me a “Tipu vegetarian”. There is a technical term for people like us - Ovo-lacto-vegetarians, which means vegetarians who consumer both diary products as well as eggs. There are of course the lacto-vegetarians who consume diary products but not eggs. Finally there are also the pure vegetarians who don’t consume any animal product at all and I have heard that there are people who consume only fruits called fruitarians, though I have not met any. I am not that extreme and sometimes I get tired of telling the waiter to take back my food and just take out the prawns or ikan or sotong whatever, and just eat the vegetables.
I have not always been a vegetarian and used to love fish, fried chicken wings and so on but I don't why, I decided to become a vegetarian. I gradually gave up meat, than chicken than finally fish and sea food. "Do I suffer from any disease?" " Do you feel weak?" are some of the questions I get all the time. The answer to both is "NO!" But I take care to have a proper balanced diet. In fact I am healthier than many of my non-veg friends and I have noticed one great thing – we vegetarians look younger.

Animals and Diseases

I am sure you remember the days when people walked around with masks on and we laughed at the paranoid Singaporeans. Don't laugh. The SARS threat is not over yet. Recently some new cases have turned up. The authorities in Guangzhou have received orders to cull about 10,000 of the civet cats which are suspected as source of SARS. This disease caused a downturn of the Asian economies from which we have not fully recovered.
In the north, there have been some reports of the Chicken flu. This is caused by a rare and deadly influenza virus, previously found only in birds and poultry. The first case of Chicken flu was reported on the 11th of May 1997 when a three year old boy in Hong Kong began suffering from severe respiratory distress and later died of complications. More cases turned up later in late november that year.
We also cannot forget the outbreak of the Nipah virus in Malaysia. The first human cases of disease attributed to Nipah virus occurred in late September 1998 in the northern city of Ipoh. The cases were first attributed to the Japanese encephalitis (JE) virus but was later found to be a previously unknown virus of the family Paramyxoviridae which was first called Hendra-like virus. Direct contact with Pigs are the apparent source of infection for humans.
Quite recently there was news about an outbreak of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) or the "mad cow disease" in the US which traced its origin to Canada. This was first discovered in England and millions of cows were slaughtered. Many scientists believe that Mad cow disease originated when British cattle were fed animal-based feed that included the remains of sheep who had been sick with scrapie, a disease similar to BSE. BSE can be passed along to humans who eat infected beef through a mutated protein known as a prion. It is not known how many people are infected with the human version of mad cow disease, the new-varient Creutzfeld Jakob Disease (vCJD), because of its lengthy incubation period.
And of course we can't forget the most deadly disease which has no cure- AIDS. It is still widely believed that the HIV came into the humans from one or more non-human primate species- monkeys and chimpanzees when they were hunted as food.
The the process by which certain disease causing viruses and other germs pass from animals to humans is known as zoonosis. Once an animal disease has infected people, it may then be passed from human to human. The Ebola virus is another deadly example.
Link: Non-vegetarian diet
One possible solution: Lets all become vegetarians

Malaysian Tolerance and BO

Malaysians are largely very tolerant. They can tolerate a lot and at the most they might mumble or give a deadly stare but they will not go beyond that. However after that they would be complaining out their lungs to their family and friends. Anyway, just looking around really opened my mind to how we tolerate so many things that we don't like, grumble and just go on our way.
I recently faced a situation where I felt like talking out but I guess the Malaysian "way" got to me too. Well I was taking a ride on the PUTRA LRT in the evening which like always was packed with people back from work. Well we were packed like sardines when this sweaty guy came in at one station. The minute he came on, there was a rotten spicy smell odour. He was holding the support grip with his arm raised and presented his armpit directly in my face and the smell came in nauseating waves. The smell in the train was not fresh anyway but this guy was something. This went on till I couldn't stand it anymore and got off at KL central station to wait for another train. What a horrible experience. I couldn't eat that evening.
Ever wonder how their friends and family can put up with them. My dad once told me that people with BO cannot smell their own odour because they got used to it - something about the olfactory nerves getting less sensitive with constant exposure over time. Same goes for their families. This is also the reason why we cannot smell our favourite perfume after using it constantly - I mean it doesn't seem as strong as it used to when we used it for the first time and we spray more quantities and end up smelling like a popurie.
I am sure many of us had this experience where we had friends who had the BO problem but couldn't bring ourselves to tell them about it. How do you tell your friend that he or she stinks without hurting him/her?
For those suffereing from it here are some tips:
1. Use a medicated soap in the affected areas (mostly the armpits)
2. Buy new clothes - don't wear them yet.
3. Wash your old clothes regularly with medicated soap or detol (soak them for at least an hour to make sure you kill all the bacteria)
3. Now you can wear your new clothes.
4. Use an antiprespirant / deodorant on your armpits.
(Sometimes the combined smell of perfume and BO can be deadly)
5. Stay off spice especially garlic and onion for sometime
6. Bath at least 3 times daily.
7. Repeat all of the above till you get rid of ur BO and in the meantime please take a taxi or at least travel int he LRT during off peak hours.
I hope this post doesn't offend anybody. I guess sometimes we have to speak out even if we hurt their feelings. It is for their own good (but I guess mostly ours).

Bam - Some Hope in the Horror

It has been more than a week since the horrific earthquake in Bam, Iran, which has killed more than 30,000 people. Numbers can be very clinical and unless we sit down and think about it, we can miss out that the number - 30,000, which is an awful large number.
However, there was some hope among the horror stories. Just read that an elderly woman in her 90s was dug out from among the ruins. Called the “miracle of Bam” Shahrbanou Mazandarani was rescued after 8 long freezing days without any food or water. She said “God kept me alive”.

Happy New Year and Blah Blah Blah

I am in a bad mood. I guess everyone would be if they were in my shoes. This is going to be the 2nd New Year's eve which I will be spending all alone. Our boss is organising a big get together and attendence is compulsory for all employees on the 1st of January, 2004, which is tomorrow. And I was thinking of a romantic night out with my wife. Looking at the bright side, I will be taking leave immediately after that till the 4th of Jan.
Saw my parents off today. So its back to work at Kubang Kerian, Kelantan for my father and back to managing the house for my mum. Actually she was just mentioning (or hinting) that they are very lonely there in Kota Bharu, just the two of them together in a big house. I felt sad and think that I should make it a point to visit them more often. All our siblings are spread out all over - one in KL, one in Australia and me here way up north. I wonder when we would be able to celebrate the New Year - one big happy family like we did a long time ago.
Anyway, taking about the new year I have decided not to make any resolutions - just try to be good and avoid evil - in thought, speech and action. Is that a resolution?
Wishing everybody a VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR!