From Batu Pahat to Kota Bharu

Actually I should rename the title to "From Alor Star to Kuala Lumpur to Batu Pahat and back then to Kota Bharu and back" but I guess it would have been too long. I have taken a long leave to spend some quality time with my family.

Last friday I drove down to Batu Pahat, Johor with my wife to attend one of our good friends' wedding. I got to know Gogot and Bear (nick names) through my wife (she has known Gogot since her school days). Gogot and Bear have been together for a long, long time and we were really happy to see them finally tie the knot and settle down together. I wish them a very happy married life.


I am flying to Kota Bharu, Kelantan today to visit my parents. Besides my wife and Rahil, my mother-in-law, brother-in-law and our maid, are coming along too. Unfortunately my father-in-law is in the States right now or it would have been the perfect family reunion.

More updates later when I get back, till then it's a brief "hiatus".

FYI, Alor Star is the capital city of the state of Kedah in Malaysia, which lies on the north bordering Thailand. Johor is the southern most state of Malaysia bordering Singapore and Kelantan is another northern Malaysian state, again bordering Thailand but on the eastern coast.

New Bloggers

Now more and more people are joining the blogosphere. I noticed that a few of my friends have even started their own blogs without even telling me. I discovered their blogs purely by chance. You know who you are…

I am proud to say that I have inspired, motivated and helped a few people get on board.

I will just mention 2 here:

Mr. Rajoo (my colleague) who has just started his blog called Shopping Tips. On his blog, he provides (some really strange) tips on how to shop, save money and get free stuff.
Believe me, this guy knows all the tricks and has a “huge” bank balance to prove it (so I have heard). Nothing illegal involved.

Mr. Faizal from Melacca, who has a blog called Jutawan :: Millionaire. Records his journey to becoming a millionaire. I wish him all the luck and hope that one day it comes true. However, someone just told me that a million is nothing. A Billion. Ah! Thats something.

Oh Yeah! I am now using Blogrolling to list my links. Now linking is just a few clicks away. However, during the process, I lost a few links. Unlike other bloggers, I do believe in reciprocal linking – you link to me and I link back. However, some conditions apply (HINT: A lot of government employees and kids read this blog).

Talking about kids, Jealine, a 10 year old blogger from the Phillipines left comments on another blog of mine - Auto Lah. Her writing is better and more mature than many bloggers here in Malaysia. Of course, there is a possibility that it is someone older faking it or maybe her parents are helping out. You can check out her blog and decide for yourself.

-------
Added this later...

Spell your name/ url, etc., etc. using pics on Flickr by clicking here.

I got this from Samson's blog.

Malaysian-Indian identity

Do Punjabis (an ethnic group of people who originate from the Punjab region of the Indian sub-continent) come under the “Indian” category or the “others” category?

I once asked this question and provoked a small heated discussion among my friends.

According to some of them, Tamils, Malyalees and Telegu (based on the Indian languages they speak) fall under the Indian category while other groups like the Punjabis (majority Sikhs), Gujaratis, Ceylonese (Sri Lankans), come under the "lain-lain" (others) category. Others disagreed and were of the opinion that everyone from the Indian sub-continent is an Indian. To this day I am not sure what’s correct.

It is quite funny that Sikhs are often incorrectly referred to as ‘Bengali’ in Malaysia. Bengalis actually refer to people from the Bangladesh and West Bengal state of India. I won’t mention another term used to refer to them, which is considered derogatory here in Malaysia but is actually derived from a Hindi/ Punjabi word meaning “brother”. Yeah! Its strange.

There are also the Indian muslims who have assimilated with the Malay community and the Chittys but that’s another story.

It was interesting to learn that a founder member of the Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC), a component party of the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) alliance was a Sikh. Datuk Mahima Singh Thaliwal who was also the country’s oldest former MP, passed away at the age of 99. Read the Star report here.

BTW, The Indian community in Malaysia is the smallest of the three main ethnic groups and accounts for about 10% of the country’s population.

Happy Endings

Not every saga has a happy ending but recent events which took up headlines and official media as well as unofficial (blogs) in Malaysia ended on a happy note.

The six missing people (four kids in Fraser's Hill and the father and son in Cameron Highlands) were finally found unharmed.

The Prime Minister intervened personally to ensure that the top SPM scorers finally obtained the Public Services Department (PSD) scholarships.

And today the Higher Education Ministry has approved two years' unpaid leave for Associate Professor Dr. Terence Gomez to enable him to take up the post of project manager for research in identity, conflict and social cohesion with the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development. His forced retirement was duly revoked and thus enable Dr. Gomez to rejoin University of Malaya after his secondment ends.

Proves that in Malaysia, the "Authorities" do listen to the people.

Books Meme

Shsuya passed me this meme and here are my answers:

1) Total number of books I own:

Like Shsuya, I can't answer this. I have loads and can't possibly count. However, most of them are academic books.

2) The last book I bought:

The Glorious Qur'an by Ahmad Zidan and Dina Zidan

3) The last book I read:

Angels and Demons by Dan Brown

4) 5 books that mean alot to me:

This was quite tough as a lot of books made an impression on me. However, I will list the 5 books which really made an impression.

a) The Quran (c. 650) Translation by Yusuf Ali
Presented to me by my wife when we were still friends. My first step into Islam.

b) Victor Hugo's Les Misérables
Very touching.

c) Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre
Yeah! The main character is a lady. So what?

d) JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings Trilogy (actually that's three books, but I will count them as one. A bit of cheating Heh! Heh!)

e) I, Robot by Isaac Asimov. It is actually a collection of short stories. The famous 'Three Laws of Robotics' first appears in this book

5) Tag 5 people and have them fill this out on their blogs:

Sending this to Acat, Chics, Ezu, Ita and Lucia.

Faster Processing of PR Applications in Malaysia

I welcome the Government’s recent announcement that the applications for permanent resident (PR) status in Malaysia would be processed faster.

The Government has also doubled the number of people granted the power to sign the approval for PR applications to four: namely, the Home Minister, the Immigration Department's Director-general, Deputy Director-general and Director of visa. Previously, only the former two had the power to approve the applications.

According to the Deputy Home Minister Datuk Tan Chai Ho, they have a backlog of more than 10,000 applications. He added that under the new system, “applicants would not be kept in the dark about their status”. I know of a few applicants who have been doing just that – waiting patiently for several years without any news. Some highly qualified people have since then, moved to other countries.

I just hope they would give priority to professionals married to Malaysians and those who have been working here for a long time. I am sick and tired of hearing of uneducated, unemployed PR holders involved in acts of crime and terrorism. The point system used in Australia is not perfect but I think would be a great system to emulate. It ensures that only people who can contribute to the country and society have a better chance of becoming Permanent residents of the country.

For your information, foreign women married to Malaysians have to approved by the immigration department, while foreign men married to Malaysian women and other applicants have to be approved by the Home Ministry.

Read “Shorter wait for PR applicants” in the Star.

World Environment Day

Yesterday, the 5th of June, was celebrated as World Environment Day around the World. The day was established by the UN General Assembly in 1972 to mark the opening of the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment.

In New York, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan called for the creation of green cities saying:

"Let us tap the great knowledge and natural dynamism of urban areas and create 'green cities' where people can raise their children and pursue their dreams in a well-planned, clean and healthy environment,"

Looking around, I can see that whatever green cover we had in the cities are being lost in the name of development. Way up north in Kedah, its not so bad, but it is very obvious in the urban centres of KL and Penang, where we have concerete jungles.

I hope Malaysian town planners/developers would heed his call.