Ipoh Tauges ....

hey guys. it's me again. tanned and enriched with spanish culture (at least i that's what i think so for the latter :P). it's 1215am now but 715am in sweet humid malaysia. autumn's setting in - the chill's more apparent, leaves are getting scant, i'm in my FINAL YEAR! it's a bitter sweet excitement for me.

firstly, let me tell u how i ter-came to this blog site again. i was rather bored and didn't wanna go to sleep despite being tired. so fooled around with the net. typed in 'teh kah jin' to see what search results would come forth. as expected, mainly random and totally coincidental findings. then tiba-mentiba, had this B.B. (yeah, boys' brigade) website with MY name in it!! had listings of president's badge holders throught the years. yes, fooji .. ur name and all our names are in it as well. anyways, went looking from one link to another concerning bb and had was reminiscing those times. gosh .. i've grown.

from there, i began to search 'acs ipoh'. and it lead me to this geocities website of acs ipoh. could be the one that kooi fatt and ian came out with, which earned ian his pelajar paling gempak award. and then suddenli, as i scrolled down the page, saw this blogpage. coincidence aye. a sweet one definitely.

then i came in and was reading the blogs that were posted since my last visit. and then saw this little link at the bottom of my blog entitled 'comments' with a number '4' next to it. my curiosity grew. i clicked and voila, ada komen woh!!! now this blogging thing isn't too bad after all ;)

ok, my spain trip. sorry la karkin, gua bukan f1 or footie fan, so didn't visit those two places u mentioned. but i did go to a real madrid merchandice shop tho'. think the jerseys with names and numbers were sold about 80euros. you do the conversion :P

left from glasgow to barcelona to experience warmth without humidity. reached at night. got a bus from the outskirt-situated airport to the city, and was an adventurous walk back to our hostel.

hrmm. think i'll just summarize my trip. basically, visited mainly cathedrals (and even cathedral-mosques - whereby the christians built a cathedral in the MIDDLE of the EXISTING mosque after the christians captured the then-muslim spain. remember sejarah? :P) AND museums (archaeological, art -saw some picasso etc). then had the privilege of spectating bullfight in seville. was a gory yet a pleasant experience at 10euros, relatively cheap, i feel. and also spectated 1.5hrs of flamenco dance. was nice. so from barcelona, we went to madrid, then a day trip to cordoba (which was scorching hot - close to 40degrees!), then to seville and finally in faro, portugal where we flew back to glasgow from.

i'll tell more if u guys would wanna listen. think i've already babbled on a little bit too much :P

teong, found a job yet? what u looking for? where u now? ipoh/kl?

karkin, what job u in? based where?

fooji, tried calling u twice. once, think u slept, and second, u could be in class at 9am msian time. and did u get my email before i left for spain? study hard dear .....

kok ming takde blog dah ker?

ok .. till my next blog. take care guys. GOd speed .....

40 days more to the biggest exam of my life.

And what am I doing today?

Looking for an elective topic after my exams.

A case of building castles in the air !

What do I do here in Klang, besides studying and disturbing my patients?

I play badminton

I talk crap with fellow hostellites

I read newspapers

I blog, I read blogs, I surf the net

I watch movies

I go for expensive dinners

I go to church

I prepare for church stuff

CONCLUSION: I do a lot of things in Klang, I have the time.

So, to friends - my closest ones whom I did not call or visit although we are in the same Klang Valley, I am sorry.

It is not because I am busy, not because I do not have the time. It is because I forget. I forgot that number in my phone directory, I forgot that I can spend my Saturday afternoons looking for friends and cousins besides sleeping it off or watching cheap VCDs.

I am sorry, Sharan. She will be leaving in 2 weeks after months in Cheras. And I have never met her in KL or anywhere till now.

Guys,

did you read that pro-government students won at the student elections in UM after so many so many years? This followed a boycott from so-called pro-opposition students.

So, even the mainstream mengaku that there are factional, partisan politics in universities.

But never mind that, (there are students like me who criticise both),

I just got a notice over here in Klang Campus that elections would be held on the 15th Sept.

Funny isn't it, considering that on this same day, we got news about the pro-govt victory.

Razali Agus must be doing some dirty things to secure victory.

Why must he stoop so low?

At times when basic things, matters pertaining to the heart and soul are not taken care of, why would waste so much time on politics?

Ipoh Tauges ....

hey guys! guess this blog will come to be a shocker for some of you, for two reasons. one, the fact that i dun blog and still don't share the diligence (but not necessarily the passion) of penning down your thoughts and opinions. second, being that i've not kept in touch with some of you here. i presume from the little i've read, kar kin's graduated, teong's got a new job, haven't read any mails from kming, ian i'll write something in you blog soon, hrmm .. who else have i left out? :P

anyways, i'm doing fine here in scotland. having my sem break now till 24th sept, final yr's starting then. my short summer break was rather packed, so glad it's over. had 2 heavy subjects, but i'm not gonna tok much about boring academia here. on a brighter subject, i've been travelling a lot. been to manchester (alone to meet friend) and london (met up with coursemates there). came back and went to two scottish towns called oban and braemar. beautiful scenery along the way. they had scottish highland games going on in braemar, an annual big thing in that small town whereby thousands would head up there to see the games and meet the royal family. was an experience la. and i'll be going to spain and portugal on monday for 10 days.

despite all this activity, been feeling rather restless inside. just feel i'm wandering very aimlessly. it's darn annoying and i feel rather helpless about it. i think this is the worse feeling that anyone can experience, being unsure of yourself and your purpose. sucks man. don't mean to trigger a string of comments concerning this or disrupt your zealous discussions on politics and patriotism. just venting a bit of my frustrations in this blog i guess :P

hope u guys are doing well and i might pay a surprise visit here again once in a while. take care y'all. GOd speed.

p/s fooji: i'm way overdue in my reply. will reply before i'm bound for spain.

Let's get Married

If you all remember, I am one of those amongst us who have subscribed confidently to being single to avoid all the troublesome things that can happen when you have a female around, the amount of troubles could be endless!!!!!

But hey, lately ( not really lately,.... it has been for some time already, despite me not being in a relationship), after reading about the blissful married life of this girl, and this guy, I see the point of being married.

And now, if you believe love can be reason enough to be married, then why the wait till 30 or what? Get married now, and enjoy the intimacy of a young wife. It's not that getting married mandates making babies and feeding them.

Get married young, if you can!!!
I will, if I can. Unfortunately.... faham-faham sajalah...

By the way, thanks to Kar Kin and Teong for your comments to Komen Hari Merdeka 2004. Wow, I enjoy the serious discussions put forth. Keep it up, guys.

Just to keep this blog alive, I also want to add my views on "Komen Hari Merdeka 2004". Firstly regarding PGL. I am not a movie-goer therefore even the greatest blockbuster from hollywood can only merely slightly take my attention off. When Fooji posted "Komen Hari Merdeka 2004" and I read it, I didn't have any idea what PGL is (or rather I had not seen the clips of the movie) until I saw an advertisement over RTM, if I am not mistaken. That was after 31st August.

Regarding the concept of entity, I think I did write something of it (masyarakat madani and socio-economy of multi-racial nation like malaysia, where the minority is still dominant over the nation's wealth). I believe I gave a very well-balanced view in response to Pang's "Moderate-ism and not Total-ism". We are just fooling ourselves if we say that we can 100% achieve masyarakat madani and bangsa malaysia yang tercinta.

among the malays themselves, in terms of politics they have the Islamic PAS, the reformation keadilan, and the wealthy UMNO and in terms of socio-economy, they have the modern secular KL or city malays and the conservative religious kedahans or kelantanese. even among the chinese, they tend to divide themselves into english-ed and the chinese-ed and in terms of politics, they have the DAP who struggle to fight for more rights, basically for the lower and middle classes chinese and also they have the MCA who incline themselves to promote the standard of living among the chinese (or rather the rich chinese). each subset of the bigger set, among the malays and the chinese, have different goals, different struggles, different backgrounds etc. there is no unity at the micro-scale, how could there be at macro-scale?
like what fooji said, PGL is merely a tool for us to see how divisive we are. we just have to admit that we are living harmoniously because we are selfish; for the sake of peace, we tolerate and carry on our living. to improve the situation or what we call to bridge the gap, i believe it all boils down to the new generation like us, who are, i can say, well educated and can think rather rationally.

nevertheless, after i graduated, having studied in the nation's premier university, it is shameful to know majority of the students still stick to polarisation. cant just we humble ourselves and accept the failures and weaknesses of others, as we too have negative blood in us? i thank God that i have one great malay friend during my 3 years at UM. as he humbly told me that he is one of the many privilleged to enter university each year because of bumi status, and got the chance to study together with me, he does want to make more chinese friends and acknowledging us as more superior to him, he is disappointed to know that many chinese are quite selfish and very unwilling to befriend him.

you see, in UM, supposedly where all the educated and smart people are, there is also such cold relationship, how much more among those who are less-educated. in many ways also the chinese are not up to the mark in university. being malaysians for more than 20 years and among the most fortunate to get seats in the university, they just simply dont know what other cultures are like, and the positive parts of interacting with the right people from different races. why they are haughty? headstrong? un-cooperative? proud and not humble? why they can achieve great academic scores and yet fail utterly in the simplest and most fundamental of humanity and social responsibility?

i believe in God and He teaches me to be humble all the time and in everything, i ought to acknowledge myself as not better than others but others as better than me. in short, i am not trying to convince people to agree with everything. just understanding the different contexts, cultures and willing to mix and get along with different people from different races are more than good. indeed, there are more to discuss and argue but i dont think it is necessary.
regarding F1 and Proton, i dont see any necessity for proton to go so far in the automotive world. if they can produce cars that are reliable, like merely producing power windows that can work for long without jamming halfway after half a year, is a wonderful achievement itself. as long as they can manufacture satisfying (really adhere to the ISO or whatever) family sedans, i would be pretty proud. auto sports, too bighead to think of. the germans and the japanese are by far too advance and no point we leap too far too fast. like what karkin said, petronas is only trying to promote its existence in the eye of the world, even the oil i dont think petronas produces. somebody produces it and stamp a petronas syntium mark on it out of contractual agreement.

finally, klcc. klcc is designed and architected by cesar pirelli. he is one of the great architects in the world, same league as kisho kurokawa, keizo tange, etc. he is a french if im not mistaken. in my humble opinion, after having gone up and down tower 2 for a couple of times, i do see its purpose and benefit now. true, in the first place, it does serve like a piece of pride and exaggeration symbol of malaysia but the importance behind the showcase is it generates income and job opportunities. with all those luxury makers like aigner, hermes, salvatore ferragamo, isetan opening their outlets there, it already serves as a centre of tourist attraction and economy transactions. i dont see any bad if MNCs dominate tower 2, as long as the majority or even 100% of the workforce are malaysians and they do help in growing our economy. after all, we still need very much of their expertise.