Malaysian household income

I noticed this report in theedgedaily.com yesterday about household incomes in Malaysia:

"Pulau" Pinang?

Since I'm so much in the mood to give my tuppence worth of opinion to the Penang state government, here's one more that had been in my mind for several years. I might as well say it now or else it'll never be said.

I'm quite miffed when people continually refer to Penang as Pulau Pinang. Not that I don't want to use the Bahasa Malaysia version but why Pulau Pinang. Isn't the state composed of both the island and the mainland? Doesn't the mainland portion of Penang count at all? Our founding fathers treated us residents of the mainland as a step-child of the state. They forgot that we are also integral part of the whole economy.

My suggestion is simple. Just call the whole state officially in Bahasa Malaysia as Pinang, dropping the word Pulau. It would then make a lot of sense later if you refer to the island as Pulau Pinang and the mainland as Seberang Pinang. Why use the - in my opinion - utterly ugly Seberang Prai??

Now repeat after me: Pulau Pinang, Seberang Pinang, Pulau Pinang, Seberang Pinang. Like the sound of it? I do.

Pahang PAS' party-pooping prudish pricks

Oh oh .... we'd better watch out. The prudes and pricks are at it again. Just because a member of a rock music band dared to show his boxer shorts during a performance, there are people who are now voicing so much outrage over the little incident. Where's the tolerance? It was not as if the singer dropped his pants; it was not as if he wore nothing beneath his pants. I'm not saying that what he did was right but all he showed was a little glimpse of his boxer shorts - at least, that's what it looked like in the picture - and it should not have caused this amount of outrage.

But then I forget. These prudes are intolerant party poopers and they try to impose their version of ideals on people who disagree with them. How can we ever engage them in a proper dialogue when they continue to choose to live right beneath a coconut shell?

If such a small incident can do so much to distress these Pahang PAS party-pooping prude pricks, I really wonder how they'd react if Woodstock had happened in our backyard way back in 1969 and the above happened.

What, lah!

My blog's milestone: 10,000 visits

I'm so chuffed that this humble little blog has passed its 10,000th visitor mark since I added a counter to the site in February this year. My thanks to all visitors who have dropped by.


When I logged into my blog yesterday evening at 8.16pm, I suddenly noticed that the counter had registered its 9,999th visitor. How can you keep still under such circumstances? Impossible. Ten minutes later, the landmark 10,000th visit occurred. And another four minutes passed before the counter clicked in my 10,001st visitor. From London.

What now for George Town?

Okay, I believe 24 hours should be just right for the euphoria to last and the state to get back to reality. I'm referring, of course, to the news that George Town has at long last received its World Heritage recognition from the good guys at UNESCO.

Let's not feel smug about this achievement. It means NOTHING at all if the Penang state government does not roll up its sleeves and capitalise on the listing. How, you may ask? As a supportive Penangite who believes nothing can ever be good enough for Penang, here are my two cents' worth of opinion to improve my state:

• For a start, educate people that the capital of Penang is spelt as George Town (two words) and should not be bastardised as Georgetown. Just check with the Penang Museum.
  
• Reaffirm George Town's status as Malaysia's first city. We became a city on 1 Jan 1957 and nothing can and will remove this status from us.
• Redefine the city limits. What's wrong with having a city within a municipality?
• Bring back the tramcar system or reintroduce the electric buses. Relook into the traffic system, create a proper public transportation system within the city limits and build major hubs for public buses plying intra-municipality routes.
• Build on our heritage and historical status by bringing back the old street names. This has nothing to do with colonialism.
• Make George Town the hub of food culture in Malaysia. Don't let others steal our Penang Food identity and shamelessly claim Penang's food as theirs. See how we can promote Penang's food through our own exclusive television programmes.

George Town now a UNESCO World Heritage site

YES, finally we make it to the UNESCO World Heritage List. This is extracted from a UNESCO statement which was released yesterday:

Eight new sites, from the Straits of Malacca, to Papua New Guinea and San Marino, added to UNESCO’s World Heritage List
Monday, July 7, 2008

The World Heritage Committee meeting in Quebec City has added eight new cultural sites to UNESCO’s World Heritage List on the morning of the 7 of July. With these inscriptions, Papua New Guinea and San Marino enter the World Heritage List for the first time.

The new sites inscribed are:

Melaka and George Town, historic cities of the Straits of Malacca (Malaysia) have developed over 500 years of trading and cultural exchanges between East and West in the Straits of Malacca. The influences of Asia and Europe have endowed the towns with a specific multicultural heritage that is both tangible and intangible. With its government buildings, churches, squares and fortifications, Melaka demonstrates the early stages of this history originating in the 15th-century Malay sultanate and the Portuguese and Dutch periods beginning in the early 16th century. Featuring residential and commercial buildings, George Town represents the British era from the end of the 18th century. The two towns constitute a unique architectural and cultural townscape without parallel anywhere in East and Southeast Asia.

Despite the disappointment of last year, this is what I've been waiting to hear for a very long time....

Vinyl morpher

Meet Dave. He's a DJ in London and he loves what he's doing, which is spinning his records and doing his remixes. I bumped into his website three days ago when I was searching for music on YouTube.

As a DJ, he has a tremendously large collection of vinyl records, many of which you won't find any more because those are limited edition records distributed only to DJs like him. They are meant for the discos and that's where he makes his living.

About three months ago, he began uploading to YouTube a collection of videos comprising extended versions of dance tracks of the 1980s. To date, he has more than 600 videos and to be frank, I haven't even heard of about 90 percent of the artists. So this is a great collection of music and what's more, the sound quality is absolutely crisp and sharp. Visit his website here or alternatively, just do a search for "vinyl morpher" in YouTube and you'll bump into Dave instantly.

Dave also has a secondary website that holds a collection of much older material. So if you are a child of the 1950s or 1960s, you'll be equally immersed in these classic songs.

LATEST (24 July 2008): I've just learnt that YouTube has suspended both his accounts. All the songs have been removed. I'm saddened by this development. I hope to see Dave back online soon.

The Sullivans

In the early 80's, I was glued to the television set for one of the most improbable soap operas to hit our idiot box. It didn't have any violence, no scandal and certainly no whiff at all of sex. Instead, the TV drama was all about a typical Australian family during the days of the World War.

I'm referring to The Sullivans. Although each episode was a half-hour long, RTM chose to show two episodes at a time and twice a week too. So it became a ritual for me to sit in front of the TV on a Wednesday and, I think, a Saturday to watch the drama unfold. Unfortunately, RTM underwent a revamp and they dropped the series soon afterwards.

I never learnt until recently that there were a whopping 1114 episodes, The Sullivans ran for six seasons from 1976 to 1983, and the series was also screened to acclaim internationally. None of the main actors were known household names in Malaysia but at least three minor actors went on from The Sullivans to become big names in the international entertainment industry: Mel Gibson, Kylie Minoque and Sam Neill.

Thanks to YouTube, this clip includes the opening credit to The Sullivans. How I miss the theme music:

Self-serving politicians. Bah!

I was blogging about this as part of my earlier item on Willie Dixon's Back Door Man but after reflecting, I believe this warrants an item on its own. Frankly, I'm quite fed up with the politics in this country. It's one stupid allegation after another, one silly rumour after another, and one statutory declaration after another. More than a week ago, I resolved to cut back severely on reading the main pages of the newspapers and online news sites. Today, I'm reaffirming my resolve and I'm adding socio-political blogs to my list of cut-backs.

I thought our politicians are elected to serve the people but instead, their self-serving, selfish self-interests are now all on display for everyone to see.

How wrong can I be! It's disgusting to see all the dirt being thrown around in public. They - the politicians, the government, the opposition - have become the laughing stock of the world. Malaysia still boleh? You tell me! All this power play and shenanigans in KL .... they are masking the real problem which none of the politicians are willing to address, for their obvious personal reasons. The real problem of rising prices. Inflation is rearing its ugly head. It hits people like me bad because salaries and wages are totally out of syncronisation with Prices 2.0. That's the reality. We are in the middle and we are being squeezed, and all the politicians care about is to remain in power and stave off challenges from others who are equally power-crazy. It's quite ironical that it is the Malays who are so crazy over their perceived political power are the ones who are not looking after their own race. This have left us Chinese, Indians and others feeling really neglected.

I call on the politicians to put the PUBLIC back into Public Service or otherwise I really fear for the immediate future.... My future, my wife's future, my children's future, my family's future, all our future.... What, lah!

Willie Dixon's Back Door Man

I was having lunch with my colleagues last week, trying to make sense of the current political turmoil in Kuala Lumpur, when I asked around: "Does anyone remember that Led Zeppelin song, Whole Lotta Love? I've half a mind to reproduce part of the lyrics on my blog." You see, there's this part of the song that goes: "Shake for me, girl, I wanna be your backdoor man".

But then I was told that The Doors actually had a song that's called Back Door Man. That intrigued me because the title sounded so very familiar and it was not because of any political flavour or favours. I decided to run a check on this song to see what information could turn up. Yes, definitely, it was in The Doors' self-titled first album way back in 1967.

Among my music collection was this compact disc of that legendary blues song-writer, Willie Dixon. He wrote Back Door Man in 1960 or 1961. Howlin' Wolf (1962), John Hammond (1964), Black Oak Arkansas (1975), Sugar Blue (1994), Robby Krieger Organisation (1995), Quicksilver Messenger Service (1999), James Blood Ulmer (2001), Arno (2004), Little Bob (2005) and Nelsen Adelard (2006) had all covered this song and The Doors were just one of them.

There's nothing suggestive at all about the lyrics to Back Door Man. I doubt Dixon would have meant it the way it's being bandied around now. A "Back Door Man" is just a guy who has relations with a woman while her husband is out slaving away to provide for her. The usual guilty party is a regular tradesman caller like a milkman, plumber or an insurance salesman, etc, who would run out the back door as the husband entered the front door.

Any time soon

Looks like the opening date for this new shopping centre in Bukit Mertajam is imminent. As I was driving home yesterday, workers were putting up this sign for Province Wellesley's latest commercial landmark. I can't wait for it to open...

Trains, chess and automobiles

SLC Tyres is an automobile tyre shop in Bukit Mertajam but they have been allowing the Penang Chess Association to use its premises for chess competitions on the mainland. It's quite a decent-sized premises of about three storeys high. Lately, it has been trying to promote itself as an auto academy, one which provides technical training to people in the automobile industry.

The interior of the building is quite spacious. The ground floor is, of course, meant for the servicing of cars but once you go upstairs, there are training rooms (SLC calls them classrooms), a recreation hallway with ping-pong tables, a cafeteria and a multi-purpose hall with a stage and even a lounge room for people to watch television. The directors of this joint have ambitions. I wish them well.

The railway track from Bukit Mertajam to Butterworth runs a distance behind the building. I've never been so close to a track before. Certainly not while a train is trundling past. The cargo train was moving quite slow so I took the opportunity to snap this shot. Perhaps I shouldn't do it again, whether or not it's a slow train to the coast because accidents can happen. Like a derailment. I wouldn't want to be there when it happens....

Anyway, since I was already there, I've always wanted to take a picture of the railway track. Nice perspective: the track disappearing into the distance. But this is not quite the vanishing point that I want, unfortunately.

Took my breath away

This was the break of dawn yesterday, seen from the Hotel Equatorial in Penang. I was mesmerised by the contrast of colours.

Getting twittered

Ahh ... you may have noticed that I've started twittering. Late start but to my simple mind, Twitter is great! Come follow me; you should give it a try!

Eat, drink and be merry

To lead a simple life, you need to be healthy. And to be healthy, you need to exercise. Surprise, surprise .... I learnt two things today about exercising.

First, exercising on an empty stomach makes you hungrier. It's because your lower blood sugar increases your appetite. The moment you see food or even think of it, you only want to eat and put back all the calories you've lost through the exercise. Nobody fully understands why this is so but it is believed that exercising releases a hormone called ghrelin which protects the body from losing too much weight too quickly.

Second, drink lotsa water. Better yet if it's iced water. It seems that people who drink water regularly eat about 200 fewer calories in a day. And if the water is cold, you can even eat another 50 calories less.

What do you think? Are these good ideas? I haven't put them down into practice yet so I cannot tell you my experience.

Weaver ants

If only life can also be as simple as that of ants. All they do are to forage for food, defend the nest, take care of the larval young and care for the queen whose job is simply to lay eggs.

It so happened that there's a small nest of weaver ants outside my house. Discovered it yesterday when I was attempting to prune the leaves on a plant. Very clever insects. They pulled three or four leaves together and used their silky secretions to bind the leaves. The result? A perfectly camouflaged ant nest.

This is my first experience with weaver ants. To be frank, I've never even heard of weaver ants before, let alone seen them.

They are very aggressive. If they feel that an intruder is near, a bunch of them will appear to defend the nest. I tried to rouse them by tapping on the leaves and suddenly, an army of them came out to look at me and wave their feelers menacingly. They followed me wherever i moved my lens.

MP3 walkman

I bought this for my wife recently as her birthday present. She's delighted with her new toy. It's easy to use, so she told me, unlike a previous model that I gave her as a temporary measure while I went quietly in search of her present.

I was considering various brands, including Creative, Samsung and Apple's ipod Shuffle, but where value for money is concerned, I settled finally on the 2Gb Sony Walkman NWD-B105F which seemed to be the best alternative. Good vibrant sound too, as befit any Sony product.

Now she is happy and I'm happy. Please give me a pat on my back.

Psst. Don't tell her this but I almost screwed up the toy two days ago. I plugged it into the computer, hoping to transfer some music files when suddenly .... I seemed to lose all the files and the computer couldn't detect the player. Tried all sorts of methods to recover the player but the computer kept asking me to reformat it. Finally, I gave in and reformatted the damn thing. Luckily, its working now but obviously, I lost some programs and a PDF file that first came with the player. Ah, well, they are not that important. What's important is that my wife can continue using it and I don't have to transfer more files to keep her happy for the next, what, two weeks?

Songs from my youth: Hair, the musical

When I was in my teens, one of my first exposures to pop culture was listening to the Radio RAAF Butterworth over the 1445khz medium wave band on my transistor. It was wonderful listening to music that the staid Radio Malaysia English Service could not play in those days.

This is one of my favourite albums from that era. I missed out on buying the record in the 1970s but this was among the first compact discs that I acquired soon after I bought my CD player in the late 1980s: the soundtrack from the tribal love rock musical Hair. I've often wondered why people bothered to prefix the name of this musical with the "tribal love rock". Is it necessary? Not anymore in today's society, I reckon.

Anyway, I do not expect to see any stage performance of Hair at any time soon. The closest I got to experiencing the show was to watch the film version in the cinema, starring Treat Williams, in the 1980s.

Hair spawned many musical hits by various artists. The Fifth Dimension started the ball rolling with the medley "Aquarius/Let The Sunshine In", the Cowsills had their rollicking fun with the title track "Hair", Oliver ruled the airwaves with his "Good Morning Starshine", Nina Simone sang her version of "Ain't Got No/I Got Life" and Three Dog Night crooned away with "Easy To Be Hard".

There are other musical gems from this album, such as this song from the film version which I've linked from YouTube. Listen carefully to the lyrics. Oh yes, in case you want to know, this is Sodomy, the current flavour in Malaysia.

Identity theft, Part 2

PayPal has been quick to respond to my report. Yes, they confirmed this morning that the email I purportedly received from them is a phish. PayPal has already taken steps to thwart the phisherman's attempt to steal PalPal users' passwords. Here's what happened when anyone now clicks on the CANCEL TRANSACTION link in the email:


The first warning message. PayPal has done something to intercept the link and displays this warning sign in its place. But I'm amazed that there's still a link at the bottom to allow people to continue further:


The second warning message. Now Firefox gets into the act. If by this stage you are still not convinced that the email is a phishing attempt, you can go ahead to report it. But I doubt you'll want to go this far, do you?

Words of wisdom?

When I was a college kid, my friends and I used to tell jokes that started with "Confucius says". We thought it was very cool and witty. Let me play that game again. Here's one I remember from those carefree days of youth:

Confucius says: "Rape is impossible. A woman can run faster with her skirt up than a man with his pants around his legs."

Witty, huh? I wonder whether this lesson applies to sodomy attempts too?