Happenings around the World

I am looking around for topics to write in my blog this week. There aren't many things that caught my attention, except for the usual gutter politics of more lies involving innocent family members and the audit report that had some incredible findings of how the government wasted tax payers' money. But somehow, I am not in the mood to criticise all these as others have done lots of it already. So tired of all that, what can be said has already been said. For me, I am just waiting for the time to mark the big X on the ballot. I have made up my mind and no amount of smear tactics will change my mind.

Oh yes, the world is also shocked by several events, from the massive flood in Thailand (and neighbouring countries), to the quake in Turkey and the killing of Gaddafi in Libya. The Thailand flood has brought about many issues affecting Malaysia like the price hike of vegetables and production halt of some manufacturing companies due to lack of parts from Thailand. It is the worst flood in 50 years for Thailand and I hope it will not last much longer. The quake in Turkey see many hundreds dead and more still missing while the killing of the defeated Gaddafi was a sad sight to watch, no matter if he was a tyrant or not. It is sad that people have so much hatred in them to kill a defeated man instead of taking him into custody for trial. Now I heard of some conspiracy theory on the real reason why he was killed.

We will never know the real truth, just like the many other unfortunate things that have happened, in and out of the country.

For our Children

Education is basic human rights to me. Without education, there will be no improvement from generations to generations. Nations cannot be improved and mentality of the people will be stagnant. It is commendable that Malaysia has been giving compulsory free primary education for many decades.

However, the current education system that we have in this country is not in an encouraging state. Our government had changed policies so often that even the teachers are confused. We as parents are also worried. My eldest son learns Science and Maths in English but unfortunately, his brother, who is 1 year younger, is learning it in BM. If given a choice, I would rather the teaching and learning of Science and Maths in English continues. I have signed the petition online in favour of maintaining the teaching and learning of Science and Mathematics in English (PPSMI) in schools. For parents who feel the same way, do go sign the petition.

Make no mistake, I am not in any way disrespecting BM as the national language. BM, as I have said before, is a beautiful language that I am proud to be able to speak fluently in (not so much in writing due to lack of practice). But like it or not English in the language of businesses in Malaysia. We encourage foreign investors to come to our country, surely they would not be interested if the locals are not able to converse well in English. Unless you are not going to be an employee (and a good one at that), you cannot run away from good spoken and written English.

I recently conducted interviews for 3 positions and I was shocked that many of the candidates cannot even speak well in English. Most of them are from places other that Klang Valley. Even with a public college diploma, they struggle to speak a full sentence in English. It was painful to be in the interview panel, I wanted to ask them to speak in BM instead to make it less painful for the candidate and myself. But that of course that would not be acceptable to the rest of the panel. After all, we are in a British University! So needless to say those who were not proficient in English were eliminated. So tell me English is not important. There are a lot of argument in the internet of people opposing the wide use of English in local education citing Japan and Germany as examples. Unfortunately, we are far far  away in terms of development from any of those countries. It is to our own disadvantage (as a country) if we do not make English as important as BM.

For me, it is highly possible to master 2 or more languages for any average person. So make both English and BM equally important. A third language is also possible to master, e.g. mandarin or tamil. If we start the kids with these languages from young, they will be proficient in all of them.

For the record, I am also not supportive of the many different types of schools that we have, there should be only one type of school for all. And for goodness sake, increase the salaries of teachers and produce high quality teachers. Make it a profession of high esteem. We are placing the future of our children in them (of course parents also play important roles), so they should deserve nothing less! If I were to be a politician, I would make that something I will fight for.

We are really in need for strong and firm education policies which are developed by experts in this field and not politicians whose priorities are not in line with the people such as parents like me. I do hope we will get the correct country leaders who can see the problems we are having with the present education system which has been getting from bad to worse. Look at University Malaya, my alma mater, which standards have been spiraling down due to many reasons.

I hope things will change soon so that my kids will not need to suffer the bad quality of local education for the next 10 to 20 years to come.

Angry Who?

My eldest son has been asking me if his Angry Birds bed sheet is done yet. We went shopping some months ago and saw this Angry Birds motif cloth that both my son were excited about. I had to buy it! But after buying it, the cloth sat in the plastic bag near my sewing machine for months! I finally started work on it a few weeks ago but it is still WIP. This is the first time I try making fitted bed sheets, so made a few miscalculation and it was too loose. So now am trying to rework to make it fit better. So boys, be a little more patient, will get them sewn up soon, mummy promise!

Angry Birds, they are everywhere! On your phones, your iPad, on T-Shirts and bags. I can see them sold in supermarkets, pasar malam, pasar pagi, everywhere. The game is fun, I finished the free version ones but am too cheapskate to pay for upgrades, so I am done with Angry Birds games. But it will not be the same with other Angry Birds stuff like toys, puzzles, t-shirts, stationery, bed sheets etc. Some of them have already made their way into our home, ;). Not that I mind, they are pretty cute.

Apart from the bed sheets in progress, I still have plenty of cloths that I bought but never got around doing anything with them yet. Still pending some PJs and shorts for the boys and their dad. Even bought some pretty checked cloth that I planned to make into a pretty dress for my princess. But *sigh*, they are still packed away in a corner. When am I going to find the time (and the mood) for all that!

Oh, I think I totally forgot to mention about the Budget that our PM announced recently. How could I? Let me see, hmmmm, weeeeeeeeeell, errrrrrrrr..... There is nothing to talk about because none of the goodies are coming my way! Except maybe saving around RM30 for school fee per child, RM60 per year, big deal! Furthermore I do not see how the budget can help save our slowing economy or provide long term solutions to problems like inflation. Disappointing. Because of the impending election, there is a lot of handouts (but non for people like me) in this budget. But once the election is over, there will be GST and subsidy cuts! Oh well, spend and save wisely for rainy days.

My Computer History

Was looking forward to a nice lunch today but that didn't come true because I forgot I had to attend a meeting during lunch time. So I ended up having vegetarian food at the canteen, somewhere I haven't been in for months.

This week, we are sadden by the demise of Steve Jobs. Remarkably talented, creative and visionary man and only 56 :(. He succumbed to cancer. More facts and story about him on wiki can be found here.

Looking back at how I started using computers and later work with them daily, it is amazing how much the world of computers have change during a relatively short span of time. The first computer I used was in secondary school when I was a member of the Computer Club and even help wrote the school computer magazine which we named COMTEK. We have to start the computer with a floppy disk (the big flappy ones) and the language used was BASIC. And of course the screen were black and green only.

MAC Classic Color

Later on, I was introduced Mac in the Uni and it was in colour! It was nice to play with them in the computer lab. I still remember that I was so envious of my friend whose parents could afford to buy her an IBM PC, a 486 at nearly RM5K at that time. Probably with a 16MB RAM and a few hundred MB of HD. I was finally able to get a PC (a clone one, Pentium I only) when I was in my final year (I think it cost like 2K) and it was great. Spent hours on it using a dail-up to connect to ICQ and stuff. I was really getting into computers then. I was doing a Genetics Degree and my professor would always come asking me for help on his PC when he has trouble using his software on his great new PC. I was more than happy to help him out. Once, he even advised me to get into computers which I eventually did. I went back to do a PG course in Computer Science and after years of part-time study completed my Masters in the same field.

Now, many years down the road, I still deal with computers on a daily, only that the specs have improved, a lot, like a ton! Computers are getting faster, the colour screens are getting better, lighter & thinner, the storage are getting a whole lot bigger, so talk about terabytes now instead of MB. RAM goes into gigabtyes too.

For many years I dealt mainly with PCs, and very little with Apple stuff. Until recently, I got hooked on iPhone and iPad. Both are marvelous products, beautiful and work perfectly. So it's extremely sad to hear that Steve Jobs is no longer with us, God bless his soul.

Work, bags and xxx

Woah, another week just zoomed by. Hectic week at work, feeling tired and sick, gald the week is over. However next week will be even more busy with problems piling up. I just realized sometimes you cannot be too trusting in others' work and have to follow up & check up on their work constantly. Which also means I would have to spend more time doing that instead other more important stuff. Maybe that's the difference between executives & non-executives. Let's not delve in the past but look to improve the future. I will have to be more stern. I have a few new staff coming in next week so that would give me the help required. I just hope the new staff won't be shocked by the amount of work ahead of them on the first week of work.

Enough about work, it's the weekend! We visited my sister today and had a long shopping trip at One Utama. Finally got myself a new Guy Laroche purse which was at 40% off and then a handbag which was at 50% off caught my sister's eyes. So I ended up with a new Guy Laroche handbag too. No regrets, they were a great bargain. Hopefully they can last me longer than the purse and handbag I bought at Harrods about 2 years ago. I am also still thinking about letting go of my LV brand new handbag that my brother-in-law helped me get in Europe recently. I posted it on Mudah (1st time ever posting on Mudah) and was extremely surprised that I have been receiving smses and call from interested ladies. Boy, the ladies are certainly into branded handbags. Still haven't decided if I should sell it or keep it.

I want also to share this very very amazing talent that caught my ear and my heart. He is Josh Krajcik who auditioned for X Factor, Simon Cowell's talent show. He blew Simon (and me) away! Amazing voice which you wouldn't expect to hear from a guy looking like Josh. Utterly, incredibly great performance! Please see for yourselves here and prepare to be impressed.