Malaysian Bloggers got sued yet again, next might be you

Prominent political blogger in Malaysia, Raja Petra got sued for a total of 7 Million Ringgit or 2197624.99 USD due to his negative post about University Utara Malaysia (North University Malaysia). In separate case, Rocky and Jeff Ooi was sued recently by News Straits Times for their criticism on the newspaper publisher. Now this is what I call free speech, Malaysian style. Let us stop and think for a second, why does these bloggers, and thousands of Malaysian bloggers in the blogspear choose the Internet as their medium to voice their opinions?

I am scared to my spine, I can barely pay my car installment and house rent each month, now I have to worry about my blog being monitored by Malaysian Government and big organizations. These organization can easily utilize the public media to clear the air, but they choose to stamp on the people who criticizes them with money, it is the classic bloggers versus godzilla story.

So bloggers, better think twice before publishing your post, you have been warned.

Celebrity news should never appear on the country's headline

Lately I am hearing and seeing the celebrity news being broadcast at the mainstream media alongside with country's news, to me it is just inappropriate because what are significants of celebrity news when compared to war, economy and political news? Put celebrity news on entertainment channel or entertainment show and leave it there!

There should be more news journalist like Mika Brzezinski of MSNBC, who simply refuse to present the Paris Hilton "news" as the headline:

Men admit to Love Jay Chao as a singer will be laugh at

I probably can understand why certain people, especially older men will tease other men who love Jay's music, they view him as not being manly enough, too young and too immature, what people failed to see at a first glance is his depth of music. The main issue here is not the music he produce, it is his public appearance. But who would blame them if THIS is their first picture of Jay they've ever seen:


Don't judge the book by its cover. Initially I am a skeptic too, but after I've been exposed to a couple of his albums I began to understand what's the fuss about. Undoubtedly his beats is simplistic, but the lyrics and the way he sang it deserved some respects. So before you judge him, listen to one of his many number 1 hits and make your own conclusion:


Dark Humor

And the song below is my personal favorite:


Broken String

His music career has influenced my life, and I hope my IT career can be as inspirational as he is.

Reason why no one is using your Software or Website

That cartoon drawn by Eric Burke basically sum up what I learned so far about system usability.

How to deal with difficult people

Base on my personal experience, difficult people falls on one or all of the characteristic below:

• In almost all conversation, no matter what context, their ultimate goal of talking to you is to show their superiority, boost their ego, or try to convince you how pathetic your life is when compared to them.
  
  
• It is almost impossible to have a good, peaceful conversation with them because they will usually mix it with bombastic negative emotions.
  
  
• They will not appreciate your contribution or your hard work, because your work will never be as good as theirs.
  
  
• It is impossible for people like them to accept your sincere comments, no matter how experience you are on the subject matter.
  
  
• Their emotion fluctuate from day to day basis, some critical ones even fluctuates on the hourly basis.
  
  
• They are critical about you following their set of rules, and they'll keep track on the number of times you break them.
  
  
• They constantly need your attention, up to a point where you feel like they own you.

Below is the method I used to deal with difficult people:

1. Try to avoid any face to face conversation, use e-mail if you need to work with them. If things goes sour, at least you have a black and white proof.
   
   
2. If it doesn't degrade your ego or harm your image, just agree with what they have to say and walk away peacefully.
   
   
3. If you really need to insist your comment upon them for their own good, tell them in a humble manner, if all else failed ask their superior to help you.
   
   
4. If you need to work with them on a day to day basis, then tell them humbly that you won't take non of their BS, and your interaction with them is strictly business.

Sometimes I feel sorry for them, because usually their behavior will attract a lot of negative elements towards their life. I did some analysis on some of them and this is what I found out:

• Some or all of the difficult people I know have some sort of bad childhood experience, lack of friends, poor family relationships, been laugh at all the time, etc.
  
  
• They usually lack of peer's recognition or respect.
  
  
• Upper management love them, because to them these difficult people can "stir things up".

Remember, your anger towards them has no impact on the situation at all, and the term "if you can beat them, join them" does not apply because lets face it, do you really want to be like them?

Life is meaningless without wants

There you go, I've finally concluded my 4 days of soul searching which took place on Thursday 13 of March 2008. I was forced to took a day off because the question lingers in my mind and render it useless, I must find an answer to the reason why I am alive right now, and why I was doing what I was doing. I am totally lost of direction, I don't know what was wrong with me. Initially I thought I had a bad day and it was fuel with a case of bad boss, but then I realized my boredom with life goes a little bit deeper then that, there is a question in my head and now it demand an answer from my consciousness.

I slept for almost 14 hours on Friday because I really want my brain to be in total rest, I want to focus all my neurons to one question and one question alone. But it failed to render an answer that satisfy it, then on Saturday I went out with my Girl just to inject more stimuli to inspire my brain and that failed also. Yesterday I try to distract my brain with unrelated books and television shows, it failed miserably too. While I was laying on my bed thinking about what I am going to do tomorrow, then out of a sudden I feel like calling my girlfriend, out of no where I feel like an answer just pop out of my brain like a pimple, I feel so relieved, I feel almost at the top of world!

The answer is simple, life is simply meaningless without wants. Now I am not trying to over complicate the subject, nor I was trying to over simplify things, that little sentence right there has solved a question that lingers in my head for almost half of the month. The thing is, I know every human beings must have a purpose in life to aim for, I have a purpose statement written on my wall, but if I don't want to achieve or try to satisfy my purpose, then the purpose statement itself is useless. Let me give you an example, if I don't want to achieve something from my career then what am I working for?

If I don't want anything, then why am I alive?

The keyword here is "want", you want to be better, you want to be healthy, you want to move on with your life, you want to sleep early, you want to buy a car, you want to buy a house, etc etc. Once you know what you want, then your next question should be "why", why you want to be better, why you want to be healthy, why you want to move on with your life, why you want to sleep early, why you want to buy a car, why you want to buy a house, etc etc. With why it will ultimately leads to you main purpose, your goals in life, which should leads to your wanting to fulfill your purpose. And that cycle goes on and on until the day you die, unless you choose the path to escape "Samsara", which deserved another post on its own.

My vision seems clearer right now, but I still don't know what lays ahead on my path to understanding my mind.

Zivity: Social Networking/Modeling/Making Money With Your Beauty Online

Zivity is an interesting concept, it bring together models and photographers around the world and their work is published online for people to see. If others like their work, people can vote for them and each vote is backed by dollars. This way models and photographers earn extra income from the site, and their work will be easily spotted by magazines and tabloid. What's fun about Zivity is you don't have to be a professional model or photographer, anyone can join, as long as your picture is not about sex.

Oh by the way Zivity is for female models only so pretty boys you can look elsewhere. Currently Zivity is still in Beta, therefore you need to have an invite to join. But as soon as this site goes public I'll be one of the first to join as spectator :p

What other avenue we can voice our disapproval to the government?

In Malaysia all mainstream media are controlled by the government, all local television channels, all the local radio channel and all the local newspapers. What the media cover doesn't really show whats really going on in Malaysia, almost all Malaysian knows the fact and yet we can't do anything about it. The only source that we can trust right now is the independent web sites on the Internet, even the government tried to ruin the credibilities of Malaysian journalist who dared to publish their opinions online. What other legitimate avenues that the people can use to voice their concerns? To me the only way is through votes, and maybe that's the reason why the opposition gain such a huge victory in the 2008 election.

I think the ruling government should encourage more transparency, give the media more room to critic the government. Take US or Taiwan for example, people can freely talk about their government without fear of their ass being poke by ISA (Internal Security Act), if you have done nothing wrong, why scared of the press? Let the people say what they want to say, and let an open debate go on. I honestly believe that the people will take their best interest into consideration, we are Malaysian, we want the best for our country too. Maybe the people doesn't understand a certain law being enacted, or maybe the people doesn't really understand why the oil prices raised when we are producing oil and earning billions of Ringgit each year, so please openly, publicly explain to us why.

Obviously the issues that being raised by the opposition isn't about racial tension at all, that is what mainstream media is projecting to the people, it is actually about the inflation rate and about national security. So please, stop treating us like a child and let us know the full story.

Malaysia National Front suffers a major lost

National Front or more commonly known among Malaysian as Barisan National (BN) has suffered one of the worst losses in BN history, by losing Pulau Pinang, Kedah, Perak, Selangor and Kelantan to the opposition party. I personally have never seen such a major loss by a ruling government before, especially under the father of development, Tun Dr. Mahathir Bin Mohamad. To be honest the news came as quite a shock to me, I know the opposition party would win a number of seats this election, but I could never have imagined such a victory.

I am not claiming to be a political analyst, but lets look at the fact. After Abdullah Ahmad Badawi take over the Prime Minister seat, in 2004 election he lead BN to win 91% of the Parliamentary seats. That is a monumental success for the party, the people believed that he is able to fight corruption and govern Malaysia to a better future. But in this election, under the same Prime Minister, he also lead his political party to one of the worst lost ever. Base on my common sense and my gut feelings, that goes to show the people is not satisfied with his performance, and the people want more from their government.

"I made the wrong choice"
said Tun Dr. Mahathir after he is being interviewed by Bloomberg

Badawi is rumored to resign after the government is formed, but the news is not confirmed.