JLCZ

(Review) Jay Chau's Exclamation Mark/驚嘆號

2011-12-05T14:26:00.001+08:00

I have to swallow my pride and let it all out, yes I love Jay Chao's new album (驚嘆號/Exclamation Mark). I know, I bitch and moan about how he should burn and die because he uses auto tune, but after going through the album again and again (17 times to be exact) in the span of 13 days, the auto tuned song fits with the rest of the album when you listen to all the songs one after another, it sort of break his previous formula of fast song then slow song then back to fast song. Now it is fast song, then kinda slow song (Heavily auto tuned), then slow song, then back to fast song, I hope it sense to you : )

He still include his signature slow song in the album with the song (你好嗎/How are you), it is the only slow song in the album, I wish there are more. I am not sure whether it is intentional or coincidental, but I felt that certain songs in the album is meant to be the continuation of his past hits, the most obvious is (世界末末日/End End of days?), I felt that he is trying to put a closure to (世界末日/End of days) with more upbeat tempo. Another departure from his past album is the use of repetitive word in the chorus, for example in the auto tuned song (Mine Mine), he repeat the word mine for at least 8 times, I have to admit, it is pretty catchy especially when he intertwine the meaning of Mine with a similar sounding Hookien word meaning don't.

Jay Chau got a lot of bad press in southeast Asia recently due to his cocky response to an allegation where he is accused of plagiarizing other singer's song. We Asian prefer our singers to be humble and shy, like what Jay Chau used to be before he became one of the heavenly kings, I hope it doesn't hurt sales too much. He is certainly the most creative and innovative singer/song writer of our time, chinese music industry won't have this much international impact without him.

Q: What motivate you into writing this Questions and Answers about death?

2011-11-29T20:49:00.001+08:00

(This is part of a series in a long question and answer session with myself throughout my life regarding death, click here to view all questions and answers)

Since I was 12, the time when I finally has the mental capacity to understand what death is, I was horrified with the prospect of me, as an individual would cease to exist, and the world will go on without me. I am terrified with the arrival of night, and would be so afraid of falling asleep, fearing that I would never wake up again. I was especially terrified of dreamless nights because in my little head, I thought I was dead, and when I woke up I’ll thank the heavens for bringing me back to life.

When I was about 13 years old my grandmother brought me to a traditional buddhist monastery, I asked what lies ahead of life after death, and the elder monk told me that I’ll be reborn again, in fact, any living beings will be reborn again and again. Being 13 I recall the monk talks about Karma and other religion’s mumbo jumbo stuff that I have no clue about, in my mind I am just happy that there are other realm then this one after I am dead. I take refuge and great comfort knowing that I will be here again in the next life.

But the refuge didn’t last long, throughout my life I am always haunted by questions and doubt. Questions like, what if the monk was wrong? What are the evidence that support the theory that there are after life? As I grew older, the question became more and more complicated, and I grew more anxious when I can’t find the answers. Books in the library doesn’t convinced me, and answers from my parents, and other elders in my life doesn’t yield any satisfactory results that can comfort my uneasy mind.

Then the internet came along and it change my world view in more ways then I can possibly count. However the Internet is a double edge sword, it brought many possible answers, and sometimes those answers can lead to even more confusions when two or more possible answers doesn’t agree with one another. Hence my life is seen as a perpetual emotional roller coster, when I found the answers to my questions, I’ll feel happy and settled, but when I found a new set of questions that puzzled me, I’ll fall helpless with the thought of morbidity, and I’ll slip into depression for weeks, sometimes even months.

Hence my motivation is to record the journey I’ve been through throughout the years, with hope that someone out there can find the answers to what they are looking for, and take comfort in the answers that I found; I try to be as honest and earnest as I possibly can.

If you have a question on your own regarding death, feel free to ask away at the comment section below, remember, there are no such things as stupid question here.

Q: Why do you keep this in a question and answer format? And not in one long post like you normally do?

2011-11-29T20:14:00.001+08:00

(This is part of a series in a long question and answer session with myself throughout my life regarding death, click here to view all questions and answers)

Well the first reason is because that’s how my mind format and organize broad issues regarding death; There are many angle to tackle here, and to me it is the easies way for anyone, especially myself to refer to my point of view to such complicated and personal matter in the future. I organize all questions regarding the subject matter in this web blog under “Death and Reincarnation” tag for easy browsing.

The second reason is because, as sciences and philosophy progresses, we bound to encounter more interesting, or rather, fascinating questions regarding life and death that never crosses our mind before. What we knew today might be dead wrong tomorrow (no pun intended). Hence nothing here is carve in stone, as my life progresses I bound to find far better explanation to the questions posted here.

Thirdly, my mind tend to fire different questions at different point in time, to write one long article regarding this matter will undoubtedly limit my ability to expand on the subject matter. Bare in mind that I don’t plan to complete, or more morbidly, finish the quest of discovery till my dying breath, to me putting it down in this question and answer format is the easies way to revisit all my past adventures if you will, and update them as and when needed.

In conjunction to my third point, sometimes I am bothered by a particular questions that linger in my mind for many day, week, month or sometimes even years. Worst of all, I don’t even know what the question is. It is my hope that people can easily glance through all the questions posted here and find what they are looking for. Hence it is important for me to find the right answer, as well as to answer them with as much accuracy as I personally held true.

Lastly, I plan to either publish my own book, printed and in digital format or write a thesis about the subject matter in the future, this format is easy for the reader to digest, and to jump around any topic that interest them at any point in time.

If you have a question on your own regarding death, feel free to ask away at the comment section below, remember, there are no such things as stupid question here.

Wave son, condom man said hi.

2011-11-10T22:22:00.001+08:00

Sign of self defeating thoughts

2011-11-10T19:00:00.000+08:00

One of the primary reason why I often failed in many of my pursuit in life is due to my inert tendency to have self defeating thoughts. The notion that I am not smart enough, or good enough, or fit enough to push through obstacles and finish what I started. Every night before I fall asleep I tend to feel like a loser, a person that is wronged in life, cheated, and defeated, struggling to find a spark of true success in life, and it shows in all aspect of my life. I stop blogging a year ago, stop reading a book a day and going to gym 2 years ago, gain more then 15 KG in weight and hardly found anything that can satisfy my thirst for happiness. Without the support of my family and friends I don't think I can pull through and find the courage to write this post today.

The first sign of self defeat is to think about why I am doing this and that, especially when I am doing something entertaining and fun, like the joy of writing or playing video games. My inner thought process will kick in and start releasing comments like,

You should be working right now instead of enjoying yourself, do you think you deserve this?
Think about Mark Zuckerberg or Adam Khoo, do you think they enjoy the activity you are doing right now?
Can't you find something more productive to do then wasting your time doing mindless things?

I tend to suppress those thoughts and in the end, I can't really submerge myself with what I am doing, can't really enjoy fully, and felt dissatisfied. When I start working on projects, I tend to finish it off quickly to enjoy myself, the vicious cycle continue on and on.

The second sign of self defeat is to think about defeat before my pursuit can yield any results. The thought of failure often plague me when the risk is high. For example when my previous blog post show sign of stagnation, my immediate urge is to stop writing all together. I feel like no matter how much effort I put in writing a post, I don't see any tangible results. Now I believe that the golden rule of success is to continue delivering my best work regardless of external, uncontrollable factor, my hero, Steve Jobs frame it perfectly when he said:

you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards.
So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

The third sign of self defeat is when I start setting goals I don't really care about, even the notion of setting a goal to keep myself motivated to do something I don't really care about is absurd.

Being aware of my inner voice at each and every moment require mindfulness and a strong will, that is what is necessary to hinder the tendency to have self defeating thoughts, is to being aware of it. Lets see whether I can pull it though this time.

Focus on the joy of Writing

2011-11-08T19:00:00.000+08:00

I love to write, in fact on and off I have been writing passionately for almost as young as I can remember. I wrote my first short story in Bahasa Malaysia when I was around 11 years old, its about a hero with super powers trying desperately to save a princess trapped in an elaborate dungeon. Up until this day, I still don’t know how I came out with the plot, and all the adventures that leads to the climatic scene, where the hero successfully save the princess, and they live happily ever after. I remember I pour all my imagination in it, and use limited vocabulary that I have at the time to describe the awesomeness I am trying to portray in the story. Frankly as I read the story now, it is not as awesome as I remember it to be, but impressive nonetheless.

Then as I get older, I tried this online thing called “Blogging” and I am instantly hooked, I recall at one point in my life, I couldn’t have any inner piece without regurgitating my thought into a blog post. But as time goes on, my inner perfectionism got the better of me, I start to get obsesses about web site design, I thinker with it as if I am posses by demons. I would adjust the color of the background till the late hours of night, until I found the correct shade of gray I wanted. That wasn’t enough, I would submit the source code to HTML Validator to ensure that the code behind the page compliant with the latest HTML standards. I wanted more, I subscribe to web server hosting, and end up installing my own webserver, wrote my own content management system using PHP, and design my own webpage using CSS. Eventually the whole enterprise of publishing my thought and conveying my true inner feelings become a whole lot more complicated that I thought it would be.

Indirectly, my obsession with my own personal website help contribute to the success of my day job, so I was happily being carried away with the notion that setting the proper font size contributes to the success of my overall well being (What a pile of bullshit). Then as my site became more and more popular, my visitor starts to complain about the quality of my content, and some even made fun of my use of words and the obvious wrongness of my English grammar. I enroll myself in an English class online to “fix” what I thought was embarrassing display of weakness in the overall package of supreme awesomeness. At the time I was still in Software Engineering and learning proper software development methodology, while working on the next iteration of my Content Management System, AND learning to grasp the complexity of the English language. I lost my 8 hour sleep, I cut down on social activities and even created a timetable like a 12 year old to properly distribute my time. When I was promoted to Project Management in 2010, everything start crashing down.

I have to let go my obsession with the website and start focusing on all my projects in hand, I honestly don’t have much time to spare, after a year my web hosting renewal contract lapse and I didn’t even notice, by the time I revisited my passion in the early 2011 during chinese new year, I was shocked with the realization that all my content is deleted by the web hosting company, and the domain name has been released back to the outer space. Reflecting back, I strongly believe that if I just concentrate on writing, I wouldn’t have stop. Now I have to build my content all over again, from scratch, but it is a lesson learned, and it is a mistake that I will never repeat again.

Tips to those who is just starting out:

1. Once the website look decent enough, and it is able to render properly on all web browsers on all platform, stop tinkering with it and start writing. No one actually cares what shade of green you are using in your background.

2. Using proper English is important to convey you message across. Mastery of language require constant use, you’ll get better at it overtime, so write more. If you still not convince, listen to Stephen Fry’s take on Language: [Audio]

3. Good quality content is the most important asset for your website, so revisit your old post, update them and rewrite them if necessary. And don’t stop creating new content when you are at it!

Biggest water bottle I ever had

2011-11-08T17:45:00.001+08:00

Due to no water dispensers, I have to purchase the biggest water bottle I can find that can last me for days, I am not disappointed.

jacksonlim.com, finally.

2011-11-08T00:40:00.002+08:00

The longest running blog for myself over the internet is finally getting the attention it deserve. I bought a custom URL for this blog for 10 USD a year, which is jacksonlim.com, naturally, and it will be the focal point for my social networking in the next coming years. Instead of just uploading it to Facebook, all my social "things" will be started from here.

Chinese Moon Cake Festival

2010-09-22T23:50:00.000+08:00

Today is the chinese moon cake festival, apparently my better half has no idea about it and tried to sleep through it! Luckily she has me to wake her up, went for some light dinner and head off to the cinema. To our surprised the cinema is closed, I really didn't know they close on moon cake festival. I lost my mood and went on home.

It has been a busy day at work, grant presentation and finalizing the new corporate website, the only thing missing is the annual report section which I'll get it done right now.

New corporate website

2010-09-22T01:30:00.000+08:00

I've been rushing to complete our new corporate website this paste 3 days, the design has been finalized but there are so many nitty gritty stuff left to be completed. But the awesome part is, I've got to deal with all the department in the company, from the accounts, to Product Development Unit, from the Secured Operation Unit to Project Management office. Each department is linked one way or another with the website.

I'm sure once the product section is finalized by the CEO, the project will be finished.

After 2 years

2010-02-18T15:19:00.003+08:00

It has been 2 years since I made my last post, and to be honest, nothing much has changed. I am still persistently chasing my dreams and now I have landed in the role of Project Management, which is a stepping stone to what I plan to become in the future. There are much to learn now then ever before, I need to, literally have the mindset of a small business owner to run the team. I need to take into account the well-fair of MY staff, OUR projects, and OUR missions. Gone are the days when I only need to take care my small little domain areas, now I need to see the big pictures, and plan ahead into the future, which of course takes time, motivation and courage.

I plan to write about what I've learned so far in project management at this space, first is to further enforce my knowledge about the subject, and second is to share what I've learn to the world. If you are interested in my journey, bookmark this site, or add this site in your RSS list.

How to remove the annoying adsense message on your dashboard?

2008-05-07T16:49:00.002+08:00

Do you have an annoying Adsense message on top of your blogger dashboard? The message goes like this:

"Your AdSense account needs verification. Please check your email for the Google AdSense Verification message."

The notification is misleading, the main reason why the message appear is because you haven't allow Blogger to manage your adsense account. To enable it, follow the step-by-step guide below:

Log in to your Adsense account at adsense.google.com
Go to My Account > Account Access
Click "Enable"

After a few hours, the message should disappear from your dashboard.

You are welcomed.

Happy Birthday To Me, Welcome To 23

2008-05-06T10:24:00.003+08:00

It is safe to say that starting from this day onwards, I can no longer deny the fact that I am a grown up man. When I was young, I meant like 15 or 16 years old, I kept dreaming the life I want to have when I am 23, I want to have a nice car, staying in a 2 story home, have a kick ass computers and consoles, a nice phone, graduate with a degree, have a stable job and working for what I love, and an ideal girlfriend. So far all my dream has been satisfied, and I am so thankful for what I have. But that doesn't mean I should stop dreaming right?

There are a big difference between dreaming and setting goals, you should dream as big as you can, even you know it is almost impossible to achieve it, but that is the beauty of dreams, it doesn't necessarily need to come true. But for goals, you have to set a specific goals that need to be accomplished at a certain date. It make sense to set your goals in order to make your dream come true, the goals that you set must be logical and achievable at a certain time specified by you.

For example my dream is to become a CEO one day, running my privately owned business with sound income. My goal now would be to managed my money and increase my financial portfolio by the age of 30. Therefore right now I am reading a lot on financial planning since I have no exposure on that area yet. That isn't a far fetched goal isn't it? But I dream big!

As for now, I am savoring the day I become 23. Congratulations Jackson, you have reached the second phase of your life.

Emotional Rhythm

2008-05-05T14:55:00.002+08:00

It is challenging for me to sustain a persistent emotional rhythm, sometimes when I "feel" like having a positive lifestyle, I will exercise regularly, eat healthily, clean the house and resume my blogging habit. But sometimes when things start to go down, I'll "feel" like forget it all, play games and slacking off sometimes for months on end. I know each time when something pressing happened to me, I will sway one way or another.

But now I think I've found the solution, thanks to David Allen's Getting Things Done methodology I think I've found a way to mitigate the negative emotional spiral. Regardless of what my current emotional state, I will write down all that needs to be done, and when I need to do it before my head got chopped off.

I think the main difference between the conventional to-do list and David Allen's GTD is how we actually manage each task. The task itself is not categorized as "work" or "personal", every single thing that needs to get done, I meant everything, including the spare toothbrush that you want to throw 3 months ago is in the list.

Then you control your tasks with a policy, if the task can be done within the 2 minutes period then do it immediately, if not then either delegate it, store it for future consumption or forget about it. So far I've just implemented roughly 20% if his methodology, and I am already ripping the results.

I've:

Cleaned my bedroom
Cleared my cupboard
Installed a new filling system
Installed a new PC for my dad
Cleaned my dad's desk
Finished 8 chapters of "Mastering Window Server 2003" out of 21 Chapters

All that is done within the 2 week period! That is more then what I've previously did within a month. I know my results is subjective, but I think the result can be replicated to anyone who follow his methodology as rigidly as possible.

I think the main reason why his methodology works is because you know what you should be doing now, and not something else. Your mind is clear from other interferences, like what David Allen said, your mind RAM is freed to be used on a particular task in hand other then being used to remember what you need to get done later. Bravo to David Allen for making such a breakthrough in Personal Productivity. I'll keep you posted on my implementation of GTD

For now, anyone who is trying to proof or disproof the existence of God is making assumptions

2008-04-13T17:52:00.002+08:00

Believer and Non Believer can argue all they want, but currently there is still no solid evidence to suggest the existence of God, nor there is any solid evidence to disproof the existence of the all mighty. but they are certainly a lot of educated arguments on this matter, if such arguments happened say 100 years ago, millions of non believers will be burned or tortured to death.

I say such arguments is healthy for the society because it will force people to think about their own faith, and will ultimately straighten or weaken their believes, at least they are not following their religion blindly. Some might argue that there is no impact on ones life if God exist or not, I say some of those people are just being naive.

I guess ultimately you have to make an assumptions, but I hope you won't impose your assumptions on others, because you are assuming anyway, whether you realize it or not.

I don't know how to be a boss

2008-04-09T00:07:00.006+08:00

How do you actually do it? To me all the method I read online seems unrealistic, for example some people depend their entire livelihood just by blogging. In order to do that you need at least millions of hits a day and you need to constantly produce quality post that will be able to satisfy millions of people. Some sell products online, but how do they manage the logistics and how did they manage to get the stuff to sell at a reasonable price? All of that needs a huge amount of work, and success is not guaranteed.

I know the benefits of being your own boss, you can wake up whatever time you want and deal with your business at your own leisure. You can choose what you want to do, you can ask other people to do what you don't want to do. But how do you actually become a boss? That questions haunt me for a few days already, I believe if I look deep into the question, I'll find the answer.

Don't worry I'll keep you posted

Malaysian Bloggers got sued yet again, next might be you

2008-03-27T10:41:00.003+08:00

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

2008-03-24T14:15:00.003+08:00

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

2008-03-24T11:49:00.008+08:00

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

2008-03-19T11:28:00.004+08:00

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

How to deal with difficult people

2008-03-18T10:29:00.003+08:00

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:

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.
If it doesn't degrade your ego or harm your image, just agree with what they have to say and walk away peacefully.
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.
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

2008-03-17T01:15:00.003+08:00

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

2008-03-15T02:38:00.004+08:00

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?

2008-03-10T14:30:00.003+08:00

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

2008-03-09T16:38:00.003+08:00

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.

The Religion Arguments

2008-02-28T23:13:00.003+08:00

Lately I've been approached by two individuals who determine to convert me to their religion, although changing religion doesn't even cross my mind at all, the arguments that they present to me is interesting. I love a good conversation, especially if it could challenge my point of view. So I sit down with them, and listened carefully on what they have to say. The conversation start off with with a few standard questions, like when I die where will I go, if the world ends who will rescue me, you know the drill. Base on my understanding on my spiritual believes I was able to answer them promptly.

Halfway through the exchange of questions and answers, I sense that they have exhausted their arguments, and they are getting quite frustrated with my defense. Then the conversation went on ugly, they start to give out a few statements that to me, doesn't really mean anything or have any significants. For instance, they argue that:

All the country with Buddhism as their state religion is poor.
[Put a psychopath name here] kills millions of people before the 21 century, and he is a Buddhist.
There are more Buddhist in US jail then all the other religion combined.

I don't see any relation between their arguments and being a Buddhist. Because:

I don't understand how being a Buddhist can affect any country's economy, plus isn't Buddhism a state religion of Japan?
A person's action doesn't reflect the whole population.
Where did the source came from? Did the inmate convert to Buddhism in jail or they are Buddhist before they commit the crime.

Although I try to make the conversation as civil as possible, to me both of them are way too emotional to make any further arguments that I can accept. I thank them for their goodwill, and hope there isn't any hard feelings.

1st Post - Public Static void main (String[] args)

2008-02-28T00:34:00.005+08:00

If you have seen me before on my previous website, I would like to congratulate you on the discovery of this Blog. You might be wondering, why I start another Blog since I already have one which is still online. The answer is quite simple really, I just want to branch out and see where I could go with this site, it is just that simple. If this is your first encounter with me, then I hope you'll enjoy our conversation. Before I move on I want to let you know that I treat each of my post as a personal conversation with myself, well actually it is not that personal anymore since there are thousands, or if I am lucky, millions of people might be reading this right now, but I like to think that way, it sort of feel more romantic that way. Now before we get all sticky, let us go to the main topic shall we?

First of all my writing skill is getting rusty, although I write programs for a living, the content I am writing is dedicated for electronic brain, not the moist brain that you currently have. If you do have electronic brain then please do drop me a message, and let me know which syntax you could understand, I'll compile every post for you. What you can aspect to see in the next couple of post is the improved quality of my writing, and contents dedicated to all the Software Engineers out there, I am still new at actually practicing the methodologies but I am learning new stuff everyday, so in order to remember all the stuff I've learned from now on, I will start to seriously document everything I've learned from various sources and publish it online, I am killing 2 birds with one stone really, I have a central reference point and you can refer to it as well if you find it useful.

So I hope you could join me on this journey to SE enlightenment. And on top of that I'll post about my on going pursuit of Personal Development and trow in bits and pieces of my life, I do that just because I love you.

If you are wondering what my title means, it actually signify the start of a new Java program.