The Backlog

My Takes On The Chua Soi Lek Case

In wake of the Malaysian Health Minister’s scandal, I felt sad that politicians are exposing one’s private life as means of sabotage. I know the General Elections are near (and the alternative front is gaining more support than ever), but don’t you think such a scandal will ruin one’s reputation so bad that people will remember him for it? What do you remember most significantly about Bill Clinton? His case with Monica Lewinsky rocked the world like he was some rock star celebrity. Come on, sex scandals are so 1999!

True, he shouldn’t have done what he did but come to think of it, if he is doing a good job as Health Minister then by all means he should be our Health Minister for as long as possible. I don’t care about his personal life. Let him live his life the way he wants in return that he do his job dutifully. I much rather let a sinner be our Health Minister, than let a ‘hollier than thou’ character screwing up.

The CSL resignation was shocking, due to the fact that he confessed but announced that he won’t be leaving the post. Maybe it will be better to drop right out of the public eye and dip into low profile for some period of time. Hopefully, soon enough, people will remember him as the Health Minister who improved many policies within the Health Ministry and a politician who speaks and leads better than most, if not all in the government.

But I think he shouldn’t have resigned. Ministers are getting away with pretty much anything right now. What happened to the Altantuya case? What happened to the billions that were squandered on incomplete projects? If that’s not enough, how about dozing off at local and international meetings? If these ministers are not dealt with appropriately, then why is CSL carrying all the burden on his shoulders just because his video was exposed? If it was up to me, then CSL wouldn’t have to resign. An apology is good enough. After all, a person who apologizes and admits his mistake is far better than one who denies and make up facts to cover up for himself.

In addition, I felt disgusted that hotel rooms are no longer safe. As The Star reported, Wireless spy camera costs as little as RM300. Anyone could get their hands on a camera and install it almost anywhere! It could be in your car, your bedroom or even your bathroom. I think this calls for extensive security measures to be taken to keep hotel rooms safe for tourists to stay in. It’s making a bad name for the country. I wonder if someone could come up with gadgets to disrupt the wireless communication between the spy camera and its controller, or has it been implemented already? Engineering students, this could be a potential Final Year Project topic for you guys!

Oh, just to make this clear. I’m no supporter of any political party, just the average guy voicing out. I have no interest in exercising my rights as a voter, and I think it will hard to convince me that spending half a day to queue up just to put in a vote. I think I would rather spend that whole day resting and keeping myself occupied for more beneficial activities. Barisan Nasional’s gonna get the 2/3 majority, anyway. It’s just a matter of how large the scale of victory. I certainly don’t want them to win by a landslide though. There should be alternative parties to keep them on their toes.

I must be on medication to post a picture of a teacher with a blackboard in the beginning of the post. There is a reason for that. I post regularly in small scale forums, and this subject is still widely discussed in those forums this very day. I read about different views supporting and disagreeing with the resignation and the mutual condemnation of the recording. So I decided to come up with something creative, because I’m weird like that.

A teacher walked into class and points to the blackboard, then asked the students. “What do you see?”

The students replied “A blackboard.”

The teacher drew a small dot on the blackboard. Then she said to the class “Tell me what you see now.”

Seeing the white spot on the blackboard, the class answered “A WHITE SPOT!”

The teacher shook her head and said “I still see a blackboard. A big blackboard with just one small insignificant spot of chalk on it. Why do you only see the white spot? Is one white spot going to change your opinion on what you see?”

This story tells us that we sometimes don’t have a clear view of things, resulting in a misinterpretation or a misunderstanding of the object we’re trying to look at. The big blackboard could be attributed to CSL’s achievements in politics, and the white spot signifies the scandal. People only see the white spot right now, but hopefully in the future they will just look at the big picture instead of remembering him for that white spot.

Posted in Rants, Woes | 4 Comments »

Short Chinese New Year Holidays

Dear all,The request for additional holiday for Chinese New Year was officially made by SRC 07/08 today (26th December 2007). However, the application was rejected due to academic reasons.

Students may follow the public holidays, which is from 7th February 2008 to 8th February 2008, instead of the one suggested on MMU Academic Calendar.

Here, we would like to take this opportunity to wish you all the best and good luck in your final examinations!

Actuality in Action, Integrity in Principle

Students’ Welfare Division
Students’ Representative Council 07/08
Multimedia University

Melaka Campus

This is sad. Every year when there is Hari Raya the academic trimesters will miraculously end for a break that spans at least 3 weeks. What about Chinese New Year? We are given only 2 days off. With the two days off being Thursday and Friday respectively, the subsequent weekend shall be absorbed as an extended holiday resulting to a grand total of just 4 days.

That means I will have to rush home on Wednesday just to make the reunion dinner, spend the next 3 days braving the immense traffic to go around town visiting my relatives, then brave the expectedly heavy traffic once again on a warm Sunday afternoon to come back to Melaka. Fine, I could just stay on until the unearthly hours of Monday to begin my journey. Hopefully there won’t be too much traffic then.

Argh. I think I’ll just persuade my family to take a short vacation somewhere, while I stay back in Malaysia slurping on instant noodles for dinner on Wednesday. Bet no one is free enough to come out yamcha, mwahahaha.

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Assignment Woes

It’s near the end of the trimester. Everyone’s busy completing their assignments and preparing for the finals. Today I am due to submit an assignment and to give a presentation on the spot. The assignment should involve 3 to 5 members in a group, and in the documentation it will list down the responsibilities of each group member. Basically it’s just to tell the lecturer “who did what”.

I finished my part early. But my 2 group members didn’t touch the remaining sections until yesterday. Fine. So I met up with both of them yesterday, and started to make real progress. Some results were out, some assumptions were made. Though we were full of doubts for the whole time, we couldn’t really do much as time was short. We finished our discussion about two hours later, and each of us went home to do the documentation.

Since I finished my part early on, I offered to compile all the documentation and print them before submission. Today they are both expected to send me their work, and I will put them into one complete document. I woke up at 9am, hoping to receive what I asked from the both of them. I stared at my taskbar and there was no notification of new mail. I even checked my inbox just to make sure.

I messaged one of them in YM and he said he finished one section. Great. He sent them to me and I went through them. It was the part for Conclusion. Naturally I opened the file to check for formatting. Once I opened the file I hit my head on the table, because it was so blatantly clear that he copied and pasted from another source. He speaks broken English, yet his writing skills are da bomb, man!

So I asked him if he copied, he said he referred to the Internet. I googled a random sentence and got the exact same sentence, word by word, line by line, notation by notation. I asked him to redo, or operate on the piece of literature until it is beyond recognition. He deleted a few paragraphs and sent them back to me. Again I hit my head on the table. Tired of editing pieces, I took the website address and added it into the bibliography section.

I gathered all the work from my two groupmates and tried to print them out. My printer found the right time to give me more problems. Fine, I asked one of them to print and it’s all settled. Came presentation (submission and presentation at the same time), the guy who copied from the Internet didn’t know what he was saying. All he uttered was crap. I can’t do any better anyway, but I think it’s better to not say much than to say all the wrong things during a presentation.

At the end of the day, the assignment was submitted, and I could finally get some sleep.

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