Digital Fugue - Random Thots

Does it matter?

Living life in todays world is a challenge. We have to brave to numerous things thrown at us constantly. We are constantly endangering ourselves while driving to and from work everyday. At work, we need to perform, perhaps with superpowers if mot miracles to please our bosses and the company. Work for the betterment of the company they tell us... work and ye shall be rewarded!
But no, they shareholders want more return from their investment, the company owners want to get their hands on the latest Mercedes Benz and a new mansion. At the end of the day we get paid peanuts and take home the burden and stress in order to keep the shareholders happy.
Corporate wizzards took over and did some creative business deals, shares traded hands and the shareholders are happy. Employees, on the other hand, are at stake. Of all the stakeholders, the shareholders are more important than the employees.
Do we deserve it?
perhaps....
do the shareholders deserve their dividends?
perhaps...

Some of us had tonnes of workload on their shoulders only to have someone else take the credit.
Is that fair?
perhaps...

Inflation is up... nothing new. So the government decided to increase the price of petrol... and approve the increase of other price-controlled items. Satellite TV cost more and I'm preety sure tele/cellphone charges and toll charges will follow suit.
Is it fair for the tom, dick, harry and the average joe on the street?
perhaps...
The people who supported the opposition are angry... the ones how voted for the ruling party kept their anger inside... feeling somewhat cheated.
does it matter at all?
perhaps...

At the end of the day, we are all insects... working for each one of our big fat queen bees.

I was having dinner with some friends this evening and we were talking about communism vs capitalism. One example was how the cigar rollers in Cuba work hard to produce cigars while earning a meagre USD100 a month for their effort. The government then held a grand function with the same cigars being auctioned off at a few thousand USD.
The same is happening in our so called "capitalist oriented" country, we work for peanuts while the bosses get huge bonus signing multimillion dollar contracts. Parallel ideologies i call it.
The rich are getting richer while the average joe will forever munch on peanuts... if we are lucky we might get almond or hazelnut or cashew nuts. If i could afford it, I'll take pistachios, thank you very much.
Is it fair?
perhaps...
does it matter?
perhaps...

Marbeckham

I was happily having coffee with some friends when the inevitable front-pager conversation piece poped out. Here's a piece of the conversation:

Mulder: You know that Sarah Marbeck? Actually she's not that preety.
Me: Dude, imagine this... after a party she accept your invitation to adjourn to your hotel. Now she's rolling on your hotel bed... you had to be gay if you choose not to jump on her.
Mulder: hmmm... you got a point :)
Scully: Aaarrhh... guys! They're all the same!
Me: Pardon moi, mademoiselle... if Beckham invited you to his hotel room, would you decline?
Scully: ... errrmm... let me think.... depends on the situation...
Me: You mean you would pass a one night stand with David Beckham?
Scully: yeah... i mean no... i mean.. of course i would follow him!
Me: Hah!
Scully: Well yeah... for a one night stand. But i wouldn't waste for two years of my life dreaming of changing my name to Sarah Marbeck-Beckham! That's so... stupid.
Me: Well, a story is a story... Did you know the tabloids offered her £200,000 for the story? If she's so stupid, she wouldn't have thought of keeping all those text messages would she?
Scully: £200,000???
Mulder: As in 1.4 million Malaysian schmuckeroos...?
Me: yeah... you can call her stupid, a whore and all those words that would make your mom wash your mouth with cili padi... whatever it is she's laughing to the bank with more dough than all our combined savings for the next 10 years.
Mulder: Alright world, watch out for my story... Beckham is gay!

Moral of the story:
SMSes are much more dangerous than tapped phone lines.
If you are planning to have an affair, make sure your ass is covered.
If you are planning to make quick bucks selling juicy stories, remember, they will always sue you back.

The other side of the history

What if, what what we believe in after all these years are all wrong. What if the people who wrote history books skew the story to benefit certain quarters and demerit others.

When I was a kid, I was fascinated by the wild west... the gold rush, the cowboys and the indians. I read a few books and articles on Geronimo and Chief Sitting Bull and of course the most famous epic battle, the battle of little bighorn.

The articles depicted the story in favour of General Custer and his determination to fight to the very end, lifting him to be an american hero. Even the battle site was named Custer Battlefield and his epic end called Custer's Last Stand.

But recent research and discoveries uncovered that Custer's Last Stand was amyth. Custer in fact ignored orders to wait and attacked the Indian Village on his own. A price he had to pay with his own life and over 200 of his men.

Research showed that the 7th Cavalry was in no order. Most of the soldiers found had bullet wounds on their back, indicating that they were running for their live rather than defending themselves to the end. The massacre was over in about two hours.

Which brings me to these conclusions:
1. The Americans have a (long) history in skewing facts to favour themselves
2. What we read in history books are not neccessarily 100% true
3. Perhaps what we believe in all these years were not true...

More on Battle of Little Bighorn here and here.
Custer's Last Stand artwork

Arnie the guvnor

Arnold Schwarzenegger is now Govenor of California. Should he run for president (say in 2008) will he be like Reagan? or Clinton? or (God forbid!) Bush?

I guess California smoking law wont be as stringent as New York... :)

Somewhat related: Cigar Aficionado interviews Arnie.

OIC Summit 2003

Malaysia will host the 10th Session of the Islamic Summit Conference which will be held from October 11th to 18th.

Like previous big international events, roads will be closed to facilitate the traffic. Don't get caught off guard, here's an early warning from the Royal Police(in Malay).

Related: Organization of Islamic Conferences (OIC)

Playing with the GIANTS

Still on the Malaysian Budget 2004 issue, this time on another favourite discussion, the prices of cars in Malaysia. According to the PM,

"The Government has indicated earlier that the prices of cars will not be lowered even after the reduction of import duties on cars from ASEAN countries. To mitigate the loss in revenue, the Government proposes to levy excise duties on imported cars when import duties are reduced from 1 January 2004. Therefore, consumers are encouraged to purchase cars now for themselves and their families. "

This is of course to protect the national car makers Proton and Perodua.

In the automotive industry, mergers and acquisition seemed to be the current trend. Just take a look at the world's biggest auto maker, General Motors for example, under its belt there's the American favourites Chevrolet, Oldsmobile, Pontiac, Caddilac, Buick, GMC, Saturn and Hummer as well as European favourites SAAB and Opel. I believe Fiat will also be in its group of companies if the acquisition process goes well. Ford Motors on the other hand have these brands under it's belt; America's Lincoln and Mercury, British Jaguar, Land Rover and Aston Martin, Japanese Mazda and Swedish Volvo. Chrysler have merged with Daimler-Benz. The Volkswagen Group have Audi, Bently, Bugatti, Lamborghini, Seat and Skoda under its belt. French Citroen and Peugeot sits under the PSA Group.

But check this out, according to Bloomberg the most valuable car maker is Toyota, with market capitalization of USD108Billion. That's more than GM, Ford and DaimlerChrysler put together. Nissan sits at number two with USD50Billion followed by Honda with USD42Billion.

Now back to Proton, a check with KLSE indicates that its market capitalization at RM4.23Billion. We sure have a long way to go... Then again, the question pops up, where do we want to go? How are we treating Proton and Perodua, as a national icon or as a business case? which is more important?

While talking about cars, I could not help but drool at the sexyness of a Toyota Camry Solara.

Somewhat Related: More info from Bloomberg

ISP Merger - Greater forces at work

The PM's annoucement on the merger of Malaysia's top two ISPs seemed to have stirred the Malaysian internet users nest. Here are some response to the issue:
Jeff's response
Alphaque's initial shock
Alphaque trying to make sense out of it
Haxa's Dismay
NoorHidayat snubs the monopoly
Alphaque giving it back

But not all are angry with the merger, at least some one is happy with the merger.

Now, my thots on the issue:

Too many things happening

Too many things happening

My favourite quote is, "twenty-four hours in a day is not enough". Take just one working day, in no particular order, we sleep for eight hours. Total time in the shower, in the toilet and grooming for the whole day, another two hours. Three meals a day takes about three hours. Daily commuting from home to the office vice versa another 2 hours. Work = 8 hours.
And we are left with one hour to do the groceries, do the laundry, mow the lawn, wash the car, read the newspaper, watch the news, smoke a cigar, bake a cake, read a book, catch a movie, feed the cats, walk the dog, blog, do the dishes, cook, drink coffee, paint the town red.
Forget about it. Im babbling.

The first East Asia Congress was a success, with numerous issues being discussed at the round table. I was lucky enough to be a delegate throughout the session. At the end of which, I managed to congratulate the CEO of ISIS Malaysia, the organization that is responsible for the congress. He thanked us for coming and reminded us of next year's event. From the glow of his eyes and his anticipation, next year's event will be bigger.

The congress talked among other things about building the east asian community, the need for Asia Monetary Fund, free trade etc. Some of the presentation can be downloaded from the East Asia Congress site.
However, in my opinion, they missed out a few important areas in their discussion, which include science and technology, the environment and defense. Then again, there's always next year.

Rising crime rate

Rising crime rate

Last night, I had a drink with an old friend of mine. One of the issues we talked about was on sociology and the conversation side tracked to crime. He told me his friend's car was stolen the night before right infront of his house. According to the neigbours, they heard the alarm went off for a while. Thinking that it was just a case of a mispressed remote control, they shruged off any suspicions. About 15 minutes, a gear lock and a steering lock later, the Satria GTi was gone.

My friend believe this occurred because of "cause-and-effect". He thinks these crimes were executed by former VCD peddlers. The current stem on pirated vcd have caused much grief to the peddlers.
Doesn't make sense? Consider this, a vcd peddler operates from, let's say 6pm to 12 midnight. During that course, he sells an average of 60 vcds (10 vcd per hour). His margin is about RM2 per vcd. That's RM120 a day. Times that by 26 days; they conservatively earn about RM 3,120 a month, that's almost double what fresh graduates earn. Im sure in a good month (summer movies) they could easily double or even triple that amount.
For a peddler, that is a lot of money. Even for an average Malaysian, that is a substantial amount of money.

In socialogy, we can relate this to "systems theory" where everything have its own function in the system. Take a component away, and the system cease to work, or it could still work but at the expense of other components in the system. That, according to my friend, is exactly what's happening.

This morning, we found out that my sister's car was broken into last night. The car was parked across the street, in front of my house. Fortunately, nothing was missing. It was almost similar to the ordeal i had a couple of months back.
No it does not stop there. Sharizal's car was also broken into last night.
Perhaps the theory is right, afterall?

Reading: Human Development Report 2003 (Available in PDF)

"Mr. President, can you shut the..."

"Mr. President, can you shut the...."

At times don't you just wish you could just shut everything out and enjoy solitude all by yourself. Now with just USD 299 you can have that! (sain in the manner of an annoying TV commercial). Technology review wrote an article on the lastest offering by Bose, the QuietComfort 2 noise cancelling headset. But would you spend USD299 for a peace of mind? I know it would be a jem during migrain attacks! Wonder if they have the ear plug version. That will be a jem in the weekly departmental meeting and the ceremonial screwing in the monthly and quarterly reviews (as we are all aware, the screwing gets louder and louder as the financial year progress). It will be a jem, oh yes.

In other areas, check out Michael Moore's latest letter to George W. Bush. And guess what, a week later another one of his lies of mass destruction braced the headlines. For more of his antiques, go to bush lies.