On Tolerance

"We must respect other religions even as we respect our own. Mere tolerance thereof is not enough." - Mahatma Gandhi

I decided to put this quote I came about recently as it was rather ironic in my case.
As most of the people who are close to me know, there is an Indian temple somewhere opposite my house. On Friday night, they began setting up their temporary stalls, with zinc roofs and whatnots... To me that wasn't a problem... I am rather tolerant.... I think

Saturday came, I woke up to the sounds of indian drumming. So be it then, I went around doing my work till night came. When night came, so did the loudspeakers.... in da poo di han le ma le , I don't know Tamil, so its up to you to guess what the heck it means. Midnight came, hanlemale stil kept going on...... 12.30.. immense honking from the road... went to have a look, what a weird sight it was..... The Indians were dancing on the road! In the middle of the road to be exact... on one of the busiest known roads in Penang. and this fella was carrying something tat was 2m tall, in the shape of a half-circle, and was twirling it around.... and so, Air Itam road, right in front of my house, was this 2m radius of empty road, and this guy in a Mercedes honking all the way, trying not to be civllised... There was plenty of space beside the road, grassy pavement somemore.. and he chooses to dance in the middle of the road? C'mon lah..there's an easier way to die, such as jumping into the monsoon drain.

1 AM - hanlemale was still singing and the fella was still dancing, this time at the side of the road.

2 AM - hanlemale still on, fella went away, presumably tired

3 AM - hanlemale still on, street is empty, so others went to dance there, somehow they aren't aware that there is a stretch of straight road from CLHS, past my house and all the way up to Penang Hill..... about..... 3 km in all, a drag racer's haven.... they should be thanking Lord Bhrama/Shiva/Vishnu that the racers decided not to race this weekend.

3.30 AM - got feddup, went to bed, hanlemale stil on...

4.00 AM - hanlemale still on.

Saturday Night
Hanlemale went on till 3.30 AM, then this 6 wheeler came and dismantled one of the stalls and then hanlemale stopped.... no one was dancing that night....

Sunday Night
Hanlemale till about 2 AM thank god...

Monday Night
Hanlemale till 12 (?)

Although we are told be tolerant and understanding, but singing offkey, with a loudspeaker easily the size of a small house, isn't particularly homage to a God, especially his birthday. I know I would get pissed off if u sang a song at 100 dB at me for 12 hours or more. And for God's sake, its Air Itam! Statistics of Air Itam : 95% Chinese 4.99% Malays 0.01% Indians.. and why is there an Indian temple right smack in the middle of Air Itam.. ??

Best part is... the temple attracts Indians from all over the state, all sorts of Indians with absolutely no courtesy began blocking our gates and parking there.... until the lorries returned and it was either the lorries had to stay out, or the lorries came in and the cars into the monsoon drains... so the pathway was cleared :P

Now tell me, where is tolerance ? :P

I have another quote that I quite agree with in some way.....

"There is no harmony between the three races of Malaysia, there is only tolerance. Other nations think we have harmony because we do not fight."

This excerpt comes from the first chapter of a rather famous book..... most people would recognise this sentence. And if you don't you should know the book and the author as well.

The Malay Dilemma - Mahathir bin Mohammad

See Not Within, But Without

Many people are blinded.... for sight and intuition are not always clear...

The War Within

A Dark veil is draped before us, Sillhouetting even those with unhindered sight,
I traipse upon this sodden path, Wondering when they would be enlightened,
Much water has flowed under the bridge, But yet many are still in the dark,
Obtuse these people are not, yet easily fooled they are,
For what may seem benign, Will be our undoing.

The Third Reich was thought to be harmless, but became the greatest atrocity,
Loss of democracy, confoundation, of free speech, of Sanity.
Quietly, it has insinuated our ranks and files, and has beguiled our order,
Many are impervious to its presence, many indeed usher it in.

I say to you my Brothers! Take up your blades and your dignity,
And Let us purge this Evil.

Someday this shall be looked upon,
In days much brighter,
Arguments shall happen over this tale,
Outset of a New Age this will be.

Perceived failure we shall not accept,
Over Our lic you have to tread,
Recorded this shall always be,
Regret this I shall not.



This is just written to let off some steam, its based on something true, do not ask me what it is.

Breaking a Little Tradition Doesn't Hurt Eh...

For once, I am gonna post two nights in a row... due to the MUET (Malaysian University English Test) Speaking Exam I took this morning.

Question :

You are a Malaysian Student studying overseas. You wish to tell the foreigners about Malaysia and promote it. Choose One Aspect to talk on.

i. Malaysia's Achievements
ii. Famous Landmarks in Malaysia
iii. Holidaying in Malaysia
iv. Cultures in Malaysia

TASK A

I had to elaborate on i. Malaysia's Achievements .... rather stupid isn't it? I actually didn't have much time to think of points and simply yakked out some rubbish which most people would have thought of.... such as the Petronas Twin Towers, Proton etc... The Chinese Examiner was rather good... she actually saw that I was stuck and asked me a question that made it easier to answer the question.

TASK B

Now this time it was the group discussion.... the four of us actually got along quite well.... with the other 3 aiming at me half the time..or rather three-quarters of the time..... The chinese examiner yet again tried to help.... this time to Candidate C who was actually meek and fumbling with ideas and didn't quite speak much.... Also, she realigned our discussion and before we knew it, we had surpassed 10 minutes!

Now to talk a bit about something that slipped my mind in the last post.

DiGi was the last of the three surviving telco's in Malaysia not to have introduced Caller Ringtones. Finally a week ago it did... this is in the footsteps of Maxis, followed by Celcom. Maxis calls it Caller Tones while DiGi calls it Caller Tunes. I know some of you actually hate that service but to me, its just something interesting ...like a trinklet... for lack of a better song, I have put J.S. Bach's Air in G as my main caller tone... until I find something else more entertaining. For those who like to call me in the dead of the night, I have set a weirder tone to spook you out....

And thats all for now, stay tuned for whether I get a Band 4 or 3 :P

The Confession

Well, well, well, finally he has conceded defeat.

Who has you might ask? Why, Tekko, who insists that he is in the right all the time.
Last Monday (09-05-2005) as usual we went for the lab and did our experiments as usual with the idea that this experiment like the others that preceded it, would be extremely inaccurate and would require immense changes of the answers. Little did we know how immense it would be.

Independantly, several of us reverse calculated the answers using an arbitary partiton coefficient of zero (meaning no solute inside the inorganic solvent at all). From what we calculated we found that the Lanthanum Boron Arsenic Sulphur had juz performed a miracle (once again), now if you put in two bucks into your piggy bank, there is no reason to believe you would be able to extract 5 bucks from it. Well, this was what happened... the number of moles extracted was 500% higher than what should be, even at partition coefficient = 0, which is highly unlikely in the first place.

So... after being cheng'ed by tekko for close to an hour the next morning, we all had to agree to come again on Saturday to redo the experiment. Tekko as usual gave his usual lecture, "You all very careless when doing experiment, do this do that wrong!", "You all didn't come tell me Phenolphthalein got problem, I only know when other class teacher [sic] tell me!" and so on and so on.

Hmm... sometimes a bit of fun in the lab is worth it, it was most certain Phenolphthalein wasn't at fault, and why would that be? Thanks to the Maori King who used it to test tap water. Turns out tap water is basic, no wonder it tastes bitter.

Alright, let me skip forward to Saturday, where the confession starts!

Saturday, a downcast day with minimal sunlight that is extremely suitable for sleep-ins which I wasn't able to do as I had to report to sch for the experiment at 8.30AM. Being a weekend, and sch uniforms being optional, it was a prismatic display of colours with each person wearing his own colours and a beehive of activity has they showed off their handphones. Expeiment started, and ended, with only a slight decrease in the values attained.

Then tekko, feigning ignorance, began to lambast the class as being so careless as yet to screw up another experiment and said that we would get only a few marks out of 12. Since he has publicly threatened us, See Tatt and I had to defend outselves. After the majority of students exited the lab, we went to confront him. At first he seemed to stick to his ideals, that all was right and that we were wrong. After reverse calculating in front of him and assuming different cases, he finally conceded that the lab asst was probably at fault. Now that was what we have wanted to hear since the very first experiment! Slowly, he began to explain why the lab asst might be at fault. One, he didn't graduate high school. Two, he didn't have experience in preparing chemicals for Sixth Formers before. And Three, he did not know the precautionary steps.

Perhaps that was the truest statement I have heard all year from him. But there was a catch in that statement, since he said we valued accuracy so much and the lab asst couldnt provide it, he had to prepare the chemicals himself, with the help of several individuals whom he claims have stronger foundations in chemistry than even the lab asst. I think you get my gist.

The others days of the week passed eventless with the exception of tat Belly has changed back to his cellophaned-taped-senget pair of spectacles. Wonder what did he do with the new gold pair ... and something is forever on my mind, why does he need to wear it 30 degrees above the horizontal?

Tomorrow(Monday), is the date of my MUET Speaking Test, although IMO I am fluent in English, the thought that I need to speak for an exam makes me slightly nervous. Ah well, have to get used to it, gonna have to take IELTS in a few months also..

And btw, Dan, changed the music liao :P

Of Digi and Epson

Long time since I last posted as I had to settle the mad and (recently) sharped-eye Belly's homework that is as high as Mt.Ararat. Not that I have finished it of course ;-)

Nothing much interesting, so I shall get onto the first topic on my mind. Digi, (as the advertisers say it, the better plan) recently increased its validity period from 100 to 120 days for the RM100 reload, and to 60 for RM50. It was rather weird that they did not advertise this in the papers....
Due to this, I shot past my next reload by over 15 days.... next one is the reload bonus :P
Ohya, for all of you who are curious, my current balance is RM730.58 as of this post.... gonna find someway to burn it liao or else gonna hit the max limit soon.

Epson, my old Epson Stylus Photo 720, bought in 2000 has run out of ink recently and try as I might I couldn't find the replcement catridges anywhere ( For the wise guys out there, its a stylus photo printer, meaning it uses a 2 tank 6 colour system, impossible to refill as no one sells 6 colour refils, so don't suggest I refill). Original or fake, both couldn't be found. In the end, I had to look in Prangin E-Tech, One-Stop and finally BJ. Found one old unit in BJ, and oddly was the same place I bought the catridge before and I clearly remembered he had two at that time... seems can't be found in Penang anymore, and the last two I bought from him were the last. What to do? Go to KL loh.... found a set there....so now I have 4 new catridges sitting here on my desk.... 2 black 2 colour...total cost? (RM55+RM65) x 2 = RM240.... no printer change at the moment then :)

Now to write about a week backwards.... MUET, the absolutely horrid paper that most people died in.. on the other hand, I don't really think much of its standard. The weird coincidence was tat a passage in Reading Comphrehension talked about Rabindranath Tagore, Nobel Literature Laureate 1913. I discovered soon after the test ended that Saturday, April 30, was the late Tagore's birthday. Conincidence? Maybe not...

Just yesterday we were treated to a laughfest with Mr.Tio fumbling with numbers..... to quote:

"Do you know what quota is? Let me give you an example.... next year you go into university you will have ...."

He then went on to write 50 35 15 on the board, then mentioned another probability

60 35 15

The class then laughed at him as 60+35+15 would make 110% ... He then realised his error and then spun around to change the values....

"I think the in neh neh only 10%"

That would still make 105%. After another change to 60 30 10, he gave up and concluded that should be right.... Talk about Kelenga Sciao :P