Where's My Noose?

Oh good, the damned thing is finally up.

noreply@blogger.com (Jeffrey Hardy Quah) — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 12:43:00 +0000

For even more information of what it is I'm spending my time on these days, go here. I'm quite pleased with how the whole site turned out, myself. While you're at it, check out my company's website as well, of which I also had a considerable hand in, hah! (Thanks also to Daniel, Ben, Wooi Leng, Richard, Agnes and of course website designer Khoo Teng Hooi. Couldn't have done it without them.)

So yeah, no point hiding it anymore, I guess. I'm the assistant editor of Penang Economic Monthly, a 64-page magazine about socio-economic issues relating to Penang. Distributed and sold nationwide, with a cover price of RM10. Surely you've heard of us. (...right?) I do... whatever it is assistant editors do, plus quite a bit of writing. No ranty-political drivel, no matter how much you or I might miss it. Quite a bit of travelling (at least initially), plus meeting some pretty interesting people for interviews and such as well. It's a pretty sweet gig, and though my dream job is still making comics that have tons of explosions in them, I'm quite pleased with where I am right now.

So, yeah, the blogging thing. No, it's not quite dead yet. I actually thought it was, until I happened to go to Blogger. They've got some funky new designs that I really like and just had to try out. I like how it looks now, simple and no-nonsense, but still easy on the eyes. We'll see how it goes.

For now though, the majority of my non-professional writing is done on... Twitter! I know, I never thought I'd do it, either. Never got the feel for it the first time I used it, but now it's ridiculously addictive. Plus everything you write has to be short and sweet, so there's much less pressure to churn out the essays I usually indulge myself in. Forces you to be concise. I like that challenge. That's pretty much where my train of thought is these days.

Met the chief engineer of Penang Bridge the other day with my boss. Interesting guy; he and his wife are very generous people. One of my favourite things he told us was that the projected budget of the bridge had been RM800 million. By the time they finished, it ended up at RM740 million. Imagine that happening today.

We interrupt this extended period of non-blogging to bring you some shameless self-promotion

noreply@blogger.com (Jeffrey Hardy Quah) — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 08:53:00 +0000

Because some loser got himself published on Malaysian Insider:

It was a Thursday, and Loh-Lim Lin Lee was buying fruit in the Penang Botanic Gardens. The next thing she knew, a man drove up to her on a motorcycle and began scolding her furiously in Hokkien: “How did you allow these monstrosities to be built?” He gestured, but Loh-Lim knew exactly what he was talking about.

Okay, technically it's an article from my gig at Penang Economic Monthly, cross-published at Insider because they have, like, x1000000000 our readership at PEM, but who's counting, right?

April Uprising

noreply@blogger.com (Jeffrey Hardy Quah) — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 13:35:00 +0000

I'm a huge John Butler Trio fan, and it felt like this album was taking forever to come out. This is the first album John Butler's done with his new lineup, ostensibly because he was looking for a different sound, and mission accomplished, it does sound a lot different from his previous stuff. Not to knock on Michael Barker and Shannon Birchall, those two are great fucking musicians, but Butler's meshed pretty well with new drummer Nicky Bomba (who's actually his brother-in-law and was Butler's original drummer way back when) and bassist Byron Luiters.

April Uprising's easily John Butler's most polished work to date. Gone are the overindulgent guitar solos; brother's no longer concerned with showing off how great a guitar player he is, and is actually being a bit more adventurous with his music. There are all kinds of styles at work here, townhall, reggae, country, even rock (he's playing the electric guitar for the first time on a studio album). You can tell he's been challenging himself quite a bit, yet the album still feels like three guys just jamming in someone's home studio and throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks. I love that. I love how he switches gears so effortlessly, from the fast, fun rock stylings of "One Way Road", to subtle politics of "Johnny's Gone", to the genuinely brilliant desperation of "Take Me". I love watching (or in this case, hearing) growth, whether it's from my favourite writers or musicians.

"Close to You". It could have been a typical preachy John Butler song from five years ago, a humourless rage against The Man. But that was the old JB. There's a fun, uncharacteristic rock vibe, and it does sound like a rage at first, which makes the sentimentality of the lyrics a pleasant surprise. There's a funky hook at around the three-minute mark of the song that I just can't get enough of.

Which isn't to say that John Butler's suddenly transformed into the Brandon Flowers of hippie songwriting or anything. I mean, check out this first single from the new album:

"It's never enough because they can't relate
To the real world, thinking that the oyster is just for the pearl"

Now that's the John Butler I remember. But you forgive him, because it's such a goddamned fun song.

There are one or two missteps here and there. "To Look Like You" is... I mean, I like it, don't get me wrong, but I don't know if a 34-year-old hippie should be singing about what it's like to be a teenage girl. (It's a song about body image issues and is actually quite decent, but still.) Overall, though, April Uprising's a triumph for Butler, who's come a long way from busking on the streets of Fremantle. I could listen to this album over and over every day (and, in fact, I am). It's his best work yet, and really a testament to what you can do when you've reached the top of the mountain, but aren't content with resting on your laurels, and want to reach for the sky.

In which I put on my Captain Obvious hat

noreply@blogger.com (Jeffrey Hardy Quah) — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 12:58:00 +0000

You know what I really like about my KL trips? Not having to deal with stupid office bullshit.

Unfortunately, stupid office bullshit never go away; they're just patiently waiting for you to come back fresh and re-energised, then they ambush you, pulverising your spirit once more to that they can lick your sweet, sweet tears.

Since I've never been an anonymous blogger, it's kinda hard to bitch about work stuff here in really explicit terms, but I'll try to be discreet. Basically, we had a charity concert thingy last night, which the company was preparing for the last couple of weeks, basically making everyone work the phones, design posters, carry furniture, etc.

Now, I was in KL for the magazine work, so I got out of most of the preparation stuff, and I got back to Penang just in time for the thing itself. Before yesterday though, I've been hearing rumblings from a couple of co-workers about how everything was going to hell and people were yelling at each other, etc. It sounded pretty bad, to the point where I was mildly surprised to see the office building still standing, and not torched in the righteous inferno of the Revolution.

Everything came to a boiling point yesterday. Long story short, tables were slammed and people brought to tears. This isn't just a typical "everyone snaps once in a while when the pressure's on"; people simply didn't like each other. The soprano we brought in for the show happily sang on for the audience, oblivious to the little meltdown happening indoors.

Other than that little hiccup, the concert went shockingly well. People seemed to be enjoying themselves, and I didn't have to do any literal heavy lifting after all, which is always nice. Blood will probably be spilled at the inevitable function post-mortem, though. They won't directly involve me, thankfully, but it's going to suck just sitting through it.

Marie's right: the really, really sucky thing about office politics is that they're so emotionally draining. Someone's always trying to screw someone, and you don't need to be the screwee to be emotionally invested in whatever's going on. No one likes to hear about how A is getting fucked over by B because of something C said. You come to work to work, not to get fucked because the office made the mistake of hiring a sociopath.

Singapore

noreply@blogger.com (Jeffrey Hardy Quah) — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 16:16:00 +0000

The last time I visited Singapore was 16 years ago, during a school field trip in the last days of my primary school years. Don't remember much about it, other than that it was okay. I did stop by Singapore a few years ago in transit from Penang to Melbourne, and did a day trip thingy, but that hardly counts, does it?

Anyway, after purchasing RM360 of now-worthless Killers concert tickets and RM240 in flight tickets, I ended up spending the weekend in Singapore following people around shopping. Which actually isn't nearly as bad as it might sound.

I got more exercise than I ever did in the past year just by walking around.

Oh, and comics. I bought a fucking library's worth of comics. Fuck me, have you seen the size of their Kinokuniya? The one in Orchard Road. Ho-lee shit. I could honestly spend half the day there, if I could get away with it. I thought I was in heaven. Their graphic novels selection certainly has a much wider variety than ours (which actually is pretty solid to begin with). The Kino in Bugis isn't nearly as impressive - quite pathetic, in fact, but then I happened to find Absolute Comics right next to it and that was impressive. I think I bought way more comics than I paid for the tickets.

Oh, and we stopped by Clarke Quay Saturday night. Upon which we did this:

Followed immediately by this:

(These aren't videos of me, by the way, as far as I know no one took any vids. But take my word for it anyway.)

The first one, the Slingshot, actually isn't so bad, mainly because you're staring up at the sky and not the ground. I didn't care for the constant bobbing in mid-air, but other than that it was fun.

The second one, the Xtreme Swing, should be classified as torture and banned under the Geneva Convention.

I have no idea how high up we were (though looking at that video, the answer is "probably pretty fucking high", but how it works is that they position the car parallel to the ground, and you're staring down at the ground as you're slowly pulling backwards and up. So you get to see the entire world shrink away from you as you go up higher... and higher... and higher. Seriously, I couldn't recognise anyone on the ground by the time we reached the peak. (Though that might be because they made me take off my glasses.)

The exact moment my entire body weight started to rest on my chest straps was when I came this close to wetting myself. I'm not proud of it, but I'd like to see you handle it with any semblance of dignity. Okay, Leanne (the only other person in our group who went up, after everyone else, including Kean (food poisoning my ass), chickened out) handled it a lot better than I did. She's got ice water running through her veins, that one. Me, I barely saved my membership in the Manliness Club by not bursting into tears. Barely.

Unlike the Slingshot, we actually get to pull the lever once we're up. Shirley, a nice Indian girl who coincidentally also came down for the Killers concert, ended up pulling the thing. We warned her to let us know when she'll be pulling it, under pain of an ass kicking. The drop was nearly as bad as being stuck up there - I actually screamed like a girl as the ground rose up. Screams turned to desperate laughter, because if we didn't laugh we'd fucking cry right there and then.

There are Facebook pics out there of me looking either bug-eyed or pretty damn pale. No, I'm not linking them, you go find them yourself.

In any case, we survived, and I honestly didn't think I had it in me to go up at all, so, er, that ought to make up for nearly wetting myself going up, right? Or literally having nightmares that same night about chest straps disappearing and me falling down to the ground, right? Right?

Crap.

Ah, screw it. I went up, you didn't. HAH.

Leave the bourbon on the shelf.

noreply@blogger.com (Jeffrey Hardy Quah) — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 08:01:00 +0000

I was looking forward to The Killers in Singapore this Sunday. I really was. I mean, when I was first asked to go, I only heard, like, one song from them (the "I got soul but I'm not a soldier" one, which remains one of the best-loved lines in a song that is also utterly meaningless), but I thought, okay, why not? I then spent the next month-plus listening to all their albums and memorising their lyrics so that I wouldn't look out of place in a mosh pit. I worked hard at it. Then, after two weeks of tiring production work in KL, I have a whole weekend in Singapore plus my first concert in years! Yay, right?

The gods, they mock me.

All sorts of rumours are flying about right now, and I know a lot of people who are literally in tears about this. Me, I was disappointed at first. Now I'm just pissed. Fuck you, Killers, The. I hope you lot get caught with a ton of drugs and have to do Celebrity Rehab or something. (I'm well into the second stage of grief, as you can tell.)

Meanwhile, I guess this is the closest I'll ever get to a Killers gig:

Sigh.

How they have fallen

noreply@blogger.com (Jeffrey Hardy Quah) — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 05:16:00 +0000

Or: Mahathir has turned into a goddamn idiot. Or maybe he's always been like this, but everyone was too scared of indefinite detention without trial to say anything.

Also, I've been accused of being an Obama shill (why ever would people think that?), but this annoys the hell out of me almost as much as the insane 9/11 conspiracy theories:

“Well, I am a bit disappointed because so far none of his promises have been kept. He promised to get out from Afghanistan but he ended up sending more troops there instead. He promised to close down Guantanamo but he has not closed down Guantanamo. Even other things he has not been able to do."

Okay, firstly, Obama's never promised to get out of Afghanistan. NEVER. Iraq, yes. Afghanistan, nope. Believe me, I followed his campaign very closely in '08. Also, the Guantanamo thing is a stupid thing that got shut down by stupid, scared, corrupt Senators, but that's a whole other thing.

But seriously, Mahathir, you're a goddamn idiot.

Just when I thought I was out, they drag me back in.

noreply@blogger.com (Jeffrey Hardy Quah) — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 15:03:00 +0000

A lot of people have been bugging me to hear my thoughts on the whole "Allah" thing. Which is both flattering and kinda weird, but okay. So here goes: I don't really care either way.

Oh, don't get me wrong, I think firebombing churches are stupid and very close to being acts of terrorism when you think about it. (If you're a Muslim in the West and you're throwing Molotov cocktails at churches, then it will be terrorism. Trust me on this.) Actually, okay, this is the part about the controversy that I genuinely care about: I desperately wish we Muslims could protest over something we don't like and not look like insane people. Is that too much to ask?

But use it, don't use it, who gives a shit, really. Yes, a lot of people, including those whose opinions I usually respect and really should know better, like to say that it's a conspiracy to confuse young Muslims or whatever. Which is fucking retarded, because there are already laws against converting Muslims in this country.

There's the sense of ownership issue, in which "Allah" belongs to Muslims and nowhere else. Except for all the historical evidence that suggests that the word "Allah" actually predates Islam. Except that technically it's not the same Allah. It's complicated.

All of which is utterly pointless and I really could not care less. Except that I've already written 200-plus words and counting, so, er, I guess I do on some level. But anyway. Use "Allah", don't use it. What do I care?

Though I do find it amusing that so many people are suddenly caring about the issue and saying that they should have the right to use the word "Allah", when no one cared until now. Tell people they can't do something, they'll scream at the top of their lungs for their right to do it. Look at me for example. I didn't want to write about this at all, until my mom pointed a finger at me and warned me not to write about it. So I sure showed her!

(I'm so, so sorry, Ma.)

And another thing that annoys me about this: it puts me in a position to agree with Mahathir. International press hasn't been kind to Malaysia over this issue, and they shouldn't be. But Switzerland bans minarets and no one so much as shook a fist in outrage. As a Muslim, that annoys me. Though Mahathir naturally avoids the subject of people firebombing churches. Which is a pretty Mahathir thing to do, actually. Something bad happens in Malaysia, wag your finger at the West, then ignore the problem completely.

But a dialogue probably needs to be done. There's an extreme disconnect, I'm noticing, between Muslims and non-Muslims over this issue. (All anecdotal evidence with no scientific merit, of course.) I hate to say this, but while Muslims can certainly try to chill a little bit and not get all outrage-y all the time, I don't think non-Muslims are doing enough to understand Malay Muslims. To them it's just a word. To a lot of Malays, it's so much more than that.

(523 words. I must really not care about this.)

Ugh.

noreply@blogger.com (Jeffrey Hardy Quah) — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 09:44:00 +0000

This. Not so much surprising as it is just eye-rollingly backward. I'd even venture to use a big word like "anachronistic" just to show off, except that, well, when we see so many decisions similar to this with regards to Islam and Malaysian women, that word just doesn't quite fit anymore, does it?

The Syariah High Court here ordered Manohara Odelio Pinot to be loyal and pay back RM1,112,250 owed to her husband, Tengku Muhammad Fakhry Sultan Ismail Petra, the Tengku Temenggong of Kelantan.

"The plaintiff was a perfect husband and the question of torture does not arise. As such, the defendant has no reason to act in such a manner," he said.

Missing from the judgment is an expectation that the wife get dinner ready by the time the husband gets back from a hard day's work of being royalty. Also:

Asked whether he was hopeful that Manohara would be loyal to him, Tengku Muhammad Fakhry replied; "Certainly".

Sorry, ladies, he's taken!

Awwww.

noreply@blogger.com (Jeffrey Hardy Quah) — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 02:54:00 +0000

Baloo and Shere Khan chillin' out. (Those are their actual names, and this is an actual zoo.)

Continuing Adventures in Hotel Sucky

noreply@blogger.com (Jeffrey Hardy Quah) — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 13:25:00 +0000

So I accidentally locked myself out of my room this morning. No problem, I thought as I took the elevator down to the lobby. I'll just show them some ID and they'll get me a new key. But previous experiences here started making me a little dubious about how smoothly it would really go. How much of a fuss would they put up to make sure that I'm who I'm saying I am and that I wasn't trying to sneak into someone else's room?

"Hi, I'm from Room ***, I locked myself out."

"No problem, here you go."

Now I'm not entirely sure if I should be pleased with the quick, painless service, or worried that the front desk just gave me a hotel room key without checking to find out who I was. I suppose they could have seen me around before, but still!

Okay, maybe I'm complaining way too much. But next time, I'm not leaving my 20-carat diamond collection behind anymore.

More on Hotel Sucky

noreply@blogger.com (Jeffrey Hardy Quah) — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 13:53:00 +0000

It is seven minutes to 10pm. I had gotten back from work less than an hour ago. Okay, had dinner with some co-workers, but still. Was tired, a little fried, very much looking forward to a nice hot shower. I mean, missing cup noodles aside, surely the hotel couldn't screw that up, right?

I opened the bathroom door and found myself staring at an empty towel rack.

Guys, at some point you've got to at least pretend to try, you know?

Chee Beng Kean...

noreply@blogger.com (Jeffrey Hardy Quah) — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 17:05:00 +0000

...would like to know where his fucking money is, asshole.

Incoherent Stream of Consciousness

noreply@blogger.com (Jeffrey Hardy Quah) — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 16:55:00 +0000

It's 12.39am and I'm tired and I have work in the morning, but I don't wanna sleep. Outside my window hundreds of cars are zipping back and forth in the Federal Highway. I see skyscrapers in the distance, their lights still turned on. There's another life happening right this very minute while everyone else is sleeping. I want to reach out and touch it, let myself get sucked into that other world.

But it's 12.43am and I'm still here typing/rambling away, with nothing but cold Kenny Rogers leftovers, a glass of Coke and hot instant cup noodles to keep me company, The Killers blaring in the background. I'm tired and vaguely annoyed but not sure at what and that's annoying me even more.

12.46am. It's almost like I'm waiting/expecting/hoping something to change, but all that's happening are my fingers tapping away on elegantly-designed Vaio keyboards and Brandon Flowers screaming away. I'm getting more and more annoyed, and I don't know why.

"I don't wanna be kept, I don't wanna be caged, I don't wanna be damned, oh hell"

It is 12.50am. I'm still in the same exact position I was 11 minutes ago. Everything's the same, and nothing's changed.

Shit.

Seriously? Of all the things you could grab you pick that?

noreply@blogger.com (Jeffrey Hardy Quah) — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 16:08:00 +0000

Ahh, KL. Back here for more work stuff; we've set production time for our magazine at two weeks, and hopefully we can cut it to one by the next ish.

I can actually see myself living here. I never thought of myself as a KL person, but there seems to be so much more life here. Penang is so blek these days, with highrises popping up at the least appropriate places. At least you expect highrises in KL. The people I work with are smart and friendly, and traveling around the city is so much easier with a GPS it almost feels like cheating. Though one time I followed the GPS's route from Tropicana to Solaris Mont Kiara, and I found myself in the North-South Highway, looking at a helpful signboard telling me which direction Sungai Buloh was.

Cons of permanently moving to KL (if that ever happens, which hardly seems likely at this stage) is of course leaving friends and family behind. Yeah, you can make new friends, but starting over from scratch has never been easy, at least for me, and I'm pretty shit at meeting new people. Which... would pretty much be the same scenario if I ever move back to Melbourne, come to think of it. Goddamnit.

Pros of temporarily working in KL: Company puts you up in a hotel, albeit a cheap one, and you're working more or less unsupervised, not in a dusty cubicle all day while dealing with endless meetings and office politics. There's a bit more pressure with that lack of supervision, but it's also very freeing.

Cons: the hotel I'm staying at is THE WORST GODDAMN HOTEL IN KL. I mean, there are at least two lamps that aren't working due to power socket failure, a front desk and room service centre that take forever to pick up the damn phone, and housekeeping is, arggh. I'm still too pissed off to be coherent. I found one of my brand new books a little mashed. Oh, and one day I bought some instant cup noodles for supper, left them in the hotel in a plastic bag by the corner, and when I came back later that night from work THEY WERE GONE.

Motherfucker. I have half a mind to fill in their customer review questionnaire. You know, the one that they'll just ignore in the end.

Had dinner with Zai and his wife Ulfah last week. I think it was the first time I'd seen them in person since... shit, their wedding a couple of years ago. Their daughter was born around this time last year. They looked like they hadn't slept in years. Suckers. Kidding, lovely people.

KL. Sigh. Decisions, decisions...

Saturday Night Music Video

noreply@blogger.com (Jeffrey Hardy Quah) — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 12:18:00 +0000

It's Saturday night and it's raining out. Ugh.

"My Favorite Things" by Pomplamoose.

The end of the world looks so pretty

noreply@blogger.com (Jeffrey Hardy Quah) — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 16:32:00 +0000

Daniel watched 2012 with his mom last night. He took MC from work today.

Was it that bad?

Well, I had extremely low expectations to begin with, so I ended up being reasonably entertained. Hey, when a movie promises to blow up the world and delivers exactly that, you can't be too mad at it, can you?

It's a Roland Emmerich film; you know what to expect by this point. (And what you expect not to see are subtlety, moderation and logic.) Shit blows up, in expensive-looking CGI, in increasingly ridiculous ways. (The moment the aircraft carrier scene happened, I wish Danny Glover's character would've said, "I really fucking hate symbolism." You'll understand why when you see it.) Plus, I'm a big fan of Chiwetel Ejiofor ever since he nearly stole the movie from Nathan Fillion's hands in Serenity, and he's pretty much the soul of 2012. (Sorry, John Cusack.) Seriously, if you expected anything, I dunno, substantive out of this movie, you're an idiot. (That criticism doesn't apply to Transformers 2, which is objectively shit, I don't care how much money it's made.)

Overall: I'd pay maybe RM8 for this movie.

We're so screwed.

noreply@blogger.com (Jeffrey Hardy Quah) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:12:00 +0000

Why? Because it turns out that we don't have nearly as much oil as we've been led to believe:

In particular, the allegations cast a shadow on the prediction in the last World Economic Outlook, believed to be repeated again this year, that oil production can be raised from its present level of 83 million barrels a day to 105 million.

External critics have frequently said this cannot be substantiated by firm evidence and that the world has already passed its peak in oil production. Now the ''peak oil'' theory is gaining support at the heart of the global energy establishment.

''The IEA in 2005 was predicting oil supplies could rise as high as 120 million barrels a day by 2030, although it was forced to reduce this gradually to 116 million and then 105 million last year,'' said the IEA source, who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals inside the industry.

''The 120 million figure always was nonsense but even today's number is much higher than can be justified and the IEA knows this.

Malaysia's oil reserves will last for just another 20 years. Worldwide reserves... well, it looks like we can't trust the official figures anymore, if the whistleblower turns out to be right. Solar tech is advancing rapidly, but even then it'll be another 50 years till it gets to the point where it can start to replace our oil dependence, if not longer.

I've started to revise my previous anti-nuclear stance. It looks like we'll need nuclear tech after all, if only in the short to medium term, until alternatives prove more viable. The problem with nuclear power plants is that they're too big, too damn expensive and too dangerous. Hundreds of millions to build, an additional hundreds of millions a year to maintain... plus Malaysia doesn't exactly have a good record with maintaining standards. Present nuclear plants are just too heavily entrenched in the Cold War model, and not what we need now. We need a new kind of nuclear power plant, one that's relatively cheaper, causes less havoc on the environment, and less easily weaponised. As hard science fiction writer Charles Stross points out, nuclear technology had the bad luck of being discovered right around the time a major war was brewing.

Will we ever get to the point where widespread, peaceful applications of nuclear tech is possible? We might be closer than you'd think: India is preparing to export plutonium-free nuclear reactors to other countries.

Found: 50,000 soldiers

noreply@blogger.com (Jeffrey Hardy Quah) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 06:20:00 +0000

Morbidity aside, this is a pretty breathtaking find:

The remains of a mighty Persian army said to have drowned in the sands of the western Egyptian desert 2,500 years ago might have been finally located, solving one of archaeology's biggest outstanding mysteries, according to Italian researchers.

Bronze weapons, a silver bracelet, an earring and hundreds of human bones found in the vast desolate wilderness of the Sahara desert have raised hopes of finally finding the lost army of Persian King Cambyses II. The 50,000 warriors were said to be buried by a cataclysmic sandstorm in 525 B.C.

"We have found the first archaeological evidence of a story reported by the Greek historian Herodotus," Dario Del Bufalo, a member of the expedition from the University of Lecce, told Discovery News.

(Via.)

Eye over Mars

noreply@blogger.com (Jeffrey Hardy Quah) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 13:52:00 +0000

Courtesy of The Big Picture, false colour and greyscale images of the Red Planet:

Sigh. Why can't we visit weird alien landscapes? More here.

Brain drain

noreply@blogger.com (Jeffrey Hardy Quah) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 07:32:00 +0000

Okay, so Malaysia's brain drain problem is starting to bite us in the ass. Actually, it's already been bit many, many times over the years, but this might be the first tangible case that'd make people sit up and take notice.

Of annoyance is Gerakan's Wan Sun Keong, who keeps harping on about how Penang produces "6,000 engineering graduates" a year. I don't know if those figures are true, but even if they are, that's not the point. The point is that we're producing 6,000 engineering grads a year, and an MNC took a look at them and said, "Not good enough" and walked away.

Fact: we're losing Malaysians every year. 40 percent of overseas Malaysians are in Singapore, including a couple of MPs. Opportunities to grow are extremely hard to come by, and there's way too much red tape that gets in the way. Sheena can regale you guys numerous horror stories about trying to make it as a doctor in Malaysia. (But only when you buy her a drink.)

Plus that engineering thing? Malaysia has one of the, if not the lowest number of patents produced in the region. You know why? We don't have people to do the R&D work, but even when we do, the patents go overseas. Why? Red tape. Do you know how long it takes for a patent to get approved in Singapore? One year. Do you know how long it takes for a patent to get approved in Malaysia?

Three years.

The tax structure thing the article floats at the end isn't going to cut it, not on its own. There are much deeper, more fundamental issues involved, most of which involves the fact that Malaysia is a crappy place to grow talent.

I almost wish I could frame this comment

noreply@blogger.com (Jeffrey Hardy Quah) — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 12:07:00 +0000

I usually don't bother addressing comments made on old posts, never mind posts from almost two years ago, since they're usually critical and insulting at a time when no one else would be reading them and be ready to call on their bullshit. But this is just too precious to pass up. If you didn't click on the link, the post in question was referring to a case in Saudi Arabia where a woman who was gang-raped was sentenced to be lashed repeatedly.

Two years after I made that post, I got this comment from Anonymous:

ok lesson i dont know whats your problem with saudi arabia but lesson have you ever wonderd why saudi womens wear that black and we call it (abbaya) we wear it to protect our selves cause our women is like i dimond not a segret we are protected we are not a segret any one can smoke and when he finesh he throw her and thats ok for you selling womens having money for sex we have a degnty and if i give you two kind of choclaits one of them is clean and covered and the other is open and dirty tell me wich one you will gonna choose iam pretty shore you will choose the clean and covered one and stop talking about freedom cause this is our freedom we choose it and thats what we want cause we feel save and btw iam from saudi arabia and iam proud to be saudi

I like that he goes on a bizarre rant that is only tangentially related to the topic in question. I love how he inexplicably compares women to cigarettes and chocolates. I love that he talks about how much he's proud to be a Saudi, but after spending all that time writing this comment, never actually talks about the woman who was sentenced to be punished for being raped.

Most of all, I love that he never uses a full stop, not even once. Please, read that again and bask in its glorious brilliance.

My poor babies

noreply@blogger.com (Jeffrey Hardy Quah) — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 12:44:00 +0000

I will likely have more to say about my weekend in Langkawi (short answer: WOOOO!!), but I will say this: whenever people talk about parasailing, no one ever, ever, mentions the fact that it has the curious side effect of crushing your balls.

Crushing disappointment.

noreply@blogger.com (Jeffrey Hardy Quah) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 10:26:00 +0000

Log on to Gmail account.

See a link to "Reuters: Oddly Enough - Free honeymoons to halt divorce rate?".

Click on link.

Please don't be Malaysia, please don't be Malaysia, please don't be Malaysia...

...

GOD DAMN IT.

The stupid, it burns

noreply@blogger.com (Jeffrey Hardy Quah) — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 14:03:00 +0000

Puteri UMNO has decided they don't like how they're being treated and demand to be taken seriously:

Its chief Rosnah Abdul Rashid Shirlin said Puteri must prove that it is not merely a cosmetic job and that it is not only good at canvassing for votes during elections.

"Please don't sideline us when it comes to bigger things. We want to be on equal footing with Umno Youth and Wanita Umno.

"We want to fly with wings just like them and become the backbone of a house which stands tall without nails," she said in her maiden policy address at its general assembly today.

Okay, fair enough. You may be UMNO scum, but I'm willing to give you a chance. Go:

The call was contained in one of the motions that were passed without debate at the movement’s general assembly on Wednesday. “In view of widespread screening of movies with ghosts, superstitious and mystical elements, we urge the Government to empower Jakim to ban their production as they do not carry any positive message, but instead may destroy the faith,” it said. The movement also called on the Government to issue a similar ban on all foreign movies of such genres. It said film producers should concentrate on producing films of different genres that could serve as lessons, rather than show horror and superstitious ones which might not even deliver the intended messages.