The Department of Islamic Development (JAKIM) recently launched an online poll to gauge public opinion about the controversy over the the caning of women for adultery. It’s an issue that has seen The Star, Malaysia’s largest English daily, having its license threatened because they dared print an article discussing it, and caused Marina Mahathir’s regular column to be censored over it.
The poll is reproduced below:
Wajarkah lelaki & wanita muslim yang melakukan kesalahan minum arak & persetubuhan luar nikah dikenakan hukuman sebatan mengikut peruntukan undang-undang jenayah syariah.
(Is it appropriate for Muslim men and women who are guilty of drinking alcohol or extra-marital sex to be caned as per Syariah law)?
The results were as you might imagine, seeing as netizens tend to be urban and more highly educated. That and the link to the poll was being widely circulated on Facebook and Twitter. Unscientific Malaysia has a thread with varied discussion on the poll. The votes for Tak Wajar (Not appropriate) were initially ahead, e.g. 98 Wajar and 150 Tak Wajar . But suspiciously, the votes for Wajar (Appropriate) burst ahead a few hours later.
This trend continued through the day: the votes for Tak Wajar would slowly climb up, but when you checked back a while later Wajar would be solidly ahead.
So I wrote a quick script to pull the poll results every few minutes, and it seems like JAKIM isn’t above a little ballot-stuffing.
This was the poll at 11:26, when I started out. 400 votes for Wajar and 256 for Tak Wajar:
11:26:
20 minutes later at 11:42, Tak Wajar had climbed to 260:
11:42:
3 minutes later at 11:45, Wajar shoots up to 532 instantly (conveniently, exactly double the Tak Wajar votes).:
11:45:
Word started getting out on Facebook and Twitter, and the Tak Wajars rallied. The scoreboard at hourly intervals from 12:00-17:00:
12:00:
13:00:
14:00:
15:00:
16:00:
17:00:
But then a miracle happens!
At 17:12 the Tak Wajars stood comfortably at 1544 vs 992 for the Wajars. But then Wajar gets another mysterious boost of 500 votes at 17:14:
17:12:
17:14:
Of course this still leaves the Wajars behind, so more miracles happen. The standings at 17:30 are 1493 for the Wajars, but at 17:32 they get another 200 votes, and another 100 or so a few minutes later:
17:30:
17:32:
17:34:
But things still seem pretty close! No matter, as we can see by the snapshots at 17:42 and 17:44. 500 more phantom votes for JAKIM:
17:42:
17:44:
The fun doesn’t stop with another 500 votes falling from heaven at 17:52 to 17:54, bringing the tally to 2818 Wajar vs 1930 Tak Wajar :
17:52:
17:54:
The standings at the time of writing are 2824 for Wajar and 2000 for Tak Wajar. Anyone want to take out a bet on the poll winner?
Online polls by political parties are not new. Neither is it new for online poll results to be ignored – When MCA President Ong Tee Keat put up an online poll asking if MCA should pull out of BN, the poll was taken down after 78% of respondents voted a resounding yes. When the Government reverted the teaching of Maths and Science from English to Malay, a poll on Dr. Mahathir’s blog had more than 70% of people disagreeing with the decision.
Neither do I claim that online polls are reliable – as even TIME magazine famously found out.
But for a Government agency to blatantly cheat on their own polls? With the URL www.islam.gov.my no less? For shame! At best, this is mischief – at worst, sinister.
After all, this is not a “Do you like this site” poll where one can at least give the excuse that one does not want to look bad. It is a poll on whether or not to implement the caning of females, something even most of Malaysia’s Muslim peers don’t do. Isn’t it contradictory for our self-proclaimed moral police to cheat when seeking public opinion? And why put up a poll when you are not serious about getting responses?
It seems that JAKIM is simply itching to start caning and policing private behaviour, and there’s nothing they won’t do to justify it.
[Update]
Just to clarify why it’s likely that the poll was rigged, and not some diehard clearing their cookies and refreshing the browser, which probably happened on both sides. The jumps are all in 100, 200, 500 increments (and one instance early on where it was exactly double). The odds are that if someone outside JAKIM were putting in fake votes, the increments wouldn’t be so neat.
[Update 2]
Yoon Kit provided a graph that illustrates the trend, Wajar votes are the cyan line:
Wilz took the raw data and makes a prediction of what the votes should have been like.
[Update 3] As I realize it will never possible to prove with 100% certainty that it was manipulated (although I believe it was), I’ve updated the title to reflect this. Malaysiakini’s Chinese edition has picked up the story.
[Update 4] Malaysiakini’s English edition has picked up the story too, with denials from JAKIM.
Also see: Religion, Morality and How it Divides: The Tamarin Study.
Tags: caning, caning controversy, cheating, government, islam, JAKIM, Malaysia, morality, poll, Religion, syariah, unmalaysia, unscientific malaysia
Valentine’s Day
More than a mere date flick, Valentine’s Day realizes it can turn a profit on recycled plotlines as long as you throw enough big names at it (Carol pointed out that the star billings on the poster are in alphabetical order).
That said, it does make for a decent date night. One of those movies you’ll forget the minute you walk out of the cinema, and where the stars overshadow their characters. 5/10
Hot Summer Days
If I recall, the trailer for Hot Summer Days actually showed during the Valentine’s Day screening, which was apt because it’s pretty much a Mandarin/Cantonese version.
The difference is that the big stars pulled in for Hot Summer Days put in meaningful performances, and the storylines are as fresh as the weather was hot – and this coming from me, the ultimate banana who had to rely on subtitles to watch it.
The SMS romance between a cab driver (Jacky Cheung) and a pianist turned foot masseuse (Rene Liu) is especially endearing and would be worth a movie on its own. There’s also a little part straight out of Reader’s Digest where a little girl asks her busy father how much he earns per hour, and borrows money to buy an hour of his time. I’d read it before, but seeing it on screen still brought a gulp to my throat.
Nicholas Tse is also stellar as a air-conditioner repairman chasing a biker chick with a heart of gold (Barbie Hsu). “Chasing” here being also literal, his worn motorbike cannot keep up with her scooter until he starts raking in the cash because of the hot weather.
The only story arc I thought a bit weak was the one with Vivian Hsu as a lady in love with a sushi master (Daniel Wu). But this only because she looked too good in the role :).
More than a date movie, Hot Summer Days is a a tribute to love. 8/10
Drunken Master II (HD)
I actually went on a Jackie Chan marathon over CNY and Drunken Master II was just something I felt I had to highlight. High definition + Jackie Chan in his prime = unadulterated G-rated entertainment.
Rewatching it after all these years made me appreciate just how sublime a movie it was. Jackie Chan as “Wong Fei Hung” in Drunken Master II (who was then 40, although he played a much younger character) was a far cry from Jackie Chan in Spy Next Door. You could just feel the energy and enthusiasm in the fight scenes. Jackie was also fortunate to have a good supporting cast in the film, with Ti Lung (who was only a few years older than Jackie) giving us a lesson in Chinese culture in his portrayal of a strict, wise Wong Kei-ying. Anita Mui as Fei Hung’s mother pretty much carried the comedy parts in the film, I miss her.
Zombieland
Zombie movies appear with annoying regularity, but the comedy Zombieland isn’t just tolerable, it’s actually quite entertaining. Columbus, Tallahassee, Wichita and Little Rock (as the world’s population has turned into zombies, it seems there is no longer a need for names. One’s place of origin or destination suffices) are four unlikely travelling companions who learn to live their lives in the middle of a zombie holocaust.
The little-known Jesse Eisenberg leads as Columbus, a socially-challenged college student whose isolation helped him survive the zombification that has befallen (nearly) the rest of the known world. The rules he has come up with to survive in a world of zombies are a running gag and pop up regularly: 1) Cardio, 2) Double tap, 3) Beware of bathrooms, 4) Wear seatbelts, to name a few. Much hilarity ensures as he teams up with an eccentric gunslinger Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson) and two cynical sisters in a search for a zombie-free home.
This being a zombie flick, you’ll see gore galore, but the light-hearted take on romance and discovery amid the (very ample) zombie slaughtering makes this a worthy watch this year. 7/10
Lost: Season 6
Carol complained to me once (well okay, not once) that English series are “slow-moving”, being that in accordance with tried and tested capitalist principles the stories usually drag on and on, their seasons limited not by imagination but by how long their ratings hold out. In contrast TVB dramas typically only take one season for the evil twin brother to turn up, the main character’s father to be revealed as the evil villian and the hero to realize that his Best Friend is also the Love of His Life.
This generalization is quite broad of course, and shows like House MD are still excellent episode after episode, six years after their premieres. But then we have Lost, which started off strongly the first three seasons or so but jumped the shark when it introduced time travel as a way to explain all the goings on in the island. Where other shows might have gotten away with the time-travel device, the way Lost did it was just extreme deus ex machina. Not cool, man.
You know you really shouldn’t be watching a series any more when you no longer give a hoot about the “love triangle” subplot (seriously Kate, you deserve to be reborn in Utah) and you secretly hope for all of them to just die. And you get really annoyed by the recycled plot points:
- Ok I get it Sawyer can be intensely emo.
- What? A seeeecret temple? Really?
- A seeeecret temple guardian tribe? Really?
- A mysssteerioussss leader of said guardian temple tribe who speaks cryptically? You have got to be kidding me!
Of course this gives rise to the question “So why still watch it”, to which I would say I just have a need to see my years of investment give me a return no matter how sucky it is :(.
I don’t mind spoiling it here either, since I have it all figured out: obviously, the boring “side-flashes” this season will build up to The End where The Great Reveal will tell us that they in fact succeed in resetting time, and the side-flashes are in fact an epilogue. Am I smart or what??
That’s it for Feb 2010, here’s to hoping I get round to doing this next month too…
Tags: cinema, february 2010, hot summer days, jacky cheung, lost, lost season 6, lost season 6 finale ending, movies, rene liu, Reviews, series, valentine's day, zombieland
It struck me some time ago that the opening of Beauty and the Beast (at least the Disney version) was a little off. If you recall, the Prince turned away an ugly beggar woman who offered a rose to him in exchange for staying a his castle. She transformed into a beautiful fairy and cursed him into a Beast.
You have to wonder why the beggar woman had to turn into a “beautiful fairy”. Didn’t that mean beauty was just as important to the fairy as it was to the Prince? Who was she to judge?
Now take Shrek. Its parody ending – when the once-beautiful princess turned, not into a permanently beautiful princess, but into an ogre, proving that looks really didn’t matter – may have been mere comic to some, but the way I look at it, if I were to choose between Beauty and the Beast and Shrek, Shrek would impart the values I want my children to remember: practice what you preach!
If you think about it, the same applies to some religions. Many Christians (not all) believe for example that there will literally be mansions and crowns to enjoy in heaven, and streets and gates made of precious metal, which is a wee bit contradictory with the austerity that Jesus otherwise promoted. Ditto with the Prosperity Gospel that is popular in certain Christian circles where you are assured that God will reward you many times over should you donate to the church.
Same goes for other religions and their promise of virgins in heaven awaiting to pleasure you, also a contradiction to how obsessed they are with sexual repression while on earth.
But I would be unfair if I did not commend people like Gandhi or the teachings of Buddhism, where they are at least consistent.
Gandhi taught nonviolence – but didn’t go on to say that people who didn’t practice this would then be tortured for eternity or routed by a heavenly host.
Gandhi taught austerity – but didn’t go on to promise riches and comfort in the afterlife.
I think it is important to know where a moralist is coming from.
There is a vast difference between telling you that people have no need for material things because there are more important things in life, and telling you that people have no need for material things because you will get even more bling in the afterlife.
One is a true set of values; the other just delays what you really want to make yourself look good before Someone else.
Tags: beauty and the beast, buddhism, christianity, gandhi, moralists, prosperity gospel, Religion, shrek
Just a short note to share, if you haven’t seen these already. Sam Tsui and his producer Kurt Schneider became Internet sensations after their amazing vocal arrangement and visual tricks in “Michael Jackson Medley” was posted on Youtube. They even got a gig on Oprah recently! Awesomeness.
Michael Jackson Medley
Cover: Don’t Stop Believing (Journey)
Tags: Kurt Schneider, michael jackson, michael jackson medley, Sam Tsui
The Old Frees’ Association for Penang Free School alumni has a long history dating back to 1923. Most old boys will know it, especially those in Penang. It has its own association building with recreation halls and a fairly good public cafeteria which I used to visit regularly, and holds annual games with the students.
Driving along Kelawai Road recently, I happened to spot a Myvi bearing what I at first thought was an OFA sticker. Looking closer however I was appalled to find it actually said something else:
Ok I’m bad at photographing while driving, so here’s what the car sticker says:
The Old Frees’ Muslim Association! Complete with web site and Facebook group I might add.
I touched on the deterioration of the Old Lady and how Chinese students were now flocking to vernacular schools before the 2008 elections when Jawi signage was put up, but this is especially shocking. I still remember, as a PFS freshie, how at orientation it was stressed to me by the Prefect that brought me around that the “Free” in “Penang Free School” did not mean one did not need to pay for education, but rather that the school was founded on the ideals that it should be open for all.
What does the “Free” in “Penang Free School” mean, now that we have associations exclusively for Muslim alumni with their self-description stating:
…sumbangan terhadap sekolah adalah melalui peruntukan atau dana yang telah diluluskan untuk kebajikan pelajar-pelajar Muslim khasnya dan keseluruhan pelajar secara am-nya.(Contributions to the school are through provisions or donations that have been approved specifically for Muslim students and for the general population)
What’s happening here simply mirrors what we see in Malaysia though. Here’s how to run nearly two hundred years of tradition to the ground in ten years:
- After observing the phenomenon of non-Malays happening to become the majority in a select school – instead of striving to produce better Malay students, do away with standard instead so you can admit more Malay students. Then fall behind even schools that are less than 10 years old in PMR results.
- Put in place headmasters that have no attachment to the school (I went through three HMs; one of them didn’t even last a full year!), including some who can barely string together coherent English sentences [cache].
- Have religion divide a school founded on secular principles – ironically, Free School was proposed as a secular school so that Malay students would not feel they were being influenced by Christianity.
The Old Frees Muslim Association is an oxymoron. Come to think of it, so is the president of the United Malays National Organization promoting “1Malaysia”. You can feel Hutchings and Hargreaves turning over in their graves…
Tags: 1malaysia, ofa, ofma, penang free school, pfs, Religion
(pic from here)
Read this recently in The Star and I was flabbergasted.
The biggest gainers will be new inspectors who will get a starting salary of RM2,060 compared to RM1,492 previously. Diploma and STPM holders will also be allowed to join the force directly as sergeants and they will start with a basic salary of RM1,500. A sergeant’s basic salary previously was RM890.
I think most of us know our police force is paid very little, but I had no idea it was this little. It pretty much explains why we see corruption rampant in the police: if I were a policeman I’d honestly do it too, just to survive. If there’s one thing that’s true in this world, it’s that you get what you pay for. You want good cops you’d better make it worth their while.
What made me post this is a seemingly unrelated article I read today on The Malaysian Insider:
The Royal Malaysian Navy Chief today played down the significance of a defect on Malaysia’s first submarine — KD Tunku Abdul Rahman — which had prevented it from diving…The submarines were built at a cost of RM3.4 billion and ordered in 2002.
If you’ve forgotten, these RM3.4 billion subs are the same ones that saw another RM540mil contract “maintain” them awarded to Razak Baginda’s company.
One wonders why we spend billions for two submarines that apparently don’t even work when the crime rate constantly increases (rape cases in 2008 were up by 300%), no one I know dares to walk the streets at night, and apparently our policemen are being paid less than McDonald’s staff.
The only mystery in all this is why the police apparently side so much with the government that pays them so little. Unless I’m missing something…
Tags: crime rate, government, Malaysia, police, submarine
If you haven’t heard yet, Google recently generated a lot of buzz by purchasing a Superbowl ad slot for a cool US$5mil. It features “Parisian Love“, a long-distance love story told through keywords.
Some speculate that it’s feeling intimidated by Microsoft’s rival search engine, Bing. Google had never booked an ad on TV before; CEO Eric Schmidt quipped on Twitter that someone had said “Hell has indeed frozen over”. The Google blog didn’t reveal much either, only saying that:
we liked this video so much, and it’s had such a positive reaction on YouTube, that we decided to share it with a wider audience.
Well either Google’s raking in so much money that splurging US$5mil to “share” a video was no biggie, or it felt it needed to do things differently (I’m personally rooting for the former).
There’s no doubt that people love the ad though (watch it before reading further, there will be spoilers!). It’s one thing to know that Google’s role in indexing the knowledge of the masses has empowered us all, but “Parisian Love” shows its personal, human side.
I was curious how loverboy would have fared wooing his French maiden if he’d only used Bing though. So I did some digging.
“Study Abroad Paris France”
The debut query “study abroad paris france” [Bing] is a tie between Google and Bing; the same site (studyabroad.com) tops the results. Google has the slight edge though, drilling down to the individual page for France and even its summer program.
Google Suggest is also a powerful advantage that Google still has over Bing, it practically tells its own story during the ad. I’m not sure why Bing hasn’t rolled this out. Perhaps they figuring out how to perfect it – keying in common words into Google and looking for the most hilarious Google Suggest results is an entertaining past time.
“Cafes Near The Louve”
.
The next search “cafes near the louve” [Bing] has Google showing Bing who’s the boss. Both engines manage to suggest “Louvre” as the correct spelling for Louve, but Bing guesses wildly with cybercafes and museums, while Google not only gets the context right, but automatically plugs in Google Maps into the results, with reviews to boot!
“Translate Tu Es Très Mignon”
A translation request for “tu es très mignon” [Bing], sees Google ahead again. What loverboy needs is right at the top. Bing not only leaves its translator an additional click away, its translator fails to auto-detect the language:
“Chocolate Shops Paris France”
As we saw earlier, Google shows how it owns search by not only plugging in Google Maps, it has pinpointed ads and shop reviews featured as well, with phone numbers even!
“AA120″
A quick search for (flight) AA120 [Bing] has Microsoft totally stumped, resulting in speaker sound systems instead. Google, on the other hand, not only knows it’s being queried for a flight schedule, it shows the information right in the first row.
Search On!
I assure you I didn’t get paid to write this; I was just curious to see how the results would turn out if I keyed them in. And Google still impresses, 12 years after its launch. I remember using it when it first came out (back then, children, we had ancient sites like Altavista, Lycos, and Ask Jeeves, which all failed to impress) and never touching any other search engine again. When Bing came onto the search scene last year it was touted to finally give Google a run for its money. It had more space for ads, it took over Yahoo! Search, and it had the negotiating muscle of Microsoft behind it.
Google’s romantic narrative, however, may look “cute” , but make no mistake: it’s still light years ahead of Bing when it comes to search. And it all looks simple, fitting flight information, maps, and translations neatly into the results, but it’s surely a front for the most advanced algorithms and tech that made Google what it is today. Google vs Bing is a knockout, for now.
Rumours are that Bing is trying to become the default search engine on the iPhone and Facebook. I can only say that it would be a terrible disservice to us all.
I’ll end here with an ad for Bing – tell me which is better.
Tags: ad, bing, google, parisian love, search, superbowl, technology, Trends
In a socialogical study by Professor George Tamarin, more than a thousand Israeli schoolchildren aged eight to fourteen were given this account of the battle of Jericho, from the book of Joshua (this story should be familiar to all kids who grew up attending Sunday School):
Joshua said to the people, “Shout; for the LORD has given you the city. And the city and all that is within it shall be devoted to the LORD for destruction… But all silver and gold, and vessels of bronze and iron, are sacred to the LORD; they shall go into the treasury of the LORD.”
…
Then they utterly destroyed all in the city, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and asses, with the edge of the sword… And they burned the city with fire, and all within it; only the silver and gold, and the vessels of bronze and of iron, they put into the treasury of the house of the LORD.
The children were asked a simple moral question:
“Do you think Joshua and the Israelites acted rightly?” The children could choose between:
- A. Total approval
- B. Partial Approval
- C. Total disapproval
The results came back polarized: 66% gave “total approval”, 26% “total disapproval” and 8% “partial approval”.
Typical answers from the “Total approval” group:
In my opinion Joshua and the Sons of Israel acted well, and here are the reasons: God promised them this land, and gave them permission to conquer. If they would not have acted in this manner or killed anyone, then there would be the danger that the Sons of Israel would have assimilated among the Goyim.
In my opinion Joshua was right when he did it, one reason being that God commanded him to exterminate the people so that the tribes of Israel will not be able to assimilate amongst them and learn their bad ways.
Joshua did good because the people who inhabited the land were of a different religion, and when Joshua killed them he wiped their religion from the earth.
The justifications were all based on religion. Even those who gave “total disapproval” did not do so in the way one might expect, as these samples show:
I think it is bad, since the Arabs are impure and if one enters an impure land one will also become impure and share their curse.
Two others who totally disapproved did so because Joshua destroyed everything, including animals and property, instead of keeping some as spoil for the Israelites:
I think Joshua did not act well, as they could have spared the animals for themselves.
I think Joshua did not act well, as he could have left the property of Jericho; if he had not destroyed the property it would have belonged to the Israelites.
What made Tamarin’s experiment truly enlightening was a control group he ran. He gave a different set of children the same text quoted above, but with “Joshua” replaced with “General Lin” and “Israel” replaced with “A Chinese kingdom 3,000 years ago”.
Suffice to say the results were drastically the opposite now: only 7% approved of “General Lin”, while 75% disapproved.
The above is extracted from a text in a book by Richard Dawkins. The professor who conducted the study was subsequently fired.
If you’re close to me you’ve probably heard me tell you about the study above before. It underlines how religion divides us and makes behaviour that would otherwise be reviled, simply because “God said so” – even when this means killing the “young and the old”, and the poor animals as well!
Similar passages can be found in Numbers, where God orders vengeance on the Midianites:
1 The LORD said to Moses, 2 “Take vengeance on the Midianites for the Israelites. After that, you will be gathered to your people.”
3 So Moses said to the people, “Arm some of your men to go to war against the Midianites and to carry out the LORD’s vengeance on them. 4 Send into battle a thousand men from each of the tribes of Israel.” 5 So twelve thousand men armed for battle, a thousand from each tribe, were supplied from the clans of Israel. 6 Moses sent them into battle, a thousand from each tribe, along with Phinehas son of Eleazar, the priest, who took with him articles from the sanctuary and the trumpets for signaling.
7 They fought against Midian, as the LORD commanded Moses, and killed every man. 8 Among their victims were Evi, Rekem, Zur, Hur and Reba—the five kings of Midian. They also killed Balaam son of Beor with the sword. 9 The Israelites captured the Midianite women and children and took all the Midianite herds, flocks and goods as plunder. 10 They burned all the towns where the Midianites had settled, as well as all their camps. 11 They took all the plunder and spoils, including the people and animals, 12 and brought the captives, spoils and plunder to Moses and Eleazar the priest and the Israelite assembly at their camp on the plains of Moab, by the Jordan across from Jericho. [a]
13 Moses, Eleazar the priest and all the leaders of the community went to meet them outside the camp. 14 Moses was angry with the officers of the army—the commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds—who returned from the battle.
15 “Have you allowed all the women to live?” he asked them. 16 “They were the ones who followed Balaam’s advice and were the means of turning the Israelites away from the LORD in what happened at Peor, so that a plague struck the LORD’s people. 17 Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, 18 but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.
Here Moses is angry because the women and boys were spared; only the virgins deserved to live.
One wonders sometimes why it is that religious people claim that they are more moral than others. It has been said that “Without religion, good people would do good things and bad people would do bad things. But for good people to do bad things – that takes religion!”
There are also those who would shrug off the above saying “Oh but that’s the Old Testament” and but yet happily nod “Amen” when listening to messages from the pulpit preaching prosperity or why God wants you to be rich (which are all drawn from the Old Testament, the NT makes it clear about the camel through the eye of a needle thing), or tell you that morals are absolute and unchanging. (See the term “Cherry picking“).
Morality aside, racism and religion are the two greatest dividers in the world today. People from different religions (I’m talking about the ones who take it seriously, not the “Oh my parents are X, so I’m X”) treat each other differently, and heck even within the same religion, people from different sects/denominations treat each other differently. A conversation I had last week went something like this:
“So you’re Christian?”
“Oh no, I’m Catholic”
Which pretty much sums it up.
It’s not out of the way – I know many Protestants who disparage Catholics in their unguarded moments, and probably vice-versa. The images above for example are from a tract that was sold in my church bookshop. Much of the friction and conflict in today’s society stems from the religious vs the secular, e.g. stem-cell research, euthanasia, abortion, the teaching of evolution, the use of condoms, vaccination and practically every Malaysian political issue.
And in every case when you look closely it’s sometimes not even about what the various religious texts say any more – if you cherry pick through any holy book you’ll find passages to support whatever you want. It’s about the people who control the interpretation, for reasons that may or may not be benevolent. Malaysia is a good example of this; the “defense” of Islam is not so much about furthering the faith itself, but to show that one side is more religious than the other.
Well the main purpose of this post was to share the study made by George Tamarin but I ended up ranting a little. I hope that you remember it the next time someone tells you religion teaches you moral values!
Note: Since I am notoriously lazy when it comes to taking pictures, most of the pictures here are shamelessly stolen from Carol’s blog.
Ok ok my new year resolution is to go on a holiday this year! It’s been quite a while since I’ve managed to get away on a good long holiday and now’s as good a time as any to plan ahead. My dad used to work in Singapore Airlines so my childhood was a very lucky one. Every year my family got free tickets to a destination of our choice. Sometimes we’d eat mostly instant noodles there but hey I got to see a lot of places my friends didn’t: New Zealand (I dream of retiring there), Australia, the USA, England, Canada etc. He used to tell me I’d regret it when he retired and we no longer had this opportunity. I didn’t think much of it then but boy do I get what he meant now!
Hopefully I’ll be able to go to these places again someday. I’m thinking of starting off small though. Mysimplifieds.com has this Bargain Tuesday thing where they come up with a great deal every Tuesday for a limited time. Some time back it was a 3D2N 5-star hotel stay at Anantara Si Kao, Krabi, Thailand for a very good price. I snapped it up immediately!
That’s going to be my destination for this year.
If there’s one place on earth I’d like to go to again though, it’d be Disneyland.
Call me childish but there’s really no place like it. I was looking at Carol’s Tokyo Disneyland pictures and it got me really nostalgic.
I went to Sunway Lagoon recently – it was o-kay, but when I went for the Scream Park I got really disappointed. Despite the banners proclaiming “PRISON BREAK” and “NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM” what you really got was cheap props and a bunch of part-time students going up to you and yelling “boo!” (no kidding!). I couldn’t help remembering the Haunted Mansion, I won’t spoil it but suffice to say I can still remember parts of it even though it’s been a decade since I was there. Ditto for Genting which was even worse, they actually charged an extra RM10 to ride a “simulator” that had something like 200×150 resolution, 8-bit graphics and the motion didn’t even sync with the screen! What a rip-off. I still remember going on Disneyland’s Star Tours and how very impressed I was with it.
Of course it’s not just about the rides there. Even if you’re grown up there’s just something about that place, the sheer detail put into every aspect of the park from the rides to the performances, to the decor, and the cast.
Going to the Magic Kingdom again is my long-term goal for the next few years, now I just gotta save up for it!
Tags: Advertorial, avillion, disneyland, krabi, tiger
- Never register anything but your real name as your primary email address. You’ll regret it when you grow older.
- Knowledge is power. It really is! Read all you can. Use Google Reader.
- Learning to Google and Wiki is one of the best things you can teach yourself.
- Memorize keyboard shortcuts. They’ll save you a lot of time.
- When going for a buffet, save drinks till the very last! Otherwise you’ll get full too fast. And hold the rice too!
- This is the correct way to get ketchup out of a bottle:
- Drinks are the biggest profit makers at any restaurant. You save tons by not ordering drinks, or ordering just plain water, or relying on the soup. RM2 orange juice is probably made the exact same way as RM12 orange juice.
- Always remember where you park your car! If you are really bad at it take a picture of the lot.
- Being nice is harder than being nasty but it’s usually better in the long run
- Being emo may feel like the easiest thing to do (especially in your teens!) but eventually you need to move past it, it doesn’t help any.
- People who think they are different and incessantly declare themselves so are annoying.
- “Friends forever” is a very rare thing; friends come and go. It could be a change of career, a change of location, sometimes just a change of chat clients. Cherish the friendships you make.
- Everyone is ultimately selfish.
- Being right sometimes isn’t the only important thing.
- Judge not a person by how he treats his superiors, but by how he treats his inferiors.
- Time does heal all wounds.
- The two greatest divisors of humankind are 1) Race, 2) Religion.
- If you are going to set your clock ahead to make yourself more punctual, don’t make it more than 5 minutes fast. Otherwise you’ll remember it’s fast every time you check anyway.
- Politics may be ugly (in Malaysia, sometimes totally inane) but ultimately it is how we govern ourselves. If you can, but don’t, vote; don’t complain about the government either.
- When you buy anything tech-related, be prepared for it to halve in value in a year’s time.
- The best things are usually neither the cheapest nor the more expensive option.
- Overuse your credit card and you’ll end up living on next month’s salary. Avoid this!
- You’ll find very little of what you learn in university applies in the working world. Put thought into internships and FYPs!
- Never put parking tickets in a trouser pocket. Especially not if you’re going to the cinema.
- Blog often! There’s no better way to capture your life. Ours is a lucky generation to have a way to look back on our younger days.
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