wifey wasn't too delighted that i had to stay overnight in a conference in Penang. on the other hand, i wasn't too happy that she didn't understand that all this was work.
i am not attending it. i was doing a major part in preparation for the final day of the conference. the highlight of the event would be the dialogue between the fraternity's elders and the top dog of the Ministry. expecting a probable late night, to go back home through the winding roads of Batu Ferringhi, not only will it consume an hour of travelling time, it is also pretty much suicidal, unless I have the skills of Takumi Fujiwara.
the final preparation and all the print works ended 2:30am. would have been 4am, if I haven't got the best team of competent people behind me.
then something a consultant said struck me.
He was mentioning about some fellow colleagues' disappointment when the prior banquet dinner was not going to include the family members.
"Well, if you look at it, why do you want to work? Why? To earn enough for your family, right?"
I thought of it for a while. He's right. Back to the basics.
Cavemen hunts to gather food for himself and the family.
Secretly, I wish to apologize to my dearest for my trailing thoughts of her not being understanding. I'm so sorry, dear.
I guess, somewhere, I need to strike a balance somewhere and seriously, learn the fine art of saying 'No'.
But hunting for something as important as food, at times, more important than food.
The old lame saying goes: Give a man a fish and he eats for a day, Teach him to fish and he eats for life.
Yes, I am talking about education.
Been hunting around the place for a decent kindergarten, mainly not for advanced super duper education.
I guess to cultivate the culture of learning is adequate for the time being, IMHO.
Firstly, the kindy must be clean and safe, not all gloomy and third-world.
Secondly, the cost shouldn't leave me 'koyak', a term regularly used by my Consultant here.
Thirdly, lots of friends, lots of events and companionship for little Aedan.
Gone to five kindy around my neighbourhood, gone through the timetable, the syllabus, the days in the year, student-teacher ratio, the toilet and classroom.
Tiring, really.
Found the right one for him I guess without being too damaging to my wallet.
Another phase in Aedan's life begins in few months' time.
I'm confident he ain't going to cry going to school, but I'm not sure whether his naughty itchy hands will tear down the kindy.
Let’s call an irony an irony. Obviously, doesn’t sound as nice as ‘let’s call a spade a spade’.
On the day of festival of light, the northern parts of peninsular were flooded with water.
Countless properties, vehicles and items drowned in damage while few lives left the living world. The damage was unavoidable, but the deaths in certain way were debatable of their certainty.
The matter of fact that through TV news, you see few children wading their way through the roads either by foot or bicycle on a waist-high water level as if God had bestowed to them the waterpark of Sunway Lagoon, did raise certain questions about the level of parental apathy around that neighbourhood.
The flood was claiming more lives than the news lead the public to believe. Some other people found their way to the grave by a much chronic way. There were patients transported out from the State’s hospital to the neighbouring hospitals in an unplanned impromptu manner leading to certain unavoidable complications. I guess it is too late now to say that probably a protocol for evacuation should be drafted for the event of massive flood.
This protocol must give a clear indicators where evacuation must be done when the thought of ‘Shit probably going to happen’ arised, rather than when ‘Oh, Shit!’ was verbalized. By then, it would be kind of late. It is kind of late.
In the medical world, we applaud the power of anticipation. Sadly, most of us, if not all, are poor in predicting weather, not only it was not in our medical school’s curriculum, it was only briefly being enlightened to our mind through a brief scene in the Chinese movie ‘Red Cliff”. Or was it ‘Red Cliff 2’?
Sam Kwok = not a caucasian.
Secondly, the dirty water, food and poor living conditions are perfect recipe for bad health and diseases. They probably will put the cocktail of cigarette-smoking, binge-drinking and full-fledged high-cholesterol diet to shame, or at the least, to a strong ‘draw’.
How well the health initiatives were able to tackle the horrible aftermath will be gauged by how well controlled those bad health and diseases were being controlled. Pouring massive amount of money into the state to the few preying vultures without clear plan for a good health strategy is definitely a senseless move.
The flood over the northern peninsular did bring back memories of certain discussion that I had back in high school with my pal, Gab.
If he still remembers, we were talking about the canal of Malthai, a collaborated co-operation between Malaysia and Thailand, to form a canal across the peninsular. With that, I am sure the few northern states will be rich like hell. And, inevitably, the small neighbouring island country with their overcrowding talents may be up in arms (and brains) with a few contracts and MOUs for our leaders to sign, just like the one about the water supply.
The flood may just turn into a naturally-formed canal of Malthai, with a few sacrifices along its natural establishment.
Well, with each natural disasters getting more unpredictable than the previous ones, it is kind of not surprising this may just come true within the next generation or so.
With a natural disaster turning into a natural blessing, now, this could probably be the i(bu)ronies, mother (ibu) of all ironies.
When The Barack Obama sex doll was exhibited at the recent 8th Sex Culture Festival in the southern city of Guangzhou, I believe there's a general acceptance that second to the ever popular notion of sex sells, is Hope sells.
Similarly, in our own ground, the People Alliance was selling the same thing as well, more or less, somehow in a less attractive package. Yet, the substance in their manifesto never did come around. They are selling dreams as much as Hope. They aspire to end a lot of evil in the establishment, yet failed to provide the 'How-to'. Everyone is looking around up and down, in and out, left and right for their shadow Cabinet and shadow Budget, but those idealistic shadow stuffs still remain in the dark, behind the shadow. Too much of shadow got me thinking about Wayang Kulit.
Probably it is just a pure coincidence that Galas/Batu Api by-elections coinciding with US mid-term election, but they both served quite well as a wake-up call.
It is probably time for the public to stop hearing bout rantings about how certain things should not be done this way or another. Instead, everyone would like to hear how would you do it.
