It’s sad, it’s really sad. People are rejecting transsexuals everywhere! In recent years we have seen some really interesting developments about these transsexuals, some are good, but mostly bad. New York has finally legalized same sex marriage, although it is not the first city / country to do so. Pakistan is considering  to legalize the third sex. But sadly this has resulted in a torrent of negative images of the gay and lesbian society as a whole. A gay pastor in Malaysia is being condemned for conducting this marriage with his partner, a broadway musical director in New York.

What’s the fuck is wrong with these people? If they love to be with the person that they love, what is wrong with that? Why do they care if they marry their same sex, marry someone with long hair, no hair, or someone who loves picking his/her nose in public? They get married because they believe in the marriage institution that solemnize their union. It’s not only about the sex you dimwit!
Malaysians are still living in the dark ages when it comes to sexual liberation. I must admit that I was once guilty too. Can’t blame me, I was molested by one! There were a lot of them everywhere, in my school, in the streets, on the bus, they look like very normal everyday people.

Imagine if you were born with a cleft in your lips, a deformed limb, or without the gift of sight. They feel that they are different right from the moment they were born, very low self-esteem to show themselves to the world, for fear of being ridiculed and joked about. This is made worse when their own family members finds out about this, and they are forced to “repent” and “go back to the right path”. But deep inside, they cannot change that, they know it. They fail to understand that sexual preference is biological, it’s not a choice like religion (I’m talking about you, you stupid religion-quoting assholes who calls yourselves holy man!) So what do they do about it? You see closet cross-dressers, or transsexuals who roam the back lanes only at night to avoid the criticizing eyes of the society. They try to live like normal people like what the society norm is, but what is the norm?

My perception of them changed as soon as I got to know them better. Being human, they only desire simple things that any normal human want; to love, and be loved. What could possibly be wrong with that? If being with the person they love for the rest of their lives is wrong, then I don’t know what else is right! Do you want insist that they marry the opposite sex, but NOT the person that they love, and spend the rest of their lives in misery? Heck, even your so-called “normal” marriage ends up in divorce, so what can be normal with that?

Let’s get one thing straight (ahem, no pun intended). I am not writing this to sympatize them. They do not need to be pitied upon. They only desire to be recognized as who they should rightfully be known as. It sounds simple, but there are very intricate things that even very I sometimes do wrong. Have a look at this video:

It is unfortunate that transsexuals are considered people with weird sexual preferences, and thus are often related to porn. But there are actually a bunch of very famous transsexuals individuals worthy of our attention, because they fought for what they believe. Look up Christine Jorgensen, Renee Richards, even our very own Jesse Chung, you will realize that they are very common after all.

What you do feel about the new sexual revolution? Just ask yourself this question, how would you feel if your own son or daughter decided to do the sex change? If you just hesitated, I think you are not ready yet …..

I am so happy when I saw the news today. Chew Mei Fen got the boot from the MCA council! PADAN DIA PUNYA MUKA!! I fully support this move. Her recent spat with Ong shows that she is no longer in-sync with the party’s objective. Anyone who is either with Ong, or against Ong. Yeah, yeah, Ong said that this has got nothing to do with her move to have an extra EGM on 28 Nov, but even the blind knows what his agenda is. But in any case, I still support him. His style might be dictatorian, but that is how China grew to be so big in the first place!

People, I urge you NOT to be pitiful to MF Chew. As Soi Lek  mentioned yesterday, MF Chew is indeed very “talented“. She is the only one among 7 million chinese in Malaysia who got a portfolio in the ministry even though she lost her constitution. (Chua, you forgot about Koh Tsu Koon )  MF Chew deserves it, and if she knows better, she had better resign from all her post in MCA. Nobody wants a loser in the party.

Looks like MCA is regaining back its shine after all. Let’s hope this stays

The below is a representation of how one should NOT do in Malaysia, but for reasons quite unknown, has become a standard for everyone to adhere to while driving in Malaysia. Foreigners driving on Malaysian road, you will find this guide very informative!

1.  Turn on those hazard lights in the rain and in the fog to remind other drivers that you are there. Turning on your headlights just ain’t enough. You need to be constantly be reminded that it is dangerous driving in this condition with the “tick-tock-tick-tock” sound coming from the indicator lights. It also soothes your sense of insecurities.

2. On the contrary with the above, DO NOT turn on your hazard lights when you stationary on the road shoulder. If you do that, people will think that it is raining heavily or really foggy.

3. There is this long queue waiting at the traffic lights. And there is a sliproad leading out to the left where there is no need to wait for the traffic lights. What would be the best way to skip the jam? Use the slip road, drive allllll the way towards the junction, and at the last minute, cut into the queue. Ignore all angry honks and fuming stares from other road

4. Indicator lights are for sissies. When you want to turn, just turn. No need to use the indicator. They reveal your combat driving strategy. Especially when you are doing number 3 above.

5. If you are following someone doing number 3 above, and you actually want to turn left, put your hands ready at the honk. When you see some asshole blocking your road because he got stuck trying to cut in the queue, honk the mutherfakker out of his brains!

6. The road sign that says “90″ means, drive at a minimum of 90 km/h, you slow fuck!

7. Got accident on the emergency lane? Ehhhh can see what is the car plate number ar? Got people die ar? So many tow cars wan, do they need help?

8. Got accident on the OPPOSITE side of the road? Ehhhh can see what is the car plate number ar? Got people die ar? So many tow cars wan, do they need help?

9. If you are driving a big car, and you are driving at the highway at 180 km/h (as usual), shine your high beam to that damn car that is moving at 120 km/h in front of you. Who cares if he is overtaking another car. I own the bloody road! Ditto if you are driving a Singaporean car. Stupid Malaysian police can’t track me down when I’m back in Singapore anyway.

And lastly if all fails, use the international sign language of friendship.

1. Automatic car are useful in city drivings because of the stop-and-go situations involved. But they are getting more and more useful in highways.

2. Why do we use the highways? What is the basic thing that you expect in return of paying a hefty sum at the bloodsucking toll booths? The convenience, the time you save, the assurance that you will arrive IN TIME for that 8 am meeting in JB. What if you cannot get that? What if you are stuck in a stupid jam from KL to Ipoh for 5 hours? Who will pay for the lost of time and opportunity? PLUS should give us a rebate for every hour that we are delayed in our journey!

3. I agree with those who drives in the emergency lanes. “If I do not drive in those lanes, somebody else would anyway. It might as well be me.”

4. Speed limits are only beneficial to the police who radar-scans us.

5. Elsewhere in the world highways are used to divert traffic from a heavily congested area and maybe make a little profit, just enough for general maintenance of the highway. Malaysian highways are designed from a profitability point of view.

That said, safety on the road is still necessary. Make sure you are in physical fit condition before you undertake that 300 km exodus back to your hometown. Have a safe trip everyone and SELAMAT HARI RAYA!

BWUUUAAAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!

I can only afford an uncontrollable insane laugh! Come on Malaysia! Not another one of your tasteless jokes! Can this be one of your publicity stunt again? I mean, seriously, what do you expect to put in your machine? A 1.6 litre turbo CAMPRO engine? Well, here’s news for you! CAMPRO engines are lousy, inefficient and unsafe! Just the other day, a poor young mother burnt to her death when her Gen-2 fitted with the CAMPRO got hit on the engine compartment and caught fire! And this is not the first time I heard of such news. And don’t get me started on the potential driver. The son of a big-shot. Ring a bell? The last Malaysia F1 joker driver was also a son of someone influential who pushed him into the game, and look at the mess he has made for Malaysia!

For you who bought Proton cars (my poor self included), it’s time you stop supporting Proton and start buying from a REAL car company.

1. I saw this malay kid, wearing a t-shirt with all chinese wordings there. It’s a club or something of a chinese school. How did he get to wear that t-shirt? Could be given by a chinese close friend, or maybe he studies in that school? Who know….

2. During the ghost month festival, there was a lot of prayers and offerings everywhere. I saw this temporary prayer altar built right next to a buzzing Bazaar Ramaddan. No complaints from either parties.

3. A chinese colleague of mine has a Malay husband. So naturally she celebrates Hari Raya and Chinese New Year. Her sister is married to a Christian Indian. So she celebrates Christmas and Deepavali! So her family celebrates all four major festivities in Malaysia!

4. A crazy Malay dude of mine here in the office suddenly sprang into a Teocheow song out of no reason! =P I don’t even understand Teocheow!

So you tell me, is “Race” needed in government forms? Are we really that divided? Is the cow-head incident in Shah Alam necessary?

This makes me think, are politicians still playing the racial cards to their own advantage? Are political parties that are segregated into race still relevant?

Happy 52nd Anniversary Malaysia. May you still have many more peaceful anniversaries ahead, for my two girls’ sake.

*Sigh* ….. the worst has happened. Against the will of Tun Dr Mahathir, and legions of parents around Malaysia, the stupid Muyiddin has announced that Science and Math be taught back in Malay. This is a 180 degree turn back towards the prehistoric era. The Malaysian education system is going the way of the dodo.

As mang0 has already summed it up, I have either the option of teaching my girls in English myself, or sending them to an international school. I think I am more inclined towards the latter. Malaysian Educational system just don’t have the edge anymore to remain competitive.

This harks back to my early schooling days when I remembered a very important event in life. It was the early nineties. I applied, went for interviews, and was finally offered a scholarship, the Asian Scholarship to go study in Singapore. Naively me and my parents turned down the offer. I can understand their reasoning. My dad was afraid to let me go that far. I was only a teenager about to go into the wild puberty stage. Letting me go there alone would have exposed me to all kinds of vice. (Hey, isn’t that great?! HAHAHAHA!!! ) Thinking back, I felt kinda regretful. I would have enjoyed a better life there in Singapore. I mean, come on, I hate the life in Singapore, but I don’t mind the 5 times more purchasing power the Singapore Dollar gives me! My life would have turned out differently. I could have married another girl, or maybe even still be single. But I would have missed having Kit Yan and Hui Yan

I got lucky in my years of schooling. I have been schooled in a Malay / English medium all my life. Nevertheless, my grasp of the English language was not very strong. Blame it on the education system, only academically strong but no real world exposure. I got my break when I became close with Vinod Nair, of mixed Indian and Chinese parentage. I owe my English to him. I later found out that he had wanted to learn Cantonese from me, but turned out he landed on the losing end of the deal!

I also had a lucky break in St Michael’s Ipoh, where I did my Form Six. There, EVERYBODY speaks English as the main medium, even the Malays. Our physics teacher, Mr Ng, encouraged us to learn physics in English, although STPM was conducted in Malay. He told us that in order to prepare ourselves for the university and subsequently to the world, a full grasp of the scientific term in English is compulsory. Come on, the “hardware = barang keras” joke is an exemplarily example of the silliness impracticality of using Malay as a technical language.

All hail the Dark Ages of education in Malaysia!

Edit 13 Jul 2009: It seems that certain factions of the chinese and indian community also wants to abandon the English as a technical language too! I am deeply aghast!

Lots has been said about the language and its uses in Malaysia. The latest development saw our former Prime Minister to urge the government not to forsake the future of our children by denouncing the importance of English. I am totally aghast at the action of some parties who chose to childishly ignore the use of English to increase the competitiveness of Malaysians as a world-class citizen. English is, after all, the 3rd most spoken language in the world after Chinese and Spanish. Note that Malay, or its nearest variation Bahasa Indonesia is nowhere near the top 10.  And this decision came from no other than the seniors in our very own Menteri Pendidikan! And today the news says that majority of the people do not want English to pass in SPM! What the fuck are they thinking?

Let us just step back for a while and look at the Malaysians now as a whole. Throw a stone anywhere, chances are the person you hit knows a smattering of English, at least to be able to communicate properly with any English-native speakers. Last Sunday I went to the zoo, and I stopped at a bus-stop to take a rest. There was an old Malay grandma there, probably in her 70′s, looking after her young toddler grandchild. To my surprise, she speaks in English with us, refusing to converse in Malay even when we sprinkled some Malay into our conversation. She even spoke in English with her young grandchild, who is no more than 14 months old! There was a bit of typical Malaysian slang, but the point is that everywhere, people have no problem talking in English. So why the decision to lower English to second-class status?

Have you ever been to Thailand? Indonesia? Vietnam? Japan? Korea? How do you communicate with the most common of all people that you see; the taxi drivers? Do you have problems communicating with them in those countries? If you only speak Malay, then the answer is most probably a big YES. Do you think tourists to Malaysia will have problem communicating in English with our taxi drivers? Other than the quarrel about the use of meters, chances are that most if not all taxi drivers in Malaysia can speak good English.

We have been so long into allowing our SPM test papers to be answered in both Malay and English. Just as when we are almost seeing the result out of this, they have to revoke the importance of English. Wouldn’t it be a waste of effort? Come on, get real. For those who still insist on the purity of the Malay language, let me ask you this question. Can you speak purely in Malay without ANY influence of foreign language, especially English? What is the word “komunikasi“, “satelit“, “implikasi“, “dansa“, “televisyen“, “radio“, “komputer” doing in the Malay language? How do you pronounce chlorofluorocarbon in Malay? Or the mezzanine level? How about phobia? Tell that in Bahasa Baku to my face, you hypocrites!

I am not saying that Bahasa Melayu is of lower status. I cannot ignore its importance in Malaysia. I speak fluent Malay, and it’s the second language that I picked up after my native Cantonese. I had a very close Malay friend in primary school. But it just annoys me that some people choose to ignore the importance of the English language, and that they can live with just Malay in their daily lives. For those people, go live in an island and good riddance with you!

*Sigh*, what has our education system come to now? My poor girls……

Previously I had my doubts when I said that the government will honour their pledge of RM625 to peasants like us. Good news is, they do! Got my road tax renewed on 8th July while I was in Singapore last month. But the bad news is, baby milk powder is on the rise. Luckily the shop in Serdang where we normally go to buy still has some old stocks with the old price. So my wife quickly bought 4 boxes for Yan Yan and 3 boxes for Hui Yan. Then there also the yearly car insurance that we need to pay.

In the end, when I came back form Singapore, I never did get to see the RM625. They were all used up all in a flash. What do you think? RM625 enough for a normal family staying in Malaysia? Some more the price of petroleum has decreased, but still the government insist on sticking with the higher price! They are doing like a person who is about to go to the gallows. They will be enjoying all the luxuries of life, feasting on the best food, minutes before they are beheaded. In this case, Pak Lah knows that the days of BN are numbered. Thus they are now sucking the wealth of the nation dry before they hand out the country to Anwar. At the expense of the rakyat of course!

Unless you have been living in a remote jungle forest of Borneo without any internet connection or TV whatsoever, you would have known by now how much petrol price has risen overnight. I quickly went to refuel both my cars. I consider myself lucky. I got refueled in less than an hour for each cars. Some are not so lucky. The Jalan Putra Permai which has 4 petrol stations were choked full of cars queuing up all along the road. My colleague got stuck in LDP for 2 hours last night, and she was not even refueling!

I have never queued up to fill up petrol before in my entire life during a fuel price increase, even when the price increased by 20 cents or 30 cents before. But this time, it’s bloody 78 cents! That’s an increase of 40%! My Wira will be affected the most. It’s the car with the highest fuel consumption rate. At 40 litres, it can go roughly 437 km. That’s assuming the previous price of petrol at RM1.88 per litre (I’m a cheapskate, I use RON 92 fuel!). Now with the increased price structure, I will have to pump in an extra RM30 every time I refuel. Supposing that I refuel 3 times in a month (this is already a very conservative assumption), I will require an extra RM1080 per year! The bloody RM625 I get from the road tax rebate is barely enough to cover my extra expenses! Fuck you Pak Lah!

We are talking about a Proton Wira 1.5 automatic, one of the most commonly used cars driven by common Malaysians. If it affects my car, chances are, it will your car too. When Pak Lah drew this structure, he must have the Kancil 660 in mind. Even my Toyota Altis 1.8 consumes less fuel than the Wira. Does it mean that all the rakyat should dump their Protons and buy Kancil’s, Kelisa’s, Vios or City?

I can almost immediately see a domino effect. Everything will cost more. EVERY DAMN THING! Remember, the RM625 is only applicable for private cars with less than 2000cc. Lorries and trucks will most definitely not benefit from this. Neither do airplanes, trains and boats, things used to ferry our daily necessities to our Tesco’s, Carrefour and pasar pagi. I cannot imagine another rice price hike again. (hey, that rhymes! Ahem …) Soon electricity tariff is going to increase, mee goreng, underwear, medicines. And these are just the important stuffs. Don’t get me talking about the camera lens that I planned to buy! Say bye bye to my two daughter’s insurance plan!  *sigh…*

On a different note, I’m glad for this structure too. This way, we can still stop Singaporean registered cars from enjoying the subsidized fuel. This mean to say that if you Malaysian who defected down south to become Singaporean PR will not enjoy this benefit for their Singapore-registered cars. They still enjoy some advantage, RM2.70 is still some form of subsidized fuel, albeit in a smaller amount. Unsubsidized fuel still cost RM3.00. Even then, it’s cheaper than their Singapore fuel.

My Wira’s road tax will expire in July. Let’s just see if they will honour their pledge of RM625 for us….