"Every damn morning"

This is why I started keeping a notebook next to my bed to write down dreams.

Peter Dickinson said that the first chapter of The Weathermonger came to him in a dream. Who knows, I could write a novel.

In case you're wondering, the mouseover text on this xkcd strip is a quote from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, where Lucy sneaks into the magician's rooms to find a spell to restore the Monopods, and reads a spell "for the refreshment of the spirit" that turns into a beautiful reverie, but fades from memory as it ends. This essayist believes that the objects Lucy remembers - a cup, a sword, a tree, and a green hill - are a reference to the agony, death, and resurrection of Christ, the story that all other good stories remind us of in one way or another.

I couldn't quite remember whether it was from Lewis or Tolkien.

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Speaking of the Chronicles of Narnia, FlowerMoonFish and I were discussing the Prince Caspian movie on the phone and she says that the reason Peter and Caspian were written as a pair of testosterone-drenched idiots was that (quoting someone else) "the art of our time can't recognize nobility".

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Speaking of nobility, I hope that Raja Petra's right and our King doesn't let AAB and gang call a snap election to screw around with Pakatan Rakyat's chances of taking over the government. Sure they're mostly figureheads in a parliamentary democracy...and history has proved over and over again that heredity confers nothing in morality or intelligence...yet I still find myself hoping that when needed the Agong will act, with nobility.

Information and communication technology, eh?

Sorry haven't been blogging...too depressed over bike theft and trying to find a new one.

You know, if anybody needed any more proof that the Malaysian government is run by dinosaurs and the reason things suck there is because of bureaucracy and politics, not because of anything inherently wrong with Malaysian culture or people, all you need to do is compare 2 websites: Any website of a Malaysian government ministry or agency, and something that's run by volunteers with a real interest in what they're doing, like TorrentMalaya.

It's sort of ironic that the best homegrown Malaysian website I've ever seen is a media piracy (a.k.a. "cetak rompak", literally "print robbery") site. It's really well-designed and the rules and user classes are well-thought-out.

As opposed to the typical government website, which despite all their blabber about the "K-economy" and "ICT" still looks like it was designed by a colorblind grandmother with delirium tremens.

More Malaysian bloggers OMGWTFBBQ

Er...okay... DR MAHATIR HAS A BLOG. There's no way to not have a jaw-dropping reaction to that.

Although I think it's mostly that now the old man's persona non grata with the current administration (note to future heads of state in pseudo-democracies: make sure your proteges don't menderhaka against you next time, if there is a next time), he just wants to have a soapbox somewhere. Everybody on the bandwagon!

Barisan on the bandwagon

Holy cow. Barisan politicians are really jumping on the blogging bandwagon now. Hm, I wonder if it's got anything to do with BN's stunning loss of four states (plus failure to recapture Kelantan) and its two-thirds Parliamentary majority to the Opposition in a strongly Internet-driven upset, after years of insulting Malaysian bloggers as stupid and seditious? (Lim Kit Siang's had his own blog for quite a long time. Teresa Kok, the DAP MP for Seputeh who's been blogging since 2006, is quite funny because the title of her blog is "Sassy MP".)

For instance, the ex-Health Minister Dr Chua Soi Lek has turned to blogging. He has more free time these days after resigning from his Cabinet and MCA posts, since he was caught on video demonstrating safe sex. Alas, he uncreatively picked "drchua" as his sub-domain name on Blogger, and then found that there were already 8 "drchuas" on there. So he's drchua9.

Mohammad Ali Rustam, the Chief Minister of Melaka, wanted to get into the Malaysia Book of Record as the first CM to have a blog. Then he found out that his skin was too thin to take criticism, especially over a post implying that state governments allowing Chinese to farm their dirty pigs was a special concession that we should be endlessly grateful for, and deleted all comments and disabled future ones. However, not only did Malaysiakini archive the comments on the controversial post, TWO mirror blogs with comments enabled popped up rapidly. (Melaka sucks, by the way. If you believe all the stuff they tell you in school about how it's the nexus of history, you will be heartbroken as I was by how horribly run-down all the beautiful old buildings are.)

Muhammad Muhammad Taib (no, that's not a typo) the ex-CM of Selangor who was given a senator post as a consolation, is also jumping in. Ironic, considering he once lodged a police report against Raja Petra Kamarudin for insulting the King in a post on Malaysia Today. At least he was smart enough to buy his own domain name and hasn't started deleting comments - yet.

What I think is really interesting about all this, is that blogs and alternative news sites like Malaysiakini and Malaysia Today (I prefer "Today" over "'Kini" since it's free, although they don't quite cover the same ground) have had a really active part in turning the tide in this past election. Unlike in the USA where bloggers are merely observers and commentators, Malaysia is a small country and communication through the Internet only reinforces the "everybody knows everybody" atmosphere. By allowing people to see how many others were frustrated with Barisan Nasional, blogs, alternative news sites, and yes, Facebook allowed individuals to overcome the apathy of "Barisan is going to win anyway" and gave them the impetus to go out and vote. Barisan just didn't see this coming.

I'm no political pundit and I can't stand people who go on about it all the time, but I'm a citizen of a democratic nation with eyes and ears and emotions, and I unabashedly find recent developments incredibly cool.

Shabery to hear out bloggers

I'm re-posting this article from The Star in its entirety because Shabery is astounding in his clarity, after years of government Ministers and UMNOputras calling Malaysian bloggers seditious idiots (how any group can be a bunch of "housewives" as well as a major threat to national security at the same time is beyond me.)

KUALA LUMPUR: The Government will not control bloggers but will consider their views as well. That is the assurance given by newly-appointed Information Minister Datuk Ahmad Shabery Cheek, who is planning a meeting with the blogging community “in the next few weeks to hear them out”.

“The alternative media, like bloggers, play a role in nation building. It is the most direct and simple channel for people to voice their opinions. Sometimes, they can bring about a negative effect but it is mostly positive.”

Shabery said some had overlooked the significance played by bloggers, who could now form their own personal broadcast centres via their websites.

He dismissed the view that bloggers sided with the Opposition, saying that the bloggers only expressed their personal opinion.

“Bloggers are individuals and they have differing opinions. I cannot say that they are all Opposition. Sometimes, they are seen to support the Opposition but sometimes they criticise the Opposition too,” he said.

On whether the Government would enforce some control on the blogging community, Shabery said they would not do so.

“The question of controlling bloggers does not arise. As the saying goes, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink,” he said.

Asked if there was a message that he would pass to the bloggers in the meeting, Shabery said: “It is better that I be a listener first”.

To a question whether the mainstream media had lost its credibility and relevance due to laws governing the media, he said that the rise of blogs was a global trend, adding that this, however, did not mean that people had sidelined the media.

“No matter how free the mainstream media is (from government control), like in the USA, UK and Australia, it is still subject to the standpoint of their respective media (organisation) heads. So, people will still seek alternative news,” he said.

So why's HE still...?

Reading news from home is like having a face full of pimples. You can't help wanting to pick at it:

NEP is no more ... it's the NDP lah!

KOTA KINABALU: Sabah Progressive Party president Datuk Yong Teck Lee is puzzled why there is so much fuss over the New Economic Policy when it has already been superseded by the National Development Policy.

He questioned why politicians on both sides of the political divide, in Penang particularly, were still harping in the issue of the NEP that had expired in the 1990s and replaced with the NDP.
...
“The successor to the NEP was the NDP,” he said, adding that overtime Vision 2020, 10-year Outline Perspective Plan (OPP), five-year Malaysia Plans and other policies overshadowed the NDP.

“We are now busy with other new concepts like development corridors, Agenda Baru (New Agenda) and Islam Hadhari (Civilisational Islam). It is no wonder that some politicians both from ruling and opposition have lost focus on which policy to talk about,” he added.

He said the DAP-led Penang government “so-called cancellation of the NEP” was completely redundant because it no longer existed and it was disappointing that Penang Umno was still harping on the NEP like it was a valid document.

Well, maybe they're still harping on it because from what we've seen over the last decade, "NDP" is an abbreviation for "more of the same old crap". Even many Malays, who are supposed to benefit from it, weren't happy this time around.

Besides, we have leadership from the top!

Pak Lah: Most policies are federal policies

PETALING JAYA: Almost all of Malaysia's policies, including the New Economic Policy (NEP), are federal policies, said the Prime Minister.

AAB must have been sleeping when the NEP was abolished.

From Bumiputera Malaysia.
From Kickdefella ("kick the fellow"), more great movie parody posters here. I think my favourite is the "Dah Benci Kot".

Five states!

Kelantan, Penang, Perak, Selangor, and Kedah! *happy kitty dance*

I'm sorry to say this about a newspaper where one of my favourite aunties is a journalist but...The Star needs to stop licking the boots of losers. I was once told that The Star editors would hang up pro-MCA banners in the offices during election but thought it was an urban legend until I saw their awful, AWFUL coverage of this year's... Hehe.

Transmission of information

This is a perfect example of how influential the USA is, that even a roadside hawker in Kelantan (the only state in Malaysia that is was controlled by an Opposition party before yesterday's election) knows who one of the presidential candidates is. Probably the owners of most small mom-'n'-pop restaurants here don't even know there's a country called Malaysia let alone that we're having elections in the same year as them:

“Yang kito nak kat Malaysia ni pemimpin yang bermutu, buke pemimpin yang penipu! Kok Amerika tu ado Barack Obama, yang Negro tu. Hei, baik pun Negro dio tu, dio tu orgre bermutu, bukan mace Bush yang buat cerito gilo di Irak. Nah, pemimpin begitu loh yang kito nak di Malaysia ni”

(Rice stall owner, in front of Muhammadi mosque, Kota Bharu)

It's from an article titled "Vox Pop ala' Kelate" on Malaysia Today. Kelantanese speak a unique dialect of Malay...it's quite different to listen to. One of my favourite musicians, Zainal Abidin, uses it in some of his songs.

Anyway, translated:

What we want in Malaysia is quality leaders, not leaders who are liars! In American they have Barack Obama, that Negro guy. Hey, even if he's a Negro he's still good, not like Bush who's doing crazy stuff in Iraq. There, it's leaders like that we want here in Malaysia.

(NB black people are still an unusual sight in Malaysia, outside of the urban areas where there are a fair number of African college students.)

Only one choice?

Saw this full-page ad in Friday's theSun (obviously, I'm reading the electronic version, but the website has PDFs of the newspaper pages).

I've got news for you, Barisan politicians: the only countries where the people have "only one choice" are TOTALITARIAN FASCIST states.

Barisan Rakyat

I really like the Barisan Rakyat poster. I think it's well-balanced in terms of colour and lines...composition is overall nice and I like the font, but it's a bit the weird that the second "RAKYAT" is glued to the top of the picture.

I'm planning to print it out big and attach it to my backpack so people will see it as I walk around...there are quite a few Malaysian students in town (especially undergrads on Public Service Department scholarships haha), so SOMEbody will know. Click for big size:

This solution

Welp...Parliament dissolved today...the circus has begun.

Oh, and is anyone surprised that AAB is a few hours short of being a TOTAL bare-faced liar?

Wednesday February 13, 2008 Parliament won’t be dissolved today, says PM

BANGI: Parliament will not be dissolved today.

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi put an end to such speculation, telling reporters here yesterday: “Esok tak ada (No, it won’t be tomorrow)”.

He also denied that today’s Cabinet meeting would be the last with his present team of ministers before Parliament is dissolved to pave the way for the next general election.

Wednesday February 13, 2008
MYT 1:10:44 PM Parliament dissolved, elections on

PUTRAJAYA: Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi has announced that Parliament has been dissolved, paving the way for the 12th general election.

At a hastily convened press conference at his office Wednesday afternoon, he said he had met the Yang Di Pertuan Agong in the morning and received His Majesty's consent to dissolve Parliament.

"I've informed Parliament and the Election Commission," Abdullah said. The state assemblies have also been advised to dissolve.

Also, I'm excited that Jeff Ooi is running. Go Malaysian bloggers!

Pray for peace. I think we've all seen in the last few months how apparently stable countries (e.g. Kenya, Pakistan) can dissolve into chaos when the fairness of elections is severely compromised and politicians on both sides - Gov't and Opposition - think more of their own power than of the people they're supposed to represent. (Look at Bhutto; her administration and family were notoriously corrupt while she was in power but then she gets shot and all of a sudden she's a martyr for democracy.) I really doubt anything so extreme will happen in Malaysia, but pray for us.

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Barack Obama was in Madison today. I support him but as to the prospect of my spending hours in a stadium crammed with noisy undergraduate students (ref: undergrad cooties), he can go fly a kite =P

Also, David Morgan-Mar (the Irregular Webcomic guy, who's Australian) explains why the rest of the world gets upset about American presidential elections: they have so much power over us but we have no say. I've been trying and trying to explain this to my white Republican boyfriend. At least he supports McCain =)

Multidrug-resistant infections in Sultanah Aminah Hospital

This is absolutely appalling. (Scroll down to the second part of the story in the middle of the page.)

If you don't want to read it here's a quick summary. A woman whose 60-something diabetic father was in Sultanah Aminah Hospital in Johor complained because a consultant told him he urgently needed a wound debridement surgery, but he was subsequently left in the multidrug-resistant isolation ward for five days with only i.v. antibiotics. He has a multidrug-resistant Acinetobacter infection in the ulcer. A reporter from theSun went to visit them and found that:

• The door of the quarantine ward had a sign saying it should be closed, but it was left open
• another sign said that everyone going in must wear gloves, masks, and aprons, but there weren't any masks or aprons
• there was a pile of used gloves next to the glove box (yay cross-contamination!)
• visitors were ignoring the signs since the protective equipment wasn't there
• even worse, the reporter saw A NURSE AND A DOCTOR!!! walk in, attend to patients, and walk out without putting on the PPE or washing their hands (and the doctor's tudung wasn't tucked into her lab coat, which is effectively the same as a non-Muslim doctor having unbound long hair trailing all over).
• Another guy was there who had been in a road accident and acquired a multidrug-resistant infection from a metal implant in his leg. He's been there with a FRACTURED HAND for over a month. His fiancee said that the quarantined patients appear to have been "forgotten".

This hospital is apparently run by monkeys. Even if the patients weren't KNOWN to have an infectious disease, clinicians are still supposed to wash their hands between patients (I don't use the same gloves for different experiments in the lab).

Let me point out again for the sake of my American readers that Malaysia is not, in terms of technology, resources, or wealth, a backward country. I take every opportunity to smack down the ignoramuses who assume that "developing country" = "1990s Rwanda". We make computers, other electronics, drugs, all kinds of fine consumer products. We have so much. But brains? Who knows.

Greasy palms

(This is all from stuff printed in The Star which is virtually an MCA party organ, by the way. I'm quite disgusted at how they fawned over Chua Soi Lek after he resigned after being caught dicking around. "Brave and decisive" my foot! He didn't have a choice!)
I think we've got a bit of a contradiction -

• Regulation of companies growing palm oil sucks,
• Deforestation, and draining of peatlands is making Indonesian biodiesel decidedly NOT carbon-neutral or environmentally friendly,
• The industry causes an annual cloud of smoke and other airborne crap, known as "the haze" to fall on Malaysia,
• And to cap it all, we've got a shortage of cooking oil to the point where it's been smuggled out of the country

- and the gov't STILL wants to increase biodiesel production, with the industry in the state it's in?

2008 New Year's Resolution

I don't normally make New Year's resolutions (e.g. "I will not bite my nails" has been a historical failure since age eight or so) but I've come up with what I think is a viable one this year:

• To match any amount I spend aside from regular groceries, household, and toiletry supplies with donations to NGOs doing food aid, health, education, social justice, or women's issues - both secular and Christian.
• To match ALL spending on my cat with donations to animal welfare (not animal rights) and wildlife conservation organizations.

This way I'll probably spend less money this year on silly stuff and waste less time Internet shopping.

Maybe it sounds a bit extreme to some people but I've found since leaving home and starting to earn my own money at age 18, that the less stuff I buy, the less stuff I want. Materialism is a self-perpetuating lust, and most of the hobbies I really enjoy require very little material.

Other things I'd like to do:

• Write at least 2 short fiction stories and submit at least 1 to Writers of the Future or a science fiction magazine.
• Draw more, and spontaneously.
• Reinstall Creatures 3/Docking Station on my computer and start tinkering with the CAOS (Creatures Agent Object Scripting) language.
• Call parents and sisters and "small" boy more often (sometimes I forget my brother has a phone because he never calls me...)
• Clean my bike more often.
• Cook for my boyfriend and make him take his vitamins regularly.
• Watch more movies.

It's gonna be a personally interesting year...my project is going to get into animal studies...I'll have to write a thesis and hopefully graduate...my parents just got transferred to Penang...two of my London cousins are getting married in the summer so I'll finally have a chance to go to England...a couple of Phases kakis are getting married in Malaysia...another couple is having a baby, which makes them the first friends my age to reproduce...my boyfriend is taking 2/3 of a year off school for an internship...his mum wants to show our respective cats in the summer (TICA lets you show household pets)...

Et cetera. 'Tis life. =)

Halal turkeys

*sigh* This is so typical of Malaysians...aping the West, so that finding a halal source of a poultry that's typically associated with Christian holidays (i.e. Christmas and Thanksgiving) becomes an issue.

From theSun:

Halal turkey prices soar

Eunice Au

PETALING JAYA (Dec 21, 2007): If halal turkey was hard to find in local stores last Christmas, there is ample to go around this year.

However, consumers will have to fork out a lot more for the meat, which is imported from Australia by one company.

A check with the Giant hypermarket showed that prices of halal turkey had increased by 50-70%. A spokesman for Giant said prices had risen from RM16-RM20 per kilogramme last year to RM28-RM30 per kilogramme this year. However, he said he could not say for certain what had caused the jump.

Checks with other supermarkets showed that the price of turkey that is not certified halal, which is available in Isetan and Jaya Jusco, is also about the same.

While the Australian dollar has strengthened against the ringgit, this is only by about 6.5% compared with December last year.

Last year, following a circular from the Malaysian Islamic Development Department (Jakim) on Dec 7, 2006 which stated that imported turkey at that time was not halal, many hotels and restaurants nationwide had to pull the item from their Christmas menu. ...article continues.

I remember about 11-12 years ago our friends gave us their old microwave/convection oven (the dad is a doctor and the mum was a real estate agent, so they had a bit of money) because it wasn't big enough to thaw a turkey in so they were getting a new one. Looks like lots of other people are jumping on the bandwagon. Roast turkey isn't even the sort of thing that would show up in Malaysian cuisine - way too dry.

Malaysian politics wiki?

My cousin Jerng sent me a long and somewhat rambling log of a conversation between a Malaysian and someone from the UK. I don't go in much for esoteric activism strategies, but the part that caught my interest was the idea of starting a wiki for Malaysian law and politics, like the Opening Politics UK website. I like the idea...what do you guys think?

I'm not much of a political person, but I do like to stay informed. I developed an allergy against too much blah blah blah between going to a liberal arts college and dating [last year] a guy who now writes for TPMCafe.

MERDEKA! MERDEKA! MERDEKA! 1 day late

FlowerMoonFish brought me a miniature flag which is now pinned to my backpack. I'm waiting for the first jackass to ask me why it looks so much like the US flag, and the answer is going to be "It's a symbol of how good we are at pirating Hollywood movies."

My coworkers are Colombian...they're nearly 200...it makes me feel like we're such a little baby country.

My [maternal] grandfather's birthday was also yesterday (obviously he's older than Malaysia). So was Steve's. We're in Milwaukee at his parents' home now.

I brought along some nitrocellulose scraps from lab to blow up (molecular biology labs have big rolls of nitrocellulose for DNA and protein analysis). We tried a small bit first, about 2cm square, and it barely went poof. Then we wrapped a bigger piece around a squib and that was MUCH more satisfying. ^_^

Steve's dad got all enthu about the explosives (did I mention they're a gun culture family?) and brought out three Roman candles. We stood around in the backyard eating ice cream cake and yelling "HAPPY BIRTHDAY STEVE!" "HAPPY BIRTHDAY MALAYSIA!" and "HAPPY BIRTHDAY HWA'S GRANDPA!"

theSun (a free ad-supported newspaper, the only mainstream English paper that's not owned by a political party) had this really funny headline: Zam accuses theSun of promoting 'Malaysian Malaysia':

KUALA LUMPUR (Aug 28, 2007): Information Minister Datuk Seri Zainuddin Maidin said today Gerakan adviser Datuk Seri Dr Lim Keng Yaik's assumption that the Malay and Chinese newspapers favour certain parties and are not fair to all the races was inaccurate.

On the contrary, in many issues, "the Chinese and Malay newspapers are fairer to Malaysia than certain English newspapers.

"To say that theSun newspaper is a champion of Bangsa Malaysia shows that Dr Lim Keng Yaik sympathises with the newspaper which has all this while fought more for (the DAP's) 'Malaysian Malaysia'. "In many issues, theSun newspaper has touched on matters that offend the Malays, including the special rights of the Malays, the New Economic Policy (NEP), the social contract among the races that was agreed upon before Merdeka and also the question of unity in the society," he told a news conference after attending an "Anak-anak Merdeka and Malaysia" gathering in Angkasapuri here today.

(Anak-anak Merdeka are those born on Aug 31, 1957, when the country achieved independence and the Anak Malaysia are those born when Malaysia was formed on Sept 16, 1963.)

Lim, who is Energy, Water and Telecommunications Minister, was quoted as saying in Penang on Sunday (Aug 26) that theSun had used the Malaysian approach compared with the other newspapers, which according to him, were biased towards certain parties.

I suspect theSun's reporters of using a very fine sense of irony to say things that you can't say out loud...like "DS Zam is a moron."

btw, check out FMF's Merdeka blog entry - it's the lyrics of a hymn about Malaysia in the Malay language (Bahasa Melayu or BM for short). For readers from the US, given how flag-waving so often goes along with professions of love for "Jaysus Chr'ahst!" it might be hard to understand why it's important for Malaysian Christians, as racial and religious minorities, to be patriotic...take my word for it, a lot of people find it hard. The song translates roughly (sorry my Malay sucks):

Jesus is the king who is worthy to be lifted up
Worthy to be worshiped by all the nations
With Your blood, You've redeemed my nation
Fulfil, God, Your word on to country

My heart longs to see Your glory
My heart longs to see Your power poured out
In the beloved land, Malaysia my glory
I pray Malaysia will be full of Your glory
Malaysia for your glory

Happy 50th Malaysia!

Biasiswa Agong follow-up

For whatever peculiar reason, my post last year on interviewing for the Biasiswa Agong (King's Scholarship) is the first English language Google hit for "biasiswa agong", even above the JPA's page. This is sort of weird because I didn't get it (only 10 scholarships for MS and 5 for PhD are offered per year).

Anyway, a couple of people subesquently posted comments asking for advice (sorry for the delays in replying). Here's a short list of what I think I did right and wrong, hope it helps.

• In the letter notifying interviewees, they say to bring a hard copy of your proposal. Bring FOUR copies - 1 for each interviewer and 1 for yourself so you don't get confused.
• Also bring a copy of your CV just in case - if I remember correctly, the original application that we mailed in required one, but won't hurt right?
• Also bring a short outline of a verbal presentation of your proposal so you can rehearse silently while you're waiting. It's an interview not a presentation though, so don't make yourself a long speech.
• If you've been studying abroad for a while, PRACTICE YOUR BM!!! The interview was in English, but they asked a few sentences in Malay to check if I was still reasonably fluent. Pull out your long-forgotten SPM buku rujukan or whatever.
• Even if 1 interviewer does most of the talking, try to look at/address all of them while you're speaking. My interviewers were 1 Malay lady and 2 men; the lady seemed to talk most and to know the most about the subject I was discussing.
• Make sure you can explain how your studies/research will be useful to the rakyat eventually.
• If you're applying for a program abroad, be prepared with a convincing reason you won't just take the money and run (I think the govt is becoming a bit more aware of the brain drain problem even if they still suck at corralling the undergrad JPA scholars). And no, "my parents are getting old" is not convincing.
• Try to make yourself sound original and independent. This is where I think I screwed up - my current advisor/boss had just emailed me a big PDF of his grant proposal so I was sort of like "Er, yah, I'm just going to be the research assistant on this cool project..." *slaps forehead*

Good luck to you people who contacted me or who are reading this...let me know how it goes!

By the way, they suck at notifying unsuccessful candidates. I only found out when there was a newspaper article about the YDP Agong having lunch or something with the scholars. I can understand not notifying every Ali, Muthu, and Ah Beng who applied, but there weren't that many people who made it to the interview stage so at least could have sent out "We regret to inform..." letters right?

As for me...I came to the US anyway. I'm 8 months into a 2-year MS program. My salary and tuition are being covered partly by a scholarship from the institution I'm at (you know, "institution" sounds a bit like a mental hospital...) and partly by my PI's grant funding, since I'm working for him as a research assistant. This is generally what happens in the US for students in the natural sciences - funded either as RAs or TAs (teaching assistants, who teach undergrad classes).

However, if you're in bio like me and thinking of taking the same path to "the States", be warned that the NIH (National Institutes of Health), which is one of the biggest resources for life sciences research here, has been funding a smaller and smaller fraction of grant applications over the past few years, so your boss may run out of money for graduate student salaries. One of my lab-mates just lost her job due our boss pokai. So keep looking for other scholarships, and also for TA-ships and the like.

By the way - if you have any adik-beradik who want to study in the US for undergrad, tell them to apply to Williams College. Williams gives all international students a roundtrip ticket home annually. I almost fainted when my sis FlowerMoonFish told me. Bloody kid!

Freedom to blog

This isn't exactly putting myself in the line of fire since nobody but friends read my blog, but I'm going to make my opinion very clear: NAZRI AZIZ SUCKS (and this isn't immediately relevant to these events, but so does Hishamuddin Hussein, by the way). There. I didn't say anything about the King, or about a particular religion, or a particular race. I'm pretty sure I'm entitled to state my opinion of individuals though. =D

If you don't know much about Malaysian politics, try reading the first article anyway...Raja Petra is super funny (he really is a Raja, he's a minor aristocrat).

• 23/07: See you in hell Muhamad son of Muhamad
• 24/07: Umno files report against webmaster
• 25/07: Action against 'flaming' blogs: Belittle the king or Islam and you face the music (bah, the stupid New Straits Times can't even get its terminology right - flaming is when you reply insultingly in an online conversation, not when you're insulting someone who's not "there".)
• Webmaster Raja Petra questioned for 8hrs

Cancer vaccine - what??

Cancer vaccine trials for 230

KUALA LUMPUR: Some 230 advanced-stage lung cancer patients in the country will take part in clinical trials for a therapeutic cancer vaccine.

Deputy Health Minister Datuk Dr Abdul Latiff Ahmad said the vaccine, Epidermal Growth Factor (EGF), was the first of its kind in the world and produced here with the cooperation between Malaysia and Cuba.

“The second and third phases of the clinical trials would be conducted on 230 patients who volunteered to undertake the trials at 14 hospitals nationwide.

“They have been told they have about six months to live,” he told a press conference.

Dr Latiff said the trials would be conducted by a local biotechnology company and Cuban researchers.

(From The Star)

Ok, I'm really confused as to how EGF can be used as a cancer vaccine...as far as I know the therapeutic use of recombinant growth factors is in special bandages to heal chronic wounds like bad burns and diabetic ulcers. But I've spent all day reading Harry Potter so I'm not going to PubMed it now.

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I'm suspicious of "big" announcements with regard to scientific research in Malaysia because Malaysian officials like to say all kinds of karut stuff...like last week the Fisheries Department said they were going to save the vanishing leatherbacks by cloning turtles (can't access the original article because the New Straits Times is a lot more stingy about giving free access to archives). I mean, do you know how hard it is to clone mammals? Nobody's even TRIED reptiles yet...Junaidi can go jump in the lake with Michael Crichton and his dinosaurs lah.

Melaka

So Melaka, the place where I suffered for two and a half years before going off to college - also known as "an overgrown fishing village where everybody is related to everybody else", and by its Anglicized name of Malacca - is in the news again since someone discovered a new bat-vectored reovirus there. Apparently the Chief Minister isn't too happy about a virus being named after his state, never mind that nobody minded the naming of Nipah virus back in the 1990s (Chua Kaw Bing, the leader of the Malaysian team, was also involved in the discovery of Nipah, if I remember correctly).

Viruses have been renamed in the past, most notably the Sin Nombre ("No Name") hantavirus that killed a lot of people in a Native American community. The researchers were originally going to name it after the place it was discovered, but the community objected, not without reason since a number of their best young people had just died.

Thinking about Melaka again, I can't say that this is the only thing I find interesting about it. Melaka has a great history, but the vast majority of Malaysian local governments wouldn't know what history was if it bit them on the bum. The vaunted Portuguese fort, A Famosa is a pile of rocks while beautiful old Chinese shophouses that have been around for generations crumble (warning: 鸟屋 [The Bird House] is one of those artsy movies where the ending makes no sense).

During my time in college, I read Shellabear's transcription (it was originally written in Jawi) of the Sejarah Melayu [The Malay Annals - or loosely, "The History of the Malays"] and finally finished it during spring break of senior year. We had been exposed to snippets of classical Malay through the last two years of secondary school, but never read a full text like how American kids have to swallow at least one Shakespeare. I wanted to taste at least one classical Malay book in its entirety...which was pretty much the equivalent in difficulty of an ESL speaker digesting the Lord of the Rings.

I was volunteering on a Habitat for Humanity build that spring break. Lying on the bottom bunk in a beach house in South Carolina, reading by torchlight, I wept over the terror and betrayal of the Portuguese invasion:

Setelah datang musim maka kapitan kapal itupun kembalilah ke Goa. Telah datang ke Goa maka, diwartakannya kepada wazir-wazirnya peri kebesaran negeri Melaka dengan makmurnya serta dengan ramai bandarnya. Pada masa itu wazirnya di Goa Alfonso d'Alberquerque namanya. Maka ia pun terlalu ingin menegar khabar negeri Melaka itu. Maka ia menyuruh berlengkap kapal tujuh buah, dan ghali panjang sepuluh, fusta tigabelas. Telah sudah lengkap, maka disuruhnya menyerang Melaka. Maka Gonzalo Periera nama kapitannya. Telah datang ke Melaka, make dibedilnya dengan meriam. Maka segala orang Melaka pun terkejut menengar bunyi meriam itu, katanya, 'Apa bunyi ini seperti guruh?'

Maka peluru meriam itupun datang mengenai segala orang Melaka: ada yang putus lehernya, ada yang putus pinggangnya, ada yang putus pahanya, ada yang pecah kepalanya; makin bertambah-tambah hairanlah orang Melaka melihat peluru bedil itu, katanya, 'Apa nama senjata bulat-bulat ini? Mana tajamnya, maka ia membunuh ini?'

[My crappy translation: When the season came, then the captain of that ship returned to Goa. When he reached Goa, he reported to the viceroys of the greatness of Melaka, of its sovereignity and its many towns. At that time, the Viceroy of Goa was named Alfonso d'Alberquerque. He greatly desired to hear more of Melaka. therefore he commanded that seven ships, ten long ghalis [dunno this word], and thirteen fustas [dunno also] be equipped. When all was ready, he commanded the invasion of Melaka. Gonzalo Periera was the name of his captain. When they reached Melaka, they bombarded it with cannon. Then all the people of Melaka were shocked to hear the cannons, saying, 'What is this sound like thunder?'

Then the cannonballs came and struck the people of Melaka: some had their necks broken, some had their waists broken, some had their thighs broken, some had their heads crushed; and the amazement of the people of Melaka grew watching those missiles, saying, 'What is the name of these round weapons? Where is their sharpness, that they kill like this?' -- Sejarah Melayu, WG Shellabear edition, p.184]

That is the history of Melaka. The history of Melaka cannot be conveyed by a bunch of lazy vendors selling trinkets made in China. The history of Melaka cannot be conveyed by painting all the buildings in the historical district brick red. The history of Melaka, for heaven's sake, cannot be conveyed by a giant revolving tower shaped like Hang Tuah's keris.

The history of Melaka is the history of a fallen kingdom whose conquerors themselves all fell in time. It comes to us through stories, read or spoken, and through the lives of the people whose ancestors were there - Malay, Chinese, Indian, Portuguese. In comparison all else is dirt.

Nucking Futs

My friend Koidy, who's from Batu Caves and just finished her BS at Franklin and Marshall, sent me this story. Ooooookie. To treat erectile dysfunction? (Or as the less squeamish of us would call it, "impotence".)

Koidy brought up concerns about proper controls since the article says

so far 40 volunteers had tried the tablet and responded positively.

Perhaps it's just sloppy writing on the part of The Star - maybe Dr Kim did describe a controlled study but the reporter just thought it would be too boring to put in a mainstream paper - but otherwise it sounds sketchy. Also no mention of whether the results were published in a peer-reviewed journal.

This is a really irresponsible statement to make:

“Furthermore, because it is not a drug, it is safe for those with hypertension or diabetes, or (those) who have recently had heart bypasses,” he said, adding that some of the volunteers had undergone bypass surgeries.

Not a drug? The last time I checked, the general definition of a drug was any chemical that alters the body's physiology. If you claim that it can give fat old men boners by dilating their blood vessels, it's a drug. This also falls under the fallacy about "natural" remedies that technophobic types like to believe - that if something is natural, it must be safe. Another small molecule that can be extracted from nuts (cyanide from almonds) is "natural", but I wouldn't care to assume its safety in any great quantity.

Anyway, nitroglycerin is used in heart patients for the same purpose - it's converted into NO in the body. Why reinvent the wheel?

Also, something I might not have picked up on if I hadn't seen someone's letter to The Star about Malaysian academicians entering bogus design contests: the "International Invention, Innovation, Industrial Design and Technology Exhibition" that this product won a gold medal at is hosted by Malaysia. From the list of "winners" [PDF] from last year, it looks like virtually all the entrants were Malaysian. And there were FIFTEEN gold medals given out to university teams in the "Biotechnology, Health & Fitness" category, out of a total of 46 gold medals awarded to universities. It's like a primary school Sports Day where everybody gets a prize. (I was going to say "Special Olympics" but it's not fair to associate handicapped people with the incorrigibly incompetent.)

Check out the guy lah...see for yourself.

And whatever happened to Tongkat Ali?

---

Stupid cat went out right before a thunderstorm. I have now one very soggy and unhappy kitty wandering around my apartment looking for things to dry herself on..aiyayayayayaya.

Masuk angin keluar asap

I'm sort of glad Dr. Mahatir retired a few years back. He's got to be the only third world dictator ever to do so voluntarily. I'm getting increasingly convinced he's pretty nyanyok now though. Check this out.

The former prime minister said bloggers should not tell lies and untruths, and because there were no laws governing them, their freedom to write anything could negatively affect the development of the country.

“Although bloggers are not subject to the same laws governing the mainstream media, they should write the truth all the same.

And a few paragraphs later:

Dr Mahathir also apologised to Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi for accusing him of owning a house in Perth, Australia.

He said he got carried away when he mentioned it at a talk in Kulai, Johor, on March 29 recently and added it was based on a rumour.

Seriously lah...Malaysian public officials and politicians clearly don't know anything about the internet or they wouldn't have come up with such a hare-brained idea as registering "bloggers". There's clearly a difference between people with huge reputations who do it on a semi-professional basis like Jeff Ooi and idiots like me* who do it just to waste time, but it's along a spectrum. There is no discrete cut-off that would distinguish the "bloggers" the government wants to take down.

*Or Michael Ooi, for that matter (Just kidding. Read his blog, it's damn funny, and he's one of the more popular non-political Malaysian bloggers.)

National embarrassment

Good grief. I just found out from a commentor on the Education In Malaysia blog (see this story for background) that Malaysia was featured in Nature back in 2005. And not in a good way.

I know it's too easy to blame everything on the government...but that's because it is too easy. The idea of Ketuanan Melayu is a load of crap (as any idea of the supremacy of a particular ethnic group is, especially in a country with ethnic miniorities this big), and the resulting policies and practices are doing as much good for our country's progress as a pair of lead boots to a swimmer. See the Nature story here.

The road less travelled

Talked to Koidy Koid on Gmail chat this afternoon. She'd sent me an email with a link to this entry on the Education In Malaysia blog and the following in the comment thread:

Anonymous (Wed Nov 29, 02:40:32 AM): PhD + 3 years postdoc experience, optimistically you may get between RM5K to 7K per month salary in IPTA (public uni) or IPTS (private uni) in Malaysia.

You are on probation and most likely you will work in a department whose head has not heard of Nature Cell Biology and Cancer Cell; neither the dean knows Nature Cell Biology and Cancer Cell. They know how to answer to the call of nature.

If you are in IPTA, your first priority is not getting your research gear up and ready. You have to sign 'Aku Janji' form and attend induction courses and other silly civil-service based classes to be educated about stuff totally unrelated to your scientific career, so that you are well prepared to take exams that you must pass for your confirmation and promotion later^* .

Then you have to cope with grant applications from various sources like IRPA, SAGA, etc.

When you are finally ready to carry out your world-shattering frontier experiments, you have to cope with unexpected power cut and zero water supply, which happen a bit annoyingly too frequent.

Meanwhile, the clock goes tick tock, tick tock and you discover that your brilliant virgin scientific ideas got published by your competitors in Nature, Science, Cell, PNAS, EMBO Journal, etc.

After one or two years, you may make a bold decision - cut loss, give up science, and go into politics (the best exponential rising path is to join Umno Youth or Puteri or Putera, if you qualify) to salvage your bright future.

On the other hand, if you are as smart as you claimed and have guts to face rewarding challenges, then, my boy or girl, go south - the little red dot (which most likely will give you a starting salary in S$ more than the equivalent RM of a professor in IPTA in Malaysia, and you pay less tax, and no 'Aku Janji' to sign, and no civil-service based classes to take, and ....!) - or other leading nations in the world!

Smart people must know how to make smart choices. Good luck to you.

Koidy: Hi taikach.
me: hi koidy
Koidy: i'm thoroughly depressed.
me: just got your email
Koidy: yeah.
me: Unfortunately it's what I heard when I was doing a bit of career path research back home. (calling people up, talking to Emily Tan's dad, etc.)
Koidy: that plus the essay... can go bang head.
me: how buys are you this week? would like to talk on the phone. it occurs to me that i don't call friends much, but would like to.
Koidy: sorta busy, because Tar coming back tomorrow, then got this essay, also making him pressie. but i can make time :)
me: ahh okay
wanna chat tonight? just for a short time if you're working on the essay
Koidy: sounds wonderful :)
thanks.
need your pragmatic grounding on issue at hand.
but dang, future so bleak.
me: hehehe ME? pragmatic??
maybe we shoudl form a Malaysian Scientists Support Group on facebook.
Sent at 1:27 PM on Wednesday
Koidy: we should...
sighness.
me: /me sighs too
Koidy: maybe could have found rich boyfriend.
pulak-pulak Tar is also completely into low-income jobs and serving the poor.
me: i was just about to type "engineering pays well" and then hit Del.
Koidy: :P
sorry.
me: I'm seriously thinking about moving to Singapore.
don't want it to be permanent though
Koidy: really??
yan is there?
i mean, yan is there.
me: the impression i got from the people i talked to is that there is some hope that M'sia will improve over thnext decade or two but it will be SLOW.
Koidy: and how will it improve if people like you run to sing??
me: yeah, she's on a 3-year bond after uni =P
Koidy: i wonder how she's doing with the to boys.
me: HAH
i think it's one of those quantum statesthat's neither here nor there but the waveform will eventually col.lapse.
Sent at 1:32 PM on Wednesday
Koidy: are you referring to yan or to malaysia?
me: clarification: what i'm afraid of is getting stuck as a junior
lecturer with no power in an IPTA.
Yan =)
Koidy: haha. kenapa?
oh yeah. i know what you mean--all my hopes of research dashed.
me: my hope is that it might be possible to build up my career for a few years in Sg, and then move to Malaysia and start a new job with more seniority.
Koidy: makes sense.
but what about steve?
me: yeah. there's literally nothing for him in M'sia.
we saw the list of MS projects in the Biomed Engineering UM website, and he said they were undergrad caliber.
some of them were totally ridiculous, like "Changes in Body
Composition Before and After Prayer in Muslim Women."
Koidy: aahhhh! stop stop!
enough bleak news about tanahair.
beh tahan.
wanna bang head on mass spec and cry.
but arthur keeps holding me up and exhorting that no matter what, we
need to go where God calls us.
frustration and poverty are not things to run away from.
me: s'truth
Koidy: i agree with him about poverty (not that either of us will ever
be impoverished)
me: was reading an article in The Scientist about sicence in Africa
Koidy: but dunno about the frustration part. that's harder to deal with.
me: scientists in dev countries all over the world are fighting this
kind of thing. at least we've got company in misery, it' not unique to
M'sia.
Koidy: mm.
that's hopeful.
bleh :P
sorry... being petulant.
but taikach, what about your vet dreams?
me: shrug you know what's funny? after i figured out that vet school was going to be too expensive and applied to grad school as a backup, i really wasn't upset at all.
learned from my internship that i liked research. and weirder...ever since i could read^** (literally!) i've had this morbid interest in infectious diseases anyway
i think this is the right field for me. anyway, it still involves work with animals - zoonotic disesase, veterinary vaccines, just on the research side instead of clinical.
i think God wants me here, 's what i'm trying to say.
Sent at 1:40 PM on Wednesday
Koidy: sounds wonderful.
i really think there is a place for God's people in the sciences. as much as there is anywhere else, but there is definitely a dearth of Christians in the sciences.
for me, i'll go to grad school, then see how loh.
i think i'm committed to going home.
and if that's where God wants me, hopefully, i'll find in that (my
calling), the staying power to do what's necessary.
me: meetoo.
bah, i should remember to pray for you more often. i usually forget to pray for frineds unless they email me about their grad school apps.
Sent at 1:46 PM on Wednesday
Koidy: grin
it's okay.
i'm only currently trying to up my prayer life.
gtg liao.
to my other, more relaxing job at the library.
ta... and thanks!
call me after dinner?
around 8-ish or something liddat?

^*Werner's Where There Is No Doctor was one of my favourite books from about age seven. I still can't explain why, but it's laid the foundation for a lot of the things I think about now. It's the manual for rural healthcare workers.
^**This isn't just the one guy's opinion, according to the UM professor emeritus and new PhDs I talked to back home, funding depends a LOT on seniority, and a lot of the tenured profs are deadwood.

Biasiswa Agong interview

EDIT: I wrote a follow-up to this post a year later because for some weird reason it keeps showing up #1 on Google searches for "biasiswa agong" *scratches head*. No, I didn't get the scholarship, but I'm doing my MS studies anyway. Please see here for the follow-up, and if you're applying this year or applied last year, let me know how it went! I'm always interested in connecting with other M'sians in academia.

---

I just got a call from someone called Ismail at the JPA to tell me to check the JPA site this afternoon for my interview date for the King's Scholarship (Biasiswa Yang di-Pertuan Agong, .doc file explaining what the scholarship is).

*does happy kitty dance* I've been worrying that my application was incomplete, or didn't reach (even though I sent it by PosLaju), or got thrown in the trash, since I never heard anything back from the other JPA scholarship I applied to earlier this year.

Biasiswa Yang Di-Pertuan Agong ini adalah bagi mengiktiraf kebolehan luar biasa seseorang pelajar, di samping memberi peluang kepada pelajar untuk melanjutkan pengajian di peringkat pasca ijazah dalam bidang Sains dan Teknologi.
[The King's Scholarship aims to acknowledge a student's extraordinary abilities, in addition to giving students opportunities to further their studies at the graduate degree level in Science and Technology fields.]

Penerima Biasiswa Yang Di-Pertuan Agong yang telah menamatkan pengajian diwajibkan pulang ke negara ini tetapi tidak terikat untuk berkhidmat dengan Kerajaan.
[Recipients of the King's scholarship who have completed their studies are obliged to return to this country but are not bonded to Government service.]

That's exactly what I want - to return to Malaysia, but have the freedom to do what I want to do with it.

OK, now I have an immediate reason to whip out that material on dengue from my boss and reread all of it like I've been planning to.

And I really hope I'll have a chance to explain myself in English. Last time I had an interview in Malay was for my SPM Lisan (oral) exam 6 years ago. One of the selection criteria is "Prestasi semasa temuduga" (prestige in the interview), so I'd better stay cool and do as best as I can in BM though.