The Reader

Let's play the blame game...

Remember the traditional song Bangau Oh Bangau?

It really amused me to read the blame of the problem of fungus at Hospital Sultan Ismail,in Johor Bahru.The Ministry of Health blamed the contractor and vice versa. The bottom line is the public will suffer.

"Gajah sama gajah bertengkar,kancil mati ditengah."

I expect to read more 'interesting stories' in the next few days..

Hello Bangau. Where are you?

What day is today?

On returning home for lunch today, my wife asked me what day is today.I told her it is Tuesday 28 September,2004. Then ,she asked again what day was yesterday? Of course ,I replied it was Monday,27th September. From the look of her face, I exclaimed: My God! Now, I know. Yesterday was my 27th wedding anniversary.

Whatever is your views, I am guilty as charged!

Tonight, I must take her to dinner.

Galactical mergers..

Last Friday, I read with great interest about the mergers of two galaxies some 800 millions light years away from our planet earth. What interests me most are the type of actions still taking place in the deep place ,and it occurs at a distance beyond my mental grasp to comprehend the dimension of length.

Let's see how far is one light year? One light year is about 6 trillions miles. Then, let multiply that figure by 800 millions. The answer is about 4.8 billion trillions miles(10 to the power of 21)!!! My mind is too small to be stretched to understand the size of our universe...

Let me tell you a story...

After my usual weekend walk at KLCC this morning, my friends and I entered KLCC for breakfast. I was pleasantly suprised when I saw the stage for Story Telling Final to be held by 10am.We went to Asean Flavours for our breakfast and chatted away waiting for the show time.( I was dissappointed that I donot have my camera with me,so what you see here is just a snapshot from my Fatboy( a nickname for my Nokia 6600).However you can see better photos of the event at Nazley fotopages.

Well,this event was for the kids. They were smartly and beautifully dressed for the occasion.I really missed the opportunity to take their photos. My fatboy is lousy when it comes to taking pictures of people in the building.Equally,the children performance is very good.How I wish my kids to participate in such an event, but all of them are young adults now.

A few years ago I had this idea to get a few friends to KLCC garden and started a telling story/reading poetry session.But alas,it never took off. In fact, I have set up a website at geocities in 1998 to archive the potential good stories.It also failed but you can read a few there.

Below are two quotations from the website that I love:

Ion to Irina:Do not silence that voice within.

Poetry was not written to be analysed,it was meant to inspire without reason,to touch without understanding.-From The Notebook-The Novel

To cut the long story short( a phrase I borrow from Sir Jefferey Archer book),I am still very interested to organise an adult story telling event if I could get at least ten people who are interested to participate. Any takers?

Below is what I wrote six years ago at the website:

Malaysia is relatively a young nation of 22 m people.Her post independence life is only 41 years old-life has just began.She had been colonised by almost all major powers from east and west.And every one of them left something behind.The last was the British,which has major influence in the political,economic and social life of Malaysians.Now,Malaysia is a multiracial country made of Malays,Chinese,Indians and other minor ethnic minorities.Slowly and steadily,it has transformed itself from under-developed agrarian economy to almost a modern industrial state with a vision to be a fully developed nation by year 2020.

The country and the people have undergone various major political, economic and social changes in the last 41 years-the good,the bad and a few ugly ones.We are a community of a group of communities. Formerly,a community used to be defined by ethnic group only, however now other economic and social factors have created new sub-communities that transgressed ethnic borders. Each community has its own culture and way of life.Likewise,the nation of Malaysians has its culture and a way of life.Each community has its own stories.The nation has her own story.The sum total may be the Malaysian story.

Stories are written for others to read and preserved for the future generations.We can buy books from bookshops or read them at the libraries.This website is also about reading,books, bookshops and libraries.However,stories are borderless.They are all over the globe.They are human....

Let's tell ,write and read our Malaysian stories.The story may be told by a Malay,written by a Chinese and read by an Indian,but it is everyone's story-the story of Malaysians.Every story has its own 'power'-one of them is it teaches us to be human.Let's understand ourselves so that we may understand others.Let's understand others so that we understand us better.Let's us be a better Malaysian....
God Bless Us All Malaysians.

A pciture is what we see...

Everyone of us will see each picture differently. To the business men, this is a good place for business because it is a transportation hub where a large human traffic will be passing this location. To marketing people, it is a strategic location to hang their pasters or banners. To coffee lovers, it is a good place to savour hot cappucinos or mochas, to the pick-pockets, there is plenty of opportunities to steal from people in a hurry,to the taxi drivers, it is a good place to pick up passengers,etc.....

What prompted me to take this photo is the beauty of the space frame below the roofs.In my engineering jargon,it is structurally demonstrative! What says the architect?

The same picture means different things to different people.Q.E.D.

[Please click on the photo for better view.The picture is taken at KL Sentral]

Disconnected

Since Thursday afternoon, my home telephone is cut off because a big Telekom cable to my neighbourhood is faulty and now under repairs. Upon my enquiry, I was told that it will take another three days before I could get connected again. To my family members and friends out there, please use my mobile number in case you wish to call me. Without a phoneline, my streamyx is down and I could not dial for my JARING account.

Now, I am writing this note while having dinner at a hotspot restaurant. Please bear with me in the next few days if I could not reply promptly to your emails,IM.

Spending in the way of Allah

How much did you spend in the way of Allah this year? Syaik Khalid Yasin, in his lectures at Masjid As-syakirin,KLCC last week told the audience that we muslims are very stingy.According to him, if every muslim/muslimah were to donate 10% of our wealth, it is more than enough to provide muslims all over the world with the best schools.medical facilities etc for all the ummah!

Let me quote Surah al-Hadeed ayat 10:

“What hesitation should you have in spending in the way of Allah swt when everything in the heavens and earth belongs to Allah swt.”

Just look at whatever we may have.Previously,they belong to other people.When we leave this world, all ‘our wealth’ will belong to others after us. In fact, we are just acting as trustees.Yes, we worked hard to acquire our income/wealth, but as muslims/muslimah we also believe that whatever ‘belongs to us’ is given by Allah swt.

The bottom line is we ACTUALLY donot own anything ,even our own body.Everything belongs to Allah swt. So,let me remind myself and my fellow muslims to allocate some portion of our income/wealth to be spent in the way of Allah.

Below are two ayat to motivate us:

Surah al-Hadeed ayat 11:

Who is ready to give a sincere loan to Allah swt so that He can double it for him agenerous reward beyond it.

Surah an-Naba ,ayat 36:

There is a reward from your Lord and an additional gift according to your sincerity.

RM10 Martabak By Order

This morning, I have breakfast with my mother and my wife on a RM 10 murtabak a piece! It is the most expensive murtabak she brought from Kota Bharu,Kelantan. It is about 25 mm thick and we only managed to eat only half of it. This special murtabak can only be bought by order a day earlier. That is how popular it is.

E-Books

May be I am old fashion or my old age or both. Somehow reading ebooks from my pda or computer is not for me. Last week, a young friend WJ downloaded two audio books into two CD's and I synced them into my iPod.I tried to listen,but cannot concentrate listening to the narrator.I still prefer my books to ebooks and audio books.

I agree with Mr Thor Kah Hoong,the owner of Skoop Bookshop who wrote in the Star to-day(page 10) that "people still read books'. IMHO, despite the hype of digital books, paper books are here to stay. I also agree with him that we can't take laptops to bed, but I know a few who read books on their pda while in bed.

Personally, I love to hold real books( I meant paper based books) in my hand. I am very particular about the design,the font,the papers and the binding. On a few occasions, I do smell the books!

To me,when it comes to electronic book,it is just the contents!

What say you?

Note: My previous postings on books.

Bar-coded Nasi Lemak

Yesterday was the first time I saw a bar-coded 'nasi lemak' at Cold Storage supermarket at KLCC. The picture is shown in my moblog on the left had side of this page. This made me think more about what is going on in tthe simple bar-code that have been in use for years especially in the retail industry.

Previously,it never crosses my mind how bar-code work;as usual I took things for granted. To find out, I googled the Internet and discovered how a simple idea could revolutise the way the business is being done.As a civil engineer,this subject is foreign to me.May be I should tell my friends in water indutry to bar-code all the pipelines so that all pipe parameters could be included in a bar -code for asset management and maintenance work?

Prior to the existence of bar codes,I just wonder how thousands of items are being managed at super-markets and ware-houses?