Aaaaargghhhh!!! My head feels like exploding nowadays everytime i go out and about in town. It is not due to the traffic jams or ever increasing cost of living in this big city, but it is due to the one called C or F, or should i say the increase of C or F in the air. I cant remember the last time when the temperature got so hot almost everyday averaging around 38 degrees Celcius and sometime peaks near 40 Celcius! The highest temperature i have ever experienced was 42C in 1995 when i was in Perth, Australia. Breathing the dry air at 42C in Perth was like breathing in a sauna,you could feel the hot air slowly entering your airways and filling your lungs, it was very uncomfortable.
When i was in high school in the 70s the highest temperature never got past 35C i think. But then that was when Malaysia was a lot less developed and the green area coverage throughout the country was more than today. There were a lot less highrise buildings then and less roads too. The number of cars that burn diesel and petrol and release carbon dioxide and monoxide into the air by thousand of tonnes per day were less. There were less factories that release toxic gases into the air back then. We did not have regular occurance of haze as the result of open burning.
So what has happened to our country since the 70s that contributed to this heat or increase warming? I like to call it as collateral damage of a country going through rapid growth to become a developed nation. In my opinion we are trying very hard to achieve the status at the expense of our environment. Now trying to become a developed nation is not a bad thing, it is just trying to do everything in haste without proper planning, monitoring of policies and enforcement will lead to some screw ups now and then, and when we are dealing with mother nature it will somehow strike back at us in some form or another in the future.
In a material world that we live in today, maximum profit overrides everything else. While there are some responsible corporations operate within the by-laws to achieve their targets, there are equal numbers that do not follow the laws and try to bypass procedures and requirements if they could get away with it. Some would lobby the influential people in important positions to get instant approvals when certain requirements have not been met for their projects prior to commencing, i.e Environmental Impact Studies. Then there are those illegal operations that do whatever they like, like land clearing and stealing timbers in forest reserves and conduct open burning in the process. We hear cases like in Cameron Highlands where some farmers cleared the forest areas to expand their farms without approvals. Everyday we lost so many football field size green areas due to legal and illegal land clearings which contributes to the increase in the air temperature we experience today. Less greenery means less shaded areas, less absorption of solar heat and carbon dioxide, and less production of oxygen for us to breath.
While in the cities where population grows at an alarming rate due to the economic factors, land would become scarce and expensive. The demand for housing for a bigger population would force the authorities to improve the increase in density per acre and lead to highrise apartments boom. The concentration of highrise blocks which house thousands of unit of apartment in a small area become the norm in big city like Kuala Lumpur. Just imagine if an apartment has five air conditioning condenser units blowing hot air into the surrounding, what would thousands of units of apartments will do to the temperature of the air in the city? Take this fact with the thousands of office blocks, factories and at least a million vehicles releasing heat everyday so the occupants can be comfortable inside, we will have a city which behave like an oven,baking itself slowly. The hotter it gets outside the more the usage of air-conditioning increase and the more the release of heat into the air, it is a vicious cycle, almost close to insanity.
So what do we do and how do we escape this heat? I am afraid the damage done is quite extensive already in Malaysia but still we could slow down the process if the government of the day have the political will to re-examine certain policies to balance growth of development with environmental conservation. God created trees for the good of mankind. The trees in so many forms give us food,oxygen for us to breath, shade us when it is hot, protect the slopes and from strong winds, they even protect the beach from erosion and tsunamis. But some human failed to see the importance of the trees and replaced them with concrete jungle due to greed and in the name of progress. Well, mother nature has a way to remind us of our mistakes and is telling us to give her a helping hand to help her recover. It will take time but if we ignore the signs we will face bigger danger when the temperature rises higher. As it is now the polar ice caps is slowly melting, the glaciers are melting and the sea level slowly increasing and in the near future a lot of land will slowly be inundated with water.
Monday, March 8, 2010
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
HARI RAYA AIDIL FITRI
As always after almost a month fasting the Hari Raya fever is getting more intense when the Muslims start to do last minute shopping and preparation for the big day on 1st Syawal. Eventhough the economic slowdown is still lingering in this country it does not stop Malaysians from shopping and hunt for good bargains at popular shopping centers and street shops.
Of course it also attracts the parasites of the society to hunt for their food - pick pockets, muggers, snatchers etc. Yesterday my sister in-law became another victim to the bag snatchers right in front of her house in broad daylight!
There are also those who take advantage of those who unlucky enough not to own their own rides by selling them fake bus tickets with inflated prices. These poor people only realised they were cheated when the bus never showed up. It happens almost every year, somewhere somebody got screwed and it robbed them of the supposedly enjoyable journey home to their villages, what a shame!
For those who are fortunate enough to own their own wheels it is a different story. Every year Malaysians die by the thousands on the road en route to their hometown or kampungs. It has becoming a trend to rush home ala Michael Scumacher by speeding zig zag through the traffic and ignoring the traffic rules. Some could not be bothered with traffic summons, why not? They only need to pay 50% at discounted rate on the net! I know some people who accumulated more than thirty traffic summons which cost thousand of ringgit and they still could not be bothered! I guess they will never stop until they die.
Well i guess it is the same year in and year out, Hari Raya can bring the best and the worse out of Malaysians who claim that they are a well behaved or bersopan society. I beg to differ as this part of our society is going through slow death. In our haste to pile up our wealth and
status in this material world some of us start to stop becoming nice and decent people, social ettiquette has gone down the drain. Some
Muslims have even forgotten the basic teachings of the Rasul s.a.w (peace be upon him), some young generation even abandoned them so
to appear " modern and progressive".
Well, i pray that all Muslims in Malaysia stay faithfull to the teachings of Islam so we can become a stronger Ummah in number and in our belief. I would like to wish all Muslims Selamat Hari Raya maaf zahir batin especially my friends and ex- staff at Sunrise Bhd. Please be patient in adversity and be focus to achieve success.
Of course it also attracts the parasites of the society to hunt for their food - pick pockets, muggers, snatchers etc. Yesterday my sister in-law became another victim to the bag snatchers right in front of her house in broad daylight!
There are also those who take advantage of those who unlucky enough not to own their own rides by selling them fake bus tickets with inflated prices. These poor people only realised they were cheated when the bus never showed up. It happens almost every year, somewhere somebody got screwed and it robbed them of the supposedly enjoyable journey home to their villages, what a shame!
For those who are fortunate enough to own their own wheels it is a different story. Every year Malaysians die by the thousands on the road en route to their hometown or kampungs. It has becoming a trend to rush home ala Michael Scumacher by speeding zig zag through the traffic and ignoring the traffic rules. Some could not be bothered with traffic summons, why not? They only need to pay 50% at discounted rate on the net! I know some people who accumulated more than thirty traffic summons which cost thousand of ringgit and they still could not be bothered! I guess they will never stop until they die.
Well i guess it is the same year in and year out, Hari Raya can bring the best and the worse out of Malaysians who claim that they are a well behaved or bersopan society. I beg to differ as this part of our society is going through slow death. In our haste to pile up our wealth and
status in this material world some of us start to stop becoming nice and decent people, social ettiquette has gone down the drain. Some
Muslims have even forgotten the basic teachings of the Rasul s.a.w (peace be upon him), some young generation even abandoned them so
to appear " modern and progressive".
Well, i pray that all Muslims in Malaysia stay faithfull to the teachings of Islam so we can become a stronger Ummah in number and in our belief. I would like to wish all Muslims Selamat Hari Raya maaf zahir batin especially my friends and ex- staff at Sunrise Bhd. Please be patient in adversity and be focus to achieve success.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
A GLOOMY WORLD
It has been a while since the last article i wrote at the start of the new year.
I have been "hibernating" like a bear trying to shield myself from all the insanities that have been going around me and the world, and did not feel like writing at all. The problem with hibernating is that sooner or later you have to wake up and face the reality, and the changes that have been happening around you.
Talking about hibernating, i am very worried about the bearishness of our stock market and the trend of going down south is squeezing the wealth of thousands of investors including me. With bills knocking at our doors every month from banks and utility companies, it is quite worrying that one day i might not be able to live up to it. I am sure others will have sleepless nights thinking about it too depending on the extent of their exposures.
Our stock market is so connected to other stock markets' performance world wide especially the Wall Streets and Dow Jones. As the situation in the United States seems bleak despite the US800 billion package announced by Mr Obama, our stock market is dragged down with it to the bottomless pit . This still happens despite the new RM60 billion stimulus package announced by the Deputy Prime Minister the other day. It seems that the loss of confidence in the economic future of Malaysia and the rest of the world is pretty bad.
In Malaysia, a lot of companies have started to take proactive steps to cut operational costs to survive this economic uncertainties. Some have retrenched thousands of workers especially in the manufacturing sectors as demands for product in the export market is reduced. Some have reassigned their staff into different job scopes and sent them for retraining to acquire new skills to cope with future roles. Some who are still strong resort to minor paycuts and benefits. But there will be a time if the situation does not improve, they will have to resort to using more drastic measures that will make life more miserables for the employees. I am sure one day it will happen to me too, no exception.
We are still trying to adjust to the rising food prices due to the increase of petrol and diesel last year which did not slide down as the crude oil price dropped substantially to US47 per barrel as of yesterday, one wonders how is he going to cope with all these pressures. Living in a city like KL nowadays is pure madness on our souls. Highways with tolls with rates keep going up is coiling us like a python slowly tightening its muscle over its victim to a slow and painful suffocated death. Worst still, some idiots are helping giving energy to this beast to allow it to operate as long as it can to suffocate more and more victims. Only after a lot of screaming by the victims, the decision got reversed for now. How can they be so insensitve to the problems faced by most of us to survive during this difficult time, one wonders. I guess we are partly to blame for voting for them.
As we are facing this situation, there is one group of people in Malaysia who are not affected by it at all it seems - our politicians! It is either they are very rich or they are living in a different realm, it must be, since they are not bothered by it all and spend all their waking hours politicking non-stop on the streets, under a tree and all the way to the Parliament! The world and our country is facing an economic meltdown, but in Malaysia they are fighting over the post of Menteri Besar(Chief Minister), new State cars, teaching certain subjects in English, accusing other people of sending them live bullets and saying unstatemenlike words in the Parliament House, fighting over compulsary fish containers, fighting over God's name (funny we have been independent for 52 years, now only people want to fight over Allah's name,why? what purpose does it serve?) challenging the Malay Sultans' rights in courts and many more!
My question to all these smart people is - dont we have enough problems? Are you helping the situation to improve or making it worst to fulfill your self interests and narrow agenda? Are you not afraid that this country will disintergrate to pieces to the point of no return just because you want to win? Is winning everything when everything around you already destroyed?
Remember to destroy is easy( ask Mr Bush), but to build a nation will take years of hardwork. Complaining and opposing other people's ideas and efforts to improve is always easier than coming up with a better one of your own and doing it. I think it is high time to build and strengthen this nation to face the new challenge as one people, one nation.
Outside Malaysia, there is a very dark cloud hovers over the foreign relations between a few countries that is quite worrying.
The latest being the provocation by the US Navy in the Chinese EEZ water. What is the motive behind the US Navy sending the Impeccable ( a submarine tracking ship) so close to China's new Naval base one can only assume. The similiarity to the Gulf of Tonkin episode which was a pretext to the US's involvement in the Vietnam War is worrysome.
In my opinion, provoking a giant like China which has an ever increasing modern military might with nuclear arms is an act of insanity! Furthermore, the US is relying heavily on China to help her coming out of the economic pit as China holds the largest amount of US treasury ( in trillions!) in the world. One can only wonder what will happen to the US if China decides enough is enough of this bullying, and offload the US treasury to the market. It will spell the end of the US and send it back to the Stone Age!
Do not tell me Mr Obama does not know of this danger or is he doing it quitely to take away the domestic attention from the ailing economy? It seems that this tactic is permanent feature in the US Foreign Policy after the WWll. Almost every US President got the US involved in wars in other countries around the world, all in the name of democracy and lately fighting terrorism made famous by "are you with me or against me Bush", and Mr Obama a.k.a "the Messiah" is no exception. The change that he promised to bring to the previous bad policies is just a smoke screen to get him into Office. Now he is doing exactly like what Bush did. To his admirers in Malaysia, so sorry, he is the same as the rest before him, just in the different release version, US President v.44.
The policy of warmongering remain intact as we can see on the promised buildup of troops of 17000 more in Afghanistan by him, and constant harassing of Iran, Syria and North Korea(Axis of Evil). The US keeps implementing policies that in the long run are detrimental to its own domestic interests and the world peace. Mr Obama should have the courage to free his country from unproductive policies and influence of pressure groups within his administration and Israel lobby groups, and bring about real change that he promised his fellow citizens. He should have a stronger control over the 53rd state - Israel, a liability to the US own interests, which is running riot in the MiddleEast and threatening to attack Iran unilaterally if the US fails to persuade Iran to abandon the alleged nuclear programme.
I dread to think what will happen if somebody did a stupid mistake and caused the US to enter into a war with Iran, and Iran retaliates by striking Israel, then the Hizbollah and Hamas decided to join the fight to help Iran, on the other side the US provoked a giant like China into a military confrontation, and North Korea decides to join and help China face the US which will force South Korea and Japan to help the US, and all this happens while the war in Iraq and Afghanistan are ongoing, while Pakistan is facing problem internally with various groups which makes India contemplating a pre-emptive strike to protect herself. What will Britain and Nato countries do to help the US in the fight against Iran? Is Russia going to sit idle? What does this scenario look like? A World War Three? Far fetched?
Believe me it could happen, just observe how every episode is slowly unfolding itself all over the world as though they are being orchestrated by somebody. History will repeat itself if we the human kind are not careful. In the 1930s there was a Great Depression, then there was a great war. Now we are having an economic calamity worst than the Great Depression while conflicts between nations are slowly boiling all over the world. My only hope is that they do not explode into a full scale conflict which drag the whole world into it because that will be too gloomy of a world to face for me, my children and the children of the world.
Lets hope sanity will prevail and we all come out of this in one piece.
Amen.
I have been "hibernating" like a bear trying to shield myself from all the insanities that have been going around me and the world, and did not feel like writing at all. The problem with hibernating is that sooner or later you have to wake up and face the reality, and the changes that have been happening around you.
Talking about hibernating, i am very worried about the bearishness of our stock market and the trend of going down south is squeezing the wealth of thousands of investors including me. With bills knocking at our doors every month from banks and utility companies, it is quite worrying that one day i might not be able to live up to it. I am sure others will have sleepless nights thinking about it too depending on the extent of their exposures.
Our stock market is so connected to other stock markets' performance world wide especially the Wall Streets and Dow Jones. As the situation in the United States seems bleak despite the US800 billion package announced by Mr Obama, our stock market is dragged down with it to the bottomless pit . This still happens despite the new RM60 billion stimulus package announced by the Deputy Prime Minister the other day. It seems that the loss of confidence in the economic future of Malaysia and the rest of the world is pretty bad.
In Malaysia, a lot of companies have started to take proactive steps to cut operational costs to survive this economic uncertainties. Some have retrenched thousands of workers especially in the manufacturing sectors as demands for product in the export market is reduced. Some have reassigned their staff into different job scopes and sent them for retraining to acquire new skills to cope with future roles. Some who are still strong resort to minor paycuts and benefits. But there will be a time if the situation does not improve, they will have to resort to using more drastic measures that will make life more miserables for the employees. I am sure one day it will happen to me too, no exception.
We are still trying to adjust to the rising food prices due to the increase of petrol and diesel last year which did not slide down as the crude oil price dropped substantially to US47 per barrel as of yesterday, one wonders how is he going to cope with all these pressures. Living in a city like KL nowadays is pure madness on our souls. Highways with tolls with rates keep going up is coiling us like a python slowly tightening its muscle over its victim to a slow and painful suffocated death. Worst still, some idiots are helping giving energy to this beast to allow it to operate as long as it can to suffocate more and more victims. Only after a lot of screaming by the victims, the decision got reversed for now. How can they be so insensitve to the problems faced by most of us to survive during this difficult time, one wonders. I guess we are partly to blame for voting for them.
As we are facing this situation, there is one group of people in Malaysia who are not affected by it at all it seems - our politicians! It is either they are very rich or they are living in a different realm, it must be, since they are not bothered by it all and spend all their waking hours politicking non-stop on the streets, under a tree and all the way to the Parliament! The world and our country is facing an economic meltdown, but in Malaysia they are fighting over the post of Menteri Besar(Chief Minister), new State cars, teaching certain subjects in English, accusing other people of sending them live bullets and saying unstatemenlike words in the Parliament House, fighting over compulsary fish containers, fighting over God's name (funny we have been independent for 52 years, now only people want to fight over Allah's name,why? what purpose does it serve?) challenging the Malay Sultans' rights in courts and many more!
My question to all these smart people is - dont we have enough problems? Are you helping the situation to improve or making it worst to fulfill your self interests and narrow agenda? Are you not afraid that this country will disintergrate to pieces to the point of no return just because you want to win? Is winning everything when everything around you already destroyed?
Remember to destroy is easy( ask Mr Bush), but to build a nation will take years of hardwork. Complaining and opposing other people's ideas and efforts to improve is always easier than coming up with a better one of your own and doing it. I think it is high time to build and strengthen this nation to face the new challenge as one people, one nation.
Outside Malaysia, there is a very dark cloud hovers over the foreign relations between a few countries that is quite worrying.
The latest being the provocation by the US Navy in the Chinese EEZ water. What is the motive behind the US Navy sending the Impeccable ( a submarine tracking ship) so close to China's new Naval base one can only assume. The similiarity to the Gulf of Tonkin episode which was a pretext to the US's involvement in the Vietnam War is worrysome.
In my opinion, provoking a giant like China which has an ever increasing modern military might with nuclear arms is an act of insanity! Furthermore, the US is relying heavily on China to help her coming out of the economic pit as China holds the largest amount of US treasury ( in trillions!) in the world. One can only wonder what will happen to the US if China decides enough is enough of this bullying, and offload the US treasury to the market. It will spell the end of the US and send it back to the Stone Age!
Do not tell me Mr Obama does not know of this danger or is he doing it quitely to take away the domestic attention from the ailing economy? It seems that this tactic is permanent feature in the US Foreign Policy after the WWll. Almost every US President got the US involved in wars in other countries around the world, all in the name of democracy and lately fighting terrorism made famous by "are you with me or against me Bush", and Mr Obama a.k.a "the Messiah" is no exception. The change that he promised to bring to the previous bad policies is just a smoke screen to get him into Office. Now he is doing exactly like what Bush did. To his admirers in Malaysia, so sorry, he is the same as the rest before him, just in the different release version, US President v.44.
The policy of warmongering remain intact as we can see on the promised buildup of troops of 17000 more in Afghanistan by him, and constant harassing of Iran, Syria and North Korea(Axis of Evil). The US keeps implementing policies that in the long run are detrimental to its own domestic interests and the world peace. Mr Obama should have the courage to free his country from unproductive policies and influence of pressure groups within his administration and Israel lobby groups, and bring about real change that he promised his fellow citizens. He should have a stronger control over the 53rd state - Israel, a liability to the US own interests, which is running riot in the MiddleEast and threatening to attack Iran unilaterally if the US fails to persuade Iran to abandon the alleged nuclear programme.
I dread to think what will happen if somebody did a stupid mistake and caused the US to enter into a war with Iran, and Iran retaliates by striking Israel, then the Hizbollah and Hamas decided to join the fight to help Iran, on the other side the US provoked a giant like China into a military confrontation, and North Korea decides to join and help China face the US which will force South Korea and Japan to help the US, and all this happens while the war in Iraq and Afghanistan are ongoing, while Pakistan is facing problem internally with various groups which makes India contemplating a pre-emptive strike to protect herself. What will Britain and Nato countries do to help the US in the fight against Iran? Is Russia going to sit idle? What does this scenario look like? A World War Three? Far fetched?
Believe me it could happen, just observe how every episode is slowly unfolding itself all over the world as though they are being orchestrated by somebody. History will repeat itself if we the human kind are not careful. In the 1930s there was a Great Depression, then there was a great war. Now we are having an economic calamity worst than the Great Depression while conflicts between nations are slowly boiling all over the world. My only hope is that they do not explode into a full scale conflict which drag the whole world into it because that will be too gloomy of a world to face for me, my children and the children of the world.
Lets hope sanity will prevail and we all come out of this in one piece.
Amen.
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