Miaow-miaow

I may not be ready to admit this but my resolutions are a mixed bag of hope and determination that are likely to yield mixed results. 

1Q 2010 Progress Report: 2010 Resolution List

1. Start writing my Marketing textbook (Still to get started) 

2. Start my second Masters (Still to get started) 

3. Write my Ph D proposal and submit for approval (Still to get started although the University has been identified) 

4. Write two short stories and get them published (To begin in May) 

5. Complete 10 ACG-qualifying speeches and achieve Toastmasters’ ACG and ALB recognitions (To begin in April) 

6. Teach 1000 hours for period October 2009-September 2010 (As at March 31, I have completed 355 hrs of teaching, i.e. 35.5%) 

7. Direct 45,000 visits to my blog (As at March 31, As I See It recorded 24,880 hits, i.e. 55.3%)

The British government announced Monday that party drug mephedrone will be banned in the UK within a month, after a spate of deaths were linked to “miaow-miaow” (as it is popularly known here). 

Home Secretary Alan Johnson said mephedrone – currently freely available to buy on the Internet and in shops selling legal highs – would join amphetamines and cannabis as an outlawed class B drug, the second most dangerous kind.

This is not to be confused with the local version of Miaow-miaow, which are legally sold in Malaysia and do not contain banned substances! What's more, they are safe to eat even if they may be addictive! 

I am referring to Miaow Miaow Food Products Sdn Bhd, a Malaysian company that produce leisure food for snack lovers under the Miaow Miaow brand name. I sure hope this company don't plan to export their products to the UK anytime soon – unless they opt for another brand name that will not make them come under instant suspicion!

This evening, I braved the unbroken traffic to attend the Advanced Communicators Meeting (or ACM # 45, for short). This is my first time here. I have been told that this meeting is open only to Toastmasters who have completed at least 10 speeches. 

What is different is that each speaker will face a panel of three Toastmasters to evaluate him or her, in addition to the Open Evaluation session. Moreover, members of the audience could seek further clarification from this panel and the speaker could also present his or her rebuttal. 

Overall, I found this an interesting meeting. As I have said, I had mixed feelings – on the one hand, I had enjoyed the meeting, but on the other hand, I had to get used to a barrage of questions coming from the floor on my "evaluation", and this can be a needling experience.

From NEP To NEM

Today, we retrieved RM24 from the HELP for Haiti Fund collection box. The grand total is now RM7,995, and inching closer to the RM8k mark.

Yesterday, Prime Minister Najib Razak (right) unveiled the New Economic Model (NEM) – effectively replacing the much-maligned New Economic Policy (NEP), introduced by his late father, Abdul Razak Hussein, Malaysia’s second PM. 

The NEM is a national template that embodies broad economic reforms to transform the country into a high-income nation that is both sustainable and inclusive by 2020. 

And Najib even knew how to sing the right melody: “While the NEP’s original policies are still relevant, it is time to review its implementation. We will chase the same goals but transform the way we do things” (The Sun, Malaysia, March 31, 2010, p 1). 

Notwithstanding, the NEP was an elaborate failure because of poor implementation, and this is to put it very mildly.

Having said that, the NEM as I understand it, is like a celebrated pop song (think of any of the songs by Beyonce or Lady Gaga or Shakira) that will propel itself straight to the top of the music charts. It is a catchy tune, bursting with ear-pleasing rhythms that will make us shake our booty but at the same time, it is a music piece that is lightweight and some would say, even hackneyed. 

In other words, the NEM lacks substance, although it scores high on intentions. I have arrived at this conclusion based on what I have been reading in all the reports I could find. It is noteworthy to mention that the NEM is a 160-page report that is impregnated with a 31-page Executive Summary! (ibid, p8). 

I daresay, it contains a lot of showy platitudes for it to sound so pretentiously pompous! As a Marketing person, it’s called the packaging!

Senior DAP lawmaker, Lim Kit Siang highlighted the problem faced by Najib’s NEM as being the same faced by his 1 Malaysia concept – and that is, whether he is prepared to really walk the talk.

I guess, we just have to wait for its follow-up, the Economic Transformation Program roadmap that will furnish us with the detailed plans needed to achieve the objectives laid out in the ambitious NEM. 

As The Sun says, it is a “quantum leap in 10 years” (ibid, p 8), the question that will surely be asked is “Can we do it?” Until we examine the said roadmap – the verdict’s still out! 

Give Najib a chance lah…

The Great Malaysian Brain Drain

The HELP for Haiti Fund collected a meager RM8 to bring our todate total to RM7,971.

I read with interest this news report in today’s Star that the National Economic Advisory Council (NEAC) are claiming that Malaysia is losing its skilled talent which it needs to drive future growth as many are leaving to seek better opportunities elsewhere. The brain drain is, indeed, a serious constraint on the country's development, present and future.

Quoting an estimate by the Ministry of Human Resources, the NEAC say in 2008 some 350,000 Malaysians were working abroad – and over half of whom have tertiary education.

"We are not developing talent and what we have are leaving", the NEAC warns.

I don’t think I am wrong to say that more and more Malaysians are packing their bags to leave. I am not sure if any study has been done to investigate this but many have speculated that the exodus is brought about by disillusionment: rising crime, crippling cronyism, a tainted judiciary, growing racial and religious intolerance, an antiquated education system, stagnating salaries and a host of other concerns. Whether these are valid reasons or not, the fact remains that the brain drain saps the economy of much-needed talent.

The saddest thing is that our country seems indifferent to this situation.

But I note that even Singaporeans are leaving home too – but their reasons are very dissimilar to ours.

I put to you that it’s not only Malaysians and Singaporeans – but other nationalities too. 

"Brain drain" has emerged as a compelling policy challenge for developing countries undergoing globalization. This "human capital flight" describes the emigration of educated and highly skilled talents. 

The lure of wealth and availability of opportunity elsewhere leaves labor-exporting economies in a self-reinforcing bind: How can a developing country hope to fast-forward when the best and brightest routinely set out in search of greener pastures?

Lovely, You Stink!

 

To view the full ad, check out http://community.livejournal.com/vintage_ads/1816403.html

This informative deodorant ad from way back in 1935 tells you how to know whether you stink or not! This boingboing.net posting on Sunday noted the gleeful touting of technology to "gently close the pores" and the need to define the term "deodorant". 

I posted this piece because I thought it is still as relevant today. More so, in a hot and humid climate like Malaysia. 

A thought just crossed my mind and it refuses to go away!

Do you know that there are persons who actually enjoy the smell of their armpits?

And I even know of men who just love to sniff at women's armpits because they love that "stinky-sweet" bouquet?! 

Okay, you may think it is just a fetish. 

Actually, there is an explanation for this. Sometimes people are attracted to other people's special brand of human smell. It sounds weird, but every so often, a chemically compatible match comes along and...you get all caught up in a phenomenon I term body-odor attraction. 

No doubt, there are those who will find this off-putting but there are those who do find this secretly pleasurable! 

I say, to each his own!

 

In an exciting SPL match, Celtic scored an emphatic 3-1 win over Kilmarnock. 

Adventurous Killie survived an early battering until Robbie Keane brilliantly weaved his way into the penalty box to chip the goalkeeper after 37 minutes. And then Keane again blasted in a 62nd-minute second and Scott Brown slotted a third goal four minutes later for rampant Celtic. 

As a consolation, Kilmarnock replied in the seventy-third minute and that was it. This victory simply re-established a 10-point gap at the top of the Scottish Premier League for Celtic.

Earth Hour 2010

Two of my SNHU students, Lim Suak Ying and Vincent Yeoh Kian Soon this morning handed RM30 to the HELP for Haiti Fund. Thank you for this meaningful donation – it makes me feel proud to have caring students like you! 

This is part of the RM42 we collected today, bringing the total to RM7,963.

BEFORE & AFTER. Image credit: http://anythingbeautiful.blogspot.com/2010/03/earth-hour-in-kuala-lumpur.html

Yahoo! News headlined “World’s iconic sites go dark to fight global warming”. 

From New York City skyscrapers the Empire State and the Chrysler Building, along with landmarks from the Eiffel Tower and Sydney Harbor Bridge to the Petronas Twin Towers and Burj Khalifa went dark for an hour Saturday (08:30 PM local time) to raise awareness over the fight against climate change.

Image credit: http://www.usatoday.com/weather/environment/2010-03-27-earth-hour_N.htm?csp=34.

Image credit: http://gulfnews.com/news/gulf/uae/environment/earth-hour-saves-170-000-kw-hour-in-dubai-1.604194

Chicago Mayor, Richard Daley was quoted: "By participating in the symbolic event of Earth Hour, we show that, together, we can collectively make a difference to protect and preserve the environment".

For those who are in the dark about Earth Hour – it actually started in 2007 in Sydney, Australia when 2.2 million homes and businesses turned their lights off for one hour to make their stand against climate change. A year later and Earth Hour had become a global sustainability movement with more than 50 million people across 35 countries participating. 

In March 2009, over 4,000 cities in 88 countries officially "switched off" to pledge their support for the planet, making Earth Hour 2009 the world's largest global climate change initiative.

This year, some 4,000 cities in more than 120 countries supposedly participated.

This worldwide brownout called Earth Hour is a great initiative – but it is a symbolic gesture at best. If we are indeed serious about the impact of climate change, then we should forget about promoting it as a once-a-year occasion. We could instead consider organizing Earth Hour on a monthly or even weekly basis to demonstrate our seriousness to this worsening question of climate change. 

Truth be told, the ordinary citizen wasn’t that bothered about this event. Obviously, the will to turn out the lights is not something most people would do willingly, assuming they understand why they should do it in the first place.

And so Earth Hour wasn’t a success at all if you consider that Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB) recorded only an insignificant drop in demand during Earth Hour Saturday night, with a load reduction of 203 megawatt (MW), as compared to 550MW registered during the same energy conservation campaign last year (Bernama, Malaysia, March 28, 2010).

But it’s not just Malaysia – I stumbled across this illuminating Canadian news report today from Metro Vancouver that British Columbians turned off the equivalent of 1.4-million lights during Earth Hour – a 1.04 percent reduction in the province’s electricity load, which was less than it was in the two previous years. In 2009, electricity consumption went down by 1.1 percent, and in 2008 it went down by two percent, according to BC Hydro.

I don’t think it is any different elsewhere – so while there is some publicity about Earth Hour, we still have a lot to do to convince people to switch off lights if only for 60 minutes! It is an inconvenience to most of us, if we are to be honest about this!

Therefore, it is time to engage and energize the masses. What is needed is a people-driven movement that can mobilize everybody – somehow, WWF, as the organizers, are not the right vehicle to undertake the task. I mean, WWF are supposed to focus on environmental protection and nature conservation work, and even these endeavors are not exactly satiated with success, given the many challenges they face in this country and elsewhere. 

So taking on responsibility for Earth Hour is not a smart move. To show how much we care about our living planet is fine, but really, what are we going to do about it, individually and collectively? 

If many of us were not willing to switch off the lights for an hour, we don’t really care enough, right? Our position is always to let others do it! At best, we are spectators.

In this vital EPL match for Liverpool, the Reds won handsomely against Sunderland with a convincing 3-0 score. The first goal came in the third minute from a moment of genius from Fernando Torres. Glen Johnson added a second in the thirty-second minute with a shot that deflected off a defender from the opposing team, and then turned provider for Torres to hook home again in the sixtieth minute. 

But is it already too late for the Reds to play catch-up?

I attended the KL Advanced Toastmasters Club meeting, and this time, I took on the role of an Evaluator for Sandra Ghouse. And I won the Best Evaluator award in the process, though admittedly, I didn’t perform as well as I normally would. 

Interestingly, this time, Lucky introduced the evaluation for the prepared speech to come immediately after – thereby, putting all Evaluators on their toes. I suppose, this is good practice for the Evaluation contest when it comes later in the year.

Premier Meeting

Somebody captured me on camera on Thursday – in a rare and quiet moment – I was trying to read my speech. It was imperative that I tried to get some practice because I had the Area W1 International Speech Contest on the same evening. Needless to say, these moments were few and far in between.

On Saturday morning (i.e. yesterday), I went to Bankers Club at Wisma Amoda in Jalan Imbi, KL to attend the Premier Advanced Toastmasters Club meeting as the General Evaluator. An interesting experience altogether because this was a very different club meeting. E.g. Instead of a Table Topics session, they have the “Go with the Flow” session which is more a micro-debate session. Of course I enjoyed myself – well, I will always enjoy wherever and whenever I go to these meetings because to me, Toastmastering is fun! Moreover, it was well-attended, which was something great to behold. I guess, about the only qualm, I may have – although I hasten to add that one cannot judge from just one meeting – the quality of the speeches were just so-so. But then again, I have heard so much about this club that my own expectations may have been unrealistically lofty. But I got to listen to two speakers – Lee Sai Keong “From Zero to Hero” and Marcus Chee “Color of Rights” – who were practicing their respective Division-level International Speech Contests though – and they gave me a good idea of other Toastmasters’ winning speeches.

In a crucial EPL game, Birmingham substitute Kevin Phillips scored a stoppage-time equalizer as Arsenal's title challenge was blown off course in a bruising encounter. They collected a mere point in a match that they should have won in the first place!

The Last Dash

After we have tallied all the cash from Thursday, the grand total of cash received for the HELP for Haiti Fund is now RM7,921. This includes the RM1,656 contribution from HUC's Rotaract Club. Congratulations to everybody for a great job done!

It’s not over yet – we will only stop this donation drive on April 01, 2010. So let’s make that last dash to raise as much money as we can. We would love to touch RM10k – but whether we can do this depends on every one of us!

As I have mentioned earlier – very many people played important roles to make this “HELP for Haiti” a success! If you are keen to know who are the people who actually started it all – then check out the photo below:

(L-R): Victor Reddy, Mathew Varughese, Victor Ong, Arun Kannan, Edrickson Duane Sadom & Edric Ho

More Photos from Thursday

These photos were taken at the HELP University College campus.

Photos from Thursday's Benefit Concert

The above photos were taken at the HELP University College campus on Thursday.