in passing - malaysian: 03/01/2005

A close up of this beautiful flower..

The lily bloom in my friend garden in Malacca

Well here we are, three couple of people in their golden age, on holiday at a friend house in historical Malacca...The bungalow was specially design by my friend, a QS by profession and today his dream bungalow stood majestically among all the houses that was built some thirty years or so ago. It is just about five hundred metre from the beach, facing the straits of Malacca, but the houses itself faced west...When the houses in this vicinity was first built, it was the most prestigious of all the houses in this part of Malacca...Houses built in an era where only the affluence could afford to live in such house, except of course for the government officers who, like their British master were provided with houses wherever they are posted to work and now with independence, these once government quarters are left to decay, for the new Malaysian now own their own houses.....And now in this vicinity most of the old bungalows that are not government quarters were also left to decay and only a few were renovated into modern housing and my friend's bungalow is one of the few built to the satisfaction of its owners....Al's home were furnish with the finest antique and china...In a way it look like a museum of a sorts..The lawn were beautifully scheme, making the green space an ideal place to entertain friends, like having Bar B Q or dinner in the open...His spouse love to garden and as a result there are color of blooms everywhere, turning the outside of the house into a garden of colors of all shade of the rainbow..Greens and colorful flowers...That evening after settling down in the comfort of this home, we dine in the garden, in the open and what else...A Bar B Q....We set up a round table and help in getting the food ready and then together sat to enjoy the great Bar B Q spreads...Exchanging chat and yarn in subjects that pop up out of our minds from time to time, interrupted by laughter when someone crack up a good joke..., We talk about old times, some politic, while enjoying the spread of grill lamb, chicken, sea foods and the other special that our spouses had help to prepare...Chilled drink were served and it taste like wine except that it did not contain alcohol... The weather was beautiful with clear sky, sprinkle with stars and a half moon, making me think of the great time we have had in our youth and now in our golden age, memories flash on and off of those beautiful moments when the night sky were lighted with thousand of stars like tonight...Now that our children have all grown up and our eldest daughter have their our children..Those memories bring happiness like never before...Friends that is life...And we all should treasure it as we proceed on our journey of life, every seconds should be use as productive as possible for we pass these route of life only once in that journey, so do 'make hay while the sun shine'...After dinner, we continue to yarn till late night...It was indeed an enjoyable day for us...In historical Malacca....

Testing hello, hope this time is works...what happen to the good old days of using hello...

My Hello is still not working properly, trying to send picture to my blog, in first instance it work but when I tried to edit the posting that contain the photo, when posted again, the picture did not appear...Hope those good people at Hello could find the reason of these problem..From what I know there are many complain regarding this problem with Hello...Hope by now it is corrected and works as good as before...Thanks

[this one have been edited] no photo appear...

My Hello is still not working properly, trying to send picture to my blog, in first instance it work but when I tried to edit the posting that contain the photo, when posted again, the picture did not appear...Hope those good people at Hello could find the reason of these problem..From what I know there are many complain regarding this problem with Hello...Hope by now it is corrected and works as good as before...Thanks

These buildings in the heart of the Malacca city , that was built by the Dutch in the sixteen century...a spot where most tourists wonder.....

The Malacca river in the heart of the historical city of Malacca...a picturesque sight indeed..this picture was taken when I visited Malacca last week...Enjoy..

Well I am back from Malacca after a great visit to this historical city, a couple Al-Hap invited us to stay with them, it has been an open invitation from this charming couple, a close friend of us, they are both in their golden age like us and unlike us He is still not really retired, still running his own business..I guess trying to make more money and enjoying every minutes of doing just that...His other half is a charming lady that love to cook...So after postponing the trip from last year, we decided to do the trip this month and to make the trip and our stay in Malacca merrier, we invited a relative couple to join us on this holiday...A sorts of a package tour 'three days and two night' in the historical Malacca...So on the morning of the seventeen, together with my spouse I drove the new Honda Accord to the relative house,pick them and then drove to Malacca taking the North South Highway to the south...It was a lovely day, with the sun shining, with the back drop of the blue sky and patch of clouds....The new car was just a dream car, it just flow on the highway and in no time we arrived at the first R & R, just before Seremban...Stop there a breakfast of a sorts for a while and taking it easy while we chat our way through the breakfasts, that are made of the usual roti canai and teh Tarik...My dear friend Lias, look famished and He had a large portion of rice with the usual mixed of vegetable and other Malaysian dishes...We enjoy the breakfast and after feeling good we left the R & R and drove on toward Malacca, chatting on various subjects all the way careless of the time...We stop once again, this time at the Air Keroh R & R to have something heavy and coffee before proceeding on to the city of Malacca...We arrived just at noon and drove through the historical city and then headed toward the villa of my friend at Tanjung Keling...He was not around at that time, I did not tell him earlier of our arrival time, so that we would be able to travel at ease and I told him to take it easy of our arrival...So I call him on my cell phone and told him that we would just visit our condo at Pantai Putri and then would proceed to his home in an hour time....Well after spending a while at meeting the new management of our condo, we proceed to the villa and sure enough my fiend AL and Hap was there waiting and happily welcoming us to stay with them at their home..just about five hundred meter away from the sea front of the straits of Malacca....[to be continue]

The glorious orchid, to ponder and enjoy....

BBC NEWS UK Politics Government's terror bill passed

When Malaya and later Malaysia continue to use the Internal Security Act or in short as ISA after it achieve independence in nineteen fifty seven, the whole western world was critical of this tough law that was introduce by the British when they ruled Malaya as a colony...It was a law that curtail some of the basic right of the citizen but very useful to fight communist terrorist that rampant the country from ninety forty eight, killing and destroying property along the way, the communist then wanted to turn Malaya into a communist country..Thanks to the ISA, the communist was defeated and Malaysia enjoy to became one of the most develop country in the part of the world...Today it can boast of already became a develop country..With its citizen enjoying the highest standard of living and the its citizen prosperous...Had it not been for the ISA, Malaysia, multi racial, multi religious country would be in a mess simply because there were too much freedom for people to create damage by exploiting sensitive issue, such as language, races and religion...The Act allow citizen who commit political or other problems, such as sensitive issue, to be detained without trial for a given period, in a way detaining a minority to save the majority of the citizen...It is said this law is undemocratic and thus should be abolished. This law so far have been useful to defend democracy and would continue to be useful if the authority use it with care...I personally felt that so far it has been use with care to protect the right of the majority citizen...And now after the September Eleven happening in the USA, the States introduce the Patriotic Act, which is some what similar to the ISA and today the United Kingdom passed a law of the same nature as a tool to fight terrorism...Well it look like the Malaysian ISA is here to stay and other countries that once opposed such law, now have themselves introduce such law...Well the world have indeed change a lot after September eleven...

Well today is Tuesday and I had not blog for a few days already, Sunday we went to Kerdau for a Wedding party of a family friend..It took us just one and half hours to get there now by the new highway, before that it would takes some three hours to get to Kerdau from Kuala Lumpur...Well as usual on arrival we met the other family members and after seeing the host, set to enjoy the meals...And then chat with the family members that gather at the same table...It was indeed glad to have such opportunity to meet the other family members that live in different part of the country....It was indeed a beautiful day, this Sunday...We did enjoy the trip and return home in the evening....

The Chat Room..., I have try to chat at a few chat rooms before and found that it does not work for me, so I stop joining any Chat Room...Recently a friend invite me to his Chat Room and I join in and like before I just could not understand what all this chatter are doing,,,,so after chatting for a while I decided that Chat Room are not for me...I believe in serious discussion on subject by subject but it look like some Chat Rooms that I visited did not appear to be going that way...So I excuse myself and no longer visit such room...I think I am rather naive as far as Chat Room culture are concern and as such I am not able to enjoy doing just that...Friends, thanks for inviting me and I hope you all would continue to enjoy yourselves in the Chat Room.. Have a nice day....

Once it was Bukit Ceraka and I think because the old Chinaman could not pronounced it properly..The taxi drive a Chinaman would just say Bukit Celaka, Celaka in Malay mean worse then bad, a bad omen of a sorts...So to make it easy for everyone to pronounced the name of this place it is changed to Bukit Cahaya...Which mean Bright Hill, Bukit is Hill...and Cahaya mean Bright...This set of virgin jungle in the state of Selangor was converted into a botanical garden of a sorts by one of the former Federal Government Agriculture Minister, who is always with ideas, sometimes it is out of this world..But most of the time his ideas are good and practical and because of his idea and dream,this Forest Reserved was turn into a Botanical Garden for all to enjoy the Floral and Fauna at its best..Thus the beginning of this Green in the heart of the state of Selangor and near the federal capital of Kuala Lumpur..But now it is another story all together, the areas around and near this Green have been destroyed for what they call 'development'and this was exposed by the local paper after the damage is done, so now the authority have come out with all sorts of explanations to explain for this debacle of such proportion, making the green into a desert and building concrete jungle around the vicinity of the Garden...Actually I am sick of such happening, destroying the green of nature, just for the sake of development...Why don't they develop other areas away from this Green or the Botanical Garden call Bukit Cahaya...We visit this Botanical Garden when it was first open and found it to be a great place to be, to wonder and learn about the richness of nature, the floral and fauna and the animals and insects are plentifully, the atmosphere cool and accommodating...It is not that far from the city and it makes a great site to drive and enjoy nature at its best..And later on I visited this area for the second time and this time I found most of the place were not maintain properly...I was sick seeing the place in such condition..But what can I do but complain and then I forgot about this place and now it is on the Headline in the local paper because of the development problems..I hope that this time with all the exposures that this botanical Garden had, those in charge should take care to manage this place professionally, so that it stay as a great place to visit and enjoy life....Bukit Cahaya and not Bukit Gelap..."Gelap" mean dark...Let this garden remain bright forever, so that the future generation have a place to enjoy nature at its best, not that far from the concrete jungle of the city....

The last time I saw a good Malaysian movie is the 'Spinning Gasing' and later I watch the 'Idola', both movies I found to be good, but it seem that the Malaysian public did not seem to like these films...Now Yasmin, the well know advertising figure with many good shorts advertisement seen on our local TV...came into the local movie scene...It was the Rabun and now Sepet..Both movies had problems with the local Film Censor Board, but was eventually released with cuts here and there....I had not see both her movies but according to review and the short I saw on Astro, both are good movies...It is movies of the real life of the Malaysian society...It has won many international award, that makes Malaysia proud..Yasmin's Sepet...I was the first director of Development and Promotion of Finas or the Malaysian National Film Board, set up in the early eighties and I know for sure that film making is no small task and at time it do not makes money at all, one reason is that the local market is so small and Malay speaking movie do not have large audience, so in order to make money in movie, those that want to go into movie production had to budget it extremely well if it is just for local cinemas but if a movie is made for the international market, then the economic of scale would make such venture a worthwhile effort..For a good movies would always find market if it is a product of quality...I understand the this movie Sepet by Yamin has got into the international market, good for Her and I hope that this movie would bring success to her group of film makers, thus would introduce the Malaysian movie to the world...Syabas to Yasmin...Keep on going and I believe you would succeed in your endeavors......

I was at the mosque this evening and met an old friend, who had his secondary education in Indonesia, thus his thinking had been 'Malay' all along. To him the Malay world is everything...I told him that Bahasa Melayu is still young and only a communicative language and has not become a language of knowledge...As for the internet is concerned, the language now is English, not knowing the English Language, one would not be able to navigate the internet and as such would not be able to use the full potential of cyberspace... This put the Malay who only know the Malay language at the disadvantage with the other Malaysian, especially the Chinese Malaysian, whose language Mandarin is a very advance language, it is not only a language of communication but knowledge as well, therefore to students who know Mandarin, they are at the advantage in gaining knowledge...Even if the Malay take seriously acquiring a second language, English, they would be still handicap to the other Malaysian...The Chinese Malaysian have their mother tongue and if they go to Chinese School, the would surely be fluent in Mandarin and of course English the second language in all Malaysian School...If the Malay know English, they would still have two languages, Malay and English, whereas the Non Malay would still, at least have three languages, their mother tongue, any Chinese languages, Tamil to the India Malaysian, there are still one up as far as language are concerned...With the Malay language [Bahasa Melayu] still a language of communication, the Malay who continue to shun the English language and Mandarin would be left behind, in acquiring knowledge, as such would continue to fall behind the other races, that makes the Malaysian society...So to me if the Malay want to survived and continue to prosper in the new millennium, they have to be serious in acquiring English and or Mandarin as well ...Failing to do that would left them in a limbo and possibly continue to lack behind in all fields of human development...The Malay should put away their Malay nationalism, for in today's world of globalization, thinking global would take one a long way...Nationalism has its days and it is gone..Today is globalism and it is here to stay....To the Malay my advise is to acquire knowledge and to do that they must master the English language and better still Mandarin as well...Ponder hard on this and I am sure the Malay would realized the important of learning more languages.....

What a surprise...One thing that I notice absent in my new car is that there are no ashtray and the cigarette lighter...Which before this had been a standard items in every cars...I am glad that they no longer provide ashtray and cigarette lighter in the car, for to me it is just a waste of space, for today's car are air conditioned, making smoking in a car bad for one's health...Nowadays smoking has not only being considered as a unhealthy habit, it is also an anti social event,as such more and more people give up smoking altogether...In Malaysia smoking are not allowed in shopping mall and this is indeed a very good progress in trying to create a healthy society....I was a smoker once, start smoking in my teen, at that time it was just a fashion to smoke and almost every other person smoke..I gave up smoking some twenty years ago and now live a healthy life without cigarette..In offices, smoking was allow before... Now it is banned totally..The absent of ashtray and cigarette lighter in this new car are indeed a way forward in making driving safer and enjoyable...I did not know that new cars come without these items, so it was rather a surprise to me when I could not find the usual ashtray and the cigarette lighter in this new car that I just bought...Instead of a cigarette lighter's socket they had provided a socket for charging electric appliance or charging cell phones battery with a warning that the socket could not be use for cigarette lighter.....A great change indeed, a bonus for the lover of cars...Thanks to those car manufacturers...In this case it is Honda of Japan...