This is the 4th time I am not in Malaysia to 'celebrate' the 4th Anniversary. I'm not sure whether it's a good or a bad thing.
And it's Halloween today! Can he pretend to be Einstein for one day? ;-)
Why 'Sensintrovert'? Ramblings of a sensitive+introvert plus very sarcastic at most times; mostly about the happenings of his home yard.
“The present number of ferry services is not enough to cope with the high number of tourists going to the island. This can lead to overloading of the ferries.
Dumb and dumber over ferry inferno
Norman Fernandez
Oct 19, 07 7:56pm
Recently, former Singapore Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew called the Burmese generals dumb. Could the dumber ones be here? According to Science, Technology and Innovation Minister Dr Jamaluddin Jarjis, there is an urgent need for a new jetty at Tioman Island which according to him would result in better services and prevent untoward incident.
Perhaps the minister would like to be informed that people had died from a ferry tragedy and not from a collapsed jetty. As of yesterday, the death count from the Tioman Island ferry tragedy is six and one passenger is still listed as missing.
At this stage, what is important is for the government and relevant authorities to first slap criminal charges on the ferry operator for their omissions (at the same time check on the others) and haul up all those who had shirked from their responsibility in ensuring that the ferries plying Tioman island are not only seaworthy but importantly has all the necessary licences and has complied with all relevant requirement.
What matters most and importantly now is to ensure safe and seaworthy ferries, and not the construction of a new jetty.
Manhood road ad 'very successful'
An Australian ad campaign aiming to reduce road deaths by questioning the manhood of speeding drivers has proved a great success, a survey suggests.
Images of road deaths have not curbed speeding, says the RTA
The TV ads show women shaking their little finger - a gesture used to symbolise a small penis - as speeding male motorists race past.
In a government-commissioned survey, about 60% of young men said the ad had made them ponder their driving habits.
The ads have attracted complaints of sexism since they began in June.
But New South Wales (NSW) Roads Minister Eric Roozendaal said a few dented egos was a small price to pay if the adds help save a life.
"Wiggling your pinkie has cut through to that crucial age group of young drivers - they're using it as a way to slow their mates down and stop them acting recklessly on our roads," he told the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper.
The A$1.9m (£805,000) campaign "Speeding. No-one thinks big of you" has been running on TV, in cinemas, at bus shelters and online since June.
The NSW Roads and Traffic Authority (RTA) said it introduced the campaign because the shock tactics of previous adverts, showing disturbing images of death and injury in road crashes, had not worked.
The new ads included one young driver revving his engine and rushing through traffic lights in front of two young women and another racing past a female pedestrian.
After both incidents the women wave their little fingers in slow motion with knowing glances.
Speeding is a factor in about 40% of road deaths in NSW each year, according to RTA figures.
The ad campaign was introduced at the same time as restrictions on learner drivers - including a ban on all mobile phone use, limits on the number of young passengers allowed and tougher speeding penalties.
Government repression no longer ignores bloggers
The Internet is occupying more and more space in the breakdown of press freedom violations. Several countries fell in the ranking this year because of serious, repeated violations of the free flow of online news and information.
In Malaysia (124th), Thailand (135th), Vietnam (162nd) and Egypt (146th), for example, bloggers were arrested and news websites were closed or made inaccessible. “We are concerned about the increase in cases of online censorship,” Reporters Without Borders said. “More and more governments have realised that the Internet can play a key role in the fight for democracy and they are establishing new methods of censoring it. The governments of repressive countries are now targeting bloggers and online journalists as forcefully as journalists in the traditional media.”
At least 64 persons are currently imprisoned worldwide because of what they posted on the Internet. China maintains its leadership in this form of repression, with a total of 50 cyber-dissidents in prison. Eight are being held in Vietnam. A young man known as Kareem Amer was sentenced to four years in prison in Egypt for blog posts criticising the president and Islamist control of the country’s universities.
It was reported that Abdullah’s Hari Raya open house attracted 180,000 to 200,000 people -- meaning he is very popular with the rakyat. This is what the mainstream media reported. Well, let us work out the sums.
It takes three seconds to quickly shake the hand of each guest if you do not talk to them, ask them how they are, etc. You just shake their hands as fast as possible and say, “Next!” So, in one minute, you can shake the hands of 20 guests and, in an hour, the hands of 1,200 guests. To shake the hands of 180,000 to 200,000 guests will take about seven days. And that is only if you shake their hands non-stop, 24 hours a day over seven days, without taking a break to eat, sleep, pray, go to the toilet, etc.
But I thought the open house was only half a day or six hours at the most? This means the most number of guests you can shake hands with would have been about 7,000. Or did more than 190,000 people just go home without shaking hands with their host or thank him for the food they ate? That's terrible.