Muhyiddin Yassin is the Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia. He has sounded like an idiot. See this story on Malaysia kini on selection criteria for scholarships.

I would have thought that it is quite easy to satisfy the public: publish the selection criteria, publish the lists of recipients and their achievements to demonstrate the criteria have been met.

Anything less is hiding, not being transparent.

God have mercy on Malaysia.

I think that’s it, we probably just lost a European final for the first time.

Either we’re the first team to retain it or it’ll be the first time we lose a European final. Let’s hope it’s the former.

Emails aren’t text messages.

You can write an email as short as 2 lines or as long as 20 pages. There are no capacity restrictions. Many however, maybe sub-consciously, treat an email like it is a text message sent via a mobile phone.

When you write a letter, we try to be careful with matters such as sentence construction, spelling, paragraphing and the message that letter will be conveying. There should be no difference in writing an email.

When you draft a text message, you are constrained by a number of things. The biggest constrain is the size of your message. You are restricted to 120 characters. You can’t say much. Hence you abbreviate. U abrev8. It is a stop gap medium, until you are able to “TTYL”. :-). Cambie now – c u in 5, ttyl. xxx. Most imptly u dun risk conveyg wrong msg bcos u r c’ing tt person soon n can chat then. U r expected 2 b brief. Not ur fault if msg short n incomplete.

When you write an email however, there is no reason why you shouldn’t try to elaborate what you are saying. It is not a stop gap medium. You can of course make it that (a stop gap medium), by saying so, preferably at the start of the email . If you don’t, the reader may take what you have written as the complete message you intended to convey. Unless you say so, you cannot assume that email to be “just a quick note” without any further explanatory efforts.

So you do have to think – much as you would if you were putting words on paper to be sent out to the reader. If you don’t, and you don’t qualify it as “a quick note” to be elaborated further, the reader can and often will take the contents to be the entire message. That puts the burden on you to think through what you are writing, and take responsibility for it.

This is especially true if that single message is to be sent out to multiple recipients. You’d have readers with a whole range of knowledge of or appreciation for the subject matter of the email. A reader may have had something to do with that subject matter maybe a year ago, and another reader may have just dealt with that matter yesterday. These 2 readers will have very different mindsets when reading that email. It is incumbent on the writer to set the history, context, perspective and language of the email correctly so that the message conveyed is as accurate and complete as it can and should be.

Well does every email have to be a pedantically drafted document than? Of course not. What it must do is to accurately convey the message. It must be thought through. A well thought out email can be a 2-3 liner message, and it can accurately convey the required message. On the other hand, a 10 page email can – if targeted across a range of people for example – can be so inaccurate (or irrelevant) that it truly shows the writer hasn’t really thought through the matter properly. Worst of all, it could be wrong and paint a picture in the reader’s mind which wasn’t true at all.

I suppose if a wrong message has been conveyed you then try to re-send a correct or correcting one. In the meantime however if that wrong message has been sent to say, 6 persons, you may already have a number of responses all seeking clarifications or further information. If each of the 6 recipients asked a question and then follow up with some information, you’d have potentially a dozen or so follow up messages.

In a way the ease of hacking away on a keyboard and clicking on a mouse has made many of us a lot more careless with our writing. We appear to think less. Maybe it is because the uniformity of the letters represented by the font, the straightness of each line, and the neatness of the whole write-up tend to suggest things are ok. Maybe it is the sheer numbers – the number of people having access to a writing tool must have exploded – the number of people writing less than perfectly has just gone off the charts. An inability to write properly has become a lesser inhibition for someone to pen something and click the “send” button. Someone once said any idiot can look smart with a spreadsheet. Unfortunately it looks like this is also true for word processor or an email account. Suddenly, anyone with access to these tools is inclined to write. And unless you’re a Uighur or live in the Kalahari, who wouldn’t have access to these tools today?

Email malaise. Modern communication tools malaise.

I’m home this morning, with kiddo who is supposed to be sick.

Just after 4am. kiddo woke up abruptly and rushed to the toilet. “Nose bleed”, I thought and Tress must have thought the same. We werent however given much time to think before she called for Tress.

We both woke up and about a minute after getting into the bathroom she complained of dizziness and funny feeling in the tummy. We sat her down, gave her a drink of warm water and waited for a bit.

She looked a bit pale so we got her to lie down on our bed. After about an hour we crawled back to bed and I decided to take the day off to be with her.

She’s now playing the piano so she must be better…

It isn’t quite state of the union address but I thought I’d take stock anyway.

Tress and Kiddo

All 3 of us have been busy. Tress was particularly busy at work these past few days. She gets home about an hour and a half before me and gets a lot done in that time. Dinner is mostly her show now. Occasionally I cook a bit on Sundays and stock up in the freezer. She must still attend to the preparations – decide what to have, defrost, microwave, etc. A range of chores keep her busy, usually right up to 8 or 8.30. She will then curl up on the couch and drift to dreamland in no time.
Kiddo has been busy with schoolwork, as well as her music stuff – piano and guitar lessons as well as playing keyboard in the church worship team.
Both are generally well, although we all think we can use a family holiday. Our January trip to Sydney feels like it happened ages ago. It has been just over 4 months but whatever good that break did has been undone within a couple of weeks of our return and the weariness has accumulated.

Feel Forty Four?
Yes I do. I’d do a 50-minute 9+ km run and be knackered. I’d feel the tightness – in my bum, groin, knee and calf. I’d have to do no more than a trot the next day, usually a 5k brisk (but steep) walk. I still hit the gym at least 4 times a week, spending about an hour or 1:15 each time – usually 45-55 min cardio (run on the treadmill mainly) with some stretching and slight weight work to round things off.

My hairline recedes as though it is escaping a tsunami by running up the island. Up top, the foliage feels trampled and is rapidly thinning. There is very little white but I’d much prefer a thick white plumage than barren and thinned but jet black cover. I sleep ok, and all other functions appear to be running well. My appetite appears to be particularly flourishing and I continue to ensure that any thirst I have is well doused by the offerings of Aussie vineyards.

Nearer to Thee?

I guess. I continue to spend time reading the Bible and praying, mostly in the morning – very early in the morning. Apart from the nearly forgotten Sydney trip (way yonder in January), I haven’t missed church. The discourse with church members on theology continues and I guess until our church has a pastor, this “debate” will continue. I guess even if we have a pastor and that pastor is of the “pneumatic” rather than the “noetic” sort, we’d still have discussions and I’d still be animated but that is a by and by.

I am still struggling when it comes to the main event – that of fulfilling the Great Commission. I have thus far done next to nothing to share the gospel with people I know. It is worse than drawing blood – it just feels extremely difficult. If and when I fulfil that part of my dues, I will be much happier.

AIG

Remains ill, is recovering and will be better. Work continues to be busy and the sooner I get a break (say a week or even 2-3 days) the better I’ll cope. We should be moving office in Oct sometime, provided NY approves the lease (for next door, actually). In practical terms this doesn’t change anything for most people. St Kilda Road in South Melbourne is a very nice are to work in, but the big disadvantage is access. If you rely on public transport, tram is the only way to go and this old school carriage is very slow and can be jam packed, especially in the morning – inching towards what the mini buses in KL used to be.

**********************

Quite apart from how things are with me personally and my family, my mind and feelings are often tied to what’s happening in Malaysia. To that end it has been a miserable period these past 2-3 months. To see Najib Razak – one so badly saddled with heavy baggage in the form of the Altantuya murder case and also in cases of very large scaled corruption – assume the helm of the nation’s leadership was sickening.

His ascendancy validates feudalism where patronage overrides rule of law. By his assumption of power, Malaysians see that as long as someone has power and connection, he can get away with anything. That may have been par for the course in day-to-day Malaysian life but must never be formally endorsed. Najib Razak’s becoming PM does that. Najib Razak has demonstrated no virtue throughout his political career. Increasingly he has demonstrated that he has no time for principles. If one can has serious inference of being involved in major criminal activities hanging over one’s head how can he ever be credible or respected?

This basic mistrust and non-credibility will always plaque the present administration. Malaysia will always pay the price of allowing a very bad person to become PM.

19 May 2009. I believe this date is another milestone in the social and political transformation which Malaysia has been experiencing since March 2008.

Last night, a group of young Chinese Malaysians met up and held a vigil. They are the latest heroes of the struggle currently underway in Malaysia. They wore black, a colour recently bestowed sacred status in the struggle – a crusade against the increasing lawlessness of the National Front coalition government. The vigil was within the compound of the premises of either a DAP building or the home of a DAP MP, Theresa Kok.

The police was par for the course and did not give the “519 heroes” any quarters. But they did not seek any. Lead by a young MP Teo Nie Ching and equally young state assemblyperson (I forget her name), they were exemplary in the art of peaceful disobedience. They did not comply with thuggish police demands to disperse but neither were they unruly or disrespectful. They simply sat down and refused to budge.

To the great shame of the Malaysian police, they forcefully removed these peaceful and law abiding private protesters and threw them into jail.
As Walker reported from the salt mine protest in India during Gandhi’s time, whatever residual moral authority that may have remained with the Malaysian police has been emphatically stubbed out by the arrest of late 19 May 2009.

The police is well and truly on a slippery slope and I see an inevitable result to all this.

Thursday – “Wicked”
Last Thursday we went for the musical “Wicked” at the Regent Theatre on Collins Street. Earlier, work turned out to be very busy and I was struggling to finish essential work before leaving the office. I scrambled once the clock showed 4.30pm, and pegged away with tunnel vision till it was about 6.15pm. Tress and Kiddo had already emailed and texted me after 5pm asking what my plans were.
I scooted out of the office and raced to the tram stop. Once on the tram I texted my ladies saying I was on the way. We had dinner on Bourke Street and then took a short walk to Collins. While walking, I suddenly felt really tired and thought I might actually fall asleep during the show (God forbid, I know).
I had nothing to worry about. The show was spectacular and there was little risk of me falling asleep. After all, while the tickets we got were considered cheap tickets, at $86 each they weren’t exactly coffee money either. We finished just after 11pm and by the time we got home (after dropping Tress friend off) it was past 12am.
The images were spectacular – beyond picturesque.

Friday – Joe Hu
We still had to be up at about 5,30am the next day. Thankfully it’s a Friday. The day was nevertheless still very busy at work. That night I was too bushed to do anything except stay home and sleep early. Kiddo would have none of it and insisted on being in church for Joe’s bible study.
We went, reluctantly at first. Because of a wedding the next day, the bible study was moved to a different building. There were also far less people. We finished around 10.30pm. We got home and I was really glad to be in bed.

Saturday – Weeding and Wedding, Beauty & The Beast
Well sort of. Our front lawn and driveway was just filled with fallen leaves so after coffee with Tress, she went about with the laundry while I raked the leaves and put them away in the garden bin.
The leaves covering the ground were to me, quite picturesque.
Tress took Kiddo to get a coat for the wedding, and I finished up, washed and changed and got ourselves to the church on time.
The bride wasn’t on time however and we waited for just over 45 minutes before it finally started.
We left, and went to do a bit of shopping in the arvo – kiddo for some school stationery and I stocked up on some wine. We got home, changed and headed to the train station to get into the city for kiddo’s date with a schoolmate for yet another musical production. We stopped by in a house on the street after ours for an open inspection.
We took the train into Melbourne Central, had a bite to eat and waited with kiddo for her friend. When she showed up Tress and I jumped on a train and went back to Blackburn. Kiddo and her mate proceeded to Melbourne High for the Beauty and the Beast. She later raved about how good it was and how, dollar for dollar and talent for talent, Beauty and the Beast a la Melbourne High and MacRoberson girls’ was comparable to Wicked at the Regent. I believed her, having seen West Side Story at Melbourne High last year.
While waiting for her we went to David and Lee Leng’s. They have moved into their new home earlier that week so we thought we’d drop in. We picked up a cheesecake and some grapes on the way.

United’s 18th
While there Alex and his family also showed up so we chatted for a bit. I left just after 9, to catch United’s title winning match against the goners.
Just before half time however we drove to South Yarra to pick kiddo up. There was some confusion about the finishing time so by the time we picked her up she was alone – at 11pm in a dark school yard. We were worried and were grateful she was alright and relatively calm about it.
We got home for the final 15 minutes of the game and I poured myself a very good glass of red to toast the achievement.
Now for a bottle of Barolo in anticipation of a Roman victory on the 27th. Meanwhile, the pictures of Neville, Carrick, Ferdinand etc each taking turns to lift t he trophy made for great pictures.

Sunday – a new experienceSunday we had a speaker who facilitates advocacy work for persecuted Christians in the middle-east. I want to keep in contact with this worker and seek to come alongside.

Form over substance
The church was still resplendent with the deco from the wedding. It was still a beautiful building, but it came at a price.
Those who did the job were totally spent and were absent from church on Sunday. There was no Kids Church as well and a few confused parents weren’t pleased.
This emphasis on the beauty of physical objects is totally consistent with the increasing trend of letting photographers dictate proceedings. Instead of having photography capture moments of the proceedings, we have allowed it to dictate the proceedings.
A photographer can stop an entire wedding while he snaps away. Somehow everyone has to toe his line, just because he wants to deliver a perfect picture. It should be a beautiful occasion and it is for the photographer to capture the occasion. He should not be manufacturing the occasion for the photograph.
Ah well, what do I know… it was a picturesque weekend…

A hattrick. At home. 18th. Knocked someone off the proverbial perch. Gold.

Well done, Manchester United Champions of England. Again.

It is that time of the year again when the tree next to our driveway sheds its leaves (and become totally botak) …. headache for us cos we will need to clean up its mess ….