It has been 3 years now since my late father passed away. 3 years ago, I was at home when I received a call from Jean, my brother’s wife. I was just numbed after that. For weeks thereafter, my life was in turmoil. I still shed a tear a few days ago, when I tried to recall the last few days of my father’s life. No one saw it coming. He had been unwell and was in hospital for a short while a few months earlier. He was better and was resting at home. No one knew what happened. My mother found him lying on the floor early on the morning of 30 November 2006. He was gone by then. He could have been gone the night before, no one knows.

3 years hence, and death has become a less distant event. I think you live most when you best appreciate death’s reality. I have been learning to hold back less. I have had to tell myself to not worry so much about saying the wrong thing – it is more important to say something if you have feelings or opinions on a matter, than to hold back while you find out more. Unless of course, you are on the pulpit and what you say is taken to be the gospel truth – then you really do have to be sure what you are saying is properly backed up one way or another.

I now tell someone how I feel about that person, a lot more readily. If I thought that person did well or was honourable for example, I’d call it and let that person how much I appreciated it. If on the other hand someone behaved poorly I’d also call it out and let that person know. If that person dislikes it, what is the worst that can happen? Will he injure or even kill me? I was going to die anyway. So instead of dying say 30, 40 years later I’d die sooner in that person’s hand? So what – what is 30, 40 or even 50 years from the perspective of eternity? We need to conduct ourselves in a manner which is driven to truth and better relationship with each other and making things better, and not tolerate poor behaviour which compromises truth or causes us to treat each other poorly or brings down the quality of human behaviour and relationships. That way we make a difference and make the most of this very short life.

I was tramming in this morning when I met up with a colleague. He is one of the accountants in the Finance Dept. I asked him how the team was coping after the Head was asked to leave earlier in the week. He said the team was very confused. That Head was a hardworking and competent fellow. He was very committed. If a commited, hardworking, competent and smart fellow got the sack, it has to be managed properly to avoid the perception that he had to go because of regime change. If the view was that the only reason for his sacking was he wasnt on the new boss’s good books, it will only encourage politicking. It would not encourage hard work and dedication. Is this the sort of behaviour the corporation want to encourage? Certainly the level of grovelling and sanctimony has escalated and continues to grate. I dont know….

When a new first team manager is appointed to a football club, you’d expect the coaching staff to also be replaced. That new manager would usher in a whole team of coaches and assistants, most of whom have previously worked for that manager and whom the manager likes and can work with.

That appears to be what has happened in my work place in the last 5+ months. HR, Product Development, Operations, Marketing and Strategy and Compliance have all gone. Yesterday, Finance went. Admittedly not all changes were driven by the new CEO and not all heads had worked well with the previous boss (MD, who was poached by a competitor). Still it has the distinct image of a new team and the association with a new Manager is well justified. This is especially true in the case of Finance. He was gone yesterday and up until yesterday, there was nothing to suggest anything was wrong. It was almost like the change happened only because of the new Manager. Like in the case of a footie club.

This may well be a natural and ordinary thing to do in the dog-eat-dog corporate world. What eats me up though is the constant harping of “loyalty” and “people are our best assets” mumbo jumbo. Loyalty is necessarily a 2-way street. What is evident thus far is that this is an alien concept for the soulless corporation. As long as you are providing the numbers or playing the game in a manner or style suited to the manager, you are in and if you are not in the manager’s good books, you are out. If that is loyalty then I am indeed Tom Cruise. If you cant rely on the corporation to be loyal, would you be loyal?

And if people truly are your best assets, then surely you retain, not release people. I suppose the argument is the corporation retains good people. Well if that is the case then why not be a bit more accurate and say so ie “good people are our best assets” and then define what constitutes “good people”?

The fact of the matter is that corporations hire and fire according to their prevailing agenda. So it would be foolish for any individuals to sign on or resign for any reason other than their individual prevailing agenda. That means if at any given time in one’s career money is important then by all means move even if it is just for very marginal difference and if the working environment no longer stimulates or suits then find some place else which does. It would be just plain silly to treat your work as your life because it isn’t a reciprocal arrangement. Your life may terminate you.

Najib has demonstrated near zero attempt at reforming the utterly corrupt Malaysian police. Is this because Musa Hassan has him by the proverbial balls? Does Musa Hassan have materials, information or documents which will send Najib to prison, let alone sacked as PM, if publicly released? Is there material in relation to Altantuya which is being held by Musa’s monkeys to hold Najib powerless to act? That’s the problem with Najib not refuting what Bala has revealed. He is now powerless and Malaysia is at the cusp of meltdown if this continues. Musa Hassan and his fellow thugs will run unrestrained and when you have idiotic oafs running the house, you know you are staring at an abyss.

post script- there was a story today on Malaysia Today purportedly written by someone from the AG’s Chambers. The above is probably not only correct but even bigger in magnitude – ie, the whole law and order machinery have their hands on the Razak family jewels.

A French reporter has made statements which Malaysia cannot ignore. It suggests a close relationship between its Prime Minister Najib Razak and Altantuya Shaaribuu, a Mongolian murdered in the Klang Valley for which a close associate of the PM, Abdul Razak Baginda, was prosecuted but acquitted.

Arnaud Dubus alleged that there was a photograph of the PM and Altantuya together. This photograph was deceptively obtained by the Syed Abdul Rahman Alhabshi and given to the Malaysian police. This photograph will show that the PM lied about his association with the murdered victim. Why did he lie and what was the nature of their relationship? Did he have anything to do with her murder, as the Malaysian public has long suspected? How can the country continue to let this man be the head of government?

It’s 20 years now. I was in Uni in Sydney then, arranging furniture at the lecture halls of the Law Faculty for exams to earn a buck while preparing for my own exams. Time flies, things moved on but is humanity any nearer to fulfilling its purpose? Doesnt look like it, I think. As a whole, especially the Western world, we are as far away from God today as we were 20 years ago – in many respects, even further than before.

Berlin Bash ? Baby in Bethlehem needs to be given prominence.

We are I think, becoming accustomed to being zombied out on alternate Friday nights. On these nights a few couples from church (and 1 from another church) meet up in our home to just catch up, chat and enjoy a glass of red or two. Sometimes 1-2 couples stay on after the rest have left. Generally most leave by about 10.30pm. Those who stay back invariably have other stuff they want to talk about. Sometimes therefore, it finishes after midnight.

Last Friday we stretched the boundary a bit. A couple of families stayed behind to chat some more about stuff. We finished just before 2am. Needless to say, at that hour I had turned the corner and sleep was no longer easy. So after everyone left I turned on the tele, poured myself a couple of shots of single malt and slowly sipped the stuff hoping to unwind and relax. I eventually went to bed after 2.30am.

It was a stinker the next morning. When I got up just after 8 it was light and very warm already. After gulping down some really cold water and juice, I headed out to the garden, and pottered around a little bit. While dumping stuff into the bin I realized how dirty the car was so I took it to the car wash. $6 (it was a coin operated self wash joint) and about 40 minutes later I got home with a much cleaner car. I put the Dyson to work and gave the rooms a good vacuuming. It all finished about noon, then we headed out to our usual coffee place for some brekky for kiddo and lunch for me.

Tress and I did our usual nasi lemak takeaway and some grocery shopping after dropping kiddo off for her class. We then picked kiddo up and headed home. We pottered around a little bit more before heading out to Oakleigh to check out a Schnoodle puppy there. Kiddo was all excited and really wanted us to go ahead and get the puppy then. I asked if we could pick it up 2-3 weeks later but they would not hold it for us.

We left the place after about 1 hour, and convinced kiddo we need to have a plan in place before bringing the puppy home. We agreed to work on the plan together and be prepared to bring the puppy home the next weekend. We got home, Alex and a friend of his from Malaysia (who is also a distant relative of Tress) dropped in for a beer and then I cooked dinner and went to bed relatively early.

On Sunday arvo after church we went to visit another friend, who has a business dealing in pet supplies. We got some basic stuff, and caught up with these very good old friends who whipped up a really delicious char koay teow for us. It was very warm the whole day but we have been under a very effective evaporative cooling unit in their house the whole arvo so the very delicious char koay teow was thoroughly enjoyed.

We left their home just after 8pm and Tress was yawning away in the car. It was partly the heat over the entire weekend but also possibly because for perhaps the first time in weeks we had some time doing pleasant stuff and although tired, felt a little less stressed. This coming week promises to be another stinker with temperatures ranging from low to mid thirties.

The deck in our house was completed maybe 4 plus months ago. I had to wait a few weeks but I finally had the roof structure as well as the deck itself painted. About 2 months ago we started looking for some furniture to you know – deck out the deck. We settled on some hardwood pieces. Really simple stuff to begin with – just a middish round rable with half a dozen chairs, 2 of them capable of being stretched out to put the feet up. That was about a month ago. All good, except we bought them from a furniture shop called Early Settler, on Whitehorse Road in Nunawading.

Early Settler may be its name but my buying experience suggests early settlement is not on the menu with them. 4 weeks after we bought the pieces they still cant confirm with us when delivery will be possible. When we made our purchase, we were given the impression that delivery will take place within 2 weeks. In fact we were told that we should be picking the stuff up as soon as they are in the store as and they expect this to be about 7-10 days from purchase.

Just over a week ago I checked in on them. I was already a frustrated customer when I walked in but their change of tune from when we first made our purchase was unpleasant. From a “come pick it up quick” tone it is now a “we never promised anything” attitude. So I suggest if you want certainty on your furniture delivery, look elsewhere. Early Settler furniture may be a shade cheaper than other furniture places but you have to put up with their non delivery. They were shifty and less than honest with us and come Saturday I will let them know in no uncertain terms what I thought of their behaviour. It would have been 4 weeks then (just a couple of days away) and our deck is still without any furnitures. I will avoid Early Settler for any of my future furniture shopping.

There was an article circulating in cyberspace recently. Singapore’s Harry Lee made some pointed observations, which were published in a Malaysian Chinese daily, to the effect that the Chinese had a very small window of opportunity to reverse things or face extended gloom in the form of subservience to the numerically dominant Malays and other groups of Muslims.

While the problems of racial superiority garbage practiced by the Malaysian government have been a thorn in the side of other races for as long as I can remember, Harry and his compressed timeframe brings into focus how untenable the situation really is. No one I know is happy to let his child remain in Malaysia. Most choose to stay only because there is either no option to leave or the option is too expensive or costly in other terms. Few choose to stay for altruistic reasons, especially if one has children.

For those who chose to remain in Malaysia for whatever reason, I am grateful but hope they do not have any regrets later. I am grateful because obviously that means I have people to provide that bridge to my past which completes me. I cant imagine going to Malaysia with no one to catch up with.

So for those people I must continue to hope Malaysia does better. Unfortunately every time I looked up Malaysian news, all I see are negative items. I see how a Prime Minister continues to be stained with allegations of involvement with murder. The fact that Najib Razak remains heavily implicated in the murder of a Mongolian national as a result of an illicit affair is an indictment that can only go away with due investigation and if supported by prima facie evidence, resignation and prosecution for murder or whatever the evidence supports.

Prosecuting Najib Razak for murder is entirely proper but of course, well nigh impossible. In fact like recent writings suggest no one even remotely close to being an authority figure runs any risk of being hauled by the law. Many have gotten away with murder before, let alone a blue blooded Prime Minister like Najib Razak. One would have to penetrate through levels of highly corrupt police, attorney general’s office and the judiciary.

In all of this, I wonder if the family of Najib Razak’s alleged murder victim can mount a campaign to bring international pressure to bear. Certainly overseas Malaysian Chinese can play their role to highlight the evidence tying Najib Razak to the murder of Altantuya Shaariibuu as a reciprocal gesture to the loyalists who remain in “tanah tumpah darah ku”. Maybe that is the little we can to and thwart or counter the process of thinning out the minority races in Malaysia.

The likes of Najib Razak and his grubby UMNO twerps may want to thin out the minority races but no one should be allowed to get away with murder.