ChanKelwin.com

One can only take so much bull-crap from politicians sometimes.

A week ago, Jerlun MP Mukhriz Mahathir was alleged to have asked for the closure of vernacular schools — an offence which may see him fined or jailed if found guilty. He later denied this.

I am nobody to judge if Mukhriz Mahathir, son of our ex-Prime Minister Tun Dr. Mahathir bin Mohamad has committed sedition. In fact, this post is not about him but the people who have said that our Jerlun MP did commit sedition.

At least two politicians and a lawyer have spoken against Mukhriz’s statement. All claimed that he could (and maybe should) be charged with the Sedition Act. One even wanted the Attorney-General to take appropriate action against him.

That is really funny because as far as I know, the police would not lift a finger unless a police report is lodge. Just a question to parliamentarian Lim Kit Siang — how many police reports have been lodged against Mukhriz Mahathir for his alleged seditious statement? On the other hand, how many police reports on snatch theft incidents have been made and what are the steps taken to address this problem?

So, Barack Obama has become the first non-white president of the USA. This hardly comes as a surprise. The truth is that I never bothered about it anyway.

What difference does it make? Some may look at it and hope that it may happen in our country as well. That is, a future prime minister could come from a minority ethnic group. Yeah, right. Dream on.

Some reporters were quick to shoot the question to our prime minister and his response was anything but dull.

It is possible for anyone from a minority group to be a nation’s leader, even in Malaysia, says Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Badawi.

I laughed so hard I almost choked on my own laughter.

Something mystical must be happening in our stars this few days. Today, the High Court ruled that the detention of Raja Petra Kamarudin under the ISA was illegal and has ordered for his immediate release. He should walk free later this afternoon if nothing else crops up in between then and now.

Now that he will be out free, I was just wondering who shall be the first person whom he will attack on his Malaysia Today blog. PM Abdullah Badawi? Deputy PM Najib Rajak?

No no no.

If I were him, I will knock on opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim’s doors first.

Language is a beautiful subject; if one spends enough time and effort coupled with interest studying it.

I am not a language freak but reading one of the latest articles on Malaysiakini got me thinking. I did a short research on two main languages in Malaysia — the English and Malay language — and found what I was looking for. By the way, is it called Bahasa Malaysia or Bahasa Melayu now?

Quoting from the mentioned article on Malaysiakini, “Ahmad did it again, told Chinese not be American Jews”:

“I want Koh Tsu Koon and Gerakan to take responsibility for whatever untoward incidents that could happen in this country of ours.”

The word in the quoted text above that sparked the desire in me to conduct my little research is ours. A check on Wikipedia reveals that the possessive predicate adjective of the word we is ours. Some other examples on possessive predicate adjectives include mine, yours, his, hers, yours and theirs.

So, what are possessive predicate adjectives used for? Possessive predicate adjectives are used to show one’s ownership. For example, when I say “The pen is mine”, I meant to say that the pen belongs to me. When I say “That ball is yours”, I meant to say the ball belongs to you.

What really, really sparked the desire in me to conduct my little research is that I noticed a “weakness” in the English language compared to the Malay language. The point is that I noticed how we can’t differentiate the word “We” in English like how we can differentiate the word “We” in Malay.

In the Malay language, we have Kita and Kami at our disposal. Kita refers to the individual speaking, his/her friend(s) and the person/people they were speaking to (inclusive we). On the other hand, Kami refers to the individual speaking and his/her friend(s) excluding the person/people they were speaking to (exclusive we). (I learnt this in school so if I am wrong, don’t put the blame on me.)

In English, there aren’t two words that can clearly distinguish between inclusive we and exclusive we. The only possible method to understand the usage of the word “we” is to fully read and understand the entire sentence/paragraph.

This might be a design flaw in the English language since some other languages have up to six words to differentiate the word “We”.

Author’s note: Here is some salt. Kindly add to taste.

I was window shopping at Sunway Pyramid last night. I think the last time I’ve been there was a few years ago. I didn’t even know they have a new building now.

The thing that amazed me the most about this Sunway Pyramid shopping mall is their car parking system. Wow! I didn’t know we have such intelligent car parking systems in Malaysia. Each parking lot has a censor above it to detect if a vehicle is parked in it. A lamp above the lot will turn green if the parking lot is vacant and red if it is taken.

Now, I don’t want to sound like an idiot. My line of work is developing computer systems. Therefore, I am very aware that such a system is implementable. In fact, a few years back on the Nescafe Kick-Start programme, I remember one contestant had this same idea.

The reason why I was amazed isn’t because such a car parking system exists in Malaysia. It was simply because there is a company who is willing to invest money to prevent their customers from going berserk from hunting for a parking lot.

Anyway, my main blogging point isn’t Sunway Pyramid’s car parking system but what I saw while window shopping there. As always, when you are shopping with a group of girls, any shops with sales or discount signs will be a ’stop’.

As they were happily doing their thing, I saw the sign the shop had in their window and couldn’t hold my laughter and just had to take some photos of it. I didn’t have my Nikon D40x with me so I borrowed my gf’s camera phone to take a snapshot of it. I don’t have Bluetooth or infrared dongle with me so I couldn’t transfer the photos over. Arggh…whatever.

It seems like the shop was having an “All things must go!” sale. The sign shows that the sale will last for only 9 more days. I guess they were closing shop soon. Either that or it was just a sale gimmick.

No, I wasn’t laughing at them. I was definitely not laughing at them because they might be closing shop soon. I was thinking — If DS Anwar Ibrahim’s 16th September plan is really on track (give or take a few days or weeks), that means BN will be “closing shop” real soon.

If BN will be closing shop soon, are they having any cheap sales?

So, DS Anwar Ibrahim won the Permatang Pauh by-election. I am sure the result does not surprise many. However, I was quite surprised that he still managed to win with a bigger majority compared to what his wife achieved on March 8th. Considering all the effort by the BN camp but still fail to make a single dent to the result is simply amazing to say the least.

It was only a few days back when KJ (I think) confidently declared they are out to bury Anwar’s political career. Later, it was DPM DS Najib Tun Razak or the BN candidate (what is his name again?) that said they are confident of winning with 500 or 5000 majority. I am sure that they knew then that they didn’t stand a chance against Anwar. Their goal probably wasn’t to defeat him but just to reduce his winning majority. Despite all that, they still failed.

So now that Anwar has won the by-election, what is next?

Firstly, he is definitely on his way into Parliament and staying put for many years to come lest he ends up behind bars. Next, he may pull some tricks out of his magic bag ala David Copperfield style for the September 16th deadline. Then, maybe a few more cents reduced from the current petrol price together with other promises he made in the past.

The comments I have read and heard for the past few months have been mostly of supportive nature towards the PR camp. Call me a skeptic but I am in the group of people who doesn’t think BN or PR will make any much difference.

As I view it, politics is just another form of business. Politicians are the business owners, the people are the consumers and there are other shareholders/stakeholders.

One company (A) has been monopolizing the market for over 50 years now. Then three smaller companies merged into one company (B). Their mission is to break the former company’s monopoly in the market and to try to monopolize it for the next 50 years or so.

You see, it really doesn’t matter who controls the market — company A or B. Company B may claim that they provide better service and quality products. At the end of the day, they are still businessmen. If there is only one thing in a businessman’s mind, it has got to be making money.

I don’t blame them. Like I said, politics is just like business. Unless and until politicians behave like they are running a nonprofit organization instead of a business, PR or BN makes no difference. PR or BN…will it become another case of lampa-palan?

Wait a minute. If politics become “nonprofit”, just who on earth would want to be in politics? Who am I kidding? Even a kid wouldn’t fall for that.