Tag: Malaysia

When Bapak Maszlee Keeps Missing the Trees for the Forest

Sometimes we get hung up on the finer points that we tend to miss the big picture. Many people tend to do this constantly. Me included. There are many reasons why this is the case but chief among them are the fact that there are too many things to do or to fix at any given time considering the VUCA state that we are in now. We then to get caught up in the whirlwind of things.

In the case of Bapak Maszlee the chief of the issue to me is the 3-page jawi subject. My apologies, it’s not even a subject but a passing remark for the Standard 4 BM subject. Just how long throughout a year of schooling will teachers be spending on three pages of a text book? Would it be one whole period? or half a period? Two period perhaps? And yet the whole nation is up in arms about it.

For completeness sake, let’s take a look at the proposed three pages of Jawi in Standard 4 textbook.

It really is nothing much isn’t it? Don’t you guys agree?

My eldest daughter and my son can read and write Jawi and they are still in Primary school. They aren’t great but they aren’t very bad either. They are doing fine even before all this hullabaloo. With these 3 extra pages on Jawi in the standard 4 textbook and probably 1-2 period spent on it, will it make them Malays, Chinese Indian, Iran, Kadazan and other ethics more Malaysian? At the end of the day, the only take away is “it’s Jawi writing”.

Today, if you were to google ‘Subjek Jawi’, you’d see endless links to opinions and debates about it. This article will definitely add to it. The more you delve into it, the more you will see that it’s dividing the very fabric of our unity. You’ll start to see that it has resulted in people being downright racist and bringing in religion into the matter. Let’s take a look at a few examples here.

With just people refusing to have a 3-page jawi in the textbook, they are immediately labeled as Communists. We see the Malays turned it into a religion. issue. And some even told these Chinese folks to go back to China. Would this sort of language makes people want to learn Jawi?

Personally, I am fine to have it included in the syllabus.I’m not against it and I’m not for it. I’m just indifferent. It won’t make or break anything for me. Make that what you want of me, you can label me with anything you want. Go ahead.

The original proclamation of Malaysia in Malay written in Jawi script.

This would’ve been a better topic to discuss about Jawi in my humble opinion. But then again I’m not an expert in Bahasa Melayu for Standard four.

What I am so angry about is that we treat Jawi as an Islamic script. Let us be clear, it’s not an Islamic script at all. It’s as Islamic as Rumi, or any other script out there. Jawi alphabet is not the even same as the per Arabic alphabet. There’s an additional 5 letters in Jawi in case you forgot about that. Have you read erotica in Jawi from the 40s and 50s? I remember reading some of it back when I was in primary schools. Friends passed around erotica in jawi, It’s almost like an amulet or “tangkal”, yellowish piece of ancient paper folded with Jawi writings on it. So yeah, nothing Islamic about that. Have you seen this add beer add in Jawi?

This is the problem with the Malays. We believe we own things and it’s exclusive to us. This country belongs to the Malays and Malays alone. The rest can get the hell out if you don’t like it. And whatever we owns are automatically Islam or Islamic. Bribery kinda now have Islamic version of it and working together with non muslims now becomes Tahaluf Siyasi. And now suddenly Jawi is the language of Islam. If it’s really is that, why are you lot only making a big noise out of it now? Why not back in 1950’s?

In case you forgot all about it, it was Asas 50 back in 1956 through 3rd Malay Language Congress (Kongres Bahasa ke-3) that proposed the Malay language be used in the roman or Rumi script. Asas 50 was made up of journalists, writers and teachers of the Malay language. These are the folks who hold up Bahasa Melayu up so high in their heart more than any of you guys and myself included. They love the language so much that they put up a proposal to romanise the Malay language.

You want to know why? It for one single reason and one single reason only. In a memorandum by Asraf and Usman Awang (Memorandum Mengenai Tulisan Rumi Untuk Bahasa Melayu: Disusun Oleh Asraf dan Usman Awang):

Bangsa-bangsa asing dapat mempelajari bahasa Melayu lebih mudah melalui tulisan Rumi, bukan saja kerana tulisan Rumi sudah menjadi tulisan yang universal atau diketahui di seluruh dunia umumnya, tetapi juga kerana buku-buku pelajaran sastera bahasa Melayu serta buku pengetahuan lainnya mengenai bahasa Melayu dapat dengan lebih mudah ditulis untuk orang asing dengan tulisan Rumi daripada dengan tulisan Jawi.

Memorandum Mengenai Tulisan Rumi Untuk Bahasa Melayu: Disusun Oleh Asraf dan Usman Awang

It’s for this very reason that it was introduced to be romanised back in the 50s. And on 14 December 1959, Parliament have stated that both Jawi and Roman script of Bahasa Melayu are both accepted.

Today, we have people of various ethnicity can speak and write in Malay easily as it’s romanised. Now we want to go back to the 1050’s? Okay, I understand, fashion come and go right? Nowadays people wear ‘tengkolok’ or ‘tanjak’ a Malay headgear for men, it used to only be back in the day. So fashion do comes back in style. So yeah, don’t forget that it was the Malays who wanted to throw away Jawi. It’s very common for Malays to forget. Remember Boikot McD? Remember the more recent BMF? Of you forgot about it already? Ya, Melayu Mudah Lupa.

Now Jawi have become a national education issue and have somehow become the last straw for the Minister of Education to resign. It has divided the nation once again since 1956 memorandum. If we really are going have this rather time consuming and all encompassing discussions about our education system. If we really want to have a discussion that will probably divide the nation then why not do it proper? Why not take on the subject of One School System, No SRJK (C), no SRJK (T), no Sekolah Agama Rakyat, No Sekolah Tahfiz, no any other types of school except National school? Mother tongue language, Arabic, French, KAFA, Tahfiz, Usuludin or whatever else can be electives and taken up after official school hours. Debate on this and divide the nation on this instead of a 3-pages of Jawi that is not worth dividing the nation at all. This is a subject I don’t mind to divide the nation with. Not the 3-page Jawi non-issue.

With this Jawi issue, Mazlee let the bigger objectives of him being the Head of MOE be gone with the wind. Personally I think he had the toughest job right after PM and MoF. I don’t envy him and I think nobody in their right mind would envy him. It’s a tough position. He needs to get his head clear of the main objectives and keep that as the big rocks. Is Jawi his big rocks? Should it be front and centre every time Minister Maszlee comes up? Or should something else be front and centre? That’s the issue I have with him.

He not all bad, really. He did several right things right. He was the first among the ministers to share his ministry report card. Having said that, I personally think report card is rubbish. Anyone trained in KPI reporting will see that sort of KPI reporting is rubbish but I’ll give him the credit that he was the first to published it. He has the right mindset and the big balls to do it.

Summary of the KPI shared by MOE

He said all the right things on Cikgu Duka Lara (Teachers who are separated from their spouses as a result of being posted to different states are not only suffering mentally and physically but also financially). He started the ball rolling and made it all public. On top of that he also made inroads on reducing administrative works for teachers.

He made sure schools that are in dire needs for improvements get a big allocation in the budget. I remember cheering about it when it was announced by MoF in the budget.

As a first timer he did better than many other ministers out there. Many of whom who didn’t even break the news stratosphere because he/she did nothing at all. He did his best and Dong Zhong agrees with me. It’s unfortunate that the Jawi issue is overblown and costs him and us the situation we are in now.

With this resignation I expect other ministers who performed worse than Maszlee to resign as well. Dr. Mahathir proved that he’d doesn’t mind dropping a minister from Bersatu. So I’d expect Anwar Ibrahim, LGE, Mohd Sabu and others to also drop non performing ministers.

It’s important that the head of a family be true to the main objectives and goals. Don’t be caught in the whirlwind of things that’s not paramount to the objectives. It’s like this friend of mine, recently he contacted me through WhatsApp. He was telling me about this argument he and his wife were in on which school bag to buy for their standard 6 kid. The kid wanted an Barbie bag, but the Mom wanted to buy a Smiggle bag. It costs roughly about the same with Smiggle only slightly higher. Mom’s point is that it’s on sale. It’s usually much more expensive, not to mention it’s of good quality. Dad said his kid wanted Barbie and that’s what important.

I then replied the Bapak, “Bapaknye, you guys arguing about this bag…Have you guys bought all other things? The text book? The stationary? Uniforms? Got him a good tuition centre already? What about his extra curricular? Belum eh? Don’t miss the trees for the forest please Tuan.”

Peace be unto you.

You Need A Budget Part 1

I’ve penned two things I have a beef about in the 2020 budget.

I just downloaded THIS app to start managing my monies better. It’s pretty unique and good actually. I have a few goals for next few years and I’d like to achieve them all. Let’s hope this app can help me achieve these goals.

Since we are on the subject of budget, I am a bit torn with a few items in the recently concluded 2020 budget tabling by LGE our Finance Minister. 

LGE presenting the 2020 Budget in Parliament

Overall, I feel it’s a populist budget. Most people get something from the 2020 budget. It’s for the masses. Middle income get some, B40 gets the most, and everybody is happy now that the rich are taxed more. Be it only 2000+ of the filthy rich folks impacted, it will still make a good headline for the masses to feel good about it. A populist budget means the government wanted the Rakyat to feel good about the administration. The Rakyat has been feeling anxious and unhappy with the performance of the administration the last year or so. This populist budget will probably get the administration a few points up, in the approval rating. 

I’m feeling pretty good about many of the stuff that was announced. Some of the opposition politicians said the budget had nothing significantly new. Many of the initiatives are carried over from BN era apparently. Well to that I say, why fix it if there’s nothing wrong. PH main beef was with Najib, many other policies have proved to be successful, so continue lah. It’ll be stupid to change something that’s working well. Just change what’s not working well and that’s Datuk Seri Najib and his cohorts.

So to keep up with the spirit of typical Malaysians, whom does not comments on good things, and just comments super hard on the not so good things, let’s get the ball rolling. 

First up, the Minimum Wage. Government will increase the minimum wage to RM1200 for select major city. I’m going to assume major cities will be Klang Valley, Penang and JB. 

Let me get this out first, I believe we should have less government intervention and more market forces decided on things. I agree that there should be government intervention, but it needs to be kept at a minimum. 

So, when the government announced higher minimum wage, I’m not a happy camper. We are just buying time to satiate the rakyat with easy money without increased productivity. Market forces dictate that one should only pay when one gets the value that one wants. In the case of minimum wage, the employers get the same output/productivity but it costs more now. That is not economically viable and against the law of economics. Market will eventually correct itself.

LGE tabling the budget, statingmMinimum wage has been increased to RM1200 starting next year in major cities.

Imagining running a business and you get this increased costs out of nowhere but productivity remained the same. How will the business compensate to the increased costs? Increase the price! That’s the easiest. It’ll be easier since the market now have surplus of money due to the increase in minimum wage.

Very quickly, the market will adjust to the increase in costs with an increase in price. Give it 3-6 months to adjust, probably by April or June of 2020. The Rakyat’s buying power will then be back to where it was before. The rakyat will not get intended increased buying power and the business will then get back their normal profit levels. But prices of goods and services have since increased. 

Another unintended impact of higher minimum wage is automation. Look at some of the places in the world where minimum wages has become so high that businesses can no longer afford to hire minimum wage worker. The businesses resorted to automation. Robots instead of chefs/cooks to cook the food, drones to send the pizzas instead of riders. Conveyor belts and robot arms to pack stuff at the warehouse instead of packing worker. Robots vacuum cleaner to clean up the floors at offices instead of your typical auntie cleaner. These are minimum wage jobs with minimum wage tasks. 

Here are some examples we have in KL, look at many McDonald’s outlets we have around the city. They now have ordering kiosks, some outlets have three of them installed and some have up to 5 kiosks. Who are these kiosk replacing? Yup, minimum wage cashier. Now we only see one cashier manning the counter. 

Another example, Pump attendant, back in the 90’s we have pump attendant. Nowadays with cashless payments and automated pump, we no longer need the minimum wage pump attendant workers. 

In the more developed countries, we have ROBOTS FLIPPING BURGERS! Take a read in that article and see for your self a robot flipping burger patties.

That is Flippy, a robot flipping burgers in California.

Let’s take a look at San Francisco, California. Here, the minimum wage is a whopping USD12 per hour. How much money is USD12 per hour? Let’s do the Big Mac meal set comparison. A Big Mac meal set in Bay Area, SF, is USD5.99. Working for an hour there can get you 2 Big Macs meals. So, working for an hour will get you 2 meals for the day. 

Let’s do the same calculation in KL. RM1200 a month is about RM5.77 per hour. A Big Mac meal set in KL costs RM14.95. You need to work for 2.6 hours before you can get a single meal. 

Comparing San Francisco Bay Area and Kuala Lumpur, the minimum wage if California is super duper high lah, we can say that kan. That is why my friends, they have robots flipping burgers. These robots cost less than a human being, at USD60K per robot, the cost is the same as 20 months of minimum wage salary + some benefits of probably valued at about 20% of the salary. Benefits like annual leave, hospitalisation and medical, EPF and etc. 

This means after 20 months, the robots now works for free. Robot don’t do mistakes, they cook perfectly, they don’t complaint, they don’t take breaks, they don’t ask for 15 minutes solat break twice a day on top of the 1 hour break. Best of all, robots don’t get sick as often and don’t go on annual or maternity leave. 

Have you ever had Costa Coffee brewed by the robots in those Shell Select Petrol Stations? They taste the same almost every time you get them right? Compared to Starbucks sometime too sweet, sometime too bland and sometimes the Frappuccino ice is too chunky and sometimes not. Some of you argued that you need human to interact and whatever lah, when was the last time you spoke to the baristas brewing your coffee? While using the McDonald’s kiosk and did not even miss the human cashier you had interacted back in the days. In fact, you are glad that you had the kiosk because it’s way faster than having a newbie cashier taking you orders oh-so-slowly and sometimes with errors. 

I might be talking too much into the future but sometimes we forget that the future is not that far off. Look at that family picture you have in your purse or wallet or on your office table, yeah, it’s been more than 10 years since you got married. Time flies.

Alright, let’s take a look at the second not so good things about the 2020 budget. Let’s take a look at it in a separate article I’ll post tomorrow. I feel this is getting too long already. I need to write shorter articles and get to the point faster. Lots of my readers only skimmed through the articles and they feel it’s too long. If you managed to read up till this paragraph, give yourselves a pat on the back and give a comment on what you think below or on my FB/Twitter/LinkedIn page and I’ll send you Domino’s Pizza discount codes as a token of my appreciation. I got a few extra and these have expiry dates and limited quantities. Be fast yah.

Peace be unto all.

p/s: If you have time, read up on what Andrew Yang, the next presidential candidate for USA have to say about automation industry.

Don’t Kill the Messenger

I’ve written down my thoughts of the recent closure of Utusan Malaysia operations and the papers.

Spent a while thinking of the title of this posting. It’s rather harsh and it kinda not what I really want to say. But alas, that will do for now. 

Back in the day, probably in the 90’s, my favourite newspaper was Mingguan Malaysia. The Sunday edition of Utusan Malaysia (literally translated to Malaysian Courier/Messenger). There was a time when I look forward to Sundays, where I’d have a chance to read the ‘Wawancara’ or interview of the week. It’s usually two sometimes three pages long. I’d read every sentence written and re-read them. That’s where I developed my love for Q&A or interview sessions. Till today, the part I love the most in any magazine I picked up would be interviews with a particular person of interest to me. I’d buy a full blown magazine to just read a 2-3 pages of interview that interests me. I just love reading about how one thought process works in their head, in doing or coming out with something. 

I love to understand the thought process behind some of the policies introduced by the government and the current situations faced by the person of interest feature in Mingguan Malaysia. Many a time, you can see how much one’s filter or views of certain situations, shaped their thought process and action towards it. It kinda opens you mind and let you experience this paradigm shift of your own views or opinions. Suddenly you realised that you weren’t so RIGHT or, there are more than one ways to see or do things other that YOUR ways.

My second favourite section was of course “bisik-bisik by Awang Selamat. I just love the writing style. A bit of sarcasm, with a dash of criticism on various topics of interest. They are just short snippets of what Awang thinks on current issues. Some are sarcastic in nature, some are straight up finger pointings, some are just mild criticisms and some are just opinions on matters of interest. It’s a great place to catch up on some topics, that the editors fancy. Sort of like twitter posting nowadays, a short and sweet take on issues. Sometimes it’s a thread that takes up several tweets, sometimes it’s just a single paragraph. Love it. 

A look at the Bisik-Bisik by Awang Selamat.

After a while, probably around 2006 or so, I started to find Utusan a little unbearable. Too many politicians doing and saying stupid things at the time and Utusan no longer make it a point to write about them. Back in the days they would write about it in the Awang Selamat column or in some of the guests writer column. I always look forward to it because I know we can depend on the paper to fight for us the Rakyat and tell these politicians off. But alas, it seldom happened around that period onwards.

I may be too young to remember or perhaps its the nostalgia that is clouding my mind, but, I still remember moments where I read Awang Selamat calling out some of the politicians doing or saying something stupid. At least, in a sarcastic manner so as not to cause them any trouble. But that was no longer the case, if I remember correctly, it was probably around Pak Lah’s time.

The other thing about Utusan, they was so behind the curve in their adoption of the News-on-the-Internet stuff. I still remember their website was slow to load, still using frames, and whatever janky web tools that were probably 5-10 years behind the curve. What made it worse was, probably only a few years ago, before they got their ‘new’ website, they would load a full desktop page on a mobile device. Be it a phone or a tablet, the same full desktop website would load and it took literally 5-10 seconds for the whole thing to load. A big turn off if we want to read an article that probably will only take 5-10 seconds to read or skimmed through. Coupled that with a clickbait-ty headlines, you’d be cursing the moment you realised the article was a shitty one. It was that bad.

On social media front, I still follow Utusan on Facebook, and here’s the other part they failed to take advantage of. There are almost nothing else other then posts showing snippets of the news and a link to the article on their website. That’s it. Occasionally you’d see Senyum Kambing posting. They had zero social media personality and strategy. Almost zero interaction with the readers or followers of the page.

Yes, this is how Utusan posts on Facebook. Don’t get me started what they do with Twitter.

I love Utusan. Wait, maybe I should say, I used to love Utusan. I felt Utusan was really a newspaper I’m really proud to be a reader of. But, after they no longer have these opinion pieces, interviews, Awang Selamat takes on stuff that matters and news stories that matters, to folks like me, I no longer felt proud…for many many years. And since Utusan never really cared about their younger or more technology savvy readers, where most of these readers only spent their time online and on social media, I kinda stopped caring about them as well.

To me, Utusan no longer represent the modern Malays, the Rakyat that wanted to be informed, that wanted to stay ahead what’s happening and serves the interest of the readers.

A few months ago, there was a campaign to buy start buying Utusan again so that it can be saved. I did not do anything at all. It needs to be save by it’s masters, not us the readers that it betrays. Unless the masters of Utusan cares and let Utusan be Utusan, it is more suited to be left for dead instead. Utusan in it’s current state is not worth saving. Even with all the history behind it, it’s better if all of it dies. Let it be a reminder to never stray from the mission that it sets to be. Utusan needs to apologise for straying too far away, it needs to start serving its readers again rather than its masters.

Corporations that failed their customers need to apologise sincerely and starts to work towards being better and win the trust of their customers. They can’t take it for granted. Look at Domino’s Pizza Turnaround, this has been a textbook case study around the world on how a corporation can really turned-around a failing business. Listen to what customers have to say, internalise and understand it, acknowledge it, then pledge to be better. It’s very simple.

I sure hope Syed Mokhtar and his team can make it NSTP group the papers that we the Rakyat can be proud of, not just papers to be given free to schools and government offices. Syed Mokhtar have also been buying shares of Utusan via his proxies, I hope he’ll make Utusan a better newspaper as well. One that serves the readers. As for Utusan, you can stay dead if you don’t change because, nobody wants to save you, even your masters didn’t save you. Yup, your masters left you to die, really, they left you for dead. Don’t get angry at me, I’m just the messenger, sending you this message. Don’t kill the messenger.

Peace be unto all.

p/s: I knew the title will deliver at the end.

p/p/s: Edited the part relating to Syed Mokhtar to clarify the shares he’s buying or have been holding for a few years.

You Gotta Go Fast…You Gotta Spread Love Not Hate

As prescribed by my doctor, to live longer with my rather delicate heart, I need to read less national and world news; read more books and watch less movies to take my mind off things that would made me feel restless. Also to meditate, that helps a lot too.

So, about the movies, when Sonic the Hedgehog movie was announced I was super excited. Being a kid who grew up with a Sega Mega drive. Sonic is THE mascot not only for the console but for Sega itself.

Sega Mega Drive Box for Japan Market

I remember buying this Mega Drive console with my ‘hard earned’ duit raya at the age of 12. It was probably 300 or 400 hundred bucks at the time. I’m sure I didn’t have enough but somehow my mom chipped in I guess. Things our mom would do for us is unbelievable.

So, back to the Sonic Movie. Being a Sonic and Sega fan, I am so happy about it of course. Who wouldn’t right? People are never logical, we are psychological so we tend to be nostalgicaboutw things we love when are are kids.

But, the whole of the internet isn’t happy at all. Sonic has always been compared to Mario. Partly because of the consoles rivalry between Nintendo and Sega back in the days. Nintendo fans would shit on Sega and vice versa. Nintendo continued their success in the console and games industry, while Sega stopped their console business and focused solely on games. It broke my heart, a large part of it.

Since the movie trailer been released, the internet has showered it with…yup, you guessed it right…HATE. You can see hate after hate after hate after hate after hate being thrown at Sonic movie trailer.

Then I saw this photo uploaded by one of IGN editors.

There is so much hate across the internet for a simple movie about Sonic. The movie is not for them in the first place. The movie is probably aimed for kids!

Yup..Slow down games and movie critics.

We love to spread hate more than spreading love. Even a good movie like the recent Avengers: End Game. Article after articles came out talking about just how many plot holes are there in the movie. I won’t spoil them here though.

It’s always fun to hate stuff. It’s always easier to hate stuff. People can easily relate to hatred so it gets shared and spread faster.

The point is, we love to spread hate and we love to spread it fast. Look at your Facebook timelines, out of 10 posts, there will be 4 that are about how much we should hate the Chinese, the christians, hindus, non-muslims and so many other groups.

We see the death of Adib being used to stokes the fire or racial hatred against the Indians and religious hatred against the Hindus. Blood has to be paid by blood being posted and shared and reshared.

We see the issue of an independent muslim preacher being arrested being used to stokes the fires of religious hatred. We see the ICERD ratification being branded as against the Monarch and thus against Islam and the Malays as whole. There are points to ponder and details to listen to, but it should be about stoking the fires of hatred agains one another.

What we actually seeing is people being used on both sides of the divide, be it Malay, Chinese, Indians, Muslims, Christians, Hindus or any other group. We forgot that we are never logical, we are psychological. We forgot that we are easily manipulated by either side of the divide if we became too emotionally invested. Politicians prey on the people who are easily influenced.

We must all realised that politicians are always, always working doubly hard for MONEY and POWER or POWER and MONEY only. They are always chasing these two things and these two things only.

RELIGION and RACE are the platform that these politicians use to achieve money and power. Until the Rakyat understands this, the power will never be in Rakyat’s hand. It will stay in their hands and forever the rakyat will be fooled.

So let’s not be macai on both sides of the divide. Let’s think more and read more and spread love. Not hate.

Thanks and peace unto all of you.