i've been reading a lot about tun dr. mahathir's comments, especially about badawi. i can only say, though i am indifferent about politics in malaysia, what mahathir is saying does not reflect well on him, nor the country, contrary to what he thinks.

first, he wails that badawi is giving in to singapore, because he has agreed not to build a bridge but keep the causeway. now for all the benefits that building the bridge will give to malaysia, i am not convinced that it will give the malaysian port industry the upper hand compared to singapore. sure, port klang managed to snag evergreen, a big shipping firm, and that is no doubt a blow to psa. but honestly have you ever asked why people choose to use singapore, despite the higher fees? i suggest a few things - good connectivity and efficiency, all of which are crucial in any business plan. see when i see empty shelves in supermarkets, especially of goods i want to buy, i think of bad logistics management. time is money. especially when you are dealing with physical goods. i am in no way suggesting that port klang is inefficient or lacks extra connectivity, especially since i have not been there before, but i am saying, off the top of my head this is what singapore is probably best at. so hit us where it really hurts.

(and frankly. a bridge? do you know how bleedingly expensive it will be? yes you do. that is why you want us to pay for it. and of course when we said we wouldn't you floated the ridiculous half-bridge idea. actually ridiculous is an understatement)

secondly, you tell the press that your successor, your hand-picked successor, is not doing a good job. he is putting indian dissidents in jail and has contributed little to the country overall, so you claim. now i disagree with the treatment of indians in malaysia, but this is a pot calling a kettle black. seriously. you yourself ruled malaysia with an iron fist, the reason why people don't want to bring it up is because of respect for your long tenure. do not tarnish that image. plus, after what happened with anwar (who i must admit i found very persuasive) isn't this successor bashing a little tired?

thirdly, you say he is not doing a good job for malaysia. let's not forget the context of the situation here. you are not comparing like with like. first off i can think of the oil price rises, which only recently dipped below US$100 - a massive amount. faced with supply shocks in a still industrializing country, how will you propose to manage the country better? second i can think of other problems, such as terrorism and malaysia's need to tread carefully, to be a good intermediary. in fact i think badawai is not doing too bad a job, at least he hasn't got the US pissed off by some statement he made which was not warranted.

you know what takes the last straw? the article i read today about the gentleman's agreement between him and badawi. basically he said that he chose badawi because he is older, and the understanding is that after he has served his term he should give way for najib. seriously i think this is the worse thing he has said. it is wrong on so many levels. firstly for someone who is no longer in the government, he is trying to advise on succession, which i think for a country without a system like the US is a matter for the political party to decide, and not the civilian. secondly, to suggest that a gentleman's agreement existed, at the level of PMship, suggests politicking of the worse kind. so basically, only his opinion counts. and further how is age the only relevant criteria in assessing a leader's capability? note that mahathir himself resigned only when he was 78. clearly he thought that age has little bearing on an individual's capabilities.

if you want to comment, at least do it explicitly, like what mm lee did. now i am in no way a supporter of his (another understatement, again), but at least he made his stand explicit. he was going to remain in the government even after he resigned, he wasn't going to be content with criticising from afar,and he made that crystal clear (legitimate, too). that i respect.

ahh. but this is politics, surely. i am glad i will never be a politician.

i have natasha bedingfield's unwritten on playback on my itunes (oh yes i have gone to the other side) but as i was happily bobbing on my gym ball this thought popped in my mind..

"feel the rain on your skin..." she sings. i think "well, i have no choice. i am in england."

hurhur.

i am quite proud of myself. i have actually begun buying music! to be fair this is still quite an alien concept but at least i only pay for songs i want. though at 79p a pop it's still not cheap. i was just reading the other day about how we pay a lot more than the US and EU customers. wouldn't it be nice to download songs in US i wonder, 99cents (only). after all i really don't need cds nowadays. i bought one (yes amazing isn't it) - the killers - and after transferring the tracks to my laptop the disk is now rotting at home.

i wonder if there's some cd recycling scheme?

oh, and does anyone have any running songs to recommend? i googled running tracks, only to turn up results for the physical kind. of course, my little brain didn't think of the other more obvious alternative before googling. half an hour later i did the same thing. i really do need to get my brain to work huh.

Ah, it seems like I only like to blog when I am in the library with a looming dateline to boot.

My book, opened to the page on Newbury about missing markets, is not too bad, rather interesting actually. But not as interesting as surfing the internet, in particular reading blogs. Whenever I read one, I invariably want to read the blogs of many others. It just happens. So I've read the blogs of my jc and secondary school classmates, reveling the knowledge of their lives and new found loves, realising that I don't and I mean literally don't keep in contact with any of them anymore. And you can't count reading their blogs as a substitute, like Andre said, if you cared enough you'd talk somehow, and not be a voyeur.

There are a lot of things I wished I had done, one of them perhaps is not to have lost touch with any of them. In some ways, I hate being in a relationship - it's stifling, you spend all your time with an individual and of course are immensely happy, but at the same time you have so little time for your friends - through your own choice. Sometimes I wish I could reverse my decisions and be in a relationship later: seriously you can always find someone for you, but your friends are meant to be for life.

So now I am left with the feeling that I am a horrible friend. Even now in uni I don't really care to make new friends; precedent tells me I will hardly keep any. I struggle to spend time with people I really care about, and MSN is hardly any substitute either. Sometimes you ask yourself if the balm of being in a relationship, of always having someone to talk to, is illusory and harmful, simply because you end up pushing away other people who care about you too.

I miss my time in secondary school, I had fun then, made lots of good friends and was just me. Even then I got chained down far too early. Seriously, 13 or 14? Not a good idea by any stretch of imagination. I do sometimes wish with a fervour that I could go back and reverse all these decisions and tell myself to realistically and honestly assess what I am giving up for something that is as fleeting as a relationship. And anyway half the fun of being in a relationship is in the chase really.

But then I stop, because I am afraid of the butterfly effect. What I basically want is to take away all the bad parts, but leave the good parts, especially how I made some of my friends in JC. Zk you know what I am talking about. And of course in the end I still want to meet Abiel. But then of course that will probably not happen, I am who I am today because of the choices I made, rightly or wrongly so.

Sigh. I miss my friends.

i have a "phat" baby nephew! so abiel calls him. well he is fat. very very fat. i've only just seen photos of him, and this perhaps provides some perspective.


no prizes for guessing which he is. i bought a really cute top for him that said, "chicks dig me" but it's for 6-9month old babies, and looking at his three-month old frame now i think he can't wear it. oh well. it's on its way to singapore now anyway, too late that i saw his photos. my goodness honestly. if i had a baby this size i don't know what i'd do! (his birth weight btw is >4.5kg) but he does look cute. i have pictures of my cousins carrying him, and you can see her muscle definition quite clearly.


well here is another thing i have missed. i missed 21st birthdays, wedding dinners x 2 and now an addition to the family. it sometimes makes me wonder if it's worth it. one of my cousins, who has always been pretty, has now blossomed to become really really pretty. in fact make that two. i can't say i am surprised, i suppose i just wasn't expecting it all to happen when i am not around.

and now IE has come back to me to say that they have approved my masters application. now this is vague, simply because i don't know if they've essentially signed a carte blanche for me to do my masters, or if i still have to get a first. (nigh on impossible if i don't start revising soon!) but this provides motivation. i was glad to hear my parents happy to hear the news - my dad even said it's better than him winning the lottery, which seriously, given what he dreams about doing with lottery money, means a great deal to me. it makes me glad that they don't mind me studying abroad for another year, but in a way i was looking forward to going home, finally. it's been very long. but there are too many buts for me to want to leave by this year - abiel is here, my friends are here, and i really want to start my career on an equal footing with my friends, so we can gripe about the same things and all. as it is, i will be the first among my cousins who are about my age to start working, and i don't want to run out of things to do or say to them.

abiel said i should get an interest. you know i always thought i had a lot of them, but aside from exercise i don't actually have any. not exactly reading unless these are frivolous magazines, and i don't think you can call that an interest. perhaps its archeology or cosmology, but these are so impractical that i've weened myself off books on this a long time ago. travel. perhaps, yes. but i think it's got to do with my love of glossy pictured books, just like how i love cookery books (though i seldom read them! they make my tummy ache in hunger :S the pains of not having a kitchen) hm.

i don't really want to be those people who live their lives in others', you know what i mean? i can see myself living my life for my children and husband, and that is scary. where will i be then?