Everything begins with a dream

I love sports movies, especially those that are fact-based (true stories) such as The Rookie, Miracle On Ice etc. They often make me feel good for two hours, motivate me and let me appreciate the enormous obstacles some sportsmen have to go through to achieve their dreams.

Today I was watching on sat TV for the third time "The Greatest Game Ever Played", a Disney production movie based on the 1913 U.S. Open, in which amateur golfer Francis Ouimet is competing against Harry Vardon and Ted Ray, professional British champions.

Nobody expected Ouimet to qualify for the Open, let alone do well in it. In the end he overcame his father's fears, his own self-doubt and everything else to win it in a nail-biting final playoff against Henry Vardon.

The storyline is not too complicated, even for someone who has no idea how golf is played (e.g. my wife). It is a movie the whole family will enjoy, and we did. The music score is inspiring.

The ending is very moving, and I even shed a tear because I am absolutely moved. I am a sucker for teary endings.

If you have not seen "The Greatest Game Ever Played", give it a try. You will not be disappointed.

Lest We Forget

Today is the 16th of September 2007.

On this day forty four years ago, Sabah and Sarawak joined Malaya as equal partners to form the Federation of Malaysia, despite the fact that certain quarters that cannot count would like us to believe otherwise.

Lets get some dates clear up first:

31st August 1957 is the day Malaya achieved independence.
16th Septenber 1963 is the day of the formation of the Federation of Malaysia.

31st August is gazetted as our National Day and I don't have any problem with that.

The year 2007 is the 50th year of the independence of Malaya and the forty fourth year of the formation of Malaysia.

As far as I am concerned Malaysia is 44 years old, and not 50 as claimed by certain quarters that can't count.

This is important. Otherwise a younger generation will grow up not knowing their history.

But did anyone care? Not much, a few maybe. Today's significance is not even mentioned in today's newspapers. In Sabah, today is a public holiday, but not because it is Malaysia Day. They gazetted today in the state of Sabah as the Birthday of the Head of State.

Happy Malaysia Day.

Lest we forget.

Economics explained with cows

I receive a lot of forwarded emails from persons known and unknown each day. This is one of the better ones that popped into my mail box recently :


ECONOMICS EXPLAINED WITH COWS

SOCIALISM
You have two cows.
You give one to your neighbour.

COMMUNISM
You have two cows.
The State takes both and gives you some milk.

FASCISM
You have two cows.
The State takes both and sells you some milk.

NAZISM
You have two cows.
The State takes both and shoots you.

BUREAUCRACY
You have two cows.
The State takes both, shoots one, milks the other, and then throws the milk away.

CAPITALISM
You have two cows.
You sell one and buy a bull.
Your herd multiplies, and the economy grows.
You sell them and retire on the income.

SURREALISM
You have two giraffes.
The government requires you to take harmonica lessons

AN AMERICAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You sell one, and force the other to produce the milk of four cows.
Later, you hire a consultant to analyse why your cow has dropped dead.

ENRON VENTURE CAPITALISM

You have two cows.

You sell three of them to your publicly listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt/equity swap with an associated general offer so that you get four cows back, with a tax exemption for five cows.

The milk rights for six cows are transferred via an intermediary to a Cayman Island company secretly owned by the majority shareholder who sells the rights to seven cows back to your listed company.

The annual report says the company owns eight cows, with an option on one more.
You sell one cow to buy a new President of the United States, leaving you with ten cows.
No balance sheet is provided with the release.
The public then buys your bull.

THE ANDERSEN MODEL
You have two cows.
You shred them.

A FRENCH CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You go on strike, organize a riot, and block the roads because you want three cows.

A JAPANESE CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow but produce twenty times the milk.
You then create a clever cow cartoon image called 'Cowkimon' and market it worldwide.

A GERMAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You re-engineer them so they live for 100 years, eat once a month, and milk themselves.

AN ITALIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows, but you don't know where they are.
You decide to have lunch.

A RUSSIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You count them and learn you have five cows.
You count them again and learn you have 42 cows.
You count them again and learn you have two cows.
You stop counting cows and open another bottle of vodka.

A SWISS CORPORATION
You have 5,000 cows. None of them belong to you, but you get to charge the owners for storing them.

A CHINESE CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You have 300 people milking them.
You claim that you have full employment, and high bovine productivity.
You arrest the newsman who reported the real situation, and run him over with a tank in a large open square area.

AN INDIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You worship them.

A BRITISH CORPORATION
You have two cows.
Both are mad.

AN IRAQI CORPORATION
Everyone thinks you have lots of cows.
You tell them that you have none.
No-one believes you, so they bomb the hell out of you and invade your country.
You still have no cows, but at least now you are part of Democracy.

A NEW ZEALAND CORPORATION
You have two cows.
The one on the left looks very attractive.

AN AUSTRALIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
Business seems pretty good.
You close the office and go for a few beers to celebrate.

A MALAYSIAN CORPORATION
The government give you two cows.
You claim they don't produce as much milk as expected and sell them back to the government at a premium and wait for the government to give you milk.

Serving features are for illustration purposes only - Part 2

Walked into a certain fast food outlet specialising in fried chicken to order lunch. The counter staff asked me if I'd try their latest promotion named Chicken Poopers (the typo is deliberate, you will soon know why...).

I looked at the promotional menu and found that Chicken Poopers are basically chicken balls the size of golf balls, or so I thought.

I said no thanks and proceeded to order my lunch. However just before I pay up, I thought "Hey, if they are the size of golf balls, they cannot be that bad right?" and ordered a serving.

When I got home, I took out the box which contains the chicken poopers. The box rattled. I open up the box only to find 5 miserable chicken balls the size of marbles, not golf balls. I think even my cat's testicles are bigger. This photo must have been taken with a macro lens during the photo shoot for the advertisement.

And true enough, the dreaded statement "Serving features are for illustration purposes only" are again in fine print in all their ads about this product.

Why oh why oh why will I never learn?

The English Premier League is back

The EPL 2007-2008 season is now almost 2 weeks old, and surprisingly it is not that predictable so far.

For starters, last season's champion M*n U*d is now at position 16th in the league table after 3 matches instead of being in the top four. It is not everyday we can technically say that M*n U*d is trying to avoid the relegation zone.

Chelsea's cylinders are still sputtering due to injury problems and was lucky not to lose to Liverpool on Sunday no thanks to the match referee Rob Styles who committed daylight Rob-bery by awarding Chelsea a penalty resulting in a 1-1 drawn match.

Arsenal? Their goalkeeper has been inflicted with the dreaded butter fingers disease lately.

The breath of fresh air must have been Manchester City, winning 3 matches out of 3 so far and is topping the table. At least Sven G. Ericsson got something right finally, unlike during his job as England's manager.

Newcastle under Sam Allardyce is doing better while Bolton is having a terrible time in this new season after Big Sam left them. (Bolton chairman's note to self : Never bad mouth your ex-manager.) Newcastle slammed four goals past Bolton's goalkeeper on opening day.

As for the rest, nothing remarkable so far, but as the season progresses, things will change.

As for my team Liverpool, thanks to some very good buys in the transfer market which beefed up the team's striking power, this season may just be the season Liverpool will win the EPL title after 17 years.

This season is different. The team looked confident, decisive and took no prisoners in their 2 matches so far, and I foresee this to be the trend throughout the season.

Liverpool to win the 2007-2008 EPL title. A man can dream, can't he?

Even Nicaragua is better than us now

Latest FIFA ranking for national soccer teams is out.

Malaysia dropped to 154th place, from 149th last month. Now even Nicaragua is above us.

Drop another 54 more places and we will hit 208th. That won't be very long, as everyone is still trying to point fingers at each other instead of getting some real work done.

And FAM is asking for more time to submit their report? Puleeze!

Japan 4 - Australia 3

Asian Cup quarter finals last night between Japan and Australia.

Japan finally scraped through to the semi-final by the hair of their chinny chin chin after winning the the penalty shootout 4-3 when the match remained deadlocked at 1-1.

The thing is this : Australian players are clearly half dead after 120 minutes of football due to the heat and exhaustion, and get this : they are playing with only 10 men for the final 45 minutes! Yet Japan could not win and require a lottery i.e. the shootout to go through.

Lucky buggers.

"My child did that?? Impossible!"

Recently two cases of teachers allegedly involved in injuring students were published in the newspapers.

In case #1, a 13 year old secondary school girl was allegedly punched twice in the face by a teacher after she allegedly said something vulgar to him in class. As a result her face is swollen.

In case #2, a secondary school student in Sabah was allegedly slapped by a teacher resulting in injury to his/her ear drum etc and may lose hearing in one ear for life. The student allegedly said something very disrespectful behind the teacher's back and was overheard by others and reported.

Before I want to get something off my chest about student behavior today, I would like to say that what the two teachers did is very wrong and action should be taken against them by the authorities.

Okay, teachers are not psychopaths just waiting to punch or slap people for no reason. Something the students said must have been so rude or disrespectful or provocative that the teacher will snap and hit out at the student.

The question here is just what is wrong with some of our students nowadays?

In my time as a student i.e. during the 70s and 80s, we feared our teachers all the time. One step out of line and we will get detention or other appropriate punishment befitting our mistakes. It is a very very rare case to hear teachers injuring students.

But from what I can see nowadays, a lot of students have no respect for their teachers and we often heard of students abusing teachers verbally, physical assaults, vandalizing teachers' property such as cars etc. When the teacher snaps and retaliated unlawfully, the parents of the student will yell bloody murder and tell all and sundry that our teachers are all psychopaths.

In the two cases above I have not read of anyone actually questioning the parents of the student just what kind of upbringing their children are getting today to the extend that they can abuse their teachers verbally.

No doubt action should be taken against the teachers but I just wish appropriate action will be taken against the students too. If nothing is done, it is like telling everyone it is okay for their children to be rude to their teachers.

Okay, I hear some saying it is easy for me to rant about this but what will I do if I find out one day that a teacher has punched my daughter's face resulting in facial injury?

Well, first I will demand that the appropriate action be taken against the teacher, by making the appropriate reports and so on. Then I will find out what set the teacher off. If the reason is because my daughter said something vulgar or rude to the teacher, I will personally slap her face in front of everyone myself.

That I can assure you I will definitely do.

149th and still going downnnnnnnnnnnn...

The pathetic state of the Malaysian national soccer team. It is currently ranked by FIFA to be 149th in the world, out of 208 teams, and teams like Swaziland, Mauritius, Lesotho, Tajikistan and the Bahamas are ranked higher than Malaysia.

After the recent whipping-- or demolition by China (5-1) and Uzbekistan (5-0) in the Asian Cup, I won't be surprised when the new FIFA ranking comes out next month Malaysia will be somewhere in the region of 150s or worse, 160s if Iran also do a 5-0 on Malaysia this week.

Ah... the Asian Cup tournament. Whose bright idea was it to have Malaysia host one of the groups? And to be grouped with China, Uzbekistan and Iran? Someone in the Football Association of Malaysia (FAM) called it the group of death. As I understand it, a group of death in any sport means a very tough grouping, where teams will have a tough time winning the group and progressing. We consider ourselves to be worthy opponent in this so called group of death? Cannon fodder is more like it.

Yesterday the Deputy President of the FAM tendered his resignation from all posts. Although he did not give his reason for resigning, it would appear that he has read the feelings of most Malaysians. This is commendable, for it is not natural for anyone in high positions in Malaysian sport associations to resign whenever there is a serious debacle. It is rare indeed.

However, others in the FAM have started saying he should not resign because it is not his fault. If this continues, I bet that in a few days the Deputy President will change his mind about resigning citing popular demand asking him to stay on and all that. This is also another sickness of Malaysian sport associations : Resignations may not be permanent, due to popular demand.

Someone high up in the Cabinet then said that it is a collective responsibility and the DP should not resign. Gawd, if they like to stress on collective responsibility so much then the whole powers-that-be in the FAM should resign. However, the chance of that happening is as much as Bush having dinner with Osama. And the rot continues.

Malaysian soccer has been in the pits for the past 20 years. When I left Malaysia for overseas studies in the mid 70s, Malaysian soccer is something to be proud of, and we have players who will play for the country for peanuts. Players who have hunger in their eyes and the passion for winning. Players who dared to look into the eyes of their opponents and thought "We are going to bury your team today!".

When I came back, I witnessed the decline, and that corruption scandal involving closed to a hundred players in the local league finally killed it. Overnight, talented players were banned for life for their involvement. I lost interest.

Today, our professional league division 1 is called the Super League, while division 2 is called the Premier League. We are the only (I think) professional soccer league in the world who dared confer these superlative names on our divisions. Even the mighty English FA only call their top flight the Premier League. The self delusion continues.

So, where should Malaysian soccer go from here? I do not know. I am tired of the failures. Tired of the same old excuses. Tired of the politicking. Tired of the interference. It is easy for me to say do this and do that, but unless those in power at the FAM do a 180 degree change in how soccer is run in this country, we will continue the downward spiral.

And rank number 208 will not be far off.

Where pirate taxis roam and the illegal immigrants play

A lot of friends on the 'Net have asked me just where exactly is Lahad Datu, and why would I want to live there.

Okay, first we settle the question about where Lahad Datu is located. For details on Lahad Datu, you can dig up the info on Wikipedia, where half an A4 page is allocated to describing this town.

Now, as to where it is located, these two Google earth images will be of great help :

So now some of you can reprogram the GPS coordinates of your ICBMs.

Now, why would I want to live here? It's the call of duty. I have been working here since 1993, and more or less a Lahad Datuan (is there such a word?) by now. It is the fourth largest town in the state of Sabah, and one of the advantages of living here is that the pace of life is slower. On the other hand, being a small town, your choice in everything is very limited.

What do I like best about this place? The seafood. Prawns the size of lobsters. Fish that you don't have to break the bank to pay for.

Ok, maybe the lobster analogy is a bit far fetched. Prawns the size of half a lobster then.