Baik Punya Cerita!

I was recently convinced to watch a Malay movie...(those who know me well will vouch for the near impossibleness of that happening...sigh, the things we do for love sometimes...) However i am pleased to report that i was pleasantly surprised and even entertained by the show...It was Afdlin's Baik Punya Cilok and it was actually FUNNY! The movie was a cross betweeen Ocean's Eleven and Twelve and The Bujang Lapok series. There was a comprehensible plotline and the dialogue, (not Monty Phyton stuff, of course) was superb! The characters were played out well and you could actually see the chemistry betwwen the four friends...Hats off to Afdlin and gang for pulling off a good show!
To anyone who has doubts about Malaysian movies, forget Yusof Haslam and the bunch of blithering idiots he hires for scriptwriters...Afdlin Shauki, Harith and the gang are the people to watch in the future!
Oh yeah...there will be a surprise appearance in the movie...you will like it.
Watch it people...worth the time and money...Malaysian Cinema is back!

Business Ethics??

I have just run into a ethical dilemma...can you work for a company and then freelance for a rival company at the same time? Recently been receiving jobs from a different advertising agency and working as a freelance copywriter for them...I am still a bit sceptical as to the ethics that are involved...are you supposed to be working for a rival when you are in the employ of the company? Granted, i do all the work after office hours and in my free time...so no office equipment is actually used to help the rival, but what about the job done itself..what if, because of the work that i have done, the rival starts getting an edge above my company and thus cutting profits from it? A little voice in me is saying that i wouldn't have to do this work in the first place if my company actually paid me better...but there is still that nagging feeling that i am somehow contravening Section 25 of the Universal Declaration of Good Guyness... Sigh...

Life and things that piss me off

Have you wondered sometimes whether you are living your life the way you are supposed to? Is every human being on the planet following a set route in which the person has to follow in order to become who he is? Or is it really a random series of choices which send you down one road or another? What makes a person good or bad? I always thought that a good person is a person who is honest and truthful to everyone and cares for the welfare of the people around him, but why is it that this attitude always goes unrewarded. Its the good guy that always loses out...Its the honest guy that gets betrayed in the end. Its the person that cares that doesn't receive help when he needs it. Why?
Why do you have to be a bastard to succeed? I don't want to blame anyone for being smart (Yes Halian, I know...) But why does it have to be that way. I hate hypocrites and i hate dishonesty for malicious reasons, but why am i surrounded with these people? (Sir Halian, Sir Arik and Lady Raihan, My Queen and those that i have named as friends excluded)
I have personally known someone who deliberately lies and colours the truth so that she could get an advantage...no one is spared, not even her boyfriend. Why? wouldn't life be a little empty when you have no real friends? Why lie?
I am hereby vowing never to be hypocritical (never was) never to be malicious (except in debates) and to strive for success in life by paying as much attention to the people around me and caring for their needs as much as possible, I vow to honestly work for a living and not exploit the talents or the disadvantages of others, I vow to become a better person and make people around me feel better as a result.
So help me i vow to live for the future generations, to prepare them for the world, to give them faith iin themselves and the tools they will need to project that self confidence. I vow to strive to be a better Muslim, to make my Creation worthwhile, to seek to better understand my Creator and His many mysteries. I vow to smile more, to laugh with others or otherwise keep silent, i vow to be the best me i can be.

Work work and more work

Hello world! its been a while since i have posted anthing new, been rather busy with living i guess. Working in an advertising firm now as a copywriter. Pretty good job seeing as i get paid to come up with creative ways to sell products and i can give free rein to my creativity. the people tht i work for seem to be pretty nice actually. Mostly Chinese but they make me feel at home...Malaysia, i love this country sometimes... Hope that my pay gets increased though...need to seriously plan my budget or i might be out of cash pretty early into the month. How is everyone? I don't think that anyone is still reading this blog though but to whoever is...hello!

America and Anti Americanism

A simple glance at the news today and we will be able to hear and see that the United States is incereasingly becoming a major pain in the butt for many nations. It ravaged Vietnam, Afghanistan, then Iraq...notice the similarities between the three countries that i just mentioned? All of them were attacked for reasons that only seemed to be understood by the power elite in washington but not justified to the general public, or else justified with shabby intelligence reports that seemed to pull the wool over most Americans.
To top it all off, the average American on the street doesn't even know where these countries are! I thank Jay Leno for that interesting nugget of info
Whatever happened to the principles that Amerca has stood for during the days of the Founding Fathers notably Abe Lincoln himself, the person the abolished slavery despite great opposition from everyone.
Now the President of the United States seems to me to be a slug of a man, whose intelligence is doubtful at best coupled with big multinational corporation ties that totally destroy his credibility and impartiality.
What were the Americans thinking when they faced the ballot box?
Apparently they were not thinking at all...

GOOD LUCK IN THE EXAMS EVERYONE!!

Life can be fun sometimes you know, i just got off the phone with one of the school debate participants and it was gratifying to know that these people still seem to remember me even after so long. Its scary sometimes when you hear that you have caused so much change in their perceptions on life and issues that they had to rethink everything that has been thought to them over the last two to three years. One person can in fact make a huge impact upon the individuals around him and a truly responsible person takes the opportunity and gives the best to everyone, but a person who does not realise his role in society and in his immediate circle of friends is a potentially destructive force.
Physics applies here as well. "Every action has an equal and opposite reaction" Every thing you do has its equal reaction in the person you effect and has the opposite reaction on you. It takes a very responsible and upright person to use that power responsibly.
Who's life have you changed today? and was it for the better?

hello world...i guess that putting together a functioning blog is someting which requires a lot of time connected to a steady source of connectivity to the Net, someting which i unfortunately do not have at the moment. can't wait to get myself my own home and IKEA furnishings so that me and my second girlfriend, my desktop comp, will be able to surf the information highway in peace. By the way, did i mention that i have decided to name my computer Olga? Fitting name i guess, its a big thing with no fancy frills, but its real power lies within. Olga indeed :-)
Ever had the feeling that you could do so much more with your life if only you could get off your rump and start doing things? A lot of people seem to have the impression that i don't work hard enough for the important things in life. I think that is true to a certain extent, but i can't help it, i just don't feel passion for those "important things" I hate academia...i prefer practical, hands on jobs...
oh well..cest la vie...grin and bear it.

Of leadership and men

One question has always puzzled me no matter how much i try to rationalise it...i have always wondered what it takes for a person to be a leader? I'm talking about a leader that is naturally looked on to lead and not a person that was elected or put into that position. Its a pretty gray area, different people seem to react differently to different types of leadership tactics, some need a leader which tells them what to do in a military manner while some others need soomeone who sets the general objectives of a project and then delegates duties. What then makes a true leader? what does a person need? Some prefer their leaders to be somber and serious while some others prefer them to be jokesters and funny in order to releive tension...if a siingle individual was to follow the needs of everybody around him, he would develop multiple personalities man...I wonder what the Prophet did in his time to do his thing?

MAVERICK MINDS 

Blair Affair

Three cheers for democracy!
Its the only political system in the world that lets good, educated and politically aware people choose their potential leader. Hurrah for democracy! the only system that lets people make the same mistake twice! It was bad enough that Bush Junior was elected back into office, but that was expected because of strong Bible Belt support and the current Christian Revivalism in the U.S., but Tony? Come on...
Weeks before the election, we saw Tony being questioned about his involvement in Iraq and the lies that he told about the weapons of mass destruction that were supposed to be hidden somewhere in the numerous harems of Saddam's palace
Furthermore, the Labour Party's economic policies have been receiving a lot of flak from the British public...Those two reasons would be enough to signal death to any political candidate, but somehow Blair seems to have survived...albeit with a significant reduction in his majority votes.
May be it was a case of the Brits not wanting the other guy more than Blair...Better the devil you know than the one you don't right? Mr Howard from the Conservatives has reputedly resigned as a result of his three time in a row defeat at Mr. Blair.

Democracy has spoken.

Work stress

at long last i have finally manged to find the time to actually update this damn blog of mine...honestly its kinda turning into something of an addiction...Anyways, i finally got myself off my bum and got a job. Currrently doing surveys of customer satisfaction for Company X an IT solution provider, whch incidently is a fancy corporate sounding name for a company that puts together systems for customers...I learnt one very important lesson at work...the value of patience...The interviews have to be done over the phone and the customers have to answer a series of questions in order for the survey to be complete and for me to get paid...:-)

As expected, i got more than my fair share of Malaysian "courtesy" so to speak. Have you ever stopped to consider the effect you manners may have on the person that you are peaking to on the phone? I encountered people who seemed to think that telephone manners is an alien concept. My job involved me calling the IT dept heads to ascertain whether they were satisfied with the products provided by the company and if not to identify the problems that they faced so that the company could inprove its service, but more often than not i was treated as a nuisance and a bother to their schedules. That in itself is not a problem, but some of them seemed to go out of their way to be rude to me.

Just goes to show that Malaysians have a long way to go in terms of professionalism and courtesy.

So folks the next time someone 'inconveniences' you with a five minute customer survey, cut the guy a little slack, alright...he's just trying to pay the bills. If you don't want to answer the survey, say so, and make their lives a little easier.

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

Jumping Straight Into It...

Hello again, as promised lets start the ball rolling shall we?
I have always debated with my friends, sometimes heatedly as well about the efficacy of Malaysia's Bumiputera policy and its implications to the Malay racial group as well as to the other races in Malaysia. More often than not we end up in a stalemate and agree to disagree with each other, so i decided to widen the scope of the discussion a bit further, lets bring in the rest of Malaysia too...

Here are a few questions that i think should be answered first in order for the dicussion to be on the same plane of logic.

1) What is the purpose of the policy and has it acheived its objective?

2) What are the situations in which the policy applies, Education, Land...etc?

Lets see the answers alright...Malaysian politicians need not reply, we have heard enough from you lot already.

Hey guys

hello world, this is my first posting so i will be as brief as possible, this blog is set up for two reasons, First, so that i can finally get myself in touch with the blogging community and, Second to facilitate the reception of fun into my existence...looking forward to hearing from everyone soon. I promise that the discussions will be interesting enough.