in april last year, i blog about shah alam PAS MP, khalid samad, visiting the shah alam church. he’s one very open minded PAS MP indeed.  yes, and this time, we heard him speaking up in defence of the herald printing in bahasa.

he wrote a letter to the nutgraph. the following excerpt is exactly what i had been saying all the time - only i was not profilic enough to put in like how he put it. i put it in a er… simple english, ‘unprofessional’ way when i said "the gov’t is afraid of muslim reading it in bahasa will suddenly feel the urge to convert. in other words, the govt’ is telling us that the faith of muslim is not strong!" see how khalid samad put it very nicely:

received this from a friend via email. click on it to read and pass it on, if you like.

what really happened in the middle east

UPDATED:

read also the blog of citizen warrior

my friend, helen, wrote this interesting piece ‘malaysia is like israel’  in malaysiakini 6 days ago. i found i can relate to what she wrote. i would like to comment on some parts, the last few paragraphs.

In Malaysian blogosphere now, there is the usual schism. The Malay-Muslim voices have been unequivocally pro-Palestinian. The non-Malay, non-Muslim voices have tended to be more accommodating of Israel’s self-justification.

true. why are the malay muslim and the government so out-spoken against israel? why are they siding palestinian? i guess if i were to ask khairy, he would have answer something like "one must defend one’s own religion". hey he did lead his gang on a protest.

my post ‘ya allah! what the hell is wrong with the home ministry’ refers.

in that post i had asked:
so again is the government telling us how weak the faith of the muslim in malaysia is???

why do you think i pose that question?

MAFREL (malaysian for free and fair election) is looking for volunteers to help in its monitoring works of the kuala terengganu by-election. if you care for a free and fair election, do sign up as a volunteer, ok?

what to do as a volunteer? don’t worry, you’ll be trained… and it’s nothing difficult at all. in fact it would be interesting. i should know since i’m a MAFREL member (in fact, i’m the penang state coordinator). i signed up prior to march 8, 2008! how exciting!

how to sign up? simple. just contact the MAFREL terengganu team. please visit our MAFREL website for the details.
 

first got the news from malaysiakini - malay language edition of catholic paper banned: editor.

if you are not a subsriber to malaysiakini, read from the singapore strait times.

so again is the government telling us how weak the faith of the muslim in malaysia is???

i will talk about this more tomorrow as now it’s bed time for me. gotta get back to work after a week off! argh!!

note: related post - the home ministry keeping the herald in suspense.

heh. ok ok. i was being a bit dramatic but it was true!

my first day of the new year always start with mass at the church. jan. 1 is not only new year’s day for us catholics but it is also a triple celebration. it is the feast of mary, mother of god and also world day of peace (declared by our holy father). so it is only right for us that every year, we begin our year by attending mass to pray for a good year ahead.

what about the meet with the CM? well, as you can see the banner picture here, it was a dialogue session with residents of bayan baru who owned low-cost and medium cost flats (that’s me - the former - now you know for sure me no orang kaya). went to this session right after mass in church, which was held at the field of one of the block of flats in lebuh mahsuri..

apart from the CM, lim guan eng present, there were sim tze tzin, pantai jerejak MP (which covers bayan baru), zahrian, penang’s PKR chairman, abdul malik, penang exco and batu maung MP. the picture you see here, seated third from left, is lim guan eng (crossed-armed). sorry picture not clear as i dare not go close.

the dialouge session was mainly about land titles, the freehold status and so on. no i do not have a report here but you can read about it in malaysiakini and other press today i’m sure as i spy so many reporters on the field, including athi, the malaysiakini reporter.

UPDATED
read the news from:
the star
the new straits times

haven’t seen it in malaysiakini yet. why so slow, athi? (met him and say hi to him. saw him interview mr chai tsing boo and taking his photograph)

for the first time since i moved to bayan baru 10 years ago, we had a new year countdown party right at the community field just below the flat i’m staying.

it started with a food fair at 7.30pm, which was in aid of the pusat harian harapan bakti in balik pulau, penang (a home for the mentally challenged children). i went with my mum and sis and we bought RM50 worth of tickets to spend.

would like to share a poem:

——————————————————————-

Let us all gather round and cheer,
With a drink of wine or an ice cold beer

Perhaps you’re like me and don’t drink the swill,
Or your like my grandparents who live on pills.
Maybe this world seems harsh at times,
Or its just that most of us just like to whine.

I’d say that this is a great place to be,
It all depends on how we can see.

True we’ve had bad things in the past,
But we know in our hearts that these will not last.

If we try our best to be simple and pure,
There’s nothing our hopes and dreams cannot cure.

So, I don’t know the value this is worth,
But lets all try to be happy and heal Mother Earth!

Happy New Year!

——————————————————————-

this lovely poem and many other lovely poems can be found here.

… but what else is new???

i am referring to SK’s (mageP’s lab) post about the recent rally by umno… er… sorry… by some malays NGO held in penang. he had said it all what i had wanted to say.

the rally happened on a day when i was not in penang (was in KL) so i missed the news actually and only saw it when i was back in penang on tues., 30 dec. reading it, i was very incensed and had wanted to blog about it but 1) a little tired and 2) wordpress blog is loading so damn slow. been like that for past few days. anyone on wordpress experienced this?