mgg pillai, the ‘legendary’ journalist.
(pic taken from jeff ooi’s)

1939 - 2006 (age: 67)
cause of death: heart attack
day/time of death: 28 april 2006, 10.47am

it is with a tinge of sadness that i learned of the death of mgg pillai, first through the ‘beritamalaysia’ newsgroup, then at jeff’s screenshot. it was quite a surprise news as i did not know that he was not feeling well. many of you would have known the name - mgg pillai - the hard-htting, out-spoken veteran journalist.

mgg pillai was the owner of the first online community discussion group, sangkancil. i joined sangkancil in 1998 and get to know mgg pillai (on the net) and the others sangkancil members (including ‘malaysian’s most influential blogger’, jeff ooi) from there. we had a great time debating in sangkancil. mgg pillai hardly joined in our debate but he was always ready with articles of his own (or from other media) for us to read and or course to…. debate.

oy! this ‘info man’ here is so very smart eh… with the thinking same as those in the west and europe, while those behind him (the flag waving rakyat) are all not as matured in thinking as those in the west and europe. (picture taken from sun2surf)

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i just don’t understand our menteri-menteri. like this zam zam guy for example, the info menteri. now, he’s saying our thinking are not as matured as those in the west. much ealier didn’t he (or some other menteri) said we shouldn’t apt the west? and we have so many of them always talking about ‘asian values’, priding in themselves that our values are better than the west.

all of you were in school before and know what a report card is right? that is to check on how you are doing in school with the various subjects and overall. well, a group of NGOs who had been monitoring the bus  revamp service in penang, has now come out with a report card for bus. this report card is basically for a bus commuter to monitor the bus which they hops on to, to find out like (as the Qs appears in the card), how long you waited for the bus, were you over-charged, was the bus dirty and so on. what a bus commuter need to do is to take a card and fill in the details ofeach bus that they take. yes, one card for one bus.

damn! streamyx was down again… for 4 days successively. past 3 days, it was down for 10 mins to 1/2 hour but yesterday it was down for more than an hour!! @*^%)#$!*!^!!! and of all the &^#$!*(! it had to be down after midnight - the time when i’m free to post. grr! last night (er… actually this morning) it was down just after midnight… and it was only at 1.30am that it was ok… by that time, too late for me to blog as i need to get my beauty sleep. grrr!!! so blame streamyx for not seeing me updating my blog!!

as monday is usually a blue monday to many since it is the start of a week… a long week of work work work… here’s a joke to cheer you guys up. received from forwarded mail.
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Can study continue STUDY
Can’t study, work FACTORY
Cannot rely on CHARITY
Earn a little SALARY
Just enough 4 daily ROTI
Go work no WIRA but LRT.

… look what you get! yet you complained! ayo-yo!

well well well, look what i found in my letter-box yesterday - a leaflet from jabatan kemajuan masyarakat (KEMAS).

this is one side of the leaflet. translated, it says:

wow! so good one. why ah some more you grumble so much and go on street protest too? don’t you know you alone, you one self pay only extra 30 cents, many many people get subsidies… especially poor people. so quit grumbling lah. let’s look at the subsidies listed out (i’m sure not extensive, eh?), printed on the other side of the leaflet.

well this is the other side of the leaflet. what is clearly read there is “rakyat bayar 30 sen” (public pays 30 cents) and “kerajaan beri” (government gives), followed by the areas the government are subsidising. since they are not so clear, i take the liberty here to translate it here. so translation of the whole page is thus….

… no, not by fire or landslide.. or any natural disaster, but by officers from KL’s city hall (DBKL). bulldozed and demolished by them!!

the worst part of it was that the temple was demolished when about 300 devotees were inside performing prayers. how insensitive DBKL officers can be!

gosh! i am shocked! how could this happened? oh, of course it could… this is bolehland… and it is a hindu temple, not a mosque.

pak lah, what happened? what happened to the constitution on freedom of worship/religion?

‘JAKIM won’t wait for decency guidelines‘ screamed the headline in NST of 19 april.

Muslim couples caught kissing or committing other indecent acts in public will be dealt with by the Islamic Affairs Department (Jakim) regardless of any advice from the Housing and Local Government Ministry.

Department director-general Datuk Mustapa Abdul Rahman yesterday said non-Muslims found committing indecent acts with Muslims would be handed over to the police while their Muslim partners would be dealt with under the Syariah.

There was no need for its enforcement officers to wait for the formulation of guidelines by the Housing and Local Government Ministry on what constituted indecent acts.

calling penangites who uses the public transport!

(people rushing for the transit link bus. picture taken from china press.)

if you do not know yet, i.e. if you do not read the star paper or surf the penangwatch website, a new group known as ‘bus user groups‘ or BUG in short had been formed on 14 april during a public hearing at d space, weld quay (same place we had our bloggers/podcast/cms workshop).

basically BUG is formed to gather feedback of the new bus system. as many of you are aware, there were lots of hiccups and complaints from bus commuters on the revamp of the new bus service.

oh, btw, dr teng’s name is up there because he is the state exco in charge of the revamping of the bus system.

The committee comprises experts from the Public Works Department (PWD), Penang Island Municipal Council (MPPP), Seberang Perai Municipal Council (MPSP), the Department of Environment (DOE), the Mineral and Geo-Science Department, Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) and the Institute of Engineers Malaysia(IEM).

what committee? apparently this committe is to:

“gather information on such guidelines from other earthquake-prone countries like Japan, Taiwan and Indonesia.”

the penang public works, utilities and transportation committee chairman koay kar huah said this. learning from the acheh tsunami, they don’t want to be caught off-guard when disasters happen, so from now on they want to ensure that high rise building and high rise structures are earthquake proof.