Just as I was blabbing to a friend of mine a few weeks ago, TNG tweeted something that’s somewhat exactly the thing we were talking about. I suppose TNG was quoting a Merdeka Canter survey.

You want a more democratic country? You blame the government for not being democratic, not listening to you, or when you say something they just put them in the spam bin. You’re doing the same thing! Whatever the government says, you treat them as a lie if they’re not in your favour. Today you quote the EC as if they’re the most honest people in the world, and tomorrow you call them liars.

You want a world class education? With the persistence of the MLM crusaders, you jumped at the slightest news about local universities. You can’t even imagine sending your kids to local universities because you think they are of lower standards. When your kids come back and they say they want to be a teacher or lecturer, you tell them no. “Lecturers are those who can’t make it in the real industry” you said.

You want smaller income gap? You don’t complain when you get that multi-million contract from the government (federal/state). “It’s because I work hard” you said. Don’t mention thousands, you don’t even care about giving RM 5 to an orphanage. You claim every single cent which you spent for the non-profit NGO you spend your time for.

At the risk of sounding, in the words of the brilliant Karim Raslan, ultra-conservative as well as somewhat ungrateful, I’m actually inclined towards reducing, not stopping but reducing, the number of overseas PSD as well as MARA scholarships, gradually of course. I’m all for GLCs to give overseas scholarship though.

Now, the reason why I want them to be reduced is not a financial decision in the aspect of scholarship funding, but rather the Malaysian higher education environment. IMHO, ultimately, we should not be proud if we study overseas, instead, we should be proud if we were a UM graduate, UPM graduate or a USM graduate, just as the Brits are proud with their OxBridge, just as the Americans are proud with their Ivy-leagues and just as the Australians are proud with their G8. Well of course, to be proud of our local universities, they need to be at par with the THES top50, and THAT is exactly what we should be doing. Our local universities and MOHE are working really hard towards that and we should be helping them, not patronising them.

We want future medical students to dream of Taylor’s Medical School instead of RCSI or Johns Hopkins.
We want future engineering students to dream of UPM’s Engineering Faculty instead of MIT or Imperial.
We want future economic students to dream of UM’s Economics Faculty instead of Wharton or Oxford’s Said Bus. School.
This should be our ultimate goal. Not just to flood our economy with foreign-educated workforce.

Having said that, of course we have to maintain a ‘healthy’ mix of foreign-educated as well to bring a different perspective. However, just imagine if our own universities were flooded with foreign students, not just Asians and Africans, but Americans and Europeans as well. Even better, if we’re blessed enough, they would be worrying about brain-drain to Malaysia. How much more perspective do you want then?

And let’s be honest, how many of our friends who are in Nottingham, in Dublin, in Manchester, who are not vocal, not demanding and, to a certain extent, apathetic on Malaysian issues? Blind loyalty is, of course, another issue altogether.

However, I would want to echo Karim’s thought, “It may simply be a better investment if some Malaysians are allowed to pursue higher technical or vocational education”. You won’t get underwater welding skills in universities. If you don’t know yet, you can find out how much underwater welders make and compare that to your starting pay. Even those Bangladeshis/Indonesians doing special types of roof fittings or polycarbonate roofs can get thousands for a week’s work. But then of course, it’s manual labour and it depends on the employee market condition.

So there you go, don’t phase out, just reduce, but maybe not just yet. Get the universities to buck up, and work hard to be at par, if not better than Stanford, Seoul National and Tokyo University. Then reduce the scholarships. Even MARA needs to reduce them. Just ignore PERKASA and focus on entrepreneurship.

Recently the government introduced RON 95 fuel to the mass market, which in some way upgraded the RON 97 we’ve been using all this while to a ‘premium’ fuel, and made it more expensive. I’m not sure what was the official announced reason for this but if I’m not mistaken, it was meant to lessen the people’s burden taking into considerations the rising oil price at that time. Some might have the perception that we are using a lower quality fuel right now since the number at the nozzle is lower and it’s cheaper, so it must be of lower quality isn’t it? Wrong. At least in my limited knowledge of the oil industry. The cheaper fuel doesn’t necessarily translate into lower performance, it doesn’t reduce your fuel efficiency, and alas, it doesn’t provide less power for the Kancil Turbo we often find overtaking the Camry and Accord (to a certain extent the 3 series and C-Class) on Malaysian highways. So yes 2-litre car owners, you’ll still be staring at the Kancil’s behind.

Anyway, back to the people’s perception. As I’ve mentioned earlier, it is not of a lower quality. It’s just something to do with something which I couldn’t effectively make you understand here or anywhere else for that matter. Please consult someone with an Engineering degree or someone from Shell or Exxon (you know who you are). According to Wikipedia here, most parts of the world use the RON 95 or lower as their regular fuel, any higher would be premium fuel or in layman’s term, expensive fuel. Do you know what does this mean? The fuel that we used before was the expensive one!! Damn government. This amounts to daylight robbery! Why didn’t they just give us the cheap fuel since day 1? Didn’t they expect people would be mad at them? I don’t know, maybe they have a reason for that, valid or not, justified or not, you have to go ask them yourself. I don’t know.

That was just the introduction. Just to let you know that we were paying a relatively low price for our fuel considering its ‘premium’ (maybe not if you also take into account the thickness of your pockets).

I want to pose a question to all of the bright economist out there, yes that includes you Dann, is the fuel subsidy justified? I can recall my A Level Economics teacher, Mr Jamal (who apparently just opened up a Facebook account here) announced to the class that fuel subsidy is bad. Why you might ask. Fuel subsidy is pretty much similar to regressive tax. The government is paying more for those who consume more ie; well-off people who can afford the 4.5l Cayenne, and not those who only use the 1.6l Satria Neo. Take for example a Cayenne, they use RM500/month for fuel and a Satria who only uses RM200/month. Yes the Cayenne’s owner pay more, but the government is also paying more for them. Say the subsidy is 20% from the selling price, that would mean the government is paying RM100 per month for the Cayenne and a puny RM40 for the Satria, those who need it the most. Now you can see how, in Malaysia, being rich makes you richer and being poor makes you poorer (corruption and cronyism isn’t part of today’s discussion).

By lifting the fuel subsidy, the government was actually doing justice for the people but of course we saw there was a huge protest about it. Although it was economically right, but not so populist and if we want to find fault, we can find it even here such as where would the saved money be spent and so on. Anyway, this is not to defend nor to blame the government, it’s just to satisfy my curiousity.

ps: This might be provide better and further explanation http://welkerswikinomics.com/blog/2009/09/29/letting-markets-work-the-malaysia-fuel-subsidy-goes-bye-bye/

I saw a few comments on facebook, blogs and other sites expressing disappointment. They say UMNO this, Najib that, Malaysia sucks, I want to migrate, something along those lines. I decided to join the bandwagon.

I’m disappointed with those who only look at one side of the coin, and when they do look at the bigger picture, they decided to ignore the other side’s argument. In other word, bias. As well as selfish if I do not know more.

Take Sultan Azlan Shah’s recent call on judges to be impartial and apolitical. Some commenters on The Malaysian Insider think that His Highness wasn’t being apolitical when he should have been by appointing Zambry as Perak MB. To be honest, I really don’t know whether he was indeed being apolitical or not when appointing Zambry, but to use that as an argument to say he was taking sides is, I think, pretty ridiculous. First and foremost, it is his prerogative to refuse Nizar’s call for dissolution of assembly, and when the king does that, the MB shall resign. If I’m not mistaken, the Perak constitution says “should the King refuse to dissolve the assembly, the Chief Minister shall resign”. I’m no law expert, but to me that sounds pretty much like Nizar has to resign. Although it doesn’t state what would happen if he didn’t. If it’s up to me, I would also look for an alternative to Nizar as MB and I’ll appoint him. It’s that simple. But then again, I might be wrong. Anyway, what I wrote there showed that Sultan Azlan Shah was just being rational and not that he took sides. People might forget that right after the March election there was still no Pakatan Rakyat. Even now, I think PR is still not an official party but only a coalition between PKR, DAP and PAS. Anyway, looking at the results, BN was the party who held the majority at the time and should have ruled the state. But no, Sultan Azlan Shah told them to wait because he heard those three parties were forming a coalition, and if they did, they would be the majority in the assembly. So they did and the coalition was formed as PR, and that’s it. Sultan Azlan Shah then appointed Nizar as the MB to head the “mixed government” and rule Perak. UMNO people could’ve said that His Higness was taking sides but again, I think he was just being practical.

Another point in hand is the PPSMI. Some who claim as the Malay language heroes fought PPSMI like there’s no tomorrow, claiming that it will kill the national language. Success followed. They must be happy now that the national language survives the horrific policy. Although I also do not agree with Maths and Science being taught in English in primary school, but I would heavily agree if it is only done in secondary school (at least for the time being). Those 7-year olds in some rural areas might not even know what addition or multiplication are, what more asymptotes or domain theories. Even some adults do not know them. At least when the reach the age of thirteen, they could understand easier the meaning of the word domain in mathematics. Anyway, back to the so-called fighters. Why did they not fight against vernacular schools? SRJK does not use the national language at all apart from the learning of the language itself. Isn’t that would a far greater threat to the Malaysian language than PPSMI? As far as I have great great respect to A. Samad Said and Prof Ungku Aziz, I think they were picky in choosing what they want to fight. Men of their calibre could have easily fought for one type of school like the one Mukhriz put forth recently but came short of any media publisity.

Anyway, my point is, please look at the bigger picture. My picture might not be the biggest, but I think is bigger than some.

The first time I read this news, I went “not again!” Can we not call it a referendum whenever BN lost? So if BN wins in one of the by-elections later on, does it count as support for Dato’ Seri Najib? Therefore, people at Batang Ai supports him? Or, why not we call the Court of Appeal’s decision to overturn the High Court a referendum as well? So it seems that the Court of Appeal supports the federal government and the high Court supports the federal opposition. After all, judges are voters too.

The other thing I’m confused is, if the voters really did vote for Dr Mansor because they do not approve of Najib’s administration, I really don’t get where they are going. It is, after all, a state seat. No matter who wins, the federal government would not change. Why not call it a referendum of support for Lim Guan Eng’s administration? Maybe they think he is doing a really good job in Penang, better than Koh Tsu Koon maybe?

Maybe the voters wanted a Malay DCM and they prefer Dr Mansor as the DCM compared to the other two Malay assemblymen from the state government.

Maybe simply because the voters think that Dr Mansor was indeed the best compare to the other candidates.

This are all speculations. For the truth, you have to ask the people in Penanti. Maybe you would be surprised by the answers, or not.

My question is what kind of argument is that? People vote the person who can represent them. If you do not vote, you are bordering apathetic. Anyway, to UMNO/BN members, since BN is not contesting, what do you have to lose? If you don’t want to sing to their tune, go out and vote against them. You want to give them a free win is it? You don’t vote, what would you get then?

Call to double number of scholarships (New Straits Times)

Are the students really deprived or are we just demanding too much from the government? To me, the government should not increase the number of scholarships, just because students are getting smarter in the academic sense. If I were to award scholarships, I would not want to dish them out to everyone who passed the minimum requirements (in this case, it seems to be 9As), rather I will give them to those who deserve it i.e. the best students. That is why they have interviews. To select the best from those who qualified to apply for the scholarship. They are, after all, a tool to recognise students who excel in their studies, who the sponsors think have potential to excel further in their respective careers, hence the word award are used and not provided. Scholarships are awarded.

There are two (that I can think of) categories of sponsors.

Category 1: Private firms

Most companies award scholarships as part of their CSR initiative. However, we must remember that the main objective of a company is to maximise profit. How? By employing the best possible person. Companies go the extra mile to identify which student has the highest potential to be the perfect employee. They want to secure these people right from the beginning, so they give out scholarships and make the students work for them after they graduate. Therefore, they would not want students who just pass their minimum requirements. They want the creme de la creme.

Category 2: Government/GLCs

The role of the government is to take care of the well being of its people i.e. citizens. Yes of course they have some sort of obligation to make sure those from the less privileged background get all the help they can. But then again, just like the private companies, the government also wants the best people to work for them as well. Why? So that those bright students who would probably later on be great economist, great doctors, great engineers, great policy makers, to work for the people. They will not only make riches for themselves, but the people as well. Imagine if the government did not have economic savvy people like Tun Daim Zainuddin and Datuk Mustapa Mohamad working for the people. We would most probably be a little bit behind, if not far behind, than we are today. So although the government has to help certain people to get good education, it also need to help the whole of the country in the long run.

So what does all this relate to my first paragraph? Creme de la creme is the answer. Let’s say this year 2,000 scholarships are available and 2000 people got straight As. Everything is fine and dandy. Next year 2,000 more places are available for grabs, but 2,500 people got straight As. No doubt at least some of the 500 students (or their parents) would knock on some politician’s door and complain that they did not get a scholarship. Are they right to do so? Maybe, maybe not. It all depends on how many people are taking the exams. If 10,000 students sat for the exams and 2,000 got straight As. That means they are indeed the best, academically, worthy of the 2,000 scholarships awarded. If 10,000 students sat for the exams and 2,500 got straight As. Only 2,000 places are available because we want the best 2,000 students. So they invented this beautiful thing called interview. We need to figure out the best 2,000 who will be awarded with scholarships out of the 2,500 who got straight As.

So to the unfortunate 500 who did not get the scholarship, I would say they are really unlucky if they deserve the scholarship or they really do not deserve the scholarship because they are not the best 2,000 students in the country. So to those who got straight As but did not get a scholarship, consider yourself unlucky which you can do almost nothing about it, or work harder next time so that you can be the best 2,000 who deserve a scholarship.

The demands for an increased number of scholarships should not be looked at purely on the number of complaints we receive. We must look at which students rightfully deserve a scholarship . We can not award scholarships to students who excel. We need to award scholarships to students who excel the most.

One good suggestion I have heard so far is not to fix the number of scholarships awarded. Instead, give them to the, say, 5% of the best students. This would be a very interesting idea to be looked at.

ps: One important point is that we can’t rule out the possibility that they made the wrong choice in some cases. What I wrote is based on the assumption that their choice were right in the first place.

Maybe they really were badly prepared, I don’t know. But by saying that the food she had, which she said later on as rice with mackerels, chicken, or boiled eggs were like dog food, that was very uncalled for. I had a very close friend who became very poor when his father lost his job. Everyday, his family would eat rice with plain omelette for roughly a year until his father got a new job. Mind you that they weren’t always poor, they live in a double-storey corner lot with a huge yard and a reasonable car. And for Teresa to say that the food which she had, which were way better than my friend had for almost a year, were like dog food, it was really disturbing. There she was, an MP and state rep, complaining about her food in detention, which were very much like what thousands of her constituents eat every single day. She got chicken and mackerels jugak pun which some of us don’t even eat except once a month.

And talking about mackerels, I had another incident with another friend of mine. Me and a few friends were eating in the dining hall at college and they served mackerel that day. And one of my friend wasn’t eating so we asked why. She replied that she doesn’t eat mackerel and casually asked “ikan kembung bukan ikan orang miskin ke?”. Well maybe she was raised that way, I don’t know. Whatever she thinks about mackerels, I don’t really care, and she’s not an MP.

On another subject, I just read about the HINDRAF thing at PM’s open house on Hari Raya. I don’t know how far of a disturbance they caused or whether there were any disturbances at all, but if it’s true that they did cause some unpleasant things on that day, I’m very insulted. I mean, how could you go to someone’s house and buat kacau? How rude is that? One of them explained why none of them ate at the open house, it goes something like this, “we came here to ask for the release of the ISA detainees, and not to eat PM’s food”. And they argued that it is an open invitation to PM’s open house, so they should be allowed to go in. What the hell wei? It clearly was an open house, where we poeple eat, greet, and celebrate Hari Raya. And if I invite people to my open house, I would do it out of the Hari Raya spirit, as an act of kindness and charity, to feed people although they need not be fed. I won’t invite someone to my open house, just so they would cause uneasiness to me, my family or my guests. Let’s be rational, if you want to send the message to Pak Lah, just go to his open house, queue nicely like everyone else, wait for your turn, and when it’s your turn to meet him, say whatever you want to him. Then go eat la.