Wakeup Mosquito

Mosquitos have to be killed! A sudden hot highlight emerged from all media recently in Malaysia and the war against mosquitos has just declared.

Just because the death toll for dengue fever has risen to nearly hundred. Those who have been bitten (in fact, stung) by mosquito and being hospitalized with dengue has also been risen to thousands. Therefore societal concerns were called, ways of killing mosquito were taught, fogging of insecticide was carried out, some scientists even called for bringing in insect-eating bats! And on top of that public complaints arose.

Mosquitos have been there for decades. To kill or to hew, authorities doesn't bear. Only we people care after being stang, basically chasing after the insect and trying to clap it to thin (dead) in term of seeing whether our blood-claim is there within palms. Or rushing for "Kingkong" spray to kill. If successfully caught, we are gratify. If not, disdainful but still keeping close of its re-present for the next snap. Hygienic one will apply medical paste onto the wound and washes his hand clean. Whereas dirty one will simply spit some saliva to apply onto the wound and cleans his hands by rubbing over his cloth. For me, I use an electrotype racket bought it from pasar malam in presided.

Why mosquito is mainly accounted for dengue? Is there any other factor makes room for dengue?

When after I read on those officers' says and those politicians' photo shots of posing with tool to help in killing mosquitos in the newspaper, I have mirths.

The Howl of Firefox

Yesterday I was intending to upload an image relating to my blog but after several uploading attempts yet it still came out with the message "you image is not uploaded" within a small window popping out from the Firefox browser.

What's the hell with this Blogger.com. This was my first blame pined on it. "Shouldn't it be a bug on such largely used blogware?" I scratched my head and asked myself. Then I tried again but was again getting the same default answer.

Uncompromisingly, I drew out a cigarette, downed to the kitchen for a cup of liquor, paced to my garden, sitting there ingesting my favorites beside my mini fish pond ...and started to think about the reasons of why and how.....

Shortly, I got the gestate (may be it is the faculty through which the smoking is apprehended). I moved back to my Notebook and confidently checkout the properties of the built-in 802.11g device, pinged my router to make sure that connection is intact. Er! everything were seemed ok. So I logon to Blogger.com again to insert (upload) my image. Mahhai! it failed again. For this time I scraped my bottom!

Ah! May be I have to reboot my system. So I made a reboot and did it again but it had caused me to a bottom-scratching again.

Suddenly, I realized that I'd excessively loved Firefox just because don't know why I'd disliked IE long ago. Under such situation, I weighed on IE. So I used IE logging to Blogger.com to sent my image and surprisingly she did it well.

Now I start to think whether Firefox is unable to talk XML well like IE with Blogger.com?

Loan Shark Got Sucked!

This time a loan shark got sucked. Yesterday I noticed a series of painting-script which was sprayed onto the shop front of a business unit in a business center in Butterworth. The script was written there in red as "Orang Busuh, hutang tak bayar" and decorated with multiple $ signs and several enlarged xerox of identity cards of the debtors. It shown that the debtors had taken to their heels and the loan shark was in vein of his late discernment.

Loan sharks have thrived since the last few years in Malaysia. They have been accused for using strong-arm tactics to emphases their threats such as threatening phone calls, interrogative acts to family, traumatic or harassing jobs, car/asset damaging, disguised flyers, paint scriptures etc. against those loan defaulters. They are rarely known for their kindness and consideration when trying to collect debts. They have also been disguised by society for their illegal activities which caused social ills.

Many loan defaulters have suffered great pain and misery to their families. Sometime making their very last endeavor to settle loan became impossible. Therefore some have chose to take to their heels, some have took the very last channel to end themselves by committing suicide. Yesterday, there was a suicide case happened in Ipoh. A coffee shop operator hanged himself in order to release the tough tag of loan sharks. He was hoping of getting his family be altered with peace treaty following his death. [source: Oriental Daily News, Sep 27]. Cases of loan shark-related suicide and murder are seemed to have become markedly rife in Malaysia.

"I believe this problem cannot be solved overnight. I sometimes wonder whether it can at all be solved. I certainly have no solutions. This year alone, I had 250 loan defaulters who have caused great pain and misery to their families" said by Datuk Michael Chong, the head of the MCA public services and complaints bureau during an interview by FAY D’CRUZ on Nov 13/04. "The Consumer Credit Act is needed urgently because of the burgeoning of various kinds of consumer credit in country. We are also much aware of the misery wrought by illegal credit system, such as loan sharking." Urged by S.M. Mohamed Idris, The President of Penang CAP on Nov 16/04.

One of my friends has suggested that It is time to make the government aware of this situation that has became obvious. I easily shown him some name cards that have just taken from my mail box. See! this one is xx Credit Sdn Bhd; call Ah Meng 012-532xxxx; call Ah Heng 017-414xxxx, this one is xxx Credit Sdn Bhd; call 016-511xxxx & 012-542xxxx, wow! this one xxx Finance is a professionally computer printed enclosure that has a superior quality than bank. My friend then asked me: "Have you ever been to their offices? Vow! very class loh, many times bigger than yours and are fully equipped with cctv, and their dog-chains are very rough loh." I nodded.

I have doubted whether police have ever seen such kind of name cards/letters/leaflets. I also have doubted whether the Ministry of Trade have ever noticed that there were no company number imprinted after their company's name. I even have wondered why people are still taking their offers!

Something About Traffic

Inside TheStar's Letters to the Editor column dd Sep 23. A reader called J.M. wrote that he had moved into his home in Kampung Kerinchi, a place of 20-minute drive from KL city where he had finally discovered that it was a "cowboy" town and where laws did not exist. He felt sad to see motorcyclists flouting traffic rules daily. Speeding, snake-riding, red-light beating and even motor racing without helmets by some juveniles of ages 10 and 12. He told that these were all very common in the area. He also told that he has been had! Words of relocating existing hawker-stalls by the developer did not materialized. He urged the authority to enforce the law before a disaster happens.

J.M. has probably taken a wrong choice to move into a kampung-alike place instead of taman or city. The name Kampung Kerinchi by itself is self explanatory as kampung. At kampung place, such kinds of snake-riding, red-light beating and bare-headed motorcycling by samseng teenagers, is a norm in its life. How can the authority broaden the traffic law into this kind of kampung area? As you know, how can the authority do away with their TT "tunggu tengguh" and EL "esok lusa" sicknesses that used to be attributed with full responsibility by the general public? The recent case of a teacher fell to his death when the termite-infested plywood floor of a two-storey school block in Alor Star gave way, therefore leading to the alert of emergency funding from authority for re-renovation works. Another recent case of 7 life's deadly accident happened in Penang resulting to the calling of re-examination of the road and safety measurement. These are the good examples. If J.M. can take it easy and get amused by seeing kampung kids play the scene of motor video game in real tracks, and if he can learn to keep alert by fending off left and right from the mad-cow traffic. Then he should be pleasing and comfortable.

Another reader called Harry Belafonte wrote that he had been used to be harassed by left-squeezed jumping queue, road bullying and whopped victimizing. He had called police once for an incident but was being told that "tak boleh buat apa-apa fasal tadak orang kena". He had seemed to be suffering from agoraphobia; abnormally afraid of traffic places. He described the traffic here is like a battlefield and driving is such a pain in Malaysia. He questioned whether the police would only act upon after somebody has been killed or hurt first.

Probably Harry is living in a city area. Where usually roads are like ant's ways that full of driver ants. Everybody is "cary jalan" to "cary makan" and no doubt it is like a battlefield. The behavior of big fish bullying small fish is seemed to be a natural character on the road. But luckily not all drivers are inhibited to that behavior.

On the roads here the meaning of the word overtake "travel past, as of a vehicle" doesn't define to whether left and right by many road runners. Driving at 40-50kph onto the priority lane of a 80kph's limit city-way will certainly be attracted to left-squeezed overtaking, buzzing horn, beam lighting, tailgating or even worse a x#@&Pxkx whopping. But basically, majority of drivers are following rules and white lines but least on yellow lines. Anyway try to use hand signers inline with car's signers to communicate with other annoyed car's drivers so that they may swallow back their anger with ease. For example, use a thumbs-up signer to praise the driver who has given way to you. Use a peace or hand-up signer to compromise your driving mistake but don't ever use a middle-finger signer.

Another reader called Roadblocker wrote that roadblock are a necessity to weed out undesirable elements. He also said why must one panic when one sees a roadblock unless one has committed an offense, if one does not speed, one can always stop in time under any circumstances.

Roadblocker is seemed like a good citizen. But a good citizen does not always meet a good cop in good faith. I have an experience of being mistaken by policemen who were setting up a roadblock at a point of the north-south highway in order to "collect" those over-speeders. They blocked me and wanted to book me for over-speeding and so I was furious at the time because I had been driving within the speed-limit all the time during my journey. A frontal argument was therefore exchanged and finally another good cop came to give way by telling that they might have had mistakenly spotted my car which has the same or similar characteristics in model and color with the one which has been zoomed. Where usually police place their roadblock? I don't have much idea but I understand that there will occasionally be having some policemen using their bodies as a roadblock located just 3-5 meters away from an invisible corner at the end of Jln. Todak 2 in Seberang Jaya. In such a circumstance, once you have taken the corner, then you will certainly right away be panicked to pad you break when you suddenly saw policemen just in front of you. Would you not to be panicked under this kind of situation?

However, traffics here are so defective, by then who is who to be blamed? The educators.

What's the perspective?

The world is suffering from destruction and lost of life caused by crime. Look in the nation as well as world sections of many newspapers and you'll usually see cases of people died from robbery, murder, kidnapping, sabotage, riot, terrorism and so on. But the MCA's boss in Malaysia believes that Malaysia is still a safe place to live. As quoted in the Oriental Daily News (www.orientaldaily.com.my) on Sep 19. He said in his opening speech during the open ceremony of Selangor Council football competition on Sep 18 "that Malaysia is a safe country and tourists can put down their hearts (safely) visit Malaysia. Not only Kuala Lumpur is safe, all the other areas are also safe ...". Currently Malaysia is being rated at 36 placing with a scoring of 6.61 within The world’s best country by economist.com ( http://www.economist.com/theworldin/international) and rated at 39 placing within Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index 2004 by Transparency International (www.transparency.org/surveys/#cpi). Not really bad.

I don't know how safe it is as there is no any statistical data to give a certain degree or a certain outward aspect. As far as what am I concerned, I used to properly lock my car when it is parked. I used to lock my home's doors and windows with grills when it is vacant or when it is time to bed. I used to detect the safety of my family members when outing. I used to keep in high alert on my surroundings when touring. I used to observe the safety of my home when there is a present of aliens around. I used to be accompanied when banking.

Am I paranoiac? Certainly not. As what I've believed, all these acts is a common thing-to-do in living and basically is a part of life. The only "differences in safety deviation" that I could distinguish is from movies. People acting in Asia movie were typically double-checking to ensure that their door is closed when outing whereas people acting in Western movie were typically closing their door in a simple way without prudence. Homes were more grilled in Asia movie comparatively with homes in Western movie. But people in Western movie used more gunfire than people in Asia movie. By then, how to count the numbers of degree in order to determine a safe country?