Nevermind that it is actually announced under the National Broadband Initiative (NBI). While I do not oppose government donating laptops, what I’m interested in is what sort of laptops the government will be purchasing, and from whom.

Ever heard of the $100 laptop? I supposed it’s more appropriate to call it the $199 laptop. That aside, assuming that the government is purchasing this laptop, which is approximately RM 660 with the current exchange rate of 1 USD = 3.318 MYR, the government will be able to purchased a whooping 1.5 million units of laptops for the students, disregarding shipping and handling.

Let’s assuming that the government is buying Dell laptops, the current Inspiron Mini 10v is selling at just RM 999, which means the government can afford to buy approximately 1 million laptops, again, disregarding shipping and handling.

Let’s just hope that these laptops will not turned out to be something like those RM 12k monsters currently sitting in the parliament.

Perhaps the essence of the Liberal outlook could be summed up in a new decalogue, not intended to replace the old one but only to supplement it. The Ten Commandments that, as a teacher, I should wish to promulgate, might be set forth as follows:

1. Do not feel absolutely certain of anything.
2. Do not think it worth while to proceed by concealing evidence, for the evidence is sure to come to light.
3. Never try to discourage thinking for you are sure to succeed.
4. When you meet with opposition, even if it should be from your husband or your children, endeavor to overcome it by argument and not by authority, for a victory dependent upon authority is unreal and illusory.
5. Have no respect for the authority of others, for there are always contrary authorities to be found.
6. Do not use power to suppress opinions you think pernicious, for if you do the opinions will suppress you.
7. Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
8. Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent than in passive agreement, for, if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a deeper agreement than the latter.
9. Be scrupulously truthful, even if the truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.
10. Do not feel envious of the happiness of those who live in a fool’s paradise, for only a fool will think that it is happiness.

It is quite unfortunate that these are not the Ten which were literally set in stone, don’t you think so? Anyway, The Eight “I’d Really Rather You Didn’ts” are not too bad as well.

Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.

I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy—ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness—that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it, finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what—at last—I have found.

With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.

Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a hated burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer.

This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.

It’s interesting how he arranges the three: love, knowledge and empathy. For those of you who would say you have the same passions in life, would you have arranged them as such?

A friend once asked me what kind of person I’m searching for. I said, somebody who would accompany me through all the ups and down in my life, and when we are old and I look at her, I’ll say to myself, “I’ve made the right choice.”

I recently had a nice conversation with a lecturer of mine. What I found most pleasant about the conversation is that it is not the typical teacher-student conversation. Rather, it was nearly like a conversation among friends in which we share our thoughts and opinion on various issues. He tried to encourage me to consider doing a post-graduate degree. Suffice to say, the reason he gave was not the usual “climbing the corporate ladder” crap that one hears most of the time. For that, he has my gratitude.

One of the issues we discussed was of course about the possible career path for me. This, unfortunately, is not something that I can clearly discuss yet. Heck, I still haven’t made up my mind on the subjects that I’m going to take for next year. One thing for sure though, I still think it is very unlikely that I’ll be taking a post-graduate degree.

There’s an interesting subject that I might take next year though, Transport System. This interest clearly is due to the fact that Penang has such a screwed up transport system. Whether or not I’ll be taking that subject, that I will decide after talking to the subject coordinator.

It would be nice if there’s a feature in WordPress that allows authors to write comments in their blog, for example, words after % will be treated as comments, and will not be shown in the final output. The advantage will be obvious for those who knows programming language, where they can write all the “fucks” they want after the comment. Unfortunately for me, HTML is not a language that I speak, and I’m not sure if it can be done using HTML.

Well yeah, and I’m sad, but at the same time I’m really happy that something could make me feel that sad. It’s like, it makes me feel alive, you know? It makes me feel human. And the only way I could feel this sad now is if I felt somethin’ really good before. So I have to take the bad with the good, so I guess what I’m feelin’ is like a, beautiful sadness. I guess that sounds stupid.

How about a shorter quotation from Towelie:

You wanna get high?

I guess it all depends if you are willing to follow the words of a stupid little boy or a genetically engineered alien spying towel. Enjoy.

Blogging is not what I need now.

Oh, fuck it.

Loyalty itself is doubtless a great emotional virtue, but it can be an equally great intellectual fault. Loyalty is the shining front of a shield whose obverse side may be inscribed with prejudice, intolerance, and fanaticism. I believe I can be unreservedly loyal to ideals, to great causes, to whatever and whomever I admire. I can act loyally, too, out of a sense of duty, toward people and institution to whom I owe such conduct by conventional, and no doubt inherently sound, standards. But I cannot give myself passionately to people and institutions merely because I happen to be part of them. This is probably a fault of character, a manifestation of still wider deficiencies which grow out of my lifetime emphasis upon the intellectual as opposed to the emotional in human life.

- Benjamin Graham, in The Memoirs of The Dean of Wall Street

I can’t help but to agree with Benjamin Graham, and smirk when I consider it in the context of Malaysia. Unfortunately, I don’t think it is safe for me to spell out my thoughts here.

Yes, I’m a coward, and I’ll be the first to admit it.

So often in our history, unhappy, misguided people have created scapegoats, blaming those that are different for the problems in their own lives.

- Professor Charles Francis Xavier

I have now concluded my task. I have given, in more or less detail, a sketch of my eight years’ wanderings among the largest and the most luxuriant islands which adorn our earth’s surface. I have endeavoured to convey my impressions of their scenery, their vegetation, their animal productions, and their human inhabitants. I have dwelt at some length on the varied and interesting problems they offer to the student of nature. Before bidding my reader farewell, I wish to make a few observations on a subject of yet higher interest and deeper importance, which the contemplation of savage life has suggested, and on which I believe that the civilized can learn something from the savage man.

We most of us believe that we, the higher races have progressed and are progressing. If so, there must be some state of perfection, some ultimate goal, which we may never reach, but to which all true progress must bring nearer. What is this ideally perfect social state towards which mankind ever has been, and still is tending? Our best thinkers maintain, that it is a state of individual freedom and self-government, rendered possible by the equal development and just balance of the intellectual, moral, and physical parts of our nature,—a state in which we shall each be so perfectly fitted for a social existence, by knowing what is right, and at the same time feeling an irresistible impulse to do what we know to be right., that all laws and all punishments shall be unnecessary. In such a state every man would have a sufficiently well-balanced intellectual organization, to understand the moral law in all its details, and would require no other motive but the free impulses of his own nature to obey that law.

Now it is very remarkable, that among people in a very low stage of civilization, we find some approach to such a perfect social state. I have lived with communities of savages in South America and in the East, who have no laws or law courts but the public opinion of the village freely expressed. Each man scrupulously respects the rights of his fellow, and any infraction of those rights rarely or never takes place. In such a community, all are nearly equal. There are cone of those wide distinctions, of education and ignorance, wealth and poverty, master and servant, which are the product of our civilization; there is none of that wide-spread division of labour, which, while it increases wealth, products also conflicting interests; there is not that severe competition and struggle for existence, or for wealth, which the dense population of civilized countries inevitably creates. All incitements to great crimes are thus wanting, and petty ones are repressed, partly by the influence of public opinion, but chiefly by that natural sense of justice and of his neighbour’s right, which seems to be, in some degree, inherent in every race of man.

Now, although we have progressed vastly beyond the savage state in intellectual achievements, we have not advanced equally in morals. It is true that among those classes who have no wants that cannot be easily supplied, and among whom public opinion has great influence; the rights of others are fully respected. It is true, also, that we have vastly extended the sphere of those rights, and include within them all the brotherhood of man. But it is not too much to say, that the mass of our populations have not at all advanced beyond the savage code of morals, and have in many cases sunk below it. A deficient morality is the great blot of modern civilization, and the greatest hindrance to true progress.

During the last century, and especially in the last thirty years, our intellectual and material advancement has been too quickly achieved for us to reap the full benefit of it. Our mastery over the forces of mature has led to a rapid growth of population, and a vast accumulation of wealth; but these have brought with them such au amount of poverty and crime, and have fostered the growth of so much sordid feeling and so many fierce passions, that it may well be questioned, whether the mental and moral status of our population has not on the average been lowered, and whether the evil has not overbalanced the good. Compared with our wondrous progress in physical science and its practical applications, our system of government, of administering justice, of national education, and our whole social and moral organization, remains in a state of barbarism. [See note next page.] And if we continue to devote our chief energies to the utilizing of our knowledge the laws of nature with the view of still further extending our commerce and our wealth, the evils which necessarily accompany these when too eagerly pursued, may increase to such gigantic dimensions as to be beyond cur power to alleviate.

We should now clearly recognise the fact, that the wealth and knowledge and culture of the few do not constitute civilization, and do not of themselves advance us towards the “perfect social state.” Our vast manufacturing system, our gigantic commerce, our crowded towns and cities, support and continually renew a mass of human misery and crime absolutely greater than has ever existed before. They create and maintain in life-long labour an ever-increasing army, whose lot is the more hard to bear, by contrast with the pleasures, the comforts, and the luxury which they see everywhere around them, but which they can never hope to enjoy; and who, in this respect, are worse off than the savage in the midst of his tribe.

This is not a result to boast of, or to be satisfied with; and, until there is a more general recognition of this failure of our civilization—resulting mainly from our neglect to train and develop more thoroughly the sympathetic feelings and moral faculties of our nature, and to allow them a larger share of influence in our legislation, our commerce, and our whole social organization—we shall never, as regards the whole community, attain to any real or important superiority over the better class of savages.

This is the lesson I have been taught by my observations of uncivilized man. I now bid my readers—Farewell!

I have now concluded my task. I have given, in more or less detail, a sketch of my eight years’ wanderings among the largest and the most luxuriant islands which adorn our earth’s surface. I have endeavoured to convey my impressions of their scenery, their vegetation, their animal productions, and their human inhabitants. I have dwelt at some length on the varied and interesting problems they offer to the student of nature. Before bidding my reader farewell, I wish to make a few observations on a subject of yet higher interest and deeper importance, which the contemplation of savage life has suggested, and on which I believe that the civilized can learn something from the savage man.

We most of us believe that we, the higher races have progressed and are progressing. If so, there must be some state of perfection, some ultimate goal, which we may never reach, but to which all true progress must bring nearer. What is this ideally perfect social state towards which mankind ever has been, and still is tending? Our best thinkers maintain, that it is a state of individual freedom and self-government, rendered possible by the equal development and just balance of the intellectual, moral, and physical parts of our nature,—a state in which we shall each be so perfectly fitted for a social existence, by knowing what is right, and at the same time feeling an irresistible impulse to do what we know to be right., that all laws and all punishments shall be unnecessary. In such a state every man would have a sufficiently well-balanced intellectual organization, to understand the moral law in all its details, and would require no other motive but the free impulses of his own nature to obey that law.

Now it is very remarkable, that among people in a very low stage of civilization, we find some approach to such a perfect social state. I have lived with communities of savages in South America and in the East, who have no laws or law courts but the public opinion of the village freely expressed. Each man scrupulously respects the rights of his fellow, and any infraction of those rights rarely or never takes place. In such a community, all are nearly equal. There are cone of those wide distinctions, of education and ignorance, wealth and poverty, master and servant, which are the product of our civilization; there is none of that wide-spread division of labour, which, while it increases wealth, products also conflicting interests; there is not that severe competition and struggle for existence, or for wealth, which the dense population of civilized countries inevitably creates. All incitements to great crimes are thus wanting, and petty ones are repressed, partly by the influence of public opinion, but chiefly by that natural sense of justice and of his neighbour’s right, which seems to be, in some degree, inherent in every race of man.

Now, although we have progressed vastly beyond the savage state in intellectual achievements, we have not advanced equally in morals. It is true that among those classes who have no wants that cannot be easily supplied, and among whom public opinion has great influence; the rights of others are fully respected. It is true, also, that we have vastly extended the sphere of those rights, and include within them all the brotherhood of man. But it is not too much to say, that the mass of our populations have not at all advanced beyond the savage code of morals, and have in many cases sunk below it. A deficient morality is the great blot of modern civilization, and the greatest hindrance to true progress.

During the last century, and especially in the last thirty years, our intellectual and material advancement has been too quickly achieved for us to reap the full benefit of it. Our mastery over the forces of mature has led to a rapid growth of population, and a vast accumulation of wealth; but these have brought with them such au amount of poverty and crime, and have fostered the growth of so much sordid feeling and so many fierce passions, that it may well be questioned, whether the mental and moral status of our population has not on the average been lowered, and whether the evil has not overbalanced the good. Compared with our wondrous progress in physical science and its practical applications, our system of government, of administering justice, of national education, and our whole social and moral organization, remains in a state of barbarism. And if we continue to devote our chief energies to the utilizing of our knowledge the laws of nature with the view of still further extending our commerce and our wealth, the evils which necessarily accompany these when too eagerly pursued, may increase to such gigantic dimensions as to be beyond cur power to alleviate.

We should now clearly recognise the fact, that the wealth and knowledge and culture of the few do not constitute civilization, and do not of themselves advance us towards the “perfect social state.” Our vast manufacturing system, our gigantic commerce, our crowded towns and cities, support and continually renew a mass of human misery and crime absolutely greater than has ever existed before. They create and maintain in life-long labour an ever-increasing army, whose lot is the more hard to bear, by contrast with the pleasures, the comforts, and the luxury which they see everywhere around them, but which they can never hope to enjoy; and who, in this respect, are worse off than the savage in the midst of his tribe.

This is not a result to boast of, or to be satisfied with; and, until there is a more general recognition of this failure of our civilization—resulting mainly from our neglect to train and develop more thoroughly the sympathetic feelings and moral faculties of our nature, and to allow them a larger share of influence in our legislation, our commerce, and our whole social organization—we shall never, as regards the whole community, attain to any real or important superiority over the better class of savages.

This is the lesson I have been taught by my observations of uncivilized man. I now bid my readers—Farewell!

I’ve missed sleeping alone, on a big bed, with a big blanket. With no snoring brother beside me to keep me awake.

It’s good that I don’t get sick this time, but I suspect that I’m allergic to something at home. Can’t stop sneezing, sometimes. Good thing it’s not a symptom of flu, but I still have the urge to take that yellow health alert card to the general hospital, just to see people’s reactions. Evil, I know.

Funny I don’t actually miss the food that much. I’m perfectly fine with not eating out. But the Bak Chang and the Perut Ikan(though there’s no actual perut ikan, being substituted with dry salted fish instead) my grandmother cooked were most welcomed.

One thing I definitely don’t miss is the slow internet. TMNet doesn’t have monopoly my arse. Another thing is being asked by parents to go here and there. I like my idle time.

Kinda sucks that I’m heading down to KL tomorrow. I still haven’t done what I want to do. Ironic, huh. Timing, timing.

Nothing ever goes according to plan.

How am I going to survive without internet for 3 days? I’ve become a news junkie and reading news paper is so last century.

Do you know that the Western Parotia (Parotia sefilata) used to be called P. sexpennis?

What an incoherent post. Toot.