Ervan’s Weltanschauung

After much project delays, I finally reached The Hague. The flight was pretty uneventful. It’s been a while since I took MAS, and happy to say, it has improved tremendously from the last time I took it in 2005. And now I remember why I prefer the Boeings to the Airbuses, the plane is much quieter. And with me being on the upper deck, you don’t hear a thing at all. All I need to do is relax, sit back, and enjoy the flight.

Being on the upper deck, it feels like you are in your own private cabin. And being together with other people from Shell, it became like a Shell only private flight. The service is better than expected, and MAS even catered for me who is of course, fasting. And the food is excellent, with four choices for my main course and breakfast. Yeaps, I was pampered….

The flight was smooth, until we reached the Andaman seas, where we hit some turbulence, and yes, it was that bad. Luckily there was no incident like what happened to my KL-Kuantan flight where the stewardess dropped a tray of drinks on the passengers as the plane went through an air pocket….

Anyway, I arrived at Amsterdam, on time at 6:30 am, and got myself out of immigration and customs in good time.  By 8:30, I was already at my hotel, and bumped to Pat who conveniently forgot that I was fasting. As I did not get enough sleep on the flight, I decided to take a nap, before venturing to the office.

Getting around The Hague seems easy enough. Public transport is good and the trams are available nearly every minute. The strip tickets they used were kinda confusing, but luckily the tram driver is helpful and ensured that I validated at the right strip. And finding my office is easy, just stop at this hard to pronounce street name, and walk about 5 minutes, and voila, you are in the office. However, being very near to the North Sea, it gets very windy, and the weather is not unlike London, only probably worse…

I got to meet my PM, Skander, and of course my colleagues, Jeroen, Alex, Gregory and Leo. Skander is Tunisian who has lived most of his life in Netherlands. Jeroen and Leo are Dutch, while Alex and Gregory are Belgian. And yes, there are some friendly banters going on about the Dutch and Belgian, and soon, Malaysian. I met up with Jauharina, and left for the town right after that. 

The town is an interesting blend of architecture. The way it is built, is not unlike the Brits, but more organized. Shopping is rather limited, and it closes early by 6:30 pm. And true what the wikipedia says about The Hague, they do hold a sizeable population of Indonesians as I get to hear people speaking in Indonesian everywhere I go. By the time I was done, I rushed back to my hotel as I got to break my fast with my colleagues.

First day in The Hague, and I am loving it….

I met with two police officers today. Long story, had to sort out a few things today that I had to take the day off…

Lance Corporal Siti of the Sungai Way Police Station and Sergeant Jamil Ali of the Petaling Jaya District Police HQ. The way they handle my case, in a polite and courteous manner, and professionally, restored my faith with the Malaysian Police Force.

And with the Most Influential Blogger kept on blogging with bad news on the Malaysian Police Force, one should be reminded with the song from Cat Stevens..

"
I hope you have a lot of nice things to wear
But then a lot of nice things turn bad out there"

There are the good and the bad, but for most of us, we tend to highlight the bad in people, instead of praising the good. Hence, I am doing this, cause frankly, good deeds are never praised enough….

For all the birthday wishes, birthday sms, birthday calls, birthday food, and should i also add the hoax bomb threat call the people in SH & WCP got yesterday on Sept 11? It’s not funny when you have a conference call and we were forced to get out. And I actually protested to my boss as I walked out,

"I know lah today is Sept 11, but surely they got the date wrong for the fire drill?"

30 mins later, I found out that there was a bomb threat. *sigh*

And no thanks to these idiots, I had a really packed birthday today *double sigh*

With work *more sigh*

At least the sushi lunch made up for it…..and the pre-Ramadhan food binge.

But please do spare some thoughts and offer some prayers  for the people at Sumsel (Sumatera Selatan) and Sumbar (Sumatera Barat). Heard a 8.2 earthquake hit Sumsel, and a 5.9 earthquake hit Sumbar within hours of each other…

Or in Malaysia’s case, even their guests.

I found out recently from a chat with my friend who is currently studying in Indonesia. A karatedo official from Indonesia were beaten up by the Malaysian police force. And that happened after he was beaten up by some hooligans. He tried to get some help from the police, and instead of helping, our police force beat him up!

A google search came up with a number of things. An Indonesian couple who were staying at Nikko Hotel, decided to take a walk in the KLCC park were approached by plain clothed policemen. The policemen thought they were up to no good. Suffice to say, they cut their holiday short and left Malaysia in a hurry. Heck, even a friendster friend of mine from Indonesia mentioned that Malaysians are rude to Indonesians.

But if the person is Mat Salleh, man, how we treat them nice. Funny.
Not good for Visit Malaysia Year 2007 eh?

We Malaysians do have a problem in how we treat our weakest member, and sadly, we are still doing it, intentionally or otherwise. How are we going to address this problem? What can we do apart from education?  If only we could put ourselves on their shoes, then we would know how painful it could be…and then only we’ll make the effort to address this issue.

One week on, and I am still missing Perth.

Looking at the skyline from Kings Park, it is a beautiful sight indeed. Don’t you wanna go there and just enjoy the view again?

Ok, back to work..
more pixs at my Flickr 

I have been thinking on what I should write for Malaysia’s 50th Merdeka. I know I will not be around to celebrate the 50th Merdeka, it’s funny that I will be celebrating Malaysia’s 50th merdeka at some immigration counter or perhaps onboard the flight.

I was thinking of writing my thoughts on the eve of Merdeka, but I wont be able to do so if I was to be in a plane somewhere, or even if I am lining up to say hi to the immigration officers.

50 years of Merdeka. Malaysia has come a long way since 1957. A lot has been said on TV and radio that how things has changed in Malaysia. We now have things like the PETRONAS Twin Towers, KLIA, bla bla bla. But, it’s always easy to measure progress with something tangible. It’s easy to see those, and not realising that those were built not by the blood and sweat of Malaysians, but by the Indonesian and Bangladeshis migrant workers. To say we are the project managers of those project, we still have to remember that the Japanese and Koreans helped us. Do you still feel proud?

And how about our sports? That’s another way for us to measure success. We used to rule the football field back in the 60s and 70s. Alas, we became a laughing stock in Asia. We used to rule the badminton courts when we were under the British, but now, even though we are still there, others have overtaken us.

It is also not funny to read the book Revolusi Mental which was compiled and written after the 13th May incident, and realised that the Malay mentality today is still the same as back then. Have we not learned and evolved?

It’s not even funny to notice that since the 1960s, the Malays do not like UMNO because they all came from the bangsawans (noblemen), and today, the Malays do not like UMNO because they are rich (even if they don’t go to school). Heck, even Tun Razak pretended to come from a poor family when people know he came from the aristocracy. If you notice, it’s always not okay for Malays to be rich, and most will say that they got rich through unscrupulous means. But that’s another matter altogether, and I will skew out of the merdeka topic.

And you know what else is even funnier? When you watch P. Ramlee’s movies and notice that movies like Antara Dua Darjat, Ali Baba Bujang Lapuk and Tiga Abdul captured the essence of the Malay life, and still can be applied today. Heck, you can remake those movies and put in our current actors and the underlying message of those movies which were made in the 50s and 60s can still be applied today.

We still have a long way to go. We are there materialistically, we are there education wise, but, we still need to revolutionise our mental and culture pysch. Celebrate the 50th year of merdeka, our forefathers have worked hard for us to achieve this independence. But remember, we still need to liberate our mind and revolutionize ourself.

Just got back from chocolate buffet at KL Hilton with my nephews. We had a good time, and they really enjoyed the buffet. It’s really good to just hang out with my nephews, and yeah, they are growing up fast….

Very fast….

This was forwarded by Azam a few weeks back.

An Al-Jazeera report on Malaysia’s street children.

I was rather surprised with Siti Mariah who voiced her concern that the support the Government is giving to the Yayasan Salam for the street children will send the wrong signals. In this case, it is okay to be a prostitute as the Government will take care of the kids.

I am glad that the Government is choosing to ignore the conservatives, and like what Hartini said, it will help to prevent the fourth generation of prostitutes by keeping the kids off the streets.

Kids as young as 6 year old, loitering in the Chow Kit area at midnight. Gosh. Ideally, they should be in their bed, sleeping. But then again, this is not a perfect world, is it?

Outlawing drugs, prostitutions, will not solve the problem overnight. Even the society has to be aware of this problem. It is a vicious cycle, as shown in the video, that the son of a prostitute had to endure taunts and discrimination by his "friends" and teachers at school. This kind of behaviour helps to push one away from society, and joins the bad seeds.

But then again, society has always mistreated those who does not conform to their norms and standards. In the words of Mahatma Gandhi, "In matters of conscience, the law of majority has no place". Gandhi has of course tried to improve the life of the Dalits, or the Untouchable, but was assassinated. The small poor man from India has  a point there.

It is soon to be Malaysia’s 50th year of independence. We still have many social ills that we are not acting upon at all due to our current society belief and behaviour. It is time for us to acknowledge it, and understand, it takes more than the law and the execution of the law to rid Malaysia of its ills.

And by acknowledging it, and actually walk the talk, then only then we can really make Malaysia great.

I am one
I am child
I’m the saint who marches in love
I am the pain
Electric pain bolt of thunder in the rain

I’m the blood
I’m the key
You are evergreen who blessed in union
Let them born into this world
Let them sing into the sky

I will be fading
As your child
As your child

Don’t let go
Don’t be frightened
Don’t be scared and don’t be late

I am one
I am child
I’m the saint who marches in love

Peeling deeper to the lyrics, it does tell the story of an orphan, or even a street child. Yeaps, Nidji, they are the Indonesian version of Coldplay.

People always ask me about my fascination of Battlestar Galactica. But I did not really watch the Reimagined Series as I caught it in the middle of season 1 and could not make heads or tails of it all. Good old Dex provided me with the Miniseries, and I was hooked since. And impatiently waiting for the 4th Season.

The basic premise of the series is similar to the original Battlestar Galactica of 1978. Humanity is wiped out except for the rag tag crew, fleeing from the Cylon tyranny. Ditto for the reimagined series, except the Cylons have evolved so much, that they now look like humans. Here, the enemy could easily be someone you know all your life!

It’s not surprising that Battlestar Galactica managed to get 4 Emmy nominations. One of the nominations was for writing, and I do have to say, Battlestar Galactica is more than just another science fiction.

Indeed, what happened if our own civilisation has advanced to deep space travel, and was destroyed. A group of human survivors would venture to find ourselves a new home….

But here is where Battlestar is different. The humans were given hope to find, Earth where the 13th colony resided after their exodus from Kobol. Indeed, after the destruction of the Twelve Colonies, the Commander of the Galactica gave a rousing speech, and gave hope to the survivors that he will lead them to Earth. Or in the new reimagined Battlestar Galactica, even the first sceptical President Laura Roslin began to believe that she will lead them to Earth.

And it all started with hope, and it lead to believe. Which I am sure a lot of us could relate to. After all, we rely on hope to keep us going. You need that something to make your life meaningful. But, what happens if the hope is shattered?