It's Just a Car, Is it Not?

I'm not sure if I can call it my first car. I had a car before, which was a nice fourth generation 1977 Mazda 323. I used it for my entire INTEC years which spanned for almost 2 years.

Good times.

A modest 4-speed manual that runs with a cute 900cc engine. While a decent Honda Accord takes off up to a 100kmh in 6 seconds, mine took 6 minutes on a long flat road. Oh yea, its red in colour. Fierce.

It was my dad's first car, sort of. He had another one before but he never called it his first because it didn't last long enough (heheheheheheh). After a few years, he upgraded to a nice brand new Proton Saga in marine blue, while the old car (back then it was still young) was passed on to my mom. Soon as our family progressed, the car was then passed on to my eldest sister before years afterward my brother got to use it. My turn arrived in early 2003, and hence my adventure with the red stallion began.

But today is not about my precious red old Mazda.

Today, I wish to introduce to you - Isabelle.


Say hello, honey. You'll be in here a lot more in the future.

Unless Aliens Come and Visit

Question
It is now more than 50 years since independence. For how long do the Malays expect to be treated as special and different from the other citizens?

Answer
For as long as the Chinese and Indians prefer to be identified with their countries of origins. For as long as they want to keep their home languages and their schools.

---

This was taken from Tun Mahathir's blog entry today in which he was supposed to present a talk in Melbourne. Nevertheless, for my personal use today, I will only apply the mentioned paragraph.

Does it not make sense to you?

It made perfect sense to me. It's kinda like a two-edge sword kinda response. The spoon-fed analogy for Malay's rights does not fit in this context. It's not about developing a 'weaker' group of people, nor about preserving rights of the owner of the land, nor even about equality among all. Although I wish to say it's about a win-win situation for everyone, but presenting it without context will make it as worthless as a 18 karat diamond ring without a girl to propose to.

Context.

No I will not share you with one. I have my own context. As it developed from my childhood, raised in a modern Malay community by not-so-Malay-ish parents and later moved to a relatively more conservative environment, reached puberty in the Malay-intensive high school, developed intellectual properties in progressively mixed cultural atmosphere, and later in a more foreign land with more foreign surroundings, and so on. Those are my own context.

It is difficult to share context. Lets leave it at that.

Why did I called it a two-edge sword?

Because if both opposing ends push to defend themselves, winning will mean death for the other. Hence, war can never stop, unless someone wins, which the outcome will not be good for half of the community, and then their children will then grow up promising vengence - as all good movies like to tell us.

However, if one of them actually loosen their grip slowly, giving confidence to the person at the opposing end to do the same, the sword will sooner or later drop and the only thing left between the two is just empty space, full of great potential to be filled with great things, like hugs or potentially bad things too. But to the very least, no blood is shed. Don't we all like that?

Let me attempt to approach this in a way I'm more familiar with.

Sustainability.

You cannot be sustainable with you alone, nor with your own race, community, country, or whatever group you like to be associated in. Sustainability can only be achieved when everyone understands the same language. And by language, I don't mean the thing that come out from your mouth that seems to be transmitting some information to the intended parties. Language, as I wish to intend its meaning in the previous paragraph, is where all of us can understand all of us, without the use of words, body gestures, or even inactivities.

We don't have to learn other people's language to be a good companion. You don't have to learn other people's culture to respect whatever their believes are. All we need to know is that as long you understand their existence, they will, with God bless, understand you as well. Sustainability is possible when everyone understands each other.

That's the ultimate key. If only you understand what understand is in this context, which again only applies to my own.

Your great great grandchildren can only enjoy driving a nice Toyota by the beautiful seaside motorway if we start the effort to understand everyone else. Whatever your choice you made today will impact them in so many ways - and lets hope its a positive impact. I wish to elaborate further on this but my intellectual output for today has reached its daily limit.

Nevertheless, let me leave you with this: Don't do anything for yourself, your family or even your loved ones. Instead, do it for humanity, period - then therefore yourself, your family and your loved ones will naturally be in good care.

And God. Yes, God. Do it for God.

Bomoh and its Equivalent

Plan changes. I don't like that too much. I blame bad planning instead of fate. Nevertheless, there were many times fate, or qadar if you prefer, have been favourable upon my bad plannings. There were countless mistakes made in life but there're always silver linings. Fate has been kind.

So where fate has brought me today?

It's been two months since I started in a green building consultancy firm. I get to do what I've always wanted to do - which is to develop high performance building. I was employed specially for modelling. Yes, you read that right - modelling, no shit.

Specifically, building modelling. I do daylighting, energy, CFD modelling as well as develop water efficient solutions. If you don't know what modelling, in this context, exactly is, you may drop me a comment and ask me about it.

Or I can just tell you right now.

Modelling in this context is a simulation approach to building design. In other words, we predict the performance of the building before it is built. For example, daylighting modelling means we predict how indoor daylighting will look like, in terms of graphics and amount of lighting available, inside the building. This building modelling is done using computer software, i.e. Ecotect, 3Ds Max, Light Studio, Radiance (which I currently use as a plugin in Virtual Environment). It's no rocket science but I still think it's pretty cool.

So, give me a building design, preferably in proper architectural drawings. I'll run it down my simulation program whichever you want to know. Should daylighting, for example, is your curiosity, I'll be able to tell you that how much area inside your building will receive excellent daylighting, i.e. Daylight Factor above 3.5, and also identify which part that criticially requires assistance from electric lighting, which I will then provide how much electric lighting you need, i.e assuming a set of fluorescent lighting of total 48W provides approximately a well distributed 500 lux around the 100sqm.

This sounds a wee bit like engineering. In most cases, it is true. However, I'm still waiting for a project where we can address more sensitive subjects, i.e. art galleries, museum, etc. There's a significant factor that differentiate your experience in different spaces. Light levels, light CRI, carbon content, humidity, temperature, etc. Those factors can be quantified and I wish soon enough I would be able to participate in such projects that require such extensive assessment.

That's a bit of preview about what I do for a living nowadays. It was a bit exaggerated. My job is mundane most of the time. Modelling is only fun when I can actually solve things. Most of the time my numbers were not at all within logical range and no where near credible as a proper estimation. Ye la kan who would want to hire a bomoh that cannot predict whether you'll win that nombor ekor or not. Bad example but you get what I mean.

Perhaps, I'm not that exactly different than a bomoh. Added with high-technology gadgets, with a bowl filled with clear flower-scented water, I will be able to tell you that, "Hotel enchek nanti akan jadi sangat bagus, tapi mungkin sedikit panas. Saya cadangkan ambil tangkal ini, tanam kat belakang rumah enchek selama 2 bulan lengkap. Kemudian order la gelas dua lapis untuk ganti selapis gelas yang enchek guna untuk hotel enchek tu. Pastu gali balik tangkal tu dan letak kat celah2 gelas tu nanti ye. Kompem sejuk elok seronok pengunjung datang,"

Alternatively, I can do actual building modelling for a much higher fee.

My Colourful Fishes Inspire Better

Did anyone noticed how skinny my fishes are these days?

There's a lot of things that I would like to do these days. Who doesn't? I mean, in life, people would like to fill theirs with happy stuffs as much as they possibly can. Let it be in terms of quality or quantity, objects of possession or frantic experiences, giving or receiving, et cetera. I would like to fill my life with happy stuffs, such as this.

Writing is still one of my happy things I like to do. Time, no, convenience does not allow me to do so. Well, I've that used that excuse for a lot of things. Friends, exercising, family, etc. To me, busy is not a good excuse. I use it occasionally but hear me here that I'm not that fond of seeing myself being careless in time management.

Hence, here I am trying to work my way back to what was my weekly, if not daily, source of mental apple pie.

So, today I am writing a review. Please allow me to start the next paragraph with a bolded title.

Inspire the 10-Year-Old Me

I went to watch Tun Mahathir The Musical early last week. Credit to Ainee and Kerel for the awesome seating. I came in my formal shirt and pants as any nice gentleman would attend the theatre - especially a high profile biographical play. Plenty of beautiful ladies around the multi-tiered hall and nicely dressed pakcik and makcik attending the show to witness their beloved former national leader celebrated in a play. It was a nice atmosphere for a show of this stature. It was about Tun Mahathir and I had high expectation for a play about a leader of his magnitude.

Well, suffice to say I was frustratingly disappointed (note the two adjectives applied). I won't say whether I am or not a big fan of the man, but impartiality would not credit my feelings otherwise.

I can forgive the following things:
1. Pre-recorded musics
2. Excessive stage performers
3. Glare-prone lighting directions
4. Amateur-ish scripts
5. Cheap background video editing

However, the very essence of a biographical play is whether it inspires or not. Failure to do so defeats the purpose of crafting a high-profile play of a high-profile person on a high-profile stage.

It was like watching an educational film, the kind that you show to primary school kids to learn about our nation's rich histories - our leader is good, our enemies are bad, all he did was right and whatever his enemies did was wrong. This is a stage where intellectual people attend to be inspired by great works of our local playmakers. We (as it seems now that I openly claim that I am in fact an intellectual person) would like to be respected with stories where process of thoughts is challenged and our minds can tingle in excitement from learning the ultra-wide human perspectives. Alternatively, at the end of a good play, I would hope to feel that I should go to a bookstore and read more about what he did.

However, I felt I could have settled with my jeans and collared T-shirts and probably a dewan sekolah rendah (you know the kind that you have to merge a row of classes, rearrange the desks and chairs to make space for the general assembly) would have been a suitable stage for the quality of the play, with me as a 10 years old with my school friends as their marginally interested audience, although we're forced by our educators to go through the 3 hours of torture as punishment for wearing jeans to school.

I came with a wish to be inspired. A leader inspires and his story should be inspiring. I was not inspired by any part of the play. All I learnt from the play was Teh Halia seems quite nice and I shall try it soon.

Even the beautiful lady sat behind me left at half time. You see that, 'bad play'? You made my potentially future wife/scandal ran away.