Yo..10 cents?? No, its not our very own Malaysian Rapper.

This is what Badawi had to say for the recent price decrease: “As the world fuel price has had a sharp decrease lately, the Government has decided to once again reduce the retail price for the public’s benefit,”

Notice the word SHARP DECREASE, does it match with our 10cents? Public benefit?? or Government benefit? Anyway, if you don’t want to decrease the price to about RM1.60 per litre (which is what people in the US are paying), then why don’t you(the government) show us and be transparent, how much money is Malaysia making from this slow decrease in fuel price? I am not against Malaysia trying to make money, but I do want to challenge the government to tell us the profit figure and also show us in detail how the money is going to be spent. Don’t tell us that its suppose to cover for the RM625 that you have rebated to the people with lower cc cars, because the initial plan was to have that rebate in the first place and to subsidise 30cents per litre of fuel… that all has already been budgeted. Tell me what are you going to do with the money that you are making now with the sudden uninformed but assumed policy change.

Single school structure with an open mind…

Quote from the Star: Umno Youth chief aspirant Datuk Mukhriz Mahathir has called on the Government to abolish the vernacular school system to enhance unity among the people.

He said a single school system was the only way to check racial polarisation.

“The Government should consider introducing only a one school system with Bahasa Malaysia as the medium of instruction, except for the teaching of Science and Mathematics, which is already in English,” Mukhriz told reporters at Parliament House yesterday.

“Of course, pupils should then be given the option to study their mother tongue. Under this system, the Malays will also have the option of studying other languages like Chinese and Tamil, and this will further boost unity among the races,” the Umno Youth exco member added.

—————————————————————————

This is my opinion:

1. Will single school system promote unity? YES … if you put everyone in one system, people tend to be groomed to have the same thinking and hence unity can be achieved. But this does not mean that the people will be smarter, they will not be able to think out of the box, hence Malaysia will be less competitive if we implement this system. Which is why in the corporate world, people don’t believe in “one structure” system. We should have open competition, no monopoly, otherwise Microsoft woudln’t have to spend so much money on lawsuites to fight their competitors.
2. Why would UMNO want to have a single school system? Answer is easy, if you can’t be as competitive as your competitors, you go to war with them, take over their country and force them to be like you and hopefully you will also be influenced to be more competitive like your competitors in the process.
3. Is Bahasa Malaysia the right medium of instruction? NO. We should look into the future, and when the world has already acknowledged that countries like China, India and Russia will overpower US in terms of economy, we should look into how to position our country the best way to cope with the change. One way is to learn the language of the strongest…. give parents the ability to choose which language they think is best for their children’s future… logically thinking, we should use medium of instruction such as English, Chinese, Tamil or even Russian depending and only use BM as “optional”. I will be a proud father if my daughter can master English, Chinese and Tamil. Like the Sultan of Selangor said ” Malaysia belongs to all races, not just the Malays. The country is what it is today because of the contributions of all races and that is something we must acknowledge.”
4. Then what is the best structure for our schooling system? OPEN system. I always believe that the most competitive environment will force the weak to surrender and the strong to strive… if we have an open schooling system, we will be able to create students who will be able to contribute to their country. The education ministry must realise that language is not everything, but it is the attitude towards education which is important. Hence they must concentrate more on determining the process to improve student discipline, to teach based on understanding rather than memorization. Not closing down variations of schools so that we can all be one narrow minded community.

No increments for spending next year??? Who said so?

If you are thinking about no increments next year, who said so? Asked Najib… he has already given you a choice, to have your own increment next year. Just choose not to submit your KWSP 17A form and you will automatically get 3% increment for your usage. Don’t think about the future as its too far away, hah! I know I am not going to submit the form, so I suppose I will get the 3% increment for myself, and the best thing is if you have already maxed out on EPF+lifeinsurance (>RM6000), you will get the 3% without additional tax… woohoo.

So, like people always say, life is short, so don’t take life too seriously…. maybe with this 3% you can buy some cheap shares and make more than EPF .

KLCI sustained with who’s $$$ ?

As I have predicted on my previous blog, when the world market slumps, our market is only down by less than 1%, but when the world market soars, we still go to red (slightly)…. today’s market for example just shows that our government is pumping money into the market. The question is who’s money? EPF? ASN? ASM? Recently seems like there are a lot of Amanah Saham Schemes released, which my wife happily bought some. I suppose the Billions of Ringgit they get from the release of the “Amanah” schemes will be used to show that MALAYSIA MASIH BOLEH.

STI is down 2% now, NIKKEI down 4.53%, Seoul down 3%…. but KLCI is only down 0.72%. Its 9.49am.

Thinking short term only?

The title today actually reflects how I think our current government makes their decisions. When they announced that we will stick to the 30cents subsidy for petrol, they were thinking very short term. Now, instead of subsidizing 30 cents, we end up subsidizing the goverment with our hard earn money. Now, why do I say the solution was short term thinking? They only thought of a solution for high fuel price, eg above USD80, but they never thought what will happen when the price of fuel drops.

What if fuel price drop up to the level that our fuel price is only 30cents per litre? Does this mean free petrol for us? Obviously not…. so now, Najib is trying to slow down the loss of income from the low fuel price… get the people to pay the government’s bills…. bring down the fuel price slowly, shouldn’t it be done based on biweekly average of fuel price. We the people don’t mind paying more when the fuel price increases so long as when it drops, they honour the drop and allow us to have cheap oil. Imagine, this is only on crude oil…. what about palm oil price (CPO), etc… when the price of CPO is high, they enforced windfall tax, but when the price of CPO has gone low, do you think they will subsidize the loss?

I’m really interested to see how Malaysia manages this e-crisis. If you observe properly our current share market, I think the government is pumping in money into the KLSE market to dampen people’s fear… when the world’s market crashes badly eg 5%, we only drop by 0.5%, and when the world market goes up by 5%, we drop by a small amount, eg. 0.01%. This just shows that when world market crashes, our government buys in to control the situation and when other stock exchange increases significantly, our government tries to sell what they bought earlier, as people will go buy into the market thinking that KLCI will go up. This can’t go on forever…. so its a matter of time before Malaysian market drops below 700 points… my prediction still stays, 600 points by end of Q1 next year . Why do I say this, right now in the US, the banks are only seeing lots of bad debts from home owners, individual persons, imagine when the corporate bad debts start to come in next year…. banks will close down.

Oh yea.. and nothing is impossible at this time, I remembered a time when I spoke to a friend, and he said that when CITIGROUP reduces to USD20, he is going to buy in … now its USD3.77.

How bad is Malaysian Economy?

I guess thats the question everyone is asking now, and I am no expert in economy and hence do not have answer to that. What I do know is its probably hitting our Malaysian government pretty badly now. How’s that?

Well, first, its already the 17th of the month, and still not a single sound from Najib to revise the petrol price. Delaying the announcement by a few days will save our Government’s coffers by tens of millions at least. Also, there are news that Crude Oil price will fall down to USD30 this coming February, which is bad news for Petronas and more bad news for our second main income Palm Oil exports. If that happens, the whole lot of palm oil plantation will be in the reds, which means no more income from palm oil to the government at least in terms of income tax.

Imagine, less money from petronas and palm oil producers…. what else have Malaysia got? Lets wait for end of year profit numbers after Christmas and see how the public respond to them. I predict the KLCI to drop to about 600 points by end of Q1 next year. But I hope I am wrong.

Change needed to liberate minds of students…

That was what our DPM said. I quote the Star “There should be an intellectual renaissance to open up and liberate the minds of students, and this should start in the universities, said Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak.”

I don’t know what he was thinking, but I think if you want to start liberating minds of our children through education, then we have to start from preschool onwards… and that means for the education ministry to start at the primary school level. What our DPM or soon to be PM is saying is to start liberation efforst in universities which is silly. How do you change 18 years of bad habits? It would be easier to encourage a 4-6year old to ask questions, to be more interactive in class rather than using current methods of teacher talk and you listen, remember the time when you were scolded by your teacher for talking in the class, for copying, etc???

Tony Buzan, expert in mind mapping said that we can only improve if we copy the best of people… and yet in school, we were discouraged from copying…imagine when a kid is born, and that kid said his or her first words,  ”Daddy” … and the parent go “Don’t copy, find your own words”.

Emphasis should not be only what you learn in school/uni, but how you learn. That is what everyone should be working towards and that is what our current Parliment should be thinking about, having members of parliment who are more educated rather than a person with completely no education and can’t keep up. I wonder if they can put all members of parliments’ education background on a website for public to view and scrutinize.

Oh yea and on a seperate issue of how our “misinformed” Minister justify to give 10.5M gratitude payment to 5 judges who were fired earlier, maybe we should take the money out from his pocket. Or perhaps this is the same issue, our Minister didn’t have the NEED TO KNOW attitude before making any decision, are they just puppets to put up a good show on RTM1 at 11.30pm everyday weekday?