Rant For The Week

I quote from the online edition of The Daily Mail (UK Newspaper) on the incident where Gordon Brown shot himself in the foot then stuffed it straight into his mouth!


[Seconds after telling her she was a 'good woman', Mr Brown was caught by a TV microphone privately attacking Gillian Duffy, 66, as a 'bigot' for daring to raise immigration with him - laying bare his contempt for the concerns of millions of voters.]

There's more in the article. Good for many a laugh.

But it deserves a much fuller analysis as it points perfectly to what is wrong with the World today (in general) and what is wrong with the "Western Developed" countries (in particular). We here in Asia need to learn from this (else we will become them!).

The "accepted" behaviour consist of:

1. Lies and Deflections ("He says it was 'very nice to meet her' as they part and she tells reporters he seems 'very nice' ") - Not only can they lie, but more importantly, we even easily, simply believe them!
2. When caught in the lie, express regret, say "I am Sorry" and expect to move on.
3. At the same time, all kinds of excuses are given from all interested quarters. This Spin-doctoring is clearly shown by Lord Mandelson (" Lord Mandelson led a desperate damage limitation exercise, pleading that the Prime Minister was 'slightly tired' and 'letting off steam' but admitting there could be 'no justification' for his remarks. ")
4. You WILL NOT BE PUNISHED for it (whatever it is)
   

My rant this week is why do we keep falling for this kind of S**T?

I know we keep falling for it because we immediately want to believe in the next thing that he says, whether its that he will rescue the UK or that he will not cut their social benefits!

Gordon Brown now expects that everyone forget about all this (MOVE ON PLEASE!), that he will not be punished in any way, and that he is still the right man to lead his Party to WIN THE ELECTIONS!

Can it be that all these type of behaviours are learned by their young and thus they behave accordingly (easy sex, bad attitude, lie and cheat in their jobs etc...)?

Khidmat Arcade and Wisma Khidmat

I went on Thursday (22 April) to meet with someone at the Khidmat Arcade. Khidmat is the Civil Service Cooperative. I was never a member and so do not know fully of the history and stories! There is very little on the internet on this organisation.

This Khidmat Supermarket is pretty run-down. I tried to go in, but the security guard at the door said "No bags allowed". Since I didn't want to leave my camera in their hands (are they responsible to pay for any losses?), I went to a different supermarket (CKS), where having the customers are more important than having their bags.

The Coop was given a big piece of land (surrounding the Arcade) and individual lots were purchased by the members (some were then resold at much higher prices). So the area has big bungalows and also some standard housing estates.

The Coop had a piece of land close to Kota Kinabalu City center, where they put up a 2-storey block (Khidmat Supermarket was on the Ground Floor) and a high-rise office block. Both are currently empty. All the cars are enjoying free parking!

Some financial difficulties had caused them to sell off these 2 buildings to the Sabah Credit Corporation (a small state government owned financial institution). There were various talks and proposals of using these buildings for a school or medical center. Whatever it is, they better build a multi-story carpark or else there will be "parking hell" in this area. The Petronas Building is next door.

Inland Revenue Board Building - Kota Kinabalu

Hoping to submit my Income Tax return (deadline for submission 30 April 2010), I went to the IRB on 18 April (Sunday). I remembered (if I am not wrong) that in previous years, the IRB was open on weekends for e-filing using their PCs (no digital certificate required).

I was informed that they would only be opened on the last weekend in April.

Upon leaving, I looked more closely at the crane and realised that it had three workers on a platform dangling high up outside the building.

It looked somewhat dangerous. Don't the new buildings have those cleaning platforms winched down from tracks on the roof?


A close-up zoom shot showed that they were fixing some things to the wall (below or above each floor's windows).

I have no idea what the fittings are for. Could it be for lights, or decorations, or awnings?

Thought For The Day

Sunrise - 18 April 2010 6.01am

Be pleasant until ten o'clock in the morning
and the rest of the day will take care of itself.
~Elbert Hubbard

Elbert Green Hubbard (1856 – 1915) was an American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher. According to Wikipedia, he was a prolific writer and editor of magazines.

Big Moth

Found a Big Moth (about 6 inches across) hanging on the wall. I made the mistake with the previous one of trying to catch hold it to let it out of the window. Unfortunately that didn't work as its wings totally disintegrated upon my touch. So this time I left this one alone. The far distance in the photo is actually the ceiling as I have rotated the photo.

I had been reading up on photos for web use and for print use. It seemed to boil down to the dpi (dots per inch) basically. The photos in the previous postings were just quickly downsized in "Paint". This time the image was resized to 72 dpi and 640 x 480 before being uploaded to Blogger.

The wonder of the internet allowed me to find out what type of moth it was. It was a Lyssa Zampa, quite common in South East Asia.

Kota Kinabalu Airports

This afternoon I went to the airport to pick up a colleague coming in from Tawau. It gave me another opportunity to take some photos and also to use the panorama feature on the Lumix FZ35.

The original airport (60s and 70s) was near the Tanjung Aru Beach. In fact it is opposite the new park covered in my post on The Tanjung Aru Beach Area. After the new airport was built on the other side of the runway, this "old" airport was used by the Sabah Flying Club and others.



When the "Low-Cost" airline (Air Asia) started, the old terminal was renovated and was named Terminal 2 (all Air Asia flights land here). If your connecting flight is on Malaysian Airline System (MAS), then you have the "fun" of transporting yourself (and luggage) to Terminal 1.

The new airport (called Kota Kinabalu International Airport - KKIA) was constructed on the other side of the new extended runway. In 2005, the construction to expand the KKIA by about 3 X in size and further extend the runway was started. The "new" extension portion was completed in 2008. While all the flight services used the new extension, the "old" KKIA was demolished and rebuilt. It is near completion. This whole complex is called KKIA Terminal 1.

KKIA Terminal 1 ("new" extension portion)

KKIA Terminal 1 (Rebuilt "Old" portion)

Due to the proposed extension of the runway, the pony race-track at one end of the runway was demolished. I went to one of the remaining structure on the race-track grounds to take a series of photos using the panorama feature of the Lumix FZ35. These were then stitched together using the software supplied by Lumix.

The stables area, the admin building with the race-track beyond

This end of the runway, the KKIA Terminal 1 is center-left (far distance), Terminal 2 is to the center-right. The small building on the right is the "sport club" associated with the Pony Racing Club. It is basically a slot-machine joint.

KKIA Terminal 1 (it's clearer here what I was talking about in the earlier paragraph) with the rebuilt "old" KKIA Terminal on the right and the "new" extension center-left.

The panorama feature was very simple to use and the software automatically stitched together the series of photos taken (the last one above from 4 photos). The software even removed most of the distortion due to the changing angle of each photo.

Teo Thien Min R.I.P.

A sad occasion, one of my uncles had passed away on 31 March 2010 from a traffic accident. He was my mom's younger brother.

I remembered him best in the 60s, when I was a kid. He was operating an electrical shop in Membakut (a town some 80km south of Kota Kinabalu). At that time all the towns south were connected only by the railroad (steam-train). I remembered that his shop had an air-conditioned room (it was really a "wow" factor at that time), since he was a distributor for Sanyo products. Of course, the room was mostly used by the mahjong players!

There were quite a few years I went there on the second day of Chinese New Year (via the wood-burning steam train where the embers drifted in from the open windows and burned tiny holes in my shirt) and spent a few days there. It was an adventure using the communal toilet (too disgusting to go into details - my aunties can attest!).

I remember him as a slightly reserved kindly man who was very generous to us kids.

Rest In Peace.

The Wonderful World of Public Transport in Kuching!

Yesterday's New Straits Times (NST - one of our national english newspapers) carried this photo and an article on the launching of the new Rapid Kuching bus service (Kuching is the state capital of Sarawak, the other Malaysian State in Borneo). The Minister said that this was part of the improvement to the public transport system for "those who rely on public transport to go to work or school.....)

(Fair Use For Comment Only)

Those of us in Kota Kinabalu should be REALLY JEALOUS! They have sleek new buses in Kuching. They have better dressed passengers (I don't think they are going to school, dressed like that!). Who wouldn't be using public transport when it's so nice?

Kenny Sia (A Blogger in Kuching) should abandon his car and take to the bus every morning (maybe he can meet his soul-mate)!