Last August, the SIL Khairy Jamaluddin remarked that the Chinese Malaysian community would take advantage of infighting to make demands to advance their interests went to the public, leaders from MCA and Gerakan condemned the statement, calling it unwanted and insensitive.

Here comes the interesting part. The key phrase: Read his lips well!

Fast forwarded to last Saturday, when opening the People’s Progressive Party Youth wing convention, KJ warned that there were limits to freedom and said government could revert to greater authoritarianism if certain people chose to abuse the current climate of freedom.

"Racial sensitivities still exist and we should respect these boundaries,"

This is by far the biggest mouth I’ve ever seen in my life.

The Visit Malaysia Year 2007 Campaign, a grand plan to agreesively develop and market Malaysia as a major tourist destination and o populate and promote tourism-related activities, programmes and events showcasing the uniqueness of Malaysia as a tourist destination is about 12 days away.

While lots of money and efforts had been spent and wasted to ensure the entire country plays up to the tune as similar to the one by The Ministry of Tourism leads by Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor, I’m here to carry out my little responsibility as a Malaysian, with a little very trivial insight that might have been overlooked: Where are the tourism information centers for the ease of tourist navigating around Malaysia?

Yang Berhormat, you certainly do not wish that our dear visitors screw up their plans of making Malaysia a tourist-friendly country, just because your team mislook this insignificant compartment.

The Star SMS alert at 9:48pm.

Expansion work on the KLIA low-cost carrier terminal will being early next year to solve overcrowing, Malaysia Airports Bhd CEO Bashir Ahmad said.

For the record, Low Cost Carrier Terminal (LCCT) was officially launched on March 23, which is about 9 months ago.

And now, we’ve got plan to expand the LCCT. Hats off to Bashir, LCCT is indeed overcrowing, I can assure you that. Imagine, long queue waiting for the immigration clearance, much more than the capacity of the lounge. 2 working manual counters with 3 available auto-gates, 2 working with 1 out of service. By the way, that was about 15 minutes to midnight.

Simultaneously, another interesting question to every decision maker that had or going to have their says in this coming expansion plan: Is there a proper planning in place prior to the construction of LCCT? Or does that imply the typical "do first think later" habitual thinking of, I mean Malaysians?

Trust me, we can do better than that, a lot better than that.

Sorry for the void of update, I was totally cut off of any internet connectivity since last Wednesday.

Former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim in an interview on Saturday accused the government of stifling non-Muslims’ rights and said Malaysia’s majority Muslims feel their own rights are threatened by greater clamor among minorities for protection of their rights.

"The worrying thing is the Muslims feel their position and their power in religious discourse is eroding. The non-Muslims feel they are being marginalized and discriminated against." […]

"We have come to a stage where it is considered unhealthy. The debate over … religious issues has been contentious. There is a lot of unhappiness,"

By the way, Anwar called for a cross-cultural dialogue to ease tensions in the multiracial country.

Any government organisations or NGOs are willing to take heed of the call?

Via Bernama:

Although many people have come and asked him (Pak Lah’s son, Kamaluddin Abdullah) to go into joint ventures with government-linked companies, he says ‘No, I have enough money, I am rich’," said Abdullah. […]

"I did mention that the old man practically smashed Khairy’s pot of rice."

According to Pak Lah, rich man is his son. But how about old man? Who’s the old man?

I can’t believe it’s the Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi who uttered those words. How about you? You OK?

Via The Business Times Online:

Traditional journalists must find ways to access and take the writing of bloggers into account when doing their reporting, according to Reuters Asia’s managing director Alex Hungate.

The growing popularity of online social networks and blogs suggests bloggers have an equally valid point of view, he said in a recent interview with BT.

A Windows MSN survey of more than 25,000 people in seven Asian countries published last week indicated that 51 per cent of online respondents rated blogs as being equally trustworthy as traditional media.

Follow the keywords: Bloggers have an equally valid point of view.

Thanks Berita Malaysia’s YW Loke for the alert.

[UPDATED VERSION] The coach was wrecked and once threatened to quit.

Yesterday, after 36-years of medal dry spell, young and unseeded Malaysian pair of Koo Kien Keat-Tan Boon Heong end the drought with their superb attacking play.

Now, we’re relieved that there shouldn’t be any excuse (if there is any) for doubles chief coach Rexy Mainaky to quit, the main architect of the new remarkable combination.

Congratulations on the outstanding achievement, from all Malaysian badminton supporters. Desire for more!

Words from Rexy?

Read the rest of this entry »

Singapore’s Deputy Prime Minister S Jayakumar announced that Genting has won the bid to build Singapore’s second casino resort, despite putting in lower bids compared to other 2 contenders.

The S$5.2 billion ($3.4 billion) resort consists of 1,830 hotel rooms, the world’s largest aquarium and a Universal Studios theme park, to open in 2010.

Genting has said it will fund the project through debt and internal resources. In October, the company arranged almost $1.5 billion of financing through five unidentified banks.

Genting expects the resort to generate S$15 billion a year in tourism spending, and plans to spend S$200 million a year to rejuvenate the project over 30 years. The company said the casino will generate as much as $2 billion in gaming revenue in the first year.

Universal Studios has signed a 30-year agreement to manage the theme-park for Genting. The company, which is a unit of General Electric Co., however doesn’t have an equity stake in the project.

Malaysiakini reports that Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi has called on the media to provide more coverage on nation’s development projects and coming 50th Merdeka celebration and reduce reporting on negative and disaster incidents.

The question is, why the need of "feel good" stories in the first place? The existence of medias are to report nothing but the truth, aren’t they? Wy not eliminate this and that, you and I will feel even better, better than good for sure.

Wars, political turmoil, oil crisis. Iraq has got all of them.

Yet, when comes to sports (at least there is a proof now), the fighting spirit, the nationalism and etc. prevail.

(SOURCE: Asian Games Doha 2006)

Why Malaysia football will continue to pluge and destined for the failure alley? No wonder blogger Stephen Francis was seen as yelling: Are we sure that we actually sent a team of donkeys to Doha?