I believe that people should be able to reap,
the work and effort they put into work and therefore i believe in capitalism and pure comtpetition...which is not only good for everyone to excel but for the loser he knows that is not the real place that he belongs....but then again they good and hardworking people who never seem to get a break like the rubber tappers who work really hard but never seem to be able to better the lives of their love ones..so in effect we must temper capitalism with compassion..how much and where we draw the line I leave it to the economists though some might argue that rubber tappers should quit and do something else..what else? Another problewith capitalism is that is that some people with power and influence and monewill use it so that they don't have to compete like the car parts supplier who bribe the car manufacturer's..so if playing filed is not level..and how is the poor guy with superior technology and work going to survive...this is where we need a referee..he will never be perfect but it will be much better than no referee...this is then the use of of governmentent..their duty is to ensure a level playing field..other than that they don't intervene....the referee don't kick the ball into the goal..he just runs around and thires to intervene as little as possible and get out of the way but will do it if it is necessary.....if a referee can do it..why is it so hard for elected government do it?

heh,
controlling the price of sugar? ridiculous..on one hand you are trying to get mamaks to reduce the sugar they put in their products and people to take less sugar so that there will be less cases of diabetes and on the other you are trying to keep the price of sugar artificially low....sure it wins elections but who is going to pay for health care when half the nation is diabetic?...the quickest way to reduce the amount of sugar in products and help people live a healthier lifestyle is to make something more expensive...like with cigarettes and alcohol... if they use this rationale to impose sin taxes why can't they just let market forces determine the price of sugar...why intervene to bring down the price of something that is bad for health? Sugar is definitely killing more people than cigarettes but of course lung cancer is a more glamourous disease...the worse thing is they are killed slowly so the health cost is high..whereas in lung cancer you are dead within the year....when sugar is more expensive people will use less sugar and innovative mooncake makers will won't be making mooncakes that are toos weet and before you know it they will be making mooncake for diabetics so those poor old folks won't miss out on the fun.

Hello I am back,
It has been a while...I am quite lazy to blog but I thought I better keep the thing going.....just a thing about character...in the papers a few days ago a Malaysian-born neurosurgeon was arrested for bribery....man you must be pretty smart to become a neurosurgeon in the US..it is competitive..but no matter how smart you are in the end...you can't excape from greed...and many people do stupid things because of greed...kind of sad to know parents nowadays are pushing excellence instudies and performance instead of the building the of character...give an honest man of average intelligence any day over one thousand corrupt geniuses.

After a long long while I am back,
But as I have predicted it turns out that blogging was just another fad for me. It promised to make my voice heard but the number of silly advertisements that I got far out numbered the comments and most of them are from friends anyway. Not that this detracts from the validity of their comments but I don't think my views are going to get far this way. I will have to go back to trying to get myself published which is the only realistic way of doing it.
Thought scame and go and the penalty for not putting them down is you forget them.
The thing that I have been thinking about on lately is seeking the truth and the fact the "Quod Est Veritas" should be everyone'e warcry. Sure we need to do the things to survive but in our psare time we spend some of it seeking the truth. For many imporant things we just take it for granted. We just assume that it is true without investigating it. We may not have the time to verify everything but at least in the most imporant things such as "is Jesus God?"
Christians that take it for granted but Paul says we must work out our salvation. We must ask ourselves do we truly believe? PEople who brush over this often will have faith crises when they are older when it will be much much worse. PEople who have it younger then to resolve it in a happy way though not always. In the end the illustration is chicken pox. If you get it when you are young you might die but it is not as worse as whne you are old.
Some non-Christian just only look at the points against that is not even thougth up and judge by themselves and take it as as true. They have delegated the most imporant duty of seeking the truth to others but even the smartest makie mistakes and one should not delegate this because in the end if one makes a mistake at least one doesn't have to regret delegating this duty even though we enjoy blaming others.
There are many to barriers to truth. Now I will not confined it to discussion about Jesus but the truth can be seeked everywhere and in its own way it is important. It can serious questions like is the universe expanding or collapsing to the best nasi lemak to be found in Kedah. Though the consequences are different but what is perceive as the truth will guide us in our decision making. Not all questions should be pursued with full effort.
The danger is lies can be seen as truth. Lies can masquerade as truth, truth can be misrepresented, the truth be seen as the lie. Whatever the situation the truth is not found and because of that wrong decisions are made. Is a foetus a human life? The answer will determine how we approach the issue of abortion. Even our own eyes can mislead us and witnesses may not be truth. But what differentiate the truth from lies is there is evidence but even in this respect even lies can have "evidence".
In the end we must weigh up everything and to do this we must not be intellectually lazy but strive to consider BOTH sides of the argument and rebuttals to it and make a judgement for ourselves.
Consider the Iraq war. Was it right to invade? I have study the arguments on both sides carefully and at the end of it I support the war but that is not the point. The point is we can see a lot of people taking either position without first determining the arguments on both sides. They just take a default position such as all wars are wrong. My father whom I greatly resepct is a pacifist and I respect him for that because in his eyes and from his analysis of hisotry except for a few exceptions institutions brought about by wars in genral don't stand the test of time. He will compare Malaysia's independence gained by negotiation to Indonesia's which was gained by violence and how both countries subsequently turn out. I would disagree because though force is not always good but sometimes it is necessary. The Khmer Rouge would have gone on killing had Vietnam not invaded Cambodia. Yet Vietnam was never called an imperialist nation though they occupied Cambodia for over 12 years before there were any elections. SO we are both right force was the lesser of two evil but up till today Cambodia is still in the grips of Hun Sen who was allied to the Vietnamese.
History in the end can be the judge whether the was was right or not and the picture will not be pretty. We like to gloss over it but the truth is nothing is perfect and there will be flaws but if greater good comes out of it then I think it is only fair we judge it as correct. However even then we have a problem. We do not know it will turn out and history have shown us that to invade there is a problem not to invade there is a problem. In the end we realise of man's endeavour is in vian and Death devour us all. In the end all we have is the Truth. What is the Truth? IS the truth is there will be reincarnation and amn will get according to his deeds in the next life or is the truth is God is in control and and if we can hypothetically follow his perfect will then all will be solved. Then it leads to a conumdrum: what is his will? And again again it is a crazy thing to explore and much of the ills stem from sincerely mistaken people deluded into thinking they are doing the Almighty's will.
Back to history;can only be so much of a guide. I think the gist of the matter is please investigate and study both isde of the argument so that if history prove you wrong at least you can have the cold comfort of not saying anything daft like " Iraq was much better under Saddam" for the simple reason reason he is a Sunni. Have you read a Shiite or Kurd talk like this lately?

After a bit of encouragement I am finally,
Putting a bit a of my thoughts into a soft copy. Hve you ever met a person who is better than you in everything and after a period of admiration that person becomes unbearable as your attempts to catch well aren't a match for that person's natural in-built talent. Somehow that person is better than you in things that you are good at. NO amount of hardwork helped you. Well the truth there are things that you ARE good at because God is always fair and love his children but the fallen side wants the visible gifts that can be seen by other men. Girls will crowd roud the pianist who can play any song requested. No guessing how many crowded round the guy who has utmost patience but has nothing else. Yet most will say that the patient person has the greater gift but that is in theory. In reality the the pianist gets the glory. We shouldn't strive for it but we crave it.
I saw this line in No Left Turns which described Beowulf, the hero of the oldest piece of English literature which is translated to modern English: "He made the best of all he had..... putting each imperfection to the service of integrity...was good because he accepted there things of him that were bad."
This is literature seeking to teach us timeless wisdom all the while maintaining the beauty of the language and the naturalness of speech. What it means is he accepts that he is not supremely talented and accepted his lot but instead using his time to compete he used what he had to basically do good.
Not to discourage all the budding guitarist in church but what are your motives? Rather serve integrity. It lacks glory but builts character and at the end of the day it is probably that which matters.

What are you going to do when a bald guy who is taller than you,
Comes in and say we are going to lunch now. Well you stop blogging and go for lunch. Sorry to all my readers for a substanceless post yesterday. Anyway continuing what I said yesterday. I been through all the systems and yet they were all found wanting. In capitalism we assume that the individual is good and will make the right choice that will benefit society. In socialism we assume that the government will make the right choice and make decisions that will benefit society as a whole. But the fact of the matter is individuals and governments are humans and therefore are victims of vices such as greed and selfishness. So in all nations there is corruption at all levels and self-enrichment. Though it can be argued that socialism is worse because if you have one bad nut or a group of bad nuts at the top the whole country is screwed like if a dictator wishes to fill his swiss bank account rather than a hospital with equipment. While in a free-market society though most people are selfish but it can be argued that there will be enough people with a conscience to feed and provide healthcare for the poor to make up for it. This is demonstrated by the number of hospitals around the world that is run by private funds though it must be admitted that there are not enough.
As you can see there are a lot of suffering around the world and we can sometimes act to prematurely before we are ready or prepared to tackle which sometimes can make matters worse. But the urge to do something is that separate humans from animals and one of our instincts that we lose too easily when we get older and cynical. Call me naive but i believe that if we hold on to this trait long enough to acquire the skills and knowledge to do something useful we can actually chnge the world. Unfortunately we most often lose this trait in the midst of getting the knowledge and skills i.e. the years in university and the first few years of our working life.
One of the things we try to do is to change the political system. We are forever trying to search for the perfect one. It can't never be found as all is dependent on the ruled and the ruler. If everything so I can form my opinions in perfect knowledge. in the ideal world i would like to hear the and read the responses of people of all political believes propose and defend their believes adn also read the evidence in history. At the moment i support the American model of capitalism. There are flaws but it really fantastic to see that for a all the bad press the US gets an unlimited amount of Muslims want to go and live in that anti-Muslim and Zionist-dominated nation. You don't hear Malaysian women wanting to go live in Saudi Arabia but plenty want to go to the decadent West.
The basic outline of what interests me at the moment in t he Pentateuch is the combination of the best of what we will call now socialism and capitalism even before these ideas came into existence. Aspects of capitalism are: 1. Low-taxes 2. Welfare in the hands of the individual not the state. A brief look at the Pentateuch will convince that individuals must take care of their parents, then relatives, and if they can still afford it after that their neighbours and so on as they can afford. 3. A small government, in fact no government except for priests who wield no influence outside religious matters and local judges.
Aspects of socialism: 1. The reversion of property to the original owners in the year of Jubilee. 2. No one can take absolute profits. they must in way give chance to the poor.
This is a basic outline that I hope to explore later and debate with people and i hope someone will correct me if get things wrong.

Ahh it is good to be back,
Blogging took a back seat for a while. Not only did I have exams which are actually a pretty lame reason for not blogging...some on some of the most successful bloggers in the Us are a bunch of lawyers who have families and yet still have time to analyse the news of the day ad post it......so not only was it the exams but very much my lack of ideas.
There are a few ideas I ahve been bandying around but they aren't really that developed because for one thing if you don't think through your ideas before you really say them out after a while when you look back that idea will look really stupid.....that is what I am trying to prenvent but it is at the expense that of not blogging for extended periods because hwere can you find the time to read economics and the like and at the same time trying to get on top of your work?
But today I decided to briefly write down the brief outline of some of them.
The first up is the perfect political system. I have been a capitalist, communist, socialist and everything in between. Lunch call will be back.

Was it Menalaus who got Paris in the end?
Paris burns..so says the news..the analysis in the blogosphere is not good...note to all in Europe... visit Paris NOW cause there won't be much left to see...but it could all the overblown....I am skeptical that 900 cars can be torched in one night...sounds like sensationalism...anyway i need someone on the ground to tell whether anything is under control....if this turns out not to be sensationalism then there could very serious trouble...as this could spread..it seems it is already in Denmark next the netherlands then even Germany...the thing is it involves Muslim youths..that make up quite a large minority....and it is not about iraq or poverty because France was against the war and welfare in France..is to put it mildly scandalous...you even get paid for not working.....not much news here in the Malaysian papers..they try to cut the bad news..trying to keep the festive mood....read most of the media...I want to know the ordinary people's perception of things on the ground....that is the most important thing..the people in Paris will the best..but I don't know any Parisians....truth issuch a precious commodity as it will right many wrongs...now if it turns out that the news media got it wrong...our views will be forever coloured by what we read...people will stop visitng Paris..but what is the truth?

Wow it has been a while since I was here,
I like to take the excuse that I have exams approaching and i don't have the the time to blog but the fact of the matter is that I have exams and I am not even studying and I prefer to laze a around and let my thoughts wander instead of engaging in some serious thought processes.
So I have assignments deadlines looming but because I am not interested in them they have been consigned to to be done later box. Sad to say i am more interested in other things like articles about all manner subjects that are available over the internet so in the end I might be a very knowledgable doctor but not necessarily in the art of medicine which actually spells the defeat of my original prupose. Why is it so. difficult for me to be a single-minded person? Ill-discipline on my part really, God help me.
On another unrelated front i realise how terrible my prose have been and definitely I wouldn't be able to take on schoolchild of eleven from 19th century Britain. If British education has deteriorated over the pass one hundred years
-actually the rot only started 40 years ago with liberals taking over education-how much more the Malaysian education system. Well I can complain or I can set about doing something that includes improving myself and correct bad habits which I shall do right now by going off-line and start studying.

Reading my own blog,
Is such a torture. First there is my lousy typing and editing, and then there is my long-winded way of writing prose which is incoherent to say the least. Back in the old the school master would have forced me to rewrite my essays until I have gotten all my spelling and grammar correct. Ah the joys and pains of the odl days. Also after a while you will realise that some of the things you say are quite ignorant and daft but I guess we are always learning and can't have perfect knowledge of everything and make the correct judgement all the time.
That is why we should always have principles that has proven to work for the past two thousand years and also learn from other people's mistakes and experiences. He is wise who learn from experience but even wiser who learn from the experience of others. Because of this I enjoy reading the life stories of other people and of course the Bible which for all its errors and inconsistencies has proven to be quite a remarkable book, in fact miraculous and its principles still apply for today. There are contentious amd controversial points like is Saint Paul a misogynist and women's role in the church but that does not negate its power in anyway if one honestly read throught the WHOLE Bible. The very error and inconsistency is what prove to be a genuine human document of God's dealings with Mankind but because of that one has to read the whole thing to understand what is principle and what was clearly a compromise like divorce in the Pentateuch and also the election of a king in Israel. There isn't enough space for me here and I am lazy to type out everything but let me assure you that the Bible is one book you can't do without.

Here in Penang Medical College,
The lot of us, yes all 101 of us, are divided into twelve groups. And these twelve groups goes to the Accident and Emergency department every two weeks to observe the going ons in there.
Last night was my group's turn. I went to get some money, crossed a busy road, bought some credit for my handphone, had dinner at Rawther's. He has started opening up to midnight and sells dinner where before he only do breakfast and lunch. Had some nasi minyak with mutton kurma with chapati and kima. drank a glass of air bandung( Bandung is a town in Indonesia, the drink is actually just condense milk mix with syrup.
As I walk into the hospital back gate I can hear the wail of the siren. Interesting night this is going to be. As I walk past the acute emergency room there was a guy lying there. Nothing special. Only later I learnt he had multiple compound fractures which caused me to venture for a second look but by then it was already covered by the piece of sterile cloth.
There was no going ons so I went to the other A&E room. It was the usual stuff. Asthma, a nick here and there. Then a group of guys went for dinner and I followed them.
ANyway I am boring even myself. The guy have to have an emergency amputation. So we were there looking at the slicing by the surgeon, smelling the burning flesh and slash and dosh of the sucker and instruments beign passed around. It was interesting until you realise that the person will never use the leg again and he is only 22 years old. I can imagine him lasying football with his friends and now longer able to join he just drifts away from them. How will he react when he regains consciousness. What about the family? Is he the only that the whole family has put their hopes on? I am sure his parents will be glad that he is alive but ten twenty thirty years down the line who will take care of him? Will he marry? Or will be forever lonely knowing that the only reason is that he only has one leg and can barely support himself?
I can never understand the pain he will go through because I don't I will ever go through a fraction of what and I don't plan to and I pray I don't have to. I am the scion of of the middle class, with enough money to pay for a private medical education. Am I not privilege. But I am too self-absorbed.
The fact is I will be back later. Got something to do.