this is asterix.

It is bad enough when our – supposedly – leader keep telling us not to read blogs because blogs are written by unintelligent people with nothing better to do. And now suddenly an opposition leader is trying to tell Malaysians to stop watching television because it is being used as a tool by the governing party to spread propaganda. To these people, I have this one thing to say, even if you are a member of the government or a leader of a political party, you have no right whatsoever to tell us what to and what not to do. Seriously, who the hell do you think you are? The cabinet members are insulting voters’ intelligence for implying that we – the Rakyat – cannot differentiate between what’s right and what’s wrong when we read blogs on the internet. The opposition leaders are also insulting voters’ intelligence for implying that we – again, the Rakyat – can be easily fooled just by watching some programmes on the television. If the people really are that stupid, why bother asking us ...

And so it begins, the 12 th General Election for Malaysia . Here are some statistics for my area, Parliament Gombak (P-98) and State Gombak Setia (N-17). For the year 2008, the candidates for Parliament Gombak are Said Anuar Said Ahmad from BN and Mohamed Azmin Ali from PKR. I have to say that I know nothing about Said Anuar but I do hear a lot of things about Azmin Ali. In 2004, Parliament Gombak was won by Dr. Raman Ismail, representing BN with a majority of 13207 votes. Parliament Gombak is a predominantly Malay area and it is expected a lot of Islamic and Malay-related issue to be played here, just like previous general elections. Let’s go to State Gombak Setia, for this General Election, from BN camp is the incumbent, Yuszahari Mohd. Yusoff and he will be facing Dr. Hasan Mohd. Ali from PAS. To be honest, I know nothing about Yuszahari as well. But I do know Dr. Hasan, in fact, I used to go to some of his motivational camps when I was in primary school. In the 2004 el...

The date has been set, now all that we are waiting for is the competition to begin. Election Commission (EC) today announced that the Nomination Day will be on the 24 February 2008 (Sunday) and 13 days later will be the Polling day on the 8th March 2008 (Saturday). Honestly, I was quite surprised that the campaign period has been extended to 13 days, considering the trend for the past few General Election (GE) was less than 10 days (8 days in 2004). For your information, during the 11th GE, Barisan Nasional (BN) won 198 seats from 219 seats contested at that time. And for this year’s election, there will be 222 seats up for grabs by all competing parties. I am beginning to wonder how will BN do this time considering this is the first election that all races in Malaysia actually have issues with the current government. If you have been reading around, you would see that the Malays are very concern about the rising cost of living and alleged corruptions within the government. The Chines...

Around 11pm I received a phone call from my significant other telling me that my sister just gave birth to a girl – after more than 48 hours of labour pain. I did not call my sister straight away as it would be stupid to try to call someone who just spent the last few hours giving birth to a baby. When I woke up the next morning, I received a picture message from my sister – a picture of my third niece (her second daughter and third child). She does not have a name yet as my sister and her husband was not prepared for the baby girl. Apparently, they were expecting a boy and not because the scan went wrong but because they did not scan for the baby’s gender in the first place. Which is a cool thing, since there was some element of surprise when the baby finally came out around 3am in the morning, Malaysia time. Anyway, I just want to say congratulations to my sister and brother-in-law for the newborn daughter. On a very different matter, as expected, Pak Lah announced the dissolution of...

I guess when you are running out of time, you will start to think about what is going to happen next. And when I attended MAS interview last weekend, I was hit by the reality – in less than 150 days I will no longer be a student. I have been trying no to think about the life after this but I guess there will be a point where we all have to finally set our foot back on earth and accept the reality that is coming towards us. And few recent events made me realize that the time has come for me to make few very crucial decisions that will definitely how I live my life 10 years from now. I am not scared, but I do feel overwhelmed. And I also want to share a video that can really tell you what am I thinking right now by HappySlip.

I have not mention this in this blog yet, but before the end of last term, I applied for Management Associate Programme at Malaysia Airlines. And about two weeks ago, I received a call from the Human Resource department inviting me for an interview session on the 2nd February 2008 . And for the past two weeks, I have been preparing myself for that interview. So, now let me tell you about the interview yesterday. The email from MAS did not say specifically how long was the interview session, so I went without a proper knowledge of how the interview was going to be handled. The interview session started at 9, and I arrived around 8.30 in the morning. I went into the building and was greeted by the receptionist. I then registered as a visitor and took the elevator to basement, where the interview was held. When I came down, there were already 4 candidates eating Nasi Lemak (Malaysia Hall) with 4 other MAS’ staff. I introduced myself and join them for breakfast. It was good! My fir...