Grass cutting or pebble spraying

My car got its paint chipped off again! On the way to work today, I didn't manage to see MPSJ cutting grass(spraying pebbles) by road side. When I pass them, I heard a loud pebble connecting to my door sound. On inspection after I parked my car at the office later, found that paint had been chipped off.

I think everyone had problems with the pebble spraying before. MPSJ sends its arsenal of pebble sprayers out nearly every month. I had seen cars with side windows smashed, windscreen smashed and I guess a lot of cars are as unfortunate as mine, with paint chipped off or bodywork dented.

Everyone knows that these pebble sprayers are unsafe when there are cars or motorcycles on the road. Why must they do it every time when people are driving to work when the traffic is at its peak? I wonder if these pebble spraying issue happens elsewhere in other countries or am I stuck in the only country whose town council does not think.

07-07-07

Today is suppose to be a special day. Why? Because the calendar will show three "07". However, other than noticing a lot of people trying to get married on this special day, I don't see it being really special at all.

It is an extremely warm day. Been like this since one or two weeks ago. Makes us hot, irritated and tired. There are also news that the haze will be coming again from our neighboring country. I managed to miss it the previous year by being in another continent. Hope the haze does not come this year as I have no opportunity to escape it this year.

Referring to weddings, there is really a lot of wedding dinner going on this weekend. Maybe everyone thinks that 070707 is a special day for getting married. For those who miss it this year, there is still 080808, 090909, 101010, 111111, 121212. If you are still not married by 2013, then you might have to wait till 2101 for 010101. That's if you can wait that long.

I have nothing special to mention on this special day as it has so far appear to be very ordinary to me. So that's it.

Should we sell Proton to foreigners?

Proton, Malaysian National car maker, which many Malaysian is not so proud of. It is well known for its inferior quality compared to other car makers such as the Japanese or Korean, but I do sincerely hope that it is not inferior to China's product.

A lot of people do not wish to own a Proton, citing its inferior quality as one of the reasons. The only reason people actually buy a Proton is because it is cheaper compared to other cars in Malaysia due to the high taxes placed on imported cars. Because of this, Proton is suffering from very poor sales thus it seems to be generating losses and a lot of Malaysian citizens are urging the government to sell it off as it is wasting the tax payers money. One of the proposed buyer is Volkswagen, the company that had helped revived a few other poor performing car manufacturers.

Must we sell Proton to a foreign car maker? Do we not have local companies with the skills to manage Proton? Or is Proton such a money sucking organization that nobody wants to risk it?

I sincerely hope that Proton would not be sold to a foreigner company thus resulting all our tax payers money going to some foreigners' pocket. I do hope that most Malaysian realize that Malaysia has a lot of polices in place that is very favorable to Proton. I am very sure Malaysians can do a good job of running Proton if they are given the chance.

Proton is our National car. Our RM100 bills bear the picture of Proton. Let this continue to be our National car. Sell Proton, but to some local companies and let them turn the company around. I am sure if in the right hands, Proton can surely revive itself with such favorable policies in place.

And to those trying to think that by selling Proton off, we can get cheap imports, I doubt it will ever happen. Even if it happen, it might be only a 5 to 10% decrease. There are tons of imports on our Malaysian streets. I think a majority of it are on hire purchase schemes. Imagine if suddenly the imports prices become low. Wouldn't that make majority of car owners poorer? So, the best thing is to improve the quality of Proton. Make it a real car. One that the nation can be proud of.

Of course, to achieve this, I am sure all those bumi policies that is slowly crippling our Malaysian economy must be removed from Proton.

Puspakom to vet all used cars to prevent 'kereta potong'

The news today mentioned that the government is going to make it mandatory to have all used cars to be checked and approved by Puspakom before ownership transfer is allowed. Their reason for this move is to prevent cut and joined cars on the road. There could also be a hidden agenda in it, where few years from now, Puspakom inspection might means older cars will not pass the inspection, thus reducing the amount of old vehicles on our road, forcing the citizens to buy new cars.

Anyway, how many of us actually trust Puspakom inspection? Most of us don't even trust SIRIM inspection. I suspect anything inspected in this country can have its result tweaked by political or monetary means. Would this Puspakom be another money sucking machine? I wouldn't be surprise if later years, to sell your car, you will have to pay Puspakom, whether your car is healthy or not healthy will depends on how much you fund Puspakom. If you don't pay, they will just declare your car as not road worthy.

Never slow down to look during accidents

Our FM radio stations in Malaysia usually broadcast traffic reports during peak hours so that motorists can be forewarned about any traffic congestion. Not that the warning can be of any use as there aren't a lot of alternatives route to use. Even if you know that route is congested, you still need to drive into the congestion, just that you are well informed beforehand.

Sometimes, they will also announce accidents that happen on certain stretch of a road. I noticed that they will also give a general advice to the motorists and persuade everyone not to slow down and look. They comment that Malaysian drivers have this mentality to slow down and look at traffic accidents, therefore causing traffic to slow down and causing massive traffic jams.

However, when you really think about it, shouldn't we all slow down when an accident happen? If you see a car crash, should you just resume your normal speed and drive through the site without observing the crash? Wouldn't the victim of the accident need help? Is it common in most developed countries to ignore accident victims?

Actually, I really feel embarrassed that we never ever stop to help strangers. How many of you will stop your car and help if you see a motorcyclist being knocked down? How many of you will try to help if you see a snatch theft? Most people will ask you not to be so "gei poh" as you will "attract a lot of trouble" by helping. Is this how we should behave in the society? Where is all the kindness we studied during our Moral education in school? Had all that education gone to waste?

If an accident happen, traffic will tend to slow down. It is a fact. Small roads plus obstructions at the road side because of accidents will slow down traffic. It is absolute rubbish to speed past accidents. It is because the roads have no emergency lanes and there is no proper authorized personnels to remove those obstructions that cause traffic congestions, not because the drivers slow down to look. Everyone in every country will look, if they are human. This is because they are only human if they are curious and have a heart.

Friday prayers

This post might be provocative. Please ignore this post if you are easily provoked. This is just what strikes my mind while stuck in traffic in a hot Friday afternoon.

 

Today is a Friday. My colleagues decide to have their lunch at a nearby shopping mall. Not feeling like having fast food for lunch today, I decided to have lunch at a nearby normal Chinese stall. Anyway, nearby is not really that near also as I still have to drive there.

It was a quick lunch and I thought I would want to make it back to the office earlier and finish up my work. It was terrible on the way back. I was caught in a jam caused by people on the way to their Friday prayers. It seems like either the mosque do not provide adequate parking or the devotee find it more convenient to park their car at the roadside. So, a normal three lane main road becomes as tight as a 2 lane kampung road with people crossing the road wherever they wish. You will also see a lot of motorcyclist riding without helmet. Maybe because this is prayer time and their God had suddenly made them invincible to traffic accidents.

Do these people realize that it is illegal to park at roadside? Or do they know it is illegal but since they are on their way to prayers, their God will forgive them?

Also, the town council in this area had been actively giving summons and towing away vehicles for illegal parking. You can see them making their rounds everyday, except during Friday prayers. So, did the town council give special privilege to Friday prayers? Or is it because all the officers are also religious and is already inside the mosque doing their prayers?

On a separate note, these prayers also interfere a lot with productivity. Most government offices have to shut down during Friday prayers to accommodate for their staff performing prayers. So, do they extend their business hours on Friday to make up for it? I might be making a false accusation here, but I have a feeling that most of the people who claims they are going for prayers, are actually using that as an excuse to do other stuff such as going to the malls.

Anyway, I have no problems with people going for prayers. Just make sure you don't break the law and become and an inconvenience to others.

P2P networks

Lately, there have been a lot of complaints about bandwidth throttling for p2p network users. Is it ethical for throttling to be in place when the service providers advertise their services as UNLIMITED usage for a fixed fee per month? Their excuses for implementing throttling is that p2p users used up more than 50% of their bandwidth. According to this article, p2p now dominates more than 50% of the bandwidth. From my interpretion of the results, Internet users had evolved from using http to p2p network for file transfer. If p2p network was never introduced in the first place, I figure our Internet users will still consume the same amount of bandwidth, just that it will be in another protocol. If there is not p2p traffic, users will be doing direct http downloads, ftp downloads and even email downloads. So in my opinion, blaming p2p services for congesting their network is not reasonable. Bandwidth throttling is also unreasonable. Imagine this, a person sells you all the water you can take from his pond for one day for a fix amount of $1. After you pay for it, you proceed to bring a pail to scoop the water. Upon arrival at the pond, the owner take away your pail and give you a spoon. Do you think it is fair?

Is it too quiet in the office?

Read an interesting comment today about the noise level in our working environment. I had been in offices where it is really really quiet until you can hear pin drops and you would feel guilty if you breathed too heavily and disturbed the ambiance. I feel it is really uncomfortable to work in such environment, even though it is really pleasant to have the silence when you are concentrating on certain tasks or problems. One of the main reasons I feel that it is so silent is because everyone is afraid that making too much noise would make them look bad by their bosses as their bosses would feel that they are not working hard enough. Nobody dare to chat or laugh even though it is time for tea break. It is really uncomfortable.

On the contrary, a place where it is too noisy would be really bad for productivity as you would not be able to concentrate much on your work. Therefore, I would like to work in a place where we have a quiet area at our workstations where we can concentrate on our work with the occasional 5-10 minutes discussion so that we do not disturb our colleagues. Anything more than that, please take it to the meeting room or if the management can afford it, have a fun/relax area for the staff to take a tea break, brain storm and joke a little without disturbing the rest of the colleagues who are trying hard to WORK in front of their workstations. By the way, if there really is a fun/relax area in my office, I think you will find me there most of the time instead of at my workstation :)