Part 1


Part 2

Please leave your thought if these videos really make you think.

Security has been always a major social issue in Malaysia, you read horrible news on a daily basis. I hope this forwarded email will help, at least to build more awareness around friends.

1. The elbow is the strongest point on your body. If you are close enough to use it, use it! – Kids don’t do this to your siblings.
2. If a robber asks for your wallet and/or purse, DO NOT HAND IT TO HIM.Toss it away from you, chances are that he is more interested in your wallet and / or purse than you and he will go for the wallet or purse. Run like mad in the other direction!
3. If you are ever thrown into the trunk of a car: Kick out the back tail lights and stick your arm out the hole and start waving like crazy. The driver won’t see you but everybody else will. This has saved lives.
4. Women have a tendency to get into their car after shopping,eating,working,etc., and just sit (doing their check book, or making a list, etc.) DON’T DO THIS! The predator will be watching you, and this is the perfect opportunity for him to get in on the passenger side, put a gun to your head, and tell you where to go.
5. As soon as you get into your car, lock the doors and leave.
6. A Few Notes About Getting Into Your Car In a Parking Lot,or Parking:
   • Be aware: look around you; look into your car, at the passenger
     side floor, and in the back seat. (And check out under the car as you
     approach.)
   • If you’re parked next to a big van you should enter your car from
     the passenger door. Most serial killers attack their victims by pulling them into their vans while the women are attempting to get into their cars.
   • Look at the car parked on the driver’s side of your vehicle and the
     passenger side. If a male is sitting alone in the seat nearest your car,you may want to walk back into the mall, or work, and get a guard/policeman to walk you back out. IT IS ALWAYS BETTER TO BE SAFE THAN SORRY. (And better paranoid than dead.)
7. ALWAYS take the elevator instead of the stairs. (Stairwells are
   horrible places to be alone and the perfect crime spot).
8. If the predator has a gun and you are not under his control,ALWAYS
   RUN! The predator will only hit you (a running target) 4 in 100 times; And even then, it most likely WILL NOT be a vital organ, RUN!
9. As women, we are always trying to be sympathetic: STOP IT! It may get you raped, or killed. Ted Bundy, the serial killer, was a good-looking,well educated man, who ALWAYS played on the sympathies of unsuspecting women? He walked with a cane, or a limp, and often asked”for help” into his vehicle or with his vehicle, which is when he abducted his next victim.
10. Someone just told me that her friend heard a crying baby on her porch the night before last, and she called the police because it was late and she thought it was weird. The police told her “Whatever you do, DO NOT open the door.” The lady then said that it sounded like the baby had crawled near a window, and she was worried that it would crawl to the street and get run over. The policeman said, “We already have a unit on the way, whatever you do,DO NOT open the door.”

    He told her that they think a serial killer has a baby cry recorder and uses it to coax women out of their homes thinking that someone dropped off a baby. He said they have not verified it, but have had several calls by women saying that they heard baby cries outside their doors ! when they’re home alone at night. Please pass this on! and DO NOT open the door for a crying baby.

And please remember, if someone ever threaten you with your life, you seriously don’t have to show him how civilized/educated you are, take every single chance you can to kick him in his balls hard enough to make him throw them out. Or, you can also consider devices like pepper spray and tazer.

I once saw a product, like a tiny siren device. A loud and noisy beeping sound will go off when pressed. I don’t recommend using that, it’s like shouting at the criminal’s face to make him goes berserk.

Please try to forward this information as you see fit.

Shaun Boyd on Lifereboot.com has written his own ‘10 Reasons It Doesn’t Pay To Be “The Computer Guy”‘, definitely worths your time. Find out the irony facts that being a “Computer Guy”, if you have been working in computer support, this is something you don’t want to miss.

Background
Ma Yan was 13 when writing her stunning diary, during that time she and her brother were studying in a boarding school 12.5 miles away from her home, Zhangjiashu Village, NingXia, China. The only transportation available was farm tractor, which charged RMB$ 1 per trip at that time. They did not have the money to travel by it so they took 5 hours to walk back to home during weekends.

Her mother gave them RMB$ 4 per week to spend on meals in the school. RMB$ 4 equals to MYR$ 2, and roughly USD$ 0.60. They could only afford Mantou(a kind of bread for Chinese which flour is the only ingredient), and plain rice.

Some excerpts of the book below are taken from various sources.
#1

We have a week off. Mum said, ‘Honey, there is something I want to tell you…. I’m afraid this is your last time to go to school. You know we cannot afford it if you three kids go to school, because only your father works in other places.’

I said, ‘Then I have to stay at home?’

‘Yes,’ Mum said.

‘What about my brothers?’ I asked.

‘They must continue studying.’

I asked mum why boys can go to school but girls cannot.

‘You are not grown up enough to understand all these until one day you are a mother,’ Mum explained.

This year, I cannot go to school, I’m back to do farm work to support my brothers. I felt like was at school each time I recalled the laughter of my classmates. If only I could go.

#2

This afternoon, when I want to start writing my diary, I can’t find my pen…. I’m distraught

You’re probably going to start laughing. “A pen. What a minor thing to get so distressed about!”

If only you knew the trouble I had to [go through] to get that pen. I saved up my pocket money for two weeks. Some of my comrades have two or three pens, but I had none, and I couldn’t resist buying one.

The difficulties I confronted in getting this pen mirror all my other problems. My mother had given me some money with which to buy bread. For days, I had only eaten yellow rice. I preferred going hungry and economizing so that I could buy the pen. How I suffered for that pen!

A fund has been raised in order to help other kids in NingXia to go to school. The site is at http://enfantsduningxia.uk.over-blog.com/. As of today, Ma Yan is entitled to 25% of the book’s royalties. She’s withdrawing RMB$ 500 per month for her education and family every month.

Ma Yan is just one girl that got lucky, among millions of other kids in the world that can’t afford to go to school.

Sources
http://www.zonaeuropa.com/20041213_1.htm
http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/04/19/005503.php
http://portal.unesco.org/education/en/ev.php-URL_ID=32750&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html

This book can be purchased at Amazon.com

Anyway, I’m now stucked with Celcom’s 3G Plan. Not an ideal connection for heavy data user like me, even loading this blog is at “snail” speed. Better to save my posts in drafts on my local drive. Connection is my life, this is a recognized fact among friends.

After these few days of hard work(moving furnitures here and there), I started to worry about my HEALTH. I seriously need some fixes, offline stuff, can’t go on like this.

Like it?

This is my first blog entry with Internet Explorer 7, on Windows XP Professional. Got this IBM T-42 laptop sometime ago from a friend, I think I’ll let it stay the way it is, don’t really have the urge to install linux on it.

So, please be ready for a full load of updates in this blog, I’m back in action again!

Expose War Crimes: Criminalise War. This is the title of a series of events being held at Putra World Trade Center, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, from February 5th to 11th, 2007. The events include conference and exhibition, organized by Perdana Global Peace Organization. That place is kind of far for me to pay a visit, but thanks to the Internet and bloggers, photos and excerpts are available online.

Now, get to the conference. Let’s look at the list of speakers.

1. Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad Keynote Speaker
2. Mr. Hans von Sponeck Former UN Asst. Secretary General
3. Prof Michel Chossudovsky Internationally renowned Economics Professor
4. Mr. Michael Carmichael Author and Founder of the Planetary Movement
5. Ms. Leuren Moret Internationally renowned expert on depleted uranium
6. Mr. Greg Palast Internationally renowned journalist and author
7. Mr. Gwynne Dyer Internationally renowned author and journalist
8. Ms. Rana Al Alouby Internationally renowned journalist from Iraq
9. Prof. Ms. Niloufer Bhagwat President, Indian Lawyers Association and InternationalTribunal judge
10. Dr. Christopher Busby Scientific Secretary of European Committee on Radiation Risk
11. Prof. Shoji Sawada Physicist, Hiroshima survivor and expert witness on radiation issues
12. Mr. Alfred Lambremont Webre International lawyer with experience in War Crimes Tribunal
13. Prof. Ms. Paola Manduca Professor of Genetics, University of Genoa, Italy
14. Mr. Dirk Adriaensens Founder member of Brussels War Crimes Tribunal
15. Ms. Hana Bayaty Member of Executive Committee of Brussels War Crimes Tribunal and renowned writer and journalist
16. Dr. Walid Al-Khatib Palestinian Peace Activistist
17. Mr. Mohammad Umar Chairman of Ramadan Foundation, UK
18. Ms. Cynthia McKinny USA Congresswoman
19. Mr. Ibrahim El Moussawi Editor in chief of Hezbollah weekly, Al Intiqad and Al Manar TV, Lebanon
20. Mr. Ali Shalah Former detainee in US prison in Iraq
21. Dr. Saeed H. Al Musawi Former Permanent Representative to UN
22. Ms. Anjun Anwar Education Officer, Ramadhan Trust, UK

Something pierced my eyes badly when I browsed through Jeff’s post of ‘Will the real “Prisoner in the Hood” please stand up?‘.

Quotes:

This Israeli dressed in civilian clothes tortured me by inserting, firstly, a jagged wooden stick into my rectum and then later, with the barrel of a rifle. I was cut inside and bled profusely. During this time, when any guard walked past me, they would beat me. I had no food for 36 hours.

I told him that I had an operation. He then pulled the bandage which was stained with blood from my hand and in doing so, tore the skin and flesh from my hand. I was in great pain and when I asked him for some painkillers, he stepped on my hands and said “This is American painkiller” and laughed at me.

Above quotes were taken from slides presented by Mr. Ali Shalah, during his speech. He was detained in Abu Ghraib prison(west of Baghdad) in 2003 and 2004(Six months). His news can be found in New York Times’s March 11, 2006 post here,but later denied by NYTimes on March 17, 2006, here.

I have no comment on this, read carefully the stories published in the links above to get your answer of conscience. For more details in this conference, please visit Jeff’s post at ‘Will the real “Prisoner in the Hood” please stand up?‘, and ‘Criminalise War‘. Thanks Jeff for his informative post on this event.

Now the exhibition. LensaMalaysia.com has a collection of photos here. Wonderful job from guys at LensaMalaysia.com.

By the way, look at this video of Dr M introducing this event. Not too late for a 81 year old man to catch up with the technology eh? Don’t you think he looks cuter now?

Youtube.com original link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4YvF8JiA7M

Dr M has been nominated for Nobel Peace Prize 2007.

One last quote from Agata Christie:

One is left with the horrible feeling now that war settles nothing, that to win a war is as disastrous as to lose one.

Please, regardless of your nationality, try your best to say NO to any kind of war that kills.

*The Mayonnaise Jar and 2 Cups of Coffee*

When things in your life seem almost too much to handle, when 24 hours in a day are not enough, remember the mayonnaise jar and the 2 cups of coffee.

A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him. When the class began, he wordlessly picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls. He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was.

The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open reas between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was.

The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Ofcourse, the sand filled up everything else. He asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with an unanimous “yes.”

The professor then produced two cups of coffee from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar effectively filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed.

“Now,” said the professor as the laughter subsided, “I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the important things—God, your family, your children, your health, your friends and your favorite passions—and if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full.

The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job,your house and your car.

The sand is everything else—the small stuff. “If you put the sand into the jar first,” he continued, “there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff you will never have room for the things
that are important to you.

“Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Play with your children. Spend time with your parents. Visit with grandparents. Take time to get medical checkups. Take your spouse out to dinner. Play another 18. There will always be time to clean the house and fix the disposal. Take care of the golf balls first—the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand.”

One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the coffee represented. The professor smiled.

“I’m glad! you asked. It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem, there’s always room for a couple of cups of coffee with a friend.”

I’m quite ashamed after reading this, there’s too much IT stuffs I want to get into, too much stuffs I want to learn, and I miss my weekly family dinner quite often. It’s time for a change, make this my 2007’s resolution, more time with my family.

Thanks to Jerlynn, a nice girl studying in Singapore. Salutation to the original poster of this story.