Blacksmith Rd

Wandering around Malacca, I came across Jalan Tukang Besi which literally means Blacksmith Road. Well guess what? There are I think only 2 of these geezers left and it seems that they are the last of a dying breed.

It's quite funny though, as you follow the Heritage Trail of Malacca, the last thing you would expect to see on the trail are blacksmiths but hey, they are part of the trail and that's what make them special.

Notice the the road sign is actually made of wood

Once Upon A Time

I was in Malacca this morning attending to a matter at the Melaka High Court. With a little bit of spare time, I thought I'd go for some sight-seeing with my handy Leica.

Well as you can see the photos here are of the places of worship of the various races in Malaysia. The 1st picture is the one of the Christ Church built in 1753, followed by pictures 2 & 3 of Masjid Kampung Kling. No. 4 is the Cheng Hoon Teng temple dedicated to the goddess Kwan Yin. It was built in 1673 and is supposedly the nation's oldest functioning temple. No. 5 is the Chetty temple.

The beauty of these places of worship is not that they are buildings of religious & historical value but that they are virtually built next to each other and are in close proximity. Perhaps once upon a time in Malaysia people were more tolerant and respectful towards each others' religious beliefs.

Current Playlist

Priceless

Pulau Penang High Court

It took me approximately 16 hours to complete my hearing at the Penang High Court today. This is how a typical day of a peguam in Malaysia can look like :

4.00 a.m. : Wake up time

4.30 a.m. : started the drive to Penang

8.30 a.m. : arrive at the Penang High Court

8.45 a.m. : filed 2 affidavits relating to the hearing I was conducting

9.00 a.m. : registered my name with the court interpreter and inspected the court file to obtain the enclosure numbers of the documents in the court file

9.05 a.m - 2.00 p.m. : waited for the matter to be called ( & while waiting I also did the following : talked cock with fellow lawyers, listened to the ipod, watched BJJ videos on the ipod, went to toilet, came back from toilet, thought about the drive home to KL, had a sudden craving for Char Kuey Teow, suppressed the sudden craving for Char Kuey Teow, reflected on whether I was a good father to my 2 girls etc)

2.05 p.m : matter called and went into chambers to see the Judge

2.10 p.m. : hearing completed

2.15 p.m. : had One Tonne Mee at the Rio Hotel & Kedai Kopi

3.00 p.m. : went for a workout at Clark Hatch @ the Heritage Club

4.30 p.m. : started the journey back to KL

8.30 p.m. : arrived back home

Out of 16 hours, only 5 minutes was related to 'work'. Ok what!

When The Going Gets Tough...

KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 23 — A prominent political blogger was jailed for two years under a strict security law that can keep him in prison indefinitely, a lawyer said today.

Online commentator Raja Petra Kamarudin, known for his anti-government views, was already in police custody and was served a detention order last night, said his lawyer Malik Imtiaz Sarwar.

Another of his lawyers, J. Chandra, confirmed that Raja Petra has been sent to Kamunting under Section 8(1) of the ISA which states that "if the Minister is satisfied that the detention of any person is necessary with a view to preventing him from acting in any manner prejudicial to the security of Malaysia or any part thereof or to the maintenance of essential services therein or the economic life thereof, he may make an order (hereinafter referred to as a detention order) directing that the person be detained for any period not exceeding two years."

The order was signed by Home Minister Datuk Syed Hamid Albar, who has said Raja Petra's writings pose a threat to national security by creating racial tension.

Raja Petra’s wife Marina Lee Abdullah said today: "The police informed me that my husband has been sent to Kamunting this morning and that he will remain there for two years with no trial. This is the worst news I can receive but we will keep fighting for his release."

"This is dirty foul play by the government as they know that we are in the process of fighting for his release in the court but I was expecting this," she said.

Raja Petra's lawyers were pushing for his release in a habeas corpus hearing today but Marina said the detention order had upset their plans. The habeas corpus hearing, meanwhile, has been postponed to Oct 28 after preliminary objections from the DPP against the defence application that with the new order under Section 8 of the ISA served on Raja Petra today, it was no longer relevant to rely on the earlier application filed under Section 73 (1).

Chandra said the defence would be filing a fresh application against the Section 8 order.

Raja Petra has increasingly infuriated authorities by publishing numerous claims about alleged wrongdoings by government leaders on his popular site, Malaysia-Today, which serves as his blog as well as a news portal. The government has denounced most of Raja Petra's allegations as lies.

Raja Petra was arrested on Sept 12 under the Internal Security Act, which allows an initial detention of two months for investigation, followed by a two-year jail period that can be renewed indefinitely.

He will be held at the Kamunting Detention Centre in Perak. The centre houses detainees held under the security law, most of whom are suspected Islamic extremists.

Raja Petra's arrest triggered widespread protests by civil society groups, lawyers and other online commentators. Along with Raja Petra, authorities also arrested an opposition lawmaker and a journalist on Sept 12, but they were released subsequently.

The ISA is a holdover from British colonial days, when it was used against communist insurgents. Independent Malaysia's post-colonial government has kept it in the statute books and has used it sparingly against political dissidents, ignoring calls from opposition groups and others to disband the law.

Those interested in signing the online petition to free Raja Petra Kamaruddin , the Hindraf 5 and others held under the Internal Security Act may do so here : http://www.petitiononline.com/isa1234/petition.html

Can An Average Person Do This?

Like a lot of other guys out there, I love my UFC. The discipline that these guys have and not to mention their mental toughness is to put it mildly, awe-inspiring. I've watched this fight quite a few times on the Mac and I can appreciate the hours these guys have to put in to get to where they are today.

While not aspiring to be like these athletes, I sometimes have to ask myself, can I even put in 10% of what these guys put in to be in shape and not get a heart attack by the age of 40? Oklah, 5%. Well in the past year the waist has gone down to size 36 from God knows what previously (too shy to mention).

To put things in perspective, I've only attended 2 BJJ classes in the past month and have basically given gym a miss since Lordz of Pain in March.

Sigh, it's a bloody long and winding road.

P/S : sorry but the voice/sound is out of sync with the video, but enjoy the fight nevertheless. It's between Yoshiyuki Yoshida & Jon “War Machine” Koppenhaver in UFC 84 "Ill Will"

Keep It Up Astro!

Astro tried to cheat me that day lah..2 of my olympic channels didn't have any transmission & so I called up Astro. Told them about it & at the same time also told them my other channels eg AFC, Channel V etc also gets no transmission.

So the guy on the phone said, they will send a technician over. The sports Olympic channel can be fixed for free but Channel V etc have to charge. So I said why some charge & some not charge since since I am paying monthly and Astro is not delivering?

Astro's reply : oh the olympic channel problem we have been having some technicalities but the other channels is due to hardware problems ie decoder and that my decoder is out of warranty. So I told him if it's decoder problem I shouldn't be getting ANY channels. Then Astro fella on the phone bullshit and say Channel V & the other channels is on a different higher frequency...aiyo wanna bluff oso bluff properly lah.

Anyway later their independent technician came and fix everything for no charge lah. KNN PKM Astro

Langkawi Cable Car

We just came back from Pulau Langkawi yesterday and I must say I was pretty impressed by what it has to offer. One of the places we stopped by was the Langkawi Cable Car which took us from the base of Gunung Mat Chinchang to its peak where you will initially stop at the Middle Station where you can walk along the 'suspension bridge' and test yourself for vertigo..lol. Although the bridge is a marvel of engineering, the winds up there can be strong which sways the bridge somewhat, and believe me that by itself can give you the shakes.

After this, you can then board back the gondolas, which will take you to the Top Station which is approximately 450 meters up to the peak of Gunung Mat Chinchang. There will be 2 viewing platforms here and apparently this is THE spot for a golden sunset in Langkawi.

If you ever decide to visit this place equipping yourself with a good camera is a definite must.

FARES

Adults RM25.00
Children (3 – 12 yrs old) RM18.00
Students (Letter from School required) RM18.00

Note:
Discount price will be given to Malaysians with MYKAD, purchase at ticket counter only.

OPERATING HOURS
Monday – Thursday 10.00am - 18.00pm
Wednesday 12.00pm - 18.00pm
Friday – Sunday & Public Holiday 09.30am - 19.00pm

Sports Day

The kids had their sports day this morning. The weather held up and everyone had a fun day out.

The kids won 1 gold medal each under their respective discipline i.e. the Potato Dribble and the Bounce & Thread. Parents were not left out as 10 pairs of parents took part too as you can see from the pics

Raja Musang

Meet my new friend, the Raja Musang. Today I had a chance to meet Raja Musang again after a first encounter 2 weeks ago. I am sad to inform you that things didn't go down well for him. Durians nowadays have such fancy names. We started off with the Red Prawn, then on to the Margerine and finally to Raja Musang.

Somehow you just know that this stuff is bad for you when it tastes this good!

So everything in moderation lah.

Run, Fat Boy, Run

I came across this article at Time.com. Maybe we can draw some inspiration from it

That runner's high may translate into a lot of other long-lasting health benefits, a new report from an ongoing study suggests. Researchers have found that regular jogging, or any consistent aerobic exercise, in middle age and late in life may reduce people's risk of disabilities and help them live longer and healthier.

The study published this week in the Archives of Internal Medicine tracked two groups of people - "ever-runners" and "never-runners" - over two decades beginning in 1984 : 538 people who run regularly, the majority of whom were selected from a national running club, along with a control group of 423 people who never run. ll participants were age 50 or older when the study began. Aside from their exercise habits, the two groups were demographically matched, similar in lifestyle habits, ethnicity and physical characteristics like weight. Each volunteer was asked to complete an annual questionnaire from 1985 through 2005 that traced their health status, including body mass index (a ratio of height to weight used to determine obesity), levels of disability and how much exercise they got.

Not surprisingly, the data showed that exercise was a boon to health. Over the years, compared with the never-exercisers, people who exercised regularly - in addition to running, activities included biking, aerobic dance and swimming - showed improved aerobic capacity, better cardiovascular fitness, increased bone mass, fewer inflammatory markers, less physical disability, better response to vaccinations and even improved thinking, learning and memory. They also lived significantly longer. What surprised researchers, however, was that those health differences persisted - survival and disability rates, in particular, continued to diverge for the two groups - over the course of the study. As the volunteers entered their seventh and eighth decades of life, many of the runners discontinued the activity and took up less strenuous activities like walking, but their health benefits endured.

Although the study focused on runners, the benefits appear to accrue from any vigorous aerobic exercise. In fact, the data suggested that even a little bit of exercise was better than none. A few of the volunteers from the non-running group did break a sweat sometimes, if not in a prolonged, consistent way - they reported having run for more than one month at a time - and even that short period of regular aerobic exercise appeared to have created positive health benefits, For avid runners, more good news: the study found no significant difference between the condition of joints in pavement pounders and their more sedentary peers.

Ok What!

A Fresh Start

Today marks my first lesson of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu at Crush under Prof Marcos Escobar. I have previously rolled with the guys at Crush on Open Mat Saturdays, so I wasn't a total stranger there. The crew there were friendly and outgoing and overall it was a fun class.

As usual a telling point was my fitness or lack thereof. I was gassed within 30 minutes of class while we were still doing our conditioning exercises. Although it's tough (for me!) it will probably be good for me in the long run. I need some serious toughening up and Crush should be the place to do it.

The schedule at Crush for BJJ is as follows :

TUESDAYS & THURSDAYS
from 9:00pm to 10:30pm

SATURDAYS
week review & open mats session
6:00pm - 7:00pm GI
7:00pm - 8:00pm NO GI

The address and contact are as follows :

No. 8-3 JALAN PJU 5/10
DATARAN SUNWAY
KOTA DAMANSARA

tel. +6012 2206 064
email. ebjj@live.com


SEE YOU GUYS THERE

A Crying Shame!

Poverty has forced a senior citizen in Desa Jeram Batu, near Kuala Lipis, to live in a chicken coop.

Shamsiah Samat, 57, has been living with dozens of chickens and geese for four years. She rears them to make extra money.

"I used to stay with relatives, but I moved out when they asked me to pay rent."

Before that, she had lived in a squatter house near the Pahang Club House. Built by her late father, it had collapsed eight years ago.

"Before that, my family lived in a rakit house (boat house) but it was swept away during the floods in 1971."

She said her father had tried to apply for state land but was not successful. He died at the age of 98 in 1993.

Shamsiah, who is a spinster, said she was told that she was not entitled to apply for a house under the hard core poor housing programme because she was not a single mother.

"They said I must own a piece of land before I can get the cash aid to build a house."

Shamsiah who is entitled to RM100 in monthly aid from the Welfare Department claimed that, sometimes, she did not receive the money.

"I rent this chicken coop for RM50 a month but there are times when the owner does not ask for the rent."

Shamsiah leaves her home at 7am every day to go to work in a grocery store and returns around 7pm.

"I have no choice but to walk to the town every day because I only get paid RM13 daily," she said, adding that her wish was to own a proper house before she dies.


WTF! Living in a chicken coop and paying rent for it! Even chickens don't want to live in chicken coops anymore. Man, sometimes I am really disappointed with the authorities (that would be putting it mildly). Come Ramadhan next month and we will have a lot of our Muslim friends going overboard with the breaking of fast at fancy restaurants/hotels. Shiiit..what a contrast that is going to be.

Honda, Werld Bess Sella

Honda Malaysia which has been selling the Civic Hybrid for the past 1 year, has through its managing director and chief executive officer Atsushi Fujimoto called upon the government to reduce taxes for hybrid cars to enable more people to buy these economical and environment-friendly vehicles. At the same time, he said incentives should be given to manufacturers and importers who bring hybrid models into the local market.

Well I suppose that's one way to reduce the burden of the rakyat since these hybrid cars do reduce petrol consumption and more importantly carbon emissions. But I think it would be better to just improve the public transport system nationwide and to reduce the amount of vehicles on the roads.

That's easier said than done, but hey that's another story altogether

Current Playlist

Seems like I am stuck in time but these are the albums currently in my playlist on iTunes

Leader of all Malaysians? Errrr.....Ok!

Reproduced from the Malaysian Insider

The leader of all Malaysians. Once it captured the spirit of optimism that accompanied Abdullah Ahmad Badawi into office as the country's fifth prime minister.

Today, it is a reminder of what should have been; what could have been; another unfulfilled promise by a politician who promised to blur the racial and religious lines but ended up delivering an even more polarized nation five years on. The leader of all Malaysians.

Once it offered the umbrella of comfort for non-Muslims, planting hope among the 45 per cent of the country's population that the difficult issues of conversion, places of worship and freedom of religion would be tackled.Today, these five words have been buried by a community feeling increasingly despondent about their place here and the ability of important institutions to protect the rights of all Malaysians.

The numbers tell the story. A comprehensive survey on political developments since Election 2008 show that only 18 per cent of the 3,000 people polled identified Abdullah as the leader of all Malaysians, with only 7.3 per cent Chinese believing that he had done enough to deserve the moniker. Generally, more Indians and Chinese feel that he protects the interests of Malays more than he looks after the other races.

Even the anecdotal evidence suggests that the despair is coursing through the veins of many non-Muslims. Datuk A. Vaithalingam has always been a straight-talker. He never fudged or hedged when he was a top official in the golden era of the Malaysian sports scene, the days when the country's football team was a source of national pride and Isthiaq Mubarak was clearing hurdles at the Olympics.

But he outdid himself last Wednesday. Speaking as the president of the Malaysian Consultative Council of Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Sikhism and Taoism, he gave a candid appraisal of the non-Muslim sentiment in the country to Abdullah.

"I must report to you that many non-Muslims feel marginalised in today's Malaysia. There is growing discomfort with the rapid Islamisation of our society. Universal values of ethical conduct and good governance, values which are shared by all religions, are appropriated by some to be only "Islamic", '' he said at the 25th anniversary of the council.

He cautioned the Prime Minister - the guest-of-honour - that unless concrete steps were taken to assure 45 per cent of Malaysia's population of fair treatment, the outflow of talent from the country would continue unabated.

Abdullah thanked him for his honesty and made the usual sounds on the need to be fair to all races. But even the PM knows that his government has not come close to delivering on any promises to non-Muslims since he came to power in October 2003.

Questions of body snatching or the status of burial rights for non-Muslims whose conversion to Islam was unknown to the dead person's family remain unresolved.

Abdullah promised to put in place a mechanism after the nastiness surrounding the burial of Everest hero Moorthy in 2006.

Little has changed since then. Similarly, there has been some disquiet over the plight of mothers whose husbands convert to Islam and then, avoid their commitments under the civil law to their former family. Non Muslims are unhappy that the courts are allowing one parent to convert children to Islam even if the other parent does not consent.

Vaithilingam also noted: "In schools, our children are not permitted to and do not get education in their own religion. Moral lessons are reportedly vetted by the Islamic authorities.''

His litany of complaints on Wednesday was long.

This is not the first time that the council has voiced their displeasure at the state of neglect over the interests of non-Muslims. Deep down, they know that Abdullah is not prepared to champion these issues, not when his own position in the country is precarious.

But they cannot keep the lid on the percolating discontent among the non-Muslims. That is why many of the religious groups backed the move by the Bar Council to proceed with its controversial public forum on conversion to Islam on Saturday.

The forum was eventually stopped by the organizers on the advice of police and threats by Muslim non-governmental groups.

Truth to be told, little good would have emerged from a forum not represented by major Muslim players such as Parti Islam SeMalaysia, Umno and Jakim. But in the absence of any meaningful moves by the government or political parties to resolve issues related to conversion, non-Muslims are prone to support any group willing to discussing these matters.

Abdullah and other Umno leaders have urged the Bar Council and other bodies to discuss sensitive matters behind closed doors but the Prime Minister will know from recent experience that this approach does not guarantee any progress. For example, he knows that many of his Umno colleagues in Cabinet are either against or ambivalent about promoting dialogue between Muslims and non-Muslims. That is why Datuk Shafie Apdal's proposal to have more dialogue on national unity was shot down vigorously by an Umno minister during a recent Cabinet meeting.

A cabinet minister, who declined to be identified, told the Malaysian Insider: "Shafie did not get much support.

Pak Lah did not say much and neither did Najib. It could because this is the Umno election season and nobody wants to do anything which will upset party members. But it could also be in-built mechanism against dealing with any difficult issue, whether judicial reform or other reforms.''

There is little doubt that the party grassroots is ambivalent about reform - and this is a charitable interpretation.

During recent branch meetings, Umno members were focused on Malay unity - specifically the need to stay as one and fight off demands from the increasingly vocal non-Malay population.

There was little discussion on the need to shed the party's perceived arrogance and refill the depleting bank of non-Malay support.

Against this backdrop and with the upcoming party elections in December, no national leader is going to champion the cause of non-Muslims and risk alienating the Muslim constituency.

Certainly not the man who once said that he was the leader of all Malaysians. That claim rings hollow among many non-Muslims today.

Quico' Farewell Party

Group Pic

Marcos, Fang & Quico

Master Chef Raul

Prem & Chris doing what they do best

The bunch of us hung out tonight at Fang's place for Quico's farewell dinner. Quico, as you may well know has decided to retire to Bali. It was an opportunity to catch up with the guys and to strenghten existing ties between the guys from Brutal BJJ, Crush MMA and KDTA.

Special thanks to Fang for hosting us and also to Raul for manning the barbecue pit thus ensuring that none of us left the party with an empty stomach. Viva la Mexico!

Get the original sized jpegs here (for a limted time only) : http://public.me.com/kenu13