As Suanie Sees It

1. Is that really her? I seem to remember that she has curly hair.

2. If it’s her, why she so dumb go and pose in a shoot like that?

Idiot.

Assorted stuff and photos for Deeparaya, Deepavali, Hari Raya Aidilfitri, Halloween, Putrajaya, KY, ShaolinTiger, Toys’R'Us, toes, cam whoring.

I would like to wish you all SELAMAT DEEPARAYA!!! No? Then Uncle Viewtru has something to tell you.

I’ve been seeing some Rangoli around, here’s Midvalley’s effort for this year.

The stage was for performances at certain times. I happened to pass by the area during one of the performances, it was really good so I hung around for a bit.

They played these tunes without stopping : some old Chinese tune, Selamat Hari Raya (yes I know there are many Selamat Hari Raya songs, this was the one that goes ‘Selamat Hari Raya, kepada saudara serta saudari, setahun hanya sekali’ etc), Never on Sunday, Love You More Than I Can Say, Gong Xi Gong Xi. Then there was a pause, and they continued with Chan Mali Chan and a P.Ramlee song, then I had to go off somewhere.

But I tell you this, standing there listening to them play, I’d never felt so Malaysian in my life.

At Midvalley’s Carrefour, I saw some of the employees making a Rangoli.

There was also a small one at PJ State’s Tenaga Nasional.

I didn’t manage to take much photos of Hari Raya decorations. Here’s Midvalley’s Hari Raya decor for this year (minus performance).

Last year they had a kampung house setting, I liked that better. Anyway to make up for my not-so-many photos for Hari Raya, I am willing to be your DBKL/ MPPJ. Just e-mail me your phone number and I’ll be at your house during the first and second days of Hari Raya and I’ll personally show you how apologetic I am.

This is a backlog photo. ShaolinTiger has a friend, yay!

A lot of people are seriously pissing me off. Will see what happens after the holidays.

KY thought it would be too lonely to renew his IC at Putrajaya alone, so he got me to tag along. It was my first time to Putrajaya.

It felt like we were in another country!

Totally unrelated, we have freaky toes.

I bought another insurance plan yesterday. Broke broke broke.

Plastic wigs from Toys ‘R Us.

And Janice is exploring her life options.

And that’s almost it.

I would like to wish all of ye a Happy Halloween!!!

That’s it.

On 1st December 1955 when my mother was nearly 6 years old, something happened in a land far far away where the law stated and allowed for segregation and discrimination based on skin colour, painfully obvious in-your-face racism. Rosa Parks, an African-American woman in Montgomery, Alabama refused to give up her seat in the middle section of a public bus even after being told to do so by the bus driver when a Caucasian man wanted a seat in the same section. The public act of defiance led to her getting arrested and jailed, and triggered a massive civil rights movement that changed America’s history. You can read more about the boycotting of public transport here, and some bits about Rosa Parks here.

Sweet. But let’s not forget that Rosa Parks was not just tired of sometimes the bus drivers taking fares then zoomed off when she had to get down to go to the end of the bus. She was also heavily involved in the NAACP. While there are some who claim that there were other people who refused to give up their seats prior to Rosa Parks but were not accredited accordingly, I say bad luck and timing lah, she was the secretary of NAACP and the powers that be thought that her story served a nicer inspiration.

This kind of thing also want to dispute. Sien. Why not discuss and dispute this? Is it right to want to preserve cultural aspects based on race and genes bordering on racism?

Anyway there are many types of racism and a lot of forms of racism are still heavily practised today. In our modern politically correct world, direct discrimination like in Rosa Park’s case will be met with outright rage and disbelief, and if you are the person or company practising it, serves you right lah.

But then the theories of racism and discrimination are ideas that evolved with time. What was seen as acceptable in the olden times when people were not as anal as today (one of the reasons was due to lack of platform opportunities for the discriminated back then) can be widely protested against today, disputable as they are. As I mentioned before, I was reading a book on Richard Feynman and during his later days he faced much protest when his first autobiography “Surely You Must Be Joking, Mr. Feynman” was published. Women rights campaigners lobbied against his choice of words they defined as ’sexist’ and ‘male-chauvinistic’, discriminating women in science. So now you have a whole discussion or argument on whether or not R.F.’s own words acted out during his time were right or wrong, and/or could and could not be read/published today. Grey area, I am not going into it, never ending discussion.

I often have conversations with KY other than superficial stuff like men, women, beer, blogs and koi pond. It was pointed out that many companies in the States practise reverse racism and not unlike Malaysia it is actually legal. So something like a company has 3 top spots available, and one of the three top spots has to go to a person who is the most qualified in his race, and not the most qualified in the entire country regardless of race. On the surface it doesn’t sound right and it is quite patronising at the expense of the company’s productivity and performance.

BUT then, factors like basic human rights are not always equal, each slice of the pie is often not the same shape and size and some people may not even get the pie. Translated, certain opportunities available to some people may not necessarily be available to others, and most of the time they are due to background and money. When you already have something so segregated like that, quality of education in public and private schools for example, the chances of getting the pie often is slim to none, which I don’t think is fair. Not to say that reverse racism is fair to those who have had or could have such opportunities, but these social factors must be taken into consideration.

Money makes the world go round. In many aspects, money can buy you better health, longevity and can even give you the healthiest, more ‘durable’ kids what with all the genetic research. It is happening already; what is scary is that it will eventually be discrimination based on genes, the whole Gattaca scenario where you will no longer be a second class race, but a second class human. In that scenario, given a person who had all the benefits that money could buy including tempering of genes and a person who have not such benefits who would have to take sick leaves now and then, both of equal knowledge and education and experience - based on competence and future-productivity level, which person do you think the company would hire?

Scary scary scary. All boils down to a suitable balance between socialism and capitalism. But… who can play God?

Just my Thursday thoughts.

With the increasing popularity of blogs, they are a great platform to present your voice on issues to a greater audience. Beats running naked on the street reciting a whole paragraph of what-nots. But with the focus on blogs and the cheaper and wider availability of the Internet, things changed. Three years ago you can still blog about your neigbours’ stupid smelly fat cat desecrating your garden or how his stupid fat daughter walks like a clumsy pumpkin lump or how they are so ugly that their momma left them for good. Try it today and somehow in the near future you may just be sued for libel.

Either you grow up or you don’t. If you don’t then don’t blame other people for voicing their opinions also. It’s the fucking INTERNET.

Free speech? Free speech my ass. Can I just quote T-Boy’s words on this? Hmm I think I will.

That ‘Fundamental Right’

And then there’s the ‘fundamental inalieable right to Free Speech’. While many people focus on the right to say whatever you like without fear of censorship, I say ‘bullshit’.

Freedom of Speech means freedom of living to the consequences of what you say. While you can say what you like online, you’re never, never free from consequence.

The government may not be able to do a thing to you4, but that doesn’t mean that what you say can’t get you fired, or get you verbally slapped around like a two-buck whore online, or cause your friends or lovers to leave you.

Welcome To The Land of Shut The Fuck Up

And so you do and must censor yourself. You think to yourself, “Can I say this? Is this right?” before posting your vitriol across the public wire. Of course you must. Being free to speak doesn’t mean you are free from being told, in very firm words, to be quiet.

As a matter of fact, as a Citizen of the Internet, you are allowed to speak whatever you like. Freedom to speak doesn’t mean that you must be listened or that your words deserve immortality. You are free to speak. What happens next is not up to you.

And frankly, like religious bigotry and outright stupidity, racism is hardly a defensible thing. You want to get in trouble, get in trouble by yourself. I’m not defending you, not because I do not care about free speech, but I have better time defending the right to the free speech of others who are more deserving.

That was from his post So You’re Getting Fucking Persecuted about the two S’porean bloggers who kena charged and jailed. The content of his post still applies.

Read and learn.

About Peter Tan, the ‘malicious’ disabled person:
You know, Peter is not the ogre Miss XX and Turosomething from LocalBrand made him out to be. Yes he is my friend and that is why I can tell you that contrary to XX’s post, he does not go out of his way to seek sympathy bla bla bla yadda yadda yadda. Peter has done the community much good by blogging about life as a disabled, raising SOCIAL AWARENESS which may be lacking prior to this due to the non-existent platforms. So now we understand why the accessible toilets are not meant for the able-bodied with no afflictions other than stupidity. Now we understand better why a lot of buildings are death traps for those not able to just run should there be a fire or incidents like the 2004 tsunami trembles that affected Penang. Those are not pleas for sympathy unless you are saying that disabled do not have rights just like anyone else?

And one more thing regarding accessible toilets: I understand that not many people like to use the ’search’ function or even know that the history of his blog, so I am now giving you a link to one of his older entries regarding accessible toilets:

Two Sides of Human Nature

And Yvonne Foong just wrote a blog entry on accessible toilets and how it feels when it is not really that accessible:

Why handicap toilets are important.

We don’t really have control on the various buildings’ toilet design and build. In many other countries, public toilets are a tad bigger than those in Malaysia so some able-bodied folks can still use them for various reasons. However in Malaysia, a lot of our public toilets are cramped, some without taps even. If a pregnant lady needs to use the accessible toilets because of those two reasons then yes go ahead. If a rude older woman or a 21 year old popular ranty blogger wants to use accessible toilets because they are more spacious with mirrors and think it’s their God-given right to use them, well in the words of XX herself,

FUCK YOU.

And because I’m his friend, he discusses some things with me, one of the things being Turodrique from LocalBrand’s phone conversation. I’m damn pissed because all Miss X and Mr T seems to be able to grasp is that Peter is trying to harm XX’s income and by doing that Peter would have something to gain, financially or otherwise. And since Peter is not going to be bothered if he gets misunderstood or misquoted by the sole sentence of “BECAUSE IT WORKS”, I’m going to tell you this:

THERE IS MORE THAN ONE SENTENCE.

If Mr. T recorded the conversations he had with Peter over the phone, please, feel free to broadcast them in their full entities. Why don’t you publish the e-mail that Peter sent also? I’m sure everybody would love to know.

Look, if you are going to devote an entire post whining about the ‘underhandedness’ of some people, why not take the entire context? Things must be taken in whole instead of picking ONE SENTENCE and use that as the sole basis to debate. Err how about the sentence where he said something like, because companies should be aware of the people who represent them?

So they have been made aware, now what? BECAUSE IT ALWAYS WORKS not because to get her sponsors to pull out, but to make the points clearer. How the sponsors deal with that issue is entirely up to them. Either they stick with XX or they don’t. In the case of Voxy (and now Kimage) they chose not to associate with her anymore, that’s their prerogative. I’m sure there are plenty of other brands and companies who would not mind their banners on her blog just to ride her waves of popularity that seep into the minds of youth (not just from Singapore, mind you) despite her blogging tone and blog content. They all can do that, good luck to them, I sure as hell am not going to believe in their products or services and I’m going to tell all my friends about my stand on it.

You know, that’s why universities have courses on marketing and branding. Consumer power, I tell ya. You should really be more aware of your choices in life.

And say you go into a restaurant and the waiter mistreats you. Do you engage the waiter or do you go to the manager?

And again because people cannot seem to find links as easily as they should, here’s one of my earlier post for you on why I oppose to this sad shit.

All Things Considered

You can actually see it happening already, with her young blinded supporters thinking it’s all right to use accessible toilets because they are there and the chances of a disabled using it the same time as them are slim to none. Talk about morality lines indeed.

Actually it’s a bit boring to write something this long because all she and her blinded followers could only see everything as:

“I FUCKING HATE XIAXUE!”

So if you are one of those people who cry damn foul that Peter Tan is a loserlah, fuck Peter Tan lah, fuck Kimberlycun she’s fat and lumpy, fuck ShaolinTiger he’s a white man in Asia overstaying his welcome lah, all XX detractors are just jealous lah, I tell you what:

WELCOME TO THE REAL WORLD.

Now if you’d excuse me, I have other things to blog about.

I am going to do a Simon, inspired by Rojaks the problogger.

1. I have more fun chilling out and relaxing with my friends and family, a quiet night in than going out ‘conquering’ the world with skimpy clothes that I can’t really fit in, attempting to squeeze through a sweaty and sometimes very hamsap crowd (the non-accidental swiping of butts) and loud blaring and often badly-mixed music that I can’t dance to.

2. Trance still lifts me up big time, but on radio and such I find myself leaning towards Light & Easy or Mix (when they are not playing popsy Hitz-like tunes).

3. I try to avoid it and am conscious about it as I know what it feels like to be on the receiving end of age discrimination, but sometimes I can’t help going, “Kids these days…”

4. I stopped trying too damn hard to impress. If I wanted to play games I would go buy myself a Scrabble set.

5. Visible changes duly noted when comparing self photos from the year 2001 and now, the most obvious being that the youthful innocence gone, gone with the years.

6. Regarding the country’s development, abandoned animals and social awareness, I find myself *gasp* caring.

7. Dull resignation when caught in a traffic jam. Of course the swear words still flow, but no more squeezing.

8. Fragility of life is as clear as it could be.

9. My no-kids policy is slightly wavering. Slightly.

10. The grey hair, oh the grey hair!

The signs are nigh.