Reflections on RM2.70 per litre fuel prices and the impending RM4 per litre come August.

Much has been written about sustainability of oil based economy civilization. The Olduvai Gorge theory estimates that industrial civilization cannot support itself beyond 2030 with out current practices.

In the light of all these, I am been thinking a bit,
On a global front
I watched this:


Scoff all you want about pretty boy Leonardo DiCaprio, but he is strong enough to breakaway from the typical shallow culture that Hollywood favours and reward tremendously. He is using his best asset - his fame and personality, to further a cause he strongly believes in.

What then are you doing with your strongest assest?





What we are facing now is a convergence of crisis (climate change and our dependence on oil), both of which threaten our lives.

I've said this before, that our economic model adopted is seriously flawed. Our economic model is a model not unlike a biological disease; with characteristics of a virus, parasite, or even cancer. In order to sustain itself it has to keep expanding, devouring more resources along the way. Any reduction in consumption would have a serious impact on economic growth and in extreme cases it results in a recession that leaves people out of job without any means to feed themselves. Like a disease that only ends after its host dies, our economic system needs to continue expanding at the expense of the very biosphere that supports our life here on earth, to the point that life can no longer be supported. And that is the point where human civilization would end.

The earth of course would in time rejuvenate itself like it has always been for the 4 billion years. We, however, do not have another 4 billion years.

One of the scientist featured in 11th Hour commented; like inside like outside. What is happening outside in the physical realm is merely a reflection of what we are, the moral fabric we have, the value system we follow, how we see ourselves and what do we want out of life. Like inside like outside.

The world is so broken because we humans have become a very broken race.

We build our identity around our material possesions that tells us nothing of who we are as a person.

We work day and night, losing ourselves along the way just so that we can afford to buy things that we don't need in order to impress people that do not care about us.

We build our security around our jobs, who are determined by companies who see us as nothing more than cog in a complex set of profit making machinery that is always trying to do more by hiring less people. Human resource. Ever asked yourselves what does resource means? A log of wood is a resource. A barrel of oil is a resource. So what are you to your company?. A log of wood to burn? It just doesn't make sense that people build their lives and identity around something so fragile, something who is constantly trying to look for ways to eliminate them.

We drown our loneliness with mindless entertainment and surrounding ourselves with equally lonely drinking buddies who care very little about us.

We fear the deafening silence of a quiet still night with nobody around. Because silence forces us to face ourselves and our insecurities. To counter our fears we carry our iPODs around, our portable gaming consoles, we fiddle with our fancy cellular phones when we are alone.

So we hide all our insecurities, and the emptiness of our souls, void of any faith and genuine friendship behind this facade of material possesions. We engage in the futile pursuit of buying our way into happiness, with our Lamborghinis, LVs and Armani suits. We tell ourselves that we need to own a bigger car, a bigger house, a more fancy suit just to prove to everyone else that we are "successful." To join this supposedly elite club of fake plastic people who care very little about us.

Global warming, climate change, energy crisis, food crisis - major concerns as they are, but they are really actually symptoms of how broken and empty the human race has become. We are all in the pursuit of the happiness, but most of us are looking too hard in all the wrong places.

And this is the thing that I fear the most - every single big idea or proposal to address climate change and the energy crisis is focused around complex socio-political-economic policies, fancy new eco-friendly technology and ways of educating the public.

But I am very certain that none of this will ever achieve reasonable levels of success until the source of the problem is addressed - the healing of the human soul. It sounds hippy-dippy, but I strongly believe with my whole heart that the source of all our woes is the broken human soul that is either knowingly or unknowingly crying out for healing.

On the local front

These two men have been famously quoted for asking everyday Malaysians to change their lifestyles in the light of rising energy prices. Sure I have no problem with that. It's a very valid advice.

But these two men are not everyday coffee shop bitchers, leaders do not garner respect unless they walk the talk. So how about taking the public transport everyday like the Mayor London Ken Livingstone and Mayor of New York Michael Bloomberg?. OK, I seriously doubt that they do so on a daily basis in rush hour, but I would like to challenge these people to walk their talk and face the people at least on a weekly basis.

I don't mind paying higher fuel prices. Giving out generous subsidy is a bad practise as it only encourage wastage of what is a precious commodity and it hampers efforts to develop more energy efficient and eco-friendly solutions. Subsidy promotes complacency. It is easy to sit back and relax when you know that you are sitting on black gold, that you can get foreign experts in and pump it up for you when you need money. Look at all the most developed nations within Asia - South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore - none of which have a lot of natural resource to draw from. In contrast, none of the major oil exporters - Saudi Arabia, Russia, Venezuela, Nigeria, Iran, Kuwait, Iraq, Brunei have made any great strides in their human capital development.


Norway is the 3rd largest oil exporter in the world, after Saudi Arabia and Russia. But unlike the other two coutries, Norway does not squander its oil wealth into giving subsidy to its people. All Norwegian oil profits are reinvested into improving social welfare and education.

The results are obvious : Despite its wealth Saudi Arabia is constantly ranked in the lower half of almost every single indicator of human development. Russia is crippled by a corrupt government and its wealth is tightly held by small group of political elite. On the other hand, Norway, whose citizens pay market prices for their fuel has some of the best education system among OECD nations, better than USA and Europe. In 2007 Norway was 2nd in the UN Human Development Index, after Ireland. The Norwegian government created a Norwegian Government Petroleum Fund to invest its oil profits. As of December 2007, the fund is estimated to be in excess of USD 388 billion.


The fund is created to finance future government projects and development once petroleum reserves are exhausted. The Norwegian goverment is also aggressively pushing for a policy to ensure oil production in Norway remains viable for another 50 years by gradually reducing oil production.

Now that is what I call responsible management of a country's natural resource.

Of course, I am not calling for a direct copy of Norwegian government's policy to be implemented in Malaysia. We are a developing country and the dynamics at play and state of socio-economic development is just not strong enough to run with no subsidy at all. But the point on subsidy is clear; its like a drug. Use sparingly it might cure a diease. You need to wean it off as soon as you can do without it. Else the consequences will be ugly.

What I am unhappy about is :
1. Toll charges.
The government always say that we are paying some of the lowest petrol prices in the region. Fine, but what they are not telling you is that we are also some of highest toll charges per km! Not to mention our car prices are also some of the highest.

2. No audit has been done on Petronas
The accounts of Petronas are protected by the Official Secrets Act. How is it possible that the accounting books of a company largely funded by taxpayer's money is protected as a classified document?!

3. Public transport (woeful)
Enough said about that. By and large I believe people want to stop driving and would happily rely on public transport instead. If the people of New York, Tokyo, Osaka, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Taipei, Singapore, Seoul can give up driving to work I believe we KL-lites would have no problem doing so. If only the infrastructure is reliable enough.

Malaysian Dream Girl.

Why are there so many blogs bitching about the controversy that who won and who they think should win? Is it really that important to actually take time to blog about it? Who cares if Cindy won?! Why does it even matter?

Why do people have this fascination with glamour girl socialites when these people will hardly bother about us? Don't get me wrong, I am not branding these girls as mere pretty dumb blondes. I believe many of them are a lot more talented than me, earns a whole lot more than I can ever hope to, and are far better educated than me. Good for them. My point is, I don't care.

What I am concern on is the fascination of our generation with empty glamour lifestyles. We work hard to keep up with the Jones next door. We work hard to afford a certain lifestyle in the hope of earning the respect and admiration of those who are of "higher class." Well the sad truth is that if people do not like you because of your social status, they will still not like you irrespective of how much more you make. They will continue to look down on you. Move on. There are far more people who care about you if only you stop behaving like another arrogant upwardly mobile ambitious jerk.

Blogs are mainly dominated by young people who form the next generation. I use blogs as good reference to understand the interests and fads of the young (Gosh why do I talk like I am so old...maybe I am...). But based on what I read around the blogospheres, I am worried on how are we going to survive the challenges of the next century. With the looming energy crisis, food crisis, climate change, and the lot.

Bitching aside, I was pretty oblivious to this whole Malaysian Dream Girl thing all along. Until today only I understood what was it all about, when I found out that Nissan was doing a tie-up with the event.

As I didn't pay any attention to the media blitz, I couldn't comment much on Nissan's interesting foray. Up until now, no other car brand in Malaysia has tie-up with such an event, not that I know of at least. The closest I can think of is Mercedes-Benz sponsorship for the KL Fashion Festival, which I think fits perfectly into the Mercedes brand image. The KL Fashion Festival is a high society high glamour sophisticated event, its fits perfectly into the lifestyle and interests of a typical Mercedes-Benz customer.

But Malaysian Dream Girl and Nissan...the link is a bit blur to me. My view is that even women themselves would not aspire to drive a "sissy" car. Women drivers are in fact far more sophisticated and harder to attract because they expect everything that men look for, and then even more. And they are usually more rational than men when it comes to vehicle purchase. Cars who are associated too close to the feminine side have hardly done well in sales. Just look at the cute VW Bettle, which even has a tiny flower vase on the dashboard. It's true. Constrast this to the marketing efforts done by BMW for the Mini Cooper. Both women and men aspire to own it.


But still...it is a worthwhile effort if Nissan's intention is to attract the attention of young, successful female professionals etc. Like I said, I didn't much attention so I can't comment much if it was a good effort.

However looking at the website, I think things could have been done a lot more better. I am not quite sure if the content of the promo is suitable for the target audience. I would guess that the gender mix ratio of Malaysian Dream Girls viewers are slightly more bias towards women, with the rest being one of those "I-am-so-cool-dudes." Thus, I am not too sure if the vehicle features highlighted and the way they are presented is suitable.

Take for example this phrase :
MR18DE / HR16DE Newly Designed Engine

Spirited in design and performance, the Nissan LATIO promises impressive torque and superb handling to equate to driving joy. Compact and lightweight, this all-aluminium 4-cylinder engine is equipped with CVTC (Continuously Variable-valve Timing Control) & Drive-by-Wire technology to enhance intake/ exhaust efficiency, environmental friendliness and torque while reducing noise, friction, and fuel consumption. All these contribute to smooth acceleration and responsive handling.

MR18DE – Max. Power: 126ps/5,200rpm, Max Torque: 174Nm/4,800rpm
HR16DE – Max. Power: 109ps/6,000rpm, Max Torque: 153Nm/4,400rpm

That's a whole lot of gibberish to the average Malaysian Dream Girl viewer. And do women buy cars because it has a lightweight aluminium engine with variable valve control? Or for its power output? I don't think so. And then they went on and on about its Intelligent key etc etc.

Most Nissan have a very useful feature not found in many other Japanese cars in its price range - its keyless entry will only unlock the driver's door at the first press, illuminating the vehicle's interior. This is a particularly useful feature for single women in empty parking lots. It prevents carjackers from entering the vehicle from the other doors, and the illumination alerts the driver of anybody lurking inside the car. Why wasn't this communicated?

The car has very good all-round visibility and the controls are very light and easy to use around the city. Thus, space judgement in tight cities is a breeze. So too is parking and tight U-turns. Why wasn't this highlighted as well?


The Latio has a massively huge glovebox. Perfect for women! I know of many women drivers who have to hide their handbags under the seat for fear of thieves on motorcycles smashing the window and running away with their handbags, while the vehicle is stationary at a traffic light / traffic jam. Again, the car has so many features that would interest a lady, but its kept "hidden."

There, now I want my sales promo commission from Nissan.

PS. By the way, are they really such dream girl? I am also a regular testosterone charged guy. Honestly I don't dream of any of them. I might give a couple of glances if any of them walk by, but dream girls? I duno, I am weird, as usual. Glamour girls hardly turn me on.

Below are the news around the world that the local mainstream government controlled newspapers aren't publishing.

Haiti - The scenes in Haiti have been dramatic. Gunfire on the streets in the capital Port-au-Prince; thousands parading through the streets; and 9,000 United Nations peacekeepers powerless to stop the violence and the widespread looting. Five people have been killed in the violence since last Thursday, according to unofficial reports. Even an impassioned plea by the Caribbean country's President Rene Preval on Wednesday failed to restore order.

Egypt - Clashes have been breaking out among Egyptians waiting in long lines for subsidized bread and the president has ordered the army to start baking more to contain a political crisis.

The turmoil in the world's most populous Arab country is a stark sign of how rising world food prices are roiling poorer countries.

Government bakeries sell subsidized versions of the flat, round bread that is a staple of people's diets.

Acute shortages of subsidized bread, which is sold at less than one U.S. cent a loaf, have caused hours-long lines and violence at some sites in poor neighborhoods in recent weeks.

At least seven people have died, according to police. Two were stabbed in fights between customers in line, and the rest died of exhaustion or other medical problems aggravated by waiting in the spring heat.

Bangladesh - Government-run outlets selling subsidised rice and other basic commodities are now being besieged by members of the middle class as food prices continue to rise.

In Dhaka people are queing up for hours a day in the midday sun to buy 5kg of rice per head under the government’s Open Market Sale (OMS) scheme - established whenever a potential food crisis is perceived. The authorities have opened over 2,500 such outlets nationwide, with an additional 3,800 set to open in the coming days.

Philippines -- Philippine activists warn about possible riots. Aid agencies across Asia worry how they will feed the hungry. Governments dig deeper every day to fund subsidies.

A sharp rise in the price of rice is hitting consumer pocketbooks and raising fears of public turmoil in the many parts of Asia where rice is a staple.

Part of a surge in global food costs, rice prices on world markets have jumped 50 percent in the past two months and at least doubled since 2004. Experts blame rising fuel and fertilizer expenses as well as crops curtailed by disease, pests and climate change. There are concerns prices could rise a further 40 percent in coming months.

Top rice exporters curbing rice exports
Indonesia, the world's third-largest rice producer, may join China, India, Vietnam and Egypt in curbing exports as declining inventories threaten to spark unrest around Asia.

The country's rice production may exceed domestic consumption by 2 million metric tons this year, insufficient to allow for exports, Agriculture Minister Anton Apriyantono said today in a text message to Bloomberg News. Indonesians will consume about 36.2 million tons this year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture forecasts.

Rice, the staple food for about 3 billion worldwide, has almost doubled in the past year on rising imports by the Philippines, the biggest buyer, and as global food supplies lag behind demand led by China and India. Record prices for commodities including rice, wheat, soybeans and corn are stoking food inflation and contributed to strikes in Argentina, riots in Ivory Coast and crackdowns on illicit exports in Pakistan.



We have a very serious situation here people. Three decades ago, Marion King Hubbert revealed his Hubbert Peak Theory. Of course, in an age of cheap oil where teenagers emptying their loose change in their pockets could poll together enough money to fill up a tank of worth of petrol, nobody took him seriously and the mainstream geo-scientific community labelled him as some sort of a renegade researcher. Almost 4 decades later, in the oil wars of Iraq and the Middle East, crude oil prices were hitting new record highs almost every quarter, and thanks to the power of the Internet, more people began to sit up and listen about Peak Oil.

In short, The issue is not one of "running out" so much as it is not having enough to keep our economy running. In this regard, the ramifications of Peak Oil for our civilization are similar to the ramifications of dehydration for the human body. The human body is 70 percent water. The body of a 200 pound man thus holds 140 pounds of water. Because water is so crucial to everything the human body does, the man doesn't need to lose all 140 pounds of water weight before collapsing due to dehydration. A loss of as little as 10-15 pounds of water may be enough to kill him.

In a similar sense, an oil based economy such as ours doesn't need to deplete its entire reserve of oil before it begins to collapse. A shortfall between demand and supply as little as 10 to 15 percent is enough to wholly shatter an oil-dependent economy and reduce its citizenry to poverty. Read more about Peak Oil and its rammifications here.

In 2006, Goldman Sachs predicted that crude oil prices will breach USD 100 per barrel by the end of 2006. They weren't too far off. It breached the magical 100 mark by early 2008. And as predicted, food prices will soar as a result of rising energy prices and the dependence of the world's agriculture on petroleum to formulate pesticides, power agricultural machineries, processing and transporting of food.

To make matters worse, bio-fuel has been targetted by many "experts" to be a temporary solution for our transportation energy needs. And as I have mentioned in my earlier entry on alternative energy vehicles, choosing a decision to use land for fuel production versus food production is not a wise choice to do. I would need to eat as much as I would need to travel!

The future looks bleak. After over 100 years of rapid plundering, I guess Mother Nature is getting back on us.
Economic ministers urge action on food shortages
The world's economic ministers declared that shortages and skyrocketing prices for food posed a potentially greater threat to economic and political stability than the turmoil in capital markets.

Biofuels getting blame for high food prices
The idea of turning farms into fuel plants seemed, for a time, like one of the answers to high global oil prices and supply worries. That strategy seemed to reach a high point last year when Congress mandated a fivefold increase in the use of biofuels.

But now a reaction is building against policies in the United States and Europe to promote ethanol and similar fuels, with political leaders from poor countries contending that these fuels are driving up food prices and starving poor people. Biofuels are fast becoming a new flash point in global diplomacy, putting pressure on Western politicians to reconsider their policies, even as they argue that biofuels are only one factor in food prices' seemingly inexorable rise.

A follow-up from my earlier entry.

Zahid Hamidi, Minister in the Prime Minister's department wants to start a Save Sufiah Programme. Have these BN politicians no self respect? Are they so desperate to have a Muslim poster child prodigy to appease their overly inflated egos and to keep their rhetorics of UMNO and glories of past Islamic civilization?

Sufiah is not a Malaysian, she will never pledge any allegiance to Malaysia, let alone UMNO! It just so happens that she has a Johor born mother. That's it!

Stop wasting public fund on a Pakistani-Malaysian descent British citizen! Have these people not learnt anything from their disasterous performance on 8th March election?

For every Sufiah there are many more brilliant so-called "kaum pendatang," a label perpetuated by UMNO Youth on non-Muslim Malaysians, perservering along in the archaic public education system.

And everyone knows the typical ending - a straight-A result, no placement nor scholarship from public universities, snapped up by Singapore or Europe or USA.

Food for thought : How many people realised that the CEO of SIA was a Malaysian? Think of how much public funds that could have been saved if he were to ran MAS all this while.

The sad story of Sufiah Yusof made me thought a bit on the state of our world's unfortunately shallow understanding education and what it means.

Sufiah Yusof; the math prodigy who once hit headlines for securing a placement at Oxford at a tender age of 13 has been revealed in an expose that she is currently working as a £130 per session prostitute. A one-time darling of the Malaysian mainstream media by virtue of her Johor born mother and to a certain extent, that she is a Muslim.

Beneath the image of a too picture perfect family painted by the media 10 years ago, is a seriously dysfunctional family. Her Pakistani born father Farooq considers himself a prodigy. He began to hit the headlines when he pioneered "hothousing" (whatever that means) - a concept of intensive personal tutoring of young children which he believes is able to tremendously accelerate a child's learning process. Farooq's 5 children are the subject of his experiment and he is all too keen to show off his results. Iskandar and Aisha were admitted to Warwick University before the age of 15. However despite his children's amazing academic feats, Farooq attributed all that to his tutoring techniques and was particularly adamant that his children were not gifted in any particular way.

Farooq's training regime would involve putting his children through a daily routine of morning prayers were followed by stretching and breathing exercises. The house's temperature is kept low to ensure their attention. Television, pop music and anything else that might lead to "shallow thinking" was banned. They would all then be expected to train for tennis with the same sort of intensity. Last week, Farooq was jailed for sexually assulting two 15-year-old girls while working as a personal their tutor.

Following her husband's guilty plea, Sufiah's Johor-born mother Halimahton has filed for divorce from her husband.

Prior to Sufiah's entry into Oxford, she had twice attempted suicide at 11, and at 15 she sparked a massive nationwide manhunt when she ran away from home. She was later found in an Internet cafe.

Read more here :
Sufiah Yusof - child genius revealed as prostitute - Safe for work version.
Genius on the game - Not Safe for Work (Contains mild nudity).

OTHER CHILD PRODIGIES - WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
Ruth Lawrence
Graduated aged 13 from St Hugh's College, Oxford, with a first-class degree in 1985. Now lives with husband and two children - whom she is determined to allow to "develop in a natural way" - in Jerusalem and teaches maths full-time at the Hebrew University.

John Nunn
Went to Oriel College, Oxford, in 1970 aged 15. Got a first in maths at 18, a doctorate at 20 and became a chess Grandmaster three years later. Lives with his wife in Surrey and makes a living writing books about chess.

Adam Dent
Started reading chemistry at St Hugh's College, Oxford in 1994 aged 14. Left the following year, having been accused and then acquitted of sexual assault on an older pupil. Did an Open University degree and got a job stacking shelves at Iceland. Later went back to Oxford (this time to St Catherine's) and graduated with a first in chemistry in 2002. Is now an IT consultant.

James Harries
Presented himself on television - most memorably on Terry Wogan's chat show in 1990 when he was 12 - as an entrepreneur and child prodigy with an encyclopaedic knowledge of antiques. Had a sex change operation in 2001. Now called Lauren, she is a counsellor and also teaches drama in Cardiff.

Terence Judd
Made his first appearance as a classical pianist with the London Philharmonic Orchestra aged 12. Won the British Liszt Piano Competition at 18. He committed suicide in 1979 at the age of 22 by throwing himself off Beachy Head.

I wouldn't call neither Farooq nor Sufiah as well educated individuals. I have come to the conclusion that being intellectually brilliant / gifted and being educated are two mutually exclusive matter. I have come across numerous First Class graduates but yet can still be amazingly clueless about life and make ridiculously less-than-wise decisions. I have worked with MBA holders who are suspiciously lacking of any business sense.

The story of the Farooqs is a classic example of how has the current generation of educators have completely lost the understanding of education. I am reminded of the best group of educators I have ever come across - the late Brother Ultan Paul and the followers of John Baptist De La Salle, I wonder what would they say about this. I was educated in a school planted by promising young men who gave up their comfortable lives in Europe to setup a school in South-East Asia providing free education at a time when reading and schooling are the preserve of the rich and privileged. The leaders of my school staunchly rejected the popular notion of streaming students according to their academic ability, because they believed every student, irrespective of their learning ability deserves equal attention. Adopting an elitist path to produce the maximum number of straight-A scorers was beside the point. On hindsight, I appreciated that. Because I believe characters of young boys are not moulded by keeping them within a cocoon of goody-two-shoes nerds.

The purpose of education is not to turn every young mind into an Ivy League school material, simply because the bell curve distribution of human intelligence will tell you that not everybody will be a rocket scientist. The purpose of education is to turn people into civilized, well-mannered contributors to society. A bus driver and even a humble street cleaner and garbage collector is still a contributor to society. But what we have today is express tutorials promissing to turn a 5-year old into the next music or math prodigy. Anything less than that and the child is deemed a failure. Remember that the Steve Jobs and Richard Bransons of our time would never have been produced under such a regime.

The result? We have schools of mass produced academic and sporting drones who lacked any sense of creativity nor having strong characters. In a few more decades, our universities will be filled by a generation of shallow character straight-A drones who think alike and lacking in principles. We live in a time of increasingly brilliant academicians who are worryingly lacking of ethics.

The measure of a person's education received is not by his academic papers, but the way one carries himself in public and the depth of one's character. Character, I just wished that word receive a bit more attention from parents and educators than the monosyllable 'A.' Character should be the target of education, not the 'A' grade. But as with all things human, we set ourselves against the easier target, which unfortunately is the later rather than the former.