It’s September 11 2003, exactly 2 years after new fascism was born into this modern world.Note – This is The __earthinc’s first remote post. Kudos to Ev of Evhead for making it possible.
Category: Politics & government
A time for peace, I swear it’s not too late…
I can’t help but feel envious toward Malaysian students’ association in other universities such as in University of Minnesota in Minneapolis for their professionalism in organizational matters, or as matter of fact, in many other students’ societies in Michigan.
The Malaysian students’ association here couldn’t even be considered a proper organization. It is not even registered under Michigan Students’ Association. In fact, I don’t consider it as useful to me right now. It has outlived its usefulness. The only organization that I really enjoy being in is the Solar Car Team.
Perhaps I should praise the Malaysian Students’ Association or the sassier acronym, UMIMSA for organizing Malaysia Week. Nevertheless, I don’t really call it as a success as majority of the event visitors were Malaysians. The event was held in order to introduce Malaysia to foreigners but I dare bet that Malaysia receives more publicity from terrorism to Malaysia Week.
By criticizing it, I am not saying UMIMSA is useless at all, though currently, sadly it seems exactly that. UMIMSA does have a role. All I am saying is that the organization should be more proactive for its members. By proactive, it includes professionalism. If all UMIMSA does are luncheons and dinners, then UMIMSA has no right to collect membership fee. Having to pay USD 20 just for chicken wings, turkey or fried rice is outrageous.
However, I am glad seeing UMIMSA at least organized something though with UMIMSA’s size, much is left to be desired.
Why do I say no professionalism? First of all, time management. Never have I seen anything that was organized by UMIMSA was punctual to the minute, or should I say, to the hour. Secondly, nothing that is going to be done was told in advance with sufficient amount of time. Even the Malaysian Week for example, was made public to its members barely two or three weeks earlier. As a result, as I saw it, the preparation was substandard. Thirdly, everything was passed through my mouth, no paper work, no nothing. Not even a proper report. To some extend, the attitude of the committee members are amazingly irresponsible. A clear example was during the Michigan convoy preparation for the 2002 Midwest Games. A supposedly-not-to-have-happened mistake had cost the convoy members more money than it supposed to be. The post-mortem – nothing, not even a decent apology.
Sometimes, even the activities that were planned during its first committee members meeting was not carried out. This situation happened last year when I was a member of the committee. This year however, beside the Malaysia Week, I saw no other activities at all (eating is not an activity). There are only two possibilities to explain this – one, as I have said earlier and two, nothing was planned. This year, even the skiing tradition was not carried out.
UMIMSA’s incompetence has resulted in its members to organize events on their own. On one instant, most of Malaysian class of 2005 went ice skating in Yost Ice Arena on their own, bypassing the association. It was not just the class of 2005. Even the class of 2006 had organized a barbeque on their own, without any help from UMIMSA. Even now, the freshmen are planning to organize Malaysia Day inline with the upcoming Malaysia’s Independence Day and a paintball trip somewhere in the near future, again bypassing UMIMSA.
Perhaps UMIMSA might be able to redeem itself in my eyes when the new freshmen reach Detroit on this August 22nd. Yet, skeptically, I think only a handful of persons will fetch the freshmen out of pity rather than in UMIMSA’s name.
UMIMSA needs to do something for its own sake because each time it does not do anything, the more people are going to do things on their own and slowly if not immediately sidelining UMIMSA for good. As long as UMIMSA continues as it is right now, I will not feel the urge to actively engage in it as I had and planning to in the Solar Car Team.
Something to celebrate for the return of electricity.
Let’s sing Blame Canada!
Times have changed, our kids are getting worse
They won’t obey their parents they just want to fart and curseShould we blame the government?
Or blame society?
Or should we blame the images on TV?No, blame Canada, blame Canada
With all their beedy little eyes have packed thier heads so full of lies,
Blame Canada, blame Canada,
We need to form a full assault its canadas faultDon’t blame me for my son Stan he saw the darn cartoon and now hes of to join the klan
And my boy Eric once had my picture on his shelf but now when I see him he tells me to fuck myself
Well?
Blame Canada, blame Canada, it seems that everythings gone wrong since Canada came along, blame Canada, blame Canada
They’re not even a real country anywayMy son could have been a doctor or a lawyer rich and true instead he burned up like a piggy on a barbeque
Should we blame the matches? Should we blame the fire?
Or the doctors who allowed him to expireHeck no, blame Canada, blame Canada, with all their hockey hollabaloo
And that bitch Ann Murray too
Blame Canada, shame on Canada, for the smut we must stuff the
trash we must stash the laughter and fuck must all be undone we must blame them the cause of fuss before
somebody thinks of blaming us.
p/s – Ohio should take the blame too.
Categories
[175] Of taxes
Something I found over the net.
“Age old dilemma: If someone gives you a penny for your thoughts, and you put in your 2 cents, what happens to the other 1 cent? I’m guessing taxes.”
Well, under Bush administration, I am sure you will be getting the other cent back, at the expense of the Big Brother.
I attended SpectruM unveiling ceremony last friday in front of the Media Union. There, I met up with Brent and Mirai, both are the in the race crew, directing visitors to the event area. I helped them a bit and later stayed with them for more than two hours, catching up things and so. I felt guilty for not helping them out for the spring rush. Nevertheless, it was great seeing them again, especially seeing Mirai the crazy Tokyo citizen who are living in the world full of Evas, Doraemon, Playstations, Honda, Toyota, Final Fantasy, Atari and of course Ultraman and Godzilla. I pity Brent for having to suffer a fate worse than death, being a roomie to a racist Japanese. Hey Mirai, I’m gonna kick you out of Asia.
Digressing…
The Spectrum is a two-seater Solar Car and it is long when compared to its predecessor, M-Pulse. Longer body means more solar panels and more energy to recharge the batteries. Furthermore, University of Michigan’s seventh generation solar car is the first car to have two seats in whole history of American Solar Challenge that will be held in July. Hope we will win this one. I hope Missouri Rolla will eat Wolverines’ dust. Another one bit the dust.
Apart from that, things are pretty grim right now and spring is spoilt by an almost routine, daily rain. Secondly, the bombing incident in Saudi Arabia and Morocco. Then it was the recent earthquake that shattered Algeria. Not to forget, the SARS and newly reemerging mad cow case in neighboring Canada is not going to die soon. As people thought it cannot get worse, Indonesia is finally cracking down on the Acheh rebels for good. And not to forget, Bush’s forest plan of which, essentially states that in order to prevent more forest fire, trees need to be cut down.
However, among the mist of destructions, one glimmer of hope came out from the most unexpected place. In the recent week, Bush has pushed for a peace road map for both the Palestinian and for the Israeli authority. I am not aware of the full detail but one of the objectives is to have the establishment of a legal Palestinian state no later than 2005, less than two years away.
Although I am skeptical of Bush plan’s success rate, Ariel Sharon latest words touched me. He said, “To keep 3.5 million people under occupation is bad for us and them” and “This can’t continue endlessly”. It is true that the occupation is bad for both of them and if the conflict continues on forever, it will destroy both parties. The logic is easy to see but hatred usually blankets rationality. It is amazing to hear that finally, somebody has gone out of the blanket and sees that the only path for both archenemies is peace.
Nevertheless, I see that hatred still clouds many people in the Knesset and in the Muslim world.
While Ariel Sharon wants to go down the path, some members of the Likud party are opposing peace proposal. Their primary reason for opposing is the key point that demands Israel to give up some keys areas. The opposing members claimed that by giving up these key areas, Israel’s security will be threatened. Though their claim might be true, they fail to see that Israel will be never not being threatened as long as the Intifada continues. Israel will only achieve peace through tolerance and trust, not through hatred and prejudice.
Despite this breakthrough, Ariel Sharon acceptance of the peace proposal rings a bell. In fact, it rings three bells. About three or four years ago, a peace proposal was being considered between the two foes under Clinton’s supervision. Everything was going great and peace was almost there until Yasser Arafat rendered the peace building to smoldering pieces. PLO’s rejection of Camp David peace proposal however was justified since Israel was simply giving the Palestinian an autonomy state instead of a sovereign state of Palestine. Other similar scenarios successfully led to peace and unfortunately, it also led to the assassination of Anwar Sadat and Yitzhak Rabin.
Yes, it is discouraging to see all attempts towards peace were dismantled and motivated by hatred that originates back to ancient times. Yet, it was hope that made all these attempts possible. And yet, hope is nothing but hope and all attempts will fail. The Palestinian and the Israeli need two other ingredients – a non-hating spice and a non-prejudice fire that will boil the water.
Although I hate Bush’s so-called foreign and environmental policy, I this time sincerely wish George Bush luck.
“This can’t continue endlessly”
– Ariel Sharon, Prime Minister of Israel, refering to the struggle between the Israeli and the Palestinian in the light of Bush’s peace proposal. (I am not really Quote of the Day type of guy but Ariel Sharon’s words really touched me deeply.)
p/s – Al-Qaeda issued a statement against four countries, namely the United States, the United Kingdoms, Australia and – drum roll please – NORWAY. OMG, what HAVE Norway ever done? Oh, wait, it is an infidel country up in the Scandinavia. LOLROTF. I suspect the person whom wrote the message made a typo mistake – a really huge typo mistake.
p/s 2 – Brent, you are right. In this world, everybody has his (or her, I hate being have to not being a chauvanist. It makes life complicated.) own opinion and there are two groups – those who are right and those who are wrong. However, you are wrong about The Matrix: Reloaded being a great movie. I believe Morpheus sucks.
p/s 3 – old joke. It’s still not out yet.
p/s 4 – I’m officially legal…err…I mean 21.
p/s 5 – Israel is considering applying into the EU. And the EU is seriously considering it. Well, the world is a crazier place than I thought it was.