Categories
Sports

[861] Of Ajax 3 – 1 PSV

There was a time when the Amsterdam Arena was PSV’s second home – PSV totally dominated Ajax when the former played at Amsterdam . Things have changed for the past few years; including this year. Ajax beat PSV Eindhoven 3-1 in this year’s Johan Cruyff Shield:

Twelve minutes later Wesley Sneijder made sure the Johan Cruyff Shield would remain at the Amsterdam ArenA with a superb individual goal. Sneijder intercepted the ball on the left flank, took it in and rocketed a superb 25-yard shot past the despairing Moens and into the top right corner of the net: 3-1, and ‘game over’.

Seeing Jaap Stam lifting the Shield with Ajax – instead of PSV – certainly needs some get-to-use-to. Whatever it is, this is starting to look like a good season.

Categories
Photography Travels

[860] Of the second half of the second day in Bangkok, Thailand

If you’re interested, read part one and two.

After Wat Pho, we made way to the Bangkok National Museum while the day was still relatively bright and almost cheery. We passed along several landmarks . One of them was the palace:

Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved

I wonder if those yellow stuff are actually gold. I’d presume they are. This looks inside the inner wall of the palace:

Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved

Somewhere nearby, there’s a large open space, much like the Mall in Washington D.C. There’s a university there too and there were many monks, as you can see:

Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved

After all these and a few other photos, we reached the museum.

The museum has a large compound and the galleries are scattered all over the place. Despite that fact, we had mere two hours and so, we managed to roam a gallery. There were 20 galleries there and one of the galleries that I wish I had visited is the Srivijayan gallery.

I’ve always feel that it’s wrong for Malaysians to think the Sultanate of Malacca was the most prominent civilization in our history. The truth is, Srivijaya was far larger and lasted much longer than Malacca. I strongly feel Malaysian history book should give Srivijaya more credit instead of over glorifying Malacca. Perhaps, the reason why Srivijaya sat in the shadow of Malacca these days is because Srivijaya was a Hindu kingdom while Malacca was Muslim. I’d imagine many conservatives in Malaysia hated that idea. I believe it’s just history and it doesn’t matter what the religion of any kingdom. Regardless of the religions of Srivijaya, the empire deserves more befitting treatment than it currently receives. It’s part of our history and it’s important we all know it, regardless what these conservatives think. If the country falls to them, they would rewrite our history, destroy our culture like they’re doing in Kelantan and turn us all into Arabs.

There are no photo from the museum. Unlike museums in the United States and Malaysia, photography is forbidden in this particular museum complex.

While I was visiting the Metropolitan Museum in New York, I frequently found myself being left behind by my friends; museums usually fascinate me. That didn’t happen in the Thai museum because I am kind of familiar with most of the subjects that were on display. Nevertheless, it was still taxing. I felt like I was going to lose my legs after we were done with the museum.

When we got out of the museum, which was around 17:30, the bright sunny day had into a gloomy one. It even rained for awhile though it wasn’t too bad. What was bad was the fact we didn’t know where to go and that we were very hungry. My dietary restriction didn’t make the situation any easier. The saddest part was, we opted for McDonald’s. I call it sad because I don’t really like fast food. Well, I like fast food but I have issues with large fast food chains.

Anyway, we asked around for the nearest McDonald’s and three girls directed us to Khao San. We didn’t know the name of the place actually but when we got there, it was like Thai version of Malaysian Petaling Street or Chow Kit Street.

Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved

I later found out off the net that Khao San is a backpackers’ haven. The next I visit Bangkok, I know where I’d want to stay. I’ll bring my backpack too just to blend in. While at Khao San, we didn’t get McDonald’s but instead, we got falafel. That was the first time I tasted falafel since I returned to Malaysia from the United States.

And yeah, we did meet Ronald McDonald despite not buying anything from him.

Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved

While Khao San looks dirty, it isn’t too bad. Moreover, there are some cool
restaurants with great atmosphere:

Another one:

Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved

Some are hidden inside an alley:

Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved

Another one:

Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved

The distance between the museum and Khao San isn’t too demanding to traverse. What made it challenging was crossing the road. As mentioned earlier, crossing the street in Bangkok isn’t the best of all hobbies. We had to cross something like a busy six or eight-lane street. If jaywalking is an offense in Bangkok, we should be punished with life sentence with no possibility of parole. We came out alive. I suppose living in Kuala Lumpur does teach you one or two things about crossing a seemingly “un-crossable” street.

Once done with Khao San, we headed for the Democracy Monument. I however have a few deadlines tomorrow. Therefore, I’ll stop here for now.

Categories
Humor Society

[859] Of how to spot a religious conservative?

Sometimes, religious conservatives, regardless of beliefs, share common traits. Here are few commonalities among conservatives . The list is by no mean exhaustive nor it is exclusively attributed to religious conservatives. Nor a person has to have these attributes to be a religious conservative. It’s just a guideline. However, if a person shares more than a few attributes stated below, chances are, the person is a religious conservative. Enjoy:

  1. They’re the chosen people. They’re the best of all human beings, regardless of moral. Sometimes, in their bedrooms, you’ll find stickers “IM DA BEST” all over. Signed by their gods of course. Well, yeah… they fake the signatures.
  2. They self-appoint themselves as god’s or gods’ (for simplicity’s sake, gods’) representatives on Earth. Therefore, they expect others to look upon them highly. Pay them. Even feed them. Everything.
  3. They believe that they’ve a monopoly on truth. They believe that since the gods are the ultimate truth and that they’re gods’ representatives, whatever they say or do is the truth. So, this give them the exclusive rights to design laws or fatwas at their wimps.
  4. The incapable-of-mistakesism disease. Otherwise known as I’m-always-rightism. This is directly because they think that they’re the self-appointed guardians of their religions; gods’ representative on Earth. In their opinion, any mistake by them will reflect on their gods and so, they solve this dilemma by insisting that they’re mistake-free. Even if they’re driving and take the wrong turn, they’ll always be right, even if they’re lost.This disease is also a widespread problem in the male population all over the world. Possible source for such correlation is probably due to the fact that religions have always been dominated by men.
  5. Any criticism against them is considering criticism against god or gods. This is probably because they keep quoting their holy books. After some time unfortunately for all of us, they’re confused about when they’re speaking for themselves or when they’re quoting their gods. This intolerance of criticism is the reason why certain conservatives apparently have inability to listen to reasons.And remember when there were criticism against novel SHIT back in the late 1990s in Malaysia? Because the author was associated with PAS (a religious conservative political party in Malaysia), the head of PAS tried to justify the author’s usage of obscene words by saying even god mencarut (expresses obscene words).
  6. Intolerant of difference in opinion. If there’s difference in opinion, they’ll kill you. When they say 1 + 1 = 3, you don’t want to argue with them. Reconsult number 3, 4 and 5.
  7. Watch out for those that keep talking and talking and talking without listening. Sometimes, it helps to check if they’re running on Energizer. More importantly, avoid a female conservative at all cost!Who are these conservatives? Why, preachers of course!
  8. They have short fuse. In other word, emotional and any prolonged heated argument will degrade to uncivilized discussion. Watch out for mud balls. DUCK!
  9. They have no respect of other religion. To the conservatives, those of different beliefs are second-rated people. For instance, these conservatives’ rights and privileges must rule supreme over any other individual rights, even if those rights and privileges infringes on others’ rights. If you want a match of the century, wait until conservatives starting to turn on themselves. It happened before; Catholics-Protestants, Sunni-Shiite. Jedi-Sith.
  10. Polemicists. For some reasons, they like to look for petty argument. It could be a bright sunny day with blue sky but you could depend on a conservative to ruin it. In fact, if you want to ruin other person’s fine day, hire a conservative and send the conservative to that person.
  11. They practice double standards and selective reasoning. For instance, murder of any kind is wrong but for them, murder of Muslims is wrong but murder of Jews is okay. Murder of “kafir” are okay.Then, they talk of freedom but readily prevent others from practicing freedom. Freedom is only acceptable when such freedom suits their purpose. It’s like having a selfish girlfriend; she can do whatever she likes but you can’t do whatever she likes. You don’t want to get into marriage with that girlfriend of yours.
  12. Their love of double standards make them easy targets for students of logic or those that are familiar with rules of logic. When the conservatives are caught with their back against the wall, they’ll switch the subject. This is where personal attack could also occur. Sometimes, they run away, hiding inside a small box slightly smaller than their world, which unsurprisingly is another box. If somebody pokes their box, they’ll hide into yet another box and they have endless supply of boxes.
  13. They’re the moral police. They’ll dictate your moral because their moral is superior to ours. You can’t do this and that but they can sodomize some kids entrusted to them or ask a female that was caught by moral police to do a blowjob for him!
  14. They have the weirdest sense of humor. When they call for the killing of all non-believers, they call it a “satire”. They will later be surprised if the public gets angry. Or when a person dies, they will make a joke out of it.

Any more?

Oh yeah. Probably intolerant of jokes too. They like to make jokes on other people but can’t accept jokes on themselves. They’ll burn the whole city to the ground just to prove that they can’t accept joke. Or they just sue you.

Categories
Economics Politics & government

[858] Of minimum wage and unemployment rate debate in Malaysia

According to the New Straits Times on August 9, there’s a plan to introduce minimum wage “for three categories of workers“.

KUALA LUMPUR: Minimum wages are on the horizon for three categories of workers, a little over 25 years after the initial attempt failed largely due to flaws in the system.

A total of 250,000 private security guards, private clinic assistants and casual farm workers will soon be the first people in the country to enjoy a minimum wage.

If all goes well, they are expected to take home guaranteed monthly wages by the end of the year.

The article focuses on the benefits of minimum wage but it fails to be neutral by highlighting the other side of the coin. The article in fact only quotes bodies and individuals that are for minimum wage – labor unions and politician within a government that already have strong interventionist tendency. Therefore, allow me do a public service by raising the ugly side of minimum wage.

In a free market, prices and wages – for the sake of simplicity, let’s call prices and wages as simply prices – are the points where demand and supply coincide. That prices are at equilibrium. If we impose a price ceiling below the equilibrium prices, according to the law of supply and demand, supply will decrease while demand will increase. Artificial shortage will occur and this describes the current artificial sugar shortage in Malaysia. If the ceiling is above equilibrium prices, chances are, nothing will happen as the ceiling doesn’t affect the market. Remember, price ceiling simply means the “less or equal than” operator.

Price floor on the other hand is the “more or equal than” operator. So, if we impose price floor below the equilibrium points, nothing will happen because the restriction doesn’t affect the point itself. However, an introduction of price floor above free market prices will artificially decrease demand and increase supply. This last scenario is very relevant to minimum wage.

In other word, less employers will want to employ more workers while more employees will want to work. Hence, higher unemployment rate, ceteris paribus .

There are already talks of high unemployment among Malaysian youth. Despite that, unemployment rate of Malaysia as of the first quarter of 2006 is 3.8 according to Malaysia Department of Statistics, which is quite respectable in my opinion. Germany and France are used to around 10% unemployment rate while the US and most European nations currently suffer above 5%. Regionally, Brunei has 4.8% (2004), Cambodia 2.5% (2000), Indonesia 11.8%, Laos 2.4%, Myanmar 5.0%, Singapore 3.4 (2005 by Singapore Department of Statistics) and Thailand suffers 1.8% unemployment rate according to 2005 The World Factbook by CIA.

As for me, I oppose minimum wage. I prefer the market to decide on it, as long as market failure doesn’t occur.

Regardless of what I think, the introduction of minimum wage will reignite public discourse in youth unemployment as unemployment as a whole will go up with imposition of minimum wage above equilibrium wage.

Categories
Sports

[857] Of Ajax goes to the second leg with great advantages

Preliminary matches for the UEFA Champions League are underway and Ajax are on their way to the first stage . Ajax’s first opponent is FC Copenhagen and Ajax won the first leg in Denmark 1-2, courtesy of the best purchase by Ajax in recent years – Klaas-Jan Huntelaar. That win gives Ajax the away goal advantage and all Ajax need to do now is to at least draw in Amsterdam.

I didn’t watch the game and I haven’t had the chance to watch the proper highlight of the game. Despite that, I’m somewhat happy to hear good reports on some players. With Jaap Stam in the team, it seems that Ajax have found their new Chivu. Or Frank de Boer if we want to go down farther down the line. Still, it’s Stam’s first competitive game with Ajax and it would be premature to praise him too much.

Babel seems fantastic as always. I’m convinced that he’ll gain a place in the first team soon. One of the reasons why I like Ajax is the fact that the team keeps chunning out unbelieveable talented player over and over again. People like Babel.

Rosenberg and Rosales still look good. Both are as good as the other; both are excellent wingers. I’m not sure about Kenneth Perez though. He’s Ajax’s new signing from AZ Alkmaar.

But the real person on trial here is Ajax’s new coach, Henk ten Cate. Remember, Henk ten Cate was Rijkaard’s assistant at FC Barcelona, the last season’s European Champion.

I do feel however that this season is the first time Ajax will have a stronger attacking force coupled with reliable defense for a full season in recent times. Ajax’s problem has always been converting possession into goals ever since Ibrahimovic left Ajax for that old hag Juventus. So, this is a promising season, both for Eredivisie and in the European arena.