I went for a little walk today in the evening and managed a couple shots.
This is my favorite.
Categories
[536] Of boredom
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[535] Of another victory for free trade
Amidst the Europhobics’ victory cries and even some ridiculous calls for a return of the Franc and the Deutsche Mark, there is a good news originating from the middle of Europe.
Switzerland has voted to join the Schengen zone.
Signaling Swiss desire for closer integration with the EU, about 55 percent of voters, or 1.47 million people, supported joining Europe’s passport-free “Schengen” zone by 2007.
Hail to free trade.
p/s – and yeah, today’s World Environment Day. Then again, everyday is Earth Day.
Every Friday around noon, I’m supposed to attend a Friday prayer at a nearby mosque. I have not missed any one yet lately, save the one day that I departed for San Francisco.
As it typically goes, there is a sermon prior to the actual prayer. Unlike in Malaysia where the sermon is almost for certain boring, politically biased and lacks logical flows, the sermon at Ann Arbor most of the time gets the wheel inside of my head cranking. The sermon is interesting because most of the time, it relates to issues that I follow.
Lately however here in Ann Arbor, the Friday sermon has somewhat become a fundraising session. Every recent Friday sermon that I’ve attended as far as I can recall, the sermonizer will start on how donating is good and god will reward a person that gives in the afterlife and what’s not. The sermonizer will continue rambling until a punch line – “there is a poor community in Charlotte, South Carolina that is building a mosque” or “your brothers and sisters in Columbus, Ohio need your help to complete an Islamic center”.
I have nothing against fundraising. As I wading through a very difficult jungle out there, I do see how almost everything needs capital. The statement becomes especially true when it concerns religion. No matter how much cash is thrown into the mosque, the church, the temple or anything, it will needs more and more money. Plus, a couple more cents.
However, I feel it is outrageous to see somebody explicitly soliciting for monetary contribution during a Friday sermon. In my opinion, an announcement before or after the whole praying session would suffice. A flier would suffice. A sandwich man would serve the purpose too. Imagine a sandwich man wandering around soliciting for donation at religious sites – would love to see that!
I don’t know. I don’t get myself involve into the local Muslim community too much. Perhaps that might nullify my opinion. Nevertheless, seeing a sermon session becoming a soliciting session is distasteful.
Oh, well. I guess I should be looking forward to attend another fundraising session before performing the Friday prayer, or I could skip the soliciting session, or, skip the prayer altogether and play Warcraft 24/7 until I rot in hell.
But I wonder, if I had stopped attending the prayer because I hate the sermon cum soliciting session, would I pull the sermonizer cum solicitor into hell with me?
This of course, assuming that God exists, I’m in the right religion, heaven and hell exist, blah, blah, blah…
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[533] Of MF2
I was in San Francisco about two weeks ago. There was a conference, or sort of, about Malaysia called the Malaysia Forum, organized by Malaysia Forum at Stanford. I know, it is hard to imagine why Malaysia Forum that was held at Stanford was organized by Malaysia Forum at Stanford. There is an actual challenge to figure out the connection. But then again, the obvious link is not really quite obvious, like in psychology where everything is about sex. Well, to be fair, wherever Freud is available.
The forum was not bad. I can’t say I was disappointed nor can I say I was impressed since I didn’t set anything in my mind beforehand. However, one thing that caught my mind in first hour on first day I was at the forum was the lack of Malay. If my memory serves me well, there were only five Malays – me, Syamsul the Recom.org founder, Omar with an interesting perspective on Islam and the Malay culture, one person that I didn’t quite get the face and Bakri Musa. If you count Hishamuddin Rais, that’s six but I don’t count socialist in. I do however, count MCP in. MCP is indispensable to the society. Totally dude.
Putting socialist cum MCP aside, it’s a perplexing scenario indeed. Out of more than 80 attendees, less than 10 were Malays. It might be entirely possible that the composition actually describes the Malaysian population in the Bay Area and its environs. Then again, I came all the way from Michigan. Who knows.
Too bad, the Alliance doesn’t out-zerg the Horde on Destromath anymore.
Nevertheless, I actually enjoyed Malaysia Forum. I got to meet new people and somehow got myself into a new project. The project looks interesting but only time will tell.
Till then, goddamn, I need to find a job near the Bay Area! The Malaysian community over there is so vibrant.
Also, sambil menyelam minum air!
Transamerica Building! w00t!p/s – via Laputan Logic. Google Sightseeing.
Categories
[532] Of the next step
The Kyoto Protocol has been in force for than three months now. I haven’t read much development on it save that some countries are planning to leave the Protocol and its legacy behind after it expires. They say it is too costly to do a Kyoto part two. At the same time, I doubt many parties of the Protocol will be able to meet the reduction goal by the year 2012.
Don’t get me wrong. Though Kyoto is not as effective as most would want it with people on one side says it’s too costly and the other saying too little too late, it is still an important step to be taken. It essentially set the pace towards greener future.
But still, one will have to wonder what is going to happen after Kyoto. Many have mentioned the need to get China, India and other developing nations to join hand in hand. But whatever is going to happen, I’m noticing a new trend in combating climate change.
Kyoto has been targeting governments. Maneuvering with such target in mind is hard given the fact that the Protocol almost died with the pullout of the US. The Protocol only got through with Russian ratification.
The near death experience probably made a lot of people to have a second thought. Hence, attention has shifted from government to organizations down the hierarchy – states, cities, private firms.
Some states in the US have their own initiative to reduce emission despite the federal government refusal to ratify Kyoto. Development in those states, California in particular has been rather encouraging. California, San Francisco in fact, has always been a leader when it comes to taking care for the environment. When I was in San Francisco, I saw first hand why – large fleet of its buses is zero-emission buses, electrically powered. I have not seen anything like it before.
Today, UN World Environment Day that is be held in San Francisco. Though the conference itself is not about climate change in particular, it will however touch on renewable energy and in general, sustainability, which go in line with methods to cut emission down.
And all these sustainability ideas won’t come true without the green technologies which come from many firms such as Toyota, Honda and General Electrics. General Electrics lately has been campaigning hard to reinvent itself as a green company. Its Ecoimagination campaign to me is impressive so far. I’m not however sure whether this is a real effort or simply another green-washing as done by Exxon and others.
Yet, all of the steps and trend is useless if there is no green grassroots. Then again, these green steps started because of expanding green grassroots. What makes me wonder is how the green grassroots started and then skipped everything between private citizens and the governments. It is weird to see only after the jump was made, everything in between starts to build up.
But in the end, it is good to see green ideas are being embraced by the bases and more importantly at the moment, privates firms. I’d guess it is not too premature or showing too much confidence to say, welcome to the green century, despite the death of environmentalism.