Christmas trees are a traditional symbol that date back more than four hundred years in Europe, so what could be better for an advent article than something about creating Christmas tree images.
The typical, simplified, representation of the tree is several triangles of decreasing size stacked on top of each other with a small over-lap, so are fairly easy to create with a computer program.
Here I'll use Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) to draw the image as, given the description above, it seems perfectly suited to the task.
When I first started thinking about writing an Advent article this year I reflect that I hadn't really written a great deal of Perl 6 in the past twelve months in comparison to the previous years when I appear to have written a large number of modules. What I have been doing (in my day job at least,) is thinking about and implementing applications that make heavy use of some messaging system. So I thought it would be interesting to bring some of those ideas to Perl 6.
Perl has always had a strong reputation as a "glue language" and Perl 6 has features that take off an run with that, most prominently the reactive and concurrent features, making it ideally suited to creating message based integration services.
At my feet right now is the excellent Enterprise Integration Patterns which I'd recommend to anyone who has an interest (or works in,) the field, despite it being nearly 15 years old now. However it is a weighty tome (literally, it weighs in at nearly one and half kilograms in hard book,) so I'm using it as a reminder to myself not to attempt to be exhaustive on the subject, lest this turn into a book itself.
There are quite a large number of managed messaging systems both free and commercial, using a range of protocols both open and proprietary, but I am going to limit myself to RabbitMQ which I know quite well and is supported in Perl 6 by Net::AMQP.
If you want to try the examples yourself you will need to have access to a RabbitMQ broker (which is available as a package for most operating system distributions,) but you can use the Docker Image, which appears to work quite well.
A couple of the examples may require other modules but I'll introduce them as I go along.
RabbitMQ implements the rich broker architecture that is described by the AMQP v0.9 specification, the more recent v1.0 specification as implemented by ActiveMQ does away with much of the prescribed broker semantics to the extent that it is basically a different protocol that shares a similar wire format.
This demonstrates most of the core features of RabbitMQ and Net::AMQP.
Firstly you will notice that many of the methods return a Promise that will be mostly kept with the actual returned value, this reflects the asynchronous nature of the broker which sends (im most cases but not all,) a confirmation message (method in AMQP parlance,) when the operation has been completed on the server.
The connect here establishes the network connection to the broker and negotiates certain parameters, returning a Promise which will be kept with a true value if succesfull or broken if the network connection fails, the supplied credentials are incorrect or the server declines the connection for some other reason.
The open-channel opens a logical broker communication channel in which the messages are exchanged, you may use more than one channel in an application. The returned Promise will be kept with an initialised Net::AMQP::Channel object when confirmed by the server.
The publish method is called on the exchange object, it has no return value as it is simply fire and forget, the broker doesn't confirm the receipt and the delivery or otherwise to a queue is decoupled from the act of publishing the message. The routing-key parameter is, as the name suggests, used by the broker to determine which queue (or queues,) to route the message to. In the case of the default exchange used in this example the type of the exchange is direct which basically means that the messsage is delivered to exactly one consumer of a queue with a matching name to the routing key. The body is always a Buf and can be of an arbitrary length, in this case we are using an encoded string but it could equally be encoded JSON, MessagePack or BSON blob, whatever suits the consuming application. You can infact supply content-type and content-encoding parameters which will be passed on with the message delivered to a consumer if the design of your application requires it, but the broker itself is totally agnostic to the content of the payload. There are other optional parameters but none are required in this example.
The consume method is called when you are ready to start receiving messages, it returns a Promise that will be kept with the "consumer tag" that uniquely identifies the consumer to the server but, as we don't need it here, we can ignore it.
Once we have called consume (and the broker has sent the confirmation,) the messages that are routed to our queue will be emitted to the Supply returned by message-supply as Net::AMQP::Queue::Message objects, however as we aren't interested in the message metadata in this example map is used to create a new Supply with the decoded bodies of the messages; this is safe where, as in this case, you can guarantee that you will be receiving utf-8 encoded but in a real world application you may want to be somewhat more robust about handling the body if you aren't in control of the sender (which is often the case when integrating with third party applications.) The content-type and content-encoding as supplied when publishing the message are available in the headers attribute (a Hash,) of the Message object, but they aren't required to be set, so you may want to consider an alternative scheme as suitable for your application.
within the top level of the react block. However you choose to exit your program you should always call call close on the connection object as it will cause a warning message in the broker logs that might upset the person administering the server if you don't.
You're probably thinking "that's all very well, but that's nothing I couldn't do with, say, an HTTP client and a small web-server", well, you're getting reliable queuing, persistence of unread messages and so forth, but yes, it could be over-kill for a simple application, until you add a requirement to send the messages to multiple, possibly unknown, consumers for example. This kind of pattern is a use of the "fanout" exchange type, which will deliver a message to all queues that are bound to the exchange.
The only major difference here is that we use declare-exchange rather than exchange on the channel to obtain the exchange to which we send the message, this has the advantage of causing the exchange to be created on the broker with the specified type if it doesn't already exist which is useful here as we don't need to rely on the exchange being created beforehand (with the command line tool rabbitmqctl or via the web management interface,) but it similarly returns a Promise that will be kept with the exchange object. You probably also noticed that here the routing-key is not being passed to the publish method, this is because for a fanout exchange the routing key is ignored and the messages are delivered to all the consuming queues that are bound to the exchange.
The exchange is declared in the same way that it was declared in the producer example, this is really a convenience so you don't have to worry about which order to start the programs, the first one run will create the queue, however if you run the producer before the consumer is started the messages sent will be dropped as there is nowhere by default to route them. Here we are also declaring a queue without providing a name, this creates an "anonymous" queue (the name is made up by the broker,) because the name of the queue doesn't play a part in the routing of the messages in this case.
You should be able to start as many of the consumers as you want and they will all receive all the messages in the same order that they are sent. Of course in a real world application the consumers may be completely different prograns written in a variety of different languages.
A common pattern is a set of consumers that are only interested in some of the messages published to a particular exchange, a classic example of this might be a logging system where there are consumers specialised to different log levels for instance. AMQP provides a topic exchange type that allows for the routing of the messages to a particular queue by pattern matching on the producer supplied routing key.
This should now be fairly clear from the previous examples, except in this case we declare the exchange as the topic type and also provide the routing key that will be used by the broker to match the consuming queues.
Here essentially the only difference from the previous consumer example is (aside from the type supplied to the exchange declaration,) that the topic is supplied to the bind method. The topic can be a simple pattern where a # will match any supplied routing key and the behaviour will be the same as a fanout exchange, otherwise a * can be used in any part of the binding topic as a wild card which will match any characters in the topic, so in this example application.* will match messages sent with the routing key application.info or application.debug for instance.
Of course. The beauty of the Perl 6 reactive model is that various sources feeding Supplies can be integrated into your producer code as touched on above and similarly a consumer can push a message to another transport mechanism.
I concluded after typing the first paragraph of this that I would never be able to do this subject justice in a short article, so I hope you consider this as an appetizer, I don't think I'll ever find the time to write the book that it probably deserves. But I do have all the examples based on the RabbitMQ tutorials so check that out and feel free to contribute.
The idea of "state" and the "state machine" is so ubiquitous in software programming that we tend to use it all the time without even thinking about it very much: that we have a fixed number of states of some object or system and that there are fixed allowable transitions from one state to another will be almost inevitable when we start modelling some physical process or business procedure.
If we are in state S and the event E occurs, we should perform the actions A and make a transition to the state S'.
once we string a number of these together we could consider it to form a workflow. Whole books, definition languages and software systems have been made about this stuff.
Often we find ourselves implementing state management in an application on an ad-hoc basis, defining the constraints on state transition in code, often in separate part of the application and relying on the other parts of the application to do the right thing. I'm sure I'm not alone to have seen code in the wild that purports to implement a state machine which in fact has proved to be entirely non-deterministic in the face of the addition of new states or actions in the system. Or systems where a new action has to be performed on some object when it enters a new state and the state can be entered in different ways in different parts of the application so new code has to be implemented in a number of different places with the inevitable consequence that one gets missed and it doesn't work as defined.
Using a single source of state management with a consistent definition within an application can alleviate these kinds of problems and can actually make the design of the application simpler and clearer than it might otherwise have been.
Thus I was inspired to write Tinky which is basically a state management system that allows you to create workflows in an application.
Tinky allows you to compose a number of states and the transitions between them into an application workflow which can make the transitions between the states available as a set of Supplies: providing the required constraints on the allowed transitions and allowing you to implement the actions on those transitions in the appropriate place or manner for your application.
This defines our three states "new", "open" and "done" and two transitions between them, from "new" to "open" and "open" to "done". This defines a "workflow" in which the state must go through "open" before becoming "done".
The Tinky::Object role provides the accessors state and next-states to the object, the latter returning a list of the possible states that the object can be transitioned to (in this example there is only one, but there could be as many as your workflow definition allows,) you'll notice that the state of the object is defaulted to new which is the state provided as initial-state to the Tinky::Workflow constructor.
This would result in an exception "No Transition for 'new' to 'done'" and the state of the object would not be changed.
You are not strictly limited to having the similarly named transitions enter the same state, but they must have different from states (otherwise the method generated wouldn't know which transition to apply). Obviously if the method is called on an object which is not in a state for which there are any transitions an exception will be thrown.
All of this might be somewhat useful if we are merely concerned with constraining the sequence of states an object might be in, but typically we want to perform some action upon transition from one state to another (and this is explicitly stated in the definition above). So, for instance, in our ticketing example we might want to send some notification, recalculate resource scheduling or make a branch in a version control system for example.
Tinky provides for the state transition actions by means of a set of Supplies on the states and transitions, to which the object for which the transition has been performed is emitted. These "events" are emitted on the state that is being left, the state that is being entered and the actual transition that was performed. The supplies are conveniently aggregated at the workflow level.
The beauty of this kind of arrangement, for me at least, is that the actions can be defined at the most appropriate place in the code rather than all in one place and can also be added and removed at run time if required, it also works nicely with other sources of asynchronous events in Perl 6 such as timers, signals or file system notifications.
Defining a large set of states and transitions could prove somewhat tiresome and error prone if doing it in code like the above, so you could choose to build it from some configuration file or from a database of some sort, but for convenience I have recently released Tinky::JSON which allows you to define all of your states and transitions in a single JSON document.
As well as providing the means of constructing the workflow object from a JSON description it adds methods for accessing the states and transitions and their respective supplies by name rather than having to have the objects themselves to hand, which may be more convenient in your application. I'm still working out how to provide the definition of actions in a similarly convenient declarative way.
It would probably be easy to make something similar that can obtain the definition from an XML file (probably using XML::Class,) so let me know if you might find that useful.
My prime driver for making Tinky in the first place was for a still-in-progress online radio management software, this could potentially have several different workflows for different types of objects: the media for streaming may need to be uploaded, it may possibly require encoding to a streamable format, have silence detection performed and its metadata normalised and so forth before it is usable in a show; the shows themselves need to have either media added or a live streaming source configured and then be scheduled at the appropriate time and possibly also be recorded (and then the recording fed back into the media workflow.) All of this might be a little too complex for a short example, but an example that ships with Tinky::JSON is inspired by the media portion of this and was actually made in response to something someone was asking about on IRC a while ago.
The basic idea is that a process waits for WAV files to appear in some directory and then copies them to another directory where they are encoded (in this case to FLAC.) The nice thing about using the workflow model for this is that the code is kept quite compact and clear, since failure conditions can be handled locally to the action for the step in the process so deeply nested conditions or early returns are avoided, also because it all happens asynchronously it makes best of the processor time.
Which defines our six states and the transitions between them. The "rejected" state is entered if the file has been seen before (from state "new",) and the "failed" state may occur if there was a problem with either the copying or the encoding.
The program expects this to be in a file called "encoder.json" in the same directory as the program itself.
This example uses the 'flac' encoder but you could alter this to something else if you want.
If you start this with an argument of the directory where you want to pick up the files ffrom, it will wait until new files appear then create a new ProcessFile object and apply the workflow to it, then every object to which the workflow is applied is sent to the applied-supply which is tapped to check whether the file has already been processed: if it has (and this can happen because the file directory watch may emit more than one event for the creation of the file,) the object is moved to state 'rejected' and no further processing happens, otherwise it is moved to state 'ready' whereupon it is copied, and if successfully encoded.
Additional states (and transitions to enter them,) could easily be added to, for instance, store the details of the encoded file in a database, or even start playing it, or new actions could be added for existing states by adding additional "whenever" blocks. As it stands this will block forever waiting for new files; however this could be integrated into a larger program by starting this in a new thread for instance.
The program and the JSON file are in the examples directory for Tinky::JSON, please feel free to grab and tinker with them.
Tinky has a fair bit more functionality that I don't think I have space to describe here: there are facilities for the run-time validation of transition application and additional supplies that are emitted to at various stages of the workflow lifecycle. Hopefully your interest is sufficiently picqued that you might look at the documentation.
I am considering adding a cookbook-style document for the module for some common patterns that might arise in programs that might use it. If you have any ideas or questions please feel free to drop me a note.
Finally, I chose a deliberately un-descriptive name for the module as I didn't want to make a claim that this would be the last word in the problem space. There are probably many more ways that a state managed workflow could be implemented nicely in Perl 6. I would be equally delighted if you totally disagree with my approach and release your own design as I would be if you decide to use Tinky.
Tinky Winky is the purple Teletubby with a red bag.
I made the audio streaming source client Audio::Libshout about a year and a half ago, it works quite well: with the speed improvements in Rakudo I have been able to stream 320kb/s MP3 without a problem, but it always annoyed me that it was difficult to test properly and even to test it at all required an Icecast server. Even with an icecast server that I could stream to, it would be necessary to actually listen to the stream in order to determine whether the stream was actually functioning correctly.
This all somewhat came to a head earlier in the year when I discovered that even the somewhat rudimentary tests that I had been using for the asynchronous streaming support had failed to detect that the stream wasn't being fed at all. What I really needed was a sort of dumb streaming server that could act in place of the real icecast and could be instrumented to determine whether a connection was being made and that the correct audio data was being received. How hard could it be? After all it was just a special kind of web server.
I should have known from experience that this was a slippery slope, but hey.
An icecast streaming server is basically an HTTP server that feeds a continuous stream of encoded audio data to the client listeners who connect with an HTTP GET request, the data to be streamed is typically provided by a source client which will connect to the server, probably authenticate using HTTP Authentication, and start sending the data at a steady rate that is proportional to the bitrate of the stream. libshout connects with a custom request method of SOURCE which is inherited from its earlier shoutcast origins, though icecast itself understands PUT as well for the source client. Because it is the responsibility of the listening client to supply the decoded audio data to the soundcard at exactly the right rate and the encoded data contains the bitrate of the stream as transmitted from the source the timing demands on the server are not too rigorous: it just has to be consistent and fast enough that a buffer on the client can be kept sufficiently full to supply the audio data to the sound card. Icecast does a little more in detail to, for instance, adjust for clients that don't seem to be reading fast enough and so forth, but in principle it's all relatively simple.
As might be obvious by now, an audio streaming server differs from a typical HTTP server in that rather than serving some content from disk or generated by the program itself for example, it needs to share data received on one client connection with one or more other client connections. In the simplest C implementation one might have a set of shared buffers, one of which is being populated from the source connection at any given time, whilst the others are being consumed by the client connections, alternating on filling and depletion. Whether the implementation settles on a non-blocking or threaded source possibly the most critical part of the code will be the synchronisation between the source writer and the client readers to ensure that a buffer is not being read from and written to at the same time.
In Perl 6 of course you'd hope you didn't need to worry about these kind of annoying details as there are well thought out concurrency features that abstract away most of the nasty details.
In this the Supplier is being fed asynchronously to stand in for the possible source client in our streaming server, and each client that connects on port 3333 will receive the same stream of characters – if you connect with two clients (telnet or netcat for instance,) you will see they are getting the same data at roughly the same time.
The Supplier provides a shared sequence of data of which there can be many consumers, so each connection provided by the IO::Socket::Async will be fed the data emitted to the Supplier starting at the point the client connected.
The CATCH here is to deal with the client disconnecting, as the first our code will know about this is when we try to write to the connection, we're not expecting any input from the client we can check and besides the characters becoming available to write may happen sooner than the attempt to read may register the close, so, while it may seem like a bit of a hack, it's the most reliable and simple way of doing this: protecting from further writes with a Promise. If, by way of experiment, you were to omit the CATCH you would find that the server would quit without warning the first time the first client disconnected.
I'll gloss over the signal outside the react as that only seems necessary in the case where we didn't get any input data on the first connection.
Of course a real streaming server would read the data frame by frame and adjust the rate according to the bit-rate of each frame. I actually have made (but not yet released,) Audio::Format::MP3::Frame to help do this, but it would be over-kill for this example.
Of course the original intent of this streaming server was to be able to test a streaming source client, so we are going to have to add another part that will recognise a source connection, read from that and relay it to the normal clients in a similar way to the above.
conveys the audio data to the clients. All else that is necessary is to return with a Supply that is not intended to actually provide any data but just to close when the client closes their connection.
(Providing the path to some MP3 file again,) then if you connect a streaming audio player you will be getting some audio again.
You might notice that the script can take a password and a mount which aren't used in this case, this is because Audio::Libshout requires them and also because this is basically the script that I have been using to test streaming servers for the last year or so.
code in many other languages.
I'm pretty sure that you wouldn't want to use this code to serve up a popular radio station, but it would definitely be sufficient for my original testing purposes with a little additional instrumentation.
authentication and better exception handling.
If you'd find it useful I might even release it.
sets for testing this kind of stuff for some reason.
Have fun and make more noise.
A little over a year and a half ago I decided to write a radio station management application in Perl 5, I won't bore you with the detailed reasons but it involved hubris and not liking having to modify an existing application that was written in multiple languages that I didn't enjoy working with. Most of the required parts were available on CPAN and the requirements were clear, so it was going along, albeit slowly.
Anyway in the early part of this year a couple of things coincided to make me consider that there would be more value in making the application in Perl 6: the probability of a release before Christmas 2015 tied in with my original estimate that it would take approximately a year to finish the application, the features of Perl 6 that I was aware of would lead to a nice neat design, and frankly it seemed like a cool idea to get in there with a large, possibly useful, application right as Perl 6 was beginning to enter the mainstream. I largely stopped working on the Perl 5 version and started looking at what I needed to be able to make it in Perl 6. Of course this would prove to be even more hubristic and deluded than the original idea, but I didn't know that at the time.
It was immediately clear that I was going to have to write a lot more code for myself: at the turn of the year there were approximately 275 distributions in the Perl 6 modules ecosystem, whereas there are somewhere in the region of 30,000 modules on CPAN going back some twenty years. There were bits and pieces that I was going to need: Database access was coming along, there was a RabbitMQ client, people were working on web toolkits so some of the heavy lifting was already being worked on.
I thought I'd start with Linux::Cpuinfo because it was a fairly simple proposition on the face of it and I haven't been happy with the AUTOLOAD that the Perl 5 version uses since a few months after I wrote it nearly fifteen years ago.
In the parent class of the newly made class, works really nicely. This is all going swimmingly, you can construct and manipulate classes using a documented interface without any external dependencies.
The fact that the Perl 6 NativeCall interface allows you to bind functions defined in a dynamic library directly without requiring any external code didn't seem to really help with the next couple of modules I chose to look at (Sys::Utmp and Sys::Lastlog) as the majority of the code in the Perl 5 XS files is actually dealing with the differences in various operating systems ideas of the respective interfaces as much as providing the XSUBs to be used by the Perl code. As it happens this isn't really so much of a problem as, with all the XSisms stripped out, the code can be compiled and linked to a dynamic library that can be used via NativeCall, even better someone had already made LibraryMake that makes integrating all this into the standard build mechanisms really quite easy. Infact it all proved so easy I made both of those modules in a few days rather than just the one that I had intended to do in the first place.
Anyhow by this point it was probably time to start on something that I might need in order to make the radio software, so I settled on Audio::Sndfile – it seemed generally useful and libsndfile is robust and well understood. And this is where the yak shaving really began to kick in. The module itself was really quite easy thanks to NativeCall despite the size of the interface and a subsequently fixed bug in the native arrays, but it occurred to me that automated testing of the module would be somewhat compromised if the dynamic library it depends on is not installed.
This has the effect of aborting the build before the tests are attempted, which for automated testing has the benefit of not showing false positives where the tests could not be attempted.
I've subsequently added it to at least one other author's tests, it nicely encapsulates a pattern which would otherwise be ten or so lines of boilerplate that would have to be copied and pasted into each test file.
A feature of the implementation of libshout is that it has an initialisation function that returns an opaque "handle" pointer, that gets passed to the other functions of the library, in a sort of object oriented fashion, additionally it provides getter and setter functions for all of the parameters, these would best be modelled as read/write accessors in a Perl 6 class, but there would be a lot of boilerplate code to write these out by hand. Having looked at a number of similar libraries I concluded that this may be a common pattern, so I wrote AccessorFacade to encapsulate the pattern.
Thus saving tens of lines of boilerplate, copy and paste mistakes and simplified testing. It probably took me longer to write AccessorFacade nicely after I had worked out how to do traits, than I ended up doing for Audio::Libshout. Which is a result, as next up I decided I needed to write Audio::Encode::LameMP3 in order to stream audio data that wasn't already MP3 encoded, and it transpired that the mp3lame library also used the getter/setter pattern that AccessorFacade targetted, having that library enabled me to finish it even quicker than anticipated.
Digital audio data is typically represented by large arrays of numbers and with the native bindings there is a lot of creating native CArrays of the correct size, copying Perl arrays to native arrays and copying native arrays to Perl arrays and so forth, this was clearly a generally useful pattern so I created NativeHelpers::Array to collect all the common use cases, refactored all the audio modules to use the subroutines it exports and found myself in the position of having written more modules to help me make the modules that I wanted to write than the modules I actually wanted to write. So in order to get things in balance I wrote Audio::Convert::Samplerate that used some of the helpers above.
Around this time I decided that I probably needed to concentrate on some application infrastructure requirements rather than domain specific things if I wanted to get anywhere with the original plan and started on a logging framework that I had been thinking about for a while. I immediately concluded that I needed a singleton logger object so I wrote Staticish.
It does exactly what I need it to, but I still haven't finished that logging framework.
But it needed some real world application to test it in, and fortunately this presented itself in the Perl 6 ecosystem itself: the META6.json that is crucial to the proper installation of a module. It is quite easy to mis-type if you are manually creating JSON, so META6 which can read and write the META6 files using JSON::Class and Test::META which can provide a sanity test of the meta file seemed like a good idea. Almost inevitably JSON::Unmarshal and JSON::Marshal needed to be revisited to allow custom marshallers/un-marshallers to be defined, (using traits, natch,) for certain attributes.
I had actually already started making JSON::Infer a year ago in Perl 5 for reasons that I could make an entire post about, but having already started down the JSON path it seemed easy to finish in Perl 6 and use JSON::Class in the created classes to allow the creation of JSON web service API classes easily: unfortunately JSON::Class (or rather its depencies) didn't even survive the encounter with the test data, so I made JSON::Name so JSON object attribute who's name wasn't a valid Perl 6 identifier could be marshalled or unmarshalled correctly. All fixed up this gave me the impetus to finish the WebService::Soundcloud which I had been playing with for a year or so. I still haven't finished the CouchDB interface.
So now toward the end of the year, there are 478 modules in the ecosystem and somehow I have made 29 of them and I haven't even started to make the application that I set out to make at the beginning of the year, but I'm happy with that as hopefully I've made some modules that may be useful to someone else, I've become a confident Perl 6 programmer and the things I've learned have helped improve the documentation and possibly some of the code. I will finish the radio software in Perl 6 and I still know I have a lot of software to write but it becomes easier every day. So if you're thinking of making an application in Perl 6 yourself enjoy the journey more than you may be frustrated by not reaching the destination when you expected as you are probably travelling a path along which few have been before.


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Fleas and fish eggs: testing textile breakdown
Advanced Textiles, Business, Geosynthetics, Industry News | May 1, 2013 | By: IFAI
Textile products at the end of their useful lives often end up buried in landfills, where water combines with eager microorganisms to break down organic molecules in natural fibers and polymers. This natural decomposition process generates carbon dioxide as a waste and also releases organic molecules to the soil while rotting away the volume and mass of the product. But what happens during the decomposition of textile products with coatings, surface treatments or synthetic polymers containing carbon-to-carbon molecule links that fungi and bacteria can't "eat"? The Hohenstein Institute, Bönnigheim, Germany, can create individual test plans to evaluate the ecological impacts of product breakdown, using a range of techniques.
The institute uses a soil burial test governed by international standards to evaluate textile breakdown and determine how quickly and completely microorganisms work. Evaluating the residue is trickier, and can be costly and impractical. The Hohenstein Institute tests the residue, with all of its combined breakdown products, on sensitive biological organisms to assess potential environmental harm. The method uses marine bacteria, water fleas and fish eggs, among other things, and tests whether the residue has adverse effects on living things.
Everyday products, such as clothing or home furnishings, should break down in soil quickly without leaving harmful residues. Geotextiles used to reinforce embankments or dikes, however, need to resist decomposition in wet environments for as long as possible. Among those seeking individual test plans are producers of prefabricated automotive parts and chemical coatings, as well as recycling companies looking for better waste management techniques.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Covid-19 jabs: Children aged five to 11 can now get appointments
Bookings opened on Saturday for children aged five to 11 in England to get a Covid-19 vaccine.
Parents and carers can arrange appointments for Monday onwards through the NHS vaccines website or by calling 119 from 7am on Saturday morning.
NHS England said hundreds of sites will offer jabs from Monday, with more coming on stream throughout the week.
Some five million children are eligible for the jab, following on from the success of the campaign to vaccinate vulnerable youngsters with health conditions.
Most new appointments will be at local vaccination centres or community pharmacies outside of school hours, and there will be walk-in clinics available, with timings on the NHS grab a jab website.
NHS England said more appointments will be added throughout the week so anyone unable to get a convenient slot should keep trying.
Children will be offered two doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, at least 12 weeks apart, at a third of the normal strength.
Families will be given a vaccination record card with the name of the vaccine, batch number and the date the vaccine was given.
Calum Semple, professor of child health and outbreak medicine at the University of Liverpool, told Sky News: "This is now a vaccine-preventable disease and the vaccine is safer than the disease.
(PA Graphics)
"It's a very unpleasant illness for children. And if they have a weakened immune system or if they live in a family where a member has a weakened immune system, the consequences can be devastating.
"So yes I am pleased."
Prof Semple, who advises the Government as part of Sage, said the vaccine will reduce days lost from education.
Dr Nikki Kanani, GP and deputy lead for the NHS Covid-19 Vaccination Programme, said: "From today, parents of almost five million five to 11-year-olds can book their little ones in for a vaccine, ensuring they get their first dose of protection and helping to protect against potential future waves of Covid-19.
"Vaccines remain the best defence we have against the virus – my 13-year-old son has had his two vaccinations and I'll be booking my 10-year-old daughter in for hers at the earliest opportunity, and would encourage all parents to read the NHS information available and consider doing the same."
Health and Social Care Secretary, Sajid Javid, said: "From Monday, the NHS will be rolling out the non-urgent offer for Covid vaccines for all children aged five to 11 in England.
"Parents, if they want, can take up the offer for their children to increase protection against Covid as we learn to live with this virus.
"Children without underlying health conditions are at low risk of serious illness from Covid and the priority remains for the NHS to offer vaccines and spring boosters to adults and vulnerable young people, as well as to catch up with other childhood immunisation programmes."
Will you be getting your children vaccinated? Let us know in the comment section below!
How to incorporate the kids into your dad exercise regime
Being a dad is hectic and sometimes your fitness can fall by the wayside. Here are some fun dad exercise ideas to get you moving.
7 types of depression explained | How to be a dad
There are many types of depression and this article explains what is involved with seven of them and where to go for help


My question is about Fresh Start with Windows 10. It re-installs Windows 10 but how well does that work on a Thinkpad. All of the drivers would come from Windows, not Lenovo, and the Lenovo factory installed software would be missing. Has anyone done a Fresh Start on a Thinkpad and if so what were the results? I have an E570. Thanks.


text:
IHS Markit Adds Tom Cunningham as COO of its thinkFolio Segment
Cunningham will be working with Spiros Giannaros, focusing on thinkFolio's product management & support
Jeff Patterson | Executive Moves ( Executives ) | Thursday, 21/09/2017 | 11:51 GMT+1 2019-05-27 10:50:45
Photo: IHS Markit
IHS Markit has announced its newest appointment, installing Tom Cunningham as the Chief Operating Officer (COO) for its thinkFolio product. He will be tasked with leading thinkFolio's product management, services, support and managed service offering, following a lengthy career spanning over two decades.
Register now to the London Summit 2017, Europe's largest gathering of top-tier retail brokers and institutional FX investors
thinkFolio is Markit's cross-asset-class order management (OMS) and portfolio modelling system (PMS). The investment management platform is one of the group's key segments, which supports a variety of cash management and FX, fixed income modeling, and loans functionality. Representing one of Markit's key buyside offerings, the hire helps reinforce a fast growing segment for the group.
In his new role as the COO of thinkFolio, Mr. Cunningham will be reporting to Spiros Giannaros, Global Head of thinkFolio and Enterprise Data Management (EDM) at IHS Markit. He steps into his role with immediate effect and will be based out of the group's London office. Together with Mr. Giannaros, Cunningham will focus on the unit's product management, services, and support, which represents a natural bridge from other buy-side cloud-based managed service.
Mr. Giannaros commented: "I'm delighted to welcome Tom to the growing thinkFolio team. Tom joins us at an exciting time when we are expanding our presence across regions and investing heavily in the next generation architecture of thinkFolio, as well as adding the solution to our managed service offering."
Tom Cunningham
Cunningham is no stranger to the technology industry, having held several senior level roles for the past twenty-five years. He joins Markit's thinkFolio from Jupiter Asset Management, having worked as its Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for over three years – his tenure saw him oversee the management of the group's IT and operations.
He has held several additional roles at technology providers, including Threadneedle Asset Management as its Head of Front Office Technology and others dating back to 1990, according to information made public on his Linkedin profile.
The appointment represents IHS Markit's latest appointment since its tranche of hires back in June 2017. Randy Hebert, Stuart Crooks, and Steven Singh all joined the group earlier this year as part of IHS Markit's push to grow its FX business.
Tags: buyside / IHS Markit / moves / thinkFolio
BCS Expands US Equities and Fixed Income Sales Teams
Overstock's tZERO Reveals a Flurry of New Hires


text:
layout: page
title: Vaughan Malichyte Financial Dinner
date: 2016-05-24
author: Frank Mclaughlin
tags: weekly links, java
status: published
summary: Ut a euismod urna. Suspendisse in.
banner: images/banner/meeting-01.jpg
booking:
  startDate: 07/10/2016
  endDate: 07/13/2016
  ctyhocn: WASWRHX
  groupCode: VMFD
published: true
---
Vivamus facilisis, nulla mollis efficitur finibus, lectus sem interdum arcu, a bibendum augue ipsum sit amet ex. Duis sed congue mi, at sollicitudin ex. Proin posuere sagittis gravida. Mauris sed urna eget lectus aliquet lobortis. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Proin luctus dictum magna non facilisis. Morbi luctus in urna sed mollis. Nulla non enim faucibus, commodo tellus non, tincidunt ligula. Donec et efficitur eros. Sed cursus accumsan mi sit amet porta. Pellentesque posuere dolor quam, ut bibendum massa semper sit amet. Praesent et varius urna. Aliquam sit amet lobortis lacus, sit amet dignissim libero. Praesent aliquam tristique mauris, vel vehicula magna ullamcorper vel. Aliquam tristique lectus non purus consectetur, quis congue enim consectetur.

* Cras ornare diam vel bibendum rutrum
* Duis nec turpis nec turpis rhoncus malesuada.

Vivamus ac felis vitae ante placerat venenatis. Cras ut est posuere magna elementum tincidunt faucibus sit amet elit. Etiam consequat tellus euismod quam suscipit eleifend. Nam malesuada sed metus non egestas. Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae; Cras ut tincidunt purus, ut suscipit arcu. Aenean maximus auctor sem, quis mollis nisi fringilla quis.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Trying not to bullshit too much
Long weekend.
Today is Merdeka, tomorrow Raya Haji, then Saturday and Sunday, then special holiday for SEA Games victory.
Hmmm....only in Malaysia, I guess.
No comment. Don't want people to get angry with me.
I know many of you all like this long weekend thing.
Typically Malaysian.
Well, I'm sitting alone at this place now.
There's a radio next to me playing some Malay songs.
Earlier, the news announced that all the highways were jammed.
Everyone going balik kampung again.
I'm not. Just sitting here quietly.
Actually, I can't drive long distance for now because of my ailment.
Otherwise, I would probably be going to the East Coast. Not been to the beach for months now.
Now, days like this, I just sleep at home.
Anyway, yesterday a friend from JB called and asked me whether Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad is really going to contest there in the next general election.
He was referring to my last few postings on it.
"Eh, engko jangan main-main benda macam ni. Orang kat sini risau tau," he said.
I explained to him that I was just theorising.
'Aku goreng je postings tu. Ya lah. Kalau betul-betul jadi at least korang dah prepared. Korang banyak main tau tak? Semuanya main agak-agak je. Buatnya orang tua tu betul-betul turun lawan kat Johor, kang korang terkejut beruk pulak," I said to my friend.
Really. I don't know shit about where Dr Mahathir is going to contest in the next general election.
I just like the idea of him contesting against Shahrir in JB and make Khaled Nordin and his people sweat a bit.
No need to panic, okay.
My friend also asked me when I'm going down to JB again.
Well, maybe next month.
Will ask my boss to pay for the trip.
If I can spend about a week there I can get things from the ground again for my writings.
Nowadays, I can just theorise about things.
Another word for it is bullshitting.
Actually, that's what most people do these days.
Thought of something and then write it in blogs, Facebook, Twitter etc.
And then claimed themselves to be political experts.
Especially those with charts and such.
Well, never mind.
Don't want to comment too much on that too.
Don't want people to get angry with me.
See lah, if I can get better, I'll try to be on the ground more.
That way I can write better stuff and do less bullshitting.
Okay, you all have a restful long weekend.
Try not to get stuck in the jam.
Here's a song,
Need to cook something now.
Hungry.
Posted by Annie at 12:06 19 comments:
Annie and Jocelyn - about the Johor battleground
I wrote this on Saturday,
Dr Mahathir to contest in JB?
It turned out that the famous Jocelyn Tan of The Star wrote this the next day about Lim Kit Siang probably contesting in JB,
Malay tsunami – fact or psywar?
I didn't notice it and wrote this instead the same day
Another place where Dr Mahathir can contest in Johor
I only realised about Jocelyn's article after reading Big Dog's and Voicey's just now,
Projection of sentiments Vs facts
Kit Siang's Malay tsunami psywar, Lethargic Chinese surprise
Quite amusing actually.
You all have to excuse me for being a bit late into reading Jocelyn's article.
It was Sunday and I was not feeling well enough that day to go out to buy newspapers or even surf the net too much.
Anyway, my postings during weekends are mostly out of whims, actually. No proper research.
I'm better today, so that's why I'm reading a bit more and therefore noticed that Jocelyn's article.
Well, I have great respect for Jocelyn as a political writer even though I do not agree with all that she wrote.
For one thing, I know that she actually tried her best to be on the ground to gather her materials, unlike so many others who just sat in their room and conjured up stories and then claimed themselves to be experts.
I bumped into Jocelyn many times at odd places where most high profile political writers would not go to get their stories.
For instance, I met her on one damp rainy night at a small gathering at a community field in Taman Tun Aminah, Johor Baru as she followed the rounds of TS Abdul Ghani Othman during the last days of campaigning of the last general election in 2013.
Ghani was at that time on his suicide mission against Kit Siang in the Chinese-majority Gelang Patah.
Despite her age and seniority, Jocelyn, in my opinion, sticks to being a true journalist by doing assignments that were normally only assigned to rookie reporters.
Yes, I admire her for that.
I was very young when I first met Jocelyn. She was working for New Straits Times at that time. I even remember the date - June 5, 1997.
At that time, I didn't know her yet as a political writer. Instead, I love to read her regular feature articles in NST.
This is exactly what I said to her at that moment,
"So, you are Jocelyn Tan. You are my favourite NST writer," I said enthusiastically.
I know, I sounded dumb, but those were my words. I didn't know what she looked like before that. Those days newspapers hardly carried picture by-lines of their journalists. And there were no internet too.
She smiled sheepishly as her collegues, who were with her made funny remarks to what I said.
She was cute. Still is.
Of course, I don't think she remembers that.
Well, nice memory that one.
As for her article on Kit Siang wanting to go against Shahrir in JB, I think it's plausible but I highly doubt Kit Siang will try it.
After all, the JB parliamentary constituency is still a Malay majority area.
Kit Siang, is not that brave.
He is not Ghani Othman, okay.
I don't even think he will lead the Pakatan's charge in Johor, knowing that BN will use the age-old anti-DAP sentiments among Malays, especially in that state.
I still think Dr Mahathir will be the one to play that role, if not in JB, then it's going to be as I said - in Muar.
I may wrote my last two posts on it out of whims, but the truth is, I had been thinking about it for quite a while.
Pakatan will need something to shock BN if it's to have a serious chance to capture Johor.
Imagine this - Dr Mahathir contesting JB and Kit Siang defending his Gelang Patah seat.
The two of them going around Johor selling the idea that the Malays and Chinese Johoreans can work together to topple BN.
That, I think, can be quite dangerous for BN.
Some may think that Dr Mahathir will never get out of his comfort zone in Kedah but I have this feeling that being 92, he may feels that this general election is his one and only shot left.
He would want to make it counts and for that he will throw caution to the wind and go for a do or die battle.
That battle will be in Johor, the birth place of Umno, which he is trying to kill now.
And for that, I doubt that he would want to be safe in Langkawi and so out of the lime light.
But then again, that's just my hunch and I'm not a reknown political writer like Jocelyn Tan.
Jocelyn must have written her article after doing thorough research and hearing about it from credible sources.
So, you all should stick to serious reading on this matter with Jocelyn.
Read mine just for fun, okay.
Someone took the trouble to call me up yesterday and asked why I teased Shahrir in my last post,
Well, to tell you all the truth, I find Shahrir annoying.
Everyone seems to overrate him so much.
Seriously, what are his achievements which were beneficial other than to his own personality?
What are his memorable contributions the several times he was a minister?
Think about it, okay.
Anyway, I actually intended that last post of mine as a reminder of the real and present danger to BN should Pakatan decides to go all out in capturing Johor in the next general election.
After all, Johor is the key to break Umno as it is the birth place of the party.
What better way it would be than having Dr Mahathir to personally lead the attack.
Pakatan actually tried it in the last general election with Lim Kit Siang leading the attack at Gelang Patah.
This time, I think Dr Mahathir could try it in Johor Baru, the parliamentary constituency bearing the name of the state capital.
I always think that the handsome old man should just rest, but since he had proven himself incapable of resting, then I suggest for him to go all out instead.
For that, he should not settles on contesting a safe seat such as Langkawi, where everyone is grateful to him, and he is sure to win.
What's the fun in that, right?
I think, just for the heck of it, Tun Dr Siti Hasmah should contest in Langkawi.
I'm quite sure she can win there even without campaigning. No joke.
If Dr Wan Azizah can be Anwar's proxy, what's wrong with Dr Siti Hasmah being Dr Mahathir's proxy?
Dr Mahathir should contest in JB instead because of so many reasons.
Of course he shouldn't contest in Pekan against Najib because that would be stupid.
I know Pekan very well and there's no way Dr Mahathir can beat Najib there.
JB on the other hand is different.
Dr Mahathir actually have a chance to win there against Shahrir.
More importantly, the anti-BN people in Johor will be so hyped up by Dr Mahathir contesting in their state that they may even manage to capture what used to be the Umno's stronghold.
That's what Lim Kit Siang tried to do when he decided to contest in Gelang Patah in the last general election.
Lucky for BN at that time the retiring TS Abdul Ghani Othman was willing to fight a losing battle at the Chinese-majority constituency to contain Kit Siang from wrecking more havoc in Johor.
Maybe Khaled Nordin would be interested to stand in for his former mentor Shahrir in JB in the event Dr Mahathir is to contest there?
Well, I doubt it. Furthermore that would not help much, I think. Dr Mahathir will go on rampaging around Johor and beyond no matter whether his opponent is Shahrir or Khaled.
Khaled is no Ghani, okay.
Anyway, just imagine what would happen if Dr Mahathir actually wins and becomes the JB MP.
I can instantly think of a few,
1. He can actually shuts up Shahrir for the final time.
2. It would be easier for him to irritate Singaporeans that they are his next door neighbours.
3. He can annoys Sultan of Johor more if he wins. After all, Istana Pasir Pelangi is in the JB constituency.
Hmmm....those are just off my head.
If I'm Dr Mahathir, I would be quite tempted to try it.
Well, why not? Nothing to lose what.
I know, some of you all think I'm a bit crazy writing this.
After all, Shahrir still have over 10,000 majority.
Okay, how about this instead.....Dr Mahathir to contest in Muar.
BN MP there Razali Ibrahim got just about 1,600 majority.
Imagine Dr Mahathir as the MP of the royal town of Johor.
That could be quite uncomfortable for many people in my home state, I think.
Hahaha...how about that, eh?
Okay lah, enough with my Dr Mahathir in Johor crazy theories.
Here, listen to this better,
Nice, right?
I read this story and I laughed,
Shahrir To Consider PM's Request To Continue Leading JB UMNO
excerpts :
- Shahrir, who is Johor Bahru UMNO division chief, told reporters after the opening of the division's delegates conference here today that he would discuss the matter with the division and branch leaders and members before making a decision.
- When opening the conference, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak had openly expressed hope that the Johor Bahru Member of Parliament would not step down, saying that Shahrir was still needed to lead the division.
- Also supporting the call for Shahrir to continue helming Johor Bahru UMNO was Menteri Besar and state UMNO liaison chief Datuk Seri Mohamed Khaled Nordin, who in his speech at the same event, described Shahrir as a political icon, and a credible and respected figure.
I wish they could just be frank about it and said - there's no one else to replace Shahrir to contest the JB seat because Shahrir never trained anyone to replace him there.
Instead, Shahrir said he's going to discuss about it and such. What to discuss lah? It's a done deal. Don't be malu kuching and pretend, can or not?
Also, next time don't be gatal and say don't want to contest anymore while in actual fact you knew that there's no one else to replace you because you designed it that way.
Well, doesn't really matter to me. Shahrir can keep the JB seat till the day he died.
That is if he can keep it lah after the next general election. His majority there was slashed from over 20,000 to just over 10,000 over the past two general elections.
By the way, I wish Khaled could explain how his former boss is so iconic, credible and respected. I'm a bit lost on that one.
All I know is that he made his political career by whacking Dr Mahathir when the handsome old man was still the PM. People actually thought he's so good just because of that.
Really, other than that, what else?
How I wish Dr Mahathir can contest against Shahrir in JB for GE14.
Sorts of making it the last rumble for both of them.
That would shake things up quite a bit, especially in Johor, isn't it?
And for state seat, maybe Dr Mahathir should contest where ever Khaled is contesting.
Just a thought ya.....hahahahaha
Eh, but it's not totally impossible too, okay.
Dr Mahathir was said to have drafted a 10 points plan on how Pakatan can defeat BN in Johor
Anyway, this is another story which made me laughed the other day,
Make Defending Putrajaya A 'Jihad' - UMNO Members Told
excerpts;
"Here, high hope is placed on UMNO, as the frontliners, to defend Putrajaya, as a symbol for the present government to be maintained.
"As frontliners, your huge sacrifice is demanded and because of that, the fight to defend Putrajaya in a jihad much needed by the party," he said when opening the Putrajaya UMNO delegates conference here today.
Do they really need to use the word "jihad" like that?
But then again, this is a story about Shahidan Kassim and Ku Nan.
I shouldn't expect too much.
Still, it was funny to read.
Can't they came out with more sober and proper way to motivate their people.
I really don't like them throwing around the word "jihad" like that.
Can't they just do things properly and lead by example in order to motivate?
I've seen other Umno people like Ghani Othman and Johari Ghani did it, why can't they?
Sultan Johor vs KJ
This one is sorts of a continuation of this previous post,
TMJ vs KJ
I think you all have read this story,
Johor sultan challenges Malaysian polo team to a match
"I challenge the Sea Games polo team to come to Johor and show your fangs since news of your greatness precedes you," Sultan Ibrahim said.
"I'd like to extend the invitation to the youth and sports minister and hopefully he won't disappoint the requests of the people to see your team defeat the Johor team."
Khairy is a member of the Malaysian Sea Games polo team.
His comments followed the Malaysian team's match against Singapore today, in which he singled out an unnamed player who "came on and asked the performing player to pretend to be injured" after the national team had taken the lead.
"So, there's a photo of him in the team, to be featured in the print media and spread the propaganda as if he was victorious and reliable."
The sultan said he would play in the Johor team in the proposed match, along with his two sons and two horse trainers, adding that if they lost, he would admit to the superiority of the nation's Sea Games team.
I received quite a number of messages yesterday over the story.
Unfortunate to say, they were mostly negative.
Some asked me why did Sultan Ibrahim issue such a challenge.
How would I know.
Probably, KJ had done something to irritate the Johor royal household.
I used the word "irritate" because "anger" would not be the right word.
I don't think Sultan Ibrahim is angry with KJ.
Otherwise, he wouldn't be issuing a challenge of a polo match.
A polo match, is a noble game of gentlemen. They drink tea on the veranda of the posh club house while watching the match. All very nice and high class, okay.
You don't get angry with someone and challenge him to that.
I think if the sultan was really angry with KJ, he would instead challenge him to a fist fight.
Of course, that would not happen, right?
For me, the sultan's challenge is more that of a gentlemanly dare to someone who annoys him.
In this case, Sultan Ibrahim was probably annoyed with KJ for fooling around with polo, a sport that he loves, and he issued the challenge, just to prove a point.
Maybe KJ and his team will accept the challenge.
Then, Sultan Ibrahim and his sons will thrash them in the match, after which they will have tea and later on in the evening a banquet with laughter and merriment all around.
The sultan, TMJ, KJ and everyone else will have a good time and everything will be fine again after that.
Yes, I think that is what will happen.
So, no need to get all worked up over this matter, actually.
And of course I'm sure the Johor royal polo team will massacre KJ and his team on the field. No doubt about that.
Just have a look at the video of the Johor team, ok.
The need to be fair
Despite my appeal for people
Not to be so annoying
I still received these sorts of comments,
BN Khaled & his macais are enjoying while it last as GE14 will be a total annihilation for BN and annie too should be enjoying before BN doomsday come wink wink wink
Yes, it's annoying, okay.
I picked that one up from my last post because despite being annoying, it's short and doesn't sounds not very intelligent as compared to the long winded ones.
Since this type of comments mostly came from the Pakatan people who visited this blog, it does makes me wonder whether they could be any better than the BN people in handling freedom of speech and expression.
Many of them appeared unable to handle criticisms even from people who also criticise their BN opponents.
It's again that matter of either you are with us or against us mentality.
Couldn't they handle those who decided not to choose their side nor that of their opponents?
For these people, their side is beyond criticism.
I think they need to look in the mirror once in a while so that they can see whatever not so nice and correct those defects.
On top of that, they need to be cool about it.
You see, I did allow these sorts of anti-BN comments through even though I'm not sure whether what were written are true,
BN has already commenced their clandestine and covert ways and means to cajole the innocent public to support them in the next polls.
My friend's daughter secured a place to pursue her tertiary education in one of our public university just a month ago.
As in the case of many middle income group, her parents applied for PTPTN and were successful in the application.
Guess what happened next....in her Surat Tawaran Wang Pendahuluan Pembiyaan (RM1500) she was directed to go to the MP's office to collect the cash.And the MP belongs to BN.
During the collection activity, her parents were told to vote for the MP in the forthcoming elections.They were also cautioned of the repercussions if they voted otherwise.
The shameless MP even had the cheek to pose for a selfie with the applicant.
In 2009, my two children were granted PTPTN for their further studies in local varsities and we were directed to open a SSPN savings account in CIMB to facilitate the funding.There was no involvement of MP's or any slimy politician.
How low can this stupid BN stoop ? Why such desperation ?
Why must an MP get involved in the disbursement of a loan that is entirely the responsibility of the student in as far as repayment is concerned ?
Bodoh Piang bin Bangang !!!!!
Rasta Rules
I even agreed on the part about the need for wakil rakyat to be sincere in their work.
But then again, I feel that we need to be fair.
There are actually BN MPs who are sincere in representing and helping the rakyat.
In fact the good ones may even outnumbered the bad ones.
I have met some of them and was impressed by their work.
The same goes with the opposition MPs. Some are good, others are bad.
Whatever it is, that's for their constituents to decide actually.
Come election day we should know whether they are good or bad.
Unless of course if they move to contest in another constituency where the people there do not really know them la.
Some are like that, they didn't stay in one place as they knew if they do that people in that constituency would not vote for them again because of their lousy service as wakil rakyat there.
Okay, I know, the Pakatan readers (especially the commentators) of this blog may want me to give an example of a good BN MP.
Watch this short video, okay;
Those in the video are real people in need and as according to them, they did get help from their MP who is a BN guy.
Bear in mind that the urban constituency of Titiwangsa was wrested back from Pakatan by BN in 2013 despite the Chinese tsunami....or urban tsunami, whichever you wished to call it.
How did that happen?
I think it's because Jo Ghani worked his ass off on the ground like in that video long before the last general election.
I know, his majority is not much but considering the circumstances at that time, it was still a good achievement.
After all, as I wrote previously, nothing beat real work on the ground like that, no matter whether the wakil rakyat is a BN or Pakatan guy.
Another wedding and a bit on Johor MB
Was at yet another wedding reception today. Been like this for the last four weekends.
To Ahmad Arshad Said and Najwa Solehah Shamsul Bahrin,
Wishing and congratulating both of you on the special day of your lives.
May you have lifetime love, harmony and happiness.
Have a great marriage
I quite enjoyed attending the wedding.
Ate quite a bit too,
Nasi beriyani, Palembang beef, mutton curry, some fruits and chrysanthemum tea
Very sedap, but I think if I eat like that for one week straight, I would probably be dead. Too rich.
Anyway, as I was sitting quietly there eating my food, I received these wassap messages from a friend.
- Jauh MB ko lunch hari ni
- Sampai starhill
- Datang segerombolan
Apparently, Johor Menteri Besar DS Mohamed Khaled Nordin was having lunch with about 10 of his people at the Luk Yu Tea House in Bukit Bintang, KL
Hmmmm....
I guess that more or less an indication that the general election is not likely within the next two or three months.
Many are saying now that it will be in November.
That couldn't be, as Khaled seemed to still have the time to spend his weekends in KL.
If the election is so near, I don't think he would have the luxury to spend precious weekends outside Johor.
I remember his predecessor, TS Abdul Ghani Othman spending all his weekends on exhaustive tour of all the kawasan peti undi in Johor as far back as a year before the last general election in 2013.
Ghani can't do that during the week days at that time because he had the state administration to run too.
I'm quite sure Khaled would do the same too if this coming general election is already just around the corner.
He wouldn't have time to hang out with buddies at a fancy restaurant in KL during the weekends if the polls will be in November as predicted by a lot of people now....right?
Unless maybe Johor BN's election preparations are already in tip top condition that he can afford such luxuries.
Hmmmm.....I'm a bit skeptical about that.
Well....don't know lah.
Talk too much, people get angry with me pulak.
Okay, here's some music to cheer up your weekend,
That drummer is the fantastic Kanade Sato.
Good that Malaysia is really neutral over Arab quarrel
Last month I wrote this,
Malaysia must not join Arab states against Qatar
I was told that the people who wanted us to take sides in the dispute wanted Malaysia to be with the other Arab states going against Qatar.
Yesterday, Jahabar of Malaysian Insight wrote this,
Qatar emir's visit causes split in Putrajaya
The Malaysian Insight understands Foreign Minister Anifah Aman is firm that Putrajaya, as a neutral party in the Gulf diplomatic crisis, will host Emir of Qatar Sheikh Tamim Hamad Al-Thani when he visits next month
But Defence Minister Hishammuddin Hussein, who is also the Special Functions Minister and seen to be close to the Saudi government, wants the trip delayed until peace is brokered between the Middle East nations.
"There is a spat and Anifah is unhappy, to put it diplomatically, that his ministry's decisions and jurisdiction is being questioned. The emir has been invited and it cannot be delayed," a source told The Malaysian Insight.
Then both Hishammuddin and Anifah immediately denied Jahabar's story,
Malaysia welcomes Qatari emir visit, denies ministerial rift
Hishammuddin Hussein and I have long been working very well and closely with each other on many occasions," Anifah said in a statement.
"The government of Malaysia looks forward to the state visit by the emir of Qatar and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs with other Malaysian government agencies are currently making the necessary preparations for the visit," he added.
He also said Malaysia had made its position clear on "the ongoing difficulties between the Arab Quartet and Qatar".
"Why should there be rift? The rift is between the Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
"Do you really think that I can stop the emir of Qatar if he wants to come?" Hishammuddin said at a press conference at the Parliament lobby.
Whatever it is, I'm glad that it's confirmed now Malaysia will remain neutral as far as the Arab quarrel is concerned.
I believe that's the best for the country.
It doesn't matter to me that Jahabar's story, and in a way my post on the matter too, were denied by the ministers yesterday.
For me, that's only natural.
I don't know about Jahabar, but I didn't write that post of mine last month simply to make the ministers seemed to be quarreling with each other over the issue.
I didn't even mention any of the ministers' name.
My posting was actually just an appeal for PM DS Najib Razak and his government to do the right thing which is to remain neutral when it comes to other people's disputes.
In this case, I believe that we have a good foreign minister in Anifah and therefore Najib and the government should trust him and his people at Wisma Putra to handle such matters.
I also think that Anifah is the best Sabah guy that Najib have in his Cabinet.
The guy is cool and I really believe that he knows what he is doing.
These are two of my previous postings on him,
Maybe Anifah is more humane than Aung San Suu Kyi
Please let Anifah do his job
Guys in red look the same
The Pribumi people have been going to town about Umno people being responsible for the fracas at their Nothing To Hide 2.0 forum over the weekend.
Most linked the culprits to the Red Shirts of that funny Jamal Sekinchan Ikan Bakar guy.
Umno people on the other hand accused the Pribumi people of self-sabotage to gain public sympathy.
They said it's the work of the Pribumi's youth wing Armada who themselves organised the event.
There were tones of this debate in the social media.
However, when people asked me what I think of it, I said I don't know.
I was not there, so what can I say?
Both sides of the argument have their own logics.
Honestly, I feel that both sides are more or less the same so that I can't really tell who were telling the truth and who were lying.
They even sounded the same.
In fact, they even look almost the same,
What is it with these guys and wearing red?
Personally, I prefer purple.
Okay, I know the Pribumi supporters will say their Armada guys are very much nicer than the Red Shirts.
Well, I don't like the Red Shirts too. They tend to look thuggish and behave as such.
But than again, I find that the Pribumi side, despite their Armada leader looking a bit cute, can be as nasty too.
Just read the comments section of this blog, okay.
They were very quick to jump on my neck whenever they didn't like what I wrote.
And of course they mercilessly whacked people they don't like and any BN or Umno supporters who dare to voice their opinion in this blog.
Sometimes I do wish that they were not too harsh.
I think it only makes people like them less.
By the way, why they called themselves Armada, eh?
It's weird la.
So, I rather look at the fracas over the weekend as just another one of those usual Malaysian political comedies.
Alhamdulillah though that Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad and Tun Dr Siti Hasmah Mohd Ali were not injured in the incident.
I always feel that the elderly couple should not be exposed to such risks, but since they insisted on going on the campaign trail, I hope the Pribumi people could tighten security at events to be attended by them.
Pas-Umno cooperation and possible GE14 scenario
After reading this Bernama story yesterday, I was convinced that there will be a real political cooperation between Umno and Pas for the coming general election,
Pas practices mature, constructive politics - Najib
excerpts,
The prime minister, who is on a one-day visit to Kelantan, said because of Pas' maturity in politics, the party had become a constructive opposition party.
"We oppose (one another), but in certain matters that bring good and benefit for the people, we can cooperate," he said.
Most significantly, Najib said all that at an Umno function in Pas-governed Kelantan and in the presence of Kelantan Umno chief DS Mustapa Mohamed.
I think it's sort of a signal to Tok Pa and Kelantan Umno people that it's okay for them to let Pas keep the state as it has now become a good opposition party, and friendly to BN.
In return, perhaps they may probably have a Pas-Umno coalition Kelantan government after the next general election.
The same set-up seems possible in other states too, particularly in the outright Malay majority states of Kedah, Terengganu, Pahang and Perlis.
They may have an arrangement where Pas lead in Kelantan and Kedah while Umno lead in Terengganu, Pahang and Perlis.
If Umno and its BN allies prevail in the other states, Pas elected representatives may also be included in the state administration there even though the party may not be joining the ruling coalition.
BN may also expect support from Pas MPs in the parliament even if they are sitting in the opposition side of the hall.
In return, Pas may get the support of Umno MPs every time it proposes some "Islamic laws".
There may even be ministers appointed from among the Pas MPs at that point.
It's actually a good arrangement for both Umno and Pas.
It secures at least the five outright Malay majority states for Umno in the bigger picture, while Pas may get to lead Kedah in addition to its Kelantan now.
Yes, Kedah may then also have syariah public whippings too like in Kelantan soon.
Pakatan's Malay parties of Pribumi and Amanah which were expected to contest in those states may not likely stand much of a chance against a combined Pas and Umno arrangement.
Okay, maybe Pribumi and Amanah can put up a bit of a fight in Kedah but I don't think the Dr Mahathir factor is enough for them to defeat a combined Umno and Pas in the state.
Kedahans that I know told me that they will only vote either BN or Pas. They seemed allergic to other than those two parties. It's brand loyalty, I guess.
With that, Umno can therefore concentrates its energy and resources in the other states where Pas knows that it would not be able to do much due to its lack of non-Malay support.
There are Penang, Perak, Selangor, Federal Territories, Negeri Sembilan, Malacca, Johor, Sarawak and Sabah.
BN will probably not put up too much of a fight in Penang, Selangor and Federal Territories. The anti-BN sentiment on the ground there is probably very bad, that they would not want to waste too much effort and resources.
Meanwhile, Sarawak is already in the bag.
Sabah too. Probably Shafie Apdal's Warisan may manage a decent showing but I doubt it will be able to do more than just winning a few electoral seats.
So the only real fight will be in Perak, Negeri Sembilan, Malacca and Johor. They are going to be the key states of GE14.
BN is likely to put more efforts there than elsewhere.
I believe Pakatan planners knew this and will do likewise.
Their chances are the best in Perak and Johor where the racial composition and level of political awareness are similar to that of Selangor.
Pakatan chances in Perak should be for now at about 50/50. and in Johor about 40/60.
Even if they can't wrest those states, Pakatan may likely be able to get extra parliament seats there.
I think Negeri Sembilan and Malacca are at slightly lesser risks for BN compared to in Perak and Johor.
Still, BN does have the over all advantage at this stage.
Worst case scenario for BN is that it loses in Penang, Perak, Selangor, Federal Territories, Negeri Sembilan, Malacca and Johor but still wins (with the help of Pas) in Perlis, Kedah, Pahang, Terengganu, Kelantan, Sarawak and Sabah. That's 7-7.
But a more realistic scenario is that, BN is just likely only going to lose in Penang, Selangor, Federal Territories and maybe Perak.
Despite some of my friends in Johor saying my home state will likely fall to Pakatan, I still think BN will prevail there. It may lose some more parliament and state seats but I just can't believe that it can become another Selangor.
To a lesser extent, I feel the same about Negeri Sembilan and Malacca.
Combined with Pas MPs, I also think BN will still control parliament even though without the two third majority after GE14. It should basically be about the same as now.
Again, bear in mind that my calculations include the likelihood of Umno-Pas coalition state governments in Kelantan, Terengganu, Pahang, Kedah and Perlis.
Okay, at the moment, that's how I think it will be for GE14 and its outcome.
Woke up a bit early.
Going to my cousin's wedding in a short while.
So many weddings of people I know over the past weeks.
Mating season, I guess.
Better lah.
The past year, so many people I know died.
It was as if some sorts of deadly plague had set upon them.
Well, weddings are much better than funerals.
I wish I can have one for myself too, but I don't think I have much hope for that.
Better chance of me having a funeral, I think...hahaha.
I'm still not well.
Don't even know if I could get well.
Must cheer up a bit for the wedding.
Sorry, no politics today.
Actually, thinking about funerals is better than thinking about politics.
Politics is really darker and gloomier.
At funerals, at least everyone is a friend.
You don't fight at funerals. Politics seems so stupid at such moments.
Okay, need to go now.
Here's a love song to go with the wedding mood,
I sing this song whenever I think about my love life these days.
Used to sing this one back then,
Cheers and have a good weekend.
A neutral observation
Actually, I did my last four posts the way they are to test the response of readers from both sides of the political divide to views of a neutral observer such as myself.
Two of the posts are slightly pro-BN and the others slightly pro-Pakatan.
About 80 percent of the comments are from the pro-Pakatan crowd.
Most of them were not happy with every pro-BN elements of the postings.
They seemed to react quite harshly to the posts perceived not to be in their favour.
On the other hand, the few pro-BN readers who commented seemed more docile even when I appeared to be criticising their side.
The truth is, I wrote all four posts aimed at highlighting weaknesses of both sides and the need to remedy them.
A bit on soundbites from Johor over tea
- It's on the need for BN not to be over confident even at its strongholds as the chances of it losing the next general election is quite real.
Don't be so annoying
- The post was meant to inform the Pakatan people that they could not hope to replace the BN people if they behave as bad as the BN people or worse.
Bland stories on a happy day
- This one is to inform the BN people why their methods were not doing so well in the perception war to win the heart and mind of the people.
An example of how Pakatan people screwed up
- This post is actually to tell Pakatan people not to get arrogant with their opinions because they could be distasteful to many who would otherwise support them.
As I wrote above, I think the BN side reacted more positively to my criticisms than the Pakatan side.
The BN people may not like what I wrote but they were not too quick to jump on my head and accuse me of this and that.
As for the reactions of the Pakatan people, you all just need to go to the comments section of those postings and judge for yourselves.
I feel that the Pakatan people need to be more cool and not too quick to jump to conclusions.
But then again, maybe they just enjoy whacking people that they perceived to be their enemies.
Many people are like that.
The question is, how are they to be better than the BN people with such an attitude?
Anyway, I'm not feeling very well today.
Something to do with my heart. Very painful.
So, that's all for now.
For a bit of cheer, here's a wonderful song,
It's actually requested by an Indian friend.
Someone suggested for me to read an anti-BN blog written by a supposedly intelligent woman named Mariam Mokhtar.
Honestly, I never read anything by her before this.
So, I gave it a try and read this latest post in the blog,
What has "bumiputeraism" done for the Malays?
It actually made me felt like going back being a full-fledged pro-BN blogger again.
Really. I was that disgusted.
I found the post to be extremely arrogant, insulting and condescending.
If I'm a BN operative, I would like to translate the article to Bahasa Malaysia and distribute it among the Malays, telling them that this is the typical attitude of anti-BN people.
That should be able to secure several hundred thousands extra votes for BN.
It's much better than whacking Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad which only have the opposite effect.
I tried checking the background of this Mariam Mokhtar but can't really find it.
But I bet she's one of those Malays who never care to learn how 70 per cent of the Bumiputera were living below the poverty line before the introduction of the New Economy Policy in the early 1970s.
Now it's almost next to zero per cent, with many these days complaining about their perceived poverty in the social media via their expensive sophisticated smartphones.
This Mariam Mokhtar probably never experienced poverty herself and never feel anything when the Malays were being generalised as stupid or lazy by others.
Her line of reasoning is actually very similar to that of many DAP people that I know.
So, it's not really off the mark to say that's the typical attitude towards Malays of many who wanted BN out.
I think it's also the very reason why many Malays would never accept the opposition, particularly DAP.
Malays as a whole would never accept arrogant, insulting or condescending people like that.
At least Najib, no matter what accusations they threw at him never treated them with such contempt.
A bit of search also revealed that I'm not alone in my opinion about the woman's writings.
I'm putting in full here a posting from what appeared to be a dormant politically neutral blog about another arrogant, insulting and condescending article by Mariam Mokhtar,
A Response to Mariam Mokhtar's "A superior Malay … is an Arab"
So, The Heat Malaysia featured an article by (who I assume to be) guest writer Mariam Mokhtar. She's pretty prolific, with her own website and articles/opinion pieces featured in a bunch of news portals. Go click on this link above and then come back. Done? Cools. Okay, if you were too lazy to read the whole thing, Mariam basically is writing about the modern Malay fascination with Arab culture. I'm sure you've seen examples of it. Lots of people are emulating the clothes, rituals, habits and speech patterns (using the Arabic names for holidays like Hari Raya, for example). There's also a pretty heavy focus on religion in many of these cases. Mariam argues that the adoption of this culture is making Malay people intolerant and arrogant towards non-Malays and patronising towards Malays who choose not to adopt those 'Arabic' aspects. But here's my problem. She does it terribly. Ms Mokhtar, if you're reading this, know that I have no hard feelings on you personally, but your opinion piece is honestly quite horrifying to read. She starts off with an anecdote that goes: "Until the 1990s, a Malay boy would usually reply that his ambition would be to become a doctor, a lawyer or an engineer. Today, a sea [of] change has occurred. A child social worker said, "These days, many Malay boys aspire to become ustaz. They appear to have no other ambition, or interests."" I don't know who this child social worker is, but they're a horrible child social worker. I thought people in that field were supposed to encourage kids to achieve their dream? I mean, who are you to say that taking up a religious profession means a lack of ambition? She goes on and gives a list of occupations that she thinks are more 'beneficial' (engineers and scientists, lecturers and trade workers) and compliments those people for wanting to help their communities, as if those in a religious profession are lazy and ignorant themselves. Come on, Ms Mokhtar, I'm sure you know better than to generalize an entire group? But wait. She then writes: "Many Malays today, are intolerant and arrogant. They claim superiority over other Malaysians, but when it comes to meritocracy, they suddenly cry foul, and blame the non-Malays of denying them of their rights. […] Today, the Malays have allowed the insidious Arabisation to creep into their everyday life, and dilute their own culture. Their children are given Arabic sounding names, which are difficult to spell and are almost unpronounceable. […] Why does the Malay man not ride his camel to work, rather than terrorise other road users with his kapchai or Proton?" You have got to be kidding me, right? Calling an entire culture 'insidious'? Making fun of their naming conventions? Using ridiculous stereotypes like 'Arabs ride camels'? I'm sorry, which group of people are you calling out for being intolerant of other cultures again? And here is where the nail in the coffin lies, guys. She ends her piece with this stunning work of journalistic talent: "The Saudi Arabians depend on Pakistani and Bangladeshi menial labourers. We, too, depend heavily on Bangladeshi workers. If he's not careful, the 'superior' Malay will be an Arab… or perhaps a Bangladeshi." Give this woman a Pulitzer Prize, folks! I'm going to ignore the incredibly obvious question of "How is that at all relevant to this discussion?" because that would be too easy. How on Earth could you be so condescending to foreign workers? If 'superior Malays' are not 'careful', they'll end up like Bangladeshis? How do you mean, Ms Mokhtar? Do you mean to say that they will begin to work extremely hard? Do you mean to say that they'll be willing to travel thousands of kilometres, going through isolation in a foreign country in hope of a better life for their family? Or perhaps you wanted to say that they'd face persecution, abuses of their rights, and offensive opinion pieces put out on The Heat Malaysia treating them like the butt of a bad joke? No, Ms Mokhtar, I don't believe you meant to say any of those things. You were just trying to make a cheap shot at the expense of one of the most marginalized communities in Malaysia, and while trying to prove how 'intolerant and arrogant' a certain group of people were because they adopted Arab culture, you proved that a person could be just as intolerant and arrogant and condescending without adopting it. I have friends from many different national backgrounds, I am happy to say. Some of them are from the Middle East, some of them are from Bangladesh. They vary in educational qualification and income levels, but the most important thing is that they vary at all. They're not some homogeneous, faceless, monolithic group that it's okay to make fun of. Your opinion piece was basically the equivalent of saying "Don't be intolerant… because everyone knows only Arabs are intolerant! And don't even get me started on the Bangladeshis!" I hope you realize the problem with that statement. I'm sorry, but I'd very much prefer to live in a Malaysia where we celebrate a variety of different cultures, Arab, Malay, Bangladeshi, what have you. The day when a group of 'Arabicised' Malay people start giving me flak for being Malaysian-Chinese, then maybe I'll write about that, but I sure as heck won't be putting down entire cultures and groups of people while I do.
Posted o April 7, 2016 Tagson A Response to Mariam Mokhtar's "A superior Malay … is an Arab"
These are the links to ALL political stories published by national news agency Bernama yesterday :
Kota Belud UMNO, BN Fully Support Najib's Leadership
Johor UMNO Ready To Face Former Leader Who Joined Opposition
Leadership Qualities A Must To Attract Urban Malay Voters - Khairy
DPM Tells Component Parties To Prove Their Worth
Don't Abandon UMNO If Not Selected As Candidate - Johari
Semporna UMNO Still Intact - Nasir Sakaran
Shahrizat Reminds Umno Members To Be Ready To Face GE Challenges
Reject Perception-based Politics - Puteri UMNO
Sabah UMNO, BN Must Unite To Defend Government
No One Can Drive A Wedge Between Najib And Ahmad Zahid - Ismail Sabri
BN Will Still Be In Power After GE14 - Mahdzir
GE 14: Terengganu UMNO Intends To Field Women Candidates
Rather one-sided and predictable, aren't they?
Boring, if you asked me.
I wonder what's in the mind of the Bernama editors when they saw those headlines on their webpage at the end of yesterday.
I mean, can't they be a little bit more creative?
Try to make the stories be a bit more interesting and different from those published by New Straits Times, perhaps.
Surely the editorial direction can be better, right?
Wouldn't it be nice if they can make a bit of an effort to attract people into reading their stories?
Jeezzz, surely they must have thought of that.
Or did they?
What's the point of all the feel good stories if no one really feels like reading them, right?
Did they think of that too, or did they just do those stories to please those upstairs so that they can keep their well paying job without caring whether people want to read them or not?
Honestly, I feel that they didn't seem to even try being smart about it anymore these days.
Simply do the stories to fill up the pages without getting in trouble with the bosses, I think.
No wonder that good for nothing pro-opposition Malaysiakini is the most read news portal in the country.
People want to know what's happening on the other side too, okay.
Umno really need to do a survey to find out how many of its members read Malaysiakini.
I think they would be shocked with the findings.
Maybe then they will do something about it.
I'm rather sure they will carry on like now no matter how much I bitch about it here.
Wasting my breath only.
The most, they will do a bit of revamp, change several people here and there with golden parachutes for the outgoing big time editors and that's it.
Heard that what's happening at Media Prima.
Someone forwarded me this Wassap message yesterday evening,
Sure hope whatever that they are doing, I would like to be proven wrong by them selling more of their stories after such a revamp.
It would be wonderful, I think if one day the NST Online can replace Malaysiakini as the number one news portal in the country.
Well, you can never tell what's going to happen in future, okay.
See, even a cat can grows horns.
Anyway, despite everything, yesterday was a happy day for me.
Unfortunately, someone requested for me not to write about the main reason why I was happy.
Such a spoilsport. But what to, the guy is a shy one.
However, I think I can write a bit about the secondary reason why I was happy yesterday.
I got to meet many of my friends from the old Johor BN team.
They are good sincere people whom I have the honour to work with.
We worked hard in defence of Johor back in the last general election in 2013.
We didn't become rich or anything like that because of it, but our conscience is clear as we believed in what we were doing.
It feels good being able to feel and say that.
Special thanks to our chief at that time, TS Abdul Ghani Othman, whose leadership by example inspires us to do the right things.
Latest picture I have of Datuk Ghani and his wife Prof Jamilah (I still find it difficult to call them Tan Sri and Puan Sri)
Someone asked me yesterday what's the difference between Pakatan people and BN people.
My answer - more or less the same.
Most on both sides are annoying.
Just read the comments section of this blog if you don't believe me.
Just the other day I told a friend who is with Pribumi that I'm irritated with many of the people on his side the same way I'm irritated with many of the Umno people.
What is it with that obsession of wanting to put Najib in jail is all about anyway?
Are we to be like some third world countries which enjoy jailing leaders they don't like anymore?
Are we going to be like Peru, for instance.
Are we going to be a lynch mob if there is a change of government?
For someone like me, it just shows that they are no different than the BN people they accused as being tyrants.
And that even before they got power.
Why can't they talk more about healing the nation and reconciliation?
Talk about proper justice, cannot ka?
Simply simply want to throw people in jail.
They sound the same as those Umno people who talk about "either you are with us or against us".
Just imagine the chaos if people like that got into power.
Some of them are in fact creepier than the creepiest Umno people.
Urgh....
I think this is why some people got fed up with politics in this country now.
The alternative doesn't seems very appealing.
That is if they pause and think la.
Seriously. They are more or less the same, right?
Okay, that's my morning thoughts for the day after reading again comments at my last post.
Just need to let it out.
Eh, can you all write less annoying comments in this blog, please?
Here, an energetic morning music video to go with that request;
Had tea with an old friend yesterday afternoon.
The guy is from my gang in Johor back when we were defending the state for the last general election in 2013.
He's sorts of my senior and I respect him very much.
Even though out of politics now, my friend still receives credible intel from the ground, especially in Johor.
I have not seen him for quite a while, so initially I was not really sure why he called me out for tea.
It turned out that he's worried about Johor BN's preparations for the coming general election.
Basically, his worries were almost the same as what I wrote in this previous post,
Can Khaled do what Ghani did in handling a Malay tsunami?
Well, actually his assessment was even slightly worse than mine.
He said the possibility of Pakatan Harapan capturing half of the Johor's 26 parliamentary seats is very real.
The opposition coalition already have six - Gelang Patah, Senai, Bakri, Kluang, Batu Pahat and Pagoh.
Click on the link to my previous post above to know the other constituencies in Johor which were at risk of falling to Pakatan Harapan.
My friend said BN's preparations for the coming general election in Johor so far was not even close to the level of what were done during the same period in the run-up to the 2013 polls.
He felt that MB DS Mohamed Khaled Nordin and his team have not been on the ground enough and Khaled's visits to the parliamentary constituencies earlier this year, said to be in preparation for the polls, were mere touch n go affairs.
Khaled visiting Johor Baru parliamentary constituency early this year
"They can't just go to a constituency for a few hours, look around a bit, listen to a briefing by the district officer or someone like that and consider that as preparing for the general election," he said.
My friend also believed that there were not even proper follow-ups for those visits.
He said he was told that another round of similar "gerak gempur" visits will be launched by Johor BN soon but he felt even that is not going to be good enough.
Using fancy or fearsome soundbites and nothing much else is not going to win elections.
Just theorising and inventing catchy slogans are also not good enough.
They came out with a lot of those lately.
Well, making noise and looking tough is easier than really thinking properly and doing the actual work.
I'm always of the opinion that nothing can replace sustained hard work on the ground as the best way to win elections
That should had been started right after the last general election.
A bit too late now, I guess. So much time wasted.
In many cases, chasing individual interest seemed more important back then..
Sudah ada kuasa sikit, mahu pulun jadi kaya la pulak. Tak apa, pilihanraya lama lagi.
I wrote several times about many with that attitude right after the last general election.
Now they suddenly realised that there's not much time left even if they really want to do those real works. So, make noise lah a bit here and there. Make it sounds as if they are doing work.
Anyway, back to my old friend. I was surprised that he seemed more pessimistic about BN's chances than I did.
He said feedback from the ground have not been very good at all.
I'm very sure that he has not turned to the other side, but he even believed that Pakatan will likely win in Kedah.
He said BN leaders are making too many mistakes even now, which I agreed.
Too many own goals.
For one thing, I believe they got it all wrong from the start with their handling of Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad.
They shouldn't have whacked the handsome old man the way they did. It only made things worse for them.
Many succumbed to their ego and ended up shouting on top of their lung with no one actually bothering to listen to them.
And what with that full page articles in newspapers supposedly written by MBs, which were actually their speeches written by I don't know who? How much did they pay for that? Did they really think people read those stuff?
What to do. Those are already rice turned to porridge cases.
Now I think they are making another mistake - they underestimated Dr Mahathir's ability to get the opposition parties to work together.
He's doing exactly that now.
The more time they give him to do that, the more dangerous it would be for BN.
Ignore this and I think BN will be in serious trouble.
But, then again, what would I know....I'm just an insignificant anonymous two-bit blogger, right?
My blog is devoid of facts, said some.
True also, my blog doesn't have charts, what.
Well, never mind. Doesn't make much difference to me what most people think about me and what I wrote.
I just write whatever stuff that crossed my mind which made sense to me.
Okay, that's all.
Good that Malaysia is really neutral over Arab qua...
A sister's love