May Day Declaration

If you are somewhere around the Merdeka Square on 1st of May, join the parade starting at 10 a.m.

DEKLARASI MEI 1, 2006

Sempena dengan Sambutan Hari Pekerja, 1 Mei 2006, kami para pekerja yang berhimpun di sini menuntut kerajaan Malaysia dengan segera:

Ø Hentikan Penswastaan Perkhidmatan Bekalan Air.
Ø Hentikan Penswastaan Perkhidmatan Hospital.

Selain itu, kami menuntut kerajaan Malaysia membuat undang-undang baru untuk menjamin dan membela hak rakyat tertindas:

1) Hentikan rancangan untuk mengimplementasi Cukai Perkhidmatan dan Barangan (GST)
2) Ambil langkah-langkah untuk memiliknegarakan (nationalisation) semua kemudahan asas seperti institusi pendidikan, bekalan letrik, kesihatan dan air kerana adalah tanggungjawab kerajaan untuk menjaga kepentingan pekerja-pekerja Malaysia dan keluarga mereka.
3) Gubal AKTA GAJI MINIMA untuk semua pekerja Malaysia dan mansuhkan polisi gaji murah.
4) Gubal undang-undang pembentukan kesatuan sekerja secara automatik.
5) Pastikan tempat kerja bebas daripada diskriminasi terhadap pekerja wanita, termasuk dalam sektor informal.
6) Mengubal undang-undang Anti Gangguan Seksual yang melindungi pekerja wanita di tempat kerja
7) Hak saksama kepada pekerja migran dan perlindungan dari dianiyai oleh pihak majikan, polis dan imigresen.
8) Mansuhkan segala undang-undang yang menindas dan mendiskriminasi para pekerja, antaranya ISA,OSA, Akta Universiti & Kolej Universiti, Akta Pertubuhan, Akta Mesin Cetak dan Penerbitan
9) Skim Perumahan Rakyat pada harga yang mampu dibeli, di bina di lokasi strategik, saiz rumah yang sesuai, sistem rumah campuran serta tabung perumahan untuk memberi bantuan kepada pembeli yang kurang mampu.
10) Iktiraf Hak Tanah Adat Orang Asal di Malaysia dan berikan hak milik kekal serta kukuhkan status tanah Rizab Orang Asli di Malaysia. Rancangan pembangunan tanah Orang Asli hendaklah berasaskan kehendak, keperluan dan aspirasi Orang Asli.
11) Beri kepentingan kepada sektor pertanian dengan peruntukkan tanah dan subsidi yang cukup, demi menjamin produktiviti dalam negara yang mampu menampung keperluan makanan asas rakyat. Elakkan pengkopratan sektor pertanian dan galakkan sistem koperasi petani.
12) Pastikan pemuliharaan sistem alam sekitar yang menyeluruh. Kami membantah apajua usaha menswastakan sumber alam semulajadi. Sistem ekologi mestilah dipelihara tanpa motif keuntungan dan komersil.
13) Menuntut suatu model pembangunan yang saksama, yang memberi kepentingan kepada rakyat setempat di mana segala rancangan pembangunan mestilah dibincang dan dipersetujui oleh semua.
14) Menuntut suatu sistem kerajaan yang benar-benar telus, bersih, kredible dan bebas dari segala bentuk rasuah, kronisme dan penyelewengan.

ICM - the future of Malaysia? and Updates

Just back from German class. I haven’t improved my pronunciation until now. The situation is getting worse. Maybe, I should find more German friends to practice. How about getting a German girlfriend? Was glauben Sie?

Received the phone call from my ex-roommate, who is now in Bohn, on Wednesday night. Thanks to him. I know that the “Playboy” channel in German is available until 5 a.m. Hmm… Indonesia government asked the publisher to stop publishing the magazine with the title “Playboy” because of the huge protest from the Muslim groups. So, how about Malaysia? Do you think that our government will legally allow that? The answer is obvious!

Met my insurance agent on Tuesday night. Yes, I still owe him RM300 ++ since he paid for my medical card. I said to him that I wouldn’t pay him until I have enough money to do so. Then, he kept coming with his new proposal “retire plan”. Save your money for 10 years and you get the cash back starting at age of 40 until 80… or 70... or 60 …. ???!!!!

Completed my first Linux driver framework to access the register and memory of the PCI bridge this week. Thanks to the open source, I can able to obtain sufficient information to kick start my job. Now, I am concentrating on understanding the PCI bridge architecture which provides various communication mechanisms between the IOP CPU and the system CPU. This is part of the tasks in the board to board level communication in cPCI backplane.

Some interesting facts from our MyICMS 886 Strategy drafted by Ministry of Energy, Water and Communication Malaysia to share:





What is 886? Our country luck number! No, it’s all about 8 new services, 8 essential infrastructures and 6 areas to stimulate our country’s Information, Communication and Multimedia service. A great future for Malaysia in ICM technologies if we can succeed!

SMS - Happy Birthday

Received a couple of SMS from my friends wishing me “Happy Birthday”. My brother sent me a message asking me to find a girlfriend and emphasizing that I am 28 years old! He and his girlfriend have a long relationship, almost 10 years, and yet to get marry. I think that he should marry first. The first two messages which I received were actually from my insurance agents. I bet that they used some automatic SMS generation machine since both the messages arrived almost at the same time. My mum did not know how to SMS so she had to make a call. Caught by surprise! Celcom in Northen region also sent an SMS to me…..

A Terrible Week for the Games

A terrible week for the games! First, our ladies were whipped by Australia and China. Lost to Australia 16 – 0 and China 22 – 0. Can you imagine that both teams score against us in every 5 minutes time? Then, our hockey team which won the bronze medal in Commonwealth Game put up a terrible performance in World Cup Qualification in GuanZhou. They lost to Japan 1-0 and lost to Korea 3-1. To qualify for the World Cup, they need to at least get the fifth place in the tournament. Then, Josiah Ng, a promising cyclist in the Keirin competition, could not even qualify for the final round. Maybe or just maybe, Malaysians are not good in any game. We can only be proud as best organizer of the game!

Most unexpected result came from ManUtd. They drew with the bottom team in EPL which is the worst record team so far in EPL history. No change to catch Chelsea any more ....... Maybe Bolton, the neighbouring team for ManUtd, can do us a favour!

AFC U20 Women Football Tournament

After completing the German class, headed back to my office to solve the interrupt problem. I am currently doing the board to board communication via cPCI backplane. After crashing my Linux host for several time, I found out that I forgot to mask out the IRQ generated from the 2nd board. Done!

Next, it’s time for the football match. This time, the venue was KLFA stadium in Cheras. Heavy rain started around 4.30 p.m. It’s hard to find the way towards the stadium. Managed to reach the stadium 5 minutes before the kickoff time. These were actually U20 women football matches. The first match was South Korea against India and the second match was between North Korea and Japan. South Korea is the former champion. At the end, South Korea thrashed India 11 nil. You wouldn’t believe that whenever the Korean player shot outside the penalty box, it was a goal. India is too weak to be in the competition. No pace, no stamina, no skill and …… North Korea put up a much respective performance against the Japan and lost 3 nil. Japan seems to have improved tremendously in the tactical area. At least, they knew how to apply the time wasting technique. The coach made three substitutions at the last 10 minutes. One player came on during the injury time when Japan had comfortably leading 3 nil. I think that the North Koreans are not too behind in terms of physical and stamina. But they lacked the exposure and I just wonder whether the peoples there have the opportunities to watch the football match.

Actually, there is no publicity for this tournament at all. So you can see in the picture that the players play in a almost empty stadium. Same old strory again. Even the World hockey tournament in Bukit Jalil two years ago, the stadium was half empty for the final match. Luckily, the South Korea and Japan participate in this tournament and are able to attract their “hard core” supporters.

Malaysia enters this tournament as the host nation. Our coach said that, “If I said to you that our team can beat China. I am telling lie. Just imagine, our team plays only for one month, like festive season, and eleven months doing nothing”. So, what do you expect from them? Bottom of the table without any goal, same with France in 2002 World Cup…..

Empty stadium just before the kickoff time

South Korea's Cheerleader

South Korea's Decoration

Small group of South Korean supporter

Japanese kids waiting for the kickoff

Japanese kid waving the flag

Japan's Decoration

Boot Firmware, AirAsia and 9th Malaysia Plan

Just completed by German Test. It’s just getting harder and harder for me to memorize what I have learned. Yesterday, I had made a big mistake by damaging the hardware configuration word stored in the flash memory. Thinking of burning my own operational firmware to handle the E1 ports, I simply flashed the 1st EEPROM of the board and the board is straight away out of service. Since the boot firmware is resided in the 2nd EEPROM, I assumed that I can safely flash the 1st EEPROM and ooppsss… all the hardware configurations required by the Boot firmware had gone. There is one JTAG port in the board but I could not find any suitable tool in my lab to reprogram it. Sending back to the vendor is the only solution.

Read a cover feature on Bizweek regarding Tony Fernandes, the CEO of AirAsia. AirAsia just has its new low cost carrier terminal under operation beside our former PM mega project, KLIA. It is interesting to find out that all the 53 routes of AirAsia are all profitable or at least breaking even. Low cost budget flight is a new concept in Malaysia. It’s not easy for normal people like me to travel by air since it is such a luxury expense. I have had my first flight at the age of 22 and during that time, there was no AirAsia. I still remember that the route was from Penang to KL. How much I pay for that? Forgot already, since I was not the one who paid for the ticket. So, AirAsia is providing the alternative for the peoples in this region. Is there any alternative for our political situation?

Ninth Malaysia Plan, some of my concerns:

“The Government targets to have 60 percent of academics in Malaysia with PhDs by the year 2010. In order to strengthen research capacity at local institutions, cooperation networks with leading international institutions will be created.”
- 60% of Academics with PhDs, not too bad! Who should we cooperate?

“The public sector budget allocated for R&D activities is RM3.9 billion - twice the amount that was allocated under the Eighth Malaysia Plan.”
- Where the outcomes from the funding allocated under 8th MP?

“we target to have 50 RSEs for every 10,000 members of the labour force by 2010.”
- Alright, just 0.5%!

“Brain Gain Programme - a programme directed at involving or attracting outstanding researchers, scientists and engineers, including Malaysians abroad“
- If I am doing well in oversea, do I need to take a risk returning home? Unless I am patriotic and work for nation pride....

Let’s wait and see! We can always come out with a good proposal but how about the implementation…..


“A company is stronger if it is bound by love rather than by fear.”
Herb Kelleher, founder of low fares aireline