Hello old friend...

The last few months must be the second longest time that I skipped blogging since I started some years ago. That doesn't mean the View from Above has had no views what so ever since July, it's just that I felt it was better I kept my views to myself.

Now the year's coming to an end, 2008 started out rather bad and seems to be ending in a worse note - talking about globally and generally not specifically about me. The wars that was on earlier in the year are still on, some new conflicts have erupted since then; piracy is getting worse and making my job a little bit more complicated; the economy is going downhill; and worse of all to me there has been little to no changes to the politics in Malaysia.

Isn't it wierd how polarized the world has become of late? We're either for the government or against it, we're 100% muslim robots or we're kafir/munafik, we're malays or we're chinese or indians or whatever you have... Someone writes something remotely challenging and everyone gets off their rocker. Most times without even properly reading the said offending pages or investigating both sides of the story - case in point the RPK issue or take any racial or religious issue that emerged in the last 3 months in Malaysia.

I had at least 3-4 notes to say about all of that - fortunately for everyone I have been keeping my anarchist-anti establishment thoughts to myself, of course where's the fun in that? I'm getting just so detached recently with all the crap happening or not happening that I think I need a little emotional motivation to continue - otherwise I would stop caring. And caring means sharing... So here they are in point form and in summary, my anarchist take on things:

1. The Malaysian government should all resign - they have failed to keep up with the state of the world and seem to only have time for politics and not work. There's only 24 hours in a day, at the rate the news and gossips on politics are going on one wonders when the work actually gets done. Forget the corruption charges how about start with negligence and work from there...

2. The Malaysian opposition should get a first warning letter and some should already resign for cases of idiocy and just plain moronic behavior. Look DAP/PKR/PAS are not even on the same platform at the core of it, it will be a miracle if Anwar holds them together until the next election. While we're on that topic, Malaysia will never accept non-racial politics - at least not in my lifetime I think. Come on, do you really think all these lovey dovey Rakyat Malaysia gatherings are spelling the end of non racial politics? At grassroots levels Malays want to be Malays, Chinese want to be Chinese et cetera et cetera. There might be a few exceptions, but not many. We're temporarily united against a common foe, UMNO and the threat of corruption and economic decay. We're not ready for true unity, that takes a heck of a long time. It took America 232 years to elect their first minority president, and he's still only half african american. When we're ready to let go of some cultural identity - and I think one of the first are segregated schools for different races - then we're making progress. You can learn language from any school - just stop segregating the races!

3. Islam is beautiful religion, but please leave it off politics. As a religion we have all we need to lead our lives, as a society do you not realise that the abuse of religious beliefs to stay in power have led to the destruction of muslim societies everywhere? Religion is not democratic, no one can question the word of God or the words of his holymen so why do we need it in politics? The "afterlife" is not a good enough a motivation to run a proper country. Besides who are we kidding, it's always religion on top but really its all about money, politics, power and land. I'm not saying that we should all support secularism - no I think secularism is another form of religious discrimination. But whatever it is leave religion out of governance - it has place in our lives not in how the government is run.

4. It's about poverty idiots. Eradication of poverty shouldn't be a priority, it's a necessity. In this day and age I can't believe there are still people out there with no roof over their heads, no food and no access to clean water - no I'm not talking about other countries but my own. And yes it gets worse elsewhere. Incidents of violence, racism, crime and what have you are higher in areas of extreme poverty - the lack of means to even support oneself can lead to various acts of desperation and even turning to extremist groups for support and protection. What can we all do about it? And I believe governments should do more.

5. And it's about education. It's a given. I'm appalled at the state of education which in so far seems to just exist to educate enough - to fill the brain with data and then leave out the important clue as to what to do with them. That "we're not taught to think" is a common phrase I hear in Malaysia and Singapore. Worse yet I think Malaysia's investment so far in education has been just plain ridiculous. Teaching is no longer a favored job, schools exist so that parents can get their kids out of the way for part of the day and the focus is still too much on examinations and getting grades. Don't get me wrong I love exams, think they're swell. But why is it I remember more from my 2 years in the US school system (standards 4 and 5) than I did my entire high school? I know American history better than 70% of Americans (according to an online test) - and still recall pages of books and projects I did when I was 10. But I cannot remember anything significant from my highschool days. Ad-maths - NOPE, Chemistry - close, but I had to look 95% of stuff up again, English - NO WAY, - BM - EVEN WORSE, - History - Some vague references to Adat and the history of Melaka but that's about it and that was from Form 3. Heck most of what I remember and know now are results from self learning and reading. So... what the F? Does the system work? No I don't think so...

Anyway, enough ranting already.