Hahahhahahha I'm sure you've seen these pictures about Khairy somewhere but I really can't help but post them here to make them my own.



This is what they do in UWC Singapore, isn't it!?!?! Hahahhahahahahah.

Definitely not Oxford?





Hahahaha shit facebook will fucking screw every one of us over in twenty years.

Scandals here we come ;)

Sarajevo is the capital of Bosnia, this every one should know.



This is one of the much-speculated Pyramids of Visoko, right outside of Sarajevo.



The Tunnel of Hope -- from which Sarajevo received most of its supplied during the 1992-96 siege by Serb forces.



Maleziya (yep that's Malaysia) funded its transformation into a museum.





Bosnia Project <3

Center circle: Belma, Valerie (William and Mary), Deivid (Swarthmore), Lisa (Swarthmore)

Outer circle: Andrew (Swarthmore), Dan (W&M), Seth (W&M), Will (W&M), Robyn (W&M), Steph (W&M)









Gazi Husrev Bey's Mosque -- the Turkish warlord who built Sarajevo. I had an epiphany-like moment when our tour guide told us that Sarajevo was named after the Turkish for palace -- sarayi!!!!! How come I didn't notice hmmph.





Providing water to weary travellers is obtaining pahala in Islam -- so every traveller can go inside mosques to rest/get water. Also water fountains were once ubiquitous in the Ottoman Empire.



Like this. Which is also an official? symbol of Sarajevo.

Which is very, very cool for the backpacker.





The clock tower with Arabic numerals!



Sarajevo is a very pretty city, but only in the touristy parts (or part). Pretty, sunny, but also quite boring.



The rolling hills were to die for. Mmmmm.



This is the old Austro-Hungarian City Hall which was also a library -- the Serbs shelled it (not least to destroy all symbols of Bosnian culture) and thus almost all the artifacts were destroyed.





The Bosmal building! Which, according to one of my kids, stands for Bosnian-Malaysian Building. Verified by google.



Confusion is sex







The Catholic (Croat) Cathedral -- in Bosnia (and Yugoslavia), religion is used as an ethnic marker. Muslim = Bosniak, Catholic = Croat, Orthodox = Serb.





Probably most of the souvenirs were made in China. :)



Except these pretty hand-made metal work!







Coffee drinking is a national pastime.







Hohoho Tito's still quite popular in the former Yugoslavia -- he turned them into a regional powerhouse (with the West's funds, of course).





The never-ending flame against fascism, built after WWII.

Notice the bullet holes!



LOL





Many buildings away from the touristy parts are still dilapitated. This is an olympic museum or something on a hill.



Shelled, abandoned, and ignored.





The University of Sarajevo





So I bought one tram ticket and I took a tram tour of the city lah. And I went onto the tram and sat down and rested my tired feet -- then these officers came up to check for people who didn't have tickets lah. So they came up to me and I showed them my ticket and apparently we had to punch the ticket into the machine. And I was like I didn't see the machine (which was on the tram) because the people in front of me didn't punch their tickets and also because I thought that all I had to do was buy the ticket and get on the tram -- all the while speaking in English to pull off the stupid tourist routine.

But they made me get off the train and told me that there was a fine of like 20 Euros for not having a ticket or "misusing" it -- which is acceptable lah if it wasn't in super small print behind the ticket itself -- there wasn't even punching instructions on either side of the ticket. So I continued arguing lah, no way I'm going to pay 20 Euros for something I didn't know I had to do -- not my fault because there were no instructions on the ticket, and none of the passengers before me punched theirs.

This continued for about 15 minutes -- they even called someone who was more fluent in English hoho and I continued arguing with them -- all the while maintaining that I was not going to freaking pay the fine because the law was not clear. Plus I paid for the ticket okay. And I don't know what they really wanted me to do -- pay the fine or pay them a bribe.

But the most (and I think only) convincing argument I made to them was by pulling out my pants pockets and showing them that I had absolutely nothing inside them, other than oil blotters and a chap stick. (I had earlier taken out my wallet and put it in my sling bag :D ) And at that they were like oh shit okay lah whatever lah stupid tourist go on by. And we got on the next train and they made me punch my ticket and went on to check whether other passengers punched their tickets or not.

:)







Inside an orthodox church.

Hello friends,

Everyone I'm sending this email to has something in common (besides knowing Chen Chow). We're all planning to attend, are already attending, or have attended an American university. We've had the benefit of an educational philosophy that emphasises more than professional training - an education system that avoids the mass production of cookie-cutter citizens, unlike the universities many other countries. We've enjoyed incredible opportunities to grow as individuals, and often at the expense of the very institutions we attend. But for every one of us, there are many who could have had the same experience, yet for some reason simply ended up elsewhere.

Some of you might remember this letter I wrote to a local media outlet some months back, which highlighted the incredible dearth of information about the opportunities America offers: http://educationmalaysia.blogspot.com/2008/05/apply-to-us-says-john.html

This Saturday the 23rd we're doing our little bit to change this sad situation. At the Descartes Education Counselling Centre in Damansara Utama, a group of us - current students and alumni from various American universities and liberal arts colleges - will be speaking on the hows, the whys, the whats of applying to American institutions of higher education. I hope you'll join us.

But more than that, I hope you'll help us spread the word. There are many bright students out there who do not realise the scope of financial aid available, or the life-changing possibilities of a liberal arts education. If you have any friends who are interested in learning more, please, invite them and bring them along. If you have contacts at local colleges or secondary schools, please let them know about this upcoming talk. Even passing this email along is enough. And if you run a blog or website, please help us get the word out.

I'm attaching a map to the venue, and a poster for the event. If you're interested in helping distribute the poster, please get in touch with me and we can talk about reimbursement for photocopying costs, etc. And if you're just skimming this longish email, here's a summary:

What: Panel on American undergraduate/liberal arts education
Where: The DECC office, 55-1 Jalan SS21/1A, Damansara Utama, 47400 Petaling Jaya.
When: Saturday 23 August, 2pm to 5pm
Why: To learn about the opportunities of an American education, and how to get there. And, of course, to meet some incredible people (namely yourselves)
How: Show up and bring your fabulous personalities along

Thanks so much, and I'll see you there this Saturday. :)

John


Nathaniel Tan (Harvard '03)
Andrew Loh (Swarthmore '10)
Hwa Yang Jerng (Bates '05)
Ng Eng Han (Dartmouth '10)
John Lee Ming Keong (Dartmouth '11)
Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams (Michigan '05)

So I went to Zenica, Bosnia, to teach English under the Swarthmore Bosnia Project.

I'm too lazy to write (as always) so I'll let the pictures tell the stories. :)



Zenica is the third largest city in Bosnia, according to Wikipedia. It is also the poorest canton in the country.

The "c" in Bosnian/Serbo-Croatian is pronounced like a "tz," like the "zz" in pizza.

The river looks really pretty in the picture but in reality it was too polluted to swim in :(



Bosnian buildings reek of communist architecture from the old Yugoslavia.






Cevapi is one of the most amazing things in Bosnia (and the Balkans).



There was basically one long, commercial road where people hung out; to see and to be seen.







Bosnia is a country of contradictions. I like ;)





Picking her nose hohoho



This is Valerie, one of the other six teachers from William and Mary.



This is going to be my theme for the next few posts so you guys better like pictures of little kids.

I still remember all their names, but no names here for the paeds. ;)



The cleaning ladies were so nice! I was coughing really horribly the first week because of I-dunno-what allergies and they made me mint tea ;)











This was when I taught them about Chinese New Year -- we needed something fun so I made up a rhythm for lion/dragon dances and we danced around the room while kungfu fighting. They liked ;)

The sticks were also used for the Malaysian stick dance! Which is the best cultural activity one can ever do -- the kids were really hooked onto it, especially after they mastered it and when we moved on to more difficult routines. Throughout the four weeks, they kept asking for "in in out," which was how I taught the stick dance (partly to imprint the concepts of in and out and also partly to make the instructions stick to their minds. no pun intended.)

I also taught them pseudo taichi (one big watermelon 一个大西瓜... cut into half 切成一半... one for you 一半给你... one for you 一半给你... etc) hehehe.



We also made figures out of pipe-cleaners (furry wire) for arts and crafts! I made a football player out of my wires, and he liked it so much that he borrowed my figurine back home and copied it. :)

I like smart kids. So I asked my kids these:

Which country's football uniform is made out of a red shirt and green pants? (Portugal)

So whom did I make with my pipe-cleaners?
(Christiano Ronaldo!)

And it was really nice feeling for me when even the youngest kids could answer this question -- because it definitely took more than a little outside-of-school thinking. Very nice communal ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh moment.





We did International Day on Wednesdays -- and we learnt about countries around the world. This was Mexico...



... where I learnt about sombreros and maracas. ;)





I made faces at them and they followed. :(









And my art teacher would be proud because I taught them crayon etching! Which was something we learnt back in Form 2.





Of course being so kiasu I had to one-up everyone lah.



Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!! Etching was done on Halloweeeeeeeeeen -- we did Holidays on Friday.



Goldilocks and the three bears! So gobsmackingly cute.





Pocahontas





This is Jusuf, the cutest gypsy boy ever (gypsies are really discriminated against in Europe) and Lisa (my teaching partner).

Deivid (another Swat teacher) wanted to adopt him :)

I can speak a little Bosnian -- Znam tako malo Bosanski -- albeit with atrocious grammar. :)

But first, a joke.

The Star: Wanita Umno's by-election 'jihad'

BUTTERWORTH: Wanita Umno has declared its campaign in the Permatang Pauh by-election as jihad or a holy war.

Its deputy chief, Datuk Seri Shahrizat Abdul Jalil, said the movement would act as a bastion to stop an ambitious individual from achieving his dream and personal glory.

Flush With Energy

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

The Arctic Hotel in Ilulissat, Greenland, is a charming little place on the West Coast, but no one would ever confuse it for a Four Seasons — maybe a One Seasons. But when my wife and I walked back to our room after dinner the other night and turned down our dim hallway, the hall light went on. It was triggered by an energy-saving motion detector. Our toilet even had two different flushing powers depending on — how do I say this delicately — what exactly you're flushing. A two-gear toilet! I've never found any of this at an American hotel. Oh, if only we could be as energy efficient as Greenland!

A day later, I flew back to Denmark. After appointments here in Copenhagen, I was riding in a car back to my hotel at the 6 p.m. rush hour. And boy, you knew it was rush hour because 50 percent of the traffic in every intersection was bicycles. That is roughly the percentage of Danes who use two-wheelers to go to and from work or school every day here. If I lived in a city that had dedicated bike lanes everywhere, including one to the airport, I'd go to work that way, too. It means less traffic, less pollution and less obesity.

What was most impressive about this day, though, was that it was raining. No matter. The Danes simply donned rain jackets and pants for biking. If only we could be as energy smart as Denmark!

Unlike America, Denmark, which was so badly hammered by the 1973 Arab oil embargo that it banned all Sunday driving for a while, responded to that crisis in such a sustained, focused and systematic way that today it is energy independent. (And it didn't happen by Danish politicians making their people stupid by telling them the solution was simply more offshore drilling.)

What was the trick? To be sure, Denmark is much smaller than us and was lucky to discover some oil in the North Sea. But despite that, Danes imposed on themselves a set of gasoline taxes, CO2 taxes and building-and-appliance efficiency standards that allowed them to grow their economy — while barely growing their energy consumption — and gave birth to a Danish clean-power industry that is one of the most competitive in the world today. Denmark today gets nearly 20 percent of its electricity from wind. America? About 1 percent.

And did Danes suffer from their government shaping the market with energy taxes to stimulate innovations in clean power? In one word, said Connie Hedegaard, Denmark's minister of climate and energy: "No." It just forced them to innovate more — like the way Danes recycle waste heat from their coal-fired power plants and use it for home heating and hot water, or the way they incinerate their trash in central stations to provide home heating. (There are virtually no landfills here.)

There is little whining here about Denmark having $10-a-gallon gasoline because of high energy taxes. The shaping of the market with high energy standards and taxes on fossil fuels by the Danish government has actually had "a positive impact on job creation," added Hedegaard. "For example, the wind industry — it was nothing in the 1970s. Today, one-third of all terrestrial wind turbines in the world come from Denmark." In the last 10 years, Denmark's exports of energy efficiency products have tripled. Energy technology exports rose 8 percent in 2007 to more than $10.5 billion in 2006, compared with a 2 percent rise in 2007 for Danish exports as a whole.

"It is one of our fastest-growing export areas," said Hedegaard. It is one reason that unemployment in Denmark today is 1.6 percent. In 1973, said Hedegaard, "we got 99 percent of our energy from the Middle East. Today it is zero."

Frankly, when you compare how America has responded to the 1973 oil shock and how Denmark has responded, we look pathetic.

"I have observed that in all other countries, including in America, people are complaining about how prices of [gasoline] are going up," Denmark's prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, told me. "The cure is not to reduce the price, but, on the contrary, to raise it even higher to break our addiction to oil. We are going to introduce a new tax reform in the direction of even higher taxation on energy and the revenue generated on that will be used to cut taxes on personal income — so we will improve incentives to work and improve incentives to save energy and develop renewable energy."

Because it was smart taxes and incentives that spurred Danish energy companies to innovate, Ditlev Engel, the president of Vestas — Denmark's and the world's biggest wind turbine company — told me that he simply can't understand how the U.S. Congress could have just failed to extend the production tax credits for wind development in America.

Why should you care?

"We've had 35 new competitors coming out of China in the last 18 months," said Engel, "and not one out of the U.S."

Year	Datuk Wira	Taylor's	HELP	IIUM
2008		SMK Seafield, Selangor	SMK Damansara Jaya	Sekolah Tuanku Abdul Rahman, Ipoh
2007	SMK Lok Yuk, Sabah	SMK Bukit Bandaraya, KL	SMK Taman SEA, Selangor	Sekolah Alam Shah, Putrajaya
2006	Batu Pahat High School, Johor	SMK Damansara Jaya	SMK Damansara Jaya	St Xavier's Institution, Penang
2005	SMK Sultan Abu Bakar, Pahang	SMK Damansara Jaya	Royal Military College, Kuala Lumpur	St Xavier's Institution, Penang
2004	Tsung Tsin High School, Sabah	SMK La Salle PJ, Selangor	SMK Damansara Jaya	St Xavier's Institution, Penang
2003	SMK Damansara Jaya	SMK Assunta, Selangor	SMK Subang Utama, Selangor	Royal Military College, Kuala Lumpur
2002	SMK Convent Bukit Nanas, Kuala Lumpur	SMK Damansara Jaya	-	-
2001	SMK Damansara Jaya	Sekolah Sri Garden, Kuala Lumpur	-	-
2000	Combined Team, Sabah	SMK Damansara Jaya	-	-

So I typed up an entry about Day 6 and 7 a month ago but the fucking internet died on me and wasted an hour of my life. 



Istanbul traffic is horrible. Their drivers rank all the way up there with the Chinese as the worst in the world.

Istanbul has many de jure, but not de facto one-way streets.

Contrary to what I've read on Wikipedia, Istanbul also has a lot of Arabic speakers. I was surprisingly happy that I could communicate in Arabic There was one guard that tried to convert me. Hehehehe. Masha'allah.

So remember the bright red shirt for MSLS? I got it in Turkey ;)



The next day I went to the Princes' Islands and stopped at Buyukada, the largest of them all and the one everyone said I should visit.



Ataturk is Turkey; Turkey is Ataturk.



Actually Buyukada nothing to see lah so boring.





I was expecting a beach (with sand, of course!) but what I got were green, slimy rocks.

But the water quite clear lah.



This is a sea slug. Yummy.





So I got on the ferry and went back to Istanbul proper because I was bored. And I wanted to get off at Kinaliada because it had sand, albeit very little, but I didn't because I was peeing in the toilet and was having second thoughts. So I stayed on the ferry while it made another round of the five Princes' Islands before heading to Istanbul. After all, the sea made for good scenery.





We were feeding the seagulls.



When I said we I mean they because deep down inside I hate birds. They represent a looming, haunting, overhead threat that can poop on you anytime so you have to strain your head every time they appear to make sure they miss.





Seagulls are stupid. They catch the bread in their beaks and then try to swallow it but miss and the bread falls all the way into the ocean. Then they fight each other for the bread and catch it in their beaks and then try to swallow it and miss.





So in Turkey I am Japanese.

They call you Japon! Chinya! and they expect you to respond -- so normally I don't but this time I made an exception because it was my last day in Istanbul so have to make something exciting happen mah.

So I told him Malaysia. Then the joker asked me if I spoke English.

Then I said yes and laughed. Hohohoho then he shut up because he couldn't really.

So I met these people onboard the ferry and they looked sooooo mature but they were only high school kids!!! So we tried to communicate with each other, in the minimal Turkish I knew and the halting English they knew. Then by chance we sang Simarik which is this really famous Turkish song (called Kiss Kiss elsewhere?) and it was a moment of cultural exchange and human bonding and just being fun, loud and obnoxious. Then they asked me to sing another song so I sang Ave Maria and it was fun but not as loud.

All the other tourists were looking at me/us -- not out of annoyance but out of jealousy -- their eyes were practically screaming now why can't I get the fun, cultural exposure?! Why?! But it is unlikely that one would hear Ave Maria sung in Istanbul on a ferry in the Sea of Marmara.

Now a journey is never complete until you fall in love with someone or someone else falls in love with you. Or lust. So there was this girl who hit on me and shook her booty under the pretext of teaching me a traditional Turkish dance. Now one of the kids (I called him dede jan -- dear grandpa -- because he was clearly the leader of the group) told me to say seni seviyorum to the girl, supposedly to teach me Turkish. But I love you is already one of the phrases in the free tourist guidebook so I was like I know what you're trying to do! and we were like hahahahhahaha.

Another one told me that my sunglasses were cok guzel (very beautiful) so I said tesukkur (thank you). But the girl who was hitting on me went yeeees, but the eyes under them are more guzel hohohohoho so quite blatant lah the flirting.

There was also another old gentleman beside us who spoke Arabic so he stepped in to translate whenever we got stuck. Which made me happier because I sang Ave Maria and spoke Arabic on a ferry in Istanbul.

So the dede jan was pointing about me and going on and on about sunnet (sunat/circumcision) all the time and the other kids were cracking up. So I said ya Allah, hayir, ya Allah which means O God, no, O God at which point the entire group went ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo. So I think I might have committed a cultural boo boo in Istanbul.

But tourists are to be forgiven. They gave me an Ataturk pen as a souvenir (LOL) which I used all the while in Bosnia and the rest of my Balkan stint. And so we talked and were loud and obnoxious for the rest of the journey back to Kabatas.



So prettttttttty. So apparently this was the island in one of the Bond movies under which the villain had a lab and a nuclear submarine and threatened to blow up Constantinople.

I was talking to this guy on the way back from Hong Kong and he was telling me something that only retrospectively I realise could really be true in many, many cases. He was telling me about how the Europeans (especially Germans) were blatantly racist or something for staring at you unhesitatingly, unflinchingly whenever you enter some place where you don't belong (e.g. a restaurant). And then there would be this negative vibe that would emerge and severe all possible bonds of fellowship between fellow men.

I guess the reason why that thought has never crossed my mind was that whenever people stare at me I think it's because they think I'm handsome.

Which says a lot about my unhealthy, burgeoning ego and my un-sleep last night because I was nerdy enough to wikipedia 三国演义 (The Romance of the Three Kingdoms) after watching Red Cliff last night with Joe, John and Ashley.

And so yeeeeeep it was a very fulfilling end to Turkey.

Updated with videos!! (Sept 7 2008)

Okay. So I term most conferences intellectual masturbation (Qu: egotistic masturbation) because despite the lofty objectives, do we really believe we will [develop a new generation of leaders? achieve national unity?] through a [two-day conference? three-month NS?] Right.


So my motive for going to MSLS II was to meet people lah. :) Social masturbation, not intellectual.

But I think I am challenged to reassess my thoughts after watching the debate between Tony Pua and Khairy Jamaluddin and Nik Nazmi -- the crowning glory of the summit. Because I had discounted being inspired by the speakers as an outcome of MSLS.

But that is for later. Firstly, I personally thought that despite having more boring speakers (both ways) this year, as a whole I thought MSLS II was better than last year because the trio debate more than made up for the general lack of oomph.

Speakers generally think that they should stay clear of sensitive issues in such circumstances -- they cannot be more mistaken. This is a student leaders summit. Notwithstanding the slippery slope of elitism, we crave controversy. We won't bash you up because you espouse controversial opinions; we bash you up because you are stupid, unsubstantiated, false, or baseless. We want to be challenged and entertained and inspired(!). We want you to engage our attention and intellect. Any less (i.e. repeating bland political rhetoric) and we go to sleep or talk amongst ourselves. Trust us.

Economics is the science of allocating scarce resources. Do we really want to spend our time listening to trite slogans that we've heard for years? Do the speakers really want to spend their time repeating meaningless statements? Right. If we wanted that we would've just read the newspapers. Don't condescend to us.

So before I do a comprehensive review of MSLS II, I want to say thankyeeeeeeeeeeeeeeew to the organising committee for doing this, because it sucks to organise things. But MSLS is becoming an institution in its own right.

So Day 1 started off with Khaled Nordin, our Minister of Higher Education. There was no Q and A session on "Student Activism as an Element of Human Capital
Development" -- fucking hell, because I had so many questions to ask him. This speech was ridiculous, not least because he cannot speak English. Delivery was halting and awkward and it was apparent that the PA wrote the speech and our minister was reading it for the first time. I've never been a fan of mandating a language of delivery -- tak dapat cakap Bahasa Ingerris cakaplah Bahasa Melayu -- we are all bilingual if not tri- and multilingual. What matters is the substance. But Mustapa last year was so much better.



And I was (and am still) really, sincerely surprised that our journalists could pick up anything from the meaningless speech, let alone write full-length articles on it when I dozed off. Read Marina.


Then it came to Khoo Kay Peng and Ungku Aziz on "Malaysian National Unity: Organic or Manufactured?". I thought Ungku Aziz was a bit kooky. Kay Peng was very passionate -- is he related to Khoo Kay Khim? The debate was okay lah but I thought it verved a bit (read: a lot) off-topic. Many questions were left unanswered and many answers were unsolicited. Read Khoo Kay Peng's account.

Next was Zainah Anwar and Mazeni Alwi (Chairman, Muslim Professional Forum), "Reconciling Religion and Gender: The Malaysian Context". Zainah was amazing as usual but Mazeni's speech was all over the place. This guy begs to differ: (Emily and Su Ann and Wai Kin and Valerie and Emily yep it's that guy...)


Again, you guys are smart enough to draw your own conclusions lah. But I do agree with him about inviting an ulama (ulama's actually plural in Arabic so in universal grammar this sentence is wrong) to MSLS. It would have been even more interesting to have invited an UMNO imam to debate a PAS imam and more importantly making them answer all our uncensored questions. Then I can ask them questions in Arabic to show off (and maybe suffer public embarassment myself when I realise that I've forgotten all my vocab). ;) Nik Aziz for MSLS III, perhaps?

Also remember to invite the TM Net boss for MSLS III because I have damn a lot of questions to ask him about Streamyx.

I also asked a question here because somewhere in their speeches they referred to the oft-argued incompatibility between Islam and women's rights and also because I just finished reading the biography of Muhammad by Karen Armstrong (which, incidentally, is banned in Malaysia! Hahahahha). Which went something like (yah this account is getting very Andrew-centric):

• During Jahiliah, womens position = nothing.
• Muhammad raised it radically, revolutionarily high -- whereby before the word of a woman was worth nothing, in Islam in the 7th century the word of two women was worth the word of one man.
• This radical change in society was so successful that Christian scholars wrote tracts denigrating Islam for giving women so many rights.
• Even Christian women took to the veil to persuade their husbands to treat them better.
• Given that Islam at its conception and in the context of the 8th/9th/10th century was at the forefront of liberating women and improving gender equality, I think that it is wrong to say that Islam and gender equality as we understand it in the 21st century is contradictory.
• I think we are concentrating too much on form and not enough on substance -- does it really matter that the witness of two women equals the witness of one man, or instead do the original objectives and motivations of Islam matter more?

Now we all know that we need some sort of group discussion thingy to have direct audience participation in the conference, etc. But to me it was the weakest portion of the summit, not least because many if not most people decided to skip it. Even so, the groups were too big for any meaningful discussion or personal sharing to take place, time too short for intellectual epiphanies or omg-i-just-changed-my-weltanschauung moments. I'd rather have them axed in favor of socializing sessions where we just get to meet people and talk and bitch -- after all one of the aims of the summit is to enhance networking amongst "future leaders," eh.


After lunch was Hishammuddin (love!) on "The National Education Blueprint: Addressing Racial Polarization and Sustainable Economic Development." I wrote about his poise and grace and shocking honesty about Pengetahuan Moral (which made national headlines!) and how he impressed me here.





Next was the corporate forum which was mmmmmmm boring. So Emily and Su Ann and I went back to talk to Valerie and Suga and people. Ya lah we very rude lah. But as in school, if the teacher is boring you talk to your friends lah.

Then came the Badawi fiasco aka public humiliation by William. I do have to say though that I felt bad for Badawi then, and I thought that he was very sporting for letting the floor ask questions (when there was no Q and A session in the orginal itinerary). And I am damn happy that it is Badawi at the helm and not Mahathir or Najib (whose negative popularity is probably similar to Hillary Clinton's).

Then Wai Kin and I went to the Bishop's for Yang Jerng's paaaartaaaay and I met Nat the Jailee and many others. And sang.






The next day I was so tired that I went back to bed after waking up early and skipped the first session of Day 2.

For race relations we had Ibrahim Suffian (Director, Merdeka Centre), Karim Raslan, and Dr. Denison Jayasooria (former Executive Director, Social Strategic Foundation). This session was OK lah but nothing particularly special or enligthening, other than Karim's beautiful-sexy British accent. 

Next was supposed to be Zaid Ibrahim but it was cancelled!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! There were rumours that Badawi told him not to come -- either because of the public embarrassment or because of fears of disclosure of important things-to-come. Purely speculative, of course.

Then we skipped the next talk because it was becoming reaaaaally draggy. This smart Su Ann had just woken up. But then I felt a pinge of regret after learning that Mr Yeo from the Bar Council was quite good.

And now the pinnacle of the summit. (people please laugh -- it's funny lah)



And so Tony vs Khairy vs Nik Nazmi was the awesomest shitz in the whole wide world yesterday. I won't delve into details since accounts about this abound. Tony writes really comprehensively, along with Nik, the Star, and the Malaysian Insider. All links stolen from Tony :)

There was a message going around saying that there wasn't going to be a free Q and A session and that we had to write our questions down -- but this was not to be. Fortunately. Censoring would go against the very principles of having a summit.

This was cool: Nik Nazmi was more concerned with "what Khairy calls leakages, I call corruption" and quoted American accounting firm Morgan Stanley's estimate that corruption had cost the country RM330 billion over the last two decades and the Special Task Force to Facilitate Business's (Pemudah) estimate of RM10 billion lost to corruption this year alone.

But the best write-up of the event must go to Shanon Shah. Must read.


And Shanon is absolutely right -- it was intellectual, amazing, most importantly, fun. So enjoyable!!! I share his analysis and feelings, so you should read his entry.

Hahaha the American contingent was being loud and obnoxious as usual and many a time we found ourselves pounding the table in applause. I'm surprised my hand isn't sore from all that clapping.

And what was even more encouraging was that this was the exact same questioning environment for Hisham and Badawi. It wasn't straitlaced or controlled or shit -- rather open and receptive and positive and constructive. Even if some of them deflected some questions lah. ;)


In the end we (read: Su Ann) were going "Khairy for PM!" Hahahhahaha. Which really speaks to how impressive Khairy is as a public speaker/debater and how deeply we enjoyed the three YBs. So thank you very much, Tony, Khairy, and Nik, for making this an unforgettable experience. Shahril was also an excellent moderator -- he asked the right questions at the right times.

But I do have to write down some of the more enjoyable (paraphrased) jibes from the debate:



Khairy: On one hand Pakatan is arguing against this subsidy mentality, but which one of us is saying "hari ini membentuk kerajaan, esok turun harga minyak?!!!" (touche!)


Nik: NEP doesn't discriminate whether you're a Malay from Taman Tun or a Malay from Rembau (heeeeeeeeeeeeeeh!)


It was this humour and basic rowdiness that really made the debate great. Every good debater knows that when the bar for substance is equally high throughout the teams, what really makes for victory, what sets apart the creme de la creme is style. And that determines how memorable you are as a speaker as well. And Tony vs Khairy vs Nik was the epitome of styyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyle baybeee.

And I am inspired. Never realised that a measly student summit could feel so empowering. :)


** all pictures stolen from Carol

---

Added 9 August 2008:

Of soliloquy and dialogue

The performance of the various politicians who participated in the Malaysian Student Leaders' Summit over the weekend, while more varied in quality, were also entertaining. The education minister took a question on the uselessness of Pendidikan Moral with good humour and the prime minister's speech triggered some strong feedback.

I'd already sensed a schism in the student crowd, and this was confirmed when the young YBs � Nik Nazmi, Khairy Jamaluddin and Tony Pua � took to the stage. Riotous applause punctuated the proceedings as they tackled the minutiae of petrol subsidies and parried each other's jibes. If they keep it up, the Dewan Rakyat will one day be even more fun than the House of Commons....