How times have changed ..

Today, it was reported in the local media that 26 people had been caught for having a sex party in one of the better hotels in Kuala Lumpur. The report said that a TV newsreader and a starlet and a soon-to-be-married couple plus college students were involved in sex, taking drugs and for being drunk in the same hotel room. Apparently, the police got wind of the party since one of the students had been organising the party through the local internet. I presume the people involved were all Malays. Having caught them red-handed with some of them literally with their pants down, the police released them on police bail, which usually amounted to RM 500/= each.

Not long ago, before the days of the internet and video, there were many reports of  police catching people watching the so-called blue films. With sadistic glee, the police then released the full names of the people involved in what is now actually an innocent past time. But now, the names of the people actually involved in sex party are withheld. How times have changed.

On another note, I don't know why the Malay media such as Utusan Malaysia tend to report on births of illegitimate children - nothing else but bloody bastards I called them - from western celebrities as if to glorify such births. Why the other day, Bristol Palin, the daughter of Sarah Palin, the failed nominee to the US vice presidency, was given publicity for delivering a baby out of wedlock. Not sometime ago, Tom Cruise was given good news in the Utusan for siring a baby out of wedlock. Utusan Malaysia seemed to endorse such births as though they were fashionable whereas, in my book, the babies were illegitimate - bastards - for thats what they were. Remember, some time ago during the height of the Nipah virus attack on pig farms in Malaysia, all the Malay media including the local TV stations, dared not use the term "babi" for pigs. Why they refrained from not using the word "babi", perhaps out of respect to the non-malay/muslims, I don't know. Instead, the word used for "babi"  was "khinzir". At that time, it was khinzir here and khinzir there while "babi" was buried in their sensitivities. After the general election in March 2008, and, especially after the proposal by the new Selangor State government, to set up modern pig farms on a large scale in Sepang, the media started to call a spade a spade. The word "khinzir' was dropped in favour of the word for pig in Malay - which was "babi". The word "babi" stuck to his day, whenever pigs were referred to in the news.

Now, I would like to mention the Malay word/phrase "meninggal dunia" - literally meaning leaving the world - for someone who died. To me, the word should refer to someone who is a Malay or a muslim who dies - not to anybody. This is just like using the Malay word "mangkat" for royals when they die or the word "wafat" for prophets when they  die. For the others, the Malay media should use the perfectly simple and neutral word "mati". Of course, the media should not use crude words such as "mampus", "kojol", "jahanam", "masuk neraka" etc to refer to deaths of person not of the Malay race or of the Muslim religion.

How times have changed.

Update:03/01/2009: In the latest on the party, it seemed the media were not accurate in their reporting. Today, the Star reported that the participants in the party were on remand until next week pending charges to be made against them. The Star even named the TV personality who was from the Astro Awani channel while other names were not divulged. It was also reported elsewhere the recently married couple in their 20s - not soon-to-be-married - were the organisers of the party and were still held as they were suspected of supplying drugs, such as shabu and ketamine, consumed in the party.

Update:07/01/2009: It's reported in the news that the last person held longer by the police in this connecion has been released on police bail. He's suspected of being the organiser and drug supplier. His name is not mentioned. The Awani girl's name is Fazarahrihan Abdul Razak aged 22 years. All those who are positively identified as drug users will be recalled once the final drug tests have been made. 

More on this later ...

Year 2009, a miserable year ..

Today marks the new year 2009. For me, year 2009 is a gloomy year because things will get more expensive, even though the whole world is facing a recession, maybe even a depression to match the economic gloom of the early 1930s. My income is getting progressively lower than in the previous years and I think it is going to get smaller still, though I won't be starving. On new year's eve, I had not sent SMSs to my friends as I used to do for the past countless years ever since I acquired a handset.

The macro-economic picture is that Malaysia is facing tough times. Commodities and manufactured products on which Malaysia's prosperity depends won't be bringing as much revenue as they did in the previous years. Prices for crude oil and palm oil have gone down by more than 50 percent. Electronic products that form the bulk of the country's export are facing less orders from the United States and Europe because these 2 group of countries are in trouble.

I read in Yahoo today that a billionaire in Iceland has now a net worth of exactly zero. A great number of billionaires have lost hundreds of billions in the last few months. A French billionaire committed suicide for losing all his money in a Ponzi scheme perpetrated by Bernard Madoff of Wall Street.

Such is the state of the economy that I wonder if Malaysia can survive at all.

Looking for Cheats on Resistance One and Two ..

I have played Resistance One several times on Superhuman mode. To me, its one of the best Playstation games ever to come out, to rank in excitement as the Resident Evil and the Onimusha games. Sadly, I cannot find cheat codes in the internet, no matter how much I have scoured the worldwide web. All the so called cheats found were nothing else but lockables, tips, glitches, and how-tos, but there was no mention of how to beat the games easier and faster by using the alphanumeric codes like those cheats for Resident Evil and Onimusha. Nobody seemed to be able to crack the cheat codes for Resistance One.

Now comes Resistance Two which I have played several times on Superhuman mode. As with the first version, I have not been able to get cheat codes at all. The same "bullcheats" that you find for Resistance One, you can get them from all the so called gamecheat sites like gamefaqs, gamecheatcc, and so on. Why I like to use cheats even after I passed the games several times is to beat the hell out of some enemies like the goliaths, the auger wielders, the chameleons, and the naked zombies.

I cannot understand why Insomniacs Inc. allow Nathan Hale to be killed by a person like Capelli. Why can't the game creators let Nathan Hale be spectacularly vapourised by the nuclear explosion and allow Capelli to escape to contine fighting in , say, Resistance Three since we all know that, somewhere in the game, it is mentioned that Nathan Hale, had only about 19 hours to live.

Since I am unable to find the cheat codes for the Resistance games, I have to wait for the Resident Evil Five which will be on the market next year, after so many "next years" in the last 3 years.