Outstanding blogs ...
Between sometime in mid April 2012 to just about now, I have not blogged anything in this blogsite. This is because I had been away from my main computer, though I had "blogged" on my IPad through the "writing" applications that I had downloaded. Though I could easily invoke the richardsorge.blogspot.com and write in the blog on my IPad, , I refrained from doing so after some bad experience with 'glitches' like highlights appearing in the paragraph and so on. So during the duration that I was not on my main computer, I used Apps such as Pages, Notes, etc. to write on the usual views of news that I came across in the internet or news papers.
So I am reserving this column to insert my earlier writings since if I copied them in the usual manner, I would not be able to collate them properly in the date order. What appears below are the "articles" that I had done in the past 2-3 months or so.
When Greece became part of Euro, abandoning its currency, the Drachma, little did she know that she joined a rich men's club. So eager was Greece to become a member of the Eurozone fraternity she was prepared to show false statistics in order to fulfil the entry requirements. If, for example, the requirements that economic strengths were a prerequisite to be a member, then Greece provided bloated trade figures, balance of payment, forex reserves, and so on just to gain entry into the Eurozone dominated by such rich countries as Germany, France, Holland, Belgium and several others. Greece was a poor man trying to keep up with Jones's but had not the resources and the capacity to sustain for a long time.
In the end, Greece had lived beyond its means becoming bankrupt in the process. In order to keep up with the richer countries , it spent and spent using borrowed money until it could not possibly repay its loans or even the interests on its loans. And now, having stuck in a quicksand of debts, there's no way that Greece could extricate itself other than downsizing its bloated economy by, first of all, reverting to using her old currency system. This is the only solution if Greece wants to survive in the eurozone by accepting the painful fact that it's a poor country.
One of the things that Greece can easily do to get back on its feet is to sell the many islands to the world in order to improve its GDP. A great number of the islands are useless since many of them are inhabited.
The other day I was astonished to read that Greece's GDP per capita was USD 24,000. Malaysia is now trying hard to attain a GDP per capita of USD 15,000 ( it's now about USD 8,000) before saying that it has reached developed status. As things are, we Malaysians are way better off than the Greeks. We are well off enough to tour Greece but not so for the Greeks to tour our country.
The trouble with Greece is that the country has, for years, not been getting sufficient taxes. Its either the tax collection system is hopelessly inefficient or that the Greeks are fond of avoiding tax. Ask any grocery storekeeper or a butcher or even an Onassis when was the last time he paid tax. The answer is either some few years ago at best or never at all at worse. Some might reply that what tax are you talking about !
Greece should go back to the times when "Never On Sunday" was made. Although the Greeks were never as rich as the Germans or the French then, at least, they were never out of a job. Even Mellina Mercouri was prosperous enough to have a day off.
Malaysia's Foreign Loans
10/04/2012 Monday:
It's heartening to know that Malaysia's 1st loan taken from 1965-1998 from the World Bank has been fully settled while a later loan taken from ADB in 1968-2000 has some USD 124 millions left to pay. The implication would be a strengthening of the Malaysian Ringgit (MYR), an increase in our forex reserve, an improvement of its financial ratings and so on.
Foreign loans should be totally wiped out by 2020 which is the target year for Malaysia to attain "developed status" as Najib promised that he would take Malaysia to this position. Malaysia would then be like Singapore now which doesn't owe to anybody except to her own people in the form of loans from her people's provident fund.
Taking foreign loan is a double edged sword. Firstly, foreign governments or their institutions tend to be extra wary before they decide to provide loans. And if they do, the terms and conditions are extremey tough. Secondly, foreign loans are designated in their own currencies or in USD and payments have to be made by way of the same currencies. The danger is that should the currency of the borrowing country weakens, the country faces a double whammy of a punishment in that the borrower has to pay both the principal and the interest in the currency of the lending country or in USD. It's good if the currency of the borrowing country strengthens, but it usually never does since how could it when the borrowing country needs money to finance itself.
Many years ago, Malaysia suffered because she borrowed ¥ from Japan and had to pay back the instalments in ¥ despite the soft loans provided when Malaysia's currency greatly weakened vis-a-vis the ¥. This was during the period when Mahathir was the PM of Malaysia. Malaysia regrets to this day for taking loans from foreign countres.
We don't like to be like Greece which has been living beyond their means. Portugal, Ireland, Iceland are going the way of Greece now. Spain and Italy are possible future victims of their own profligate ways. These countries face bankcruptcy in the near future.
Teachers are fond of ....
Greece should abandon the Euro ... |
Malaysia's Foreign Loans
10/04/2012 Monday:
It's heartening to know that Malaysia's 1st loan taken from 1965-1998 from the World Bank has been fully settled while a later loan taken from ADB in 1968-2000 has some USD 124 millions left to pay. The implication would be a strengthening of the Malaysian Ringgit (MYR), an increase in our forex reserve, an improvement of its financial ratings and so on.
Foreign loans should be totally wiped out by 2020 which is the target year for Malaysia to attain "developed status" as Najib promised that he would take Malaysia to this position. Malaysia would then be like Singapore now which doesn't owe to anybody except to her own people in the form of loans from her people's provident fund.
Taking foreign loan is a double edged sword. Firstly, foreign governments or their institutions tend to be extra wary before they decide to provide loans. And if they do, the terms and conditions are extremey tough. Secondly, foreign loans are designated in their own currencies or in USD and payments have to be made by way of the same currencies. The danger is that should the currency of the borrowing country weakens, the country faces a double whammy of a punishment in that the borrower has to pay both the principal and the interest in the currency of the lending country or in USD. It's good if the currency of the borrowing country strengthens, but it usually never does since how could it when the borrowing country needs money to finance itself.
Many years ago, Malaysia suffered because she borrowed ¥ from Japan and had to pay back the instalments in ¥ despite the soft loans provided when Malaysia's currency greatly weakened vis-a-vis the ¥. This was during the period when Mahathir was the PM of Malaysia. Malaysia regrets to this day for taking loans from foreign countres.
We don't like to be like Greece which has been living beyond their means. Portugal, Ireland, Iceland are going the way of Greece now. Spain and Italy are possible future victims of their own profligate ways. These countries face bankcruptcy in the near future.
Teachers are fond of ....
I despise teachers who are fond of making fun of their students in front of the class. They seem to get a kick out of humiliating a student when the student answers wrongly or makes an obvious blunder. A popular way to humiliate a student is for the teacher to make fun of essays written by a student. He enjoys reading the essays as loud as possible in front of the class, pointing to some obvious errors like grammatical mistakes, sentence construction, and the arguments presented in the essays. To their credit at least, they don't reveal the author of the essays. They don't bother to council students, to tutor them, to advise them, or to encourage them to improve. Their attitude Is one of "take it or leave it". If the student fails to understand then it is too bad for him.
One such teacher I know was Tan Cheng Or. Rumours had it that he had a first class honours in english from the University of Malaya. True or not I was not sure because he did not speak English fluently the way a graduate teacher with a "first" spoke. There was many a time we saw him in class reading the Utusan Melayu (a local daily written in Jawi) to show off to us that he had mastered the Malay language. There was another teacher by the name of Ti Teow something who was trying to teach us to pronounce the word "perpendicular" properly by repeatedly pronouncing it as "perpenticular". His Chinese tongue simply could not distinguish a "d" from a "t" just as the commonly peculiar Chinese tongue that cannot distinguish an "r" from an "l"; like, for example , in Bill Haley's rock song "Lock, lock, lock, lound the crock". There was another maths teacher by the name of Cheah who had a bad case of halitosis. Its only when he came up to the students desk to emphasise on some problems that we prefer he ought to explain them on the board, far away from us. He sported an Omega watch which to us was the watch at that time until we learnt later that the real watch is a Rolex. Another teacher that I know was called Austin Hooi. He taught us Geography in Form 4. To us he was lazy, usually coming to teach at just 15 minutes before the 45 minute-period was over.
There were also good teachers in my time who take the trouble to make you understand. There were teachers like Norton, Ananda, Wilson, Mehrotra, Gurmukh, Chan Chee Onn, who had the patience and the zeal to teach us students. But most of them only provide the service without care to their students.
Another notorious teacher was OP Agarwal. He was a science teacher on contract from the Indian government to teach science in small town schools. Academically, Agarwal was a brilliant teacher, being conversant in science and maths. He had an excellent memory. We used to make fun of him because of his right index finger which was half missing. There was a story related to us kids when he was briefly a science teacher in a neighbouring school, notorious for having unruly and outspoken students. One day, he was so angry with his students in class that he harangued them for being so stupid that they could not even give the correct answer to 5 plus 5, to which a cheeky student replied that 5 plus 5 equalled to 9 and a half. I remember one day, while in Form V, I chanced to look at this Agarwal leering at the chest of a female student by the name of Kamala. She was a Tamil girl whose bosoms were just nicely developing as she was growing up, as most of the female students were in their 16s and 17s. In all my innocence, I was wondering why he kept on staring at her chest, oblivious to anyone in the classroom. Years later when I knew the meaning of sex, I realised that this Agarwal was enjoying himself with a hard-on. Another teacher was Gurbachan Singh who was the rugby teacher. He liked to refer himself as GBS like the British philosopher George Bernard Shaw. Rumours had it that he was intimately involved with a Malay girl from the kampung to the extent that some of my friends had seen that he had sex with her. I have no means to verify that but I did see this GBS being extra nice to her as he was giving her tips on javelin throwing while in preparation for the school's sports.
The principal of that school was an Indian by the name of MT Pillai, with curly, rounded alphabets for a signature. He used to have a car but from one day we observed that he walked to school. And he walked to school since then. He had 3 children as far as we knew, a son and 2 daughters. The son was good for nothing except that he had an 'A' for English, while a daughter, Vasantha, was mediocre in class. The youngest daughter was however the exception. In school, she was always among the very top. But his wife was the one that gave him the most embarassing problem, for she was an alcoholic. She was notorious for swearing profanities when drunk. We students simpathise with the headmaster.
The assistant to the headmaster was one Mailvaganam. He was later transferred to a school in another neighbouring town and this was where he became notorious as one who meted out punishment to a Chinese student by severe caning. The boy must have made him so angry that at a certain point, the teacher called him "communist". [This was unfortunate, because, it so happened that the boy's name was Chin Peng, and Chin Peng was, at that time, the head honcho of the communist terrorists who have been terrorising Malayans from 1948 to 1960]. The punishment was so severe that the boy's father took him to court where the media ran a detailed expose on what actually happened.
Another teacher was Balwant Singh who was a man of violent temper. He left teaching to study law and became a practising lawyer. Many years later, he was the Datuk Balwant Singh who shot and killed an Indian in an incident. After a long trial, he was lucky to have escaped the hangman's noose. During the height of the trial, a Punjabi friend of mine inadvertently slipped out a dark secret of Balwant Singh - which was for having an affair with his own niece in contradiction to the peculiar characteristics of the Punjabis in this country, Punjabis here are notorious for looking after their womankind in the most strange way. Should a Punjabi girl get herself involved in prostitution or being notorious for being too amorous, woe betide her because Punjabi men will hunt her down to perform honour punishment or even honour killing. For doing what she does, the Punjabi Kaur has digraced the Punjabi race. Examples of honour killings are many in Britain. In many instances of cultural conflicts in Britain, many a migrant Punjabi father, has killed his own daughter for being on a date with men who are not of their kind.
During those days, most of the teachers were men and in most so called English schools, there was a dearth of Malay teachers. In contrast, currently, most of the teachers in so called national schools are women and are invariably of the Malay race. The Chinese, Indians, and Punjabis prefer to earn their livelihoods in other high-earning professions rather than being in rot with low incomes as teachers.
On another note, there was this MKK of a girl by the name of Mazidah Mahmud. She was one or two years my junior, and for no rhyme or reason, she seemed to be prejudiced against me. I didn't know her at all apart from the fact that she had a sister in the same form as me. Her father had been a Malay school inspector, and a stupid one at that, because he was unable to answer satisfactorily to questions that I posed in class where he taught on retirement, and had to bluff himself out expecting that I would not notice. She was jealous of me perhaps because I came from a poor family and I was a brilliant student, always among the top 3 in class, competing against brilliant Chinese students. At that time, no Malay students were ever at par with me.Rumours had it that even in Form III, she had a penchant for spreading her legs for her male classmates, or male seniors, and even for some of the teachers. Hence the MKK appellation( mek kuat kangkang). Her sister was no better. If any girl student I hate to this very day, it is this girl. I wonder what has become of her now !
This is one news I like to speculate on ....
16/04/2012 Monday : A bunch of US military officials and secret service agents were sent to Columbia ahead of Barack Obama's attendance in a so-called Summit of the Americas, a kind of regular convention of political leaders from Canada, US, Central and South Americas. A sort of convention to re-affirm the "Monroe Doctrine" - America for the Americans - is still alive. Yes, those latinos that speak Portuguese and Spanish are still Americans, not only those that come from US. Europeans had better keep out. As for Asians and Africans, they better be not seen anywhere near the conference. Strangely, this time Cuba was not invited.
I am not going to talk about the "Monroe Doctorine" in this blog, but about the US security officials who have been assigned in Columbia to "secure" the presence of US political and administratve officials there, including the President himself. Instead of doing their job as portrayed in the History Channel and by Hollywood of tough, no nonsense, dedicated security officials, they were confronted with Columbia's police who found them in different degrees of sobriety caused by "excessive drinking" and in associations with the local prostitutes. It all started when one local prostitute refused to leave the room where an agent short-changed the pro for her services. She created such a ruckus that the hotel management had to call the authorities to deal with the situation. The local authority later discovered that a whole bunch of security agents and military personnel were all found to be not doing there jobs that they were assigned. They were nothing but of bunch of freeloaders, behaving like the ugly American tourists, enjoying themselves at the US government's expense.
The reason for their behaviour is easy to guess. To them, Barack Obama, is a nigger and why should threy take all the trouble to look after him, even if he is the CEO of the United States. Most probably they are Republican sympathisers too. Their attitude would have been different if the President is George Bush or any of the "white, anglo-saxon" bastards of a president .....
One such teacher I know was Tan Cheng Or. Rumours had it that he had a first class honours in english from the University of Malaya. True or not I was not sure because he did not speak English fluently the way a graduate teacher with a "first" spoke. There was many a time we saw him in class reading the Utusan Melayu (a local daily written in Jawi) to show off to us that he had mastered the Malay language. There was another teacher by the name of Ti Teow something who was trying to teach us to pronounce the word "perpendicular" properly by repeatedly pronouncing it as "perpenticular". His Chinese tongue simply could not distinguish a "d" from a "t" just as the commonly peculiar Chinese tongue that cannot distinguish an "r" from an "l"; like, for example , in Bill Haley's rock song "Lock, lock, lock, lound the crock". There was another maths teacher by the name of Cheah who had a bad case of halitosis. Its only when he came up to the students desk to emphasise on some problems that we prefer he ought to explain them on the board, far away from us. He sported an Omega watch which to us was the watch at that time until we learnt later that the real watch is a Rolex. Another teacher that I know was called Austin Hooi. He taught us Geography in Form 4. To us he was lazy, usually coming to teach at just 15 minutes before the 45 minute-period was over.
There were also good teachers in my time who take the trouble to make you understand. There were teachers like Norton, Ananda, Wilson, Mehrotra, Gurmukh, Chan Chee Onn, who had the patience and the zeal to teach us students. But most of them only provide the service without care to their students.
Another notorious teacher was OP Agarwal. He was a science teacher on contract from the Indian government to teach science in small town schools. Academically, Agarwal was a brilliant teacher, being conversant in science and maths. He had an excellent memory. We used to make fun of him because of his right index finger which was half missing. There was a story related to us kids when he was briefly a science teacher in a neighbouring school, notorious for having unruly and outspoken students. One day, he was so angry with his students in class that he harangued them for being so stupid that they could not even give the correct answer to 5 plus 5, to which a cheeky student replied that 5 plus 5 equalled to 9 and a half. I remember one day, while in Form V, I chanced to look at this Agarwal leering at the chest of a female student by the name of Kamala. She was a Tamil girl whose bosoms were just nicely developing as she was growing up, as most of the female students were in their 16s and 17s. In all my innocence, I was wondering why he kept on staring at her chest, oblivious to anyone in the classroom. Years later when I knew the meaning of sex, I realised that this Agarwal was enjoying himself with a hard-on. Another teacher was Gurbachan Singh who was the rugby teacher. He liked to refer himself as GBS like the British philosopher George Bernard Shaw. Rumours had it that he was intimately involved with a Malay girl from the kampung to the extent that some of my friends had seen that he had sex with her. I have no means to verify that but I did see this GBS being extra nice to her as he was giving her tips on javelin throwing while in preparation for the school's sports.
The principal of that school was an Indian by the name of MT Pillai, with curly, rounded alphabets for a signature. He used to have a car but from one day we observed that he walked to school. And he walked to school since then. He had 3 children as far as we knew, a son and 2 daughters. The son was good for nothing except that he had an 'A' for English, while a daughter, Vasantha, was mediocre in class. The youngest daughter was however the exception. In school, she was always among the very top. But his wife was the one that gave him the most embarassing problem, for she was an alcoholic. She was notorious for swearing profanities when drunk. We students simpathise with the headmaster.
The assistant to the headmaster was one Mailvaganam. He was later transferred to a school in another neighbouring town and this was where he became notorious as one who meted out punishment to a Chinese student by severe caning. The boy must have made him so angry that at a certain point, the teacher called him "communist". [This was unfortunate, because, it so happened that the boy's name was Chin Peng, and Chin Peng was, at that time, the head honcho of the communist terrorists who have been terrorising Malayans from 1948 to 1960]. The punishment was so severe that the boy's father took him to court where the media ran a detailed expose on what actually happened.
Another teacher was Balwant Singh who was a man of violent temper. He left teaching to study law and became a practising lawyer. Many years later, he was the Datuk Balwant Singh who shot and killed an Indian in an incident. After a long trial, he was lucky to have escaped the hangman's noose. During the height of the trial, a Punjabi friend of mine inadvertently slipped out a dark secret of Balwant Singh - which was for having an affair with his own niece in contradiction to the peculiar characteristics of the Punjabis in this country, Punjabis here are notorious for looking after their womankind in the most strange way. Should a Punjabi girl get herself involved in prostitution or being notorious for being too amorous, woe betide her because Punjabi men will hunt her down to perform honour punishment or even honour killing. For doing what she does, the Punjabi Kaur has digraced the Punjabi race. Examples of honour killings are many in Britain. In many instances of cultural conflicts in Britain, many a migrant Punjabi father, has killed his own daughter for being on a date with men who are not of their kind.
During those days, most of the teachers were men and in most so called English schools, there was a dearth of Malay teachers. In contrast, currently, most of the teachers in so called national schools are women and are invariably of the Malay race. The Chinese, Indians, and Punjabis prefer to earn their livelihoods in other high-earning professions rather than being in rot with low incomes as teachers.
On another note, there was this MKK of a girl by the name of Mazidah Mahmud. She was one or two years my junior, and for no rhyme or reason, she seemed to be prejudiced against me. I didn't know her at all apart from the fact that she had a sister in the same form as me. Her father had been a Malay school inspector, and a stupid one at that, because he was unable to answer satisfactorily to questions that I posed in class where he taught on retirement, and had to bluff himself out expecting that I would not notice. She was jealous of me perhaps because I came from a poor family and I was a brilliant student, always among the top 3 in class, competing against brilliant Chinese students. At that time, no Malay students were ever at par with me.Rumours had it that even in Form III, she had a penchant for spreading her legs for her male classmates, or male seniors, and even for some of the teachers. Hence the MKK appellation( mek kuat kangkang). Her sister was no better. If any girl student I hate to this very day, it is this girl. I wonder what has become of her now !
This is one news I like to speculate on ....
16/04/2012 Monday : A bunch of US military officials and secret service agents were sent to Columbia ahead of Barack Obama's attendance in a so-called Summit of the Americas, a kind of regular convention of political leaders from Canada, US, Central and South Americas. A sort of convention to re-affirm the "Monroe Doctrine" - America for the Americans - is still alive. Yes, those latinos that speak Portuguese and Spanish are still Americans, not only those that come from US. Europeans had better keep out. As for Asians and Africans, they better be not seen anywhere near the conference. Strangely, this time Cuba was not invited.
I am not going to talk about the "Monroe Doctorine" in this blog, but about the US security officials who have been assigned in Columbia to "secure" the presence of US political and administratve officials there, including the President himself. Instead of doing their job as portrayed in the History Channel and by Hollywood of tough, no nonsense, dedicated security officials, they were confronted with Columbia's police who found them in different degrees of sobriety caused by "excessive drinking" and in associations with the local prostitutes. It all started when one local prostitute refused to leave the room where an agent short-changed the pro for her services. She created such a ruckus that the hotel management had to call the authorities to deal with the situation. The local authority later discovered that a whole bunch of security agents and military personnel were all found to be not doing there jobs that they were assigned. They were nothing but of bunch of freeloaders, behaving like the ugly American tourists, enjoying themselves at the US government's expense.
The reason for their behaviour is easy to guess. To them, Barack Obama, is a nigger and why should threy take all the trouble to look after him, even if he is the CEO of the United States. Most probably they are Republican sympathisers too. Their attitude would have been different if the President is George Bush or any of the "white, anglo-saxon" bastards of a president .....
posted by Richard Sorge @ 3:26 PM
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