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Image credit: Bank Negara Malaysia

The economic downturn that we’re are facing now have a lot in common with the 1980s recession.

I just found that out because today, I got hold of a sum of money which I don’t need to use at the moment. I was thinking what to invest this money into. Considering that inflation shot up to more than 7% last month, investing in unit trust and other interest-bearing deposits would result into me making a great loss since their effective rate of return (per month) won’t compensate the surging monthly inflation which “economists” expect to remain high for awhile.

Then I thought of buying some gold coins. That, apparently, not a good option either. In late 1970s / early 1980s, during the economic downturn, the price of gold sky-rocketed to around $800 per oz. only to go down to about $300 per oz. a few months later and stabilised around that for many, many years. It has been increasing rapidly since Q4 last year and has now reached over $1000 per oz.

Looking back at the past:

The Iranian Revolution sharply increased the price of oil around the world in 1979, causing the 1979 energy crisis. This was caused by the new regime in power in Iran, which exported oil at inconsistent intervals and at a lower volume, forcing prices to go up. Tight monetary policy in the United States to control inflation lead to another recession. The changes were made largely because of inflation that was carried over from the previous decade due to the 1973 oil crisis and the 1979 energy crisis. - Wikipedia

The 1980s recession had got to do with world oil price hike. We just need to be a little patient.

So unless I am saving this money for the next great economic downturn probably only coming in about 20- or 30-year time, there’s no point to buy gold now. So what should I be spending the money on? Should I invest in China or should I go watch Olympics in China?

By the way, the “economists” are pressuring the Bank Negara to increase interest rates. I can see the logic but please don’t foolhardily increase it to 7% right away like what that other pseudoeconomist did to our retail oil price. Maybe the Bank can consider increasing it just a little bit lower than 4% by the end of this month, then gradually to 5% in September and 6% in November and keep that until end of this year. By next year we can reduce it back regressively to a favourable rate since they say it will start to soothe by then.

N.B. This account is purely from my college-level knowlegde in economics. If you’re in doubt, go find Mankiw.

Ah, I just remembered that they are having a sale in the mall now and I do need some new clothes. Economic downturn supposedly make you skinnier but I grow fatter.

Everybody use Facebook like plastic bags these days. Practically everybody you know are on Facebook unless they live in Syria or Iran. It’s a great tool to catch up with friends who live in other places and can sometimes be a means of self expression. But it’s bad when it’s bad. Here are some rules to using Facebook.

1. Thou shalt not create a Facebook unless thou already have one
Let’s face it. Facebook is addictive. They make money from the time you spend on the website. Hence, they gonna make it more and more addictive. There would always be a click after one, then another click and another and another until you realize that you’ve wasted so much time doing nothing productive. So listen to this advice: if you don’t do Facebook, better do not start to. And don’t create another if you do have one already.

2. Thou shalt add only thy own friends who know thee
Some people are crazy. They add practically everybody on the network as their friends. Only add people like Anwar Ibrahim, Kenny Sia, Miley Cyrus or anybody famous if they know who on earth are you. Heck, who wants to add them anyway?

3. Thou shalt send invites to only thy friends who are interested
I am really sick taking invites to join groups, add applications, attend events, etc. that I don’t even care. I mean like do think I would be interested to take the “what‘s your porn star name” quiz? Or do I care to join your silly anti-oil-price-hike group when you don’t even care to know the purpose of that group?

4. Thou shalt not forward every frigging message on thy wall
Super Wall, Fun Wall and all the innovations of the original, the Wall, are full of spams. People keep on forwarding messages with silly pictures that tell you to “click forward to know what happens next” or “forward back to me if you really are my friend”. Come on, your friendship only worth some silly message? They are all bogus! That does not count all those religious garbage and chain messages people just happily forward each other. All these are so web 1.0!

5. Thou shalt not clutter thy profile page
Do you know that you don’t necessarily need to put every frigging quiz and each application you add on your profile page? You can actually place those garbage in extended profile. Scroll down to the bottom most of your profile page and click on “Edit Extended Profile”. I have a friend whose profile page is even more cluttered than my bedroom. At least, I could find my keys in my room. His profile, couldn’t even locate the Wall! For your Facebook profile stick to the “less is more” mantra.

6. Thou shalt not use fake names
Sometimes there are genuine friends who add you but you’ve no frigging idea who they are. Most of other social networks, by default, allow access to one’s profile page even though you’re not “friends” yet. Facebook, on the other hand don’t do this so it’s really difficult to recognize someone who use fake names. But when you don’t approve their friend request the next time you meet, they would think you try to avoid them. I strictly add only people that I know and who I have talked with. My friends say I’m paranoid, so be it. Better be safe than sorry. Please use your real name.

7. Thou shalt put only thy own picture
There are people who look like Hello Kitty, among all other non-human objects. There are also people who look exactly like celebrities when they are not. I do have problem with these people for the same reason as in no. 5.

8. Thou shalt not suggest thy friend to other friend unless they know each other
I have, on several occasions, been suggested to add people who I don’t even know. I added them anyway thinking that they were mutual friends of me and the person who suggested them. I thought they just happened to use fake names and pictures of others as above. It turned out that I didn’t even know them. No, they are not my fans either. I felt so violated because these people have seen all the things on my profile page which might question my morality and sanity. They could use all these against me in the future should their intent towards me be bad.

9. Thou shalt not miss reading everything on the screen
Facebook is bitch! They keep your information. Do not trust anybody with too much information, especially a website. Make sure you know how they manipulate your information. When adding an application, read every single word. Make sure you share things that you really want to share. OK, I’m being paranoid again. But what do think million-dollar company like this do? They just make more money!

10. Thou shalt stop using Facebook and deactivate thy account if thee are spending too much time on it
For the same reason as in no. 1, you should stop using Facebook if you are addicted to it. Apparently, Facebook don’t delete your account completely. Your account would be deactivated. The next time you try to log in, they will send an email to activate your account back. The scariest thing is, everything would still be there, remain intact. Yes, including all those stupid quizzes you did before. I tell ya, even the devil don‘t trust Facebook.

Prime minister Abdullah Badawi had just made the much anticipated announcement of today. Petrol will increase by 78 sen to RM2.70, effective midnight which according to media reports to mitigate oil subsidy burden. Expect news on price increase in all other goods and services looming in the coming weeks.

Photo by Mohd Fahmi on Flickr

This year I will finally experience oil price increase that would directly affect me. Thinking about it makes me crazy. Among other things, I keep on worrying whether my favourite ice cream at Ikea would remain at RM1? It is definitely a bold move by the government, albeit very late, to announce such unpopular move at this moment of political awakening. It obviously shows that the government got caught in ‘now or never’ situation. Oil is like religion in Malaysia, everybody is emotionally passionate about it.

The mechanism to support the price increase by right should work very well. It would first and foremost encourage users of motor vehicles to reduce fuel consumption. Fuel subsidy given discriminatively to those using small car and motorcycles which make perfect sense because these type of vehicles are more fuel efficient. (It should not, however, be a presumption that the subsidy would “rightly” reach the lower income group since higher income group can buy small car and motorcycles, too.) Fuel subsidy are given in the form of rebate instead of a supplemental to the price at consumer level.

When learning economics, I always interested to find out how changes in policies, which are supposedly made to address problems, can backfire. One common mistake policymakers tend to commit is not explaining what they are doing.

How do you think the majority of Malaysians would react to the price hike? To them, price increase would only mean that they need to fork out more money for petrol, instead of reducing fuel consumption and despite the subsidy through rebates. Whoever they are, they would transfer their economic burden to whoever that pay their income (i.e. employees would ask for higher salary from employers, suppliers would charge buyers higher price) and the problem would eventually spiral. In the end, the economic burden would be borne by consumers. Since everyone is a consumer, inflation would go higher and higher.

The government has a lot of explaining to do to avoid unnecessary panic which would possibly make this subsidy restructure fail like last time. (Remember improvement in public transports?) It is not merely a subsidy cut. The change is meant for consumers to reduce fuel consumption and for oil subsidy to be directed to the right people (i.e. those who commit to reduce consumption). We need to change our flawed understanding of subsidy. It is an incentive, not an aid. Subsidy should not be meant to ease consumers’ burden but to encourage them become efficient.

From now on, we need to take carpool seriously. It’s good for the environment and mental health, too.

So yesterday, Umno president Abdullah Badawi said that BN’s unprecedented defeat in the last general election was due to the acts of saboteurs within the party. All news reports that I read/watched said that he did not comment on why did these Umno members sabotage in the first place?

Today, the deputy president Najib Razak went on saying that “the party had an idea on the individuals who were allegedly involved in sabotaging activity”. Again, what, in the party’s “idea”, did actually these saboteurs do?

The simplest form of “sabotage” that I could think of is Umno members voted for the opponent parties. In such case, are they punishable as Umno members for exercising their own rights to vote as Malaysians? Wouldn’t it be way unfair to even call what they did as a sabotage?

Let me give you an example of my idea of sabotage. See, Umno and I are talking ideas now. Let’s say A had been running a restaurant on a street for many years and it was the only restaurant on the street. One day, B came to the street and set up his own restaurant. These two restaurants became competitors to each other. A started to lose his regulars to B and his business growth became slower. To make sure people come and dine at his restaurant and win over customers who preferred B’s, A planted stink bombs in B’s. Whether or not A succeed, what A did was a sabotage. Although what B did was not in A’s favour, B did not sabotage A. Get it?

So now, the mind-boggling question is what exactly Badawi meant by sabotage?

I am wondering what happened to Badawi’s so-called elegant silence? I mean seriously, in times like this the best way to move forward is shut up and just do your work. I prefer the silent Badawi right now, elegant or otherwise. People will pick up on silly things you say. The other old man need to learn to shut up, too, although I truly admire his wit (just go look for videos of his speech at the recent mykmu.net forum). Just shut up and move on for the sake of moving on. Spare the people your party infighting.

We’ve got far greater issues to deal with right now. Let me suggest a few: global warming, immigration, crime, socio-economic gap, etc. We don’t need Umno news in the front page every day especially on Sunday paper. I think it really made me grumpy today.

Tengku Zafrul on where Malaysia is heading as global player when addressing Malaysian students in London. Not surprised at all he didn’t emphasise on innovation, something which Malaysia certainly lack of.

Update: So, he did talk about it and I’m wondering what did the students ask him and how did he reply. However, I’m indeed very surprised and probably flattered (a little) that he responded to this post. With a big greeting somemore: dear sir. Haha

It’d be nice to be able to talk about this further. Does the whole Tune conglomeration bring innovation to Malaysia? Can a business model with staggering similarities with another model elsewhere be considered an innovation? Or rather how can Tune bring innovation?

And just to answer the other comment, no, I didn’t stay for he Q&A session because I wasn’t even there. Hope there’ll be this kind of event when I finally got to study there, soon.

One thing that I’ve just realized is that politicians are mostly ugly.

Those good-looking ones usually don’t make it far in politics.

Okay, maybe politics make people ugly.

It’s hardly news by now that Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi announced his new cabinet line-up.

I watched the news on TV a couple of times today and just couldn’t help but to pick up the line where the prime minister appeared to be praising his own self.

Watch the video by The Star and seek to 0:49.

I have [...] heard many times, reading many articles, and comments given by many people, that Pak Lah (Badawi’s nickname) has worked out many policies very well…

This is what we call masuk bakul something, something angkat sendiri in Malay. Forget already. But you know lah the masuk bakul thingy.

So our dear prime minister has heard many times, has read many articles and comments. Guess, he didn’t actually hear and read much.

Anyhow, what a great way to face a defeat: not admitting it.

I’ve actually planned to host this site on different domain names. Since, I can’t afford the for another domain name (yet), it remained just an idea until some one made me to, at least, test if it would work.

And so, it does work. One can access this site on poppacket.blogrunn.com and poppacket.com. Basically the idea is to host one WordPress instance on multiple domain names by using advanced options in wp-config.php and domain pointer.

This is not a redirection. The domain name(s) in use will remain intact site-wide. Take a site with domain names abc.com and xyz.net for example. If one access a WordPress page at http://xyz.net/about, it will appear as such instead of being redirected to http://abc.com/about. All internal links - for posts, pages, feeds, theme files, plugin files, admin panel, et al. - will appear as xyz.net as well.

Why would you wanna do this?

I had the idea to do this quite some time ago when some one asked on WordPress Support Forums how to set up his wedding site using WordPress with two domain names. One that started with his name first and the other with the bride’s name first. It was a really cool idea or so I thought.

Another reason why you want to have multiple domain names on one website is to protect your names from being used for unproductive profit-making activities. This is particularly important if your names are famous. Say, for example, you were one of the world’s biggest superstar, you wouldn’t want the .net or .info domain names that bear your name show useless stuffs. Or if you were the world’s biggest selling marketing guru, you wouldn’t want your .net domain to be forwarded to the website of some family walk-in clinic.

I am using this method in a number of projects that I am working on where one WordPress instance is used as CMS for multiple websites with unified users management. This will make maintenance much easier especially when administering multiple websites single-handedly.

It will also be useful for websites with the same target users. The content on each website may be different but registered users can access their accounts on multiple websites with a single login. Contributors and authors also don’t need different logins to write a post on the websites.

What you need?

• Meet WordPress requirements
• Domain Pointer (or Domain Parking) provided by your web host

N. B. The method will only work with WordPress version 2.2 onwards.

How?

1. Install WordPress the usual way on the first domain name. For the purpose of this example, we call it ilovecookies.com.

2. Say your second domain name is cookiesforall.net. Now, log in to your hosting control panel and go to ‘domain pointer’ (sometimes also known as ‘domain parking’).

3. ‘Point’ (or ‘park’) cookiesforall.net to ilovecookies.com.

4. Edit wp-config.php by adding the following codes after the $table_prefix line:

$hostname = $_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'];
$hostname = str_replace(’www.’, ”, $hostname);
if ($hostname == ‘cookiesforall.net’) {
define(’WP_SITEURL’, ‘http://cookiesforall.net’);
define(’WP_HOME’, ‘http://cookiesforall.net’);
}

5. Take a nap.

6. Voila!

N.B. In the example above, it is assumed that WordPress is installed at the public root, whilst your WordPress address and Blog address (in wp-admin/general-options.php) are set to http://ilovecookies.com.

If you have something like http://ilovecookies.com/wordpress or http://ilovecookies.com/blog, then change the forth and/or fifth lines in step 4 above accordingly.

What about more than two domain names?

For subsequent domain names, for each, add to the codes above the following:

elseif ($hostname == 'whotookmycookies.org') {
define('WP_SITEURL', 'http://whotookmycookies.org');
define('WP_HOME', 'http://whotookmycookies.org');
}

So now, you have ilovecookies.com, cookiesforall.net and whotookmycookies.org.

If, for example, on top of the three above, you have ohmycookies.info, the codes would look like this:

$hostname = $_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'];
$hostname = str_replace(’www.’, ”, $hostname);
if ($hostname == ‘cookiesforall.net’) {
define(’WP_SITEURL’, ‘http://cookiesforall.net’);
define(’WP_HOME’, ‘http://cookiesforall.net’);
} elseif ($hostname == ‘whotookmycookies.org’) {
define(’WP_SITEURL’, ‘http://whotookmycookies.org’);
define(’WP_HOME’, ‘http://whotookmycookies.org’);
} elseif ($hostname == ‘ohmycookies.info’) {
define(’WP_SITEURL’, ‘http://ohmycookies.info’);
define(’WP_HOME’, ‘http://ohmycookies.info’);
}

Some people who I introduced this trick to said it didn’t work for them. Most of which, I didn’t know why. I’ll help where I can. But if it worked, I would love to hear from you.

As writing this, I am currently following the live reports on Malaysiakini. It came to my thinking, shall a new government is elected out of this general election, what will they need to do? Optimistic thinking? Maybe, but judging how the opposition currently leading (unless, of course, you‘ve been tuning to RTM at this time) the votes counting thus far, it is not impossible.

Update: I started writing this around 8:00PM before went to eat. Hence, the projection of opposition’s possible majority in parliament. So on the new government thingy, till next general election, I guess. By then, I will be voting. Postal vote tell ya. How cool is that?

Shall BN fail to retain majority in the parliament, DAP, PAS and PKR have to first and foremost, merge in a coalition in order to form a legitimate majority. This crucial step can be the most gruesome part of the whole process of forming the new government. A lot of questions will arise. The most important one would be: who will be the leader of the coalition? Should he/she be the leader of the party that won the most number of seats, in total or in proportion? Should he be Anwar, since he is right now the “it person, capital I-T”? Should they adopt the BN model where one party dominant over the struggling others? Should they embrace true democracy with regards to forming leadership of the coalition? Should they instead have leaders from each party, on equal standing, co-preside the coalition?

Next, the coalition, after settling down with the leadership issue, will need to form a cabinet. Who to perform in which portfolio might not be a problem. They have got the best people in various fields. However, to form a unified cabinet with streamlined policies can be an extremely difficult task. Each party in the coalition has its own vested interest and will attempt to shape the cabinet policies to their liking. PAS will definitely pursue its Islamic state agenda, in the open or otherwise. DAP will try to DAP-ize all Malaysians where each and everyone is equal and not better than other, which is good, but going to make some people unhappy, especially those who had been enjoying so much under BN government policies favouring the Malays. PKR will obviously be playing the “Anwar says” game. Haven’t they been worshipping Anwar Ibrahim all this while anyway?

This has never been a problem in Barisan Nasional cabinet as UMNO supersedes other parties. The president of UMNO, who eventually is the coalition party president and the prime minister, will make final decisions on practically all cabinet policies. One way to make all parties to be unified is by adopting an agreement on fundamental principles of the government, which must be based on universally accepted values. It is something like the social contract that BN people have been talking (out of proportion) about but social contract is actually a different concept than what I am talking about. The agreement can be something like the People’s Declaration championed by the People’s Parliament. It must be documented and upheld at all time.

Once the coalition achieved both things above, the next task would be to commit in institutional reform. The new government will be under enormous obligation to replace all bad laws and policies of the previous government. An active constitutional reform, or rather reversal, is necessary. Unconstitutional laws like the Internal Security Act, University and College University Act and Police Act, just to name a few, need to be replaced. There are so many loopholes in the law, the Official Secret Act for example, allowing corruption to take place. A new level of confidence has to be instilled in the judiciary while the Lingam scandal is still warm (and before we forget about it). The new government have to look into other institutional reforms concerning the police force, the Anti-Corruption Agency, the Election Commission and other independent bodies that are currently not-so-independent; and into powers of religious departments, of Rela, etc.

There are many economic policies that need a revision especially those relating to distribution of wealth and subsidies. The new government need to face the problem of high inflation growth and have to keep up to their election promises ensuring no highway toll hike and no fuel hike, which in my opinion, the latter one is unachievable. The new government have to come out with an effective mechanism to handle escalating crime rate. On education, they have to close the gap between rural and urban areas. All in all, they need to rebuild everything from scratch and look at each aspect of governing some 25 millions people from the bigger picture.

Lastly, what they need to do are maintaining good performance and popularity as well as ensuring peace and stability. In order to make sure all such reforms in governance come to fruition, they must hold power in government long enough. To do so, they cannot afford to lose in following election especially the immediate next general election, unless they go corrupt like the present government. After all, election process is a popularity contest. To win, you just have to make everyone happy. The BN government have maintained a reasonable level of “peace” and “stability” and over the past 50 years, alluring foreign investments and topping world charts on all sorts of things. The new government have to do better so that we need not to lose out to other countries at eyes of world. In the end of the day, what others think of us is the only thing that matters, isn’t it?

Last Saturday, I attended the launch of Amir Muhammad’s latest project, New Malaysian Essays 1. Four of the writers, Brian Yap, Saharil Hasrin Sanin, Aminuddin Mahmud and Amir himself were at the Annexe Studio, Central Market for the launch.

New Malaysian Essays 1 is the first of an annual series of non-fiction writings on Malaysia. There are six interesting essays by six distinguished writers. Other writers including Sonia Randhawa and Burhan Baki. The cool cover, layout and design of the book was done by Bright Lights At Midnight. Have to say that the cover was really, really spot on. Another cool thing about the book is that it has got more footnotes than my law textbooks, and there are index pages, too! At the event (and also in the preface), Amir told that the book was inspired by similar genus of serial publications from Singapore (Focas, now defunct) and Indonesia, of which the feel and look are incorporated into the Malaysian version. To that, Amir hit the infamous tourism tagline, “Malaysia truly Asia”. Amir also said that New Malaysian Essays contained fresh writings because he felt that most Malaysian non-fiction books are compilation of previously published newspaper column writings.

The well known writer-cum-filmmaker seemed to have paid very close attention to detail in every aspect of this book. He (jokingly) told those who present that night how he was split for choices to either use the “Shahrizat paper” or “Zaid Ibrahim paper”. Both well-known UMNO politicians have a book each. The punch line - how much UMNO control over everything in the country, even to papers for book printing - was rather dry, not many people really got it, I guess.

On the public reception of this book, Amir told that he was “worried”. His earlier publication, Malaysian Politicians Say the Darndest Things, was well received with volume 2 to be released later this year. The compilation, according to Amir, was intended largely for those “who don’t read“. I guess he ‘worries’ no more when 113 books were sold at the event of about 200 attendees (his own account). There was this one auntie who bought four or five, for late Christmas present, perhaps.

I forgot to ask this to Amir or anybody that night. The title. Is it New Malaysian Essays as in Malaysian punya New Essays or New Malaysian punya Essays? If the latter, what does it mean by new Malaysian? Are we now living in some sort of a new kind of divide, the Malaysians and the New Malaysians?

I have finished reading Brian Yap’s The Trouble with Malaysia which was published (as pictured right with illustrations by Rebecca Chew) in this month’s Off The Edge (yeah, the one with Marina Mahathir as the sassy covergirl). Brian’s piece, I think, was the least interesting of all six. It’s not that it was all boring or anything. It’s just that it was more or less a summary of issues that have been highlighted in many socio-political blogs last year, those that I am, and probably other a few hundred thousands Malaysians, well aware of. You know, things like Zakaria’s illegally-built mansion, untold leftist histories of pre-Independence Malaya, keris-waving at UMNO general assembly, those kinda stuffs lah.

I could summed up that the trouble with Malaysia, so to say, is that there are just too many of them. Almost everyone or everything Malaysian or in Malaysia is with widely damaging problems. The lack of people trying to solve them and excess of those who create more were not helping either. A footnote from Brian’s essay, which made me ponder about my national identity for quite a while:

27 Malaysians don’t like to read. If you’re reading this, you must not be liking it, or not Malaysian.

(This is slightly related to the Malaysia’s trouble. I was very annoyed about the plastic bags wastage at the launch. There are people only bought one or two books but given a relatively huge orange pasar malam bags. Some even toted bags big enough to carry the books the purchased. Everybody, just please reduce plastic bags usage.)

Aminuddin Mahmud wrote Branding - Mamak Style which I think the most interesting one. Amir’s account on the writer, from what I can remember right now, being Aminuddin had been trying to talk to him about branding, but being Amir, he didn’t buy into it. Then he came up with “branding and mamak” and it ended up in this book.

Teroris Bahasa by the shy writer (who declined to give a speech that night, even after has been called for many times), Saharil Hasrin Sanin, as the title indicates, was about the national language. He courageously used a dozen or so words which many of us are not really keen on saying nor hearing of. But the nature of the piece was nothing degrading or vulgar. It’s purely intellectually well-written.

Other essays are: Unwelcome Words by Amir Muhammad (an interesting some (“New”?) Malaysian lingo lesson); Yes, We Must Move On: Theoretical Notes on Various Things Malaysian by Burhan Baki and A Manifesto for Independence: Fifty Years to Merdeka? by Sonia Randhawa. I have yet to start reading the last two pieces though.

At the launch that nite, Mia Palencia and Jerome Kugan entertained the crowd with lively, as Mia put it, “everything DIY” performances. They both have new records coming out. Bernice Chauly and Chuah Guat Eng were also there promoting their books.