while we in malaysia struggle to understand the meaning of independence as well as practicing it, others from the other side of the world are now happily surfing on the new wave of change, thanks to the recent event in America. although the wave of change looks promising as if the wave is still far from the shore, we must never forget that sooner or later, it will hit the shore. unless if the wave change its appearance into a tsunami, then we might witnessing something different. anyway, i found a ’surfer’ today who believe that the wave he is riding now, can and should be utilize by his nation in order to find the right shore to land on, name ‘The First World’ shore.

have a read here or you can click to this link to go directly to the source. happy reading.

If we will it, who can dare stop us from joining the First World?

By KOIGI WAMWEREPosted Tuesday, November 18 2008 at 18:06

Now that Barack Obama has successfully dreamt of being the president of USA, Kenya and Africa must also dream of joining the First World immediately.

Without a dream, no individual or country can develop. To develop, we must dare dream. Countries leap forward when they dream. They stagnate and die when they don’t.

Our freedom fighters dreamt of independence. For it, many were killed, detained and tortured. In 1963, however, they hoisted our national flag.

Then came one-party dictatorship. A second generation of freedom fighters dreamt of multiparty democracy. They too were persecuted, but eventually won.

Despite these successes, we are not yet free. We are too poor to be. To be truly free, we must dream of moving our nation from Third to First World. We must dream of eliminating

poverty for all.

The dream Kenya needs is not the dream of individuals becoming rich and famous or of MPs, ministers, the president or communities capturing the presidency. It is the collective dream of moving the nation from poverty to prosperity, stagnation to development and hell to heaven.

But can we succeed if we dream? Yes, we can — like Malaysia, Singapore, China and South Korea.

To succeed however, Kenyans must jump over certain hurdles. Although we have weakened it considerably, dictatorship is not dead, and no people can develop if they are oppressed by tyranny. To develop, we must be completely free.

To develop, our dream must come from within, not without. A dream dreamt for us like Vision 2030 will not take us to the First World because it comes to us dead and cold and sparks no fire and passion in us for action. To take us there, we must embrace the dream with the same passion we desired uhuru (freedom).

After uhuru, the mission and dream of our generation is to take Kenya to the First World where no one but ourselves can take us. Only we must remember to expect opposition and not approval, support or welcome from our friends who are already there.

But on the tumultuous way to the First World, we must hold hands. A country at war with itself cannot develop. To get to the First World, all our communities must reconcile, renounce and combat negative ethnicity everywhere.

By the way, thieves have never taken any country to the First World. Our visa to the First World is to punish corruption without mercy, not put thieves at the head of the match.

To reach the First World, Kenyans must free themselves from cynicism and believe they can develop. Without faith in themselves, Kenyans will perish just where they are.

Already our athletes have shown the way. Through their kind of effort, hard work and determination, Kenya can be a First World country. Before we set out, however, let us consider a few more things.

First, the path to the First World will not be easy. We shall need to make ultimate effort and sacrifice and enjoy no picnics along the way.

Two, we must have precise knowledge of who and where we are. We shall, otherwise, not comprehend just how far we lag behind others, and how badly poverty has compromised our survival.

Three, visionary leaders must lead us to the First World. We’re poor today because our leaders have limped. But who will remove bad leaders — our dream’s Achilles Heel — when voters are captives of their money and negative ethnicity?

To reach the First World, the right leaders must execute land reforms to feed everybody. If a few Kenyans continue to own unused land, Kenyans can forget the First World forever.

It pains me to think that our acceptance of poverty emanates from a sterile religious faith that God in His own good time will take us to the First World. This we must abandon because God has given us the power and freedom to match to the First World or die in our self-made poverty. God suffers no lazy people gladly, however religious.

To open the doors to the First World, we must master technology, industrialise and do everything else to meet this end. We cannot develop by keeping our bad ways of doing things. For our safari to the First World, we must have new leadership, new work ethics, new education and new discipline.

For sure, we have compelling reasons why we must join the First World. We have a right to its comforts. We must prove we are no lesser human beings. Depending on others for our survival is unacceptable.

Mr Wamwere is the author of ‘Towards Genocide In Kenya: The Curse Of Negative Ethnicity’ and chair of CCM party.

sometimes we try our best to fulfill the dream of others, compromising our own dreams. we do so because we believe that when others are happy, we should also. Let it be  whether we like it or not, we pursue the dream of others than ours.

i believe too, that in order for us to achieve happiness, others around us need to be happy first. somehow, that’s not the question. to be happy has always remain the aim of a man, even a mad man knows how to differentiate between happy and sad, and which one will be his preferences. however, the means of achieving it, the happiness is more important. to be honest i’m clueless about this happiness issue.

i’ve tried, many times, to entertain people around me hoping that they will feel happy and later i will feel it too. but as time moves, people change as well as their happiness understanding. hence what i do today might not be relevant again tomorrow in order to make them happy. i still believe it is possible for me to achieve that happiness for as long as i do not sacrifice my self all the time. a wise man once told me “you need to learn how to love yourself first before you start loving some one else. If you fail to do so, you will not only destroy yourself but you will also destroy people around you”. i guess it’s true. but being raised as a person who was trained by a system, to ‘put forward others first than yourself’, i can see that i’m heading no where close to reach the real meaning of happiness.

sometimes its ok if you put yourself in a middle of a junction, rather than a straight, provided you know which junction to follow when you want to embark into a life journey. but it will be tough journey when you put yourself  in  a middle of a desert, not knowing your direction yet there are no junctions for you to follow. in the end, you will be walking in a circle, a really big circle where in the end of the day, you will regret yourself for making that first step. I’ve gone through this before yet i’ve to go through it again. whether this is to test my maturity in dealing with problems, i’m still puzzled. sometimes i question myself why do i embark into such journey where the uncertainties that lies ahead are so obvious. why dont i just settle everything for once and forever. i wish i could. but it seems like, so far, all i know is how to plan but i do not know how to execute my plan. i think i need to re-study my plan again.

what ever it is, as far as i know, i’m not giving up yet. i will continue with what i’ve executed and stick with what i’ve planned. i can only plan, but in the end, i believe only allah’s knows best what is good for me and what is bad for me.

Dalam diam aku mencari
Dalam bersuara aku memerhati
Dalam berfikir aku berperang
Dalam berjalan aku terbang

Yang dicari terus menghilang
Yang dijumpai terus menyepi
Yang tertinggal terus mengejar
Yang dibawa terus mati

Apa hidup hanya sementara
Apa dosa pengimbang pahala
Apa haram lawannya halal
Apa putih itu kawannya hitam

Soalan demi soalan
Pertanyaan demi pertanyaan
Hanya satu impian si polan
Kenal erti apa itu kehidupan

I was surprised to know that in Selangor, any new application for new cybercafé has been frozen due to unknown reason. I presume the state government has their own rational to impose such restriction and I’m not going to argue about that. Whether it’s a good or bad decision, it’s up to the citizen of the state to think and to judge the state government, consciously using their conscience.

What I’m interested to know now is how we, as the citizen of Malaysia prioritize our needs. I was surprised when I first came back to Malaysia in March, to see the amount of ASTRO disk around Klang Valley. Even worse when I passed across few low cost apartments or flats around Klang Valley, the outlook of ASTRO satellite disk affix to the wall of the building resemble the outlook of mushrooms on a dead tree trunk. So far, every house that I went possesses at least one ASTRO decoder. Yes, I understand. ASTRO is ‘the place’ where people can go for ‘travelling’, for ‘studying’ and even to participate in ‘sports game’ (remember Euro 2008 when ASTRO ‘built’ ASTRO STADIUM with multiple screens). That’s how powerful ASTRO can be in Malaysian life.

However, when it comes to the discussion of internet connection at home many would come out with reasons such as “I don’t have a computer at home”, “It’s too expensive to have an internet at home”, “I prefer to use office internet. Free and faster than home connection”, and most of the time, the common one is “Internet is too dangerous for children. You know lah all this porno stuff that’s available on the net”. Well I guess what you see on the HBO, Cinemax or Animal Planet sometimes gives you more information about porno (anyway, according to Babylon-Concise Oxford English Dictionary, the meaning of porno is “television programmes, books, etc. regarded as catering for an obsessive interest in a particular subject”) than the internet. So, which one carry more weight when it comes to the accessibility of pornography material.

After all, what we crave from both is information. But don’t you think that television only provides one-way communication compare to the internet. It’s going to be interesting to know how people would like to spend their extra money for such facility.

p/s: I have a question to ask. A simple question and you don’t have to scratch your head to answer this question. The question goes like this: If you have extra $100 every month from you salary and you want to spend it badly, which one would you purchase:

1.    ASTRO (Family package + mini packages + Sports) = RM59.95; or

2.    STREAMYX (Streamyx 1.0Mbps with 1.0Mbps download speed and 384kbps upload speed with MODEM) = RM99

Happy answering!!!

superior or supremacy ? what does these two words mean to you? does it sound frightening or does it help to boost your self-esteem?

if the former, than you must have gone through a very bad experience of discrimination. if the latter, i presume you must have taste the sweetness of power and glory and now you hesitate to let it go.

but morally, how do we interpret such understanding?…

Credit Crunch

What Does it Mean?
An economic condition where investment capital is difficult to obtain. Banks and investors become wary of lending funds to corporations; this drives up the price of debt products for borrowers.

taken from here at Investopedia.com

Recession

What Does it Mean?
A significant decline in activity across the economy, lasting longer than a few months. It is visible in industrial production, employment, real income and wholesale-retail trade. The technical indicator of a recession is two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth as measured by a country’s gross domestic product (GDP).

taken from here at Investopedia.com

Bailout

What Does it Mean?
A situation in which a business, individual or government offers money to a failing business in order to prevent the consequences that arise from a business’s downfall. Bailouts can take the form of loans, bonds, stocks or cash. They may or may not require reimbursement.

taken from here at Investopedia.com

so, for a simple calculation, we can see that [CREDIT CRUNCH + RECESSION] = BAILOUT; well, i guess i dont have to be an economist, at least a prominent economist in order to formulate such formula. another thing, the bailout system “may or may not require reimbursement”. which one carry more weight, ‘MAY’ or “MAY NOT”? i’m puzzled. after all, “we” as the general population, have to unite in order to bailout all these nasty and greedy businessmen through our tax money for our future which will be more or less similar to the previous one. i do hope that after this, business people will stop and slow down a little bit when it comes to the discussion on how to make profits over the general population. it seems like we are the savior of your greediness and not the other way round…what a pity…at least a shame…

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