The Butcher of Kuala Lumpur

I’m So Proud of Our New National Car

Haha. My name is Ahmad, and I am a proud Malaysian.

Well! Our sneaky national car company is so super cool that they caught me completely unawares with the launch of their super super super new MPV (yeah, multi-purpose vehicle… what other purpose can a vehicle have other than to be a vehicle?).

The Exora. At just under MYR 80,000, it’s supposed to be good value for money. Uh huh… considering that a loan would have the average guy pay at least 20% interest (yes, I’m such a positively positive person I’m willing to think the banks will let the average Malaysian off with a 7-year loan at 3% per annum), that’s MYR 96,000 ringgit. I make, after cuts, just about MYR 1,770 per month. That would take me more than 4 years to make the money to pay for that “family car” (Proton’s descriptive phrase, not mine).

Can you believe that I’m making more than the average working adult? I can!

Malaysia Boleh!

Tags: Malaysia boleh, Proton Exora

Taman Negara Orang Asli to destroy generators for World Earth Hour

The Batek Orang Asli, the nomadic aboriginal hunter-gatherers who live near the Taman Negara forests, have announced that they will destroy their evil, carbon-emitting diesel generators tomorrow, 28 March 2009, for World Earth Hour.

Sani Hisnam, a 70-year old Orang Asli, first thought up the idea when he heard a local ad on his AM radio, asking Malaysians to switch off their lights for one hour on World Earth Hour. Despite his age and berry-only diet, Sani has a keen understanding of global warming and believes that the global effort will do much good for the world.

“If we had lights, we would definitely switch them off. So I sat down on my rock and thought very hard about how we, Orang Asli, could contribute to the national effort. And then, my son returned from a trip to the city. He told me that our diesel generators, which we sometimes use when we need to cook in rainy weather, is a source of pollutant. Did you know that using it for 15 minutes will produce enough carbon monoxide that would need 15 days for a tree to absorb?”

So tomorrow, Sani will lead a band of 23 Orang Asli as they intend to make a bonfire of 12 diesel generators.

Ahmad Haji Arshad, a Malaysian student, lauds the attempt, although he feels that Orang Asli could do more.

“Sometimes, I do wish that more groups of people, such as the Orang Asli, would do more for conservation. I mean, urban people like me do lots of things like recycling the plastic we use, reusing our computers, and you know, other good stuff. But I guess what they’re doing is a good start…” said Ahmad, as he sat in his MPV talking to us with the engine running.

Farah Lee, a working mother of three, concurred: “The Orang Asli have always been anonymous when it comes to environmental efforts. Look at Sarimah and Ida Nerina… they’re so famous and they fly all over the world, and yet they take the time to go on TV to tell us about Earth Hour. They are true angels.”

Farah organised a tree-planting trip to Venezuela last month for her 120 colleagues where they managed to plant 20 trees. They even managed to get cheap tickets with only 3 transits.

Tags: Orang Asli Malaysia, World Earth Hour Malaysia

Rainy days and rainy nights

So it’s been a week since my last post: forgive me for that but this time I have an excuse. The rain got into our servers, and we’ve yet to get it fully backed up. We’re on a backup wireless line but it’s no good for anything else but text emails.

Meanwhile, Malaysia won an award from Britain (can’t remember the name, but I’m sure you can easily look it up if you were really that interested) for it’s super high technology SMART tunnel. Apparently, thetunnel is saving billions of ringgit in productivity and damage savings (it is one of its kind: on normal days it eases congestion by providing an expensive short cut through city traffic line and it doubles up as a flood prevention mechanism, able to channel immense amounts of rainwater from the city direct to nearby rivers).

I’m not about to buy the whole thing: there’s a lot of political lobbying and the SMART tunnel being featured on National Geographic doesn’t waver me.

Let’s look forward to tomorrow or tonight: tasty posts!