cogito

1. i read that the public service division is be upping the compensation of top civil servants and ministers between 4 n 21% come 2008. well i cant exactly say that this is right or wrong, good or bad.

in tough times, and good times as well, we understand we need to retain top talent in the civil service. fair enough. civil servants also deserve a similar remuneration to those in the private sector. i will let this pass.

but so far it seems like the pay of the top civil servants have increased the most. they know they need to retain talent, so they pay retentions to keep themselves in her service.

it seems to me suspiciously like the management blackmailing itself to stay. it seems like it came straight out of dilbert. the catbert in me wants to purr in delight.

2. thailand, burma, malaysia. yupp, asean is be becoming da moz happening 'hood.

i dont really know much about thailand because theres no way for a non-elite but very caring person to know whether thaksin was actually corrupt and mismanaged the country or the military was misguided or self serving. although from the external pov thaksin must have done a pretty job because the baht grew strong and the economy wasnt fledging from chuan leekpais time.

myanmar is really severely mismanaged. u may already know that i am all guts, no heart, but i actually felt for the burmese people. on one hand, the cynic that is my gut (and its eminence) feels that they have never experienced our kind of life so they dont know what shit they are actually in, but having a depraved few abusing the general populance even after fattening itself so much fleecing on so little belonging to so many, i am stirred.

but burma is tricky business. i dont see aungsansuukyi as a good leader in peacetime. her claim to fame was aung san, undeniably. not purely her own merit. much like the nehru-gandhi family. and it is hard to divorce the individual soldier from the burmese. these soldiers are the sons of the barmans who have had little choice but to serve the self serving. if other countries just happy happy invade the country it is easy to foresee more suffering for the people.

malaysia is really screwed up. now im not a person particularly bothered by discrimination. in fact i actively engage in such activities. but how malaysia has managed to get away with decades of racial discrimination confounds me. i agree that racial apportionment might have prevented the significant minorities from dumping the people of the land in the dust. but this whole policy is just too harrison bergernon-ish. instead of helping the people of the land, the emigre are disadvantaged because the amount available cannot be increased, and because of less able management perhaps because of the requirement of having the people of the land in power.

3. the idealist in me hopes that hindraf can succeed. that the world can step in to stop the nonsense that is umno, the nonsense that is the current unfair, unequitable status quo. but of course, the pragmatist in me tells me that if malaysia is rid of her ills then singapore is surely and very quickly screwed.

maybe singapore might fissure, from the rich poor gapp. although i actually find little problem with the singapore taxation system, maybe something should be done for the lower income group. though this is a tricky issue. while we can concede that decisions that led them to the rut were made on imperfect information, clearly there is no decision in this real world that has been made with perfect knowledge. society has not been kind to them, but society is not to blame.

but society had better help these people. if they have nothing, they have nothing to lose, and they become desperate, and the peace and tranquil and good property valuations would all be lost. from the pragmatic side, it is like protection money that might be extortionate from the general society to them, and we better do it.

4. today is shidas last day at work. so zhenan and i celebrated at ajisen in bishan, in his absence.

5. studying today was unproductive.