Malaysian Election 2008

From Tricia's blog, Egalitaria

Her pre-election comments



Her post-election comments

Here are some of my comments that I’ve been giving to journalists over the last couple of hours on the recent victory.

What led to this “political tsunami” as Kit Siang has put it? The tsunami has hit mainly amongst the urban mixed seats, and it has been due to a number of reasons. First, the growing disquiet over recent years over the inability of the Pak Lah administration to address corruption, the very promise for which he was sworn into power four years ago. Second, the disillusionment with ethnic-based affirmative action amongst these seats, the solution for which lay within factor number three i.e. the Anwar factor, attempting to cater to members of all ethnic groups through one of the more comprehensive economic policy proposals since the inception of Parti Keadilan Rakyat.

Where traditionally, rapid urbanisation led to the enmasse of Malays into urban centres, thereby creating more mixed seats acting in favour of the Barisan Nasional, this has changed today. Some of the urban Malays were willing to do one of the following: choose PKR, choose DAP (due to the alliance between DAP and PKR), or choose not to attend/spoil their votes, in order to punish the incumbent BN. This marks a shift in urban Malays’ sentiments towards the BN, and augurs well for the country since these have voted according to principle and not necessarily ethnicity alone. A possibility is even the Malays’ disillusionment with regards to the NEP, and if trends read correctly, this may indicate the gradual removal of NEP-ridden policies as frequently discussed.

What are some immediate implications? MIC having contested 9 Parliamentary seats and won only three, is considered literally shattered to bits - he being the one sole representative of MIC. Gerakan is in an equal position, having lost all of its contested State and Parliamentary seats in Penang, conceding defeat to DAP. The remaining leg on the increasingly shaky stool of BN is MCA, also weakened significantly. The raison d’etre - or reason for existence - of the BN coalition, which is power sharing amongst all ethnic groups, has also been made a mockery of. The BN will see UMNO as the sole “big brother” within the coalition, where component parties need to renegotiate their roles and responsibilities sufficient for an effective Government. Peoples’ representation of Chinese and Indians will predominantly lie within its Opposition leaders.

The people are fed up with the Government, an understatement - they have established a protest vote in the Elections, punishing Government for their lacklustre performance in managing the nation’s wealth, integrity and interests of the people. For opposition to maintain its power over next years, it has to live up to its electoral promises, making good its commitment to implementing particular concrete measures such as putting local council elections into place.

Malaysian Election 2008

From Tricia's blog, Egalitaria

Her pre-election comments



Her post-election comments

Here are some of my comments that I’ve been giving to journalists over the last couple of hours on the recent victory.

What led to this “political tsunami” as Kit Siang has put it? The tsunami has hit mainly amongst the urban mixed seats, and it has been due to a number of reasons. First, the growing disquiet over recent years over the inability of the Pak Lah administration to address corruption, the very promise for which he was sworn into power four years ago. Second, the disillusionment with ethnic-based affirmative action amongst these seats, the solution for which lay within factor number three i.e. the Anwar factor, attempting to cater to members of all ethnic groups through one of the more comprehensive economic policy proposals since the inception of Parti Keadilan Rakyat.

Where traditionally, rapid urbanisation led to the enmasse of Malays into urban centres, thereby creating more mixed seats acting in favour of the Barisan Nasional, this has changed today. Some of the urban Malays were willing to do one of the following: choose PKR, choose DAP (due to the alliance between DAP and PKR), or choose not to attend/spoil their votes, in order to punish the incumbent BN. This marks a shift in urban Malays’ sentiments towards the BN, and augurs well for the country since these have voted according to principle and not necessarily ethnicity alone. A possibility is even the Malays’ disillusionment with regards to the NEP, and if trends read correctly, this may indicate the gradual removal of NEP-ridden policies as frequently discussed.

What are some immediate implications? MIC having contested 9 Parliamentary seats and won only three, is considered literally shattered to bits - he being the one sole representative of MIC. Gerakan is in an equal position, having lost all of its contested State and Parliamentary seats in Penang, conceding defeat to DAP. The remaining leg on the increasingly shaky stool of BN is MCA, also weakened significantly. The raison d’etre - or reason for existence - of the BN coalition, which is power sharing amongst all ethnic groups, has also been made a mockery of. The BN will see UMNO as the sole “big brother” within the coalition, where component parties need to renegotiate their roles and responsibilities sufficient for an effective Government. Peoples’ representation of Chinese and Indians will predominantly lie within its Opposition leaders.

The people are fed up with the Government, an understatement - they have established a protest vote in the Elections, punishing Government for their lacklustre performance in managing the nation’s wealth, integrity and interests of the people. For opposition to maintain its power over next years, it has to live up to its electoral promises, making good its commitment to implementing particular concrete measures such as putting local council elections into place.

My Father's Baptism

My father who is 80 years old was baptised on 1st March 2008 during the Cantonese service of the Hebron Presbyterian Church, Johor Bahru, Malaysia.

Soli Deo Gloria.

He even sang in the choir!

.

My Father's Baptism

My father who is 80 years old was baptised on 1st March 2008 during the Cantonese service of the Hebron Presbyterian Church, Johor Bahru, Malaysia.

Soli Deo Gloria.

He even sang in the choir!

.

Ulysses

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
March’d with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoy’d
Greatly, have suffer’d greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shores, and when
Thro’ scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honour’d of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’
Gleams that untravell’d world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!
As tho’ to breathe were life. Life piled in life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.


This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle –
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro’ soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil’d, and wrought, and thought with me –
That every with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads – you and I are old;


Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Make weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.






Alfred Lord Tennyson

Ulysses

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
March’d with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoy’d
Greatly, have suffer’d greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shores, and when
Thro’ scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honour’d of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’
Gleams that untravell’d world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!
As tho’ to breathe were life. Life piled in life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.


This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle –
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro’ soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil’d, and wrought, and thought with me –
That every with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads – you and I are old;


Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Make weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.






Alfred Lord Tennyson

Medical Student Clerking Patient

I believe this is by the Medical students at IMU

HT: Punna

Medical Student Clerking Patient

I believe this is by the Medical students at IMU

HT: Punna

God's Call Waiting

God's Call Waiting
Be faithful where you are while you wait for God's call.
by John Ortberg,

I keep a small rock on my desk with a single word painted on it: naviget. I cherish that rock. My wife gave it to me during a spell that was dry for me and hard for us; when I felt like my past was crumbling and I was not sure what the future held. And if you don't know Latin, keep reading; you'll eventually find out what it means.

I first came across this word in a wonderful article by theologian Gilbert Meilander called "Divine Summons." The article was about the notion of calling and vocation, which have long been vexing subjects for me, because I wondered if I would ever get one...

...Which brings me back to the article by Meilander. He writes about how Aeneas, in Virgil's The Aeneid, has a divine summons to be the founder of Rome—"I am the man/whom heaven calls." But building Rome is not what Aeneas wants to do. He is forced to give up his love and his attachment to the past.

For a calling is very different than a quest for fulfillment. A calling, though we glamorize it, is not glamorous. It is a response to a summons. It is a kind of surrender. It is a willingness to die to the past and move to the future. C.S. Lewis wrote, "To follow the vocation does not mean happiness, but once it has been heard, there is no happiness for those who do not follow."

Aeneas does not want to leave his home to follow his calling; it means leaving old dreams and old loves. But there is a larger and better destiny to which he is called to submit. So Jupiter says of him, "That man should sail."

And he does. Sailing means embracing the pain of leaving behind what he thought was his comfort and fulfillment. It means trusting that somehow he is not just moving into the future; he is being led. It is Abraham leaving Ur for he knows not what. It is Moses leaving Egypt for a land he will never enter. It is Jesus walking the Via Dolorosa toward a hill he does not want to climb.
"That man should sail." It meant—a little like Jim Carrey in The Truman Show—it's better to have the faith to embrace reality with all its pain than to cling to the false comfort of a painless fantasy. That life and growth and meaning can come only in the risk of obedience. The future—even if it's hard—is better than nostalgia.

It meant that in leaving port there was something to sail to. It meant hope.
"That man should sail." I did. I have. I am. The phrase in Virgil is a single Latin word written on the rock my wife gave me in love and trust. The word sits on my desk each day to remind me: Naviget.

John Ortberg is editor at large of Leadership and the pastor of Menlo Park Presbyterian Church in Menlo Park, California.

read complete article here

God's Call Waiting

God's Call Waiting
Be faithful where you are while you wait for God's call.
by John Ortberg,

I keep a small rock on my desk with a single word painted on it: naviget. I cherish that rock. My wife gave it to me during a spell that was dry for me and hard for us; when I felt like my past was crumbling and I was not sure what the future held. And if you don't know Latin, keep reading; you'll eventually find out what it means.

I first came across this word in a wonderful article by theologian Gilbert Meilander called "Divine Summons." The article was about the notion of calling and vocation, which have long been vexing subjects for me, because I wondered if I would ever get one...

...Which brings me back to the article by Meilander. He writes about how Aeneas, in Virgil's The Aeneid, has a divine summons to be the founder of Rome—"I am the man/whom heaven calls." But building Rome is not what Aeneas wants to do. He is forced to give up his love and his attachment to the past.

For a calling is very different than a quest for fulfillment. A calling, though we glamorize it, is not glamorous. It is a response to a summons. It is a kind of surrender. It is a willingness to die to the past and move to the future. C.S. Lewis wrote, "To follow the vocation does not mean happiness, but once it has been heard, there is no happiness for those who do not follow."

Aeneas does not want to leave his home to follow his calling; it means leaving old dreams and old loves. But there is a larger and better destiny to which he is called to submit. So Jupiter says of him, "That man should sail."

And he does. Sailing means embracing the pain of leaving behind what he thought was his comfort and fulfillment. It means trusting that somehow he is not just moving into the future; he is being led. It is Abraham leaving Ur for he knows not what. It is Moses leaving Egypt for a land he will never enter. It is Jesus walking the Via Dolorosa toward a hill he does not want to climb.
"That man should sail." It meant—a little like Jim Carrey in The Truman Show—it's better to have the faith to embrace reality with all its pain than to cling to the false comfort of a painless fantasy. That life and growth and meaning can come only in the risk of obedience. The future—even if it's hard—is better than nostalgia.

It meant that in leaving port there was something to sail to. It meant hope.
"That man should sail." I did. I have. I am. The phrase in Virgil is a single Latin word written on the rock my wife gave me in love and trust. The word sits on my desk each day to remind me: Naviget.

John Ortberg is editor at large of Leadership and the pastor of Menlo Park Presbyterian Church in Menlo Park, California.

read complete article here

Ichthus Seminar, Singapore

Ichthus Seminar, Singapore

The 8 Marks of a Robust Gospel

Scot McKnight writes,

I sometimes worry we have settled for a little gospel, a miniaturized version that cannot address the robust problems of our world. But as close to us as the pages of a nearby Bible, we can find the Bible's robust gospel, a gospel that is much bigger than many of us have dared to believe:

The gospel is the story of the work of the triune God (Father, Son, and Spirit) to completely restore broken image-bearers (Gen. 1:26–27) in the context of the community of faith (Israel, Kingdom, and Church) through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ and the gift of the Pentecostal Spirit, to union with God and communion with others for the good of the world.

The gospel may be bigger than this description, but it is certainly not smaller. And as we declare this robust gospel in the face of our real, robust problems, we will rediscover just how different it is from the small gospel we sometimes have believed and proclaimed.

McKnight's 8 marks of a robust gospel are

1. The robust gospel is a story
2. The robust gospel places transactions in the context of persons
3. The robust gospel deals with a robust problem
4. A robust gospel has a grand vision
5. A robust gospel includes the life of Jesus as well as his recurrection, and the gift of the Spirit alongside Good Friday
6. A robust gospel demands not only faith but everything
7. A robust gospel includes the robust Spirit of God
8. A robust gospel emerges from and leads others to the church

read complete article here

The 8 Marks of a Robust Gospel

Scot McKnight writes,

I sometimes worry we have settled for a little gospel, a miniaturized version that cannot address the robust problems of our world. But as close to us as the pages of a nearby Bible, we can find the Bible's robust gospel, a gospel that is much bigger than many of us have dared to believe:

The gospel is the story of the work of the triune God (Father, Son, and Spirit) to completely restore broken image-bearers (Gen. 1:26–27) in the context of the community of faith (Israel, Kingdom, and Church) through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ and the gift of the Pentecostal Spirit, to union with God and communion with others for the good of the world.

The gospel may be bigger than this description, but it is certainly not smaller. And as we declare this robust gospel in the face of our real, robust problems, we will rediscover just how different it is from the small gospel we sometimes have believed and proclaimed.

McKnight's 8 marks of a robust gospel are

1. The robust gospel is a story
2. The robust gospel places transactions in the context of persons
3. The robust gospel deals with a robust problem
4. A robust gospel has a grand vision
5. A robust gospel includes the life of Jesus as well as his recurrection, and the gift of the Spirit alongside Good Friday
6. A robust gospel demands not only faith but everything
7. A robust gospel includes the robust Spirit of God
8. A robust gospel emerges from and leads others to the church

read complete article here

Learning the Science and Art of Medicine

Please realise that the study of clinical medicine is unlike any other schooling you have gone through before.

Here you are called on; you are asked a question; you answer it.

Why don't I just give you a lecture? Because through the questions, you learn to teach yourselves. By this method of questioning-answering, questioning-answering, we seek to develop in you the ability to analyze that vast complex of facts that constitutes the relationships between health and illnesses.

Now, you may think, at times, that you have reached a correct and final answer. You are assured that this is a delusion on your part, there is always another question; there is always a question to follow your answer. Yes, you are on a treadmill.

The questions spin the tumblers of your brain. You are on an operating table; the questions are fingers probing your mind, urging you to think clearly and rationally. We do brain surgery here. You teach yourselves the scientific facts of medicine and we train your minds to think like a doctor.

The Facts of Medicine is the SCIENCE of medicine, How to think like a competent doctor is the ART of medicine. You need both.

HT: Punna


picture credit