Ill Will wonders:


I read a couple places that gas emissions can cause blindness if they interact with even the smallest amount of moisture in your eyes. When they interact with moisture it forms acid. So does this happen when you give yourself a homemade facial by putting your face over boiling water? Or do they cancel each other out since the gas emission in this case is a form of water?

Brandon Hopkins wonders:


While contact lens companies may not be advertising that they are causing blindness, multiple studies show that contact lenses may be a contributing factor in blindness, especially in developing countries. The World Health Organization says that there are currently 37 million blind people in the world, and approximately 90 percent of those people reside in developing nations.

So how can you avoid going blind because of your contact lenses? Follow the following 5 tips and talk to your optometrist about blindness.

1. Eat right. Senior Consultant Ophthalmologist and Rotarian with the Rotary Avoidable Blindness Program, Mr. Low Hong says that the eating right can help improve your eyesight. By eating right Mr. Hong advises eating traffic light-like vegetables. That means those vegetables that are red, green, and yellow. Those colored fruits can contain important chemicals required by the eye to function and have a clearer vision and you’ll see colors more clearly. Hong also advises eating carrots because they help improve your eyesight as well.

2. Sleep right. Position is more important that length says Hong when it comes to blindness and cataracts. When you sleep face down on your pillow you put pressure against your eyes and eye sockets that can lead to cataracts and eventually cataract surgery. Additional sleep also helps your eye recover from wearing contact lenses for prolonged periods. Sleep helps your eyes recover from any damage they might have experienced as a result of wearing contacts all day.

3. Practice good hygiene. Good hygiene for you eyeballs? This isn’t anything special that you shouldn’t already be doing. Good hygiene for you eyes include washing your hands regularly and avoiding touching your eyes with any foreign object including your fingers. You can also wear UV resistant sunglasses to avoid UV radiation. When it comes to contact lens use you’ll want to make sure you don’t share anything with another contact lens wearer. That includes sharing contact lenses, cleaning solution, eye drops, moisturizers, storage containers and anything else that touches your eye.

4. Avoid eye rubbing. This one may seem simple, but it is often overlooked. If your keep your hands out of your eyes, you’re less likely to develop an infection and scratch your cornea. Eye infections are a serious cause of blindness. Another serious cause is inadvertent eye damage usually caused by a foreign object. Stay aware when walking near trees with low hanging branches and whenever around objects that are hanging at eye level.

5. Replace contacts regularly. Another reason contact lens wearers experience blindness is because they keep their contacts in too long and don’t replace them as recommended. If your contacts are designed for single use and are disposable, throw them out after first use. If they’re designed to last one month, don’t wear them for two months. Another reason is because people leave them in too long. If you keep your contact lenses in for 16 hours every day you may begin to experience additional dryness and irritation. When you no longer need your contacts in, take them out.

Blindness is serious and extremely difficult to treat. If you take precaution and recognize how valuable and fragile your eyes are, they’ll hopefully last you an entire lifetime!

Figato wonders:


Apparently I have no idea what appeals to a woman.
I’ll be watching TV with my wife – something on E! like “best looking celebrities” and I’ll ask something like “is he attractive” and she’ll make a face like I just shoved a lemon in her mouth.

Do any other guys suffer from this type of “blindness”

Eudora wonders:


My son is in Iraq right now. I praise him for facing his fears in the past, for moving forward, and for following his heart. He has always been a wise, compassionate, giving person with strong morals. He was my guide to wake me from my blindness and help me choose the right path out of a very dark situation! When I first saw him, I fell in love. (God Bless you, I love you Son!)

My daughter has been through hell with me. We have seen and survived many dreadful things. She was there to hold my hand and I was there when she cried. She has been my best friend and comfort. She has much more strength than she gives herself credit for. She is a star in a darkened sky, an opal on a sandy beach, a rainbow after a heavy storm. She is exceptional!

I thought I could never have children, so these two precious wonders are amazing, miraculous blessings. Whatever I did to be rewarded so generously, I’m deeply grateful! I feel like the luckiest women on Earth. Please tell me about those you love.

Jim Moyer wonders:


The time has come for the Governing bodies of adult softball and youth fastpitch softball to require all softball pitchers and 3rd basemen to wear a protective softball face mask. While the actual risk of being hit in the face with a line drive is slight, the severity of the injury can be blindness or even death. According to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission in 1991 reported that more than 100,000 cases of facial trauma occurred in children younger than 14 years while they participated in sports activities with a surprisingly high incidence of female pitchers that are hit with a batted ball.

Let me give a couple of real life examples that I have witnessed first hand. A few years back when my daughters softball team was just a 10 year old team (although we were very good), we had the opportunity to play a High School Junior Varsity team. During that game, one of our 10 year old girls hit a line shot back at the pitcher. The pitcher was just able to move her head enough that the ball glanced off the side of her head just above her ear. She immediately fell to the ground and everyone rushed the field to see about her. Fortunately the ball had glanced off of her rather than a straight on blunt impact. She only suffered from a rather severe abrasion on her head, a swollen ear, and a pretty good size knot on her head. Understand that I’m talking about a fairly athletic 14 year old girl only had the chance to react and turn her head about 45 degrees to avoid a ball hit by a 10 year old girl.

Just this season I was watching a fastpitch softball game of 12 year old girls. I was sitting by the father of the 3rd baseman and we were discussing how scary it is that coach’s have the 3rd baseman play so close to home plate. Many 3rd baseman now play about 20 feet inside 3rd base and even closer when the coach thinks the other team is going to bunt. Later that same inning, a batter ripped a line drive about 18 inches directly over his daughter’s head. She didn’t even have time to flinch. Honestly, it was so sudden she didn’t have time to duck or move her hands for protection. The dad, relieved that his daughter was okay, said, “That’s it. I’m online tonight and will buy a protective face mask. She won’t play 3rd base again without one.”

One might think a protective face mask is only applicable to girls softball, but that would be naive. Just two years ago, I met a man that played recreational slow pitch softball. He proceeded to tell me that he stills plays softball but he can longer pitch. He had been struck in his right eye socket with a batted ball and could not risk being struck again. Are you ready for this, it took three surgeries and 189 stitches to repair the damage to his eye socket, nose, and cheek. I don’t know his exact age, but I suspect he was in his late 20’s or early 30’s when the injury occurred.

The game of softball is the most participated sport in the U.S. Given this level of participation and the possible severity of facial injuries, it just makes sense that players in high risk positions should be required to wear a softball protective face mask. The unfortunate reality is that most people will not wear safety gear until they are required to do so. A couple of years ago, face masks on batting helmets became mandatory. In the year prior to that rule, my daughter’s softball team was the only team in our fastpitch softball league that voluntarily put face masks on batting helmets. That’s just one team out of approximately 50 teams.

I’m not sure why more players don’t wear the protective face mask. I suspect some parents are not aware that it exists and many other parents don’t want to spend the $40.00 because the odds are so slim. Imagine what the cost might be for a trip to the emergency room, a week in the hospital, and two or three re-constructive surgeries. That’s just the actual financial cost. Also consider the potential of losing sight in one eye, or the mental damage associated with having scars from 189 stitches. Those costs can’t be measured.

Now that you have been made aware of the safety issue, the severity of the injury, the knowledge that there are softball protective face masks on the market, what will your position be? Will you be proactive with your local league? If you coach, will you be proactive with your team? Finally, will you be proactive with your daughter, or with yourself if you play softball?

Slow pitch softball and fastpitch softball are great games. I hope you will take the necessary precautions to ensure your safety and those you are responsible for.

Francis Githinji wonders:


If there is a place which has a booming online business then it has to be Australia. The Australian dating sites owners and the people who are looking for dating partners online are benefiting. The traditional way of finding love is slowly being replaced by the technology way of doing it. To be sure of success Australian singles are registering in more than one site. Years back it was hard to get a place with good Internet connection. The Internet was poor and was not easily available but now almost every home and office has excellent Internet connection. There is both the opportunity and the ability to surf the Internet for happiness and love. The lifestyle of many people in down under have been influenced highly by the computers.

The majority of Australians work with computers through their daily activities and so it wouldn’t be a big deal to browse over the dating profiles placed on the many reliable Australian dating sites. Online dating in Australia has been made easy by the fact that most people interact with computers more often than they do with people. It is convenient to chat with others while you are still in your bed room than it is to invite a friend in your comfort zone. Social networking platforms have enabled people from all over the world to live more superficial lifestyles. You will certainly agree with me that it saves your face to express all your desires, fantasies, and feelings without fear of rejection and embarrassment. A face to face rejection encounter can be so disastrous to a point of forcing you to ask for a transfer or change your peers.

This can be very expensive therefore online dating has been cheap in more than one ways. It is a risk free and fun way of hooking up with partners and friends with minimum effort. It encourages flirting as a way of testing whether the relationship can result into anything serious. If you see a hope of compatibility, you can then plan for a physical meeting. That is how much an online dating can be convenient. No wonder online Australian dating sites are gaining popularity with each passing day. The first date cannot actually be grouped as a blind date after the exchange of photos, and e-mail messages. It is just an opportunity to see the person you have been longing to set your eyes on.

There are generally two classifications of Australian dating sites. This is depending on the goal of the singles visiting the site. There is the mainstream dating where an individual is more focused on serious long-term relationship and there is the casual version of it where members are more interested in seeking casual sex than commitment. There are also some hybrids though they are not very popular since it is hard to mix romance and sex. This is because many people are put off by the commitment desires. They might want to enjoy sex with no strings attached  and will cruise at the sign of emotional attachment.

Swami Satchidanand wonders:


Other explorers of inner truth went still further in their search; and by experiencing the reality of mind and matter within themselves they recognized that diverting the attention from the bad behaviour or Energy Blockage is only running away from the problem.

Escape is no solution: one must face the problem. Whenever a negativity arises in the mind, just observe it, face it. As soon as one starts observing any mental defilement, it begins to lose strength. Slowly it withers away and is uprooted.

This is the case with all weak Energy Blockages, however for very deep and powerful Energy Blockages one must meditate with a Master of Meditation, within his buddhafield. Let the Master do the work!.

Or one must learn very powerful blockage busting techniques like Energy Enhancement. Then, like Alexander the Great, you can learn how to cut the Gordian Knot with your sword of Discernment!

Usually, the necessary solution is a mixture of both being with a Master of Meditation, and learning advanced Blockage Busting techniques yourself. This we do in Energy Enhancement!

Instead of running away from the problem, I am facing reality as it is. Then I shall find that the defilement loses its strength: it can no longer overpower me as it did in the past. If I persist, the defilement eventually disappears altogether, and I remain peaceful and happy.

In this way, the techniques of self-observation shows us reality in its two aspects, inner and outer. Previously, one always looked with open eyes, missing the inner truth. I always looked outside for the cause of my unhappiness; I always blamed and tried to change the reality outside. Being ignorant of the inner reality, I never understood that the cause of suffering lies within, in my own blind reactions toward pleasant and unpleasant sensations.

Now, with training, I can see the other side of the coin. I can be aware of my breathing and also of what is happening inside me. Whatever it is, breath or sensation, I learn just to observe it, without losing the balance of the mind. I stop reacting, stop multiplying my misery. Instead, I allow the defilement to manifest and pass away.

With Advanced Blockage Busting Techniques we go Blockage hunting in Meditation. Simply by using any memory of anger or fear. Simply by going into the timeline when bad things happened to us, we can simply find the Energy Blockages and remove them. As we remove them the negative emotions and bad behaviour never return for that particular Energy Blockage.

The more one practices this technique, the more quickly one will find one will come out of negativity. Gradually the mind becomes freed of the defilements and Energy Blockages; it becomes pure. A pure mind is always full of love–selfless love for all others; full of compassion for the failings and sufferings of others; full of joy at their success and happiness; full of equanimity in the face of any situation.

When one reaches this stage, the entire pattern of one’s life starts changing. It is no longer possible to do anything vocally or physically which will disturb the peace and happiness of others. Instead, the balanced mind not only becomes peaceful in itself, but it helps others also to become peaceful. The atmosphere surrounding such a person will become permeated with peace and harmony, and this will start affecting others too. And help them remove their own Energy Blockages.

By learning to remain balanced in the face of everything one experiences inside, one develops detachment towards all that one encounters in external situations as well. However, this detachment is not escapism or indifference to the problems of the world.

An Energy Enhancement meditator becomes more sensitive to the sufferings of others, and does his utmost to relieve their suffering in whatever way he can–not with any agitation but with a mind full of love, compassion and equanimity. He learns holy indifference–how to be fully committed, fully involved in helping others, while at the same time maintaining the balance of his mind. In this way he remains peaceful and happy, while working for the peace and happiness of others.

This is what the Buddha taught; an art of living. He never established or taught any religion, any ‘ism’. He never instructed his followers to practice any rites or rituals, any blind or empty formalities. Instead, he taught just to observe nature as it is, by observing reality inside. Out of Energy Blockages, one keeps reacting in a way which is harmful to oneself and to others. But when wisdom arises–the wisdom of observing the reality as it is–one come out of this habit of reaction. When one ceases to react blindly, then one is capable of real action–action proceeding from a balanced mind, a mind which sees and understands the truth. Such action or removing Energy Blockages can only be positive, creative, helpful to oneself and to others.

You are an immortal and pure being. Energy Blockages are that which is not you. They are filled with perverted spiritual energy which causes bad actions and negativity.

What is necessary, then, is to ‘know thyself’–advice which every wise person has given. One must know oneself not just at the intellectual level, the level of ideas and theories. Nor does this mean to know just at the emotional or devotional level, simply accepting blindly what one has heard or read.

It needs an Ancient Advanced Synthesis of Effective Techniques for Gaining More Energy – Meditation, Shaktipat, Energy Circulation, The Kundalini Kriyas, The Five Elemental Paths Of The Chi Of Chinese Alchemical Taoism, The Grounding Of Negative Energies, V.I.T.R.I.O.L, The Art Card Of The Thoth Tarot, Access To Kundalini Energy, Strong Psychic Protection, Learn The Merkaba, Pyramid Protection, Power Tower Protection, Create The Antahkarana, Soul Fusion, Monadic Infusion, Logos Infusion. The Painless Removal Of Stress, Trauma And Negative Emotion

However, to remove these sub-personalities completely, the more Advanced techniques of a Synthesis of Ancient Meditational Techniques are absolutely necessary:-

Leading onto the more advanced Techniques of The Karma Clearing Process. Learning how to clean The Karma From Past Lives, Future Life, Future Lifetimes, Integrating Soul Fragmentation And Retrieval of Inner Children, Selfish Ego Sub Personalites, Life Destroying Strategies, The Aloof, The Interrogator, The Violator, The Selfish Competitive Star, The Vamp Or Don Juan, The Pleaser, The Blamer, The Critic, The King, The Self Destructor, All The Destructive Vows From This And Past Lifetimes,.

Which results in The Creation Of Self Love, Love And Service.

Ponder on this…

M. Nadarajah wonders:


Another Malaysia is Possible

(Or Losing Sight of History, Justice and Compassion *)

M Nadarajah

————————————————

I have stopped feeling at home in Malaysia. There is a great deal of uneasiness. Someone out there may want to shout at me: “Go back to India, if you want!” Really, that is not the issue. I am not making a choice between India and Malaysia.

Though my reasons may be private my uneasiness is not, and it is certainly very real for many of us here. It is for me complicated and mixed up with the history of this country, its emerging character and its future.

I am a Malaysian. But my ancestors belong to a culturally rich ancient civilisation, which is today a major contributor of human resources to the global cyber-industry. Inevitably, my cultural roots are in India. They are not here. Like many in the Indian diaspora, ‘India’ is a presence that shapes the diaspora Indian’s everyday cultural life around the globe.

But the Indian civilisation, as the Chinese one, has long ago interacted with the culture of the people of the Malay Peninsula and has produced distinctive and creative hybrids. I sincerely like to locate my ancestors and my culture in that process of hybridisation. But no. This nation has not made me feel comfortable or proud of that.

The attempt here has been to carefully remove any hybrid elements, in what I think, are vain attempts to create a ‘pure culture’, whatever that means. In its everyday life statement, cultures have always carried out dialogue with each other.

Except in the clever ads put up in the national television networks at around the time of the national day in August – when an attempt is made to show the sharing of cultures – the rest of the year we live in a highly ethnically compartmentalised and charged reality.

The ads seem to assume that sharing and hybridisation is something new, which has to be promoted, little realising we always have a tradition of hybridisation and active syncretism.

There are fine examples of sharing and cultural hybrids in Malaysia, all of which are facing danger of marginalisation, “cultural extermination and death”. A couple of decades from now, through conscious design or careless neglect, cultures around “wayang kulit” or “Dato Kong” would have been consigned to the dustbin of history, forgotten for good. We completely avoid that history. In fact, steps are taken to destroy that history. Why?

A little reflection would reveal that we are becoming a nation that is slowly but certainly having little or no respect for history – past, present or future – justice or compassion and how they once enriched our individual and national life. For some of us, this is the root of our uneasiness. And homelessness.

There have been a number of stages through which Indians have interacted with the Malay community. But under British colonialism, south Indians – mostly Tamils – were brought here through the indentured labour system and, later through the kangani system, to work in the plantations to help make money for British entrepreneurs and the British government. And, of course, later for the Malayan government.

Imagine this scenario for a moment. Imagine that you can go down to the material foundations of this nation and can see the contribution to that foundation in terms of layers of labour and income in dollars and cents.

You will certainly see what critical contributions Indian labour has made to creating a modern Malaya/Malaysia. But that is history now and it is best forgotten. In fact, the situation here is even more saddening. Instead of recognising the contribution of the Indian community and being sort of “grateful” for that, we have some Malaysians shouting coldly and loudly that the Indian Malaysian community is an ungrateful community!

History, and by extention heritage, is this country is faced with the problem of political myopia. We have fed and fattened our greed for profits any way in the name of “development”. In the face of this, history and heritage in this country have been given up for commercial and short-term growth benefits and ethnic demands.

We are willing to tear down the “significant old” and give the developers all rights to develop. Under the rent control repeal, Georgetown in Penang is, for instance, under attack. This is culturally a very rich area, both in terms of cultural practices and architectural diversity.

In this place, you have within walking distances, in one street a Protestant church, the “Goddess of Mercy” (Chinese) temple, the Mariamman Hindu temple and the Kapitan Kling Mosque. And, more importantly, a community that supports it. Isn’t this what we must preserve and promote as an instance of the “true Malaysia”?

But short term, and therefore historically blind, planning and greed will perhaps one day destroy this cultural diversity and richness. Recently, the multiethnic and historical cemetery at the Sungai Besi area – a preservation and the memory of our past community – was faced with the danger of being gobbled up by greed.

“True Malaysia” must have physical icons around which we can all come together in the true spirit of being Malaysian. But our historical insensitivity is bent on destroying all these. Sadly “Malaysia” as a “cultural hybrid” is soon going to be only reflected in advertising and public relations budgets and programmes. It will in time be merely a media event. Perhaps that is all we really want.

This historical blindness, greed for profit, lack of concern for justice or the feeling of compassion affect all of us and certainly the Indian Malaysian community a great deal. When the world of the Indians – the plantation society – the world they worked in very hard, the world in which many of them died working to produce wealth for this nation, started to crumble, there was no urgency in this country to do something about it.

It was a process that was certainly going to produce a massive problem within the community. But that foresight was neither with the government nor the MIC. In fact, it was not at all seen as a problem for the nation. It was the problem of the Indian community, not Malaysians.

Such a mode of thinking is the root of our mainstream political existence: Turn the problems faced by Malaysians into the problems of the community and let the community deal with it. So when we have problems with pigs, it is seen as the problem of the Chinese community.

The problem of the Ecstasy is the problem of the Chinese youth. Not Malaysians. The problem of drug abuse is the problem of the Malay youth. Of course, the problem of the Malays directly becomes the problem of the Government.

In one way or another, all these affect many Malaysians. Sometime ago an elderly Chinese taxi driver told me “I want to be a Malaysian and I want to love this country but I am not allowed to. I am always made to feel like less than one”.

This year he has decided not to put up the Malaysian flag on his taxi. The quality of justice and compassion in this country is abysmal. And there are many who do not feel at home.

Coming back, the Indian Malaysians unable to deal with their crumbling world moved from rural poverty to urban poverty. And even 40 odd years of independence, with the Indian rubber tapper labouring community – mostly Tamils – even now not guaranteed a minimum wage, a minister with the Malaysian government had the cheek to say that he did not know what the rubber tappers really did behind the rubber tree!

That is symtomatic of our insensitivity to history or justice. Or our gratefulness to our own people. The Indian Malaysian community is a poor minority exhibiting all the problems of a poor minority in a multi-ethnic environment. Left to fend for itself – unlike the protected Malay community – within an ethnically charged environment, it constantly faced a great deal of obstacles.

These problems started early. In the sixties, my brother was working as a door-to-door salesman selling books. As he knocked the door of a non-Indian Malaysian home, he heard one say, “Find out what that black bastard outside wants.”

In a chat with a young frustrated Indian Malaysian student of mine, I was informed that she was told by a non-Indian employer “If not for your colour, we would have employed you.”

After completing his hotel management course, the son of a friend of mine – quite a dark-skinned person – wanted to join the “front office” of a hotel, which a “visible position”. To his disappointment, he found that it was quite difficult for a dark skinned person to occupy such a position. He was given a position in the “house keeping” department, a “behind-the-scene” department.

If you are a fair skinned Indian, close to appearing like Sharukh Khan, perhaps you will have an opportunity in this country. I have watched the plight of a pregnant Indian Malaysian woman, with a big bag of goods she had shopped in a nearby supermarket, trying to get the attention of a taxi driver. The person who finally stopped to pick her up was an Indian taxi driver.

I can go on with these examples. The fact that I remember these examples is certainly uncomfortable to me. But “objectively” they reflect a reality that most of us, and certainly the government, like to hide. I am not saying that Indians do not exhibit racist tendencies.

The thing is that we have put our blinkers on and like to believe that there is no racism – retail or institutional – in this country. And therefore no need for us to talk about it, articulate our problems in public, rationally engage in a discussion, and even work towards legislating against certain forms.

We are told that we are not ready for discussions of racism or that we can’t even rationally discuss certain unhappiness about “race relations” in this country. The David Chua episode is a case in point.

If after 43 years of independence and many more decades before that of living together, of working together, of seeing our loved ones – even across ethnic groups – being buried in this land, we cannot come to a table to rationally discuss a common problem that affects us all, what have we really accomplished as a nation or as a community?

And what is historically blind about all these is that we are pushing our problems to the next generation and teaching them to push the same problems to the next, hoping eventually everything will come to pass and that we will all form one big, happy family. Even myths need to be constructed with some realism! We have come to a bridge and we are refusing to cross it!

The marginalisation of the Indian Malaysian community has many secondary but critical effects. After the Sauk incident – an incident that clearly revealed how low people rated the mainstream media and its independence and how cynical they have become – there was one question that many threw at me in our casual conversations. Members of the Malay community also raised this.

“If”, they said, almost in a chorus, “the group that carried out the arms heist was a non-Malay group, do you think they would have hesitated shooting them on sight?”

And in many discussions, there was always a reference to shooting of a “pregnant Indian woman”. An unarmed Indian Malaysian pregnant women was shot on sight for being in the company of Indian Malaysian men who were suspected to be kidnappers.

This terrible thing has been burnt into the Indian Malaysian psyche and it will appear again and again as a query: “What is our status in this country?” There were many others who were likewise shot in situations that raises many questions, all of which affects the feeling of “belongingness” to this nation.

Political powerlessness

TV3, for instance, is famous for putting Indians (read: Tamils) in their place. TV3’s treatment of Indians is a good measure and is reflective of Indian economic and political powerlessness. Had this group been financially strong and politically powerful, the scenario would have been significantly different.

The Indian Malaysian community will have their movies not at a god-forsaken time but at prime time. Elsewhere, the community has been told to stand on their own two feet. But the same logic has not been directed at the Malay community.

In this country, the majority community behaves like a besieged minority, putting the poor minority community of Indian Malaysians, and other such communities, out of the scope of Islamic justice and compassion. When are we going to learn that ethnicity alone is really an inadequate criterion to deal with poverty?

In an unequal level playing field, I think we need to look at poor Malaysians. They are Malaysian. They are our people. They need help. Why is this so difficult to see? We look but do not see. We hear but do not listen. Our drive for political survival is so narrow and blind that it suffocates and kills our sense of justice and compassion.

My unease with Malaysia is not only the result of the marginalisation of the Indian Malaysian community. There are certainly many things that are going on in this country that will make a citizen uneasy, that will further question our notions of justice and compassion. We are, for instance, a labour shortage economy and we need alien labour. We bring this people in from the neighbouring countries but treat them rather badly.

Hard-earned income

One of my close relative runs a gold jewellery shop. A number of his customers are Bangladeshis. I have personally observed how they take their money out from some of the oddest of places, sometimes from inside their under garments.

When asked why they do that, they say that there are “Malaysians” who like to extort them of their hard-earned income. So when they travel, they put their money in the oddest of places, hoping that it is not found. We point our finger at them without realising how mean we have been.

During the height of the economic crisis, a conversation with a taxi driver revealed yet another aspect of our brutality. The driver of the taxi I was travelling in told me that his business is down. He continued to say many Indonesians have returned since the crisis, finding it difficult to sustain themselves here. As a result of which, the taxi driver observed, his income was down significantly.

I was curious about immigrant labour using taxis to travel rather than bus service or LRT. He told me that they use taxi to avoid being spotted while walking or waiting for a bus or train. They just do not want to be visible because for them, that attracts a section of Malaysians out to prey on them. To avoid being preyed on, the immigrant labour take taxis. This is really sad.

Security on the roads or other public spaces in Malaysia really has a character with a cold attitude: Malaysians vs non-Malaysians; professional aliens vs aliens doing manual labour; rich Malaysians vs poor Malaysians; politically conforming Malaysians vs politically non-conforming ones. In all of the above, the former always has a better deal than the latter.

Economic units

On another question of immigrant labour, I was once talking to a health activist working on AIDS. In the course of our discussion, I saw another instance of the shallowness of our compassion. We import labour into our labour shortage economy as economic units, expecting them to come here, work, earn an income and get back when their time is up.

But to do so is demeaning. Human beings are not economic robots. They have all kind of needs, not only economic or survival needs, but also sexual needs. We have not made provision for this. Over a time that need begins to raise its head, and in an arrangement where these needs are not taken into consideration, a number of health problems will certainly ensue, including the problem of AIDS. Is that the problem of immigrant labour or the system we have?

I like to believe that we have a system that is hardly considerate or compassionate. These are not political problems as much as they are problems of governance. But do we as a people and as a nation care? A similar problem relates to the blind, our own people. If you walk around in Brickfields in Kuala Lumpur you will find a lot of blind people moving around … quite dangerously. A vehicle could anytime knock them down.

These people have been around here for a long time and yet we have not spent time to develop a blind-friendly environment in Brickfields. In Tokyo, as in many other places in Japan, for instance, walk on the pavement and you will see how the needs of the “visually challenged” have been taken care off.

Compassion is intricately knitted into the design of the pavement and that makes the environment for the blind there certainly friendlier than ours. Compassion is not just about a value or a feeling but also about concretely designing a really caring and sustainable society.

Due process

The most serious recent happening that brings to sharp focus our sense of history, justice and compassion relates to the events surrounding our treatment of ex-deputy prime minister, Anwar Ibrahim. I am not debating here his innocence because I really do not know that.

But we need due process in place to seek the truth out ceaselessly before we convict any citizen of this country. Have we really done that in the case of Anwar Ibrahim that we can answer this affirmatively, without an iota of doubt?

This is a classic case, which reveals how insensitive we have become to history, justice and compassion. For now, they have become the silent casualties. As many people felt and still feel, if this could happen to the DPM, where do we ordinary citizens stand against the power of the state, even to raise an innocuous question about its public behaviour?

History has however never been known to be silent about truth for a long time. That will eventually comes out into the open. The Anwar episode will be written and re-written. It will be discussed and researched.

Articles and dissertations will be produced on it. And perhaps one day, when justice assertively holds politics accountable, Malaysia may hear of alternative narratives. Malaysia will wake up to the terrible wrongs that it has committed to a number of its citizens.

And we may just find Guan Eng and Anwar Ibrahim on that list. So will the unarmed pregnant Indian Malaysian woman who was shot. How can we believe that history will not review our actions, our decisions 25 or 50 or 100 years from now? That is the depth of our historical blindness.

The court decision in a case that an international community – of not just governments, that may have other agenda for criticising us, but also of professional bodies, NGOs, and concerned individuals – says is ridden with all kinds of legal anomalies and the sentence of six years and nine years to be served consecutively, raise nagging questions and leave a deep seated uneasy feelings: What is my country really? Where is our compassion? And where is our notion of fairness and justice?

How can I feel being at home in this country? As I walk down the main corridor of Mega Mall on the Aug 30, I see people’s economic and instrumental arrangement with this nation. Not their emotional attachment. I like to believe that I am wrong. Somewhere in the distance, I hear an announcement: “The business hour is extended to 12 o’clock to welcome…”

Without a sense of history – the past, the present and the future – without a capacity for justice and without a feeling of compassion, what are we really going to welcome? I really wonder…

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*Written in 2000

Riza wonders:


It has just the right amount of information available to people that a lot of people enjoy playing it and it conceals just the right amount of information that there is still room for a lot of skill and luck to be put into play. Most people introduced to poker today start with Texas Hold ‘Em and therefore if you want to start playing poker, a good place to start would be through learning how to play Texas Hold ‘Em.

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The game starts off with each player getting dealt two cards face down. These are sometimes referred to as a person’s hole cards and they are cards that only that person can use. Once the cards are dealt out to each person at the table, a round of betting commences. The player sitting immediately to the left of the dealer button (the button shifts with each hand one player to the left) is required to bet half of the small bet blind; this is referred to as the small blind. The player sitting immediately to the left of the small blind is required to bet the full bet blind; this is referred to as the big blind.

The betting in the first round commences with the player to the big blind’s left, who is referred to as being under the gun. Players have the options of calling, raising or folding and once the betting during that round has been decided, three cards are dealt face up in the center of the board. These three cards are referred to as the flop (or third street) and they represent the first three community cards that every player can use in order to make the best five card poker hand. Once the flop has been dealt, another round of betting commences, this time starting with the person that was the small blind before the flop was dealt. Players have the option of checking or betting (if nobody has bet before them) or they have the option of calling, folding or raising (if someone has bet before them).

Once the betting during this round has been dealt with, yet another card is dealt face up in the center of the board next to the flop. This card is referred to as the turn card (or fourth street) and the betting options on the turn are exactly the same as they were on the flop. Once the betting on the turn has been resolved, a fifth and final card is dealt face up next to the flop and turn cards. This card is the river card (or fifth street) and after it is dealt a final round of betting ensues during which the same options as were available on the flop and turn are also available on the river. If there are still at least two people left by the end of the river betting round, then the showdown occurs. The players show their hands and try to make the best five card poker hand from their two and the five community cards available. The player with the best poker hand wins the hand and takes the pot.

 

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Peter Murphy wonders:


You can be confident! All you have to do is rid yourself of confidence killers. Confidence killers are self-defeating thought patterns. Many of us walk through life with these harmful assumptions.

See if you’ve got any of these evildoers in your thoughts:

1. The All or Nothing Sniper:

This way of thinking is the reason you can’t seem to enjoy even the small wins you’ve been getting in life. I’ll bet you were the kid in school who went home crying when you got one wrong on a test!

You think you are a complete failure when your performance (whatever it is) is not perfect. You’d be confident if you didn’t spend so much energy being so hard on yourself!

2. The Dark Cloud of Destruction:

Look out! There is a disaster hiding behind every corner. Expect it. The Dark Cloud of Destruction makes you think silly things like: ‘I failed my chemistry test; there is no point in even thinking about college, now.’

3. Warlord of Negative Magnification:

If you listen to this confidence killer you’ll never be confident. He’s got a warped idea that if it’s good- it doesn’t really count. He’ll take any little negative anthill and magnify it like it’s a mountain.

If you won 8 singing contests but had a cold for the 9th and came in second, he’ll harp on that ninth and you’ll never look at the 8 trophies as the great achievements they really are.

4. The ‘If I feel it, it must be so’ Monster:

This is like a computer worm that shuts down all the clear thinking parts of your brain! A person with this can never be confident until they learn that how they are feeling doesn’t necessarily match up with the truth. We all have days when we don’t look our best or perform at our best.

The ‘I feel stupid so I must be stupid’ syndrome allows us to let our emotions run our lives. Don’t blindly accept emotions as truth. Be confident enough to think that tomorrow you probably will be feeling different.

5. The Sinister Should:

Perfectionists are good at should statements. Should statements are more about what your think other people expect from you than what you really want.

Should statements can be something like: Everybody should have an education plan. The person then thinks ‘ Oh, no! I don’t have an education plan! There must be something really wrong with me.’

6. Libellous Labeller:

Let’s throw this one in jail and throw away the key. You know the thought. It’s the one that we use to blame things on something. ‘I am a loser. It must all be my fault.’ If you are going to think labels, label yourself a confident person.

7. Compliment Constrictor:

This creepy crawler just can’t seem to let you accept a compliment. For once, if someone tells you that you look good in that dress, don’t let the slimy one takeover and say: ‘Really? I think it makes me look fat!

The good news is that recognizing any of these villains is half of the battle. So put on your white hat- train yourself to cancel these confidence-killing thoughts.