reduced and recycled

8.20am: I’m back in the office. Yesterday wasn’t so great, but Sunday was better: met up with an old friend in the morning and then had quite a bit of fun with a new friend.

Coming back to the office, in contrast, feels like a let-down.

9.15am: I get why Leo wants to leave Twitter. He’s just trademarked the ‘TwiT’ brand and he’s got to protect his trademark. That’s all well and good. But announcing it on twitter a few days ago? Well, some have pointed out that it was just in bad taste to declare out in the open how he’s trying to avoid confusion to other TwiT fans and twitter users (some of whom are both).

I don’t know if it’s in bad taste, though, but the undeniable thing is, people will be checking out Jaiku (the platform Leo’s migrating to) just because Leo is (the Leo effect!). Is that a good or bad thing? A number of people are blowing what he said out of proportion, though. Check it out here.

9.30am: The Scobleizer’s posted a link on twitter to Tim O’Reilly’s blog post call for a Blogging Code of Conduct. You can check out the link to Mr O’Reilly’s post over here.

In the light of the whole Bloggers United saga and the recent suit brought against Jeff Ooi and Rocky, O’Reilly’s initiative appears to be much needed. Granted what spurred the initiative were recent threats against an American blogger (check out the post), but many of the guidelines laid down deserve looking into. Wanna sign up?

11.17am: Another short report down. I headed over to Chris Pirillo’s blog after his call out for parental control software suggestions on twitter, and I was reading through the post, and the sentence that caught me most - from a reader of his - was: ‘my son’s getting too net savvy for my comfort now’.

I was like: that right there encapsulates the gap between parent/child, between the previous generation and the new generation. And this is apart from considerations of parental responsibility and censorship of material for children (no offense to the parents, they’re doing the right thing). It’s like a snapshot of the new quickly out-distancing the old. It’s scary.

1.03pm: Therefore, lunch. Tracking through pools of water on rough screed in office shoes isn’t something I’m happy about. But a short skip and a walk later, I found myself standing in front of a newly-opened restaurant selling Pakistani food. That’s what I was told, anyway. Would that make this restaurant a Pakistani restaurant? What’s the difference, when they’re going to serve local favourites anyway?

And why am I being such a pedantic asshole anyway? If it says it’s a Pakistani restaurant, then it damned well is!

And by the way, there was only like one Pakistani-looking fella in there.

3.37pm: I took a break after handing in my third report of the day, and feeling great about my output. Then I headed over to Bernama to catch up on the elections in Machap and what do I read? Najib saying “Indian Community’s Position Improving under BN”.

Now, you’d expect a government official to spew party-political bullshit from time to time, but I usually expect Najib to come up with something a bit more substantial. His argument: (1) he went to Bali, Sulawesi and the University of Crimea in the Ukraine and found that 80% of Malaysian students were Indians.(2)These Indian students were sponsored by MIC. (3) Thus, BN via MIC, is improving the Indian Community “from time to time”.

Let’s see: the best Bumiputera students get scholarships to the United States, the United Kingdom and high-class what-nots, but not “Bali, Sulawesi or the Ukraine” - two of those locations located in struggling developing countries and the other in the former communist eastern bloc. Such privilege.

What if we take all Malaysian students studying overseas, yah? Out of, let’s say, 15,000 Malaysian students overseas, how many of these are Indians? And how many of these are in premier universities? And how many of those not in premier universities obtained comparable examination results with their top-flight contemporaries?

Heck, and since when did more-kids-in-varsity equate to “improved conditions”? After 50 fucking years, is that all you can tell the Indian community? That you’re sending their kids to half-arsed medical colleges (the grads from which you once thought should not be recognized? Remember that same University of Crimea? Remember Sothinathan’s metaphorical slap-in-the-face in parliament?)?

Unless Najib’s willing to provide facts and figures, I can’t say he’s wrong outright - because I don’t know - but I’m gonna call BULLSHIT SPIN on this.

And the irony? The irony is Najib coming out today and saying “speeches from individuals don’t reflect the party’s stand”.

Oh, really?

5.29pm: fourth report down, and I’m mentally exhausted. It’s almost time to head home, but looks like the boss-man wants to have a drink. Or maybe he was pressured into it. Who knows? Ha!