Life Letters

I received this e-mail from the Graduates Christian Fellowship (GCF) Malaysia. I asked them if I could reproduce it on my blog to further advertise it. They said I could.

PACABA training prepares you to become a polling agent. This means that you will be on the front lines of the election process. It will be your job to make sure that no fraud takes place on election day. You will check the electoral roll, you will count the votes, and you will weed out the spoiled votes. Once you have attended a training session, you do not necessarily have to become a volunteer on that day itself, however you will be qualified to do so if you wish to be. It is a good way of being actively involved in ensuring the transparency of the country's democratic process without being partisan.

 

Dear GCF member,

We are organising a training session for Polling & Counting agents in collaboration with Tindak Malaysia.

Here are the details:

Date   : 24^th March (Saturday)

Venue : St Paul’s Church. (Lorong Utara Kecil, Petaling Jaya)

Map    : http://maps.google.com.my/maps?q=St+Paul+near+PJ+Selangor&daddr=Gereja+ST+Paul,+46000+Petaling+Jaya+(Gereja+ST+Paul)&hl=en&view=map&geocode=CZJpebOUwj2GFTRqLwAdKP8OBiHRMJX4tehnMA&t=m&z=16

Schedules

8:30am   : Registration.

9:00am   : Training + Role Play (Dewan St Paul, 2nd Floor - Upper Room and EC1)

12.00pm : End 

Polling Agent + Roleplay (Level 2)

Objective: Participants will have sufficient knowledge to perform as polling agents.

Coverage: Level 2, Intermediate (For first timer @ Polling agent refresher course)

Content  : Duration 3 hours / 50% Training (1.5hrs), 50% Role play (1.5hrs)

·  Polling Agent & Booth Observer / Barung Agent responsibilities.

·  How do I become a Polling Agent / Counting Agent / Barung Agent?

·  What is the Electoral Structure of Malaysia?

·  What are the Voting Processes?

·  What is inside a PACA Kit?

·  Tasks for Polling Agents before and during polling & Best Practices.

·  How to handle different scenarios during polling?

·  What are the forms used for procedure control and accounting of ballot papers?

·  How to protest?

·  How to use Standard Operating Procedure checklist & references to Election.

Counting Agent + Roleplay (Level 3)

Objective: Participant will be ready to become any PACABA role on Election Day.

Coverage: Level 3, Advanced

Content  : Duration: 3 hours.   30% Training (1hrs), 70% Role play (2hrs).

Pre-requisite: Completed Polling Agent Level 2 sessions OR you have previously served as PACA in the previous general elections. If you are new to PACABA training, DO NOT attend this as you will be lost.

·  Counting Agent responsibilities

·  Tasks for Counting Agents during and after counting & Best Practices.

·  How to fill up ALL forms used for procedure control and ballot paper accounting?

·  How to handle different scenarios during counting?

·  How to determine Undi Ragu?

·  How to recount?

·  How to protest?

·  What to do when you have more ballots in the box than reported in Form 13?

·  What are the relevant envelops used?

·  How to use Standard Operating Procedure checklist & references to Election Laws?

PACABA = Polling Agent, Counting Agent, Barung Agent.

"Barung" is the station at the entrance to polling centres where voters first go to check their details before going in to the polling rooms. 

Training is free of charge. The purchase of the below 3 materials is not compulsory but if you want to volunteer as PACABA, then it is something you will need to be able to do your job effectively.Thus, we encourage you to purchase them.

1.       Buku Panduan SPR (3-in-1, that includes Polling/Counting Agent Handbook, Guide to Determine Undi Ragu, Candidate Guidebook) RM10

2.       Tindak Malaysia Training Package (all the necessary forms + samples+ checklists + election law references) RM5

3.       Tindak Malaysia Process Flow Charts (for Barung, Polling and Counting Agents)RM2

During the training session, Tindak Malaysia will have other supporting materials for sale as below:

1. Election Laws of Malaysia - RM30
2. PACABA training DVDs (2 volumes)-RM10

For your information, there is always a shortage of agents (PACABA), so your participation is highly encouraged. If you are interested to be trained and would like to volunteer to help out as PACABA for better transparency during the upcoming general elections, please email to gcf.msia@gmail.com your RSVP before 19th March and note which level of training you would like to be trained.

Thanks.

Blessings,

GCF Malaysia

I bought a copy of Mein Kampf. Never wanted to buy it before, it's like buying something called "Diary of a Serial Killer" or something. (And now, you too, can be privy to the Voice of Evil! At 20% discount if you purchase another book from us!). 

But I'm teaching The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas in school, and the more I read about the Holocaust the more curious I was about the whys it happened. Then I saw Mein Kampf on sale for like, RM 40 (USD 10). 

Ho crap, leafed through like a few pages of it and was scared to think of how Hitler's ideas took such easy rooting. I mean, it's not like he's writing a blog or something. He had a very clear intended audience in mind. He was addressing them in terms that both of them mutually agreed upon. We all know: Nazism took root in fertile ground, ordinary Germans were not all innocent. But leafing through Mein Kampf is gives you a different level of intimacy with that concept. You suddenly realize how that ground can be fertile...because you live a bit of it yourself. 

The scariest thing is thinking about how that same 'fertile ground' exists in so many places still, in so many parts of human interaction and culture. 

There was a sky roaring incident near my hometown, in a place called Samarahan. Sky roaring is an unexplained phenomena where a strange, rhythmic and loud sound is heard from the Earth's atmosphere. Comparisons have been made to jet engines, low hums, heavy breathing, and the trumpets of the apocalypse. The above video is an audio recording of the sky roaring that happened in Samarahan. It occurred during the 11th and 12th of January. Here is the news report from our local daily.

The following is a list of videos of recorded sky roaring events that I found most interesting:

Kiev, Ukraine. This is the most frequently forwarded video, also the most frequently debunked. A loud metallic rhythmic roar. Comparisons have been made between this and the sound of Jewish trumpets, supporting the 'angels of apocalypse' conjecture.

Florida, USA. August 2011. Low sound, like a jet plane that doesn't move. A news report about a sudden sound that interrupted a sports event, also in Florida, sounds like howling wind.

Sounds across Canada. A faint metallic sound, gradually growing louder recorded October 2011. A weird hum that sounds really distorted. Conklin, Alberta, Canada, January 2012. A very loud metallic roar. This video has been spreading like wildfire.

Bucharest, December 2011. Metallic sound. This is really weird and creepy, no thanks to the flickery video. Warning: to quote someone else, "this noise is truly horrible". Hoax? This is another video of the sound, taken from a distance.

Colorado, USA. Loud and short booming sounds. These sounds were heard prior to an earthquake.

United Kingdom. News coverage by the Telegraph. Described as "A weird, low, humming sound." No actual video recording. A John Watson is on the case; I am amused.

Sweden. November 2011. Similar to the sky roaring in Samarahan, Malaysia -- resembling heavy breathing.

Singapore, August 2011. Strange cloud with creature made of light twisting on top, some hissing sounds. Posted this for the proximity to where I live. Not sure what to make of this as this can be easily faked.

Aalborg, Denmark. A little similar to the Samarahan sky roar.

New Jersey, December 2010. Comments from various people on his channel stating that they've heard similar sounds.

I found most of these videos from the blog Strange Sounds in the Sky, which chronicles video recordings of sky roaring. Strange Sounds in the Sky tends to support the theory that these are the sounds of supersonic weapons, but records of sky roaring have stretched as far back to the 19th Century. This phenomenon is also known on Youtube as earth groaning.

HAPPY NEW YEAR LJ FRIENDS!!

I love you all my dashboard confessional people

I spent the turn of midnight buying a cup of tea

Looks like digi's 3G network collapsed a little at the point of midnight. Yay for Starbucks wireless

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On a less angsty note, I saw the new Sherlock Holmes movie.

You know, it really felt like this crew saw the BBC version with Cumberbatch as Holmes and simply gave up. A pity, I did like the Ritchie movie-verse of Holmes.

In the first movie, Downey Jr's Holmes felt like a believable take on the character, if you give room to some exaggeration on some of Holmes's traits. I accept the need for more action and more highlights on the man's eccentricity. But in this movie, he's barely recognizable as Holmes. Holmes is mad, but not that mad: in the first movie this is shown through him trapping flies in a jar (exaggerated but believable), in the second we have it hit over our heads with -- Watson literally calls him 'manic' while Holmes looks on with 'crazy eyes' in a room filled with tropical plants. Again, I suspect that they were going for Holmes as that bohemian Byronic figure in the first movie, only to see that Benedict Cumberbatch did a better job at it and weren't sure of what to do for the second. The result is a parody of an actor taking on the 'Byronic Holmes' role, all jumpy and nervy and not in the least bit resembling Holmes.

When Holmes isn't recognizable, the movie drops, but other things can still keep it afloat. Jude Law's Watson, in the first movie, is considered by many to be among the best Watsons we've had. Sadly his talents were mostly wasted. The only time I could feel 'that's Watson!' was in the beginning, as he walks through Baker Street for a grand total of a few seconds. Most of the time, Watson could have been any other buddy, but it probably doesn't matter now that Holmes could have been any other stock 'neurotic genius'.

The movie's fans on Rottentomatoes defend the film by saying that critics forget that Arthur Conan Doyle was really writing pulp fiction. In some ways this isn't entirely unwarranted; Roger Ebert claims to have read the books but forgotten that Holmes did cocaine, not opium, so you do wonder whether the critics were thinking of previous screen adaptations instead of the books. (I've always suspected that Holmes taking cocaine was a way of making him appear 'cool', like an arty person smoking marijuana, whereas if Conan Doyle showed him taking opium it would have been like a hero taking hard drugs.)

But there's pulp fiction, and there's ridiculousness. I'm disappointed at the lack of restraint here and the lack of dignity. You can make pulp fiction that is still -- well, respectable, for the lack of a better word. Guy Ritchie is able to do this; I wonder if the silliness in this movie is the studio's pressure for bigger means better, or Ritchie's own loss of creative direction.

In the last movie we had big action scenes, but they still felt comfortably Holmesian as long as you're willing to give Hollywood some leeway and accept that we need big action sequences. The ship action sequence is an example of that: it's a big action scene, involving a giant and a ship falling into the sea, but it still felt like something that could be in the Holmes canon, not in the grandiosity of the action but in the level of excitement it stirred. In this movie Holmes and Watson are running through some frozen woods while men who look strangely like Nazi soldiers fire at them with retro-futuristic bombs resulting in tree-splitting explosions. I almost expected seeing something with a mushroom cloud. It wouldn't be out of place in this Holmesian world.

Also, I'm disappointed that they had to make cheap gags at Sherlock's and Mycroft's expense.

To be honest, as a whole, I don't think it's the worst of Holmes pastiches. Fans of Sherlock Holmes had to endure Stupid Watson and all sorts of bizarre adventures in previous screen adaptations of our favourite duo. But it's far from a good one, and with the second season of BBC's Sherlock coming very, very soon, I'm afraid this movie isn't going to be remembered well.

By the way, the action scenes (particularly Moriarty and Holmes's) were quite well done. Guy Ritchie is an action film director, and if everything else flops in the movie, the action sequences nevertheless are great eye candy.

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I've been doing several things; getting involved in a number of things. Nothing significant.

If you've been following my Tumblr you'll see that I got involved in a heated exchange over racism and anthropology around Christmas. It was a small matter, but working in the back of my mind is the anger I feel that theories of race aren't really tools for liberation but elitist commodities and community norms.

The way a white young woman who'd jumped into the conversation was treated reinforced my sentiments. I didn't feel as though she was being punished for being white (or even showing white privilege) as much as she was punished for not knowing the code words and behavior of a particular community -- mainly the anti-oppression blogosphere.

This is my weakness, though: I didn't condemn the actions of those whom I disagreed with. Maybe because I didn't want to deal with the backlash. Maybe because I knew where they were coming from and I wanted to respect that, the moral code of every individual. Maybe because I needed time to collect my thoughts. When I did collect them, the only thing I felt was regret.

You know, it doesn't matter if you're really prejudiced as fuck. It doesn't matter if you're really a bad person. If you know the code words, the norms of behaviour for a particular community, you can hide your prejudice against others very well. Look at how long, and how far Hugo Schwyzer came.

I've been working in very white-dominated environments. When I'm in a very PC-observant field I don't feel as though I am treated as an equal. I feel as though I am being accommodated. As though people were just inventing social mores to go around accusations of racism.

I know that in their hearts, I am not an equal.

I know that in their hearts, I am only an equal if I get a Monty Python joke.

Haha, Life of Brian.

I can only be heard if I've gotten that joke.

This is liberty: it needs to be purchased.

This is liberty: the purchase of knowledge of Western theorists in well-paid Western jobs, discussing the East, speaking a Western language.

Said, Spivak and Bhabha are commodities like knowledge of Microsoft Excel spreadsheets are.

Maybe I'm just bitter, right? Maybe my aimless nationalist rage, my need to feel a sense of pride in being a citizen of a great country, except that my real country throws darts at me and so I have lived for the country in my mind. Maybe it is because, since youth, I have felt weakness, have learned that weakness is the result of not having, have learned that power is acquisition, and I am getting the same vibe out of this: I have not, I have not acquired.

This is not an essay. It is not criticism of existing practices and theories. I don't have that ability yet. But I will acquire it.

Edit: Why did I get rid of my 'quiet rage' icon?

Edit 2: My mentioning 'Life of Brian' isn't because I don't find it funny; it's just the only thing from Monty Python I know. At least I think it was Monty Python. That and the Spanish Inquisition thing, and that's only because of napoleonofnerds's icon. 

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Well, it seems that after ten years or so of Livejournal being my primary blogging tool (with many failed attempts to move elsewhere) it seems that the time for me to say "I don't use LJ that much" has finally arrived.

I now blog on Tumblr. I'll still be using Livejournal, but instead of life updates I'll be posting my written work -- creative nonfiction, mostly. So my Livejournal will still be actively used and actively updated -- about once a week, I expect -- but you'll be getting more substantial posts.

I will still be reading my Friends List very regularly and commenting as often as I can.

Why the shift to Tumblr?

Tumblr started to increase in popularity when teenagers started using it to post pictures of models, thinspo pics, bad poetry, and random art works. In time these blogs started to look like scrapbooks; they painted a life and a particular worldview through the things a person gathered.

I don't know how it really kicked off, but artsy people really liked this. Quite a number of my 'arty' friends have found a usage for Tumblr.

As far as my personal experience goes, it functions a lot more intuitively and naturally in recording the things I observe and accumulate for 'inspiration' (and whatever you might call it) than Livejournal. I don't have to write a whole entry to review Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, I can just quote Roger Ebert's review and add a few lines of my own. I don't have to write at great length about Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being, I can just post my highlights and annotations. And it can all look aesthetically pleasing, which is very important. If I were to do the same on LJ I'd just look lazy.

It took me several good minutes to type this. On Tumblr, I'd just write a short disjointed note: "Not using LJ as much now. Too much time consumed. Tumblr quicker, scrapbook apoeal; LJ a newspaper column".

So to conclude: my Tumblr account is here.

Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone.