Solitude

I strutted my way along Swanston St as I headed back home. I like the sound of my thongs against the pavement. It has a consistent rhythm to it. Like the sound of the second hand on the clock in the middle of the night. I like the cool breeze against my cheeks. It reminded me of Japan when the snow flakes melted on my face. Only this time, it wasn't as cold. I took an intentional breathe of air and tried to breathe in the smells of the city. It was a concoction of smells - smells of a city that's about to go to sleep. I smell alcohol. And cigarettes. And car fumes. And food. A few bars were still open. I hear people laughing. I hear music pumping.

I stopped by Starbucks and deliberated whether I should get myself a cup of latte. I haven't had my dosage of caffeine today. So, one cup shouldn't be too harmful. A bloke behind the counter served me. A familiar face. He has been here for at least 6 months now. He winked at me before taking my orders. Pulling off his usual charm on girls. I've seen him done it a few times. That's his way of making his customers feel comfortable I suppose. His colleague, a petite Asian girl, was the cashier tonight. Another familiar face. I still remember her first day at Starbucks. The temperature was rocket high that day. Starbucks were full of patrons - taking advantage of the shade and air-conditioning. She was running around like a flustered chicken, mixing up some orders and being reprimanded by her supervisor. She still has the tense look on her face. I wonder why. Starbucks was pretty empty tonight. My order was ready within 2 minutes. I grabbed my coffee and decided to call it a night.

I guess this is what solitude does to you. I It makes you more aware of your surroundings. It makes you observe. It makes you learn.

p/s: I just finished my latte. I wish Starbucks made more decent coffee. The froth looks like foam that floats on the surface of a bubble bath. Except that its slightly brown. Well at least, its not burnt.

The importance of prayer

So the Australian Federal Election has come and gone. Australia is now led by Kevin Rudd, Labor leader. I don't quite agree with some of his policies but the Australian public obviously think differently =) Anyway, I came across Mark Conner's blog (senior pastor of city life, knox) and what he says is quite true and I thought of sharing it with you guys:

Regardless of who you voted for, we need to pray for Mr Rudd, for his party, and for all the candidates who were elected - in both the House of Representative and the Senate.

"I urge you, first of all, to pray for all people. As you make your requests, plead for God's mercy upon them, and give thanks. Pray this way for kings and all others who are in authority, so that we can live in peace and quietness, in godliness and dignity. This is good and pleases God our Savior, for he wants everyone to be saved and to understand the truth. For there is only one God and one Mediator who can reconcile God and people. He is the man Christ Jesus. He gave his life to purchase freedom for everyone. This is the message that God gave to the world at the proper time." [The Apostle Paul - 1 Timothy 2:1-7.
NLT]

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On a different note, Brendon Nelson has been newly elected as opposition leader. He is a doctor by profession which is quite a change from the assemblage of lawyers!


Off to gym!

Democracy for you

Last Saturday, a peaceful rally consisting of 40 000 Malaysians marched the roads of Kuala Lumpur to submit a memorandum to the King demanding clean and fair elections.

Today, I tried entering into malaysia-today.net website, the leading biased-free, non-government controlled newspaper in Malaysia. Guess what? Malaysia-today.net cannot be retrieved! Tell me, is this a coincidence or what? 4 days after the biggest rally in the past decade, the leading alternative newpaper's website is down.

This might interest you



Okay, initially I was a little reluctant to post this up. Disclaimer: This is not a true representation of how Malaysians converse.


Transcript of Malaysia's Information Minister's interview with Al Jazeera News on the Bersih Protest.

Minister: I commend yo-yo-your journalists trying to project... to exaggerate more than what actually happened. That-that-that-that's it. We are not the-the and I-I congratulate your journalists behaving like an actor, that-that's it...

Reporter: As you say that, sir, we're watching scenes of protesters being sprayed by chemical-filled water!

Minister: YA! I am watching! I'm here! You've been trying... trying to do it this - to do this everywhere but in Malaysia people are allowed to, you know? We know our police head our colleague... Police have whatever allowed the procession to go to the Istana Negara, you know? Do police, first police, like, they handle them, they attack them, they... the police don't, don't, don't fire anybody?

Reporter: Our correspondent came back to the office, sir, with chemicals in his eyes!

Minister:You-you-you-you are here with the idea, you are trying to project, what is your mind! You think that we Pakistan, we are Burma, we are Myanmar. Everything you-you are thinking! WE ARE DIFFERENT! We are totally different!

Reporter: Well unfortunately when you refuse to let people protest, it does appear so.

Minister: Ya ya we are not like you! You-you have earlier perception, you come here, you want to project us like undemocratic country. This a democratic country!

Reporter: So why can't people protest then, if it's a democratic country?

Minister: YES, PEOPLE PROTEST! People do-do... of course they protest. We are allowing them protest, and they have demonstrated. But we just trying to disperse them, and then later they-they-they don't wanna disperse, but later our police compromise. They have compromised and allowed them to proceed to Istana Negara! Police, our police have succeeded in handling them gently, right? Why do you report that? You take the opposition, someone from opposition party you ask him to speak. You don't take from the government, right?

Reporter: Why did you not break up these protests...

Minister: Pardon? Pardon? Pardon?

Reporter: Why did you not break up these protests more peacefully?

Minister: I can't hear you! I can't hear you!

Reporter: Why did you not break up these protests more peacefully?

Minister: No we-we are! We... this protest is illegal! We don't want..this... the... NORMALLY...

Reporter: OK, so let me return to my former question. Why is this protest illegal?

Minister: YA! It's a illegal protest because we have the election in Malaysia. It's no-no point on having a protest! We are allowing to every election... every five years never fail! We are not our like, like Myanmar, not like other country. And, and you are helping this. You Al-Jazeera also is helping this, this forces. The, you know, these forces who are not in passion, who don't believe in democracy!

Reporter: Alright, many thanks for joining us.

Minister: I don't, ya, you, Al-Jazeera, this is, is Al-Jazeera attitude. Right?

I didn't understand parts of it. Did you? Was it even English he was speaking in?

Pic galore

Victoria Market
Jus and I went to Victoria market on Saturday for brekkie and to buy food for dinner. Normally Ill order the popular bratsworth sausage but i decided to be a little more adventurous that day. Decided to get a mini pizza from the stall next door.




I ordered the typical hawaiian pizza. Guess I wasnt too adventurous after all. I might try the pumpkin pizza next time.


I detest birds! I placed my food on the table and disappeared for a mere two minutes to look for Jus and the birds ate my untouched pizza!!!! It's disgusting. I couldnt stop glaring at the seagulls for the next 5 minutes - hoping that my glare would guilt-trip them. I was going to eat the two untouched slices but I remember watching a man dying in one of Dr. House's episodes because of some bacteria that ravens carried. See, who says Dr. House is uneducational.


A good coffee makes my day =)


Heck, i decided to eat the two untouched slices. I have medical insurance anyway.



Kidding, Jus bought me a new one.

Southbank

I decided to take a stroll by myself at Southbank yesterday. It was one of the best evenings I had. I love talking to random people and obversing the sights and sounds.


Flinders St Station - One of the main train stations in melbourne. I love the perspective of this picture.



Southbank - the Yarra river


Kids buskers at Southbank. Instead of giving my kids allowance next time, Ill make them busk! haha. Start them young. Teach them the value of money.


I spent a good 20 minutes talking to this painter. Its his first time painting such a huge art piece. I love the vibrancy of the colours. I asked him what the painting meant. He said freedom and also because he simply like Jap carps.



100 metres away, I spotted a huge crowd. There was a mini game going on. Basically, you have to cycle from one white line to the other white line without falling off the bicycle. Sounds too easy huh? Heres the catch - the bicycle's mechanism have been reversed. To turn right, you have to steer left and to turn right, you have to steer left. If you manage to cross that 3 metres without falling off, youll win 100 dollars. Sounds too easy! Many gungho guys took part in the competition, but they couldnt even make the first 10 centimetres. Its harder than it looks. I spent a good 40 minutes laughing at them :P haha.



That was one bad fall.


Watch one of the participants


Watch the expert do it. He make its look too easy.



The onlooking crowd. I love public entertainment. Suddenly all barriers were broken. Frowns were replaced by lines of laughter. Everyone was cheering for the participants. Melbourne seemed even more beautiful that day.

Australia's anti-terrorism laws - Do the laws provide adequate safeguards to individual human rights?

Australia’s tough anti-terrorism laws became a subject of intense controversy when Dr Mohamed Haneef became the first person to be detained without charge under the new laws. On the 2nd of July 2007, Dr Haneef who is an Indian doctor working in the Gold Coast Hospital was arrested based on suspicion of terror-related activities. This resulted in the detention of Haneef for 12 days before being charged. He was later charged for recklessly providing support to a terrorist organisation by giving his UK mobile phone SIM card to a relative who was allegedly involved in failed bombings in the UK. Shortly, after, his charges were dropped.

The purpose of the anti-terrorism laws, is bluntly speaking, to prevent a terrorist attack. Anti-Terrorist laws are intended to facilitate intervention and prevent a potential terrorist from acting by a range of planning, preparatory, funding and association offences. Some have argued that rights to individual liberty, natural justice, due process of law and legal representation may be needed to be modified to strike the balance with national security interest. But where do we draw the line? To what extent must our fundamental human rights and liberties be compromised?

Dr Haneef was held in detention without criminal charge for a period of 12 days. The Anti-Terrorism Act (No. 2) 2005 empowers the police to question terrorist suspects for an extended investigative period of 24 hours. However, the ‘dead time’ provisions of the Crimes Act, which is not subject to a time cap, effectively allows a person to be detained for an indefinite period of time before the questioning begins.

Perhaps the length of Haneef’s detention was justified for various reasons - the need to wait for a New Scotland Yard Interrogator to arrive and also for the need to investigate. However, it is the issue that there is no cap on the detention period that is of concern. According to Dr Ben Saul, director of the Sydney Centre for International and Global Law, detention for Haneef, became unlawfully arbitrary under human-rights law, since it was impossible for him to know how long he would be deprived of liberty. As such, it is essential to have sufficient regard to our fundamental human rights by setting a maximum period of detention.

In the Sydney Morning Herald, Peter Russo, Dr Haneef’s lawyer also expressed his dissatisfaction with the terrorism detention laws. He asserts that it is difficult to envisage that the intention of Parliament when enacting such legislation would have been to allow for the detention of a person for such a long time of 12-days. It follows that, in May 2004, when considering the proposed terrorism laws and the danger of lengthy detention, a representative from the Attorney-General’s Department said: “I have spoken to the Victorians about cases in Victoria concerning reasonable time and what the court has considered to be reasonable time, and the court has considered periods like 16 hours to be reasonable."Given that 12 days is a far stretch from 16 hours, perhaps the current uncapped detention laws should be reviewed.


More importantly, as Christopher Michaelson, who is part of the Strategic and Defence Centre in Australian National University asserted, many of our anti-terrorism laws lack effective judicial and parliamentary review mechanisms to protect our fundamental human rights. He argues that key pieces of anti-terrorism legislation such as the ASIO Amendment Act 2003 (which allows for seven-day detention without charge of non- suspects) do not provide for any meaningful judicial review at all. Other laws such as the Anti- Terrorism Act (No. 2) 2005, allow for judicial review in very limited circumstances. It follows that even where judicial review is possible, Australian courts cannot examine the compatibility of antiterrorism laws with any human rights instrument. This is simply because Australia neither has a constitutional bill of rights nor any special act of parliament protecting the citizen’s basic rights and freedoms. Also, although Australia has been a party to the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights since 1980, it has failed so far to give domestic effect to its international obligations.

When the anti-terrorism amendments were legislated, Prime Minister John Howard said that the legislation was very much influenced by the UK counter terrorism legislation.

Dr Angela Ward, an Australian-born British barrister has told ABC’s Lateline program that the main difference lies in the fact that the UK counter terrorism legislation is subject to review against our Human Rights Act, which implements most of the United Kingdom's international obligations and imports a proportionality test. A judge would be obliged under the Human Rights Act to interpret a certain provision in conformity with the act and if the judge was not able to do so, the judge would have the power to issue a declaration of incompatibility and ask the Parliament to reconsider. As Australian judges do not have the power to directly review legislation against Australia’s international human rights obligations, they will be more disempowered in comparison.

This leaves us with the other option – parliamentary review. According to Michaelson, in the absence of any domestic human rights instrument and in light of limited judicial review, effective parliamentary review of the anti-terrorism laws is all the more vital.

The current Anti- Terrorism Act (No. 2) 2005 does not provide sufficient oversight mechanisms as it does not empower any independent body to monitor the operation of the antiterrorism laws. Therefore, the Government should consider the establishment of an independent body to review the operation, effectiveness and implications of the laws.

These laws, after all, tread uncharted legal paths in Australia and significantly infringe our individual rights and liberties. Perhaps with an independent body, uncapped detention laws would not have been enacted and Haneef would have been granted his fundamental right to a definite detention period.

By: Joanne Khoo (written by me but was unpublished for certain reasons)

Interview with Dato Seri Syed Hamid Albar, Foreign Minister of Malaysia

O-K-A-Y. Did he actually answer the questions? For you to decide. I've restricted myself from any political comments.







Small talk

My brother and I struck a conversation yesterday while watching Numbers.

Me: What was your ambition when you were young?

Bro: I thought you knew. A housewife.

Me: Oh yeah. That was after you wanted to be a maid.

You are first Roman before anything else

Many of the laws in Malaysia are very much underpinned by the idea of race. That is no secret. That’s the way how things have always been. It’s something that most of us have come to accept. Back in school, when we had to fill up administrative forms, we had to fill up categories of race and religion. We tick the boxes without questioning why we did so – it’s as natural as ticking the box indicating your gender. Coming to Australia, I realise that Australia along with most countries do not do that. In fact, it is discriminatory to categorise citizens based on race and religion.

The embedded concept of race is very much part of our colonisation history. When the British ruled Malaya (the old name of Malaysia), they imported the Chinese people to work in the tin mines and the Indians to work in the rubber plantations. The Malays had to work in the paddy fields to feed the nation. Tin mining was big business back then. Of course, the Malays wanted in but licences were not given out to Malays as they were needed to stick to working in the paddy fields. So it was from then that Malaya was categorised by race.


When the British left Malaya and Malaya gained independence, Malays were left at the bottom of the poverty line. Paddy sector did not provide much money. As we all know, special rights were then given to the Malays to minimise the economic disparity between the races.

Imagine if the nation was not segregated by race from the beginning. Imagine the concept of race never embedded our laws. What a different nation Malaysia would be today.

Side-note: In one of my law classes in first year of uni, we had a discussion on why we were categorised by our gender. Some argued that there are no two genders but a spectrum of genders such as fully male, dominant male/recessive female, half male/half female, recessive male/dominant female, fully female. To me, that was absolutely absurd: You are male because you have a penis and female because you have a vagina. Full stop. Your anatomy tells you what gender you are. Maybe I’m a little naïve but I think there are more important issues to devote your energy to. Hm, I guess if I were a transvestite that would be an important issue to me.


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Okay here are some random pictures because a certain someone (hint hint: cheryl =P) might soon complain that my blog is getting boring.

This is what I want do after my assignment



A self-portrait after my make-up day out. I think I should go for a make-up course. Professionally done make-up looks so much better.



Much better without flash



My dear Ann graduated on Sat. A combination of beauty and brains. Whoever said you gotta be ugly to be smart.



Ann with her gorgeous sisters plus cousin.



Here is what i miss doing - by that I mean driving rather than posing.



Jus, Tim, Cheryl and I went to watch a play based on the book 'The importance of being earnest'. It was produced by our friend, Eugene. It was so professionally done. The amazing part is that everyone involved are volunteers and some are not even from an acting background. Two thumbs up for that.



I heart my point and shoot camera. It takes good shots.



I miss Cheryl. She is now back in Malaysia from her 3 month stay in Hong Kong. I told Cheryl that I feel closer to her now although technically, it really doesnt make a difference whether she is in HK or Malaysia. Its the same time zone.




We always forget to take pictures when we go out. We only remember when we are in the car, driving to a destination. Hence the multiple car shots.



Here's why I miss her. Who else would take such silly shots with me.

Face the book and not the screen

Is facebook overrated?

At any one time in a law class, there is at least one person using facebook. Is this facebook that addictive? Perhaps I'm not really into it yet as I have just learnt how to update my status and added an aquarium today. Hooray for me. It took me one week to figure out how to put up a profile picture (cheryl had to teach me) I havent figured out how to send gifts etc. Facebook confuses me. haha.

Anyway, im kinda glad that im not that IT savvy or else Ill be more addicted to the net than i already am.

Below is an article from The Age

Facebook labelled a $5b waste of time
Andrew West
August 20, 2007 - 9:58AM

Employees are more likely to be whiling away the hours on the social networking site Facebook, a report says.

Richard Cullen of SurfControl, an internet filtering company, estimates the site may be costing Australian businesses $5 billion a year. "Our analysis shows that Facebook is the new, and costly, time-waster," he said.

The report calculates that if an employee spends an hour each day on Facebook, it costs the company more than $6200 a year. There are about 800,000 workplaces in Australia.

"There are Facebook groups dedicated to slacking off at work," Dr Cullen said.

"Some of them are specific to employees of a single company."

Facebook - the name is lifted from the term used in American universities for student directories that list names and photographs - has exploded as an online recreation in the past six months. Australians had taken up the trend with a frenzy, said Dr Cullen, and the country now ranked fifth in the world, behind the US, Canada, Britain and Norway.

On July 29, 195,000 people had registered for Facebook's Australian network. Ten days later the figure had jumped to 224,000.

One anonymous enthusiast, quoted in the SurfControl study, said: "Of course everyone checks Facebook at work, duh! I don't have neither internet nor a TV at home because I like doing more useful things with my time when I'm off work."

Another user was even more candid. "I work full time as a tax accountant," she said. "For the past two weeks I'd say I have averaged about 15 minutes of work per day."

The site has even replaced internal messaging systems and emails, themselves legendary guzzlers of work time, for communicating within offices.

Some employers were restricting employees' internet use or blocking the sites, Dr Cullen said. But others are establishing protocols for using social websites.

One fear is that Facebook users can make company systems vulnerable to hackers.

"It's only a matter of time before a security loophole is discovered and exploited." Dr Cullen said.

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Btw, last weekend was a-w-e-s-o-m-e. Snow trip update soon.