What a ROYAL week!

Splash across the newspapers websites across the globe are the pictures of the newly wed Brits popular Prince.. Well, I don't know what to comment more since everybody has already their put their two cents here and there.. I guess I'm taking the 'indifference' mood this type.

On the serious note, I had just finish writing and submitting papers for peer-reviews. Man, what an intense week it had been! Finally today I've some time to sip my coffee, and read newspaper properly which leads me to write this entry (or otherwise I would make an excuse for myself to keep procrastinating it..).

I've come across this section in TheStar that was reviewing something about brain drain and Malaysia. Phew..I just cannot believe that I said those words in a breath. As if both of them are parallel to each other since the beginning of time.

Anyway, the report was based on the published findings of the World Bank (http://www.worldbank.org/my) that says every 1 out of 10 Malaysian brains migrate out of the country. With a population of about 28 million, that makes it 2.8 million talented Malaysians are abroad!

Well, I don't wish to engage in the issue of brain drain affecting the country here. I'm sure that there are many reasons why one leaves, returns, or ways on how the authorities are doing to tackle this diaspora.

I think it's unfortunate that the talents are leaving the country in search for greener pastures, but it's unavoidable (unless the country is going to strict regime like North Korea). I think while we can still try our means to attract those who have left, we should focus our energy even more on educating, properly train and equip those who stayed behind.

An example of such a measure is actually already in place some years back, when the government announced that mastery of Science and Maths in English is the way forward. I lauded it back then and still is now, though I cursed them for not introducing the plan years earlier when I was in high schools. One may have to despair a lot of the time with the switch, but gradually it's always a win-win situations.

I have been educated in a system with Malay as the medium of instructions, learnt everything about Science and Maths in Malay. So when it was time to enter university and sit for SAT exams, I found it cripples me to re-learn everything and express it in terms that the world understand, English. Now, after years of learning everything in English, I find it impossible to help with homeworks for my nieces and nephews. The Physics jargons that I know by heart in English now seems so alien in Malay. I bet my nieces have thought low of me now that I couldn't help but ask them back to explain what the questions want to know.

So, bring back the English as the medium of instructions for Science and Maths. I know from heart that deep in the rural areas in Borneo (or anywhere for that matter), someone will one day come out and say it out loud that if it's not for English-taught Science background she/he had, she/he would not be where it's now.

Comments: Too tired to process my hike to one of the best Day's hike in the world, Tongariro Alpine Crossing, a couple of days back. Like I said, it WAS a week full of royals and majestic landscapes!

Stop sensationalize frivolous issues from dumbing us down!

Maybe it's just me, being away for so many years from home, seeing and reading everything from a distance, through a 3rd person eyes.

Every day, I usually make an effort to read newspapers portals (pro-and anti-governments) over the net--just to keep abreast of issues at home, in particular education-related matters. Such raised news that made it to the front pages usually have high fidelity with my soul. Perhaps, it's because I'm very much a campaigner of a better education for deserving children of Malaysia.

Sadly, in recent years it has become very much politicized, to its core that it just completely turned me off. I feel the same way as reading rubbish comments on how the work of literary Interlok being riddled with 'racism' and what nots to reading the latest new-found sex tapes allegedly involving some political figures. These kind of things (sex tapes etc) are not suppose to make it to the front page for our children to read at school. If you're to ask me why not, I'll tell you straight in the face that you might as well allow public screening of any porn videos in cinemas, as much as you want to publicize (or character assasinate) a person (or a group of people) bedroom antics in national newspapers (and the Parliament!).

It all comes down to what our mentals are curious of. And at the moment, it seems like our news room are feeding us with junkies that will not contribute to empowering national development, improving economic standing, reducing poverty and crime, to list but a few. Rather than engaging in discussions that can lead towards betterment of English proficiencies and competence of generations of talented Malaysians globally or how to tackle the rising cost of living of average Malaysians, for example, people in the higher echelon of the House prefer spending time watching smut videos and that too at the expense of the citizen time and money.

We cannot allow such trivialities making their way to the top of the country's priorities and dumbing us down along the way.

Comments: In the recent natural-disasters affecting the world, when tens of thousand people died, cut out of basic necessities, unaccounted for, I find it befuddling that inconsequential matters like smut videos printed in bold, huge fonts on the country's newspapers frontpage.