Screenshots

It's extremely sad to see the current state of Chinese press in this country, considering it is one of the key pillars for propagation of the use of the chinese language and all things vernacular. One's civilisational roots shouldn't atrophy because of weak state policies which are myopic because the policy-makers are immature and insecure, limited in their worldview, zealous of protecting their own stymied culture.

Media in this country should open up. When so many educational institutions in the west are offering courses in chinese because they have seen that most of Asia in this century will become more sino-centric, the govt here continues to use the need for a malaysian national identity to subjugate the inherent and natural needs of a growing segment of our society to connect to civilisational excellence that has stood the test of five thousand years. There is another loss of increasing gravity; enter any bookshop in China and each is four-storey high and packed with readers even during working hours and you will find thousands of books of the west that have been translated into chinese. They are leapfrogging ahead in the acquisition of knowledge while over here we have DBP in a new building doing what on international bestsellers and technical texts? In its self-defeating and parochial machinations, the govt is killing the future of relevance of Malaysia just so that it can continue to keep its decision-makers wellfed, sacrificing the future of our youths, and thus the future of this nation.

The chinese press must be given new life so that it can expand its horizons and become a refreshed intellectual force for the future of Malaysia. Anything that hemps its growth down must be removed. The chinese-reading communities, whether they be chinese, malays, indians, etc must be encouraged to read in chinese and thus partake of what the chinese-speaking world has written localized for national consumption. If we don't have that, we would be losing a global movement of great import and future relevance.

And there's so much repository of wisdom and knowledge one can learn that's couched in the chinese language. All there, and all the more critical given how little has been done in the past fifty years to translate the best of the world into the malay language, now only remembered for islamic-centric discourses.

I can write some more (thanks, life feel and beefstew) but it suffices to say that it is so difficult to defend what is good whenever it so happens to be chinese..in this, our so-called, own, country.

Now for a side blast; the closing date for the public universities online submission is today. If there is a UM undergraduate law course, why is it missing in the selection list? Secondly, many of the biological science courses have been broken up into all sorts of biotech stuff; in many instances save for one uni, there's no clear writeup on what these courses involve, what their graduates will be doing, what is the language of instruction and where the course will be conducted. What kind of an application system is that? You grief when you read in one (USM) that one degree course is to prepare graduates to be lab assistants. Perhaps they should not only update their crappy web info but also review the entire political rigmarole of trying to join the bandwagon of bio-tech without knowing one bullshit about it. Lastly, where's the matriculation part in the form?

A small finale on 'excellence' in Malaysia. Mustapa, you're screwed.

Utusan melayu newspaper, which was printed in jawi and read by my mother and grandmother, folded up years ago. No malay tears flowed as malays have enbraced Rumi - roman alphabet.