Screenshots

Dear YB,

Do you miss the old good days of being a free person roaming around with your camera without being greeted (passionate disturbance) by the public?

JEFF OOI says: Yes indeed. I have screwed up my privacy as a regular citizen. Somehow I have to re-claim my private citizen's life but just do not know how.

916 won't just be about celebrating Malaysia Day in recognition of Sabah and Sarawak as well. It will also be about closure.

Right now, there is a chasm. You can see and sense things have changed in the way the rakyat are seeing this country. Sure, there were still some photo-opps where things look staged. But that sense of camaraderie and esprit de'corp is missing. No doubt the higher costs of just trying to live have weighed down on the shoulders of the majority, but something else has appeared. Perhaps it has to do with the advent of a two-party system in the political landscape but then again the word 'system' may be misleading unless the new player avoids the excesses and hauteur of the old one. Maybe that's what's preying on the minds of most. Would Pakatan end up being Barisan if it wins? But that itself begs the next question. If status quo is maintained, would Malaysia be able to recover her health and goodwill to protect and champion the future of the next generations of Malaysians?

To answer the first question, one must therefore answer the second. To answer the second question, one must understand what Barisan has really all been about.

Barisan has been nothing but Umno. And Umno has been nothing but 50.3 percent of the population, less the malay supporters of PKR, PAS, the independents and the indigenous bumiputra natives. Anyway you cut it, that's not a majority by definition. When you consider how Umno operates to pre-declare no competition for its decision-making posts, it then becomes all about elitism in the entire population of Malaysia, including Sabah and Sarawak. Power gets concentrated in a few and then it gets corrupted across. That started with Razak, rose to a peak with Mahathir and now about to transit by the backdoor from Badawi to a Najib under whose defense portfolio billions have already been lost from various defense contracts, so far attributed to miscarriage of services by underparred contractors.

And now we have Ahmad Ismail. The rakyat ask: who is Badawi to try and excuse what the guy had said and who is Najib to then try and apologise on his behalf after the excuse was found to be lamentably inexcusable in itself, since if the rakyat were to accept that excuse, it would have meant the rakyat could also be made to be party to the biggest bash of all - the celebration of Double Standards? One for Umno elites, and some for Umno general members, and every other crumb you can scrape for the rest of the population, minus, of course, those recalcitrant pendatang's.

Said in the heat of the by-election campaigning? A disingenuous excuse, anyone with active glial cells will retort. If to try and win voters someone has to pull out from his deepest psychological recesses such a damning statement after fifty years of independence and coexistence, after spending RM100 million for a merdeka bash, after years of trying to build this nation together, after years of cheering champions and working the butts off, after years of one recrimination after another financial scandal of colossal proportions, and you can still believe he didn't mean it, then what is it? A psychosomatic trigger ingrained in the DNA of the race?

Enough is enough. They have all run out of excuses. They are bleeding this country dry, and fighting dirty to continue to be in the position to bleed it further. And they are using the malays to champion their cause to divide the rakyat to stay in power to continue the ripoff.

Will an Anwar-led government be a better option? Who knows? But right now, most have already concluded that the bird in hand has all along been the vulture on the bush.

After all, where does one get longhouses of the real indigenous natives burning to the ground for want of a fire-extinguisher while those self-aggrandising anti-pendatang's write big cheques to send man to space in this 21st century? It would only be in this country called Malaysia where the natives can maturely accept the malays but some malays have shown they cannot accept chinese and indians except to be harangued as pendatangs, even when all were born and cared for on adjacent cribs in the same run-down hospital.

If all babies look the same when born in the same place and at the same time, what gives the division when they grow to become men? Where did it come from, this strange and God-forbidding thing? Look at those faces in the photos. Anyone looks calculative, conspiratorial, power-crazy?

Even before 916 comes, let there be closure of this chasm. Love one another as if one wants one another to love one. After all, if we are going to live for nothing, must as well love for something.

;P

Dear YB Jeff,

Congratulations to you for having the opportunity to be one of the "Merry Penangites" again - yes that freedom to be able to live that cherished "Photographer's lifestyle" once more.

Coming back to MERDEKA... from 831 to 916....

We have had too much 'Rhetorics" and as they say, "Talk is cheap", so we need people who have "Walked their Talk" to provide "Pragmatic & Workable Fast-Track" solutions - the short term & long term solutions.

"Let us begin. ... And so, my fellow "Anak Bangsa Malaysia" ask not what Malaysia can do for you -- instead, ask what you can do for this great nation Malaysia for All Anak Bangsa Malaysia.".

I would like to quote the famous John F Kennedy's speech to every "Anak Bangsa Malaysia".

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/a/2004/10/24/RVGKL99JM61.DTL

"Every literate American recalls the essence of the words John Kennedy spoke on the steps of the U.S. Capitol that cold morning of Jan. 20, 1961.

Acknowledging that man now held "in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life," Kennedy insisted that the message must "go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans -- born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace. ... Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty."

After raising the stick of Cold War resolve, JFK took care to also dangle a carrot of cooperation.

"[L]et us begin anew -- remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof. Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate."

Kennedy went on to note that the work at hand would not be finished in the first 100 days of his administration, nor the first 1,000 days, nor "perhaps in our lifetime on this planet." Nevertheless, he announced,

"Let us begin. ... And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you -- ask what you can do for your country."unquote.

My best wishes to you on this noble mission Jeff, may God bless & guide you with the answers we all seek

Colorful shots of Penang. Wish I could join you in your street shooting romp, but alas it is not to be.

Show more!

JEFF OOI says: Yes indeed. I have screwed up my privacy as a regular citizen. Somehow I have to re-claim my private citizen's life but just do not know how.

Dear Jeff,
No problem... when ever you have time, you may arrange a photo outing... all photog will be more than happy to accompany YB to have a shooting session!

hmmm....I love your 70-200mm lens!