Two years ago, 11-year-old Zhang Yaoyin was beaten with a metal bar and thrown from her fourth-floor classroom by her history teacher. On Monday a Chinese chat forum dug up and posted a graphic news report about the incident, reigniting the debate about how such a tragedy came to pass.

The girl, from Yongzhou City, Hunan province, was brutally killed as her secondary school classmates looked on. Her 28-year-old assailant, Li Hengyi, was convicted of murder, but evaded a jail sentence because he was found to be schizophrenic. Although his parents were made to pay a 20,000 yuan medical bill (around €2,100) for the research into their son's mental condition, there was no criminal charges. Eleven-year-old Zhang Yaoyin's mother disputed the sentence, demanding to know how a "mental patient" got a job looking after children. Which is what webusers are asking after a news report originally posted on Youku.com was picked by dzh.mop.com on Monday. The clip contains footage of bloodstains in the classroom where the girl was attacked, and images of her clothes, covered in flies, lying outside the school. It has provoked an emotional response online, where webusers have taken on the investigation themselves, asking whether Chinese schoolteachers are properly vetted for psychopathic tendencies. A secondary school teacher in the country says no.

Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Kvxk9Lpwgg&feature=related

These few weeks Malaysian people are talking about making English subject to be mandatory pass in SPM. 99% of the people that I know do agree it should be compulsory pass, because English is important according to them.

I guess I am the minor 1% people who object this decision, most people object this because they are not comfortable with English, which is not my reason here. Previously I strongly agree to make Science and Math subject to use English language, but on the other hand, I do not agree turning it into a mandatory pass subject in SPM.

SPM initial purpose was to test the general ability of the student, see what they are strong at and what the are weak at. Using this result, it work as a guideline telling the student which direction they should go, if you are good in art subject, maybe you should take art course in the university; if you are good in accounting subject, maybe you should take finance related course in the university.

SPM suppose to act like a general examination, in a general examination, it is extremely ridiculous to set which subject must be pass. Because everyone's ability is different and unique in this world, does someone weak in a language subject mean he/she does not deserve to further study in university? How about someone who is very good in art, but very weak in language subject, should the art course in the university reject this student because he/she does not pass the mandatory subject?

Maybe you will say: "Who will possibly fail English? It is so easy!"

Perhaps you have forgotten many scientists and famous people in this world (such as: Albert Einstein, Leonardo Da Vinci, Napoleon Bonaparte, Tom Cruise ... ) are borned with Learning Disorder, especially dyslexia (reading disorder). These people mostly having the same or even better intelligent with normal people, but they will have difficulties to to read and write, some even cannot differentiate the the alphabet such as 'p' and 'q', 'b' and 'd'. The bad things is ... learning disorder is not something rare among human race.

Few days ago I have read magazine that a Master student with dyslexia, he can only write about 25 words each day to finish his thesis. At the end he did it though and pass. But come back to SPM, do you think someone who is talented and suffer from dyslexia able to finish an English essay for SPM in given time?

The main purpose of Education is to find out the strength and weakness of the student and guide his path based on his/her interest. Making any subject to be MANDATORY in a general examination is no different than killing the child's real potential.

Many parents will feel that English is important around the world so their children must learn English. By forcing education to be a job hunting tool, do you think children will love what they are doing? How about next few years Chinese language become popular? These parents going to drop all English subject and change again? And nobody asking what their children like or interest in? These actually explain why so many youngsters start to feel schooling is useless, the more you study, the more you just become a mindless robot, and this is what happen to our university graduates.

My point is: stop implant our never-become-true dream into our children, you die to be a doctor doesn't mean your children are!

more reading:
a. Many object to making English a ‘must pass’ SPM subject
b. Make English a compulsory pass subject for SPM, STPM and matriculation to end and reverse the unchecked decline of English standard in the country in the past three decades
c. Time not right for SPM English pass

On June 20 2009, at city of Tehran, around 6.30pm, Neda with her music teacher (Hamid Panahi) and other 2 friends were on the way to participate the protest of the outcome of the 2009 Iranian presidential election.

Unfortunately, she got shot in the chest by plain-clothes Basij paramilitaries while she stand outside of the car watching the mass protests. She die on the spot.

Her death was captured on video, later uploaded to Youtube and Facebook. Normally Youtube will immediately delete video with excessive violance such as showing how a person die. But due to this special case, Youtube decide to keep this video. Soon this incident become 'famous' among Iranian and international society. Some Iranian even called her as "Voice of Iran".

more reading:
a. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Neda_Agha-Soltan
b. http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/world/2009/06/25/facebook-turns-irans-neda-into-a-martyr.html

Terengganu stadium collapsed on 2 June 2009. This building which spend about RM300 million survive only for a year should listed in wonders of the world. How often you saw a building that spend so much and collapse in such a short period? That's really something to be proud of as Malaysian.

Photo source: http://jacesxinz.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!F501F5BE0E74FBC4!2839.entry

A friend of mine told me I must write this down, a story that she had heard from a taxi driver the day she arrive at KLIA airport. She took a taxi and during the way she chat with the taxi driver about his work. The taxi driver mention that each day, he had to pay around rm250 (which is around rm6000-7000 a month) to cover the cost of taxi license rental fee and petrol. After my friend calculation, she found out that he probably need to work more than 10 hours non-stop to break even, remember it is not making profit, just break even.

To make matters worse, for those who are not belong to airport taxi team, he can't pick up any passenger from the airport, he can only set them off from the city to airport. Which mean he would have to go back city in an empty car.

After a long period of suffering and enduring, you are not suprise that the taxi here had build up some law-breaching bad habbits. Take an example, in most taxi hot-spot places(such as shopping mall), you will notice that most taxi will decline to use taxi meter and charged consumer over-price. This is because the taxi meter does not reflect the "taxi license rental fee" which indirectly paid by the consumer at the end.

As you can see, there are mainly two causes of this problem:

First, because the government's "cronies" able to get all the taxi license from JPJ. Those taxi drivers who want to work will have to rent it from the "cronies" that own it. Taxi driver never own a license for their work, in another word, the need not to responsible for their professional. If you understand this, there's no wondering why taxi driver over-charge their fee, and have a bad attitude towards their customers.

Second, some taxi companies and drivers are over protect their business territory. Example KLIA is about an hour from the city. If normal taxi are only allow to drive passenger there and not allow to pick up passenger at airport, they are pretty much wasting their petrol actually, plus the customers have to pay more to go KLIA. All these happen because of selfishness that certain people want to keep their profit high. In some area, taxi that from outside area is forbit to pick up passengers, this over protected act, will only cause our society to loss at the end.

The first ever step to solve the plight of taxi service in Malaysia, is to have fair distribution of taxi license to the public, eliminate the territory protection of taxi driver, and force all taxi drivers must responsible for their license and their professional code of conduct.

3 May 2009 - Jill St. Onge (27, female, USA Seattle) had die at Phi Phi hospital around 8am on Sunday. Her fiancee Ryan Kells send her to hospital after found out she is terribly sick in a room where they stay at Laleena Guesthouse on Phi Phi Island. Ryan mentioned most of the time she was in the room while he went out hanging around, and he can smell there is some sort of stove gas type of smell in the room, they both difficult to breath, vomiting, stomach ache, feeling weak and low blood pressure in that 2 days but Jill was more serious. So he believe her dead might relate to gas poisoning from the air-cond. Robert St. Onge (Julie's brother) said his sister's lung tissue was completely gone, and there's no explanation from the Thailand Government.


4 May 2009 - Julie Michelle Bergheim (22, female, Norway) die around 1.30am, she is staying in the same Laleena Guesthouse with Jill St. Onge. Julie and her 19 years old female travel companion both sick and having the same symptom as Jill, both send to hospital, unfortunately Julie had deceased and her friend is recovering. Autopsy report said found cyanide in her stomach.



A Bangkok specialist epidemiologist is already on Phil Phi, seeking to find the reason behind the mysterious fatalities.

Thailand's top forensic scientist, Dr Pornthip Rojanasunand, is expected to be involved in autopsies to determine what killed the women.

A spokeswoman at Vachira Hospital on Phuket confirmed the bodies of two women had been received from Phi Phi and sent on to Bangkok for forensic tests.

Thailand currently focus on investigating the possibility of food poisoning, however William Hurley (USA Washington, poison expert) says usually death from food poisoning are cause by dehydrate, both victims doesn't have this symptom. He conclude the 2 victims seems pretty much die of gas poisoning. This is match with what Jill's brother's had conclude as well.

Early of April 2009 - A 48 years old male Norwegian die of serious diarrhea, the place he live just 1.5km from Laleena Guesthouse.

May 7 2009 - A 30 years old female Swiss found dead on Krabi beach, her neck was entangle with her own handbag's sling.

May 12 2009 -Ernst Hermannweid (57, male, German), having the same syntoms with the 2 victims (Jill and Julie), and die after severe vomitting. He had been staying at the Sky Inn Hotel in Patong. Mr Hermanweid was employed as a project manager by the M+W Zander consulting company, working in Malaysia and Singapore.

more info:
a. Blog about death of Jill St. Onge by her family.
b. http://www.bittenandbound.com/2009/05/09/jill-st-onge-us-tourist-dies-mysteriously-in-thailand-photos-video/
c. German, 57, dies in Phuket after severe vomiting
d. Phi Phi 'Poisoning' Kills Two Tourists
e. http://hk.news.yahoo.com/article/090530/4/cg54.html
f. http://www.elevior.com/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=1313

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says that US created Taliban and abandoned Pakistan. Hillary Clinton acknowledged that the United States too had a share in creating the problem that plagues Pakistan today. Problems we face now to some extent we have to take responsibility for, having contributed to it. We also have a history of kind of moving in and out of Pakistan, she said.

Lets remember here the people we are fighting today we funded them twenty years ago and we did it because we were locked in a struggle with the Soviet Union.

They invaded Afghanistan and we did not want to see them control Central Asia and we went to work and it was President Reagan in partnership with Congress led by Democrats who said you know what it sounds like a pretty good idea lets deal with the ISI and the Pakistan military and lets go recruit these mujahideen.

And great, let them come from Saudi Arabia and other countries, importing their Wahabi brand of Islam so that we can go beat the Soviet Union.

And guess what they (Soviets) retreated they lost billions of dollars and it led to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

So there is a very strong argument which is it wasnt a bad investment in terms of Soviet Union but lets be careful with what we sow because we will harvest.

About the Pulau Tengah stray dogs left to dead incident, you can click here to support and donate: http://www.mycen.com.my/rescue/index.html