WHAT THE HELL.

Source: The Star, 22 May 2008

SCHOOL UNIFORM SEXY, SAYS GROUP

KUALA LUMPUR: A Malaysian group condemned the uniform worn by girls at government schools, saying it encouraged rape and pre-marital sex.

“The white blouse is too transparent for girls and it becomes a source of attraction,” National Islamic Students Association of Malaysia vice-president Munirah Bahari said in a statement.

“It becomes a distraction to men, who are drawn to it, whether or not they like looking at it,” she said, calling for a review of uniform policy so that it did not violate Islamic ideals.

In multicultural Malaysia, home to majority-Muslim Malays as well as ethnic Chinese and Indians, female students at government schools have a choice of wearing a white blouse with a knee-length skirt or pinafore.

They may also wear a “baju kurung” and a headscarf is optional for Malay students.

Munirah said that “covering up” according to Islamic precepts was important to fend off social ills, including “rape, sexual harassment and even premarital sex.”

“This leads to babies born out of wedlock and, to an extent, even prostitution,” she said.

“Decent clothes which are not revealing can prevent and protect women from any untoward situations,” she said, suggesting that girls wear a blouse of a different colour or with an undergarment.

However, the girls themselves also came in for criticism, with the association saying that some used the white blouse to lure men.

“This is the source of the problem, where we can see that schoolgirls themselves are capable of using this to attract men to them,” Munirah said.

“This could see them getting molested, having premarital sex and all sorts of things.” – AFP

Thank you, Munirah Bahari, for your enlightening logic. We now know the cause behind all those cases of rape, pre-marital sex, sexual harassment, babies born out of wedlock, prostitution, molestation and the unmentionable "all sorts of things".

The uniforms of schoolgirls.

Sure, Nik Aziz spouts the "blame women for rape" story every now and then, but sane people don't listen to him anyway. It BLOWS MY MIND that a young, educated female is capable of exhorting garbage which would only set her, her female counterparts and her country back.

My one hope for the country was that one day in the near future, people like Nik Aziz would all be dead, and the younger generation would realise how destructive this kind of fundamentalism is, realise it can never instil harmony in a multicultural society and instead, embrace progressive thinking, like some Malay leaders and thinkers have encouraged their own to do. Dr. Mahathir Mohammad, Karim Raslan, Dina Zaman - they've done a world of good by braving the backlash from their own, and being vocal about the importance of progressive thinking - whether in terms of religion or the 'rights' issue (but that's a whole other kettle of fish). In a country where race is such a sensitive issue, we depend on people like them to help the country open its mind, knowing how difficult it is for non-Malays to comment on such issues without stirring up racial tensions.

Then people like Bahari come along. What a tragedy.

PwC in pictures

Photos here are, as usual, not mine. They belong to Diong, Adeline and Alison.

Today was my last day at work. Before I show you some photos, I find it necessary to mention the elevators at 1 Sentral.

Every morning, you tag yourself in, punch in the floor you want to go to, and this slab of stone will tell you which lift to go to. That way, everyone headed to the same floor gets grouped together, minimising the number of stops before reaching your floor. There are only 3 buttons in each lift - open, close and emergency. It's amazing! It almost makes coming in to work fun.

So fun, in fact, that I extended my internship by 2 weeks. Here's a snapshot of the Advisory floor:

The glass door rooms lining the wall are where the executive directors and partners sit.

The better half of interns

The lesser half

Razwan getting some love

All in all, I had a great 2.5 months at PwC. Admittedly, I was lucky enough to have had the opportunity to work on a variety of assignments which covered the spectrum of work a typical graduate analyst/associate would encounter - research, report-writing, financial modelling, analysis and presentation. Better still, I was offered work that spanned different industries and environments, which kept it fresh and stimulating, and did wonders for my general knowledge.

I know the unfortunate few who spent their internship doing solely data entry, filing or research will beg to differ, so I'm glad and thankful it worked out for me the way it did.

Anyway, that's all from me for now. Happy Valentine's!

Somehow, I'm not impressed.

The University of Melbourne
No. 22 in the World, No. 10 in Social Sciences
World University Rankings 2006 published by the Times Higher Educational Supplement, UK, October, 2006

Seen as a signature on one of the outgoing uni emails. Clearly, putting up bright blue signs saying the same thing along the Swanston St side of campus is not enough. My knee-jerk reaction upon seeing this was - The University of Melbourne, No. 1 Championer of Mediocrity. But we all knew that already. Is 'championer' even a word?

There's been a fair flurry of activity these few months, mainly involving me working, organising things and looking forward to returning to the home away from home in Melbourne, for more reasons than one.

Work finishes in two days; that is very good news. Admittedly, this 1 month plus stint has offered me excellent and highly relevant exposure to the working world and to the equities market, but I think that's enough for one holiday. For those interested, the Malaysian stock market is bullish at the moment following strong buying interest from foreign institutional investors. Of course, when the market reopens later at 2.30pm, your guess is no better than mine which way it will go.

It really presents a futility of sorts to the work I do, and the work I see people doing here at the research dept. Every morning, the technical analyst will prepare technical reports of the KLCI and every morning, I come in and read the day's predictions of the market's movements, only to have it rendered irrelevant within 5 minutes (okay, maybe half an hour) of the start of trade. Unlike predicting the weather, where there's a science to it, trying to predict the stock market's movements, especially using theory and models, requires you to eat your words a lot of the time. Either that, or make the sort of analysis at a level of vagueness to rival the horoscopes.

So let's take a holistic, macro view of things. Yet, one cannot be sure how and how much each of the variables affect the market, at the same time, unpredictable irrational behaviour must not be underestimated. One day, I read news reporting that anticipation of an interest rate hike by the Bank of Japan helped pushed bank stocks and thusly, the Nikkei up to close in the green. Next day, the Nikkei closes lower, allegedly after certain reports questioned the likelihood of an interest rate rise. While it is likely that interest rates weren't the only variables these two days, it just seems that the writers are just arbitrarily picking any explanation that can justify how the Nikkei moved, and whether or not these explanations are really significant, it's hard to know.

Even with work like company reports, stock recommendations and earnings forecasts, analysts are forever revising their estimates everytime a material event occurs, which to some extent, defeats the purpose of their work. It's never much help until what they forecast happens, and when it does happen, it's too late. It's a bit of a catch-22. Yet, we go through the motions, day after day.

In my view, any real use this research department can offer are fundamental analyses of companies - prepare reports that probe into the foundations, dig behind the creative accounting and sum up the management of a firm for the purpose of long-term investment. Short-term participation in the stock market is just short of a gamble, and has far less use for such information than a genuine mid-to-long term investment plan.

I suppose I'm taking a rather harsh and cynical view of this research and analysis work. One thing to consider as well, is that the firm I'm at is a small one, whose clients are mainly retail investors who don't really care nor understand the figures in the reports. They're mainly interested in the bold BUY/SELL/HOLD recommendation at the top of the page. Working for the bigger players like JPMorgan would be somewhat different, I'd imagine, perhaps a little more meaningful. I'd like to find out, someday. :)

With that I shall end my little spiel. On a lighter note, here's quote I found highly amusing. I think it was CJ who first told it to me - "Investment is speculation gone wrong."

happy new year and all those things

Now let's see. We pick up the story from whence we saw our heroine last - in the throes of exams. Since then, a month and a half has passed, without so much as a peep on this blog, regretfully.

The holidays have been lots of fun, as I've been able to enjoy a kind of freedom I'm unaccustomed to back home. I got my driving licence in record time - if I'm not wrong, 2 weeks from first lesson to issue of licence. Exam results were reported satisfactory, my birthday was happily spent with that riotous company we all know and love, and new year's was a whirlwind of booze, deliberately bad music and blackmail-worthy photos.

And that brings us to the here and now, where our heroine is valiantly attempting to hammer out a blogpost in the midst of the ruckus and bickering and nagging and scolding that is happening all around her. Ah, don't you love the start of school term. One big logistical mess of carpool, tuition, activities and other arrangements, times two for each sibling.

As for me? Nothing quite so harrowing, I assure you. I start work experience tomorrow at a securities firm. I have absolutely no clue what people do at work, what I'm supposed to be doing or if they even know what to make me do. Push papers and make coffee, I suppose. =)

This year promises to be even more hectic than ever, as I move on to bigger roles in the FMAA, uni and the ulty scene. Excitement, oh the excitement!

social obligations

What a chore. All that Chinese tea, polite smiling and run-of-the-mill conversation. Oh my you've grown, you look taller, you've got darker, you look like your father, you are very lucky to be living such a comfortable life, no matter how much money you have the most important thing is happiness etc etc. Glad it's over. I've had enough to last me a decade. *swoons* There was also the usual debate over how we should address each relative. That was kinda interesting to think about because I had absolutely no idea what you'd call your mother's mother's sister's daughter's husband in Chinese/Hokkien, and it was all "Hello Uncle, hello Auntie" to me. It's a little bit of a shame though to think that this will all die out in the near future as the new generation hardly have a grasp of all these convoluted addresses.

The heat is quite killing too. I nearly burned myself on the metal seatbelt buckle when I first got in the car. And the Mars bar that we bought when my mom stopped to buy some fruits as buah tangan was not in good shape (but I ate it anyway, stickily). The drive back from the visiting spree was an amusing one cause my dad, my bro and I had this sudden urge to communicate in Malay, complete with the right accent.

Now I'm back, was planning do my Chem prac, but the aircon is making me drowsy. And the bed...so...comfortable...so...zzz...

my day in dot points

Went out for lunch with Grace, JS and CY today...as wacky as ever, the three of them. How I miss their company. =)

Big thanks to Connie and Rach for the stay at their homes, the plane letters and for seeing me off at Flinders. I love y'all.

Finally got the codecs to make ex0's Meet Joe Black work. Was watching the show rapturously. *sighs dreamily* Brad Pitt...

Played badminton this evening, I am the undisputed champion, bwahahah! My bro's ego has to be deflated now and then, he thinks he's so good at it. Heh. Heh. Heh.

Dinner tonight is going to be awesome! Mom's cooking seafood...mmmm.

Hopefully there's time to go to the pasar malam too tonight. I haven't been in ages and I really want to get some DVDs this time.