It seems like I am losing my patience lately. I wish I could get to my work place faster every monrning; I wish I could get back home quicker after work every day; I wish I could climb up the ladder and be promoted faster; I wish to get things done quicker; I wish I could finish a puzzle quicker; I wish I could......
-I know my working hours will be long - construction work in Malaysia is usually 10/7, conservatively.
-I know I will have to spend hell lots of money just to get a Kancil (with the same ammount of money I can probably owned a Camry in Aus assuming RM1:AUS$1).
-My starting salary will not be as 'lofty' as what I'm getting now.
-I can NEVER have the luxurious benefits that Coffey (my company) is currently providing. Coffey would fully sponsor my Master tuition fee if I ever want to do it.
-The quality of life of my next generation will be different - have to stay at house all the time to stay away from ever increasing kidnapping, rapping and robbing.
-The quality of my life will be different - I will have to save all my earnings and send my children oversea for education to widen their exposure (I know it is not REALLY necessary but I never trust the education system in Boleh land, please agree with me - it is a fact).
-My health will be different - have to breath in the romantic haze from Indo once a year (if lucky, otherwise twice, thrice?)
-Unlike Australian government (giving out AUS$ 21 000 for first home buyers at this economic crunch period), the Boleh land government wont do a shit other than dropping a few milli bucks on the petrol.
-And the list goes on...
I know I have been coping well with this over the 18 years or so when I was back in the Boleh land. Back then I didn't have a choice but to cope. But now possessing an Australia PR visa, I can very much dictate/decide/change my life in the future. With all the possible dramas that I stated above, it seems that the dicision whether to stay on or not is not difficult to make. But infact, it is atually not!
The only and ONLY reason I'm still refusing to make a call on the dicision is my parents and my dearie. Is this the place they are meant to be? Is this the life they wanted? Is this the best possible solution to have a better life? Is this a wise choice?
Then I look at my 2 topnotch grandpas. They both came to Malaysia all the way from China almost 70-80 years ago, leaving behind their families, friends (wonder is there any back then), home, everything and never look back. Only for a reason - to have (or try to have) a better life! And I am 100% sure if they didnt make a move back then, I am probably now working as a farmer or hawker! Forget about writing in English.
With the same intention but different era, if they can do it back then, why can't I? Why can't we?
The clock continues to tick......
For the pass 60 hours or so the whole world has just gone mad while having an orgasm cheering for the newly elected President of United States of America, in another word most powerful, or influential if you like, human being on earth! OH... OH... OH... Obama! And I have to say I'm really happy for him to win the election!
Working life is scary! Unwittingly, I have already been working for almost 2 months!
After all the fuss of my visa and working rights, my career at Coffey finally get started today! Quite a hectic day for me - first to introduce myself to more than 150 staffs in the office, one at a time; then to be familiar with the office layout and general security system; learn to use the email/phone/fax/printing machine and system; set up my work station; study an online safety course; and then finally to learn that I am going to a site office at Port of Brisbane tomorrow beofre the end of the day! I was quite surprise that I am assigned to the site office on my second working day, but I guess it will be a very good experience working at that site office as the project there is very large in scale and very challenging.
Wish that I can settle in as quickly as possible and ease pass the 3 months probation!
I guess I have just picked the right time to move to Brisbane as I was just in time to witness the biggest event of the year in Brisbane - The Brisbane River Festival last weekend. The annual River Festival is to celebrate the Brisbane River which passes through the Brisbane (something similar with the Yarra River in Melbourne), and it includes a 30 minutes continuos pyrotechnics and fireworks. It was the first time I witness this event first hand and it was really breath-taking. The picture above shows the opening of the River Festival with a F111 strike aircraft dashed pass the Brisbane city sky. Anyway, I snatched this picture from someone in the internet :P Here are some photos taken by me.
If moving houses is troublesome, then moving interstate is super-hyper-duple-troublesome. I was tremendously happy once I got the offer from Coffey, only when I havent thought of the shits that I have to go through before I left for Brisbane - sorting out all the shits, throwing those not-so-useful thingy, selling the furnitures, packing and sending all the sutffs. But I'm lucky enough that I'm gonna stay with my brother, so I dont need to look for place to stay in Brisbane.
NOT GONNA POST ANYTHING UNTIL I KNOW THE RESULT OF THE INTERVIEW.
Oh yeah~~ I just got my result for my final semester this evening, and confirmed that I am now officially graduated! I would have to admit that I've been waiting for the results in agony for the last couple of weeks. It is just so hard not to think about it and I'm glad that it is all done now! What a big relief, not only for me but also for my parents who have been waiting more anxiously than me since I finished the last paper.Nguyen Tuong Van will almost certainly hang on Friday after Singapore today cut a thin thread of hope that his life could be saved.
In case you don’t know here is a short summary of what happened. Nguyen who is an Australian citizen was caught in Singapore trying to smuggle almost 400 grams of heroin from Cambodia to Australia three years ago. Anyone who carries more than 15 grams of heroin into Singapore will be sentenced to death if found guilty. The Australian Government had appealed for clemency for Nguyen, who has been on death row in Changi prison since being sentenced in March last year. He now faces execution on this Friday (2nd Decmber 2005).
Erm… honestly I have mix feelings for this case. Every country has their laws and punishments for different kinds of crime committed. Every time before we enter, say, Malaysia and Singapore, we are warned that drug smuggling is a serious offence and will be sentenced to death if it exceeds a certain amount. But yet people still try to challenge the law and gamble their life just to get the money they craved for. I don’t understand and perhaps I can never understand why these people put money ahead of their precious life? Or may be you can argue that if they don’t get that amount of money they will be dead as well. Anyway… for me it is still a stupid thing to do – having known that nowadays the customs, particularly in Singapore, is so strict.
We have to know that drugs really blight the community and I am sure that you won’t be please to find out your children are addicted with marijuana or heroin when you become parents. So I have to say the punishment has to be stern as ‘kill one (may) scare the rest’. Whether it has to be a death penalty or not I think it will be an issue to be discussed for years to come. Anyway, for me I rather choose to have a death sentence rather than a life prison sentence. I think I will become insane if I have to spend more than 50 years in jail so I would rather choose to die instantly.
Australian government had appealed for clemency for this young 25 years old Aussie man but every time the clemency was turned down immediately by Singapore. Singapore is well known with its strictness when it comes to laws and I don’t think they will change their mind anyhow anywhere although the Australia government may ask Singapore to have Nguyen Tuong Van's execution referred to the International Court of Justice. And I think it is a bit unfair if they change their mind to call off the death sentence, because it is unfair to have a set of rules for Australian and a set of rules for other nationalities. But recently there are rumours that Australia might protest against this death penalty by using economy boycotts. If that happens I think the relationship between Australia and Singapore will be well deteriorated.
Anyway... back to Malaysia. I am not very certain how the customs in Singapore is but I am very certain how the customs officers in Malaysia are doing their job. This is what exactly happened to my relatives, friends and me every time we enter Malaysia. There are normally two officers, each standing at a side of the gate of the exit, ‘looking’ at us before we walk pass the gate and officially go into Malaysia. They never ever check our baggage to see whether is there anything forbidden to bring into the country. We are allowed to buy a litre of liquor for tax free and any addition of that will be taxed, accordingly to the tax system. But one of my relative was ‘smuggling’ 4 bottles of liquor in her baggage and nothing happen to her.
Last year when I was in the plane back to Malaysia, a Caucasian sitting next to me asked me, what he needs to declare or show to the officers before he enter Malaysia. I was a bit uncertain how to answer him. Really… how should I answer him? I think for a while and I decided to tell him the exact situation which is happening all this while. From his gaze he looks stunned and shock. But anyway I ask him to declare just in case the officers check on him. Then we have a good chat about the cultural in Malaysia, as he was heading there for tourist purpose. This time I was stunned by him. The first thing he asked me was about the ‘bribery cultural’ in Malaysia. I ask him how would him know about this cultural was well practised in Malaysia. Yet he told me Malaysia is well known about that, aren’t we? I did nothing than nod my head.
I want to make a point here. Death penalty is still a legal sentence in some countries around the world. But yet those countries that applied this rule have the worst record of drug smuggling case. If the customs of every country do their job strictly and seriously, the number of drug smuggling cases will be well decreased. Not that I wanted to praise Australia but I do think their customs really do a good job, don’t they? So if every country can take them as an example, and by using newest technology, every drug smugglers could be easily spotted. If that is the case, is there still a need to apply death sentence?
