You Say Best When You Say Nothing At All!

Part One

Recently it was revealed that an MP asked this particular question at the current Parliamentary Session:

[name omitted] minta Menteri Pertahanan menyatakan proses pembelian kapal peronda generasi kedua (Second Generation patrol Vessel - SGPV) pada Februari tahun lalu dengan harga RM6billion sedangkan Filipina telah didedahkan telah membeli kapal jenis sama tetapi sedikit besar dengan harga hanya RM32.7juta . Adakah pembeliannya melalui proses tender terbuka. Jika ya, berapakah syarikat yang menyertainya.

Despite his colleague basically receiving a mighty pounding for asking roughly the same question a number of months back, this MP who holds a higher position in the party, still insists. I do not know MINDEF's answer but, well here's my reply:

The Philippine Navy has recently acquired the ex-US Coast Guard Cutter USCGC Hamilton which was renamed BRP Gregorio del Pilar and to be followed by  ex-USCGC Dallas and probably another one. Sure, it's bigger (3,000 tons displacement compared to 2,000 tons; 115m in length compared to 105m) than the favourite(?) candidate for our SGPV programme. But our esteemed MP somehow forgot to check that BRP Gregorio del Pilar was originally commissioned in 1967 and was bought second-hand by the Philippine Navy - who wants to buy a 45-year old ship at inflated prices? Next, the price tag for del Pilar is way lower not only because it's a second-hand ship but also because of what she is equipped with:

1 x 76mm OTO Melara Compact DP gun

1 x M242 Bushmaster 25mm cannon

2 x Mk16 20mm cannon

6 x M2 12.7mm heavy MG

2 x 6-barrel Super RBOC decoy launchers

1 x AN/SPS-73 search radar

Sperry Mk 92 FC System

Despite her size, she is not much equipped. Now can you spend RM32.7 million and expect the ship to be equipped with surface-to-air missiles, anti-ship missiles, guns, torpedoes, search radars, FC radars, ECM equipment, and combat data systems?  

Part Two

Apparently, Tuesday, 17th of April is the "Global Day Of Action On Military Spending". So being a member of the international community, some 'concerned' NGOs in Malaysia have appealed to the PM to cut down on military spending. They wanted the defence budget, which is at 2-3% of the GDP to be cut down to LESS than 1%. To highlight their concern, they quoted that the defence spending was as high as 15.9% of the GDP during the Third Malaysia Plan. They also wanted the government to promote ASEAN coo-operation to pool resources and slash arms spending in the region. Their spokesman also said that the purchase of the two Scorpene-class submarines are wasteful as the Navy needs up to ten to patrol the South China Sea and that the more 'effective' approach would be 'passive defence measures such as anti-tank or anti-aircraft systems'.

They quote the Third Malaysian Plan as being excessive in defence. They somehow forgot the political and security climate during that time, 1976 to 1980 with the Second Emergency/Insurgency at its height, Vietnam and Cambodia have fallen into communist hands and the Soviets have invade Afghanistan. They want ASEAN countries to slash arms spending but of the numerous NGOs in the region, only those in three countries had activities on the 17th. Furthermore, no NGO in one particular country which spend 6% of its GDP (or roughly US$9 billion)  took part.

But the funniest thing is that when that spokesperson tried to offer a 'more effective' alternative way to safeguard our SLOC and EEZ - by using anti-tank or Anti-aircraft systems. Yes, who needs 100km-range Exocet anti-ship missiles or 50km swimming Black Shark torpedoes when you can use 2.5km Javelin ATGW or 200 meter RPG-7? Or force missiles designed to destroy AIRCRAFT to fly low and blow holes in ships?

And finally, I find it ironic that one of the protesters wore camo-pattern trousers in an effectively anti-military rally!

Local = Tak Bermutu (Ye La Tu)

Aku baru aje 'melepak' kat forum Mymil bila terbaca posting oleh standupper pasal kemalangan jalanraya di Terengganu semalam yang mengorbankan seorang pegawai Jabatan Agama Islam Terengganu. Tapi bukan kemalangan tu sendiri yang si stand ni nak cerita, sebaliknya ada komen dalam Facebook yang kurang tepat yang juga menunjukkan mentaliti sebahagian rakyat Malaysia sejak dulu-dulu lagi. Komennya?

"Naib baik diaorang bukan naik kereta buatan Malaysia. sorang aje mati. klu kereta buatan malaysia tu saya rasa semua sekali arwah"

"Jgn beli kereta buatan malaysia.murah tak juga. Mahal adalah selamat jauh sekali. 60km je accident mata (mati?) 80% temgoklah dalam TV yang banyak mati accident kereta adalah dari kereta kebanggan malaysia"

Jadi, kalau katakan van tu sebuah Proton (biasanya yang jadi mangsa ni Proton, Perodua tak pulak) makanya, semua tu mati la ye, sedara? Adakah ajal maut seseorang dalam kemalangan ditentukan oleh jenis kenderaan, bukan Qadha dan Qadar Allah? Agaknya kalau ditunjukkan sahaja gambar keadaan van yang remuk sekali tu (tanpa mengetahui apa terjadi kepada pemandu dan penumpang) rasa aku silap-silap dia kata, "Mati semua ni"...dan BUKAN "ni van Toyota...ada yang hidup ni...." Sepupu wife aku pernah alami kemalangan dalam situasi yang hampir sama dengan Iswara Aeroback dia - tokey bengkel siap tanya "Berapa orang mati?". So sedara dalam FB tu, boleh terangkan kenapa sepupu tu tak mati padahal dia bawak kereta buatan Malaysia? Atau terangkan macamana Princess Diana boleh mati dalam Merc S-Class yang langgar tembok pada kelajuan 130km/j? Atau sedara-mara yang terkorban bila Toyota Wish dia jadi scrap metal pada awal tahun tempoh hari?

Pelanggaran pada kelajuan 60km/j aje dah boleh mati? Mungkin ye kalau tak pakai seatbelt, jatuh gaung atau terperosok bawah lori. Dan kereta paling banyak kat Malaysia ni sah-sah le kereta buatan Malaysia, jadi kalau berlaku kemalangan pun banyak le yang libatkan kereta buatan tempatan!

Memang Proton tak sempurna (siapa aje yang sempurna?) tapi kalau merapu kata kadar kematian lebih tinggi sebab kereta tempatan aku rasa sudah lebey......

Phishing Blues

I recently found this complaint somewhere in the Net:

"Baru-baru ini saya dikejutkan dengan kehilangan sejumlah wang di akaun Maybank saya secara tiba-tiba. Ini terjadi apabila tiba-tiba saya mendapat sms yang sejumlah wang saya ditransfer ke akaun yang tidak dikenali. Dengan itu, saya terus menelefon bank dan mengarahkan agar akaun saya disekat,saya juga telah membuat laporan polis pada masa yang sama.

Semua salinan telahpun saya beri kepada Maybank untuk tujuan siasatan. Malangnya, pihak Maybank tidak mahu bertanggungjawab diatas kehilangan duit saya dan menganggap itu kecuaian dari saya sendiri. Saya berasa amat kecewa. Buat pengetahuan semua, rupa-rupanya bukan saya seorang sahaja yang menjadi mangsa keadaan ini, ramai lagi yang hilang duit di dalam akaun Maybank yang dibuat melalui email menyatakan agar pelanggan mengemaskinikan akaun masing-masing. Kebanyakan rakan-rakan yang mengalami nasib malang yang sama terdiri dari pekerja awam.

Persoalannya, dimanakah tanggungjawab Maybank diatas kehilangan duit pelanggan yang menyimpan duit di bank mereka? Yang saya pelik ini terjadi hanya di bank Maybank bukan di akaun-akaun lain. Diamanakah yang dikatakan sistem keselamatan yang konon-kononnya terlalu bagus oleh Maybank? Berapa ramai lagi yang akan jadi mangsa selepas ini? Saya tidak faham mengapa Maybank mengambil ringan masalah pelanggan dan enggan bertanggungjawab.

Inikah yang dikatakan “customer always right”?

Pada pendapat saya, Maybank2u Online memang tidak selamat untuk digunakan kerana senang-senang penggodam haram masuk dan mencuri duit pelanggan dan Maybank tidak sama sekali tidak bertanggungjawab! Kenapa setelah ramai yang menjadi mangsa Maybank masih berdiam diri tanpa apa-apa tindakan membaikpulih sistem mereka? Adakah mereka memang langsung tidak pedulikan aduan pelanggan dan hanya mengutamakan keuntungan semata  mata?"

 Maybank, and just about every other banks have issued warnings to their customers NOT to respond to e-mails  from sites masquerading as theirs asking customers to 'update' their accounts by inputting their password, login and/or account number. Known as phishing, such scams have swindled many. Reading the complaint above, I'm quite amazed that there are still people who were conned, despite warnings given by the banks themselves and through the media. She even complained about the security of Maybank2U website. Well, lady, even the best anti-intruder system is worthless if you power the system down, allowing just about everybody access into your compound! The loss of her (and others') money is not because some hacker managed to bypass Maybank's security system, but because he had been given the 'keys' by the owner themselves! Of course Maybank won't accept responsibility! 'Only at Maybank' ma'am? Heck, even I have received e-mails from 'Bank Islam' and other banks which have internet banking facility.

So, what did I do with those e-mails? I deleted them of course. But since I do not have a Maybank2U account, I feel it was safe to type f**k_off as my login and a**hole as my password.....

Going Nuts Over Chickens

By this time, thanks to the internet and especially YouTube, just about everybody knows about the altercation between the employees of a local branch of KFC and a customer. Apparently pissed after being told that the outlet has 'run out of chicken' after waiting in queue for an hour, the customer wanted the management to apologize to him and allegedly he uttered some vile words which raises the anger of the KFC crew. hence the altercation.

I'm not going to give my opinion on that particular incident. But I believe a more peaceful outcome can be reached. I'd like to republish a story I had written here in 2009 when I waited for my overdue French Fries at one of Alor Setar's McDonald's branch. I was at Alor Setar that day attending to some business. Onece finished, I called my wife asking whether she wanted me to bring dinner home. She said just buy some McD's French Fries.So I ordered two large portions of Fries to go. The kid at the counter told me to wait for 5 minutes as the fries are still being fried. The 5 minutes is up..and I waited for another 5. In the meantime I saw other customers walking away with French Fries - so where's mine? Since I sat fairly near the counter, I made a gesture signalling 'Where is my order?' to the kid. Acknowledging that, the kid hurriedly packed something (which I can't see at that time) and came at me. When he arrived at my table, I saw two McChickens! So, being an honest (ahem) guy, I told the kid that I wanted two Large French Fries, not McChicken. Realising his error (and probably a bit panicked too) he said that these burgers are on him! And he hurriedly went back to the fries counter and fetched me the two Large Fries.

So, no need to raise voice.....I got my fries AND two free McChickens!

I 'Own' The World!

Dialogue from Tan Sri P. Ramlee's movie Tiga Abdul (more or less!)

Abdul Wahub : Tuan Sadiq Segaraga jangan pandang saya takde mata. Saya lebih kaya dari Abdul Wahab dan lebih kaya dari Abdul Wahib. (passing a folder to Sadiq Segaraga)

Sadiq Segaraga : Harta-harta Ismet Ulam Raja di luar negara! (Browsing folder) Pakistan! Afghanistan! Turkistan!Popostan! Gohead Gostan! Kat mana negeri Gohead Gostan?

Abdul Wahub : Dekat-dekat dengan negeri Setan!

Sidiq Segaraga : Dekat Negeri Setan pun Ismet ada harta? ....(can't remember what -Stan), Tanjung Rambutan!

Many real Malaysians do have properties and money deposited overseas, but recently while reading The Star, I came across someone who claims that he has €5 trillion in a HSBC account. He also alleges that he is a descendant of not one royal lineage but FOUR! (China, India, Java and Siam) and he also has access to untold riches such as:

- gold bars stacked as a pagoda

- US$15 million worth of jade

- US$10 million worth of diamonds

- stacks of US Dollars

All of which were kept in a cave in Kunming, China...guarded by two, uh, immortals......And oh, how about these further claims?

- He is the sole adminsitrator of secret royal wealth and apparently the wealth accounts for 86.7% of the world total!

- A Chinese 'royal' doctor (a rather anomalous claim since the last real emperor died as a commoner in 1967 and that he only lasted as emperor until late 1940s) claims that he is an incarnation of Emperor Nurhaci (1559-1626)

- He will soon be crowned as Emperor Of Indonesia!

- Malaysiandigest.com (which also interviews him) shows his name card with titles like

                  "Emperor Kamal

                   The Most Highest Perfection

                   The Ancient One Shining Gold Dragon

                   Son Of The Heaven

                   Emperor Of China"

                   Once An Emperor Forever An Emperor

                  "Yang Dipertuan Besar

                    Kerajaan Melayu Nusantara

                    Pemerintah Kuasa Melayu Bunia Dan Dunia

                    Bergelar

                    Maharaja Zulkarnain Iskandar Shah Ke-19" (I wonder who were numbers 1 to 18)

- He prefers to stay single since he has 8 dayangs to uh, entertain him. Plus he claims that once crowned  as the Emperor of Indonesia, he will have 800 of them plus 1,200 guards. To top that he will have a squadron of private planes traveling with him....

Getting somewhat back to the real world, Mr Kamal Ashnawi is the President of Sierra Petroleum International, a company doing business oil and gas exploration, development, exploitation and production. Nothing strange with that except that the investment portfolio shows a total of US$1.5 trillion (which should put them not only among the oil industry leaders but probably among the biggest businesses, however they were virtually unheard of) not to mention that their website is somewhat spartan and that the latest news was in 2005. I believe the company is real but their capital is nowhere the figure quoted.

So, real deal, scammer or someone with delusions of grandeur? Many netizens ridicule him. A number of others believes he is the one prophesied in a Javanese legend, or even someone who, by virtue of his wealth, becomes the saviour of the ummah. One commentator even compares his story to that of  Prophet Muhammad's (PBUH) journey (Israk and Mikraj) - in the sense that both of them got ridiculed but prevailed in the end. (To me that's where the similarity ends, as Prophet Muhammad gave irrefutable proof of his journey). How can you take him seriously when he said he is a descendant of four separate royal lineage, or when he said that the treasure cave is guarded by 'immortals' (Genies? Heck, even genies are mortal despite having a long life), or when he gave the value of the valuables (how, did the immortals have a checklist, or they kept a ledger?), or when he claims that he is negotiating with the International Monetary Fund so that he can be crowned as Emperor Of Indonesia (what does IMF have anything to do with it?)

What's In A Name?

Credit to Mymil forum for posting this article:

Call naval patrol ships by actual term, Pua tells Putrajaya

KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 21 —The federal government should stop conflating the six naval patrol ships it was buying for RM9 billion with “littoral combat ships” when they are from a lesser category, DAP’s Tony Pua insisted today.
The DAP lawmaker said he could now confirm that the government was not acquiring “littoral combat ships (LCS)” as claimed, but another class of naval vehicles called “Gowind Class Corvettes”.

“The Gowind-class corvettes are not ships to be belittled and are powerful in their own ways which may serve the needs of Malaysian navy, but they are not by means the equivalent of LCS as trumpeted by the minister and the government,” he added.

The DAP publicity chief has been sparring with Defence Minister Datuk Seri Zahid Hamidi in and out of Parliament over the hike in costs for the six vessels after this was revealed to have ballooned from an initial RM6 billion to a whopping RM9 billion.

He pointed out that the LCS is a specific type of ship built to a specific length, speed and design by the US navy and no other country. He added that the US’ currently had only two such vessels in service and was building others.

The Petaling Jaya Utara MP noted Mindef officials said the top speed for Malaysia’s patrol ships could only reach 28 knots, which was lower than the 40 to 45 knots of the standard LCS.
The six ships were also to be shorter, measuring 105m long, and would not have the long-range transit reach of 3,500 miles (5,600km).

Mindef officials also said each ship can carry only one Eurocopter 725 onboard and would not have the capability to launch and recover small boats.“It will certainly be a stretch of any military expert’s imagination to equate our purchase of these SPGV Corvettes to the state-of-the-art LCS,” Pua said.

After being slagged off a number months ago for comparing the SGPV (which is corvette-sized) shipwith, among others, smaller Fast Attack Craft and even ships designed and built 20 years ago, the esteemed Mr Pua returns....now blaming the government for giving 'fancy names'. Furthermore he allege that the SGPV is of a 'lesser category' than the USN's LCS.

Now, while the proposed Gowind-class corvette is not the same with the USN's Littoral Combat Ship (with title case), they ARE designed to fight in the littoral zone (which is, basically the coastal area between the high water mark to the depth of 200 feet). So, it is not wrong to describe the SGPV as littoral combat ships (lower case)!

While he is right in that the Gowind-class is indeed slower, have less aircraft capacity and doesn't have the stern ramp for launching boats, I believe he is quite wrong when saying that the SGPV is 'lesser' than the LCS, especially in these areas:

1. "Does not have the long-range transit reach of 3,500 miles"

That range is actually influenced by the speed ANY ship (except nuke- and wind-powered) makes. The faster it moves, the lesser the range. And if the private venture l'Adroit (to be handed over to the French Navy) is to be used as reference, she has a range of 8,000 miles @ 14 knots (the Freedom-class LCS has a range of 3,500 miles @ 18 knots, so I guess the operating range is roughly the same)

2. Weaponry

The US LCS are equipped with a single 57mm gun, 4 12.7mm machine guns, 2 30mm cannon and one 21-cell RAM missile launcher. It has been proposed to carry up to 45 A(M?)GM-175 Griffin missile, with a range of 3.5 miles and a 13-pound warhead.

The proposed weapons for the Gowind-class is Aster 15 or Mica RF surface to air missiles with a range of up to 30km (RAM's range is 9km); MM40 Exocet or RGM-84 Harpoon Anti-ship missile (range of  up to 180km and 140km respectively and warheads of 165kg and 221kg). Plus guns.

So, honestly, in weapons capability at least, is the Gowind/SGPV 'lesser' than the LCS?

Decade

Sometime in 2001, probably in March (I can't exactly remember when, but definitely earlier than May), I received a phone call from my mother. Never have I thought that that particular call would bring a major change in my life.

Forward to May 2001. That phone call is basically what the Malays termed as 'merisik'. Although, in my case, it was kinda reverse-merisik since it should be the guy's family recceing the prospective bride. So, I got engaged with my wife until December of the same year. I didn't know at the time but she told me that my decision to accept her hand in marriage is similar to Lord Wellington's summary of the Battle Of Waterloo : "A damn close-run thing" as there is another family who were also asking her hand for their son at roughly the same time. So I guess Field Marshal von Blucher arrived just in time!

What makes our marriage unique (more or less) in modern times is that it is a family-arranged marriage.  Heh, even the clerk at the Religious Department expressed her wonder. Whilst I do know my wife previously as our families are very close (if not actually related - I'm still not sure myself!) I did not have feelings toward her then. Somehow I have the feeling that is why our love is stronger, as the saying goes 'bercinta lepas kahwin'.

Thank you sayang for being a faithful, devoted and loving wife and mother. The last 10 years was among the best in my life. Sure, there are some incidents (sedangkan lidah lagi tergigit!) and I look forward to more happy days together.....till death do us part. InsyaAllah.

p.s. this was supposed to be posted on 22 December, the 10th anniversary of our wedding but, ah you know the rest!