Atheist Bus

I think this is awesome!

http://www.atheistbus.org.uk/

scarlet fever....

well i take back what i said last week, obviously the iceman has laid off the caffeine or black tar or whatever it was he was on in Melbourne that got him driving like a hyperactive chipmunk. and Ferrari seems to have sorted out whatever gremlins were in their engine. But Massa ... i had so much hopes for the guy, but he has still to show us that he deserves a seat in Ferrari F1.

that said even for Kimi I think we still need to see how things turn out this season. They say the new rules including doing away with traction control will show us who the real drivers are. And what Kimi has done is shown us that he's got stellar skill (esp. with that move leapfrogging Massa), and with an open track he'll drive his way to the podium. But Melbourne had him cracking under pressure further back in the race (and possibly combined with having to actually drive every inch than letting traction control baby you). On the other hand performance at Melbourne tends to be quite atrocious since the drivers have generally forgotten how to drive. And is the lack of traction control killing Massa? When he's good, he's really good, but once in a while he tends to slip up ... maybe traction control was saving him before. We shall see..

as for the others, BMW has been doing quite well and Toyota too, although i doubt a serious contender for the top tiers. Alonso's doing as well as possible in the equivalent of a lawnmower amongst top tier F1 cars, and as for Hamilton, the boy's got mad skill, but can he cut it? last season had him sporting rookie mistakes (but then again he is kind of a rookie), lets see if he's learnt anything.

And i still think "Force India" is the corniest name for an F1 team. period.

a bizarre land

you know as much as I love London and as much as they are supposed to be an advanced civilization, there are certain (legacy?) things that I find completely bizarre, mostly related with English bureaucracy. take for example banking. now in our little sorry excuse for a nation i can still walk into a bank and get an account in at most a couple of days. here, they tease you. first it takes a week to get your account. and then another week to get your card. and then another week for a pin number (which may or may not work). and somewhere in there you'll get one letter with your internet pin, another with your customer number, another with the policy booklets. its like dealing with a well seasoned stripper who knows how to tease you and prolong your pleasure. except in this case its not pleasure but A BLOODY PAIN IN THE ASS!

oh and then there's the fiasco with the TV license. for those of you not in the know, the moment you have a TV in your room/house/box under a bridge by the Thames, you need a TV license, which is like 130 or so quid. and they're really anal about it too. Now I am fortunate to not have had to deal with this, but I was just speaking to two people who had a run-in with the TV licensing people. they both got letters saying "you do not have a TV license. if you do not have a TV, please call us." ... with all the usual threats of fines and shit. so one of them diligently calls them up, and from what i gather the conversation went something like this:

a: I don't have a TV
tv peeps: what do you mean you dont have a TV?
a: I just don't have a TV
tv peeps: how can you not have a TV? everyone has a TV
a: well i dont have one, i dont have money for one
tv peeps: are you planning on getting one?
a: well if you'd be kind enough to make a donation i might consider it
tv peeps: ok fine. but i'll be stopping by to inspect your place

the other guy was even better. he lives in a dorm and his letter said "your ROOM xxx does not have a TV license ....

oh yeah and this isnt just limited to TVs. anything that can get a TV signal needs a TV license. so if your laptop has a TV tuner, you need a license. Heck, if your bloody refrigerator could get a TV signal, you'd need a bloody license. now, we figure that the cost of maintaining that bureaucratic structure to track and enforce these things, is most probably much higher than the actual revenue from the licenses. i mean, where else in the world do you need a tv license? even in our sorry little nation we dont need one.

competitiveness and global views

Tony Fernandez had this to say to STARBIZ, comments on why MAS is opposed to open skies for Malaysia .. i think his view is fitting:

Did anyone wait for AirAsia to be of certain size? From the start, we were up against an airline that had subsidies, enough aircraft and support from the government.

Just look at us. Five years ago we have 2 planes and today we carry 18 million passengers. We have not have 62 labs or 20 management consultants telling us what to do or 17 code names. It was survival for us and now look at our growth. No one protected us today.

MAS has a bigger market capitalization than ours. So why is one national champion trying to hold back the growth of the other?

Look at CIMB group. It is now a regional bank but not once did Datuk Nazir Razak talk about protection in Malaysia even when CIMB had to compete with banks like Maybank or even Public Bank.

So Idris (MAS MD Datuk Idrs Jala) needs to take a global view. It is a free market out there. Why stop others from growing? I am really surprise at what he said. He should not be scared for MAS.

They (Firefly, MASs budget carrier) even have Subang even though we fought so hard to stay back in Subang.

Why are they afraid of competition? We welcome competition. It is time to get rid of ship on our shoulders. Just get the inferiority complex off.

All local companies that have enjoyed protectionistic trade policies and yet have failed to show any signs of world-class quality (need i name them?) should take note