Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Accountability at GLCs

Taken from the headline of the Business Section, The Star today:

"SIME DARBY SACKS CFO

Sime Darby Berhad on Monday sacked its chief financial officer (CFO) and another senior executive following an in-depth inquiry into RM120mil losses from Crude Palm Oil (CPO) futures trading."

It's not often you read about senior officers of big businesses in Malaysia being dismissed. Normally, they would issue a statement where the officer has opt to "leave the company" due to all sorts of reason (among the famous ones are health or wanting to spend more time with the family) although in the real reasons tend to run abuzz in the grapevine. Therefore it is refreshing to see MNC/GLC such as Sime Darby taking step in upholding transperancy and corporate governance.

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Mini Vacation

Courtesy of my mum-in-law, Honey Dearest and I spent the weekend at Holiday Subang (despite the hotel being a 5 minute drive from home, heheh). My mum-in-law has some vouchers expiring at the end of the month and since there is one for a free one night stay with breakfast, we decided to utilize it and treat it as a mini vacation for us.

We checked in promptly at 2.00 pm and were given the room 1507. Correction, it was SUITE 1507 and it was simply marvellous! It was at the corner of the hotel, with two views of us to enjoy. One is the view of the Tasik Subang Jaya and the Kelab Golf Negara Subang (with the federal highway sandwich in between) and the other is the view of Subang Jaya township itself (with the yet-to-be completed elevated road leading into/out of SJ being a prominent landscape now). I guess we didn't do much accept laze around and watch TV.

Then again, sometimes the best of vacations is just that... doing nothing :)

Friday, June 06, 2008

It's RM2.70 per litre, people...

Well, the inevitable just happened. The government just announced that fuel price would be increased by 40% to RM2.7o per litre while diesel is increased by RM1.00 to RM2.58 per litre.

It was just a matter of time before the fuel price has to be increased. The amount of subsidy that the government has to fork out has resulted in the balloning of the deficit.

Yes, everyone is affected by this. I was among the many who queued up at one of the stations near my house and managed to fill up Honey Dearest's and my car (I avoided the obvious popular stations such as Petronas and Shell).

Certainly a lot of things to say about this...

Tuesday, June 03, 2008

Wow... what a f*%k*d up place we live in

If we were to believe everything we read in the blog lately, then surely this country is the worst country for anyone to live in. You are sometimes put in a quandry; reading the mainstream media will give you the impression that all is right with the BN government and if were to read the blogs (esp the well-known ones, you know who they are), the Pakatan Rakyat is the true saviour of the "people" and everything BN/UMNO/Bumiputera/Malay/Islam is deemed to be "bad". No, don't give me that look. Lets face it, its what's out there now.

It is always good to have two sides of the matter to consider. In terms of governing, its good to have Check and Balances. If you are an ardent follower of certain blogger, you should also not totally boycott the mainstream media, vice versa. After all, it is you who can decide what you wish to believe in.

Some of the articles posted on the blogs are actually well-thought out and provoking piece which makes us ponder on the state of our nation. The arguments presented are not neccesarily emotional in nature but unfortunately, it is the comments from the readers which can sometimes be difficult to fathom. Many times you will come across people who take the opportunity to go into Malay/Islam bashing under the guise of "justice/fairness" for all and make racial/religious comments which frankly is unacceptable. Yes, you can sense that pent up frustration of years of being "discriminated" by the UMNOputras/Bumiputras/Malays, so is this so called "political tsunami" really a change for a better of Malaysia or its just a way to get back at the above ?

Makes you wonder..