Ants Stealing Colours

Man Of Faith or Man Of Violence?

When many people who are supposedly more knowledgeable in Islam yell on top of their lungs to get rid of a certain sect, or to get rid of a church from a certain neighborhood, and to provide support to the Palestinian state above support for local needs... the Palestinian government issues condolences to the Egyptian government because of the church bombings; where President Mahmoud Abbas says that the attack's goal was to destabilize the kinship in Egypt and incite hatred between Moslems and Christians.

Maybe these people need to sort our their priorities, like for instance, concentrate in enhancing faith instead of inciting hate. Yelling, pushing, shoving in the name of religion does not make you a holy man.

UPDATE: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad conveys Christmas greetings to the Pope and world leaders who celebrate Christmas through an official letter, and prays for Christians to have a year full of health, success, happiness and prosperity. He also wishes that 2011 becomes a year of peace where increased empathy and understanding will occur between people of different faiths.

 

The Irrelevance Of Widely-Adopted Ideologies When Competing With Greed

Vietnam is, and will remain for probably some time, an outwardly Communist country. But for many of us who were doctrined in school back in the day, we wouldn't recognize it as a Communist country as it somehow does not follow the stereotypical model printed in our brains of what a Communist country is like. But perhaps this is because, it's not really a Communist country any more, only that the ruling - and only - party is Communist.

Supposedly under the Communist doctrine, all land is belongs to the state and thus nobody owns private land. This obviously isn't the case. Private enterprise (and trade) is not allowed under Communism, but this isn't the case either. And the more controversial - yet mistaken - aspect of Communism, its atheism, may be more similar to Western secularism - where the state does not interfere with religious affairs. A minority of Vietnamese still go to church or the mosque, a majority pray at some sort of temple or provide offerings to the gods. And Communism, becomes more like a doctrine or principle for the ruling party.

I can't even find reference to atheism on the Wikipedia entry.

And what has this done for Vietnam? The country is stable, growth is steady, development is planned (albeit slightly chaotically), people have jobs, people have enough to eat, and they're catching up with the rest of South East Asia (and even, I dare say, actually pulling ahead from the pack in some fields).

Does this have anything to do with Communism? Nope, I don't think so. It definitely does not have anything to do with the religions that the Vietnamese believe in, either.

But it has a lot to do with a smart and firm leadership of the country. Whatever principle, doctrine or religion you follow - as perfect or imperfect as they can be - it comes down to the people leading the country to make a difference. Evil and greed can overcome anyone in power, whatever path they claim to follow.

I am not saying what is bad or good, I am just saying that there are more pressing things we need to think about rather than a war of ideology.

 

Flame on!

Why Vietnam needs bigger traffic jams to boost its mobile ‘net

Having lived in Jakarta for most of my career, the legendary commute with the obligatory traffic jams made me turn to mobile internet for many of my personal and work needs, like email, Twitter, news browsing, and traffic info services like Infoll and Lewatmana. This is one of the reasons mobile internet has surged in Jakarta, and is only pushed higher by cheaper data rates, addiction to social networks and location-based services (which are only relevant on mobile-internet enabled devices).

Then, what happens in a city where the commute (and traffic) is not so bad, and you can get a WiFi connection virtually at any coffee shop, restaurant or mall in the city?

read the rest of the post on e27.sg.

Began, the (Groupon) Clone Wars have, in Vietnam

Groupon clones seem to be everywhere these days. This is most notably seen in Vietnam, where I am living right now, where according to this article there are about 10 sites live or about to go live. Among them, there’s the Groupon-esque section of Zing, which is arguably the largest youth-oriented portal in Vietnam. There’s Phagia.com.vn (formerly Groupon.vn), Cungmua,Kenhgia,Muachung, Hotdeal.vn (an IDG investment),  and Nhommua.

Read the rest of the article on e27.sg.

Make Sure It's Worth It

Dreams in our sleep are often filled with unconnected images and occurrences, yet perhaps the half-conscious mind tries to make sense of all of it by tying these instances into a somewhat credible output it can remember, no matter how absurd. So anyway...

Two nights ago, I dreamt of a district attorney feeling frustrated about a tough case, almost ready to give up.

Last night, I dreamt of the same lawyer, finding case files she apparently threw out her car on the highway earlier that day, on her doorstep, with a note: don't give it up. it's worth the fight.

Every day we are faced with challenges, easy and difficult, that demotivate us in doing our daily work. So sometimes you have to ask yourself, is it worth it? Is all this effort going to have the benefits or outcome that you need?

Sometimes it is good to keep sight of your priorities, objectives, or simply just what will make your life happier.

"Dari Surabaya?"

A few weeks ago, Saskia and I were waiting for a taxi at our apartement's taxi stand. There were many motorcycles going in, out and around the apartement's entrance, but there was one guy who just stopped near us and looked at us. We were feeling uncomfortable since he was looking at us, wondering if we were doing something wrong or strange (or if we looked strange), but finally, he spoke:

"Dari Surabaya?"

Out of all the questions in the world, he asked if we were from Surabaya or not. Maybe we were obviously Indonesian (so was he) and he decided to skip that question, so he perhaps decided to test the next question (being the obvious Javanese that we are). But imagine, standing on a street corner of a foreign city, and suddenly being asked something about your origins in Indonesian.

ha ha ha.... that was slightly weird.