Civilian

ci•vil•ian
–noun

1. a person who is not on active duty with a military, naval, police, or fire fighting organization.
   
2. Informal. anyone regarded by members of a profession, interest group, society, etc., as not belonging; nonprofessional; outsider: We need a producer to run the movie studio, not some civilian from the business world.
   
3. a person versed in or studying Roman or civil law.

–adjective

4. of, pertaining to, formed by, or administered by civilians.

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)

What’s another word for “civilian”, the adjective, not the noun? “Private” is the best I could find.

I gave my classes another round of quizzes last week, their fifth; and I plan to give at least a couple more before the semester ends. A student raised her hand during one of the quizzes. When I went to her desk she pointed to her quiz paper and asked “sir, what is the meaning of this word?” pointing to the word “civilian”. It was a true-or-false question:

The unemployment rate measures the percentage of the civilian population that is out of work.

The answer is false.

What’s another word for “civilian”? I was quite a bit taken aback that somebody even asked what such a common word means – “non-military”? “Outsider”? I opened the question to the class. There were a few chuckles, but then another student raised his hand and said, “isn’t ‘civilian’ the same as ‘population’?”

Somebody, kill me!

I just told them to ignore the word.

Omnipresence

It is interesting to see that Wired saw it fit to publish our Muslim angkasawan’s – astronaut’s – potential problems in performing acts of worship, which are typically defined within terrestrial bounds, in space.

See: A Muslim Astronaut's Dilemma: How to Face Mecca From Space

I remember during undergraduate we discussed similar issues in some of the university-required Islamic studies courses. Forget about problems when praying and fasting at the International Space Station, what about praying and fasting on another planet! While Angkasa (National Space Agency) and JAKIM (Department of Islamic Development Malaysia) took the effort to hold a national conference to resolve the issue, I really don’t think that it was ever a real problem, though the whole question makes an interesting academic exercise.

The solution is really not much different from when we’re travelling through foreign, unfamiliar lands. We simply do whatever we can, as much as we can. Muslims worship God; and God is omnipresent. Planet-side we face the Ka’aba partly as a symbol of unity. Acts of worship like the daily obligatory prayers and fasting are first and foremost expressions of faith and submission, and not meant to unnecessarily burden the believers.

Old Record: The Other Side

I’ve always wanted to write about the ‘other side’ of Old Record but never actually got to doing it. Basically, the idea is the music/movie industry is also partly to blame over the whole pirated media and downloading issue. However, the latest entry on Freakonomics talks exactly about that, so I’ll just post the link to the article:

What’s the Future of the Music Industry? A Freakonomics Quorum

While I don’t buy pirated CD/DVD, I download music, movies, and television shows off the Internet via P2P file-sharing technology. I download music to sample them, because the local radio stations do a poor job of promoting new music of the kind that I like. If I like the music I’ll buy it, either in the form of an actual CD or (sometimes, when I was in the US) through online stores like iTunes Store and the now defunct MSN Music; I delete the music files I don’t like. I download movies that don’t get screened at local cinemas because of one reason or the other, and if I like them enough I’ll buy the DVD, especially if it’s loaded with extras, from Amazon. About the same applies with TV shows. Once a show is aired somewhere on the planet, with the technology that we have today, it’s already ‘out there’.

Awaiting delivery from Amazon:

As Seen on TV

There’s a ton of work to do: mid-terms to mark, finals to prepare, etc. so I decided to sit down and watch some television. Nice.

:P

I am feeling ambivalent about Prison Break 3. The first season was great, which set the stage pretty solidly for season 2, which was also for the most part a great run. However, I was rather disappointed with the end of season 2. The brothers were at last exonerated. At that point they should have just concluded the series and it would’ve been perfect. Instead, the creators decided to put Scofield back into another prison, though this time in Panama, and suggested another layer of conspiracy that may involve some secret government/military experiment.

In other words, it was getting ridiculous, as if they’re just perpetuating the whole ‘adventure’ to make more money.

Prison Break 3 (Fox photo)

Season 3 – at least the first episode – now returns without Sarah Wayne Callies a.k.a Dr. Sara Tancredi, which is another mystery. Is she or is she not still in the show? I hate all of this at the moment, but I’m still watching season 3 nevertheless; at least for now.

Other shows I’m watching, via I’m-not-sure-if-it’s-really-legal downloads, include Burn Notice (new), Californication (new), Eureka (season 2), and Saving Grace (new). Greek (new) also turns out to be quite interesting, though the first 10-episode season is already over. Many of the old favorites are returning, and new shows are coming. Fall is definitely a great time for television.

Ramadan Stories

Apart from the nightly tarawikh prayers, Ramadan in our household is almost like any other time of the year. We normally don’t take lunch anyway, only my parents regularly have breakfast, and dinner is usually around 7 p.m. So, the menu for iftar is also almost no different from a normal dinner menu, with the exception of the customary dates.

I am ‘quite’ picky about food. Not exactly discerning, just picky, in the sense that I don’t eat a lot of stuff like cockles, squid, green vegetables, and most of the exotic local delicacies like budu, tempoyak etc. I have even stopped eating durians. All my relatives have long given up any hope of making my palate more Malay.

Once during Ramadan when I was nine or so I returned from school and had a peek under the food cover, and found a few packs of tapai ubi, fermented cassava. I never tasted it before – never wanted to – but somehow I found myself opening one of the packs and stuffing the content into my mouth.

“Buat apa tu?” Mother caught me.

I (accidentally?) ate tapai, YUCK! I spitted it all out; it was so embarrassing, though till this day I still cannot say which was more embarrassing: that I was caught red-handed eating during the day in Ramadan, or that I ate something so gross. Maybe both.

YUCK!

I’ve never had any tapai since.

Freakin’ Stupid

I
I spent hours yesterday repeatedly reinstalling, updating, and repairing Acrobat Professional, and thinking that “Oh, shit!” my computer’s messed up when it turns out that it was Microsoft’s fault all along. Stupid Microsoft! It all started when I wanted to convert a Word document file to PDF when a message popped up saying “Missing PDFMaker files…”, suggesting that I repair Acrobat Professional.

So I did, again, and again, and again to no avail, until out of frustration I googled up the message: “Missing PDFMaker files”. Apparently, MS Office had automatically and discreetly disabled PDFMaker during one of the automatic updates. There was nothing wrong with my Acrobat Professional installation or the computer at all.

PFFT!

II
The McLaren F1 spy scandal has just got more interesting. Though I’m not a McLaren fan at all, the punishment meted out by the FIA World Motor Sport Council – forfeiture of constructors’ championship points and a $100 million-fine – appeared quite surprisingly harsh at first. I thought I would be happy to read about it, as it means that Ferrari is now the de facto 2007 team champion, but I wasn’t. Quite frankly F1 doesn’t excite me that much anymore and I can’t even remember the last time I watched a full race.

As more details of the affair are released, it is actually surprising that the punishment wasn’t heavier. While McLaren has to submit their cars for inspection in 2008, they are allowed to continue racing their existing cars this season, and the drivers escape any punishment when at least Alonso was also implicated in the scandal. The reason they didn’t impose the heavier punishment they should – a full two-year ban for the whole team including the drivers – was that they didn’t want to upset [British] fans hoping to see rookie Lewis Hamilton winning the drivers’ championship.

Way to go, FIA!

III
Defending champions England were defeated 0 – 36 by South Africa in the Rugby World Cup second Pool A match.

HAHA! HAHAHA! MUAHAHAHAHA!

Go Springboks!

The Aliens are Coming!

Obviously, somebody forgot to brief the Auditor General. There’s only one explanation for the government’s paying RM224.00 for RM40.00-screwdrivers, RM1,146.56 for RM160.00-pens, and RM10,700.00 for RM417.00-books etc:

We are preparing for an alien invasion!

It's all hush-hush, of course; we can’t let the alien know now, can we? There is a top-secret massive underground complex stretching from under the Ministry of Defence Complex in Jalan Padang Tembak to the Kuala Lumpur City Centre, with secret emergency evacuation exits through the Putra LRT and SMART tunnels.

Of course, you don’t hear it from me.

President Whitmore: I don't understand, where does all this come from? How do you get funding for something like this?
Julius Levinson: You don't actually think they spend $20,000.00 on a hammer, $30,000.00 on a toilet seat do you?

Independence Day (1996)

Word of the Day

pasrah

1. Jw menyerah;
   
2. memasrahkan menyerahkan: kepada-Nyalah kita pasrahkan doa dan harapan;
   
3. terpasrah terserah;
   
4. kepasrahan keadaan menyerah diri (nasib) kpd Tuhan: ~ doa utk menunggu saat-saat berkabung.

English: to submit to one's fate.

A relatively common word, especially in literature, that I’ve never understood and known how to use (and never thought of looking up the dictionary). Now I do, though not the kind of word I look forward to using.

“Aku pasrah” – Suapi

On a lighter note, the origin is Javanese – no wonder I don’t know it given my Bugis-Minang heritage.

:-P

Monday Morning Shower

The wet Monday morning created a three-mile long traffic jam when a trailer truck decided to fornicate with the road divider. On the other side too, because everybody loves a good show. It must have been quite a storm last night, for a fallen tree then upset the not-so-merry-go-round one-way campus traffic. Needless to say, I was late.

Three classes and three tests summed up my day today. YAWN. Luckily I was not there to take them; you wouldn’t believe that you can get so tired doing nothing. One more tomorrow and I’m done.

Interestingly, everybody gets sick or has some close relative pass away during mid-term season.

Visiting fellow Pak Suherman gave history lessons last Friday

Profiled

All UK ‘must be on DNA database’

The whole population and every UK visitor should be added to the national DNA database, a senior judge has said.

Lord Justice Sedley told BBC News the current England and Wales database, which holds DNA from crime suspects and scenes, was “indefensible”.

He added it would be fairer to include “everybody, guilty or innocent” on it.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6979138.stm

The UK maintains a DNA database of everyone accused of committing crimes. While it helps towards solving a lot of criminal cases, as anyone who’s watched enough CSI (or not!) could have imagined, it is becoming an issue now that DNA profiles of people who are cleared of any criminal wrongdoings remain in the database.

I’ve always thought for a country like Malaysia, where the government already has everybody’s fingerprints on record for the national identity card system so violation of civil liberties should not be so much an issue, it’s only natural that we ‘progress’ to having a national DNA database, once we can get the practical issues and logistics ironed out.

fingerprint by stadma at deviantART

Stay

kl tower by purplisyh at deviantART

Stay (Faraway, So Close!)
by U2, from the album Zooropa (1993) [watch it on YouTube*]

Green light, Seven Eleven
You stop in for a pack of cigarettes
You don’t smoke, don’t even want to
Hey now, check your change

Dressed up like a car crash
Your wheels are turnin’ but you’re upside down
You say when he hits you, you don’t mind
Because when he hurts you, you feel alive
Is that what it is?

Red lights, grey morning
You stumble out of a hole in the ground
A vampire or a victim
It depends on who’s around

You used to stay in to watch the adverts
You could lip-synch to the talk shows
And if you look, you look through me
And when you talk, you talk at me
And when I touch you, you don’t feel a thing

If I could stay, then the night would give you up.
Stay, and the day would keep its trust.
Stay, and the night would be enough.

Faraway, so close
Up with the static and the radio.
With satellite television
You can go anywhere:
Miami, New Orleans
London, Belfast and Berlin

And, if you listen, I can’t call
And, if you jump, you just might fall
And, if you shout, I’ll only hear you

If I could stay, then the night would give you up
Stay, and the day would keep its trust
Stay with the demons you drowned
Stay with the spirit I found
Stay, and the night would be enough

Three o’clock in the morning
It’s quiet, there’s no one around
Just the bang and the clatter
As an angel runs to ground
Just the bang and the clatter
As an angel hits the ground.

The song that got me hooked to U2.

So close, yet so far.

__________
* Universal Music puts the video on YouTube for all the world to see, yet doesn’t allow it to be embedded elsewhere. Go figure the primitive logic of these corporations!

Dekat Tapi Jauh

“Siapakah akan jadi anak gemilang [Malaysia]?” asked Kam, via text message, on Sunday. “Who will be Anak Gemilang Malaysia?”

“Jauh dari Boston pun boleh hantar SMS?” asked mom, amazed that I received a text message all the way from the other side of the world. She forgot that we also communicated through text messages when I was in Boston.

But, “Anak Gemilang Malaysia?” I asked in return. Yes, we like to talk in endless series of questions.

I don’t watch television. Correction: I don’t watch local terrestrial television; and there are many reasons why. The top three:

1. My dad usually holds the remote, and he rarely stays on a channel for more than two minutes. Even when/if he settles on a program, he likes to press the mute button – “Sakit telinga aku” – often during the best, very crucial parts. They hurt his ears, right.
   
   
2. My mom is next in line in the remote-holder hierarchy, because she has ‘regular programs’ she ‘has to watch’, although most of the time it’s actually the other way round: the television watching her dozing off.
   
   
3. They, local TV, not my parents, suck.
   

So, in short, again, I don’t watch local television. Kam does.

I did before, way back, when there was no other kind of television. I did too when I was in Boston, catching TV3’s Bulletin Utama, Majalah 3 etc. online on TM’s bluehyppo.com. RTM supposed to have a live stream as well, but it didn’t work. I suppose it works now.

So close, yet so far.

__________
PS: The Tokoh Anak Gemilang Malaysia award, which was shown concurrently by Astro and RTM, went to Datuk Onn Jaafar. Any Malaysian who doesn’t know who the guy was really need to look for their (children's) school history textbooks.

When I Read Newspapers

Why do our national service (NS) trainees keep dying? I saw this on Bernama:

September 02, 2007 11:42 AM

NS Trainee Dies

KUANTAN, Sept 2 (Bernama) -- A National Service trainee at the Cheneh Cemerlang camp in Kemaman died on the way to the Tengku Ampuan Afzan (HTAA) Hospital here Saturday night.

Mohd Rafi Ameer, 18, died at 10.30pm after having fever since last week, his sister, Jubaidah, said Sunday.

Jubaidah, 25, when met at the hospital, said her brother called her at their home in Bukit Rotan, Kuala Selangor, last Saturday, to inform her that he had fever and his leg was swollen for nearly week after he fell during training.

…

http://www.bernama.com/bernama/v3/news.php?id=282514

The rest of the article is just blah-blah-blah; you know the usual stuff. First, they’ll wait for some preliminary report, in this case the autopsy. Then, a committee will be formed to look into the matter. There may even be a promise thrown in for good measure that steps will be taken to ensure that the tragedy will not repeat in the future, but in the end when the news cool down everybody will just forget about it. Nothing will change.

We have the same script following some major road accident, building collapse, landslide, air crash etc.

The theme is apathy, indifference, for safety and the value of human life. It is not just indifference among the people in authority, but actually the society in general. That much is evident in the general disregard for traffic laws.

Compounding the indifference is lack of accountability. The proverbial buck simply never stops. I suppose ultimately we all just have to accept that everything is takdir – fate, which is just another way of saying “Shit happens”.

It is high time that we to start suing people.

__________
PS: Oh yes, I read almost exclusively mainstream, official press because I’m a sucker for propaganda.

PPS: Speaking of propaganda, who can beat the ultimate master of the craft – former Iraqi Information Minister Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf?
:-D