What The Toot!

WARNING: This post may induce uncontrollable urge to write angry emails and to “flame” me.
WARNING: This post may also be controversial. If you are uncomfortable, DO NOT continue reading.

I was reading the news again, when I came across this and this. While most people will feel love and warmth when they read the news, I on the other hand, think otherwise.

Triplets bring joy and hardship

The first report was dated 18th July. It brings to the attention a couple with five children, including a triplets, and talks about how hard life is going to be now that they have the new triplets.

To the aid of the triplets' parents

The second report is dated today, and it talks about the people feeling good about themselves donating to this couple, and how are different people trying to help them differently. Heck, another Chinese Daily has also reported that three Australians, Melbournians to be exact has decided to support the expenses of the triplets by wiring at least RM350 into the account of the father monthly. They will also encourage their friends and family to donate when they are back in Melbourne.

While I will not dwell with the issue of the age difference between the man and wife, which really is a non-issue here, I really have to comment on their financial planning. A family of four earning a combined household income of RM1500 really has NO BUSINESS reproducing. In fact, I am not even sure the monthly income will be enough to sustain the two older kids through primary, secondary and even tertiary education. We also have to consider that the father is of “retirement age”. How long can he keep up with the same income? How can he cope with rising living expenses?

Haven’t the family heard about proper financial planning, proper family planning, and contraception? They can have all the bodily pleasure they want, but considering their income, they really should not be trying for any more children. People will refute me by saying it’s their right to reproduce, and I will agree completely. However, it’s also their rights and responsibility to make sure they have the income to support any addition to the family.

And what’s with the amount of charity and donation the couple is receiving? What kind of message are we sending here - that if you are poor you can have all the kids you want and people will take care of them for you? If the parents have no means of raising the children, then they should let them go, and let them be adopted. How can one be sure that they will not spend all the donations and aids in one go? When should the aid stop? In fact, what if the aid stops coming suddenly - what next?

That said, I hope the government start thinking seriously about providing family planning session to the people, particularly towards families who are prone to reproduce excessively without considering their financial situation. One of the reasons of poverty is the lack of financial and family planning. Education is the answer to poverty - NOT aid.

The importance of spell-checking and double-checking one’s work cannot be stressed any further. Most bloggers (including me) do not normally spell-check their post, but in fact, they should. An article, and the mistakes in the article says a lot about the author. I swear I shall spell check and double check my work, including this blog, in the future.

It’s one thing for bloggers and amateurs to make mistake, it’s another thing when formal news source do the same. I was reading news online, when I came across the following:

Australian Prime Minister is Ruud!

In one heading, there are two mistakes: “Ruud” and “Bilaterial”. While “bilaterial” has been corrected, as of today, no one has bothered to correct “Ruud” yet. The post still can be found here. That’s extremely “Ruud” of TheMalaysianInsider.com to misspell the last name of a Prime Minister from another country. That’s all fine, until I scroll down to the bottom of the news and read the news source - BERNAMA.

Non-Malaysian might not know this, but BERNAMA, short for Berita Nasional Malaysia, literally Malaysian National News, is the Malaysian National News Agency. Immediately, I search for “Ruud” on the website, and I swear I could not have made this up, this is what I see:

Ruud's visit again

As of today, the news complete with the mistake can still be read. Since the news from The Malaysian Insider is sourced from Bernama, it’s mildly acceptable for them to make the mistake, but it doesn’t exempt them from spell checking their articles, especially with a huge ass heading of “Ruud”.

BERNAMA’s mistake, is another thing. It’s the Malaysian National News Agency, man! If they can make such simple mistake, what about the average Malaysian?

Now I know why our national English level suck ass. Maybe Australia should consider terminating the “bilaterial” ties with Malaysia.

We here at WhatTheToot! seldom (read: almost never) praise anyone. Heck, the whole point of this website is to record the Toot stuff in the world, and to record the rants and displeasure that we have.

This post, however, is an exception. Today I am going to praise two organisation. The first being the State Secretariat Office of Penang. A few days ago, I saw another quotation which interest me. It seeks out company providing the software subscription for Lotus Note, a proprietary software. I am a self-proclaimed Open Source supporter and enthusiast, and when I saw that, I wrote an email to the State Secretariat Office:

To whom it may concern,

Hi. Firstly I applaud the Penang State Secretariat Office for the well-designed website. I have been looking at websites of different departments and agencies of Penang state and it appears to me that Penang State Secretariat Office website is one of the, if not, the best designed and user friendly website.

I also express my sincere gratitude towards the Office for your role in keeping the various departments and agencies under the responsibility of the Office functioning at its best.

I have been monitoring the tenders and quotations listed on the Penang State Portal (website) and I have recently come across the quotation aforementioned (PTMKN/2008/SH2). Specifically, it’s about the supply of Software Subscription of Lotus Notes to this Office.

I plead with you to reverse this decision. If anything, the state should move away from proprietary software and embrace open source culture. The obvious benefit would be cost, since one would not be tied to licensing cost. Next, surely the state doesn’t want to be “lock-in” to a specific software of a specific vendor.

The Malaysian Administrative Modernisation and Management Planning Unit (MAMPU) has approve and  encourage the use of Open Source Software in public sector through the Open Source Competency Centre (OSCC). Sadly, while other states like Malacca seems to be proceeding and embracing the usage of open source software in public software very well, Penang state seems to be lagging behind.

Thus, I hope you would reconsider the quotation, and modernise the public service in Penang by the use of open source software. I am sure the licensing cost and software subscription could be better spend in other development of Penang state.

Lastly, I hope that this email will be read and I humbly await your reply. Your earliest response is very much appreciated. Thank you very much.

For more information, please see the OSCC website:
http://www.oscc.org.my/

Within 24 hours, Abdul Hamid Md Noor, the Information Technology Officer from the State Information Technology and Communication Office replied my email:

Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us and we appreciate your comments on the open source software.

For your information, the State offices are currently using Lotus Notes as our collaboration tools and maximizing the usage on the same platform for our workflow and knowledge base or document base applications. Thus it’s quite abrupt at this point of time for us to reverse this decision.

However, I would like to inform you that we also adhere to MAMPU guidelines on the usage of open source software as our premier choice for any new ICT projects. FYI, most of our applications run on open source software, for example you can see that our State Portal & SUK Office portal are on open source.

That is the kind of speed in replying email I am seeking. You do not need two weeks to reply an email. Another person I would like to praise is Syed Yusof Ibrahim who is in charge of the Corporate Services of RapidPenang. I have been emailing him back and forth a lot. Typically, his reply would come in less than 24 hours, more often in the range of 5 hours.

That is the kind of efficiency I am looking for. In this modern world, you don’t actually need official, material form that comes in snail mail. Using email save cost and time. And yet, our assemblymen doesn’t seem to understand this.

I still haven’t received any reply from any of the assemblyperson other than the ones mentioned in other post. It’s been a month. That’s their efficiency. Maybe they should learn a thing or two from the public sector itself.

This shall be the last part of the experiment. We have seen the good and the bad. Now, the ugly.

Honorary Mr. Ong Khan Lee (PKR) from N24 Kebun Bunga replied to my email on May 24. I present to you the verbatim (that means word-for-word) reply from him:

Personally I m not aware of the price and tender but what I know so far that each of us will be given a laptop and printer and this was approved by the previous government!

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device via Vodafone-Celcom Mobile.

Yea, Mr. Ong Khan Lee. Personally I am not aware of the price too. If I did, I wouldn’t have asked you. And if I asked that means I hope you could find out for me, you know, since you’re an assemblyman and all and you supposedly have more power than I do.

I don’t know if the last line was automatically generated from his BlackBerry® or what. I presume it is.

What surprised me more was the use of the punctuation - the exclamation mark (!) at the end of his email. When I first received it, I do not know how to interpret it. I asked my brother and he said it was of excitement. I see it as anger.

Maybe my emails has come as an annoyance to him and he decided to say “Piss off” with the exclamation mark. I still do not know. As if that’s not enough, two days later on 27 May he sent me another email, saying this:

!

That’s all. If you don’t believe me, have a look:

Yea, he seems pretty pissed to me. A screenshot from my Gmail.

Well, I have no idea whatsoever what he was trying to present to me. Maybe it was a typing mistake or something. Or maybe even the BlackBerry® is angry with my email and decided to say piss off to me one more time.

Well, the real reason for it? We will never know. That’s another mystery of the universe.

Well, we know that 57.5% of state assemblyperson in Penang publish their email address online, and we also know that only 30.4% of that bothered to reply. We have also seen those emails from assemblymen who apparently forgot to reply my email. Now I have to give credit where credit is due and praise some assemblymen for their reply, with some quality. Not just some oh-I-don’t-know-why-don’t-you-check-the-state-treasury-office.

Honorary Mr. Ng Wei Aik (DAP) from N28 Komtar wrote this to me on May 25. He was the first to notify me of the status of the tender (ongoing) and thus the first who gave satisfactory reply. However, his tone in the email could have been better.:

The tender process is still on going. Anyone can bid the tender provided the company offer the lowest price. All these will be decided by a tender committee, which the government will not interfere its decision making. If you are interested, then you can bid for the tender.

Non of us can give you the answer on the status of tender because we are not involved in the tender committee. However, we will ensure the whole process is complying with the CAT - Competency, Accountability and Transparency principles.

Ng Wei Aik

Political Secretary to Penang Chief Minister

State Assemblyman for Komtar

Credits to him for publishing his mobile phone number in his reply, as well as 3 blogs and 1 alternate email to contact him. He also didn’t call himself a Y.B. (Honorary). Good Job!

Honorary Mr. Wong Hon Wai (DAP) from N33 Air Itam replied on May 26. His reply was swift - the first saying he will check it out, and the second letting me know of the status of the tender:

Dear (My Name),
1. As of now, No company has been awarded for the tender.

2. You are invited to observe the Dewan Negeri proceeding which will be held sometime in July.

Regards,
Wong Hon Wai

Again, professional-looking, formal and simple. Just what an email ought to be, especially from an assemblyman. Oh hey, no Y.B. too.

Honorary Mr. Chow Kon Yeow (DAP) from N26 Padang Kota replied on June 2. His reply came late, as I received it after the arbitrary two-week limit I set for them to reply the email. I figure two weeks is enough to find out about the status of the tender, and write a reply to me. Nevertheless, he took the liberty and the effort to write to me. He’s what he wrote:

Dear Sir,
The State Financial Office is still trying to source for the notebooks and printers with the required specs at the most reasonable price. TQ.

Simple, acceptable, but I don’t like using TQ as “Thank You.” That is just my perspective though. No calling oneself Y.B. too.

It just came to me that those who gave satisfactory reply didn’t address themselves as Y.B. That’s a good thing.

No toot material in this post, but I just have to do it to give credits to the 3 assemblymen. Next up, last reply from an assemblyman. Good stuff.