A dedication

I seem drawn, for some inexplicable reason to Tennyson's verses from his work Ulysses. This, I dedicate to everyone who worked tirelessly for their respective teams recently. I especially dedicate this to the people of MCA, Gerakan and MIC in the hope that they may persist in their endeavour; embittered and bloodied but, unbowed.

They need to reset their compass and begin anew. Cast off the old baggage and trappings. Bring in new heroes. The old soldiers must now accept that their time is over. Step aside to let the new heroes come into the fray.

Come, my friends, 
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world. 
Push off, and sitting well in order smite 
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds 
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths 
Of all the western stars, until I die. 
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down; 
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, 
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew. 
Though much is taken, much abides; and though 
We are not now that strength which in old days 
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are, 
One equal temper of heroic hearts, 
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will 
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. 

Selangor's Mentri Besar

It's a no-brainer that Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim should resume his position as the Mentri Besar of Selangor. He has managed the state with good conscience, industry and vision. His 5-year track record is clear for anyone to see.

But, politics has no brains.

I dare say that Selangor voters voted for Pakatan Rakyat candidates in large part because of the integrity and undisputed capabilities of Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim.

To, replace this man with any other person would be an action without brains.

Federal Cabinet: The best and the brightest

I had to borrow the title of David Halberstam's seminal book (1972) on the Vietnam War for this post. While Halberstam's title was intended to contrast negatively the excellent academic and corporate credentials of the U.S. Cabinet members who somehow lost their objectivity and led the U.S. in the miasma and morass of the Vietnam War, this post hopes to address a reverse scenario in the context of the new Federal Cabinet that BN will be forming.

Whether or, not, the MCA maintains its stand to reject Cabinet positions under the new Najib Administration, I hope that Najib will look beyond the BN component party leaders to form the new Cabinet. 

I hope Najib will use all resources available to him to seek and, persuade, capable people to assume Cabinet positions.

People like Koh Tsu Koon and Rais Yatim were ineffective in the previous Cabinet as were a few others.

Whatever brickbats that may have been thrown at him, the elevation of Idris Jala to a Cabinet position was quite an inspired decision. For better or, for worse, Idris Jala put in the type of effort that many Cabinet members didn't.

So, Najib should look beyond the pale of the BN component parties in an effort to seek out capable Malaysians to serve the country and narrow the rural-urban divide that seems to have formed as shown in the 2013 General Elections.

I say, make full use of the Senatorships, to get in the talent.

Don't just look at the paltry offerings in the larder.

The task at hand, if anything, is to continue to focus on the Economic Transformation Programme.

The capital market has responded positively to the certainty that a continued BN Administration offers. This is a very good re-start.

The concern remains about the debt levels of the Malaysian government. The fiscal deficit has to be pared down. This is a must.

The handouts must be reduced. There must be a better managed needs-based welfare programme that alleviates poverty and social challenges at a more target-specific level. No more carpet-bombing of money handouts, please.

While Malaysia's social safety nets are already quite good, it can be better.

MCA's proposal to reject all government posts

The MCA appears to have taken the position that its members who have government-appointed positions should resign in the wake of the 2013 General Election debacle.

With the greatest of respect, such a stand is childish and silly.

I am reminded of what Teh Kim Poo did after the 2008 General Election when he lost his State Assembly seat in Pandamaran, Selangor. He decided to "punish" in the manner described below-

MCA Klang division chairman Datuk Teh Kim Poo says he will write to the federal government to cancel grants totalling RM7.05 million for three new village projects in Pandamaran, in the Klang district, Selangor.

According to reports in the Chinese press today, he said he is doing this because he is fed up with the constant attacks from the Pakatan Rakyat (PR) state government and incessant criticisms and complaints directed at him by villagers whom he said are "ungrateful" for his help and service.

The vocal former Pandamaran assemblyman said if the residents remain unappreciative of his service, he would consider closing his service centre and quit politics.

Notwithstanding such an action, the man was back in 2013 as the BN Parliamentary candidate for Klang! 

Not wanting MCA representatives in the Federal Cabinet, State Excos and government-appointed positions is a silly position to take. 

Much as I wanted to resist it, I couldn't help but be reminded about this story in connection with likely intent of the MCA's current posture-

When the body was first made, all the parts wanted to be the boss.

The brain said, "since I control everything and do all the thinking, I should be the boss."

The feet said, "since I carry man where he wants to go and get him in position todo what the brain wants, then I should be the boss."

The hands said, "since I must do all the work and earn all the money to keep the rest of you going, I should be the boss."

And so it went with the eyes, the heart, the lungs, and all the other parts of 

the body, each giving the reason why they should be the boss.

Finally, the asshole spoke up and said it was going to be the boss.

All the other parts laughed and laughed at the idea of the asshole being the boss. The asshole got so angry that he blocked himself off and refused to function.

Soon the brain was feverish and could barely think, the feet felt like lead 

weights and was almost too weak to drag the body anywhere, the eyes grew bleary, and the hands hung useless at the sides. All pleaded with the brain to let the asshole be declared the boss. 

And so it happened; all the other parts did all the work and the asshole just 

bossed and passed out a lot of shit.

I implore the MCA not to go ahead with the plan to reject any offers of Federal Cabinet, State Excos and government-appointed positions.

It sends the wrong message to the community and, as I have said of Teh Kim Poo's action in the wake of 2008; such actions have a terrible habit of coming back to haunt you later on.

Whatever said and done, Malaysian voters did vote for your candidates. And, you may be in a sulky mood. But, your service and involvement is still needed.

So, if you'll pardon my French, don't act like an asshole.

MCA Redux: Malaysian Communities Association

At its present trajectory, it is a given that the Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA) will disappear into the footnotes of Malaysian history. In its current guise, the MCA is out of step with the evolution of Malaysia's democracy and politics.

In the wake of the 2008 General Elections, where the MCA had a dismal showing, we heard the MCA leaders eschew the opportunity to embrace and reach out to a wider Malaysian community. Instead, the MCA leaders said, the MCA cannot become a multi-racial party unless UMNO becomes multi-racial. If you care to do a check-back on my earlier blog posts under the label "MCA" (circa. 2008) you will find that I had urged the MCA to embrace the strong message from the electorate that it needed to reach out to the wider Malaysian polity beyond Chinese clan associations and chambers of commerce. This they did not do. The implications, as we have seen in the 2013 General Elections, is laid bare.

Chua Soi Lek's recent pronouncement in the aftermath of the 2013 General Elections, that Malaysia will see a two-race political system were the Malays are in government and the Chinese in opposition, would be hilarious if not for the danger such a myopic and superficial inference creates. Based on that statement alone, Chua Soi Lek should immediately resign as MCA President instead of "not seeking re-election".

If MCA members genuinely share Chua's views, then, the MCA is surely doomed.

Firstly, such a view reveals that there is zero analytical skills in the MCA. This probably explains why the MCA did not take heed of the message sent by the electorate in 2008.

Secondly, such a view shows that the MCA leadership is trapped within UMNO's race-based narrative scripted single-handedly by Dr Mahathir. It is a trap of MCA's own choosing, by the way. So, don't blame UMNO. UMNO merely led the MCA horse to the trough. It did not force the MCA horse to drink from the racialist pool of putrid water. 

There are two possible broad interpretations of the 2008 and 2013 General Election results for the MCA. They may not be mutually exclusive.

One, the Chinese Malaysians, together with most urban Malaysian voters, want to be represented by the best and brightest Malaysian politicians regardless of their race. Nurul Izzah, Rafizi Ramli, Khairy Jamaludin and Tony Pua are  some  high-profile examples. Saifudin Abdullah should be on this list too.

Two, Chinese Malaysians want to be represented by humble, modest and conscientious MCA leaders who dare to take on the difficult issues that are of major concern to urban voters. These are issues such as good governance, open tenders of government projects, crime-fighting, corruption, the environment, quality of  and access to education and fair play. They do not ever want to be embarrassed by VCDs and DVDs of MCA leaders in compromising positions or, singing karaoke songs.

On both scores, the MCA has failed. 

The slate of candidates offered by the MCA in 2013 were not properly promoted. They were ill-prepared to face the demanding electorate. Worse of all, they had no answers to the hard questions that the electorate was asking. Instead, the electorate was subjected to fear-mongering about the hudud or, bombarded with karaoke DVDs.

The MCA were not just bland, they appeared to be completely out of step with the electorate. That, surely, must be the greatest reason to indict the current MCA leadership. How could the MCA have no political strategy beyond the hudud?

There were so many oversized pink elephants in every room and tent and, dare I say, in every mammoth dinner hosted by MCA that the electorate was bewildered by MCA's sheer indolence and insularity. The colloquial Malaysian expression is, probably, syiok sendiri.

But, all is not lost. 

The MCA still has some life in it and some pretty damn good advantages.

First, it has lost and lots of money.

Second, it has lots and lots of party branches.

Third, it has lots and lots of members.

Fourth, it has lots of history and, therefore, pedigree.

Now, it just has to parlay those strengths with a change in content.

The starting point has to be some serious soul-searching on the matter of changing the "Chinese" in its "C" to "Communities". With this, will come the requisite repositioning its political strategy. 

The next step is to do some mental surgery to re-attach the cojones that it has put in deep freeze because its leaders over the past several decades has chosen patronage politics that involves getting projects for themselves and cronies.

This is the time for re-invention.

Some may say that, if you were to look at the history of the MCA, this party was always elitist and self-serving. It had its roots in Kuomintang sympathies and looked with concern to the issues and challenges that wracked post-imperial China. It, then, morphed into a political body that engaged Malayan concerns about citizenship for the Chinese community and the needs of the Chinese business community.

It may be said also that the needs of the Chinese community at the time were dealt with by clan associations and dialect associations working in a loose collaboration with the MCA. Tun Tan Cheng Lock was famously criticised for being illiterate in the Mandarin.

But, why should history shackle the MCA of the present? Just as modern corporations can transform from a small start in one industry into a corporate giant in another, so, too, can the MCA make that quantum leap from being Chinese-based to becoming Communities-based.

And, I'll let the MCA in one one secret.

You don't need UMNO's permission to do this.

Reconciliation

I like what Najib has stated in the BN Press Conference following SPR's announcement that BN had crossed the 112 seat majority barrier to be eligible to form the next Federal Government. He said that BN will look into a form of "national reconciliation".

To my mind, taken in proper context, "national reconciliation" should not be about bringing disparate ethnic groups together so much as BN addressing the issues that concern URBAN VOTERS. It just so happens that most urban voters are of Chinese ethnicity.

Framing "national reconciliation" efforts in the context of Malay, Chinese, Indian, Iban, Kadazan, etc may end up as an exercise in treating a misdiagnosed symptom.

The Malay voters in Pasir Mas and Shah Alam has shown that Perkasa and its views and positions has no place in Malaysian politics. This is something all Malaysians must sit up and take notice of. Let me repeat. Malay voters have rejected Ibrahim Ali and Zulkifli Nordin. This shows that moderate, sensitive and pragmatic politics and political leaders are encouraged in Malaysia by ALL Malaysian voters. 

This is also a message to political parties like the DAP whose followers can be very rude and insensitive that political issues must be better articulated.

The elephants in the room for URBAN VOTERS are issues such as corruption, cronyism, good governance, fair play and rising costs of living.

Phantom voters in EC rolls

I have never really thought very deeply about the allegations about phantom voters in Malaysia's electoral rolls. But, as it turns out, I have recently been informed by good friends who have lived overseas for quite some time due to career and work commitments (so this is first-hand) that their names have mysteriously been shown as having been registered in the Election Commission's electoral rolls.

Quite naturally, I was sceptical and I asked the one who has recently returned to Malaysia, a Malaysian of Indian descent, to give me his identity card number. I typed in the number at SPR's website.

Lo! And, behold! My friend's name popped up as a registered voter in Subang Jaya. What gives, EC?!!!

The other two, Malaysians with Chinese and Kayan genes, are registered as voters somewhere in Kuching, Sarawak and, they told me that, for all it's worth, they have lodged complaints to the Election Commission. 

I say, "for all it's worth" because Judge Vernon Ong has just thrown out Charles Santiago's complaint.

This is a serious concern.

I have not participated in any of the Bersih rallies... but, I am forced to acknowledge that Ambiga and the Bersih people weren't crying wolf. 

The electoral rolls need to be seriously reviewed and cleaned up. 

The shitty part is that I'm a voter in Charles Santiago's constituency in Klang. This means that if I vote for him, my vote would be negated by the phantoms that he has alleged, exists in the Klang voter rolls. 

If I vote against him phantoms would not negate my vote.

Hmmmm...... decisions, decisions.......

This and that

It's been a very bad week for people who had prepared for the end of the world. They have to pick up where they left off. And, they need to now clear all the canned food and preserved food from their pantry.

That aside, I mourn the passing of Lim Keng Yaik. Malaysia has lost another good man. He will be missed.

Which leaves me to raise this feeling in the pit of my considerable stomach about the state of our fluency in the English language and, worse, the quality of thought processes.

I have just skimmed through a piece written by an academic at one of our local universities who wrote ponderously (or so, she must have thought) on Montesquieu and the doctrine of the separation of powers. 

Her grammar and syntax kept falling apart. I find that to be quite forgivable and tolerable because I, too, have learnt to lower my expectations as my work life progresses. In such situations, I merely speed up my skim-reading, you know, like a hydofoil increasing its velocity in choppy waters so as to raise the hull further from the surface water...oh, I'm sure you get it.

What I found difficult to pardon is that the piece, being a written contribution to an august journal of professional practitioners and peers, did not stray very far from its encyclopaedic roots. There was, after nearly 10 pages of excursus into the wherewithal of Montesquieu's thesis and its influence on politico-legal thought on it, nothing that the piece had to offer by way of pushing the envelope of the proposition further or offering a comparison between the adoption of the doctrine in various constitutional jurisdictions.

As William Shakespeare (Julius Caesar (I, ii, 140-141)) wrote, "The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars, but in ourselves..."

I really shouldn't have even tried to read that piece.

B Ark candidates: Maths and Science in Malaysia

The Trends in Maths and Science Study 2011 (TIMSS 2011) has revealed that Malaysia's appalling academic showing in the field of Maths and Science is trending in the wrong direction.

This reminded me of a possible fate of Malaysians and the possible types of skill sets that Malaysians may end up being good at given this trend as indicated by the TIMSS 2011 survey.

The scenario may be played out as such-

“I mean, I couldn’t help noticing,” said Ford, also taking a sip, “the bodies. In the hold.”

“Bodies?” said the Captain in surprise.

Ford paused and thought to himself. Never take anything for granted, he thought. Could it be that the Captain doesn’t know he’s got fifteen million dead bodies on his ship?

The Captain was nodding cheerfully at him. He also appeared to be playing with a rubber duck.

Ford looked around. Number Two was staring at him in the mirror, but only for an instant: his eyes were constantly on the move. The first officer was just standing there holding the drinks tray and smiling benignly.

“Bodies?” said the Captain again.

Ford licked his lips.

“Yes,” he said, “All those dead telephone sanitizers and account executives, you know, down in the hold.”

The Captain stared at him. Suddenly he threw back his head and laughed.

“Oh they’re not dead,” he said, “Good Lord no, no they’re frozen. They’re going to be revived.”

Ford did something he very rarely did. He blinked.

Arthur seemed to come out of a trance.

“You mean you’ve got a hold full of frozen hairdressers?” he said.

“Oh yes,” said the Captain, “Millions of them. Hairdressers, tired TV producers, insurance salesmen, personnel officers, security guards, public relations executives, management consultants, you name them. We’re going to colonize another planet.”

Local Councils and Resource Allocation

One of my favourite past times is to makan angin by taking drives to the fringes of the urban centres. To me, this is where the real Malaysians live. It is where the real Malaysia exists.

The obvious thing that one notices when driving away from the city centres or town centres is that the roads and road shoulders get progressively ramshackle and unkempt.

Rubbish is strewn and heaped in untidy piles. Undergrowth is rampant and way too wild. Stray dogs forage openly.

It is not a pretty sight.

But, this is where many, many Malaysians live; in the fringes of urban centres.

Why aren't Local Councils allocating more resources to maintain these fringe areas?

It is obvious that fringe areas are less densely populated. It is clear that this is where the working class Malaysians live. It is noticeable that these are localities where automotive chop shops, recycling yards, light industrial activities have found their place.

In short, these fringe areas do not contribute as much assessment as the buildings and structures in the urban centres.

That said, Local Councils cannot discriminate against fringe areas. This is irresponsible.

I am quite convinced that if Local Councils allocate more resources to maintain street lighting, collect rubbish more frequently, clean up the illegal rubbish heaps, cut the undergrowth and used mechanised sweepers to sweep away debris and loose gravel from road shoulders, residents in these fringe areas will see that being civic-minded is beneficial. 

This will create a virtuous cycle.

Local Councils must stop the discrimination of fringe areas in favour of urban centres.

Legacy

I read with great interest the latest blog post by etheorist here. The blogger wrote about the fixation many of us have with the accumulation of wealth and went on, wistfully, to reflect on the implications of this wealth-fixation of ours. The blogger raised much food for thought (if we have time for that).

I also read, with sadness, the Obituary of Datuk Khoo Eng Choo. Datuk Khoo was the leader of PriceWaterhouseCoopers in the 1990s together with YM Raja Arshad.

I didn't know Datuk Khoo personally nor have I ever worked with him.

The anecdotal information that I have suggests that Datuk Khoo and his team built the old PWC from the foundation and legacy left by the late Jaafar Hussein who had moved on to helm the Malayan Banking group and, later, became the Bank Negara Governor.

Datuk Khoo and Raja Arshad and the team they had built PWC's reputation and sealed its dominance of the accounting profession in Malaysia. 

To acquire market leadership in any field, in any market jurisdiction, requires great skill, care, industry and foresight. By all accounts Datuk Khoo had these qualities in abundance.

As any great leader will attest, the path to success is littered with injured egos and perceived unfair treatment by team members who were found wanting. I am certain that Datuk Khoo who is said to have possessed Napoleonesque qualities has his fair share of detractors.

This should not cloud his legacy and the achievements of the team that he led at PWC in the 1990s.

I hope that those who worked beside him will not consign him and his work to ignominy. 

Where etheorist's blog post and the matter of Datuk Khoo's legacy merges in my mind is the issue of what types of goals and values that we should have and what we want our offspring and successors to embrace.

I wish to hazard a proposition that perhaps a life well lived should, ideally, leave a zero sum legacy where people will say that in our lifetime we did not leave the world worse off that when we first arrived.

I would hazard a corollary proposition that if we were to be excessively exuberant during our lifetime, that excessive exuberance led to an improvement to the world that we lived in.

For, if we left the world a worse off place than it was when we first arrived, we would have committed a crime, or, as the people of faith calls it, a sin.

So, picking up on etheorist's thread, our industriousness in wealth accumulation should lead us to acquire and enjoy a comfortable and reasonable luxurious life of happiness and when the time comes for us to depart, we should only leave behind enough for our children to receive a decent education and an adequate stipend for them to get started on their life's journey.

Anything exceeding that should be bequeathed for the betterment of the community.

Those, I believe, are reasonable goals and values for each of us. 

Tweet nonsense

To my great horror it appears that my twitter account has been hijacked. As such, I have decided to delete the twitter display in this blog.

It is a wake up call to realize just how vulnerable we can be in cyberspace.

There is hardly any difference between a cyber hijacking of a twitter account or any email account and being a victim of crime in the real world. The violation of the private space is equally outrageous and unacceptable.

Revert

I have been rather conscious about the usage and abusage of the word "revert" in the many emails and correspondence that I receive.

Someone pointed me to a very interesting piece on this very matter of the usage and abusage of the word "revert" in the New York Times written by Ben Zimmer. You can access the piece here.

I am profiting from Mr Zimmer's industry in ferreting out the background, context and usage of the word.

It appears that the word "revert" is understood in the English-speaking world to mean "to go back" or "to return to the former condition"...except in South Asia and parts of Southeast Asia.

In South Asia and parts of Southeast Asia, the word "revert" is taken to mean, "to reply". 

As with all things English, I prefer to rely on the Oxford Dictionary which defines the word "revert" to mean "return to (a previous state, practice, topic, etc.)" which is not quite the same as "to reply" izzit?

Getting the right people

Yesterday, I was part of a meeting to pitch an investment to one of Malaysia's large public institutional funds. The top honcho for the fund is a consummate professional, which explains why the fund has widely and consistently regarded as one of Malaysia's finest examples of a well-managed fund. 

The subject matter was a mere drop in the ocean in the context of the total fund size that this institutional fund had in its portfolio. Yet, the man was familiar with the features of the proposal. The dimension of his office was breathtakingly modest. The decor was equally modest and slightly more worn than I had imagined it would be. 

Yet,this man headed a humongous fund. This is what trust or "amanah" means. 

Malaysia is lucky to have men like him. I wish there were more men like him. 

If men like him had been put in charge of government-funded projects and many GLCs, there will be hardly any ripple of disquiet or discontent from any quarter in Malaysia. 

In fact, the publicly-listed companies within this fund's stable has been widely regarded as "blue chip" in the investment community - steady price and good earnings year-on-year. 

Malaysia needs more good men like him. Malaysia needs less sycophantic executive-types whose eye is NEVER on the project paper assumptions but ALWAYS on the facial expression of the political patron. 

My basic point is this - there are many, many good and capable people who are highly qualified, who possess the correct skill sets for the various challenging tasks facing Malaysian statutory bodies and GLCs. 

The reason for many good men and women being overlooked or bypassed is that they are too busy worrying about getting the projects, the assumptions, the numbers, the team and the coordination done right that they do not put enough time into "sucking up" or "ampu". 

The political patrons often read the wrong signals. The good executives are overlooked because their brows are furrowed, they are less charming, slow to say the platitudes, they drum their fingers and fidget too much (because they want to get away from the small talk and get back to their desk to meet critical deadlines). These are not the attributes that appeal to the political patron. 

What the political patron gets suckered into is the absolute 24/7 availability of the poseur who looks every inch like the Wall Street or City of London go-getter. It's a facade that the political patron cannot see past. 

The poseur wins the day almost every time because he or she invests so much time with "office politics" and spends hardly any time poring over reports and dealing with project issues. Political patrons are high maintenance. 

This is the conundrum that we face in Malaysia. It probably happens elsewhere too. 

But, I don't care about elsewhere. I care about Malaysia. 

That is why I am happy to have met with one of the best chief executives of a Malaysian public institutional fund yesterday. Malaysia needs more men like him.

Gong Xi Fa Cai

To everyone celebrating the Chinese Lunar Dragon Year, I wish you Gong Xi Fa Cai.

To everyone else, I wish you Happy Holiday.

Those of you who are driving long distance, please take care to get rested from time to time.

Malaysia: Headlines for the wrong reasons

Much as I hate to say it, Bloomberg columnist, William Pesek has made a pertinent point in his latest piece on Malaysia.

Malaysia has been hitting the international headlines for the wrong reasons for some time now.

This grates on me like an itch that is buried in the subcutaneous layer. It's bad and self-wounding.

Where good ideas come from

I'd like to think that my mind has sufficient complex creativity with sparks flying in the way that Steven Johnson's YouTube displays below. But, in mock humility, I should say that I'm not so sure my mind is this good.

What about your mind?

Happy 2012

Happy 2012 to everyone.

I know the Mayan calendar suggests that this may well be the last solar cycle for us.

That said, I suspect that in spite of such a profound prospect most of us will still soldier on to do the things that we need to do instead of just staring at the sky or watch endless repeats of the DVD of John Cusack racing toward an ark in the Himalayan range.

Happy 2012!

What is the Chinese language?

First of all, I wish everyone celebrating, a very Merry Christmas. And, to everyone else, Happy Holidays.

Being an illiterate, albeit an earnest inquirer, I found this piece in the Economist to be highly informative and interesting. In particular, the robust comments for the piece are very instructive.

I HAVE exercised Chinese commenters with a few posts that were seen as either simplistic or biased. So let me offer two competing visions of Chinese that help explain what the two sides disagree on. These are archetypes which few partisans may agree with every word of.  But they are the basic poles of thinking about Chinese, I think. I submit them for the good of commenters, who should debate them to shreds.

In brief, Chinese traditionalists believe-

1) Chinese is one language with dialects.

2) Chinese is best written in the character-based on the Hanzi system.

3) All Chinese read and share the same writing system, despite speaking in different ways.

Western linguists tend to respond-

1) Chinese is not a language but a family; the "dialects" are not dialects but languages.

2) Hanzi-based writing is unnecessarily difficult; the characters do not represent "ideas" but "morphemes" (small and combinable units of meaning, like the morphemes of any language). Pinyin(the standard Roman system) could just as easily be used for Chinese. Puns, wordplay and etymology might be sacrificed, but ease of use would be enhanced.

3) Modern Hanzi writing is basically Mandarin with the old characters in a form modified by the People's Republic. Everyone else (Cantonese speakers, say) must either write Mandarin or significantly alter the system to write their own "Chinese".

There are so many arguments packed into these two ideas that it's hard to start, much less finish, in a blog post.

PPSMI: Best PMR results in last four years

Now that we've got further proof here:

Best PMR results in last four years

WHAT WAS THE REASON GIVEN FOR REVERSING PPSMI?

WHAT?