Moving Earth

This isn’t news anymore but heck, we had an EARTHQUAKE on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning! First ever experience of an earthquake in my entire recorded history of my life!

I slept just about 20 minutes before the event and at around 0100 hours, it happened. My bed shook, my cupboard door flung open and my stuff started rattling for about 10 seconds. Took me 5 to realise that my bed was shaking notoriously loud.

Got out from the bed into the cold, grabbed my dressing gown and went out of my room to see who else in the house felt it. Surprisingly, NO ONE got up. It was quiet, all their lights were off and an awkward silence floated through the air. Got back into my room, looked out of the window and saw neighbours coming out of their houses. That, at the very least, confirmed that I wasn’t crazy.

First thought in my head, how could this possibly be an earthquake? We are not on a fault line, not even close to any. Pondered about it in my bed for about an hour and finally got to sleep at around 2 in the morning.

Got up the next morning to find out that the earthquake epicentre was just 70km from Sheffield in Lincolnshire measuring 5.3 on the Richter scale.

I guess this is a once in a lifetime thing for a person that came from a seismically stable country. I wouldn’t want to be in a place where some super gigantic one hits.

Competitiveness

Was reading this article on The Star website regarding our beloved Prime Minister giving a speech telling people not to compare Malaysia with Singapore.

 The Star

18 February 2008

Pak Lah: Don’t compare Malaysia with Singapore

PENANG: Do not compare Singapore’s economy with that of Malaysia’s.

It is like comparing “first-class grapes (Singapore) with first-class apples (Malaysia),” Prime Minster Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said when addressing the Chinese community at the Penang Chinese Town Hall (PCTH) dialogue session yesterday.

“We are a population of over 20 million and we rank eighth in the world in terms of our competitiveness.

“This is not the Government’s figure and I am not telling you lies. This statistic is from an international survey.

“If I quote statistics from our own surveys, you will not believe us. Everywhere I go, the business community tells me that Malaysia is doing very well. These people are smart. You cannot fool them because they are well-read,” he said, adding that the Government had no reason to lie.

“Please trust us – we are your government. If you look at the economy, we are doing well. That is a fact proven by figures. But people still claim otherwise because of increasing prices. This is a very simplistic way of analysing the economy.

“Nobody is happy to see prices rising but this is out of our control. The question is not how to bring down prices but how to help the rakyat cope.

“Every country in the world is faced with rising oil prices except maybe Brunei but you cannot compare. The RM40bil oil subsidy we give out can be used to build better schools, roads, hospitals and infrastructure but we don’t want to burden the people,” he said, adding that education and medical treatment was also heavily subsidised by the Government.

“We subsidise even water and electricity, yet people are angry when they hear the word ‘toll’. We try to subsidise as much as possible but we still need to impose toll charges because we need to build roads,” he said before thanking the Chinese community for contributing to the country’s economy.

“The private sector is dominated by the Chinese and I want to say a big ‘thank you’ to the community for creating so many job opportunities,” he said.

1. If we don’t compare ourselves with someone better, how are we to improve ourselves?
2. We rank 8th in competitiveness in the world as claimed but according to the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report released last year, Malaysia ranks 21st in both Global and Business Competitiveness from 19th the previous year. (Where did he get this ambiguous and inaccurate information from? There’s no where else other than the World Economic Forum’s report to follow)
3. Read on the report further and you’ll find out that the top 2 most problematic factors in Malaysia are inefficient government bureaucracy and corruption. Oh dear, oh dear!
4. Yes, yes. You would argue that Malaysia is 21st out of 131 economics surveyed, that’s good. That isn’t my point, my point is where on Earth are we ranked 8th?

Hmmm. *ponders*

Probably I should go look at some anonymous global competitiveness ranking only approved by Malaysia and I might just find the answer there.

Snow!

Woohoo!

Snow snow snow! It hailed yesterday, it snowed a little yesterday, it sleeted too much yesterday but it snowed “properly” in the middle of the night last night!

Finally, my dream if drawing my curtains and looking out into the white view of snow on cars, road, grass, everything came true! Well, I know I should just shut up and get to the pictures right? LOL

I woke up early today, 7.30 am. Sadly, I wasn’t the first to “break the snow”. Oh well, at least I was one of the first!

This picture is the playground just next to my house.

Now these are mine!

Watching the sunrise in the distant in snow with freezing hands.

Just a chair that I used to sit on when I’m in the playground.

This picture is a view of Weston Park, about 7 minutes away.

Poor grass. Must be freezing to death like my hands!

Just a rough idea how deep the snow was.

Oohh!! Stationary “cascading” snow! Haha!

And finally, to end this short picture-filled post on this below freezing Saturday morning, a view of the hills in distant and view of the Ski Village. Doubt anyone can recognize the village though. (hint: it’s on the hill! DUH!)

Have a nice day!