Kill Shot ...by Vince Flynn

The reading bug hasn't quite left yet. This is another book that sits on the New York Bestseller's List. Into the world of spies, of men turned into killing machines, treachery and loyalty in ine breath and patriotism it brought me. It's a book filled with action, to the very end.

The main character, Mitch Rapp is trained to kill with extreme efficiency. And he is very good at what he does, so good that the CIA lets him operate on his own, without a supporting team, which is supposed to be against protocol anf caused quite a few envious undercurrents. He is sent out into the field and is ruthlessly efficient at what he does. He has a list of scumbags which he is supposed to delete from life. A trail of bodies is left all over Europe, terrorists whose deaths would not really be missed, striking fear in those on the other side.

In a supposedly routine mission in France, something goes wrong. Unexpected assassins showed up at his kill zone and 9 bodies are left behind, one of them, his target - the Libyan Oil Minister which he disposed. Mitch barely gets away with is life. He is shot at the shoulder. And so began his quest to find out the people who put the price on his head.

The novel is a page turner all the way to the end. The plot is simple enough to follow. One can more or less tell the good guys from bad. There is a little love interest in the midst as well. Unknown too him, by being too good at what he does is also an occupational hazard. The narcissistic CIA guy behind his problem is also a traitor. Even within a same spy agency, its heads have different ideas about doing business and they can be corrupted, by money as well as power. The web of entanglement goes high up into the corridors of 2 other foreign spy agencies.

Good triumph in the end, however, after more lives were laid to waste. Good guys live and bad guys die. Funny too how such books can make one root for killers. I guess deep down in most of us, we basically don't really mind the bad guys being nicked from the face for this world. Managed to squeak this in at number 6 for the year before the month comes to an end.

Also, I read up a little bit more on the author and novel after I finished the book. Yay! There are other Mitch Rapp novels. So if I want to get a dose of this kind of action, there are a few more books like this out there.

 

And the Idiot is....?

More than 20 years ago, I did my teaching practical in a well-known school in Seremban, SMK Chan Wa. I only attended one meeting during my teaching practical and the meeting lasted only 15 minutes. I was told by the teachers that's how long their meetings usually lasted. Apparently, the Principal felt that short briefings would suffice. He must have felt his teachers were intelligent enough and also trusted them. Short meetings are a rarity these days. We have such phrases... pegang mike, syok sendiri.

These days I think, we have way too many meetings and long ones too. And they are an insult to our intelligence. Matters which can be addressed in minutes take hours. A lot of immaterial ramblings take place. Just do some simple Math and the hours which are wasted are quite staggering. Add that to the added unquantifiable factors such as stress, physical tiredness, frustrations, indignance, etc, etc... we would have lost out not only the hours but a lot of goodwill.

Next the teachers' timetables. In the old days, the Senior Assistant 1 would be the one responsible in arranging the timetable. These days many pass that responsibility to an IT literate teacher. After more than 10 years of extensive IT usage in schools, we still have many unteachable administrators who claim to be IT incapacitated but competent enough to FaceBook or use a smart phone. I think if they feel they are dinosaurs in this age of computers, they should be made extinct in admin. As a result of their unteachability, timetables these days also imply our idiocy. In some schools, teachers teach non-stop for 2 1/2 hours. Teaching is not like any office job where you can at least go on. Productivity falls over time without breaks. Usually, after 80 minutes one would be bushed and would require a breather... So to be in classes for such a long stretch would burn a teacher...

Computer softwares do the timetable. With such softwares it's only a matter of keying in the data and timetables would be generated. Of course, there are certain parameters which the operator should key in as well. There seems to be a lot of feigned or real ignorance in this process, though. I always believe that computers can't be idiots. It is whatever that is churned out that reflects the idiocy of the operator.
Recently, I was given a timetable with 4 periods in one stretch! Earlier, a friend had complained on her FB her 2 hour plus marathon classes for a few days a week. In my case, after some teachers complained it was rectified the next day. An oversight, yet again a reflection of the apathy and also of abuse in blocking specific blocks of time for the operators of the software. It is often not uncommon to find the timetable teacher and those close to him with very agreeable timetables.

To ensure that the timetables generated are good, the final process would involve one of the administrators checking it. The fact that such timetables where 2 or 3 classes are stuck together like Siamese twins is also an indicator that many of our administrators are inept or just plain lazy. I think it is safe to assume that signatures are penned without so much of a glance at the timetables. Frustration levels build up, teachers get worn out.... we have very few leaders who will go out into the trenches with us these days.

Distribution of classes should also be 'fair'. But what constitutes fair? When I was a student, good classes usually get the 'good' teachers. Face it, there are good apples and bad apples. These days, good and bad apples are all considered good apples. Anyway, the system is rife with abuses now. Picture the monkey tree... any monkey above will continue to give shit to the monkeys below. The crap unloading is basically like a train out of control these days... made worse by our very own apartheid-like policies. Double standards can never be good for a society in the long run. And the rot in our education system is a result of such double standards.

Last year was a year of 1Malaysia Netbook. Free computers for those with household income of less thn 3K. There were mutterings among students. Apparently teachers' children in my work place were also given. And one of those teachers had recently been given a promotion too. I wonder if indeed it's true her kid had received the Netbook, does it mean that somebody falsified information when filling in the forms? Cos it is unlikely that her household income is less than the stipulated minimum. And the fact that the admin close their eyes to it. For not having integrity, you get rewarded too! How's that?

My generation is a generation grown up on "Gua tolong lu, lu tolong gua.' And if anyone dares confront them, they'd do a 'Jessie Ooi aka Ms Tow Truck' on you and throw you a how-dare-you and then go on a rant about their rights and privileges which they claim is enshrined in the Constitution.... which if true means that we have a Constitution that promotes keadilan with caveats.... only if it suits them. This is what happens when we put people with questionable level of integrity and and a check and balance mechanism that is skewed. One only has to look at what one political party goons behave to see how the politicians in power reek everything that is questionable.

Basically, ours is a system that has been built on skewed moral values coated by this veneer of religion.... to the point that the judicial dares not cite a shoe throwing imam for contempt. LOL! It was only made public after uproars in the media that the judicial lodged a police report over the incident. But I am sure the are juicy stories behind this lack of action.... could be a case of conscience being pricked since this imam is one frustrated fler for some reasons....

So, who are the idiots? Looks like it's us who choose to remain silent or continue to stand by and watch it all unfold....

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks ...by Rebecca Skloot

Now this is one interesting book! And it's non-fiction. The oldest human cell line and immortality for the unsuspecting woman whose cells have lived on way after her mortal body has returned to the earth. A cell line is basically a line created from one set of cells. They grow it in the labs. Before this particulr cell line it had not been possible to culture human cells in the lab.

I learned a lot reading this one. Tremendous fun too. HeLa cells made it possible to propagate the polio virus, which made the development of its vaccine possible. Like many in my generation, I got my polio shots. Now I learn that I should be grateful to her cell line. It also was responsible for the discovery of the role telomerase in the degradation of cells and the discovery of HPV vaccines. Many have won Nobel Prizes and other research awards on account of this cell line. But it's prevalence and virility have also caused contamination of cultures running up millions in losses.

And where did the cells come from? From Henrietta Lacks, died at 31, mother of 5, in Baltimore, Maryland, against the the backdrop of racial America. She was black, obviously. Before she died of cervical cancer, doctors At John Hopkins managed to get a sample of her cancer cells. It's also a story of human ingenuity too, where pioneers like Dr. George Gey built their own labs, as in literally with their own hands and spent their own money building them. Hers were the first human cells which could grow in cultures - it achieved immortality in the labs. So Henrietta's renegade cells lived on even long after those of her generation with normal cells expired. This is an interesting site about her and her famous cell line.

There was one chapter in the book where Rebecca (the author) brought Deborah and Zakariyya (Henrietta's children who were still babies when she died) to John Hopkins to see their mother's cells. When Dr. Christoph Lengauer invited them to look at the cells under the microscope, Zakariyya asked this question, "If those our mother's cells," he said, "how come they ain't black even though she was black?" And the doctor replied that cells don't have colour under the microscope. They're clear till we put color on them with a dye.

That's what racism is all about. We colour people with our colours. Except that in life, those colours are represented by everything created in our minds. But under the different colour skin that each of us have are the same things and those things will all meet the same end once the telomerase lines run out.
The writer brings us into and through the lives of Henrietta's family. She also brings the reader into a world where human tissues, antibodies, actually just about everything related to us has price tags - opportunities translated to not just cures but also dollars and cents. And it's also a book which touches, even though subtly, that the poor, the underprivileged usually turns to faith because there is nothing else they can turn to. It also highlights the ignorant practices - marriage within the same family and the promiscuity of that generation. Henrietta married her first cousin and he was a womanizer who brought back syphilis and gonorrhea to her. Her children have hearing problems and one was committed to an asylum where she died.

Reading about this makes biology come to life. And it's a pity that such books will not make it to the reading list of many of our children because of the lack of their English. Such books inspire and spark imaginations. If it's firing up the young minds to take up the Sciences, then we should put books such as this on the must read book list for them, not some books that require little or no imagination like the ones you find in the literature list in our secondary schools now.

Definitely a good read. I was glued. Finished it in one and a half day... number 5 for the year! Actually, reading is about the only thing that I can do when I have to sit with my gal while she does her school work... school tests are coming soon, hence the reading frenzy too. 8) Cos that's all I can do in between explanations...

Iceberg ...by Clive Cussler

A novel can help us de-stress. Pick up a book where the good guys win in the end will put you in a better mood. And that's what I did. In the Dirk Pitt series, you have a all-round hero; suave, intelligent, brave, quick and seemingly invincible.

A yacht is spotted frozen on an iceberg and that sends Dirk onto another swashbuckling adventure, and there was one scene where he actually went swashbuckling; with dressed up pirates and their cutlasses. From an iceberg in the frigid Atlantic north to an island of geysers and aurora borealis, Iceland and even Disneyland, the good guys went on a chase to right a wrong. This novel brings us into a world of conspiracy and manouverings; where the wealthy think they own the world. They justify their ruthlessness by making the excuse that it's a necessary sacrifice for the greater good of mankind. Come to think of it, this actually is what we see and experience in real life too. Everything can be turned into an excuse.

Reading is fun cos the author gets to dictate the story line and you get to choose what type of story you want to read. Anyway, in this kind of novel, everything that is birthed in evil, the sins of the past eventually catches up. Good guys triumph in the end. Now wouldn't it be nice to see our cows unscandalised, our health taken care properly and how environment freed from the scourge of rare earth byproducts? Or that the denuded forests become forests again so that her natives can have their homes restored, or the so many leakages plugged so that our cost of living does not keep spiraling upwards. If only life is as simple to dictate like a novel.... But this is the real world. In the real world, bad guys do get away. They also become larger than life... on this earth. They wield influence with impunity. They grab, take, plunder, seize and do anything they fancy because they can, and they know it. Empires rise... and they fall. One way or the other, the fall usually has something to do with greed.

Anyway, the book is a good way to escape momentarily into a world good triumph over evil in the end, where the good rises from a great deal of bruising to deal the final blow to an evil plot. The world is safe once more. 8) The hero is magnanimous in the end. Good guy with a great heart. And oh ya! He gets to go back into the arms a great gal too. LOL! Book 4 but though the heart was momentarily lifted, the eyes took a 'beating' from staring too long at the screen. Still, I'd say this is an enjoyable read...

 

The Amazing New Age Media

I think most of the young people won't think twice about googling for info. 7 or 8 years ago Google became a verb and the rest is the present. Need to find a recipe? Google it! Want to find out more about a disease? Yup! Google it! I even use Google to learn Mandarin. Need to find out the meaning of a word, phrase... Yup again! Google translate it! That's just the learning and knowing part! You can locate and pinpoint as well. But of course, all this can be quite scary. Between Google and Apple, they own almost everything else that makes this possible.

What I find even more amazing is the way things can go viral in a short time. The digital media has a tendency to keep things alive in a WYS format. You get to see things in ways not imagined before. CSL vs LGE debate... Never before has a debate gone so viral and with a constant barrage of commentaries, pictures and videos to add. And because of these viral ability, one ambitious-trying-to-please her political master probably never imagined finding fame in such a short time. Ms Tow Truck! LOL! I keep think of Mater in Cars! 10 years ago, only those in the hall would have seen her performance. Today, everyone who wants to see needs only a few clicks, at will. Amazing!

And the influx of news... Amazing speed they are delivered too. 1Care? It would have been bulldozed through successfully before this age of New Media. Then Bayan Mutiara land deal. Who could have imagined that the CM's office would castigate his accusers so quickly.

It would have taken ages or perhaps never for news that the former Chief Justice is now into business and just landed the contract to build a highway. Being senior appointees in the corridors of power is very lucrative, apparently. Allegations after allegations have been thrown by sources from inside and outside the country. Our very own Cowgate and even Lynas... Once upon a time, the gateway to all these information was held by only ONE. These days, the Old Media is still controlled but again and again as it has been shown, the old media might find itself facing obscurity. Twitter, FaceBook, Google, YouTube, news aggregator... the list is unending. They give the reader an other side of the coin view. The study of mass media has indeed gotten blown way out of its original size. New Age Media!! I think it's kinda cool at the moment. It's like a second Age of / Renaissance. When Gutenberg invented the printing press, he enabled the folks back then to read the Bible for themselves. That sort of exposed the sham the clergy were and it freed the people from the shackles of those who used religion to enslave the majority. This New Age media is like that printing press... Now to see whether it will herald a new Age of Reformafion.

This New Media seems to be providing a level playing ground in a different way. It's providing fodder for social uprising in a manner which defies whatever that we've studied in history. It would be interesting to compare the Arab Spring of 2011 and the Bolshevik Revolution of 1905. The manner that information has been able to get to the people.... the manner how vivid graphics are shared worldwide.

New Media... I wonder too whether it could be used to bring about changes in many of our institutions which fallen to rot of mediocrity brought about by incompetence. My little mind has gone overdrive thinking about possibilities.... LOL!

 

Sing You Home ...by Jodi Picoult

Been some time since my last Jodi Picoult. This is another book that made the bestsellers' list.

In the beginning of the novel, Zoe and Max are trying to have their own baby. They are unable to have kids even though they have been married 9 years. Both have fertility problems. So, 5 years into their marriage, they try IVF. And 5 years down the road, she's on the 5th cycle of treatment, after 2 miscarriages. Her clock is ticking. They are almost broke after so many tries. And then at 28 weeks, she lost the baby. Both are devastated. Something goes out.

Everything goes downhill after that. Zoe wants to try again. Max cannot go through it. They drift apart, or rather he runs away. He goes back to the bottle and files for a divorce. Then, Max finds religion. Zoe finds Vanessa. From straight to gay. Zoe 'marries' Vanessa and they want to have their own child. Zoe remembers that there are still 3 more frozen embryos. But to use it, she has to get Max to release them since they are his too. And that's when things got ugly. Max's church believes it's wrong because the pre-born children will be growing up in sin. A court case; digging up dark secrets, opening of closets long locked to be forgotten... and the dark and ugly of what all of us are capable of, especially under the guise of religion, how ugly religious people can be. The more you claim to be godly, the more of the a voice of moral authority you feel you are entitled to be.

Picked up the book because it's a Picoult book. But after a couple of pages, actually thought of not continuing because the story evolved around an issue which I'm uncomfortable with.... being gay. Being gay is an abberration from the norm and abomination in the eyes of faith. Yet as I read, I found it to be rather humbling too because often times we forget that gays are people too.

Being gay I guess finally also boils down to a need(s) being met; a soul mate, a friend. It's not just about a deviant sexual orientation. Deep down everyone is this need to be loved and accepted. Everyone of us wants someone with whom we can share our life, someone who knows what we like or will do, without being told or asked. One can easily identify with Zoe as she goes through the most difficult time of her life and finally finding that someone fills that need, just that it's Vanessa. It's easy to see why people make their choices...

As Max and Zoe go through their legal battle, Max's church throws their weight hehind him. And that's where the ugly appears. People hide behind institutionalised religion. People use institutionalise religion for legitimacy. And it's easy to see why people turn away from religion once you can think for yourself... . Faith which is supposed to be the face of compassion and love is often more judgmental and harsh in its persecution of the very peope they are supposed to engage and show love. We become the hypocrites instead of givers of compassion.

This is a book that made me think quite a bit more than usual. Putting ourselves in the opposite pair of shoes is not something many of us are willing to do. Many of us prefer to hide behind this veneer of religious laws so that we can dictate the kind if moral grounds that the rest should tread. And sometimes being gay is not just about having a deviant sexual orientation. It's also about gravitating towards other needs met... It's a product of love being a verb and not just a feeling. Today's world is also an increasingly lonely one despite having so much more....

Coming in at number 3... I thought the reading bug had been squashed by eyes that tire more easily these days and also other pressing demands. It's nice to know that a good book can still keep me riveted.

 

Interesting Insights... Jeremy Lin

I've been seeing lots of posts about him on FB and on so this morning, while waiting for my gal to get ready, I listened to this. From an upcoming Asian American basketball player....

It's not him being a devout Christian that caught my interest here. It's how the people in his life impacted him. First, his family; his brothers who loved basketball too and played with him. Next was his coach who took him under his wings, be his mentor and his best friend (an opportunity, he said, which his brothers never had) and for 6 years gave him that sort of attention, polishing, training which enabled him to hit a higher note with his game. And then a coach which Harvard hired, after his freshman year, a man which revamped the coaching system there, and it enabled their basketball team to start to shine.

This guy has the humility to understand that human might alone is not enough to make it all come together. There are things which are out of our hands... I tend to agree with him that it's an angle of divine intervention.

The touching of lives... I think that's what missing a lot these days. We lead such busy lives. We seem to interact more, but these interactions seem to have more of a pseudo feel than real. We have very little time to invest in relationships, making a difference, impacting... We are more taken up by projects of grander designs, nicer sounding names. Investing time as what the Jeremy's first coach did is a long arduous task, one that does not bring you an instant measure of success. If anything, it's a long suffering and often times, thankless task. These past few months, i've been reminded again and again, there is this need there, young lives basically in need of good role models. For people who are committed to taking real interests in these young people; lije the role models, mentors and coaches who helped shape Jeremy Lin into NBA material.

And we need good and committed people. At my work place, our administrators never fail to tell us all teachers are the same... I think that's just an excuse. Teacher A walks in the class and the students continue to make noise while she teaches. Then Teacher B walks into the same class - all is quiet. Are both same? So, if our education system is seen to be on a decline, or our graduates seem not to meet market needs, we've got to ask ourselves whether it is in part due to the decline of real commitment. These days, we harp so much on the outward that we fail to see that it's what we do and think in secret which affect how we turn out. One reason whwellie schools seemed better in the past is back then, we seemed more able to do things more right. We had not only good and capable role models but they seemed more committed to their job in a truer sense, not like the tunjuk-tayang that seems so biasa these days.

Anyway, I am yet again, reminded of the selfless role models who have made all the difference in my life.

I went on to watch a couple more of clips on YouTube of Jeremy Lin in action. He's good. First Asian American to make it into the big league. Watching him, one tends to feel that an American Chinese is more American than Chinese. Now wouldn't it be nice to see the same kind of ability to integrate as Malaysians regardless of race over here too? For that to happen, I guess our politicians need to have their brains 'washed' first, I guess. And I hope too Jeremy Lin will not let success eat into him... At a time when we are reminded of Whitney Houston, how fragile everything can be too.