pelf-ism is contagious

I attended the opening ceremony of the 3rd Postgraduate Seminar on campus this morning (read about the 2nd Postgrad Seminar that we organized last year). The opening speech given by the Dean of the Faculty of Science and Technology got me thinking. The speech opened up my eyes to how narrow-minded lecturers can be. How full-of-themselves some academicians can be.

I can’t remember the whole exact speech, but he mentioned something like how postgraduate students doing their Master’s degree can actually save a lot of time and graduate in 3 semesters instead of taking 3 years. He also mentioned that the first Ph.D student he supervised back when he was still in UKM managed to graduate with a Ph.D in only 2 years.

But what he, the Dean, failed to see was that the nature of a student’s program and project strongly determine the duration a student will take to complete his Master’s or Ph.D degree. The Dean himself is a Math-person, and Mathematics students spend most of their time sitting in front of the PC, working on complicated equations and all, fair enough. But for students who run research, we depend very much on the project grant allocated (to go sampling, to buy chemicals, to buy equipments), the subject (turtles, fish, seaweed), the lab (machines, chemicals) and what-not. Even if a student has everything mapped out before he started his project, things could still go wrong, e.g. machines can and will break down, your subject can and will die etc.

As the Head of the Faculty, I’d expect him to be a respectable person, somebody whom we can look up to, somebody whom we know understands our situation, somebody who is willing to listen to our problems as well as somebody who is willing to help us solve them.

Not somebody who benchmarks all his postgraduate students with his Mathematics students and definitely not somebody who makes the rest of us look like we’re not fit enough to be his students. At one point, he even said that he will “sieve” all his postgraduate students and those students who are taking longer than the recommended duration will be asked to discontinue their studies because “it will affect us, lecturers, and it will affect the university.”

I can’t believe I heard that from an academician.

I read with disgust that women working in retail outlets and restaurants in Kelantan have been warned to mind their dressing or be prepared to face a fine.

The Kota Baru Municipal Council (MPKB) has announced that it would “no longer tolerate indecent dressing” by women, both Muslim and non-Muslim. Public relations officer Mohd Azman Daham said that under local council by-laws women who “dressed sexily or indecently” could be fined up to RM500.

Great. Now we even have our very own Malaysian Fashion Police. Do they even know what is decent and what is indecent? Do they watch P. Ramlee’s classics? Do they even know that Saloma, bless her heart, and other women only wore their sarongs while doing their laundry at the river?

Such outfits are prohibited here as it smears the reputation of Kota Baru and affects its status as an Islamic City.

- Mohd Azman Daham, MPKB public relations officer

You know, this is what happens when you people voted the moon into power. Like 5xmom said, the state government is taking 100 steps backward for each forward step.

“We define proper attire as wearing respectful clothing,” state Local Government Committee chairman Takiyuddin Hassan said.

“We apologise to non-Muslims if this comes across as harsh but we must respect our Asian culture and religion in public.”

He noted that “eye-popping” outfits invited undesirable attention.

He urged the people to co-operate, especially those in the retail and restaurant businesses.

Trader Che Suraya Hulaimi Sulaiman, 32, supported the council’s move, saying “Almost everywhere there are retail assistants or waitresses wearing sexy clothes.

“This is an insult to Islam.”

You know what I was thinking? Those people who served beef during Hari Raya open house actually openly insulted the Indians and a fraction of Buddhists! And those people who banned Christmas songs containing the word “Jesus”, aren’t they also insulting the Christians?!

Now, I apologise to Muslims if this comes across as harsh but we must respect our Asian culture and religion in public.

Hmmph..

Disclaimer:
I am not trying to create any disharmony or discomfort among the races in Malaysia. The above examples are used just to demonstrate my point-of-view. And it may not even be the same as yours.