SOCSO

I bought a book in a book titled “Social Changes In India” by Kuppusamy in a second hand book shop while I was a undergraduate student.

In the book there was article about fishermen in Kerala India, whereby the government trained fishermen to use new technology in fishing by which they can increase their catch subsequently their income.

However, it did not work. The fishermen were happy with their daily catch and return home earlier once they got their catch similar to before resulting no increase in their income by more leisure time.

I do see the same trend even now where economic competition has increased, cost of living sky rocketed, some wants has become necessaries and so on.

I had observed many wives who receive SOCSO compensations after the death of their husband or for some other reasons, do not go to any work or find an extra income. They solely depend on the SOCSO compensations. My check with the department showed it is not a condition that the wife should not work if she gets the compensation.

These ladies earn sympathy from public by telling they are widows. They ask whatever opportunities available to get extra money just by telling their sad stories. They self impose poverty.

If the ladies determined to work and find an extra income plus the husband SOCSO compensation they can alleviate poverty, increase the investment on the human resource development of their children. They can have a happy family and live respectfully.

Indians and Patents

Recently I was reading an article on patent rights. I was surprised to note that curry was patented in Japan.

Curry is a Tamil word. Curry leaves were used by the South Indians for aroma purposes. It also has some medicinal values. Whether curry is patented in India or not, I do not know, neither the article mentioned about it.

There are several other products to which Indians were the founders but not patented in their own country.

Yogurt and sour milk are two dairy products were often mentioned by doctors for good health to which Indians were the founders. Dutch lady and Nestle are the largest producers. Both are non Indian companies. There are also many small companies in several part of the world manufacturing these products but I had not seen any Indian companies.

Apart from these dairy products there are also many others products to which Indians were founders but now manufactured and sold to Indians but I had not seen any products found by others and manufactured by Indians and sold to others.


May be Indians are not enterprising as others and level of application of knowledge for business purposes are limited among Indians. If we continue to be as what we are I see no change in life style for Indians others will continue to gain profit from us.

Extreme future

In the extreme future, nano-IT-bio and nuero technology going to dominate the world in the next two to three decades.

Not only the electronics will be taken over by nano but several other industries will also be dominated by the nanotechnology including textiles. This technology is still not popular in Malaysia. No students I have met ever have the ambition to learn this technology as they do not know the prospects of reading this. The employability is also very limited as Malaysian companies do not have high technology.

However students should have the knowledge of prospects of this advance technology, if not teachers must provide them with sufficient knowledge as to create interest to learn this techonology. Students should learn advance techonology in advance as they should prepare themselves for the future. In a competitive environment we should have skills others do not have in order to earn economic rent.

As with bio and neuro, men wants live long. A long healthy life to which bio-neuro play an important role. Men now live longer than any time in history as modern medical science developed in the last 150 years ago. Before that men had an average life of 18 years only. Alexander lived only 32 years and Socrates live until 35 years only. So were Buddha and many others.

Now living until 70 years old is a norm. Now with the developments of medical science(Bio- Neuro) it is possible children born in the last decade of last century can live until the first decade of the next century.

Genetic engineering which is also related with the same field as this will develop further and enable men to have night vision, sharp vision etc. Stem cell development will enable cloning of organs possible. Artificial human blood will be discovered within next decade. To make all these developments possible, there is a need for massive need of high level human resource development to which intelligent students need to prepare themselvs and contribute toward the same.

IT, is one field many think it is saturared now. Highly skilled IT personels there is still huge demand. Robotic science development is accelerating. Medical surgeries are done by robots. Factory automations( Industrial robots) are also need IT personels. So IT with nano will an excellent field in the future.

UPSR 7As and 5As.

In the mid December the standard six students placements in secondary schools were made known. Some 7As students of SKT/C were not offered to enrol in the primier schools but students SK even with 4As and 1B were offered place in these institutions. Reason: offers were based on co-curriculum for students of SKT/C but SK automatic offers.



How the co-curiculum marks were calculated. Answer- condidential.



The successful students (5As) of SK are separated and put in special classess called RKA( Rancangan Khas, special programme ) and the sub standard students (4As and 1B) were put together with the 7As students of SKT/C students.



Reason : The schools needs to concentrate on the SK students so as to ensure that they produce better results in PMR. SKT/C students : don't bother.



To any visitors from education departments or elsewhere were shown the RKA classes.



This practice gives an impression that the SK schools are superior to SKT/C school students.

This is in line with the government policy of " memperkasa sekolah kebangsaan".



Parents of SKT/C however should not give up hope. This is just a government gimmicks. The teachers teaching the RKA classes do not have extra teaching skills. The parents of these classes too depend heavily on private tuition classes which is a norm now for better results.



With all these dicriminations the enrolments to SKT/C s keep on rising. No sign of the standard of education being dropping. BRAVO PARENTS.

Malaysian Literature and translations

There are many noble prizes winning for literature writings, which very interesting, informative, world view and high standard of catholicity of the scholarship. As many Malaysians can read in English that is the only languages leads us to read internationally renowned writings however many Malaysians English language competency is in the declining trend.

It is a great unfortunate that these internationally renowned writings are not translated to any of the indigenous languages of Malaysia. Malaysian writer let it be Malays, Chinese, Indians and even East Malaysians write in their own languages, with their own and/or their readers back ground. We do not even translate our very own literature from one language to another with in our own country.

Quality of Malay writings can be enhanced with wider circulations, at the same time internationalize our writers views. I am yet to see writings in Malay translated to other languages. May be no effort being made or our writers do not meet the required quality.

We should translate Malay stories, novels and other quality writings to Chinese, Tamil or to languages in East Malaysia and vice versa. Then the Malay language will grow to greater horizon. More non Malays will understand Malay way of life. These translated versions of Malay writings can make to appear in mass medias, in the Chinese speaking countries and in India. Later effort can be made to translate to other Asia and European languages.

We need to come out of coconut shells, have to compete internationally in this world, which is made smaller by knowledge and technology.

We should be very proud if any Malaysian wins a noble prize. Let him/her be a Malay, Chinese, Indian, East Malaysians or others. It is sad to say as some local newspapers writes, when a Malay wins anything, it is a Malay win and not Malaysian win, which irritates other loyal Malaysians.

Amartya Sen writings

Of late I read two books written by Nobel prize winner Dr. Amartya Sen.
I was amazed by his command of language . My English is not good but anyway when I compared him to other western writers whose mother tongue is English, Amarya is far too good.

Every line in his books is a fact. The summary of his books are the books itselves. In his writings, he never condenm anybody. Praise for all. Unites everybody. Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Buddhist and others.

He is an Indian from Bengal, now residing inUSA.

In the book "Argumentative Indians", a book that every Indian should read as he writen about past glories of India and Indians. India was the cradle of knowledge. Chinese, Arabs and many others came to India to equire knowledge.

In the book, " Identity and Violence", he wrote about Hindus and Muslims in India living together harmoniously. India with second largest muslim population in the world and with as many muslim scholars as the rest of the muslim world put together, Indian muslims had earn a respect as they do not indulge themselves, in any terrorism internationally.

In the book Identity and Violence he had written about civilisation confinement, globalisation, anti west and culture and captivity. This book really widens ones knowledge as well able to admire his command of English.

These books are really worth reading by every one.

Science and Mathematics in English

UPSR results were released recently (2008). The Tamil schools had done extremely well. An increase of 22 per cent in straight As.

Credit to the increase goes to the teachers and the parents. There was one school were extra classes were conducted in the afternoon and at night. All week ends and public holidays there were extra classes. The teachers received no extra monies from parent. There were no rests to the students. Parents have no time to teach their own children not because they were busy but all the time was taken by teachers. The students straight go to bed once they were at home due to their tiredness.

Malaysian government had done a good job by allowing science and mathematics to be taught in English. English language gives a world view. Knowledge can be accumulated by reading in English before it can be translated to students' mother tongue language as no discoveries have ever pineored in any of Malaysian languages. By learning in English we are not any way becoming less Malaysian or less of our own ethnicity.

USA,whether we like her or not, she is still the cradle of many discoveries. Their discoveries are written in English. If our students in Malaysia able to understand the discoveries at early stage then we will have an advantage over others.

There was several science v scholars. By the time we learn the discoveries several other inventions taking place. The lag time can be reduced by we learning the both subjects in English without waiting for translations.

As for Tamil schools there were not many exercise books available for both the subjects in Tamil because of the smaller market. This problem has been overcome by the change of language. Now they have more exercise books. Better command of English. There was one school I went; I noticed all students in the class were communicating in English Language without jeopardizing their command of the Tamil Language. Their commands of Malay Language were excellent. The students' command of English were better then their teachers.

Science and Mathematics if continuously used to teach in English, Tamil schools will be the most to benefit and more middle class Indians will send their children to Tamil schools.