shame on you, china!

for doing this, this, and now this.

my nephew said i'm the greatest driver

news from my sister in tokyo. from her chat with fadel:

nesia: who's the best driver?
fadel: uncle aco! uncle aco!
nesia: are you sure?
fadel: yes, yes. uncle aco!
nesia: why him? why not auntie nanna?
fadel: ugh... well... look... when it comes to street-turns, uncle aco doesn't need to slow down. auntie nanna does.....

i take that as a compliment :-)

should we always tolerate the wrong?

kompas reports (in bahasa) that a doctoral student quit her hunger strike, after her demand was granted by her department. according to the report, she started the strike two days before as she found that the university had decided to expell her from school. the system has it, you have to register every semester. she failed to do that because she was "in maternity leave". a university official says that the student has failed to re-register for four (!) consecutive terms.

the student happens to be a leading activist -- or so implied by the newspaper. she was accompanied by her fellow activists in doing her protest. demonstratively she also burned her textbooks.

what in the world is all this? you've got system with rules in it. you violated the rule. but you don't want to bear the consequences. you did admit your mistake, yet you refuse punishment; you even blame somebody else for your own failure.

if i were an authority in the department, i would not tolerate such irresponsibility. even if it comes from "important" persons in the society.

aussie's freak

news this morning: "90 percent of australians believe that corby is not gulity". of course! whoever did that stupid "research" should have also sampled indonesians. and, trust me, the news would say: "while 90 percent of indonesians believe otherwise". what good do this kind of silly polling do for peace? crap.

by the way, read the linked article above. "some (australians) declared they would never travel to bali again". so what, mate? big deal!