Sanaku's blog

I feel this is a good thing, this struggle with labor, with borders and trans nationals. Look at California in the US and other border states with Mexico, they all too struggle with the flood of illegal immigrants. I think of it this way- It is better to be the country they are coming to, versus the one being left. - SanakuFrom INQ7KUALA LUMPUR -- Malaysian oil palm plantations are losing up to 70 million ringgit (18 million dollars) a month because of labour shortages after hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants were expelled, a report said Wednesday.

I remember a time when walking down the grey walls of my corporate life it was hard to not get caught up in the mediocrity.  It is hard for everyone.  Often I fail to remember that we are all just people who are either working or trying our best to do what we can to make this life better.I was forwarded this article by a colleague of mine who pays attention to such things about leadership and what those who are great do to remain great.  -Sanakufrom the Harvard Business Reviewby Marcus Buckingham

From BrandMalaysia the Star Wars Spoof.. The STAR WARS spoof

The best compliment that a movie can receive is to spawn a parody. This came from sequential pictures
and seem to be making the rounds through internet pretty fast. I have
uploaded it to a local server for faster download for Malaysians.
Ladies and gentleman, I present you ...LINK

In the people web, a word often quoted by those who support the ability for interaction of socio groups via web enabled technology is coming of age even in some of the most politicaly dangerous parts of the world.  I saw this on Slate and thought to share."Syria Out!"By David Wallace-WellsPosted Monday, Feb. 28, 2005, at 5:38 PM PT
"Syria out!": Lebanese Prime Minister Omar Karami resigned
this morning, dissolving the nation's unpopular, pro-Syrian government
in the face of nationalist protest that followed the assassination of
former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Reporting from Beirut,
linguist/blogger Caveman estimates
that 200,000 protestors gathered in the streets in anticipation of a
vote of no-confidence in Karami's government. Jim Geraghty of the National Review sees a pattern.
"Substitute red and white for the Yuschenko orange," he writes, "and it
looks like the same defiant but almost jubilant crowd the world saw in
Ukraine."

Long after the crowd had left and the cameras had moved, a lone runner
entered the stadium to complete the 26-mile-long marathon in the 1968
Mexico City Olympics. Injured earlier in the race during a fall, he
stumbled along, more than an hour after the others had finished. Hurling
himself to the finish line, John Stephen Akhwari of Tanzania finished
dead last. But before you judge him as a loser, take careful heed of the
words he uttered when asked why he did not quit earlier when he had been
injured:

Taken from any street cornerThe
Malaysian political class likes to promote itself as being moderate,
tolerant and willing to open up "democratic space". The truth is not
nearly so cosy. Authoritarian practices die hard. There is a report
here

at Malaysia Today, one of the few independent online sources of
information, about the clampdown on dissident bloggers. It's a sorry
catalogue: Mack Zulkifli's blog at Brand New Malaysian has come in for particular attention. Here's the account of the slightly surreal, low-key harrassment:

Southwest Airlines (SWA) began service June 18, 1971 with flights to
Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio. SWA became a major airline in 1989
when it exceeded the billion-dollar revenue mark. SWA is now the
largest carrier based on scheduled domestic departures. Year end
results for 2003 marked Southwest's 31st consecutive year of
profitability. SWA is the United States' only major short-haul,
low-fare, high-frequency, point-to-point carrier.Get this:Best practices with recruiting new staff... Southwest focuses on employee referals. they say their best staff know and hire the best people.

I saw this interesting article about the future of media and journalism.-SanakuBlogs,
Everyone? Weblogs Are Here to Stay, but Where Are They Headed?

What is next for Malaysia?  Exerpts Taken from a PBS interview (Click Here)Prime Minister of Malaysia since 1981, Dr. Mahathir bin Mohamad has
overseen Malaysia's transformation into one of the wealthiest nations
in Southeast Asia and has become a vocal critic of Western-style
globalization.A critic of Capitolism:Once communism was defeated, then capitalism could expand and show its
true self. It's no longer constrained by the need to be nice, so that
people will choose their so-called free-market system as opposed to the
centrally planned system. So because of that, nowadays there is nothing
to restrain capital, and capital is demanding that it should be able to
go anywhere and do whatever it likes.

Last week I had a bad day at the office. I know you've been feeling down lately at work, so I thought I would share my dilemma with you to make you realize it's not So bad after all. Before I can tell you what happened to me, I first must bore you with a few technicalities of my job.

As you know, my office lies at the bottom of the sea. I wear a suit to the
office. It's a wetsuit. This time of year the water is quite cool. So what we do to keep warm is this: We have a diesel powered industrial water heater. This $20,000 piece of equipment sucks the water out of the sea. It heats it to a delightful temperature. It then pumps it down to the diver through a garden hose, which is taped to the air hose. Now this sounds like a darn good plan, and I've used it several times with no complaints.

What I do, when I get to the bottom and start working, is take the hose
and stuff it down the back of my wetsuit. This floods my whole suit with
warm water. It's like working in a Jacuzzi.

Everything was going well until all of a sudden, my butt started to itch.
So, of course, I scratched it. This only made things worse.Within a few
seconds my butt started to burn. I pulled the hose out from my back, but the damage was done. In agony I realized what had happened. The hot water machine had sucked up a jellyfish and pumped it into my suit.

Now, since I don't have any hair on my back, the jellyfish couldn't stick
to it. However, the crack of my butt was not as fortunate. When I
scratched what I thought was an itch, I was actually grinding the
jellyfish into the crack of my butt. I informed the dive supervisor of my
dilemma over the communicator. His instructions were unclear due to the fact that he, along with five other divers, were all laughing hysterically. Needless to say I aborted the dive.

I was instructed to make three agonizing in-water decompression stops totaling thirty-five minutes before I could reach the surface to begin my chamber dry decompression. When I arrived at the surface, I was wearing nothing but my brass helmet. As I climbed out of the water, the medic, with tears of laughter running down his face, handed me a tube of cream and told me to rub it on my butt as soon as I got in the chamber. The cream put the fire out, but I couldn't poop for two days because my butt was swollen shut.

So, next time you're having a bad day at work, think about how much worse it would be if you had a jellyfish shoved up your butt.

Now repeat to yourself, "I love my job, I love my job, I love my job".