According to last weeks Star, MACC deputy chief commissioner Datuk Sutinah Sutan was reported to have said that Civil servants and staff of government-linked companies (GLCs) surfing social media or engaging in personal matters during working hours may be categorized as having committed corruption!!

The underlying logic to the argument seems plausible enough, Datuk Sutinah goes on to elaborate that:

“For instance, if a person spends three hours during his or her stipulated working hours for personal tasks, it can be deemed a form of corruption as the Government trusts and pays its employees to fully utilise the working period to complete tasks relating to the respective jobscope,”

Now while all this sounds good on paper, I think we need to delve deeper, because every time a broad statement such as this comes along it’s important to take a step back and analyze the evidence rather than rely on ‘common sense’. Common sense is after all–not so common (this reminds of the MACC lawyer who claimed the Teoh Beng Hock could strangle himself to death)

So here we have a situation where the MACC deputy chief seems to think that the social media habits of Government servants warrants a statement from such a high ranking officer and therefore logically this must be something of high consequences to the nation, much more than the RM250 Million soft-loan given to a company to sort out the nations beef issues.

There’s been a huge controversy over the newly installed digital Electric meters by TNB, with consumers from all walks of life raising hell over their the perceived rise of their utility bills ever since they’ve installed thenew meters. USJ State assemblywomen Hannah Yeoh blogged about her response to this, urging TNB to explain the price hike.

However the state assemblywomens action pale in comparison to Dian Abdullah who urged her YB to investigate TNB, and started a petition asking for independent calibration of meters–which she eventually hopes to present to Agong once the petition reaches 10,000 signatures. Ms. Dian Abdullah reports that she " personally feel(s) that the time has come where TNB should stop scamming the Rakyat especially those living and working in Kuala Lumpur and Selangor."

Of course, in typical Malaysian fashion–this is all mired in politics. A popular blog reported that the suppliers of the meters to TNB are linked to former Prime Minister Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. Obviously if we intend to get into that we might not have enough time or space in this one post.

My point though is that there is quite a simple engineering (or dare I say scientific) solution to the issue–something that doesn’t involve politicians or lawyers. It’s unfortunate that Malaysians immediately revert to political and legal solutions, when engineering and science can solve most of your problems for far less hassle, far more effectively.

This is a tech blog, so let’s talk about tech.

Let’s about the technology behind the term geo-engineering. According to wikipedia  “The concept of geoengineering (or climate engineering, climate remediation, and climate intervention) refers to “the deliberate large-scale intervention in the Earth’s climate system, in order to moderate global warming”. The techniques of geo-engineering are based on science, but applied on scale that exceeds even my imagination.

Techniques of geo-engineering include things like injecting metallic substances into the upper atmosphere to reflect the sunlight and thus reduce the earth temperatures, or on the more audacious side of the spectrum we have engineers proposing we install cooling pipes into the ocean to mix the cooler deeper water with the warmer surface water to cut-off (or at least slow down) a hurricane. Slowing down a hurricane might sound ludicrous to you, but if you understand the concept behind the creation of a hurricane, you’ll soon realize the solution is solidly based on science, and all it boils down to is an engineering challenge on a never-before-seen scale. It also helps that the company pioneering the hurricane halting technology is currently applying for a couple patents and is supported by the big thinker himself–one Mr. Bill Gates.

It has its sceptics and critics, but then again there were many sceptics when President Kennedy propose to send a Man to the Moon and bring him safely back in 1969. Till this day, some still are sceptical that the United States actually sent anyone up to space in 1969, and even more are critical of the amount of government funds spent on the Space Program–just nobody tell Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

So your child has just finish SPM or STPM or A-Levels and now you’re looking at a possible future career for them, or you yourself have just graduated and considering your future career. This is not something to take lightly, after all it’s the 4th most important decision in your life, behind who you get married to, when to have your first child and which EPL team to support. (hint: the answer to last one should start with M and end with anchester united)

Of course, there’s a lot of things to consider when choosing your future career and usually it’s a mixture of passion, interest and future career opportunities.You want a career you like and have interest in, but you also want a career that has future growth possibilities that match your aspirations (do you plan to live in Malaysia or move abroad…etc etc), and if you plan to stay in Malaysia you need to pursue a career that’s growing in Malaysia not something that’s growing somewhere else.

So while it’s great that you like palaeontology and want to contribute to your Tanah Air, but you’re going to be very hard pressed trying to find opportunities for digging up Dinosaur bones in Malaysia. At some point you need to keep certain things as hobbies and find a career that’s offers more progression opportunities. Or make the difficult decision of pursuing your passion somewhere other than Malaysia. It’s a difficult decision obviously, and sometimes you don’t have enough information to make these decisions–but thinking of these things now will save you a lot of heartache later on.

I think we need a lot more engineers and IT professionals in Malaysia, all this talk about transformation from the government isn’t going to happen with lawyers or politicians–it’s going to happen with technology, and unless we have more technically focused professionals entering the workforce, no transformation is going to happen (or at least no ‘good’ transformation).

Unfortunately, not many people seem to agree with me and usually when people don’t agree with me–people are wrong (the only exception to the rule is my wife).

However, I can’t understand had a decline in IT graduates over the last 10 years, and at the same time have an increase in IT opportunities in Malaysia?

A Jobstreet/Pikom report on the ICT industry in Malaysia reports that we’ve gone from 120,000 graduates per year, to just 75,000 graduates per year. That’s a bad sign on so many levels, so today as my little bit of service to the IT community in Malaysia, I’d like to tell you why a career in IT rocks.