Commonwealth Games 2010

It’s commonwealth games week! I’ve always enjoy the games. Sports and martial arts are two interests that I had to sacrifice for the sake of studies. I wished I had achieved something in those arenas before. Despite all the issues like murder, PRK DUN Galas, halal haram of Penang’s RM100 gift to the oldies and facebook crime, I decided to place my attention on the Commonwealth Games in New Delhi. Feels like the 1998 games in Kuala Lumpur had just happened. Now it’s already 2010! From my personal point of view, our sportsmen and women could have done better, especially in sports that don’t involve physical advantage. But what really caught my eyes is the cycling team. To be able to compete in the finals with the Australian, English, New Zealanders and Scottish is wonderful.

How I wish to return to the past when I was still young, and had plenty of time to enjoy sports. I still remember going to the Dome for two consecutive days during Sukma 2000 in Penang. My friends and I were there to support our coach who competed in the Kumite category of Karate. Unfortunately she lost to a national fighter from Kuala Lumpur and only gained a silver medal. Yet we were proud enough because a few weeks back, she won a gold medal in the World Junior Karate Tournament. Missing the good old days.

The Criminal Facebook

Last week, I just read about the super rich founder of Facebook, who was listed in higher rank than Steve Jobs, but only lives in a moderate rented house near his office. This week, two cases were reported in the newspaper, about teenagers being hit; one by a girl’s boyfriend whom the victim was going to have a date with; the other one was because of misunderstandings. Hurm, more damage than benefits. With facebook, good people become more transparent, i.e. everything will be written on their wall – from cooking, to eating, playing, studying, sleeping, bla..bla..bla. Their privacy has been put aside. Some people update their facebook every 15 minutes! How could they study or work while facebooking? Really “impressive”. Made me recall an email  with photos  from someone, about a TM front desk officer, facebooking during working hours and ignoring her customers!

And how many Muslims have declared “murtad” in their facebook? I can’t recall, because there are too many!

Just today, the headlines of Yahoo frontpage highlights about the new feature of facebook:

Another week, another Facebook controversy — this time, over the site’s just-relaunched "Groups" feature, which lets you create instant private or public spaces for your friends, co-workers, fellow hobbyists, you name it.

Personally, I think the idea behind the new Groups feature is an excellent one. By designating smaller circles of friends within your overall list of Facebook pals (which, for some online social butterflies, can easily run into the thousands), you can post updates, photos, videos, and URLs to your individual subsets without bothering everyone on Facebook with the minutiae of, say, your breakfast menu, or how quickly you crossed the finish line in your latest half-marathon.

Indeed, I might start actually posting to Facebook again now that I’ve created a tiny group of friends (three, to be exact) who (a) I trust, and (b) won’t be annoyed by any pointless musings that I'll be tacking onto our wall. (Uh, guys — you don’t mind, right?)

But it didn’t take long for a controversy to flare up: namely, the fact that your Facebook friends can add you to any group they so choose — as long as they’re already members of said group — without your permission.

Why did Facebook make Groups go the "opt-out" rather than "opt-in" way? "To make the product simple" is the official line. Another likely reason for the policy, I’m guesssing, is that it encourages the rapid growth of ... well, new groups. Without the necessity of waiting for invitees to accept an invite, Facebook’s groups are free to grow quickly and exponentially. The more — and bigger — groups there are, the more Facebook memberswill use them — and that’ll make groups more attractive to app developers and advertisers. Hey, that’s business, like it or not.

Of course, the downside is that you might find yourself suddenly signed up into a Facebook group (or groups) you hadn’t bargained for, such as the "Underwater Basket-weavers of America," with your inbox suddenly flooded with email notifications for each and every snapshot, comment, and update posted to the collective group wall.

That’s a side-effect I’d count as more of an annoyance than anything else, although there’s always the more worrisome possibility that one of your frenemies will add you to a group of a more, ah, unsavory nature. 
-This is only half of the article-

I am definitely not saying that everything about facebook is negative, but what I would like each and every one of us to ponder is how bad a social network like this has turned us into. For those who successfully used it for the sake of dakwah, silaturahim, public announcements and so on, well done! I can't deny that I've lost contact with many of my friends because I haven't joined this worldwide networking. Both have the advantages and disadvantages. I was not invited to some of my friends' wedding ceremonies but that's okay, because I don't have to feel guilty for not being able to attend them, since many of my friends live far away from my hometown. Perhaps when my time comes, I might consider setting up an account just for the sake of sending invitation, that's if facebook is still alive when the time comes!

RM100

Now that Perak is in their hands, they are targeting Penang next! Everything about Lim Guan Eng is faulty. Since before Ramadhan, my respected Chief Minister has been bombarded with issues. When they can’t fight him face to face, fists with fists, they start using scandals. They came out with issue that the RM100 for the over 60’s came from the Penang Turf Club, so it is haram. A number of veterans returned the money in protest to the haram sources, but at the same time received even more money from unknown sources. Huk, huk, cough x3. This situation had forced ustaz-ustaz to come out with some sort of fatwa about halal haram of the money. Come on people, wake up, guess who approved the biggest beer factory in Selangor several years ago and where does the profits go?

Tweets

Someone retweeted this :

"It's okay to make mistakes. Just don't keep making the same mistakes and hope for miracles to happen"

Mistakes are a good lesson for us to learn from. Nobody is perfect, hence we do make mistakes and surely we tried our best to learn from them. Those who never learn from mistakes have just made another mistake! A perfectionist might say that he never makes mistakes, but he still have other people's mistakes to learn from. So, no excuses for us to keep making the same mistakes and eventually hoping for miracles to happen!

Sometimes we are just to proud to admit that we have just made a mistake.

Insaf, insaf...

p/s susah juga..bila aku tegas sikit orang dah kata aku marah, kalau aku marah, orang akan kata apa agaknya? Mungkin lepas ni tak boleh lembut-lembut dan baik-baik dah, supaya orang tak salah anggap.