If a Malay gets selected as Malaysia’s representative when the Russians set off to the International Space Station in October 2007, not only will he be the first Malaysian astronaut, but also the first Muslim space traveller.

And as most of you would know, devout Muslims are required to pray five times a day, and to face Mecca while doing so. Herein lies the problem, as there is serious difficulty in determining the direction the astronaut would have to pray towards in space.

But it seems a Malaysian professor over at University Kebangsaan Malaysia has already figured the problem out, and has written a computer program to calculate all that needs to be known.

So, why in the world did I blog about this? Well, it was just so… unique, wasn’t it? After all, you’re not going to see a problem like this manifest again any time soon you know.

Probably almost every blogger in Malaysia has touched on this subject before. About Public Service Deparment (PSD) scholars, especially medical ones, not returning to Malaysia to serve their bonds. About PSD scholars without even a speck of integrity, or loyalty to the country that educated them, for free too.

So, given the scenario faced by the Government, should potential scholars be protesting that PSD is sending most of their medical scholars to cheaper destinations, e.g. India, Indonesia and Russia, rather than Australia, Ireland and England? After all, not only is it expensive to send potential doctors to the UK, but also potentially foolish if you consider the excellent job prospects provided to them after they complete their studies.

Even locum doctors (temp. doctors) can be paid £1000 a week. Heck, it’s seriously tempting isn’t it? You could effectively work there and pay off your scholarship. Why return to Malaysia and get paid ridiculously low salaries in government hospitals for ten years?

However, that isn’t the whole problem. The fact is that even with the excellent salaries doctors (or engineers, etc.) are paid overseas, there are still a large number of scholars not returning to Malaysia and disregarding their bond entirely. The least they could do is repay their bonds, right? At least that way, the Government wouldn’t be losing money sending scholars overseas (as long as they are paid with market-rate interest too).

So, what should the Government do to curb this behaviour? Already, scholars that do not return to serve their bonds get referred to the Attorney-General for legal action, but since they are already overseas, that’s unlikely to result in anything substantive. Act on their family? Well, probably.

But even that is unlikely to help in the long run. In the long run, there is need to ensure that our scholars want to return home - which is something our neighbour, Singapore, has managed to do. In the past, top Singaporean scholars didn’t want to return to Singapore either. They wanted to stay in top institutions is the United Staes, and conduct research there - something that used to be impossible in Singapore. These days, however, it is rare to find a Singaporean scholar not returning to serve their bonds. After all, their career paths are lined with gold. The organisations they are bonded to are world-class organisations that anyone would love to work in, e.g. Economic Development Board, Government of Singapore Investment Corporation.

That’s exactly what we need to replicate here in Malaysia. No longer can we afford to let scholars believe that they have no future as an ex-scholar in Malaysia. Understandably, building world-class organisations for scholars to return to will take (a lot of) time, but ensuring that scholars (and the public) know where in the world they will return to and what in the world they will be doing 5 years down the road, should be a piece of cake, right?

Well, almost nobody in their right mind would dare say “horny” or “gatal” in public, but it seems certain ahmm… politicians are an exception. Mr. Abdul Fatah Harun, a MP from Pan-Malaysia Islamic Party - an opposition party by the way - recently said that single mothers were “gatal” when asking a question about aid for them.

As expected, this caused an uproar in Parliament, which was made worse by the fact that he initially refused to withdraw the word even after condemnation by the Minister of Women, Family and Community Development Sharizat Abdul Jalil. Let’s also not forget the fact that Mr. Harun hails from an Islamic-focused opposition party.

Truthfully, I’m not sure whether Mr. Harun meant to be funny or politically imbecilic. Women make up a large percentage of voters, no matter the constituency, so you do not need to be a rocket scientist to know that he has probably lost a significant number of voters - not that there were going to be many in the first place.

In any case, Mr. Harun did finally withdraw the world after continued protests, but the damage (potentially unrecoverable) has clearly been wrought.

There’s so much interesting news popping out all over and so much to talk about, but it seems this blog is destined for a bi-monthly or at best, weekly posting schedule.

Basically, I guess it comes down to value-addedness. I’m just not value-adding much to some of the “quick-release” content I’m “aggregating” here.

So, I’ll be giving myself more time to write longer and more solid posts. But whether the posts come out right, well… you’re the judge (and jury in fact).

Wow. I’m sure male high school students all around the world would scream for pornography as “punishment” for not completing homework. So, it’s surprising that the 13-year old students forced to endure this “punishment” informed their parents about it (yes, I’m only joking, sheesh!).

Anyway, enough of the bad jokes and back to the facts. It seems that recently, a government school teacher forced his students to watch a pornographic movie as punishment for not completing their homework. Both his male and female students were herded into an audio-visual room for this “punishment”.

At this point in time, I’m not sure whether the teacher is a sex maniac, or merely imbecilic. Porn as “punishment”? Did he think he wouldn’t be reported? What happened to the rod, the water bucket, or running around the track as punishment? Whatever it is, I really doubt I would even want to know.

Incest and rape come in many forms, some more extreme than others - though all absolutely heinous and unjustifiable. But few would have imagined the recent case of a father - having four wives - raping his 12 to 15-year old daughters.

But, we’ve heard such cases before. So, what makes this man particularly evil is that he used religion to convince his wives that he “owned” his children, thus giving him the right to have sex with them. At this point, I won’t blame his wives that were (for some reason or another) gullible enough to convince their children to have sex with him. According to The Star, the daughters were actually prepped by their mothers, with various reasons given to justify the act of incest.

In any case, I’m sure that those of us out here are relieved that the eldest daughter finally reported their father to the police, and can only hope that this man is given the harshest possible sentence in the book.

P.S.: I rarely throw around highly subjective words like “evil” in my articles or essays. Please tolerate just this instance.