It’s been a while since I wrote my last entry. A lot of things cross my mind yet none of it made it to here. I’ve been so busy filling work order forms and increasing me hearing ability. Okay enough there. I like to talk about diesel. Not Van Diesel which my brother has been bugging me for weeks to take him to watch ‘The Pacifier’. Sorry bro I haven’t got time to sit and relax yet.
It’s the diesel oil. The kind which people put in cars and our government love to keep. They want to save money but eventually waste time of others. As money and time can’t be compared accordingly so let compare other things that will arise from this ‘clever’ Apdal plan. Diesel hit shortage tag, reporters hit the keyboard and the rest is busy trying to figure out what happen with diesel. In the mean time many others things have an increase in price this few days and guess what…with diesel as front page title in newspaper people forget about the extra money they have spent in everyday lives and nobody bothered about it. What a ‘afdhal’ plan. The crooks is richer by day and the ordinary people is being poorer by seconds.
The worst thing in this world, next to anarchy, is government- Henry Ward Beecher
Saturday, April 30, 2005
Saturday, April 16, 2005
Letter from Palestin.
I am just beginning to learn, from what I expect to be a very intense tutelage, about the ability of people to organize and to resist against all odds - Rachel Corrie
I have been in Palestine for two weeks and one hour now, and I still have very few words to describe what I see. It is most difficult for me to think about what’s going on here when I sit down to write back to the United States—something about the virtual portal into luxury. I don’t know if many of the children here have ever existed without tank-shell holes in their walls and the towers of an occupying army surveying them constantly from the near horizons. I think, although I’m not entirely sure, that even the smallest of these children understand that life is not like this everywhere. An eight-year-old was shot and killed by an Israeli tank two days before I got here, and many of the children murmur his name to me, Bali—or point at the posters of him on the walls. The children also love to get me to practice my limited Arabic by asking me “Kaif Sharon?” “Kaif Bush?” and they laugh when I say “Bush Majnoon” “Sharon Majnoon” back in my limited Arabic. (How is Sharon? How is Bush? Bush is crazy. Sharon is crazy.) Of course this isn’t quite what I believe, and some of the adults who have the English correct me: Bush mish Majnoon... Bush is a businessman. Today I tried to learn to say “Bush is a tool”, but I don’t think it translated quite right. But anyway, there are eight-year-olds here much more aware of the workings of the global power structure than I was just a few years ago—at least regarding Israel.
Nevertheless, I think about the fact that no amount of reading, attendance at conferences, documentary viewing and word of mouth could have prepared me for the reality of the situation here. You just can’t imagine it unless you see it, and even then you are always well aware that your experience is not at all the reality: what with the difficulties the Israeli Army would face if they shot an unarmed US citizen, and with the fact that I have money to buy water when the army destroys wells, and, of course, the fact that I have the option of leaving. Nobody in my family has been shot, driving in their car, by a rocket launcher from a tower at the end of a major street in my hometown. I have a home. I am allowed to go see the ocean. Ostensibly it is still quite difficult for me to be held for months or years on end without a trial (this because I am a white US citizen, as opposed to so many others). When I leave for school or work I can be relatively certain that there will not be a heavily armed soldier waiting half way between Mud Bay and downtown Olympia at a checkpoint—a soldier with the power to decide whether I can go about my business, and whether I can get home again when I’m done. So, if I feel outrage at arriving and entering briefly and incompletely into the world in which these children exist, I wonder conversely about how it would be for them to arrive in my world.
They know that children in the United States don’t usually have their parents shot and they know they sometimes get to see the ocean. But once you have seen the ocean and lived in a silent place, where water is taken for granted and not stolen in the night by bulldozers, and once you have spent an evening when you haven’t wondered if the walls of your home might suddenly fall inward waking you from your sleep, and once you’ve met people who have never lost anyone—once you have experienced the reality of a world that isn’t surrounded by murderous towers, tanks, armed “settlements” and now a giant metal wall, I wonder if you can forgive the world for all the years of your childhood spent existing—just existing—in resistance to the constant stranglehold of the world’s fourth largest military—backed by the world’s only superpower—in it’s attempt to erase you from your home. That is something I wonder about these children. I wonder what would happen if they really knew.
As an afterthought to all this rambling, I am in Rafah, a city of about 140,000 people, approximately 60 percent of whom are refugees—many of whom are twice or three times refugees. Rafah existed prior to 1948, but most of the people here are themselves or are descendants of people who were relocated here from their homes in historic Palestine—now Israel. Rafah was split in half when the Sinai returned to Egypt. Currently, the Israeli army is building a fourteen-meter-high wall between Rafah in Palestine and the border, carving a no-mans land from the houses along the border. Six hundred and two homes have been completely bulldozed according to the Rafah Popular Refugee Committee. The number of homes that have been partially destroyed is greater. Today as I walked on top of the rubble where homes once stood, Egyptian soldiers called to me from the other side of the border, “Go! Go!” because a tank was coming. Followed by waving and “what’s your name?” There is something disturbing about this friendly curiosity. It reminded me of how much, to some degree, we are all kids curious about other kids: Egyptian kids shouting at strange women wandering into the path of tanks. Palestinian kids shot from the tanks when they peak out from behind walls to see what’s going on. International kids standing in front of tanks with banners. Israeli kids in the tanks anonymously, occasionally shouting—and also occasionally waving—many forced to be here, many just aggressive, shooting into the houses as we wander away.
In addition to the constant presence of tanks along the border and in the western region between Rafah and settlements along the coast, there are more IDF towers here than I can count—along the horizon, at the end of streets. Some just army green metal. Others these strange spiral staircases draped in some kind of netting to make the activity within anonymous. Some hidden, just beneath the horizon of buildings. A new one went up the other day in the time it took us to do laundry and to cross town twice to hang banners. Despite the fact that some of the areas nearest the border are the original Rafah with families who have lived on this land for at least a century, only the 1948 camps in the center of the city are Palestinian-controlled areas under Oslo. But as far as I can tell, there are few if any places that are not within the sights of some tower or another. Certainly there is no place invulnerable to apache helicopters or to the cameras of invisible drones we hear buzzing over the city for hours at a time.
I’ve been having trouble accessing news about the outside world here, but I hear an escalation of war on Iraq is inevitable. There is a great deal of concern here about the “reoccupation of Gaza.” Gaza is reoccupied every day to various extents, but I think the fear is that the tanks will enter all the streets and remain here, instead of entering some of the streets and then withdrawing after some hours or days to observe and shoot from the edges of the communities. If people aren’t already thinking about the consequences of this war for the people of the entire region then I hope they will start.
I also hope you’ll come here. We’ve been wavering between five and six internationals. The neighborhoods that have asked us for some form of presence are Yibna, Tel El Sultan, Hi Salam, Brazil, Block J, Zorob, and Block O. There is also need for constant night-time presence at a well on the outskirts of Rafah since the Israeli army destroyed the two largest wells. According to the municipal water office the wells destroyed last week provided half of Rafah’s water supply. Many of the communities have requested internationals to be present at night to attempt to shield houses from further demolition. After about ten p.m. it is very difficult to move at night because the Israeli army treats anyone in the streets as resistance and shoots at them. So clearly we are too few.
I continue to believe that my home, Olympia, could gain a lot and offer a lot by deciding to make a commitment to Rafah in the form of a sister-community relationship. Some teachers and children’s groups have expressed interest in e-mail exchanges, but this is only the tip of the iceberg of solidarity work that might be done. Many people want their voices to be heard, and I think we need to use some of our privilege as internationals to get those voices heard directly in the US, rather than through the filter of well-meaning internationals such as myself. I am just beginning to learn, from what I expect to be a very intense tutelage, about the ability of people to organize against all odds, and to resist against all odds.
-Rachel.
The above is not my story, but story from a girl I'd admire for her strong courange and determination. I'm a muslim and I don't dare to take the chance that she did. She try to help people who are not related from any way to her, but those same people have been close to me, they have the same religion as I am, they are fighting so that the third holy place in Islam where Prophet Muhammad p.u.h was taken to heaven to stay sacret forever.I grew up knowing how they suffer yet never take the innisiative to help even a bit. Shame on me. To her family I like express my deepest sympathy.
Writers note:
On February 7, 2003. Rachel, an American peace activist, was crushed to death by an Israeli US-supplied D-9 Caterpillar bulldozer on March 16, 2003, while trying to prevent a Palestinian refugee home from being demolished.
I have been in Palestine for two weeks and one hour now, and I still have very few words to describe what I see. It is most difficult for me to think about what’s going on here when I sit down to write back to the United States—something about the virtual portal into luxury. I don’t know if many of the children here have ever existed without tank-shell holes in their walls and the towers of an occupying army surveying them constantly from the near horizons. I think, although I’m not entirely sure, that even the smallest of these children understand that life is not like this everywhere. An eight-year-old was shot and killed by an Israeli tank two days before I got here, and many of the children murmur his name to me, Bali—or point at the posters of him on the walls. The children also love to get me to practice my limited Arabic by asking me “Kaif Sharon?” “Kaif Bush?” and they laugh when I say “Bush Majnoon” “Sharon Majnoon” back in my limited Arabic. (How is Sharon? How is Bush? Bush is crazy. Sharon is crazy.) Of course this isn’t quite what I believe, and some of the adults who have the English correct me: Bush mish Majnoon... Bush is a businessman. Today I tried to learn to say “Bush is a tool”, but I don’t think it translated quite right. But anyway, there are eight-year-olds here much more aware of the workings of the global power structure than I was just a few years ago—at least regarding Israel.
Nevertheless, I think about the fact that no amount of reading, attendance at conferences, documentary viewing and word of mouth could have prepared me for the reality of the situation here. You just can’t imagine it unless you see it, and even then you are always well aware that your experience is not at all the reality: what with the difficulties the Israeli Army would face if they shot an unarmed US citizen, and with the fact that I have money to buy water when the army destroys wells, and, of course, the fact that I have the option of leaving. Nobody in my family has been shot, driving in their car, by a rocket launcher from a tower at the end of a major street in my hometown. I have a home. I am allowed to go see the ocean. Ostensibly it is still quite difficult for me to be held for months or years on end without a trial (this because I am a white US citizen, as opposed to so many others). When I leave for school or work I can be relatively certain that there will not be a heavily armed soldier waiting half way between Mud Bay and downtown Olympia at a checkpoint—a soldier with the power to decide whether I can go about my business, and whether I can get home again when I’m done. So, if I feel outrage at arriving and entering briefly and incompletely into the world in which these children exist, I wonder conversely about how it would be for them to arrive in my world.
They know that children in the United States don’t usually have their parents shot and they know they sometimes get to see the ocean. But once you have seen the ocean and lived in a silent place, where water is taken for granted and not stolen in the night by bulldozers, and once you have spent an evening when you haven’t wondered if the walls of your home might suddenly fall inward waking you from your sleep, and once you’ve met people who have never lost anyone—once you have experienced the reality of a world that isn’t surrounded by murderous towers, tanks, armed “settlements” and now a giant metal wall, I wonder if you can forgive the world for all the years of your childhood spent existing—just existing—in resistance to the constant stranglehold of the world’s fourth largest military—backed by the world’s only superpower—in it’s attempt to erase you from your home. That is something I wonder about these children. I wonder what would happen if they really knew.
As an afterthought to all this rambling, I am in Rafah, a city of about 140,000 people, approximately 60 percent of whom are refugees—many of whom are twice or three times refugees. Rafah existed prior to 1948, but most of the people here are themselves or are descendants of people who were relocated here from their homes in historic Palestine—now Israel. Rafah was split in half when the Sinai returned to Egypt. Currently, the Israeli army is building a fourteen-meter-high wall between Rafah in Palestine and the border, carving a no-mans land from the houses along the border. Six hundred and two homes have been completely bulldozed according to the Rafah Popular Refugee Committee. The number of homes that have been partially destroyed is greater. Today as I walked on top of the rubble where homes once stood, Egyptian soldiers called to me from the other side of the border, “Go! Go!” because a tank was coming. Followed by waving and “what’s your name?” There is something disturbing about this friendly curiosity. It reminded me of how much, to some degree, we are all kids curious about other kids: Egyptian kids shouting at strange women wandering into the path of tanks. Palestinian kids shot from the tanks when they peak out from behind walls to see what’s going on. International kids standing in front of tanks with banners. Israeli kids in the tanks anonymously, occasionally shouting—and also occasionally waving—many forced to be here, many just aggressive, shooting into the houses as we wander away.
In addition to the constant presence of tanks along the border and in the western region between Rafah and settlements along the coast, there are more IDF towers here than I can count—along the horizon, at the end of streets. Some just army green metal. Others these strange spiral staircases draped in some kind of netting to make the activity within anonymous. Some hidden, just beneath the horizon of buildings. A new one went up the other day in the time it took us to do laundry and to cross town twice to hang banners. Despite the fact that some of the areas nearest the border are the original Rafah with families who have lived on this land for at least a century, only the 1948 camps in the center of the city are Palestinian-controlled areas under Oslo. But as far as I can tell, there are few if any places that are not within the sights of some tower or another. Certainly there is no place invulnerable to apache helicopters or to the cameras of invisible drones we hear buzzing over the city for hours at a time.
I’ve been having trouble accessing news about the outside world here, but I hear an escalation of war on Iraq is inevitable. There is a great deal of concern here about the “reoccupation of Gaza.” Gaza is reoccupied every day to various extents, but I think the fear is that the tanks will enter all the streets and remain here, instead of entering some of the streets and then withdrawing after some hours or days to observe and shoot from the edges of the communities. If people aren’t already thinking about the consequences of this war for the people of the entire region then I hope they will start.
I also hope you’ll come here. We’ve been wavering between five and six internationals. The neighborhoods that have asked us for some form of presence are Yibna, Tel El Sultan, Hi Salam, Brazil, Block J, Zorob, and Block O. There is also need for constant night-time presence at a well on the outskirts of Rafah since the Israeli army destroyed the two largest wells. According to the municipal water office the wells destroyed last week provided half of Rafah’s water supply. Many of the communities have requested internationals to be present at night to attempt to shield houses from further demolition. After about ten p.m. it is very difficult to move at night because the Israeli army treats anyone in the streets as resistance and shoots at them. So clearly we are too few.
I continue to believe that my home, Olympia, could gain a lot and offer a lot by deciding to make a commitment to Rafah in the form of a sister-community relationship. Some teachers and children’s groups have expressed interest in e-mail exchanges, but this is only the tip of the iceberg of solidarity work that might be done. Many people want their voices to be heard, and I think we need to use some of our privilege as internationals to get those voices heard directly in the US, rather than through the filter of well-meaning internationals such as myself. I am just beginning to learn, from what I expect to be a very intense tutelage, about the ability of people to organize against all odds, and to resist against all odds.
-Rachel.
The above is not my story, but story from a girl I'd admire for her strong courange and determination. I'm a muslim and I don't dare to take the chance that she did. She try to help people who are not related from any way to her, but those same people have been close to me, they have the same religion as I am, they are fighting so that the third holy place in Islam where Prophet Muhammad p.u.h was taken to heaven to stay sacret forever.I grew up knowing how they suffer yet never take the innisiative to help even a bit. Shame on me. To her family I like express my deepest sympathy.
Writers note:
On February 7, 2003. Rachel, an American peace activist, was crushed to death by an Israeli US-supplied D-9 Caterpillar bulldozer on March 16, 2003, while trying to prevent a Palestinian refugee home from being demolished.
Wednesday, April 13, 2005
Most of the things worth doing in the world had been declared impossible before they were done - Louis D. Brandeis
Always think I'm suitable to be a doctor but know I know why God send me here, sick people doesn't make my day. Been at Penang GH for like 2 weeks and seeing sick people really sadden a person draws you back somehow.
When to neuro surgery ward today for testing and commisioning of new ventilator, I must say the design for the ventilator was sleek smart and stylish. ( Can't believe I'm actually falling for the design....sigh) To bad the design wouldn't be appreciated by the user since if a person is wearing this then the person is either having trouble to breath or totally unconcious. So at the end the desing is just for sell purposes only.
There are no extraordinary men... just extraordinary circumstances that ordinary men are forced to deal with - William Halsey
Always think I'm suitable to be a doctor but know I know why God send me here, sick people doesn't make my day. Been at Penang GH for like 2 weeks and seeing sick people really sadden a person draws you back somehow.
When to neuro surgery ward today for testing and commisioning of new ventilator, I must say the design for the ventilator was sleek smart and stylish. ( Can't believe I'm actually falling for the design....sigh) To bad the design wouldn't be appreciated by the user since if a person is wearing this then the person is either having trouble to breath or totally unconcious. So at the end the desing is just for sell purposes only.
There are no extraordinary men... just extraordinary circumstances that ordinary men are forced to deal with - William Halsey
Saturday, April 09, 2005
The black knock out day
Quick decisions are unsafe decisions-Sophocles
Today is not a very good day for me to be happy, I got sore throat the result of not limiting my ice intake and with my limited knowledge of electronic board and power source I manage to trip the power source of my office building, the WHOLE OFFICE (How often you got the chance to do that).
It started as little experiment between me and my industrial training friends trying to find the source of faulty in an electronic board that is not functioning. It was all going smoothly until....a spark goes off, I froze and of the whole office shut in silence. The power source have been trip, black out....everyone just turn their back to us and I wish I could hide under the table at that very moment. Amazingly no one blame us instead just said it was a process of learning. We make mistake sometimes only be careful next time. If a trainee is not able to make mistake then they won't learn anything. (Gosh am I lucky or the spark just sent me flying across to another dimension and all this is not real). Okay its real, this people are nice.
Today lesson is next time if you want to test something, be carefull because your boss might not be nice as mine was. If you end up as employer next time be nice to the trainee....
Learning sleeps and snores in libraries, but wisdom is everywhere, wide awake, on tiptoe.-Josh Billings
Today is not a very good day for me to be happy, I got sore throat the result of not limiting my ice intake and with my limited knowledge of electronic board and power source I manage to trip the power source of my office building, the WHOLE OFFICE (How often you got the chance to do that).
It started as little experiment between me and my industrial training friends trying to find the source of faulty in an electronic board that is not functioning. It was all going smoothly until....a spark goes off, I froze and of the whole office shut in silence. The power source have been trip, black out....everyone just turn their back to us and I wish I could hide under the table at that very moment. Amazingly no one blame us instead just said it was a process of learning. We make mistake sometimes only be careful next time. If a trainee is not able to make mistake then they won't learn anything. (Gosh am I lucky or the spark just sent me flying across to another dimension and all this is not real). Okay its real, this people are nice.
Today lesson is next time if you want to test something, be carefull because your boss might not be nice as mine was. If you end up as employer next time be nice to the trainee....
Learning sleeps and snores in libraries, but wisdom is everywhere, wide awake, on tiptoe.-Josh Billings
Wednesday, April 06, 2005
Help wanted...to search for humour
I have a fine sense of the ridiculous, but no sense of humor- Edward Albeeour
Perlis in BI, the 'Menteri Besar' score again. This is the guy who knows how to have his name in newspapers but doesn't know a thing about rulling a country. I'm not joking. Okay don' take it seriously, it is just my opinion (MB Perlis fan I'm sorry, have no attention of hurting anyone). If you want to find a country with a lot of ideas (ridicilous one..they want to achive something but sadly it is something not worth achieving) Since I might end up in ISA for this one so I just left it here. (you might wonder for someone who hate politics, I certainly have a hobby of writing about them, yes I have because when you see politics the way I see it, you learn not to become like them.
Back to my world. As ussual work from 8-5, boss have found a new assistant to help him count the work order and guess who? ME! The worst part is he found me when the clock almost strike 5, so I have to do extra work for extra time and no extra money. Again!
If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed suicide. -Mohandas Gandhi
Perlis in BI, the 'Menteri Besar' score again. This is the guy who knows how to have his name in newspapers but doesn't know a thing about rulling a country. I'm not joking. Okay don' take it seriously, it is just my opinion (MB Perlis fan I'm sorry, have no attention of hurting anyone). If you want to find a country with a lot of ideas (ridicilous one..they want to achive something but sadly it is something not worth achieving) Since I might end up in ISA for this one so I just left it here. (you might wonder for someone who hate politics, I certainly have a hobby of writing about them, yes I have because when you see politics the way I see it, you learn not to become like them.
Back to my world. As ussual work from 8-5, boss have found a new assistant to help him count the work order and guess who? ME! The worst part is he found me when the clock almost strike 5, so I have to do extra work for extra time and no extra money. Again!
If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed suicide. -Mohandas Gandhi
Tuesday, April 05, 2005
OT...operation theater..over time
Information's pretty thin stuff unless mixed with experience- Clarence Day
Went into operation theater today, have to change from the blue 'Khidmat Healthronics' uniform to a blue top, white pants uniform ( hideous one too..surgeon have bad taste in designing uniform) What I learn, hmm when you have someone who's position is to help, you will ask for help even for the smallest unnecessary thing including pushing the monitor wheel so it wouldn't block the water pipe. (True story) My supervisor was ask to inspect whe the heat mattress wasn't functioning, the problem.......blocked pipe, I can't help smiling. I swear the sister is about to choke me at that very moment for smiling. Imagine if I laugh, the scaple is just a centimetre away....
Anyway, my supervisor is bad at seeing watch, he thinks it is four o'clock when when it is 5.15...OT...overtime for me
Life is the art of drawing without an eraser. John W. Gardner
Went into operation theater today, have to change from the blue 'Khidmat Healthronics' uniform to a blue top, white pants uniform ( hideous one too..surgeon have bad taste in designing uniform) What I learn, hmm when you have someone who's position is to help, you will ask for help even for the smallest unnecessary thing including pushing the monitor wheel so it wouldn't block the water pipe. (True story) My supervisor was ask to inspect whe the heat mattress wasn't functioning, the problem.......blocked pipe, I can't help smiling. I swear the sister is about to choke me at that very moment for smiling. Imagine if I laugh, the scaple is just a centimetre away....
Anyway, my supervisor is bad at seeing watch, he thinks it is four o'clock when when it is 5.15...OT...overtime for me
Life is the art of drawing without an eraser. John W. Gardner