You know what? I truly agree with Mr. Peter Schier, Reader's Digest 2003 and Robert Levin's research and speech about Malaysians: we are not friendly at all. According to Mr. Peter Schier, Malaysia is ranked third last in friendliness. I have to say 'we' though some of us are damn friendly but no choice folks because the research is concluding everyone including the good and bad apples. So sorry folks.

I have not read the Reader's Digest and Robert Levin's research but I would love to if someone could provide their finding because I don't seem to be able to find that on the net. I would really appreciate if someone can do this for me. But the thing is I don't even need to read the reports to prove that Malaysians are unfriendly.

In fact, I can even reiterate and strongly support that Malaysians are damn bloody unfriendly. But please exclude me for I am a rare breed of Malaysia that is damn friendly to friends and strangers. Ask me anything and I will answer your question without having doubts in you for I trust you. No joke. If you ask some of my friends ... they will agree with you for I got to know them through, for example, me as a passenger waiting for a bus...

Me: Hey I like your hair do.
Stranger: Haha... thanks.
Me: Did you cut it yourself?
Stranger: No way! I went to this bla bla saloon to get it done.
Me: Cool ... oh my name is Meow Meow by the way .... Nice to meet you ...
Stranger: I'm Woof Woof.

And that was how I usually get to know people during travelling. And I still keep in touch with some of them. =p But this scenario only happened when I was still in New Zealand as a student. It's just amazing how friendly are the people except if you go to the train stations, where the people there are damn unfriendly because passengers love to harass them by asking them "What time is the next train to and to?" Yup, folks, that's including me. =p

Ok back to Malaysia. So far, I have never succeeded in talking to a stranger. I mean I did talk to strangers but they ended up giving me a look that says " Who the heck are you or How dare you or Don't talk to me, Leper!". No joke, folks. Malaysian people here are damn bloody unfriendly. No offense. You don't have to feel guilty if you know you are not like that. Ok fine. I thought I was approaching people that don't share a similar or rather something in common so fine.

So yesterday I tried a very simple experiment. I was in Mid Valley in the afternoon and I was busy devouring every book in MPH by just looking at them. Because I'm a manga collector, I went to the manga corner and I saw this man holding like 6 [I think more than that] manga and he was picking up almost every manga volume. As I said, I wanted to prove my hypothesis so I approached him like this:

Me: You are really a serious manga collector.
He: [just look at me like I'm a Leper] Yea?
Me: I see. [In my head: Because of you, Malaysians are now deemed as not friendly]

And I just walked off. So my hypothesis is damn right: Malaysians are not friendly. I mean c'm on people I'm just at this manga corner and trying to get to know other manga readers and have I done anything wrong? And what is wrong with those people? I'm not mad but just could not grasp why people are like that?

If you think I'm the only one that thinks like that then you are wrong. I was talking to this Director of something in a University and she totally agrees with me as well that people just close themselves to others, thus creating a wall of communication. The thing is we are not asking people to reveal your bank account or some other personal stuff to us but we just want to get to know you better. Warui ka? [something bad?] That is all we ask.

I came across a quote by Daisaku Ikeda that says that if you are willing to reveal yourself to a person beside you, you never know what can this person do for you especially when you are in dire of help. I agree with this quote because I was in need of help when I was still in NZ. The help I needed is something not all of you guys can understand. Oh well, I was in this supermarket looking at the Asian corner looking for some ingredients and it happened that this guy came to me and asked me if I was very cold because I was wearing my hood and I looked like Kenny in South Park. And I said I wasn't but it's my habit to do that. So we ended up talking and he eventually helped me out to write an example cover letter. Cool ... because we just got to know each other like one hour and I got a favour. And we are still keeping in touch until today.

But I guess it's hard for people to be more open minded. People are now very cautious since the world today is not safer. I guess urbanites are more close minded than the kampung [rural] people when comes to talking to strangers. Innocent? I don't think so. I think it's just that people sometimes think too much.

Oh well, wish Malaysia luck in the Visit Malaysia Tourism 2007 campaign.

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I'm damn tired today because I was wearing some boots since 8.30 am until now. Not only that, I have been walking in that shoe for don't know how many hours in many places in KL alone. I went to an investment seminar then education fair at PWTC follow up by PC fair at KLCC.

The education fair sucks. I thought I could get information that I need and want but i only got one information which is some European scholarship, which is of course better than nothing. I also got to talk to this sort of counsellor which happened to be distributing some dentistry education leaflet. But luckily I answered his question if not I won't know which EU university to look up on the internet. I guess my prayers were answered somehow.

The PC fair sucks as well and I feel like telling off the organizers to have 'one way street' for visitors in the halls. Imagine two forces going against each other and I was squashed. But don't worry about me folks because I was holding an umbrella upside down so you can imagine what happen if people would like to squash me. I was very surprised I was not pickpoketed. This is because I have a friend who told me that she was pickpocketed twice within her holiday back in KL. Funny.... Maybe she has this innocent look where she could be taken advantage. Yes I know I'm very cruel. =p

Although I had a bad day, I received something weird as well. I was thinking of something something... more of dreaming of something something and when I opened a free paper called the Yellow Post and looked at the horoscope of Virgo... it reads

"You are likely to experience the ecstasies of romance as you fall in love this week. However, not rushing into physical intimacy will be good for your relationship. Pay a little attention to improving your physical fitness."

Weird. The horoscope is telling me to stop dreaming of that something something. And I actually wanted to skip the horoscope part because I don't believe but my little inner self is screaming top of its lung to me to read and I did.

Another lesson here is Don't ever ignore your little voice in you.

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Did anyone miss me? Yes I think some of you are. Yea la, perasaan la renaye [yea right].

Oh well, yesterday seminar was all day long and I was even more flattened than a pancake when I reached home. I was just slopping on the sofa because the muscles in both legs refused to cooperate with me. I was so exhausted that I just ate everything from my bowl of rice even though I don't like the ham. Not only that, I was just so tired that I could just doze off on the sofa. But I endured because I wanted to watch last night's Project Runway's theme. You know what was the theme? It was designing an outfit inspired by your dog. And you know what? I was shouting in awe when I see those toy dogs. There were corgi, pomeranian, pug and many more. Imagine I was so excited when I saw those cute miniature dogs. And my mum could hear me shouting in excitement from the restroom. They were just so adorable and I could just squeeze them to death if they were in my arms.

Oh well, the seminar I hosted was fine. I got to see and meet few of the participants and I saw some leng chai [cute/handsome/gorgeous guys]. Bwahahaha... And I got to meet the counsellor of the French Embassy. Leng chai o. I was also praised for my emceeing because I just said some good closing for yesterday's topic. That was pretty cool.

So anything exciting happen last night for you guys?

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Let me share something with you guys: I'm a total idiotic pyschic. A few months ago, I foreseen myself being an emcee for my company's upcoming seminar and I told myself not to be so perasaan [yea right, as if] because big boss won't be asking some newbie to be the host. With that, I was relieved because I don't really care of who and who is going to be the host except me and it's also because of ma fan [troublesome]. So I was la la la for the past few months until yesterday ....

Boss: Renaye, can you please do me favour?
Renaye: Oh sure, what it is?
Boss: Can you please be the emcee for this Thursday's seminar?
Renaye: ???!!!

That was what exactly happened. My premonition came true and I don't believe it. This is never the first and the last time.

So I now have to think of my lines for the upcoming seminar and I'm now having a headache of what to wear. What is more concerned is my hair.. my stupid hair... my hair is neither too long or short. Argh .. my hair sucks.

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Be it extremely emotional, controversial, messed up, or whatever, this entry has been password protected.

If you know it, enter it; or, ask me for it.

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This is pretty strange. I was updating yesterday's blog at the same time as today. What is this? Some kind of coincidence? Or everything happens has some meaning? EErriiiee....

I got nothing to do at work again. It's not really I got nothing to do but I just need to proofread something and I'm just not in the mood to do it because I have been transcribing speeches for the past few weeks until my English merosot [downgraded]. If my standard of English has gone down the slope, how am I going to proofread? Makes sense right? Moreover, I'm sure you guys could detect some grammar mistakes somewhere in the entries... bwahahah

I decided to take a break from my work - undeclared. I was lucky to get hold of the Clash of Civilizationarticle written by Samuel P. Huntington online. It was firstly published in Foreign Affairs Journal in 1993 but it is only accessible by subscribers. I read a little of his article when I was still a student but I found it too profound for me to understand so I abandoned it. But I now got no choice to read because there will be a seminar with this title. And I need to know what the heck is Clash of Civilization.

In this article, Huntington hypothesizes that wars will no longer based on political ideologies indifferences but cultural because cultural civilization is the only difference humans shared. Therefore, political conflicts will occur between nations and political parties of different civilizations.

Clash of civilizations occurs because of 6 reasons:

a) Each civilization is different from each other in the form of history, languages, culture, tradition, etc even though there might be some overlapping. Each person in the civilizations has different views on the relation to God, politics, governance, etc. These differences don't mean that they will bring conflicts and violence. Insofar as, these differences happened to be the case. [I won't give any examples here because I want to be neutral]

b)The world has become a smaller place. People now can communicate with people from all kinds of corner of the world. This intensifies the awareness of culture differences between civlizations and commonalities within civilizations.

c) The modernization of economics and social changes are invoking people to loose the grip of their own identity. Nation states are losing their own unique identity.

d) The dual role of the Western is enhancing the growth civilization-consciouness. A de-westernization and indigenization is occuring in non-Western countries.

e) Cultural characteristic and differences are not really mutable therefore, they are not so easy to be compromise and resolved. Problems related to politics and economics are easier to resolve than cultural based-problems.

f) There is an increased of economic regionalism. Civilization-consciousness will be reinforced by the success of economic regionalism. And a successful economic regionalism is based in a common rooted civilization.

Clash civilization happens at 2 levels: micro and macro level. On the micro level, people from different civilizations fight for territory and over each. On the macro level, states from different civilization fight for economic, political power bla bla and championing their political and religious values.

What does renaye see?

I agree. If I flick through today's newspaper or every now and then, I'm bound to come across articles about people fighting with each other either for territory to establish a place of their own identity or political power. This is sad. I don't have to read that in the World news section.... I can also detect Huntington's message in the local news section. This is more sad. I have things to comment related to this but being a nobody, I want to keep my status quo. All I can say is my beloved country, Malaysia, is doing her best, inter alia, to maintain the peace and harmony our ancestors have fought for the coming generations. For this, I'm very thankful....

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