Earthquake Hits Eastern Sumatra

First time I'd ever been in a swinging (ok, make that swaying) building. Quite amusing, actually, to be honest, from a totally personal point of view. There I was typing away on the computer when the whole world started to shake a little around me. I thought I was giddy, perhaps insufficient sleep or stress from the upcoming meeting, but I hadn't suffered from stress-induced giddiness in, like, a million years, if ever, so there I was closing my eyes and quietly and slowly leaning back in my chair - thinking a few minutes' sleep would be enough to shake off the giddiness.

Then the chair started shaking and that was when I got REALLY worried - worried that I was seriously hallucinating, that is.

Thankfully there were other human beings around and they affirmed upon my enquiry that I was not going mad or suffering a serious loss of blood to the brain; in fact, they had initially looked at me like I was insane, since they were rushing to evacuate the building and there lay yours truly snoozing, to all intents and purposes, in his comfortable office chair.

Anyway the entire population of the office decamped to the field outside and then adjourned to the nearby (low-level) canteen for lunch as the earthquake passed.

After a while staff began to whip out their respective O2 XDA's, Palm TX's, and other similar devices to access the Internet in the hope of discovering more about what was obviously an earthquake, probably somewhere in Indonesia. Amazing isn't it, that nowadays we have come to expect so much of cellular telephone networks and broadband wireless Internet access. In the end the first word of the earthquake came from good old fashioned television. Channel News Asia reported the earthquake long before BBC News and AsiaOne picked it up. One day some bright young Channel 5 executive is going to create a screenplay based on this and call it The Evacuation of Shenton Way or something.

Familiarity breeds contempt. The aftershock came around 2 hours later, when we had all returned to the office. This time we half-heartedly made it all the way to the lift column and then decided, en masse, to turn back for our all-important meeting. So nobody evacuated.

At the commencement of the meeting, our senior colleague stood up (the swaying had stopped, thankfully, it was starting to give me a headache) to announce that the building was safe, so long as we all stopped working whenever it was swaying. Somehow I found that very funny.

News of the earthquake can be found here: Earthquake News from the BBC

LMT

Electronic Judiciary system launched

http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2007/1/11/nation/20070111191206&sec=nation

I remember a certain system called LAWNET. It was launched in Malaysia around maybe one or two years before Singapore launched its own Lawnet. The Malaysian Lawnet featured a search engine called EXCALIBUR. I organised talks on this for the Bar, of which I was then a member. Speakers were invited from Lawnet. Subscribers were welcomed. Proclamations from hilltops were proudly made that the system was way ahead of what any of Malaysia's neighbours had. Since basically all of Malaysia's neighbours had nothing close to Malaysia where government IT initiatives were concerned, save and except for the Little Red Dot down south, such proclamations had to be read as a taunt to Singapore.

Then the system died. And it remained quiet for many years before being re-launched - in a very limited form, lacking any search capacity whatsoever and featuring only legislation (no case law, commentary, digest or any other sources of law or value-add for lawyers).

Lawnet was (and still is) a project of a government owned company - Percetakan Nasional Malaysia Berhad or PNMB. This is the official government printers, "privatised" and hence a "private" entity, even if government-owned.

Now, Singapore's very own Crimson Logic (another "private" company, owned and run basically by the Singapore government) has had Lawnet for many years, and it features integrated law reports, digests, commentaries, scholarly articles, and legislation resources - all of which are searchable any number of ways.

About the only advantage Malaysia's Lawnet has over Singapore's Lawnet is that Malaysia's may be somewhat cheaper to subscribe to. And even on this point I am not very sure, since I have not enquired recently and Singapore is always looking at keeping costs down while for Malaysia costs can only go up (to the tune of some RM30 million bucks...).

Well. Good luck, "Malaysia". Boleh. U gonna need it.

LMT.

"PUTRAJAYA: After numerous delays, the initial phase of the Electronic Judiciary (E-Judiciary) system has been launched.

There will be smoother court processes to reduce the acute backlog of cases, numbering over 8,000.

Case Management System (CMS), Court Recording and Transcription System (CRT), and Common IT Infrastructure (CIT) are among the functions to be implemented in 11 courts involved in a pilot project in Kuala Lumpur and here.

The project, which began in Sept 2004,cost over RM27mil.

The system, which will enable Internet registration of cases and easy access to court records and past cases, will be eventually extended to the 410 courts nationwide.

Minister in the Prime Minister's Department Datuk Seri Nazri Aziz, who presided over a symbolic ceremony to signify the completion of the systemsaid the "Malaysian-made" system was more comprehensive than the electronic system in the US, UK, Australia, Hong Kong and Singapore.

"It would be good if this Malaysian product can be extended to other countries which do not have a system of their own," he told reporters on Thursday."

What Goh Chok Tong said in response to Mahathir

For those who may be wondering what it was Goh said exactly (I referred to it in my last post):-

South China Morning Post
January 26, 2001
IAN STEWART in Kuala Lumpur

RELATED:
Meritocracy comes under attack
Book fuels mistrust of meritocracy

A NEW row between Malaysia and Singapore has underscored the racial tensions that have adversely affected relations between the Chinese-run island republic and its predominantly Malay neighbour since they became independent.

Singapore's Prime Minister, Goh Chok Tong, has angered Malaysian leaders by saying that Malays in his country do better educationally on a percentage basis than Malays in Malaysia, where they are aided by affirmative action programmes.

He also said a higher percentage of Singapore Malays held administrative and managerial positions, although Malaysia proportionately had more Malay doctors, lawyers and millionaires.

Hishammuddin Tun Hussein, head of the youth wing of the United Malays National Organisation (Umno), the dominant government party, accused the Singapore leader of "undermining, intentionally or otherwise" the achievements of Malays in Malaysia.

Other Umno officials said it was unfair to compare Malays in Singapore with Malaysian Malays because the island republic was small and had a higher per capita income than Malaysia.

Mr Goh's assertion, which was based on a government survey, goes to the heart of the different political ideologies of Singapore, which espouses meritocracy, and Malaysia, which rejects it.

He was responding to charges by Malays in both countries that their race was marginalised in Singapore.

Mr Goh said a book on the subject by a Singapore Malay writer "provided the excuse for Malaysian media interest in the fate of Malay Singaporeans".

Malaysian commentators said the book, Singapore Dilemma, by Lily Zubaidah Rahim, shattered the myth of meritocracy and vindicated Kuala Lumpur's policy of giving special privileges to Malays.

Mr Goh said that in Singapore, where admission into universities and polytechnics was on the basis of merit, the Malay community had made significant improvements in the number of passes at all levels.

He said that last year, 25 per cent of the Singapore Malay workforce had upper secondary or higher qualifications. In 1998, the latest year for which Malaysian statistics were available, the equivalent figure for Malaysian Malays was 14 per cent. The figures for Malays holding administrative and managerial or professional and technical positions in Singapore and Malaysia were 23 per cent and 16 per cent.

The affirmative action issue has recently been a hot topic in Malaysia, with the Prime Minister, Dr Mahathir Mohamad, blasting members of a Chinese community group as "extremists" for suggesting Malay privileges be abolished. But he also has scolded Malays for not doing as well as Chinese in schools and universities.