Borneo Cup 08

Paintball

Well, I love paintball. Its my new hobby. Theres nothing more fun than deluding yourself into thinking your some kind of superhero, equip yourself with a fake gun that shoots lil balls of paint, and running of into the wild (ok, not so wild) and unknown (ok, not so unknown) to face off against like minded individuals.

There's no better way to engage in constructive discussion and a sharing of cultures than to shoot someone in the face. And Bush Jr. will back me up on that.

Exhibit A: Morons

So a few weeks back (months? its been MONTHS?) a bunch of us got together and decided to get our asses painted blue yellow and red (yes, we wanted to get tattoos of the Malaysian flag on our butts. Failing that, we played paintball.) I present to you exhibit A. Noticed the slightly warped and deluded looks. Rohene is not visible in this picture because she is invisible.

Exhibit B: Avoiding World-Ending by the Cthulhu

There's this absolutely charming place in Kuching where everyone goes to play paintball. Its and outdoor arena, with all the necessary obstacles, muds and soil parasites that would keep any wannabe terminator-style killing machine happy. Unfortunately, I cannot present a picture to you, because nobody took a picture.

Paintball itself is a rather established and safe extreme sport. Nobody gets killed or worse, has their balls cracked on the pavement. As you can see from exhibit B, full body armour and helmet are provided. It looks like the Halo helmet to keep geeks happy. Otherwise, they would summon the Cthulhu (as is visible in Exhibit C. Geek concerned was unhappy with lack of Halo-like guns and aliens to hate. "Foreigners don't count," says Geek. "The politicians beat us to it.")

Exhibit C: Foreigner (read: Budaya Kuning) Lover (Burn Em'! Burn Em'! Burn Em' All!)

The goal of the game is to capture the enemy's flag (misleadingly called 'Capture the Flag'). Why anyone would want the enemy's flag and not their virgins is still a mystery. The goal is reached by shooting your enemy to pieces and bringing their flag back to your base. Suprisingly, if you are shot you don't really die. Instead you walk leisurely to an area of the field called the 'Dead Box'. Remember this name. You will spend a lot of time here. In the Dead Box, players are expected to ponder the meaning of life, and achieve world peace (Exhibit D)

Exhibit D: Players after achieving World Peace. ( if only everyone had started worshipping the Dollar God earlier.)

Other than achieving what civilization has failed to do in the pass 5 000 years, teams (bunch of players who can't get along but pretend to do so anyway) also earn 100 points for capturing the flag, 10 points for every kill and a candy bar for every bruise. You also get love and intense adulation from the crowd if at anytime during the game your panties becomes visible.

Exhibit E: We Sucked.

All in all, we sucked. We really really sucked. We got shot. Yay. We lost. Yay. I got shot in the face. Yay.

Lets do that again!

p.s: Rohene is visible in Exhibit E because she in not invisible.

Judicial Appointments Commission

Well if you've read the paper, you may know that Pak Lah is setting up a Judicial Appointments Commission (JAC) to 'clean up' the judicial system.

Whats the Problem?

If you havent realized, the Malaysian judicial system is effectively shackled to political will. This is in direct contradiction to the principal of separation of powers, where the Executive, Judicial and Legislative powers of the state should be separated.

However, in Malaysia, there are certain laws (enacted under our former PM) that force judges to decide cases based on what parliament says. Also, the PM gets to choose our Chief Justice and Supreme Court judges. Therefore, a system that should be completely free of lobbying, political misuse, etc. is vulnerable to the wants of the politicians.

Furthermore, there have been too many cases and allegations (by former and retired judges, no less) of fixing, impropriety, etc. etc. etc.

The Brits

So this whole Judicial Appointments Commission idea is grafted from the British system. The Brits have a commission (say it with me: INDEPENDENT) that is not beholden to any political institution to appoint and promote judges based on merit. Any papers, research, findings, appointments, promotions, doodles and limericks are made public (PUBLIC: Tom, Dick, Harry and their 7 sisters can look at it if they want to).

The Malaise-yans

Of coz the great peoples of the great kingdoms of the Malaise-yans cannot be the using the established, transparent systems of the decadent west. We must make-de our own system.

In the great Malaise-yan system, the JAC advises the PM on who to choose. Meaning that the PM is still doing the choosing. Meaning that there isn't really much change is there?

And am not sure if I missed it, but there is no mention of exactly how this new system will be 'transparent and representative'. Are the appointments and promotions decision making processes going to be published and made public? No mention. And a good question that Ro asked- What happens if the PM disagrees with the decision of the JAC? Does he have the power to override them? (makes the JAC a bit redundant dont it?)

Eagerly looking forward to more news of this 'Judicial Renaissance'.