Now, boys, just settle down.

I read this colum in The Star and found it amusing!

Brave New World
By AZMI SHAROM

The teacher has to rein in the unruly few or the lesson cannot start and the whole class, nay, even school, will suffer.

GOOD morning, boys. Good morning. Settle down, settle down. Now, it’s been a tough couple of weeks for us and as your class teacher, I think we should go over a few things.

We have been the premier school in the country for the past 50 years, but a few unpleasant incidents recently have put that position at risk.

If we don’t get our act together, we may lose our hallowed position.

Therefore, before we begin our history lesson, there are a few matters I would like to discuss with you.

First off, our head prefect, Mr Hamid, can you stand up, please? Well, it seems that you have …

You there, yes, you, the boy at the back. Can you please stop making that obscene gesture with your hands? No, you can’t say you are just tapping your right hand with your left. That is an obscene gesture. Keep it up and I’ll give you six strokes.

Now, where was I? Oh yes, Mr Hamid. It seems that you caused a massive traffic jam at the school gates. Your prefects were stopping everybody and checking their badges and their bags. Do you realise that you caused a great deal of problems?

Boys were late to class and even teachers were late because of your overzealous behaviour. Mr Tan the Maths master was furious because half his class missed their calculus exam.

What did you say? You were concerned about the security of the school because you thought our rival school was going to cause trouble at your prefects’ meeting? And where, pray tell, did you get this intelligence?

Oh, you heard it on the grapevine? Well, the next time you choose to listen to plants, please check with me first before you go disrupting our school day.

Second on the list is our debating team. Gentlemen, please join me in a round of applause for the hard work of our team captain, Mr Chik.

He put up a courageous display against a debater who had miles more experience than him. Bravo, Mr Chik, a brave effort indeed.

Brave but futile, I’m afraid. Mr Chik, I have spoken to the debate master and he told me that you hardly did any research.

Listen, my boy, you can’t beat the opposition by making personal attacks on their past.

You have to put over your point clearly; otherwise you’ll just look foolish.

And one more thing; for the next debate, please bring a handkerchief.

All right, now it is time to discuss some academic matters. I have just marked your General Paper test and I was quite shocked with some of your answers.

Mr Ibrahim, stand up, please. Young man, I read your essay on government scholarships and it was very passionate and fiery but you can’t just make things up.

There is nowhere in the Constitution that says that all scholarships are reserved for Malays.

It says that reservations of a proportion of scholarships for Malays may be made by the King. It does not say every single sen is for one group or another.

Don’t argue with me, boy! You got it all wrong. All you have to do is read the blinking thing.

What do you mean you did read it? What did you see exactly when you read it?

Perhaps I should send you to the school nurse. I think you need glasses.

One last thing; as you all know, half the boys in this school stay in the hostel.

It has come to my attention that the day boys have been teasing the hostel boys by questioning, how can I put it, their … manliness.

This behaviour has got to stop. It is childish and undignified. It also reflects an obsession with matters sexual that borders on the unhealthy.

The next time you get the urge to speculate about another person’s private life, may I suggest you play some rugby and let the exertions raise your minds from the gutter?

Very well then, I trust the events of the past few weeks have taught you all a lesson and the debacles that have so embarrassed us will not be repeated.

We can now begin our history lesson. Would you be so kind as to take out your textbooks and turn to page …

For the last time, boy, stop making that gesture! You have had your warning, and seeing as how you are too uncouth to show the slightest bit of remorse and repentance, I shall see you after class.

Let’s see whether you can keep doing that with your hands once I’ve caned them raw.

Now, where was I? Oh yes, please open your books to page 46 …

> Dr Azmi Sharom is a law teacher. The views expressed here are entirely his own.

let’s all buy Mercedez to save money.

Ubah gaya hidup? Credit to Paul Tan's blog for the picture.

No, that’s not a typo. Apparently the new strategy to save money if you have a car is to buy a more expensive one with the argument that the servicing costs in the long run will justify its purchase. I don’t need to tell you that a Mercedez is more expensive than a Perdana V6, only a blind man will say otherwise. Even the deaf and dumb can guess which one is more expensive. The Terengganu’s MB decision to buy 14 Mercedez Kompressor E200 to replace their current fleet of Perdana V6 Executives just boggles the mind. Not only because of the amount of money spent, but also the rationale behind it.

Terengganu State Secretary Mokhtar Nong argued that the decision was made as a result of the Perdanas’ lack of reliability, explaining the Perdanas often require costly maintenance, especially on the gearbox, when used for continuous, long distance journeys.Two of the Perdana V6s in particular needed cumulative repair costs of RM175,229.97 and RM132,357.76 respectively since 2004. However, Proton denied the allegation of high maintenance costs from Terengganu state government, citing the regular maintenance (motor oil and oil filter replacement) for the Perdana to be around RM200. The controversy had created a possibility of maintenance fraud by the state government of Terengganu, as the regular cumulative maintenance costs of a typical Perdana V6 for the same period is far lower than the claim by the state government and also due to the fact that there was no such warranty claims being made by the state government since October 2004 for one of the defected cars.

Is he trying to insult other people’s intelligence by claiming that the repair costs for a car component is more than the cost of a new car altogether? I don’t care what car it is, (even if it’s a Bugatti Veyron) it just does not make sense that repair costs of a Perdana V6 is more than the cost of the car itself.

This whole illogical and incredulous sequence of claims leads to a high degree of suspicion that there was some hanky panky going on regarding the details of the entire car maintenance process for the Terengganu Excos. Who serviced them? Why did it cost so much? Are the numbers correct? The Star reported through its SMS alerts service today that several senior officers have been interviewed by the Terengganu ACA over the Perdana fleet’s maintenance costs. Sigh, maybe some people’s ambition in life is to taste how owning a Mercedez is like.

Sometimes, when people do something wrong, we try and find a way to give them the benefit of the doubt. Otherwise known as ‘bersangka baik’. But this is just too illogical. And I mean, literally.

We hate people who are corrupted. We hate them more when they are corrupted and idiots.

rasuah: public enemy number one.

Maaf kerana lambat update. I was reading the news yesterday and as we all know, there has been a lot of arrests by BPR lately, that Immigration fellow, then yesterday a former Putrajaya Holdings landscaping staff. It is perplexing as to why Malaysians can be so corrupted. Morgan Stanley apparently reported that 330 Billion ringgit have been lost through corruption. That is a lot of money. I have been trying to figure out the reasons why and I have come up with a few theories.

Some people say that not everybody understands what rasuah means. Maybe yes, maybe no. People must understand that rasuah not only involves money, it can be anything that you receive in return for a favour. For example, if a guy gives you an all-expense paid holiday for you and your family in return for a favour from you, that is rasuah eventhough there was no visible exchange of money. He does not need to hand you 3000 ringgit in cash, he can just convert it into a different form to make it appealing to you. This is part of the first problem. People can talk all they want about rasuah, but sometimes they are just as susceptible to it when it comes knocking on their door in a different form, a form that looks ‘less guilty’ to them and more appealing.

There is also rasuah kuasa, when one uses one’s power to interfere in a supposedly neutral process to ensure that a particular outcome is in one’s favour. Conflicting interests must be declared and made clear so that people are aware of your business dealings. I still think that a lot of people know this but pretend they don’t. For those who genuinely don’t, then be aware and understand the concept.

We need to remember, rasuah is a sin that involves other people and a very serious one indeed. The profits that we get will be used to feed our family and later on in life, the consequences of that will be reflected in our lives. The mufti of Perlis explained that certain sins are best kept a secret if you know about them, untuk menutup aib sesama Muslim, but others are best publicized so that the public are not victimized. Rasuah falls into the latter category. If it’s between you and Allah, then asking for forgiveness in solitude is perhaps better for you. Tidak aib di dunia. But for things like rasuah, it needs to be discussed in the open and tackled rigorously as it involves other people’s money and is a threat to the society as a whole.

So I am reminding myself and my fellow friends who are about to embark on their working lives to keep themselves ‘clean’. Biarlah kita hidup sederhana tetapi dengan wang titik peluh sendiri yang sudah pasti lebih berkat dan memberi kita lebih kegembiraan daripada mendapat wang yang haram.

It’s not only for your own good, it’s for the nation.

“Dan janganlah kamu makan (atau mengambil) harta (orang-orang lain) diantara kamu dengan jalan yang salah, dan janganlah kamu menghulurkan harta kamu dengan (memberi rasuah) kepada hukum-hukum, kerana hendak memakan (atau mengambil) sebahagian dari harta manusia dengan (berbuat) dosa, pada hal kamu mengetahui (salahnya)”.

Al-Baqarah ayat 188