Winter in Abu Dhabi

Christmas decoration at Lulu Hypermarket in Al Wahda Mall.

In front of Al Wahda Mall shopping mall

Me, in front of the Malaysian Embassy during the Hari Raya Haji open house

Scene outside the Malaysian embassy in Abu Dhabi during the Hari Raya Haji open house gathering.

Giant UAE flag raised up at Al Wahda Mall for the UAE National Day celebration

Raining in Reem Island, Abu Dhabi.

Time passed really fast...have spent more than 5 months in the Emirates.Winter have arrived in Abu Dhabi and it will my first winter experience in my lifetime.Before winter, rain started to fall after more than 4 months without rain and it happened immediately after the sand storm.It was really a relief to see rainfall unlike in Malaysia which is we can experience almost every month.Many sports events in Abu Dhabi was postponed due to the unexpected rainfall and some parts of Abu Dhabi roads was even flooded.

On 2nd December 2008, UAE celebrated their 37th independence day and many major shopping centre here organised special events to commemorate the occasion.In Al Wahda Mall which is within walking distance from my villa,the mall organised traditional dance show to mark the event.Streets were decorated with colourful lightings and there was a fireworks display on the eve of the national day.

Hari Raya Haji which also falls within the same week is a big occasion here.The government offices was closed for more than a week to mark the occasion. Attended the Malaysian Embassy open house last Friday and it was great to interact with so many Malaysian working here.Some came as far as Dubai to enjoy the Malaysian food here like the bungkus nasi lemak and sateh which they missed dearly.Christmas is around the corner and many shopping centre have put up decoration to light up the occasion.

Iraqi shoe-thrower captures Mideast rage at Bush- Reuters

BEIRUT (Reuters) - The hurling of shoes at U.S. President George W. Bush on his farewell visit to Iraq strikes many in the Middle East as a fittingly furious comment on what they see as his calamitous legacy in the region.

Arab and Iranian TV stations have gleefully replayed the clip, sometimes in slow motion, of an Iraqi reporter calling Bush a "dog" and throwing his shoes at him -- the Middle East's tastiest insults -- at a Baghdad news conference on Sunday.

The affront was a twisted echo of the triumphal moment for Bush when joyous Iraqis used their footwear to beat a statue of Saddam Hussein toppled by U.S. invading troops in 2003.
"It indicates how much antagonism he's been able to create in the whole region," former Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher told Reuters, adding that the incident was regrettable.
Bush had harmed America's reputation and the friendship many had felt for it. "Despite past mistakes in its policies, there was always a redeeming factor. In this particular case, there doesn't seem to have ever been a redeeming factor," Maher said.

Muntazer al-Zaidi, who works for independent al-Baghdadiya television, has shot to local stardom for his attack on Bush and his cry: "This is a goodbye kiss from the Iraqi people, dog."
He has also won instant fame abroad -- a poem on an Islamist website praises him as "a hero with a lion's heart" -- although the Iraqi government slated his "barbaric and ignominious act."
Zaidi's crude public display of disdain for an incumbent U.S. president hit a chord with many in the Middle East.

"The Iraqi journalist is a true and free Baghdadi," said a Saudi private sector employee who gave his name as Abu Faisal. "He was brave and did us proud. Bush destroyed (Iraq) so surely he deserved to be beaten with a shoe."
Khalid al-Dakhil, a Saudi university lecturer in social politics, said the incident summed up Bush's impact on the Middle East, which "will haunt this region for a long time."
Dakhil, who said Bush had committed war crimes in Iraq after launching a war based on "lies" that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction, nevertheless fretted about the shoe-throwing.

"While understandable, it wasn't the most sophisticated and constructive way to express one's anger at Bush, especially coming from an educated Arab journalist. It reinforces the stereotype ideas in the Western world about Arabs."
Some Palestinians, whose hopes of independent statehood have withered in the eight-year Bush era, relished the moment.

"A shoe company in Hebron claimed the attack on Bush and they will give the attacker shoes all his life," runs one joke being exchanged on mobile telephones in the Gaza Strip.

How to become very rich in Malaysia- The Star

Connections and the ability to flip assets can get you going places




If you have ever wondered how to get rich in Malaysia – fabulously rich and very quickly at that – here’s a model that you might want to look at very closely. Not easy to do but if you do have a couple of projects in the bag, it will set you up for several lifetimes.

First you need connections – strong ones, the higher the better and if it goes right up to the top all the better. You need this because you need to convince the powers that be that your projects are good.But you might ask if your projects are so good, why do you need connections? Why don’t you just go out and execute? Good questions, those. Here’s the answer - you need the state to give you something to do the deal that will help the nation.

Still can’t figure it out? See, it’s like this. You want to help the country, right? The country needs say a port. But you can’t build a port just like that. You need land to build a port. You tell the state or federal government you need land – cheap land, preferably free to build the port.
Or to take another example, you want to help the country by building a power plant. But look, you need land too and not only that you need the power to be sold. So you want an agreement – an iron-clad one to sell the power to Tenaga Nasional and to pass through all costs.

You see, that’s your reward as an entrepreneur – you get someone else to build the power plant, they guarantee the performance of the plant and someone else guarantees to buy your power and pay for all your costs. Nice deal? You bet. Billionaires have been made that way.
Or you may want to start an air hub. If you are persuasive enough, you can even convince the government to compulsorily acquire the land and sell it to you cheap. Once you have cheap land, lucrative contracts and concession agreements, the sky’s the limit.

Let’s take it a step further. If you want to realise the value of all of these things that you have and still keep control of them, it’s nice to have a listed company into which you can inject them. Inject one asset for shares and you gain control of the company. And then inject others over the years for cash, taking the money out of the company. Who says you can’t have your cake and eat it too?

Do it right and get a flow of assets to inject in (you can do anything with discounted cash flow valuations – just change the discount rate, and presto, the value changes!), and you get a tidy flow of profits and cash into your personal accounts over the years. I mean a really tidy flow.
Just how much can you make this way, you ask? Why don’t you take a guess first? Did you say RM500mil? Guess again. RM1bil? How about five times that and you may be getting into the right order of magnitude.

One Tan Sri Syed Mokhtar Albukhary actually made some RM4.5bil that way - actually more because he still controls the listed company. (MMC’s latest RM1.7bil deal irks investors7) We are not saying he is the only one, which makes your chances of joining the ranks better – if you are connected to high places that is.But then again, if things change – and that’s still a big ‘if’ – you might not find it so easy anymore.

P. Gunasegaram is managing editor of The Star. He thinks it is high time we changed the way we did business

IF OBAMA HAD BEEN A MALAYSIAN (MALAYSIAKINI)

*From a Disappointed Member (Malaysiakini) Nov 14, 2008 4:20pm

It is nice to know that Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi thinks anyone can become PM in Malaysia. He must think we are stupid and blind to the realities of being ethnic minorities in Malaysia.If Barack Obama was unfortunate enough to have been born in Malaysia, he couldn't even become the general manager of PKNS, never mind, president of the US, the most powerful country in the world.If he became a born-again Christian in his teenage years, keeping in view his father was African Muslim, Jakim would have hauled him off to a religious rehabilitation detention centre in Malaysia, and his kids would have been taken away from him.Michelle Obama would then have been advised by our racist religious authorities to divorce him.

Just for not being Malay, Umno would have overlooked his obvious talents and intelligence, and they would have denied him permanent residence or a citizenship and he can forget about any potential scholarships, job promotions or a place in a public university.Like Vijay Singh, world champion golfer, he would have been forced to emigrate to live elsewhere.If Barack Obama had advocated equal opportunity and equal rights in Malaysia, he would have been demonised by* Utusan Malaysia* as being anti-Malay and anti-Islam and taken into custody under the ISA just like what happened to Teresa Kok, and he would have had Molotov cocktails chucked into his parent's house, and had curly daggers waved at him.

If he had advocated rule of law like Zaid Ibrahim, they would called him a traitor to the Malay race.If he advocated democracy like Anwar Ibrahim, then Umno, the world champions of fitnah would have fixed him for sodomy.If like the jailed Hindraf 5 leaders, Barack Obama tells us to 'hope for change' and have the 'audacity of hope' then it would have been ISA and water cannons for him and his supporters.For practicing freedom of religion and conscience, and following the religion of his choice, he would have been charged with apostasy, and don't forget, some of our Malaysian politicians have advocated death for apostasy, just to prove their religious standing in the eyes of theirethnic voters.Abdullah Badawi's statement that anyone can be PM in Malaysia is a sick joke and a clear attempt to mislead the public, and to assuage the collective privileged guilt of Umno's wealthy and corrupt warlords who head a party dedicated to race supremacy, religious and racialapartheid, and the worst type of racial and religious politics.

I am so glad Barack Obama will be the next president of the US. It goes to show that ordinary voters in the most powerful country in the world are prepared to reject the evils of racism, and embrace solidarity with their fellow voters in the context of equal rights and equal citizenship.They have shown long-suffering ordinary Malaysians what real muhibbah looks like instead of the dagger-waving displays (Umno AGM), Umno Youth beating up women delegates at peace conferences (Apcet II, KL), and nameless criminals chucking Molotov cocktails into women MPs' houses - that is, what I would term the Biro Tata Negara brand of nation-building by Umno.

I doubt if Barack Obama can have any impact on Malaysia's racist politics but it is good to know that people in America can still make a common stand with their fellow voters across racial lines for the common good.I challenge Umno to invite Barack Obama to Malaysia to show him the political and judicial wonders of our Malaysian system.
I challenge Umno's gutless politicians to tell Barack Obama, president-elect of the United States of America what opportunities he would have had if he were born in Malaysia