Does My Vote Count? Yes It Does!

I think no one was shocked by BN's victory in Hulu Selangor yesterday - or at least that's what I believe. I mean, look at P. Kamalanathan's electric smile, and add that to Najib's charms and promises - the 1725 majority won by the ruling coalition in an opposition state came as no surprise for me.

Let's talk about election in general. Does democracy provide each voter the chance to decide the fate of it's country? Or is this one-man-one-vote system inherently fails to fulfil its promise to give equal opportunity for each and every individual citizens? Skeptics would tell us not to vote because, so they believe, in reality no single voter has the power to elect a government. In a way, the skeptics are right: as individuals - each of us is just one meaningless voter - drowned by the overwhelming thousands of others in our constituencies. (In the context of Hulu Selangor by-election, how futile one-vote seemed when it's matched to 48999 others)

But hold on a moment. Last night as I pondered upon these questions, I thought of using measures of random probability to try to resolve this great debate on the relevance of our democratic system. And I've done it! Sadly, the skeptics are right!

From my calculation of the probability (or chance) that our single vote can have an impact to an election, I've found out that it actually matters really less.  In fact, there is very little chance that my single vote could determine the winning candidate in an election. In other words, my vote is unlikely to affect the outcome. (Obviously, this calculation must take into account many assumptions. The details of this calculation is included later in this post. I really recommend you to see it - I was astonished myself, because earlier I got to a wrong conclusion in an opposite direction). Maybe it sounds obvious to you, but do allow me to explain it further.

Yes, if we don't vote, we practically have no influence on the outcome - maybe because we just don't care. But if we do care and we go out to vote, what difference does it make? In a two party election - even without our vote - it is very likely that any one of the party wins the election anyway. So is it worthwile to go out and vote?

Oh Please Don't Stop The Music!

The Absurdity Of Our Left Wing Friends

In order to convey a message effectively, one must always repeat it many times. Now let's say it together: APCO APCO APCO APCO. Again! OK that's enough. How many times have we heard this four letter word lately? A hell lot, of course! Before I proceed, let me tell you that I may know the least bit about this APCO affair, and so do most of us. So come on lah, the government wants to clean up it's image to garner support from the people. I say why not? In fact, I think (and I believe everyone would agree) a strong majority is what a country needs to progress. Let's say our voters are divided 50/50 between PR and BN. Can you imagine what would happen? Well perhaps we don't have to imagine that kind of situation anymore - our close neighbour is already making enough headlines for us to see.

So does this mean we should all vote for the same party in the next election? Obviously not, because we still need an opposition force to create a system of checks and balances. However, democracy is not about tearing down the establishment - as what our left wing friends are keen to promote.

I just read a post from a blogger who calls himself a failed government experiment. True to the nature of his left wing ideologies - that (almost?) everything the government does is reckless - the post I read (Thursday Jottings) was nothing more than a rewritten old script of our left wing politics. I think whatever was in that post was BS. Now why should I care about what someone would like to write, or rewrite on his own blog? The answer: as much as left wing commentators are free to write about the mishaps of our government and pander to our dissatisfactions with government services; I believe it's time for us to get disillusioned from their September-16-manifesto.

As a rule of thumb, for them, everything that goes wrong in our country is the government's fault. From economic crisis to road traffic accidents, from blackouts to influenza H1N1. Am I exaggerating? Of course not! Why don't you visit Malaysiakini, Harakah Daily, Malaysian Insider; or buy a copy of Suara Keadilan from a nearby newsstand, and then tell me if I'm wrong. Take the post I just read as an example: the blogger blames Tun Dr Mahathir for our societal ills 'as encapsulated by AF'! After all, Mahathir was the PM for an overwhelming 22 years - he must have had plenty of time to make everyone behave properly. Oh how criminals would love to hear that our PM is partly responsible for their heinous acts. Perhaps they could split the prison time with the PM then?

Hey, I'm not campaigning for any political parties here. I'm just championing the stability of our country, promoting peace, and supporting our socioeconomic progress. When it's time to topple the government, the majority will know and they will act accordingly. This brings us to my final say on the absurdity of our left wing friends: Who makes up the majority? To me, it's simply any group of voters with the most members - we must trust our fellow countrymen to decide our country's fate.

Instead, our left wing friends usually act as though other Malaysians have no sense of reason. They form mobs rioting on the streets; they have high tolerance of ruckus in the Parliament, and pander to our emotions with lies and deceit - never fail to blame whatever it is wrong with our country on the government. Again, if I must repeat, we the People can choose whom we want to govern us. So don't put the blame on Mahathir who stayed in office for over two-decades, but blame it on most of us - the Malaysian majority - who have allowed him to do so.

A Few Exam Tips

The following is an excerpt from my email to a friend who've asked me for a few exam tips:

First let me concede my inability to give you the best of advice to help you through this difficult situation, but please allow me to offer a few still:

First off: Don't be overconfident. I don't see that from your response, which is good. It might even sound strange to you, but it does happen to some people (especially after a few revisions). Sadly, it's always the false sense of security that makes us more vulnerable to failure.

That said, my next advice: Don't panic. Too much panic is always counterproductive. I sometimes do this relaxation technique, which helped me a lot to prevent panic attacks during exam: While I was calm in my room (weeks or days before any test) I close my eyes and imagine I'm in the exam hall. It works best if I actually feel the stress and panic during that meditation. But the trick is then to calm myself down in that simulated exam moment. The desired result is to associate exams with a relaxed, calm and confident feeling. I believe this positive emotional state would help us a lot to focus in exams.

"What about the subject?", you may ask. What to study, how and when? My approach for EOS 5: Revise multiple topics in a day - across different semesters and systems. I believe in the quality of my revision not the quantity, which means I didn't measure how many lecture notes I haven't read, or how many times I've gone through a particular note - which most of my friends did. I simply open a textbook, say Papa Patho, and choose a topic, say Diabetes. After I read about diabetes, I try to recall the anatomy of the pancreas, kidney, or even then continue to read on myocardial infarction because I know diabetes poses a strong risk for MI.

That might have been ineffective, afterall, what if I've read MI before, should I study what I haven't instead? Not at all. The trick is to know what you already know and what you don't. If certain topics like MI keeps on popping up (it's related to various important diseases we learn) it means it is important for exam purposes! But I never forget to go through lecture notes - making sure I haven't overlooked on subtopics or minute details (in the end, the lecturers are the ones forming the exam questions). There is one caveat: Different people have different successful methods of study. I've only suggested one, you must already know many others.

My final tip: Discuss what you've studied, with others. This may in fact be a selfish practice, because you actually benefit more than the person you discuss with if you had the priviledge to quiz others or attempt at other people's questions. Or you might also learn what he/she knows that you didn't.

One bonus tip: Borrow exam-question-sample books from the library. Those have surely helped me and my friends whom I shared those sample questions with.

There was, however, another important tip which I shared with this friend in another email:
 
Most importantly, if I must say, is that at the end of each day, I'd reflect upon the lessons I've learnt [from my revisions] on that day and topics I've covered and test myself if I can recall them - or [see if] I [have] just wasted my time in front of a book (If so, I'd [try to] figure out why)

At the end of the email, I told her this:

It's never too late to work hard.
Hakim J

Do biometrics help in pest control?

The author regret having posted the following paragraphs, and he has extended his sincere apologies here.

Let's look for a moment at the pest problem at our house. Pests - like cocroaches, termites, rats, etc - could annoy us in many ways: a mere sight of them may disgust or even scare us off; they pollute our food and destroy our belongings; they find a suitable corner tao live, and multiply! And so we buy cans of Ridsect, Shieldtox; lay rat traps; and so on to exterminate these pests, or at least control them. However, just like diseases, prevention is better than cure - or as pestexterminatenow.com may suggest,"Be Inhospitable!"

I've just watched the Edisi 7, the 7pm news on NTV7. The headline was on illegal immigrants risking their lives to escape from getting caught by our security forces. Apparently Pasar Selayang employs some of those foreign workers captured by NTV7's camera in action, as they scurried across a six-lane highway - in the middle of the night. If I'm not mistaken, an officer reported that there were about a thousand illegal aliens at that location, but the law enforcers have only managed to capture eleven of them.

Next, Dato' Seri Hishamuddin was interviewed on this issue - in a surprisingly small office (which I guess/hope was not his). What I learnt from the interview was that Malaysia would very likely employ biometrics at our borders to recognize all immigrants in the near future (not necessarily be at the end of the year, I heard). This biometric system is currently in operation in the US, Japan and Singapore. Now why am I asking this question: Do biometrics help in pest control? Let's compare the illegal immigrant issue with our pest problems at home - and see how we could possibly resolve the matter effectively. First let me say that I don't mean to devalue the lives of illegal immigrants to the level of common pests. This only serves as an analogy to solve the problem that they're causing in our country.