Consumer rights? It's an oxymoron. Consumers in Malaysia, Mana ada rights!!!

I was reading the news today and read through this article about our court banning a website created by a very angry customer. No doubt that this person was really angry about the car he purchased and obviously, he went through all the trouble to get a website up and share his embarrassing and painful experience. I'm sure he is not the only person with such bad experience. I'm sure a lot of people feels the same way and wish that they themselves can put a website up to expressed their bad experience in buying a car.

A part of me feel that this person should be lauded instead of being condemned. His agonizing experience alone seems enough as punishment. But alas, he was punished by silence. His voice and concerns are force to be shutdown and his lips was sewn together while he have to carry a pejorative mark of insolence on his forehead. Consumers in Malaysia, Mana ada rights!!! (Consumers in Malaysia, they don't have rights!!!)

Rather than siding on the consumer who earns probably a basic salary, just enough to pay his housing, car loan and now repairs for his car, the court decided to shut him down. He was force to bring down his website which was all about his dissatisfaction with a car manufacturer company in Malaysia. Where is our freedom of speech? Wait, we don't have one....:)

So lets analyze the whole thing and think about it. What would probably be the fair trial:

Firstly, I think, consumers should have the right to express their opinions regardless of true or false. Besides, its only an opinion and the court cannot assume that others are idiots to take people's opinion for granted.

Second, if the opinions are making the company to have a bad image from any form of publication, therefore, the publication itself should not be stopped, but the content of it should be altered to sound more opinionated and objective rather than an act of defaming the company. If the company feels that the content was defaming the company in anyway, justification of loss in revenue or potential loss of revenue through customers sentiments should be presented to support the claim.

Third, if customers opinions are wrong, by no means that a company should have any rights to take away that opinion. It is the responsibility of the company to clear their own reputation, by keeping customers happy, by improving their products' quality or by showing off their products' good traits and rating or what not. Showing proof and justification from their own data would certainly vindicate them from any form of false claims by unscrupulous customers.

Well, it leaves me with some questions after thinking about what the verdict should be?

1. So what should the judge make Fong do?
2. Since when are the Judges really interested on how a company feels? (Poor company, don't cry, we will beat him up for you, don't you worry)
3. Where is the right channel to expressed problems with manufacturers and companies if they are indeed at fault. So that people like Fong will be legally represented? (Yeah, I wish we can act againts non-performing contractors, bad manufacturers with faulty products and etc)
4. Why is the company being such a baby about it? Have they lost a few millions already? What about Fong? How much have he spent to fix his car? Maybe helping Fong repair his car would be a better solution rather than making lawyers rich over this stupid dispute....

***As a disclaimer....This article in my blog is purely an opinion of mine, and it has no intention in defaming any company in Malaysia. Thinking so would be reading out of context which consequently invalidate any claims of defamation by the writer...

Snippet of article attached below....

Ruling to bar website upheld

PUTRAJAYA: A disgruntled engineer who had put up a website containing several defamatory allegations against Perusahaan Otomobil Kedua Sdn Bhd (Perodua) after purchasing a Kelisa with defects failed to overturn an interim injunction order barring the site.
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Justice Sri Ram said that if the article, written by Fong, was a personal grievance and contained true facts, he could consider it fair comment.
“But he went further and attacked the reputation and integrity of that company,” he said.
Fong, 49, was appealing against the Kuala Lumpur High Court's decision on Sept 17, 2003, which granted Perodua, Perodua Manufacturing Sdn Bhd and Perodua Sales Sdn Bhd the injunction to bar his website pending the trial.
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Read all about it at........thestar.com.my

Oh, he is such a cool Uncle :)

So what did you guys do for last Raya Haji? I took monday off from work and stretch my weekend all the way through to tuesday. It's just so nice to have so much free time in your hands. So what did I do? On Satuday and on Sunday, I did some coding for my freelance work. I was suppose to submit a php program that was suppose to be used somewhere in the UK. I'm not very sure what the outcome is, but I'm hoping they will pay me nontheless. That sunday night, I was coding again. I know, you're thinking, this guy is such a geek. But its for a worthy cause, I did some programming before for an online testing system to test some of my students. It's a pretty lame web application which is not worth anything much, but could be used by others for creating online exams on the web. So why the hell not, I've put it on OSCC knowledge bank so that everyone can download it, modify it, and use it according to the spirit of Open Source Software. I call the program I wrote Simgipunq, which stands for "Simple Gila Punya Quiz", or roughly translated to Damn Simple Quiz. Cause that's what it is....

But then, I still had monday and tuesday off. And feeling geeky all week really got me down. So I decided to bring emil with me, to join his really cool uncle doing some wall climbing. Monday evening, after running around doing my errants, Emil, my sis (Leilanie), my brother Inlaw and I, went to Summit USJ. Emil and myself went to the training for wall climbing. There are two roles that you play when you are wall climbing. The climber and the belayer.

The belayer helps the climber belay down and make sure that he is safe while climbing. He also makes sure that the climber doesn't fall straight to the ground (which could be really bad if this happens to you). The techniques of belaying are as follow:

1) Make sure you have the "figure of 8", and the carabiner with you. Attached the carabiner to your harnest and insert the "figure of 8" into your carabiner like in the picture.
2) Fold the rope like in the picture with the end of the rope on the right side of your hand (on the left side of your hand if you are left handed) and insert the loop through the "figure of 8" like in the picture.
3) Then, insert the loop into the carabiner and screw to lock the carabiner.
4) Finally, just like how Emilio is doing it, stand firm and get two hands pulling downwards to make sure the climber doesn't fall:)

The other role that you play when rock climbing is the climber's role. This is the role that you get to be a monkey and climb rocks. But there are a few techniques about roping that you need to know before climbing. The techniques are shown below:

1) Before you tie the the rope to your harnest, make sure you have enough length to tie the knot. Here is the ISO 9001 recommended length, with your hands stretch out on one side and the other holding the rope.
2) Then, curl the rope, like in the picture no. 2, such that you'll see a figure 6.
3) Wrap the rope around like picture 3, and insert the end of the rope through the figure 6 hole. You should be able to see the figure 8 on the rope.
4) Insert the end of the rope through your harnest, from top to down.
5) Insert the rope through the knot, by following where the rope came from like in picture 5.
6) Keep following the rope and inserting the end of the rope through all required holes.
7) Make sure you have a very firm knot. You don't want the knot to get loose anytime while you are climbing :)

Only when the belayer and the climber is ready, then you can start climbing. Here are some pictures of us in action. We went on tuesday too, we figured, we didn't have enough the first day.....

Emil had a lot of fun. We all did. Even Fariz, my brother inlaw tried it out. Now, I know I like geeky stuff and do geeky things. But hopefully, to my nephew(Emil), he will be telling his friends that...."Ohhh, I have such a cool uncle...."

It's all a fairy tale.

Ever since I started work again, I find myself having less time to talk about myself in this blog (now, that could be a good thing, since I can be very boring and self-centered most of the time). But, this is the new year--2006--and I want to make sometime for myself to rethink about some setbacks in life, retrospect on the past and get hindsight about the reality of life for the last, almost 29 years of my life.

What I'll be talking about is something metaphorical, the good life of richness and wealth, also known in this context as milk and honey.

Year end 2005, as I was talking to a friend in a Cafe, a subject about why are we here came up? The discussion came to a few questions left unanswered. For example, years ago, when we were younger, our teachers, our parents and every single adult we met told us that we should work hard, study hard and a life of milk and honey will await us. And so we did, we worked hard. We studied hard. We put aside the fun menacing life that we could have, that could have been, a lifetime memory to be remembered. Today, we find it hard to drink milk or even look at honey, speaking figuratively. It is as if we were told to believe in a fairy tale. Something much similar to believing in Santa Claus (be good and you'll get your present this christmas) and the tooth fairy. Semuanya, cerita dongeng.

It left us baffled as to why we find those who seemed to be an idiot in school, a loser to friends and a moron to teachers are now seen as the bearer of milk and honey. Why? Is it nepotism? Is it politics? Is it corruption? What could it be? What's the secret ingredient that would allevate a human's social status?

But there are also those who were losers, and remain losers. There are those who were idiots who are now millionaires. And there are some ugly people out there, who turns out to be rich and handsome. Of course there are people who are ugly before and today are uglier and fat. It seems that there are no positive co-relation to a successful life. Or atleast, we can't find a good explanation for their misfortune or their good fortune.

The path of good life, seems to occur without explanation. Some are lucky to merry someone rich. Some are unlucky to merry someone who is an adulterer. Some are lucky and unlucky to get both? Did the lucky ones did something right in the past that they deserved remuneration and the unlucky ones did something terribly wrong in the past that they deserved a scourged life?

We come to realise one thing that seems unexplainable. The river of milk and honey is not something that flows to whom that deserves it. But it flows in random chance and disorder, and god is the person with the magic hand that decides where the river should flow. Or atleast that's the best way we can explain such injustice.....

As for me, I'm glad that I led a mediocre life. I was not such a goody-goody good boy in school. I'm glad I was the guy known to teachers as Joey the Menace. I'll be really disappointed today if I really believed in the fairy tales they told us before, cause at least today, I have an excuse for a life of mediocrity.

Finally, our conclusion to the discussion was, "rezeki itu datangnya dari tuhan". Good fortune comes from the almighty god, creator of heavens and earth. What else can you say about it? Science obviously can't explain it.....