Tony Fernandes and other stuff

This morning on the way to school, I managed to catch a news about Tony Fernandes on TV Mobile. For people who don't know about him, he is the CEO of Air Asia, a Malaysian low cost carrier. Air Asia is going to sponsor Singapore Slingers, a local-based team playing in the Australian Basketball League.

So what about this man? He is the man who revolutionalize the airline industry in Southeast Asia. Thanks to him, Now Everyone Can Fly. (Air Asia slogan) After reading an interview with him on Today, every marketer can learn a thing or two from this guy. He insisted on wearing his Air Asia cap at every media event; his theory is that if the CEO doesn't identify himself with the company, then no one will be.

Air Asia is official budget carrier of Manchester United and some of its planes are painted with Wayne Rooney and Cristiano Ronaldo; it sponsored the Williams F1 team because associating itself with such a glamourous sports would improve public perception of the brand. Although Tony is a Spurs fan, business is business and sponsoring United exposes Air Asia to the world.

During the last holidays, I took 4 Air Asia flights; 2 on Thai Air Asia and 2 on Malaysian Air Asia. Why are there two Air Asias? In fact there is an Indonesian Air Asia as well. They are all affiliated with one another and have the same management model. So what's the difference between the two?

My Thai Air Asia flights were between Yangon and Bangkok on 12th December 2007 and from Bangkok to Singapore on the 16th. I flew from Senai to Kota Kinabalu on the 19th on Malaysian Air Asia and the return trip was on 23rd.

The Yangon flight was only slightly more than half-full so I got the seats to myself. The stewardess on the flight are DAMN HOT... I believe that one of them is the model in the menu. However the plane was parked far away from the terminal at Bangkok airport and we needed to sit a crowded shuttle bus to and fro the planes.

The Malaysian stewardess were sadly nowhere near their Thai colleagues. Both flights were full and the plane got quite warm. There was also an unbelievable number of flies buzzing around the passengers during the fight to KK. Really wonder about the hygiene level of the plane.

I can't complain for the amount that I paid. Air Asia's success has spawned many other low cost airlines like Jetstar, Tiger or NOK Air. Poor travelers like me are benefiting with the liberalization and the drop in fares over the Southeast Asian skies.

In fact, I'm actually applying for an internship post with NOK Air in Bangkok. If I were successful, I would be staying in Thailand for almost the entire holidays. Maybe my Thai will be not bad at the end of the internship.

Back to Tony Fernandes again. He is one of the successful Malaysian Indians around; sadly the community is marginalized. A lot has been said and written about helping the poor Malays but the Indians in Malaysia are often neglected. In this country which is polarized along racial and religious lines, Indians hardly have any say due to their relative small strength and financial power.

From what I gathered from the net, the Indian community leader from MIC seemed to be more concerned about filling their own pockets than helping follow Indians. Abdullah has detained the five lawyers who organized the rally to highlight the Indians' plight. There is a high likelihood that more Indians will support the opposition in the coming election.

Recently I made a trip to the Malaysian High Commission to collect Form K. It is a document which certifies that I have relinquished my Malaysian citizenship and while I was there, there were many people who are either collecting like me or are applying for it. In fact, I saw a sign which said that the application to renounce the Malaysian citizenship is only limited to 20 applicants per day.

Will Malaysia be successful in stopping its brain drain? I think it will make a good political science project topic.

BRAWL

I witnessed a brawl last Sunday.

It was quite funny.

Mats v Vietnamese.

It's rather childish I guess.

Hopefully none of this shit happen again on Sunday.

Bangkok + Kanchanaburi 12/12 - 16/12

After the Myanmar CIP expedition, Ken and I went to Thailand for a short break.

So it's mainly about chilling, relaxing and TRAVELING in this trip.

The flight between Yangon and Bangkok was only an hour; during the flight I was suspecting that the gorgeous flight attendant was the model for the Air Asia T-shirt on the pamphlet.

(Sorry no photos because I accidentally deleted ALL of them in my next trip. Arggh...)

Ken was his usual self when he claimed that he knew Bangkok VERY well. Well it turned out that Ken wasn't bragging after all.

I managed to meet Cecilia which was staying in the same hotel as me. Our room for the first night was really sucky. The TV was tiny; the paint were dirty; washroom was pathetic and the sofa even broke. Both of us kinda regretted that we chose to stay there.

Since that was my 3rd trip to Bangkok in a year, I was running of places to go. (Not exactly... actually I haven't been to many places such as Royal Palace, Wat Po, etc) Hence I suggested that we headed out to Kanchanaburi which Ken reluctantly agreed to.

It was an adventure getting to Kanchanaburi itself. First we needed to take a cab from our hotel to Southern Bus Terminal. It turned out that the bus terminal had shifted but luckily there were still buses to Kanchanaburi from there. Then the bus would meander through every small town along the way to pick up and drop off passengers. However I will not complain because the bus ride cost me only 88 baht. (4 sgd)

After 3 hours, we finally rolled into Kanchanaburi bus station. To get to our guesthouse, we took a 10min trishaw ride. The room cost us 300 baht and has air-con and hot showers. It was more value-for-money than the 1,000 baht room in Bangkok.

We managed to visit the Thailand-Burma Railway Centre, an excellent museum detailing the history of the Death Railway. Then we took a walk around the War Cemetery opposite the museum. Dinner was the roadside stalls in the pasar malam beside the train station; after a round of street food we ended up chilling at a pub until sleeping time.

The next day saw us wake up early to see the Bridge over River Kwai. We could actually walk on the bridge when no train was passing through. We would take train to Nam Tok, the terminus of the line two hours away. Along the way there was pretty nice scenery and at the end of the railroad there was an underwhelming waterfall Sai Yok Noi.

The bus trip back to Kanchanaburi was only one hour and we hopped onto the next bus back to Bangkok at the bus station. While waiting for the passengers, I realized that there was a bank book in the seat pocket in front of me. So after much gesturing, I managed to pass the bank book to the person at the counter. So much for learning basic Thai for the past 3 months.. LOL.

Dinner at Bangkok was at Chinatown. Ken initially brought me to a restaurant which didn't live up to his claims. However he finally vindicated himself by locating his favorite restaurant and celebrated by eating 5 giant grilled prawns all by himself. A walk through Khao San Rd was followed by an early night back at the Residence. The room was thankfully better than our last one.

Chatuchak was the first thing on our agenda on our last day at Bangkok. It was the largest outdoor market in Southeast Asia and there were thousands of stalls. The heat was too much for us though and we spent the day malling and even managed to catch Will Smith's I Am Legend. In the evening Ken went out to meet his friends for clubbing and returned disappointed as there was a ban on alcohol sales due to the polls the following day.

Our flight was at 7am so we had to leave our hotel at about 4.45am. The taxi driver thought that we were going to the old Don Mueang Airport but luckily I corrected him in time. The flight back was uneventful and I got to rest a few days before my next trip.

Post-CIP thoughts

During the course of my CIP trip to Myanmar, there are several issues which bugged me. For those who actually read my posts, perhaps you all can share your views on them.

1. True Altruism?

There were numerous sessions whereby our team members shared their reasons for joining the CIP. I can't recall a single person (including myself) whose main motivation is to help the needy. Common reasons include: Experience OCIP, see Myanmar, challenge yourself etc. It seems that we are doing it mainly because for our own motives.

I am wondering whether there are actually people who are joining these overseas expeditions out of true altruism. I asked Ho Teck why did he join Project Angel after already being part of BHBH last summer; his reply was that it was fun during the expeditons.

My feeling is that we should be more concerned about how our efforts can improve the conditions of our beneficiaries instead on about how much we could gain from it.

2. Donations

As this was our first trip there, the team was not able to accurately gauge the costs. Hence we ran into the problem of over-budgeting. I don't know all the details but at the end of the trip we donated about a million worth of kyats (approx. 1100 sgd) to the orphanages.

The donors had generously provided the team in both cash and kind for this expedition. However if we take a closer look, most of the money did not go directly into helping the orphans. Most of the money ended up being spent on housing, feeding and transporting us. What percentage of the donation is actually being utilized to benefit the orphanages? At the end I feel kind of bad when we are splurging (by Burmese standard) on our meals in order to meet our food budget.

As Shahid said, won't it be better if we just give them the money? Well another set of problems surface. How do we ensure that money is properly used? How do we ensure that those in control of money will not abuse our trust? It is difficult to solve this moral dillemma.

3. Prostelyzing

An interesting fact about this expedition is that only 5 out of the 14 participants are non-Christians. The organization that we are working with is a Christian one and the orphanages that we visited are ran by pastors. Hence there is a fair amount of prayers and mentions of God during the trip.

While I consider myself to be tolerant, I admit that there were instances whereby the atmosphere was too Christian. Even the Christian members were worried that the non-Christians were uncomfortable. I hadn't anticipate it but on a hindsight perhaps I should have.

At the end of the trip, we asked Pastor Patrick (our coordinator) what is his motivation behind helping the Burmese orphans. His reply was frank: he wanted to spead the word of God.

Perhaps it was the same thing which motivated Mother Theresa as well. However I will prefer a secular expedition if I get a say.

Last but not least, I'm glad that our efforts managed to bring some benefits to the orphanages; we can still make improvements and bring more benefits to the orphans if there are subsequent expeditions.

Myanmar CIP Trip

There was a gathering for the Myanmar CIP participants this afternoon at Jackie's place. Well this presents me a good opportunity to blog about my trip to Myanmar which takes place from 5-12 Dec '07.

Side-tracking a bit here, Jackie's place is really very nice; it looks like a high-class Balinese resort. The decor are really tastefully done and wonderfully reflects the owners' class. If I got the chance, my house in the future will look something like that too.

Yado, our team leader, has done a brilliant job in summarizing the whole trip in this entry. I will just summarize my own feelings for the trip.

Firstly, Myanmar is not as bad as I thought to be. It turned to be more developed than Cambodia and there are less beggars and hawkers on the street. We only hear about the negative news from the media; visiting there is really a different experience.

Burmese people are generally gentle and non-confrontational; Yangon seemed to be still stuck in the 60s. Our team has the wonderful opportunity to speak to Mr Robert Chua, Singapore's ambassador to Myanmar. He and the embassy staff shared their insights with us and it was really an eye-opener for me. Hopefully there would be changes and improvements for the Burmese people in the near future.

Secondly I am glad to be able to work with this wonderful team. Everyone did their part and tried their best to fulfill the trip's mission. To put it simply, this is one of the best teams I've ever worked with. I won't mind working with the team again.

Lastly, I believed that our work with the orphanages is just the beginning. Deep down I know that our efforts this time round is not going to improve the orphans' lives significantly. They need more than newly-painted buildings or tooth-brushes. There are many things that we can do for them: helping to be self-sufficient, more books etc. However, I don't know whether I can find the strength and determination to carry it through.

If I have a chance, I will go back and help them again. I will talk more about my feelings in the next entry.

My Blog is so DEAD

My last post is almost 2 months ago.

Well a lot of things happened but I could not find the motivation to blog about them.

I better do before I forgot what I want to write about.