Can Traditional Food Survive Globalisation?

I had to choose between Nasi Dagang or Nasi Kerabu for breakfast this morning. Both are Kelantanese cuisine which could be obtained in many food outlets around Kuala Lumpur. Eventually I went for the Nasi Dagang.

As I was enjoying my breakfast, two thoughts came to my mind. First, the taste of the Nasi Dagang is not the kind that I was used to when I was a little boy living in the middle of Kota Bharu, the capital of Kelantan. I lived with my grandmother who was very particular about food. She would walk to all corner of Kota Bharu for the sole purpose of bringing back the best food for us. You could imagine the size of Kota Bharu those days, everything was within walking distance.

Being spoilt with carefully selected food in my younger years, I am having problem enjoying the present Kelantanese food. Very seldom I could find one with the taste that I was used to those days. Could it be that as the know how is passed from one generation to another the taste also changes? Or due to commercial pressure profitability is preferred over the pride of serving great food?

Second was the issue of expertise and supply. As business cost gets higher, only food with high demand would be viable to be sold. This will slowly phase out good traditional food which may not be popular due to lack of promotion. Eventually people would only prepare traditional food during special occasions such as festivities while the more commercialised ones would take up the space in modern outlets in shopping arcades.

If we observe how fast food from the West have been making their present felt in Malaysia, it appears that elements of globalisation include the competition for the survival of our traditional cuisine. It would be a great tragedy if some food that used to be enjoyed by our forefathers would not be around soon as the younger generation have different preference in their diet and appetite. Perhaps one way of saving traditional cuisine is to up scale how their are offered so that more could compete for limited spaces in modern shopping centres.

Who knows in the near future, traditional Malaysian food would be available across the globe.

World Cup: Its Paul the Octopus VS Mani the Parrot

As we get closer to the final match between Spain and Holland, the attention of the world shifted to two new unexpected star of the World Cup. Paul the octopus has a track record of 6-0, its predictions on the winners had been spot on so far. Not to be left behind, Mani the parrot suddenly made its appearance in Singapore, predicting Holland to be the next world champion.

Would Paul or Mani eventually prevail? 

Although at the early stages of the World Cup teams from South America were the hot favourites to advance to the final, the fight to be the world champion would be between two European teams, its present champion, Spain, and the team which played in World Cup finals before but never wins the championship, Holland.

Judging from earlier performance, the final should be explosive and exciting. while Holland has been scoring many goals, even against the mighty Brazil, the Spanish team had few scary experience in the earlier stage, especially when it lost to Switzerland. However, judging from how Spain was able the overwhelmed Germany in the semi-final would certainly set the expectation that Holland should not feel too confident of winning.

Coming back to Paul and Mani, the focus on their predictions could also reflect the disgust people have on the bookies, football gamblers who could be influencing the outcome of games from behind the scene. Although no serious allegation has been made against them so far, concern voices regarding the invisible hands of bookies tainting outcomes of sports matches is definitely not unheard off.

Perhaps greed has turned people into beings who are too focus on money and wealth and willing to do anything without bothering the consequences. Unfortunately, these sort of people do go around in suits and ties, pretending to be honourable people in the public eyes.

Disgusted with the behaviour of corrupt human beings, it is not a surprise that octopus and parrot like Paul and Mani are seen as more credible! At least they are not pretending that they really know the result. We are they ones who are making the claims!

Let the Show Begins

Depending on which part of the world you are at, the impact could be felt in one way or another. Yes, the FIFA World Cup 2010 has started in South Africa. In countries where some of the matches are shown live during early mornings, it would not be any surprise if some would turn up at their offices sleepy and tired.

24 teams representing the world's best are fighting for the ultimate glory, to be crowned as the Champion of this 19th edition. Given how globalised the world is now, this event is being watched by millions of people all over the world. Those with passion and financial ability are now in South Africa, providing teams which they support with whatever encouragement they could.

Is has been a gigantic task for South Africa, the host, to organise this kind of event. Although there were challenges and problems at certain stage, especially when the world was experiencing the worst financial crisis ever, the stage was open for competition as scheduled with a memorable opening ceremony. 

For statesman Nelson Mandela, this event would be the icing on the cake, the ultimate sign of his achievement in consolidating South Africa into a state belonging to all South Africans, whatever colour they are. It is unfortunate that Mandela is in mourning due to the demise of his grand daughter who died on the eve of the first kick off.

We are now at the early stage of the tournament. No doubt history will be created, future will be charted and many hearts will be broken. This greatest show on earth is more than just a sporting event. It means a lot the the poor most African countries, finally this great soccer event has reached their shores. Hopefully, more people would be enlightened and inspired, not just to play better soccer but to take up the challenges of their lives.

Let's see how this FIFA World Cup would progress further......

WCOA Early Birds Registration Ends This Month

The Malaysian Institute of Accountants will be hosting the World Congress of Accountants, the World Cup for global accountants in Kuala Lumpur in November this year. As usual, those who register early will be given preferred fee. This early bird rate will end this month.

Themed - Accountants: Sustaining Value Creation - The WCOA would bring global thought leaders and professionals to discuss and debate challenges and solutions to problems relating to the accounting profession and business. Given that sustainability is the ultimate aim of development, the roles of accountants in building business and sustaining the value created would be important. 


Being part of WCOA would certainly be a great opportunity to participate in a world class event in our own backyard. Furthermore, for Malaysian participants, the fee paid to participate in the WCOA is HRDF claimable.

Please visit http://www.wcoa2010kualalumpur.com/ for detailed information.

A Great Loss to the Malaysian Accountancy Profession

Although not unexpected, receiving the news of the passing away of Dato' Nordin Baharuddin was certainly a sad news indeed. Although I visited his home 2 weeks ago, he was too weak to accept visitors. For sure, he will be remembered as an honest gentleman with passion and principles, the fittest among all accountants in town.

Reproduced below is his biodata as copied from the website of the Malaysian Institute of Certified Public Accountants:

YBhg Dato' Nordin Baharuddin

YBhg Dato' Nordin Baharuddin is formerly the Chairman of KUB Malaysia Berhad. He was the Executive Chairman of Ernst & Young Malaysia from 1999-2004 and has over 35 years of work experience in both public accounting practice and in the commercial sector. Dato' Nordin was admitted as a member of the MICPA in 1982 and became a Council Member of the Institute in 2000. He is the Chairman of the Administrative & Financial Affairs Committee and a Member of the Executive Committee and the Public Affairs Committee of the Institute. After graduating from The London School of Economics and Political Science, Dato' Nordin joined Deloitte Haskins & Sells in London in 1973 to pursue Chartered Accountancy.

Upon qualifying, he joined Petronas in 1979 as Manager in the Production Sharing Audit & Accounts Department, which oversaw the implementation of production sharing contracts between Petronas and other oil companies.

Dato' Nordin joined Ernst & Young in 1980 as Manager and was soon promoted to Principal and Partner. In 1984, he was transferred to the Sarawak office of Ernst & Young to assist the Partner-in-Charge in developing the Ernst & Young offices in that State. In 1990, Dato' Nordin was appointed the Partner-in-charge of Sarawak with overall responsibility for the growth and development of the practice. He also had special responsibility for staff training, quality control and technical standards.

Dato' Nordin has participated in a number of public speaking engagements on a number of subjects relating to accounting, auditing and finance. He has many years of experience providing advisory, accounting and audit services and has also served as a member of the Working Group on Corporate Governance of the Islamic Financial Services Board.

Currently, Dato' Nordin is an Independent Non-Executive Director of Sarawak Enterprise Corporation Berhad, Scomi Engineering Berhad, Visdynamics Holdings Berhad and Senior Advisor to Citibank Berhad.

In recognition of his services to society and the nation, he was awarded the Darjah Setia Negeri Sembilan in 2000, which carries the title Dato'.

He is a Council Member of the Malaysian Institute of Accountants and is also a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales and a Member of the Financial Reporting Foundation.

The Sensitive Ecosystem

While the oil spill at the Gulf of Mexico could be thousands of miles away, we have our own similar problem when 2 ships collided at the Straits of Malacca, near Singapore. The latest is that the oil spill is spreading to the Malaysian shores after causing problems in Singapore.

Somehow, there is not much coverage that we have in Malaysia on this unfortunate event. Either the media deems this as not that news worthy or we Malaysians are not bothered about it as it happens far away from where we live.

I was in Cherating, off Kuantan, recently and was able to enjoy the beautiful South China Sea. There we people who caught some fish using net. Just imagine how their life would be affected if the mishap happens to be in that area. Cherating is where Club Med is located as well.

As we develops further and enjoy better quality of life, we should not ignore the basics which enable us to be where we are now. We need to ensure the environment around us remains beautiful and sustainable. Otherwise, the cost to live in a messed up environment would be expensive and would suck whatever extra income we generate in the future.

Not sure how sensitive we are in protecting our environment, perhaps we have not messed things up that much to start to be concern. However, if we are smart and develop the mentality to preserve what we have, I am sure the long term cost to the society will be less.

The choice is ours to decide.

Who Is Paying The Bills?

Given the chaos the world is experiencing now, we need to really think deeply about the future and organise ourselves accordingly. The near collapse of Euro has initiated debate about the sustainability of the "European Way of Life" with high taxes and generous social security and retirement benefits. If this New York Times article is true, this will have to change soon.

The Performance Management & Delivery Unit of the Prime Minister's Department (PEMANDU) will be organising an Open House on subsidy in Kuala Lumpur next week. The government spent around RM 74 billion last year on various subsidy from fuel, sugar and healthcare, among others. It is also soliciting an on-line feedback from Malaysians on this issue. If the income level of average Malaysians is low, being addicted to subsidy is not a surprise at all. The data on the basic qualification of Malaysian workforce points towards the problem.

While naturally we would like to have more for less efforts, even people living in countries like Malaysia has to think forward and structure ourselves accordingly so that we could have a sustainable decent lifestyle across the society. How this will be addressed in the New Economic Model which will be revealed in full next month would certainly be the concern of most Malaysians.

The Open House is an opportunity to understand the thoughts of the government on how the subsidy would be reduced. Rather than complaining after policies have been implemented, this opportunity should be used by all of us to put across our thoughts on this important matter.

Be a responsible Rakyat and make your views count.

A Tribute to All Teachers

Following the tradition, 16th May is Teacher's Day in Malaysia. It is to honour those men and women whose task are to ensure young Malaysians are adequately educated so that they could contribute towards nation building when they grow up later.

Teachers had played important role in nation building especially the pre-Merdeka and early days of our independence. Among the early roles allowed to Malaysians by the British colonist, teachers in the early days of Merdeka were not involved only in educating Malaysians but were part of the intellectuals who transformed this country into a nation which could stand on its own feet. 

Given limited choice of employment, those who joined the teaching profession those days were among the smart and the brightest, no wonder teachers in the early years of Malaysia commanded respect from all levels of society and many of them ended up being leaders of the society.

In a modern and sophisticated Malaysia, the roles of teachers has grown and become more demanding. Being the group of people interacting with future leaders of this nation, it is upon the teachers to ensure our young flesh and blood do not only acquire academic knowledge but compliment the efforts of parents in inculcating good values in young Malaysians. As our population grow, these tasks are getting more difficult.

As we modernise and move up the value chain, more employment opportunities are available. Teaching is no longer the first choice among the smart and bright Malaysians. While it is fair for them to consider opportunities to maximise their future, the teaching profession needs talents in catering for the more demanding needs of the nation. To add misery to the profession, this is among the most politicised profession due to the number of votes teachers could bring during elections.

As we honour our teachers, we should also ponder on whether this celebration should be limited to teachers as teachers or should also cover others whose role includes getting somebody to be educated. This will robe in many more Malaysians including our parents, bosses and colleagues. As knowledge and platform in delivering knowledge evolve, even Google could fall into definition as our teacher!

Being a son of a teacher, I am very proud of the contribution of this noble profession and I pray that all teachers, present and past, we be blessed.

No amount of money would be enough to recognise the contribution and sacrifices made by teachers in this country to ensure we enjoy prosperity as what we do today.

Happy Teacher's Day.

A tribute to all mothers

Celebrating Mother's Day when one's mother is no longer around is certainly odd. What remains is the memories of the past, to the extend that the mind could remember. Unfortunately, we are not in the position to experience the challenges of our mothers had to go through when we were in their wombs. None also could understand the period when they risk their lives in delivering us into this world.

Many could recall the early days when they were old enough to remember the feeling being comforted by their mothers in the time of needs. Off course we could not remember how it was when they had to wake up and attend to us when we cried. None of us could deny that those early days set the tone for our future.

Many religions and cultures place mothers in special positions. In Islam, they are respected as such that it is a great sin to raise our voices when speaking to them. What more to hurt their hearts. Given the sacrifices that they made in ensuring all their children would be raised in the best possible ways and achieve the best possible future, such honour is the least we could give them.

Have we done enough to thank the most special human being in our life, our mothers?

Malaysia missing on iPad first global launch

The iPad global launch is slated to be on May 28 in nine selected countries. Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and Britain are the countries selected to the first launch. Unfortunately, Malaysia is not on the list.

Even we are not slated for the next launch scheduled in July. The countries listed on the second launch are Austria, Belgium, Hong Kong, Ireland, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, Singapore and New Zealand.

Could it be that our purchasing power is considered low that the market for such product is small in this country of 27 million people? Or could it be that we, Malaysians, are do not have appetite for products which contains high intellectual property contents? 


Our level of respect towards intellectual property could be one of the reasons for not being included in the first two scheduled releases. How could be develop such mindset when our level of innovation is fairly low. We are more consumers rather than producers.

In any case, some of us may argue that we need not be listed in any of the launch as iPads are already available at Plaza Low Yat, the hub for electronics products of Malaysia. Or we could just turn to eBay just like what others from around the world are doing.

Maybe in the future, when the objectives of the New Economic Model is achieved, Malaysia will be among the first country for any world class product launch. Just imagine more Malaysians with higher purchasing power, purchase only licensed products and have do not tolerate any infringement of laws such as intellectual property or even corruption.


Let's wait for this moment to happen!

The Value of Trust

The Open Graph project initiated by Facebook is set to further enhance its ability to create value from its membership base. Having more than 400 million registered users, such base is definitely enough to attract advertisers, especially when Facebook could offer a more targeted customer segments given the amount of private information it collects from its members.

The new initiative allows third parties to offer certain Facebook functions such at the "like" function. Attached to certain products or information, this would be a powerful tool to accumulate information for advertising purposes. Such ability create concern on whether private information will be exploited by both Facebook and the third parties.

How did Facebook ended up with huge information regarding its users?

First, I suppose, is the trust the members have on Facebook in not exploiting information which the members share with their friends. This was reinforce with the lack of commercial activities of Facebook in the past. On the other hand, sharing information had also enable users to pull value to themselves by being connected to long lost friends, building relationships with new friends as well as advocating their views and thoughts with the community at large.

The commercial success of project Open Graph would be dependent on whether the trust level of Facebook members could be retained. If enough people on Facebook feel that their information is being exploited for commercial reasons without adequate value in return,the project would encourage people to move away from Facebook.

Who says trust has no value?

A note from Ross Dawson

Sometimes it is amazing how social networking could influence you life! I have been reading books written by Ross Dawson and was following his work on Trends in the Living Networks. We ended up as friends on Facebook.

One day I received a message from Ross on his trip to KL. I was excited and volunteered to connect him with people and organisations which are relevant to his interests. We finally met in KL.

This is Ross's note on his visit to KL.

iPad hits the market

Yesterday saw another milestone passed when Apple finally released the long awaited iPad to the market. While the gadget which is supposed to be the bridge between smartphone and laptop means different things to different users, the release had certainly created huge excitement for fans and foes alike.

What would be interesting is how this new gadget would be applied in our personal lives as well as business. Given that Apple decided to migrate tools form iPhone to iPad, the new gadget will come with many functions previously ran on iPhone. 

Let's watch this space as many of us will start to figure out to do things that are not possible in the past with the new iPad.