Alvin Chan

An Ideal Nation

Alvin — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 01:10:53 +0000

This will be one of the most controversial topics of all time. ‘What is an ideal nation? How does one define an ideal nation?’ Everyone was born from different place in the world and were brought up under different culture and environment, therefore the perception of ‘ideal nation’ is totally different from one to other. While there is no good answer to this (capitalism vs socialism), there remains some indistinguishable characteristics that everyone agrees on.

Equality

Citizens should be given the same equal rights at the legislation level for their being as a first class citizen of the nation. Citizens are like the oil of a Buggati Veyron, if you do not have enough oil, the super fast and expensive car will not move an inch. Having the same rights as the next citizen beside you makes you feel content as when you suffer from economic crisis, they too will suffer together. You do not see the same class of citizen who earns almost the same amount of wages able to enjoy luxurious lifestyle just because one have a privilege over the other by default. As pointed out in this post, a nation’s growth will only be stagnant as no one will want to let others get a free ride over their hard work.

Freedom

Freedom is a universal right of any citizens. Probably the few good examples of nations practicing freedom will be United States of America, United Kingdom, Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, South Korea. While the many policies implemented by these few countries may not be agreed by me, I do agree on their stand as a country of freedom, freedom even for their citizens to voice out their discontent towards their government. Some would say chaos will be unleashed when the citizens are given such rights and wreck havoc in the cities, but when you look at the recent rally by the Thais, it feels that the freedom in democracy is well in place. Any citizens who want to give its country a change for the better will never, ever want to resort to bloodshed. These are citizens who truly love their country and will not want to see their country going into the void. They do not want to stain their own country with blood of revolution, nor do they want the country to be trapped with a government which is undemocratic. Leave the bloodshed to the colonist and civil wars. Right mind thinking citizens will never ask for bloodshed in the first place.

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© Vyriix for Alvin Chan, 2010.
Post tags: corruption, equality, freedom, ideal, idealogy, nation, perception, transparency, unity

Unity – Together We Stand Strong, Divided We Fall

Alvin — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 16:06:48 +0000

Unity is the state of being one or undivided, be it in mind or for a purpose. It is the pillar which holds the foundation for the success of an organized system. Without unity, the system will be in chaos, divided and without proper order among the population of the system. Nations will fall, corporations will collapse as a result of lack of unity among the populations.

Unity in the Warring Periods

Genghis Khan was a leader who managed to unite the many tribes and confederations in the Central Asian plateau. Prior to his military campaign, These tribes were strong in their own way and each of them were in no good ties with one another, leading to the constant chaos of raiding, plundering and revenge-led campaigns against one another, thus leading to a constant warring period. Under Genghis Khan, Mongol Empire is united as one and manage to expand its border to a wide area.

The warring period in China came to an end with Emperor Qin Shi Huang ending the constant battle among the states with a military sweep on each of the states, thus unifying China as one for the first time. Though he maybe a very cruel leader and his move had resulted in a massive lost of Chinese philosopher knowledge when he ordered every books in China to be burned, it remains the fact that China had at last been unified and the constant chaos had been a thing of the past.

Unity From the Heart

Unity is achieved in the Feudalism period by conquering and surpressing the population, which led to alot of bloodshed as a result. Unity in a nation itself does not need to go through bloodsheding process, nor shall it be able to be achieved by coercion or surpression. This works the same for corporation. In an organized system, unity will only present itself when everyone is content with their being in the system itself and unity will automatically be acknowledged by everyone and be applied across the entire network of organization, be it top to down unity or unity among peers. How do you expect unity to form among your employees when you’re implementing policies which prevents him/her from being treated equally even among his/her peers?

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Be On Lookout While Refilling At Gas Station

Alvin — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 01:19:53 +0000

Please be careful when you’re in the gas station refilling your gas tank. Do not think for a second that you’re safe by standing in the open. Below here is a footage of an accident which happen at Taman Midah, Cheras. A poor guy was killed by a car which got out of control apparently while he was refilling his gas tank.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhaAFzcgHDU

Obey the rules in the gas station. No handphones on, No engines on, No cigarettes and lighters on. And always discharge yourself before refilling your gas tank.

Edit 7th April 2010: Video works now

Equality For All – No Strong Shall Be Weaken For The Weak To Be Strong

Alvin — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 17:42:24 +0000

Part of democracy is to have equality in freedom, rights to anything we can gain from the work done by our own hands. People who work harder will gain more reward, people who slack off will gain less. That’s the fundamental of equality, and this is what keeps democracy alive. The strong and hardworking one will continue to advance and the weak will be filtered off. But the weak ones are not being denied their chance of getting strong and they can progress at their own pace, eventually being one of the strong ones in the ecosystem. That is how it should work by right.

But when you take the equality out of the equation and impose a cap on certain variables of it, it will have collateral damage on the balance of the whole ecosystem. Surely you can say because weak ones cannot cope up with the strong ones and the cap is essential to maintain the balance of the ecosystem. But over a long period of such quick-fixes, the weak will tend to rely too much on the advantage they have over the strong ones and eventually, they will still slack off and will gain less.

Advancement of the society in the modern world depends on the level of knowledge that the society possess. When you impose affirmative action into your policy to quick-fix the balance of the ecosystem, you’re bound to be hit by a loss of knowledge from the strong ones. The world is a free place and anyone would leave a place for a better place, that is a fact. At the end of the day, the society’s advancement progress has come to a stagnant level, and most likely going backwards as the loss of knowledge continues to outflow from the ecosystem to other ecosystem. You can only blame yourself for holding up to your affirmative action policy for too long a period that there are so few knowledgeable people left in your society to propel it to an advanced society.

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Toyota FT-86 Concept Car

Alvin — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 04:08:38 +0000

This is a car which I had been waiting for quite some time. Cars prior to the revealing of FT-86 don’t tick the interest bud in me, except for the Honda Civic. I’d been waiting for such a car, not too fancy, look young, feels lively & vibrant, sleek and sweet.

Toyota surely did not disappoint the many of us who had been waiting for the new model to replace the sweet AE-86, and FT-86 just managed to cover all the spirit that AE-86 had in the new car. The car will be powered by light front engine, rear wheel driven, 4 or 5 seat coupe, with a new 2.0 L Flat-4 Toyota-Subaru “D-4S” engine. Paultan explained the D-4S engine in detail here.

From Paultan,

It won’t surprise me if the 2.0 liter D-4S Boxer engine in the production Toyota FT-86 coupe may make over 160 to 170 horsepower and around 210 to 215Nm of torque, which exceeds what regular 2.0 liter engines with port injection can do.

Now that’s a good news for such a nice car on the exterior. The double good points makes the car much more valuable to get your hands on one of them. Richard Hammond from TopGear even predicts that the car will be a massive success when it comes to production in year 2012. And with a estimate base price of USD $20,000. It would translate to roughly within RM 200,000 I guess for On the Road (OTR) pricing in Malaysia. All it’s worth as of now and this car really ticked my liking towards it. And best of all, it comes in 6 speed manual transmission. With the car coming to production in 2 years, and might take another year to hit Malaysia market, I’m still in time to save for it then

Drown yourself in the pictures released for public. Don’t forget to checkout the dashboard which has a very nice design and futuristic feel. How much do you think the car would be priced at when it comes to mass consumers?

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