T.O.B. (T.O.B.)

A couple of days back I was having a discussion with my lovely wife about the concept of thinking outside the box. I was suggesting that rather than thinking outside the box why not we make the box bigger. Of course she being more smarter and wiser than me counter proposed that there is no such thing as boxes in the first place.

And I would say that this is one of the most important revelations for me this year. That there is no such thing as boxes. The reason why, we always say think outside the box is because we unconsciously put a limit on our mental capability. And unfortunately such sayings only reinforce the idea into our very psyche.

Our mind is capable of unlimited potential. The limit of it can be liken to that of the horizon, that it'll continue to move as we move towards it. And even that limit is still possible to be expanded upon. How? By having more inputs, be more aware, learn more new things, express more of yourselves, experiences different culture and so on. Such pursuit of knowledge is like stepping on a ladder or better yet, like flying. The more you know, the higher you go. The higher you go the further the horizon will be. And that is the truth of things.

Holiday in Fraser's Hill

Me and my family just spend the weekend in Fraser's Hill. It's a quaint little township around 4000 ft above sea level. The weather is not that hot in the afternoon and cool in the evening. I'm guessing the population of the town to be around 600 to 800 people.

There are a few attractions in Fraser's Hill amongst them are the Jeriau Waterfall, Allen's Water and the Paddock. On top of that there are also British style houses, and a few outdoor activities such as golfing, archery and horse riding. And not to forget the jungle tracking and also bird watching for the enthusiasts.

Unfortunately, most of the attractions are not properly maintain which leads to a very poor perception of how serious the Goverment is willing to go to attract tourist. But most importantly, this reflect how the lackadaisical attitude of our population towards protecting the environment and maintaining public places and amenities.

I do hope that should I go for any more holiday to Fraser's Hill the situation will have improve for the better, if not for the sake of the population's pride at least for the camera lens of the tourist.

Thiniking Outside The Box (Integrated Property Development)

I know, I know...the title is long winded. I'm after all trying to support our great PM's call for the people to think outside the box. So, after this there will be a series of Thinking Outside the Box (TOB) writings that I'll be doing on and off.

To get things started here is an idea I had after driving 6 hours continuously from Kuantan to Putrajaya to KL (after having faced with a long journey, I have to face long congestions) . I was with a friend of mine that I have not meet for nearly 9 years. So as usual after hours of talking we the topics range from all sort of things until finally it arrived at this topic: "Integrated Property Development". Of course this idea came from facing such a long, boring and dreary congestion in KL!!

While in the traffic, I was discussing with my friend how to reduce time in traffic. The answer is fairly easy, that is not to drive into traffic. In order to achieve that, I have to stay at an area where everything is provided for. Ranging from workplace, health clinics, shops, schools etc. At first, the solution to get this done is by putting all this in a central position surrounded by houses (I call this group of development as IDC (Integrated Development Clusters) . All of this should be within walking distance (20-30 minutes) from one point another. But after thinking about it, I came to the conclusion that such a model is not feasible due to the fact that my employers might not be willing to move office for the sake of my well being!

But I'm thinking that the idea is sound, since we already have buildings concept such as SoHo, Planned township etc. But unfortunately, in my honest opinion, this concepts are not holistic, including my idea. So I need to tweaked a bit this idea of mine to make it at least plausible to do.

First, we need to have a working environment where work can be done beyond office. This is already possible by having mobile technologies, and already people are using it for home office and such. But not all employees can work properly in the comfort of their own house. So what we need is a place where employees can go to one place where they are not in the office, nearby his house and still be able to do work. If you have 300 to 400 employees from different organization doing this at a central area, then you'll have the Universal Productivity Area (UPA), a truly open office concept where people from different organization can work together at the same place. UPA will have the necessary hardware and software capabilities to enable people to work. (I.e. working area, unassigned desks, coffee corner, LAN, WiFi etc)

Around the UPA should be provided facilities for health clinics, schools, banking institutions, public services counters/machines, security points (police beat or station), retails units (such as shopping mall). All of this will be the Core of IDC.

Surrounding this Core will be residential units of around 300 - 400 houses. All should be walking distances (10 - 20 minutes) from the Core. People working in the UPA is encourage through various incentives to stay in this residential areas.

The next step would be to create more IDCs that is connected to one another to form an IDC Township.

Of toll concession and immigrants

I was reading the news the other day about the issue of whether or not the toll concession agreement should be made public. It would seem that the venerable Work Minister put forward his suggestion to the Cabinet, that perhaps it would be best if the public be able to see the documents and judge for themselves the merit of such documents. In an unrelated news, the exalted IGP suggested that immigrants be confined or restricted to their work premises so that it would be easier to monitor their movement. The suggestion was based on the assumption that such restriction will reduce the number of crimes being committed in this country.

Again both of these events seem unrelated, on the surface at least. But if we ponder deeper on these issues, we will realized that such issues touches the very basic of our nations principals. Both issues have its roots in the basic principal of democracy and human rights. The concessions issue touches on the freedom of informations, for which without such freedom the public will have literally no ability to decide properly the course of the nation. Whereas the immigrants issue, touches on the freedom of movement, for which without such freedom, I can barely imagine the consequence.

So, after 50 years of Merdeka, 50 years of nation building we still have amongst our top officials those who do not seem to grasp the basic notion of a free and democratic nation. It is fortunate that our beloved Prime Minister seems to be the wiser man in both of these events. I believe he have commented the best way possible for a person in his position and hopefully, just hopefully a greater freedom as enshrined within our Constitution shall prevailed in the end.