Arrr. It's a fine day isn't it? Now, after a full 24 hours of not-so deep thinking, I decided to forgo my "wait till this blog's weathered and seasoned for about a week before posting anything meaningful" stance and just get on with it. Well, basically I came across something-

*time-warps to the point where this post is supposed to rant about*

Today, I went to the Friday prayers as usual, except that today's is earlier because I'm too lazy to go late. Just so that the title of the khutbah(sermon) is...well, I can't remember if there was actually a title there(See, at the UTP mosque, they conduct the khutbah through the aid of slides, where they actually project Powerpoint slides of the English version of the khutbah at the white screen in front of everyone. Pretty nifty huh? Now repair my room's door.)

So yeah, short story short, I read the contents of the khutbah and I couldn't believe it. The slides show some pretty alarming statistics. For one, all 57 member of OIC only have like 500 universities combined together, while USA alone has like 5000! The OIC spend 0.2% of their total GDP for R & D, while other developed countries spend 5.0%. OIC country members has only a ratio of 250 scientists per every 100 thousand of the population, while in Japan the number goes as high as 8000 per 100 thousand of the population! Now, I forgot to put the disclaimer, but the accuracy of the statistics is subject to my poor short-term memory, so I am very sure that I messed up some figures in the previous statements which could be more or less that the real ones, but otherwise it's supposed to give the same impression anyway...

But I disgress.

OIC. Organisation of Islamic Countries. Malaysia happens to be its current chairman. Why do all this matter? Because....this explains why we've been lousy at the international level all the time!
We have never been serious in trying to improve our country, to take it to a higher level! All this time our country are abuzz with stuff like AF-can't remember what which number is it now, Mentor, WWW and other similar, equally distracting(if not useless...wait, it is) entertainment stuff and scandals regarding controversial, frickingly-costly megaprojects(including those that got the green light but somehow end up unfinished...what a waste!) and corruption and inefficiency among politicians and civil workers. Does all this actually reflect our true vision? Yeah, we do have our own Vision 2020, yet, from the looks of things now, it might as well be Vision Rm20.20. This simply cannot be. Our country are seriously lacking in fields of local-made technology and R&D, something that First World countries often possess.

We don't have many universities - oh, fine, so we actually have other IPTAs that aren't that bad either which can make up for the lack of Unis. However, the important thing here is not only quantity, but quality. You can have the most number of universities in South-East Asia, but unless they're going to turn up some pretty decent professionals that continuously do R&D and actually contribute to the technological prowess of the country, it's just not worth it. The lack of homegrown(read: local!) scientists accounts for this. My whole idea, to put it in lazyman's term, would be:

More quality unis = more quality professionals and scientists = more R&D = more local technological discoveries = more development of country towards Vision 2020 = improved export of goods and services = less reliance upon outside help = Respect!!!

Now, I know that the above equation makes me sound like some hardline communist. But all in all, everyone can agree that it's theoretically true at least. So if it's good, then why don't you take it? Yes, yes, not many people will be reading this anyway, but for those who did, don't you agree? C'mon, can't the government at least pay attention to the more important issues at hand and try to solve the problems that are all-too familiar in our country? Problems that hinder us from achieving our Vision 2020....Then again, things are very difficult to change, and for the most part, people like me can only hope and pray to God that it happens. After all, if it does, the the whole country will benefit from it. Then, not many people will laugh at OIC, calling it Old Incapable Countries
or something like that..we'll get the respect that we should get.

So then, salutations.