Sometimes even an UMNO Minister can say sensible things

Page 7, NST April 3,2008:

Minsitry
can't help
Sufiah

PUTRAJA: There is nothing
much that the Higher Education
can do forSufiah Yusof as she is
not a Malysian citizen.

DESIDERATA:

If thou be patient, I'l take out a subscription to Malaysiakini,
or hack into a friend's access, and give thee the fool story
one YL Chong wrote/or edited about SE7EN or Eight years ago.

OR if you want the story faster, you pay for my subs, K!:):):):):):):)

seven s-miles, one for each of the seas you need
to cross to get at Desi!:(

DESIDERATA UPDATEs @9.43pm, after spending considerable time doing research like a journalist would, but mainly because I get very angry when POLITIKUS appear on the scene and talk through their a*seholes without any knowledge of what went on before, and why a similar case resulted in TRAGEDY because of ar'ehole politicians who failed our Malaysian child geniuses like CHIANG TI MING. Do you remember him?

I do, because I covered his story as it unfolded. And he hailed from Furong aka Seremban, my hometown; but Chiang's greatest setback was he was born into a society still steeped in RACIST POLITICS, mainly promoted by UMNO, and now a few decades later, they don't seem to learn the MAIN LESSON FROM GE2008, that in gist, paraphrasing an American President:

You can cheat some of the electorate all the time, all the electorate some of the time, BUT NOT ALL THE ELECTORATE ALL THE TIME.

Some disparate notes I searched and reproduced from some ARCHIVES -- I will come back to thread them together when I am freer. Miss Patience is also Mr/Ms Virtuous.

Extract1:

There should be a national awareness and concern that for decades, our national education policy and system had failed to recognise, foster and nurture the gifts and talents of our children.
Malaysia should not wait for another blaze of publicity about the discovery of another child prodigy related to the country, whether Sufiah Farooq, 12, who has been admitted to Oxford University to read mathematics, or Chiang Ti Ming who obtained a place at the California Institute of Technology in 1989 when he was 12 and who is now finishing his Ph.D. in Particle Physics on “Super String Theory” at Cornell University or Loh Chang Shiung, another boy wonder who read for a physics degree at the age of 12 at the National University of Singapore, before there is another brief but fruitless concern about the national neglect of the hundreds of thousands of gifted and talented children in our schools.
:
:
:
Chiang had achieved many firsts while at CalTech, including being the youngest ever student to receive the Undergraduate Students Merit Award two years in a row.
He was also an honorary member of the Tau Beta Phi, a national engineering society.
He had been accepted to study for the second year of the four-year Physics degree course at the university in 1989 when he was 13 after sponsorship from several organisations.

The prodigy later pursued and graduated with a doctorate in particle physics at Cornell University in New York.

The above was extraced when I googled, and the extract was from a Blogsite called Tempenis ...or something, whatever - just stating that the above helps to put some backdrop to current news involving Sufiah.

Extract2:

I guess this was an news item from a local daily -- the Star? -- someone who'ssure, please drop via Comments a line:)

Monday January 8, 2007
‘Boy genius’ Chiang dies

SEREMBAN: Chiang Ti Ming, the boy genius who was the youngest student ever to be admitted into the prestigious California Institute of Technology (CalTech) almost two decades ago, has passed away on Saturday morning.

“He passed away peacefully,” said a family member yesterday.

The family declined to reveal other details while Chiang’s parents, father Chiang Chick Liam and mother Lee Soo Hoon, were too distraught to talk to the press.
Only his family members were seen entering the house here yesterday afternoon and requested that privacy be given to them.

Press reports in 2002 said that he had been admitted into a hospital in Kuala Lumpur, for depression and withdrawal symptoms. The family also suffered a tragic loss when his sister Eei Wern, drowned at the swimming pool of the Seremban International Golf Club in 1993. Eei Wern was then four.



2008/04/02


Extract3:

Related stories you can read from NST, I reprroduce some lead lines from its Online edition:

I'm Every Woman: Why Sufiah why?
By Zaharah Othman



ZAHARAH OTHMAN had been in the home of Sufiah Yusof witnessing how her parents had hot-housed the math prodigy and her siblings — and her heart goes out to the mother reeling from her daughter’s tragic downfall.

"THE last time I met her, we were both in the surau.

It was the Ramadan of 2005. She was in her black jubbah and hijab and was a picture of sweetness and confidence..."



* Zaharah Othman is a Malaysian writer who lives in London.

Extract4:


8/04/02
Moves afoot to help Sufiah

KUALA LUMPUR: The Prime Minister's Department and the Malaysian Missionary Foundation (Yadim) will try to assist former child mathematics genius Sufiah Yusof, now aged 23 and fending for herself as a prostitute in Salford, Manchester.

Minister in the Prime Minister's Department Datuk Dr Zahid Hamidi said they would help the gifted girl return to the right path through the "Save Sufiah Programme".
"The first thing we should try to do is to contact her mother or arrange a meeting with Sufiah to find out the reason she turned to prostitution, offering her services through the Internet, using the name 'Shilpa Lee'," he said.
It was reported in the News of the World that Sufiah is now a $130 (RM821)-an-hour hooker operating from her dingy flat.
The "Save Sufiah Programme" is headed by Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister's Department Datuk Dr Mashitah Ibrahim who will come up with strategies to assist Sufiah.

Sufiah created news when she was accepted into Oxford University at the age of 13. Her mother, Malaysian-born Halimaton Yusof from Muar, Johor, and her father, Farooq Yusof from Pakistan, tutored her and her siblings at home.

However, Farooq is now in jail after he was found guilty of sexually assaulting two 15-year-old girls whom he tutored in maths.

In another development, Zahid urged Muslim bloggers to help counter the attack against Islam by Dutch legislator Geert Wilders through his video Fitna which was posted on the Internet.

"This is the time for bloggers to do something useful and not just use their blogs to condemn the government." -- Bernama

___________________________________

BLOG POST'S MAIN EXTRACT IN FULL under Desi's eyes, which is my premise for commentary as stated in my Post's TITLE!I delayed posting it because I need to C&P from NST Online-lah!

PUTRAJAYA: There is nothing much that the Higher Education Ministry can do for Sufiah Yusof as she is not a Malaysian citizen.

Sufiah, 23, is a British citizen, whose mother Halimathon Yusof is from Muar, Johor. Her father, Faroof Yusof, is a Pakistani citizen.

Higher Education Minister Datuk Seri Mohamad Khaled Nordin said Sufiah was also of legal age and could do as she liked with her life.

Reports from Britain (one of them News of the World ) said the child prodigy had become a prostitute.

"We just can't bring her back. She is big now and can decide for herself. She has the right to do as she pleases, " he said yesterday, adding that the Malaysian Students Department in Britain had been asked to look into Sufiah's case.

DESIDERATA: I had to put in a lot of background because of the contrasts in the two cases referred to.

Sufiah:

* Not a Malaysian

** Given Malaysian government scholarship JUST BECAUSE HER MOTHER WAS BORN IN MALAYSIA (in Batu Pahat, I believe). In Sufiah's case, I remember the Government leaders "bent backwards" to claim Sufiah as one of Malaysia's own products and went on to offer her a scholarship... at the way the events progressed (I was covering the news as News Editor at an online news organisation then...), I don't think Sufiah or her parents even bothered to apply for one.

*** Now there are still misguided Malaysian leaders who think they could cash on a British girl's misery and downfall with their "high moral" purposes as if they were God-sent saviours to pull amisguided girl back "to the right path"

Ti Ming:

* Full fledged born-and-bred Malaysian

** Context of the family tragedy of his sister's drowning in a swimming pool was that the Dad had to accompany Ti Ming in the US (as he was a minor, and I believe US education rules required one parent's presence there...)

*** I don't remember any Malaysian leaders showing concern when Ti Ming or his father's application for a Government scholarship was rejected -- I still remember on SPURIOUS GROUNDS INCLUDING THAT THE CHILD HAD NOT SAT FOR THE STANDARD EXAMINATIONS -- I beleive the SRP at Secondary 3, and SPM at Secondary 5 (and some STPM assuming they proceeded to Form 6) as other "normal" pupils. Hey, morons at the Education Ministry -- Ti Ming would not have been a "prodigy" if he went through "normal" schooling and exams, would he?

I vividly recll some idiotic politikus - from the BN -- accompanied Ti Ming to solicit donations -- like a beggar going around with those round coconut shell bowls I can picturise! -- to enable Ti Ming to go to the US for tertiary studies. With such historical tragical trajectroies involving a Malaysian child-prodigy, do you now wonder how the POLITICAL TSUNAMI MADE POLITICAL PARTIES LIKE MCA and GERAKAN QUITE IRRELEVANT?

I am still celebrating the slow, but sure, demise of one or two or three BN component parties.

Shed no tears my friends -- there are still many of BN politicians who can't see beyond the colour of a child's skin. Other factors are secondary or inciental. Or accidental. Whatever -- it just does not matter as far as these fossilised minds, or borrowing from Dr Mahathir's vocab, MORONS, are concerned.

I sleep soundly tonight after letting out hot steam. I pray Ti Ming's soul rests in peace. And I hope nomore young Malaysians will undergo such baptism of fire, and premature calling nack to the ashes, as from ashes all Homo sapiens do cometh from. ~~ Amen/Amin

PS: To such idiotic Ministers dispensing unsolicited advice to Bloggers, viz:

""This is the time for bloggers to do something useful and not just use their blogs to condemn the government."

can I share a THINKING ALOUD:
Do you catch the MORAL IN MY POST, Mr Minister from UMNO?
Spell it out for thee, in case tyour English is as handicapped as one former MB-colleague of yours:

"CHARITY BEGINS AT HOME!"