Malaysia Boleh confuction

5th September 2006, NST Report:

Malaysia plans to push the boundaries of space travel by making a cup of tea.
Malaysia will send its first astronaut into the heavens abroad a Russian rocket next year and attempt for the first time to make the nation’s favourite hot drink, the tarik in space.

"The physics experiment is to see what happens to the tarik in space,” Tun Hanir Omar, head of Malaysia’s astronaut selection programme, told reporters.

Making the teh tarik in space would bring Malaysian customs to the attention of a worldwide audience, said Dr Faiz Khaleed, one of the astronaut candidates - Reuters

Excellent! The physic experiment? To see what happen to the tea in space? So what is the tea gets smelly and frost? What do we learn that can be useful to future scientific research? Sell teh tarik to the aliens in the moon or sell it to the Americans from Apollo?

More interesting is the fact that Dr Faiz Khaleed said: making the tea in space would bring Malaysia to the attention of worldwide audience. Wow, to tell the world that the tea can be made in space? Stem cell research is already condensed and excelled. The worldwide audience is going to be amused of the fact that Malaysia spent RM80 million just to make a cup of tea and eat roti canai.


Finally, a sensible message is spoken and reported in The Star today - There will be no teh tarik-making or roti canai-tossing experiments in space for our Angkasawan when he blasts off in October.

Instead, he will carry out at least 10 laboratory tests for serious research designed by 10 universities, institutes of higher education and government science agencies.

Science, Technology and Innovation Minister Datuk Seri Dr Jamaluddin Jarjis said “All the experiments done in space so far are for the benefit of the countries that sponsored their scientists to fly to space. There have been no scientific studies in space on any Asian interest, in terms of medicine or food technology."

“The Americans do experiments for their own industries and they do not share their findings. It is the same with the Russians or Japanese; they will not share. This is why it is important for our Angkasawan to carry out these tests,” he said.

At last we hear someone who talk something that comes from the head, not from the thinking kidney.

Malaysia’s astronaut programme was part of a package deal arising from Malaysia’s purchase of 18 Sukhoi SU-30MKN fighter jets from Russia. Najib added that the Russian Government had offered in return a place for a Malaysian to join Russian cosmonauts on the expedition to the ISS in October.

So, Malaysia proclaims that the trip to the moon is free of charge - it's paid by the Russian Sukhoi guys: some kind of exchange, goodwill, or, built-into the purchase price.

It had been propagated that Altantuya was the interpretor that assisted in the Sukhoi deal. It's coincidence and more so for the fact that she was ashed to a permanent disappearance. The conspiracy theorists had been expounding extensively on the connectivity between Sukhoi team of negotiators and decision-makers. Read more at Susan Loone's Blog. I won't dare and have no balls to propagate more than insidiously unsafe. In her article today, Susan was been passionately and mercifully advised. This is what she ascribed:

[Quote]"Since I started blogging on Altantuya Shariibuu’s, I’ve received several comments, all but with one message: “Be Careful”.

A veteran journalist friend shot me an email, saying very briefly “Can we go slow on the Mongolian juice?”. Other send words of caution: “Take care ...”.

The one closest to my heart was even more dramatic: “Please remember, there is someone here who loves you very much. Be cautious”.

But the best of all comments came from a dear fellow journalist, who suggested, probably tongue in cheek: “It’s time you hire a bodyguard, it’s much cheaper in Bangkok, anyway”. [Unquote]

Read more at Howsy's Rant:Here, here, and here