Rant & Raves

Recently there were a lot of hoo-haa from the newspaper about the very first Malaysia traveler. [The Star got a report here.]

Now, I am not saying that this is not true. We do have the very first Malaysian space traveler and every all the TV news channels were covering the take-off, and all the blogs and newspaper marked the day (in case you didn’t know, it was October 10th) of the take-off. Hell, there were shitloads of advertisement about it as well. But some news agency announced that we have the first Malaysian astronaut in space. I beg to differ the term used here.

Astronaut, as defined by Dictionary.com, is “a person engaged in or trained for spaceflight.” Now, for my understanding, the Malaysian government has spent hundred of millions of taxpayers’ money to send Dr. Sheikh Muszaphar into space by tagging along the Russian space program. So its more like me taking a flight to Japan. I pay the flight ticket, and I became a traveler. But should I be called a pilot? Well, if I am flying the damn 747, then I demand people to call me a pilot. But I am not. I am only a passenger. I am only a traveler.

Okay, maybe I should feel proud that there is finally a Malaysian going into space. But on second thoughts, I decided not to feel proud. Why? That’s part of the money that the government is spending on fuel to bring this dude up in space (I am a taxpayer, remember?). Secondly, what is he doing up there? I mean, other people or countries are sending astronaut in space to do research, to construct some satelite but what is our scientist doing up there? The expedition will normally take months if not years, but our spaceman, so to speak, is only going to be in the space for 9 days.

At first there were big splash of news internationally and the Malaysian government became an International Joke because the Malaysian government had earlier decided that the first Malaysian space traveler to perform play batu seremban, a traditional Malay children’s game played with pebbles, will do some batik painting and will make teh tarik, a type of Malaysian milky tea, all to see how these things can be done without gravity (which I blogged about here and here) so they scrapped the Teh Tarik shit and just slot in some so-called researches and experiments. So is this some kind of joke? No, the government is taking this very seriously. If it’s not a joke, then it is a waste of money. The taxpayers’ money.

The Russians will be thinking, “Hey, those idiots payed us so much money, its up to them what they want to do up there as long as they don’t mess up our space craft.”

By the way, I am very sure that Dr. Sheikh Muszaphar will be slapped with a Datuk-ship (something like being knighted, becoming a Sir but in Malaysia, its Datuk) when he comes back. If not soon, it will be some time in the near future. Mark my words for that.

And I wonder how come my Frequent Travel Miles cannot translate into a Datuk-ship. Fuck, life is just so damn unfair.