They might not have won The Amazing Race Asia but I’d say both were serious contenders and if not for some back luck, both teams had one hand on the title.

Still, I think it’s quite an achievement that a Malaysian team has made it to the top three of all three The Amazing Race Asia competitions - woot!

So happy for my friends!

And to sign off, here is a tumpang glamour pic - my most recent with Ida :P I know, I know - action right? Aiyah, I not famous so must tumpang like this lor. Give chance lah!

Congrats to Sam & Vince for a well-deserved win, I thought!

Days after Datuk Rafiah Salim - who was replaced earlier this month by Prof Datuk Dr Ghauth Jasmon - made headlines after lots of talk in Parliament about the lack of gender equality when it came to choosing VCs (among other things!), the ex-Universiti Malaya VC has spoken up in a one-hour interview with Malaysiakini (Part 1 and Part 2).

These articles are not free - you need to be a subscriber of the online news portal to read them - but among the points she brought up are:

1. Rafiah claims that it is gender bias which led to her not being re-appointed as Vice-Chancellor. The article read:

Explaining her allegation of gender bias, Rafiah said she recently learnt that the women VCs were only given a two-year contract while male VCs were given a three-year contract. This included her successor Prof Dr Ghauth Jasmon.

“Doesn’t this [show they are] more confident in men than in women?” she questioned.

2. She claims that there was many political influences with regards to many decisions a VC must make, including who gets invited to speak at the University.

“Things like who can we bring in to speak to the students, who we can’t - even among the Barisan Nasional people,” she revealed during an hour-long interview with Malaysiakini yesterday.

And later said:

To a question, she admitted that one recent case of such political interference was UM’s decision to cancel a speech by Nobel peace laureate Shirin Ebadi who was to speak there early this month.

The university had withdrawn its invitation to Ebadi, an outspoken critic of the human rights situation in Iran, two weeks before she was to deliver a speech on Islam and cultural diversity.

3. On student politics, Rafiah said that she had no issues with students getting involved with politics, unless it interfered with their studies.

On students’ freedom, Rafiah said she did not mind her students being active in politics provided that it did not come at the expense of their studies.

“Join-lah (politics), what the heck man, except that I am very firm with students that if they are so involved in politics and not focused on their studies, that would get me very angry,” she said.

I don’t think many people will be at all surprised at any of these revelations. But I suppose it is good that people directly involved in it are speaking publicly, instead of there being rumours and stories floating around which is hard to substantiate (grapevines, as efficient as they are, cannot be trusted 100%, I suppose).

The article also mentioned that Rafiah will soon be writing a book about UM. Wonder if more dirt emerge.

11.08am Malaysian time (+8 GMT)

What is it? Apparently, it is what Time calls:

“… a $399 saliva test that estimates your predisposition for more than 90 traits and conditions ranging from baldness to blindness. Although 23andMe isn’t the only company selling DNA tests to the public, it does the best job of making them accessible and affordable.”

Okay, so I don’t know the consequences of having such a test, and data, available so easily publicly but what caught me was that the device would be able estimate susceptibility from anything from Lactose Intolerance to Lou Gehrig’s disease, according to Truemors, where I first read about it.

This is because I am kind-of Lactose Intolerant - I spew *yes, gross I know* if I eat cheese or drink fresh milk but am okay buttering up my bread or having ice cream. This device might end the mystery once and for all.

Still, I thought it was kinda cool. The device was created by Google founder Sergey Brin’s wife Anne Wojcicki. That has nothing to do with anything, but how’s that for trivia of the day?

8.32am Malaysian time (+8 GMT)

Now, I don’t know if it’s from lack of time due to my extremely busy past couple of weeks (and therefore, not being able to find many stories), but I was quite dissapointed. Most of the ones I read were the same old, same old - they could have been rehashed stories from his Democratic nomination win, for all I know.

Today, however, I came by two interesting articles related to the US Presidential elections - both on the same page in The Star - Page 3 of StarMag. Both were by StarMag’s regular columnists - Wide Angle by Huzir Sulaiman and Stray Thought by A Asohan.

Huzir wrote an open letter to Americans, congratulating them on a good choice of President-to-come - especially after the disaster that was the past eight years under the ‘W’ administration. He talks about how, although we’re not Americans, that our lives are so much influenced by them. He invokes the names of Pollock, Warhol, Miles Davis. B. B. King, David Sedaris, House of Pain - all such a global force.

Huzir wrote about Obama’s 2004 Democratic Convention keynote speech, and the latter’s talk about small miracles.

We looked around our own part of the world, and we wanted those small miracles for our own countries.

We wanted them so badly for ourselves, America, that it hurt all the more that you could enjoy them at home and yet behave in the way that you did abroad.

Then there is Asohan’s piece, a reality check of sorts. Yes, his was similar to others I have read which talks about numbers - Obama got 43% of the white vote as compared to John McCain’s 55%. And McCain’s 5% compared to Obama’s 95% of black votes (according to BBC exit polls).

But it was the last two paragraphs that resonates the most.

But the world’s declaration that America has looked beyond race in electing Obama is naive.

It is an important first step, sure, but America will only have transcended race when a white man votes for a black man, and a black man votes for a white man, without giving a damn what his skin colour is.

I don’t know if many people would agree with the two of them - if Americans will give us that wee bit of ownership of their talent, or if people still think that we’ve got a long way to go in terms of “looking beyond race”.

But for me - a Malaysian who believes in the ideals of the United States, who grew up with a lot of American influences and who followed painstakingly, the election just past (and the couple of elections before that) - it is certainly food for thought.

And that is why I love the post-europhia/buzz articles.

11.20am Malaysian time (+8 GMT)

I mention in the article about the major transformation of Bangsar Shopping Centre (BSC, as we know it) and how each day, as I pass it, I try to remember what it was like - when it was just phase 1, and then when they added the new wing and now with the renovations.

On the way to work (and back), I drive past Bangsar Shopping Centre (BSC) – currently undergoing a major transformation – and am reminded about how little I, well, remember of its past.

I keep trying to recall how the old wing looked like before the construction happened. This is considering the fact that I live just down the street from it, and was playing around the construction site when the original wing was being built (never mind the dangers of cycling and skating in a construction site).

I will be heading out there in a bit to snap a photo of it - as I promised in my article. I wonder if this might be the start of a series of photo uploads along the lines of Edwin’s Kuala Lumpur Daily Photo and Jerome’s Hanoi Daily Photo, which I help plug in my article.

I’ll keep you updated if my project goes as planned.

9.33am Malaysian time (+8 GMT)