'We are what we ...'

There is an old saying that: 'We are what we eat.'

Eating does affect our health and well-being, but so do other influences.

Genetics have a profound effect on our make up and personality, as well as our tendency to certain illnesses.

How we think and act also greatly influence who we are and how we feel; contributing to our own sense of dignity and happiness.

The choices that we make in life; whether in terms of what we eat and how we act, certainly have a profound effect on who we are, and on our own happiness and those around us.

Nature seems to teach us that the wrong decisions that we make in life may give us short term pleasure but usually long term pain. And the right decisions may require short term effort and pain, but usually result in long term pleasure and gain.

The Qualities Most Useful to Us

Extract from Adam Smith's 'The Theory of Moral Sentiments'

The qualities most useful to ourselves are, first of all, superior reason and understanding, by which we are capable of discerning the remote consequences of all our actions, and of foreseeing the advantage or detriment which is likely to result from them: and secondly, self–command, by which we are enabled to abstain from present pleasure or to endure present pain, in order to obtain a greater pleasure or to avoid a greater pain in some future time. In the union of those two qualities consists the virtue of prudence, of all the virtues that which is most useful to the individual.

Private Rail in Malaysia

'Star' Newspaper Monday November 16, 2009

Waste of funds if KTM can’t compete

KTM, along with the Government, are definitely in the wrong with their first procurement of “new” trains to ply the newly completed section of the RM17bil electrified double track.

It is unbelievable to think that the Government is spending RM30mil to purchase four diesel multiple train sets, which are 20 years old and which several South American countries have managed to purchase for around RM10mil.

But what is even more surprising is that these well-used trains can average only 80kph on a track that was built for 120kph trains, and they are diesel trains running on an electrified line!
To say that the Government has “no money” to buy decent fast trains defeats the whole purpose of the huge expenditure on this project. If KTM cannot, after the completion of double tracking, compete with its main competitors in the bus companies that ply these inter-city routes, then the whole project has been a complete waste of taxpayer funds.

The alternative is to throw the whole industry open to private train services, where private companies would supply their own trains and lease the track from KTM. Express train services between the main cities of Malaysia would be a safe, fast and competitive alternative to existing bus services.

Dr IAN MACKECHNIE,
Kuala Lumpur.