By Syed Akbar Ali
"Posters and buntings about it are all over town, at almost all lamp posts. It looks more like an election campaign. All carries his picture. . . Who? It is Home Minister Hishammuddin Tun Hussein. The posters and buntings were about the ministry's Hari Raya 'Bersama Rakyat' open house which takes place today from 3pm onwards at the Police Training Centre or Pulapol, Jalan Semarak. . .
Impressive work but foolish at the same time. I dont think Hisham should subscribe to such a method to 'advertise himself and the ministry'. Even Prime Minister Najib's open house in Pekan the other day did not take such an approach.
I am not sure whose idea was it but it must be from one of his irrelevant advisers. They thought it was the best way to promote this 'anti-bloggers minister'."
A Minister hanging up buntings inviting people to his Open House? Semangat 'keterbukaan'. I received the invitation too via sms but this is the season of Rumah Terbuka and there are two more today (Friday), all clashing.
The Bloggers have been trying for some time to get a meeting with Minister of Home Affairs Hishamuddin Hussein. In fact, more than twice (I think at least three times) the Bloggers were told of a meeting with Hishamuddin - all of which became 'tak jadi'.
The general feeling is that the Minister is not comfortable sitting down and talking to Bloggers. The Bloggers are known to ask pointed questions and can be extremely vocal eg. Jai's "
foolish at the same time", "
his irrelevant advisers", "
anti-bloggers minister." Ouch !
I met some Foreign Embassy folks last two days. One of them asked 'How do you keep track of all the Blogs that you want to read or should read?' I think that is a good question, the answer to which lies in another question "How do you decide which latest books you should be reading, seeing that so many new books are published?"
To choose books we read the reviews, browse in bookshops, listen to what other people say, check out the bestseller listings, see what Dr Mahathir or Bill Gates are reading etc. Something similar would or should apply to picking Blogs. Blogs also differ in who reads them. Are they decision makers, are they the neighbors, students, Government folks etc.
Hishamuddin's advisers should know this as well. Or maybe they already know it ;)
2 comments:
Advisers have limited time nowadays. Too busy fighting among themselves like promoters at supermarket to exchange yellow letters with envelopes! The trend is becoming rampant, the legend of level 4 boys are peanuts by current standard.
but cant the minister think for himself?, just wonder...
Talking about books - what is your opinion on those electronic book-readers like Amazon's Kindle, the one from Sony, and KL MPH has also come out with one.
This is a wonderful device, is it not? In time most books (especially text-based books with no diagrams or pictures) will be sold in this form rather than the traditional paper and ink product. The books that you have written, The Club of Doom, and others, will be admirably suited to being distributed in electronic form. Imagine - you can now write, "print" and sell your own books without any help from the bricks-and-mortar printer and distributors! All the profits earned by the books will go directly to you instead of to any middle-men; and thus you can sell your books at a much lower cost and more people will be tempted to buy them.
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