Introducing a New Contributor

It was two days ago, when I realised that I've just posted more than 100 entries onto this blog. Given my modest expectations on the blog, that was an achievement, for it was only over a period of 21 weeks. I found myself possessing better knowledge and understanding of the education system and its issues in Malaysia. And worse, I found myself terribly engrossed with these issues, often having to restrain myself from trying to have an opinion on everything! I also found myself spending a lot of time thinking about, as well as writing for this blog. As a result, something had to "give" - I'm now a weaker golfer than I was before I started the blog :) Someone even commented that my golden brown tan has disappeared!

At the same time, the popularity of the blog has increased significantly (although its in no way comparable to some of the blogging pros out there), with a lot of help from Jeff Ooi in June and Sdr Lim Kit Siang this month, plugging the site. I'm expecting some 7,000 visits and 15,000 pageviews this month, compared to less than 4,000 visits and 7000 pageviews in June (even less in May). With the increased visits, the self-imposed "pressure" to produce more relevant and better written articles, naturally increased.

So I thought it's about time for someone else to be "sharing" my "burden" in contributing to "Education in Malaysia". I suppose the objective of the blog has never been strictly to only broadcast my personal point of view per se, but to raise important (and sometimes, interesting) issues facing our education system and if possible to encourage a frank, reasoned and open discussion on these issues. And the task is actually a lot bigger than one person, blogging part-time.

Ong Kian Ming, a former senior policy analyst with the Socio-Economic Development and Research Institute (SEDAR), current pursuing his doctorate in political science at Duke University - has kindly agreed to contribute his thoughts on Education in Malaysia. (For those interested, Duke University is consistently ranked among the Top 10 Universities in the United States by US News & World Report over the past 10 years.) Kian Ming also happens to be an ASEAN Scholar a few years my junior during my secondary school years in Singapore.

I am certain that given his background and qualifications, he will become an excellent contributor to the blog, to make the blog richer and more relevant for Malaysians. His contribution will also add diversity to the opinions expressed on this blog, and hopefully that will lead to greater and more enlightened discussions to issues faced in the Malaysian education scene.

I'll let Kian Ming introduce himself in greater detail in his subsequent writings as we figure out how to do this "team blog" thingie. In fact, his first contribution to the blog was in this post, posted through me. I'll look forward to having his first official post out on the blog (I know it's ready to go).

For the new and loyal readers out there, thank you for visiting and we hope to make this blog a site where you can understand, highlight, discuss, propose and contribute to making education in Malaysia better, in a reasoned, open and collected manner.