Does this make any sense?

"We will do what make sense." This seems to be a favorite phase of WM Cheang - a former IT Manager for Intel Malaysia. Cheang gave me the impression that he would do a sanity check whenever he makes a decision by asking himself "does this make sense?" I took no notice of this until recently when I learned that to be a lecturer in Engineering in Malaysia will require the person's first degree to be in Engineering. In other words, if say you did a double degree and were first conferred with a degree not in Engineering and that you later pursue and completed a PhD in Engineering, you are not qualified to teach Engineering in Malaysia.

I was informed by someone who is the Head of Engineering at a College in Malaysia that the organisation governing the standard of education in Malaysia has to protect local universities! Don't know how such a rule will protect local universities and so I went to this governing body's web site but I was not able to find any mention of such rule. I tried the organisation that concerns Engineering education specifically and I couldn't find any mentioned of such rule there either. I tried calling them but the best I got was a voice mail. While googling above, I stumbled across an article of similar vein.

Here is another interesting practice. Below is a picture of a label the department of statistic in Malaysia have for each residence! I have seen these attached near the main entrance and even the main door. I couldn't figure out what's the rationale of having to tag each residence this way or when these labels will be used again.

By the way, this is not a Malaysian thing. Take a look at these outdated ridiculous laws.

Sure we can't do anything about such strange law/regulation/practises. But we sure can make sure that we do not do things that don't make sense! Recently, whilst working together with a friend to design a database, I kept asking if the structure we put in place makes sense. Some two or so hours later, I noticed that this friend started to do the same asking the rationale and if something we are proposing makes sense!