Saturday, December 26, 2009

Of Formula 1 and statements made by a certain Malaysian

The Formula 1 silly season or 'of-season' circus is going at full swing at the moment. Recently we read that Brawn GP was bought by Mercedes, Lotus and Malaysia are F1 team mates in a certain sort of way, Petronas has decided to sponsor the newly formed ex-Brawn now named Mercedes Petronas and Michael Schumacher coming out of retirement to race for them. I am looking forward to seeing Schumi race again.

But I think the news that made my grey matter spin a little is the fact that Alex Yoong is ashamed that Petronas isn't sponsoring Team  Lotus F1. In all honestly, what was he thinking when he made that statement on his Twitter account. We also know that with Schumi back in F1 and with Mercedes, I can easily state that all TV cameras will spend alot of screen time on the Mercedes Petronas cars and with that, Petronas has actually made an advertising coup. On a company level, they've actually made the right choice. We'd now see two big Malaysian names on two teams now, one, Mercedes Petronas and the other Lotus F1, with Malaysia and maybe Air Asia plastered all over the cars. Isn't that bigger mileage for the country?

Then again, people who like posting instantaneous messages on either Twitter or Facebook usually do not think of the repercussion when they post on these sites. Then again, the word Twitter is derived from the word TWIT:

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A twit is an idiot.
The term may also refer to:
  • The TWiT podcast network TWiT.tv, or a fan of it
  • The weekly TWiT.tv podcast This WEEK in TECH.
  • The Roald Dahl children's book called The Twits
  • Acronym for Teenage Women In their Thirties
  • A user of Twitter
Hence, if we look at the origin of the word, we now know what is in the mind and the person of Mr Alex Yoong when he 'twitted' about Petronas sponsoring Mercedes. Most probably nothing. The moral of the story is that do not be an overzealous updater. Think before typing. All it takes is some patience, and maybe in the case of Mr Yoong, a PR officer to go over all postings.