Friday, July 30, 2010

1Malaysia 1Manusia

My My My, the 13th general elections are drawing closer and ever closer now, huh? Which explains the flurry of news reportage against the opposition of late, the disingenuous prosecution of Tun Dr Ling Liong Sik et al PKFZ scandal, etc. Hey Mr. 1Boss-Man, we're not fooled by your latest scam, OK? Both Tan Sri Eric Chia of Perwaja and former land and cooperatives minister Tan Sri Kasitah Gaddam were also charged and both VVIP clowns were acquitted later no thanks to an unusually inept and weak prosecution. But you could find ALL the evidence (and more) in Anwar's sodomy trial, right? No stained mattress, no stone left unturned in the heinous offence of sodomy, right? Hey Mr Attorney-General, you're the man alright! Well i know who i'll be voting for in the next general elections. You better make sure that the Elections Commission gets more postal votes in cos you're gonna need it! Charged for cheating my yellow ass.

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

When oh when

WILL the powers-that-be kindly-pretty-please-with-sugar-on-top see fit to get off their collective asses and pass the Personal Data Protection Bill which was tabled in Parliament in November 2009 ? Till today it STILL hasn't been passed into law? This is a landmark Act to protect people's personal data from unscrupulous commercialisation/selling/trading of such sensitive information without their consent. Basically, this Act will help to protect you from getting ass-raped.
(Blogger's post-blog note: I have just received word that the Personal Data Protection Act received the Royal Assent in June. It should become law just as soon as the government gazettes the Act which hopefully will not be too long from now).

Sunday, July 18, 2010

Paris, Pot and Power

Just read a news report (Agency France Press) that Paris Hilton was caught upon arrival at an airport in Corsica with about a gram of cannabis in her possession, was taken to the cop station and later released without charges. Getting caught with some grass in your purse is no big deal, but the AFP report went on to say that Ms Hilton was caught after coming in on a private jet and I quote: "with people close to power in Malaysia". That immediately piqued my interest. Hmmm, I wonder now who these jet-setting people who are "close to power in Malaysia" are. More importantly, were they travelling in a private capacity or in official gubment capacity as in a private jet funded by Malaysian taxpayers, as in a trip sponsored by 1Malaysia? Oh oh oh i can't wait to find out. When you say someone is "close to power in Malaysia", the connotations are many and multi-faceted. One easy presumption would be that those "close to power in Malaysia" are probably getting "close to power $$$" from the Malaysian gubment. Otherwise, they wouldn't be "close to power in Malaysia" in the first place, would they? But speculation aside, i'm pretty certain that the identities of said mysterious people (fellow countrymen?) would be revealed very soon. Our tax ringgits hard at work as usual? Man oh man this better be good.
Blogger's post-blog note: I just viewed something like 53 pictures of Paris Hilton partying with a rotund Penang billionaire's son or some richie rich. The towkays were trying to out-order each other very expensive champagne and from the looks of things it was very merry indeed. Well, if it's someone spending money from their own pockets, then it ain't none of nobody's business. AFP's vague and insinuating report shall be put to rest with this.

Friday, July 16, 2010

The Lizard King


(Photo of Jim Morrison with long-time girlfriend Pamela Courson)

I actually took the trouble many years ago while on a trip to Paris, to drop by the Lizard King's final resting place at Pere Lachaise. One of my HongKong acquaintances gave me a wide-eyed look: "Why do you want to visit a graveyard??" But at Pere Lachaise lies also Modigliani, Oscar Wilde and many other illuminaries of arts and music and writing (i have forgotten some of the other noteworthy names but google it up if you will). It was a mecca of sorts for me, being a Doors fan since my junior college days when i bought "the Best of The Doors" featuring a shirtless and slim Jim Morrison on the cassette cover. I listened on my walkman and was enamoured. Riders on the Storm, Light My Fire, Moonlight Drive. Jim had the words, he had the voice, he spoke my language, i understood the man. More importantly, he understood me. Later when studying abroad i went to the premier of The Doors' movie at the local cinema with an American communist acquaintance (haha a member of the American Communist Party now that's a contradiction in terms if any). Anyway, the American Commie suggested that in order to fully appreciate the movie, one had to get drunk. Heck yes, Jim Morrison was stoned most of the time if not all of the time. The band's name itself was taken off Aldous Huxley's the doors of perception and dropping acid was all the rage in the 60s and the rest of the story well, you know it. But Jim's appeal was in his poetry and his music. I didn't care for his druggie hyped-up image or his well-publicised temper tantrums (wait, i wasn't even born when those happened) or maybe some of it i did because it was all natural, of course. He struck a chord in me that was so deep i still feel it today whenever i play his music. Back at Pere Lachaise, Jim's final resting place was none too grand. It was just a plain old tomb carved out in concrete (not even a headstone of Jim like in the movie); there were some graffitti on the wall, some complimentary, others less so ("Jim you asshole" read one). One fan came and sat there not moving for what seemed like hours. I went, sat beside the tombstone, took some pictures, read the graffitti, then went on to see the other grave sites. In the movie eponymously titled "the Doors" directed by Oliver Stone with Val Kilmer playing Jim Morrison's character, the Lizard king was portrayed as a wild child of the 60s. Indeed he was. Val Kilmer himself never personally liked the Lizard King, calling him a drug addict. Which wasn't false. But if one had to take drugs to be free, as so many other rock stars then and now do, it is a tragedy. Millions adore them and yet perhaps to release their artistic talent to the fullest they had to indulge in mind-altering drugs which ultimately destroyed them. What price creativity? What price freedom? Certainly not to die at age 27 years old in the bath tub after ingesting heroin, as Jim Morrison did. Fans mourned the passing of Rock's God. I mourn the loss of a life so young and so talented. One who was able to tug at my heartstrings in the most profound way possible as no one knew how. Mine and millions of other heart strings tugged at and broken when the Lizard King took his last and final trip through the Doors of Perception.
Jim, may you rest in peace. Wherever you may be.

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Reason to be optimistic

IT'S HEALTHY to be an optimist. You bring cheer to yourself and others around you. So much so that it has a multiplier effect (in economic terms, that's like the government spending money which creates jobs and more business and snowballs into a self-reinforcing expansion of the economy, benefitting everyone).
I know there is a lot to be gloomy about in our world today - floods, droughts, earthquakes, violence, crime, man's inhumanity to man/woman/child - but it's not ever worth it to brood. Take the Information Technology Revolution. Who would have thought in the 80s that someday soon you'd be able to message your pal on the other side of the globe almost instantaneously, or you'd get voice transmission services for next-to-nothing or that the tape you're now dubbing for your best friend would soon become obsolette and replaced by MP3 CDs capable of storing hundreds of songs in just 1 CD? We never dreamt that was possible, we never dreamt period - and yet look at us today.

I made some rough guidelines on the Dos and Don'ts of internet use which i am stating loosely here just for the record: Do use the internet as a learning and research tool. For example, DO use the internet to discover more efficient solar cells or to build bigger and better batteries to store solar/wind/wave power. Don't use the internet to surf porn. Don't use the internet to research how to make bombs.

I'd like to think that come another 20 years, we'd have found the solution to our energy needs and that fossil fuel and the internal (infernal) combustion engine have become a thing of the past or of mere curiousity interest for our children's history lessons at school. I have reason to be optimistic about the future. I don't think that the Greenhouse Effect will doom humanity. I believe we are more resourceful, more resilient and more adaptable than we give ourselves credit for.

I'm cheerfully optimistic.

Friday, July 9, 2010

Born to be Wild

Is Taman Negara or the National Park. I was but a sophomore back when i was on a plane heading home from England and i chatted casually with a couple of Malay dudes (later i found out they were members of Royalty, but I can't remember which house) who recommended that i throw out a few days of summer vacation at Taman Negara in Pahang state. So me and my ageing uncle both bought tickets and we went on the trip up the Sungei Tembeling to a clearing in the jungle where they had built comfortable traveller's chalets complete with a cafe and air-con units for the better-heeled travellers. I booked into a "bumbun" jungle hut for a night with some Danish students (all girls) and spent the night in the jungle looking out our bumbun (strategically nestled on a tree top) at the salt lick below where the animals came out at night to get their daily portion of salt and drink while we busied outselves staying awake all night to spot them. We saw a mousedeer, a small bear but there was not a tiger in sight. The next day i trekked out alone on the jungle trail and my legs were full of leeches which didn't bother me much except the bleeding and itching when you pulled out the leeches. Leeches were everywhere - they were under the fallen jungle leaves and they even swam in the clear running jungle streams. It was spooky too to trek in the jungle alone, sometimes you had the feeling that the jungle was watching you. The jungle can swallow you up - no one can hear you scream in the jungle. Snakes slithered here and there (no worries, they're more afraid of you than anything), a mousedeer on the run (very hard to spot them as they are so tiny and so fast!), a small snake swallowing up a frog, jungle tree tops obscuring the sky almost completely.
Back at base camp we had all the creature comforts - oh yes, even ice-cold beer and hot-cooked food. My uncle who was a bird/nature-lover stayed at base camp and busied himself studying the hornbill who had made itself a permanent roosting place on the lower branches of one of the tall "tualang" trees. Not far from our base camp along a hiker's trail there was a nice Rafflesia flower in full bloom. They say it pongs at night or something. There were also wild colorful ginger flowers (you can eat the wild ginger roots but it probably doesn't have the same sting/spicy-ness as the commercial ginger we buy at the supermarket), also some kind of wild jungle tree fruit that has the fleshy taste of rambutans and about that size too but its covering skin was yellowish and the fruit less sweet, i can't remember now what the guide told me was its name. The guide fellow was a slightly-built local Chinese man in his late 30s. Asked what was most challenging for him, he told me: "sometimes the loneliness can be crushing".
But if you have a bunch of like-minded pals, a trip to Taman Negara would be quite refreshing. Back to nature and as cliche as that sounds, it's good for your soul. You could even trek right up to Gunung Tahan, the tallest mountain on Peninsular Malaysia, if you were more adventurous (have to pay the orang asli guide to bring you there). Whatever, I thoroughly recommend it.

Saturday, July 3, 2010

Bye to "Off the Edge" magazine






Just heard over 89.9 FM radio today that "Off the Edge" magazine is closing.
The decision was announced about 2 weeks ago by its owners and by its editor Jason Tan. The reason is that they wanted to focus on financial journalism, ie. The Edge weekly paper-zine which is Off the Edge's more famous sister magazine/publication.
I don't blame them. In all the 6 years that Off the Edge magazine has existed, Yours Truly has bought as Yours Truly can recall, a total of only 2 copies, or at the most 3 copies. Whenever i saw the magazine at the bookshop i would without fail read my favourite columnists Patrick Teoh who wrote "Teohlogy" column and other writers such as "Si Mabuk".
But i would invariably think twice about paying RM9 (it was only RM9 when last i spotted the magazine at the bookshop) for a copy as i thought that, as entertaining and relevant as the magazine was, it was a lifestyle and leisure magazine which i could not justify buying over something else like, for example, The Edge or The Economist magazine. So if Yours Truly can think this way, and Yours Truly am sympathetic to the local arts and writing scene, you can just imagine how many other people with less arts-leaning views would base their magazine-buying decision on. Although the owners of Off The Edge magazine have not openly declared it, i would think that the magazine had a hard time surviving financially. The illustrious and reclusive sasterawan Salleh Ben Joned bemoaned the limits of the local publishing market - it is very hard to make a living as a writer in Malaysia, especially if you write non-business or non-commercial works. The arts and writing scene in Malaysia is not exactly groaning from the awful weight/burden of having to chose from among so many generous corporate sponsors/patrons! Be that as it may, as the reading public grows in numbers and spending power, one hopes that things will change for the better. And that will not be soon enough for our great and long-suffering arts and writing scene.

Thursday, July 1, 2010

flowers blooming

Last weekend i bought some fish to prepare for my infant daughter's porridge. It was good expensive fish, "Or Her" (in Hokkien). Normally my wife would prepare it by scooping out its flesh and packing it in bite-size portions using clear/transparent plastic wrapping. This time i decided to give it a go myself. It was hard work scooping out the fish using a steel tablespoon and my hands smelled heavily of fish afterwards. After i was done, there were some leftover fish skin, bits of flesh, bones and fish head. Instead of throwing these away, i decided to bury them in my potted plants as fertiliser. So using my bare hands, i buried bits and pieces of fish skin flesh bones and head in 4 selected potted plants. That was about 5 days ago. Today when i inspected the 4 potted plants i was gratified to see that they had ALL sprouted tiny flowers as if to show their appreciation for the fish fertilizer. It has been raining for a few days so by now the fish remains would have putrefied and its juices mingled into the plants' soil. Everyone of the plants now have tiny flowers starting to sprout out and they will bloom into beautiful flowers not very long from now.