Maker bound

He's dead, Johnny Hart's dead. Johnny Hart, the creator of the B.C. comic strip that's running daily in The Star, is dead. He was 76 when he died last Saturday of a stroke. Although I did not enjoy those strips that had a religious undertone - and there were many - I enjoyed those thoroughly modern prehistoric characters like the guru on the hill, the ants, the advice-dispensing rock with the ridiculous "ching" sound effect, the snake and especially the fat lady that thumps the snake. Will we still see the strip now that Johnny's gone?

I'm upset

I know I'm upset when I begin to split my infinitives without realising it. I'm always very careful but this had to happen.

Instead of writing "....to continue nonchalently..." I had actually typed "...to nonchalently continue..." in my item below on Najib.

I'm really upset with this piece of nonsense from me.... :-(

Don't over-react, lah!

Last Friday, the New Straits Times reported deputy prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak as saying that Malaysians, especially the media, should not overreact to bomb scares as they could cause chaos.

I say, I say, I say .... am I to believe that such words are uttered by a person so high in the government?

Don't over-react? Should we not over-react to bomb scares? Are we to nonchalently continue with using the Penang Bridge even though there may be a bomb planted there? Should we not be scared? Are we only to react only if a bomb actually goes off? Are we to be the guinea pigs or the victims of a bomb blast, if there is one? Would you like to be the guinea pig and go across the bridge first and then tell us it is save??

My mind boggles....

Pos Malaysia

I've a bone to pick with Pos Malaysia.

Last Mar 31 during lunchtime, I was at their outlet in TESCO, Penang, wanting to pick up a 75-sen stamp. What did I see? A group of about 15 to 20 people hanging around Pos Malaysia, some standing and some seated. All looking rather bored and silly, actually.

I walked up to the only counter opened (three were three, but only one was manned to handle customers) and asked the chappie whether this was the counter to buy stamps. Without batting an eye, he said yes but I'll have to take a number and queue up like everyone else.

I was stumped. Taking a number just to buy a 75-sen stamp? What would I have to do to buy a 30-sen stamp? Take two numbers??

Anyway, meekly I went to press the Butang A and the little slip of paper fell out. My jaw dropped again. Another 16 people ahead of me? At the Tesco branch of Pos Malaysia, where traffic is considerably high, there is only one staff to handle customers during lunch hours? And you know what people generally do at post offices, apart from buying stamps...they don't hang around for a teh tarik. They weigh their parcels, send off registered letters and Poslaju letters, buy postal and money orders, transact on their Bank Simpanan accounts, pay their utility bills, what not...

Gee, my 75-sen stamp pales in comparison with these lofty activities. No wonder I've really got to wait in line in that one long queue, waiting for others to complete their business before I could buy this little miserable 75-sen stamp. Maybe, I should have gone for the teh tarik first...

Chump, chimp, champ ... whatever

Extracted from the New Straits Times today:

GEORGE TOWN: It has turned out that the phone call which led to the closure of the Penang Bridge came from State Works and Public Utilities Committee chairman Datuk Koay Kar Huah.

Koay yesterday admitted that he received a call from a friend who was stuck in a traffic jam enquiring if there was a bomb on the bridge.

"I got the call and instructed my staff to check and verify if it was true. They then called the Malaysian Highway Authority," he said at a specially called Press conference by Chief Minister Tan Sri Dr Koh Tsu Koon.

And this is the extract from theSun today, a report by Opalyn Mok:

PENANG (April 5, 2007): The chain of events that led to the closure of Penang Bridge yesterday afternoon was apparently set in motion by a query from a bridge worker to a state executive councillor, and was not a bomb threat.

Datuk Koay Kar Huah, who is the exco in charge of public works, utilities and transportation, said today he received a call from a friend, who is a staff at the bridge, asking him whether it was true there was a bomb at the bridge.

Koay said this when asked by reporters about talk that it was his call to the police that led to the bridge's closure for two hours and 40 minutes that resulted in a gridlock for peak-hour commuters.

"I called up my staff to check it out and the staff then called the Malaysian Highway Authority (LLM) to verify the information," he said in a joint press conference with Chief Minister Tan Sri Dr Koh Tsu Koon.

The old block

Earlier this week, Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards commented in an exclusive interview with New Musical Express:

"The strangest thing I've tried to snort? My father. I snorted my father. He was cremated and I couldn't resist grinding him up with a little bit of blow. My dad wouldn't have cared, he didn't give a shit. It went down pretty well, and I'm still alive."

Richards has since denied saying this:

"I wouldn't take cocaine at this point in my life unless I wished to commit suicide. The truth of the matter is that I planted a sturdy English Oak. I took the lid off the box of ashes and he is now growing oak trees and would love me for it!"

Which version would you believe??

The end?

"Lots of things drive me on. The disappointment of games we've lost, the trophies we have lost. It is not the trophies that you have won that drive you on; it is those you've missed out on. Maybe having only a year or two left drives me on as well. You can see the finishing line and you just have to enjoy it. It brings out the best in you. When you are 19, 20 and 21, you think the end will never come, but once you are in your 30s, you know the end will come around 35-36. You just try to enjoy it and win as much as you can, because you know that in three or four years, you won't be doing it."

Cheng Beng

Today's Cheng Beng, you know, the Chinese equivalent of All Souls' Day. Families will go to the cemeteries to spruce up the grave stones of their dear, departed family elders. In Penang, this will mean huge traffic jams leading to the big cemeteries like Batu Lanchang, Batu Gantong and Mount Erskine on the island. Berapit on the mainland will also see traffic congestion too.

It's funny ... before Chinese New Year, we would be spring-cleaning our houses and before Cheng Beng, we would be doing the same for our ancestors' grave stones.

Anyway, I didn't go for Cheng Beng today. That had already been done four days ago. We are permitted to start this ritual as early as 10 days before the actual Cheng Beng date but I know families who had started even earlier. It's not about being kiasu but only a matter of practicality. The weekends may be the only convenient days for the living!

This year at the Batu Lanchang cemetery, I bumped into my KL cousins who had returned just for Cheng Beng. They were at their parents' grave, just across the ditch from my maternal grandparents. I hadn't seen some of them for a few years so it was like a mini-reunion of sorts.

Where my family is concerned, going for Cheng Beng always mean waking up at 5am. Two good reasons for this: one, we want to find a good place to park and beat the traffic jam at the cemetery and two, we want to avoid the hot morning sun at Batu Lanchang. So we'll always leave the house at about 6am and reach Batu Lanchang at about 6.45am. It would still be pitch dark but already, a hive of activity is going on. For one, there'd be touts collecting parking fees from the early birds. Then, as the darkness lifts suddenly, you'll find yourself surrounded on all sides by a sea of tombstones and people generally walking, cleaning and praying.

My other Cheng Beng spot is the Siamese cemetery along Green Lane, across from the Caltex petrol station. This place, unfortunately, is very run down and nobody seems to be responsible for its upkeep. Certainly not the Siamese monks that live nearby. But this place is shady. There is relieve from the searing sun BUT you face something more challenging: mosquitoes. About four years ago, a big tree was uprooted and it fell across some grave stones. It narrowly missed my paternal grandparents' grave stone but several nearby ones were damaged. It took more than two years for people to clear away the trunk.

Hoaxed

I came home too late and tired last night to do anything. Who wouldn't be tired if you had spent the last four hours trying to get home? A journey of 35km which normally takes me around 50 minutes suddenly stretched into hours. And it was all because of a prankster who thought he was being clever by shouting fire. If I can find this irresponsible guy (I know that I've called him ball-less and spineless in my other blog), I'll gladly castrate him!

You should have seen the queue as traffic was diverted from the Penang Bridge. It was real bad. Cars, trucks, vans, lorries and buses all wanted to make a line to the ferry terminal.




And in the midst of all this chaotic scene, old cars were overheating and breaking down. Luckily, there were good Samaritans around to help push the cars away. These guys didn't have to, but they did.

No more island in the sun

Nailed down. Pulled out. Flattened. Demolished.

No matter how you want to describe it, the Chongqing nail house is no more. Today, the bulldozers came in and took the little house away. With this sudden turn of events, the three-year-long saga that has come to symbolise the private citizen's defiance against the Chinese government and illegal land grabs by developers has ended.

In the end, the owners of this two-storey brick house - perched 10 metres high on a tower of land in the middle of a huge construction pit - were compensated with a new up-market apartment worth about 3.0 million Yuan and given another 900,000 Yuan in special damages for the electricity and water that had been cut off by the developers. That's a very tidy sum, especially by Chinese standards.

Read my original post on this topic.

Moon

I love the moon.

On a full moon's day, nothing is more romantic that to walk in the moonlight with my wife. And especially, when you peer into the night sky, the pale yellow orb of the moon speaks to you in a whisper: "Feel my light, feel my glow, feel the quiet, feel the peace." You can't do this with the sun.

Yet, there is more to the moon than the light, the glow, the quiet or the peace. Just a few days ago, I was watching an interesting programme on National Geographic where it was argued that the gravitational force of the moon could trigger earthquakes.

The moon's orbit around the earth is ecliptical, just like the earth's orbit around the sun is. At perigee, the earth and the moon are at their closest point to one another. Likewise, at perihelion, the earth and the sun are closest to one another.

The TV programme suggested that when perigee and perihelion occurs together at a time when the sun, earth and moon are aligned, the gravitational forces on the earth's tectonic plates are at their strongest. The force may even be strong enough to trigger the plates to slip, thus triggering earthquakes.

The 26 Dec 2004 earthquake of magnitude 9.1 off Sumatra that caused the destructive tsunami in the Indian Ocean coincided with a full moon. The 6.4 magnitude earthquake on 6 Mar 2007 happened a day after the new moon. Likewise, the 9.2 magnitude earthquake in Alaska on 27 Mar 1964 happened on a day of maximum high tide and as you know, tides are caused by the moon's gravitational pull.

Today is also a full moon's day and I arrived at the office this morning to learn that a big 8.1 magnitude earthquake had occurred in the Pacific Ocean and it set off a tsunami that hit the Solomon Islands badly.

So it may really be true after all that the moon is potentially dangerous for people who live in earthquake-prone regions. In the past, the full moon was linked to crime, suicide, mental illness, disasters, accidents, birthrates, fertility, werewolves and vampires, among other things. Add to this growing list of events now is an earthquake.

Won't get fooled again

Welcome to 1 April 2007. It's April Fools' Day, by the way, a day when people with nothing better to do will try to pull a fast one over other people. I've given up on playing pranks on my friends and family but don't think that I've lost my sense of humour. I haven't!

While scouring the on-line news agencies, I came across a story about someone trying to sell on the Internet hairs that purportedly belonged to the Egyptian pharoah, Ramses II.

According to Reuters, an archaeological team from Egypt was on its way to France to retrieve the 3,200-year-old strands of hair taken from the mummified remains of the pharoah. The Reuters report said that last year, someone had offered to sell the hair on the Internet for between 2,000 and 2,500 euros (US$2,668 and US$3,336).

I don't know why, but I was immediately put on my guard the moment I saw this story. Something told me to be suspicious of it. Could this be an April Fools' joke in the making? The release of this news-worthy story so close to April 1 is just too coincidental. But, some newspapers in the world have carried this story...including China's People's Daily Online. Let's see whether Reuters will say more about this story tomorrow.

By the way, a good April Fools' story will normally try to include some real facts as part of its report in an attempt to make the story realistic. This are the real facts added to the Reuters exclusive:

"Ramses's mummy was discovered in 1881 and shortly afterwards moved to Cairo's Egyptian Museum. In the early 1970s authorities noticed his body was deteriorating and sent it to Paris, where it was treated for a fungal infection."

Can they?

"The only thing we have to do is keep our nerve. Are we playing like champions? I think so. You expect a championship team to show the determination, drive and resolve we showed (against Blackburn)."

Island in the sun

Would you care to wager how much longer this lonely house can withstand the forces of development going on around it?


This is in Chongqing, China where this lonely house, precariously placed on top of a 10-metre drop all around it, has earned the name of "coolest nail house". It's called a nail house because nothing - or no one - seems able to uproot it.

The saga began three years ago when the owners of this house began battling a property developer that wanted to develop a piece of land into a shopping centre. But while the other homeowners accepted a compensation and then moved out, this house's owners refused to budge and tried to ask for more.

But the owners got more than they bargained for when the property developer began digging into the ground all around this little house and left it standing all by itself.

Just like an island in an ocean. All cut off from the rest of the world.

US$1,453 million

This is the world's most valuable football club, according to a special report by Forbes business magazine on 29 Mar 2007:


Some clues to the club's identity:

Founded: 1878
One-Year Value Change: 6%
Debt/Value: 84%
Revenue (2005/2006 season): US$310 million
Income (2005/2006 season): US$92 million
Home Uniform: Red shirts with white trim, white or black shorts, black socks
G14 Member: Yes
Stadium capacity: 76,000

Still don't know? Here are more giveaway clues:

Owner/Major Shareholder: Malcolm Glazer
Chief Executive: David Gill
Head Coach: Sir Alex Ferguson
Club President: Joel & Avram Glazer (Co-chairmen)
European Trophies: 2 European Champions Cups: 1968, 1999, 1 Cup Winners Cup: 1991, 1 Intercontinental Cup: 1999
Domestic Championships: 15: 1907-08, 1910-11, 1951-52, 1955-56, 1956-57, 1964-65, 1966-67, 1992-93, 1993-94, 1995-96, 1996-97, 1998-99, 1999-00, 2000-01, 2002-03
Domestic Cups: 11 F.A. Cups: 1909, 1948, 1963, 1977, 1983, 1985, 1990, 1994, 1996, 1999, 2004, 2 League Cups: 1992, 2006
Main Sponsor/Uniform Sponsor: AIG/Nike

Followed by:

2 Real Madrid (Spain) US$1,036 million
3 Arsenal (England) US$915 million
4 Bayern Munich (Germany) US$838 million
5 AC Milan (Italy) US$824 million
6 Juventus (Italy) US$567 million
7 Internazionale Milan (Italy) US$555 million
8 Chelsea (England) US$537 million
9 Barcelona (Spain) US$535 million
10 Schalke 04 (Germany) US$471 million
11 Liverpool (England) US$454 million
12 Olympique Lyonnais (France) US$343 million
13 Newcastle United (England) US$260 million
14 Tottenham Hotspur (England) US$243 million
15 AS Roma (Italy) US$224 million
16 Hamburg SV (Germany) US$221 million
17 Manchester City (England) US$208 million
18 Borussia Dortmund (Germany) US$199 million
19 Ajax Amsterdam (Netherland) US$196 million
20 Celtic (Scotland) US$185 million
21 Everton (England) US$165 million
22 Olympique Marseille (France) US$157 million
23 West Ham United (England) US$156 million
24 Glasgow Rangers (Scotland) US$147 million
25 Aston Villa (England) US$140 million

Say what? Say cheese!

CAUTION: Here's something for mature viewing only.

West Country Farmhouse Cheesemakers from Somerset, England had put their handmade-on-the-farm cheeses to mature about three months ago and thought it would provide a jolly good talking point to hook one up to a webcam. But to their udder surprise, more than half a million viewers have already tuned into their website to look at THE MOST EXCITING event in cheese history.

It's so fulfilling to see the cheese develop a faint grey coat of mould. It's not a pretty sight, not for the faint-hearted, I tell you, but it's an awesome experience you'll not want to miss. Grip yourself and click here to get yourself transported to the Cheese Event of your lifetime! Caution: Don't click if you cannot stand the smell of cheese!

Philip Crawford, chairman of the West Country Farmhouse Cheesemakers group, explained in their press statement:

"We’ve told you how much we love our cows; you may have heard that we spend so much time with them they have started to moo with a West Country accent. We’re very proud of our cheese too and we’ve launched the new website to let the whole world appreciate how it takes to create the perfect-tasting West Country Farmhouse Cheddar. As you can see we really do take our cheesemaking seriously. We nurture our cows so they produce lovely milk which in turn creates exquisite cheese."

I want a piece of this cheese. I really do. In fact, I want it so much that I don't mind watching it mature. Anyway, it's no harder than watching grass grow or watching paint dry. So, Mr Crawford, if you want to give me a piece of the cheese - any of your award-winning cheese will do - just drop me an email. I'll gladly join you to watch this particular cheese mature until the end of the year...

Call me Jake

A few months ago, I was alerted to this video on YouTube. I had forgotten all about it until last night when I was listening to one of George Harrison's CDs. The man's name is Jake Shimabukuro. Don't let the name intimidate you. Just say it slow .... Shi-ma-bu-ku-ro ... and please remember it because he plays one mean ukulele!

Will he?

"Am I the best in the world? I have been improving my game and I'm in a great shape this year. I feel mature. The Manchester United players are by my side and I also have a great help in the national team. But, of course, I believe I am one of the best. I have a good contract in financial terms and what really matters to me is to show my game. It's a good sign to know that I have so many clubs interested in me, such as Madrid. It means that I am valued and my work pleases. But I'm very happy where I am and I hope to stay in Manchester United for many years."

Break-up letter

I received this joke by email recently. I enjoyed it initially but then I began thinking how it is a sad reflection of humanity continuing to be swept along by global world events. Are we to remain just pawns manipulated by those in power?

A soldier stationed in Afghanistan recently received a letter from his girlfriend back home. It read as follows:

Dear Ricky,
I can no longer continue our relationship. The distance between us is just too great. I must admit that I have cheated on you twice since you've been gone and it's not fair to either of us. I'm sorry. Please return the picture of me that I sent to you.
Love,
Becky

The soldier, with hurt feelings, asked his fellow soldiers for any snapshots they could spare of their girlfriends, sisters or ex-girlfriends. In addition to the picture of Becky, Ricky included all the other pictures of the pretty gals he had collected from his buddies. There were 57 photos in that envelope, along with this note:

Dear Becky,
I'm so sorry, but I can't quite remember who the hell you are. Please take your picture from the pile, and send the rest back to me.

Quaint discovery

If you are prepared to veer off the well beaten tourist track, even the Golden Triangle in Kuala Lumpur can throw up a few pleasant surprises. I did not have to travel far from the Radius International Hotel to see some truly fascinating sights.

Along Cangkat Bukit Bintang, there were boutique eateries specialising in German food, Lebanese food, Brazilian fare, etc:





Some art deco-styled buildings along the same road:



Across from the hotel is Jalan Nagasari. I was surprised at the (almost) complete lack of traffic along this road and its feeder roads on a Saturday morning. This is one of the feeder roads ... Jalan Berangan:


And along Jalan Nagasari itself, I saw more quaint houses, including one with an external spiral staircase. Art deco must've been very popular in those days...