Seberang Prai City

Today's haze wasn't too bad, so I took a little drive to check out this place. The question is, when is the shopping centre opening? Amidst all our economic woes with lessened spending power for our hard-earned ringgit, how successful will this place turn out to be? Will it draw in the crowds but more importantly, will the crowd spend?


Anyway, to put the shopping centre in its proper perspective, here's how the whole building looks like. If I'm not mistaken, there used to be a little stream or ditch that ran through this plot of land. I wonder what has happened to it.

Colours of the world

08 July 08, 08:08pm
And the Games have begun

Never mind the athletes, never mind the politics, here are some of the most spectacular images from the Opening Ceremony.

The Chinese invented gunpowder and fireworks. Rightly so. But I wonder how much was spent to add to the smog and haze over Beijing?

Cool .... a giant ball of papier-mache representing the globe, with people walking upside-down on its lower hemisphere. Sarah Brightman singing the Olympic song in Mandarin!

3,000 disciples of Confucius, that's who we are! I'm impressed...

Retired gymnast Li Ning, triple-gold medallist hero of the Chinese gymnastic team at the Los Angeles Olympics 1984, hoisted by wires and taken on a run around the Bird's Nest Olympic Stadium. Looked easy but I think it must have been tiring on the limbs too.

Wonderful torch. It's effect will be felt around the world.

Olympic countdown begins

One World, One Dream
Now, THIS is truly the event of the year

Tickled pink again

Yes, I'm tickled pink again but I'm not referring to the picture at the right (above). Neither am I referring to the headline that fronted The Star's online page when I visited it this morning. Who cares about the sexual undertones in today's front page when I see Up against Seirawan listed as the second most viewed story in this Friday's edition of The Star Online? Gee....tickle me pink!

In case you want to read it online on my other blog, click here.

He stays, Ronaldo stays

"I can confirm that next season I will play for Manchester United. I will play for Manchester with all my heart and soul. I will fight and honour that shirt with the same commitment and dedication as always."

It's shameful

Only hooligans and cowards attack defenseless women. This happened on Sunday when Guang Ming Daily photographer Loh Hoay Hoon was set upon by unprovoked scumbags while attempting to take photographs of Anwar Ibrahim in Permatang Pauh.

Can anyone explain?

When Parliament was dissolved on 13 Feb, the Election Committee set 24 Feb as the Nomination Day and 8 Mar as the Polling Day. That meant political parties had 11 days to finalise their list of candidates and there were 13 days of campaigning.

When Wan Azizah resigned from her Permatang Pauh parliamentary seat on 31 July, the Election Committee set 16 Aug as the Nomination Day and 26 Aug as the By-election Date. This will mean the political parties have 16 days to finalise their candidates and there'll be 10 days of campaigning.

I'm confused. Why is it that a nation-wide election with hundreds of candidates can be completed in 24 days whereas a single by-election with possibly only two candidates need 27 days in all? Shouldn't a by-election be much simpler with less resources required?

Caw! This crow is doggy trained

Here's a crow that thinks it's a dog. Meet Jack. It eats dog treats, jumps up on his owner’s lap and has even started attacking the postman. It was adopted by a family in Somerset, England who found it outside its nest and unable to fend for itself.

For the life of me, I wouldn't understand why anyone would want to adopt a bird such as the common crow which eats almost and destroys almost anything. But when the family found the crown, it was still a baby: small and vulnerable, unable to even lift its own head. They decided that Jack needed close care.

So what did they do? They took it home. But 10 weeks later it showed no sign of wanting to leave its new home. And it started to adopt the habits of the five dogs in the household.

"Whenever we get in the car, he jumps in too because he wants to come with us," said 12-year-old Cheryl. "And when mum comes back, he jumps on her lap like an excitable puppy. He is stubborn but really thinks he is part of the family."

Jack comes and goes as it pleases. It often disappears but returns home at the end of the day. It steals dog treats from the bowls of the dogs. Cheryl's younger brother said: "I brought him home and we looked after him. Now he thinks he's a dog and he tries to protect us - he even jumps on the postman's head."

Haze continues to envelop Penang

There's no respite from the thick haze that's currently enveloping Penang. This was the breath-taking view from the Equatorial Hotel in Bukit Jambul yesterday morning. You can see everything but the bridge. Thick, uniformly greyish-yellow haze.


And below, the Penang Bridge at its mid-span late yesterday afternoon. Where's the view? Only God knows....


Meanwhile, this is an excerpt from a news report from the Radio Australia website:

Environment officials in Malaysia say forest fires on the Indonesian island of Sumatra could cause heavy smog in Malaysia.

The head of Malaysia's environmental department says the government is drafting plans to prevent any open burning during the dry season, to avoid adding to any smog drifting over from Sumatra.

Like I mentioned yesterday in a comment on another blog: "... years and years of haze and the blardy department is still studying how to form a committee to look into deciding how best to have a sub-committee to work on the purchase of computers to write their student reports on their on-going investigations into the probability of open burning in Sumatra causing the haze in Malaysia before the department will finally agree that another committee should be set up to verify the recommendations of the earlier committee...."

What, lah!

Bandaged but will it cure?

I was so taken aback by this photograph in the New Straits Times' online version yesterday. It showed Pier 28 of the Middle Ring Road Two (MRR2) in Kuala Lumpur, all wrapped neatly in plastic as if it had been bandaged.

What happened was that on Sunday, motorists driving beneath the flyover were alarmed when debris came loose from the flyover and even clumps of concrete fell off. There was a huge jam - on a Sunday - while the authorities blocked off traffic for a few hours to check on the flyover's condition.

Now, while the affected pier has been bandaged and preliminary repair work due to start today, my worry is whether there can be a permanent cure for this problem. Remember, the MRR2 had been closed before about two years ago because of a similar concern. Despite millions of ringgit having been spent, we find almost the same problem happening again.

No permanent solution? What, lah!

Solsjkaer's farewell

"I have had the best players in the world around me. The fact I had that and played for the best manager in the world, in front of the best supporters makes me feel very humble."

Gulag man Solzhenitsyn is dead

I've just learnt of the passing of Alexander Solzhensitzyn, Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970. He died yesterday in Moscow, aged 89, of either heart failure or a stroke.

In the 70s, I read his works fervently, starting with One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich and progressing to The First Circle, Cancer Ward, The Love-Girl And the Innocent and Gulag Archipelago. They were all eye-opening accounts of life in the Sovet Union, especially the labour camps. I can term it in two words: bleak and awful.

Solzhenitsyn was a Soviet artillery officer in World War II, was decorated for his courage but denounced in 1945 for criticising Stalin in a letter. He experienced Gulag life for eight years. In 1962, Denisovich was published. After the first volume of Gulag appeared in 1973, he was stripped of his Soviet citizenship and expelled. Eventually, he settled in Vermont, USA, where he completed the other two volumes of Gulag. He only returned to Russia in 1994 after the Soviet Union had collapsed two years earlier. His return was dramatic as he chose to travel overland from the Russian Far East.

Beatles weekend

Spent last weekend listening to my Beatles records. Something within made me pull up my Abbey Road album, give it a good clean-up and then place it on the platter. Still sounded amazingly good. I've only five Beatles albums, unfortunately. What's missing from this picture is Let It Be. Amazingly, I don't have any Beatles album on compact disc.

Lifeless in the haze

Despite rain reported in some areas of Penang today, the haze has been quite bad. This photo was snapped off Gurney Drive at about 4pm. Muted colours. Can't even coax any life out of it.

Pistorius fails in Olympics qualification

With the Beijing Olympics due to open in five days' time, I'm just following up on the intriguing case of Oscar Pistorius.

If you remember, I did write about him once. He's the double-amputee from South Africa who battled with the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) for months and then finally winning an appeal at the Court of Arbitration for Sport to allow him to race against able-bodied athletes. More recently, he faced concerns that he could pose a danger to other athletes.

Now the news is out that he has been left out of South Africa's Olympic team for the Beijing Games. After failing to meet the qualifying standard to run in the 400 metres, Pistorius was also left off the 4x400m relay team after Athletics South Africa president Leonard Chuene confirmed that four other athletes had faster times than him.

Pistorius fell short of the 400m qualifying time of 45.55 seconds, although he has a personal best time of 46.25. Last May, he said that his legal battles had prevented him from focusing on training, and that it might be more realistic to aim at qualifying for the 2012 London Olympics. But I hear that he will be competing in the 100, 200 and 400 at the Beijing Paralympics. He holds world records in all three events.

"From the beginning, we knew that he had to qualify," said his manager PeetVan Zyl. "We didn't expect him to be granted any special opportunity or anything. The rules are the rules."

Let's also enjoy his game while we can!

"I'm just going to enjoy the season and see what happens after that. I can't hide from the fact that I will be 35 later this year, but I try to look after myself and use my experience by playing different positions than I used to. I don't know what I am going to do when I finish playing, though. Bryan Robson has just taken the ambassadorial role, similar to Sir Bobby Charlton's role over the years. I've taken my coaching badges because I want to stay in the game in some capacity, be it coaching or managing, but I will have to start thinking about it a lot more seriously at some point. I am thinking ahead, but you can't predict the future. A lot of people just fall into jobs, so you can't predict what you are going to do."

Penang's PM-in-waiting?

How would you feel if the future Prime Minister comes from your own constituency? I think it'll be so cool...

You think he's bluffing?

Duhh...

Defying the law of gravity

It was widely reported in the mass media yesterday that the government was considering lowering the price of petrol should the world crude oil price dip below US$125 per barrel and stay there for at least three weeks.

Hah! What good would that do to us when the damage has already been done? Consider this: when the petrol price was increased from RM1.92 per litre to RM2.70, it sparked an all-round hike in the prices of goods. Inflation soared to 7.7 percent.

Now the government talk about considering to lower the fuel price IF ... (mind you, a lot of conditions attached here). Seriously, do they think that the price of raw materials, our comsumables, etc, will come down? Do they think that hawkers will lower their food prices when the petrol price goes down? They'd be very naive if they do that because food prices will always defy the laws of gravity.

Haze returns

The lazy, hazy days are back in Penang. Even as I drive to work this morning at 6am, I could detect the haze lingering in the air. Anyway, here is the view from the Equatorial on Thursday morning. From my vantage point, I couldn't even see the Penang Bridge.


And this photo was snapped on my way home late yesterday afternoon. Where's the BM Hill? Disappeared. Even David Copperfield couldn't have done a better (or worse) job!