Pizza gluttony

Uhh ... I hope nobody will mind if I display our gluttony in the office yesterday. This was our lunch yesterday.


Yes, pizza. All 12 of them. Large pizzas. But of course, there were about 30 of us. And we finished all. Aren't we gluttons? Indeed.


And what was our celebration all about? The resignation of a colleague. That's him in the centre, the company's resident linux geek. He's off to Kuala Lumpur, the Big City, and leaving us all behind at the Mayang Mall office in Bayan Baru, Penang. Good luck to him; I wish him well.


In the meantime, this is the rubbish left behind. Part of the rubbish, actually, because another two bags of empty pizza boxes were ... somewhere else!


Ahh ... here they are. My two colleagues taking the pizza boxes to the trash bin.

What a disgrace!

Nelson Mandela? Mahatma Gandhi? Zambry is NOTHING compared to these great men of history. What a disgrace. Shameful! He sullies their fine names.

Media photographers

I just want to dedicate this post to the media reporters and photographers. They are the ones always in the background, but they are also the ones that bring us all those wonderful stories and photographs you see in the newspapers every day. It's not often that you'll see them seated together. So, this is a special occasion for me to sneak in a hastily snapped picture of them while they were enjoying themselves at a function last Sunday.

Show and tell

Like Alice said about her adventures in Wonderland, it's getting curiouser and curiouser. In the newspapers, it was reported that this woman, Hee Yit Foong, had claimed that the pepper spray device she had been accused of using to attack a Pakatan Rakyat representative with during last Thursday’s chaotic State Assembly meeting was not hers.

Star Online: "she claimed the device had been flung at her earlier during a fracas. She said she does not know how to even operate such a device, and that she had held it up to Aulong assemblyman Yew Tian Hoe to demand if he was the one who had flung it at her."

Personally, I find it hard to believe her explanation. She's just digging herself into a deeper hole. I was watching this incident on YouTube and I don't see any exchange of words between her and Yew in the seconds leading to the incident or the seconds after. More than that, I felt it was a funny way to hold something up to show it to another person. She was practically clenching at it. Then, when she looked down momentarily, could it be that she was making sure that she was holding it correctly?

Also, did she use the spray? She claimed not to but from the way that Yew flinched and then felt his chest, could there have been a feeble spray or a crooked spray that landed on his uniform? It's really very hard to tell. In any case, if there was really a spray, he was lucky not to have caught it on his face. That would have been Ouch indeed!

Liar liar pants on fire

I felt so bemused when I read reports of the antics in the Perak state assembly last Thursday. I felt even more bemused when I saw the videos and photos from some websites. This picture, for example. Is this a woman who cannot even lie properly in the face of hard evidence? Really, I don't know how she could keep up a straight face and deny that she wasn't threatening another person with a pepper spray.

"Come closer and let me show you my hotel key-chain and pendrive."

Did that look like a pepper spray or was she just holding up her hotel key-chain, as she had claimed? I should reproduce this remark from the Sun2Surf website:

Asked if she had pepper-sprayed Yew during the sitting as reported on television news, she said the device she was holding in her hand was a key chain from her hotel and a pen drive. "I would not give him (Yew) free publicity by pepper spraying him in the House."

Funny. I would have expected all hotels to have replaced their 20th Century door locks with 21st Century security card systems by now. Also, are there still modern pendrives, thumbdrives or flash drives that measure around four inches or 10 centimetres?

Actually, I'm intrigued by the pepper sprays. How do typical pepper sprays look like? I googled the Internet and came up with thousands of images. This one on the right shows typical pepper sprays that looked similar to the cheap object she held. Of course, there's a key-chain on the spray; only difference is, there's no "hotel" attached to the other end. The truth is out there and people can decide whether or not she still has any credibility left.

A yo-yo Sunday

My son, Jeremy, first became interested in the yo-yo way back in 2005. My wife and I didn't even know there was a thriving yo-yo scene locally until we took him to the Sunway Pyramid in Petaling Jaya to see first-hand people playing this game. My own experience with the yo-yo only went as far as a simple looping the loop, so I was quite glad that he wanted to explore further into the game.

The following year, he threw himself into the deep end of the game when he asked me whether he could compete in the second Asia-Pacific yo-yo championship at Genting. Naturally, he was all at sea. A real novice drowned out by the yo-yo experts. As he himself had expected, he was knocked out in the preliminary round.

I'm glad he did not quit the game despite this result. Today, we were at the Queensbay Mall where he competed in a northern region competition organised by the Malaysian Yo-Yo Club. I was watching him. The years had steadied his game. He no longer looked the complete novice that he was in 2006 or 2005. Though he only came third in the 5A event, I'm proud of his achievement. It's not whether he came in first, third or last. It's all about competing and I'm happy for him that he still chose to compete.

The picture is not clear because it was taken off a video recording on my camera, but here's a picture of him competing.


By the way, I'd like to acknowledge the following people I've known from the Malaysian yo-yo scene who were in Penang during the weekend: Dimi (who is the president of the Malaysian Yo-Yo Club), Azrul, Raymond, Shakeel and Kong. Dimi was the first person that Jeremy knew at the Sunway Pyramid in 2005. He gave my son that little bit of initial encouragement.

Weekend interlude

I was looking through my records yesterday and pulled out two albums by Jim Reeves. I had almost forgotten how velvety he could sound until I spun these records on the turntable.


Oddly, about the only memorable song I could remember from Reeves was He'll Have To Go form Skeeter Davis' album, Here's The Answer.


The one common thread running through all these albums was the name of Chet Atkins. But not only was he already an established producer, he was a notable recording artiste in his own right.

The Lord Gautama

Happy Wesak!

Statue of Buddha at Inward Path Publisher, Rangoon Road, George Town

"Black" humour

"Even wearing black has become a subversive act. Malaysians are not only fighting against discrimination on their skin colour but now are also subjected to discrimination according to the colour of their clothes. It is such a laughable matter, and Malaysia has become an international joke, but I am too sad to even laugh about it. BN has lost all moral authority, legitimacy as well as ethical values."
- Lim Guan Eng, Chief Minister, Penang, talking about the political circus in Perak -

Perak state assembly pasar malam

The real ugly side of power-hungry politicians. No amount of excuses can justify these shameful actions.

The idiot

Tomorrow being Wesak Day, I would like to share one of Ajahn Brahm's wickedly delicious stories from his deliciously wicked book, Who Ordered This Truckload of Dung? (page 226). This one is about someone calling you an idiot.

Normally, if someone were to call you an idiot, how would you respond?

First, you'd start thinking to yourself: "How can they call me an idiot? They've got no right to call me an idiot! How rude to call me an idiot! I'm get them back for calling me an idiot!"

And suddenly you'd realise that you have just let them call you an idiot another four times.

Every time you remember what they said, you allow them to call you an idiot yet again. Therein lies the problem.

If someone calls you an idiot and you immediately let it go, then it doesn't bother you. There is the solution. Why allow other people to control your inner happiness?

Who cared about the speech?

So, did anybody bothered to listen to what he said? What did he say, anyway?

Where is the ocean?

This is a very short but deep story. I am still trying to understand it properly. There are other variations of this lesson but I'm reproducing only one here:

"Excuse me," said a very young ocean fish, "you are older than I. Can you tell me where to find this thing called the Ocean?"

"The Ocean?" replied the older fish. "Why, it is the thing you are in now."

"Oh this? But this is water. What I'm seeking is the Ocean," said the disappointed young fish as he swam away to search elsewhere.

It'll be interesting to learn how various people would interpret this story.

A meaningful quote from a Sufi master

"The master said there is one thing in this world which must never be forgotten. If you were to forget everything else but were not to forget this, there would be no cause to worry, while if you remembered, performed and attended to everything else but forgot that one thing, you would in fact have done nothing whatsoever. It is as if a king had sent you to a country to carry out one special, specific task. You go to the country and you perform a hundred other tasks but if you have not performed the task you were sent for, it is as if you have performed nothing at all. So man has come into the world for a particular task and that is his purpose. If he doesn't perform it, he will have done nothing."

- from Sufi Master Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi's book, Fihi Ma Fihi (Table-talk) -

Reading tomorrow's newspaper today

I made a trip to the Kwong Wah Yit Poh in Presgrave Street, George Town this afternoon to attend an MOU signing ceremony. Later, I was taken on a little tour of the premises where I picked up a copy of tomorrow's newspaper.


The Kwong Wah Yit Poh is one of the world's oldest privately-owned Chinese newspapers. It was established on 20 Dec 1910 by Chinese revolutionary leader Dr Sun Yat Sen, which means that next year will be the centenary year of the newspaper.


By the way, the calligraphy in the masthead seen above was written by Dr Sun himself. The image itself is, however, not of the newspaper's first issue. Kwong Wah Yit Poh had not been able to trace its first issuedue to its relocations and the few wars in the last 99 years. I've been told that this particular issue was the earliest available copy in the newspaper's possession. It was brought back from the Dr Sun Yat Sen memoriam in China. Presumably, the Chinese revolutionary leader had taken it back with him.


This vase with a portrait of Dr Sun adorns the conference room on the third floor of the Kwong Wah Yit Poh building. The newspaper really owes a lot to this great man.


Here, tomorrow's edition of the Kwong Wah Yit Poh is already rolling off the press at high speed, and it was only about 4.30pm.

Aboo Sittee Lane

I was surprised to find such houses still tucked within George Town today: doubled-storey structures with the lower floor of brick walls and the upper floor of plank walls.


Of course, this one has long been abandoned. Wooden crates blocked the entrance into the compound and I had to push them aside in order to go in and have a look. I peered into the interior. Yes, definitely abandoned.


And this is how the exterior of the upper floor looked like. Still a lot of detail in the old woodwork.


Further down the road, this house was still in a livable condition.

I wish St Xavier's Institution well

The St Xavier's Institution's long tradition of a white cassocked school principal walking the corridors is about to end. According to newspaper reports, Brother Paul Ho is retiring soon and when he does, he won't be replaced by another La Sallian Brother. Instead his position will be filled by a civil servant. It's a big shame that another tradition is disappearing from our education system.

A member of the school's board of governors is hoping that an Old Xavierian would be appointed to helm the school, someone who is familiar with the La Sallian style of education.

While I support him fully, I have to wish him a lot of luck. If past experience is anything to go by, the school may get an Old Xavierian civil servant there for two or three years. After that, be prepared for the worst. The Ministry of Education will not care about who your next school principal will be. More likely, the ministry will choose someone who will cast the school's traditions to the wind. This person will then ignore the pleas of the board of governors and the Old Boys of the school and insist on doing things his own way.

Believe me, it will happen. After all, they did this to with the Penang Free School. How many of its school headmasters since the days of Tan Boon Lin were Old Boys of the Penang Free School? And how many of them valued and cherished the traditions of the Penang Free School? Why, even the time hallowed tradition of holding the Speech Day on 21 Oct was ignored just because it fell on a Sunday. It shouldn't be this way. In my opinion, headmasters are only transient characters. They should feel honoured to serve a school, not the other way round. They can either leave behind a positive legacy during their short stay or they can run away with their tails between their legs. The choice is theirs how they want to be remembered or reviled.

So let this be a warning to the St Xavier's Institution. The same fate may befall your school. Just be careful and may your own fine school traditions continue with no hindrance.

Today's lunch

We bought a few slabs of salmon yesterday and sat down to a feast today. Salmon steak marinated with herbs and then fried in olive oil. To complement the dish, we had a salad of chopped vegetables, tomatoes and capsicums tossed with olive oil.

My thoughts on run up to football season finale

I woke up this morning to see the football standings in England crystalised to a great extent. The teams are already in the final stretch of the season and I'm expecting the results to fall the right way not only in the Premier League but also the Champions League.

First, in the Premier League where some teams have only three games to play and some others four games. Going into the final stretch, Manchester United are of course in pole position. They have a six-point lead over Liverpool who will be playing tonight. I don't expect Liverpool to drop any point against relegation-threatened Newcastle but anything possible can happen. (Why am I hoping that an upset will occur tonight?) But even if Liverpool win all three points tonight, Manchester United are still in the driver's seat. Nevertheless, the title would still be theirs to lose as any trip-up may prove fatal.

Anyway, Manchester United's last four games will be against Manchester City (home), Wigan (away), Arsenal (home) and Hull (away). In the meantime, Liverpool will be playing Newcastle (home) tonight and then West Ham (away), West Brom (away) before ending their season against Tottenham (home). Chelsea are the big outsiders in the title race with three games left against Arsenal (away), Blackburn (home) and Sunderland (away). They'll have a shot at the title only if Manchester United and Liverpool completely trip up in their last games and I don't view this as realistic.

Second, Europe looks to be more exciting. Arsenal will be playing Manchester United on Wednesday morning. It will be a tough game for United even though they are defending a slim 1-0 win from the first leg last week. Arsenal will be playing on home ground and it will also be the London club's last shot at a trophy this season. Meanwhile, Chelsea will be at home to Barcelona on Thursday morning. This will also be an exciting game, especially since Barcelona gave out a warning signal last night with a 6-2 blitz on Real Madrid in the Spanish league. Serve those unscrupulous blighters right!

By the way, quintuple no more. Setting sights on the quadruple now!

New cafeteria at Old Frees' Association

My family decided to give the new cafeteria at the Old Frees' Association a try yesterday. Heard that they took up residence on 15 Apr after the contract of the old cafeteria operator had ended. The menu looked interesting so we ordered a plate of Singapore fried bee hoon, a plate of Sar Hor Fun and a bowl of Mee Suah Tau.

Our verdict: the Singapore friend bee hoon was nice, the Mee Suah Tau was okay but the Sar Hor Fun was a disappointment. Overall, I think the new operator can do much better with their food.