A Quiet 74

I turned 74 three days ago, on Monday 22 July to be exact. It was a quiet affair; no parties, dining out, nothing. Some of the children remembered, others didn’t. But my Rotary colleagues at RC Pudu remembered, sent a birthday card, fined me four times since 1 July and sang the birthday song.
I think I am feeling my age now. I am beginning to feel pain in my left knee area, especially during the duduk antara dua sujud for the tahyat awal. However, I am not yet into using a  chair to do my solat like some of my younger friends. My masseur said it’s muscular and not bone problem. I can walk but not as brisk as before. Running? yes a bit, but I quickly get out of breath.
Nevertheless, I am looking forward to my next 4x4 adventure trip to the Australian Outback in October 2013. It’s just a 24 day trip: Darwin-Alice Springs-Uluru-Simpson Desert-Brisbane. And Raja Azma is funding my air travel as a belated birthday present. Thank you, my dear.

GE 13

Notice my inked finger. A bit 3rd world, but that’s what Dumbiga wanted. We could have gone biometric, we have the technology and even introduced chip-based passports to the world. So ladies, bear with it for another 5 days or so.

Ham and I went to vote today at SK Taman Ahmad Razali Ampang Jaya.  Mek and Zaki voted at KDE, Sabrina at 1Utama. Whom did I vote for?  Of course BN.  Voting for PR is simply a no-no.   Why, because these clowns simply cannot govern.  They have been given five years (2008-12) to prove themselves as a possible alternative, so that we’d have a two party system.  Regrettably, they screwed up, big time.  In the five years, instead of governing they continued to behave like the Opposition. They went on and on with their criticizing spree and “politics of hate.”  PAS hated UMNO, DAP hated the MCA/BN and PKR hated Dr Mahathir. Added to that we had some fringe lunatics like Harris Ibrahim with his ABU (Anything but UMNO) mantra

and Hishamuddin Rais with his “let’s demo” as his pastime vocation. Dumbiga and unkempt Samad Said and their motley bunch of troublemakers with their “Bersih” thingy was fuelling the rioters with unclean money from foreign NGOs. PAS is naturally hopeless, having had Kelantan for 22 years and nothing to show for it. They can’t even provide clean water. And their leaders when caught on a sex video got away being hudud-ed with the blessings of their self-appointed Murshidul ‘Am and the party president. And they call themselves an Islamic party. Shiissh.  Kedah PAS govt was in a perpetual quarrel with a faction trying to oust the MB.  They also antagonized the non-Muslims with stupid rulings, besides destroying the eco-system by rampant logging at the Pedu lake catchment area. Meantime, their own University College, KUIN, suffered a financial crisis which is yet to be solved.

DAP had Penang.  Being an offshoot of LKY’s PAP when Singapore was kicked out of the Malaysian Federation in 1965, they of course carried on with LKY’s slogan of “Malaysian Malaysia” espousing meritocracy or “winner-take-all” policy as opposed to BN’s power-sharing or “prosper thy neighbour”  policy, that has proven to work well for the last 55 years. Also the fact that their leadership perpetuates dynastic rule of the Lim’s and the Karpal’s – is quietly camouflaged when they chant their war cry of Ubah (Change) for GE 13; quite oblivious of the fact that UMNO have changed their President six times; likewise MCA and MIC.  What hypocrites.  Worst still, the CM of Penang, a parachutist from Melaka, is trying to do a Singapore in Penang by building expensive high rise condos on acquired land that’s beyond the previous owners’ (read Malay) ability to buy. As a result, they had to move out to the mainland thus facilitating a subtle ethnic cleansing exercise. And for this GE, encouraged by the perceived high Chinese support for DAP’s Ubah war cry, LKS decided to jump over to Gelang Patah in Johor. And he did win although BN fielded Dato Ghani Othman, a well-liked good-report-card Johor MB for the last 18 years. Johor Chinese are sending a dangerous message indeed.

What about PKR.  Well, this is a party belonging to the Anwar family, nepotism of the highest order – mother as President, daughter as Vice-President and father as self-appointed Ketua Umum.  By the way, isn’t it strange to see that all the three parties of the illegal PR, having their leaders – Anwar, LKS and Nik Aziz – being self-appointed instead of voted in by their party members? What a mockery they make of democracy.  Unlike PAS and DAP, PKR was cobbled up in the wake of Anwar being kicked out of UMNO in 1999 and sent to jail for corruption (abuse of power) and Sodomy (which he got away with on account of a technicality.) It’s only 14 years since but most of his stalwart supporters have left him after realizing that they were taken for a ride by his acting ability, chameleon character and low moral standing; aided and abetted by his naïve wife. It’s amazing how he could get away with things – even Sodomy II (again on a technicality) after getting his case postponed more than 60 times in the course of four years; thanks to his lawyer, the wily but highly unprincipled Karpal Singh.  PKR have no credible policies to speak off; they even said that a manifesto is not a promise and therefore no obligation to honour. Their only aim is for Anwar to be PM. Period. And if Anwar is PM, then this disparate lot could occupy Putrajaya. God forbid.

Afternote: The voters did their thing. BN won with 133 seats with PR 89. Kedah was wrested back and Perak retained. End result: DAP kept Penang, PKR kept Selangor and PAS kept Kelantan. But in terms of the popular votes, PR had 50.87% and BN 47.38% – it was a Chinese tsunami with MCA, Gerakan and SUPP trounced.  Consequently, MCA decided not to accept any govt posts, not at State, or town and even village level.  A stupid merajuk attitude. Anwar, however, who was cocksure that PR would win and he become PM chose not to accept the results saying than BN and EC cheated; citing 40,000 Bangla phantoms, blackout during vote counting, washable indelible ink and other “scripted” accusations. So he went on a nationwide “Blackout 505” demo spree, with initial heavy turnout by the Chinese. PAS and the Azmin faction of PKR stayed away.  Finally when it came for the opening of Parliament on 24 May, Anwar and gang meekly attended and took the oath as MPs. However, to save face he has instituted a court case to have the results of the GE13 declared null and void and a fresh General Election be convened.

Faritz and his bicycles

My youngest son, Faritz, is a graduate of Swinburne University (Melbourne, Australia) in Industrial Design.  He graduated in January 2011; came home, looked for jobs that fit his qualification; but no joy.  His friends with similar education are also no better.  Apparently, our Malaysian industries don’t have a need for designers. They just manufacture OEM products. Those that do design work, have enough designers, supposedly.
So last January, he decided to do something related to his hobby.  He loved cycling and the fad is catching on in Kuala Lumpur and Malaysia in general. The Le Tour de Langkawi annual races helped to popularise this sport.

The Swift modified to carry bikes	His room is like a workshop

One day, while loitering in Sri Hartamas, he saw a cycle shop looking understaffed. He went in and asked the manager for a job. He got it. And now, he is the manager.
It’s a high end bicycle shop selling bikes for racing, mountain rides, dirt track extreme sports and the likes. He has raced too and won an iPad. Now he is really hooked into it and would go to Putrajaya where the happenings are, to cycle to their hearts content in the middle of the night.

Ah passed away

My sister-in-law, Zulaikha -- or Ah as she was popularly known -- younger sister to Ham, passed away at the KLH early morning on Tuesday 21 May 2013.  She never recovered from the operation to her skull as a result of a fall somewhere along Jln Tuanku Abd Rahman on Saturday 18 May.  She was buried after zohor prayers at the Taman Bukit Teratai Muslim Cemetery in Cheras (see map.)

Ah’s death was a tragedy. She was under some kind of black magic spell for some eight years. She was transformed from an entrepreneurial lady to one that went round begging to borrow money to meet the demands of her tormentors. None of her relatives including me were spared her pleadings. She even went to friends and neighbours and remote acquaintances. It was embarrassing.  Even on the day she died, she was on an errand to obtain money to deposit RM 9K into an account. Her brother Jid, got this information from her hand phone that survived the fall.

A police report has been made and hopefully the perpetrators would be found, lest more victims end up like Ah.

50th Anniversary

It was my 50th wedding anniversary with Ham on 27 Jun 2013. Both  our daughters came back from their abode overseas (Ida from London  and Nani from Dubai) to celebrate with us. We had a kenduri  with  tazkirah by an ustaz from Algeria, who is a PhD student at the UIAM  Gombak.

We invited him because he was to deliver the tazkirah in English for the benefit of our sons-in-law Phillip Rolland (Ida's husband) and Scott Shuey (Nani's husband.) Our invited guests of family and friends, of course, had no problems with English. Unfortunately, my boys — except for Zaki and wife Sabrina — couldn't make it earlier because they went to KLIA to pick up Fahd who came back for his semester break from Wanganui, New Zealand. The boys' mother, Ku Mek couldn't make it either because she is wheel-chair bound having had a fall in the bedroom (cockroach punya pasal) on 10 Apr, to be exact.  Her sisters Ku Yang and Ku Lan came. And the boys came later with their friend Nazrin and had a good late dinner. 



The food was catered by Ruz Aladdin restaurant. Everybody praised the nasi biryani gam (Johor speciality), beef rendang, the tapai ubi (my favourite; reminds me of my musim Jepun and Nyah's expertise with tapioca preparations.)


All in all, it was a wonderful evening and the weather stayed fine without the haze that came from Indonesia a couple of days ago. The girls left early the next morning for their holidays in Vietnam (Ida and Phillip) and Kota Kinabalu (Nani and Scott.)  We wished they could have stayed longer. Ah well, at least they came back and for that we are grateful.