The other day I saw someone drinking iced milk with red syrup. A rare sight indeed! Later at a Mar Vista stall we learnt that the drink is known as Bandoeng
You must have read about the politician’s car skidding in heavy rain. It’s amazing that drivers to day still do not know about the aquaplane effect, which is that at above 50 mph in heavy rain your wheels float as on water like a motor boat and you are in danger of being swept aside by a gust of wind.
A son meets a student from China studying in the UK. The chance meeting is in Boston where a mutual friend is doing IT. Her aunt is a doctor in Beijing. Yes, her aunt will arrange for a liver transplant. It is done. And the father is back, happy and recovered in Penang. A story boook come true!
Albert has returned Xinran’s marvellous interviews with people in China and told me John lliked it so much he has ordered this and her first book for himself.
We were eating the flower crab - ch’i - when I discovered I was the only one who did’nt know that mosquitoes would sting them in the eye and kill them instantly.
It’s good to learn that the famous pomelo growers of Tambun have at last received grants to their land of 99 years.
Of all the well known bloggers I find the MP Teresa Kok the most honest with her figures. While others boast of millions of readers she publishes a modest honest count of only 775. Such honesty is rare indeed
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Monday, January 25, 2010
sex and china writers
Chinese writers are obsessed with showing off their sexual prowess. The latest is the Nobel Prize winner, One Man’s Bible, pages and pages of his exploits with women in various beds. It seems that a Chinese ant-Mao writer must not only show his eloquently stated anti-Mao credentials but must tell of his hot sex life to get the Nobel Prize.
The Johore Sultan has just died. I used to visit his father when was living in Singapore and later when I visited for polo. He was a very kind man, absolutely without malice. His son was always respectful when speaking to me and called me “uncle” He was rather erratic (born like that) but kind hearted like the father. He was a great friend of Tony Wee of Singapore, once a boxer and a DPP.
The oriel is back gurgling his deep whistle on the old rambuttan tree.
I would recommend looking at the amusing blog cheeseburgerbuddha.blogspot.com run by a journalist artist, a very entertaining fellow who has been all over the world.
The former minister Ghazali Shafie’s orbituary in the papers do not mention that he was in the British secret service then became head of Malaysia’s MI5. Amateur pilots were suspicious of his version of the air crash in 1982 which killed the co-pilot but which he survived. He was the one who changed the treatment of political detainees after arrest. Instead of being just asked to accompany the detectives the lock up, political detainees were handcuffed and even blindfolded as if they Viet-cong. And they were not even given water to drink for a long time after arrest
The Johore Sultan has just died. I used to visit his father when was living in Singapore and later when I visited for polo. He was a very kind man, absolutely without malice. His son was always respectful when speaking to me and called me “uncle” He was rather erratic (born like that) but kind hearted like the father. He was a great friend of Tony Wee of Singapore, once a boxer and a DPP.
The oriel is back gurgling his deep whistle on the old rambuttan tree.
I would recommend looking at the amusing blog cheeseburgerbuddha.blogspot.com run by a journalist artist, a very entertaining fellow who has been all over the world.
The former minister Ghazali Shafie’s orbituary in the papers do not mention that he was in the British secret service then became head of Malaysia’s MI5. Amateur pilots were suspicious of his version of the air crash in 1982 which killed the co-pilot but which he survived. He was the one who changed the treatment of political detainees after arrest. Instead of being just asked to accompany the detectives the lock up, political detainees were handcuffed and even blindfolded as if they Viet-cong. And they were not even given water to drink for a long time after arrest
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Bulgarians never smile
13 January 2010
I told Peter about the Bulgarian restaurant, the complaint that the woman never smiled. Though beautifully redone in wood we avoided the place. Oh! Peter said, Bulgarians never smile. I once asked the manager of the Bulgarian airline why their air hostesses never smiled. What is there to smile at? He asked. So in we went to this restaurant and the woman actually came up to Peter and smiled. Yiong got hold of a booklet from her desk and it was full of jokes about Bulgarian stinginess. Substitute “Penang” and it could have been all about Penangites!
We were at Kroh late one night with a group of enthusiastic visitors I had brought to Betong and were looking for a place to eat - it was past 10 om and surprise. surprise, a Malay woman directed us to a Chinese coffee shop at the corner
unsmiling bulgarians
I have in the car Divakaruni’s Palace of Illusions which I read whenever I wait for KH in the car. I thought it highly entertaining and thought the kings and gods in her story were surely from Indian legends. Now I have received the Penguin Mahabharata and discover that hers is a very ingenious version of a story simply told of the Mahabharata but through the eyes of Draupadi, the doomed princess and very feminine.
At Telok Bahang at a restaurant the owner said to me dont come this way Thursday to Sunday the traffic jam sometimes stretches back as far as here. She complained the place was now full of gangsters and illegal structures.
I told Peter about the Bulgarian restaurant, the complaint that the woman never smiled. Though beautifully redone in wood we avoided the place. Oh! Peter said, Bulgarians never smile. I once asked the manager of the Bulgarian airline why their air hostesses never smiled. What is there to smile at? He asked. So in we went to this restaurant and the woman actually came up to Peter and smiled. Yiong got hold of a booklet from her desk and it was full of jokes about Bulgarian stinginess. Substitute “Penang” and it could have been all about Penangites!
We were at Kroh late one night with a group of enthusiastic visitors I had brought to Betong and were looking for a place to eat - it was past 10 om and surprise. surprise, a Malay woman directed us to a Chinese coffee shop at the corner
unsmiling bulgarians
I have in the car Divakaruni’s Palace of Illusions which I read whenever I wait for KH in the car. I thought it highly entertaining and thought the kings and gods in her story were surely from Indian legends. Now I have received the Penguin Mahabharata and discover that hers is a very ingenious version of a story simply told of the Mahabharata but through the eyes of Draupadi, the doomed princess and very feminine.
At Telok Bahang at a restaurant the owner said to me dont come this way Thursday to Sunday the traffic jam sometimes stretches back as far as here. She complained the place was now full of gangsters and illegal structures.
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Dogs, Shakespeare
At lau hio hnui the other day I wondered if the well fed well groomed stray dog with a beautiful coat belonged to the coffee stall. I asked the boss who in answer gave the waiting dog a slice of bread telling him to go home. He disappeared in a flash, the bread between his teeth.
At the sio bar stall I asked the boss whether he had replaced his dog which had died of old age with another. Yes he said. He took a pariah pup when it was still blind and fed it with a milk bottle. Now it had groan big but its bark was strange - more a groan, like a long “wooooow.”
Peace and quiet at last. The piling having ended I snatched an hour of starved sleep.
Bought a Toyota Rush to replace the Prado. It has a cassette player which is very welcome for I am now able to go through my BBC collection: Edward Greenfield playing his huge library. Talks on classical music and opera, jazz and poetry, music from Africa and Latin America, Jazz for the Asking, Anything Goes. Requests came from all over the world. It was these BBC talks that taught me that many singers based their singing on Louis Armstrong. The condition of the cassettes is very good. I don’t tune I to the BBC nowadays because all you get is football and more football.
Shakespeare compels KH's attention after meals. Plots and murders, scheming nobles and ruthless kings and cardinals - great theatre!
At the sio bar stall I asked the boss whether he had replaced his dog which had died of old age with another. Yes he said. He took a pariah pup when it was still blind and fed it with a milk bottle. Now it had groan big but its bark was strange - more a groan, like a long “wooooow.”
Peace and quiet at last. The piling having ended I snatched an hour of starved sleep.
Bought a Toyota Rush to replace the Prado. It has a cassette player which is very welcome for I am now able to go through my BBC collection: Edward Greenfield playing his huge library. Talks on classical music and opera, jazz and poetry, music from Africa and Latin America, Jazz for the Asking, Anything Goes. Requests came from all over the world. It was these BBC talks that taught me that many singers based their singing on Louis Armstrong. The condition of the cassettes is very good. I don’t tune I to the BBC nowadays because all you get is football and more football.
Shakespeare compels KH's attention after meals. Plots and murders, scheming nobles and ruthless kings and cardinals - great theatre!
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
New planning authority
After the lapse of a few days, piling has resumed at the air force place. The “Tuan YB” letter has had no effect. As if in reply a new signboard proclaims that the Ministry of Defence has authorised the building of a “block” at the site. This the first serious test for the DAP government and it does seem to have failed in enforcing the rule of law. We will suffer bang bang bang bang for another week or so.
The building workers at the site work long hours. Even after sunset the trucks, cranes and diggers never stop work.
Suffered ear bashing again at the Dewan, attending a charity concert, where the stage hands pumped smoke?clouds?mist? without stop onto the stage, and cameramen roamed at will, blinding the audience with their burning lights . It was an evening of revelatory sadness. Young women writhing in worship of James Bond in the temple of sex with their god towering above them on a screen, hopping around with a gun. Little children playing electronic organs and pianos and dancing in celebration of Star Wars and Terminator. One wonders whether all music schools offer the same syllabus - wallowing in the cultural dregs of Hollywood and exulting in the roaring music of the US bully and his gun.
Secret service: We now learn that Italy’s fascist dictator Mussolini was paid £100 a week by MI5 to keep Italy in the first world war. Archived documents have revealed that Mussolini got his start in politics in 1917 with the help of a £100 weekly wage from MI5. Mussolini, then a 34-year-old journalist, was not just willing to ensure Italy continued to fight alongside the allies in the first world war by publishing propaganda in his paper. He was also willing to send in the boys to "persuade'' peace protesters to stay at home.
The building workers at the site work long hours. Even after sunset the trucks, cranes and diggers never stop work.
Suffered ear bashing again at the Dewan, attending a charity concert, where the stage hands pumped smoke?clouds?mist? without stop onto the stage, and cameramen roamed at will, blinding the audience with their burning lights . It was an evening of revelatory sadness. Young women writhing in worship of James Bond in the temple of sex with their god towering above them on a screen, hopping around with a gun. Little children playing electronic organs and pianos and dancing in celebration of Star Wars and Terminator. One wonders whether all music schools offer the same syllabus - wallowing in the cultural dregs of Hollywood and exulting in the roaring music of the US bully and his gun.
Secret service: We now learn that Italy’s fascist dictator Mussolini was paid £100 a week by MI5 to keep Italy in the first world war. Archived documents have revealed that Mussolini got his start in politics in 1917 with the help of a £100 weekly wage from MI5. Mussolini, then a 34-year-old journalist, was not just willing to ensure Italy continued to fight alongside the allies in the first world war by publishing propaganda in his paper. He was also willing to send in the boys to "persuade'' peace protesters to stay at home.
Friday, December 4, 2009
Bang! Bang! goes on
Piling has resumed at the air force school. There is no signboard to show that planning permission has been obtained. Does it mean the air force is above building regulations? The latest is that the assemblyman for this area and member of the government who describes himself as a YB Tuan” has written to the City Council about this. We shall wait and see whether this big shot can be effective.
I see that the DAP people at their convention stepped on pictures of Perak assembly members who jumped over to the other side. So we can see that hooligan culture is not confined to the government side. Makes one wonder, if the DAP comes into power will they treat the opposition the bestial way their mentor treated J B Jeyaratnam?
People continue to leave his country. The dy foreign minister tells us that between March 2008 and August this year 304, 358 emigrated (this figure is of those who registered and includes 50,000 students)
The rain came the other day fast and furious December rains?
I see that the DAP people at their convention stepped on pictures of Perak assembly members who jumped over to the other side. So we can see that hooligan culture is not confined to the government side. Makes one wonder, if the DAP comes into power will they treat the opposition the bestial way their mentor treated J B Jeyaratnam?
People continue to leave his country. The dy foreign minister tells us that between March 2008 and August this year 304, 358 emigrated (this figure is of those who registered and includes 50,000 students)
The rain came the other day fast and furious December rains?
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Becoming normal
The noisy piling in the air force school has stoppped. The welcome silence allowed me to hear the tekukor call in the morning. I wrote to the Tanjong Bungah Residents Association but had not reply from them. I also wrote to the chief minister’s office. I suspect that the later protest by the residents of Hillside, who feared that piling must imply a four storey building, must have been heard by the city council. Let’s see whether the military are governed by our zoning bylaws. Last year, our opposition, made in answer to a notice from the city council, stopped a 3 storey plan from being successful. I must say that ours is an active road containing very aware residents..
I am sleeping less and less, from 12-13 hours a night to 11-12 and now about 10 and 1/2 hours, a progress that has delighted because it gives me more time for reading and working. I put it all down to the bicycle accident a few years ago when I had a mystery fall from which I had a concussion which lay me down in bed for five days to wake up sleeping 12-13 hours a day which made Barbara misthink, on a visit shortly after the accident, that I had died when at 1.30 pm I was still in bed!
I am sleeping less and less, from 12-13 hours a night to 11-12 and now about 10 and 1/2 hours, a progress that has delighted because it gives me more time for reading and working. I put it all down to the bicycle accident a few years ago when I had a mystery fall from which I had a concussion which lay me down in bed for five days to wake up sleeping 12-13 hours a day which made Barbara misthink, on a visit shortly after the accident, that I had died when at 1.30 pm I was still in bed!
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