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!

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.

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?

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!

Come back!!

My vertigo has now receded so much so that I am reading Dickens Litle Dorrit before bed and in the car - while waiting - Banerjee’s Palace of Illusions, a fantastic tale of magic powers and of supermen which made me a 12 year old again. What a great writer Dickens is. The wealth of detail fascinates whereas The Ship, a story about the history of a glass noodle making family in China, tens to boredom. I now realise that “dunking” doughnut in coffee is American and “Toast sopped in coffee” was English.

KH missed the Chinese passumbul the other day and instead bought one from Fettes Rd from an Indian hawker. It was awful and had a strong hint of the wc; another example of the sort of thing you get nowadays - unemployed fellows trying their hands at cooking to earn a few dollars.

Few weeks later ...

Much better. Some of my former staff visited. One spoke of her caning her children mercilessly and I always thought her an always cheerful and gentle person. She admitted she inherited the habit from her father. All through her account, another of the girls murmered “child abuse” over and over again. We had a great time talking about sprits and dreams and charms.

At a dinner party some visitors from KL said they wanted to have a look at Hard Rock Hotel’s first hotel in Penang. Strange I thought.

It’s been raining cats and dogs robbing the month of its reputation as one of the kite season

With the substantial recession of the nauseating vertigo I have come back to this message to finish it

Much better now and was able to do the back breaking, eye tiring job of preparing The Penang File for launching which was finally published with the aid of Firefox.

Beauty

Sorry but this vertigo thing wont go away and keeps me away from the piano and the computer
But I thought I must keep in touch so here is something about beauty from the Tunhuang Caves

CHAPTER TWO
WU TZU-HSU
Once upon a time there was a King of Ch'u so powerful that his dominions reached as far as the land of Buddha. This King had a minister called Wu She, whose two sons were in service in other kingdoms. Tzu-shang, the elder, was at the Court of the land Of Cheng; Tzu-hsii, the younger, was serving in the land of Liang.
The Heir-Apparent of the King of Ch'u was old enough to have a wife, but was not yet married. The King said to his ministers, 'Who is there that has a daughter lit to be his consort? I have heard that a kingdom without an Eastern Palace<26) is like a land that is half wilderness. . . . Half the majesty of a kingdom belongs to its Crown Prince, yet our Prince has no bride. What should be done?'
'I have heard', said the Grand Minister Wei Ling, 'that the Duke Mu of Ch'in has a daughter of sixteen whose beauty surpasses that of all women. Her eyebrows are like the moon at its waning, her cheeks are like frozen light (?), her eyes are like falling stars, her face has the beauty of a flower, her hair is seven feet long, her nose is straight and her forehead square, her ears are like hanging pearls, her hands fall below her knees, her ten fingers are slender and long. I would have your Majesty give orders that a marriage with her should be negotiated for the Prince. For if arrangements can be made that meet your wishes, it would bring glory to all your domains and be a fine thing!'
So Wei Ling was sent to solicit the Duke of Ch'in's daughter. When he came home with her, *he King of Ch'u sent for him and said, 'I am afraid you have had a hard journey through wind and frost.'

vertigo nuisance

26 October 2009


Sorry for the silence I have been laid low by vertigo a nuisance but I am defying it and sending this off while I can concentrate.

I find from Word that there are all sorts of English to choose from: - there is even one version for Malaysia and one for Singapore!

Plumber came. Talked from the moment he came through the door until he left!

Garrison Keilor in a piece in the International Herald Tribune tells us of a sign in the backseat of a London cab which reads: APlease keep your feet off the seats.@ In America, he claims, such a sign would only stimulate certain people to plant their shoes directly on the seats. Here such a sign would simply be ignored.

It rained so heavily just a day before Hari Raya that river behind La Salle School overflowed its banks and long roads of cars were stranded wet in Green Lane and the area around the Mesjid Negara. They have been promising the past umpteen years to deepen the river but it=s just all talk.

There is a golden aureole that has chosen the born again rambutan tree to sing from. It comes in the morning and again in the late afternoon about 6 when I am in the garden. A fearless troubadour.

Today is the last day of kiu ong iar (the nine goods festival) and true to form it rained like hell. Next month will be November when we are dry and Kota Bharu is flooded

More later when and if I recover