The Mauling of Mister Potatoes.

Utterly and altogether unbelievable. For more than 40 years I'd been fantasizing about something close to this. It finally happened, and more. Manchester City routed Manchester United 6-1 at Old Trafford. The Theatre of Dreams, football Fort Knox or plain swamp was battered and buried, taking with it the ghosts of that freaking overhead kick. Nobody, not even the deepest City-loving romantics, were quite prepared for what's unfolding in plain sight: a complete dismantling of the 19-time champions heading for 20. The feeling hasn't really sunk in. It won't.

Remember the snide and cynical broadsides from Rooney the white Pele my arse and the Fergie-lapping tabloid toerags after the Community Shield? (Football lessons, Barca and Real rejects, poor old City, as ugly as sin, bunch of strangers etc). The pain was brimming over and reaching out for retribution. What a rich reversal and a cruel vindication. No fluke, no freak this time. Just a brazen display of exquisite and articulate football I hadn't seen in 40 years of following City. No football lessons here. Only merciless mauling of Mister Potatoes.

Potato chips lovers, including those at Putrajaya, should take heart when, only two days after the Old Trafford hiding, Man U won a Carling Cup fixture. Against Aldershot. All the what? Quite a nameless team at the wrong end of the 4th Division. Owen scored a goal amidst local fans' cheeky chants of "We're going to win 6-1." Call that a quick recovery if you want.

"We're Manchester City, we'll do what we want." The new shout of swagger ringing across the Etihad just about sums it all up.

There's no better time to tell jokes and rub the occasional salt. Here's an assortment of jibes picked out from the social network:

1. Sick swan
2. Six and the City
3. Man U trauma line: 016 16 16 16 16
4. What's the difference between Man U and a black cab? A black cab lets in five.
5. What do Col Gadhafi and Man U have in common? Both slaughtered by the locals.
6. Man U expected to win the second and third set?
7. 4th official: How much time do you want to add, Sir Alex?
Alex: Just get the whistle blown.
8. What time is it? It's six past De Gea.
9. All Man U players looked upset. Except Rooney. He can't count to 6. He just looked confused.
10. David De Gea's mum rang him up at half time. Told him to be home before seven.
11. Finally, the best of the lot:
Monday morning in the Fergie house.
Mrs Ferguson: Get up, Alex. It's just gone seven!
Alex: Goodness me. They scored again.

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Break-in Redux

Now repeat after me: "This country is going to the dogs!".

Somebody broke into my house - again, for the second time in less than a year. And maybe by the same twisted scum of the earth. We'd yet to fully recover from the first one and now this. Horrendous, and hard to believe our (wretched) luck. But I'm sure this isn't the worst on record. Not in a country with two million illegal students and one million illegal policemen. I've heard of houses broken into twice in a month. I love this country just like the Zimbabweans love theirs. Malaysia is definitely transforming and is well on track to becoming the only developed country with hudud laws by 2019. Bring on the laws, guys. Lop their hands off for all I care.

It's a sad Saturday. The dark, gathering clouds were ominous enough. We'd only one nagging suspicion: that it's going to rain (ha, ha). We left at two and came back at about 7.50 only to find a broken window with pure and natural air gusting in, a telltale sign that something was amiss because we hadn't had fresh air in our house for 20 years. I sprinted up faster than Usain to find all rooms plundered and pillaged. Clothing and things strewn all over. I'd never seen a refugee camp but I could picture it when I saw my bedroom or what's left of my bedroom. Only my son's room appeared untouched, because it's plundered and pillaged everytime. Apart from my watch and wife's knock-off jewellery, nothing much was missing. I finally found an old Manchester City t-shirt I'd been looking for the last ten years (thanks, thief!). Lucky thing no Mercedes was taken (because there's no Mercedes to begin with).

While the pain of losing a watch should ease off the morning after, the cerebral trauma should linger for a while. Something like post-partum, only worse. We've to be prepared for symptoms of cognitive failures like confusion, anger, hearing loss and constipation. A friend who's also a multiple victim recommended an elegant quick fix for break-in depression: blame it all on UMNO and Perkasa. It's not quite clear how he contrived this placebo. There's no conceivable way the venerable political institution and the well-meaning NGO could've had a hand in his misfortune, and certainly not in burglaries. I couldn't agree with him, but he recovered in seven days. I guess it's mind over matter.

Now the police report. Actually, I was in two minds about filing a report. With the country's entire police personnel already short-handed by the thousands of reports lodged against Anwar Ibrahim, Ambiga and Mohamad Sabu, my bothersome break-in report wouldn't stand any chance. But my good sense prevailed, for two reasons. One, with all those ETP, NKRA, KPI, MACC, EBITDA, filing a police report is now faster than figuring out what those abbreviations stand for. Two, police might be enlightened enough to be able to crack this case and recover the loot. The odds are no better than seeing Elvis at Mydin, but who really knows. Without a police report my wife can't claim her fake bangles.

With nothing to lose, I drove to USJ 8 police station and filed a report with the investigating officer, one Inspector Faisal. I used to work for a Fortune 500 multinational champion and I could tell with 90% precision that this particular law enforcer was 100% unmotivated. A repeat burglary isn't an unnatural sex act, fair enough. But the least he could've done was to feign some interest and curiosity. I've been religiously paying my income tax for the past 30 years, I'm sure a good part of it has gone into sustaining a functional police force. It's hardly paying back.

We're having a late dinner when a police officer came to visit the crime scene. He's a CSI-type, with camera, gloves and all. He dusted the broken glass for fingerprints. No fingerprints, the shithead wore gloves, probably local and gay, he said (not verbatim). He took some pictures, and more pictures upstairs, and that's it. I wasn't totally impressed, but at least he tried. They did the exact same thing for the first break-in a year ago. I'm beginning to believe that this is a police SOP (Standard Operating Ploy) to scam us into thinking they're serious.

I was expecting police cars flashing and blaring around my area the next day, harassing and hounding the workers at a couple of construction sites nearby. Nothing. Maybe it's Sunday. Nothing on Monday. Tuesday, still nothing. I understand, for the police to proceed they need clear leads, like the perpetrator's passport, his name cards, or, better still, Mr Perpetrator announcing himself at the police station. But utter inaction sends the same stark message to both the victim and the villain: that break-ins are no big deal and they're very much part of our multicultural sophistication which also includes running red lights and Malay hantu movies. At this rate, you'd be forgiven for deciding that the transsexuals are creating more value for this flagging country.