Masalah Ayam: The Problem With Our Education System

The above is an actual, and cruel, PT3 exam question. Now pit your thinking skills against Form Three students. The students were given ten minutes.

Like my opening gambit? Stay with me. We're into some serious business.

My youngest Sarah came home today all happy and jolly. Why not? Her SPM is finally and truly over, with the final paper (Biology) put to bed. She'll never ever have to read, study and think again for the rest of her life. Well, not really. But it surely feels that way.

How the sadists at the Ministry of Education had found it necessary to spread the nine subjects over 28 days of exam is beyond belief. I mean, she's taking the normal Science and Maths stuff, no special papers like Art History or Basic Wahabbi. Twenty-eight days!

All I need is three more days to go completely mad.

It's been a nervy and edgy two, three months for me. I wish I could help Sarah along in some substantive way, like showing her the finer points of Physics. That's out of question, you know why. I've never felt so helpless. All I could do was to find her tuition teachers, provide her with enough food, and buy her the much needed stationery without asking silly questions, like why buy stapler every week?

Actually I'd also bought her a brand new iPhone early last year in return for a promise that she'd study hard and devote all her waking hours to SPM. She studied very hard and devoted all her waking hours to SPM from January all the way to February - two months.

Now that SPM is safely behind her, she can now devote all her waking and sleeping and eating hours to Korean TV.

Roughly 98% of our education system is SPM. (100%, according to DAP). So, sitting for SPM is a do-or-die mission for .....the parents! Like it or not, SPM results are the gold standard in this country. If your child doesn't get 9 A+, you're a failure as a breathing and warm-blooded person. You can't walk into Mydin, you can't make police report. As for the children, they'd be just fine, happily getting by and living with whatever they've "accomplished". They've already got their iPhone, remember?
     

Because of SPM, our secondary education system has been badly broken up into two classes of schools: the daily schools for normal students and Sekolah Berasrama Penuh (SBP) for paranormal students. The SBP is further split into SBP and MRSM. You'd know an SBP by its feelgood nameplates like Sehebat, Semashur, or Integomb (gomb rhymes with bomb). Each SBP is given RM100 million a year to do whatever it fancies. Students get a seven-meal plan complete with vitamin supplements and dental floss.  

The truth is, these elitist schools have turned into slow slaughter houses. They're totally driven and doped by SPM. Teachers would see off the two-year syllabus in two months and then start on something out of US Navy Seal: practising past-year questions. For days on end they'd pore over hundreds of thousands of past questions dating all the way back to Isaac Newton. Performance is measured through weekly trial exams and weekly GPA. This business model works like clockwork as most students actually ace the exam with 9 or 10 or even 28 A+, thanks to those past-years questions and spot questions (not to mention, ahem, leaked questions).   

The daily schools are the underclass. They are pretty much left to fend for themselves. With 90 students packed in one class, the teachers take one full year to memorize each student's name and IQ level. Every other month the school would hold a jogathon or poetry reading to raise funds for new toilet doors. A typical daily school set-up consists of an overweight headmistress, 35 lady teachers and one good-looking ustaz. A typical daily school gets a straight A student once in 100 years.
       

That's our secondary education system in a nutshell, a simple two-caste structure, as close you can get to academic apartheid. Never in the history of humankind have the less gifted been so deliberately marginalised.
  
Oh, I almost forgot the tertiary education, I mean the universities, colleges, university colleges and college colleges, which provide a wide range of diploma and degree programs, some useful, like Medicine, some less useful, like Law. Like its secondary brethren, this supposedly higher education system comes in two flavours: public and private.

The public universities are founded and financed by the government and run by Umno. Leading this lot is Universiti Malaysia Pahang, known the world over now for its cutting-edge spiritual engineering and its flagship anti-hysteria kits. For some unknown reason, 90% of students in  public universities are Malays and female. UiTM has the biggest Malay population (105%), more than Sheffield University's Malay population (60%). Half of all public university students are Kelantanese who speak only Kelantanese. This disproves the long-standing notion that public university students speak only Malay.

Private universities and colleges, on the other hand,  are run like normal Chinese businesses with one noble objective: to make profit. English and Cantonese are widely spoken here. They typically charge extortionate fees for tuition, registration and air-conditioning. The fees hit the roof for joint-degrees with branded universities like Oxford (Brookes). A good example of a private college is Segi College Subang Jaya where 90% of its student population are Chinese and Nigerian nationals on tourist visas. They attend classes once in six months and you know them by their short shorts and half-shirts.

                                                             II

Based on the latest statistics, we have now 100,000 unemployed graduates waiting and vaping, half with CGPA of 3.85, half speak half-English like Wayne Rooney, but all vote PKR. To solve this problem, the government is "importing" 1.5 million loyal Bangladeshis to vote BN.

More damning statistics emerged recently when the deputy dean of Melaka Manipal Medical College alleged that 1000 medical graduates and housemen had quit because of poor English. Undead deans and dons like this are partly the reason why our universities are floundering in global rankings. Manipal is a glorified nursing school. Don't listen. Medical English isn't Shakespeare. Finish the antibiotics, drink a lot of water, your sugar level is 39. That's about  it.  
    
Our education system was recently ranked 50th in the world, lower than Kazakhstan but higher than South Sudan. Malaysia is also 50th on a corruption index. A coincidence, if you asked me. To be fair, there have been plenty of churns and chops over the years to trade up our education system. A new policy or program would normally coincide with a new minister and end invariably with a wasted expenditure of RM1.2 billion.

Remember English for Science and Maths? Cluster schools, familiar? Now the Ministry is purring about the DLP or Dual Language Program and HIP or Highly Immersive Program (HIP). Last month the deputy education minister P Kamalanathan went further, talking about SHITE or Sharing Hot Indian Teachers for English. As the name suggests, the project will involve recruitment of well-trained Indian English teachers from India to improve our English standard. We do have our own Indian English teachers, of course, problem is they're from Gombak, not from India.  Go ahead and guess how much this SHITE will cost.

But nothing fires up my imagination more than KBAT. It stands for Kemahiran Berfikir Aras Tinggi, an unimaginative name for an unimaginative idea. Well, the objective here is to encourage students to think rather than memorise log table or watch Kardashians. (Never mind the teachers). How does the Ministry go about doing this? By asking students trick questions like Masalah Ayam above. Hahaha.

My niece Hana with A* in A-Level Maths and Physics is still trying to solve this problem after two months. It requires trial and error which, in turn, requires time and divine intervention. Students might get locked into this one moronic question for two hours and easily forget that there are 49 other moronic questions to solve.

SPM Add Maths last week was littered with killer Kbats. One top Chinese student in KL didn't sit for Paper 2. He took his own life immediately after Paper 1. This is tragic, sad and absolutely unnecessary. Our PM extended his condolences and quite rightly pontificated that exam isn't everything. Agreed 100%,  it's "hard work" that decides success and wealth in later years, not SPM results. I think PM and all his ministers should make their SPM results public to prove this important point.   

                                                            III

With education standard drifting about and the government turning and twisting with all kinds of tricks to stem the slide, teachers are bearing the bulk of the brunt. Their workload has been piling on - an average teacher now is busier than a hypothetical hard-working cabinet minister. As a result teachers are forever confused and disillusioned. It's only a matter of time before they start asking for ministers' plum benefits (car, smartphone, talking nonsense etc).

Good teachers are a God's gift. But I don't think we're overly blessed. Malays in particular are born inarticulate and untalented and clumsy. Our Indonesian maids can speak far better than us. So teaching becomes a burden, a bother, and never second nature. Teachers are well prepared for pitch battles, but way short on the softer skills and the craft to motivate students away from Instagram. Ask any teacher their idea of teaching, the answer is unequivocal: thankless and tiring. A teacher today  has to eat one whole chicken to replace the calories lost through a half-day of teaching. 

So where does this leave us? Well, how about teachers taking dancing and dressing lessons to perk up posture and poise? Or theatre and taranum classes to sharpen vocals and speaking skills? Our teachers have to shape up fast. Bollywood teachers are coming.

The solution to Masalah Ayam, if you're interested:

8 chicks @ RM5  = RM 40
11 chicks @ RM3 = RM 33
81 chicks @ 3 chicks for RM1 =RM 27

Total: 100 chicks for RM 100. 

Polis Evo

Last week I bucked the trend. I watched a movie at a movie theatre! It was a Malay movie with a thoughtless title: Polis Evo.

The last time I watched any movie at any theatre was in 1984, when I was a student in upstate New York. That movie was the original slasher "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre". I couldn't enjoy the movie. A lady seated right behind me screamed every time the freak with the chainsaw came on.

Don't get me wrong. I like movies. I even have my own list of "movies to see before you die", which I can show you if you're interested. Just ask. The first movie I watched at a theatre was a P Ramlee comedy flick "Madu Tiga" in 1964. It was truly a magical experience for me. Big screen, big crowd, big sound, in complete darkness. And P Ramlee, man, what a genius. When I came out, I just couldn't find my way in broad daylight and almost fell over. My elder sister had to steady me.

I watched a lot of movies during my hostel days at Tiger Lane. The school showed one movie a week, every Friday, free. Half of the films starred Jack Palance. He wasn't exactly a pretty sight, but he was 100 times more popular than our head boy. Whenever we had a new guy operate the projector, the jerk would, against all odds, start with the last reel and give away the whole plot. In my eight years there, I must have watched at least 300 movies. But if I rope in the movies I watched with friends in Ipoh town, I could've easily racked up 400 in total, including the epic Haathi Mere Saathi (twice). I'm not sure what's the industry standard, but 400 seems a lot.

Now back to Polis Evo. Even with complimentary passes in hand, I was initially quite reluctant, and even offended by the mere suggestion. It's a 32-year old record, remember? If I went ahead, I'd have to start all over again and I can only equal this record in 2047, when I'm 94. And what if I got found out by my Whats App groupies? These zealots have been posting all sorts of scriptures urging old and unsuspecting classmates to contemplate and repent and abandon all worldly pleasures. Watching Polis Evo is hardly a way forward.

But it's common curiosity that finally won the day. The film had been heavily marketed on all Astro channels and Rapid buses. The box-office collections had broken the RM10 million mental barrier in just two weeks. It's a lot of money, even at the current exchange rate. Some half-brain punks on H Live were raving with a rating of 11 out of 10. It's a Van Persie moment, and the curious little boy inside had to make the call. I finally relented. So there I was with wife and my two girls Aida and Sarah at GSC Summit USJ. The theatre, or Cineplex, nowadays is actually very small, much smaller than the old Lido cinema in Kota Bharu where I watched Madu Tiga and even smaller than the Tiger Lane school hall where I watched Jack Palance.

Polis Evo is technically not a Malay movie. At least not the one I watched. Half of the dialogue was in Terengganu tongue, the other half in deep Kelantanese. It had been bandied about as an action-comedy, with a tired formula that borrows heavily from Lethal Weapon, Bad Boys or even Rush Hour franchises. It fell flat. It flopped real hard. It's a waste of time and unworthy of any serious review or rating.

The premise and plot were outrageous and insulting all at the same time. Cliched and corny at every turn, with non-existent sub-plots to speak of. The movie was set and actually shot in Kuala Terengganu, and how's that for a mindless non-starter. Kuala Terengganu? Can you believe it? Tripadvisor has rated Kuala Terengganu way behind Puchong as a destination for tourists or retirees. In real life nothing actually wants to happen in Kuala Terengganu. And now suddenly car chases, shootings, explosions, meth labs, drug running, hostages. What can be more implausible and improbable than this? It even showed Pasar Payang so that nobody would mistake it for some place else.

As to why Malay films have sunk to such depths of desperation is beyond me. It's about time we round up David Teo and everybody who talks like him and frame them for undermining our economy and our prime minister. DAP won't mind. 

The performance of the lead cast was patchy and contrived even by my pathetically generous standard for Malay films. Give me Ahmad Yatim any day. The problem with all pelakon Melayu is that they try too hard and it shows. They come across as dysfunctional, farcical and altogether ineffectual. In Polis Evo the characters who really delivered were the bad guys who looked and spoke Kelantanese to the core.

Terengganu diction is dark and twisted and is never easy on the ear, but why let a non-Terengganu cast mangle it further? All of which begs the question as to why weren't real and able Terengganu persons used? Nobody (except Zizang) is good enough in the whole state of Terengganu Darul Iman? My daughter-in-law is from Manir and I think she's talented enough to walk into that sister part (Normally I'm owed a big dinner for saying something like this).   

All this has left me with only one viable verdict: that how hard Zizang tries to market his home state, Terengganu just doesn't have it.

Like most bad movies, Polis Evo did have its bright moments. Two actually, both in Kelantanese. One, the part when Zizan pulled off an elaborate clownish routine, and the baddest of the baddies wasted no time in cautioning him "Bo la buak bodo nyoh, takuk jjadi bodo sungguh". Brilliant. Zizan would be wise to take that seriously. Two, when the same guy took Zizan's sister as hostage and he warned Zizan "Aku keno ambik adik mu buak koletero (Collateral)". Koletero! Hahaha. Sounds like cholesterol.

Any of you reading this, there's still time to change your mind. Don't fall for the hype and vibes. Better never than late.

    

                           

Thai Story

                                           
                                                    

 

On 17 August, Bangkok was once again rocked by bomb blasts. Whatever was the idea behind this barbaric act, collateral damage was grim: 20 dead, 125 injured.

Apparently explosives were planted at a shrine in Erawan, a popular tourist area in the heart of Bangkok. Violence and strife have been breaking out with almost predictable regularity in Thailand. But Bangkok continues to lure more tourists than Paris does, thanks to its go-go girls.

Normally I'd react to news of Bangkok bombs with an air of detachment or resignation. But not this time.

I'm very familiar with Erawan area. During my final years in Petronas, I made regular trips to Bangkok, about every other month. Petronas had founded a company (Petronas something Ltd) to look after its 200 service stations in Thailand. My last trip was in June 2009 for a meeting with Thai Oil, our local supplier. Whenever I'd to be in Bangkok for meetings, I'd put up at Hyatt in Erawan area. In fact the official name of the hotel was Grand Hyatt Erawan (pic above, glass broken).  The shrine was right outside the hotel.

So when I heard the news and watched the sad footage, my heart sank. I've to thank God that nothing like this happened when I was there. I've lost count of how many times I walked past the temple on my way to Chit Lom Sky Train station or nearby Central World Plaza. There's a couple of shops just across with a fine collection of Thai silk. I'd to navigate my way through the temple throng whenever I'd to get Thai silk for dear wife. I'd go back and forth at least three times as part of my bargaining strategy.

I always remember my sweet stays at Hyatt Erawan. It wasn't the very best hotel in Bangkok because no wayward English writer had ever slept here, but still it was lush and luxurious, with all the facilities you need and didn't need, available 24 hours. Its breakfast was a gastronomic galore. I'd spent more than an hour every morning trying out every variety of bread.   

I still remember the night I couldn't sack out and went down for a round on the treadmill and was shocked to discover that the gymn was full. I thought I'd be alone. It's three in the morning.

Petronas finally quit the Thailand market as good sense reigned. Good money was chasing bad money. We were technically subsidising the Thai motorists while half of Kelantanese households were coping without running water. With so much cash pile to burn, Petronas had developed this habit of going on misguided safaris here and there only to come out licking its wounds. Nobody got rapped for these ego trips, of course, as Petronas ruled with unfettered impunity. The generous dividends and taxes repatriated into government coffers had clearly gone all the way. Malaysians are a forgiving lot.

Even today I'm still in touch with a couple of Thai friends I worked with in Bangkok - Mukhdawan and Pipop. (One was a lady. Guess). These people were quietly convinced they knew the market better, and KL staff should only come to Bangkok to visit crocodile farms. Whenever we met we'd sit down and argue and have dinner by the Chao Phraya. And then we'd argue again. Man, I how I miss the good times.

It was the height of the Red Shirt/Yellow Shirt standoff in Bangkok. I took the opportunity to hit Pipop and Mukhdawan whenever the Red and Yellow shirts took to the streets of Bangkok to face each other down. I'm not sure what colour these two guys were. But I was less than subtle with my digs and jibes. I'd message:

"Khun Mukhdawan, hahaha Yellow and Red on the streets again? Hope you're OK. Stay safe now".

Mukhdawan would reply with a short "Thanks. Don't come to Bangkok now".

On 31 August (last month), one day after Bersih 4, I received a message from Mukhdawan:

"How are you, man? Hope you are OK. Stay safe now"


                                                                 Thai Story 2

I was in Hat Yai recently to attend a nephew's wedding in nearby Songkhla. For those who still think Ottawa is the capital of Japan, allow me to enlighten. Songkhla is about 30 km from Hat Yai, and Songkhla or Singgora (its Malay moniker) is the name of both the Thai town and the province bordering Kedah and pseudo-state Perlis.

Songkhla and Kedah were once a single Malay kingdom with an Indian name and a Thai ruler. It only became a firm Thai province after a 1900 treaty where the British gave up slow Songkhla in exchange for the more colourful Kelantan. Revisionists have surfaced recently with claims that the British were drunk at the time: it should've been the other way round.

Anyway, Hat Yai is bigger and livelier than Kota Bharu and Alor Star combined, with its own international airport and floating market (not as big as the one in Bangkok, but it floats). I couldn't help but notice the city now crawling with Malaysians who'd come in busloads to escape Malaysian monotony and paranoia.

Now back to my nephew Azri. He's my elder sister's son, one of her nine children. Nine. His bride, who goes by username Fern (I can't recall her longer name offhand), is a Thai.  She was born into a Thai Muslim family who still live in Songkhla and speak, well, Thai (Hahaha, sorry. What do you expect?). Azri and Fern both work in Petronas. More than 50% of Petronas staff now are married to each other or one another or whatever and, at this rate, it should hit 100% by 2019. Azri was 33 or 34 and Fern was so fair and so much prettier than Azri. It's certainly worth the wait.

Weddings as an event have long ceased to motivate me due to their lack of imagination and creativity. I'd try to avoid mostly the laboured Saturday evening weddings, you know, the staple part where they bring on grainy clips on bride's and groom's early years and a scripted banter on how they, for some unknown reason, met and liked. What passes for speeches are mostly delirium in disguise. All this while Manchester City is bullying and bamboozling Chelsea on Astro.

But I've been looking forward to this wedding since it was announced early this year. It's already exciting and imaginative because it's in Songkhla, and not, say, Gombak.  So I flew all the way with wife and Aida and Sarah to Hat Yai. For a bit of romance, we decided to stay in Hat Yai and commute with the locals by mini bus to Songkhla for the two-day do. The short rides were pleasant and the fare (RM3.60 per person) was so affordable even with the  ringgit as it was (you choose the word).

The akad nikah on the first day got a little complicated because I'd to wear complete baju melayu, with sampin, socks and all. (Me and wife both had peach numbers. In hindsight, it wasn't a bad idea, I mean, we actually looked hot even at a combined age of 120 years. Hey). Otherwise it was a straight-forward affair, starting with a moving Quran recital, and it was all over in under an hour. Azri and Fern were proclaimed husband and wife. Just what they'd asked for.  

And the wedding the next day, I didn't quite get half of it, I mean the Thai half. A real pity because I actually took a one-semester Thai language class during campus days and got an honest A. All I could muster now was one word "mai". But I could feel the energy and atmosphere. Unmistakably festive and upbeat. The noise level was a notch higher but really nothing not to like. Thai people are decidedly a happy and expressive lot.

Both sets of parents watched and wept. Nothing was said between them. I guess joy and jubilation needs no language.

Finally the proverbial moment of truth. Speech by Azri's father. Haha. He swaggered up the stage with Mourinho's nonchalance and sprang the tactical masterstroke - the speech was in Thai. I wasn't prepared for something like this. And I thought this part alone was value for the good money I'd given Tony to come here. I didn't understand it one bit, but what the hell. It was brave, creative, inspired. I could hear Fern's crowd cheering on. He must've nailed it.

Thai language is fun. My Thai teacher cautioned us that a Thai word may vary in meaning with its tones. One note higher, it could mean the opposite. The word "klai" means far and near in different tones! "Kai" means chicken. One note lower, it's egg. You don't speak the language, you sing it. "Mai mai mai mai mai" spoken in five different tones would roughly translate as "new wood doesn't burn, does it?"

The flight back was brisk, but long enough for me to reflect on how well things had panned out. The wedding was nothing short of memorable, something to look back on fondly later. Songkhla was still part of Thailand. And Azri's father had hit the right notes and nuances when he actually said, in Thai, that Azri and Fern are "new" husband and wife. Not "wooden" husband and wife ! Hahaha.......

My best wishes to Azri and Fern.

   
                                                                    

You Remember You Strong

On 28 July this year our PM announced the appointment of a new Deputy Prime Minister. I'm not interested in your vile comments, so don't bother. Dato Seri Dr Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, the new Deputy Prime Minister, is no stranger to Malaysian political folklore, rising fast and furious through party ranks. Umno now has three million members, so a party member's chance of becoming a Deputy Prime Minister is as good as seeing Elvis busking at Sogo. Dr Ahmad Zahid is a wily politician with a typical chequered career, ups and downs and outs and ups. I guess it's all ups from now on.

Your cynical inner self might question why we need a Deputy Prime Minister. Some countries, like Singapore, have two deputy prime ministers. I don't know exactly what  a deputy prime minister does, let alone two. Everybody in UK thinks PM David Cameron's deputy is Brendan Rogers, including David Cameron himself. I'm sure Dr Ahmad Zahid knows what to do as Deputy Prime Minister. Even if he doesn't, he can quickly fall back on his day job as Minister of Home Affairs, a job he's performed so well so far. Penang and Pandamaran are now virtually free of part-time gangsters, big-time gangsters and Dato gangsters.

Everywhere in the world a home affairs minister is a powerful, intimidating, and even shadowy, figure because they're in charge of public safety and internal security. They control (figuratively) the police, immigration and prisons. If police and prisons don't scare you, nothing will. You'd know you have an effective home affairs minister if you feel safe at home and you don't run red lights and you stop bullying lady drivers.

But why call it Home Affairs? Maybe to differentiate it from Foreign Affairs and other affairs that take place away from home (office, Starbucks etc). They also call it Home Affairs Minister in Zimbabwe. So we must be on the right track. In North Korea two ministries are responsible for home affairs: Ministry of State Security and Ministry of People's Security. Ministry of State Security takes care of prisons, while Ministry of People's Security also takes care of prisons. Prisons are biggest business and GDP generator in North Korea.

Now back to our new Deputy Prime Minister. I've never met or spoken to Dr Ahmad Zahid in person but he impressed me as crowd pleasing and easygoing when I saw a footage of him on a big bike wearing a big smile. My wife thinks he's good-looking, you know, that lush crop of real hair, sharp dress and all. She's using me as the benchmark, so the standard is pretty low.

I've nothing but respect and admiration for what he has accomplished in and outside of politics. Like I said, it's not easy to become a minister anywhere in the world, let alone a Deputy Prime Minister. Bung Mokhtar has been a noisy MP for more than 20 and everybody expects him to remain a noisy MP for another 20 years. Neelofa is rich and famous but she'll never get to be a Deputy Prime Minister by selling lots of stuff online. Dr Ahmad Zahid also holds a bona fide PhD from a bona fide university. holder. It's not easy to find a Deputy Prime Minister with a bona fide PhD these days.

Dr Ahmad Zahid and I were both born in the early part of 1953. Nothing special about that because thousands of people were born in 1953. I was born in Kelantan and he in Jogjakarta. He speaks fluent Javanese, if that means anything. Admittedly there's nothing special about being born in 1953. Millions of people were born 1953, including our Prime Minister and Cyndi Lauper. It's ok if you don't know Cyndi Lauper. It's also ok if you don't know anything. 

But Dr Ahmad Zahid and I also share something else. We both attended schools at the old Tiger Lane in Ipoh. His school, Sekolah Izzuddin Shah (Sisi), was just across the road, within a shouting distance (quite literally) from my school (Sekolah Tuanku Abdul Rahman (Star). Since we're born in the same year, it's safe to conclude that we're around Tiger Lane at about the same time, the hippie years of 1966 - 1971.

I'm not sure why, but it's like some kind of law that schools in the same neighbourhood must hate each others' guts. Harvard steals MIT's Nobel prize winners, and vice versa. For years St John's has been insinuating that VI is a glorified mental institution. There's no love lost between my school and Sekolah Izzuddin. The resentment ran deep for three reasons:

1. Both schools were fully residential, all-boys schools. So the students were a deprived and deranged lot. We're all accidents waiting to happen.

2. Sekolah Izzuddin was a state-run religious school, whereas my school was a federal-funded English-medium school and, of course, less than religious. They learned Arabic while we played Rugby and Cricket.

3. My school was physically about one hundred times bigger with lots of buildings and fields and gardens. Not to mention wacko wardens and cooks running around non-stop.

That "English medium and bigger buildings" bit was actually irrelevant because we're completely different types of schools, with dissimilar inputs and end-products. But the big heads among us took this as a subtle sign of superiority and a green light to run down our neighbour.

The rare black and white aerial photo above clearly shows how our school Star overwhelmed our neighbour Sisi. My school had eight hostel blocks, with two (Yellow House and White House) at the far end and closest to Izzuddin. Incidentally these blocks housed more than their fair share of those elements that our gay prefects had, quite rightly, downgraded as basket-case. These guys needed only half a reason to fly off the handle, so to speak. In the late afternoons they'd mill about the fence to trade insults with their opposite number across the road. I can't recall all the gibes and taunts, but the one that stands out until today was "Oi, dok baca Yasin ka?" I suppose that verbal pile-driver packed enough cerebral power to leave the other side with no options but to bay for our blood.  

It had to be sooner rather than later. Both sets of students, as a routine, would descend on Ipoh town (now city, for some reason) on weekends and our paths simply had to cross because Ipoh at the time was smaller than modern-day Subang Jaya. We'd to share the same bus. You can imagine the tension and anticipation boiling up whenever the two groups converged at the bus station. There's plenty of provocative stares and eyeballing. If I'm honest, the Izzuddin guys always had the upper hand and we're, well, cowed. They're on average bigger and had reached puberty earlier. Our dining hall wasn't Ritz Carlton, so we didn't grow and develop quite the way we should have.

Admittedly we're only good and strong in numbers and well behind the fence. Outside the school the Yellow House cowboys walked like choir boys.

I myself had an encounter of the fourth kind at the bus station. It was one fine Saturday in 1971. It's half a century ago, so I can't recall the month. Four of us were at the bus station listening and humming along the Hindi hit "Tum Bin Jaon Kahan" blaring loudly out of the jukebox. We were feigning a brave front  in clear view of a watching Izzuddin clan at the far end. They read our ruse and threateningly gestured for one of us to join their table for a heart-to-heart talk. We sent over the biggest guy in our group to at least establish some physical parity. I forgot what actually transpired but our go-to guy kept his cool. He was back with us after about ten minutes with a "last warning" from the Sisi mob. 

To this day we're not sure what was the last warning for. None of us was from Yellow House and we'd never offended them in any specific way. It was a Hindi song we were playing, not an Arabic song. Our group were technically harmless and peace loving. We went to Ipoh town to seek solace by watching Chinese and Hindi movies. We never talked to their girl friends as far as I can remember.  In fact we never talked to any girl since we bid farewell to our moms in January 1966.

To be fair the altercations had never escalated into all-out skirmishes or hand-to-hand combats. Deep down, we'd so much in common: Melayu, Islam, Kampong, and broke as hell. Nevertheless making fun of Izzuddin guys continued to be the most popular sport (after rugby).

One cruel joke making the rounds was an unfortunate event involving one of our boys. Walking all alone, he was pulled over by the Izzuddin crowd in Ipoh town and verbally warned, in English, "You remember you strong?". 

Our guy was stumped and he took all the time he needed to regain himself and to make sense of it all. You remember you strong? "Awak ingat awak kuat!". Hahahaha. In Malay context and culture, it wasn't a casual question. It's a clear and severe warning. In no time, "you remember you strong?" became our battle cry. It soon developed into a potent weapon for us to cull any of our own trying to show off, rerun old jokes etc. This precious line has been repeated a thousand times in our lively group exchanges to this very day.

Well I thought nothing of this "You remember you are strong?" episode beyond its comical and nostalgic element until Dr Ahmad Zahid was appointed Deputy Prime Minister. I don't have any proof whether he had any part in the bus station showdown or whether he was solely or severally responsible for coining the paranormal poser "you remember you strong?" I don't think he was complicit in any way for two reasons. One, he was foreign born. Two, he was more of  a bookworm or a softie who loved classes and exams. He's has a PhD, remember?

For us, boys from the big, English-medium school, it's time for some reflection and serious soul searching. Leaders lurk anywhere, shaped and made in the humblest of surroundings. Like it or not, an Izzuddin alumnus is now the Deputy Prime Minister and Home Affairs Minister. So eat your heart out, boys.

Dr Ahmad Zahid is effectively the most powerful person in the whole country now. He can haul up anybody he sees as a threat to national security. See the pic above. He's making a point or perhaps reminding us or even issuing a last warning. I'll never know what he's saying. Could it be "You remember you strong?" Who knew.            

   

          

   

A Free Guide To Frugal Travel

In March this year I went to Italy together with five family members for 9 days and 8 nights, swinging through seven lovely cities: Rome, Siena, Lucca, Pisa, San Gimignano, Florence and Venice. It cost each of us RM 3500.

Welcome to frugal travel.  Or affordable travel. Or clever travel. Whatever.

No trick. It's all in: flight, food, sleep, bus, train, boat, car, insurance. Everything except museums. No, we didn't fly Afghan Air. We flew on Etihad, voted best airlines last year.

Frugal travel is a psychological triumph over the financial trials of travelling. Not to mention the physical pleasure of defeating the tyranny of the travel industry. It felt like you'd just beaten up a road bully at their own game. 

Not only that. Your travel is more fulfilling and relaxing and liberating because you're in total control. No bus waiting at 6 am sharp to ferry you to the next country. No need to hold that pee for two hours just because you don't want your travel buddies to know the state of your prostate. No stops at extortionate souvenir shops owned by a younger brother of the bus driver.

You can stop anytime anywhere, change your itinerary, avoid towns with difficult names like Cocking (England) or Pussy (France), stop at fruit stalls to buy peaches and pomegranates, or look out for pretty mosques in unlikely places. The freedom, flexibility and possibility are endless.

Frugal travel is frugal only in strict accounting sense. The value and experience is anything but frugal. It's more inspiring and enduring than any of the mom-and-pop tours pitched by Poto Travel or Parlo Travel. We slept in a rustic farmhouse deep in timeless Tuscany for three nights. We walked on the Normandy beach where the Allied Forces had landed on D-Day to storm the Germans (It's so surreal that you could almost hear the gunfire). No local travel agent can offer you such experience.

As a retiree with loads of time to kill, I've been travelling quite a bit, not as broadly as Bourdain, but enough to learn a few tricks, which I want to pass on to you for free. I know it's hard to believe anything free these days, but who can blame you. With GST now in full swing, Ringgit free falling and billions in ghost accounts, you've lost all hopes.

This guide is conceived on the premise that you're a typical economic person, meaning: 1. You're not Donald Trump, and 2. You want to travel anywhere for free.

My top travel tips:

1. Travel Off-Season
 

Don't travel during school holidays. Flights are scarce, prices are steep and passengers are noisy. Summer travel is nice for its high dose of daylight, but you've to compete head on with the thick-pocket Japanese and Swedish vacationers. With ringgit rate now higher than your CGPA, you'll lose easily. So go in Spring or Fall.  Don't worry about kids skipping school. They can miss one week of  classes and will still grow up to be gynaecologists. Or politicians.

2. Tailor Your Tour

Celebrate your personal tastes. Don't heed the herd. Our country is teeming with travel agencies (400 as at this morning) offering a wide range of tour gimmicks preying on lazy retirees. These packages come with hilarious names like Sonata Korea, Nostalgia Norway and Romantika Hanoi. Don't fall for any of these. Hanoi is communist.

A friend recently splurged RM10,000 on a tour of the Balkan states. Unless it's part of your annual money laundering, spending ten grand for the privilege of seeing Albania is hard to explain.

The better option is to draw your own tour. Buy a la carte instead of package. Shop for the cheapest flights, hotels and rental cars, dream up your itinerary, personalise your destinations and routes, load up your food supply,  choose your travel companions, and so on. All on your own. More fun this way.


3. Buy Tickets At Least 6 Years Ahead 

Six months ahead. But it sure feels like six years.  For Italy, we bought nine months ahead, at RM2057. For Paris in 2012, we bought 15 months ahead (RM 1500) on AirAsia, and it's so long that my younger son got bored and decided to get married in the meantime. For London in 2010, it's one full year ahead (RM1200), also AirAsia. For Melbourne in 2011 it's six months ahead  (RM430), you guess which airline.

There's a real risk, of course, because of the long lead time. You can easily develop early Alzheimer's and forget your flight dates. Ridiculous tickets normally come with ridiculous conditions. For example, our Rome tickets allow full refunds only in the event of the ticket-holder's death. But it wasn't clear who'll actually get the refund. Wife? Son? Penang government? 

But there can be unforeseen upsides. We're booked on low-cost AirAsia flight to Paris in 2012 but travelled on high-cost Malaysia Airlines after AirAsia discontinued Paris. So we had 30kg luggage, fine dining, Malay ghost movies and 63-year old stewardesses, all at no extra fees.   

4. Buy Tickets Online.

You know this. You've to stay up all night during AirAsia "free seats" stampede, but it's fun when you finally clinched Bandung for RM106. Online booking is the best option. Early this year Garuda offered RM1300 on its booking site for  KL-Amsterdam.  From Amsterdam you can easily find your way to The Hague, if you know what and where The Hague is.

There's a number of independent search engines for price comparison. I like Skyscanner. Just be careful though: the lowest price may not be the best. A RM 950 flight from KL to London on Chinese Eastern Airlines looks like a bicentennial bargain until you realize that it has 23 stop-overs and it takes about two weeks to land in London.

Some travel agents do offer cheap flights during Matta Fair. I'm not sure whether it's part of their compliance with the Sedition Law and why should I care. We bucked the trend and bought our Rome tickets from Sedunia Travel.

Otherwise my first choice is AirAsia. Its business statement is "Let's bankrupt other airlines", so it has to be brutally cheap to live up to that promise. Its booking process is mazy with all sorts of tricks and traps to fleece you. Stay cool and take your time, you can game it. Don't get overly emotional over luggage fees. Travel light, 7 kg max. Use Crocs shoes, Crocs jeans, and Crocs underwear, they've zero weight. Studies have shown that you can  wear a pair of  boxer shorts for 10 straight days without irritating your bowel.

5. Plan Your Itinerary.

No brainer. Itinerary is hard to plan and spell, but a well-thought one will stretch your travel value. Study, read and think your itinerary as if you're sitting for your Biology test. Tripadvisor is a good start. Read travel guides like Michelin, Rough Guides and Fodor's. Buy 2006 editions at Book Excess for RM5. Places like Rome or London don't change every year. In fact they've not changed much since William The Conqueror.
  
If you think reading isn't fashionable, you always have short cuts: use travel agents' itineraries as a guide. Then customize around it. Delete da Vinci Museum, add Juventus Stadium. I'd recommend itineraries from "holiday specialists" like Cosmos or Globus. Don't use itineraries from Umrah or Istanbul champions like Triways or Andalusia. They're good only if you're Malay, female and 60 years old with a body mass of 100 kg.

6. Don't Travel Alone.

Unless you're travelling on Petronas expense account or you're meeting a billionaire Nigerian prince, don't travel alone.  No fun. Travel in numbers. But the party shouldn't be too big. At train stations you can't correctly count beyond six. Group travel is cheaper because you can spread your spending. Take along your family and friends. For even more fun, pay for all their tickets ha ha. 

7. Drive. But Don't Drive In Colombia.


If you want to see more of a country nothing beats driving. Unless it's Colombia. If you're already in Colombia, don't drive. Come back.

Driving allows you to see more what you want to see, at your own pace. It's ideal for big, open countries like the US, Canada, Australia, UK, France, Spain and Italy where tourist attractions are spread all around. Car hires in these countries, especially Spain, are relatively affordable. With a car, you can even stay outside the big cities, where hotels are cheaper, bigger and quieter. You can drive into cities or take a train. You can start, stop and snack any time you choose. And that pee.

It's normal to harbour apprehensions about driving in strange places. Left-hand driving, funny road signs, funny traffic police, no-driving zones, flat tyres etc. It just shows that you're a normal, sensible person. But I can promise you'll overcome these unfounded fears after ten minutes of driving. If you can drive in Malaysia, you can drive in California. 

You don't need a car if your extensive 10-day itinerary consists of only one city, say, Ottawa. (Why would anyone want to be in Ottawa for 10 days isn't part of this discussion). If you plan to see the countryside, Viking villages, remote castles, active volcanoes, alien landing sites or even shady factory outlets, it's best to hire a car. Buses or trains, if available, are slow and late.

My standard MO is always to rent a car at the airport, eg London, and then drive out and away to see all the major tourist treasures and traps (Scotland, Lake District, Stoke City stadium etc) and return to London to recover for one or two days. We did the same for France and Italy. The best car rental site is Auto Europe for both price and variety. I always hire an automatic car because my poor eye-brain-leg coordination. Go for manuals, they're are at least 30% cheaper.
 
8. Forget Waze, Buy a GPS

You need a GPS to drive. Buy a GPS navigator. I bought a 5" Garmin.  Buy, don't rent with your car. Long term, GPS is a lot cheaper because you can use it more than 1000 times. Just update the maps, free at illegal sites. You know all these sites.

Don't use internet just to operate your phone's GPS or Waze. You might end up in Tg Malim instead of Milan. Joke. Actually internet roaming will cost you your arm. And your leg.

9. Don't Sleep Among Backpackers.

Don't cut corners with your sleep. Say NO to youth hostels or sweaty backpackers dorms with shared toilets, kitchen and oxygen even if they're free. Rent apartments with stoves and freezers. They're cheaper than hotels if you book online early through AirBNB or Tripadvisor or even Booking.com. Book at least three months ahead. If it's six of you, book six beds, not five. You want to sleep and snore comfortably, not on top of each other.

10. Ferry Your Food

This is life and death because we Malaysians must eat, 24 hours. Take along plenty of forage. 15 kg should be enough to keep a family of five on the same metabolic rate. You'll be surprised at the variety of fast foodstuffs now available, even instant nasi lemak, nasi goreng and, believe this, lontong. Buy at Speedmart or Mydin. Don't waste time preparing full-blown fusions like masak lemak cili api ikan keli salai with cheese or nasi dagang ikan salmon. Curry, soup or tomyam are faster than 10 minutes.

You'll somehow stumble upon a lot of Malaysian or Malay or even Kelantanese restaurants overseas. Don't bother. They're mostly expensive, with unique styrofoam taste. Eat Kelantanese food only in Kelantan.   

11. Shopping Is Unnecessary

Unless you're looking for some authentic local products as showpieces to provoke your neighbours, like Samurai swords (made in Taiwan) or Persian rugs (which are actually Belgian). 

Factory outlets are generally ok if you've a thing about 1949 fashion. All the sales assistants at these outlets can speak Chinese and Japanese. They also speak only to Chinese and Japanese. If you're Kelantanese, you've to guess the prices and sizes and the exit.

Chocolates are always cheaper and tastier anywhere outside Malaysia and are worth buying for giveaways. Big supermarkets like Carrefour outside Paris or Sainsbury's near London are the best place to buy chocolates. Don't buy at KLIA duty free on your way home. The chocs are ok but all your money goes to Umno.

A Word of Caution: Taking It  To Extremes

Don't overdo. A friend (former classmate) recently travelled to Europe, USA and Canada for three months. Apart from flights, he spent very little, if at all, on anything else. He slept on park benches, on rail tracks and in igloos, and cleaned himself once in four days in communal baths, lakes, glaciers etc. He ate beetroot and rented bicycles to move around. He's about my age (meaning old), but he runs marathons 14 times a year. He takes the whole "travelling on a shoestring" notion to a new level.  Most of us won't last two days. This isn't frugal travel. This is Man vs Wild. Don't do it.

    

The Joys Of GST And Fig Farming

We're already into the second month of GST. The debate is still raging on with no signs of letting up. A day hardly passes without a pundit propagating new GST ideas or a stand-up trading GST jokes.

I can no longer sit on the sidelines and look on. It's time to weigh in with some thoughts and theories. So here we are, eight burning questions:

1. Recently Washington Post, Hindustan Times and WSJ proclaimed Malaysia the world's corruption champion, ahead of Indonesia. Does GST have anything to do with this?

What? No. GST and corruption are, semantically at least, as different as chalk and cheese. You don't have to be corrupt to have GST. And you don't have to have GST to be corrupt. Of course, you could be more corrupt if you had GST. And you could have more GST if you're more corrupt. If you run a nonparametric polynomial regression, you'd find that corruption and GST are statistically independent with a very low or even negative correlation coefficient. We're just starting on and you're already impressed with me.

GST isn't new and not created by Barisan Nasional as alleged by many conspiracy convicts. In fact its origins preceded the famous Daeng Chelak and his four Bugis brothers. GST as a concept dates back to the Ming or maybe Qing Dynasty in China, more than 2000 years ago, when King Ming or King Qing reigned and floated the novel idea of taxing his subjects' opium consumption to stem widespread addiction and finance the construction of the Great Wall. However this idea was rejected by all 1220 imperial eunuchs. It never took off until only 10 years ago when China introduced GST to support its addiction to LV bags and high-speed trains. There's already plan to increase GST to 25% to feed its addiction to GST.

In the case of China, more state officials were caught and shot for corruption in the period before GST, proof enough that GST and corruption are either unrelated or unfriended. I'm not suggesting that Malaysia use China as a model for anything. The use of guns and live bullets is certainly harsh. Rubber bullets are more civilized.

2. Bersih, Perkasa, Gasak, Tibai, Tembak and other well-meaning NGOs have all accused the government of not allowing enough time for the businesses and the consumers to understand and prepare for GST. 

Is this a question or an answer? I'm not going to answer an answer. 

Let me repeat, GST isn't the brainchild of Barisan Nasional. First, you need brain to come up with brainchild. Second, although Malaysia is late in the GST arms race, the idea isn't exactly new. It's been on the back-burner since 1962, when our country wasn't under Barisan Nasional and Datok Senu was minister for something. There's no, or maybe less, corruption at the time because all projects were given to either JKR or LLN. None of the projects cost more than RM1 million and only one project was delayed longer than one day.

Since then, GST was deferred on the eve of every election. From 2000 to 2014 it's postponed every six  months (i.e 28 times). From January to March 2015 we had a GST dry run where Jaya Grocer was allowed to increase the prices. The idea was to allow both supermarkets and consumers to get the feel of GST. When GST kicked in on 1 April, supermarkets increased prices again based on actual GST (6%) and consumers weren't supposed to even look surprised.

Even with so much GST education and burning-in, most people are still confounded and dumbfounded (or just dumb). With no way out, they've started calling GST and hard-working ministers all sorts of nasty names to register their displeasure. This is unfair and ungrateful. Since this blog has been officially certified expletives-free, I won't get drawn into naming the nasty names for now. There's already an app and a video game you can install for free.

3. We're also aware that out of 6 million Chinese and non-Chinese registered businesses in Malaysia now,  94% pay only road tax. Can anybody conceivably escape GST?

GST is a tax on your consumption, not a tax on your legal, or illegal, income. You can only avoid GST if you're an anorexic, or a breatharian living on cosmic microfood. For the rest of us, the non-anorexic, GST is as sure as Subang Jaya traffic jams. You've to pay GST even if you scored all A in your college final year.

Before I forget, not all products or produce or services attract GST. Some products are so ugly and repulsive that they don't attract GST. As of this morning, 1767 products are either GST-exempt or zero rated, mostly vegetable and rare metals listed in the periodic table. Cooked or canned kangkong is deemed attractive, and attracts the 6%.

A smart consumer eats only raw rice and raw ice. He lives and breathes around the 1767 products, whose prices had actually been increased 100% well before GST. Clever is as clever does, so to speak.

4. Are Malaysia and Canada the only major economies with GST now?  

You're innumerate. And Canada, hahaha, you're funny. The number of countries in the world today is 200 or 202, depending on whether you recognize Palestine and Perlis as independent countries. 160 have imposed some kind of consumption tax under various names and guises. These countries include some that were already cruel even before GST, like Zimbabwe and Singapore. North Korea has deferred its GST until its population consume something.

Most countries have increased GST rates over the years to keep up with Norway. This was made possible by either changing the government or changing the population or both. Some countries that can't change their government or population, change the name from GST to VAT, then back to GST.

5. GST is fair, progressive and gentle. Why Malaysians are against it?

It's in the genes. People don't like to pay more. Actually people don't like to pay.

I'm not sure who's the pr consultant engaged by the government. Maybe the same guys who helped the Tourism Malaysia promote our country as a distress destination. There's been a lot of confusion, due mainly to miscommunication and conflicting statements. Like, the government announced that GST is good for the people. But 1767 products and services are GST-free. If it's good, then why so many goods are without GST? And why is GST only 6%, and not, say, 96%?

GST is Physics. You just don't understand. I bought a variety of spices (rempah) at Giant recently and was surprised to discover that rempah kari daging is GST-free, but rempah gulai nasi dagang has GST. It's only seven sen but you're still confused and up in arms. Is this a subtle attempt to derail hudud?

As we're all about to resign to an all-round price spikes, Ahmad Maslan dropped yet another bombshell when he declared that 329 products are cheaper with GST. When pressed for names of the products, he rambled on with veiled threats like how his mother could read Quran and so on. The ploy worked because nobody harried him further. Until the next day.

To be fair, car prices did come down. The cheapest Mercedes C-Class is now RM488,888. Before GST it's RM688,868. A hefty reduction of about RM 200K. Thing is, I still can't afford it. Mercedes-mad Malay cronies are generally happy that the price hasn't only dropped but also retained all but one number 8.  

The timing of GST introduction couldn't be worse. April is a bad month for anything. And for GST, every month is a bad month, so April is doubly bad. All kinds of incoherent and impossible mumbo-jumbo seemed to bunch in in April, you know, things like government debt, government jet, crooked bridge, Jho Lo, Mongolian maid, and even the sultan or prince of Turkmenistan. Blame other countries if you must, but make sure it's the right country.

6. Every consumer is technically poorer because of GST. But who's hardest hit?

Let me remind you one more time that GST isn't a Barisan Nasional's idea.

The population pile hardest hit by GST are the unemployed, which include the retirees, which include me. Among the retirees, the hardest hit are those living off EPF savings, which again include, you guess again, me. Among the EPF-dependant retirees, the hardest hit are those who eat yoghurt, which again include, hahaha, me. In short, in the whole country, I'm the worst hit.

There's no mitigation for the ranks of retirees that I'm unfortunately part of. No recourse or remedy to moderate the impact. Those on government pension might get a hike if Cuepacs conmen managed to muscle in with yet another 100% salary increase plus automatic upgrading to Jusa C for all government employees, otherwise known as government servants. Don't fall for this slick "servant" misnomer. It's nothing more than a misdirection to get all of us to pity and defend this crowd. If you go to Immigration Department to legalise your illegal maid (or yourself), you'd know who's actually "servant" (hint: it's not your maid). 

7. Since GST won't go away because BN will rule for as long as there's daylight, how do we cope? 

Time to call forth your creative instincts.

Universiti Malaysia Pahang responded to GST by inventing an anti-hysteria kit. At RM8750 a set, it's devilishly cheap. This ghost-busting gear is fully portable like portable toilets used by Bangkok motorists. You can take it with you on supermarket rounds and should be handy when you see the new grocery prices. Incidentally UMP is also planning to penetrate the Bangkok motorists market, betting on the multi-tasking potential of the kits.

A couple of old but intrepid classmates responded by going into fig farming. Fig, not pig. But the way it's turned out, they might've been better off going the other way. I don't know the real economics of fig gigs, but it's nowhere near ketum or qat. But, seriously, I think this sad act of denial and deviation is emotional rather commercial. A fig tree is typically small and monotonous with little decorative or therapeutic value. It bears an average of two small fruits every ten or eleven years. You can easily get GST-free fresh or dried Lebanese figs at Mydin for RM 32 a kilo while making friends with the Nepalese cashiers.

But, of course, the joy of picking your own figs is without compare. Plus, fig trees have no history of violent reactions to your temper or pressure or abnormal sexual energy. So you're in complete control. 

I'm slowly adjusting to GST, which inevitably involves some unpleasant cultural changes. For example, I don't buy yoghurt now. Price of Marigold yoghurt was RM1.39 before 1MDB stashed the cash in Cayman Islands. It's RM1.95 now.  I'm not sure which mathematical model those people used to calculate GST and adjust the price. I don't have fig trees to vent my anger on, so I just stopped slurping yoghurt. I read somewhere that one gram of yoghurt breeds five billion friendly bacteria cultures that keep us healthy. Since I don't eat yoghurt, I now have only 1.5 billion cultures hanging around in my system. I'm less healthy and less cultured. I no longer listen to classical music, look at paintings, play the violin, attend operas. All in all, I'm less happy.

8. A friend said you've to change your lifestyle to cope with GST. Does this make sense?

Nothing gets more overrated and glorified than "lifestyle"? What's a lifestyle? Playing golf 23 hours a day?  Is watering figs a lifestyle?

I always tell my old classmates that I'm leading an action-packed lifestyle because I watch Tanyalah Ustaz early morning and run early evening. And read Arsene Wenger's football philosophy in between.  But whatever your lifestyle ideas are, it's worth revisiting your so-called interests, hobbies or plain habits now that GST is lurking at every turn. For starters, get rid of your pets. Talking to cats or dogs or fig trees won't change anything, certainly not your CGPA. Pets and vets are never GST-friendly.

Next for the axe is Astro. If you take out live EPL games,  Astro is TV2 in all but name. Why spend RM150 plus GST a month just to watch live football and lion-chasing-antelope reruns? Drive to kedai mamak. The screen is bigger and crowds livelier. The only downside of this high-life is that you might get high after watching Chelsea playing with 10 defenders, and run the risk of crashing into stray and free-running Myvis.

Just to sustain my hectic lifesyle, I'm taking glucosamine for my creaking knees and rosuvastatin (Crestor) to beat my cholesterol. Glucosamine is GST-free but not Crestor. I still can't figure out why. My knees are more important than my heart? I know the price increase is only RM8, but with this whole psychology and dynamics, and the tragic thought of Ahmad Maslan sardonically pocketing my money, how can I possibly go on with my life, or lifestyle.

I'm now mulling the next step: dump Crestor and buy a generic substitute, which is 50% cheaper. I'd be contributing less to Krygyzstan economy. I hope this generic statin isn't a placebo or a Nigerian hoax and is as good as Crestor. Otherwise, I might end up with the ultimate change of  lifestyle. You know what.

Did I get the country name right?    

                

A Trip To Italy

A Trip to Italy. Really? After a slew of slow travel tales with silly titles like "Melbourne Memory", "A Picture of Paris" and "Hong Kong Hangover", I can understand it if you're holding out for even more thoughtless titles like "The Italian Job", "Romancing Rome" or  "You're Too Brutal, Brutus". But no, not this time. You're already dazed and damaged after paying tax on your tax, it's unfair to tax you further with a slick travel title. So A Trip To Italy it is, and it's about a trip to Italy.

About Italy (And Italians)

Italy isn't easy.
 
Dante and da Vinci on the one hand, Berlusconi and Balotelli on the other. Cradle of civilization and core of corruption and all things in between. Its politics and finances are such a dithering mess that the only way out is to invade Bavaria.

But what you can never fault is its offbeat dynamism. Italy is never boring. It changes and renews itself. Italians are exceptionally curious, creative and adventurous people. Not to mention talented and good-looking. Hollywood's sad portrayal and stereotyping of Italians is both unfair and unfortunate.

They're by nature easy-going, and some might have drifted into organized crimes and frauds, but they're really few and far between. There are many more famous Italian artists, actors, scientists, explorers and footballers (it's alright if you know only Sophia Loren). In primary school, I was taught about the epic expeditions of wayward Italian seafarers like Marco Polo and Christopher Columbus. I was so fired up that I memorised all the dates. But our teacher was quick to put a damper by reminding us that they're nothing compared to our home-grown Laksamana Hang Tuah who'd travelled all the way to Indonesia.

The first time I fell for Italy was when I watched the Godfather.  I'd read the Mario Puzo mafia opus  in record time, but the movie was even better. The part where the young, dreamy Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) went on his first date with a local Sicilian girl, and the title song Speak Softly Love soared, and the whole village turned up to cheer the couple on was so cool and heart-warming. But what struck me most was the backdrop: a village clinging precariously to a hilltop. Pretty, old and sensual. How long must I wait before I could see and feel something like this?

About forty years.


Going To Italy

I finally went to Italy, on 20 March this year, with wife and my two girls Aida and Sarah. An unsuspecting sister-in-law, probably misled by all the tall-tales and fish stories in my travel blogs, joined us. She brought along her full-grown son. So altogether it's six of us.

Actually I have another eight sisters-in-law and I did invite every one of them to join our party, just to be fair. They all declined for a variety of reasons, like husband was unwell, husband couldn't fly without his bicycle, husband wanted to buy the whole Tesco before GST, and so on. Well, you don't want to know any of  this, but you'd appreciate that I'm just trying to be fair here.

We didn't use Air Asia this time only because the airline didn't fly to Italy or Sicily or any part of Europe now. We took Etihad and had to lay over at Abu Dhabi airport, which was technically part of the vast Arabian desert. As expected, Etihad was different. 30 kg baggage, non-stop meals and juices, latest movies, noise-cancelling head-phones, cold-cancelling blankets etc. And the doa before the take-off was a nice touch and a humbling reminder. 

Italy Itinerary

And we didn't go to Sicily, of course. You don't go to Sicily. You go back to Sicily.

I'm afraid at this point my brother-in-law, who's not very good with places and spaces, might get seriously confused. Is Italy Sicily? If I didn't go to Sicily, how did I go to Italy? Is Ottawa the capital of Italy? Sorry, but let me explain. Sicily is an island and is part of Italy, just like Penang is an island and part of Malaysia (Note: there's no DAP in Sicily. At least, not yet). Technically, we went to the non-Sicily part of Italy.

Our itinerary reads like this: KL to Abu Dhabi to Rome to Siena to Florence to Venice, then back to Rome then back to Abu Dhabi then finally back to KL. From 21 March through 29 March. Altogether 9 days, 8 nights. Reliable travel agencies like Reliance or Kopetro would promote this itinerary as  3 countries, 14 cities, 14 days, 8 nights.

We stuck to our London and Paris formula. We rented a car at Rome Fiumicino airport and then headed out and broke at Siena (3 nights) and Ferrara (2 nights) before swinging back to Rome (3 nights).  Siena and Ferrara were kind of base camps for further assaults on the surrounding towns. From Siena, we covered Pisa, Lucca and San Gimignano. On the way to our next base at Ferrara, we would stop off at Florence. From Ferrara, we hit Venice. Finally we drove south for about 400 km from Ferrara via Bologna to Rome for the last three nights. From Rome, we roamed  Rome.

All the cities with pretty names above are genuine and deserving Unesco world heritage sites, unlike Melaka which tricked its way into the list by claiming that the Jonker Street pineapple tarts recipe was passed down by the 16th century Portuguese Jesuit priests.

Linearis Casa Vacanze e Agriturismo Podere Sertofano, Siena (21 - 24 March, 3 nights).

This isn't an Italian expression of surprise.  It's a farmhouse. We holed up here for the first three nights in Italy. About 9 km from Siena, the house was smack in the middle of the Tuscany (Toscana) region famed for its postcard-pretty landscape and scenery. Many Hollywood movies were shot here, including The Gladiator, Under the Tuscan Sun and The American. It's alright if you haven't watched any of them. My wife swore that she'd seen a Malay TV drama with a Tuscany backdrop. I thought she's aging exponentially.

We'd to climb an off-road to get to the farmhouse. The interior had been remodelled to fit in six apartments. We took one unit with three rooms, a kitchen and a bath at 288 Euro (RM1200) for three nights. Our farmhouse had a real farm with a human farmer, not a virtual farm and a human nerd like FarmVille. It's surrounded by endless acres of olive groves and vineyards. The scenery was simply unbelievable. Farmstay or Agriturismo is now a trend  and I'd encourage you to try it before it goes out of fashion like FarmVille.

Handsome Hill Towns

From our location we ventured out to Siena, San Gimignano, Pisa and Lucca. Like I said, these sweet-sounding towns were all ancient and steeped in history with rich medieval architecture and engineering on full display. San Gimignano and its towers, in particular, was a gem and it's a pity that you've never heard of it. Time stood still here and the atmosphere conspired to render  a sense of serenity and unhurried life of 2000 years past. Streets were narrow and rough, but very safe and quiet without Malaysian drivers. Non-residents were not allowed to drive into the town centre at the top, so we'd to park at the foot and climb up. I overheard my wife and her sister breathing heavily behind me. 

A piazza or city square is a standard feature of Italian towns, big or small. The smaller the town, the bigger the piazza. Don't mix up piazza with pizza or Pisa. Piazza is a square hemmed in by buildings with brownish and  yellowish facades, and it's where most Italians converge and do what they do best: nothing. Pizza, on the other hand, is small and expensive everywhere. Pisa is Pisa.

Both Siena and Lucca were certainly impressive, with typical narrow alleys and expressive buildings and cathedrals. Their piazzas are worth a visit if you have no morbid fear of too much space. Those who've done MRI would find these places therapeutic. Siena's Piazza Il Campo especially was huge and expansive, reputedly the loveliest empty space in Italy. It's the site of the mad biannual Palio bareback horse-race you saw on the National Geographic channel and repeated on Astro 500 times in one week.

Lucca is smaller but equally old and graceful with no less than three piazzas to boot. Signages and directions (and public toilets) are definitely not Italy's strong suit. It took us almost one hour to find Piazza del Mercato, the biggest of the bloody piazzas. I really thought I was mentally failing, losing all my senses and just too old. To make matters worse, we easily stumbled upon a halal kebab shop, which was never a tourist attraction. I was very relieved when a niece later told me that she had the same problems when she visited Lucca three years ago. She added that it's a lot easier to find all the tourist attractions in Gombak, where she now lives. Thank you, Mek.

I thought that Sicilian village in the Godfather was pretty. It's pretty pedestrian compared to the glorious San Gimignano and Siena.

Galileo And The Leaning Tower

Pisa was the easiest and friendliest city to visit. From the car park, it's an easy 500 km walk to Campo dei Miracoli, where our object of desire, the Leaning Tower, stood. Aida and Sarah jumped at the sight of the tilting structure. It's freakishly beautiful with a clean all-white tone and perfect cylindrical form.

Looking at the tower, I tried to picture the great scientific mind Galileo doing the fabled experiment. He threw two two balls from the tower to debunk once and for all the scientific wisdom that heavy ball always falls faster. I'm not very good at physics, so I didn't understand all the fuss. Maybe this breakthrough is important if you play football and score lots of goals with your head, like Edin Dzeko.  In the meantime sister-in-law and son did the world's most maligned "pushing the Leaning Tower" camera trick. The picture that came out was so realistic that both of them looked heavier than the tower (actually the tower was heavier, but not by much).
     

Apart from Siena and San Gimignano, there were many other similar walled hill towns in Italy, like Volterra, Orvieto and Montepulciano. I always wondered at all the efforts and expenses required to build towns like these. According to a taxi driver in Siena, it's easier to protect and defend a hill town from invaders like Attila, Hannibal and Chelsea supporters. Now I know why Melaka was attacked and easily taken by the Portuguese (once), Dutch (once), British (twice), Japanese (once) and Javanese (now). I heard that Kelantan is now eyeing Melaka as part of its long-term political and spiritual expansion.

Villa Regina at Cona near Ferrara  (24 - 26 March, 2 Nights)

No trick here. It's a small hotel with basic breakfast. We put up here for two nights for our tour of Florence and Bologna (Bologna). The hotel was in Cona, a small town about 5 km to Ferrara and one and a half hour to Venice.

Any good travel book will tell you that Florence and Venice are a must for any serious Italy itinerary. And our itinerary was very serious.

Firenze And Bandung

Somehow, I thought Florence (Firenze) was tame by Italy's very high standards. Maybe because we're not art and culture vultures who roam the museums. But my jaw still dropped at the sight of its Cathedral, Florence landmark since the 11th century. The city's alleys were teeming with quaint shops plying high quality, non-designer leather bags and accessories. They're good value even if you convert the prices into your wretched ringgit. It's hard to keep a cool head here, as my wife and her sister found out. One shop owner claimed that Malaysian Sultan and wife bought something from his shop. Speculate, if you like. I didn't tell him that Malaysia actually has nine sultans.

Later I found out that although Florence is the hotbed of Italy's leather industry, it's not the cheapest place to buy leather goods. It's just like Bandung isn't the best place to eat mee bandung. In fact you can't find mee bandung in Bandung. Not an elegant analogy, admittedly, but you surely get my point. Buy leather bags in Rome or anywhere in Italy but not in Florence.  

Gerimis Di Venice

Venice or Venezia was every bit what I'd imagined. Maybe more. The rain didn't dampen our spirits one bit. Venice was so stunning, unique and inspiring, oozing so much aura and charm. You could never be prepared enough for something like this. Simply out of this world. An engineering and architectural marvel, it's a city built on islands with canals and bridges criss-crossing it.

This was truly a trip to reminisce, starting with the 10th floor parking at Piazzala Roma, slow boat ride along the city-splitting Canal Grande, gaping at exquisite facades and marble domes, ambling aimlessly up and down the lively Piazza San Marco, traipsing around the narrow alleyways and pathways, and tracking back to Rialto boat station for the return trip. The boat was packed and we're all crushed and drenched. I saw Sarah, the smallest person on the boat, shaking and grasping for air.

Visiting Venice isn't cheap even if you're already in Italy. In our case parking fee alone was 30 Euro and the boat ride was 84 Euro. So it's about RM 76 per head just to go there and do nothing. But it's well worth it. It'd cost you your arm if you hit the museums or got scammed by the gondolas. I don't know how much it cost George Clooney recently when he went  to Venice and married his 25th girlfriend. Must be well worth it.

At sea-level and vulnerable, Venice is an antithesis of the hill towns. Instead of idly waiting for attacks, it decided to go global by starting world's first money-for-flesh loan scheme now widely practised by all banks and Ah Longs (read the Merchant of Venice and Annual Bank Negara Report).  Marco Polo was sent to China to trade fake silk with Kublai Khan. This fakes business would've never been possible had Marco lived in the Tuscan hills instead of Venice waterfront.

We'd planned for a quick tour of Bologna on the way back to Rome as I'd wanted to see the University of Bologna, the oldest university in the western world, and buy a real college t-shirt to match the fake University of Pisa we bought at the Leaning Tower. We reached the place quite easily but just couldn't find a legal parking space. We gave up, and tapped the GPS for a quick exit to the A1 Autostrada. Rome was about 370 km away.

146, Via Cavour, Rome (26 - 27 March, 3 nights)

It's an apartment on via Cavour, a major artery in Rome city centre. It's on the fourth floor of an old block with no lift, about 700 m from Rome Termini railway station. This building was at least 100 years old and its one storey was actually two times higher than one storey of any standard and sub-standard house in Malaysia. So we'd to actually walk up eight floors. When we reached the apartment, the heavy sister-in-law almost passed out.

I'd booked this place through Tripadvisor, and now we got to meet the owner, Marco, who came to greet us  with a friend. Aida reminded us that he's the third Marco we'd met in five days. He gave us the  key and showed us around the apartment: two rooms, a kitchen, a bath, and heater. He left us a bowl of apples and a bottle of wine. We appreciated the thought, but it didn't stop us from speculating that Marco's friend was actually Marco's boyfriend. Hahaha.

Romping In Rome

It's Rome, finally. The  Eternal City. Rome, or Roma, is smaller than London or Paris. Like London and Paris and other great cities (eg Kota Bharu), it has a river. But River Tiber, when I saw it, was narrow and yellow and all in all charmless and nowhere near the flourish and splendour of Thames or Seine. 

But Rome's gorgeous monuments, sculptures, structures and other vestigial remains of its past triumph simply had no equal.  These tourist draws were not too far apart. They could be explored on foot in one day, unless you stopped at, say, Colosseum one whole day to reflect and visualise what it's like to fight a lion. We did just that (cover in one day, not fight the lion). In one day we did Colosseum, Roman Forum, Pantheon, Trevi Fountain, Spanish Steps, Piazza Navona, concluding at Piazza del Popolo. It's an easy walk for a total distance of about 3 km. We took the Metro back to our Apartment. The better option was always to walk back on a different route and enjoy different sights. My wife and sister-in-law were all shot and I didn't have the heart to suggest anything imaginative.   

March is actually off-season but the crowd was thick at these spots. We started with Colosseum which was only 400 m from our apartment. There's a very long queue snaking towards the entrance. We decided not to compete. This sublime piece of Italian architecture and grandeur had from time immemorial been the iconic face of Rome. Intense and gripping, it could stop you dead on your tracks.

We just hung about trying our best to appear as literate and educated as we possibly could against the raunchy Chinese tourists who're more interested in photobombing rather watching the crumbling Colosseum. It's easy to denounce these Chinese jet set for being what they really were i.e Chinese. But with 9000 km of Great Wall crashing in their backyard, they'd seen more than enough old structures collapse. They'd really want to see something different, and I would strongly suggest they visit Trengganu, where they could watch new structures fall down. Not just stadiums, but also mosques, airports, hospitals, politicians etc. More variety, more value.
        

The neighbouring Roman Forum was elaborate and slightly difficult to get the message if you, like me, don't have a degree in ancient Roman politics. Pantheon, Trevi Fountain and the two Piazzas were more straight-forward, and the attitude and atmosphere here was decidedly happier.  Time and again you'd to stop and marvel at the art and architecture on offer, which had been variously described as medieval, gothic, renaissance, Romanesque, baroque, bad-ass and so on. I'd never know which is which. Trevi Fountain was closed for some restoration works. I suspected they're drying it up to collect the coins. Italy, the one-time economic and technological powerhouse, has really fallen on hard times.

Pope And Poet

Spanish Steps and the adjacent Piazza di Spagna were a fun place. The crowd was young and boisterous. I'm not sure what these steps actually were, but they're filled to the brim. My wife and I were easily the oldest couple that afternoon. We joined the crowd just for the hell of it. We sat on the steps, catching our knees before we moved on. The English poet John Keats loved this place, and he lived and died here 100 years ago, when crowds were gentler and he could write romantic poems. No living poets come to die here now.

The next day it's Vatican City, home of the Pope and officially the smallest state in the world. It's quite alright if you still think Perlis is the smallest state. Next to Colosseum, Vatican is the most visited and photographed part of Rome. Again it's all thronged and packed with people from about everywhere. St Peter's Square and Basilica, like other Roman structures, were imposing and so massive that my standard camera lens couldn't fit all of it in.  The crowd was well behaved, and you know why. Angels and demons walked this place, and if that eponymous movie was to be believed, there's plenty of scandals and skullduggery going on behind the somber and saintly veneer.

Fake Market Day

Our last day was 29 March, a Sunday. Our flight had been scheduled for 9.45 evening. There's still time for one final foray, and this time to what was supposed to be the biggest street market in Italy, the Porta Portese Sunday market in the Trasvetere area, across the Tiber. The market was big, no doubt, but the goods on offer were disappointing. The problem was the same in markets everywhere now: cheap fakes and African traders.  

Actually the best place to buy genuine Italian stuff was the small family-run shops around Piazza Navona and Pantheon. The ones at Via Del Governo Vecchio were certainly worth a look. The stuff carried no designer labels, but you could feel the pure Italian care and craftmanship. Prices were surprisingly affordable even for retirees. Aida snapped up a rare-looking leather shoulder bag for her college runs for 40 Euro. You can buy a Burberry or Mulberry anywhere in the world. But stuff from Via Del Governo Vecchio can only be bought at Via Del Governo Vechhio.  

Italy in Italics

Despite its economic difficulties, Italy is swamped by migrants, mostly from Africa and South Asia (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh). They stuck out like sore thumbs and they're everywhere, from Florence, Venice right to Rome. At every tourist spot, they'd be hawking all kinds of fake stuff and selfie sticks. These artists saw the words "We are tourists. Hit us" written all over us, so we're real hot.

To be fair, these traders were quite harmless. Most speak English very well and they're quite useful if you need direction to Vatican or toilet. Some were proud Muslims like us. These people were fine with me. Just look at the positive side: it's fun listening to Banglas speaking Italian for a change.

Some of these traders prospered and they opened up restaurants around the Termini Rail Station, offering halal cuisines with faux Italian names. We discovered these vibrant food joints on the last day. Sister-in-law and son splurged all their remaining Euros on kebab, beryani and pizza here. They finished off the food before they could convert into ringgit. Quite awe-inspiring.  

Afterword

Italy is everything. Classic countryside, lovely landscapes, showpiece structures, ancient towns, rich cultural heritage, you name it. Fruits, mineral water and chocolate are abundant and shamelessly cheap. The Italian language is so smooth. Listen to the Italians (or Bangla migrants) speak the language and it's like listening to somebody reading a poem. The city names are easy on the ear: Siena, Ferrara, Verona. Compare that to Gombak.

You might notice that there's no record of our visits to museums. It's only because we didn't visit any museum. We're never trained to go to museums. The last time we visited Museum Negara was about fifteen years ago when there's an exhibition of Malay ghosts. My two girls kept asking me throughout "Which one's the ghost?". It's a very well-organized hoax. I could only hope that our Prime Minister wasn't in any way involved. We weren't exactly traumatized and it didn't cost us all that much, but the hangover lasted  for a while. 

But, really, for the truly cultured and refined, Italy is a visual and emotional feast. Museums and art galleries are everywhere, and they're all bona fide and fraud-free. One travel book recommends three days in Florence, with two days just for the museums. Do you think those Chinese tourists we met visit the museums? I think they're off to the factory outlets.

For us, Italy is still an incredible experience even without the museums. If you take away the river, Rome is practically a museum. Tuscany is a live and living painting, and all the reason you ever need to visit Italy.
 

Arrivederci

Our flight was on time. From Rome to Abu Dhabi, it's Alitalia, which was actually 49% Etihad. It's a 5-hour stop-over at the desert airport before a connecting flight to KL on Etihad, which was 100% Etihad. We had a delicious lamb beryani on board.

We landed at KLIA at about 10 pm, 30 March. My two boys were waiting at the airport to whisk us back home. I can still recall the first time travelling overseas with them (to UK) 22 years ago, when they're still in primary school. Lots of fun. 

The next morning I went out with wife for our weekly away-ground breakfast. As we sat down to enjoy our favourite roti canai, those famous words came to haunt us "a man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it". Hahaha.    

Questi giorni quando vieni il belle sole
La la la la la la la la la la la la  

The View Can Be A Lot Better Without The Old Couple

No Cars. No People.Just Like Subang Jaya.

We Thought Only Trengganu Had Falling Buildings Like This

Julius And Brutus Had Lunch On This Rock When They're BFF

Their 50th Ice Cream In 7 Days

Don't worry, I Didn't Go In

Mother And Son Hunting For Halal Kebabs

We Came, We Saw, We Straightened The Tower

Ah, The Lights Of My Life

  

Definitely Not AirAsia