(Stupid) University Rankings

I've to admit that I'm most intrigued by two modern inventions: 1. Arsene Wenger and 2. University rankings. They've nothing in common except for the "professor" sobriquet lavished on the overrated football coach by the illiterate section of the Arsenal crowd. But let's leave Arsene for a rainy day and turn to the more pressing business of university rankings.

A good day now hardly passes without another university rankings released by a newspaper (Wall Street Journal), a magazine (BusinessWeek), or, strange enough, a university (Shanghai Jiao Tong). Last week QS issued a brand new ranking:  best universities in Asia. Out of one hundred or so universities in Malaysia, five have been placed in the Asia top 100. I don't know much about this QS. It could well be another low-cost airline or even Perkasa in disguise, but they seem to have a soft spot for our universities. QS claims to be non-partisan and non-racial, which doesn't say much these days because Utusan Malaysia is officially a non-partisan and non-racial newspaper. So whenever our university or government functionaries want to look clean and cultured, they'd quote QS rankings, and avoid the more famous TI's Corruption Perception Index because it's not directly related to universities (It's hard not to agree with this logic).

I'm not sure who or what sparked off the rankings race, but my first encounter dates back to 1990 at a bookstore in PJ when I stumbled on a non-fiction work with a mundane title " The Best Business Schools". It's an honour roll of 40 top business schools in US ranked by BusinessWeek, plus an insider look at each school. I just had to buy the book because my school was in there. I didn't go to Harvard, wrong guess. HBS was second anyway. Number one was Kellogg (Northwestern University). My school just about made the cut. My reaction was: how? The school was so bland and spartan that all I could recall was braving a snowstorm one early morning to attend a statistics class. The Dutch professor was so inspiring that he cured my pathological fear of numbers, allowing me lead a normal life. There's no ranking of universities or anything in my younger days. Today you can read a review and ranking of door knobs on the internet. I chose the school only because its business program complied with basic human rights, meaning less quantitative, meaning less maths, and no periodic table.

Ranking of universities will soon overtake cricket as the most corrupt sport. If there's a ranking of all university rankings, I'm sure QS would be right at the bottom of the heap. Any ranking that places Malaysian universities in the top 100 is suspect. For those who've had both local and overseas college experience, it's not too hard to compare and conclude. Half of the local professors are world champions on Malay history, Malay politics and tongkat ali, while our rice and fruit taste and texture have not improved since 1964. They're actually brilliant and first-rate professors. But they can't express, create and engage in productive ground-breaking research because the universities are run by the government that, until today, is still fighting for our country's independence from the British. NGOs with eponymous titles like Desak, Tibai, Gasak, Korap and so forth will be up in arms and accuse me of conspiring with Air Asia X to run down the entire Malay race. OK, Mr Ngo, can you name two professors, just two out of the 2365 professors in Malaysia? For all the tough talk, they can name only one: Prof. Ibrahim Ali.  

Remember in 2004 when University of Malaya (UM) was ranked 89th in the world, higher than Nottingham and Indiana? The university and the whole country went berserk. I could see flags with number 89 fluttering all over the campus, and the literature-loving vice chancellor (VC) had all the time to pen a poignant poem on this. A year later he returned to earth with a ranking of 169th. The reason? QS mistook the Chinese and Indian students in UM for students from China and India. I'm sure QS would rank Nilai University College ahead of Imperial College when they find out that 90% of daytime student population in Nilai are Nigerians and Chechens.  

I've lost count of how many rankings in the market now. Easily a dozen, maybe  more. US News, Forbes, BusinessWeek, the Economist, WSJ, Financial Times, Shanghai J T, Times Higher Education (THE), Princeton Review. And QS, hahaha, of course. Some only rank the business schools. Some only US or UK universities. All of them seem to be consistent on the top five or six (Harvard, Oxford), but beyond that it's pretty much free for all. Worse, some universities rise or drop twenty places in one year in the same rankings. A top twenty in US News is nowhere in THE and vice versa. No Malaysian universities are in Shanghai's top 500 (let's ask them apa lagi China mau?). My school is no longer in the top 40. Now you know why I'm angry. The idea of ranking universities annually is plain bollocks. Universities are not flatscreens or androids. Their reputation and brand were built by the likes of Thomas Jefferson and Isaac Newton over 300 years.

Men are born to like lists and rankings, for the simple reason that lists read easier and sexier than The Lord of The Rings. So we have Fortune 500. Group of Eight. Gang of Four. Seven Sisters. Double mastectomy. The danger is that some people become morbidly obsessed with rankings. University of Malaya VC's only known KPI now is to get the university into the top 100 in the world before 2090. When I was in Petronas, we called this smart objective because it comes with numbers, time and plenty of stress. Incidentally Petronas has just appointed a hard-driving former VP with an honorary doctorate as VC of its prized university (UTP) to gatecrash the world rankings. QS ranks UTP outside the top 200 in Asia. With a joke location and Yiddish name like Tronoh, it can only be uphill. Should we learn from Singapore? The guys at National University of Singapore (ranked 2nd in Asia by QS) just laughed off the university's perennially high ranking. It's a joke, of course. The Chinese government of Singapore get its way with one simple doctrine. What they want they buy: water, maids, submarines, warships, islands, KTM.

There's no way out. Rankings are here for the long haul. BusinessWeek has already expanded with a ranking of business schools for those who sleep in class (I'm serious). Princeton Review has its annual rankings of schools for lesbians, party goers and communists. I heard Platts (an oil and gas trade publication) is seriously considering its own university rankings. With  a long experience in rigging oil prices for Shell and BP, it looks like a natural extension. Petronas is a loyal and high-value Platts' customer with a hundred-year subscription to all its extortionate oil publications. There's certainly hope for UTP.






 

                  

Election Reflection

It's over now, I mean the election, just in case you're still holding your breath for EC's announcement on the date. Now is one dandy time to pause, ponder and reflect.

I know you're already overwhelmed by the relentless torrents of thoughts, theories and verdicts from part-time political pundits and psephologists, mostly struggling professors madya from local universities ranked 1456th, 1396th and 1354th in the latest world university rankings. All are mediocre except for a few who look clever and even Scottish (eg Karim, Farish, Noh Omar). Their narratives are decidedly lazy and agricultural. They pontificated that BN needed both urban and rural support to secure a two-thirds majority. I mean, it's like saying Indonesian maids are from Indonesia.

With plenty of time to burn, I've decided to weigh in. I pored over and rummaged through the numbers to make some sense of the election outcome and dynamics. No surprise that all the political analysts are biased, innumerate and, in the process, missed the more relevant points. So what can we really draw from the just-concluded election? Plenty to learn and take away if we're not lazy. For a  change, let's use the much-maligned Question and Answer (Q and A) format:

Q.Who won the election?
A. PR. Anything else is just gossip.

Q. But why does BN, not PR, get to form the government? So unfair.
A. Let's not mistake our election for a beauty contest, where the winner gets to rule for a year, visit places, or marry Hugh Hefner for two weeks. According to an expert in criminal law, we're adopting an archaic Anglo-Saxon democratic model called First In, First Out, quite similar to the trick used by the Welsh accrual accounting. It's devilishly simple: in any election, the party that comes first is out. This system differs slightly from the original democratic notion conceived by Plato or Pluto or some one-name Greek geek about 2500 before Greek bankruptcy. Most modern democracies like Zimbabwe, North Korea etc have long rejected this idea, more so now that Greece is part of Germany. Whichever way you look at it, BN, quite rightly, should form the government.

Q. Who's the best performer?
A. Consensus is a tie between Nurul Izzah and Taib Mahmud (and Taib's wife, don't forget). Nurul Izzah for jailbreaking the BN juggernaut. Taib for beating back PR and the other PR (guess). The less romantic plump for Teresa Kok, who racked up the biggest majority. She polled 61,500 votes, about 50% more than what PR had expected. This is all daft. Because the biggest winner is actually Zulkifli Noordin. PKR had expected him to get only one vote but he managed a massive 38,080. It's 3,807,900% more than expected. Take that, Teresa.

Q. Based on the election, is it safe to say that Khalid Ibrahim is the best living politician today?
A. I'm not sure about safe, but Khalid Ibrahim, Selangor MB, is definitely the best politician today. How? By not being a politician, that's how. For the past five years he's been banging his head on his transformation agenda: free water, free sand, and plastics-free Saturdays. In between, he mumbles and exudes the very charisma of a three-pin plug. People just fell for this refreshing, working-class, crony-is-cissy style. And how he blew away and left BN for dead on the night. 

Q. So there's a fraud?
A. What fraud? Our competent EC has just spent RM400 million of your good money to make sure that the election isn't another gold-bar multi-level scam. The guy at the polling station tallied my IC against his register and then screamed my name so loudly that the whole Kg Pandan knew I wasn't an Indon phantom. No fraud. Not a chance.

Q. Chinese Tsunami?
A. Both "Chinese" and "Tsunami" are overrated and overused terms, up there with verbal bores like transformation, gerrymandering, lol, samsung, Victoria Beckham. They've been given more credit than what they remotely deserve. And they're not even English to start with. Tsunami is, you know it, Japanese, Chinese is, well, Chinese. Japanese and Chinese are technically still at war (the siege of Manchuria hasn't formally ended). When did the last time you saw a Chinese speak to a Japanese? Exactly. So any expression containing both Japanese and Chinese words is immediately hilarious and can't be taken too seriously.

Q. Why couldn't BN do better? Where's the tipping point? Who's at fault? Will this repeat?
A. Man, I'm out of breath. There's just too many to pinpoint. Cows, videos, ambiga. But the feather that broke the camel's back was the submarines. Not one, but two. Maybe more, I don't know. This is unfortunate because Malaysia is historically a maritime nation (remember Parameswara, Hang Li Po, Sir Francis Drake?), but Malaysians are, genetically, scared of submarines. I watched submarine flicks U571, K19 and KL Gangster half-way and almost blacked out with claustrophobia. Naturally people won't vote anybody who's out to scare them.

Q. PR's popular vote was about 51%. Why wasn't it possible for PR to get more, like 60%?
A. So obvious. It's due to DAP's poor performance. The party's support among the Chinese was low. Surprise? Let's look at some Chinese-heavy seats (i.e 90% of voters are Chinese) where DAP won big-time. Let's assume same voter turnout across all races and let's assume (conservatively) that DAP got its votes only from Chinese voters and let's also assume that I'm right. In Seputeh, 97% of the Chinese voted DAP. What? Only 97%? This is terribly low compared to, say, 100%.  In Mengelembu, it's mere 92%. It's disastrous 82% in Kuching. I can go on but the point is made: the Chinese don't support DAP. Now you see how I'm sharper than all those professors madya and those Scottish lookers combined (hahahaha).                


 

          

Election, At Last

 

So I was wrong. There's going to be an election after all. And it's next month, not in 2019. From now until the election day, our caring PM is also a caretaker PM. He's about half-way into proclaiming the dissolution of the parliament when the mainstream media (meaning Utusan Malaysia) and the alternative media (also Utusan Malaysia) went into orgasmic overdrive, declaring that Selangor and Sabah will soon be part of Malaysia. Who can blame them. They've been waiting for this moment since 2008, the last election. You won't find a country more captivated and consumed in election fever. That Malaysia and Malaria rhyme so well is no coincidence. Nothing is done without a stench of electioneering. Kelantan will transform from poor to very poor now that politics has overtaken batik as the biggest cottage industry. Believe it or not, this is the 13th general election, and our election process has been massively transformed. With the use of the ink, we're now on par with Iraq and well ahead of the Ivory Coast.

If you watch only TV3, you'd be led to believe that it's going to be a cakewalk for BN because if BN candidates lose, BN-friendly candidates will win. But if you add up all the cash bonanza, it looks tighter than Barca vs Real. With sentiments so finely balanced, there's all to play for. Thanks to EC and EC bashers, election will be more fun. They're doing away with nomination protests. This will allow candidates who can't spell their names to still contest, campaign and run down their opponents. Of course, we need more tweaks if we're really serious about benchmarking against election dreamlands like New Zealand, Denmark etc.

A 94-year grandmother is contesting to protect polygamy. Problem is, there's no age limit in Malaysia, unlike North Korea, where there's restriction on age and everything else. Horny granny aside, the sight of an 80-something icon and firebrand being towed around on the campaign trail is hard to stomach. I know about some US judges and senators who retired after 90 and how they appointed George Bush, legalized Elton John's marriage and reinstated slavery. I always believe that a physically weak leader (political or spiritual) is intellectually suspect. No, I'm not calling for a candidate who runs Boston marathon. But a candidate who can at least walk without help, think clearly and talk in plain Malay language without the need for Malay subtitles.  


It's well-documented that opposition parties either don't get enough airtime or don't get airtime. I've no problem with this because all the TV and radio stations belong to either the government or businessmen scared of the government. Fair enough. People have to eat. But why not make it official, I mean legislate a law, or even amend the constitution, to disallow opposition parties from using TV and radio. With the law, anybody even remotely related to the opposition can't be seen within 10 km of any TV or radio station. Draconian, yes, but it's a rule or law that's understood by everybody, just like running red lights or the advantage rule in football. With this simple regulation, nobody will complain, certainly not the ruling party.

This election is already spinning into a melee of manifestos. This is, of course, a sign of political maturity. And mockery. One manifesto contains 120 vague pledges or promises, and each promise has another 120 vague sub-promises with even more vague-vague sub-sub-promises, with suspicious words like kroni, sisipan, mapan, iltizam thrown in to confuse and upset the average readers like you. When you're just about to get the hang of the whole thing, another 100 additional vague promises are added. This is Suarez-style daylight trickery. Why not limit any manifesto to just one page and ten promises max using basic numbers and clear language like tidur, nasi, ayam, hutang, sekolah, mydin, astro. This way it's easier to determine which party might bankrupt the country faster.


In every election, single mothers and artistes are singled out for goodies. This election they get even more. I'm a Petronas retiree and technically not an artiste, so I don't get anything even though Petronas and I have paid billions of ringgit in income tax. I'd propose that  all Petronas retirees be reclassified as artistes, or even single mothers for all I care. This way, I'll get to share the goodies. Grocery discounts, insurance, free medical, low-cost real estate, subsidized TV serials, low-quality TV serials, you name it. But how can a Petronas retiree be deemed an artiste or single mother? Easy. Look up the law. Pull up any contract or agreement and read: male gender is female gender, plural also means singular. A court in Canada even ruled that a horse is indeed a bird. So why can't a Petronas retiree be an artiste or a single mother?

If I want to vote, I'll have travel to Kg Pandan to vote. I lived in the area in the early 80s, and I haven't changed my polling address. One candidate there is an ex-Petronas. We've never met but I heard he's a rising star, a Senior Manager at the age of 27, a chartered accountant of England and Wales, an engineer, an MCKK old boy. Breathtaking. Can you be more educated than that? At this rate, he should become a GM at 30, VP at 35, and burn out at 39. Somehow he decided to quit and write a clever farewell missive, and went on to become a political mastermind or something and, once again, a rising star. Since his widely celebrated revelation of financial/comical scandals and skullduggery in high places, political attack dogs have made valiant attempts to frame his "actual" reasons for leaving Petronas. I think there's nothing sinister. He just didn't want to be a Petronas VP, that's all.

Hong Kong Hangover

 

When I was holing up at the 29th floor of Petronas Twin Towers way back in 2004, I came to know an English expert named Mike Hessien. No, he didn't teach English, he was an expert on lubricants and he was born somewhere in England, which makes him English. He wasn't a vice-president but he seemed to know a lot about lubes. My knowledge on lubes was just enough to trigger the regular oil change for my car, but we hit off immediately when we discovered that we indeed had something in common: he loves Manchester United, I hate Manchester United. He'd been moving around a good bit and he recounted his first time in Hong Kong: "I've never seen so many Chinese in my life". Not exactly a heart-lifting sentiment, but it's nothing more than what you could expect out of a fiercely technical guy. There's no context to what he said. He meant just that.  

I was in Hong Kong for four days (in 14 March, out 18 March). When I stepped out of the Airport Express at the Hong Kong central station, Mike's words rang out. I'd never seen so many Chinese in my entire life. (I turned 60 just last month). It's one and half Chinese person per square foot, give and take. But what do you expect? This is Hong Kong, part of China. China, Chinese. Fair enough, but coming from Malaysia, you'd expect something more cosmopolitan and less monochromic. You'd expect everywhere to be just like KL or KLCC, with Indonesians, Nepalese, Nigerians adding colour to the standard fare of Melayu, Chinese and Kelantanese.

Unless you're an inhabitant of faraway Norway, Hong Kong shouldn't evoke any touristic mystique. Last year my neighbour went to Hong Kong just to eat. I happen to live in USJ. We have a bustling commercial hotbed called Taipan, which is actually Kowloon in all but name. So why bother? Honestly, my first choice was Rome or Rio, but Tony's airbuses don't fly to these far-flung places, not while Tony's busy watching his QPR investment melting into a misadventure. Air Asia is cheap, but choice is thin. They fly only to Hong Kong and Nanning. No contest there. Nanning sounds like a gerund and probably is. So Nanning is out.

I'm hardly half-way through and you already think that Hong Kong is humdrum. And crowded, colourless with ugly red taxis, it didn't fire my imagination, and so on. You're only right about crowded and taxis. Hong Kong is a worthwhile experience. Believe me.

For a start, I went to Hong Kong with my wife, two girls, son, daughter-in-law, and, this is the exciting part, my granddaughter. Diana was 5 months old, and people at this age are less than subtle in expressing their feelings and ideas. (I could see fellow fliers holding their breath at the sight of our little screamer). But I can tell you now that flying with granddaughter beats flying with bosses any day.

Just a bit of an introduction to Hong Kong for my brothers/sisters-in-law who still think Ottawa is in Japan. Hong Kong is made up mainly of Hong Kong island and Kowloon, geographically just like Penang and Seberang Prai. Hong Kong and Penang are, of course, politically different: Hong Kong government is headed by a Chief Executive (a Chinese), Penang government is led by a Chief Minister (a Chinese).    

One of the main draws and lures of tourist hotspots like Paris, New York, London, Ottawa  is a charming Chinatown. Some, like Melbourne, have Chinatowns, Chinese mayors, Chinese laundries and Chinese launderers. This is where Hong Kong loses out. There's no Chinatown in Hong Kong. The whole town is Chinatown.

My picks of pleasant surprises and hidden gems: 

1. JJ Hotel.

When I said JJ Hotel, the taxi driver joked:  JW? Gay driver! Hong Kong has plenty of horror hotels, but not JJ. This Tripadvisor-rated hotel is clean and friendly with enough space to breathe and talk. And free and fast wifi to boot. If you can't afford JW, try JJ. Located in Wan Chai area, it's ten minutes to a subway (MTR) station and you can walk to Causeway Bay, Hong Kong's boomtown. On our trip to Stanley Market, we'd to take the MTR at Wan Chai and, after seven stations, get off at Chai Wan. Wan Chai, Chai Wan, priceless. I can think of Tokyo, Kyoto for a parallel. Or goreng pisang, pisang goreng. Hahaha 

2. Dim Sum at Wan Chai Mosque

I'd read about the dim sum on travel blogs, but we discovered the mosque only on the third day. It's just 100 metres from JJ. The canteen served halal food, and the dim sum was the standout. Sublime stuff. It's Sunday, and the place was buzzing with off-duty Indonesian maids in bright tudung, who came here to meet, eat and pray. There's a plaque from Astro, whose crew had visited this canteen three times for their food program. Why three times? Because Astro likes to repeat its programs. The mosque is six-floor, clean, well-kept, with notices in perfect English (unlike our public university websites). Next day, I came here again with wife at 3 pm for zohor and asar. And dim sum. The canteen was closed.

3. Macau (or Macao)

This gambling den and Portuguese relic isn't part of Hong Kong, but close enough. The one-hour ferry ride was pleasant, even with the hassle of immigration (four times) on both sides. There's an unmistakable old European feel, the buildings, road signs, windows, hanging flower pots, and the Portuguese egg tarts. It should make you wonder why the Portuguese hadn't built something like this when they had their chance in Melaka in 1500s. Were they busy fighting off hare-brained Hang Tuah and friends? All they've left us is Jonker Street and its pineapple tarts. But a walk through the famous and grandiose Venetian (a mixed hotel, mall, casino, canal, gondola) should nudge you right back to the modern-day Chinese mercantile grandstanding, show-off and, ahem, knock-offs.

4. Avenue of Stars

For those yearning for Bruce Lee, look no further. This is the place to savour the fists of fury -  in bronze. Avenue of Stars is Hong Kong's snappy answer to Hollywood's Walk Of Fame, complete with star-tributes to its very own movie pantheon. A whiff of nostalgia swept in when I stepped on stars of my schooldays favourites: Ti Lung, David Chiang, Wang Yu. Sadly nothing on Lo Lieh, another hero, who played the perennial villain. His final showdown with Wang Yu in "The Chinese Boxer" is more intense and artistic than Bruce slapstick. Anyway there's a star for Li Tit, not sure who but pretty name all the same. From the Avenue of Stars you can feast on the famous Hong Kong skyline, featured in serious spy movies (James Bond) and semi-serious spy spoofs (Johnny English).


5. Look, No Cats and Dogs

A sure pleaser, this one. Hong Kong's air maybe clogged, but ground level is spick and span. Roads and sidewalks are narrow without even a trace of phlegm. All toilets are free and cleaner than the tolled ones in London or Paris. KL? Don't ask. And no stray cats and dogs, not even one during my four days. Wonder what kept them off the streets. I'd stopped running on Subang Jaya roads for more than ten years now just to avoid crashing into pit bulls and pit-bull poos. I guess Hong Kong is corrupt-free which makes it phlegm-free.   

6. Ocean Park

I didn't go to Ocean Park. Ask Diana if you want to know.

          

Macau: We want egg tarts! We want egg tarts!

Time Square Hong Kong: When I Grow Up I want To Be Time Square New York

 Big Boss Bruce In Bronze Behind

 
  

We Can Smell Dim Sum From Here

A Healthy Hong Kong Man Showing Off His Daughter.

Wan Chai To Chai Wan to Stanley Park To Chai Wan To Wan Chai Makes Me Sleep

 

Nenek Geram Cucu.

I've Waited Here For Two Hours, And All I Get Is This Junk.

Nothing Wrong With Me. Something Wrong With My Glasses.

Ocean Park: I Didn't Go Because My Cholesterol Is Higher Than This Cable car

 Diana Makes Her Feelings Known: These Cheap Chinese Glasses Really Suck !

When I'm 64

Will you still need me,
Will you still feed me,
When I'm sixty-four. 
  
I turned 60 this morning. 60, not 64, but what the hell, I just have to quote those epic Beatles lines.

A milestone of sorts, but no fanfare or fireworks, only android-driven congratulatory messages from Telekom Malaysia, Digi, Senheng, and, you've to believe this, Umno Selangor. If anything, I know now whom to vote in the coming general election, if ever there's going to be one.

I share my birthday with Cristiano Ronaldo and Carlos Tevez, and the similarity, rather sadly, ends there. They're talented, young, good-looking, rich, famous, heavy-haired, Latin. I'm Kelantanese. The contrast almost makes me sick. My only revenge is that these guys do have some serious problems: drinking, drugs, women, contracts, taxes, violent managers, and team-mates waiting for the half-chance to break their legs. I only have high cholesterol. I know you'd still choose Cristiano. 

Unless you're a palaeontologist, sixty years is a long time. To give you a fair idea, it's longer than a mid-season Wigan vs West Ham. I spent half of that time in Petronas. If I could turn back the clock and restart, I'd probably end up working............ 30 years in Petronas ! Yes, I'm that boring. Thing is, I just can't warm to the idea of working at Felcra, Hong Leong, Puspakom. Just examples, nothing against these companies. It's alright if you're already caught in any of them. Petronas has always been the gold standard,  so there's no motivation to switch even in another (hypothetical) life. Whether Petronas would still take me in if it could go back isn't the subject of this discussion.

I've never celebrated my birthday. No, I'm not superstitious or phobic or sick. On the contrary, I think birthday is one of the biggest concepts in the brief history of human thinking, up there with Natural Selection and Baltic Dry Index. I'm just indifferent to birthdays, exactly the way some of you are indifferent to tomatoes, dragon fruits, Indons, vice-presidents, and so on. I did get occasional birthday gifts, though, from my two girls: a hand-drawn card with a funny dad caption, a Hallmark card with a funny dad caption, a mug with a funny dad caption, a plain Timberland tee.

With my bad birthday attitude, you can only expect that each and every one of my birthdays to be a non-event.  You're right. Each and every one except my 55th. I'd to retire on my 55th birthday, so I'd to wait and watch for it because if I work beyond my 55th birthday I won't get paid even though Petronas is the richest company in the country. My co-workers reminded me by throwing a birthday bash (just cake and Coke actually). It's my last birthday in office, so it's the least they could do. It's all very well and they're seeing the back of me but a few days later I was back on contract. The next birthday, I was still in office but nobody said anything. It slipped right past me the way it had always been for 54 years: a non-event.

Now that I'm 60, what will change? Can't think of anything right now. Maybe I'm now more qualified or entitled as a senior citizen. It's downright comical how senior citizens are being pushed around in this caring and cash-rich country. When you hit 55 you're officially a senior citizen and you can enter Penang Bridge marathon as a veteran and you can legally beat the long queue to renew your passports. But the bloody LRT will only allow you discounts when you're 60 and they will also allow you to compete with Nigerian students for your priority seats. Hospitals? You're only priority if you're 65, and not dead.   





 

       

     

The Day I Saw Obama

It's a cloudless Friday afternoon, 16 June 2006, when I saw Obama, in Evanston, outside Chicago. He didn't notice me, of course, but there he was, in the flesh, walking a mere 20 metres out on his way up the stage at Ryan Field to address graduates and parents at Northwestern University's 148th commencement. My eldest was in the graduating Class of 2006. As fate would have it, my camera ran out of batteries, so I couldn't snap anything to prove this to you.

Obama needs no batteries because he's a born orator. He speaks from the heart. And he must've picked up some skills during his early schooldays in Jakarta, where almost everyone speaks and double-speaks. His speech was short and straight, but it's hard not to be inspired:

"Challenge yourself. Take some risks in your life. Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. And it will leave you unfullfilled" 

A pretty aphorism and a handsome excuse for driving a preve and not a porsche. Man, this guy is smooth. I'd barely heard of Barack Obama then, but I was already impressed.  He'd just been elected a US senator with some 65% vote. What struck me wasn't so much the "challenge yourself" mantra. I'd heard it repeated to death in all my thirty years at Petronas. It's the "poverty of ambition" and "asks too little of yourself" bit that I fell for. Not its substance, but the elegance. Pure Chicago and massively original. A lot fresher than the dreaded and Balotelli-ugly "deliverables" and "stretch targets".

True to his every word, Obama went on to become US President, not once, but twice, earning a miserly $400K a year. This is, let's face it, the ultimate "walk the talk". He'd have earned more than that had he joined Petronas and become a vice president. But that would leave him unfulfilled.

Now back to my eldest. As a graduating student, he's seated close to the stage and had a plum view of Obama, but I wasn't sure whether he's listening to him at all. He's probably too busy pinching himself just to be doubly sure that this graduation gig wasn't a dream or another Nigerian hoax. The ghost of the past four years was still looming large. Northwestern, decidedly, isn't Universiti Malaysia Kelantan.

Obama didn't join Petronas, you know that. But my eldest did,  if you want to know.

My Makkah Miracles

It's two years ago this month that we were in Makkah to perform the haj. It's a journey like no other. A time for conscience and contemplation. And a late, late honeymoon. The memory lingers as the idle mind succumbs to flashbacks. Two years on, the heady scenes and sounds are still stirring the senses. Everyone came back with tales of miracle moments. I'll tell you my six:

1. Poetry Meets Poetry.

Ya Allah, jadikanlah cahaya pada hatiku,
cahaya pada lidahku,
cahaya pada telingaku,
cahaya pada mataku,
cahaya dari belakangku,
cahaya dari hadapanku,
cahaya dari atasku,
cahaya dari bawahku.
Ya Allah, kurniakanlah kepadaku cahaya.

No, it's not a puisi mistik from Latiff Mohidin. It's a beautiful doa recited (in Arabic) as we approached Masjidil Haram. My first sight of the grand mosque froze me on my tracks. How could you not be consumed by this iconic celebration of Islam. The symmetrical grey lines, monochromic mosaic walls and rhyming motifs collided and colluded to render an aura of understated majesty and grandeur. The mosque is the ultimate poetry.

2. The Lady and the Lullaby

Sai'e seems second fiddle to the depth and intensity of tawaf. It was supposed to be a short, straight walk-trot of about 400 m, back and forth, six times, in a covered and climate-controlled pathway. Routine enough until things took a poignant turn as the mind conjured up visions of the lady and her infant, stricken with untold panic and fear, flailing back and forth, wailing for water in the scorching sands. Divine trials break the realm of reason. One of the doas for the Sai'e circuits brought pangs of nostalgia. The first time I heard these obscure lines was about 50 years ago. Mother used to serenade it to lull little brother to sleep. I could almost catch her flawless pitch chorusing as I recited the doa. So overcome, I broke down.

3. Rapping at Arafah

Wukuf was truly climactic, and the midday khutbah was its cusp. The sweeping scene of millions in white ihram flecking the barren Arafah landscape took my breath away. Nothing was more humbling as chiefs and chauffeurs mustered on equal terms. No paychecks and perks here, only faith, penance and surrender. The second half of the khutbah sent me into raptures as the adzan came on. The khutbah and the adzan overlapped in an Eminemesque rap as the mind slipped into half-trance, losing myself deep in the moment.


angin panas di luar khemah
menolak kita ke pinggir ingatan
lalu membakar dosa kita
maka kita pun terpegun
dan menatap dengan diam
( From award-winning "Wukuf" by Wan A Rafar, 1983)

4. Mudzalifah and  Million Lights.

It was lepak time. And why not. From Arafah to Mina after Wukuf, it's a mandatory break (Mabit) at the plains of Mudzalifah after sundown at least for one heart-beat long. Off season, Mudzalifah was a flat wasteland with no visible vegetation, no sheds, no rain, not a thing. Imagine the epic transformation from zero to three million souls converging enmasse in half-darkness for the pause. Lights flickered for miles and miles out, as far as the eyes could take. Sheer pleasure and spectacle. Thanks to Arab efficiency, one heart-beat was actually four hours.

5. The Long March: Mina to Makkah

We chose to walk back from Mina to Makkah after we're done with the devil. It's cool, temperate climate as we joined other like-minded devil-bashers and quickly melted into a motley, cosmopolitan crowd marching toward Makkah. The long flowing line of pilgrims literally linked Mina with Makkah, reprising  the physical and emotional "ordeal" of the early haj travellers without the combustion engines to ferry them around. Inspired and emboldened, we hit Makkah in no time and valiantly pressed on with tawaf and saie to complete our haj. We logged almost 20 km that day. No pain, all gain, we rewarded ourselves with a hefty briyani.

6. The Sheikh Sang


It was Subuh prayer on 20 November. The imam's rendition gave me goosebumps. What a way to vocalize God's verses: with power and pace. I'd heard the bluesy Al Sudais and Al Juhany, but this guy was different. He rocked! I wished he'd just go on and on as he sweetly muscled his way, shifting the tune and lifting the tone to drive the message home. He came on again for Subuh the next day with a moving recitation of the familiar Surah Al Munafiqun. And again for Maghrib on 27 November. Back home I googled him: Sheikh Khalid Al Ghamdi, one of the younger Makkah imams. Listen to his delivery of Surah Ale Imran on 24 July 2011 on YouTube. Add him to your listless playlists.