The Curious Case of Non-Random Shootings

35 shootings in four months. Ten shootings in seven days. Four straight shootings in 26 hours. No, I'm not talking about cruelty in Malay film industry. I'm talking about our own safety in our own country. I've said it many times, and I'm going to say it again, and you may want to repeat after me: This country is going to the dogs.

You'd normally rely on the government to somehow do the right thing in chaos and crisis, like when our country was attacked by currency pirates, Sulu pirates, Lee Kuan Yew. But now the leadership appears to be all at sea. I know it's difficult to come around after a bruising election, but I'm sure the government is game enough to conjure up something sensible to calm the nerves.

But this time around, the government just flailed on with some foggy statements and feeble gestures to quell the widespread fears and disquiet. Butt of the blame fell squarely on the repeal of the Emergency Ordinance, although the connection is, at best, circumstantial. The IGP reassured us that all victims were targets, meaning all shootings were not random or drive-by types, meaning we're not tailspinning into downtown Detroit. Nobody is actually celebrating. A shooting is a shooting, like fat is fat.

Listen to TV3. Funny how they'd proudly report that cases are being investigated under kanun keseksaan dalam kurungan or something, which makes it all appear like somebody's pet cat has been abused. Call it kanun or lanun for all I care, please catch the culprits now.

Less funny was the move to promote five very senior police officers to a newly created rank of senior deputy or deputy senior something, with better pay, perks and all, while the bloodshed went on and on. I'm sure these good officers wouldn't mind deferring their promotion to a quieter time, or at least when one or two hotshots are nabbed.

But the most bizarre of all was the statistics bandied about by the home minister in Mingguan Malaysia, itself no less bizarre. The minister alleged that EO abolition had freed 2,600 criminals. These criminals each has 10 right-hand men, who in turn have another 10 right-hand men each. This elegant snowball effect gives us a staggering total of 260,000 criminals on the run and lurking in your neighbourhood. But why stop at 260,000? How about their cousins, classmates, clients, and sundry sympathizers? That's another 10 each, and the total now is 2.6 million, more than 10% of the population. The minister is a PhD, so he can't be wrong. My only hope left is that, since it's Mingguan Malaysia, the minister has been grossly misquoted. He meant right-handed men, not right-hand men. So it's only 2600 criminals, the rest are just right-handed men, like you and me.

The statements and statistics are nothing more than a clever misdirection. Serious crimes are surging, with or without EO, ETP, ECER, EBITDA and other abbreviations. What's changed is the MO, another abbreviation. It's strange that nobody has questioned why the shootings spiked after the election. Is this pure coincidence? Or the criminals are partly motivated by the chance to taunt and thumb their nose at the 47% government and the tough-talking home minister. Who knows. You might get a PhD if you could, with clever statistics, prove this right or wrong.

It's a sad, sad situation. Crime has declined sharply across the civilized world in spite of the deep recession. While committing crime is out of fashion everywhere, it's all vogue here. Nobody has explicitly blamed the police, apart from mild insinuation from DAP.  I wouldn't want to upset anybody who carries a gun. But face the facts. 35 suspects and none was caught. One had his film-star footage posted across all media. It's a no-brainer that the main deterrent to crime is the fear of being caught. But what's there to fear if nobody gets caught? Of course, the usual excuses just rolled in, inadequate police numbers, rampant gun-running, Indian gangster movies, red bean army.

To be fair, how far should the police go if people are hell-bent on bashing each other. At the core is the all-round culture and climate of corruption, law-breaking and other wrong-doings. Commercial extortion is rising and hiding behind the outrageous price of food and fruits, data plans, astro packages, medical degrees, check-in luggage, nasi arab, the list is long. Violent crimes and confrontations should blend in quite nicely.

There's no sign of a breather. While I'm writing this the tally has increased to 37 with a couple of shootings reported yesterday. And police made a breakthrough finally when they arrested and charged......a taxi driver. No big deal, half of the taxi drivers on the road should be arrested and charged anyway. The government isn't any closer to nailing the problem. Nobody has a clue. Nobody except Nancy Shukri. The minister suspects the shootings are mostly gangland revenge perpetrated by ex-EO inmates. Clever girl. And she's dead set on replacing EO with another preventive law (maybe XXL or another suitable abbreviation being worked out in a lab in Putrajaya). DAP reacted by appointing Teresa Kok to look into this. PKR should let Elizabeth Wong enter the fray. Another turf war is brewing up.

While waiting for Nancy and Teresa, I think we should immediately stop the on-going shooting of KL Gangster 3. Nobody has yet proved any causal link between the KL Gangster shootings and the current spate of shootings. But, as Ronald Reagan has wisely reasoned out, why take the chance?



           

              
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The Project

 

One of the known pleasures of retirement is the unfettered freedom of pursuing a passion (assuming your job is not a passion). What immediately comes to mind is finishing off all the 200 business books you bought on the run at airports since 1985. But, seriously, the list of pursuits can be long and demanding, ranging from safe ones like visiting relatives to chancy ones like visiting Somalia.  In my case, I've a backlog of untouched "The Economist" magazines dating back to 2009, about 150 copies in all. Never mind the stacks of unopened cds and dvds with wacky titles like "Boards of Canada" (Pop music, not shale gas regulators) and plot-spoilers like "The Assassination of Jesse James by the coward Robert Ford" (Brad Pitt flick). You've to be fully retired and stress-free to be turned on.

 

The day after I left Petronas for good in 2009, I sat down and read. In no time I found myself collapsing into a reading binge, or binge reading, you choose. I read, read, read, read, days on end. I tore open the wraps like a hungry wolf, downing two or three copies of the cold magazines in one helping. I had something like 126 more copies to go when I happened upon a feature on aging: a scientific study has revealed that degradation of memory power and thinking skills late in life can be prevented by regular sudoku, ballroom dancing and memorizing. I can accept sudoku and, grudgingly, ballroom dancing, but memorizing? A paradox of sorts. If you lose your memory, you've to memorize. So counter-intuitive, it's like, if you lose your appetite, you should eat more. What should be memorized? High on the recommend list was poems, song lyrics and War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy.

I was actually struggling with a failing mind. Not mine, but my father's. We're losing him. His memory was patchy and he lived in lapses. He'd lost most, if not all, sense of proportion. Every action or inaction was flawed. Once he drifted out of my sister's home in PJ and I'd to recover him at the Sungai Way police station when he couldn't find his way back. A kind cabbie had sent him there when my old man flagged him for direction to Kg Laut, his home in Kelantan. Looking at him, I could almost feel all the emptiness. It's too late for him to memorize poems.

Maybe it's about time for me. I was already doing a lot of reading. It's just one additional step. Instead of read and read, it's read and read and retain. Reading the pompous and ponderous magazine is tough enough as it is, now I've to memorize it, just to keep my mind in operating condition. Please, Petronas, give me back my job and any bad boss. I don't want to be the first and the only person to memorize 150 issues of the Economist. I took a while to gather myself and finally settle for poetry, as recommended by the dreaded study. Poems are certainly prettier and friendlier. Some are devilishly easy to memorize, they come in ten lines of one gorgeous word per line. Example: Sepi, Sepi, Sepi. So easy. There's a Malay masterpiece with half-page of binary glory: "tak, tung, tak, tung". Still it all looked wishful and daunting as I couldn't bring myself to memorizing anything bigger than grocery lists. I was flicking through an old favourite "sajak-sajak pendatang" by Muhammad Hj Salleh when it suddenly dawned: why not memorize the "ultimate poetry", the Quran?

The start was slow and painful. Actually I didn't even know where to start. According to Obama, I was showing all the symptoms of poverty of ambition.  Al Fatifah is cakewalk, then comes Surah Al Baqarah, a page turner (45 pages, 700 lines) in classic Arabic. No pictures, no pie charts. Lucky thing I'd the benefit of a training on lateral thinking by the thinking maestro Edward de Bono. Why follow the flow? I could start from the end and memorize shorter and snappy surah first. It should be easier and more motivating this way.

Not so fast. The going was still heavy, with the usual dithering and pussyfooting. I knew too well that a project without timeline and stiff fines will get delayed. The only projects that finish early are those with toll booths. In my case what's needed was probably a little something that could push the plot forward, so to speak. A turning point, or  the killer nudge.

It came. I was doing my haj in November 2010 and my "project" bore the brunt due to tight schedule, rude crowds, noise, dust, strange food, huge Nigerians, and other excuses. Somehow in the morning of 10 November, after days of stalling, I finally managed to ace Surah Al Bayyinah (The Proof, eight verses, eight lines). That very evening, during the maghrib prayer, the grand imam came on and recited loud and clear.......Al Bayyinah. God, what's this. The odds of this happening are something like 1 in 1200, or less than 0.1%. This might well be pure coincidence or statistical quirk, but it's all the proof I needed. I was, to say the least, overjoyed, inspired and all fired up to push on. No targets, no timeline.

What's the point of all this, you wonder. Let's be clear, I'm not trying to compete with Ustaz Haslin Bollywood. Or trying to show off or something. Thing is, there's nothing to show or shout about. People memorize the whole Quran at twelve or earlier in less than two years. I started at 57. I'm into the 28th juzuk after two and a half years. Don't panic. I started from the back, remember. So it's only my third juzuk, about 45 pages, only 7% of the whole Book. If I soldier on at this santai speed, I'll be done earliest in 2041, still ahead of Kajang-KL LRT line. No, that's grandiose. Seriously, I'll be more than happy with 20%.

Memorizing is fun. This is what I want to pass on. You've to believe me. You should try it today. Just do it anywhere: traffic jams, LRT, Firefly flights, performance meetings, Malaysian Super League games. Put on your Beats By Dr Dre knock-offs for style and impact. You'll get high and plenty of kicks and chemical reaction at the end of every page you memorize. You'll waltz your way through a tapestry of God's graceful words and verses, flowing prose and rhyming lines. No pain here, only pure pleasure. Along the way, you'll pick up Arabic, and, if you're talented enough, you could create your own signature tune. Or two tunes, an uptempo for daytime traffic and slower one for romantic nights. Hit a few bars to calm down your eager husbands. My tone is dead flat day and night, prompting friends to suggest that it's good enough for reading weather forecasts. 

Ah, my old man. He passed away in his sleep early this year. I owe him everything. I'm sure he likes what I'm doing.

    

    

    

(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.