Friday, August 29, 2008
deviant lives
many years ago i joined a group of people , a very small select group of young pondok students who were talibanistic in their outlook and thinking and in fact would certainly joined the taliban if they were in the taliban country of north western frontier of pakistan or afghanistan. these students were some of the most innocent and morally upright and idealistic young people i've ever met in my life. i did not know very much about any of these young boys except that they were sent by their parents to study in a pondok school far away from their birthplaces at very young age. cooped up all day long in small thatched roofed huts in a typical pondok school complex that you can still see scattered all over my home state(kelantan) and the southern thailand learning obscure and out of print religious tracts by rote . their religious leaders were the typical ultra fundamentalists completely removed from reality but fully satisfied with their own small world.
although i have no desire to live in this kind of cultish world it must be said that for some people this is a perfectly satisfactory life as it can be a self contained world where no modern life complexities intrude and creating havoc in mind and body. one good friend , a very modern man and a successful professional with a modern singaporean wife one day many years ago decided ok, that's it! sold everything, brought his whole family to one of these pondoks and spent their days learning obscure religious texts and praying most of the nights away. i used to visit him and asked why he did this. don't you find it boring to pray half the night away every night? and he simply answered, do you find it boring to breath every single minute of your life? and the argument stopped there. but quite recently i discovered that he has left the pondok after a big fall out with the amir . and not only that, he now explained that this amir is teaching ajaran sesat and he is determined to bring down this ustaz . so one day he went to discuss this with tuan guru nik aziz but within ten minutes was chased out by this venerable and astute pas politician . it turned out that this deviant amir is a staunch pas supporter and therefore could not be a deviant by definition...hmmmm.
and so, this ascetic friend who has not read newspapers or watched telivision for more than 15 years has now come back into the modern world with all its complexities again and discover the joys of internet and texting messages on the mobile . seems to enjoy it quite well. the last time i met him i was careful enough not to say that he has wasted his life and worse, his children and wife's but as they say, life moves on and on and on...
as for those young idealistic boys , i've not heard anything since those old and happy days except for two. one is now an imam somewhere and no doubt still living in his own small world. another seemed to come back to the real world and living quite a middle class life with a doctor wife somewhere in kl. how the hell he got hooked up with a doctor for a wife is a mystery to me. there's a lesson there somewhere as they say but i'm too stupid to discover what lessons can be learned from anything. but i try.
and so, as for lessons, that was precisely why i joined those boys in those days long ago. their amir , the leader is an interesting guy. a very bright young man who studied in a completely secular system in a university in the united kingdom and came back and worked as an engineer. but one day he basically threw his hands up and said oh fuck, this is not it...and moved somewhere to the middle east to study arabic and islamic studies. came back home, took his children out of public schools and self tought them himself and recruited some bright boys from nearby pondok to be his shall we say desciples. and so they learned all sort of obscure and esoteric things from him and this is the queer thing. one of the texts they studied was betrand russell's a history of western philosophy . and that was why i joined this group.
and so we had a very good time in our weekly study group arguing things like socrates and his disciples in the old greek days but we did not amount to anything at all. nobody went on to write anything or discover any new things or found any answers to anything from all those philosophers . we all get more confused by the complexities of life and the group gradually thinned out as people moved out and about and i too one day had to leave this innocent and probably demented group one day many years ago.
i have not met the amir since but on and off i got to hear news of him. soon after i left, the group kept on arguing the betrand russell's text for a while longer but one day the amir basically said oh fuck it...this isn't going to work out either , and came back to modern world again and joined a monster government linked company as one of the directors of something or other. worked here as a typical professional and one day basically exclaimed of fuck , this is not working either! and resigned and the last i heard of him is that he's frying noodles in a restaurant somewhere...
as for me, well i just mosey along as they say. i've long stopped to make sense of anything and just try to enjoy life as best as i can and like many of you that means sex sex and more sex, and craving for more and more money...and i can understand why some good people just throw their hands up in the air and say oh fuck...this is not it, i'm going to join the al qaeda ...
i deeply respect these people but i'm no hero! hell i'm a fucking coward. i'm just a flea in the scheme of things but funnily enough it feels quite good to be a flea...and so i try as best as i can to navigate my way in this difficult and complex world. i learned early that philosophy doesn't give satisfactory answers but i still feel we need some kind of metaphysical, philosophical and yes spiritual guidance in our moral and ethical lives. but one book is as good (or nonsensical) as another when it come to this kind of things and i've decided to give a try to follow the modern day philosopher and management guru, dilbert...and so i'm now reading dilbert future: thriving on stupidity in the 21st century...the world standard bible other wise known as wikipedia described the book like this:-
The Dilbert Future (1997) is a book published by Scott Adams as a satire of humanity that breaks the net motivations of humanity down into stupidity, selfishness, and "horniness", and presents various ideas for profiting from human nature.
and i think i'm getting some answers already and i don't like what i read. looks like in the future the world is getting into a lot worse condition than it is now.
page 107-108
PREDICTION 28
In the future, women will run the world in all democratic countries.
although i have no desire to live in this kind of cultish world it must be said that for some people this is a perfectly satisfactory life as it can be a self contained world where no modern life complexities intrude and creating havoc in mind and body. one good friend , a very modern man and a successful professional with a modern singaporean wife one day many years ago decided ok, that's it! sold everything, brought his whole family to one of these pondoks and spent their days learning obscure religious texts and praying most of the nights away. i used to visit him and asked why he did this. don't you find it boring to pray half the night away every night? and he simply answered, do you find it boring to breath every single minute of your life? and the argument stopped there. but quite recently i discovered that he has left the pondok after a big fall out with the amir . and not only that, he now explained that this amir is teaching ajaran sesat and he is determined to bring down this ustaz . so one day he went to discuss this with tuan guru nik aziz but within ten minutes was chased out by this venerable and astute pas politician . it turned out that this deviant amir is a staunch pas supporter and therefore could not be a deviant by definition...hmmmm.
and so, this ascetic friend who has not read newspapers or watched telivision for more than 15 years has now come back into the modern world with all its complexities again and discover the joys of internet and texting messages on the mobile . seems to enjoy it quite well. the last time i met him i was careful enough not to say that he has wasted his life and worse, his children and wife's but as they say, life moves on and on and on...
as for those young idealistic boys , i've not heard anything since those old and happy days except for two. one is now an imam somewhere and no doubt still living in his own small world. another seemed to come back to the real world and living quite a middle class life with a doctor wife somewhere in kl. how the hell he got hooked up with a doctor for a wife is a mystery to me. there's a lesson there somewhere as they say but i'm too stupid to discover what lessons can be learned from anything. but i try.
and so, as for lessons, that was precisely why i joined those boys in those days long ago. their amir , the leader is an interesting guy. a very bright young man who studied in a completely secular system in a university in the united kingdom and came back and worked as an engineer. but one day he basically threw his hands up and said oh fuck, this is not it...and moved somewhere to the middle east to study arabic and islamic studies. came back home, took his children out of public schools and self tought them himself and recruited some bright boys from nearby pondok to be his shall we say desciples. and so they learned all sort of obscure and esoteric things from him and this is the queer thing. one of the texts they studied was betrand russell's a history of western philosophy . and that was why i joined this group.
and so we had a very good time in our weekly study group arguing things like socrates and his disciples in the old greek days but we did not amount to anything at all. nobody went on to write anything or discover any new things or found any answers to anything from all those philosophers . we all get more confused by the complexities of life and the group gradually thinned out as people moved out and about and i too one day had to leave this innocent and probably demented group one day many years ago.
i have not met the amir since but on and off i got to hear news of him. soon after i left, the group kept on arguing the betrand russell's text for a while longer but one day the amir basically said oh fuck it...this isn't going to work out either , and came back to modern world again and joined a monster government linked company as one of the directors of something or other. worked here as a typical professional and one day basically exclaimed of fuck , this is not working either! and resigned and the last i heard of him is that he's frying noodles in a restaurant somewhere...
as for me, well i just mosey along as they say. i've long stopped to make sense of anything and just try to enjoy life as best as i can and like many of you that means sex sex and more sex, and craving for more and more money...and i can understand why some good people just throw their hands up in the air and say oh fuck...this is not it, i'm going to join the al qaeda ...
i deeply respect these people but i'm no hero! hell i'm a fucking coward. i'm just a flea in the scheme of things but funnily enough it feels quite good to be a flea...and so i try as best as i can to navigate my way in this difficult and complex world. i learned early that philosophy doesn't give satisfactory answers but i still feel we need some kind of metaphysical, philosophical and yes spiritual guidance in our moral and ethical lives. but one book is as good (or nonsensical) as another when it come to this kind of things and i've decided to give a try to follow the modern day philosopher and management guru, dilbert...and so i'm now reading dilbert future: thriving on stupidity in the 21st century...the world standard bible other wise known as wikipedia described the book like this:-
The Dilbert Future (1997) is a book published by Scott Adams as a satire of humanity that breaks the net motivations of humanity down into stupidity, selfishness, and "horniness", and presents various ideas for profiting from human nature.
and i think i'm getting some answers already and i don't like what i read. looks like in the future the world is getting into a lot worse condition than it is now.
page 107-108
PREDICTION 28
In the future, women will run the world in all democratic countries.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
at the beijing olympics
well, i've done it. watched the olympics and not just just any ridiculous events like synchronised swimming or beach volleyball and i don't mean the women artistic gymnastics either, but the athletic events in the bird's nest.
but the security measures! it would make the israelis proud. your bags were x-rayed everywhere, to enter the subways, the historic sites, and the stadiums. a small inconvenience but unavoidable under the circumstances. there is however one very big inconvenience. the chinese government apparently did not regulate the hotel rates. ALL the hotels abuse this olympic period by hiking up the rates by at least 4 times and in some cases even up to ten times or more. i had to pay USD150 per night for a crummy 3 star hotel and this is more expensive than the usual rates for the grand hyatt on wanfujing where i usually stayed (on business). and if you want to stay in any 5 star hotels be ready to pay USD1000 or more per night. but despite all that i was very lucky to get this hotel because you can hardly find any hotels on the internet with rates lower than USD250 and this hotel is just ten minutes walking distance away from the famous wangfujing st , the oxford street of beijing and only a few steps away from dengshikou subway station (exit A). (I'm writing this detail so that i will remember where to find it and use this hotel again if i were to come next time (on the cheap) - the usual rate is around usd40 per night). one good- or bad - thing about staying in a three star hotel like this (depending on your perspective) is that every night at odd hours you'll get a call from a lady asking if you need a good massa-G ...another interesting point is that , while normally you can't walk ten steps on wangfujing st without being accosted by both men and women fences asking if you "one lady? good massa-g..." this time around they seems to have dissapeared. either being cleared away by the police for this olympic season so as not to tarnish china image or they are sated with the randy aussie and russian visitors i could not ascertain...they certainly don't come and offer me any this time around...
just opposite is the 'water cube' where swimming events were held and the lucky spectators get to see micheal phelps created history by winning so many gold medals and breaking so many world records and became instant superstar here. i am not too impressed with this (water cube) although seems like it's a very popular photo opportunity site also for many spectators especially with it's attractive multi colored and ever changing color for each of the cell displayed at night . but it just looked like a huge dunlopillo to me and i keep on thinking about that anwar and the tilam caper everytime i looked at it.
as to the actual games itself i must confess i only had ONE ticket for the night event on the 18/8. even then i must consider myself very lucky. it is so damned hard to get a ticket even for chinese in beijing. they had to apply through internet and will only get it by lottery many months way back . there were only a few occassions when they open up to buy in public and i got this ticket because of my good chinese friend who several months back queued at six in the morning in front of the bank of china just to get the ticket for me.
the chinese , you gotta give it to them. they did everything right. hell, who but the chinese can shoo away the perpertual smog of beijing . when i was there the whole of this week, the air 
was pristine clean! just take a look at this picture.
was pristine clean! just take a look at this picture.i've never seen anything like it and i know because i've been to beijing for more than ten times in the last ten years. the sky was bluer than in kl. the local news proudly claimed that the air is now the cleanest in ten years. it is amazing but they did it. i'm impressed. and as a contrast to this, i'm in kunming now, a smaller city and considered as one of the better cities in china. known as the spring city or flower city but it seems a little dusty and grimy compared to bejing now. amazing! and not only that . the subway is the cheapest that i've ever experienced anywhere in the world. you just pay 2 yuan (approx 1 ringgit) to travel anywhere in beijing and not only that if you have an olympic ticket, you ride free of charge anytime and how many times you like. and like magic all the taxis are now spanking new hyundai elantras and for the first time i did not see those ubiquitous small beijing red colored taxis anywhere. and the drivers were honest. if you don't speak chinese just show him a small piece of paper with chinese scripts of the place where you want to go and you basically can close you eyes and sleep and you'll be delivered to where you want to be with correct fares.
but the security measures! it would make the israelis proud. your bags were x-rayed everywhere, to enter the subways, the historic sites, and the stadiums. a small inconvenience but unavoidable under the circumstances. there is however one very big inconvenience. the chinese government apparently did not regulate the hotel rates. ALL the hotels abuse this olympic period by hiking up the rates by at least 4 times and in some cases even up to ten times or more. i had to pay USD150 per night for a crummy 3 star hotel and this is more expensive than the usual rates for the grand hyatt on wanfujing where i usually stayed (on business). and if you want to stay in any 5 star hotels be ready to pay USD1000 or more per night. but despite all that i was very lucky to get this hotel because you can hardly find any hotels on the internet with rates lower than USD250 and this hotel is just ten minutes walking distance away from the famous wangfujing st , the oxford street of beijing and only a few steps away from dengshikou subway station (exit A). (I'm writing this detail so that i will remember where to find it and use this hotel again if i were to come next time (on the cheap) - the usual rate is around usd40 per night). one good- or bad - thing about staying in a three star hotel like this (depending on your perspective) is that every night at odd hours you'll get a call from a lady asking if you need a good massa-G ...another interesting point is that , while normally you can't walk ten steps on wangfujing st without being accosted by both men and women fences asking if you "one lady? good massa-g..." this time around they seems to have dissapeared. either being cleared away by the police for this olympic season so as not to tarnish china image or they are sated with the randy aussie and russian visitors i could not ascertain...they certainly don't come and offer me any this time around...
but enough of that. and back to the olympics per se. and it's true what they say. the olympic complex on the olympic green is impressive. the stadium which everybody now calls 'bird nest' takes my breadth away. very magnificent beautiful and impressive. it is already turning into a distinctive and iconic world architecture and you can't turn anywhere in beijing without seeing a picture of this great structure. i remember watching a news item about this chinese man who took thousands of pictures of the bird nest starting from the beginning of the construction till now and still can't stop clicking away. and i can understand him. everyday there were hundreds of people clicking their digital cameras with this superstructure as the background as you can see here. 
and i can't stop clicking away myself too.
and i can't stop clicking away myself too. 
just opposite is the 'water cube' where swimming events were held and the lucky spectators get to see micheal phelps created history by winning so many gold medals and breaking so many world records and became instant superstar here. i am not too impressed with this (water cube) although seems like it's a very popular photo opportunity site also for many spectators especially with it's attractive multi colored and ever changing color for each of the cell displayed at night . but it just looked like a huge dunlopillo to me and i keep on thinking about that anwar and the tilam caper everytime i looked at it.
as to the actual games itself i must confess i only had ONE ticket for the night event on the 18/8. even then i must consider myself very lucky. it is so damned hard to get a ticket even for chinese in beijing. they had to apply through internet and will only get it by lottery many months way back . there were only a few occassions when they open up to buy in public and i got this ticket because of my good chinese friend who several months back queued at six in the morning in front of the bank of china just to get the ticket for me. and here's another interesting thing. i would never imagine any of my chinese friends here would ever do this kind of thing for me. not that they are any way bad but goes to show how racist politics have poisoned so much of our relationship. i don't expect anything from my chinese friends here and they also don't expect any from me. sad but that's the way things are. but remove this political poison and i find that chinese are some of the most beautiful people in the world.
but despite the diffculty of getting tickets legally, and notice arounds prohibiting scalping nobody seems to care and there seems to be quite a lot of scalpers around offering tickets at astronomical price. a t
icket with a third tier seat (where the athletes only look like ants crawling about ) went for 2100 yuan (approx rm1000) on the night i was there...
icket with a third tier seat (where the athletes only look like ants crawling about ) went for 2100 yuan (approx rm1000) on the night i was there...another surprising thing for me is that the authority successfully clamped down on pirated olympic souvernirs. while you can buy a lot of t-shirts etc with beijing olympic logo the last time i was in beijing around november last year anywhere in beijing, now all these have dissapeared and if you want to bring home key chains, caps, mascot toys, t-shirts and any other olympic related merchandize the only way you can get these are at authorized outlets . and needless to say as these are official licensed products you have to pay around rm50 for a t-shirt that you'll get 3 for rm10 at petaling street...but what the hell, you can't be a cheapskate all the time...
i won't say anything about the games itself as everybody watchs this on tv but i must say that the local tv here is very2 dissapointing. there was hardly any athletics shown on any channels probably because of the broadcasting rights and all that...but anyway , here's a pic of the fastest man on earth usain bolt (in yellow) getting ready for his 200m heat. the atmosphere in the stadium needless to say was electric...
the only world record that night was in women pole vault and i was lucky to watch it right in front of me as the position of this even was right opposite my seat position. i brought a powerful russian made binoculars (bought in petaling street) with me but i won't tell you which part of the women's athletic body i focussed most of the time...hmmm.
the only other live event i managed to watch was free... like many beijing citizens that lined beijing streets i too did the same and watched a bit of the woman marathon...apart from these , most of the rest of the time i just spent revisiting the usual tourist places, you know , the usual suspects - loafing around in tianamen sq, forbidden city , temple of heaven, silk market, pearl market and of course the panjayuan weekend market where you can bargain on everything including books . i ended up with more than 30 kg of art books and especially pleased to get two huge coffee table books on lucien freud. and also visited national art museum of china (NAMOC) beijing where they have this exhibition of ming and qing chinese scrolls from the palace museum collection in conjunction with the olympics and an exhibit of a modern chinese painter who painted nudes with skin tones and style not unlike lucien freud incidentally.
visiting these places this time around was even more fun than usual because you get to see all sorts of people who come for the olympics and if you're lucky and know your athletes you may bump into some as i did and i happened to catch the big fish himself. i was at the temple of heaven when i saw a gaggle of people and reporters tailing this guy who turned out to be micheal phelps. he seemed a very nice young man agreeing to take pictures with some excited chinese girls and showing his medals and i just took the opportunity to snap one here...
it was appropriate that he visited the temple of heaven where the ming and qing emperors in the old days came to offer prayers for good harvest and mr phelps certainly had a good one and probably he came here to offer his thanks too...
Saturday, August 16, 2008
if i lied, strike me dead!
so finally saiful bukhari sworn on the Qur'an that anwar ibrahim "put his penis in my ass hole...and may Allah curse and punish me till doom's day if i lied" which you can read here and watch the video here. this is historic and may mark the beginning of anwar's final disgrace and downfall or equally possible the start of the end of UMNO and bn.
for muslims, swearing on the Qur'an especially in a formal and public setting such as this is taken very seriously although i must say that i know of at least one randy goat friend of mine who used to routinely swear "demi Allah etc.... " when his domineering wife shouts that he's been screwing whores again...but his wife is astute enough not to take his swearing seriously and usually take the ultimate and very sensible lie detector test by sniffing his underwear.
although we can not fully discount that saiful was lying through his teeth and couldn't give a rat's ass about the severity of his action or he was compelled to swear under duress , personally i think that he had spoken the truth. he looked so innocent and at ease and not like a person with a threat that c4 bomb will be shoved up his rectum next if he didn't swear on the Quran. but there is no end to human treachery. anthony burgess wrote at one point in his memoir little wilson and big god that duplicity comes naturally to women and i guess may also be second nature to people like saiful so he could be lying , but as i say...
and i bought some nice fresh peach last night in front of my hotel here in beijing and for some reason this variety that looks like a malformed redblood corpuscle reminds me very much of saiful...took me about a few minutes to make a connection. it actually looked somewhat like a short tailed monkey's ass when she is in heat...and that was probably how saiful's anus looked like after been sodomised repeatedly by anwar...sordid!
but does all this matter.? yes a lot because if he's telling the truth than the whole of malaysia has been taken for a ride by anwar. i personally am NOT a fan of Anwar but as i said many times before i couldn't care less if he were a homosexual or like to have sex with animals . and it is much better to have a gay PM than someone who is possibly a murderer.
Monday, August 11, 2008
millions of precepts and commandments....
i think i have more than several thousand dollars' worth of money in my mouth with all these crowns and fillings but still i had a hell of a tooth ache last night and it was sunday and even in this muslim majority country where less than 10 % of the citizens are christians we had to have a weekend on sunday and not a friday as a muslim majority country should have and of course you couldn't find any dentist anywhere on sunday ...even in this muslim majority country ,unless if you stay in a place like kb where we have friday as a weekend but not that is , if you happen to live in a wog place like K fucking L which i happen to be for the last several years...so i had to endure an excruciatingly painful tooth ache day and night till monday (today) to go and see the dentist... and there wasn't anything really good on tv and even olympics couldn't distract me from my tooth ache...and so i picked up one pirated dvd at random and slotted it into my cheap chinese DVD player and it was a very good thing i did that... it happened to be a very good ridley scott's directed movie american gangster . it is lying there for ages among all the rest of still unwatched pirated dvds that i bought from the great pirate capitals of the world, you know saigon, hanoi, bangkok,manila, beijing and petaling street.......and if you like ballsy movies with brains this is just the thing for you. and watching all those violence and gore eased my pain somewhat...but what i liked best was this very brief sex scene where the good cop robert was screwing his legal counsel and she panted... of fuck me, fuck me like a cop not a lawyer...
now here's the thing about morality and lawyers... morality first: nobody in his (or her) right mind will say that watching pirated movie is doing the right thing...but consider this... if you happen to live in malaysia which doesn't take too kindly to movies where dialogues have fucking this fucking that, motherfucker this motherfucker that and bonking scenes and nude scenes the chance of watching an unexpurgated movie of this kind (which american gangster is an example) in the cinema is just about zero...i don't know if we can buy an original uncut movie of the same because i never in my life ever buy an original dvd...when i'm in malaysia that is...
now you might say, what a bastard i am... and you may be right too... but considering everything i think i'm a much lesser bastard than say that asshole ezam mohd noor who one day sang one tune and the next day another or that shithead saifool bukhari... who made a police report claiming to have a (consensual) homosexual intercourse with anwar...if it was consensual why the fuck make a report eh? or badawi's son in-law khairi jamaluddin who( if mahathir is to be believed) has his tentacles (khairi's) in every thing and messing up the country like it is his father in-law's property (or perhap's that's precisely why the bastard did it and probably still does) ...so in the scheme of things as i say...
and lawyers... i never understand lawyers...perhaps that woman lawyer in american gangster knows better , at least when it comes to sex....anyway, take this bar cauncil forum on 'embracing islam' on saturday...admittedly i don't know much about it , what's it's goal and purpose. but i know this. to many muslims, this is viewed as meddling into muslims' business where non-muslims don't have the right to. simple as that. what would christians feel if muslim lawyers association for example held a forum with the goal of changing the law to enforce malaysian christians to worship another jew say ehud olmert as god for a change instead of jesus?
i assume lawyers have good brains ( not as good as us scientists of course ) but why the hell they still want to do the thing that they fully well know will touch on the sensitivity of the muslims?... now the thing with muslim is this... muslims have its own specific world view , you may agree with some of it and may not with some . you may think muslims are an intolerant lot ..not like say hindus and christians and buddhists ...but you can't equate muslims with non muslims...
i read someone's comments in one political blog recently...his question is this...christians have 10 commandments, buddhists have eight precepts, what do muslim have?...this is a very good question but also shows how ignorant this guy is about islam... for islam have millions of precepts and millions of commandments...not just ten or eight...you can't even go into the toilet without shall we say observing certain muslim protocols... you can't even have a lawful sex with your lawful wife without observing shall we say muslim protocols... and that's precisely the complaints and insults made by salman rushdie in his satanic verses...which gets muslims and myself included all riled up... and it goes without saying that it is all too easy for non muslims to encroach and perhaps unwittingly intrude into areas where nuslims will not compromise....and this forum on conversion is one of them....bar council should understand that... why meddle into things which you have no business poking your nose in?
it's true and unavoidable that conflicts may arise when some aspects of muslim and non muslim life gets intertwined as in the case of marriages and conversions for example. but since muslims have millions of commands and precepts you have to play by the muslim rules when you're a muslim...and muslims certainly recognize that for non muslims you can play by your religious rules if there are any ...and we respect that... but don't go trying to meddle in a business where you have none...
for a take on the muslim thinking about this you'd do well to read this and this for a start....
but enough of all this nasty stuff...
i'm going to end with something completely different and personal ... decompression time. here's a clip of my 85 yr old chimp solving rubik's cube under 4 minutes with a nice cheb mami music in the background...and you can see a small part of my library behind him...here
not a terribly impressive feat by world standard (there was a chinese 3-yr old girl solving it under 2 mins somewhere on youtube...but i still can't figure out how the hell to do it...)
and this is where i usually tap tapping all this nonsense...
now here's the thing about morality and lawyers... morality first: nobody in his (or her) right mind will say that watching pirated movie is doing the right thing...but consider this... if you happen to live in malaysia which doesn't take too kindly to movies where dialogues have fucking this fucking that, motherfucker this motherfucker that and bonking scenes and nude scenes the chance of watching an unexpurgated movie of this kind (which american gangster is an example) in the cinema is just about zero...i don't know if we can buy an original uncut movie of the same because i never in my life ever buy an original dvd...when i'm in malaysia that is...
now you might say, what a bastard i am... and you may be right too... but considering everything i think i'm a much lesser bastard than say that asshole ezam mohd noor who one day sang one tune and the next day another or that shithead saifool bukhari... who made a police report claiming to have a (consensual) homosexual intercourse with anwar...if it was consensual why the fuck make a report eh? or badawi's son in-law khairi jamaluddin who( if mahathir is to be believed) has his tentacles (khairi's) in every thing and messing up the country like it is his father in-law's property (or perhap's that's precisely why the bastard did it and probably still does) ...so in the scheme of things as i say...
and lawyers... i never understand lawyers...perhaps that woman lawyer in american gangster knows better , at least when it comes to sex....anyway, take this bar cauncil forum on 'embracing islam' on saturday...admittedly i don't know much about it , what's it's goal and purpose. but i know this. to many muslims, this is viewed as meddling into muslims' business where non-muslims don't have the right to. simple as that. what would christians feel if muslim lawyers association for example held a forum with the goal of changing the law to enforce malaysian christians to worship another jew say ehud olmert as god for a change instead of jesus?
i assume lawyers have good brains ( not as good as us scientists of course ) but why the hell they still want to do the thing that they fully well know will touch on the sensitivity of the muslims?... now the thing with muslim is this... muslims have its own specific world view , you may agree with some of it and may not with some . you may think muslims are an intolerant lot ..not like say hindus and christians and buddhists ...but you can't equate muslims with non muslims...
i read someone's comments in one political blog recently...his question is this...christians have 10 commandments, buddhists have eight precepts, what do muslim have?...this is a very good question but also shows how ignorant this guy is about islam... for islam have millions of precepts and millions of commandments...not just ten or eight...you can't even go into the toilet without shall we say observing certain muslim protocols... you can't even have a lawful sex with your lawful wife without observing shall we say muslim protocols... and that's precisely the complaints and insults made by salman rushdie in his satanic verses...which gets muslims and myself included all riled up... and it goes without saying that it is all too easy for non muslims to encroach and perhaps unwittingly intrude into areas where nuslims will not compromise....and this forum on conversion is one of them....bar council should understand that... why meddle into things which you have no business poking your nose in?
it's true and unavoidable that conflicts may arise when some aspects of muslim and non muslim life gets intertwined as in the case of marriages and conversions for example. but since muslims have millions of commands and precepts you have to play by the muslim rules when you're a muslim...and muslims certainly recognize that for non muslims you can play by your religious rules if there are any ...and we respect that... but don't go trying to meddle in a business where you have none...
for a take on the muslim thinking about this you'd do well to read this and this for a start....
but enough of all this nasty stuff...
i'm going to end with something completely different and personal ... decompression time. here's a clip of my 85 yr old chimp solving rubik's cube under 4 minutes with a nice cheb mami music in the background...and you can see a small part of my library behind him...here
not a terribly impressive feat by world standard (there was a chinese 3-yr old girl solving it under 2 mins somewhere on youtube...but i still can't figure out how the hell to do it...)
and this is where i usually tap tapping all this nonsense...
Wednesday, August 06, 2008
"wogism"
She was a physical training instructress of intense Tamil beauty, Christian, convinced she was really white and that her darkness was a kind of hereditary sun-tan. She wished to marry an Englishman and could not, she affirmed, bear the touch of a black or brown or yellow skin....She was a true victim of imperialism.
That came from a highly enjoyable memoir Little Wilson and Big God by Anthony Burgess and to me although unintended as such by Mr Burgess this little snippet describes very well an extreme form of wogism - if there ever is such a word. a disease that is infecting more and more people and getting more serious by the day in this country and in many other parts of asia too.
i have a lot of pet hates and one high on the list is a wog and it's female version ( a wol?). i know the world has lost the battle against western imperialism when i heard led zappelin song wailing everywhere in moscow, ricky martin's 'she bang' in hebrew in jerusalem and hip hops in all languages from chinese to siamese to malay to mongolian...young people thinking it's hip to be seen drinking terrible coffee in starbucks and macdonalds sprouting everywhere. families speaking broken english to each other in their home instead of their own language...we, to put it simply are fucked.
i always think of vs naipul as a wog and paul theroux in his book sir vidia's shadow about his friendship gone wrong with the man also alluded as much although he didn't directly say so. naipul of course doesn't think he's one and hates wogs as much as anyone else and derisively called some people mr woggy...
alas .there are too many mr and ms woggy everywhere... kuala lumpur if full of people inflicted with this wogism disease...we are all victims of imperialism ...there is no getting away from it...and not just the common people... the worst wogs are actually some of our bluebloods and aristocrats and vips...and lord has mercy including our 'intellectuals'!!
and if you ask me the classic and the ultimate mr woggy archytype, it is non other than salman rushdie. incidently there is an interesting little news about him in the herald tribune recently which you can read down here in full...or in the original version here.
all this is very sad, because at one time it's the other way round. the west was once very much enamoured by the east. many of the west's aristocrats are lovers of anything oriental. a reverse wogism if you like. but with colonialism and the rape of the east this love has turned to despise and nothing now illustrates this better than the treatment of the arabs and the rape of afghanistan and iraq...
i was in the islamic art museum of malaysia recently and although it is no V&A, it is still one of the best museums anywhere in SEA and some of the islamic art works there are exquisite and it makes me want to cry to see all the lovely Quranic scripts and miniature mughal paintings on display..i believe not too many KL people even know that this museum exist and the only few visitors there on that day were westerners and a few chinese tourists from Taiwan or mainland china...and a japanese...
and by the way the current exhibition at the museum is Beyond Orientalism: How the West was Won over by Islamic Art(25 Jul 2008 - 25 Oct 2008)
and i end here with a painting by jean-etienne liotard of a woman in "eastern" attire reading a book...
That came from a highly enjoyable memoir Little Wilson and Big God by Anthony Burgess and to me although unintended as such by Mr Burgess this little snippet describes very well an extreme form of wogism - if there ever is such a word. a disease that is infecting more and more people and getting more serious by the day in this country and in many other parts of asia too.
i have a lot of pet hates and one high on the list is a wog and it's female version ( a wol?). i know the world has lost the battle against western imperialism when i heard led zappelin song wailing everywhere in moscow, ricky martin's 'she bang' in hebrew in jerusalem and hip hops in all languages from chinese to siamese to malay to mongolian...young people thinking it's hip to be seen drinking terrible coffee in starbucks and macdonalds sprouting everywhere. families speaking broken english to each other in their home instead of their own language...we, to put it simply are fucked.
i always think of vs naipul as a wog and paul theroux in his book sir vidia's shadow about his friendship gone wrong with the man also alluded as much although he didn't directly say so. naipul of course doesn't think he's one and hates wogs as much as anyone else and derisively called some people mr woggy...
alas .there are too many mr and ms woggy everywhere... kuala lumpur if full of people inflicted with this wogism disease...we are all victims of imperialism ...there is no getting away from it...and not just the common people... the worst wogs are actually some of our bluebloods and aristocrats and vips...and lord has mercy including our 'intellectuals'!!
and if you ask me the classic and the ultimate mr woggy archytype, it is non other than salman rushdie. incidently there is an interesting little news about him in the herald tribune recently which you can read down here in full...or in the original version here.
Salman Rushdie has threatened to sue John Blake Publishing over a book by a former bodyguard that he said portrays him as cheap, nasty and arrogant and depicts his police guards as "losers" who drank on duty. Rushdie said that the book, "On Her Majesty's Service," contained "a bunch of lies." The author's lawyer said he had written to the publisher demanding that the as-yet-unpublished memoir be withdrawn. The book was co-written by Ron Evans , a former London police officer who was a member of the team guarding Rushdie while he was under an Iranian-backed death threat for his 1988 novel "The Satanic Verses." The book - described as an account of "the thrills, spills and despairs" of Evans's career - claims Rushdie billed the police force for officers' overnight stays at his house; that guards nicknamed him "Scruffy"; and that at one point, the officers got so fed up they locked him in a cupboard while they went to the pub. The book was due to be published next week, but the Internet retailer Amazon lists no date for its availability.
(AP)
well, that's a book i'm looking forward to ... i've always suspect that salman rushdie is quite an obnoxious guy...not someone i'd like to be friend with...although i must be fair and say i like his writings...someone i will make an effort to go to his readings if he ever come this way but not someone i'd like to play table tennis with...he plays this game as this interesting interview about his new book revealed...all this is very sad, because at one time it's the other way round. the west was once very much enamoured by the east. many of the west's aristocrats are lovers of anything oriental. a reverse wogism if you like. but with colonialism and the rape of the east this love has turned to despise and nothing now illustrates this better than the treatment of the arabs and the rape of afghanistan and iraq...
i was in the islamic art museum of malaysia recently and although it is no V&A, it is still one of the best museums anywhere in SEA and some of the islamic art works there are exquisite and it makes me want to cry to see all the lovely Quranic scripts and miniature mughal paintings on display..i believe not too many KL people even know that this museum exist and the only few visitors there on that day were westerners and a few chinese tourists from Taiwan or mainland china...and a japanese...
and by the way the current exhibition at the museum is Beyond Orientalism: How the West was Won over by Islamic Art(25 Jul 2008 - 25 Oct 2008)
and i end here with a painting by jean-etienne liotard of a woman in "eastern" attire reading a book...
