Robbed!

My friend, Singapore Teo, or Sin Teo as we call him was robbed at knife point three days ago.This is how it happened:

He was having his shoplot painted and wanting to rent it out, he had advertised with his mobile phone number prominently displayed. Someone called up claiming to want to rent the shoplot. So Sin Teo arranged to meet him at the shop lot. Two men in their early forties came and said that they wanted to check out the first floor.

Sin Teo explaining how he was robbed

When they were on the first floor, one took out a knife and persuaded him to give him all the money, his watch and his ATM card. They also forced him to reveal his ATM card number. Then they tied him up. He managed to free himself and phoned up the bank but it was too late. They had already withdrawn 2000 ringgit and remitted another 3000 ringgit to a bank account in Kuala Lumpur.

So beware of strangers posing as prospective tenants. Make sure you have someone with you when you meet up with prospective tenants.

Ice-kacang

When we heard the familiar ringing of the bell, we rushed out of our house. It was time for our ice-balls!. The ice-ball man, on his tricycle would get down and shave the ice, shape it into a ball and sweeten it with colourful syrup and we would have our fill of sucking on the balls to extract the sweetness. The method of shaving ice then was a piece of wood studded with nails to hold the ice-block firmly while scraping it over a sharp blade embedded in a thick block of wood. Although it was unhygienic, we never got sick from it. Life became much easier for the ice-ball makers when a machine was invented to make shaving ice easier.

The traditional ice shaver (photo from: goodmorningyesterday.blogspot.com)

The invention (photo from: goodmorningyesterday.blogspot.com)

The ice-ball has since been replaced by the popular ice-kacang. The Ocean Seafood Restaurant recently set up an ice-kacang corner so that customers could enjoy it as a dessert. The ice-kacang can be had for RM 1.00. (No, there is no incentive of any sort from blogging on The Ocean Seafood Restaurent, if the thought crosses your mind. It so happens that it offers the cheapest beer in a comfortable restaurant setting!).

The ice-kacang corner

A waitress filling up the containers with the ingredients for ice-kacang

The ice-shaving machine which is operated electrically

Shaving the ice block

The shaved ice

Customers have a wide selection of things to put into their ice-kacang

Atap chee, which is the fruit from the nipah palm

cin cao

Corn cream

Cendol, the thin worm like pandan flavoured flour noodles

Groundnuts

Sweet kidney beans

Gula melaka or palm sugar

Green syrup

Red syrup

The ice-kacang topped with corn cream and evaporated milk

Muggles of Parliament: Demolish Christian Statues, Destroy the Crosses

Kudos to darnmalaysia and Mental Jog and others for bringing to our attention what the two muggles of Parliament from the Batu Pahat district had said in Parliament as recorded in the Hansard (reports of Parliamentary proceedings).

In today's New Straits Times is the response from the Education Ministry on the call by the two muggles to remove all Christian images from missionary schools in the country:

The Education Ministry will not remove the cross and other Christian images from mission schools.

Deputy Education Minister Datuk Noh Omar said the images were part of the mission schools' tradition and there was no reason to change it.

He said this at the Dewan Rakyat yesterday when opposition leader Lim Kit Siang brought up the issue of a back-bencher who had called for the images to be removed.

The call by Syed Hood Sye Edros made during the Dewan Rakyat session in October had allegedly created a storm over the internet, someone had posted the extract from the parliament's Hansard.

Syed Hood, Johor Umno Youth deputy chief, in making the call on Oct 29, had said that the board of directors at mission schools were allegedly partially administered by churches in foreign countries.

According to the Hansard, the MP said: "I was made to understand that the board of directors at these schools are partially administered by churches in foreign countries.

"I was also made to understand that the application to build a surau in some of these schols had to go through the approval of these boards of directors. It shames me that the school administrations are still controlled by the church."

At the parliament lobby yesterday, Minister in the Prime Minister's Department Datuk Seri Nazri Aziz said the public could lodge a police report against anyone who uttered seditious remarks.

"No one can make seditious remarks even if they have immunity as an MP."

HINDRAF's Demands

I am no political analyst, just an ordinary citizen trying to figure out what's happening in this country. In the wake of the 'Lawyers' march', the 'BERSIH rally' and the 'HINDRAF protest', the question that sticks out is why is there so much disaffection with the present administration? What has gone wrong? Judging from the heavy internet traffic that has converged on the three events on the net, I am inclined to assume that Malaysians have suddenly become politically more active. Or is it just a figment of the imagination? What happened in blogosphere may not necessarily reflect the reality of the Malaysian political scenario. How does the common man feel about the situation in the country? Do they remain untouched, unconcerned about these events that have thrust themselves into the consciousness of the nation? Or do they remain as apathetic as ever, concerning themselves with the daily necessity of working and living? It is however, more likely that the intensity with which these events were reported, discussed, and analysed in blogosphere is a phenomenon that is confined to the urban literates who have access to the net while the rest of the populace, other than saying that it is not good for the country, have remained unruffled by these events .


But the fact that tens of thousands of people who had taken to the streets in the BERSIH and HINDRAF rallies to voice their frustrations has in some measure jolted them from their slumber to take note and understand the issues that confront the nation.


Never in the recent history of this nation have organizers been able to mobilize people in such massive numbers. While the BERSIH rally is to a certain extent multiracial, that of HINDRAF is overwhelmingly of one race. And that has set a precedent that could encourage others to do the same.The HINDRAF rally has also highlighted the failure of existing channels or avenues to deal with disaffection.


The MIC's and the government's reponse to the HINDRAF have been immediate: the setting up of a hotline and a special committee to look into the socio-economic problems of the Indian community. However, they need not have to look far. By examining Ponnusamy Uthayakumar's article posted in the Frontline, MIC would have an inkling of the kinds of problems that have frustrated the community. However, one could take exception to Uthayakumar's claim of 'ethnic cleansing' in Malaysia, the term being used so loosely to include so many things. But I am sure that MIC knows what these problems are, but has little success in solving them. HINDRAF's insistence in directly dealing with UMNO instead of MIC has shown how dismal MIC's track record is in solving problems of the Indian community and it is an uphill task for MIC to regain the trust and confidence of the Indian community that needs help the most.

Interview with the Information Minister

Aljazeera in a telephone interview with Zainuddin Maidin, the Information Minister of Malaysia on the BERSIH rally on 10 November. He should check himself into a language centre to "polish up" his English.

How to make demonstrations work for you

The November 10 BERSIH rally for fair and clean elections and the November 25 HINDRAF march which started out as peaceful rallies degenerated into demonstrations when participants were doused by chemical-laced water and stung by tear gas. Foreign press reports had contended that excessive force was used to dispersed these rallies although the government had claimed that the police force had responded with restrain in handling recalcitrant demonstrators.

But for sure, one demonstration was handled with kid gloves and that was the demonstration by two thousand raucous, belligerent Barisan National youths (the coalition government's youth members) last year against USA's continued support for Israel during the ASEAN Regional Forum at the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre in which the American Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice was a guest of the Malaysian government.

The leading man was none other than Khairy Jamaluddin, the son-in-law of our honourable Prime Minister. He had shown in the video clip how he could use demonstrations to his advantage, with a little help from the Federal Reserve Unit.