Pumpkin Crash Helmet

I was alerted to a recent news item on the ingenuity of humankind to bypass the law. Nigeria has recently passed a law which makes wearing crash helmets mandatory. some Nigerians have taken to wearing dried pumpkin shells, or calabashes to circumvent the law. Others have resorted to wearing construction helmets and plastic containers or other contraptions. To show that they mean business, the police have impounded thousands of motorcycles.

In Malaysia, the Sikhs are allowed to wear their turbans while riding their motorcycles while the police close one eye to those who wear surbans while going for their Friday prayers.

A reader has come up with this photo of what it probably looks like wearing a dried pumpkin shell.

A plastic container for a crash helmet

This is another contraption to beat the law

Construction helmets

India's Alarming Foeticide

According to a U.N. report, an estimated 113 to 200
million women are missing from the world today,
which is to say that 1.3 to 3 million women and
girls 'disappear' from the earth annually from
gender-based and sexual violence. In India alone, more than 50 million of those 'missing' are due to female foeticide, the sex-selective abortion of female babies who are viewed as a burden to the male-dominated society. Although ultrasound scanning to determine the sex of a foetus has been
banned in India, it is being carried out illegally due to its huge demand and profitability. Read more
about India's female foeticide practice.

The Middle East Connection

The place I stay, Puncak Damansara, is pretty cosmopolitan. There are Middle-East residents, many of whom come with their families for the duration of their stay in Malaysia, Chinese nationals, Africans, Pakistanis, Iranians, and even Mongolians at one time. They have gravitated to this part simply because it is near the various colleges that can be found here: the Damansara Utama College, the Bandar Utama College, and various other English Language institutes. The pictures below were taken in the morning of the first day of Hari Raya when they just came back from the mosque.

Bald Heads

Nancy alerted me to this news item in the BBC News. We felt that this novel way of advertising would interest the readers.

(Pic from BBC News/Asia Pacific)

Bald-head adverts

for NZ airline

New Zealand's national airline is looking for bald passengers to head up a new advertising campaign.

The carrier said it wanted 50 passengers to be "cranial billboards" and publicise a new check-in service on their heads.

The fliers will be offered money to have their pates temporarily tattooed with the message.

The airline said it would pay NZ$1,000 (£380; $666) per head, making it easy money for bald frequent fliers.

The airline's marketing manager Steve Bayliss said in a statement: "How better to tell our customers that Air New Zealand is going to do something about [long check-in queues]... than through messaging they can read while they're standing in a queue themselves?"

Hongkong TV Reporter Arrested For Public Indecency

I stumbled on this in the Singapore Straits Times today. The television reporter explained that he did it to relieve stress.


That reminds me of a time long past, but indelible from the memory: the May 13 incident in 1969. Tun Dr Ismail was the Deputy Prime Minister and Home Affairs Minister during the state of emergency. Immediately after calm was restored in the country, the cinemas, at least those in Batu Pahat, were flooded with pornographic movies, not the triple X of course, but those soft porn that would lull people into forgetfulness of the dreadful consequences of the May 13 incident. It was a time when people of all races flooded the cinemas. I can't remember how long the cinemas ran these movies; a week? two weeks? But they were removed soon after. Was it a conscious design on the part of the government at that time? Or did the cinemas take advantage of the situation to profit from it? No one will ever know. As Karl Marx said, religion is the opiate of the masses, but in this case, could it be sex is the opiate of the masses in turbulent times?

The First Korean Cosmonaut

When the Malaysian cosmonaut, Dr Sheik Muszaphar Shukor, successfully completed his mission to the International Space Station, Malaysians in general rejoiced over his achievement, but detractors also criticized the mission as a sinful waste of money. How much did it cost the Malaysian government to send him into space? It was part of the deal when the Malaysian government agreed to purchase Russian jet fighters worth US 900 million dollars. And how much is it going to cost the Malaysian government to send another cosmonaut to space? US 30 million dollars.

The funny thing was that it was reported that Dr Sheik Muszaphar was going to spin top, toss batu seremban (a five stone game), paint a batik motif and make 'teh tarik' (pulled tea) while in spacecraft. But of course the main objective was to conduct scientific experiments.

Now South Korea has sent her first cosmonaut, and
the Koreans are intensely proud of her. And according to a report she was going to share a traditional Korean dinner which included the "fermented cabbage dish, kimchi", and serenading to her five international colleagues with a Korean-language song. Well, it seems that Asian cosmonauts cannot resist the temptation to showcase their cultures while in space. The cost to the South Korean government? US 20 million dollars. Who is going to be the next Asian cosmonaut, I wonder.