VOTING RIGHT: Bidah Sengin, 105, had her finger marked with indelible ink before voting on May 5. — Photo by Nick Fletcher of Utusan Borneo.

WHILE the GE13 results tally showed BN39, PR2, a SMS came in, saying opposition Pakatan Rakyat de-facto leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim had declared victory.

Congratulatory messages to the new Mr Prime Minister flooded the social media sites within minutes.

Amidst all the brouhaha, there was a faint voice crying out: “This is incredibly irresponsible when the votes are still being counted.”

But nobody cared.

By midnight, we finally heard Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Abdul Razak declaring victory over television, followed by his speech.

What the winner said was a letdown to Malaysians.

A not-too-jubilant Najib, clearly crestfallen over the denial of a two-thirds majority for BN in parliament, said: “We have tried our best but because of several factors that have happened, particularly the lack of support from the Chinese community to BN, we fell short of our target.”

Najib went on to attribute the defeat of out-going Johor Menteri Besar Datuk Abdul Ghani Othman in Gelang Patah parliamentary seat mainly to the Chinese Tsunami which reportedly saw a massive swing of voters’ support to the opposition.

He alleged racial polarisation in the voting trend and feared this could lead to conflict in society.

“Therefore, we will undertake a process of national reconciliation so that we can set aside any extremism and communalism with policies based on moderation.”

At the other camp in a hotel, what the loser said was also a letdown.

Anwar Ibrahim, flanked by Pakatan top leaders, said: “It is unfair to expect us to form a decision based primarily on the results of an election that is considered fraudulent.”

There were no victory cheers regarding Pakatan’s success in defending its states and making inroads in BN strongholds.

Even though he had uttered Chinese Tsunami himself, Najib rose – commendably – above the realm of ethnicities to talk about national reconciliation.

Yes, it’s time for healing and reconciliation but first, we must stop all the race-based rhetoric and the blame game.

To many, two of the best GE13 results are the defeats of Perkasa’s Ibrahim Ali and Zulklifli Nordin – both known for their rhetoric with thick racial undertones.

The fact that they lost in predominantly Malay areas shows even the Malays have rejected their extremism. But will their defeats doom them to political oblivion – or just silence them for a while?

No. The person allegedly linked to them has spoken again! You, of course, know I am referring to Tun Dr Mahathir who seemingly always needs to say something to stay in the public eye.

“The Chinese community rejected the hands of friendship of the Malay community, resulting in the Chinese Tsunami in the GE13.”

It is now two weeks after GE13, yet the racist remarks from politicians, former law enforcers and academicians continue.

Many believe as long as Najib allows extremists in UMNO to express racist and extreme views every now and then, not only will his 1Malaysia programme be negated, his national reconciliation and ‘looking beyond race’ thrust will also remain just a dream.

Najib’s transformation cabinet has been announced this week. More issues surrounding races are expected to be raised over the next few weeks. It’s another letdown for many.

Parti Rakyat Sarawak (PRS) president Tan Sri Dr James Masing, for one, is disappointed that his party has been allocated just one full minister and one deputy minister post (the latter for Datuk Joseph Salang has been declined).

Noting that the winners were not given due recognition, he stated categorically: “But what I can’t understand is the promotion of Riot (Datuk Richard Riot) as his party SUPP did badly in GE13. They only won one out of seven seats contested.”

His reasoning may not be along racial line but generally, the Dayaks are not happy with their representation in the cabinet lineup since ineffective representation may lead to disinformation and misinformation on the ground, as is commonly believed.

The show will go on but for goodness sake, can we stop all the sabre-rattling and rabble-rousing and start “fulfilling the promises in the election manifesto” and also allow the people to have peace without holding noisy rallies?

For many of my older friends, amidst the disruptive rallies and the tiring blame game, the vote of Bidah Sengin, aged 105, on polling day brought about much hope and thought.

The centenarian’s effort to exercise her democractic right despite advanced age, should serve as an apt reference point for Najib’s future victory speech (should he again win GE14).

Essentially, it is an inspiration drawn from Barack Obama’s address after his presidential victory last year.

The US president, albeit basking in the glory of his second-term victory, did not forget to mention the courage of fellow American Ann Nixon Cooper, who, at 106 years old (one year older than Bidah Sengin), and like her elderly Sarawakian counterpart, still made the effort to come out and cast her ballot in her home state, Atlanta. It’s a heart-warming and inspiring story. Let’s do an Obama the Sarawakian way.

GE13 in Malaysia produced many firsts and stories that will be told for generations. But the one on my mind is about a woman who voted in Padawan.

She’s a lot like the millions who stood in line to make their voice heard in this election except for one thing – she is, as you might have already guessed, Bidah Sengin and she is five years past her 100th birthday.

She was born at a time when there were no cars on the road and planes in the sky.

And today, I think about all that she has seen throughout her century in Malaysia and Sarawak in particular – the heartache and the hope; the struggle and the progress; the times we were told we CAN’T and the people who pressed on with that Malaysian slogan: Yes, Malaysia Boleh.

At a time when women’s voice was silenced and their hopes dismissed, she lived to see them stand up, speak out and reach for the ballot. Yes, Malaysia Boleh.

When there was despair in the dust bowl and depression across the land, she saw a nation conquer fear itself with new jobs and a new sense of common purpose. Yes, Malaysia boleh.

When the bombs fell on our land and tyranny threatened the world, she was there to witness a generation rise to greatness and a democracy was saved. Yes, Malaysia boleh.

She was also there to witness an Earthling take a giant step for mankind on the moon, a wall come down in Berlin and a world connected by our own science and imagination.

And this year, in this election, Bidah Sengin had her finger inked so that she could cast her vote because after 105 years in Sarawak, through the best of times and the darkest of hours, she knows how Malaysia can change.

Yes, we can.

As Malaysians, we have come so far, seen so much but there is so much more to do.

So let us ask ourselves if our children should live to see the next century, if my children should be so lucky as to live as long as Bidah Sengin, what change will they see? What progress will we have made?

This is our chance to answer that call. This is our moment.

I always believe the young voters decide their own future with their votes. But with Bidah Sengin, I believe we are all equal in our ability to bring about change. That one vote makes a difference, no matter the age of the one who casts it.

Being old, well, it’s not a complete letdown.

STOP clicking and think for a moment about how you spend your time online.

They are all the rage nowadays – facebook, twitter, instagram, Google+ – and we should be challenged to take a hard look at our Internet usage.

Do you read, research, watch youtube or simply regard the time you spend on the Internet as time for social networking?

A good friend recently took a break from facebook because of a flood of political stories and hate messages.

“My usual moments of connecting with friends suddenly turned ugly. I find I have to start my days with rumours, threats and dirty words.

“What’s more disheartening is my friends who are considered learned, highly respected and credible are all posting videos, links and posters, smearing others without considering whether these are true and edifying. This is senseless and sheer madness – I start my case.”

She continued: “So I unfriend some of these friends but found out soon there is such madness in everyone.”

That’s my good friend taking a short break from her online net-work and not intending to come back in the near future after fasting for a month.

Interestingly, a recent study Coming and Going on Facebook by Pew Internet and American Life project revealed 67 per cent of American adults who are online are members of facebook and many people are taking more short-term breaks from their online networks for a wide variety of reasons.

My friend’s reason for going off facebook is that there is too much drama, gossip, negativity and conflict on the social network but realistically, this forms only nine out of the 61 per cent of facebook users in America who voluntarily take a multi-week break from the social network.

That’s worrying because it reflects the fact that many Malaysians are sharing on facebook – 13.6 million, to be exact, out of a 28.3 million population, according to socialbakers.com.

Imagine the amount of gossips that could have been spun by just a small percentage of users.

The top three reasons for Americans to leave facebook are personal with lack of time taking 21 per cent, and no interest and irrelevant contents taking 10 per cent each.

My good friend was ready to tell me what happened to her when she gave up facebook.

I THINK BETTER. That’s her claim.

“After three days off facebook, I can focus on stuff that is important to me. My creativity increases and I have more room to focus and my thought retention improves.”

That’s amazing.

But why not? She has a point here. Scroll down our facebook newsfeed, probably 80 per cent of the posts are irrelevant to you and of low quality.

There is an endless stream of thoughts from other people flowing through our minds all the time. We are dumping a large percentage of information that we do not need to fill the space in our brain – which, by the way, is poor use of our brain!

It’s good to hear our own thoughts once again – which is a lot more coherent, definitely.

I INTERACT BETTER. She further claims.

“The only place we can talk to the wall is our facebook. Years pass, we develop a very poor quality interaction through facebook – no facial expressions, no body language, no voice, probably just some emotion signs.

“But since going off my facebook, I have started emailing, picking up my phone to call and putting more thoughts into my blog.”

She couldn’t be wrong. Communicating via facebook is shallow. We feel we are doing something worthwhile in connecting with people but from a more objective perspective, it’s just touch and go with no real interaction.

A hug isn’t a real hug. A smiley isn’t a real smile – all we are doing is just pushing some buttons!

Think of our time spent browsing the newsfeed and liking the statues of erstwhile online friends. Isn’t it more wonderful to have some socialisation face to face than just sitting alone in front of a computer, clicking away?

I HAVE MORE TIME. I have no doubt about this claim of hers.

“I don’t browse photos of people whom I don’t know which is taking a big chunk of the time on facebook. I don’t click link after link that gets me nowhere!

“These messages don’t have much depth. Most are trivial and mundane. Some are clever or witty. Few are memorable and life-changing. I have time to enjoy some really better quality reading materials online.”

No one can argue about it – facebook wastes time – it give us a feeling of connectedness but the long-term benefits are negligible.

I LOSE WEIGHT. My friend must be kidding but no, she is very serious about this last claim on the benefits of facebook fasting.

“When I’m on facebook, I have to take every picture of the food I eat and post on the social network, if not tweet or instagram. It’s unpresentable to put a cereal breakfast, a banana lunch and an apple dinner on facebook if that’s what we can have for meals in real life.

“With facebook, I think food. I go the Malaysian way to show what I eat. I’m intentional about what I eat so that I can put it online. And as time goes by, I put on weight because I overeat! I eat because I want to share my cool pictures online and get some likes!”

Losing weight or not aside, the killing of the desire to impulse-share would definitely connect us better with the people right in front of us while dining!

Are all these reasons good enough for us to go facebook fasting? For one, there is no button here for you to click a like nor will this be on my facebook for you to like.

Exercise your citizen’s right by VOTING today. But remember, don’t take picture of your ballot paper and put on facebook – it’s a criminal offence.

CALL FOR PEACE: A school photo of Boston Marathon bombing victim Martin Richard.

MY friend BP who lives in America with her husband and three lovely children has been greeting the world by posting pictures of Spring for the past week.

Indeed, the signs of spring are everywhere.

But on Tuesday morning (Monday in America), she re-posted a link from the Incourage.me site: “Praying for Boston, our hearts ache” accompanied with a prayer of St Francis of Assisi that reads: Lord, make me an instrument of your peace; Where there is hatred, let me sow love; Where there is injury, pardon; Where there is doubt, faith; Where there is despair, hope; Where there is darkness, light and where there is sadness, joy.

Many of her friends from far and near joined in and echoed her thoughts.

Among them, a note from her friend who lives in Boston that says: “My best gratitude to all for your thoughts and prayers. By the grace of God, this world is in dire need of peace. I live in the city of Boston and to bear witness to the horror and traumatic attacks that occurred here on Monday is beyond my comprehension.

“We will recover from this assault in time. Please, dear people, continue to pray for us. I will speak for all Bostonians in saying how very grateful we all are and how much we appreciate each and every one of you. Love, light, joy, blessings and peace on this planet.”

A marathon is the most unifying of sporting events that attract large crowds – runners and cheerers.

The city that show up to cheer on thousands of runners do not really want to know or care much about who wins. There are no sides to root for or against.

Those who stand at the finishing line and on the sideline – as they have been doing in Boston since 1892 – come to celebrate with the runners from around the world.

It is an uplifting event.

But two bombs on Tuesday unleashed chaos, claiming three precious lives and injuring many others, leaving behind a carnage of pain, loss and suffering.

One of the victims, Krystle Campbell, 29, was described by her grandmother as beautiful, happy, outgoing and a hard worker.

Summer Shack, a seafood restaurant where Krystle worked before, posted a statement on its Facebook page, saying she was beloved.

“She was an incredible woman, always full of energy and hard at work but never too tired to share her love and a smile with everyone. She was an inspiration to all of us. Please keep her and her family in your thoughts and prayers,” the post said.

The mayor of Boston described eight-year-old victim Martin Richard as a young boy with a big heart.

He was deeply saddened that a Chinese girl Lingzu Lu who came to Boston in search of education, had also fallen victim to the attack.

Who would have wanted to target such a sunny event and so many innocent people?

Who would have kept so much hatred in their hearts and transferred all into pressure cookers and let them blown off to take away the lives of happy runners and cheerers?

It is a highly stressed society that sees tension boiling over on several fronts. The amount of rage bottled up inside many people, even here in Malaysia, can be felt if you are a frequent Internet user.

If we think Boston is too far away for us to feel unsafe, the truth is we are all less safe – even as far away as Malaysia.

With the election fever running high, different political beliefs have been a cause for many to engage in hate languages.

Celebrities like Datuk Michelle Yeoh and Eric Moo who are rightly the pride of Malaysia shining on the international entertainment stage, are not spared hate messages either when all they have decided to do is to be present at a Barisan Nasional function.

Lest we forget, one does not wake up one Spring morning and decide to kill. One is taught, directly or indirectly, that life is not valuable, that the human condition is not respected and shared.

People who commit acts like the Boston bombers’ are not necessarily born with murderous streaks.

Indeed, the 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (the second suspect now in police custody) is described as a “wonderful, outgoing, grateful” kid. His father asserted: “My son is a true angel.”

So, where is the disconnection between everyone’s perception of Dzhokhar and the reality of unimaginable violence that officials believe he and his brother (the first suspect who had been shot down by the police) committed?

There are many unanswered questions.

But we know, sometimes they are created and condoned as well as taught, somewhere along the way, that human life is worth less than their desire to terrorise.

When you have been taught to recognise the value of life, you will respect and fight to save it – just like many responders at the bombing site.

When you have been taught to respect and share life, life will be cherished and celebrated.

Don’t let the election fever uproot your values and respect for life. Don’t let hatred take root in your heart because of different political beliefs.

President Barack Obama brought a mixture of reassurance and defiance in an interfaith memorial service in Bostin’s Cathedral of the Holy Cross.

“Everyone of us stands with you,” Obama told the crowd.

“Boston may be your hometown – but we claim it too. For millions of us, what happened on Monday is personal.”

I want to know who the perpetrator(s) are – when and why did their respect for life wither so drastically that they would even contemplate such an abominable act. Somewhere, a person or some people are watching.

The Boston bombing is personal. It can happen anywhere.

As President Obama looks ahead to Boston’s next year race, predicting that “the world will return to this great America city to run even harder and cheer even louder for the 118th Marathon, let’s not take peace which we are enjoying in Malaysia for granted.

April is the promise that May is bound to keep – we need to keep April free from hatred and make room for love!

IT’S

We have reached the height of the political season with the announcement of the dissolution of Parliament by Prime Minister on Wednesday (April 3).

It’s even harder to impart positive thoughts when sharing our political ideology with the young ones with so many campaign ads in print, electronic, radio, TV and at ceremahs during an election year.

Difficult it may be but most parents are committed to bringing up children to be compassionate, thoughtful and open-minded.

But let’s face it. Parents are humans too – it’s difficult to be completely unbiased when it comes to politics.

Let’s hear this conversation between a father and his 6-year-old son.

Son: What are those flags, dad?

Dad: Signs of a corrupt government.

He gave an analogy of what a corrupt government is – like when you play monopoly and the bank overcharges you and pockets the money or let foreigners who don’t belong on the board buy property and collect at GO.

“There is nothing wrong with parents acknowledging and owning their bias (if they have one). The important thing for parents to keep in mind is to allow their kids to have their opinions and ideas about politics and the political system,” said Dr Robi Ludwig, a psychotherapist and award-winning journalist.

Weeks before Qing Ming (or tomb festival), many voters received a meaningful SMS (at least to me) from politicians reminding them how they were indebted to the good and great deeds of their ancestors and
that they should always remember their forebears while observing the tomb-visiting season.

Yes, the point is covering the history of the founding of a nation and the struggles that nationhood entails – and also how our government came into being. This appears essential when it comes to talking politics and government to children these days.

The history of how and why our government was set up the way it was is a great lesson to impart before launching into the ‘hot’ issues.

This is important because teaching children to think that politics and government is just another mundane current affair is making light of its real significance and may also be dangerous to young minds.

Even among adults, it’s not easy to discuss current political events and issues or that elections can be neat and clean without heated arguments.

We do not wish to overburden young children with negativities beyond their control.

The smear campaign and hitting-below-the-belt tactics used to pull down someone with an opposing view such as attacking them on a personal level, is not really what we want to teach our children.

Our job is to air our views so that our children can hear our thoughts, ideas and opinions. We discuss views and why we believe in them. We teach tolerance – not hate-mongering and character assassination.

Our task is not to indoctrinate our children into thinking exactly like us but instead make them realise the importance of being aware of the various election issues and what the candidates stand for.

In doing so, we are communicating to them that as they mature and become voters themselves eventually, they need to develop their own political opinions and cast their ballots as responsible citizens.

Stories of children and even adults being bullied and insulted because of their political beliefs are not unheard of.

This shows most of us are not even able – perhaps not willing – to handle non-controversial political discussions in a rational manner, what more to say of political issues that may cause heated arguments or altercation.

While adults try to avoid religious and political discussions at social events to keep the peace, why not teach our children the same thing?

We learn from the Scriptures that we are to look at children as people separate from ourselves who are passing through our lives on the way to theirs. They are lent to us for a while. They are not ours in any ultimate sense. We have been given the privilege of launching them but we don’t steer the ship forever.

Let children be children. Don’t bombard them with too many negative thoughts and quirky adult concepts.

I like this 8-year-old’s thoughts on Merdeka Day some 10 years back:

I wanted to fly a flag also on my mother’s car. I think it’s so nice to see the flags flying. But my mother does not like the idea. She says flying flags does not really show a person’s love for the country – the flags should fly in our heart wherever we go.

True enough, this morning we passed by a car with more than 10 flags flying high. They overtook us and the passengers popped out their heads and made monkey faces at us.

So it’s more meaningful to let the flag fly high in our hearts.

We went to the church spring cleaning. I saw many uncles and aunties happily cleaning the church. I saw flags flying in every heart and every corner of my church.

I used to like August very much. Why? Because on the first day of the mouth, it’s my birthday. In the middle of August, it’s my grandpa’s birthday, then on the last day of the month, it’s Merdeka Day. There has been a reason to celebrate on 1st, 15th and 31st. But my grandpa had gone back to the home of the Lord. Now, August has become a month with a reason to remember my grandfather and my country on the 1st, 15th and 31st.

I remember. I listen. I watch. I learn. I see. I feel. I move. I smell. I touch. I love. I run. I jump. I yell. I sing. I dance. I am not a great person. Malaysia is my country. I am one small star. But my mother says that’s wonderful too.

Our God, being very journalistic, has instructed us the how, the when and the where to communicate excitement, joy, humour, wonders, and glory to children:

“…impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.” – Deuteronomy 6:7

Be guided.

FOR many years, Steve Green tried to prove to God and the world that he was really good and also the best Christian artist around.

“The real motivation in my life was I want to glorify God in my life but that’s partly true. It was an also true that I wanted to have impressive record of myself,” Green said at one of the reunion gatherings hosted by Gaithers Vocal Band in the 80’s.

Many years later, he found that he had only ONE person in all his songs and accomplishments.

“There is only one hero in my story. If there is any shred of faithfulness in my life, it’s only one faithful One – not me but Jesus alone.”

The Christian music singer was in Kuching at the invitation of the Kuching Ministers’ Fellowship and the Full Gospel Christian Businessmen’s Fellowship as part of his world tour in conjunction with the release of his latest record – Rest in His Wonders – on March 6.

The organisers readily accepted a press interview with thesundaypost but it did not materialise as Steve “lost his voice” due to flu on arrival in Kuching.

However, he sent an audio record of the questions posed by thesundaypost. It came in late as he had been featured in a writeup of the concert. But on an Easter Sunday, what can be more appropriate than to share Green’s message?

Here is the Q & A with the Christian gospel singer.

Q: What was it like being raised by missionaries in Argentina?

A: As with anything, there are positives – and some challenges. The great things are that my parents are sincere in their devotion to Jesus, their desire to serve as missionaries and they were good missionaries.

I was raised in a Christian home. I heard the gospel from my infancy and it was also great being raised in a foreign country. That’s a blessing in itself – getting a sense of how international the body of Christ is. It makes me feel at home later in other parts of the world. I have a greater sense of being a citizen of the world. Those are the good things.

The difficult part is that I spent a lot of time in boarding school from the time I was eight and that had some difficulties.

You can imagine for children to be away from their parents during the crucial stages of their lives is not quite easy. Children who grow up in foreign cultures sometimes have a difficult time finding where they belong – and we are called ‘third culture kids.’

We know we don’t really necessarily belong where we are. We are different and we look different. I know I was an Argentine. When I come back to the States, I don’t feel I’m at home too.

It can be a difficulty but it’s a good thing we are reminded that we are aliens and strangers in this world and home is not here. Home is yet to come when we are in Heaven.

Q: What do you hope God will do through your songs? How do you want your songs to inspire worship?

A: I want to do two things. I want to encourage people with a rehearsal of what is true, thus reminding those who are listening to things which are true of God’s words. I want also to have songs which will be a vehicle of worship so that the songs can give melodies and words to people to help them express praise and adoration of God. Both things, worship, instruction and also encouragement.

Q: What message will you have for others who are grieving, struggling or questioning God?

A: That’s a very natural part of life. If you don’t struggle, if you don’t question God, I wonder if you have real faith.

God’s ways are certainly not our way. We are small and finite and so limited in our perspective and we live in a poor fallen world and God hasn’t told us everything about all that is going on.

He told us enough to trust Him to know His character. He gave us enough of the beginning of the story in Genesis, so we know where we come from. We know what’s wrong with the world. He gives us enough to cling to this world for promises and assurances in this life and the life to come.

So grieving and struggling and questioning are part of this life. God is not offended by our questioning. He can handle any question we can throw at him. But in the end, there’s a greater level of trust and confidence in what we do know about Him. Sufficient for us to go through any difficulty with.

We learn on the way that we presume a lot of things. Sometimes, we think God in His words has said something because we take it out of context, thus, believing something really isn’t true which will hurt us. But there is enough in God’s words to give us the assurance, confidence and comfort in anything that we experience in this life. Hold this steady to the very end.

Q: You established Steve Green Ministries in 1984, 26 years ago. Since then, you have been honoured with four Grammy nominations, 13 No. 1 songs and seven Dove Awards. You have, through your songs and life, cheered up the faithful and encouraged the weary. How do you account for the longevity of your music and the success you have found in the field?

A: I have no idea. Perhaps, no way to account other than just very simply it was God’s design. It was His purpose for my life. It was something that he made me and gave me to do and it’s really His doing.

As it’s with our salvation as we look back and ask the hard question – how did you come to believe – and you will finally come to a part that it was God who really did it.

God revealed this to me – working and preparing me for circumstances and bringing me to Him in the same way. The whole of our life is lived in God’s grace.

He has held me. He has kept me. He has opened doors for me. He has even pushed me through doors that I was hesitant to go through. I was an introvert – I prefer to be in a small group and stay home. And God has seen fit to push me well out of my comfort zone and put me on a platform that I never wanted. It’s His doing. So I have no other explanation.

Q: You put together Hide them In Your Heart and Prayer Bear movies which teach children important truths from the Bible. What do you think of children’s ministry?

A: It’s very important. Most people come to faith at an early age. If kids can be exposed to the Words of God, God uses those tools to draw them to Himself even as they grow older.

There are letters that I received from youths and even young adults who had said I was away from the Lord and I remember some of your songs. Anything we do in the area of children’s ministry is very important.

Q: The song People need the Lord was a turn-around for you in your Christian life. How does it resonate with you and for other needy people?

A: The song actually came after a life turn-around. It was God who has brought me to Himself and rescued me and I was beginning to have a sense of what I was supposed to do in this world. And then Gleg Nelson brought me the song, among others, to record. It struck a chord.

Honestly, I was partially thinking about evangelism and that people who have never heard of Jesus, need Him but equally, I was thinking of people who know Him and still need the Lord. I was thinking of all the people whom I bumped into and even myself who grew up in a Christian home but have a partial understanding of the Gospel.

I was thinking that all of us and all of our lives are in desperate need of Jesus, not only for those who never heard of Him, those who know Him, still need Him every moment of their lives and so it was a really a two-way message for me.

Q: Would you like to share your thoughts after the Kuching concert?

A: I have been to Kuching and Kuala Lumpur. It was wonderful to visit a new part of the world. I’m so grateful for the opportunity, grateful for the privilege to sing and share with so many people from various part of the world.

I find that the common denomination – the one thing that brings us together is the Gospel of our Lord Jesus. It transcends culture – all of us are foreigners. There is no one person who naturally belongs to God. In the Old Testament, God did choose Israel but, as you know, as the Old Testament progressed to New Testament where Christ came to Earth as a saviour, his own people rejected him.

We are all foreigners and alienated from God. He is the one who made peace with us through Jesus’ message that binds us together and my goal is to stick to that and cling to proclaim wherever I am and it is a privilege to be in Malaysia.

Blessed Easter.

MANIPULATIVE: With his rag-tag army on the run, Sulu sultan Jamalul Kiram Jamalul now turns to waging what seems like a futile propaganda war to advance the cause of his claim on Sabah.

AS the hopelessly outgunned intruders from the Southern Philippines are fighting a losing battle against the Malaysian armed forces in Sabah, the self-proclaimed Sulu sultan Jamalul Kiram is waging a propaganda war against Malaysia in Manila.

He is turning to the media to paint himself and his followers as victims of Malaysian military aggression and the people from Sulu living in Sabah as being oppressed, persecuted and living in fear.

His operation centre in Manila is churning out ‘horror’ stories of women and children being shot at and prisoners taken by the Malaysian security forces being tortured.

The fact that it was Jamalul who ordered his followers to intrude into Lahad Datu in the first place has been conveniently ignored.

His ability to deflect responsibility for the loss of so many lives and the suffering of his own people has been helped largely by a sympathetic Filipino press and social media which highlighted his sob stories without any semblance of verification.

Although Manila, under the then president Marcos, officially dropped all claims on Sabah in 1977, leading to the normalisation of relations between the Philippines and Malaysia, the sense of injustice over losing what they believed was their land still lingers among many Filipinos, especially in the south.

Jamalul’s foolhardy decision to press his claim over Sabah through the intrusion on Feb 12 by some 200 armed followers, led by his brother Agbimuddin Kiram, and the subsequent clashes that ensued, has opened up the old wound that never really healed.

Faced with certain military defeat and the loss of so many of the gunmen they sent to Sabah, Jamalul and his backers tried to wriggle their way out by offering to negotiate a ceasefire with the Malaysian government.

It was a clever but preposterous gambit which Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib did not fall for as doing so would tantamount to recognising Sulu as a sovereign state and Jamalul as its legitimate leader.

There is no room for talks with anyone who invaded our nation and laid claim to one of the states.

As the conflict drags on, Jamalul is losing grip not only of the situation in the combat zone in Sabah but, more significantly, among his own followers as well.

Contrary to his initial claims that his armed followers were fired by patriotism and willing to die for their cause, it has now emerged from admissions by some of the captured gunmen that they were actually driven by promises of $600 in wages, land and position.

The mounting casualties among the Sulu invaders are also beginning to tell on the resolve of Jamalul’s followers.

This was exposed by the spokesman of self-proclaimed sultan Abraham Idjirani who said when calling for the ceasefire: “The achievement of Sulu obtained over the last few days cannot compare to the value of lives lost.”

Now that the intruders have been cornered into a desperate situation by an overwhelmingly superior force, the question on the wisdom – of the lack of it – behind Jamalul’s real objective in sparking the conflict comes in focus.

No one in his right mind would have thought he could wrest a state from a nation with just a rag-tag band of gunmen.

Surely, Jamalul could not have dreamt of a military victory when ordering a tragically flawed incursion into Sabah. Undoubtedly his plan was to draw international attention to his ‘claim.’

On this score, he has succeeded to a certain extent as the Lahad Datu intrusion and its ramifications are widely reported in the Philippines media and several Filipino NGOs have called for Asean member countries to intervene.

The executive director of Philippine International Dialogue was reported as saying: “In this time of need for resolute leadership in our region, we find Asean’s voice markedly silent on Sabah. We feel it is time for Asean to step up and lead in this time of crisis.”

Almost all of the international news networks have reported on the clashes in Sabah, notably BBC and Al Jazeera.

With his call for unilateral ceasefire rebuffed, the manipulative Jamalul has turned to the United Nations, calling on the international body to probe human rights violations of Filipinos in Malaysia.

It is perhaps a tat early to assess the damages Jamalul’s folly has done to the bilateral relations between Putrajaya and Manila.

How it is going to affect the Moro Islamic Liberation Front peace accord, facilitated by Malaysia, is yet to be seen.

The pressure is not so much on Kuala Lumpur as on Manila as while Najib is getting approval from Malaysians for his handling of the situation, Acquino is facing pressure from his own people for what they perceived as “mishandling the Sabah issue.”

President Acquino’s website was hacked recently with one hacker posting: “We are silent witnesses as to how you are mishandling the Sabah issue. You did nothing while our fellow brothers are being butchered by the Malaysian forces and while our women and children become subject of human rights abuses. If you can’t act on the issue as Philippine President, at least do something as a fellow Filipino. We are watching.”

Jamalul’s quixotic quest to claim Sabah on behalf of a defunct sultanate has stirred up a storm that will not subside soon.

How will it end? The world is watching.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT: You live your life with the values you got somewhere along the line. I do not approach photojournalism as the be-all and end-all. It’s an honourable profession but the values I bring to my job come from other sources. — John Long, photographer

AN accident caused oil to spill onto the road. The vehicles involved were removed but nobody seemed to remember to clear the oil slick on the road. A typical scene at a road mishap.

An expatriate happened to drive by and not surprisngly, his car spun off the road on hitting the oily patch, and landed in a drain. Passers-by stopped to take photos and get the plate numbers.

A while later, the stunned driver, with a cut in his forehead, crawled out of his car and used his own handphone to call a friend for help. Another typical scene at a road mishap.

A little bird laments the cavalier attitude that is responsible for such road accident scenarios. Her friend was recently involved in a mishap of a similar nature.

What she also finds disturbing are media reports tending to assume road accidents that happened at this festive time were due exclusively to one worst cause – drunk driving after CNY celebration, and this without the benefit of a breathalyzer test! Why was there complete silence on the oil spill that led to the accident in the first place?

One could also ask why didn’t anyone present at the scene think of helping the injured expatriate driver?

We seek answers, do some soul-searching and hope if we ever find ourselves in the same situation, we will act with courage in coming to the rescue of the victim instead of assuming everything is fine, or standing by taking snapshots of the licence numbers, desiring to strike a lottery and make a fortune out of somebody’s misfortune.

Isn’t lending a much-needed hand to a person in distress the civilised thing to do?

Most people would think so but behaviour science seems to suggest otherwise – like it or not.

On Friday, March 13, 1964, 28-year-old Kitty Genovese was returning home from work. As she approached her apartment entrance, she was attacked and brutally stabbed to death by a man.

Despite her repeated screams for help, some 38 people who heard her from their apartments did nothing – not even call the police.

After the story gripped the country, two young social scientists, Bibb Latane and John Darley, conducted a series of experiments on the behaviour of bystanders.

Their conclusion which is starling and now known as Bystander Effect, is that the greater the number of people present, the less likely people are to help a person in distress.

The study concludes it is partly because of diffusion of responsibility – you think to yourself, there are all these other people here. This isn’t entirely my problem.

A New York Post’s front page photo of a man about to be killed by an approaching subway train which generated fury in the US just before the close of 2012, has many similarities to this infamous story of Kitty Genovese.

Ki Suk Han, 58, was pushed by an assailant off the platform at Manhattan’s 49th Street subway station in New York.

Onlookers did not try to save the man. Some kept taking pictures of the scene. Ki was later killed in full view and right before the eyes of the crowd.

When viewed through the prism of behavioral science of Bystander Effect, it means each onlooker is possibly thinking someone else was closer, someone else was stronger, someone else would do the heroic act.

As a result, no one acted.

The next day, the New York Post flaunted the shocking picture on the whole front page under the headline: This man is about to die.

A photographer freelancing for the tabloid who was at the scene, took the picture.

The reaction from the public was ferocious. In condemning the photopgrapher, many people asked whether the lensman was uncaring and more interested in getting a picture that would make him richer than saving a life? Was it ethical photojournalism?

They expressed shock why the newspaper decided to publish the photo of the tragedy.

Under tremendous public pressure, the photographer later said he was not deliberately taking pictures of the man on the tracks but was flashing his camera in an attempt to alert the conductor of the train that there was something wrong. The pictures were taken just by accident.

He also said he thought it was important enough to take the pictures to help police find the man who perpetrated the attack.

He was also quick to point the finger at others: “Why didn’t the people who were close enough help him? If I could reach him in time, I would have pulled him up.”

If you were there, what would you have really done in this 22-second life-and-death situation?

It’s certainly a disturbing story but also one that provides food for thought, especially on the behavourial study attributing the non-action of the crowd to the Bystander Effect.

Photojournalistic instincts could have taken over in the case of the photographer. But what justification did the other bystanders, reportedly busy taking pictures, have for not lifting a finger to save Ki Suk Han that day?

Let’s do some soul-searching. What have we become when every other person in our community is trying to be the first to capture an event and post and share it on Facebook, Twitters and Instragram?

At corporate or private functions, shows, performances, birthdays, weddings, funerals and graduations, we see people holding their smart phones, ipads and cameras busy shooting away.

It’s no longer the exclusive rights of reporters and official photographers, and the privacy of the hosts is no longer an issue.

Has the longing for self-preservation in getting as many “like” clicks on our personal social media spaces taken over the virtue of respect for others’ privacy as well as the urgency to help people in distress?

John Long of America National Press Photographers Association, when asked about the duty of the photographer in a life-and-death situation, replied: Your job as a human being, so to speak, outweighs your job as a photojournalist.

COOL BEAT: The formula is playing well with others – not being too flashy, keeping good time and paying attention to details.

A LITTE bird told me if I did not watch the special short video, showing our Prime Minister beating the drum, then I must.

I heard Najib was deejaying a pre-Chinese New Year programme, sending greetings to the Chinese community in Mandarin together with his son Nor Ashman – and the programme was aired by radio stations a week before Chinese New Year.

The duo discussed the definition of their names in Mandarin with Najib saying his Na-Ji means embracing luck and all positive things while Nor Ashman said his ji-ping was si ji ping an which means peace for all seasons. It was very impressive.

But, of course, that was before I heard Celine Dion singing the Chinese folksong mo-li-hua (Jasmine Flower) in Mandarin with Chinese soprano Song Zuying on China State TV New Year Gala Show, welcoming the Lunar New Year.

I have also seen banners with pictures of Najib dressed in a Chinese suit, sprouting up prominently in the streets and highways of the Klang Valley and Penang.

I have also seen his picture printed on metal tea boxes and ang pow (red packets) distributed widely throughout the nation – which I thought was a bit too much.

Ang pow packets symbolise happiness, auspiciousness, prosperity and luck and are usually decorated with lucky symbols such as Chinese characters of the three immortals – Fook, Look, and Sow – or Chinese zodiac animals, depending on the year the red packets are to be used. There has never been a personality printed on ang pow packets or gifts for New Year before.

I have also read his greeting letter, quoting Deng Xiaoping’s crossing the river by feeling the stone, reminding the Chinese community that reformation should not be rushed and that he is emulating the spirit of Deng in implementation the transformation programme.

Now, back to the special short (drum) video. The first scene showed a little girl and her family in the midst of busily preparing to celebrate Chinese New Year at their home.

Like a busy bee, the little girl moved around the house excitedly, trying to lend the elders a helping hand. First, she told grandpa who was writing Chinese calligraphy on red paper that the ‘stroke’ should be longer.

In the next scene, the little girl dashed into a room, searching frantically for something before emerging with a dusty old drum.

While she was sitting outside her house, looking at the drum, a man (the footage only showed part of his legs) appeared. She walked towards the man and asked: “Do you know how to beat a drum?”

The lower part of the man’s face, shown on the video, was distinctive of Najib’s lips and moustache. The man took up the drum and left.

The soft background music then changed to the grand beating of the drum. The little girl’s eyes sparkled and she gasped!

A pair of hands was seen beating triumphantly on the drum. More drummers joined in, firecrackers were lit, lion dancers pranced to live and a sizeable crowd gathered to watch the New Year spectacle.

Everyone was curious to know who the main drummer was. And the crowd did not have long to wait to find out. Their searching looks turned into awe and then applause when the “star” drummer was revealed – it was Najib, wearing a red Chinese costume, flinging up both arms to signify the end of the performance.

The little girl whispered into Najib’s ear Gong Xi Fa Cai while Najib wished her the same.

It ended with a shot of the Chinese word ji on a piece of red paper with Najib appearing to clasp his hands together to wish the crowd Gong Xi Fa Cai in Mandarin.

But lo and behold, the beautiful short video was spoilt by a glaring oversight – the word ji was written wrongly. Anyone conversant with Chinese knows the bottom horizontal stroke of the word is shorter than the top one.

Remember, at the beginning of the video, the little girl told her grandpa who was writing Chinese calligraphy on red paper that the ‘stroke’ should be longer?

Could the elderly man have been writing the word ji? Or could he have been misled by the little girl into writing the second horizontal stroke longer?

From letters, red packets and greeting cards to tea boxes, I feel our Prime Minister has been misled by a group of public relations advisors not well-versed in Chinese culture and traditions – just like this grandpa.

The short video also showed the burning of firecrackers which are still banned in the country.

All in all, the array of New Year greetings has done more harm than good to Najib’s image.

The STONE theory – from Deng Xiaoping’s crossing the river by feeling the stone – sounds convincing but are there really any stones to feel? Where is the other side of the river? Is there still time for Najib to find the way and learn as he continues to hit the campaign trail or has BN lost itself in the middle of the river?

Crossing the river by feeling the stones – well, it certainly is a trying and risky endeavour as well as a maze!

Buddy Rich (1917-1987), an American jazz drummer, band-leader and also the world’s greatest drummer, when interviewed, said:

I don’t think any arranger should ever write a drum part for a drummer because if a drummer can’t create his own interpretation of the chart and he plays everything that’s written, he becomes mechanical; he has no freedom.

This could be food for thought as Najib embarks on his election campaign in the country’s fiercest general election ever in the weeks ahead.

Phyllis Wong phylliswyy@theborneopost.com

Violet, my friend, who believes in feng shui, said: “That seems to be the only suitable colour left for me to wear during Chinese New Year.”

She revealed she bought a blue cheongsam as this year comes under the Zodiac symbol of the Water Snake which, she reckoned, would feel comfortable with her water-blue traditonal attire and bring her good health, peace and prosperity.

She noted: “If, going by what Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng said, red is support for DAP, yellow for Bersih and green for the environment and against Lynas, then surely blue is support for BN.”

Belonging to a group that do not wish to show their political inclination, Violet has been perturbed by the fact that one’s veneration for this year’s Spring Festival could be measured in political terms and degraded by simply classifying it on the basis of the colours of one’s attire on New Year’s Day.

Her mood during this festive season is also spoilt somewhat the BN-MCA’s Chinese New Year Concert in Penang, featuring South Korean singer, songwriter, dancer and rapper Psy or Park Jae-sang, who gained global fame with his hit single Gangnam style.

But oddly enough and for reasons best known to himself, LGE was fuming when he heard such a show will be staged in Penang.

Has LGE over-reacted? Was it not so long ago that DAP produced a gangnam-style video, poking fun at BN – and standing out prominently in the clip was wife of the Prime Minister, Datin Seri Rosmah Mansor.

The video has since been given star-rating by DAP leaders and supporters. So a Real McCoy gangnam-style performance by the man (Psy) himself in a DAP-controlled state would be a boost for the video, wouldn’t it?

STOP, THINK, DO: This is fundamental knowledge that should be inculcated in young children, particularly, the yellow/orange colour which tells you not to rush but think before you act – Johnny Hii, PhD student of Tasmania University, Australia.

Not quite. An apparent kia su LGE has called on all those planning to attend the concert on Feb 11 to wear red in a show of support for DAP, yellow for Bersih and green for the environment and against Lynas.

Observers view this as a face-saving move to blunt the BN-MCA initiative that appears to have upstaged the Penang Chief Minister in his own backyard.

Pro-PR netizens have even pressured Psy not to come to Malaysia by resorting, as usual, to washing dirty linens in public.

In an open letter, a certain netizen known as David Kang told Psy it is the citizens who will be paying for his performance in Malaysia.

He added: “The children in Sabah and Sarawak are struggling, walking miles of roads to school and feeding on the left-overs as they could not afford to buy fresh vegetables everyday.”

Such sweeping statements have offended many parents in Sarawak and Sabah for portraying them as uncaring and callous in the treatment of their children. Surely, parents in the two East Malaysian states deserve much more credit than that. Indeed, the current round of gangnam-related controversy has shown the true colours of many netizens.

Red, as a colour, is not only auspicious to the Chinese community, especially during the Lunar New Year, researchers have also discovered this particular hue has long been associated with love. And
there’s some science to it as well.

According to a study, men are enarmoured of red clothes on women. In sports, athletes clad in red, are known to outperform their opponents. Moreover, red supposedly lends colour to the face of whoever wears it.

LGE probably will lose some points for asking people to wear red just to support his party and his political agenda.

In so doing, he is not only denying the people the opportunity to show love and respect for the Lunar New Year but also diluting the reverence and esteem in which the Lunar New Year has been held since time immorial.

Studies have shown blue and red enhance cognitive performance but they do not say which provides the greatest boost. It depends on the nature of the task, I suppose.

We associate red with danger, mistake and caution. In a heightened state, red makes us vigilant and thus helps us perform tasks where careful attention is required to produce a right or wrong answer.

Through association with the sky, ocean and water, most people associate blue with openness, peace and tranquility. This benign hue makes people feel safe about being creative and exploratory.

Studies have also found that red is most effective in enhancing our attention to detail while blue is best in boosting our ability to think creatively. So, the choice of blue or red should be made more thoughtfully!

Regardless, blue is still people’s favourite colour, besides red, and since this is the Year of Water Snake, it should come as no surprise – from the feng shui perspective – if blue is preferred as the colour of choice.

However, as it’s Chinese New Year and a time to celebrate, let us wear whatever colours we want, and pooh-pooh the antics of any political party to classify us by dress colours to suit its own ends.

Let the people in Penang, and fans of Psy in all corners of Malaysia have a good time, watching the Korean rapper strut his stuff on stage.

If there is a cause for complaint about the gangnam-style concert, this Foochow woman from Sarawak has made more “ringgit and sense” of it in her facebook post:

As a simple housewife, making a simple budget everyday, and every month too, I won’t pay my hard-earned Malaysian money, listening to an almost tuneless foreign rapper performing funny horse-steps on stage. P Ramlee impersonators for me anytime to show my patriotism. Not that my standard is not high. It is a question of ringgit and sense. A sensible budget can put our country back on good economic and RM track in no time. Ask any good housewife.

IN ALL HONESTY: Pupils raising their hands to show they play firecrackers at home during the Lunar New Year. — Photo courtesy of Sin Chew Daily

MANY years ago, the Americans sent a delegation to France. Their mission was to search through Gallic cemeteries for the grave of a man that had been left unmarked – and to disinter the body and bring it back to America.

When the body arrived in New York city, it was reportedly welcomed by a special band and the casket was displayed to public for a day before it was re-interred with a monument erected over the man’s grave to recognise his status as a celebrated poet, author and statesman.

Who could have deserved such honour but John Howard Payne, the composer of the song – Home Sweet Home. The lyrics reflect the utmost importance of home, and also show Americans venerate home and family from which all human values spring.

The streets are getting busier than ever. People are flocking to department stores – and also airports. Yes, it’s home-coming for those who have been away from home, to celebrate the Lunar New Year (on Feb 10 this year) in familiar surroundings and among loved ones and friends.

Yearning for home and anything that reminds one of home is imbedded in human nature.

While in Kuala Lumpur last week, I met up with three good friends, Jocelyn, Peter and Wuan, for coffee. I brought along some local goodies – and kongpia (or guang bing, a type of bread baked in a tandoor-type oven) is always a favourite at such ‘long-time-no-see’ gatherings, especially among the Foochows.

Jocelyn, a Foochow but not-so-Foochow after living out of Sarawak for many years, was so excited about the kongpia that she took pictures and posted them on her Facebook, prompting an almost immediate response from her daughter at home: “Daddy asked if that’s kongpia.”

Jocelyn replied: “Tell daddy yes, but none for him.”

The daughter replied: “Ok..k..k..k..k. Daddy says you are not coming home.”

“Kongpia-deprived home,” Jocelyn quipped.

At that moment, I couldn’t help feeling (with a lot of wonderment) that the whole world actually dances with food from home!

Of course, Jocelyn is going home with or without a bagful of kongpia!

Home is a special place of love, laughter, simple joy and truth. Lest we forget, there are also responsibilities to be shared.

Now, how many of us, as parents, take our responsibilities seriously in keeping our children safe while celebrating the New Year?

Every year, amidst happy family reunions, there are always some mishaps to mar the celebration. What is regrettable is that such untoward incidents can be avoided with parental (or adult) supervision and responsibility.

Yes, I am talking about firecrackers! While letting off firecrackers is the Chinese way of greeting the New Year with a bang, it can most certainly dampen the celebrative mood if things go wrong.

Two weeks ago, the police were invited to give a talk to the pupils of Chung Hua Primary School No. 2 in Stutong, Kuching, on the dangers of playing firecrackers.

When sub-inspector Simon Low asked “who play firecrackers at home during Chinese New Year,” a sea of little hands shot up almost instantaneously! That’s what I love about children. They are so innocently honest.

But shouldn’t we be concerned about the situation or do we continue to close an eye to the potential danger it could bring?

Notably, almost all the pupils admitted to playing firecrackers during the New Year despite the ban on firecrackers in the country since 1978.

So, everytime we set off pyrotechnics, we are not only taking the law into our own hands but also passing it (illegally) into thousands of little hands no different from those of the Chung Hua Primary School No. 2 pupils in Stutong.

Had Low asked how many of the pupils knew firecrackers are banned in the country and playing firecrackers is punishable by law, he probably would have seen fewer little hands raised.

If the police were to issue summonses based on the confessions of these little ones, would you be receiving one for breaking the law?

I think it has to be said that responsibility for education
along this line rests with the home – not the schools. I would, in no way, recommend that schools take over such responsibility which comes, as it must, within the ambit of the home.

This is what home is for – a place where fuzzy values are set straight, law and order observed, false outlooks corrected and shoddy practices exposed.

While we may think the police have done a good job in educating the young ones on the danger of firecrackers, I have to state my case – that failure on the part of the enforcement authorities, their  apathy and laxity in throwing the book at the culprits, is a travesty of the law.

I thought poet Edgar A Guest put it wonderfully with these wise words:

If I don’t help my boy to grow up right, I call myself a failure no matter how much money I make or how big a reputation I get. I have a number of tasks to do, all of which I should like to do well; to be a failure in any one of them would be disappointing. Yet, I could bear that without whimpering if I were sure I had not failed my boy.

Not so much of me in the bank and more of me and of my best for the lad is what I would like to have to show at the end of my career. For me to succeed as a father, he must succeed. Unless my boy comes to manhood fit for the respect of his fellow man, I shall have been a failure. The glory of our handwork lies not in ourselves but in our children.

A blessed New Year to one and all.

REMEMBERING: The past actually happened but history is only what someone wrote down — A. Whitney Brown

Phyllis Wong is delighted to receive an email from Dr John Fozdar of Kuching in response to her last week article – Fishing up history – which he finds ‘very instructive.’

Here is the additional memorabilia of his exciting early days and memories in Sarawak medical services:

The Sarawak Medical Department has recently been in the news with the launching of the history of that department.

If the authors had cast their net wider in history, especially pre-Malaysia history, they would have discovered that the Sarawak Medical Dept has claims to international acknowledgement for some of its vagaries.

In the late 1950s or early 60s, Sarawak featured prominently in the British Medical Journal and even the UK newspapers as the only country in the globe to have an appendicitis epidemic.

This happened in Sibu when an expatriate doctor, under work pressure, began to diagnose many cases of abdominal pain as acute appendicitis. He performed appendicectomies on a few hundred patients in a very short period and the people in Sibu panicked.

The Director of Medical Services, also an expatriate, related that there was a long queue of several hundred patients winding along the shop lots, and past some hotels around the Lau King Howe hospital, holding their hands over the appendix region.

They would be diagnosed as acute appendicitis and lined up for operation.The British papers took notice and reported this strange phenomenon.

The Director sent Dr Wong Soon Kai (now Datuk Patinggi Tan Sri Dr Wong Soon Kai) to Sibu. I think Soon Kai had recently returned from the UK with his FRCS, the first Sarawakian to be so qualified.

Dr Wong Soon Kai took up his duties at the outpatient department and diagnosed that there was mass hysteria and almost none of them had appendicitis.

In a few days the scare died down. The expatriate doctor was repatriated to UK on medical grounds. Sarawak had gone down in medical annals for an ‘appendicitis epidemic.’

There were other significant ‘happenings’ in Kuching in those early years.

One expatriate doctor working in Kuching was not attending to his duties and would often be found in another establishment, close to the GH.

He managed to get three hospital assistants – ‘dressers’ – to work as ‘doctors’ and carry out all the clinical work.

It was pointed out to him that these ‘dressers’ could not sign death certificates, which still required a doctor to sign.

He managed to get these ‘dressers’ registered as doctors and work went on.

When another doctor was posted to Kuching, he noticed this anomaly and put a stop to this and ‘deregistered’ these ‘doctors’.

The ‘doctors’ went to court. They admitted that they were not trained doctors, but they had worked as doctors and had done nothing wrong during their term of service. Now to deregister them would be an injustice.

The Rajah upheld their argument and they were allowed to be doctors – personal to holder.

I was told that another of these expatriate doctors complained to the DMS that patients could get confused when they see dressers going around with stethoscopes, which should only be carried by genuine doctors.

The DMS told them that the dressers had been carrying stethoscopes for many years and it would be difficult to stop this practice. However, if the doctor felt strongly about this issue, he could carry two stethoscopes.

There must be a lot more to those extraordinary days.

The work done by these ‘dressers’ was of high standard. Many years ago world-renowned Sir GB Ong, (Ong Guan Bee of Bau) Professor of Surgery in HK University visited Kuching.

He was invited to do some surgery in Kuching. After all, he was world-renowned.

He did some thoracic surgical cases in Kuching General Hospital which required open chest surgery.

I asked him who gave the anaesthesia for this major surgery and he said one of the dressers who was trained to work in the surgical unit.

He said he found the service provided to be excellent and he had no anxious moments.

The dressers were a great and necessary asset to medical services in pre-independence Malaysia.

WE

I took a stroll along the jetty and met the Nugget family of three generations – grandpa, papa and son. They were setting up to catch crabs.

“I have been away from Moonta working in Western Australia for 34 years and now I am back to retire. My mum is 105 years old and still healthy,” grandpa Nugget proudly declared.

So, it is a family of four generations in Moonta, one of the three towns known as the Copper Coast or Little Cornwall near Port Hughes.

Grandpa Nugget flung the pot for trapping crabs into the sea and threw me these words: Fish up some fish, fish up some history of Moonta, if you haven’t been to Moonta, you haven’t travelled!

There goes the old wheeze, known all over Australia.

In his book Australia’s little Cornwall, Oswald Pryor wrote governors had used the quotation in after-dinner speeches, knowing it would always raise a laugh; politicians had relied on it to enliven an address to electors; ministers had worked it into sermons and it was a stock gag with stage comedians as well.

Driving tourist trial

My friend Walter Tarca who was kind enough to miss part of the fishing fun, brought me around Moonta for a driving tourist trial, passing a few streets full of the original cottages; an old railway station opened in 1909; Moonta Uniting Church built in 1873 which was once a Methodist Church and Moonta Wesley Methodist Church, built in 1865.

We ended up at the Moonta Mines Museum.

Here, there are 14 rooms to look through to learn about the Cornish miners’ lifestyles – what they did, how they lived, their hardships, their families, their school life, their work in the mines, their life underground and even their last journey to their resting ground.

A walk through this school-turned-museum impressed upon me this truth – the Cornish people lived life to the full because they knew a miner’s life could be short.

How was the miner’s work really like back in those days? These and many other questions were answered in this museum.

Really, museums need not be boring places if the exhibits are stories themselves unfolding before your eyes; if the keeper is an interesting person and if the visitors can actively participate in their programme.

Moonta Mines Museum is one such excellent example.

The pickey boys

Have you heard of the pickey boys? Unravelling the secrets of these boys, aged from 10 years upwards, the Museum shows them (through exhibits) sorting through a ton of ore for a shilling (10 cents) with a stern-looking captain supervising them – and ever ready to mete out punishment if they bungled.

These poor young souls would work all day and then had to go to school at night. You had to go to school because if you didn’t, you wouldn’t get to go to work to earn that life-sustaining shilling!

Have you every wondered why Cornish pastries are shaped the way they are – with a big handle?

Well, as I have discovered, the crust of Cornish pastries was made into a fairly large handle so that tin miners and farm workers could hold their pastries in their unwashed hands and not eat any of the dirt!

In a tin mine, dirt could contain tin, copper and arsenic dust – all poisonous.

The miners worked hundreds of metres underground where there was no water to wash their hands. To avoid transferring toxic waste from their hands onto their food, they would hold a pastry by the rim, eat the rest of it and then throw the rim away.

I did not visit the historical cemetery due to time constraint. But Walter told me that to many people, the cemetery is unique because of the large number of unmarked children graves there.

About 300 children, killed by diseases which raged through the town due to unsanitary conditions around the mines, were recorded in a plague.

Such is Moonta with every detail of its history engraved in the landmarks of the town and recorded in the Museum.

I miss Moonta but Waltar said Moonta misses its honoured citizens more in a message!

Gratifying book launching

Back home, I was, of course, delighted that the State Health Department had launched a book that chronicles the long and rich history of health services in Sarawak.

Heritage In Health also records some of the unique healthcare programmes such as the Flying Doctor Service; village health promoter programme; applied nutrition programme; environmental sanitation programme; malaria control programme and rural health clinic system to meet healthcare challenges faced by the state.

My friend, Chang Yi, who was excited about the book, asked: Is there any mention of Chempro?

Sadly, there was nothing on Chempro, the Community Health and Motivation Programme, developed during the years of American Missionary Lorraine E Gribbens in Christ Hospital Kapit.

Chempro was a key factor in immunisation programmes, public health teaching and preventing communicable diseases in Kapit.

We missed out Chempro as well as Gribbens, the remarkable pharmacist, who had made a difference in the lives of many.

As Land Development Minister Dato Sri Dr James Masing put it on her passing on Dec 20, 2009: “Gribbens encouraged me and other Iban children to study hard, be devoted Christians and morally upright. She entrenched in us the feeling of integrity. I myself benefitted from her motivation, words of wisdom, encouragement and kindness. I excelled in my studies after that.”

Heritage in Health may have missed out Chempro but it does not forget the many acts of the great nor, more importantly, the many acts of the small as well.

Both had helped immensely in shaping the state’s healthcare history based on the memories of many conscientious medical personnel and available documents.

It takes wonderful people like Dr Yao Sik King, Dr Flora Ong, Dr Gracia Tiong, Matron Margareth Wong and their dedicated team to make possible the historical recording health services in Sarawak.

Lest we forget about the importance of recording history, let’s listen to what state health director Datu Dr Zulkifli Jantan said:

“Unfortunately, they have never been systematically recorded. With the passing of time, retirement of staff and relocation of offices, there was a real danger that this information would be lost to future generations if we did not undertake the tedious task of recording them for posterity.”

Indeed, according to one of the great literary minds, Mark Twain, history, although sometimes made up of the few acts of the great, is more often shaped by the many acts of the small.

SHAME ON YOU: A woman demonstrator vents her anger at the police during a mass demonstration to mourn the death of the gang-rape victim in New Delhi, Mumbai. — Reuters photo

ALMOST 10 years ago, at the closing of a legal literacy seminar for women, a certain Roselan Johar Mohamed, then Kota Kinabalu Umno pro-tem head, uttered, among other things, that “if you cannot fight rape, better lay down and enjoy it and rape victims should be psychologically assessed as to whether they enjoyed the incident.”

There was public outrage over his bizarre remark. I cannot remember whether he said sorry or not but he certainly should have, given the wide media coverage and fierce condemnation of his vulgarity. Angry women groups also demanded an unqualified public apology from him.

He is certainly not (nor will be) the last of the (male) chauvinistic politicians the country has seen. Every now and then, you still read about sexist remarks made by the people’s elected representatives at state assembly and parliamentary sittings.

It’s down right uncouth — even obsence — when an assemblyman could do things like asking a woman YB at a state assembly sitting to remember to look after her own “forest” while commending her for managing forest reserves.

I thought this kind of misogynic fools and display of public stupidity in the August House only existed in boleh land. I was wrong. There is equal, if not frighteningly greater, degree of gender prejudice (against women) in other lands as well. And it’s going to stay, I firmly believe.

On Dec 16 last year, a 23-year-old physiotherapy student was repeatedly raped in a bus in south Delhi by six men, including the bus driver and a juvenile. The attackers also inserted a metal rod into her body before dumping her naked body out of the moving bus onto the road. Latest police reports said they were trying to run the vehicle over her.

The victim died after some weeks of medical care at a Delhi hospital and later at Mt Elizabeth Hospital in Singapore to which she was transferred for specialist treatment. But the injuries to her internal organs were too grevious for her to be saved.

As the world grieved over the tragegy, an agriculture scientist at a rural university in Madhya Pradesh, Dr Anita Shukla, won few friends with her shockingly dismissive reaction: “If the girl was surrounded by six rapists, why didn’t she surrender before them — at least it could have saved her intestines.”

As if this was not enough, the insensitive scientist, who is also a Lions Club member, blamed the victim for the crime.  “Women instigate men to commit such crimes.”

She did not stop there but went on to accuse the victim of being insensible by staying out of her house after 10pm.

“It was bound to happen when she roamed till late into night with boyfriends.”

She was speaking at a seminar — Sensitivity towards woman — organised by the Lions Club.

Some newspapers reported it was organised by the police themselves. If true, this is another example of sheer public stupidity on the part of the police to hold such a seminar at a time like this — no matter how noble the objective.

I thought the president of the Madhya Pradesh Women’s Commission was being too kind in her response: “Dr Anita Shukla has lost her mental balance. A statement like this from a female scientist shows she is insensitive towards women even after being a woman herself.”

The Andhra Pradesh Congress chief Botsa Satyanrayana, describing the gang rape of the physiotherapy student as a minor incident, said: “Women are asking for trouble if they venture out at night.”

These are glaring examples of how stupid and inhuman the opinions of some people can be and how it takes all kinds to make up our society.

Mind you, there are people watching from the side who blame rape victims for not resisting. “Why didn’t they scream for help? If only they had fought back, maybe this would not have happened.”

But if the victims resisted, people such as Dr Anita Shukla and Roselan would quickly retort: “Why did you fight back? You only made it worse!”

Yet others would say if the six men were not of a culture where sexual harassment of women is accepted as a fact of life and where rape victims are ignored by police, and worse, blamed for the crime, maybe they would not have beaten up and raped anybody.

Let me cut in here. If there are educated people like Dr Anita Shuka who openly blames rape victims instead of teaching her sons to respect women, then the death of the gang-rape victim will have been in vain.

Moreover, if people like Botsa continues to hold office, I am afraid there isn’t much the administration of Andhdra Pradesh can do to guarantee security and justice for its wo-menfolk who are victims of sex crimes, dowry tortures or any forms of harassement, abuse and atrocity. Unless there is drastic change in mindset, it’s futile to expect light at the end of a very long dark tunnel.

If some sectors of Indian society continue to treat the fair sex like domestic creatures who should not be seen after 5pm lest they become vulnerable to masculine repression and violence, then all the protest marches and candlelight vigils following the beastly gang-rape will have only fleeting impact for change.

Until people are prepared to be better parents and better human beings, not looking for scapegoats when something has gone wrong; until politicians are pro-active and not merely paying lip service in enacting laws to protect the public, irrespective of gender, and until there is a paradigm shift in police sensitivity and attitude towards rape victims, women in Delhi will continue to have the Sword of Damocles hanging over their heads.

As one young girl lamented: “If a nine-month child can be raped or a three-year-old molested, what kind of clothes will save me from being raped?

Indeed, all this open and unspeakable stupidity has been a rape of my intelligence!

INTERPRETIVE TRAIL: This covers the stories and secrets of the 150,000 people buried at West Terrace Cemetery.

The cycle of the Mayan Long Count Calendar ended on Dec 21 but the world did not.

That means we all have to roll up our sleeves and face the challenges of the coming year.

In Malaysia, we have this little business of choosing our next government to take care of sooner rather later – most say it will be in March next year.

By all accounts, the next general election – the 13th since the birth of our nation – promises to be the mother of all elections.

Both sides of the political divide are on overdrive – in fact, for some time now.

For the man in the street, it means more struggles – the inevitable inflation, making ends meet and a host of other problems to overcome.

But there is also the sunny side of the street for us to walk on – friends, families, successes to savour and the very joy of living.

Personally, my view of facing the future has been influenced by a compelling journey of discovery and encountering remarkable human stories of courage, heartbreak, struggle and success as I wove through a foreign land.

I was in Adelaide over the past 10 days and had the privilege to walk the same roads and paths that 19th century South Australians had.

I immersed myself in the captivating and long-forgotten stories of the South Australia’s early pioneers, notable figures and controversial characters.

In the self-guided interpretive walking trail of the award-winning West Terrace Cemetery,  I “met” Sir John Langdon Bonython (1848-1939), a media magnate, politician and philanthropist; international composer Percy Grainger; Chinese community leader Yett Soo War Way Lee (1852-1909); war hero Arthur Seaforth Blackburn and ballerina Madeleine Parker.

Standing tall is Overland Telegraph Monument connecting Australia with the world. And uniquely designed is Caroline Emily Clark Memorial Garden where those buried in unmarked graves are remembered.

It was a discovery of South Australia’s rich history made in a journey of courage, heartbreak, struggle and success as I walked through the cemetery listed as state heritage.

The South Australian government has also honoured the war-fallen with a narrow slither of land marked by a partially-curved pedestrian pathway as well as war memorial plaques and stones.

It was a pedestrian route that evolved in the 1920’s and formalised in the 1980’s to honour the fallen soldiers.

Among the 33 memorial plaques, I found one that read: Dedicated to the memory of the members of the 8th Battalion the Royal Australian Regiment who died while serving Malaysia 1967/69.

Strolling in the historic town of Hahndorf in Adelaide Hills, I was drawn to the story of how 187 German Lutheran immigrants from 38 families (later another 14 families joined) arrived and settled down here with a negotiated contract of 100 acres of rent-free land for the first year.

The families worked and built German-Style farm houses and established businesses. Many of these 19th century buildings are still as they are with over 100-year-old elm and plane trees lining the main street and the original buildings beautifully maintained or restored to original condition.

The town has become a place to visit on the tourist map, and today, it is one of South Australia’s popular tourist destinations.

Like Hahndorf, the town of Lobethal was where the German settlers set up distinctly German villages. It means valley of praise.

The annual Christmas lights festival – The Lights of Lobethal – which began about 55 years ago, saw more than 90 per cent of all homes and businesses lighting up for the Yuletide Season with displays drawing thousands of visitors.

I was excited about going on a fishing trip to Port Hughes. It was there that I had the opportunity to walk through the Moonta Mines heritage site.

But nothing like the excitement in 1859 when two shepherds stumbled upon green rocks and heralded a great mining dynasty on Yorke Peninsula, particularly in the mining town of Moonta, 125km from Adelaide.

A visit to Moonta Mines Museum yielded so much information that visitors came away with an overload of the richness of the town’s history.

The museum formerly housed Moonta Mines School built in 1878 to educate the children of Cornish miners.

The mines closed in 1923, and in 1968, the children were sent to Moonta School, and the museum was subsequently set up in 1969.

I stepped back in time as I entered the classroom of yesteryear – two-seater desks, maps on the walls and a blackboard. A scenario well before the advent of computers and modern teaching aids.

There were nine rules for teachers which included: Any teacher who smokes, uses liquor in any form, frequents pool or public halls or gets shaved in  a barber shop will have good reason to suspect his worth, intention, integrity and honesty.

A pay rise was only given when the teacher performed his work faithfully without a fault for five years.

Male teachers may take one evening each week for courting purposes, or two evenings if they went to church regularly.

There was no mention of female teachers – probably because male teachers were not wooing female teachers! I wonder whether any teacher could survive working under such draconian rules.

Quite clearly, the discipline, courage and pioneering spirit of the early settlers had laid the foundation of present-day Australia.

Inspired by these Australian pioneers, I’m all ready for whatever 2013 has in store. The early trail-blazers Down Under had shown that with strong will and spirit, there is no mountain too high to climb.

So here’s to putting my best foot forward.

RUDIMENTARY: Basic needs for a rural boarding school such as decent bunks in an airy dorm.

BORNEO POST readers were outraged by its front page picture on Dec 4, showing more than 20 boys and girls of a primary boarding school in Belaga, sleeping all crammed up in a stuffy room.

The girls’ dormitory of the school – SK Punan Ba – collapsed on Jan 31 this year, and after the initial knee-jerk pledge to build a new one as a replacement, nothing has been done so far and the pupils have been sleeping ‘like packed sardines’ in one of the school offices.

A concerned parent sent a handphone snapshot to highlight the plight of the pupils in the hope that the authorities could be stirred into action.

The next day, Assistant Minister of Culture and Heritage Liwan Lagang sent out another shockwave when he said SK Punan Ba was not the only school to be neglected in the district.

According to Liwan, the Belaga assemblyman, many other schools also faced similar harsh conditions and needed urgent repairs, including the dormitory at Long Busang, another settlement in the area, which was gutted recently.

Although it is an open secret that many of our rural schools are old or poorly maintained, the furious reader reactions to the pathetic condition of SK Punan Ba show they feel strongly against the lackadaisical attitude of the authorities in addressing this shameful situation.

The angry feelings of readers remind me of James Taylor’s song: There is a feeling like the clenching of a fist, there is a hunger in the centre of the chest, there is a passage through the darkness and the mist … someone shed a little light to the gloomy day.

Happily, it is not all gloom for rural schools as an email I received from Chang Yi, a former educationist, now leading a very enriching retirement life travelling, writing and doing researches on Chinese tradition and food, would attest.

“Not all rural schools are in such poor shape,” she said.

Chang Yi had just visited Sekolah Kebangsaan Bario, the second school adopted by the Sarawak Women for Women Society (SWS) under the Smart Partnership Programme.

“Management is good as every arm of the machinery is functioning at its best – right down to the gardener and cook in this school,” she noted.

She shared with me pictures of the school and the students’ activities, singling out, in particular, a snapshot of the dormitory with this observation: “The double-decker beds of SK Bario are very well-maintained. Dora Tigan is a good headmistress. She is a computer science teacher and had attended some courses in the Maktab Perguruan in Miri when I was a lecturer.

“Schools in the rural are badly managed because although very often headmasters or headmistresses are willing to work hard, there is no response from the real bosses in Kuala Lumpur. The communication is bad.”

SK Bario, located in the Kelabit Highlands in Baram, has 162 pre-school and primary one pupils, and 12 teachers. The vast majority of the pupils are Kelabits while the rest comprise Penan, Malay, Lun Bawang, Chinese, Indian and Kadazan.

From the perspective of SK Bario, I see the picture of able leadership in the headmistress, backed by her team of dedicated teachers and staff, and most importantly, supported by a pro-active community.

From my childhood experience of going to a small rural school, I know the bonds run deep in small rural communities.

We might not have the best facilities but the community ensured the most basic needs of a school such as a conducive learning environment and an adequate and safe building – were provided for the children.

Back in the good old days, there was no unnecessary bureaucracy – all we had was a community thriving on strong ties of love and hope and a burning desire to see their children grow and bond in a decent place of learning.

However, the role of the community in maintaining a school has shifted more to the government.

The attitude now is that it is the government’s duty to provide financial support to schools although it must be emphasised that the community’s continued support for education, especially in the rural areas, remains indisputably vital.

The close link between a school and the community can enhance our children’s sense of purpose in complementing efforts to prepare them to become useful citizens and productive workers in the future.

Sharing the same line of thought is this reader’s email to the Borneo Post: “Let us move forward with positive action and do something about this. Will Borneo Post shoulder this move as a civic duty towards humanity?”

It is heartening to note from a recent interview that Welfare, Women and Community Development Minister Datuk Fatimah Abdullah is now promoting the value of volunteerism through her ministry’s We care and we share programme.

She said: “We want to promote the value of love, kindness, generosity and compassion. We want to instill and nurture the culture of social responsibility through community involvement, and encourage people to care and share with one another.

“We must not let modernity take away the kindness of human nature as the country continues to progress and move forward. In fact, the government has declared 2013 as year of volunteerism.”

As Jack Shekton, founder of small schools cooperative, aptly put it in an interview on a life connected to community: In schools not connected to place, kids don’t have a role and they’re anonymous; the teachers are anonymous; the places are anonymous. I don’t believe morality is a function of anonymity.

Now that we have marked Sk Punan Ba on the map, it’s no longer anonymous. So what’s the task standing before us now?

FROM THE HEART: A silent prayer for charity in the face of adversity.

SHE moved from table to table in a busy coffeeshop with a basket of vegetables and some foochow dumplings.

Stopping by my table where I was having breakfast with my young children, she said in Foochow: “Auntie, please help. My daughter-in-law met with a road accident – the children need money to buy textbooks and milk powder.”

My young children, clearly shocked that their mum was showing no sympathy, pleaded: “Mummy, please buy her vegetables.”

I did not. She moved on to the next table. Not quite recovered from what they saw, one of my children asked: “Mummy, is it because she looks older and she called you auntie and you were not happy, so you didn’t help her?”

It was a then unpleasant experience, especially when I was taken in earlier by her sorrowful tales of mishaps and her fake goodness of offering more than she was actually making from selling her ware.

My suspicion of her contrived state of poverty was confirmed when I found out that her son actually has a high-paying job at a reputable company, her daughter-in-law did not meet with any accident and the veges and siew mai she sold were overnight stuff.

More than a decade has elapsed and my children have grown up. But the woman still tells the same old story to make an easy buck – like the interminable accidents her daughter-in-law seems to meet day after day and her grandchildren perpetually remaining infants in need of milk powder – apparently forever.

Moving on – last month, we were dining at a western food restaurant. Three persons stood in front of us – one of them strumming a guitar – and sang us a song. After that, they placed a card on the table and asked for a donation supposedly for a foreign charitable organisation.

Come to think of it, we are actually a land of charitable people – very often, we stand ready to oblige some outwardly well-meaning musicians “strumming our pain with their fingers, killing us softly with their songs.”

Even with some doubts in mind, we still open our wallets and contribute freely!

Then there was this 74-year-old businessman who donated a piece of land to two associations in the hope that a building could be erected for the benefit of the members and to earn some income from renting out the space.

One year had passed and there was no news of these two associations embarking on the project. Another year went with no good news either – and a third year slipped by in dead silence.

The old man gave the associations an ultimatum through the media to produce a concrete plan within a month or he would reclaim the land for other philanthropic purposes.

There are some who ask whether the elderly Good Samaritan is promoting himself by reminding the public – through the ultimatum – that he has donated land to the associations?

But the septuagenarian told the media that he was not promoting himself, saying he was old and just hoped to see his wish fulfilled. He reminded the media not to play up his ultimatum.

Will the kind old timer’s wish be realised? Can he reclaim his land and give it to more deserving quarters? This will be his “charity pains” in the days to come.

Lately, it seems more and more people are claiming to represent certain benevolent bodies and asking for public donations. I find it easier and less guilty (why should my conscience be pricking?) to turn down these people politely by telling them I have my own donation plans.

I have come up with a “how to donate” list to avoid the pain of knowing my better nature has been taken advantage of. The tagline is be the hunter, not the hunted – do not respond to solicitations for money. Instead, decide what causes you genuinely want to support.

Rule No. 1:  Give to someone I know. They can be my friends, my friends’ friends or family members or a project raised by my friends. They must have a personal connection.

Rule No. 2: Give to those in immediate need, like during an emergency or disaster. But then, we still need to be careful about which organisations we are channelling our donations through. Go for well-known charitable bodies or our own church. Take one more step to check how efficient these bodies are.

Rule No. 3: Give to those whom you can visibly see are in need – like a physically challenged person.

Rule No. 4:  Look for organisations with good stewardship – that is how they manage their funds and transparency. I have seen organisations raising a million ringgit while spending RM500,000 on a charitable dinner to immortalise their charitable acts. Whether what they have lavished on the dinner are from the donations received or funded by the organisation concerned, the money could well have gone into the charity fund.

That leads to Rule No. 5: Evaluate how the charitable organisations portray themselves in the media.

There is an increasing trend amongst society in general to give to charity or raise awareness about a charity with the agenda of looking good in the process.

Some people use their donations or charity works to lift their own profile and expect to be acknowledged for it rather than going about it without any fanfare purely to help others.

Charity is supposed to be a noble, selfless act that should be kept from the public eye, especially the media.

“Don’t let your left hand
know what your right hand is doing” is a hard act to follow. Most donors are not only adverse to keeping their acts of generosity secret, they also make sure reporters and photographers are on hand to record their humanitarianism  for posterity.

There is a clear line between giving to charity and promoting oneself in the name of doing charity to gain attention and publicity.

But, let’s not shy away from “charity” just because it hurts sometimes.

Our greatest good for humanity is in helping others help themselves through love that is not influenced by selfish motives – certainly not like the vege and dumpling seller who attempted to project her depravation in public – but then, not everyone
is fooled by her disguised trickery.

You can say I am vain but probably it is more a digital age’s pleasure.

You can also say it is a paranoid thing to do (googling yourself) but after the court asked Google and Yahoo to compensate a Melbourne man A$425,000 in two separate lawsuits recently for linking him to one of Australia’s most notorious underworld figures, it is perhaps justifiable to find out who you are in the Google search engine.

Melbourne resident Milorad Trkulja was in a restaurant with his mother in 2004 when he got shot in the back by an unidentified hitman. He survived the attack but the crime was never solved although he reportedly knew who shot him.

The shooting was reported in Melbourne Sun Herald and the article posted on various websites devoted to crime in Melbourne.

Trkulja, a former music promoter and prominent member of Melbourne’s Yugoslav community, claimed a Google search of his name linked him to the same league as Tony Mokbel, an alleged murderer and a drug trafficker, and Dennis Tanner, an alleged murderer.

The search engine implied he was a figure so prominent in the underworld that his rivals hired a gunman to kill him.

According to Trkuja, this led people to conclude that he was also a criminal when he was actually a victim to an unsolved crime. He claimed it did so much damage to his reputation that one couple refused to sit next to him at a wedding.

He contacted the Internet giants and requested them to take remedial action which was not entertained.

He brought a landmark case and sued Google and Yahoo for defamation. Subsequently, the court asked Google and Yahoo to pay him A$200,000 and A$225,000 respectively in two separate defamation suits.

Google argued it was not its fault, claiming it merely picked up stuff other people had produced which, it pointed out, was a reflection of the content and information available on the Internet.

However, Justice Barry Beach rejected Google’s argument and put the search engine in the same category as a newsagent that distributed papers and magazines, saying the man was “entitled to an award of damages that vindicates him.”

This was not an isolated case. Google was not only facing this lawsuit.

The former First Lady of Germany Bettina Wulff has also filed a lawsuit against Google for ‘autocompleting’ the search when her name was entered into the search engine with “prostitute” and “escort.”

If you google regularly, you would have noticed how Google “autocompletes” your search by giving you many suggestions.

Google said the suggested “autocomplete” emanated from the searchers’ curiosity and not Google’s assessment.

Have you found a reason to ego-surf and see how the Internet “brand” you online? I did so once, just once!

And Yes, I was thrilled to find another “me” through the magical Google search engine. And that “me” is all over cyberspace.

The animated Me dot com homepage invited me to enter to discover a brilliant young magician.

Australian author Geoffrey McSkimming has written a book titled Phyllis Wong and the forgotten secrets of Mr Okyto.

The book was introduced this way: “When a series of seemingly incomprehensible robberies takes place in the city, Phyllis realises there is much more to the crimes than meets the eye. It may be baffling her friend chief inspector Barry Inglis but Phyllis is determined to find out more.”

Geoffrey had been appearing in bookshops and schools in Australia in August and September this year to read to the public in conjunction with the publication of his first Phyllis Wong story.

I dropped an email to him, and he promptly replied:

Thanks for your email and I’m glad you are excited to find another Phyllis! My Phyllis Wong is a young magician who thinks in a brilliant fashion, and uses her detection skills to try to solve mysteries that are happening all around the city where she lives.

The first story, Phyllis Wong and the Forgotten Secrets of Mr Okyto, has recently been published and already gone into second printing, and I’m here in Paris at the moment working on the second Phyllis Wong story which will be published next year.

You’re not the first Phyllis Wong to find me. Another Phyllis Wong – a photographer from Sydney – has made contact through Facebook and she likes the story. She also found out about this by Googling her name.

I used the name because it sounds lovely. I find the hardest thing for me as a writer is to come up with the best names for my characters (I’ve written over 21 books) and Phyllis Wong is just right for the young girl magician-detective. It sounds perfect.

I’m glad you don’t mind that she is your name-sake. I think you will be proud of her. Her great grandfather was one of the world’s most famous and successful magicians before his mysterious disappearance on stage way back in 1936, and Phyllis has inherited his love of conjuring from him.

There is surely no cause for me to take up a case against Google. But one could expect with the precedence of Trkulja Vs Google & Yahoo, the courts worldwide will be busy with such lawsuits if the Internet law remains as it is or the search engines do not modify their search results.

Until then, try googling yourself!

As for me, I will continue to enter the magical world of Phyllis Wong and who knows, I might even find a clue from the other “me” to the missing pieces our cops are still searching for in attempting to solve the recent open shooting cases in the major cities of the state!

CHARM OF FISHING: Pursuit of what is elusive but attainable, a perpetual series of occasions for hope.

LAST week, PAS president Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang offered himself to be the ‘other’ prime minister-in-waiting.

Who would have thought he preferred to be the master rather than the “servant” of the people – and this after having said he didn’t really mind going back to be a fisherman.

Apparently, he changed his mind following a popular demand at his party’s recent annual conference or muktamar for him to be the prime minister of a nation with 28 million people – that is if the opposition won the next election – although he appeared (outwardly at least) to be playing down the strong call from his supporters to take up the challenge.

However, after sleeping on it for a night, Hadi welcomed the call, saying unabashedly that “sometimes, it can be syok (a fleeting thrill) to be proposed for the PM post.”

As for his intention to return to the life of a fisherman – presumably after quitting politics or getting a big knock at the polls – the PAS strongman said: “At least, I can teach the people.”

While he didn’t say how he would go about doing this – and setting aside our different religions – his statement sounds very biblical to me. Perhaps he aspires to be a fisher of men.

Pakatan Rakyat (PR) advisor and Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) de facto leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim was quick to respond, and trying to sound as civil as he could, said the proposal by PAS could be discussed despite his ambition to secure the PM post being an open secret.

DAP secretary general Lim Guan Eng attempted to douse the fire by maintaining that Anwar would be the prime minister if PR won the next general election.

“This is the consensus of the three parties (PAS, DAP and PKR). If PR wins, it’s Anwar who will be prime minister,” he declared.

When pressed to comment on the proposal that the PR component party with the most seats would get the PM post, Lim skirted the issue by maintaining that consensus among the component parties was more important.

“We think the one who can represent the whole of PR, the whole of Malaysia, is Anwar,” Lim said, fully aware that his party could win the most seats.

The opposition tripartite looks very much like a perfect pact – a lot of understanding and tolerance with the leaders ever so humble and ready to serve!

Is that where my vote should go?

However, if it is PR’s consensus that Anwar should be prime minister, then the resounding support of PAS delegates for Hadi to assume the nation’s top post – coupled with Hadi’s own consent to accede to the popular demand from his party – contradict the stand taken by the PR leadership.

And compounding the rather thorny issue of PR’s conflicting stand on the PM post is public perception (disillusionment if you like) that the opposition alliance is dithering and waffling when it comes to the question of hudud.

Problems surrounding the issue have not been ironed out yet. There is no common stand and it’s highly unlikely the stalemate will be resolved anytime soon if the overwhelming support shown by PAS grassroots at the muktamar for implementation of the contentious Islamic law is anything to go by.

While PR is plagued by the premiership and hudud controversies,  former Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohammad noted in his usual point-blank style: “Even before forming the government, they are already squabbling. Later (if) they form the government, not only Hadi and Anwar but Karpal Singh too would want to be PM.”

A political observer was quick to enlighten me that even the consensus on the choice of PM will not count for PR.

Based on his calculations, Hadi has a higher chance to be prime minister if PR were to form the next government.

“According to Article 43(2a) of the Constitution, the Yang di-Pertuan Agong shall appoint the Prime Minister to preside over the Cabinet a member of the House of the Representatives who in his judgment is likely to command the confidence of the majority of the members of that House,” he explained.

Does this mean if there is more than one aspirant, then there will be a voting for the PM post?

The observer said it is no secret  Barisan Nasional (BN) MPs will never for a day allow Anwar to be prime minister, adding that if BN MPs voted in favour of PAS, then it is possible the post will go to Hadi – not Anwar.

The aspiring fisher of men, in addressing the annual assembly where he was urged to take up the PM post, had stressed PAS would uphold its Islamic principles in pursuit of Putrajaya together with its PR partners.

He also declared PR had agreed to hudud’s implementation which again contradicts the promise DAP and PKR made to the people.

Indeed, consistency in PR’s principles, policies and spirit is important and may well determine the outcome of its much-touted match to Putrajaya.

The grapevine has it that Kedah Menteri Besar Datuk Seri Azizan Abdul Razak invited Hadi for a fishing trip when the PAS president visited Kedah.

Before they headed out to sea, Azizan asked his family to prepare spices for his favourite fish dish. But as it turned out, the catch was dismal and all those fantasies of a sumptuous fish feast came to nought.

It is said the incident prompted Hadi to call on PAS supporters to concentrate on winning the election and put aside the issue of prime minister-in-waiting.

“What’s important is that we must first win the general election,” he said.

But for voters like me, I think it’s important to know who will be leading the nation if the opposition wins the election – Hadi, Anwar or Karpal Singh? And just as important, whether the PR component parties will be consistent in the execution of major policies in steering the nation?

But then, I only have one vote – it probably does not matter.

BE NOT DISMAYED: There should be another piece coming that will put the whole story together.

A DAY after his 60th birthday, he told the president of his extra-marital affair and subsequently tendered his resignation as the country’s most powerful man in the CIA.

Her husband, meanwhile, cancelled her 40th birthday party after she was identified as the mistress.

Events leading to the shocking end of the admirable career of CIA director David Petraeus all seemed so simple. Not unlike the script from the Desperate Housewives, a woman received a series of harassing and threatening emails from anonymous accounts, accusing her of flirting with “him.”

She complained to an FBI agent. The Bureau caught out the top spy in the country by linking the emails to his autobiographer, Paula Broadwell .

It could well have been summed up that Petraeus offered to resign simply because he felt he had violated his personal code of honour by entering into an affair with Broadwell.

If you are a die-hard CSI fan, you will not accept such a theory and just conclude: Ah, how true, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.

You will instead snap your fingers and swear there must be more to the whole regrettable affair than meets the eye. There are still too many pieces of the puzzle that just don’t seem to fit!

So, the search for the missing pieces continues.

I am quite thrilled, actually, with how the FBI opens up the secret compartments – like how I do with my set of nesting wooden dolls. First, with the outer layer, then as I open, dolls of either gender of decreasing sizes appear!

The FBI has been fast in finding the missing pieces if we are to draw a comparison with what’s happening here at home.

The timeline of the event, as provided by the American news-papers, showed Broadwell only started sending harassing emails to the other woman – 37-year-old Tampa socialite Jill Kelly, said to be having a liaison with four-star General John Allen, US commander in Afghanistan – in May this year and by September, the FBI had nailed Petraeus and Broadwell.

Now back at home, the missing pieces that the men in blue have found in the three open shooting cases in the major cities – or are still trying to find, to be more precise – appear to be in connection with crimes allegedly linked to one common theme – Internet gambling.

But the cops have said otherwise. The state police chief was reported as having brushed aside talks that the recent fatal daylight shootings in Sibu could have been linked to Internet gambling.

On the surface, Internet gambling is not the main cause of the murder because the victim’s scope of business covered mainly entertainment, logging and oil palm, according to Police Commissioner Datuk Acryl Sani Abdullah Sani.

He said the killing could have been due to a personal grudge and possibly business rivalry. He also ruled out the possibility of the three murder cases in question having any link to each other.

But the CP’s top man in Sibu said he believed the husband of the woman, gunned down in the most recent coffeeshop shooting, was involved in illegal computer gambling but added, with reservation, that it was too early to link the underground activity with the killing.

I am just trying to make sense out of the whole messy episode but have no clue whatsoever as to where I can find the missing pieces. But maybe – just maybe – I might have one missing piece in hand. Ah Kang, the husband of the murdered woman, had frequented the café where the shooting occurred. The killers must have trailed him to keep tabs of his movements and struck him when they thought the timing was right.

Even as police investigations are on-going, I remain apprehensive and for good reason too because the venue (of the shooting) is also my favourite café for kampua and liver soup!

Which reminds me of the grand adventure of a wedge-shaped animal searching for the “perfect (missing) piece to perfect itself” while singing and enjoying the scenery as it travels along its journey.

But after the animal has finally found the perfect piece that fits the purpose of its search, it begins to realise it can no longer do the things it used to enjoy doing – like singing or rolling slowly to enjoy a conversation with a worm or a butterfly.

There and then, it decides it was happier when searching for the missing piece than actually having it. So it gently puts the piece down and continues searching … happily.

I like how Anne Roiphe explained this fable in a book review. The fable can also be interpreted to mean that no one should try to find all the answers or hope to fill all the holes in themselves or achieve total transcendental harmony (psychic order) because a person without a search or loose ends or internal conflicts and external goals becomes too smooth to enjoy or know what’s going on. Too much satisfaction blocks any exchange with the outside world.

The FBI is probably close to finding its missing pieces. Will the truth hurt?

By the same token, are our men in blue also close to finding the perfect pieces to fill the gaps that are causing the three shooting incidents to remain unsolved thus far?

IMPRESSIVE: The centre-piece of Legoland is the Miniland with recreated famous Asian landmarks.

MY Legoland journey actually began with a walk around the old part of Johor where distinctive red buildings and unique windows of old buildings stood out.

There was this breathtaking Red House which literally painted its location at Jalan Tan Hiok Nee red. This scarlet building – with white and elaborated linings and unique windows – was actually one of the old structures turned into a heritage house for cultural purposes. The window design reflected Chinese culture and history.

There was also a Chinese museum, known as Tiong Hua museum, showcasing the early Chinese settlement here – with history, cultures, traditions and occupation of the various Chinese communities that had made Johor their home.

Further down the street was Mui Hwa Restaurant, in existence since 1946, making it one of the oldest kopitiams around the state. This two-storey corner building served Hainanese cuisines, including the famous Hainanese chicken chops.

It exuded an ancient charm with its tiled flooring and staircase banisters leading to the first floor where the windows served as gateways to the past and the soul of the place. I took a peek and was ushered into the heart of the premises.

Venturing on, I came across shops, owned by the Malays, Indians and Chinese alongside each other – or even on the groundfloor and the first floor.

The same distinctive windows of the shops amazed me just as I was by an eating place call Gluttons Corners with signs, indicating it served delicious baku teh and wonton mee. A gathering for gluttons? I would be coming along if one were organised!

It was windows, windows and more windows – some wide open, some with laced curtains but all having one thing in common – signs and symbols of the presiding deites affixed on them.

I had little time to explore more but the impression these places left on me is enough to remember Johor by for a long time.

Lasting impression

Next was a trip down to Legoland, further reinforcing my desire to make it a memorable experience.

I was in awe of the Miniland, showcasing 17 Asian countries with their famous landmarks.

What I had not explored in old Johor town came alive right before my eyes in the Miniland. Here, the famous landmarks of Johor Bahru, the capital city of the host state, were depicted down to the minutest detail.

The classical and stately High Court buildings, constructed by the British colonials, stood tall among the other landmarks such as Dataran Bandaraya, Masjid Negeri Sultan Abu Bakar, Johor Tourism Information Centre, Bangunan Lembaga Tabung Haji, Sultan Ibrahim Building, Stesen Johor Bahru, Bangunan Datuk Jaafar and more buildings of the old town.

A Catholic church was also impressively recreated with Lego blocks, blending comfortably into the tidy conglomeration of the surrounding buildings.

Amazingly, the unique windows of these buildings were all Lego-bricked together in great detail and they connected my mind beautifully with the unique windows I saw at the old town!

At Legoland, more than 30 million Lego bricks were used to meticulously create miniature landmarks from 17 cities in the region, including India’s Taj Mahal; Myanmar’s gigantic barge on the shore of Yangon; the Great Wall of China; Singapore’s Merlion; Malaysia’s iconic Petronas Twin Towers in Putrajaya and Kuala Lumpur International Airport. With the touch of a button, these models were brought to life.

Proud achievement

It really did Malaysia proud to have hosted this largest ever Lego Park. More than 100 people the world over were involved in the photography, design, production and actual construction.

A lot of the models were built by our own builders working at Legoland Model Shop in Nusa Cemerlang, Johor Bahru, which is another source of national pride, while others were built in the US, Denmark, England, Czeh Republic and Germany.

At the opening ceremony last month, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak, acknowledging “the special place Lego bricks hold in our hearts,” said the building blocks are just like how we build ourselves.

How do these building blocks lego-lise our nation and people?

I am trying to fathom the Prime Minister’s thoughts on this. And I would venture an educated guess. What the PM implied (I think) in his remarks at the opening ceremony was that if Lego building blocks could be used to create miniature cities, parks and iconic landmarks of the world, then their quality in this regard should also inspire people to build a better future for themselves and their country – hence, the building blocks are just like how we build ourselves.

The first version of the Lego bricks was invented in 1949 but with limited value though the invention was considered great.

Four years later, the first Lego mat, referred to as the base for building, was invented, serving as the foundation for the Lego bricks.

By 1955, Lego launched the Lego system of play, and armed with the mat, Lego bricks could build just about anything you can imagine. It’s the foundation and with it follows connectivity.

If you or your children grew up building Lego blocks, you’d certainly know the blocks’ ability to connect varies. Some bricks can connect to many while others may connect to only one.

By understanding the nature of each Lego block, we are able to interact and connect well. The magic is to effectively uncover the relationships and connections between people and their worlds. The bricks make it easy to see, and more importantly, understand perceptions and realities.

Lego-lised Johor is the window to bring Malaysia to the eyes of the world – a window where the world is connected to us.