snow.on.the.sahara

geez...does everyone have more of a life than i do, or is it normal for blogs to just die on weekends?

have surfed onto most of the blogs i visit regularly for my daily kick, and MAN, no one seems to be updating!

c'mon guys, SOME people (read: me) have nothing else to do but read your blogs, so throw us a bone here and entertain us!!!

boohoo.

for the first time in too long a while, shen finally gets her weekend off.

when the press statement for the announcement of cabinet later on this afternoon arrived via fax at the office yesterday, my heart sank down to my tired toes as i realised, there goes any thought i had of (finally) having some well-deserved rest this weekend.

turns out, i remembered that for some strange reason which will always be beyond me, our station doesn't even have news on weekends...and thanks to this glorious glorious anomaly...i slept until 10 this a.m! hee...hee...hee (picture a very pleased shen chuffing conspiratorially to herself).

of course, i have many reasons other than rest to look forward to this weekend. i have so much stuff outside my professional life i need to catch up on. first on the list, unexpectedly, was meeting a fellow blogger ive been meaning to have coffee with for some time.

ash is someone whose life ive followed religiously for the past 8 months or so now. i cant say why exactly his life intrigues me, and he seemed rather astonished that anyone might actually think so, but i guess when someone actually has the guts to speak from the heart its hard not to find that intriguing.

over a tall rhumba and a caramel macchiato at starbucks, many laughs and lots of verrrryyyy interestinggggg revelations...i suppose i can say it looks like the start of a promising and rather social weekend.

ahead on the list of things to do:

utterly boring stuff
1. pay for the ridiculously expensive and unnecessarily decked-out car (which nevertheless brings me much joy)
2. eat. eat. eat. oh yes, eat.
3. watch announcement of cabinet on tv (pays for a reporter to be well-informed)
4. read all four of my newspapers from cover to cover (ahh, bliss!)

utterly productive stuff
1. sleep. lots of it.

fun
1. dinner with a long lost friend who's back from sri lanka, karina.
2. tea with a long lost friend who's back from studies in japan, hafiz
3. day out with mum (awwww...) where a movie, hi-tea and shopping is in order
4. long uninhibited chats (!) online with kai

and now...bring forth the weekend!

when news of BN's massive win in terengganu started pouring in via sms at the lembah pantai vote-counting centre the other day, many reporters congregated at one corner of the hall to confirm the political developments and discuss the implications of the win.

one reporter shook her head dismally and lamented: it's sad, so very sad. we need the opposition and this is bad news for the country.

this statement has stuck in my head since then, not because i agree nor disagree with her, but because it made me think deeply about the the state of the opposition in malaysia.

it became clearer after observing the news reports on various local tv channels, mine notwithstanding.

you know something is wrong with local tv journalism when presenters on-air react a little too enthusiastically to reports of a party win. as journalists, they should by right, be neutral. party affiliations should not cloud on-air judgment. similarly, whatever the tv station's party affiliations may be, they should not refer to news of the win as 'we have won massively in terengganu'.

not only is this unprofessional, it does grave disservice to the rest of us who make an effort to be factual and impartial.

my point is not about a journalist's party affiliations. party support and personal opinions expressed outside work are reasonable. as long as these affiliations remain personal, and do not find their way into scripts or on-air presentations, they have every right to be expressed.

but i digress.

why did the reporter feel that the opposition's loss was, in her words, bad for the country?

she later told me that not having a strong enough opposition in parliament would lead the way to the formation of a dictatorial government, without the 'checks and balances' required to keep the ruling party on their toes. such a massive loss to the opposition, she said, would result in the minority losing its voice in policy-making. i agree with her to some extent.

i dont think the landslide victory was altogether a bad thing. but there was another reason for the win, and that wasn't entirely because the people are all for the BN and its policies. while i agree that the BN is without a doubt the better option, and in many cases, the only option for government, it must be said that they are where they are, in power, because this country lacks a formidable opposition.

the opposition can lament all they want that they are discrimated against by the mainstream media, that they are suppresed, that they are at the mercy of the ruling party's government.

but this is where i beg to differ. these are not the reasons why we lack formidable opposition. i agree that there exists a great deal of suppression of the opposition in this country. but when you have an opposition that speaks up only when it wishes to further its own arguments and justify its own existence, then its little wonder the ruling party clamps down on the dissenting voice. when opposition speaks up in malaysia, it is more often than not destructive criticism, tit-for-tat, us versus them.

the mentality is that the opposition exists only to counter the ruling party. if this were really the reason for having an opposition, then isnt the only reason left to vote for them being the fact that you do not agree with the ruling party? what happened to the idea that an opposition exists also to provide an option to the voter for choosing a government.

if this be the case, then shouldnt the opposition be doing a better job at providing realistic options for the voter, rather than just a dissenting us- versus-them voice?

fact is, we probably lack formidable opposition because there is no one party that is truly relevant to the average malaysian. while BN may have the upper hand in securing the alliances of all the component parties that claim to represent the various races, this doesnt necessarily mean that the BN is a truly relevant party. i doubt that any one of the component parties that make up the BN can truly represent the group of people they claim to represent.

why?

i, like many others of my generation, consider myself a 'displaced' malaysian. this is the malaysian who doesn't view him or herself as malay, chinese, indian or what-have-you, but malaysian. ethnically, i may be chinese, but mandarin is neither my first language nor my second. i speak english first, bahasa malaysia second. i studied at a national school. i have friends of all races, and we all communicate in english first, bahasa second. if you asked someone like me which party best represented my needs, i can safely tell you that there is none.

there is no party that can truly claim to be malaysian, and by this i mean not racially-based, nor religion-based. ideally, its members should not be selected on grounds that they represent their ethnicity, but because they know only how it feels to be malaysian. there must be no quota for race. and it must be secular. at its core there should be a goal for racial unity.

there is no party that walks the middle, moderate ground other than BN. and even then, BN isnt entirely what a person like me is looking for in a party. the closest a party ever came to walking the middle moderate ground was the DAP.

then again, even the DAP has now polarised into a mostly chinese party with a smattering of indians. it champions mainly the causes of the chinese and secures victory mainly in chinese majority areas. its relevance to the displaced malaysian has greatly dissipated.

at some point, it seemed as if perhaps KeADILan might begin filling this vacuum. but when it became increasingly obvious that at the heart of keADILan's existence, and fight, was the release of sacked DPM anwar ibrahim, it made many of us wonder just what else it seemed the party was fighting for. they can speak up all they want about the lack of fairness, justice and democracy in this country, but at the end of the day, apart from anwar, what else can they deliver? it seems to me the only reason they decry the lack of fairness, justice and democracy is because they perceive this is what is keeping anwar behind bars. but when anwar is someday released, who or what else will keADILan champion?

as for PAS, its quite evident to the displaced malaysian that PAS can never reach beyond the malay heartland. apart from the promise of religion, what else can they offer to the non-muslim of another religion? i have to admit i feel that there should be no place for non-secular parties in politics. parties that attempt to rule or attract support via religion are to a great extent relying on the fear of the believer to gain ground. all they have to say is 'if you believe in your religion, support the party that fights for your religion'. the voter, believer that he is, may fear divine retribution, or otherwise fear coming across as a weak believer if he doesnt vote in their support.

it is dangerous to mix religion with politics, and i believe that this could be the reason behind divisive politics in the israel-palestinian, india-kashmir-pakistan, phillipines-milf, ireland-roman catholic-protestant issues. when religion and politics mix, logic and rationality give way to emotion and passion. this can hardly be the way to choose a government.

i'd say, if there ever is a party that can offer a good challenge to the BN, and provide the voter with a less obvious choice, thereby forcing the voter to choose with extreme care, it would be a party that can not just offer a contrasting view, but a valid alternative. im not saying an alternative to the extreme-right or left of the mainstream. im saying an alternative not to far off the middle, one that can offer just as good, if not better service to the country, promise development, and continue to walk the moderate line.

dont leave me with PAS, KeADILan and DAP as my only options outside the BN. this, this lack of an option, more than anything, suppresses democracy. not the right to choose, but the right of having a choice.

only when the opposition can play its game right, and speak to the needs of the people and not the party...maybe then more voters would feel that their vote truly counted.

and then, maybe then, they would feel more of a responsibility to vote.

after 2 weeks of 15 hour days and one 24 hour day/night with NO off days for as far back as i can remember (forgive the addled brain), sheahnee lee is STILL alive. so help me, God.

and while i dont expect to be given any rest days soon to recover from this damn election fever, the pace is beginning to slow down considerably and for that, i am at least thankful.

i spent most of nomination/election week travelling up and down four hours a day to sungai besar, selangor. for those not in the know, this is a sleepy village close to the border of perak, where life moves so slowly i daresay the australian outback is comparably more happening.

setting off from the office at 5 a.m. daily to make the journey north, it's a wonder neither i nor my cameraman fell asleep at the wheel and land in a swamp, the way another colleague of mine did last week on the way to terengganu (the car sank into 7 feet of slush and mud, and had to be written of along with the RM70,000 worth of camera equipment...but THAT's another story).

the first sight to greet us at sungai besar was the cheery pink sun rising over miles and miles of paddy fields, lush and green. the air was different; it was young. and yet, there was a feel of the old everywhere around me. it was after all, a village that has been in sleepy existence for nearly a century, forgotten most of the time, but for election week. this is the home of dr khir toyo, the menteri besar of selangor, and his modest living quarters in the village are undoubtedly among the very few signs of development for as far as the eye can see.

its amazing what politics can do to a village.

i watched the people, simple, humble and friendly at the beginning of the week, metamorphose almost over night into raucous, almost extremist slogan-chanting crowds by the end of it.

the rundown wooden shacks that had been houses transformed into party barracks, covered from wall to wall, ceiling to floor, with posters and flags.

rattle-trap cars and motorcycles became parade floats of sorts; some cars had posters pasted onto windshields...how the drivers made their way around with their heads out the windows still amazes me. motorcyclists pitched metre-high flags at the back of their bikes and rode around without getting the flags caught on, among other things, streetlamps and electric poles.

the village, which i presume rarely sees heavy traffic most days, suddenly saw a surge of big fancy city cars, police patrolmen and huge trucks with posters of khir toyo's face pasted on the sides.

i'd spent much of my week in sungai besar, but on election day, after travelling to the village early in the morning for polling visuals, i was rerouted back to the city in the afternoon for vote counting.

selangor was experiencing unrest in some areas. several polling centres had would-be voters kicking tables and chairs, tearing down posters and chanting slogans...frustrated at the Election Commission's obvious lack of preparation. hundreds of voters who had spent hours waiting in line to vote found to their dismay that their names were not listed at their respective polling stations. as a result, most malaysians reading this will recall that voting in selangor was extended for two hours.

by the time i was sent for my final assignment on polling day, i had already been working 15 hours and was beginning to flag miserably. votes at the lembah pantai counting centre, where i was stationed, took forever to be sorted through. 96 voting boxes, with many more still arriving up to 9.30 pm, had to be carefully registered and emptied by ONE, yes, ONE counting officer. hundreds of other EC officers were milling around doing all sorts of other work, but the actual counting was left to this one poor man, whom i'm sure left the station early the next morning with exhausted bulging eyes.

when the results were announced at 11, after 4 and a half hours of vote counting, my real work had only just begun. struggling to stay awake and alert, i got my interviews, got my visuals, practically sleep-drove back to the office and filed in the story.

when i stumbled out of the office at 3 a.m. i had to thank God the elections were over.

that is, until i found myself sitting back in the office again a few hours later, and again today...realising, fool that i am, that my only chance of an off day might perhaps be sometime next week.

so, til then, i shall rest my weary body whenever i can, steal quiet moments alone, and blog in order to look busy.

shen is back.

1.15 pm from BERNAMA:

Capt. Nasir Ma Lee, 60, the pilot of the Piper 28 light aircraft which
crashed near the Langat Dam near Kuala Lumpur last Friday, was found dead
by the rescue team at 10.20 am today, the Civil Defence Department said.

this news particularly distresses me as he was the very kind gentleman who flew me and a cameraman in a helicopter over taman hillview in 2002, where a massive landslide demolished a house and killed six of Tan Sri Ismail Omar's family members.

captain nasir, knowing that i had never been in a helicopter before, took the effort to explain every little safety procedure before take-off. i was admittedly, a little jittery, but i was reassured by his vast piloting experience.

as we hovered over taman hillview, we both gasped at the sight of the tragedy below. he muttered a prayer for the family and said he would never forget flying over this nor over highland towers after its collapse 9 years before.

as we made the final round over the site before leaving, captain nasir told me i would always be welcome to call on him for free if i ever wished to take a loved one on a romantic night-time heli-ride. he shared with me a story on how he had once flown a couple over the city at night, just so a guy could propose to his girl hundreds of meters in the air, with the city night-lights below for a spectacular view.

as we flew back towards the helipad in damansara, he saw my look of awe at the view below, and kindly gave me a mini guided tour/joyride, pointing out various interesting landmarks around KL.

i think he enjoyed playing captain, much as it was obvious he enjoyed flying. although his death is tragic and sudden, it seems somewhat befitting that he should depart this earth doing the one thing it seemed he loved the most.

my condolences go out to his family.

working for almost a week now on election stories, im beginning to get the idea that a lot of the politics in this country are just downright petty.

take for example, PAS' latest strategy to win over voters using religious blackmail. it pretty much works out that if you dont vote a 'true' islamic party (i.e. PAS), you go to hell. by the same token, PAS argues that you win your ticket to heaven by marking your 'X' in the box next to the green and white symbol that represents their party.

reading ash's post a couple of days ago only reinforced my concern that a party can actually win votes in this country purely by default (i.e religious beliefs/upbringing/peer pressure/fear).

he writes, and i quote:

"Picture this: a 7 year old child spitting loudly whenever he sees a picture of a former leader, or when he appears on the tube. Picture the same kid cursing whenever a police car drives by, referring to them as "dogs". I wonder: does he actually know why he's doing that, other than because his mum told him to? Imagine a family not buying any newspaper other than the "alternative" for 2 years. Imagine siblings suddenly drifting apart leaving their children confused as to what's happening to the family. Blood is thicker than water, you say? Not when election day's coming."

i knew vaguely prior to that post that politics in the northern states had real potential to get ugly. little did i realize that this is already the case. when kids spit at pictures of politicians, you know these are the beginnings of fanaticism. and i worry because these kids can hardly know why they are inspired towards such hatred.

but petty politics arent just limited to the opposition. those who have watched the news tonight will no doubt already have heard that MIC's long-suffering deputy has been unceremoniously dropped from candidacy like a hot potato. speculation, which im inclined to believe in this case, is that he was beginning to represent a threat to the party leadership. the official line however, is that he had merely outstayed his welcome. this, my friends, from the mouth of a leader who is well-known for having outstayed his welcome for more than a decade now.

want to know why its taken me so long to exercise my right to vote? this is exactly why. give me some good politicians who arent politicking for power, money or influence...and maybe then ill hand them my vote.

i agree to some extent that the youth of today are too comfortable with their cushy lives to care about their constitutional rights, voting being the main point of contention, but i hardly think it is any wonder when so many of us have gotten alarmingly used to the way politics are run here.

politics should not, should never be, about who makes a more influential leader. votes should never be a mere popularity contest. and politicians should never allow pettiness to take precedence over responsibility.

i want the person i someday vote for to put his/her people first, and himself/herself last.

and the day elections, and politics, stop becoming the balls-carrying farce i daresay it is now, maybe then youll see me line up to exercise my right to vote.

must we ALWAYS wait for tragedy to come to our senses?

im talking about parents who let their kids sit on their laps in the front seat of a car, without a seatbelt.

im talking about parents who obviously havent given much thought to what might happen if someone else's vehicle hit their car from behind, even at 40 km/h.

im talking about parents who will no doubt grieve for the loss of their babies, after their kids fly out the windscreen to their innocent deaths, and then say its God's will that it happened.

perhaps they think its enough to be driving slowly, in the left lane, at 50 km/h.

perhaps they think that if they hold tightly onto their child, its enough to prevent tragedy.

or maybe that a dashboard will be enough to save a child's life.

it isnt.

on the way to KL this morning, a black honda cruised past me at 40 km/h, wife in the passenger seat, kid on lap. nearing the toll, traffic ground to a halt. in the blink of an eye, the honda was hit from behind, by a car that simply couldnt slow down in time.

i didnt have time to take a proper look, to see if they were ok...but the last thing i saw gave me a chill. and it made me furious.

there was hardly any damage to the car, but it had spun a good 180 degrees. and as i drove past, i caught a glimpse of the wife and her kid in the car, covered in blood. it streamed down their faces, and stained them red.

forced to move forward in traffic, unable to stop, i had no choice but to look ahead and continue driving. but the image bore a hole into my brain.

how can anyone think that it is God who wills people to be irresponsible? how dare they point their finger to the heavens and say it was the car that hit them from behind that killed their child?

they dare because they dont dare admit it was their fault.

why dont people think that their little sunday drive could change their lives forever? and after tragedy, what's the point of 'what if's' if they didnt use their brains before?

what if they had thought of buying a baby seat for the back, if they could afford the price of their car? what if wifey hadnt sat in the front, but at the back? what if baby had been strapped down with a seatbelt?

and its not just about the speed they may have been driving.

research shows that mere bumper knocks at even 40 km/h can be fatal, if a child doesnt wear a seatbelt. the chances multiply wherever in the car the child happens to be seated. place the child in the front, elevated on a mother's lap, and the chances grow. sudden braking is enough to put a child's head through the windscreen. the pullback after the brake is enough to sever the child's head.

every stupid parent who puts no thought into their child's safety is an accident risk. if it is truly God's will for an accident to happen, the least they can do is to make sure they did their very best to prevent it.

and after that, they can point to the heavens all they want, and truly accept that some things are meant to be.

cockroach loves his cuddles

this is my cockroach, the household's resident 'malcolm in the middle'.

older and wiser is teddy the cat, 13 years old and as fat as he is grouchy. he lost his teeth to gingvitis recently and his last weigh-in at the vet's put him at over a hefty 5 kilos.

younger is 2 year old mouse the cat, who like her namesake, scampers all over the house and will eat anything. she has a particular interest in geckos and loves egg mixed with condensed milk.

back to my dear roach. you will have of course noticed that cats in my house do not have typical kitty names. but roach got his because my mother decided one day that he would NOT be named 'tigger' like i wanted. and in typical aussie fashion she christened him cockroach on a whim and the name stuck.

roach has recently taken a liking to the bear above, an ancient teddy passed down from my mother's mother. grandma made it for her three children, namely my mum, her younger sister and younger brother in the 1960's. the kids, not knowing what to name the bear, called her 'all-of-us's'.

all-of-us's was my bear until she began making me sneeze. she had gotten tatty over the years, and her fur (yes, she once had fur) had begun coming off in clumps. when i was 8 i took a fancy to playing doctors and nurses, and spying a tear forming on all-of-us's' tummy, i stuck a bandaid on it which never came off. all-of-us's has now retired to the spare room downstairs, and this is where she found an adoring devoted fan.

since roach discovered her there one morning, he has rarely left her side. cuddling her bandaid-ed tummy and stretched out comfortably, it is my coackroach's idea of pure heavenly bliss.

for those not in the know already, you heard it here first.

the 10th parliament of malaysia will be dissolved effective tomorrow, to make way for the 11th general election expected sometime at the end of march.

this means that if you happen to surf here within the next few weeks or so, and continue to see this same sorry post in lieu of an update, im probably stuck in some tiny state in the north or the east coast without proper access to a computer.

either that, or im stuck in KL feverishly filing a godforsaken amount of news reports and wishing like hell i was lying on a beach somewhere far far away where no one's ever even heard of elections.

oh what am i on about! such is the beauty of democracy.

today is just one of those unbearable days where the minute i opened my eyes in bed, it struck me that i didnt have HIM to cuddle up to at the end of the day.

today is also the day i planned to meet up with zab and angeline, friends i havent seen in ages, only to discover those plans have been dashed by a last-minute election meeting scheduled for tonight after work.

its one of those days i came into work early for once, only to remember i dont have an assignment until 2.30. i now have to think up a million interesting things to do in order to pass the time until then.

and it just has to be also the day that im ridiculously free at work, and NO ONE happens to be on messenger!

goddamit.

today sucks already.