RIFLE RANGE BOY

I particularly fancy this Hollywood couple due to the scaring similarities between their birth dates and mine as well as my other half's! - 16th July (Ginger Roberts & yours' truly); 10th May (Fred Astaire & my other)!

Mountains out of mole-hills? If you remember the article from the local daily a couple of weeks ago, Amber Chia's baby is finally out to pose in the press. Too bad there were no paparazzis snooping around ala-Brangelina type of scenario around Ashton's way! Anyway everybody is just making a mountain out of a mole hill. So Amber has a kid, so what? Just doing what biology has taught us and nature will take its course in due time, big deal. No new ground-breaking record breaking discovery here! But I guess that is the job of the people in the press and the media (including advertisement moguls) - to create an apparent need or dying desire to know everything out of and apparently an insignificant and trivial event and sell it like hot cakes whilst smoking their Cuban cigar and laughing all the way to the bank! Who cares what the leaders or sportsmen do outside their normal working hours? Just because you are a star, it does not mean that what you do (like dangling your baby o...

Just when you think, the world around you is on the verge of crumbling down on you, just view these snippets to convince yourself that there is hope. There always is, you just have to find it! Hope lies eternally in the human chest! http://edition.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/04/01/cnnheroes.krishnan.hunger/ http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/04/01/cnnheroes.krishnan.hunger/

No, this is not a blog of a near-death experience, seeing the white light and bearded old man at the end of the tunnel or about how evaded a catastrophic situation. It is about my experiences with the barber, particularly Indian barbers. From time in memory, Malaysian Indian barbers have been hairstyling our mane even before Merdeka. They have been a part and parcel of Malaysian culture. Even Lat, the famous Malaysian cartoonist, has depicted them in many of his comic strips, mostly in a comical way (duh!). They initially started as mobile vendors, with their tools of the trade nicely tucked in a debilitated probably second hand or hand-me-downs leather suitcase and everywhere they lay their hat was their workplace. Now, they offer the luxury of air-conditioned shops and clean utensils (at least they use disposable blades). They are however, less innovative compared to the ultra new modern unisex saloons in terms of styling, perming, dyeing and washing. Just like in  La...

Opinion    2010-10-20 16:36 Former Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad recently labeled democracy a failed ideology. He has also described China’s authoritarian government as a model that works better than a democratically elected one. Seriously. He did. Another one of his “the 11 September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Centre was staged” moments no doubt, but a shocker nonetheless. My foot massage guy from China was as surprised as I was. He asked me how many kids Mahathir had. I said seven and he wondered aloud if Mahathir knew about China’s one-child policy. Imagine that. No Mukhriz, no Mokhzani and no Mirzan. Only Marina -- by reason of a governmental policy that you do not have a say in. According to Mahathir, China’s political model shows that  “having a non-democratic country can also give a good life for the people.” What a load of nonsense. Having your internet access censored is not a good life. It is a life that builds barriers around free will. It is a...

Every now and then our local dailies will sing praises of world standard achievements of supposedly 'Malaysians' where the only Malaysian thing about them would be their or their parent(s) place of birth. Malaysia probably had nothing to do with their grooming or nurturing! Or there may be a remote thread of a connection to her mother who was married once to a Malaysian, like in the case of the out-of-closet Penny Wong, the first Asian Finance Minister of Australia. Then there is the story of Sufiah Yusof, the Oxford Maths child prodigy turned social escort (₤130 pounds/hour) whose mother was Malaysian.The latest to join this list of celebrities is the Ipoh-born Tan Zhang Shan. From the era of his predecessors in the late 70s, Singapore has been engaging in a devious plan to woo bright Malaysian across the causeway by dangling carrots in the form of ASEAN scholarship and tertiary education scholarships. Many of my classmates in Penang Free School are and have been contributi...

And yet another run was completed yesterday - 17th October 2010, UPM Mizuno Wave Run. As the name suggests, the terrain of the run was wavy with hills and valleys. And the number of my running buddies have increased in number. A neighbour, Rajinder and his friend, Jagjeet have also caught the running bug. As for me, it was not a great run to shout about. This time around the run was a bit slower than last year's timing but it was all it was all done in the name of exercise and healthy living. Results: CATEGORY GENDER OVERALL NAME BIB NO SPLIT1 CHIP TIME GUN TIME 114    522 569 SURESH KUMAR A/L P. SHANMUGAM 3019 34:50.10 1:02:49.75 1:03:11.80 537 787 863 JAGJEET SINGH GHILLEN 1701 41:46.39 1:08:49.12 1:07:08.42 202 924 1016 ASOKAN SHAMUGANATHAN 3020 40:25.51 1:07:36.16 1:09:11.63 918 1302 1501 RAJINDER SINGH A/L KULDIP SINGH 1661 45:23.06 1:17:27.46 1:15:47.16 Next stop: 2...

In spite Nosradamus' and other doomsday prophets' predictions of impending doom to the human race and human civilization, we as a race have managed to pull through thus far. Many economists have also forecast widespread famine and starvation by the end of the 19th century after looking at the exponentially world population growth versus the slow increase in food supply. And the holier-than-thou preachers of various religions of the world ostracized John Hunter and his medical team for finding a cure then for syphilis (which was considered as God's punishment for people indulging in unholy union of sexes) who predicted that the End was near for evil ruled the world which supposedly will cause God's wrath and annihilation of the human race.   Houston, we have a problem! We managed to dodge all these. When we are fed up and tired of reading and hearing of destruction and decadence, we occasionally hear of the undying fighting spirit of the human race. After the...

The man who fought for justice Aliran, on 14 October 2010 Share 0 digg When D R Seenivasagam passed away in 1969, some 150,000 people lined the streets of Ipoh to bid him a touching final farewell. Who was this man? Andrew Lin explains. Passion for justice: D R Seenivasagam remembered - Photo credit: ipohworld.org 15 March 2010 was the 41st anniversary of the passing of D R Seeni-vasagam, or DR as he was affectionately known, a great and illustrious son of Ipoh. Sadly, the day passed by without any mention of the event in the obituary pages of our local newspapers . To old-timers of Ipoh, Darma Raja Seenivasagam needs no introduction at all. He was the President of the People’s Progressive Party (PPP), one of the earliest political parties formed in pre-independent Malaya. Under his leadership, the PPP captured control of the Ipoh Town Council — the forerunner to the Ipoh Municipal Council and later the Ipoh City Council — in 1958 and provided efficient local government for the peo...