Bad moon rising

Out of the 11,319 Malaysian students in that country, 6,135 are pursuing Islamic studies while the rest are doing medicine. The Malaysian Students Department in Egypt was also working closely with the Malaysian Embassy in Cairo to activate a core team to handle any possibility of a security risk, and a 'crisis operations room' had been opened at the embassy since Wednesday, the statement said. Several street demonstrations were reported to have been carried out in major towns in Egypt including Cairo, Dumyat, Suez, Tanta, Alexandria and Mansura urging on President Hosni Mubarak to step down. BERNAMA

The Tamils in the village have an apt saying in a situation like this. When a Chetty dies, only then all his misdeeds and mischief will be out in the open for scrutiny. The Chettys in the Tamil community are respected for thriftiness and business acumen. Hence, all their clandestine activities are nicely smoke screened by their wealth. At the funeral, all his heir apparent will appear from nowhere to claim their respective stake in the will. The villagers who put the Chetty on a  pedestal will suddenly drop him like a hot potato as he is dead on gone.
Just like that, when the people of Egypt decided to dispose of their despot of a tyranny and his dictatorial regime and do it in the open, it sent shivers down the 11, 000 over Malaysian students there. Only then did it come fore to the tax payers' mind that such a big colony was living on our money there. Anyway, there were not there because they want to pursue excellent world standard education comparable to the Ivy League or Oxbridge!   
Just for comparison, here are the world ranking of various universities close by and close to our hearts: 

Country	University	World Ranking
USA	MIT	1
USA	Harvard	2
USA	Stanford	3
Taiwan	National University	12
Japan	Tokyo University	16
UK	Cambridge	19
Japan	Kyoto University	24
Singapore	National University	92
Thailand	Prince of Songkla U	324
Thailand	Chulalongkorn	418
Indonesia	Gadjah Mada	583
Malaysia	USM	629
Malaysia	UKM	731
Malaysia	UM	788
Egypt	Cairo University	1405
Egypt	Al Azhar University	8692
Egypt	Sinai University	11627

Ref: http://www.webometrics.info/top12000.asp
For the records, the top 33 universities in Egypt rank between 1,405 to 11,996th position in the world! Of course there are many ways of ascertaining ranking status. This particular one above looks at web publication, there are others based on academic paper presentations etc. UK based rankings put British universities above the neighbours across the Atlantic and vice versa. There is even a Russian based one which puts Moscow State University above Cambridge and Harvard. 
Al Azhar university is the second oldest surviving university whose emphasis was on Islamic issues. Gamal Abdul Naseer, the 2nd Egyptian President introduced secular subjects like economics and medicine with religious input to meet the changing times. I heard that it is a pre-requisite for an attendee in this University to be a Muslim!

Al Azhar University

Back in 1983, when I was roped in to university, amongst my batch were many disgruntled students who were utterly devastated as they were denied of scholarships to study in these minaret shaped buildings called institutes of higher learning. (More about this in another posting, coming soon, still writing). These guys and girls were clothed like a Middle Easterner would. Three girls (medical students) were even donning the burqah! They gave up medical studies after an ultimatum by the Dean - remove the drape or be removed from the faculty! Apparently the scholarships were offered by various bodies - Public Service Department, political parties and Al-Arqam, a defunct group with deviationistic Islamic teachings.
On top of using all our country's resources to educate our citizens in universities of not the highest esteem, now we the tax payers have to fork out the millions incurred in the rescue mission to bring back our stranded students via 'Ops Pyramid'.

Credence Clearwater Revival (CCR), the lone band of the swamp rock genre. This song is a the original soundtrack 
from the film 'American Werewolf in London' which my school buddies and I watched on then spanking new technology
called VCR during our post SPM (O levels) holidays. Of course, they was a movie starring Koo Stark to follow!