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Showing posts from October, 2018

You, your Master!

Yes, I do my job but I am not your slave! They tell your vocation is God. They tell you stories of postmen clinging on their mail-bags like it was their dear lives they were holding on to in fatal motor-vehicle accidents. You have seen simple men giving their whole lives away doing repetitive mundane jobs to bring food to the table. You have heard of Men of God or self-appointment saviours of mankind in obscure places performing seemingly meaningless rituals that garner no worldly gains but only personal satisfaction. To the uninitiated, it may appear that they are just deluding themselves into doing something worthwhile for the rest of humanity. You, the simpleton, may not visualise it. In short, in the old world, a person's job was viewed as their purpose for living. You are born, you do your part for the continuity of species, then you wither away. The thinking man, however, looks at it from a different angle. Sure, everyone is answerable during his assigne...

Valencia - Land of Paella

I was taken back when I was told that paella (pronounced payea ) was the national dish of Spain; surprised because it was basically a variant of what Malaysian know as 'nasi goreng' and that rice could be a staple food in a region in Europe. Rice was introduced to this region in the 10th century by the Moors in Andalusia, making rice eating a custom in this region. Valencia is well known for its varieties of paella. Paella - the rice is of the round ended variety, bomba rice. ©FG Seafood paella, pick your choice: rabbit meat, snail, squid with black ink. ©SKCL Around the railway station  ©FG High Street  ©FG Like opium to the masses, every  town in Spain has a football team to showcase the prowess of the local boys. Everybody is happy; the boys who have their soccer stars to look up to for aim in life, the local populace are kept busy anticipating their favourite team's next outcome, the local thug with his betting racket, the local counci...

Filling up the bottomless pit!

The Spider's Web: Britain's Second Empire (Documentary; 2017) Director, Producer: Michael Oswald I always wondered how Britain, after 200 years of ruling over almost half of the globe, survived after losing everything after the Second World War. It is a mystery how they continued their role in being one of the economic powerhouses of the world. It is no secret that WW2 marked the beginning of setting of the sun over the British Empire. Slowly, one by one, its colonies demanded to be cut off their attachments to the Crown. The coup de grâce must have come after their disastrous 1956 campaign over the nationalisation of the Suez Canal by President Nasser. The value of the pound-sterling plummeted. Foreign investors withdrew their investments. A special market was created to circumvent the control of the monetary bodies of the UK. Hence was born the London Euro-Dollar market to keep investors' interest in Britain. This was the precursor to the setting up...