RIFLE RANGE BOY

  T junction - Semenyih, Hulu Langat Batu 18, Genting Peres. This junction had seen better days. Weekends and holidays used to be marked with a hive of activities, loud banters and laughs. Streams of cyclists enjoyed the mild temperatures, the greenery and the challenge of steep hills leading to Genting Peres. This is the once busy T-junction of Batu 18 Hulu Langat leading to Peres and beyond. Now it stands a sorry sight of the testimony of all the putrifying underhand dealings that had been happening right under our noses. Used to be a family heirloom, now a staircase to nowhere. To me, this reminds me of my own imaginary vision of how the world would be after the apocalyptical World War 3 - a pillbox amidst the man-made ruin, standing proud as the last man standing, a symbol of victory after a zero-sum game. To the outside world, it was a front for prosperity. Unbeknownst, behind the row of lush greenery that paved the web of highways lay hidden hectares over hectares of governme...

Year in year out it is the same story. December would come and like an uninvited guest would gate crash your Christmas party. The intruder would be party, a wet wild kind, to be a ruin to many, leaving its hosts wet and grounded. It had wrecked property, upset school examination schedules and took lives from time immemorial. It must have happened all over the ages that the house designs in this part of the world involved stilts. The annual floods this time seem to have hit us a carnage of Titanic proportions. Even medical personnel who normally be at limelight for victims to seek help now find themselves trapped in hospitals. And on top of it all, hospitals traditionally had been built on higher ground! Rather than finding the root of the problem and thinking of ways to mete the problem with our God given minds, what do we do? Say it is all 'act of God'. Lest we forget, God helps those who help themselves. We cut, we pilfer, we rape, we mutilate and we flatten Nature and ...