RIFLE RANGE BOY

The Hungarian Parliament House by the Danube at sunset They did not know where they came from. They intelligently guessed they must have come from the Ural mountains around 800CE. No, say the archaeological finds. Excavations showed carvings and even scripts that go back 5,000 years! Modern history tells them of Prince Stephen, the first devout Catholic King canonised posthumously. People were happy going about their daily lives, leaving the administration to the monarch, whom they were programmed to believe God Himself ordained. They were glad to part with a portion of their hard-earned produce in return. After all, He decides whether the people should live, suffer, or die. Soon, times turned for the worse. Other nations tried to dominate. People’s trust in the Divine soon dissipated. Then, Godless men steamrolled their ideology upon them. The communists preached equality and Utopia on Earth. It was, of course, another tale to outwink the unassuming. They knew they had to rise. An up...

Carey Island - Historical Island (Tamil; 2022) வரலாற்று சிறப்பு மிக்க கெரித்தீவு Author: M Govindasamy In 1988, when I was a doe-eyed newbie starting work in Klang, I was assigned to many in-patients who hailed from a peculiar place called Carey Island. I swear I knew the small islands around Malaysia, but I had never encountered any Carey Island. In Penang, where I grew up, my contemporaries and I tried to excite ourselves by quizzing each other and trying to locate islands on the atlas. Our interests were piqued by the people manning the now-defunct ferry services between Penang Island and Butterworth. The ferries were named after islands around Malaysia - Langkawi, Tioman, Pangkor, Redang, etcetera. The name that excited us most was Pulau Babi Besar. Sadly, Pulau Babi Besar is now renamed Pulau Indah, as the previous name hurt the sentiments of small hogs and those who perceived the animal as unclean. Carey Island is no island at all. It is part of the state of Selangor, which is di...

I do not want to see the skyline. I want to know  how the background  looks with me as the  subject.  It is all  about  me,  myself and I.  From a group of people who thought that peeking into a mirror was looking at the devil itself and that posing in front of a camera would drain a person's soul, we have come a long way. Our generation is easily the one that has the most access to how they look. Rather than posturing at their better side, they seem to want to see every angle of the body. They yearn to have the perfect photo-friendly display of the best that they have to offer. They want to be forever in portrait mode. Every passing moment is a potential Instagram moment, and they must be ready. They do not want to be caught in an awkward pose, opening the mouth too wide, with the hair unkempt or even with a face incongruent to the camera's angle.  Their every second of their existence must be an ' insta ' worthy moment! Don't eve...

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...