All cried out!

So it just fizzled out, just like that. All it took was a carefully worded press statement on Facebook, how they, the organizers, stating their heartfelt empathy decided to call it a day. After days of speculation, they called the international level KL Marathon off!
Just as soon as the announcement was made, as if the Gods were cheekily laughing, all the skies cleared up like a scene from Jurassic Park with a computer-graphic generated prehistoric crystal clear skyline. Anyway, The Air Pollutant Index (API) was spiraling down since yesterday, much aided by the occasional showers seen all over the country. So, I do not see the great rush to postpone the meet by three months. To top it off, the Met Dept. predicted next days of continuous rain. Guess the decision has been made - no run, no go, no way! Anyway, the mad Met Dept. has always been the butt of any weather joke as they are known to have missed more remarkable things, like a hurricane, for example.
All those hours of scrutinizing the API like the Composite Index of the Stock Exchange have been futile.
There goes the hopes of the many FMVs who had laboriously and maniacally endured that early morning runs and sacrifices, put themselves at risk of being at the mercy of thieves on prancing motorbikes, have to start it all over again. With the fasting just around the corner, their plans have to be modified or have to set their priorities straight. All that building up and tapering seem wasted.
For the organizers, it was 'a hard decision' and 'health safety of the runners is of paramount concern'. Did they act unilaterally or did they succumb to the pressures of the naysayers of the dangers of acid rain caused by cloud seeding, the 10nm particles being more than the 2.5nm one which cannot be washed off so easily? Or are they afraid of the legal implications of the ever litigious minded society who find pleasure fault in others or find a scapegoat in the event of a mishap. I suppose, the organizers, rightfully may be morbidly fearful of that one joker who, without being fit or doing more exercise than pressing his TV remote from his favourite couch choking on his potato chip and sugary drink, would decide to join in the melee, get injured and put squarely the blame of his misery on the organizers' decision not to scrap the run. Whether, rightly or not, sometimes no publicity is better than one in which the quick conclusion jumping trial-by-media public crucifies the innocent. The aggrieved sounds more convincing than the big corpration. In the meantime, keep on running.... till we meet in Île Maurice! à bientôt!

Your mess, your headache!

So there I was, talking to my old friend on the cell-phone. As per courtesy, when he answered, I asked him whether it was a convenient time to speak. He replied in affirmative as he was just waiting to pick his son from school. My friend had 2 sons and a daughter. I came to understand that this was the second son that he was waiting for. The first, a 12 year old lad, had been packed off to stay with my friend's brother in law in Australia. Why? Has he been banished from our motherland for some unforgivable crime sentenced to the pleasure of the King or something like that? Of course not! They are staying in Klang, with dearth of quality international education in the vicinity, my friend thought that for the sake of his future, his son would be better off let to grow up in a foreign land away from his parents!
Well. this is not the first time I have heard off such a 'sacrifice' done by parents, all in the name of securing a bright future for the children (as if children educated here in Malaysia are only fit to sell nasi lemak; not to imply that nasi lemak sellers are educationally challenged and have a bleak doomed future). They forget that many a successful entrepreneurs the world over did not even have the opportunity to even seek shelter from rain in a school compound! Lim Goh Tong and Boon Siew (of Honda fame) are 2 living (deceased) examples.
There is a family friend (an Indian in Thailand), who, in the not that well globalized Bangkok of the 1970s was mercilessly sent away to study in a boarding school in India at an unbelievable tender age of 5years old (no kidding). After being traumatized by home sickness and peer bullying, lucky for him, he continued the rest of his education in a newly established international school in Bangkok then.
And yet another boy (another friend's early teenage son) who after failing to perform well in the Malaysian schools, was bundled off to a boarding school in Chennai.
Hey, am I missing something here? Have I been misinformed all this while? I have always thought that you are responsible to the DNA that you sow. Just like you cannot go around spilling and sowing your wild oats recklessly without taking responsibility as a man, you are also responsible for the product of the half of the DNA that you did not 'waste'. In the immortal words of MSM, anyone can be a father; a good father takes responsibility of his offspring and nurtures him through his financial, physical, spiritual and psychological needs. Nobody likes his little own to be associated with such a brilliant but sickly serial killer like Charles Sobhraj.
My take on this is, you left this carbon foot-print, it is your job to ensure that this isotope, even if it does glow like diamond, it does not burn aimlessly like charcoal in a wild fire! You would not want your mess to be other people's headache.