RIFLE RANGE BOY

Chief Justices Tengku Maimun Tuan Mat, Chief Judge of  Sabah  and  Sarawak Abang Iskandar Abang Hashim,  and apex court judges  Nallini Pathmanathan,  Mary Lim and Mohamad Zabidin Diah. The naive, straight-thinking, law-abiding me with no background in the legal field used to think that the buck stopped at the Court Of Appeal. If one fails at the Appellate Court, it was pretty much that. One goes to jail to complete a sentence or meets his maker as he hits the gallows.  Now we know there is life after the appeal. One can seek justice by pleading at the Federal Court. If the results there are not to his liking, he further argues to have a judicial review of the panel of judges that meted his sentence. Even the Federal Court can be held at ransom. This is called justice in the world of the high-heeled. Everyone deserves adequate legal representation, and it is his human right. Of course, it becomes mandatory if the client can afford the obscene amou...

Bad Boy Billionaires: India (Documentary, 2020; Netflix) This is another one of Netflix's productions that hit a snag in India, this time it spurned court cases demanding against its release. Three out of the four episodes in the series were released recently. The fourth episode, a documentary narrating the rise and fall of Ramalinga Raju of Satyam Computers, was successfully stopped at the courts for its damaging portrayal of the man.   The remaining episodes tell about the escapades of the three Indian icons. Vijay Mallya, a fugitive currently residing in the UK, is also known as the King of Good Times. Born to a beer brewer father, despite the Prohibition of liquor in many states of India, managed to glamourise beer drinking during the dot com bubble heydays of the '90s. From there he went on to the world centre stage through his involvement in the 'no frills' airline business and the F1 races. He made a few shady loans, and soon he was hot on the heels of the author...

A thought flew past me as I was sitting through a lavish wedding dinner in a posh establishment recently. A doctor in the infant years of his career was proudly showcasing his catch to the world to ogle. Set with the high-brow society setting and the ambience to match, we, the mortals were given a sneak peek into the lives and times of the groom and bride through a montage of a roll of photos that was rolling during the function. We gathered that the respective families went through thick and thin, scaling the waves of obstacles to attain the comfort that they had acquired in life.  Well and dandy, all these... But how is a measly paid medical officer in the notoriously underpaid system of Malaysian civil service going to sustain the same type of lifestyle? Is he still going to be that dedicated doctor who will weather all kinds of resistance to put wellbeing above everything else as he chose the profession, not for the glamour but the calling? Is he going through grind t...

After the demise of Singapore's founding father, LKY, the question of personal liberty and freedom versus the need for Big Bro to oversee things for the nation's greater good made its rounds.  Proponents of human rights and individual freedom would argue that the Government has no business barging into personal lives and tapping into our telephone calls. After gruelling all the wrong decisions in the past and paying dearly, the West could no longer trust their governments. Instead, they would let their elected leaders mess up all people's (Third World) future than their own. The leaders are elected servants, and they are there to serve. On the other end, paternalistic leaders feel that human beings are just brainless blind invertebrates with a herd mentality. They just follow their peers without much thinking or analysing! This was proposed by Sayyid Kutb, the Egyptian school inspector who earned a scholarship to the USA. In his daily dealings, he discovered that people ar...

Now that you have it all, you can sit in the comfort of an armchair and advise those on the lower rung of the ladder to see the bigger picture. We were all there, struggling to weather the unknown, dreaming of walking shoulder to shoulder with the Titans. You thought that, by being up there amongst the immortals, life would be a pleasure cruise, a walk in the park. Life difficulties, you assumed, would be a thing of the past. Oh, how wrong you were! You discover that new powers beget newer problems which are just as challenging to solve. You realise that money is not the panacea for all your woes. Your worries were just beginning but how you fail to take notice. Then it would hit you... You then start questioning the meaning of life, the meaning of existence and purpose of it all. You would find that there are other things in life than just chasing wealth and prosperity. It becomes crystal clear that the coveted pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is just an illusion. Just li...

25.5.2010 ‘Wealth is Health’ or ‘Health is Wealth’? That is a good question. From the time I can remember, the age old adage of ‘Health is Wealth’ had been ingrained in our impressionable minds to be the ultimate truth. Is it really the elusive truth that everyone is looking for? In the pre-industrial era when most people led simple lives toiling on the wonders provided by nature, e.g. farming, hunting or any work which involve indentured labourers or bondage slavery. Here, a healthy fit body will ensure ability to endure the hardship of calamities of nature to bring home the bacon! An unhealthy invalid or an aging senile individual will be a burden to family and society unless a social safety net is in place. If you were the servant of the palace or a sorcerer in the dawn of human civilization, (as if we are more civilised now), health is of paramount importance for survival. Is this adage still of relevance at this present date and time? Let me look at how health brin...