What are you running for?

What are you running for? That was the tag-line for this year's Siemen's 10km run held on 18th July 2010. Participants in the fun run category were supposed to fill up the reasons on their vest bib. Some wrote the usual - for fun, for health reasons etc. One man wrote 'in memory of M Kahelan (again!)' I wonder who this Kahelan chap is. That is why he has to write again as nobody gave it two hoots the first time he wrote!

Coming back to the run per se

...
This time around, Suresh and I car-pooled for the run together - of course, we ran at our own comfortable pace. Even though it was organised by a German multinational company with a fixation with discipline, the run decided to follow Malaysian timing. They started half an hour later than their scheduled time of 7am! From the starting point at Dataran Merdeka, we galloped along to the Bank Negara area, up a few wavy path and terrain along Bukit Tunku hills till we reached Lebuhraya Mahameru. Running along the highway, we entered Jalan Parlimen, pass Padang Merbuk into Jalan Raja Laut and finally into Jalan Tunku Abdul Rahman. Here we were greeted by thumping beats of drums from various ethnic groups, setting the pace as we approached the finishing line, back at Dataran Merdeka again.

Suresh and I completed our runs at 58"  and 1'01", respectively. The run itself was just a run-of-the-mill type of affair without much razzmatazz. 

What fascinated us happened as we were walking back to the car. We met a gentleman whom we gathered from our conversation that he completed his 10km run in 58" and had just completed the recently concluded (5th July 2010) Gold Coast Marathon (42.195km) in 5'15"! And he was 65 years of age, but he did not look a year older than 50!

So, what are we running for? 

Is it for its health benefits? It will help us to maintain our weights. Is our blood vessels in our body like a drain? If the flow of leachate is sluggish, eddy current forms causing debris to accumulate the gutter walls. Running probably increases the flow rate making it less likely for atheromatous plaques to form. Is it also to ward of lifestyle diseases like diabetes, hypertension and hypercholesterolemia? Of course, you may get hit by a car, looking at the way some maniacs handle their 'F1' machines! 

Is running the elusive elixir of youth that everyone is dying for? Running supples the joints, making it possible to be more ambulant and independent for many more years in the twilight years, delaying the need for walking sticks! It also probably reduces the deposition of adipose tissue in the middle part of the body. Is it is a coincidence that it occurs in 'middle age'?

Is it because of the euphoria that you get afterwards when you complete the race and the sudden plethoric gush of endorphins occurs, giving an all-time intoxicating feeling with no hangover, headaches or guilt!

Is it a state of denial as the years roll by when the first digit of your double-digit age increases? Mind you, we are not in a midlife crisis but rather at the peak of our prime!

Whatever we are running for, we will still be running till we can. Next stop - Newton Run, 26th September 2010...

Silent movies 'say' so much!

Bored of the usual reading and feeling depressed? Why not sit back, relax and a enjoy a short snippet of Charlie Chaplin in a black and white (duh) silent movie?

I shot the sheriff but I killed no deputy!*

21.7.2010

Today there was an uninvited guest to the house this morning. Out of nowhere, I sighted a little mouse scooting across the room. I followed it and it appeared again! As a reflex, I stepped hard on it! And hold behold, I killed it instantaneously.

Karni Mata Temple in Rajathan

Then it fell on me. The Hindu sages say that a visit by a mouse is a visit by Lord Ganesha himself! And a bad host I have been, That would explain why they have a Rat Temple in Rajasthan which shelters thousands of rats. They would say the same thing if a snake should enter your house. One should not harm the reptile as its partner would come back with sweet revenge. And legend has it that cobras are supposed to have a real elephantine memory! If fact, 10 years ago when there were plenty of constructions around the housing estate, I found a baby cobra in one of my jogging shoe! This, I found it the hard way when I slipped in my foot into the shoe just to kick it out thinking that there was a cockroach in my shoe. And out slithered out a black baby cobra and stood out looking at me like as if it was taking a photo-shot of me!
I guess the religious people will say that it is time I had a special prayer for Vinayakar and Nagamah! And the priests will be more than willing to carry it out for a small fee, all in praise of God... And to forget the Hanuman whose manifestation appeared a few weeks ago in the study room to squander some cookies. And the believers of Muniswar will call for his appreciation as many dogs wander the road in front of my house to answer nature's call cum territorial markings when their owners decide to let them feel the joy of running against the wind! What about the Persian cat? Egyptian prayers for Cleopatra, perhaps? May be with human sacrifice?

*I shot the Sheriff is a song made by Bob Marley and later popularised by Eric Clapton. It is just my way of saying I killed the rat because it spreads diseases which can sometimes be deadly


.

Down the drain...to others' pedestal!

1976 PFS Form 1A class photograph

The talk about stopping the leak from brain drain is all hogwash. Nobody (the powers that be) is serious about this, as we slide further and further as a nation with intellectuals just to be replaced with flight-by-night entrepreneurs and their immigrant workers to do their dirty job as the entrepreneurs laugh all the way to the bank! And intelligent people have kept on moving since the 70s in droves.
With the widespread use of internet social networks like Facebook and Google, we are now able to trace some of these long lost people. In my my case, I managed to track down some of these child prodigies that Malaysia lost to the rest of the world, predominantly Singapore.

• Ho King Hee was an all rounder in PFS. Besides being first in the whole form, he was a school prefect, played tennis and chess for the school, sang in the school choir and obtained A in Art and the Science subjects. Thanks to the ASEAN scholarship, he got into National University in Singapore and is now a well renowned neurologist in Singapore. I managed to surf his medical acheivements...http://www.emedihub.com/profile.php?pid=213

Doctor's Details
Name	Dr Ho King Hee
MCR No.	04793G
Qualifications	MBBS (Singapore) 1988   MRCP (Int Med) (UK) 1992   FAMS (Neurology) 1998
Registered on	03/05/1989
Registration Type	Full Registration
Registered Specialty	Neurology
PC Start Date and End Date	01/01/2010   -  31/12/2011
Primary Practice Place	K H Ho Neurology & Medical Clinic
Practice Address	Blk/House 6 Napier Rd   #05-17 Gleneagles Medical Centre   Singapore 258499
Tel	64799993

• Khor Chong Chneah was my comrade in Red Crescent Society in PFS. After school, via ASEAN scholarship, he started studies in Singapore and he is now a resident doctor in Gleneagle hospital in Singapore.

Doctor's Details
Name	Dr Khor Chong Chneah
MCR No.	05367H
Qualifications	MBBS (Singapore) 1989
Registered on	01/11/1990
Registration Type	Full Registration
PC Start Date and End Date	01/01/2010   -  31/12/2011
Primary Practice Place	Gleneagles Hospital
Practice Address	Blk/House 6A Napier Rd   Singapore 258500
Tel	64705845

• Danny Toh Boon Tuan was my class monitor in Form 1 and Form 2. He was in school magazine editorial board, an avid shutterbug, wandering around the school compound and field clicking the afternoon away. He also designed most school emblems and society T-shirts. He is quite passionate about his pictures. Like the above, Danny is also residing in the City Island. Some of the  samples of his photographs.

• Suresh Tharmaratnam was another classmate in Form 1A. His father was one of the first UK trained O&G in the country. Suresh was sent to UK when he was 15. He is now a Consultant O&G in Ireland.

Dr Suresh Tharma Royal Jubilee Maternity & Belfast City Hospitals Consultant Obstetrician & Gynaecologist in Belfast City Hospital (Gynaecology) & Royal Jubilee Maternity Hospital (Obstetrics).His special interests includes High risk Obstetrics and Minimal Access Surgery and Prolapse Surgery in Gynaecology.He offers privately:- Antenatal Care, Prenatal Screening & Diagnosis, Fetal Anomaly Scanning, Minimal Access Surgery for Pelvic Pain, Endometriosis & Benign Gynaecology, Specialist management of Prolapse & Incontinence, General Gynaecology & Pelvic Screening.

• Dev Kumar, from PFS, is now stationed in Singapore and attached to GE Healthcare. He studied actuary studies. http://sg.linkedin.com/pub/dev-kumar-s-o-santhiran/9/48/8a3

• Jagjit Singh - a fellow RRF-ite and USM mate is now living in Santa Clara, CA.

• 
  
  
  Another friend whom I managed to track down is Aqbal Singh Sambhi. He left PFS in the upper secondary class. He is a lawyer in Singapore after obtaining his law degree from NUS. 

  
  

Name	Law Practice	Admission No	Tel No	Fax No
Aqbal Singh s/o Kuldip Singh	Pinnacle Law LLC 9B Circular Road Singapore 049365	8/1988	62360100	65572515

Thomas Aqbal (2nd from left) at a seminar.

• Ooi Onn Tat is an old Free who manifested on Facebook is a lawyer in Singapore.

Ooi Oon Tat

Wong Alliance LLP 24 Raffles Place #20-05 Clifford Centre Singapore 048621

12/1989

65332883

65330103

I suppose this is not an exhaustive dissection of how Malaysian intellectuals decide to emigrate to greener pastures to leave our country in a vegetative state. I just illustrated of a few examples that are close to my heart.

Post footie blues

Just like a parturitent mother who feels drained out  after completing the zenith of her expression of her womanhood (i.e childbirth), a football maniac will be all cried out. A post partum mother, who in the antenatal period was flushed with loads of endogenous natural steroidal hormones and in the adrenaline rush days before the event of labour, will feel down after the sudden drastic drop in these hormones!
For the past couple of days, a football die hard fan feels just like that. After one month of top world class football action, now suddenly life has no meaning anymore! All the adrenaline rush, nail biting moment, vocal cord damaging incomprehensible shrieks extending into the wee hours of the morning has now come to naught. Life is now moving at a snail's pace with nothing to look forward to. Even F1 has lost its lacklustre. And the illegal DVD peddlers are to business as usual after more than a month of business diversification as footballl bookies! Come August 14th, it would be business as usual - the English Premier League will commence!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LNNgMExgP8&feature=related

Bastille Day

14th July 2010

Bastille Day – the day the French peasants ambushed the Versailles prison after tolerating years of tyranny under the Louis XIV and his predecessors.  While the peasants’ kids were wailing in hunger, the French aristocrats were basking in wine and caviar in their summer garden party! Enough is enough, they said. And the rest they say is history which changed Governments forever. Legend has it that King Louis the XIV’s consort, Marie Antoinette, was captured at the Austrian border whilst escaping from the mob. When she was hurled back to Paris, all her hair turned white overnight! That was the act teaching that Mr Lee Kok Keng taught back in the History class of Form 3B in 1978 and I still remember it like it was yesterday. And his visionary statements about Onn Bin Jaafar being a forward thinking leader who quit from UMNO when his idea to open the party to all Malayans was shot down. That was the type of teacher we had back in our schooldays. We respected them and words that came out from their mouths were pearls of wisdom. It is time to remember my secondary school teachers… next few blogs, perhaps...

"Let them eat cake" is the traditional translation of the French phrase "Qu'ils mangent de labrioche", supposedly said by a French princess upon learning that the peasants had no bread. Asbrioche is a luxury bread enriched with eggs and butter, it would reflect the princess's obliviousness to the nature of a famine.

Memories of RRF: P. Ramlee movies

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3qBG0wSmJg (Madu Tiga)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4IYZ4psuSM&feature=related (Madu Tiga -song)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M38ZytgjzFc&feature=related (Dendang Pontianak)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4iQ1WsRW-I&feature=related (Anak Bapak -Chetty)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z84aQPIgwqc&feature=related (Nasib DoReMi)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyLbm79Y0oo (Gerimis)

My son Danny enjoys watching Malay dramas and movies on Astro Citra, a passion his other siblings cannot understand. It is probably due to his predominantly Malay male and female classmates. I believe that over time, he will realise that his comrades will get different treatment than himself, and he will start shunning his passion and go on with his different things in life. In another instance, my other kids could not understand why we (my wife and I) chose to sing Malay songs by Alleycats during a karaoke session. "Alley, who?" they asked.

They do not realise how things were in the good old days. In the 1960s and 1970s, with the euphoria of an independent nation, tolerance and acceptance was the norm. People of all strata would throng open houses (during festivities) with alcoholic beverages being served without batting an eyelid. The question of the halal chicken or halal utensils would not arise! The TV program options were limited; only terrestrial TV and the transmission hours were limited. Like it or not, you had TV1 or TV2 or bust. We were left with Hobson's choice of TV2 during the International Quran Competition!

With NEP, the 1979 Iranian Islamic Revolution and the proliferation of cable TV, it was a Renaissance. Indian, Chinese and Islamic consciousness started creeping into Malaysian society! Indians became more aware of events in Chennai and its Parliament; the bedroom escapades of Edison Chen fascinated the Chinese viewers rather than being mindful of the existence of Maya Karin as well as Allan Pereira and Indy Nadarajah!

I first noticed this change during the pre-Astro days when I was posted in Johor Bahru. Johoreans were glued to ethnic Singapore TV channels only, oblivious to current events in Malaysia. Moreover, their children studied across the causeway, and their yardstick for measuring the quality of life is the city-state! Don't even talk about the interracial mingling of fellow Malaysians. The same scenario spread nationwide, flamed by the leaders with vested interests. After more than half a century of independence, shouldn't we be more evolved towards national integration rather than segregation? Wasn't this the colonial technique deployed by the British via their 'divide and rule' policy?

History has taught us that social re-engineering will only hit us back on our faces. When Chairman Mao Se-Tung promised his nation that China would surpass Britain as a steel-producing nation via his Great Leap Forward movement, little did he realise that it would lead to a Great Famine, usurping 16.5 to 40 million as victims?

Talking about P. Ramlee's movies, every Malaysian child of the 70s will agree that it was a unifying tool. Most of us would have seen at least some of his films more than once! Some can even recite its dialogue. Of course, this is nowhere compared to the die-hard Tamil movie fans in Tamil Nadu who would torch themselves for the sake of their celluloid hero!

Let me try to remember some of his movies I remember watching on the black and white 14" TV in the living room of RRF. There was a time when Cikgu Zakaria (BM tuition teacher in Jln Thean Teik) used to tell us the movie due to be screened that (Friday) night and also gave a short running commentary. The few films that come to my mind are...

• Bujang Lapok series - another comedy;
• Anak-ku Sazali - an award-winning movie with P. Ramlee in a dual role;
• Labu dan Labi series - a full-length comedy with many sub-plots involving butlers Labu and Labi, their boss Haji Bakhil bin Kedukut and daughter Manisah;
• Gerimis - a bilingual Tamil-Malay movie about interracial love, starring P. Ramlee, Chandra Shanmugam, VI. Stanley et al.;
• Do Re Mi series - about 3 wandering vagabond and their antics;
• Tiga Abdul - serious drama, one of the many movies with pseudo-Arabic influence;
• Ali Baba & 40 thieves;
• Anak Bapak - poking fun at Malay way of living;
• Keluarga 69 - with A.R. Tompel, another comedy poking fun at modern life where the son marries a divorcee whose daughter marries his father!
• Masam-Masam Manis - a comedy where a teacher spends most of his time in a nightclub and sleeps in class;.
• Madu Tiga - about a polygamous man and his antics dodging from his wives;
• Ibu Mertuaku
• 6-Jahanam - a grieving husband avenges his wife's murder by 6 bandits;
• Many more... Hang Tuah, Semarah Padi, etc

I also remember watching many horror movies with Pontianak and Nenek Kebayan, gambar purba (set in olden times, e.g. Bawang Merah Bawang Puteh, Singapura dilanggar Tondak, Raja Bersiong) and Mat Sentol comedies.