Ah, whatever

I successfully managed to cajole and rationalize myself into not caring about the 50th Merdeka. I never actually did. If I were still living in KL, I’ll look forward to it largely for the public holiday that entails.

The thing is that for the past two years, I experience the Singapore National Day, and I though, hey, why don’t I feel this way about Malaysia. I sure as hell love Malaysia far more than Singapore. Just that Malaysians – or at least the online kind – tend to prefer to write editorials proclaiming where Malaysia has gone wrong in 50 years.

Malaysia is either too Islamic or not Islamic enough. It is too liberal, or completely conservative. It’s economic development is too fast paced or too slow/nonexistant. Malays have too much privileges or not enough rights.

But this is from me, before heading to my Internet-less home – Happy Merdeka. And I’ll drink down a nice Scotch in honour of our country.

Unfair

Just as I get assigned more readings from my professor, I read this:

SINGAPORE, Aug 29 (Bernama) — Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and his wife will visit Kuala Lumpur from Thursday until Friday to attend Malaysia’s 50th Merdeka Day celebrations.

He’s not even Malaysian! Fine, I’m not usually that patriotic. But as my latest column says, I’m a sucker for nice-number events. Like my 21st birthday. Y2K. Stuff like that. I could go to JB except that 1) nobody wants to go with me (as if, “I didn’t bring my passport” is a good excuse) and 2) the countdown’s in AEON Tebrau City.

Yeah, where? Huh? Couldn’t they just have it somewhere near the Causeway (e.g. walking distance)?

But back to the column, read. It’s fishy.

Hello from La Salle

Nope, that’s not some far-off island I wish it was. It’s a “private” arts college in Singapore that happens to be right next to my hostel. And I’m here because of the Internet. Internet’s down in the hostel – shockingly, despite being managed by the award-winning Centre for IT, SMU.

And it has been down for the past three days. Joy.

Blogging shall remain terse until I think of something up (something cheaper than this).

When you need to kill embarrassing family members…

Deputy Federal Territory Minister’s bother is being charged with drug trafficking. The mandatory punishment for drug trafficking, by the way, is death. It would be interesting to see how this pans. But the fact that The Star can’t even quote Wira Abu Seman bin Yusop’s name, meh, not very optimistic.

Odd solution

A Sabahan teacher thought a bunch of girls’ baju kurung (a national dress, used also as a uniform) is too short. Her ingenious solution? Tear it.

Honestly, we need more bright teachers like this.

Whitening products used, desired

Prime Minister: “I have been fair, I want to be fair, I’ll always be fair”.

I’m doing this in my next test

Chants don’t work

If you’re wondering why blogging have been rare, it’s not because I don’t like you. While generally, that has been a pretty good excuse, the Internet connection in my new place sucks so bad that I just caught myself chanting, “send, send, send (swivels chair, arms flagging in the air) send, send…” to an important email (it got sent, two hours later).

But I can’t really put all the blame on SMU hostel: Singtel kinda has a monopoly on the area. Though with the rent, the same amount of rent where I can rent an entire double-storey terrace house just off Jalan Telawi, Bangsar, only S$8 of it each month goes to Singtel. Cheap doesn’t even begin to say it.

And right now, homing pigeons seem to be faster and more reliable, but as luck would have it, Singtel has a monopoly on that too.

I prefer the original lyrics

Compare and contrast. Negaraku, courtesy of NTV7 and MPO:

And a slightly older song:

Old news of course. But you would think our wise and fair Forefathers would think of prickly issues like plagiarism before adopting the melody of Terang Bulan.

It’s a bit unfinished

But here’s the soft-launch of Bolehland.com! And the first exclusive column is up, by Hafiz regarding Malaysia’s leaking patriotism.