Columns

ON a trip to Perth, Australia in 2002, I was astonished to see the amount of advertising that went into Visit Malaysia Year. One particular billboard that hogged downtown Perth caught my eye: a sun-drenched sandy beach replete with pillar-like coconut trees on the left, and on the right, four Malaysian beauties representing the Malay, […]

LAST week, in the middle of yoga class, our petite instructor interrupted our asanas to tell us she’d heard there was trouble on the streets. “Go home straightaway after class. Don’t stay out tonight,” she warned, adding something or other about those who lived in Chinese neighbourhoods. Earlier that Friday of 5 Sept 2008, an […]

CRIME is at an all-time high, but no one seems to be doing anything about it. My friend who lives in Taman Paramount, Petaling Jaya laments that snatch thefts occur daily in the streets leading to the LRT station there. What she finds incredulous is that there are no police personnel in the area despite […]

(Ahmad Ismail image courtesy of Merdeka Review) WATCHING the baying crowd of Republicans at their party convention in St Paul, Minnesota, as they rapturously applauded the sneering, hate-filled speeches of leading figures such as Rudy Giuliani and vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, I found it hard to doubt the truism that the United States is more […]

Don’t voters have a say if MPs jump from one party to another? AS 16 Sept 2008 looms ever nearer, this seems to be the main question on all minds: will the current government be toppled? Investors, business managers, civil society, politicians, and Malaysians at large are understandably concerned over the increasingly tense political situation […]

Corrected on 29 Sept 2008 at 2:30pm (Calendar image © Janaka Dharmasena / 123rf) THE late British Prime Minister Harold Wilson once said: “A week is a long time in politics.” And the week from now to next Tuesday, 16 Sept 2008, will be the longest in Malaysia because two games of uncertainty are being […]

DURING the Merdeka weekend, I did what I suspect thousands of Malaysians scattered across the globe do on a regular basis. I took the girls for roti canai at the local Malaysian restaurant. (Batik on the walls. Always, batik on the walls.) We read Lat at bedtime. (“Mommy, what is kampung?”) And I plotted our […]

(© Sebastian Kaulitzki / 123rf) REMINISCES are, by their very nature, flawed. Memories are stored in the brain as a hodgepodge of sights, sounds, smells, tastes and tactile sensations, haphazardly filed away in different parts of the cortex, with the hippocampus acting as the control centre. There’s just so much information coming in that the […]

THE Malaysian public has received two major economic shocks this year: the marked increase in the price of rice, and the hike (and subsequent reduction) in the price of petrol. However, our economic troubles are not over. The world economy is tottering on the brink of a major recession that will undoubtedly plunge us all […]

PENING kepala saya. Tiba-tiba macam ada ribut pengharaman oleh pihak berkuasa di Malaysia. Pada 14 Ogos 2008, pihak media dimaklumkan bahawa Kementerian Dalam Negeri telah mengharamkan dua judul buku, Muslim Women and the Challenge of Islamic Extremism (terbitan badan bukan kerajaan Sisters in Islam) dan Pelik Tapi Benar Dalam Solat (oleh Rahman Mohamad). Seorang wakil […]