SEPTEMBER 19 — Some auteurs, like Takashi Miike, Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Michal Winterbottom, are effortlessly prolific, churning out a new feature every couple of years with factory-like regularity. 

Some directors, like Hong Sang-soo, who’s made 35 films in 30 years, are even beyond prolific. And then there are directors like Na Hong-jin.

Ever since his breakthrough with 2008’s The Chaser, Na has taken his own sweet time between projects. 

While The Chaser established his mastery over the gritty Korean thriller and The Yellow Sea pushed that kinetic violence to near-unbearable extremes with bigger set-pieces, it was 2016’s The Wailing that solidified him as a modern master. 

That film, a terrifying, hallucinatory masterpiece of supernatural dread and rural paranoia, remains my absolute favorite of his work. 

Now, a full decade later, Na has finally returned with Hope, a film that is as utterly unhinged as it is technically extraordinary.

On paper, Hope arrives with a massive reputation, billed as having the biggest budget in Korean cinematic history at a reported US$40 million (RM163 million). 

But let’s put that into perspective for a second. In the bloated ecosystem of contemporary Hollywood, US$40 million is practically pocket change. 

It’s what American studios spend on a mid-tier studio comedy, a couple of superhero reshoots, or marketing campaigns alone. 

Yet, what Na Hong-jin manages to wring out of that price tag puts US$200 million Western blockbusters to absolute shame.

The author argues that Na Hong-jin’s ‘Hope’ sacrifices narrative depth for extraordinary action craftsmanship, delivering a technically audacious, if flawed, showcase of pure genre filmmaking. — Plus M Entertainment pic

Unsurprisingly, critical reactions out of its early screenings have been intensely divided. 

This is a true “love it or hate it” movie in the purest sense. If you walk into the cinema expecting a complex, intricate narrative with layered plot twists, political allegory, or heavy emotional subtext, this film is simply not for you.

In terms of pure narrative, Hope is, quite frankly, a “nothing” film.

Set in Port Hope, an isolated Korean seaside village near the Demilitarized Zone, the story kicks off when local police officers investigate a series of mysterious attacks on livestock. 

That single incident quickly spirals into a relentless, nightmare siege against an unknown, terrifying alien entity lurking in the surrounding wilderness. 

And... that is essentially it. 

The plot doesn’t branch out into multi-layered investigative detours or deep character backstories. It is a straight line of pure, visceral survival from start to finish.

Where Hope becomes an absolute “everything” film, however, is in its pure action craftsmanship.

Much like George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road, Na treats narrative merely as an ignition key to start a two-hour plus engine of kinetic mayhem. 

If you have any experience with making films, or even a passing appreciation for the mechanics of cinema, you will spend the entire runtime marvelling at the sheer technical achievements on display here. 

Working alongside legendary cinematographer Hong Kyung-pyo (The Wailing, Parasite), and his longtime editor Kim Sun-min, Na constructs set-pieces that feel like they shouldn’t logically exist.

The editing, in particular, is a masterclass. In an era where fast cuts are often used to hide cheap stunt work, the rhythm of Hope’s editing is astonishingly precise. 

Every cut carries physical momentum, every transition makes absolute sense despite the chaotic mood, and the audio design works in tandem with the visual cuts to create a sensory assault that leaves you breathless. 

Long tracking shots weave seamlessly into fast reaction cuts, building a sense of escalating panic that never sacrifices spatial clarity.

That said, the film isn’t entirely without its stumbles. For one, the visual effects are a notable letdown. 

Despite the record-breaking domestic budget, the film’s CGI unfortunately looks pretty cheap and distracting. 

When the alien threats move out of the murky shadows and into full view, the digital rendering lacks the weight and texture of the practical sets surrounding it, creating a frustrating clash between top tier physical filmmaking and undercooked VFX.

Even more distracting, though, is a sudden, jarring shift towards the end. 

Right when the film should be barreling toward a clean, visceral finish, it stumbles into lore-building territory. 

A giant alien ship suddenly crashes to Earth, and out of nowhere, the alien dialogue becomes subtitled when it was previously completely incomprehensible. 

Hints of backstory are abruptly dumped on the audience in what is clearly a move to set up a sequel should the box office numbers justify it. 

I get the business rationale behind franchise building, but if Na had just kept this one minimalist, lean, and all-action all the way to the end, it would have been absolute perfection.

As the polarising reactions have proved, Hope will unfortunately alienate casual moviegoers who prioritise script density, seamless CGI, and elaborate exposition over raw visual storytelling. 

hoBut for those of us who appreciate genre cinema elevated to the level of pure, unadulterated craft, Na Hong-jin has delivered an audacious, heart pounding triumph that proves why he is still worth waiting a decade for.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.

SEPT 17 — As if on cue for Malaysia Day, Umno’s General Assembly last weekend produced a furore over faith and sincerity in a divisive time. 

Sepang division chief Noorazli Said took the pulpit to assure members that party president Zahid Hamidi was clever in his dealings with Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim and Pakatan Harapan.

Almost no one pays attention to a minor division chief’s political sermon with no national presence, so Noorazli does the predictable, he opts for a salacious joke to wrap his point.

Poor decision, considering the party is in religious frenzy to up its credential among Muslim population parties with the intention to benefit from communalism and equally to lead the community.

Umno wants to gain from PAS’ base support but ultimately it wants to rule the said congregation.

In the middle of all of that, priest and nun gags are unnecessary distractions. They are tirelessly trying to show that Muslim unity is the holy grail of national power while lifting up the multiculturalism that they also defend.  

Noorazli’s faux pas invited much criticism.

I’ll pass on the religious examination, but I do have much to add to the apology — or non-apology the situation has produced.

For within it lies the question of sincerity, and the political communication dominant in the country.

Umno members gather for the opening of the 2026 Umno General Assembly at the World Trade Centre Kuala Lumpur on September 11, 2026. — Picture by Sayuti Zainudin

Sorry seems to be the easiest word

In the Internet age where immediacy is imminent, apologies are never far away.

When mistakes are quickly and widely known, remorse and guilt follow as relentlessly.

In a different time, Umno division chiefs are less worried about how minorities react to their jokes. State media filters content, curates comprehension accompanied by messaging, and clarifies to the people like they are children. 

Not now, not in this market. 

Grandparents born around World War Two are remembered by grandchildren worried about their own elderly care in 2040. Between the dead and aging, is the Malaysian public setting the tone. 

This is who Noorazli and all other politicians face.

The Umno Sepang chief issued an apology on September 14, 2026. Two days after his assembly exhortation. The reactions were not to his liking because 16 hours later he posted a follow-up which was a bit rebuttal, remonstration and disgust.

There are dimensions in both statements worth examining.

In the initial output, he outlined that the controversial bit was just an analogy, and if it hurt anyone, he apologises. And promised to be careful next time.

Many accused him of being insincere. I’d accuse him of not actually delivering an apology since he prefaced it with “if I hurt anyone, then I’m sorry.” Which sounds a lot like, “I don’t want to upset you, the people who can vote for me and the party, so if an apology will make you feel better, then I will let you have an apology, so you feel better.”

It appears Noorazli was expecting for his effort to be praised, not ridiculed by so many. Which made him release his tirade about no one being in the position to judge sincerity. Political determinations should not evaluate his words.

Except, there is one thing. Did he actually apologise?

Not marking him out, or just his party. Even Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim in July apologised for his “illegal temples” reference. Years back he made derogatory statements about Indians.

https://www.malaymail.com/news/opinion/2023/12/28/anwars-tanjung-malim-k-gaffe/109500

And currently, Zahid himself has been cast as a tad offensive speaking publicly about Umno Wanita Chief Noraini Ahmad’s slimmed down figure and ageing.

A good time to ask ourselves in a time where it is so super easy to say sorry, dissect its purpose.

All apologies

When we say sorry, it’s not about us. It is about the person, community, party or minority the apology is directed to.

Recriminations can continue for a duration depending on the harm, the intention and reactions from the aggrieved.

At times, apologies require repetition due to the scale of the affront.

In a few cases, apologies are never accepted. That’s just how it goes.

I have yet to hear a Malaysian politician say sorry without qualification.

That is where the sincerity sits. Contrition is about regret, humility and restitution.

There are no rules to apologies. As in when a group or person apologises, the affected have to find it in themselves to accept the apology. As I said, apologies are about those hurt. Those who hurt are not owed a positive reaction.

Noorazli’s situation is bad, extremely bad in the Malaysian context. It’s a gaffe. It may not have the longstanding effects of things like forest fires, land clearing, or voter fraud or failing schools, but it is visceral. 

A large assembly asked to laugh about examples which do not apply to those in the hall but do to many outside the trade centre.

When apologies are whole and not put out with technicalities, they do sound more sincere. When they are made in person, rather than in a social media post, they carry more weight.

This is a federation with a deep harrowing past, often buried.

The Internet unearths them one by one, and there is nothing those in power can do.

What is in their hands are choices. Either deflect, feign ignorance or water them down — which appear increasingly foolish as the machines gather momentum — or find the courage to confront them and own the past. And when mistakes and errors were made, acknowledge them and apologise.

Apologies do not solve the past, they shape the future.

They certainly are not quid pro quo.

SEPT 16 — There was a time when social media wouldn’t stop showing me videos of foreigners coming to Malaysia and praising it to the skies.

I do think it’s important that we broaden our views and appreciate the perspectives these visitors give us.

Then we have videos from a creator who said she had never encountered as much racism as she had in Malaysia.

Her views matter too.

I think the time for romanticising living overseas is over; for many the doors have closed shut, and even if they did open they would find not lands of milk and honey but ones of suspicion and doubt.

It is strange that Malaysians complain when they are turned back from South Korea and Australia because of supposed racism but at the same time are so horrid to foreign workers and migrants here.

But perhaps it shows how in some ways we are just human, easily susceptible to xenophobia and colourism.

Yet one of the few things I clung to during the pandemic was how Malaysians came together to try and keep each other alive.

Malaysians helped feed and shelter foreign workers abandoned by their employers, shared tips on how to get vaccine slots, used the internet to signal for help and to find those signals.

All we had was each other and in the end, that is still all we really have, if we choose to remember.

Sixty-three years Malaysia has existed, and I have spent maybe more than a decade doing my best to remind people that Malaysia is more than one state or one people.

Facebook has also reminded me that I have stayed in this rental for over 17 years, longer than any house I have lived in all my life.

I moved to Selangor when I was 18, but before that I had brief stints in London and Manila, so yes, I have lived in West Malaysia longer than I ever have in Sabah.

So in many ways I have become a Petaling Jaya person now; I don’t ever want to leave. 

Yet as the doors and gates of this crumbling house rot around me I have to think about some day finding a new nest and hope I do not have to sell a kidney to afford it.

Some days I scan iProperty and laugh at the sheer audacity of the listing prices. 

”This would be perfect for those looking to remodel into your dream house,” and it’s a picture of an abandoned-looking house with mold all over the walls, and “spacious garden” being full of debris and overgrown weeds.

How much for this wondrous gem in the heart of PJ? RM2 million, apparently.

I have lived in an old, decaying house long enough to be able to recognise one by sight and I often pass many old houses with “For Sale/Rent” signs and immediately wonder if the roof had been waterproofed lately.

Speaking of old, decaying houses, Kuala Lumpur as it is now is dazzling and clean in ways that it wasn’t when I first moved here.

Sixty-three years Malaysia has existed, and I have spent maybe more than a decade doing my best to remind people that Malaysia is more than one state or one people. — Picture by Yusof Mat Isa

One night I stared at KL Tower in the distance, looking almost small and frail next to the towering buildings that surrounded it, with even the EQ hotel seeming to dwarf it.

Sometimes the things that happen in this country make me deeply unhappy.

Yet I know I would be just as miserable to be too far away from it, its comforts and the casual knowing that people I cared about were a phone call or train ride away.

We deserve better, I feel.

We deserve transparency. Politics that does not involve a new bogeyman of the week. 

We deserve equality and prosperity for all, instead of being told our lives and our skills are worth less than a lying chatbot.

Yet I think too many of us think too much about this country being one that we deserve, but too little about being Malaysians who would embody the people of this ideal country.

We must reflect that good, that peace, that generosity in resources that we seek in this land we call ours.

I hope as more Malaysia Days come, our hearts do not harden, our courage does not falter, our dreams not be allowed to die.

Let us always dare to dream of a better Malaysia.

Happy Malaysia Day. 

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.

SEPTEMBER 15 — There is the official group: Family, office, old classmates who still pretend the Form 5 reunion is happening. Everyone is in it. Birthdays get a sticker. Political links get communally ridiculed. Lunch photos are shared. Blah blah blah.

Then there is the other group which consists of the same people — minus one. Sometimes minus two.

Given a name so bland it could pass as a logistics chat, and immediately put to its real use: Talking about the person who is not there.

If this sounds familiar, congratulations. You have either built one of these groups, sat inside one, or — the more interesting fate — you are the missing name.

The unofficial supplement WhatsApp facilitates and certainly did not invent: Gossip. It merely removed the last inconvenience.

A brief history of gossip

Once upon a time you needed a corridor, a kopi-o, a lowered voice. Now you need a few ticks, a contact list and hopefully people’s generally acquiescence with being involuntarily added to a group.

But going even further back, gossip may have begun with hands; primates nurturing alliances by grooming: time-consuming, one-to-one, limited by how many backs you can scratch before sunset.

Robin Dunbar’s argument, now a kind of origin myth in this field, is that language arrived as cheaper grooming I.e. talk let us service several relationships at once.

And what did we talk about? In sampled conversations, social topics — who did what to whom — take up around two-thirds of the airtime.

Gossip, in this telling, is not a later “corruption” of speech, it may be why speech was worth evolving in the first place.

The WhatsApp icon is seen on a smartphone in this undated image. — AFP pic

Gossip tracks reputations. It flags free-riders and serves as a release valve for felt injustices.

It teaches the unwritten rules faster than any official briefing. Baumeister et al treated it as a manual for group life: how we learn what “we” will and will not tolerate (see note 1).

Gossip gathers norms and it bonds the people doing the gathering. Experiments show pairs who trade talk about absent others often leave more aligned, and sometimes more cooperative.

The research does not baptise the WhatsApp splinter group. It only explains why the habit feels so old.

We did not invent talking about the missing person. We inherited it, then gave it a group name bland enough to look like logistics.

Back to WhatsApp groups (minus one)

What is striking is not that people complain about each other. People have always done that.

What is fresh is the architecture. The main group remains the public face of belonging. The side group is the disavowed extra — the place where the actual judgments and “real talk” live.

Call it the unofficial supplement of friendship: The official chat says we are close. The unofficial one decides who is allowed to be close enough.

Why bother? Because talking about someone who cannot answer back is strangely bonding. Shared irritation is cheaper than shared vulnerability. You do not have to risk a fight. You just add everyone except them and let the comments do the work.

There is also a little power in it, right? As in, who gets to create the smaller room? Who decides the guest list?

For people who feel slightly ignored in the big group, the splinter chat is a promotion. Suddenly they are curators of the real conversation.

Finally, perhaps the most humbling aspect of this entire phenomenon. Always remember: There is almost certainly a group of your friends which— for whatever reason — doesn’t include you.

Note 1: Two helpful works on gossip include Dunbar, R. I. M. (1996). Grooming, gossip and the evolution of language. Harvard University Press and Baumeister, R. F., Zhang, L., & Vohs, K. D. (2004). Gossip as cultural learning. Review of General Psychology, 8(2), 111–121.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.

SEPT 12 — It’s always nice to see a filmmaker return to their trashy, low-budget roots after a stint with the major studios. 

For the better part of a decade, Adam Wingard has been somewhat lost inside the corporate machinery of Hollywood’s franchise industrial complex. 

While his Godzilla vs. Kong entries were undeniably slick, big budget spectacles (and a whole lot of fun in their own special ways), they inevitably lacked the mean-spirited ingenuity, efficiency, and blood-soaked thrill of his early work.

Which is why Onslaught, which opened in Malaysian cinemas just last week, feels like such a breath of fresh air, especially when released just as the summer movie season ends. 

Stripping away the CGI giant monsters, Wingard goes down and dirty again with a modestly budgeted, lean and mean genre entry. 

It is clearly Wingard going back to making the exact type of films that made his name in the first place — sturdy, efficient, and wonderfully gory siege cinema — cut from the exact same cloth as You’re Next and The Guest.

In fact, comparing Onslaught directly to The Guest reveals just how much Wingard thrives when he operates within self-imposed boundaries. 

The Guest succeeded because it took a simple, archetypal narrative, that of the mysterious stranger invading a family home, and injected it with relentless John Carpenter-esque dread, retro 1980s neon-soaked aesthetics, and a deliciously unhinged performance from Dan Stevens.

Onslaught functions on a very similar frequency. Swap out the quiet suburban house for an isolated, run down trailer park, and swap out Dan Stevens' super soldier for a trio of escaped, genetically modified super soldiers, and you have a film that plays almost like a disguised remake, reboot or even a sequel to The Guest.

Official posters for Adam Wingard’s action thriller ‘Onslaught’, starring Adria Arjona as former army sniper Celeste. — Picture via A24

Like all good siege films, Onslaught is an unabashed love letter to Carpenter, specifically his eternal classics Assault on Precinct 13 and Escape From New York, with a healthy dose of James Cameron’s The Terminator thrown into the mix for good measure. 

Wingard captures that precise 70s/80s genre cadence — an isolated setting, a ticking clock, and an unstoppable force pounding at the gates — with perfect ease.

Where The Guest had Dan Stevens effortlessly charming and terrifying us in equal measure, Onslaught hands the emotional heavy lifting to Adria Arjona. 

Fresh off impressive turns in Andor and Blink Twice, Arjona is a total badass lead here, and will remind Wingard fans of the similarly badass lead performance by Sharni Vinson in You’re Next. 

She plays Celeste, a former Army sniper trying to keep her life together, with a raw, grounded physicality that makes every tactical manoeuvre and brutal exchange feel earned.

Having said that, Stevens isn't left out of the fun. Reuniting with Wingard 12 years after The Guest, Stevens flips his role from mysterious anti-hero to outright villain. 

He has an absolute blast chewing the scenery as the wild, mad scientist figure behind the super soldier project, and I loved every second of his performance. 

It’s the kind of uninhibited, gleeful work that reminds you why genre cinema can be so much fun when actors completely commit to the bit.

Yet, amid all the flying limbs and bullet riddled walls, the film's most delightful surprise is young Blake Kennedy as Celeste's daughter, Daisy. 

Instead of playing the typical screaming child who exists purely to be rescued in most movies, Daisy is written and played as a proper, polite little lady. 

Her pristine manners in the middle of absolute carnage inject a subtle, quirky and pitch-perfect element of comedy into the proceedings, giving the tension room to breathe.

If I had to complain about at least one thing, it would have to be the final stretch. 

Onslaught builds up such a fantastic momentum during its first two acts that the final battle between Celeste and the last surviving super soldier didn't feel quite as epic or brutally difficult as what some fans might expect from a true final boss fight. 

Some might even call it anti-climactic, that’s how underwhelming that final boss fight was. 

Were parts of it censored because of extreme violence? It could be, but I can only find out once the film is out on digital, so as of now, it’s a wee bit underwhelming for my gore loving tastes. But that’s just me nitpicking.

Overall, Onslaught is a very solid piece of genre entertainment, especially during that remarkably exciting buildup, that proves Wingard is still at his absolute best when he forgets the studio green screens and goes back to basics.

SEPT 10 — It’s an oxymoron when people claim it is only through Umno and PN coming together — for the nation but first Melaka — that political tranquillity, economic dynamism and social justice will prevail.

This is not to negate the present electoral mathematics, which guarantees victory for Umno and PN in the state the size of Hulu Selangor. 

But to say their win will likely turn the precursor to a greater nation is premature. To begin with, they believe in a country which prioritises some Malaysians, and not so much other Malaysians.

This column asserts any short-term gain by Umno and PN together tends to also unravel in record time. Splendidly, the past six years in Melaka exemplifies the toxicity of the Umno-PN relationship.

It is easy to forget the shenanigans in the historical city, as events have sped past and its excrements swept under the Dataran Pahlawan turf. Melaka Hilir deserves better.

The second smallest state is rife with instability. Here’s the painful recap.

Time after time

In 2018, Pakatan Harapan formed the first non-Barisan Nasional (previously Alliance) government under Amanah’s Adly Zahari.

It was an uneventful period, which bodes well for the first alternative government.

National events victimised Melaka, initially, but so much thereafter was the state’s own undoing.

The shocking resignation of Mahathir Mohamad in February 2020, not only forced a change of federal government but also paved the way for state switches.

In Melaka, two from Bersatu quit the government, unsurprising considering Muhyiddin Yassin with the majority of the party plus Umno and PAS, stormed to national power. 

The shocker was two Pakatan reps, excos no less, quit the coalition. Norhizam Hassan Baktee (DAP-Pengkalan Batu) and Jailani Khamis (PKR-Rembia) were rewarded with them keeping their old exco positions.

This file picture shows the Melaka State Legislative Assembly building in Ayer Keroh. The state is preparing for another election following years of political uncertainty. — Picture by Shafwan Zaidon

Umno’s Sulaiman Ali was picked by the party to be chief minister.

Now it must mean everything’s hunky-dory. With this correction.

The dastardly DAP was removed from running Melaka. They were still the bogeyman, and there was hardly any public rancour towards ex-Adun Norhizam.  

Umno, Bersatu and PAS together in power to make Melaka great again was the spin. After 500 years, finally a Malay coalition to run the old kingdom.

Yet, the honeymoon only lasted 19 months.

Umno does it to itself — with no DAP DNA footprint.

When the government switch occurred, among the Umno Aduns was Idris Haron who led the state for five years (2013-2018) before the GE14 debacle. Now with Umno back helming Melaka, the naïve likely conclude Idris would act as mentor to Sulaiman. After all, Idris had institutional knowledge and a chance to raise Umno’s bar.

That they’d have monthly tea with French macarons.

Fat chance!

Instead, Idris led one other Umno rep Nor Azman Hassan, along with Bersatu’s Noor Effandi Ahmad and yes, that name again, Norhizam to withdraw support for the Umno Melaka government.

Apparently, they felt after Umno saved Melaka from Pakatan in 2020, they needed to save Umno from Umno.  

Sulaiman is forced to go to the polls.

Here’s the rub, after almost two years with PN running the state, Umno were disinclined to contest with them. Idris, sacked by Umno, contests as a PKR candidate — difficult to defend PKR in these instances. He duly loses.

The voters, rather than punish BN for being a flake, akin to the tantrums of a spoilt six-year-old, gift the coalition 21 wins. 

While Idris goes the other way — Umno to PKR — unsuccessfully, Jailani the 2020 defector goes the opposite direction. The ex-PKR dude by then was a reformed Umno leader. He defends Rembia for BN-Umno and wins.

Sulaiman now, yes now, gets to have his time to govern. With a two-thirds majority made purely of just BN — 18 Umno, 2 MCA and 1 MIC. This is actual bliss. No preservatives, just original content. 

Surely, surely, it will be plain sailing to 2026.

Not so.

Sixteen months later, Sulaiman resigns for a myriad of reasons, including his health. He was 56. On March 31, 2023, Melaka Umno chief Ab Rauf Yusoh is sworn in as chief minister.

Pompeii or Krakatoa

In hindsight, Melaka seems to represent best the turbulence and chaos of Malay-costumed unity initiatives and Umno’s own self-destructiveness.

But before the parties, let’s grade the Melaka voters.  They appear to be goldfishes — with very short term memory. 

The past vanishes as they are divided into two camps; those obsessed with Malay unity and therefore wilfully ignore all pressing misdeeds and disorganisation, and the other, abjectly disappointed with Pakatan’s inability to purchase enough reforms.

Though I might want to add in this Merdeka festivities, those who demand change should introspectively ask themselves how much they are willing to change too. 

This one-way street thinking and feigning innocence as whining victims risk turning stale. All of Malaysia must reform, including ourselves.

To the parties then, firstly, Umno.

It is a chaotic organisation bent on victory rather than principle.

Consider this, Umno President Zahid Hamidi has asked Ab Rauf to choose his mates for the upcoming state election.

Zahid will let Ab Rauf get on with getting the best possible result for Umno.

A decision to work together based on who gets to govern is predatory. It is about mining the voters, rather than presenting ideas for the voters to choose. It reduces elections to merely identity rather than ability or intent.

Because, wait for this, as Umno and PN march forward to nomination day, PAS will likely name Jailani.

It is difficult to keep up with Melaka bits but shortly after winning for Umno, Jailani gets suspended by the party.

He now joins PAS. Umno mulls wanting to sue him for RM100 million. Nothing comes of it.

The past three years, PAS has a seat in the Melaka assembly, thanks to Jailani. It’s unlikely they’d abandon him. Umno is adamant to contest all 21 races it won in 2021 which includes Jailani’s Rembia.

There is a more than outside chance that Jailani will now contest for his third party in three consequent Rembia elections and win it. Election Commission officers would have to check their records. 

The curiosities aside, in spite of just a few years ago wanting to bankrupt Jailani, through this turn of events, Umno’s full machinery may have to campaign for Jailani.

That’s how irresponsible things may play out in the state and voters are going to completely look away and just stick to the unity efforts, whatever that means.

If and when Umno and PN win in Melaka with all that has preceded, it marks the end of political innocence and forebodes the collapse of sensible democratic ideals.

SEPT 9 — Much as I am loathe to admit it, it feels like my 40s are now separated by “BC/AC” or Before Cancer/After Cancer.

A pandemic, a new major war and a cancer diagnosis are not what I wanted to experience in the fourth decade of my life and now my fifty-something years loom ever closer.

Right now I feel a strange peace.

Now, I’m not about to proclaim that I have reached enlightenment or that I am a candidate for sainthood.

It’s far more mundane than that.

As I continue to spring clean my house, throwing away broken and un-giftable things, I find things I have no recollection of buying, no memory of why I wanted them in the first place.

Besides things I have also let go of something I think most people should learn to — an attachment to outcomes.

Or as Doris Day sang, que sera sera.

I think most people are unhappy because their life or even their sense of self does not conform to very specific notions.

Desire, I think, is a healthy thing and that desire is behind some of the most beautiful things we have but too much of it, twists those things into hideous transmogrifications.

We want what we want; over analyzing desire is a pointless exercise.

Yet I understand that for people in great pain or suffering, such as those living in countries at war, it cannot be easy or perhaps possible to live in a detachment to outcomes.

When you live in conflict, all you can hope for is for that conflict to end, and for you to survive until you see the fulfilment of that hope.

For those not in crisis it is a privilege then to be able to sit with yourself, to be able to look back on your past, your thoughts, your actions and release your emotional ties to them.

I sit on this computer and think, ah, my life has been beautiful. Today there has been occasion for joy. Tomorrow holds promise of more joy.

There is no joy in holding onto my sadness or my grievances and I do not know, but I can hope my cancer remains gone and that tomorrow I don’t get run over by a careless Malaysian driver.

I watched the Chiikawa movie again last week but only to collect the special merch from a screening.

The character I find most endearing in the franchise is Usagi, the rabbit-like creature who will suddenly burst into song or verse and somehow in the past few weeks I have accumulated quite a few mini Usagis.

When Usagi isn’t rapping or happily stuffing its face with food, it is content to just lie around, seeming aimless in its relaxation.

Yet Usagi is also brave, unashamed about expressing itself creatively, also a skilled hunter and diligent in skill-acquiring.

Like Chiikawa’s Usagi, I would like to live in the moment and care only for the things that matter. — Screengrab via YouTube

Containing multitudes, indeed.

So I’d rather like to be Usagi — being silly, prone to not taking myself too seriously, not caring to prove anything to anyone (besides myself)... isn’t that a nice state of being?

Before I go off and do some necessary laying about (I volunteered to do far too much writing), I hope that you too find something, some thought that can sustain you in this mad world we live in.

And if all else fails, lie down and let your mind be still and empty, thinking of nothing besides what would be nice for breakfast.

I suggest nasi lemak.

SEPTEMBER 5 — It is no secret that Hollywood is currently suffering from a severe case of acute franchise exhaustion. 

We live in a cinematic landscape dominated by board approved IP, multi-phase universe building, and an unrelenting, assembly line brand of nostalgia that usually feels more like a cold corporate strategy than actual art. 

Which is why walking into the cinema expecting the worst, only to walk out genuinely affected by the craft on display, remains one of the purest joys of a film lover.

I’ve been a bit busy the past few weeks, but as usual I’ll always try to cram a few movies into my schedule, even if sometimes that means I’ll be catching them a bit later than the usual movie crowd. 

On paper, Spider-Man: Brand New Day and David Robert Mitchell’s The End Of Oak Street have very little in common. 

Yet both films manage to stand out in a remarkably crowded summer season by daring to prioritise atmosphere, character, and genuine cinematic craft over mere spectacle.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day

When it comes to everyone’s favourite neighbourhood web slinger, audiences have been treated to a dizzying array of iterations over the last two decades. 

We’ve had the excellently operatic Sam Raimi years, the misplaced gritty reboot energy of the Marc Webb films, and the multiverse-hopping, Easter egg heavy extravaganzas that defined Tom Holland’s initial trilogy.

Which brings us to Spider-Man: Brand New Day, and I am happy to report that this is, without a doubt, my favourite Tom Holland Spider-Man film so far.

The author argues that ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ shows superhero cinema can still feel fresh when character, emotion and filmmaking craft take precedence over franchise spectacle. — Screengrab via YouTube/Sony

Directed with a surprisingly restrained, character driven focus by Destin Daniel Cretton (of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings fame, but more crucially of indie dramas like Just Mercy and Short Term 12), the movie strips away the multi-versal crutches and team up gimmicks of No Way Home. What we are left with is a story that feels intensely personal.

Having been erased from the memories of everyone he loves, Peter Parker finds himself completely isolated in a cold, vast New York City, a young man hiding from the world in a tiny, depressing apartment.

By stripping away the universe saving stakes, the film pivots from being a typical superhero movie to a remarkably tender, melancholic coming of age story. 

We watch Peter process grief, loneliness, and the harsh realisation that growing up often means making choices that hurt.

Holland gives his finest performance in the suit to date, playing Peter not as the wide-eyed kid eager to join the Avengers, but as a worn-down young adult navigating the messy, unglamorous realities of adulthood. 

It is a grounding, deeply emotional entry that proves superhero cinema can still hit hard when it focuses on the human underneath the mask.

The End Of Oak Street

If Brand New Day succeeds by shrinking its scale, David Robert Mitchell’s The End Of Oak Street succeeds by taking a high concept premise and treating it with skilful cinematic elegance.

Mitchell, who previously proved his mastery of dread and spatial awareness with It Follows and the delightfully bizarre noir Under the Silver Lake, takes a major leap into big budget studio territory here. 

The narrative setup — a quiet, suburban 1980s cul-de-sac suddenly torn from reality — could easily have devolved into a messy, CGI-heavy creature feature. Instead, Mitchell delivers a masterclass in tension.

What makes The End Of Oak Street work so well is its brilliant synthesis of influences. 

On one hand, Mitchell leans heavily into the cozy, golden-hued 80s nostalgia of Steven Spielberg and his iconic Amblin imprint. 

The neighbourhood feels lived-in, the suburban kids on their bicycles feel authentic, and the score hits all the right emotional chords. 

But where lesser filmmakers would settle for cheap nostalgia bait, Mitchell weaponises that sense of comfort.

He injects the narrative with his signature, slow burn suspense. Using fluid tracking shots and incredible set-piece construction, he slowly ratchets up the dread until the suburban haven becomes a playground of survival. 

The thrill of the set-pieces doesn’t come from relentless action, but from Mitchell’s expert pacing, knowing exactly when to hold a frame, when to hide the danger in the background, and when to let loose. 

It is a gorgeous, thrilling piece of genre filmmaking that hits the rare, sweet spot between nostalgic warmth and edge-of-your-seat horror.

It is easy to get cynical about mainstream cinema these days, especially when multiplexes are routinely flooded with uninspired studio products. 

Yet, both Spider-Man: Brand New Day and The End Of Oak Street serve as vital reminders of what happens when talented directors are allowed to bring a distinct visual language and emotional weight to large scale genre cinema.

Whether you are looking for a grounded, intimate study on maturity or an impeccably crafted, thrilling ride through 80s suburbia, both films offer a glorious night out at the movies.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.

SEPTEMBER 3 — Farewell to the real McCoy. The doctor who never stopped worrying about the bomb and kept detesting it.

Ronald McCoy’s extraordinary journey ended on September 1, 2026. He did many things, among them founded with global colleagues an organisation which won the Nobel Peace Prize a decade ago. 

He was 96-years-old, epitomised service and love for humanity. As a former schoolboy cricketer, he’d be quite delighted to declare it an inning.

The life of this doctor who delivered so many of my countrymen is a Malaysian story. Both the journey and his thinking.

My own experiences with Dr McCoy were limited but three stand out. Coffee and chat while preparing his citation in 2004, the actual night to honour him and the brief encounter at a city motel reception area.

I did not realise the coffee was over 20 years ago.

The Victoria Institution Old Boys’ Association committee asked me to meet the man selected as Victorian of the Year in 2004, to prep his citation. 

I had seen Dr McCoy at alumni events but sitting down and talking to the man about his life was an honour. 

He was like the first recipient, Siew Nim Chee in 2002, who kept links to the school and its alumni even after their schooling days were over. (Siew, the first Malaysian Cornell University graduate contributed a portion of his salary to the school throughout his working years)

Calmly, he retraced his years in Pasar Road and how the war interrupted his adolescence. 

From student he turned into a 13-year-old who worked for the Federated Engineering Company. The factory is now where Fraser’s Business Park is situated, just behind the Chan Sow Lin LRT station. 

He worked side by side with his father during the war, and since the plant made noodles, his mom would give them curry in a flask, so that they could have curry mee.

The war ended, but his regret about the atomic bombs used to accelerate Japan’s surrender was a preoccupation which never gave way. 

In secondary school he stayed true to the school ethos, to show character on the field, in the classroom and stay a gentleman. He was school captain at the VI.

His headmaster Frederick Daniel read out on August 5, 1949, this about McCoy. “In the history of the VI, no other boy had ever been school Captain and Rodger Scholar in the same year or had combined successfully academic study and other school activities.”

Ronald McCoy was 74, when old boys from all years, gathered in Hilton Petaling Jaya to honour him in 2004. 

McCoy addressed the boys as he would have more than half a century ago as head boy. 

It was a forthright manner of speaking he possessed, filled with purpose always. It was what he was championing rather than about himself. His self-effacing exterior always makes people ask, who is that man?

Neither politician nor billionaire. But a man born to serve.

In Universiti Malaya he studied medicine on a university scholarship and government bursary. He repaid that debt and some more.

Ronald McCoy was 74, when old boys from all years, gathered in Hilton Petaling Jaya to honour him in 2004. — Picture by Shafwan Zaidon

In the obstetrics and gynaecology department at KL Hospital, Assunta and Pantai Medical Centre for 40 years. He retired in 1996 after making 20,000 deliveries.

This is plenty but his natural tendency to want to do more benefitted Malaysia and the world further. A past president of the Malaysian Medical Association, he desired universal coverage and equitable access for all through various committees for decades.

He served on various non-medical NGOs to champion transparency, free speech and art.

Which moves us to his participation in the quest to free mankind from the horrors of nuclear annihilation. 

He founded the local chapter of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War in 1987; the organisation won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985 and he went on to become its co-president.

Now, all of these were part of the tribute to be read at the dinner in 2004. The post and telegraph department draughtsman’s son was 74 then.

These events are supposed to be tail ends turned into tall tales in retiree gardens.

He wrote new chapters thereafter. There’s ageing well, and ageing gracefully, and the McCoy option of doing it magnificently.

Our lad founded The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) in 2007. He tirelessly contributed to it and with 470 organisations signed up to it, and in 2017 it was given the Nobel Peace Prize.

There is trouble when the CV is too prodigious or celebrated. The man gets lost in the text.

On July 11, 2011, I found myself, with tens of people somewhat trapped inside one of the many cheap hotels on Jalan Pudu facing the bus terminal. There were no check-ins, everyone was fleeing police firing tear gas at protesters. 

It was Bersih II and people were running helter-skelter. Dr McCoy was standing amidst the people with a handkerchief covering his mouth.

He was not too internationalised to forget that he was with his people.

The fights to get things right are small and big, and no one is too big for a fight, is what I think when I think about Ronald McCoy.

He always attended alumni dinners, I remember the last one I attended. There is a tradition to mark the generations attending the event. 

The emcee begins with calling out all the students of the VI from the 1940s. Only Dr McCoy stood up, to heartfelt ovations from those present. 

In every sense, he’s never stopped being school captain, only that the campus grew larger, and larger, without him forgetting that we are all individuals equally loved. 

He was not only delivering babies nor stopped doing so in 1996. Malaysians, whether we know it or not, stand on the shoulders of giants. 

This Malaysian focussed on doing rather than fretting about identity. And for that, all of us are wiser.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.

SEPTEMBER 2 — No one tells you about the survivor’s guilt after being declared cancer-free.

“You should be happy,” people tell me.

I am grateful, yes.

Yet each time I see or hear about someone who wasn’t as fortunate it eats at me.

The woman who I terrorised the zakat office for last year, Musliha, is in worse shape since the last time I wrote about her.

She is hospitalised, the cancer spreading to her arm, the chemotherapy and the medication she was previously taking not working.

Her tumour now leaks blood, her mouth full of sores and she has even had to have a blood transfusion.

While zakat did approve some funding for her medical costs, she cannot work and relies entirely on her husband’s meagre salary.

So if you can help ease her burden in any way, please donate to her here.

On Threads I saw her show diapers being full of blood, diapers she uses to absorb the blood from her wounds.

Perhaps some of you wonder why I keep bringing up her situation.

Aren’t there so many people out there I could also champion? 

If I could clone as many Ernas to advocate for every single person that needs it, I would.

One of the main reasons I decided to get treatment for my cancer was my knowledge of how bad it can get when not treated.

It wasn’t long ago I had declared in a column that if I was diagnosed with cancer, I wouldn’t bother getting treated.

But knowing what I do now, about the suffering untreated cancer patients endure, I decided that I had to try and brave chemo and all that comes with it.

It is only sheer luck and different circumstances that separate my cancer outcome and Musliha’s.

If there was a way for me to wave some wand to make her cancer go away, I would.

Because I am not a faith healer, just a very strident journalist, this is what I can do for her and maybe, just maybe writing this will convince some other woman to get checked.

Yes, it is unfair that money and access to aid and newer treatments make so much difference for cancer survivability.

The least any of us can do is ease, in any way, the burden for someone else.

Yeah, maybe you can’t pay for Musliha’s meds.

But you can help buy her a meal, subsidise a day’s worth of diapers and dressings and as someone who had been in her shoes, even the barest amount of help matters.

When I was still getting Ko-fi donations I would cry into my food and drink, as maudlin as it sounds.

I thought then well, someone cares enough that I stick around so I will keep trying. 

Even when everything tasted like metal and the smell of curries made me nauseous I would eat as much as I could keep down.

Now here I am begging at a keyboard again for someone who I never even spoke to in real life, who I watched from a far (like a creepy weirdo) in the daycare ward. 

I do it because of that guilt of recognising oh God that could have been me.

It could be you. It could be your loved one.

Pain and illness will come to us all unbidden, no matter how saintly a life we try to live because cancer is a dice roll our cells throw every millisecond — we just don’t realise it.

That was the most fascinating fact I learned in the past few weeks; most of us get cancer without realising but minor cancers that our bodies’ immune system deal with swiftly, while we live unaware.

What my cancer did for me (though I would rather not have had it) was remind me that each day, even when it sucks, is a gift.

Though my joint stiffness has been a right pain, I am glad I can walk without a cane... that my food doesn’t taste of metal and blood, that no one can tell I was ever sick and my hair has grown out dark, thick and stubborn.

And I ponder again Thomas Merton’s Prayer.

“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end.

Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.

But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.

I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.

And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it.

Therefore will I trust you always, though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.”

I hope that when I finally walk through that last door on this journey of life, I can say that I did my best to live those words.

Hopefully, you will all have a few more decades left to get sick of me.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.

AUGUST 30 — Back in 2001, I had to go to KLIA every weekend and I always used the same taxi driver.

When I recall his skills (as he used to pick me up before picking up my other colleagues), my mind is quietly blown: He was able to drive to any house on any street within a 10-mile radius of SS2 — this would be considered a superpower nowadays.

Alas, today, we have Waze. Such a useful ubiquitous tool on the road which, unfortunately, has removed directional memories from every Malaysian.

God forbid the app shuts down when we’re about to go to some wedding party at some restaurant we’ve never been to before located “somewhere between TRX and the American embassy” (!).

On (rare) occasions, my taxi driver had to (very briefly) consult a (physical) map but, seriously, how many modern urbanites know how to read a map other than Google Maps nowadays?

Today we are inundated with tools that don’t just save time, but quietly teach people they no longer need any underlying skill.

TLDR: We increasingly can’t live without products which make us “dumber”.

Today we are inundated with tools that don’t just save time, but quietly teach people they no longer need any underlying skill. — Picture by Yusof Isa

Take Google Translate which has done more harm than any other tool in cancelling language classes.

Because why bother taking time to learn Vietnamese and Spanish words and grammar when you can speak your own language into the phone and have your speech auto-translated when you’re visiting Hanoi or Madrid?

Likewise, A.I.-fitted phone cameras which have destroyed the craft of photography from the average user; the “auto-adjust” function removes any motivation for us to ask how many changes in saturation, vibrance, contrast, etc can really help our photos.

Don’t even get me started on university students who can no longer write proper essays since DeepSeek and Gemini can do the job for them within minutes.

Or even TED talks and TikTok videos which reduce complicated topics (which have sharpened scholars for decades) to 15 and, uh, 2 minutes respectively.

Imagine someone who’s studied psychology for more than a decade being “lectured” by some dude who saw an Insta reel on ADHD; anyone who’s ever cut their teeth studying a subject can immediately identify the pseudo-knowledge coming a mile away.

The issue here isn’t just about technology making life more convenient or easier. It’s about people using tools in a way which makes them believe they no longer have to spend serious time and effort learning certain things.

Or, worse, this is the story of modern contraptions making people believe they’re much smarter than they are.

Netflix rows, YouTube autoplay, TikTok’s For You page don’t merely just suggest; they potentially replace taste formation.

You stop hunting, stop sitting with a difficult album or a slow film, stop building the “private canon” that used to be how people became interesting.

I remember first listening to musicians like Def Leppard and Debussy and asking myself why I enjoyed the music. I doubt I always got a “right” or wise answer but at least in the past I never liked a song simply because it’s been played two billion times on Spotify.

Needless to say, when we spend time listening — really listening — to albums like Hysteria or classics like Claire de Lune, something inside us changes and grows, a process essentially short-circuited with infinite Spotify “smart shuffles”.

Malaysians should also be more concerned about institutions which award post-graduate and doctoral qualifications to students who can barely speak the language in which their dissertations are written.

Or about MBA courses which are meant to elevate business thinking and effectiveness of would-be directors and managers but end up creating a class of folks who are experts at yapping non-stop and Tai-Chi-ing problems away.

And need I mention some educational organisations whose staff go around claiming that people from certain ethnicities can fly?

In all the above educational examples the outcomes are students who believe they have come out “smarter” but, you know, could be quite the opposite.

Finally, with all due respect to Christopher Nolan, there’s a case that The Odyssey, whilst smashing box-office records (becoming the highest grossing R-rated movie ever), nevertheless dumbed down a literary classic.

Instead of Homer’s “the man of many turns” (liar, flatterer, inventor of the Trojan Horse, sex slave to a sorceress, etc... basically a figure you simultaneously admire and distrust) audiences around the world were cheering for a guilt-racked veteran who’s nothing more than a Greek version of a remorseful action hero.

The real product today isn’t convenience. It’s the feeling that we already know the way — even when we couldn’t find the restaurant, the word (or ourselves?) without the app.

And even when we leave the cinema sure we’ve met Odysseus when all we’ve really met is a stripped-down Hollywood version of, uh, Nobody (see note 1).

Note 1: That’s how he identified himself when the Cyclops asked him his name. Check out the original story to find out why.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.

AUGUST 27 — More sugar than usual, so watch that glucose count.

It’s the Merdeka season! It justifies the overenthusiasm — not an obesity death march.

Therefore, time for over-the-top patriotism and flag-draping. Tinged with unhealthy clicks of selfies.

Today, the objectives are transparent like the embellishments which accompany. That Malaysia is fine, and it’s wonderful, being Malaysian.

And no, I’ve not lost my marbles riding the night bus home from the train station.

We have our problems, some intractable with morbid possibilities, but I started this column with a clear intention, to celebrate the country as it kicks off its annual festival which carries on to Malaysia Day.

I’ve made a mental note to mentally sledgehammer myself if I turn inexplicably into Melancholy Street. My ward said I’m prone to do so. He has a point, rah-rah Malaysia then.

According to the author, Malaysia inches with every Merdeka to a stronger identity despite the best efforts of agitators. — Bernama pic

There is a huge point, a critical distance being crossed without us caring enough about it. 

It’s now 69 years and needs no apology. Malaysia has been an experiment for 69 years. I understand my brothers and sisters from across the pond beg to differ and point to MA63. 

Can we not worry about the terminologies and philosophical preponderances about the six years differential and leave it for another day? 

To agree at least a test was initiated and we’ve been bound to it ever since, and our collective futures are at stake dependent on durability. So yes, each year means more.

Sixty-nine matters because it is 31 years closer to a hundred, which is a gargantuan milestone, therefore converts further a concept into a constant. Malaysia as a constant.

When we are 100 years old, Malaysia ceases to be a fanciful idea but a nation with identity and facts, whether it likes it or not. In age parlance, no more a teenager or young adult but clearly ensconced as an adult.

Adulthood is difficult to attain for countries in the modern world.

The Soviet Union was artificial and ended after 74 years — dead tsars’ fiefs rolled into a centrally planned economy powered by military might. 

The weight of scale and global overreach eventually undid it. Europe’s Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia met similar disentanglements for different reasons. 

But if dissecting former Western colonies is more instructive, in Africa, The Mali Federation split into Senegal and, well, Mali, and Sudan and Somalia lost parts transformed into South Sudan and Somaliland. 

Or even closer, Pakistan lost East Pakistan (Bangladesh) inside 25 years, and the closest and most poignant, Malaysia lost — dumped/severed/mutually split/painfully exited — Singapore within two unified years in 1965.

Countries are constructs, if I am allowed to meander into the grey zone. They take work.

They also are rewarded by staying together longer. How, over time, a country despite itself, its contradictions, demographic lopsidedness or its geopolitical impossibilities takes root. 

That a seed in an orchard appears unimpressive, but as time passes begins to tower over all, eventually offers cover and protection from the elements, and provides nourishment to its people.

While wealth, a manageable population and culture contribute immensely, time is indispensable.

A country then forms an identity and without realisation finds itself distinct from other countries.

An excellent example of developed identity through nationhood dwarfing geography and culture, is that Malaysians are glad to be different from Indonesians. 

We are happy they are Indonesians, our neighbours, and us Malaysians.

While some academics speak about the people of the archipelago being indistinguishable, a clear consciousness has developed over time and separates the respective sides of the Anglo-Dutch Treaty (1824) line, in our hearts and minds.

Nations are permanently imperfect and require time to come to terms with being a nation. 

The United States still had slavery four score and seven years after declaring certain truths to be self-evident, such as that all men are created equal. 

The gains of reconstruction did not remind the government it was wrong to intern more than a hundred thousand ethnic Japanese with American citizenship 72 years later. 

If nations are judged by their mistakes only, few escape judgement.

The strange present

When the British departed, a collection of migrants with natives kept apart by colonial practices read as a precursor to disaster. Not to mention a communist insurgency manned primarily by one ethnicity was still in play.

It could have easily unravelled. 

But here we are. All of us. You and I.

Yet more remains, in the tasks to be accomplished.

Observing the current climate, social and physical, it invites more suspicion than faith, to decide the country’s prognosis.

The last two state elections were a cry for race unity to overwhelm a shrinking minority population’s threat. The alarmists scream about every election being one closer to the country’s ethnic majority being dispossessed

To casual external onlookers, it does not reassure.

But, consider the wider cultural separation among the people, all 33 races, stretched and separated by the world’s largest sea, the sheer lack of prolonged discord is a testament to the people.

That allowed the space, they live amicably with each other, and often thrive together. 

If only the politicians left the people alone for a bit to get on with being with each other. They do it seamlessly without antagonists lurking. 

They do not need agents to remind them about the prevailing differences. The citizens need a different type of reminder that we’ve successfully kept going for 69 years, and next year, 70.

This Merdeka

To remind people that the more festive they are, the more they contribute to Malaysia.

The US was not announced here by accident. Being a younger nation and scant culture and history, it focussed on outward expressions of patriotism.

From 4th of July to Superbowl, whether a school drum camp or just another professional sports match, the national anthem along with flag displays are synonymous. There’s no such thing as too much America in the daily lives of Americans.

Imitation is indeed the sincerest form of flattery and Malaysia needs the colours out. Cheesy and overdone are not rebuttals but tributes.

Malaysia inches with every Merdeka to a stronger identity despite the best efforts of agitators.

Sixty-nine and counting. Count with me.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.

AUGUST 26 — I wonder if Japanese people get tired of the way they're perceived by some, not as people but curiosities, like exotic animals.

Some stereotypes are true — that there is an enduring love and adoption of cuteness in Japan.

Take the success of the recent Chiikawa movie.

While the rest of the world was filling seats for Spider-Man, cinemas were packed for the Chiikawa movie and its adorable 2D animation.

Despite its dark undertones I liked it enough to watch it twice.

We admire Japan for its history, culture, cuisine and speed running its way into developed nation status.

The kawaii or cuteness obsession in Japan is something very uniquely Japanese and I like that they just lean into it, with cute mascots everywhere.

Unsurprisingly a Japanese university, the University of Hiroshima, actually conducted a study, The Power of Kawaii: Viewing Cute Images Promotes a Careful Behavior and Narrows Attentional Focus, in 2012.

It looked at the performance of university students and how viewing cute baby animal pictures affected their efficacy at a fine motor dexterity task.

Interestingly, efficiency rose to 44 per cent after looking at cuties, only 12 per cent after looking at grown animals, and normal objects only saw an improvement of one per cent.

Chiikawa, Pokémon, Hello Kitty, Rilakkuma... Japan has a formula of churning out adorable characters like South Korea churns out pop idols, both very lucrative.

The 'Chiikawa' movie is testament to Japan's love for adorable creatures. — Picture via Facebook/MediaLink

The closest Malaysia has come to something similar is probably in how popular the Upin and Ipin animated series is in Indonesia.

I think there is a big hole in our local creative scene as far as creating IP with mass appeal.

As Merdeka Day and Malaysia Day come nearer we are still very much a nation preoccupied with our differences instead of what we share.

It doesn't help that we keep getting the same old people using the same rhetoric about not wanting to share... because it works.

Malaysians are still far too easily baited with racial and religious sentiment and the notion of a Bangsa Malaysia seems more like a populist fantasy than an achievable reality.

With many of us preoccupied with just cari makan, there are too few storytellers and bards to sing our hopes, to weave our dreams and help us imagine a better narrative than the same old, same old colours of hate.

Nagano (a pen name), the illustrator of Chiikawa, did not envision the series to be a massive success.

It wasn't some workshopped, market researched phenomenon but an illustrator daydreaming about being a soft, cute animal in this harsh, cruel world.

Her daydreams have created an adorable, though frightening, world where even being an adorable furry being can't save you from the horrors of monsters and needing to pay the rent.

Yet those simple tales of little friends just enjoying the small joys of life, whether they be sharing noodles or wearing matching pyjamas, are a reminder that we all need a little lightness of being, no matter how heavy the world gets.

I hope Malaysians learn to dream again, to tell more stories and sing songs to make us remember that even in a world full of monsters we can all learn to find, and share, happiness in this place we call home.

Selamat Hari Merdeka. Selamat Hari Malaysia.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.

AUGUST 23 — Stinky tofu lets out an awful stench but for many people it tastes awesome.

Our king of fruits gives Westerners the impression they’re eating smelly socks but tell that to the hordes of folks throwing their money away for Musang King.

Ayam gepuk’s sambal can sometimes leave patrons with anaesthetised lips, sweating buckets and (later on) severe sore throat but when Ming Chun’s Gepuklah opened recently, the street basically ran out of parking lots.

Ditto, with Stephen Chow movies. There are so many things which are sub-par by modern-day film-making standards, yet his movies win big.

Watch any of his blockbusters since the turn of the century and you’ll know what I mean.

Nobody can watch The Mermaid or CJ7 or the latest Kungfu Soccer and suggest that anyone in the cast should be nominated for an acting award.

Oftentimes the acting comes across as something out of a primary school project with the kids simply doing what their teacher told them to do (with quick glances at the audience to check if they’re doing the right thing).

In Kung Fu Soccer, lead actress Xiaofei Zhang more or less shouts and pouts for the entire movie and everyone else is essentially one-dimensional.

We are worlds away from seeing a Meryl Streep or Gary Oldman performance here.

A YouTube screengrab of a scene from ‘Kungfu Soccer’ trailer.

And yes, I’m aware that Yuen Wah won a Golden Horse Award for Best Supporting Actor in Kung Fu Hustle (playing an aged tai-chi master joining the first against triads), but this is something as mysterious as tai-chi itself.

I’ve watched his performance numerous times — a performance which includes lying face down on the ground and burying his head with the soil from broken flower pots around him — and I can only conclude that it was a sort of honorary award.

Chow’s script is chock full of cheesy moments, dad jokes and childish gags which would probably bore the average Comedy Club fan to tears.

For example, in Kung Fu Soccer there’s a scene when a guy is thrown on the floor and his head gets stuck in a pot. This blind lady tries to smash the pot open without knowing that another guy has already removed the pot from the guy’s head.

The result is half a dozen instances of the dude being smashed on the head with bigger and more brutal items while the lady doing the smashing keeps asking if the pot is broken or not.

That’s just frickin’ stupid… but I and the rest of the audience were laughing like we’ve never laughed before.

And don’t even get me started on the CGI. I’m positive no Hollywood director or producer would be caught dead using the sorts of “animation” Chow uses in his films.

Hollywood CGI seeks to make the unbelievable believable; Stephen Chow’s “CGI” practically screams “This part of the movie is super-fake, everyone knows it and everyone will love it”.

It’s slapstick gone overboard, making even Naked Gun look sensible.

This is truly the magic of Stephen Chow’s movies. The acting is torrid, the script is cheesy, the CGI is (literally) a joke — but we can’t get enough of the movie.

I left Kung Fu Soccer telling myself the film rivalled The Odyssey and Spiderman: Brand New Day (hell yeah, I said it).

Chow is no Nolan but you’ll never watch Tenet or Interstellar and laugh and cry without entirely being sure why you’re so moved.

Kung Fu Soccer’s story will never match Homer’s epic tales but nobody will watch this show about a team of quirky and super-powerful women football players and not notice that there are timeless themes of growth, love, self-discovery, friendship, forgiveness, etc. all of which are found in every major literary narrative.

Finally, Kung Fu Soccer’s animation can never hold a candle to what Marvel Studios can produce but, amazingly, the movie doesn’t require “world-class” special effects to make the story work.

To end with yet another food analogy, you know how sometimes the best Hokkien mee stalls can be found in some 40-year-old alley or under a century-old tree next to a busy street?

And the noodles and sauce are so good precisely because you’re eating within humble settings and not, say, inside a 5-star hotel?

 * This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.

AUGUST 20 — What’s most dangerous?

A. Handle uranium in a reactor without gloves

B. Evening strolls on the Korean DMZ after hours without permission

C. Navigate an oil-tanker with an American flag through the Strait of Hormuz

D. Affix a Malaysian flag on a pole, balcony, wall, rooftop, fence, pillar, floor, ceiling or staircase

D probably gets a bunch of votes in a Malaysian Internet poll.

In our independence month, nothing is straightforward and our flag turns into Kryptonite very quickly.

A Nepalese guard and an office lady bear testament to this in Johor’s Kulai this week as they continue their four-day remand in a police station over their complicity in the astonishing act of erroneous display of a set of flags — Jalur Gemilang and Johor state flag — at their factory grounds. Astonishing binds itself to this situation since a common act turns into jail time.

Not a first — flag faux pas and in Johor followed by police detention — in January a Chinese national was apprehended.

For this latest Kulai folly, the local municipality took it upon themselves to shut down the plant. What other monstrosities may be in motion inside the factory, the council must have felt, if they were impudent with the national and state symbols?

The police and Kulai Municipal Council were probably reluctant players drawn into a national political drama. When the pressure spiked, they were forced to act.

Flags of our fathers

National symbols in a newish country are always rife for controversy. Not that older countries are not subject to these controversies, but they are less inclined to go nuclear about the matter.

Let’s examine some album covers from the United States.

The 1971 Sly & the Family Stone’s There’s A Riot Goin’ On album switched the canton into a black background with white stars, and Outkast’s Stankonia in 2000 paraded a black and white flag with the artists posing in front in colour.

These were not isolated nor unintended. They were on covers sold in stores and then exhibited in homes.

They were controversial and invited scrutiny and debate, upsetting a whole bunch of people.

The counter argument is that a confident, well-informed, diverse and self-assured country doesn’t overreact. Strife and discord won’t follow every instance the flag is altered.

Also, getting mortified and trying to put out a small kitchen fire by blowing up the restaurant with a Tomahawk missile is an overkill.

Where Malaysia falls in the secure with our own symbols index must be answered by us.

Saya Anak Malaysia

Sudirman Haji Arshad, the late music legend, used to don the flag as a costume for his performances.

Also, over the years, this time of the year, Malaysians from all walks of life have experimented with the flag on their attire, accessories and vehicles.

These parades of our flags bring people together.

While disgust over flag misuse has grounds, it might be necessary to remind the offended that all Malaysians get to determine if they took umbrage. Not just them because they stand menacingly.

The amazing thing about a national symbol, like a flag, is it belongs equally to all citizens. Young and old, male and female, north, south, east, west of the territories and certainly rich and poor.

To create a separation between people and their flag is unconscionable.

Realise that flags empower the masses.

This is not a generally expressive country. The vast majority struggle to speak about their feelings to close friends.

To speak about their country, and their feelings about it, is even harder.

The easiest way to shut up a group of Malaysians is to ask them to speak publicly in turn. The podium may just as well be the guillotine.

But with a flag, in moments of unadulterated ecstasy, they just have to hold on to it — or drape it, lift it, pass it from person to person.

People do not need words in these moments.

Very few objects are as cathartic as national flags.

A trader displays a collection of Jalur Gemilang ribbons she sells online, in Kampung Paya Senang. — Bernama pic

The flag game

It occurred without warning. Over the years it’s become cyclical. Certainly persistent.

Initially, it was just political posturing. A political tactic to prove “some of us have dishonest feelings about Malaysia”.

Wrong flags — whether upside down, the AI generated digital version or poorly copied — are lightning rods.

Those who want to appear more dedicated to the country jump on it. They virtue signal to the moon and back. And therefore, the defenders of the federation have the moral authority to act.

The thing about choosing to appear to protect the country from the “vicious” is that others cannot condemn these “patriots” for their “commitment”.

Political opponents, in and out of government, get caught up in it.

To make distinctions or explain the mistakes render them inconsistent and with less patriotism. Or worse, weak.

It balloons, and now all on the political stage are upset.

Which then means all the government agencies must follow the will of the political establishment.

They start to lock people up.

Twenty-nine stories both ways

Ten days to Merdeka eve and I cannot see a flag on the balcony of any unit opposite my building, and on my own block.

So, it appears in many parts of Cheras.

They can be infrequently spotted along a long row of shophouses. I can understand the hesitance.

When there have been that many episodes of everyday citizens punished severely for flag “errors”, as far as human nature goes, it is better just to forego the process. Why risk being in a jail cell over the holidays?

While government ministries, agencies and bodies can budget private contractors to deck their facilities, they are perfunctory exercises in the eyes of the public.

The private citizens’ public displays of Jalur Gemilang hold more weight, always.

For it’s from the heart.

Somehow, to score cheap political points and sow mistrust among voters, these political actors have robbed the masses of their joy, their relationship with their own symbol. Doubt has crept in. Caution dominates.

That’s the real tragedy of the current conundrum.

These agents seek patriotism like rituals of obedience rather than acts of love.

If they succeed, our own grip over our own national flag loosens. And moves us closer to state approval and formal oversight in regard to the use of Jalur Gemilang. Estranging people from their own personal piece of Malaysia.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.

AUGUST 19 — I get it. It’s hard to be in the F&B business with the overhead, cash-strapped customers and delivery platforms taking a huge chunk out of your earnings.

When I was very ill, GrabFood kept me fed when I couldn’t even walk without a cane.

Yet now I’m weaning myself off most food delivery services as the price is too hard to justify.

With the marked-up prices, ingredient rationing and cost-cutting, Grab, ShopeeFood and the like are more occasional treats.

Why order my favourite shio pan on a food delivery app when I can walk 15 minutes to a nearby bakery? 

Yet I might still be using the apps more often if it wasn’t for the listings being hard to tell apart. 

Many stores are using AI-generated pictures for their food so I don’t actually know what I’ll be getting.

I know that even menus can be misleading in restaurants, with that decadent-looking bowl of ramen in the menu turning up on your plate as a mass of stringy noodles, while you play “hunt for the meat.”

At least menus look appetising; the images on Grab are just revolting.

Why are the colours so radioactive?

Why is cheese dripping everywhere on everything and looking like sewer overruns?

Much as we like making fun of “American cheese” for not being real cheese, it still looks better than the terrifying, neon yellow goop in GrabFood ads.

Why would I order something that looks like it came out of the pages of Swamp Thing?

The author argues that pervasive AI-generated food imagery is misleading, unappetising and emblematic of a wider push to adopt AI where it adds little value.

I’m making it a point not to eat anywhere that uses AI imagery pervasively whether on Grab or anywhere else.

There’s a big and popular food chain that has the money to hire artists or photographers for its food but no, they instead use the same radioactive orange/piss-yellow graphics on food listings and even merch.

Despite being criticised for it, the chain does not seem to care so long as the queues remain long (as they were last weekend in a mall I frequent.)

Some days I despair at the constant bombardment and messaging to “adopt AI” but tell me, for what?

Outside of work (my column is 100 per cent written by me, no AI proofreading/brainstorming/editing going on here) where AI summaries are a new tedium, I see no reason to use AI.

A friend of mine, a writer and editor, was recently approached about joining a platform that would let readers use AI to query your book.

What madness is this now?

I do not want to ask ChatGPT about a book while I’m reading it; I have eyes. 

Going back to disgusting AI pictures — there needs to be a ban on AI for food advertisements because it’s just outright misleading.

It’s great that I’m saving money by almost never ordering food now, but I fear that at this rate I’ll be going through my own personal AI psychosis from all the hideous graphics that are just everywhere.

Even trying to use DuckDuckGo instead of Google to avoid useless AI search guides has not been great.

I’ve been forced to go back to Google because DuckDuckGo’s search results are full of “dead” sites, created by bots, with articles populated entirely by AI writing. 

At least on Thursday I’ll be watching the Chiikawa movie, where I’ll be watching cute, animated mascots try to survive a disaster island scenario.

Before that I’ll make sure to walk to Dou Dou Bake and enjoy the sight and smells of human-made, doughy artistry.

With the haze making even my old cat cough up her lungs, it will be a challenge but nothing a mask can’t sort out.

Now if only I could wear a mask that would make AI food adverts invisible.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.

AUG 16 — Mrs K, in her 80s, was in a coma.

One of her sons, BB, who had not seen her in about a decade, refused to return his siblings’ calls and messages regarding his mum.

Two weeks ago, I met up with BB (for some reason he agreed to see me but not his siblings). I told him about his mum. 

As her house was barely a mile away, I said, “Let’s both go see her.” 

He said no.

I said, “C’mon man, she doesn’t have much time. If it’s a matter of nerves, I’m happy to walk into the house with you and accompany you to see her, it won’t take more than a few minutes.”

He said no.

I asked if this was about guilt and shame? He said, “No, maybe it’s about pride.”

I said, “What’s there to be proud about? She isn’t even conscious and wouldn’t even know you’re in the house.

“Don’t you want to see the woman who gave birth to you, raised you, took care of you, etc?”

He said, “No. I don’t ever want to see her again.” 

I asked about 10 times, again and again. BB kept saying no.

Mrs K died the very night after my chat with BB. A mutual friend speculated that perhaps she was “waiting” for her son to go and say goodbye to her and when he made it clear a final farewell wasn’t on his to-do list, she left.

‘Dead to me’

I only wish this was some isolated incident. However, my experience and conversations over the past two years or so suggests it isn’t. 

When we start paying attention, we realise that perhaps 20-30 per cent of our circle of extended family, friends, colleagues, etc have estranged family members who don’t want to have anything to do with their folks. 

There are so many grown-ups who want to have absolutely nothing to do with their parents that I told a few people like me with young kids that if our teenage children are still talking to us when they reach their 40s we probably deserve some badge of honour.

Some adult children don’t want to return messages or answer calls from their parents, let alone have a meal with their mums and/or dads. 

Most of these individuals have even blocked their parents’ numbers and refuse to let their parents know where they live.

In some extreme cases, like the case of my friend BB, they won’t even visit their terminally ill mother or father and won’t be caught dead (pun intended) attending their parents’ funerals. 

One person blocked his mum out of his life after a very heated argument where the mum said some crazy hurtful things to him.  — Unsplash Picture

In the very worst cases, I know of one or two individuals who have outright “boasted” about how they ignore condolence messages and how “my attendance doesn’t make a damn difference to anyone, least of all me”.

How does it come to this point?

In my conversations with such folks, the #1 reason is a sense of extreme betrayal or hurt which they cannot forgive. 

One person blocked his mum out of his life after a very heated argument where the mum said some crazy hurtful things to him. 

Another even took her ageing mother to court after her father died because she was unhappy with the share of the inheritance and blamed her mum for “influencing” him to give her (the daughter) less than she felt she deserved. 

My friend BB blames his mum for his marriage failures. 

Another friend has been complaining about favouritism (by her dad towards her older sisters) practically since early childhood years so once she began work overseas, she decided that ghosting her dad was the natural thing to do. 

In other cases the problem begins with one parent; but when the other parent doesn’t defend the child then both become private enemies #1.

Another very popular reason is the LGBQT factor and in such cases, sadly, the relationship-cutting began with the parents. 

An acquaintance from Kajang told me his parents threw him out of the house when they found out he was gay. 

Finally, there are terrible cases of physical (and surely criminal) child abuse by parents. I have no words.

Keeping the door open

I hope nobody reads this article as a judgmental one. Like some people have reminded me, I often don’t know what the family background is, what was actually said or done, what incidents have occurred and so on.

Far be it for me to add more layers of condemnation upon situations already mired in resentment and hatred.

If nothing else, I hope this can spark a deeper conversation, both among those who are still on good terms and talking with their parents and those who (literally) couldn’t care less if their mum or dad has died.

Ultimately, let’s all agree when a child refuses to connect anymore with her parents that’s not exactly something to “celebrate” and some critical conversations are necessary for healing, for hope, for openness, for a less hurtful future.

There are many occasions to extend olive branches, to reach out. Reconciliation is always possible if the heart is willing to try. 

Keep the door open because hope may yet walk through?

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.

AUGUST 13 — “You call yourself a Victorian?”

It was jammed down our throats from seniors, teachers and probably the school gardener throughout our freshman year until we’d wake up in the middle of our sleep, unable to answer but filled with a sense of expectation.

And get on the 6.15am Foh Hup Omnibus Company ride from Cheras to school. Alight at the old ENE Building and trudge through the squatter colony and up past Stadium Negara. To school.

It’s right next to the second highest building in the world, for those unacquainted with the Victoria Institution’s location.  

For those equally unacquainted with the school discipline enforced, I can sum it up. 

It was plenty and I experienced the whole menu through the years. Students had to slip into lines before quarter past seven or get held back by a prefect at the front gate. 

Whether the student was dropped by a government vehicle courtesy of his high-ranking father, or just the riff raff unfortunate to miss the bus, everyone late was held back.

And the truly late — guilty! — run twice around the school which is not a small campus before heading to class. Yes, I got a lot of cardio done in the morning through the years.

To be more than you were. 

This was the tone set throughout my secondary school years in a school fixated with symbolism and traditions.

An aerial shot of Victoria Institution in Kuala Lumpur. The author argues that schools build character not through grades alone, but through traditions, discipline and expectations that foster confidence, integrity and civic responsibility. — YouTube screengrab

The VI Way

It’s Founder’s Day tomorrow, 133 years ago Mrs WH Treacher, the Selangor resident’s wife, walked along with a line of city elders, those who raised the funds for the Queen’s Jubilee, to the selected site by the Klang River. 

A stone was laid and classes began the following year.

Thirty-six years later, thanks to persistent flooding, the school moved up to Petaling Hill in 1929.

Talking about that school, it is something I never tire of doing.

It gives me the opportunity to delve into how expectations can be a good, and even a great thing, when exercised with wisdom and care.

There was hardly anything phenomenally special about the boys even if they arrived from their primary schools with good grades or sporting excellence. Hardly.

It was expectations which drove us forward. So that we lift ourselves and meet the expectations, in the classroom, on the fields and in manners.

Being 12 is scary. If I am to take liberties, so was being 13 and 14. Right up to fifty and beyond.

So, when the whole environment at school was about expectations and standards we are all naturally demanded to meet — of course many of us failed to match it — it gave us a springboard.

There’s a word to describe what comes out when the expectations are managed rather than laid on the shoulders of the young like a boulder. Confidence.

And if the younger student is unsure of himself or questions his own temperament, he only needs to look up to senior students. They exude confidence.

Since they took the journey before and excelled, or at least in our eyes it appears they did, we feel we can too. 

Only years later when we sit with super seniors did we learn about their shenanigans. That they too were petrified young boys in their time and naturally did many naughty things.   

Yes, to the elephant in the room, there was ragging. Not intended as displays of power and control but as rites of passage. 

For, the ultimate goal was to build deep camaraderie within the student population.

Yet, as I consider my schooling with the hindsight of time, more than setting the tone, expectations, the occasional excellence, the most sought after or better phrased the large umbrella where all of these sit, is character development.

To be a person who more often than not says what he means and means what he says. 

To set examples rather than wait for them. To be disappointed with oneself when acting poorly rather than waiting for others to prove your guilt. 

Don’t expect a medal for doing the right thing. Don’t sell people down the river for a quick gain.

And one day after seven years, the school coughed me out and asked me to carry on with my adventures elsewhere.

The green, green grass of Bangi and beyond

This is not a “my school is better than yours” segment. Rather, an observation that a large majority of our schools do not have a cultural framework which emphasises discipline and civic duty. 

There may be individuals in the form of teachers, sports coaches and senior students who turn into Mr Miyagi and do their bit. 

A great headmaster can do wonders. But without a larger tradition or culture to house the effort or to embolden the actors, the impact is restricted. 

And the school products are then passed on to tertiary institutions. 

What I did learn quickly in the public universities system, attending Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, a large number of students arrived with the grades but not necessarily the confidence or character.

It nurtured a defensiveness which permeated life on campus. People fought for positions and not to elevate the general body. 

Beat people down with ad hominem attacks and CV presentation rather than with argumentation. 

But worse, not expect more from themselves, to keep themselves in check. To understand excellence without finesse is sad. 

No amount of success will compensate for a lack of basic manners.

Many hold key positions in the public and private sector today but whether they expect more of themselves, I suspect very much. The defensiveness is too imprinted in them, and the fear of losing face.

So, nothing is rocket science. Nurture never is. But it has to be present.

Unfortunately, too many of our schools are run badly, and parents are taking the manufactured grades through examination gaming as proof of quality. 

I fear a few technocrats are nodding in the back and are ready to introduce Character Building 101 with two instruction hours per week. Ace the course, they say.

Character development is a tad bit more complicated. A good place to start is to imbue kids with traditions and expectations to meet through examples delivered.

My pal Azam Aziz believed in that. He poured in time, money and effort to the school through the alumni over the years without waiting for encouragement or acknowledgement. A year ahead in school, he was miles ahead in terms of personality.

He’d hate the nonsense dominating Malaysia these days, devoid of a sense of honour and decency. Azam died early this year.

As for me, I’m still unsure about the effect of the VI project on me. I’ll let people call me what they want.

But Happy Birthday, Victoria Institution. If it stays true to traditions, it’ll remain much taller than the building next door. Be yet wiser.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.

AUG 12 — Fighting inertia has been a daily battle.

I already work from bed but the temptation to never leave it at all is always present and so I make myself go out, walk for far too long and, when possible, find a good pastry.

Last week I was attending an event at a hotel that was somehow central and yet remote, not very accessible if you rely on public transport and which needed me to take multiple trains and a bus to get there.

There was also far too much walking.

Sure, I could have just taken a Grab straight there but why would I pay RM30-50? I’d rather buy coffee or a good croissant.

Part of my very roundabout journey to get there (Google Maps has become rather useless public transport guidance-wise these days) was getting to the Semantan MRT and taking a bus.

This particular bus first did a circuit of Bukit Damansara before coming back to Semantan MRT.

I found it mildly amusing.

Yet a woman, whose Touch N Go card had insufficient credit, who had to get off the bus earlier, managed to get back on when the bus returned to the station but at a slightly different stop. 

Good for her.

To get to my destination I had to take the bus to Arte Hotel and then leg it another 15 minutes. 

At least I got to stop at Lacher Patisserie at The Met, which makes a divine cempedak flan.

It has the right amount of flakiness and a base of real cempedak pulp, not flavoured cream, but if I ever feel a craving I’ll take the MRT to the bakery’s outlet on Jalan Conlay instead.

Yet a woman, whose Touch N Go card had insufficient credit, who had to get off the bus earlier, managed to get back on when the bus returned to the station but at a slightly different stop. — SoyaCincau pic

Though I enjoyed my brief stop, it bothered me a lot that this particular spot in KL—despite a neighbouring conference and exhibition centre, as well as Matrade—was nowhere near enough for good transit.

It dawned on me then that this area had been designed by, and for, people who have always been driven around. Not driving, driven.

If you are not the one driving, you have little care for what you see on the way so long as you are taken to the destination. 

For some reason there aren’t even enough street lights at night despite a nearby many-starred hotel and being billed a metropolis, of all things.

Yet regretfully I will be returning to the area, just for The Met because apparently there is a very good fine dining Indian restaurant called Jhol.

Perhaps I will write about it next week.

This week I will wonder why, in this sprawling capital of this flawed and lovely country we call home, we have decided to still make some places just too annoying a destination — unless you are perhaps a little mad and really want some cempedak flan.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.

AUGUST 9 — There’s a joke about how lecturers in Malaysia today aren’t lecturers anymore — we’re basically administrators who happen to teach classes. 

Lecturers are also counsellors, confidants, immigration liaisons, “priests” (as students often confess their sins to us), stand-in parents, translators, complaints department officers, messengers for parents who can’t talk to their kids, care-givers, anger management therapists, citizen law enforcers, accidental “motivational” speakers, marketing executives, lobbyists, fall guys, parent relations officers – you name it.

The Malaysian Quality Agency (MQA) documentation and accreditation process in itself already demands practically an entire department with hundreds of hours required in manpower and meetings (see note 1). 

Some universities have a specialised centralised team. Others? Uh, just ask the lecturers to do all the work lor!

Likewise, there is an asymmetry when it comes to the academic and marketing departments i.e. in many campuses you’ll see lecturers doing “marketing” work but not the other way round. 

You’ll find lecturers helping out in student recruitment events but you won’t see marketing executives, uh, taking over academic-related duties.

But the care-giver role is especially critical.

Once, many years ago, a lecturer drove me home through a storm when I was stuck after class. 

Another ensured I ate before a late-night study grind. David Graeber argued that society undervalues roles rooted in care, yet they’re what keep us human (see note 2). 

In Malaysia’s diverse lecture halls, this rings true, especially for foreign students navigating a new world.

The author argues that Malaysian lecturers increasingly shoulder administrative, emotional and caregiving burdens far beyond teaching, making their often-invisible support essential to students. — Picture by Miera Zulyana

Take the thousands who flock here for affordable, quality education — Chinese, Indonesians, Africans, those from the Middle East, etc. 

They arrive with big dreams but also big hurdles: language barriers, culture shock, homesickness, immigration problems, sub-par university on-boarding, confusing course-selection procedures, etc.

Every new semester, my colleagues and I need to answer the desperate questions of hundreds of students from China, all semi-panicking about why their selected courses aren’t approved yet, will their attendance be affected, how to submit assignments, when will holidays begin, is there a “Certificate of Study” given so they can show the authorities back home, etc. 

Now imagine those who fly in late. We have to deal with all of them, answering their questions using Google Translator, giving them assurances we can’t really give, and so on. 

I believe these moments reflect Graeber’s point: Caring work isn’t just functional — it’s transformative, building environments where people flourish.

Malaysia’s education hub status magnifies this issue.

Lecturers are cultural and institutional guides, make-shift uncles and aunties to help students, many of whom are well and truly lost procedurally, culturally and academically. 

As if that isn’t enough, we’re also quasi-priests to students who somehow have many “sins” to confess. “Sir, I know I wasn’t supposed to do X but because of Y I had to choose Z which led me to X and…”

I’ve heard of a colleague hosting a potluck so foreign students can swap dishes and stories, easing their isolation. It’s not in their contracts, but it fosters belonging. 

Many lecturers aren’t chasing prestige or pay — they’re fueled by passion to see these students get through college in one piece and with their love of learning intact. 

That’s the caring ethos Graeber championed: work that matters because it lifts others up.

Do I have to mention that all this isn’t easy?

Picture a lecturer juggling packed classes, research deadlines, and endless paperwork, yet still finding time for a struggling student. 

It’s late nights, quiet sacrifices — exhausting stuff. Caring roles demand resilience, often without fanfare. 

For foreign students, that extra effort — a kind word, an hour of guidance — can shift their entire experience. One lecturer’s patience might mean a homesick student sticks it out instead of booking a flight home.

As for being the fall guy, it doesn’t take a genius to see that in many cases the institution will seek to avoid problems with their customers (i.e. the students) and top management, as we all know, is very apt at defending itself. 

So when a problem occurs and the client and leaders cannot be faulted, who do you imagine will get the rap?

Next time you walk by a lecture hall, look past the slides and exams. Lecturers are Malaysia’s unsung Crisis Officers and Absorbers, shaping minds and lives — especially for those far from home. They don’t get medals, but their impact ripples. 

In a country like Malaysia betting big on education, lecturers are the ones ensuring no student gets left behind, to the point that offering care — and any other form of assistance — is the real backbone of learning.

Note 1: I don’t mean to denigrate the importance of the MQA but it’s worth repeating that as at 2024 (the last time I was involved in the process) the agency still required departments to submit CD-ROMs for new program applications. This is part of the oversight for academic quality — let that sink in.

Note 2: David Graeber’s posthumous book, The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World: Essays, published in November 2024 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux argued that co-operation and caring are fundamental to an anthropology of freedom from coercive structures and authoritarianism.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.

AUGUST 6 — I’ve been walking around disoriented these past days. Mostly in traipses to rid persistent cliches chucked into conversations online and in-person about the Negeri Sembilan election, which ostensibly rolls into Johor before landing flat in last year’s Sabah polls. 

Al, a very old friend from a far more innocent time, told me that perhaps I assume too much about what people need. 

People by large are perfectly comfortable in the equations they hold even if those suppositions do not pass muster under scrutiny. 

Which was a clarion call. I had to break it down to the basics. 

It’s not that the “self-declared” progressives lost so comprehensively the past month.

It was the air of inevitability leading to the result. That nothing was going to avert the obvious. 

Where do we begin this then, this autopsy?

DAP are staring down the barrel

They have a congress on August 16 but it’s a bit pointless. The make-up of the delegation already presupposes the outcome. 

They want to determine Pakatan Harapan’s efficacy to their cause when they have an existential crisis at hand. Talk about deciding how to decorate the home to impress disgruntled neighbours when the house is on fire.  

Malaysian voters listen to political leaders during the state election campaign, as debates over identity, representation and communal politics take centre stage. — Bernama pic

BN has, mostly utilising the power of incumbency, throughout 60 years marked DAP via its leadership of Chinese communalism as a threat to the Malay community.

Was it unfair? Grossly. But that’s how the cards were handed out. 

The party was blessed with a buffer period, between 2007 through its participation in Bersih through to early stages of the Madani government, say 2024, to reinvent itself. 

It falsely assumed, the second time in government was vindication of its strategy. To stubbornly hold on to Chinese support by being Chinese first, and gather a sliver of votes from Malay-based partners, to prevail. 

The past 15 years, the successes, were supposed to be political cover as the party Malaysianised. It never did. It is a Chinese-first party, which is why it will lose handsomely in the general election but stay clear of losing its deposit — there’ll always be 12.5 per cent communal votes. 

Their separate but equal pillar, they never realised, can boomerang back. Perikatan Nasional minus Bersatu and Barisan Nasional – with the inconsequential MCA and MIC – play the same game. Communalism first. 

How DAP wasted the gift of 15 years.

To bring Hew Kuan Yau or Superman Hew to campaign in Negeri Sembilan. Ten years after he voluntarily stepped out of DAP for his divisive communal politics, he continues to campaign for the party. Certainly cherished by the party. 

Park and picnic on a railway track, even the late KTM Komuter can kill you.

PN-BN worked a formula out

The rumblings about the Negeri Sembilan exco numbers and choice of mentri besar in less than transparent fashion does not reduce one principle adhered to by all participants — communalism before differences. 

This was in the kitchen awhile before it got to the dinner table.

In September 2023, Mahathir Mohamad became PAS’ advisor. He abandoned the Pejuang and Pergerakan Tanah Air coalition, which crashed and burned along with him at the general election in November 2022. 

It would be unsurprising to find out his fingerprints are present on the blueprint in play. More so convinced to learn that Pejuang was co-opted into PN together with the expected entry of Hamzah Zainudin’s Parti Wawasan Negara.

Wawasan stayed out of Johor in order to avoid unnecessary rifts, and entered the fray once Bersatu’s fate was sealed in Johor. 

Pejuang did not want to underperform and stayed out of Negeri Sembilan. You can bet your last ringgit Pejuang will be in the PN candidate list for Melaka. 

The formula is overly plain.

There is enough power to share among those committed to the movement is the core message.

But always, always, sort out DAP and its hangaround Pakatan before dividing the spoils among current partners inside the new grand coalition.

The message’s consistency is aided by the message’s simplicity.  

Is it wrong, communalism?

My answer is my life’s work. However, I’m negligible. 

Thirty-four million Malaysians, twenty-one million of them voters, get to decide the country’s path.

In these past two state elections, they have delivered clear verdicts.

Democracy proponents cannot decry the people’s democratic choices, however they arrive at their opinions. It is theirs to hold as is the vote to cast. 

Yet, people who celebrate majoritarianism ought to be careful. All those in the majority, will belatedly realise their more personal issues or beliefs are constantly in the minority. Nations are groups of minorities misled to believe most people agree with them on most things. 

But the larger failing, as a nation, is if communalism dominates who do we blame?

Both sides, definitely. Yet, the demographic realities press the need to change harder on one side. The other side only wins. 

Wait out the storm

This appears to be the only strategy from PKR which chairs Pakatan. 

Which is indistinguishable from DAP’s “work harder with the same principles” strategy. 

Something has to give. Or all of them can prepare for life out of power. 

It might shock but a sizeable number of voters edging to PN-BN presently do not subscribe to the conservative slant of the leaders. They nevertheless think most leaders on both sides are far removed from them.

But as I mentioned, one side has a super-clear value proposition, and the other waits.  

They are borderline to commit the cardinal sin of elections, to wait for the pendulum to swing back. It may gravitate back as a guillotine to end the misery of the serial losers’ necks.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.

AUG 5 — Media people are a judgy bunch.

It comes with the job. A journalist with poor judgement won’t be a journalist for long.

So when I saw another newspaper post screencaps of Hospital Kuala Lumpur’s urinals overflowing with bodily waste, my first thought was that the sub-editor or whoever was posting the article lacked taste.

Yet isn’t that our job as journalists? To decide what is relevant, and to make the relevant interesting?

I am very grateful for the public healthcare system.

Let us not, however, pretend our public hospitals aren’t full of biohazards.

I’d managed the entire time, with cancer, before my surgery to not catch more than a very brief fever but it took just one night being warded in HKL to be down with a nasty throat infection.

The toilet in the HKL women’s daycare ward is the stuff of germaphobe’s nightmares, with puddles of water everywhere, some even ankle high.

For some reason (I suspect budget cuts) there was no soap. 

Of course the smell I most associate with Malaysian public hospitals was everywhere; the ammonia-laced odour of urine.

The first thing I noticed when I visited a Singapore hospital was how clean it smelled. Not even the toilets smelled of wee.

Of course we can play the whole blame game or hand wringing melodrama but the reality is that our hospitals are full, our cleaners overworked, the hospitals underfunded.

There was a game I used to play a few decades ago called Theme Hospital.

It was all about, unsurprisingly, designing hospitals.

The consequences of poor choices would include your patients throwing up in the corridors, and if you did not hire enough janitors, your hospitals, and the game, would quickly become a nightmare.

The author argues that public hospitals should be assessed through informed reporting that examines underlying problems. — Picture by Raymond Manuel

I wish the articles we see about our public healthcare system were better than “oh look this is bad”, quotes from some analyst, hand wringing and then few things change unless an election is around the corner.

The problem is the whole structure of government and how things are run. are far too opaque.

Everyone should be able to know or find out from easily accessible sources the structure of everything, not just our public hospitals.

Don’t tell me to ask AI as due to there not being accessible public records there is nothing the robots actually know about this.

Disclaimer: For the purpose of this article (and because some overly optimistic person will insist on it) I checked with LLMs and none of them gave me the correct number of currently serving oncologists, nor which public hospital actually has them on-site.

You cannot fix a structure that is not properly documented, nor can you attend to the rot until you can properly gauge what or where it is.

What I’m trying to say is that right now more people need to have an understanding of how the system works before it can actually be fixed.

We can’t rely on the politicians for that because for too many of them, the extent of their knowledge is knowing that even in a pandemic they will be given access to the VIP wards.

I guess it’s up to us, the keepers of record, whether journalists or bloggers, to learn how to tell stories again because some stories need telling. 

In truth I’ve been dealing with my own existential crisis and wondering if life has any meaning anymore.

Then I read about that Times journalist who wrote about the Fifa debacle, read Sarah Kendzior (my current favourite columnist) and how she stubbornly keeps pushing out books and her newsletter, and I remember the many writers who still keep me reading and writing, and hoping.

Our public hospitals are imperfect, true, but we’re lucky to have them but we need, also, to fight for them and sometimes that fight is not better served by screenshots of a urinal.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.

AUG 4 — “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” — Edmund Burke

There was a time this senior director of a college I was working in demanded that a subordinate surrender his learning management system password (to the director) so said director could modify a certain student's marks. 

When the subordinate refused (as there were simply no grounds to do so), the director yelled at the top of his voice, “GIVE IT TO ME NOW... OR ELSE!”.

All credit to my colleague for not budging. The director yelled a few more times and, facing a gentle wall, eventually backed down. 

The student failed and had to drop out; ipso facto the institution couldn’t collect any more fees from said student for the following semester (that’s why the director was mad at my colleague for failing said student).

Does the story sound familiar? I bet it does. Sadly, other similar stories don’t always have the same happy ending. 

Bullying is profitable. Period. 

Platforms like Linked-In are awash with articles and comments and AI-generated graphics on corporate bullying. 

It almost seems to be the theme of the year; many big companies are falling over themselves publicly condemning bullying in the workplace and affirming the importance of respect and care and openness. 

As per my opening story, in most cases there is no mystery to why corporate bullying occurs and why it persists. 

The reason why some office heads keep treating their subordinates like trash  is rooted in factors we don’t need a Sherlock or some PhD in Psychology to ascertain: It’s because it makes the company money.

That’s it. It’s cold capitalism, plain and simple.

The reason why some heads can gaslight, scream, shout and threaten their staff is because such behaviour "gets things done" and keeps his/her KPI numbers up. Period.

It is not uncommon to see instances whereby some senior director will walk into a particular department, stand in the middle of it and, like some imperial herald, shout at the top of his or her voice to demand some answer or call out a person’s name. 

The author argues that workplace bullying persists because intimidation is often rewarded when it boosts profits and delivers results, despite companies’ public commitments to respect and care. — magnific.com pic

The reason why some HRs refuse to investigate, let alone discipline, certain corporate bullies is because the big bosses have told them to stand down — and the reason for that is because said bullies have made a lot of cash for the bosses.

Sure, there are some cases in which a bully has been suspended and probably even fired. But, at least in my experience, this only occurs if there are no serious drawbacks or consequences to said person departing the company OR if the publicity is already so bad, the organisation has to pull the plug.

This is probably why it’s critical that bullying behaviour be recorded; testimonies and statements are much harder to obtain and lack the fire it takes to ignore the court of public opinion.

Hopefully, after July of last year things will be easier. That month Malaysia officially criminalised workplace bullying and harassment through amendments to the Penal Code (Act A1750) and Criminal Procedure Code. 

This historic legal reform elevates severe psychological abuse (see note 1), digital harassment, and doxxing from internal human resources issues to criminal offence.

I don’t know much about doxxing but psychological abuse and harassment are pretty common stuff in our workplaces. The only thing sadder than seeing it happen in our offices is seeing the victims accept it and sometimes— tragically — even feel guilty for letting their departments down.

What solutions are there?

We all know that ultimately the end of corporate bullying must begin from the top. Is revenue more important than destroying the mental health of the people who work for us? Can we use forms of patience, respect, cooperation and dialogue instead of "old-fashioned" authoritarianism, oppression and abrasiveness? 

Will the CHRO have the courage to clamp down on bullying cases even if her C-Suite counterparts are pressuring her to "let it go" because, oh, this particular director is critical to the organisation?

Sadly, in the case of workplace bullying, Edmund Burke’s quote stands true. We must have the strength to take up his challenge.

Note 1: A small unpopular caveat here. In the same way that not all instances of a parent scolding or disciplining their kids cannot be equated with child abuse, we cannot declare every instance of harshness or anger by the boss as acts of bullying.

I recall a Stephen Covey seminar where it was said that we cannot talk our way out of a problem we behave ourselves into. I guess it’s the same for corporate bullying? 

If we behave like bullies, people will know. They just know — or at least the matured ones will know. And no amount of superficial "apologies" or sweet-talk (or even a nice bonus) will change that. 

Likewise, when a boss truly respects and cares for his/her staff, that is also known, recognised and affirmed.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.

JULY 30 — “Be a proper Malaysian, possess the right amount of racism”  is the Negeri Sembilan campaign in a nutshell. 

What that means in the sane world, no one really knows. But that’s what’s on sale in the state, oversaturated with traditions —  which no one can talk about too much, less falling on the wrong side of the acceptable interpretation. 

But the selling has gone thermonuclear. 

When all is done and dusted, certificates should be issued for all, winners and losers. For the ability to take cognitive dissonance to the edges of the galaxy within every participant’s stump speech is beyond comprehension.

What is not talked about and operates in the fringes which may ultimately decide the success or lack thereof for Pakatan Harapan is how disappointed are its voters. Which translates to them not so much voting for the other side but not turning up on August 1. Let’s explore before we deplore this election devoid of substance. 

DAP The Impossible

The same side of NO DAP, is the pond Barisan Nasional and Perikatan Nasional swim in. 

PN are unashamed to bash DAP to the rafters. Which then of course leads them to rhetorical genius lines like how half the country has a back-up country, but not the Malays. They could have copied it wholesale from anti-migrant posters in Jawi from the 1940s. 

Their enthusiasm gets the better of them, like in the case of Kedah Mentri Besar Sanusi Nor who trips into the race bait unwittingly in the zeal of his speechmaking. 

By the way he rampages through with anti-DAP language, he’d have been absolutely miserable in the seven years PAS shared meals with DAP in the Pakatan Rakyat years (2008-2015). 

He backtracks on his language, saying how multicultural he is. I half expect him to talk about how being a good old boy from Sik and then to boarding school in Sungai Petani, he was unable to form meaningful friendships with those who look different from him. 

But thank the heavens, he had the great opportunity to share lecture halls with minorities during his Universiti Sains Malaysia days. 

Listen, I am OK with Sanusi being partial to people completely because of their DNA. He’s not alone on this. I prefer him all guns blazing rather than dishing out canned lines about how wonderful it is to be all together in this great united colours of Benetton. He is funnier at his provocative best. 

On the same token, it’s quite the torture to hear from PAS’ supporters wing, Gerakan and MIPP and Wawasan minorities explaining how Sanusi and those who feel home is not the same for all of us, actually means well. 

How about the new BFF?

BN, led by deputy president Mohamad Hasan, are completely against over the top racism. They won’t flog minorities but a proper scolding is necessary. So that they know real peace and harmony can only be achieved by unequivocal Malay leadership, primarily by Umno. 

The minor leaguers, at times referred to as MIC and MCA, prefer elegant silence, and as they did in Johor, collect their dues in the form of state seats on Saturday. 

Umno also conveniently leaves out the productive years it continues to experience in federal government with DAP, and that their grip on power in Perak is due to DAP assemblymen.

The overall summary from PN and BN, is that DAP through strategic vote canvassing, competency and track record in locations like Penang and Selangor may win. In an election. 

This is unacceptable. All minorities must play a dutiful secondary role because this is what BN and PN can live with. 

That’s it. The whole campaign. Fear the DAP. 

I have a bucket of issues with DAP. But I am fairly certain they are still Malaysians and deserve respect and civility. Certainly not attacks grounded in irrational fears. Again, DAP chooses the ethnic path but it is not grounds for ritual lynchings online. 

Whether or not the running down of multiculturalism persists after the elections, that is really in the hands of voters, both those who stomach haters and those who’ve lost the love.  — Bernama file pic

Too blue, not that blue

Those infirmed Pakatan folks. 

They won’t vote because those they believed in came astronomically short. By not voting they hand the results to those who want to reverse even the minimums achieved. A cruel twist of fate.

It’s horrendous, the mood of traditional Pakatan voters but they remain unmoved and ensconced in melancholy.

They, the pretend reformists, underperform, like Portugal at the World Cup. 

The reform they expected never materialised and on days they cannot tell the sides apart. 

Enuff said.

The constancy of power

The unfortunate part about being in a state is that there are no gap years. Unlike taking a year off from work to raise a kid or get a degree, governments are permanent concerns. It is not like since the options are unpalatable we skip a few years of having a government in charge. 

PN and BN stoke up their bases. Many on the fence slide to them since they feel not tugged in any other direction. 

Pakatan doubles down, saying nothing is quite that bad under them. They need time to get this to the finishing line they insist. 

It’s fluff in campaign language. 

Whether N9 has come too soon after Johor, the results on August 1 will be a major marker for when the general elections are to be held.  

Whether or not the running down of multiculturalism persists after the elections, that is really in the hands of voters, both those who stomach haters and those who’ve lost the love. 

From the standpoint of democracy, it is absolute shambles. Almost 70, Malaysia can do better than divide and rule.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.

JULY 29 — “You watched Odyssey twice, right? You should watch Kokuho.”

Watching a film about, of all things, the Japanese art of kabuki was not on my to-do list but I was intrigued enough by the recommendation to buy a ticket last night.

It was either go last night or sneak into the back of a theatre with my work laptop because July 29 is the last date of its screening in Malaysia.

There wasn’t enough time for me to read up on the movie.

Even in the last minutes before the movie started at 8.50pm I was sending work emails and assignments so all I had managed to find out was that the two lead actors trained for 18 months in kabuki.

Ryo Yoshizawa and Ryusei Yokohama are phenomenal in their roles as almost-brothers, always-rivals vying for both a place in the spotlight and the favour of their master.

Kokuho’s premise of a yakuza’s son trying to break into the world of kabuki is fantastical but while the script is flawed, the pace meandering, it is a very beautiful film.

I found the kabuki set pieces enthralling; such gorgeous costuming, elaborate stages, full-bodied traditional musicians and shot in such a way that you felt yourself also transported into a kabuki theatre.

Having just finished the game Guardians of Azuma, where the protagonist is a shrine dancer, I found myself being able to appreciate the dancing in Kokuho as well as the sound of Japanese instruments.

I recognised the sound of taiko, Japanese percussion, and the hand movements, the way the dancers moved bearing fans in yukata.

Right now I’m playing another Japan-designed game — Persona 5 Royal.

At various loading screens it keeps showing me the phrase, “Take your time.”

'Kokuho' is captivating in many ways due to how much visible effort has been put into its creation. — Media Castle/Kokuho film pic

The beauty of Kokuho is, when you think about it, created precisely by the creators taking their time.

Without the lead actors being convincing kabuki performers, the film would not have worked.

Yet we live in an age where we are sold the notion of speeding things up and instant gratification.

The best things take time, like dry-aged steaks and intricate dances, yet I go online and my eyes are assaulted constantly by hideous AI-generated flyers or graphics.

My friends on Facebook have to deal with my terrorising them whenever they post any AI-generated imagery so I see a lot less of it on my feed, which I think is the point.

Three hours is a long time to sit in the cinema and at times I did think Kokuho’s director was a bit overindulgent.

It is a particular affliction of Japanese cinema where, for some reason, you will be made to stare at a clump of trees, perhaps a sandy bank or some other random Nature spot until the director decides to advance the plot.

I still found that time a good break from the mundanity of the outside world.

Whether I’m chasing shadows in Persona 5 Royal, watching elaborately made up actors performing kabuki or trying not to fall asleep reading language textbooks, I understand now that I cannot rush time, nor can I really ever know how much of it I truly possess.

We trade time for money, then use it to buy more time but we would be happier when we are not worrying about either.

For art is best savoured in both its making and experiencing.

In a world obsessed with ChatGPT perhaps we might all be better off learning about kabuki.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.

JULY 23 — Kitty Genovese comes to mind reading the news about Velmurugan, female J and male D at the Appeals Court yesterday. Sadness also prevails on days like these. 

Three of them denied the right to be Malaysian despite being born here, raised here.

Velmurugan endures the ignominy of his entire extended family having Mykad minus him. His wife and kids are Malaysians. Because his late mum’s documentation was inconclusive and by extension his too, the 38-year-old lives without a country to call his own. 

Female J’s Indonesian mum’s whereabouts are unknown. As are male D’s Filipino mum’s. J is 30 years of age, while D is two years younger. Both have Malaysian fathers proven by DNA tests. 

There are lengthy explanations involving the Constitution, the policies of the National Registration Department (NRD) and documentation trails, not to mention that in the case of J and D, Indonesia and Philippines have confirmed their non-origin from the two republics. 

Visitors walk past the MyKad and JPN signage at the National Registration Department (JPN) in Putrajaya, September 23, 2025. — Picture by Raymond Manuel

Every party involved in the determination of the trio’s fates have presented reasons why they cannot let it happen. To let them become Malaysians. Conditions are not met, the curt riposte. Their hands are tied, they'd claim. 

Segue to a distressing old incident

Miss Genovese’s rape and murder in 1964 did not only horrify New York City, it inspired psychologists John Darley and Bibb Latané to define bystander effect and diffusion of responsibility. 

Perpetrator Winston Moseley stabbed her after 3am just outside her residence. Someone screamed nearby and he retreated. 

But when nothing transpired he returned and assaulted her sexually before killing her. Start to end was 35 minutes and no one intervened.

There were many people around but each of them from their units felt someone else would step in. 

Someone else will save the lady’s life. No one did. Because everyone was expecting someone to do something. That’s the bystander effect. If others can help, let’s just wait and see “these others” help. 

Since there are so many potential helpers, so many with the capacity to aid, the responsibility is diffused to the many. 

If you were the only person in a dark alley and witnessed one individual attacking another person you are likely to get involved. 

But if the same attack played out in a large crowded hall, many look at each other for action. The onus to act is organically distributed to those present, and inaction may prevail. 

We humans tend to look to each other, hoping one of us is better enough to act. 

Not that we do not recognise evil but feel others can fight the devil for us. 

In the Genovese case, after the initial media furore and the far-reaching impact it had as a teaching tool, detractors pointed out that saying 38 people failed to act was faulty.

Thirty-eight people were within earshot in the residential area but it was in the wee hours and a fair number were asleep. Those who woke up may have been uncertain what was transpiring outside. 

The rebuttal was that conditions restricted the number of people we can reasonably expect to react. Early hours, in the dark and doubt shrouded the situation. 

No one told us

The fates which befell Velmurugan, female J and male D, has struck many stateless Malaysians. By many, it goes to the thousands. 

If all the members of Parliament — Dewan Rakyat and Senate — the senior judges of Malaysia, and the Cabinet were made to sit in a hall and a short video of the lives of the stateless was played, hardly anyone would feel indifferent about the pain, isolation and emotional turmoil lived by the victims. 

Stateless people are victims regardless of their own complicity in their circumstances. 

Most might squirm in their seats. 

Some may cry. 

Those people with power, those who decide where the country goes, they’d be affected by the anguish just like regular folks. 

Despite the horrendous space called the Internet comment sections, Malaysians are kind. The potential for kindness here is world class even if politicians seek to trigger many to hate. 

Maybe like the night Genovese died, many Malaysians today are unaware. 

They are asleep, unsure what is happening in the courts, hear the noise but cannot decipher the what, who, when, why and how? 

They do not fear to act, they just do not know. Perhaps. 

But the focus is on the powerful in the country. Those who decide. 

In the case of the trio, all branches of government would have been approached — their MPs, the various ministers including the prime minister, and the courts. 

Those approached most assuredly point to the limitations.   

But they forget, while they lament their own limitations, a killing continues. 

The three of them — and all home-born stateless folks — die a little every day. 

It’s female J and male D, for the court wanted to protect them. I am fairly confident J and D do not feel altogether protected. 

Those in their lives, their bosses, their locality, most would be cognisant of their predicaments. J and D live the stigma wherever they are.  

Every opportunity they let go because of a situation they did nothing to be in, chips away their life force. 

This situation is an excellent example to illustrate why the progressives bleed support in the elections around the country. 

Their opponents care less about these individuals, even if they have sympathy for these victims. Their voters do not factor here because they are not progressive voters. 

For the home minister and the prime minister, the self-declared progressives, them cowering behind valid excuses do not bode well. Their voters are disappointed. 

When you are a progressive, it helps to behave progressively. 

It was impossible for the trio, Velmurugan, J and D to be saved under the conservatives when they led the country. But when they cannot be saved by the progressives in charge today, the grief crescendos into an almighty wail to silence the banshees.  

I feel ashamed and I am a nobody. It is about time those who are somebody step up before they have no power to save even themselves. 

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.

JULY 22  — Being told I need to be on medication (Tamoxifen) for the next 5-10 years was a bit daunting.

Even with a daily reminder, I still slip up and miss a dose or two every other month so I understand now why doctors fuss about medication compliance.

My hormone blockers would cost me nearly RM200 a month but are, fortunately, covered under our public healthcare system.

Last week though, the entire process of procuring them was somewhat maddening though I don't blame the doctors and nurses who are doing their best.

A typical oncology follow-up goes like this:

1. Arrive at the hospital at least half-an-hour before your appointment.

2. Surrender your appointment book to the counter, placing it in the little box with the time of your appointment on it.

3. Wait for 20-40 minutes for your name to be called for you to get a number.

4. Wait up to an hour for the payment counter to call you to prepay your admission fee (currently RM5).

5. Wait for your number to be called to finally see the doctor.

6. If blessedly you have no alarming symptoms, you get pushed out the door and now you need to get the appointment desk to give you a date for the next appointment.

7. Wait again to be called and given your appointment book back.

8. With your appointment book, bring it along to the pharmacy with your prescription slip (which your doctor should have given you) and then wait for your medication.

9. Be grateful you pay nearly nothing except half a day gone.

I used to be really judgemental seeing some patients bring along multiple family members when going to the hospital but I get it now.

A cancer follow-up may only cost RM5 in Malaysia's public healthcare system, but it can still take half a day, multiple queues, and plenty of patience. — Picture by Shafwan Zaidon

Looking at some of the older patients (like one uncle who spent most of the morning with his walker looking a little dazed), I think they would forget halfway what they were supposed to do next. 

Heck, I forgot halfway I was supposed to get my appointment from the counter because when I was still at the specialist building, whichever oncologist I was seeing would give me my appointment on the spot. 

I already get funny stares when I'm sitting down in the waiting room because without my bald head, I look fairly able-bodied.

It's not like I can wear a sign around my neck that says "If you make me stand for too long, I'm not going to be able to leave my bed for the rest of the day."

Every hospital visit feels like a trial and speaking of trials I recently watched Christopher Nolan's take on The Odyssey. Twice.

There's a moment in the movie where a torn sail flutters in the wind and it got me thinking about how sometimes, life is like this — that sometimes, you must wait for favourable winds.

You take from a story your own meaning and the movie was a good reminder to me that I need to let go of the illusion of control; there is a time to fight and there is a time to wait for a change in weather.

All I can do in my situation is show up to my appointments and tell the stories for those who do not understand what it's like.

A fix for the entire inefficient process at the hospital could be as simple as signs explaining the processes, no need for AI promises or some other high-tech solution.

It feels sometimes in Malaysia, we are all trapped like Odysseus' crew, looking for a captain to steer us in the right direction.

All we can do now is hope the boat is strong enough to survive the choppy waves and unexpected storms, trusting that soon we'll find land again. 

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.

JULY 20 — When universities hire only people with PhDs (or certain PhDs) and only people who have published academically, this isn’t always good news and, in fact, may contain hidden risks.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start at the beginning.

Nowadays, in most Malaysian universities (both private and public), having a PhD and being well-published is almost a matter of necessity when it comes to hiring new employees. These two criteria are often even used for screening purposes. 

When someone applies to an academic department to be a lecturer, one of the first things HR or the Dean or Head looks at is whether you hold a PhD in that particular field you’re applying to teach and whether your H-index (university talk for “I have published quite a few articles in top-tier journals”) is above a certain number.

File picture of a lecturer addressing students in a university lecture hall. The commentary argues that an overemphasis on PhD qualifications and publication records in academic hiring may come at the expense of teaching quality. — Unsplash pic

The PhD requirement is a new Malaysian Qualifications Agency (MQA) rule which came about two to three years ago. 

So in many cases it won’t matter if you’ve taught Business or Journalism courses for the past eight years; if your PhD isn’t related to the department you’re applying for, chances are you’ll have trouble even getting an interview.

The H-index or publications requirement is one which many private institutions have adopted of late. 

Why? Because when a university has a higher number of staff on its payroll with these levels of indices, its international rankings (QS, Times, etc.) go up — and these (usually) translate to higher student numbers, especially from overseas.

This is the (unsurprising) reason why many Malaysian private universities regularly boast about their rankings; ironically, these positions are not merely "academic" but have real monetary consequences.

So, what’s the problem? What’s not so great or even bad about an institution always holding these two criteria in mind when hiring new academics?

First, the obvious. There are simply many many good lecturers and teachers who are able to communicate a particular syllabus effectively to students (both in small and large numbers), who can inspire them, help them and so on.

These folks may only have a Masters degree or they may not be well-published. 

But when a university refuses to even interview a Masters holder to teach a Bachelor degree course (“just because she doesn’t hold a PhD”) despite many proven years of dedication and skill, that sounds like a Lose-Lose.

Don’t get me wrong. Of course it doesn’t make sense for someone with only a Diploma in I.T. to be teaching a PhD (Computer Science) program but why insist that a Bachelor degree must be taught by a PhD? 

In fact, many years ago I recall in HELP Institute everyone’s favourite tutor (for our BSc Econs) was a guy who had just graduated the year before.

Likewise, and secondly, when it comes to publication we have an even weirder disconnect between what students need and “what makes a university appealing”.

More often than not, a university needs a lecturer who can be with his/her students throughout the semester, someone who cares, who can teach, who can help organise events, who will be there for the department and so on. 

These are good people who can work well with students and so on but for whatever reason, they just don’t write or publish a lot. 

Why can’t such folks be hired and channeled towards teaching, instead of being rejected for not having published a lot in academic journals?

Furthermore, in some disciplines publishing in some top-tier journal is simply not an indicator of excellence. Eg, journalism, video production, teaching, graphic design, etc. 

These are practitioner-oriented disciplines where many top people, because they’re so good at doing their thing and being actively engaged, will simply not have the time or interest to submit 6,000-word manuscripts in APA 7th Edition format to the Asian Journal of Whatever. 

Conversely, we must ask how many lecturers who a) have the correct PhD and b) are published well are somehow also good lecturers who can engage a classroom, have patience with students and so on?

I certainly don’t deny they exist but why restrict the education sector with such a Venn diagram?

So back to the point I made at the start of this essay. We have two near-immutable criteria impacting the quality of university education in our country, serving too as barriers to entry to possibly a high number of good lecturers (who either don’t hold a PhD or don’t publish as much as a department would’ve liked them to) and preventing many university students from the service and dedication these people could provide.

Perhaps MQA should consider being more flexible with their criteria and universities should really ask themselves if official rankings are all that matter?

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.

JULY 18 — As a huge fan of fight flicks, I’ve been harping on about Chinese web movies, specifically those on iQIYI, for a few years already. 

Due to the peculiarities of international film distribution and the taste-making powers of the media and film critics based in the West, these Chinese web movies are kind of a blind spot to the rest of the world, unless you’re a particularly keen fan of martial arts flicks who doesn’t really mind scouring all corners of the world wide web in search of the latest or next great fight flick or martial arts film star.

If you’ve read some of my columns here, particularly my annual year-end favourite films list, you’d have noticed me going on and on about films like Eye For An Eye: The Blind Swordsman, Eye For An Eye 2: Blind Vengeance, Black Storm and Blade of Fury, all of them iQIYI originals that you can stream on the platform if you’re a subscriber, and you can even watch some of these for free, legally, on YouTube, on their official channel.

The reason why I’m bringing all this up again is that, finally, one of my favourite actors in those iQIYI movies looks set to break through on the international martial arts movie stage with the release of one of the most anticipated action films of the year, The Furious. 

The author argues that Chinese web movies have become an overlooked source of world-class action cinema, with Xie Miao emerging as a new international martial arts star worthy of wider recognition. — Picture courtesy of Antenna Entertainment

That actor is Xie Miao, whose previous claim to fame was as a child actor supporting Jet Li in My Father Is A Hero way back in 1995.

After an almost 15-year break from acting to complete his studies, you can occasionally see his face in some TV series and small or supporting parts in films, with most of his major work happening in the Chinese web movies sector, including favourites of mine like the aforementioned Eye For An Eye movies and the ongoing Fight Against Evil movies.

His first major international spotlight as an adult came courtesy of the global hit The Furious, which made around US$37 million (RM151 million) at worldwide box-office and is set to earn even more now that it has arrived on digital. 

The Furious is sort of a double whammy for me because not only does it represent the Chinese web movies that I’ve been loving, courtesy of Xie Miao’s star turn in the lead role, but it also represents another corner of the action movie world that’s not talked about enough — the Japanese fight flick scene — courtesy of debuting director Kenji Tanigaki (who’s the action director/designer for films like Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In and the Rorouni Kenshin films) and action director Kensuke Sonomura (director of the awesome Hydra and Ghost Killer, and also action director on films like One-Percent Warrior and the Baby Assassins films).

Hyped as one of the year’s finest action films, The Furious really does blend the best of both worlds — the sometimes wild and crazy ideas in all those Chinese web movies and the grappling and close-quarters hand to hand combat that has become the trademark of the Japanese action film scene — and deserves all the accolades and box-office success it’s experiencing. 

However, if you’re a Xie Miao fan like me, there’s another more under the radar breakthrough happening in China for him, as the previously only straight-to-streaming release of the first two Fight Against Evil films have somehow, against all odds, made it to an actual cinema release for Fight Against Evil 3 earlier in the year.

Never mind that the cinema release was a bit of a box-office disappointment, as it only made around 29 million yuan (RM17.5 million) in cinemas, and iQIYI had to recoup their costs from the film’s online release, but I’d happily argue that the action sequences here, especially those heading towards the film’s climax, can easily rival anything from The Furious, with one or two sequences handled even better than The Furious. 

I think one of the contributors towards the film’s box-office disappointment was the fact that tonally, the filmmakers’ decision to lean more towards action comedy during its first act, with some set-pieces sure to remind audiences of Jackie Chan’s brand of action slapstick, is a very unfortunate one.

It’s an acquired taste that I’m not sure everyone can overcome, even if I understand the commercial thinking behind that decision. 

But, make no mistake, once the film unleashes itself from that action slapstick shackles, it powers forward as one of the more brutal and awesome action films I’ve seen come out of China, especially if we don’t include those crazy iQIYI straight-to-streaming action flicks, in the last few years.

The plot is even quite identical to The Furious, with both films seeing Xie Miao playing the hero and both in search of a kidnapped young girl. 

How fitting and what a coincidence that is, to see Xie Miao announce himself on the world stage with these movies. Let’s hope there’ll be more great stuff to come, because a new international action star has definitely arrived.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.

JULY 16 — It’s not common, PAS’ reaction to the Johor polls. 

For a party — and its coalition — to be euphoric in catastrophic defeat. PAS is leading its Norwegian Row version in stadiums nationwide for right-wingers. Screaming ferocity unmatched by multicultural modern Vikings.

Thirty-three Perikatan Nasional candidates lost and only 12 avoided deposit forfeiture. PAS got 2.4 per cent state support, or under 49,000 votes. 

Yet, party leadership is delirious, and just cannot wait for the Negeri Sembilan State Election to kick off on Saturday. In their minds, they possess the big mo. How, incredibly how? 

PAS cares not for Johor, or Negeri Sembilan and even Melaka. It eyes national power by building up a feverish “us against us” race armageddon throttled into a Malays snowstorm, from which it emerges as the most senior leader by being the most unapologetic about race politics.

It bypasses all policy, development and social upliftment questions, by posing back only one question in repeat, “Do you want Malay leadership?”

Its systemic and comprehensive demolition of Bersatu while together inside PN is death by a thousand cuts. But nobody cares outside the two metres between Muhyiddin Yassin and Azmin Ali, PAS is on a higher mission.

The author argues that PAS is pursuing a long-term strategy centred on Malay-Muslim political consolidation, warning that identity-based politics risks deepening national divisions at the expense of governance and unity. — Picture by Sayuti Zainudin

PAS, and obviously the rest of PN dragged in, may lose all 120 seats in the three states but by securing Pakatan Harapan’s devastation and the election of Malay-first administrations it intensifies the pressure to insert all these in the Muafakat Nasional bag. 

In the larger picture, a BN win is a PAS win if eventually all agree to sit inside the larger umbrella led by PAS. By the same token, every DAP – by extension Pakatan – defeat reduces threats to the grand union of Malay power.

This is why less than 60 hours before the Johor polls, PAS President Hadi Awang gathered all 11 PAS candidates in Muar and promised to hand over its wins to shore up Umno if it did not have enough. 

In a roundabout way, it was to encourage its base to forego support for the PN candidate even from PAS in races which BN and Pakatan were going toe to toe. And sure enough, BN coasted to its best result since 2013. 

PAS has found its formula. 

The game inside the game

BN negotiates with PAS for Negeri seats, curiously, not with PN. The coalition chairman Samsuri Mokhtar forgets not he is PAS vice-president. In hindsight the 2016 Amanah split has reduced internal transgressions today to near zero inside the party. 

It’s not straightforward for BN. PAS can guarantee them Negeri and after Melaka, but complications ensue.

Umno was born from the unity of Malay associations in 1946 to oppose a progressive charter for the peninsula, with Parti Kebangsaan Melayu Malaya (PKMM) with its leftist ideology providing the activist spine and membership numbers. PKMM left in a huff and inadvertently helped create Umno’s substance. 

Movements can swallow up minor pieces, and Umno does not want to appear on the menu.

Umno President Zahid Hamidi knows PAS is an existential threat but after its Rumah Bangsa zeal throughout 2026, it cannot reject calls for unity. But it does not want to be outflanked by the Islamists.

Let’s use the spice levels used at Nando’s restaurants to see how Umno can be outwitted eventually. 

Newcomer Bersama is between lemon & herb and mild, it upholds the status quo with Malay leadership. PKR and Amanah are decidedly mild. 

But Umno monopolises the sweet spot between mild and hot, toying with extra hot on rare occasions, the gold standard of being race-first but conciliatory to other races. 

Bersatu tries to mimic Umno but recently lost its mojo. PAS, Wawasan, Pejuang and Putra reside purely in the extra hot section. 

A single mode is risky only if a counter proposition extinguishes the mindless barbs. But if not, it is a blue ocean for PAS and gang. 

If one ventures to read about how a joint effort among democrats, Marxists, civil activists and Islamists to overthrow the Shah only ended with the Islamic Republic of Iran, or how Kuomintang was infiltrated by the Communist Party in the 1920s or how earlier the Bolsheviks upended the Mensheviks in their united initiative to democratise Russia, it’s all about shaping the narrative while the larger identity drive is underway. 

Now you know why PAS is pleased as punch. It only wants to secure Muslim solidarity and raise the spectre of DAP as an existential threat to the Muslim way of life. 

The underclass and minorities

The base voters are unaware they write a blank cheque to the solidarity leaders.

The leaders get cover, nothing they have done, or failed to do matters. 

Therefore, after the election, including the general, they are not incentivised to do or keep promises, just to repeat identity rhetoric.

Those who reject their decisions are opposed to Malay unity.

The city flat residents and food deliverers continue to live in the same economic circumstance as before elections. They conflate their predicament as an outcome of not enough race power, when the real issue is class power. 

And race relations flatlines if PAS gets its utopia. 

The relationship with Borneo also becomes frictional and most certainly attritional in a Semenanjung more determined to keep race divides rather than draw in both east and west into the Malaysian project. 

But more so, viscerally PAS wants a divided nation. It accepts citizenship but it prefers tiers in the country. Malaysians have to ask themselves if that is what they want. 

Because PAS’ rhetoric emphasises that a large number of Malaysians are actually more from Nagapattinam or Panyu rather than Morib or Gopeng. And permanently so. 

In the current climate of race overdrive and minority disenchantment with a regressive dysfunctional federal government, PAS’ goals are highly achievable. 

Secure a warm glow of religiosity in the country and take over the pulpit as the most committed to the cause. The simplicity of the plan makes it even more outrageous.

I have no riposte. 

A moral quandary descends upon the country, which only each voter can decide for his or herself. 

It’s clearly not the country the majority of youths want but they are so hamstrung and disempowered that they cannot act. They only can watch the trainwreck occur and gasp too late in horror. 

I was in a van last Friday evening in the backroads of Hulu Langat, my colleague’s husband driving. He asked me about politics while his wife and four young children sat at the back around stacks of durian. 

A lot of frustration as he explained leaving PKR for PAS because the party does not lie. I did not understand how to answer him in a way to convince him that a bigger Malaysia is better than a shallow, narrow and divided nation. I don’t have the rhetoric to match the haters. 

I do remember reading Nelson Mandela. He wrote people are not born to hate, they are taught to hate. 

If one can learn to hate, then one can be taught to love. A bit of faith goes a long way. 

For this man wanted to love his captors rather than punish them for the decades he spent inside prison cells. Love. 

The eldest kid in the van turned 11 yesterday. Our birthdays are a day apart. I am desperate that the country I leave behind does not keep us oceans apart because of our names. Under these Malaysian skies.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.

JULY 15 — I don’t think we should always be looking for silver linings. Sometimes, things are objectively terrible.

Like people who insist on finding the “blessings” in getting cancer.

My blessings are the people in my life. Cancer was something terrible that happened to me, even if I did make the best of it.

I’m not thankful for getting cancer. I’m thankful for the support I’ve received and for being in the public healthcare system while it was still mostly functioning.

Making the best of bad situations, leveraging the worst to create the most ideal option, it’s sometimes the only thing you can do.

Just the other day I was talking to a colleague about Bella Astillah and how some have reduced her to just being a “social media starlet.”

Bella was a singer first, a good one, and even represented Malaysia overseas.

She had the misfortune of marrying a man who embarrassed her publicly not once, but twice, and to this day her ex-mother-in-law takes every opportunity to talk to the press to defend Bella’s ex-husband.

Yet Bella persevered. Worked hard. Endured the pitying eyes and whispers, hustling online because she had two children to raise. 

The author argues that hardship should not be romanticised, with people pressured to find ‘silver linings’ in terrible situations. — Unsplash pic

With or without Syed Saddiq, she has done well for herself but that does not in any way diminish her previous pain.

Sometimes, I find myself crying without even understanding why. I turn on YouTube and put on a random song and the tears start. Then I try singing and am so glad I don’t have to do it for a living like Bella does because the lump in my throat starts up and chokes my voice back.

I understand now that my body is doing what it couldn’t at first when I was too busy trying to survive my cancer diagnosis, bully government agencies and trying not to fall down stairs.

There was no time to grieve or mourn, no resources to allocate to having an emotional breakdown. 

My body now thinks it’s safe enough for me to be as sad and as angry as I want.

It has also surprised me, like when I was trying to assemble a metal locker I bought off Pinduoduo.

The locker was RM65 with free shipping (by sea) but on Shopee (without shipping) it’s nearly RM200 so it really makes you question the true cost of things.

It was sturdy enough but required a lot of screw-turning and whenever I had to expend a bit more energy, I was rather amazed that I had the strength now to make that extra turn.

What I was less surprised by, but grieved, was to find out that the woman whose QR code I was sharing for donations, had her own relatives stealing her donation posts and putting up their own QR codes.

How awful a person must you be, to steal from, of all people, a cancer patient?

She was heartbroken to find one of those people was even sharing a roof with her.

If you have been wanting to spare her a ringgit, her actual, verified donation link is here. 

Of course I’m anguished on her behalf, but thanks to the many people who did respond to her donation plea, she is only a few hundred ringgit away from her target to order her first treatment course.

Just the other day, my Instagram feed showed me words from writer and poet John Roedel.

“I have no patience for people who can watch the world burn and never wonder: How do I become rain?” 

I don’t know how much longer I have on this earth, maybe decades, maybe years.

So I’d rather not waste it when I still have the voice, and the rage to bring storms when they are needed.

Like reminding people of the current realities of ever more crowded emergency roomshttps://www.threads.com/@unreachabledesire/post/DauuZIQGYAL?xmt=AQG07eMEoK4a_STlMhD3nZlTXgPpNnm1M91uJfMn-zp66A and the sick who need the requisite agencies to step up, instead of asking them to shop around their QR codes.

In this burning world, we all need to become the rain, or at least, offer up umbrellas. 

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.

JULY 11 — This World Cup has produced quite a number of debatable decisions. 

From the ruled-out stoppage time winning goals for Iran (against Egypt) and Colombia (against Portugal) to Messi’s potential (but ultimately ungiven) red card when playing against Algeria, to Croatia’s denied past-extra time equaliser against Portugal, to the Jonathan Tah goal for Germany against Paraguay which was ruled out due to a foul on the keeper, we’ve had more than a fair share of heated moments where one team can claim prejudice and unfairness whilst another will surely say, “Oh it’s the referee’s decision so let’s respect it.”

Therein lies the funky principle: If you’re a football fan one of the things you must accept is the on-pitch “injustice” towards the team you favour. 

Mentioning team bias is important because, as we all know, apparent “injustices” and “poor decision-making” by the referee are all in the eye of the beholder, or more specifically the eye of the fans whose team is either being favoured or disadvantaged by such controversial decisions.

Referee Michael Oliver speaks with Dani Olmo #10 of Spain during the FIFA World Cup 2026 Quarter Final match between Spain and Belgium at Los Angeles Stadium on July 10, 2026 in Inglewood, California. — Getty Images via AFP pic

Speaking of wild decisions, on Wednesday morning Egypt fans were livid that Mostafa Ziko’s first goal against Argentina was disallowed because of an earlier foul on Argentine centre-back Lisando Martinez. 

Then later in the game Argentina completed their comeback from two goals with Enzo Fernandez heading in the winner, but Egypt fans will again point that Mo Salah was fouled in the Argentine penalty box. 

So not only should the Argentine goal be ruled out, Egypt should’ve had a penalty!

The scenes after the match in which Egypt head coach Hossam Hassan was screaming at the officials and accusing them of both prejudice and racism are both understandable and yet, well, paradoxically “part of the game”.

Let me explain.

It’s like when you get involved in a relationship, anyone except the most naïve of individuals should realise they’re setting themselves up for a world of hurt and pain. 

That’s just the way courtship and romance functions. Anyone who’s ever been in a relationship or marriage knows exactly what I mean.

Likewise, in football, part of the excitement of the game is the sheer subjectivity of the decisions being made, decisions which simply will NOT make everyone happy.

As a Tottenham Hotspur fan, I’ve seen my team put the ball into the opposition net only to have the goalie drag it out and the referee wave play to continue. 

I’ve also seen my own goalie put the ball down next to his feet for a goal kick, only to have the opposition striker kick it in when the goalie thought the match was paused.

Many football fans will tell you a million stories and incidents of blatantly wrong, unfair, harsh and unjust decisions against their team. Crucially, they will also be able to relate a few episodes in which their team benefited from referee blindness, oversight, carelessness or VAR simply missing something.

Again, it’s all part of the game. 

Without the possibility of injustice, football would be ironically less than it is. In a sense, this makes football very human.

You have 22 players plus a few officials plus very enthusiastic managers and assistants on the sides all trying to coax and nudge the game their way in even the slightest manner possible. This will not change and, frankly, shouldn’t change.

I suspect this is also the reason why although it should be very easy to bring A.I. into the picture and get it to decide on controversial calls (replete with its hundreds of unassailable justifications – and who’s going win an argument with a super-smart machine?), in football it just won’t happen.

Because, in the end, football remains a human game with all our human flaws. And every human will want to keep it that way—even fans of those teams who got kicked out of the World Cup because the referee decided a certain striker wasn’t fouled in the penalty area but lost his balance instead.

*This is the personal opinion of the columnist.

JULY 8 — Right now I am sitting on my bed, with an old 2018 Mac mini desktop connected to a much newer iPad Pro also in my bed.

Rather unsexy but the frustration of trying to figure out tech has far better dividends than trying to figure out, for instance, how not to murder your significant other.

I have become addicted to trading in my old gaming tools at secondhand dealer CeX.

My latest acquisition (after trading in an unused controller and Pokémon Pokopia, finished and unlikely to be replayed) is a curious device called the Jumpgate by a company named Savage Raven.

It seemed like the solution to my newest quandary — how to connect my Nintendo Switch 2 to an iPad.

On paper, it seemed I had all the tools. The right cables, the right power supply and yet nothing was working as it should.

A couple of buttons were too tight; that was remedied with a screwdriver.

Then I realised that the problem was not the hardware but probably the software; my fancy new but used device needed a firmware update.

But reader, the update program runs only on Windows and not Mac OS.

I had a brief moment of insanity where I contemplated getting an old Windows machine but my bank account talked me out of it.

Ah! In a corner was my unused Mac Mini, the only one of my Intel Macs left (that have not gone to the tech graveyard in the sky).

Tinkering is something worth doing but fear holds people back. — Picture by Erna Mahyuni

I tried installing VMWare Fusion to run a virtual Windows machine but while I did get it running, it refused to acknowledge that my Jumpgate existed.

The innate perversity of inanimate objects is truly vexing.

So the Mac Mini was booted up, connected to an iPad (my cat peed on my one remaining desktop monitor) and two hours later I am reinstalling Mac Monterey because I seem to have an addiction to suffering.

Yet I am still grateful that I know how all this works.

Figuring out why a computer wasn’t turning on, putting one together with my own hands, those are now skills that are dying out. 

PC parts have become increasingly expensive, with RAM and hard disk prices now soaring.

Two thousand ringgit would have gotten me a halfway decent midrange desktop if I got the parts myself, 10 years ago (as Facebook reminded me, showing me a picture of my last PC).

Now that same amount wouldn’t even cover the motherboard, processor, RAM and storage.

I don’t want to see a future where no one can afford to buy or maintain their own computers.

Even this old Mac mini is still expensive in the secondhand market, as having an Intel chip means it can dualboot Windows.

It’s also a machine with replaceable RAM but secondhand RAM is ludicriously expensive now so I doubt I’ll ever add more to my Mac mini’s paltry 8GB.

There’s now a movement in the Klang Valley to learn DIY, fixing or repurposing old items and interestingly, Facebook groups for barter.

I think the youngsters see what we call progress as stifling and truly, who can blame them?

Wireless headphones are overrated.

An old dress at the bundle store is probably made of better cloth and handiwork than the average Zara but costs less.

Have you seen the prices at Zara these days? Hundreds of ringgit for glued on hems, the audacity.

Modern tech and innovation sells us the notion that a friction-less, seamless life is the ideal.

In reality life is so much more interesting when it is well-lived, well-explored, well-savoured.

Kids of my generation understood that if a video game was hard, then you just needed to get better in the best way possible — play more.

One of my friends loves playing at the extreme difficulty level for the rush of euphoria.

It’s so much more satisfying to have conqured something that is an actual challenge.

Yet I see people my age and older choosing to ask a robot what kind of chicken cut to eat or how to word their emails.

Instead of talking to their friends, they ask ChatGPT for dating advice, about their health scares, confiding in it their fears for the future.

I don’t want to talk to a computer; I’d rather take it apart, see what makes it work, find out just why it’s not doing what I want it to do. 

A computer should help me make my life better and yet instead we are destroying our forests and seas to keep making them.

We’ll see what happens in the next five years. Maybe RAM will be cheaper. Maybe it’ll be a new War of the Worlds.

Whatever happens, at least I know I won’t have to rely on a machine that has no eyes or soul to tell me how to fix it.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.

JULY 5 — I read an article recently about a man in his 30s who envied his colleagues who are buying fancy stuff and visiting cool countries while he’s slaving away.

Likewise, in my interaction with much younger friends and students it’s not uncommon to hear laments along the lines of “I feel like I’m faking adulthood. Everyone on LinkedIn and Instagram looks like they’ve got it together. I don’t even know if this career is what I want five years from now.”

Welcome to the quarter-life crisis, Malaysian edition.

We used to think existential angst was something that hits you at 45 when middle age comes knocking on your existential doors. Turns out, for a growing number of young Malaysians, the question arrives much earlier — right around SPM and/or after receiving the infamous “golden keys”.

The numbers are sobering. According to the National Health and Morbidity Survey (NHMS) 2023, depression among adults aged 15 and above has doubled since 2019 to 4.6 per cent, affecting roughly one million people. 

The burden falls heaviest on younger age groups, particularly those aged 16 to 29. Among adolescents, one study even found depressive symptoms in about 26.9 per cent of secondary school students. 

The Malaysian Youth Mental Health Index 2023 paints a similar picture of moderate overall risk, with the “Healthy Mind” domain scoring substantially lower than ideal. 

This isn’t just “kids nowadays being dramatic”; it’s a developmental crunch point — what psychologists call emerging adulthood — colliding with quiet but hard realities like societal expectations, peer envy, identity and so on.

Voilà, the quarter-life crisis.

What’s feeding it? I’ve got a few guesses. 

Take our education system for starters. We’ve built an impressive machine for producing exam-takers and degree-holders. What we haven’t built nearly as well is a machine for producing people who know how to navigate uncertainty, failure, pivots and the gap between “what society expects” and “what actually makes sense for me.”

This is when the real world comes and the comfy classroom or living room vibe won’t hack it no more.

Competitive job markets, rising cost of living, delayed milestones (marriage, house, financial independence), and parents who still ask those classic questions with the best of intentions. 

Pile on social media — the endless highlight reels of peers “winning” — and you have a perfect storm of comparison, self-doubt, and quiet despair. 

Many young people feel both locked out (can’t find the right path or the all-important breakthrough) and locked in (stuck in something that doesn’t fit). 

The result? More anxiety, more burnout, more “I’m behind” syndrome, and yes, rising depression and anxiety.

Universities and colleges should treat out of campus transition as seriously as they treat the transition in. — Picture by Miera Zulyana

Two low-hanging fruits

First, universities and colleges should treat out of campus transition as seriously as they treat the transition in. 

Right now, most career services focus on job placement — résumés, interviews, that sort of thing. 

What’s missing is structured support for the bigger questions: Who am I becoming? What kind of life am I actually willing to build? How do I handle not having all the answers?

A modest but mandatory (or at least strongly encouraged) “Life Design” or “Navigating Your 20s” module in the final year — covering identity exploration, values clarification, basic financial resilience, and normalising multiple career paths — would cost relatively little and could prevent a lot of quiet suffering later.

Make it practical, discussion-based, and facilitated by people who aren’t just academics. Young adults don’t need more lectures; they need space to think out loud without judgement. 

HELP Institute’s Dengar Rakan Muda Project (launched last year in collaboration with the Sports & Youth Ministry) is certainly something along these lines.

Second, we need to normalise non-linear paths and build lightweight community support for it. 

Right now, taking time after graduation to explore, intern in different fields, volunteer, or even travel (within reason) is still often viewed with suspicion — by families especially. What if we flipped the script and made these things “cool” and endorsed?

Simple, accessible “Exploration Hubs” or peer-led programmes run by universities, NGOs, or even local councils could be immensely helpful. 

These would be places where young people can meet others in the same boat, share stories, get light mentorship, and try small experiments without it looking like “wasting time.” 

Pair this with public messaging that celebrates non-traditional journeys the same way we celebrate straight-A students and corporate climbers. A little cultural permission goes a long way.

These aren’t silver bullets. They’re nevertheless relatively low-cost interventions that address the meaning and belonging gaps at the heart of the quarter-life struggle.

Our young people aren’t lazy or entitled. 

Many of them are simply exhausted from trying to adult in a world that still runs on old scripts while everything around them has changed. 

The least we can do is stop pretending the script still works and give them better tools — and a bit more grace — to write their own?

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.

JULY 2 — I failed to disguise my chuckle reading about Onn Hafiz’s verdict on public debates. As much as he unequivocally failed to hide his contempt for reason.

The Barisan Nasional Johor chief remains convinced they are unnecessary and counterproductive in an election. More so I suppose if it involved him debating.

A cruel world which asks a state’s chief executive of four years to respond to his opponents in real time on a stage.

Yes, standing up and speaking, who’d think that’s one of the requirements for higher office?

I mean, bowling and Bonsai pruning may be far more necessary to run a state. Square dancing too.

Onn felt dignified discourses should be the sole preserve of the state assembly, not in markets or on TV.

His reply was to an unwelcome invite from former education minister and PKR-Pakatan candidate for Wangsa Puteri Maszlee Malik. To the unacquainted, Malay-Chinese Maszlee rates himself as a speaker. He also rates swimming classes for students.

Onn feels debates are confrontational, when outside the assembly. He really should not be in politics if he’s convinced confrontation is unhealthy. Central to politics is the confrontation of ideas, values, ideology and beliefs. In the pursuit of power.

Elections peak these confrontations.

Except one bit, elections and their debates are civil activities, they eschew violence.

Party flags are seen in Johor Bahru ahead of the 16th Johor state election on July 11. The author argues that public election debates strengthen democracy by allowing voters to scrutinise competing leaders directly, rejecting the view that such exchanges are unnecessary or counterproductive. — Bernama pic

Perhaps he imagines participants clubbing each other with verbs, nouns and adjectives. Metaphors are nuclear escalations. And gesticulations, taunts.

The august chamber vs plain voters

In Onn’s universe, the state assembly is the perfect and only forum. They are rich with decorum, restraint and orderliness. 

I could not help thinking that perhaps the menteri besar spent the majority of his four years in power, being abducted by aliens. Mind probes, they can do a real job on you!

Because our legislative gatherings are usually farces.

They are dominated by serial screamers whose key achievements are to prevent others with the capacity to form sentences and articulate them to complete their utterances. 

They find it an affront that people can formulate thoughts through speech rather than rage. Since they find it impossible to do it themselves.

But more pertinent, if I am to be permitted, lawmakers in theory rationalise to their equals in the chamber to clarify, elevate or decry resolutions, and in better days shape or amend legislations. Through the interactions of lawmakers, in Johor’s case the 56 elected assemblymen.

An election debate, on the other hand, is to assist the voters to decide if those vying are worthy to be elected.

It’s the step before.

Johor’s 2.7 million voters are better off to see the competitors face off. Which assists them to decide who governs the state.

A debate positions those in contention to speak up but even more to speak about their ideas in the presence of their opponents, and to reply to the queries from their opponents.

Since only one of them wins, and all of them want the support from the rakyat, it is quite extraordinarily simple to assume having them have that argument in the presence of said voters is in the interest of all.

Exactly why politicians like Onn, and his coalition avoid intellectual altercations.

They hate to look silly — my six-year-old niece forbids me from using the other word.

So, they obfuscate the matter and suggest an incomprehensible excuse that Onn is being the good guy by being afraid to be embarrassed. Such sacrifice.

I believe that the Royal Military College which processed Onn in the Nineties, administered education and managed activities conducive to the challenge of replying after listening. 

Also, his exceptional opportunity to be raised in a celebrated political family must have added to his armour. Not the least the mentoring by his uncle, Hishammuddin Hussein.

This before adding the amazing political education received in Umno which holds up more than anything, intelligence. Also, nepo-babies, but that is for a different segment. Fellow nepo, pardon party member, Khairy Jamaluddin Abu Bakar led him in Umno Youth before.

Speak like you never have

I have good news for Onn despite his dislike for disorderly arguments from beyond the state assembly, Maszlee is not a monster speaker. In fact, the field from Pakatan to Perikatan Nasional is inundated with the ordinary.

The thing is this. It is not about debating.

This is not a throwback to the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates for the Illinois senatorial race which is the modern political debate benchmark.

It is not about format, structure, platform or microphone quality. It is the spectre of facing each other.

Umno likes to win without being exposed or examined.

Without being questioned.

Of course, Onn will struggle to reply to anything related to incessant floods in the state to the economic model as a Singapore satellite. 

Umno leaders are not wired to reply, they are wired to declare. Opinions, decisions, deliberations or discord. Their way is that they speak, and we for our own good find a way to agree.

Umno leaders do not like surprises. They want results confirmed upfront which is why they have a distaste for elections. Too much power in the hands of the peasants, sorry, voters.

The biggest reasons I cheer them on, despite almost guaranteed to have a snooze-fest, is that public election debates humanise all of the participants and increase the powers of the people. That we all get to openly judge them.

There are hardly any outright winners in these debates. They have their base to back them regardless.

Onn, if he entered the arena would receive waves of adulation and support. Social media rife with his pictures and ideas, for there are armies of Umno supporters from Muar to Pengerang. Not to mention paid cybertroopers.

The real benefit about a debate is that the people get to hold their own mini-debates after the debate. That’s the real boon from the exercise, the rest talking to each other about what they think about the proponents.

The ideas collide in the debate even if farcical.

Debates are indeed confrontational. They are also our triumphs. They exhibit our ability to contest our thoughts and philosophies verbally rather than with actual clubs. 

They add to democracy, not detract from it. Those saying otherwise are unfit to lead.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.

JULY 1 — A Sabah man’s post about a long, uncomfortable wait in Queen Elizabeth Hospital was another reminder that the state’s health infrastructure is very much lacking.

I was born in that hospital.

Decades later, it shoulders too much of a burden, with Sabahans having to travel too far a distance to the state capital because of limited resources in their districts.

It wasn’t that long ago that cancer patients in Sabah had to fly to Kuala Lumpur for some treatments.

Now there are more cancer resources but they are just a fraction of what’s available in the Klang Valley.

My oncologist could point out the window across the road to where the pharmacy was, the one where I could place orders for my immunotherapy drugs.

While I had to crowdfund the five-figure sum for the drug Perjeta, I had the access and reach for my endeavours to be successful.

The author argues that Sabah’s strained healthcare system and the crushing cost of cancer treatment expose deep inequalities, urging greater investment in public healthcare over profit-driven priorities. — Pexels pic

How would you explain to a middle-aged mother in a Sabah village two hours from town that she would need more money than she might have seen in a lifetime, to tip the odds in her favour?

She would likely be terrified; I knew I was.

I know another cancer patient who was also frightened by the cost, and her cancer is now at stage four with her biggest hope being a drug that will cost her RM60,000.

You can read about her and pass her funds if you’re able here.

In this age, it’s a blessing that there are so many more available treatments for what ails us.

Yet what use is that if people can’t afford them?

While some diseases you can perhaps reduce your chances of getting them with lifestyle tweaks, cancer doesn’t swerve from the virtuous.

They say that women who have had children, who breastfed, who do not take hormonal birth control are less likely to get breast cancer.

Yet all you need to do is visit the nearest chemotherapy daycare ward and so many of these women, on paper, should have lower risk and yet cancer found them still.

Cancer is just cells behaving like cells would, with random chance deciding who gets to stare death in the face, and who gets to have the Reaper reschedule his appointment for another time.

I will never be free of hospitals.

Like another survivor said, cancer patients iive scan-to-scan, with the looming spectre of recurrence always skulking, there being no magic incantation that will make it leave for good.

We need more doctors, more nurses, more hospitals, more income equality.

Instead we get more highways, more data centres, more announcements of budget cuts and more investors applauding retrenchment drives.

We have even turned the houses of healing into monuments to greed, with pretty fountains and banal elevator music.

The saying goes, “Only when the last tree has been cut down, the last fish been caught, and the last stream poisoned, will we realise we cannot eat money.”

We used to consider locusts scourges; now we elect them to boards and make them trillionaires. 

Perhaps only when there are no more people left to slave and toil, with even the robot makers and tinkerers dead of sickness, starvation or from natural disasters, will the agents of capital understand that you cannot stripmine humanity in perpetuity.

As impossible as it might seem now, I still live in hope that I will see humanity win over the barons of greed before Death offers me a hand up the stairs, as we exist in this grand cinema we call life.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.

JUNE 27 — There have been numerous hiking accidents and mishaps happening in our country of late. 

In the first five months, Malaysia recorded 52 cases of lost hikers involving 114 victims. In fact, Malaysia has recorded 1,059 hiking accidents and 63 deaths since 2021.

Those are not negligible numbers.

Likewise, I’m sure we’ve all noticed some recent tragedies around the world involving cave-diving.

Could these have been avoided by some simple rules like, say, ensuring that hikers never wander off ahead too far alone? Or follow a “Stop” protocol if one is lost? Or, in cave-diving, something like “All divers must not use recreational equipment when diving beyond a certain depth”, or “Always maintain a continuous line (of rope, etc.) from the entrance, etc.”? Or maybe just bar cave-diving during monsoon season?!

Those events involved some lives which were snuffed out. Could adhering to, say, one extra SOP have ensured more people survived?

The value of ‘constructive paranoia’

Anthropologist Jared Diamond relates this story which happened on one of his many trips to New Guinea. 

He noticed that his native guides refused to sleep under a tree if it was dead. At first Diamond felt that their behaviour verged on overreaction but then it occurred to him that a) every day he could hear trees falling somewhere in the forest and b) given how often the new Guineans slept under trees, it was entirely rational to avoid sleeping under a dead tree because one never knew when it would fall (see note 1).

Diamond gave a name to the kind of caution exercised by his New Guinea guides: Constructive paranoia.

Risk expert Nassim Taleb further explains that we must never discount any kind of behaviour (no matter how “irrational” or “superstitious” they appear) if such behaviour facilitated long-term endurance or survival. 

Ergo, a little bit of paranoia ensures we’re not hit by high-impact irreversible tragedies.

Speaking of falling trees in New Guinea, my former workplace is situated on top of a hill. Many cars park along the slopes along which are many trees. 

Following the advice of Diamond and Taleb, I warned my colleagues and students to NOT park on those slopes. 

You just never know when a tree may collapse, especially during huge storms.

I would generalise this advice to caution any driver from parking their car under any tree for prolonged periods of time. Like many readers, I have lost count of the number of cars I have seen crushed by falling branches. 

‘I would generalise this advice to caution any driver from parking their car under any tree for prolonged periods of time.’ — Bernama pic

In addition, I would also caution you to stay clear of outdoor parking lots especially those with a high tendency to flood, especially now that the monsoon season has started. Unless you’re just stopping for a few minutes, it’s probably safer to find parking indoors.

Such constructively paranoid suggestions can come across as impractical, silly, boring or fun-destroying. And yes constructive paranoia will inevitably yank the joyride chain of those who like “living on the edge”. 

But think about the many bicyclist friends you know who’ve broken a leg or an arm because going at top speeds was such a thrill.

For some folks, tragedies are the only reality that will persuade them of the folly of their actions. Would it really hurt to have behaved in a constructively “paranoid” manner?

It’s not about being afraid of life; it’s about removing unnecessary risks thereby lowering the chances of reaping big-time irreversible consequences.

Note 1: See the entire chapter 7 of Diamond’s The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn From Traditional Societies?  

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.

JUNE 25 — It is three days to the start of the Johor election.

There is absolutely nothing of significance to report as far as ideas are concerned.

Based on Johor, and presumably in Negeri Sembilan too, Malaysia should look around to see if there are global awards or ranking systems for political parties, like TIMES or QS. 

Because we would absolutely smash it as the most colourless electioneers in the world.

Really, just nothing out there.

And my ire is directed at Bersama. Surely as the late johnny to the soirée, it should make more of a meal of it.

Why?

Because it is the Rafizi Ramli party. Opines he rides ahead of the herd. Now, unconstrained by party etiquette and fluff, he can display his full repertoire. Instead, he and Bersama, other than the wisecracks, are completely rudderless.

Firstly, that does not mean do not vote for Bersama. There are worse choices. It’s just that after pegging itself as the better choice, it refuses to be the different choice it promises to be. And if there is no substantive difference between Bersama and the tired usual, incumbency wins.

That’s the pity of it all. 

Rafizi Ramli and Nik Nazmi Nik Ahmad left their party and their parliamentary seats. Noble in that they did not pretend to stay in the party while bitching about it and the leadership. 

And they started a party. Which is great for them. All Jomo Kenyattas and Sukarnos have to begin with vehicles.

Now, there’s the vehicle. Use it.

Tell us why Bersama has the core principles which were never realised in PKR.

It seems they have the same idea of political parties as those in the ascendancy. Pick up interesting people and put them in to contest. 

Since interesting people are in short supply they settle for “been around” characters, hoping they’d be familiar even if galaxies away from being interesting.

How not to be incensed when Bersama chooses to unveil its 15 candidates tomorrow evening, 12 hours from the nomination deadline. 

Rafizi says it is a strategy. At this rate they might be the best kept secrets in all the 15 constituencies the weekend after election day. If the strategy was for fewer people to know that they want their votes, then it is working spectacularly well.

How not to be incensed when Bersama chooses to unveil its 15 candidates tomorrow evening, 12 hours from the nomination deadline. — Picture by Raymond Manuel

The reason why election campaigns were shortened in the 1980s by Dr Mahathir was to rush them, and therefore not let his opponents familiarise themselves to voters. 

Mix it with the potent power of incumbency and state media, it results in electorates in a struggle to turn their backs on Barisan Nasional.

Before the voters can pause to consider the other ideas available and chat with their friends and families, and rationalise the options and candidates, the politicians are already in the state assembly or Dewan Rakyat to be sworn-in.

New ideas need time to coagulate in the minds of the people. New parties by definition seek to bring new ideas. Getting more time is critical for them to seed the ideas in the masses’ minds.

That means putting their core principles out early. Introduce the candidates as early as possible and hit the ground running. Only when the people are acquainted with the candidates can they offer themselves as volunteers and polling/counting agents.

BN, PN and Pakatan do not need more time to campaign beyond what is allotted because they do not intend to present anything new. They are resource rich and imagination poor which is par for the course.

Let me give you an example.

BN are very happy that Zahid Hamidi, who is also their chairman, is not made to complete his defence in the Akal Budi case, those 47 corruption charges. 

PN are the people inside the glass house who cannot ill-afford to throw stones. 

Pakatan is led by the prime minister.

All three are going to instead claim they are about doing the best for Malaysia beginning with Johor. 

Why so, they have a good line-up of candidates. They have zero interest in assuming a clear position because that would be risky.

How does Bersama want to deal with the Zahid question?

By not.

It is highly unlikely that Rafizi can find it in himself to say that it was wrong not to pursue the case.

To be contrite about the past. Bersama cannot surge in the present without the fortitude to admit its leaders’ complicity in political compromises, shockingly unethical.

The high moral horse needs an occupant and no one is brave enough to mount the saddle.

Zahid is not the only mistake that Rafizi actively participated in, so did Nik Nazmi. The journey to the top through Bersama requires them to cleanse themselves of their previous roles, by being remorseful, at least.

Then to live that kamikaze ethos they announce but do not dare embrace in action.

They are not in PKR anymore, so why act like they are? They can break the usual splinter mould. Rather than be a better version of PKR, they can become a better version of themselves and offer examples to their people to a philosophical core of their movement. Again, not a less dull version of PKR.

For instance, the campaign for the 16th General Election should have started two years ago. They are late but instead of trying to be a contender in this election, they should treat it as a dress rehearsal for the real show, the general election no more than eighteen months from now.

I fear in desperation they’d just join the rest, to be the umpteenth populist party with no ideas but a conveyor belt of recycled leaders.

I’d be happy to be proven wrong but all the indications up to this juncture point to a brasher appearing party with an unabashed leader with no logical theory underpinning the enterprise.

Before they want the people to sing their song, they might want to write it. Not mimic the old guys and hope everyone pretends it’s a new song because Rafizi and Nik Nazmi are singing it.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.

JUNE 24 — “It’s like the solution to everything is exercise,” a friend complained to me.

Yes, I replied, while sending her yet another study, all of them saying pretty much the same thing — eat right, exercise and don’t stress out too much.

Just the other day I was reading about the effects of what the Japanese call 森林浴 (Shinrin-yoku) or forest bathing.

No, it’s not about forest nudism but simply about spending time in Nature.

Nippon Medical School clinical professor Dr Qing Li decided to study the health benefits of forest bathing, the results which were published in a paper: Effects of forest environment (Shinrin-yoku/Forest bathing) on health promotion and disease prevention — the Establishment of “Forest Medicine”. 

From observations, trees transmit phytoncides, compounds that have an effect on our bodies’ Natural Killer (NK) cells that work to identify and eradicate cancer cells, increasing their number as well as the levels of anti-proteins such as perforin, GRN, and GrA/B.

According to the author, the urge to hike, camp or pursue other recreational activities in Nature is our bodies telling us what is good for our health. — Pexels.com pic

The paper is not suggesting you should replace chemo with a walk in the trees; it’s more surmising that forest bathing helps strengthen your immune system, with particular effects that will help stave off cancer.

What is also interesting is that this increased activity in NK lasted for up to 30 days after a session.

Perhaps the urge to hike, camp or pursue other recreational activities in Nature is our bodies telling us what is good for our health.

It’s a shame that in the next decade or so more of our forests are being decimated if not for palm oil, but condos or the newest scourge: data centres.

I wish people would consult the I Ching rather than ask ChatGPT if they should have toast or oatmeal for breakfast.

Casting three coins and attempting to infer the meanings of the hexagrams would probably be a better use of your time. 

You cannot trust LLMs; their inner workings do not follow what a human would call logic, dependent on probabilities and algorithms.

The I Ching, I find, like many other tools of divination, is not really about seeing the future but understanding yourself. 

If, say, you flipped a coin, in the end the actual result might not matter because the real answer is what you are hoping to get. 

What will you do, then, when you can no longer hide behind your indecision and are faced squarely with what you truly desire?

Right now my desire is to see less AI-slop writing on my socials, it’s so aggravating.

I tried web searching what time the nearest train station would open and I noticed the AI summary (which I never use, it’s wrong more than half the time) confidently stated the station would be open at 5.30am.

Reader, no RapidKL station on the Kelana Jaya line has ever opened before 6am.

It’s now one of the hottest summers ever recorded in Europe with temperatures exceeding 40°Celsius in, of all places, Paris.

I miss the days when people took things like the ozone layer seriously and some rando wasn’t insisting climate change was a hoax.

But despair will not help me. 

All I can do for now is to find that time, once a week, to walk among the trees because it is good for my mind and body, before the whole of Klang Valley becomes, as Joni Mitchell sang, just one paved parking lot.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.

JUNE 18 — You are upset that Pakatan Harapan has not reformed the country enough. You are eligible to vote in Johor or Negeri Sembilan. 

You are tempted to not get into the car and drive to Johor on July 11 or August 1 to vote. 

You are upset reading this because it is the same narrative on repeat using a different font. Also, you skipped lunch. 

Let’s flip this to give it dimension.

Is reform storming in the country? No. Is the deputy prime minister not facing the jeopardy of prison because the government he leads has an attorney-general unwilling to let the defence even try to wriggle out of a well-delivered prosecution, because he paused it? Yes. 

Did you feel giddy in 2018, when Pakatan won, and giddier in 2022 because the messianic-like Anwar Ibrahim, the number one reformist candidate for a quarter of a century, was finally prime minister and was about to unleash the reform Kraken?  Undoubtedly.

You are a disappointed Pakatan voter. Worse if you were one as far back as 2008 when it did not have a name for itself, just a hodgepodge of political parties not inclined to allow Barisan Nasional waltz to two-thirds in Parliament.

After all that, four elections with false starts to get to a tryst with destiny, the Madani Project delivers three and a half years of half measures and qualified successes. 

The country is not falling apart but the feeling it’s still the dreary same is hard to fend off. The Middle-East conflict challenges Malaysia, as it does the world, but it’s manageable still.

File picture of Malaysians casting their votes at a polling station during the 15th Malaysia general election at Sekolah Kebangsaan Puncak Alam 2 on November 19, 2022. — Picture by Miera Zulyana

But what do you do as a voter?

I get this infuriating response from the random irate name on the electoral roll. “I just won’t vote, that will show them!”

Firstly, it shows nothing to no one. 

This is not a typical buying decision. Choosing not to buy overpriced Starbucks drinks over politics has led to X number of stores shuttered in recent years. 

But a country — or in this case a state — is not a retailer, therefore the analogy struggles to translate. 

Voting decides who runs either state, by deciding to not vote, does not mean the respective states are not run for the next five years.  The state is run the next day regardless how many per cent of the electoral roll shows up on election day.

Not showing up to vote means denying yourself the right to affect who gets executive power through accumulation of legislative representation. 

It’s happening whether you like it or not, and no amount of grousing the next five years matters after polling day has as significant an impact as casting the vote.

The pickle in this tickle of retelling the same old is that the prime minister and the members of Pakatan are convinced that a high turnout on July 11 and then August 1, means only good things for them.

In their estimate, those who are mulling “to go or not to go” are disinclined by Pakatan’s performance in the past years but equally disinterested in the other mob.

They are numbed Pakatan voters who are not braindead to know the other lot, Barisan Nasional and Perikatan Nasional and its splinters are committed to limit Malaysia’s social evolution to an acceptable zero.

This is where the Johor and Negeri elections are different from the Sabah election late last year and the impending Sarawak election later this year.  

Over there, state unity is at an all-time high, which seismically shifts choices to local choices versus Semenanjung-infused choices.

Over here in Semenanjung, it is whether apathy mixed with traditional incentives directly or indirectly to the voters yields seats for BN and PN, or social activism mixed with a general sense that things have to be progressive giving Pakatan and some like-minded parties wins.

Are you, the progressive, still upset? Of course you are because it is not ideal. It is a huge shout away from par. 

But actions must be welded to what is possible and not on options unavailable on the menu.

Turn out and vote, if not for Pakatan, there are the other parties drawn to progressive ideas that are not BN or PN. Those in power may have come up short, but those not in power who are traditionalists are not going to pick your values, they are intent on burying them. To steady a Malaysia forever race-based, opposed to equality and divided. 

However underwhelming the present feels, remember you sent a former prime minister to prison, and if 809-pages of a ruling holds out, he is looking at prison till he is in his eighties.

Voting did get things done. Our flag-bearers have poor scorecards but the larger agenda to move us in one direction rather than the other remains. Requires a heck of a lot of fighting daily, but still on the table.

Almost 30 years ago, I put my chips on Anwar not because he was worthy but he was the biggest bat to take a swing at the authoritarian and absolutist BN. 

Anwar was from the system and as such the malfunctions are expected. BN and its splinter PN and every other splinter, are still the same, if anything more convinced in the unique unequal Malaysian solution.

I wrote at the start “four elections with false starts to get to a tryst with destiny.” The last four words were in the opening line of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s inaugural address at India’s independence in 1947. 

He ends the sentence with “we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially.”

Not wholly or in full measure. Just substantially. It’s a long game, this.  

And if there is one thing progressives understand, no real gain is realised overnight. On July 11 and then on August 1, Malaysia hears from the south which side of substantial things fall.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.

JUNE 17 — Once you’re a cancer patient, regardless of whether you’re cured or not, you will never be free of hospitals.

Right now I see my oncologist every three months, my surgeon every six.

I get a mammogram and if needed, an ultrasound, once a year. My latest scans have come back clear and for now, I can feel some relief.

The universe can be amusing; I had just wrapped up a boss battle in Final Fantasy VII: Remake Intergrade when my number was called.

It’s not the easiest of games but it’s not so hard that I quit out of frustration.

Like the game, my cancer journey has been full of milestones or, as I see them, “boss battles” with the final boss being my cancer.

Unlike Final Fantasy I won’t know if the bosses will stay defeated.

The threat of cancer returning looms always but here’s the thing — for some people no matter how clean they eat, how much they exercise, how zen their mindset, it comes back.

Stressing or worrying will not serve me.

Follow-up appointments are now an unavoidable part of my life but hey, I can play games while waiting. — Picture by Erna Mahyuni

This time, I am mapping my own healing journey but instead of slaying monsters, I am recalibrating my body and how I navigate life.

Once you truly understand just how fragile life is, you learn the answer to that question: do you truly want to live?

Many of us barely live.

Life becomes a series of routines, we get hung up on life’s minutiae and sometimes death comes too quickly to even have time for regrets.

I’ve written the first draft of a book, am letting a second one percolate a little in my mind while I get on with the business of living.

Physically I wish I wasn’t carrying a few extra kilos but at the hospital, I felt just so grateful to be able to walk up the stairs without feeling like I was climbing a steep mountain.

I didn’t have to cling to the banister, lean against a wall, drag one foot slowly behind the other, with each step feeling more torturous the longer it took.

For once I felt as well as I looked.

If I hadn’t been bald previously, no one would have clocked me as a cancer patient, too plump, too tan, too outwardly able-looking.

It got to the point I had to perform my cancer, with loud groans, slow shuffles, dramatic clutching of handrails because otherwise I would get stares that asked “why are you here” or “why are you sitting down/taking the lift/crowding the waiting room.”

For now I am free of the shackles of judgement and nosy parkers, with legs that (mostly) obey me and shoulders and arms that hurt a lot less.

While I will spend hours in waiting rooms for as long as I am alive, all that time isn’t wasted — I’ll just play Final Fantasy on my Switch or chase after tricky Pokémon.

No hour is wasted if it’s spent doing things you love and I hope, when I finally encounter that final boss I am destined not to beat, that I will be satisfied with how I played this game we call life.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.

JUNE 16 — I confess I don’t watch that many Korean TV series. But about two weeks ago someone recommended this one, Teach You A Lesson (directed by Hong Jong-chan), to me on account of my role as a teacher. 

The person even asked me if I recognise some of the problems highlighted in the show and whether they apply to Malaysia?

I wasn’t interested at first. But then I noticed that Teach You A Lesson was trending as the #1 non-English show from early June onwards (and I think it was also #2 across all shows) so I thought what the heck, let’s give it a shot.

After the first two episodes, I was all in. Adapted from the Naver webtoon Get Schooled, Teach You A Lesson is about a special department of the Korean Ministry of Education being tasked to solve deep systemic problems within the nation’s schools. 

These range from bullying to suicide to gambling addiction and so on.

Initially I was attracted by the sheer action. You have one guy taking on multiple gangsters and making it look easier than Jet Li swatting aside karate novices.

Kim Mu-Yeol is second to none in absolute macho coolness as the chief inspector heading into schools to resolve whatever problem is occuring; his aura farming never lets up and will be a hard act to beat. 

I last saw him trading punches with Don Lee (Round-Up: Punishment) and even then he was easily the best villain in that cop series. 

A scene from ‘Teach You a Lesson’ featuring Kim Mu-yeol as the fierce Na Hwa-jin. — Picture from Facebook/Netflix K-Drama News

He’s now buzzing so much that John Cena recently posted a photo of him on Instagram. And yes, they both look alike.

Jin Ki-Joo is perfect as the OTT female inspector who can trash a dozen guys trying to beat her up. P.O. (a rapper apparently) shines as the tech-guy and Lee Sung-Min is perfect as the wise old man overseeing the bureau in charge of fixing things in school.

The good casting and cool action aside, after a few more episodes, it struck me that the initial punches and kicks were just the hook. 

The real message was something more important. Indeed, the series comes across as more of a social commentary  or a national awareness-type campaign regarding issues in Korean education.

National education arguably stands at the centre of a society’s past, present and future. If the system is abused by its key players and innocent stakeholders suffer, that speaks a LOT about the country as a whole. 

The series covers student-on-student bullying, parent-on-student, teacher-on-student, student-on-teacher, parent-on-teacher, etc. 

In light of the best in film-making, the series hits hard on viscerality, drama and realism. 

The bullying scenes, especially, are very in-your-face. You can practically feel the slaps and the cruelty being meted out. 

No student who has ever been bullied will be unable to identify with the heartache, pain and shame of being relentlessly tormented. 

Likewise, everyone who desires even a modicum of justice will absolutely cheer when the bullies get their own medicine deliciously handed to them.

The fact that a macho dude like Kim Mu-Yeol is doing the ass-whooping makes the series even more satisfying. So satisfying in fact that a few days after the series aired, a group of Korean teachers even protested that the series should be banned as it promoted corporal punishment.

I’m willing to bet nobody gave a damn. Even if many viewers disagreed with hitting students, 99 per cent of them would have no problem enjoying a show where some very vicious assholes got their butts handed to them on a platter.

Almost every episode in the series follows a similar formula which, no matter how often you see it, remains undeniably entertaining: The bad guys get to experience the exact torture and pain and hardship they’ve been passing out to their victims.

This show is proof that watching bullies get paid back via tasting their own medicine never gets old.

It also has an important message for many parents who obsess over their children’s education to the point of, well, oppressing their kids.

In one episode, you see Korean parents maniacally seeking to ensure their children get into med school. Since birth (!), the kids have been force-fed tutors, consultants, round-the-clock studying and even ADHD-ish pills to keep them more focused — it would be hilarious if it wasn’t tragic given how close it mirrors what’s happening in many Asian communities.

One parent screams that she’s sacrificing herself for her son. The protagonist tells her in her face that the truth is the opposite: She’s sacrificed her son for her own wishes.

If you’re an educator or a parent or, of course, a student I reckon this series is a must-watch. 

Even more so when Kim Mu-Yeol, just last week, shared that a teacher from Malaysia sent him a note thanking him for the series and noting that the struggles of teachers as portrayed in the show resonated with him.

Indeed, as it would.

* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.

JUNE 12 — Have you ever presented someone with facts or data which challenged his/her deeply held views, expecting the person to be responsive to the possibility that maybe he/she is not entirely right, only to have him/her doubling down and clinging even more strongly to his/her original belief?

I mean, I know right? 

And, c'mon, this happens with us too, doesn't it? A friend gives us three good reasons demonstrating that our political narrative is less solid than we think – and what do we do? We put up some Captain America shield and stand our ground even more!

Anyway, I recently discovered there is an official name for this phenomenon: the backfire effect. 

The phenomenon suggests that on certain hot-button issues – politics, religion, public health, or other polarised topics – people struggle (or refuse) to distinguish fact from fiction. 

Contradictory information does not always correct misconceptions; indeed, sometimes (or most of the time?) it reinforces them. 

If you've had a recent discussion on, say, vaccines or the Mid-East or US politics you'll 100 per cent know what I'm talking about. 

It's almost as if facts and arguments suddenly usher in some non-normal realm of reality.

Note that these are not cases where a person agrees with you but, for business or vested interests, she has to follow some party line. Example: cigarettes or alcohol or fried food sellers will understandably be less than enthusiastic when presented with facts about, say, the disease-causing properties of their products.

Social media algorithms can reinforce existing beliefs by repeatedly exposing users to information that aligns with their views while filtering out opposing perspectives. — Picture by Yusof Isa

Neither is this a case of information being too complex or complicated to understand, such that people cannot grasp the challenges to their beliefs (hence their non-change of mind).

No, these are cases where there simply are no rational reasons why someone would hold on even more strongly to an original position despite having no pushback or counter-evidence and what-not. 

Efforts to persuade in such cases simply achieve the opposite, back-firing, effect.

Unsurprisingly, backfire effects intensify in highly polarised environments and echo chambers, where information circulates in closed systems. 

Repeated exposure within like-minded groups amplifies beliefs, leading people to selectively accept information that aligns with their views while dismissing contradictions. 

It is also important to distinguish the Backfire Effect from healthy scientific scepticism. 

Researchers routinely question new data, iteratively test hypotheses, and demand rigorous evidence before changing conclusions. 

Not immediately accepting fresh information does not always signal stubbornness; it can reflect a responsible need for time to evaluate it thoroughly.

Why the doubling down?

Several factors appear to drive this reaction. The more emotionally invested we are in a belief – especially when it forms part of our core identity – the more defensive we become. 

Contrary evidence can feel like a personal attack, prompting us to treat it as hostile rather than informative. 

Social media curation algorithms have exacerbated this by creating personalised media cocoons. 

It is increasingly common to see people demonise others based solely on voting preferences or a single “liked” post. 

In such bubbles, individuals become extremely resistant to data that contradicts their narrative. 

There are moments when people simply lack the emotional or intellectual maturity to engage productively with facts which challenge their cherished beliefs.

It can even sometimes be reasonable for us to avoid correcting misinformation in order to prevent amplifying certain sources or adopting their framing.

Despite these risks, correcting basic facts and straightforward misinformation remains valuable and often effective. 

Hard data and statistics tend to work best because they shift the discussion from “intuition versus intuition” to “evidence versus evidence”. 

Fact-checkers should generally not shy away from corrections out of backfire fears, as these interventions improve belief accuracy even if they do not produce complete attitude change.

Two factors consistently enhance correction effectiveness: providing an alternative explanation for the misconception and offering detailed, evidence-based accounts. Both require time, patience, and careful communication from all involved. 

Ultimately, the Backfire Effect is not an excuse to abandon truth-seeking or civil discourse. 

It is a reminder of human psychology’s complexities – our identities, emotions, and social environments shape how we process information. 

In an age of abundant misinformation, understanding this effect equips us better to navigate disagreements. 

It calls for humility, persistence, and a commitment to evidence over ego. Facts may not always change minds instantly, but patient, well-crafted corrections can still move beliefs closer to reality – one calibrated step at a time.

** This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.

JUNE 11 — Fascinating does not entirely encapsulate the insane stratagems underway in Johor and Negeri Sembilan’s elections. 

Granted they are extensions of national anxieties accelerated by these assembly polls.

The Election Commission (EC) meets tomorrow, June 12, to decide polling day, most likely around the World Cup final on July 20.

An overarching theme to the elections is identity politics and its grip on our national politics. 

The July vote counts will put to bed the notion, or not, that race gets an outsized say still in 2026 Malaysia. 

A litmus test of how far the country has come, and whether the spirit of 2022 reemerges.

It’s loud out there. The key developments involve the Perikatan Nasional's (PN) existential crisis, Barisan Nasional’s (BN) return to basics via induced amnesia and Pakatan Harapan’s hold to its tradition driven by DAP.  

Dancing around all this is Anwar Ibrahim, waiting without cutting ties with anyone.    

The grand unity plan

The Islamist PAS turned the heat up to maximum this week by announcing an end to co-operation with Bersatu. 

Yet, this decision does not mean its exit from PN. Read between the lines, PAS feels it took the relationship as far as possible and it’s time Muhyiddin Yassin’s troops vacated the PN residences. 

Funnily, Bersatu feels the same way. A classic separation with paperweights cum partner cum offspring Gerakan and Malaysian Indian People’s Party (MIPP) hoping beyond hope they do not get sent to orphanages.

PAS wants the new girlfriend Reset Malaysia to move in.

And also, extends invites to every Malay-first organisation. It rounded up Parti Pejuang Tanah Air (Pejuang), Parti Bumiputera Perkasa Malaysia (Putra), Parti Berjasa Malaysia (Berjasa) and Parti Perikatan India Muslim Nasional (Iman). Ibrahim Ali gets a lifeboat from his old PAS pals.

PAS reactivated Annuar Musa, former Umno secretary-general and now central committee member, to resuscitate Muafakat Nasional immediately. 

Ask Umno to submit to the greater good, the ultimate unity vehicle. Annuar says it does not matter what it is called as long as all Malay leaders come together, right now. I'd call it Trantor. 

Muafakat gets the firm support from Umno Youth Chief Akmal Saleh but not party president Zahid Hamidi.

Zahid is not amiss to sense PAS wants to overwhelm Umno’s current Rumah Bangsa with its even bigger ambition.

The author argues that the Johor and Negeri Sembilan elections are being driven by a contest over identity politics, with parties trying to outdo each other as more important issues are sidelined. — Picture by Firdaus Latif

PAS wants it all. Because lightweights Gerakan and MIPP are asked to stay despite them allowed zero input to the PAS manoeuvres. 

They are so light, they have to stay, less risk floating away to Neptune, or even as far as Trantor.

Do not misunderstand, the “others” parties are welcome but the goal is to be the unapologetic grand Malay-first coalition. Umno is welcome but this train is departing from the platform, either way.

This is PAS’ riposte to Bersatu, it builds a better supergroup than PN in 2022. Except despite the inroads in that general election for both PAS and Bersatu in the Semenanjung back then, the former did not win any parliamentary seats in Johor or Negeri Sembilan. 

PAS style does not click as much in the south but ambition they believe can take them across the finishing line.

PAS has a single strategy, that Malaysians have got even more polarised, especially the lower age-groups and they will heed the clarion call. That enough Malays will vote for the grand coalition. 

This is more PAS than PN, and the evidence is not only in the decision to use the party logo for Johor. 

It is more evident in how muted PN chairman Samsuri Mokhtar is, ceding authority to his party leaders Hadi Awang and Tuan Ibrahim Tuan Man.

Umno gets mirrored

Up to June, when Onn Hafiz set a course for elections, Umno was on the up.

Its 80th anniversary, and the homecoming of who’s who in Malay politics. Even MCA and MIC were out partying in the streets, ready to collect seat victories on the shoulder of big brother.

They felt the only downside was the association with Pakatan inside the Madani government, and therefore the need to put distance between Umno and DAP.

That’s what they thought till PAS went into overdrive this week.

Now, they are in a race to rack up their Malay credentials as PAS and Reset Malaysia play up their romance for the sake of Malays under threat.

It has to politely shy away from PAS’ “true” Malay movement even if Akmal foolishly wills it. 

Expect the op-eds on how Pejuang, Iman and Putra saddling up beside PAS is insignificant. 

After all, as Gerakan Tanah Air (GTA), all three parties lost all deposits at the 2022 General Election. 

Yet, younger voters are a bother.

At the last state polls, with 55 per cent turnout, BN snatched 40 of the 56 seats, or 71 per cent. 

Eight months later at the general election when 73 per cent or an increase of over one million voters, BN only secured nine of the 26 seats (35 per cent). When more showed up, ostensibly more younger voters, BN suffered.

The Manchurian Test

In the 1962 thriller The Manchurian Candidate, a political candidate was brainwashed with a trigger word planted through hypnosis. 

That the candidate cannot help himself, the idea is too embedded in the person that once activated he can only do what he is programmed to do. 

Malaysia may have a degree of the Manchurian Candidate, in our case the voters, not the election candidates. 

That Malay voters — by virtue of living through lives dominated by PAS clerics and Umno right-wingers — cannot refuse the allure of the dream united Malay movement. That once triggered, everything else pales in significance.

For the sake of balance, let’s consider Johor’s challenges.

Facilitate the Johor- Singapore Special Economic Zone (JS-SEZ) undertaking. While GDP growth exceeds the national average, electricity supply is not amped up to match the investment. 

This is central to the jobs creation venture to raise the state median monthly wage above the national median which is a couple of hundred above RM3,000. With better and higher paying jobs, the ability to own homes in an inflated market. 

While the Johor Economic Transformation Plan intends to raise the game at the other towns — Mersing, Segamat, Kluang and Batu Pahat for instance — it is still about the state capital region gobbling up growth.  

The RTS Link, the game-changer ,kicks off in 2027 but question marks ensue about the Johor end processing 40,000 passengers daily. 

If smooth travels from the Singapore end are met by bottlenecks on the Johor side, all may come to naught.

That’s just a short list, and insanely, none are campaign issues.

Both Umno-BN and PAS-Muafakat are convinced that the votes centre around who is more Malay dedicated and the Manchurian effect triggers as election day looms. 

Which means, if like in 2022, the online vitriol hits fever pitch to drown out all other considerations. 

Scare voters about the spectre of not-Malay enough winners, and therefore government.

There is a toll here. The sanity of the people. The Manchurian effect is about psychological trauma, in this case of entire peoples'. 

That people are constantly made to be afraid of dangers they cannot see and the need to suspend reason and to become completely tribal. 

These politicians forget that these people they milk for votes have to live between elections too. 

Living daily with the fear of the loss of Malay power leaves a regular person troubled. And fuels social ills. Not that the politicians care, they have elections to win. 

JUNE 10 — I'm off work this week and no, it's not because I went and lost my head and bought another plane ticket.

My house needs cleaning, my lawn needs weeding and my gardenia plant needs saving from a bad case of the mealybugs.

Next week I have a follow-up appointment with my surgeon to go over the results of my latest mammogram but next week is next week, this week I'm decluttering.

That includes my hobbies; I have belatedly discovered CEX and the joys of trading in my old video games for new video games.

I no longer game on anything but the Nintendo Switch 2 — it's portable, fairly powerful and was worth selling my older Switch for and I don't miss playing on mobile, PC or the PS5.

While I was cataloging what I had, I came to realise I have a fairly big library of digital games (curse those eShop sales) and a decent amount of physical ones.

Except maybe for the upcoming Fire Emblem release this year, I have a moratorium on buying more games and will attempt to clear at least half of my gaming backlog.

"Clearing" also means being able to be honest with myself about whether I will finish a game. 

First on my list A Short Hike — the reviews were great, the price was cheap and it seemed charming enough. You're a bird. With legs. Going on a hike.

But after two hours I got annoyed by all the puzzles, having to map routes, collect enough golden feathers to be able to scale cliffs and talk to increasingly annoying NPCs.

Maybe it was the cancer, but if I'm not doing things that I need to do (eat, show up for work) or want to do (nap, eat too many croissants) I have decided I will just not do them.

Do I need to finish A Short Hike? Do I want to finish it? No and no.

This Marie Kondo-ish approach also serves me well for house cleaning. Do I need this? Do I want this? Two no's and off it goes into the bin.

What do I want to do? Watch Masters of the Universe a second time because it is leaving the cinemas fairly early. Make a grilled cheese sandwich. Figure out how to make decent French toast. 

What do I not want to do? Give too much of a damn about current political machinations. 

The world turns. Politicians remain selfish and mostly stupid. I will tend my gardenias and focus on the more important things in life — like when the LRT3 will open so I don't have to spend 40 ringgit on return Grab fares to 1 Utama. 

Apart from that I will be playing another game — AI: The Somnium Files. I'll tell you about it next week.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.

JUNE 4 — The upcoming Johor state election like the Olympics focuses on the medal tally, with Barisan Nasional, Pakatan Harapan and Perikatan Nasional trying to hog the limelight. 

Indeed, it will be a minor miracle if none of them hold the mentri besar post when the counting is done. 

Then why bother with the certain also-rans? Because how they fare determines whether they have a future. 

To know if they are set to be serious players in the general election — regardless if months away or in 2028. 

It can also decide if Malaysia is set to have four significant coalitions, or just three restructured ones. 

In the outside lanes

Muda, Bersama, Reset Malaysia and Pejuang can get to the starting line, but are they all just as keen?

Let’s read their vitals.

The easiest one first. 

Pejuang did contest in the last Johor polls in 2022. Forty-two races, trounced in all, losing all deposits. 

A picture of consistency when eight months later at the general election, they and all their allies under Gerakan Tanah Air lost every parliamentary and state race — 168 in total — and lost every deposit. They might have funded the Election Commission’s Xmas party. 

The humiliations included party president Mukhriq Mahathir and his dad, Mahathir Mohamad. 

Since the debacle Mahathir has left the party. He plays musical chairs in heading and advising a series of parties and movements bent on race first. He is still prominent in Pejuang’s promotional material even after ditching them. 

It’s probably far less difficult to explain quantum physics than to describe exactly what Pejuang is today and what purpose it serves. 

If they throw their hat in Johor and sustain their failure performance rate, when is it time to call it quits?

Pejuang wants to partner with others to be relevant. Unfortunately, the intended targets prefer Pejuang being irrelevant.

BN and Pakatan are non-starters and PN has too many suitors. At this pace, Pejuang might talk itself into oblivion. 

Muda won one state seat courtesy of co-operation with Pakatan in 2022, Puteri Wangsa. 

It’ll defend that one as president Amira Aisya Abdul Aziz (4A) is the incumbent and newly minted as party president. 

The tragedy, however, is that ex-president Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman remains a large shadow; Amira lacks charisma, and Saddiq produces more catchy youth content in a week than Muda has in the past three years. 

Its new leaders fumble most lines between saying they want youth, youth and youth, and then in the next breath urge all Malaysians to back them. 

They have an equally dysfunctional relationship with exclusivity as Umno has, only with colossally less history and victories. 

In its last election foray, the 2023 August polls — Perak, Penang, Selangor and Negeri Sembilan — all 19 Muda candidates lost their deposits. 

If Amira loses this time, and further loses her deposit, what is the party left with? 

Reset Malaysia, let’s be honest, is waiting for a suitable arrangement with PN before nomination day. 

PAS are stuck in a three way love fest, holding Bersatu with their right hand reluctantly and reluctant to let go Bersatu rebels on their left. 

Already PAS Info Chief Fadhli Shari has declared support for ex-Bersatu man Wan Saiful Wan Jan wherever he contests. That’s not an endorsement that makes Bersatu President Muhyiddin Yassin smile.

It was 39 days or almost six weeks between dissolution and nomination day in Sabah last year. 

Hamzah Zainudin’s motley crew face a countdown with no option to reset. Bersatu for their own survival will run down the clock and leave Hamzah ashen. 

PAS being PAS will expect the rest to conclude matters for them. Indecision will dominate and Muyiddin’s field marshall Azmin Ali cannot countenance parity for Hamzah’s unregistered group. 

And Hamzah won’t touch Pejuang with a long barge pole, which further isolates him. He understands best how home ministers tend to be massively unkind to those out of power, like himself. 

Not sure he’d be thrilled to use the mangosteen or tractor for his yikes, independent candidates!

The final outsider contestant is Bersama. Terengganu-born Rafizi Ramli is probably looking at the electoral roll and using several AI tools to spit out the right number of candidates to field. 

He is always convinced electoral victory is a formula away rather than a strong, consistent and honest message away. 

And PKR, already under fire, will want to squash its former deputy president. 

He’d be attacked by his own protege Akmal Nasir, the former PKR youth chief, Johor Baru MP and currently helming the ministry Rafizi exited. 

Akmal would be expected by the party to trample on Bersama. It is obvious that Bersama targets PKR seats. 

It is unfortunate Bersama is asked to contest so soon after kicking off but it cannot choose to shy away from this battle. 

(From left) Nik Nazmi Nik Ahmad and Datuk Seri Rafizi Ramli raise their hands together on stage during the official launch of the new political branding 'BERSAMA' (Together) at the PJ Performing Arts Centre in Petaling Jaya. May 17, 2026—Picture by Raymond Manuel

No podium, potential in being competitive

Firstly, the goal for these future champions or far too soon to disappear phenomenons is not to win the state but to establish a beachhead. 

Which of the four possess the nous to prevail?

Then look at the measures used to evaluate potential. 

The “candidate to deposit loss” ratio enables a plain view of survivability. Can one in eight voters dare support your party? 

Pejuang never recovered from 2022 and Muda from 2023. This is the figure used by the Internet to denigrate second tier parties. In politics it is better to be hated than to be laughed at. 

Second, exhibiting a spine in electoral arrangements, if it comes to it, matters plenty. Operating from a weakened position they cannot choose to ignore overtures. 

The outcome is beyond small players, as BN, Pakatan and PN dictate terms. 

But they cannot let the process chip away at their credibility. But being beggars shooed away from the negotiation table downgrades parties, demeans them. 

Muda was perpetually treated like that by Pakatan and if they think PN are a classier bunch, they are asking for a repeat.

Malaysians are aware the big boys prefer fewer players and use electoral pacts to bury the competition. 

Eighteen years ago Parti Sosialis Malaysia was unregistered but had an MP and assemblyman each thanks to a partnership with Pakatan. 

Last year, as a registered party but long ignored by Pakatan, it mustered 6 per cent in Perak’s Ayer Kuning’s by-election and lost the deposit. 

The reality check for PSM is that compared to recent years’ outcomes, Ayer Kuning was not a horrible result. 

Strangely, Bersama has a chance to fail spectacularly but impress a nation. Rafizi is the only politician east of Mandalay who identifies himself as a kamikaze and thinks that’s a good thing. 

Spoiler alert, the Japanese did damage the enemy in the Second World War using kamikaze pilots but ultimately lost the war. But Rafizi was a boarding school Malay language debater, those sorts do not let facts get in the way of a story. 

In pursuit of a beautiful defeat, he might spark interest in his party. But that’s the conundrum, he needs to excite people about his party, not just him. 

Which means the candidates and their stories. They are the ones who need to run into machine-gun fire in a ritual of democratic zeal. But that’s not Rafizi’s style. 

Nik Nazmi Nik Ahmad is the natural number two to him not because they were long-time PKR leaders, short-lived ministers and alumni of Malay College, but rather due to Nazmi being happy to let Rafizi corner the attention. 

Though, Rafizi might ultimately prove all of us wrong. 

Say Rollo Tomassi

In the first-past-the-post dynamics of our Westminster Parliamentary system, it is a high bar to clear for a party to survive infancy. 

Until 2008, the country had half a century of a fixed coalition against under-strength and divided opponents. Almost a one-party nation. 

By 2020 we accelerated through deceit and backroom deals, into a three-way game. 

Parliamentary democracies naturally limit themselves to two sides until untidy and quick splinters occur which crowd the field and frustrate voters.

Johor may be the first of several obstacles to test the mettle of the established three and the newer players. 

For the former, to top the game, for the latter, to stay in the game. In a cruel way, it is far harder for the pretenders to stay relevant than for the big three to win.  

For the four, it is also auditions. Notch up support for themselves or increase voter turnout or turn into Internet sensations, then the big three have to consider partnerships. 

And from there to the general. There are too many moving parts for now. 

They all won’t hurt their chances if they put on their strategy wall throughout this election this reminder: Go big or go home!

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.

JUNE 3 — The summer solstice falls on June 21 this year.

I am told we should expect hotter weather as El Nino returns; saw someone saying that no South-east Asian can be trusted who says their favourite season is summer.

Yet as spring dissipates it feels as though I have come out of hibernation.

With the warmer season inching closer my body seems to welcome it even through the discomfort and the menopausal experience of always feeling as though my internal oven is stuck at “burning”.

The political temperature in the country is also rising.

State assemblies are dissolving, politicians are retiring, new political parties and coalitions are emerging or re-emerging.

Two years from my fiftieth decade, I understand now that we can only understand life through cycles. What lives must die, what starts must end and sometimes the same old things come back around.

Yet new cycles can still appear alongside new ideas, new hopes and new crisis. 

My dysfunctional left shoulder blade is slowly regaining mobility and I find myself reaching out with my left arm, no longer fearing sharp pain.

It seems like such a small thing to be able to just stretch for my water bottle with my left hand and yet each time it still feels like a miracle. 

Less than two months ago I would have to turn all the way to my left, picking things up with my right arm because my left side might as well have been made of stone.

All things must pass, whether weather or sorrow. — Picture by Erna Mahyuni

Countless stretches and exercises seemed to have, to my eye, barely any effect but I tried them anyway even resorting to acupuncture which seemed to finally start the breaking of the glacier that was my arm.

There is still a lot of pain.

I wake up during the night feeling aches all over my arms, along my thighs, feel the stiffness of my ankles and the soreness of my hip joints.

Yet I do not take painkillers. It is no debilitating pain, just the aches of a body still learning to move again, and despite the constant discomfort it reminds me that I am alive.

Like the final day of my trip to Taipei when after days of constant rain without even the shortest break, the sun finally came out on that last morning.

I walked across the grounds of Huashan Creative Park and sat on the benches that were too wet for me a few days ago.

No coat was needed to shelter me from damp or raindrops, just the sun, the breeze and clouds that stretched across the blue, reminding me of Sabah’s cloud-painted skies.

Everything must end, I know, and now I am hopeful that includes my living as a stiff mannequin wrapped in flesh.

One day I will be able to dart down stairs quicker, not wince while I’m trying to zip up my dress, and be able to run without feeling like my thighs are made of horse jerky left out too long, stiff and unmalleable.

For now I am happy for every day where I feel or think about the pain a little bit less and welcome the sun even as it burns because if the phoenix can rise from the heat, from the fiercest of fires, so, I hope, will I.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.

JUNE 2 — PhD programmes in the country remain quite the rage. Government initiatives like MyBrain 2.0 (or MyPhD) and visa options like Graduate Pass have ensured a steady stream of local and foreign post-graduate students into our academic institutions.

While, as a whole, the increase in the number of PhD graduates should bring a net gain to our country, some issues have already arisen chiefly of which is the high number of unemployed doctoral scholars.

But I want to focus on another pressing issue usually associated with post-graduate programmes, especially PhDs. 

I’ve spent about six years working with post-graduate students and one non-negotiable statistic stands out: The part-timers as a whole do worse than the full-timers.

Yes, yes there are exceptions of course. But these always prove the rule which is that if you’re going to do an MBA, DBA, PhD, etc. your chances of successful completion (within, oh, 20 years or less) rise by a whole lot if you skip the part-time groove and jump in full-time.

One huge problem with part-time is the nasty existence of Parkinson’s Law i.e. that work expands (or, in our context, delays?) to fill up the time available for its completion. 

Put simply, the more time is given the more work people will feel they need to do simply because of the extended duration.

A cute analogy is the average buffet breakfast at any hotel. On a normal day we eat our breakfasts based on our budget and our daily habits which, I guess, would usually be one portion or so. 

According to the author, while, as a whole, the increase in the number of PhD graduates should bring a net gain to our country, some issues have already arisen chiefly of which is the high number of unemployed doctoral scholars. ― AFP file pic

But if we were to stay a few nights at some fancy hotel, suddenly our breakfasts are potentially unlimited since it’s a buffet.

Ditto, the makan version of Parkinson’s Law! (see note 1)

However, I think the problem with a part-time PhD isn’t even that more work actually gets done; it’s the perception slash delusion that one needs to do more (because of the extended time), all of which eventually produces hopelessness and despair. Result? The candidate drops out.

Because a PhD already involves a lot of work as it is. There are the (usually) extensive amounts of reading involved because how do you jump-start an investigation without first knowing what’s relevant, what’s pertinent, what’s already been found, what’s being studied, who the key players and writers are, what’s considered “acceptable” research in the field, what methods are endorsed, future trends and so on.

If holding a PhD in some topic renders you an expert, how can a wannabe expert not spend the requisite time absorbing what every other expert more or less takes for granted on the topic?

Hence, unless we’re going to give up academic integrity and just ask Gemini or DeepSeek to write our 70,000+ words for us, we absolutely need to put the time in to draft out what we have to say.

Like building the Great Wall of China, it’s one brick — or, in this case, one word — at a time. And that’s a whole lot of “bricks” a PhD student has to lay down.

And all this is without the psychological curveball of Parkinson’s Law!

A part-time PhD would, by all accounts, insert this law into a student’s psyche and make that Great Wall feel like an even greater one.

Now for the bad news.

Part-time PhD candidates are usually part-timers because they have a full-time job on their hands. 

This means not only less time to work on their academic research (duh), it also means less “mindshare” or emotional leverage to focus on their theoretical background or literature reviews or what-not.

Hence, again, why in a globe where the average drop-out rate of PhD programmes is 40-50 per cent, part-timers have a categorically higher risk of non-completion than full-timers.

So am I suggesting that you either do a full-time PhD or not at all?

Well, obviously not.

I hope this piece helps as a reminder that when you have more time on your hands (for something as complex as a PhD) it means that time management becomes even more important. 

Make no mistake: A PhD done part-time is more challenging than one done full-time.

Ensure the structure and scope. Don’t allow anyone, not even your supervisor, to tell you to take all the time you need. 

Make sure your thesis is worked out relatively well from the start. Give yourself no mercy on the chapter deadlines. Heck, ask your boss for a sabbatical if possible.

Think and study like a full-timer whatever the official university acceptance letter states.

Don’t let Parkinson’s Law derail your research. All the best.

Note 1: Parkinson’s Law is also displayed every day by every major IT system-integration project that budgets years and years to implement a new system for their organisation. 

Somehow the lesson is never learnt that the longer you “let” a project continue, the more it will be hit with complications and problems.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.

MAY 28 — Speed, agility and strength are quintessential in track and field’s triple jump events, but all comes to nought without rhythm.

Hop too soon and lose out on distance, worry too much about distance and forget about the step then everything goes off colour, and let’s not even get into the need for a final explosive leap. Rhythm cuts through. A bit zen-like.

Malaysian elections are like that and Anwar Ibrahim understands rhythm better than all in the field presently.

It also helps that he is the only person who knows when the next general election is. He gets to set the pace.

His experience and bitter education with rhythm is evidenced in his meteoric rise, catastrophic fall and prolonged impatient wait to lead the country. They aid him to read the electorate.

He did join Umno in the same year he was named a candidate, won his family’s traditional seat and became a deputy minister in 1982. 

Devastating PAS which felt he was odds-on — not that the party members gamble — set to be a PAS member before eloping with the great enemy.  

He did grab Umno’s deputy president post by the scruff of the neck with the dexterity of a seasoned pro in around 10 years. 

He would have replaced Mahathir Mohamad sooner if he did not mistime his belligerence before the millennium. It probably reinforced a degree of caution in him.

He spent the next 24 years — some behind bars — working around the various administrations’ strategies and tactics.

Anwar holds the cards now, and he is not going to show them until he absolutely has to. 

But news and events are percolating, and the prime minister’s reactions to them are strong indicators that elections are likely to be in 2027.

The author argues that Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim is carefully timing the next general election around the political rhythms and weaknesses of rival coalitions, with signs pointing towards a 2027 poll rather than an earlier contest. ― Picture by Yusof Mat Isa

Everybody Wang Chung Tonight

The three main Semenanjung coalitions are at different stages today.

Perikatan Nasional’s spine PAS faces an impossible choice to either stay with Bersatu or back its emergent splinter group. 

In its usual default, it lets rancorous divisions with Muhyiddin Yassin’s leadership play out rather than be decisive about it. 

PAS are masters of passive aggressive politics which paves the way to deny they were responsible for any misgivings. 

In their after the fact narrative, it was forced upon them therefore they are innocent and maintain their purity of intent.

Snubs, olive branches, cynical statements, de-escalations, confusions and frustrations will dominate the space until either Muhyiddin’s crew or Hamzah Zainudin’s — if he sorts out his vehicle — is preferred by PAS. 

The Islamists can only replicate 2022’s results if they have moderates with them, like in Padang Serai, Bagan Serai, Kuala Langat or Jasin. They need the dark blue of PN on the ballot paper when in the west coast.

Either way, it’s a protracted process, the choosing simply due to PAS’ nature to eschew it.

Meanwhile, Barisan Nasional is riding high. Rumah Bangsa recruitment, the Negeri Sembilan standoff, the Johor solo resolve complete with its mentri besar apologising to the party president consolidates inwards to display renewal, separation from Pakatan Harapan and readiness to helm the country.

In this GE16 race, there is little doubt BN is pace-setting with the chasing pack a bit behind.

Which begs the question, how far behind is Pakatan under PKR’s leadership?

The Reformasi party reshuffled its election preparedness, lifting the Selangor Mentri Besar as co-election director, leaving more queries about deputy president Nurul Izzah Anwar’s exact role rather than the fluff of overseeing strategic development and grassroots development. 

A new war-room is up and running with Anwar’s political secretary Azman Abidin heading it.

The numbers continue to circulate about PKR’s chances in a general election. Mood matters, and PKR won’t want an election when people feel its support is suspect.

Key partner and electoral safety net DAP however has a plan A, B and C with a readiness for any eventuality. 

It fears losing its credibility, and the July 12 party congress is interested in the soul of the party rather than its place in the federal Cabinet. DAP may ask more of Anwar before the year ends.

There are nuances within the PKR-DAP relations but it remains not frayed.

Anwar sees Umno is ahead in preparations despite PN lighting itself up and screaming in its flames. 

Is he caught unawares or since he has a date in mind knows Umno-BN is premature and PN can continue its cremation?

Scheduling, scheduling, scheduling

First week of June will be done when the last Raya Haji holiday-maker’s car arrives back in the city, and the countdown to the World Cup begins. 

The final is played on July 20, and once the euphoria dies down the Merdeka month energy kicks in until mid-September.

The window for a general election is between late September till November ends. And thereafter holidays and year-end merriments compete for space.

If the Anwar administration straddles the situation calmly and weathers the global oil supply, he has no pressure to go to the polls before 2027.

And 2027, politically, only kicks off in April, since the fasting month followed by Raya fills up both February and March.

Perhaps this was in Anwar’s mind all along.

That Umno runs out of overexuberance by year-end. It’s a party that requires enough rope to hurt itself. Anwar might be supplying it.

A few more unfortunate decisions in court, or trouble with the palaces or outright power struggles cannot be ruled out. 

There are a lot of forced smiles inside the party presently. And at some point, Khairy Jamaluddin Abu Bakar’s turns to speak plaudits about the most excellent Zahid Hamidi and his leadership of purpose and integrity which is beyond reproach may turn the population vertigo. And accelerate Planet Zygo’s invasion of earth.

Parallelly, PKR picks up steam with a bevy of good news from around October beginning with the Budget. Pardon, election Budget.

Which is why this column is convinced he is preparing his hop, step and jump for 2027 rather than 2026. 

If events beyond his control force it this year, there is real fear that the Pakatan campaign is off-tempo, and the seat count proves it.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.

MAY 27 — I’ve been a Tottenham Hotspurs supporter since 2001 and every year when my friends and I discuss football my joke is, hey, as long as Spurs isn’t relegated this season I’ll be happy.

Little could I have imagined, especially back in the glory-power days of Dimitar Berbatov, Robbie Keane, Gareth Bale, Harry Kane, etc. that my beloved football team would have to fight all the way to the final day of the season to see if they can stay in the English Premier League.

With a huge sigh of relief, I’m glad to say that it worked out well. Spurs beat Everton 1-0 at home, their first home win in 10 games, to seal 17th place and stay in the league. West Ham, Burnley and Wolves were relegated instead.

What a ride it’s been.

Some time in mid-March it became clear to many folks that the reigning Europa League champions could face the very prospect of being kicked out of English football’s top tier.

Spurs had already fired Thomas Frank who, whilst beginning the league strongly, had left Spurs languishing around 15th place with about 2.5 months to go before the season ends.

They replaced him with Igor Tudor in an attempt to bring a respectful end to the season.

However, a 0-3 defeat to Nottingham Forest sealed Tudor’s fate and the club’s leadership removed Tudor (after seven matches in charge) and brought on Roberto De Zerbi.

This last-ditch attempt was Tottenham’s last play. There’s no Door Number 3. The season was almost at a close and very few (if any) managers would be willing to take on such a responsibility to drag a famous club away from the brink.

De Zerbi didn’t start well. His first game was a 1-0 away defeat to Sunderland (despite Spurs being on the attack consistently), followed by a 2-2 draw with Brighton (where a last-minute mistake by Kevin Danso cost Spurs precious two points.

Things only took a promising turn in late April when De Zerbi managed back-to-back wins, both away, against Wolves (Spurs’ first league win of 2026!) and Champions League contenders Aston Villa.

A big screen displays a thank you message to Tottenham Hotspur players after the Premier League match against Everton at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London, Britain on May 24, 2026. — Reuters pic

By this time, also given West Ham’s poor form, Spurs had gradually moved out of the relegation zone (which they waded into for a while) but they weren’t safe yet.

A draw with Leeds and a defeat to Chelsea (again, despite playing well) left the relegation battle down to the wire.

The final win against Everton, thankfully, held off the unthinkable. And the Spurs can go marching on for another season.

Nevertheless, the real work must begin now. As De Zerbi said during his post-match interview, there are lots and lots of changes required.

Read between the lines, the manager said that about half the team isn’t showing enough commitment. This is drastic and absolutely must be addressed.

The Tottenham Board must repair a perennial mistake and spend good money on world-class players, players who can ensure the team doesn’t face a relegation battle next March.

Overall, the 25/26 season has been like a wilderness experience. It’s brought about pain and desolation which normally produces only two outcomes: hopelessness and despair or determination to better one self.

I know I speak for all Spurs fans that we hope the club has learnt well from the past year to take the latter route. Come On You Spurs.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.